This may be the greatest artist that have ever lived, and this album is for sure one of the best albums ever. It’s really impressive to follow the making of the album in the Youtube-clip (attached later in this post). All the details, all the thoughts and Michael Jackson’s amazing touch for everything, together with Quincy Jones as a producer. An unstoppable team.
What was interesting at this time in music history, was the importance of music videos. This may be one of the albums with the most music videos produced from it.
Five of the tracks from the made it to number one in U.S.
I Just Can’t Stop Loving You
Bad
The Way You Make Me Feel
Man In The Mirror
Dirty Diana (don’t miss out the amazing guitar play on this one)
I will not go into details for every song in this post, since it’s so well described in the documentary. Don’t miss that one, if you haven’t seen it before.
Oh, now things are heating up. Thirteen albums left, and I think every one of them are totally awesome. At 13:th place I’ve placed an album, that I think I’ve said in every post, could/would’ve been placed higher up. This album is one of those that I return to every now and then, in short a real goldie, literally; the album Gold from the Swedish Music Collective, Blacknuss.
Blacknuss plays a combination of RnB, Soul and Jazz in a great mix, and among the musicians you find many of the Swedish elite. Only one person have played on all albums, the drummer Martin Jonsson.
I’ve been fortunate to watch Blacknuss live at Mosebacke in Stockholm, and when it comes to rhythmic experiences, and “people just can’t be standing still”-experiences, that’s still my nr. 1.
It’s hard to point out some favorites, since all tracks has its place on this awesome album, but if I should try, you shouldn’t miss Thinking Of You, Rising To The Top (with the amazing Lisa Nilsson on vocals), Dinah, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, It Should Have Been You… or… just listen to the album. This is one of those albums, that after a few plays will stay in your library forever and really hasn’t any big weaknesses.
Nikki Sixx (Frank Ferrana), Vince Neil (Vince Neil Warton), Mick Mars (Robert Allen Bippus) and Tomme Lee (Tomme Lee Bass) may be the band that have lived the rock’n roll life to its absolute maximum. Success, fame, glam, women and party on one hand. Drugs, jail, trash, crash, burn and even dead band members. Nikki Six was in an academic way dead for two minutes before found by Slash in his hotel room 1987, and the injected with adrenalin in the heart and survived. This was actually the background for the track “Kickstart my heart” on the Dr Feelgood album.
Back to the album. This is after all a “Best album of all times”-list. Shout at Devil was released in 1983 and was Mötley Crües biggest hit at the time. The sound, with its roots in Blues, and old school rock n’ roll, played on speed became part of the beginning of a new era in the hard rock / heavy metal scene; Glam rock.
Many parents in Sweden were really afraid of Mötley Crüe and other bands at the time (especially W.A.S.P), and even Swedish Television arranged a talk show around this matter (Swedish), and even though Nikki Sixx tried his best to explain the lyrics in a more down to earth way, the parents hated the album, which always is a good reason for the teenagers to do the opposite. “What a crock of shit! There was nothing demonic about Shout at the Devil. All we were saying was that everyone should stand up and shout at those people who are holding them down, whether it’s their parents, their teachers, or their bosses.” Nikki Sixx (source: nikkisixx.tv).
The highlights on the record, except for the title track is, in my mind “Looks that kill”, “Helter Skelter” (Beatles Cover) and “Too young to fall in love”.
I really like the full sound of Mötley Crüe at this stage in their career, with the crisp guitar, the always amazing drums, Nikki Sixx (as the most frequent writer of the tracks) bass lines and of course the falsetto voice of Vince Neil.
Some other facts:
Nikki Six played with Slash and Izzy Stradlin (later part of Gun’s n Roses) before forming Mötley Crüe
Vince Neil appeared in the MTV-show “The remake of Vince Neil” which was aimed at getting Vince Neil back in form after years of food abuse
This may be one of the most touching videos I’ve seen. The story behind it, is that Rooie Mark, 54 years old has a deadly disease and only have a short time left. One of his last wishes is to watch Feyenoord one more time. However, the season hasn’t started yet so his friends arrange the possibility for him to watch the first training of the season. What Rooie didn’t know was that the fans and players had prepared something really special for him.
