Editor’s Note: The Albumism staff has selected what we believe to be the 50 Greatest Live Albums of All Time, representing a varied cross-section of genres, styles and time periods. Click “Next Album” below to explore each album or view the full album index here.
SIMPLE MINDS | Live in the City of Light
Virgin (1987)
Selected by Andy Healy
For the pre-YouTube generation, live albums were the only way of being transported to concerts you could never have attended. In the instance of many of my personal faves, this is the beauty of the live album. And sometimes, a live album lets you relive the glory of a show you actually got to witness first hand. This is the case with Simple Minds’ Live in the City of Light. The joy of this album is that it transports me back to Section 12, Row 7 during the band’s Once Upon A Time tour and all those great memories come flooding back. And whilst this album owes a fair bit of credit to post production and studio overdubs it still manages to capture the excitement of a band basking in the glory of stadium success whilst still remaining a relatively intimate experience.
Standouts like “Someone Somewhere (In Summertime),” “Once Upon A Time,” the reworked “Book of Brilliant Things,” the guitar tinged “East at Easter,” and the sing-a-long joy of “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” keep the album bubbling along and the listener enthralled. Whilst some live albums like Kiss’ Alive II and Queen’s Live Killers might have you imagining the over-the-top spectacle of the live show, Live in the City of Light keeps the focus here on the musicality of the songs and the passion of the performance.
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