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Influential Albums: 1297-1303
Sat., Dec. 2. 2023 4:11pm EST
J. Jackson, lead singer and lyricist for ApologetiX here again.
Here are the latest entries in the "albums that influenced me" series I started writing in May 2020.
Note: Just because an album appears on this list doesn't mean I give it a blanket endorsement. Many of the secular albums on this list are mainly there because they wound up being spoofed by ApologetiX.
1297. Best of Hall & Oates: Starting All Over Again - Daryl Hall and John Oates
Released October 14, 1997, Best of Hall & Oates: Starting All Over Again was a pretty comprehensive collection — 36 tracks, including hits they had for both RCA and Arista. Between 1976 and 1990, Daryl Hall and John Oates notched 29 Top 40 singles, and 23 of them are included on this collection. The only ones missing are "Wait for Me" (#18), "The Way You Do the Things You Do/My Girl" (#20) "How Does It Feel to Be Back" (#30), "Missed Opportunity" (#29), "Downtown Life" (#31), and "Your Imagination" (#33). I wish it had "How Does It Feel to Be Back" (possibly my favorite H&O song) and "Your Imagination" (reminds me of my college days), but you can get all that stuff online easily now anyway. Best of Hall & Oates: Starting All Over Again did have all 16 of the duo's Top 10 singles, though, including all six of their #1 hits ... plus the original version of a seventh #1 hit they wrote, "Everytime You Go Away," made famous by Paul Young. It also had their Top 10 adult contemporary hit "Starting All Over Again" (a cover of an old Mel & Tim Top 20 pop hit I always liked) and Daryl's Top 5 solo hit "Dreamtime" (a tune I bought on 45 in '86 when it was a hit). ApologetiX has spoofed four songs on Best of Hall & Oates: Starting All Over Again: "Rich Girl," "You Make My Dreams," "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)," and "Maneater." For a complete track listing, go to https://www.discogs.com/master/4635-Hall-Oates-Best-Of-Hall-Oates-Starting-All-Over-Again
1298. Complete Greatest Hits - The Cars
I've written about The Cars numerous times before on this list. I owned their first five studio LPs back in the first half of the '80s and went on to buy their last two much later. I also picked up their first greatest hits collection (from '85) in the early '90s, but that one only had 13 tracks, whereas this one has 20. Believe it or not, ApologetiX has spoofed nine of them. I bought Complete Greatest Hits soon after it came out, in February 2002, almost six years before we released any of our parodies (although we record a rough version of "My Best Friend's Girl" on one of our early homemade cassettes back in 1992). Obviously, we made up for lost time. The Cars had 13 Top 40 hits, and every single one of them is on this album. Interestingly, they also had three others that stalled at #41 — "Good Times Roll," "It's All I Can Do" (my favorite Cars tune), and "Since You're Gone" — and they're all on Complete Greatest Hits, too. We can thank Rhino Records for that. The band racked up four Top 10 pop hits: "Drive" (#3), "Shake It Up" (#4), "You Might Think" (#7), and "Tonight She Comes" (#7). They also garnered three #1 mainstream rock hits ("You Might Think," "Magic," and "Tonight She Comes") two #2 mainstream rock hits ("Shake It Up" and "You Are the Girl"), and one #1 adult contemporary hit ("Drive"). The Cars had such a great sound, although it was sometimes difficult to decipher the meanings of their songs. I'm a "words" guy, and Ric Ocasek's phraseology (he wrote all the lyrics and music) used to frustrate me when I first started listening to them, because it often seemed that he wasn't taking things as seriously as I'd like. But I learned to embrace and appreciate his bizarre and obscure wording the same way I learned to appreciate Duran's Duran's and some of Dylan's more enigmatic stuff. For a complete track listing of Complete Greatest Hits, go to https://www.discogs.com/release/9999118-The-Cars-Complete-Greatest-Hits/image/SW1hZ2U6OTEwMzc2ODE=
1299. The Best of the Doors - The Doors
