Click here for Part I: The Project
And here for Part II: The Leftovers

50. Amy Winehouse – Back to Black

The process of putting this list together was part analytical, and part pure feel. And Amy making it into my top 50 was pure feel. I didn’t really even seriously start getting into her – this album mainly, but Frank is fantastic also – until three or four years go, many years after her untimely death as a member of the 27 Club.

You’re going to hear this a lot, probably for the next 49 albums too, but this album is perfect. Every single song is a rare gem; not a dud to be found. The fifth track, the titular track, is the most haunting and musically unique on the record:

We only said goodbye
With words
I died a hundred times

You go back to her
And I go back

To black

Amy was a force of nature, and that we got only two albums out of her is evidence that the human race was robbed of probably one of the most gifted artists of the the 21st century. Imagine all the additional music that Jimi Hendrix would have continued to make, or Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, or D. Boon, had they lived past 27. In my 50’s now, myself, and not being a musician, and thinking about all the twists and turns my life took since that age: just imagine. God bless you, Amy. Thank you for your music.

49. The Clash – London Calling

Although I played it hundreds and hundreds of times, for whatever reason, London Calling didn’t speak to me on the same social or emotional level that The Clash spoke to so many others. My friends and I didn’t cut school and listen to The Clash, we listened to Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin. The Clash didn’t bind me together with a counterculture sticking a big middle finger to The Man. Nevertheless, this album is a collection of incredible songs, and as I said, I listened to it hundreds of times and loved it more and more each time.

I bought the CD at Tower Records on Broadway not long after I moved to Sacramento in 1989, along with Public Enemy‘s Yo, Bum Rush The Show, and possibly a third CD that is lost to the annals of time. It wouldn’t be right of me to write about what The Clash meant to England, America, the world, in the late 70’s and 80’s. They weren’t that to me. They were just some band that the punk rock guys were into, and when I finally bought their most famous album, I listened to it about nine hundred times in a row. It’s a fucking great album. Timeless. I could put it on right now and it would be like putting on a comfy sweater of amazingness.

48. Depeche Mode – Violator

I almost didn’t include Depeche Mode in this list, because my first serious introduction to them – beyond what was played on KROQ in L.A. in the 80’s – was a used cassette I purchased somewhere in the San Fernando Valley in the late 80’s: Catching Up with Depeche Mode. This lifelong stoner/rocker fell in love big time with this synth-heavy British pop/new wave music from the early-mid 80’s, and played the hell out of that cassette. And as you recall from Part I, greatest hits collections are expressly disallowed from The Fifty.

But Violator was somewhat of a departure from their dark-tinged pop into full-blown blackness. And it’s incredible. There was nothing much like it in the 80’s, as this album heralded a new sound of the 90’s where pop, rock, goth, punk, new wave, folk, dance, and electronic music were all given the freedom to loose their shackles and cavort shamelessly together. This album has been described as haunting and heavy, and I would agree. But mainly I see it as an emphatic door slam to the 1980’s. Not only to Depeche Mode’s own music, but to entire genres.

Takes me completely
Touches so sweetly
Reaches so deeply
I know that nothing can stop me

47. The Cult – Love

This was a very important album for me. Released in 1985 when I was 16, it was one of the three albums that broke me out of the heavy metal / classic rock… I don’t want to say rut, or doldrums, but let’s just just say that more traditional hard rock and metal was pretty much exclusively what I had been listening to for the last several years before this. The other two albums that had this affect on me were U2 War, and Talking Heads Stop Making Sense. These three records single-handedly launched me into new genres of music, where I didn’t need to worry about being cool among my stoner friends, I didn’t have to be concerned about whether I possessed a black and white baseball jersey concert shirt of a rock band from a show at Long Beach Arena or the Fabulous Forum. These three albums eventually led me to Love And Rockets, Depeche Mode, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Cure, The Smiths, and then into the hip hop realm. I just needed a couple of records to be told “You can listen to more than Ted Nugent, Iron Maiden, and Jethro Tull.” (Three wildly different artists there, but you get my point.)

The Cult Love was an incredible album that was far from the standard rock/metal of the day, but still still featured a traditional rock band with vocals, drums, guitar, bass and keys. It wasn’t new wave, it wasn’t punk, what was it? I think it was sowing the seeds of what we later called “Alternative,” but that’s not quite right either. It was rock, but with kind of a melodious edge, spiritual themes, and a fearlessness about it. It was jangly and raw with big vocals and big guitars, but no one would really call them hard rock or metal, although they kind of became that later.

Regardless, it’s an amazing album with not a dud on it. “She Sells Sanctuary,” “Big Neon Glitter,” “Love,” “Rain,” “Hollow Man,” “Brother Wolf, Sister Moon…” you’re just not going to get a stronger collection of a mid-80’s post-punk / goth / proto-alt outfit.

46. Hedwig And The Angry Inch – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

My buddies and I do a thing called Don Pedro’s Movie Night, which is a tale for another time, and we used to try to do it weekly. Dinner at Paesano on Capitol Ave., and a movie afterwards. For a few years there, The Crest tried to stay solvent by building a couple of small movie screens in the basement under their main theater. In one of those tiny theaters, my friends and I saw the film Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a 2001 musical based on stars and creators John Cameron Mitchell‘s and Stephen Trask‘s Off-Broadway hit from a few years prior.

We absolutely adored the film, the story of a young glam rocker from East Berlin, the product of a botched sex change operation (hence the Angry Inch…get it?) unceremoniously dumped in Junction City, Kansas, where she befriends and manages – and falls in love with – a young glam rock prodigy who eventually leaves her behind, à la A Star Is Born, pick your version.

I might have some of the story line wrong. It was one of the first DVDs I ever purchased, in the early 2000’s, but I haven’t seen the actual film more than a couple times, and the musical once in a revival in San Francisco with my friend Joel. But the film soundtrack album…oh, that soundtrack!

It’s simply one of the greatest rock albums of the 2000’s. Think Hair, Saturday Night Fever, or Hamilton: soundtracks of original music that stand tall on their own even when completely divorced from the theatrical or cinematic production from which they came. There are beautiful slow songs (“The Origin of Love,” “Wicked Little Town,” “The Long Grift,” “In Your Arms Tonight”), out and out rockers (“Tear Me Down,” “Angry Inch,” “Freaks,” “Exquisite Corpse”), and wonderful, hilarious, touching hybrids of the two (“Sugar Daddy,” “Wig in a Box”), closing with the anthemic “Midnight Radio:”

Here’s to Patti
And Tina
And Yoko
Aretha
And Nona
And Nico
And me

And all the strange rock and rollers
You know you’re doing all right
So hold on to each other
You gotta hold on tonight

I think I played this CD for five years straight. I’ve never stopped loving it.

