1981: Queen - Greatest Hits I

I listened to this a lot. A lot. From around the time of Freddie Mercury's death, or just before in fact, when I was 13, to at least two years later, if not more, I liked Queen. And not much else. I listened to Queen. And not much else. Well, that's not quite true; I listened to the radio and watched Top of the Pops and liked some other imaginary idea of music which I hadn't heard yet, but, if ever I chose to listen to music, I chose to listen to the two cassettes I purloined from my sister's room, Queen Greatest Hits and, for good measure, Queen Greatest Hits II. Really, that was it. Just Queen, or once in a blue moon, my childhood favourite, Madness.My friend James Kesner tried to get me to listen to Suede, The Manics, The Levellers (who he thought I'd like, I'm glad I resisted that one), but I knew Queen were better than all of them and I'd keep on listening to Queen, thank you very much.

I wasn't the only person listening to them. This album, Queen Greatest Hits, is the bestselling album in UK history, the only album to sell more than 6 million copies in the UK. So there's a good chance you already know it. You may choose to listen to it as a result of my prompting. I won't. I can't bear it.

You may have already read here about my musical awakening, prompted by The Jam's 'Going Underground', when I was 15. The Jam chimed somewhat with Madness, who'd been my favourite pre-Queen, and from there, away I went. The 80s, then new wave, then Beatles and Bowie and  Bruce and Bob and Blur and Britpop and all the rest of it, with my trusty NME by my side. Somewhere within that, Queen got lost, No, they didn't get lost, they got forcibly ejected. My regal period ended with a revolution.

I read a lot of opinionated angry men then, I read to my horror that Queen were the anti-punk, I read to my horror all kinds of reasons why Queen were not where it's at, some of which looking back was pretty repellent character assassionation. Was it just that I was highly susceptible to propaganda for people who can't play their instruments well? Either way, there has been no comeback.

I've even made a conscious effort in recent years to get back in touch with what I once loved, to hear the good in Queen again. But I really can't. I can't bear it.

It's not that I'm not interested or impressed. I'll happily watch a documentary about them, read an article about them, watch footage of their extraordinary powers in concert, in particularly their famous Live Aid set, often seen as one of the greatest (short) gigs ever. Hell, Freddie Mercury went to Art School in Ealing, what's not to love?

Just the music in and of itself, listening to the music, the songs that I listened to over and over and over again for month after month. I look at the track listing now for Queen Greatest Hits I and nearly every single song looks utterly vapid and silly. God, I sound like such a rock snob. You know I like so many songs and bands which are way more vapid and silly than Queen. It's not that. It's just ...

...  I cope better with going back to Greatest Hits II. I sometimes hear real soul in that. Obviously, really. There's real anger and sadness and mortality. There's still plenty that's naff, but I don't crumble in the face of my self-imposed shame.

What's wrong with it? What's wrong with me? The tracklisting of Queen Greatest Hits I is a gallery of some of the most entertaining, recognisable songs in the history of rock music, from Don't Stop Me Now, We are the Champions, Killer Queen, We Will Rock You to the monster of them all, Bohemian Rhapsody. But, really, the only two songs on the album I can deal with are Somebody to Love, which has the bones of a beautiful song in there and just about manages not to put tooooo much meat on those bones, and Flash, because ... well, because it's awesome, obviously. No,  because it's so silly, it's a comedy song, and no one need pretend otherwise.

God, they've got tunes, so many, so many ideas, so much virtuosity, but that's the problem. It's all showing off. Bohemian Rhapsody is the perfect example, where there you could probably make three really good songs out of it, but instead you makes one bloated horror show ... or what most people would say was one masterpiece. Yes, I listened to it about 200 times in 1992, yes, I know that the chances are it's still a masterpiece, I just made myself irreversibly sick of it, I get that.

And yes, some people are born to play stadiums, and yes, exhibitionism and virtuosity are not per se bad things, and yes, Brian May seems lovely and Freddie Mercury had one of the most extraordinary voices and yes John Deacon ... John Deacon, but, forgive me, I can't bear it.

What else is there for me to say? I've got little coherent to add, just that there are various, if you will, Platonic ideas of what rock music is, and Queen are the embodiment of one of them, but it's not mine, and I just can't quite fit them into my balloon any more.

I'm going to do a Queen compilation, and it will be a Queen compilation for D McG aged 15 rather than 35. Bear in mind I've basically only ever listened to the Greatest Hits over and over again, and there may well be a huge pile of downbeat, relaxed, pastoral album tracks I've never listened to which would totally change my mind back. Hmm ... perhaps.

Under Pressure (which has never not been tremendous)
Somebody to Love
It's a Hard Life
Killer Queen
These Are The Days of Our Lives
The Show Must Go On
Innuendo
Scandal
Flash
Friends Will Be Friends
Who Wants to live Forever?
Hammer to Fall

I know, that's a pathetic excuse for a proper Queen compilation and it's also dishonest, because it's not me aged 15, it's me now, only including the ones I liked when I was 15 which I can still just about tolerate now. Sorry, Queen's Greatest Hits. Sorry, fans of it. But, you know, what if i'm right?

1988: Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

This is often described as the Greatest Hip-Hop Album of All Time, certainly by people who don't know much about hip-hop, like me. Public Enemy have, since their emergence in the late 80s been the hip-hop band beloved of serious rock fans and indie kids. They have two avowed masterworks, this and its follow-up, 'Fear of a Black Planet'. They're still going to this day.

Their leader, Chuck D, is the go-to guy for people who want a right-on rap hero, fearsomely articulate and thoughtful, with the stentorian bellow of a preacher and the fierce zeal of a missionary. Jeez, even Michael Gove likes him, as this unbearable clip demonstrates.

I like hip-hop. I own quite a lot, probably more than most people. I have a fair few albums and an awful lot of tracks. The truth is, though, that it's something I enjoy more in small doses. There aren't many hip-hop albums I've listened to repeatedly all the way through. This one I have, but not many others.

I used to make lots of compilation tapes, and I'd always put a rap track or two on them, sometimes in slightly alarming juxtaposition with a folk ballad or some such. But, usually, that's how it works best for me.

I've had a think about why that is. One reason emerged as I was listening to 'It Takes a Nation of Millions ...' recently. It's so demanding! It demands your attention, that you listen to the words, it jabs you with its beats and its samples, its a hundred different things within a song. It made me realise that even if I think I'm giving some album of acoustic flammery my full attention, it gives plenty of opportunities to switch off, to lose oneself within the music (the moment, you own it etc).

One of the many impressive things is just what a honed operation they were - everyone had a role, from the producers who found the music samples to the DJ, Terminator X, to Professor Griff to Chuck D himself who found the vocal samples and provided the powerful lead. And then there was Flavor Flav, the original hype man, one of the most original and unusual characters in modern music, an authentic loon (sometimes not in a good way) whose yapping vocals dovetailed perfectly with Chuck D's.

And then there's the music, jabbing, screaming, always completely original (as original as sampled music can be), eclectic, hardly ever a smooth ride.

There's a real rock sensibility to Public Enemy, and no wonder they were beloved of everyone from Nirvana to the Manics to Anthrax.

This album is from 1988 - hip-hop had had a decade beforehand but arguably this is its Bob Dylan moment or it's Beatles moment - when it grows up and becomes a serious force. That's not to say a) that Public Enemy were every wildly successful - they've sold millions but not multi-millions. They've hardly ever made anything close to pop music. b) that this album is even, sadly, that influential. Righteous, positive hip-hop and sweet hippy hip-hop (represented by De La Soul) had their moment but were swept away by the gangsta rap of NWA which would become the dominant commercial hip-hop of the 90s and beyond.

This album is meticulously put together and constantly on the move - it's 16 tracks, 2 halves, a full hour. Lots of preaching, a bit of humour, lots of Flavor Flav saying everyone's name, including his own. It even begins, incongruously, with Dave Pearce.

Chuck D's lyrics are impressive throughout, and the album saves arguably its two strongest moments for the second half - Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos and Rebel Without a Pause.

Like I say - they're still going strong - I saw them on TV at Glastonbury last year (minus Flavor Flav, an absence keenly felt). We're entering the age of heritage hip-hop acts. Bizarrely, they had their biggest ever UK single in 2012 when their late track ' Harder than You Think' was used by Channel 4 for the Paralympics.

These would be my favourites.

Bring the Noise
Fight the Power
Brothers Gonna Work it Out
He Got Game
911 is a Joke
Give it Up
Prophets of Rage
Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos
Don't Believe the Hype
Harder Than You Think
Night of the Living Baseheads
By the Time I get to Arizona
Public Enemy No. 1
Rebel Without a Pause

1989: The Pixies - Doolittle

I'm going to level with you, this isn't an album I actually bought in 1989. In 1989 I bought 'Wild!' by Erasure and an instrumental selection of the Greatest Hits of Andrew Lloyd Webber - I was disappointed when I took it home that it was instrumental - I should have known from the £1.99   price tag. However, even then, I must have had some sense that there was a hierarchy of cool in music, because I almost bought 'Kylie' (the classic debut) but thought it wasn't cool enough for me and I might be teased.

But somewhere in the world, far, far from 'Our Price' in Ealing Broadway Centre, these four American kooks were releasing their breakthrough third album, generally considered their best and one of the most important in the history of alternative music.

