Green Day - Warning:

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 1 we have Warning: by Green Day

I know what you are thinking, how the Freaking Hell did a Green Day album which wasn't even that big a hit for them beat some of those other classic albums and i'm as shocked as anyone but of the 12 songs on the album, i only skip the one, Jackass, so using that criteria it sits proudly at the top with 91.67% of the album listened to. Hey, blame Math's not me.
What is obvious on this album is that the band stepped back from the angry Punk sound of their earlier offerings and aimed for a more folk-punk sound, citing Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Petula Clark, The Mama's and Papa's and The Kinks as inspirations and those guys are as folky as it gets and that
is most evident on the title song Warning song which is almost directly lifted from the Kinks Picture Book. How Ray Davis failed to sue and buy himself a new yacht to replace the one the taxman took i will never know.
The album includes probably my favourite Green Day Song which is the very un-Green Day like Misery which paints a picture of Virginia, Mr. Whirly, Vinnie and Gina who all come to a grisly end to a happy sounding Mariachi style tune.  
The other acoustic songs are Macy Day's Parade and Hold On but to dispel any sense that they were moving from the punk stage into Corduroy and plaid shirt territory, the album also has the more hard edged usual Green Day sound songs Minority, Deadbeat Holiday, Blood Sex and Booze, Church on Sunday and Castaway.
Guitarist Jason White was bought in to add some more fiddly bits to the music and stayed around ever since and he had certainly bought a new dimension to the band, American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown were classic Green Day but after a brief flirtation with mega-stardom, they seemed to have peaked and after shedding all those extra new fans, have happily shifted into the background again, helped by the next three albums, Uno, Deux, Trois albums being more like their earlier, less commercially accepted, body of work.

There they are then, my top 15 Albums and i agree there are not many modern ones and if you are not a fan of the angry, guitar driven stuff then you probably think they all suck and that's fine, each to their own and all that, but i guess one day i will grow up and embrace safe, radio friendly middle of the road sounds or alternatively, and more likely, i could just say f*** that and carry on until i'm in my old peoples home and having the residents banging on the wall at 2am telling me to TURN THAT BLOODY RACKET DOWN which would complete the circle because that's exactly what my parents shouted at me when i was a kid.

Guns N Roses - Use Your Illusions 1

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 2 we have Use Your Illusions 1 by Gun's N Roses.

On arriving back home in September 1991 with my copy of Nirvana's Nevermind i thought it would be a long time until anything better would come along to top it but as it turned out, i had to wait a week because Use your Illusions 1 & 2 was released at midnight the following weekend.
I always knew it was going to be good because back then HMV only did the Midnight opening for a few of the very biggest and best and there i was stood outside the record shop on a chilly September night wearing a pair of jeans with rips in the knees and a green flight jacket along with 20 other rather more grubbier looking GnR fans.
To be honest, i assumed that this would easily be my top album but of the 16 songs on it i skip over two and a half, Live and Let Die and The Garden as well as the first 3 minutes or so of November Rain until Slash plugs in his Les Gibson and for me Gun N Roses were all about Slash, the coolest man ever to pluck a guitar string and knock out a guitar riff so sharp it threatens eyeballs whenever it comes on the radio.
It would be easy for me to just bang on about Slash now but the sum of Gun N Roses parts made the complete package of the kind of wild Rock Stars we would all like to think we would be soaking their cornflakes in Jack Daniels, knocking seven bells out of each other while smoking 120 Benson & Hedges and still manage to put on a show before collapsing off stage into their own sick.
What Use Your Illusions 1 had was some very up tempo songs such as Right Next Door To Hell, Double Talkin' Jive and the frantic Garden of Eden but also some rock ballads which still have Slash wailing away which proved that soppy ballad's can still include a kick arse guitar solo like in November Rain and i can always appreciate a hunky man in tight leather trousers taking off his shirt and climbing onto a piano to give us a solo.
Use Your Illusions 2 had some amazing songs (Civil war, You Could Be Mine, Knockin' on Heavens Door) but never landed quite as well as UYI 1 and the double album was the last proper Guns N Roses offering with the original line up although they put out the Spaghetti Incident full of 70s punk songs and named after an infamous Mötley Crüe groupie encounter...ask your parents.
They did implode in acrimony not long after and although Axel Rose continued to plow his own furrow, without Slash it was never going to be the same and anyone who has heard Chinese Democracy will agree but between 1987 and their split in 1995, Guns N Roses were always drunk, mostly high, generally unkempt and smelling strongly of alcohol and their own vomit which is just how rock stars should be.

