My Top 100 Albums (30-21)

We are now the equivalent of one Advent calendar away from the list's completion.  This post will take us up to the top twenty.  We still have to get to albums from numerous well known bands and solo artists.  This section of the list was the hardest to sort for rankings, probably because there are so many high quality albums here.  That includes number thirty....

#30

Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends

Coldplay

Runner-Up:  A Rush of Blood To The Head

Bronze Medal:  X&Y

Honorable Mention:  Mylo Xyloto

The mark of a good album is when it achieves a sound that's greater than the sum of its parts (or sum of its songs in this case).  There are few albums on this list that epitomize that concept more Coldplay's Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends.  The most recognizable singles on the album are "Viva La Vida" and, to a lesser extent, "Violet Hill".  If I were to rank my favorite songs from Coldplay, "Viva La Vida" might crack the top ten but it would be buried below the mountain of other hits like "Clocks", "Fix You", "Talk", "Paradise", "Yellow", "Speed of Sound", or "The Scientist".  For that reason, I could easily and justifiably have placed A Rush Of Blood To The Head in this slot and moved on.  And, to be fair, I almost did.  Rush of Blood was the first full album I purchased from the band and it's solid from start to finish.  There are numerous hits to be found including "Clocks" which will go down as an all-time great song.  

*Brief tangent:  In December 2009, ESPN's Sportscenter compiled the greatest sports images of the past decade (2000-2009) and set it to "Clocks".  What made it interesting was that they timed the images up with lyrics of the song that fit together.  For example, "A tiger's waiting to be tamed" coincided with images of Tiger Woods decked in red at the Masters or "curse missed opportunities" coincided with the Bartman foul ball at Wrigley Field (Alou probably wasn't catching that ball).  It was a great six minute highlight and I included it here if you haven't seen it.  Tangent over.*

So why include Viva La Vida on the list?  To me, the album achieves a different sound than any other Coldplay album.  The arrangements feel more like an orchestra set that the band is playing around.  The sound is richer and grander but not overwhelming.  It's beautiful.  One tracks melts into another to the point where three songs have passed by and it still feels like one piece of music.  When I purchased the album on iTunes it included 12 tracks but Spotify only lists 10.  That's because "Lovers in Japan" and "Reign of Love" were combined into one track as were "Yes" and "Chinese Sleep Chant".  

The album is less about favorite tracks and more about listening to it in its complete form but if I had to pick favorites, "Viva La Vida" is still the best.  When I lived in Jacksonville and was training for a marathon (if you haven't heard of one, it's a long race which I'm sure literally any of its prior participants will tell you about in great detail), I listened to "Viva La Vida" and Dropkick Murphy's "State of Massachusetts" on a loop.  More evidence for the court that I'm just a weird guy.  

"Death and All His Friends" is a haunting finale, "Violet Hill" will get your head nodding, and "Cemeteries of London" / "Lost!" provides an incredibly strong start to the album.  But skipping any tracks on this album number 30 is not only unnecessary, it takes away from the experience.  And life is all about experiences.  Like this time I ran a marathon....wait where are you going?

#29

FutureSex/LoveSounds

Justin Timberlake

When the boy band craze of the late 1990s hit, I was in late middle school / early high school, an environment for which it was a social death sentence to your red blooded male machismo to express anything but contempt or, at most, apathy for their albums.  At the peak of the boy band boom were *NSYNC and The Backstreet Boys.  The rivalry between the fan bases reached a fever pitch that would not be seen again until the great Team Jacob vs Team Edward battle of 2008.  The popularity of each band was judged by the decibel level of the shrieks of fans and by the number of votes tallied that day on TRL.  98 Degrees was mixed in there too as a third party candidate but they were the Ross Perot to the main Bush/Clinton face-off.  It's impossible to say who really "won" between *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys but it's undisputed that Justin Timberlake emerged as the biggest success story of any member of either group.  Whether there was a master plan all along for his career progression or he just happened to luck into it, his path should be the blueprint for any teen idol looking to stay relevant into adulthood.  

*NSYNC disbanded in 2002 and Timberlake released his first solo album Justified later that year.  The boy band stigma was still heavily attached to him which put the full album off my radar but the catchiness of "Cry Me A River" and "Rock Your Body" were hard to ignore.  He somehow managed to dodge the bulk of the media scrutiny following the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident.  Jackson too most of the flak which I don't think would be the case today.  Tiimberlake would have (justifiably) shared much more of the blame and public ire.  What I wouldn't give to have a story like that be the main topic of controversy and news coverage.  Take me back to 2004.

Following that album's release, he walked the tightrope perfectly to ingratiate himself to a broader audience.  He started acting and chose to work with well-respected and successful directors like Nick Cassavettes in Alpha Dog.  He was clearly targeting roles that were a little darker so people would take him seriously.  That's not a new strategy but finding the right role is key.  Zac Efron went too dark with The Paperboy and the entire cast of Spring Breakers made the same mistake.  When audiences can sense that the actor is trying that hard, it can feel a little manipulating.  

Timberlake happened to find exactly the right role for him as Frankie in Alpha Dog.  He could play serious but the role also required someone who had a charming personality, which Timberlake naturally possesses.  He'd capitalize on this trait to a much larger degree of success and acclaim years later in The Social Network.  The rest of the Alpha Dog cast was so strong with Anton Yelich, Olivia Wilde, Ben Foster (another child actor who has transitioned very well into niche roles) and Emile Hirsch that Timberlake wasn't asked to carry too much of the load especially with Cassavettes directing  He attempted more of an artsy "out there" role in the head-scratcher Southland Tales (so did The Rock and Sarah Michelle Gellar who were both trying to chart their own paths to bona fide adulthood movie stardom) but I have yet to talk to anyone who understands what that movie was trying to say or can even chart its plot.  

To further distance himself from the boy band version of himself, Timberlake cut his hair and replaced his boy band curls with an almost shaved head.  He started dressing in suits which was a not so subtle move to project a more grown up image.  That move could have backfired on him if the public perceived it as snobbery or elitism.  But he proactively countered that by using humor (some of it self-depracating) on Saturday Night Live where he proved to be one of those hosts who just clicked with the cast and showed a natural ability to comfortably host (e.g. John Goodman, Jon Hamm, Alec Baldwin, Steven Segal).  Anyway, we're talking about music right?

Most importantly, in the same way that he aligned himself as an actor with talented directors to enhance his acting career, Timberlake surrounded himself musically with very talented producers.  Timbaland, who worked with Timberlake on some tracks of his first solo album (including the very successful "Cry Me A River"), took center stage on Timberlake's next album FutureSex/LoveSounds.  The result is an album that rewards consuming it in full album form rather than piece by piece via radio singles.  Timberlake, Timbaland and everyone on the album are in no hurry and take their time exploring the space of each song.  That struck me as a sign of confidence from Timberlake as an artist who was really intent on putting out a quality and complete piece of work.  Sure "Sexyback" dominated the radio but it's more the anomaly on the album than the norm.  He could have tried to make 12 tracks that were irresistible bait to Top 40 radio but instead he made something that you can feel he's enthusiastic about.  Many of these songs found their way onto the radio anyway but in edited form.  The media had to bend to make his songs fit their format rather than the other way around.

If I associated one album from college, this would be it.  From standing against a wall at house parties to standing against a wall at bars and even the rare Broad Ripple club (R.I.P. Seven and Vogue), this album was everywhere.  Taking a fresh look back at the pop music scene then, Timbaland was a dominant force ranging from this Timberlake album, to the Nelly Furtado album, to his own release ("The Way I Am" and "Apologize" were inescapable), the man's fingerprints were everywhere on the most popular and most requested songs.  But this album seems to have stayed the most relevant.  Looking back on it, the only song that doesn't fit is the second to last track "Losing My Way" which deals with battling addiction.  It's a legitimate problem that he's addressing but tonally it doesn't really fit with the rest of the album.  But it's a minor nit and it's a decent song; just seems out of left field.

Timberlake has faded a bit.  After some tepidly reviewed movies like Runner, Runner and Trouble With the Curve he's not acting as much except for some animated work, where my oldest daughter knows his voice  from the Trolls franchise.  He's had some quality music since then, most notably "Mirrors" from The 20/20 Experience.  But there has also been the poorly received Man Of The Woods and even his collaboration with Jay-Z "Magna Carta" felt underwhelming given the talent involved.  But I believe he still has more quality work to offer in both music and film but, even if that's not true, leaving your mark in films like The Social Network and in albums like number 28 FutureSex/LoveSounds isn't a bad legacy for a former boy band teen idol.

#28

Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness

The Smashing Pumpkins

Runner-Up:  Siamese Dream

In 1991, the game Action 52 was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System.  The game was unique in that it packaged 52 games into one cartridge.  Obtaining video game reviews in the pre-internet age of the early nineties was almost impossible.  Word of mouth was your best bet, otherwise you were buying the game blindly and hoping that the gaming experience justified the price tag.  That could be nerve-wracking enough when you were paying $30-$40 for a game but Action 52 was selling for $199 ( ~$350 in 2020 dollars).  I'm sure for a lot of kids, the large price tag meant that this could be the only game they received for a full year so fingers were doubly crossed that the game would turn out to be a winner. 

My parents didn't allow us to have a Nintendo until 1993 so I wasn't even given the opportunity to ask my parents for this game.  But it's doubtful I would have anyway.  Even at 7 years old I would have known that the price tag was too steep.  I dodged a major bullet because this game was a complete disaster.  It has gone down as one of the worst games ever put out for the original NES.  Many of the games were repetitive with poor controls or, in a few cases, didn't even work at all.  There's an entertaining video review of the game here.  The lesson learned here is that an increase in quantity is no guarantee of quality.  

