I think it really says something about a record if you have to pause occasionally to see if the sound you're hearing is the music or a truck backing up. (It was a truck backing up.) This record is squeaky and squonky, clickety-clackety-chrunchety. The vocals aren't exactly singing, more pitched shouting that reminded me of my Granny a lot of the time. I can't imagine the day when I will say, "You know what I'd like to hear today? Some Pere Ubu." But I did find this interesting, a unique listening experience. Kind of like getting a routine MRI (I get one every year) --- I don't really like or enjoy it but it's fascinating and there's only a tiny bit of pain and fear involved. And now I have to give it a rating from 1 to 5 and pretend that the experience of music is somehow one-dimensional, as though I could nestle Pere Ubu somewhere between Portishead and Leonard Cohen instead of on some other scale entirely.

Oh, so this is the Taylor Swift about whom I've heard so much from under the rock where I've been living. I get it now! Hella catchy but also sophisticated pop tunes. Good for the kids and their parents (and their parents' childless friends). Love it!

Jesus Fucking Christ, this record. If there were no lyrics, I would really really love this. I very much enjoy this traditional style of country with its banjos and fiddles and delicious guitar playing. The duet with Buck Owens is particularly good and it's great to hear Maria McKee on Send Me the Pillow. But as so often happens, toxic masculinity ruins the party again. My dude, your lady-friend is allowed to leave you. She's allowed to leave to be with someone else or just to get away from you (and your gun) or for no reason at all other than she wants to. And, yes, I know it hurts. It's super painful and will make you sad and angry and humiliated and that is HARD. I get it. But eat some ice cream, binge watch some TV, take a bath, and get some freaking therapy. This multi-song revenge fantasy is a misogynistic horror show and it makes you sound like a fragile baby. I'm giving this a 2 instead of a 1 for Buck Owens and Maria McKee.

How wonderful to listen to two women in a row! (Björk was yesterday. These two make a nice pair.) I've not listened to this one and didn't know anything beyond Running Up That Hill. I'm sorry I waited so long. Or maybe not. Maybe it needed to be now for me to appreciate it. Big Sky and Jig of Life were my favorites. I'm quite well taken with her voice, especially how it drops on the word "God" in Running Up That Hill. I sense a particular kind of authenticity in her music, that she's making exactly the kind of record she wants and needs to make and that makes me want to listen more. Excellent.

Hard-hitting but melodic, this is another album that I think younger me would have really loved. I like it now but it has a ... not juvenile, that seems pejorative, and that's definitely not what I'm going for ... but maybe youthful(?) feel to it that doesn't hold the same appeal as it would have a couple or so decades ago. Still, high marks!

Wow! Wasn't expecting to love this so much.

Delightful. Really enjoyed it.

While I was very familiar with the singles from this album that were released in the US, this is the first time that I remember hearing the full album. I found most tracks on this record just OK. I can't deny that the opening riff of Money for Nothing is pretty great and I really liked The Man's Too Strong and the bass-heavy One World. The one track that I actively disliked was Your Latest Trick which seemed quite dated with all its 80s saxophone and reminded me of the theme from LA Law...and not in a good way.

I'm not sure that there are actually 11 different tracks here --- more like two and a half. What I'm saying is, some of these songs sound the same. Except Thug, which sounds like the theme from Seinfeld. But what the heck --- it's peppy and fun and I had a good time bopping around the kitchen making dinner and waxing nostalgic about high school cheerleading as I listened.

Tom Waits is one of those artists that I always felt I was just expected to like. So I resisted liking him for a long time. And then one day...I guess I finally heard the right song(s) or something and now I love him. It feels to me like he channels music from somewhere not of this world. Good variety of styles on this record. Not every song speaks to me personally (sorry Downtown Train) but there are a few that I love a lot (Jockey Full of Bourbon, Big Black Mariah, Gun Street Girl). I've heard the comparison to Cookie Monster before but this is the first time I've noticed that sometimes Tom Waits sounds like Christopher Lloyd (specifically on the title track here).

Had no idea what I was about to listen to. I found the first track (I Wanna Be Adored) unbelievably boring the first time through and was afraid I was going to loathe the rest of the album. But I smiled through the remaining songs and immediately started the record over. Love the Brit-pop vocals and jangly guitar. I'll come back to this one. p.s. If no one's done it yet, "This is the One" would be the perfect soundtrack to the ending of a manic pixie dream girl movie.

Not much variety from song to song but I appreciate their youthful exuberance. I hear a few of these songs fairly often when my husband's choosing the music --- Family Entertainment, Here Comes the Summer, Get Over You (which I guess wasn't on the original LP and was a bonus track on the digital stream I found) --- but most of these were new to me. Really liked Billy's Third, Male Model, and I Know a Girl. It's not a style of music that I feel the need to seek out but I don't hate it.

There's too much to say about this album. It's just terrific. Picked up on a lot of new things listening this time: disquieting stereo effects, interesting fade-outs and transitions between songs, lyrics I've never quite caught ("trying to make a dove-tail joint"). Such diverse musical styles but nothing sounds out of place. I love it mucho.

Songs are short, fast, and fun but kind of all the same. I can appreciate the album's importance for its time and its influence on other bands. And who doesn't love chanting "hey ho let's go"? But as a whole, the record doesn't exactly speak to me personally at this point in my life.

Yay, a woman finally! I haven't listened to this one in a long, long time and it was wonderful to listen to it again. I love her voice, love her music. (Also, her hair. My god that HAIR!) Favorite tracks: Thing Called Love, Cry On My Shoulder, Nobody's Girl, I Will Not Be Denied, and I Ain't Gonna Let You Break My Heart Again.

I like this album a whole lot and really enjoyed listening to it in one sitting for the first time in a long time. I loved feeling immersed in the fullness of their sound. Perry Farrell's vocals are simultaneously raw and melodious. While I really like the singles (Stop! and Been Caught Stealing) that made me buy the CD when it came out, I dig even more the theatricality of the later songs on the album, like Three Days, Classic Girl, and the nightmare circus that is Of Course.

I've never heard of 'em. I'm goin' in! All right! You wanna win me over quickly? Gimme accordion right from the jump! Or is it a harmonium? Either way, I am totally on board. Next song is the "everybody needs a bosom for a pillow" song! I know this one! (After looking it up, I know the Norman Cook (Fatboy Slim) remix.) Yes! Love it! Love the trippy groove of We're in Yr Corner and the silliness of Funky Days are Back Again. Appreciate the reminder that, "Good shit's all around, good people." Definitely will listen to this one again and am already looking into their other albums, starting with Judy Sucks on a Lemon for Breakfast, which...is that a clarinet on the title track? Swoon!

All I knew ahead of time is There She Goes, mostly from So I Married an Axe Murderer (which I watched again this summer and it has held up pretty well). I like this album! Different songs remind me of different bands --- lots of REM sounds, a bit of U2 and The Beatles, British Invasion era Rolling Stones and The Kinks, and even an iota of The Monkees. None of that is bad. The song Feelin' has me feelin' pretty darn good. (It's just too short!) Would have rated it a 4 after the first listen. Rounding up to 5 after the second.

I can hear their influence on The River Bottom Nightmare Band. I was kind of ok with it until Parchment Farm which is...problematic on a couple of fronts. There are better albums to listen to for this kind of psychedelic rock sound. I doubt I'll listen to this again.

I've heard of The Electric Prunes but the name is such an unsuccessful attempt at humor, I kind of assumed they were a parody, like Spinal Tap. But here they are. (And maybe Spinal Tap's got an album on this list so this doesn't really prove that they're a "real" band. In fact some of these songs reminded me of ST's Cups and Cakes.) Anyway... I liked this. The music definitely evokes a specific time period. These guys look awfully serious on the cover, though, for playing songs that are quite silly. I guess they're mad because their producer made them sing songs they didn't even write! How often has it happened that an all-male band sang so many songs written by a couple of women? (Oh, but looking closer, I guess they're recreating the B&W illustration behind them which is...what? Why isn't THAT the cover?) In addition to Spinal Tap, I was reminded of The Guess Who and The Hollies. I enjoyed I Had Too Much to Dream, Are You Loving Me More, Sold to the Highest Bidder, Get Me to the World on Time, and About a Quarter to Nine. The ragtimey Toonerville Trolley was a delightful surprise at the end.

I don't know. Listening to MJ mostly just makes me feel sad and conflicted now. Highlights of this album for me are the groove of The Way You Make Me Feel (you knock me offa my feet now baby --- hoo!) and when the chorus comes in at the key change in Man In the Mirror and also remembering how my college friend Laura changed the words to Bad and sang, "My dad...has had...a crush on Cheryl Ladd!"

"Obviously, doctor, you've never been a 13-year-old girl." This album is a mood. They used to use some of these tracks on This American Life a lot. That may have been why I bought the CD originally but I can't really recall now. I don't remember much about the movie other than thinking that it captured the 70s better than most movies set but not made in that decade. It was nice to listen to the whole album again. There's a sound on one of the tracks (maybe Dirty Trip?) that sounds like The Bionic Woman jumping. I like the album a lot, especially the last track with narration from the movie. That's some beautiful writing there. "Everyone dated the demise of our neighborhood from the suicides of the Lisbon girls. People saw their clairvoyance in the wiped-out elms and harsh sunlight. Some thought the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them: so full of flaws. But the only thing we are certain of after all these years is the insufficiency of explanation."

