White Ladder

genérico. percusión recargada. cantante que imita a todos y a ninguno.

Singer-songwriter discovers how to sample and loop tracks and proceeds to make music for proto wine moms. Gray is a solid song writer, but this album as a whole is so generic (especially the singles). I was 16 and working at the local shopping mall when this album really started gaining traction, and Babylon was inescapable. I'm immediately transported back to folding jeans at Anchor Blue and for that, I need to take a star off the otherwise middle of the road score I was going to give it. I did enjoy My Oh My

It's ok, but never great. Better than I expected, but I had very low expectations. A lot of the songs remind me of songs by different artists. Not good enough to put it on myself, not bad enough to turn it off. Favorite song: we're not right

I’m getting too many “slow” indie albums on this thing, and it’s killin’ my vibe, man…

It's ok, nothing really special imho...

I thought the instrumentals where nice but nothing special. It's definitely not something you would dance to but it wasn't trying to be. The vocals on the other hand were not my cup of tea. I was not a fan of the singer and the lyrics where repetitive. The songs all just blended together.

De liefdesbaby van Bob Dylan en Nick Drake mocht contractueel zonder eigen inbreng een album uitbrengen na het winnen van een seizoen van Idols. Althans zo klinkt het. Ontzettend generiek. Daardoor wel veilig en dus makkelijk te luisteren. Vanzelfsprekend wat electronische probeersels er in, want het is 1998 en die computer met state of the art Intel Pentium II processor staat er niet voor niks. Geen ramp om te luisteren dus, maar tijdens deze lijst hoop je toch op de wat meer memorabele albums. Deze zal niet aan me voorbij flitsen op het moment dat Onze Lieve Heer me komt halen, want dit ben je binnen een half uur vergeten.

I was originally going to say that it is merely tolerable, but I’m afraid even that might be too generous. Even songs with some potential get scuttled by annoying indulgences: see Sail Away’s coda which is a whistling solo (yep). Certainly better than Nora Jones or Steely Dan, but that’s not praise.

"Sail Away" is pretty great

It was alright, slightly boring I would argue

Stuck between a 2-3. Definitely was not a bad album so I don’t wanna give a 2 but it’s just not my kinda thing. Sounds like something you’d hear in a coffee shop and is perfect in that setting so I like that this kinda music exists for that vibe but I’m not gonna seek it out. I also respect how early this album is to this sound even if it seems worn out now and I respect that he was early to the bedroom pop scene as well. Fuck this last song is almost 9 minutes for no reason. Just secured a 2 with that one David. 👍: Babylon

🥱🥱🥱🥱boring. It sounds good and all but I just need more. More substance, more character, more soul, more something. When Bryce said this was a top 50 selling album or whatever I was kinda shocked. Starting to make sense of it now though, I’m pretty sure this album is just like the background soundtrack of life. You don’t remember these songs, but you’ve heard them; they’ve just been existing in the background your whole life. Not sure what to rate this because the music itself is made well but it’s just SO uninspired. Leaning 2 here. Would it kill this guy to make a somewhat interesting song? Just one? Best: Babylon MMM: LET GO OF YOUR HEART 🫠LET GO OF YOUR HEAD 😵‍💫AND FEEL IT NOW🥴

I'm sure David is a nice guy.

It's not the worst thing I've ever heard, but due to the blandness of the album, I feel like I've heard it over and over. David Gray has a good voice, but the strummed guitar with the drum machine might be the most generic thing I've ever heard. I can hear its influence on so much other bland music that I find it impossible to enjoy. It's inoffensive, but it's just too safe. Even the guitar playing seems conservative. Any fingerpicking at all would be welcome at this point.

I forgot how much Babylon took over airwaves in the late 90s. I think overall this one suffers from being built around its hits without containing much substance. White Ladder is pretty vanilla.

2/5

oh the boring Zeroes - quite how this guy dominated the charts is weird. totally inoffensive, well played for making the coin I suppose

Rubbish

medium pop

Bland and uninspiring instrumentation and arrangements, the last two songs are decent but I won't be revisiting this.

forgettable. un peu comme Coldplay, mais en moins bon

The opening two tracks were pretty great folktronica. I was excited for the rest of the album because those tracks felt kind of novel but after that he dropped the “tronica” part of folktronica and I enjoyed it a lot less. The pure folk/pop rock tracks sound like music I hear often in commercials. This Year’s Love actually does get used in commercials so maybe that’s it. I really loved that window-rattler bass intro on We're Not Right. I think this is a good example of how important track order can be. If the -tronica songs came later and it opened with 2 folk/pop rock songs I may have enjoyed it more.

Please forgive me - idk it was aight. Nothing super crazy going on. Instrumental also boring Babylon - boring, especially instrumental My oh my - I do not like this guys voice We’re not right - what the fuck is this instrumental. This weird ass beat. I do not like it

Not my jam, but it is not bad.

Music for people that has a Brad Pitt poster in their room.

Well, that was boring.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Surprisingly boring for an album in the 1001.

Babylon is a classic. Rest of it is kind of plodding and dreary and repetitive, Silver Lining and Sail Away are all right.

Aggressively bland. Not my kind of music.

Kind of a snooze fest

Oh boy. I dated a girl in college that was a big folk fan. This dude was one of her favorites but she always got mad about the songs that got radio play because they weren't "real folk" or whatever. Those radio songs are, to me, way better than the rest of the album. It's very, very, dull. Luckily I ended up marrying a woman who does not listen to such boring crap.

I feel like I used to have one of his albums. Listening now, it feels kind of dated. Not super impressed.

I remember when 'Babylon' was released as a single and it was everywhere. It did not withstand the test of time if you ask me. Overall pretty boring album. 2/5

This is the kind of music I usually really like, but instead I just found this horrifically boring

Didn't do anything for me

Too cheesy for me and the cover of Soft Cell's nice&campy Say Hello Wave Goodbye hurts my ears

Pliisu levy josta vaikea löytää tartuntapintaa. Harmiton taustamusa ilman mausteita.

Background music, whiney voice

Kul med nåt jag aldrig hört talas om. Tråkigt att det var så tråkigt.

PREFS : Please Forgive Me, White Ladder, This Year's Love, Say Hello, Wave Goodbye MOINS PREF : Sail Away

Boring

One-hit wonder for a reason and he should be grateful about that. Manifests every cliche of singer-songwriters and not in a good way.

