The Clash – Sandinista! (1980)
When I first heard Sandinista! as a schoolboy, I was baffled by the way this supposed “punk band” careered between genres or combined them, several at a time. Today, now that revolutions such as the iPod and streaming have changed the way we listen to music, the 36-track triple album sounds like the ultimate mixtape. It’s a two-hour long hurtle through rock, pop, funk, soul, Motown, dub, jazz, calypso, R&B and swing. The Magnificent Seven – which I always loved, along with the anti-military The Call Up – is even thought to be the first UK rap track.
Rediscovering it as an adult on a remastered CD version that came out in 2013, the sprawling opus certainly has flaws but I can’t quite comprehend how my teenage ears didn’t recognise the greatness of the likes of Police on My Back, Somebody Got Murdered or Charlie Don’t Surf. Maybe Sandinista! was so far ahead the world needed to catch up. Dave Simpson
Charli XCX – Vroom Vroom (2016)
One handy/mortifying thing about criticism is having your initial reactions preserved in print forever: it can help you plot your changing taste; it can also give that artist’s fans a stick to beat you with for life. When I had Twitter, I never got as much blowback for anything as my Pitchfork review of Charli XCX’s Vroom Vroom EP, which I slated on release in February 2016.
Charli’s first full-length collaboration with PC Music’s Sophie was a tweaky, blown-out romp through acid bass lines, panel-beater thwacks and demented baby voices. At the time, I dismissed it as “pointedly uncommercial and abrasive” and “ferociously trite”. It took until seeing her live in 2019 to appreciate those qualities: you’d call it a slow burn if the EP’s car-obsessed lyrics weren’t so speed-addled.
Where I once thought those asinine themes reduced her to a “vapid cypher”, now their commanding hauteur connected directly to Charli’s vulcanised stage presence. And by 2019, the general collapse of society brought a new appeal to a record that sounds like a pep rally on the edge of a black hole. I was relieved to boot some of my old self-seriousness into that void. And as ever, Charli was ahead of her time, leaving me gratefully eating her dust. Beep beep! Laura Snapes
Bob Dylan – Murder Most Foul (2020)
It’s not just that I wasn’t into Bob Dylan, it’s that I didn’t want to be into him. As far as I could tell, his best song was bettered by Hendrix and his blues and folk forebears seemed much more deserving of this frankly obscene surplus of renown. Still, my contrarian self couldn’t resist giving Murder Most Foul a listen; arriving at the advent of Covid with its amateur artwork and 17-minute runtime, the meditation on JFK’s assassination appeared curiously, hilariously out of touch with the present to the point of becoming a meme.
I listened with intent to poke fun but soon found Dylan repeating himself – first as farce, then as tragedy. Not only did I warm to his lackadaisical drawls and those woozy wanderings of piano and violin, I became obsessed. Maybe it’s the slapstick brutality of the lyrics that run the JFK tape back and forth like a sports action replay, or the way the he embarks on an entire litany of Americana unprompted, winking as he places his ramblings on top like some cherry. Regardless, I’ve found an unlikely refuge in his mythological account of the day the US was born and the day it died. Tayyab Amin
50 Cent – Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2003)
Like many who were born in the late 90s, 50 Cent’s In Da Club featured heavily in my childhood. The track stayed in the UK charts for 32 weeks but it lingered for much longer, its quickly renowned refrain about partying like it’s your birthday reverberating from music channels and school playgrounds. As co-producer Sha Money XL once noted, In Da Club became “the birthday record”: “You play Stevie Wonder and then you play In Da Club.” It did indeed become ubiquitous at parties, but the novelty value quickly wore off and I began to find it intensely annoying.
After subconsciously writing 50 Cent off based on that track alone, hearing Get Rich or Die Tryin’ played in full almost two decades later surprised me. This time, I heard his forays into new styles and moods that had been overshadowed by the hits, and the unfamiliar interludes that tied the songs together. I soon grew to love the record’s steely keys and skulking percussion, the blockbuster bad-boy persona and the softer moments scattered throughout, like the surprisingly melodic account of his shooting in Many Men (Wish Death), or the pleas for commitment from a lover in 21 Questions, propped up by an achingly good Barry White riff. “Could you love me on a bus?” remains one of my all-time favourite corny lyrics.
