Best easy listening albums

When was the last time you listened to an old album from start to finish? With our ears set to shuffle since the death of the CD, only the vinyl fetishists seem to do it any more. Consequently we can end up believing we have solid opinions on records we may never have given our honest and sustained attention. I didnt want to include Pink Floyds Dark Side of the Moon. Then I played it to my nine-year-old son, who doesnt share any of my cultural baggage. Watching it blow his mind, I changed mine.

So. This list is designed for anybody interested in extending their aural attention span and genuinely challenging their preconceptions. Weve included classics and curveballs, because to list can also mean to tilt.

Most of our personal favourites arent here, because weve tried to pick the records that broke new ground rather than those that refined old sounds. Hopefully you can still feel the electricity of invention in The Beatles Revolver, Public Enemys It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Nass Illmatic. Hopefully you can hear the influence of these albums on some of your own favourites. Hopefully, youll use the comment section to tell us what surprised you and what confirmed your suspicions. But first, the olde English meaning of list, or lyst: shush and harken. Helen Brown

The Velvet Underground & Nico [1967], The Velvet Underground

It was Andy Warhol who wanted Lou Reed and John Cale to let his beautiful new friend Nico sing with their avant-garde rock band. Truthfully, though, Victor Frankenstein himself couldnt have sewn together a creature out of more mismatched body parts than this album.

It starts with a childs glockenspiel and ends in deafening feedback, noise, and distortion. Side one, track one, Sunday Morning, is a wistful ballad fit for a cool European chanteuse sung by a surly Brooklynite. Venus in Furs is a jangling, jagged-edge drone about a sex whipping not given lightly. Ill Be Your Mirror is a love song. European Son is rocknroll turned sonic shockwave. Thats before you even get on to the song about buying and shooting heroin that David Bowie heard on a test pressing and called the future of music. Half a century on, all you have to do is put electricity through The Velvet Underground & Nico to realise that he was right. Chris Harvey

I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You [1967], Aretha Franklin

When Jerry Wexler signed the daughter of a violent, philandering preacher to Atlantic records, he took her to church, sat her down at the piano, and let her be herself. The Queen of Soul gave herself the same space. You can hear her listening to the band, biding her time before firing up her voice to demand R-E-S-P-E-C-T, 50 years before the #MeToo movement. HB

Master of Puppets [1986], Metallica

Despite not featuring any singles, Metallicas third album was the UK rock radio breakthrough theyd been looking for. In 1986, they released one of the best metal records of all time, which dealt with the potency and very nature of control, meshing beauty and raw human ugliness together on tracks like Damage Inc and Orion. This album is about storytelling the mediaeval-influenced guitar picks on opener Battery should be enough to tell you that. Although that was really the only mediaeval imagery they conjured up they ripped Dungeons & Dragons clichés out of the lyrics and replaced them with the apocalypse, with bassist Cliff Burton, drummer Lars Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett and singer/rhythm guitarist James Hetfield serving as the four horsemen. Roisin OConnor

Remain in Light [1980], Talking Heads

Facts are simple and facts are straight / Facts are lazy and facts are late sang David Byrne, submerging personal and planetary anxieties about fake news and conspicuous consumption in dense, layers and loops of Afrobeat-indebted funk. Propulsive polyrhythms drive against the lyrical pleas for us to stop and take stock. Same as it ever was. HB

Catch a Fire [Jamaican version] [1973], Bob Marley and the Wailers

The album that carried reggae music to the four corners of the world and made Bob Marley an international superstar also set the political tone for many artists to follow. Marley sang of life where the living is hardest in Concrete Jungle and looked back to Jamaicas ignoble slaving past No chains around my feet but Im not free. He packed the album with beautiful melodic numbers, such as High Tide and Low Tide, and rhythmic dance tracks like Kinky Reggae. Released outside of Jamaica by Island Records with guitar overdubs and ornamentation, the original Jamaican version is a stripped-down masterpiece. CH

