Part of what makes the third and last album by Big Star such a heartbreaking one comes with knowing the details of its recording and release. After not succeeding commercially with #1 Record and Radio City, 3rd / Sister Lovers was recorded in 1975 and then slated by the company until it was finally released in 1978. By that time, Big Star was no more and, to add insult to the already ill-starred career of the band, their third album was met with apathy by both audience and critics back in the day. If you've ever listened to this record, even just once, you'll understand how unfair this is. 3rd is an aching, extremely beautiful collection of songs. It's not all gloomy, the beginning of "Kizza Me" gives a hint of cheerful power-pop glory before the album sinks into some of the most depressing lyrics and sounds ever produced in the seventies.
This evokes many images in my head when I listen to it. Fripp and Eno have perfected their tape guitar effects on this one. While there are beautiful ambient pieces on the record, interestingly the B-side consists of only one track, full of sinister drone and menacing humming.
You can definitely hear how they're shuffling Fripp's King Crimson sound with Eno's ambient. In a lot of ways, the album sounds like a precursor to post rock, feature free-flowing guitar tones that define what that genre is today. Station to Station is my favorite album of all time.
Never before has a minute and a half of nothing but the sound of a train been so interesting. When the music finally comes in and repeats itself for another two minutes it still feels very engaging. And the rest of the album sure isn't slacking either. "Golden Years" and "Word on a Wing" feel like songs that Bowie had been building up to during Young Americans but are better than anything on it (with the latter containing some of Bowie's very best lyrics).
"Wild is the Wind" is probably Bowie's best cover as well. No list about sad albums can do without A Crow Looked At Me. But this time, happily, we already included it in our previous list. For those unfamiliar with the story behind this album, Phil Elverum's wife, Geneviève, died in 2015 four months after the birth of their first child of pancreatic cancer.
I don't know if you already feel like crying, but I do. As devastating as this all sounds, Mount Eerie took all of that sadness, grief, hopelessness, and disorientation and turned it into A Crow Looked At Me. A collection of songs so raw, so authentic, so deeply personal that it's impossible to escape its sadness and, in a way, making it ours as well. Because empathy is one of the reasons why we all love sad music, A Crow Looked At Me is an album that relentlessly asks us to join Elverum through the dark path of grief. Liam's debut album LP1, released in December 2019, follows a similarly cringy trajectory.
Boosted by Chainsmoker-esque beats and sleazy lines about " your ass in the car," Liam's music is a bold statement separating himself from the sound of One Direction, but it's not for the better. Each song on LP1 sounds like a mishmash assembly of smash hit ingredients, but the final product can't quite stick the landing, and songs blur together in a haze of tropical synth and repetitive melody. The striking debut album Neu was produced by legendary German producer Conny Plank - as were many of Krautrock's early classics - and it shows Rother and Dinger working in two styles. One is the down-to-midtempo 4/4 rock tracks where, instead of chord progressions, the band locks down into long, minimalist grooves based on a single chord. Then there's haunting, more drone-based experimental ambient music like "Im Gluck", a deeply beautiful piece featuring an early example of Indian-style drones meshed with guitar loops and feedback. The Ship breaks many norms we've been accustomed to in ambient music and Eno's work.
Unlike most ambient pieces, the near 30-minute songs here do have a structure, but are still loose enough to be considered as a musical landscape. The songs feature eerie vocals and philosophical lyrics that tell stories of The Titanic and its condition right now, rotting under the sea. Subjects also range all the way over to the first world war. The Hour Is Thin features the best lyrics Eno has ever done. Delivered in a spoken-word format, it's unlike anything I've ever heard before. The final track on the record, a cover of The Velvet Underground's I'm Set Free, has been remade into a beautiful, poignant piece, dedicated to David Bowie in the liner notes of the album.
Phenomenal record from the nearly 70-year producer. The album opens up with I Loved It All , which opens up the album beautifully. The following tracks, Clinic Hope, Big Fish and Love Without Violins are pop perfection. Hit song after another, the album opens up to a fantastic start. Love Without Violins especially is a true masterpiece.