Soccer isn’t all about people fighting in the stands.
Rooie passed, sadly, away just three days later.
P.S If you don’t have time to watch the full video (even though I think you should), click on this link for a short photo version D.S
11:th of June 2008, Coldplay released the Brian Eno produced album “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends”. For me, this album was the first time I really started to enjoy Coldplay. As often when I come across new artists it takes a little while to get used to the sound, the atmosphere and of course the lyrics. What really makes this album complete, is the fulfillment of all those categories.
In short, the album covers the aspects of life, death, war and love. Not the typical “easy going topics”, to say the least.
The album starts off with Life in Technicolor, which is a long intro to the rest of the album. In my opinion this intro works perfectly as an atmosphere leveler.
Cemeteries of London; a typical track about the topics of the album, was recorded in a Barcelona church, and if you listen closely you can hear some spanish “clapping” in the song, while “Bass player Guy Berryman told Entertainment Weekly: When I imagine the song in my head, I see London in 1850. A hell of a lot of rain and men in top hats.” (reference Entertainment Weekly)
Lost! is really well described by “Floridaguy” on song meanings:
This was one of the first songs Coldplay worked on for the record. The band were originally inspired by the song “Sing” by Blur, which they were listening to in their dressing room before performing in a gig in Detroit. They tried to write a song like it and it ended up evolving in various ways with lots of different versions before the final recorded rendering. Chris Martin explained to MTV News: “That’s often how we write, is we listen to something and we think it’s incredible, and we feel stupid for not having anything as good as that, so we go and try to play it. And then, of course, because we don’t know how to do that, we often come up with something new.”
42 is a quite melancholic track with many of the big life questions asked. So far in this review I’ve kept much focus on the lyrics, but the album musically is really amazing. What’s different with this track is that it doesn’t contain a chorus. Instead it’s divided into three parts.
Lovers in Japan. When asked about the development of the song, during a track-by-track reveal, drummer Will Champion said:
We were in a studio in New York, this place called the Magic Shop, and it had this thing called a tack piano there, which sounds like an old honky-tonk piano, where you put little tacks in the hammers, so it sounds like more of a harpsichord almost. And so we wanted to use that kind of sound, but we didn’t have a tack piano, so rather than sample it, we went and bought an old piano from the shop up the road from our studio, and we bought a load of tacks, and me and Guy and Jon spent a couple of hours pushing tacks into the piano hammers. (Source Wikipedia)
Yes: As many of the tracks on this album, this track also have it’s completely own identity. The vocals by Chris Martin are really low.
Viva La Vida is the big top hit from this album reaching the top in both the UK singles chars as Billboard Hot 100. I guess almost everyone who reads this blog at least have heard the typical strings intro. The lyrics carry many biblical references but seems to be more aimed at the conflict between people and government, and especially around war.
Violet Hill. Also a track about a soldier going into battle. The first rows in the lyrics are truly amazing, and gives the rest of the track its atmosphere.
Was a long and dark December
From the rooftops I remember
There was snow
White snow
I really like the contrast in this song (which I may write about almost all the tracks on this album)
Strawberry Swing is a low-key track with african drums, a guitar melody that almost runs throughout the track as a thread.
The last track, Death And All His Friends somehow share some identity with the Swedish pop band Kent.
In the later part of the track the summarize the album beautifully with the sound of “Life in Technicolor”
As I think I’ve written in all my posts, this album should’ve ended up higher in this list, and I begin to feel that I will have a correction post afterwards where I will rearrange all albums. This album is truly great!
Gary Moore (1952-2011), is probably one of the “all greatest guitarists so far”. Maybe not always the fastest, but the combination technical skills, incredible melodies and a 6:th sense to catch an atmosphere has brought him to the absolute top.
