0.24.0 - It's all just a little bit of history repeating* (Week 24 wrapup)
This Week: Influential albums by black women, a great recommendation, more musical titans pass away and other mad ravings.
As particularly narcissistic theories go, this past month has been brewing in my mind a terrible concept; that somehow, future historians find these writings, one of the few records left after a great cleansing or censoring of all recorded history by right wing authoritarians because it's far too insignificant to bother covering up. What if the vague allusions to world events I've scattered throughout these articles ends up being one of the few primary sources left in 2355 when historians look back on this time from their habitation bunkers and ask what the hell we were all doing? If that is true, future historians, let it be recorded that this week, somewhere between the 10th and the 15th of July 2025 is when stuff got really scary. From Israel and Iran toying around with the big button marked "World War 3" to political activists imitating police officers to carry out a series of targeted political assassinations of democratic lawmakers in America, its not been a great week for someone with a pessimistic outlook to spend scrolling through social media, and waking up each morning wondering what new horror has taken place while I have been unconscious. For the record, closer to home we're in danger of declaring a drought here in the UK with water levels at their lowest and also there was a historically powerful lightning storm where over 30,000 lightning strikes were recorded in less than 12 hours. I am sure that is totally normal and a sign of a environmental climate balance in perfect working order.
There, that's the breadcrumb left for the future people, they can all stop reading now while I talk about the albums I listened to this week for another 15 paragraphs, and I promise I'll probably not mention anything else critical about world history or events in those paragraphs. I might slip something in by accident, so you should probably read to the end of the article anyway, just in case. I may be long dead by 2355, but those views still count.
That might be amongst my most esoteric introductions, but it's been a weird week. Let's stay firmly seated on the bummer train as we talk about our first two albums.
Those prominent musicians who made it past the age of 27 are now all facing into being well into their canasta and shuffleboard era, which in turn means that every passing month brings more additions to the obit list for people whose music I grew up listening to. This week, both Sly Stone and Brian Wilson passed away, a pair of songwriters and vocalists whose performances defined a lot of the music I remember from my youth. I already covered Sly & The Family Stone's pivot from hope and love to activism and protest when I covered There's A Riot Goin' On back in January; Stand is the hopeful precursor to that album, a place where the vision of San Francisco musicians from varied ethnic backgrounds could come together under the leadership of a black man and create music that bridged the racial divide. The fact that track 2 on this album I'm going to have to retitle "Lets Not Call Each Other Ethnic Slurs" (feel free to google track 2 on Stand to find out why) aside, the rest of the album feels positive and uplifting, a vision of a kinder, gentler future that would never really appear. Outcomes aside, both this album and There's A Riot Goin' On are foundational albums and Sly Stone's contribution to music is titanic.
Astute readers may have noticed I every time a colossus of music history floats across my doorway I run and hide unless I have anything specific to say about it. There are lists of the best albums ever made which have Pet Sounds as the number one album. In fact, right now, I am just going to google for a random "Best Albums Ever" list and see where it lands.
I picked NME because I figured they would be mavericks but lads, 26 is too low. This list has Definitely Maybe by Oasis above it and This Is It by The Strokes at number 4 of all time. I mean, criticism is subjective and all that but let's get serious here. Pet Sounds has God Only Knows and Sloop John B on it and The Strokes album has Last Nite as its most recognisable song and 25 years later, The Strokes would be lucky to stand in Brian Wilson's shadow. Pet Sounds is one of the best and most important records ever made, if you need more detail than that, please refer to all other parts of the internet for an exhaustive guide.
If you are wondering what connects these four albums, the answer is nothing more than they were each recommendations given to me at some point this year. I've talked at length about how naming your band can be hard, and it definitely was for Steely Dan in every sense of the word, as they took their name from a chrome dildo found in a William S. Burroughs novel. They're a band where I don't have a good sense of what their legacy is; I've never heard anyone in person profess to enjoying their music, there are not reams of literature extoling their virtue and influence on rock & roll, but at the same time I feel like everyone must have heard Can't Buy A Thrill and Pretzel Logic and Katy Lied at least once through. It's possible my parents were just outliers and huge Steely Dan fans in a nation at-best apathetic to their existence, but I've nostalgic affection for this entire album and their early catalogue. I don't really know what else to say about them. There's maybe no audience for the kind of bouncy blues rock Steely Dan were peddling any more; music fans have become too discerning, it's probably cringe in the parlance of the youth, but if you want to hear what it sounds like when a band are just having fun playing together, Steely Dan might be the best example of that I can think of.
While talking this week my friend Paul recommended The Ambassador by Gabriel Kahane and I was sat in a car park waiting to pick Catherine up, so I just put it on. This album had totally passed me by, and not wanting to shoot my bolt too early, this might be my favourite recommendation from all this year. I'd listen to a track and go "Oh, this is interesting, the lyrics are clever and the performance is cool, it's a bit Sufjan" and then the next track would meander into new, interesting musical directions, shifting influence and style while never feeling disconnected from what came before it. I've listened to it all the way through precisely once and have already recommended it to three other people. As a first impression it was exhilariting for me, and I am excited to give it further scrutiny.
Hey look, it's another one of those albums of all time, Carole King's Tapestry. I actually got this recommendation three times; from my friends Andy and Louise, and from my sister-in-law, and in my list of recommendations from everyone I asked, this is one of only three albums to appear more than once (Graceland was another, and for some reason Quality Control by Jurassic 5 was the third). I'm a huge fan of James Taylor's music, which means I had obviously heard Tapestry several times before this listen through. The amazing thing about Carole King and James Taylors musical relationship is the way in which they were able to be friends and James was able to help bring Carole King into the spotlight in a live music setting all without in some way being a sex pest, an art which seems to have been lost when the 70's ended if the story about <<Insert Any Prominent Male Singer Accused Of Exploiting Their Relationship With Women In Music For Their Own Sexual Gratification Here>> is true**.
