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.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: The Colour and the Shape
I’ll never make it to heaven, but if good old St. Pete told me my entrance was contingent upon naming the best rock’n’roll band of my lifetime, it’s Foo Fighters without hesitation. Born from the ashes of Nirvana as the solo project of drummer Dave Grohl there just isn’t another band from 1987 to now that’s both qualitatively and quantifiably massive. This 1997 sophomore effort from Dave was a step away from the grunge era that defined him, toward the more melodic and accessible rock sound they are now known for.
The Colour and the Shape may represent their best album, but I’ll gladly debate you aimlessly until three in the morning because they have two others that are just as good. After the introductory first track, “Monkey Wrench” kicks your front teeth in with a blistering pace of 174 beats per minute. Dave belts out his frustrations over distorted guitars, “Adolescent resident, wasting another night on planning my revenge” and it is so visceral it almost bleeds.
Infamously, Grohl recorded his own drum tracks for nearly the entire album unbeknownst to the drummer in the band. William Goldsmith rightfully didn’t take it well, and the result was him leaving the group, but the rest of us getting the masterclass of Dave on the throne. I can’t imagine, “My Hero” opening with any other drum intro, and I often find myself trying to isolate what the drums are doing on this album, which is something I rarely do as a failed guitarist.
“And I wonder when I sing along with you, if everything could ever feel this real forever.” ‘“Everlong” is’…Frankly, a very difficult sentence to finish. There is the guitar in drop D tuning to maximal effect in the intro, the drums at a pace only Taylor Hawkins could later come close to replicating, everything on this track is turned up to 11. It builds into one of best songs of the decade, and with over a billion streams on Spotify this is the signature Foo Fighters song for the ages.
It’s a really special moment when someone turns exceptional talent and tragedy into something millions can enjoy forever, that is Dave Grohl with Foo Fighters. More specifically, this album was him taking everything he can do musically and putting it on a canvas. There is a level of polish on this record that would serve as the blueprint for most of the rest of the band’s existence in the spotlight. Dave Grohl is a hero in my book, though I wouldn’t say ordinary.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: Odelay
There are certainly sounds on this 1996 classic I hadn’t heard put together before, like turntables and harmonicas. Synthesizers abound and there is a groove a minute. It kicks off with that sacrilegious guitar riff about the devil and never looks back. I feel like I could end it there and it would be enough justification for you to listen to the album if you haven’t already. Beck invites us to his fifth studio album Odelay with, “Devil’s Haircut” and the journey is better than any need for a destination.
Odelay ranks at #306 on Rolling Stone’s top 500 Albums list and has sold 2.3 million copies in the United States, solidifying Beck’s presence on the music scene. I don’t think I’ve ever changed the radio station when the electric piano kicks in on “Where It’s At” and signals five minutes where I can just sway and relax. I haven’t seen Beck live, but I can always get behind the anthemic chorus lyric, “Where it’s at, I’ve got two turn tables and a microphone.” I am always down for that kind of an amateur show in my head.
“Lord Only Knows” gets back into a more traditional acoustic arrangement echoing a bit from 1994’s Mellow Gold that included the breakout hit, “Loser” and received substantial airplay, peaking the album at #13 on the Billboard charts. Beck’s folk background shines on this one with his lovably apathetic finish to the warm chorus, “So don’t, you hesitate to give yourself a call, letcha’ bottom dollars fall, throwin’ your two-bit cares down the drain.”
I’ve always thought that “The New Pollution” would sound perfect in an Austin Powers movie, the driving bluesy British groove hooks you almost immediately. It’s like you can see a cool-looking James Bond caricature moving in slow motion, suavely doing secret agent moves in a montage that will eventually end up coming together with impeccable timing. It also starts with the great line, “She’s got a cigarette on each arm” setting you up for the toxic landscape that she exists in.
In a word, this album has relentless flow. Beck makes some interesting choices and takes some chances, like opening, “Lord Only Knows” with an unintelligible scream, seemingly unrelated to the rest of the song. This derailed an early listen for a friend of mine when I first started loving this album, but they always come around. The listener is introduced to something new with each passing minute on this one, and almost all of it works to perfection. This is one to tune out the world to, it sounds just as great as it used to, and I might need to find a sixer of that, “jigsaw jazz” he mentioned and have another listen.
It’s a Wonderful life of Albums: (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
(What’s the Story) Morning Glory? is a four course album prepared by master chef Noel Gallagher and served to you whether you like it or not by his brother Liam. From the opening chords of, “Hello” to the waves on the beach that introduce, “Champagne Supernova” this album renders the next button obsolete. Ranked #378 on Rolling Stone’s top 500 albums list and selling over 22 million copies worldwide, Morning Glory is a British rock behemoth.
