2014: The Next Great Album

It's rather worrying when the person in charge of the nation's music thinks this ...
http://www.nme.com/news/radio-1/78327

My natural reaction is, of course,  ... smug face, corporate goon, his favourite album is probably 'Back to Bedlam' by James Blunt or 'Rockferry' by Duffy ...

But does what he's saying actually carry an uncomfortable truth? Will we all be listening to playlists rather than albums in a few years time? Have we already lost the art of listening to albums? Have artists lost the will to, and the art of, making albums?

Well, first up, he's not the first person to say something like this, and they're not all goons.

I do recall a favourite band of my youth, Ash, saying that the album format was dead to them and that they would release a single a fortnight for a year, and it being deemed fairly revolutionary.

Then again, Ash were always a "singles band" as some acts just are, across different genres - bands or singers who master the shorter form, who have many hook-laden crackers and pepper the charts but you wouldn't always want to give a straight hour of your time to. It's always been thus, and often people have seen soul, pop and hip-hop acts in particular in these terms. Yet, as I observed last year, several of the biggest commercial acts seemed to be suggesting the album form was anything but dead in making huge, ambitious, conceptual albums, from Beyonce to Lady Gaga to Justin Timberlake to Jay-Z to Kanye West. Hard to know if any of these were massively successful artistically as actual albums but certainly the aim seems to give the lie to the notion that no one cares about albums anymore.

And, the obvious thing is the album format suits the artist, in terms of booking studio time, having a period of writing and set of emotions to get out in one go, having songs cohere into a unity due to that time factor- it may be that the listener tires of the format before the artist wants them to, and then who'll win out?

But will the music fan really tire of the album? Has it all changed and will it all change so much? We've always liked to make our own compilations and playlists, certainly since the dawn of taping. I'm a little behind the times with things now, I still buy via iTunes rather than streaming, which I know is what the kids are all doing, and that may have a profound commercial impact, but I'll treat the business side as a separate issue for now, one which I'm not qualified to comment on.

What I do feel is that this blog strand has reinforced for me the ongoing strength of the album format, and it seems like the man who blithely disregards that and says "hey, there may be the odd big album, but playlists are where it's at now" has never really understood the possibilities of popular music and is as big a tool as he initially seems to be.

Albums are great if they gather momentum, if they express a world view, if they share with you the room they were recorded in, if they have subtle or explicit leitmotif, if they surprise you, if they have sub-sections, if they reveal the character of the band and reveal different kinds of virtuosity, if they make you feel you've got a friend, if they introduce you to new concepts, if they tell you about the times they were recorded in, if they reveal secrets on repeated listens, if they're different from the album before, if they're over-ambitious, if they're perfectly timed, if they're any or all of those things which mere playlists can hardly be or do.

A great album is capable of being the equal of a great novel, a great film, a great TV drama. Are we all going to be watching clips shows in future? No, people's thirst for vast, expansive dramas only increases.

I've taken so much pleasure in listening and re-listening to the 50 albums for 1963 to 2013, trying to find a meaning or an idea to inspire 1000 wordson them. There've been surprises, nearly all good ones, and above all, a re-cemented respect for the form.

Is there one favourite to emerge from these 50? No, not really, just lots of different kinds of great works. I expect I extolled the virtues of Joni Mitchell's 'Blue' above all others, but I appreciate that's just one type of album for one type of occasion. There isn't one great ruling work above all else. Thank goodness.

So what of 2014, more than halfway through it? Well, I've loved music this year. Loved it more than any year for ages, and I wonder if my odyssey into the musical past has helped with that.

Funnily enough, it'd be pretty hard to pick one album/artist to write about for this year, as so many artists I've written about have released stuff this year. In particular, it's been the year of the Solo Record.

Damon Albarn, Conor Oberst, Jenny Lewis, Morrissey, Gruff Rhys, Hamilton Leithauser, Jeff Tweedy, all these are artists whose bands I love who've released or will shortly be releasing solo records this year, not to mention works by the Manics, James Yorkston, The Pixies, Ryan Adams - hell, there's even been a Michael Jackson album.

Of all these, my favourite is probably the Gruff Rhys album, and don't tell him people aren't making unified concepts anymore, when he's just released a album/app/film/book to almost universal acclaim.

Having said that, I listened to the new James Yorkston album for the first time today - The Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society, no less, a thing of what appears to be great beauty. And on the same day, I've bought and listened to the new albums by FKA Twigs and Kate Tempest, both tipped for the Mercury Prize, and, particularly by the former, been highly impressed.

Hell, no, the album's not dead.

Then again, despite my efforts to be down with the kids, I do finally feel my taste has pretty much split for good from the young and the hip. I would just generally rather listen to my old fogies.

Here's another bit of fun from the NME (with its tiny readership)
100 Most Influential Artists
However completely silly it is, there are interesting truths in it. I mean, they asked people and everything! Right now, it's probably true that people making music don't really listen to The Beatles, Stones and Bob Dylan that much. The pantheon doesn't mean what it once did. People find their own influences.

The ones I fell for, even recently, don't really figure (though Rilo Kiley do, oddly). No Wilco or Furries or Walkmen, though there is Beck, Blur and the Strokes.

Aah well, I'm rambling. There is, after years of trying to find a definitive answer, nothing anywhere near a definitive answer, and if there were, I'd be nowhere near the person to find it.

2014 has seen some really good songs and some really good albums, that's my review of the year.

Rather than talk about one, I will just list all of them I've heard so far which I think are worth investing your £10.99 at HMV in. That's how it still works, right?

Gruff Rhys - American Interior
Lykke Li -I Never Learn
Sun Kil Moon - Benji
King Creosote - From Scotland with Love
James Yorkston - The Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society
Manic Street Preachers - Futurology
FKA Twigs - LP1
Mac DeMarco - Salad Days
The War on Drugs - Lost in the Dream
Kate Tempest - Everybody Down
Damon Albarn -  Everyday Robots
Jenny Lewis - The Voyager
James Vincent McMorrow - Post Tropical
St Vincent - St Vincent
Hamilton Leithauser - Black Hours
First Aid Kit - Stay Gold
Elbow - The Take Off and Landing of Everything

Really and truly, I'm glad I bought all of those already and the year's not much more than halfway through. I bet I add at least another 10 to that list by the time the year's out. Long live albums! Long live rock'n'roll for grown-ups.

1996: Wilco: Being There

So, this is the last, alphabetically, of the series of 51 albums from 1963 to 2013. I didn't plan a big bang, but it's nice to end with an album by one of my favourite bands, albeit one of their (slightly) less celebrated albums.

It's not considered an especially important album, but I can certainly make a case for it being quite an important album in the arc which us overly serious rockist music fans and critics adhere to. It's an Americana album from 1996, which was a Britpop year. It's far from the first Americana album, however you use that term. It was made by a band led by the lesser member, Jeff Tweedy, of an influential Americana band, Uncle Tupelo. It was their second album, and the first 'AM' had been pretty underwhelming and shown no great signs of promise, while the career of his bitterly estranged erstwhile colleague Jay Farrar's band, Son Volt, seemed to be going from strength to strength.

Yet it's Wilco now who are one of the most consistently acclaimed bands of the last 20 years, who've been described in terms like "the new REM" and "the American Radiohead".

Looking back, I can say I had an inkling. I had never heard of Wilco, or Jeff Tweedy, or Uncle Tupelo, and I was still very much a Britpop boy, when I received an NME in early 1997 (while overseas) with a large, glowing review of this album (several months after  its U.S release). There was something fishy here. Why was the NME devoting so much space to this unknown American band when we all know they should only really roll out the red carpet for the likes of Mansun and Shed Seven? It seemed anomalous at the time, though looking back, one wonders if some kindly wise journo was saying "All, right, kids, that's enough of the stuff we were into when we were young, this is a little harbinger of what's going to matter to us all when we're adults" ... something like that.

I didn't listen to 'Being There' till two or three years later - it was its follow-up, 'Summerteeth' which really got me into Wilco, after Mercury Rev had really steered me in this new American direction. It's a double album, it's a statement of intent, not entirely consistent in its quality, but it makes its mark.

It's the first song, really. 'Misunderstood'. Like I said, 'AM' is a fairly bland album of unremarkable country-rock with a couple of nice tunes. Looking back, you can say it's the bridge between Uncle  Tupelo and the real Wilco but, at the time, it was largely ignored. Then came, at the start of 'Being There', 'Misunderstood', the quantumest of quantum leaps, a demanding, dark, atmospheric indie-folk-rock epic which presaged the truly great band Wilco were going to turn into. In truth, it fits better on their masterpiece 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot' than it does on this album. It's a hint of the songwriter Tweedy was capable of becoming.

As was the six-minute Side 2 opener, 'Sunken Treasure', mournful in pace but quietly, sadly inspirational in outlook. The album is grounded in these two monster tracks, which are pretty much the only songs from this album I've seen Wilco play live regularly.

Otherwise, there's a little more to get your teeth into in Side 1 than Side 2. In the fly-on-the-wall documentary 'I am Trying to Break Your Heart' about the tough time Wilco had making 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot', you see Tweedy dismissing the likes of 'Outtasite (Outta Mind)' and 'Monday' as "easy rockers", as if he was almost embarrassed by them, but they're top class easy rockers and, significantly, in recent years, as his fire has died down, Wilco albums have more and more easy going, catchy easy rockers, as  if he has accepted his gift for those kind of songs and finally run with it.

