Over what will likely be the next few years I’m going to be ranking and reviewing the top 5 albums according to users on rateyourmusic.com (think IMDB for music) from every year from 1960 to the present. If you want to know more, I wrote an introduction to the ‘challenge’ here. You can also read all the other entries I’ve written so far by heading to the lovely index page here.

So we’ve made it to the penultimate year of the 60s, and if I continue this relentless pace of posting one every two weeks I should be finished some time in August 2022. Realistically though, I won’t be able to, and it won’t be finished until some time after that. Anyway, 1968, here’s some of the year’s most famous events: Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, Tommie Smith and John Carlos performed the Black power salute in silent protest at the Mexico Olympics, Apollo 8 became the first spacecraft to orbit the moon and Boeing introduced the first 747 ‘Jumbo Jet’.

Musically, these were the top 5 albums released according to rateyourmusic.com’s users:

#1 The Beatles - The Beatles (The White Album)
#2 The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Electric Ladyland
#3 The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat
#4 The Zombies - Odessey and Oracle
#5 Van Morrison - Astral Weeks

So, we’ve seen the top three before on these lists but we’ve got a couple of newbies to the challenge bolstering up the top 5. Because I’m a masochist and like to give myself work, I’ve also spotted these 5 albums from further down the list which look intriguing:

#6 The Kinks - The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society
#7 The Rolling Stones - Beggars Banquet
#9 Aretha Franklin - Lady Soul
#11 Pink Floyd - A Saucerful of Secrets
#13 Simon & Garfunkel - Bookends

And well would you look at that? We’ve got ten albums to get through again. It’s as if I like nice round numbers isn’t it? Let’s get cracking, here’s my ranking and thoughts on the above.

odessey and oracle.jpg — 10. Odessey and Oracle

The Zombies

The Zombies’ second album, Odyssey and Oracle, wasn’t much of a success initially (and the band split up pretty soon after its release because of this) but has gained acclaim as the years have gone on. Partially recorded at Abbey Road Studios, their music bears a significant resemblance to that of Abbey Road’s most famous artists, the Beatles. There’s also more than a hint of the Beach Boys in their harmonies.

It’s easy to see how this album has gained so much acclaim, although a little puzzling as to why it didn’t initially. Odeyssey and Oracle is full of wonderfully catchy songs featuring varied instrumentation, slick production and harmonies that engulf you like a warm bath. The psychedelic nature of the album only ever serves to keep things interesting, and never leads the whole thing off the rails. The lyrics are surprisingly dark at times, something which is cleverly hidden by the comforting melodies that contain them.

Odyssey and Oracle is one of those albums you’ll swear you’ve heard before, it’s timelessly well written songs jogging memories that don’t exist, reminding you of unexplained gaps in your memory of things that should have happened, but didn’t. How could a song be this good and yet have had so little airplay? How come this hasn’t been part of my life sooner? I don’t have the answer to these questions, but I do know your musical life is about to improve should you allow this pop gem to enter it.

Song Picks: Care of Cell 44, Maybe After He’s Gone, Beechwood Park, Changes

8/10

LadySoul — 9. Lady Soul

Aretha Franklin

Aretha’s twelfth album is another vocal delight. Now, I spent most of my review of 1967’s I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You raving about Aretha’s amazing vocals, so I’ll spare you the superlatives here. Let’s just say her voice is as timeless and demanding of attention as ever, there doesn’t see to be a note in existence she can’t hit the bullseye on, and although she can get a little warbly for my tastes, it’s never completely gratuitous.

Again, Aretha’s original compositions sit effortlessly beside covers of classics such as People Get Ready and Money Won’t Change You. (You Make Me Feel) Like a Natural Woman was written for, rather than by, Aretha Franklin, but it’s hard to imagine anyone else doing the song justice. The bombastic way she sings ‘You make me feeeeeel’ multiple ways before soulfully pouring out ‘like a natural woman’ is one of those great moments of recorded musical history where you can’t help but stop in your tracks and listen.

