[Updated album list, 28th June 2009 -S]
That’s actually a misquotation from Casablanca, but it’s so ingrained in our contemporary ethos that no one really cares (she actually says “Play it, Sam, play ‘As Time Goes By‘, one of the most sappy songs of all time). Bogart’s ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’ wasn’t in the original screenplay either — it was something said from Bogart to Bergman while he was trying to teach her poker in between takes.
Anyway, I wanted to talk about music. A wide, all-encompassing love for every kind of music. Except for death metal, which just doesn’t count as ‘music’. Maybe if they turn their amps down, they might be able to hear the shit they’re pumping out.
I know this is a touchy subject. Everyone has their own taste in music, which they are often irrationally proud of. ‘Yeah, I listen almost exclusively to Norwegian Death Metal, nothing else is even worth listening to.’ Most people firmly believe that their taste in music is approaching some kind of divinity, and anyone that doesn’t like their music (Impossible!!) can go stick it where the sun don’t shine.
The thing is, in general, ‘good music’ can be quite easily defined. There are a few bands and a few genres that are widely accepted as ‘good’. You won’t often find the Norwegian Death Metal lover saying that ‘Ah yeah, that Bacharach song was shit’ — some music is just so perfect. Some songs hit all the right spots, in all the right places, at just the right times. It’s this wide-scoped genre of music that I like to think I am an aficionado of. I’ve spent the last 10 years or so trying to locate, listen and identify all of the greatest albums ever made. I think I’m completely spoilt, being able to listen to some of the best music ever made, at any time. The power of digitising your CD collection!
So what makes music ‘good’? What can turn a piece of mediocre music into something truly ‘awesome’?
- An element of excellence. Be it vocal excellence like Whitney Houston, or an instrument like Ben Folds’ piano antics, or even excellent lyrics (though this is often a subjective measure, so I’m not really going to use it as a metric for measuring ‘good music’)
- Major tonality. This is slightly harder to get your head around, but generally this dictates ‘happy sounding’ music. Most of the anthems that you know will be in a major tonality, with some key-change later in that drives you up to the ‘next plane’ of the song. Pandora actually enlightened me to the fact that almost every song it chose for me was of ‘major tonality’ — sadly it’s a USA-only service due to licensing restrictions. Blah.
- Does the music take you places? Do you feel positively stimulated by listening to the music? More energy? More relaxed? Often a good album (not necessarily a song) will take you on some kind of ride through the thoughts and emotions of the artist. The music needs to appeal on enough levels that it gets you involved — it needs to be intellectual, emotional or spiritual (or all 3!) . I’m not talking about just the lyric here either — the music itself can take you to all of these places too.
- Most importantly, the music has to be so well made and so well engineered that you can listen to it time and time again, each listen-through granting you a new facet of the music, a new understanding and thus more appreciation. I’m still amazed that I can listen to a song by Marvin Gaye for the 100th time and pick out an instrument that I’ve never heard before. The quality of the recording is important here — the mixing and mastering has to be very well done so that it never detracts from your enjoyment of the music. All too often music is mastered for playing in cars — it’s heavily compressed so that you can still hear it over the driving noises, which means you’re probably never hearing what the artist wanted you to hear.
So, given the above attributes, you can start to pick out good albums (I’m not going to pick out ‘good songs’, as it’s pretty easy to make a good tune — look at Burt Bacharach and Hal David, or the Elvis Presley — it’s making a good album that’s the tricky bit).
This is by no means a comprehensive list, but I can almost guarantee you will enjoy each of these albums. You’ll even want to listen to them again and again… and again. It is no surprise that they are are also some of the best-selling albums of all time.
In no particular order:
- Marvin Gaye – 1971 – What’s Goin’ On
- Miles Davis – 1959 – Kind Of Blue
- Miles Davis & Gil Evans – 1958 – Porgy and Bess
- Elton John – 2008 – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Remastered)
- Paul McCartney & Wings – 1973 – Band on the Run
- Fleetwood Mac – 1977 – Rumours
- Bruce Springsteen – 1975 – Born to Run
- Ben Folds Five – 1997 – Whatever & Ever Amen
- Michael Jackson – 1979 – Off The Wall
- Michael Jackson – 1982 – Thriller
There are a few other albums which I feel could make the list, but they would most likely be very controversial. My inclusion of Ben Folds Five into a list of ‘historic greats’ is no doubt a bit dangerous, and it’s certainly a lot more ‘eclectic’ than the others in the list. Though, any album which I can listen to once a day, for 3 years, without being bored has to be a prime example of ‘good music’.
