Charts

I actually meant to discuss this a couple weeks ago when it was actually current news, but hey, better late than never.

I’m a list guy. I can spend hours, days on end attempting to make sense of lists of the best sitcoms of all time, or whether “Off the Wall” or “Thriller” is the better Michael Jackson album (“Off the Wall” is), or…well, you get the picture. Anyway, the folks at “Entertainment Weekly” published their 1,000th issue a couple weeks ago (congratulations to them), and they posted lists of the 100 greatest TV shows, movies, books and records of the past 25 years. While the TV and movie lists were interesting (book lists don’t move me), I was most intrigued by their list of the Top 100 albums. Sitting pretty at the top of the list was…”To the Extreme” by Vanilla Ice.

Obviously, I’m kidding. The album they picked for the #1 spot was Prince’s “Purple Rain”, which struck me as sort of a strange choice. I mean, it’s logical. Hell, it’s an incredible fucking album. It’s just not a standard or expected choice. I would have expected “OK Computer” or “Nevermind” (both of which would have been as deserving…”Nevermind” didn’t even make the list), or, if the EW folks wanted to be edgy, Winehouse’s “Back To Black” or any of the three qualifying Kanye West albums. But “Purple Rain” just seems like sort of a left-field choice, or as left-field as any album as huge as “Purple Rain” was can be, considering the damn thing spent damn near six months at #1 on the charts.

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