1977 - Clive's Top Albums of Every Year Challenge
In what will likely be my final post of 2020 (don’t panic, I’ll very much be carrying on with this cahllenge into 2021 and beyond) we’re going to take a look at 1977. The year the nuclear-proliferation pact, curbing the spread of nuclear weapons was signed by 15 countries, Star Wars hit theatres for the first time, and British Public sector trade unions including firefighters undertook a strike for wage increases.
As usual, here’s what rateyourmusic.com’s users rate as the year’s top 5 albums, using their fancy new algorithm which seems to give a little less credence to how many reviews an album has, meaning less reviewed releases have a better chance of coming high up the lists.
#1 Pink Floyd - Animals
#2 David Bowie - Low
#3 Television - Marquee Moon
#4 Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
#5 David Bowie - “Heroes”
So returns from Pink Floyd and Bowie and first time entries from Television and Fleetwood Mac. Bowie achieves the rarest of things by managing to release two albums in one year that make it onto the list. As usual, five just isn’t enough, so I’m grabbing a few from further down to compete for the coveted title for 1977, including a shameless dip quite far down to grab an old favourite.
#6 Trans Europa Express
#7 Fela Kuti - Zombie
#8 Wire - Pink Flag
#11 Bob Marley & the Wailers - Exodus
#12 Brian Eno - Before and After Science
#25 Martha Argerich - 24 Préludes, Op. 28
#85 Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols
Plenty of artists we’ve not had before there, so let’s get these 12 albums reviewed and see who comes out the victor. I know I’ve said this a few times already, but this is absolutely a contender for one of the strongest years we’ve had yet.
12. Trans Europa Express
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk’s sixth album ‘saw the group refine their melodic electronic style, with a focus on sequenced rhythms, minimalism, and occasionally manipulated vocals. The themes include celebrations of the titular European railway service and Europe as a whole, and meditations on the disparities between reality and appearance.’ (Wikipedia). Their Previous album, Radio-Activity, had been their first entirely electronic one, moving away from their earlier krautrock style. Trans-Europa Express is regularly seen as a massively influential album on modern music, and was in fact called ‘the most important pop album of the last 40 years’ by the LA times.
Europa Endloss (Europe Endless in English) is a simple, dreamy song about the band travelling across Europe by train. It’s lyrics are simple and repetitive just like the electronic musical backing. The electronic percussion and synths lull you into a beautiful and yet musically primitive sleep. The simplicity of many of the arrangements was likely born out of how early this was in the development of electronic music, but it is also part of the album’s charm, lending it a slightly post-apocalypitc and industrial feel that is only added to by haunting vocals on songs such as Spiegelsall (Hall of Mirrors in English). “Even the biggest stars, don’t like themselves in the mirror” the vocals say in German repeatedly, with a reverb large enough to make it sound like an observation from god.
The songs on Trans- Europa express tend to hinge on a repeated vocal line and simple synth melody and drum beat. The title track is a great example. ‘Trans-Europa Express’ is repeated regularly through some sort of Vocoder to turn the vocals to mercury, and the skittering electronic drum beat is repeated throughout the six and a half minute track, while the synths fill the gaps with large, almost organ-like chords. It’s another strangely haunting piece, like an abandoned factory with the machinery left on. The beginnings of many electronic genres are here, and the influence Kraftwerk had is undisputable. The record has certainly aged, and its sounds are particularly primitive when compared to all the fancy stuff we can do now with electronic music. But it has aged gracefully, thanks to the musicality and atmosphere at its core, and it’s simplicity really is rather beautiful.
Song Picks: Europa Endloss, Spiegelsaal, Franz Schubert, Endloss
8/10
11. Frédéric Chopin: 24 Préludes Op. 28
Martha Argerich
Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op.28 were first published 1839, and contained 24 short piano pieces, one in each major and minor key. A Polish virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era, Chopin apparently never performed more than 4 of the 24 pieces in a single performance, and there is still debate as to whether they were intended to be played in order, or indeed written as 24 separate pieces to use as possible introductions to other works, as Preludes generally were. The fact that Chopin ordered the songs using the circle of fifths rather than simply moving up the keys in semitones suggests to me that he had thought about the ordering a little too much for the pieces to be designed for consuming independently however. The 24 Preludes, Op.28 have been recorded and performed by a whole heap of pianists, but it’s Martha Argerich’s version, released in 1977 that makes it onto these lists.
