Rebirth of the Album

Hanging out at my brother’s house last weekend, I found myself admiring his vinyl collection, which he’s casually been building over the last decade.

He’s got excellent musical taste and sensibilities (and introduced me to many of my now-favorite bands), but his interest in vinyl isn’t because he’s an audiophile who would argue that the subtle nuances in the music are lost in any other format¹.

The Benefit of Friction

I grew up around our sister’s and parents’ 45s and LPs, and so I was baptized in the “technology”. The LP (“long play” record) was literally meant for that: to be played a long while…well, at least one side of an album. Because if you wanted to skip or replay a track you had to get up, walk over to the record player, pick up the needle, and try to set it down precisely between tracks, which, when you invariably missed to the left or the right of the target, was this slightly unsettling scratch-and-abrupt-start situation. (Also, you had the sense you were putting wear and tear on the needle with each lift and set.)

Anyway, albums—particularly concept albums—were designed to be listened through, and were (supposed to be, though not always²) created not as a haphazard assemblage of the ten or so songs, some hits surrounded by filler tracks; but a carefully curated collection of tracks that hung together cohesively to present a narrative or carry a motif.

The best albums were indeed works of art, and the record player introduced the requisite friction that allowed you to listen through and gradually fall in love with it. So you really knew an album when, upon the completion of one track, your brain anticipated the intro notes or beat of the next³. And how often did you gravitate toward several songs when you bought the album, only later to find that other tracks rose to the top?

As opposed to our streaming culture today, where you might play a favorite track or two from an artist, but then jump to the next artist—or, more likely, allow the algorithm to steer you through its mixtape.

Rick Beato also talks about how scarcity is part of the equation: the fact that you had to save up your money, go down to the record store and buy it for a good chunk of change⁴. Versus today where you’ve got access to the universe of music for what used to be the price of an album, ergo, the value of any one album (or song) is reduced.

Album sales (across all formats) have been on a downward slope since the late 90s:

US Recorded Music Album Sales Per Capita

And even though it’s a happy thing that we’re in the “vinyl revival” era (with vinyl unit sales now exceeding that of CD⁵, and vinyl demand outstripping supply 2:1⁶), it’s still niche enough that it won’t stave off the overall decline of the album.

It may prove too difficult to save all of society, but for a smaller segment perhaps slowing it down to 33⅓ rpm and listening to albums front to back can help us fall in love with music in a new way or all over again.

If I were to start a vinyl album collection…

I should say, first, that you have to apply some fairly tough criteria to whittle it down to a top 20:

And so, here’s my definitive list, which I suppose I could purchase and pay for by taking a two-year break from the music streaming service:

Honorable Mentions

№	Album	Artist	Year
1	IV⁸	Led Zeppelin	‘71
2	Born to Run	Bruce Springsteen	‘75
3	Purple Rain⁹	Prince	‘84
4	Moondance	Van Morrison	‘70
5	Revolver¹⁰	The Beatles	‘66
6	Crash¹¹	Dave Matthews	‘96
7	Tomorrow…¹²	Jayhawks	‘95
8	For Emma…¹³	Bon Iver	‘07
9	Glass Houses	Billy Joel	‘80
10	Joshua Tree¹⁴	U2	‘87
11	Blue	Joni Mitchell	‘71
12	Thriller	Michael Jackson	‘82
13	Pearl	Janis Joplin	‘71
14	Fleet Foxes	Fleet Foxes	‘08
15	Bridge Over…	Simon & Garfunkel	‘70
16	Salesmen & Racists¹⁵	Ike Reilly	‘01
17	Kind Of Blue¹⁶	Miles Davis	‘59
18	Blonde on Blonde¹⁷	Bob Dylan	‘66
19	North Hills	Dawes	‘09
20	What’s Going On	Marvin Gaye	‘71

Parting thought: Man, 1971 was my year—too bad I hadn’t been born in the mid-50s. (Perhaps we have our answer to WTF happened in 1971? after all.)