45. Guns N’ Roses – Appetite For Destruction

Wow, how to even begin writing about an album like this. Let me start by saying there are far bigger Guns N’ Roses fans than me. I liked them a lot, I saw them in concert once, opening for Aerosmith, and I played this album (along with G N’ R Lies and Use Your Illusion I/II) about a million times.

Listening to it now, it’s a flawless record. Every single track is strong, rocking, and somewhat fresh in the era of mid-late 80’s hard rock/heavy metal. But somehow GNR just reminds me wholly of the years 1987 to 1991, and it’s a little tough for me to go back. I consider 1986 – 1991 the greatest five years in the history of rock and roll, followed closely by 1966 – 1971. GNR is just a small reason for this. (The Smiths, The Cure, Public Enemy, N.W.A., Cowboy Junkies, Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, Pixies – Lord, must I go on? – are the main reason for it.)

But the album itself? Ummm… just hop in your buddy Rich‘s Camaro with the T-tops off and fucking blast it. Every song. You’ll see.

44. Love And Rockets – Express

Jesus, this project is taking me a hella long time. “Hey, I’ll just write about a few of my favorite albums! OK, I’ll turn fifty later this year, let’s go top fifty! But what about all the leftovers? Let’s write about all of them too!” It’s a miracle I’m finishing this before it’s time for Sixty at Sixty.

So where was I? Oh yeah, Love and Rockets – Express, from 1986. They were featured on an NPR story a couple of years ago. “One hit wonders’ second best songs.” What the fuck? One hit wonder? Love and Rockets? Blasphemy!!! OK, “So Alive” was kind of a hit, and the eponymous Love And Rockets it’s on is also a great album, but Express was the album that made me fall in love with Love and Rockets. What did NPR say was their second best song? “Yin and Yang (The Flower Pot Man)” from Express. I might have chosen “Motorcycle” also from the Love and Rockets album, or “Ball of Confusion” from this album (which I must admit I didn’t realize was a cover when I was 17 and first getting into this band), or “No New Tale to Tell” from Earth, Sun, Moon. Whatever. L&R was definitely not a “one hit wonder.” Eew!

Truth be told, I was WAY more into Love and Rockets than I ever was into Bauhaus, which if you don’t know, was all the members of Love and Rockets minus Peter Murphy. L&R was one of those non-metal, post-rock bands that truly and sincerely helped me break out of my hard rock / classic rock / heavy metal exclusivity mind frame. Earth, Sun, Moon is also an incredible record, as is the eponymous Love And Rockets, but Express will always be nearest and dearest to my heart.

43. The Traveling Wilburys – Vol. 1

I can’t believe this album is as low as #43. Seems like it ought to be a top 20, but that’s what happens, I guess, when you start making lists. This is a flawless record: every single track a straight-up masterpiece. Who’s still alive from the Wilburys as of this writing? Just Jeff Lynne and Bob Dylan. Who would have thunk it? Roy Orbinson would have been 87 if he were alive in 2023, and he was the oldest of the Wilburys, so we really could – and should – be living in a world where all the Wilburys are still alive. Rest in Peace Roy, Tom Petty, and George Harrison.

I don’t really know what to say about this record. If you’ve ever liked any of the members, or any of the bands they were in, you ought to love this album: The way they trade off lead singing/songwriting, the jangly melodies, the badass backing vocals, and whoever was playing session rhythm section crushed it (don’t make me look it up.)

Again, if you’ve ever been into The Beatles, or Bob Dylan, or ELO, or Tom Petty, or really any great classic rock music, it’s hard to believe Traveling Wilburys Vol. I wouldn’t make your top 50, too.

42. Black Sabbath – Paranoid

This is big. BIG. Black Sabbath was one of the earliest bands I got into. It must have been seventh grade or thereabouts.

At the time I was getting into Sabbath, original lead singer Ozzy Osbourne‘s debut solo album Blizzard of Ozz was enjoying enormous popularity, well before the opening riff and echoing vocals to “Crazy Train” became sports arena anthems. It was a great time to be an Ozzy/Sabbath/Dio fan, because Ozzy was killing it, Ronnie James Dio – Sabbath’s next lead singer – would soon strike out on his own with some incredible solo albums- and Sabbath’s most meaningful body of work – 1970 to 1981 – was just ending. The music – 50 plus years old now, like me – was fresh and HEAVY.

Black Sabbath of course were heavy metal pioneers. If you look up Heavy Metal Music on Wikipedia, they are the second band named. I was only a tot then, but I don’t think the term Heavy Metal was much in use in the late 60’s and early 70’s. I feel like the term took hold in the early 80’s, but I could be wrong. You could call them hard rock and you wouldn’t be far off.

Paranoid is without question regarded as one of Black Sabbath’s greatest albums, and most consider the Ozzy era to be Sabbath’s definitive time frame. (But I contend that their first album – Heaven and Hell – with Ronnie James Dio on vocals as Ozzy’s replacement, is one of their very best records as well. I wrote about a live Dio/Sabbath cassette surviving a boy/boom box/bus crash once.)

The album itself? Well, half of its eight songs are basically Sabbath’s most iconic: “War Pigs,” “Paranoid,” “Iron Man,” and “Fairies Wear Boots.” Although “Iron Man” is terribly played out, those other three sound as fresh and heavy in 2023 as they did fifty plus years ago when the album was released.

41. Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning

Conor Oberst‘s 2005 masterpiece could easily be placed much higher than this. You shouldn’t compare any of these bands, but in the mid 2000’s I really got into Damien Rice, Decemberists, Iron and Wine, Josh Ritter, and other singer/songwritery types too numerous to name (Oh, OK, I’ll name some of them: Chris Garneau, Dave Doobinin, Gary Jules, Joanna Newsom, Calexico, Jose Gonzalez, Jim Noir, none of whom made this list, but all of whom made my heart burst with incredible music love). It was a good time to be a singer-songwriter, and Conor did it better than most. He was prolific, he was sincere, he was insincere, he was raw, and he was open.

This album starts with a weird spoken word tale about an airplane going down, and continues from there with an absolutely flawless collection of pop/folk/rock classics, most notably “First Day of my Life.” I learned to play a shitty, half-assed version of that song on my acoustic guitar, and it never fails to make me happy. I had this on CD, but rebought it on vinyl a few years ago and have been overjoyed ever since.