I got through it, it wasn’t bad. But I wouldn’t put it above a meal of salt and pepper chicken, boiled potatoes, and slightly over cooked broccoli, completed with a small bowl of wet vanilla pudding. It wasn’t anything worth coming back to.

Nothing in it

- that weird feeling when he sounds like Ed Sheeran but its actually Ed Sheeran sounding like David Gray? And my mind is not understanding this

Ei kauheasti sanottavaa. Aika medium

The fact that Spotify's first listening recommendation after this album is a playlist for 'Calm Labor and Delivery' says more about this record than I ever could

It’s okay, I suppose.

I listened to this quite a lot at the time but in retrospect it's a bit of a bland nothing. The production sound is "terrible" even on the remaster, which I guess is a result of the technology of the time he home recorded it. One or two nice tunes but mainly a bit blah. It's not a 1 star though - there's enough dross in this list to give this two.

"White Ladder" eh? What kind of album name is that? The album cover did not help. It's among the worst one that I have ever seen so far. Here we have a mundane scene of behind some sort of iron fence. In front there's a black square with a glowing diagonal line in it. What the heck is that? It tells a lot about the music itself. Mundane and annoyingly generic. My heart sank when I learned that I'm listening to another "folktronica" album. After that Goldfrapp album, I knew mixing folk and electronica is a bad idea. I enjoyed it a bit more though. I like the electronic tunes in some places, particularly in the moments where emotions can be felt. However, that does not necessarily mean that it's better than Goldfrapp's "Seventh Tree". The mentioned album is more inventive and less generic than this. This is some well-produced folk pop for malls, and it's evident with that voice. In conclusion, David Gray's album is, well, gray. I can accept the first track, but as a whole, it's another proof that the robotic electronica and the emotional, human folk is at least very difficult to marry.

Nope

Some strange folk-ish music with a slight electronic beat. Despite being kind of "unique" it just seemed awfully generic really... Nothing about this really stood out to me, and I can't say I enjoyed this album very much. Favourite: Sail Away

One word: “meh”. It’s not terrible, it’s just not very interesting to me.

This album is meh. The first two songs start off alright, but it just does not keep the energy through the rest of the album. It's not my kind of pop music. Favorite song: Please Forgive Me Worst song: Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

ik min kop te

Not for me.

meh

I don't have much background knowledge about this album, but it's 90's pop, so I wasn't expecting to like it very much. I wasn't wrong with that assumption. I don't understand why every song is at least 4 minutes or longer. They don't really need to be. I also don't much care for his voice. The instrumentation isn't bad, and it'd be accurate to say it's my favourite part of the album, but it still doesn't make me like the songs very much. The music isn't offensively bad or anything, but it sure did go in one ear and out the other. It's interesting that there's a cover of a Soft Cell song, but it's inferior to the original. Also, I know the Soft Cell version is already five minutes long, but there was really no reason to extend this cover to be nine minutes long. I was glad to be done with this. My favourite song was My Oh My.

Unworthy of the list. The single "babylon" belongs in the Hall of OK songs. The rest of the album sounds like something from down the road's open-mike night: overly long songs, bland lyrics, uninspired melodies, average voice. I can forgive an inoffensive and unremarkable album, just don't put it on the list and have us listen to its entirety. Special place in hell for its producer. About half of the tracks included forward-mixed additions well out of place. Most notable in opening track and Babylon, with terrible clicky drum track.

Meh

Bland and dated with only a few interesting bits

1/10, 10%

The big thing that gets me about this CD is how repetitive it is. I think he’s making this stuff with a sequencer, and it feels like it. Every song is an endlessly-repeated 4-bar sequence, sometimes (on the more diverse tracks) about a minute of one followed by a minute of another. And there isn’t a ton of evolution of inventiveness in them- be really tends to stick with the same sequence, as originally presented, for the whole song. “Please Forgive Me” and “My Oh My” the phrase is actually two chords, back-and-forth, with brief B-sections. And the drums are clearly a machine, there’s no drift at all. It just means that there’s very little for the mind to play with here- far from revealing more on repeat listens, I get bored midway through each song (partly that’s that they’re slow and sad too). It’s a shame, because he actually has quite a nice sound- he’s got a pleasant, soulful voice, with decent power and projection, and the combination of basically sad country music with piano rock is a little novel. Bottom-line, I didn’t hate this, but if this is on here, he better have EVERY Coldplay CD, because they just do the same thing better.

The music isn't distinctive enough to draw me in, so this album wants me to be drawn in by some profound lyrics which really aren't there. The title track is actually pretty distinctive musically from most of the other tracks which really bleed together and sound samey. This Year's Love isn't particularly novel, but it also stands out from the rest of the songs. I guess this guy gets points for influencing the 21st century British singer-songwriter scene, but I don't particularly like those artists either.

Nothing shockingly bad about this, but just not pulling me in.

Doesn't hold up. Pretty vanilla but not awful.

Nice, easy listening

It s nice. 2.5

Trite, shallow singer/songwriter pop written for teenage girls after their first heartbreak. Bleh.

Mid. 2 stars

As I said previously, you can only like so many folk artists. Since the music / riffs usually are nothing to write home about, you can like them only if you invest time with the lyrics. If you don’t invest the time, you will never start liking them regardless of how how good they are. I didn’t invest the time with this English brother.

This is very soft, like James Taylor for the next generation. There's a lot of mega selling modern folk singers out there these days who sound equally bad. The modern production makes it worse. The cover of Say Hello Wave Goodbye is bearable, but not for 9 minutes.

Not too unpleasant but not too exciting either

The synth and fake drums are kinda corny

Good background music, acoustic rock not really my thing.

Meh

Couldn't get through all of this...maudling overplayed meh. Agree with comments about bad drum machines.

David Gray is the Adele from the early 00s. Their albums are very popular (you could hear White Ladder everywhere 20-25 years ago) and very skilfully made, and whilst listening to a couple of songs is nice, listening to a whole album in one go might be a bit too much. WL contains quite a few very strong songs and I was thinking about a 3-star score or so, but had forgotten about the horrible 9-minute Soft Cell cover in the end (+5* original -> -5* cover).

boooring

This is OK, I guess? It feels kind of middle-of-the-road to me, and the top track "Babylon" is extremely forgettable. British people seem to love it though. 2/5

This album is so ADULT©! This album is 1998/2001 and people who kept telling me to grow up always seemed to mark this as the favourite album. They were probably right but if their idea of adult was David Gray I'm glad I kept on being a ne'er-do-well. Also, why does this album sound like a bunch of bad B-sides by the Verve?

