Album: Revisited — An Overview

The creation of music is always happening. Every second of the day, musicians across the globe are creating art and expanding forms in dynamic new ventures. Singles and albums are constantly released, flooding the market with innovative new ideas and discoveries of what music can be. Countless publications seek out what they deem to be the best of new music and write commentaries and reviews. If an artist in lucky, their work will reappear in coveted “Best of the Year” lists that publications produce at the end of each year.

But what happens next? Few publications revisit albums, often only if the album is rereleased or remastered. Several publications take a “best of” retrospectives of a particular year or decade, but these reevaluations rarely include more than a few sentences describing an album’s legacy. The music lives on, but does it continue to have an impact? And if so, does the impact change? The album was considered to be important by critics upon its release, but does it still hold artistic value and purpose? Or was the album wrongly panned upon release and deserves another listen?

This is my project to revisit albums that are long time members of our popular musical anthology. I want to explore how our perceptions and perspectives of art evolve, specially in the form of the pop album. In the end, I want to discover if albums really hold up, if their value to the form has changed, and if its still worthy of a listen today. I will put on my musicology hat and combine history with some biased opinions from my own ears that I hope spark conversation. And more than conversation, I hope my deep dives lead you to a wealth of musical adventures, discoveries of albums you have never explored, and rediscoveries of gems you had forgotten.