Great pop album with diverse musical styles. Not the happiest lyrics. Excellent contribution of Neneh Cherry on Slow Train to Dawn

My favorite Bowie album from the Berlin period. The instrumentals are not as great as on Low (but still good) . The songs with vocals combined with the incredible "windenhurst" guitar play of Robert Fripp make this album stand out. The strange and distorted sounds and melodies of Black Out, Beauty and the Beast and Joe the Lion are thrilling. The song Heroes is pure magic.

I always thought I didn’t like Iron Maiden apart from some songs. This album with Paul Di'Anno on vocals took me by surprise. Later on I realised Bruce Dickinson needed some getting used to, but he’s also great.

This album is a true highlight in the history of songwriting. It does not provide that much innovation, but the sheer craftmanship cannot be denied. Songs like "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart", "War on War", "Jesus, Etc.", "Ashes of American Flags", "Heavy Metal Drummer", "I'm the Man Who Loves You", "Pot Kettle Black" and "Reservations" are amazing. Yes, that is almost all of the songs. The other ones are "just" great and live all these songs are even better. One of the true classic albums!

Very disappointing to get some bilingual version of a bollywood soundtrack with mediocre songs. This list assumes we cannot deal with the real non-western (uk/usa) version of indian music. So it should be bilingual or made with western musicians. It makes me sad.

I like prog rock like King Crimson, Genesis and Pink Floyd, but Yes is much too pretentious and boring. It’s all thought out and missing any form of spontaneity or emotion.

Great old school hiphop

A masterpiece by Maxwell and yes, the boy can sing.

A fantastic dance album with a lot of distorted sounds that make it also appealing to a rock orientated audience.

I always thought I didn’t like Iron Maiden apart from some songs. This album with Paul Di'Anno on vocals took me by surprise. Later on I realised Bruce Dickinson needed some getting used to, but he’s also great.

Song number 1and 4 are ok, the rest is mediocre, boring, slick and emotionless.

Nice old school garagerock, but a lack of original material.

One of the best metal albums. Certainly Fucking Hostile and Walk are incredible.

At the time I was really impressed, but nowadays the weak vocals tend to annoy me a bit.

One of the best albums ever made. Covers nearly every style and genre and excels in it. Also one of the few double albums that would not improve by turning it into a single one.

Fagen and Becker named the band after a "revolutionary" steam-powered dildo mentioned in the William S. Burroughs novel Naked Lunch. ROFL. One of the bands i never listened to before this challenge, what a mistake…

The only mambo album on the list is a quite mediocre one.

Good album, but hardly a real classic. Still 4 stars for being comfort food for my ears.

An all-time jazz classic by saxophonist John Coltrane.

This album consists of great songs (Goldfinger, Girl From Mars, Kung Fu) played with lots of energy and joy.

A big fat No to Yes certainly to this boring example.

Important album for drum and bass music. Timeless: Inner City Life/Pressure/Jah and Angel are great songs. I attend a concert of his at the time as support act for Björk.

One of my favorite electronic music albums, reissuid with Born Slippy on it. Taking concepts of Techno and Jungle and slowing it down to an intelligent, but not soulless sound.

Outstanding debut album with the outstanding Take Me Out song (I like the Scissor Sisters cover version even more). Matinée and Michael are also splendid.

Ryan Adams is not a pleasant guy. I saw him live this year and it was a bummer to see a guy on stage that was mainly complaining about the audience and making very depressing cynical jokes. Still Heartbreaker and Gold are terrific albums with great songs.

One of the many 1960s albums on the list that does not leave a strong impression on me. It's fine, not good or great.

The last album of Leonard Cohen is about saying goodbye and leaving it all behind. Very impressive with moving lyrics and a voice so low and broken it is almost not human anymore.

I tried Listen Without Prejudice and it was quite boring with mediocre songs (unlike the Faith album)

An unpleasant and boring 1960s pop album.

The album starts and ends and in between there is some electronic music that sounds indistinctive and generic.

