Journey Complete!
Finisher #452 to complete the list
1089
Albums Rated
3.61
Average Rating
100%
Complete
Rating Distribution
Rating Timeline
Taste Profile
1950s
Favorite Decade
Funk
Favorite Genre
US
Top Origin
Cheerleader
Rater Style ?
264
5-Star Albums
39
1-Star Albums
Breakdown
By Genre
By Decade
By Origin
Albums
You Love More Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trout Mask Replica | 5 | 2.28 | +2.72 |
| Suicide | 5 | 2.46 | +2.54 |
| We're Only In It For The Money | 5 | 2.47 | +2.53 |
| The Modern Dance | 5 | 2.48 | +2.52 |
| Cut | 5 | 2.71 | +2.29 |
| Djam Leelii | 5 | 2.79 | +2.21 |
| My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts | 5 | 2.79 | +2.21 |
| Scott 4 | 5 | 2.8 | +2.2 |
| Ys | 5 | 2.8 | +2.2 |
| Nick Of Time | 5 | 2.83 | +2.17 |
You Love Less Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs | 1 | 3.39 | -2.39 |
| If I Should Fall From Grace With God | 1 | 3.34 | -2.34 |
| Slippery When Wet | 1 | 3.29 | -2.29 |
| Eagles | 1 | 3.29 | -2.29 |
| S&M | 1 | 3.26 | -2.26 |
| Who Killed...... The Zutons? | 1 | 3.14 | -2.14 |
| 461 Ocean Boulevard | 1 | 3.12 | -2.12 |
| The Lexicon Of Love | 1 | 3.08 | -2.08 |
| Heartbreaker | 1 | 3.03 | -2.03 |
| Microshift | 1 | 3.03 | -2.03 |
Artists
Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Beatles | 7 | 4.86 |
| Brian Eno | 5 | 5 |
| Radiohead | 6 | 4.83 |
| Bob Dylan | 7 | 4.71 |
| Talking Heads | 4 | 5 |
| Neil Young | 4 | 5 |
| Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds | 5 | 4.6 |
| Led Zeppelin | 5 | 4.6 |
| Miles Davis | 4 | 4.75 |
| The Kinks | 4 | 4.75 |
| R.E.M. | 4 | 4.75 |
| Stevie Wonder | 4 | 4.75 |
| Pink Floyd | 4 | 4.75 |
| Prince | 3 | 5 |
| Pixies | 3 | 5 |
| The Velvet Underground | 3 | 5 |
| Jimi Hendrix | 3 | 5 |
| Neil Young & Crazy Horse | 3 | 5 |
| David Bowie | 9 | 4.22 |
| The Who | 5 | 4.4 |
| Joni Mitchell | 4 | 4.5 |
| Yes | 3 | 4.67 |
| The Cure | 3 | 4.67 |
| Kraftwerk | 3 | 4.67 |
| Marvin Gaye | 3 | 4.67 |
| Nirvana | 3 | 4.67 |
| Fiona Apple | 2 | 5 |
| Funkadelic | 2 | 5 |
| Missy Elliott | 2 | 5 |
| Wilco | 2 | 5 |
| Portishead | 2 | 5 |
| Kendrick Lamar | 2 | 5 |
| Aretha Franklin | 2 | 5 |
| Pavement | 2 | 5 |
| Hole | 2 | 5 |
| The Mothers Of Invention | 2 | 5 |
| Cocteau Twins | 2 | 5 |
| T. Rex | 2 | 5 |
| Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band | 2 | 5 |
| Willie Nelson | 2 | 5 |
| Bob Marley & The Wailers | 3 | 4.33 |
| The White Stripes | 3 | 4.33 |
| Black Sabbath | 3 | 4.33 |
| Beastie Boys | 3 | 4.33 |
| Beck | 3 | 4.33 |
| Roxy Music | 3 | 4.33 |
| Arcade Fire | 3 | 4.33 |
| Kate Bush | 3 | 4.33 |
| Paul Simon | 3 | 4.33 |
| Bruce Springsteen | 5 | 4 |
| Sonic Youth | 5 | 4 |
Least Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Ryan Adams | 2 | 1 |
| Slipknot | 2 | 1 |
| Everything But The Girl | 2 | 1.5 |
| The Pogues | 2 | 1.5 |
| Public Image Ltd. | 2 | 1.5 |
| Metallica | 4 | 2 |
| Kings of Leon | 3 | 2 |
Controversial
| Artist | Ratings |
|---|---|
| Deep Purple | 4, 5, 2 |
| My Bloody Valentine | 4, 2, 5 |
| Elvis Costello & The Attractions | 3, 2, 5, 4 |
5-Star Albums (264)
View Album Wall
Popular Reviews
Fiona Apple
5/5
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.
80 likes
The Rolling Stones
3/5
If this were the only Rolling Stones album it wouldn’t be on the list.
56 likes
The Divine Comedy
2/5
This is what you'd get if you asked me to write a Pulp parody album.
28 likes
Everything But The Girl
1/5
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23 likes
1-Star Albums (39)
All Ratings
Eels
5/5
The Who
4/5
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.
Johnny Cash
4/5
Rod Stewart
2/5
I was not put on this earth to "get" Rod Stewart.
The Who
5/5
CHIC
3/5
Jane's Addiction
3/5
The Rolling Stones
4/5
Marty Robbins
4/5
Wild Beasts
3/5
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart
2/5
Coldplay
3/5
The Jam
5/5
Scott Walker
5/5
Paul Revere & The Raiders
3/5
Love
3/5
Prince
5/5
An all timer when it comes to the album-quality vs album art ratio.
The Band
4/5
Creedence Clearwater Revival
3/5
KISS
2/5
Muddy Waters
3/5
Leonard Cohen
4/5
Badly Drawn Boy
3/5
Randy Newman
4/5
Gene Clark
5/5
Fleetwood Mac
4/5
Pulp
5/5
A Tribe Called Quest
5/5
Massive Attack
3/5
Johnny Cash
3/5
Guided By Voices
4/5
Miles Davis
5/5
Jorge Ben Jor
5/5
Joni Mitchell
3/5
Janis Joplin
4/5
The Afghan Whigs
3/5
Jungle Brothers
4/5
The Smiths
5/5
I avoided this one for ages because Morrissey is a racist wanker. I know it’s good, but I’m just sick of the guy and for better or worse I hear it in the Smiths’s music.
Well, I saw The Killer a week or so ago and had a hankering. Great album, shitty dude.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
4/5
The Fall
4/5
The Prodigy
4/5
Orange Juice
3/5
Yes
5/5
Laura Nyro
2/5
Lou Reed
4/5
Air
5/5
The Smiths
3/5
Leonard Cohen
3/5
Fiona Apple
5/5
Dire Straits
2/5
The White Stripes
5/5
3/5
Black Sabbath
3/5
Very good, just not my favorite Sabbath.
The Kinks
5/5
5/5
David Bowie
5/5
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
5/5
Beastie Boys
4/5
Simply Red
3/5
Frank Black
2/5
4/5
Funkadelic
5/5
4/5
The Rolling Stones
4/5
R.E.M.
5/5
The La's
3/5
Le Tigre
4/5
UB40
4/5
Donald Fagen
3/5
3/5
U2 sounds like a bank commercial.
X-Ray Spex
4/5
Maxwell
3/5
this music reversed my vasectomy
Turbonegro
2/5
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
3/5
Morrissey
3/5
I mean...Speedway good.
Sam Cooke
5/5
One of my favorite live records ever. Sam’s got the audience in the palm of his hand.
Joni Mitchell
5/5
Supergrass
3/5
Ryan Adams
1/5
Fuck Ryan Adams.
The Damned
3/5
Tangerine Dream
4/5
The Stooges
4/5
Dinosaur Jr.
3/5
Queen
4/5
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.
N.W.A.
4/5
Mudhoney
3/5
Bob Dylan
5/5
Weather Report
3/5
Coldplay
4/5
Santana
4/5
The Who
4/5
Little Richard
5/5
Rush
3/5
I should like this, yet my Zappa-lovin ass will call this "too angular and chaotic."
1/5
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.
Death In Vegas
3/5
Super Furry Animals
4/5
Rod Stewart
2/5
Ice T
4/5
Genesis
3/5
Metallica
1/5
Sounds like a bad James Bond soundtrack.
The Pretty Things
3/5
Leftfield
4/5
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.
The Go-Go's
4/5
The Stranglers
3/5
Joan Armatrading
4/5
Faust
4/5
The Flaming Lips
5/5
Tom Waits
3/5
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.
Stereo MC's
2/5
The Divine Comedy
2/5
This is what you'd get if you asked me to write a Pulp parody album.
DJ Shadow
5/5
R.E.M.
4/5
Fela Kuti
5/5
Duran Duran
4/5
The Young Rascals
3/5
Red Snapper
2/5
"The Rake" made me angry.
The Slits
5/5
The Soft Boys
4/5
The Beach Boys
5/5
D'Angelo
4/5
The Beach Boys
3/5
Barry Adamson
3/5
gee wonder why David Lynch hired this guy
Bobby Womack
4/5
Bruce Springsteen
5/5
Talking Heads
5/5
The Sugarcubes
2/5
Kinda doubt we'd remember this one had Bjork not become Bjork
808 State
2/5
Air
4/5
Tom Waits
4/5
Pet Shop Boys
4/5
The Black Crowes
3/5
Pretenders
3/5
Grizzly Bear
5/5
Franz Ferdinand
4/5
Beck
5/5
*You're* crying.