And now… I am going to slide my Grado headphones gently over my ears, press ‘play’ on my iPod, and dance around in the rapidly descending snow like a lunatic. It doesn’t get much better.
Jossie Posie
Feb 6, 2009
I am seriously impressed by this post…and slightly, just slightly in love.
sebastian
Feb 6, 2009
I am a music geek. Hell, I’m a music dork.
And proud. *turns his amp up to 11*
Tara
Feb 6, 2009
^-^
You described it perfectly! Music is magical that way. And I totally love those few albums that you can just listen to all the way through and it takes you on a whole excursion.
Jo
Feb 6, 2009
I want to post something just so that I can see my little monster pic!
And yes, very true about music and that is a great album list!
sebastian
Feb 6, 2009
The big turning point for me was when I discovered that singles came from albums. My playlist used to be just a huge collection of great songs, but with no real… flow to it. I started arranging the songs into some kind of pleasing flow, so I could be taken on some kind of rollercoaster as the playlist progressed.
Then I discovered a few of the above albums, and I was hooked on listening to entire albums… for ever!
andhari
Feb 7, 2009
LOL i bet if i ask you to review my songs, i would be very crushed. You seem to know your stuff.
sebastian
Feb 7, 2009
Well, I would promise to give it a fair listen… I don’t prejudge anything, unless it makes my ears bleed within 10-15 seconds (damn that death metal…)
Daniel Cassidy
Feb 8, 2009
I suspect you’re thinking of Black Metal. Death Metal is usually quite melodic and… sane.
Major tonality: Er, you didn’t seriously mean to exclude all music in a minor scale did you?
Also I’m not sure you can describe ‘excellence’ as an ingredient of ‘good’ and then consider yourself to have contributed anything useful :).
sebastian
Feb 8, 2009
I think I’m probably talking about thrash metal… or whatever really — I think I describe it fairly well. The kind of metal that makes you turn your amp down, and then realise it’s not your amp that’s making it sound just a bit shit.
Minor tonality has its place — but normally as a part of a song, not as the central diatonic tonality of the song. Occasionally you get a minor-toned song thrown into an album to bring it down a notch too — that can be quite fun. I can’t think of any good albums where the whole thing sounds like a miserable afternoon which, by the end, makes you think an overdose of valium would be a good idea.
‘Good music’ is the all-encompassing term I’m using here. You could, in theory, have an excellent guitar player in a black metal group, but it wouldn’t make it ‘good music’. That’s why the other elements in the list should also be present!
Øystein (Ahkailon)
Feb 8, 2009
Quite interesting post, but I sort of missed diversity in your taste of music (to a scertain degree of course: Marvin Gaye and Michael Jackson is hardly the same thing). I just got curious as to how you would like something like Opeth’s new album ‘Watershed’; as I find it to be a really great album, whilst not beeing quite the same ‘type’ of music as you have listed in the post (think constant state of melancholy broken up by agressive ‘wake you up parts’).
As for thrash metal I believe Pantera might have some ablums worth looking into, but it might not be quite your cup of tea (as you have mentioned). Also, maybe you could try out Soilwork’s ‘Stabbing the drama’ (Melodeath/Gothenburg metal), as I for one quite enjoyed that one.
Looking for happiness and calm in Norwegian Black (sounds like a cheese) or general black metal might be a bit optimistic as I don’t think that is the artists goal with the music.
sebastian
Feb 8, 2009
You make fine points — I did miss out one thing in my post, which was that it depends where you want the music to take you. Some people WANT to be taken down a dark, melancholy, rainy path. Not many, but some do. I guess I was aiming for a kind of ‘scatter shot’ approach at defining what makes good music, not a completely definitive list of every good album, as chosen by the opinions of 6 billion people around the world.
I was fairly certain that almost anyone could listen to those albums and not find them offensive; I might hazard to say that anyone could ENJOY those albums — as long as they don’t have some of those weird ‘I only like rap!!’ preconceptions.
I was mainly inspired to write it because of those kinds of people — I hate to think of people that may never listen to the music I’ve listed here. I know there must be people all around the world that only listen to noisy metal… they’re missing out on so much!
I’ll have to listen to Opeth’s new album and get back to you — I actually thought of a ‘music review’ audio blog… Maybe I’ll try it with that!