Green Day - American Idiot

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 3 we have American Idiot by Green Day (2004)

The story behind this album was that Green Day were recording an album but someone stole the Master tapes so rather than re-record the same songs again they wrote a bunch more 'spikier' tunes which reflected their disillusionment with was was going on in America at the time and as this was the America  of George W Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney with their Afghan and Iraq Wars, there was no shortage of American Idiots to be disillusioned with.
Turns out having their original songs swiped was a great move because this 'punk rock opera' turned them from a decent pop-punk band into Global superstars and deservedly so although it meant us small band of Green Day fans who had followed them since 1039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours now had to share them with everyone else.  
Whereas the previous Green Day albums came with the standard punk driven 3 minute songs about non-important things, American Idiot was a less than subtle slap around the face with socially critical and politically charged lyrics while keeping that basic Green Day sound and to be honest kicking back against authority was what punk was originally all about although whereas the Clash and Sex Pistols did it in 3 minutes, Green Day went with 9 mins of Jesus of Suburbia and another 9 mins of Homecoming amongst the softer ballads of Wake Me Up When September Ends which i assumed regarded the 9/11 attacks but was about the death of the singers father and Boulevard of Broken Dreams which is a real builder and is joined onto the previous song Holiday which runs into Boulevard to emphasise that Holiday is the 'fire and rage' and the Boulevard of Broken Dreams is the resulting painful and lonely hangover. Gotta admit that's very astute and poetic of them boys.
Kerrang magazine put it in 13th place in the Greatest Albums of all time but i've gone higher and pegged it at number 3 which means the top 2 have to be amazing and number 2 is although i thought it would be a shoo-in for top spot and the Album which is number 1 with the least amount of skipped songs surprised even me and i'm the one writing this. Go figure! 

Nirvana - Nevermind

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 4 we have Nevermind by Nirvana (1991)

The year 1991 is probably best remembered for the Gulf War, the collapse of the USSR, Mike Tyson's rape arrest and my brief and unsuccessful experimentation with black hair dye but it was also the greatest year for music and that comes down to a week in September when Nirvana's Nevermind was released on the 17th and the following weekend the album which sits at number 2 on my list came out, two of the best albums ever to be shoplifted from HMV.   
Nirvana were effortlessly cool and that was down to the front-man Kurt Cobain who didn't have the best voice or the skills of a guitar maestro but was the epitome of cool with the long blonde hair, the piercing blue eyes, the languid 'don't care' approach and the downplaying of his and his bands own place in music history, he really looked the part and had the songs to back up him up as the voice of a generation, whatever that means.  
Back then MTV still played music videos and Smells like Teen Spirit was played on a continuous loop and that fast and slow tempo, loud chorus and quiet verse of Teen Spirit really hit a nerve as did Lithium and the slower paced Come As You Are with it's line 'i don't have a gun' which he obviously did as we found out four years later.
The lyrics were not earth-shattering, it takes a certain genius to appreciate the mind behind: 'A mulatto, An albino, A mosquito, My libido, Yeah' but it was always about the music and the whole Grunge Scene although i am not sure what they were aiming at with their follow up Albums, especially the Unplugged Album, but whatever it was they missed.
It's testament to this album that they are remembered 30 years later although i imagine if we asked today's kids who their version of Nirvana is they would say someone like The Script or McFly, so let's not ask them. They're obviously idiots.

Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill

 Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 5 we have Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morisette (1995)

