20 Albums

My sister tagged me with this note on Facebook and I really like it as a jumping off point for a blog post, so I thought, why not? I rarely talk about music on the blog, because for me music is just this omnipresent thing that I don't put a whole lot of thought into. (Also my music taste is fairly appalling and embarrassing, and I'm pretty sure Mary would disown me if I let the world in on this) But nonetheless I will do this, and elaborate a little bit on why I picked the albums I did.

Think of 20 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world. When you finish, tag 20 others, including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good.

20. The Who- Who's Next: I should preface this by saying I love pretty much all of The Who's stuff, growing up it was always Tommy, but it was Who's Next that made me fall in love with them. Maybe it's a cliche but I feel completely unstoppable when I hear Baba O'Reilly. You can't put a price on that.

19. The Spice Girls - Spice World: I'm a girl. I was eight when The Spice Girls first came on the scene, and ten when Spice World hit. I choreographed countless basement level music videos with my friends to this music. Not to mention Spice World is one of those undeniably great pop albums. Listen to "Stop" again sometime and tell me it isn't on the level with 60s Bandstand style pop.

18. Rent: The Original Broadway Cast Album: Two CDs of pounding rock music, profanity and bohemian agnst. High School wouldn't have been High School without Jonathan Larson's rock opera. Really, if you want to be impressed musically and with sheer power, "What You Own" and "Take Me or Leave Me" are the ones to listen to. And even the movie soundtrack which I also have, and have listened to, couldn't recreate that power even with the same vocalists. Probably because almost ten years later Adam Pascal and Idina Menzel were better trained singers and lost a lot of the raw power that's contained in those original recordings. Adam really is a revelation on this album, his voice is edged with punky pain and perfect agnst and is so distinct that it never could be recreated.

17. Tim McGraw- A Place in The Sun: I fell in love with country music when I was a sophomore in high school. For a rich girl from New Jersey it's hard to admit something like that. And since then I've found much higher quality stuff than A Place in The Sun, but this was the album that did it. It contains one of my favorite songs ever, "My Next Thirty Years."

16. Coheed and Cambria - Second Stage Turbine Blade: Imagine being fourteen, just starting off high school in a brand new enviroment, entrusting yourself to people you barely know and then stumbling upon music that is unlike anything you've ever heard before and you'll get some idea of what Second Stage meant to me. It made us all fall in love with Coheed, an infatuation that continues to this day. Also, "Devil in Jersey City" may be the best song ever to dance around to when you're severely pissed off.

15. Billy Joel- Turnstiles: "James," "I've Loves These Days," "All You Wanna Do is Dance," not to mention "Miami 2017," "New York State of Mind," "Say Goodbye To Hollywood" and my all time favorite song "Summer, Highland Falls." There isn't a bad song on this album and I'd already fallen deeply into Billy Joel when I finally listened through it the first time, and this cemented him as my favorite artist ever. I was barely 14, but it was also just after 9-11, and listening to Joel's love letter to New York healed a part of me that was still so scared of the city that I'd always seen on the horizon.

14. The Postal Service - Give Up: It was the summer of 2004. I was in the middle of a production of Anything Goes. "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" made me feel safe. That's the only way I can explain it.

13. Sarah McLaughlin - Mirrorball: "Angel" is one of the most beautiful songs ever written and it's only available on this live album. But you also can't disregard the sheer beauty of Sarah's voice and simple piano harmonies. It's really a shame that Lillith Fair had to die before I was old enough to go.

12. Bruce Springsteen - The Rising: It was hard to pick a Springsteen album, but I went with The Rising for a similar reason I talk about Turnstiles. Listening to The Rising was a healing process for me, as it was for most people. Being the age that I was, in the place that I was in 2001 is strange. We were just entering adolescence which is this traumatic time anyway, and once in a journaling assigment in high school I descibed it by saying our generation's innoncence was hijacked in addition to the planes. Having music that really helped me sort out those emotions kept me from both forgetting and dwelling on the events of September 11.

