It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: Californication
There is no official ambassador honor for the state of California, but perhaps they should give the title to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. There are no more prolific propagandists of dreams of a California lifestyle than them, stitched into the fabric of the culture. It’s debatable if this is their best album, they are a great band, but Californication hit hard for me in 1999 and I wasn’t alone. The record spawned six singles, and went on to sell over fifteen million copies worldwide, for a more modern take, three of the band’s top five most streamed songs on Spotify.
Californication marked the return of guitarist John Frusciante to the band, and his presence is felt throughout. His beautiful almost weeping clean guitar forms the framework of, “Scar Tissue” a single that can hook you within the first 15 seconds of the song starting. It features a mellow and lovable chorus, “With the birds I’ll share this lonely viewin’” and the hilarious verse, “Soft spoken with a broken jaw, step outside but not to brawl, autumn’s sweet we call it fall.” The bigger hits on this album are so easy to love.
The next track hits pretty hard in succession, “Otherside” features great storytelling about the pitfalls of confronting addiction. It’s dark in places, musically strong, and features this great opening verse, “I heard your voice through a photograph, I thought it up and brought up the past, once you know you can never go back, I gotta take it on the otherside.” The song is reflective and accessible enough that it doesn’t force the subject matter on a casual listener too heavily, it was a single after all.
The title track simply leaves nothing to be desired, five and a half minutes of Red Hot Chili Peppers bliss. If you catch the music video, it features the latest in what video games looked like at the turn of the millennium. The lyrics speak to the overwhelming cultural force that California is to our society and the world, and the possibilities that are only there beyond the superficial. “Space may be the final frontier, but it’s made in a Hollywood basement. And Cobain can you hear the spheres singing songs off station to station?” All of this comes to a head with Frusciante’s almost too perfect guitar solo, it silences whatever noise is going on in my head every time I hear it, at least for a moment.
I also want to give compliments to Lawrence Azerrad, know for his Pink Floyd album covers for the art, this cd begged to be picked up off the shelf even if you didn’t know the band. I remember the joy of buying this CD at the Ft. Wayne Best Buy back in jr. high, and that, ladies and gentleman, is an old sounding sentence. It can be argued as to whether this is the best Chili Peppers album, there are at least two others you could make a case for. In the end, this is the one that has, “Californication” on it, so all other arguments are probably moot.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: Only by the Night
In the fall of 2008 there was an injection of youthful energy in the world of music, a new semester was in the works for me and a new Kings of Leon album was the music of the moment. It was one of the few times I can remember a rock band being the center of attention in the culture of my youth, all the better that it was for good reason. Only by the Night is a great album with two massive hit songs that propelled it in quick succession to the front of our minds.
Album opener, “Closer” puts us on pins and needles from the outset with the recurring delay guitar rippling like a foreshadowing of the heavy journey ahead. “Skies are blinking at me, I see a storm bubbling up from the sea, and it’s coming closer.” The song sets the foundation for the rest of this monster album with its six singles, but also immediately indicates it won’t be the smoothest ride. It won’t be sunshine and rainbows, but you should have no interest in getting off the ride. The eerily optimistic hungers you get from it will be satisfied.
If you’re looking for the banger of 2008, “Sex On Fire” is your hit, pun intended. This has the guitar string bend heard round the world, with all the distortion necessary to accentuate one of the steamier choruses of the year. “You, your sex is on fire, ah, ah, consumed, with what’s just transpired,” immediately followed by that massive guitar driving the point home. Radio play never killed this one for me, and when it came on at a party it was a cue to head for the keg line, as the were about to be a lot of empty cups.
Just a month later the equally compelling second single was released with a less sexy, more communal tone, “Use Somebody.” Lead singer Caleb Followill pangs for a companion from a dark place, “Someone like you and all you know and how you speak, countless lovers under cover of the street, you know that I could use somebody…Someone like you.“ The chorus of “oh-ohs” forms the pop friendly bones of the song and it is heavenly to hear a crowd echo this by the thousands, even someone like you.