There are also several sweet, sweet country ballads, from 'Say You Miss Me' to 'What's the World Got in Store'. The second side is a bit more one-paced, but you can see the intent in making a double album and, for once, the intent overrides the content. Compared at the time to 'Exile on Main Street', this is Wilco expanding their sound, indeed expanding the possibilities of alt-country itself, you could say ushering in a new age of classic American rock, after Britpop had tried (and most would say, failed) to do the same for English rock.

This isn't their best album or the most enjoyable to listen to - if I was grading them, I'd put at least four conclusively above it, but if, like me, you think the best rock music of the last 20 years as mainly been made by groups of middle-aged American men, then this album can take a fair amount of the blame!

I gave Super Furry Animals a 40 song compilation, and I could do the same for Wilco, who, in consistent quality, in combining the old and the new, are America's equivalent. I won't though, as we can't have two winners. So 30 for Wilco ...


Misunderstood
She's a Jar
Jesus, Etc
Hummingbird
You'll Never Know
Candyfloss
Dawned on Me
On and On and On
Ashes of American Flags
I am Trying to Break Your Heart
The Late Greats
Spiders (Kidsmoke)
Sunken Treasure
What Light?
California Stars
I'm a Wheel
I Got You (At the End of the Century)
Reservations
Radio Cure
Say You Miss Me
Impossible Germany
I Might
I Must Be High
Wilco
Hate It Here
Theologians
One Wing
Either Way

Via Chicago
I Got you (At the End of the Century)

1987:Whitney Houston - Whitney

I had this album. Or rather, I borrowed it, aged 11, for an extended period, from a boy called Amit Arora, along with The Beach Boys' 20 Golden Greats, in exchange for 'Utter Madness'. And I admit, I listened to Whitney a lot more than the Wilsons.

This is very much Whitney's imperial era, where nothing was going wrong and nothing looked like going wrong. As far as I can ascertain, there was no absence of genuine acclaim for Whitney Houston in the 1980s even from the so-called serious music press. Back then, she probably occupied territory currently occupied by Beyonce (though even more successful). It was only really with The Bodyguard soundtrack that she became a significantly more polarising figure. If you liked gloopy, warbly power ballads, you'd buy and cherish one of the best selling albums of all time. If not, she came to represent, along with Mariah Carey, something terrible in pop music.

Two of the very biggest icons of modern pop music died at a similar age within a couple of years of each other at a horrendously premature age.  They both (though Jackson a bit more so) straddle the eras between old and new chart pop music, which changed irrevocably in the mid-80s. Both were from old-school royalty, but made r'n'b/pop, not soul, music with very little of a retro edge to it. Of course, Michael Jackson's fame stands alone, but Whitney Houston is really not far behind, and some might argue she's been even more influential on modern chart music.

Every young female with a couple of octaves, a tear just behind the eye and a melisma is "doing a Whitney". I'll say right now I think her influence is pernicious, but I'll also say she's one of the most phenomenal pop singers I've ever heard.

Daughter of singer Cissy Houston, cousin of Dionne Warwick, goddaughter of Darlene Love and "honorary niece" of Aretha Franklin, it's safe to say that Whitney Houston had classic soul running through her. And she'd have been a great soul singer if she'd been born at the right time, just as she'd have been a great R'n'B singer if she's been born a little later. But she was of such an age that she became a star in the late 80s/early 90s, the age of the power ballad and the smoothing of soul into MOR, of dance-pop and key changes. And it's with that sound she'll forever be associated - looking back at it, there's something pretty joyful and awesome about the stuff on 'Whitney' and its predecessor, 'Whitney Houston'. You'd have to be a bit dour not to find some pleasure in the likes of 'I Wanna Dance with Somebody'. And when I was a kid, I can't deny I loved 'One Moment in Time' and even 'The Greatest Love of All'. This oddly earnest, solipsistic, inspirational flood, it was big business.

So, after a 3rd, more urban, album flopped by comparison, she hit even more paydirt with the noise that defines her, the soundtrack to The Bodyguard, and, above all, I Will Always Love You. When people talk about doing a Whitney, they're talking about that extraordinary, unbearable vocal performance (no, that r in the middle of that word is not meant to be a t).

To be fair to Houston, her acrobatics are relatively restrained compared to some of her peers and successors, but has there ever been a song when the listener's been so coerced into feeling something?

I felt nauseated, and that all but finished Whitney Houston as a listenable entity for me, so the fact that, at the end of the decade, when I found myself warming to the even more r'n'b direction she displayed on 'My Love is Your Love' and 'It's Nor Right But It's OK', it was very much a guilty pleasure.

By then, I think, the word was out on Houston's private life. It's something about the horrible nature of a) modern celebrity and b) hard drugs that she went, in public perception. almost overnight from a woman you could never imagine something bad happening to, to a woman whose early doom seemed inevitable.

A ghastly and grim death, after a tour where all reports suggested the flawless voice was completely shot, and, even worse, her death brought this famously maligned pap tribute from UKIP goon Tony Parsehole

Oh well, Whitney Houston. I'm not really a fan, as you can probably tell, so why did I choose to write about her? Because she's one of the most influential artists of all time, because she defined an era of pop, because, in a sense, despite it seeming like everything went right for her, everything went wrong for her. That's obvious. I don't even mean in the obvious sense. I mean, in the narrow way a chap like me looks at it, she comes pretty low on the critical scale, and really that's just an accident of history. Whitney Houston on Motown or Stax, that would have been great. Whitney Houston, as young artist, leading a band like Destiny's Child, that would also be great.

Still, I believe the children are our future ...

Saving All My Love For You
Million Dollar Bill
My Love is Your Love
One Moment in Time
I Wanna Dance With Somebody
I'm Your Baby Tonight
It Isn't, It Wasn't, It Ain't Never Gonna Be - with Aretha Franklin
It's Not Right But It's OK
How Will I Know?
Didn't We Almost Have it All?
Where Do Broken Hearts Go?
The Greatest Love of All

2012: The Walkmen - Heaven

I think I've always had a "favourite band". Though I've listened to hundreds of other things, though Bob Dylan probably is who I rate the highest and have listened to the most, there's always been one band who I'd be able to answer was my favourite for a fairly long period of time.

It goes

Madness (8 to 13, say)
Queen (13 to 15)
The Jam (15 to 18)
Blur (18 to 21)
Super Furry Animals (21 to 25)
Wilco (25 to 31)
The National (31 to 33)
The Walkmen (33 onwards)

Yes, yes, it's obviously an inconsistent tale, I've just been telling you Super Furry Animals win pop music, so they should probably be my No 1 super heroes again, shouldn't they, but, do you know what I mean? From 18 onwards they've been bands who are very much alive, so it is rather to my disappointment that, not all that long after The Walkmen became my favourite band in the whole world, they announced they were taking an "extreme hiatus". Somewhat more cheerily, no sooner had they started this hiatus than they got together again for a charity show, so here's hoping the hiatus isn't too extreme, certainly not as extreme as the Furries or Blurries has been.

But it's the Walkmen I've been listening to above all this last few years. I've been lucky enough to see them on the old festival circuit several times. I'm sure it would be better to see one of their own shows, but seeing them take it to a mid-afternoon slot at a festival, winning new fans along the way, is a pleasure to behold.

They never quite won enough new fans though. They went on for a long time, did plenty of albums, sold a few records, but they'd get to the Top 40 or so in the USA, but they didn't have that big crossover, either instantly, like The Strokes (who they were erroneously compared to early on) or gradually, like The National. The life of the rock band can take various arcs - for the Walkmen and various of their type, they live the life, do the albums, they're really good, then, I suppose, they get to their late 30s with kids etc and it's probably hard to stay on the treadmill in the same way. So along comes the extreme hiatus and then, hopefully, the profitable reunion.

So why didn't the Walkmen get massive? They weren't as glamorous as The Strokes or as handsome, though cooler in a real way - a detached, lived-in, calm, almost patrician cool. They wanted to sound how they sounded, not how would sell records. They generally produced themselves, used vintage instruments, wanted them all to be heard, rather than a dense sound. Their most famous song, The Rat, is one where they let someone else produce it, and they apparently don't like the results themselves. It's too chunky, they say.

I can't say I agree, though I do hear how the sound is slightly different to most of their work. I'm happy with the production on The Rat, though, which I think is, unparalleled, the best four minutes of rock noise ever created, the most perfect unrelenting assault on eardrums from start to finish, an unquenchable exhilaration.

History will consider it so. Trust me. It makes The Ace of Spades, London Calling, Gimme Shelter, all of them, seem a little disappointing.

It's not typical Walkmen though. There's a lot more shade to them. I suppose you'd say they're mainly a winter band, but they can do summer too. Their main weapon is probably the singer, Hamilton Leithauser, with his fabulous powerhouse voice and rather intriguing persona. He plays the tall, privileged jock who doesn't quite believe in himself to perfection. So much of The Walkmen's songs are about winning and the doubt in whether the win will hold. Insecurity is always there.

This album, 'Heaven', looks like being their last, while it was also the first one I anticipated as a bona fide fan of the band. Was I initially a tiny bit disappointed? Did I find it overly stately and mature, did I perhaps think there weren't enough stonkers on it?

Either way, now, now I've been listening to The Walkmen more than pretty much anyone else for the last couple of years, I can say it's got much of their best stuff on it, warm and celebratory, a far cry from The Rat's solitary fury. The title track is one for the ages, a triumphal jangly classic, others to relish are Heartbreaker, We Can't Be Beat (always on about winning!), Song for Leigh, Love is Luck, The Love You Love.