I’d say this is a stronger album than I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You purely because the band adds a little more, the opening track Chain of Fools is testament to this. An infectious bass and drum groove and some funktacular guitar work complement Aretha’s vocals perfectly, creating my favourite song on the album.

Song Picks: Chain of Fools, (You Make Me Feel) Like a Natural Woman

8/10

VillageGreen — 8. The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society

The Kinks

Well, that’s probably the longest album name we’ve had on the challenge so far. I’m going to give the album a short review as revenge, take that. This is the Kinks’ sixth studio album and their final one featuring all the original members as the bassist left following this album.

The album is sometimes referred to as a concept album about English life, in fact music-critic Stephen Erlewine described it as a ‘concept album lamenting the passing of old-fashioned English traditions.’ The reality however is that Ray Davies, the group’s lead singer and songwriter, did not compose the songs to fit a preset idea or concept. It just happened to be that he was scribbling a lot about these themes in the preceding two years when the album’s material was written.

Let’s cut to the chase, I love this thing. It’s such a merry affair and feels like sitting outside on a fine summer’s day, beer in hand, chilling. Sitting by the Riverside sums the whole album up perfectly with the line ‘Sitting there just drinking wine and looking at the view’.

Oh, and it has a song on it called The Phenomenal Cat, which has to be a contender for the greatest song title of all time. It also starts with the flute and features a prominent tambourine as Davies sings about this phenomenal cat, has there ever been a breezier song? It’s all filled with a cheerful creativity that nicely shows what this album is all about.

A jolly collection of simple, unassuming songs about day-to-day life that have production and instrumentation varied enough to keep it engaging throughout. I’ve talked before about how hard it is to create a genuinely happy album without it being cheesy, and the Kinks have absolutely nailed it here. Put this on, and even if it’s rainy and wet outside, it’ll feel like the sun’s come out. Magic.

Song picks: Last of the Steam-Powered Trains, Picture Book, Starstruck, All of my Friends Were There

8/10

BeggarsBanquet — 7. Beggars Banquet

The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones’ last album before Brian Jones was kicked out the band later drowned in his swimming pool following struggles with drug addiction, Beggars Banquet sees the band getting more instrumental experimental and is a notable step up from their previous work for me.

Sympathy for the Devil features brilliant syncopated drum patterns spread across the stereo field that create a really unique drum fuelled, energetic atmosphere, which the piano and Jagger’s strained vocals perfectly complement. It’s one of those rare moments in music where everything just clicks, and is both really inventive and catchy at the same time. Factory Girl features a similarly innovative use of percussion.

Street Fighting Man, a song about riots, is a good example of Mick Jagger’s fierce and growling vocal throughout this album. A song recorded mainly on acoustic instruments (unusual for such a ‘heavy’ song), it has a really unique sense of space to it. Dear Doctor displays Mick Jagger’s often underrated ability to howl out a tune, bang in tune, and Salt of the Earth finishes the album with a heartfelt celebration of the working-class.

Beggars Banquet sees The Rolling Stones really hitting form. The songwriting has got more interesting and consistent, and the production is both cleaner and more full of ideas. It’s an album that’s a real pleasure to listen to, both fun and engaging, and featuring one of the year’s most captivating vocal performances.

Song Picks: Sympathy for the Devil, Street Fighting Man, Dear Doctor, Factory Girl

8.5/10

WhiteLight — 6. White Light / White Heat

The Velvet Underground

The Velvet Underground’s second album ditches pretty much all the accessibility of their debut which means we’re left with a 40 minute assault on the ears in the spirit of the aforementioned album’s more challenging tracks. Initially I didn’t really enjoy this all that much and found it too challenging but now, although I still don’t like it anywhere near as much as their debut, I’ve come to enjoy the creative chaos of it. I think it’s best to think of it as rock’s version of Free Jazz. An album written with complete freedom, with minimal concern for structure, melody etc.

