Idlewild

This was one of the worst records I had to listen to.

This just sounds like an audition to get the job as the lounge singer on a Carnival Cruise, not something that should be on this list. And based on this album, I don't think she's going to get the job either.

This album was just so boring. It sounded like someone playing keyboards in the 70s lounge at a steakhouse. The singing was fine but the exact same song sounding like every single time. I had to skip through all songs and couldn’t finish this album.

Awful 80s pablum

Stuck in the elevator on the way to the dentist’s waiting room.

wyjec ktorego wynajmuja na wesele, co to ma byc w ogole

My reviews keep getting messed up.l, but this was a snooze fest. Some kind of soft pop with smooth instrumentals, but not a good smooth (more of a sterile smooth jazz). Music you would hear your weird aunt listening to when you were young and/or the theme song to a cancelled pilot about a boring family with a dog named Benny. Not for me at all.

I made it 4 songs in and had to turn it off. Why is this here? Trash "easy listening" with shaky vocals. 2.5/10 (1.25/5)

Nope

Terrible

Nope.

Aus meiner Sicht gibt es 2 Einsatzmöglichkeiten für dieses Album: Option 1: Softporno-Hintergrund-Mukke (da dann gerne auch ohne Vocals) Option 2: Hintergrundmusik für den clichéhaftesten Urlaubsabend am Mittelmeer von Manfred und Uschi. Für die beiden ist es so authentisch und einmalig, während ich mir nichts schlimmeres vorstellen könnte. Darauf kann man mit dem roten Hauswein anstoßen, bevor es dann hophop schnell wieder auf das Kreuzfahrtschiff zum Bingospielen geht. Es ist ja per se keine schlechte Musik und sicherlich besser als irgendeine Avantgarde-Experimentier-Kacke, Ich habe aber keinen Sinn für diese Mucke..

Nothing special about this, maybe just the first song is great.

One of the most boring albums I’ve ever listened to holy shit

Boring synth pop. No real standout songs

Yawn. Couldn't get through this. Expected to enjoy it going in, but I was very very wrong.

Apparently this album was critically acclaimed. We really need a punch a rock critic day. Good Lord this was rubbish.

I don't understand. 1/5

pallosissimo

One tearjerker is not enough ....

More like "Everything But Good Music". This album had to have been one of the ones they US government used to torture prisoners at Guantanamo. Just so laughably bad. The singing alone reminded me of those hopeful early American Idol contestants who are terrible singers. How did this make the cut!? 2/10.

So boring

Not my style of music, most songs song exactly the same. Like background/montage music for an 80s rom-com.

Made me of think of the Robot Wars promo that said: and why is this on PBS?! ... IT'S BRITISH!

This is 80s music in its worst possible form. I'd rather listen to A-ha for 10 hours straight.

Generally horrible.

Dentist office reception area music Very forgettable

boring. couldn't wait till the end.

Okay. Real talk. How does a group like this get signed? There is no bar for a talent scout to see them perform. There is no demo where someone would hear this and want to pay for more. And this is the FOURTH record by them! Additionally, who was like, yeah, 4th record, let's just use the beats that come out of the Casio keyboard we bought for $100 that's meant to teach children how to play piano. This record sucks. It's not even good elevator or dentist office music. It's total shit. 11 songs in btw. They choose to use a real guitar and some Hammond organ and bongos. They waited 11 so gs to use real

Nope. Not for me. Slow, boring, don't like her voice. Snooze fest.

Sounds like falling in love in your 70s on a cruise ship

4 tracks in and it's doing nothing for me. Pure pop with a crap drum machine. 8 tracks in and simply bored. Finished the album. A definite 1.

It's not music, it's muzak.

Lame is the adjective that best describes this album. EBTG has one good single - Missing, but it ain't on this album. I knew this was gonna be a slog when the first song was a lame cover of I don't want to talk about it (even Rod Stewart did it better). Sophisti-pop was the rage in the 80s and 90s but other groups such as Sade, Style Council and Matt Bianco did it much better.

Impressions: Love her voice but all the tracks sound the same. Favorite: Love Is Here Where I Live, Apron Strings Rating: 1/5

I remember a few years ago there was a big ‘make everything sound like 80’s music’ vibe all across the whole industry and I was so disgusted with it. This record is a great example of why I felt that way. There was a lot of great experimentation and innovation in music in the 80s but goddamn so much of it was this mopey nonsense that doesn’t seem to have any other reason to exist other than “I’m a musician! I make music!” This isn’t offensive it’s just like a braindead continuation of a line of musical thinking that went nowhere and it seems like everyone in the universe should have been able to make that determination even in 1988

Coñazo.