Most of this was...fine? I guess? (shrug emoji) I like the guitar playing and the instrumentation but mostly this leaves me cold and wanting to listen to a country album that I like. I liked Hillbilly Highway. Good 'Ol Boy is ok, though I don't really get why someone from Iran partially owns his truck and it reminds me a little of the song Gettin' Bi from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. I do really appreciate the line, "I was born in the land of plenty, now there ain't enough." And I don't know that I like the song all that much but I sure feel the sentiments in My Old Friend the Blues.

Me, before listening to this album: I just don't get why people like Bob Dylan so much. Me, listening distractedly while cooking dinner: Yeah, I still don't get it. Me, as soon as It's Alright Ma starts: Ohhhhhhhhhhh...I get it now. I'm giving it 5 just for that experience.

I've only listened to The Jam's Greatest Hits and frankly I'm surprised we're listening to this album instead of whatever album Town Called Malice is on. I will be equally surprised if we eventually listen to more than one album by The Jam. (Side note: My husband said he knew of this album before he knew what "all mod cons" means and he thought it was something much cooler than it actually is.) I only recognize a couple of these but this is a fun album. The bass and the drums stand out a lot to me in an interesting way. Favorite songs: the cover of The Kinks' David Watts (oooooh, when do we get to listen to The Kinks?), Billy Hunt, Fly, The Place I Love, and Down in the Tube Station at Midnight.

When this started, I thought, oh lord this is not what my frayed nerves need today. And I turned it off. Then I restarted and turned the volume down and it was much better. I completely missed this band at the time but I dig this punky, grungey (grungy?), alt-rock sound. (My spell check likes grungy but my eyes don't.) Reminds me of Faith No More, Soundgarden, Elvis Costello. Misbeaten sounds like The Beatles feat. Frankie Valli. I love On a Rope, Young Livers (yes!), Ball Lightning, Suit City, and Come See Come Saw. WOW! I love this!

I admire their speed and their power and their talent. These guys can play. But other than the title track (which is great), there's not much on this album that makes me want to listen again. Similar to how the Ramones made me feel, I can see why other folks like them but they're just not for me right now. I think maybe they're good for adolescent dudes who are mad at their math teacher and I can't not take that personally today.

I don't love every song on this record, but the ones I love, I love an awful lot. These are hard rock songs with singable and often beautiful melodies. I'll Stick Around and For All the Cows are two of my favorite FF songs. I also like Good Grief, Floaty, and This is a Call. Before today, I'd never heard how this album was recorded and now my mind is blown. This is all just Dave? Whoa.

This record broke my heart and made me laugh out loud. He's a genuine poet and a heck of a story-teller. I loved pretty much every track (even Pretty Good with its glib mention of dog rape (WTH???)). This kind of album is the reason I'm here.

This album is not without some 80s cheese and some of the songs seem rather pedestrian in their themes (Allergies? Cars Are Cars? Write what you know, I guess). But Paul Simon is a poet and a prophet who can write a good melody and some great lyrics. (I also forget sometimes how freaking funny he can be.) I understand why I missed this album in 1983 --- it was a little grown-up for my 15-year-old tastes. But this sure appeals to me now. The title track, Song About the Moon, Think Too Much, and Rene and Georgette Magritte... are all really nice pieces of music. Train in the Distance and The Late Great Johnny Ace gave me chills.

Holy cow! This album is freaking fantastic! What have I been waiting for??? I think as a kid I bought just enough into the satanic panic of the 70s and 80s to believe at least a tiny bit that listening to Black Sabbath would invite Satan into my soul. (There were Christian protestors outside the brand new Events Center when Black Sabbath came to my home town in the early 80s.) And even after I became certain there was nothing to fear in this music, I had convinced myself that Black Sabbath just wouldn't appeal to me. They'd be too hard, too noisy, too mean. I even knew and liked half these songs already (War Pigs, Paranoid, Iron Man) but there was still a part of me that did not believe. Gah! Propaganda works, yo! Now I get why the powers that be needed me to be afraid. But the truth is we don't need to fear this bunch of hippies! The war pigs are the ones to fear! Anyway, my feelings about every single track on this record run the gamut from like-it-a-lot to oh-my-god-I-love-this-so-much! The drums, the guitars, bass, vocals are all amazing. When everything but the hi-hat drops out at the beginning of War Pigs? Sublime. The mellow bongo-ness of Planet Caravan? Smooth. The psychedelia Electric Funeral? Terrific. The bluesy grooves in the middle of Hand of Doom and Fairies Wear Boots? Bluesy and groovy --- and wicked! I love this record. More please!

Hello! Feminist Killjoy here... I spent a lot of this listen making a mental list of some of the female artists that I hope are coming up. (We've been listening for a month and we've heard exactly one.) So, while this album wasn't unpleasant to listen to, it had me wondering if maybe Deerhunter's dad was on the judging panel? And this isn't to say I think they're bad. If they lived down the street and played the local clubs, I'd think they are awesome. I'd be super proud of them for making stuff. But I found most of this unremarkable in the grand scheme of music and I can't help but wonder who was passed over to include it in the 1001. My rating of them is low perhaps because I'm mad at the list-makers of the world. Songs I enjoyed: Earthquake, Desire Lines, He Would Have Laughed. (And I've listened to these three several times now and like them more each time. I'm glad I've heard them. They are good.) Song I actively disliked: Basement Scene

I expected this to be shocking and it was. I was shocked by how boring it is. Next!

Hooray! Some soul! I didn't think I knew this guy but once it started I recognized Cry to Me from that one scene in Dirty Dancing. You know the one. I also know He'll Have to Go but I'm thinking that maybe I really just know the first line, "Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone," from a TV ad for one of those compilation records in the 70s. (And maybe not this version. Maybe Elvis?) I really like this! Sexy, bluesy, lots of yearning. So glad to be introduced to it.

I freely admit that I've been living under a rock since about 1995. I was of course aware of Amy Winehouse and felt the grief of her fans when she died but I'd never listened to her music. (OK, maybe I saw them do Rehab on Glee...) I didn't know what to expect but it sure wasn't this. Musically, it's a joy to hear such a clear echo of the girl groups and soul singers of the 1960s --- I especially like the sample of Ain't No Mountain High Enough in Tears Dry on Their Own. The music sounds completely modern and nicely retro. Lyrically, it's sometimes hilarious (what kind of fuckery is this?) but mostly it's depressing as hell. I hear a woman trying desperately to numb her pain while trying to sound devil-may-care. And it is obviously so much worse considering how her short life ended. I can't imagine a bleaker sentiment than Love is a Losing Game. One or two songs are misses for me but overall I really like this album. I'm angry that we lost such a talent so early and I hope that she is resting in peace.

Jesus Fucking Christ, this record. If there were no lyrics, I would really really love this. I very much enjoy this traditional style of country with its banjos and fiddles and delicious guitar playing. The duet with Buck Owens is particularly good and it's great to hear Maria McKee on Send Me the Pillow. But as so often happens, toxic masculinity ruins the party again. My dude, your lady-friend is allowed to leave you. She's allowed to leave to be with someone else or just to get away from you (and your gun) or for no reason at all other than she wants to. And, yes, I know it hurts. It's super painful and will make you sad and angry and humiliated and that is HARD. I get it. But eat some ice cream, binge watch some TV, take a bath, and get some freaking therapy. This multi-song revenge fantasy is a misogynistic horror show and it makes you sound like a fragile baby. I'm giving this a 2 instead of a 1 for Buck Owens and Maria McKee.

For the first two songs, I couldn't really tell what musical language these guys were speaking. Once the bass kicked in on the superbly titled Whisperin' While Hollerin', I started to understand what we were doing. And then came the spare and lovely acoustic guitar instrumental Vastopol which is completely unlike anything else on the album but doesn't feel out of place. There is more great bass, funky guitar, and playing with time signatures in Mas Cojones, What Gets Heard, Time with You, and If'n. There are a couple of drum solos, which are good if you like that kind of thing. Some Things is fast and catchy punk-lite (in a good way). I came away thinking that these guys are decent musicians who like having a good time and I had a good time listening though I don't know how often I'll come back to this.

Are they trying to be silly? This isn't funny enough for me to believe they're not earnest but ... The songs I _almost_ liked were Breakpoint and, I can't believe I'm about to type these words, Tornado of Souls. But I've had enough metal for a while. Could we please have some Indigo Girls or Barbra Streisand or, as a friend of mine once said, "some goddamned Dolly Parton?"