Pop com maior presença de elementos tecno, mas sem grande relevância para mim.

It's not the worst album I have heard here. I actually like the singer's voice. It's really nice. I am just not a fan of synthesized instruments. If there were real people playing along then there would be such different energy in the songs.

another english singer-songwriter zzzzzzz

Enjoyed David’s album

Interesting performance, songs weren’t bad they just didn’t move me any which way.

-Honestly very boring -The only point that stood out in the album was the passion in the chorus of "My Oh My" -Everything was sonically just very plain and boring

This feels like an album I should like (kind of slow, meloncholy, unassuming) but I just found it annoying and boring. Every song sounded the same. I barely noticed when it changed to the next track.

mehhhhhh

p825. 1998. A perfect example of the artist's surname reflecting the content. It's a bit like porridge, you consume it to fill a need but it leaves you feeling vaguely unsatisfied. Every track sounds the same, and the cover of Say Hello Wave Goodbye is appalling, it sounds like a dirge. The entire album is background noise for a 90s dinner party. Definitely not essential listening.

05/20/2022 Pretty dull and unmemorable. Same vibes as Coldplay, etc.

Pretty weak

honestly, pretty average.

Het begin beviel me wel, maar na ongeveer de helft van het album had ik zo ongeveer gehad. Daarom net iets minder dan de helft van de punten

Babylon saves this from being a one. Very sleepy.

Pop that's just forgettable enough thanks to the underwhelming production (electronics that mostly disappear after a few tracks!?) and way-excessive length. It would make a pretty good EP, but it's always a bad feeling to check and see you're less than halfway through a project.

Njae, det lirar inte tycker jag. Det är inte helt urkasst men det är för välproducerat på något vis.

the biggest test yet to my no skip policy. 2*s only for the fact that it is a bit of a nostalgia trip, despite the fact that it's bringing me back to places i don't want to go

Forgettable as a project, songs on their own are not too bad though.

Its....ok. I actually think DG has better songs elsewhere but this is obviously the radio friendly megahit album. In this particular genre, its not a bad album. In an overall context, there's no justification for it being here. This Years Love is a decent tune, but I actually find the two super-singles quite irritating.

This LP has aged worse than spoiled milk - the drums sound straight out of the 90s Korg catalog, and the synths could be presets on any old synth you'd find at a garage sale. The only part that makes this semi-tolerable are the mildly unique arrangements, but even those are hard to find under Gray's melodramatic vox.

I have no idea if I've ever heard David Gray before. I find the album cover quite off putting for some reason. But it gives me no clue as to what I'll be hearing. OK that's a familiar voice. Opening track is fine but doesn't really blow me away. But here we are, Babylon. Also fine. These songs are all reminding me of Dave Matthews, who is fine but I never understood why people loved him quite so much. Same here, he sounds sincere enough, but this doesn't even have the quality music behind the vocals. Oof. We're Not Right and Nightblindness are not fine. By the last song I am desperate to be done, even though some of the later songs were inoffensive and 50 min isn't an outrageous run time. Just too much for me. I'm looking at the cover art some more and I think it tries to be interesting in a way that is actually pretty boring. So I guess it *does* give some idea of what's inside.

tepid

Low 2, didn't make me feel much

David Gray's voice reminds me a lot of Ryan Adams. Am I alone in that? The music isn't nearly as all over the place as Adams, but the voice is just about the same to me. This is pretty bland for me, though.

It's all quite a bit bland isn't it? It's okay, sure and completely inoffensive but nothing worth writing home about.

I'm not a fan really. This was absolutely everywhere back when, and if something isn't quite your bag, but it's in your face at every corner you end up really disliking it. I did listen to the whole album partly as I'm committed to 1001 albums... and partly as therapy for the damage inflicted by Babylon every time I walked into a shop in 1999.

Terrible, overwrought shit.

I didn't make it through this whole album. It was very much like department store background music to me, and did not hold my interest. Maybe the last 2/3 of the album is great but I will never know.

This album is a bit of a snooze fest. While the songs were mildly pleasant, they were also nothing great. I found I was more bored with it on the second listen, which isn't a good sign. I liked My Oh My and Silver Lining. Please Forgive Me sounded like an attempt at being Bob Dylan. Babylon is overplayed, but not bad. Overall, it wasn't a terrible album, but I could easily go without ever hearing this album again. Zzzzz.

Another background album. Painfully mid. 4/10.

Babylon is a dated hit. Boorrrring soft rock nonsense. technically and sonically competent.

Hm hm. Solid fusion of nostalgic love songs and pop music, I'd say.

I didn't think I would like this, and I was right. But I don't hate it as much as I thought I would, either...the music is nice but the vocals are irritating. Not enough here to justify that third star...sorry.

OK - but a little dull. Not sure what the album is doing on this list

2.5 | No ubicaba a David Gray, nunca había escuchado su disco ni su música (que recuerde). Me sorprende mucho por lo que leo la magnitud de éxito que fue este disco, años y años en el top 100 de ventas, millones de ventas, por un momento, sin que yo siquiera tuviera conocimiento de él, al parecer fue de los artistas más fuertes que había... y después pareciera que nunca logró volver a rascar siquiera un nivel cercano a ese. De hecho parece que todo se basa en la canción de Babylon, la cual debo aceptar es bastante buena; sin embargo el resto del disco se siente un poco repetitivo, canciones de amor sin ton ni son, sentimentaloides, no mal escritas pero tampoco nada brillante. Veo también que se creo mucha expectativa desde antes que saliera en masivo el disco, se habló muchísimo de él y del sencillo antes de que Dave Matthews lo relanzara con fuerza y me pregunto qué tanto fue la calidad verdadera para llegar a ese nivel y qué tanto fue simplemente la maquinaria promocional que infló un álbum como la nueva virtuosidad del alternativo basándose en una canción brillante. No es malo, no es excelente, se me hace una curiosidad interesante de escuchar al conocer la historia del disco pero hasta ahí... Disco algo olvidable para mí a pesar de no tener problemas graves.

