Not sure I'd describe Please Please Me or Love Me Do as "lit", but it's all a matter of opinion, I suppose. Same for From Me To You, Secret, She Loves You, All My Loving... I'm on record as saying And I Love Her and Yesterday are their best songs, period, but there are many I like more. Within You Without You, Tomorrow Never Knows, Two Of Us, Fool On The Hill, Hide (which is older, yes)...
My favorite 80s rock album may be INXS Kick. Billy Joel released "The Stranger" so I will never poopoo his music
Listening to that Scott Aukerman and Adam Scott podcast during the pandemic, I've gone back through all REM's albums recently. If I'm being honest, there are a couple of songs from Monster I don't really love anymore. But New Adventures is amazing straight through. After that, totally agree, the number of songs that I "love" on an album that I decreased for next three, with a bit of a resurgence for the final two. I think a big reason for that is Bill Berry leaving. The band really did work as four co-equal parts, and I think Bill leaving threw them off kilter a bit. Could've also been somewhat due to the fact that he and Mills were the true musicians in the band, ie., the kids whose parents had them taking lessons from grade school up to college.
I really only liked their psychedelic later stuff for years, but after I bought and listened to all their early stuff, I developed a newfound appreciation - it’s what made the later stuff possible and it’s really good - nothing second rate at all. My first LP I bought for my turntable, still spin it from time to time.
I like this one better than anything on the early 90s "hit" records. Michael Stipe said it was the best song he wrote
You have to remember their early stuff is what made them. They were different, they were cool, they were vibrant. The kids were ready for them. I know I’ve said it once or twice. (Or more) that was the time I knew them. I worked as a bouncer and got to meet them all. it was more crowd control tho you don’t bounce 14/15 year old kids. It was their early years that gave them the time and a springboard to work on and get creative with their music. With help from people like George Martin. Maybe a little help from their friends!? True their early stuff seems a little naive now. But I can pick songs from both ends of their repertoire that I love. and by the way. Music died that afternoon on the roof of Abby Road Studios. my favourite movie this year is “Yesterday” just silly fun and Beatles music (With Lovely Lily James)
When I’m home alone and have time to pick up my guitar I almost always kick off with ‘Let it be’ Four chords, simple progression and it sets the mood.
I'm not sure some of you nephews realize how crap popular music was before the British Invasion and Motown. Ladies and Gentlemen ,Pat Boone and Doris Day!!!!
Little Peggy March-- "I will follow him/ wherever he may goooo/ there isn't an ocean too deep/ a mountain so high it can keep/ can keep me away/ away from your ears...."
I get where you're coming from. For me, it's a low for them. Doesn't mean I hate it, but it doesn't make me sit and pay attention. I'm not a big fan of a lot of 50s popular music or culture in general, and early Beatles is closer (in both sound and time) to that period than later Beatles. And the crooners, and Elvis. And the Beach Boys (in sound, not decade). It just sounds like (parts of) the world was kinda blindhappily humming along in the sunshine.
Forgot about this one! It IS beautiful. And it's been covered just as beautifully, too- Al Jarreau and Kathleen Battle. You can overlook Jarreau's rambling in the final third of the tune.
When Sgt Pepper was released, I had a summer job in a can factory. Had to get up at 5:00 for the 6am-2pm shift, and would sit alone in a quiet kitchen to have cornflakes and toast for brekkie, listening to the bbc on the radio. One day much to my surprise they started talking about the release of the Beatles new LP. The bbc talking about pop music was almost unheard of! The songs had never been played anywhere in public at that point. I'll never forget hearing the songs one after the other, sitting alone drinking it all in. I was mesmerized. Never heard anything like it in my life - the quality, the variety, it simply stunned me. When She's Leaving Home came on ..... words fail me. It was heart-stopping then and it still hypnotizes me now. If I was told to choose only one album to listen to for the rest of my life, there is no contest. Nothing else comes close.
