THE 50(ISH) GREATEST ALBUMS OF ALL TIME
Relaxodus
Album #32 : Bob Marley & The Wailers — Exodus
Aaaaaand relax.
Does anyone else remember life being this busy? Has it come as a shock to anyone else how crazy real life is? I thought the new normal was supposed to be different, more calm and measured?
Instead, I find myself once again running around like a blue-arsed fly! Now, I reminisce about all those lockdown days, complaining about having nothing to do. I didn’t know how good I had it.
I am, of course, joking. Please don’t put us back into lockdown. I am busy though — work is mad, and it if it’s not work it’s wedding admin, if it isn’t wedmin it’s looking after the dog if it’s not the dog it’s socialising. The latter is hugely overrated if you ask me. “what have you been up to since we last saw you? Oh, nothing? Me too.” Well, see you in two years!
Plus, usually when I am stressed, I’ll go for a run. But the last week or so I have been injured, which has been less than ideal.
Injured or not, it was nice to have a weekend without any real plans to just chill out, and this album was the perfect soundtrack to that. Not only does it have that chilled reggae vibe, it is an absolute masterpiece. Immediately accessible but ground-breaking at the same time.
I am grateful for this record coming out the choosing tin when it did. It has forced me to slow down and properly take stuff in. For example, if you stop and listen carefully to title track Exodus, the last 45 seconds contain a rare feature from the Cookie Monster.
Also, I’ve been reminded that it contains the song Jamming and I know a story about that. It’s a song that everyone knows, right? Wrong. An old friend of mine thought, for a long, long time, that that the lyrics were “B’jamming.” (As in, ‘and I hope you like B’jammin’ too…’). I mean… how? Marley sings “we jammin’” so. many. times. So many times. It never fails to make me laugh.
So, maybe this week’s lesson is to try and fulfill the promise we all made ourselves during a year of lockdowns. When we go back into the real world, we’ll take our time and appreciate it — it’s something I’ve not been great at so far, but I’ve been too busy to think about it!
Thanks for reading — over the course of 2021, I’ll be reviewing 50(ish) of the greatest albums ever recorded. You can see the list here:
There is also a playlist featuring the best song from each album here.