Orbital
2/5
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
Nico
3/5
Steely Dan
3/5
Steely Dan is just at this intersection between prog (my jam) and easy listening (not my jam) that does not do it for me.
Brian Eno
5/5
Billy Joel
3/5
Bonnie "Prince" Billy
4/5
Joy Division
4/5
Pixies
5/5
AC/DC
3/5
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.
Julian Cope
3/5
Derek & The Dominos
1/5
I need a slowed-down, soul-free version of Little Wing like I need another hole in my head. Diet blues.
Arctic Monkeys
4/5
Public Enemy
4/5
Big Brother & The Holding Company
4/5
The White Stripes
5/5
Ray Charles
3/5
Aerosmith
4/5
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.
James Brown
4/5
Cheap Trick
3/5
Taylor Swift
2/5
Who put this here
Talking Heads
5/5
Fats Domino
3/5
Sly & The Family Stone
4/5
David Bowie
4/5
Radiohead
5/5
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.
Nick Drake
4/5
Dr. Octagon
4/5
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.
Public Enemy
3/5
Deep Purple
4/5
The Rolling Stones
5/5
Megadeth
3/5
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.
The Velvet Underground
5/5
This album's especially great for giving Nico multiple opportunities to say "clown" (pronounced 'klauhn')
The Cure
4/5
Belle & Sebastian
3/5
Billy Bragg
3/5
Brian Eno
5/5
Elastica
4/5
Sonic Youth
3/5
The Youngbloods
3/5
The Style Council
3/5
The Specials
4/5
5/5
Beatles
5/5
Buena Vista Social Club
3/5
The Boo Radleys
4/5
Fleet Foxes
4/5
Dexys Midnight Runners
3/5
A band that dares ask the question: what if Sparks went ska?
The Mars Volta
5/5
Garbage
3/5
Radiohead
5/5
PJ Harvey
4/5
Sigur Rós
5/5
Pet Shop Boys
3/5
Echo And The Bunnymen
4/5
Curtis Mayfield
4/5
Mike Oldfield
4/5
Prince
5/5
3/5
Sex Pistols
4/5
The Divine Comedy
2/5
Casanova felt like Pulp parody. This feels like Magnetic Fields parody.
Missy Elliott
5/5
I hadn’t listened to Missy Elliot before this, and that’s on me.
The Strokes
5/5
Alexander 'Skip' Spence
4/5
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
I wouldn't hold out much hope for the tape deck.
Or the Creedence.
Fiona Apple
5/5
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.
Various Artists
5/5
Neil Young
5/5
Stereolab
4/5
Peter Frampton
4/5
Queens of the Stone Age
2/5
Bon Jovi
1/5
Leonard Cohen
4/5
This is just the same song ten times and I love it.
Public Enemy
5/5
SAULT
4/5
Tim Buckley
3/5
Sonic Youth
5/5
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.
Stevie Wonder
5/5
The fadeout on He's Misstra Know-It-All is comically long
Jimmy Smith
5/5
Oasis
3/5
Oasis just not my tempo. I have no nostalgic connection to this album (which seems to fuel a LOT of the praise in these ratings), it all sounds a bit samey, and every song could have a good 60-90 seconds shaved off.
Jean-Michel Jarre
2/5
Miles Davis
4/5
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!”
Alice In Chains
3/5
Bad Company
4/5
All I hear is Tom Scharpling hanging up on boring callers.
Wilco
5/5
Gorillaz
3/5
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.
Amy Winehouse
4/5
Pet Shop Boys
4/5
The Sonics
3/5
Steve Winwood
4/5
I should buy a boat.
George Jones
4/5
John Lennon
2/5
When it comes to the Beatles, it's hard to pick my favorite: George is probably my favorite person of the lot and an undersung contributor to every song, Paul has the best pop sensibility and I love his post-Beatles output the best, and Ringo may not have much but at least he's not John.
Muddy Waters
5/5
Roxy Music
5/5
Van Halen
4/5
Maybe hair metal wasn’t a mistake
Everything But The Girl
2/5
Is there a 90s uk sophistipop album this list doesn’t have?
Ella Fitzgerald
4/5
Michael Jackson
4/5
Crosby, Stills & Nash
4/5
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
Incredible Bongo Band
4/5
Buffalo Springfield
4/5
Erykah Badu
4/5
Kraftwerk
4/5
fuhn fuhn fuhn
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
XTC
3/5
Bob Dylan
5/5
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.
Beatles
4/5
Simon & Garfunkel
3/5
Goldfrapp
4/5
Bob Dylan
5/5
5/5
The Mamas & The Papas
4/5
Love
4/5
Booker T. & The MG's
3/5
Digital Underground
3/5
The Byrds
4/5
Norah Jones
3/5
Antony and the Johnsons
5/5
The Icarus Line
2/5
Thanks I hate it
The Auteurs
4/5
Marvin Gaye
5/5
The Roots
3/5
Count Basie & His Orchestra
3/5
Michael Kiwanuka
4/5
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.
Portishead
5/5
The National
4/5
The Rolling Stones
3/5
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.
ZZ Top
4/5
This is what every bar band thinks they sound like.
The Fall
4/5
The Lemonheads
3/5
Arcade Fire
5/5
Frank Sinatra
3/5
Jane's Addiction
2/5
Jane’s Addiction’s creative approach seems to be “if something’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.” Pump the brakes, boys.
Sepultura
4/5
Talvin Singh
2/5
When the yoga teacher puts on cooldown music that isn’t as peaceful as they think.
Kate Bush
5/5
Michael Jackson
4/5
4/5
Dusty Springfield
4/5
Lucinda Williams
3/5
The Electric Prunes
3/5
Sounds like Philly Boy Roy singing the Toonerville Trolley.
Arcade Fire
4/5
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
MGMT
3/5
Gil Scott-Heron
4/5
Patti Smith
5/5
Hawkwind
3/5
OutKast
5/5
Nine Inch Nails
4/5
Raekwon
4/5
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
4/5
Beatles
5/5
Iron Maiden
4/5
The Byrds
4/5
The Incredible String Band
2/5
I used to think our cultural distaste for the hippie movement was an overreaction. Then I listened to this album.
Tom Waits
5/5
Everybody who hated this listened before 11pm
David Bowie
4/5
Thin Lizzy
3/5
Negative stars for the stage banter.
Brian Eno
5/5
The Flying Burrito Brothers
4/5
Bruce Springsteen
3/5
The Clash
4/5
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
2/5
Ride
2/5
The Saints
2/5
Ministry
2/5
Frank Zappa
5/5
Eurythmics
3/5
Tortoise
4/5
Femi Kuti
4/5
Talking Heads
5/5
Cream
3/5
The British impulse to include a nursery rhyme or drinking song in every guitar-driven album.
The Who
5/5
What’s for tea daughtah?
Pantera
2/5
I am once more forced to acknowledge the existence of thrash.
Killing Joke
3/5
New York Dolls
3/5
The Cars
5/5
Ray Charles
4/5
TLC
4/5
The Louvin Brothers
2/5
Blue Cheer
3/5
Van Halen
4/5
The Smashing Pumpkins
4/5
Jimi Hendrix
5/5
The Chemical Brothers
3/5
Machito
4/5
The Stooges
4/5
Curtis Mayfield
5/5
Aphex Twin
4/5
Milton Nascimento
4/5
Jeru The Damaja
4/5
Hugh Masekela
4/5
The Hives
2/5
Jurassic 5
4/5
Pink Floyd
4/5
If you were going to put out an album in 1967 you had to have a song about a gnome.
Paul McCartney and Wings
5/5
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
5/5
System Of A Down
4/5
Soul II Soul
2/5
Kendrick Lamar
5/5
Bob Dylan
5/5
ZZ Top
3/5
Grateful Dead
3/5
Elliott Smith
5/5
Hüsker Dü
2/5
Meat Loaf
4/5
Marvin Gaye
4/5
Beastie Boys
4/5
Drive Like Jehu
2/5
Minor Threat
3/5
Nick Drake
3/5
Run-D.M.C.
4/5
Faith No More
2/5
The Avalanches
5/5
Charles Mingus
4/5
The Doors
3/5
ABBA
4/5
Siouxsie And The Banshees
5/5
Ute Lemper
1/5
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.
Supergrass
3/5
My Bloody Valentine
4/5
4/5
Isaac Hayes
3/5
Björk
3/5
Sebadoh
3/5
My favorite band named after an Adam Sandler catchphrase.
Throwing Muses
4/5
The Temptations
4/5
Radiohead
5/5
Arrested Development
3/5
Dexys Midnight Runners
3/5
PJ Harvey
4/5
The Jesus And Mary Chain
5/5
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
Elvis Costello
3/5
Lynyrd Skynyrd
5/5
Miles Davis
5/5
Herbie Hancock
5/5
Elvis Presley
3/5
The Verve
2/5
Some of these album selections really peg the book’s author as a British fella who came of age in the early 90s.
Queen
3/5
*see the title Ogre Battle.*
“Hey! They wrote a song about my divorce!”
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
3/5
Guns N' Roses
4/5
Deep Purple
5/5
Lana Del Rey
4/5
David Holmes
3/5
Big Black
4/5
Little Simz
4/5
Gang Of Four
3/5
Alanis Morissette
5/5
Roxy Music
4/5
Youssou N'Dour
4/5
5/5
The Last Shadow Puppets
2/5
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.