Theirs is a perfectly cultivated brand of thrilling anthemic rock which deserves a lot more than it got, but you rather feel they never really wanted it anyway, they were never willing to reach out and grab more.

The marvellous Hamilton Leithauser (who may live in a lighthouse in New Zealand, but probably not) has just released his first solo album. It's not as good as The Walkmen, but there's some great stuff on it, which I've included on this here compilation ...

Heaven
Juveniles
While I Shovel the Snow
Alexandra - Hamilton Leithauser
Heartbreaker
The Rat
Angela Surf City
We've Been Had
The Love You Love
Thinking of a Dream I Had
Little House of Savages
Song for Leigh
We Can't Be Beat
All the Hands and the Cook
11 O'Clock Friday Night - Hamilton Leithauser
Victory
Stranded
In the New Year

1991: Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque

Interestingly, 1991's album of the year for the American music magazine Spin was not 'Nevermind', but this little piece of work, and Kurt Cobain himself described Teenage Fanclub as the best band in the world, while Liam Gallagher described them, a few years later, as the second best band in the world.

At their best, they made perfect music, almost too perfect. They've made two classic albums, this, their third 'Bandwagonesque' from the grunge era, and their fifth, 'Grand Prix', from the Britpop era. The two albums do sound different, as I'll get to, but neither is really informed by the contemporary trends - they're just thoroughly Teenage Fanclub.

Teenage Fanclub are one of many great Scottish Pop bands, starting from Postcard Records in the early 80s, with Orange Juice, Josef K and Aztec Camera. There's been a constant stream of pure quality since then, a small population punching further above its weight than anywhere else. There isn't as such one unifying sound, but there are quite a few bands informed by the jangly sound of the American west coast but with a uniquely Scottish take on it. Why has Scotland been able to "do" American music so well, so much better than England, in the last few years? Maybe it's just that the accent sounds right. The Scottish accent is just a much more natural medium for melodic rock'n'roll than the English one, in my view. The English are forced to either go total American or go full English in a way that can sound forced or can force you to make something which entirely excludes Americana. Not that there aren't great English bands, but few of the best of them incorporate any sense of America. Mumford and Sons in what happens if you try.

Teenage Fanclub are masters of that jangly, harmonising sound. They also have three equally excellent songwriters, who share the weight. In truth, you can hardly tell between them. Their voices and their songs sound pretty similar.

'Bandwagonesque' has certain similarities to Jesus and Mary Chain in terms of taking the sweet sounds of America but still leaving a bit of fuzz and scuzz on it. 'Grand Prix' is far cleaner. That move to cleanliness often signals the moment where a band stops sounding like its true self and more like a covers band of itself, but 'Grand Prix' is just so damn good, it stays on the right side of that.

It stands with albums like 'The World Won't End' by the Pernice Brothers, 'Lapalco' by Brendan Benson, 'Nashville' by Josh Rouse, 'Free All Angels' by Ash, in being minor but perfect, just as fine a collection of songs as it's possible to imagine that band producing.

I do prefer it to Bandwagonesque, but the earlier album is perhaps more noteworthy, showing a) that the early 90s was far from a musical desert for Britain and that grunge didn't sweep all before it, and b) setting the benchmark for so much of the Scottish Pop that was to follow in the years to come.

The problem Teenage Fanclub have is that they're so good at what they do you can feel like you don't necessarily have to hear all of it. But their ability to produce reliably good songs has remained throughout.
Here's the first of two compilations I'm giving you. The first is Teenage Fanclub - i'm afraid it doesn't veer far from their own Best of.

Ain't that Enough
Baby Lee
The Concept
Verisimilitude
Neil Jung
Sparky's Dream
Tears
I Need Direction
I Don't Want Control of You
Star Sign
Is This Music?
What You Do to Me
Mellow Doubt
Don't Look Back

As a bonus, here is, upon pain of death, an attempt to produce a 20-song Best of Scottish Pop - one song per band - i'll include the Scottish folk but only the folk that is poppy, if you see what I mean.

Ain't That Enough - Teenage Fanclub
Rip it Up - Orange Juice
The First Big Weekend - Arab Strap
The State I Am In - Belle and Sebastian
Oblivious - Aztec Camera
American Trilogy - The Delgados
You're Not One Bit Ashamed - King Creosote
Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken - Camera Obscura
Sunshine on Leith - The Proclaimers
Mid-Air - Paul Buchanan
Barcode Bypass - Mull Historical Society
Party Fears Two - The Associates
Dry the Rain - Beta Band
Velocity Girl - Primal Scream
April Skies - Jesus and Mary Chain
Amsterdam - UNPOC
Floating in the Forth - Frightened Rabbit
Darts of Pleasure - Franz Ferdinand
When I Argue I See Shapes - Idlewild
Flowers in the Window - Travis

Just a fragment, really, and quite a mainstream one. There's so much I've missed.

1992: Take That - Take That and Party

You could say I've set myself a challenge for 1992. I was going to choose 'Automatic for the People' which I think is one of the most complete and perfect albums ever made, but I didn't think I'd be able to do justice to REM and their huge body of work, of which, for the most part, I'm only really a casual fan.

I think I can do justice to Take That and its offshoots without trawling through lots of albums. Call it music snobbery, I think justice will be done.

Which is not to underestimate The That, one of the true phenomena of British pop music. They have never stopped overachieving and surpassing what their critics deemed them capable of. Their sales are vast, their influence is vast, they've even done a few decent songs.

I became aware of them pretty early on. I still remember it. Watching 'The Disney Club' on a Sunday morning in late 1991, presenter Andrea (daughter of Stan) Boardman reading a letter out from a fan saying she loved the new Take That song, could they appear on the show, only for the ruse to be (oh, the japes!) that the letter was from Andrea herself, as she was such a Take That fan, and they then performed their second single and the first to reach the Top 40, 'Promises', live. I was mesmerised by the awkward one with the bizarre spiky peroxide do. I don't remember the others but I'll never forget (ah-ha!) my first sight of Gary Barlow.

'Promises' was one of seven songs on their debut album 'Take That and Party' which went on to be a single - they were pretty ropey but the success grew gradually. I hated them from the start, I thought they were everything that was wrong with pop music. Looking back at my complaints, those were pretty innocent times - "They were put together by a manager!" Well, duh. "They're only successful because they're good looking" In later years, the number of boybands that weren't actually good looking made me long for Take That,"They don't play their own instruments ..." oh, goodness.

They established the boyband template which would haunt us for years to come, but they certainly did it better than anyone else - the talented one (we thought), Gary, the cheeky one, Robbie, the cute one, Mark, the background ones, Howard and Jason. The plan, masterminded by Nigel Martin-Smith, was genius. They toured the schools and they toured the gay clubs, they built a vast fanbase. They weren't just for little girls. Everyone loved them, the kids, their mothers, gay men and (believe me, this is true) the rugby boys in the public schools. They fuckin' loved them!

Take That were a Northern 90s phenomenon - ok, let's look at 90s culture in terms of three Manchester vs London, in all of which Manchester was victorious. Oasis vs Blur, Manchester United vs Arsenal, Take That vs East 17. Perhaps the last seems a bit unequal, but there was an attempt to put Walthamstow's finest on a similar level. They really were a rum bunch, weren't they?

'A Million Love Songs', gloopy monstrosity that it is, was probably the one which made people take notice - major currency was made of the fact Barlow had written it himself. Vocal duties began to be shared around a bit as the Number 1s started coming. I still hated them and refused to see any good. In retrospect, I've kind of worked out why. Call it coincidence, but my feelings softened when the 5 of Take That became 4, split up and was 4 on their re-emergence.

The fifth, the initial departee, Robbie Williams, went on to make melodic pop-rock, often guitar-based, with clear and humorous lyrics and big choruses. People might say to me "you like melodic pop-rock, often guitar-based with clear and humorous lyrics and big choruses, don't you? That must be right up your street". But no, giving proof to the fact that taste in music is about more than genre and sound, the music of Robbie Williams is not the music I like. It's the opposite. Ask me what I like and the truest answer is "Not Robbie Williams, not Lily Allen, not U2". He was really quite an enormous success but I find nothing more unlistenable. Perhaps the main thing is that I find his voice the least believable I've ever heard. I don't believe a word.  (that was a Robbie Williamsesque rhyme). I prefer the Vengaboys.

His belief that in co-writing 'Angels' he'd ascended to the ranks of the great songwriters rankled a little with me at the time, but what do I know? It is the one song that is in the Top 10 songs for both weddings and funerals in the UK. All of us music snobs, that say this or that is just cheap and  trite tat, we should think about that.

Anyway, if I rank my Take Thatters, Robbie's bottom. No great interest in Howard, put off by Barlow's Tory arrogance, so then there's little Mark and Jason of Orange. I suspect that, of the five of them, the one whose songwriting and musical outlook would most appeal to me is Mark's, but golly his voice was always reedy.  And Jason? Yes, he's my favourite. Always was, really. I was outraged on his behalf when, at the 1993 Smash Hits Poll Winners' Party, he was the only Thatter left out of the top 5 of Most Fanciable Male. Really? Beaten by Barlow? The kids are cruel. Jason always seemed like the one who understood the absurdity of all, who reconciled himself to a life of making elegant man-shapes for a living, who learnt guitar and took time out to study. Gratifyingly, Jason's the one whose not a member of the Tax Avoidance Scheme which has tainted their good name in recent times.

Yes, it's a little bit Tainted That at the mo, what with that and a few more personal tabloid tales, but their comeback as a manband is, nevertheless, extraordinary. It was far from a foregone conclusion that they'd come back triumphant, and indeed, nearly every other pop band of their type, whether the Spice Girls, All Saints, East 17, 5ive, Boyzone, who've attempted to follow suit with the big comeback have been met by a big sigh of indifference.

Take That's comeback, like their initial breakthrough, was masterful. There was a documentary, which teased the return of Robbie, in which the four others just seemed really really nice, and then there was the comeback song, the one Barlow had clearly been holding back for just the right time for his big comeback - 'Patience' surely their best song, a proper, grown-up memorable song which has set them up for the next 10 years.

Robbie's come and gone again in the meantime, even contributing to a half-decent single, 'The Flood'. The tale is ongoing,  with a new album on the way - they're the last boyband standing, even though Howard Donald is now closer to 50 than 40.

OK, so here's my compilation.  I've taken into account everything I know by all of them. I can't judge Robbie Williams' songs objectively, i'm sure many of them are really well contructed pop songs, but I just can't stand it. And, you know, for all the praise they get, I only really think there's a small handful of genuinely good songs.

Pray
The Flood
Patience
Babe
Back for Good
Shine
Open Road - Gary Barlow
Rule the World
Candy - Robbie Williams
Four Minute Warning - Mark Owen
Could it be Magic?
A Million Love Songs
Never Forget

1964: The Supremes - Where Did Our Love Go?

That thing I said (in The Smiths post) about finding it harder to revere artists who were around as you were growing up has a slightly different version, and that's to do with the stars of the 60s during the 1980s. Bear in mind that the 80s were to the likes of McCartney, Harrison, Dylan, Diana Ross as nowadays is to the likes of Damon Albarn, Liam Gallagher and Mariah Carey. And they initially all seemed like slightly rubbish people of the present rather than legends of yesteryear. My first experience of Paul McCartney was The Frog Chorus, my first experience of Diana Ross was a cheesy power ballad called 'When You Tell Me That You Love Me'.

And it doesn't help that a lot of music criticism, even after you realise that The Supremes were basically the 2nd biggest singles band of the 60s and that Diana Ross has sung several of the most perfect songs that ever existed, is a little sniffy about her. They'll say that Martha Reeves was a better  singer, that other members of The Supremes were better singers, that she was lucky to get all the good songs and make insinuations about how she got  to be the star. As if those songs would be better if other people had sung them. And what with all those rubbish power ballads of the 80s and 90s and that terrible penalty at the 1994 World Cup, I believed the doubters for a long time.

Some people would still say Kelly Rowland was a better singer than Beyonce.

Others may have more range, more power, but Diana Ross was a great pop star and a wonderful singer. There's something really rather bizarre about her, isn't there, the way she carried herself, even 50 years ago, like a refined little old lady, the articulation, the catch in the light but still strong voice. I just ended up hearing too many great songs sung by Diana Ross to doubt her talents.

So, here's this album, then, never really seen at the top of Greatest Albums Lists. Because Motown were a singles label, right, and The Supremes were a singles band. 'Where Did Our Love Go?', as an album, includes several of their most famous songs. I was expecting the rest to be watered-down filler, but actually, no, there's real range and variety and there's not a bad song on the album. The most famous songs are the title track and Baby Love, followed by Come See About Me, but then there's Run Run Run and A Breathtaking Guy, Your Kiss of Fire and When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes. Everyone a winner! Songs written by Holland-Dozier-Holland, or Smokey Robinson, or Norman Whitfield. No drop off in quality.

Yes, yes, it has a little compilation feel to it, as some of the singles had already come out, but how's that different from The Strokes' debut or even, say, What's the Story, Morning Glory?

I'm asked the question before - what is it with so few soul albums being seen as great albums by the rock music press. They love the singles, but seem to set a higher standard for soul albums. Great rock and punk albums can just be great collections of songs without some great theme, but a soul album seems to need to be as deep as Songs in the Key of Life or What's Going On.  Incidentally, the latter has far fewer distinctly memorable songs than Where Does Our Love Go?

There hasn't really been anything else like Motown in the history of pop music, there have been prolifically successful songwriters for a while, and studios, like Stock Aitken Waterman, who hit a winning formula for a while, but the sheer numbers of Motown hits in the 60s which both achieved massive success at the time and are still seen as unique classics to this day is astonishing.

The Supremes were its biggest stars, just about, though there were plenty of great songs to go round. They had 12 US Number 1s, and some of the ones that didn't become big hits in the UK, like love Child and I Hear a Symphony,  are the best of the lot. There are a few Diana Ross tracks on the compilation too - my absolute favourite vocal performance is on 'I'm Gonna Make You Love Me', a duet with The Temptations, which has really become one of my favourite records.

I Hear a Symphony
Ain't No Mountain High Enough - Diana Ross
I'm Gonna Make You Love Me - The Supremes and The Temptations
Love Child
You Are Everything - Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross
Reflections
Run, Run, Run
You Can't Hurry Love
Come See About Me
Chain Reaction - Diana Ross
I'm Still Waiting - Diana Ross
You Keep Me Hangin' On
Stop! In the Name of Love
Baby Love
A Breathtaking Guy
Where Did Our Love Go?

1999: Guerrilla Part 2

I realised that my main post on this album was rather taken up with trying to prove that Gruff Rhys was a genius and very little about 'Guerrilla' itself and my experience of it. Rather a shame, as it's so tied up with a particular time for me, and I so thoroughly experienced it as a single entity, that it's a good opportunity to talk about that phenomenon, which has been increasingly hard to find with the digitization of music.

So, let me set the scene. The album was released in the summer of 1999, preceded by the single 'Northern Lites'. I hadn't, in fact, been totally and utterly sold on the Furries before that point, but I loved 'Northern Lites'. If any Furries track was to be a massive hit, it was this one, but it stalled at Number 11. The next single, 'Fire in my Heart' came out in August 1999 and was really just as good, a beautiful harmony-laden circular torch song, one of the sweetest, straightest songs the Furries ever did, which again stalled in the charts far short of its deserved position.

I was finally ready to embrace the Furries wholeheartedly as I returned to St Andrews University for my third year, taking up residence in a shared house, 7 Baker Lane.

Aah, Baker Lane. The name sends shivers through all who knew it. I lived there with friends Alex and John. Finding a flat/house in St Andrews was a bit of a circus, always conducted the previous February, as there were only so many good ones to go round. John, Alex and I had agreed to rent with another fellow named Richard Smith, and even reached an agreement on a lovely 4-bedroom house on North Street, only for Smith to mysteriously duck out at the very last minute. Ah Smith.

So, we three kings of mirth were stuck needing to find a three-bed place when pretty much everything had already been taken, and all we could find was 7 Baker Lane. It was central - check! A house - super! Picturesque - mmm! It had a piano - luverly, and a garden - sweeet! It had two bedrooms, both the size of cupboards -hmmm. One of them had bunk beds - ah. It had no central heating - eek.  It was next door to a mad alcoholic with a mad cat - oooh. Baker Lane, remember the name.

Baker Lane was formerly known as Baxter's Wynd, it was a little alley between two of the town's main road. We got a lot of walking traffic going past. Before winter kicked in, it was a place of revelry. We had an open plan downstairs and we all spent most of our time there with the stereo on, so listening to the same stuff. Alex would impose the likes of Macy Gray, Shelby Lynne and Lauryn Hill on us, I had a bizarre affection for twee-indie no-hopers Ooberman, John would restore order and find universal approval with Belle and Sebastian and, above all, the Super Furry Animals. And above all, Guerrilla.

We really did revel. We ate, drank and made merry, had friends round, had parties - it was as good a version of dissolute, wasted decadence as we could muster. All soundtracked by our Furry Friends. Early in the morning to late into the night. Not necessarily the way to endear yourself to a mad alcoholic next door with a mad cat.

'Guerrilla' is rather a disconcerting album - it squelches and stutters, beauty follows torture, absurdity follows grace, you never really know where you stand with it. Baker Lane was a disconcerting place in a way - statistically one of the lowest ranked places in St Andrews, it was cold and dingy and squalid, but we loved it. I hear the album and my senses fill up - the cold, the smell, the dust, the laughs.

It was the first Furries album I listened to repeatedly and the first I bought. I think there are stronger, more consistent works elsewhere - its predecessor, 'Radiator' is an astonishingly consistent and imaginative work. 'Guerrilla' has several songs which are ideas but not exactly  full songs, like 'Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home') and 'Chewing Chewing Gum' - it's the sound of some kind of madness. The childlike refrains bounce out at me, almost haunt me. Honestly, if I'd bought the album now, there would have been lots of tracks I'd have skipped, I'd have stuck with, say, Citizen's Band, Do or Die, Turning Tide, Northern Lites, Night Vision, The Teacher, Fire in My Heart, Keep the Cosmic Trigger Happy. But the point is, I'd have been poorer for it. It's the squelches and the creeping oddities which stick with me, which bring back the memories, which make 'Guerrilla' not just the work of a band I like, there for me to assess, but a part of my life and memories.

These days, I still listen to loads of music, and I try to give whole albums a reasonable chance, but I get to listen to music in a controlled, sanitised, environment and I'll inevitably start skipping to the good ones pretty soon if the weird ones don't grab me. Life's too short. Isn't it?

1999: Super Furry Animals - Guerrilla

It seems there's a winner. I didn't expect there to be a winner when I started this, and if I had, I certainly wouldn't have expected it to be this particular act, which - though I've never lost the love for them - I haven't really listened to all that much in the last few years.