Revolver [1966], The Beatles

An unprecedented 220 hours of studio experimentation saw George Martin and The Beatles looping, speeding, slowing and spooling tapes backwards to create a terrifically trippy new sound. The mournful enigma of McCartneys For No One and the psychedelia of Lennons Tomorrow Never Knows and She Said, She Said can still leave you standing hypnotised over the spinning vinyl, wondering if the music is coming out or being sucked back in. HB

Like a Prayer [1989], Madonna

It may be the most serious album shes ever made, yet Like a Prayer is also Madonna at her most accessible pulling no punches in topics from religion to the dissolution of her marriage. In 1989, her personal life was tabloid fodder: a tumultuous marriage to actor Sean Penn finally ended in divorce, and she was causing controversy with the Like a Prayer video and its burning crosses.

On the gospel abandon of the title track, she takes the listeners breath away with her sheer ambition. Where her past records had been reflections of the modern music that influenced her, Like a Prayer saw her pay homage to bands like Sly & the Family Stone and Simon & Garfunkel. The album was also about an artist taking control over her own narrative, after releasing records that asked the audience and the press to like her. RO

Led Zeppelin IV [1971], Led Zeppelin

Millennials coming at this album can end up feeling like the guy who saw Hamlet and complained it was all quotations. Jimmy Pages juggernaut riffs and Robert Plants hedonistic wails set the bench mark for all subsequent heavy, hedonistic rock. But its worth playing the whole thing to experience the full mystic, monolithic ritual of the thing. Stairway? Undeniable. HB

The Best of the Shangri-Las [1996], The Shangri-Las

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no no no no no, no one ever did teen heartbreak quite like the Shangri-Las. Long before the Spice Girls packaged attitude for popular consumption, songwriter Ellie Greenwich was having trouble with a group of teenagers who had grown up in a tough part of Queens with their gestures, and language, and chewing the gum and the stockings ripped up their legs. But the Shangri-Las sang with an ardour that was so streetwise, passionate and raw that it still reaches across more than half a century without losing any of its power. Leader of the Pack [co-written by Greenwich] may be their best-known song, but they were never a novelty act. This compilation captures them at their early Sixties peak. CH

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars [1972], David Bowie

Flamboyance, excess, eccentricity this is the breakthrough album that asserted Bowie as glam rocks new icon, surpassing T Rex. He may have come to rue his Ziggy Stardust character, but with it, Bowie transcended artists seeking authenticity via more mundane means. It was his most ambitious album musically and thematically that, like Prince, saw him unite his greatest strengths from previous works and pull off one of the great rock and roll albums without losing his sense of humour, or the wish to continue entertaining his fans. Im out to bloody entertain, not just get up onstage and knock out a few songs, he declared. Im the last person to pretend Im a radio. Id rather go out and be a colour television set. RO

Unknown Pleasures [1979], Joy Division

In their brief career, ended by the suicide of 23-year-old singer Ian Curtis, Joy Division created two candidates for the best album by anyone ever. Closer may be a final flowering, but Unknown Pleasures is more tonally consistent, utterly unlike anything before or since. The mood is an all-pervading ink-black darkness, but there is a spiritual force coming out of the grooves that is so far beyond pop or rock, it feels almost Dostoevskyan. There are classic songs Disorder, Shes Lost Control and New Dawn Fades and for those whod swap every note Eric Clapton ever played for one of Peter Hooks basslines, the sequence at 4:20 on I Remember Nothing is perhaps the single most thrilling moment in the entire Joy Division catalogue. CH

Hejira [1976], Joni Mitchell

Though her 1971 album Blue is usually chosen for these kinds of lists, Mitchell surpassed its silvery, heartbroken folk five years later with a record that found her confidently questioning its culturally conditioned expectations of womanhood. Against an ambiguous, jazzy landscape, her deepening, difficult voice weighs romance and domesticity against the adventure of strange pillows and solitude. HB