Mercury Rev
3/5
The Fall
3/5
Led Zeppelin
5/5
The The
3/5
Buddy Holly & The Crickets
5/5
Bonnie Raitt
5/5
Todd Rundgren
4/5
Travis
3/5
What if The Bends had no teeth?
The War On Drugs
4/5
Joy Division
5/5
Bauhaus
3/5
Rage Against The Machine
5/5
The Pogues
1/5
The album that gave us THE go-to karaoke song for guys who have make their drinking problem their personality.
Dolly Parton
3/5
The Modern Lovers
5/5
Leonard Cohen
4/5
Björk
4/5
Suicide
5/5
Frankie Frankie
Fugees
5/5
Janelle Monáe
5/5
Always been kinda salty that Janelle’s never really followed up on the promise of this record and has segued into straightforward pop.
Beyoncé
4/5
Fugazi
4/5
John Lee Hooker
3/5
Oh shit someone let the 80s get a hold of the blues, someone get that out of its mouth before someone gets hurt.
Pixies
5/5
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
3/5
Good album with a whopping four closing tracks.
Elton John
4/5
Al Green
4/5
CHIC
3/5
New Order
3/5
The Stone Roses
3/5
Anita Baker
4/5
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.
Serge Gainsbourg
3/5
Afrika Bambaataa
4/5
Screaming Trees
2/5
Honk shoo mimimimimi
Honk shoo mimimimimi
Violent Femmes
5/5
Roni Size
1/5
The Velvet Underground
5/5
Absolutely stunned to see people are all bottom-Drake meme with the banana album but somehow top-Drake meme with WL/WH.
Sly & The Family Stone
5/5
Blondie
3/5
Tracy Chapman
4/5
Lightning Bolt
2/5
Thundercat
3/5
Always found this album super sketchy, like you could drop ten tracks and expand five.
Def Leppard
3/5
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
5/5
The Byrds
3/5
Country Joe & The Fish
2/5
Traffic
3/5
Cypress Hill
3/5
Simon & Garfunkel
4/5
Metallica
2/5
Alice Cooper
4/5
I used to be such a sweet sweet thing
‘Til they
Got a holda me
Green Day
3/5
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.
Haircut 100
4/5
Earth, White Boys, and Fire
Justice
4/5
Metallica
2/5
…And Metallica for some (just not me)
A Tribe Called Quest
4/5
Crowded House
2/5
Woodsound
Motörhead
2/5
Depeche Mode
3/5
Massive Attack
3/5
Stephen Stills
4/5
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
5/5
Caetano Veloso
5/5
Bill Evans Trio
3/5
Kraftwerk
5/5
Echo And The Bunnymen
3/5
Stevie Wonder
4/5
Mudhoney
2/5
Jamiroquai
3/5
I'm didgin' out, Jerry!
King Crimson
5/5
The Jesus And Mary Chain
4/5
TV On The Radio
4/5
1/5
Is this a fuckin prank
Bob Marley & The Wailers
4/5
Isaac Hayes
5/5
The Crusaders
3/5
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.
The Go-Betweens
3/5
Einstürzende Neubauten
3/5
Beatles
5/5
The Verve
3/5
Bee Gees
2/5
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
5/5
Frank Sinatra
3/5
Dr. Dre
4/5
In these reviews I see a lot of assertions that the music and lyrics have aged poorly; the fact that these complaints echo the same pearl-clutching and overtures towards respectability politics which had talk show pundits demanding these thugs pull their pants up, it underlines timelessness of the project.
Cat Stevens
3/5
Nirvana
4/5
The Replacements
5/5
Judas Priest
3/5
Elliott Smith
4/5
Neu!
4/5
Linkin Park
2/5
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."
Ramones
5/5
The Monks
5/5
Higgle-dy - Piggle-dy, mfers
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
5/5
GZA
5/5
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.
Eminem
2/5
"Meet Jon, 38 years old. After being prompted by a coffee-table-book list of supposedly essential music, he's about to listen to an entire Eminem album, no skips. And suddenly his conscience comes into play:"
The Birthday Party
3/5
Madonna
4/5
Willie Colón & Rubén Blades
3/5
Joni Mitchell
5/5
The Sabres Of Paradise
2/5
1001 early 90s UK electronic albums to hear before you die.
The Streets
3/5
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.
The Police
3/5
Amy Winehouse
5/5
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.
a-ha
3/5
The Young Gods
1/5
Symphonic metal was a mistake.
Black Sabbath
5/5
Astor Piazzolla
2/5
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.
Fatboy Slim
4/5
Kraftwerk
5/5
Elegance and decadence
The Temptations
4/5
Def Leppard
3/5
Gym metal. Something to make you throw up devil horns on the stairmaster.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
3/5
Bing-a-bong-a-bong-a-bong Burbank
Gigga gigga, gigga gigga-Glendale
AC/DC
4/5
Soundgarden
3/5
Billy Bragg
4/5
Slipknot
1/5
GIT OFF MY LAWN
Radiohead
5/5
Dire Straits
3/5
The synth riff on Walk of Life is the auditory embodiment of forced fun.
Elvis Presley
4/5
Kacey Musgraves
3/5
Shack
2/5
wow, look: britpop
Sinead O'Connor
5/5
Hot damn
Led Zeppelin
5/5
Elbow
3/5
My first thought was “millennial Talk Talk.” After several songs, I felt like I was watching a trick commercial.
Adele
3/5
Two bangers followed by an Adele album
Miles Davis
5/5
Led Zeppelin
3/5
Pink Floyd
5/5
Carpenters
4/5
Rush
3/5
This is NOT Adele's 21 played forwards, then in reverse. It's some other thing.
Kanye West
4/5
Jacques Brel
3/5
The Smashing Pumpkins
5/5
Madness
3/5
Boards of Canada
4/5
The Doors
2/5
Jim Morrison: patron saint for deep thinkers whose big ideas start and end at weed legalization.
Kanye West
4/5
I've been cold turkey on Ye since, oh, 2018 or so; the Hitler apologism and emotional abuse of his ex is pretty unforgivable. But over the last week or two I've been a little hungry for something from Mr. West. This led me to a relisten of Life of Pablo, which I still find incredibly uneven, even if there are high highs (weirdly enough, the conversation on last.fm indicates many people consider Pablo to be his absolute peak. I'm not seeing it).
Anyway, Lou Reed was right about this one.
Paul Simon
4/5
Simon & Garfunkel
5/5
Pink Floyd
5/5
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.
Nas
5/5
Lupe Fiasco
3/5
You can tell a 00s hip-hop album by the intro, the lead single reprise, and the 11-minute outro.
The Killers
3/5
Miriam Makeba
5/5
Nina Simone
5/5
Ravi Shankar
4/5
Hot Chip
4/5
Ice Cube
4/5
LCD Soundsystem
3/5
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).
Abdullah Ibrahim
3/5
ABBA
4/5
Deep Purple
2/5
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.
Duke Ellington
4/5
Spiritualized
4/5
All rising action; a little overwhelming as a single listen.
The Blue Nile
3/5
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.
Otis Redding
4/5
Foo Fighters
4/5
The xx
5/5
This is 100% based on the music but the xx are one of the top bands that seem like they'd absolutely hate me.
Beastie Boys
5/5
Like Sam the butcher
I’m bringin Alice the meat
Solange
4/5
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.
Silver Jews
3/5
Bob Dylan
5/5
Klaxons
2/5
Man the 00s really were a time where music was doing too much.
The Rolling Stones
3/5
If this were the only Rolling Stones album it wouldn’t be on the list.
Django Django
4/5
William Orbit
2/5
Iron Maiden
3/5
I know this stuff’s controversial cause they talk about the debil but this sounds like phantom of the opera to me
Common
3/5
The Prodigy
4/5
Eric Clapton
1/5
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???
Dennis Wilson
3/5
Listen, I don't really like U2, but this was the U2 I was introduced to at the cusp of high school in 2000. I kinda like the singles, and I've been waiting to listen to this one until I was in the right mood. It's a sunny workday afternoon and my belly is full of paneer. This was the smooth adult contemporary pill I needed it to be.
PJ Harvey
3/5
Maybe needed headphones for this one.
Frank Ocean
5/5
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.
Can
4/5
Carole King
5/5
Lloyd Cole And The Commotions
2/5
Hey guys! Whoa, 80s Brit jingle-jangle, huh? All right.... Welp, see you later!
Nirvana
5/5
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.
Nick Drake
4/5
Napalm Death
2/5
kinda funny scrolling through the 28-track list and thinking "god, why is *every* album I must listen to before I die a bloated, 90-minute epic?"* So, props on having one of the longest tracklists here yet being one of the few albums below 55 minutes here.
*Seriously, the anglocentric aspect gets enough flak in these reviews, but the constant preference for BIG STATEMENT double albums deserves its share of consternation.
Led Zeppelin
5/5
Kate Bush
4/5
Sugar
2/5
Culture Club
3/5
Eagles
1/5
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.
Jazmine Sullivan
3/5
Jimi Hendrix
5/5
Destiny's Child
4/5
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.
Pentangle
3/5
Slayer
3/5
The Specials
4/5
Daft Punk
5/5
U2
4/5
Blur
3/5
Nanci Griffith
4/5
Damn y’all ain’t afraid of broadcasting the classism you’ve tied up with the country genre.