Martha Argerich is an Argentine-Swiss concert pianist, and widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists of all time. Born in 1941 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she began playing the piano aged 3, eventually moving to Europe in 1955 and later gaining Swiss citizenship. Despite her incredible talent and rather impressive list of accolades (see her Wikipedia page here), Argerich has generally shied away from the spotlight, which would explain why this is the first I’ve heard of her.
Argerich’s performance here is masterful. Though I can’t claim to have heard these pieces played by anyone else, it’s hard to imagine them being performed more beautifully than they are here. Argerich can put dizzyingly fast lines together in a way that still feels very human, while making them sound just as effortless as the slower pieces. Those slower pieces have a delicate wonder to them, like the notes from some sunken ship resurfacing as bubbles on the ocean’s surface. There’s a whole world to get lost in here, and Argerich’s mastery of the instrument coupled with Chopin’s gorgeous compositions has absolutely become one of the piano albums I’ll point people to when they ask for my favourites, sitting proudly alongside with Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert.
8.5/10
10. Zombie
Fela Kuti
Fela Kuti’s second album to make it onto these lists caused quite a stir. Hugely popular in his home country of Nigeria, the record angered the government there, which it criticised heavily. It angered them so much that they attacked his commune, murdering his mother by throwing her out of a window, severely beating Fela Kuti, burning the entire commune and destroying his studio and master tapes. Though the re-issue added an additional two tracks, I’ll be reviewing the original 25 minute 1977 release here, which featured just two tracks.
The album opens with the title track, a scathing attack on the Nigerian military, describing them all as zombies who just follow orders without thinking, “Zombie no go think, unless you tell am to think”. The sound is similar to the one on Expensive Shit, but perhaps larger. We’ve got a whole host of driving percussion, a scatty strummed electric guitar, and the two talking saxophones that form the centrepiece of Kuti’s afrobeat sound. Once Kuti starts chanting his political lyrics, it’s not hard to see why he had such a big impact in his home country. The music draws you in with its infinite danceability, and soon has you chanting its simple and yet astute political message along with him.
The second and final track Mr Follow Follow has a similar message, “Some dey follow follow, dem close dem eye”, but is a little calmer in it’s instrumentation, with the bass, guitar and saxes laying down an irresistibly smooth groove like the light-hearted march of a cartoon army. Fela preaches about how everyone follows instructions without questioning them by closing their ears, eyes and ‘sense’. A master of setting a theme or mood before introducing any lyrics, it takes Kuti around 7 minutes to start singing here again, and by the time he does, you’re so entranced by the groove that you’ll agree to anything he says, thankfully his message is one that we could all do with hearing.
Zombie is musically and thematically cohesive, an album that is incredibly enjoyable in itself, but which becomes even more remarkable when you know the context of its recording. It’s difficult to imagine how Kuti feels about the album that inadvertently led to the death of his own mother, but to me, this is a perfect example of the power of music to unite, to spread a message by both being accessible and revolutionary.
Song Picks: Zombie, Mr Follow Follow
8.5/10
9. Pink Flag
Wire
The English band’s debut album was received well critically, but didn’t sell well. Widely seen as one of the most influential albums of the 70s, its footprints can be seen on many hardcore, punk and alternative albums since. The record features 21 songs over its 35 minute duration, focusing on short, punchy songs that get to the point quickly and never outstay their welcome.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned a lot of times how big a fan of Guided by Voices I am, I’ve always loved their immediacy, how their songs seem to be captured at the point of inspiration, rather than when they’ve been thought out endlessly in the studio, and there’s something attractively raw about that to me. Pink Flag gives me the same vibes. Many of these songs could quite easily have been turned into 3 minute radio hits, but they’d have lost something. There’s a real magic to the rawness here.