My Pixies experience is pretty limited - I've got 'Doolittle', a Best of and a few other bits. I'm lucky enough to have seen them live, at Benicassim in 2006 (near the start of their second incarnation which, bizarrely, has lasted longer than their original run). They were tremendous, exhilarating for 60,000 people. The show had to stop for 20 minutes as it was getting a bit dicy down the front and people needed to calm down a bit. At that stage I knew about 15 Pixies songs and they played all of them and they were all awesome.

About half of those were from 'Doolittle' - which I bought soon afterwards. A rattling 15 songs with no pause for breath. It hardly follows the album formula I described in my previous post on the Pernice Brothers, as it puts its biggest number up front - 'Debaser', beloved of the indie disco, which could dwarf a lesser album. In fact, the first half probably contains the stronger, certainly the more well known, songs. The second half is fun, I wouldn't say it sags, but I'd say the album is slightly top-heavy.

To me, the Pixies are a pop band. Their best moments make me feel exhilaration,  but I wouldn't say there's anything beyond that for me. They don't move me, sadden me, enrage me, even intrigue me. I know they intrigue some people. Their geeky weirdness, the biblical and surrealist imagery, the dark story-telling, it's all great stuff, I know they meant a lot to people. Frank Black being a chubby, balding rock god is great and, if you will, empowering; the scream of rage, the cry of the outsider, I get all that.

I also hear their influence - whether it's on Nirvana or a pop-punk band like Ash. The quiet-loud dynamic, the surf guitar sound, the heaviness allied to sweet pop tunes, the use of Kim Deal's backing vocals, it's all there.

I don't dismiss them by calling them a pop band - they mastered that thing that a few of the alternative bands who've developed a massive following have managed down the years - being clever while getting the kids to dance. In that sense, their successors are the likes of Blur, The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, Pavement, dare I say it, even the Killers (without the clever bit ...).

Their best songs sound great, on your headphones, on the radio, everywhere. This album, 'Doolittle', has their cleanest, poppiest production, and I think that really suits them. They've their first album of new material for 20 odd years coming out next week, and I think there's a general sense of "I wish they wouldn't" (including from Kim Deal, who left the band because she didn't want to record new stuff), and early reviews suggest it's all too clean, almost like a Pixies covers band, but, who knows, it's all perception, isn't it? To me, they're a band at their best when they're most "mainstream" (musically not lyrically), most melodic and sweet. I haven't decided if I'll get the new album, but i'm not ruling it out.

My Pixies compilation will be frankly a little disappointing, not far from just being a Best Of.

Debaser
Gigantic
Here Comes Your Man
Where is My Mind?
Tame
Velouria
Crackity Jones
Wave of Mutilation
Monkey Gone to Heaven
Nimrod's Son
Hey
Planet of Sound

2001: Pernice Brothers - The World Won't End

For several years, I'd describe this as my favourite album in the world. Perhaps, more than I'd admit, to be wilfully obscure, because I enjoyed my favourite album being something other people hadn't heard of, or perhaps just because I felt this album deserved a light shone on it.

It doesn't sit quite so high in my estimation anymore. It's a minor album, a classy, neat, minor album, free of fluff, short on faults, maybe a tiny bit short on truly memorable melodies. Its creator, Joe Pernice (for the Pernice Brothers - though it did contain his brother Bob amongst others - is very much the vision of one Joe Pernice, who has also recorded under his own name, as Chappaquidick Skyline, as lead singer of alt-country middleweights The Scud Mountain Boys, as  part of the New Mendicants with Teenage Fanclub's Norman Blake) is a master songwriter, one of those cult men hanging around for decades who's never quite famous.

He's made loads of other really strong albums of strong songs, but this one stands out in my estimation by a long mile. Why is that? Is it truly better than his other works such as 'Big Tobacco', 'Overcome by Happiness' and 'Yours, Mine and Ours', or is it just that it's my album, the one I've chosen to love and cherish?

2001 was a pretty good year for music for me, in fact probably my favourite. I was buying and listening to a lot of albums, some of which are seen as classics, yet this is the album that stands out. What else was there? Off the top of my head, I enjoyed Elbow's debut, Ash's Free All Angels,  Mercury Rev's All is Dream, Roots Manuva's Run Come Save Me, Bob Dylan's Love and Theft, Ryan Adam's Gold, The Strokes' Is This It, The White Stripes' Red Blood Cells, Matthew Jay's Draw, Ed Harcourt and Tom McRae's debuts, The Furries' Rings Around the World, PJ Harvey's Stories from the Cities, Stories from the Sea, Spiritualized's Let it Come Down, Spearmint's A Different Lifetime, and i'm sure, plenty more. A lot of indie pop, a lot of singer-songwriter, that's where I was at back then.

It's probably 'Is This It' by the Strokes which defines the year. It was set up to be a "classic", mythologised before it even came out. To me, as with the rest of their career, though they are a band whose songs I like, it was a mild disappointmen, The best songs were those on the EPs which we'd all already heard. The album was more of the same, but less. That's not the band or the album's fault, but it's just an aspect of why some albums fulfil,  thrill or let down.

The Pernice Brothers' 'The World Won't End' had nothing to live up to with me, I'd never heard of them, I liked a song I heard by them on an Uncut free CD, I think they had another song getting occasional airplay on XFM, I liked the sound of the review I read, I bought it, I liked it.

Not wildly, to start with. I just liked it. But gradually I noticed it was a great album. What makes a great album? I've told you before, all the songs should be good and you can feel a sense of unity running through it. Simple.  The first two should be good but not so amazing that everything that follows will be a let-down, then when you expect to lose momentum, the 3rd, 4th and 5th should be better, then the 3rd quarter should be strong too in a slightly different way, and it ends with a proper ending and maybe something a little lullabylike. Formula! There's a fuckin' formula. Why doesn't everyone follow it?

This album follows the great album formula (well, let's be honest, it kind of defines my hastily concocted great album formula ...). The first two songs are upbeat chamber-pop with a dark undercurrent, the third quarter is a bit more rocking, the final chapter is wistful and sad. And the key, as so often, is the second quarter of the album, songs 3, 4 and 5, the loving, beating, heart. The songs are called 'Our Time Has Passed', 'She Heightened Everything' 'Bryte Side'. They're all bitter-sweet love songs, almost a song suite really. The first two are delightful, the third you will recognise, if you are a regular reader of this blog, as my favourite song in the world, in an even more long-lasting way than its parent album was, for a while, my favourite album.

Now, I've been on holiday so it's been a while since my last post, so I've had a good long time of re-listening to this album and the whole Pernice oeuvre and getting to grips with it all. I've listened to 'Bryte Side' a lot, more than for years. It's been lovely to revisit this old friend, and find it as healthy as ever.

It's a very slight song, just three minutes but pretty much over in the first two, just three short verses and not much of a chorus. It also has an alarming lyrical moment which I'm still uncomfortable with - the first verse ends with the line "another year does suicide" which is ugly and could surely have been avoided. Joe Pernice's writing is generally so free of lyrical awkwardness I feel it must be on purpose as it's not like there aren't other options of sorts  which would scan ok. So, uneasily, I let it be.

The title - 'Bryte Side' - I love. The hint of irony which is all important. The song is about a love that has been and gone - weak fireworks eclipsed in the trauma ...the first two verses set that up.

And then, the third verse, which I easily and happily state is my favourite moment in the history of recorded music and is precisely the definition of what I love in pop music.

Strings are a cliche, but when they're right ... so as the verse begins, the swell, which seems to announce that something important is about to happen. This seems to be confirmed by the first half line - "I hope I never love anybody ..." then a momentary break "... the way we never really tried". The hint at grand heartbreak, then the bathos - just perfect. Then the image, the placing, which brings it to life "Skin tanning in a hot flash summer - I never was so terrified". Perhaps I myself particularly loved the song because the lyric implies the tanning is part of the terror - something any pale skinned dude can well understand!

But this, this verse here, is just the most perfect, most evocative moment I've come across. The title makes perfect sense now - 'Bryte Side', the tacky greetings card disavowal of true feelings, the sneer and shrug which makes thew heartbreak all the more evident. Kurt Cobain said it even more succintly 10 years earlier - "Oh well, whatever, never mind ..."

So there - a little insight into what I love in a song. The album contains more lovely moments - the fierce summer haze features throughout - how could i not love an album with a song called 'The Ballad of Bjorn Borg'.

I'd really give it a try. This is the highpoint for Joe Pernice, I'd say, though there are many more classy songs - there's been a novella based on the Smiths' Meat is Murder and a novel of his own (which I haven't read yet).

