"What's your favourite album?"

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Drawing heavily on that discussion we had on Poptimists a week or two ago, here's my latest Pitchfork column. I wanted something straightforward after last month's reaction-free one (which I'm still quite pleased with) and I appear instead to have accessed my inner Nick Hornby.

Comments

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I didn't have anything to play music on (other than a radio, that is) until I was 12 or 13 - I guess I was 13 when I first bought an album. That was Slade Alive, and it stood as my favourite for a couple of years (and I still love it). In recent years I've been citing Pulp's Different Class, but the allegiance aspect, which is certainly very often part of such a choice, is a negative for me in this case, as I've disliked or hated 99% of indie since around 1990, and more specifically I hate 99% of other Britpop, so I don't feel any affinity with the genre, fans or whatever.

I'm still in the habit of not considering compilations when I answer this question - if I did, the albums I love most would be Al by Al Green, one of the prime-period Louis Prima comps, or even James Brown's Star Time, if we can stretch the definition that far. There is some point to considering albums made as albums, rather than compilations of the act's best work, separately for some purposes, but I'm not sure why I still answer a favourite album question on those terms.