With so many songs to talk about, it’d be folly to try and cover them all, so I’ll just talk about some of my highlights. Here goes. Ex Lion Tamer seems to have single-handedly invented Brit-pop, well before that genre was to dominate the charts. The chorus is as catchy as a song about sitting in front of your TV waiting for things to change could be, an anthem for the procrastinator. Lowdown is a great example of how great Colin Newman’s vocals sound when he throws caution to the wind, while Brazil’s guitar sound is so filthy you feel as if you’re being dragged backwards through a rubbish dump. So Obvious features the kind of major chord riff that could have easily been turned into a rock classic, but was instead seemingly played into a washing machine for 50 seconds, recorded, and then left there. Surgeon’s Girl features the lines “Said you weren't a tuna fish, put in a tin / They're very big, ha-ha” while Straight Line includes another fabulous riff that gets played for 44 glorious seconds and is then cut short. Mr Suit is the perfect anti-establishment punk song, something it achieves in only 1:25 seconds with a chorus that says ‘fuck the system’ like no other, “no, no, no, no Mr Suit”. On the grungy Strange, the band decide to play for a whole 4 minutes, with a riff so fuzzy and brilliant that you feel like you’ve just stuck your head straight into the world’s warmest tube amp. The lyrics are simple but performed by Newman in a way that makes them bounce against the guitar riff gloriously. The album’s final two track end things in a blaze of glory, Gimme Love is so drawled you can barely understand what’s being said and 1 2 X U is the ultimate bounce around punk song, but with drums that sound so thin it’s like they’re being played on a load of plastic cups, and guitars that are so loud they’ve gone full circle and ended up quiet again. Chaos.
In a genre that often gets repetitive, Pink Flag is an outstanding album that’s unpredictable, inspired, has the attention span of a gnat, and is completely brilliant.
Song Picks: Strange, Ex Lion Tamer, Lowdown, So Obvious, Gimme Lov
9/10
8. Before and after Science
Brian Eno
It’s been quite the decade for Brian Eno, both in terms of his own albums and his contributions to those of others, and his fifth release is another remarkable one. As usual, a whole host of musicians collaborated with Eno on the album’s material, and the it also includes Eno’s final examples of rock music, before he was to head in a more ambient direction. Notably, over 100 songs were written for the album with only 10 making the cut.
Once again, Eno’s lyrics are more about a mood than meaning, which is clear on the opening No One Receiving, where they paint a bleak, industrial picture perfectly backed by the machine-like and yet gently funky backing of the plethora of percussion driven along by the song’s ever-present guitar riff. It’s another perfect example of Eno’ ability to create a world very much his own, something that he was to excel at in his later solo ambient recordings. Backwater displays Eno’s perhaps underrated ability for simple and infectious melody, sounding like Eno’s interpretation of a light hearted sailor’s song. Once again the synths and instrumental create a musical palette that’s both unique and infinitely interesting. Eno’s emphasis on the sound of words rather than their meaning is further explored on the enigmatic Kurt’s Rejoinder, inspired Kurt Schwitters, a prominent figure in the dada movement, which you can read more about here. We see Eno’s ambient work begin to creep in on the eerie and beautiful Energy Folls the Magician and the opening side ends with King’s Lead Hat, a song inspired by the Talking Heads, who Eno would go on to produce multiple albums of, and who’s name the title of the song is an anagram of. For me, it’s one of the album’s highlights, with it’s bopping bass line and drums, topped with an irresistibly catchy melody performed in Eno’s characteristic style. It’s a track that screams ‘fun’, and fills me with joy whenever it comes on.
Side two takes a more introspective turn, with Here He Comes setting the tone nicely with its slightly withdrawn and mumbled vocal backed by some gorgeous lead guitar work. It’s a late night drive kind of a song, sparkling gently like the stars as you exit the air pollution of the city. The gorgeous, twinkling guitar work continues on Julie With… and the gentle night-time ride continues until the album’s end with Spider and I, a song that makes you feel like you’re floating into the most beautiful cosmos, with nothing but your best friend in company.
Before and After Science is very much an album of two halves. The first half perhaps more perfectly encapsulating what Eno had been trying to do with rock music than any of his previous work, and the second half beautifully slides us into his more ambient catalogue. It’s a perfectly documented turning point.
