There are 466 posts filed in Music (this is page 11 of 67).
So here we are with another installment of me looking back at some of the music I’ve enjoyed from the first half of this year. I guess that means this’ll mostly be music from March or April. I don’t know if you remember much from that period, since I was mostly just sitting around waiting to get vaxxed. But hey, at least I remember some of these albums. Continue reading
My prediction for 2021 was that it would be an off-year for music, not unlike 2020 was for movies. While music is a medium that (especially now) can be produced by one person at home, it typically thrives on collaboration, which we didn’t have much room for in 2020 or early 2021. So it was hard for me to imagine that a lot of artists would be able to go into the studio and record new music while also abiding by covid protocols. While this does seem to somewhat be the case, considering there haven’t been nearly as many hotly anticipated albums as there were last year, 2021’s still been no slouch.
Some of this has been due to the fact that a few high-profile albums that were already gestating for a while got released this year after delays. But also, music is just such a vast, universal art form that there’s always going to be good stuff to discover. I would say this has been the theme for my 2021 listening, as I’ve definitely ended up listening more to artists that I either hadn’t heard of or had somewhat ignored for a while. I’ll admit that Spring/early Summer is usually the time when there seems to be a new great album from an artist I love coming out every week, and that isn’t quite the case this year. But again, there’s still been some good stuff coming out recently in addition to the other discoveries that have made this year worthwhile so far.
Also, since streaming has made it rare that I end up spending much time with albums I don’t like these days, I’ll forgo using star ratings for these albums in exchange for arbitrary “like”-ness ratings. Continue reading
Holy crap, we’ve almost reached the top 10. Though because the rankings of the top 50 best-selling albums in the U.S. has shifted since I started doing this countdown, the math has worked out that less than 39 albums have been written about. To remedy this, I’ll start doing some bonus entries to make sure I round this out to an even 50. I know, that may sound insane to give myself more work for a project that’s taken me years to finish, but we gotta do this right.
Album: Boston
Artist: Boston
Release Date: August 25, 1976
Copies Sold In U.S.: 17 million Continue reading
Since it’s March 31 and we still haven’t had a single post all month, here’s an obligatory People’s Album entry to keep this from being the first completely postless month. Though don’t worry, word on the street is that we’ll be a little more active on here in the month ahead.
Album: Metallica (The Black Album)
Artist: Metallica
Release Date: August 12, 1991
Copies Sold In U.S.: 16 million Continue reading
It’s hard to say what new music will look like in 2021. You would think that there may be a dearth of album releases due to the pandemic making it harder for musicians to collaborate in the studio over the past year. Though unlike film and TV, music doesn’t rely as much on large groups of people for creative fulfillment, and as we even saw in 2020, some artists are perfectly capable of writing and recording worthwhile material while in isolation. So for that reason, I think 2021 won’t be the greatest year for music or anything, but I don’t think it’ll be a complete wasteland the way movies were in 2020 and TV will almost surely be this year.
I can’t verify whether both Jazmine Sullivan’s and The Weather Station’s new albums were recorded during lockdown (though I know Heaux Tales was), but their introspective nature certainly checks off what we want out of music these days. They’re two albums that are among the most critically lauded albums of the year so far (though I suppose Heaux Tales is technically an EP), while also being probably my two favorite albums of the still-young year. They’re not that similar of sounding albums, as they’re coming from two artists that inhabit two very different spaces of the music world (Sullivan coming from the mainstream R&B world, while The Weather Station comes from the artier side of indie-pop). However, they feel worth comparing to me because they both see two artists in similar stages of their careers finding their sounds in truly revelatory ways. Continue reading
It looks like I took off 2020 completely from doing any installments of The People’s Albums, but I’m still so close to finishing out this seven-year journey that I just gotta keep pushing. Also, after catching up with The Bee Gees: How Do You Mend A Broken Heart? and the film Saturday Night Fever this past week, I finally feel ready to assess this cornerstone of the disco movement.
Album: Saturday Night Fever (The Original Movie Soundtrack)
Artist: The Bee Gees / Various Artists
Release Date: November 15, 1977
Copies Sold In The U.S.: 16 million Continue reading
Oh boy, not really in the mood to do this right now. If future generations are reading this a bunch of domestic terrorists stormed the Capitol building the other day. Christ man, what’s wrong this country? You don’t have to read this now if you don’t want to. I don’t want to write it now. Maybe you can check back in when things are ever better. If they’re ever better. Ugh.
