1001 albums: buenas noches from a lonely room

Hello hello, the latest randomly generated album for me is “Buenas Noches From a Lonely Room” by Dwight Yoakam.

Cover of the album which is a sort of black and white/sepia photo of the singer, with the left side being his torso up as he wears a dark shirt or jacket and a large cowboy type had, and the right side his torso down in studded pants — Cover of Buenas Noches From a Lonely Room

I was a little disappointed to find that this album contains neither Yoakam’s cover of “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” nor that one song about playing solitaire too long with a deck of 51, which I can never remember the title of but sang a lot as a child. I remember my dad rolling his eyes at both, because somehow I wound up hearing Yoakam’s versions of each before I heard the originals.

The title track did still sound a little familiar and I suspect I heard it on the radio in the past. It was also very interesting to me that the song I like the most off this album, “Streets of Bakersfield” appears to be another cover.

Something that stood out to me as I reviewed the track list is that a lot of the songs hover right around three minutes long. I’ve heard of this being something common in the streaming era, particularly songs dipping under three minutes, but this album is from 1988.

Link to the 1001 albums page for this album. Another interesting thing, at least to me, is that this is the first time I searched for “1001 albums [album name/first few words] didn’t turn up the page I wanted in the first page of search results. I instead stumbled upon many other people who have worked their way through this book of albums! Wonder what it is about the SEO/people writing about this one in particular that bubbled them up. I found this writeup from someone at The Bubble enlightening and interesting. I also enjoyed A Beginner’s Guide to Licking Rocks on the same site when I noodled around.

1001 albums: your arsenal

Hi hello, this is yesterday’s album which I have been backdating to reflect, but I realize that over the weekend the picker doesn’t run so I might as well do yesterday’s today (since I forgot) and then set today’s for tomorrow. Time is a flat circle.

The cover image for album Your Arsenal by Morrissey, featiring a kind of dark sepia toned photo of Morrissey holding a microphone wearing a fully unbuttoned, long button up shirt — Your Arsenal cover

I’m here to talk about “Your Arsenal” by Morrissey, this time, as the picker decided, and I would like to start by proclaiming: “Glamorous Glue” still absolutely fucking slaps.

I used to listen to that one a lot on the bus right to school. I can’t remember if we had mp3 players yet or if it was on a CD. I know I definitely owned at least one CD, it wasn’t this one so it was probably some sort of compilation. I think one issue I keep running into thus far, since I’ve gotten a good run of artists I kind of know, is that I’m like, “well I already liked these aspects so this was fun!” and that’s it for analysis. Then again, this isn’t billed as an album analysis blog.

That reminds me: link to the 1001 albums page about it. Some thing that strikes me as I read this (I don’t look at anything about the album before I listen) is that it says “glam rock [provides] the key touchstone” for the album which goes a long way toward explaining my enjoyment of it. I’d say that new wave/goth and glam rock are two areas that, even if I don’t notice their sounds, if their sounds are in a song or album I’ll probably enjoy it. What even was that sentence. I don’t know. What I do know is I wasn’t too surprised to see the 1001 albums site also draw a strong comparison from “Glamorous Glue” to “Jean Genie” which I also crank up pretty often.

Honestly I think more than anything, I really liked this album but I’m obsessed with the reviewer. “It isn’t all Chicory Tip and Dr. Martens however” is another great one.

1001 albums: darkness on the edge of town

Hello! Today’s generated album was “Darkness on the Edge of Town” by Bruce Springsteen. I’ve listened to a good amount of Bruce Springsteen before, but I don’t think that I’ve listened to this one or at least not in full.

Link to the 1001 albums post about the album.

This time around the opening track was like “this is fine” but I really enjoyed the closing track, which is also titled “Darkness on the Edge of Town” – maybe I just really like things that are eponymous with the album?

I think the unfortunate nature of this artist’s music, for me, is the “Born in the USA” thing, where politicians tend to use it because it sounds great and some of the words are good and then they didn’t really hear the point or the rest of the lyrics – except in my case I think I struggle to hear full lyrics unless I listen multiple times. I’m here to vibe to the rhythm at first, unless the vocalist is quite clear in their enunciation and the music stripped way back in the mix.

Overall I’m not sure I like it as a couple other albums from Springsteen that I’ve listened to in the past. It was okay.

1001 albums: fever ray

Today’s auto selected album was “Fever Ray”, what seems to be the self-titled debut album by group/musician Fever Ray. Link to the 1001 albums page.

Cover photo of the album Fever Ray, which is in black and white, kind of an ink or woodcut style perhaps, and depicts a woman wearing sunglasses with hands held apart and text "Fever Ray" between, houses in the background. — Cover to album Fever Ray by Fever Ray

Once again (like “This is Hardcore”) I found myself quickly hooked on the opening song. I would say that with the Pulp album I was able to quickly kind of half-zone-out and listen while I worked and casually enjoy the whole record, but with this one there were a few skips. A lot of the sounds used were very interesting, and I was surprised to find that it seems to be one person using a lot of interesting vocal processing, not a group like I thought.

