Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time: Album-by-Album Thread

471. Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow

One of the milestones of mainstream 60s psychedelia with some genre defining songs. Belongs on the list.

 

Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow

This albums list is turning out to be more interesting than the accompanying RS 500 songs list. Anyway, Surrealistic Pillow. One of the pillars of SF psych rock, although, that said, there ain't that much psychedelia on the album; 'White Rabbit' is indisputable, 'Plastic Fantastic Lover', 'Today'. Much of Surrealistic Pillow is still at heart folk-rock, but there's nothing wrong with that of course. It's arguably JA's most focused album, although I'm glad they were not starstruck by its chart success. They instead decided to stay true to their underground roots and were not afraid to exploit new territory on subsequent albums.

4 / 5

 

Surrealistic Pillow
A-
I'm not a big fan of Jefferson Airplane/Starship generally, but I do really like this one. And, its importance to its scene is pretty huge.

 

Stuff that might make some kind of top 500 for me so far.

Muddy Waters.... although I would probably lean towards the Chess box over Anthology
Howlin' Wolf .... Moanin At Midnight, is excellent, but I would likely have other favourites. Howlin Wolf is probably my favourite blues singer.
Something Else By The Kinks ... up until recently i thought of the sixties Kinks as a singles band, but they are certainly not. At this stage i think the Kinks were the best sixties album band going.

So far that would be about all that would make a list for me.
Linda Ronstadt might make it onto a list, but possibly a different album.
I probably prefer Iggy Pop's solo career over the Stooges, but even there i am not sure he'd get a top 500. 500 albums isn't very many, and there have been some wonderful albums in the last seventy years.

That may make it seem like I only like older albums, but it is more that I am just not particularly fond of the more modern albums they decided to pick here.

 

It's really just a collated list a few hundred (industry) folks' 50 favorite albums. Some of the participants are surely nominating things partially due to influence, etc., but there's no requirement that they do that.

Participating in the thread is just a way to prod yourself to listen to and talk about some music that maybe you wouldn't otherwise listen to or think about very much if at all . . . although of course occasional selections are going to be things we've heard tens of not hundreds of times and talked to death. But most won't be.

 

As far as Iggy Pop goes, Raw Power and Funhouse are 2 of the greatest rock records ever made and from his solo career Lust For Life and The Idiot are also classics in my opinion

 

That's fair, just not my opinion. Like I say Iggy may get in, but that would take an awful lot of work for me to get sorted out, and i don't have time at the moment

 

Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow Another album I bought, then ditched.

For some reason White Rabbit - a generational classic - wasn't included on the original UK release. (Neither were another two songs; all three being replaced with tracks off their debut.) The other single, Somebody To Love, is all-out great with its frenetic insistence. Closer, Plastic Fantastic Lover, has an effective off-kilter wooziness. The rest? An amalgam of twee folksiness & hippy drippy ultimately sinks it. Overall, it's just boring.

 

I think the main problem with the list that I've seen so far, is the industry figures voting on it. Whereas the artists and critics are going for what they like, I can see the industry executives going for what paid for their house on the French Riviera.

Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow

I liked this a lot more 40-45 years ago -- it's not freaky at all, it sounds like basic folk pop/rock. I think albums like this are what younger people dismissively call boomer music. It's certainly not bad, but I don't understand it being massively appealing unless you were there at the time, which I wasn't. I prefer Baxters, which is one of those albums you can't believe made the top 20. 3/5, wouldn't make my top 500 rock albums.

 

#471

Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow

I don’t know if anyone ever understands this—I’ve mentioned it a couple times before, and I’m exaggerating it a bit to get the point across, but Jefferson Airplane always strikes me as weird in that their playing and arrangements come across like reinventing the wheel. In other words, I always get a vibe from them like they picked up guitars, drums, etc. and from scratch, without bothering to learn any conventions or even pay much attention to how other people played, they said, “How can we make interesting/pleasing sounds with these instruments?”