Alanis came into existence as an angry, feisty young lady who had been spurned in love and was going to make 13 angry song to make sure everyone knew about it and this is the result but then she must have got a boyfriend or something because after this brilliant album, she went all sappy and i stuck with her for a few more albums just in case he dumped her and she got all pissed off again but he must have been a keeper because she never which is some ways is good for her, in other ways such as for her career, it sucked.
You Ought To Know is her at her ticked off best and serves as a reminder that if you ever find yourself sat behind her and her boyfriend at a theater, then you might want to change seats.
The song Ironic led to many discussions about whether rain on your wedding day, a free ride when you've already paid or good advice that you just didn't take is actually ironic at all but whether she was being ironic by singing a song called Ironic which wasn't ironic at all it obviously didn't bother people that much because the album spent 222 weeks in the UK Charts and sold enough copies to allow her to consider
retiring without ever having to set foot in a recording studio again which on hearing her follow up albums was a career path she probably should have been followed.
The cassette tape of Jagged Little Pill got dragged into my cars cassette player not that long after i bought it so i borrowed a colleagues CD and burnt my own to prevent paying for the same songs twice, reasoning that i had already paid for them once so i wasn't depriving Alanis of her 75p or whatever percentage she gets from it and i haven't yet been chased down the street by an angry Alanis Morissette demanding her 75p so i guess she's cool with it but if she isn't, then Ironic means using language that normally signifies the opposite and for that piece of advice i will charge you 75p so so we are now all square. Ironic ain't it. 

Meatloaf - Bat Out Of Hell

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 6 we have Bat Out Of Hell by Meatloaf (1977)

Bit of a cheat that Meatloaf finds himself in such a lofty position in my best Album chart because his Bat Out Of Hell Album only has 7 songs on it and although it may run for a tad over 46 minutes, the title song is close to 10 minutes long and the 3 songs i skip equals only 16 minutes of missed opera-esque warbling from the man who spent his last few months denying Covid-19 existed before dying from...guess what...Covid 19.
Despite his less than satisfactory medical expertise and blatant refusal to end a song at a decent run-time, i always quite liked Meatloaf who had a great rock voice and some amazing songs as well as seeming a very jovial, pleasant man who never took himself too seriously.
The stand out song for me on here is Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad, a lovely ballad which is the complete opposite to the Bat Out Of Hell song which is a tumbling and rollicking good song about a teenage boy ending up torn and twisted at the foot of a burning bike after seeing a sudden curve way too late
which sounds better without the explanation that the songs writer, Musical Steinman, who imagined Peter Pan singing it to Wendy so i guess Disney decided against that particular ending.   
You Took The Word's Right Out Of My Mouth starts with a dialogue about a girl offering her throat to the wolf to rip out and then goes into a song about a girl leaving a guy speechless after kissing him which if you read the previous sentence about Peter Pan seems par for the course.
The last song on the album is Paradise By The Dashboard Light and in my mind i see the record creators saying hey Meat, great songs so far but we have 10 minutes left at the end so have you got 2 or 3 more songs and Meatloaf going, nope but i do have 1 which is 4 songs stitched together which is why we have the brilliantly barmy boogie woogie type song which for 8 mins is about a boy getting his rocks off with a girl after swearing to stay with her forever and ending the song 9 minutes later praying for the end of time.    

Billy Joel - An Innocent Man

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musician's who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 7 we have An Innocent Man by Billy Joel (1983).

Considering that Billy Joel has banging out tunes over a 50 year career, he doesn't seem very appreciated in Britain where he has only had 5 top ten hits and 3 of them came in 1983 from this album so not a great return for him but two people who did appreciate him were my parents and it was an unusual day if we went without hearing a belt of Piano Man or My Life coming from the record player.
As i grew up i obviously took in my parents taste for the New Yorker subliminally as whenever i heard one of his songs in a Supermarkets, i always found myself singing along to his ditties as i price up the Cleaning fluids.
Before Uptown Girl reminded everyone that he was still around, his big song was Piano Man and it was only fairly recently i discovered it comes with a music video although it didn't help it much in the UK charts although it was probably the best number 136 we ever saw.
Probably my favourite Billy Joel songs is 'Scenes from an Italian Restaurant', mainly because halfway through singing about Brenda and Eddie in the summer of '75, it changes to a completely different song and then ends up back where it started and the two in one songs always seem to appeal to me.
'This Night' is a real gem hidden away on the album and Beethoven is given a writing credit on the song as it is based on one of his compositions which means i can boast of knowing two Beethoven songs, this one and that one that starts Dom, Dom, Dom, Dom!!!.
So there we have it, i have a soft spot for Christie Brinkley's ex-hubby and i blame my parents although it could have been worse, they could have been Country and Western fans.

Sex Pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 8 we have Never Mind The Bollocks by The Sex Pistols (1977).

