The Skip Button Top 10
Not too long ago, I took to this website to talk about my top ten albums of 2020. One great thing about looking back at this last year of music was that it got me reflecting on my first year of The Skip Button, and how this show has offered me a brand new way of engaging with music.
Perhaps there was a more appropriate list I could be making…
I’ve spent a lot of the past year doing a deep dive into what is supposedly some of the worst music in recent memory. This is the music that we, as a society, have agreed is deserving of our mockery and scorn. However, in order to create content that is at all interesting (and in order to convince myself that listening to Nickelback’s entire discography is actually a good use of my time), I’ve had to cast my assumptions and biases aside and open my heart up to the possibility that what I was about to listen to might actually be good. To be sure, that didn’t always happen (I don’t know if you could tell, but I’ve been trying to find a positive spin on JC Chasez’s Schizophrenic album for about 10 months now and so far, nothing).
However, now that I’ve celebrated a year of hosting this podcast, I thought I’d tip my hat to some of the music along the way that actually did pleasantly surprise me; the music that at times made me wonder, “Wait, why am I supposed to hate this, again?”
So here they are: my top 10 favorite albums I’ve discussed during the inaugural year of The Skip Button:
10. Nickelback - All The Right Reasons
The irony of Nickelback’s 5th studio album is that by watering down traditional grunge music into a digestible pop format, the band ended up with something that was all their own. Whether or not it was the band’s intention, All The Right Reasons became an introductory course for young millennials all over the world discovering grunge music for the first time. Chad Kroeger’s melodies on songs like “Photograph” were just enticing enough to ease his audience into his rough and gravelly vocal timbre. On “Follow You Home”, the drums and guitars rock so ferociously, you might forget for a moment that what you’re listening to is a pop group at the peak of their abilities. All The Right Reasons ends with their hit song, “Rockstar”, an ironic lampoon of the trappings that come with fame. The song’s long misunderstood message is just one example of Nickelback being far too successful - both in what they do and how it sells - to worry about all the people who will just never get it.
9. Black Eyed Peas - Elephunk
On the Black Eyed Peas episode of The Skip Button, I claimed that, while the group’s mid-2000’s music might “sound” good, it doesn’t actually hold up to a lot of scrutiny. No album encapsulates this better than Elephunk, one of the best-sounding albums of the 2000’s. Take the song “Labor Day (It’s a Holiday)”. Somehow, Will.I.Am was able to make a song sound so exuberantly funky, you might forget that it’s literally just a song about Labor Day. With the addition of Fergie to their roster, the group had the flexibility to transition from boom-bap to mainstream music designed to get an entire stadium of people jumping. If that was their goal with “Let’s Get it Started”, I can’t think of a more successful song of that era. That song, as well as the other hits from this album - “Hey Mama”, “Where is the Love”, etc. - proved that Black Eyed Peas could make hip-hop sound however they wanted it to and still be as big as any other contemporary rap act.
8. Coldplay - Parachutes
Although it’s the debut album of one of the world’s highest-selling bands, more than anything, Parachutes feels like the arrival of Chris Martin, a 23-year-old songwriter who would become one of music’s most prolific melodists. The fragility in Martin’s still-developing singing voice only adds to the tenderness of melodies like the ones heard on “Sparks”. Throughout the debut, there are glimpses of where the band was heading. “Spies”, for example, is a standout track that predicts how subtle storytelling would become a signature of Coldplay albums. They had yet to arrive at their orchestral arena-pop sound - a sound that would lead critics to saying things like: “Perhaps it's hard to think outside the box when the box is the size of the Las Vegas MGM Grand Garden Arena.” However, in retrospect, songs like their breakout hit, “Yellow” feel like a statement of purpose, asserting that one day, stadiums all over the world will be singing along to their music.
7. U2 - Joshua Tree
U2’s iconic fifth album is a perfect example of what happens when a band is completely at ease with their own musical identity. With Brian Eno stepping in as a producer, Joshua Tree sounds as big (if sometimes as bloated) as the ideas behind it. Bono’s voice and the Edge’s guitar feel like they’ve been released from cages, and are now free to swirl around and encompass their listeners. With this freedom, they tell different stories (“Red Hill Mining Town”), explore new genres (“Running to Stand Still”), and of course, rise up against political violence (“Bullet the Blue Sky”). Yet through it all, they sound more focused and confident then they ever have. The opening three-song run on this album alone (“Where The Streets Have No Name”, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, and “With or Without You”) is enough to solidify their place as one of the best bands to come out of the 80’s.
6. Black Eyed Peas - Monkey Business
On their 2005 album, Black Eyed Peas sound more at home in the funky pop sound they established on Elephunk. Out of all the mainstream rap albums to come out from this era, Monkey Business is maybe the most jubilant (even if it’s sometimes as cringey as the word “jubilant”). “Don’t Phunk With My Heart” is a double-time exercise in how many catchy elements the group can cram into one song. “Pump It”, the Dick Dale-sampling album opener, is another example of a group finding new ways to bring hip-hop into the mainstream, no matter how many people it may piss off. Compared to Elephunk, this album is much more consistent (no unsolicited homages to Arbor Day or whatever), and features more rap-centric songs like “Ba Bump” or “Like That”. There’s still that iconic who-even-cares-what-words-we-use style of rapping that can be heard on tracks like “My Humps” (I don’t know what “milky milky coco puffs'' refer to, and at this point, I don’t want to). However, it’s employed much more effectively on what is arguably the best album in the group’s catalog.