Released as a single in 2016, I can safely say is one of the best singles of the year. The track opens with a robust synth beat and with the band's lead singer's Sónia Tavares's raspy voice. Eno's influence can immediately be heard when the song starts to build up, sounds are being stacked over each other creating a kind of a "wall of sound" that Eno has been using a lot in his recent output. Constant changes in the harmonies of the song keep the listener interested. After the half-point of the song, the music drifts to new chords while the pulsating synths and guitars are still present.
Eno starts his multi-layered vocal, which sounds enormous. The one-man choir is very reminiscent of Eno's Talking Heads work, and the melody is euphoric. Even the lyrics are absolutely incredible throughout the song. Not to mention the music video, which is just as great. There's also a sly Bowie's Blackstar reference in there, which is quite poignant knowing Eno and Bowie were very good friends. U2are an Irish rock band from Dublin, formed in 1976.
The group consists of Bono , the Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen Jr. . Initially rooted in post-punk, U2's musical style has evolved throughout their career, yet has maintained an anthemic quality built on Bono's expressive vocals and the Edge's effects-based guitar textures. Their lyrics, often embellished with spiritual imagery, focus on personal and sociopolitical themes.
Popular for their live performances, the group have staged several ambitious and elaborate tours over their career. And in 2017, when he released his debut album named — what else? — Harry Styles, Harry established himself as worthy of all the hype from his years in the band. A brooding rock record filled with anecdotes about all the sex he has and heartbreak he's felt, Harry Styles reintroduced Harry to the world as an indie songwriter, David Bowie fanboy, and charismatic lover. And with his next, more experimental 2019 album, Harry takes all these elements of his identity a step further, securing his spot in the popular music landscape as a modern rock star. Right away from the wonky sounding riff of Burning Airlines Give You So Much More the album always begins to enchant me.
Somehow Eno manages to sound unusual and unique, while still creating really lush captivating and melodies with strange lyrics, and it works perfectly - it's an incredibly satisfying listen. It's definitely pop music, but it's so much more than that, with textures and layers of intrigue. Eno really knows how to put together music that sounds amazing, yet he clearly has a sense of play and fun. The manic energy on Third Uncle is incredible, and the song is way ahead of its time, sounding like post-punk before punk was a thing.
The final track Taking Tiger Mountain is incredibly beautiful and definitely one of his best. Usually lists like this tend to skip over that one, and not only is it a personal fav, , it was also the first truly great record that he put out after I became a fan. Harry released Fine Line at the end of last year, interrupting winter's dreariness with bright, dancey songs about all-consuming yearning. And on "Cherry," his transportive and melancholy ode to an ex, listeners get a glimpse at genuine heartache from Harry.
Despite having built a career out of belting love songs, Harry has never before sounded this vulnerable in his music before. "Cherry" shines a light on the vulnerabilities of a seemingly invulnerable star and brings a touching depth to Harry's music that was previously absent. Fine Line is the most adventurous and enjoyable of the One Direction members' solo efforts, and it's sure to convert even the most crotchety boy band skeptics into believers. However, the third and final album Neu '75 has diversity and depth aplenty, even though by this point the creative partnership was fracturing deeply.
Produced again by Plank, the first half suggests a definition of Neu! It opens with a lovely proto-synthpop instrumental ("Isi") followed by two magnificently dreamy ambient rock pieces. "Seeland" crawls along at a slow clockwork pulse, with sad lead guitar phrases by Rother fed through a delay pedal and enveloped in a cavernous spacerock sound. On "Leb Wohl" the clockwork pulse recedes to a whisper, over which Rother plays weepingly beautiful piano accompanied by wordless vocal sighs.
Treated live drums combined with an electronically sequenced beat create a steamtrain-like groove, while pretty, arcing guitar, synth lines and smatterings of piano provide the decoration. An album that definitely requires multiple listenings sessions to get fully invested in. When it released, Another Day on Earth was Eno's first album in decades to feature vocals, a new addition to his art rock discography.
The album is very eccentric, and it features some of the best songs Eno's ever written, including the lyrics. It is clear to me that this is on a par with his earlier song-based albums though quite different in feel. Here we have the artist, nearing 60-years-old, creating sonic landscapes for us to contemplate. The electronics on this album create vast soundscapes and experiences that you can almost feel falling into.