Enter Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, the fourth album from The Smashing Pumpkins (cue one of my favorite jokes as an eleven year old).  Released in 1995, the album was a double disc that contained 28 tracks.  The question was whether this album was using the same gimmick as Action 52 in that a large quantity was masking subpar quality.  That was question would be answered with an emphatic "no" as the album generated overwhelmingly positive critical reviews and massive commercial success.  

While it was easier to dissect Action 52 by singling out the games that weren't completely terrible, it's easier to dissect Mellon Collie by singling out the few songs that aren't as appealing and there are truly only a few.  Both discs of the album are strong but you lose the double disc effect with Spotify as both discs merge into one 28 track album.  The run time of the full album is a little over two hours but the Spotify deluxe album, complete with new versions, demos and outtakes, clocks in at five hours and fifty-two minutes.  I'm a fan of the Smashing Pumpkins but I don't need close to six hours of them in my life for one sitting.  

The whole album is big and over-the-top in an intentional way from the number of tracks to the grandiose sound that ranges from orchestration to heavy grunge to alternative rock. After the beautiful instrumental opening, the rest of the 27 tracks are full of classics like "Tonight, Tonight", "Bullet With Butterfly Wings", "Zero", "1979" and "Thirty-Three".  But there are lesser known songs here that make the whole album worth the listen.  For me that's "Here Is No Why",  "Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans" and "Beautiful" to name a few.  But with a track listing this vast and diverse, it's worth hearing the whole album to discern your own personal favorites.  It's amazing how much the band can aptly toggle between beautiful string-heavy orchestral pieces like "Tonight, Tonight" and "Galapogos" to the heavy, hard rocking guitar of "Jellybelly" and "Tales Of A Scorched Earth".

 

Billy Corgen and his bandmates' second album Siamese Dream will always be a classic rock album to me that houses my two favorite songs from the group ("Disarm" and "Today").  But it's impossible to leave Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness off the list for its ambition, its high quality and its lasting legacy as one of the top albums of the nineties.  And, unlike some notoriously bad video games, the number 29 album didn't cost $199.

#27

Folklore

Taylor Swift

Runner-Up:  1989

My Taylor Swift entry was set in stone.  It was 1989, case closed, on to the next one.  I really didn't think twice about it.  I'm not the biggest Taylor Swift fan but it was impossible to deny the sledgehammer of pop music that 1989 represented.  It was radio hit after radio hit that you could play at a party or in the car.  It inspired a Ryan Adams cover album (guy sounds a little scummy but worth it to check out his take on "All You Had To Do Was Stay").  

But my wife and friends kept talking up Folklore.  I had heard snippets and was enticed but I didn't give a legit chance until recently.  And now, Folklore replacing 1989 is only the second change to the list I've made since finalizing in September.  It's also the only album on the list that will represent 2020.  It's a beautifully made album that can sound haunting, sorrowful, nostalgic or hopeful depending on the song.  Sure, if you need a party or pop album you're still reaching for 1989 but Folklore has really resonated with me and, in researching how it was made, I discovered a big reason why.  

I'm a big fan of the band The National and member Aaron Dessner had a heavy hand in writing the instrumentation for many of the tracks on Folklore.  There are songs in which Swift could be replaced by The National front man Matt Berninger and you wouldn't think twice. The other main contributor was Jack Antonoff from Bleachers and fun. who also helped Swift write 1989 and Lover.  Justin Vernon from Bon Iver collaborated on the song "Exile" which is one of, if not the best, track on the album.  But it's the totality of the album that puts it on the list here.  

There are personal touches all over the album. "the last great american dynasty" details an heiress's wild lifestyle before Swift reveals at the end that she purchased said woman's home in New England.  "epiphany", the song with the most fingerprints of The National on it, references both Swift's grandfather's wartime service and the trauma of front line workers as they combat COVID-19.  "mad woman" is a direct shot at Scooter Braun (so awesome she's re-recording all her masters just to spite him).  Despite the number of collaborators, it's consistent in theme and in tone and that's a credit to Swift allowing contributors but never losing control.  Hats off to her for producing a great work during the height of the pandemic.  

The National and Bon Iver received boosts to their streaming numbers over the summer after this album number 27 debuted.  I wonder if the success of this album will encourage more diverse pairings in the future.  Billy Corgen and Demi Lovato album forthcoming in 2021?

#26

Nevermind

Nirvana

Same kid.  We're old.

Runner-Up:  MTV Unplugged

Bronze Medal:  In Utero

This will likely be viewed as too low on the list by some so it's worth pointing out once again that this list is my personal preference of album listening.  There's no denying the influence and well deserved acclaim this band, and specifically the album Nevermind, has received since 1991.  There are sadly not many Nirvana albums from which to choose so it really came down to Nevermind or the MTV Unplugged album.  I love the Unplugged album but I went with Nevermind for a few reasons.  One, Nevermind is the classic Nirvana album in every way from the iconic cover to the songs on the album.  Two, the Unplugged album felt a little like cheating since it includes acoustic renditions of songs covering all Nirvana albums.  And three, so much of Nirvana's appeal was the bombastic guitar sound and Cobain's vocals at full tilt.  The Unplugged album, while highlighting a softer side of Cobain's voice and the lyrics of many songs, does not capture the loud sound that the band was known for when they jump started the national grunge movement.

I never owned Nevermind.  The first and foremost reason was that I was six years out when it was released so what little teen angst I had was still years away.  Also, even if I wanted to purchase the album I would have been confronted with the barrier of the album's infamous cover.  Even years later after I downloaded it, I'm sure it wasn't my mother's favorite sound emanating from my room.  

I'm curious how my own kids will perceive this album (and many others on this list for that matter).  If my daughters are enthused about rock music, there's no doubt that they'll find their way to this album.  I wonder if they'll hear it for the groundbreaking sound that it was.  Or has the sound been copied and mimicked so much by now that the original will actually sound derivative?

1991 was an interesting year in music.  Looking at the number one albums over the course of the year shows the diversifying nature of the music landscape.  There are pop mainstays like Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson and culture snapshots like Michael Bolton and Vanilla Ice while genres like country music and rap were coming more into the mainstream via artists like Garth Brooks and N.W.A. respectively.  Even the rock genre is becoming fragmented in style as the list includes a diverse list of bands from U2 to Metallica to R.E.M. to Van Halen to Guns N Roses.  And into this increasingly complex musical picture came bands like Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Soundgarden and Nirvana.  

As diverse as the music industry was prior to the band's arrival, Nirvana provided a sound that was unlike anything else at the time and remains tempting for bands to mimic but impossible to duplicate.  No album exemplified that more than Nevermind.  No disrespect to In Utero but this is the definitive Nirvana album no matter how overplayed some songs have been over the years. 

There's the famous line from The Dark Knight of "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain".  In the rock industry that line can be altered to read "You're either immortalized after a couple great albums or endure long enough for fans to call you a commercial sell-out".  Doesn't roll off the tongue quite as easily.  In Nirvana's case, Cobain's untimely passing ensured that the band would only produce a handful of records which actually served to lift the status of the band as they were never given the chance to decline or fail.  

Cobain's passing does present an interesting sliding doors moment.  Many, including myself, would have followed with great interest how Cobain's work would have progressed over the years.  If he were still here, would Hole have still gone on to make Celebrity Skin?  Would Dave Grohl have still gone off on his own to start Foo Fighters?  I can carry that "what-if" further by asking whether Queens of the Stone Age would have achieved the same success without Grohl's clout supporting them (probably given their talent).  No doubt that Cobain would have dabbled in side projects and collaborations and that's the "what if" piece that I wonder the most about.   

Nevermind is a classic album but for whatever reason it's not one that I reach for frequently.  There are some songs like "Lounge Act" that just don't connect with me for whatever reason.  I know that's a reflection of me rather than the album's quality.  I still love it.  There are just other albums coming up that I can listen all the way through without skipping anything.  Regardless of my ridiculous and inconsistent ranking criteria, Nevermind is a rock album that will endure for generations and it comes in at number 26 on this list.

#25

Leaving Through The Window

Something Corporate

Runner-Up:  North

I covered Jack's Mannequin at album number 52 but the first band of Andrew McMahon comes in at number 25.  The sound is more punk and the lyrics are brasher than his subsequent bands but, considering that McMahon was only 18 when the band rose to fame, it's understandable.  The band would only last for two albums, North and Leaving Through The Window.  Truth be told, two of my favorite songs from this band weren't a part of either album.  "Konstantine" is only listed as part of their greatest hits compilation Played In Space while "Forget December" was part of the Santa Cause: It's a Punk Rock Christmas fundraiser album.

Both are similar in sound but Leaving Through The Window takes the spot here.  Songs like "I Want To Save You" and "Punk Rock Princess" accurately capture late teenager melodrama while songs like "If You C Jordan" and "Drunk Girl" capture the immaturity without the crassness of Blink-182 (not a knock on Blink-182; little crassness never hurt anyone).  But it's songs like "I Woke Up In A Car" and "The Astronaut" that provide a glimpse of McMahon's capability as a songwriter. 

I was very late to the party on finding this band.  In fact they had already released what would be their last album by the time my freshman year dorm room neighbor introduced me to them in fall 2003.  That would be the first of many bands that he'd lead me toward.  In return, I rewarded him with my smothering friendship that included finding a way to live next to or across from him in a dorm room, fraternity house and off-campus house.  He compensated for those four years of close proximity by moving to Seattle, which is about as far away from me in Philadelphia as possible.  But I still roped him into starting this site in 2010.

McMahon seems to have handled stardom at an early age with some maturity and perspective.  His name doesn't carry as much clout as other artists who achieved fame at the same relatively early age like Taylor Swift.  Some of that I attribute to the fact that McMahon has been a part of three different bands over an 18 year span.  I'm sure if Something Corporate had just endured for 18 years then the following would be even larger.  But it's doubtful that creatively the band could have lasted even half that long.  Credit to McMahon for recognizing when things need to be shaken up creatively.  Thankfully the band hadn't reached that point when they released Leaving Through The Window, the number 25 album on the list.

