Hearts & Numbers - Taylor Swift - Fearless

Fearless (Taylor's Version)

by Taylor Swift

This was the first thing I'd heard by Taylor. 

I remember it like it was yesterday only I can't recall the name of the website that I used. It allowed one full listen to an album and then you had to buy it and, I think, Apple bought it and it became iTunes.

By the time I heard "The Best Day" I found myself weeping and I thought there must be something wrong with me.

I commented that to an editor of a blog I was writing for and he said, "They're good songs, dude".

That they are.

Dilemma:

Do I rate the album with or without the bonus tracks? 

Because the "album" is a redo of the original album.

Hmmm...Let's see what happens.

1. Fearless 90
2. Fifteen 100 💗
3. Love Story 100 💗
4. Hey Stephen 95 💗
5. White Horse 95 💗
6. You Belong With Me 100 💗
7. Breath 85
8. Tell Me Why 90 💗
9. You're Not Sorry 90 💗
10. The Way I Loved You 85
11. Forever and Always 90 💗
12. The Best Day 100 💗
13. Change 90

(With that last song you know...Taylor wants to rock)

Fearless rating:

5 out of 5

A+

Bonus tracks:

1. Jump Then Fall 85
2. Untouchable 90
3. Forever and Always (Piano version) 90
4. Come In With the Rain 
5. Superstar 70
6. The Other Side of the Door 75
7. Today Was a Fairytale 75
8. You All Over Me (From the Vault) 68
9. Mr. Perfectly Fine (From the Vault) 72
10. We Were Happy 73
11. That's When (From the Vault) 80
12. Don't You (From the Vault) 70
13. Bye Bye Baby (From the Vault) 73
14. Love Story (Elvira Remix) 90

The second part, the stuff "From the vault"...it doesn't really add anything. The songs are fine but the 13 that makes of the real album are chef's kiss perfection.

Fearless holds up nearly 17 years later, despite these recordings being newly crafted. The songs, man, it's the songs. I don't listen to a lot of Country but, boy, if they all had songs this well written, I would. 

This is the story of a 19 year old navigating the world of burgeoning adulthood and relationships and teenage love and it lands every step of the way. 

Hearts & Numbers - Taylor Swift - Folklore

Folklore

by Taylor Swift

I was sitting in the garage during pandemic, listening to records and reviewing them for the Facebook group when this album dropped. 

What they hell have I been doing with my? Taylor Swift goes into a cabin and writes records. I hadn't picked up my guitar in years. 

So, it had me wondering what I actually thought of each of her records and, instead of reviewing the records I am just going to listen to them and rate the songs based on how they hit me. Do I like them? Do I want to add them to a playlist? Would I "love" the song enough to give it a heart on Apple Music?  And what number out of 100 would I ascribe them. 

So, that's what I'm going to do. Hearts & Numbers. 

Folklore

1. The 1:  95  ❤️
2. Cardigan: 100  ❤️
3. The Last Great American Dynasty 95 ❤️
4. Exile 100 ❤️
5. My Tears Ricochet 95 ❤️
6. Mirrorball 95 ❤️
7. Seven  95 
8. August 100 ❤️
9. This Is Me Trying 100 ❤️
10. Illicit Affairs 100 ❤️
11. Invisible String 90 ❤️
12. Mad Woman 85
13. Epiphany 95 
14. Betty 100 ❤️
15. Peace 90
16. Hoax 80
17. The Lakes 100 ❤️

5 out of 5

Grade A+

After listening to Folklore, and I mean really listening...this is a remarkable album. A pop folk confessional masterwork. 

1001 Albums Generator - The United States of America - The United States of America

Album 14

The United States of America (1968)

by The United States of America 

As an acting student in the Experimental Theater Wing of NYU I am shocked that I never heard this album before.

Discordant and angry, subversive and challenging and any other host of adjectival couplets I can think of. 

Members of this group would work on, of all things, Sesame Street. And when I think about it, it makes perfect sense. Sesame Street was sort of subversive. Targeting the poor and the underprivileged, Sesame aimed to educate and used the tool of the elites, advertising, to do just that. It worked. For a while. 

4.5 out of 5

The American Metaphysical Circus

Hard Coming Love

The Garden of Earthly Delights

Where is Yesterday

1001 Albums Generator - Cypress Hill - Cypress Hill

 Album 13

Cypress Hill (1991)

by Cypress Hill

There was a time when alternative and rap converge. Almost like each genre was giving cred to the other. Rap reviving rock and rock helping rap make inroads into the mainstream. 

I miss that. We are so siloed these days. 

Sometimes this sounds just like Beasties and that makes sense, contemporaries will contemporary.

