Music In My Shoes

2025 Best Selling Rock Vinyl, The Sound of Silence, and Once in a Lifetime E112

• Episode 112

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We pull apart 2025’s top rock vinyl list, trace why greatest hits still rule turntables, and celebrate the albums that outlived their moment. Along the way, we honor Steve Cropper, clear up calypso vs mento, and revisit songs from Simon & Garfunkel to Talking Heads and Oasis.

• 2025 rock vinyl chart highlights and surprises
• why greatest hits dominate modern vinyl buying
• Fleetwood Mac Rumours as an enduring benchmark
• personal vinyl memories and early listening habits
• Steve Cropper’s legacy at Stax and beyond
• calypso versus mento and Count Lasher’s role
• The Sound Of Silence’s evolution and covers
• Talking Heads’ choreography and video impact
• punk’s critique of MTV and early Beastie Boys
• Oasis anthems and communal singalongs
• new year outlook for music anniversaries

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SPEAKER_02:

Hey everybody, this is Jim Boge, and you're listening to Music in My Shoes. That was Vic Thrill kicking off episode 112. As always, I'm thrilled to be here with you. Let's learn something new or remember something old. Happy New Year, Jimmy. Happy New Year, Jim. It's good to be back with you. Wonderful to be back. So I know we ended the year, our last episode with the top 95 albums, according to WPLJ Radio in New York for 1980. Yep. Well, Ultimate Classic Rock did a thing, the top 20 rock vinyl records of 2025. I thought it would be kind of cool to take a look at what those records are. Okay. Again, records. This is just records. This is not CDs. This is not streaming. This is vinyl, actual vinyl. Oh. So number 20, Bon Jovi Greatest Hits, the Ultimate Collection, and it was 195 on Billboard's ERN chart of records total sold. So any genre, whether you know included Taylor Swift or pop or RB or rap or rock or whatever it is, 195 for the year. And again, 20 on the list of best-selling classic rock albums of 2025. Number 19, Sublime with the Sublime album. Number 18, Metallica, the Metallica album with Enter Sandman. Yep. Okay. Number 17, Eagles, Their Greatest Hits. Now, the Eagles' Greatest Hits, I think, is the number five best-selling album of all time. Here on vinyl, it's still number 17 in 2025. And you we talked the last episode about albums, I think it was Back in Black, we mentioned how it just keeps selling and selling and selling because it's so good. Number 16, Bob Seeger and the Silver Bullet Band, Greatest Hits. And I think that's one of the common themes. When people buy vinyl today, a lot of it is to get the greatest hits so that they're paying a premium price that they're getting quality songs. Number 15, Aerosmith Greatest Hits. Number 14, Fleetwood Mac Greatest Hits.

SPEAKER_03:

People really like the greatest hits, don't they?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. Number 13, Leonard Skinner, all-time greatest hits. Number 12, Guns N' Roses, Greatest Hits. 11, Daryl Hall, John Oates, The Very Best Of. Number 10. Now I'm not sure why they have this as a classic rock album, but I'm going to go with it. Again, Bill Board put this out and it was reported by Ultimate Classic Rock. I don't consider ABBA to be a classic rock. It's pop, yeah. I like some of their songs. I'm not putting it down. I'm just I don't see where it fits in this particular list. Number nine, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers greatest hits. Number eight, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Legend, the best of. I got that, you know, as soon as I had like one of my first CDs, Bob Marley Legend, was one of the first ones that I bought. I remember that. Yeah, me too. Number seven, Creed Greatest Hits. I'm not sure I could tell you more than one or two songs, the fact that they have a whole album.

SPEAKER_03:

Exactly two songs is what I could tell you.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. Hey, I know a lot of people out there like Creed. You might want to get this album because it looks like it's good from the standpoint of it's the seventh most sold vinyl record in 2025. Number six, Nirvana, nevermind. Okay, see, it's not a greatest hits. There you go. It is not. Number five, Journey Greatest Hits. Number four, Queen Greatest Hits. Number three, Credence Clearwater Revival, Chronicle, their 20 greatest hits. Now I have that on vinyl. That's how long that album has been out, a greatest hits album. I have that on vinyl. I think I actually have the Aerosmith Greatest Hits one, too. There's a few of these I have on vinyl. And number two, Elton John Diamonds, which is a greatest hits. Number one, Fleetwood Mac Rumors.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, there you go. At least number one isn't another greatest hits.

