Woo, 75 posts
Time to post my list then!
As per what other people have said, this list is very different to my list of top albums; most of my favourites never made it to the top. Also, as I'm still (fairly) young, my first exposure to a lot of major artists was via their Greatest Hits album, so it feels like there's quite a lot of those in this list.
01 -
Mansun Attack Of The Grey Lantern
02 -
Oasis Be Here Now
03 -
Radiohead OK Computer
04 -
Oasis Definitely Maybe
05 -
Blur Parklife
06 -
Queen Queen's Greatest Hits
07 -
Basement Jaxx The Singles
08 -
Beatles 1
09 -
Bon Jovi Cross Road - The Best Of Bon Jovi
10 -
Madonna Confessions On A Dancefloor
11 -
George Michael Ladies & Gentlemen - The Best Of George Michael
12 -
Prodigy The Fat Of The Land
13 -
Ash 1977
14 -
Levellers Zeitgeist
15 -
Pulp Different Class
16 -
Stereophonics Performance And Cocktails
17 -
Arctic Monkeys Whatever People Say I Am That's What I'm Not
18 -
Beatles Revolver
19 -
U2 The Best Of 1980-1990 & B-Sides
20 -
Moby Play
21 -
Ash Free All Angels
22 -
U2 Pop
23 -
Robbie Williams I've Been Expecting You
24 -
Meat Loaf Bat Out Of Hell II - Back Into Hell
25 -
Bon Jovi Crush
26 -
Manic Street Preachers This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours
27 -
Blur Blur
28 -
Alanis Morissette Jagged Little Pill
29 -
Charlatans Tellin' Stories
30 -
Travis The Man Who
31 -
Fatboy Slim You've Come A Long Way, Baby
32 -
Chemical Brothers Surrender
33 -
Green Day American Idiot
34 -
Suede Coming Up
35 -
Embrace The Good Will Out
36 -
Crowded House Recurring Dream - The Very Best Of Crowded House
37 -
Dire Straits Brothers In Arms
38 -
Kylie Minogue Kylie Greatest Hits
39 -
Beastie Boys Hello Nasty
40 -
Phil Collins Hits
41 -
Beatles The Beatles (The White Album)
42 -
Michael Jackson History - Past, Present And Future Book 1
43 -
Oasis (What's The Story) Morning Glory?
44 -
Razorlight Razorlight
45 -
Doves The Last Broadcast
46 -
Madonna Ray Of Light
47 -
Tracy Chapman Tracy Chapman
48 -
Fleetwood Mac Rumours
49 -
Abba Greatest Hits
50 -
Elvis Presley Elv1s - 30 Number 1 Hits
1997 was clearly a great year in chart music for me. Not only do three consecutive chart-toppers (
Blur, [/i]...Grey Lantern[/i] and
Pop) feature in my Top 50, but another three of my top twenty (
OK Computer,
Fat Of The Land and
Be Here Now) were also released that summer.
It's still hard to believe that
Mansun managed to top the UK album chart with their debut release. At the time, label-mates
Blur's
Blur was sitting at the top spot, and record company Parlophone refused to shift any marketing resources to support Mansun, instead splashing the cash to try to keep Blur at #1, but a dedicated fanbase helped the Chester boys to the top spot. It's a strange concept for a chart-topping album; a concept record about a cross-dressing priest. Best-known is
Wide Open Space, but there are a whole host of other classics on there, including the Bond-esque opener
The Chad Who Loved Me, the acoustic menace of
You, Who Do You Hate?, and the mournful closing track
Dark Mavis. What's more, it's normally under £5 in most record store sales, so you really should check it out.
Apparently, I was the only person to love
Be Here Now. It got a five-star review from Q at the time, but in their recent 10th-anniversary retrospective (God I feel old), they absolutely slated it, as did the band. To quote Noel Gallagher: "It's the sound of . . . a bunch of guys, on coke, in the studio, not giving a f***. There's no bass to it at all; I don't know what happened to that . . . And all the songs are really long and all the lyrics are sh*t and for every millisecond Liam is not saying a word, there's a guitar riff in there in a Wayne's World style." But those are all reasons why I
love it! Despite all the in-fighting which was going on behind the scenes, the album is so utterly carefree; I'd rather have an album full of singalong tracks like
The Girl In The Dirty Shirt,
Don't Go Away,
Stand By Me and
All Around The World than listen to any of their last three offerings. This album's also fairly poignant to me as it got me through the first summer that I was in love, and I saw the band perform live in Paris shortly after Diana died - they dedicated Live Forever to her - so this holds a special place in my heart.
OK Computer, you know all about. It's another album that was absolutely worshipped upon its release - Q named it their number one album of all time, just months after it hit the shelves - and although the fever for it has died down, it's still one of the most consistently brilliant studio albums ever made.
Radiohead's live performance at Glastonbury that summer was also astonishing.
The remainder of the top ten is mostly Greatest Hits albums - I've just realised I'm now Alan Partridge, having named "the best of the Beatles" as my favourite
Beatles album.
Madonna's
Confessions... is the most recent album to feature in my Top 50, and is still one of my most-listened-to albums today (particularly the DJ mix version, which mixes the entire album into a single track).
Elsewhere in the top 50,
The Levellers are another unlikely #1 band, and this is far from their best album (check out 1991's
Levelling The Land if you get a chance), but
Zeitgeist gave them a chart-topper some eighteen months before they released the only song anyone associates with the band,
What A Beautiful Day.
There's not much else that needs explanation in my list - yes, it's mostly britpop/indie which I grew up with, but there are a few older records in there, like
Dire Straits,
Fleetwood Mac and
Tracy Chapman.