Perfect Albums

My Top 5 On Friday Meme focused on albums that are perfect start to finish and I've been thinking on that quiet a bit. There are so few albums that fit that description in my book, even when it comes to long established artists.

For me, even with bands that I love, there are just songs that make me go, Ewww.

With the Moody Blues...it's well....just so much sap in the post core 7 albums and in the core 7...well it's usually Mike Pinder songs that make me press NEXT! Mostly because his songs tend to make me reach for the razor blades.

Even The Beatles had songs that ruined their albums. The White Album is one of their best and worst all rolled in one. The stuff that was brilliant was just that, but the stuff that sucked was vile! Which leads me to Paul McCartney....

Paul is the king of the half good album. His albums seem to work out to be half brilliance and half fluff and the fluffy part is usually awful. Take the 80's. They started off with a fabulous album, Tug of War, which is one of those albums that's almost 100% good. If you'd throw out the song What You're Doing it would be perfect. But then he follows it up with Pipes Of Peace, which is terrible. The next few albums are a mixture of love and hate depending on how you like Paul. Broad Street is remakes of songs from The Beatles onward. Press To Play is a largely ignored album that's close to perfect minus a song or two. And then there's Flowers In The Dirt. For me it's one of Paul's only perfect albums. It's only turned perfect for me in recent years when songs like That Day Is Done and closing track Ou Est le Soleil have become truly enjoyable.

His next close to perfect album was Flaming Pie, but even that has a few pot boilers. It makes me wonder what Sir Paul's thinking when he records. Surely he has to know that the songs are crap. Mind you, making a perfect album is hard, but I can forgive a bad song or two, but Paulie is one for doing 6 good and 6 bad.

Damn him!

Is it to much to ask for mostly good album? I know perfection is hard, but you would think he could do it.

I think its proof that having the snarky foil of John Lennon really helped his writing. Which I think is why I love the stuff that Paul and Elvis Costello wrote together. Elvis has the same brutal sense of humor that Lennon had in the pre-Yoko years.

The only artist in my list of favorites that has had a lengthy career and has done several perfect albums is Elvis Costello. God bless him for that. Now will some on tell him its time to record another? I could use another "perfect" album. It's been awhile since I found one. I'm sick of having to skip over crap songs. But hey...I guess those people at the RIAA will be happy, because I'm one of the few sods out there that buy CDs on a regular basis and lots of them