Someone included Once Around the Block on a mixtape for me a while back but that's all I know of Badly Drawn Boy. I've always liked Once Around the Block because it's in 3 and sometimes you just need a waltz so I'm interested. First track is called The Shining and I'm nervous. Oh, a cello. How lovely. And a French horn? Go on... O! It's about the sun! And it's pretty! I love it. Next song is Everybody's Stalking (good Midnight Cowboy/Nilsson reference) and I'm dancing at the bus stop! (Can't really understand the lyrics but they might be creepy since it's about stalking.) I love this one, too! Also on my love list are Pissing in the Wind, Say it Again, Epitaph, the disco sound of Disillusion, and Stone on the Water (another waltz). The piano at the beginning of Magic in the Air reminded me of Hard Candy Christmas from Best Little Whorehouse... This Song is very strange. I listened to it twice on speakers and would have absolutely believed it was Simon & Garfunkel. But then I was relistening on headphones on my walk home and thought I might be having a stroke. There is some very very strange (and off-putting) stereo effect happening there. I almost fell over. There are a few tracks on this long album that didn't do much for me but overall I really liked this and will listen again.

What were you doing when you were 21? This woman was recording a masterpiece. Incredible.

Sweet and mellow, folksy and jazzy, double bass and marimbas, lovely melodies and a mournful voice. Side A was perfect for my state of mind on a lazy gray autumn Sunday afternoon. Side B's Gypsy Woman (title=ugh) went on way too long for me. Was grateful when that one was over. But overall, I really enjoyed this. Will look for more of him.

This is a band that I've seen on other people's T-shirts but I've never really listened to. And now I've listened to them. It's not at all that I disliked them. Not at all. But I can't really say that I liked them either. The music is fine but didn't make me feel a lot of feelings: good, bad, or otherwise. The instruments are standard rock band. Songs are melodious but not really pretty. A lot of the singing is more like pitched talking or yelling. And again I'm not saying this is bad, just not for me. Here are the songs that I appreciated: Teen Age Riot, 'Cross the Breeze, Eric's Trip, and Total Trash.

This feels like the kind of album that would be playing super loud at a record store and you'd be shopping and grooving and you'd pick up a copy and then listen on your walkman and it would feel like a wonderful secret. I loved this an awful lot. Even songs that started out kind of annoying (is he rhyming "mistake" with "mistake"?) built to something magnificent. Different tracks brought to mind wildly different things: Pristeen reminded me of Jesus Christ Superstar, Double Vegetation of The Who's Tommy, Promised Land of Leonard Cohen, Safesurfer of Pink Floyd. Several of the tracks are a total groove and a half: East Easy Rider, If You Loved Me At All, Soldier Blue, Not Raving But Drowning, Head. I was dancing along for a lot of it. And then we end with the easy, mellow Las Vegas Basement. I didn't pay much attention to lyrics. They seem repetitive but I didn't mind that at all. Love it love it love it. Thank you for this!

As a Seattle-ite, I'm glad I've now listened to a Mudhoney album. I was solidly...whelmed. I didn't want to leave the room because of it or anything but I'm not in a big rush to listen again. I did listen to it twice: once on headphones, mostly just paying attention to the music, and again on speakers while doing other things. I liked it better the second time. As my sole focus, there wasn't much there that caught my interest, nothing particularly unusual or catchy or moving. But while I was doing other things (making breakfast, answering emails), I found myself bopping around a bit to it. That's gonna elevate it from a 2 to a 3 for me. Thanks, though, Mudhoney for saving Sub Pop.

I really don't like looking at the cover. These guys make me nervous. I don't trust 'em for some reason. I really didn't like this the first time through and liked it even less the second time through. Couldn't really distinguish from track to track, lyrics are more speaky and shouty than singy, nothing really to grab onto. But I kind of got into the groove of it the third time through and really enjoyed Breadcrumb Trail, Washer, and Good Morning, Captain. If I were a different person, I can imagine listening to this late at night in a low-key hang with friends. But my friends and I are old and that would be past our bedtimes.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! This is so great! Listening to this just felt really good. Loved every track but special shout-out to Human Behavior, Like Someone in Love, and Big Time Sensuality. So good! Eleven stars out of five. ***********

How wonderful to listen to two women in a row! (Björk was yesterday. These two make a nice pair.) I've not listened to this one and didn't know anything beyond Running Up That Hill. I'm sorry I waited so long. Or maybe not. Maybe it needed to be now for me to appreciate it. Big Sky and Jig of Life were my favorites. I'm quite well taken with her voice, especially how it drops on the word "God" in Running Up That Hill. I sense a particular kind of authenticity in her music, that she's making exactly the kind of record she wants and needs to make and that makes me want to listen more. Excellent.

This is fine. Not unpleasant to listen to but nothing particularly stands out.

Lynyrd Skynyrd's Three Guitar Army and Ronnie Van Zant's growl resonate deep in my bones. These songs feel surprisingly like home. Maybe it's because Gimme Three Steps was one of the songs that my brother's garage band rehearsed in our basement. (We did not have a garage.) My brother must've had a Greatest Hits album on 8-Track or something because several of these sound familiar but not all of them. I've never heard this whole album before, I'm sure of that. At least 3 songs mention guns but I don't think they ever get used, just held threateningly. I said "uh-oh" when they started talking about the ghetto in Things Goin' On but the rest of the words seemed ok and then the honky-tonk piano came in sounding exactly like something Paul Williams would write for the Muppets or Bugsy Malone and I was totally charmed. I prefer the upbeat songs like I Ain't the One, Gimme Three Steps, and Things Goin' On to the ballads but I cannot deny that Free Bird is a great song even if it's nine minutes long and I've heard it a million times. If I get to see the original Skynyrd line-up in the afterlife, you bet I'll ask to hear Free Bird.

This one took me a few listens before I could really decide about it. I was excited to listen --- I'm not very familiar with Emmylou Harris but feel like I should be. The first time through, the songs just weren't taking hold. I thought they were pleasant and pretty but none of them felt like mine. I'm almost done listening for a third time and it's grown on me quite a bit. Her voice is great, there are some interesting guests singing harmony, the instrumentation is varied and fun, her songs tell a story. I'm most sold on One Big Love, Hour of Gold, and the title track. Those feel like they belong in my library. I also like Boy from Tupelo and My Antonia.

There's nobody that quite sounds like Kraftwerk. This is another of those bands that I appreciate and respect more than like. They're good. They're unique. They're interesting. And yet... Their music doesn't make me FEEL anything. I never have the thought, "Oh, I should listen to some Kraftwerk." This album is good. I have a hard time distinguishing between songs but I can tell that things change now and then. I find the affectless German thing quite charming and some lines stick in my head (We look around and change our pose.) I wasn't wishing for it to end but I wasn't all that disappointed when it was over, ya know? Normally, this kind of review would mean a 3-star rating from me but I'm bumping it up to 4 stars because, although I don't love them, my husband does and he doesn't love many things and so the fact that he loves Kraftwerk DOES make me feel something...happy.

I'm having another ohhhhhhhhhh-I-get-it-now moment. I've heard bits of this my whole life but never sat through the whole thing and kind of didn't think I'd like it that much. I listened to the 35th Anniversary Deluxe Edition, 1 hour and 46 minutes of music that I didn't want to end. Frampton's musicianship is astounding --- there's plenty of impressively spoodly electric guitar solos but then there's some lovely acoustic technique in Penny for your Thoughts and All I Wanna Be. And his voice! Smooth and lovely throughout, lots of variation. None of the fatigue or pitch problems you can sometimes hear in live recordings. I think of Frampton as a great guitarist but he can really really sing and he seems to be an incredible showman. In addition to the singles I was familiar with, I fell in love with several of these songs during this listen: Wind of Change, All I Wanna Be, I Wanna Go to the Sun, Shine On, and White Sugar. I didn't really love the cover of Jumpin' Jack Flash --- it just didn't seem to have teeth for some reason --- but I have renewed appreciation for Do You Feel Like We Do, all 14 minutes of it. So great!

This was fun. Mostly these are songs I either don't know at all or don't know well. Stand-outs were the catchy, danceable title track and the theatrical I Let the Music Speak, a glimpse into what B&B had in store with the musical Chess (which I love). I didn't find much else that was very distinctive on this album but even a run-of-the-mill ABBA song is nice to listen to. I listened to the Deluxe edition with seven additional songs. I don't feel like those added much. A friend mentioned that he liked how the original album ended so I listened again, stopping at the end of Like an Angel Passing Through My Room, and I totally agree: that's how the album should end. There've been a lot of albums in this project where the version I find streaming is a Deluxe version and that's clearly not always good --- it matters how an album starts and ends and what order the songs play. This is a reminder to try to find the original version whenever I can.

Well now I don't know how to rate this album. I listened all the way through twice and was quite well taken with it the first time, ready for 5 stars. But after a second listen, I'm tired, ready for it to be over, at a low 3. I'm not sure what happened. I find I like it best when I can give all my attention to the lyrics. That makes it hard to get anything done while I'm listening. Second time through, I had to get some work done so maybe that's why it grated. I did really like the first side both times, all acoustic with just Dylan "singing." His voice is definitely a parody of itself and I can't call it "pretty" or even "good" but honestly I can't imagine these songs sounding any other way. This is poetry talk-sung to some simple, sweet melodies. His musicianship really shines on the harmonica --- chords and single tones with dynamics! Whoa. I started writing down all the lyrics I particularly liked but had to stop pretty quickly because I'd be quoting entire songs. I like the second side less with more musicians and more electricity. I see now from the album's Wikipedia page that the audience agreed with me: "The first half of the concert was greeted warmly by the audience, while the second half was highly criticized, with heckling going on before and after each song." It wasn't bad but I wasn't as charmed. I'll split the difference and give the whole thing a 4. I'm glad to have listened to it but I may not listen to the whole thing again.

