“Ramones”. “Never Mind the Bollocks”. “The Clash”. Critics love to heap praise upon pioneering punk albums written and performed by men.

The only advantage any of these records has on Pretenders’ self-titled debut is that they came first. All were recorded in the late 1970s, while “Pretenders” was released in 1980. None of the men can match Pretenders in depth, consistency, or ability.

So many emerging musical genres and subgenres represent reactions to the direction of popular music. Punks like Ramones and The Clash told the world they were sick of Rush and Yes stretching songs out to 10 or even 20 minutes with complex arrangements and pretentious multi-part suites. The stripped-down, three-chord sound so in vogue in the late seventies was conceived with the listener, not the critic, in mind. Of course, critics loved punk, so the sound got angrier and more defiant, fit for the basement, but not the FM dial.

Enter Pretenders. The first half of their debut is loaded with punk credibility. “Precious” and “The Phone Call” introduce Chrissie Hynde’s signature snarl. “Tattooed Love Boys” is hard, fast, and flippant. They’re a punk band, and a worthy one.

The second half is a whole different animal. “Stop Your Sobbing” brings all the snarl and defiance, but loads it with joy and vivacity. “Kid” is built on that unforgettable riff and boasts Hynde’s chops as a singer, not just a rocker. “Private Life” is richly textured and contemplative without pretention.

“Brass in Pocket”, “Lovers of Today”, and “Mystery Achievement” comprise one of the great closing suites of any album in any genre. They’re all worthy of radio, but fit for the basement. “Brass” is the karaoke staple. “Lovers” proves the musicianship the punks go out of their way not to show off. “Mystery” brings back the punk attitude that opened the album, but closes it with an instrumental workout that proves this band has everything. The men can play, the band feeds off each other’s energy, and they share the songwriting credits, but this is Chrissie Hynde’s band, and this is her masterpiece.

That’s my 84th-favorite album.

The only version of Madonna’s “True Blue” currently available on Spotify is a recent remaster on which most songs are extended with techy flourishes. This is frustrating because, since I first listened to the original version five or six years ago, I find myself returning to it with surprising frequency. Those flourishes distract from what was already a pretty great album.

One might argue that constantly updating Madonna’s work makes sense. It’s hard to picture eighties Madonna spending countless nights in the studio trying to get every note right on an era-defining album. Her game was hit singles. Well, hit singles and videos, publicity, fashion, acting, controversy… She defined an era as a cultural icon while much of the general public that loved or hated her probably couldn’t name two of her albums. Over the next decade or two, when music and fashion changed, it was just as likely to have changed because of Madonna as Madonna was to have reacted to the change.

That same argument might conclude that 1986’s “True Blue” is not an album, but a collection of singles packaged for radio and video and the speakers of every club and every department store at the same time. The nine songs were written by five different songwriters and packaged by Sire with MTV and the whole world in mind.

To reduce this record in such a way is to miss how much it has to offer. “Papa Don’t Preach” was Madonna’s most mature statement to-date. “Live to Tell” was her first great ballad. “La Isla Bonita” represented her brilliant first step into world music. At first listen, non-singles like “Where’s the Party” and “Love Makes the World Go Round” feel like filler, but they fit the album’s themes- freedom, defiance, and the control over one’s life that comes with growing into an adult.

Given the way it clashes with many of the choices closer to the top of my list, it would be easy to dismiss the inclusion of “True Blue” in my top 1,000 as a token nod to an influential artist whose sound defined her era. If that’s your impression, give it a spin- particularly if you have access to the original version- and I think you’ll agree with my assessment- these great songs add up to a great album. Whether recorded by a once-in-a-generation icon or a one-hit wonder, it’s just great music.

That’s my 571st-favorite album.

Where does “Out of Time” fit within R.E.M.’s discography?

Their first four albums are loaded with post-punk, underground street cred. “Document” and “Green” have iconic singles and quirks that define a band introducing itself to mainstream audiences. “Automatic for the People” is the second-phase masterpiece. “Monster” is the arena-sized banger. “New Adventures in Hi-Fi” is the mature entry from the elder statesmen.