5. U2 - War
If there exists a single counter-argument to the notion that U2’s protest music is disingenuous or heavy-handed, it’s War. U2’s third album introduced Bono as music’s preeminent political songster, an astute observer of conflict and loss. His haunting vocal performances blend perfectly with the work of his bandmates, whose instruments pound and march like a military on songs like “Seconds”. “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is an iconic opening track, not just because it’s a rocking and emotional protest anthem, but also because, as a response to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the song states plainly the band’s identity as Irish Baby Boomers. War is, in part, an album about all the demons that come with this identity. As a result, it’s an album that could have only been made by this band at that time.
4. Coldplay - Rush of Blood to the Head
If Parachutes highlights the unique talents of Chris Martin, then Rush of Blood to The Head, the group’s second album, highlights what happens when that talent is bolstered by the right band. The arrangements on this project are electric yet patient, highlighting Martin’s careful choices of lyric and melody. In this way, Rush of Blood to the Head is in stark contrast both with Parachutes - which at times is too timid and delicate - and with the group’s more derided later albums - which at times threaten to swallow Chris Martin’s ideas whole. With songs like “The Scientist” and “Clocks” becoming massive hits, Coldplay became the new face of Brit-pop, inspiring a young generation of music lovers to rush to their own instruments and learn the band’s melodies and rhythms. However, songs like the simmering opener, “Politik” set out to prove that the band has much more to offer than just a nice ditty.
3. Lil Wayne - Rebirth
Never has the phrase “greater than the sum of its parts” made more sense to me than when I did a deep dive into Lil Wayne’s deeply-hated rock album. Truly, there is not a single part of this album that works; the arrangements are contrived, the lyrics are often sophomoric, and the whole presentation is confused and inauthentic. And yet, there’s a satisfaction that can be found in how absolutely chaotic Rebirth is. Lil Wayne once said that this album wasn’t about genre, but about freedom. I guess freedom is having as much to lose as Wayne did in 2010, and just not caring. In this quest for freedom, Lil Wayne attempts to push the boundaries not just of hip-hop, but also the very idea of blackness. On songs like “Prom Queen” and “Knockout”, he adopts the musicality and presentation of pop-punk while still managing to make something unequivocally rooted in black music. In this way, Rebirth is a precursor to how our idea of “black music” would evolve a decade later. If that’s not enough, the straight-ahead rapping on “Drop The World” proves that hip-hop can carry the same emotionality as emo music. Sure, Rebirth is a failed experiment, but the fact that its implications can still be felt all these years later is reason enough to recognize it as an important if not great album.
2. DJ Khaled - We The Best
To be fair, this album wasn’t much of a surprise. I’ve been aware of the effectiveness of DJ Khaled’s second studio album since long before I memorized every word of the remix to I’m So Hood (I’ll stop bragging about this when it stops being so damn cool). At his most influential, Khaled’s albums were a state of the union for hip-hop, and no album better encapsulates what was happening in 2007 rap music then We The Best. Khaled’s bed of beats and ad-libs were nothing ground-breaking (or creative, or pleasant, or well-mixed, or... ), but they didn’t need to be; they just needed to provide enough room for the five-star talent that was featured on this project, from the solidified (like Trick Daddy and Jadakiss) to the up-and-coming (like Flo Rida and Rick Ross). The fact that songs like “Bitch I’m from Dade County'' had low-quality synth lines and no hook just highlighted the defiant bravado with which some of Miami’s finest rappers were vying to put their city on the map. And while critics were quick to deride and question Khaled’s role on the album, just try to listen to this album’s hits without shouting along to his catchphrases.
1. Phil Collins - Face Value
Maybe it was because he had already accomplished so much with Genesis. Maybe it’s because he had learned so much for his experiences as a prog-rock drummer, a pop songwriter, and a jazz fusionist. Maybe it’s because he was too bitter about the heartbreak in his life to care about making an easily marketable project. Whatever the reason, it’s clear that Phil Collins’ debut album was made with no intention of being in conversation with what was happening in music at the time. This is one of the reasons Phil Collins received so much criticism. It’s also what makes Face Value so brilliant. Inspired mostly by his widely-publicized divorce with Andrea Bertorelli, the album is a tour of the many stages of grieving a broken relationship: denial (“You Know What I Mean”), depression (“If Leaving Me Is Easy”), and of course, anger (“In The Air Tonight”). Each of these emotions is paired with its own sound - both sounds that show off his virtuosity as a traditional rock musician, as well as brand new sounds whose implications would reverberate throughout the decade. In fact, some of these emotions are conveyed through haunting jam sessions - like “Hand in Hand” - rather than through song. To be sure, some songs, like “This Must Be Love”, are introductions to the corny, soft-rock sound that, to his haters, would come to define Phil Collins’ career. But, as is so often true with the people I discuss on The Skip Button, the first things that might come to mind when one thinks of his music are only a fraction of what it actually has to offer.
