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A PLETHORA OF POP MUSIC BOOK REVIEW #4
1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die
Is hearing the same as listening? This book is at home in the infinite media landscape in which we live. We hear a lot, but do we listen?
Spanning six decades with reviews by 90 international critics, 1001 Albums promises a lot. With 1001 albums and nearly as many pages, this compendium still manages to be remarkably lightweight.
The albums are organised chronologically and are grouped by decade. This avoids any ratings system, removing a certain layer of controversy. It also avoids clustering around a particular era, all decades getting fairly even treatment, which is a good strategy.
Each album is afforded a half page review in three different formats.
The first is a single half page column. These are text only or come with a small thumbnail of the album cover.
The second is a full page review where a picture of the album cover and the track listing are added.
The third format repeats the second, adding a relevant photo to the facing page. The increased amount of page space acts to emphasise albums considered more significant and this largely works, although often I…
