As you may understand, music is such a powerful source of joy in my life. Growing up in a golden age of extremely productive and skilled musicians during the 1970s and 80s, the amount of vinyl records I wanted to buy far outnumbered the ones I had the budget for.
Enter digital and streaming, that luckily changed during my lifetime. I now have access to, basically, every record ever made and released. Or, at least, way more than I could ever consume. Discover-ability of new-to-me artists is also way better and easier.
Anyhow… thinking back, I realised that it was a lot of albums I never really got to listen to. Sometimes, I’d borrow one from a friend, other times, we’d only play the hits etc. So, setting out to remedy this, I started my personal Project Discography.
The workflow is dead simple: Start with an artist you really like. Now find their list of studio albums on your streaming service of choice and start with the oldest one. Put on your headphones and listen from the beginning, in track order, through the whole album. Now, do the same with the artist’s second album. Repeat. If you’re up for it, add in the live albums too and check compilations for any previously unreleased or remixed tracks. (Feel free to skip the goofy Christmas albums, I mostly did.)
If you try this, I promise you will get quite a few surprises and probably discover fantastic tracks that you’d never have discovered otherwise.
This far1, I’ve completed2 the discographies of 50 artists, totalling 703 albums. I don’t have any reason to stop any time soon — it’s just so much great music out there.
| Al Jarreau (15 albums) | Aretha Franklin (34 albums) | B52s (9 albums + a few live ones) | Bahama Soul Club (6 albums) | Betty Davis (5 albums) |
| Billy Joel (12 albums) | Bo Kaspers Orkester (18 albums) | Bob Marley (10 albums) | Bonnie Raitt (19 albums) | Candy Dulfer (10 albums) |
| Chaka Kahn (12 albums) | Chic (9 studio albums + 1 live) | David Bowie (28 albums) | Diana Krall (16 albums) | Donald Fagen (4 albums) |
| Doors (6 albums with all four original members) | Earth, Wind and Fire (22 albums) | Elton John (35 albums) | Erykah Badu (6 albums + 1 live) | Everything but the Girl (11 albums) |
| Grace Jones (10 albums) | Incognito (20 albums) | James Brown (approx. 50 albums) | Jamiroquai (8 albums) | Japan (5 studio albums, 1 live, 1 as Rain Tree Crow) |
| Jonathan Coulton (6 albums) | Joni Mitchell (20 albums) | Kate Bush (10 albums) | Kraftwerk (8 albums) | Manhattan Transfer (17 albums) |
| Melody Gardot (6 studio +2 live album) | Nikki Yanofsky (5 albums) | Nils Landgren Funk Unit (11 albums) | Patti Austin (16 albums) | Prince (43 albums, incl. several live albums and Super DeLuxe versions) |
| Queen (13 albums with all four original members) | Randy Crawford (15 albums) | Rebecca Törnqvist (11 albums) | Sheila E. (9 albums) | Steely Dan (9 albums) |
| Stevie Wonder (24 albums) | Sting (15 albums) | Talking Heads (8 albums + 3 live) | Taylor Swift (11 albums) | The Police (6 albums) |
| Tina Turner (9 albums) | Trintje Oosterhuijs (16 albums) | Yazoo (3 albums, lots of 12 remixes) | Yello (14 albums) | Yellow Magic Orchestra (10 albums) |