Inevitably this means the album would go on the ‘difficult listening’ shelf, but it’s also rather rewarding when you stop trying to force it to fit your ideas of what an album and music should be.

The simplest song here is the gorgeously relaxed Here She Comes Now where Lou sings about a topic unknown (though some suggest it’s his guitar) in a remarkably out of breath manner for a song so vocally simple. The opener White Light/White Heat describes the effect of methamphetamine in much the way Heroin described the effects of its titular drug on their previous album. They’re the two most accessible songs on the album, which includes such weird delights as the instrumental, dark, mini-audiobook The Gift, the stoned, gently psychedelic Lady Godiva’s Operation and the suitably thrashing mess I Heard Her Call My Name.

Most challenging though, is closing track Sister Ray, a 17-minute noise-rock marvel that perfectly finishes this tumultuous, seemingly stream-of-consciousness record. Apparently the producer Tom Wilson walked out half-way through the recording because he was so shocked by the utter noisy chaos unfolding before him. Recorded in one take with warts and all left in, the song is a remarkable recording of a moment of unadulterated musical freedom. The drums march along uniformly while all the other instruments dart off in different directions trying to create as much, and as punishing a sound as possible, as the piece threatens to burst at the seams and explode, emphatically destroying your ear-drums. Lou Reed has talked about the topic of the song and stated, “I like to think of ‘Sister Ray’ as a transvestite smack dealer. The situation is a bunch of drag queens taking some sailors home with them, shooting up on smack and having this orgy when the police appear.” Something he describes as a ‘scene of total debauchery and decay.’ Just like that scene, the song is a complete and utter filthy mess, but if you just sit back and relax your innate resistance to its punishing dissonance, you’ll find yourself escaping reality for 17 minutes, swept away by it’s anarchy.

White Light / White Heat is a challenging album, and you’d struggle to call it an enjoyable listen in the traditional sense, but hidden in it’s jumbled spontaneity is something magic, a frenzied manifestation of a mind with no boundaries.

Song Picks: Sister Ray, White Light/White Heat, Here She Comes Now

8.5/10

Their fourth studio album is a concept album about life from childhood to old age, although this is only true of the first side, and the second side features mainly unused songs from The Graduate soundtrack, and Mrs Robinson, which was of course used.

I was immediately struck by how modern this sounded, Save the Life of My Child features some of the first synths I’ve heard so far in this challenge and the rowdy heavily reverbed ambient crowd wouldn’t be out of place on a recording today. The song has a strangely sinister tone, one that I absolutely wasn’t expecting, and it’s a great opening to the more experimental nature of this album. It the story of a bunch of people frantically trying to stop a child committing suicide by jumping off something.

America is perhaps my highlight on the album, and is a prime display of Paul Simon’s great lyrics and the duo’s melodic skill. It’s the story of Paul Simon and girlfriend Kathy’s trip around America, while contemplating the meaning of the American dream. The songs starts with some sumptuous low-key humming and each verse ends with a melody like a crackling, heart-warming fire, ‘.... to look for America’ they sing, as the image builds of a whole country of people looking for a country, which seems to disappear the harder they search.

Overs explores the point of a relationship where both parties know it’s over, but are too afraid to say that out loud. A similar topic to that of Dangling Conversation from 1966’s Sage, Rosemary & Thyme. This one has a remarkably more light-hearted feel, which juxtaposes nicely with the sad and resigned lyrics, ending perfectly with the verse:

How long can I delay?
We're just a habit
Like saccharin
And I'm habitually feelin' kinda blue
But each time I try on the thought of leaving you
I stop...
Stop and think it over

Voices of Old People is just that. The voices of old people as recorded by Garfunkel at United Home for Aged Hebrews and the California Home for the Aged at Reseda. It’s a touching and intimate break in the music which precedes the lovely Old Friends, an image of two old men sat on the bench together as the world goes by. Bookends (Reprise) marks the end of the concept part of the album as we move to the more ‘poppy’ part of the album. The highlight of which is undoubtedly the famous Mrs Robinson, a song with the most infectious of choruses, and which actually has little to do with the film, having been written before it’s inclusion. The album is also notable for the fact that it barely has any lines that rhyme, something pretty rare in the rock album world.

