By now, you have probably been tagged in one of those ubiquitous Facebook notes where you are supposed to name your 15 favorite bands, albums, songs, movies, books, authors, poets, scenes from your favourite movies, favourite lines from your favourite movies etc., etc. Even if you’re like my husband and you scorn Facebook, you’ve probably been sucked into some type of list or countdown at one time or another — AFI’s 100 Years … 100 Heroes and Villains, The 100 Greatest Comedians of All Time, NME’s 10 Essential Tracks of the Week, Billboard’s Top 40.
Personally, I’m a sucker for these lists. I seem to be constitutionally incapable of resisting them, even though they’re hardly ever revelatory. People I don’t know that well pick movies I’m not that into and I realize this is probably why we’ve never really been kindred spirits or talked about movies. AFI never strays too far from the conventional wisdom about the greatest movies or greatest actors. You might quibble with the order of the top five, but the names you think you’ll see are usually there in some formation. My close friends — nerds and music geeks like me — pick things that are on my list or, at least, choices that are perfectly respectable.
Of course, the instructions on the Facebook note tell you not to think about it too much, but that’s impossible. These lists are made for overthinking. How can I possibly name my favorite albums? What kind of favorites are we talking about — favorites for sad days, happy days, dancing, going out, melancholy days, nostalgic days, albums I’m in love with right now, albums I’ve been in love with for more than 15 years?(Note to friends that tagged me recently: I haven’t forgotten, I’m just overthinking my list.)
There is also the public pressure of making these lists. Do you include everything? What about the holes in your musical education — the albums you should be into, but you’ve never really liked or those you haven’t listened to yet, but pretend to be into. What do you do when you love an album that’s not supposed to be the best album by that band? At this point, you might think — what’s wrong with me? I’m too old to worry about sounding cool to a bunch of music nerds. Inevitably, you do your best — selecting the obligatory mix of tried and true favorites, the albums that have stood the test of time and made an impact. Now, that you’re older, you pick your favorite album by that band, not the one you are supposed to like. The music nerds always throw in something unexpected — an obscure band, an ironic nod, a hip guilty pleasure — to give their lists diversity and show their senses of humor or personality. Then you read your friends’ lists and find that you can’t believe that you missed this band or that. Where are the women on your list? How could you forget the jazz or the fact that you love the White Stripes? The genius of Outkast or Billy Bragg? The process is fraught with difficulties.
Still, there is something enormously comforting about cataloguing and keeping track of my favorites; like a hen gathering her chicks, I’m carefully tucking them away, making sure no important songs or movies are forgotten or lost. It is a way to bond with others — when you find someone else that worships Arcade Fire or Bright Eyes there is a sense of true communion, you’ve both felt the spirit. We keep making these lists because they are never complete — there are always holes, important things we forgot, albums and books that will be added to our future canon. Ultimately, I think they’re a way of owning a little part of the books, music and films we love; a way of marking their impact on our lives.
So, tell me, what are your 15 favorite … songs for rainy days, poets for when you are falling in love or out of love, books that you read as a child, books that you’ve been meaning to read, albums that you loved when you were 15? You decide.
‘Top(?) 15’ Albums that have defined periods of my life (in no particular order):
1) ‘What’s the Story, Morning Glory’ by Oasis. As a young teenager (14 to 15 – ?) I learned every song on the album by heart, on guitar, and performed most of them.
2) ‘Pop’ by U2 . I got the album while on holiday in France, and listened to it a lot. The crafted opening section of ‘Last Night on Earth’ was huge for me.
3) ‘The Goldberg Variations’, J. S. Bach, recorded by Glenn Gould. This piece was mentioned in Thomas Harris’s novel ‘Hannibal’, and when I listened to it, I fell in love with its virtuoso brilliance, and order. Age 17, I remember walking round Oxford with this on my Minidisc player. I think it went a lot deeper than pretentiousness of youth.
4) ‘Beautiful Freak’ by the Eels. I loved the Eels for years – and ‘E’s precision of sound was always electrifying.
5) ‘OK Computer’ by Radiohead Indisputably one of the best albums ever made. I was lucky enough to be a teenager when it happened.
6) ‘The Score’ by the Fugees My entry-point into hip-hop. A brilliantly made album, in my opinion, with lots to like. I went on to enjoy Wyclef’s next two albums.
7) ‘A Prayer Unto Thee’ by Kenneth Cope I don’t rate it now, but heck, I served a mission, and there weren’t many albums that were ‘approved’. This one reminds me of the time, and has some nice moments… I guess. :)
8 ) ‘Symphony No.9’ by Beethoven I fell in love with this just before my mission – I think the grand scale of it, as well as the subversive appearance of the piece in Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ made it even more resonant.
