Geez people really turned on this album didn’t they. Music still seems good to me. Weird that the current top review here knocks the lyrics for “every other word being fuck this and fuck that” when there’s… a single f-bomb across the entire album? Lots of projection going on when it comes to the content of the album; you’re telling on yourself, bro.

I was not put on this earth to "get" Rod Stewart.

This is what you'd get if you asked me to write a Pulp parody album.

If this were the only Rolling Stones album it wouldn’t be on the list.

I need a slowed-down, soul-free version of Little Wing like I need another hole in my head. Diet blues.

I've never been especially crazy about this album. I love individual tracks on their own, but this has always felt like a Who album that happens to have their best songs rather than the best Who album.

I was not put on this earth to "get" Rod Stewart.

An all timer when it comes to the album-quality vs album art ratio.

Very good, just not my favorite Sabbath.

U2 sounds like a bank commercial.

One of my favorite live records ever. Sam’s got the audience in the palm of his hand.

Fuck Ryan Adams.

Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon into I'm In Love With my Car is the rock n roll one-two punch you never knew you needed.

I should like this, yet my Zappa-lovin ass will call this "too angular and chaotic."

This is a low rating where I want to make my bona fides clear: I like 80s music, and I specifically like new wave and synthpop. That said: This annoys the everloving shit outta me; it sounds like Robert Smith fell into The Love Cats and couldn't get out.

Sounds like a bad James Bond soundtrack.

After being real cool on much of the electronica served up to me so far, this one actually clicked. Seems like good study/coding music, but according to the reviews I'd be best off tripping face in a London warehouse.

This one sits in an awkward spot between Waits' early beat-crooner phase and his later tinpan-circus-in-a-gutter phase. Small Change or Blue Valentine do this same thing way, way better imo.

This is what you'd get if you asked me to write a Pulp parody album.

"The Rake" made me angry.

gee wonder why David Lynch hired this guy

Kinda doubt we'd remember this one had Bjork not become Bjork

*You're* crying.

Time and again this site has served me turn-of-the-90s UK electronica, and it's still yet to make an impression on me. I try to not generalize about music, but I can completely understand why music from this period gets slammed for being so repetitive. for being so repetitive for being so repetitive for being so repetitive boom-boom-boom-snap so repetitive boom-boom-boom-snap so repetitive boom-boom-boom-snap so repetitive

Steely Dan is just at this intersection between prog (my jam) and easy listening (not my jam) that does not do it for me.

I know this is very good, and there are some songs I really like. But, as a millennial growing up in the 90s watching truck commercials backed by AC/DC tracks, this music sounds like a midlife crisis.

I need a slowed-down, soul-free version of Little Wing like I need another hole in my head. Diet blues.

As a 90s kid growing up with 90s Aerosmith, I didn't take Aerosmith very seriously. In fact, I loathed Aerosmith. They're up there with Billy Joel as artists who I completely understand the success and reach they've had, but I really only appreciate on a cultural level rather than a musical one. So color me surprised when I put this album on to find some real tightly played hard rock. Maybe a little unsophisticated lyrically, but you can see yourself handing the Zeppelin crown over to them. And then Big Ten Inch Record played. No, I was right. These guys are corny. Then comes Sweet Emotion and you see why they got so big.

Who put this here

It's downright frustrating how this album gets no love in the shadow of Radiohead's later, more experimental work. This is an album which exemplifies guitar-driven brit-rock, full of incendiary licks and inward-looking lyrics. It's almost as though the sheer consistency of this album is held against it compared to the zigs and zags of the following albums, even the zigs and zags within the tracks of those albums.

Seeing this pop up gave me moosebumps. A little overlong, I tend to skip a couple of the repetitive songs. But a true classic nonetheless.

It's not Megadeth's fault I'm more of a Doom / Sludge / Slow Metal guy. But, beyond technical proficiency, I just don't get the appeal of speed metal.

This album's especially great for giving Nico multiple opportunities to say "clown" (pronounced 'klauhn')

A band that dares ask the question: what if Sparks went ska?

Casanova felt like Pulp parody. This feels like Magnetic Fields parody.

I hadn’t listened to Missy Elliot before this, and that’s on me.

I wouldn't hold out much hope for the tape deck. Or the Creedence.

Geez people really turned on this album didn’t they. Music still seems good to me. Weird that the current top review here knocks the lyrics for “every other word being fuck this and fuck that” when there’s… a single f-bomb across the entire album? Lots of projection going on when it comes to the content of the album; you’re telling on yourself, bro.

