Your favourite album ever, THROUGH THE YEARS

Funky

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Same question... harder to define maybe but I’ll have a go

Probably didn’t have a favourite album until the 90s, so it would have been this



Until this came out, which was my favourite for almost 20 years



It was this for a couple of years



but I think I’m back to ROL if I’m honest.
 
Hounds of Love
The Ascension
A ta merci
Ghettolimpo
Tragic Kingdom
 
I honestly don't remember, but it may at varying stages have been

Eternal - Power of a Woman
Spice Girls - Spice
Spice Girls - Spiceworld
TLC - Fanmail
Macy Gray - On How Life Is

I think for a long time it was Madonna - Ray of Light

But for the last decade plus, it has and will always continue to be

Mariah Carey - Butterfly
 
Spice Girls - Spice World
Susanne Sundfør - Ten Love Songs
Natalie Imbruglia - White Lilies Island
Muse - Origin Of Symmetry
Interpol - Antics
 
Culture Club - Colour By Numbers
Madonna - True Blue
Michael Jackson - Bad
Pet Shop Boys - Actually
Madonna - Like A Prayer
Michael Jackson - Dangerous
Madonna - Erotica - Always
 
Shania Twain - Come On Over
Dixie Chicks - Home
Gwen Stefani - Lamb
Cascada - Everytime We Touch
Dixie Chicks - Home (again)
Kylie - Light Years
 
The first album to ever properly knock my little socks of was "Madness Presents...The Rise And Fall" by Madness (usually just known as "The Rise And Fall". I was 9 and was given the cassette for Xmas by my parents. They were at the peak of their powers and yet this album didn't sell so well, despite coming in the middle of one of their most successful runs of singles. Every song sounds different to every other and yet you could be listening to no-one else. The ambition in the writing and arrangements is palpable and, even with a couple of middling songs, the album as a whole just shines from beginning to end. It was the album where I first learned how much you could really do with music and it changed my relationship with music as a thing.

Today, there are obvious blemishes. A member in brownface on the cover and a song called "New Delhi" in which a couple of the band do what Nish Kumar called "The Accent" towards the end (which is actually the only problem with what is otherwise an excellent song which incorporates Indian instruments and microtonal shifts very well indeed - a shame the masters are lost and the voices can't be mixed out). Plus, the group's name has aged badly. But to a nine year old in 1982, I was too young and had too narrow a worldview to think too much of this - it didn't seem any different to the English comedians on television doing a Scottish accent. That was being white in Glasgow in the early 80s for you.

I still listen to the album and I still find it rewarding. Their ability to write songs about urban decay (the 'managed decline' of Liverpool), war (Falklands), depression, suicide, fraud (!) and mix these seamlessly with some of the more jaunty material for which they were known remains remarkable to me.
 
In a rough chronological order of being my favourites.

Love Hurts - Cher
- my first ever album, bought in cassette form from John Menzies. For what it is, it definitely delivered. Cher's schlop chops are loud and lethal, particularly effective on Save Up All Your Tears, still pretending to be a Biker Mama Ol'Lady on World Without Heroes, pleasing old timers with the comparitively bludgeoned 2nd attempt at the title track (go seek out the recently remastered, more meditative 1975 reading that's currently a YouTube exclusive for a genuinely touching performance), hitting a home run with Shoop Shoop and schlocking fillers such as Could've Been You being otherwise unremarkable were it not for the reverberations of Cher's buoyant timbre. Cher was at her fuck-me peak, but the tweaks, nips, tuckings and staples soon made her a punchline again for next few years. Her next album would be one of her very best and, you've guessed it, a relative flop.

Oh god, there are so many more that were my favourites to come. That'll do :D
 
Lady Gaga - Born This Way
Madonna - Confessions on a Dancefloor
Britney Spears - Femme Fatale
Kosheen - Kokopelli
Nightwish - Dark Passion Play
Siobhan Donaghy - Revolution in Me
Dido - Life for Rent
Zomby - With Love
Junior Boys - Last Exit
 
The good tracks from Fanmail (all exquisite it must be said):

- Fanmail
- Silly Ho
- No Scrubs

It all gets unbearable from then on in. Front loaded isn't the word!
 
The good tracks from Fanmail (all exquisite it must be said):

- Fanmail
- Silly Ho
- No Scrubs

It all gets unbearable from then on in. Front loaded isn't the word!

it’s definitely a massive step down from CSC... but it’s still a great album. It’s just a bit hit n miss. I got very bored of this album after a while because I think it was very of its time but I’ve learnt to appreciate it again.. I just never listen in full. “Come On Down” is a gorgeous pop song (a million times better than its dull sister Unpretty, but I understand why the latter was a single given the lyrics) and I have a soft spot for Dear Lie. But it’s the fabulously understated and futuristic one-two of Lovesick and Automatic at the end of the album that lift it for me. Very underrated.
 
I think Dallas Austin's stuff has aged a lot better than Timbaland's, but that might be because it wasn't quite so ubiquitous.
 
Obviously having a hefty hand in one of Marge's best albums makes me all the more warm to him.
 
I think Dallas Austin's stuff has aged a lot better than Timbaland's
Oh 100%. And even more so when Timba flew solo without Missy. She brought a more experimental, almost punkish angle to his work. On his own it became a tired, basic formula.

I love a lot of Timba stuff to be fair, but him and the Neptunes kinda killed off the groovy R&B sound of the early/mid 90s and I’m still bitter about it!
 
I think Missy's input on the pop scene is a story that has not yet been told. She clearly does not want the spotlight on her but I think she has had a profound effect on both her collaborators and the things she has done solo.
 
There’s a few songs from the mid 90s that Missy produced that pretty much steered the course for the new R&B sound that dominated from 97 through the noughties. People don’t realise how much of an innovator she was. Those 1996 albums from Aaliyah and 702 should be viewed as the moment R&B evolved.
 

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