Great debut album with the hits "Welcome to the Jungle", "Paradise City", and "Sweet Child o' Mine". Fantastic guitar work by Slash.

Live albums should not be on this list, but this is a nice one.

I don't like this kind of bland and MOR pop. Also it sounds really outdated and the songs are of poor quality.

An ok album of singer-songwriter Beth Orton. A bit bland and nothing sticks.

Fire Of Love is a fine rock album of The Gun Club. I prefer The Las Vegas Story album which has a wider range of styles and better songs.

Before listening to it again after a long time I thought Slippery When Wet would be more fun and enjoyable. I guess it did not age well.

This is another ska album of The Specials with fine songs, but the quality and energy compared to their debut album makes it a bit disappointing.

Awful smooth and overproduced 1980s soul that aged terribly.

Good classic Neil Young rock album. Not the one I most prefer compared to the other albums he produced in the 1970s.

Apart from the hit singles "Money's Too Tight (to Mention)" and "Holding Back the Years" the album lacks good songs. The production and overall sound has aged better than expected and the vocals are still fantastic.

One of the best albums in this list. Great performance, fantastic songs and an important shift in music for Miles Davis and Jazz Music as a whole.

Avantgarde folky pop album by weirdo John Martyn. It takes some getting used to, but rewards you in a great way for your efforts. I like the album cover too.

Classic West Coast hip hop album by The Pharcyde. Playful and comical eccentric lyrics and incredible rapping skills.

Good indie rock album. They have a distinctive own style of music and fine songs.

Debut studio album by PJ Harvey with great personal songs. I back this quote of a critic: "a volcano and the scorched earth surrounding it, ripped with landsliding guitars, cowpunk mania, twisted blues, profound extremes, and power chords that hit like boulders dropped from on high."

While I like Jeff Buckley a lot, the music of his father does not strike me as interesting. I find his mediocre folk/pop songwriting and performance rather boring.

Of course "Freddie's Dead" is a great cover. This rest over this album is fine, but I like The Reality of My Surroundings a whole lot better. Wrong album pick.

Great third album with power pop songs by Big Star. Their previous two albums have more highlights, but this one has a more constant quality.

My favorite The Fall album with several post-punk classics on it. Mark E. Smith is screaming and talking about all of his frustrations as usually. And frustrated he is...

Great slow mystical debut album post-rock album by Sigur Rós. The lyrics are in Icelandic, but also in their own gibberish language. Not that a would notice which is in which language. The cello-bowed guitar work gives the album a very specific sound.

The album title describes the state the album exists in with a mix of space rock and brit pop/rock. It's a lot of fun, but maybe a bit long.

I enjoyed this album by Van Morrison. The songs are great and of consistent quality. His vocal performance is amazing.

Some good songs, al lot of mediocre ones, 3 stars for the fabulous guitarplay

Very important album for electronic music, but also very outdated and a drag to listen to

Live albums should not be on this list. It's an rather generic jazz album by singer Sarah Vaughan. Nothing wrong, nothing remarkable about it (Why is it on this list).

It's a good soul album by Marvin Gaye, but it lacks the real blockbuster songs that are on What's Going On.

Great metal album by Faith No More with classics like "From Out of Nowhere", "Epic" and "Falling to Pieces". As always great guitar riffs and the vocals are excellent.

"Cybele's Reverie is an excellent song with French lyrics. The other experimental pop is not that bad either.

This East Coast hip hop album consists of legendary classics. Sadly the only real album by The Notorious B.I.G.

The "Sweet Baby James" song is a classic. The other songs are so so on this folk rock album by James Taylor.

I have no idea why this album is on the list and the earlier Madonna albums, f.e. Like a Virgin, are not. I also do not like the song Like a Prayer that much. Cherish and Express Yourself are catchy tunes though.

Waterfalls is a catchy tune, but not a good one. The other songs on this TLC album are forgettable.

On their second album you can already get an impression of the things that will make Queen of of the greatest rock bands later on. This album is not nearly on the level they will achieve years later.