Paul Simon
5/5
N.E.R.D
2/5
Manic Street Preachers
4/5
Ali Farka Touré
3/5
Baaba Maal
5/5
The Only Ones
3/5
Lambchop
4/5
Michael Jackson
3/5
Jeff Buckley
5/5
Korn
1/5
John Coltrane
4/5
Frank Sinatra
3/5
absolutely brutal way to find out I’m not a swingin’ lover
Elvis Costello
5/5
Pink Floyd
5/5
Alice Cooper
4/5
Everything But The Girl
1/5
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The Monkees
4/5
The Stooges
4/5
fIREHOSE
2/5
The Kinks
4/5
Dead Kennedys
4/5
The Magnetic Fields
3/5
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.
Tricky
3/5
3/5
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.
FKA twigs
4/5
Britney Spears
3/5
I've let this one sit in my Unrated backlog for a year-plus now because listening seemed like a fraught situation. On the one hand, you have the ingrained sexism through which so many people - in the world, on this site, and me myself (I was 12: the culture demanded I either objectify or hate her, or both!) - view Britney and this album in particular. People are icky towards pop stars, and have been especially icky towards Britney.
On the other hand, there's the fact that I've just never come around on Britney, even as the drumbeat of time has vindicated her and literally rescued her from the conservatorship which has come to represent the shackling of a complicated person who's been lent zero grace. I've come back around on Madonna, Janet, Mariah, Celine...just not Britney.
So...all that aside? I don't like this! Baby One More Time is weird and gross! Sequencing on this album blows: stacking Crazy right after Baby just makes the two singles feel so interchangeable. Soda Pop is a freefall off a cliff quality and energy-wise.
I was about to complain about the length, as the Spotify version is 16 tracks and an hour long, but wikipedia tells me this is 42 minutes and 11 tracks; that's blissfully brief, considering the number of pop albums on this very list which run a full 70 minutes. You get an extra star for that, Brit.
Fairport Convention
4/5
Fred Neil
5/5
Steely Dan
3/5
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.
Chicago
4/5
The B-52's
5/5
Björk
4/5
Scott Walker
4/5
Van Morrison
3/5
3/5
Nitin Sawhney
2/5
Nirvana
5/5
2/5
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?”
Syd Barrett
1/5
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.
Television
5/5
Snoop Dogg
4/5
Missy Elliott
5/5
Morrissey
3/5
This is certainly the fourth Morrissey solo record I've heard before I die.
Paul McCartney
4/5
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?
Creedence Clearwater Revival
5/5
- 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?
M.I.A.
3/5
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
3/5
SZA
5/5
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.
Goldie
1/5
Inner city lyyyyyfe
Inner city
Pressure
Pressure
Pressure
Indistinguishable from the parodies which came after.
Songhoy Blues
4/5
Cee Lo Green
2/5
Quality truly is subjective huh
Pearl Jam
5/5
Astrud Gilberto
2/5
Buck Owens
3/5
Emmylou Harris
4/5
David Bowie
5/5
Bebel Gilberto
3/5
Mylo
3/5
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
Giant Sand
2/5
The Offspring
3/5
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
2/5
Super Furry Animals
5/5
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.
Beck
3/5
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.
U2
2/5
I hate hate hate Mysterious Ways. Boomer dudes will play this song at vow renewals for women who move in decidedly predictable ways.
3/5
A jazz combo falls down the world's longest flight of stairs, then sets up and starts jamming on the mezzanine.
Bob Dylan
4/5
Saint Etienne
3/5
Rufus Wainwright
3/5
Echo And The Bunnymen
4/5
MC Solaar
4/5
k.d. lang
3/5
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
4/5
Skepta
2/5
Paul Simon
4/5
Peter Tosh
4/5
Aretha Franklin
5/5
Les Rythmes Digitales
1/5
hey
you
what's that sound
everybody look what's goin down
hey
you
what's that sound
everybody look what's goin down
hey
you
what's that sound
everybody look what's goin down
hey
you
what's that sound
everybody look what's goin down
hey
you
what's that sound
everybody look what's goin down
hey
you
what's that sound
everybody look what's goin down
etc
Shuggie Otis
4/5
Anthrax
3/5
The painting of Among the Living has been the subject of discussion, because it was long believed to depict the character Rev. Henry Kane, the antagonist from the film Poltergeist II: The Other Side, while others thought it depicted Randall Flagg, the subject of the album's title track and the antagonist from the Stephen King novel The Stand.
Drummer Charlie Benante, who conceived the concept for the cover, explained: "It was just about how much evil there is amongst us. I wanted to show just the same type of person on the cover. The same type of people and then, the one person that was sticking out kind of giving you a wave, like a 'hi!'".
Talk Talk
4/5
Louis Prima
5/5
Steely Dan
4/5
I know this album best for its reputation as something you spin to test out a new turntable or sound system. Based on that reputation alone, this music was a total surprise.
I liked it, though. Especially when I recognized the De La sample.
The Cardigans
4/5
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
3/5
My Bloody Valentine
2/5
The Byrds
4/5
The Isley Brothers
5/5
I listened to this yesterday morning, then yesterday afternoon Rudolph Isley died; weird coincidence. Rip to a giant.
Elis Regina
2/5
The music is fine; however, this is a compilation reissue rather than an actual album, so the sequencing BLOWS and the production of each album clashes.
Suede
3/5
Tears For Fears
4/5
The Cure
5/5
Emmylou Harris
4/5
Lorde
3/5
I tried to get into this one when it came out, to little luck - I’m just outside the demographic for this. I enjoyed it more this time (I’ve embraced pop a lot more over the last six years), but…still tired of that Antonoff sound. Just so unnecessarily anthemic.
Living Colour
4/5
Pere Ubu
5/5
Tina Turner
4/5
Todd Rundgren
5/5
Laibach
2/5
Richard Hawley
3/5
An aggressively fine album.
Pavement
5/5
Joan Baez
4/5
The Psychedelic Furs
3/5
Mariah Carey
3/5
David Bowie
4/5
oi m8 wuzzat on yer clavicle
De La Soul
5/5
It was the 90s: every rap album needed an embarrassing “skit” where the artists had loud sex with like four women at once.
Grant Lee Buffalo
2/5
Go back to Stars Hollow, nerd
The Zutons
1/5
Ahh the nostalgia I have for this album. Joining the college radio station and getting excited to finally mainline groundbreaking new music. Buying this at a shop during turkey day break after hearing the energetic opening track and the big single. Realizing beyond the energetic opening track and the big single, there isn’t much here. Hearing the phrase “dipsy doodle” delivered with sincerity. Havana Gang Brawl. Havana Gang Brawl? Ha-van-a Gaaaaaaaang Brawl.
This is the first album (of 650 and counting) I’ve heard before and *don’t* like.
This whole thing sounds so *empty.* This album taught me 60s/70s nostalgia only gets you so far. Put The Coral on this list.
The Darkness
3/5
In the 00s we were dredging up the worst impulses of 70s and 80s rock and pretending they were charming if prefaced by a wink to the camera.
There's a reason this is on spotify's "Kegstand" playlist, and based on all the "me and my mates" nostalgia in these reviews, "Kegstand playlist" sums up my feelings about this record.
Belle & Sebastian
4/5
The Rolling Stones
4/5
John Grant
5/5
TV On The Radio
4/5
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
5/5
Deee-Lite
3/5
The Allman Brothers Band
3/5
Kings of Leon
2/5
someday we will have to answer for the garage rock revival
Butthole Surfers
4/5
Marvin Gaye
5/5
John Martyn
3/5
Beatles
5/5
Robbie Williams
2/5
Hey i never knew the Oasis brothers did a Smash Mouth album!
“I know a freaky lady named Cocaine Katie” is apparently my sleeper-assassin activation phrase.
Baaba Maal
4/5
Japan
3/5
Iron Butterfly
4/5
Marianne Faithfull
3/5
The Doors
3/5
ride the snake to the lake 🤷
Os Mutantes
5/5
Fever Ray
5/5
So wild when an album comes up, I think “oh I know this stone cold classic,” and then go to the reviews and people are basically braying like frickin donkeys.
Iggy Pop
4/5
Megadeth
3/5
Growing up I always considered Megadeth to be Metallica’s dumber younger brother. Which is saying something.
Slipknot
1/5
Tito Puente
5/5
Magazine
3/5
Holger Czukay
4/5
I’m like the last frame of that Vince McMahon meme when they’re doing Peter Lorre voices on that last track
Dizzee Rascal
3/5
Ryan Adams
1/5
I guess I get two chances (and hopefully just two) to say fuck Ryan Adams
Bill Callahan
4/5
The Cure
5/5
I found this long and gloomy the first time i bought it but i just keep coming back. A classic.
Wilco
5/5
Jeff Beck
2/5
She said you remind me of Rod Stewart when he was young
Yeah, you've got passion and you think that you're sexy
And all the punks think that you're dumb
Soft Machine
4/5
Incubus
2/5
minus a star for *reads again, wrinkles nose in disgust* Battlestar Scralatchtica.
Doves
4/5
Happy Mondays
3/5
well slap my ass and call me Garfield
The Kinks
5/5
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
5/5
I’m so sick of reviews on here that go “I hate this music because someone I hate liked it.” It’s such a charmless way to be.
Motörhead
3/5
Ash
2/5
John Prine
5/5
The Triffids
2/5
A lot more enjoyable than the average rating implies, but remarkably inessential nonetheless.
Hole
5/5
holy moly Hole is easily THE discovery for me off this list. I knew they were good but these are two perfect albums.
