Most people who know me, know I have like five things I care about more than anything else when it comes to pop culture. Sports, Breweries, Trivia Night, Saturday Night Live, and Music. Not in any particular order. And I love music. I know this love for music began when I was a kid. My father had hundreds (and maybe thousands) of albums lined our living room growing up. They were in these wooden shelving units, and every genre of music was represented (as long as it was released from 1965 to 1985). As a kid, I would look through these albums one at a time and listen to almost all of them. I could not get enough from Aretha Franklin to Queen to Black Sabbath to The Beatles. It was not unusual for me to listen to Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall, follow it up with Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, and finish the afternoon with the Dave Clark Five. To this day, I am still as big a music fan as I was when I was a kid. I love attending concerts with my wife, daughter, and best friend, David, and I still like mixing genres to keep everything interesting. I feel like, for that reason, now is the time to Consider Outloud, the music of my life. I know hardly anyone will even care about this list or my sonic opinions, but I care, and that is enough for me.
I first attempted to create a list like this in 2011 when I read the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. I was interested in what my list would look like. I have started and stopped this list and revised and revised it again. But I think I got the best list I can muster now. I also realize that I am 51 years old, and while I plan on being here for a long time, my musical tastes are starting to lock in more and more. While I love Chappel Roan and Sabrina Carpenter, I know I am leaning on my past more than ever. I think every kind of music nerd has tried to make a best-of list in their life, and doing so can be a bit of a fool’s errand. After all, everyone has different tastes and likes different genres of music. For example, this list will be clearly absent country music, speed metal, or 90s R&B. I have to admit, these are not genres I am into. So, I cannot say anything is definitive. And, I am keenly aware that I am a 51-year-old white dad who is heterosexual and a dye-in-the-wool Gen Xer. This list will reflect that a lot. Looking for synth, I got you, 80s pop music, check, grunge, of course. But I also tried to look deeper into my previous listening habits and bring in some yacht rock, hair metal, hip hop, soul music, and Latin music.
For this list, I will try to listen to one album a day and write about it in a weekly post that lists the seven albums I listened to and provides some context as to why I added them to the list. I think it is important to note that these albums will not be in order. I included 1,000 albums, but they are not ranked on purpose. I honestly did not feel they did the artists or my tastes justice. At some point, REM’s Document, The Smiths’ Strange Ways Here We Come, The Beatles’ Abbey Road and Prince’s Purple Rain have been my favorite albums, along with many more. So let’s not do that. I will also be adding commentary to my Facebook, Instagram, and Threads feeds, and I will have a running Spotify playlist with essential tracks from each album. So, join me. I know this is trite and self-indulgent, but I hope you find something you love too!
Considering Outloud 