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Song of the Day #1,438: ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ – The Beatles

Best Albums of the 60s – #19
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – The Beatles (1967)

The first Beatles album on this list is one I’ve long considered overrated.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was a game-changing masterpiece — almost by definition — but I’ve never really loved it as a collection of songs. ‘Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite,’ ‘She’s Leaving Home,’ ‘Within You Without You,’ ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ — these songs wouldn’t make it on any Beatles mix tape I’d ever make.

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Song of the Day #1,437: ‘Time of the Season’ – The Zombies

Best Albums of the 60s – #20
Odessey and Oracle – The Zombies (1968)

 

This freight train back through time keeps rumbling on. I can’t resist the urge to carry these decade-best lists back ten more years into the 60s.

At first I resisted, realizing that this list would be dominated by two or three artists. But after browsing several “official” best-of lists across the web, I realized that every one of them was dominated by the same people. It’s not that I’m woefully out of touch with the music of the decade — it’s just that certain musicians, at the dawn of the rock-n-roll era, completely dominated the landscape.

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Song of the Day #1,436: ‘Desolation Row [Alternate Take]’ – Bob Dylan

Exactly one week ago, I predicted a flood of Bob Dylan tracks on Random Weekends to match the onslaught of Elvis Costello. The two artists most represented in my music collection should, over time, be the two artists most represented in this series, no?

Well, here we go. And while it doesn’t seem fair that two songwriters who have had their own dedicated weekends (lasting close to a year in total) should dominate this one, I can’t feign disappointment over the selection of this alternate take of ‘Desolation Row’ culled from the No Direction Home soundtrack.

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Song of the Day #1,435: ‘Little Goody Two Shoes [Alternate Version]’ – Elvis Costello

OK, I understand that truly random groupings will always result in clusters that appear anything but random, but it still seems weird that this series has turned into Elvis Costello Bonus Track Weekends over the past several weeks.

Nothing against Mr. Costello, who is of course one of my very favorite artists, but it’s time to give somebody else a shot! And while all of these bonus tracks are enjoyable enough, they mostly justify the fact that they were left off of his official releases.

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Song of the Day #1,434: ‘Idiot Wind’ – Bob Dylan

Best Albums of the 70s – #1
Blood On the Tracks – Bob Dylan (1975)

I doubt this pick will come as a surprise to anybody, particularly given that Bob Dylan hasn’t placed another album on this list. The 70s wasn’t his most successful decade, but it produced what may well be his best album.

Blood On the Tracks is the quintessential break-up album, a poetic chronicle of a dissolving marriage that simultaneously feels deeply personal and profoundly universal.

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