“Out of Time”, in some quarters, is a punchline. After releasing a classic album every year for six years, the band disappears for three years and comes back with KRS-One’s cringeworthy rap and Kate Pierson wailing about shiny happy people?

To me, “Out of Time” is a reckoning with fame. After a whirlwind stretch that started as an underground experiment blending The Byrds with Wire and ended with massive worldwide tours with tens of thousands singing along with “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” and “Stand”, R.E.M. had time to regroup and decide who they wanted to be in the nineties.

They decided, it seems, not to commit to being anything specific. Michael Stipe funk-rapping and yelling “DJ sucks” during “Radio Song” may reek of cultural appropriation today, but in 1991, it was a turn no R.E.M. fan saw them taking. Imagine listening to that song for the first time and fearing the whole album would sound like that, only to fade into the plucky mandolin of “Losing My Religion”? “Low” opens with solo bongos and builds so slowly that fans of 1988’s “Green” might not have believed they were listening to the same band.

The jangle-pop recipe that won R.E.M. fame isn’t absent here, but it doesn’t dominate. “Belong” is the alt-country song John Cale never wrote. “Me in Honey” is the Kate-Pierson-backed pop song that should have gotten “Shiny Happy People’s” radio play. And dirge-turned-gospel-tune “Country Feedback” might be the best song the band ever recorded, an anthem for a dark room after so many celebrations of light.

One might conclude that “Out of Time” is great despite its missteps. I prefer to think that the missteps are part of what makes it great. A decade-old band that could have retreated to their old formula, content that their eighties hits could fill a lifetime of concert playlists, decided to branch out and see what else they were capable of. As it turns out, they were capable of putting out another decade’s worth of fantastic music.

That’s my 497th-favorite album.

This one comes straight from the pages of For the Record. Did I mention it’s available now on Amazon? Click here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0578468220

I listened to a few hundred jazz albums in compiling this project, but I’m neither a musician nor a critic, so I can’t intelligently tell you why Cannonball’s “Somethin’ Else” tops everything by Miles, ‘Trane, and Mingus as my favorite jazz album.

I can, however, tell you that the note Cannonball plays beginning at 8:32 of the opening track, “Autumn Leaves”, is perfection. In the seventies and eighties, I believe Congress passed legislation dictating that the last time a chorus was played in a song, the most prominent note/word in said chorus must be played/sung at least a half an octave higher than its counterparts earlier in the tune. Over the years, many a song has been soiled by this trick, which often breaks a singer away from her comfort zone in an attempt to knock us off our feet for a fleeting moment. Cannonball’s alto sax owned that higher note and delivered it so perfectly that I wish it were the last such lift in music history.

That’s my 4th-favorite album.

Anyone with studio access and a backing band could have recorded “I Love Your Lovin’ Ways”, the first track on Nina Simone’s “Wild is the Wind”. It’s an uptempo R&B number that would have felt in place on a Ray Charles record, a Kinks album, or any demo submitted by an ambitious band’s manager to a label exec.

The blandness of “I Love Your Lovin’ Ways” is worth noting only because of what comes next. “Four Women” is a massive statement- an epic portrait of American suffering that no artist could possibly bring to life the way Nina Simone does.

Fortunately, “Wild is the Wind” is more “Four Women” than “I Love Your Lovin’ Ways”. Simone’s singular talent is on display on the riveting “Break Down and Let it All Out”. “Lilac Wine” requires all the range and all the lived experience of the era’s foremost chanteuse. “If I Should Lose You” is a low-register reinvention of a jazz classic. The title track and “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” deftly navigate torturous trials with equal parts heartbreak and determination.

Nina was jazz, Nina was soul, Nina was the blues. That her label saw fit to open an album almost a decade into her career, at the peak of her powers, with a yawner of rhythm and blues speaks more to the direction of the industry than to any shortcoming of the artist’s. Skip track one and be rewarded with one of the great triumphs of any genre.

That’s my 250th-favorite album.

The book’s available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578468220

Or, if you live in southern Maine, get me your address and I’ll deliver a signed copy to your door.

It’s on.