Ok

White Ladder by David Gray (1998) When a singer/songwriter begins an album (“Please Forgive Me”) with a self application of the first of the seven last words of Christ (“Forgive . . . They know not what they do” Luke 23:34), followed by the anti-rhetoric rhetorical device of ironic self deprecation (Antony: ”I am no orator, as Brutus is . . .” Shakespeare, Julius Caesar Act 3, scene 2), the careful listener knows he/she is in for some seriously persuasive soul-baring. I don’t know if David Gray melted the heart of his former love, but he nearly melted mine. And so he proceeds, step by step, humbly, with musical quality and apparent honesty: confessing, bleeding, pleading, agonizing, fearing, and soiling the listener with his personal emotional dirt—completely devoid of gems or nuggets. Now I, for one, am willing to get dirty. And I’m sure we can all relate. But does he go too far? Does he repel the audience with overwrought transparency? Does he produce a certain detrimental empathy, if only in the hearts of his more sensitive hearers (i.e., those who are the only ones likely to ‘get it’ in the first place)? Perhaps so. Feelings of exile (“Babylon”) are not quite right, especially when, in your inebriation, you “can’t tell the bottle from the mountaintop” (“We’re Not Right”). Is this why White Ladder was so hugely popular in Ireland? Perhaps the real lessons of the Babylonian Exile and the Betty Ford Center are being missed here. Is it only a matter of discipline and accountability? I don’t think so. David Gray seems reluctant to embrace the good, the true, and the beautiful. A whole album full of this is unbalanced. Even faith (“Sail Away”) is tormented by a history of shattered trust. Even hope (“Silver Lining”) can only grope about for a dark cloud in which to wrap itself. Even love (“This Year’s Love”) is encumbered by the anxiety of ephemerality. And even in the eloquent kiss-off of the closing track (“Say Hello Wave Goodbye”), Mr. Gray is depressingly and unrelentingly self absorbed. Don’t listen to this album if you’re blue, unless you just need to be reminded that someone’s life sucks more than yours does. 2/5

Might be good but hard to enjoy because it's been so overplayed as classic 90s lovey music

Non descript and pretty boring

a bit too singer-songwritery for my liking, but some good tunes on here

I almost gave this 3* - the same as I gave 'The Freewheeling Bob Dylan', which is madness. It's fine, singles are OK. But there's something quite annoying about it, and him.

Very pleasant background music. I would have probably given this negative stars 10-15 years ago but can see the appeal to an extent.

Easy jazz.. not bad

Some good tunes

Barebones and soporific rock. Feels like the soundtrack to a B-movie countryside romcom. I applaud this album for starting a broader musical trend but I just can't get into this

Meh. Decent but a bit boring.

Pretty boring, I recognized many of the songs. Sounded like shopping in the mall. The harmonies sounded consistently depressing. I found this great quote about David Gray: > David Gray is sick of the sound of David Gray. “I’m bored with myself,” he confesses within moments of my arriving at his Hampstead home. “I realised, after the last tour, I’m fed up with my basic line of inquiry, my angle, my schtick, the density of my voice, all these things needed to be escaped from.

Hard to see past how it was mocked and parodied. Bland but inoffensive.

3.5

"This Year's Love" Released: 8 March 1999 "Babylon" Released: 12 July 1999 "Please Forgive Me" Released: 22 November 1999 "Sail Away" Released: 16 July 2001 "Say Hello Wave Goodbye" Released: 17 December 2001

He sounds like Bob Dylan's son except not as good.. like Bob Dylan's actual son. Album was fine

Nope, zu easy-listening, zu David Bowie-like.

Boring as hell. 3-4/10

boring '90s crap

Fine in the background. Easy listening for 50 year olds. Not bad, but why would you ever choose to actively listen to it?

Overplayed crap. Not even sure it was good when it first came out, probably only made the list due to lack of foresight.

This was... so boring. With so many streams on Spotify I was surprised I never heard of it. It must have been a big in the UK thing that never really made it here. I did enjoy Nightblindness, but that's it.

Nach meinem Geschmack ist diese Platte ein Ideechen zu unverfänglich. Man würde gerne etwas nettes darüber schreiben, aber nett ist hier leider die kleine Schwester von Scheiße. Für gewöhnlich entdecke ich ja an jedem Album in dieser Liste noch den erkennbaren Willen, sich abseits ausgetretener Pfade zu bewegen, das gelingt mir bei diesem Album nicht, dafür ist es einfach zu banal. Ich habe seinerzeit nix von dieser Platte mitbekommen, bin mir aber sicher, das diverse Songs davon gerne in Radio gespielt wurden. Laut englischer Wikipedia sagte der Künstler über sein Werk folgendes: "Its success came from nowhere, and it changed how the business thought about what music should be. Since then, there have been lots of artists who've taken it on and done their own thing." Dieses Statement geradezu naiver Selbstüberschätzung rang mir ein kleines Schmunzeln ab. Schmock.

It feels like this album list has a particular fetish for mediocre British pop music. This album is fine, but there's not anything particularly interesting or noteworthy about it that I can see. It's like having a Jack Johnson album on here. It's fine, but there are so many great albums that are not represented on this list, I can't understand why this one is. This album also gets more mediocre as it goes. I though it might have some interesting elements at first, but there's really nothing here 2/5

Singer/songwriter, roligt, klaver

It was shit when I first heard this and is still shit all these years later

"Babylon" is a solid classic which I had not heard in absolute years, and my jaw dropped in surprise when that chorus kicked in. Everything else though? Complete and utter rubbish. Imagine a 1990s romcom that wanted to use Coldplay for this big emotional moment but couldn't afford it, and you get David Gray. This ain't it, chief.

Zzzzzz..... Åh sorry, jag somnade

Inledande Please forgive me är riktigt fin och höjer förväntningarna på vad som komma skall. Emellertid tas de snabbt ner. Låt efter låt maler på utan att lämna någotsånär helst avtryck. Kille med gitarr som ylar på till en nyköpt trummaskin. Det är väl först med Sail away som det blir aningen intressant igen (med betoning på en aning). Det räcker till en stark etta.