I Know!! WTF...Sex Pistols at number 8? WTFFFF Lucy!!! I had to double check myself but true enough there are Sex Pistols songs on this album that i skip through to get to Bodies, God Save The Queen, Holiday In The Sun, Anarchy In The UK, No Feeling's and Pretty Vacant.
I was 8 years old when Johnny and his lot were in their pomp and safety pins, purple Mohican haircuts and flobbing at the teacher were frowned upon in Bramble Road First School so i had to wait until i was much older and all my friends were plastering posters of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet on their bedroom walls before i came out of the record shop with the bright yellow Album Cover with a sticker saying 'Warning: This ALbum contains Explicit Lyrics' and thinking 'i f****ing hope so w....r'.
The songs were very much of their time and compared to some songs today, seem pretty mild except Bodies which apparently is based on a true story of what happened after a Sex Pistols gig one night when a female fan turned up with a present in a plastic bag for Johnny, the song makes it pretty clear exactly what she handed him.
Although they admit it now, Pretty Vacant never fooled me, the emphasis Johnny put on the second syllable of Va-CANT was obvious and although fans of the New York Dolls and The Damned like to argue that the Sex Pistols were not the first punk band actually, to me they were the grand-pappy of all the bands who's type of music that i like which followed, all kickstarted by this one album and the handful of singles from it so to quote Mr Rotten, 'Ah but now, And we don't care...va-CANT'.  

Sum 41 - All Killer No Filler

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 9 we have All Killer, No Filler by Sum 41 (2001).

As i skip half of the 13 tracks on this album that name is a bit misleading but the ones that i do play are certainly great, the sort of up-tempo guitar tunes that i would thrash out before i got all old and started wearing cardigans and sensible shoes.
I don't know if Pain For Pleasure is a mickey taking metal sounding song, it certainly looks like a send up in the video and they did evolve into a more metal sound rather than the pop-punk they began with, but that song is all about the grinding intro slowly growing louder and louder and if Sum 41 does have one thing in their locker, it is great intro's and the first 25 seconds of Motivation with the big, choppy chords and heavy drumming is just brilliant and to be fair the rest of the song isn't bad also.
Fat Lip, which is just about larking about as a teenager and getting punched in the mouth which looking at singer Deryck Whibley's face, must have happened quite a bit in his formative years, also has a good intro and that is the song which made their name, Wikipedia lists them as the 31st best selling Canadian Artists although that list probably makes more sense to Canadians, after the top 10 names i hardly knew any of them.
The lead singer dated Paris Hilton and married and divorced the 8th best selling Canadian artist, Avril Lavigne, and when you can call Avril Lavigne you ex-wife that is some impressive punching above your weight.  
There was a bit of a pop-punk explosion around the turn of the century with bands like Offspring and Blink 182 before Simon Cowell came along with his nonsense and put an end to it but we must be due another punk-pop renaissance soon...please.

Madness - One Step Beyond

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 10 we have One Step Beyond by Madness  (1979).

There were a few Ska bands around in the late 70s and early 80s, bands like The Specials, Bad Manners and The Beat and while i was drawing Siouxsie Sioux make up on my Cindy Dolls and falling into the Punk movement, my brother would be in his bedroom playing Madness singles and despite my constant advice that him and his speeded up reggae music was lame, i did like them but i wasn't ever going to admit it to him.
A DJ friend always said that whenever a disco was dying on its arse, he would whack on One Step Beyond as it was a sure way to get people up and dancing and i can't hear that song now without seeing groups of lads going from standing around trying to look cool to doing that jerky arm waving dance only Sugg's seemed to be able to do properly.
As this was the debut album it has all their best songs because Madness started off brilliant but as they got more famous, their songs became more 'grown-up' and they rapidly went downhill over the next few albums and they finally broke up after no longer bothering the top 20 of the charts.
Over the years Sugg's has become something of a National Treasure and the group played on the roof of Buckingham Palace at the Queen's Golden Jubilee and they are back touring again and i went along with my brother to see them in concert a few years ago but it was the early hits that they played and which got the best reception which proves that although some bands mature and change style successfully, it never worked for them and the style change did them no favour's whatsoever.

Green Day - Insomniac

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 11 we have Insomniac by Green Day  (1995).