#24

Watch The Throne

Jay-Z / Kanye West

Runner-Up:  The Blueprint

Bronze Medal:  The Black Album

This album is going in as the Jay-Z entry.  Let's be clear that I'm not saying this is the best Jay-Z album.  That crown goes to The Blueprint and I don't think it's a particularly close race but you could maybe talk me into The Black Album.  So now I'll attempt to make my case (in a meandering, rambling sort of way of course) as to why Watch The Throne, which isn't even a standalone Jay-Z album, takes this spot on the list.

Jay-Z's early albums like Reasonable Doubt and In My Lifetime passed me by when they were released in the mid nineties.  I was still trying to find my own way about what kind of music I liked and, other the occasional song like "Gangsta's Paradise" or "Can't Touch This", I hadn't been exposed to much rap or hip-hop.  I would take baby steps more and more into that genre starting with dipping my toe in the water with Will Smith and The Beastie Boys.  One afternoon on my bus ride home in seventh grade one of the high schoolers gave the bus driver a cassette of Jay-Z's Vol.2...Hard Knock Life (edited of course otherwise it would have been ejected halfway through "Intro").  Even the edited version of the album only made it about four tracks in until our 65 year-old driver had enough and jettisoned the tape for the regularly scheduled country music station.  God bless our bus driver Kenny Kenoyer; he tried to appease the masses of rowdy kids he had to shuttle every day by giving their music a chance but every man has his breaking point.  

Side story:  When I was eight years old, I summoned the courage to ask Kenny to play the MC Hammer Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em album that I borrowed from my sister.  I thought I would be cheered by everyone for having such cool taste.  Instead, the tape made it about a third of the way through before the rest of the bus was literally chanting to take it out.  When Kenny finally pressed ejected there were wild cheers.  My little third grade ego took a beating that day and I'm not going to lie that typing this out elicited an audible groan from me 28 years later.  

Over the next few years as middle school turned to high school, I would hear numerous rappers ranging in sound and ability from Ja Rule to DMX to Nas to Eminem to Nelly.  But Jay-Z always sounded different, cooler, superior, effortless.  In the fall of 2001, my sister emailed me from college to ask me to download and burn some songs for her on our computer.  I can't remember the full list but I know that there were many tracks off The Blueprint (released on 9/11 which was a fact I had forgotten) including "The Ruler's Back".  That song alone got me to listen to the whole album and what an album it was.  To this day it's a classic from "Takeover" to "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)" to "Heart Of The City (Ain't No Love)" to the Eminem collaboration "Renegade".  

It's an album that holds up to this day.  Unlike other rap albums that I've tried revisiting like Marshall Mathers LP or Dr. Dre's 2001, the lyrics, while most assuredly explicit, don't venture into extreme over-the-top violence or sex.  I know Slim Shady was a persona but there's a lot of lyrical content in the early Eminem albums that just makes me uncomfortable now.  But Jay-Z's albums don't suffer the same fate.  Jay-Z doesn't speak of women in the highest or most mature light but there's no talk of throwing them into the trunk of a car.  

In 2003, Jay-Z released The Black Album and announced his retirement.  That retirement would only last three years and during those three years, Kanye West, longtime Jay-Z producer and perceived protégé who worked on The Blueprint and The Black Album, rose to prominence with his own two massively successful albums The College Dropout and Late Registration for which Jay-Z even contributed verses on tracks for each album.  Kanye's ability as a producer and a rapper began to be viewed as on-par with Jay-Z.  This viewpoint would gain steam when Jay-Z came out of retirement with the underwhelming Kingdom Come.  He would get more on track with subsequent releases American Gangster and The Blueprint 3.  But in that same timeframe, Kanye released Graduation, 808s & Heartbreak and, the high mark, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (for which Jay-Z contributed an incredibly weak verse for "Monster" that stands out in inferiority even more when Nicki Minaj completely makes the track her own on the subsequent verse).  Kanye's personal stock had taken a bit of a hit mainly from the Taylor Swift VMA hijacking debacle but there was little doubt as to his immense level of talent.  And the talk of Kanye's superiority to Jay-Z grew.

Then came Watch The Throne, the joint album between Jay-Z and Kanye West released in 2011.  The two would be collaborating but many were listening to the album as a competition between the two.  To my ear, this album cemented what I had always felt was the case.  Kanye was the superior producer but Jay-Z is the superior rapper.  He's great at creating the coloring book but Jay-Z can make the page come to life.  Kanye's lyrics are solid but there are times when you can hear him laboring to make the rhyme work.  Whereas it just seems to flow out of Jay-Z completely effortlessly.  On no track is that more evident than the ninth track.  Before that, the time on each track had been relatively equally split between the two but two minutes and seventeen seconds into "Who Gon Stop Me" Jay-Z just can't help himself and for the next ninety seconds, he just lets loose without a word from Kanye.  True to the song's title, who's going to stop him?  Apparently not Kanye, who just lets him continue uninterrupted.  It's not the best verses Jay-Z has put out but, again, it's the effortlessly and smoothness that his lyrics come out that is a microcosm of what makes him unique and maybe the best ever.

This album doesn't waste a track from start to finish.  There are guest spots from Beyonce and Frank Ocean but Kanye and Jay-Z are what all listeners are there to hear and they don't disappoint.  Kanye produces some of his best work (but not THE best work) which is admirable considering how much creative juice Twisted Fantasy must have used up.  I'd go with the deluxe version of the album as the four additional tracks, while not matching in tone of the rest of the album (e.g. H.A.M.) are still worth the listen.  The whole album is a highlight but "Otis", "Gotta Have It", "No Church In The Wild" and "Made In America" are the cream of the crop.   

It's an understatement to say that Jay-Z has proved to have staying power.  He's been a force of nature as a celebrity and in the music world since 1996 through his own albums and the artists he's influenced and supported.  The man has continued putting out albums to varying degrees of critical and commercial success for almost 25 years.  The high points are extremely high (The Black Album) and the lows (Magna Carta) are only low when comparing to the extremely high bar of expectations that he's set for himself through years of A plus work.  Another artist for whom I'll always be interested in what the next project is.  But The Blueprint and Watch The Throne, the number 26 album, will always be go-to Jay-Z albums for me.  

#23

Hybrid Theory

Linkin Park

Runner-Up:  Meteora

Bronze Medal:  Reanimation

I Googled Linkin Park to find out the backstory hoping for a great backstory behind the band name.  Nope.  They named it after Lincoln Park in Santa Monica but they wanted the domain name for their website so they deliberately changed the spelling.  Oh well.  Also, the first page of Google results and Wikipedia are basically the extent of your author's research.  

You'd be hard pressed to find an album that permeated the Tri-County High School male demographic at the turn of the twenty-first century than the debut album from Linkin Park, Hybrid Theory.  In pre-game locker rooms, in weight rooms, in our cars, in our rooms, the album was everywhere and it stayed prominently in the spotlight for over a year.  

Produced in the time when every band felt that they needed to have a DJ (Incubus, Limp Bizkit), Linkin Park's sound stood out, not from that turntable gimmick but from the dichotomy of sound between its two lead singers.  Mike Shinoda's deeper voice and lyrics that skewed more toward rap were offset by the pained and powerful screams of Chester Bennington.  It was a unique sound that diversified what the band offered to its listeners.  

"One Step Closer", "Crawling", "Papercut" and especially "In The End" are the songs that received more than their fair share of airplay but the whole album is solid from start to finish.  "My December" and "Runaway" are two of my favorites that didn't get quite as much attention.  Plenty of drives in high school where this album served as the soundtrack to stressing about grades (take me back to when that was my biggest stressor), frustration with unrequited high school crushes, or riding high thinking about an upcoming weekend trip to the Tippecanoe Mall with my friends.

As time has passed, I've listened to the album, and the band, less and less.  It's not an album to casually put on around the house and my teenage angst, along with the front of my hairline, has receded considerably.  That's not to say that I never listen to the album. I'd be lying if I said I never put this album or the equally solid follow-up Meteora (not counting the equally good Hybrid Theory remix album Reanimation) on when I'm alone in the car while letting the Honda Pilot speakers test their limits a little.  

Even if it only gets airtime in my car or in my gym, Hybrid Theory is the album that holds the most nostalgic ties to high school for me.  It was always going inside the top 30.  But it doesn't receive enough rotation currently to be inside the top 20.  Don't try to decipher my ratings methodology; you'll just get a nose bleed.  Just belt out the chorus to "In The End" and enjoy album number 23.

#22

Crash

Dave Matthews Band

Runner-Up:  Before These Crowded Streets

Bronze Medal:  Under The Table And Dreaming

Some people you can't help but smile when you're around them.  My cousin Brandon was one of those people.  He was three years older than me but he never made me feel that way.  He walked the tightrope of sticking up for me but also giving me an appropriate amount of (deserved) flak to make me feel included  and not coddled.  I looked up to him a lot.  My cousin Clint was my age so when I would go over to their house to play, Brandon's room was like a shrine to what was cool (e.g. NBA Jam on Sega, Shaq poster, etc.).  After college both of us moved to different areas but I always looked forward to seeing him and, like I said, I couldn't help but smile and laugh the majority of the time. 

My wedding day was a blur but some of the most vivid memories I have from that day and the night before involve Brandon and his wife Megan.  His laugh and smile are what I remember the most and they're featured prominently in so many pictures and memories from that day including a couple pictures that hang on our wall.  Someone advised me to enjoy our wedding day because it's the last time that all those people will be in the same room.  I agreed with that in logic but it's not until years start to go by that you realize just how true that is.  I didn't talk to Brandon as much as I should have or wanted to just because everyday life gets in the way.  But three years later, he would be gone.  

I still think about him often and one of the connectors to his memory that I'll have forever is through music, specifically through his favorite band, Dave Matthews Band.  For the album selection, it came down to Under The Table and Dreaming, Crash, or Before These Crowded Streets.  Streets is probably the best album to simply just let play and there are some classic songs on Under the Table but Crash takes the slot here since it was the first album that really got me into the band.  