SPEAKER_02:

It's not another greatest hits, and it is the 25th most sold vinyl record of any genre in 2025. I mean, the album came out 50 years ago. It's crazy. Taylor Swift has a couple albums. Some country guy, Morgan Wallen, has like three records. I couldn't tell you a single song by him. But I just think that it's cool. This list, classic rock, you know, people say classic rock is is gone and it's dead, and you know, that's some good albums there that are people listening to.

SPEAKER_03:

Rumors is amazing, right? You know, you just it's hard to believe all those songs are on one album.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it really is. I mean, Fleawood Mac, you know, at one point when you take a look at them, they were another band that everything just, you know, seemed to be a hit. Everything was just great. It was different than the last album they put out. Each song, you know, whether it was Christine McVee doing her songs on the album or Stevie Nicks or Lindsay Buckingham, it was just really, really good music.

SPEAKER_03:

Trevor Burrus, Jr. And we could probably do an episode just about them because, you know, they had Buckingham Knicks and then they had Fleetwood Mac, which was only McFleetwood and Christine McVie, and and they joined their two bands together, and that was like the secret to making them both so much better than they were separately.

SPEAKER_02:

Aaron Powell Right. You know, Fleetwood Mac was big in the 60s with uh Peter Green. He was the vocalist. I think he played guitar and they did a bunch of uh of songs that you know were big were big on classic rock radio today, back in the day, it was just rock radio. But um, yeah, Fleetwood Mac for sure, without a doubt, you know, and then like '82, that was kind of when things started to change a little bit for them. They weren't as diverse as they were. They kind of got a little bit mellow, more adult contemporary, I guess you would say. But that's all right by me. It's cool to see lists like this and see, you know, that people are still buying rock albums and still support rock music and vinyl, you know, the fact that there's a list of vinyl, the top 200 vinyl sold records for 2025, that's really cool because used to think that that would never happen again.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. And and I may have mentioned before, but in my uh school library and elementary school, you know, we had maybe six vinyl records or something uh that were pop records and rock records, and one of them was rumors. I'd go in there to the library and get a pair of headphones and listen to rumors.

SPEAKER_02:

There you go. I like it.

SPEAKER_03:

Elton John's Greatest Hits.

SPEAKER_02:

I had Elton John's Greatest Hits on uh vinyl. I think there was like one and uh Greatest Hits Volume Two, I think it was. Now he's got the Diamonds one, and that encompasses more years, more songs.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, he didn't have that many things out when I was listening back in like 1977.

SPEAKER_02:

No, he did not. Yeah. You were correct about that. But that was cool. I I dig that vinyl's back and I dig that they have the list. I really do. Guitarist Steve Cropper died on December 3rd, 2025. He was the guitarist for Booker T and the MGs, and they had a hit in 1962 with Green Onions. It was instrumental. They were the house band for Stax Records, and he co-wrote and he played on Otis Redding's Sitting on the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour. Now, those are two super classic songs that Steve Cropper actually co-wrote, and I just think that's pretty cool. He was the guitarist for Sam and Dave Soul Man and the Blues Brothers version as well, because they wanted him to be part of the whole Blues Brothers band. And in both songs, they give uh a shout-out to Steve. You know, it's just really cool to be that good and be that talented. Unfortunately, you know, time ends for all of us, and his time has come. But I'm sure he is hanging out with Otis, and he is hanging out with uh Donald Duck Dunn. He died not that long ago. And there being soulmen and playing in a band up there. I hope so. While time waits for no one, tick, tick, tick, it's Minute with Jimmy.

SPEAKER_01:

It's time for a minute with Jimmy, Minute with Jimmy, Minute with Jimmy. It's time for a minute with Jimmy, Minute with Jimmy, Minute with Jimmy.

