Why is The Saints’ (I’m) Stranded on my best 1,000 albums ever list?
Legit punk rock circa 1977 from Down Under.
What does The Saints’ (I’m) Stranded mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?
With every musical genre, there’s music that’s more boring versus more exciting to listen to. It’s challenging to articulate why this is the case at times, though I do my level best to make the attempt as part of this massive best 1,000 albums ever project.
And even though punk rock can be a “simpler” musical form that is also often loud and fast, that in no way automatically makes it “exciting.” As with punk goes all music: a lot of it is terrible.
Australia’s The Saints are pretty fascinating as they excel at blasting out both “simple” and more sophisticated punk rock while (I’m Stranded) as a whole is quite exciting indeed.
As Warner Wolf, the great local TV sports anchor in New York City, would say back in the day, “Let’s go to the videotape!”
“One Way Street” is “simple” punk rock but don’t be fooled: it’s wildly exciting and showcases enough nuance and sophistication in terms of chord changes and songwriting to set it apart from most of the output from the genre.
The self-titled track, “(I’m) Stranded,” is probably the best on the album, and it skirts the line between being a great punk rock song and a great arena shaker in the perfect way. It’s so good, in fact, that I’m really surprised that it – and The Saints – didn’t break bigger in the U.S. The world was a bigger place back then, I suppose, for both good and ill.
I’m not 100% positive that “This Perfect Day” was a single released by The Saints in 1977 that wasn’t included on (I’m) Stranded, but let’s just go ahead and say it was. Point being: it’s really, really freaking good (how’s that for sophisticated analysis!).
This album also sounds like
The All Music review does a great job of posing The Saints as Australia’s answer to the Sex Pistols (UK) and The Ramones (USA), and puts them in a grouping, sound-wise, in the mix of bands like the Stooges, MC5, the Velvet Underground, and New York Dolls.
Some stats & info about The Saints – (I’m) Stranded
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Australian Bands, Punk Rock, Rock Music
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4.5 out of 5 stars
- When was (I’m) Stranded released? 1977
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #854 out of 1,000
The Saints’ (I’m) Stranded 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.