After Brandon passed, Megan has done an exemplary job of raising their daughter while dealing with her own grief.  If that wasn't enough, she has productively channeled those emotions into a blog, Blonde Is The New Widow, where she can use her experience and witty writing to help those who may be going through similar experiences in life or just parenting in general.  That's probably a more worthwhile endeavor than, say, operating a blog to narcissistically name one's top 100 albums.  

There's not much to say about the Crash album.  No one's reading this and thinking "who is this Dave Matthews guy?  I should give his music a chance."  DMB has been around since 1994 and this is one of their most well known and loved albums.  Either you like the band, in which case you don't need me to tell you that songs like "Two Step", "Tripping Billies", "Crash Into Me", "41" and "So Much To Say" are some of the band's best work and aren't fading with age.  Or this band is not for you, in which case I hope these few paragraphs were at least worthwhile in shining a light on what a great guy Brandon Federer was.  He's still missed, still loved and this album number 22 will always remind me of him.

#21

Ten

Pearl Jam

Runner-Up:  Vitalogy

Bronze Medal:  Vs.

There are some movies or albums or books that can be so unanimously viewed as excellent that they can start to suffer from too much praise.  Discussing them may be avoided because there's nothing to truly debate if all parties agree on how great the work is.  There can even be a decline in how much it's consumed because, if you're anything like me, you fall in love with the work, run it into the ground to the point where you become a little sick of it, and then you develop this quasi-aversion to it.  Or at the very least, the piece loses some of its luster.  A good example is when TNT decided to run The Shawshank Redemption on a schedule that resembled Good Morning America.  It's a phenomenal movie and I still enjoy watching it but some of the awe is taken away when you watch it that often.  A similar dynamic happened to me and the Pearl Jam album Ten.

I don't think I need to sell anyone on the high quality of this near-legendary album that included the enormous hits of "Jeremy", "Even Flow", "Alive" and "Black".  But to just list those songs is selling the whole album short.  All eleven (always bothered me that the Ten album had eleven tracks) songs are worthy of high praise and it's what warranted listening to the album on repeat.  But I went so overboard on listening that, over time, I drifted away from the album.  Thinking about listening to it didn't charge me up so I really stopped giving it a chance for years.  

It wasn't until I put this list together that I gave it a full listen again.  If it's even possible, I forgot just how good it is.  I respect how the band has tried to mix things up over the years and there are some solid albums other than this one in their discography but the Pearl Jam selection was always going to be this album.  I don't think that shocked anyone.  It was just a matter of where its placement on the list would be.  In the weird Pearl Jam vs Nirvana rivalry, I was always firmly on the Pearl Jam side of the fence and, listening to both Ten and Nevermind in full recently, that opinion hasn't changed.  Both are great but give me Vedder any day.  

Now it's up to me to not ruin Ten, the number 21 album on the list, for myself again.  Show some self-restraint!

Just like that, we're on to the top twenty.  New post coming tomorrow.  We're almost there!

My Top 100 Albums (40-31)

The countdown continues as we reach the top 40.  The selections have gotten even harder from here but we're now waist deep in bands and albums that I absolutely love.  Just a reminder that there's only one album per band/singer allowed on the list.  On to number 40!

#40

Black Holes and Revelations

Muse

In prior entries I've talked about the six months I spent in New Jersey during college for an internship and how I was more or less solo for the majority of that time.  A couple months into the job, I decided that I would grow a goatee.  The problem with that is that I can't grow facial hair.  So, after two weeks, the goatee looked like a three year old's drawing of a house; you can tell what it's supposed to be but it doesn't look anything like what it's supposed to.  My boss's boss stopped me in the hallway after those two weeks and advised me that I should remove it for the sake of my workplace image.  Even worse, he suggested that I not even wait until the end of the day and I should take care of this during my lunch break.  I went back to my apartment, shaved and for a few minutes sat on the futon mattress on the floor that was serving as my makeshift bed and thought "this is really not going well at all".  Looking back, the whole experience was, in fact, going well and this higher-up had given me a valuable piece of advice.  It's beneficial to have people in your life to tell you when something is a bad idea or just to provide honest feedback.  Past success can be an impediment to finding this advice because either people will be less likely to question you or, even if they do, you may ignore them because you've been successful in the past so what do they know?

Muse is a band that has continually tried new things over the course of their career that has spanned eight albums over 21 years.  They started as a pure rock band and gradually experimented more and more with electronic instrumentation to varying degrees of success.  As the band grew more successful, some of the sound on the subsequent albums got larger and larger to the point where it felt like they were trying to fit an elephant into a port-o-potty.  Some of this newer sound doesn't connect with me but I applaud their initiative to try something new and inventive rather than just trying to repeat the sounds of prior albums.  It's also incredible to me that a band of three primary members can make a collective sound so loud that it borders on a full orchestra.

Following the solid rock album of Absolution, their third album which was propelled by hits like "Time Is Running Out" and "Hysteria", Muse released Black Holes and Revelations which ratcheted up the scale of the album aided by adding more synthesizers.  The synthesizer experiment continued further and further on the next two albums, The Resistance and The 2nd Law, the latter of which, in my opinion, took the electronic sound too far.  They started to sound less like a rock band and more like a synth show even though there were hits I liked including "Madness", "Undisclosed Desires" and "Panic Station".  Like a misguided twenty year old mistakenly trying to grow facial hair, the band needed someone to tell them to give them honest feedback.  Either no one was brave enough to provide the feedback or their past success closed their ears off to those kinds of suggestions.  

Muse attempted to get back to more of their rock roots with Drones which I thought was a middle of the road, perfectly serviceable rock album (lead singer Matt Bellamy's fresh divorce from Kate Hudson could have played a factor in the album's production).  Their latest release, Simulation Theory, is actually an album that I enjoyed the most since Black Holes, even though the synthesizer influence returned in full.  I just spent the last two paragraphs saying how they shouldn't lean into the synth sound too much but now I'm praising the synth-heavy Simulation Theory.  One more brick in the 7 foot wall of evidence that I shouldn't be a music critic.  

Black Holes and Revelations was a Goldilocks moment for the band to my listening preference.  The songs were more operatic than those on a standard rock album and there was just enough electronic influence to make the sound interesting without overwhelming the album.  "Starlight", "Map Of The Problematique", "Supermassive Black Hole" and "Knights of Cydonia" are some of the highlights.  I'm really looking forward to what the trio has in store in future albums but they've already built a very successful catalog highlighted by album number 40. 

#39

Only By The Night

Kings of Leon

In my only major traffic accident, I rear-ended another car at a stop light in late 2008.  I had never been in a car when the airbags deployed.  No one warned me how dusty that experience is.  I was convinced that the car was on fire.  I'm sure my girlfriend at the time enjoyed not only being in an unnecessary traffic accident but also talking me off the ledge that the car was not on fire (shades of Ricky Bobby).  

Despite this accident that occurred around 4 PM, I was still determined that we make the 8 PM Kings of Leon show at The Electric Factory, a relatively small venue in Philadelphia.  I'm glad I did because, as the band announced at that show much to the chagrin of the crowd, it would be the last time the band would play a venue that small.  The crowd was actually so angry at the decision that most of those in the front row turned their backs on the band when they played "Sex On Fire".  That was hard for me to understand since I had just started listening to the band seven months earlier.  

Similar to many others, my first real exposure to Kings of Leon was through the album Only By The Night which included the hits "Sex On Fire", "Crawl", "Closer" and "Use Somebody", a song that was driven into the ground so hard that it resurfaced on the other side of the planet.  After wearing out that album in 2008, I made my way to their previous three albums and I particularly enjoyed Aha Shake Heartbreak ("King Of The Rodeo", "The Bucket") and Because of the Times ("On Call", "Knocked Up" but really the whole album is great). 

As much as I enjoyed the earlier work and even the later albums, especially the latest album WALLS, the decision for the list came down to Because of the Times or Only By The Night.  The knock against Night would be that the hits have been overplayed but that's by no fault of the band.  Going back to how I felt hearing each album the first time, Only By The Night takes today's spot on the list.  

12 years later and the album still holds up.  I would be tempted to say that the number 39 album is "on fire" but I don't want to give myself a panic attack.  *checks self to see if on fire*

#38

August and Everything After

Counting Crows

"Mr. Jones" was one of the first songs I remember hearing on the radio and wanting to own.  Purchasing a CD was a big endeavor that involved parental consent and a monetary loan so it was much easier to just record the song off the radio onto a cassette even if the sound quality was akin to listening to the song inside a tin can.  Plus you could never be sure when the song would even play on the radio.  The safest bet was during the weekly Top 40 Countdown but that presented its own problems.  The Casey Kasem hosted countdown aired on our local radio station on Sunday mornings from 8 AM to noon which meant that it overlapped considerably with Sunday Catholic mass and, on some Sundays, catechism.  Sometimes I would miss the song that I wanted completely or, even worse, the song would come on when we were two minutes away from the house which meant that I would just miss being able to run inside and press record.  On those days I would carry resentment toward my parents for a couple hours at their dilly-dallying after mass ("just haaaad to talk to the LeBeau family for those five minutes huh?").  
 
Thankfully "Mr. Jones" was one of the songs that I was able to successfully capture.  The rest of the 1993 August and Everything After album passed me by for the most part until I was a teenager with the full power of Napster at my fingertips.  "Round Here", "Omaha" and "Rain King" were my favorites and they're still the tracks for which I turn the volume up a little higher.  But I appreciate the album for being able to just hit play around the house or in the car and not worry about which song is coming up next.  
 