SPEAKER_03:

So here we are in 2026, and it's the 70th anniversary of the 1956 record by Harry Belafonte Calypso. Now, this was responsible for really starting the calypso craze. Everybody knows Calypso music. Island music makes you so happy and everything. What everybody doesn't know is that about half the songs that were known as calypso music, particularly by the Jamaican Harry Belafonte, were not Calypso songs. Calypso is from Trinidad and Tobago. Jamaican music back then, the predecessor to ska and reggae was called Mento music. So he did a lot of Mento songs, but people just called it Calypso because it kind of was marketed that way to the American market. So everybody thinks it's all calypso music. Really, it's this very cool proto-reggae stuff that kind of had made some social commentary the way that reggae did, and it had some kind of sarcastic humor in it. It's really fun music. If you go back, so Count Lasher was the biggest Mento star in Jamaica, and they say he's probably one of the most overlooked Jamaican musical artists of all time because up until a few years ago there were no known photographs of Count Lasher. Now there are the I looked all over the internet. I found five pictures of Count Lasher. And he put out his own records and sold more records than anybody in Jamaica back in the 50s and 60s. But then Reggae came along and and they got popular and he was the he was the guy that, you know, they stood on his shoulders.

SPEAKER_02:

So that was a good minute with Jimmy, but I'm trying to figure out how could there be no pictures? Is it because his real name wasn't Count Lasher and you know it was something else? So if you look up his real name.

SPEAKER_03:

I think honestly, I think Jamaica was just so poor and his music was only for the people. It wasn't like tourists weren't going to see him. He wasn't playing concerts for a lot of people with posters up and things. So just nobody had a camera, I don't think.

SPEAKER_02:

That's a good reason.

SPEAKER_03:

Like the pictures of him, they're they're random pictures. There's there's one kind of of him with his guitar that was probably for a a record cover or something. Then there's another one later in life with what looks like his son, you know, just sort of a Polaroid or something. And they're just it's it's amazing. They're just very, very few photos of this guy.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm gonna have to check it out again.

SPEAKER_03:

It's fun music.

SPEAKER_02:

A good minute with Jimmy. Thanks. My Minute with Jimmy. Let's revisit some more music in my shoes. Simon and Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence, peaked at number one on Billboard Hot 100, January 1st, 1966. Originally released as an acoustic song in 1964 that went absolutely nowhere. And then they added bass, drums, electric guitars. Actually, Simon and Garfunkel didn't know that they added that. Somebody went in and dubbed it over.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and you can tell when you listen to it, it's like you can tell that they played it without drums because the the uh tempo of it kind of ebbs and flows the way it does when you're playing an acoustic song. Right. And then the drummer is trying to keep up and like play a little slower and play a little faster with it, and it's all sort of rocking back and forth.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, even though it's rocking back and forth, it ended up becoming a number one song because it had all of that, which is crazy that how little things can change something. So, Hello Darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again. I mentioned on an episode last year that Rush paid tribute in their song Free Will, Simon and Garfunkel lyrics, and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sound of silence. Rush's nod, for the words of the prophets, prophets being money, not prophets, as Simon and Garfunkel said, for the words of the prophets were written on the studio wall, concert hall echoes with the sounds of salesmen. And again, like I said before, I think that's one of the greatest nods of all time to anybody in any song. Disturb released a heavy metal version in December 2015, bringing the song a whole new audience. And I believe Disturb did the song, I think it was on Conan O'Brien, and Paul Simon saw it and actually sent a note to the band saying he really liked what they did with it, really enjoyed it, and they responded back to him saying that they were honored that he would write to them and that he liked what they did with it. You know, because sometimes people get a little antsy when you take a song and then you make it a heavy metal version, you know? It's just so different. But I think that's pretty cool. You know, both were enthusiastic about, you know, what the other had done, and both were proud of what they had done personally as well as what the other had done with the song. Whether it be what Paul Simon and Garfunkel did originally or what Disturbed did, everybody seemed to be in agreement with it. The Beatles, we can work it out, peaked at number one on Billboard January 8th, 1966. It was a double A side 45, with Day Tripper being the other song. And that reached number five on Billboard late January 1966. Adam and the Ants, Ant Music, peaked at number two on the UK charts in January 1981. Again, I've mentioned this before. This song barely made any ripple in America. It was the number two song in the UK. Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

It's so different.