As I wrote in the first post in this series – The Best Album of All Times – I will only post one album per artist and I guess that Gary Moore could hold more places than one. The hard part is to choose between the three of them Wild Frontier, After the war and Run for Cover.
In my opinion Wild Frontier is the best when it come to a complete album without any big dips, and oh’boy this album is on the safe side all the way. The difference between this album and the earlier ones are obvious but an interesting detail is the use of a drum machine instead of a human drummer.
The album kicks off with the famous “Over The Hills And Far Away” (later covered by many others for example Nightwish), followed up by the title song “Wild Frontier”. These both songs marks perfectly the change in Gary Moores style after the previous mentioned albums. The Heavy Metal is more popilicious, and the overall sound more friendly.
It continues with “Take A Little Time”. Still a really good song, but a bit after the first two tracks. In my opinion this track get’s a little bit to flirty with the new style and the chorus isn’t far away from many other Dance-tracks.
The Loner is a true epic track with Moore showing of his rare sensitivity in creating emotions / feelings with a guitar. An awesome track!
The weakest part of this album may be the start of “Friday On My Mind”, and it doesn’t really kick off completely, but still is an okay track.
Strangers In The Darkness is a track that may be influenced by Billy Idol (?). The atmosphere, and even more, the vocals are pretty close.
Thunder Rising; a track with a heavy guitar adrenaline stamina that runs almost through the whole song, a punchy chorus and after approx 3:30 a guitar that almost sounds like a bagpipe.
Johnny Boy; a sad track with beautiful melodies dedicated to his friend Phil Lynnot that passed away 1986.
Don’t miss the last track (since it’s hidden behind a second version of “Over the hills and far away”). I’m not really sure how to comment on this track. This track is really different from the others. Some West Coast influences (?), some pop and a bit of a 70’s sound at the same time. In short, Great track! Don’t miss!
If you want to explore more songs from his previous albums I suggest:
Every now and the most of us receives, and shares quotes. What’s really hard to find is quotes that aren’t to corny or sentimental, and just get’s to the core. These 42 points is all about that. I hope you’ll find them as thoughtful as I did.
Stephen Simmonds may be one of the best kept secrets internationally when it comes to male singers. Stephen is a Swedish singer and is appearing frequently in tv-shows, back other artists but rarely plays on his own stages. I’ve never figured out why he hasn’t made it to the big stages in the BIG world, but sometimes I guess it’s a choice of his own.
His album, For Father, released in 2002 is absolutely amazing, and while I’m writing this I’m starting to think that it might be higher up in the list, but as always prioritizing is hard and music can never be “absolute”.
actually I didn’t discover this album until the 2010’s within Spotify, and I directly got struck by it. The album is low key and as a rich full red wine perfect for long evenings at home.
If you like me enjoys his voice, he uses his full potential on all tracks. The high notes in the album, in my opinion is the title song For Father, Where is your heart, Always in my head and More to do and I guess I could list them all.
If you haven’t given Stephen Simmonds a chance before, now you have the chance. Don’t miss it out.
Explanation of the image: As some of the followers of this blog have figured out, I’m a big F1 fan, which is inherited from my father and an interest we both share with intense conversations over the F1 weekends.
If you like to try out new photo apps for your iPhone / iPad you might enjoy some paid apps that are currently free for a short period. Click on the name of the app for a direct link to each app.
A typical Photo Editor app, with quite a lot of functionality built into it. Even though it says that the app used to cost $21 and now’s out for free it’s not the full truth. I checked the history of the app and they increased the price on the 10:th of July from $1 to $21. Maybe a good advertising trick. Anyhow, it seems like a good app even though I’ve not tried it out that much yet.
Best album of all times – Number 18: Ratt – Out Ot The Cellar (1984)
Ratt, the band with the name that’s a synonym to Steering Wheel in Swedish was one of my big favorites as a teenager, and they still are. Risen from the L.A Glam scene, in competition with bands like Mötley Crüe, Van Halen and its likes, Ratt was a solid contender of the heavy metal scene back in my youth. In Sweden they had a few hits, but my feeling is that the group didn’t get the attention that they deserved, and experienced in other parts of the world.