But, in the process of listening to everything I intend to write about for a few weeks in advance, it became very clear to me - Gruff Rhys and the Super Furry Animals win! They win pop. They win rock'n'roll. They win the Song Contest.  Sorry Bob Dylan, sorry Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney and David Bowie, you can all go home now.

Whaaaaaat, you say? Just like that. Without word of explanation? Of course there'll be a few words of fatuous, unrigorous explanation, fear not, I won't let you down.

I should probably have come in a little lower and you'd be on board. If I'd suggested that SFA were the finest Welsh tuneful indie-rock combo of the post-Britpop era, you'd almost certainly agree, unless you classify the Stereophonics as tuneful ... but, try as I might to deny it, I think more than that. I compare the Furries to The Beatles and I think they're better. I compare Gruff to Damon and I think he's more eclectic, imaginative and masterful. I compare them to Wilco and think they're more consistent. I compare them to Joni Mitchell and they tell me more about the world, more that I trust and believe in. Gruff Rhys and his buddies are a joyful gift to the world which far too little of the world knows about.

What really gives the lie to my grand statement is, of course, success. Success, whether in sales or influence, means something in popular music. The Super Furry Animals have not, by the way, sold as many records as the Beatles. Or as Ed Sheeran. Or The Stereophonics. And how much have they influenced ... not all that much. But it's kind of hard to be influenced by a band who does absolutely everything and does it brilliantly. Easier to be influenced by a one-note, one concept act like the Libertines or The Strokes. Oh yeah, the Libertines and The Strokes, they're so influential ...

Having said that, they hardly wallowed in complete obscurity and do hold a chart record of their own, albeit a slightly unwelcome one, which is the longest run of Top 40 hits which didn't make the Top 10. That says a lot really. It says they're a band which could do singles, which sought success, which maintained a high standard of likeability, which fans stuck with, but that they never quite compromised enough to do anything which "the masses" cottoned on to. Probably their most famous single is 'The Man Don't Give a Fuck'  - never going to get all that much airplay ...

Why else didn't they become wildly successful? Yes, they were too offbeat, Gruff's voice is not as such a pop voice, they were always five men who didn't look like pop stars, past the first flush of youth. Gruff Rhys is himself the most striking-looking but he does speak English ... in the most .... unusual way ... that it was probably .... quite  hard work ... having him on ... TV shows  ... selling his wares.

Why else? Because there is no stand-out moment in their career, because music journalists had no  option but to be a little complacent about their mastery. Another great Furries album, the story went. Where's the story?

Their first five English language albums are almost faultless. That's why they win pop. I listen to them all, all the way through, and I find them almost faultless more than anything else in the history of pop music. Relentless tunes, more per song than most people manage in a career, brilliant ideas, humour, every genre effortlessly blended in - soft rock, prog rock, techno, calypso, punk, folk, hard rock, close harmony, sampling, Americana, country, tropicalia, balladry, Nick Drakey instrumental, Spiritualizedy instrumental - it is all there and not in a showy, aren't we clever way. They just could do it all and make it sound great. Within that time,  they also released two of the greatest stand-alone singles of all time, The Man Don't Give a Fuck and  Ice Hockey Hair, which distils all their genius into 7 minutes, a great album of b-sides and extras, and, of course, a fine Welsh-language album that made the Top 20 and was mentioned in parliament.

Gruff is like a seer, or an alchemist - his songs so full of complex, bold ideas boiled down to something funny and palatable. As a lyricist, his propensity for humour perhaps sees him underestimated, but his skill for setting words to  music is unquestionable. Even a simple line like "I really need to get some energy in me" from Fuzzy Birds, the way he uses it to propel the song forward count as great lyricism for me. I wonder if another reasons why the Furries are underrated is their iconography - the wonderful illustrations of Pete Fowler are so tied in with their sound, it is possible to view SFA as almost a cartoon band. Like Stevie Wonder, there is so much bright colour in the music, it can almost be overwhelming. Oh, the Furries, they're fun ... like the Coen Brothers ... not weighty enough ... nonsense ...

I described those first five albums as "almost" faultless. There are perhaps two major faults I identify in their career path, both at the time when major label stardom was closest, when signed to the label Epic. Their two albums within that period, Rings Around the World and Phantom Power, are a tiny bit undervalued compared to the first three. To me, they're amongst their strongest, but 'Rings' begins, oddly, with two of its least catchy songs,  and the lead single of 'Phantom Power', 'Golden Retriever',  is the weakest of their career for me, just too obvious a steal from 'Son of my Father'. It's their Roll With It moment. I have come to love everything else on Phantom Power. Everything. It's also Gruff Rhys' favourite.

That's the thing with the Furries - listen back to the songs you've forgotten from the albums you've forgotten and they'll blow you away with their tuneful lushness or rocking power - 'Out of Control' from Phantom Power, 'Bass Tuned to DEAD' from Radiator, 'Helium Hearts' from Dark Days/Light Years. The list goes on.

This here album, the one I'm writing about, is 'Guerrilla', their third English-language album, the one that actually really got me into them in a big way, never off the stereo for a couple of years at university. Perhaps, critically, just, the most acclaimed, though there's not much in it. Personally, now, it's my 3rd or 4th favourite, but that is personal - the slight mentalness of the second half with all its squelches was wonderful at the time for drunken students but less so now.

But the album is still such a rich gift - Gruff Rhys has said he hates to write songs which lure audiences in with poignancy, yet this album contains a couple of true beauties, Turning Tide and Fire in My Heart, the faultless Northern Lites, Do or Die, Keep the Cosmic Trigger Happy and, the special treat, Citizen's Band as a hidden track, which is almost as good as anything else on the album. It's quite a disconcerting album, really, it's still got the tint of madness to it. If they lost anything as they got older, it was that.

I found the album inspiring, genuinely inspiring, the seriousness and coherence of ideas,  the virtuosity all wrapped in the cloak of humour. They're never trying to persuade or manipulate you into liking them, they're just entertaining you on your own terms.

I've seen articles writing Gruff off as a dope-addled joker but, hell, like, say Gram Parsons or Damon Albarn,  he hasn't half kept up a prodigious work rate. This has carried on into his increasingly tremendous solo work, where he has really found his feet on the last couple. He is a true renaissance man, a cross-media master, has been for years - albums come with DVDs or films, books, travelogues, apps. He has become the world expert on the subject of his latest solo album (the masterful 'American Interior'), John Evans. And all the time, the tunes keep coming. Such a great ballad man for someone who tries not to write poignancy songs.

There  was a waning of the Furries. It began with 'LoveKraft' and carried on through 'Hey Venus!' and 'Dark Days/Light Years'. I did not like LoveKraft at the time, hated the fact that songwriting duties were being shared round, that they'd slowed things down tried to make a lusher album. Listening to it recently, it's much much better than I remembered - it was a change, but it holds up. Not their greatest, but a worthy addition to their canon.

'Hey Venus!' and 'Dark Days/Light Years' less so, sadly.  They are both albums made by a band trying to recapture some element of its identity, not sure of itself. 'Hey Venus!' is POP Furries, look, we can still do tunes, 'Dark Days/Light Years!' is jamming heavy rock Furries, too loose and casual. To be honest, it was probably mainly a brief dip in Gruff's own songwriting mojo. It happens. He's got it back now. Will he ever bring it back to the Furries? I hope so. Those are decent albums but you'd want something more to be left with.

I once came across a guy who hated the Furries - he was a massive twat and he was a massive fan of The Killers. Apart from that, I've been lucky to spend time with other people who love them, and am slightly baffled that anyone who really paid any attention wouldn't.

I enjoyed reading all  the cooler-than-cool Pitchfork reviews of them. Pitchfork is often very sniffy about substandard British acts.  Not the Furries, of course Furries Reviews

Because Gruff and the Furries are the winners, I've indulged myself (and them) by giving them a 40-son compilation, just to show how many good ones there are - i've taken them from every part of Gruff's career. Nothing ... nothing ... beats this.

American Interior - Gruff Rhys

Northern Lites

Chupacabras

Helium Hearts

Calimero

Ymaelodi A'r Ymylon

Demons

Atomik Lust

I Told Her on Alderaan- Neon Neon

Something 4 the Weekend

If We Were Words, We Would Rhyme - Gruff Rhys

She's Got Spies

God! Show Me Magic

Bad Behaviour

Out of Control

Fuzzy Birds

Hometown Unicorn

The Undefeated

Sex, War and Robots

Presidential Suite

Now that the Feeling Has Gone - Gruff Rhys

Liberty Belle

Citizen's Band

The Last Conquistador - Gruff Rhys

Run, Christian, Run

The Turning Tide

Keep the Cosmic Trigger Happy

Hello Sunshine

Fire in My Heart

Hermann Loves Pauline

Run-Away

Mountain People

Slow Life

Venus and Serena

Walk into the Wilderness - Gruff Rhys

Christopher Columbus - Gruff Rhys

It's Not the End of the World

Ice Hockey Hair

The Man Don't Give a Fuck

For Now and Ever

1994: Suede - Dog Man Star

I've seen Brett Anderson doing his thing up on stage twice, both times in front of tens of thousands of people. The first time was on the main stage at Benicassim in 2006 as frontman of the short-lived band The Tears, his reunion with erstwhile Suede partner Bernard Butler. The second time was as frontman of the reformed Suede headlining Latitude in 2011. I'd been told (by a big fan of the band, which I myself am not) that the reformed Suede was a joy to behold, would blow my cynicism away, and it was to an extent. They rocked it. The Tears, on the other hand, did not, and I heard an awful lot of people,  as they ploughed through their one - mediocre - album, shouting "Play some fuckin' Suede". Brett Anderson, with his rock star moves, seemed defiantly ridiculous. He might have seemed just so ridiculous fronting Suede, except I allowed myself to buy into the idea of Brett Anderson rock star  because I liked a lot of the songs enough, and it was great.

