2 for 2: if maximalist albums were watches
two larger-than-life albums and the watches I’d say represent them well
I’ve had this strange idea buzzing around in my head for a while—namely, if a music album could be represented by a watch, which watch would the album be?
let’s lay down some criteria here, as the watches I’m going to be listing are likely going to be ones I don’t personally own. thus, there won’t be any sentiment in the way of ownership attached, other than the fact that I simply think the watch is cool and fits the album.
simply, for each album, the corresponding watch should reasonably:
suit the album’s aesthetic (ie. cover art, music videos, live performances)
not be a watch the artist actually wears (ie. AP Royal Oak Offshore for Jay-Z)
without further ado, let’s get started!
№ 1: Silverchair, Diorama (2002)
genre: post-grunge, baroque pop, art rock
the album: like a door to another world as the cover art suggests, Diorama is a lush portrait of swooning soundscapes filled with wonderment. Australia’s Silverchair began with high schoolers at the comedown of the popularity of angst-ridden grunge, the trio no older than 15 on their debut, Frogstomp (1995). sonic experimentation would follow with more acoustic and orchestral elements, and Diorama was their deepest dive yet. the album carries the listener through narratives of searches for meaning, self-discovery, and escapism—all with a hearty helping of Dali-esque surrealism. absolutely gorgeous orchestral arrangements headed by Van Dyke Parks1 in collaboration with lead singer Daniel Johns accompany the whimsical, turbulent journey of 11 tracks. but make no mistake, this is a rockin’ and a rollin’ album.
best songs: Across the Night; World Upon Your Shoulders; After All These Years
fav lyric: “all those years I was hurting to feel something more than life” (track 11, “After All These Years”)
the watch: Yonger & Bresson, “Le Singulier”
yeah, I could’ve just gone with the Daytona with its array of sapphires in all shades of the rainbow and pavé diamond dial. but that would be too easy, and wouldn’t really pair well with the album.
a peculiar album calls for a peculiar watch—one that invites curiosity, rather than shouting from the rooftops. I feel Le Singulier from French-Swiss brand Yonger & Bresson (est. 1975, but new ownership since the 90s) captures many of the baroque intricacies of Diorama and its synergy between Johns and Dyke Parks.
with help from the Franck Muller design team (the Swiss watch brand behind polarizing models such as Crazy Hours and Colour Dreams), Yonger & Bresson produced a remarkable watch for the price. over the course of a 15-day funding period on Kickstarter, the project with the goal of reaching €25,000 was met with over double the amount in pledges. of all watches to represent Diorama, however, why a skeleton watch?
frontman Daniel Johns, like any teen idol given the lightning pass to superstardom, grappled with burdens of success and his own personal demons. on the outside, Johns was living every kid’s dream: touring the world, selling platinum records. but fame, especially at such a young age, made the growing pains that much harder—he would be plagued with depression and substance abuse, suffered from anorexia nervosa, and at just 22 years old developed a rare case of reactive arthritis (Johns would later explore these accounts in a three-part docuseries, “Inside the Mind of Daniel Johns” in 2022). it’s this open, bare honesty that, to me, makes the vulnerable, exposed nature of a skeleton watch appropriate.
like Diorama, Le Singulier isn’t for everyone. it’s by no means in the utilitarian’s corner: it’s a loud watch that demands plenty of wrist real estate, and makes no compromises in pursuing art deco-industrial eloquence. personally skeleton watches have never really been my thing, as I feel most tend to look gimmicky and rather cheap, but I sincerely do like the execution done here.
