So why is Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
If you listen to Electric Ladyland straight through, it’s a trippy and even at times bizarre journey.
At 75 minutes long, you can imagine the nearly 14-minute “1983…(A Merman I Should Turn to Be),” as well as shorter tracks like “Moon, Turn the Tides…Gently Gently Away” and the opening track, “…And the Gods Made Love” (the latter two of which sound like Calm app sleep meditation sessions) playing as background music to parties and conversational sessions that were, uh, heightened by certain substances back in the day.
But Electric Ladyland is also injected with some of the most astonishing, exciting, and enduring psychedelic hard rock ever recorded – and that’s why it landed (gently, like a castle made of sand) on the cusp of the best 1,000 albums ever’s Top 150.
If you’re not a deep level Hendrix fan, you might not be familiar with “House Burning Down,” so I want to spotlight it as it’s absolutely incredible.
My man Adam turned me on to it way back in the day (via cassette tape!) and we would listen to it – in our dorms in Binghamton or at his dad’s loft space in SoHo in downtown Manhattan – enraptured by the sublime mix of psychedelic hard rock, blues, and funk that this one lays down.
To even the most casual of music fans, it’s obvious that Jimi Hendrix is a wizard at playing the guitar, but that’s only one piece: there’s the song craftsmanship and there’s his unmistakably soulful vocals – in addition to his strikingly unique presence as a Black musician leading a hard rock band during that era.
And then after listening to “House Burning Down” a million times, you notice the wild studio experimentation going on, but most of all I always hugely enjoy Mitch Mitchell’s militaristic, marching beat on this one.
What’s also fascinating about Electric Ladyland on an album level is that while it’s a revered collection of Hendrix tracks – Rolling Stone has it at #53 on its greatest 500 albums rankings, for example – it doesn’t include a majority of the handful of Hendrix songs that most Musical Casuals would likely rattle off if asked (“Foxey Lady” and “Purple Haze” would be the first answers for many, I’d wager).
However, what’s possibly the most iconic Jimi Hendrix song of all is included on Electric Ladyland, and it’s a Bob Dylan cover song at that. I refer of course to “All Along the Watchtower,” which is both one of the single best cover renditions of all time and it includes what may well be a Top 5 guitar solo in all of rock music history.
And then connect all of that with the fact that when Hendrix covered Dylan in 1968, the Vietnam War was escalating – as was its political backlash, fueling in part the countercultural movement in the U.S. – and it’s a towering (if you’ll pardon the pun) musical statement all told.
There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief
Then we have “Crosstown Traffic,” one of Jimi’s hardest rocking tracks of all time, which is simply a blues rock smasher.
Over the years, I’ve come to greatly appreciate “Little Miss Strange,” which is a gem of a late ‘60s rocker – and you can almost feel Jimi’s time in London, listening to bands like Cream with this one.
Some stats & info about Jimi Hendrix – Electric Ladyland
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, Psychedelic Rock, Blues Rock, Hard Rock, Album Rock
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – #53
- All Music’s rating – 5 out of 5 stars
- When was Electric Ladyland released? 1968
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #152 out of 1,000
Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
You’re just like crosstown traffic – so hard to get through to you.
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.