Suede were the first of those bands, those major bands of the 90s, who really broke through, even to kids like me without much of a music taste in 1992/3. I knew about them and knew they were the great hope of British music. They were the Paul Gascoigne of the whole thing, if you will, while Blur and Oasis were the Alan Shearer and David Beckham ... if you will. Brett Anderson, to me, is one of the most nonsensical characters in music, buzzing with insecurity and self-importance and utterly undisguised envy and weak bravado. But, you know, he's done all right for himself. Despite the fact that the Tears were so hopeless,  most people, including me, think that Bernard Butler supplied Anderson with a magic he would never recapture.

Butler was kicked out of the band at the end of sessions for their second album 'Dog Man Star'. Suede have since (including a large hiatus) completed four albums without him, the first of which 'Coming Up' was actually very successful, but they have really not been the same band since. They're the perfect example of the band that starts to sound like a covers band of themselves, where the magic is intangibly (or, actually, sometimes, fairly tangibly) lost. It's not always disastrous, not exactly, it can be fine, but it's all too clean, too self-conscious. Think Wilco's 'Wilco', Spiritualized's 'Let it Come Down', Furries' 'Hey Venus', Belle and Sebastian's 'The Life Pursuit'.

What Suede lost was obvious. They lost their great musical talent - no one has ever denied that. Butler has had success in numerous fields since then, and, actually, if you ask me who I'd rather see reform to make a new album, it would be McAlmont and Butler, not Anderson and Butler.

Although Anderson and Butler really did work well for a while, there's no denying that. Now, and at the time, their eponymous debut and 'Dog Man Star' were both considered classics - this seedy, narcotic Londony take on the Smiths and Bowie. I never know with Brett Anderson if he's in on any of the joke - when he sings " you're tie-king me eau-va" on The Drowners, sure, he knows he's pronouncing the words oddly and doing that on purpose, but he does he really know how silly it is, that the magic comes from the silliness above all? He probably does, but i'm never quite sure. Still, what a song ...

Their best songs, though, for me, are on Dog Man Star, a massive, sweeping, elegant, dangerous album, and the album that suggests that if they'd stuck together, well, they really could have been something. It's the one act of Suede I still hold in the highest regard - I like the first album, I really don't rate anything post-Butler, I just think it's weak, plinky plonky, trite and boring. I think Dog Man Star's great. It's not like it's been on my stere-eau by the nuclear maotorway for the last twenty years, but, you know, I like it.

The one I always loved was The Wild Ones - really beautiful.  I remember it was on the same Top of the Pops as End of a Century - to be honest, from that point on, Suede were a defeated enemy and I was all about Blur. Dog Man Star was not a massive commercial success and no wonder Anderson was seething. He thought he was creating a definitive masterpiece and who stole his thunder? The dick who stole his girlfriend.

It's interesting how the three, or let's say four, guitar heroes of English indie all had their alliances with charismatic frontmen severed and how all fared afterwards. Morrissey and Marr, Brown and Squire, Anderson and  Butler, Albarn and Coxon - how interestingly similar all those relationships are, with the Albarn/Coxon one being slightly different in that it was always known that Albarn was the main musical talent and would be fine one his own, whereas Morrissey, Brown and Anderson actually all did a bit better without their foil than many thought they would.

Anyway, I'm rambling because I'm watching Spain-Chile (what of the severed alliance of Xavi-Iniesta?) - Dog Man Star is an album out of time, forgotten in a sense, though enough people comment on its forgotten state so as to make it unforgotten. It's pretty brilliant, rather like The Bends; some of the best songs are the non-singles, it's instantly evocative and without filler.

It's born of conflict, tension, drama, decadence and ambition, and I've never been in a recording studio but it is fascinating to consider the elements that create magic and those that don't. A lot of the mythology of rock'n'roll seems to have a large grain of truth to it.

Anyway, here's a compilation of the works of the members of Suede - sorry, I do love a bit of McAlmont and Butler, I really do.

Introducing the Band
The Wild Ones
The Drowners
Animal Nitrate
Yes - McAlmont and Butler
New Generation
Metal Mickey
Stay Together
Refugees - The Tears
I'm Not Alone - Bernard Butler
So Young
You Do - McAlmont and Butler
Stay - Bernard Butler
My Insatiable One
Black or Blue
Trash
Bring it Back - McAlmont and Butler
It Starts and Ends With You

1976: Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life

There was really just one summer of Stevie Wonder for me. Or so it seems, looking back. 2000. And I think, just as soon as it started, it was over.  I think maybe it was being disappointed by the two lesser albums from his "golden period", Music of My Mind and Fulfillingness' First Finale, or maybe it was hearing one too many slightly clumsy lyric - "just like a haystack needle", "was for Christmas what would be my toy" etc. I've listened to Stevie Wonder since then, but not with such fervour ever again. I know those songs, love the songs, but the albums, the three great albums, 'Talking Book', 'Innervisions' and 'Songs in the Key of Life' are not "go-to" albums for me.

Which is a shame for me, as they're brilliant, imaginative, influential, rich, joyful, eclectic, thought-provoking, without direct comparison. Stevie Wonder's early-70s is surely one of the very greatest prolonged creative spurts in the history of popular music, alongside Bob Dylan's mid-60s and not much else for consistency and prolificness.

Songs in the Key of Life was the culmination of this - almost 40 years ago. Incredibly (even though it was itself considered a long delayed album), this was his fifth studio album in four years, and in the time since he has only completed five more full studio albums (notwithstanding film soundtracks and such like). It's not true to say it's all been cack since then - there's plenty to like on Hotter than July, from 1980, but it is safe to say that Stevie spent the vast majority of his creative juices in that period.

Though it's not like he'd been quiet before then. As a Motown child prodigy, he'd released several hit albums in his teens, though not breaking too far from the Motown blueprint. It was in the early 70s, tentatively with 'Where I'm Coming From', then with 'Music of My Mind' that he seized control of his career and wrote himself into music history.

Listening to Stevie's most famous 60s hits next to his 70s work, though I'm normally a gigantic fan of the simple Motown magic compared to 70s MOR, smooth soul/funky jams etc, you can't help but hear the quite enormous leap he made. It really is the leap from black and white to colour, it's as simple as that.

Colour. Has there ever been an artist whose music is so associated with colour as Stevie Wonder? I've never considered myself the slightest bit synaesthetic, but listening to these albums, the colour bursts into my ears, like Pet Sounds, like the Furries, like Joanna Newsom, not like the Strokes or Otis Redding or The Smiths - don't get me wrong, a lot of the greatest films are black and white, but Stevie Wonder's music of the 70s is kaleidoscopic, technicolor, that's just how it is.

It's explicit in some of his greatest songs and greatest lyrics too (for all that there was the very occasional clumsy lyric, he was really a tremendous writer of beautiful words), from 'Golden Lady' to the glorious 'Visions' - "I'm not one who makes believe, I know that leaves are green, They only change to brown when autumn comes around". You don't need me to point out the poignancy.

'Songs in the Key of Life' is the big one, the final statement from a great artist's greatest period. You rather make yourself a hostage to fortune with a title like that. Does this immense double album live up to its premise? I've never quite been sure.

Its critical standing is unquestioned as is the fact that it was also a phenomenal commercial success. There are enough people who know what they're talking about who consider it their favourite album of all time, but perhaps for me the streamlined perfection and poignancy of Innervisions is preferable.

I've never quite got on board with the second half, never been entirely sold on 'As' (perhaps the problem was that I heard George Michael and Mary J Blige do it before Stevie) or Isn't She Lovely, found Black Man a little cheesy, gave up on Another Star a little way through too often. Perhaps this is carping,  and perhaps indicative of the fact that, as I fell out with Stevie Wonder after the summer of 2000 passed, I didn't then accept Songs in the Key of Life on its own terms, and it was hence permanently etched in my mind as a glorious failure.  I've recently listened to the ones that were a turn-off all those years ago, like Summer Soft, Have a Talk With God, and Ngiculela, and just thoroughly enjoyed them.

And anyway, the first half contains, in order, Sir Duke, I Wish, Knocks Me Off My Feet, Pastime Paradise. Ridiculous.

Still, I wonder if I will keep on listening to Stevie Wonder and Songs in the Key of Life now, after their recent forced rediscovery.  Or will I just move on to the next one in alphabetical order and leave him behind again? I think it's more likely to be Talking Book and Innervisions that keep me interested, to be honest, and perhaps I have unfinished business with Music of My Mind and Fulfilingness' First Finale, which I bought from King Creosote for a fiver each in September 2000 when my Wonderlust was already on the wain, and never really believed in. There are no songs from those two albums on this wonderful compilation of Stevie Wonder, which, if I were using it to soundtrack the goings-on of a friend of mine, I'd call 'Songs in the Life of Key'. Oh.

Sir Duke
All In Love is Fair
Knocks Me Off My Feet
For Once in My Life
Blame it on the Sun
He's Misstra Know-it-All
Visions
Saturn
Livin' for the City
I Believe When I Fall in Love With You It Will Be Forever
Superstition
I Wish
Master Blaster
As
You are the Sunshine of My Life
Uptight (Everything's All Right)
Happy Birthday to You
Tomorrow Robins Will Sing
Signed, Sealed,  Delivered
Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing

1986: The Smiths - The Queen is Dead

This is, according to the NME's thoroughly put together and extensive list in late 2013, the Greatest Album of All Time.