This debut solo album of Method Man is a good album. Not as great as Wu-Tang Clan, but great anyway. Nice east coast hip hop of a rap arist with a perfect rhythm and flow. Dark music support the distorted lyrics.

Live albums should not be on the list as these are more or less greatest hits. But if you put one on it, this is a good candidate. Good banging hard rock by a band with a lot of drive in their performance.

I remember this as a better album than it is nowadays. It's a nice collection of proper punk rock songs. The problem is that there are so many such albums. It does not really stand out.

This is probably the best Iron Maiden album. Great Heavy Metal songs with a band in peak form. Run to the Hills and The Number of the Beast are all-time metal classics.

A true classic album with amazing songs. The performance of the band is excellent. It sounds like everyone has had a long night and lots of booze while every note is played spot on.

Ballads and blues from the gutter. Nobody can visualize the moment that you are in a pub at closing time drunk enough to kiss someone you would try to avoid at daytime like Tom Waits can.

An album with covers of songs that were for the most part performed by black artists earlier. That is not a problem or a crime, but the versions on album do not add anything.

EVOL is the start of the top years of Sonic Youth. Great post-punk and noise, soundscapes with distorted and detuned, screeching guitar noises. A bit darker atmosphere than on their later albums.

Nice album by The Verve. I only knew Urban Hymns. Good brit pop songs, nothing really stands out though.

Uninteresting generic 1970s guitar rock. I like their later work much better, this is a bad Rolling Stones rip-off.

The debut album of Björk with eclectic pop songs like she already made with the Sugar Cubes. The material and performance matured and Nellee Hooper also added some dance elements. Very impressive record!

Nice garage rock album. I like the raw production and the combined vocals of the female and male singer.

Eclectic sample album of David Byrne and Brian Eno. All kinds of musical styles from all over the world combined to danceable songs with spoken word vocals samples from all kinds of sources. Intelligent, but also very funny.

Though I like rai, I never really got Khaleb. His music is too generic and slick compared to other musicians in this genre (like Cheb Mami). This album is not bad.

Great rock album by Manic Street Preachers with the sublime songs A Design for Life and Everything Must Go.

The third album by Portishead was release 13 years after their debut album Dummy. The albums shows various musical genres (not only trip hop anymore). The music is laid back, slowly progressing and full of grandeur.

I never heard of William Orbit of this Strange Cargo III album. I don't think it's something you must listen to before you die, but it was a nice break between all the pop and rock albums filling up this list.

The debut album of Chicago was a disappointment to me. Most of the songs are dragging on in an uninspired jazz rock format.

I expected to like this album more than I did in the end. The vocals are great, but the songs are all covers and the k.d. lang versions don't really stand out. The instrumentation and production are somewhere between bland and boring.

This fith album of Beck is a blast. Great alternative rock songs (Devils Haircut, Where It's At) on an album that's catchy as hell.

Very impressive rock 'n roll album by Buddy Holly considering he was only 20 years old at the time. Several songs are rock standards now (That'll Be the Day, Not Fade Away). What would have become of him if...

Lucinda Williams has made a great country album from a singer songwriter point. The songs are solid and the production is spot on.

This country album aged very poorly. Maybe in 1967 these lyrics were interesting, but in 2024 they are boring as hell.

This debut album of Pink Floyd contains psychedelic mostly written by Syd Barrett. It is a good album, but sounds a bit dated now. Also the legend of Syd Barrett (due to the very sad life story) has grown bigger than his contribution to music history.

I like Jane's Addiction as a band and Nothing's Shocking and various individual songs, but this album is merely ok to me. The songs are not that outstanding and the production is a bit messy.

One Meatloaf song at the time like Paradise by the Dashboard Light is ok, an album full of wagnerian rock is a crime. Over the top is an understatement. If Phil Spector makes Wall of Sound productions, what should we call what Steinman does?

Broken English is considered the best album of Marianne Faithfull. If the songs are not written by the artist itself most of the time the artist has great qualities in performance (vocals, instrumentation, deliverance). I cannot find these on this record. It's ok and the songs don't stand out either.

