For today’s Question of the Day, we steal an idea from our buddies at The Weeklings, who asked their editors and contributors this question:
“What’s the one album you’d give anything to hear again for the very first time?”
The team over there gave some really thoughtful, obscure, random, awesome, and inspiring answers, a few of which we’ll share below.
But we want to know, GMP, what album do YOU wish you could hear again for the first time?
Personally, this feels like a super complicated question. There are a ton of different reasons you may want to hear it for the first time again. Do you wish you could re-create the sensation of having your mind completely blown the way it is only a few times in your life?
Do you want to remember how it felt to realize you weren’t alone in the world, when you first realized that this musician knew exactly what it was like feel how you do?
Or did you ruin an album by playing it way too many times, and now you can’t stand to hear it… but you remember when you were so in love with it that even when it was turned off, you still heard it in your mind?
For me, the ones I wish I could hear in order to remember what it was like to have my mind blown have to be Brandi Carlile’s The Story and maybe even Give Up The Ghost. When The Weeklings first asked this question, I described my reaction to the first time I heard “Dreams” as having to pull my car over to the side of the road because I thought my heart was going to explode. I mean, damn, that woman can sing.
Also in that category, as trendy as it may be, is For Emma, Forever Ago, by Bon Iver. I still become paralyzed by the song “Re: Stacks” which guts me every time.
The album that made me feel less alone in the world was Tori Amos’ Little Earthquakes. I know it’s trite, but I was a teenage girl and I felt dark and angry and misunderstood (as so many do). Tori’s random, dark, emotional crooning spoke to me.
The album I overplayed (as did the radio) was Ray LaMontagne’s Gossip in the Grain. Yeah, he’s a mega-popular guy, but that album is amazing. I wish I could stumble upon him again, hear that album for the first time again, particularly the song “Sarah”, and listen over and over again until I’m sick of it… again.
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Over at The Weeklings, Greg Olear says:
I tend not to like anything on first listen. In fact, if I like something too much, my ardor usually cools, and I wind up getting sick of it very quickly (see also, “Wayne, Fountains of”). It’s rare when I love something from the gate and I love it after repeated (and repeated and repeated) listens. So I’m going with Billy Joel’s Songs in the Attic, the live album he put out of songs he wrote before The Stranger dropped and he became too big for his own good. The first track, “Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)” is far and away his best song, musically and lyrically, and remains my favorite song of all time. [Read more from Greg’s entry here]
Sean Murphy explains:
I still remember everything about it. Fall semester, senior year. The more I learned at college, the more I understood how little I knew. Something, obviously, was working. I was wise, prescient or just plain lucky enough to sign up for an elective called “Introduction to Jazz”. I knew the genre was vast, intimidating and would take considerable effort to navigate; I’ll always credit this class for giving me a framework to acquaint myself, a three credit Rosetta Stone® for my Rosetta Stone. We’d gone through the century, decade by decade, and it got better as we went. Yes, Bebop was what I’d been missing all along without realizing it. But it was what came next, the more formless expression that started creeping out of the margins like lava oozing through ancient stones, that portended obsession. Those names: Mingus, Monk, Miles, Trane. And then, as we tackled the topic of “free jazz”, a cat who had the audacity to name his 1959 (the best year in musical history, by the way) album The Shape of Jazz to Come… [Read more of Sean’s picks here]
And Sean Beaudoin chooses not to avoid cool inscrutability:
I’m tempted to go with something truly iconic like White Light/White Heat or Abbey Road, just to avoid any notion of cool inscrutability. I love this question because I often wonder while listening to something brutally overplayed and presumably mediocre from the 80′s or 90′s (think Hall & Oates or Blue Oyster Cult), What if this track was just released? Would we think “Rich Girl” or “Don’t Fear the Reaper” was some sort of retro-genius if we heard it for the first time today? Would we actually admire the bald pop songsmithing because it’s not drenched in nostalgia or enforced familiarity? In any case, I’m going with the Stooge’s Funhouse. I still crave it all the time, even now, after a million listens and essentially using it as a life raft to get through college. The raw, sweaty, stupid dirge of Funhouse is exactly what I want when something heavy and abrasive and completely unselfconscious is required. It’s a slab of simplicity that I rarely hear in contemporary music, and would love to be shoveled in the back of the head with afresh.
So, how about you?
Michael Jackson’s Thriller? Outkast’s Speakerboxxx (which is amazing)? Or something classic, like Hello, I’m Johnny Cash?
There are no wrong answers here, people.
When I was sixteen I heard Body and Soul by Joe Jackson. The album was laid out like a classic jazz recording, both on record and on the cover, which made me sit up when I heard horns and major seventh chords mixed into pop songs with catchy melodies. There were Latin beats, piano solos and even instrumentals. It not only changed the way I listened to pop music, it changed the way I listen to all music. And Joe? He continues to amaze, never doing the same thing twice. I could go on ….
David Bowie: Diamond Dogs. Blew my world right open, and might be responsible for my desire to unleash both men and women from the gender binary. Certainly a key component in my love of costumes and make-believe! LOVE LOVE LOVE that album, and that man. (Still pretending that last album never happened, so please dont’ bring it up.)
Overall, it’d have to be Pink Floyd’s The Wall. As a teenager who had suffered from being abused since toddlerhood, and a mom who smothered (with the best intentions) us, trying to protect us from our abusers, I could very well relate to Roger Waters lyrics dealing with loss of his father in WWII and the unhealthy dynamic he had with his mother. The specifics weren’t the same but the emotional isolation was a perfect match. But the music!!! The roars and the quiet moments. The intensity. David Gilmour’s evocative guitar playing. Listening to The Wall made me feel like… Read more »
YES to Kate Bush, too.
I feel like the evolution of what Tori Amos did went Joni MItchell -> Kate Bush -> Tori Amos -> Regina Spektor/Fiona Apple.
Agree or disagree?
Pretty much agree, although Im not familiar with Ms. Spektor’s work. Joanna, what about Rickie Lee Jones? Does she fit into your continuum?
I don’t know that she fits directly into this continuum, but I know her and love her.
Actually, in thinking about it further, I would take Regina Spektor out of my continuum and just leave Fiona Apple.
Regina Spektor definitely owes a LOT of props to Rickie Lee Jones, though.
Re. Kate Bush…”that I think has held pretty well. ”
And while I’m here, Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. I love\d all the space between the notes.
I am moved my personal experience and deep feelings.
I’d enjoy hearing Janis Ian’s Societies Child, Paul Simon’s Kodochrome, and Ferron’s Shadow’s on a Dime.
I agree on Kodachrome. I thought long and hard about what Paul Simon album to include in the question today, and couldn’t decide on one!