The sibling rivalry and MTV Unplugged heckling incident overshadowed two Billboard Alternative #1 hits in the United States, but who could forget the songs? “Wonderwall” and “Champagne Supernova” took the band to another level in terms of worldwide success, on top of the #1 UK singles, “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and “Some Might Say.” It’s anecdotal, but a friend once told me they met a street musician in Mexico who learned English so they could play, “Wonderwall.”
This sounds entirely plausible to me, because everyone I knew who had an acoustic guitar learned this song at some point. The cynic in me wants to address that cliche and my disdain for it, but in my heart I know that it was just too irresistible to learn the love song of the decade. “I don’t believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now” hits you like a Mike Tyson opening salvo in a song with an acoustic arrangement that is more recognizable than the band itself. Noel Gallagher stopped owning this one as soon as the ink left his pen, it belongs to humanity.
With, “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and “Champagne Supernova” you have two of the most enjoyable sing-along songs of my lifetime. I was lucky enough to have a group of friends that cooperated in forming an Oasis singing circle during late nights in college, and how could you not? The nonsensical chorus of, “Don’t Look Back in Anger” is often what Noel chooses to close with, for good reason, the crowd is always with him. As for, “Champagne Supernova” I don’t care if you’ve never done a drug in your whole life, we still wanna know, “Where were you while we were getting high?”
In December of 2008 I saw Oasis in Detroit with my dad, and it will be a lifelong memory. The band split up the following summer, and for over a decade most thought they would never tour again. Last year however they announced a 2025 reunion world tour, I should have known. I say that because my dad likes to tell the story of seeing The Rolling Stones on their, “last tour” in 1981. Since The Rolling Stones tour from last year was one of the most lucrative, it gives me hope for Oasis. This is because I know Noel and Liam still have something other than a mother in common: it’s the tunes, man.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: Make Yourself
Whatever tomorrow brings, I will always love this album. Incubus broke into the mainstream with their second studio album Make Yourself, which I find most interesting because of the albums that came before and after. It was recorded after a tour in support of their debut, S.C.I.E.N.C.E. and marks a transition between that harder sound featured at Ozzfest to the surf rock ambiance of Morning View. It’s also a 1990s alternative rock classic with three tent-pole singles that make the speaker dance.
On paper, Incubus makes no sense. The construction of the band was not in the mold of many groups at the time in several ways. They are an alt-rock band with a DJ, people used to talk down on them for that in some music circles but it never bothered me. Gen-Z listeners might see old videos of him on stage and think, what a pioneer, look at him playing the laptop acoustically! In addition, they only had one guitarist for all these loud, wall of sound choruses: Mike Einziger. The man has never met an effect pedal he didn’t like, and you will hear some unfamiliar sounds on Incubus albums, queued by his right foot stomping.
While the previous album was successful in its own right, this one had, “Drive” on it. A song that should be on any nineties playlist worth its salt, and a big part of why the fan base for the band became divided. They definitely went in a more radio friendly direction with this album, but I would never use the term, “sell-out.” The album sold over two million copies, and it wasn’t because they were, to quote Office Space from the same year, “No talent ass-clowns.” You certainly can’t say that about the lyrics of the song or Brandon Boyd’s vocals, I don’t want to imagine anyone else singing it.
As for the other two singles, “Pardon Me” sounds great whether they play it in an acoustic or electric arrangement, from the opening phaser guitar to the line, “I’ve had enough of the world and it’s peoples’ mindless games.” In sticking with that transition theme of the album, “Stellar” is a bit quieter and more melodic. The louder chorus repeatedly insists loving disbelief, “How do you do it? Make me feel like I do.” Boyd’s voice really shines on this one, something the band leaned into throughout their career.
While there is some immaturity in this sophomore effort, it doesn’t detract from a great set of songs. Incubus has adapted their sound over their decades as a group, and this record was the one that paved the way for a lot of great music that came after. The mistake people make with Incubus is trying to figure out what to label them as, so just don’t. Enjoy Incubus for all the joyful noise they make on this one, with open arms and open ears.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: Third Eye Blind
If an album can sound like a time and a place, 1997 gave us Third Eye Blind’s self-titled debut. As for the time, if you distilled the elements of nineties alternative rock into a bottle, it would be Third Eye Blind coming in at around 151 proof. Great sounding guitars, edgy lyrics that were just clean enough for radio play, and a collection of heartbreaks that sound so good. As for the place, Third Eye Blind always seemed like a college album to me, sucking the marrow out of life and dealing with an uncertain future while living palpable moments almost every day.