I can't really wax lyrical about Tapestry, again because it is so beloved and so full of incredible songs and her vocal performance is so impeccable that I couldn't explain why its great in the three sentences I would have to do that. What I will say is I like the James Taylor version of You've Got A Friend better, but I'm sure that just because that was the version I heard first.
In 1989, when we had MTV, I remember seeing the music video for Sign O' The Times and find it fascinating and kind of scary and also confusing because it had a lot of words in it I didn't understand how they fit together (I was 13 years old, so that's probably for the best.). It was definitely arresting, and very different from most of the music videos at the time. When I was a few years older, I had my Prince phase (does everyone have a Prince phase? Am I again just projecting my experience on everyone on earth?), I listened to the album Sign O' The Times and by then I knew what nearly all the words in that song meant. At the time I was like "Yeah, man, Prince is making a lot of sense here" but I was young and stupid and would have agreed with anything Prince said at the time, which is why I'm banned from a specific hotel lobby in London. Even later in life, I realised that with this music video, Prince had pre-invented (is that a word?) the popular Youtube video format 'Kinetic Typography' sixteen years before YouTube launched at all.
In hindsight, both the album and the song feel more than a little off kilter to modern sensibilities, and reflect more of Prince's less conventional thinking about things and the way they should be. There's no doubt the man was a musical genuis, but so was Keith Moon and I don't want him dictating national social and economic policy either. The album felt like way more of a slog than I expected this time through - it's just very unnecessarily long, and every time I thought we were getting near the last track I'd glace down at the tracklist and see we still have 8 songs left. Kevin Smith was apparently told there are whole albums and music videos made of Prince songs which will never see the light of day, so I can appreciate the pressure of needing to constantly create, like some kind of musical shark at risk of drowning it they stop swimming, but not every album needs to be 80 minutes long and 17 tracks, even if you are Prince.
Oh goddddddd.
Look, I like all of these albums, and a couple of them quite a lot, but there's not a reader on earth who needs to hear me, a middle class white guy from the north of England, talk about the success and influence of black women in music since the 1980s. Please don't take this as me being dismissive or not being willing to celebrate their accomplishments. This is me telling you I am not remotely qualified to have those discussions, and my general feelings are that the more that people identify when they are out of their depth or not culturally in an appropriate position to offer an opinion and keep their feelings to themselves, the better off and happier we would be as a society. I won't let these albums pass without comment, but I'm going to stick to just a brief drive-by comment or opinion as necessary. What I can say is that each of these five albums has been covered on the excellent podcast This One Goes To 11 where they have guests far more suited to talk about why each of these five albums is important, and I'll link them below.
Rhythm Nation 1814 was another "long road trip" album we had in my parents car in the late 80's and very early 90's. I like it better than any of her more famous brother's albums apart from Thriller and Off The Wall.
I like a lot of Rhianna songs in isolation but this was the first time I had listened to an album all the way through, and ANTI didn't leave more of a mark on me than being 'the place some of the songs of hers I like live', but I have incredible respect for her as an artist.
When Lemonade came out it changed the way I felt about Beyoncé; before it launch I though she was just an excellent and well marketed R&B star. Lemonade gave me a whole new level of respect for her as a songwriter, as a musical phenomenon, as a visual artist. It blew, and continues to blow, my mind at how good it is. If for any reason you've slept on this album, regardless of your musical taste, you absolutely should listen to it at least once.
Its a terrible cop out to say I respect Whitney Houston without being a fan of her music, but it really wasn't for me at a time when I was forming musical opinions based on how loud the guitars were and how much the lead singer shouted in each song. My enthusiasm for her music isn't significantly heightened by going back to it 30 years later, but she's a hit machine and dullards like me are not her primary audience. File under "It's a me problem", Whitney passed the time very pleasantly while I was watering and feeding the roses in our garden, but I'm not running back to listen to more Whitney albums with any speed.
It was pretty obvious from the beginning that Ms Lauren Hill was not interested in being a pop star or widely acclaimed musical sensation on anyone's terms except her own, and that upset a lot of people who rightfully hailed this album as a masterpiece - and there will never be a better crafted, clearer cut expression of an artists vision than this album I don't think - and in turn Ms Lauren Hill gave the mechanisms of fame and popularity the middle finger and did her own thing. No matter what your opinion on what happened with her career, The Miseducation of Lauren Hill is a modern classic.
It's been 6 hours since I started writing this article (I had a break for dinner and Catherine wanted to play some Mario Kart) and to my knowledge, no significant historical events have taken place in that time which require cataloguing. Let's see how long that lasts for.
Until next time.
*Please enjoy this semi-obscure big beat floor filler from The Propellorheads and Shirley Bassey if the article title didn't immediately make you go "Oh, shit, that was a song that existed"
** God I get so paranoid that people think I am using AI to write these and me making fun "Insert your own stuff here" jokes are evidence of me churning out AI bile at you. I read an article this week which said people are saying that any text article which uses em-dashes is evidence of it being written by AI. You can pry my ill-advised use of uncommon punctuation from my cold, dead hands, so I'm just going to have to trust that you trust me rather than curtailing my instinct to put em-dashes into my writing just because it triggers my anxiety reflex.