As much as I enjoyed "Mr. Jones" on the radio, I would learn to enjoy it in a new form when I met my friend Chris when we were both on work rotations in Jacksonville.  Chris has a good voice and once or twice would coerce his way into a stint on the microphone at a bar with a band where his go-to song was "Mr. Jones".  He saved the best version for his wedding day though.  I don't think he pulled it out in the delivery room for the birth of his son though.  I'm always impressed by his ability to actually sing in front of people and to remember the words to what is a deceptively tricky song lyrically.  
 
You'd be well within your right to have Hard Candy penciled into this list but, for me, Counting Crows never flew higher (bird pun, yay) than album number 38 August and Everything After.

#37

The King Is Dead

The Decemberists

I can almost smell the campfire on my clothes by the time this gem of an album wraps up.  The Decemberists took my favorite song "Sons and Daughters" from 2006 and expanded it into album form with the tweaks of ramping up the Americana folk influence and the guest guitar work of R.E.M.'s Peter Buck.  The result is 2011's The King Is Dead.  

Like I mentioned, I think the ideal setting for this album is around an evening campfire but it really plays anywhere as a relaxing listen.  The whole album is strong but "This Is Why We Fight" was the song that drew my attention back to The Decemberists after a couple albums that didn't connect with me.  It's probably not a coincidence that three of my favorite songs on the album are the ones for which Peter Buck lends his guitar talent ("Don't Carry It All", "Calamity Song" and "Down By The Water").

"Rox In The Box" is an upbeat workers anthem masking the absolutely brutal work performed by Montana miners at the turn of the 20th century, specifically the Speculator Mine disaster in 1917.  It's not a pleasant story but the struggle of the American blue collar worker is a running theme in the history of the early 20th century and it's this song specifically that could have been sung around a worker encampment bonfire in the 1920s.  It blends in with the album's theme perfectly.  Side note:  the Solas "Tell God and the Devil" covers this same topic with a similar folk song.

 

"January Hymn" and "June Hymn" are beautiful, slowed down tracks while the closing track "Dear Avery" has taken on a different meaning for me since our second daughter, Avery, was born in July 2019.  She seems ambivalent when I sing this to her in the car.  That's not likely to change as she gets older.  

The only songs that leave me a little cold are "Rise To Me" and "All Arise!" (too twangy and leans a little too hard into the folk sound).  But even discounting those two songs isn't enough to knock this stellar album out of the top 40 and it comes in at number 37 on the list.  

#36

21

Adele

This album might be number 36 on the list but Adele has a top ten voice that's able to pack arenas, sell millions of albums, and maybe even provide common ground for the deepest of divisions.  Through a discography that's shaping up to sound like last night's lotto winners (19, 21, 25), Adele has proven to be a staying force in the musical landscape.  

I've written before about being fortunate enough to have friends and family who were generous enough to share their good taste with me, not only in music, but also in movies, books and even plays.  Few people were more influential to me than Dan, my first manager after college.  He not only looked out for me professionally and helped me navigate the corporate world but also provided me with some entertainment recommendations that had a lasting impact well after I rotated to my next position.  

One of the downsides to my first job was that during our quarterly closings, our team would have to stay at the office until about 2 or 3 AM.  There would be lulls and waiting periods throughout the night during which our team (seven people with ages ranging from 22 to 29) could converse about topics at length other than work.  Music, movies, TV and New York plays/shows were the main points of conversation and it was great for me to hear new and different opinions.  

After a while, I knew Dan and I had similar taste (David Fincher, The Killers, Arrested Development) so when he started providing recommendations, I listened.  If not for him I would have missed out on seeing shows like Spring Awakening (pre-fame Jonathan Groff and Lea Michele) or August: Osage County as well as movies like Half Nelson.  He also put the bug in my ear early about Adele and he was the one who got me a copy of 21 before "Rolling In The Deep" overtook the airwaves and just society in general.  "Rumor Has It", "Someone Like You", "Set Fire To The Rain" and "Turning Tables" also got frequent CD play in my car during my hour-long commute.  

The older I get the more I'm able to look back on my career and see with appreciation how many people looked out for me.  Dan was one of those people both professionally and personally and for that I'm very grateful.  I should call him more often.  It would give me a reason to say "Hellooo.....it's me...."

Adele put out an equally stellar album 25 in 2016 but the album 21, coming in at number 36 today, will likely be viewed as her go-to album and for good reason.  

#35

Throwing Copper

Live

Searching for music from the band Live was a nightmare when music streaming sites launched.  You can imagine the flood of results that were returned by just typing in the word "live".  But it was worth the effort to capture their music from the 1994 triple platinum Throwing Copper.  

The album's success was built around singles "Selling The Drama", "I Alone" and "All Over You".  But it's "Lightning Crashes" that vaults this album not only above other Live albums but also into the ranks of top rock albums of the 90s.  It's a song that seems like it shouldn't work.  The subject matter is a little grisly and macabre as the first minute of the song describes a mother passing away while giving birth.  It compelled the eleven year old version of me to look up the word "placenta" in the dictionary (pre-internet!).  I found the definition, slowly closed the book, and backed away.  My take on the song is that it's meant to examine the dichotomy between death and birth and the endless cycle of human life.  But that's weighty for a rock song especially when one of the top albums released that same year, Green Day's Dookie, was a euphemism for poop.  But some mid-90s rock listeners never shied away from darker lyrics in songs (e.g. Vervepipe's "The Freshman" or Ben Folds's "Brick") so maybe it's not so much of a stretch that this song was a smash.  

What's consistent across the whole album is lead singer Ed Kowalczyk's excellent voice.  There are some songs that don't strike a chord with me ("Pillar of Davidson", "Shit Towne") but the overall album is so strong that those slight dips are rarely noticed.  

Normally I advise sticking to the original album rather the "deluxe" version that Spotify offers on some albums.  Most of the additional tracks offered in these deluxe versions are demos or extra tracks that were omitted from the original album for good reason.  But this album is the exception.  One of the three extra tracks is "Hold Me Up".  I have no idea why the band thought that this song didn't belong on the original album.  I think it's one of the best songs they've ever made and it fits tonally with the rest of the album.  

 

I'll always have a soft spot for their 1999 album The Distance To Here ("The Dolphin's Cry", "Run To The Water", "They Stood Up For Love") but it still stands a full foot shorter than the band's sophomore effort Throwing Copper.  The band would continue on for a few more years with varying success until the original band split for good in 2009.  But as Throwing Copper celebrates its twenty-five year anniversary this year, it stands as a landmark to the band's accomplishments and as the number 35 album here.

#34

There Is Nothing Left To Lose

Foo Fighters

Runner-Up:  The Colour And The Shape

Bronze Medal:  In Your Honour

Honorable Mention:  Wasting Light

The third album from Foo Fighters whose title also accurately captures how my daughters apparently feel about winter hats and gloves at schoo (dad jokes!).  If I wrote this ten years earlier that joke would have read instead as "how I feel the morning after a hard night out at the bars". 

The Colour And The Shape will likely always be the classic Foo Fighters album as it includes "Everlong", "My Hero" and "Monkey Wrench" but it's their follow-up 1999 album that takes the spot on the list today.  Over the last 25 years the band has put out nine albums and TINLTL manages to stand out as the most unique and not just because it's the shortest Grohl would ever cut his hair.  

I love a good, loud rock anthem and Foo Fighters are able to supply that with ease across multiple albums (e.g. "Walk", "Best Of You", "St. Cecilia").  But this album, while still firmly in the rock and roll genre, is a little mellower than the band's other work.  That's partly because the band consisted of three members for this album which is half the size of the band's lineup currently.  So while the sound may not reach as grandiose levels, the songs sound more intimate.  It's also the first album for which Taylor Hawkins serves as the drummer.  Hawkins has been one of the better influences musically on the band over the years and that comes through as early as this album.  

"Learn To Fly" has been, and probably always will be, my favorite Foo Fighters song and it spawned the band's best music video.  It involves an airplane, hallucinogen-spiked coffee, pre-fame Tenacious D (for whom Grohl would serve as the drummer on their next album), and the band's trio managing to save all of a plane's passengers because they were drinking scotch instead of coffee during the flight.  It's a classic early aughts video for which Grohl plays six parts and highlights the band's fun-loving nature as opposed to the self-seriousness of Grohl's prior band Nirvana.  

"Stacked Actors", "Breakout", "Generator", "MIA" are the other highlights here.  There's also what's probably one of the bands best ballads in "Next Year" which I will forever associate with the theme song to the gone-too-soon TV show Ed.  

No doubt that Foo Fighters will continue releasing solid rock albums for years to come.  Grohl stated on Bill Simmons's podcast that there's no point in Foo Fighters breaking up now.  He equated it to your grandparents getting a divorce.  "What's the point?  What the f*ck are they gonna do?"  It'll be interesting how the band progresses in the future.  Grohl has had a hand in a number of bands either getting started or furthering their success (Queens of the Stone Age, Tenacious D) so it wouldn't be surprising if there are more side projects along the way.  

But There Is Nothing Left To Lose, today's album coming in at number 34, will in all likelihood remain my favorite release from the band.

#33

Hold My Home

Cold War Kids

Runner-Up:  Robbers and Cowards

Bronze Medal:  LA Divine

Honorable Mention:  Loyalty To Loyalty

It's no secret that Joseph A. Bank runs a "sale" almost every weekend of the year.  It's a gimmick and it's meant to spur potential buyers to buy three suits to drive the price per suit lower.  But running a sale that often just becomes white noise and consumers no longer view the sale announcement as a special event.  The same can be true of bands and album releases.  Release an album too infrequently and your fan base loses its fervor for your music.  Release an album too often and the albums could suffer in quality.  

Few bands are more prolific in terms of album releases than Cold War Kids.  Over 13 years the band has released eight albums including three in the last four years.  Thus far in the band's career the frequent releases haven't resulted in a downturn in quality.  One of the benefits of such frequent album releases, other than the obvious benefit of enjoying their well made music, is that I'm able to connect each album to what was going on in my life at the time.  

