Top 10 Albums From The Grave
These 10 artists left out world and then just like magic, released albums! And good thing, because they all rocked.
10. Selena - Dreaming of You
Every fifth-grade girl in the nineties became openly and passionately obsessed with Selena after Jennifer Lopez portrayed her wearing a spangled bustier in the movie Selena.
We were ignorant, however, to know that Selena had had a dedicated following for years before the Latin pop star's death in 1995 and the subsequent movie's 1997 release. She was a verifiable icon and an enormous talent.
Unfortunately, the album of hers that sold the most copies by far was Dreaming of You, which wasn't released until after her death. I listened to the entire album yesterday - three times in a row - and to my surprise, I still knew every word. This makes me believe that viewing this movie should be a prerequisite requirement to entering middle school. Little girls everywhere would be the better for it.
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Author: Dayna Evans
9. J Dilla - The Shining
The death of J Dilla had a far-reaching effect on the hip hop community, and it continues to reverberate today as a presence at award shows, at tribute concerts, and in endless posthumous releases.
The first and best of them all is The Shining, a 12-song compendium of songs that he'd been working on before his death. It features some of J Dilla's closest collaborators-Madlib, Black Thought, Common-who would later mourn him in their music and celebrate his life in tributes.
It's an amazing, soulful record, as was everything that J Dilla had a hand in, and its companion release of just instrumental tracks really illuminates what an extraordinary talent he had for producing.
Tune in as we undress pop culture's most beloved obsessions. Don't miss LOVE LUST | THE UNDEAD and more, Tuesdays at 10p.
Author: Dayna Evans
8. Jeff Buckley - Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk
Recently it was revealed that Gossip Girl star Penn Badgley would play the role of Jeff Buckley in an upcoming movie about Buckley's life. While you recover from the shock and trauma of how poorly this role was cast, you should listen to Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk.
It is the unfinished but retouched and tweaked album that Buckley had been working on before his tragic death by drowning. As the brooding, sullen representation of New York in the 90s, Buckley leaves behind an accurate legacy record that shows us the music we loved on Grace, but with a chance for interpretation.
The album is split into two discs: more polished studio songs and a collective of his b-sides and four track recordings. Whether you are a fan of Buckley's infamous vocal range or his attempt at appearing edgy and romantic simultaneously, this record could never disappoint.
If you're looking for something as legendary as Grace, you won't necessarily find it-but with a little imagination, you can feel how his music might have matured. And my imagination says that it sounds awesome.
Tune in as we undress pop culture's most beloved obsessions. Don't miss LOVE LUST | THE UNDEAD and more, Tuesdays at 10p.
Author: Dayna Evans
7. Sublime - Sublime
The cover of this record is easily one of the most recognizable of all time. When I was given my first CD player (a legit boombox, not even portable), I had to exchange the cassette tape of Sublime for a CD, which felt like the ultimate betrayal.
For reasons I can't actually explain, this CD cover still hangs on the wall of my bedroom - maybe as a tribute to my first experience in listening to real music. ''What I Got'' was played constantly on my local radio station, which inevitably led me to figure out what ''getting high'' meant.
Bradley Nowell's death was something I was naive to until years later when I digested that getting high may have meant something more sinister. It is amazing to think that, due to Nowell's overdose, Sublime's record company almost decided to not release this album.
This would have been an unforgivable misstep. For me, and I'm sure for others, listening to this CD over and over on my boombox (covered in stickers) was one of the things that made me genuinely obsessed with music from that point forward. The album, despite being overcast by grief, can never be paralleled.
Tune in as we undress pop culture's most beloved obsessions. Don't miss LOVE LUST | THE UNDEAD and more, Tuesdays at 10p.
Author: Dayna Evans
6. Jimi Hendrix - Every posthumous album
Jimi Hendrix has eleven posthumous studio albums, which more than triples the number of records that he released while he was still alive. That is completely wild. Hendrix wasn't like Van Gogh-he was respected during his time, and clearly had enough material to put out album after album.
But because Hendrix died only three years after his first album, Are You Experienced, was put out, the opportunity for great productivity while he was still alive wasn't really there. Luckily for obsessed Hendrix fans, of which there are many, he recorded a great deal of what he either wrote or played, and his live performances were caught on tape enough times that posthumous releases could continue for a long time to come.
His sound is ubiquitous, allowing the posthumous releases that continue to be churned out to serve as preservation projects for his pervasive style. I'm sure a live album could never compare to actually seeing Hendrix gyrate and swing about on stage, but I'm not sure if I could even handle that sexiness, so it's probably for the better.
Tune in as we undress pop culture's most beloved obsessions. Don't miss LOVE LUST | THE UNDEAD and more, Tuesdays at 10p.
