Crate Digging is a recurring feature that takes a deep dive into music history to turn up several albums all music fans should know. In this edition, Corey Taylor offers up 10 essential non-metal anytime albums.
As the masked singer of one of the most popular metal bands in the world, there is built-in mystery to the persona of Corey Taylor. But as we learned in our cover story this month, there’s a complex individual under that mask, and that complexity extends his musical language as well.
Taylor’s new solo album CMF2 draws from his myriad influences — metal, hard rock, punk, folk, grunge — in a way that feels natural and expressive. It’s something he doesn’t always get to flex in Slipknot, picking up where Stone Sour left off as an outlet for Taylor to simply be himself rather than No. 8.
Metal musicians tend to get stereotyped as metalheads who therefore only play and listen to metal. While Taylor certainly plays and listens to metal, the genre is only a fraction of his musical palette. CMF2 proves as much, even hinting at it with the album art, which the singer called a “homage” to David Bowie: a mannequin gallery of Corey Taylors from over the years — a wax museum of his career.
So, what non-metal music does Corey Taylor listen to? Below, he offers up a specific set of albums from across the genre spectrum, from jazz to post-Britpop, that offer a glimpse into not only his record collection, but also the underlying influences behind his solo material.
We also collaborated with Taylor on an exclusive merch capsule featuring a photo print of the cover image and a T-shirt printed with a “pinup patch” cutout of the singer himself. Created from the photography of Marina Hunter, both are available now at the Consequence Shop.
Pick up a copy of CMF2 on vinyl here, and snag tickets to Taylor’s ongoing solo tour here.