As their fourth studio album and follow up to 2007’s excellent, Because of the Times, Kings of Leon were already ascendant, Only by the Night put them into the stratosphere. This was the album where they broke into the United States, after years and albums of success in the United Kingdom. This Tennessee band of three brothers and a cousin rocked their way around the world before coming back to conquer America. I don’t love everything that comes out of Nashville, but when I listen to this album I can’t help but ask someone to pass the southern barbecue.
Happy Pride To All
To everyone who celebrates pride this month, I hope you enjoy yourselves, you deserve it. It presents us with an opportunity to promote unity in a divided world, and celebrate our individuality and humanity. I’m not up on the correct acronym of the moment, but the LGBTQ+ community has given much to the world, and they deserve a month to be recognized. Two years ago while working in an office in Marysville I had told a coworker I would be attending pride with a friend, the response was one of the ugliest homophobic rants I’ve ever heard in my catholic-raised life. I was angry, but respectful, and that made me write this song, I hope you enjoy. Be yourself, happy pride!
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: Is This It?
Rock and Roll debauchery has always held its appeal to me, when the cool band of the moment does something outrageous. Noel Gallagher once said, “Until you’ve actually thrown a television set out of a window, you don’t even know the sense of joy it brings.” The Strokes, led by stylish frontman Julian Casablancas were that cool, on edge band for me in the early 2000s. I have no accounting for hotel structural damage that they caused back then, but I always thought they might unleash that destruction at any moment.
The debut album Is This It was already on the hype train when it came out in 2001 on the heels of the success of their EP The Modern Age, which was released in the United Kingdom the same year. The first single from the album was, “Hard to Explain” rose to number 1 on the UK indie charts. This was our first introduction to the guitar heavy sound of The Strokes with the reverse reverb on Casablancas’ vocals, a defining sound of the early oughts.
In the vein of rock and roll mythology, good artists copy, great artists steal. With that in mind there was a definite and later blessed theft involved with the making of the single, “Last Nite.” The rhythm guitar intro is almost a direct lift from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’,“American Girl” something the band would later admit to in an interview that Petty himself referenced. Like a true crusader for the love of rock and roll, Petty never sued or was in any way negative about them lifting the intro, he laughed it off like the legend he is.
The easiest listening song on the album is probably the third single, “Someday” with its jangling guitars and somewhat hopeful lyrics, “You say you want to stay by my side, darling your head’s not right, ah, see, alone we stand, together we fall apart, yeah, I think I’ll be alright.” The music video was fun, featuring the band in a bar telling stories, sharing cigarettes and drinks, it would be rock and roll caricature if it didn’t look so natural and cool.
The Strokes were going to be the band that saved rock and roll in 2001, and their debut album Is This It? was going to be the blueprint. That kind of hype was something no band could ever live up to, but at least we got this masterpiece. If nothing else it shows the enduring power of rock and roll to have a record like this come out decades after the prime era of the genre. The energy of the record is also undeniable, and it clocks in at around 37 minutes, just enough time to make a memory tonight that will be hard to explain.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: El Camino
It’s fitting that the first album I really fell in love with after moving to Columbus after college was from Ohio homegrown legends The Black Keys. 2011’s El Camino was Akron duo Dan Aurbach and Patrick Carney’s 7th studio album together, the follow up to their multiple Grammy winning commercial breakthrough Brothers. It peaked at number two on the Billboard album chart in the United States and prompted my first opportunity to see them live.
Most of The Black Keys discography lived on my iPod for the four years I spent in college from 2006-2010, so I was not new to their greatness by this point. This was another example of an album that just fell to me at a perfect time in my life in addition to being loaded with great songs. It kicks off with, “Lonely Boy” which won them three more Grammys that year including best rock album. With its delectable chorus and lyrics of a man at wits end, “Well your mama kept you, but your daddy left you, and I should have done you just same.” The lead guitar piece drives it so well and you can hear almost immediately why this was a hit.
