Listed below are the overall rankings for the best albums in history as determined by their aggregate positions in over 58,000 different greatest album charts on BestEverAlbums.com! (Chart last updated: 3 hours ago).
"(It's a Julien Baker album, it's a good album. One of the contenders for the championship belt of badass sad sack songwriters comes back with a whole lot more production punch than she had on her last couple albums. The result is a lush, at times overly so, but mostly gorgeous album that will abs...""(It's a Julien Baker album, it's a good album. One of the contenders for the championship belt of badass sad sack songwriters comes back with a whole lot more production punch than she had on her last couple albums. The result is a lush, at times overly so, but mostly gorgeous album that will absolutely have you sobbing in solidarity with her if you aren't careful.)
This is easily my most anticipated album of 2021 thus far. I adore Julien's debut Sprained Ankle, and, while I found her second album considerably less cathartic and powerful, I still quite liked it.
From her first 2 albums I felt that As a songwriter Julien is pretty miserable, not like she's bad, I mean she is very VERY good at just completely expressing utter despair and self-loathing like few songwriters I've ever heard. This is perhaps the main feature and most obvious aspect of her music in her career thus far. This aspect is so much on the forefront that sometimes I think her other strengths are overlooked. Lyrically she does know how to plunge the knife in and then twist it for maximum effect. Melodically she isn't an all time great, but she generally can write a good hook and a good and memorable melody. And she knows how to make just a very consistent and engaging emo album to sob along with.
In the lead up to this album I was feeling kinda meh and in the dumps and as a result I was very eagerly anticipating this album. When I heard it the night it was dropped I was initially lukewarm. Then I woke up and listened a couple more times and I started to warm to it a bit more. Now as I write this and I listen yet again, I am starting to really quite like it.
The obvious change in her production is what is probably going to get the most ink. And for good reason. Cuz this album is indeed MUCH more adorned with big synth parts and walls of electric guitar and keyboard and just a lot of embellishments that are trotting along beside Julien's familiar emotional voice and songwriting themes. This upscaling of musical...stuff... is generally well done. What the album clearly loses in terms of that intimacy and cathartic power that her first album had, it gains in terms of just a lot of beautiful moments of epic earcandy. The absolutely badass chorus of "Heatwave" is something that just couldn't happen without the new production angle and to say it works in enhancing the emotional punch of the song would be an understatement. There are other moments when the increased production touches work quite amazingly alongside Julien's songs.
There are also songs which feel somewhat overproduced and made me briefly miss that stripped down sound featured in "Sprained Ankle". An example of this arguably over-adorned style somewhat hampering the impact of a song is on "Relative Fiction". That song for me is good but coulda been great if not for those damn silly percussion sounds. Maybe that touch will grow on me, but for now I don't love it, feels a bit much especially with the big bass sounds and the several guitars also being layered on top of it with Baker's vocals also being multitracked, idk it just kinda rubs me the wrong way.
Still, the hits here and the overarching feel and flow of the album are indeed fabulous and there are some pristine and incredible moments sprinkled on this album. Tracks like "Heatwave", "Hardline", "Ringside", "Song In E", "Ziptie" are very powerful songs that are some of her best in her career thus far. While I don't love this like I love her debut, I think its a better album than her sophomore album and its great having a new Julien Baker album in my life to absorb when I'm feeling like my whole world has been bled of meaning and color. She's one of the best singer/songwriters of her generation and this album is quite solid and already has that familiar warmth connected with it in my mind that will make me revisit it often over the next long while.
"Blacked out on a weekday
Still something that I'm trying to avoid
Start asking for forgiveness in advance
For all the future things I will destroy
That way I can ruin everything
When I do, you don't get to act surprised
When it finally gets to be too much
I always told you you could leave at any time""[+]Reply
"There needs to be a term for this kind of music that’s been gaining such popularity so quickly. Mumford & Sons, The Avett Brothers, The Punch Brothers, Trampled By Turtles, and now The Lumineers. It’s like all of a sudden the public cares a little bit about bluegrass. But it’s not “true" bluegras...""There needs to be a term for this kind of music that’s been gaining such popularity so quickly. Mumford & Sons, The Avett Brothers, The Punch Brothers, Trampled By Turtles, and now The Lumineers. It’s like all of a sudden the public cares a little bit about bluegrass. But it’s not “true" bluegrass, you see. It’s poppy bluegrass. It’s folk rock that has elements of bluegrass (tight harmonies, banjo, mandolin) mixed with elements of pop. There hasn’t been a good name for it yet. Some would say “progressive bluegrass" or “newgrass" but those have somewhat different meanings. I think the best way to describe it is this: it’s banjo pop. Pop music lead by a banjo and all those folk/bluegrass elements.