Song Picks: No One Receiving, King’s Lead Hat, Here He Comes, Spider and I
9/10
7. “Heroes”
David Bowie
Bowie’s twelfth album and second of 1977 continues in similar vein to Low, which we’ll get to later in this list. The middle album of Bowie’s ‘Berlin Trilogy’, Heroes was the only one actually recorded in Berlin. Bowie rejoined Tony Visconti and Brian Eno, who he’d worked with on Low, and much of the other personnel remained the same, with the notable addition of Robert Fripp on guitar. The majority of the tracks were recorded spontaneously in the studio and, perhaps most remarkably, Bowie had no lyrics written before he started recording. It continues the theme of having the opening side dedicated to to more conventional songs, with the second side being given over to predominantly instrumental tracks. It was commercially successful, and the most well received of Bowie’s ‘Berlin Trilogy’ initially, though Low is now largely seen as his masterpiece.
The album comes storming out the gates with that familiar insdustrial sound on Bowie recordings since Station to Station, including the brutal machine-like drum sound, which pounds along as the rest of the musicians bounce energetically and Bowie’s lyrics remain largely impenetrable. It combines haunting and dancy in a way that only Bowie can. On the following track Joe the Lion, a tribute to Chris Burden, Fripp’s influence becomes obvious, his riff is another corker, making this one of Bowie’s best rock songs in my books. Fripp effortlessly switches between riffs and solos as Bowie’s howls create another cataclysmic song to lead us into the more gentle Heroes. There are songs that become so famous that they become very much their own thing, and can sometimes stick out when listening to an album purely because of how much more familiar you are with them than the rest of the record. Heroes could easily be such a song, and yet it fits in seamlessly, yes I’ve heard it 3000 times more than any of the other songs here, but this very much feels like the song’s home. Fripp’s guitarwork is yet again what raises the piece from great to amazing, adding in endless depth and texture to a song that could easily have become boring with its simplicity. Bowie’s vocal performance is singular, metallic, and brilliantly unrestrained, getting more shouty as the song progresses, and as Visconti moved the mic further and further away from Bowie. The song tells of a doomed relationship, enjoying it “just for one day” inspired by an affair that producer Tony Visconti was having at the time. Sons of the Silent Age is essentially about ‘average Joes’ living lives that Bowie clearly thinks are rather boring. The first side closes with Blackout, a return to the dancy, industrial sound of the opening track.
The largely instrumental second side is dominated by the three tracks that flow into each other at its core, Sense of Doubt, Moss Garden and Neuköln, the former has a similar dark, haunting and desolate atmosphere to the instrumental tracks on Low, perhaps with some added menace, while Moss Garden is beautifully relaxing, apparently written to recreate the feeling of sitting in some moss gardens in Japan. It makes me want to go and do that immediately. Neuköln brings us back to a slightly darker mood, and features Bowie on saxophone before we finish with Secret Life of Arabia, a warm disco inspired tune, topped with a dusky vocal.
I find Heroes quite hard to separate from Low, and I give the edge to Low purely because it was more groundbreaking, while Heroes was very much a continuation of what Low had started. I think Heroes does everything just as well, there’s just a little less of that intangible magic there that I can’t explain. It may simply be because I listened to Low first.
Song Picks: Beauty and the Beast, Joe the Lion, Heroes, Moss Garden
9/10
6. Marquee Moon
Television
Television’s debut landed to widespread critical acclaim. The band had grown in prominence following their residence at the Lower Manhattan Club and Brian Eno, who seems to have his fingerprints on so much music of the 1970s, produced the band’s first four demos in 1974. The band were eventually signed to Elektra Records, who released their debut.
I’ve mentioned a few times now how one of my favourite things about this listening challenge is discovering an album that seems to invent a genre out of nowhere, this is especially remarkable when that genre is one that played such a big part in my own youth, the 2000s indie-rock revolution of The Libertines, The Strokes et al. Marquee Moon, to me, is the birth of that movement, as well as so many more closer to its date of release.
