I guess I mistakenly thought I knew Johnny Cash, mostly through the radio and general consciousness, and I was not prepared for how incredible and just fuckin metal this album is. This dude is up there singing about murdering dudes to applause from murderers. if your black metal isn't this black, go the fuck home.

back in the 70s, steven tyler fucked an underaged groupie, and proceeded to literally adopt her as his legal daughter so he could keep fucking this child. he can stuff his big ten inch up his own ass for all i care.

this is the best elvis costello album i've ever heard

another album where only half the songs are good but like... I think all of us had the simultaneous realization that Rod Stewart kind of slaps and we're unsure how to handle this information.

the bla's

maggot brain.

.5 points for Blues for Sister Someone for sounding like Lenny tried to cover Venus in Furs based on someone describing the song to him, and instead it came out sounding like the worst song Led Zeppelin never wrote

too indulgent to be punk and not catchy enough to be pop, great aesthetics and sound somewhat let down by meandering compositions

an old friend once told me that his fiancee's favorite band was a-ha and I laughed before realizing he was serious and they were planning a trip to europe to see them play live. this was like 2003. the marriage didn't work out but do you really want to marry someone whose favorite band's best album mostly just sounds like songs Duran Duran didn't think were good enough to release?

my favorite phase in a lot of rock bands is that phase where their ambition exceeds their abilities and usually that's the part that gets swept away and hidden when the band makes it big. but that phase was it for the monks- weird skronky ideas that sound like rough drafts, stabs at early proto-prog, and a lot of quirks that would show up later in punk. except the compositions are almost childlike in nature, delivered unenthusiastically and clumsily. shitpost by band that knew what they were doing or amateurs with ideas exceeding their talents? this thing's kinda great.

listening to this album on a proper pair of headphones is both a revelation and a form of torture. hearing songs like Scar Tissue on literally anything better than an aftermarket stereo FM broadcast in a honda from the 80s reveals a lot of nuance and neat performance details by a band of incredibly talented people. the downsides of course are that a) the mix/master is atrocious, and b) the fact that it's RHCP. Louder tracks reduce audiophile grade equipment to sounding like you're using a 5 pack of skull candy earbuds from 2003, quieter tracks are exhausting in the way that only brick wall mixes are. Excusing that, not that you should, the larger problem is that RHCP are consistently one of the biggest misuses of musical talent in recorded history but that's almost neither here nor there. at its best it's got earworms that are still living 20 years later. when it's not, it's Anthony Kiedis literally jiving (poorly) over aimless wanking. it's almost a shame that the good parts, while few and far between, are as good as they are. would be easier to just ignore entirely.

it's hard to approach an album I've probably heard 100 times as most thoughts I've had about the album shriveled up and died 2 decades ago. anyway Morrissey's solo debut definitely proved to be the prototype for most of his solo career, namely that each album has about 3-4 amazing songs and 8-10 more you don't care about. weirdly the one of his that I think is more or less bangers start to finish isn't even on this stupid list (Bona Drag) but they curiously thought to include Your Arsenal, and granted, Glamorous Glue is a good song but not THAT good. even though like 8 tracks on this album are forgettable if not outright terrible, the handful of classics on here earn it at least a 3. Morrissey is one of those acts where even diehard fans are just like "yeah just let me make you a mixtape" because boy he landed a lot of duds

for all the things from the 80s that people make fun of, it's wild to me that "aging rock/folk dudes find relevance by appropriating African music" isn't higher on the list. and people STILL hold this trend in high regard. Simon's voice, not really evolving past his folk days, sounds confused, sing-speaking over a semi-eclectic group of songs, ensuring he can ruin as many genres as efficiently as possible. were people clamoring for white guy beat poetry over zydeco music in the 80s? also holy shit the tone on that fretless bass is the absolute worst, it's almost impressive how they zeroed in on the single most nasal, farty midrange frequency and pushed that ALL the way up. I hate almost everything about this and that's not even including the nagging gross feelings about Simon heading to apartheid-era South Africa to plunder black music. Even with You Can Call Me Al being catchy, this album's lucky that I can't rate lower than 1 star.

