1001 Albums Summary

This is the album that has "Superstition" on it, the rest of the album is pretty forgettable electronic keyboard and sleepy soulless blabbering. Songs just boring and don't go anywhere, like an essay written to pad length.

Album generally is a tease. Makes you think it's going somewhere and it's got something or it's developing something, but ultimately just waddles about like a lost penguin. The highlight of the album is the latter 1/3 of "Sparkle City", the rest is sleepy, boring, slop of someone too stoned to have put in the effort to be as good as they could be.

As someone without a lot of experience with hiphop, but no particular disdain for it, I liked this album. It's an actual album. Each song is distinct, it's not a mushy bleed-together of left-overs to pad the length. But the production is consistent and each song obviously belongs on this album. Each track has interesting things that separate them from the rest, and the production is really top notch. Production is so good it probably makes it swing above its weight class. There's nothing irritating on the album, it's all consistently good. Solid album I probably wouldn't choose to listen to again, but if it came on I wouldn't be compelled to turn off either.

Starts off as forgettable, progresses into really bland always-shouting scratchy thrash punk, and I almost gave up on it. But then it had variety. Some slow ballads, Album was all over the map. Some good stuff in there. A little for everyone. I might even revisit some specific tracks later.

Over half this album are radio heavy hitters. The album itself though, meh, doesn't feel like you're listening to an album. It's a lot more sleepy than you'd otherwise think. I'm realizing the Eagles in general have sleepier hits than I thought, and listening to them a bunch in a row, rather than interspersed among heavier songs, actually makes them less interesting and less worth listening to. For what I would expect to be a solid 5-star on the strength of the hit machine this album was, it's more like a collection of singles that don't play that well together. After a front-to-back listen, I'm rating it shockingly low for what I would have predicted.

To my Western mind, this was authentic Indian music. Apparently, to Indians, it's half way to Western music, Western scales, etc. I suppose it's fair to say this is the musical equivalent of the "Chinese" fortune cookie. Culturally, this is the Indian musical equivalent of "Live, Love, Laugh" spraypainted on some fake barn wood and hung in your bathroom. Skill-wise it sounds lovely. I don't care about any of the baggage, if I liked it, I'd like it, and that's fine. I just wasn't really into it. Maybe too psychedelic, maybe too foreign, maybe too slow, I dunno. I just wouldn't ever choose to play it again. I'm going to rate it 1-star, despite trying to save that for truly unlistenable garbage, which I now have no way to separate it from. But seeing other things I've rated 2-stars that I enjoyed far more, it seems the only fair rating to give it. I think if it's your kind of thing, you'd like this a lot. But if it's not, it's hard to get off the runway.

I don't mind punk, and I often don't know the lyrics to songs because often to me the singing is just an instrument. But, if singer's voices aren't instruments and they're just screaming, I have to be able to understand what they're screaming about. And I can't. I can occasionally pick up a sentence here or there, but otherwise it's just the same chord and same drums and same screaming endlessly. It either has to sound good, or it has to have a message. This was neither. Every song sounded exactly the same: Thrash-Thrash-Thrash-Thrash-THRAAAASH Thrash-Thrash-Thrash-Thrash-THRAAAASH Thrash-Thrash-Thrash-Thrash-THRAAAASH Thrash-Thrash-Thrash-Thrash-THRAAAASH Sounded like a garage demo of someone on their 3rd week with an instrument.

Awful, aimless. Sounds like a highschool project, recorded inside molasses, with none of the potential or impact of a slow album.

This guy is like Bob Dylan, if Bob Dylan has no passion. It is an entire album of the same 2 notes sung, cheap drums that never change, low-effort tune that goes nowhere. No pace changes, no tone changes, no intensity changes. It's like listening to someone whisper for an hour. Utterly unredeemable. If you've heard the first 30 seconds of any song, you've heard the whole album. Try this: load up the whole album, and then click to a random spot in a random song, and then do it again, and again, and again. See if you can even tell that you're in a different song. Utter boring trash.

Solid album front to back. Songs are mostly distinct from each other. Has a subdued version of "You can leave your hat on". Has some actual songs that go somewhere and say something. "Old Man" is him talking to his dad who's dying, "Political Science" is hoping for someone to just hurry up and drop a nuclear bomb. There's happy songs, sad songs, silly songs, serious songs, y'know, actual variety. Despite being a music style I'm not heavily into, I could listen to this from time to time.

More garbage. I'm sure she can sing, but she doesn't. She talks. The production quality is embarrassing on this. Sounds like an edge junior high kid produced it, using spare OS midi sounds from Windows 98. It's chaotic in a bad a way, soup-pot of random sound-effects shaken around while trudging through a swamp. Just about a complete lack of musicianship. This feels like something parents would bring up at a wedding to embarrass their kids. "Remember when you were 13 and you thought you'd made a hit record? *everyone groans*, let's just have a listen to this masterpiece. Okay okay, that's enough."

Middle of the road album with some good hits, and some trash. The high pitch falsetto is just really not my bag. But the funk and harmony digs deep. Luckily these tend to be the two types of songs, so they're on different tracks. Africano is the hit here, but you wouldn't know it by the obscenely long and unlistenable intro. Fast forward until the funk drops. The lead track Shining Star is the other track that can boogie. Normally I'm a fan of albums that mix it up, some faster some slower tracks, but, the slower ones here just aren't any good and by the time you suffer through them you've ruined the mediocre tracks that pass the time to the next hit. This isn't really an album you could listen to beginning to end, but it does have some value if you snipe out what you like about them.

I suppose there is nothing necessarily about Hip Hop that requires you to be tough. But, it does at least seem generally expected. There is ... nothing... tough about French. No matter how badass you might be, you sound like you're picking flowers and painting landscapes. It's impossible to be intimidating. Musically this was solid for a rap album. Production was great, it sounded nice. But it's french rap. I'm sorry. Hard ceiling. 3-stars.