My favorite albums

/ 22 min read

I have a test in <2 hours, and wanted to take a break to write a post about my favorite albums ever. This is a particularly interesting post for 2 reasons:

  1. I listen to a wide range of music so this list will change every so often. My music taste was a lot more sporadic a few years ago, I would have had a new top 5 every few months. Now, I feel the core albums will stay for many years, but every year one or two entries could change.

  2. I’ve rarely thought about such a question, even though it’s not particularly obscure. I also associate most with artists, then songs, then albums, so I don’t have too many albums I adore, even though I think it’s an incredible medium.

Let’s get started! I’ve included one album per artist to make it more interesting, though I don’t think my list would look too much different if this rule was excluded.

10. Views, Drake

Views, Drake

If you asked me, on any given day, since I was in 7th grade, to name my 3 favorite artists, I don’t think you’d find a day where Drake didn’t make that list. I had phases where I wasn’t in a “Drake Phase” yet he’d never leave my rotation, or my favorites. I had other phases where I felt like Akademiks and my top 5 was Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake.

But to be frank, I had a really hard time putting any of his albums on this list. He has stong projects in Take Care, Nothing Was The Same, and If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, as well as some I adore more than others do, such as Scorpion or More Life. But I sat here, making a blueprint of my top 10, and none of those albums came to mind as I listed one project after another. With one spot left, I insisted to use it on him to reflect my admiration towards him as an artist.

I listed all those projects, all very strong. But I think Views is his best album, thematically and in terms of consistency of sound and storytelling. It’s an introspective-as-fuck album during the peak of his popstardom, so I think it didn’t get the flowers it truly deserved. But if you go back and listen, it’s so damn good.

9. Oppenheimer, Ludwig Göransson

Oppenheimer, Ludwig Göransson

I think Hans Zimmer is one of the greatest musicians ever. I think every movie he touches becomes better period just due to his soundtracks. The Dune trilogy has been no exception. I recently watched Dune 2 in IMAX and the soundtrack alone took it from an 8-point-something to a 9-point-something. He’s truly remarkable.

But I am so, so glad he was preoccupied with Dune. Because I don’t think he could have matched what Ludwig Göransson did on Oppenheimer.

I’ve developed an annoying (to others, at least) habit of poking this movie into every conversation I can. I’ll fully review it some other time, since this blog didn’t exist the first 4 times I watched the movie. But the most memorable thing about this movie is not Nolan’s screenplay or direction, however brilliant. It’s not the Trinity Scene, or RDJ’s stunning performance as Lewis Strauss. It’s not the stunning cinematography or the brilliant sets. It’s not Josh and Rodrick cosplaying as physics All-Stars. It’s not even Cillian Murphy’s haunting eyes. The most memorable part of this masterpiece to me is that sharp violin screeching. Giving me goosebumps every time I hear it, even now.

Violin as a representation of Oppenheimer’s story was a brilliant choice by Chris and Ludwig. I like to believe that the soft, orchestral tones represent the exciting possibilities of science, the rampant curiousity Oppenheimer was shown to exhibit. But in the words of Nolan’s Isador Rabi, the culmination of three centuries of science was a weapon of mass destruction. A divine revelation of power that murdered many innocent people. Taking science too far, to the point where it exits the realm of marvel and enters the realm of otherwordly horror is a phenomenom that could not have been more perfectly embodied than the singing mermaid of a violin that Göransson exhibits all throughout this score, most notably in Can You Hear The Music.

But CYHTM is not the only standout, Destroyer of Worlds, Fission, Trinity, and Kitty Comes To Testify are all fantastic, but the whole album is.

8. Stars Dance, Selena Gomez

Stars Dance, Selena Gomez

Feels goofy writing about this album after the last, but in my defense I wrote the initial list in ascending order. This album was my first taste of girly dance-pop, a genre I still really enjoy all these years later. I have absolutely no interest in defending this album’s merit as a “good dance-pop” album with anyone. It probably can’t go song for song with the heavy hitters.

But this album introduced me to 4 on the floor beats with growling basses, half-time breakdowns, vocal chops, and the rest of the works that did shape my music taste going forward. Also I had a massive crush on Selena Gomez. Sorry you could’t compete in that department, Ludwig.