The album opens with See No Evil, a song propelled by a snake-like guitar riff in one channel accompanied by a basic off-beat chord riff in the other channel. This is all backed by some great jazz inspired, and yet straight, drumming and a vocal that cuts right through the mix with a high frequency, nasal quality that forces you to pay attention to the lyrics. Lyrics that, in this case, are about knowing one is being controlled by desires, and yet seeing the beauty in those desires. It’s the perfect indie-rock song, catapulting the album onto the scene with a number that’s both accessible and revolutionary.
Televison stand apart from other acts of the period for their mix of genres. There’s elements of punk rock, particularly in Tom Verlaine’s deliberately unrestrained vocal, of jazz in Billy Ficca’s intricate drumming, and of a combination of rock and jazz in the guitars, which use more interesting chords in one song than Status Quo probably did in their entire career. It’s a remarkable meld of musicality that’s progressive not for the sake of being progressive but because the sound created is so damn enjoyable. There’s a breeziness to it, an irresistible energetic Sunday morning feeling, a feeling that all is right with the world while music like this is being created.
The album is full of great moments. Among them the great off-kilter guitar work on Friction, which gives Mac DeMarco a run for his money - indeed the competing guitar solos throughout the song belong to the album’s many highlights. The great title track is another one, an 11 minute jam which was apparently the first take, and the engineer initially thought was a rehearsal, testament to just how well well these musicians gel, it sounds perfect. A perfect mix of instrumental intrigue, interspersed vocals, and lyrics that keep you engaged. Not least the majestic closing couplet:
I was listening
Listening to the rain
I was hearing
Hearing something else
By the time you reach the closing track Torn Curtain, which contains perhaps the album’s most affecting chorus and a cracking guitar solo by Tom Verlaine, you’re left feeling like you’ve been blessed by something completely fresh sounding, a refreshing musical shower under a mountain waterfall.
Song Picks: See No Evil, Marquee Moon, Torn Curtain
9/10
5. Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols
The Sex Pistols
The band had already been banned from playing in various parts of Britain and fired from two record labels by the time their only album was released by Virgin Records, and the controversy didn’t end there. The title meant many stores refused to stock it and some charts refused to display its name. Regardless, and probably because of this, it debuted at number 1 on the UK album charts. If you were to somehow measure which albums have influenced the most music since their release, I suspect Never Mind the Bollocks… would end up near the top. Sure we’d had punk before, notably with Ramones in 1976, but it had never been this chaotic, this free, this simple and giving this few fucks.
The album opens with Holidays in the Sun which explodes into motion following the marching bass drum and an explosive riff from Steve Jones on guitar (he also plays bass on most of the album). It’s important to note that the Sex Pistols achieved their sound not by using some sort of amp designed for distortion, oh no, they turned up the gain and volume so high on a predominantly clean amp so that it lead to the distorted racket they’re famous for today. Rotten’s lead vocals are pretty much the birth of the kind of half-sung half-shouted, theatrical vocal that became common on the punk scene after this album was released. It’s sneering, loud, bursting with a cocky attitude, and just generally bloody fabulous. The song also shows their often underrated ability to come up with a catchy hook.
Bodies, the only song to feature Sid Vicious, has a chorus that is so jubilantly cathartic it juxtaposes with the fact the song tackles abortion in such a head on and unflinching way that it appalled many people at the time. It’s probably the heaviest, most gut punching song on the record.
God Save the Queen is obviously monstrous too. Rotten shouting “God Save the Queen - fascist regime!!” and sarcastically belting out “we love our queen!” is quite probably the single most influential punk song of all time, along with the equally boisterous Anarchy UK later on, which a generation of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 fans (me included) have seared into their brains. It’s these two songs which perhaps influence in a foundational way, 50% of my own music. The Sex Pistols taught me to shout my head off, to make my thoughts heard, and to not care whatever anyone else thought. The Sex Pistols taught me freedom
Never Mind the Bollocks… says “We’re the Sex Pistols, and this is what we sound like. Deal with it.” and it’s the best statement of individuality, not caring what anyone thinks, and freedom that there’s probably ever been.