My family and I made a rest stop in Olympia on our way from Seattle to Portland last week. Aside from the capitol building, Olympia doesn’t look much different from any other mid-sized American city. Some chain stores and restaurants, a little local flavor, a delightful food co-op, a highway exit for Sleater-Kinney Road…

To fans of one of the most dynamic and disruptive bands in music history, it would be easy to believe that Sleater-Kinney Road is named after the band. Alas, the reverse is true, as the band took their name from the street where their garage rock took root.

To say that there’s never been a better all-female band is to sell Sleater-Kinney short by marking them. Had Kurt Cobain lived a few more decades an hour up I-5, Nirvana fans could dream of that band’s cumulative output living up to the standard Sleater-Kinney set with six consecutive masterpieces between 1996 and 2005. The Decemberists reign over the PNW music scene today, and they have reached similar highs, but they can’t compete with Sleater-Kinney’s consistency.

I suspect Sleater-Kinney fans are more divided as to which of the band’s albums is their favorite than fans of most other groups. “Dig Me Out” and “One Beat”, in particular, are of a similar caliber. But “The Woods” represents a pivotal point in the band’s career. It’s their first record on Sub Pop, the label that released “Nevermind”, and the last album before a ten-year hiatus that left fans wondering if their most raucous work yet was their swan song.

“The Woods” is perhaps the album that makes the best use of Corin Tucker’s banshee wail, most notably on opener “The Fox”. “Modern Girl” is the closest the band ever came to a successful ballad, though it may better qualify as an anthem. “Entertain” cleanses the palette after the softer interlude, reminding the listener that she’s in the presence of punk-rock royalty. “Let’s Call it Love” is the best example in the band’s oeuvre of the trio’s ability to feed off each other’s brilliance, stretching out over eleven minutes of chaotic exuberance.

Sleater-Kinney has been a force for more than two decades, standing out even among the deep field of indie rock giants. In 2005, they made their loudest claim that they were the best band in the world.

That’s my 326th-favorite album.

I don’t know what to do with Queen.

I made a conscious choice to subtitle the book “My 1,000 Favorite Albums”, rather than any allusion to greatness, because my thoughts about what albums are great are inherently less interesting than a list of albums that appeal to me personally. If I recognize the influence an album had on other music or I know that it sold millions of copies and won over the world, but I don’t particularly like it, including it in a book about my favorite albums doesn’t tell you anything about me and probably doesn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know about that album.

I’ve never particularly liked Queen. About a month before I sent the text of the book to my designer, I pulled “A Night at the Opera” off the list entirely and was prepared to submit a Queen-free list. A few weeks later, I gave it another listen. It’s sloppy. It’s overambitious. It’s eccentric to a fault. And it’s pretty great.

I had the opportunity to watch “Bohemian Rhapsody”, the 2018 biopic, on a plane this weekend. Like the band itself, the movie was a showcase for great talent with a compelling central narrative, but aside from a few entertaining moments, it was hard to watch. Bryan Singer never shows anything he can’t just have a character tell you. The sequence where Freddie Mercury is offered a solo record deal, kicks the record exec out of the limo in a rage, berates his band while telling them he’s taking the deal, and crawls back with an apology, is derivative and ham-fisted. Brian May doubles as a smiling lackey for Mercury and the Bach-caliber composer who invents the stomp-twice-and-clap intro to “We Will Rock You” behind Freddie’s back. Lord help us.

The movie soured me on a band I already don’t love. At the same time, it serves as a reminder that Queen were a supremely talented group who, perhaps more than any of their rock-n-roll peers, were willing to take chances. “A Night at the Opera” takes more chances than a tipsy gambler and, while many of those efforts fall flat, the band deserves credit for defying their label to make an album no one saw coming.

“Bohemian Rhapsody”, for all its quirks, is a tour de force. “Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon” is a reverent Kinks tribute. “Death on Two Legs” is a showcase for May’s virtuosity. For all its warts, “A Night at the Opera” is all the good Queen had to offer, stuffed into a characteristically idiosyncratic package. It’s nearly unaninmously remembered as a great album. While I don’t always agree with conventional opinion about Queen, the crowd is right in this case.

That’s my 773rd-favorite album.

#28: “Nevermind”, Nirvana, 1991

I’m writing this one from a family vacation in Seattle. It wouldn’t feel right to profile anything but Nirvana’s game-changing major-label debut.