I remember listening to 2007's Robbers and Cowards in the hospital when my mom was receiving chemotherapy (the song "Hospital Beds" hit a little too close to home at the time). 2013's Dear Miss Lonelyhearts was around the time of our wedding.  2017's LA Divine and 2019's New Age Norms 1 were both released around the births of both of my daughters.  I know it's common for certain songs or albums to tie the listener to a particular experience or feeling or moment but with this band, the frequency of this band's album output has made that easy.  

It's also encouraging that the albums released are consistently of high quality.  There's no one album from the band that's completely blown me away but they've been consistently solid.  So instead of one "A+" album, there are six to seven "B+" to "A-" albums.  The strength of the band has always relied on the underlying use of the piano and lead singer Nathan Willet's voice which somehow effectively achieves a mix of wounded but upbeat.  I know "true" fans of the band turn their nose up a bit at the newer releases like LA Divine but I love the sound of that album particularly songs like "Can We Hang On" and "Part Of The Night" where lead singer Nathan Willett's voice can really shine.  But I also love the band's early work like Robbers and Cowards ("We Used to Vacation", "Hang Me Out To Dry") and Loyalty to Loyalty ("Something Is Not Right With Me", "Dreams Old Men Dream").  

But it's 2014's Hold My Home that represents the band's apex to me.  The pounding piano notes of "All This Could Be Yours" grabs your attention out of the gate and that's followed by the band's biggest commercial success "First".  "Drive Desperate" (my favorite on the album), "Hold My Home", "Nights & Weekends" and the closing track "Hear My Baby Call" are the other highlights here.  

If I'm lucky, I'll be able to keep tying life events to Cold War Kids album releases like my daughter's graduation or bingo night at the nursing home.  I'll take as much good music that this band can churn out regardless of how frequent the releases occur.  But if the band decides to take an extra year or two to make a product as good as the number 33 album, Hold My Home, I'd be happy to wait patiently.  

#32

Full Moon Fever

Tom Petty

Runner-Up:  Wildflowers

Bronze Medal:  Damn The Torpedoes

Honorable Mention:  Into The Great Wide Open

A titan of rock and roll, Tom Petty makes his contribution to the list with today's entry Full Moon Fever.  I'm combining Tom Petty's solo work and Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers all as one discography (same will go for Springsteen and the E Street Band).  There may not be an artist on this list who's an easier listen than Petty and it's hard to tell whether that's due to his voice or the guitar work.  It's probably unfair to place Petty this far down the list and the main reason is that I have typically always listened to his music in the form of a "best of" playlist rather than in album form.  In the case of a mega-talent like Petty, that playlist can stretch for over three hours.  

Those playlists very often served as the background music of many trips and memories with my best friends from college.  Petty's music provided the audio backdrop to eating Mexican food at 3 AM our senior year, renting a houseboat for three days in Tennessee as a one year college reunion, an impromptu road trip senior year to Winston-Salem to help one of our best friends check out Wake Forest law school and, my favorite, pulling into lake cabins in upper peninsula Michigan at 6 AM after a 13 hour drive and seeing the sun come up over the lake as "Learning To Fly" played on the radio.  Petty's music is primed to put you in a good mood already but the fact that I associate fun memories like those just adds to my preference for his songs.

Tom Petty versus Bruce Springsteen has been an informal competition to me (shades of Pearl Jam versus Nirvana) and I'm not sure if that's widespread or if it's just in my head.  They rose to prominence at roughly the same time and both went through stretches where they released solo work as well as of members of a band (Heartbreakers and E Street Band).  Petty's work is almost as voluminous as Springsteen's but it's not dissected with nearly the same minutiae.  Petty's work is the easier listen and that's not necessarily a bad thing especially depending on your mood.  There are some nights that I'd rather just have a beer and sing along to "Free Fallin'" rather than put myself in a three day funk by listening to Nebraska.  For anyone starting to get riled up that I'm attacking Springsteen, calm yourself; his entry is still coming.  They're both immensely talented and I love both of catalogs for somewhat different reasons.

Full Moon Fever takes the spot as the Petty entry by a fairly wide margin but I could have also included Wildflowers here instead.  It's just hard to compete with an album that includes "Free Fallin'", "Yer So Bad", "I Won't Back Down", "Runnin' Down A Dream" and "Love Is a Long Road".  This was Petty's first solo album, which was also about the time that Springsteen ventured out on his own with Tunnel of Love.  Petty brought in members of his side band The Traveling Wilburys (except Bob Dylan) to help record and it's easy to hear their influence on the album.  Wilburys are another band well worth the listen and aren't talked about enough as a strong rock band (self-guilt and apologies to Kingsley that they won't make it on this list).

What is on the list is Full Moon Fever, an incredibly strong album from a rock and roll legend.  We won't mention the acting career.  We'll just focus on album number 32.

#31

The Suburbs

Arcade Fire

Runner-Up:  Funeral

The band that has somehow become synonymous with hipsters, here's an Arcade Fire entry to kick off the top 40.  Their debut album Funeral was released in 2004 which somehow completely passed me by as I had more pressing matters in my life, like trying to fit in during freshman year of college while occasionally and naively wearing Aeropostale gear.  So Arcade Fire wouldn't show up on my radar for another three years when they were promoting their next album Neon Bible as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live (they actually participated in one of my favorite short sketches "Business Meeting") and their song "Wake Up" was used in the trailer for Where The Wild Things Are.

The band was large both in number of members and, as a result of that much instrumentation, in sound.  That could result in songs that sounded grand in scale like "Rebellion" or "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" but it could also result in some songs sounding too crowded or a little out of control.  That left me as a casual fan of the band up until 2010 when their next album, The Suburbs, was released.  

The Suburbs more effectively harnessed the large sound of the band by scaling down the complexity even if that meant scaling down the enormity of the sound.  That's obvious from the opening track "The Suburbs" where the gentle piano and gentle Partridge Family guitar strumming actually evokes images of a 1950s family driving through their perfect neighborhood.  But that's contrasted against lyrics of "sometimes I can't believe it / I'm moving past the feeling" which I interpret to mean moving past caring about larger issues and settling into the seclusion and insulated safety net of the suburbs.  

The last notes of "The Suburbs" bleeds right into "Ready To Start", "Modern Man" and "Rococo" which makes for a stellar start to the album.  The rest of the way is littered with solid track after solid track from "Suburban War" to "We Used to Wait" until the album's finale of "The Sprawl I & II" and a closing orchestration of the opening "The Suburbs" which leaves the album on a slight melancholy note.  

The band's subsequent albums didn't strike a chord with me but it's impossible for  me to leave The Suburbs off any "best of" list and it comes in at number 31 here, just missing out on the top 30.

We're on to the top 30 so there will be a new post tomorrow (12/7) taking us from numbers 30 to 21.  I appreciate you sticking with it this far!

My Top 100 Albums (50-41)

Halfway to the finish line when I pull the rug out from everyone and list one of Yanni's albums as my favorite of all time!

Clearly I'm a fan of all the albums that have been listed already in slots 100-51 but now we're getting to the really good stuff.  Reminder that the rule is one album per band and only one soundtrack allowed.  The soundtrack rule came back to bite me in this portion of the list as I had Prince's Purple Rain album originally in this section before realizing that it's technically a soundtrack.  I had to throw it out since that spot already went to the Godzilla soundtrack.  I think it's obvious that culturally Purple Rain will be remembered just a little more than the soundtrack to a 1998 cash grab remake but, again, this is a personal list and not a critical list.  Also, I think enough accolades have fallen on the Purple Rain album without me regurgitating that I love "When Doves Cry" or "Let's Go Crazy".  

Keep the feedback coming.  It's nice to hear that people are at least casually following along and hopefully it's been a nice distraction from all the post-election nonsense and COVID news.  

Also, I wanted to point out that this year people will rely on food banks more than ever especially with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming.  If you're local to Philadelphia, you can donate at Philabundance of if you can visit Feeding America to donate nationally or find your local food bank.  Even if you're reading this post-holidays, it's a donation that's welcomed 365 days a year.

On to the next ten entries...

#50

Play

Moby

Morgan Freeman's character Red in The Shawshank Redemption states that in prison "a man will do just about anything to keep his mind occupied".  The same can be said for 14 year-olds on 13 hour family car rides.  Every year my family would travel from Indiana to our family's cabins in the upper peninsula of Michigan for camping and fishing.  It was my favorite time of the year but the car ride could be brutal for long stretches.  My entertainment consisted mainly of two forms: 

1. Watching my parents try to navigate Chicago traffic in the pre-Garmin, or even MapQuest, era ("Wait, was that was our exit?!?  You have to tell me sooner so I can merge over!!").
2. Using my fancy CD walkman with non-skip technology.  

My CD wallet back then was pretty lean so after one hour (probably of the Godzilla soundtrack) and one battery change, I was pestering my sister to let me borrow some of her collection.  What she loaned me during the summer of 1999 was Moby's album Play.  I hadn't heard much electronic music other than from a very few artists like Fatboy Slim.  The sound of Play was akin to what I had previously heard but some tracks sounded altogether different.  I listened and enjoyed the first seven tracks, then I got to "Natural Blues".  Then I listened to "Natural Blues" again.  Then again.  Then my sister asked for the disc back.  I turned the volume up and listened again.  I really had never heard anything like it.

Similar to what Avicii's TRUE album would accomplish almost 15 years later, Play was a fusion of techno sound and folk/bluegrass sound.  The main difference between TRUE and Play is that the samples Moby uses have much more of a southern feel, as many of them are taken from field recordings taken from Alan Lomax's sprawling 1993 box set Sounds of the South:  A Musical Journey From The Georgia Sea Islands to the Mississippi Delta.  The blend between these soulful, and sometimes even mournful, samples and the electronic sound was unique then and still stands on its own now, even though a few others have attempted to follow in its footsteps.  