I find that quite attractive, but it makes them fairly bizarre. It requires some acclimation to really understand them. I suppose the Grateful Dead are a bit like that, too. But Jefferson Airplane always comes across to me as reinventing the wheel in a very pleasantly idiosyncratic “crooked” manner.

They’re also a bit odd in just how varied each of their albums tends to be.

Surrealistic Pillow is as good of an example of these characteristics as any Airplane album. What Surrealistic Pillow has that the Airplane’s other albums don’t is two huge hits that definitely deserved to be massive hits. The hits don’t really sound like anything else on the album. They don’t really sound much like each other, either. This isn’t a good or bad thing. It’s just an Airplane thing.

All of this makes them relatively “difficult” listening. They’re fairly experimental. They’re pretty hardcore psychedelic overall. Which makes it more remarkable that they were as popular as they were.

I’ve never really tried to do a ranking of Airplane albums, so I’m not sure what would be my #1 for them. They’re a 2nd tier, top 51-250 artist for me, but again, I lump artists into “families,” and this family is quite extensive—they morphed into Jefferson Starship and then Starship, of course, but there are also offshoots like Hot Tuna, and there are a bunch of solo albums and related projects/collaborations.

As much as I like Airplane, I like the Jefferson Starship incarnation even more, and contra the Jefferson Airplane/Jefferson Starship fan norm, I like the “just plain old Starship” incarnation at least as much as the Airplane version of the band. So whatever my Airplane ranking would be, I’d probably have a Jefferson Starship album or two, or maybe even a Starship album on my top 500 list instead of an Airplane album. But I still love Surrealistic Pillow and the rest.

My top 15 albums from the list so far (the further we get into the list by the way, the less sure I am of where I ranked anything, but I’ve decided to not worry about/not second-guess previous placements and just try to approximate where the current album should go for me based on the mess I’ve created so far, lol. To really do an ordered ranking, I’d need to do a lot of relistening with comparisons in mind):

1. Howlin’ Wolf – Moanin’ in the Moonlight
2. The Kinks – Something Else by the Kinks
3. Sheryl Crow – Sheryl Crow
4. Bonnie Raitt - Nick of Time
5. Muddy Waters – The Anthology
6. Phil Spector – Back to Mono
7. Rufus - Ask Rufus
8. Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow
9. Linda Ronstadt – Heart Like a Wheel
10. The Pharcyde – Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde
11. Sparks – Kimono My House
12. Miranda Lambert – The Weight of These Wings
13. The Stooges – The Stooges
14. The Indestructible Beat of Soweto (various artists)
15. Belle & Sebastian – If You’re Feeling Sinister

 

#471 Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow
This is the rose between the thorns of yesterday and tomorrow's albums. A heady mix of psychedelia, folk-rock and more straight-up rock songs. There is a great diversity of material here, yet the Airplane managed to meld disparate material - and juxtapose the contributions of multiple vocalists - into what sounds like a cohesive album, which rises and falls, ebbs and flows quite beautifully. White Rabbit is a favourite , followed by Somebody To Love and 3/5 of a Mile, but the ballads are also a delight - Today and Comin' Back To Me are achingly delicate.

Overall, a fantastic album and straight in at no.1. It would make my Top 500 albums with no hesitancy. White Rabbit would also make an equivalent list of songs (and very well placed at that); I've always found that a fascinating song, with its tale of substance abuse set against a literary background and martial drumbeat.

I prefer the 'surprise' of each new album and not to look too far ahead, but I keep taking the occasional peek in preparation. It struck me that it could be a number of weeks before this album is topped.

 

Racking the third 10

The Kinks – Something Else by The Kinks
Probably my #4 Kinks album, and still easily worth inclusion of the top 500 of all time. Sure, some songs are stronger than others, but there is good variety here and every last cut has something wonderful to offer. An easy vault to #1 in this group of ten as well as overall in the first 30 so far. The way this list is going, It’ll probably sit there for some time.


Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow
While I’m not a huge psychedelia fan, I’ve always loved the Airplane, and this is probably their best (After Bathing at Baxters being the closest competition). Had my appreciation for Something Else by the Kinks not shot up recently, this would have been my first in this group and overall so far.


