My friend Ken and I decided to listen to an album every day this year. Each week is themed. At the end of each week, we rank what we listened to. To be clear, we aren’t ranking every album that fits the theme. We are only ranking what we chose to listen to during the last seven days.
This week’s theme is “trading favorites,” meaning each day I sent one of my favorite albums to Ken that he’d never heard, and he sent one back. Since we both technically listened to a different record each day, we decided to rank them as pairs. My pick is listed first. Ken’s is listed second.
#7 A Night at the Opera by Queen (1975) and The Presidents of the United States by The Presidents of the United States (1995)
When I recommended A Night at the Opera, I had not heard it in years. My memory was that I had been blown away by its inventiveness. You had experimental structure on songs like “Bohemian Rhapsody.” You had guitars masquerading as horns on “Good Company.” You had voices masquerading as horns on “Seaside Rendezvous.” It was inventiveness, along with doses of strong songwriting, that called attention to itself.
The Presidents of the United States is inventive in a much quieter way. These songs, including hits like “Peaches” and “Lump,” feel like standard, riff-driven alternative rock that was pervasive throughout the 1990s. But The Presidents of the United States have an unexpected set-up, the trio composed of drums, three-stringed guitar, and two-stringed bass, the latter two of which are tuned to open C#5.
This forces us to confront an important question: Is inventiveness better when it shouts from the mountaintops or when it hides in the shadows? Maybe the theatrical weirdness of Queen distracts from the fact that some of the ideas are half-baked (e.g., “I’m in Love with My Car”). Maybe the hidden exoticness of The Presidents of the United States prevents us from giving them proper credit.
As I’ve aged, I try not to delve too deeply into these ideas. All that matters is if the songs move you. Beyond the obvious gems (e.g., “Love of My Life,” “You’re My Best Friend”), A Night at the Opera didn’t do much for Ken. He also found it almost preposterous that a group with a singer as good as Freddie Mercury would let anyone else take the microphone (e.g., “'39”). Likewise, The Presidents of the United States left me wanting more. I’d turn a few other places for big 1990s riffs before returning to their alternate tunings.
#6 The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan by Bob Dylan (1963) and Caught it from the Rye by Tré Burt (2020)
As a Bob Dylan superfan, I knew I was going to have to pick an album from Hibbing, Minnesota’s favorite son this week. This was a problem for Ken. He’s an avowed Dylan hater. In fact, earlier this year when I made him listen to Dylan’s Infidels, he said the entire album “felt like a prank.” Luckily, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan was less tedious for him.
When I first discovered Bob Dylan in high school, I kept hearing that many found his voice off-putting. I didn’t understand why. Freewheelin', the first album of his that I fell in love with, is packed with endearing vocals (e.g., “Girl from the North Country,” “Corrina, Corrina”). That’s actually why Ken was able to connect with the Nobel Prize winner on this record. “His voice,” Ken told me, “is semi-normal on this one.”
His general distaste for Dylan’s nasally tone left me unsure why he loves Tré Burt’s Caught it from the Rye. Burt, signed to John Prine’s Oh Boy Records, has a voice clearly descended from the “Blowin' in the Wind” singer-songwriter. For me, Burt’s voice and his album were totally fine. Not something I would return to but serviceable.
#5 Melodrama by Lorde (2017) and Bridges Worth Burning by Kind of Like Spitting (2002)
A few days into this week, Ken told me that he was making his selections based on whatever I had chosen. My early Bob Dylan record, for example, was paired with a singer-songwriter that he liked (i.e., Tré Burt). My Queen album was met with an album by a group named for another head of state (i.e., The Presidents of the United States). That said, Ken felt his pairing of Kind of Like Spitting’s Bridges Worth Burning with Lorde’s Melodrama didn’t make much sense.
On the surface, I got why he thought that. What do Lorde’s off-kilter, alt-pop anthems have to do with early-2000s emo cuts? Actually, quite a bit. Lorde’s diaristic lyricism (e.g., “Green Light”) pairs quite well with Ben Barnett’s heart-on-your-sleeve passion (e.g., “Passionate”). Of course, the instrumentation is quite different. You won’t find a trap hat on Bridges Worth Burning. But I think Lorde’s success is a small example of the long shadow that punk and emo have cast on the world of popular music.
#4 Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen (1975) and War Elephant by Deer Tick (2007)
Whether they intended it or not—and they probably did given their recent cover of “Dancing in the Dark”—I can hear the influence of Bruce Springsteen on Deer Tick’s War Elephant. The dark characters of Nebraska lurk in songs like “Standing at the Threshold.” The Americana of Devils and Dust powers “Baltimore Blues No. 1.” The intensity of “Not So Dense” could very well have been ripped from the final third of “Backstreets.”
“Backstreets,” of course, comes from Springsteen’s 1975 breakthrough Born to Run. Born to Run is my favorite album. It’s an album of dreams realized and thwarted, strapping yourself to another person—whether its Terry or Eddie or Mary or Wendy—as you try to change your life. And even if it all goes wrong, maybe you’ll still have one another to weather the storm.