OK, that's not the stupidest thing I've ever heard. There are plenty worse. There are few others with such marvellous moments throughout. It's an album with at least 6 stone cold classics. And bathos can be a good thing. I like bathos well applied.  But there are few such balefully bathetic moments as this album's low points.

Anyway, Morrissey. Morrissey and Marr. The severe dalliance. Or severed alliance. Everyone says Johnny Marr's a cool dude and everyone says he's one of the most wonderful guitar players too. That's never in doubt. Morrissey's a more controversial figure. Because he often seems such a bellend, it's quite hard to deal with.

Morrissey is, sort of, massively famous. Or at least, if he's in your sphere, he's massively famous. Broadsheet journalists write about him as if he's Michael Jackson. But he's, oddly, not actually that famous or successful. Were we to construct a list of acts who've sold more records than Morrissey, we'd probably find all kinds of irrelevances like Level 42 and Herman's Hermits and The Stereophonics there. The Smiths, though sometimes called their generation's Beatles, never had a Number 1 album and hardly had any Top 10 hits. It's a large, large cult, but no more.

I go back to my childhood to understand that. Watching Top of the Pops growing up, The Smiths, then Morrissey solo, were on it all the time with the some Number 14 single or uth-aa. And I couldn't stand it, I thought he was weird and it was always a tuneless racket.

[Incidentally, does anyone else have that, where if you grow up listening to bands before your taste is fully developed, and then it turns out they're kind of critically acclaimed, it's much harder to fully appreciate them. That's my excuse with bands like REM, New Order and U2. Well, my excuse with U2 is that they're awful, obviously. Also, incidentally, did anyone else, when they were little get the bands, all the British bands, confused. Look - Simply Red, Simple Minds, Dire Straits, U2, UB40, Level 42 - I could not tell any of them apart till about 1991.]

Anyway, getting back to The Smiths (who I confused with the Housemartins, I think), to be honest, even as I got older and listened to them on Virgin Radio or whatever, I really wasn't sold, I didn't hear much in the way of tunes. It took buying this here album in 1998 or 99 to really get it.

Once I got it, like many others, I instantly fell for it big time. Suddenly I understood what everyone had been going on about. My oh my, I Know It's Over, where's that been all my life? Then I heard Vicar in a Tutu, Never Had No one Ever and, mainly, Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others. Johnny Marr has tactfully said he prefers the music on that song to the lyrics. There are 10 songs on this album, and how can it be the greatest album of all time with two duds and one abomination. I'll ignore those songs for the rest of the time and treat 'The Queen is Dead' as a 7-track masterpiece.

The Smiths did have a perfect short career where they never released anything substandard - the first is pretty good, Meat is Murder is pretty fantastic and gets better the more you listen to it (though I hate the title track), Hatful of Hollow and Louder than Bombs are both tremendous compilations, The Queen is Dead is the zenith for most, though both protagonists cite Strangeways Here We Come as their favourite.

All great stuff, great iconography. No wonder our forebears in those dark 1980s fell so hard for them. The seven songs on 'The Queen is Dead' which I don't hate are the fearsome, funny title track, the beautiful I Know It's  Over, the super-hilarious and cutting Frankly Mr Shankly, the marvellous central tunefest of Cemetry Gates, Bigmouth Strikes Again and The Boy With the Thorn  His Side, and then, of course, There is a Light That Never Goes Out, which is better than most things ever.

Getting back to the puzzle of Morrissey, I've seen him just the once, second on the bill at Benicassim, I think to Franz Ferdinand (who were great, by the way).

It was kind of great, a thrill to start with, he played loads of good songs up front and then he actually played There is a Light ... and it felt like a profound life moment, and then he gave some shit patronising chat, played a few dodgy songs and it all kind of drifted and we got the beers in and waited for the headliner. For a noted wit, a lot of his chat is so lame. He has to live up to his idea of himself, and nearly always fails to, that's what I think.

Anyway, Morrissey's solo career has actually had several really great moments, I'll give him that, he's clearly a capable songwriter in his own right, but listening back to the Smiths as I've been doing lately, I really do appreciate the artistry of Johnny Marr. He's had a really good career himself, doing the job in all manner of bands and always making them better, but you do wonder if he might have done more, his arranging and compositional skill seems so vast.

Anyway, this is my compilation, it's the Smiths and Morrissey and would include anything Johnny Marr took the lead one, but nothing quite makes it.


The Headmaster Ritual
How Soon is Now?
The Boy With the Thorn in His Side
I Know It's Over
Irish Blood, English Heart - Morrissey
Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want
That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
Cemetry Gates
First of the Gang to Die - Morrissey
Well I Wonder
The Queen is Dead
This Charming Man
Everyday is Like Sunday - Morrissey
The More you Ignore Me, The Closer I Get - Morrissey
Suedehead - Morrissey
William it was Really Nothing
Panic
Bigmouth Strikes Again
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
There is a Light That Never Goes Out

1968: Simon & Garfunkel - Bookends

There's a tendency from music critics to revise history by saying "You know, it wasn't actually the most super-successful album by this legendary act that was the best, it was the second most successful one that was the best" (a bit like, though the opposite of, always choosing the second cheapest bottle of wine at a fancy restaurant, which is, of course, what everybody does).

So, Revolver, Off the Wall, Talking Book, Hunky Dory, Definitely Maybe etc all fall into that category, as, I often find, does 'Bookends'. This is a more complete, fulfilling work than Bridge Over Troubled Water, they say.  Is it?

Let's not underestimate how phenomenally successful Bridge Over Troubled Water was - before Thriller, it was the bestselling album of all time. It was the last album of S and G's relatively short spell at the top. They split, people suppose, because Simon didn't think he needed Garfunkel and was constrained by the process. Fair enough, he's hardly flopped on his own, though, for me, everything he has done since has not lived up to the best of the Garfunkular era. Though Simon sang lead on the majority of songs even in S and G, it's somehow Garfunkel's voice which is more memorable and Paul Simon's (forgive me if you disagree) suffers for being a little monochrome. Perhaps it's no accident that the most successful work of his solo career surrounded him with many other wonderful voices.

Together, they made beautiful music. Undoubtedly. Despite that vast success and the accomplishment of the work, you do hear Simon complaining that he doesn't quite receive the acclaim of his most lauded peers (Dylan, Cohen, Mitchell, let's say). Hard to say, really. Paul Simon is probably more successful than all of them but I certainly don't think he's come up with as many memorable songs as Bob Dylan. Maybe that's the monochrome voice again. And maybe it's that thing which critics of the band will say that it's just a bit ... prissy, a bit pleased with itself, a bit church group.

That's the criticism. That's countered by how beautiful, exemplary, imaginative, progressive and utterly well-crafted their finest songs are. I do think there is too large a gap between their best work and their second tier songs though. I think that's true on  both 'Bookends' and 'Bridge Over Troubled Water'. America, Overs, Old Friends in succession on Bookends, this could be a masterpiece, but then Fakin' It and Punky's Dilemma are, for me, forgettable. Likewise Cecilia, Baby Driver, Why Don't You Write Me amongst one or two others on 'Bridge Over Troubled Water'. Hey, it's just like, my opinion, man.

So I must say I'm a little underwhelmed by Bookends on giving it the most considered listens I ever have. The songs I love on it I already knew inside out - America and Old Friends/Bookends are wonderful - I'd say America is their greatest song - and others like Mrs Robinson and Hazy Shade of Winter are great too. Everything else is good, but you know, pretty light, don't you think?

It certainly shows the duo (or Simon), moving on from the folk sound, the first noise of Save the Life of My Child is pretty aggressive and there are all kinds of lovely production touches - this was never really a band capable of rocking, so this gives a very account of what they're capable of.

I think it's meant to have a bit of a "life cycle" theme to it, but I'm not particularly sure how well that fits together, in particular the second half.

I also noticed while writing this how much i've concentrated on the major American stars when it comes to the late 60s/early 70s - Dylan, Young, Cohen, Mitchell, Simon, Redding (and a few others) have all had their turn, but what of Jagger, Townshend, Davies, Barrett etc. i've just read a book about just that period in the history in British music, the "madmen" who took it past the summer of love and into the darker waters of the next decade. It's fascinating, but for the most part I don't buy it - I don't believe in the genius of Pete Townshend, or Ray Davies - I've never ever found any of their concept albums anything but absurd - give me The Best of the Who/Kinks any day, and even that begins to sag a little when you get to the likes of Plastic Man. [This implies, reading it back, that I don't like the Kinks or think they're one of the most important bands in all music, which isn't quite true. I do love them, and they were important, but I just haven't got into all that much of what they did after the late 60s, despite trying]/

I do think those pesky Americans took it all to the next level around that time, certainly in terms of melodic, literate pop/rock. Britain still had the biggest bands of the early 70s - Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and, a little later, Queen, but I do think the great British artists of the 60s never really found the spark to the full extent again.

But still, saying that, I appreciate that when it comes to that period, mine's a pretty limited history of rock'n'roll. Bookends, in style, substance, and conception, epitomises that slightly po-faced, crafted, American thing, but when it's good and you're in the mood for it, you can't beat it.

Here's a compilation from duo and solo - had to have Bright Eyes, of course. Don't cry, now.