And, by the way, I seriously doubt the average listener can detect the subtle differences in sound quality between vinyl and other formats, without doing some seriously-exacting side-by-side comparisons. Just like the average palette can’t detect “great wine” from “decent wine”. ↩
Lest I come across idealistic and naïve, a disclaimer that I realize there were/are plenty of bands that had a hit single and filled the requisite tracks around it, as well as the stifling recording contracts that pushed artists hard to pump out songs by certain deadlines in order to get paid. In fact, at one point Ben Folds had a recording contract where he was required to write and record 13.6 songs in some year…which prompted him to write this sardonic ditty. ↩
As I covered in my bibliophilic post, the analog version (i.e., paper books) outperforms the digital version (i.e., e-reader) in terms of comprehension; and in the music-listening realm maybe you substitute enjoyment? ↩
The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse ↩
33M units CD vs. 41M units vinyl in 2022. https://mixmag.net/feature/vinyl-industry-record-breaking-point-manufacturing ↩
The Vinyl Straw: Why the Vinyl Industry Is At Breaking Point ↩
Legend is a timeless classic, but I’m also kind of with John Bonham on the boredom factor of reggae as a genre. ↩
I must give first place to the greatest rock band of all time, and IV is probably up against II with but in my estimation they are the best rock band of all time and this their opus magnus. ‘Led Zeppelin IV’: How Band Struck Back at Critics With 1971 Masterpiece ↩
A son of Minneapolis. And it’s some of the only overlap with my wife who doesn’t dig classic rock per se. ↩
Very difficult to pick the #1 Beatles album, but for me Revolver edges out Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Abbey Road, White Album. ↩
Nostalgia for college. ↩
Nostalgia for Minnesota. ↩
Hey, as an acoustic guitar-strummin’ Wisconsinite by birth, Re: Stacks may very well be one of the most beautiful songs ever written. Allow myself one melancholic album. Left to my own devices I could fill the list with sad, wistful albums. ↩
Cliché, but, hey, I want it. I once had a friend disparage me for my admission to liking of Mozart. Pffft. It’s a hipster tendency that advocates ditching anything perceived too popular and too familiar. Achtung Baby scores higher on the Rolling Stones Greatest Albums of All Time (#63), but I’m sticking to my guns. ↩
Ike is my “family’s rock band”, thanks to Uncle John discovering him years ago…a Marquette connection. Many night-before-Thanksgiving shows at First Ave. And proud this is my sole 21st century pick. ↩
On repeat at Wine Night in Mod 28A. ↩
Dylan’s greatest album is also a tough call, which you’re not going to convince everyone on, but Blonde on Blonde is a masterpiece, and I dig that it was a combo of New York and Minneapolis musicians. For me Blood On The Tracks is probably #2 and then Hwy 61 Revisited. ↩
Shout out to Dad, who wouldn’t describe himself as a music fan, but, Man, does he love this album. ↩
I know it’s blasphemy to leave out the Stones from the top albums chart, but their best tunes are too distributed across their albums IMO. Sticky Fingers is probably a little controversial; the correct answer is supposed to be Exile on Main St. (‘72) or maybe Let It Bleed (‘69): Rolling Stone has Exile as #6 on the 500 albums of all time; Let It Bleed as #32; Beggars Banquet as #58. And Sticky Fingers coming in at #64. ↩
10 singer-songwriter albums you should definitely own ↩
My jazz pick if I didn’t have Kind Of Blue. ↩
Weirdly, I’m not an enormous Fleetwood Mac fan, but this album is chock-full of hits. ↩
Different genre but I’m throwing it in. ↩
A little sheepish about this, because of their cheesy lyrics but Guster hits my nostalgia bone, so to speak. Actually, nostalgia plays no small role in what you might consider the most important music, so this whole thing is as much a diary entry or memoir as anything. It ultimately matters more than relative ranking on the Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Albums of All Time. ↩