I'm pretty familiar with Eno's work but not Roxy Music, and all I knew about it was that they were supposed to be glam rock. I don't know that we get all that much glam here but we do get a near-perfect side A of explorative and wild rock that I'm shocked I've never heard before. Side B fares considerably worse, where the tracks range from "aimless but enjoyable" to "how did this get recorded?" but oh that side A

This is is the worst album to introduce someone to The Stooges and possibly solo Iggy but a neat album for those already a fan of better albums in the band's oeuvre. album's solid if not life altering, but an interesting look at the band while they were still finding their voices.

this is the most 1989 album ever recorded. four Danger Zone bass patches out of five

i bet this is really good to the people who like it

I've got nothing clever or profound to say. Transcendent music.

my guy Fred here went and recorded the most boring song about cocaine ever, but I have to admit I was real into whatever acid fueled nightmare the last track was

it's Cuban Linx. best song: all of them

I love Tom Waits but this one is honestly a very middle of the road album for him. still, about half the album slaps so I suppose you could do worse.

captures the beach boys at just about the exact moment they teetered over the cliff but it ain't bad at all. brian wilson's songs are all stacked at the end of the album so at least it goes out on the high mark. the songs composed by other members have a real store-brand beatles feel to them, which is odd considering the two bands' rivalry.

Pretty good stuff, real nice to chill to, but way too long of an album, especially since there's not a ton of variety going on. Says the guy who likes metal where every song is the same.

it's literally my favorite album and every time I listen to it it's as exactly good as the first time.

My Arcade Fire story is that I saw them open for Unicorns back a few months before this album came out and absolutely nobody was paying attention to them and hanging out at the bar areas and I think that's hilarious. and really those are more or less my feelings now. I am completely ambivalent to this and have no strong feelings in any direction. I didn't get it then and I don't get it now. The only thing I can say after revisiting it again is it sounds way more like Broken Social Scene than I remembered it sounding. But even they were pretty boring live.

because i'm a broken person i have a hard time appreciating glossy, expensive, and frankly *talented* pop music when i can instead listen to some clanking, lumbering, uncomfortable song that makes you work for the relief of the melody. basically what i'm saying is that beyonce isn't someone whose music i had ever had any real impulse in pursuing, assuming it to resemble her earlier pop career. i guess all this time she's been making surprisingly exploratory neo-r&b that sounds like if if you gave carpenter brut some ketamine. i don't know how this happened and i don't know why i was unaware of it before. on a lot of levels this is really not my thing, and i wouldn't seek this out but it's kind of the ideal outcome of exploring music outside of your wheelhouse; this is not an album for ME and yet it impressed the hell out of me.

I thought I was gonna get some pretty sick elf music based on the cover but instead I got mixed results with pagan folk weirdos. singer's voice owns and exactly half the tracks on the album kick ass... but then the other 4 are boring as all hell. best song: matty groves

of course this would be the kind of album that you'd find on a list where you're like "hey Elvis is pretty important, he should be on here" and you find the one with Suspicious Minds and you're done. the real problem here is that this album came out at a time where people, art, and music were becoming rebellious. but it's okay moms and dads, Big Guy is still here, he can still sing, for now, and he's got 12 completely inoffensive songs for you. at a point I blanked out and had an emotional whirlwind where I realized how good the backing band is, which quickly wore off when all they played were the same "bum-baa" blues chords and sounded like the guys at a live band karaoke place. pretty generous 3 here. I don't know why I'm giving it a 3. It should be a 2 but I just can't

One of my all time favorites and I won't pretend not to be biased. a billion words by a quarter million hipster music writers have said just about everything that can be said about it, so I'll just say it gets better every time I hear it and I listened to it 5 times since last night.

while I actually love their first album, Psychocandy, I've never been a fan of anything else they've done. but, I said I'd give it a fair shot. the only thing I've really gleaned from this is that I suddenly realized where the Stone Roses got their influence. so following that influence line, without this album, there'd probably be no Oasis, which is either great or terrible news depending on who you are. anyway, decently catchy melodies, but in the end it's a very plodding and vapid stretch into the pop sphere which leaves me neither loving nor hating it.