Loved the first few tracks, loved the last few tracks, but I got a bit bogged down in the middle. Overall, I like this Joanna Newsom-y kind of thing: a coffee shop guitar, quirky lyrics. The first lines and the last lines of the first song won me over right away and will be a hymn in my own personal church: "This is the soup that I believe in This is the smoke I'm always breathin' This is the way I share my breakfast ... Well we've known we've known We've had a choice We chose rejoice" I'm interested in hearing more from this guy.

This is not what I expected Portishead to sound like. But it turns out I was confusing them with Pigeonhead. Very different. Portishead's Dummy is pleasant ethereal background sound, the kind of music that they play to alert me that my time is up in the sensory deprivation tank. I've listened all the way through a few times and, other than Sour Times (which I know from something but I don't know what), not much leaps out at me. I'll rotate a couple of songs into my library but I'm not going to rush to find more.

A solid groove of an album. Songs weren't all that distinct from one another but I danced pretty much the whole time. The last track felt like the end of a long dance party and I felt good and ready to go home.

This was fine. I didn't love it. Some lyrics popped out and at best I mildly enjoyed some of the songs.

OK! I liked this the first time through. Liked it even more the second time through. Yep, the music is catchy, the rhymes are clever. All the talk of M-16s, M-10s, .9s, and the threat of death or prison makes me viscerally anxious, so I'm not sure if I'll listen to it regularly (and I acknowledge the privilege that I have that allows me to say and do that). But this is a great album and I can see why it's on this list.

Glad to see some rap finally showing up 53 albums in. And we got two days in a row! After Nas’ Illmatic yesterday, I was excited to listen to Common. But this didn’t appeal to me. I don’t particularly like Common’s rapping style. To me it felt disconnected from the music for the most part --- it's not that I want him to sing or anything but it almost felt like the lyrics and music were recorded independently so I had a hard time finding a groove. I definitely want to be exposed to more rap and hip-hop with this project but this just wasn’t my thing.

Haven't we already listened to this? A lot of these records from the mid-90s are all running together. I liked the first few songs: the title track, Come Together (not the Beatles), and I Think I'm in Love (with lyrics like "Just me and my spike in my arm and my spoon," think more Lou Reed's Perfect Day than Eddie Money's song with almost the same title). Sorta liked Electricity. But the rest was unmemorable and felt endless. Are the 1990s overrepresented in the 1001 Albums book or is the randomization front loading the 90s records for us? Everything's starting to sound the same!

Lots of melodic and rhythmic unpredictability on this one. Interesting vocals and instrumentation, too. Sometimes it's really interesting and fun and sometimes it's hard work to listen. I loved Cannibal Resource, particularly the backing vocals and the guitar in the instrumental section mid-song. I loved Stillness is the Move, including the title (this is a band that likes a juxtaposition I think). Two Doves sounds like contemporary musical theater (that's a compliment coming from me) and contains the line, "But our bed is like a failure." And Remade Horizon is really great, again with the hooty backing vocals that I find so charming. Most of the rest didn't really work for me. Temecula Sunrise has extremely pedestrian, extremely depressing lyrics. ("Definitely you can come and live with us. I know there's a space for you in the basement, yeah. All you gotta do is help out with the chores and dishes." Poetic in its banality? Actually, kind of yes.) In The Bride, the handclaps after the line, "no one has any good reason to live," were...surprising. I'm giving this one a 4 because the songs I love, I really love, and I am giving them each a star.

Yes! I've listened three times all the way through and just started my fourth. This is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping from this project. It would never occur to me to seek out some Afro-Cuban jazz and, even if it did occur to me, I'd have no idea where to start. I love this! It's like a dance party in my kitchen. The crisp horns and percussion set my soul aflame and get my hips a-shakin'. I can't even pick any favorite tracks. I enjoyed every minute.

This was such a pleasure to listen to today. Cohen is on the list of artists like Bob Dylan and Tom Waits who I had to age into. I appreciate him in a way that was never possible before. I have a two-disc Leonard Cohen Essentials CD but haven't ever listened to any of his studio albums. So glad to be doing it now. The guitar work is exquisite, the lyrics emotionally deep. The chorus of children's voices is particularly effective but not overused. I favorited every track.

This album blows my mind. Every single time. This is a pop/rock album, right? But here's Eleanor Rigby, a piece of chamber music with pop lyrics; Love to You, with its tabla and sitar; Yellow Submarine, which feels like something written for Sesame Street; For No One, backed only by piano, percussion, and French horn; and Tomorrow Never Knows which still sounds, in 2021, like it's from the future. The rest of the songs are more traditional rock and pop but they are an eclectic mix that I find difficult to place in a specific time period. Here, There and Everywhere sounds like 1960 Beatles. Got to Get You Into My Life sounds like 1970s Wings (which is honestly ok with me). Here is a short list of the things on this album that make me exclaim, "Are you kidding me?" to these geniuses when I listen to Revolver: The too slow countdown + cough + in tempo countdown that open Taxman and the guitar solo in the middle. The psychedelic fuzzy guitar on She Said She Said. The staggered entrances of the instruments and vocals at the beginning of Good Day Sunshine and the change to the melody on "Sunshine" the last time through the chorus. The way the bass and the piano play with each other on I Want to Tell You. The entirety of Tomorrow Never Knows. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? This is my favorite Beatles album.

This isn't my favorite White Stripes album but I appreciate the intentionally spare style on display. I love Jack's youthful, crackly voice straining to hit the higher notes and Meg's steady volume on the drums. There's the perfect punk song Fell in Love With a Girl, the too short Little Room, the melancholy and melodic Same Boy You've Always Known, and Offend in Every Way somehow evoking gunslingers in the old west. A couple of the songs are relentless with the guitar, drums, and vocals all keeping the exact same rhythm pretty much the whole time (Expecting and Aluminum). My two favorites are This Protector (good lord, I am a sucker for a rock and roll piano) and the unexpected We're Going to Be Friends, which only a monster could dislike. ("Teacher thinks that I sound funny but she likes the way you sing.")

Holy holy, what an absolute gem of an album. Can't believe I've never heard it. The album starts with The Beach Boys telling me NOT to go near the water. What? This was unexpected. To be honest, this song is a little cheeseball and a bit too on the nose. It could've been (maybe was) a TV ad for water conservation. But other than the surprising message, this sounds like a Beach Boys song. Long Promised Road is a beautiful, beautiful pop song. I just love it. Can't believe it wasn't a bigger hit. Take a Load Off Your Feet is catchy and ridiculous. I knew Captain & Tennille's cover of Disney Girls but had no idea it was a cover of a Beach Boys song. This is another really lovely pop song with an achingly exquisite melody sung so beautifully by Bruce Johnston. When he sings "oh" in the chorus, it goes straight to my heart. I love this one. From that we go straight to a heavy blues riff and some sirens for Student Demonstration Time. This has some of the best lyrics including, "The pen is mightier than the sword, but no match for a gun." Fuck. Feel Flows definitely sounds like the Beach Boys singing but doesn't sound like a Beach Boys song. The instrumental section is prog rock with flutes and all. This is another one that I love. I don't know what to say about Lookin' At Tomorrow. I just don't. A Day in the Life of a Tree is from the p.o.v. of said tree accompanied by a sad carnival calliope. Again, Til I Die and Surf's Up sure sound like the Beach Boys singing but they are eerie and haunting and the opposite of the carefree surfing songs I've come to expect from these guys. They're stunning. I am so grateful to have been introduced to this precious piece of work. We've only been together, this album and I, for about 24 hours but already we are in a pretty serious relationship that I think is going to last for quite some time.

Whoa. This is dark. I am worried about Bonnie "Prince" Billy. His pain is palpable. I felt heart-sick the entire duration of my first listen. I think I'm on my fourth time through now. It is still dark but it gets prettier and prettier the more I listen. There's not a song I dislike on the album. I find the songs I See a Darkness and Today I Was an Evil One especially resonant, at least today. The record ends on a positive note (I think?) with Raining in Darling. "Oh, it don't rain anymore I go outdoors Where it's fun to be And I know you love me I know you do" love love love

Two words: Heck yeah!