Body Talk [2010], Robyn

The answer to whether Robyn could follow up the brilliance of her self-titled 2005 album came in a burst of releases in 2010, the EPs Body Talk Pt 1, Pt 2 and Pt 3, and this 15-track effort, essentially a compilation album. It includes different versions of some tracks, such as the non-acoustic version of Hang With Me [and we can argue all night about that one], but leaves well alone when it comes to the single greatest electronic dance track since I Feel Love, Dancing On My Own. Body Talk is simply jammed with great songs. CH

Off the Wall [1979], Michael Jackson

I will study and look back on the whole world of entertainment and perfect it, wrote Jackson as he turned 21 and shook off his cute, controlled child-star imagery to release his jubilant, fourth solo album. Produced by Quincy Jones, the sophisticated disco funk nails the balance between tight, tendon-twanging grooves and liberated euphoria. Glitter ball magic. HB

Illmatic [1994], Nas

How good can rap get? This good. There are albums where the myth can transcend the music not on Illmatic, where Nas vaulted himself into the ranks of the greatest MCs in 1994, with an album that countless artists since have tried and failed to emulate. Enlisting the hottest producers around Pete Rock, DJ Premier, Q-Tip, LES and Large Professor was a move that Complex blamed for ruining hip hop, while still praising Nass record, because it had a lasting impact on the use of multiple producers on rap albums.

Nas used the sounds of the densely populated New York streets he grew up on to vividly depict that life in his music. You hear the rattle of the steel train that opens the record, along with the cassette tape hissing the verse from a teenage Nasty Nas on Main Sources 1991 track Live at the BBQ: When I was 12, I went to hell for snuffing Jesus. RO

Trans-Europe Express [1977], Kraftwerk

This is the album that changes everything. The synthesised sounds coming out of Kraftwerks Kling-Klang studios had already become pure and beautiful on 1975s Radio-Activity, but on Trans-Europe Express, their sophistication subtly shifts all future possibilities. The familiar quality of human sweetness and melancholy in Ralf Hutters voice is subsumed into the machine as rhythms interlock and bloom in side twos mini-symphony that begins with the title track. Released four months before Giorgio Moroders I Feel Love, Trans-Europe Express influenced everything from hip-hop to techno. All electronic dance music starts here. CH

Kind of Blue [1959], Miles Davis

With the sketches of melody only written down hours before recording, the worlds best-selling jazz record still feels spontaneous and unpredictable. Daviss friend George Russell once explained that the secret of its tonal jazz was to use every note in a scale without having to meet the deadline of a particular chord. Kind of Blue is unrepeatably cool. HB

Astral Weeks [1968], Van Morrison

If I ventured in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream To enter this musical cathedral, where folk, jazz and blue-eyed soul meet is always to feel a sense of awe. Recorded in just two eight-hour sessions, in which Morrison first played the songs to the assembled musicians then told them to do their own thing, Astral Weeks still feels as if it was made yesterday. Morrisons stream-of-consciousness lyrics within the richness of the acoustic setting double bass, classical guitar and flute make this as emotionally affecting an album as any in rock and pop. CH

West Side Story Soundtrack [1961]

Life is all right in America / If youre all white in America yelp the immigrants in this passionate and political musical relocating of Romeo and Juliet to Fifties New York. Leonard Bernsteins sophisticated score is a melting pot of pop, classical and Latin music; Stephen Sondheims lyrics sharp as a flick knife. An unanswered prayer for a united and forgiving USA. HB

Sign o the Times [1987], Prince

Sign o the Times is Princes magnum opus from a catalogue of masterworks a double album spanning funk, rock, R&B and most essentially, soul. It is the greatest articulation of his alchemic experiments with musical fusion the sum of several projects Prince was working on during his most creatively fruitful year. On Sign o the Times, the bass is king Prince had already cemented his guitar god status on Purple Rain. There are tracks that drip with sex, and love songs like Adore, which remains one of the greatest of all time. Stitched together with the utmost care, as if he were writing a play with a beginning, a middle and an end, the album is a landmark in both pop and in art. RO

