Entertainment For Lively Minds
Ultimate Pop Albums
As I in the main consider this blog to be more rockcentric than otherwise would be keen to know people's opinions on what they would consider to be the ultimate pop LPs. Those albums full of zest, melody and life that just colour in grey days and get lifeless feet a-tappin'.
Here are my choices;
HJH's "Rubber Soul"
Before the heavier drugs fully kicked in and they created "rock" we had the perfect bridge between beatlemania breeziness and the opening of minds into a new, magical world.
The B52s "Cosmic Thing"
Every song makes you want to dance and sing. "Love Shack" is actually the worst track.
Elvis Costello "Get Happy"
Almost a greatest hits compilation that shoulda, woulda, coulda. 20 tracks in 48 mins. In and out, not a second wasted.
The Feeling "12 Stops And Home"
Proof there is still a place for melody, harmony and a killer middle eight. Follow up very underrated.
Paul McCartney "Ram"
Unlike possibly every other Macca LP every track is a killer melody. The world is a marginally better place every time I listen to this album.
Pet Shop Boys "Very"
The Pets most life-affirming album. Every track could've been a single.
Any suggestions as to where else to look for the perfect pop album?
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The Feeling
I love their debut. Not only are the tunes good, but the arrangements and musicianship are spot-on. I like hearing great musicians who aren't being showy.
Not sure if it outright Pop
but Aimee Mann 'Whatever''s like a Dulux colour palette.... in my ears...
Ooh yes
on repeat in the warehouse when I'm checking sound equipment, especially 50 Years After The Fair, one of my all time favourites. Ms Mann herself, not too shabby either is she?
Great call
but maybe three tracks shy of being an "everyone's a classic". "Stupid Thing" one of the most beautiful songs of the nineties.
Check out the Monkees......
'Headquarters' and 'Pisces.....'
Pop-tastic.
Absolutely
Two brilliant records.
Did consider Headquarters
and if I had had to pick one more it probably would've made the list. Lunatics take over the asylum and all-too-briefly win.
Default answer
Haircut 100 "Pelican West". If I could play it on that "other thread" everyone would clique their fingers, grin like Nick Heyward, shuffle their feet and be happy instantly. Find a way to listen to "Favourite Shirts" or "Fantastic Day" now. It's perfect.
Nick Heywards's (first?) solo album 'Tangled'...
...is also really, really great.
Are Hem pop (rather than, I guess, easy listening)? If so, I'd plump for Eveningland as a wonderful album chock full of good tunes.
12 years
of solo albums before that one, although not the biggest sellers ever. The first album North Of A Miracle is a great pop album, recorded at Abbey Road with Geoff Emerick, and chock full of big tunes, strangely jazz funk meets the Beatles, but it works really well.
Almost too obvious to mention:
ABC - Lexicon Of Love
Michael Jackson - Off The Wall
Blondie - Parallel Lines
Human League - Dare
Stevie Wonder - Songs In The Key Of Life
(Allowing for a broad definition of yer pop) off the top of me nut:
New Order - Technique
Malcolm McLaren - Duck Rock
The Magic Numbers
Buggles - Age of Plastic
Kenickie -At The Club
Black Grape - It's Great When You're Straight
Introducing.. Terence Trent D'Arby
KLF - The White Room
BLack Kids - Partie Traumatic
ELO - Discovery
On a good day you could even have The Eight Legged Groove Machine...
Here's a stack for the autochanger
Pure Pop For Now People - Nick Lowe
Kimono My House - Sparks
Calling Interstate Managers - Fountains Of Wayne
Nobody's Perfect - Distractions
The Yachts - The Yachts
Absolute Torch & Twang - kd lang & the reclines
Black Sea - XTC
Get It - Dave Edmunds
More Songs About Chocolate and Girls
... and I haven't really started to think about it yet.
Ooo just thought of some more
#1 Record - Big Star (or maybe Radio City)... OK - Both
Ramones - Ramones
Can't Hide Your Love Forever - Orange Juice
The Alternative To Love - Brendan Benson
Parallel Lines - Blondie
Blimey! Never heard of The Yachts
But listening to them right now and they're pretty damned good. Alas a quick search reveals their album is a thousand quid on Amazon...