Howlin’ Wolf – Moanin’ in the Moonlight
Another collection by an early bluesman which may or may not be the best collection available, but is definitely a solid representation. Like the Muddy Waters, this is an easy one to score high.


Big Star - #1 Record
I’m glad to see others saying this group escaped them back in the day. I sure did. There’s lots to love about this album. Yet, it doesn’t quite seem to connect with me as much as I think it should on paper. Still a solid, and good enough to hop into my revised top 10 up to this point.


Sparks – Kimono My House
I run hot and cold on this. Sometimes it seems fantastically creative and sometimes it seems just a step this side of novelty music. In the end, I have to set it middle of the pack, but am comfortable putting it closer to the top than the bottom.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Sheryl Crow – Sheryl Crow
I remember first hearing All I Wanna’ Do Is Have Some Fun and thinking “meaningless fluff” and writing her off. She would of course reinforce that later with the equally vacuous I Wanna’ Soak Up The Sun. Now I know it’s not fair to judge an artist by the fluff that hits the airwaves, and Crow is respected, so I tried digging deeper. While things weren’t quite so empty, still pretty boring to this set of ears. I do like the extra crunch of this album over her glossier efforts. But again, I’m not much of a roots guy or a 90s guy and this is all a sort of 90s take on roots, so while it’s not necessarily bad, it’s really not for me.


SZA – Ctrl
This is positively dreadful, but not entirely without its bright side. On the plus, while the harmonies and chord progressions are basic, they are sometimes modestly ear pleasing. Across its length, the album also has adequate variety to keep from being as monotonous as many others in its field. But within each song the beats are artificial, repetitive, and most of all, unimaginitive enough to wear out their welcome within the space of the song. The vocals are consistently dreadful, overproduced to the point of intolerably grating on the nerves. Lyrics range from slightly interesting in a new way to mostly uninteresting to downright abhorrent. I honestly love that women have gained so much voice in music, and they get to overtly cover topics once taboo, but this is truly artless and seemingly deliberately vulgar. In the end, this is a hard pass. I only put it at 7th out of this group of ten because it has a few pleasing moments while the three below are completely irredeemable.

Miranda Lambert – The Weight of These Wings
It wasn’t so long ago that Kacey Musgraves started helping me find good in country.
Miranda Lambert is no Kacey Musgraves.

Selena – Amor Prohibo
Mall music devoid of creativity or uniqueness. Offensively generic. Tiffany in Español. Not even good enough to be a demo mp3 at the Casio dealer. How on earth would anybody think this one of the top 500 albums of all time?

Daddy Yankee – Barrio Fino
Yelling… but with flow? If so, intolerably simple minded flow, if you can even call it that. Easily the least musical entry in the first 30 covered on this list, and I sincerely hope in this entire list. Utterly unlistenable.

The revised Top 10 (new entries in bold):
The Kinks – Something Else by The Kinks
Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow
Muddy Waters – The Anthology
Howlin’ Wolf – Moanin’ in the Moonlight
Shakira - Dónde están los ladrones
Rufus - Ask Rufus
Big Star - #1 Record
Various Artists- Indestructible Beat of Soweto
Sparks – Kimono My House
The Ronettes - Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes

 

SURREALISTIC PILLOW (Jefferson Airplane)
The two singles are fantastic. The rest of the album less so, though it is still of good quality. This album would be in my top 500 and likely would be somewhere similar to where RS has placed it.
GRADE: B+

I'm listing only the albums I would consider below:
1. SOMETHING ELSE (The Kinks)
2. #1 RECORD (Big Star)
3. THE STOOGES (The Stooges)
4. SURREALISTIC PILLOW (Jefferson Airplane)
5. HEART LIKE A WHEEL (Linda Rondstadt)
6. SHERYL CROW (Sheryl Crow)
7. BACK TO MONO (Phil Spector w/various artists)
8. NICK OF TIME (Bonnie Raitt)
9. THE ANTHOLOGY (Muddy Waters)
10. PRESENTING THE FABULOUS RONETTES (Ronettes)
11. MOANING IN THE MOONLIGHT (Howlin Wolf)
12. SOUNDS OF SOWETO (various artists)

The only ones definitely on my top 500 list are #1-#4.