The voice is breathy and detached, the music is often more anglocentric than countrified - more in the jangly indie-pop sphere really. My compilation would be

Overcome by Happiness
Massachusetts - Scud Mountain Boys
Judy
7.30
Somerville
Our Time Has Passed
She Heightened Everything
Bryte Side
Grudge - Scud Mountain Boys
Weaker Shade of Blue
Conscience Clean (I Went to Spain)
Prince Valium - Joe Pernice
High as a Kite
Bum Leg - Joe Pernice
Newport News
Endless Supply
Chicken Wire
Cronulla Breakdown

1965: Otis Redding - Otis Blue

'Otis Blue' is widely considered one of the all-time great soul albums, along with Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On' and a few others. It's seen as the definitive masterpiece of a definitive master. Makes you think. The whole album contains 11 tracks - 3 originals, 3 by his idol Sam Cooke (who'd died months before), and 5 other covers. It was recorded in 24 hours and was one of four studio albums Otis Redding released in a two year period. Kanye West claims to have spent 5000 hours composing one song, 'Power'. Even if he's added a zero by mistake or for effect, hell, even if he's added two zeros, that says an awful lot about the way the music industry's changed and what can be "great".

Don't get me wrong, this is a great album. It's wonderful to listen to, every song's lush and provokes an emotion, there's light and shade and hope and pain all the way through. Otis Redding had a few things helping him along which most people didn't have 1. the best backing band in the history of the world, including the likes of Steve Cropper, Donald Dunn and Isaac Hayes. 2. the best voice in the history of the world ... if you like that sort of thing.

Otis Redding's voice, this beloved instrument, rasping and rocking, soulful and strong. Pretty different from the other great soul voices of the 60s, but arguably more influential, in particular on rock singers. Otis Redding is a bit hick, a bit country. Where the great Motown artists were pop singers, he's a rock singer. The music is looser and grittier and somehow more moving.

He had something else going for him, of course - he was a tremendous writer - Dock of the Bay was  still to come, but this album contains Ole Man Trouble, Respect and the marvellous I've Been Loving You Too Long. Just three of his own though, and how funny that one of those, Respect, has been taken from him and is not associated with him at all anymore. Likewise, there's a strange thing when you look at various of the most famous songs on 'Otis Blue' - Respect, Wonderful World, My Girl, Change Gonna Come, Satisfaction ... the definitive, most famous versions of these songs are all by someone else - respectively Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, the Temptations, Sam Cooke and the Rolling Stones. He didn't succeed in claiming these songs for his own, however highly this album is thought of.

If it comes to it, I prefer Otis Redding's versions to Sam Cooke's - Otis sounds more authentic on Wonderful World - Sam Cooke is so smooth and schooled, you think he knows plenty about algebra, trigonometry and the French he took. Shake is one of my favourites and A Change is Gonna Come is one of the greatest songs of all time, but I just tip to Redding's over the original.

You wouldn't necessarily say he improves on the original 'My Girl' or 'Satisfaction'. The fact of him covering 'Satisfaction' says it all though. Even now, genuine crossover is quite rare, but Otis Redding crossed over effortlessly, whether on record or at events like the Monterey Pop Festival.

Anyway, I mentioned it before when writing about Gram Parson's 'Grievous Angel', but sometimes a great album is a happy accident, a thrown together ragbag - how much time went into the song selection and  sequencing here? Who knows? Maybe a few days, maybe a few hours? Yet now it's faultless, timeless, definitive, classic, etc ...

Was everything just way better in the good old days? Of course not.  Here's a thing, Paolo Nutini sounds like Otis Redding. Deny it all you want, he does. Half the people who'd scoff at that wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Paolo Nutini could sound even more like Otis Redding if he didn't keep his own Scottish accent, yet he never gets praised for authenticity.

I've found myself watching a live set of Paolo Nutini at a festival - I'd have rather been somewhere else, but it was pretty good. There was no way I could get past my innate music snobbery to actually "enjoy" it but he sang great, the band were great, at least one song was really good and several were good. He sells plenty of records but he can't catch a break when it comes to "authenticity". He might as well be James Blunt.  I'm not now going to tell you that James Blunt sounds like Marvin Gaye, don't worry.

People love Otis Redding because he just sang and there was none more real. I thought a fair bit about why this has come to be seen as the definitive soul album - why soul music is more often at the top of Greatest Singles lists than Greatest Albums, likewise disco, hip-hop etc, and why only certain black artists have been able to break through in terms of being seen as great albums artists.  I don't have an answer right now. I'm going to think about it and one day write an essay on it. But for now, here's an Otis Redding compilation you should really listen to.

Shake
Hard to Handle
Try a Little Tenderness
Cigarettes and Coffee
That's How Strong My Love Is
I've Been Loving You Too Long
Respect
You Don't Miss Your Water
Ole Man Trouble
Mr Pitiful
(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay
Love Man
These Arms of Mine
Change Gonna Come

1972: Nick Drake - Pink Moon

Another imposingly tall and elegant cult man of song, another album with the whiff of perfection about it. Nick Drake's 'Pink Moon' was the first album with which I saw the phrase "haiku-like perfection" associated. I get the point, but it bothers me to see a verse form used as an analogy for another art form which does involve verse of a different sort. So, perhaps "Big Mac-like perfection" is a better term. Or, if that's controversial, certainly "cup of tea-like perfection". 'Pink Moon' is possessed of a cup of tea-like perfection.

There's not too much that Nicks Cave and Drake have in common besides their name (which can get an awful lot of folk confused) - one is Aussie, the other Brit, one alive, the other dead, one survived multiple overdoses of a drug considered damaging and evil, the other was finished off by just one overdose of a drug intended to be helpful, one has a voice like thunder, the other a voice like a gentle breeze, one is a piano man, the other a guitar man, one is a man infused with monotheology, the other's vision is pantheistic, paganistic almost, one has a huge body of work over three decades, one has just three albums and a few bits and bobs.

What of the three Nick Drake albums? All are considered classics but 'Pink Moon' is by far my favourite. His debut, 'Five Leaves Left' is warm and wise, pastoral, dopey, beautifully orchestrated. There's no real despair on it, far from it. There's a lot to love about it, but it lacks great songs. I think. It has many fine songs.

'Bryter Layter',  the second one, has great songs. Like 'Five Leaves Left' it is beaufully orchestrated and accompanied by several greats of British music from Richard Thompson to John Cale. It was, really, the big attempt to "break" Nick Drake. It's poppy - with 'Poor Boy', 'Hazey Jane II', 'One of These Things First' and the classic 'Northern Sky' (the 4th greatest song of all time, of course).

There are 10 songs, of which three are instrumentals - they're very pretty instrumentals but they do sound a little like they could be theme tunes to mid-afternoon art shows on Channel 4. They bring the album down, I think. Again,  there is no overt despair on this album. There's wry humour, and self-mockery on the likes  of 'Poor Boy' and 'One of these Things First'. These are wonderful tunes, as are 'Fly' and 'At the Chime of a City Clock'.

It flopped, totally, to Nick Drake's apparent despair.

No one expected any more from him, he disappeared from view. It's all terribly sad, and for whatever reason, his last few years were a gradual deterioration.  But, there was more. Without anyone knowing, just with one sound engineer, he recorded another album  and delivered it to Island Records. 'Pink Moon'. Just him and his guitar, apart from one piano line on the album's title track.

15 years after I first heard it, Nick Drake's music still has the power to make me stop and regather my equilibrium while listening to it on my headphones in the supermarket. Stop and take my breath,  stop myself from crumpling. In this case, in this aisled place, it was the song 'Place to Be', though there are others on this album. This is a blues album, an English blues album. The instrumental track on this album 'Horn' could not be further from the florid instrumentals of 'Bryter Layter'. I'm not really a man who often hears emotion coming through an instrument's tone, but 'Horn' is painful to listen to, the rawest, simplest piece of guitar playing you'll ever hear.

At this stage, there are numerous competitors for the position of being the most devastatingly sad Nick Drake song.  One of them is not on this album. 'Black Eyed Dog' was recorded in some aborted sessions in the year of Drake's death, 1974. Now,  if you want an extra dose of unbearably, eerily sad, how about this - a music video made by another tall handsome brilliant performer who slipped away far far too soon through prescription drugs, a man so obsessed with Nick Drake he made a video for 'Black Eyed Dog' which he also starred in. The full video is not, I think, in the public view, but this is cut together from what people do have. Make sure you have the haiku-like perfection of a strong cup of tea while watching Black Eyed Dog - Nick Drake (directed by Heath Ledger)

If 'Pink Moon' contained 'Black Eyed Dog', it would be a very different album, for, despite all I've said, the mood is not entirely bleak. This album is more than that, better than that, despite running to less than half an hour.

'Pink Moon', the song, is a little beauty, both ominous and enticing. 'Road' is defiant, 'Things Behind the Sun' is one of the best melodies he wrote, and the album closes with 'From the Morning'. My favourite. When all is obliterated by nuclear cataclysm or whatever else should choose to obliterate all, 'From the Morning' will remain. "A day once dawned and it was beautiful ..."

Nick Drake's tombstone in his home village of Tanworth-in-Arden, where he died in November 1974, is inscribed with the epitaph "Now we rise/and we are everywhere" another line from this song. People have written pages and pages about Nick Drake's vision of the world, the best I've read being Ian McDonald's article 'Exiled from Heaven' in his book 'The People's Music'. You can get too hung up on all this stuff if you're young and impressionable or old and impressionable and it's not healthy - Nick Drake wasn't a prophet, just a talented posh boy that didn't get any of the breaks. In death, he's sold hundreds of thousands of records, and that's excellent. People have come to Nick Drake at different times through different things - for some people, it's a butter ad, and that's fine. For me, it was Paul Weller, funnily enough, whose (best) solo album 'Wild Wood' has a lot of the spirit of Nick Drake in it.