Meningslöst

gray? white? klonk nogal beige vond ik

gayvid gay

Some of the most generic music ever made. If the came out today I'd wonder which model spewed it out

Oh man. I know Coldpay (rightly) get stick for being bland, but David Gray was on another level. HIS NAME IS DAVID GRAY! Anyway, this was as annoying as it was massive at the time. You couldn't go anywhere with seeing Gray's head lolling about, presumably because his spine had been partially severed around the neck region, while he mewled about Babylon. Jesus, if you love it so much just go there. He's another fella i somehow ended up seeing at Glastonbury and it was as dull as you could imagine. Also, when you hear him sing and you don't know what he looks like...you imagine he looks like a sheep, right? You know the shape a sheep's mouth makes when it goes baaaa? That's how you imagine this giu sings, right? It's not good. It's anti-music in a different way from Throbbing Gristle. In a way that it just...is nothing. It's just nothing. It's a weird moment which birthed the bland boy with guitar music that is so successful today. It pushes the art form back many many decades.

Fucking garbage

I dont like ert

not for me

Just dull and as middle of the road as it comes.

The male Amy Winehouse overemotes through these numbers, substituting exaggerated vocal mannerisms for anything with actual human feeling.

I’m just now hearing this is the best-selling album of all time in Ireland. OF ALL TIME! Someone should probably check on them. This album reminds me of when I would be eating breakfast in front of the TV before school, flipping between the channels that just play music, and eventually when you run out of options you end up on like the Adult Contemporary channel and it sounds like this. Or maybe it's more like phone hold music, or idk AI music. Bad.

what is ts

If Coldplay sucked even more.

This opens with a track called Please Forgive Me in some kind of attempt to placate what he's about to put the listener through... for 50 mins! He should have named every track as some form of apology, cos fuck me this was drab! Beige music is the worst kind and this is several coats thick of it. In closing track Say Hello, Wave Goodbye, he manages to turn the great 5 minute Soft Cell song into 9 minutes of drab plodding! He probably played it exactly the same, just at his speed which naturally added the extra 4 minutes So no Dave... I won't be waving goodbye... just fuck off! I almost want to rip my ears off... just to feel something!

I can't explain but this would be a good album if it was "Gray White" by David Ladder. Huge for lovers of weird drums and Bob Dylan impersonators though.

Back when the song Babylon was on the radio every two seconds, I’d change the channel every time it came on. I hated that song. I used to mock sing it like I was a Billy goat. Once the era ended, I never thought I’d have to hear it again. Damn you, album generator. The rest of this album is a complete snooze fest, as well.

Singer/songwriter folk album with acoustic guitars and a lot of influence from 2000s electronica. It's an interesting idea but those are all things that I tend to find boring and the combination is exactly that. I found it very difficult to get through.

Can't stand his whiny voice

Bland and boring music, for bland and boring people

Oh, for fuck's sake. Really?

horrifically boring

When this album came out, the DJ at the Modern Rock radio station I where I was working said (on air) "I thought that after the death of Jeff Buckley, we saw the end of the singer-songwriter thing. Looks like i was wrong. Too bad." I don't really care for the singer-songwriter genre either. But after listening to the first few song I could understand why people do. Not that I liked these songs at all... but I got it. Then I listened to the rest of the album. It's boring AF. All these songs sound the same to me with little nuance. It also seems that some contributors to this book were just plain lazy. I feel they only thought about the questiion for a day or so and then just answered with something current (or at least recent within 10 years) and called it a day. If they had actually thought about it, they would have known that this album would have not stood any type of test of time at all.

Super bland and uninteresting acoustic pop/rock that the 90s/early 00s was ripe with. Unfortunately this album has nothing interesting to say, and the production is absolutely abysmal. How was this so popular?

recall “Babylon” coming out and thinking it sucked out loud. Gray made Dave Matthews’ singing style feel articulate, and I always pictured him as a yawp-jawed bobblehead, the vague forms of lyrics jostling out of his mouth by chance. Suffice it to say this is my first time listening to the album in toto. I do feel like if you saw David Gray in a crowd, no you didn't. His most distinguishing feature is that he looks sort of like nothing. Like the taste of air… technically it's there, but not really? And his music is pretty much the same. Sure, technically these are songs, but unless I force myself to hear them as often as Babylon was forced on us, I will not remember any of them. The most notable bit is the maniac insistence of putting a fruity-loops synthetic percussion track over (never under) these sparsely composed, boring as hell songs. If you told me this was early AI I would believe it. If you told me that this album was just 50 minutes of silence, I won't be able to confirm it wasn't. On the one hand, these are songs that never needed to be written. On the other, are any of these songs intentional enough to say they were written at all? The longer this goes on the more inessential it feels. It's as mealy mouthed as John Mayer but without the guitar chops. It manages to stuff absolutely terrible sounds (We're Not Right's weird pattering and annoying ufo synth) into songs that still immediately want to escape your brain. I'm not going to remember what these notes refer to in the morning. It's the musical equivalent of putting water in your cornflakes…bland made blander and at least a little psychopathic to enjoy it. It's 50 minutes of silent farts in the wind. And it was on the charts for three years? They thought any of these songs, much less five, made decent singles? This is apparently the album where music died. ⭐️ ½ for killing music. For that matter, ⭐️ ½ to anyone who bought this album.

1. forgive - 1 2. baby - 1 3. my - 1 4. right - 1 5. night - 1 6. zilver - 1 7. ladder - 1 8. love - 1 9. zail - 1 10. hello - 2

I'm not the audience for this record. There's something intangible I'm gesturing at or reaching for when I say that some albums express themselves wrapped inside of all the tropes of their genre while others eschew the well worn path. And, for White Ladder, I don't know if this record helped shape some of the tropes it finds itself wholly enmeshed in or if it's merely a trick of history that it sounds so steeped in cliche now. The record feels so firmly "adult contemporary" like it wants to be the picture of being open and honest in a grown-up way. I can see David Gray looking deeply into the mirror of himself grappling with the big issues of his heart as he strives to put them into lyrics that really communicate the depth of his thoughts and emotions... Or, at least that's what he'd like us to think because somehow the result is way too neat. So, I'm left to wonder if there's anything more there as the record fails to actually surprise or inspire. I can't help but downgrade it from a 2 star rating to a 1 star rating out of boredom. I admit it won't be the worst album of that lot. More than anything listening to this, I can imagine these songs as soundtracks for Lifetime TV specials that the cool middle-American moms are watching.