Unsurprisingly, Green Day feature heavily in my top Albums because i have been a fan of Billy Joe and the gang since that first 39/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours album in 1990, becoming part of the noise which spat forth from my car casette player back then along with the likes of Gun N Roses and the emerging grunge bands.
Green Day hit upon a sound early on and pretty much stuck with it which is fine if that sound is a good one, which there's is, but it didn't work out quite so well for Rick Astley who spent 1987 at the top and 1988 known as that whats-his-name bloke who had those few songs that sounded the same.
Insomniac harks back to their three minute pop-punk style before they got all political and back when only a handful of us knew who they were and before the likes of Blink 182 and Sum 41 become the face of Pop-Punk and Green Day went on a hiatus every couple of years citing exhaustion (from abuse of alcohol and prescription pills) between albums which popped out every 3 or 4 years.
There has always been a question asked around if they're 'punk' and to me they fit comfortably into that genre and Insomniac is the 1995 version of it and anyway in true punk style, i don't care, i like them.

Nirvana - In Utero

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musician's who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 12 we have In Utero by Nirvana  (1993).

Always amazes me the amount of teenagers walking around wearing Nirvana T-Shirts because if they had been born in 1993 they would have been doing stinky things in their nappies rather than singing along to the line 'I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black' in Heart Shaped Box which i guess passed for a romantic line in the strange drug fueled World of Kurt Cobain.
Almost certainly the Nirvana the kids today think of is the cool one behind the brilliant hits of the Nevermind Album because it certainly wasn't this second effort which reeks of the Record Company allowing their new stars to do what they wanted for half of it as long as they got a say in the other half.
That they sank even further afterwards with their insipid Unplugged Album probably shows that they peaked straight away but they did leave behind a few great songs from this album, even managing to make a very decent song out of an anti-rape message.
As Kurt later found it easier to put a gun to his head than stay amongst the living, we won't ever know if the trajectory of Nirvana was going to tick back up again or continue it's decline but a note to today's teenagers with the Nirvana logo on their chests, if you do happen across the Unplugged Album, it also contains Dumb, Pennyroyal Tea and All Apologies but do yourself a favour and avoid it, it's the musical equivalent of finding an original first edition of To Kill A Mockingbird and shoving it under the leg of a table to keep it steady.

Joan Jett - Glorious Results Of A Misspent Youth

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musician's and at number 13 we have Glorious Results Of A Misspent Youth by Joan Jett  (1984).

As a young girl learning guitar there were not many female rockers to emulate in the early 80s but my teacher was a proper music nerd and would teach me the chords and then punk or metal riffs which used the three or four chords i knew and through him i found out there were two rock goddesses, Joan Jett and Lita Ford, and both were in the band The Runaway's and when i heard that the remnants of the Sex Pistols were working with Jett and Black Sabbath and Motley Crue with Ford, it was Jett i kept my ear out for because a punk band was always going to knock musical spots off a metal band.
Joan Jett really hit it big in the UK with I Love Rock n Roll in 1982 dressed in leathers and full of attitude and looking like someone i had for me in my minds eye as well as adding another dirty great riff to my repertoire.
The brilliant angry sounding Cherry Bomb was the Runaway's debut song but Jett seemed to take the thought that she wrote it so she can have it on any damn album she wanted and put it on this one along with her version of I Need Someone and somehow fused the original doo wop and her guitar sound and did the same with another 60s hit New Orleans so her misspent youth was sitting in her bedroom playing 60s songs and working out how to turn them into brilliant 80's rock anthems which was more productive than my misspent youth which involved cigarettes and nicking bottles of Babycham from my parents drinks cabinet.

REM - Automatic For The People

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musician's who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians and at number 14 we have Automatic For The People by REM  (1992).

REM had six other albums released before they hit their stride with Out of Time and then the even better Automatic For The People and then as soon as they hit it, they missed it again with the next seven but they were part of the early 90's along with many other great bands like Nirvana and Guns N Roses although they couldn't be further away from the guitar sound, their greatest hit, Losing my Religion, featured a mandolin but they were on MTV at the time between the louder, more shouty bands so are inexplicably linked with them in my mind.
Like most REM songs, the lyrics to their songs can be a bit weird, i would sing along and think that can't be right and look up the lyrics and discover actually, he really did say that but then Michael Stipe is wonderfully eccentric so it makes sense.
The song Everybody Hurts is one of the most downbeat songs i have ever heard but the video did give a friend and i the game of looking at people in stationary traffic and guessing what they are thinking so it would be she's thinking 'i wish i had turned on the light when i put my make up on this morning' or the old guy is thinking 'I wonder where the tree is that is growing the wood for my coffin?
Those two albums did bestow upon them the label of One of The Biggest Bands Around and made them household names but i can't help thinking that it they hadn't had that burst of inspiration over those 20 odd songs in the very early 90s they would be the band version of Tom Petty who everyone heard of but when he died, the conversation with most people went i know the name but buggered if i can name any of his songs.

Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Welcome To The Pleasuredome

Of the millions of albums which have been recorded, only 15 can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians and at number 15 we have Welcome To The Pleasuredome by Frankie Goes To Hollywood  (1984).

I have all 7 FGTH's singles, all 7 of their 12 inch singles and both their albums and that is my pension pot right there although last time i looked the value of my vinyl heavy pension pot is considerably less than i paid for them back in the 80's but i live in hope otherwise it's looking for dinner down the back of the fridge when i hit 67.
Frankie, led by Holly Johnson and including a mustachio'd dancer who added very little to the band, landed with a huge and very loud thump in 1984 and i loved them from the start because they were so unlike anything around at the time and everyone was singing along to the controversial Relax song long before it got banned which just made it even more famous, so much so that when the outstanding Two Tribes was at number one, Relax climbed back up the charts to give Frankie the number one and two.
Power of Love then came out to give them the accolade of the first three songs going to number one and then their star stopped rising and they sort of dribbled out a few more singles and then faded away.
Holly Johnson went solo and is responsible for my getting the lyrics to Americano's stuck in my head for the rest of the day everytime i order the coffee of the same name in Costa and last i heard the guy with the 'tache went off to live in New Zealand and released an album called The Cowboy Years in 2010, so that's nice for him.

Lucy's Museum of Musician's Top Albums

I've never been much of an album person, even in my younger days i would move the record player arm over the songs i didn't much care for after a few listens or just put my favourite songs from the Album onto a cassette and play that instead and even today i play an Album a few times and just pick the ones i like and skip past the ones i don't.
What that means is that it isn't easy to pick out the top Album's, or one's that are not a Greatest Hits compilation, for the Lucy's Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum so i just never bothered but it does seem a bit of a glaring omission so i have made an effort to pick out the 15 albums with the most songs that don't get skipped which by default makes them my favourite non-greatest hits Album's.
There are some surprises as there are singers and band i really like, such as Sam Cooke, Beach Boys, Carpenters, Chuck Berry, Muse, Tom Petty, Buzzcocks, Ramones and Blondie but all their good songs were spread across albums and it is generally those artists greatest hits i reach for so i have only gone for albums where i don't miss out half of it and made a list of the 15 albums with the least amount of skipped songs.

Lucy Museum of Musician's Top Valentine Songs

The Calendar shows February 14th, the day when us women say things like 'We don't need a day to show each other how much we love each other' but actually mean if you don't get me a card you will be cooking your own tea for a fortnight.
Valentine's Day is all about being in love and many ballads are of the break-up and insecurities kind and that's not what this day is all about, it's shouting from the rooftops 'I LOVE THIS PERSON WITH ALL MY HEART' and there are not as many songs as you would assume which qualify for the Lucy
Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's museum.  

You're Still the One - Shania Twain. Very sappy but i like it. Not so much about the first throws of love but very much about finding that special someone and through all the trials and tribulations remaining in love after everything.

Time Of You Life - Green Day. You wouldn't think the punk-pop kings would make it onto a Valentine's Love Songs List but to me it's not having any regrets and going for it, making those 'photographs and still frames in your mind' because you never know, it may just be the time of your life.

Nothing Can Change This Love - Sam Cooke. He may not know anything about History or Geography but he has a great voice and this is just a lyrically faultless song with Cooke's smooth vocals, subtle strings and a tinkering piano which just come together to create a beautiful song and starts with the promise of sending a letter everyday if he went a million miles away, a sentiment probably highly endorsed by the Post Office.

I Will Always Love You - Whitney Houston. No love song list is complete without this one, a rare case of the copy being so much better than the Dolly Parton original. The part where the drum beat is followed by a split second of silence and then, out of thin air Whitney's superb vocals chime 'And I-I-I-I-I...' give me a tingle down the spine everytime.

