My Sixteen “Perfect” Albums
Recently, I was chatting with a friend, and I mentioned that to me, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours has no flaws. I love all the songs.
So that got me thinking. I looked at my liked songs on Spotify and my favourites on my computer and there are close to 2000 songs I love and whose words I know. But so many of them are on albums where there are two or maybe three super songs, while the rest seem to be just fillers.
Some are singles from one-hit wonders. Maybe it’s a good thing that streaming services permit single songs again, the way we used to have 45s in my benighted youth.
I can see that it’s extremely difficult to compose anything from 8 to 14 perfect songs on the trot.
So the next question was whether there are any other ‘perfect’ albums. Of course, this is, admittedly, an extremely personal list, however, the question is, how universal are these choices? Anyway, here goes in no particular order:
1. Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks. Every song is worth listening to. Several times. My favourite songs are If You See Her Say Hello and Tangled Up In Blue, but I love ’em all. The awe of this album is how dense with meaning each song is.
2. Bob Dylan’s Slow Train Coming. The only ‘weak’ song in that album (in my view) is Man Gave Names To All The Animals, but even that song is memorable.
3. Van Morrison’s Enlightenment. Not a single weak song on that album and some great ones like In The Days Before Rock And Roll, Enlightenment, So Quiet In Here.
4. The Beatles’ Rubber Soul. Girl, Norwegian Wood, Drive My Car, What Goes on . . . the list goes on to cover every song
5. The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Blow-your-mind brilliance.
6. Jethro Tull’s Heavy Horses. Songs like Heavy Horses, Moths, One Brown Mouse are just poetry.
7. The Doors’ L.A. Woman. Two spectacular songs in the shape of L.A. Woman and Riders On The Storm, but the entire album is a gem
8. Bob Dylan’s Oh Mercy. This is supposedly one of his ‘lesser’ albums but I really don’t think there is a bad song on it.
9. Simon and Garfinkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. Another amazing album of great songs
10. Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited. An amazing collection of perfect diamonds
11. Paul McCartney and the Wings’ Band On The Run. An amazing collection of singable, hummable, loveable pop
12. John Lennon’s Imagine. All Lennon’s seriousness combined with his Robert Browning side. It was a miraculous album
13. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours of course. Who can forget Songbird, The Chain, You Make Loving Fun and all the other songs. Just one great album
14. Deep Purple’s Machinehead. Again, not one bad song
15. Simon and Garfinkel’s Scarborough Fair. I’ve always loved all the songs on that album.
16. Van Morrison’s Moondance. What an album that is. The voice that could ‘ sing the Dublin telephone dictionary and make it sound amazing’ at its very best along with a bunch of songs to die for.
17. Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly. I’ve never seen the movie. It came out in the 70s when I was in school and I’ve never been able to watch it.
So those are the albums that I could think up off-hand. What do you think?