The Replacements - Let It Be (1984)

1. I Will Dare 3:11

2. Favorite Thing 2:17

3. We're Comin' Out 2:20

4. Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out 1:51

5. Androgynous 3:14

6. Black Diamond 2:36

7. Unsatisfied 3:59

8. Seen Your Video 3:05

9. Gary's Got a Boner 2:25

10. Sixteen Blue 4:21

11. Answering Machine 3:37

Let It Be is one of my all-time favourite albums (along with the follow-up, Tim). A crazy versatile album released the same year that Meat Puppets and Hüsker Dü tried (and succeeded) to do something new with punk rock and then released classics. I Will Dare is everything I want from an REM song (Peter Buck plays guitar on it), Androgynous is moving in its drunken lo-fi-ness, Unsatisfied is epic, and Sixteen Blue features one of the best guitar solos ever recorded.

Bridging the gap between their punk origins and less cool shit like country music, Tom Petty, KISS, and Bruce Springsteen, this probably influenced alternative music in a huge way. And then there's the fact that every song is awesome in its own way, Paul Westerberg has one of the best voices in rock (part of that Lennon, Springsteen, Cobain lineage), there's an affecting, shameless sincerity to songs like Answering Machine, and at half an hour Let It Be feels like the perfect length.

A+

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