I listen to a lot of music. My favorite category is probably pop though. I have a deep respect for music artists and the work that goes into producing a whole album and appreciate it no matter what. But today, I will be picking my five favorite albums. I just want to say before I start, every artist I put on this list, I did for a reason. I will be sharing a little about who they are, how they started music and my favorite song from the album. Okay, without further ado, let’s begin.
Album #1: 30 by Adele
I'm sure many of you know who Adele is. I mean Hello, Rolling in the Deep, Send my Love. She’s got all the hits and an incredible silky strong powerhouse voice that moves mountains. All throughout her career, she’s been such an inspiration to so many artists and the way they approach their own music.
Adele is one of the world's best-selling music artists, with sales of over 120 million records. After graduating in arts from the BRIT School in 2006, Adele signed a record deal with XL Recordings. Her debut album, 19, was released in 2008 and spawned the UK top-five singles "Chasing Pavements" and "Make You Feel My Love". The album was certified 8× platinum in the UK and triple platinum in the US. Adele was honored with the Brit Award for Rising Star as well as the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. She then released her second studio album, 21, in 2011. It became the world's best-selling album of the 21st century, with sales of over 31 million copies.This is so fucking incredible to accomplish. It was certified 17× platinum in the UK (the highest by a solo artist of all time) and Diamond in the US. According to Billboard, 21 is the top-performing album in the US chart history, topping the Billboard 200 for 24 weeks (the longest for a female artist ever). She was the first female artist in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 to have three simultaneous top-ten singles as a lead artist, with "Rolling in the Deep", "Someone Like You", and "Set Fire to the Rain", all of which also topped the chart. The album received a record-tying six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and the Brit Award for British Album of the Year. The success of 21 earned Adele numerous mentions in the Guinness Book of Records.
In 2012, Adele released "Skyfall", a soundtrack single for the James Bond film of the same name, which won the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. Her third studio album, 25, was released in 2015 and became the year's best-selling album and broke first-week sales records in the UK and US. 25 was her second album to be certified Diamond in the US and earned her five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, and four Brit Awards, including British Album of the Year. The lead single, "Hello", became the first song in the US to sell over one million digital copies within a week of its release. Her fourth studio album 30, which contains the chart-topping single "Easy on Me", was released in 2021.
Adele's accolades include fifteen Grammy Awards and nine Brit Awards. In 2011, 2012, and 2016, Billboard named her Artist of the Year. At the 2012 and 2016 Ivor Novello Awards, Adele was named Songwriter of the Year by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors. In 2012, she was listed at number five on VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Music. Time magazine named her one of the most influential people in the world in 2012 and 2016. Her album 21 has been listed in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2020).( All of this was sourced from Wikipedia)
As you can see from here, she has been a very accomplished artist since her first album 19. But her new album is my favorite by far. The storytelling is so much more mature, her voice is so controlled, not that it wasn’t before. This is a prime time for her. She didn’t peak in high school, she’s still out here getting cuter. See what I did there? My favorite song from the album is Strangers by Nature. I just love the rawness of that song. It gives a sort of self-encouragement and a very gentle start to a very vulnerable project. It’s something that Adele has always done amazingly well and she continued that in this album.
Album #2: Evermore by Taylor Swift (deluxe version)
If any of you know me in real life, you know how much I adore Taylor Swift. She is by far my favorite female artist ever. I’m sure by now, we all know some sort of backstory of how Taylor Swift started music. She started at 15 with Big Machine or she released her debut album at 16, but I think she started the moment she realized she was into music. All of this has just been a journey to her most mature, personal and genius overall project, EVERMORE.
You couldn’t ask me to pick my favorite song out of the album because I love all of them so much, but for the sake of this article, I’m going to pick it based on the story. For this I will pick ‘it’s time to go’. This song is my favorite because it tells so many stories that everybody in the world goes through and one important thing that she went through. One lyric she says is, “ Or that moment again, he’s insisting that friends look at each other like that”. I just know that there’s so many people who’ve gone through that. She makes the song so relatable for everyone.
