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: 26 minutes ago).
"King Gizzard have somehow kept their personality while making a complete shift in sound. This album is extremely pleasant, dreamy, and, as expected, psychedelic."Reply
"Once, coiled soundly beneath the kaleidoscopic cornucopia of musical excess that was the 1960's, a tidal wave which reached sacred heights but synchronically cannibalized itself ten times over, there was a man. A man who, fit with somber body language and European sensibilities, wore dark sunglas...""Once, coiled soundly beneath the kaleidoscopic cornucopia of musical excess that was the 1960's, a tidal wave which reached sacred heights but synchronically cannibalized itself ten times over, there was a man. A man who, fit with somber body language and European sensibilities, wore dark sunglasses indoors and crooned with regard to the fraudulent nature of suburban, posh societies and serial drinkers who typify carnal, animalistic yearnings on midnight pub parades. The man's name was Scott Walker and he's seemingly lived a thousand lifetimes, shuffling along in the footwear of names past and present, rich and poor, angelic and depraved in equal measure. Here, on 'Scott', Walker begins to chisel out his first, significant artistic personality, free from the restraints of the pop band expectations of the Walker Brothers and into a new era of thought-provoking, thematically challenging baroque pop. On his first solo record, the enigmatic songster registers a mere trio of writing credits, however, it's the ascendancy and grandeur of the LP that transfigures the collective into something wholly idiosyncratic. On 'Scott', a caged, creative genius breathed new air that billowed with currents of Belgian chanteurs and classical composers and laid the bedrock for one of the most beguiling careers of the modern era.
The album begins with 'Mathilde', an English rendition of Jacques Brel's 1964 chanson that details an abusive, romantic entanglement that forever resurrects like a pitiful, desperate phoenix. This is an opportune time to discuss Walker's admiration and veneration for Brel's work, once even calling him the "most important singer-songwriter in the world". Brel's pension to uncover and rhapsodize on all things strange and uncomfortable in society appealed to Walker, during a period where such things weren't touched or even discussed in pop music, let alone music at large. As a result, Walker christened his exodus from the mainstream by breathing life into Brel's haunting, challenging and sunless parables. At their moral best, they're hopeless, demoralizing accounts of unrequited love and at their worst, accounts of molestation, both mentally and physically at the hands of Army officers. Despite Walker's radical and firmly adult direction, his albums began to fall on a more gradually disinterested audience. Yet, it began to plot the roadmap for a rapidly escalating sonic approach that few (if any) could find parallels to. On 'Mathilde', Walker channels Brel while proclaiming, "My hands, you'll start to shake again when you remember all the pain; Mathilde's come back to me; You'll want to beat her black and blue but don't do it, I beg of you." The track is framed within an up-tempo sheen, reminiscent of a march into battle or a swaggering anthem of boisterous victory. The subject's early indecision is apparent with his mind made up by the end of the piece. Walker employed the assistance of three composers on 'Scott', perhaps most synonymously, Angela Morley (then Wally Stott), who would go on to further heights as Walker's arranger. On track two, Montague Terrace (In Blue), one of three penned by Scott himself, Morley crafts a dizzying, yet chic sheen before propelling walls of brass that instantly unionize with Walker's baritone hollers. There's an air of satire purveying here, like a thick vapor. "The girl across the hall makes love; Her thoughts lay cold like shattered stone; Her thighs are full of tales to tell of all the nights she's known," Walker details. It's unclear if the image is one of a much yearned for, idyllic, societal upgrade or a disdain for others' possessions and dispositions.
Arriving third, LP highlight 'Angelica' softly vibrates before segueing into Walker's cries for the song's titular maiden. The organ tones from the onset color the track with melancholy, conjuring images of eulogization for lost love. Walker explains, "Now in my solitude, I tend the flowers that I buy, As they slowly fade and die, watered by the tears I cry." 'Angelica' represents a landmark in the early days of Walker's solo odyssey, as an indication of his desire to routinely croon overtop pessimist anthems far before it was vogue, complete with a dim worldview that would become progressively overcast. Fourth Track, 'The Lady from Baltimore', is Walker's attempt at Tim Hardin's classic. Scott's take is fittingly folky, with the prose in lock-step with his bleak paradigm. His voice sports a twangy timbre, faintly foreshadowing his self-assessed "Wilderness Years" in the early 1970's. However, his foray into folk and flirtation with country is marvelously executed. Walker's most ardent statement on the LP is the final track, 'Amsterdam', a swooning, cinematic recoloring of Jacques Brel's famous live staple. It's through this piece that Walker proves himself to be most worthy to succeed Brel as the patron saint of fatalistic allegories. The track opens with accordion hisses that wash over the empty pockets of sonic space like a patient sunrise as eyelids softly open to greet it. Walker sets the the scene for the finale with a tale of the rawest kind of human desperation, with a pistol of willful ignorance tucked away in its holster. The tale is as much about revelry as it is despair, or maybe more astutely, how the two co-exist in the minds of the downtrodden. 'Amsterdam' steadily ascends, starting as a lone man recounting a drunken memory out loud. Soon, it seems as if others join in (characterized by the power of Walker's vocals). Finally, the collective emerges, taking the form of the swirling instrumentation that rises the tide lead by Walker's voice. It's a picture so vivid that it's hard to disassociate the visual from the track. It's a stunning statement ushered off by Walker's repeated chants. 'Amsterdam' is without question Walker's finest Brel interpretation and one of his career's most prolific efforts.
