The Velvet Underground’s debut was a commercial failure upon release but interestingly, even the music press took little notice of it. This is raw rock and roll in all its glory and imperfection. Sure, it all borders on pretentiousness and self-indulgence but that’s part of the charm of Horses, an album in which feeling matters much more than technical craft.
While the actual music on Horses is somewhat standard rock and roll fare, it’s all elevated by Smith’s evocative delivery, which still sounds transgressive even to this day. People who were like me, different …” Horses’ importance to rock music as a whole cannot be overstated, as it was not just a landmark achievement in the punk rock movement (which was still very much in its infancy in 1975) but established Smith as one of the rock’s earliest and most influential female idols. Beat-poetry infused lyrics combine with a killing backing band to create a statement record that would, in Smith’s own words, “make a certain type of person not feel alone. Patti Smith’s debut albums remains one of the most brilliant marriages of poetry and rock and roll. tracks with recent singles, which only pissed off people more. The album was also a massive hit across the pond, but American listeners had to wait two years for a version that replaced some U.K. Though some critics have pointed out that Strummer’s own privilege frequently undercuts the points he’s trying to make, his righteous anger on songs like “What’s My Name” resonated with a whole generation who felt their voices were going unheard in Britain’s march to ultra-conservatism under Margaret Thatcher in the 80s and the songs still rock regardless. Lead vocalist Joe Strummer and the rest of The Clash’s rapid-fire tunes touch on subjects such as unemployment, race relations and anti-American sentiment and though punk rock has come a long way in the intervening decades, this album still stands alongside the likes of the Sex Pistols’ debut album as a blueprint for the genre as a whole. One of the earliest (and best) punk rock albums, The Clash’s self-titled debut hit like a rallying cry for disdainful young people growing up in Britain in the late 1970s. In truth, Please Please Me only looks like a lesser work because The Beatles reached such vast artistic heights in their later years but as far as debuts go, there are few that can measure up. Instead, the exuberance of John, Paul, George, and Ringo shines, especially on outright classics like ” I Saw Her Standing There,” “Boys,” and “Twist and Shout,” the latter of which was recorded last due to Lennon’s throat-shredding vocals. Fortunately, the band’s rushed schedule doesn’t come through on the actual recording. The Beatles recorded 10 of the album’s 14 songs in just over 12 hours at Abbey Road studio on February 11th, 1963, which is just obscene. While Please Please Me is far from their best effort, even a lesser Beatles album is better than the best work produced by many other bands and on one hand, you just have to marvel at what the group accomplishes on their debut given the circumstances of its recording. Indeed, if you were to give someone just Please Please Me and their final album, Abbey Road, they’d think they were the work of two different bands.
Unlike most bands, The Beatles’ music only got better over time, as the Fab Four constantly evolved their sound over the course of the 1960s. Of course, the real reason behind the band’s sound – guitarist Tony Iommi had to tune his guitar down three semitones after losing the tips of his middle and ring fingers of his right hand as a teenager – is decidedly less cool than thinking the four lads from Birmingham were sent by Satan to play the devil’s music, but that didn’t stop Sabbath from starting a whole new movement in popular music in one fell swoop.
It’s not hard to see why Black Sabbath scared the crap out of concerned parents and church groups everywhere if the crushing doom of the band’s slowed-down rock playing didn’t fill you with dread, the album’s haunting cover surely did the trick. Indeed, the band’s self-titled debut is often credited with giving birth to heavy metal and the fact that it was released at the beginning of the 70s, right as the music world was pulling away from the hope and optimism of the hippie generation, is fitting. Right from the opening of the title track, with its infamous demonic guitar riff, it was clear that Black Sabbath had changed the course of rock music forever.
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