Unbelievably vapid and boring music. I don’t know if it is, but this is what i think of when I think of 90s “adult contemporary” music

So much noise. I don’t remember anything already

This is derivative pop-folk music that adds next to nothing to the style. Low hanging fruit. Nothing to write home about. A respectful nod to 'Say Hello, Wave Goodbye'. There's a classic Van Morrison vibe there in the way he sings.

This is a great album for someone who has never listened to music before. It's accessible and literally anything you listen to after will be better than it.

garbage

If there is a Muzak Museum somewhere this is playing in its elevator. No soul, radio friendly beige designed for soccer mums. Assume it pairs well with margaritas in a bowl and Lonely Lost Reisling.

Never heard of David Gray until now. Wish I still hadn't. 1

1.5 - started off ok but the rest wasn’t good

About the best thing to come from listening to this album was being able to recogise that Babylon was the song I have half-heard in a hundred things over my life, and to finally hear the lyrics clearly. I did not enjoy this, but it added to my store of knowledge, and, like the rest of the album, listening to this song was a horrible, dreary experience. Sappy, overdone caterwauling for singing, bland music, agonising sentiments. Dire.

Pop bullshit. Doesn’t deserve more words than that.

i'm sorry but it's not the 90s and i'm not incredibly basic

Bland.

A very bland pop-folk album with some touches of electronica, I didn't noticed it back then and it stayed unremarkable from my pov. In the end I really hoped the album was shorter. Anyway I have the impression David Gray is the grand father of Ed Sheeran or the like. Favorite Songs: Please forgive me (I was not yet irritated and it has some catchy tunes).

Affected vocals and trite production values. Hard to understand how this was so popular 28 years ago.

I was very happy when this album ended. I never want to hear this again.

no

Meh. Boring.

Oh for fuck sake, do I really have to listen to this?? Surely it can't be as bad as I remember it being when every cunt bought it after Babylon was played on the radio 40000 fucking times a day. Can it??? Not actually terrible music, just really, really boring. Which is actually like the worst thing that music can be IMO. It reall is just music for people who don't really like music. Like Coldplay. Halfway through the first song and I'm struggling. I'm happy to just give it a 1 and move on with my life.

I'm going to be so honest this album is so bland and going i literally feel asleep during it 😭

wtf, this incredibly tedious soft rock album was the fifth best-selling record in the UK in the 2000s? 1 star

generic Gray (keine Wortspiele) c

Eh

David Gray is where boners go to die and vaginas go to dry.

I'm two songs in and I can already say with CONFIDENCE that this sucks. It's upscale-mall background music, made specifically for people who "don't really listen to music". Checking back in post-listen and the remainder of the album did nothing but solidify my initial reaction. What a pile of shit.

A bore of a record.

I am not old enough or white enough to like this.

I suppose this is music for people who don't really like music ...

Partly heard before

my ex cancelled meeting for a David Gray concert with the girl he dumped me for, so sorry David but your melodic pop is going in the bin in retaliation.

Forgetable

BORINGGGGG!!!!!!!!

Turgid and dull crap.

Boring as shit

These songs have no business being 5+ minutes. The best thing about it is some songs sound like the end of a rom com

I feel like if I took the things I hated most about Van Morrison, Dave Matthews, and Bob Dylan this album would be the result.

I’m over a year into this journey and I have to finally proclaim that the author is just full of shit. His taste in music is mediocre at best. I hope someone in the future who knows what good music is writes a book that supersedes this one. As for this album? It’s boiled chicken that’s unsalted. White and bland as hell. Fuck David for recording this album and fuck the authors for picking it to listen too. This isn’t music; it’s Muzak.

Boring.

I'm grateful to live in a time where AI music exist and people like David Gray will realize that they have nothing to offer to the music history.

EVERYTHING I hate about bad music can be found in this spawn from hell AKA 'White Ladder' I hope I die before I start liking shit like this.

The Good: We get to climb a ladder! The Bad: Doesn’t stay white too long as we have dirty boots on… The Ugly: Finding out the ladder leads nowhere… I am not going to repeat what has already been written ad-nauseum, however, fuck you Mr D adding this… As I am totally unfamiliar with the artist, listening to the first song was not that bad. And then came the second song… and the third and all of a sudden the album was done. The above is not an indication that the experience was enjoyable, instead, I found that all songs sounded pretty much the same and I started to get really bored with the whole damn thing. This is NOT something that needs to be listened to before one dies. Period. 1 1/2*

Despite being alive and conscious when this album was big, I wasn't familiar with any of the tracks. I tried to keep an open mind after seeing that it was a singer-songwriter album from the 90s on Dave Matthews' record label. I really tried. Unfortunately, my fears were confirmed almost immediately. The lyrics are painfully trite. The music is unbearably bland. David's vocals are just about listenable when he isn't doing a bad Dylan impression. A purer expression of unoriginality would be difficult to find. This is music for an open mic night, not an essential album list. Dreadful. Simply dreadful. Solid 1

this album is giving NOTHING oh my god. how does he have 3.2M monthly listeners on spotify. you people need to get a grip. saved: n/a.

I could not stand the song "Babylon" when it came out and it was totally overplayed. Still don't like it today but it's not as cringe inducing. Something about Gray's singing style rubs me wrong. White Ladder is a late 90s skipper for me. Not sure why this album is/was so popular. I'm waving goodbye to this one...1.12 stars.

Bland late 90s adult contemporary barf.

so boring

это очень скучно.. искренность не равно 6минутная унылая хуйня

What a bland nothing album. The wikipedia summary basically only talks about its sales because there’s nothing of note in the music itself. David Gray also has mentioned that White Ladder’s success paved the way for Ed Sheeran, so I guess we can blame him for that too

It is completely impossible to listen to this kind of music without being overcome by violent thoughts.

2 out of 5

It's a big ol' meh album. He's got a lovely voice but he doesn't do anything interesting with it. It doesn't help that I remember the singles being rinsed to death on UK radio.

Basically the 90s equivalent of Ed Sheeran, only even more boring. Tailored for the romantically-starved housewife, this is one of the most generic and bland things I’ve ever heard.