Liz Phair
5/5
Madonna
4/5
Sonic Youth
4/5
John Lennon
3/5
Funkadelic
5/5
2Pac
5/5
Dr. John
4/5
The Undertones
3/5
Fela Kuti
4/5
The Mothers Of Invention
5/5
Sheryl Crow
5/5
Kid Rock
1/5
it's telling that the first top review over one star is someone boosting their admittedly 3-star review to 5 because they assume people could only dislike this music off the artist's politics, and not because it sounds like the smell of burning hair. this premise is especially false, as it elides what a major piece of shit Kid Rock has proven himself to be outside of his political leanings (and how he's a rich boy who grew up on an estate in the north, not the southern trailer trash he purports to be); it also presupposes the music doesn't sound like the smell of burning hair. which it does.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
4/5
Nightmares On Wax
3/5
It’s not the fault of the music that trip hop is the aural landscape of the coffee house, that it lands at the nexus of cool and inoffensive. To me, it’s the sound of putting too much effort into seeming effortless.
Parliament
5/5
Siouxsie And The Banshees
4/5
Spiritualized
3/5
Christina Aguilera
3/5
Bert Jansch
4/5
The Who
4/5
The Teardrop Explodes
2/5
Bad Brains
4/5
The Beta Band
2/5
I’m irrationally resentful of the gulf between the pedigree of praise the Beta Band receives and how bland I find them.
Jimi Hendrix
5/5
Jefferson Airplane
4/5
Johnny Cash
4/5
The Clash
5/5
Depeche Mode
4/5
Lou Reed
5/5
The Smiths
3/5
Hole
5/5
Basement Jaxx
2/5
ptsd flashback: my freshman year suitemate has invited me over to listen to his “mash ups.” he worships tiesto. he thinks he’s the next girl talk.
he isn’t.
The Byrds
4/5
Jerry Lee Lewis
4/5
The Shamen
1/5
700+ albums into this list and now my spotify algorithm thinks i’m into the worst the uk has to offer.
Billie Holiday
4/5
Method Man
4/5
The Cult
2/5
Asks and answers the question “what if rock was boring?”
Sisters Of Mercy
3/5
Soft Cell
3/5
Simple Minds
3/5
Fatboy Slim
2/5
Taylor Swift
4/5
Scissor Sisters
5/5
So *this* is what indoctrinated me to glam
Cowboy Junkies
3/5
I’ve always been opposed to this band off the name alone. You’re…cowboys who are junkies? Junkies strung out on cowboys? It’s a name a guy gripped by midlife crisis would come up with.
Richard Thompson
5/5
Cyndi Lauper
5/5
Tori Amos
4/5
Leonard Cohen
4/5
Kanye West
3/5
Antisemitic, racist, misogynist…beyond these things holding me back from giving any sort of shit about this guy’s music like I used to…does it really belong on the list? This was the commercial breakthrough for an artist who went on to make better, larger statements; I wouldn’t call it essential in its own.
Jack White
2/5
Super inessential; while Lazaretto is a lot more assured and less concerned with the White Stripes legacy, I’d argue Jack White (love him as i do) hasn’t done anything to land on this list since Consolers of the Lonely (which isn’t on this list).
Gang Starr
4/5
Peter Gabriel
4/5
Cocteau Twins
5/5
Rahul Dev Burman
4/5
Robert Wyatt
4/5
The Waterboys
2/5
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
4/5
Kelela
3/5
The Undertones
4/5
The Notorious B.I.G.
3/5
Q-Tip
5/5
Khaled
3/5
Ok, here's one where I wish I'd had the book to reference because I'm curious what they had to say about it. I don't know...anything about Rai music, and while the wikipedia entry for Khaled indicates he's one of the most important musicians in the genre, I'm still wanting to contextualize this within the wider Rai genre and the Algerian musical landscape.
Alas, this is another album where the only non-credit/tracklist piece of info is the album's presence on this very list, and while there's room on this list for every Scottish winner of the Mercury Prize, there's only room for one Rai album.
Neil Young
5/5
Earth, Wind & Fire
5/5
George Michael
4/5
Red Hot Chili Peppers
3/5
gigga-gigga-glendale
The Black Keys
2/5
A rarity: an album with which I'm already familiar yet doubt belongs on the list. I was pretty into this album when it came out, but haven't gone back to it, especially as the Black Keys stretch their one trick across an expanding discography.
Listening ~15 years later, when the Black Keys have more fully embraced their place as generators of televised-sport/video-game-menu/truck-commercial background music, this don't age so good. It feels like every good song has a dark twin on the tracklist, and a pretty bold 8-track lp becomes a sludgy, 15-track death march.
My hypothesis is that whoever put this on the list is simply not immune from the whiteboy urge to adore anything with Danger Mouse on the credits. Nothing wrong with Danger Mouse; but tighten it up, white boys.
Rufus Wainwright
2/5
I feel like such a hater saying this, but I've never found Rufus Wainwright's songwriting to match his voice, quality-wise. The Art Teacher is something of a banger, as is Going to a Town; but overall his songs drone and lull the listener. And I *want* to like him! I mean it! He's folk music royalty, but ultimately he's only as good as the songs he's singing, and these are...songs, for sure.
It feels most likely this album and Want One were placed on this list for being complimentary works; I'd bet if you were a fan in 2004 this diptych appeared to be Wainwright planting a flag and establishing himself as an artist. Neither work stands on its own, nor do they form a cohesive whole.
4/5
Sonic Youth
4/5
Prefab Sprout
4/5
T. Rex
5/5
Ozomatli
1/5
certain albums come up and you think “great this is going to wreck my spotify algorithm”
music for people who have no other term than “world music” for music composed beyond their shores
LL Cool J
3/5
in the 90s it was illegal for a hip-hop album to run under sixty minutes
Stephen Stills
3/5
The Gun Club
4/5
Scritti Politti
1/5
there are certain points in your life where your behavior goes to far that you actually see yourself from the outside, as others see you. as a fan of 80s music listening to Scritti Politti, this is one of those moments. is this what it sounds like when i'm getting deep into Prince and Cyndi Lauper?
Tom Waits
4/5
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
3/5
Pavement
5/5
Neil Young
5/5
In terms of Neil's expressions of grief, I find On The Beach a lot gloomier, a depression so deep and boggy he's stopped struggling and just sings. Tonight's the Night is a different beast, more funeral party than wake: there's a fresh, gaping hole in our lives and we're going to take the day to drink, eat, and remember the good times before we wake tomorrow and pick back up the messy work of living.
I hope my funeral is how Tonight's the Night sounds.
The Thrills
1/5
Grandaddy wants their sound back.
The xx
4/5
David Bowie
5/5
The Beau Brummels
2/5
You know, the Beau Brummels. They were frequent guests on the Colgate Comedy Hour with Roy Donk. They did panels with Paul Julian, the guy who did the voice of the Road Runner. "Beep-beep."
Teenage Fanclub
3/5
The Dictators
4/5
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
4/5
Germs
3/5
Heaven 17
3/5
Public Image Ltd.
2/5
John Lydon: *listens to Joy Division once*
Aimee Mann
3/5
Cocteau Twins
5/5
Bob Marley & The Wailers
5/5
Suede
3/5
Ananda Shankar
3/5
The Adverts
3/5
Sonic Youth
4/5
Brian Wilson
4/5
It's very strange to be two decades out from this second attempt at capturing Smile, and especially strange to be a decade out from the (imo) successful reconstruction of the first attempt via The Smile Sessions. I prefer the Sessions sound more than I like BWPS, but I also appreciate the sound of a man, much older and wiser and with his feet more securely under him, trying to recapture the feeling of play and creativity.
Frankly it'd be awesome if Brian came back and did Smile again, one more time for the hellof it. But I'm glad we have this.
Roxy Music
4/5
Beth Orton
3/5
Truly, aggressively FINE.
Mott The Hoople
4/5
The Dandy Warhols
2/5
This may be the one review where I fully admit my experience of the music is colored by the baggage I bring to it. But of all the bands out there, the Dandy Warhols is probably the one I find most guilty of carrying cachets which overshadow the music.
It started with DIG! *the* seminal indie-rock documentary of the 00s, a time where the flexibility of shooting digital video tore open the concept of a documentary while also exposing the cracks and shortcomings of unlimited access and endless footage. Even though that film casts the Warhols as the steady-hand career musicians and the Brian Jonestown Massacre as the sloppy also-rans who were too brilliant to hold it together and break through, I walked away liking the Massacre more, both as an entity and in their output.
Initially engaging with their music at that point, in the mid-00s, the throwback sound of the Dandy's wasn't very novel, and in fact had aged into a relic of its own time: energetic space-rock whose verve is deflated by its disaffected lyrics and self-aware posturing; it's squarely a 90s thing. I was doing a lot of library shuffling at the time, so any concept of an entire Dandy Warhols album establishing a vibe was demolished. BRMC did this specific sound better, and the Massacre does the 70s throwback with a lot more attention and affection.
Fast-forward a few years and I've moved to Portland. These guys are local heroes in the sense that you can't escape their name on every other venue marquee and their lead singer helped torpedo water fluoridation in PDX about a decade ago. Courtney's letter about fluoridation is still on the band's website; it's a masterwork of \"I read somewhere\" conspiracy-mongering and a certain strain of the \"you can't tell me how to live my life\" libertarianism which overwhelms Portland's political discourse and hamstrings the leftist haven which outsiders assume it to be.