The Lumineers debut album is banjo pop at it’s best. The songs are incredibly well-written both lyrically and musically, and the album is a wonderful, coherent idea. These guys have a bright future in a world that is beginning to love banjo pop."[+]Reply
"The people who dismiss the Monkees without ever having listened to them, and who refer to them derisively as a "band" (never without quotation marks), can never really be convinced of their merits. I don't have ill feelings toward these people because they had the whole media telling a story abou...""The people who dismiss the Monkees without ever having listened to them, and who refer to them derisively as a "band" (never without quotation marks), can never really be convinced of their merits. I don't have ill feelings toward these people because they had the whole media telling a story about the Monkees that wasn't really true.
I'm gonna skip over the music for a minute and talk about the relationship between the band and the label/company. Somebody commented on here that the Monkees represented the end of musical integrity and the triumph of the love of money. The thing is, if the Monkees are not important for their music, they are important for being a group, perhaps the first, that stood up AGAINST this paradigm. The Monkees came around in the mid-to-late 60s. What do you think was going on before this? I'll tell you-- companies were putting together groups of men or women who could sing, and then they were choosing songs written by professional songwriters under contract, and they were recording those songs in the studio with session musicians. That's just the way it was done (with a few exceptions). It was rare that any groups would play their own instruments either on record or on stage. That's how the corporations liked it--Total Control. If it sounds familiar, it's because that's how the Monkees started out. Yes, they were prefabricated. Nobody's going to deny that. But, they because an extremely important band because they broke the mold. Somehow, they and a couple of allies they had in the company, waged a war in order to control their own musical destiny. They shouldn't be denigrated for having started out just the same as so many other groups; they should be celebrated for showing the music world that artists are not puppets to be controlled by corporations. They have to have free will.
As for the album Headquarters, they played every note, and it turns out they were talented guys. Does the album stand up with the greats? Well, no, but it is one of the better albums of the year. Moreover, it is better than just about any other talented band at the time that were playing their own instruments and writing their own songs. Much of this is due to the prodigious talents of Michael Nesmith, who's song "You Just May Be the One" is an extraordinary study in pop hooks, and is the best tune on the albums. His other songs, along with Micky's "Randy Scouse Git" are the album's other best songs. The album is weakest when it is borrowing corporate tunes, written for money, like those by Boyce and Hart, and Mann and Weil. Like most of the songs on the first two Monkees albums, these songs lack heart. Nesmith's were always the best because he was an artist recording his own tunes. So many of the songs that Don Kirshner selected were so flat because they were written for a paycheck. "[+]Reply
"Fantastic country album. Don't know why this is so low rated. All good songs and 'Jolene' and 'I will always love you'. The latter so much better than the Whitney Houston version. A must have!"Reply
"My favorite all time soundtrack album. It's even better than the T.V. series soundtrack, with little Jimmy Scott one of the many highlights with the haunting, sycamore trees. Julee Cruise sings another beautiful track, and the instrumentals from Angelo Badalmenti are stunning, atmospheric, beauti...""My favorite all time soundtrack album. It's even better than the T.V. series soundtrack, with little Jimmy Scott one of the many highlights with the haunting, sycamore trees. Julee Cruise sings another beautiful track, and the instrumentals from Angelo Badalmenti are stunning, atmospheric, beautiful and moving all at the same time. A superb album. "[+]Reply
"One current artist I'm astounded has yet to follow up this masterful work of retro=pop material. Bulletproof was an absolute smash and Ellie has remained quiet long after. Looking forward to the follow up more than any other really since it's been so long"Reply