Great album openers get the listeners to keep on listening. They can do this in any number of ways. Some openers set the tone by easing us in. Others jump right in and blow our minds from the very beginning. A great album opener isn’t an easy thing to create. More than a great song, it’s all about the sequence. Track 1 has to be the perfect starter. This month, I’m highlighting my favorites. #AlbumOpeningSongs
After all these years, Doolittle is still one of my all-time favorite albums. While Surfer Rosa was an important album in its own right and exclamation mark in music history, Doolittle had an incredible sense of confidence and cohesion oozing from every one of those tracks. Here was an album that was perfectly sequenced without a single lackluster track. As soon as I got my Doolittle CD, I couldn’t stop playing it. The opening track was always an abrupt shift from homework, girl problems and whatever garbage I was preoccupied with in high school.
“Debaser” wiped the slate of modern rock music clean and served as the ultimate entry point into an album full of two-minute bangers ruled by screams, howls and quiet-loud-quiet dynamics. “Debaser” is played at full throttle. Black Francis, Joey Santiago, Kim Deal and David Lovering seemingly expend all energy on the opener, only to keep going through 15 tracks of hell-bent bliss. Santiago’s guitar riffs are the stuff of rebellion and liberation. And Francis is on a mission to blow out his vocal cords in under three minutes.
“Got me a movie. Ha ha ha ho. Slicing up eyeballs. Ha ha ha ho.”