This one. This one I want to hear performed live. I want the bass to tickle the soles of my feet and rattle my ribcage. I want to dance and sweat and mouth all the words. More than many, this album feels like one piece of work, rather than a collection of songs. I've never seen Arcade Fire. I'm making all of this up. Here is my daydream: This works best in my mind if I imagine a smallish venue --- max. capac. at most 500 people, an old theater with red velvet curtains and a proscenium stage. We've got reserved seats (we are too old for general admission) in the 6th row and a warm whiskey buzz going. The first three tracks bring us in gently, but each of these rises and falls in tempo and intensity, building to a boppy finish at the end of Une année sans lumière. And THEN, Neighborhood #3 hits like a ton of bricks and we are overwhelmed with sound and light and maybe we can't breathe. Good thing Neighborhood #4 is next so we can take a minute to recover, continuing into the beginning of Crown of Love which builds some more, shifting to a crooning ballad and again to a disco finish that leads into the steady groove of the anthemic Wake Up which itself shifts to a dance party reminiscent of The Jam or Iggy Pop. Rebellion really feels like a finale. We're all on our feet, jumping to the beat in unison. It's hot. We all need water. Almost done. We know. We are elated, high on the show. Applause, clapping, stomping. We want an encore! We hear In the Backseat start before lights come up. We close our eyes, all breathing the same air. Music builds for the last time. It is too much but we don't want it to end. Instruments gradually drop out one by one. No applause at the end of this one. We exit quietly, our ears ringing, a tear in our eyes, a gentle smile on our lips.

The earth didn't move but this is ok. I like this general style of music and there were a few stand-out moments. I like City Lights and some of its rhymes: laughin'/autographin', Stetson/gets in, and buildin'/killed him. The line in Have You See My Baby about talking to strangers because I'm a stranger, too, made me laugh. Dr. Boogie is pretty fun. Don't know that I'll play this whole album again but I like some of these songs enough to rotate them into play now and again.

Terrific. Chapman's at her best and most authentic with a spare arrangement, just her voice and guitar, maybe some percussion. A couple of tracks seem over orchestrated and overproduced, which unfortunately makes them feel dated. This is still a great album. Lyrics are bleak but vivid, some fine story-telling. Fast Car is on my top-shelf of favorite songs.

Oh, I like this. I like the style of music, the quality of his voice, and his ramblings. His folksy country-boy persona comes across as kind, gentle, and authentic. This despite his being raised in Brooklyn, his first exposure to rodeo being in Madison Square Garden of all places (according to Wikipedia). He sounds to my Wyoming-raised ears just like a genuine cowboy. I enjoyed this a lot.

Wowee! That was exhilarating! I am giddy. That's what I wrote last night. This morning I woke up to the news of the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict and I wasn't so giddy. This album's great though and I expect to be in the mood for it again someday. It had managed to fly under the radar for me all this time and I'm glad to be finding it now. I love that, though there are several different styles of music here, Queen is as unique a band as you'll find, hard rocking and broadly theatrical and fun (if you're into fun). Definitely will come back to this one again and again.

This was so fun! Love the extended version of That Lady with its wailing guitar solo and the other original songs especially You Walk Your Way and The Highways of My Life. And then there are a bunch of delightful covers that I wouldn't have expected to work but absolutely do. I loved the soulful Don't Let Me Be Lonely and Summer Breeze (more wailing guitar!) and the funky Listen to the Music and Sunshine. Terrific addition to my library. I'm really loving the records from the early 70s that have been showing up recently, new-to-me albums from familiar-to-me artists. Great fun.

I'd never heard of Hanoi Rocks. I think I would have really loved this album 30 years ago when I was listening to L.A. Guns and Motley Crue. I really liked Malibu Beach Nightmare and Back to Mystery City and, to a lesser extent, Mental Beat. The others felt like a bit of a slog for me.

Had a great time listening to this. Have always loved the Walk This Way, It's Tricky, and You Be Illin'. Great to hear the rest of this classic. Super fun.

Didn't have the luxury of a nice, long focused listen today but this provided a groovy ambience to my dinner-making. Nothing was particularly standing out until Bless My Soul and its delightful boings. I loved that track and the next, Cruise (Don't Stop), and Rise and its repRise. It's nice. I'll keep it.

I liked listening to this. Even the songs that are sad made me happy. I doubt that I'll listen again but I enjoyed being here for a while.

Well, I tried real hard to like this. I laughed out loud a few times -- perhaps I laughed loudest at, "Tell 'em how you feel, Kenny. Kenny Loggins." It was fine at first, kind of musically directionless, which isn't my favorite but I can respect it for a while. Lyrics seemed fragmented, short snippets rather than part of a story or even one theme. (Well, Friend Zone seemed pretty clear. But was maybe satire? Maybe not. So maybe not so clear.) Ultimately, I found it really hard to latch onto anything and it just overstayed its welcome. It felt like a friend of your roommate's who was kind of funny at first but whose humor wore thin pretty quickly and they were too drunk to drive home and are still at your house in the morning when all you want is coffee and some toast.

This was a great dance party. Tempos and styles changed but we kept grooving from start to finish. Loved it.

This is good, synth-y 80s pop. I don't think I'd ever heard the whole album. I liked Don't You Want Me well enough when it was released but I think I've heard it enough in the last 40 years. I really liked the songs on this album that were less familiar to me, especially The Things That Dreams Are Made Of and Seconds.

I knew Rich and Maps going into today but hadn't listened to the whole album before. This isn't really my kind of music and I don't know that I'll want to do the whole thing again but I listened to it a few times today and enjoyed it well enough. The opening of Rich is an excellent start to a record and I love Karen O's snarling, screaming vocals throughout. The lyrics in many of the songs include long stretches of a single word or phrase repeated over and over (rich-rich-rich-rich-rich-rich; choke, choke, choke; tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick; uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh-ooh; bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam dunuh-dunuh-dunuh-dunuh). This totally worked for me. The almost gentle Modern Romance is a nice change of pace after so much screaming and blistering guitar. Love the sweet vocal quality, the simple steady beat, and the quiet jingle bells on this song. The last track Poor Song starts with an off-key mmm-chh that I could listen to all day and a line that is my personal philosophy, "Baby, I'm afraid of a lot of things, but I ain't scared of loving you."

Aerosmith! Yay! I don't know this album. (Is it just me or does the cover look cheap?) I love the build at the beginning of Back in the Saddle and there are some horse noises I've never noticed before...and some yodeling! Last Child is one of the songs that defines Aerosmith for me --- an edgy, hard-rocking blues sound where Steven Tyler gets to sing and screech. The rest of the songs are totally new to me. I do love Combination --- the lyrics have some clever rhymes and the chorus is hella catchy. When Nobody's Fault started, I had to check to see if I was still listening to Aerosmith. It's more heavy metal than blues-rock. Get the Lead Out is fun. (But why are you showing me your fist? is it to show off your new finger tattoos?) I love me a song with some na, na, na's, like Lick and a Promise. Home Tonight is a nice piano-heavy power ballad whose melody made me think of Chicago's Saturday in the Park. This was great fun!

Wow. This is something very special. Wow. She is soulful beyond belief, channeling something that the rest of us aren't in touch with. I adored every song but Rebento stopped me in my tracks. Tremendous!

Unfortunately for Stereolab, yesterday's listen was Elis Regina and she is a HARD act to follow. I really just wanted to keep listening to Elis. But I'm a good student and like to keep up with my homework so I made myself listen to Stereolab a couple of times today. It's good! Pleasant and unobtrusive, nice slow grooves. Favorite tracks were Metronomic Underground, OLV 26, and The Noise of Carpet. Now back to Brazil!

Sublime. I've been to church. I am stunned and grateful.

It's hard to "review" an album that I've listened to so much. It's like trying to review air or water. This album just IS. I listened three times today and tried to hear new things. I paid a lot of attention to background vocals and bass lines and unusual instruments. This music is layered and rich and there's a lot to hear. I am starting to really notice and appreciate Ringo, both on the drums and when he sings. There's something so hopeful and endearing about A Little Help from My Friends sung in his treacly voice. Some of my favorite bits are the "hey, hey, hey" in Fixing a Hole, how the vocals build in the chorus of Lucy, and that sweet clarinet in When I'm 64. I also love the lines "Vera, Chuck, and Dave," "And of course Henry the Horse dances the waltz," and "Fun is the one thing that money can't buy." Oh yes, this is a good one indeed.

Excuse me, I am too busy to write any notes about this album because I'm building a time machine so I can go kick my college-age self in the hiney and tell her to pick up a Fishbone cassette or two. She would have really loved this album. Listening to this was a wild ride! Such a range of styles. No two songs are alike: there were spoodly metal guitar solos, some funky ass bass, soulful keys and horns, ska rhythms and danceable beats, and some swoon-inducing twelve-string guitar. Fun tunes with lyrics to match but also upbeat songs that belie their serious social justice lyrical content. I had a great time listening to this and will listen again and again to make up for lost time.

This is fine. Not really my thing but not unpleasant. I listened twice. Probably won't listen again.

I capital L-O-V-E about half the tracks on this album. The loud, fuzzy downbeat of Devil's Haircut is a tremendous start for an album and the rest of the song is great --- gotta love a song with the word "leprous" in it. I also love the lyrically absurd Hotwax ("in the chain-smoke Kansas flashdance ass pants") and its extensive instrumentation --- there's some jazzy Charlie Brown piano in the background for just a few seconds near the ass pants line and some steel guitar that are both just delightful. Jack-Ass and Ramshackle are mellow, almost plaintive, and lovely. My other faves include The New Pollution (of course) and Where It's At (of course of course) and also the country-tinged Sissyneck. Beck's varied instruments and styles, clever sampling, and singable tunes make me a fan.