So, now, the music: it's fine. There's certainly a spacey vibe here, and the texture is more important than any specific riff, rhythm, or lyric. This is the kind of band that sings about heroin being \"so passe\" on a song with a keyboard riff that declares \"I know a guy who knows a guy who lived with a heroin junky.\"
In a previous review (of the Rolling Stones' debut) I asserted an album would not have made the list of not for the achievements of their later albums; their place in 1001 albums was decided by the cachet of their name. The Dandy Warhols have done them one better, entirely building their cachet off reminders of better, more interesting groups by naming themselves after an iconic artist and naming songs things like \"Lou Weed\" or \"Danzig With Myself.\" Strip away the references, and nothing remains.
Iggy Pop
5/5
Christina Aguilera
2/5
“This is my back to basics album.”
*releases an 80-minute double album with the most excessive mid-00s production possible*
Aretha Franklin
5/5
👑
Van Morrison
3/5
Elvis Presley
4/5
“…he’s white?”
Sarah Vaughan
4/5
Jethro Tull
4/5
John Cale
3/5
Solomon Burke
5/5
Common
3/5
Bruce Springsteen
5/5
just wrap your legs 'round these velvet rims
and strap your hands across my engines
David Crosby
3/5
Malcolm McLaren
3/5
the music dances between being energetically fun and straight-up anxiety-attack-inducing; and the World's Famous Supreme Team denotes its place in hip-hop history while the straight-up theft of African music makes one want to scratch it from the annals.
Blood, Sweat & Tears
4/5
Wu-Tang Clan
5/5
Dolly Parton
4/5
The United States Of America
3/5
Run-D.M.C.
5/5
Prince
5/5
Bee Gees
3/5
Flamin' Groovies
4/5
Marilyn Manson
1/5
Keith Jarrett
5/5
Buzzcocks
3/5
The Libertines
1/5
a throwback to a time when being a messy wastoid in tight clothes was proper replacement for a personality.
Throbbing Gristle
3/5
I just listened to my forty-somethingth late-90s british sophistipop album with a breakbeat under klezmer music for this list, so Throbbing Gristle was downright refreshing. This may be pure noise, and I may never put it on for casual listening (or even formal listening), but at least it has a place in music history and formalistically goes somewhere different.
There are many much worse albums on this list with scads of high ratings which boil down to "my mates and I loved to hear this in the pub!" This album gets points for being challenging, different, and not britpop or triphop from the 90s.
Orbital
2/5
Barry Adamson
2/5
Gary Numan
5/5
OutKast
4/5
The 13th Floor Elevators
4/5
Manu Chao
4/5
“this music makes me think of being a hungover tourist” thanks for the insight m8.
The Everly Brothers
4/5
James Taylor
4/5
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
4/5
k.d. lang
5/5
LTJ Bukem
1/5
“Logical Progression (also known as LTJ Bukem Presents Logical Progression) is a compilation album”
….you mean like a frickin playlist?? You want me to listen to a *playlist* before I go?
...a playlist of Mario Kart Menu Music??
Neil Young
5/5
Tom Waits
3/5
Since the ratings skew harsh between those who love Tom Waits and those who don't I'd like to posit, as a Tom Waits fan, that this album is pretty good but like five tracks too long. Some of my favorite Waits songs are here (Dirt in the Ground, Goin' out West, I Don't Wanna Grow Up, That Feel), but nobody wants The Ocean Doesn't Want Me.
Steely Dan
4/5
https://youtu.be/DJ5xJH64BR4?feature=shared
R.E.M.
5/5
Public Image Ltd.
1/5
Circle Jerks
3/5
JAY Z
4/5
y’all manage to find things to say about rap (bad *and* good) which make my eyes bleed
The Band
5/5
Tim Buckley
3/5
Fleetwood Mac
5/5
Terence Trent D'Arby
2/5
Boston
3/5
sorry, when it comes to rock bands whose logo is a giant multicolored flying saucer my loyalties lie squarely with the Electric Light Orchestra.
Steve Earle
3/5
Adele
2/5
You're not allowed, at 25, to talk about how much you miss being young.
Eminem
2/5
Even the most ostensibly self-reflective song on this album (Stan) manages to be mad homophobic. Swap this out with the Tenacious D album and you'll equally appease cis white millenial boys (such as myself) with a similar strain of sophomoric humor *and* deliver the message that it's good to tell a man you love him.
Christine and the Queens
3/5
Like most 2010s/post-publication albums on this list this album feels like a stab in the dark, a wild guess as to what will stand up to the test of time. Don't get me wrong: I liked this album when it came out, and a few songs pop up on my algorithm, but when the same year brought us:
Mitski's Be the Cowboy,
FJM's self-titled divorce masterpiece,
Snail Mail's Lush,
SOPHIE's The Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides,
Parquet Courts' Wide Awake,
Blood Orange's Negro Swan,
Robyn's Honey,
Low's Double Negative,
The Beths' Future Me Hates Me,
Earl Sweatshirt's Some Rap Songs,
etc
etc
etc
....and none of those make the list? You're just throwing darts, my man.
The Human League
3/5
Rocket From The Crypt
2/5
Music for skankin' and chooglin'
Stan Getz
5/5
Portishead
5/5
Pulp
4/5
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
5/5
George Harrison
5/5
graded on a curve (correctly ignoring the apple jam)
Pixies
5/5
Elton John
5/5
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
5/5
One of the best expressions of grief I've experienced. One of the great artistic statements of the twenty-first century, full stop.
Paul Weller
2/5
There's plenty of music worth praising for the production, but there's something about music where the production is the main point of praise 💀
Peter Gabriel
4/5
The Flaming Lips
3/5
This album is not bad. It's quite good, and has a couple stone-cold classics, though as a millenial of a certain age it's a bit ubiquitous and overexposed; and the Lips' continued milking of it and their back catalog mars my understanding of it as Essential and not simply A Good Thing We Can All Agree is Good. I bought The Soft Bulletin (more deserving of its spot on this list) and Transmissions From the Satellite Heart. I went to War With the Mystics and tried to herald Embryonic as a posible magnum opus (like many magnum opi, it's a good single album bulked out into an interminable double album); I have synced up Zaireeka and listened to the demos on that polka-dot toilet album. The Flaming Lips are a garage act which leveled up with a more refined sound, only to dash themselves upon the rocks of the festival circuit and have remained there, in a hermetically sealed mylar globe walking atop the audience in an all-too-literal metaphor.
I like them!
They're overrated!
Grateful Dead
2/5
Live, not lively.
The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy
1/5
Musically, it was surprising to find out Michael Franti was behind The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, as the industrial-ish sound is not what I know him for. Lyrically, it was no surprise at all, as Franti's whole bag is cramming as many political talking points into a song as possible without elaborating or illuminating with a defined point-of-view. I imagine any music videos from this album involved Franti in a lecture hall, tapping a pointer at every proper noun he's written on the board and relentlessly unrolling map after map.
Sorry, I just don't like this guy. I first heard of him at Sasquatch '08, when I was forced to sit through his set while waiting for the Mars Volta. Franti's set brought out all the parents and their kids; toddlers were made to dance and families gleefully engaged in the call-and-response of "Taxi Radio, oh-ay-oh!" The music's politicism was an aesthetic, the genre squarely under the anglo-centric umbrella of "World."
Michael Franti is the kind of guy whose wikipedia entry boasts that he never wears shoes, but also that he carries a pair of thin flip-flops for boarding planes. He's emblematic of a certain aggressive chill which my PDX heart despises: the kind of person who is so focused on positivity they impose their singular perspective on their environment and, in fact, oppress people with an obstinance which makes dissent messy and unwelcome.
Back to the album at hand: who is putting this on for any listening value? You enjoy Public Enemy but find the music too adventurous and the messaging too oblique? You're trying to reach across generations to your kid who likes rap, but you can't help characterizing the popular rappers as "thugs?" You want to evince the appearance of a "book reader," but don't have a book to carry around in public?
David Bowie
3/5
Madonna
2/5
One the one hand, this project has given me an excuse to engage with Madonna's career; on the other, I'm now well versed enough in Madonna to rank this album as quite inessential.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo
4/5
There's a clear backstory to every non-anglo-centric album on this list; the author's decision to include it is invariably due to that artist's association with a white artist (today it's Paul Simon), or some other general acceptance by the anglo mainstream (the shorthand I use and see often here is 'you'd find this in the starbucks checkout').
Everyone has their proclivities, very few of us make the effort to plumb the musical depths of specific cultures/countries/continents, but this book was a collaboration, and the list is ostensibly the result of a group effort to craft a broad, definitive list. So it's kinda nuts that this album is likely the only piece of music from South Africa to break through; that's a .1% slice of the pie.
Genesis
4/5
Tom Tom Club
4/5
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
5/5
Calexico
4/5
Tim Buckley
2/5
On this one Buckley uses his powers for evil.
10cc
3/5
*ctrl-f "Dilla"*
26 results.
Now 27.
Morrissey
2/5
You can tell just how unpopular America and the Iraq War were in 2004 because even Morrissey was getting praise for landing hits on us.
The The
3/5
When it's my time to go, will I have heard "Twilight of a Champion"???
T. Rex
5/5
New Order
4/5
The Vines
2/5
I always mix up the Vines and the Hives, which does neither group any favors. In the early aughts we were mad thirsty for straight-forward guitar rock and thusly forgave a lot of what tumbled out of garages across the globe. This doesn't strike me as the most authentic of the cohort: this is the Plain White Tees school of every song wanting to be a single, and the one breakout (Get Free) stands out as an aberration, the one idea that inexplicably stuck to the wall.
