The 500 - Checkpoint #1 - 50 Blog Posts Completed

On January 28, 2019, while puttering about the apartment, I tuned into the latest edition of Bill Burr's Monday Morning Podcast. Bill was joined by his friend and fellow comedian Josh Adam Meyers, who was promoting his new podcast The 500.  

Each weekly episode of Josh's show focuses on one record from Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, beginning with Album 500 and counting down to number one. Josh does not review each album. Instead, he and his guests (actors, comedians, musicians) use "facts from the albums and song meanings as a road map" for their interview.

Inspiration struck. I'd owned that 2012 edition of Rolling Stone magazine and wanted to give each record its due and now, with a subscription to Spotify, I had easy access.

. My initial goal was...

• Two records per week and at least two complete listens.
• A quick blog post for each, highlighting the important details and a background story.
• No rating scale - just an effort to expand my appreciation.
• I also subscribed to Josh's podcast to provide me with additional insight and information.

As it turns out, this pace was untenable and my approach changed. The slower progress is more enjoyable as it provides me with more time to appreciate both the album and Josh's podcast.

The Amy Winehouse post on December 16 marked my 50th record. To celebrate, I'll share a few statistics and thoughts on how things have gone. 

• I average a post every 6.5 days.
• I am 1/10th of the way through the list, on pace to finish in 2026.
• My most popular post was for Kiss Destroyer, with 115 clicks.
• I receive more readers when I write about education - but my audience for both topics seems to be growing. 
• The majority of my readership (70%) is evenly split between the United States and Canada.
• Russia and Ukraine rank 3rd and 4th (hmmm? bots?).
• In the last few months, I've had readers from Thailand, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and Argentina.
• Three of the 50 albums I've written about were released in the 1960s.
• 15 were released the 1970s.
• 14 were released in the 1980s with three from 1987.
• Nine were from the 1990s and nine more from the 2000s.
• 11 of the 50 records were familiar to me and 12 were new. 
• My favourite discoveries were Proxima Estacion: Esperanza by Manu Chao and 69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields. 
• I was most surprised by how much I liked Life after Death by Notorious B.I.G.
• I got a chance to meet Josh when he was in Toronto for the Just For Laugh's Comedy Festival.
• Rapper LLCool J "liked" my post about his record.
• Actor, Author and Comedian Jay Mohr (SNL, Jerry Maguire) also called one of my posts "brilliant"  - so that was a feather in my cap. 

A page with hyperlinks to all of my blog posts can be found here and I am continuing to build a playlist on Spotify featuring one song from each of the 500 albums.

Don't hesitate to give me feedback, and I invite you to join me on the rest of this journey, beginning tomorrow with a look at album #450, Jackson Browne's For Everyman. 

I'll hope to have more guest bloggers...perhaps even a few of my students. 

If all goes well, I'll check in again after album #401 Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers, sometime next November.

Thanks for reading.