During the Spring of 2023, I was getting bored with my 2 or 3 recycled playlists of music I was listening to. To shake things up, I decided to listen to every single song in my Spotify “Liked Songs” playlist, at the time consisting of every single song I had saved to my Spotify since 2012, totaling at 9,564 songs. Revisiting my High School taste was an interesting flashback in time. There was a lot of Kanye West, Lumineers, and Lana Del Rey - so I suppose it could have been worse. That was a great listening experience, but then I was back at ground zero in a few short months and playing the same old, new stuff.
I listen to a lot of music. Some people can’t work with music on in the background, but I’m the exact opposite. I wake-up and connect my phone to my Sonos system and get on my morning mix. I go for a walk and insert my earbuds. When cooking dinner you better believe I’ve got a “Homemade Meals” playlist I throw on (it’s actually one of my current favorite playlists. I’m sharing it below to bless your ears).
I believe my borderline unhealthy obsession with listening is due to being a chip off the block of my old man, who is also a huge music fan.
On the way to school everyday, my dad would either be playing Lansing’s Q106 radio station or have a selection of CDs that his fancy car’s CD player would rotate between (it holds up to SIX discs!). To this day, when an obscure 80s song plays on the radio, I often surprise myself by knowing the lyrics, and have my dad’s listening habits to thank.
Just checkout his impressive and extremely outdated collection of CDs. In fact, he refuses to consider buying newer model cars that no longer have CD players (Apple Car play, meet your demise).
I digress, and the story continues with me looking for a new way to bring some variety into my daily listening. This is where the Rolling Stone’s mythical list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” enters my life.
Rolling Stone first published this curated list in 2020, and most recently fully updated the list in 2023. The magazine collects tabulated Top 50 Album lists from over 300 artists, producers, critics and other music industry experts. You can learn more about how the list is created here, but the TL;DR summary is that it’s official. A lot of people that know their music agree that these albums stand above and beyond in a very crowded space of talented artists stretching back over several decades of songwriting and melody-making.
So, I figured, why not give the top 100 albums from this list a try?
I tapped my dad to join me on this journey, to listen to the top 100 albums of all time from the top down, no skipping songs, and certainly no skipping albums.
Unshaken by my proposal, and likely calculating the hours he would spend filing tax returns in the upcoming winter, his response was “Why not do all 500?”
Indeed dad, why not.
So, on July 24, 2023, we set off to listen to all of Rolling Stone’s Top 500 albums, starting with #500 “The Funeral” by Arcade Fire. Exactly 11 months later, we listened to #1, enjoying the culmination of hundreds of hours of listening, as Marvin Gaye serenaded us in the greatest album ever created according to Rolling Stone, “What’s Going On.”
The Breakdown
After 457 hours of listening to music across Hip Hop, Country, Alternative, Punk, Emo, Disco and so many other genres…. I laughed, I cringed, I dozed off and I danced. I also found it terrifying and hilarious thinking of my dad listening to the likes of Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem and Beyoncé, who are all, to say the least, not his taste in music.
I, of course, created a spreadsheet to track every single album and my rating after listening to each one. At the end of this letter, I shared my Notion template for tracking the listening experience for these albums. Now you, too, can go on what equates to the music-listening version of Frodo’s journey to destroy the One Ring.
I put all the interesting facts about my breakdown of this listening odyssey into an infographic, because (if you can’t tell yet) I am a fan of infographics. Here’s what you need to know while checking it out:
I was not able to listen to every single album with my Spotify subscription. Notably, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell had a handful of albums not available on Spotify. As a result, the number of albums I listened to was 494.
Comments
Least Favorite - Don’t get me wrong, this garage rage punk rock grind goes hard. This album made me want to eat a bowl of nails and jump through a pane of glass just to release the feral rage it birthed in me. However, it also stressed me out, raised my heart rate and gave me anxiety for a week.
Biggest Surprise Favorite - I really enjoyed “69 Love Songs” by The Magnetic Fields. I’d never heard of this group before, and this album literally consists of 69 love songs. They are light and tender, and demonstrate witty song writing. I’ve got several songs from this group that are in my regular rotation now. Also, it won my heart with the song “Washington D.C.” which has become my anthem for my current home. Here is a verse from the song:
Washington, D.C., it's paradise to me
It's not because it is the grand old seat
Of precious freedom and democracy, no, no, no
It's not the greenery turning gold in fall
The scenery circling the Mall
It's just that's where my baby lives, that's all
For the Swifties - Yes, she makes the cut, twice. “1989” sits at rank #393 and “Red” stands impressively at #99. She actually is one of the artists that participated in assisting with building the list (I like to think she is secretly a huge Beastie Boys fan).
500 Greatest Albums Tracking Template
If you are interested in starting this journey, download the listening tracker Notion template here.
View my ratings for every album on the spreadsheet here.
Additionally, here is a playlist with my favorite song from each album on the list:
This was quite the journey, and I explored corners of musical genres that I would never have touched otherwise (and places I likely will never return to). I also was pleasantly surprised to discover and save dozens of songs that I now listen to regularly. Who needs an Apply Music or Spotify recommendation algorithm when you take discovery into your own hands?
I still haven’t decided what my next music exploratory experiment will be, but in the meantime I remain wide open to recommendations for single songs or hundreds of albums.
In conclusion, I return to the lyrical mastermind Marvin Gaye, who sang:
Some songs will show which way to go,
If only you would listen
Don your headphones, or insert your CD into the CD disc mouth thing, search for something new, press play and take yourself on an unheard journey.
The Bel