7. We Love You Tecca, Lil Tecca

We Love You Tecca, Lil Tecca

I have no musical analysis. This album is just really good. Like, too good. Every time I listen I’m really surprised at just how many good songs are on this album. I think Tecca is a quintessential, unapologetic new-age rapper, and I think that’s apparent on this album.

Tecca is shockingly effortlessly melodic. He doesn’t have a great voice. Quite nasal actually. But time and again on this project, he glides the beat, with a rhythmic flow and fun melodies. His beat selection is very good, and it’s no surprise he has been a mentor to a lot of the new-age rappers that came a year or two after him.

Look, is he Kendrick? NO! But a large amount of my music listening time is spent just listening to head-bobbable, silvery tracks, and I don’t think many do it better than Lil Tecca.

Left right, left right…

6. Jab We Met, Pritam

Jab We Met, Pritam

I never really processed until recently just how much I like this album. Unlike Oppenheimer, my affinity here isn’t massively amplified by the movie. Sure I like the movie, but this album places so highly because every song on here is excellent. Mauja Hi Mauja is one of the best Bollywood bangers I have ever heard, perfectly encapsulating the 2000’s Bollywood dance hit in a timeless manner.

Tum Se Hi, is the obvious standout. It starts with a catchy, choppy vocal melody that ropes you in, followed by 5 minutes of Mohit Chauhan excellence. This song can serve as a love song or a heartbreak anthem, but I’m not sure if that’s a sign of the track’s versatility or my poor Hindi skills. Ye Ishq Hai again exhbits tons of Bollywood charm over some Britney Spears-esque production, though I can’t speak on who inspired who.

The rest of the record is filled with songs that can be described as belonging to the dance, romance, or folk genres. All I know is this entire album is going to be played at my wedding, and for that it deserves at least spot number 6, no?

5. MBDTF, Kanye West

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West

How the mighty fall. This album was my number 1 for a long time. I made my list, and my current 1 was a no brainer. But then I came to number 2. And I considered putting this record. But I just couldn’t. Maybe with 3 then. Or 4. I never imagined it falling to 5, yet it did, barely edging out a collection of 6 Bollywood songs from a cheesy movie.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy has not aged poorly. In fact, I think it’s aged well. I’m looking over the tracklist right now, tempted to bump it up. But I won’t. This project is almost perfect to me, it’s just I don’t feel nearly as passionate about that perfection as I once did. Regardless, I’ll still claim that this is hands-down the greatest pre-trap rap album to me.

West was essentially all but exiled from the mainland due to his treatment of Taylor Swift onstage. He chose to apologize in the most Kanye way possible. By not apologizing, but rather by releasing an album so good he became impossible to hate. Why do you think the “Kanye did say that…but he made Graduation” meme is so famous. Because it’s true!

I can’t even call Power and All Of The Lights anthemic. That would entail there is a category of anthemic songs that these two fit into. But these two tracks are empowering and grandiose in ways I could never imagine. When I say anthemic, I mean a song that can hold their weight in a large stadium. These songs make me feel like I’m already in the stadium, listening to a live performance with a crowd of thousands, all while I listen alone in my room.

Monster and So Appalled are all-time great cyphers. I especially fancy the latter, with CyHi’s verse being a standout that I seldomly hear discussed. Devil In A New Dress and Runaway are clear standouts. Oddly, I don’t think I can say anything about these songs that hasn’t previously been said. Just that they are objectively good, as objective as something so subjective can be, anyway.

4. chronic, twikipedia

chronic, twikipedia

Twikipedia’s chronic is, to be succinct, internet music. That’s a term that’s been thrown around loosely, most notably by record labels and Spotify to describe hip-hop music whose popularity is just under the mainstream. Think Yeat. But I think chronic is a much better representation of what internet music is - an effortless amalgation of so many different ideas, sounds, genres.