Pet Sounds [1966], The Beach Boys

Caught in the psychological undertow of family trauma and all those commercial surf songs, 23-year-old Brian Wilson had a panic attack and retreated to the studio to write this dreamlike series of songs whose structural tides washed them way beyond the preppy formulas of drugstore jukeboxes. Notes pinged from vibraphones and Coke cans gleam in the strange, sad waves of bittersweet melody. HB

Ys [2006], Joanna Newsom

Weave a circle round her thrice Joanna Newsom is dismissed by some as kookily faux-naif, but her second album, before she trained out the childlike quality from her voice, may be the most enchanted record ever made. At times, she sounds other-worldly, sitting at her harp, singing to herself of sassafras and Sisyphus, but then a phrase will carry you off suddenly to the hearts depths Still, my dear, Id have walked you to the edge of the water.

Yss pleasures are not simple or immediate. Newsoms unusual song structures, with their fragmented melodies, and strange and beautiful orchestral arrangements by 63-year-old Van Dyke Parks, take time to work their magic. But once youre bewitched, Yss spell never wears off. CH

It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back [1988], Public Enemy

Public Enemys second album is hip-hops game-changing moment, where a new musical form that arrived fully born after years of development away from meddling outsiders found its radical voice. It Takes a Nation of Millions is still one of the most powerful, provocative albums ever made, Here is a land that never gave a damn / About a brother like me, raps Chuck D on Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos. Producer Hank Shocklee creates a hard-edged sound from samples that pay homage to soul greats such as James Brown and Isaac Hayes, and Flavor Flav gives it an unmistakeable zest. CH

Dark Side of the Moon [1973], Pink Floyd

Its easy to knock these white, male, middle-class proggers, with their spaceship full of technology and their monolithic ambitions. But the walloping drums, operatic howls and quiet desperation of this concept album about the various forms of madness still resonates with the unbalanced, overwhelmed and alienated parts of us all. Play loud, alone and after dark. HB

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill [1998], Lauryn Hill

Lauryn Hill raised the game for an entire genre with this immense and groundbreaking work. Flipping between two tones sharp and cold, and sensual and smoky the former Fugees member stepped out from raps misogynist status quo and drew an audience outside of hip hop thanks to her melding of soul, reggae and R&B, and the recruitment of the likes of Mary J Blige and DAngelo.

Its sonic appeal has a lot to do with the lo-fi production and warm instrumentation, often comprised of a low thrumming bass, tight snares and doo-wop harmonies. But Hills reggae influences are what drive the albums spirit: preaching love and peace but also speaking out against unrighteous oppression. Even today, its one of the most uplifting and inspiring records around. RO

Histoire de Melody Nelson [1971], Serge Gainsbourg

The great French singer-songwriter provocateur probably wouldnt get too many takers today for a concept album about a tender love between his middle-aged self and a teenage girl he knocks off her bicycle in his Rolls-Royce. But, musically, this cult album is sublime, an extraordinary collision of funk bass, spoken-word lyrics and Jean-Claude Vanniers heavenly string arrangements. Ballade de Melody Nelson, sung by Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, is one of his most sublimely gorgeous songs. CH

In My Own Time [1971], Karen Dalton

Theres nothing contrived about Karen Daltons ability to flip out the guts of familiar songs and give them a dry, cracked folk-blues twist. Expanding the emotional and narrative boundaries of songs like Percy Sledges When a Man Loves a Woman is just what she did. Why has it taken the world so long to appreciate her? HB