Alternate lifestyle easy listening?

Bravely answering the question of what of the Indigo Girls were a heterosexual couple that wrote boring ballads with bad electronic instruments, I have no idea why this album is on this list. This is about as milquetoast as you could possibly get.

Bad. Way too British and shitty writing

Boring. The soft pop sound is just blehhh for me. Nothing stands out and I didn't want to listen to any more. Not sure why this album is on the list. Others that I didn't like I can see significance in. Not with this one.

Boy did I not like this. Skeezy sax and pretty boring.

I hated how she sings

I got excited for a moment because I thought the great BAND Idlewild was assigned. Turned out this was the kind of music I was relentlessly subjected to back when I worked at Rite Aid.

This was awful. I have no idea how this made the list

This kind of soft pop is not really my cup of tea

helevete vade terist

No. Just terrible. If I was 42 in 1988 and never heard anything except dentist office or elevator music, I would still hate this album. I am 4 albums in and 2 were pure shit. Not thinking I'll make it to the tenth album at this rate.

The first mental picture that came to mind upon listening to this album was a middle aged woman driving her kids to gymnastics class. I am not a middle aged woman. If this is on the 1001 albums list, I can’t imagine how bad the 1002nd album must be.

The idiot who compiled this list sure loves sophisticrap.

I couldn't make it through five tracks: this album is the epitome of boring white people music. I literally can't separate it from being stuck in a chair, my mouth agape, having my teeth cleaned as this crap coos from the speaker softly. Just awful

Glossy 80s pop with a heavy dose of smooth jazz. Chimey slowed-down Johnny Marr-wannabe guitars and some bright synth sounds combined with a busy neo-soul bass and Kenny G saxophone. It sort of works? The songs are all lush and slow artifice with a chorus-pedal sound saturating the album. No real distinctions between the songs, it's a mood album that's calm relaxed and upbeat- but that's another word for boring. The sound of the milk aisle in the early 90s.

First album i couldn’t listen all the way through. if this is a genre someone likes, that’s fine, but there’s absolutely no reason this belongs on a general “must listen to” list. If I’m being generous, maybe I can hear some ideas that the XX use today, but i didn’t like this at all.

This is the musical equivalent of cheap lukewarm tea forgotten on a window sill for 3 days.

Why is this on the list?

Snoozefest 2023

This was really hard to get through, even worse than I had imagined it would be. Mumbling/ whiny singing, bland tunes, smooth/ cheesy sounds, horrible keyboards, saxo-fail, and jazz-lite noises thrown into a vat and blended together to come up with a dozen incredibly samey tracks that meander on and merge together into over 45 minutes of awfulness. This is the sort of music I would expect to hear when put on hold ringing a company who don't want me to wait on hold. It's almost like it's designed to offend. God the keyboards are an atrocity, a lot of work must have gone into making them sound so bad, they really are so very bad. They actually sound like something you might get out of a Christmas cracker. It's not even an excuse that this is from the 1980s, as I've heard better keyboards from albums made two decades earlier than this. This has been one of the few times I've found myself looking forward to adverts on Spotify as some relief from the horror of this album. What a worthless chore this was. Definitely 1-star, almost worth more for the sheer relief of getting to the end.