Somewhere in the mid to late 2000’s, my wife at the time and I saw Bright Eyes at UC Davis and I was left underwhelmed. This album is fairly quiet, but the show was almost impossibly loud. I’m no stranger to loud rock shows, but it didn’t really jibe with who I thought I was going to see. Conor seemed quite drunk, and he kept screaming into the microphone, “You don’t have to like the music, but you HAVE to RESPECT it!” My ex wife and I joked about that for a long time, mimicking the admonition to each other at various times: “You don’t have to like the dinner, but you HAVE to RESPECT it!”

I saw him many years later at a 300 seat venue in Grass Valley with the phenomenal – unbeknownst to me at the time – Phoebe Bridgers opening. It was a whole different Conor. A more real, more mature, nuanced performer who had made incredibly great music between that time – 2017 or so – and the time I first saw him. Phoebe was out selling her own merch, and I talked to her for a few minutes. I have a special place in my heart for artists who sell their own merch. If they’re lucky, they eventually get a merch person, as Conor must have years ago, as Phoebe eventually did. For a couple of years I had a Conor Oberst T shirt that I literally purchased from Phoebe Bridgers. Maybe one day I’ll write about what happened to that, and all my other concert T shirts.

40. Queen – The Game

Oh boy, now that we’re hitting the low 40’s, we’re really starting to discuss some bands that I have a lot to say about. Queen…what can you say about Queen that hasn’t been said a million times by a million fans and critics? All I can tell you is what Queen meant to me, and this album meant a lot. Truthfully, I went back and forth between this album and A Night At The Opera, as far as which to include on this list. (As we remember from Part I, only one album per artist.) Opera would probably be considered most Queen fans’ favorite record, but I have to be honest here: The Game was my first Queen album, and it remains my number one go-to Queen record if forced to choose. Opera has the ubiquitous, iconic, ever-present, fucked out “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Amazing song…do we need to keep hearing it though? I know, that’s not what this list is about, but it’s one of those songs – like “Stairway To Heaven,” “Roundabout,” and “Sympathy for the Devil” – that is so iconic it’s hard to listen to just as just a song any more. Opera is an incredibly well-rounded album, never a dull moment, with wild swings of hard rock, (“Death On Two Legs,” “I’m In Love With My Car,” “Sweet Lady”) beautiful folkies and ballads, (“’39,” “Love Of My Life”) and oddball throwbacks (“Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon,” “Seaside Rendezvous,”). It’s pretty much a perfect album.

But it’s not The Game.

The Game came out in the summer between my fifth and sixth grade, and of course my first introduction to it was “Another One Bites The Dust.” You want to talk about an iconic, ubiquitous song? “Dust” was everywhere, all the time. You could NOT get away from this song. Before long I had the cassette, and it is the pure definition of a flawless record. Not only is there not a dud on the album, every song absolutely slays. Most of the songs are rockers, but they’re more synthy than the band’s previous records. Pure pop/rock masterpieces such as “Play The Game,” “Dragon Attack,” “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” and “Coming Soon” pretty much comprise the whole album, except for the final song, “Save Me,” just a gorgeous, bombastic song that hits you right in the feels every time.

I worked in a locked-ward chemical dependency treatment center between the ages of 18 and 20, and the clients there were between 13 and 17; not much younger than many of us on staff. I was playing The Game a LOT during those years (truthfully, there weren’t many times I wasn’t playing this cassette a lot,) and one day as I drove away from the facility at the now-demolished St. Luke’s Medical Center in Pasadena, I watched one of the patients staring at me and waving to me through her window as I headed out to the parking lot to my 1979 Chevy Malibu that I bought from my friend Eric for $800. The patients would sometimes get little crushes on us, and this girl watched me through the window, waving sadly, as I drove away. 15 years old and locked up in a drug rehab by her parents for runnin’ and gunnin’ a little too hard. It seemed like she was saying “Save Me.”

I don’t remember her name, nor do I know whatever happened to her, but I still occasionally think of that poor kid when I play this song.

I hang my head and I advertise
A soul for sale or rent
I have no heart, I’m cold inside
I have no real intent

Save me, save me, save me
I can’t face this life alone
Save me, save me, oh
I’m naked and I’m far from home

39. Iron Maiden – Piece Of Mind

To me, Iron Maiden are the strongest point of the holy European trinity of 70’s/80’s metal, the other two of course being Scorpions and Judas Priest. You read about Scorpions and Judas Priest in Part II, but Maiden is my favorite of that bunch. I first remember becoming aware of Iron Maiden in seventh grade. I don’t remember The Number Of The Beast coming out (an album that I almost included in this spot, rather than Piece) when I was in seventh grade, but I do remember Piece coming out toward the end of eighth grade. It was only the second album with new vocalist Bruce Dickinson, and although it’s hard for me to say it’s better than Beast, I think I have to put it down as my favorite Maiden album.

The three members of the holy trinity of European metal of the 1970’s and 1980’s all had an identical makeup: A shrieking lead singer, kick ass drummer, dominant bass player, and two – count ’em, TWO – face-melting lead guitarists. Adrian Smith and Dave Murray of Maiden were in fine form here, shredding on track after track after track. None of these European metal bands had much in the way of huge “hits,” but upon the opening riffs of “The Trooper,” “Flight of Icarus,” or “Die with Your Boots On,” a million metal kids will light their Bic lighters and shriek with wild abandon every time.

I eventually appreciated the leaner sounds of their debut album, Iron Maiden, and then Killers, with original lead singer Paul D’ianno. And after Piece came Powerslave, an album almost equally badass. A friend and I saw Maiden live on the World Slavery Tour, supporting that album, at Long Beach Arena (“Scream for me, Long Beach!”) in March 1985, when we were 15 years old. That was, I believe, my second big arena concert (the first being Robert Plant on his Principle of Moments tour with my bosom pal Chad). Those Maiden shows at Long Beach Arena were forever etched into metal history with their inclusion on the peerless Live After Death live album. I used to tell people, “Hear that ‘Wooooooo!!!! on side 3? That’s me!” when listening to Live After Death, but that was almost certainly not the case. There was a lot of Wooooo-ing and Yowwwww-ing at that concert, and to be truthful, I was a distance from the stage.

(Twisted Sister opened for much of that tour. I was never a huge fan of theirs, but Dee Snider said something from the stage that night that I still think about almost every time I see a band, in a venue large or small. Sister was getting ready to open for one of the biggest rock bands in the world – this must have been just before they had a bit of mainstream success with their Stay Hungry album, and its hits “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock” – and fans were milling around, and sitting down, and buying Maiden merch on the concourse. Dee shouted at the crowd between songs “YOU CAN’T SIT DOWN AND ROCK AND ROLL!!!” As ambivalent as I am about Twisted Sister’s music, he was fucking right. You can’t. To this day I’m absolutely pissed when I see a band I like, and it’s a dumb seated show at some kind of theater. Fuck that.)