This was a rather dramatic soundtrack to my rather ordinary day. Evocative and cinematic, this album tells a story, going from smoky and sultry to mildly frenetic to romantic to grandly theatrical in a short 39 minutes. Not all jazz does it for me but this sure does. Love it.

I had a great time dancing for the first half-hour or so and then I was tired and ready to lie down. Terrific fun ... for a while.

Didn't have the time that I'd like to focus and listen a few times but I enjoyed the time I had with this album today. Great guitar, organ, and percussion. I particularly liked Mother's Daughter.

How odd to simply listen to an Elvis album. These songs and this sound has been so ubiquitous that it's hard to imagine a time before they existed. This was great. I'm so impressed with the musicianship and the marriage of blues and country. Very enjoyable.

Thank you, 1001 Robot, for giving me this album today. It was a balm for my soul at the end of a sad week. There is a delicacy, a clarity, a precision to every note of this album. Tempos are steady, slow, and deliberate, giving a sense of being suspended in some warm, gooey, sweet syrup. These are some of my favorite standards delivered by musicians of the highest order. Perfection.

Really surprised by this one! It's so different from Fever to Tell which we had just two weeks ago. The sound is cleaner and seems more intentional. Dance beats but still an alt-rock sound. I dig it!

I've listened to this album seven times today...so far. I am in awe of Lorde's powerful voice and story-telling, her strength and vulnerability, her fearlessness. I wrote down some of my favorite lyrics but there were a lot. Lots of favorite songs, too. This deserves more than five stars.

Welllllllllllll...I was having a pretty good time at this party. I've always liked The Humpty Dance. It's cheeky and fun. The next track talks about verbal rape but ok, I guess that's just some macho posturing and it was 1990 and all. Rhymin' on the Funk, The New Jazz, and Underwater Rimes are fine with their "smooth flow" and "dope rhymes" such as "mobster" and "lobster." (Sincerely! Not sarcasm! The quotes are from the album!) These guys mostly seem silly and fun. And then...the last half of the record felt like I was listening to a joke where I wasn't exactly the punchline but the joke really wasn't meant for my ears (and maybe as a woman, I was punchline-adjacent). I won't say I was offended by all the sex talk --- I'm a feminist killjoy, not a prude --- but I didn't enjoy it and wanted to leave the party. I'll just take The Humpty Dance and go.

Maybe this is a slow burn and with a few more listens I would love it. I really loved Up With People from its first hand-claps and thought during the first listen there was another song that I liked a lot. But on the second listen I realized it was just another version of Up With People. The rest was fine but nothing else particularly grabbed me. Nice and mellow though.

Didn't know much of PJ Harvey aside from 50ft Queenie, which is a great punk song but I didn't know how I'd feel about a whole album. Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea was a wonderful surprise. This is solid alternative rock with a grown-up point of view. During my first listen, I favorited half the tracks. During the second, I favorited the rest. I love this.

Listening to Nick Drake gives me deep feelings of warmth and safety. It's like being swaddled and held. I find this ironic and profoundly sad considering the animosity that apparently existed between this talented artist and his own brain. I'm grateful for what he left us with.

Wasn't expecting such a fun surfer rock/rock-a-billy sound from The Cramps. This was a good time. The cover of Fever was superb.

This is an old, old favorite that I used to listen to on my walkman in college. Aside from a couple of lyrics that still make me cringe, this is a brilliant piece of work. Great songs, great riffs, great vocals. I will always love it.

I like The Black Keys and have listened to a couple of their albums so I was excited to see this. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with Brothers. I like their general sound but most of these songs just blended together into a big mush. Howlin' for You, Ten Cent Pistol, and Sinister Kid stood out from the rest but just barely. Maybe a couple of their albums is all I need.

Another album that lands in the "well, it's not _bad_ but why is it here exactly?" category. Thought it lacked pizzazz.

They had me charmed from the ba-ba-ba ba ba at the start of the Peter Gabriel-esque Halfway Home. I love this song a lot a lot a lot. My love continues through Crying, Dancing Choose ("bought a sweater for his Weimaraner, too"), the funky bass and glorious chorus of Golden Age, Love Dog, and Dogs of Light. And finally, my favorite, Shout Me Out, with its tempo change and wailing second half. The songs are hard to categorize but this record is good good good.

I've never been very into Depeche Mode and hadn't listened to Violator prior to today. It's good! It's really good and gets better each time I listen to it and I want to keep listening to it. In addition to the great Personal Jesus, I do enjoy Enjoy the Silence, Halo, Policy of Truth, and the very fine Clean. I'm not done with this one yet.

Glad to confirm my feelings about The Cure: I can see why they appeal to some people but they don’t hold much appeal for me.

A wonderful Christmas surprise.

A very nice mellow interesting listen.

This is fine. Tolerable. But if I were dating someone and they said this is their favorite album, I'd probably break up with them because we wouldn't understand each other emotionally. This album isn't bad but I find it uninspiring.

Maybe it's because I heard Steely Dan a lot as a kid, but there's something about this album that seems very grown-up to me, like something a friend's cool (but not too cool) parents might listen to. I was surprised to learn that Walter Becker and Donald Fagan were in their mid-20s when this was released. They sound older than I will ever feel. AND I love it! It's not at all gloomy but they seem like they take the music seriously. There's interesting percussion and great guitar throughout. Rikki Don't Lose that Number is a terrific pop song. Pretzel Logic has a groove (but I'm scratching my head at the lyrics about minstrel shows). OK, maybe I lied a little --- Charlie Freak's lyrics are pretty gloomy but the dark lyrics are juxtaposed with a rollicking Linus-and-Lucy-like piano and some jingle bells. And I love the bass and sax in Monkey in Your Soul. At a short and sweet 34 minutes, songs are varied and interesting and I didn't feel like there was too much filler. It zipped along.

Everything about this is wonderful, from the title and the cover to his voice and his powerful lyrics. Half the songs have a practical, everyday romanticism to them and the other half protest the oppression of the working class. Every song is terrific. The Peel Sessions Album is one of my husband's favorites so I've heard Billy Bragg a lot but in a much more stripped-down setting --- just Bragg singing and accompanying himself on electric guitar. Very interesting to hear a studio album with more instruments and back-up singers. Love the violins on Train Train and the piano on Honey, I'm a Big Boy Now. There is lots of poetry to talk to the taxman about. My favorite: "Mother shakes her head and reads aloud from the newspaper As Father puts another lock on the door And reflects upon the violent times that we are living in While chatting to the wife beater next door." Oof.

Enjoyed it more than I expected but likely not enough to seek it out again.

I've been waiting for The Kinks. I don't know this album aside from a few songs. I loved every track. Super great.

I've always disliked the title of this album. It feels like a set-up --- if you don't like the record, it's because of your prejudices. Well...to this "little hungry schoolgirl" who loved Wham! and Faith, this album _was_ disappointing at the time. I like it more now than I did in 1990. I count Praying for Time and Freedom! '90 among my favorite songs. I also really like Waiting for That Day and Heal the Pain. While I can appreciate Michael's need for more respect as a song-writer and the state of his personal life at the time, this album seems overly serious. I would have liked a bit more fun and a bit less scolding. This album is nevertheless very very good.

Interesting to listen to Cohen's first album not long after listening to his last. Not a lot of variety in this one --- most of the songs are easy to mistake for Suzanne. But Suzanne is a lovely song so not much harm in that.

What a glorious piece of work this is. An incredible example of what's possible in rock music. A grand display of hutzpah and talent. I love it very much.

This was a very enjoyable listen. The disco beat and interesting lyrics provided a great soundtrack to my cold, wet, gloomy walk today. Top-notch exuberance!

Wow. This is something. I'm glad I had the time to give it a focused listen. I think it might not be quite so great in the background but, as an activity all its own, this album's got layers galore to explore. It's symphonic with its movements and recurring motifs, one piece of music rather than a collection of songs. Tantalizing snippets of the familiar melody from Good Vibrations appear early in the album in Song for Children. Heroes and Villains and Surf's Up are similarly teased before those songs actually start. The instrumentation is incredible: strings, brass, woodwinds, a deep percussion bench, whistles (so many whistles!), power tools. So much to discover on repeated listens. (I appreciated the inclusion of the instrumental Heroes and Villains bonus track to hear some of the sounds I missed the first time through.) Lyrics are often child-like and nonsensical, often just repeated words, phrases and sounds, using the voices as more instruments as opposed to a means to tell a story. I'm so grateful that Brian Wilson found the strength to come back and finish this after a tough 40 years. It did indeed make me SMiLE.