Additional point: it occurs that most of the true pop gods (Supremes, Smokey Robinson, Ronettes etc) are only represented properly on 'best ofs' not albums as such
The Yachts...
...were, as far I'm concerned, one of the great "could have beens". Me and my buddies used to see them whenever they were in Londaon (which was quite often) in the late 70's, and usually at the Nashville Rooms in Kensington. Great live band (they did a storming version of "24 Hours From Tulsa") with a fine pop sensibility - and, quite possibly, the only band to record a song with the word "tantamount" in the title.
Am now rushing off to play "Suffice To Say" at full volume.
"Suffice To Say" at full volume
Good choice. And while you're at it, you can bung on "Box 202" and "Love You Love You". Top tunes.
Terrific band. Saw them once at the Rainbow, supporting XTC: truly a pop dream double bill.
A great band ...
...let down by awful production, on both albums. A thin sound with far too much guitar and not enough of Henry's keyboards on the first Gottehrer produced album, and then just some sort of muddy mess on the second, from Martin Rushent. Tragic, because live they were simply outstanding, and their songs were both smart and tuneful. I still listen to both albums regularly.
I first saw them supporting the Kursaal Flyers; made a vow to myself there and then to *never* miss a support band again, just in case another one came along that I'd never heard of but which was as good as The Yachts. About 9-10 years later .... Danny Wilson supporting Squeeze. I've seen some poor support acts but many more really good ones, and just occasionally someone magnificent.
STD, If you need them on vinyl
I have spare copies of both albums here .... for close to a thousand quid less than the Amazon price ;-)
Thanks for the thought, Topjukes
Upon enquiry, it turns out one of my associates is a bit of a fan. He hasn't exactly been shouting about them for the last thirty years....
I'm amazed
to come in and find no-one has yet posted:
Madness - Absolutely, As poptastic as any pop record could ever get.
Ram...
... is a brilliant record - if "Back Seat of My Car" had been a Beatles single it would still be number one now.
Phoenix
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is quite simply the best pop album I have bought in the last 10 years.
I'll add
Cosmic Rough Riders - Enjoy the Melodic Sunshine
The Lilac Time - Paradise Circus
Terry Hall - Home
Pernice Brothers - Overcome By Happiness
Belle & Sebastien - The Life Pursuit
But if you want one album of pure pop brilliance you'd just need to pick up one of the many Pet Shop Boys Greatest Hits albums.
Or for just 3 minutes of power pop brilliance, check out 7:30 by the aforementioned Pernice Brothers, from their album The World Won't End. It's driven by Clem Burke style drumming and even has the Beach Boys style 'pa-pa-pa's' which were discussed in another thread. Fantastic.
Laura Nyro's...
...first album, originally called More Than a New Discovery and later re-released as The First Songs, would be my choice. Glorious pop. And she made it when she was 18.
This is the most famous track:
Oooh - d'you know what's a good 'un?
The Raw and the Cooked by Fine Young Cannibals
They don't make 'em like this anymore.
"I Just Can't Stop It"- The Beat
I nominate
Cascada - Everytime We Touch (The Album)
Every song is a winner, perhaps because they're all very similar. But when you've got a sound like Cascada on that album, why bother altering it?
I nominate
Cascada - Everytime We Touch (The Album)
Every song is a winner, perhaps because they're all very similar. But when you've got a sound like Cascada on that album, why bother altering it?
Another nomination for...
Parallel Lines.
Surely the greatest piece of pop committed to vinyl?
Can I also nominate "Solid Bronze" The Beautiful South's greatest hits collection. Fantastic record.
Fountains of Wayne..
I think are pretty pop tastic in the best possible sense and they have a new album due shortly which I am looking forward to very much..heres one from the great album Welcome Interstate Managers ....all their other stuff is of high standard also
I’m going…
…to have a second go.