Only Yesterday - The Carpenters. Karen sings about finding love and how yesterday she was sad and lonely but finding love showed her the way to leave the past behind and tomorrow maybe even brighter than today and isn't that what we are all hoping for?

Only You - Platters. This is a sublime ballad and probably almost the ultimate love song, sung faultlessly by the brilliant Tony Williams accompanied by the soft piano, the wispy sound of the drum brushes and the rest of the group singing soft backing vocals make this a perfect celebration of being in love and being with someone 'who fills my heart with love, my one and only you'. 

Never Enough - Loren Allred. If The Platters song is almost the ultimate Love Song, this one is it. It has everything, the slow build, the amazing lyrics about the stars being stole from the night sky nor all the towers of gold being enough and Loren's beautiful voice. If you don't get a lump in your throat you have either never been in all encompassing love or you are dead inside.

Warm This Winter - Gabriella Climi

Of all the Christmas songs which have been recorded, only the best can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians and at number one we have Warm This Winter by Gabriella Climi.

If you are Australian you probably know this song from adverts for the Co-operative stores because this version of the song began life as an advertisement for the grocery store and they chose Gabriella Climi to remake the Connie Francis hit from the 60s.  
It has also been used by Orange and Virgin for their adverts so someone has coined it in but Gabriella Climi had a couple of songs which crept into the low reaches of the UK charts and then quietly crept out again and this one was her biggest hit getting to number 22 in 2008 although it never makes it onto the Christmas song rotation on the TV Music Channels because the record company never bothered to make a video for it.
It's a very bouncy, bubble-gum pop record with that double drum beat and i am a sucker for a double drum beat, their must be a psychological reason for that, but also Climi has a nice raspy voice which sounds like she is just getting over a cold and although she only mentions Christmas in passing, it has fire-places, ice skating on a frozen lake, snow and sleigh riding so that's every box ticked for me, great song.

Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight) - The Hellflowers

Of all the Christmas songs which have been recorded, only the best can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians and at number two we have Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight) by Hellflower.

It's a sad fact that the Christmas period translates into some very long queues outside the offices of divorce lawyers in the New Year so we should be more like the Ramones who said in this 1987 classic that 'Christmas ain't the time for breaking each other hearts' in this song with a tune borrowed from Blondie's 'Denis' who in turn acquired it from a 1960's doo wop group who sang a song called 'Denise'.
The Ramones never seemed to get the acclaim they deserved and they were on the slide by the time they recorded this Christmas song, Johnny and Joey were on even worse terms then usual which was not improved by Johnny sleeping with Joey's girlfriend so this song could very well be taken as a plea to his guitarist bandmate.
Sadly all four original members are dead so they never got to take any pleasure in the belated prestige of seeing plenty of youngsters today wearing their T-shirts with their blackened presidential seal but their great music continues and this one does put in an occasional appearance on the Christmas Music channels and many other bands have taken this Ramones song and performed it better, such as the Hellflowers.
The punk band were asked to contribute a song to the Christmas Evel, Volume 1 and they put out this version which is my go to interpretation, the female singer's voice sitting very nicely with the big, choppy chords of the song.

Snowman - Sia

Of all the Christmas songs which have been recorded, only the best can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians and at number three we have Snowman by Sia.

The third entry for Sia, this is a criminally underrated song from a criminally underrated Christmas Album that finally got the recognition it deserved following a TikTok challenge where you had to sing a verse and chorus from Snowman in one breath.
A simple, beautiful piano ballad about the singer running away with her Snowman friend to keep him alive because we have all been there on Christmas Eve with our partner in the living room, the only illumination is the fairy lights on the Christmas Tree while you look into each others eyes and feeling like you're falling in love again with the only sound the sharp crackling from the warm, cosy fire in the fireplace and then you remember, arghh..warm fire and he's a bloody snowman and suddenly you got a massive puddle in your living room to clean up and as she says in the song, 'A puddle of water can't hold me close, baby'.
Her solution is to go to the North Pole to hide from the Sun and live happily and anyone who knows Sia's back-story will know that not only does she richly deserve some happiness but despite everything, she is one of the nicest, most inspirational people you could ever wish to meet and on top of all that she has one of the greatest Christmas Albums to ever adorn a record shop shelf.