Noel Scott Engel died on March 22, 2019, but the world knew him as Scott Walker. However, few people knew that he died in 1967 as well. This death did not serve as a passageway to the afterlife, but rather, a reincarnation. An invigoration. A rebirth. 'Scott' remains the genesis of a career that words couldn't succinctly articulate. The Scott Walker of the Walker brothers walked and died, dried up in a desert of creative disillusionment and disgust so that the Scott Walker that would follow could run and consequently, swim oceans fiercely cavernous and artistically unbound. The transaction included trading in a handsome, youthful face for a stern demeanor and a military cap that slumped lower and lower throughout the years, reflecting the thematic directions his music would take while hiding the weathered, hardened features of his face. The seedlings planted within 'Scott' would grow to spawn a wonderous garden whose fruits few would taste. Walker saw very little monetary success throughout the remainder of his career and by 1978, he was a recluse. He would occasionally resurface with records that would scorch earth and send those with their ears to the ground into a frenzy. By some, he is regarded as the most unheralded genius in music history. To others, he was a passing shadow of an assembly line industry of musical malaise. In 1967, with a brilliant, stark solo debut, he began a journey of endless ambition fit with thankless repercussions. It's a journey we all should take, for it is rooted in the very soul of what music should be, endlessly imaginative and unyielding. However, few have the inclination to look at the natural world as Walker did. It's a blessing and a curse.
"In the port of Amsterdam there's a sailor who drinks
And he drinks, and he drinks, and he drinks once again,
He drinks to the health of the whores of Amsterdam
Who have promised their love to a thousand other men
They've bargained their bodies and their virtue long gone
For a few dirty coins, and when he can't go on,
He plants his nose in the sky and he wipes it up above,
And he pisses like I cry for an unfaithful love."
-Amsterdam
Standout Tracks:
1. Amsterdam
2. Angelica
3. The Lady from Baltimore
91.6"[+]Reply
"A highly intimate album in which Sting lets go a little the virtuoso playing to tell a story and give it the space it deserves. To be listened to attentively. This one is not a party album. it is to be taken in more as you would take in a great movie or book."Reply
"This is the type of pop music i'm into nowadays. Combine queen and elo with a geeky, beat-centric hip-hop album obsessed with lonely nights spent with friends and you have "some nights". "we are young" is great, even if janelle's vocals are rather plain and underutilized. I wish the "some nights ...""This is the type of pop music i'm into nowadays. Combine queen and elo with a geeky, beat-centric hip-hop album obsessed with lonely nights spent with friends and you have "some nights". "we are young" is great, even if janelle's vocals are rather plain and underutilized. I wish the "some nights intro" was extended -- i love the queen-like vocals. Auto-tune is used to good effect in some places and is a bit annoying in other places (where i wish they could've just layered some harmonies instead, like on "stars"). It's a bold choice, both a strength and weakness, for this indie pop band which otherwise has little teeth but a mastery of the pop song."[+]Reply
"A really underrated album. The entire thing from start to finish is just a masterpiece. Like originally the only album I had heard from him was Poses, then someone referred me to Want One and I had really no idea how talented this man really is."Reply
"Wow, does Paul McCartney seem revitalized or what? I've never been a huge McCartney fan, but there's a focus to this album i haven't ever seen in his solo works, including any of his recent stuff all the way back to "Ram". He works with a handful of producers to deliver a very good album with no ...""Wow, does Paul McCartney seem revitalized or what? I've never been a huge McCartney fan, but there's a focus to this album i haven't ever seen in his solo works, including any of his recent stuff all the way back to "Ram". He works with a handful of producers to deliver a very good album with no glaring WTF?! moments that bespeckle most of his solo discography. If you just judge this album based on it being created by a 71 year old, then that might elicit a "WTF?!" response; that is, until you hear it was written by McCartney. Still, if this album, which tries on different genres from acoustic folk to electronic flavor like trying on familiar, warm, comfortable coats with ease, had someone like julian casablancas' name behind it, then the indie world would've gone apesh|t for this album long ago. Of course, julian couldn't give songs like "early days" their gravitas, but that's beside the point. I know Rolling Stone mag likes to give end-of-the year props to a handful of old fogies probably because they're the "old standard rock'n'roll" fogies, but in this case, it's well deserved."[+]Reply