This time I nominate Groovin’ by the Young Rascals. Here’s the title track:
But it also includes this:
And this:
Poptastic.
Guitar based pop records
Sugar - Copper Blue
Lemonheads - It's A Shame About Ray
Supergrass - Only In It For The Money
Not a duff track between them
My only problem
with a lot of the suggestions made so far (amid the many corkers), is that they're occasionally informed by the archness that turned pop music into "pop music" in about 1981/1982, when there was suddenly a raft of groups who were influenced by punk but whom nonetheless wanted critics and their peers to see that they were in on the joke (whatever that joke was).
That's really why Postcard Records, ABC, Scritti Politti, KLF, St Etienne etc have always left me cold; when you try to listen to these records without the comfort of quote marks, they're not actually that good. I mean, why have Orange Juice doing L.O.V.E. when you can have it by Al Green? Why on earth would you listen to "Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)" when you can cut the smartness and just put Aretha on instead?
Lexicon of Love - how many words does a pop song need? Even early Bruce Springsteen wasn't as much of a gobshite as Martin Fry. The White Room? Try and excise the conceptual gags from your mind when you open your ears and you're left with Technotronic (actually that's not fair on Technotronic, who - "What Time Is Love" nothwithstanding - made far better pop singles).
Fountains of Wayne? Big Star? Heap-big-jangle-shit, for sure, but do any girls have their records, or anyone without a degree?
Inverting the great words of Paul Newman, why stay at home and have steak when you can go out looking for hamburgers instead?
The best pop records are catchy, unselfconscious (even if they're painstaking in their construction they're usually refreshingly bereft of big ideas), immediate (and almost certainly impermanent for that reason alone), and above all else popular; if people don't buy it, then pop isn't pop.
So in my lifetime, The great pop records I can think of are:
No Parlez
Sgt Pepper
A Hard Day's Night
Rio
Kings of the Wild Frontier
True
(What's The Story) Morning Glory
Arrival
Carpenters 1969-1973
Eagles 71-75
Thriller
The Raw and The Cooked
Parallel Lines
The Kids From Fame
Rebel Yell
A Night To Remember
Saturday Night Fever
First two Madness
The Specials
The ones that hit all the buttons? A Hard Day's Night and Parallel Lines, and if there can only be one, then Blondie trumps Beatles for sheer wankpower alone.
"sheer wankpower alone"
No - I'm not going to say what you think I'm going to say. No Sirrr-eee.
That phrase made me laugh, and in the next drunken pub argument I am going to use it as I bang my pint glass on the table in an assertive manner. I think the effect of the gesture and the phrase will be such that nobody will dare disagree with me.
Chacun a son, Pax
but I like a bit of "arch" meself. And, more importantly, you can have it without it bothering the pure pop pickers. For example: I like the fact that The (none-more-arch) Pet Shop Boys have their "Where The Streets Have No Name/Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" cover as a double A with "How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?", and that Camera Obscura released a single called "Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken" as an answer to "Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken?" (a mere 22 years later). I really like the extra ingredient. But those songs stand on their own as pop songs with proper hooks and choruses whether you appreciate or are even aware of the extra bit.
Also, after the hiding-in-the-bedroom C 86 era one of the things I appreciated about the 90s was the way many of the best acts went for the pop prize just like the early 80s period you mention. If they feel the need to do it with the cultural prophylactic of "pop" couched in inverted commas, then I'll take that. And, from this vantage point, I have all that and I get to enjoy pure pop as well.
To paraphrase a wise man, if the values you hold dear mean you cannot enjoy "Justified And Ancient" by The KLF, then it might be time to re-examine those values... ;)
I think the only time that subversive pop thing really worked
was with "Radio Radio" by Elv C, which was the only great-sounding 7" scam that didn't alienate the typing pool. Elv had the decency to speak directly to them, instead of around them.
"Ebeneezer Goode", "Doctorin' The Tardis" and "Justified & Ancient" think they're better than the people that bought them, and for that reason alone they're all total mongpox. If they'd been made by The Firm rather than a really funny tall Scots guy you'd have been baying for their blood.
