Richard Harris - The Yard Went on Forever (1968)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:
Richard Harris - A Tramp Shining (1968)

For all the derision it attracts, "MacArthur Park" is an extremely strange piece of music, and its massive success as a single probably surprised everyone involved in its recording and release. To follow it up, Harris (well, Jimmy Webb, who actually wrote and arranged the entirety of both this album and A Tramp Shining) leaned into that song's artfully overblown melodrama, and generated a towering song cycle of heartbroken symphonic vocal pop that holds together even better than its predecessor.

Track listing:

1. The Yard Went on Forever

2. Watermark

3. Interim

4. Gayla

5. The Hymns from the Grand Terrace

6. The Hive

7. Lucky Me

8. That's the Way It Was

Is everybody safe?

Has everybody got a place to hide?

Is everybody warm inside?

You might also wanna hear:

Astrud Gilberto - I Haven't Got Anything Better to Do (1969)

Pierre Bachelet - Pierre Bachelet (1975)

Nora Keyes - Songs to Cry By for the Golden Age of Nothing (2004)

Esoteric musical dementia. Warped old time-y sideshow music drones as Keyes sings in a shrill vibrato about the many miseries of life -- big and small -- and cackles like a goddamn lunatic. As depressing as it is bizarre, Songs to Cry By for the Golden Age of Nothing is a guaranteed mood killer.

Track listing:
1. Tomb Song
2. Small Apart
3. Look at You, You're Ugly
4. Cauliflower
5. My Child
6. Old Pal
7. Excreted from Our Mother's Womb
8. Old Folks
9. The Show Is Over

Look at you, you're heinous
Your face is like an anus

More music made by possible witches:

Ruth White -
Flowers of Evil (1969)

Diamanda Galas -
The Litanies of Satan (1982)

Richard Harris - A Tramp Shining (1968)

Best known for including the original version of the impossibly maudlin "MacArthur Park", A Tramp Shining is a surprisingly, endearingly outsider-sounding collection of swooning, orchestral 60s pop. Fans of early Scott Walker will love Harris' slightly skewed take on crooning, while fans of Bryter Later will fall for the lush instrumental arrangements and starry-eyed melodrama.

Track listing:
1. Didn't We

2. Paper Chase

3. Name of My Sorrow

4. Lovers Such as I

5. In the Final Hours

6. MacArthur Park

7. Dancing Girl

8. If You Must Leave My Life

9. A Tramp Shining

Bless the place that no one goes
Bless the words that no one knows
Bless the rose that never grows
Lights that are dim, trees without limbs
Babies that cry, and lovers such as I

David Axelrod - Song of Innocence (1968) + Songs of Experience (1969)

Amidst all of the totally justified animosity directed at U2 for forcing their crappy new album on something like 100 million people, no one seems to be pointing out a more subtle reason to be mad at them: the album in question is called Songs of Innocence, and they have a planned follow-up album called Songs of Experience. Meaning, not only did they sneak their album into the libraries of countless innocent Apple devices, they're ripping off David Axelrod.

Of course, Axelrod's records were named after poet William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, but he made no secret of this, as the albums were written as musical interpretations of Blake's work. So, in order to glean some sort of positivity from U2-gate, I'm sharing Axelrod's brilliant first two albums, which weave together psychedelic rock, baroque pop, and jazz fusion, forming a gleaming, kaleidoscopic tapestry of instrumental bliss.

Track listing:
-Song of Innocence-
1. Urizen
2. Holy Thursday
3. The Smile
4. A Dream
5. Song of Innocence
6. Merlin's Prophecy
7. The Mental Traveler
-Songs of Experience-
1. A Poison Tree
2. A Little Girl Lost
3. London
4. The Sick Rose
5. The School Boy
6. The Human Abstract
7. The Fly
8. A Divine Image

Megalomania