The opener, ok like, sets the tone well for the rest of the project. An underground trap inspired track with elements of pluggnb and hyperpop, with an extremely unorthodox instrumental, especially in terms of its synths. Track 3, swear to god, is a quintessential plugg track, but with twikipedia’s own unique twist. The instrumental is built for the big speakers, with distorted, stereorized plugg 808s carrying the low end of the track. One thing that sticks out is the artist’s attention to detail. On every listen, if you listen closely enough, you can hear a new backing synth or percussion that you had no clue was there before. While these sounds are not too sonically prominent in the track, all of them collectively add to the track’s fullness and richness, which allows twikipedia to follow a simple archetype like plugg, while also introducing some of their own, say unorthodoxy.

The next few tracks follow a similar pattern - fast-paced plugg tracks with surprisingly electronic synths. Track 7, poster, is a standout. Twikipedia realizes at this point in the record to break out their settled sound as to add another dimension to the album. So with poster, twikipedia and featured artist, lieu, deliver a fun, playful hyperpop track that sounds like two teenagers dissing their cyberhaters, because that’s exactly what’s this song is.

The next two songs on the album are my personal favorites, starting with desprazer - a song entirely in Portugese. Twikipedia frequently makes music in their native languge, Portugese, and though I don’t understand a lick of it, I’m always entertained. Desprazer strays away from most of the percussive motifs from the album so far, and shifts to a softer, more acoustic drum beat. Twikipedia and roddie, the featured singer, sing in more mellow tone, though the track retains its stereorized synths and autotuned vocal chain, allowing it to fit thematically with the rest of the project. The next song, rude, swings completely in the other direction, as twikipedia blesses us with an all-time great pluggnb track, both interpolating and sampling Rude by MAGIC! The reason why I referred to chronic as an internet album is that it exhibits twikipedia’s mastery in so many subgenres of internet music. The artist is able to effortlessly switch between sounds in a way where the listener would even notice a shift unless they payed closer attention.

Song 12, it’s not what i have, is an emotional, chaotic amalgation of sounds, emotions, and thoughts. It’s arguably the most twikipedia track on the whole record. The track opens on a simple guitar backing with some soulful vocals, but quickly devolves into a more distorted and rapid setting, where even the beautiful sine lead from before sounds like it is now fighting for space within the mix. It almost feels like the artist is taking a dedicated portion of the song to cleanse their rage, since immediately after this refrain, they return to a 8-bit style beat with bitcrushed drums and dreamy leads, where the song finally concludes.

The outro is a beautiful collection of synths and melodies by twikipedia. I believe one of their strengths on this album is eliminating the gap between the beat and themselves. Most music treats the beat and vocals as two seperate entities that can be partitioned by a barely trained ear, but twikipedia, on a track like run outro, is able simply use their voice as another instrument. The vocals exhibit a lot of tonal variety, but due to their constrictive mixing and lower volume, they slot into the beat as just another sound. At a point, the vocals stop and a new, middle-octaved keyboard is introduced, but the transition is barely noticeable as they occupy the same space within the song’s sonics.

Chronic is able to accomplish just what I adore in an album, being thematically and lyrically consistent to the point where if you played a stranger track 1, track 10, and then a song by the same artist that’s not on the album, they would be able to identity that track 1 and 10 belong together while the last track does not. Not only is twikipedia able to achieve this musical consistency, they are able to accomplish it while making two respective tracks on the project as different as possible in terms of the subculture they draw inspiration from, with the artists vocals acting as the tether for the record’s stability.

3. Eternal Atake (Deluxe), Lil Uzi Vert

Eternal Atake (Deluxe) - LUV vs. The World 2, Lil Uzi Vert

This is technically two albums, but since they were released as a deluxe double album, I get to include them! It’s my list anyway… I make the rules.

It would be unnecessarily extensive for me to cover each one of the 32 tracks in detail. Rather I’ll speak more album on why EA Deluxe is so high on my list. Lil Uzi Vert was one of the world’s hottest upcoming rappers, as well as one of my favorites, but at the height of their career, went on a drought of releasing music. But when Eternal Atake dropped, the whole world forgave Uzi. I believe everyone who’s my age remembers where they were when EA dropped. That’s because instead of Friday midnight, practically Thursday night for me California residents, it dropped on Friday, at 10:30AM or something. I was in English class, and this was exactly one week before the pandemic started. Luckily, my English teacher was very chill (shoutout Mr. Robbins), and I had friends who sat next to me in that class, so we pulled out phones and started listening right away. We were blown away by how good it was. Everyone rushing to listen, Twitter and Spotify blowing up, everything about it felt culturally significant.