I think I’ll relisten to this one some other time and might listen to more from the artist, but don’t have a lot of fully formed opinions right now.

1001 albums: blackstar

Day 3! Kind of! I’m backdating this and posting mobile-ly because I forgot it yesterday!

Sorry no nice styling today, maybe will edit the cover photo here later

Today’s was Blackstar by David Bowie which I have listened to many times and will not be listening to today because it makes me cry now. Is this maladaptive? Probably. Will I ever be able to listen to Lazarus again? Who knows.

Many years ago while he was still alive, I drove for about five hours and then spent too much money on a cab ride* to rush and make my entry time for the then-only US showing of the museum exhibit David Bowie Is… and it is a very cherished memory.

*I was not gonna pay for parking in the city, I got a weekend rate at the edge and planned to walk the rest but I was behind so I made the questionable decision to actually ask a cabbie to step on it lmao what chaos, loved it, excellent, also almost cried then

1001 albums: 1989

What’s up nerds, today I’m here to cheat by talking about an album I’m intimately familiar with, setting the post as a scheduled post, and thereby creating false continuity like I’m sticking to a project. The album in question I found myself instead of using the generator and it’s Taylor Swift’s “1989” published in 2014.

photo of the cover of 1989 which is a Polaroid of Taylor Swift from about nose down, while she's wearing red lipstick and a sweater with birds on it. In her handwriting are her name and 1989 at the bottom. — cover of 1989

I’ve been doing my best to add alt text to this images, but I have to edit the blocks as HTML then go back because I only know how to do it from the Myspace coding knowledge deep in my brain, not with any current interface knowledge, so I hope it’s working and not being weird.

Here is the link to the 1001 Albums page for the album. I would say I’ve always kind of been a Taylor Swift fan but in 2014 I don’t think I ever really sat and listened to her albums, I’d skim through once and then play the four songs I really liked on repeat, and I’m not even sure I did that with “1989”. I say this because I do remember pulling it up on Spotify after her music finally went up, after “reputation” was added some weeks after its release, and listening to it all the way through. Either I forgot about tracks like “How You Get the Girl” and “Clean” or I hadn’t heard them before. Yes I’m here and ready to be roasted for really enjoying “How You Get the Girl” look I can objectively understand that it’s hokey but it also makes me want to bop in the car from the first three seconds every single time I turn it on.

Maybe I had just been too busy for like three years doing “Wildest Dreams” karaoke to play the rest of the album or maybe it wasn’t available? Anyway I put on my clown makeup and bought two copies of “Lover” to read the journals last-ish year so clearly I got fully onto the train eventually.

I think I rated this as my favorite album the last time I took some sort of demographic quiz for a Taylor Swift fan group, but I struggle a lot with ranking her albums because until “folklore” I feel like she had a real case of “half this album could have been given to someone else or tossed, but the other half carries it”. I cannot and will not rank “Red” as her top album because the lows are just too low, but they’re alright on “1989” in my opinion. I did definitely buy the NARS lip pencil in Dragon LAdy because I think she was seen wearing and using it a lot around this time. It’s good stuff, highly recommend. Shoot should I rate these albums somehow? Doesn’t sound fun nevermind.

1001 albums: this is hardcore

Well someone posted the “1001 Albums You Must Hear” generator to r/popheads today so you know I clicked on it and I’m here to act like I’m going to listen to a bunch of them when in fact I will probably forget about this by Monday, the next day it refreshes.

cover image for Pulp's album This is Hardcore, which is of a topless blonde woman facing downward and kind of propped up on her arms on what looks like maybe a red leather beanbag chair, with her arms obscuring her breasts and maybe a shocked expression I would say — Cover image for Pulp’s album This is Hardcore

Anyway, the first one I got was Pulp’s album “This is Hardcore” – link to the 1001 Albums site page about it is here. I’ve listened to the specific song “Common People” a lot and enjoy it, and I’m pretty sure I’ve listened to the album that song is on, but don’t think I’ve listened to this one.

I liked the album opener “The Fear” possibly more than any other song on the album because of those weird opening synths which, frankly, I would like to play on a smooth loop maybe with a pink neon light in a dark room like the club scene in Neon Demon. I processed virtually none of the album’s lyrics, but the sound was good and it made me want to listen to some new wave but that is also my baseline existence. It was nice to be able to start with something that’s close to what I’ve listened to before and that I generally like, especially since I was working. If I were to be serious about this I should probably pay more attention and maybe listen through real headphones.