SPEAKER_02:

It's just so different the way that you know both the audiences listen to music. And, you know, I really think that in the UK, they're much more accepting of all different types of genres of music that they just think is good. Where in the US, for so long, and it's up until recently, that people they listened to only kind of one thing. Maybe they dabbled a little bit in something else. But they were, I'm this. And now as we, you know, are getting, you know, older and and changing and and newer music fans, I think people are getting a little bit more diverse with what they do. And maybe our charts someday will mimic what goes on in the UK. So it starts off with the drumsticks kind of like beating. I don't know. I don't know if they're on the side of the drum on, you know, but it makes that rim. Yeah, like on the rim or something. And the video takes place at a disco, and Adam and the ants, they're dressed up in like that post-punk new wave, and they kind of got like the you know, Indian war paint makeup on. And, you know, they're at this disco, like I said. Well, I'm standing here looking at you. What do I see? I'm looking straight through. It's so sad when you're young to be told you're having fun. And just, you know, that's really cool from a standpoint of sometimes you think you have to be going to, you know, in this case, they're talking about you gotta listen to disco music and you gotta be going to this club, and you gotta look this way, and you gotta do this, and that's how you're having fun, and now you know you're having fun. And Adam the Ants, my interpretation is they're different, their music's different, they look different, but it is fun. You know, it doesn't have to be just what you're told, it can be different things. Yeah. So unplug the jukebox and do us all a favor. That music's lost its taste, so try another flavor. Ant music. Oh, oh, oh, oh. But it is a really good song. It really truly is. I I really do like that uh Adam Ant song. Talking Heads Remain in Light, October 8th, 1980. Uh, the album was released, and Once in a Lifetime was the big song that came off of it. That came out in January of 1981. And this is one of the best videos of all time, in my opinion. David Byrne is on fire in this video. And he looks like he's popping up and then he's dropping down and then he's popping up before he starts to sing. It just is such a good video. Again, you know, it came out in January 1981. They must have filmed it in 1980 at some point. And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack, and you may find yourself in another part of the world dancing, dropping. It's a really physical video. And at one point he's like just sweating, but they don't have anyone coming to you know clean him up. He does the video because he's doing all kinds of dancing, he's doing all this stuff. At one point in the video, he does have like a um handkerchief where he just kind of wipes his own face as he's singing. And letting the days go by, let the water hold me down, letting the days go by, water flowing underground. Tony Basil of the Mickey song, Oh Mickey, you're so fine. She choreographed this video.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so she choreographed it.

SPEAKER_03:

She was a famous choreographer.

SPEAKER_02:

Well she was a famous choreographer and she had that one song, Oh Mickey, you're so fine, you're so fine. You blow my mind. There you go. So you know, David is doing all this like different motions. Like I said, he's he's dancing and just it's just a crazy video, but it's so good. But then he does this hand-arm movement and he's copying an African tribe because in the video they show people doing it, and he says, same as it ever was, same as it ever was. And I just remember back in the day, how's it going? And I'll be like, same as it ever was. And I would do that. Like when you're young, you're copying what you know people are doing. That's why they advertise to young people because you're so influenced by different things. But I remember doing, you know, a ton. Like, how's it going? What's up? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Same as it ever was.

SPEAKER_03:

And every time he does that, folks, he's hitting his forearm with his karate chopping his.

SPEAKER_02:

Just like the video. I I might start doing it again. I think in 2026, maybe I'll start doing it and see what people think. Not that I care what they think, but just see what they say.

SPEAKER_03:

See what we see how they react.

SPEAKER_02:

See who remembers. Hey, are you doing that David Byrne thing? I'm not sure many people will say that. But we'll see. We shall see. So moving on, the Dead Kennedys, MTV Get Off the Air, W L I R Screamer of the Week, the last week of December 1985. Obviously poking fun at MTV with lines like, Hi, I'm your video DJ. I always talk like I'm wigged out on quaaludes. I wear a satin baseball jacket everywhere I go. That was true because I think that like J.J. Jackson always had it on. I think Alan Hunter always had the baseball, Martha Quinn. Like seriously, I think they all would wear the baseball jackets everywhere they go, but they had MTV, you know, on the back. Very, very true.

SPEAKER_00:

And then they shout, MTV Get Off the Air.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. And then it becomes like, you know, it starts out like a slow song and they shout out, MTV Get Off the Air. Then it becomes like this punk song and his MTV, get off the MTV, get off the MTV, get off the air.