Once again, I am very pleasantly surprised by Black Sabbath. I really really love this. It's more psychedelic rock than heavy metal and a few songs barely count as "rock" music: Changes is a piano ballad for crying out loud and Laguna Sunrise could play over the end credits of a Western. I think Lenny Kravitz took some psychedelic funk inspiration from Supernaut when making Are You Gonna Go My Way. There were a few tracks that started out just ok for me but then they'd hit a bridge or a transition or a melody line that made me weak in the knees. The last track Under the Sun/Every Day Comes and Goes is the most like what I would have expected from Black Sabbath and I'm glad the entire record wasn't like that. But there's enough variety here to make that track a welcome ending. I don't know how often I'll listen to this but 20-year-old me would have listened a lot and I'm going to let her give it five stars.

This is the kind of thing I came here for. It wouldn't occur to me to seek this kind of music out and, even if I did, I wouldn't know where to start. And how else would I find out that Rod Stewart got sued for stealing the melody for "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy"? Lots of fun.

Hard to believe that it was 30 years ago that I bought this CD. I haven't listened to it in a long, long time and was reluctant to listen today. I figured I'd outgrown it. BUT I found the first 2/3 of the album absolutely exhilarating. This is great heavy metal with distinct and singable melodies and lyrics. Enter Sandman, Sad But True, The Unforgiven, Wherever I May Roam, Don't Tread on Me, and Nothing Else Matters are as thrilling to listen to today as they were back then. I really wish the album ended after Nothing Else Matters though. The last four tracks are tiresome if not downright silly.

This is incredible. I have heard of Laura Nyro but never listened. I always had the feeling for some reason that her music was somehow weird and would be a challenge to listen to. On the surface, it doesn't seem challenging at all --- I get a clear singer-songwriter pop vibe a la Carole King or Rickie Lee Jones --- and I can't figure out why she wasn't on the radio all the time when I was a kid. But, oh, yeah...melodies and rhythms and even styles change every couple of lines or so. She doesn't stay anywhere for very long...and I love it. My god, what a treasure.

There may be other bands with them at the top but no one is on a higher shelf of my Mental Library of Favorite Bands than Led Zeppelin. They make me feel all of the good stuff. There is a lot to appreciate in this album. At the start of almost every song, I catch my breath a bit and think, "Oooh this one's my favorite." And at the start of the next, "Oh, no wait. It's this one. This one's my favorite." On some of the tracks, I'm often glad when Robert Plant's vocals start back up again after a long spoodly middle but any given song is back to being my favorite by the end. Love them all.

It's great to hear more jazz. I like it.

Man oh man is this one fun. A rollicking good time.

Fun, synth-y, sax-y late 70s/early 80s pop. A clear influence on Duran Duran. Not my favorite but good enough and the right beats per minute for an afternoon walk in the sunshine. Love the cover of All Tomorrow's Parties.

Before today, all I knew of blur was their song from the Trainspotting soundtrack ("Sing") and the cover of their Leisure album with the lady in the flowered swim cap. I've listened to Modern Life is Rubbish many times today. It was good music to play while I worked, neither annoying nor overly distracting. And the more I listened, the more I liked. And yet, I'm finding blur very hard to pin down. Pretty much all I know for sure about them is they're British. I try not to read about the album before I write my review but I broke that rule today and that did help me make more sense of the album as an attempt to make something distinctively English, taking inspiration from Ray Davies and Paul Weller, after an unpleasant tour of the US. I can hear the essences of The Kinks and The Jam but with a 1990s sensibility, a British response to grunge. I really, really like every song on this album but there's something holding me back from loving it and I don't know what that is yet. I feel like I need more time with it. It's a solid 4 today but I can envision it inching its way up to a 5 eventually.

I did not want to listen to an indie rock band from the early 90s today and was throwing a bit of an internal tantrum about it. But these guys have won me over, distortion and atonal speak-singing and all. I wouldn't mind if they lived on my block so I could hear them rehearsing in their garage. I'm still a long way from calling myself a fan of early 90s indie rock but I'll be happy to have several of these tracks shuffle up in my rotation.

I've not seen any of Jacques Brel's movies but based on his music, I am guessing he's an extraordinary actor. I don't speak French well enough to know what he's saying most of the time but I sure as hell know what he's feeling. Very few artists get under my skin the way he does.

Much like when we listened to Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, it took me a few tracks to find my footing with PJ Harvey's Dry, but once I did, I was a goner. I love this album, especially Dress, Victory, Hair, and Plants and Rags and especially-especially Sheela-Na-Gig and Happy and Bleeding. Swoon!

Goodness gracious. Vulnerable and raw. This is a fascinating album. Recordings of seemingly candid speeches are interspersed with songs inspired by the discussions. The way I said it makes it sound boring! But the pieces are largely about sex and sexual agency, so no not boring. I love Sullivan's voice. She's got a beautiful range and uses it with particular gut-wrenching effect on the track Lost One. My other favorites on the album were: Bodies, Pick Up Your Feelings, The Other Side, and Girl Like Me.

Clapton's recent and not-so-recent shenanigans render this pretty unpalatable for me. I get why your dad likes it but it's not for me today.

I think it really says something about a record if you have to pause occasionally to see if the sound you're hearing is the music or a truck backing up. (It was a truck backing up.) This record is squeaky and squonky, clickety-clackety-chrunchety. The vocals aren't exactly singing, more pitched shouting that reminded me of my Granny a lot of the time. I can't imagine the day when I will say, "You know what I'd like to hear today? Some Pere Ubu." But I did find this interesting, a unique listening experience. Kind of like getting a routine MRI (I get one every year) --- I don't really like or enjoy it but it's fascinating and there's only a tiny bit of pain and fear involved. And now I have to give it a rating from 1 to 5 and pretend that the experience of music is somehow one-dimensional, as though I could nestle Pere Ubu somewhere between Portishead and Leonard Cohen instead of on some other scale entirely.

Poetic and wistful but not brooding. Somewhere twixt indie rock and country. It's nice.

They've got volume and speed if you like that sort of thing. I'm finding that I need more...a poetic lyric here and there, a melody, a hook, a groove. I've tried keeping an open mind and looking for things to like but I think I'm ready to say that thrash metal just isn't for me.

Some great blues from JLH and some of 1989's more mainstream artists. Loved The Healer with Carlos Santana, I'm in the Mood with Bonnie Raitt, Baby Lee with Robert Cray, Cuttin' Out with Canned Heat, and Think Twice Before You Go with Los Lobos. I found the second half of the album much less fun. (I guess I like my blues to be fun.) I'd love to hear more from John Lee Hooker though.

Full of soul and exuberance, this album had me dancing and grinning from start to finish. I gave it five stars before the end of the first line of Tutti Frutti and it just got better from there. Whooooo!

Well, I have been on a journey with this album today. I had heard the name Everything but the Girl but I really didn't know anything about them. I didn't get a particularly good feeling from the cover art last night. I woke up early to get some work done this morning. I put on my headphones and pressed play. The mellow, danceable beats and smooth vocals were a great accompaniment to my workday. Made it all the way through the album and pressed play again. Still good. And then...I took a walk outside with it and it was much less interesting. Maybe the ear pods I wear when I'm walking give me less bass than my at-home headphones and that was the issue. Maybe the music is better as background than as my main focus. Maybe three times in a day was too much. They'd somehow lost their luster one way or another. Anyway, this is pretty good electronic-pop, but maybe just in small doses.

I'm not too keen on this many songs containing what sounds like earnest let's-get-it-on-ness. I liked the cover of Cruisin' and the smooth and jazzy When We Get By.

I've been meaning to investigate The Chemical Brothers for a while but hadn't gotten around to it. Glad this project gave me an entry point. This was a great soundtrack for my afternoon walk. Tempos were lively and kept me moving. I like it as background for work and kitchen grooves while making dinner. It's hard to distinguish between "songs" --- it's just one long dance party. Today that matched my mood and agenda perfectly.

This is one that really needs to be experienced with headphones. The dynamic range is wide and listening on speakers I was either straining to hear or clamoring to turn it down. With the headphones, I got more of the subtle sounds and some nice stereo effects. Before this, I was really only familiar with Supertramp's singles and mostly those that featured Roger Hodgson singing lead. That made it hard to fit songs like longtime favorite Bloody Well Right into the Supertramp space in my brain. Listening to this album helped with that, giving me a wider perspective of their work. I enjoyed this record a lot. Most of the songs exceed five and a half minutes and don't stay in one place --- songs I didn't entirely love had parts that I did. Some of the pieces and their theatricality brought to mind Queen and Elton John of the same era. (In fact, parts of Asylum sound so much like Tiny Dancer, that it must be an homage.) I've never really liked the song Dreamer before but I loved it today. Today I recognized a little countermelody near the end and it took a minute to place --- Rodger Hodgson included it as part of the soundscape introduction to his 1984 solo single Had a Dream, another of my favorites. And that glockenspiel at the end! Yes! Glad to have listened to this for the songs I knew and the songs that were new to me. Lots to dig into here and it definitely makes me want to hear more from Supertramp.

Only had time for one listen today. I liked it. Nice mixture of cultures and styles.

Maybe I'm a grouch today. This isn't terrible but it's not doing much for me, I can't ever imagine choosing to listen to it again, and I'm feeling some resentment about listening to it. It's got a very strong Bryan Adams/Don Henley vibe and honestly I'd rather listen to one of them because then at least there'd be some nostalgia involved.

