What’s Going On Here?
At Christmas 2020, I was given one of those scratch-off posters containing 100 “bucket list albums”. It has remained unopened, gathering dust in a wardrobe for the past year and a half. But today, I finally opened the box, unrolled the poster, and had a look over its recommendations. It’s worth noting at this point that my taste in music is generally quite different than the mainstream, and I know how much of a pretentious hipster that makes me seem. It’s true though; of the 100 albums on the poster, I don’t think I’d be able to identify the covers of more than 20 of them, let alone name any non-title song from them. There’s only one album with which I’d say I’m entirely familiar: Daft Punk’s Discovery, and even then I’d struggle to name all the tracks.
And so, in an attempt to broaden my horizons and see what all the fuss is about, I will be listening to every single one of these albums over the course of the next few months and recording my thoughts here for anyone who cares to see the opinions of a freshly graduated music student venturing into what “normal people” listen to for more or less the first time. I’ll be going in the order presented by the poster, starting with The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd and ending with All Mod Cons by The Jam.
If there’s one thing going to university for music has taught me, it’s how to have an open mind for this kind of thing, so I’ll be listening to each and every album for their entire durations, and I’ll do my best to give them all a fair shake and avoid being unjustly critical. With any luck, by the end of this journey I’ll have expanded my Spotify playlists with at least a few new songs and gained a wider appreciation for the great breadths of music that are out there. Or perhaps they’ll all be terrible. Only time will tell. I might even give a few recommendations of my own along the way.
Nick Hoad 