I love a good ABBA song. what I wasn't prepared for was that every song on this album that isn't already on a greatest hits album actually completely sucks. I truly hoped to discover ABBA songs I liked as much as their greatest hits and that sure didn't work out! edit: turns out Tiger was not on any greatest hits albums despite being a single that even I'm aware of. so there's one!

I'm really surprised I've never heard of this album before because it's very much in my wheelhouse. some really clever rhymes, incredible production, and is over before you're even starting to lose interest.

time has been unkind to this band in a way that it really hasn't for At the Drive-In. insane musicianship that is almost hard to appreciate because the entire thing seems to drip with smugness. this album in particular might be the peak of Cedric's self-gratifying pretentious lyrics. stupid album, amazing musicians.

my previous experience with moby is hating his live show at a festival and like two songs that were on the radio. I did not want to listen to this. but then to my surprise the first two tracks were actually sick as hell. and then as the album went on, the songs that weren't complete garbage were basically just the same song as the previous song that I liked. also every track where moby just talks over his music should be deleted from the internet and thrown into a volcano

I think I would have expected a more collaborative approach to this album between Bragg and Wilco but the album seems pretty neatly split in half between Bragg arrangements and Tweedy arrangements and as it turns out exactly half the album is kind of awful. That said I've never listened to Bragg before and I will check him out more after this because he singlehandedly carries the good half of the album. I've hated Wilco's music for two decades and I guess that's not changing with this. Neat album concept though, it's cool it got made.

CALL APOGEE SAY "AARDWOLF"

stage 1: this album is how long? stage 2: okay jeff, we get it. you like the beatles stage 3: this album is HOW long?? stage 4a: the edibles hit stage 4b: the whale stage 5: the lights are off and the sun went down an hour ago stage 666: a c c e p t

basically every track on this album is "X but worse" whether it's the beatles, bowie, whatever. the only really good song wasn't even on the album at first.

I just don't care man. Really don't.

it's weird this is the only Roots album on this list apparently because it's the most "it's fine I guess" of all their albums I've heard. Black Thought rules though and that carried me through the album.

another album where only half the songs are good but like... I think all of us had the simultaneous realization that Rod Stewart kind of slaps and we're unsure how to handle this information.

GOAT

this album sounds like a deepfake trained on all the rock music from 1968. it sounds the part but is just meandering and halfhearted. get paid I guess

I guess I mistakenly thought I knew Johnny Cash, mostly through the radio and general consciousness, and I was not prepared for how incredible and just fuckin metal this album is. This dude is up there singing about murdering dudes to applause from murderers. if your black metal isn't this black, go the fuck home.

this should be the textbook definition for "front-loaded," holy crap. the depths this album plumbs in the second half are only marginally raised by the title track but giving it a 3 instead of a 2 is a mercy

according to the label, this is 12 great songs for listening and dancing. I didn't particularly want to do the former and the latter is right out the window. who is the geezer who heard this and thought "aw yeah, this is a mandatory listen?"

it's no Kyuss but it's still some damn good desert rock.

this is the best elvis costello album i've ever heard

album still holds up surprisingly but that timbaland song is...woof. but yeah good shit

I don't know why this is so long, I don't know why there's like almost no cohesion to the album. It sounds like the sampler disc at a fucking j.crew in 2000. The guy who got the album added to the book only did it because it reminds him of the time he got to cop a titty grab off a girl on the verge of an ecstasy coma at an EDM festival and he's probably named Gareth or Willem.

