Rolling Stone: The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
I’m going to listen to each album from 500 to 1, and write about it.
Simple enough, or seemingly simple… though I know, big.
I won’t labour on the reasons for me doing this right now. That will
come out as I write about each one, or maybe it’ll become more apparent to me, and in any case I have no doubt my reasons will
change along the way. I will say this – I appreciate the scope of
what I am going to embark on, but at 29 years of age, so far I
haven’t been one to stick with hobbies or projects long-term. The ongoing focus I’ll need for quite some time is going to be, well,
huge. This is as much about proving to myself that I can keep
going on one thing for an extended(!) amount of time as it is about anything.
I have a few rules. I’ll listen to each album for 1 week only and then write about it. This means I’ll have a decent (though by no means substantial) amount of time to try and appreciate each album. It does however, mean that this project will take 500 weeks – just shy of 10 years, which is why I can’t really sit on each album for a more significant amount of time and why this rule is pretty important.
I’ll load an album onto my iPod (or whatever storage device we end up with in 3 or 7 or 10 years time), and will listen to each Monday to Sunday. I will be buying each on CD though: by the end I’m going to have a pretty kick-ass collection. I’m committing myself to listening to only that week’s album on my commute to and from work. Apart from that I’ll try and listen to the album when I’m home making dinner, or having a drink in the backyard with mates on the weekend, but the commute rule is important. It’s free time.
The only other thing I’ll point out now is that I’m not a music critic, or a particular aficionado of music or a musician, or a writer. I’m a pretty average guy really, I work in an office, I’m gay with a long-term partner and I live in Melbourne, Australia. I know what I like in terms of music and have a pretty open mind, though I lean towards indie rock and pop and dance-able dance.
I did a quick search on the net to find out whether anyone was also doing this. Lo and behold, they are (or have sort of tried). It’s not easy being 100% original these days, but I’m not doing this to be original. This is as much about me as it is about the list. I’m keen to document this part of my life, I’m keen to document what I learn and how I grow and what I think along the way as I listen to these albums, and I’m keen to hear a lot of great (and surely not so great, at least, to my tastes) music along the way. And I’m keen to see how this changes me.
Let’s get started.
thehifielective 