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Music

Every Album Anniversary Post Ever

We're celebrating [Artist Name]'s [Album Name] on its [Ordinal Number Divisible By Five] anniversary. We'll never forget it.

Think back to that time when [era-appropriate music fad] was gripping the [nation/globe]. Yes, it was enjoyable, and even transcendent at times, but the genre’s biggest stars and architects always seemed [cautiously optimistic/in on the joke], knowing that it was bound to collapse once an ambitious [band/singer/rapper] with a little luck and a lot of vision came in to knock down that house of cards. [Band name]’s debut album, [album title], was that [gamechanger/wake-up call/opening salvo], a [goddamn/fucking/righteous] [meteor/coup/haymaker] that [annihilated the lumbering dinosaurs/dethroned the bloated ruling class/ended the stranglehold]. Today, [album title] celebrates its [ordinal number divisible by five] anniversary, and with that temporal distance, we can fully zoom out and take stock of the unlikely impact of this [inscrutable/undeniable/seminal] release.

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[Sales figure] seems like entirely too many units sold for something this [loud/quiet/cynical/optimistic], and also not nearly enough based on how ingrained it became in our daily cultural experience. [Some shit about “when people used to buy albums.”] It was simultaneously an overblown relic of the [monoculture/old media model], and an underappreciated [philippic/jeremiad/Word Of The Day word that sounds better than plain old “critique”] against it.

Inevitable though it may seem now, that success was far from guaranteed. At the time, [band name] were [pioneers/explorers], and [pioneers/explorers] don’t do risk/reward calculations, they tap into some youthful vigor, load up their [chuck wagons/knapsacks] and venture into the unknown—the only known being the hunger for discovery. But beyond ticket sales, chart performance, TV appearances, and other concrete measures of its indisputable impact, [album title]’s true significance was manifested in its effects on living, breathing people. How these [hyper-literal description of music, e.g. “vibrations in the air”] stirred something within us. [Vague parallel to Drake, Taylor Swift, or Burzum.] [Monoculture reference.]

[Personal anecdote about the album, which dropped when writer was in 8th grade and thus unable to conjure grand conceptual thoughts beyond fantasies of getting a hand job from that girl in math class, but writer will have no problem retroactively ascribing significance to that specific time and his/her relation to What It All Meant.]

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That’s why [band name] became instant heroes to [suburban kids/inner city kids/dropouts/nerds/goths/ravers/crust punks/children of divorce] like me, while [parents/teachers/politicians/police/white people] were wary of them and the movement they represented. And now, we are those [parents/teachers/politicians/police/white people]. [The legacy continues./The circle of life./Time is a flat circle.]

[Quick track-by-track re-review]

Together, these songs formed an accidental opus that perfectly encapsulated the [emotion] of [marginalized group], but never pandered to them, while musically, it used the very tools of the [mainstream genre] against it, [a Trojan Horse to destroy it from within/an anomaly hiding inside the Matrix]. [Band name] didn’t aim for the album to be the calling card—scratch that, the screeching howl—of a generation, but by [effortlessly/uncannily/nonchalantly] twisting the essential elements of [predecessor band name]’s sound around a [cheeky/earnest] interpretation of [art movement/local subculture], [album title] built a whole new world of [sonic/lyrical/production] possibilities, and laid the foundation for the [microgenre] explosion.

Whether this was ultimately for the greater music good is still a contentious talking point today (the existence of [respected band inspired by album] would suggest it was, while the fact that it eventually spawned [uncool spinoff] proves otherwise). [Monoculture reference.] Regardless, nothing was the same.

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[Moment of concluding grandiloquence leading into faux profound bit of callback that really buttons everything up into a tidy little narrative.] But this glorious accident sent listeners and musicians alike sprinting into the wild frontier. Much like those Old West pioneers.

Sure, [factor of five] years later, we now know the lay of the land, but that doesn’t make it any less captivating when you stop to take it in.

Carl Williott is [clever, smartass, and hopefully self-aware joke that deters any criticism of the above article.] He's on Twitter@cwilliot

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