Love Tracey Thorn's featurings on Massive Attack's *Protection*. That title-track from the Bristol trip-hop collective is a wonder (equalling later masterpice "Teardrops" with Liz Fraser). And Thorn has a lot to do with how good that song is. That's the only truly positive thing I'll ever say about Everything But The Girl. This act is too damn bland for chrissake, whatever their style du jour is (jazzy sophistipop--as in here--or eurodance, or electropop, etc.). I've recently given three stars to a Pet Shop Boys album, so I can still keep an open mind, I guess. But there's a limit. Pretty sure the music critics who have consistently and inexplicably praised Everything But The Girl for decades once received free blowjobs paid through the A&R department of the band's label. I'm a music critic as well now, for crying out loud! Why can't I receive free blowjobs??? OK, gross and puerile, I admit it. A *little* more seriously, now: I'm *not* saying that the songwriting, performances and arrangements on this record are not "competent". They are, generally speaking (even if Tracey Thorn's intonations are a little weird or forced on a couple of those tracks). The real issue is this, though: bad taste is just bad taste sometimes, period. And it's always hard to forgive bad taste, even when you hail from the dreadful eighties--where you were admittedly surrounded by it everywhere, and it was almost as if you had no choice but to surrend your soul to at least *some* of it. In other words, trying to be "objective", open-minded and benevolent about certain music styles would be a blatant lie from me. Everyone sincere enough about music who's worth their salt knows you can't fully change a leopard's spots. Just as you can't turn pumpkins into golden carriages, except in fairy tales. Or except in labels' A&R departments, selling their "products" and pretending they're so relevant on a purely artistic level. It's those free blowjobs again, remember? They're as potent as magic spells. In all seriousness now, though, I *swear*: current popular opinion is *not* always right, but you can still take it into account to separate the whiff from the chaff once in a while. And here popular opinion is quite clear. Only 15 people or so wrote a 5-star review about this record on this app. Worse, those short and very general reviews do not suggest that any of those supposedly happy reviewers were yet dead-set on defending this album to save it from the sea of negativity it's currently drowning in. I would personally do that to try to save Robert Wyatt's *Rock Bottom*, as far as I'm concerned--even to the extent of making a fool of myself. But that's definitely not how far those folks would go. You just *feel* it in their reviews. They simply liked the record, they don't care about the rest. Good for them. But they should know how bad the global score for this thing is, at least. Not that such shenanigans matter all that much, I'm gonna concede that as well. For instance, the fact that *Idlewild* has such a low score compared to the 3.29 one of Sade's *Diamond Life*--every bit its equal when it comes to cheesefest fodder--remains a total mystery to me... It's true that what makes an album popular or unpopular is a very elusive thing sometimes. And your personal definitions of "good taste" and "bad taste" will rarely explain such mysteries away. I'll grant that to the few fans of Everything But The Girl who might bump into this review one day. In the meantime... 1/5 for the purposes of this list of "essential" albums, which translates to a 6/10 grade for more general purposes (5+1). Next, please. Number of albums left to review: 454 Number of albums from the list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 255 Albums from the list I *might* include in mine later on: 130 Albums from the list I will certainly *not* include in mine (many others are more essential to me): 163 (including this one)

Holy Marbles that was awful. Thank Heaven on High for that only being 45 minutes long because I don't think I could take a minute longer of that.

Literally the only thing one can do is yawn. Holy hell this is dull.

Bored the balls off me.

There are definitely worse albums on this list, but I don't think there are any that are less important. A total snooze fest. 1/5

Oh dear. This was terrible. The crystalline production is probably the only good thing about it, but the songs, the voices, the arrangements, I hated it.

More like IdleMILD, amirite? Jeeze, what a boring album. I had to double-check the release date on this one because it for sure felt like it was from the mid-60s. And not in a cool "throwback" way. More like a, "we forgot everything the last 20 years of music has taught us" way. So soft. So boring. So many saxophone solos. This did not merit inclusion on the list. Hard pass.

Bland 80s schmaltz at its finest. I will say this for this album: I didn't care for it, but it I was in a pissy mood when I started listening, and it's hard to feel anything while listening to this.

Only album I've given up on so far, trite and boring. Why is this on the list.

1/5 why on earth is this even on this list at all

Amazing that the Walking Wounded album they dropped in '96 was apparently this same group in the 80's. Completely different sound in that it was an excellent album with strong lyrics, top synth for the era, excellent rhythms. This one, which I had never heard, was a tough listen and fell flat on all the things that did better later. Could not figure out why this album was selected over Walking Wounded.

There's a girl right there! She's on the cover! And then she sings! On almost all the songs! Everything Including the Girl? This is apparently "sophisti-pop." Sophisti-pop blends elements of jazz, soul, and pop, using electronic keyboards, synthesizers and polished arrangements. And saxophone, Wikipedia! Corny ass saxophone! It's described as mellow, romantic, and atmospheric - the romantic atmosphere of 80s may have seems misty and mysterious, but that mist was just a cloud of hairspray. This is also the same genre and corner of British history that gave us Blue Nile, which I look back on unfondly. Gotta make sure I get this review in and go back and review Roxy Music so sophisti-pop can replace rock and roll (somehow?) on my 1001 summary list of least favorite genres... and, oh! We listened to an Everything But the Girl album from '96... but I never wrote the review. Did I like it? At least more than this one? Now I have to go back and listen to it, I guess. And I've just remembered that they did "and I miss you like the deserts miss the rain," which is a banger, so I guess sophisti-pop's not all bad?