As with Joni Mitchell's 'Blue', when an artist's currency is albums of cup of tea-like perfection (see, that works!), it's a bit daft to do a compilation, but here we go anyway ...

Northern Sky
Saturday Sun
Place to Be
One of these things First
Things Behind the Sun
I Was Made to Love Magic
River Man
At the Chime of a City Clock
Hazy Jane II
Hanging on a Star
Time has Told Me
Pink Moon
Horn
Black Eyed Dog
Fly
Parasite
Cello Song
From the Morning

1997: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The Boatman's Call

Does this album now sound and look so much like Nick Cave was trying to make it a classic album because it is a classic album? Did he will it to be so? Or did he happen upon it by chance, by magic? To me, it is the benchmark and the watershed in Nick Cave's career, the turning point in the road, but then again, maybe that's just because it was the first Nick Cave album I got into.

But it's not just that. There it stands, now halfway through his recording career, just before he quit heroin for good, around the time he married his current wife, the album where he became an acceptable figure, a writer of wedding songs. Maybe this is the first album of the resurrection of Nick Cave ... or, like I say, maybe I think that because it's the first one I got into.

It's not like he hadn't written beautiful piano ballads before, nor like he wouldn't write more obscene, infernal rock songs. It's not actually like this is the commercial breakthrough. The previous album, 'Murder Ballads', was marginally more successful and also contained his highest charting single, 'When the Wild Roses Grow' (with Kylie, of course). And in fact, really, Nick Cave just seems to become more and more successful every album since then. Slightly. As if, every album, he doesn't lose any fans, he just gains a few extra thousand, a few  extra thousand people realise how awesome he is. On his last two albums, he's finally cracking America. He's kind of mainstream. By the time he's 70, he'll be the new Justin Bieber.

 I wasn't ready for Nick Cave when 'Murder Ballads' came out, at the height of Britpop. To be honest, I'm still not a massive fan of that album, though it certainly has its mean motherfucking moments called Stagger Lee. Yeah, yeah, murder ballads, nice idea ... give me god and love ballads any day.

God and Love. That's this album. God is Love, they say, those Christians. But here, they're kind of separate, kind of battling.

It's well known that romance with PJ Harvey is starkly written within, sometimes cruelly, and also that the album picks over the bones of a previous, longer-lasting romance. It's also known that this is Nick Cave's religious album, and, you know, it really is - though certain kinds of religion infuse his work before and after, this is really his C of E album, it's a beautiful, warm, loving religion, not hellfire and damnation at all.

Now, I don't know if Nick Cave has ever actually believed in God (well, we can be pretty sure he don't believe in an interventionist God), but that's not quite the point. The album is infused with knowledge of faith, of church, respect for the Bible and for the practices of worship.

Somehow, he places that comfortably alongside hopelessness, bitterness and carnal longing.  Not a song is wasted.

I'm thinking a lot about the album form, what makes a great album for me. A unity. Sticking with that. Blood on the Tracks. Blue, Astral Weeks, Blue, The Boatman's Call. I think he knew what he was saying. This is my classic. This is one for the archive.

I happen to enjoy the successor, And No More Shall We Part, more. I love the songs on that, the lyricism, the wit, the surges of adrenaline and the moments of reflection, the tunes. That's really one of my favourite albums to listen to. But, if pushed, i'd accept that this is the great work.  It's not on the way anywhere. It's exactly where it is.

I love Nick Cave, obviously, and I know he's got a full career, indeed two careers, before The Boatman's Call, but i'm not tempted, no I refuse, to investigate. I'm New Testament Nick all the way. I've heard a few of the prophets, Ship Song, Straight to You, The Mercy Seat, but god knows what I'll find deep in the dark Old Testament.

So, the songs on this album? How are they? They're good. They're piano ballads, they never speed up, there's no real humour, they can be mean. The best tunes are on the first half, but some of the most striking  and unusual stuff is on the second half. Into My Arms you could build a marriage on, People Ain't No Good you could build a philosophy on, Lime Tree Arbour who could build an ... orchard on ... Brompton Oratory, you could ... oh, you know.

I wrote about Into My Arms before, so that'll do for now. Here is my Nick Cave compilation

Into My Arms
No Pussy Blues (Grinderman)
Stagger Lee
The Mercy Seat
O My Lord
Brompton Oratory
God is in the House
Love Letter
There She Goes My Beautiful World
Breathless
The Sorrowful Wife
Still in Love
People Ain't No Good
We Call Upon the Author
The Ship Song
Straight to you
Far From You
Higgs Boson Blues
We Know Who U R
Darker With the Day

That was a difficult compilation to draw a line under. Not as hard as the Beatles or Bob Dylan, but not far off, and bear in mind, I'm actually dealing with significantly less than half his recorded output... pretty good

2005: The National - Alligator

This was the first album I heard, first I bought, by The National. who've been consistently one of my favourite bands ever since. To me, this is both their breakthrough album and their best album.

The National are one of those American bands for adults, you know, a big deal in a limited sphere, big enough to have Top 5 albums on both sides of the Atlantic, to headline mid-sized British festivals, not big enough for most people to have heard of them.

They're respected and liked, though some folk don't get what the big deal is. They have two sets of instrumentalist brothers who are all seriously expert and a tall, mumbly baritone lead singer who looks a bit like James Dreyfus from Gimme Gimme Gimme.

They don't sound like Wilco, not to me, but you could say they occupy the same space.

What makes the National great? What makes this album their best album?

I'm going to start somewhere I don't usually start - drumming. There are various knowledgeable folk who insist that a good drummer is key to a rock band, and I think I often ignore the truth in that. But I remember loving the drumming on 'Alligator' right from the start, the unusual rhythms which the vocal lines seemed to have a uncommon relationship with.

I loved the production on the record, you could hear the room it was recorded in. And it had lyrics that grabbed me. Lyrics you don't often hear. 'Karen'  is the second song on the album. It contains the line "It's a common fetish for a doting man to ballerina on the coffee table cock in hand". Well,  they got my attention, at the very least ...

Matt Berninger's vocals can sound debonair then desperate in the same sentence. He's deep, and murmurs but occasionally roars. The times I've seen them live (a few years ago now) he's been a man possessed on occasion. I imagine that gets harder to pull off when you're a successful man in his 40s.

What else? Rockin' rock anthems, of course. This album alone has three monstrous singalong rock anthems, in 'Lit Up', 'Abel' and 'Mr November'. These are songs to lose your mind to. If there's one thing the National aren't doing quite as well as they get older it's the derangement of the likes of 'Mr November' and 'Abel'. Their rock anthems have become more swooping and swooning.

The standout tracks sit really well in the album without dwarfing it. 'Secret Meeting' and 'Karen' would be standouts themselves on most albums, as would 'All the Wine'. Dissolute, eloquent despair, seedy living, beautifully rendered.

This album is a big step forward from its predecessor 'Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers', which is pretty standard American rock by comparison. Then, the next album 'Boxer' was even more of a commercial breakthrough, but a bit of a letdown for me. There have been two more, 'High Violet' and 2013's 'Trouble Will Find Me' which maintain standards of excellence. 'High Violet' is almost as good as 'Alligator'.

This is a band I like a lot. They probably had a brief period as my favourite band in the world. This is a compilation ...

Bloodbuzz Ohio
Secret Meeting
Lit Up
Conversation 16
Karen
Demons
Fake Empire
Afraid of Everyone
Abel
Mr November
Think You Can Wait
All the Wine
Slipping Husband
Mistaken for Strangers
Sea of Love
Pink Rabbits
England

1982: Michael Jackson - Thriller

Isn't it extraordinary, that name, Michael Jackson? Extraordinary that the most alien star of all had the most mundane name imaginable. Not Prince, or Madonna, or Elvis Presley, or Christina Aguilera, or Alvin Stardust, not even Jackie Jackson, or Tito Jackson, or La Toya Jackson, or Jermaine Jackson or Randy Jackson or Janet Jackson - all names with a bit of pizzazz. No, Michael Jackson. You know, Michael Jackson, the plumber. Michael Jackson, the League 1 footballer. Michael Jackson, the geography teacher. Michael Jackson, the army officer. Michael Jackson, the most famous, weirdest man in the world.

I hadn't realised till I was listening to 'Thriller' for this post, and really trying to assess it and think about what I really thought about it, how my perception of Jackson was so utterly affected by the child abuse allegations against him in the early 90s. I remember when they came out, I was on holiday in a place with lots of tabloids around (I never read tabloids at home) and so followed the story from a sensationalist angle for days.

I was an impressionable teen then, and one never wants to look back and think one's an impressionable anything, but I did not like this story, did not like it one bit. But then, really, it wasn't just the allegations, it was the kerfuffle of 'HIStory', the outrageous, brazen egotism of all that, the statue down the Thames, the Messianic imagery, the Pied Piper shit, the Brits performance where i'd have done worse than Jarvis Cocker if I'd been there, the weird marriages, the veil of lies, the millions and millions whom it seemed he'd hynotised into denial. Appalling. I was a stern teenage Christian with a burgeoning addiction to indie rock, and to me, Michael Jackson, in the mid-90s, was the Antichrist. What I mean by that is I gave serious consideration to the notion that this man was the Antichrist. The actual Antichrist.