I try to focus the rankings of these albums more on the quality of the music therein than on the influence the album had on future music. “Nevermind” is fantastic music. It’s defiant, but melodic. Apathetic, but inspired. “Come As You Are” is built for a coffeehouse and “Breed” is built for a mosh pit, but both have the credibility to be welcomed into the other’s venue.

The music alone makes “Nevermind” one of the great albums of its era, but it’s the album’s impact on its era (and not just the music of the era) that makes it a universally-renowned classic. To write about “Nevermind” without writing about what it spawned- and what it stopped- would be incomplete.

In the early nineties, the narrative around Nirvana was that they’d changed rock music overnight. Gone were hair bands and eighties excess; apathy was the new zeitgeist.

Contemporaries like The Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam were likely influenced by Nirvana and certainly benefitted from their genre’s unlikely move to the mainstream. I hear Nirvana in favorites like …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead a decade later and Car Seat Headrest another decade out.

It’s also true that much of what Nirvana wrought was… well, overwrought. Stone Temple Pilots borrowed the attitude but brought back some of the excess in complex guitar work and dramaticized angst. Bush made millions by copying Nirvana’s sound and then repeating “This Cloud” or “Zen” for two minutes at the end of each song, misinterpreting Nirvana’s emoting-without-emotion. Later spawn like Lifehouse and Marcy Playground begged so hard for Kurt Cobain’s posthumous approval that they offered exactly nothing to the larger conversation. Much of the great music made in the wake of Nirvana was by hip-hop artists and more technology-oriented bands.

It may be that Nirvana is important more for trends they ended. Poison and Whitesnake appealed to a generation that tried to mimic their parents’ hippie rebellion with big hair and big emotions, but Nirvana’s Seattle-inspired, don’t-get-too-excited-it’s-gonna-rain-again-tomorrow grunge exposed the folly of the prior generation’s pay-attention-to-me-I’m-different-like-all-my-friends charade. The same bucket of cold water Ramones had dumped on prog rock fifteen years earlier reset not just a music culture, but fashion and conduct standards as well.

Whether or not the music that came after Nirvana was better than the music that came before, Nirvana was critical in shaping the culture of a generation that was a little embarrassed by their older siblings. More importantly, they made music strong enough to shape that cultural shift, much of which came on “Nevermind”.

That’s my 28th-favorite album.

Basslines matter.

I’ll hazard a guess that if you’ve got a song in your head right now, it’s a sung melody that you’re hearing, but it’s the bassline that trapped the song there in the first place.

A decade into The Roots’ career, “Phrenology” was a key milestone in their evolution from underground jazz-rap act to world-renowned NBC house band. In my estimation, sublime basslines played the biggest role in getting them there.

The prototype for a hip-hop act before The Roots was an emcee or a tag team of emcees skilled at one or both of two things: rapping and building backing beats by sampling other music. The Roots largely defy that prototype. Not only do they play their music live in the studio (or on stage), but they exist as a concept larger than a band. Talib Kweli, Jill Scott, Musiq, Nelly Furtado, and Cody Chestnutt are here to supplement Black Thought’s vocals. Poets stop by for spoken-word interludes. Ten-minute sound experiments push the boundaries of mainstream hip-hop.

None of this is to say that “Phrenology” is not a hip-hop album. Samples abound, from The Beatles to Slick Rick. Black Thought rivals vintage Nas with his smooth-but-authoratative raps. And those basslines…

The bassline that sticks in my head more than any other from this album is from “Quills”, whose chorus is an adaptation of Swing Out Sister’s “Breakout”. The Roots don’t rest on other artists’ music to build a foundation for their lyrics. Rather, “Phrenology” seems equally devoted to music’s past, present, and a future whose vocabulary they intend to influence.

Before Quills, “Phrenology” hits the listener with the rap showcase “Thought @ Work”, irresistable earworm “The Seed (2.0)”, the deft, drum-and-bass-driven “Break You Off”, and the epic biography “Water” in succession, all starting seven tracks into the record. Over 70 minutes, this album delivers everything a fan might have expected from The Roots in 2002 and far more. But it’s the basslines that keep it in my head 17 years later.

That’s my 230th-favorite album.