Not every track on the album uses these southern samples and it's clear to differentiate which ones do and do not.  The tracks that use the samples are superior to the rest of the album with the most notable including "Honey", "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad", "Run On", "Natural Blues" and "Flower" (a B-side track also known as "Bring Sally Up" to anyone who has participated in the Crossfit workout).  That's not to say that the other tracks are bad.  On the contrary, there's plenty to enjoy including "Bodyrock", "Porcelain" and especially "South Side".  

The original album was 18 tracks that ended with "My Weakness".  A "B-side" supplement was also released and Spotify conveniently combines the two into one album.  The B-sides are worth the listen, most notably "Flower", a track so strong that it's hard to reason why it wasn't included on the original album.  

But even if you stick to the original 18 track album it's still worthy of the number 50 album, not to mention being the temporary salvation to a 14 year old's boredom as he rode through Wisconsin.  

#49

Forever Blue

Chris Isaak

There are some foods like oysters on which there seems to be very little middle ground in regards to taste; people either love them or hate them.  The same can be said for the voice of the artist behind the number 49 album, Chris Isaak.  You either love his voice or it's just not for you. And if you're out on it, then there's no amount of musical accompaniment that can redeem his songs.  I love his voice and I think it's a perfect pairing to the rock-a-billy guitar sound that can be heard on many of his albums.  

This selection came down to two albums.  1989's Heart Shaped World was his breakthrough album but 1995's Forever Blue was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Album of 1995 before losing to Jagged Little Pill (Tom Petty's Wildflowers and Pearl Jam's Vitalogy also nominated).   Heart Shaped World's biggest song is undoubtedly "Wicked Game" which resulted in the music video that I'm convinced jump-started my puberty.  The whole album is strong with "Heart Shaped World", "Diddley Daddy" and "I'm Not Waiting" but it's still not as complete as Forever Blue.

Forever Blue's core of "Somebody's Crying", "Graduation Day", "Go Walking Down There" and "I Believe" is really hard to top and, in my opinion, he never did.  There's also the single "Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing" which was used two years later in the Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman/Stanley Kubrick/"what the actual hell?" movie Eyes Wide Shut. 

It's a close call and both albums are worthy of consideration but Forever Blue is a more complete album and it takes the number 49 spot.

#48

Exile on Main St.

The Rolling Stones

I was at a driving range recently trying to not focus on how much time and money I've spent on golf for such minimal improvement when I overheard the following excerpt of a conversation between two men.

Man 1:  How's life as a new dad?

Man 2:  It's great man.  

Man 1:  How old is he now?  Three weeks?

Man 2:  Two weeks.  But I love it.  When I come home and see him smile at me, it just puts everything in perspective.

Bullshit alarm blaring on full blast.  Zero chance his son is smiling at him.  Maybe his face muscles are coincidentally moving in a smile formation but it's either at random or that kid is relieving himself.  There's not a two week old in the world that can go through the mental checklist of "hey, there's a guy, that's my dad, I like my dad, I'll smile at him now".  Pretty harmless white lie from the new dad and I understand why he said it.  He's just trying to say what he thinks he's supposed to say.  

And that logic applies to the way that I have talked about The Rolling Stones for years.  I continually acknowledged them as a top rock band despite the fact that I felt lukewarm about them at best and really only knew their major hits.  But it felt like musical reverence was the expected treatment of the group.  So for years I blindly just counted them as a top rock band without actually doing the musical diligence of listening to most of their albums.  When COVID restrictions swapped my office for my house, I had music playing the majority of the time that I wasn't in a meeting.  I used that opportunity to finally give the full catalog of The Rolling Stones a chance.  

What's dangerous about bands like The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, etc. is that they can become a security blanket for listening habits.  The songs are good, they're well known, no one will ever challenge your musical taste if you listen to them.  But giving too much reverence to these groups can throw up a roadblock to discovering and fully exploring new bands.  The mythos of those legendary bands can also challenge the ability to fairly evaluate their work versus more recent bands.  I think it's important to acknowledge the contribution that many older bands have made and to realize that their influence paved the way for generations of other bands.  But older or classic rock doesn't mean it's superior to what's been released in the last thirty years.  So I tried to listen to the albums of The Rolling Stones as impartially as I could. 

They won't go down as my favorite band but their ability to stay relevant, mostly through the sheer volume of quality work, over multiple generations is admirable.  The earlier albums didn't strike a chord with me and I doubt I revisit them any time soon and the same can be said for anything after the mid-70s.  But there's a four album stretch in the late sixties/early seventies that is clearly the height of their ability and it's easy to see how they paved the way for some subsequent rock groups.

The album that I enjoyed the most was Exile On Main St. which is interesting because it's the album that contained no familiar songs to me.  The other albums in contention, Beggar's Banquet and Let It Bleed were also solid and contained some bigger hits like "Sympathy For The Devil" or "You Can't Always Get What You Want" but there were some longer songs on each of those albums that I wanted to move past.  Exile's sound was more akin to today's rock and I've been able to just let it play in its entirety which, at 18 tracks, is a testament to its consistency.  

I'll never be a diehard fan of the group but at least I feel like I've given them a legitimate chance now.  It was important to me to evaluate their work on a level playing field and judge it the same as I would an album that was released in 2017 by a brand-new band.  The band is justified in its place in rock history and Exile On Main St. is deserving of the number 48 album on my prestigious list.  The album could have climbed a few spots higher were it not for the actions of Mick Jagger.  No one talks to John Mulaney that way.

#47

Guero

Beck

In 1996, one of my friends and I agreed to swap a few albums by recording our CDs onto cassette.  I gave him Will Smith's Big Willie Style and I think Jock Jams 2.  He gave me Everclear's So Much For The Afterglow and Beck's Odelay.  Adam, if you're reading this, I'm still so sorry.  This has been a trend in my life from a music consumption perspective. I've been lucky enough to have friends (and a sibling) who are generous enough expose me to broader and often better music.  

You can imagine the sound quality of a cassette recording of a CD played through a mid-nineties boom box but even with all those obstacles, I could still hear how amazing Odelay was from the first notes of "Devil's Haircut".  Listening to it now in superior listening conditions only reinforces that fact, especially songs like "The New Pollution" and "Where It's At". But as great as Odelay is, Guero is better.  Side note:  guero means pale-skinned or blonde person and, according to a two second Google search, can be used as a slur.  So I guess it's not surprising it never came up in my three years of high school Spanish.  

The opening track of "E-Pro" has such aggressive and driving guitar work.  That's starkly contrasted two songs later by "Girl" which sounds like it was recorded as the soundtrack to an 8-bit NES game.  They're two of his best songs and it speaks to the diversity of sound he's been able to produce over a long and prolific career.  The rest of the album is propped up by the local neighborhood sound of "Que' Onda Guero", the bass track "Black Tambourine", "Rental Car" and, toward the end, the slowed down "Go It Alone" and the cowboy-feel "Farewell Ride".

 I don't feel that Beck is underrated and the musical world definitely gives him his due but the man has been making quality work since 1994.  He's done this in a variety of musical styles but none has suited him better than the work he put out in the number 47 album Guero.  Some ears were able to pick up on how special he was back in 1996.  Others were busy gettin' jiggy with it.  Again, Adam, I'm so sorry.

#46

Megalithic Symphony

AWOLNATION

Some of my college friends discovered the band Under The Influence of Giants in 2006.  Sadly, that band's duration lasted only one album but it's still very much worth the listen, especially "In The Clouds", "Got Nothing" and "Mama's Room".  I missed the boat on that band's arrival and departure but when lead singer Aaron Bruno debuted his next band's debut album five years later in 2011, I was paying attention. 

AWOLNATION's first album Megalithic Symphony achieved commercial success thanks in large part to its popular single "Sail".  But it would be a mistake to label the rest of the album as just filler around that hit song.  It's interesting that this was the song that resonated at a mass level because I count numerous other songs as superior on the album.  

The original album is 14 tracks (11 if you don't count the three short intro or skit tracks) but the Spotify version is 32 songs.  I wouldn't recommend the extended version as the more concise original album packs more of a punch.  "People", "Kill Your Heroes", "Jump On Your Shoulders", "Not Your Fault", "Soul Wars", and "Wake Up" are the highlights but, counting "Sail", that's half the album.  

The songs are upbeat but still carry a bit of an edge to them, like singing "Walkin' On Sunshine" at karaoke with your concealed-carry visible to the crowd.  The three follow-up albums have had their moments but the band's first full album, coming in here at number 46, is their best output so far.

#45

Sixteen Stone

Bush

The album that took my fifth grade basketball team by storm, Sixteen Stone was the debut album from English rockers Bush.  As one of our practices was getting ready to start, I overheard some of the middle schoolers who were walking off the court talking about how great this album was.  I had no idea what "sixteen stone" meant and, even after utilizing Wikipedia, I'm still not entirely sure what they're referencing other than some general English weight.  

But slight title confusion doesn't dampen the impact of how many hits were on this album.  "Comedown", "Machinehead", "Glycerine", "Everything Zen", "Little Things" and "Alien" stood head and shoulders above the rest of the other tracks but that was always my problem with albums from Bush.  I would love half of the album could be phenomenal but the other half would be largely forgettable and bland.  Normally that would mean that none of their albums would make the list but the six tracks on Sixteen Stone are so strong that it's impossible to not include it here.  The rest of the songs aren't bad, they just feel more like filler to me.  

I stuck with Bush for two more albums but after The Science of Things ("Letting the Cables Sleep", "Chemicals Between Us") they drifted off my radar until their break-up.  I haven't been overly impressed with any of their work since they've reconvened in the last few years but their 1994 album Sixteen Stone, coming in at number 45 here, will go down as a classic semi-grunge, semi-hard rock album.   

