5 Albums I Can’t Live Without: Dan Wilson of Semisonic

Name  Dan Wilson
 
Best known for  “Closing Time,” “Someone Like You,” “White Horse,” “Not Ready to Make Nice,” “The Only Heartbreaker,” “Butterfly.” Probably mostly “Closing Time.”


Current city  Los Angeles.


Really want to be in  Paris at the Louvre Museum, drinking up the amazing paintings. 


Excited about  Playing guitar later today. 


My current music collection has a lot of  Keith Jarrett, SZA, Joni Mitchell, Radiohead, Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter, Dawes, Bon Iver, boygenius, Frank Ocean.


And a little bit of  beabadoobee.


Preferred format I like vinyl a lot, but probably 75% streaming and 25% vinyl.
 
 
 

More from Spin:

• Jordan Firstman Has Some ‘Secrets’ He Wants to Share
• Ellen Alaverdyan and Bootsy Collins Are Holding the Groove
• Lana Del Rey Seeks ‘Henry’ On New Single

5 Albums I Can’t Live Without:

1

Abbey Road, Beatles

My parents had Abbey Road when I was a kid, along with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. But we all gravitated to Abbey Road. Our family listened to it a lot. When I was a teenager, my brother and I started to try to write songs, and that gave me a whole new view of the album. It had so many kinds of songs on it. There were short songs, long songs, jammy songs, tightly structured songs, sexy songs, silly children’s songs. The writing was all over the place and I loved it all. 

2

Are You Experienced, The Jimi Hendrix Experience

I got an electric guitar when I was 13, and the first thing I tried to learn on it was Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze.” Listening to that album was like taking guitar lessons from the greatest of all time. It didn’t have my favorite Jimi song, “Little Wing,” but I loved the album’s lyrics and the guitar and the drums passionately. “This is what I want to do with my life.” My first band Trip Shakespeare stole the name of this album for our second LP. 

3

Hejira, Joni Mitchell

A friend of mine introduced me to Joni via this album. I didn’t really know her other records. What a great way to start, with the best singer-songwriter album of all time. The only one that comes close is Tapestry by Carole King, which seeped into my bones five years earlier. But the songs on Hejira broke all the rules: rules of chords, rules of instrumentation, rules of how to write a lyric. The greatest songs on the record have no choruses—just endless loops of melody. Nobody has come close. 

4

Exile in Guyville, Liz Phair

When my band Trip Shakespeare was touring the Midwest, we met Liz once or twice in Chicago. She probably doesn’t remember. But when this album came out and rocked my world, I didn’t realize it was the same Liz. This record is shockingly, hilariously honest. Scathing and joyful at the same time. It was like an early David Bowie album, a singer-songwriter album but relentlessly rocking and experimental. My friends and I had never heard anything like it, and it deeply and directly affected my work with Semisonic. 

5

1999, Prince

What can I say? I can’t believe he’s gone. Being a musician in Minneapolis in the late ‘80s and ‘90s meant you were living in Prince’s world. And watching him write hits and change pop music and build a musical empire in the suburbs of his hometown meant you could do it too. This is bigger and bolder and wilder by far than any of the other records on my list. Prince was untouchable.  

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.