Old Friends/Bookends
America
The Only Living Boy in New York
Bridge Over Troubled Water
You Can Call Me Al - Paul Simon
Homeward Bound
Kathy's Song
Dangling Conversation
Still Crazy After All These Years - Paul Simon
You Can Call Me Al - Paul Simon
The Sound of Silence
The Boxer
Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard - Paul Simon
Bright Eyes - Art Garfunkel
I Am a Rock
So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright

2000: Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker

Hmm, what a load of Rs. This is the last of the Rs, fans of the RZA's solo work will be disappointed to hear. And it's another North American turn-of-the-century wunderkind, often accused of lacking quality control, who went to New York, tried to make it his own and was scarred by the experience. Rufus and Ryan were probably at a few of the same parties back in the day but despite whatever superficial similarities I might point out, they don't sound anything like each other.

Ryan Adams is country. Country for people who don't like country, who like punk and classic rock and power pop and folk and would sooner listen to pretty much anything else than Garth Brooks. He's made a lot of mistakes in his career, rubbed people up the wrong way, stuck with the wrong name and complained too much about it, put out too much, lost momentum and good will, got some terrible reviews and fallen far off the cool list - I sometimes feel as embarrassed about owning up to being a Ryan Adams fan as I do the Manic Street Preachers.

But a fan I am. This is someone who has done a lot of songs I love. So many fine songs. But how many fine albums? That's often seen as the problem. Too many albums, not enough wholly satisfying ones. This, his solo debut, is really the only one which has achieved pretty universal critical acclaim, and having made such a striking start, it's understandable that he engenders disappointment in some quarters.

This, 'Heartbreaker', just works perfectly, from its off-the-cuff Mariah Carey-inspired title to its banterous beginning to its woebegone ending. The supporting cast is, of course, impeccable. Who wouldn't make a great album with Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Ethan Johns, David Rawlings, Pat Sansone etc? ... I wouldn't, and you wouldn't and everyone we know wouldn't, but, you know ...

That opening banter leads into the stomping, simple 'To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High)' which, somehow, even after all these years, is still Ryan Adams' greatest song. Who knew it wouldn't quite ever sound so carefree again?

A red herring, they called it, not representative of the mood of the album.  I suppose that's true, though the next few keep the standard up, Winding Wheel, Amy and Oh My Sweet Carolina. Indeed, the whole first half of the album is pretty flawless - the heart of the album is Damn, Sam, I Love a Woman that Rains and Come Pick Me Up, which is up there with To Be Young. Right then, everything Ryan Adams is touching is turning to gold. Miserable gold. [I'll get on to Gold.]

The second half, for me, contains a few too many funereal moans, all splendid in their own right, but a little too indistinguishable, though anyone drifting off will be woken up by Shakedown on 9th Street.

All in all, if anyone listening to this didn't think a star was born, they're either dumber or smarter than me. Ryan Adams will have heard it, and I think he thought a star was born.

So he tried to make an album a star would make, said 'Gold'. I think he kind of succeeded, though many don't. 'Gold' was a reference-heavy, wildly ambitious trip through the modern American songbook. It's a bit too long, it is, though he thinks it's too short.

That's the trouble. So many good songs though.

'Gold' was still Uncut's Album of the Year for 2001. It was hardly a critical flop. The critical flops were to come. The problem, for me, with a lot of Ryan Adams albums was their genre specificity - this is my country album, this is my rock album, this is my impressionistic one. There's a lot to be said for creating a unity, but equally there's a lot to be said for being patient and putting all the best songs you've got in one album and then knocking it together into a unity, as opposed to coming up with the unity beforehand then making the songs follow that.

Of all the genres he's attempted, from country to folk to punk to metal to country-rock to rock'n'roll, for me it's his powerpop that I love the best - the cheesy rocking ones with hooks. His U2 pastiche 'So Alive' is worth more than that band's whole career to me.

He endures, and is actually more successful than ever. His last three albums have all had solid critical notices and Top 20 placings and are all pretty fine, though not as spectacular as either 'Heartbreaker' or 'Gold'.

The wisdom of his prodigious workrate and prolific release schedule is questionable, of course it is, but all I'll say that there are now hundreds of Ryan Adams songs available and lots of them are very good, and I found knocking this compilation down to size extremely tricky.

To be Young (Is to be Sad, is to be High)
Halloweenhead
Mirror, Mirror - Whiskeytown
Oh My Sweet Carolina
New York, New York
Magick
So Alive
Gonna Make You Love Me More
Come Pick Me Up
Avalanche
Shakedown on 9th Street
Drank Like a River - Whiskeytown
My Winding Wheel
Damn Sam, I Love a Woman That Rains
I See Monsters
Nuclear
Stop
Rock and Roll
Don't Be Sad - Whiskeytown
Nobody Girl

2003: Rufus Wainwright - Want One

I  have often described 'Want Two' by Rufus Wainwright as one of the most disappointing albums of all time, but listening back to it for the first time in years recently, I realised that wasn't a fitting description - it is simply one of the worst albums ever made, a dreary, portentous yet trivial collection of poorly written nothings dressed up as art. There are no good songs on the albums - there are bad songs with terrible lyrics where the subject matter and title piques interest and then dwindles to nothing.

Thankfully, I won't be writing about 'Want Two'. I'll be writing about 'Want One', its predecessor, one of the most glorious, imaginative, moving and beautiful albums of this century.

There are different ways of looking at the fact that people have vastly differing tastes in music - and I can cope with pretty much all of it, without resorting to the idea that "mine is better". Without being that way inclined myself, I can hear and understand how people are fans of everything from classical to jazz to house music to cheesy pop to overblown power balladeering. I get where the kicks are got. But the fact that anyone, any single person on the planet, might prefer 'Want Two' to 'Want One' (as is definitely the case, as I once casually mentioned on a music comments page what a poor follow up 'Want Two' was, to be met by several affronted responses) makes me only believe that some people are aliens. Aliens without ears sent to corrupt and destroy.

I heard you, Rufus. I heard you say how 'Want Two' highlighted a different side to your songwriting, something darker, more atmospheric, more experimental, but how, how can it be anything but the shabby, half-written offcuts, when so many songs from 'Want One' are so grand and perfectly formed and nothing from 'Want Two' is remotely memorable, when the lyrics seem tossed off and cheap, when everything fades to a miserable blur.

It pretty much killed Rufus for me. There've been three more self-written albums since, two mediocre collections intended to be grand fully formed statements 'Release the Stars' and 'Out of the Game', one a spare collection of piano ballads 'Songs for Lulu'. The latter has several lovely affecting moments, is twice the album with half the fuss of 'Want Two', but, in all, nothing he's done since has touched 'Want One'.

Why am I being negative? What's the problem? Maybe Rufus isn't as much of a polymath as he thinks, maybe he has a problem with quality control. There was a documentary where he collaborated with Robbie Williams' writing partner Guy Chambers to write a song, and at one point, in conversation about the song's progression, Chambers just said "Don't bore us, get to the chorus". At which point Rufus stopped in his tracks and said something along the lines of "That's brilliant, let's build the song around that". Now I'm not saying it's wrong of him not to be aware of the Greatest Hits of Roxette, which bear that famously daft moniker, but i'm saying that somewhere along the line, something should have happened to stop the resulting song, with that refrain all over it, appearing on an actual album. Maybe cool and naff shouldn't matter, but hearing it, I just felt that the whole world was in on a joke Rufus Wainwright wasn't in on. Oh, I don't know.

Let's get back to the positives. 'Want One' is the third solo album. I loved the first half of the debut, self-titled one, but I felt it tailed off. The second one, 'Poses', was, though critically acclaimed and a breakthrough of sorts, a bit disappointing for me, a bit saggy in the middle. 'Want One' is the one, the one where he gets it all right, where he is both his parents' child, his sister's brother, the prodigy, the showtuner, the crossover man, the heartbreaker, the orchestrator and the chronicler of the times.

It starts wonderfully and ends even better. 'Dinner at Eight', the closing track about an awkward meal with his father, gets me every time. It's the best song Andrew Lloyd Webber never wrote. It epitomises what Rufus Wainwright is good at - confession in a grand form.

The album shows that same gift in various different modes, from sharp powerpop to laconic singer-songwriter and grand torch song.

There are almost no underweight songs on the album - I could do without 'Natasha' and personally am not a massive fan of 'Vibrate', which I find pretty trite, but I know it's a bit of a fan favourite.

It's an album which strikingly captures New York - it came out three or four years before I went there for the first time, but the reality of it certainly chimed with that album for me. '11.11' explicitly references the 9/11 attacks, but not in a maudlin or obvious way.

At the time, I assumed Rufus Wainwright the pop songwriter has found his niche and would go from strength to strength, but it hasn't really happened like that. This is, in some ways, his most opulent and ambitious album, but often it's that same opulence and ambition that brings him down elsewhere. He also writes rubbish songs about other famous people who aren't members of his family, whether it's Tulsa (Brandon Flowers), Me and Liza (Minnelli) or Memphis Skyline (Jeff Buckley). What could be better than a Rufus Wainwright song about Jeff Buckley? What, in truth, is worse? Almost nothing, ever.

OK, there we go, a bit of a gripey Saturday moan for a fine artist. Here's a big, fun compilation to make us all feel better about Rufus Wainwright.

Foolish Love
14th Street
In My Arms
Poses
Danny Boy
Going to a Town
One Man Guy
Sonnet 20
I Don't Know What It Is
Zebulon
Want
April Fools
Movies of Myself
Oh What a World
Vicious World
11.11
Barcelona
Dinner at Eight