Best 1,000 Albums Ever
by Eric Berlin

First Aid Kit – Stay Gold: #611 of best 1,000 albums ever!

First Aid Kit - Stay Gold

So why is First Aid Kit’s Stay Gold on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?

I’m pretty sure I listened to “My Silver Lining,” off of Stay Gold, via Spotify’s New Music Friday feature. It caught my attention right away, and remains on heavy rotation for me to this day. The vocals, via the Swedish folk duo of sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg, are simply gorgeous, and the song is catchy and pleasing and soothing and exciting somehow all at once.

It’s the kind of song where you hear it for the first time, you know you’re hearing something you haven’t quite ever heard before and it’s exciting. I love that feeling, whether it’s with music or television or a novelist that I’m just discovering.

“The Bell” does an incredible job of showing off the duo’s vocal harmonies.

“Master Pretender” reminds me that many First Aid Kit songs evoke the feeling of motion, like they are meant to be heard while driving with the windows down on a sunny day. Or, stuck in traffic under cloudy gloom if that’s the best that conditions will allow. It’ll cheer you up either way.

Pop culture stuff that has something to do with First Aid Kit’s Stay Gold

I mentioned the following recently in Cat Power’s The Greatest entry (#623 of best 1,000 albums ever):

Cat Power is a musician, the stage name for Charlyn Marie “Chan” Marshall. I had heard of Cat Power for years, but it was a name that flitted around my mind along with a bunch of others that were unusual or striking for one reason or another (Japanese Breakfast? Flowers Must Die?) but took me some time to actually give some time to the music associated with it.

First Aid Kit is absolutely in line with those other band names!

Some stats & info about First Aid Kit – Stay Gold

First Aid Kit’s Stay Gold on Spotify

A lyrical snippet from First Aid Kit’s Stay Gold that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe

I hear a voice calling, calling out for me. These shackles I’ve made in an attempt to be free.

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.