That's a great story. I'm quite happy to report that I'm much younger than you are. I can listen to the Help!, Rubber Soul, and Revolver era stuff all day and Abbey Road doesn't miss one note from beginning to end. But if I hear nearly anything off of Pepper or MMT, my fast forward finger lunges for the Next button. The White Album is curious because there's enough phenomenal stuff to be phenomenal and enough awful stuff to be awful. I know they were eschewing supervision at that time but it turns out they needed producers and editors for that one. They had high highs and low lows. But if you take nearly any mediocre Beatles song, it's at least as good as the best Stones song.
Hmmm. Maybe true for the most part. But I'd give the lyrics on a lot of the songs on Pet Sounds another listen. The melodies and harmonies belie the angst/despair in Wilson's words.
I had a conversation years ago with someone who really was into the BB, and when I said I liked them okay, but wasn't into them, they recommended Pet Sounds. I do like Wouldn't It Be Nice (I'd heard it many times before), but that sounds like the Beach Boys to me. I guedss I was expecting something wildly different. Something interfered and I never got past that track that day, and I never went back. At any rate, I was never able to get past the whole T-Bird/Surfin USDA/Barbara Ann/CaliGirls thing. It was like this band brought the 50s along with them into the 60s...
If I'm on a desert island for a month, and you give me the choice of taking Rumours + Beethoven's Third Symphony, or every other piece of music that has been recorded, I'll take the first option. Now if it's a longer period, then with deep regret I must select Plan B.
Very little of Fleetwood Mac appeals to me. though I have a real soft spot for Albatross. most soothing "pop" music ever imo. (note: when I was a teenager I'd watch Liverpool from the Kop and often got to the ground way early to grab a good - i.e. safe - spot to stand. Albatross was usually played on the PA in the slow musical build up to the game.)
The earlier & later eras both had their strengths, but 1965-1966 Beatles were the best Beatles. Those three albums, plus the non-album singles of that era ("We Can Work It Out" backed by "Day Tripper", followed six months later by "Paperback Writer" backed by "Rain"--COME ON!) are just perfection.
Objectively they don't do much for me; but their mid-70's peak was the stuff I heard late night on AM radio as a kid laying in bed waiting to fall asleep. No way I can be objective about it.
At 18 years old, I got to see Paul McCartney live. On my birthday, no less. It remains to this day, a top three show for me. He opened up with stuff from his new album at the time, playing nothing but an acoustic guitar. Then, his band comes up, and he kicks off with Live and Let Die. Right after he says, "Then live and let dieeeee..." Fire comes out of the stage. I can still feel the heat from the pyrotechnics on that song. He played all the classics from his Wings career, same with the Beatles did a 20 minute rendition of Hey Jude, tore the place down with Band on the Run, and then closed it with the closing track of Sgt Peppers Lonely Heart Clubs Band. I've been to a lot of concerts in my life, I've seen some incredible shows that gave me goosebumps and others that have blown my mind. But if I had to relive the Paul McCartney concert again, I'll still be getting goosebumps.
Years ago when I worked at the arena, I had a chat with an older gent, he had to have been about late 50s, early 60s (This was 2003, 2004). We got to talking about music and he mentioned that he saw a few of the members live, I mentioned wanting to see Paul because of the music He commented, "He doesn't have to even play for me. He could just walk onto stage, wave, then walk off. That'd be enough for me. He's a Beatle." I've never heard that about any other musician.
I gave Fleetwood Mac's Rumours a shot and was surprised that I liked it. My parents were big into music growing up, but they weren't too big on the 70s acts like Led Zeppelin and such. Dad loved groups like Yes and Pink Floyd, but he was also into a lot of alternative stuff. Mom was into punk and new wave. Her and I once got into a heated discussion about Joni Mitchell (She hates the folk scene). Growing up near the Canadian border, we got a few Canadian stations. So I was exposed to groups like Our Lady Peace. We also had the techno scene on the radio as well.