So, Thriller was a great album, eh? ...

Michael Jackson's not that epitome of evil any more, not in my mind or anyone else's. He's tragic victim Michael, lost genius, never convicted of any crime worse than irresponsibility, wild extravagance, addiction, self-destruction, egotism. Imposssible to imagine what kind of old man he'd have become, now.

So, Thriller, then, the best selling album of all time. What do I think of it? I actually got rid of my zealous loathing of Michael Jackson many years ago, I bought his three classic solo albums in about 2001, I was able to disassociate man from music to some extent a while back. Maybe not fully, but I'll give it a go.

I don't think Thriller is the best album of all time, but I can't quite make my mind up about it. Some things about it bother me. Why has it only got 9 tracks? That's always bothered me.  Unless there's a very good excuse, albums should have 10 tracks or more, and I don't think the excuse is good enough here. There must have been other songs available as good as Baby Be Mine or The Lady in My Life.

It's cheesy, almost comical at times. Schmaltzy too. And here's the main thing. You might suggest I'm not the person to make this judgement, I don't get Michael Jackson, I'm not a Michael Jackson fan. But if I measure the esteem in which I hold the rest of the songs on Thriller against the esteem in which I hold Billie Jean, there's a massive chasm. I think Billie Jean is flat out one of the greatest songs ever, on every level. That's how good I think Michael Jackson can be, but I don't think anything else is as near as good.

Oh, they're good, don't get me wrong. I've listened to Thriller all the way through a few times recently, and did I enjoy it? Of course I did. Wanna Be Startin' Something is far more substantial than I'd remembered. The Girl is Mine is one of the naffest songs ever but  a real joy from start to finish. Beat It and the title track, well I know a lot of people think those are great great songs, on a par with Billie Jean. Maybe thinking that is the key to the album's greatness - they're right at it's heart, and if you think tracks 4, 5, 6 is a show of unstoppable strength, fair enough. All I can say is I want them to finish so I can hear Billie Jean.

Then, yes, I love Human Nature and PYT, those are crackers, but The Lady in My Life is quite a weak finish, as far as I'm concerned, just a standard 80s ballad.

Thriller doesn't keep me up there, I don't stay on the adrenaline ride all the way through. I'd probably listen to Tracks 6, 7 and 8 over and over again if it came to it and ignore the rest.

You know what, Bad is better, isn't it? No? 11 tracks. When you've got 11 tracks you're allowed a tiny bit of comedown here and there, whereas with 9 tracks you're not (just checked, Bad was originally 10m but Leave Me Alone was added for the CD version). What a run of hits! Bad, The Way You Make Me Feel, Liberian Girl, Man in the Mirror, Can't Stop Loving You, Dirty Diana, Smooth Criminal, Leave Me Alone. I loved those songs when they were coming out and even now, most of them hold up. And nothing dwarfs, like Billie Jean dwarfs Thriller.And he wrote more of Bad himself. To me, Bad may be his greatest achievement

A few things strike me about Michael Jackson. Firstly, the best Michael Jackson voice was the voice of I Want You Back and I'll Be There. That was a voice of almost impossible wonder. When it broke, it was extraordinary still, but somehow ... not loveable. I'd rather listen to the younger voice everytime.

Secondly, there is something I don't quite get. I know there is. There's something in STAR POWER and its value I don't quite get. Something in how people view Elvis, Sinatra, Michael Jackson as geniuses I just don't get.

My mother, not a pop music fan in general, watched a doc on Michael Jackson shortly after his death and said to me "He really was a genius" in a tone I hadn't heard her use since she's described Leonardo Da Vinci as a genius to me 20 years earlier. Well, I suppose he was, as showman, dancer, pop king, star. I'm a bit boring. I break things down to things like body of work, consistency, boring, boring, boring. That's not pop music, is it? Thriller is the biggest album ever, the most enjoyed album ever. What I have to say on it matters not the tiniest bit.

Thirdly, Thriller, this album, played all the way through my life. I remember it when I was 5 all the way through. Those songs were just there. And Michael Jackson was the most famous man in the world all through my conscious life. That's obvious too. But I suppose it means that, despite what I felt about him in the mid-90s, I, like millions of others, ok, a lot less than millions of others, and in a far more dispassionate way, I felt a little bereft when he died. The benchmark of fame was gone.

OK, a Michael Jackson compilation. There'll be very few surprises here...

Don't Stop Til You Get Enough
I'll be There
Can You Feel It?
I Want You Back
Billie Jean
Dirty Diana
Ben
Thriller
Will you Be There
One Day In Your Life
She's Out of My Life
PYT
The Girl Is Mine
Rock With You
Give in to Me
Human Nature
Smooth Criminal
Liberian Girl
I Just Can't Stop Loving You
Man in the Mirror

Hell, he was pretty good, all told.

1998: Manic Street Preachers: This is My Truth Tell Me Yours

I've chosen this particular album because it marks the time when, strange as it may sound, the Manic Street Preachers were the biggest band in Britain. Following on from the surprising success of their 4th album 'Everything Must Go' they consolidated and built on that commercial success. It was Number 1 for 3 weeks, it sold several million copies worldwide, it won the Brit Award for Best British Album.

To me, right then, it was the most important thing in the world. I remember the day it came out. I remember it well. I was on a week long boat trip on the Norfolk Broads. It just so happened that we stopped for lunch at Wroxham, a big enough town to have a WH Smith, to which I hastened and found my prize.

The new Manics album. A guaranteed hit. The single 'If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next' had already beaten Steps to Number 1 (just as the album would steptacularly deny the Steps album 'Step One').

Perhaps, looking back, that boat trip was the changing of the guard for my music taste. As excited as I was by the Manics, I was listening to Leonard Cohen and Jeff Buckley. My Britpop taste would head further and further across the Atlantic in the coming months and years. I think, even then, I could tell that this was not quite where I was at anymore.

It would be untrue, for a couple of reasons, to say that this is the last great Manics album, firstly because fans of the band would argue that at least three of their later albums are as good as anything they've ever done, so really it's fairer to say that this was the last Manics album that I devoted long, long hours of listening to. Secondly, because 'This is My Truth Tell Me Yours' is not a great album. Not really. Even if you don't hate the Manics, even if you love them, like I do. It's not a great album.

This was their real grown-up album. Looking at the cover, its bleak anti-style imagery (beach at Porthmadog, beautiful, Manics in baggy middle-aged beige), you realise it's a statement, but anti-aesthetic is still an aesthetic, and those closes look baaad. No wonder some older fans of the Manics, fans of their punkish sounds, big slogans, eyeliner and stencilled t-shirts, took against it. They were still in their 20s, for heaven's sake.

Thematically, in terms of lyrics, it's not so bland. There are songs ABOUT THINGS, about war and prison and Wales and crime and gender and tragedy, about loss and depression. Some of them are really good songs.

Listening back to it now, I still love the swooning rock anthemics when they get it right, I love James Dean Bradfield's voice, I love the tunes, I'm regularly moved by it. The first half is full of big songs, big songs that really work, 'Tsunami', 'Ready for Drowing', 'You Stole the Sun from My Heart', they're all potential singles. The second half, hmm, it's more awkward, slower, more dirgy, weirder, and it really just doesn't work as well. It does contain one of the very best Manics songs, though - 'Black Dog on My Shoulder', a really lovely piece of chamber pop about the black dog of depression.

But the album is hampered by a few things. Firstly, frankly, it's hampered by the fact that the 'SYMM' the closing track, is ... one ... of ... the ... worst ... songs ... of ... all ... time... by ... anyone ... ever. SYMM stands for South Yorkshire Mass Murderer. It is a song with the very best intentions. It is about the Hillsborough disaster - the title accuses, accurately as it turned out, the police in the fiercest way possible. But the lyrics ... jesus. I was going to paste them in here, but that would be cruel. Read them here, just read them. Jesus. Those are bad lyrics. You can tell they felt this song needed to be on the album, but they had no idea how to write it. It's painful.

I think this was the first Manics album where people began to point out that some of their lyrics/scansion etc didn't really work, and it was the first time I had to agree. Perhaps it was just my understanding of verse growing but where, before, I'd have loved the lyrics because they were brave words and they were about something, I began to realise that lines like "The future teaches you to be alone, the present to be afraid and cold" and "Give me some more of your carrier bags" could really stick out in a bad way unless handled perfectly.

Their next album 'Know Your Enemy' and the one after that 'Lifeblood' were really pretty dreadful, first swamped by too much conceptual ambition, then lifeless and drab. But they kept going and the general consensus is that their last four or so LPs have really been as good as you could expect from a band in their 40s who claimed over 20 years ago that they would split up after their first album.

Their constant battle is between grand orchestral graceful rock and fearsome punkish fury. Their two greatest albums, Everything Must Go, and its predecessor, The Holy Bible, display those two aspects respectively.

This is My Truth Tell Me Yours is a natural successor to Everything Must Go - there's not much punkish about it. It's the first album without lyrical input from Richey Edwards and for a large part, the band deal with that absence really well. Nicky Wire, for such a wonderful talker, is really not a natural writer of verse. That's my view.