Today, I can put on any of Maiden’s first five albums and be transported into a time machine of pure happiness, but almost none of their records after that have the same effect. There was a time in my life, 1982 through 1986 when Iron Maiden meant the world to me. Decades later I almost saw them again, in the fall of 2019 at Golden 1 Center, but I got violently ill on the night of the show and had to sell my ticket on StubHub. It’s OK. The epic Long Beach Arena show from 1985, immortalized on their first live album, will have to suffice.

38. REM – Automatic For The People

This is a very interesting entry for me. I was an R.E.M. fan, but not exactly a gigantic one, although I love and appreciate so much of their music. Truly, they’re one of the greatest rock bands of all time, despite our attempt to use them to define that 80’s/90’s “college radio” sound. You cannot deny that Automatic For The People is an intense record. They had already hit it big with Green and Out Of Time, but Automatic For The People is, to me, their best record. It’s deep, it’s dark, it’s sad, but it retains its semi-pop sensibilities. “Drive,” “Man On The Moon,” “Everybody Hurts,” “Nightswimming.” I don’t have a ton else to say about this record except that if you don’t like it, well, I don’t know what that says about you. If you don’t know it, fine, that’s fair. But if you know it and don’t love it? I’m just… sorry.

37. They Might Be Giants – Flood

I can’t for the life of me remember how I got turned on to They Might Be Giants. The quirky, prolific, East Coast duo – “The Johns” (Flansburgh and Linnell) – absolutely stole my heart with this album, their third, from 1990. It was just after I had moved to Sacramento, and I was so excited about their oddball sound that I tried to turn everyone I knew onto them, including my heavy metal-loving L.A. friends, who were likewise trying to turn me on to Queensryche‘s Operation Mindcrime. None of us succeeded in convincing each other. (My friend Brian hand-wrote all the lyrics to Queensryche’s metal dystopian rock opera on a sheet of paper, in the tiniest possible handwriting, for me. I feel guilty to this day that he went through so much work and within a couple songs I was like, “Meh,” and never listened again nor read his painstakingly crafted lyrics.)

I guess TMBG is still making music. They had a great documentary, Gigantic, that came out in 2003, and they made awesome kids’ records: No! being particularly popular with the whole family when my kids were little. But TMBG for me will always be Flood. “Birdhouse In My Soul” is a brilliant song, and the closest thing they ever had to a hit, but the record itself is flawless from start to finish. It opens audaciously, with a processional chorus proclaiming:

Why is the world in love again?
Why are we marching hand in hand?
Why are the ocean levels rising up?
It’s a brand new record, for nineteen-ninety
They Might Be Giants’ brand new album
Floooooooooood!

And then it rolls right into “Birdhouse,” eventually hitting “Lucky Ball And Chain,” “Your Racist Friend,” “Particle Man,” “We Want A Rock,” “Women And Men,” among many other gems, then the penultimate “They Might Be Giants,” – where they just sing the name of their band over and over among lines like

They might be fake
They might be lies
They might be big, big, fake, fake, lies

and doesn’t stop until the slow crooner “Road Movie To Berlin,” the perfect coda to this masterpiece.

TMBG is one of those weird, acquired-taste bands. I contend they are by no means a novelty act just because they have funny lyrics and play a lot of accordians. I saw them at The Crest at some point in the early 90’s, and I either went by myself or I might have talked a friend of a friend into attending. They were fantastic, of course, and I’m surprised that’s the only time I’ve seen them. I could be an anomaly in my fandom: I think they’re more typically the kind of band you’ve either hardly heard of, or that you’ve followed obsessively for 35 years and seen live a hundred times. I haven’t paid much attention to them since the early 00’s, if I’m being honest, but my goodness, Flood was – and still is – a treasure.

36. Paul Simon – Graceland

We’re getting to the point in this project – with 36 albums still to go – where I’m starting to feel unqualified to even write about these records. So much has been said about Graceland that I’m almost embarrassed to even add my two cents. How can I be close to qualified? Could I write about The Godfather and say simply “I liked it, good acting, good writing. Thumbs up.” I really am starting to feel like an idiot here. I guess all I can do is tell you what this album means to me.

As you know, very strict rules were in place when enumerating my favorite fifty albums of all time. One was one album per artist. When I introduced this piece I mentioned there was one kinda-sorta exception by someone who was once in one band, and then went solo, and both iterations made my top fifty. From reading The Leftovers and also from deductive reasoning, that of course could only have been Paul McCartney or Paul Simon: Artists whose original bands were so stellar, but somehow, incredibly, went on to have equally – or even more – amazing solo careers. This is where it’s hard to give it to McCartney though. His Wings stuff was super, and he’s had a lot of real nice solo work, but let me ask you this: If The Beatles had never existed, but all of McCartney’s post-Beatles stuff did, would he be a household name today? Would you recognize his name? Would your brother or sister? Your neighbor? That teenager down the street? Your dog or cat? Maybe. Probably not. Sorry Sir Paul, I feel like an asshole for saying it.

Simon and Garfunkel were, and remain, really big, but nowhere as big as the Beatles. However, Simon’s post S&G work has been absolutely stellar. He has made strong, popular, highly relevant music throughout the 70’s, 80’s, and I’ll argue even the 90’s. (I can’t speak too much about his work between 2000 and 2020.) While S&G only put out five studio albums in just over five years in the 60’s, it didn’t slow Simon down a bit after he and Art Garfunkel parted ways. Hell, Simon put out a really nice record called Seven Psalms in May of 2023. The man has had a hell of a run.

Simon was first heralded then years later criticized for embracing (or appropriating, depending on your point of view) music from distinctly different cultures, notably African music, to make this record. But when it came out when I was about 17, after loving Simon and Garfunkel and much of Simon’s solo stuff, I didn’t think much about that. And even now, as long as he gave credit where credit was due and paid his musicians fairly, I have absolutely no problem with it. Hell, I remember purchasing a Ladysmith Black Mambazo cassette just because I loved their sound on this record, and it seems like they became much more successful after the release of Graceland.

Simon is an inventive musician with boyish charm and a gift for lyrics. Every single song on this album is a banger, and it truly stands the test of time. Listen to “Homeless,” “Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes,” “Graceland,” or “I Know what I Know,” instead of the somewhat played out “Boy in the Bubble” or “You Can Call Me Al,” which are fine songs too.

