uring the COVID-19 lockdown of this past seven months, we were often left to listening to a lot of pop music by ourselves, and naturally as a result, many of us feel compelled to update and add to the list of our all-time favourite pop records. Remember that these aren't necessarily my thirty-first to fortieth favourite records-- any of these titles have equal stature to any other titles that appeared on previous lists. Again, these records are not in order by preference; they are in chronological order by orginal release date.

31 BRIAN ENO - Discreet Music (EG 1975)
Producer: Brian Eno. Usually innovative albums that start musical revolutions aren't really that mind-blowing in retrospect, as their successors albums often improve or perfect upon the initial form. This record may prove to be the exception. There is a diagram of tape delay machines utilised during the recording process printed on the liner notes: the recording studio as an extendion of the band's instruments. Who cannot but fall in love?

32 DAVID BOWIE - 'Heroes' (RCA 1977)
Producer: Tony Visconti and David Bowie. Continuing with the Eno obsession, I reckon we could’ve picked any of the three Berlin trilogy albums, but I picked this one, as it’s probably the weirdest of the bunch. Side one has avant-Kraut rock that doesn’t sound like anything made before or since. Side two is dominated by a big chunk of lovely, Eno ambient landscape. Bowie gives us a Dionysian dichotomy that formed one of my gateways into being a lifelong Eno fanatic. Incidentally, the track 'V-2 Schneider' was named after Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider. Cool, eh?

33 R.E.M. - Reckoning (I.R.S. 1984)
Producer: Mitch Easter and Don Dixon. I'm convinced that overall, the Brits have always popped and rocked more effectively than the Americans, but this record made me reconsider America as a viable source for pop music. It even sounds American. In the first album, you couldn't understand what the hell he was singing about. He seemed to mumble through Murmur. Somehow I didn't mind that, and it actually made the album more mysterious and poignant. Now with this album, you can understand some of the words, but you still don't know what the hell he's singing about. Perhaps this is just as well since I'm starting to doubt whether I would enjoy it as much if I understood everything.

While it's fun to make lists such as the one you're reading, I'm also torn by the fact that ultimately I’m much more of a singles person when it comes to pop music. I hate the fact that by making lists such as this one, I look like some nerd who is somehow trying to legitimatise pop music. It may seem like I'm attempting to make these records more important than what they really are. Admittedly, all this can easily be dismissed as quite a pathetic and pretentious affair, and it seems to compromise the fun and frivolous nature of pop music.

On the other hand, it's hard to be perceived as pretentious when we're dealing with singles. In fact, it's almost impossible to rank singles since their very nature is ephemeral. After three or four weeks, you’re through with them. You toss or archive them, and you move on to newer, fresher, shinier singles. You don't want to mess with them any longer. They're not meant to permanent or to be taken seriously. It’s even more pointless to try to rank them like this. Your moods are even more volatile when it comes to singles. Besides, there’s just way too many of them; ranking albums is a much simpler affair. Singles capture the essence of pop. The sheer disposable fun of singles can be summed up by some liner notes written by Peter Buck for Dead Letter Office:

I’ve always like singles much more than albums. A single has to be short, concise, and catchy, all values that seem to go out the window as far as albums are concerned. But the thing that I like best about singles is their ultimate shoddiness. No matter how lavish that packaging, no matter what attention to detail, a '45 is still essentially a piece of crap usually purchased by teenagers. This is why musicians feel free to put just about anything on the b-side; nobody will listen to it anyway, so why not have some fun. You can clear the closet of failed experiments, badly written songs, drunken jokes, and occasionally, a worthwhile song that doesn't fit the feel of an album.

Since I'm still essentially a teenager (at least in terms of having short attention spans as well as an acne problem) who loves to have fun, singles are perfect cheap thrills for a pop addict like me. Finally, like all music fans in Seattle, I attended Bumbershoot a few weeks ago, and here was their setlist. I'm putting it here since I don't want to forget it, considering the fact that it was by far their best in quite a long time. The absence of Monster and Murmur tracks notwithstanding, it was a nice coverage, wasn't it?

34 NEW ORDER - Technique (Factory 1989)
Producer: New Order. With a very apt title, this is yet another culmination of a long and dramatic musical evolution which arguably began even before the death of Ian Curtis. With this record, they finally perfected their own distinctive brand of synth and bass guitar pop/ rock/ dance music, which they have pretty much stayed with ever since. Points for the incredible Peter Saville/ Trevor Key sleeve design.

35 U2 - Achtung Baby (Island 1991)
Producer: Daniel Lanois with Brian Eno. Before this record, I couldn't stand U2 (I still can't listen to insufferable crap like 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'), but fortunately with this release, they finally discovered dance music, a sense of humour, and most importantly, irony. However, they didn't really have a choice. By 1991, they were a big joke. They had to change their artistic trajectory to be relevant. Sure, they had written some pretty catchy ditties like "Pride," "Where the Street Have No Name," and "With or Without You" as well as achieved some fairly impressive production work (under Lanois and Eno) and ambitious marketing campaigns. On the other hand, they were unbearably sanctimonious, self-righteous, pompous, and perhaps even stupid (remember how they had discovered American Black music with Rattle and Hum?). If you take yourself so seriously all the time, pretty soon people are not going to take you seriously at all. This is their redeeming record. Not only does this Eurodisc shake, rock, thump, and jangle, but it features some great quiet songs like "One" which still manages to induce a hushed sense of awe every time I hear it. Last but not least, this record is also pornographic; virtually every song has a reference to oral sex. Those naaasty bastards!

