Published on 08/10/2024.
I seemed to stir a lot of intrigue with my article Perfect Track Record: A Deep Dive into 10/10 Albums. Both online and in-person, I had a fair few speak to me about their thoughts on my selections and albums they felt should have been included; therefore I decided to write a sequel in the hope of covering a few more bases and giving amazing artists the recognition they deserve. As a point of bonus fun (for me only), I have included absolutely zilch from the suggestions given to me. I am looking forward to the inevitable outcry for a part three in the future.
Without further ado, let us take a look at my second load of picks for top five perfect albums.
Overview of Five Perfect Albums
| Album | Artist | Release Date |
|---|---|---|
| Sob Rock | John Mayer | 16th July 2021 |
| Time Out | The Dave Brubeck Quartet | 14th December 1959 |
| The Queen Is Dead | The Smiths | 16th June 1986 |
| Graceland | Paul Simon | 25th August 1986 |
| Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols | Sex Pistols | 28th October 1977 |
Sob Rock by John Mayer
I opened with a little controversy in my last article about perfect albums, and it seems I am continuing the trend this time. Many that would have seen John Mayer’s name in the overview may have expected a full treatise about his breakthrough album, Continuum. Whilst his third outing is a perfect album and one of great influence to modern guitar players, I decided, unlike Robert Frost, that I am going to enjoy wandering the road ‘less traveled by’.
What if it’s 1988 and I had had a band in the late ’60s through the ’70s, and now I’m my age in the ’80s and people are handing me these things called chorus pedals? – John Mayer, Guitar World interview, October 2021
Sob Rock is a newer release, having come out only three years ago (in 2021), but it takes on eighties sensibilities in the most earnest fashion. Even from the first Phil Collins-esque drum beat on the opening track, Last Train Home all the way through to the fading guitar solo on All I Want Is to Be with You, everything is achieved with great clarity and respect for the era that inspired Sob Rock‘s concept. Having said that, this is an album that is still quintessentially John Mayer. This is not just a record that sounds a little on the vintage side. It sounds as if Mayer hopped in a time machine, recorded the album, left it on a shelf for 33 years, and only uncovered it for the wider world as a post-pandemic treat.
If there is any song on the album that would threaten Sob Rock‘s status as a perfect album, it is probably Why You No Love Me? The chorus feels a little disingenuous about Mayer’s song-writing ability. The overall song, however, is forgivable and gets enough of a pass not to blemish the album’s ‘perfect’ status in my eyes.
Those that can not grasp the idea behind Sob Rock, or refuse to do so, may stick their fingers in their ears and start humming Neon or Slow Dancing in a Burning Room to themselves. I think that would be a mistake. Sob Rock is now as much a part of the John Mayer canon as any of his other albums, and I dare say that it is some of his best work. Mayer is a master of reinvention, and Sob Rock is a triumph of that creative process. It does not matter if you are an aficionado of the six-string or just a lover of the eighties, there is something for everyone, and every song begs to be played on repeat.
Favourite Track: Last Train Home
It never comes as a surprise when a single ends up being the best song on an album, but considering there are six singles from Sob Rock, at least it is more of a choice than normal. Last Train Home was the fourth single to be released and serves as an explosion of eighties that sets the tone for the rest of the album. The song is fun from the opening note, and the synth tones shot me back to the joy I felt when I first heard the likes of Prince’s Raspberry Beret.
The album version of Last Train Home is fantastic in itself, but if you want to go one better, try the live version from The Tonight Show. I do not know what magic the sound engineer sprinkled on the set that night, but I hope he got a pay rise because the Fallon version is the zenith!
Time Out by The Dave Brubeck Quartet
What a stocking filler this would have been for the boys and girls of the late 1950s! I would dare go as far as to say that Time Out may be the greatest jazz album of all time. That may seem like a bold claim right out of the gate, but then it was the first jazz album to sell over a million copies. There must be something about it!
From the chainsaw piano of Blue Rondo à la Turk to the animated-wonderland saxophone of Three to Get Ready, Time Out is jazz redefined. It is tighter, more structured, and softer than some of its wild rivals on the jazz scene, yet it is also more experimental and holds plenty of punch. In fact, the unusual time signatures of the compositions on the album were almost too edgy for the music companies because they wanted to push easy dance numbers. Brubeck himself claimed in a 1999 interview on Fresh Air that ‘record companies were a little afraid of it. But against their wishes, I forced them to put Time Out out. And it became the biggest seller they ever had in jazz.’
Time Out is a perfect album because it is the jazz record you wanted to hear to ease you into that crazy musical world as well as the one you would pick to listen for the thousandth time as a true beatnik. It is soft, yet commanding; experimental, yet refined; boundary-pushing, yet inviting. If you have never swam in the jazz ocean before, dip in your toes by trying Time Out.
Favourite Track: Kathy’s Waltz
Kathy’s Waltz may not seem the obvious choice for favourite Time Out song, especially with how lauded Take Five and Three to Get Ready are, but there is something coy about its composition that makes it outstanding.
The whole song is an adventure: first a stroll through Central Park; then a hike on the Hudson. It may start dreamily – start in a rather conventional manner – but Wright and Morello’s groove and Desmond’s delectable sax only set the scene for a third act when Brubeck’s black and white keys are unleashed. Most pieces of music considered wild are characterised by excessive speed or noise, but it is Brubeck’s sophisticated note choices and use of dynamics that paint lightning flashes of jazz genius across the sky of an otherwise wholesome rain shower.
