A great album you discovered based on just ONE song you heard

Nick Lowe - “Pure Pop for Now People”

I heard “So it Goes” on the college radio station and immediately walked to the record co-op to buy the album.

 

I graduated High School in June 1978. My music was primarily classic rock - Beatles, Zeppelin, The Who, etc. Then I attended college and the campus radio station and record co-op were constantly playing music that I had never heard before - Costello, the Clash, Talking Heads, the Ramones, etc. It was a revelation. For the next decade or so, I listened to nothing but alternative music.

 

One of many...

 

Ahhhh....this in 1967. Light My Fire.

 

This. 1968. After hearing "why don't we do it in the road" as a teaser on our university radio.
Mine is stamped #484, 342...

 

Uhhh...an obsessed collector?
An artist exhibition in Soho (he's collected them since he was 15...)

 

Come onnnnn...free The White Albums!

 

3 spring to mind.

1. I was browsing in Virgin years ago and they played Belle and Sebastian - The Boy With The Arab Strap. I immediately bought the album. Had avoided the band for ages and after hearing the album I wondered why I'd avoided them.
2. I was in FOPP in Bristol before a First Aid Kit gig and heard Nick Cave's We Call Upon The Author. Went to the counter and bought Dig Lazarus Dig. Was only a fiver and the gig was great as well.
3. There was another one but the wife just interrupted me about wanting to go to the garden centre to buy a lavender plant and now its totally slipped my mind!

 

Yeah, that one...

 

there's a few

Elton John - Madness (From A Single Man)
Less Than Jake - Plastic Cup Politics (From Anthem)
Spanky & Our Gang - Anything You Choose (From Anything You Choose/Without Rhyme Or Reason)

 

There and Back by Jeff Beck
No Place to Run by UFO.

 

I discovered REM because one of my local rock stations occasionally played "Radio Free Europe" and I really liked it so I went to the local record store but they didn't have Murmur however they did have their new album, Reckoning. And so, being a 15 yr old I figured that if it was new it would sound even better. Luckily I was right and to this day I still love REM and Reckoning is still my favorite album of theirs.
Unfortunately, for every great album I've bought on the merits of one song there have been 5 terrible albums that I also bought only knowing one song. Oh well, thanks to Spotify and Tidal that doesn't happen anymore.

 

I'd dabbled a tiny, tiny bit with Roxy Music back around 1991 (end of my college years), but I never really cared for much of them. A roommate of mine had Street Life: 20 Great Hits on CD -- and I guess(?) I didn't mind the earlier stuff (no memory of it now), but the later 'smooth' RM material never set well with me (and still doesn't).

Flash forward 26 years, and "Out Of The Blue" keeps popping up on 2 or 3 different Pandora stations I have. By the 10th time it's come up (in 2 weeks, iirc), I'm suddenly playing the tune off YouTube 3x a day. And 2 months later, I own all 5 of first (early) Roxy Music albums on CD. (I won't touch the later stuff.)

 

Another horrible album, bought by accident.

Back in Canada, growing up, heard this song on the radio:
trooper - 3 dressed up as 9

this led to buying the album -> flying colors

Trooper (4) - Flying Colors


There's not another single good song on there either.

In fact, the original single isn't even that good either,
being a kid, i wasn't even sure what they were referring to?
Are they dissing a woman? Is it a math joke?



Anyways, another album that was listened to once, and put away forever again.

later
-1

 

High Land, Hard Rain (Aztec Camera) on the back of "Oblivious"
The Dream Academy thanks to "Life In A Northern Town"
Power In The Darkness (Tom Robinson Band) for "2-4-6-8 Motorway"
Highway 61 Revisited (Dylan) for "Like A Rolling Stone"

 

Bit of an odd one but very late night in the UK, probably early 97 ish, I heard Jewel's song You Were Meant For Me on tv and didn't catch the artist's name. Spent months searching for who the artist could have been without remembering the song name and eventually came across Pieces of You, which I think is very underrated (maybe more so in the UK than the US).

 

well i reckon i may cop some flack for this ... but anyhow ...
when i was a wee pup of 12 or 13 i heard don't pay the ferryman by chris deburgh, and i thought it was pretty cool. i saw the album the getaway on a discount rack and i had the money and i bought it. it's a while since i listened to it, but i was surprised at the music on the album and enjoyed it a lot.... more importantly tht led me to but spanish train and other stories and that is a great album imo

 

Another terrible album, this time from ABBA,

now i may not have bought the album, so i can't take all the blame..

1976
abba - SOS was all over the radio, along with all their other songs,
yes, it was catchy, but got tiring after awhile.

so this led to -> greatest hits (canadian) the one with the park bench cover,
not the illustrated drawing.
--------------------------------------------------

ABBA - Greatest Hits



one of the worst albums of all time!

later
-1

 

"Back in the day" this happened quite frequently. One song played and go check out an album. It doesn't happen much anymore for me. There are usually enough resources online to check into an album quite a bit before committing. The last one like this I remember was back in 1998 I believe and the song was Winter by Patricia Barber off her album Modern Cool. I've been a Patricia Barber fan ever since.

 

The only album I can think of would be:
Catch a Fire by Bob Marley & the Wailers after randomly listening to the track 400 Years when testing my headphones on multiple genres. Liked the song so much gave the album a listen and is now one of my all time favourite albums, and now I’ve explored most of Marley’s discography.

 

ABBA having one of the worst albums of all time? You must be joking

 

Joseph - Stoned Age Man

 

It seems you might have misread the thread title: it's about posting GREAT albums you discovered.

BTW, personally I think that ABBA's Greatest Hits is a great album. So you posted correctly, only using the wrong words.

 

Me too! Having never heard of him, I saw Richard play it on a BBC2 arts TV show and went out to get the album the next Saturday, I haven't looked back.

I must have discovered many great albums and bands via Tommy Vance's and Fluff Freeman's radio shows. One of them played Pleiades which was so different from anything else at the time, so I got King's X Gretchen Goes to Nebraska which remains one of my favourite albums.


I bought Therapy?'s Face The Strange EP on cassette at a car boot sale in Cornwall on a whim because I'd forgotten to bring any tapes for the car journey, played it over and over (It's only 8 min) on the drive home and love the lead track Turn which led me to get their brilliant Troublegum album.

I have a couple of cheap 60's compilations with Tim Buckley's Buzzin' Fly on, again it's very different from the other songs and what a voice. Around the same time Dream Letter: Live in London 1968 was released so I took a risk, indeed Buzzin' Fly is the first track he plays but it's almost a warm up, the rest of the show is sublime.

 

I've done this dozens of times... mostly hearing something when I'm browsing through a Brick & Mortar Record Store.

I started a Gene Vincent collection from one such experience.

Maybe the strangest locale for such an event was, while working out at the gym, I heard the song "Potions for Foxes," so I immediately bought the CD -- Rilo Kiley "More Adventurous."

Later I tracked down the somewhat rare LP which, despite supposed being recorded to analog tape, doesn't sound any better than the CD.
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