This 1985 collection is quite different than the one released in 1973 (which already appeared much earlier on my list), although they share the same title. To add to the confusion, a third album with the same name and a different track listing came out in 2000. But I'm here to talk about the '85 edition, which has sold over 10 million copies in the United States alone. It contained 18 tracks, including all eight of the band's Top 40 hits: "Light My Fire" (#1), "Hello, I Love You" (#1), "Touch Me" (#3), "Love Her Madly" (#11), "People Are Strange" (#12), "Riders on the Storm" (#14), "Love Me Two Times" (#25), and "The Unknown Soldier" (#39). Of course, The Doors were about more than pop hits, so you'll also find the album-rock-radio classics "Break On Through (To the Other Side)" (#126), "L.A. Woman," "The End," "When the Music's Over," "Roadhouse Blues" (#50), "Strange Days," "Waiting for the Sun," "Spanish Caravan," "Five to One," and one of my personal favorites, "The Crystal Ship." The CD version added a 19th track, "Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)." ApologetiX has spoofed five of the tunes on this edition of The Best of the Doors: "Love Me Two Times," "Roadhouse Blues," "L.A. Woman," Break On Through," and "Riders on the Storm."
1300. Thrive - Newsboys
I bought the ninth Newsboys studio LP soon after it hit the stores, and from the moment I heard the infectious opener, "Giving It Over," I never felt any buyer's remorse. Released in March 2002, Thrive was a return to the rock form the group had perfected before Love Liberty Disco in 1999. In fact, it was closer musically and lyrically to their mid-90s albums Going Public and Take Me to Your Leader, probably because Steve Taylor was back in full force, co-producing the album and co-writing nine out of the 10 tracks. Ironically, the one track he didn't co-write, "It Is You," was arguably the album's most popular selection. It's a great worship song. The other big hit was "Million Pieces (Kissin' Your Cares Goodbye)," and rightly so. Later that year, ApologetiX played the same evening as Newsboys at an Atlanta-area festival called Four Nights in October, and I can still remember the confetti cannons they had spraying the stuff into the audience during that number. All I could think was, "Oh, man, I feel bad for the people who are going to have to clean all this up!" Two additional cuts from Thrive were released as singles to radio — "The Fad of the Land" and "John Woo." As far as the other tracks go, the ones I liked the best were "Live in Stereo," "Thrive," "Rescue," and "Cornelius." I was a little concerned when I saw the title of that last one, because we were already planning to put a parody with the same name on the next ApologetiX CD, and I didn't want anybody to think we were copying, but musically and thematically the songs were nothing alike. Thrive went to #38 on the Billboard 200, the second-highest-charting Newsboys LP up till that point.
1301. Hybrid Theory - Linkin Park
Alternative rap-rock band Linkin Park released their first LP, Hybrid Theory, on October 24, 2000. It got as high as #2 on the Billboard 200 and sold somewhere between 17 and 32 million copies (the exact amount varies, depending on the source). There were four singles: "One Step Closer" (#75 pop, #4 mainstream rock, #5 alternative, #24 U.K.), "Crawling" (#79 pop, #3 mainstream, #5 alternative, #16 U.K.), "Papercut" (#37 mainstream, #14 U.K.), and the clincher, "In the End" (#2 pop, #3 mainstream, #1 alternative for five weeks, #8 U.K.). A fifth cut also got some airplay on rock radio, "Runaway" (#37 mainstream, #40 alternative). Another track with an interesting sound is "Cure for the Itch." The first thing I remember hearing by Linkin Park was "Crawling." ApologetiX bassist Keith Haynie liked it, and I considered spoofing it, but we eventually decided to do "In the End" instead. That song peaked on the pop charts in March 2002, and our parody became the opening track on the next ApX LP five months later. Linkin Park's second album, Meteora, topped the Billboard 200 in April 2003 and sold massively as well. I particularly liked a tune called "Faint" on that one. The group would end up with five #1 LPs, 11 #1 alternative rock hits, and eight #1 mainstream hits. Linkin Park lead vocalist Chester Bennington also went onto replace Scott Weiland in Stone Temple Pilots in 2013 after Weiland left that band and had a #1 mainstream hit with them. Sadly, both singers died shortly thereafter — Weiland from an overdose at age 48 in 2015 and Bennington from suicide at age 41 in 2017.