It's not a truly great album, but if you think it's great that a band of South Wales misfits beat Steps to Number 1, if you think it's great that a song about the Spanish Civil War got to Number 1, if you basically think it's pretty great when James Dean Bradfield really gives it some with either voice or guitar, then there's a lot to love here.

A playlist!

Prologue to History
Motorcycle Emptiness
Faster
La Tristesse Durere
Little Baby Nothing
Spectators of Suicide
From Despair to Where
Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky
She is Suffering
This is Yesterday
Black Dog on My Shoulder
Yes
Ready For Drowning
Your Love Alone is Not Enough
She Bathed Herself in a Bath of Bleach
Show Me the Wonder
Life Becoming a Landslide
A Design for Life
All Surface, No Feeling
Tsunami

Maybe not actually my favourite 20, but i wanted a spread

1967: Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen

Rather as with that other definitive rock'n'roll year, 1977, where I chose Elvis Costello's My Aim is True, I'm rather pleased with myself for choosing an album for 1967, the year of the Summer of Love, which stands alone, away from its time, by an old soul for whom the song above all was everything.

Of course, Leonard, on his debut, wasn't just an "old soul" he was a relatively old dude, already in his mid 30s. He'd had poems and novels published to acclaim. His were not literary pretensions.

He took to song. Song took to him. Leonard Cohen doesn't stand in anyone's shadow, not Bob Dylan's, not Elvis Presley's, not Neil Young's, he'd be exactly what he was without all of them.

As I've already written about, I went to a Leonard Cohen gig last year. It was quite incomprehensibly excellent, I can't overstate the extent to which seeing Leonard Cohen live in the 2010s is one of the wonders of the western world.

Something I love about Leonard Cohen the songwriter is actually how unpretentious his style is - he writes in pretty simple forms with gentle humour, he doesn't baffle or confound. He's not trying to prove anything. I imagine a young singer-songwriter can aspire to writing like Leonard Cohen. He's really not all that forbidding.

What of this debut itself, a bigger hit amongst us cultured folk in Europe than in the US? As with so many, I came to Cohen through Best of Collections, but i've managed to navigate my way over the years to understanding Songs of Leonard Cohen as a proper album. Sensual is a word that should undoubtedly never be uttered by the likes of me, but it is unavoidably a sensual album, through Suzanne and Winter Lady and Sisters of Mercy.

The great song on the album, for me, is So Long, Marianne. It doesn't matter who you are, if you've got a big singalong number, you're all right with me. A real person, too. I'm trying to imagine who would be the worst possible person to do a cover of it thinking they're improving on the original - I'm thinking one of those American singers who sound like they're on the loo - have the Dave Matthews Band ever done a cover of So Long, Marianne? Or maybe the Jove. They've done a cover of Hallelujah which JBJ himself holds in high esteem.

I remember the first time I listened to Leonard, it was on a trip where I also listened for the first time to the next album I'm going to write about, which couldn't be much more different. His golden voice is pretty firmly one to listen too while the rain is pouring down outside.

These are the songs I like the best

Suzanne
Bird on a Wire
Going Home
If It Be Your Will
The Sisters of Mercy
Chelsea Hotel #2
Teachers
Famous Blue Raincoat
The Stranger Song
Stories of the Street
Who By Fire?
First We Take Manhattan
Hallelujah
Come Healing
Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye
Take This Longing
Everybody Knows
Tower of Song
So Long, Marianne

2010: Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can

Is it reductive to ponder if Laura Marling is the new Joni Mitchell, a young woman of the Commonwealth who has gone to California to find fame and fortune, whose enjoyed and endured romances with noted male singer-songwriters of the same scene, who has a voice of startling maturity, learning and presence far beyond her years? We'll see - Blue was Joni Mitchell's fourth album, and Laura Marling hasn't quite managed anything like Blue yet.

There's something so precise and exemplary about Laura Marling's career so far - four albums, all with six syllable titles, all following hot on the heels of the next. All of the albums are strong; this, her second, is my own favourite.

The process of this blog obviously involves me listening to the artists I'm going to write about in the run up to writing, and it's nice when my agenda is changed for me in that process.

I was going to write about how it was seemingly all there for Laura Marling but there was just something missing, something which meant she hadn't quite found 'it' yet, was still not writing great songs or great albums in the way she seemed to be capable.

But, listening to all her albums through the last week, I had a very enjoyable experience. I heard most of the things I'd previously thought she was missing - humour, connection with self, varied instrumentation, abandon, and, above all, and the thing I'd decided her music lacked above all, a few really good tunes.

Which, frankly, gives me a bit less to write about. I was going to work through a few theories about Laura Marling, how her absorption in songwriting tropes and clear obsession with mythology had not yet fully connected to her positioning as confessional writer, how she seemed to struggle for identity, in terms of using varying accents across the albums, how she somehow sounded too composed to truly warm to.

But, like I say, I listened to her four albums, and you can by and large strike all of the above.

But ... perhaps there's something important in the very fact I'd had those thoughts. Laura Marling is a critical darling, who gets reams and reams of (broadsheet) press coverage but sadly, here are a few young female singers who are more successful than here - Adele, Duffy, Paloma Faith, Lily Allen, Laura Mvula, Corinne Bailey Rae, Ellie Goulding, Katie Melua, Emeli Sande, Pixie Lott, Florence Welch, Gabrielle Aplin .... it goes on. And yes, it's apples and pears, but it's not like there's anything per se about her which couldn't be a mainstream album-selling artist. Maybe it's a good thing, but maybe it would be great if there was one song, one big song, which made the people who only buy three albums a year pay attention.

'I Speak Because I Can' probably contains the songs closest to that. I saw her playing two or three times around the release of this album and  she was great, seemed to be growing in confidence every time, and one or two of the songs seemed like real showstoppers.

'Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)' is perhaps the most obviously pleasing, and then there's the dark menace of 'Alpha Shallows' and 'Hope in the Water', the splendid title track and the rollicking 'Rambling Man'. This album was a big leap from her debut 'Alas I Cannot Swim' which, though precocious, came from the personality of a teenage Englander, while this album was steeped in a higher level of learning and storytelling. I'm not sure there's been a big leap forward since then, though her music has certainly become more and more American. Perhaps once she gets settled in that US setting, there'll be the event album she is almost certainly capable of.

My selection from the best of Marling would be

Alpha Shallows
Sophia
New Romantic
The Beast
Goodbye to England (Covered in Snow)
Once
Blackberry Stone
Rambling Man
Blues Run the Game (cover)
My Manic and I
All My Rage
Hope in the Air
I Speak Because I Can
Saved These Words

1971: Joni Mitchell - Blue

If I was to put together a ten-song Joni Mitchell compilation tape, I would just put the ten songs from Blue, in the order they appear on the album. This is the perfect album. Since I first heard it 15 years ago, I'd say it has never not been one of my 3 favourite albums. What are your favourite albums, imaginary people ask me surprisingly regularly. Hugh, Pugh and Joni Mitchell's Blue, I reply. Or Blue, Pugh and Barney McGrew. Or Red, White and Joni Mitchell's Blue. You get the idea. Something, something and Blue. The other two entries may change, but Blue is constant, constant as the Northern Star.

Some would place Joni Mitchell as a singer/songwriter on the highest pedestal, some would suggest her body of work is the equal of any other of her peers. I wouldn't necessarily. I have dabbled but ultimately not gone all the way with Joni. I don't have any of her 9 albums between 1976 and 2000, even though some of them are very highly thought of (something about the words "further voyages into jazz fusion" put me off).

It's pretty much Blue for me. I have most of her other early albums, and a couple of later ones, when she did some really nice, smoky covers of her own material, but there's nothing which has had even the remotely same impact on me as Blue.

Court and Spark is almost great, The Hissing of Summer Lawns is pretty distinguished, other early ones, Ladies of the Canyon, Clouds etc ...there are good songs, but ...

Anyway, why am I talking about negatives with Joni Mitchell. All of the above is personal taste, and quite likely the reason I haven't loved the rest of her career is just because my first taste was Blue, and everything - everything - after that is going to seem a little bit of a disappointment.

How come it's so good? What's the magic formula? 10 songs, 35 minutes 41 seconds. All songs between 2 minutes 50 and 4 minutes 20. Nothing the album could do without.

I think as I've listened to it down the years, I've broken it into units

1-2 All I Want, My Old Man (both sides now of romantic love, deceptively simple)
3 and 5 - Little Green and Blue (colour songs, woe and loss)
4 and 6 - Carey and California - jaunty, joyful travel songs. Glorious highlights.
7, 8 and 9 - This Flight Tonight, River, A Case of You - relationship breaking, getting away, terrible sadness. A Case of You stands slightly apart from the other two. It's the emotional culmination of the album. It's also one of the very greatest songs ever. Lots of people think that, it's not just me.
10 - The Last Time I Saw Richard - slighly removed, looking further back, cynical, irritated, holding on to sense of self.

This album is a unit and a story and a mood in the way that not all great albums necessarily are (Revolver isn't, or Thriller, or The Queen is Dead) but when they are, it somehow enhances them. To me, nothing holds together quite like Blue, not Astral Weeks, not Blood on the Tracks, nothing.

