Week 1 -- 2017's Best

This was on the top of almost everybody's list for 2017 (NPR, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, etc etc), and rightfully so.  Honestly, I don't have much to say that hasn't already been said by others much better at writing about music than I am.   I do appreciate how each album he's put out so far reveals a little more about who he is as a person - you can feel the vulnerability he's laying out in songs like LOVE., and there is palpable tension with songs like HUMBLE., where he's reveling in being on top of his game.  I did listen to this when it first came out in April, but appreciated taking a deeper listen to it all the way through a couple of times and letting the story build.   One of my goals of this challenge is to do just that -- I get music ADD and will skip through songs after about 90 seconds.  This was a good starting point to show me just how much I miss when I choose to do that.

Link to DAMN. on Spotify here.

Categories / Attributions / Rules

Week 1 - An album considered to be 2017's best
Week 2 - A tribute album
Week 3 - An album released in the 1950s
Week 4 - An album of classical music
Week 5 - An album that won a 2018 Grammy Award
Week 6 -  An album of children's music
Week 7 - An album by the current Billboard #1 song holder
Week 8 - An album from Central America
Week 9 - An album from an independent artist
Week 10 - An album of electronic music
Week 11 - The soundtrack from 2018's Best Picture Academy Award winner
Week 12 - An album by a musician turned actor
Week 13 - An album by an actor turned musician
Week 14 - An album with no lyrics
Week 15 - An album released in the 1960s
Week 16 - An album found in a resale shop (Random draw from the CD bin)
Week 17 - An album from Africa
Week 18 - An album by a solo musician who used to be in a band / group
Week 19 - An album released in the 1970s
Week 20 - An album on a music service I've never used before
Week 21 - An album that's sold over 15 million copies
Week 22 - An album of non-Christian religious music
Week 23 - An album from an island
Week 24 - An album that has the word 'Summer' in the title
Week 25 - The first album I ever owned
Week 26 - An album that charted at #1 when I was in high school ('98 - '01)
Week 27 - An album I own in CD form
Week 28 - An album recorded by a duo
Week 29 -  An album from the Middle East
Week 30 - An album from a person/group from Illinois
Week 31 - An album from a feminist artist
Week 32 - An album released in the 1980s
Week 33 - A jazz album
Week 34 - An album released the week I was born
Week 35 - An album from a trans artist
Week 36 - An album that got a 10.0 review from Pitchfork
Week 37 - An album from East Asia
Week 38 -  An album released in the 1990s
Week 39 - An album recorded at home
Week 40 -  My favorite album released in 2018, so far.
Week 41 - An album of choral music
Week 42 - An album released in the 2000s
Week 43 -  An album from Europe ( the continent, not the band)
Week 44 -  An album by a supergroup / collaboration
Week 45 -  NOW That's What I Call Music (randomly generated number)
Week 46 - A musical soundtrack
Week 47 - A parody album
Week 48 - An album of Christmas music
Week 49 -  An album from South America
Week 50 - An album released in the 2010s
Week 51 - An album from a one-hit wonder
Week 52 - An album that was considered to be 2018's Best Album



I was inspired by Sonos' 2016 Listen More challenge , and got some help from the fine folks at Metafilter to come up with some additional categories.  As much as possible, I will try to get a different album for each with no overlaps.  I will try to listen to the album at least 3X through over the course of the week to get familiar with it.