1302. Silver Side Up - Nickelback
It's fashionable in certain circles to make fun of rock band Nickelback, but those guys are probably laughing all the way to the Royal Bank of Canada ... they've sold over 50 million albums worldwide! Their third LP, Silver Side Up, was the one that cemented their celebrity status, despite the fact that it came out on September 11, 2001 — yes, that fateful day. It reached #7 on the Billboard 200, selling over six million in the United States and 10 million worldwide. Much of the credit for that has to go to the first single, "How You Remind Me," which dominated four distinctly different charts (#1 pop for four weeks, #1 mainstream rock for 13 weeks, #1 alternative for 13 weeks, and #2 adult Top 40 for 19 weeks). The other two singles didn't do as well on the pop charts, but they were big rocks hits: "Too Bad" (#42 pop, #1 mainstream for three weeks, #6 alternative) and "Never Again" (#124 pop, #1 mainstream for three weeks, #24 alternative). Nickelback would go on to have five more Top 10 pop hits: "Photograph" (#2 pop, #1 mainstream for seven weeks, #3 alternative, #1 adult Top 40 for 18 weeks); "Rockstar" (#6 pop, #4 mainstream, #37 alternative); "Someday" (#7 pop, #2 mainstream for eight weeks, #4 alternative), "Far Away" (#8 pop, #1 adult Top 40 for five weeks), and "Gotta Be Somebody" (#10 pop, #9 mainstream, #10 alternative). By the end of 2023, they'd had 20 Top 10 mainstream rock hits, eight of which went all the way to #1. ApologetiX has spoofed three of them: "How You Remind Me," "Rockstar," and "Figured You Out" (#65 pop, #1 mainstream for 13 weeks, #4 alternative). In case you're wondering, Nickelback only had one #1 hit in their homeland, "Someday," which held the top spot for three weeks on the Canadian pop chart.
1303. Drops of Jupiter - Train
San Francisco pop-rock band Train released their eponymous debut LP in February 1998, although it took a while to catch on. The first single, "Meet Virginia," finally hit the Hot 100 in October '99 and eventually peaked at #20 pop (#2 Adult Top 40 for five weeks, #21 mainstream rock, #25 alternative) in January 2000. I first heard about that tune through Karl, who really liked it. The album itself only reached #78 but eventually sold a million copies, laying the groundwork for greater future success. The band's second LP, Drops of Jupiter, arrived in March 2001 and went to #6 on the Billboard 200, selling over three million copies in the United States. The main reason for this was the first single, "Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)" (#5 pop, #8 adult contemporary, #1 A40 for 14 weeks, #19 mainstream, #11 alternative). ApologetiX recorded and released a spoof of it in 2002. The album yielded two subsequent singles, but they were only mildly successful — "Something More" (#20 A40, #115 pop) and "She's On Fire" (#21 A40, #40 mainstream). There would be sturdier Train tracks on future LPs, however — most notably "Calling All Angels" (#19 pop, #1 adult contemporary for three weeks, #1 A40 for five weeks) in 2003, "Hey, Soul Sister" (#3 pop for four weeks) in 2010, and "Drive By" (#10 pop, #1 AC) in 2012. Train lead singer Patrick Monahan was born and raised in Erie PA, a city where my family and ApX bassist Keith Haynie's family have vacationed numerous times over the years. My oldest daughter, Janna, became a Train fan and has seen them in concert twice. In fact, the first time, they co-headlined with Daryl Hall and John Oates, an act whom I saw co-headline with ELO when I was a senior in high school. My concert was in '81; hers was in '18.
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