What makes your favourite album your favourite?

[Prototype]

My favourite 2 albums are Hope and Free. Free used to be my favourite until last year, but Free now comes in a very close second, my reasons are as follows.

Track listing is one of the first considerations when it comes to favourite albums. On Free, songs I will never tire of are "A Song of Enchantment","Angelis","Lament","Twilight" and "A New Heaven", there are many other songs on other albums I will never tire of too, but that list is quite long. Then I heard Hope. The first thing that hit me about Hope was the dynamics.

Now all music changes with time because of how recording techniques change and improve, and Hope (in my opinion) has a better overall sound which I suspect is down to advances in recording. On to the actual songs themselves When I first heard "Three Ravens" I had that song itself on repeat play for I don't know how long. Angele Dei, Venite Adoremus and Wayfaring Stranger are another few favourites of mine, okay Three Ravens is by no way the first song by Libera I have had on repeat play for over an hour...but Gregor Lumsden's solo along with Alessandro and Alexander, the deliberate 3/4 beat, the oboe. I could do an in depth analysis of all of Libera's songs and what I like about them (I might start a thread on that one day) But just wanted to highlight what I liked about that one particular song.

I was getting ready to post this and just realised I have not really answered the question of why I like Hope more than Free, and I cant really, even though that was the whole point of this post.

The more I think about it now, the more I am sat on the fence about the whole thing.

[Surpinto]

I have such a hard time choosing a favorite album. Having been a fan for some time now it's more that I have favorite songs than I do favorite albums. While there can be said to be themes that run throughout a particular album, I find that unlike some other artists who may do “concept albums” where the music style differs markedly from one album to another, Libera doesn't engage in this to quite the same degree. This is understandable because Libera’s music is not really in that sort of category. If I had to pick the albums with the largest quantity of songs which I continuously come back to they would be Free, Hope, Peace , and Christmas in Ireland. So my criteria here for favorite albums is simply that I revisit songs on those albums more often. But that in no way disparages the other albums because some of my absolute all time favorites (such as “In Paradisum”, “Salve Me”, “Libera”, and many others) are not on the albums listed.

[filiarheni]

I hardly ever listen to a self-contained album in its entirety, but prefer to extract the songs I like best to a playlist and set the mode to random order to never know what comes next and have one positive surprise after the other.

But when I recently during a trip had no other choice than to listen to albums, I became well aware which albums I like best:

1. "Luminosa"
2. "Hope"
3. "Peace"

A favourite is always the one containing the highest number of songs I love. So it happens that songs ranking super-high in my liking (Voca Me, Secret, Salva Me, Sancte ) are on none of the above albums and so it happens that I like to create my own playlist where I'm independent on predetermined collections.

Why I like "Luminosa" best: For me, it expresses best what I consider a huge characteristic in Libera: It's focused on their mystic sound, and it's set in an extremely pure sounding way. Filigree. I only find it driven too much to very high heights in parts - as if it was intended to try out the limits. Nevertheless, this album is the most pleasant for my ears, and I enjoy the listen with all my soul. I'd even say: I enjoy the music so much that I enjoy my own enjoyment.

"Hope" on the other hand is the warmest of all Libera albums. This arises from the symphonic approach, which is distinctly different from all albums before. In fact, when I need some rest or sunshine for my mood, this is my go-to album and often enough it is already sufficient to only think of the album to become calm inside!

"Peace" ... no special reason, only the number of liked songs.

I could do an in depth analysis of all of Libera's songs and what I like about them

Oh yes! Same here!

I was getting ready to post this and just realised I have not really answered the question of why I like Hope more than Free, and I cant really, even though that was the whole point of this post.

The more I think about it now, the more I am sat on the fence about the whole thing.

[TullyBascombe]

I think I would choose "Peace" if only because it had the largest number of songs new to Libera within the past decade.