9) ‘Abbey Road’ by the Beatles One track flows into another – some of the most beautiful recorded moments of the Beatles’ output.
10) ‘Come By Me’ by Harry Connick, Jr Coming back from my mission, I was all idealistic and cheery… and HCJ’s stuff really defines that time for me. I loved the free-flowing piano and vocal arrangements.
11) ‘The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions’ by Seu Jorge I went to see the film… and loved it. The bit I loved most was Seu Jorge’s musical interludes… the CD played for months, in my little flat in Bristol as a new undergraduate.
12) ‘Hot Fuss’ by the Killers Another album that had a huge impact on me in the first year back from my mission. This was big at the time, and I still enjoy Brandon Flowers’ stuff to this day.
13) ‘The Color and the Shape’ by Foo Fighters I’ve enjoyed a lot of Dave Grohl’s stuff, from Nirvana onwards, but this was a particularly good point, in my memory.
14) ‘Jazzmatazz’ by Guru’ . I have a friend who played this in his car. Guru’s voice… the combination of genres… it was a winner. RIP.
15) ‘Back in Black’ by AC/DC Yes, they look ridiculous. But those guitar riffs… there’s not much that can approach the sheer hair-raising power of that amount of ROCK!!
By no means definitive… just off the top of my head. But it’s been a fun journey! Don’t make fun – it’s all in the past.
Interesting choices!
Love the Eels. I think they (he, its mostly Everett really) are totally underrated.
Funny thing, I never got Oasis until I moved to England — I didn’t dislike them, they just didn’t make much of an impression. And, then, one night I was watching an interview with Noel Gallagher and I suddenly got it — the charm, the context — it all clicked. I still don’t love them, but I feel like I understand why people would.
I tend to feel that Oasis aren’t going to ‘do it’ for me nowadays, but I heard ‘Some Might Say’ on the radio the other day, and it brought it all back… ‘Britpop’ was the sound of our generation… I can’t believe I didn’t mention Blur, actually – ‘Parklife’ was huge for me.
International:
Seamus Heaney
W.B. Yeats
Naomi Shihab Nye
Pablo Neruda
Classics:
William Shakespeare
John Donne
John Keats
Gerard Manley Hopkins
American Poets:
Ken Brewer (former poet laureate of Utah)
Ted Kooser
Cynthia Rylant
LDS Poets:
Emma Lou Thayne
May Swenson
Marilyn Bushman-Carlton
Dixie L. Partridge
LOVE Heaney and Hopkins… I really ‘dig’ poetry that gets into the earthiness of our human experience. They don’t mind getting muck under their fingernails, and I think that’s something we can easily forget with other poets (perhaps like Donne or Keats?). Great list! :D
Agreed on Heaney and Hopkins! So easy to take Shakespeare, Donne and Keats for granted. I took a Shakespeare class earlier this year and was reminded of how brilliant he is. Also, love May Swenson.
1. Ten – Pearl Jam
2. Little Earthquakes – Tori Amos
3. Jar of Flies – Alice in Chains
4. Eponymous – R.E.M.
5. Fumbling towards Ecstasy – Sarah Mclachlan
6. Swamp Ophelia – Indigo Girls
7. Purple – Stone Temple Pilots
8. The Mask and the Mirror – Loreena McKennitt
9. Nevermind – Nirvana
10. To the Faithful Departed & Everyone Else Is Doing It So Why Can’t We – The Cranberries
11. Flood – They Might be Giants
12. August and Everything After – Counting Crows
13. Soundtrack from 10 Things I Hate About You
14. Soundtrack from Singles
15. Soundtrack from Reality Bites
Kate, you just defined my post-Mission, BYU years (91-94). Other bands that remind me of this time period: NIN, Toad, Live, Pumpkins, Jane’s, Liz Phair, Origin, Sonic Youth, Afghan Whigs, Jesus Jones, the La’s, School of Fish, Electronic, Billy Bragg, Lloyd Cole, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Crash Test Dummies, Morrissey, U2 (Achtung period), PJ Harvey, Urge Overkill, Hole, The Cure (Wish period), Breeders, James, Cracker.
By ’95 the grunge and shoegaze era gave way to brit pop era.
Matt – I was in high school from 1992-1996, and those were definitely my formative music years.
This is my era as well! I graduated in 1995 and listened to everything on Kate and Matt’s lists (nice to see you here, btw!).