Twenty years later, I’ve still not exactly 180’d on In Da Club, but as for the rest of it, consider me a convert. Safi Bugel
Lana Del Rey – Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019)
As someone occasionally drawn to melancholy and tragedy, friends thought I would love Lana Del Rey. People whose taste gelled with mine were obsessed but while Video Games stirred something in me back in 2012, I found tracks such as Summertime Sadness grating. Through some combination of silly contrarianism, a discomfort about her public persona as a frequently thin-skinned, disengaged white woman, and perhaps an unease with sitting in my feelings beyond my established sad time records, I shrugged off one of the biggest singer-songwriters of the past decade as simply not for me.
Last year, shortly after turning 30, after taking stock of the way I was treating myself and letting others treat me, I finally put on Norman Fucking Rockwell! on a whim – and God, why had no one told me how funny Lana Del Rey is? Lines like “Why wait for the best when I could have you?” eviscerated me. Now, I’m mesmerised by her silver-screen vocals delivering dark humour over dreamlike production . When I’m feeling fraught, her music is like being with friends, making fun of ourselves and misguided past romances, relinquishing ourselves to the ephemeral beauty of feeling it all. Tara Joshi
Miles Davis – Birth of the Cool (1957)
I bought Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool about 20 years ago, because it was an album you’re supposed to own: legendary, pivotal, turns up on the critics’ best lists. I played it a couple of times without it making much impression, then filed it away. I came back to it during lockdown: by then I knew more about jazz, but I’m not sure a knowledge of the genre’s history or an understanding of the album’s context really figured in my appreciation.
My main reaction was a horrified shock: how had music as glaringly, self-evidently beautiful as Moon Dreams or Venus De Milo gone in one ear and out the other? How did I not notice the richness of Israel and Jeru? Perhaps it was a matter of time and place: beautiful, rich, transporting music was what I needed to hear during lockdown. Or perhaps you just can’t predict when music is going to beckon you in, which makes the moment it does all the more delicious. Alexis Petridis
Deee-Lite – Dewdrops in the Garden (1994)
Until a few years ago, I, like most people, only knew one Deee-Lite song: their 90s smash-hit Groove Is in the Heart. Though a technically excellent piece of music, it was repeated at one-too-many a cheesy club night for my liking, regrettably leading me to assume that the rest of their catalogue was also Austin Powers cosplay.
One day I was listening to an Apple Music radio show when the excellent Call Me, from the band’s last album, Dewdrops in the Garden, rang out. It struck me as what might be the cheekiest ode to pining for a phone call ever made; a marvellously bubbly and eccentric track full of telephone noises over a thumping house beat.
It led me to check out the album, which turned out to be deliciously uncategorisable: a hedonistic mix of classic house, bratty eurotrance, brash pop and more. Vocalist Lady Miss Kier is a woman whose voice comes straight from her diaphragm; Bittersweet Loving lays her impeccably soulful belt over Paradise Garage-era synths, while River of Freedom and Music Selector Is the Soul Reflector are part rave, part video game drones that increase the heart rate along with the BPM. It taught me to always listen beyond the hit – or potentially risk missing out on extreme delight. Christine Ochefu
Lady Gaga – Chromatica (2020)
I was 10 when Lady Gaga’s debut single, Just Dance, came out and I found the hype confusing. At that age, I found her arch, somewhat intense, and a bit tuneless – an orgy of unmoored vowel sounds and over-the-top aesthetics that made me squirm. As the years passed, I found intermittent moments of enjoyment in her output: I liked the undeniable Paparazzi, the twisted Abba vibes of Alejandro, the Kevin Parker drums on Perfect Illusion. But, for the most part, I was a staunch hater who found her unapologetic too-much-ness too much.
Then A Star Is Born was released. At first I was underwhelmed by what I felt was a hokey and rockist longueur. A few weeks later, though, I heard I’ll Never Love Again, the film’s closing ballad, in a friend’s car and inexplicably began to weep. I saw the film again during a moment of personal tragedy and found it impossibly moving. I started to warm to Gaga the person, although I still couldn’t stomach her music.
During the pandemic, her 2020 album Chromatica became an unexpected salve for me and my housemates. Every Friday night, we sat in our living room and quietly drank whatever liquor we had, enjoying the perverse feeling of listening to euphoric music while not having much fun at all. When lockdown lifted, we all still loved Chromatica, and delved deeper into her catalogue, finding wry humour, intense hooks, bizarre classic rock tributes (such as the Queen homage Yoü and I and the brilliant, Paul McCartney-like Just Another Day) and, suddenly, I was an absolute Gaga-head, rattling off trivia at bars and vying desperately to get tickets to the Chromatica tour. Now I look back and find it unconscionable that I ever saw anything in Gaga other than a generous entertainer, brilliant songwriter and enduring icon. Shaad D’Souza
