During last summer on Facebook, a thread trended about people revealing their top ten albums of all time, and why the album had made an impression on them.
I listed mine at the time in a rush as I suspected the idea was that you shouldn’t have to think about it too hard. That said having given it a little more time to reflect, I thought I’d give it another go.
Obviously, millions of people love greatest hits albums and Original Soundtracks (OST) (e.g. The Eagles Greatest Hits, The Bodyguard OST), but for my own list I have avoided these categories.
Each to their own, but there is enough on my list to make others chuckle without me feeling the need to add, for example, The Sound of Music OST to it.
And on that note, I really don’t mind if any of the albums I’ve selected below do indeed get laughed at and I fully expect that to be the case for some! Music choices are SO personalised, and songs stay with us for many reasons, so I’m a huge advocate that people should never be ashamed of the music they like. There are enough genres out there to cater for everybody’s tastes, so live and let live.
Anyways, in reverse order, here is part 1 (albums 10 to 6) …and feel free to click on the hyperlinks:
10. Ten Good Reasons – Jason Donovan
I might as well start as I intend to go on! Yes Jason Donovan. I love my 80’s pop, and this is one of the quintessential ‘pop’ albums of the late 80’s. It sold millions, and yes a very high percentage of those buyers were probably teenage girls, but this teenage boy bought it too and enjoyed virtually every song on it. On the basis that so many girls liked Jason Donovan, I recall thinking it genuinely might help me get a girlfriend if I liked it too #laughtercombustion
Favourite song: You Can Depend On Me
09. Different Class – Pulp
BritPop at it’s finest, and Pulp gave us at least two of the biggest anthems during my dev years in Common People and Disco 2000.
Poignant and accurate songs to the last note. Most people I knew DID have woodchip on their walls.
I bought this at Woolworths (RIP) in Southwick Square (West Sussex, UK) in January 1996, primarily as I hoped to see a girl who worked there that I’d plied with drinks two nights before at the Paradox nightclub in Brighton.
Did I find her? Did I f…
Favourite song: the aforementioned Disco 2000
08. Spiceworld – Spice Girls
Back to pop cheese (no, not pop tarts) and the Spice Girls. Their first album Spice was pretty good in its own right, but this follow up was the phenomenon of the Spice Girls at their absolute peak – every song could easily have been a single. This lingers with me as I used to play it on the way to and from work (Sainsburys, Lewes Rd, Brighton) and in particular when driving past the old Goldstone Ground (another RIP) during its final memorable season hosting Brighton and Hove Albion FC.
Favourite song: Too Much
07. Listen without Prejudice vol.1 – George Michael
I could easily have chosen any one of three George Michael albums. I love Older and Patience almost as much as LWPv1, but it just edges ahead on the basis that Cowboys &Angels is on it.
It’s stayed with me as I used to clog up pub jukeboxes by setting about 7 or 8 of the songs to play two or three times in a row! When on Earth are you going to make LWP volume 2 Mr Panayiotou?
And here’s a useless fact: this is technically the only album in this list that I didn’t purchase myself – it was a Christmas present! A couple of others were also bought for me but I’ve since repurchased them myself for various reasons.
Favourite song: Cowboys & Angels of course!
06. HIStory – Michael Jackson
As a big fan of Michael Jackson, I can still remember the huge anticipation I had for this album's release. The night before it came out, I was in Brighton on my way to The Event nightclub for a colleague's birthday – actually it was The Event II nightclub, having reopened a week or so before following a revamp. The club was stone dead, and a few other issues between friends were kicking off, resulting in one instance of me preventing a guy being beaten up amongst other things. Bored and disillusioned, I left early and wandered back alone along Western Road, Brighton, and having grabbed a box of Cheeky Chicken, I strolled along to HMV. It had a huge window display advertising HIStory, and I felt a lot cheerier after seeing that!
I went home to bed, and got an early bus straight into town to buy the double album and listened to it solidly for weeks on end, writing down all the lyrics and learning them by heart. By far and away this was Jackson’s most personal album in terms of content, had it not been so pricey (the double album was half greatest hits, and half new material) I'm convinced more people would have bought it and it may have even rubbed shoulders with the astronomical sales figures of some of his other albums. It was definitely the last time that he put such enormous effort into a project. After HIStory, I guess he just "ran outta gas..."
Favourite song: Stranger in Moscow, though closely followed by the unreleased Tabloid Junkie. Special mention should go to the awesome Hani's Club Experience version of Earth Song. How anyone could have made Earth Song such a huge trance hit on the club scene deserves a medal!
I’ll post the top five shortly – that’s if I didn’t lose you with Jason Donovan and the Spice Girls of course…
