The musical baton meme (that’s a great looking blog that doesn’t wholly look like a blog at hicksdesign, btw) that is doing the rounds at the moment has gotten me thinking about the way I listen to music.
A few years ago we heard a lot about the death of the, for want of a better term, feature length CD, that people didn’t want to buy a CD that only contained two or three tracks they really wanted. And how people would prefer only to listen individual tracks by their favourite artists and bands.
We heard all about how we could soon purchase and download whatever separate music tracks we wanted, and be able to make up compilations of our favourite music sans all those horrible filler tracks that are replete on feature length CDs.
And so it came come to pass, and thanks to nifty little portable devices such as i-Pods, we can take our music wherever we go.
This is all well and good, but in my humble opinion the feature length CD has received an undeserved right royal bagging out in the last few years.
Sure there are plenty of albums that only have a couple of tracks worth listening to. But what about those albums are wall to wall gems? How about those old concept albums (think Pink Floyd, et al) that are the sum of their parts?
I had a flick through some of the CDs that are collecting around my stereo and complied a list of ten that I still listen to from start to finish:
- Protection by Massive Attack
- Tear Drop by Massive Attack
- Blue Lines by Massive Attack
- What’s the story, Morning glory? By Oasis (hmm, yes)
- Achtung Baby by U2
- Zooropa by U2
- Pop by U2
- Exit Planet Dust by the Chemical Brothers
- Dig your own hole by the Chemical Brothers
- All India Radio (which is self titled)
Some of that stuff is over ten years old. Maybe I ought to get with the times and download more music.
What are your ten favourite CD albums that you listen to in their entirety?
