I was never a Joy Division fan. Friends of mine would point out versions of the album art for Unknown Pleasures everywhere with a wry smile, but it meant nothing to me. Joy Division came too late in life to make a difference; I perceive them now how children do the work of Charles Dickens, groundbreaking when it came out but overanalyzed and overloved, trapped in the past, no longer relevant in the modern age. Despite this guide's insistence that Closer is "a quantum leap" musically compared to the Unknown Pleasures, you could shuffle them together and I wouldn't notice. It's not for me.

Cars crashing, the sound of metal twisting, two pie tins rubbed together, nails across a blackboard- all these are more enjoyable noises.

Background music for a sad person watching rain fall down a window

I decided to renew my effort, and listened to most of it. I felt like half the songs were meant to be played with James Bond holding an assault rifle over his shoulder as he walks towards the camera and an explosion goes off behind him in slow motion. This is music for car commercials and ordering a Micheloeb Lite at the bar before going over to challenge the hot girl at a game of pool. The other half were fillers.

Sell-out hypocrites who knew the right people in NY. Later songs on album not very good. But, maybe the closest thing to “punk” on this list for this time near the turn of the millennium.

Too many songs about bitches, skits are shit, but when its being serious it's not that bad

I’ve lived with Lou Reed music for most of my life, due to the musical tastes of my father (and I assume my opinion on any other kind of 70s-90s rock or new wave albums on this list will be influenced by it), but even knowing the three “hit” songs on the album, _Perfect Day_ (made famous via _Trainspotting_), _Walk on the Wildside_ and _Satellite of Love_, this wouldn’t be an album that I would want to listen to. I think some of the songs are also jokes?

After starting with a track that I thought was full of energy, it then became a linear decline of listenability. Flavor Flav is a musical genius, just don’t give him a mic.

I heard music. Wasn't aware of it.

Different that I assumed. Track with Timbaland is trash, a few of the other tracks are annoying, but they have good backing that would probably cause me to hang around if I hit them on the radio. Of course, I wouldn’t, because Paper Planes is the only song from this album played on the radio

Background music for a sad person watching rain fall down a window

Ok, so _Elastica_ has a song used in _Trainspotting_ (2:1), and at least one other good song (the one about the car), but the rest of the album raised my tension levels. An exaggerated comparison would be a parrot squawking over garbage truck noises. So I skipped a bunch of songs after listening to them a little bit- they all kinda fell into the same bucket of poppy grunge with annoying lyrics. I’m pretty sure the singer is a cool person, but her teasing, mean girl delivery got tiring quickly.

I didn't dislike _The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady!_ I think the key was that I had it on in the background while I was trying to figure out how to Blender something, and it was over before I really knew it. I'm not really into modern or avant jazz like this- my jazz jams basically end at the end of the 40's, with the death of big band and swing jazz. I think if everything was more coherent, it would have been better, but it's obvious that's not where they wanted to go with this

Not really for me, but very technical album

I decided to renew my effort, and listened to most of it. I felt like half the songs were meant to be played with James Bond holding an assault rifle over his shoulder as he walks towards the camera and an explosion goes off behind him in slow motion. This is music for car commercials and ordering a Micheloeb Lite at the bar before going over to challenge the hot girl at a game of pool. The other half were fillers.

Biggest surprise was me liking _The Working Hour_, despite it having a sax

American Beauty just seemed too happy for me The songs weren’t necessarily indistinguishable, but nothing stood out, and before I knew it, the album was over. It’s completely inoffensive music that I could listen to while in line at a coffee shop that wouldn’t get me riled up or wind me down.

Mighty twangy! Very skillful music, maybe you wouldn’t sing so many songs about your woman leaving you if you treated her better

Oh yeah, SF Sorrow... SF Sorrow is the kind of dippy hippy bullshit I think about when I think about dippy hippy bullshit that I'm actually completely unfamiliar with. It felt like it took heavy influence from earlier psychedelic works, but I wasn't really sold on the narrative, mostly because I didn't know what the fuck was going on. Apparently The Pretty Things think that The Who stole the format of rock-opera for Tommy, but that's lame. A rock opera was an inevitability; I think they are sore only because The Who did it better.

I don't really know what Rage is usually categorized as, but the lyrics and message are straight up punk. I think that the album has aged rather well, to the point where if you knew some disenfranchised teen you could say "hey, listen to this" and they'd eat it up. This is also the only Rage album that I can listen to; it's not that there wasn't enough things to sing about, but it seems they focussed all their energy on making sure their first album had exactly what they wanted to say on it, and kinda ran out of a theme or message for the others. Like, this album they wanted to sing about X, Y and Z, and in their other albums it was like "hey we haven't sung about G yet, let's do a song about G." I think the only issue with it now is that it was overplayed, so most of its magic has been lost via familiarity.

_Rip It Up_ by Orange Juice - (I keep on forgetting to make my music player not fucking shuffle the fucking thing! It's really hard to get an idea of an album released pre-CD era when it's randomly playing tracks.) So it's 80's post-punk...crooner music? It's weird. The first song was...interesting. The second song's lyrics didn't seem to energy and upbeat quality of the music- badabada, badabada, _see the tears in a million faces_ whaaaaaaaat? The rest of the album liked to bounce around in the same manner, where you never knew what you were going to get. I wondered if any of the band went on to be part of some other bands, but they never did. Why isn’t The English Beat on this list?

