Listed below are the overall rankings for the best albums in history as determined by their aggregate positions in over 59,000 different greatest album charts on BestEverAlbums.com! (Chart last updated: 1 hour ago).
"The Foos becoming their own band, for better or worse. First 5 songs are great, but the whole album could be about 10 minutes shorter if they trimmed the fat on each track a bit. The production here just feels right, but the songs go on and on."Reply
"Many New Wave bands who continued into the nineties (and beyond), and who kept releasing new music, disappointed me. Maybe because you can only fall in love for the first time once, or maybe because the angry young man gets religion and\or smokes so much his vocal chords can't belt out the tunes ...""Many New Wave bands who continued into the nineties (and beyond), and who kept releasing new music, disappointed me. Maybe because you can only fall in love for the first time once, or maybe because the angry young man gets religion and\or smokes so much his vocal chords can't belt out the tunes like they once did. (I'm looking at you, Ian McCulloch.) But XTC is different. This is actually my favorite XTC album. Every song is good, even the one "My Dictionary," about Andy Partidge's divorce. My favorite track is "Green Man", which is a Beatlesque orchestral paen to a pagan agricultural god. Come to think of it, maybe I've gotten religion too ."[+]Reply
"They say that a prophet is never accepted in his homeland. Likewise it is often that art which challenges us to explore new vistas is never fully appreciated until time has passed and hindsight is used grant it immortality. So it was that the works of many a great composer, writer or artist were ...""They say that a prophet is never accepted in his homeland. Likewise it is often that art which challenges us to explore new vistas is never fully appreciated until time has passed and hindsight is used grant it immortality. So it was that the works of many a great composer, writer or artist were ignored in their own time, and lay waiting, dormant until the day would come when a new generation, freed from the prejudices of the past, would learn to adore what had previously been spurned. A case in point was the 18th century composer Vivaldi whose music remained forgotten until rediscovered in the 20th century.
And so it is, in its own small way, with The Visitors, ABBA’s last and least commercially successful album! If the fact that it failed to deliver more than one big hit single was not disastrous enough, the entire album concept was given a mixed reception and even panned by some of the more serious music critics of the time. Rolling Stone which awarded the album only two stars out of five blasted the album as "lousy" while the album’s commercial performance itself could only mirror that exact description managing the lowly position of 29 on the American Billboard Hot 100 Album listings. The exploration into melancholy and maturity in a new modern musical style was interpreted as nothing more than synch-drenched melodramatic balladeering. For the group itself, lacking only unanimous critical acclaim and used to almost 7 years of unbroken commercial success, the relative failure of the album must have been particularly hard to take. Within a year they had effectively disbanded, split up; gone their separate ways. Once again we were witness to the sorry sight of the artists attempt to break the chains of necessity and discover for us new worlds being spurned and derided.
And now a decade into a new century, their music lives on: stubbornly refusing to let go of the old fans with its nostalgia and rich diversity; seducing and enchanting new fans with its timeless melodies and addictive hooks. Prominent among the many reasons for ABBA's staying power has been the effect of their music catalogue to touch a raw nerve in practically every emotion. From bounding joy to deep sadness, ABBA music has a power over its listener that the critic no longer dare dismiss and no ABBA album tugs at the emotional strings stronger than the Visitors. In truth there is an air of defiance permeating the entire album. However this is no grand scale strategy on the part of the creators but the ordinary and breakable human defiance of real people desirous of artistic freedom. From the muffled cry of "help me" on the title track, to the refusal to lie down and cry in "When all is said and done", and to the admission of a twinge of guilt in "Slipping through My Fingers", there is an emotional honesty with which we, the everyman listener can readily identify with. While the primary ideas for the concept and the music lay with the male group members, Benny and Bjorn, the creative process can not be entirely disassociated from their female colleagues, for it is to them that is assigned that momentous task of actually bearing open the human soul and showing it to us. In hindsight theirs is truly a wondrous achievement both guiding the listener and then imparting the emotional meaning throughout the progression of the various themes. Notably it is on the Visitors that Frida really gives a spectacular rendition of her capabilities with songs like The Visitors, When All is Said and Done, I Let the Music Speak and Like an Angel Passing Though My Room, all bearing witness to that vocalists range and powers of mimicry.
