You know the drill; the job-destroying and imminently genocidal superintelligence selects five albums, and tossrag.com is merely responsible for the attendant tongue lashing. But the overburdened algorithm surely had its work cut out with 1967, the official Rick Beato-approved Greatest Year In The History Of Music, because all of our heroes turn up in the Christmas catalogue: the Beatles, the Doors, the Who, Hendrix, Joplin, and of course, mid-level psychedelic acts that no one born after the Cuban Missile Crisis gives a single solitary shit about, such as Country Joe & the Fish. For indeed, 1967 represents the garish zenith of Flower Power, with San Francisco consumed by the Summer of Love and everybody buying sitars, in the not-unreasonable hope that large numbers of people playing such an annoying instrument might bring down global capitalism. Meanwhile, Apollo 1 combusted on the launchpad and thereby spared its incinerated occupants from ever having to sit through the Grateful Dead’s debut album, the jammy bastards.
5. Forever Changes by Love
What do Robert Plant, the Stone Roses, and the NME’s dwindling readership all have in common, apart from an aversion to showering? Yes, all have identified baroque pop album Forever Changes by mid-tier hippie bottom feeders Love as “one of the best records ever made.” It isn’t, of course, unless you have an unfortunate predilection for orchestral folk-rock with slapstick Spaghetti Western influences and LSD-fuelled, fashionably Freudian lyrics. Which I don’t.
Standout track: “Alone Again Or”
4. The Doors by The Doors
I recently completed an exhaustive and exhausting Doors deep dive, so subjecting myself to their debut album for the 500th time in three months felt like being waterboarded by William Blake. But we must suffer for our art, and happily, I have a soft spot for Jim, his coterie of maladjusted college dropouts, and their debauched, keyboard-infused, pseudo-intellectual proto-desert rock. “Break on Through”, “Light my Fire” and “The End” are the big hitters, but the carnivalesque cover of Bertolt Brecht’s depraved “Alabama Song” is where the Lizard King really escapes from his cage.
Standout track: “Break on Through”
3. Are You Experienced? by Jimi Hendrix
I rarely reach for Are You Experienced? – guitar wankery leaves me cold, especially when it’s strange, sludgy, and narrated by an otherworldly shaman. Nonetheless, it’s difficult to deny how influential this album was for the mid-90s guitar bands that I grew up listening to. It’s arguably the birth of hard rock; Billy Corrgan and Eddie Vedder wouldn’t have careers without songs like “Purple Haze” and “Foxy Woman”, while the title track is Oasis’ entire psychedelic phase compressed into four intriguing minutes.
Standout track: “Purple Haze”
2. The Velvet Underground and Nico by The Velvet Underground
What was it Brian Eno said? Only 30,000 people bought this album, but all 30,000 of them started their own bands? But why, actually? The tunes aren’t bad – paranoid dream pop premonition “Sunday Morning”, pre-post-punk pastiche “Waiting for the Man”, orientalist S&M screed “Venus in Furs”, twangy borderline personality disorder diagnosis “Femme Fatale.” But perhaps more importantly from the perspective of said 30,000 weirdos, The Velvet Underground and Nico’s channeling of urban, artsy, dangerous, sexually ambiguous malcontent was surely a welcome tonic to the tiresome Zeitgeist of “consciousness-expanding” sitar shagging.
Standout track: “Venus in Furs”
1. Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles
And speaking of that Zeitgeist, we now arrive at its ultimate articulation – yes, yes, alongside Sgt. Pepper’s, which I couldn’t be arsed listening to again, even if “Day in the Life” is on there. Forget all that “concept album” nonsense; pound for pound, Magical Mystery Tour has the better songs, while remaining just as far-out. It’s also surprisingly sinister; “Fool on the Hill”, “Blue Jay Way”, and of course, Lennon’s unsettling acid anthems, “I Am The Walrus” and “Strawberry Fields Forever.” “Penny Lane” is St. Paul at his cricket-playing best, and “All You Need Is Love” provides the necessary simple-minded sendoff.
Standout track: “Strawberry Fields Forever”