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.... wake me up when they do something interesting.

This sounds like 10,000 Maniacs minus several thousand maniacs. Also, I don't really like 10,000 Maniacs. Utterly bored by this.

Really didnt like this at all. Probably the most time I’ve spent wishing for an album to end on this list! I’m not even sure what I dont like about it, it’s so inoffensive and bland. Maybe thats it. The only memorable thing about it was the longing for it to end. Either way it all sounded the same and I didn’t like that sound.

Contains a lot of the things I love about 90s rock. Reminded me of placebo, pixies and can't ignore comparisons to early Biffy, with exactly the right level of polish on the production. Will definitely listen again. ...is my review for Jack's recommendation of 100 Broken Windows by Idlewild. Idlewild the album by Everything but the Girl is Heart FM anti-music, offensively devoid of ideas or even differences between songs. No.

Didn't like this at all, found it to be very boring.

Don't like it

No good songs on the entire album

I literally can't for the life of me figure out why this is on this list. I am not sure it's good or relevant at all in any way. It's pleasant for sure, but get this out of here!

It's just too much

Uninspiring background music. Prefer to never listen again. 1/5

Booooring. Ok the mix was nice and the vocals nice, but man I was bored. I described it to my wife as "stuck shopping with grandma at Dillard's" music. Sorry but wouldn't listen again.

I thought this was an album by the band Idlewild at first, but alas. The music does nothing for me. Some of the lyrics at least have a bit of individuality to them, albeit in a super inoffensive way. The only song I recognised was a cover and apparently not even on the original release. 1.5

Not a lot compelling here. Some very earnest lyrics, but not in a charming way. The music is barely above easy listening. And somehow she seems to be both over singing and barely awake at the same time. As remarkable as that is, I can’t imagine why this was put on the list.

meh

Really, incredibly boring. I was looking forward to it after the previous album i heard of theirs via this project.

I have no idea why something like this is on this list. It's just flat out boring, there's nothing in the insturmentals or lyrics that make you say *Hey* You have to listen to this before you die.

Appallingly bad

How do they manage to sound so bored while making their own album? Geez.

meeehhhh, pas sûr de comprendre pourquoi c'est cet album qui se retrouve sur la liste. Don't Want To Talk About It est peut-être le premier hit qui a changé la carrière du groupe, mais j'avoue l'avoir entendu pour la première fois en écoutant cet album dans le cadre de ce projet. La pièce n'est pas mauvaise, mais selon moi le hit Missing de l'album Amplified Heart est beaucoup plus important pour le groupe. En plus, l'album ici souffre terriblement de la production qui vieillie très mal. On est dans les sonorités les plus mauvaises des années 80, sans parler du saxophone. La voix de Tracey Thorn est bien, mais l'emballage musical est mauvais. Honnêtement, l'écoute de l'album Amplified Heart vaut vraiment plus la peine que cet album.

Started with a nope, moved on to a nope, then followed up with a nope, then noped right the fuck out of there.

Way too cheesy. Just a bit gross

Bland new wavey bullshit

The album has the feel of a lounge act playing the early-bird happy hour at the Holiday Inn. I have no idea why this album would be something that anyone would have to hear before they die.

pling pling pling on the guitar. Some not so memorable lyrics. Nothing in that albums strikes a nerve in me. Sorry could not bring myself to listen to it all. It was just sooooooooooo bad.

Nah thanks bruh

Not exciting.

Trash

soooo bad

Nope. Not for me.

Maybe you just had to be there and I'm being over-critical, but then again maybe Hitler wouldn't have been so grumpy if people weren't ignoring his high 5s all the time. If it was a footballer, it'd be Dominic Solanke. SHACK loves lamb chops

It is so boring. Even though 1001 albums is a lot, this is literally not worth your time to listen through and more importantly, it should not have a spot on this list. The singer can only sing with a weird yelling voice, and the instrumental sounds like it belongs in an Adam Sandler rom-com. Favorite track: Blue Rose Moon

Not for me - 'It sounds like an 80s sitcom'.