Holidays in the Sun, Bodies, God Save the Queen, Anarchy UK
9.5/10
4. Low
David Bowie
Bowie’s 11th album is the first of his so called ‘Berlin Trilogy’. A trio of albums produced by Tony Visconti on which Bowie collaborated with Brian Eno. Though recorded after Bowie’s move to West Berlin following the drug addiction that had been apparent throughout the recording of his previous album, the album was actually mostly recorded in France. Low divided critics on release, and received little promotion. Nowadays though, it’s pretty hard to find any greatest album of all time list without Low near the top.
The album delves further into the electronic approach toyed with on Station to Station and is also probably Bowie’s least vocal album, with it’s entire second side featuring instrumentals, and the opening side featuring songs that don’t have much singing either.
Speed of Life bursts into an infectious guitar riff backed by synths and a distinctive punchy drum sound achieved by Visconti using a Eventide H910 harmoniser. It’s a relatively simple electronic track that puts Bowie’s knack for catchy melodies perfectly into an electronic context. Carlos Alomar’s serpentine lead guitar opens up Breaking Glass, on which we have our first Bowie vocal, which sparsely calls to the listener in three short verses over the top of a buzzing bass line, more gated drums, and the aforementioned guitar part that very much makes the song. It’s only on Sound and Vision that we reach our first Bowie ‘hit’. One of my very favourite Bowie songs, it’s once again lifted by a brilliant lead guitar part, this time by Ricky Gardiner, in what has to be one of the simplest and catchiest riffs ever written. Bowie’s vocals speak of an isolation in his blue house, or as Bowie puts it, “I was going through dreadful times. It was wanting to be put in a little cold room with omnipotent blue on the walls and blinds on the windows.” Bowie duets with himself, one version singing in his characteristic melodic tone, the other mumbling with a vocal that has been saturated so much it sounds like your own conscience. It’s a masterpiece of infectious mystery, and perhaps the closest song to what we had on Station to Station.
Always Crashing in the Same Car is a humble song about always making the same mistakes and never learning from them. The vocal performance is a resigned mumble, the guitars a fatalistic hum, and the synths try to break through the wall of sound like a sparkle of that good habit you should probably start cultivating. Be My Wife, the album’s second single is thought to be a final plea to his wife at the time to save their crumbling marriage, they divorced in 1980. It’s a classic, catchy Bowie number that’s followed expertly by first side’s closing track, A Career in a New Town. A song that contains some of the most heartbreaking harmonica ever cut to tape, like a cry for help from someone curled up on the floor.
As mentioned earlier, the album’s second side features purely instrumentals which open with the haunting, chilling Warszawa, a song that brings to mind a post-apocalytpic hell-scape of a city with empty houses, broken windows, crumbling walls, and faded dreams. Art Decade and Weeping Wall create similarly cold atmospheres. The latter hinting at some warmth with a percussive xylophone part that has a lovely intimacy to it. The synth melodies, however, are crushing. We finish with the masterpiece Subterraneans, its layers of synths like ages of man lost to the wind, which closes out a side of music that is as transcendental as anything I’ve heard in this challenge so far. We’ve already learnt that Brian Eno and David Bowie both made some of the best music of the 70s, but here they combine to create something untouchable, a desolate landscape of destroyed beauty, from which a flowering phoenix rises. Astounding.
Song Picks: Sound & Vision, Speed of Life, Subterraneans, A New Career in a New Town,
9.5/10
3. Rumours
Fleetwood Mac
The band’s 11th studio album was famously recorded during a tough time for the band members’ personal lives. To summarise the atmosphere in which it was recorded, Christine (keyboard player and vocalist) and John McVie (bass guitarist) had divorced having been together for eight years and were strictly not talking to each other except for matters of music. Vocalists Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were in a rather intense on/off relationship that led to lots of heated arguments and drummer Mick Fleetwood had just discovered that his wife and mother of his two children - who was not in the band - had had an affair with his best friend. Essentially, Rumours is the work of a band not really getting on, but making it work for the sake of getting some music out.