I think that the PSB-archness thing is over-stated somewhat. "Kings Cross", "To Face The Truth" and another one I've forgotten are totally for real, and I think that Neil and the other one have a genuine zeal for pop at it's freshest. That's why "Heart" is the tits.
I'm very happy for us to just disagree and be done with it
But just sayin'
Turning Japanese is about wanking
It Must Be Love is about buying condoms and was no1 the week the Pope was in Britain.
Go West is - in part at least - about AIDS. And so on.
And why not?
I can't agree with the statement that "Ebeneezer Goode.......people that bought them" but again, happy to disagree.
If you want a sneering song try "Girls and BOys" by Blur, a solid gold pop gem. Does it think it's better than many of the people who bought it? Probably.
But this kind of cleverness is celebrated in films and tv, so why not in the top 10?
And of course the PSB can be profound and sincere as well as sarcastic and tongue in cheek. Most people are all those things and there's a place for 'em all - even out-and-out piss takes - on your tranny. IMHO.
Surely you meant
House of Fun and not It Must Be Love.
Agreed archness and pop perfection are not mutually exclusive.
Aha! That explains how I failed all those exams
Turns out I was writing entirely different words to what I was thinking...
I suppose
Boys and Girls is a good example of the thang you got goin' on. I get the feeling that Damon was simultaneously repelled and enthralled, which I quite like, because that's what I feel about dogging.
Whoops....
Oh yeah, sorry
and "Reek of Putrefaction" by Carcass as well.
True? Seriously?
I take on board what you say. To me what defines and separates pop from rock in the main is melody, energy and an inability to take it self seriously (this was the change that Sgt Pepper made, although Pepper is still very much a pop record)
If you're talking greatest hits then ABBA, Madness and the Pets would be top of the tree alongside Bowie, ELO, Oasis.
I think pop IS
a serious business, as the burden of coming out with quick-repeaters (sorry Viz) often comes at the expense of your sanity if you're one of the Spectors or Wilsons of this world.
I think the pressure and pleasure for great pop creators is largely artisanal though; they want to make something that sounds beautiful, original yet familiar on the radio rather than empty their navel fluff into your ears like Bongo or that flippin' Laura Nyro woman ("too much me", as Clive James said), or show you their Debating Society medal and/or anus like Green Gartside.
I Don't think about it
I like my pop to make me smile. Fountains of Wayne and Big Star both make me smile. I had no idea that you had to clever to like them but if that's the case, then so be it.
Why have Edwyn singing L.O.V.E.? In my case it's because I prefer listening to his voice over Al Green's. I know technically AG has a massive edge but there's a vunerability to Edwyn Collins' voice that is perfect for that song.
I love Big Star,
adore them, in fact, but I can't conceive of anyone's first girlfriend owning "No.1 Record"; or, in fact, anyone that doesn't look like Mike Mills out of R.E.M. or who isn't ginger.
And, I'm sorry, but if it doesn't pass the Pax Romana First Girlfriend and/or spoddy-looking bassist test, then it aint proper pop.
Oh, and I'm sorry, but Fountains of Wayne are nothing more than moonlighting primary school teachers, and for that alone they deserved to be kidney-punched by Mark E Smith.
Arslikhan
Your posts on this thread have had me laughing out loud. Keep it up.
what utter horseshit...
but wonderfully entertaining all the same.
As I've said before to others of the parish, I'll be borrowing some of those lines....
I Think ABBA
did at least three great pop albums Arrival,The Album and Voulez Vous.I would also add ELOs A New World Record and Out Of The Blue, Franz Ferdinands debut,the Scissor Sisters debut and Everything Everything Man Alive,off the top of my head.
The first
albums from The Fountains of Wayne and Marshall Crenshaw, guaranteed to lift my spirits every time.
Voice of the Beehive
Either of the first two LPs, though I'll err to the first, "Let it Bee". It's joyful, intelligent, hook-laden music that never fails to make me think happy thoughts.