“An album that made a lot of difference”: The 1969 album Brian Eno called the best pop record
Listening to his extensive discography of expansive electronic experiments, ambient soundscapes, and avant-garde minimalism, it is difficult to immediately connect Brian Eno to the realm of pop music. Nevertheless, the former Roxy Music member has had a few brushes with the pop world on various occasions throughout his career.
Roxy Music, in fact, seemed to overcome the odds of their experimental art-rock origins to become regular features of the Hit Parade during the early 1970s, despite not really fitting in with any of the prevailing factions of pop – or, indeed, rock – present during that time.
They weren’t quite glam, they weren’t quite pop, and they didn’t seem to fit into a neat category anywhere else either; inevitably, a lot of that unpinnable nature came down to Eno’s contributions, the spirit of which he continued to explore even after leaving Bryan Ferry’s outfit in the rearview mirror.
Throughout his production career, Eno repeatedly rubbed shoulders with the movers and shakers of the pop world, spanning the spectrum from David Bowie to Coldplay, and stopping along the way for the likes of Talking Heads, U2, Sinead O’Connor, and countless others. While he was never likely to render those artists in the kind of glittery, marketable production style that is omnipresent within the pop charts, Eno does seem to have his own interpretation of the ‘pop’ sound.
That fact can be best gleaned from Brian Eno’s own pop listening habits. During a 2016 chat with Rolling Stone, for instance, he cited The Velvet Underground’s 1969 self-titled album as “an album that made a lot of difference in my life,” as well as “Probably my favourite pop record of all time, I guess.”
It is, of course, no surprise that Eno has always held the groundbreaking stylings of John Cale and Lou Reed incredibly close to his heart, but even the most contrarian of music fans would surely struggle to argue that The Velvet Underground is a ‘pop record’.
Sure, ‘I’m Set Free’ (which Eno covered in 2016) is indebted to the old-school pop production of Phil Spector, and pop served as a reference point throughout the Underground’s existence, it was hardly at risk of appearing on Top of the Pops.
Cale might have exited the band by the time that the album came to fruition, but that didn’t necessarily mean that the New York outfit lost every ounce of experimental, subversive nature. Aside from the fact that the album was far from being a commercial success, The Velvet Underground never seemed to be a band who were chasing mainstream success in the way that any self-respecting pop artist would.
Nevertheless, the idea that Brian Eno views The Velvet Underground as the pinnacle of pop certainly goes some way to explaining his musical sensibilities. As he has repeatedly proven, both in his own discography and through his production credits, the definition of pop has never been set in stone, and his own interpretation of that definition has spurred on a plethora of the greatest albums of the past century.
We already had a great debt to pay to The Velvet Underground, and a revolution in pop music is rather high up on that list.