Speaking of radio play, there was a lot of it, the debut reached #25 on the Billboard charts and has sold more than six million copies in the U.S. I heard the singles when they came out listening to 103.3 out of Ft. Wayne and later bought the CD in high school. When I hear “Semi-Charmed Life” now, the pop hit that it was, I am perplexed at the fact that it was on the radio. Sure they edited out, “crystal-meth” long before the TV series Breaking Bad made it popular, but nevertheless risqué to be sure.
Songwriting partners Stephan Jenkins and Kevin Cadigan have a way of putting gut wrenching lyrics to the happiest of guitar sounds. “Jumper” opens with no hesitation to the theme of suicide in an attempt to save a friend from ending it all. “We could cut ties with all the lies you’ve been living in, and if you do not want to see me again, I would understand.” The empathetic verses build to a crescendo finish that starts from a bass backed introduction of the lead guitar and builds to a joyful scream of, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” Put the past away, but not the part of your mind where this song lives.
Other highlights from the record include “How’s it Going to Be” with its hauntingly beautiful lead guitar dotting the final thoughts of a failed relationship. “Losing a Whole Year” similarly opens the album with an energetic recounting of love gone wrong, “I remember you and me used to spend the whole goddamn day in bed.” Where did it go wrong? “London” rides the driving guitar backing to tell us of yet another failed relationship, this one of the long distance variety. Fan favorite, “Motorcycle Drive By” builds and builds a lyrical tapestry of yet another heartache.
I’ve got a couple years until I turn 40 and square, and in my experience people my age congregate around this album like a bug light. Many a late night, ‘pass the iPod’ playlist included the singles from this album and it was often promptly followed by praise for the album as a whole. The frequent positivity would come from someone you didn’t know listened to Third Eye Blind like that, and a conversation would start. That was way back when we had conversations that you couldn’t re-tweet.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: The Blue Album
If I hear the finger picked arpeggio opening of, “My Name is Jonas” there is a near definite chance that I will listen to the rest of The Blue Album. Weezer’s 1994 self-titled debut that came to be commonly known as The Blue Album is on just about any, ‘best of the decade’ lists. It got the name due in part to the minimalist design of the cover art, featuring the band standing next to each other with a blue background, and also because Weezer released another self-titled album just 7 years later (The Green Album) a trend that would continue throughout the band’s career.
“My Name is Jonas” sets the tone for the next forty minutes and change of nineties rock. The acoustic arpeggio at the beginning quickly gives way to the driving distorted guitars that compose the backbone of the record. The guitars on most of the songs are tuned down a half step on all the strings to give a darker feel to the power chords that accompany the heavy metal caricature lead parts that work so well. This is perhaps nowhere more apparent than the lead guitar fill before the last chorus of “Buddy Holly.”
While I will admit that the single, “Hash Pipe” was my introduction to Weezer, all roads lead to blue. “Undone (The Sweater Song)” became the first single from the album and the first of my person-to-person file sharing downloads that I fell in love with from the band. Its opening notes are the background for conversations between attendees to a show that preempt the first two verses. “If you want to destroy my sweater, hold this thread as I walk away” became an anthem of a chorus, and if anybody could give me a ride to the party after the show, I’ll cancel plans.
The catchy single, “Buddy Holly” makes you stop in your tracks a little bit, especially if you watch the music video that accompanied it. It features the band playing at Arnold’s Drive-In from the sitcom, “Happy Days.” Clips of the show are intercut and the real cast member Al Molinaro making a cameo. The whole time it conjures the question, “Is this guy in Buddy Holly glasses really doing a song called, “Buddy Holly?” Leader of the band Rivers Coumo has maintained the look throughout the band’s career, and he has pulled off the eccentric look for three decades.
River’s introverted and unconfident writing style wasn’t quite as exposed on the debut as it was on the follow up, Pinkerton, but it is definitely present. Stating his jealousy, “I want a girl who laughs for no one else,” isolation, “In the garage, I feel safe, no one cares about my ways,” parental disappointment, “This bottle of Steven’s awakens ancient feelings.” At no point does any of it feel dishonest, and that’s what landed it on the Rolling Stone top 500 albums of all time list at #294. In addition to being a critical and commercial success, it has made Rivers the king of geek-rock since 1994.
I was lucky enough to see them last year on the 30th anniversary tour at Nationwide Arena and they did not disappoint. There were wonderful brush strokes from their whole career that night, but ending with The Blue Album in its entirety was masterpiece theater. The cool part is that I know there are generations of Weezer fans that came after me, so somewhere today there is a teenager re-enacting the line, “This band’s my favorite man, don’t you love them?”
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