Not sure why I feel the need to admit this openly, but: If I’d counted Christmas music, the first Trans-Siberian Orchestra album would probably have made my 50.
My own nostalgia plus Ace stripped from the boundaries of pop punk. I was supposed to see it live the week the world ended, lol
Goodness is so personal and special to me that I can very easily talk about why I like Astral Weeks more eloquently than I can it.
I really do wish I saw what others saw in Goodness. I come around to it once a year to see if anything changes though.
Remember when that was that really nice period in like 2012-13 when everyone embraced the Based mentality on AP and Deadkidsean became nice and we all shared super personal, special records with each other? That was a lot of fun! @cshadows2887 Chris, that Averi album (specifically Harwich) takes me back to a single beautiful night in college when it was absolutely freezing and saw my wife for the first time in months of being away
I wish I could sell people on why I like it so much, haha. My grandmom died a few months before it came out and my entire family dynamic shifted. I interpret the record to be about aging and dying and rebirth in such a beautiful way that I have never really seen captured in art. The loneliness at the end of The Irishman gave me a similar feeling, but totally different tones.
Honestly it’s fleeting bits of community and trading recs and exploring that keeps me coming back to the site. Lots of albums I love were introduced to me from users here. Pick of the Litter is an obvious one. Glad you have good associations with the Averi album. Getting some people into that and Chad is honestly something I’m really happy about.
Honestly I really wish I could see “El Jeffe” Craig’s list for this thread. That dude was just overwhelming positivity and joy in sharing music. He enthusiastically recommended me an album of Native American flute music in the same conversation where we geeked out about Billy Joel. Miss that dude.
It’s very funny to see the Genius annotation of Goodness be all about a romantic relationship when I take it in such a different way. Two Deliverances, for instance, strikes me as Christian visiting a dying loved one and seeing their religious iconography and asking (pleading almost) to understand why they put so much into these objects that he cannot connect with. The whole album reminds me of walking into my grandmother’s room after she passed away. It was a room I had been in countless times and one that was vacant for months as she died in various hospital beds. It was dusty and old and full of old catholic shit that had been there for decades. I think multiple songs on the album capture the image of someone watching a loved one age and die, helplessly, and then asking the weird existential questions that everyone asks with death. It then progresses to the idea of seeing the beauty of your relationship with them in nature
That’s what these albums do at their best. I remember listening to O when my heart got clobbered by a girl in college. I remember “Goodnight Goodbye” on the Averi album just destroying me after my Nana passed. Music’s at its best when it helps us make sense of the world and what we want to see in it.
Haha I almost want to rewrite the Genius analysis because I find it so offbase. But then I remember I’m a grown ass man and an English teacher and poetry is subjective blah blah
I think most students suspect their English teachers go around on the Internet interpreting art and correcting people. At least I bet mine do.
Have I transitioned to my basement to drink seltzers, watch the Lakers (hopefully) lose and listen to Goodness on Airpods for the first time? Yes. Yes I have.
If you don't fuck with Goodness as much, what do you interpret the album to be about? I absolutely would not like it as much if I viewed it as a "relationship" album.
Also, if you didn't alter your music to have Goodness Pt. 1 play immediately before Goodness 2 kicks off, you should
Y’know what, because he was repping world music and non-white artists around the world back when we were all arguing about whether Daisy or New Again was any good, I went digging to find the Native American album Craig recommended to me and listen, cause I bet anything it would have made his 50. It‘s called Canyon Trilogy from R Carlos Nakai and it’s finally on Spotify, which it was not back when. It’s pretty fucking cool and relaxing as hell in a dark, quiet room. Sorry it took me like 8 years, Craig, wherever you are in New Zealand
"You in this light feels like a thing I can't remember Clutching you close your body felt like December Shook awake early from the rocks of your tremors Tracing my thumb over the miles of your memory Now a bit brighter with a smile and a laughter One in the same and what am I to be after Dancing in private with the concept of never? You in this light feels like a thing I can't remember" Idk how to take this any other way than seeing the dead body of your loved one for the first time. To limit it to the end of a relationship is so petty to me, lol. I'd argue this album touches on death and loss and moving on as well as Carrie and Lowell. The only song on Goodness that is weaker than a song on another album is Fear of Good, and that's basically an interlude.
Did anybody else do the 1 album per artist thing? I think my list will be a lot more interesting if I go that route considering some of y’all could probably guess my top 4-5 otherwise lol