Bookends is definitely Simon & Garfunkel’s most experimental album, and my favourite up to now (we still have their classic and final album Bridge Over Troubled Water to come in 1970 though which could change that). It’s an album that perfectly demonstrates Simon’s lyrical skill, has some impressively clean and progressive production (particularly on that second track), and is just and album that begs for you to dig a little deeper. I’d have liked the concept nature to extend beyond the first half, but it still works well regardless.

Song Picks: Save the Life of My Child, America, Mrs Robinson

8.5/10

Pink Floyd’s second album is very much a transitional album. David Gilmour (who is so crucial Pink Floyd’s sound in the upcoming years) was joining, Syd Barrett was leaving. Gilmour contributed on all but 2 songs, while Barrett appeared on 3. Gilmour was initially brought in to cover for Syd Barrett’s ‘eccentricities’ such as when he was completely unresponsive on stage, but it was soon clear this was unworkable and Syd left the band. Notably, the band’s drummer, Nick Mason, states this is his favourite Pink Floyd album.

A Saucerful of Secrets very much feels like the birth of the Pink Floyd who would go on to record classic albums like The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here. Less psychedelic, and more spacey. Often cited as being a very diverse album because all members of the band contributed songwriting to the album, I actually feel that this is a more cohesive record than their debut (which was mostly written by Barrett). There’s an otherworldly, dreamy atmosphere to the whole thing perfectly encapsulated in the so-fragile-it-would-combust-if-you-touched-it See-Saw. The amount of additional instruments used to create a whole universe of sound is quite remarkable, and unlike anything I’ve heard up to this point in this challenge. I felt like I was being sucked into the world’s most gentle black hole, emerging on the other side to a whole new glorious sky of stars, planets and gentle explosions in the distance. Perhaps the most notable evidence of this ‘soundscape building’ is the epic title track, a 12 minute odyssey into the slightly ominous unknown. The piece is in 4 parts, and there are various theories as to what they represent. My favourite theory is that the four parts are all different sections of a battle ( the theory goes something like part 1: set-up, part 2: the battle itself, part 3: the view of the dead, part 4: the mourning of the dead). The piece works like a charm as a musical representation of a space battle, and by the time you get to the gorgeous final part Celestial Voices (which is a piece dominated by beautifully evocative organ chords, heavily reverbed as if reaching all corners of the universe) you’re there with all your space-being friends, feeling a kind of beautiful sadness at all the non-existent space-beings that have died. It’s quite magical.

Other parts of the album are perhaps a little repetitive and ‘floaty’ for the lack of a better word. It’s hard to get a grip on some of the songs as they seem to hover just out of reach. The whole thing feels very dreamy, which can make it feel like it lacks substance. To me though, the ethereal nature of it, mixed in with the more concrete riff-led tracks like Corporal Clegg is what makes the album what it is.

The final track Jugband Blues, which is Barrett’s last composition for the band is a tearful goodbye from a troubled soul. He sings of his detachment, before releasing the last verse over a gorgeous chord sequence, seemingly floating off into space never to be seen again.

And the sea isn’t green
And I love the Queen
And what exactly is a dream?
And what exactly is a joke?

Song Picks: A Saucerful of Secrets, See-Saw, Jugband Blues

8.5/10

The Beatles, more commonly known as ‘The White Album’ is the Beatles’ ninth album and by far their longest coming in at a whopping 1 hour and 33 minutes long. ‘Now, it can’t possibly all be good if it’s that long can it?’ I hear you say. Well, actually I’d argue that all of it is at least ‘good’ with a lot of it significantly better than that, and as a package it’s rather extraordinary, actually. The fact is though, you’re unlikely to find people agreeing on which songs are the best on this album, or indeed which ones should have been left off to cut down the obscene running length. There’s 30 songs on this thing, yes 30. Thus I’m not really going to go into song detail too much as I’ll be here all day, and I’d quite like to finish this challenge sometime before 2040.