The guitar sound from this record may be one of the most “cold” guitar sounds ever, and the tempo slow for this kind of music, while the vocals are “slow”; but wow this is a great album from start to finish. An album that’s solid and well-kept together as a whole. This was one of those albums that could’ve ended up on many places in this 40-top list; both higher and lower.
In my opinion Round and Round is the most significant contribution of all songs on this record. The song is almost a summary of the rest of the tracks.
I guess the lyrics won’t be mentioned in the lyrics classes in the 2100:s, but the clean crisp sound may end up in the musical classes.
If you want to explore more music by Ratt, check out the track Lay it down from the “Invasion of your privacy album” (1985), and while you’re at it, their more recent albums.
In my opinion the more recent contributions doesn’t share the same quality as before but still some good music to explore… and yes, they are (as a brand at least) still active with new albums on their way.
Aldo Nova, a Canadian artist became a huge success in the early-/mid 80:s with his albums “Aldo Nova” and “Subject..”.
Even though the first two albums are really good, I think Twitch is the one that’s the most complete, and keeps a certain atmosphere through the whole album with its 80’s Gary Moore influenced guitars and easy straight rock in the flavor of Bryan Adams, and maybe also Bon Jovi. If I’ve read the facts right this album was not a huge success in the world, but in Sweden it became the most successful one when it was launched in 1985.
As mentioned earlier the album is really solid, and if there is one song that lacks behind it may be the title song – Twitch. Other than that it’s an album that can be kept on replay a number of times.
On the other side it’s harder to pick a favorite, which often is the case with “Best albums”.
Aldo Nova has also been a successful song writer to a number of artists such as Jon Bon Jovi, Céline Dion, Blue Öyster Cult, Chantal and Clay Aiken’s “This Is the Night” (co-written with Chris Braide and Gary Burr), which in the U.S. was a number one hit and the best selling single of 2003. (Source: Wikipedia)
These types of videos almost always contains a child with super skills early in life. This is the opposite, a cool grandma drummer beating the shit out of the drums.
I hope you all have a great weekend finish. Tomorrow, number 19 in the album list, and a photography to go with it.
I will never forget the first time I heard this album. It was, at the time, my svärbror (brother-in-law) who have spotted it and played it loud. For quite a long time I thought he was kidding. NO ONE can like this. So rough, a wicked singer who rap-singed, and a guitar player that made the most strange noises ever.
Then it started to grow…
What an amazing album this is. Full of energy. An awesome guitar player, and a sound that (together with Clawfinger) created a new musical era.
What I didn’t knew at first was that most parts of the music brought political stories. Since I’ve always been a friend of that the human life is sacred, and no other man shall have the right to take another persons life, Killing in the name certainly stroke a chord.
The sound on this album was also at the time unique. It’s almost as RATM is a modern studio version of number 21, Dire Straits. Crisp clear guitars, a bass that sounds like a bass. Dry drums, and as I’ve mentioned a guitar that’s (still) like nothing else recorded before.
Even though I’m not a fanatic political wise I
If I could change history Bulls on parade from the album “Evil empire” also would’ve been included. Otherwise, a great album!
Today I started wondering about which albums, no matter the category, that are the best of all times in my opinion. With “best” I don’t necessarily mean the most historic or changing. I just mean, the best albums for me. The albums that I come back to time after time, some of them just for the memories connected to them, and others simply for the amazing music.
It might be good to know that my musical background has its roots in west coast/AOR, old school heavy metal and more instrumental genres, even though I listen to almost everything nowadays. In my music tab you can find my current favorites.
So instead of just posting them all in one post I figured that I’ll split them up in 11 separate posts, and today I begin with those that didn’t make it to the top-20 list and a special around the runner-up for top-20.