Inspired by Kate, Heidi’s 15 from 1995:
1. Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville
2. Pixies, Trompe Le Monde
3. Sonic Youth, Dirty
4. Beastie Boys, Check Your Head
5. Beastie Boys, Paul’s Boutique
6. PJ Harvey, Rid of Me
7. Morphine, Yes
8. Weezer, the Blue album
9. Sonic Youth, Goo
10. Soundgarden, Superunknown
11. Joni Mitchell, Blue
12. Nirvana, Nevermind
13. Smashing Pumpkins, Siamese Dream
14. Fugazi, 13 Songs
15. R.E.M., Out of Time
Musical peer pressure does not even get me…since all of the albums/bands/songs I’m liable to put on a list are ones that few people have heard of. I mean, they aren’t obscure bands…they just mostly aren’t pop.
I wouldn’t say the following is a “top” 15, but one of the notes I got caught up in was “album of your life.” Instead of doing it randomly, I decided to go based on actual songs I feel would go well as certain themes.
I had Shanghai Restoration Project’s “Pace of Light,” Cute is What We Aim For’s “Do What You Do,” Final Fantasy III’s World Map theme, Maurice Ravel’s “Toccata,” Maxo’s “Railroad Chase,” Gnarls Barkley’s “Transformer,” Gordon Goodwin’s/Big Phat Band’s “Game of Inches,” Loituma’s “Back to Sniff Road,” and Kate Bush’s “Sunset” to close everything.
Actually, I’d like to re-answer the question of peer pressure with music. I have to avoid looking surface. that’s about it.
Musical peer pressure does not even get me. . .since all of the albums/bands/songs I’m liable to put on a list are ones that few people have heard of. I mean, they aren’t obscure bands. . .they just mostly aren’t pop.
That’s very sensible.
Also, I like the idea of a biographical list.
Were you listening to Stone Temple Pilots and Smashing Pumpkins in the early 1990s when you now wish you’d been listening to Pavement?** Count me guilty as charged. So I’ll call this my “Pavement Memorial List,” or my Top 15 “Late Discoveries,” bands I started listening to much too late. (Bands listed in no particular order.)
1.) Pavement (1989-1999). I was vaguely aware of Pavement during the 1990s as a band that sounded like “slacker, skateboard noise;” but, you know, not in a good way. It was seeing “Slanted & Enchanted” and “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain” top too many Best Album lists and reading enough “Best Indie Band Ever” proclamations in too many music mags over the years that finally shamed me into checking them out. I’ve been kicking myself ever since.
2.) The Replacements (1979-1991). Winona Ryder was a big fan of The Replacements during the 80s, and I was a big fan of Winona Ryder, so I’m not sure why I resisted The Replacements until 10 years after they disbanded. Another huge regret. Check out “Let it Be” and “Tim,” two perfect indie punk-pop records.
3.) Joy Division (1976-1980). I was an early-adopter of New Order and owned nearly every album and 12″ single on vinyl during the 80s. For whatever reason I deemed Joy Division “too dark” for my tastes at the time, despite being a fan of Bauhaus, “Pornography-era” Cure, and dozens of other goth bands. What can I say? Our musical sensibilities develop in fits and starts. Eventually I repented of my misbegotten ways.
4.) Big Star (1971-1974). To be fair, I was way too young (3-6 years old) during Big Star’s hey day, and those old enough to know better in the early 1970s mostly missed out on them too. But I began reading about Big Star’s influence on countless bands I loved (R.E.M., Jellyfish, Mathew Sweet, Ryan Adams, etc.) for years before finally checking them out for myself. As always, I’m an idiot. Check out the album “#1 Record,” or go listen to “The Battle of El Goodo” or “Thirteen” over at YouTube. Power-pop brilliance.
5.) My Bloody Valentine (1988-1992). Another band I grew sick of reading about in music mags. During the early 90s I was a fan of Lush, Ride, Dinosaur Jr. and other noise-pop bands, but my experience listening to My Bloody Valentine at my local CD store left me unimpressed — sounded like they were playing decent songs through broken amps, so heavy was the noise and feedback. Years later I gave them another chance and the light finally shown through the noise and I “got” what everyone else seemed to get back in 1991.
6.) Yo La Tengo (1984-Current). With apologies to John Doe and Exene Cervenka of X, and Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo are, to me, the unofficial King and Queen of Indie Rock. They’ve had so many different “sounds” over the years, from punk to folk to shoegaze to instrumental to electronic — just an innovative, fun band I finally started listening to about 3-4 years ago.
7.) Crowded House (1986-1993). Yeah, they reformed in 2007, but I’m talking about their initial period, which the wannabe music hipster in me wrote off as “lightweight” and “mainstream” at the time. The reality is that Neil Finn is one of our generations greatest songwriters, crafting gorgeous Beatles-esque melodies and singing chills-inducing harmonies, often with his brother Tim Finn. Best CH albums: “Woodface” and “Together Alone”.