I first listened to it in the Easter holiday in 1999. My university holidays didn't match up with those of my friends and I remember just spending two weeks back at my mum's house, doing nothing but playing patience, cleaning up the excrement of our remaining elderly cat (Cat Stevens) and listening to new albums. There was no internet, 5 TV channels, no mobile phone. It was possible back then to need saving from considerable lengthy boredom. I was all set up to be consumed by an album, and so I was.

Joni Mitchell has done a recent interview, having been off the radar for several years. She seems a deeply intelligent, artistic, enormously egotistical person. She is disparaging of what might be considered her peers, while considering her own peers the likes of Duke Ellington. She sees herself as a painter first and foremost.

History might come to view her as a wonder of the world, I don't know. I think there are a few others with better catalogues of songs than her, but this, her great work, is, for me, the greatest of all the great works.

It slightly misses the point, but here is a Joni Mitchell compilation album which isn't just Blue from start to finish.

Both Sides, Now
Chinese Cafe
California
Carey
Court and Spark
River
The Jungle Line
Coyote
All I Want
This Flight Tonight
Trouble Child
Free Man in Paris
In France They Kiss On Main Street
The Circle Game
I Don't Know Where I Stand
Amelia
A Case of You
The Last Time I Saw Richard

2008: James Yorkston - When the Haar Rolls In

Well, I do love my list of the 1001 Greatest Songs of All Time, of course I do, but even basking in its recent glorious shadow, I can see some clear aberrations, times where there was no pretence at objectivity, I just put songs I really like really high up, and that's that.

The most glaring example is the unnaturally high position (42) of the title track from this album. It's just a song, a long folk song you've never heard by someone you've probably never heard of. It's not the 42nd most important, defining moment in the history of song.

I suppose.

It's damn good though. I've written before about James Yorkston and what makes him such a distinguished, mesmeric performer, despite a total lack of glamour and a limited vocal range. 'When the Haar Rolls In', as a song, is his magnum opus, a beautiful journey through memory, lost love, music and melancholy, which I feel is almost unrivalled in song, in not just capturing a part of a story or describing a feeling or expressing a sentiment, but in being the whole story, everything you feel you need to know about the writer and his life and his feelings and his situation.

There are different types of great lyrics - a great, bouncing, rhythmical lyric, rich in musicality and internal rhyme, like you may find in something like 'Anything Goes' or 'To Ramona' or day I say it, the raps of Eminem, and then there's someone like Yorkston, who usually writes as if it he doesn't entirely realise the words will be set to music and yet, when they are, they fall utterly seamlessly into place. Hmm, that doesn't quite capture it, implies there's something amateurish. Far from it. The point is it sounds natural, like real things a real person would say, except beautiful and poetic.

He deals in the folk medium though is not entirely afraid of modern sounds or turning the volume up. Oddly his most famous song is a piece of spoken word electronica called 'Woozy with Cider'.

As a man, I imagine he's a little complex - his lyrics are full of faux-humility alongside general contempt for modernity and urbanity. I don't know, something about him makes me think he's tricky!

This is one of two of his five full studio albums of original material which I would place in the highest bracket, along with his debut 'Moving Up Country'. The album feels as a whole like a meditation on love past - several of these songs seem to be mainstays of his live shows, like 'Tortoise Regrets Hare' (as good as its title), 'Temptation' and 'Queen of Spain'.

There's a fabulously meaty cover of 'Midnight Feast' by the Watersons, but it's the epic title track that sticks with you, with as many memorable phrases as 'Thunder Road' and a final surrender to the healing powers of music.

Somehow, though James Yorkston is aligned closely with modern folk music, and certainly knows his folk music in and out, he's almost too much of an individual voice with a modern confessional sensibility to be constrained by that.

I've included songs of his on a Fence compilation way in the past, but rather than updating that, this will be a purely James Yorkston list.

Sweet Jesus
Surf Song
Woozy with Cider
St Patrick
B's Jig
Shipwreckers
Tortoise Regrets Hare
Border Song
I Spy Dogs
A Short Blues
Banjo #1
Moving Up Country, Roaring the Gospel
Banjo #2
The Lang Toun
Year of the Leopard
When the Haar Rolls In

1980: The Jam - Sound Affects

Aah, The Jam. Don't get me started on The Jam. 6 albums in 5 years, 4 Number 1 singles - basically, the perfect career.

And yet, none of those albums are necessarily seen as absolute classics like 'London Calling.' The three which are closest are the punning middle trilogy, 'All Mod Cons', 'Setting Sons' and 'Sound Affects' (see what he's done there?) which are all very good albums.

'Sound Affects' is probably the best of them, and it's from 1980, which is one of the Jam's best years, so why is it not a classic? Why are The Jam seen primarily as a singles band?

I've asked myself that question before without totally grasping that the answer is completely straightforward. Of their 18 singles, only half were on albums. Simple as that. Their albums didn't necessarily contain the best songs. They gave the fans value for money. Fancy that.

Why did it take me so long to grasp that? Well, because I've never owned a Jam studio album, despite the fact that they're one of my favourite bands in the whole world and as I've said several boring times, seminal to my musical taste.

Because first I bought The Jam's 'Greatest Hits', which I listened to almost every day for two years, then I bought a really good compilation called 'The Jam Collection' which basically contained all the great songs they'd done which weren't singles, and it is fairly extensive, and then I bought 'Direction Reaction Creation' which is their complete works (albums, singles, b-sides, live tracks) mashed together on 5 CDs. So forgive me if I was occasionally a little confused about what went where.

I'm not sure I'd fully grasped that The Jam album from 1980, the year they released what I humbly submit as one of the greatest songs of all time -  'Going Underground', does not contain 'Going Underground' or its double-a side 'Dreams of Children'. The American version does, but they never broke America anyway.

It does contain 'Start!', their other Number 1 from 1980, which has frankly never been my favourite Jam hit, but listening it in the context of the album, it really works.

This is the album where The Jam really begin to get a bit funky. Apparently the influences were post-punk bands like Gang of Four and Wire and also Michael Jackson's 'Off the Wall', and you can certainly hear the former, and even the latter a little.

Besides 'Start!' it contains 'Pretty Green', which was meant to be the first single, 'Monday' which is a nice sweet song, 'Boy About Town' which is a rumbunctious little number, and a few fairly brave numbers like 'Set the House Ablaze' and 'Dream Time'. But the stand out tracks are two veritable Weller classics, 'Man in the Cornershop' (my favourite Jam non-single) and 'That's Entertainment' (which, famously, made the UK charts purely as an import single).

I still find the maturity of these songs startling. I started listening to the Jam when I was 15 so I could look up to Weller of 1980 as an adult. But he was 21/22 at the time, which is just a kid, and the thing is, he's not necessarily ever sounded so poised and mature since.

'That's Entertainment' is so good I forget how good it is. Listening to it now, it's not as simple as I remember. There are nice little psychedelic swirls, it's not just man with guitar. It might actually be The Jam's most famous song, actually.

'Man in the Cornershop' is much more of personal favourite of mine. You can probably hear Weller striving for big ideas more on this, it's not quite as natural, but I like that. What made the Jam so great, and what he slightly lost through the rest of his career, was the ability to hold on to original "social themes" lyrical theme while making a smooth transition to different musical styles.

There are so many great Jam songs, and not that many of them are contained within this particular album, whereas lots of other "great" British bands seemed much more to put all their eggs in one basket.

I do wonder how the Jam would be perceived and remembered if Weller had held on to that name throughout the 80s and even beyond (notwithstanding any personnel changes). There's not that much difference between late Jam and early Style Council. I wonder if, under that classic "brand", a lot more Style Council songs would have been way more successful and be more acclaimed. I'm not saying the Style Council didn't get a bit ropey, but there's some really good stuff in there.

Anyway, I've already done a Paul Weller in his entirety compilation so let's keep it to The Jam and let's keep it, like their career and most of their songs, brief and faultless

In the City
Going Underground
Down in the Tube Station at Midnight
Man in the Cornershop
That's Entertainment
Tales from the Riverbank
English Rose
Carnation
When You're Young
Eton Rifles
A Town Called Malice
Beat Surrender

1974: Gram Parsons - Grievous Angel

The way it works with the "classic rock" music press, of which I have been a regular partaker for the best part of two decades, it seems like there are classics of the season. So one year, I'll read lots of articles about what a great album Gene Clark's 'No Other' is, the next year it'll be Dexys 'Don't Stand Me Down' or The Zombies 'Odessey and Oracle'. Well, in the late 90s, I came across a lot of things telling me that 'Grievous Angel' by Gram Parsons was one of the greatest, most influential albums of all time. The very seed of country-rock, of alt-country, of cosmic American music. The very heart of modern guitar music.

I'm not here to argue against that, actually. There's some truth in it. But it's funny how that sometimes happens, when really 'Grievous Angel', released after Gram's death, was a bit of a rush-job, patched up mish-mash, a commercial nothing, not much of an actual album at all. It's full of covers, old songs and out-takes, made by an artist so strung out that most of his mojo had gone.

But it's still flippin' marvellous.

