My winter vinyl listening project

Ascendingthethrone

Ascendingthethrone

Ancient Mariner
Just recently, I finally finished my Maiden vinyl reissue collection. However, I had hardly listened to any of them all the way through or even got them out of the wrapping. Therefore I thought I would make good use of the winter evenings here in the UK.

My wife rehearses with her choir every Tuesday. So every Tuesday night for the last four months (some missed due to work) I have listened to and reviewed each album. It was a fun project as it got me truly listening to each song and trying to rate them as best I could.

Each song was ranked out of 10. As I listened, I made notes about each song. Now I know on this forum people rank each individual album and this has been posted multiple times. However, I added two extra categories: flow (does the album flow well and feel like a cohesive album?) and production (overall sound). These are two things that I consider essential when listening to a complete album. These categories were also ranked out of 10.

My final rankings.

1. Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. 9.5
2. Somewhere in Time 9.35
3. Brave New World. 9.29
4. A Matter of Life and Death. 9.04
5. The X Factor 8.96
6. The Number of the Beat 8.9
7. Powerslave 8.8
8. Piece of Mind 8.77
9. The Final Frontier 8.54
10. Killers 8.45
11. The Book of Souls 8.42
12. Dance of Death 8.39
13. Virtual XI. 7.8
14. Fear of the Dark 7.6
15. Iron Maiden 7.35
16. No Prayer for the Dying. 6.95

There were a number of surprises once the final rankings were totaled up.
* I didn’t think I would rate the debut album, DOD and BOS so low (especially the debut album).
* I was surprised that Brave New World was one of my highest rated albums.
* It took me a long time to get into SSOASS. As much as I like it now, it is amazing to me that it is ranked at the top.
* I realised that Steve Harris is not my favourite lyricist in the band. Lots of criticisms came from songs where he had written the lyrics.

Any thoughts on these rankings?

Despite listening to these songs and albums hundred of times on CD and MP3, it was great to sit down and take them all in one vinyl. Thanks for reading. I know it is not an original project or idea but I thought I would share it with you.
 
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TXF is in your Top 5 so the list is already great. As far as flow goes, I don’t think SSOASS succeeds as well as it should. The first side + the title track all flows into one another really, really well, but the last three seem to lose themselves after the first five (and I actually really like OTGDY, so I’m not talking about the song qualities themselves). It just seems to try to return to a narrative it never properly set up and loses that flow it had kept so well up to that point.
 
Ascendingthethrone said:
I realised that Steve Harris is not my favourite lyricist in the band.
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Hardly surprising: a lot of his lyrics are adapted from existing works. Sometimes, it shows (e.g "The Edge of Darkness"). Besides, he tends to just "put" the lyrics on the music, not consider the vocals as an instrument (the way singers do) which often result in a better flow of the song as a whole.
 
Black Bart said:
Hardly surprising: a lot of his lyrics are adapted from existing works. Sometimes, it shows (e.g "The Edge of Darkness"). Besides, he tends to just "put" the lyrics on the music, not consider the vocals as an instrument (the way singers do) which often result in a better flow of the song as a whole.
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Oh, definitely agree. Some great songs have these really weird lyrics in them. What's interesting is that Steve tossing the lyrics on the music tends to challenge the vocalist. When he did that to Bruce, there's a lot of times where Bruce really managed to make it work (The Trooper being the example that comes immediately to mind). Paul sometimes had to rush to keep up with it, and Blaze did okay. I always think of some of the lyrics in The Clansman when I think of that.

Still, there are specific vocal lines throughout Iron Maiden that I wish he'd have just gone to the singer and said, "How's this work for you, mate?" and then changed it around when they said, "It really doesn't."
 
Ascendingthethrone said:
Any thoughts on these rankings?
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The rough shape of it is similar to my own, though you ranked The X Factor way higher and No Prayer For The Dying way lower.

Our literal ratings were also very similar on Seventh Son, Powerslave, and No Prayer.

I don’t know how you can get past Blaze’s garage band performance on The X Factor, or how you could prefer Virtual XI to No Prayer, but the rest of your spread seems pretty reasonable.
 
KidInTheDark666 said:
SIT, AMOLAD and BNW all in the top 4? This guy gets it!
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Guess what? I ranked (with points 1-5) all the songs in the catalogue couple years ago and then calculated the average for each album.
Brave New World and Somewhere In Time got both full 5 points average, while AMOLAD got 4,95 and SSOASS got 4,93.
SSOASS would have surely got straight and full 5 for sure, but there was that one song (The Prophecy) that brought the average down.
The couple lesser songs brought the numbers down, because album like "The Book Of Souls" (it had 4,63) was masterpiece for me but it did drop to much lower than I would have thought. Last albums got lower points in total for sure (VXI 3,5 and TXF 2,36).
I think Maiden never really did awful and that bad album as some of their contemporaries have done, I can enjoy and listen to the whole catalogue.
So it has actually always been and so it will be.

1. Brave New World
2. Somewhere In Time
3. A Matter Of Life And Death
4. Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son
5. Iron Maiden
6. Powerslave
7. Piece Of Mind / Killers
8. The Number Of The Beast
9. The Final Frontier
10. The Book Of Souls
11. No Prayer For The Dying
12. Fear Of The Dark
13. Dance Of Death
14. Virtual XI
15. The X Factor

I might be doing further and start this all right from the start. Then rank all the songs 1-10 and participate on the talk on the forums section: https://forum.maidenfans.com/categories/song-and-album-commentaries.66/
 
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Who? Me? Oops..Of course I know the album, but this was akward to happen I didn't notice it first.
Weird..I had Killers listed on my original list but it has vanished after I edited it bit and so Killers was wiped.
I've checked my original listings of albums and songs and it had the same points as Piece Of Mind.
So, I've now updated the original post with Killers.
 
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