This is just the same song ten times and I love it.

Love this album. Was going to give four stars since this is a classic, but on this listen I’m unfortunately feeling the runtimes of several tracks. Then Thurston Moore sang “there he goes again, my magic monkey friend” and the perfect score restored itself.

The fadeout on He's Misstra Know-It-All is comically long

Love the low reviews from people hearing *this* phase of Miles Davis and going “whoa, mister wacky jazz, you’re going way over my head with this!”

All I hear is Tom Scharpling hanging up on boring callers.

It’s hard to say whether this album simply pales in comparison to the Gorillaz albums to come after it, or if it’s really just too slight and sketchy (I lean towards this; it feels more like Albarn and co. are exploring rather than establishing), but it’s wild that *this* is the Gorillaz album to hear before you die. St. Peter will turn your ass around and send you back if you think you’re just gonna shuffle off without hearing Demon Days or Plastic Beach.

I should buy a boat.

Maybe hair metal wasn’t a mistake

Is there a 90s uk sophistipop album this list doesn’t have?

February 2022 - Clicking the spotify link for this album is as amusing as checking the 42nd president’s twitter url; it’ll never get old. F*** Joe Rogan

fuhn fuhn fuhn

You don't often get a divorce album that leaves you 100% on the side of the artist's ex. Just picture Sara Dylan playing "Idiot Wind" at the filing. Every time Bob goes "whoooaaaaaaaaaaa" on "You're a Big Girl Now" I picture him going down a really steep roller coaster. And now you'll hear that every time too.

Thanks I hate it

I love Michael Kiwanuka, I love this album; recency bias has me asking: is this his most essential release? One of the most essential of 2019? Between the recent picks (which I don’t know if they come from the author of the book or the architect of this site) and the early-90s britpop, techno jazz, and art pop; the subjectivity of this list can be blistering.

Psst. Hey you. Yeah you. C’mere. No, closer. There we go, just a little closer… Nope, even closer… I don’t get what the big deal is with The Rolling Stones beyond their longevity. They’re fine.

This is what every bar band thinks they sound like.

Jane’s Addiction’s creative approach seems to be “if something’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.” Pump the brakes, boys.

When the yoga teacher puts on cooldown music that isn’t as peaceful as they think.

Sounds like Philly Boy Roy singing the Toonerville Trolley.

The Arcade Fire: growing up in the suburbs can be alienating at times. Aging Gen-Xers as they start to make up the majority of the Grammy voting body: holy shit yes

I used to think our cultural distaste for the hippie movement was an overreaction. Then I listened to this album.

Everybody who hated this listened before 11pm

Negative stars for the stage banter.

The British impulse to include a nursery rhyme or drinking song in every guitar-driven album.

What’s for tea daughtah?

If you were going to put out an album in 1967 you had to have a song about a gnome.

After learning The Divine Comedy produced this, my thought was “of course.” I never heard of The Divine Comedy before this list/site, but they’re headlining my shitlist.

My favorite band named after an Adam Sandler catchphrase.

Some of these album selections really peg the book’s author as a British fella who came of age in the early 90s.

*see the title Ogre Battle.* “Hey! They wrote a song about my divorce!”

I've just never been that keen on the Arctic Monkeys or late-00s dance-rock, for that matter. "Arctic Monkeys but make it baroque" did not win me over.

What if The Bends had no teeth?

The album that gave us THE go-to karaoke song for guys who have make their drinking problem their personality.

Frankie Frankie

Always been kinda salty that Janelle’s never really followed up on the promise of this record and has segued into straightforward pop.

Oh shit someone let the 80s get a hold of the blues, someone get that out of its mouth before someone gets hurt.

Good album with a whopping four closing tracks.

Incomplete on Spotify but what’s available bops. Love to recognize the MF DOOM Hoe Cakes sample originated in…(checks notes) Sweet Love. Deborah Vance eat your heart out.

Honk shoo mimimimimi Honk shoo mimimimimi

Absolutely stunned to see people are all bottom-Drake meme with the banana album but somehow top-Drake meme with WL/WH.

Always found this album super sketchy, like you could drop ten tracks and expand five.