Again, I adored Simon and Garfunkel, and Simon’s solo stuff before Graceland was fantastic. He’s made a lot of good music after Graceland as well. I saw him in concert once, and I gotta say, I’ll be really fucking sad when the world is without Paul Simon.

35. Buena Vista Social Club – Buena Vista Social Club

Remember big chain bookstores, and how they started getting into the music-selling business? Sometime in about 2000, my then-wife and I went to one of these bookstores, maybe Barnes & Noble, maybe Borders – it was something we did: drop the kids off at her folks, go out to eat, hit a bookstore. I wandered over to the CD section, as I often did on these dates of ours. Buena Vista Social Club was on display. It was featured on the listening station – remember those? – so I strapped on the headphones (eew!), started the store copy of the CD, read the little booklet that described the story of BVSC, and was thunderstruck from the first D minor chord of “Chan Chan.”

Of the hundred albums in the post, and the countless more by bands that didn’t make the list for whatever reason, I can’t think of another one where I remember the precise place and time I first heard of and listened to a band. It’s a pretty special artist that does that for a person, and maybe I should have ranked this one higher.

It’s worth reading up more on BVSC, and this is a good, short piece.  In a nutshell, legendary Cuban musicians from the 1940’s and 1950’s get rediscovered by an American and a Brit in the 1990’s (when one of these Cuban musicians was about to enter his 90’s), they all get together, make this amazing record, and then the musicians get invited to Carnegie Hall, become lifted out of poverty and into international fame and acclaim, star in a documentary by a German, and die (most/many of them) within five or ten years of natural causes at very advanced ages.

Buena Vista Social Club members were never all a part of one single band until Ry Cooder and others helped put them together in 1996. They were individually legends, playing in all manner of groups – sometimes with each other, sometimes not – for many decades, but it was the 40’s and 50’s that defined their sound. Then…well, we know what happened in Cuba.

But all this you can find out on your own. My experience with this record is that I became absolutely fucking obsessed with it. I learned all the lyrics to most of the songs in Spanish and English. I listed to it obsessively. I bought all the members’ solo albums that began coming out, as the elderly musicians gained newfound fame. I saw one of them – Barbarito Torres, one of the few younger members – live at Harlow’s, one of my very favorite places to see bands here in Sacramento. And this was during a time – unlike now – where I was decidedly not seeing many bands or artists play live.

When first writing this, I decided I had to have their Live at Carnegie Hall album on vinyl, so I ordered it from Discogs.com right on the spot. Buena Vista Social Club is an incredible story, and an even better band. Do yourself a favor: sit down with it, read the lyrics and the English translation, learn the stories of Compay Segundo, Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén González, Omara Portuondo, and so many other Cuban legends that comprised that band. You’re welcome.

34. LL Cool J – Bigger And Deffer

This list is woefully short of women and artists of color. I’m aware of it, but I can’t coat it woke and pretend some records mean more to me than they honestly did. These lists are the stuff that has meant the most to me, and there’s no room for anything but truthfulness. The first bands I liked were very white, very male, and very American and Brit-centric. But I’m happy to now get to the first hip-hop album in my top fifty, and my first album by a black, solo artist among this group.

You’re gonna read about a couple of other hip hop acts from the late 80’s later, but this sophomore album by LL Cool J from 1987 is pure perfection. The braggadocio is off the charts (“I’m Bad”), the beats are intense (“.357…”), the funny parts are hilarious (“Kanday”), the sweet parts are wonderful (“I Need Love”), and the entire album is just peerless 80’s rap love.

I haven’t followed rap and hip hop in a long time. I know, I know, get off my lawn, but Kanye, Drake, or Jay-Z don’t hit me the way rappers from the late 80’s did. I feel like that old shit was just funky, and cool, and outrageous, and funny, and as much as I try, I haven’t quite found hip hop today that I love as much as that 80’s stuff. (But shout out to Fantastic Negrito‘s Last Days of Oakland, Kendrick‘s Good Kid Maad City, Tyler the Creator, Denzel Curry, Megan Thee Stallion, and Kehlani. Y’all are gonna bring me back someday, I know it!)

LL Cool J wasn’t much about political commentary or social justice, he was just about amazing beats, skilled microphone techniques, and bragging about what a great rapper he was. Simpler times. I contend that the title track holds up as the greatest rap song of all time. Put it on, crank it, and you’ll see.

33. Grateful Dead – American Beauty

It’s hard to pick a favorite Grateful Dead album. I mean, they suffer a bit on this list because they were the quintessential live band, and you can freely get all their live stuff these days; you don’t have to meet some hippie in the Gemco parking lot in an RV and give him a lid of grass for a bootleg Pauley Pavillion ’73 on cassette.

You’ve learned by now that as a young stoner, I was deeply infatuated with rock music. It was always the music, but I won’t lie, you always wanted to seem cool to your stoner friends. My relationship with most bands in junior high typically started with seeing their logo drawn in Sharpie on some other stoner’s denim notebook. This led to many discussions amongst me, Tony, Chad, Brian, Little Scott, Bruce, and Eric, which would lead to discussions with older stoners like Big Scott, Joey, Ray, Adam, and Tony’s sister (not really a stoner, but cool, and into good music), and others.

In seventh grade, The Grateful Dead were a band I didn’t know much about, but they had the best artwork on their albums and posters. I was already into Zeppelin, Sabbath, Van Halen, and all kinds of heavy rock when I picked up Skeletons From The Closet: The Best Of The Grateful Dead on vinyl from Auditory Odyssey on Laurel Canyon Blvd. (Artistic license here: it could have been Music Plus on Ventura Blvd. Odyssey was way cooler though. They sold bongs and shit.) With the smoking skeleton on its cover, and the weird devil man, I knew I was gonna be in for the heaviest of heavy metal. This was going to be one kick ass, deep rock shit. Proto-metal before that was even a word.

Well, from the opening keyboards of “The Golden Road…” – a real jangly hippie jam, à la early Jefferson Airplane – to the closing strums of “Friend Of The Devil” – a folkish, country ditty, albeit with a very dark theme – I couldn’t have been more mistaken about what kind of music was going to come out of my speakers. And even now, in 2023, I feel like people who don’t know The Dead don’t realize that they are probably more at home on a country radio station than a rock station. Did I fall in love with The Dead from that collection? No, despite the fact that some of their greatest – and later my favorite – songs were on it. “Sugar Magnolia,” “St. Stephen,” “Uncle John’s Band,” “Mexicali Blues,” plus the ubiquitous “Truckin’” and “Casey Jones.”

