It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: Continuum
John Mayer was a polarizing figure before he broke Taylor Swift’s heart, frankly for a period of time he was a ladykiller who also played guitar. Thankfully for me, the guitar part was doing all the heavy lifting. His first two albums Room for Squares and Heavier Things were wildly successful albums in their own right, but it was clear John wanted to step out of the shadow of being the guy who wrote, “Your Body is a Wonderland.”
Continuum was golden era John Mayer, coming off the heels of his John Mayer Trio project with legends Pino Palladino and Steve Jordan, he was in peak form. This is 2006, three years after Bush declared, “Mission Accomplished” and well after the honeymoon period of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. “Waiting On the World to Change” is about as close to a protest song as a pop artist will get, and it’s fantastic, “Now if we had the power, to bring our neighbors home from war, they would have never missed a Christmas, no more ribbons on the door.”
Elaborating upon this disgruntled feeling, “Belief” echos a similar sentiment, and who could forget the Islamophobia that ran through the country like vodka through an Alpha Kappa bro: “We’re never gonna win the world, we’re never gonna stop the war, we’re never gonna beat this if belief is what we’re fighting for.” It’s not all gloom from the oughts, there is also blues, “Gravity” and “Vultures” are fantastic songs written during his time with the Trio. In addition, there is a completely respectable cover of Jimi Hendrix’, “Bold as Love.”
The song that hit the hardest on this album with its’ weeping lead guitar is, “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room.” John really gets after the solo on this slowly ending tragedy of a relationship: “I’ll make the most of all the sadness, you’ll be a bitch because you can, you try to hit me just to hurt me, so you leave me feeling dirty, ‘cause you can’t understand.” This is John Mayer’s best work, on his best album. It shows how much he can squeeze out of a Fender Stratocaster, and really makes you forget the bubblegum pop stuff, as good as it is.
If you wrote off John Mayer twenty years ago as fluff for the tabloids, you would be wrong, but it was easy to get that impression. I could tell you it sold five million copies in a post Napster world, but that’s just a number. I could tell you there’s another side of John, and he explores it here, but that’s subjective. What I will tell you is that this album is his best work in the studio, and stop this train, I wanna get off and listen to this album again.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: Permission to Land
I was just starting my sophomore year in high school when the single, “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” started getting airplay and it blew up. The song was everywhere that fall, and I was lucky enough to get the recommendation from a football teammate on just how solid the whole album was. From the opening distorted chords of, “Black Schuck” I was hooked and after a few listens to Permission to Land I started to believe in a band called The Darkness.
The sound was a throwback, a mixture of hard rock and glam with lead singer Justin Hawkins looking like he was straight out of an eighties hair metal video. It topped the charts in the United Kingdom and has sold just shy of two million copies worldwide to date, the debut brought back some of the antics and debauchery that made rock and roll fun. It could reasonably be thought, this is the kind of band that gets banned from hotels and smashes things.
A great guitar riff can be great in era, and it is inexplicable that they were allowed two guitar solos on a radio song in 2003. “I believe in a thing called love, just listen to the rhythm of your heart, there’s a chance we can make it now, we’ll be rocking ‘til the sun goes down” is simply so infectious that every time I hear it I have to pretend I can still do the falsetto part like I’m a teenager, something that should only be attempted in the shower.
Joyful is always the word that comes to mind when I think about Justin Hawkins running into an old crush at a dance club while rattling off all the extra-curricular activities they used to do together. “Friday Night” is easily the most innocent sounding song, and does a lot to balance the darker parts of the album. Whether it be needlework, badminton, cycling or rowing on the weeknights, we’re always dancing on a Friday night with you, mystery girl. That girl who, “God, the way she moves me to write bad poetry” and whom we all know so well.