Tina Turner is a fantastic singer and performer, but she depends on songs of others. Private Dancer and What's Love Got to Do with It are good songs written for this album. The cover of I Can't Stand the Rain (Ann Peebles) is ok. The covers of 1984 (David Bowie) and Let's Stay Together (Al Green) are poor. Other songs are filler.

Fantastic album by the king of pop. Almost every song was a hit single as they all are great catchy tunes. Top production by Quincy Jones.

The best solo album of an ex-Beatle. Several great rock and pop songs (Jealous Guy, Imagine, I Don't Want to be Aa Soldier, Gimme Some Truth) and a consistent production.

The last classic album by the Beatles. On this one the contribution of George Harrison is larger (Because, Here Comes The Sun, Something). Every song is sublime.

Station to Station is a funky David Bowie rock album containing various classics like the title song, Golden Years, TVC 15 and Stay. The sound of the album is certainly not warm and appealing, but that fits the lyrics and the alien impression of The Man who fell to Earth very well. Wild is the Wind is a beautiful cover and Word on a Wing is a good ballad too.

If I Should Fall From Grace With God is the magnus opum of Shane MacGowan. It a collection of classic songs touching all styles within the Celtic folk rock punk genre. Fairytale of New York and Fiesta sound exactly as the titles predict and show the diversity of this album full of high quality material.

Third Beatles album and the one that changed music history by using complex compositions and complicated chords in pop/rock songs (like the famous opening chord of A Hard Day's Night). Also the first Beatles album with only original material and no covers.

I have no idea why this album of Prefab Sprout is on the list. Uninteresting jazz pop from the 1980s and very very boring.

The disco Bee Gees are a guilty pleasure of mine. The pre-disco band is not. All songs are mediocre, down tempo ballads and it goes on and on and on… 😱

Metallica has made great music, but this combination with an orchestra transforms their trash metal music into MOR daddy rock.

One of the two albums of post-punk band Joy Division on this list. You can feel the tragedy and desolation of Ian Curtis and it hits so hard.

"The title refers to a fever suffered by sailors during long hot voyages". Seems to me the album has the same effect on me. Is an album of the 1001 you SHOULD NOT hear added to the MUST hear list? We will never know, but this is a 1980s rock album and production you can certainly live and die without.

Beautiful small rock and folk album by Bruce Springsteen following the big stadium rock of Born in the USA. None of the songs really stands out, but the consistency of the quality makes it great nonetheless.

An ok Paul Simon album, but no idea why it is on this list. Mostly harmless and not bad.

One of my favorite albums ever. The songwriting is so impressive and also the vocal delivery is fantastic. Rick Wakeman also provides impressive piano play making the songs (Changes, Oh You Pretty Things and Live On Mars) some of the best Bowie has created.

ABBA are a miss and hit band to me. This is a miss. No outstanding songs or hits and the production is much to smooth.

Nice electronic album supporting the film like a soundtrack should do. It does not contain any remarkable songs apart from Playground Love.

"What Have I Done to Deserve This?" is the question that i asked myself when i started listening. In the end it's not that bad. Three good songs ("What Have I Done to Deserve This?", "Rent" and "It's a Sin") and some filler.

It's a shame Evan Dando cannot sing properly. A few of the better songs can withstand his bland performance, but half of the songs are not that good and the limitations of singer and band start to annoy.

The definitive country live album. I know live albums should not be on the list, but this is not a greatest hits collectio. It is a concept album about criminal intent and as such the location location location of the concert was outstanding. Johnny Cash and the band are in top form. I like Folsom Prison a bit better, but I always considered these as a combined live album experience.

I agree (as a fan) that there are too many Elvis Costello albums on this list. I would rate this one 6.5/10. There are are couple of good pop songs on it, but nothing stands out or is remarkable.