firstly, the tonneau2 case instantly impresses upon the mind an antiquated, mid-century vibe, and I’ve always felt a skeleton looks best on non-round watch cases. part of the dial is hollowed-out, as to be expected—but what really sets Le Singulier apart is the mirror-polish steel overlay floating in between the dial and the hands: a beautiful, abstract deco pattern resembling gears, twisting and turning to the extremities of the chapter ring3. it all looks very intentional, and beckons the viewer to gaze towards the center where all the action is. a sense of dimensionality is furthered by the brand’s crown logo, “1975” and “AUTOMATIQUE” script being printed on the crystal (not the dial) which, depending on how the light hits, casts a shadow onto the dial or creates a reflection on the polished overlay beneath.
in addition, the exhibition caseback reveals the automatic Miyota 8N24 movement (regulated in-house by watchmakers in Morteau, France) and a decorated rotor with drilled holes and engraved spiraling lines. with the movement often obscured behind a closed caseback, I just love how the reverse side is just as captivating as the main attraction. beyond the cutout is a stunning micropattern of the brand’s crown logo. speaking of crowns, the two guards opposite the crown at 3 o’clock have also been polished, in sharp contrast to the brushed finish on the rest of the case. all-around it’s a luxurious package that reminds me of Johns’ extravagance onstage, and the ‘everything and the kitchen sink’ maximalism of Diorama.
Le Singulier is almost defiant in its approach, and injected with the daring Franck Muller DNA, it’s unsurprisingly so. it’s also a bit of an anomaly: neither an ideal sports watch (K1 mineral crystal, 50m water resistance), nor dress watch (15mm thick, not shirt cuff-friendly). it ships on a black silicone strap you’d normally expect on a rugged diver, though you can opt for the dressier brown leather. somehow, the watch manages to straddle the line of both sporty and dressy. it’s an amalgamation of both halves, but wholly a celebration of the extraordinaire. like Diorama, Le Singulier is like being transported to another world… if you allow the open door of the skeleton dial to beckon you ever closer.
the Le Singulier is available on the Yonger & Bresson website, on sale for $530.
№ 2: Taylor Swift, Reputation (2017)
genre: electropop, R&B
the album: “are you ready for it?” on the opening track blows the doors down on who you think Taylor Swift is. the ever-controversial Reputation is a candid exploration of public scrutiny and the fallout of high-profile relationships. with healthy doses of head-bobbing hip-hop and EDM production, there is an embarrassment of stupidly catchy hooks courtesy of Swedish producer hitmakers Max Martin and Shellback, and American singer-songwriter/producer Jack Antonoff (who she’s worked with on every album since). Rep is the severely overlooked black sheep of Taylor’s catalogue following the massively successful 1989—it contains some of Taylor’s most meaningful lyrics (“New Year’s Day”) and powerful vocal moments as a pop singer (“Don’t Blame Me”).
best songs: Dancing With Our Hands Tied; Getaway Car; …Ready for It?
fav lyric: “this ain’t for the best / my reputation’s never been worse, so / you must like me for me” (track 5, “Delicate”)
the watch: Bulgari, “Serpenti Spiga”
come on, you knew it had to be snake-themed. specifically, Ref. 103747 in 18-karat yellow gold.
featuring a gorgeous (said James Reynolds4, probably) mother-of-pearl dial, diamond-set bezel, gold-plated hands and what the maison calls an “abstract wheat stalk” and “single-spiral” bracelet. yes that’s a lot of hyphens. yes it’s actually designed to coil around the wrist. and yes, the Bulgari Serpenti Spiga looks dang cool doing it.
I specifically chose the gold over the steel and sans-diamond variants, as gold better suits the glorious excess of the Reputation era; the album bears a bodacious swagger that would make a Gatsby party turn up. it is a heavily produced record, with all its special effects and studio trickery—tracks like “End Game” and “Call It What You Want” drip with polish, and not a second wasted. in retrospect, Taylor leaned into this era hard, and I feel the payoff is more than worth it. ultimately, this era’s exprience is most rewarding to those who can read between the lines and see that while much of Rep is meant to be taken seriously, a lot of it is satirical.