When Bruce Springsteen inducted Roy Orbison into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, he noted, “In 1975, when I went into the studio to record, Born To Run, I wanted to make a record with words like Bob Dylan, that sounded like Phil Spector’s productions, but most of all I wanted to sing like Roy Orbison. Now, everybody knows that nobody sings like Roy Orbison.” And, no, he does not sound like Orbison on this record. But no other record has dared to unify the disparate worlds of Dylan, Spector, and Orbison. 50 years later, it remains a miracle, influencing scores of artists, Deer Tick included.
#3 Heard It in a Past Life by Maggie Rogers (2019) and Capacity by Big Thief (2017)
According to Spotify, my most played song of all time is Maggie Rogers’ “On+Off.” When I first found this song, not long after Rogers went viral when Pharrell Williams praised her song “Alaska” during her senior year at NYU, I was borderline obsessed. I think that obsession was driven by how the song combined contemporary production with the ethereal qualities that I love in folk music. The rest of Rogers’ debut album Heard It in a Past Life isn’t all like that. Songs like “Give a Little” are much more indebted to contemporary dance music. But the record is at its best when it combines these two worlds.
The best of Big Thief, a band that I have been meaning to get into for the last few years, kind of gives me a similar feeling to the best of Maggie Rogers. I could very clearly hear Rogers singing something like “Mythological Beauty” or “Shark Smile” even if she chose to dress up the production differently. There is an airy beauty to these albums even when they reach the peak of their intensity.
#2 Let It Be by The Replacements (1984) and Dookie by Green Day (1994)
For me, the trick to great punk music is pairing the silly, childish imagery with the most gut-wrenching melodies you’ll ever hear. It is naming your album Dookie and packing it with songs like “Basket Case” and “When I Come Around.” It is playing a song named “Gary’s Got a Boner” right before the soul-crushing “Sixteen Blue.”
Both Let It Be and Dookie are tremendous albums. In fact, many of the songs are so strong that aspiring hitmakers should put down their Michael Jackson and Madonna records and pick up these. Additionally, the musical performances on these albums are somehow underrated. No, I don’t think The Replacements ever played with as much precision as on something like Green Day’s “Burnout,” but it is a miracle to play with as much looseness as “Favorite Thing” or “Androgynous” and not have the song go completely off the rails.
#1 Running on Empty by Jackson Browne (1977) and Violent Femmes by Violent Femmes (1983)
For each pair of records I’ve written about this week, I’ve been able to find a thread to tie them together. Sometimes it was easy, as with Bob Dylan and Tré Burt. Other times it was more of a stretch, as with Lorde and Kind of Like Spitting. But a thread was nonetheless tied. Beyond the fact that we like this pair best, I’ve got nothing with Running on Empty and Violent Femmes.
Running on Empty is a road album in all senses. Some cuts, like the title track and “The Load Out,” were recorded on stage. Others, like “The Road” and “Nothing But Time,” capture a musician who lives in liminal spaces, whether on the tour bus or standing side-stage. Browne takes you through all the highs and lows of this fast-paced life. You’ve got the women (e.g., “Rosie”). You’ve got the drugs (e.g., “Cocaine”). And you’ve got the party.
Running on Empty closes with a tremendous cover of Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs’ 1960 number one hit “Stay.” It’s the perfect encapsulation of the party you don’t want to end, of the night that has you screaming “Encore!” until the lights come on. The tank always runs out, and we all must go home, but even then, we want to “stay just a little bit longer.”
The Violent Femmes’s self-titled record has nothing to do with any of this. Beyond the fact that it also exists in the broad world of rock music, I can’t really even fathom a comparison. Violent Femmes is a raucous, gnarly album that combines both folk and punk, albeit in a way that Jackson Browne could never attempt. Regardless, the miracle of Violent Femmes is that between the visceral bass lines and disturbing imagery, the music will make you want to shake your rump. Few can combine disgust with sneaky dance rhythms so seamlessly.
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Some great choices and, when I got to the top albums I immediately agreed that the deserved their rankings.
One way to connect the Violent Femmes' debut with Brown's road album is through the story of how the Femmes got their first break: https://diffuser.fm/violent-femmes-pretenders/
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The Femmes set up on Aug. 23, 1981, outside the Oriental Theatre in their hometown of Milwaukee, hoping to attract the attention of fans as they gathered for a show by the Pretenders. Instead, the Violent Femmes ended up as the opening act when the late Pretenders guitarist James Honeyman-Scott stumbled onto their sidewalk performance.
"We had to play in the streets because no one wanted us to play in the clubs," Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie told Spin in 2015. "I would say the thing about the Pretenders that was inspiring at the time was that these great international touring musicians recognized that we were interesting, whereas the people in Milwaukee thought we were losers. We knew that our music was great."
The Violent Femmes line got me, 'combine disgust with sneaky dance rhythms' is such a good way to put it. That's basically the whole idea behind what I write about, music that makes you want to move while the lyrics are doing something a lot darker underneath. Fun format this week, pairing albums like that.