There are so many iconic albums woven throughout history that it’s nearly impossible to imagine listening to them all. This summer I took it upon myself to try and listen to some of these recordings and stumbled upon the Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Albums of All Time and made it my goal to listen through as many of them as I could. 

This new column will be taking a closer look at what the people at Rolling Stone consider the greatest albums of all time, allowing me to dive deeper into the lyrics and musical stylings of these quintessential records and the artists behind them. 

For the first installment of this article we are going to jump to number 147 on the list, Jeff Buckley’s “Grace.”

Now, 147 out of 500 might seem like a very random place to begin, but I think taking a gamble on an album in the middle of the list is the perfect place to start. It is easy to make 500, or one iconic and recognizable, but what about the rest? 

The crooning vocals of a lovesick Buckley have been stuck on a loop in my brain since I first listened through the album, and his tragic story drenches the work in a melanic shroud, that I can’t help but gape at with a sort of morbid curiosity. 

Buckley made it almost impossible for me not to start this column in the middle.

The lead single and most popular Buckley song, “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” is a sensitive and deeply personal ballad of a lover laying his heart at the feet of his lost flame. Buckley pines for the woman he calls his “sweet lover” by begging and bellowing for a second chance. 

The lyrics throughout the song state how he would gladly lay his life down for the opportunity to change his fate with his lost or unrequited love. His yearning for romanticism is made all the more devastating due to his untimely drowning just three years after the release of his only full-length studio album.

“Oh-oh, lover, you should’ve come over / ‘Cause it’s not too late.”

When listening, the heartbreak in Buckley’s voice is only made more gut-wrenching because you can’t help but remember that it is, in fact, too late. 

It’s not just this single with a dreary and hazy vibe. The entirety of the album seems to almost foreshadow the dramatic and unusual tragedy of Buckley’s death through dreamy melodies and agonizing lyrics. 

Allusions to water and death are spread across the record. With lyrics like “Asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over” at the end of “Dream Brother” and “I see the rain fall upon the funeral mourners/ Parading in a wake of sad relations/ As their shoes fill up with water” in “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over.” 

These metaphors sewn throughout the album physicalize the pain of a broken heart and a deeply intrinsic yearning. At the same time, the unfortunate word choice creates a world within the album in which Buckley is eternally stuck. 

The album includes a mix of covers and original songs. The three covers Buckley chooses give us some insight into the emotions he wants the listener to feel. These are “Lilac Wine,” by James Shelton “Hallelujah,” by Leonard Cohen and “Corpus Christi Carol.” 

I think the inclusion of the well-known religious hymn Hallelujah is not only there to show off his knack for murmuring melodies but also shows his worship and dedication to his elusive muse. 

The structure of the song allows us, as the listener, to imagine that he is singing about the same woman that he trolls about in the other ballads, even when it wasn’t written for her. 

He is David ravenously searching for the right chord for his Lord. 

“Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord / That David played, and it pleased the Lord.” 

Hallelujah fits seamlessly between “So Real,” where Buckley uses repetition to emphasize how “real” his love feels, and “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” which feels like a worship song in its own right.  

“Corpus Christi Carol” is an early modern English hymn that was first written down in the early 14th century. 

According to Leon J. Podles’s dialogue about the hymn, “One theory about the meaning of the carol is that it is concerned with the legend of the Holy Grail … When he is wounded his kingdom suffers and becomes a wasteland … The text may be an allegory in which the crucified is described as a wounded knight.” 

“My kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder.”

I believe that this emphasizes Buckley’s pain and enhances the themes of love as a type of religious devotion, as he compares himself to the wounded knight. 

Overall I believe “Grace” more than deserves to be included in the top 500 albums of all time, and Jeff Buckley deserves to be remembered as a poetic genius. From his humble beginnings to his tragic end, he lived the life of a tortured artist and gave the world much more than it ever gave him. 

Freeman can be reached at [email protected]. Let her know what album you want to hear about next.