Michael Everett is a guest blogger on The Ideative Process.
Music is the most Vivid of Ideative experiences you can have. Robert wrote that in a previous post, and as promised, he will write about music and Ideative regularly.
Today, I want to offer for your comment, the 25 most Ideative albums in music.
I encourage you to find a few of these albums, listen while you read the other articles on this site, and then decide if you think they are among the top 25 Ideative albums. We would love to hear your picks.
| Artist | Album | Why it is Ideative | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pink Floyd | Dark Side Of The Moon | 741 consecutive weeks on Billboard's 200 best selling album list. That is more than 14 years. This assortment of sounds, vocals and music is unique and incredible. Putting a label on it is near impossible and yet it works oh so well. The epidemy of Ideative!!! |
| 2 | Elvis Presley | Elvis Presley | RCA bought rights to Sun Records and produced this compilation a rock album a year earlier than there was such a thing as a rock album … Long live the King of Rock |
| 3 | Beatles | Sgt. Peppers | What can be said that has not already been said about this album. The music, the cover art, the influence… |
| 4 | Robert Johnson | King Of The Delta Blues Singers | 29 songs of which everyone has heard most…only by other famous artists such as The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, The Grateful Dead, Elmore James … just to name a few. Refered to by many as "The Grandfather of Rock and Roll" |
| 5 | Hank Williams | 24 Greatest Hits | He changed Country music forever and is one of the most influencial songwriters in history. The term legend does not seem big enough. Inducted into both the Country music and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame. |
| 6 | Ornette Coleman | Jazz The Shape Of Things To Come | Creator of "Free Jazz" and this is the album to start it all (even though his album "Free Jazz" was released a year later). Part of the intrique of this album is due to the lack of a piano for melody and chord progression. |
| 7 | Bob Dylan | Highway 61 Revisited | Poetry, Story and Music blended to perfection |
| 8 | Beach Boys | Pet Sounds | The intricacies within the songs that have still not been duplicated. |
| 9 | Chuck Berry | The Great Twenty-Eight | Chuck Berry influenced EVERYBODY!!! This is his best. |
| 10 | Michael Jackson | Thriller | Love him or Hate him … this album sold >100 Million copies worldwide and solidified Jackson as the King of Pop |
| 11 | Jimi Hendrix | Are You Experienced | You can't have a list about music and Inventive, Creative, Ideative (you pick the category) and not include Jimi Hendrix. He changed what it meant to play the electric guitar. |
| 12 | Frank Sinatra | In The Wee Small Hours | This is the first commercially successful concept album and besides … it's Frank. |
| 13 | Johnny Cash | Live at Folsom Prison | Who records an album from prison…Johnny Cash of course AND it is still fantastic. |
| 14 | The Doors | The Doors | Still ahead of their time 40+ years later…The "Lizard King" lives. |
| 15 | Sex Pistols | Forget The Bullocks... Here's The Sex Pistols | You can not discuss the genre of Punk and not come around to the Sex Pistols. Only one studio album to their credit but it influenced so many. |
| 16 | David Bowie | The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars | Bowie created an entire new personality and blended theater and rock into this incredible collection of songs. |
| 17 | Bob Marley | Legend | The Father of Reggae. No one is even close to his stature. |
| 18 | NWA | Straight Outta Compton | They defined gansta rap and this album is still influential today. |
| 19 | Radiohead | OK Computer | Pink Floyd for the digital age??? You decide… |
| 20 | Jerry Lee Lewis | 18 Original Sun Greatest Hits | He made the list because he made playing the piano cool and that is no easy task. |
| 21 | James Brown | Live At The Apollo | The Godfather of Soul was told he could not do a live album… he recorded this performance anyway… the rest is history. |
| 22 | The Who | Tommy | I say rock opera and you think "Tommy" by The Who |
| 23 | Paul Simon | Graceland | South African artists and Pop songs in the heat of the apartheid … who would have thought it would produce a 5x platinum album??? Not me but then again I am not Paul Simon. Thanks Paul! |
| 24 | Nirvana | Nevermind | Redifined music for the 90's |
| 25 | Boston | Boston | Scholz a Mechanical Engineer from MIT performed most of the guitar, bass, and keyboards and recorded it all at his basement studio..not bad for debut album that went platnium in 3 months and became the mother of what we refer to today as arena rock |
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Some good choices, but I don’t think that greatest hits packages qualify.
I think you need to include Earth Wind & Fire “That’s the Way or the World” and take out anything from the Beech Boys. Their stuff was stolen from Chuck Berry and his law suit proved it. You could also include Parliment Funkadelic “The Mothership Connection”.
I would have some other choices that you do not have. However, music is such a personal choice. You cannot argue with anyone’s taste. I would have included Framton Comes Alive, Sign of the Times by Prince, the 1st album by The Police or one of Stevie Wonder’s albums. But, I agree with a lot of your selections.
Most definitely extremely subjective; I can’t see how it can be limited to 25. For example, when you talk about arena rock, I would put Led Zep up there miles before Boston. No Rolling Stones, no Traffic, no Miles Davis, etc. The list goes on for a long time.
Nice idea though.