I’ve run 1,161 miles in 2022 so far, which according to Strava, took me 146 hours. I’d guess for ~125 of those hours I’ve listened to music.

My playlists have about 450 songs total on. That’s ~30 hours of music. The sad thing is that some of these songs have been on my running playlist for over a decade. The amount of times I’ve listened to Konstantine while running is embarrassing.

So I’ve come up with the novel idea of adding full albums to my watch and listening to them start to finish. I’ll listen to each a few times, perhaps a week of running time, before moving on. I’m turning to my harmonious readers to tell me which albums to add.

This isn’t the first time I’ve done this. Within the past year I’ve consumed the following albums in order multiple times, but I’m committing to NOT listening to my standard running playlist for a while, it’s a waste of time.

• The Beatles – Abbey Road: Lives up to the hype as one of the best of all time
• Bo Burnham – Inside: This honestly is up there all time too
• Taylor Swift – Taylor Swift: Not a huge fan of her early work
• Neil Diamond – Stones: At the request of a friend, not my favorite but honestly not terrible.

As you can see from above, it doesn’t need to be jacked up music, but I want to get to know bands I’m not familiar with. Here are the albums I plan to start with in order of their release date. You’ll notice most of them are ‘all timers‘, but that’s simply the easiest place to start for me. Don’t hesitate to suggest lesser known bands / albums!

• Black Sabbath – Paranoid – Black Sabbath
• Leonard Cohen – Songs of Love and Hate
• Janis Joplin – Pearl
• Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life
• Rush – 2112
• The Clash – London Calling
• Talking Heads – Remain in Light
• Madonna – Like a Prayer
• Avenged Sevenfold – City of Evil
• Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (or College Dropout?)

Rock on!