36 SAINT ETIENNE - So Tough (Heavenly 1993)
Producer: Saint Etienne. Someone once told me that "Mario's Cafe" was once used in a shampoo commercial. Cool, eh? After all, the record is quite refreshing. This is this band's Paul's Boutique, from which it had actually sampled. In other words, this strange record is an absolute sampling tour-de-force. I've heard that they could barely play any instruments around this period, but they really didn't need to. They were so adept at sampling and finding interesting sources to sample that instrumental proficiency became irrelevant. As to the sound of this record, all I can say is that despite the wildly eclectic nature of the album, listening to this record somehow still feels like gushes of cool but bracing, damp English air. Definitely cloudy day music, and perhaps good for your hair. I like that.

37 OASIS - (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (Creation 1995)
Producer: Owen Morris and Noel Gallagher. Released at the pinnacle of the Britpop frenzy, this is a Back in Black guilty pleasure for the 90s. It's great for sing-alongs with yer mates. Remember to always play this one loud; it sounds even better.

38 R.E.M. - New Adventures in Hi-fi (Warner Bros. 1996)
Producer: Scott Litt and R.E.M. I'm crazy about this record partly because so many people inexplicably hated it. As a matter of fact, I think it's Michael Stipe's favourite too. Some of my all time favourite tracks are here, like 'E-bow,' 'Electrolite,' and 'So fast, so numb.' The last Scott Litt production and recorded mostly while they were on tour, Hi-fi has an uncanny immediacy that simply rocks, and it also has a bit of everything stylistically that they had previously done, as it distills the late Bill Berry period.

39 GEORGE MICHÆL - Older (Virgin 1996)
Producer: George Michael. This is the last British record listed here. Just in case you're keeping track, twelve out of twenty desert island recordings were issued by British artists. The immaculate production values and posh packaging notwithstanding, here's a quiet record that just wallows in its sense of loss and splendid melancholy. In the words of Paul Moody's funny NME review:

There's danger in emotional ties. George should know that. After all, he was the one who told us so in the first place, way back when life was one big swimming pool full of bleach-blonde soul girls desperate to get their hands on the shuttlecock lurking within those shorts of his... How times change. Six years and one gruelling court case on from the largely fab Listen Without Prejudice Volume One (home of the almighty 'Freedom '90', remember?), and George is more downbeat than ever. The sleeve, a sombre silver'n'grey affair, has one side of George's face swathed in shadow like a man deprived of one eye, while the music, aside from the occasional commercial glitz, is bedtime sophisto-soul; the sort of thing that could convince any pretty girl from Hollywood to High Wycombe to slip between the sheets should the evening have exuded the necessary amount of, erm, sophistication... There it is, that word again. Because George, for all the angst he so brazenly wears on his sleeve, remains the embodiment of suburban wish-fulfilment. Times may have changed, and his fans may have dipped into the real world, full of the dreary stuff ­ responsibilities, families, getting older ­ but the music still fits the mood like a glove; air-conditioned, gossamer-lite, upwardly mobile.

40 EMINEM - The Marshall Mathers LP (Aftermath/ Interscope 2000)
Producer: Dr. Dre, at al. We’ve finally come to the first record released in the 2000s. What's the appeal? For a start, he's funny and smart. He doesn't rap ad nauseum about how much cash money he has, drug deals, bitches and ho's. Instead, he rhymes about "homosexuals and Vicodin," massacres, and his ex-wife Kim. He has created his own universe. On its face value musically, Marshall Mathers is a great, catchy, and funny as hell pop record. The utter wittiness and slippery slickness of his rhymes enable their inimitable delivery by him to almost induce a sense of being vertiginous in the listener. Few records allow themselves to have as much (questionable) fun as this one. In many ways, it's like License to Ill for a new generation. It's supposed to annoy your parents. While stating the obvious, I reckon that it should also be noted that there’s a difference between fantasies raging in you head, and actually acting out these fantasies in real life. Fantasies are exactly that, and most should remain that way. Otherwise, Shady’s gonna fucking kill you!

I had the hardest time coming up with these latest ten. Other records that came fairly close to making these lists include: United States by Laurie Anderson (...should non-pop albums be allowed here? why aren't cassical albums here?), Post or Homogenic from Björk, Parklife with Blur, Ziggy Stardust or one of the other two Eno collaborations from David Bowie, London Calling from the Clash, King of America by Elvis Costello, Ultra or Violator from Depeche Mode, Pink Moon by Nick Drake, Elastica's self-titled debut, Another Green World by Brian Eno, Watermark or Shepherd Moons by Enya, Live Through This by Hole, Penguin Eggs by English folksinger Nic Jones, Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division, The Mix by Kraftwerk, Ray of Light from Madonna, Mezzanine by Massive Attack, Joni Mitchell's Night Ride Home, Dazzle Ships by OMD, Diversions from Orbital, Learning to Crawl from the Pretenders, Prince's Purple Rain, Dummy from Portishead, Life’s Rich Pageant by R.E.M., another Stones album, perhaps Let It Bleed, or maybe Sticky Fingers, Queen Is Dead by the Smiths, Dusty in Memphis by Dusty Springfield, A Grand Don't Come for Free by the Streets, Suede's self-titled debut record, Fear of Music by the Talking Heads, The Hush by Texas, the Fannies' Grand Prix, Shoot Out the Lights by Richard and Linda Thompson, Urban Hymns by Verve, any of the first three albums by Gillian Welch, Lines on the Paper by late California singer-songwriter Kate Wolf, and Skylarking by XTC.

orgotten about the first ten, or the second ten records, or the third ten records?

20 October 2020

Reach us at 'bcbloke' on all the usual social media platforms