Payn's Ponderings... Top 10 Essential Albums

[Mannahnin]

Top ten going women vocalists only

Bjork, Debut if I can’t have Volumen 1993-2003.
Portishead, Dummy, again. Beth Gibbons is incredible.
Amy Winehouse, Back to Black, agreed.
Tori Amos, Boys for Pele or To Venus and Back (perfectly good cases to be made for Little Earthquakes, Under the Pink, or From the Choirgirl Hotel, though)
Cocteau Twins, Heaven or Las Vegas (seeing Liz Fraser on the Massive Attack Mezzanine 2019 tour was a dream)
PJ Harvey, To Bring You My Love (Let England Shake is a banger, though)
Fiona Apple, Tidal
Sinead O’Connor, The Lion and the Cobra (so unbelievably good, it might have to go on my main list in retrospect)
Siouxie and the Banshees, Twice Upon a Time, the Singles (or maybe Superstition, if I can’t do a GH)
Concrete Blonde, Bloodletting (though Walking in London and Mexican Moon are really strong)
Cindi Lauper, probably She’s So Unusual. An all-time great singer.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Three or four different people in this thread have apparently had this same take.

I mean, there's no accounting for taste. And I certainly put some idiosyncratic choices in my top 10 (both of them). IIRC, no one has even mentioned classics like Stevie Wonder (Songs in the Key of Life) or Marvin Gaye (What's Going On) ... not to mention the Clash, Who, Kinks, Queen, Public Enemy, Dylan, Hendrix, Prince and Michael Jackson are tragically underrepresented.

Oh. Wait. You're saying something happened with Michael? (googles) Oh. Never .... mind.

....but going with George Harrison's All Things Must Pass before .... any Beatles album? I just can't. It was a very, very good album! Clearly, Harrison had a lot he wanted to get out (it was a triple album after all). And I certainly understand the impulse to want to rate underappreciated art more highly- I call it the Season 6 effect.

Let me explain that. For reasons that are too complicated to get into here, I think S6 of Buffy is tragically misunderstood and underrated. In fact, I might have even said that it is the best season of Buffy ... probably after overconsumption of tequila. But ... it isn't. By pretty much any metric, S3 is pinnacle Buffy. I think that S6 has a good argument to be in the conversation as the second-best season (with S2), but to say it's the best is just ... overestimating how good it is because other people don't appreciate it at all.

Same thing here. All Things Must Pass is an all-time great album. But it's not even as quite as good as Let It Be, which is a middle-of-the-road Beatles album. It's not denigrating to Harrison to note that album is not as great as the best albums of arguably the best band to ever play. If nothing else, his songwriting just doesn't measure up (again, IMO).

 

[Mannahnin]

Same thing here. All Things Must Pass is an all-time great album. But it's not even as quite as good as Let It Be, which is a middle-of-the-road Beatles album. It's not denigrating to Harrison to note that album is not as great as the best albums of arguably the best band to ever play. If nothing else, his songwriting just doesn't measure up (again, IMO).

I 90% agree with your post, but I will quibble with that last statement. At his best, his songwriting was extremely good. With a gun to my head, if I had to pick a single favorite or greatest Beatles song, I might have to pick While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I 90% agree with your post, but I will quibble with that last statement. At his best, his songwriting was extremely good. With a gun to my head, if I had to pick a single favorite or greatest Beatles song, I might have to pick While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

My bad- I should have been more clear; I meant lyrics.

At his best, Harrison could approximate profundity by obscurity.

At his worst .... I got my mind set on you ....

Regardless, solo Harrison wasn't a match for Lennon/McCartney. That said, even when it came to the actual songs I would still go with the L/M combo- for various reasons, they brought out the best in each other and minimized the worst (as we later saw when they went solo).

 

[payn]

My bad- I should have been more clear; I meant lyrics.

At his best, Harrison could approximate profundity by obscurity.

At his worst .... I got my mind set on you ....

