7 Albums Closest to My Heart

The songs on these albums are full of insight and emotion. They feature a kaleidoscope of wonder and bewilderment with the world, the heart, and the mind in a dazzling array of ways. And they have been essential somehow in how I've made peace with some of my most significant quandaries. Note that this is not a best of or favorites list, but a heart-based list.

1. Tracy Chapman, Telling Stories (2000). This album is for hope and truth in the face of paradox and the human condition. "Are we all just telling stories?" This album helped me through my first year of graduate school, after I had moved to a new state alone, and had recently broken up with my first love.

2. Simon and Garfunkel, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme (1966). Mysterious and contemplatively haunting. "Cloudy" and "Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall" are two favorites, though hearing this album from start to finish is imperative in understanding each song. Not bright and happy, as some of the melodies suggest, the lyrics and placement of tracks on this album demonstrate a coming to grips with the tragedy in the world we create through resting in nature. I took my dad to an Art Garfunkel show in either 1996 or 1997. It was a tiny, intimate theatre and Garfunkel's presence was light and airy. The varieties of percussion in the center of the round was astounding.

3. Fiona Apple, Tidal (1996). In this album, Apple's voice, rich and inspired, sang of the complexities of love and emotion. Sexy and jazzy, yet completely contemporary in tone and in lyrical quality, she made me want to sing with her. She made me understand that the heart can carry several incompatible desires at once and that even broken love is beautiful beyond compare in its depth and mystery. "Slow Like Honey" is an example of all of these features coming together in a way that feels necessary and natural.

4. Beck, The Information (2006). This album celebrates life and love in our contemporary digital age. It is eclectic and humorous in its approach and I find myself, as with all truly great music, stopping completely whatever I am in the middle of doing, as soon as one of the songs begins. I heard "Think I'm in Love," the second track on this album, for the first time in my life during a point at which I was indeed feeling as though I might be in love.

5. Pink Floyd, The Wall (1982). Inciting dreams, nightmares, and rebellion, The Wall asks us to question authority and tradition, to escape the maze of society, and to use the power of our individuality, intelligence, and even our insanity. Though I cannot listen to this album any longer, it was significant in my life for many years. My father, who passed in Dec 2010, just a week before his 59th birthday, took me to my first concert, Pink Floyd, The Division Bell, in 1994 when I was a freshman in high school. The show was so spectacular, the audience so involved at each moment, the gigantic pig heads with glowing eyes rocking to the music, the light show and the words "HEY TEACHER" lit up stories as we all chanted together, thousands upon thousands of people singing the lyrics of The Wall together. Weed permeated the air and I have to say that hundreds of live shows later, this was still by far the most spectacular. I continued to listen to Pink Floyd regularly throughout high school and my father, a few years before his death, would watch the movie, The Wall, while he was going through difficult times. Every Pink Floyd song reminds me of my dad.


6. The Beatles, "Anything at all!" (1963-1970) For a dose of happy and carefree nostalgia, I look no further than The Beatles. While growing up, my sister, Summer, and I used to listen to all of the albums and memorize them. We would quiz each other: "What album is "Octopus's Garden" on?" "What is the number of the track for "Blackbird" on The White Album?" "Can you name the exact order of the songs  on Revolver and sing a lyric for each one?" My best friend in high school, Diane, and I, also shared a love of the Beatles and it's a bonding experience whenever I meet a fellow fan. Nathan, Levi, the list goes on and on.... At first Abbey Road and Magical Mystery Tour were my favorites, then it was Abbey Road and The White Album. Then it was Revolver and Rubber Soul, then it was Revolver and Hard Day's Night. Did you know that Paul McCartney actually sang a Beatles song called "Heather"? See this youtube to hear my song. It's a rare one!

7. The Talking Heads, Everything (1977-1988). The Talking Heads specialize in humor and playfulness; their artful songs are ridiculous and eschew the traditional subjects of love and loss. They celebrate the crazy life of those peculiar people that are one part each intellectual, artist, and (we hope) harmless neurotic. My best friend, Jennifer, and I sang hours and hours of The Talking Heads together for five years as roommates in grad school for philosophy. We also played them nearly exclusively on practically every road trip we took together. In addition, we hold their songs on houses and city life verses country life close to our hearts. We celebrated with The Talking Heads when we moved from a garage apartment where we had no closet or oven to a huge contemporary house with four bedrooms, two stories, three baths, three patios, a garden, two fireplaces, a separate study, and a closet as big as a 10x10 room. It had, as David Byrne would say "every convenience."