Why is Patsy Cline’s The Ultimate Collection on my best 1,000 albums ever list?
I don’t think it’s crazy at all to say that this is one spectacular musical collection.
Some stats & info about Patsy Cline – The Ultimate Collection
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Country, Pop, Pop Music, Rockabilly, Country Pop, Traditional Country
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – #229
- All Music’s rating – 5 out of 5 stars
- When was The Ultimate Collection released? 2000
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #760 out of 1,000
Patsy Cline’s The Ultimate Collection 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 review of 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 Patsy Cline’s The Ultimate Collection mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?
When I was young, I had a fairly narrow interest in music, and happily shrugged off things that didn’t interest me or actively turned me off. Over my life, there have been many “gateway” songs, artists, and bands that allowed me to broaden my interests and tastes over time.
For example, there was a time in my life where I full throatedly would declare, “Oh, I hate country music.” It just so happened that the country music that I was exposed to at that point in my young life didn’t particularly interest me, so I just slapped the “I hate country” label on anything that smacked of a country twang, be it vocal or guitar or both.
And, to be fair, I was likely even incorrect even at that time as I’m sure I at least tolerated Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton or other country music I might have been exposed to around at that era.
Which all leads up to some moment – possibly in my late teen years but more likely in my early twenties – when I heard Patsy Cline for the first time (or at least what I perceived to be the first time). I do recall the song, though: “Crazy.” And I remember thinking, “Wait… this is country, but I kind of like it, what’s going on here?”
In a word: crazy. And from that point I realized, “Oh, there’s a certain kind of country music that’s good,” and soon I was off to the races with Johnny Cash and my entire notion of genres of music that I rejected out of hand quickly began to shatter.
These days, “Walkin’ After Midnight” is my favorite Patsy Cline song. Every time I hear it’s opening twangy chords, I can literally feel myself breathing a little easier. It has a physical impact on me like that. Probably I didn’t even know a feeling like that was possible when I was a kid. Who knows?
I wrote this note about “Walkin’ After Midnight” while doing research for the best 1,000 albums ever project: “It makes you want to get a coffee at a sleepy, friendly cafe in the middle of nowhere… after midnight or so.”
“Strange” is simply gorgeous. I bet Roy Orbison would have done a fabulous cover of this song, but probably no one could have topped the Patsy Cline original.