Our list continues with part three, #30 to #21, featuring the usual videos and full song clips. Today, Rilo Kiley, picture above, are among the chosen few...
As always, we're taking suggestions...
The Sexiest Albums You Must Own (40-31)
The Sexiest Albums You Must Own (50-41)
30. The Genius of Ray Charles
Get it on vinyl. If ever someone spends the night that you want to stick around, play it for them in the morning. Works every time. (To achieve the opposite effect: Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" has worked for us.)
Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying (Remastered Version) [Remastered Version]
29. Take Offs And Landings - Rilo Kiley
Bested by their latest release, which has sold infinitely more copies, this is nonetheless the sexiest album in their discography thanks to how Jenny Lewis' voice sounds here. (We'll give a hint: it sounds hot.) The rock goddess has never been more appetizing than on cuts like “Science vs. Romance,” where she subs in the word "sex" in place of "science."
28. Astral Weeks – Van Morrison
The title track is the most poetic song in rock, so majestic that critic Lester Bangs wrote rock's most memorable essay about it. Check out the song about a guy named “Madame George,” just for the hell of it. Choice lyric: “Would you find me/and would you kiss-a my eyes/and lay me down/in silence, easy/to be born again?”
Read the Lester Bangs essay, then buy this album
27. Eighteen Greatest Hits – Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
Sarah Vowell once wrote that seeing Smokey Robinson in concert was a major turn on. You'll find anything and everything here, straight from the man who wrote “My Girl” and almost half of all the great Motown tunes.
26. In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning – Frank Sinatra
Never has a megastar come off as more vulnerable without being a shaved-head Britney Spears. Are you a ladies man and want to get in touch with your real, much more sensitive side? Get it.
25. Grace – Jeff Buckley
A guy even a straight dude could fall in love with, Jeff Buckley released only one album in his lifetime-- and damn it if it wasn't all that he needed to remain immortal. Grace features heartbreakers like Nina Simone's “Lilac Wine” and Leonard Cohen's “Hallelujah” (the definitive version), but it's an original song, written en route to its recording, that keeps us coming back: the epic slow jam “Lover, You Should've Come Over.” “Because it's not too late.”
Jeff Buckley performs in Chicago, not long before his tragic death at the age of 30.
24. Orange – The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Another one of their albums features the line “baby, baby, you sure like to fuck!” shouted repeatedly, but somehow this one turns us on more. There's something about that cocksure swagger, rollercoaster drumming, and dirty guitar work that landed this on our “Get Motivated” iTunes playlist.
23. Let's Dance – David Bowie
This was the most successful, surprising, and diehard-confounding album of the glam pioneer's career. Featuring a slew of great 80's dance night staples (including, of course, “Let's Dance”), the album boasts many of Bowie's sexiest vocals, particularly on “Modern Love” and the Iggy Pop collaboration “China Girl,” which contain lyrics yelled, growled, and moaned. If you're still reading this list and are bored by the idea of that or anything else you've read so far, we hear the monasteries and nunneries are hiring...
22. Small Change – Tom Waits
Possibly the best line-by-line set of lyrics in human history outside of the recordings of Bob Dylan. And the sexy? We only need to mention one thing: the cover features Waits in a stripper's dressing room... with the stripper, played by none other than the future Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
Pasties And A G-String (At The Two O'Clock Club) (LP Version) [LP Version]
21. Songs in the Key of Life – Stevie Wonder
If your love is in need of love today, you can't go wrong with this one from the Young Master. There are so many classics on these two CDs, you'll swear you put on his Greatest Hits album.
Previously:
The Sexiest Albums You Must Own (40-31)
The Sexiest Albums You Must Own (50-41)