List item: Listen to the 250 greatest albums
Progress: 77/250
Title: Grace
Artist: Jeff Buckley
Year: 1994
Position: #59
Posthumous. One word that always makes me approach an album or a film with some sort of reservation. The fact that, upon a person’s death, there can be a complete re-evaluation never really sat well with me. It’s like how a painting increases in value upon an artist’s death due to scarcity, not exactly moral.
With albums like Grace I feel the need to ask this: would this album be on this Top 250 list if he was still alive. The answer? Yes, but probably placed a bit lower on the list. Whilst the reviews were not as unanimous in praise back when it was released in 1994 Grace was still placed highly on year-end lists.
If you had asked me 10 years ago if I agreed with this assessment I would have disagreed. I was unable to consider the album beyond the whole posthumous angle. Plus, I was still finding it harder to accept male vocalists.
All I can say is that I am so glad that I have grown up musically as this ticks so many of my musical boxes now. From ‘Mojo Pin’ to ‘Dream Brother’ (via the beautiful covers of ‘Corpus Christi Carol’ and ‘Hallelujah’) Grace just feels like a musical blanket that it is comfortable to snuggle up into for an hour.
