Re: Album made entirely by one person

MadhattanJack — Sat, 13 Aug 2022 02:15:34 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 08/13/2022 06:15

You kind of need a cutoff date for a question like that — I'd make it something like the year 2000 or thereabouts. At that point, home-studio technology started getting really good and all sorts of musicians started recording albums at home, often without any assistance whatsoever. There's a whole "bedroom pop" genre now, and there are probably tens of thousands of albums that would fit into it, especially if you include ambient stuff. (There's a lot of totally-solo ambient stuff out there.)

Another possible cutoff date is 1980, which is roughly when synthesizers and digital drum machines became cheap enough for non-specialists to buy and record with them, and it was also around that time when the Tascam Portastudio went on the market. Affordable digital samplers became a reality just a couple of years later. Oh, and also MIDI.

Before that though, most albums you find that are completely solo were still recorded at home — Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything and Hermit of Mink Hollow were among the better-known examples, and I think Rundgren also made a few others the same way. He basically built a big expensive professional recording studio in his house, and it probably cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars to set it all up, but that was offset by bringing in other bands to record there.

Aside from Todd Rundgren...

Bill Nelson made a few albums like that, mostly because he could (though he'd sometimes bring his brother in to play sax if he felt a track needed one, or maybe have his wife do a backup vocal). Starting with Savage Gestures For Charms Sake, I believe, though I don't own that one. About 98% of The Love That Whirls is just him — that was a couple years earlier, and I do own that one.

A couple of Stevie Wonder albums would probably qualify, especially Music of My Mind — producers would help him program the synth patches, but everything else was him, on that album at least.

Roy Wood's Boulders has a guy playing harmonium on track 1, but otherwise it's all Roy. And there's also Jason Falkner's first album, Author Unknown, which has a guy playing guitar on track 2, but otherwise it's all Jason Falkner. (Actually, most of his albums are like that — All Quiet On The Noise Floor may be the only one that's 100% him instead of 99.5% him, but that was released only in Japan and I've never heard it or even seen a physical copy.)

The internet says these would all qualify:

Skip Spence, Oar (1969)
Emmitt Rhodes' self-titled LP (1970)
Jon Anderson, Olias of Sunhillow (1976)
Steve Winwood, Arc of a Diver (1980)
Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska (1982) (recorded on a Portastudio)
John Fogerty, Centerfield (1985)
Phil Collins, Both Sides (1993)
Adrian Belew, Here (1994)

And that's probably just for starters!

Lastly, I'm not even sure the McCartney trilogy would qualify because Linda sang on the first two, and on McCartney III he brought in a couple of uncredited extras for the song "Slidin'."

Album made entirely by one person

SD100852 — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 23:03:18 GMT

Author: SD100852

Posted: 08/13/2022 03:03

I was just reading a thing about Prince and found out that all of his second album was entirely self made (in terms of writing, performing, arranging and producing) and it made me think, what other great examples are there of albums entirely created by just one person? Another few that stand out is Paul McCartney's self-titled triology

Best Ever Albums

Re: Album made entirely by one person

Album made entirely by one person