Tag: 48 Favorites For The 48 years Of My Life

My 48 Favorite Albums For The 48 Years Of My Life

48

In celebration of my 48th birthday earlier this month, I am doing three special posts: one on my 48 favorite books for the 48 years of my life, which published this past Sunday; then, my 48 favorite movies, this past Wednesday; and my 48 favorite albums, here today.

I compiled this list roughly from elementary school to high school to college to the present. I tried to think of the albums that I’ve listened to a lot, either on the school bus when I was a kid or in the car (whichever one I or we had at the time). When I was a teen, I went through a phase of Christian rock, which is represented, as well as metal. Much of the latter part of the list can be attributed to finding music via Pitchfork. As much as possible, I also tried not to include collections, but had to include a few that were too important not to exclude.

  1. Kenny Rogers – 20 Greatest Hits
  2. Elvis Presley – His Hand in Mine
  3. Styx – Paradise Theater
  4. Michael Jackson – Thriller
  5. Prince – Purple Rain
  6. RUN-DMC – Raising Hell
  7. Bon Jovi – Slippery When Wet
  8. Petra – More Power to Ya
  9. Mylon Lefevre & Broken Heart – Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing
  10. Stryper – Soldiers Under Command
  11. Tonio K – Romeo Unchained
  12. The Call – Reconciled
  13. The Beatles – The White Album
  14. U2 – The Joshua Tree
  15. R.E.M. – Green
  16. Vinnie Moore – Mind’s Eye
  17. Joe Satriani – Surfing with the Alien
  18. Queensrÿche – Operation: Mindcrime
  19. Metallica – …And Justice For All
  20. Temple of the Dog – Temple of the Dog
  21. Soundgarden – Superunknown
  22. Pearl Jam – No Code
  23. King’s X – Dogman
  24. Lone Justice – Shelter
  25. Dwight Yoakam – This Time
  26. John Mellencamp – The Lonesome Jubilee
  27. Larry Norman – Something New Under The Son
  28. Etta James – The Essential Etta James
  29. Donna Summer – On The Radio – Greatest Hits
  30. Blind Willie Johnson – The Complete Blind Willie Johnson
  31. Grateful Dead – American Beauty
  32. Pink Floyd – The Wall
  33. Terence Trent D’Arby – Symphony or Damn
  34. Public Enemy – Fear of a Black Planet
  35. Bruce Springsteen – Nebraska
  36. Johnny Cash – American Recordings
  37. Sturgill Simpson – Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
  38. Father John Misty – I Love You, Honeybear
  39. Burial – Rival Dealer
  40. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!
  41. Thee Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra – Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everything
  42. Todd Terje – It’s Album Time
  43. Kanye West – Yeezus
  44. Bon Iver – 22, A Million
  45. Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp A Butterfly
  46. Beyoncé – Lemonade
  47. Beach House – Bloom
  48. Max Richter – Sleep

And here is one song from each album, minus one: Beyoncé’s Lemonade, which isn’t available on Spotify.

If you had a list of favorite albums for the number of years for every year of your life, what would be some of those you’d have to include? Any crossovers?

My 48 Favorite Movies For The 48 Years Of My Life

48

In celebration of my 48th birthday earlier this month, I am doing three special posts: first, one on my 48 favorite books for the 48 years of my life, which published this past Sunday; then, today, my 48 favorite movies; and this Friday, my 48 favorite albums.

For this list, I broke it down, roughly by decade or every 12 years of my life. I did not always have a movie for every year, as sometimes I had two for another year instead. Unfortunately, this did leave out a lot of favorites from before I was born, including Sunset Boulevard, All About Eve, and Touch of Evil, just to name a few. The ones in bold are my favorite for those 12 years and those in bold and with an asterisk are underrated classics.