Just a week later, at the inception of the pandemic, Uzi dropped the deluxe. The two albums cater to two audiences. The first is a more conceptually sound project, playing into the spacey themes that had surrounded the album for years. The deluxe album contains many of the fan favorite leaks over the years. Uzi cures his release drought by acting like a parent who has wrongly yelled at their child. By first saying sorry with Eternal Atake, and then taking them out to ice cream with LUV Vs. The World 2. The cherry on top ensures Uzi’s reacceptance as golden child of trap.

Eternal Atake has strong tracks all around, but I feel it is most charming with tracks such as I’m Sorry, Celebration Station, and Bigger Than Life. These songs allow us to Peer into Uzi’s more honest mental state over the past few years, and the production on these three tracks, other than maybe the intro, is the most uniquely Eternal Atake-type production. Bubbly arpeggios, and simpler drums to allow for more melodic creativity from the rapper. Prices is yet another standout, with a sample of Travis Scott’s way back that doesn’t seem measly or forced, but rather has bolstered my enjoyment for both tracks. Lastly, P2 is a fantastic sequel to the rapper’s most successful song. Uzi is able to make an almost identical clone of XO Tour Llif3, but his execution as well as the fantastic album before it makes the listener feel like this.

The deluxe album is arguably better, song for song than the flagship, due to the lack of thematic constraints. Myron, I Can Show You, Moon Relate, Come This Way, Trap This Way, and Leaders are standouts on the B-side.

Does this album have bloat? Yes. Is it a storytelling masterclass? No. But much like Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Lil Uzi Vert successfully seeks forgiveness through his musical capability, delivering a cultural cornerstone of trap music.

2. how i’m feeling now, Charli XCX

how i'm feeling now, Charli XCX

When I implemented my one album per artist rule, I thought maybe Drake or Kanye would be most affected. But it was most difficult for me to not include 3 Charli XCX albums on this list. Ultimately I went with how i’m feeling now for 2 reasons. One, that it was my first introduction to her music, and two, that even though Pop 2 and Charli are certainly more inventive or star-studded, how i’m feeling now is the singer’s most thematically and sonically dense project.

Charli had an album in the works, but due to the pandemic, the range of her mental state due to confinement was more extreme than anything she’d experienced in years prior, so she scrapped that project and recorded and released HIFN in a matter of less than 2 months.

The intro song, pink diamond, opens with an abrasive synth, even by Charli’s standards, and sets the tone for the angst to be expected from the rest of the project. The next track, forever, opens with some of the same distortive elements, but quickly transforms into an autotuned ballad over a backtrack that sounds like waves crashing and thunder striking. The keys are electronic yet not gentle by the slightest. The chorus sees Charli dissolve into a sappier subject matter and a simpler and softer beat, yet the distortiveness is reintroduced for each verse.

Next is the most popular track, and my favorite, claws. Lyrically, claws continues on the uncontrollable feelings of affection from before, but over a prototypical Dylan Brady beat - combining the experimantal elements of 100 gecs with the pop appeal of Charli XCX. Track 5, detonate, sees Charli ditch the more shallow lyrical content in favor of something much more introspective. The feelings of admiration are here to stay, but with added motifs of self-deterioration. A budding romance in the heart of its honeymoon phase being forcefully seperated by a pandemic sees Charli experiencing an addiction that is both impossible to quit and to submit to. This frustration, having absolutely nowhere to go, sees the singer’s mental state absorbing the damage.

The penultimate track, anthems, is musically and lyrically significant. It seems Charli return once again to an angst-driven sound, leaving behind the softer electropop motifs of the mid-album. Anthems sees Charli crave the party lifestyle of the pre-pandemic world. The line, “I feel existential and so strange” perfectly summarizes what many of us felt during that period in time, and the singer is able to deliver a relatable track of just wanting to do something, anything, craving the inconviniences of before such as the heat from people’s bodies in a club. She feels like she is being robbed of her youth and all aspects of it, her ability to socialize, love, consume, everything.

