by Michael McCarthy
I recently posted part one of 18 Albums That Made Me, which was inspired by the my9albums thing that has been going around on social media where you can select nine album covers of the sounds that made you and make a collage to share.
As with the first part of my 18 albums list, these albums are in no particular order. I love all of these albums equally and they have all had an enormous impact on my life and my tastes in music. And I neither like these nine albums any more or less than the first nine that I posted about.
First up we have Pre-Millenium Tension, the exquisite sophomore album by Tricky, which was the first trip-hop album I ever purchased. I actually went on one date with a woman who went on and on about Tricky for something like 25 minutes. She thought he was the most brilliant artist of all-time.
After we ate at a restaurant, my date and I browsed around Tower Records on Newbury Street in Boston and she pointed out this album. I did not immediately buy it but after we parted ways outside the store I went back in and did so.
I called the woman later, hoping for a second date, but she was too busy, or so she claimed. So that was a bummer. And part of me always wondered if she might have given me the benefit of a second date if I had only purchased the Tricky album in front of her like she seemed to have wanted me to do. But I guess I thought I might look like a pushover if I immediately bought an album just because I was on a date with someone who recommended it.
In any case, I still remember the first time I listened toPre-Millenium Tension. The power had just gone out in the middle of a blizzard and this particular blizzard was accompanied by a vicious lightning storm. I was lying on my bed in the dark listening to this album for the first time and my room kept lighting up for a second or two at a time whenever lightning struck nearby. And that storm was somehow perfectly suited for Tricky’s music.
The album opens with a jittery track called “Vent” that perfectly mimicked how I felt with all of that lightning striking outside. You see, I kind of have a lightning phobia. Ever since I was a kid, my grandmother would always talk about a woman she knew who talked on the phone during a lightning storm and lightning struck and somehow she was electrocuted to death via the phone. My grandmother would always talk about that right after she would make me come inside if a storm was approaching when I was playing outside. It definitely made me fear electricity or at least electricity falling from the sky.
Although I love most of Tricky’s albums, I still think Pre-Millennium Tension is his best. It’s the perfect marriage of both of his approaches to making music. You have some songs that are mostly live instruments while others seem to be bourne of samples and loops.
Speaking of trip-hop, certain songs on Kylie Minogue’s Impossible Princess fall into that vein or similar territory, such as the album’s opening track, the anxious if energetic “Too Far.” I bought Impossible Princess in 1997 when it was a new release without the benefit of having heard any of the songs first. I remember finding it in the import section at Newbury Comics on Newbury Street and finding myself completely captivated. The colorful album cover features a then short-haired Kylie Minogue looking very different from the young pop singer who’d been polluting the airwaves with “The Loco-Motion” when I was in high school. Even just from reading the song titles, it was obvious that Impossible Princess was going to be nothing like whatever idea of Kylie Minogue I had in my head. And it only took one listen to “Too Far” for me to fall in love with the album. When an opening song is that brilliant, it’s easy to have faith in a record. Fortunately, not one song on the eclectic album disappointed me.
Impossible Princess was the second album Kylie released on the Parlophone label, which I believe dropped her after Impossible Princess failed to deliver the kind of sales they’d been hoping for. This album and the self-titled album before it are largely considered her “indie Kylie” period. Out of those two albums, more people seem to prefer the self-titled album but I’m still much more fond of Impossible Princess.
By the way, Impossible Princess was due to be released mere months after the death of Princess Di so the label actually ended up dropping the title from the album in the UK, which meant that Kylie was then releasing two self-titled albums in a row. I believe the current edition of Impossible Princess in the UK has the album title now but at the time it was originally released, the label had frantically pulled the title out of fear that it would cause a backlash among Princess Di fans. This last minute title change also caused the label to postpone the album’s release by three months.