Later I discovered live Dead, with the Dead Set and Reckoning albums, which I acquired on cassette sometime just after high school. This was back when there were very limited options in record stores for live Dead, and these two were classics. I listened to these a lot, discovering incredible jams like “Brokedown Palace” (please play this at my funeral), “Deal,” “Loser,” “Dire Wolf,” Cassidy,” and “Ripple.” I was becoming a full-fledged Dead fan – never one to call myself a Deadhead, though – and I eventually saw them live in the Jerry Garcia years precisely three times. (Which has always seemed odd to me. Most people I know have seen the Dead zero times, but a handful have seen them dozens or even hundreds of times.)

I had the good fortune of working at Sam Goody’s Music and Video in Costa Mesa, California in the late 80’s, and we got a great employee discount. I typically picked up a couple of cassettes each week at 33% off, and my first two of these were American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead, still considered their best studio albums from a band who mostly seemed disappointed by their own studio albums, according to stuff I read. They made the studio albums to fulfill their obligations to the record companies. What they really wanted to do was get on the road.

American Beauty is just what the title implies. A beautiful compilation of perhaps the most distinctly American band. The Dead was blues, hard rock, acid rock, folk, and country, all rolled up in one. Many of their most iconic songs – some mentioned above – debuted on record with this 1970 release, such as “Box Of Rain,” (And by the way, how cool is it to let their bass player, arguably the worst vocalist in the band, kick off the album with his song. It’s a beautiful tune inspired by the recent loss of his father), “Friend Of The Devil,” “Sugar Magnolia,” “Ripple,” “Brokedown Palace,” and “Truckin’.”

It was a great record, and I played it a whole lot. So it gets this spot in my top 50 list. Fun fact: in 2012 I became absolutely obsessed with live Grateful Dead. I would rip recordings from archive.org and painstakingly organize them on my computer for transfer to my iPod. I, no lie, listened to zero audio except live Grateful Dead from probably the summer of 2012 until the spring of 2013. I didn’t listen to podcasts, talk radio, or even my own family. Just live Dead. I got out of it, of course, but I can still dive back in so readily, so easily, and so lovingly. The Dead will always mean a lot to me.

32. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Freaky Styley

I had a friend named Molly when I was a teenager, and she made me a mixtape once that blew my mind. While I was listening mainly to Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath, she gave me a mixtape of Gene Loves Jezebel, Love and Rockets, Violent Femmes, and Red Hot Chili Peppers, among others. U2, Talking Heads, and The Cult had already broken me out of my hard rock / heavy metal doldrums, but Molly’s mixtape sent me to a stratosphere of great music. The Chilis were a love of mine from my first listen to “Jungle Man”on that mixtape in 1986 or so, all the way until I more or less gave up on them after 1995’s One Hot Minute. I hate to say it, but in my opinion, that was the album when they jumped the shark, although after that album is probably when they made most of their money, so good for them.

Freaky Styley is an impossible mix of funk, punk, rock, and just plain insanity. Produced by the funkmeister himself, George Clinton, it’s a groovy nonstop ass kicking of the type that hadn’t really been heard in pop music. Four white boys, impossibly funky, playing a style of music that couldn’t really be categorized. Their cover of Sly and the Family Stone‘s “If You Want Me To Stay” is a sublime, faithful, unironic love letter. They cover The Meters with “Hollywood (Africa)” and Dr. Suess with “Yertle The Turtle,” with a million funky stops along the way.

Nevermind the British bands
Nevermind the Synth Funk bands
Nevermind the Wham Wham band
Nevermind Duran Duran
Cause we’re the Red Hot
Chili
Peppers!

31. Hamilton: An American Musical – Original Broadway Cast Recording

There are only a couple of soundtracks on this list, and all of them were obsessions. I had heard rumblings about Hamilton, as we all had, but I clearly remember listening to the first several songs on the way back from visiting my oldest son in Berkeley on the road back home to Sacramento, somewhere in 2016 I want to say.

I was hooked. From the opening notes: Boom, boom boom boom boom, boom boom boom boom…”How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot…” even thinking about the opening of the album right now makes me want to put it on and play the whole thing from start to finish, all three hours of it.

Once I really started listening to it, it took me months to stop. Much like my Grateful Dead pilgrimage of 2012, this album was literally all I listened to for several months in 2016 and 2017. I didn’t have all three hours quite memorized, as documented by middle school girls on YouTube everywhere, but it was close. Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s lyrics and rhyming were so on point it just seemed ridiculous. I didn’t get all the hip hop references, having mostly been out of hip hop since the early 90’s, but they were powerful all the same. And the fact that the songs were sung by black and brown voices about our ever-so-white founding fathers, well, there was just something amazing about it.

My friend Joel and I went to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch in San Francisco a few years ago – when I was well-versed on the Hamilton soundtrack, but hadn’t seen the show live yet – and we met his daughter, who was living in SF at the time, at a local eatery. Of course we had no reservations so had to squeeze in at the bar in an Italian joint near the theater, sitting on those horrible metal square bar stools with no back, and nowhere to hang your jacket, but Jordan came and met us there for dinner even though she wasn’t going to the Hedwig show with us. I was telling her about Hamilton, and of course, remember, my only experience with it at the time was listening to the album on CD and Spotify. Jordan was a fan of musicals, so I said, “Here’s the thing. Just listen to it once, and listen to it all the way through. Until you do that, you may be familiar with it, you may have heard some songs, you may acknowledge ‘Hey, that Hamilton thing is pretty cool,’ but seriously, Jordan, listen to it. Listen to it from start to finish. All of it. Every note. Every word. You will be hooked. You will be obsessed. Walls in your heart will break down and you will scream to the heavens “I get it now!”

A stranger from a couple of bar stools over leaned in and said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but what this guy is saying is one hundred percent true. That’s exactly the experience that I had, as well as everyone else I know. Thanks for letting me butt in, please enjoy your meal.” My understanding is it eventually had that effect on Jordan too.

I did finally see Hamilton live in 2019 in San Francisco with the touring cast, and it was terrific. It’s really hard not to sing along though! At the exact moment the guns are fired in the duel between Hamilton and Burr at the end, a fat old white man had to loudly shuffle back into his seat from the restroom, practically falling all over my guest and me. Any other fucking scene, man!

People who are into Hamilton, are really into Hamilton. And you should be, too.

