I’ve seen the doomy articles that suggest that, as a person in my 30s, I’m far less likely to listen to and appreciate new music. There’s something about our teen years where we form attachments to media in our project of forging our identities, and we tend to latch on and hold tight, reaching for those films, books, or albums as we get older (this recent Freakonomics podcast episode speaks to this very topic).
I don’t necessarily think I’m averse to new things–as a musicologist and performer, I constantly encounter and evaluate new music–but what I have noticed is that streaming has chopped up my listening into individual songs instead of sitting down to have full experiences with albums the way I used to in high school, where I really give an artist a chance to charm me and give me some favorites off the beaten path. So I took to social media to gather a list of suggestions, and was inundated with ideas to keep me busy for the foreseeable future. Here is the list:
- Aging Truths (Meridian)
- Antichrist Superstar (Marilyn Manson)
- At Home With (Owen)
- Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (Shirley Walker)
- Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Kanye)
- Bigger, Better, Faster, More (4 Non Blondes)
- Bitches Brew (Miles Davis)
- Black Beauty (Danny Elfman)
- Blue Blood (X Japan)
- Breaking and Entering (Molly Joyce)
- Chromatica (Lady Gaga)
- Chrysalid Requiem (Toby Twining)
- Come on Feel the Illinoise (Sufjan Stevens)
- Crazy Nights (The Loudness)
- Dark Side of the Moon (The Flaming Lips cover!)
- Dawn Chorus (Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble)
- Dead Winter Dead (Savatage)
- Emotionalism (The Avett Brothers)
- Final Fantasy Songbook: Mahoroba (Nobuo Uematsu)
- Fire Garden (Steve Vai)
- First Aid Kit – self titled
- Float (Flogging Molly)
- From Here to Infirmary (Alkaline Trio)
- Ghost Reveries (Opeth)
- Grace (Jeff Buckley)
- Have You In My Wilderness (Julia Holter)
- Homogenic (Björk)
- Hot Fuss (The Killers)
- If Only Every Day Could Be Like This (Even the Trees)
- Into Lake Griffy (Good Luck)
- Invisible Ritual (Jennifer Curtis & Tyshawn Sorey)
- John Henry (They Might Be Giants)
- _Judee Sill_ (Judee Sill)
- Kentucky (Panopticon)
- Khruangbin (Con Todo El Mundo)
- Kids (The Midnight)
- Let England Shake (PJ Harvey)
- License to Ill (Beastie Boys)
- Live/Dead (Grateful Dead)
- Mass for the Endangered (composed by Sarah Kirkland Snider, libretto by Nathaniel Bellow, performed by Gallicantus)
- Meddle (Pink Floyd)
- Music for Hard Times (The Living Earth Show with Danny Clay)
- My Life (Mary J. Blige)
- Nashville Skyline (Bob Dylan)
- Nightfall in Middle Earth (Blind Guardian)
- OK Computer (Radiohead)
- Perdition City (Ulver)
- Phosphorescent Harvest (The Chris Robinson Brotherhood)
- Plans (Death Cab for Cutie)
- Purgatory and Country Squire (Tyler Childers)
- Remain in Light (Talking Heads)
- Remedy Lane (Pain of Salvation)
- Richest Man in Babylon (Thievery Corp.)
- Señor Smoke (Electric Six)
- Serenade Schizophrana (Danny Elfman)
- Sing to the Moon (Laura Mvula)
- Songs for Beginners (Graham Nash)
- Spiritchaser (Dead Can Dance)
- Station to Station (David Bowie)
- Stealing Fire (Bruce Cockburn)
- Suspyre – A Great Divide (Gregg Rossetti)
- Swimming (Mac Miller)
- Tango in the Night (Fleetwood Mac)
- The Suburbs (The Arcade Fire)
- Them Crooked Vultures (Them Crooked Vultures)
- Thornhill (Moxy Fruvous)
- Tourist Season (Miel)
- Turnstiles (Billy Joel)
- Visions (Grimes)
- We Stitch These Wounds (Black Veil Brides)
- What Does Anything Mean? Basically (The Chameleons)
- year of meteors (Laura Veirs)
…do you think I have enough to start with?
My own preliminary brainstormed to-listen (or re-listen) list looked like this, in case you were curious:
- Autobahn, Trans-Europe Express, The Man Machine, and Computer World (Kraftwerk)
- Archandroid (Janelle Monáe)
- Cannibal Courtship, Escape from Dragon House, and Venus on Earth (Dengue Fever)
- Chamber Music Society (Esperanza Spalding) [re-listen]
- Dawn Metropolis and Endless Fantasy (Anamanaguchi)
- Deadringer (RJD2)
- Fancy Footwork (Chromeo)
- Future Nostalgia (Dua Lipa)
- Gran Turismo, Emmerdale, First Band on the Moon, and Life (The Cardigans)
- Hey Stoopid (Alice Cooper)
- Is This Desire?, To Bring You My Love, and Rid of Me (PJ Harvey) [re-listen]
- Jolene (Dolly Parton)
- Pale Communion (Opeth) [re-listen]
- Permission to Land (The Darkness) [re-listen]
- Ruby Blue (Róisín Murphy) [re-listen]
- The Bomb Shelter Sessions (Vintage Trouble)
- W.A.R. (We Are Renegades) (Pharoahe Monch)
- When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go (Billie Eilish) [re-listen]
- Whenever You Need Somebody (Rick Astley)
I had better get started–I have a lot of music ahead of me.