“What really matters is what you like, not what you are like.”
– Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (1995)
Readers who have enjoyed our interviews from time to time know that we typically ask artists to share their five favorite albums of all time at the end of our conversations with them. No matter who the artist is, it’s always fascinating to discover which long players have impacted their personal and professional lives. A few of our interview subjects have even scoffed at the standard five album limit, rattling off upwards of a dozen or so titles and second-guessing if they’ve made the right choices.
Today, we’re excited to feature our writers’ respective lists of their 10 favorite albums, an exercise that proved agonizing for a few of us, even prompting a few rage-filled messages to be sent to our editor-in-chief who came up with the nutty idea. We all reserve the right to change our minds about these choices in the future, but for now, here are the indispensable albums that we can’t live without.
Check out Libby Cudmore’s picks below, click the “Next” button at bottom to browse the lists, or click here to return to the main index.
Dave Brubeck Quartet | Time Out | 1959 | Buy | “I hear you’re mad about Brubeck…” Donald Fagen sings in “New Frontier.” Well, I am now. “Strange Meadow Lark” just turns me to vapor, and “Take Five” can make anything—a bus ride, an evening in, a cubical—just a little bit cooler.
Donald Fagen | Morph the Cat | 2006 | Buy | This came out in 2006, when I was living in New York City and, as such, always makes me feel New York in a way that nothing else—except maybe a cup of Fairway coffee—can do. “The Great Pagoda of Funn” is perhaps the purest love song ever written, and I’m not entirely convinced that it isn’t more about the late Walter Becker than it is about Libby Titus, with the “Pagoda” being the recording studio.
JaR | Scene 29 | 2008 | Buy | Studio Gods Jay Graydon and Randy Goodrum put their heads together to create this smooth AF album that combines a sort of Steely Dan masterwork with quirky, strange little lyrics. Who else could pull off a noir-esque duet with a GPS voice?
The Magnetic Fields | 69 Love Songs (Volume 1) | 1999 | Buy | The surest sign that I am in love with you is if I give you a Magnetic Fields song, and the majority of them come off this album. In love, love-lorn and every niche emotion in between, it’s all here. “All My Little Words” kills me every damn time.
Siouxsie and the Banshees | Superstition | 1991 | Buy | It’s hard to pick one Siouxsie album but, if pressed, Superstition, which features “Shadowtime,” “Cry,” “The Ghost in You,” and “Kiss Them For Me,” has to take the prize. It’s unsettling, it’s exotic and it’s haunting in all the best ways, like a kiss of honey followed by a sting.
The Smiths | The Queen Is Dead | 1986 | Buy | My older sister gave me this album in my senior year of high school and I knew, from the moment I heard “The Queen is Dead,” that my life would never be the same. It changed my whole musical outlook in a way few albums have, and helped defined the Me that would be through all of college.
Steely Dan | The Royal Scam | 1976 | Buy | Aja may be the greatest Steely Dan album, but The Royal Scam is my favorite Steely Dan album. “Green Earrings” ranks high in my Steely Dan song rankings, and “Kid Charlemagne” is the Greatest Rock Song Ever Written. Fight me, I dare you.
The Vapors | New Clear Days | 1980 | Buy | If you only know the Vapors for “Turning Japanese” you are missing the eff out. New Clear Days is one of my Nuclear Bunker albums, in that it’s a) awesome, and b) overshadowed with a lot of fears of nuclear holocaust with tracks like “Bunkers” and “Letters from Hiro.” But there’s a lot of fun to be had too, including the snarky “Spring Collection” and the fantastically love-sick “Waiting For the Weekend.”
Tom Waits | Rain Dogs | 1985 | Buy | A perfect Waits album, striking the proper balance between the noir bar ballads of his early Asylum catalogue and the bang-and-growl of what was to come. The tipsy piano that opens “Tango ‘Til They’re Sore” is one of my all-time favorite sounds on this earth.
Warren Zevon | Sentimental Hygiene | 1987 | Buy | My dad used to play this tape in the car on the way to church and, as such, it’s the Zevon album I know the best. I put “Reconsider Me” on a mix I made for a boy whose heart I had broken. He did.