30. Leonard Cohen – Ten New Songs

I came to Leonard Cohen later than I should have, but when he got his hooks into me I stayed hooked. I honestly don’t remember having any awareness of Cohen until I heard about 1991’s tribute album I’m Your Fan, with lots of great artists I both had (R.E.M., Pixies, Nick Cave) and hadn’t (Geoffrey Oryema, The Lilac Time, Jean-Louis Murat) heard of, contributing. I didn’t own the album, but the name Leonard Cohen became imprinted in my mind as “someone I should know about” long before the internet would let you learn everything about anything over the next 60 seconds.

The next I learned about Cohen was that his brilliant song, “Waiting For The Miracle,” kicked off Quentin Tarantino‘s Natural Born Killers soundtrack. Now I finally knew who this cat was, and that song was the straight dope. I didn’t know he was nearly 60 when he recorded this song, with the inimitable Sharon Robinson, a couple of years earlier. Of course I knew Concrete Blonde‘s version of “Everybody Knows” from the Pump Up The Volume soundtrack, and I think I was vaguely aware it was a cover, but to me at the time it was simply a Concrete Blonde song.

I bought The Essential Leonard Cohen on CD in the early 2000’s, and that’s when I realized this dude was a contemporary of The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, and Bob Dylan, maybe just a couple of years behind, artistically, although older in years. By the time Cohen’s last album came out, while he was still living, in 2016, he had been making relevant pop music in every single decade from the 60’s through the 2020’s. That’s seven decades! Name me one other artist who has done that. Relevant music! You might say Bob Dylan, to which I’d say “But the 80’s.” And then I would win that argument. Cohen’s song “Nevermind,” from 2014, was the theme song for season 2 of HBO’s True Detective, when Cohen was 70 years old. “Avalanche,” as covered by Aimee Mann, was the theme song for the documentary miniseries about Michelle McNamara‘s hunt for the Golden State Killer, “I’ll Be Gone In The Dark” in 2020. No one else has that staying power with music spanning a longer era. McCartney still tours, so did Elton until very recently, and Paul Simon still makes music, but nobody did it like L.C., so consistently, for so many years.

Soon after wearing out The Essential Leonard Cohen, I started diving into his studio albums. Although I love his 60’s and 70’s work, I was most drawn to 1988’s I’m Your Man, with the amazing songs, besides the title track, “Everybody Knows,” “Ain’t No Cure For Love,” and “Tower Of Song.” I was also drawn to 1992’s The Future, which yielded – besides the amazing title track (LC was good at the title tracks!) the aforementioned “Waiting For The Miracle,” “Anthem,” and “Democracy.”

But when I heard 2001’s Ten New Songs, sharing all songwriting credit and the amazing cover photo with the exquisite, incomparable Sharon Robinson, I knew I had found my Cohen studio album home. Every. Single. Song. is a masterpiece. “Alexandra Leaving” will still be standing when all of humanity has burned down. “Love Itself” will make you break down and cry where you stand. “A Thousand Kisses Deep” will make you wonder if you’ve ever been in love (because LC has, as he’s been telling us for 60 years, and from the grave.)

Cohen died one day before the 2016 election of Donald Trump. The singer, songwriter, musician, poet, painter, novelist, illustrator, and Buddhist Monk just knew that at the age of 82, he had done what he could. The world was entering a terrible, new phase.

We will always have his music, but he had to leave us.

29. Urge Overkill – Saturation

Urge Overkill was one of those hard rock bands from the 90’s that kind of got left behind. Saturation was their major label debut, and it was as polished and cool as the band’s matching leisure suits and medallions. It was the grunge era, where bands from the Pacific Northwest tried to out-authenticize each other, with lots of loud fuzz, flannel, and tore-up jeans where you had to earn the damage. Urge, out of Chicago, shared grunge’s love of loud guitars and thumping drums, but they were all about the hooks, the melodies, and a mid-60’s coordinated fashion ethos.

Their biggest hit ever was from their Stull E.P. when they were still on Touch and Go Records out of Chicago. The song was a cover of Neil Diamond‘s “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon.” Creepy as fuck, but prominently played in Quentin Tarantino‘s (there’s his name again, two albums in a row!) Pulp Fiction and also that film’s stellar soundtrack album. It’s the pivotal scene where John Travolta‘s and Uma Thurman‘s characters return from winning the famous dance contest at Jackrabbit Slim’s, and Thurman listens to the song, overdosing on herion, while Travolta has a moral crisis in the bathroom.

That’s as close as Urge Overkill got to real rock and roll stardom, but they had the talent and the shtick to be as big as Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, or Alice In Chains (but maybe not Nirvana, a breed unto themselves).

Saturation starts off with the epic riff from “Sister Havana,” probably their second biggest hit, and continues loud, quiet, loud – Pixies style – until the final cymbal crash of “Heaven 90210.” We don’t need to talk about the hidden track, “Dumb Song, Take Nine.” This was a thing, kids. Ask your elders about hidden tracks.

I only saw Urge Overkill once, at The Cattle Club, in 1994 or so. It was always a singular experience, seeing one of your vary favorite bands in a small venue. And not because they were on a nursing home tour, but because they were on their way up. I chatted with Eddie “King” Roeser at the fire pit for a while. I bought a T-shirt that night; my son Henry still wears it from time to time, and it fills me with pride. I tore a round, cardboard, UO promotional cutout from the club’s wall that night and took it home. It hung in various apartments and houses of mine throughout the years, but has lamentably been lost to the ravages of time.

Sadly, Urge never flew too high, but Saturation remains one of the most crankable-summer-car-windows-down albums out there. And one of their founders, Nash Kato, was instrumental in the career of the only female in my top five, whose jacket she wore in the photo booth for the picture that embosses her incomparable debut album, who encouraged her and believed in her. You will have to wait for that though.

28. Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins – Rabbit Fur Coat

This one is on the list not so much because of what it meant to me, but simply because of how fucking good it is. I’m a sucker for a singer-songwriter, and Jenny Lewis made a masterpiece in her first solo record after Rilo Kiley in 2006. When I think of this record, I think of living in River Park in the late aughts, early teens. I never listened to it nonstop; it wasn’t one of those. But it’s just so, so, good from start to finish. “Run, Devil, Run” is the short, gospel-ish, opening track. It sounds like it belongs on the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack. “Rise Up With Fists!!” is brilliant and heavy:

But you can wake up younger
Under the knife
And you can wake up sounder
If you get analyzed
And I better wake up
There, but for the grace of God, go I

It’s a slow, sweet, heavy record. Lyrically, it’s just astonishing. The kind of album that it’s really worth sitting down and reading the lyrics while you listen. I won’t talk about every song, because I don’t know them all that well, but each one that comes on makes me excited. Every single one. “Melt Your Heart,” my God!