 

470. Juvenile - 400 Degreez (1998)
Producers: Bryan “Baby” Williams, Ronald “Slim” Williams, Mannie Fresh

400 Degreez is the third studio album by Americanrapper Juvenile. The album was released on November 3, 1998,[1] on Cash Money Records. It remains Juvenile's best-selling album of his solo career and currently the best-selling album ever released on Cash Money Records. The album was certified 4x Platinum by the RIAA, on December 19, 1999.

Two official singles, "Ha" and "Back That Azz Up" (the latter having been released commercially as "Back That Thang Up") peaked at numbers 68 and 19 on the Billboard Hot 100, respectively. The album peaked at number two on Billboard's Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums music chart and number nine on the Billboard 200 music chart in 1999. It also claimed the top position on the Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart on the Billboard Year-End chart for 1999. As a single, "Back That Azz Up" was released, credited, and charted as the more censored "Back That Thang Up". The album also features a bonus remixof the single "Ha" with New York rapper Jay-Z, the only guest appearance outside of the Cash Money roster and the first time Cash Money collaborated with an East Coast rapper on a song. As of 2013, 400 Degreez has sold well over 6 million copies worldwide.[citation needed] The album won R&B Album of the Year at the 1999 Billboard Music Awards. The explicit version of the album was not totally uncensored such as the line "do a (homicide) with me" on "Gone Ride With Me" and "put a (pistol) in his face" in "Welcome 2 Tha Nolia".

Critical Reception
AllMusic 4/5
Robert Christgau
Pitchfork 9.4/10
RapReviews 7/10
Rolling Stone 3.5/5

Audience Reception
7.1/10 from 45 users - AlbumOfTheYear.org
3.52/5 from 1,185 users, #392 for 1998 - RateYourMusic.com
2.7/5 from 11 users - Musicboard

 

400 Degreez
A-
In retrospect, Juvenile had a problem for awhile with some incredibly dated album covers - and this is possibly the worst offender of the bunch - but also in retrospect, this particular album is a real standout. It's possible to create many different timelines representing the different eras of hip-hop; personally, I see 1998 as the breaking point from "Golden Age of Hip Hop" (Biggie's 1997 "Life After Death" - and then actual death - is a good place to end that era, IMO), and this album plus Outkast's "Aquemini" are good examples of the major 1998 albums that signaled a whole new change in direction. It wasn't created in a vacuum, but the sound and style just had nothing much at all to do with either "East Coast" or "West Coast." In a purely technical sense, Juvenile's rapping abilities and delivery are limited, but the mushmouth style and overall flow and the huge success of the album helped change the way hip-hop sounded.

 

RS #470

Juvenile – 400 Degreez

We just covered “Back That Azz Up” from 400 Degreez in the song thread, and I feel I may have been slightly harsher on the album than I should have been. I am a hip-hop fan and I do like Juvenile and this album—I play it often enough. The beats are at a nice level of complexity arrangement-wise, and most importantly they groove; they’re pretty funky—even if occasionally the backwards stuff can be overdone and it can seem to drop the groove for a split second.

However, as I said in the song thread, but I’ll dial back slightly, there are at least, say, 15 or so hip-hop albums from 1998 alone that I like as much as 400 Degreez, and there are at least a handful of hip-hop albums from 1998 that I’d rank above this one . . . and it’s not as if I’d have 200 hip-hop albums on a general top 500 album list.

So it’s a very good album, as long as you like hip-hop in general, but it’s one of tens of very good hip-hop albums.