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
1/5
Deeply horny lyrics paired with the two least horny sounds: trombones and handclaps.
Radiohead
5/5
if not the best, at least *the* platonic, Radiohead album.
Skunk Anansie
2/5
Pere Ubu
3/5
Ramblin' Jack Elliott
4/5
Brian Eno
5/5
Big Star
4/5
Girls Against Boys
1/5
are you mad but don’t know what at? did you quit piano lessons to pick up the guitar, but you also didn’t learn to play that either?
Blur
4/5
i guess you gotta listen to thirty cruddy britpop albums to appreciate the britpop masterpiece huh
Don McLean
3/5
Animal Collective
4/5
This was my least favorite Animal Collective album for a real long time (I'd been on board since Sung Tongs and AC's trudge towards the mainstream coincided with my increasing snobbishness), but I think I was being stubborn.
Slint
5/5
Dirty Projectors
3/5
I think I liked this album a lot more before I discovered David Longstreth is a complete knob.
Doves
2/5
Fairport Convention
3/5
3/5
while this isn't the Liars album I'd put on this list, everyone else here would be equally mad at Drum’s Not Dead.
Joni Mitchell
5/5
Waylon Jennings
4/5
Underworld
2/5
King Crimson
4/5
Mekons
3/5
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
5/5
Hey, I get it: this is a challenging record. I doubt anyone listens to this regularly, "for fun." If I got in a car and the driver put Trout Mask Replica on the stereo I'd open the passenger door and tuck and roll my way to safety/freedom.
But if you're running through this list and barely make it through Frownland, then turn it off and slap one star and some snarky "ew the simpsons guy was wrong!" pap as a review; or even give this a full listen and still think this warrants a flat 1 and a kiss-off...you're not taking this very seriously and should have all your other reviews wiped from the site.
And if you think that's unfair: hey, I don't make the rules. 'Cause if I did, that would be one of them.
Spacemen 3
2/5
Thelonious Monk
5/5
Ray Price
3/5
Definitely holds the highs and lows of the era: the talking-over-the-lead-single introduction is silly and charming, even if its two minutes feel like seven. The lyrics of Sittin' and Thinkin'? Troubling. Deeply troubling.
Moby Grape
4/5
Queen Latifah
3/5
G. Love & Special Sauce
2/5
everyone knew a guy in college who “could freestyle” and it sounded like this
Kendrick Lamar
5/5
I was there for this one in 2012 and it is always a trip to go back to it and try to forget everything that came next. It’s such a perfect statement on its own, a self-portrait as well as a landscape of the streets which molded the subject. K-Dot leveled up so much after this; for some artists an album like this would be the result of the transformation, but he’s just in the chrysalis here.
Still wanna know about them motherfuckin dominoes
Morrissey
3/5
This is certainly the fourth Morrissey solo record I've heard before I die.
Led Zeppelin
5/5
Mike Ladd
3/5
Listening to this while working really rescued this album's rating. Yes, it's very slight. Yes, the rapping is dull, uninspired, and done no favors by the mix. Yes, every song begins with a halting, repetitive sample of a recognizable and better song. But I listened on headphones while working and found it to be utterly fine. Welcome to the Average, mister Ladd.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
4/5
Devendra Banhart
4/5
I was nervous about revisiting this one as Devendra Banhart and this album especially exemplify the highs and lows of the mid-00s Freak Folk movement, a style which I'd say broke into two halves: the rising electronicization/experimentation of your Animal Collectives, and the falling hey-ho stomp-clap faux-Appalachia of your Edward Sharpes and Fleet Foxeses. Simply uttering the name 'Devendra Banhart' evokes the most citified people you know tagging their Coachella photo dumps on facebook, sun-drenched images of them in big hats and bare feet, somehow backstage. You immediately picture someone weaving bird feathers into their heavily conditioned hair and always holding, despite having to deal directly with a flaky, shady weed connect.
But of course that wasn't me. *Of course.* I was *different,* my connection to this music was genuine. And there's the central paradox of the folk resurgence of the 00s: even if there were many people cosplaying at jugband authenticity and laundering the late-60s flower-child aesthetic for social media clout, that desire came from somewhere genuine: we were still reeling from 9/11 and the Iraq War, the we-won/kids-rule peacefulness of the 90s had been power-washed away and the Establishment/Right wing had ordered us all out of the pool. Some of this took the form of the NY Garage Rock revival, and some of it took the form of deeply earnest, poorly-recorded folk music.
I went to Los Angeles for college in fall '04, and despite not coming from very far, the culture clash was real: I wanted to be an Art Student, find some like minds; what I found was a rich-kids school, a repository for producers' kids to get DJ'ing out of their system before they simply followed in their parents' moneymaking footsteps. Dismayed by the scene, I dove deeper into music, and connecting with low-fi folk music was inevitable, as I was very focused on textures at the time.
Rejoicing in the Hands was my first introduction to Banhart, and I love so many individual tracks here. It was a pleasure to listen to it all in full; whatever feelings I may have about Banhart's pretensions or self-focus on image, there's a lot of joy here. You can feel the room texture here, you feel like you're in The Place as he's playing. And nothing overstays its welcome. I'm back in my dorm room, and in a not totally embarrassing way.
Of course the underground became overexposed and freak-folk was commodified; we're Millenials and thus easily marketed to, despite our avowed savviness. But I think this album still stands up on its own. I may look down my nose at recent attempts to nostalgia-fy the 00s, but this is a good example of something that was pretty good at the time and is still pretty good, actually.
George Michael
4/5
Dagmar Krause
2/5
I really didn't dig the production on this (I was surprised to read the instruments are real and not synthesized), and the significance of the project/songs feels historical rather than entertaining; which is fine, but leaves me wondering whether there's a more historical document of Eisler-Brecht songs? And maybe we could swap out this for the Slapp-Happy album, a more interesting, entertaining use of Krause's voice?
The Beta Band
2/5
This is the most embarrassing album cover on this list.
Sepultura
3/5
Wire
5/5
My Bloody Valentine
5/5
3/5
Kate Bush
4/5
Ice Cube
2/5
LCD Soundsystem
5/5
Sade
4/5
The Jam
4/5
Ghostface Killah
4/5
Joanna Newsom
5/5
"She sounds like Lisa Simpson." I'm playing Milk Eyed Mender for my college roommate. Scratch that: I've hijacked a bedroom at the party to play Joanna Newsom for several nonplussed people circled on the carpet, including my roommate, who has eviscerated her by comparing her voice to Lisa Simpson's.
This will always hang over my relationship with Joanna Newsom's music, and my total lack of surprise at the sub-3 average rating for this album (does anyone else consider 3 the turning point for average ratings here? Anything below feels like an insult, anything above feels like universal acceptance).
I've gotten into it before, but I was heavily alienated by my college experience: mix up some culture clash with self-doubt and mix in the late-teens impatience to Become the adult I'm still working at being twenty years later, and you get one unhappy camper. I dove deep into music; while my socal peers were deep into dance-rock (your Bloc Party's, your The Faints, your Arctic Monkeys), I was falling headfirst into Freak Folk.
Joanna Newsom was the woodsy poet who proudly kept some Yes and Gong records on the shelf. Lyrics were especially important to Young Me, and Joanna had lyrics for days. I carried Ys with me everywhere for the coming year: walking a California-winter college campus, flying back to Arizona for Thanksgiving and Christmas, temping for a loan company in rural Arizona for all of January, then zigzagging over Europe for four months as I studied abroad solely for an excuse to not be in California for that time, all of it culminating in my first long-term relationship with someone whose parents were mysteriously connected enough to obtain two tickets to Joanna's sold-out show at Walt Disney Concert hall in fall '07. This album is inextricable from my experiences.
It's a bit of a shame none of her music is on Spotify; I'm sure more people could benefit from accessing it more easily. It's kept me away, as well; I don't have it on vinyl (I will rectify this soon) so my only copies live on my laptop and ipod. It's probably been a decade since I've listened to Ys. But from "the meadowlark" on, I'm tuned back into a complex yet completely familiar part of myself. The music has so many nooks and crannies, touches and flourishes which I can nestle into like the couch in my childhood home.
I can't speak to this music from an objective place. But I sure hope that if I heard it for the first time today I'd take pause. That I'd come back to the person who used to sit for a moment as the final track ended, and then press play on track one once more.
Black Flag
4/5
Stevie Wonder
5/5
Slade
3/5
When you get to the Janis Joplin cover everything clicks and you realize what this is a lesser version of.
The Chemical Brothers
2/5
American Music Club
3/5
Sleepy, sometimes in a nice way. Bad Liquor spoils a nice, relaxing time.
Cornershop
2/5
you limeys really lost all sense of taste the moment they put a sitar over a breakbeat, huh
Moby
3/5
Hanoi Rocks
2/5
Venom
4/5
"Lay down your soul to the god's rock 'n' roooooolll!
unghhh....
unghhh...."
*gasps*
"Whooaooaoaauuuuaa BLACK METULLLL"
This actually grew on me as it went on; the unintentional silliness broke into intentional silliness. Is this music I'd play around the house or while driving? Not really. Would I be pretty excited if I walked into a bar and Venom was playing? Hell yeah.
addendum: this music reminded me of a passed-around supercut of *just* stage banter from a metal show; the singer ends every song by roaring "allright!" and talking about how hot it is. I was like "this music sounds like that banter." Well one internet search later it turns out that's Cronos from Venom. Here's a full extra star for that.
