The mournful enigma of McCartney’s “For No One” and the psychedelia of Lennon’s “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “She Said, She Said” can still leave you standing hypnotised over the spinning vinyl, wondering if the music is coming out or being sucked back in.
CHĮnjoy unlimited access to 70 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign upĪn unprecedented 220 hours of studio experimentation saw George Martin and The Beatles looping, speeding, slowing and spooling tapes backwards to create a terrifically trippy new sound. Released outside of Jamaica by Island Records with guitar overdubs and ornamentation, the original Jamaican version is a stripped-down masterpiece. He packed the album with beautiful melodic numbers, such as “High Tide and Low Tide”, and rhythmic dance tracks like “Kinky Reggae”. Marley sang of life “where the living is hardest” in “Concrete Jungle” and looked back to Jamaica’s ignoble slaving past – “No chains around my feet but I’m not free”. The album that carried reggae music to the four corners of the world and made Bob Marley an international superstar also set the political tone for many artists to follow. HBĬatch a Fire (Jamaican version) (1973), Bob Marley and the Wailers Propulsive polyrhythms drive against the lyrical pleas for us to stop and take stock. “Facts are simple and facts are straight / Facts are lazy and facts are late…” sang David Byrne, submerging personal and planetary anxieties about fake news and conspicuous consumption in dense, layers and loops of Afrobeat-indebted funk. Although that was really the only mediaeval imagery they conjured up – they ripped Dungeons & Dragons clichés out of the lyrics and replaced them with the apocalypse, with bassist Cliff Burton, drummer Lars Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett and singer/rhythm guitarist James Hetfield serving as the four horsemen. This album is about storytelling – the mediaeval-influenced guitar picks on opener “Battery” should be enough to tell you that. In 1986, they released one of the best metal records of all time, which dealt with the potency and very nature of control, meshing beauty and raw human ugliness together on tracks like “Damage Inc” and “Orion”. HBĭespite not featuring any singles, Metallica’s third album was the UK rock radio breakthrough they’d been looking for. You can hear her listening to the band, biding her time before firing up her voice to demand “R-E-S-P-E-C-T”, 50 years before the #MeToo movement. The Queen of Soul gave herself the same space. When Jerry Wexler signed the daughter of a violent, philandering preacher to Atlantic records, he “took her to church, sat her down at the piano, and let her be herself”. I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967), Aretha Franklin There are still a handful of sweet, unrequited love songs showing remarkable wholesomeness and maturity concerning romance–including two with references to prayer: "If You're Not the One" ("I. Okay, so the only spiritual line in the song (excerpted above) is a bit of a stretch. For example, "Gotta Get Thru This" is essentially a plea to cope with a first–time crush.
He openly shares his faith in concerts and in some of his music. Depending which bio you read, his parents are either missionaries or social workers. Turns out that Bedingfield's also an outspoken Christian. Bedingfield even pressed and distributed the original CDs of his song "Gotta Get Thru This," a dance–pop hit in clubs on both sides of the Atlantic. It sounds terrific (testament to today's technology) and it's earned him deserved comparisons to George Michael, Stevie Wonder, Craig David, and Michael Jackson.
He also records it all in his bedroom with a computer and a microphone, playing most of the instruments himself and tweaking the mix later in a professional recording studio.
The reality, however, is that he's too talented for such teen pop comparisons.īridging together elements of pop, rock, R&B, and dance, Bedingfield doesn't just write and sing his own material, which is already a step ahead of most teen pop artists. It would be tempting to write him off as the Euro pop equivalent to Justin Timberlake or Aaron Carter, though his sound more resembles pop groups such as Take That and Boyzone. "If only I can get thru this/God, God, gotta help me get thru this"īorn in New Zealand and raised in London, 22–year–old Daniel Bedingfield is quickly gaining attention as a production wunderkind.