Formative Albums, Part 1: River of Dreams
May. 23rd, 2020 04:36 pmForeword: ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
davidn got tagged in a Facebook meme about posting "A list of 10 Albums which have greatly influenced my taste in music. One title per day for 10 days. No explanations, no reviews, only covers." He then immediately broke the rules by 1) posting it on Dreamwidth instead and 2) including explanations and reviews. These are both definitely good changes and the system is much improved. We're going to break them even further by just stealing this meme and doing it ourselves even though we weren't formally tagged. I see this as an improvement as well, one I highly encourage anyone who's interested to continue.
We carefully brainstormed and narrowed down and came up with our list, which I put in an Imgur album mostly so I wouldn't forget which ten we had picked. I've only gotten around to writing the explanation/review for the first one, and will go back and add the others one at a time as I'm making these entries. If you want to completely spoil yourself re: which albums the next ten entries are going to cover, you can do so here, else you can wait and be surprised as I give each one the full coverage.
So, with that said, day one!
River of Dreams by Billy Joel
As a child, I was exposed to my parents' music collection, which included what Xyzzy calls "the more pensive end of Billy Joel's career," Storm Front and River of Dreams. The latter got particularly heavy play. Much like the perspective of Calvin's parents in Calvin & Hobbes strips, this was something I just used to like because it was catchy and pretty, with extra layers I grew into as I became old enough to understand them. Apparently a platinum smash hit in its day but somehow overlooked today (the kinds of radio station formats that play Billy Joel these days generally don't touch anything newer than "Uptown Girl,") River of Dreams is the farewell retirement speech musings of a world-famous musician looking back at his own life and times and openly wondering what kind of future his generation is leaving for the next. "Two Thousand Years" in particular contains quite a lot of uncertain, cautious, yet hopeful optimism about the future that becomes tragic in hindsight when listened to in Current Year with the knowledge of how many things didn't end up getting better after all.
Thus, this album has a mixture of warm nostalgia and newfound philosopher-level wisdom for us. "No Man's Land," a track whose meaning I had at least a basic understanding of even back then, ended up shaping a lot of the environmentalism and general wariness of development that Sara and I now hold. "All About Soul" has become "our song." The verse about "She turns to me sometimes and asks me what I'm dreaming/And I realize I must have gone a million miles away/And I ask her how she knew to reach out for me that moment/And she smiles because it's understood, there are no words to say" is... very accurate for us. She's used her position inside my head to pull me out of spiraling thought vortexes more times than either of us can count.
davidn got tagged in a Facebook meme about posting "A list of 10 Albums which have greatly influenced my taste in music. One title per day for 10 days. No explanations, no reviews, only covers." He then immediately broke the rules by 1) posting it on Dreamwidth instead and 2) including explanations and reviews. These are both definitely good changes and the system is much improved. We're going to break them even further by just stealing this meme and doing it ourselves even though we weren't formally tagged. I see this as an improvement as well, one I highly encourage anyone who's interested to continue.We carefully brainstormed and narrowed down and came up with our list, which I put in an Imgur album mostly so I wouldn't forget which ten we had picked. I've only gotten around to writing the explanation/review for the first one, and will go back and add the others one at a time as I'm making these entries. If you want to completely spoil yourself re: which albums the next ten entries are going to cover, you can do so here, else you can wait and be surprised as I give each one the full coverage.
So, with that said, day one!
River of Dreams by Billy Joel
As a child, I was exposed to my parents' music collection, which included what Xyzzy calls "the more pensive end of Billy Joel's career," Storm Front and River of Dreams. The latter got particularly heavy play. Much like the perspective of Calvin's parents in Calvin & Hobbes strips, this was something I just used to like because it was catchy and pretty, with extra layers I grew into as I became old enough to understand them. Apparently a platinum smash hit in its day but somehow overlooked today (the kinds of radio station formats that play Billy Joel these days generally don't touch anything newer than "Uptown Girl,") River of Dreams is the farewell retirement speech musings of a world-famous musician looking back at his own life and times and openly wondering what kind of future his generation is leaving for the next. "Two Thousand Years" in particular contains quite a lot of uncertain, cautious, yet hopeful optimism about the future that becomes tragic in hindsight when listened to in Current Year with the knowledge of how many things didn't end up getting better after all.
Thus, this album has a mixture of warm nostalgia and newfound philosopher-level wisdom for us. "No Man's Land," a track whose meaning I had at least a basic understanding of even back then, ended up shaping a lot of the environmentalism and general wariness of development that Sara and I now hold. "All About Soul" has become "our song." The verse about "She turns to me sometimes and asks me what I'm dreaming/And I realize I must have gone a million miles away/And I ask her how she knew to reach out for me that moment/And she smiles because it's understood, there are no words to say" is... very accurate for us. She's used her position inside my head to pull me out of spiraling thought vortexes more times than either of us can count.