the Serpenti Spiga drives that sentiment home like a late-night joyride in a Rolls-Royce Ghost: it’s undeniably gaudy, yes, yet also elegant. just as it could easily be mistaken as a simple bracelet at first glance (okay, a very fancy simple one), Reputation could be assumed to be mere tasteless pop pap—but you’d be missing out on something special.
the cabochon-cut tourmaline5 stone is especially apropo, mirroring the black, crimson red and gold-accented bodysuit of Swift’s Eras Tour—to rep the Rep era. if you’ve seen all or part of the 2018 concert film, you know that it is a wall-to-wall, bombastic celebration of embracing being the villain. but also staying true to yourself, no matter what clickbait headlines might mislead the public to believe.
Bulgari (est. 1884 in Rome by a Greek silversmith) could be considered a villain, better yet an anti-hero, in the eyes of watch collectors. the maison would not produce watches on a large scale until the BVLGARI BVLGARI men’s wristwatch in 19776. so, the ‘jeweler that later produced watches’ isn’t generally held in high esteem as hall-of-famers Jaeger LaCoultre, Vacheron Constantin, and Blancpain (all brands that precede Bulgari by a century or more). but what Bulgari may lack in watchmaking heritage, they more than make up for in bold-faced edge and innovation: look no further than Bulgari’s Octo Finissimo Ultra Mark II, 2024’s thinnest commercially available wristwatch—at just 1.7mm thick (that’s just thinner than a U.S. quarter). the Octo Finissimo and Serpenti have become inseparable from Bulgari just as “look what you made me do” has become synonymous with Taylor Swift.
you could draw some parallels here. yes, Taylor began as just a country singer, as Bulgari was just a jeweler. but both are success stories of surviving reinvention, and thriving at behest of purists and gatekeepers. both brought unique expertise from something outside of their spheres of influence—pop music and watchmaking—to create new ones. Bulgari in my eyes as a brand has done this, with varying degrees of success (after all, they can’t all be zingers, said Primus), but also while paying honorable tribute to their Roman heritage. for Reputation, the snake watch gets my vote.
the Bulgari Serpenti Spiga Ref. 103747 is available for purchase on Bulgari’s website for $56,000 (before taxes).
and there we have it! do you agree with my picks or do you feel different watches would be better? sound off in the comments. I’ll be making more articles in this series, so subscribe for the latest.
Van Dyke Parks: American songwriter and producer (b. Jan 3, 1943). famously arranged the Disney classic singalong “The Bare Necessities”, and composed the four original songs from The Brave Little Toaster, to name a few. Parks would later produce and arrange works with Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, U2, and Bob Dylan.
tonneau: derived from the French word for “barrel”, it is a case shape that is a mixture of round and rectangular, and popularized by Swiss watchmaker Franck Muller (est. 1991). they are easily recognizable due to their curved sides. some other adopters of the tonneau case shape have been Cartier, Bulova, Tissot, Hermès, and infamously, Richard Mille.
chapter ring: the outer edge of a dial, shaped like a “ring”—typically has hash marks to denote intervals of minutes in between the indices for more precise timekeeping (indices being numbers or shapes such as circles, squares, triangles, etc., to represent hours on the dial).
James Reynolds: daughter of actors Blake Lively (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Gossip Girl) and Ryan Reynolds (The Proposal, Deadpool). a sound byte of James’ voice introduces the song “Gorgeous” on the Reputation album.
cabochon-cut tourmaline: a “cabochon cut” is the method in which a stone is polished to form a convex-shaped piece, much unlike the several flat surfaces you’d see on gemstones. here, the red tourmaline is set into the crown (the mechanism used to wind the watch or adjust the time). Cartier is a well-known example with their Tank models, but with a cabochon formed from sapphire or blue spinel.
BVLGARI BVLGARI men’s wristwatch in 1977: “The history of Bulgari watches” (timeandwatches.com)
Ok, 100% agree with the Taylor Swift choice, I sadly do not know Silverchair gonna give them a listen