Greatest Albums Evar!

vaska

Ok, the rules. You get to pick no more than three albums you believe to be the greatest of all time.

Including song clips (like from Amazon.com) is mucho appreciated.

It's probably best to pick them one at a time as others suggestions I bet will influence your future selections.

And with that, I will go first.

"Stealing all our dreams
Dreams for sale
They sell 'em back to you"
- Democratic Circus

While it is easlily arguable that the Talking Heads were at the peak of their creativity (and naivete) in the early 80's, their 1988 release "Naked" was both the final page in their history as one of the great American rock/pop bands and also displayed their skills to the highest order.

Recorded in Paris and NYC with an international cast of musicians, the album incorporated Carribean, African and Asian sensibilities producing some purely organic and lush poly-rhythmic stuff you can get your ears around.

Lyrically, David Byrne has yet to match the achievement of this album. I'll wrap this up with a few more lines from "The Facts of Life":

Love is a ma chine
Love is a ma chine without a dri ver
The facts of life
The facts of life
A masterpiece
Biology
Smokey water
Air conditioned
Boys 'n' girls
And automation
Chromosomes
Designer jeans
Chimpanzees
And human beings
Machines of love

Elizabeth

OK I don't know that I will be able to narrow this down to only three, so I'll start my list with this:

Catching Up with Depeche Mode

Reminds me of so many things- so many good times... it will always have a fond place in my heart 🙂

rebelo

Definitely one of my favs:

The Gotan Project - La Revancha del Tango

In exile from the civil unrest in their homeland argentina, the three musicians moved to france and did various music acts before someone suggested they try doing a modernized spin on traditional south american tango sound. The resulting work, The Gotan Project, is a superb sort of latin sort of downtempo sort of jazzy sound that is 100% awesome.

http://www.gotanproject.com

Shrike

Radiohead, OK Computer. An example of a band making every song perfect 🙂

goldbug

Not sure if I'd rank it in my top 3 of all time, but lately I've really been resonating with Four Tet - Rounds

Merve

Barenaked Ladies' Greatest Hits

vaska

The Replacements - Let it Be

One of the greatest American punk bands you've never heard of hailing from Minneapolis, Minnesota...

Recorded in 1984, this is a seminal album in the Replacements roughly 10 year career. A genuinely "punk" band, this album has a wit, irreverence and an emotionally charged sensibility not commonly displayed by other acts. Let it Be is a cross-over album from purely punk to a more sophisticated alternative-band combining alt/punk, 50's rock and blues forms (Note: this is about the same time that people actually started using the term "alternative" and "indie" regarding bands).

Paul Westerberg's lyrics, always to the point, are hilarious and brutally honest on "Androgynous" (piano, bass and drum):

"Now, something meets Boy, and something meets Girl
They both look the same
They're overjoyed in this world
Same hair, revolution
Unisex, evolution
Tomorrow who's gonna fuss
And tomorrow Dick is wearing pants
And tomorrow Janie's wearing a dress
Future outcasts and they don't last
And today, the people dress the way that they please
The way they tried to do in the last centuries"

I won't mention their first music video in-depth which consisted only of a guys' foot and the bass speaker convolving to music, but their "Seen your Video" was clearly their take on early MTV (did it come out in 1983?) - this song is mostly an instrumental pieces:

"All day, all night, all music video
Seen your video, the phony rock 'n' roll
We don't want to know, seen your video
Your phony rock 'n' roll
We don't want to know"

Now as I remember some things, you can even hear some pretty direct rip-offs from KISS but used in a much more listenable way...haha.