SPEAKER_03:

You know, I was listening to that fairly recently. I can't remember why I looked it up and hadn't heard it since way back then. And I was thinking, you know my song I Hate the Grateful Dead. I do. I think I kind of might have had that in the back of my head when I was writing that because it it kind of follows that format. You know, it starts out with the guy talking, right? And it sort of slower music, and then all of a sudden it stops and goes into kind of a punk song.

SPEAKER_02:

Borrowing from other musicians is the greatest form of flattery.

SPEAKER_03:

We'll go with that.

SPEAKER_02:

There you go. Hey, Beastie Boy, she's on it, was the WLIR Screamer of the Week the very next week, the first week of January 1986. This is when the Beasties were still relatively unknown. They were big in New York. I had known them for a number of years. They had recorded some stuff on cassettes that they kind of released out, and you would hear it. You'd hear it in clubs, you would hear it all over the place. This song was just a regular song that they did, and it's very similar to what came out on Ill Communication when they blew up in 1986, but it was kind of like the precursor. They weren't at the that point of being able to rap the way they did. They tried here. The music was good, but the lyrics were a little sketchy. They weren't that good. I think that they worked on it and then they had it all down by the time Ill Communication came out.

SPEAKER_03:

And when was this?

SPEAKER_02:

This is 19. Well, this is the Screamer of the Week, January of 1986.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

So it's the beginning. You know, it came out in in like 1985. I still have the 12-inch, and on the cover of it, it's got them, they're at a beach, which is where the uh video is filmed at. And the beach is Long Beach, New York, not far from where I grew up. And, you know, it's a trying to get this girl, and you know, it goes through all this stuff. But the words are like, there's no confusion in her conclusion. She wants to waste my time, and that's no delusion. You know, that's stuff that I write. But, you know, they ended up going on and released ill communication, and everything was um all different once that came out for them. Yeah. Oasis. What's the story? Morning Glory. So this album was released October 2nd, 1995. And Liam and Noel Gallagher put together one of my favorite albums of all time. I would play this CD so much, I'm surprised that it still works because I would listen to it over and over in my car, over and over on my CD player, just wore it out. It came out in a perfect time when music was at a bit of a lull in October of 1995, and then it was nonstop on the radio throughout 1996. Wonder Wall made it to number eight on Billboard in March of '96. Just full of good and great songs like Hello, Roll with It, Don't Look Back in Anger, which is a crowd favorite, sung by Noel, and everybody seems to know the words, and so Sally can wait. She knows it's too late as we're walking on by. Her soul slides away, but don't look back in anger, I heard you say. And this is one of those songs that uh when my kids were younger, they heard it, and they enjoyed that the crowd would sing along with it, and then they started to sing along. It became like a f one of the family's sing-along songs. Good. So it definitely has some uh meaning. But some might say, She's electric. I think she's electric is a fantastic song. Morning Glory, Champagne, Supernova. The album reached number four on the Billboard 200 album chart in February of 1996. And it was the number 13 album for the whole year of 1996. I was gonna go see them on that tour in September '96 in Atlanta, but at some point they had that brother-brother fighting and ended up canceling, and I did not see them on that particular tour. I did I have seen them other times, but I didn't get to see them on that particular one. So I'll tell you, we started Jimmy in late 2023, and we went through all of 24 and all of 25. And here we are, it's the beginning of 2026, and I cannot believe that we continue to go on.

SPEAKER_03:

It's great. It's so fun.

SPEAKER_02:

It is, it really is, and that's why I keep coming back every single week so that I can hang out with you and have loads of fun on the show.

SPEAKER_03:

And now we have a whole new year of anniversaries to talk about things from 1981 and 1986 and 71 and 76 and 56, you know, just all over the place, and I'm excited for it.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm looking forward to 66. That's the year that I was born. So looking forward to it. Yeah. 66. That was a radio station, WNBC in New York. WNBC. There you go. 66 on your AM dial. That's it for this episode of Music in My Shoes. I'd like to thank Jimmy Guthrie, show producer and owner of Arcade 160 Studios, located right here in Atlanta, Georgia, and Vic Thrill for the podcast music. You can reach us at music in my shoes at gmail.com. Please like and follow the Music in My Shoes Facebook and Instagram pages. This is Jim Boj, and I hope you learned something new or remembered something old. We'll meet again on our next episode. Until then, live life and keep the music playing.

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Jim

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