so boring

pretty, pretty good

I absolutely adore like a third of the songs on this album but to me it just doesn't quite end up as an all timer or something. stick to the singles

the sex scene in the movie except your mom has her hands over your eyes

I learned too late in life that there was actually a really cool music scene in australia in the 80s so I was pretty excited to hear a band I hadn't heard before. So that didn't work out.

the majority of this album is seared into my brain and it should be. unimpeachable. literally the only pearl jam album i think is any good but how do you outdo perfection

I had one of those real "show up and do some work you can't quantify" jobs where literally all I did was enter some nonsense into a computer and go home. Turn that into an album and this is what you get. These fuckin dudes got a paycheck.

mopey sad boy music that nonetheless tickled my love of a good hook here and there. not bad

the "i'm very intelligent" guy from the meme the album

it's fine?

kind of a weird pick for this list, but still a fun look into a lesser known bauhaus album. the entire thing seems and sounds slapdash which is pretty cool when it works, which is less often than you want.

really cool album, didn't vibe with all of it but when i did [banderas meme]

goat

not exactly a high point for winwood or traffic so it's another weird addition to this book. this album was winwood trying to figure out what to do after blind faith broke up so he went off to write a solo album that somehow turned into a traffic album minus their guitarist. most of the better tracks on the album just seem like the byproduct of a bunch of weed and acid and just having a great time jamming, and i'm here for that. then there's the weird dabbling with american folk rock that doesn't really click. weird album made weirdly but a real good jam

cool shit. never listened to this before. last track is a jam

it occurred to me that ice-t's rhymes sound more or less exactly like flynt flossy except without irony. i want to give this a 2 but it pulls a kind of nostalgia out of me that i appreciate

if you can overlook the 7 minutes of whitesplaining the native american plight, what you've got here is elton's first genuine banger of an album. nowhere near the heights he'd reach in the next few years but a great album in its own right.

only really know cale from VU where he wrote some of my favorite stuff. this isn't what i expected but i thought it was somewhat rad for a rich guy light rock album

this isn't even the one with all the good songs still, nice singing tho

I really didn't need to revisit this. where i grew up this was everywhere. this was every car pool ride to school. every soccer practice, whatever. i guess it's fine by normal person standards but fuck this album tbh

even as a huge beatles mark i can't in good honesty endorse what is in competition for the most unnecessary beatles album ever.

it ate my review but the short of it is that this is some kind of prog r&b i didn't know existed and it's cool as hell

this is for bask for i robbed him of his review

pretty inessential zorn but still a pretty fun time.

can barely listen to this anymore with how unwell he is anymore but you know, it's still incredible

it's fine?

man this seemed like it had a lot of potential before it fell into the same trap that all concept albums of the era had where it's a bunch of unfinished songs presented as suites or something and hey look you do you ok but i know what you're doing

it's fine. the mix/master is a complete mess and makes the album exhausting to listen to. decent pop.

their best album

this shit fuckin sucks but it does remind me of being like ten years old and considering what the last like 8 years of my life have been that's an alright place to revisit

whatever

how to disguise halfassed songwriting by telling people it's on purpose pinball wizard is sick

i'm not 25 anymore

there were like two good tracks on this and they were both ones with jaco and the guy who played guitar on a lot of steely dan shit. joni seems completely unnecessary here.

this album is annoying as hell because you can hear that they have ideas but they instead choose to be the aural manifestation of a pair of JNCOs

not at all my thing

who caaaares

erection music

zzzzzzzz

it's fine

in the bottom 50% of their catalogue but zep are graded on a different scale.

back in the 70s, steven tyler fucked an underaged groupie, and proceeded to literally adopt her as his legal daughter so he could keep fucking this child. he can stuff his big ten inch up his own ass for all i care.

if most other bands put out this album it would be their best album, but in their catalogue it's the weird middle child while they were changing their sound and it's really not very memorable outside of a few standout songs. also mike patton sounds like someone punched him in the throat for like the whole album for some reason

get rid of most of the skits and like 5 songs near the end and you've got a 5 star album

the bla's