My favorite tracks on Impossible Princess are the more electronic tracks like “Drunk,” “Limbo” and “Jump,” but there honestly isn’t a bad song on the album. Other tracks are more so in the pop rock vein, such as her two collaborations with Manic Street Preachers, “Some Kind of Bliss” and “I Don’t Need Anyone” and you certainly can’t go wrong with either of those.
Enuff Z’Nuff’s criminally under-rated sophomore album, Strength, is still the best thing they’ve ever done in my opinion. I remember buying it on cassette because it came out the same day as Mr. Big’s second album, Lean Into It, and I had to choose between getting both on cassette or one on CD and at the time portable CD players still skipped like crazy so I continued buying cassettes sometimes so that’s what I did that day. Excellent Mr. Big album, too, by the way, which would surely rank somewhere in my top 40 albums of all-time if I made such a list. The thing I loved so much about Enuff Z’Nuff’s Strength was how diverse the songs were. You had super radio friendly songs like the singles “Mother’s Eyes” and “Baby Loves You” but you also had gorgeous ballads like “Goodbye” and “Strength” and heavier numbers like “The World is A Gutter” and “In Crowd.” There are 14 songs on the album and not a bad one in the bunch.
A lot of people–like Howard Stern–are always comparing Enuff Z’Nuff to The Beatles. If you listen to this album, I think you’ll understand why. From its colorful songs to their peace and love messaging, Strength is probably the album The Beatles would have made if they had continued to exist into the hair metal era. Not that I consider Strength to be hair metal. It’s more like semi-psychedelic classic rock, in my opinion.
This brings us to my favorite Robbie Williams album, Intensive Care. If you asked 100 Robbie Williams fans to name their favorite Robbie Williams album, I doubt more than five would name Intensive Care. And,yes, I would be one of them.
Mind you, Intensive Care was a genuine hit album. It even debuted at number one. But some fans were dissatisfied because Robbie made the album with writer/producer Stephen Duffy instead of longtime collaborator Guy Chambers. Oddly, Williams never worked with Duffy again after this album, although he did cover Duffy’s song “Kiss Me” on his subsequent Rudebox album. Even now, some twenty plus years later, I still wish that Robbie would make another album with Stephen Duffy.
The singles from Intensive Care were the reggae-flavored “Tripping,” the Elvis-themed ballad “Advertising Space” and the cheesy but addictive “Sin Sin Sin,” all gems. But my favorite songs on the album are actually the deep cuts “Ghosts,” “Spread Your Wings” and “Please Don’t Die.”
One of the things I especially love about Intensive Care is that it felt like a very auto-biographical album by Robbie and I’ve always been especially fond of his more personal songs. But it also has to be said that virtually every song on this album could’ve been a hit single. It still blows my mind that “Ghosts” wasn’t a single at all. If you give this album a listen, I think you’ll be inclined to agree with me.
Now it’s time for some Slang, as in, Slang, my favorite Def Leppard album. Admittedly, I had a hard time choosing between Slang, Pyromania and Adrenalize but Slang is the one I’ve listened to the most ever since it was released 30 years ago so it seems fitting that I should choose it as my favorite. Slang was Def Leppard’s grunge era album, although it came during the latter days of grunge. Now, it wasn’t a grunge album per se, but it did find the band experimenting with a lot of different styles. Songs like “Truth?” and “Turn To Dust” have raw guitars that wouldn’t have been out of place on a Soundgarden album. And Soundgarden is the band that Def Leppard has since said that they were listening to the most when they were making Slang.
Aside from being darker and less polished, Slang also has four ballads and I’m a big ballad junkie so that’s one of the main reasons I keep going back to it. But don’t expect another Mutt Lange-flavored ballad like “Love Bites” or “Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad.” The four ballads on Slang just don’t have those huge choruses with layers and layers of vocals. But to my ears, there’s nothing wrong with that. (I actually found it refreshing to hear Joe Elliot’s vocals without layers of backing vocals behind him.) “Breathe A Sigh” and “All I Wants Is Everything” are beautiful and touching and the more introspective “Where Does Love Go When It Dies?” and “Blood Runs Cold” almost have an eerie quality them. In any case, I definitely think that Slang is Def Leppard’s most under-rated album so I’m happy to give it some love here.