When you’re kissing someone
Who’s too much like you
It’s like kissing on a mirror
When you’re sleeping with someone who doesn’t get you
You’re gonna hate yourself in the morning

Amen.

After that it rolls into “You Are What You Love,” which is just phenomenal musically and lyrically. I used to play this on guitar, and I should dive back into it one of these days. Some songs on this record are so heavy that my own feeble talents can’t do them justice.

‘Cause we live in a house of mirrors
We see our fears in everything
Our songs, faces, and secondhand clothes
But more and more, we’re suffering
Not nobody, not a thousand beers
Will keep us from feeling so all alone

The titular song, “Rabbit Fur Coat” is an epic tale of a young woman selling her soul – and her rabbit fur coat – for life in a mansion house, and then 20 years later to take advantage of her own daughter in order to chase gold and more mansions. It’s hard to know how much of this is autobiographical, Lewis having been a successful child actor raised by a single mom. (“I became a hundred thousand dollar kid…”)

The next song is a mind-bending cover of the Traveling Wilburys‘ (see favorite album #43) “Handle with Care,” which features its own supergroup of backing musicians: Ben Gibbard, M. Ward, and Conor Oberst. It’s a very faithful rendition of that classic Wilburys song, but it’s enough different – and maybe it’s just the different voices – that it just knocks you right on your ass.

For me, the last amazing song on the album – remember though, there’s not one dud on any of these records – is “Born Secular.”

God works
In mysterious ways
And God gives
And then he takes
From me
From me

The album finishes with a great song, “It Wasn’t Me,” then a short reprise of “Happy,” an earlier song. I can’t speak much to The Watson Twins. They have incredible background vocals, but I don’t know if they had a contribution to the songwriting. Sometimes an album didn’t change your life, but it’s so good it just never fails to please. Rabbit Fur Coat is like that for me. I can’t recommend this record enough.

27. Tracy Chapman – Tracy Chapman

Tracy Chapman’s debut album from 1988, when she was 24 years old, was momentous. The album is flawless, and her career probably suffered from such early success. The second track on the album, “Fast Car,” remains her most popular song to date, 35 years later. Three of her top five songs on Spotify are from the album, and although she’s had a tremendous career in the music industry, she – like so many others – never really matched the success of her debut record.

I don’t remember where I got the CD. It may have belonged to my former stepmother. It may have been the first CD I ever owned, after appropriating it from her. When I moved from L.A. to Sacramento in 1989 to move in with my dad and his new wife, he let me move his Pioneer component stereo system – and new-fangled CD player within – from the living room to my bedroom. It was one of those faux-wood assemble-yourself cabinets with a glass door that closed softly on a magnet. My stepmother had this CD and Enya‘s Watermark, and no one seemed to care that I commandeered them and the stereo. These two CD’s quickly became nighttime rituals as I peacefully entered dreamland to these soundtracks.

I don’t know what to say about the record itself, except from the opening  chords of “Talkin’ About A Revolution,” to the global phenomenon “Fast Car,” “Baby Can I Hold You,” “She’s Got Her Ticket,” “Mountains O’ Things…” Every song is a perfect chapter of the life of a young woman with too much weight on her shoulders, longing for love and freedom, and fighting oppression and heartbreak at every turn. It’s as powerful in 2023 as it was in 1988. I highly recommend a listen for those who haven’t been hipped to it.

I had a feeling that I belonged
And I had a feeling I could be someone
Be someone
Be someone

And yes, I still listen when I go to sleep sometimes. All these years later. (I’ve recently tried Enya as a soporific too, but she just doesn’t work for me anymore!)

26. Tom Waits – Mule Variations

Oh boy, just throw a dart at Tom Waits‘ discography, and you’ll find a candidate for his “best” album. Some would make the case for his debut, Closing Time from 1973. Others would rightly say 1985’s Rain Dogs, or 1987’s Franks Wild Years (no apostrophe). Some might say Swordfishtrombone or Real Gone. I’m quite fond of his most recent studio release, Bad As Me, from way back in 2011. Waits remains probably my biggest bucket list live artist, and I’m just not optimistic, at his age of 73, that it’s gonna happen. He’s not McCartney or Willie or Jagger or Richards. But I will always have Mule Variations.

Like most of Waits’ work, it’s a strange hodgepodge. The opening track, “Big In Japan,” is a funky, lo-fi, kooky prologue to the great music to come:

I got the moon, I got the cheese
I got the whole damn nation on their knees
I got the rooster, I got the crow
I got the ebb, I got the flow

This gives to the odd, rhythmic, “Low Side Of The Road,” which itself turns to possibly my favorite song of all time, even though it’s up here on my 26th favorite album: “Hold On.”

“Hold On” is a masterpiece of storytelling. Haunting, emotional, resonant, wistful, hopeful, and rueful acceptance. It’s a perfect piece of Americana. From the sign that says “If you live it up, you won’t live it down,” to the dime store watch, rings made of spoons, to whether or not you can meet nice girls in coffee shops, the whole song just spins your head around with visions and imagery that whether you’ve experienced something similar or not, whether you’ve been to St. Louis or not, you just want to fall down to your knees and cry, or pray, or scream, or all three. The final verse hammers the final nail in:

Down by the Riverside motel
It’s 10 below and falling
By a 99 cent store
She closed her eyes and started swaying
But it’s so hard to dance that way
When it’s cold and there’s no music
Oh, your old hometown’s so far away
But inside your head there’s a record playing
A song called, “Hold on,” hold on…

Honestly, the rest of the album doesn’t much matter. It’s a great album, and it would stand tall without this song, but some songs are so superlative that they instantly push their album up higher, and higher, and higher. Who doesn’t have a record in their head playing at all times? Is it just me? Is that why I’m compelled to make these lists?

There are more gems: “Pony” (“I hope my pony, I hope my pony, I hope my pony knows the way back home”), “Picture In A Frame,” (“I’m gonna love you til the wheels come off,” to which my good friend and former brother-in-law’s wedding party walked down the aisle), and “Georgia Lee” (“Why wasn’t God watching? Why wasn’t God listening? Why wasn’t God there for Georgia Lee?”)

It’s a curious album, filled with the bizarre vocal stylings for which Waits is famous. Is there such a thing as Industrial Folk? There’s a lot of tune-adjacent piano and what I can only imagine are metal pipes banging on steel beams. Still, it’s a fantastic experience, this record, and dotted with some of the most emotional and compelling songs in the pop/rock pantheon.

OK, there were my 26th through 50th favorite albums of all time. Click here for Part IV of this adventure.