Saturday, September 04, 2010

Current adventures in pop music: Rehash and carefully edit your adolescence in fifteen minutes.

Some people I know filled in an online questionnaire asking them to name fifteen albums they like in fifteen minutes. The rules work as follows:
Don't take too long to think about it. Only one album per artist. Fifteen albums you've heard that will always stick with you. List the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes!
As a means of distracting myself I attempted this task, but after relying on my memory for the first ten I could think of, I started to cheat, flicking through various mp3 playlists to try and jog my memory of various things I should include. Quickly, the whole integrity of the process was thrown out the door as I realised I was being selective about what to include, lest I be accused of not having the correct contextually relevant nostalia-based picks. So I tried to do it again, believing I'd be truer to the process with a clean slate. I still cheated, but felt slightly better about the whole thing. For the sake of showcasing how I spent way too much time thinking about this, I'll share the list with you now (in alphabetical order, not of preference, of course):

Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
Blur - 13
LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
Michael Jackson – Dangerous
Muse – Origin of Symmetry
Nine Inch Nails – The Fragile
Pulp – This Is Hardcore
Radiohead – OK Computer
Regurgitator – Unit
Roxette – Tourism: Songs from Studios, Stages, Hotelrooms & Other Strange Places
Super Furry Animals – Guerilla
Supergrass – Supergrass
U2 – Achtung Baby
Various Artists – Teen Idols*
Weezer – Weezer (The Blue Album)

*Note: This probably doesn't count, as its not by one artist, but if it's something that theoretically "will always stick with [me]", then this definitely counts, if only because of the amount of times I listened to it as a child. This was a cassette my grandfather owned, and played in his car on almost constant repeat. As a result, I can easily recall the lyrics to "Workin' For The Man" by Roy Oribison. 

As these things go, there are always things you want to include, or wish you did due to time constraints, or a sudden change in taste. In this particular instance, these were:

The B52s – Time Capsule: Songs For A Future Generation
Faith No More – Album of The Year
Garbage – Version 2.0
Negativland - Dispepsi
(The) Smashing Pumpkins – Adore

...

Feel free to judge.  This won't change much, but you can nonetheless.

3 comments:

Kate said...

U2? And I thought I knew you!

Sarah W Bask said...

I totally agree with Kate. U2 are the one band I will blow up if I was allowed to rid the world of one band. I do however heart your added or should have been included list.

Daniel Green said...

I am truly sorry to disappoint, however my sympathy for Kate is somewhat diminished by the face that she's more than aware that I carry a torch for U2, even if they're... not quite as good as their glory days.

For the record, I never said these were my favourite records, or a selection I would take to the proverbial desert island. Adhereing to the rules, these are albums that are hardwired into my brain for one reason or another. At least when I wrote the list.