It's very crisp and refreshing, yet soothing and satisfying. As I had never heard of the German artist J. Peter Schwalm, I had no expectations going in. I ended up loving the album just after the first listening experience. The album is compiled of jazzy, shuffling rhythms and strings that sway peacefully. Between Eno's deft production and compositions and the chillout, trance and trip-hop elements contributed by Schwalm, the duo update the atmosphere and approach of Eno's classic ambient works for the 21st Century.
All of the sounds used here sound very modernized and fresh. There are some, mostly spoken-word vocals sprinkled around the tracks, but never to the point of being jaded. Even Eno's young daughter makes an appearance in "Bloom", a track with a conversation between the father and daughter, and it strangely works really well.
You can hear Eno clutching in a kitchen in the distance while the daughter stays near the microphone. A really great collaboration between Eno and poet Rick Holland. Eno said he had a bunch of songs, but no idea how to write lyrics for them, so he got Holland to create spoken-word lines for the tracks. Holland's work adds a nice complexity to the richly layered sound templates, and the captivating moments far outweigh the parts that don't quite click.
The music is incredibly eccentric, ranging from fast glitchy electronic grooves that resemble modern experimental dance music, to sombre quiet pieces with acoustic instruments appearing here and there. All of it is superb, with spoken word vocals sprinkled around. Holland himself actually appears on just one track, fierce aisles of light, as Eno enlisted multiple speakers to perform on the album, which helps to keep the interest up. All of the voices are very idiosyncratic, Eno's included. We can both agree station to station and ziggy stardust stardust are absolutely perfect and I most agree with the rest of your list except hunky dory should be a 9 imo.
Red House Painters, the band fronted by Mark Kozelek released their debut record in 1992 and it doesn't get much more depressing than this when you're 24. Only six songs and 43 minutes were enough for Red House Painters to establish themselves as one of the most revered bands of the nineties. Very few times the artwork of an album matched so perfectly the mood of its music. Don't stop here, we have to thank Mark Kozelek for a whole career of heartbreaking music.
On 1 July 2007, Gervais performed at the Concert for Diana in Wembley Stadium, a music event celebrating the life of Princess Diana 10 years after her death. Towards the end of the event—after a pre-recorded introduction from Ben Stiller—Gervais appeared along with fellow Office star Mackenzie Crook. They performed "Free Love Freeway", a song previously heard in the fourth episode of series one of The Office. Eno's first solo album was incredibly ahead of its time, and it's influence can be heard in many major groups of today. It astounds me how innovative Eno was at only 25 years old. The album is very experimental but still easily accessible.
The tracks are filled with witty, funny and self-aware lyrics and surreal wordplay and an abundance of fantastic hooks, from simple melodies to the intricate details. Robert Fripp's guitar work on here is remarkable, especially on the song Baby's On Fire, which features a five minute long, completely bonkers solo. I have a hard time deciding how much I like Heroes. The first side has five of my very favorite Bowie songs with the title track possibly being my favorite Bowie song period; the entire second half gives me chills - second half of the song that is, not the album.
Those " " around the title are brilliant as well. I love how screamy his vocals are on every song here. My uncertainty about this album is with the second half though. The instrumentals (aside from "V-2 Schneider") aren't nearly as engaging as on Low. That said, the way the closer "The Secret Life of Arabia" comes on out of nowhere after "Neuköln" gets me excited every time. Robert Fripp's guitar work here is phenomenal but not nearly as pronounced as on Scary Monsters.
I don't have as much to say about Low even though I enjoy it almost as much as Station to Station. Maybe that's due to the sparsity of the lyrics. Low may be the most ahead-of-its-time album I've ever listened to.
It sounds like it came straight out of the early '80s, not the mid '70s. The second side is filled with the most beautiful ambient tracks I've ever heard. "A New Career in a New Town" is gorgeous, with the harmonica making the song show as much emotion as it could with a human voice.
The fractured song structure on the first side is also very interesting. For some reason I always thought he was saying "You're knee-deep inside of me" (not "Yearning deep inside of me") on "What in the World." The life of Mark Linkous wasn't an easy one and, sadly, he killed himself in 2010.