4.25 out of 5

How I could Just Kill a Man

Hand on the Pump

Real Estate

1001 Albums Generator - Santana - Abraxas

 Album 12

Abraxas - 1970

by Santana

It opens like a jazz ensemble warming up and then seamlessly merges into the monster hit, "Black Magic Woman", which has always, I guess, been a jam song and THAT song crashes into Gypsy Queen and I want to be at the Hayden Planeterium for the Abraxas Experience. 

It does get a bit samey-same after a while but just as I wrote this, the vocals on Mother's Daughter came in to save us. To be honest, the Santana-penned tunes are the least interesting.

4.25 out of 5

Singing Winds, Crying Beasts

Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen

Oye Como Va

Reflecting Pool - Bruce Springsteen - Faithless

Reflecting Pool - Bruce Springsteen - Faithless

There once was a movie that never got made. I think it was going to be directed by Martin Scorcese. I can't remember and I am not reading my book again (right now that is).

They commissioned a soundtrack by Bruce Springsteen. He wrote one. For the movie that never got made. 

This year, as Bruce crosses the mid-70s rubicon, he put out Faithless as one of the 7 unreleased records from the 90s. 

It's dark. 

It's ploddingly hopeless. But I don't mean that as a pejorative. 

I find myself returning to this record more than any other in the Tracks II collection. 

And I am an atheist. 

It pines. It aches. I could have seen any of these songs ending up on a future Bruce record. 

I don't think these songs were supposed to sit front and center. I think many of them would either play in the background, like "God Sent You" or as part of a montage, "Goin' to California", or over the credits, which could be the title track or the opener, "Where You Goin', Where You From".

And yet, they evoke. And I like every bit of this record more than I do Devils & Dust.

Grade B+

A Side: Where You Goin', Where You From, Faithless, God Sent You

BlindSide: Let Me Ride

DownSide: 

1001 Albums Generator - Neil Young and Crazy Horse - Rust Never Sleeps

 Album 11

Rust Never Sleeps (1978)

by Neil Young and Crazy Horse

If punk was folk.

Every Friday our 7th grade English teacher would have us bring in poems and read to the class. I always chose something from The Portmanteau Book. One kid, David Gould, would read something by Neil Young. 

David was a stoner before getting stoned was a thing in our grade. Years later he would ask friends who went to The Who concert if The Whoo performed "Oooh, Wally." They laughed at him. "You mean, "Who Are You"? 

David died at age 53 about 7 years ago. We weren't friends. He's one of those kids who you just know and you are sad when you hear of his passing even though there's no relationship, per se. 

I never cared about Neil Young. Every Neil Young sounds the same to me.

This is fine. It's good in many places. 

I never need to listen to it again.

4.25 out of 5

My My Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)

Welfare Mothers

Hey Hey My My (Into the Black)

1001 Albums Generator - Korn - Follow the Leader

 Album 10

Follow the Leader (1998)

by Korn

I heard about Korn 30 years before I heard their music. 

I was driving a cab overnight in the sleepy, Meth infected desert town of California. The dispatcher was some girl, name unremembered. We talked about music because, fuck me, there were no rides. Except the nightly lab specimen and the one guy who hired me to take him to the bus station every morning so he could go to work.

"Have you heard of Korn?" She asked. And she wouldn't stop talking about them.

I talk about my location because I was about the same distance from Lancaster as Lancaster is to Los Angeles. So, they were local. 

I heard some of their music on MTV but I never listened all the way through. 

This is the soundtrack to Gen X depression. From the imagery on the covers to the music. It's all schism and chaos. It's primitive rage borne from soul wrenching. Inorganic but also purely meth capital desert bloomed. 

If you took a lot of Meth and forced Rage Against the Machine to listen to nothing but Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nine Inch Nails all day long, this is what you get. 

It's On

Freak On a Leash

Got the Life

Children of the Korn

1001 Albums Generator - Fleetwood Mac - Rumors

 Album 9

Rumors (1977)

by Fleetwood Mac

How many times have I listened to this? I am surprised that my original 1977 vinyl copy still has grooves, it's been played so much.

Obviously this belongs on this list. It plays like a Greatest Hits record because every song has been ubiquitous for the past ~50 years. And deservedly so. Immaculately produced this is an album from the sky. It's remarkable and rewards with every subsequent listen. 

5 out of 5

Second Hand News

Dreams

Don't Stop

Go Your Own Way

Songbird

The Chain

You Make Loving Fun

Gold Dust Woman

1001 Albums Generator - Kenya - Machito

 Album 8

Kenya (1957)

by Machito

I don't know if this is the first but it HAD to have been one of the most influential of it's kind because this sounds like every single television show from the 50s all the way through the 70s. 

And I mean that in the greatest way possible. 

4.25 out of 5

Wild Jungle

Congo Mulence