It would be unfair and essentially factually incorrect however to ascribe all the virtues of that album to its emotional power alone. The music, the melodies and the harmonies are as good as anything the band had come up with before, while new styles are explored and then performed with aplomb. In the overall reckoning the album forms a key component in the progression from bubble-gum pop fantasy to adult musical maturity and reality. If ABBA was a story then the defining moment is the song "I Let the Music Speak", effectively their final soliloquy. All that follows, including the magnificent The Day Before You Came, can be then viewed as mere epilogue.
In contrast to its troubled conception and birth, it is in its maturity that The Visitors has come constitute one of the more revered parts of the ABBA canon. The formers band members can rightfully look back with pride for having put faith in their own artistic capabilities and for producing a work which is both magnificent in itself as well as being oblivious to the times in which it was conceived. Freed of the commercial baggage they produced a work of art which has both meaning and enjoyment in the lives of many living and will do so for many generations to come.
For the artist the temporary rewards of commercial success, initially satisfying though they maybe, are as nothing compared to those of art and the immortality that it brings.
For the critics and for the rest of us, has not the time finally come when we should acknowledge this album in its rightful place, as one of the finest works ever produced in the history of popular music?
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"I heard "The Gun" originally in the film Rock N Rolla and I'm glad I did it helped me discover Lou who is now one of my favorite artists. This album is one of his best solo works. The songs blend together as Lou seems to describe his life at that point in time."Reply
"Well, it's not the smartest album that The Shins have ever done but you know what? After all the albums that I've listened to over the last couple of years, sometimes it's nice to just hear some simple pop once in a while. I like the songs like For a Fool and 40 Mark Strasse where I can just kick...""Well, it's not the smartest album that The Shins have ever done but you know what? After all the albums that I've listened to over the last couple of years, sometimes it's nice to just hear some simple pop once in a while. I like the songs like For a Fool and 40 Mark Strasse where I can just kick back and relax. I kind of made the same argument for The Cults last year where I said I don't mind pop music as long as it's good. This certainly qualifies."[+]Reply
"I listened to this after a tiring test, and believe me there is just a few things better to relax than this. Maybe for relaxing, maybe for making you enjoy the time, this album destroy your life expectations, building everything in a beautiful psychedelic orchestra. I like the vibes that it trans...""I listened to this after a tiring test, and believe me there is just a few things better to relax than this. Maybe for relaxing, maybe for making you enjoy the time, this album destroy your life expectations, building everything in a beautiful psychedelic orchestra. I like the vibes that it transmitted, but you the sensation that the time is stopped is the biggest highlight of this album, and the Instrumentation is amazing, with a huge quality. Very good"[+]Reply
"I generall agree with y'all commenters, except daftpunter's assertion that Sgt. Pepper is "tripe". That just seems excessively revisionist. Sgt. Pepper is a remarkable work of art, though it's hard to listen to it with "fresh ears." But yeah this is one of the most underrated albums I've ever enc...""I generall agree with y'all commenters, except daftpunter's assertion that Sgt. Pepper is "tripe". That just seems excessively revisionist. Sgt. Pepper is a remarkable work of art, though it's hard to listen to it with "fresh ears." But yeah this is one of the most underrated albums I've ever encountered. I used to think Village Green was their best, but now comparing these two, Muswell Hillbillies seems much better to me. Village Green is sort of uneven, unfocused compared to this, which is understandable given Ray's difficulty putting it together. Muswell just feels like each (excellent) song leads so naturally into the next. This album is packed with Ray's freshest, most irresistable melodies. And of course the lyrical content, never a weak spot for him, is better than ever. This is a much darker record than Village Green, not so much idyllic escape as pessimistic realism. People in grey are taking away paranoid schizophrenics (who isn't crazy in a world like this?), but Ray wishes he could just have a cuppa tea in somewhere like Oklahoma, USA. Of course, even "Have a Cuppa Tea" lampoons British culture. At least this review gets it:
http://drownedinsound.com/releases/17882/reviews/4146960"[+]Reply