There are so many great rock albums that will go down in history and will be praised for years to come, but only a few of these albums really changed everything, from an artist or bands image to the way we will listen to music for the rest of time. In these eight albums that many music fans see as some of the most ground-breaking albums, it’s easy to recognize each artist/band’s extreme growth and change, but diving deeper in we can see and appreciate the culture impact each album had, and still has, on the people and world around us.
Bringing It All Back Home- 1965
An album that enraged Dylan’s folk fans, Bringing It All Back Home changed everything for Bob Dylan, and changed everything for rock n’ roll as it was known. Dylan was viewed as a poet, a title that you wouldn’t think would go hand in hand with being a rock star, but Dylan made it work. He made it work so well that it’s still talked about today as one of the greatest rock albums. No one has been able to mimic exactly what Dylan did on this album, because no one else has the ability to come up with such great words and plug them in to an amplifier. No one could write like Dylan, and quite frankly no one could get booed like Dylan- but he didn’t care. Bringing It All Back Home was Dylan’s first of three consecutive rock albums. The albums pushed the boundaries of what music could do. People could be singing along to poetry and protest songs while shaking their bodies to the rock n roll sound- well, those who weren’t booing the album, that is.
Dylan reimaged popular music with Bringing It All Back Home. He took back rock n roll, something that had been apparently kidnapped by the United Kingdom. This back and forth competition to see who could do rock n roll better was actually a good thing for music lovers. They got to dip in to some of the greatest music ever made, a lot of which came out within the same few years. The artists were all learning and borrowing each other’s ideas to create their own version of popular rock, and what set Dylan apart from the others were his words. "What I did to break away, was to take simple folk changes and put new imagery and attitude to them, use catchphrases and metaphor combined with a new set of ordinances that evolved into something different that had not been heard before," Dylan wrote in his memoir.
Rubber Soul- 1965
Rubber Soul marked a real turning point for the Beatles. Sgt. Pepper was artistic and risky, but it was “The Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Rubber Soul was created by the artistic and risk taking, more mature, dope-smoking, Beatles. Rubber Soul didn’t only change the sound of Beatles, it changed the sound of music forever, with 14 original songs, more folky and mellow than anything they had done before. “At some point the Beatles hooked up with Bob Dylan. He brought them two things: marijuana and a broader idea of what could be said in popular music. Dylan knew they were great musicians, and could see they were limiting themselves in song content,” said NPR. Rubber Soul is an introspective album that talks about deeper things than holding your hand. This album bridges the gap between the Beatles’ poppy love songs and their more experimental projects.
Rubber Soul is pre-psychedelic rock, but listening to it you can almost feel that something more- something perhaps weirder- is coming. Weirder things most definitely came, and not too long after this album was released. The success of Rubber Soul, and the Beatles fondness of drugs, led them to become more creative in the studio, both with their words and with their musical sounds and effects. We have this album to thank for the albums that followed, like Revolver, Magical Mystery Tour, the White Album, and other albums from artists who were learning from the Beatles and would come up in the late 60s and early 70s.
Pet Sounds- 1966
“With its vivid orchestration, lyrical ambition, elegant pacing and thematic coherence, Pet Sounds invented – and in some sense perfected – the idea that an album could be more than the sum of its parts,” said Rolling Stone magazine, after naming Pet Sounds number two on their list of 500 greatest albums of all time. Pet Sounds was the Beach Boys farewell album to their fun, beachy hits. It was onto more personal songs, a more sophisticated sound, and a more controlling Brian Wilson. Wilson’s artistic vision took control of this album and went against the trends, perhaps in response to the Beatles’ Rubber Soul, or maybe just to follow through on a sound that the Beach Boys felt was true to them. “We were trying to capture spiritual love that couldn't be found anywhere else in the world,” said Wilson. This was a revolutionary album, one that sticks out in the history of rock n roll because it was the first rock record to be considered a “concept album.”
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band- 1967
The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is a great piece of art that should be recognized and celebrated. The album is full of creative risks from the expensive album cover to the very last song on the album, and artistic teamwork that is often difficult to see on this large of a scale.
After a year of the biggest band in America deciding not to tour any longer, Paul convinced the Beatles that their next album should be like a concert that people could listen to on a record. They created the name “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” as a sort of alter ego that would “tour” for them in bedrooms and houses around the world. The album got released inside of a colorful and intricate cover costing the band about 3,000 pounds, presenting dozens of celebrities, strange dolls, flower gardens, each with a specific purpose or meaning. Serious thought went into this precarious cover, which ended up winning the Grammy Award for Best Album Cover in 1967. It was also the first cover to ever have lyrics printed inside of it, which was a landmark in music history.