I used to be such a sweet sweet thing ‘Til they Got a holda me

The Dookie/American Idiot dichotomy sums up my issues with aughts-era angst and protest; where the 90s were a relatively peaceful and prosperous time, the youth were angry, didn't know why, and were ready to aim it at everything. With the destabilization of the 00s, the warmongering and conservative-christian values sinking their teeth into a weakened US, musicians descended into a brand of toothless, commercial protest music. There was so much going on at this time, yet the most trenchant observation most of these groups could muster was "the president is pretty dumb, and by proxy so are we Americans." However, there's a whole generation of people who were in middle or high school when this album came out, and it was their first and most accessible expression of anger and dissent. But to me this sounds like a collection of zippy singalongs, peppering in midsong reminders to go hit up the festival's voter registration tent.

Earth, White Boys, and Fire

…And Metallica for some (just not me)

Woodsound

I'm didgin' out, Jerry!

Is this a fuckin prank

Nice, easy listening. The kind of album you don’t realize has been done for five tracks; hard to say if that’s due to the album’s influence or it’s indistinguishability from its contemporaries.

Listen, I was once an angry teenager, demanding love/respect from others while simultaneously demanding they shut up (truly the rudest thing a kid can think to say, even when armed with all the swears), rolling all my perceived enemies and aggressors into a vague, convenient-to-critique "YOU." I am very glad I had Hybrid Theory in my Discman to remind me it was normal to be confused, angry, and above all utterly inarticulate about it. Twenty years of reading, reflection, and cognitive behavioral therapy later, this stuff sounds like "One, Two, Buckle my Shoe."

Higgle-dy - Piggle-dy, mfers

When cut across the neck, a sound like wailing winter winds is heard, they say. I'd always hoped to cut someone like that someday, to hear that sound. But to have it happen to my own neck is ridiculous.

1001 early 90s UK electronic albums to hear before you die.

An absolute crime that Original Pirate Material isn’t on this list. A Grand Don’t Cone for Free might have an overarching concept, but I’d argue the songs don’t hold together so well; I like most of them off their own merits, but altogether a full listen can be taxing.

To my surprise I enjoyed this a lot more than Back to Black (which I quite enjoyed), which has such a strong reputation and I've always assumed is *the* polished work to look towards when it comes to Winehouse's discography. Rather, the classic jazz influence is more charming with less polish/production, the humor actually caught me off guard (I always found Rehab depressing and over-obvious), and is more emotionally acute if not as raw as BIB.

Symphonic metal was a mistake.

What if the theme from Sex and the City sounded like an hour-long panic attack? On a serious note, there are a lot of great non-us, non-uk (I.e. “world music”) albums on this list, but just as many chintzy, late-career albums which clearly crossed over in the 80s - 90s, when the writer of the og book was coming of age. The instruments sound too crisp and synth-y, and everything is arranged with such a lack of mess. You can’t help but feel like this album was played and/or bought in a Starbucks.

Elegance and decadence

Gym metal. Something to make you throw up devil horns on the stairmaster.

Bing-a-bong-a-bong-a-bong Burbank Gigga gigga, gigga gigga-Glendale

The synth riff on Walk of Life is the auditory embodiment of forced fun.

wow, look: britpop

Hot damn

My first thought was “millennial Talk Talk.” After several songs, I felt like I was watching a trick commercial.

Two bangers followed by an Adele album

This is NOT Adele's 21 played forwards, then in reverse. It's some other thing.

Jim Morrison: patron saint for deep thinkers whose big ideas start and end at weed legalization.

One of my top "why do they have *this* song on karaoke and why is someone actually singing it?" moments in life has been watching a drunk ex-fratboy serviceably belt "Have a Cigar" in a NoHo bar on a Tuesday night.

You can tell a 00s hip-hop album by the intro, the lead single reprise, and the 11-minute outro.

The last LCD album I’d put on this list is the only LCD album on this list. There are individual tracks here I love, but the whole thing goes overlong (which is strange to say for an LCD album).

My days of sitting in a garage pounding shitty beer, ripping bong hits, and asking “whoa, is this still the same solo?” are behind me. It’s a me-problem, I know.

All rising action; a little overwhelming as a single listen.

I only know this beforehand because Destroyer cites Blue Nile as a big influence for Ken and afterwards. I hear the influence, and I must thank them.

This is 100% based on the music but the xx are one of the top bands that seem like they'd absolutely hate me.

Like Sam the butcher I’m bringin Alice the meat

I always found it odd that people hailed this very good album as a masterpiece then had nothing to say about When I Get Home, an utter masterpiece. Anyway, this *is* a very good one. Solange deserves more.

Man the 00s really were a time where music was doing too much.

If this were the only Rolling Stones album it wouldn’t be on the list.

