You know me. I can’t resist a good meme theme to get me talking about things for a post and ….
I love the music posts.
The meme I’ve been seeing posts for covers one album a day for 10 days and it’s the albums you found most influential. Here goes ! Obligatory links to Youtube of course.
First up – All About Eve by All About Eve. I grew up with this album, it was perhaps the first that I owned and I listened to it a huge amount. They were a goth band led by a beautiful singer with a classic, amazing voice. I would listen to this while reading Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern books which included a character called Menolly who had a wonderful voice and made up catchy songs. She was a loved character and Julianne Regan of All About Eve will always be the voice of Menolly for me. The album is packed with wonderful songs and here are a couple of them, Martha’s Harbour and Apple Tree Man. Gorgeous songs, great lyrics.
Second is an old classic by Pink Floyd. We all listened to these albums and Wish You Were Here was probably my favourite for how the tracks merged into each other. Here’s the title track, on the album this one transitions from the previous track by someone changing the channel on the radio. They bounce over a few stations before finding one with a guitar playing, the band joins in and it goes from there. Great album, great song.
Third – Alisha’s Attic, Illumina. I went by the nickname Alisha’s Addict for a while because I adored listening to the two sisters and their intermixing voices. Illumina is their second album and it’s packed full of raw, emotional songs like Wish I Were You, fun songs like Shameless and Barbarella and sugary sweet lovely songs like The Incidentals. The Incidentals is one of my all time favourite songs.
Fourth is a soundtrack, it’s the Legend album by Clannad. It was written to accompany the Robin of Sherwood series, which I grew up with in the 80s. Good series, wonderful soundtrack with Celtic atmosphere dripping from Together We, Strange Land and the Robin title track.
Fifth is a Cardigans album. You know how I love Nina Persson’s voice don’t you ? 😀 The album of choice is Long Gone Before Daylight due to all the amazing songs it has. The thing about Cardigans albums is that, in the words of Nina, they’ll creep up behind you and hit you on the head. With an axe. (That’s from their iTunes Original interviews). So while this one doesn’t have the song that drew me to them (My Favourite Game), it has so many songs that speak to you like Communication, You’re The Storm, 03.45am No Sleep, For What It’s Worth, Feathers and Down and more. Oh and then there’s Algebra from the A Camp album which I needed to listen to again. Just cos.
I only have to listen to the first chords of a Cardigans song and I’ll smile, start to chill out and know I’m going to enjoy what’s coming.
BRB.
There we go.
The thing about The Cardigans though is that you’ll be listening to those lyrics and realise those amazing songs are actually talking about some very dark themes … Themes like domestic abuse, so I’m quite careful about who I recommend them to and which songs I recommend.
Sixth is a Dire Straits album, following that theme. This group is another band that I listen to a lot but you listen closely to some of their lyrics instead of letting that sublime guitar interplay wash over you and … there’s some seriously dodgy lyrics in there. (I’m looking at you Money For Nothing and most of the Communique album !) Album of choice here is Love Over Gold with the epic Telegraph Road and excellent Private Investigations.
Seventh draws back to my teenage years as well with Kate Bush who conjures up magic with her voice and wrapt attention with the music and lyrics. Any of her earlier albums could be the one here but I’ll go with Hounds of Love with its mix of great commercially oriented songs in the first half and the story of The Ninth Wave of the second half. Highlights are Hounds of Love, Cloudbusting and Running Up That Hill.
Number 8 is a Christmas album and it’s from Elaine Paige. This has a few classics in there like her version of The Coventry Carol (best hymn), Wishing On A Star and A Winter’s Tale. It’s a fun album from start to finish.
Number 666 (or 9) is Seventh Son of a Seventh Son by Iron Maiden showing how to expertly mix heavy and musical. This was one of the first of quite a few metal albums I listened to a lot. Highlights are the title track and The Evil That Men Do. And more.
I’ll give the last one to Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds which tells a classic story over its two cd’s. I’m talking about the Richard Burton, David Essex and Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues original with songs like Forever Autumn and Thunderchild.
Honourable mentions go to people like Fleetwood Mac with Rumours (That Grand Prix theme with The Chain !), Frankie Goes to Hollywood with Welcome to the Pleasuredome, anything by Garbage (and Cherry Lips in particular), Utopia from Goldfrapp’s Felt Mountain and River City People’s version of California Dreamin’.
And I’m going to sneak in an extra one which was always, ALWAYS on in the car when I was a kid and we were going places as a family : Queen Greatest Hits 1. Bohemian Rhapsody anyone ?