Anyway, onto the music, which is glorious. Second Hand News opens the album and very much sets the tone, you’d be forgiven for thinking the song is a happy one based on the sing-along melody and marching bass and drums. However, listen in to the lyrics and it’s clear that this is about a breakup between Nicks and Cunningham, who seems to be singing their thoughts at each other, and it’s that tension which makes this song, and the whole album, so great. Dreams was written by Nicks in a room built for Sly Stone while some more technical things were being done to the album - mixing I presume. Apparently she entered the studio and said “I’ve just written the most amazing song”. That song was Dreams, a perfect breakup song to Buckingham. The acoustic Never Coming Back Again is Buckingham’s response, where his vocals soar beautifully over the picked guitar that is so clear it sounds like it’s being plucked by diamonds. Don’t Stop moves onto the McVie’s divorce, written by Christine McVie and sung by her and Buckingham. It’s a song about moving on, plodding on intently with a straightforward bouncing bass and drum part which the other instruments embelish perfectly. It’s another fabulous pop song before we arrive at the most perfect of pop songs, Go Your Own Way, which, though infinitely overplayed, retains its initial magic when listened in the context of the album. The first side is closed by Songbird, a song that is a completely timeless, beautifully performed, and delicate meditation on love. Has there ever been a more perfect chorus than:
And the songbirds keep singing
Like they know the score
And I love you, I love you, I love you
Like never before
I think not.
I’m finding it rather difficult to not continually use the word perfect in this review, but I’m going to have to use it again here. The Chain perfectly opens the second side with an opening acoustic guitar part as recognisable as anything ever recorded. The song is once again a melodic masterpiece, and the famous finale has to be one of my very favourites featuring a guitar solo that threatens to escape the realm of sound and turn into some swirling snake, I just wish it wasn’t faded out so quickly. I’ll stop gushing now, but the final four tracks of the album, though perhaps less iconic, are still generally pop gems, though I’ve never enjoyed Oh Daddy as much as the rest.
Rumours is an album that I’ve always liked, but never loved, perhaps because all my experiences of it were of other people playing it to me and telling me I had to love it. It often takes listening to an album by myself for me to fully feel it, and that was the case here. I can confirm I’ve been completely wrong to not to absolutely adore it up to now, Rumours is probably the most perfect pop record ever recorded, certainly up to this point in the challenge. Out of endless tension within the band flowered the most brilliant, affecting, and just downright enjoyable record.
Song Picks: Songbird, Second Hand News, The Chain, Never Going Back Again
9.5/10
2. Exodus
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Exodus is Bob Marley’s ninth album, and was recorded in London after he was exiled from Jamaica following an assassination attempt on him there. Often seen as Bob’s masterpiece, it’s the album that features most heavily on Legend, the Bob Marley greatest hits collection released in 1984. Bunny Wailer and Pete Tosh had left by this point, so this has more of a solo Bob Marley feel to it, though he continued to use the Wailers name on his records. Time magazine named Exodus the best album of the 20th century.
It opens with Natural Mystic where we hear Marley’s reggae stabs and Carlton Barrett’s bass walk fade in gently. It’s a groove that cuts right to your soul, very much like the ‘natural mystic' Marley sings about. There’s a touching tiredness to Marley’s vocal, and his ability to weave a catchy melody and sing it beautifully is as good as ever. So Much Things to Say gets characteristically political, and while referring to specific events it’s essentially about his tiredness of those in power with ‘so much to say,’ while they remain ignorant to what matters. Guiltiness talks of those same people, this time focusing on how many they’ve stood on to get to the top, and how they will one day get their comeuppance, “Woe to the downpressors / They will eat the bread of sorrow”. Marley’s backing singers add a wonderful depth to the melodies on the track, which are once again gorgeous and impossible to resist.
Exodus, one of Marley’s most famous compositions, closes out the political first side of the album, and is one of the most remarkable pieces of music ever recorded. Over seven and a half minutes of music are built over only one chord, with a perfect sense of the march of millions symbolised by the walking bass lines, swirling guitar parts and the odd stab of brass. It’s the march from slavery to freedom of an entire people in musical format, and it’s glorious.