Top ten albums so far plus five lower to show the placement of the current selection:

1. Howlin’ Wolf – Moanin’ in the Moonlight
2. The Kinks – Something Else by the Kinks
3. Sheryl Crow – Sheryl Crow
4. Bonnie Raitt - Nick of Time
5. Muddy Waters – The Anthology
6. Phil Spector – Back to Mono
7. Rufus - Ask Rufus
8. Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow
9. Linda Ronstadt – Heart Like a Wheel
10. The Pharcyde – Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde
.
.
.
21. The Ronettes - Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes
22. Lady Gaga – Born This Way
23. Juvenile – 400 Degreez
24. John Mayer - Continuum
25. Marvin Gaye - Here, My Dear

 

Juvenile - 400 Degreez

It's decent, particularly from post golden age hip hop (I have it as 87-94) , which I feel had a greater fall than late 70's rock, but I wouldn't put it in my top 300 hip hop albums, let alone my top 500 rock/pop/r&b albums. 3/5.

 

Juvenile - 400 Degreez I'd heard the Back That Azz Up single before - and disliked it - but not the rest. So I gave this a quick listen.

The title track has a rather effective robotic arrangement, but the album overall is devoid of much that's musically interesting to me. The lyrics - those I could make out - seemed to be a depressing mix of misogynistic braggadocio and gangsta violence. Tedious and perturbing in equal measure.

I much preferred the Pharcyde album that was discussed earlier in the thread.

 

Juvenile - 400 Degrees

'400 Degrees' is a decent longplayer, it contains some very cool beats and has interesting production, but I'm not sure it's the best hiphop album of 1998, deserving all those music awards. Oh well, it sold like hot cakes and spawned a couple of big hits, so I see where people voting for this are coming from.

3,5 / 5

 

Juvenile/400 Degreez – One listen to “Back That Azz Up” on the RS 500 song thread was all I needed to hear of this album. If the rest of the songs are different and incredibly unmissable, I guess that’s my loss.

Top 10:
1. Surrealistic Pillow – Jefferson Airplane
2. If You’re Feeling Sinister – Belle & Sebastian
3. Here, My Dear – Marvin Gaye
4. Ask Rufus – Rufus/Chaka Khan
5. Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde – Pharcyde
6. #1 Record – Big Star
7. Kinks – Something Else
8. I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight – Richard & Linda Thompson
9. Heart Like A Wheel – Linda Ronstadt
10. Damaged – Black Flag

 

Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow: This is a group that I've typically liked the singles/best of collections more than proper albums cos those tend to be the standout tracks by a mile. Surrealistic Pillow is a slight exception and an album I've flirted with off and on over the years (I prefer Red Octopus from the Jefferson Starship era), and in many ways this is a blueprint, perhaps posterchild, for the 60s psychedelic movement, though I'd say a bit more digestible than Piper at the Gates of Dawn (hopefully that'll be on this list), or VU & Nico, or (ahem) Their Satanic Majesties (talk about a difficult listen from a band hitting their stride). Still, when this album hits, it hits hard cos Somebody to Love and White Rabbit are powerhouse songs and deserve to be remembered, while Today and Comin' Back to Me are fantastic understated gems. While in the realm of psychedelic rock I would pick any dozen or so albums by the Doors, or Cream, or even the Beatles before Surrealistic Pillow, I certainly don't deny this album as being a deservedly popular and important moment within the movement. 4/5

 

UGGHH
Back to mediocre rap.....

 

I would agree with that: the following three [Jefferson Airplane] albums all are better to my ears.

David Keenan and Piero Scaruffi also place Baxters and 1969’s Volunteers above Surrealistic Pillow, and with good reason because the band has become both more experimental and more strident. Both Keenan and Scaruffi list Volunteers as one of the best rock albums of all time, and it’s strident left-wing politics one would think of as appropriate for Rolling Stone in this age of retrenchment of democracy. It is true though, that other critics like George Starotsin detest Baxters and Volunteers, considering them virtually unlistenable.

 

Surrealistic Pillow should be a mess, since the Airplane was always two or three or four different factions fighting for control. But somehow it hangs to gether and works. or at least it did for me back in the day. Can't remember the last time I listened. No problem with it being on the list, but no problem with it not being any higher.