Just not my type of music

I didn’t mind the first track but what followed was one of the most boring albums I have ever listened to. The sound of beige.

The same song ten times and it's just as boring every time.

This folk-pop album is like rain on a city window blending acoustic warmth with electronic sheen, pairing looping rhythms and soft textures with earnest, weathered vocals. Like the rain its smoothness dulls the emotional Edge and blurs after a while.

If this music were a colour it would be beige.

Get back

Babylon brings back memories of scrubbing dog shit off floors listening to radio that could only get one station that loved to play the same 5 songs on repeat. The rest of the album made me wish I was listening to Babylon.

bland

Forgettable late 90s too sincere singer-songwriter.

Sa voix est terrible, mais sa musique est pire. C'est étonnant que ce ne soit pas libre de droits tellement que c'est générique. On dirait un album écrit pour un mauvais film de romance. C'est l'antithèse de la description de spotify qui le décrit de cette façon : "David Gray is back doing what he does better than almost anyone, and fans of complex, serious, lyrical songcraft should rejoice." Tellement générique, ça ne tombe même pas dans la catégorie d'albums qu'il faut "hate listen". Évitez celui-ci.

a little too slow and bland for me

vai se fudeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

descobrir a existência do gênero FOLKTRÔNICA acabou com meu dia mais background music que isso aqui não existe. perfeito caso vc seja básico, monotono e chato e quer se sentir triste vendo a chuva cair pela janela do quarto.

just initially looking at the track list, these songs are way too long. eh

Super unfortunate for society that this kind of became the template for pop music in the 21st century. 1.0/5.0: Embarrassing

a complete and utter load of miserable, insipid strumming along to dirgey songs. Couldnt wait for it to end.

David Gray, the name means nothing to me. I don't know any of the songs. I can't stand Ed Sheeran and James Blunt. To me, it's all completely unnecessary garbage.

Boring singer/songwriter stuff

This album has just finished and I've already forgotten all of it.

Completely forgettable. Sings in one tone.

This is not nearly as offensive as the albums I usually reserve 1s for. But this might be the worst inclusion on this list so far. I could listen to this album every day for a year and still probably not be able to distinguish any of the songs from each other. And they’re all boring.

At least Nick Drake was a talented sad boy musician. Probably a 1.5, but I penalize this album as it apparently paved the way for other trash like Ed Sheeran and James Blunt (at least "You're Beautiful" is objectively funny)

Kinda like cold play if the lead singer was Scott Stapp from Creed.

All time snooze-fest.

makes Coldplay sound like heavy metal. as interesting as watching paint dry or doing laundry by hand without electricity. Why is this on the list?

Autsch, das würde ich selbst als Hintergrundgedudel beim Autofahren nicht ertragen. Aber ok, wenn die neue Flamme das erste Mal zu Besuch ist, kann man das nach der James Blunt Playlist schon mal gerne laufen lassen.

9 straight albums from the UK and 48/126 - what the absolute fuck is this!?! There are 194 other countries on this planet that all make music. I know the US and UK will hold a bulk of this list, but some of this is just a British circle jerk of what they listened to when they broke up with their girl friend or went on a road trip with their 'mates.' This is a generic dentist office waiting room album - I can partically hear the whizzing of the dentist's drill in the. background and clacking of the block on that rainbow colored loop-di-loop thing meant to keep kids occupied while they wait for their appointment. I was 15 when this album came out and have never heard one of these songs or this artist, and somehow it is so special that it need to be heard before you die?!? This guys vocals are so basic and bland that it wouldn't surprise me if it was a baked potato singing. It is so bland that I forgot I was listening to it for 3-4 tracks. The only list this belongs on is albums you must hear in order to become a right proper English twat. This list is really testing my dedication the last 2 weeks. 2.8/10 126/1001

This is the most boring, generic music in the world. If I never have to listen to David gray again, it’ll be too soon. This is the kind of music they sell at Starbucks.

In 2000, Dave Matthews released this album by David Gray. In 2004, a tour bus belonging to the Dave Matthews Band released an estimated 800 pounds (360 kg) of human waste from the bus's blackwater tank through the Kinzie Street Bridge in Chicago onto an open-top passenger sightseeing boat sailing in the Chicago River below. The incident became popularly known as the Dave Matthews Band incident or Poopgate. I can only conclude that Dave Matthews is a scatological menace.

No me gusto, música ed sheran total

Too pop

If vanilla had a soundtrack it’d be this

Wave goodbye! Another one on the list that I didn't NEED to hear!

Hoe is dit zo hoog en zo bekend? We've got Bob Dylan at home: Oersaai

Never heard of this guy but assumed he was British and I was going to be in for a boring time. I was correct. This album is so bland and the basic outros go on for way too long. Almost an hour? No thanks. Don't even bother with this.

Thumbs down

Too generic, and something about his voice is off for me. I didn't like it.

So boring, so lifeless, so just bleh.

Meh.

Never heard of him. Could have stayed that way…

custom_rating:3

Oof. Not for me. I feel like I’m too nice on here so this will be my first 1. His voice is just sorta annoying? The weird beats with acoustic whining, dude, I dunno.

Awful

Pro-tip: if you're a pale imitation of Van Morrison, don't end your album with an interpolation of his best song, it just reminds us all how much worse you are than him. This is a perfect album for when tap water is too spicy - perfectly crafted and perfectly dull totally disposable slow sad guy acoustic pop. There's a place for this kind of music in the world wherever mellow inoffensive sound is necessary - waiting rooms, fast casual sandwich chains, airport gift shops, overwrought scenes in boring movies. It's music you hear constantly but only involuntarily.

It started OK with an electronica adjacent track. Well, it could have been better without the singer. And then it's generic boring pop music. I can't believe this made it to this list. THe guy is claiming that he paved the way for this kind of yawning music in the following years, which is another good reason to loathe this record.

This is probably the kind of thing that was big in the UK but never made much of an impact in the US. Needless to say I expect to see a David Gray biopic where he is a CGI moose in the next couple of years. Like music for a dentist’s office. I continue to remind myself that boring stuff like this made the list over the Blue Album, Madvillainy, The Black Parade, Discovery, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, etc.

