Favourite albums, also why

[OhJohnNo]

According to the forum-wide search bar, it's been... never since we last had one of these threads, which seems like a colossal oversight. I mean, we've had a "best band ever" thread (a long while ago, but still) so I think it's time we corrected this!

My favourite albums have been fluctuating for a while - I have a few mainstays of my list which I'm pretty sure will remain there forever-more, but for a long while it was Origin of Symmetry, by Muse. However, another contender has been slowly climbing the ranks for a long time now, and finally reached the top recently when I realised I couldn't deny it any longer. It's...

Spoiler

Yeah it's Viva la Vida by Coldplay in case you're too lazy to open the spoiler (which I can't see being possible, but it's worth accounting for all possibilities).

Anyway, this is an album that I liked when I first heard it, several years ago. Ever since then, though, it's been slowly growing on me - first it crept into my top 10 list, then I found it edging in front of OK Computer on my top 5, then I realised it was my most played album and finally realised nothing else gave me quite the same level of joy when listening to it.

What I love most about it is that, despite having listened to it fully 17 times on my iTunes/iPod alone since I got my new hard drive (about a year ago, that was - most of the listens are recent), I discover something new pretty much every time I listen to it. It's got the best production I've ever heard - the kind that's inseparable from the song, where you can't imagine how the song would sound without it because they complement each other so perfectly. And there are these little touches which push the songs above perfection into ascendancy - for instance, after the guitar solo in Cemeteries Of London (incidentally one of my favourites ever), this barely audible humming sets in in the background - it doesn't have much effect through your average computer speakers, but when listening through iPod headphones (which pick up so much more) it produces this effect I've never heard replicated, makes the song sound heavenly and gives me goosebumps every time. It's capable of distracting me from whatever I'm doing at the time, because I just get so lost in it... it's beautiful. And it's not just on this song - the attention to detail everywhere on the album is staggering.

And it helps that the songs are brilliant - this album's chock full of some of my favourite riffs, be they guitar or otherwise. It's also the first time Coldplay really do feel like a proper band. The drumming is far superior to previous albums, and the basslines take a while to sink in - but you'll be glad when they do. Then there's the controversial matter of the lyrics - Tiresias dislikes many of them, but personally, I think they do a great job of supplementing the song's general feel. Which is what I feel lyrics should be, really - I don't want them getting in the way of the actual music, and these ones do not. Most of them seem meaningless when divested from the actual song, but within the song, they serve excellently as another instrument. What does "Now my feet won't touch the ground" mean? Oh, I dunno - I don't care, either, because in the context of the song it's one of the most touching and moving things anyone could have said, and a favourite line of mine. And then finally, there's the sequencing, which is totally perfect - masterfully paced (putting the sleek, exotic "Yes" after the lovely little ditty "Reign of Love" stands out). This and the production makes the whole thing stick together brilliantly - all the songs which worked well as singles work even better in their respective places on the album.

Anyway, other favourite albums include, in no order:

Muse - Origin of Symmetry
Radiohead - OK Computer
Sparklehorse - Good Morning Spider
Linkin Park - A Thousand Suns
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
Faunts - M4 (thanks for reminding me winder)

And now for you guys. What are some of your favourite albums?

[Tiresias]

I’m going to be a little perverse and refuse to name a favourite album. I know slightly annoying but, picking absolute best is a slightly sterilising process I find, eradicating albums with imperfections removes so much, leaving a few clichés left of albums everyone already knows are 'classic' albums.

If you ever asked me for a definitive favourite it would always be Kid A by Radiohead, because it is beautiful, intense, dense, intelligent, and most of all made me obsessed by music, obsessed by the detail, and structure. It showed me that music could reach higher than sing-a-long choruses and air guitaring, no offence to those, but don’t think I even knew what music could do till after Kid A obsessed me, back in the first few years of university.

There are other pretty much perfect albums in my book. Moon and Antarctica by Modest Mouse, Revolver by The Beatles, The Queen is Dead by the Smiths, Alligator by The National, Pet Sounds by Beach Boys, Untrue by Burial, and Sound of Silver by LCD Soundsystem among many others.

Candidates for my favourite slightly wonky album then, include Think Tank by Blur, containing several of my favourite Blur songs and Out of Time, pretty much my favourite Blur song. The White Album by the Beatles is amazing mess. Endlessly returnable, many great songs, but also plenty of ones that make no sense together. Glorious.

Elbow’s Leaders of the Free World hits all the right buttons and has some of the best song-writing you’ll find anywhere on it, but has nagging feeling of being slightly safe an option. Demon Days by Gorillaz made me fall in love with hip-hop, one of the most worn records in my collection (except not actually vinyl).