1969-1980

  1. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
  2. The Wild Bunch
  3. Fiddler on the Roof
  4. The Sting
  5. The Godfather, Part II
  6. The Conversation*
  7. Rocky
  8. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  9. Smokey and the Bandit
  10. Apocalypse Now
  11. Breaking Away*
  12. The Empire Strikes Back

1981-1992

  1. Raiders of the Last Ark
  2. Blade Runner
  3. Amadeus
  4. The Breakfast Club
  5. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
  6. The Princess Bride
  7. Broadcast News
  8. Die Hard
  9. Do The Right Thing*
  10. Dead Poets Society
  11. Goodfellas
  12. The Natural

1993- 2004

  1. Schindler’s List
  2. Groundhog Day
  3. Forrest Gump
  4. Clueless
  5. As Good as it Gets
  6. Saving Private Ryan
  7. Run Lola Run*
  8. The Matrix
  9. Office Space
  10. Almost Famous
  11. Gladiator
  12. Kill Bill 1 & 2

2005-2017

  1. Little Miss Sunshine
  2. Lars and the Real Girl*
  3. Deadpool
  4. Winter’s Bone*
  5. Up in the Air
  6. Inception
  7. Django Unchained
  8. Boyhood
  9. Spotlight
  10. Guardians of the Galaxy
  11. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
  12. Moonrise Kingdom

If you had a list of favorite movies for the number of years for every year of your life, what would be some of those you’d have to include? Any crossovers?

My 48 Favorite Books For The 48 Years Of My Life

48

In celebration of my 48th birthday earlier this month, I am doing three special posts: first, this one on my 48 favorite books for the 48 years of my life; then, this Wednesday, my 48 favorite movies; and this Friday, my 48 favorite albums.

For today’s list, I decided to try to go from childhood to the present and to try not to include trilogies or series, with a few notable exceptions in both cases. For example, I included two comic book collections and tacked on one at the end because it was the end of a series and also a good place to end. Many are from high school and college reading lists and classes, such as the Knowles, Milton, Faulker, and O’Connor, with the last two being for a course on both of them. Others are the start of series that I love, many at the beginning and a few in the middle. I want to give a special shout-out to The Bloom County collections, which helped me through mandatory chapel at Messiah College in the late 80s and early 90s. Thank you, Berke Breathed.

  1. The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins  by Dr. Seuss
  2. Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
  3.  In The Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
  4. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
  5. Stuart Little by E.B. White
  6. Big Red by Jim Kjelgaard
  7. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
  8. The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
  9. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
  10. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
  11. Lord of the Flies by William Goulding
  12. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
  13. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  14. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
  15. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
  16. Dune by Frank Herbert
  17. Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saaverda (abridged, translated, and edited by Walter Starkie)
  18. The Stand by Stephen King
  19. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  20. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
  21. The River Why by David James Duncan
  22. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
  23. Paradise Regained by John Milton
  24. The Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell
  25. Harvest Poems: 1910-1960 by Carl Sandburg
  26. Ariel by Sylvia Plath
  27. Selected Poems of William Carlos Williams by William Carlos Williams
  28. All of Us: The Collected Poems by Raymond Carver
  29. The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor by Flannery O’Connor
  30. The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
  31. Truman by David McCullough
  32. Modern Man in Search of a Soul by C.G. Jung
  33. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
  34. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
  35. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
  36. Harry Potter and The Order of Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
  37. To Kill a Mockingbird  by Harper Lee
  38. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
  39. Flesh and Bone by Jonathan Maberry
  40. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  41. Being Mortal by Atul Gawende
  42. The Essential Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterston
  43. Bloom County: Volumes 1 through 5 by Berke Breathed
  44. The Black Echo by Michael Connelly
  45. White Butterfly by Walter Mosley
  46. Dogstar Rising by Parker Bilal
  47. Memory by Donald E. Westlake
  48. Curtain by Agatha Christie

If you had a list of favorites for every year of your life, what would be some of those you’d have to include? Any crossovers?