Some of my favorite artist would have more than one album on this list, but I’ve chosen to keep just one album from every artist, and mention others worth noticing.
And remember, best album doesn’t mean best two or three songs that are good or maybe even awesome. Best album is “Best album all together”.
So, here we go…
Which albums didn’t make it to the top-20 list? (Spotify linked)
P.S I also try to post a photo of my own that I think is connected to each album in some kind of way. D.S
Runner up, Nr 21: Dire Straits – On every street
This album is, as Brothers in Arms one of the albums that are heavily used as a reference album when it comes to demonstrating sound in HiFi-shops. The sound is really clear, and you can separate all the instruments really well, and I guess the subtle music also makes some sense in a public place.
I guess many listeners would’ve voted Brothers in arms as the better album of the two, but I favor this album since I think the feeling / atmosphere as a complete album is more tight. Brothers in arms holds many of Dire Straits top selling hits but the album feels straggly compared to the more collected On every street.
This is maybe not one of the albums that I’ve listened to the most, but it’s an album that I come back to every now and then and the title song, On Every Street is one of my long time favorites.
The high points, except the already mentioned title song, is Iron Hand, Calling Elvis, fade to black and the country inspired The Bug.
Dire Straits were a British rock band, formed in 1977 by Mark Knopfler (lead vocals and lead guitar), his younger brother David Knopfler (rhythm guitar and backing vocals), John Illsley (bass guitar and backing vocals), and Pick Withers (drums and percussion). Dire Straits’ sound drew from a variety of musical influences, including jazz, folk, blues, and came closest to beat music within the context of rock and roll. Despite the prominence of punk rock during the band’s early years, the band’s stripped-down sound contrasted with punk, demonstrating a more “rootsy” influence that emerged out of pub rock. Many of Dire Straits’ compositions were melancholic.[3] Dire Straits’ biggest selling album, Brothers in Arms, has sold over 30 million copies.[4]
They also became one of the world’s most commercially successful bands, with worldwide album sales of over 120 million.[5] Dire Straits won numerous music awards during their career, including four Grammy Awards, three Brit Awards—winning Best British Group twice, and two MTV Video Music Awards.[5] The band’s most popular songs include “Sultans of Swing”, “Lady Writer”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “Tunnel of Love”, “Telegraph Road”, “Private Investigations”, “Money for Nothing”, “Walk of Life”, “So Far Away”, “Your Latest Trick” and “Brothers in Arms”.
Dire Straits’ career spanned a combined total of 15 years. The band originally split up in 1988, but reformed in 1991. Dire Straits disbanded for good in 1995 when Mark Knopfler launched his career full time as a solo artist. There were several changes in personnel over both periods, leaving Mark Knopfler and John Illsley as the only two original bandmates who had remained throughout the band’s career.
During the last month I’ve visited Malta and Amsterdam and of course spent time in my hometown Stockholm. In almost every scenic place around the world people are getting more frequent in hanging up locks to show their feelings for one another.
The tradition is to right something on the lock, hang it on a bridge, a wire or anywhere with the scenery behing it, lock it, and then throw away the key.
In these secular times, maybe this is a modern way of getting married?
Recently I’ve posted a few videos about Sweden and Swedes, and there seems to be no stopping in the number of videos about us Swedes. Some of them more authentic than others. This one is actually more true than you might think 🙂
@ Pedro Hansson – Stockholm skyline – Completely out of topic
In Sweden we have an expression called “I-landsproblem”. If I should try to explain it, it’s like a problem that’s only a problem when everything else is okay. For instance, your nearest store have changed the place of the Coca-Colas, your new Ferrari only comes with 18″ wheels, or that your planned washing time at your house is occupied 5 minutes longer than you expected. They are all “i-landsproblem”.
This post will probably hit one of those marks where “i-Landsproblem” almost won’t cut it, but still I find this topic a little fascinating since it’s all apart of our new society, and about Social Media. This phenomena (Social Media) that’s not even 10 years old but everyone knows all about it… or?
