Album Club with Jim

One year ago Jim and I started our 2 person album club. The idea is simple: we ping-pong album recommendations, taking about 2 weeks or so to listen and then meeting up on FaceTime to talk about it. Depending on the album we might might challenge each other to a ranking challenge, e.g. “if you had to cut down to 8 songs on this album what would you drop?” or “what is your starter, bench player, and who would you drop?”

Album club montage, courtesy ChatGPT-5

Side note: the montage generated by ChatGPT is either a brilliant capture of these albums or an atrocity. I’m not sure.

Here’s the list so far:

1. Rubber Soul/The Beatles (Jim) - 8/18/24
2. Astral Weeks/Van Morrison (Chris) - 8/26/24
3. No Name/Jack White (Jim) - 9/2/24
4. The Chronic/Dr Dre (Chris) - 9/9/24
5. Blood Sugar Sex Magic/Red Hot Chili Peppers (Jim) - 11/2/24
6. Tapestry/Carole King (Chris) - 12/8/24
7. Tracy Chapman/Tracy Chapman (Jim) - 12/31/24
8. Highway 61 Revisited/Bob DylanBob Dylan (Chris) - 2/4/25
9. Hackney Diamonds/The Rolling Stones (Jim) - 3/2/25
10. The Whole Love/Wilco (Chris) - 3/30/25
11. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars/David Bowie (Jim) - 4/16/25
12. folklore/Taylor Swift (Chris) - 5/7/25
13. Romance/Fontaines D. C. (Jim) - 6/2/25
14. Pet Sounds/The Beach Boys (Chris) - 6/25/25
15. Divide/Ed Sheeran (Jim) - 7/23/25
16. Brothers in Arms/Dire Straits (Chris) - 8/16/25

We’ve both really enjoyed this, and even the stuff we haven’t loved has been fun to (re)listen to. I don’t think Blood Sugar Sex Magic holds up very well, and I’m definitely not an Ed Sheeran fan. And Jim will never become a Swiftie.