Gram Parsons was just 26 when he died but for, a dissolute drugged-up waster, he managed to do an awful lot. Born of wealthy tragedy, he dropped out of Harvard, was a folk singer, was in something called the International Submarine Band, joined and influenced the Byrds, did two classic albums with the Flying Burrito Brothers, hung out with and heavily influenced the Rolling Stones on one or two of their classic albums, then released two great albums of his own which are seen as massively influential in the country-rock sphere.

You know that border between country and rock? Well, it would be a lie to say Gram Parsons was the first to pass across it - surely Dylan did in various way in the late 60s, and surely Elvis and Buddy Holly were doing it in the late 50s and Ray Charles too, but Gram Parsons was intent on harnessing all the sweet sounds of America, from country to soul to rock to folk, and he did so splendidly.

Strange thing is, his voice is a bit weak and whiny, but it's just got something. Even more so when paired with his life and legacy's secret weapon, Emmylou Harris - who wouldn't be seen as a legend when they have such an eloquent spokesperson preaching their cause for the 40 years after death?

'Grievous Angel' is the Gram Parsons album where Gram and Emmylou really sing together as equals (she'd been more of a backing singer on his first LP, 'GP'). Indeed, apparently it was his wife's suspicions of their relationship which kept her from being fully credited.

And these are some of the most beautiful duets in the history of popular music. They really are.(Which is what makes it so fitting that another pair of voices born to sing together, First Aid Kit, paid tribute to Gram and Emmylou on their 2012 song 'Emmylou').

I bought 'Grievous Angel' as a double album with 'GP' in 1999 - in my first blast of CD (as opposed to cassette) purchases. And I got it. Got it instantly. It helps that the first song is one of the two best on the album, a glorious country travelogue with beautiful guitar from James Burton (who was Elvis' guitarist) and lyrics written by a poet called Thomas Brown. But it's the singing! When Emmylou joins in. Jeez.

And despite it's being cobbled together after Gram Parsons' death (which was weird and sad and I won't dwell on), the rest of the album is almost as good. There are covers where again the singing just knocks you out - Hearts on Fire and, most famously, Love Hurts, and songs Parsons dredged up from his past given new life. 'Brass Buttons' about his mother's death, is heartbreaking enough, but the real jawdropper is '$1000 Wedding' - the lyricism and the storytelling and the melody and, guess what, the singing again. It's one of my favourite songs in the world.

He was so short of material he even used an old Byrds song 'Hickory Wind' but it all just comes together and makes a great album, the album he seemed born to make.

This album was in 1974 and, like I say, is heavily cited, though it's hard to see its influence in the intervening years - not till you get to Uncle Tupelo and Cowboy Junkies and Whiskeytown and Drive-By Truckers and Fleet Foxes and all that. Ryan Adams seems an obvious heir, both in intent and vocal style. One of his greatest moments is his duet with Emmylou Harris on his finest album 'Heartbreaker', 'O My Sweet Carolina' which really couldn't sound much more like an outtake from 'Grievous Angel'.

So, 1974, a bit of an all-over-the-place year in the history of music - pre-punk but there was already some important stuff going on with the likes of New York Dolls, Stevie Wonder was on it, Dylan was doing Blood on the Tracks, glam was top of the charts, Bohemian Rhapsody, quietly influential stuff from Big Star, shit, this was the year after Kool Herc invented hip-hop too. The early 70s were great weren't they? I was brought up to think the 60s died then it was shit and then punk saved everything, but the truth's nothing like that.

But, in terms of my personal musical taste, this was the most important album of that year (I'm just about confident in that as Blood on the Tracks was 20th January 1975 ...)

Here's a Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris related compilation - only fair to give them equal standing, as this album would not be half of what it is without Emmylou ...

Return of the Grievous Angel - Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris
Hot Burrito #1 - Flying Burrito Brothers
$1000 Wedding - Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris
Hickory Wind - They Byrds
Brass Buttons - Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris
Boulder to Birmingham - Emmylou Harris
The Road - Emmylou Harris
She - Gram Parsons
Hot Burrito #2 - Flying Burrito Brothers
A Song for You - Gram Parsons
O My Sweet Carolina - Ryan Adams and Emmylou Harris
How She Would Sing the Wildwood Flower - Emmylou Harris
Dark End of the Street - Flying Burrito Brothers
Love Hurts - Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris
Michelangelo - Emmylou Harris
In My Hour of Darkness - Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris

1990: George Michael - Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1

OK, bear with me on this, hear me out ... Vol.1. Where's Vol 2? This was a late replacement for 1990, I was going to write about the Charlatans' 'Some Friendly', but I realised that, though I like the Charlatans and have a few things to say about their place in the 90s pop firmament, I don't like the songs from 'Some Friendly' and actually, what I have to say about the Charlatans is not interesting, even to me. Here it is - they're good, they've done more good songs than more feted contemporaries ... right, on to G-Mic

I don't own this album. I think my sister had it so I think I'll have listened it to it back when it came out, and I've certainly listened to some of the songs from it ... a lot. Because George Michael was the sound of those dark capital fm days. If I listened to any radio from 1988 to 1993, it would have been "95.8!!! Capital Eff Emm" It would have been "Pat Sharp Woo Woo" "Doctor Doctor FOX!" the egregiously false "Here at Capital we don't break the rules ... cos we don't have any" etc and all those infinite jingles and ads and Fox's Juke Box, The Top 10 at 10, Help a London Child, The Hall of Fame. If you're wondering if I know my late 80s/early 90s AOR, I certainly do. And who was the King, the King in exile, to be precise?

It was George, of course.

Strange period for George, the early 90s, as he tried to get out of his contract with Sony and so wasn't releasing any new original music. His standing, certainly in the world of Capital, seemed to grow every day.

He was a London (well, Bushey) boy and he was, of course, phenomenally successful. To the extent that Listen Without Prejudice was seen as a relative failure for only selling 8 million copies ( more than most of the artists I like have sold, put together, thoughout their whole career).

They fuckin' idolised him on Capital. It was George this, George that. He'd suddenly turn up donating £50,000 to Help a London Child and then disappear back into the night. Then he'd say "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Elton John" and for the next two years, in our music GCSE class at school, the lession would rarely go past without someone saying "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Elton John"

On their Halls of Fame, there were as many George Michael songs as there are Bob Dylan songs on mine. You won't be surprised that I statistically analysed the Capital Halls of Fame of 1992 and 93, and George was the official master of all he surveyed, a-sides, Wham hits, album tracks, everything.

I was not, I suppose, a fan then and I'm not a fan now. But sometimes, then and now, I hear a George Michael song and think, "that's really pretty good" and I'd certainly rather listen to the extreme nonsense of Wham! than most of their 80s contemporaries.

There's a riff by Bill Hicks on how George Michael (he calls him George Michaels, which is annoying) is the bland corporate whore son of the devil, and it's one of those ones where you realise how wrong people who are meant to be the voice of truth get it.

People aligned George Michael's poppy, then smooth, music with his personality, where he turned out to be so much more kooky, more interesting, more intelligent and pointed than anyone imagined. Who was writing anti-Blair protest songs while all else were keeping silent? Unfortunately, Shoot the Dog is a pretty rubbish song, as most of the George Michael stuff I've heard in the last decade or so has tended to be.

But the songs on 'Faith' and 'Listen without Prejudice Vol 1', well, frankly, if i do his bidding, if i listen without prejudice, or rather, without memory of old emotions, there are some really good songs. Aren't there? Heal the Pain, Cowboys and Angels, even Praying for Time, I mean it's a bit like Jeff Buckley's Sky is a Landfill ... well, maybe that's my problem with George. Both those men are fantastically accomplished singers, but the risks, the heights, reached by a voice like Buckley compared to the smooth lack of edge which George's voice has never got away from, whatever the subject matter.

Another funny George Michael-related memory I have, a propos of pretty much nothing. There was a boy at my school called Sanveer Bakhshi, a pretty absurd character, an irritant, a fantasist, who would claim he was the fastest runner in the world, he was faster than a cheetah (he was quite fast). He would claim that his parents were the richest people in the world, that his pocket money was a million pounds a week. Anything you said, he would top it. "I'm good at football" Bakhshi: "I'm amazing at football" etc etc so, when I was learning the clarinet (terribly) and Bakhshi said "O, I'm brilliant at the clarinet", I knew he was lying. Like I say, I was hopeless, but nevertheless eventually it was the duty of every boy learning an instrument to play a little solo piece in assembly. When my time came, I was terrified, and it was pretty damn awful, as I recall. I messed up at least once, squawked away, and received at best sympathetic applause. Still, trial over. Anyway, next week, unheralded, who should appear at assembly by Sanveer cocking Bakshi playing a flawless, jazzy version of George Michael's 'Faith' on his clarinet. From that point, I never doubted that his parents, who lived in Heston, really were the richest people in the world. Anyway, back to the matter in hand.

He's had a funny old life, George Michael, and he'll never really be my cup of tea, not in my conscious, careful music taste which I have no desire to let go of. But if I find myself secretly enjoying anything from Young Guns to Edge of Heaven to Father Figure to Outside, well, don't judge me too harshly.

Here's a George Michael compilation

Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
A Different Corner
Outside
Careless Whisper
Father Figure
Edge of Heaven
Wham Rap
Young Guns
Cowboys and Angels
Heal the Pain
Freedom
Praying for Time
Jesus to a Child
Club Tropicana
and, just for kicks
Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me