Let England Shake [2011], PJ Harvey

Goddamn Europeans, take me back to beautiful England. PJ Harvey may have sounded like she was channelling Boris and Nige when she made this striking album in 2015, but few Brexiteers would want to take this journey with her. Let England Shake digs deep into the soil of the land, where buried ploughshares lie waiting to be beaten into swords. Death is everywhere, sometimes in its most visceral form: Ive seen soldiers fall like lumps of meat, she sings on The Words That Maketh Murder, Arms and legs are in the trees. Musically, though, its ravishing: Harvey employs autoharp, zither, Rhodes piano, xylophone and trombone to create a futuristic folk sound thats strikingly original yet could almost be from an earlier century. CH

Boy in da Corner [2003], Dizzee Rascal

Its staggering to listen back to this album and remember Dizzee was just 18 years old when he released it. Rising through the UK garage scene as a member of east Londons Roll Deep crew, the MC born Dylan Mills allegedly honed his skills in production after being excluded from every one of his classes, apart from music.

If you want any sense of how ahead of the game Dizzee was, just listen to the opening track Sittin Here. While 2018 has suffered a spate of halfhearted singles playing on the listeners sense of nostalgia for simpler times, 15 years ago Dizzee longed for the innocence of childhood because of what he was seeing in the present day: teenage pregnancies, police brutality, his friends murdered on the streets or lost to a lifestyle of crime and cash. Boy in da Corner goes heavy on cold, uncomfortably disjointed beats, synths that emulate arcade games and police sirens, and Dizzee himself delivering bars in his trademark, high-pitched squawk. RO

Hounds of Love [1985], Kate Bush

Proof that a woman could satisfy her unique artistic vision and top the charts without kowtowing to industry expectations, Kate Bushs self-produced masterpiece explored the extreme range of her oceanic emotions from the seclusion of a cutting-edge studio built in the garden of her 17th-century farmhouse. The human vulnerability of her voice and traditional instruments are given an electrical charge by her pioneering use of synthesisers. Thrilling and immersive. HB

Blue Lines [1991], Massive Attack

A uniquely British take on hip hop and soul that continues to influence booming modern genres like grime and dubstep, the Bristol collectives debut gave a cool new pulse to the nations grit and grey. You can smell ashtrays on greasy spoon tables in Trickys whisper and feel the rain on your face in Shara Nelsons exhilarating improvisations. HB

Surfer Rosa [1987], Pixies

It only takes 20 seconds of opening track Bone Machine to realise Pixies and producer Steve Albini have stripped down the sound of rocknroll and rebuilt it piece by piece. The angry smack of Led Zep drums, ripe bass, and sheet metal guitar straight off the Stooges Detroit production line are separated and recombined. Pixies sound is already complete before Black Francis embarks on one of his elusive pop cult narratives [Your bones got a little machine]. The tension between the savagery of his vocals and Kim Deals softer melodic tone wont reach its perfect balance until their next album but their [full-length] debut, Surfer Rosa is gigantic, and deserving of big, big love. Its loud, quiet, loud tectonics would prove so influential that Nirvanas Kurt Cobain would later say he was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. CH

Talking Timbuktu [1994], Ali Farka Toure and Ry Cooder

If you ever doubt the possibility of relaxed and respectful conversation across the worlds cultural divisions, then give yourself an hour with this astonishing collaboration between Malis Ali Farka Toure [who wrote all but one of the tracks] and Californias Ry Cooder [whose slide guitar travels through them like a pilgrim]. Desert meets Delta Blues. HB

The Great Gospel Men [1993], Various artists

Compared to the blues, the incalculable influence of gospel music on pop, soul and rocknroll has been underplayed. It can be found in every song on this brilliant 27-track compilation. If you cant hear James Brown in the foot-stomping opener Move on Up a Little Higher by Brother Joe May, youre not listening hard enough.

