new favorite.

a song from your favorite album

What music lover in their right mind would have a favorite album?

I don't have a favorite song. I don't have a favorite band. I don't even have a favorite style of music. So, why would I have a favorite album? I out and out refuse!

It is completely impossible to select. And even harder to stay committed to the answer. This doesn't mean I haven't been taking a musical tour through my head, through my iTunes, with quite the trip down musical memory highways and byways. The trouble arises when all you find yourself left with are musical beginnings, the influences, those records that you couldn't help but discover when you did. They are the albums that had impact on your life because of when you and they crossed paths.

(1.) I can't help that I discovered the brilliance of Led Zeppelin with their multi-named and often generically referred to fourth record. Every single tune is a classic, but it's not their best album and it's not my favorite of theirs either. It's probably their most influential and their most reviled, but it's got nothing on Physical Graffiti.

(2.) There have been times that I could listen to Pink Floyd The Wall front to back until I was ready to flip it back over and start again like a musical möbius strip, listening to all of the textures of composition, unsettling audio samples, and orchestral pretentiousness, and others when I could hear nothing more than ninety minutes of depression that reminded me of an Alan Parker film I once saw.

(3.) Sometimes my ears are craving the lyricism and looseness of guest musician laden Graceland, Paul Simon's 1986 ode to his time in Africa with what presumably had a layover in New Orleans. It won oodles of Grammy's and is a crowning achievement, but sometimes I want to dig deeper into the library than what somebody's tone deaf Aunt is spinning.

(4.) Eddie Vedder and his brethren showed up just in time for my libido and angst to hit full boil in 1991, when they put the semi-ironically titled eleven song album Ten in my sophomoric hands. As time passes and Cobain worship goes through predictable waves, I continue to maintain that Pearl Jam were a far superior band and this album is musically more interesting and mature than anything Nirvana put out.

(5.) Despite the radio raping and eighties nighting of several of its prominent singles, I love every single beat, phrase, silence, and lyric on Depeche Mode's Violator, but it might not be the best thing in my music library. Or is it?

For someone who decreed themselves a purist for so long, and actually spent a number of years avoiding the early use of burned CDs for wish of their store bought companions filled with artwork, lyrics, and sometimes liner notes, I have become Mr. Random, digesting the first two or three seconds of hundreds of songs a day through iTune and iPod usage.

I consider a lot of music in the favorite category. I hear a song that overpowers me with its beauty or with its spot-on emotional outburst and I immediately need to own it on my top 5, top 10, top 25, top any random number just to harness it a little bit more than my ears can attempt. Sometimes I feel like Cusack's character in High Fidelity, but that's really it. I could go on and on, writing and re-writing this blog without ever reaching anything the least bit conclusive. Music fuels my passion for living, and finding the specifics for why a love exists can only kill it slow and hard.