My Favorite Albums of All Time

-=-=-=-==-=-= My Favorite Albums of All Time - Introductory Post :trumpet: :violin: :banjo: :drum:

I have many favorite albums, and you may have many too! This is a topic to celebrate favorite albums with reviews of each album in a post. Please participate!

You may have never heard of many of the albums, first because you may not “listen to albums” or you may be musch younger than the golden age of pop, rock, blues, jazz. old-time county. Did you know that at one time in the U.S. most music consumed was “country” or “tin pan alley” music? A lot of my favorite albums were discovered much later than original release/played on the radio (or the internet). So some of mine were much more popular before I was born, or when I was a child. The same may be true for you.

For each album you review, please post an image of the LP/CD/other. Please provide release date. And please give info about why it is a prized album for you. As this is a internet forum please go to Wikipedia, AllMusic, etc. to get any relevant fact you think are important or interesting. If you are into hifi music reproduction share some features about the sound qualities as well.

If this goes well it should become a rich source of new music for us all!

4 Likes

Pet Sounds

Beach Boys Pet Sounds 1966

This is one of my favorites. Also one of Paul MaCartney’s and many other musical artists.

You may know “Good Vibrations” and “Sloop John B” . “God Only Knows” is listed by some as best song of the 60s.

Brian Wilson composed the music and guest lyricist Terry Asher wrote most of the words. The variety and quality of musical instuments and quality of recording and producing is due to Brian Wilson producing the “Wrecking Crew” form the L.A. recording scene, as well as the Beach Boys vocals.

Wilson was inspired by the Beatles Rubber Soul and by Phil Specter and his “Wall of Sound”. He composed the album while the rest of the Beach Boys were on tour without him, and the news of this album was a bit of an unpleasant surprise at the time. The Beach Boys were hugely successful with their surf music/hot rod style which sprang out of Southern California, and everyone wanted this momentum to continue except Brian Wilson, it seemed. This album was a sea change for rock and roll, and it had a delayed effect on the pop music scene, especially in America.

I was a little kid who had moved to a little town in NC and I had no idea about this album except what may have been played on AM radio. The beach boys did not seem to be very big in my area at the time. I learned that my cousins in Dallas, TX heard a lot more beach boys music than I ever did. For me this music was discovered in the early 2000s after I got my “real” hifi system where bass went down to 30Hz and mids and treble were well controlled and balanced.

Listening to this album was a revelation. So many beautiful sounds and harmonies. I had heard lots of amazing music such as CSNY, Led Zeppellin, Steely Dan, The Allman Brothers, The Beatles, and it was amazing to learn that this predated all that music.




4 Likes

Allright, I’m going to be the trashy one but I cant help but still sing songs from Hybrid Theory after all these years.

220px-Linkin_Park_Hybrid_Theory_Album_Cover

Released in 2000. I guess it perfectly captured, at least, my teen angst. On a musical technical level, I dont think it is anything special. It’s just the music you had growing up and you assign nostalgia and value to it.

I am not really sure this is my favorite album, but whenever people ask me, the first thing that pops to my mind is always DIMMU BORGIR: Puritanical Euphoric Misantropia

It is the album who opened my eyes to melodic black metal, and not so melodic not so black metal


Nuclear Blast Records 2001

Dimmu Borgir are Norwegian Black metal band, that used to play classic black metal before venturing into this album.
I believe it’s the fat pig on drums, Nicolas Barker. Adding industrial sounds and the insane speed of Barker makes it much different from the other black metal bands of the era.

I grew up on one of their CDs. Twenty Golden greats was the album name IIRC. Yeah its good. Back when the music industry actually preferred people with more vocal and musical talent.

I forgot
 How dare I
 It took 12 years and I forgot


Wintersun - TIME 1 (2012)

Wintersun is a Finish symphonic speed folk metal thing, that is absolutely insane.
I did not believe this was a real band the first time I heard them. I thought it was a programed metal drum machine with some guitar riffs. But then they released TIME 1 and became one of my top 3 favorite bands ever.
A curious fact is the vocalist, Jari, who screams like a mad person, have one of his lungs removed due to illness complications, so he literally have trouble breathing properly, but he can scream.