Most of the album’s material was written from March to April while the band was on a meditation course in India, and the album has the feel of a bunch of material written really quickly. It reminds me of a challenge I do every February called FAWM (February Album Writing Month) where the challenge is to write, record, and upload 14 songs for everyone else doing the challenge to hear in the month of February. This time constraint leads to less of a critical mindset, there’s no time for writer’s block, and thus you end up following through with ideas you might otherwise think are stupid. Usually, in my case at least, this leads to a bunch of pretty varied songs, some fitting simplistic styles to make them quicker to write, others just a bit mad, weird experiments that very occasionally pay off. The White Album to me sounds a bit like what would result if the Beatles did an elongated version of this challenge. Some of the material is very simple, some of it’s a bit mad, quite a lot of it is pretty special, but all of the 30 songs are just that, songs. With the exception of the psychedelic and haunting Revolution 9 there’s no interludes or longform experimental instrumentals. Not that there’s any problem with those of course, it’s just rare for an album of this length not to contain significantly more. There’s plenty of experimentation within the songs however, and you’ll notice as you listen just how many of the ideas put forward in this album have become entire subgenres. Quite the achievement.

It’s a weird one is this record. I think the Beatles have absolutely created albums that are more cohesive (e.g. Sgt Peppers). The fact is though, The Beatles has a special atmosphere to it, like you’re sitting in on some of the world’s finest songwriters spontaneously recording some ideas, and the fact that it’s just so bloody long means you’re always discovering something new. Despite its simplicity, it’s length means you never quite feel like you’ve got to the bottom of it, and that makes it an album with probably unmatched longevity in their catalogue.

In many ways, this album encapsulates to me the joy of songwriting. There aren’t many albums of this length that can entertain for their entire duration and never feel like a slog, The Beatles absolutely achieves that, in fact it goes beyond that, it’s never less than a lot of fun. 1 hour and 33 minutes of it.

Song Picks: Back In The USSR; Blackbird; Helter Skelter; Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da; Revolution 1

9/10

I mean it’s hard enough getting through this monstrous double-album due to its 77 minute running time, reviewing something so expansive is even more difficult, but having just reviewed ‘The White Album’, this should be a walk in the park ey?

Electric Ladyland is Hendrix’s third and final album before his untimely death in 1970 after an overdose on sleeping pills. It’s also the only one of his albums he produced, and thus can certainly be considered the purest, most unfiltered distillation of what he was trying to achieve musically. His past two albums were already ground-breaking but this behemoth of an album pushed things yet further and features in my eyes, some of the best psychedelic rock ever recorded. Actually, scrap that, the best psychedelic rock ever recorded.

Obviously we’ve got the ‘hits’ here such as his mesmeric cover of Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower, which Dylan himself has appraised as the definitive version. Dylan had already brought the splendid lyrics to life in his version on 1968’s John Wesley Harding but Hendrix made the song larger than life, an explosion of lyrical imagery, a memorable display of bombastic, busy drum playing, and above all, some of the most iconic guitar soloing ever recorded. Simply put, he turned it from a brilliant song into a masterpiece. Other hits include the irresistible Crosstown Traffic where the guitar appears more like a bunch of distorted backing vocalists than a guitar, with a riff that has to be one of the most infectious things ever written. Besides that we’ve also got the incomparable guitar wizardry of Voodoo Child (Slight Return). A song which starts with that famous, quacky intro, which soon turns into a riff that could plough through mountains, planets, hell, even time itself. That transition is one of my favourite moments on any album. The song is only elevated further by one of Hendrix’s finest vocal performances, it’s perfect closing track to the album. While we’re talking about vocals, it’s interesting to note that Hendrix was never particularly confident about them, and insisted on recording behind a screen when singing.