Drums and Guns by Low is astonishing, desolate, desperate, eery but is too much effort to get through. Lost Souls by Doves is an amazing record but loses out by being slightly mono-tonal. For miserable nights it has to be Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco. Station to Station by David Bowie is a mad favourite, as is lodger.

For my favourite record then?

REM Live at the Olympia. Yep it’s a live album, a double album even, of REM fairly recently. It’s got a huge set list of good songs and poorer songs, but all played very loud. No better album in the world to get lost in, despite it being absolutely as flawed as a silly live album should be. I know it's silly but as is picking a favorite. It's often the last one one played...

Oh and then there's Franz Ferdinand's debut...

[Rotlung]

Well, you could always give favourite album by genre, or by decade. An absolute favourite is hardly realistic because that's going to change at some point in time. I prefer to think of genres, since I tend to switch among my preferred genres and listen to a bunch of those stuff from that genre, then spend some time listening to another genre later on. For example, if I were in the mood listen to some progressive rock, I'm almost certainly going to want to listen to Nursery Cryme during one of my listening sessions, among other prog rock albums which might not be guaranteed listening time before I revisit another genre.

When it comes to classic rock, I guess I like The Beatles' Abbey Road best. I used to like Revolver a lot more (so much experimentation, psychedelia and melodies), but once I heard Abbey Road, I couldn't believe my ears. That collection of The Rolling Stones' singles The London Years is also great (arguably the only Stones compilation worth getting, forget Hot Rocks), but that's not really an album though.

My favourite prog rock album would probably be Genesis' Nursery Cryme. I was listening to a fair amount of prog before that (didn't we all start with Pink Floyd and Yes, anyway?), but Genesis' brand of prog rock combined technicality and complex song structures with some absolutely wonderful melodies (something which prog largely suffers in). Peter Gabriel managed to craft some really fantastical imagery with his style and his lyrics, and the entire band was just top-notch. Nursery Cryme was my entry album where Genesis is concerned, and thus it remains my absolute favourite.

I haven't really heard a lot of hard rock (Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, some Jeff Beck/Van Halen?), but my favourite would probably be Deep Purple's Machine Head. It's a very tight album (compared to the much faster/harder In Rock or the more experimental Fireball), but it epitomises everything that is hard rock, with a good mix of speed and passion. It also has the famous 'Smoke On The Water', which is always a plus.

When it comes to heavy metal, it's got to be Black Sabbath's Master Of Reality. I didn't start listening to heavy metal with this album (the first I heard was probably Paranoid, but I can't recall), but this really stands out as being very diverse (within heavy metal, at least) and interesting.

For thrash metal, everybody's favourite albums have got to be by one of the big four in thrash. Mine would be Megadeth's Rust In Peace, simply because the first two tracks (Holy Wars... The Punishment Due and Hangar-18) are just absolutely monstrous. Slayer's stuff usually tends to sound the same after a while, and Metallica albums are usually harder to listen to because of the awful sound quality of their albums (even the early ones).

My favourite power metal album is definitely Blind Guardian's Nightfall In Middle-Earth. It's the album that got me into power metal in the first place (no, not DragonForce or Hammerfall). I was probably very captured by how well it handled a medieval sound with a heavy metal vibe (something Rainbow laid the foundations for but never developed very much).

[Harmanoff]

Unfortunately my favorite album of all time is a swedish one that i imagine is 100% unknown to everyone outside the swedish speaking world. But in case you want to listen in its called 'Känn Ingen Sorg För Mig Göteborg', artist goes by the name of Håkan Hellström. I'd link to it but i fear it would be counter-productive since swedish singing tends to sound rather comic to english speakers in my experience.

Either way, that is not my favorite album solely on the merit of the music being good. It just happen to be the one album that i have the biggest emotional connection to. I was in the exact target demographic when it was released, i could identify with the topics of not wanting to grow up, how partying was getting old quick, how many of my old friends had moved on without me even noticing. And above all, and this is about as stereotypical as it gets, i had a crush on a girl that would not notice me at a time when that record was basically on repeat on the minidisc(yay obsolete tech)for months.

That emotional connection became glaringly obvious when i put that record on a few weeks ago after years since the last listen. I knew every single lyric and it sent me 10 years back in time. It felt like meeting and old friend i had been missing without realizing it. I find it's the same situation with all the albums i'd put on my favourites list, Dark side of the moon and OK Computer being top contenders here. Its not just the music, there are always memories of a time and place that comes along with them. I've listened to said albums hundereds of times and it's always the same emotional memory anyway.

[Carolyavisko]

mine favorite album is BLACK AND BLUE from BACKSTREET BOYS, as we all know the singing talent of this pop group nearly all the songs are liked from this album, especially the song more than that is my favorite its a slow romantic classy song to listen. Click here get more info.