Author: Dayna Evans
5. Nirvana - MTV Unplugged in New York
Everyone, no matter how uninformed, has a favorite Nirvana album, and if you're like me, a favorite photograph wherein Kurt Cobain encompasses the nature of melancholy.
Their Unplugged album, which was released with initial trepidation from the remaining band members, came out seven months after Cobain's death. It is one of the most painfully beautiful and intimate accounts of what a band can do when stripped to vulnerability.
Despite the album's success, it is in remembering the actual performance while listening to the record that makes the experience feel so heavy. Dave Grohl's now-notorious black turtleneck and clean-shaven face, Novoselic's hunched-over body on a tiny stool, and Cobain at the helm, catatonic.
It's these images that make the record so good. The Unplugged series has since had some more great successes (Jay-Z before he became milquetoast; Springsteen, who refused to unplug), but none could be as memorable as Nirvana's.
Tune in as we undress pop culture's most beloved obsessions. Don't miss LOVE LUST | THE UNDEAD and more, Tuesdays at 10p.
Author: Dayna Evans
4. Janis Joplin - Pearl
I had never been a Janis Joplin fan until I found a crate of my mom's old vinyl in the back of an overstuffed closet at our house. There is a quality to Joplin that is vaguely menacing despite her goofy grin on the cover of Pearl.
She was unhinged and wild, and her throaty, rasping voice was laden with trouble. But like most characters of her day, that's exactly what made her so good. Listening to Pearl on vinyl was like the scene in the last episode of Freaks & Geeks where Lindsay hears The Grateful Dead for the first time - it was an extended montage of judgment to confusion to admiration to understanding.
''A Woman Left Lonely'' encompassed melancholy in a way that hadn't been expressed before; ''Mercedes Benz'' was a take on greed and status that Joplin sang with a hint of snark. There is very little on the record that felt overwhelmingly deranged; it is fun, occasionally sad, and powerful, which is how I think Joplin would have liked to be remembered.
Tune in as we undress pop culture's most beloved obsessions. Don't miss LOVE LUST | THE UNDEAD and more, Tuesdays at 10p.
Author: Dayna Evans
3. Elliott Smith - From A Basement on the Hill
I remember very clearly the day that Elliott Smith died. I'm not sure why this was, but so many kids at my high school were enormous fans of his, and on the day of his death, we all walked around sallow-faced and sorrowful, spreading rumors that it couldn't possibly have been suicide. (Still a huge speculation for many.)
A year later, still wallowing in grief, we were resuscitated by the posthumous release, From A Basement on the Hill. Never would we claim that it was better than XO or Either/Or, but there was no doubt that it was unbelievable. And with everything Smith released, it had an element of the unnerving and off-kilter that kept us happy, though with greater heft this time around.
High schoolers love nothing more than reading between the lines to find melodrama and tragedy, so we parsed the liner notes of this record like it was a game of Clue. Which, of course, made us like it even more.
Tune in as we undress pop culture's most beloved obsessions. Don't miss LOVE LUST | THE UNDEAD and more, Tuesdays at 10p.
Author: Dayna Evans
2. Notorious B.I.G. - Life After Death
Biggie was a lot of things in life - a rapper, a baller, a handsome man with a lot of cash. He was also, sadly, the world's best clairvoyant. When his first studio album, Ready to Die, was released, Biggie must have had some suspicion that the next three years were to be spent preparing for the afterlife.
In March of 1997, just three weeks short of his second album's release, the infamous Brooklyn rapper was killed. Though it is sad that we have to consider Life After Death a posthumous album, its reception was so great that it became one of the best-selling rap albums of all time.
With features from every living legend in rap (most of them, before they were legends), releasing a 2-disc album with hit after hit, using some of the most amazing samples, was guaranteed to be a success. I'm sure that this is how Biggie would have wanted to celebrate his life after death.
Tune in as we undress pop culture's most beloved obsessions. Don't miss LOVE LUST | THE UNDEAD and more, Tuesdays at 10p.
Author: Dayna Evans
1. Joy Division - Closer
Joy Division and Biggie Smalls-stay with me here-actually have something in common. Both only put out two albums, one before tragedy struck and another directly after.
It's a sad commonality but both artists share incomparable greatness in their first and last records that many musicians could never achieve in a decades-long career.
Closer, which was released two months after frontman Ian Curtis's suicide, is objectively one of the greatest albums of the 80s. It is dark, bleak, and erratic-the whole album is a masterpiece of sadness and synths, which everyone at some point in their life will really appreciate.
Not to mention, the whole opus is so completely ahead of its time that one wonders what Ian Curtis would be capable of in the 90s, 00s, and beyond.
Tune in as we undress pop culture's most beloved obsessions. Don't miss LOVE LUST | THE UNDEAD and more, Tuesdays at 10p.
Author: Dayna Evans