Bliss is my favorite album by the très popular French singer/actress Vanessa Paradis. I love all of her albums but 2001’s Bliss was the first album to be released after I had just become a fan of hers a year earlier and it’s the album she was promoting when I went to see her two sold out shows at Olympia Paris that year. But that’s not the reason I’m choosing it–I’m choosing it because I think it contains several of her best songs, such as the guitar driven “Pourtant” and “Que fait la vie” and the quirky oddity that is “Commando.” It also features two gorgeous ballads in English, “La La La Song” and “When I Say.” Whenever anyone asks me which Vanessa Paradis album they should check out first, Bliss is always my answer.
The first night I caught Vanessa at the Olympia, I was in the front row on the balcony. There were five empty seats to my right. And in the sixth seat sat none other than Johnny Depp, who had a child with Vanessa by that point. I remember making eye contact with him shortly before the show started and he gave me a little nod and half a smile and I still remember it like it was yesterday. Of course, I thought about going over and asking for his autograph but I figured those five seats between us were empty because he wanted them to be and took that as a sign that he would rather not be bothered so I did what I thought was respectful and settled for the nod.
It might make some people cringe, but, yes, Nelson’s After The Rain album is easily one of my favorite albums of all-time. In my opinion, it’s a perfect pop rock masterpiece without a single bad song to be heard. You have super upbeat and addictive soft rock gems like the hits “(Can’t Live Without Your) Love And Affection” and “More Than Ever” as well as sweet ballads like “Only Time Will Tell” and “Everywhere I Go.” The twin Nelson brothers have released several other excellent albums over the years–like Imaginator, The Silence is Broken and Peace Out–but After The Rain is still the one that holds the biggest place in my heart. And I’ve been listening to it quite often again this year after seeing them at City Winery in Boston a few months ago. I find it to be the perfect album to listen to first thing in the morning when you want something with energy but not something too loud or heavy.
Now it’s time to take the scenic route across America and visit Sam’s Town, my favorite album by the best band to ever emerge from Las Vegas, The Killers. I know a lot of people prefer their debut album, Hot Fuss, and I certainly love that one as well, but I still think Sam’s Town is The Killers best album, roughly 20 years after it was released. You have insanely catchy songs like “When You Were Young,” “Read My Mind” and “Bones” but you also have heavier and darker songs like the title track, “Uncle Johnny” and “Bling (Confessions of a King).” The entire album is amazing and it’s exquisitely produced from start to finish with a perfect blend of polished synths and rough around the edges guitars.
Some say The Killers were going for U2 vibes on Sam’s Town and I can kind of see that but I still think it’s highly possible that you could love this album even if you hate U2. And I say that is someone who isn’t a huge fan of U2 but who loves this album. I also have to credit this album with getting me through a rough time. When their debut came out, I was living in California in the Los Angeles area and I was actually very happy there but, unfortunately, health problems forced me to move back to Massachusetts by the time Sam’s Town was released. I remember being very, very depressed about that but then Sam’s Town came out and provided a much needed distraction. It was like the one bright spot during a very dark summer for me.
Finally, we have pop star extraordinaire Robyn’s highly infectious 2010 album Body Talk. Initially, Robyn released the EPs Body Talk Part 1 and Body Talk Part 2 then she finally released the album, which contains most of the songs from Part 1 and Part 2 alongside several other previously unreleased songs. Honestly, every song on the album is a contagious earworm from the opening classic, “Dancing On My Own” to the sweet “Hang With Me” to its more experimental and edgy songs like “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do” and “Fembot.” I’m also a big fan of the touching ballad “Indestructible.” If you’re a big fan of pop singers like Charli XCX and Dua Lipa, I have little doubt that you would love this album. I truly don’t know any self-respecting pop music fans who don’t. Even 15 years later, the album is still quite popular today.
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