So why is Devo’s Freedom of Choice on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
This is an album with several Devo classics, but I want to start with the title track, “Freedom of Choice,” which has zoomed up my personal Devo Rankings over the years into being one of my all-time favorite songs from Mark Mothersbaugh and crew.
Much like the great song, “Beautiful World”* off of New Traditionalists (#119 of best 1,000 albums ever), “Freedom of Choice” packs an enormous punch of subversive messaging all the way at the end of the song.
* Rage Against the Machine’s quiet, chilling cover of “Beautiful World” gets a lot of mention in the Renegades piece (#342).
But equally important is that it’s simply a fantastic Devo song musically: this is synth pop with an incredible new wave hook. And as a casual listener, the lyrics get into something about ancient Rome and a dog, followed by a seeming call to arms about having freedom of choice.
It could pass as a fairly generic call to arms about progressive or personal politics, or it could just generally be about enjoying our freedoms in the U.S. of A., or some such.
But no. This is Devo, kids.
The call to arms gets flipped on its head right at the end of the song.
Freedom of choice is what you got
Freedom from choice is what you want
The subversive, slipped in message is: you have all the choice in the world, conformists, but you don’t want it. You CHOOSE instead to be robots, sheep.
And that this was going down in 1980, just before Ronald Reagan got elected president, is heady way ahead of its time stuff.
The implications circa the 2020s are many.
I feel so strongly about “Freedom of Choice” that it took me nearly 500 words to get to “Whip It,” which of course is the song most closely associated with Devo. Even though I was a very young child in 1980, “Whip It” seems like the kind of song that was part of the general soundtrack of the 1980s – really proving if nothing else how varied and eclectic popular music and, particularly, MTV was back then.
“Whip It” is so engrained in my musical DNA that it’s challenging to step back and think about what it must sound like to someone who has never heard it – or Devo – before. Pretty wild and bracing, I’d imagine.
Which is all a long way of saying that I still love “Whip It” – it’s weird and synth-y and catchy and you can’t help but want to say whip it good at random intervals for the rest of the day after you hear it.
“Girl U Want” gives you everything you want in a Devo song: super high energy, well crafted synth pop that’s catchy and sing along-able.
Songs like “Snowball” and “Don’t You Know” are outstanding deep cuts – Freedom of Choice is packed with them.
Pop culture stuff that’s somehow related to Devo’s Freedom of Choice
In my mind’s eye, I felt sure that a Devo song had to have been on the Revenge of the Nerds soundtrack. But what I was thinking of was the “big musical number” scene, which seems sort of conceptually modeled on Devo in part – Lewis and Gilbert particularly – I’d think.
Some stats & info about Devo – Freedom of Choice
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Post-Punk, New Wave, Dance Rock, Rock Music, Nerd Rock, Art Rock, Synth Pop
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4.5 out of 5 stars
- When was Freedom of Choice released? 1980
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #284 out of 1,000
Devo’s Freedom of Choice on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Devo’s Freedom of Choice that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
Freedom of choice is what you got. Freedom from choice is what you want.
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.