The Best Albums of All Time: Verse Edition
Desert Island Discs.
In this excellent podcast of the same name, all sorts of public figures are asked for the eight tracks they would take with them to a desert island (talk about essential). It got us thinking about the discs themselves—you remember, those large, black things that were designed to be listened to from beginning to end, while on the floor reading the liner notes? We put together our own curation of desert-island albums, the ones we keep coming back to for essential listening—even if it’s now a digital experience.
Kind of Blue
There are just five songs on this Miles Davis masterpiece—accompanied by six other musical legends, it is about as perfect as you can get. Even if you don’t think you like jazz, we implore you to give this a listen.
Graceland
From the first accordion notes of “The Boy in the Bubble,” this album—released by Paul Simon in his mid-40s, just when he’d begun to question his commercial appeal—arrests. With a distinctive world music vibe owing to Simon’s infatuation with South African street music, the songs’ genius lies in their social commentary juxtaposed with joyful, almost euphoric melodies, with hope always winning the day. Best of all, the album topped charts around the world, demonstrating that music can, indeed, serve as an instrument for unity.
Court and Spark
We’ve long loved this album for the light, sweet and sometimes funny songs that disguise the complex and often difficult subjects that swim below the surface. With contributions from stars such as David Crosby, Graham Nash, Jose Feliciano and Robbie Robertson, it’s one you could listen to over and over. Recently we enjoyed learning the backstory of many of its songs from the excellent tome, Rock Me on the Water: 1974-The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics.
Skylarking
We don’t know how to fully describe this 1986 offering from XTC, but it takes the listener on a trip—through seasons, themes and places—and that’s before talking about all the stylistic change-ups. Each song flows from one to the next, and defies being pigeonholed into any one genre. As we watched the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony this past weekend, we were primed for the tribute to Todd Rundgren for his musical experimentation—then floored to find out he was the producer of this album already on our repeat playlists. Read more about it here.
Midnight Marauders
There are certainly more recent hip-hop offerings that deserve a place on our island (Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly comes to mind), but the third album from A Tribe Called Quest represents the category at its best, fusing jazz and funk with amazing rhymes. These days, we are lucky if three or four songs on an album are good, but here are FIFTEEN songs—every one of them gold.
