The People’s Albums #10: Greatest Hits

Well, hello there. Instead of taking a look back at my favorite new music of the last month or so, I figured I’d switch things up and return to an old recurring feature that I’m still technically pretty close to finishing but also feel very far away from finishing. With this entry, I finally break the top 10 of America’s best-selling albums of all time. I can’t promise that I’ll get through the top 10 any quicker than the other 40 albums I’ve reviewed over the last 10 years (Jesus Christ), since these will be especially ubiquitous albums that will be hard to find anything new to say about. Which might explain why it took me so long to get around to writing about this particular album.

Album: Greatest Hits
Artist: Elton John
Release Date: November 1974 (Hard to believe an album can be this popular and also leave no trace of its exact release date on the internet.)
Copies Sold In The U.S.: 17 million Continue reading →

Colin’s Favorite Albums of April 2022

Apologies for the fact that we’re already a few days removed from April and that most of these albums actually came out in March. But well, I’m just a little backlogged with albums to listen to. The Spring tends to be the most fruitful time for music releases (both in the pop sphere and for the critical darlings), and 2023 is shaping up to be a fairly normal year in that regard after a couple years of general album release unpredictability. I’ll admit that almost all of these artists are fairly established, but maybe that’s what happens when you’re just reviewing music that came out fairly recently, as the more under-the-radar artists can tend to slip through the cracks and reveal themselves as the year rolls along. Continue reading →

Colin’s Favorite Albums of Winter 2023

I’ve been wanting to get back into reviewing my favorite albums on a (roughly) monthly basis just as I did last year, but it’s been a little hard. The early months of a year in music usually take a little while to take shape, as there’s a decent amount of spill-over from the year before spent listening to albums that made a lot of Best of the Year lists. Also, these past months have been a bit slow in terms of big-deal artists releasing albums, though it seems that things are starting to pick up these last few weeks. However, I’ll probably save reviewing more recent releases for the end of this month, after I have the chance to really spend some decent listening time with them.

But for now, let’s take a look at some albums from January, February, and March of this year, which I’ll just broadly refer to as Winter 2023, a season we can now safely say is in the rearview. Continue reading →

John’s Top Ten Albums of 2022

Remember the cartoon Pinky and the Brain? You know, those lab mice (one a genius, the other insane) who every episode plotted to take over the world? Yeah, that’s me and music. Every year I plan a new scheme to discover new music and every year I still feel like I miss something.

This year, I relied heavily on Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” section. If you’re not familiar, Spotify generates weekly playlists based on the user’s listening habits. A great idea but at the end of the day I really only found one album from that process that ended up on my list (it’s in my number 2 spot btw).

Otherwise, I found out about all these other albums in a multitude of ways; the radio, YouTube, Pitchfork (which I’ve tried to wean myself off of… No good snobs!) It’s not a perfect process but I’m happy with this list and I hope you are too!

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Sean’s Top 10 Albums of 2022

One of my annual traditions is to spend the last few weeks of the year taking time off from work and focusing on what really matters: making top 10 lists. Usually, when it comes to music, I re-listen to albums I liked and discover new favorites from other best of the year posts while playing Destiny 2, the alien shooting video game that I really like. But this time, things were different. This year, I decided to get an early start on my New Year’s resolution to stop wasting time and money on live service games by myself (a carefully worded goal that allows a Final Fantasy and Fortnite loophole). So I didn’t get to do mindless gaming mixed with music listening as 2022 burned out of the blue and into the black. Instead, I acted like a real normie and played a bunch of holiday tunes, especially Low’s legendary Christmas EP which has seemed even more essential following Mimi Parker’s death in November. I think we all agree that “Just Like Christmas” is an essential part of the canon now.

All this is to say that I immediately regret my decisions because I both a) miss Destiny and Genshin Impact (which probably means it was a good resolution, but that’s not helping me right now) and b) I sat down to start writing this post with a list of 31 albums to sort through… and probably another 20+ that could have made it if I listened to them more. So forgive me any typos and the inevitable brevity. As this morning gives way to the afternoon and then the evening and likely tomorrow morning and hopefully not tomorrow afternoon, I’m going to have to make some quick, arbitrary calls on what I write about. This is just as important for you to know as it is to Future Sean, who is possibly working on his best of the 2020s list and revisiting this post. To him I say: hey dude, hope things are better. Please go back and look at the spreadsheet we made. There are some really good records on there that we might like even more than the ones I’m about to list below!

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Colin’s Top 10 Albums of 2022

So here we are again. Another year in the books and another batch of lists on Mildly Pleased to commemorate the year that was. I can’t speak for everybody on this blog, but I’m not sure I still have the same obsessiveness I used to have about compiling these lists each year. And yet, we have more media than ever to place on our lists and easier access to it than ever, so once again there was no shortage of great stuff to consume in 2022.

Music was no exception, as the year wasn’t quite exceptional, but it was exciting to see many established musicians coming out of the pandemic either feeling rejuvenated, fucked up, or a little bit of both. This all made for some really compelling albums to listen to during a year that wasn’t quite normal, but also wasn’t a complete disaster either. Continue reading →

2022 Music Resolved: Gemini Rights

Steve Lacy – Gemini Rights

To talk about Gemini Rights by Steve Lacy is to admit to not being that cool. First off, I didn’t hear about the guy until he made multiple appearances on Vampire Weekend’s Father of The Bride, offering some vibrant guitar and vocal textures to “Sunflower” and “Flower Moon”. Though in my defense, I had given a few spins to his band The Internet’s 2018 album Hive Mind prior to FOTB coming out, even if it took me a little while to put these two things together. Also, while Lacy’s breakout single “Bad Habit” became one of the more beloved singles of the year and a sensation on TikTok (now one of our most reliable incubators of pop hits), I hadn’t really heard this song until the end of the year (because I’m old), not to mention the album it sits as the centerpiece of. Continue reading →