But, that’s enough about the shorter, more instantly gratifying songs on the album, let’s talk about the record’s two sweeping epics. The first one we come across is the 15-minute psychedelic trip Voodoo Chile which features drummer Mitch Mitchell at his absolute best, flurrying around the kit like a tropical storm, building up into a hurricane of fills that seem to take off into the stratosphere. The guitar improvisation is superb too and proof to me that Hendrix is rock guitar’s answer to the jazz genius of Coltrane etc. Hendrix wanted to create the feel of an ‘informal club jam’ (Wikipedia), and thus got everyone in the studio to record some background shouting etc, which is used throughout the track. The crescendos benefit from Winwood’s organ part, adding further creatively scattered notes to Hendrix’s virtuosic soloing. I think it’s quite impossible to listen to the piece and not be absolutely blown away by it’s spontaneously in-the-moment brilliance. Hendrix’s longest song is also perhaps the definitive display of how at one he was with the guitar, whatever he thought, he could do. The second epic 1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be) is more of a mood piece, but one that again displays Hendrix’s ability to sing the most beautiful melodies with his guitar. I particularly love Hendrix’s bass work on the track too (Redding didn’t contribute bass to this one) which has a spaced out chattering quality to it. The guitar melodies that bookend the track are as stratospheric as they are beautiful.

Electric Ladyland is an unfiltered look into the mind of one of rock’s greatest innovators, a final, colossally beautiful goodbye from someone who - although he was a massive influence on what was to come - has yet to be overtaken as a guitarist.

Song Picks: Crosstown Traffic, Voodoo Child (Slight Return), Voodoo Chile, All Along the Watchtower

9.5/10

Now, to understand how Astral Weeks, Van Morrison’s second album, came to be, I think it’s important to know about how the recording sessions operated. Essentially, Morrison sat behind a screen with his acoustic guitar and played as the band improvised around him. This band was essentially a jazz one led by Richard Davis (he played bass on Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch) who was accompanied by guitarist Jay Berliner (who had previously worked with our man Charles Mingus), Warren Smith Jr on percussion, and Connie Kay on drums. It’s this Davis led quartet that makes the album just as much as Morrison does.

Berliner said of the recordings, "We were used to playing to charts, but Van just played us the songs on his guitar and then told us to go ahead and play exactly what we felt." Kay said similar, “we more or less just sat there and jammed.” It’s this freedom that gives the album its unique sound. Lyrically, it’s not particularly coherent, but more a set of gorgeous images and spontaneous ideas flung into the air, much like the instrumentation that accompanies it. Put quite simply, I think it’s a unique combination of the jazz that has blessed these lists and the poetic melodies that have started to appear since the mid-60s.

Throughout the album, Morrison’s voice is beautifully melodic, his guitar playing simple and smooth like butter, and his lyrics seemingly magical:

And you know you gotta go
On that train from Dublin up to Sandy Row
Throwing pennies at the bridges down below
And the rain, hail, sleet, and snow

Combine this with a band that seems to know exactly what Morrison is going to do at every turn, and has the ability to throw the most delightfully colourful musical paint to fill in Van Morrison’s meditatively ‘present’ performances, and you have what is, in my opinion, one the greatest and most unique albums of all time. On that note, I think Madame George, some of the lyrics to which I posted above, is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever recorded.

In terms of some closing words to this review, I think my original rateyourmusic.com review of this album summed it up rather well, so I’ll finish with that:

‘Well this is just completely singular isn't it? I can't think of anything remotely similar. Free-form jazzy country folk. There's no structure, it just ebbs and flows along as Van Morrison spins melodies over the top, weaving a tapestry that floats somewhere in the realm of the images created in our minds while reading a book, intangible and yet beautiful. An album that flies, and forces you to fly along with it.’

Song Picks: Astral Weeks, Sweet Thing, Cyprus Avenue, Madame George

10/10