The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths
Whatever you think of The Smiths’ contentious lead singer, Morrissey, The Queen Is Dead is undoubtedly a perfect album. Touted as the band’s magnus opus, The Queen Is Dead is a perfect blend of playful jaunts such as Frankly, Mr Shankly and Vicar in a Tutu, angst-driven showstoppers in There Is a Light that Never Goes Out, and cavalier commentary that pervades the likes of The Boy with the Thorn in His Side and Big Mouth Strikes Again.
What makes The Queen Is Dead even more impressive is the fact that The Smiths had already churned out two impressive offerings in the form of The Smiths (1984) and Meat Is Murder (1985). To go one better, having produced a back catalogue of brilliance thus far, is something of the highest musical order. That being said, you could argue the steam ran out the following year for Strangeways, Here We Come, but that is a debate for another time.
The Smiths may not have received the plaudits that the lead singer so craved in their heyday, but it is fair to say that The Queen Is Dead has received a lot of retrospective respect in the years since its initial release. Indeed, Jon Savage of The Guardian claimed that the album is The Smiths’ ‘mature masterpiece’ and ‘the highpoint of Morrissey’s lyric writing’. If that kind of praise is not enough to get you to give the album a go, I have no idea what will work.
Favourite Track: Cemetry Gates
As famous songs go, I think there are few based on youths sauntering around a cemetery, crooning poetry at each other, and lecturing on plagiarism. I think if you explained the premise to a music producer nowadays and told him it would feature on an album that would peak at number two on the UK Albums Chart, they would think you were barking mad. Nonetheless, that is Cemetry Gates, and it is wonderful.
Guitarist Johnny Marr was actually not originally a fan of his melody for this spritely number, but thanks to convincing from song-writing partner Morrissey, they developed Cemetry Gates and we are blessed to have it as a recording.
For those not interested to stretch for a full album’s worth of music-listening, you can still get a healthy dollop of Cemetry Gates on the B-side to the wonderful single Ask. Then again, we live in the modern world of streaming. Just click on the link below.
Graceland by Paul Simon
What a great year for music it seems 1986 was! Here is another incredible album from months after The Queen Is Dead was released in the form of Paul Simon’s Graceland. The album was seen as a departure from anything he had created previously in his solo career or as part of Simon and Garfunkel, but it was received with critical and popular praise.
The striking feature of the album is obviously the inclusion of the mbaqanga sounds of South Africa. It was seen by some as an iffy move for the time, considering the nation was being heavily boycotted on all sides for its apartheid regime. Simon argued that Graceland showed off the power of music to bring people together and what black and white musicians could create when working in harmony.
Graceland comes with one hell of a résumé: it is reported to have sold over 16 million copies worldwide, won the 1987 Grammy for Album of the Year, is featured on Rolling Stone’s list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 46th position, and makes Entertainment Weekly’s Top 100 Albums in 18th. If all that is not enough, Graceland is also the album to feature the joyous brass section of You Can Call Me Al. What more do I need to say?
Favourite Track: Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes
Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes was not originally intended to be released on Graceland, but due to the record company deciding to push back the release date, the singer-songwriter and co. decided to make hay whilst the sun shined and put press to vinyl.
The result is a captivating collaboration between Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo that delivers an ecstatic melody behind a story of love between contrasted social classes, highlighting how more fortunate circumstances can leave one isolated from the realities of those less well off.
Graceland is a perfect album, but I would go one step further and say that Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes is a perfect song. Few songs so completely grab me on every listen, and I would put Diamonds… in my top 50 of all time.
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols by The Sex Pistols
Some readers may be starting to see a theme emerging, given that The Queen Is Dead, the eponymous title track from The Smiths’ album, was seen as an eighties alternative-rock response to God Save the Queen. This is all coincidental – and that being said, few songs can really live up to the anti-monarchist, anti-establishment sentiment sold by the Sex Pistols.
A cheap holiday in other people’s misery.
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols is an ear shattering, head banging, spit-in-a-copper’s-face album – the epitome of the punk era. As soon as you hear Steve Jones’s murderous chords over the marching boots of a Nazi rally on Holidays in the Sun, you start to believe the social asylum may be real and that this is your first taste of life outside the compound.
It is not just Nazis that get a kicking on Never Mind the Bollocks… though. There were a few tortured toff faces when God Save the Queen was released on the 27th May 1977, around the time of Elizabeth II’s silver jubilee celebrations. The line about the monarchy being a ‘fascist regime’ of course was met with a wry smile and good sportsmanship by the BBC, meaning God Save the Queen received, only four days after its release, ‘a total ban on radio airplay on their channels’ reportedly due to the song’s ‘gross bad taste’. The UK being the UK, however, the airplay ban actually helped spark sales, according to History.com, of ‘150,000 copies a day in late May and early June’. It seems it pays to piss off the right people.
The Sex Pistols may have been a one-album wonder, but what an album to record! It was seminal in the punk genre; iconic for the music, artwork, and style of the band; and showed a generation of Brits that they were free to speak their minds, no matter how obscene.
Favourite Track: Pretty Vacant
There are a few tracks on which I could have settled, but I had to go with Pretty Vacant due to personal memories. I used to practise with a local village band called Superunknown when I was 16. They mainly played a lot of rock and old school metal, but Pretty Vacant also featured on their set list. I even earned £30 one week for filling in for their bassist. That truly annoyed my parents – or more the fact I kept reminding them of it and calling myself a ‘professional musician now’ did.
Pretty Vacant is also a pretty special song in itself. It speaks to desperation and hopelessness at the time of writing and remains poignant in today’s society. It is also a fun choice because of its unlikely origins from the band Abba. Supposedly, bassist Glen Matlock (later replaced by Sid Vicious after the album’s release) ‘claimed that he took the idea from the chorus of the Abba song SOS.’ Who knew the Swedes would inspire such a revolutionary song? I certainly did not when I wrote my article on Abba. Good for them!
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