I know this stuff’s controversial cause they talk about the debil but this sounds like phantom of the opera to me

This list has been great for my music education: I now have several reasons why I hate Eric Clapton on a musical level rather than a personal level. Willie and the Hand Jive? Are you kidding???

Maybe needed headphones for this one.

I was twenty-seven and going through a months-long breakup the summer this album came out. Of course I’m biased. But hot damn this album is good. Nothing like it before, nothing like it since.

Hey guys! Whoa, 80s Brit jingle-jangle, huh? All right.... Welp, see you later!

Listen, I was six when Kurt Cobain died. I didn't listen to mainstream radio until 8th grade. I knew Nirvana were Great and Important, but I simply never connected with them beyond the singles. I've listened to their discography, but never connected. That changed this week. This shit. This is the shit.

god bless anyone who got all the way to Earlybird before giving this a 1 and quoting Lebowski. god help anyone who got all the way to Earlybird and still gave this a 5.

What’s the opposite of poptimism? Cause I’m seeing a lot of it in these reviews. Listen, I was a fifteen year-old boy when this came out: I scoffed at it. But it’d be stupid to deny this after a listen. It’s just so smooth.

Damn y’all ain’t afraid of broadcasting the classism you’ve tied up with the country genre.

absolutely brutal way to find out I’m not a swingin’ lover

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Ok the average rating on this belies just how specific this album is to a certain generation of American millennials: if you were in college between 2000 and 2008 and chased anything resembling \"indie cred\" then at least one track from this album would be a staple of the mix cds you sent your crushes. Were you twee? Then you know this one. Now here's the thing: when my older sister came back from college and had this among the cds she'd burnt for me, only disc one made it to my hands. That's the first 23 songs, Absolutely Cuckoo through The Things We Did and Didn't Do. I probably never pursued discs 2 and 3 until after college, and by then I'd lost The Glow and none of the songs hit the same as those first 23. It felt like a joke: Merritt had made one amazing album and then phoned in two more, daring the listener to actually spend time with those other 46 love songs. So this is my first actual listen to all 69 love songs, and I gotta say disc 2 starts off so rocky I thought I was right. The ship rights itself and a few good songs stand out, but the presence of obnoxious filler gets more and more obvious. By the time you hit "Zebra," the joke isn't funny anymore, and it hasn't looped around to being funny again yet.

There's something I can't place about the way they sound like they're simultaneously speeding through their set and packing up their instruments.

This is like THE album that Spotify constantly pushes under my nose, but I’m waiting til 40 to make “Dan Stan” my entire personality, thanks.

somewhere in a midwestern coffee shop the baristas are begging to play their own music and the manager is saying “why make me vet your selections when we already have São Paulo Confessions on repeat all day?”

This is a 1 I don’t give lightly. I love Floyd, and the legend of Barrett is fascinating. But even by his own admission, this is not a representative artistic statement from him.

I was absolutely going to make a joke about how Macca Two better be on this list if you’re gonna include One and Ram. But Ram isn’t even on this list. Tug of War? Nope! What is this f-ing list without Ram?

- Would you slide your shorts down Mister Lebowski, please? - No, no man, she hit me right here. - I understand. Could you slide your shorts down please?

Holy shit the racism in the reviews for this album. Some of you people should think twice about the things you think to say when a black woman’s singing.

Inner city lyyyyyfe Inner city Pressure Pressure Pressure Indistinguishable from the parodies which came after.

Quality truly is subjective huh

And so I took off on my bicycle, well, to solve all my problems, to get out drugs, cause I had enough of that, I've had the college, I've had the earing the money, and the material trip, I just decided I was going to find a new way of life

A life-defining moment was going on a high school writer's retreat and one of the seniors I looked up to playing the entire dvd that accompanied this album. It was my intro to SFA and the album which would soundtrack my own final high school years. They were a band my freshman roommate and I bonded over. It's an album I can always come back to and be transported to 2003. This is all to say, I can't speak objectively about this album. It's fucking perfect.

This album came out at a time where I was at my snobbiest. I'd turn my nose up at a lot releases from career-mature artists who didn't seem like they were bringing anything new to the table. In many instances, I was robbing myself of enjoyment; this is exemplified in my eventually-reversed low opinion of Interpol's Antics. With Guero, however, I hit the nail on the head.

I hate hate hate Mysterious Ways. Boomer dudes will play this song at vow renewals for women who move in decidedly predictable ways.

listening to every album from 1001 Albums to Hear Before You Die has taught me to avoid any album whose only Reception/Legacy fact on wikipedia is its inclusion on 1001 Albums to Hear Before You Die