Babylon is a great single but the rest are quite dull. In fact I can honestly say in the 90’s I went to see him and it’s the only gig I have ever walked out of. Boring

commercial nonsense

This must have never made it to the States. I have no recollection of this at all. My SO says she knew the hit(s) but I literally didn't recognize anything. This wasn't good though. In fact, this is the white bread of music. Nothing really going on and the only people who would be interested don't know any better.

This one I will forget about Will I listen to again: 0%

this album feels like a beige doctors waiting room

It’s a 1.5 that I would normally round up. I’m rounding down because the last album I had was the Hendrix debut and in human spirit alone, it wouldn’t be fair to say this is within 3 stars of that. There aren’t enough stars in the world to bridge that gap.

First time hearing this - I'm not from the UK so I've never heard of David Gray before today. The music is inoffensive and a bit boring. It really does sound like a soundtrack to a sad scene placed somewhere in the middle of a romcom movie (maybe a slow motion reminiscing scene or a sad male lead looking through the window to the rain juxtaposed with the female lead laying on the couch with a blanket and a phone). The most interesting part of it is how it includes bits of folktronica, which was interesting and I guess kinda innovative. I feel like if it hadn't been made in the UK, no one would have cared today. Instead, we have all those sentimental reviews how it reminds people of their childhood without any mention of the actual qualities of this album. There's so many better albums that were not included on the list instead. 2/5 (This Years Love is so annoying it made me want to lower it down to 1/5). Actually having listened the entire thing, I got really annoyed with the last three songs. 1/5

No por qué la gente disfrute por tres semanas seguidas un disco aburrido significa que es bueno. La gente no siempre tiene la razón y eso es algo que el autor de esta maldita lista no entiende; cada disco comercialmente exitoso de Inglaterra aparece acá, cuando hay ocasiones en que no tienen ninguna relevancia para el panorama musical general y definitivamente no son un "esencial que hay que escuchar antes de morir". Sigo encontrando increíble que trabajos como este se prioricen y se dejen fuera LPs tan importantes para la música alternativa (que muchas veces es aclamada por la crítica) como Modest Mouse se dejen afuera. "White Ladder" es prueba fehaciente de que el gusto inglés no siempre equivale a "un buen disco". Sálteselo, o si no se quedará dormido. PD: Muchos comparan en los comentarios a este LP con algunos trabajos de Coldplay. Debo admitir que me sentí algo ofendido porque ni los peores discos de la banda de Martin son tan malos como "White Ladder".

I've listened to enough of this. Could be described as both radio friendly or coffee table music, but in both instances the word bland must also be applied as a prefix. I don't like his nasal whiney voice either. I know it sold bucket loads but there's clearly no accounting for taste. Definitely not an album you ever need to listen to and if you do it will be instantly forgettable. Has no place on this lis

You may have heard David Gray before but forgotten. It's definitely not for me. Who likes this? I bet you relax a lot and smile at strangers. He sounds like Ben Harper took some sedatives. I'm gonna go listen to something good. One dull star. Like an imploded dwarf that has consumed all of it's fuel and no longer emits light in the visible wavelength. It's up there in the night sky, but you will never know. That's the star I give David Gray.

# 349 : Slow & dull, Average at best.

"VH1-core" "music for people that don't really care for music" At it's most exciting I'd give it "The Business Casual Smashing Pumpkins." In that this is a genre that a weirdly large amount of people enjoy, I think this belongs on a "must hear" list. However, I don't know what this does to expand anyone's interest or knowledge in music. There's nothing original happening. Everything about it is washed out and drained of personality. It feels like being told "calm down" in that attempting to force calmness just causes more anxiety. The music is so calm/boring that it makes me panic a bit in a way that I've rarely felt since childhood. The most infuriating part of that is tracks often open with or have brief clips of actually interesting music before it suddenly cuts out to generic 1-week of playing experience acoustic guitar riffs and a guy singing, whom you can tell actually wants to do spoken word, but that doesn't put food on the table so he's doing whatever this is. He has a nice voice, but similar to the music, it feels like a digitized hybrid of Bob Dylan and Billy Corgan that's been washed out and auto-tuned to the point that it feels inhuman and robotic. There's barely melody here. It's kind of background noise on background noise. If this is your genre, this is probably phenomenal. Is it good music though? It feels like it's barely music to me. It went through the motions, but it didn't try anything whatsoever. It kept the beat, it hit those strings, and it made the mouth noises, but nothing else. There's nothing to grab onto. It is a polished, grey ("Gray" lol) stone lacking any interesting feature. A monotone painting that's just a canvas covered in one color simply because the artist liked that color, no deeper meaning. I'm trying to talk myself into giving this a 2/5, but there's literally nothing positive I can come up with to describe in it. Tried my best to be objective, but it was very difficult to make it through the whole album. This is in my short list of "music that kind of makes me hate music a little bit." 1/5

This dude sucks

Boring. I’m bored

David Gray once hit on my girlfriend in a bar in Manchester in front of me. She laughed in his face and told him to fuck off. When I said did you know who that was? She replied he’s that sad boy singer and he’s a twat. She was right

2.5/10. It just went on and on and on. It really bored me. It's really not my vibe at all. My favourite part of the experience was when I got a Bon Jovi advertisement on Spotify. Sorry.

Gear: Abyss DIANA MR (vegan) Artwork: ♻️🚮🗑️ Mix: ♻️🚮🗑️ Musik: ♻️🚮🗑️ Wertung: ♻️/5

Maybe i'm being harsh but this is just so boring, I can't imagine a world where this is required listening for a music fan. It's background music for TV or shopping centres. At least I know who did that Babylon song now, been hearing that since i was a kid.

I am struggling to stay awake long enough to listen through this album. It does make for an alright lullaby though. 1/5

could i write poetry to this? n

Another one hit wonder album, straight from the Grays Anatomy soundtrack. Next.

Boring rom com walking in the rain album

Я ничего не чувствую. Лучшая песня - Sail Away.

Dull....

This was so bland ugh.

I'm sure there's an audience for this. It's not me though!

This is the first album that I don't understand why it was included on this list.

This album was so big that contemporary music writers were calling David Gray the 21st century Bob Dylan, a claim both a) incredibly stupid and b) true in a way that speaks much more to the quality of this century then the talents of the asshole responsible for “Babylon” One star

Some generic ass mall shit

Generic af. Boring too. Intro is pretentious and then it tries to be all sappy.