The best song on the album comes a few tracks later with the organ infused, “Gold on the Ceiling.” Following the wonderful guitar intro we are introduced to an organ from decades gone by and a crowd of rhythmic hand claps. “They wanna get my gold on the ceiling, I ain’t blind, just a matter of time, before you steal it, it’s alright, ain’t no blood in my eye.” This is the kind of song that fills an arena, and it was at capacity on that day as I scribbled notes of a show review to be passed on to a co-worker’s website.
Before the album’s through, the duo lament an indecisive lover on the compelling “Nova Baby”, “All this love of mine, all my precious time, you waste it ‘cause you don’t know what you want.” There are several other non-singles that live up to Black Keys polish such as, “Run Right Back” and “Stop Stop.” All of The Black Keys albums are, “just push play” intuitive to me, but this album’s cup runneth over and should be likable to just about anyone with ears. If I went deaf I would learn braille so I could read the lyrics to their next scornful love song.
My boss at the time let me cut out early to scalp tickets for their show at the Schottenstein Center in support of the album and they did not disappoint. Certainly I’m biased, but I challenge anyone to name a better rock band from Ohio. I would certainly be thrilled if they would choose a Black Keys song for the Buckeyes to kick off to. I say this because Jack White of “Seven Nation Army” fame is from Michigan and that usually seems to be an important detail down here. Buckeye football aside, El Camino should be listened to at high volume.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: Oracular Spectacular
Everyone should have a psychedelic rock album from their youth, and in 2007 we got ours. Oracular Spectacular was the studio album debut for soon to be indie giants MGMT, and nothing sounds more like my sophomore year of college than this record. Formed by Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden at Wesleyan University in 2002 as freshman, MGMT would explode into the mainstream with a blend of psychedelia, electronica and indie rock that was as catchy as it was brilliant.
The trip starts with the single, “Time to Pretend” a wonderful synthesizer filled ode to dying young and all the fun you can have. There is a point in everyone’s partying youth that this ethos seems plausible, if only momentarily. The hook during the chorus is instantly recognizable, and the lyrics were canon among college students at the time. As they agree to live fast and die young, the future seems absurd, “Yeah it’s overwhelming, but what else can we do? Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?”
Further on the journey we run into a song about a special lady with the magic touch in, “Electric Feel.” The grooving bass drives a stomping beat that makes you want to move, as slowly as you like of course. This one will hook you with its’ ear worm quality and its hard not to bounce with the chorus, “I said, ‘Ooh girl, shock me like an electric eel, babygirl, turn me on with your electric feel.’” Infectious doesn’t even begin to describe this song at a house party, and this album should come with glow sticks.
The highest charting single on the album, “Kids” which peaked at number nine on the billboard alternative list is one of the best songs of my college years. The synth-heavy track oozes with pop sensibility, the melodic lead synth line that permeates is contagious and it’s really fantastic on large speakers. I have never understood what this song was about, and I have never cared, it’s pop perfection. I have to mention the acoustic cover of the song by The Kooks in 2008 is also worth looking up, in the realm of indie-sublime.
This record came out during the perfect time for me to hear it, and I am nostalgic about it. It’s not rosy retrospection however and I am not overapraising it. It appears on Rolling Stone’s, “Top 500 Albums of All Time” 2012 list at #494, as well as on every roommate’s iPod from the late oughts. It’s a very easy listen with some drinks and friends or your favorite psychedelic sweetener, and it’s catchy choruses just may expand your mind as well.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: American Idiot
Why not Dookie? Because I wasn’t 17 when Dookie came out. The feeling of being neck deep in a Green Day wave was palpably similar to when they first exploded in 1994. Nothing was bigger in 2004 than Green Day’s punk rock opera American Idiot. The album has sold more than 23 million copies to date and there was a resurgence in Green Day’s popularity similar to the release of their major label debut with 1994’s Dookie. This was the Green Day album my generation grew up with.