The songs on this album were like nothing anyone had ever created before. There were made up stories, like a girl running away from home and leaving her parents devastated in “She’s Leaving Home,” and a beautiful meter maid named Rita, in “Lovely Rita.” John Lennon wrote “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” after his five-year-old son brought home a drawing of his friend Lucy from school, floating in the sky. The colorful words in this song bring the listener to a different universe with “tangerine trees and marmalade skies.” John bought an old circus flier in an antique store, and turned it into “Being for the Benefit of Mister Kite,” changing the scene to that of a circus. He was able to take other art; his five-year-old son’s and a flier in an antique store, and turned it into something completely of his own.
George’s song “Within You Without You” is accompanied by a sitar, an instrument from India that the he had recently began experimenting with. George brought an art form from the other side of the world over to the UK and the U.S. to introduce this new sound to the people here.
After the closing song from Sgt. Pepper and his band, an encore quietly starts to play, and grow, into what was to become one of the most historical and well-known songs in history, “A Day in the Life.” This five and a half minute tune combined the artistic brains of both Lennon and McCartney, with creative help from the other Beatles, their manager, and a full orchestra that was brought into the studio. The song begins with John singing about the real news he’s heard, seen, or read about around this time. John couldn’t complete the song by himself and asked for McCartney’s assistance. Paul also had a part of a song up his sleeve that he was having trouble finishing as well. The two combined their unfinished pieces into one, for a song that is truly Lennon/McCartney. At the end of the song, it was the orchestra’s turn to get creative. Producer George Martin told them to start at one note and end at another. How they got there was totally up to them. The climax of the song and end to the album closes with the ringing of one final chord held out for the last minute and ten seconds of the song.
Every person who worked on this album labored to make it what it is seen as today. It includes thoughts, art, and culture from around the world and artistic input ranging from a kindergarten student to Academy and Grammy Award-winning-producer George Martin. Each person involved with Sgt. Pepper helped to make musical history, and is one of, if not the single greatest and most influential albums of all time.
Led Zeppelin- 1969
The Yardbirds were out, Led Zeppelin was in, and there has never been a greater shift of a band in rock music than this one. Credit must be given to the Yardbirds for starting the careers of three of the greatest guitar players of all time, but it’s when the band solidified their line up and signed to Atlantic records that they really took off. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant John Paul Jones, and John Bonham released Led Zeppelin in 1969, giving the world an introduction to what was to come in the 70s for rock music. The album’s success quickly became the standard at which future rock albums in the years to follow would be held to. The raw sound and rock energy that was out into making these significant nine tracks was a different kind of sound, not only for the Yardbirds but for music fans everywhere. Nothing like this had yet been made, but after this album was released there was much more coming, and coming fast. Led Zeppelin put out album after album for 12 years, each album just as influential as the last, and the groundbreaking, blues-infused, Led Zeppelin is what started it all.
Born to Run- 1975
Born to Run gave rock star Bruce Springsteen the superstar status he holds today. Born to Run is a Springsteen masterpiece. “The album became a monster,” Springsteen remembered. There are a dozen guitar overdubs on the track “Born to Run” alone. The album tells the dramatic but true tale about the American dream and how it all so often comes crashing down. Rolling Stone described it as, “the fight to reconcile big dreams with crushing reality.” Springsteen apparently found it so hard to re-create the sound in his head that he almost gave up and put out a live album instead, but we thank God he didn’t. Because of Bruce’s perseverance and perfectionist ways, he was able to produce a record that will go down in history as one of the greatest ever.
With two borderline unsuccessful albums already under his belt, Springsteen knew he needed a hit for his third. The release of Born to Run was the transitional, career-defining album that Springsteen needed, as well as the new musical influence that music lovers needed, and completely ate up. Born to Run was an album that had an effect on people everywhere because of how it successfully captured the decline of the American Dream. It “embodied the lost 70s,” said the Atlantic. “The tense, political, working-class rejection of an increasingly unequal society.” Everyone in the 70s could relate to these issues just as well as they could relate to rock n roll. Civil rights, Vietnam, gay rights, the tax revolt, feminism, the sex revolution were only a few of the things taking the country by storm in the 70s. This was a time for activists to stand together, and music- Born to Run, specifically, gave them a place to stand and people to stand with.
Joshua Tree- 1987
It’s nearly impossible to think that there was a time when “Bono” was not a name known world-wide, but since the release of Joshua Tree in 1987, U2 became one of the most popular rock and roll bands in the world. The words that fill Joshua Tree are truly essential to a world living through political hardships time and time again. The reference to politics throughout the album got people fired up and talking about not only the issues the United States were having, but also about Joshua Tree and this rock n roll band from Ireland.
U2 commemorated Joshua Tree’s 30th anniversary with a concert tour that was incredibly successful. Even 30 years later people jumped at the chance to go and hear one of the greatest rock n roll albums performed live. The album stands alone with relevance to issues the world faces, but with the help of the band and fans screaming in the crowd, one can truly feel connected to Joshua Tree with new meanings behind the words all the time. On this tour, the band showed positivity and togetherness on the subject of political power and gay rights, specifically. This album had a huge cultural impact and continues to affect people all around the world.
Work Cited
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