This specific part I’m about to talk about is so so important to why she’s re-recording her albums and is owning all her music from now on. The lyrics are,
“Fifteen years, fifteen million tears, begging till my knees bled. I gave it my all, he gave me nothing at all, then wondered why I left.”
This part specifically is about how Big Machine Records' Scott Borchetta sold Taylor’s music catalog to a talent manager called Scooter Braun. Basically, this guy manages people like Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and Demi Lovato. We don’t really like to talk about him, but he is the owner of Taylor’s masters. Because he won’t sell it back to her, he agreed to let her re-record each album for a new one she releases. She gave Big Machine Records 15 years of her career up until Lover and then she left to sign with Republic Records where THEY agreed to let her own her music. Sounds just like the right thing to do.
Anyways, this song just has history in it that has allowed Taylor to be where she is right now, with 2 re-recorded albums, Fearless and Red. Just amazing.
The whole album itself is the sister record of Folklore, which won a Grammy by the way, and now Evermore is nominated for one as well. It’s a continuing story of
a team-up with Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff, and Justin Vernon, making the most of cozy home-studio vibes for more bare-bones arrangements and bared-soul lyrics, casually intimate and narratively rich.
There is an expanded guest roster here—HAIM appears on “no body, no crime,” which seems to place Este Haim in the center of a small-town murder mystery, while Dessner’s bandmates in The National are on “coney island”—but they fit themselves into the mood rather than distract from it. (The percussive “long story short” sounds like it could have been on any National album in the past decade.) Elsewhere, “'tis the damn season' ' is the elegiac home-for-the-holidays ballad this busted year didn’t realize it needed. But while so much of folklore’s appeal involved marveling at how this setting seemed to have unlocked something in Swift, the only real shock here is the timing of the release itself. Beyond that, it’s an extension and confirmation of its predecessor’s promises and charms, less a novelty driven by unprecedented circumstances and instead simply a thing she happens to do and do well. (Interview with Apple Music)
Album #3: Sour by Olivia Rodrigo
Olivia Rodrigo. She took the world by storm literally in January. Not many people knew who she was before she released ‘Drivers License’. But now, her album Sour is one of the most streamed albums of 2021 and she did that in 1 year as a debut artist. Of course, I knew who she was before that and I was a stan. I lived for the little 1 minute Instagram songs she posted. Justice for Victim and Pretender, pls. Picture this. Olivia is a 16 year old girl and she’s written the song “Happier” in 2019. She’s also acting in a Disney + show called HSMTMTS. Double threat here. She gets the chance to write a song for that show. It’s called All I Want and it’s a bop. It goes viral. I even did a cover of it on my Youtube. Anyway, her song caused Geffen Records(part of Interscope) to offer her a record deal and with that her producer, Dan Nigro came on board because he found her Instagram song ‘HAPPIER’. It’s all coming together now. That’s the first song they work on for her album. Then the rest of the album.
I would continue but I want to write a separate article on her. Anyways, I love the adolescent spirit on this album. You can really tell that she was putting all her emotions in this album and she didn’t have that much help from anybody seeing as she only had one or two collaborators on it. But I just love the rawness with most of the songs being piano or guitar driven ballads and the emotional aspect of the album that turns it into a no skips album. She knew what she was doing and she came to do it.
My favorite song off the album production wise is probably Drivers License. I know, I know I picked the most popular one. Hear me out, I listened to this song when she first posted it on her Instagram and I fell in love with it then I wasn’t here when it got viral. It even had different lyrics and everything. it’s just such a unique song and I don’t think anyone else has ever written anything like it. You can hear hints of all the favorite artists that she loves and I just think it’s such a great way to debut.
Overall though, my favorite song off the album is probably ‘enough for you’. It just has this sense of I want to be enough for someone and I don’t want to give up my own life just for them. It’s really about knowing your own self-worth enough to not be with someone who’s toxic in a relationship. Those kinds of relationships are here and they happen all the time and I think it’s a great story that she tells about it.
