40 years ago today: Prince and Talking Heads albums

40 years ago today, October 8, 1980, was a great day for music.

On that day, Prince released his 3rd album, Dirty Mind. He wrote, produced, sang, and played everything (except for backing vocals on one song and keyboards on a couple songs).

The Rolling Stone review said:

Prince's first two [albums] established him as a doe-eyed romantic.… Nothing, therefore could have prepared us for the liberating lewdness of Dirty Mind.… Dirty Mind jolts with the unsettling tension that arises from rubbing complex erotic wordplay against clean, simple melodies. Across this electric surface glides Prince's graceful quaver, tossing off lyrics with an exhilarating breathlessness. He takes the sweet romanticism of Smokey Robinson and combines it with the powerful vulgate poetry of Richard Pryor. The result is cool music dealing with hot emotions.

Here's "Dirty Mind":

 

This is "When You Were Mine" (which was covered by Cyndi Lauper):

On the same day, Talking Heads released their 4th album, Remain in Light, produced by Brian Eno.

It's been said that no song on this album has any chord changes, which is only a slight exaggeration.

"Once in a Lifetime":

 

And here's "Crosseyed and Painless," from the end of the great concert movie Stop Making Sense (1984):

The 100 Best Songs of the 2010s (91-100)

10 years ago, I listed the best songs of the decade, 2000 to 2009.

Now I'm doing it again: the best songs of the decade that's coming an end, 2010 to 2019.

(Click here for the whole list so far, with a Spotify playlist.)

The rules:

• I'm using the traditional definition of "song," meaning it has to be sung — no instrumentals.

• The song had to be released in 2010 or later. No covers of old songs.

All the usual caveats apply: that this kind of ranking is inevitably arbitrary, that the list is based on my opinions and tastes, etc. For instance, I'm not a big hip-hop fan, so don't expect to see that genre well-represented here (though my 2000-2009 list did include a hip-hop song at #22).

Check out some of these other song lists for different perspectives.

I'll roll out 10 songs per post, counting down from 100 to 1, and I should have the whole thing up before Christmas.

Here goes!


100. The Lumineers — "Ho Hey"




99. Jukebox the Ghost — "Jumpstarted"

Remind you of anyone?




98. CHVRCHES — "Never Ending Circles"

I like how it sounds like the singer's breath is incorporated into the instrumental backing.




97. Vampire Weekend — "Unbelievers"




96. David Byrne & St. Vincent — "Who"

A collaboration by two wonderfully weird musical geniuses.




95. Soundgarden — "Been Away for Too Long"

Full disclosure, this video stars my second cousin, Ariane Rinehart.




94. The National — "The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness"

The best song title of the decade?




93. Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings — "I Learned the Hard Way"

Sharon Jones died in 2016, but her soul music lives on.

The song starts at 1:15 in this video.




92. Mumford & Sons — "I Will Wait"




91. The Zombies — "Chasing the Past"

It's still the time of the season for the Zombies.




81 - 90 —>

Buddy Holly, the original, immortal nerd rocker

"One of the main things about the Beatles is that we started out writing our own material. People these days take it for granted that you do, but nobody used to then. John and I started to write because of Buddy Holly. It was like, 'Wow! He writes and is a musician.'"

— Paul McCartney

"When I was 16 or 17 years old, I went to see Buddy Holly play at Duluth National Guard Armory [three days before he died] and I was three feet away from him, and he looked at me. And I just have some sort of feeling that he was — I don't know how or why — but I know he was with us all the time we were making this record in some kind of way."

— Bob Dylan, on recording his album Time Out of Mind

Buddy Holly died 50 years ago. He was 22.

He got as close as anyone has to the essence of rock 'n' roll: saying a lot with the sparest of elements, and not caring if you seem like a bit of a fool as long as you say what you mean.

No one will ever do what he did again. He has many imitators, but no one can do it with that purity and innocence anymore; there are always added layers of irony or allusion.




Of the many originators of rock from the '50s, Buddy Holly had one of the most enduring voices. I'd rank him, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Elvis Presley in a class of their own. And no one else had so much potential cut off.




So let's listen to some of those who've carried on the 50-year heritage of simple nerd rock:

Talking Heads — "And She Was" …




They Might Be Giants — "Don't Let's Start" …




Camera Obscura — "Let's Get out of This Country" …




Weezer — "Buddy Holly" …




Death Cab for Cutie — "I Will Follow You into the Dark."




UPDATE: My mom (Ann Althouse) suggests another song.

Older albums I've been listening to, part 2 -- weird music edition

Continuing from last Music Friday, here are some more oldie-but-goodie albums I've acquired recently:

John McLaughlin -- My Goal's Beyond -- He's a hugely revered jazz guitarist whose music I haven't paid much attention to because it's always seemed like outdated, pompous "fusion" to me. But I just got this 1970 album, and it's fantastic. Unusual combination of acoustic jazz guitar and Indian music.

Stereolab -- Emperor Tomato Ketchup -- They were always one of those bands that I sort of wanted to like but never really got into. So I recently broke down and got this album. If you don't have any of their stuff, consider picking this up -- it seems like the only Stereolab album you'd ever need. You've gotta respect a band that's a whole genre unto itself:



Sonic Youth -- Dirty (deluxe edition) -- This is a reissue of what may be the greatest album from one of the most important bands of the last 20 years. You get the original album + B-sides + instrumental rehearsal tracks (this is more than double the length of the original release). I mostly got it for the instrumental tracks, since I've always been more interested in what Sonic Youth does with their instruments than the actual songs. It's hard for me to imagine a more primal expression of what-made-alternative-rock-great than Dirty Sonic Youth jams.

Television -- Marquee Moon -- It took me a long time to get around to giving these guys a fair hearing, but they're mandatory listening for anyone who has any interest in anything that could remotely be described as "indie" or "alternative" or anything like that. It's hard to imagine Of Montreal without this band. I give them a lot of credit for planting the seeds of rock music as we know it today, back in that seminal year of 1977.

Talking Heads -- The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads -- Absolutely essential live album by what must have been a great live band. Rock bands today are still making music in the spirit of Talking Heads: Of Montreal, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Architecture in Helsinki, Yeasayer, Hot Chip, and so many more. But they don't do it quite like this anymore: