Okay, one of my regular podcasts is We Will Rank You (youtube link) in which several friends from southern California rank the songs on albums from bottom to top. Some episodes they go through the whole album, sometimes they discuss their top 5 songs. One of the reasons I enjoy it is that the hosts are only a few years younger than I am and often my tastes and theirs align.

In the most recent episode (The Pixies’ Doolittle), one of the guys asked: Are there any unrankable albums – albums in which there are no duff songs. Great question. Before they moved on, Radiohead’s OK Computer was offered. Yeah, possibly. In my Radiohead canon, The Bends and In Rainbows are better, but that’s a discussion for another day. What’s the first album that comes to mind for you, dear reader? My brain goes to David Bowie first, as always. Are there albums of his that are so perfect that no song ranks lower than any other? The run from StationToStation (1976) through Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) (1980) fulfills this for me, but what about 1975’s Young Americans (7 days out of 10, my favourite DB album)?

Clocking in at 8 tracks and 41 minutes, it is almost unrankable. The title track comes in first. From Andy Newmark’s drum riff and Mike Garson’s piano trill, it’s a perfect song. From Win (track 2) through to Fame (track 8, a John Lennon cowrite and Bowie’s first #1 US hit) there are no missteps. Except for a very strange cover of the Beatles’ Across the Universe. It’s possible that even in the Beatles’ canon that song is a misstep. Fight me.

The folks on We Will Rank You talk about ‘the line’ by which they mean, how many of these songs are absolutely necessary. Obviously for me with this album, the line is 7. When Bowie came to make his next album, 1976’s Station To Station, he only included six songs. And for that album , my line is also 6. (Weirdly, the title track, which clocks in at just over 10 minutes, is actually three songs stitched together, but the whole thing works perfectly as one track.)