Why is The Jayhawks’ Tomorrow The Green Grass on my best 1,000 albums ever list?
Keep my real light shining.
Some stats & info about The Jayhawks – Tomorrow The Green Grass
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Alt Country, Alternative Pop, Indie Rock
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4.5 out of 5 stars
- When was Tomorrow The Green Grass released? 1995
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #659 out of 1,000
The Jayhawks’ Tomorrow The Green Grass 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 The Jayhawks’ Tomorrow The Green Grass mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?
The Jayhawks are a band that I completely missed out on during the 1990s, and thereafter languished in that vague “bands I should check out more at some point” category for years*.
* That “category” is one of many reasons I embarked on the equal parts insane and insanely rewarding best 1,000 albums ever project.
I’m so glad that I finally did, and Tomorrow the Green Grass in my view represents the band at its very peak.
My gut instinct reaction to “Blue” is the very true yet very trite, “Man, this is a great song.” As with the album as a whole, there are hints of The Beatles and The Byrds mixed in with 1970s American rock influences and an acoustic alt country vibe that makes The Jayhawks its entirely own (and… great) thing.
It’s so pleasing to get songs too like “Real Light” that are so confidently constructed and tightly written. I’m reminded a little bit of Tom Petty here along with the other influences I noted.
“Bad Time” leans even deeper into a ‘70s vibe, with a hook and melody and vocals that the vast majority of bands from that era would be most envious of indeed.