Album #4: Planet Her by Doja Cat (Deluxe Version)
I was definitely someone before who was scared to listen to music that I wasn’t familiar with. But after listening to Doja Cat, I was a completely different person who gained a newfound confidence in myself. It in a way made me feel like I could do anything. For a little backstory on Doja, she is a 26 year old icon. She was born and raised in Los Angeles and she started making music on Soundcloud. She signed with Kemosabe and Interscope Records in 2014 because they found a song she made called “So High” and she released her debut EP called Purrr! In 2014. She then released her debut studio album in 2018 called “Amala” which had the single “Mooo!” and it went viral. Because of this, she released a second studio album called “Hot Pink” in 2019 and it reached the Top Ten of US Billboard 200 charts. A single called Say So, which I’m sure we’re all aware of. It was very big on TikTok and it had its own dance and everything. Yeah, it topped the Billboard Hot 100 after a remix with Nicki Minaj. Absolutely amazing. And now we’re at now. Planet Her released in 2021 and it spent three consecutive weeks at #2 on the Billboard 200. It includes songs like Say So, You Right, Kiss Me More. She has been nominated for 11 Grammy awards, a Billboard Music Award, 5 AMA awards, 3 MTV VMA awards and a Guinness WORLD RECORD.
In an interview with Apple Music, they say that pop music is kaleidoscopic and that Doja takes full advantage of the fluidity of pop, and I can say that I believe it. She switches from Afrobeats to Reggaeton to hip-hop to ad libs in the first 4 songs. My favorite song off the album I would say is probably Woman. It brings out the feminism in me. It makes me feel like a badass and proud to be a woman.
Album #5: Solar Power by Lorde
I think Lorde is one of those artists where it’s a hit or miss, you know what I mean? I think people either love her music or don’t understand it at all. I’m one of those people that truly understands it and appreciates everything she puts out. She has been one of my biggest inspirations in my own music and to know her music is one of the biggest privileges I have.
A little bit about Lorde, she’s from New Zealand, she’s 25, a Scorpio like me hehe, and she’s amazing. She is known for using unconventional musical styles and introspective songwriting to really blur the lines of music genres. Lorde's music is primarily electropop and contains elements of subgenres such as dream-pop and indie-electro.
She signed with UMG(Universal Music Group) in 2009 and collaborated with producer Joel Little in 2011 to start recording material. Initially a self-released, free download in 2012 on Soundcloud, UMG commercially released the pair's first collaborative effort, an EP titled The Love Club in 2013. The EP's international chart-topping single Royals helped Lorde rise to prominence.
Her debut studio album Pure Heroin was released that same year to critical and commercial success. The following year, Lorde curated the soundtrack for The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1 and recorded several tracks, including the single Yellow Flicker Beat. Her second studio album released in 2017 called Melodrama received widespread critical acclaim and debuted atop the US Billboard 200.
She has received two Grammy awards, two Brit awards and a Golden Globe nomination. She appeared in Time’s list of the most influential teenagers in 2013 and 2014, and the 2014 edition of Forbes’ 30 under 30. In addition to her solo work, she has co-written songs for other artists, including Broods and Bleachers. As of June 2017, Lorde has sold over five million albums worldwide.
She states in an interview with Apple Music that this album was based on an epiphany and newfound gratefulness for nature and the gifts it provides. I think that this album perfectly sums it up. It truly hits all the different spots. It’s like a summer album and one that you can meditate on. She talks about the destruction of the planet on Fallen Fruit and a little bit she put in the song that I love is there’s a beeping sound like a construction truck backing up. It kind of disrupts the whole flow of the song and it goes to show that when construction trucks come they’re not very appreciated. They're loud and they cause damage and destroy things of nature just to capitalize on that piece of land they’re taking. She opens up about the lifestyle of a famous person on ‘California’ and all the feelings you experience navigating the life of fame. Overall, this album is like poetry and English class. You experience all these songs and try to figure out the album and realize it’s an epiphany of all the experiences of adolescence. It's truly a work of art.
I think my favorite song off the album would definitely be Secrets from a Girl who’s Seen it All. I feel like with the song I can definitely translate it into my own life and one day when I’m older, I’ll make a song like this for me telling myself all that’s happened and it’ll be a huge realization for me and where I’m at and where I was. It gives off a very nostalgic vibe and I just love it so much.
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