This topic is about those people who are commenting or “liking” friends posts that are “public”. You know with the “Tellus-symbol” attached to it. This means that the posts that your “friend”, “colleague” or just “facebook acquaintance” have posted is “all out there” for everyone to see. (1)
So what’s the big fuzz? What’s the problem with that?
Before I explain my thoughts around this matter; let me give a short insight to all of those who might not be aware of how Facebook friend categories work. If you know all about it.. -> Skip to “Continue here”
Everytime you post something on Facebook you will have the choice to choose who will see your message.
The main categories are:
Friends – Your facebook friends
Friends, without acquaintances – Which means all of your friends, except the ones you’ve marked as “acquaintances”
A friend list of your choice, which means that you put together only the people who you wan’t to distribute your message to, and the status mentioned above
Friends of your choice – you handpick every single one that will see the post
Public, which is basically a setting that will allow all people on your friend list AND everyone else who will google you in the future to see your post
Except the categories above, you can also categorize your friends in the category “limited”, which means that they will not see anyone of your posts, except the ones that are posted as “public”.
Continue here…
So, my question is, why do people click or comment, on friends “public” postings (except if the friend has a “higher” purpose of some kind like sending an important message or aiming at getting something important widely spread)? (1)
So, why shouldn’t you click on your friends public posts?
1) Your friend has maybe put you on their “limited” list, which means that you only see these posts that they’ve chosen to be public, which means that you’re maybe not so good friends after all.
2) When you click that public post, everyone of your friends, not just their friends… ALL of your friends will also see it. This will also mean that your digital foot print will be left entirely in their hands. Not in yours.
3) Except for the above; when you click a public post you will also “spam” your friends with the same message that most of them probably won’t care about, since they probably don’t know this person. Maybe not a big issue if you have 50 “friends”, but certainly if you have 500 or more.
So my tip to you “social media people”; think about where you’re putting your digital foot print, and make sure that you can control your own digital foot prints by yourself, instead of handing that choice over to somebody else who may keep it in public forever.
We’re living in a new era where we all are trying to keep up with these new media types, and I guess many of us (including myself) aren’t paying enough attention to what we are leaving as footprint forever.
So, in short, “like” and “comment” only posts that you know that you can control in the future.
A last short tip. When did you last clean your Facebook page, and made all your previous posts just visible to yourself? That’s a real good functionality within Facebook that many people don’t know about. Summer cleaning?
… and to all of you posting in public; remember that these posts will be public for your next employer, your friends friends (also in the future), the government and of course your children’s / parents friends.
(1) The information above isn’t applicable when you change profile picture or wall picture since those are (in most cases) public by default
Today we have one of our biggest holidays in Sweden, The Midsummer. Compared to our national day, this one totally outshines in matters of preparation, traditions and so on.
So if you want to have some insight into one of our famous traditions, watch this video. The video is all real, but I guess it’s a big understatement in many ways. 🙂
Swedish Midsummer is sure a crazy party when you look at it from an outside : – )
Today Flickr announced that they are increasing free storage to 1 TB / user. This was previously limited to professional users, but now it’s available for all users.
It’s evident that Flickr are serious in getting up to speed with the competition from 500px, Instagram/Facebook and so on.
I previously had a post about my purchase of the Olloclip Macro lens for iPhone. I really start
to appreciate the small format, but at the same time I also appreciate it’s form which makes it easier to find in the pocket (compared to previous lenses).
If you are interested in finding more photos from Olloclip, you can find them in my instagram feed at http://instagram.com/pedrohansson
Today I got my first glimpse of the new album from Daft Punk. Actually I’ve never really discovered Daft Punk before, but after two consecutive listenings the album I must say this is an amazing album. Almost like a slower, modern version of Saga.
If you haven’t discovered them yet, give them a chance
According to Swedish, and international media the World Press Photo winner Paul Hansen is now cleared from the accusations of faking his award winning photo, and will keep his award, best photo of the year.
Saarimner.com 