#44

Rumours

Fleetwood Mac

Imagine being forced to complete a group project with your ex-significant other.  Now imagine that the content of the work revolves around each other's shortcomings and the demise of the relationship itself.  Pretty safe to say that's not a recipe for healthy a healthy working environment and the work itself will likely suffer.  That was not the case for Fleetwood Mac.  Similar to how The Bachelor uses relationship drama to generate huge ratings and ad revenue, Fleetwood Mac used that same ingredient to help generate some of the best albums of their generation.  Both the TV show and the band do however share the common output of failed relationships.

My parents would play the soothing sounds of Fleetwood Mac softly when I was little and had trouble sleeping.  But if the melody of their songs is a placid lake, the lyrics are choppy water with the occasional seven foot wave.  That's especially true for the album Rumours.  The behind-the-scenes production story of the album is so well known that by now it's more legend than fact, but to summarize the state of the band heading into writing and recording Rumours:  keyboardist Christine McVie and bassist John McVie decided to end eight years of marriage and wouldn't speak to each other except to work on the album, drummer Mick Fleetwood discovered his wife had an affair with his best friend, and guitarist/vocalist Lindsey Buckingham and vocalist Stevie Nicks were having a rocky on again/off again relationship that was heading for a permanent off again status.  

Nowadays if it's rumored that Taylor Swift wrote a song that alludes to an ex-boyfriend, it breaks the internet for three days.  This was an emotional tempest that was widespread across the group that seemed so dysfunctional it's incredible that the album cover wasn't them all just giving each other the finger or lighting each other's furniture on fire.  43 years after its release and it's still incredible that the group was able to pull off the album without breaking up the band.  

There's nothing I can or will say about the music on the album that hasn't already been written or said much more eloquently.  "Second Hand News", "Dreams", "Never Going Back Again", "Don't Stop", "Go Your Own Way" and "The Chain" are just some of the classic songs found here.  "Rhiannon" will always be my favorite song from the band but it's hard to argue that this number 44 album isn't their peak.

#43

Automatic For The People

R.E.M

Similar to Alex Trebek hosting Jeopardy or Al Michaels calling football games, R.E.M. is a band that was always just "there" when I was growing up.  But, considering that the band put out 15 albums over 28 years, I took for granted what an absolute powerhouse of a group they were.  One of the benefits of creating this list is that it focused me on looking at the entire discography of a band like R.E.M.  Listening to the entirety of the catalog was time consuming but it exposed me to a lot of their outside of the well known hits.  Some of these discoveries were worthwhile ("Me In Honey" might be my favorite song from the group and I hadn't heard it until eight months ago) and some were pretty terrible ("Radio Song" is not pleasing to my ears at all).  

I won't claim to be a true R.E.M. fan but, from the outside looking in, it seems like the band went through three phases.  Phase one covered their first three or four albums as more of an underground band popular in colleges.  Phase two was when they reached a more mainstream status (or "sold out" as I'm sure a lot of their original fans would claim) including signing with a major record label.  And phase three was their last three or four albums which weren't nearly as strong as the earlier work but, after ten albums, even the best creative juices can run dry and there are still some musical nuggets to find even in this later work.  

I won't rank all fifteen albums but here are my top five albums from the group.

5.  Murmur 1983:  Debut album from the group and it's easy to hear through songs like "Radio Free Europe" why they took off at the college scene.  Stipe's voice sounds younger but it's remarkable how consistent he was able to sound for almost 30 years. 

4.  Green 1988:  First album on a major record label and the sound does seem a little more polished from the first few albums.  Hits like "Stand" and "Orange Crush" pushed the band more toward the mainstream but there wasn't a sacrifice in the quality of the music.

3.  Out of Time 1991:  I'm sure the true R.E.M. fans are rolling their eyes but songs like "Losing My Religion", "Half a World Away", "Country Feedback" and "Me In Honey" are more than enough to offset the weaker tracks like "Shiny Happy People" (sounds like a bad hippie song) and "Radio Song".  

2.  Document 1987:  I went back and forth between this album and Automatic For The People as the selection for the list.  Document would be the album I would recommend for someone who never heard R.E.M. before.  "Finest Worksong" kicks off the album on such a high note and that's buoyed by the lyrical Tazmanian Devil "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" (my favorite radio station as a kid changed formats from rock to country and, for its last weekend, played this song for three days straight), the classic "The One I Love" and other tracks like "Disturbance At The Heron House" and "Fireplace".  Just a great rock album before the age of grunge set in.

1.  Automatic For The People 1992:  Noticeably slower paced than prior albums, the album's foundation is mellow tracks like "Drive", "Everybody Hurts" (Dwight Schrute's expression of pain), "Sweetness Follows" and "Nightswimming".  That makes the faster paced songs like "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite", "Monty Got A Raw Deal" and "Man On The Moon" stand out even more.  There's a reason this album was a smash commercially and critically.  Subsequent albums would have flashes of brilliance like "What's The Frequency Kenneth" but it's not to view this as the last truly great album the band put out.  

If you're interested in R.E.M. even on a casual level, I would recommend fully exploring the full catalog.  You might have a totally different ranking of the albums but I would be surprised if Automatic For The People, album number 43 here, didn't come in near the top of your list as well.

#42

The Battle Of Los Angeles

Rage Against The Machine

Was I an angry youth?  No.  Was I an advocate for climate change, health care reform or more equal wealth distribution?  Not a chance.  Did I pretend I was all of the above when I played this album loudly in high school?  Absolutely.  Rage Against The Machine albums were a necessity for the high schooler who wanted to show those within earshot of the school parking lot that he was more serious about musical choices and was attune to the political landscape.

This may have been the first band where I differentiated that the true talent of the group wasn't the lead singer.  That's not a knock on Zack De La Rocha's vocals.  He brought a distinctive mix of anger and passion that kept the lyrics from feeling hollow or whiny.  But it was Tom Morello's guitar work that was the signature of the group and what drew many fans, including myself, to their music.  Songs like "Bulls On Parade" or "Killing In The Name Of" don't succeed unless there's compelling guitar work and Morello provides that in surplus.  The group did increase awareness for many of its causes, but it was largely because young listeners were pulled into the band's orbit by Morello's work. 

Side note about my previous entry, R.E.M.  It's hard for me to believe that Rage Against the Machine debuted their first album in 1992, the same year as R.E.M.'s Automatic For The People.  I can't imagine two albums sounding more differently and that could be why R.E.M. was largely lost on me as I started paying attention to the music scene.  R.E.M. didn't fit in with the direction the rock scene was heading and I was too young to know their earlier albums so they more or less fell by the wayside for me until recently.  Another benefit to Spotify to be able to make up for lost time with some classic bands.  Anyway, on to more Rage talk.

I was drawn in to Rage Against The Machine by their 1996 album Evil Empire containing "Bulls On Parade" which is probably the quintessential Rage Against The Machine song and the most recognizable guitar work from Morello and bassist Tim Commerford.  But it was the 1999 album The Battle Of Los Angeles that takes the spot on the list.  "Testify", "Guerilla Radio", "Calm Like a Bomb", and "Sleep Now In The Fire" were just some of the highlights on this 12 track gem.

"Sleep Now In The Fire" deserves a brief tangent.  It's my favorite song on the album and I'm sure I'm not alone in that opinion.  It conveys frustration and anger but also a sense of fun. Who doesn't love belting out "I am the Nina...the Pinta...the Santa Maria"?  But it also spawned a legendary music video directed by Michael Moore during which the band plays outside the New York Stock Exchange as NYPD attempts to shut it down.  The incident eventually caused the NYSE to shut its doors which sounds worse than it was.  The steel riot doors closed but trading on the floor continued.  What's interesting is at the 1:04 mark of the video, there's a brief shot of someone holding a Trump for president sign which is a reminder that his decision to run in 2016 wasn't a spur of the moment thing.  He'd been lurking in the background for years waiting for an attempt to make a run at the office. 

The music video would lose to Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff" video at the MTV VMAs (remember when that was must-see TV?) causing bassist Tim Commerford to climb a structure on the stage in protest.  The video may have lost but important to note that we're discussing this music video and not anything Fred Durst directed.  Also, I'm spoiling some surprises but Limp Bizkit will not have an entry on this list although I'd be lying if I said I didn't own a copy of Chocolate Starfish And The What Are You Talking About?

It's discouraging that much of what Rage Against The Machine covered in their music during the nineties are still viable problems today (poverty, health care) but they're extremely complex problems that have no simple solution.  The band did raise awareness for their causes and they did leave behind some music that will live on far beyond their years, most notably album number 42 The Battle Of Los Angeles.  Not to be confused with the alien movie / Aaron Eckhart vehicle Battle: Los Angeles.  That one will probably not live on for generations.

#41

AM

Arctic Monkeys

The fifth album from the Arctic Monkeys, AM, is aptly named.  To be clear, the AM that's being referenced isn't the AM hours that include a healthy morning workout, a cup of coffee and perusal of work email.  Oh no no.  These are the very early AM hours after the bars have closed and you're left feeling a little sweaty and a little grimy with the first pangs of the hangover setting.  If you're with your current special someone, it can tend to be the time you have that fight you should have had two nights ago at a reasonable hour.  The lead-off tracks "Do I Wanna Know", "R U Mine", and "One For The Road" perfectly capture the uncertainty of a relationship through the dim lights of a bar, diner or impromptu 2 AM apartment party. 

But worse than the 2 AM relationship fight can be the early AM hours spent alone where the self-doubt and insecurity you've been able to be successfully suppress during the day can surface faster than Free Willy.  These moods are captured too with "Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High" and "Snap Out Of It" but particularly in the finale "I Wanna Be Yours" where the snarky wordplay and cockiness from some of the earlier songs is replaced by earnest begging for some kind of connection with a special someone, or really anyone.  By the time the last notes of this twelfth track of the number 41 album fade out, you just want a shower, a couple Motrin and to tell your significant other that you appreciate them.

Taking tomorrow off.  Hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving!  Post for albums 40-31 will be up on Friday.