Eight life-affirming albums worth listening to during lockdown
Kate Bush – Hounds of Love
Sharon Dale
I’m a record collector with a vast amount of music spanning many genres. There is so much to love you’d imagine it would be hard to choose a favourite. In fact, there is no contest. My number one will always be Kate Bush.
She is a genius, a true original. Many super fans cite Hounds Of Love as her top album, as do I, and they will always mention the second side, The Ninth Wave, a suite of songs that tell the story of a woman, washed overboard at night and alone in the sea. It is incredible and emotional with an uplifting finale in The Morning Fog.
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Hide AdI bought it on release day and was impressed when a boyfriend spent ages figuring out the hard-to-hear lyrics at the end of Jig Of Life for me. That relationship didn’t last but Kate and I will be together to the end.
Parliament – Funkentelechy vs Placebo Syndrome
Duncan Seaman
Few songwriters have managed to paint their musical world with quite the same vivid colours, insight and humour as George Clinton. Although often seen as a prankster, beneath the outlandish outfits, spaceship props and in-joke song titles lies a sharp mind ever-willing to confront serious issues with his own absurdist philosophy.
Parliament’s sixth studio album pokes fun at consumerism in supremely funky jams such as Bop Gun and Flashlight that invoke Aristotle, Otis Redding, Martin Luther King Jr and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Clinton says it is the one P-Funk record he would take to the Moon, and with good reason.
As well as food for thought, it’s also a reminder of how joyful music can be when aided by Bernie Worrell and Fred Wesley’s horn arrangements and some brilliantly slippery bass playing by Bootsy Collins and Cordell Mosson. Above all else, Funkentelechy vs the Placebo Syndrome is gleeful fun – something we could all do with in difficult times.
Various Artists - The Greatest Showman soundtrack
Laura Reid
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Hide AdEven given the box office success of The Greatest Showman, the triumphs achieved by the film’s soundtrack are nothing short of impressive.
Released in December 2017, it didn’t exit the top five of the Official Albums Chart for the whole of 2018, was the biggest album of that year, and became the UK’s longest-running number one soundtrack since The Sound of Music in the 1960s.
It offers an eclectic mix of power ballads, pop and R&B vibes and a good old dose of self-empowerment that makes listeners feel buoyant and alive.
The Guardian summed it up perfectly when it said the tracks were “designed to take you from ennui to euphoria in the fastest possible time”.
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Hide AdAnd let’s face it, a quick getaway from the realities of life is something we could all do with right now. Get lost in the music of happier times.
Michael Jackson - Thriller
Catherine Scott
I am a teenager of the eighties when we were carefree and learning to be independent. I still have a love of the music from that era, not because it is necessarily the stuff of classics, but because the music brings back memories of those happy days. But what to choose as my favourite?
In the end I have gone for Thriller by the late great Michael Jackson. It was released in November 1982 and I was 16, exams were over and the world was mine to conquer.
Thriller spent a record-breaking 37 weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 album chart. It sold around 100 million copies worldwide and features some of his biggest hits including Billie Jean, Beat It and Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ and the title track which also led to one of the greatest pop videos of all time.
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Hide AdThere can’t have been many teenagers of that time not replicating the zombie graveyard walk.
Paul Simon – Graceland
Chris Bond
Paul Simon recently posted an achingly poignant version of his song American Tune on YouTube. It originally featured on his excellent 1973 record, There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, and if ever there was a record written for our times it’s this. However, I’ve plumped for another album written by one of the 20th century’s greatest singer-songwriters – Graceland.
By the mid-80s Simon’s career had stagnated but by tapping into the rhythms and sounds of South African music he rediscovered his mojo.
Graceland raised the profile of hitherto unheard of African musicians and rocketed Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who feature on the record, to international fame.
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Hide AdAny album stands or falls by the quality of its songs, and from Boy In The Bubble to Gumboots, and Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes, to the irrepressible You Can Call Me Al, Graceland is a brilliant, joyous affirmation of music and life.
Everything But the Girl – Idlewild
Yvette Huddleston
Released in 1988, even on first listening this album felt like something very special indeed. Tracey Thorn’s gorgeous voice, blending so beautifully with Ben Watts’, the jazzy tempo and the (mostly) hopeful nature of the lyrics meant it had an instant feelgood appeal.
It is one of the albums I listened to over and over on my (red) Sony Walkman (yep, that dates me) when I was Interrailing around Europe in my early twenties.
The songs were like short stories that you could delve in to and find new meaning in each time. I never tired of listening to the album and singing and dancing along to it.
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Hide AdWhen I hear it now it reminds me of being young. It always takes me back to a carefree time, watching the European countryside flash by through a train window, and of a feeling of adventure, being on the cusp of something.
Pulp - Different Class
Chris Burn
The Britpop era of the 1990s is commonly associated with the battle between Oasis and Blur, but all the cool kids know Pulp were the real heroes of the time.
After forming in the 1970s when Jarvis Cocker was 15, and going through years of obscurity, the Sheffield band’s time came in the 1990s as 1994’s brilliant
His ‘n’ Hers album was followed a year later by the even more brilliant Different Class. The album’s most famous pop anthems – Common People and Disco 2000 – combine acerbic social commentary and witty lyrics with tunes perfect for the indie disco.
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Hide AdListening to the album again during lockdown also reminds me of one of my favourite-ever gigs – Pulp’s final UK gig in their hometown at Sheffield Arena in December 2012.
In the words of Common People: ‘Sing along and it might just get you through.’
Various Artists - William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet: Music from the Motion Picture
Stephanie Smith
For those of us who prefer our music with a large slice of moody and a huge dollop of macabre, finding an album to lift the spirits is a challenge. So, whenever I need an energy or inspiration booster jab, I turn to cinema film soundtracks which, by their very nature, are varied and mood-switching, following a story jammed with high points and lows, plus the occasional surprise to keep attention from dipping.
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Hide AdMy favourite has to be the heady and eclectic mix that forms the soundscape to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), featuring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as the eponymous star-crossed lovers playing out their doomed tale amid the gangland violence of a postmodern Verona Beach... accompanied by some unapologetically mid-’90s, heart-thumpingly good tracks.
Opening with the alarmingly seductive #1 Crush by Garbage, the tempo and tension are picked up by the crashing guitars of Everclear’s Local God, its defiant chanting of “we do what we want”, followed by a moment of dream-like clarity thanks to Gavin Friday’s breathless, twinkling Angel. Then it’s Des’ree’s swooping, haunting, utterly heart-breaking lament “I’m Kissing You”. Be charmed by The Cardigans’ Love Fool, then boogie to Kym Mazelle’s Young Hearts Run Free. What’s not to love?
Incidentally, Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good) was later sampled for Luhrmann’s Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) - well worth a listen for anyone in need of a mood lift, a sense of perspective and/or planning to spend the summer in the garden.
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