Why is La Roux’s La Roux on my best 1,000 albums ever list?
Love love “Bulletproof,” and the whole album has a high-octane dance pop energy.
Some stats & info about La Roux – La Roux
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Pop, Rock, New Wave, Post-Punk Revival, Synth Pop, Dance Music, Electro Pop
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4 of 5 stars
- When was La Roux released? 2009
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #990 out of 1,000
La Roux’s La Roux on Spotify
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective take on what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.
What does La Roux’s La Roux mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?
The opening track, “In For the Kill,” reminds me that La Roux has the rare combination of outstanding vocals, real pop craftsmanship packed with great hooks, and blazing energy that can pump up a club – or, for the not so much clubbing cats such as myself, a gym or home workout.
It’s not on the album, but the Skrillex remix is worth checking out as well.
While the entire album has a great propulsion to it, “Bulletproof” is the pinnacle. The synth-y keyboard meshes delightfully with the vocals and rest of the production, culminating in a dead simple and dead catchy chorus that’s perfect for aerobic endeavors: this time, baby, I’ll be bullet proof!
“Tigerlilly” goes throwback ‘80s with its keyboard arpeggios, and makes it work with a nice hard new wave-y beat and vocals that pivot seamlessly between sweet harmonies and a more aggressively club pop mode. And, what’s more, it was a truly oddball, kind of creepy “Thriller”-esque Vincent Price-like spoken part in the middle!
This album also sounds like
There’s some 1980s synth pop and new wave sensibilities here as noted, so let’s go with Eurythmics, and then I’d liken La Roux to The Tings Tings in terms of more contemporary acts, along with a dusting of Icona Pop.
Personal stuff that’s somehow related to La Roux’s La Roux
While La Roux was released in 2009, I got into it some years later in the period shortly after I moved from Pasadena, California to Seattle, Washington. And I particularly recall listening to it while working out at a tiny, friendly local gym that’s walking distance to my house.
And as of this writing, some roughly year and a half into the covid pandemic, makes me strangely nostalgic for the era when I would leave my house to go to the gym.
Here’s hoping that La Roux will be enjoyed when people are eventually able to congregate safely in gyms and clubs and all the other places where humans like to get together.
In the meantime, get vaxxed up, people. It won’t make you bulletproof, but it’s what we’ve got and the science says it really helps.