This album perfectly showcases who Charli XCX is as an artist. It leverages the electronic ecstasy that she pioneered with Pop 2, to deliver tracks that can be listened to in a casual or social setting, but also allow us to peer into the deeper emotional and mental state of a 20-something year old during an unprecented time in our history and serves as a case study to how confinement amplifies our emotions but given an inability to execute on them, ultimately can lead to a destruction of our cognitive wellbeing.

1. COA, ericdoa

COA, ericdoa

I started this list knowing this album would be number 1. It honestly has been since the first time I heard it, and I anticipate it stays there for a long time. COA resonates with me in so many ways. It came out at a time where my music taste was rapidly changing, I had been getting into hyperpop and this album is still I consider to be that genre’s magnum opus.

COA perfectly treads the line between elements of pop, hyperpop, and trap. The opening track, 2008, sounds like a normal melodic trap song pitched up, yet the change of pitch adds a surprising amount of depth. The key change, along with production that follows trap archetypes yet with bubblier-than-usual synths and pads, enables the listener to get the same feelings of hype and angst as they would from a trap song, but does not allow the listener to latch on to a feeling of familiarity. A simple change allows it to escape a box, which is pretty representative of the project and the genre itself.

The second track, likewise, returns to a normal pitch, and again follows the same flow and rhythm of a trap record, but with a distorted growling bass, a squeakly electronic lead, and a hollow, yet pretty bell melody. These elements further abstract the user from the status quo of such music, but ericdoa’s almost Juice Wrld-like delivery ropes you back in. The general motif is I don’t view these first two songs as hyperpop, but rather an earnest challenge of emo rap in a manner I rather enjoyed.

Ericdoa’s delivery switches from rapping bragadociously to singing disheartendly, but he spends a large amount of his time on this project in an indistinguishable grey area. The third song, ivy, is a great example of this. He switches back and forth between this tones over a beat with a bassline that’s so low and distorted it sounds like it’s struggling to make it to the next note, astutely converying the desperation that is represented in the lyrical matter.

The fourth track, self sabotage, is one of my personal favorites. Ericdoa shifts from desepration to a reluctant acceptance, both in term’s of the tracks content and acoustics. The same muddled bass and synths from ivy return, only to be phased out with a verse with a flow and beat closer to a track like likewise. This song, for me, marks the turning point in the album where I really understood the emotions associated with the artist. Cocky bars and loud beats to cover up significant heartbreak and mental deterioration, exhibiting extremes of both, in terms of the production as well as lyrics and vocal delivery. Different tracks show polar extremes of these emotions but some tracks show remnants of both. Ericdoa tries to balance them, and in my eyes succeeds and fails simulataneously, which is further bolstered by production elements of both mainstream rap as well as nicher electronic genres.

The next two installments, deep end and mistake, both follow similar patterns of extemely vulnerabilty over bombastic background music, addictive vocal chops, and synthlines that itch my ADHD brain. Again, ericdoa tells us everything we need to know about him, who he is, how he feels, but the medium through which it is delivered makes it seem like he’d rather not us pay attention to all that.

The interlude, do or die, is a fun homage to his “alter ego” Dante Red, and all I’ll say about this song besides the fact that it’s good fanservice is the fact that a 206 BPM track with bitcrushed vocals over distorted 808s somehow successfully being a soothing listening break compared to the rest of the album is telling, to say the least.

Post-interlude COA, with songs such as loose things and thingsudo2me, showcase a more cohesive sound, a combination of the two we discussed earlier, but delivered consistently rather than sporadically. This allows us to listen more closely to lyrical matter, with strong performances from ericdoa as well as grandma and brakence as featured artists.

The penultimate track is a strong one, in my eyes. The artist delivers some of his most introspective vocals over a beat that sound’s like it’s crying for help, trying to escape. But as we’ve learnt, throw charismatic enough 808s on it and the song is turned into a rather fun listen.

The last song, plea, takes a much mellower, more depressing tone, and focuses on showcasing ericdoa’s vocal ability. This album will stay on top until I enter a much different era of my life, emotionally. I resonate so well with the emotions that are conveyed in this project. Not only emotions of what the artist tells us with words, but what he forces us to feel through the music. As with many of my favorite media, chaos is used as a medium to great avail. I know most will not like this album, and I don’t want them to. I just wish they like an album as much as I like this one.