Regardless, solo Harrison wasn't a match for Lennon/McCartney. That said, even when it came to the actual songs I would still go with the L/M combo- for various reasons, they brought out the best in each other and minimized the worst (as we later saw when they went solo).

I dont think any of the Beatles solo came close to Beatles good except Harrison (and only one album). I think Lennon would have gotten there eventually he was on a journey and going places and tragically taken out. Paul, as John likes to say, was the over polish of the Beatles and writes stupid love songs. Stupid love songs folks think are really really good but are really really not. Paul needed the Beatles a lot more than they needed him. /sizzle

 

[Cadence]

Updated: Went back and listened to Wreck of the Day again and I had forgotten how much I liked it (beyond just having Breath (2am) that I love. It's really different now thinking about things having Sirius for most of my music instead of a bunch of CDs (or Cassette's back in the day)

I need a lot more time to think probably for the female vocalist/lead vocalist one, so everything but the top five listed are all in pencil (they might not stay top 5, but would certainly be in my top 10). If it was CDs/cassettes I used to own there would be several more Alanis and Dido ones on there.

Heart - Heart (Bad Animals?)
Eurythmics - Be Yourself Tonight (Sweet Dreams? Touch?)
Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill
Dido - Life for Rent (No Angel?)
Anna Nalick - Wreck of the Day
GoGos - Beauty and the Beat
Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow
Cranberries - No Need to Argue
Madonna - Like a Virgin
Pat Benatar - Crimes of Passion


One of my top handful of favorite songs doesn't show up on either list and I don't think I've ever even made it through the whole album (song is Heart and Soul by T'pau with lead Carol Decker).

 

[Eyes of Nine]

In no particular order and with occasional overlap of artists:

Cars - Panorama (or Candy-O, or Shake It Up - pick one)
Rolling Stones - Tattoo You
Midnight Oil - Diesel and Dust (or Earth and Sky and Moon - pick one)
Dio - Holy Diver
Neil Young - Rust Never Sleeps
Lordi - Monsterman
Blackmore's Night - Fires at Midnight
Deep Purple - Perfect Strangers
Patrick O'Hearn - Ancient Dreams (or pretty much any - pick one)
Billy Squier - Emotions in Motion

Might change my mind later - who knows. ...ETA...and did, replacing ACDC Back in Black with Lordi.

I do like Patrick O'Hearn - nice one!

 

[Mannahnin]

Cranberries - No Need to Argue
Pat Benatar - Crimes of Passion

Pat Benatar and Dolores O'Riordan were strong contenders for my list. Probably should have gotten a Cranberries album on there.

 

[Retreater]

All Things Must Pass was an exceptional recording by Harrison, definitely the best of his solo work - though I like Cloud 9's 80s cheez production and Brainwashed. It's folksy and has fantastic backing musicians (Phil Collins, Badfinger, etc., not to mention all the other Beatles). To me, it's up there with Zeppelin 3 as one of the great "folk rock" albums. (The instrumental "jam sessions" does sort of take it down a few steps.)
I don't think any of the other Beatles ever produced as solid of a solo album. John Lennon shared tracks with Yoko, and Paul McCartney is the least interesting Beatle - with the exception of his masterpiece "Monkberry Moon Delight" (one of my karaoke staples).

 

[payn]

All Things Must Pass was an exceptional recording by Harrison, definitely the best of his solo work - though I like Cloud 9's 80s cheez production and Brainwashed. It's folksy and has fantastic backing musicians (Phil Collins, Badfinger, etc., not to mention all the other Beatles). To me, it's up there with Zeppelin 3 as one of the great "folk rock" albums. (The instrumental "jam sessions" does sort of take it down a few steps.)
I don't think any of the other Beatles ever produced as solid of a solo album. John Lennon shared tracks with Yoko, and Paul McCartney is the least interesting Beatle - with the exception of his masterpiece "Monkberry Moon Delight" (one of my karaoke staples).

This is an unusually good song from Paul. I never knew Screamin Jay Hawkins covered Monkberry Moon Delight in 72'...