When I was young in the 1980s, I always disliked The Cure due to the pathetic looks of Smith and most of all because my elder sister was a fan. Boy, I was wrong. What great music this is! (and maybe wrong about his looks at the time too)

Call of the Valley was made to create an album of classical indian music shaped in a form to appeal to a western audience. It was a commercial, not an artistic success. While far better classical indian music exists, it was chosen because of the easier listening experience, making it an awful choice.

What a pleasant surprise this is! Early garage rock and/or proto-punk. A band with an image: the monk haircut. Consisting of American soldiers based in Germany. The songs are great, the lyrics funny and lots of energy!

This is a collection of MOR daddy rock power rock songs. I would not even play this in an elevator.

The music is uninteresting and the production aged poorly. The misogynic lyrics are appealing. I really like hip hop and really dislike this album.

It seems H.M.S. Fable is only on the list because it is Brit-pop from the UK. It is boring as hell and the compositions are awful. So much great music is made in the 1990s. Why is this here?

One good song (Show Me The Way) does not make a good album. Frampton is a great guitar player and the talk box effect is fun (for a while). The rest of the songs are mediocre and MOR rock.

I understand a lot of samples are taken from this album and Bongo Rock is a great song and Apache a good cover. The rest is forgettable

Ryan Adams is not a pleasant guy. I saw him live this year and it was a bummer to see a guy on stage that was mainly complaining about the audience and making very depressing cynical jokes. Still Heartbreaker and Gold are terrific albums with great songs.

This bunch of very long overproduced vocal stretches without any melodic or lyrical content was a real waste of my time.

I would like to like this, because of the sadness of the story and the lost genius turning mad is an interesting concept. The album consists of half finished songs with some good ideas and mediocre performance. Only "Golden Hair" (not on the original release) is a great song.

This is the ultimate protopunk album. Iggy shouted the lyrics to a mic hanging close the the ceiling. The production is a great mess with all instruments affecting the recordings of the other instruments. Iggy thought Bowie f**cked up, but from the original tapes nothing better can be recovered and it should not. This is the ultimate pre-punk statement in music, lyrics and production: mess, agression, dispair. Just the way we like it and it should be!

Although there are a lot (maybe too many) Costello albums on the list, this one should certainly on it with Chelsea and Pump it up

Grandmaster Flash is one of hiphop greatest and has made fantastic singles. But this is a full album consisting of two of those songs and the rest is filler.

Let Love Rule was a pleasant surprise in 1989 and has aged well. Nothing innovating about the music or lyrics, but it just makes you happy.

What's not to like about this southern rock opera? Maybe it's length. Great songs, great musicians and great lyrics.

One great song, but the rest of the album is uninteresting.

I think this is the most awful album I’ve ever heard. The singing and music is often off-tone. Songs are uninspiring and bland. I can’t understand why it is on this list. Maybe because it’s from the 60’s and everything from that area is supposed to be worth listening to? 🤢

This album has not aged very well. Specifically the keyboard sounds are outdated. The songs are ok though.

Yet another Britpop album. It is ok. I really like Why Does It Always Rain on Me? and Turn.

The album has one truly great song in Red Alert. The rest is mediocre. The album cover always reminds me of a jar of hotdog sausages.

A beautiful album by the Queen of Soul. Several classics like Respect, A Change Is Gonna Come, Do Right Woman, Do Right Man.

The best lo-fi album ever made. Great songs that are often too short and merely sketches of something even greater.

A decent album by a great singer that does not write his own material. It contains only a few bangers (Fever, Such a Night, Reconsider Baby)

Groove Is in the Heart is a great song, but the rest of the album is filler material.

The best album of one of my favorite bands. Massive Attack created an album full of ideas, great sounds and innovation.

Maggie May is great, Rod Stewart has a incredible voice, but the rest of the album consists of mediocre songs and covers.

I do not like Morrissey as a person, though most of his music is good. Vauxhall And I is an exception. I do not understand why you would listen to this instead of his other material.

Not only Psycho Killer, but also the rest of the album show a band on the break of becoming one of the best (and is nearly there).

The debut album of The Specials is a blast. Energetic pointy British ska songs.