Released in September 2004 with an election looming, lead singer Billy Joe Armstrong didn’t mince words with his thoughts on then President Bush. With the war on terror in full swing and Fox News, led by anchor Bill O’Riley in prime time, were incessantly selling the war. Fox would emerge as the propaganda arm of the Bush administration, and Billy attacked the zeitgeist: “Don’t wanna be an American idiot, one nation controlled by the media, information age of hysteria, it’s calling out to idiot America.” That lyric from the album opening title track sets the stage for what’s to come, it’s more than a rock opera about Jesus of Suburbia, they were making a statement.
Like many other Americans at the time who weren’t buying the bill of goods being sold about weapons of mass destruction, Billy continues with the chorus of, “Holiday.””I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies, this is the dawning of the rest of our lives.” Later, before the track fades into billboard hit, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” the bridge has Billy throw out, “Seig Heil to the president gasman!” As memory serves, this was not hyperbolic, and there were as many people calling Bush and Cheney fascists then as there are about Trump now.
Not everybody was caught up in the politics of the album however, a lot of people just really loved, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” and what a tune it is. With that soaring chorus and the throng of people singing along, if you walked with Green Day you didn’t walk alone, “My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me, my shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating.” It was a massive hit song with everybody from the Hot Topic people to the Hollister people, and that’s a rare event.
Thinking back about this time in music, I am glad I was a part of it. Every time I see the album art for this leviathan, I remember it fondly. Calling it the Millennials’ rock opera is fine with me, and it did eventually become a Broadway musical. Is it better than Dookie? No. Is it also great? Yes. American Idiot was a cultural benchmark of the mid 2000s and holds up today, let yourself drown in the power chords.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: Get Born
Some would call it selling out, but I think it’s a pretty good sign if Apple calls and says we want to use your song to promote the music device that defined a generation. Australian rock outfit Jet’s debut album Get Born features so many great songs that if you weren’t there for it you might ask which one they used. “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?” is so upbeat and energetic, it’s as if they intentionally made the song to accent the black outline of a person dancing with an iPod to it.
The tambourine and bass intro that set the stage for the delectable main riff on, “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?” set the oughts on fire. It doesn’t require any sort of preparation, or greater thought process, it’s binary: Are you a human being or not? If you are, this song causes involuntary body movement in people. “So one, two, three take my hand and come with me, because you look so fine that I really wanna make you mine.” What else do you need?
There simply wasn’t a more fun song in the summer of 2004 than, “Cold Hard Bitch.” Back in the waning days of call-in requests to radio stations, there was a litany of hilarious dedications to ex-girlfriends and ex-wives. Often the DJ would egg them on until they let out a deeply satisfied, “She was a cold hard bitch.” The guitar on this track hooks you from the jump, and leads you down a road of playful misogyny, “Gonna take her home cause she’s over romancin’, don’t wanna hold hands and talk about our little plans alright.”
If you need respite from the rock for a moment you’ll find it with the breather ballad, “Look What You’ve Done.” It opens to a sad piano lamenting, “Take my photo off the wall if it just don’t sing for you, ‘cause all that’s left has gone away and there’s nothing there for you to prove.” In this song we see the versatility of the band and it provides some soothing mellow tones to an otherwise energy filled romp.
The album spawned five singles and sold over four million copies, it has something for everyone. The band enjoys a break from chasing tail and takes aim at the disc jockey on, “Rollover D.J.” “I wanna move but it don’t feel right, ‘cause you been playing other people’s songs all night.” “Radio Song” also offers a nice relaxed album track for you to fall in love with, this album uses all 48 minutes to the fullest. To not love this album, you would have to be some kinda cold, hard…Well nevermind.
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: 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.
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