I was never a Joy Division fan. Friends of mine would point out versions of the album art for Unknown Pleasures everywhere with a wry smile, but it meant nothing to me. Joy Division came too late in life to make a difference; I perceive them now how children do the work of Charles Dickens, groundbreaking when it came out but overanalyzed and overloved, trapped in the past, no longer relevant in the modern age. Despite this guide's insistence that Closer is "a quantum leap" musically compared to the Unknown Pleasures, you could shuffle them together and I wouldn't notice. It's not for me.

HOWEVER! I like the album better than Joy Division's _Closer_ from yesterday. _Spiderland_ is a pretty good early 90's...music like what my friends played in the mid 90's. It probably did deserve more recognition than it got when it got released, but that's kinda what happens when you don't tour and barely sell. I don't think it is any more impressive than a whole host of music released around the same time though, it is definitely only here because it was a "hidden gem" that only the people "in the know" are aware of.

_I Against I_ - the 1001 guide itself writes about how Bad Brains was homophobic and religious, which I didn’t really pick up; sure, there were some songs that were a little religious, but didn’t stand out being that way (and Wikipedia makes no mentions). Whatever! The lead singer’s voice really gets on my nerves.

_Live at the Apollo_ Wow what a short album! James Brown competes with punk acts on short song length. I wasn’t expecting so many “slow” songs, but that is because the only experience with James Brown are all the songs of his which are used in movies. I appreciated the audience participation

_Elvis is Back_, but he just came by for his hat. This album had some pretty raunchy songs, but nothing that stood out. No Devils in Blue Suede Jailhouses, Hounddogs. _Fever_ was _creepy_, like something a serial killer would mutter before doing serial killer things, like helping their neighbors with the trash or appearing otherwise normal

_Young Americans_ - hmm! Apparently this album was the first non-glam record for Bowie, and the record itself has an interesting history. _Young Americans_ and _Fame_ are the songs that stand out, the rest...don’t.

BSSM by RHCP- I stopped listening halfway through, as the heat death of the universe occurred. This is one of those albums that I think are without any deep cuts, but I’m fine without actually listening to the entire thing to find out. _Breaking the Girl_ is my favorite on this album

Sea Change by Beck is an album I didn't see change all that much. At this point in Beck's career, I think people probably had a specific image of him being experimental/poppy and not so slideguitary, so maybe this album came as a surprise. However, this album reminded me most of his first album Stereopathetic Soulmanure, a few songs which you could mix into this album musically without effort. Once again, in the review for this album, the 1001 book prints some lines that make it sound like this album shouldn't be in the list > Certainly the lyrics lack a little bite (he rhymes "before" with "before" on "End Of The Day"), while the vocals range from tired to clinically dead.

_She’s so Cyndi Lauper_, this album had 4 top-5 singles! I thought this album was _fun_, it had a lot of variety and Cyndi has a unique voice. I’m probably not going to listen to the whole album again, but I enjoyed it much more than a lot of albums so far.

Snoozeville

Graceland by Paul Simon - I have very mixed feelings about this album. All the songs are well put together, but the first two songs sound a lot like jokes. Even though they use atypical instruments and are played with a certain lack of precision, the songs work pretty well- not that I’m really a fan. I only ended skipping a few songs. I’m interested in why the 80’s had lots of African (maybe “Hollywood” African) influenced or incorporated music, this album has a bunch. I think that Paul Simon is the butt of jokes or is generally snubbed by people, but don’t really know why that is- did he later come out as a nazi sympathizer or something?

Debut is definitely showing its age, but it does contribute more to the Bjork playlist I have than her more recent works. Big Time Sensuality was remixed a bunch and is pretty evocative of house music at the time- simple repeating baseline and then some woman singing some nonsense over it. Human Behaviour is my favorite track, Vesus as a Boy was used in Luc Besson's Leon.

Cars crashing, the sound of metal twisting, two pie tins rubbed together, nails across a blackboard- all these are more enjoyable noises.

Huh, Grounds for Divorce is one of the songs I didn’t like, along with the first song that was great until the BWAAAAA came in much louder than the rest of the song, which is a lingering complaint of a few of the songs. Overall, a pleasant surprise!

I liked this Joni Mitchell better than the other one we listened to, still wish the author didn’t put multiple albums from a single artist on this list

Half the album was skipped

Eh?

Started out like an alternate dimension Credence and I was into it, then got too twangy

Oh, so _that’s_ Franz F.

Killing Joke’s _Killing Joke_ killed it! I only know of their music from a little later in their career, specifically the song _Eighties_. I quite enjoyed this album, it had some fun experimenting going on.

I wouldn’t say that I listened to Dylan as a kid, but we had a best of album that was played pretty frequently. I see why there were only a few of these songs on it; the song after “Maggie’s Farm” _sucks_, and Hey, Mr Tambourine Man did you know this song goes on for a few verses too long?

Nope!

Wasn’t expecting _Stooges_ to be so psychedelic. _We Will Fall_ is too long.

I cannot stand the vocals of any X song

Yeah, sure.