The road to Motown from Lord, Lord, Lord by Professor Alex Bradford is narrow indeed, but you could still take a side turning and follow his ecstatic whoops straight to Little Richard, who borrowed them, and on to The Beatles who copied them from him. The swooping chord changes in James Clevelands My Soul Looks Back are magnificent. All the irreplaceable soul voices, from Aretha Franklin to Bobby Womack, were steeped in gospel. This is a great place to hear where they came from. Companion album The Great Gospel Women is a marvel, too. CH

Hopelessness [2016], Anonhi

A lot of the music scene is just a wanking, self-congratulatory boys club, said this angel-voiced, transgender artist in 2012. Four years later, the seismic drums and radical ecofeminist agenda of Hopelessness shook that clubs crumbling foundations to dust. The horrors of drone warfare, paedophilia and global warming are held up to the bright lights in disconcertingly beautiful rage. HB

In Utero [1993], Nirvana

Kurt Cobain had one goal with In Utero: to pull Nirvana away from what he dubbed the candy-ass sound on Nevermind the album that had turned them into one of the biggest rock bands on the planet and take them back to punk rock. He asked Pixies producer Steve Albini to oversee production.

It didnt exactly eschew commercial success upon release [In Utero went on to sell 15 million copies worldwide], but the heaviness the band felt as they recorded it bears down on the listener from the opening track. Disheartened by the media obsession with his personal life and the fans clamouring for the same old shit, In Utero is pure, undiluted rage. GO AWAYYYYYYYYYYY Cobain screams on Scentless Apprentice, capturing the essence of Patrick Suskinds novel Perfume: Story of a Murderer and using it as a metaphor for his disgust at the music industry, and the press. RO

Curtis [1971], Curtis Mayfield

Curtis Mayfield had been spinning golden soul music from doo-wop roots with The Impressions for more than a decade before releasing his first solo album, which contains some of his greatest songs. While some point to the 1972 Blaxploitation soundtrack Superfly as the definitive Mayfield album, Curtis is deeper and more joyous, its complex arrangements masterly. Mayfields sweet falsetto sings of Nixons bland reassurances over the fuzz-bass of [Dont Worry] If There Is a Hell Below Were All Going to Go; doleful horns give the politically conscious We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue a profound emotional undertow; Move On Up is simply one of the most exhilarating songs in pop. To spend time with Curtis is to be in the presence of a beautiful soul. CH

Rumours [1977], Fleetwood Mac

Before they went their own way, Fleetwood Mac decided to tell a story that would be the quintessential marker for American rock culture in the Seventies.

As Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks tossed the charred remains of their relationship at one another on Dreams and Go Your Own Way, the rest of the band conjured up the warm West Coast harmonies, the laidback California vibes of the rhythm section and the clear highs on Gold Dust Woman, in such a way that Rumours would become the definitive sound of the era. At the time of its release, it was the fastest-selling LP of all time; its success turned Fleetwood Mac into a cultural phenomenon. RO

Are You Experienced? [1967], The Jimi Hendrix Experience

A virtual unknown to rock fans just a year before, Hendrix used Are You Experienced? to assert himself as a guitar genius who could combine pop, blues, rock, R&B, funk and psychedelia in a way no other artist had before. Thats even without the essential contributions of drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, who handed Are You Experienced? the rhythmic bridge between jazz and rock.

Few album openers are as exquisite as Purple Haze. Few tracks are as gratifying, as sexy, as the strut on Foxy Lady. And few songs come close to the existential bliss caused by The Wind Cries Mary. Hendrixs attack on the guitar contrasted against the more polished virtuosos in rock at the time yet it is his raw ferocity that we find ourselves coming back to. Few debuts have changed the course of rock music as Hendrix did with his. RO

We Are Family [1979], Sister Sledge

Discos crowning glory is this album that Chics Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards made with Kathy Sledge and her sisters Debbie, Joni and Kim. Nile and Nard were at the peak of their powers, classic songs were pouring out of them We Are Family was released in the same year as the epochal Good Times by Chic and this album has four of them, Lost in Music, Hes the Greatest Dancer, Thinking of You and the title track itself. Sister Sledge gave Rodgers a chance to work with warmer, gutsier vocals than the cool voices he used to give Chic records such laidback style and the result is a floor-filling dance party, punctuated by mellow ballads. CH