The Zombies
5/5
Dexys Midnight Runners
3/5
Feels like one which'll grow on me.
The Bees
1/5
Super slight, super inessential, not very cohesive. The fact that the big single is a toothless cover of a Brazilian song is points against the album.
Arcade Fire
4/5
The Pogues
2/5
"Are ya ready, kids?"
"Aye aye, captain!"
"I can't hear yooooooou!"
"AYE AYE, CAPTAIN!"
"ooooooooooh....who lives in a pineapple under the sea?"
Janet Jackson
4/5
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
Van Morrison
3/5
Didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did. Meaning I was ready to reject this like a bad donor organ, prepared to turn it off after song one. It's certainly a vibe, the Van Morrison vibe I can get with. Most everything else about the guy, who he is, a lot of the music he makes, it ain't for me.
Kings of Leon
2/5
It's telling that the catchiest song here seems like a cover.
Beatles
5/5
...is this my favorite Beatles album? It takes a lot of the digressions found in the more experimental albums and threads them together cleanly and pleasantly. Some of their poppiest songs are here, as well as their weirder little noodly bits.
Deerhunter
5/5
I hate it so very much when I scan the reviews for an album and the majority of positive comments are suffused with nostalgia. And yet here I am, about to do just that.
The only fault I can throw this album's way is that my spotify algorithm LOVES throwing He Would Have Laughed into every mix, but that's not the fault of the music.
Donovan
4/5
Hookworms
1/5
have I heard of this band?
*googles Hookworms*
oooooh that's how I know about Hookworms (derogatory).
This is a very good example of the middle ground of "separate the art from the artist;" in some cases an artist's actions are so unconscionable there's no quality of work good enough that one could look past them; other times the work is so undeniable one can enjoy it while also holding the artist's ugliness in the other hand; and, in this case, the music is so just-fine that one person can tell me the lead singer abused them and I'm absolutely fine never listening to Microshift again.
Dion
2/5
truly ahead of its time: it sounds like overly earnest cheese from the 80s, but it’s overly earnest cheese from the 70s!
Burning Spear
4/5
The Pharcyde
3/5
Electric Light Orchestra
4/5
This'll be interesting: an "I already know this album!" review. A "my nostalgic affection for this album blinders me from its flaws!" review. Finally, it's my turn. It's my Pogues, my Arctic Monkeys; you had to be there, and I *was!*
All joking a salad, I have a lot of love for this album; it was my first ELO cd, bought at Tower Records in the mid-00s after I saw Mr. Blue Sky in a Volkswagon commercial and the Eternal Sunshine trailer. I thought it was a Beatles song, funny how close to the truth I actually was.
Anyway, this is a four. It's not perfect: it's a bit long and overstuffed, some of the songs really don't work for me. But the highs are so dang high.
So I say this as a huge fan, who just saw them on their final tour a couple weeks ago: New World Record is *the* ELO album; Eldorado is my hot-take pick. Out of the Blue is their basic-b album.
White Denim
3/5
Ever since I saw White Denim live around 2014 I've held the same opinion about them: they're very talented and they're doing some really cool things; there's just a level of polish here that keeps me at arm's length.
The Police
3/5
Goldfrapp
2/5
Röyksopp
3/5
B.B. King
5/5
Neneh Cherry
2/5
Shivkumar Sharma
4/5
Willie Nelson
5/5
Gene Clark
4/5
Happy Mondays
2/5
I don't believe it took that many drugs to do this.
M.I.A.
2/5
The production is a bit grating and repetitive, the lyrical content seems way way thin (more mentions of politically-charged topics than actual political perspective being shared here), and M.I.A.'s quest to be the most frustrating person really all get in the way here. I liked Kala a lot when it came out, but it wore thin on me, and I especially went sour on M.I.A. after seeing her cruddy cruddy set at Sasquatch '08.
Ali Farka Touré
4/5
Traffic
3/5
"What'll ya have, kid?"
"Gimme....Zappa and the Mothers..."
"Coming right up!"
"Ah...but make it....too sincere."
*bartender drops his glass, the record on the jukebox scratches*
Dinosaur Jr.
4/5
Merle Haggard
4/5
The Yardbirds
3/5
Minutemen
4/5
Robert Wyatt
4/5
hey: we don't have to like all the same things. Taste is subjective, some music is just plain challenging.
but this album's low rating is a testament to closed-mindedness, a key indicator that many of the people who engaged with this project expected to be fed their favorite albums with a dollop of esteemed critical approval. And I'm not saying this as a fan. Shleep isn't all that challenging or offputting, yet here you all are, dunking on it as hard as possible. Are you here to explore the breadth of the musical world, or to be cute?
Queen
5/5
Finley Quaye
1/5
Jail. For everyone involved. At least five years in jail for this.
Björk
4/5
When I was in seventh grade we had to pick a country to spend the entire year studying: each month we would write a report on an aspect of their culture, history, cuisine, etc etc.
I picked Iceland, probably because I liked the flag. I distinctly remember buying Bjork's Debut at Sam Goody, as well as Weird Al's Bad Hair Day, for my own personal research.
A highlight of that grade (a cruddy time as middle school can only be) was our final presentation in the gym, where we each set up booths with all our crafts and research. I forget what food I served, but I remember playing Human Behaviour on a loop and infuriating my neighbor, Ireland.
Adam & The Ants
3/5
Coldcut
2/5
I was feeling good with this generic house music at first but after a certain point I realized it was making me irrationally angry. I think too many samples is not enough samples but this is too ding dang busy!
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
3/5
Ms. Dynamite
2/5
"Is it pretty unremarkable despite its Mercury Prize win? Is it overlong? Sign me up!"
- Robert Dimery
Drive-By Truckers
2/5
someone needs to sit Dimery down and explain that a double album isn't inherently essential.
Radiohead
4/5
Mj Cole
1/5
they had a live DJ at the Gap today.
he was shite.
Lauryn Hill
4/5
David Ackles
4/5
Big Star
4/5
Kings of Leon
2/5
two too many Kings of Leon albums if you ask me.
Suzanne Vega
4/5
Dusty Springfield
5/5
Peter Gabriel
4/5
John Martyn
3/5
The Coral
2/5
Magic and Medicine was the The Coral album I liked more during college in the mid-00s; their sound aged pretty lousily, as a lot of throwback music can tend to do. So take a wild guess how I feel about my less-favored album by a group I haven't bothered to think about for twenty years.
When I saw the Zutons on here I was like “get The Coral on here;” now I’m like burn em all
Gotan Project
3/5
The Good, The Bad & The Queen
2/5
Dwight Yoakam
4/5
David Gray
3/5
David Bowie
3/5
Harry Nilsson
5/5
Primal Scream
2/5
The Mothers Of Invention
5/5
Sorry, I love this.
Randy Newman
4/5
Primal Scream
3/5
this thing is all over the place
Koffi Olomide
2/5
What pleasant music; it's always great when this list drifts outside the anglo influence. Now to open up the artist's wikipedia page, but not before I take a big sip of hot coffee....
Fishbone
2/5
Sister Sledge
5/5
Justin Timberlake
1/5
Quicksilver Messenger Service
3/5
The White Stripes
3/5
Sad to say I'm happy this one isn't on the list; the two Stripes albums we've got are great, and this one just didn't age well for me. It's still White Stripes, so we're looking at a bad pizza situation: there's still great flavor here.
But the toy pianos? The marimba? Take Take Take??? Some impulses must be reined in.
The Charlatans
1/5
I’m not surprised there’s a more talented Oasis out there, however I am surprised that there’s a more boring one.
Meat Puppets
3/5
Talking Heads
5/5
Stevie Wonder
5/5
Supertramp
3/5
Aerosmith
2/5
the cars are fuckin
Joe Ely
2/5
Beach House
5/5
The KLF
3/5
Willie Nelson
5/5
The Associates
2/5
"No" sounds like the intro to Tim Curry's rendition of "Everyone Knows It's Halloween" from The Worst Witch:
https://youtu.be/SSZYVFc6BqI?feature=shared&t=52
We'll carve pumpkin fay-ceeeess
Bruce Springsteen
3/5
Not my favorite Bruce!
Sabu
3/5
Gillian Welch
4/5
Stan Getz
4/5
The Beach Boys
4/5
Gram Parsons
4/5
Eagles
3/5
A hotel you can't check out of isn't a hotel, dude. That's like some other thing.
Sleater-Kinney
4/5
The Velvet Underground
5/5
The Cramps
5/5
Metallica
3/5
Manic Street Preachers
3/5
5/5
Small Faces
2/5
what did you just call me
Ian Dury
4/5
Beck
5/5
Going down to Houston,
To the house of dance.
Going down to Houston,
To get me some pants.
Black Sabbath
5/5
Jane Weaver
4/5
Lenny Kravitz
2/5
This shit's so dopey.
Sufjan Stevens
5/5
50 Cent
3/5
Once again y'all manage to say some of the most heinous, mask-off garbage about rap music. And I don't even like this album much.
Fun Lovin' Criminals
2/5
Rap for people who don't usually like rap
Stoner music for people who haven't tried weed yet
Green Day
4/5
Brian Eno
5/5
Aerosmith
2/5
The Residents
3/5
Sparks
5/5
Yes
5/5
must be italian
CHVRCHES
2/5
Man, we were really into anthemic synthpop in the early 2010s. It feels like the music is constantly reaching for a sense of deep emotion while remaining incredibly cold at the same time.
Can
5/5
R.E.M.
5/5