“Growing On Me” and “Love is Only a Feeling” were singles that didn’t reach the same popularity their biggest hit, but add to the depth of the album nicely. After all, how could this over the top flashback of an album not have a ballad? It’s a record that was different from anything else at the time, the fervent energy the band had back then really shines through. It’s still worth a spin today, just listen to the rhythm of your heart.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: Parachutes
It wasn’t the easiest thing to like Coldplay after the movie, “40 year old Virgin” came out with the side-splitter, “You know how I know you’re gay? You listen to Coldplay.” If I were a more scrappy individual, I might have gone to blows about this album with a few idiots who echoed the sentiment of the joke. Neanderthals aside, this debut was so good that it beat out homophobia in a small religious town, truly a miracle back in the days when Coldplay was a rock band.
Selling 13 million copies since its’ release in 2000, the album achieved worldwide critical and commercial success. Coldplay would go on to become one of the biggest pop acts in the world with the Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends album being a line of demarcation away from their roots. Chris Martin puts on a hell of a live show, and usually only has positive things to say. The mainstream works that followed are good, but I will forever be thankful for those first three rock albums.
With just shy of three billion streams on Spotify, “Yellow” might be one of those fleeting examples of a band’s most popular song also being their best. Four sons of school teachers caught lightning in a bottle for this one, “Look at the stars, see how they shine for you, and all the things that you do.” Lyrics that paired with an intro that explodes like the big bang when the lead guitar comes in, they don’t play songs this good in church.
“Yellow” was accompanied by two other excellent singles in, “Shiver” and “Trouble” but for me it’s the album opener that shines brighter. “Don’t Panic”, with its’ nervous climbing guitar line and the ending suggestion that, “Oh all that I know, there’s nothing here to run from, cause yeah everybody here’s got somebody to lean on.” It’s a short song at just over two minutes, but it sets the tone for the album as a whole and as it leads into the next track, “Shiver” it really makes me miss when Coldplay featured guitars more.
The moral of the story is that anyone can turn Coldplay into a punchline, they became very popular, and if that’s how you choose to waste your energy, okay. I no longer get mad about it though, I just feel sympathy for people that can’t enjoy Parachutes, A Rush of Blood to the Head or X and Y. To end on a positive note, we have come a long way since that silly joke, and are better for it. You know how I know you like Coldplay? You listen to good music.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: The Bends
I once suggested to an old friend in college that Radiohead, specifically The Bends and OK Computer, was the best music for studying. I was overjoyed a few weeks later when he texted back in agreement from his campus a hundred miles away. Radiohead is a bit difficult to pin down or describe in a sound bite, so most people don’t get it. Everybody knows, “I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo, what the hell am I doing here?” but it’s only a music lover who gets to call themselves a Radiohead fan.
While the single, “Creep” from their debut album Pablo Honey will always be their most famous song, in music circles you will get somewhere around four different answers for best album, and none of them are Pablo Honey. 1995’s Radiohead masterpiece The Bends represents a more matured sound that separated them from the crowd of loud rock bands of the era. They weren’t Brit-pop and they weren’t grunge, however they were fantastic. This would be proven out over the aforementioned releases that followed such as OK Computer, Kid A, and In Rainbows.
The first single from the album was picked for the fans, and lacked commercial radio appeal. “My Iron Lung” can be interpreted as the band loathing the success of, “Creep” but that’s not to say the album didn’t have viable mass appeal. The album sold over two million copies worldwide by the end of 1996 on the strength of the band’s top to bottom talent. Lead singer Thom Yorke really shines on the dystopian love song, “Fake Plastic Trees” as well as providing soaring vocals throughout the rest of the album.
Haunting is the first word that comes to mind for album ending track, “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” from start to finish awash in beautiful anxiety. The guitar line that repeats throughout creates the texture for the equally stressed lyrics, “This machine will, will not communicate these thoughts and the strain I am under.” It would go on the become Radiohead’s first top five on the UK singles charts, dissuading the notion of the band being a one hit wonder. The song’s fixture at the end is a wonderful cleansing release to this album of guitar panic.
Radiohead are in the pantheon of the great bands of all time, but the music is not for everyone. There aren’t sing-along songs, and one wouldn’t be advised to put on Radiohead at the bar jukebox. The Bends is my favorite Radiohead album because it is more guitar focused than the others I mentioned and listening to it is a meditative experience. The quality is there from start to finish, and if you compare it to bubble gum pop nonsense, this is New York strip versus Skittles.
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