8.) Lone Justice (1982-1986). Great “cow punk” band out of Los Angeles that I wrote off originally as “too country”. I caught up with the “Little Diva,” Maria McKee, after she went solo, and then circled back to listen to her Lone Justice catalogue. Why she/they never got huge is a mystery to me. I hear Maria’s voice and I just melt. Check out live versions of Lone Justice doing “Workin Late” or “East of Eden” or “Ways to be Wicked” on YouTube. You won’t be able to take your eye’s off of 5’2″ Maria kicking ass in the middle of all the guys.
9.) The Go-Betweens (1977-1989, later reformed in 2000). Great jingle-jangle alternative rock band from Australia. So many great singles. If you aren’t familiar with The Go-Betweens, check out songs like “Cattle and Cane,” “Bachelor Kisses,” “Was there Anything I Could Do?”
10.) The Jayhawks (1986-2003). Alt country-rock band boasting harmonies that rival Indigo Girls, Crowded House, and Simon & Garfunklel. Knew about them throughout the 90s, but didn’t start listening until a few years ago. My loss.
11.) The Lilac Time (1987-1991, reformed in 1999). Stephen Duffy, better known for his early 80s synth-pop days as Tin Tin and his ubiquitous song “Kiss Me”, starts a gorgeous, pastoral, folk-pop group in 1987 called The Lilac Time, reminiscent of Nick Drake. Unfortunately, it was 10-12 years too soon, and nobody paid attention. I caught on around 1997 and have been swooning to Lilac/Duffy albums ever since.
12.) Guster (1991-present). One of those “college bands,” like Toad the Wet Sprocket, that started up when a few friends at Tufts College in Massachusetts starting jamming in their dorm room together. Like Toad, Guster isn’t going to top any critics lists, but they’re albums are full of catchy tunes and their fan-friendly live shows leave you feeling like you could be friends with the band.
13.) LCD Soundsystem (2002-present). Literate electronic-disco-punk band with three critically acclaimed albums. Finally started listening to LCD sometime during the summer of 2009 and they’ve been iPod mainstays ever since.
14.) Built to Spill (1993-present). Indie-rock band from Idaho. Recently fell in love with their 1997 album “Perfect From Now On”. Still working my way through the rest of their catalogue. Similar to Dinosaur Jr., Pavement, Modest Mouse, and Band of Horses.
15.) Teenage Fanclub (1990-present). Teenage Fanclub’s “Bandwagonesque” famously topped Spin Magazine’s 1991 end-of-year poll for best album, beating out such notables as Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” R.E.M.’s “Out of Time,” and My Bloody Valentine’s “Loveless”. I remember hearing the song “Star Sign” on alternative radio during that time, but for whatever reason never listened to the whole album, until a year or so ago. It’s really good. It’s probably not “Nevermind good,” but it’s great Byrds-esque power pop.
**A sly reference to Pavement’s song “Range Life,” which references (and disparages) Stone Temple Pilots and Smashing Pumpkins.
Haha! Also, guilty as charged. I occasionally came across Pavement and others on 120 Minutes (which I would stay up late to watch), but I didn’t really start listening to the bands on your list until the end of my senior year and during the first few years of college (and, after I got married!). In particular, Built to Spill, Teenage Fanclub, Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Joy Division, The Replacements and Pavement. LCD Soundsystem and The Jayhawks have been more recent discoveries — some time in the last five years. Big Star is one of those bands I keep meaning to get into and I’ve never listened to Guster or The Go-Betweens.
Yo La Tengo has become a household favorite… I’ve even gotten my 69 year-old mother to listen, and appreciate, them. I’ve recently become very attached to Explosions in the Sky – I’m not sure what others think of them. My husband and I found them randomly playing on PBS one night, and I now listen to them frequently, at work or while driving. Sometimes repeatedly, which is so out of character for me… I used to be pretty dedicated to female singer/songwriters, but I find that I am now much more into the guys. Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Buckley, all in steady rotation. With 2 little girls, we listen to a lot of Jack Johnson. Not very deep, but plenty mellow. My husband’s favorite is Pink Floyd, a band I never listened to really until we married, but that should be a staple for any music appreciator. Both having graduated HS in 1995, we relish in the goodies of those days – the Lemonheads, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins. Ha, as I type this my 20 month old saw iTunes open on the computer and started dancing… to which I HAD to reply with Lady Gaga. Can’t help it. By the way, I hate those lists – I feel terribly judged by them; completely, irrationally, to where they cease to be honest as I have to slip in something that will impress someone. No one in particular, just that vague sense of making sure my list has enough street cred.