Side two gets much less political and opens with Jammin’, a song which is essentially about having a good time, and the gorgeous Waitin’ In Vain, a personal Bob favourite, which is about waiting for love while not knowing if it’ll work out. The Wailers create a sumptuous bed of music, with Junior Marvin’s warm guitar playing feeling like a hug as Marley spins a web of melodies. I’ve gone on and on about Marley’s vocal ability in a previous review, but it’s particularly evident on this song, where he often provides his own backing vocals, and everything just sounds perfect. Turn Your Lights Down Low is Bob’s Sexual Healing and the album’s two closing tracks Three Little Birds and One Love/People Get Ready are perhaps his most famous of all. The former preaches positivity in the face of adversity and is bursting with so much sunshine it’s a wonder it doesn’t burn to ashes every device that plays it. The latter is another masterpiece preaching togetherness, ‘Let’s get together and feel alright’. As that chorus fills your head, you’re left wondering why something so simple is so difficult.
Exodus is Bob’s mainstream masterpiece, the pinnacle of both his political songwriting as well as his songs of love and acceptance. It shines and preaches in equal measure, and it fills your very soul with an unparalleled humanity.
Song Picks: Waitin’ In Vain, Three Little Birds, One Love/People Get Ready
10/10
1. Animals
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd’s tenth album focuses on the socio-political conditions in the UK in the 1970s and continues their liking for long songs, with only 5 of them over its 41 minute duration. The band released no singles from the album, but it was commercially and critically well received. Very much a concept album, the concept is best described by the album’s Wikipedia page:
Loosely based on George Orwell's political fable Animal Farm, the album's lyrics describe various classes in society as different kinds of animals: the predatory dogs, the despotic ruthless pigs, and the "mindless and unquestioning herd" of sheep. Whereas the novella focuses on Stalinism, the album is a critique of capitalism and differs again in that the sheep eventually rise up to overpower the dogs. The album was developed from a collection of unrelated songs into a concept which, in the words of author Glenn Povey, "described the apparent social and moral decay of society, likening the human condition to that of mere animals".
The album is bookended by two short pieces, Pigs on the Wing part 1 and 2, love songs written by Roger Waters for his wife at the time. They’re simple acoustic compositions, with the same melodies and pretty lyrics. They provide a certain contrast to the 3 longer, denser songs that make up the meat of the album.
The first of those longer songs is Dogs, a 17 minute masterpiece about the trying to find your place in world that is essentially ‘dog eat dog’, where those dogs are businessmen, perhaps most darkly summed up by David Gilmour in the second verse:
You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder
You know, it's going to get harder, and harder, and harder
As you get older
Yeah, and in the end you'll pack up and fly down south
Hide your head in the sand
Just another sad old man
All alone and dying of cancer
Featuring numerous instrumental breaks that get darker as the song goes on, the piece is also yet another testament to David Gilmour’s majestic guitar playing. His first solo on the song is quite unforgettable. Roger Waters’ final verse couldn’t be more perfect, performed with a detached anger:
Who was born in a house full of pain
Who was trained not to spit in the fan
Who was told what to do by the man
Who was broken by trained personnel
Who was fitted with collar and chain
Who was given a pat on the back
Who was breaking away from the pack
Who was only a stranger at home
Who was ground down in the end
Who was found dead on the phone
Who was dragged down by the stone
Who was dragged down by the stone
Having critiqued capitalism, Pink Floyd moves onto politics in Pigs (Three Different Ones), which tells the story of people caring more about holding onto power than helping those they are there to serve. The catchy repeated line of ‘haha, charade you are’ is endlessly powerful, laughing in their faces as a picture of greed, gluttony and corruption is built up over a soundtrack that includes a whole host of pig noises clearly meant to represent the waffle these frauds are coming out with. It’s a powerful, angry and atmospheric piece of music that crushes the political façade like a giant tank dressed in a clown costume.
Finally, introduced by some gorgeous electric piano and a rumbling, approaching bass line, we enter the last of the epics, Sheep, a song about those that blindly follow commands without question:
What do you get for pretending the danger’s not real.
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel.
Sheep packs a punch, finishing this pessimistic look at society with a perfect crescendo of guitars and drums that echo off into the distance, replacing the dark synths that dominated the song earlier, before we enter the aforementioned dreamy Pigs on the Wing (Part II)
Animals is a pretty spectacular look at the dark parts of the society and systems we have built. which is just as relevant today as it was in 1977. It broods, preaches and dazzles in equal measure, and it might just be my favourite Pink Floyd album.
Song Picks: All of them
10/10