11. Norah Jones - Come Away With Me: Norah has one of the most distinct voices in music and her first album, plays that perfectly. Her piano is heavy, but it fits the music and her singing is almost ethereal. The entire album feels like a stolen moments, and every song deals with the impermance of those kinds of moments. It's really beautiful.

10. Juno - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: Juno is one of my favorite movies, and the soundtrack is no small part of that. It made me fall in love with Belle and Sebastian and Kimya Dawson (The girl half of The Moldy Peaches). "Tire Swing" is the top listened to track on my I-Tunes, and not for no reason. It's a really great song that keeps you going. It's also great music to work out to, incidently.

9. Songs You Know By Heart - Jimmy Buffet: Another staple of my childhood that I grew to appreciate more as I got older. There's such a simple joy to Jimmy Buffet, and there's real emotion is so many of his lyrics which a lot of people don't catch because they get thrown off by "Cheeseburger in Paradise," which is in fact an amazing song. Not to mention Buffet brilliant put a steel drum behind country chords creating a completely unique sound but still keeping with his genre, there are very few people who've managed to do anything like that.

8. Backstreet Boys - Millenium: My older brother and I have discussed many times if there's a 90s or 00s pop equivalent to Thriller. A phenomenal pop album that even people who claim to hate pop still appreciate as a remarkable and cohesive piece of musical art. The closest thing to a consensus we can come to is Millenium, which did spawn the completely overplayed "I want it That Way," but also the beautifully touching "Don't Wanna Lose You Now," the totally rocking "Larger Than Life," the 90s pop power ballad, "The One" and cemented AJ McLean as one of the most distinct and unpredictable pop vocalists ever. Listen to him on "Larger than Life" again sometime, the guy wails.

7. Eric Clapton - Unplugged: Until I got to about 13 I thought "Layla" was a ballad because my father listened to Unplugged all the time. I still often find myself humming "Before You Accuse Me" when I'm not thinking about anything. But mostly Unplugged gave me a deep appreciation for live recorded music.

6. Green Day - Dookie : One track - "Welcome To Paradise." I was like 7 and I still knew that there was something really special about that song and that band. Too bad "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" ruined everything.

5. Ben Folds - Whatever and ever, Amen: I could lie someplace all day and just listen to this album on loop. "Zak and Sara" and "Jesusland" make me feel infinite, which is stupid cliche from Perks of Being a Wallflower but cliches are cliches for a reason, somewhere deep down they express a truth.

4. The Corrs - Forgiven Not Forgotten: I dig The Corrs a lot more than most people in the States because we discovered them the summer before "Breathless" and In Blue hit. They were playing in Dublin when we went to Ireland on a family vacation and every one was talking about them. A few weeks later my mom saw them perform "So Young" and "Runaway" on SNL and was hooked. She went right out and bought Forgiven Not Forgotten, the bands second album (A huge hit overseas, barely known here) and we listened to it constantly. The In Blue happened and I had to force my friends to listen to Forgiven so that they could see they were much better than what had made it to the airwaves in America.

3. U2 - The Joshua Tree: Maybe its the Youth Group geek in me, but I find something new in Joshua Tree every time I listen to it. There are very few albums out there that actually make you feel like you're closer to God and this is surely one of them. My friend Chrissy and I were talking about it this weekend and she put it perfectly, "Bono knows something that the rest of us don't." That's the best way to describe it.

2. Kelly Clarkson - Breakaway: Kelly's first album is not so great, and My December is actually better, but Breakaway is Kelly's way of announcing her coming, her way of saying, "I'm not a flash in the pan. I'm the real thing. I'm here to stay." It was also the first really powerful female pop album we'd gotten in a while. (Christina's Back to Basics didn't come until a few months after) and I still shiver when I listen to "Behind Hazel Eyes."

1. Carole King - Tapestry: I've talked about my love of girl pop and female song writers, none of which would be possible without Carole King. I was thirteen and determined to find my own voice and "Beautiful" seemed to be rooting me on. "You've Got a Friend" still brings me to tears, "So Far Away" makes me drive slow, and "Where You Lead" seals a pledge of loyalty to friends and family. This is one of those perfectly flawless albums.

So there you have it, those are my 20 albums. Does anyone else have some that they'd like to share?