One of the things that impresses me the most about Horses is its highs and lows. This is an album that hits the peakiest peaks and rockiest bottoms. Songs rise and fall in shape, mood, volume, never ending where they start. Patti Smith enunciates (or doesn’t) as if she just needs to work this shit out for herself and doesn’t really care if you understand it. That means that, even if I can’t completely follow the through-line of the lyrics, every once in a while a phrase leaps out and keeps me curious, enthralled. (“Your soul was like a network of spittle…”) Of course I love Gloria and its opening line “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine,” especially the second time when she is so quietly smug on “but not mine.” Birdland is an epic poem that starts with some nice piano and Smith’s sweet, almost girlish voice describing the funeral of a farmer and the son he left behind. “It was as if someone had spread butter on all the fine points of the stars, ‘cause when he looked up, they started to slip. Then he put his head in the crux of his arm and he started to drift.” And on the word “drift,” her voice slides into her more familiar growl, and we are beamed into space with the son, his farmer father, a raven, and some doo-wop. Incredible. Free Money starts again with delicate piano that is soon overtaken by relentless rhythm guitar and drums, ending in frenetic chaos. Kimberly is a 70s punk take on 60s girl groups, I think, and there’s something captivating about the refrain, “Little sister the sky is falling. I don’t mind. I don’t mind.” Like Birdland, the track Land is epic and made me all like, “Whoa!” There is so much here: “From the other ends of the hallway, a rhythm is generating.” “He pressed him against a lockah!” “He saw horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, do you know how to pony like bony maroney?” (Holy shit. WHAT???) “…sperm coffin…” “Can’t you show me nothin’ but surrender?” “Except for one who sees his possibilities. What he sees is possibilities. Seize us, possibilities.” And in the middle of all that is some great rock and roll piano which, as we may have already discussed, I am a sucker for. Finally, the cover of this album is itself a work of feminist art and I am deeply in love with it. Can I give it seventeen stars?

It seems like these guys make music because it's fun. I like it. Musically at least it's light and poppy --- I didn't have a chance to dig deep into the lyrics so maybe they're talking about serious stuff but I was having a good time. Even Long Gone, which is melancholy, if not outright sad, isn't overly earnest or dramatic, just serious enough. Nice.

I run hot and cold with Talking Heads. Love some songs, find others really grating. This one's got more good to it than grating. Glad for that.

This is wonderful. I loved it from start to finish.

What an absolute treat. Fantastic. FANTASTIC!

This was pretty much what I expected.

This record stressed me out, I did not enjoy listening to it, and it was long.

I thought I would like this more. I love their general sound, this southern-fried rock sort of thing, with its fiddles and mandolins and honky-tonk pianos and yodels. I do still love Up on Cripple Creek and King Harvest was a nice new discovery. But I was ready for the album to be over when it ended. I know it was recorded 50 years ago and, at least in my circles and the media I consume, there's not a lot of this kind of stalkery caveman garbage left but I really couldn't stomach the lyrics of Jemima Surrender. ("You can change your name, you can find a new walk, you can change your lock, it's all the same. ... Jemima surrender. I'm gonna give it to you.") After that, I was just tired and sad.

Great fun!

Didn't expect to like this one but I did. Probably not enough to listen often but good enough for today.

Dreamy vocals just underneath fuzzy guitars, a tuneful bass, and reliable unobtrusive drums. What's not to love? Surprisingly relaxing and good to work to, this album feels noisy but with intent. Droning with a purpose. I can't tell what any of the words are so the voices just act like more instruments. Hard to pick out individual songs (except perhaps the last track, the totally danceable "Soon") but things do change enough that, as an album, this is a great listen that I want to start over as soon as I've finished. Up to now, shoegaze has been my least favorite genre but maybe now things are changing...I love this!

Yep. That's 41 minutes of Steely Dan, all right. I love the cover art.

Its only flaw is that it is too short. Power, vocal agility, and so fucking much heart.

This is one of my all-time favorites. With some devastating lyrics and incredible musicianship, it's got so many great songs that it feels like a "Best of..." record. (Though there are many, many more of The Who's bests not on this album.) It is grandly exuberant, theatrical, cinematic. (There is a reason Baba O'Riley is the soundtrack to so many movie trailers.) Listening to this album just feels HUGE. Like I need to expand to fit the music in. It's exhilarating. lovelovelovelovelove

I loved this. Hopeful, uplifting, great music. Really great.

All the pieces are there for an album that I should like but somehow they're not adding up. I usually appreciate when I can tell an artist has created something with intention but this feels almost too controlled and sterile. There aren't any surprises and every song sounds kind of familiar even though I've never heard any of them before. I can imagine hearing this at an uncomfortable dinner party where the hosts seem much more grown-up and fancy than I. I think I would like most of the songs just fine if they shuffled up in a playlist but none particularly grabbed me by the feelings today.

Such a beautiful voice. Such an amazing songwriter. Top-notch album.

Liked this a lot. Reminds me of Stephen Stills of the same era. Would like some more time with this one.

I loved this album for a long time. From the opening drum beat to the last pluck of the hard, this is mellow and subdued and lovely.

Lucky I like a Gershwin tune (how about you?) because this was a lot of them. Ira's rhymes don't hurt either --- here's one of my favorites: "The only work that really brings enjoyment Is the kind that is for girl and boy meant" With Ella's smooth and silky voice and Nelson Riddle's lush arrangements, this was pure delight from start to finish.

Fun!

This was just great. Soulful and energetic. One of the best.

Glad to say I enjoyed this one much more than the previous New Order album (Low-Life). This one had a clearer point of view. Still had a hard time telling one song from another but liked it anyway.

This has everything I could want from an Elton John album. Great pop singles that I've known forever and, even better, deeper cuts that are new to me and that range from sweet pop ballads to country-tinged character studies to rollicking rock and roll anthems. In addition to long-time favorites Saturday Night's Alright... and Yellow Brick Road, I absolutely love Love Lies Bleeding, This Song Has No Title, Sweet Painted Lady, The Ballad of Danny Bailey, Dirty Little Girl, All the Girls Love Alice, Social Disease, and this amped up version of Grey Seal. Albums like this are the reason Sir Elton is the holiest of holy prophets in my own personal church.

Well, yeah. I guess I expected to see this one. I don't hate it. But I'm glad it's behind us. Next!

Some undeniably great music on this album. Too bad Brown Sugar is such a groove because the lyrics are pretty despicable. I'm glad to read that the band's removed it from their setlist. Wild Horses used to be among my least favorite Stones' songs but it's grown on me. Dead Flowers and Moonlight Mile are new loves.

Wowee, was this fun! I love the prominent bass and the psychedelic sound. Occasionally, it ventures into a ren-faire area (a ren-fairea, if you will) and engages in some scansion shenanigans (scansionanigans) that might make me uncomfortable if they came from another artist. But on Dononvan I find them completely endearing. ("Through the DARK, forbo-DING skies..." You're kill-ING me!) Fun fun good good fun.

This album certainly evokes a very specific time period for me. These songs were everywhere in 1977 and listening to them brought up memories of particular places and feelings. There's not a dud on the album. Every song is terrific. It helps that the band contains (more than) three great song-writers and vocalists, each with their own style. But these distinct voices can also blend into something sublime. Glad to have this opportunity to be reminded of it in its entirety.

Oh, so this is the Taylor Swift about whom I've heard so much from under the rock where I've been living. I get it now! Hella catchy but also sophisticated pop tunes. Good for the kids and their parents (and their parents' childless friends). Love it!

Wasn't really in the right head space for this one today and I think I might like it better on a day when I can pay more attention. It blended into the background...until it didn't, which was either because of explicit lyrics or lyrics about religion or Space 1999. I liked most the songs about multiples of 10 --- 5000 Miles West of the Future, Planet 10, and I Feel Like $100.

Excellent vibe. Super groovy.

Lots of catchy beats. I was happiest when I wasn't paying attention to the lyrics.

I've managed to avoid RATM all these years and now I'm not sure why. I think I assumed they'd be too rage-y for me. Turns out we're outraged by the same stuff and I should have listened before. I dig it.

The opening track Zebra perfectly fit my mood and needs at the moment giving me high expectations for the remainder of the album. Perhaps too high. No other track rose above a non-committal shrug on my how-much-do-you-like-it? meter. Songs are simplistic and repetitive, both rhythmically and melodically. I wanted bigger changes, more surprises. There were times when they teased me with a build and I thought, ok here we go, and then...no. Overall, this just didn't do much for me.

Pure rock'n'roll theatrics. Love it.

Great guitar hooks and memorable lyrics. Splendid!

The movie Tommy was on HBO a lot when I was about 11 years old. I remember circling all of the times it aired in the HBO guide that came in the mail so that I could tune in for the last ten minutes of every airing and watch Tommy scrabble over all those rocks singing, "I get excitement at your feet!" I hoped none of my siblings would come in the room and interrupt, tears streaming down my face as I watched Tommy raise his arms, palms open toward the enormous rising sun. This was more spiritual to me than anything that happened at church. I found the rest of the movie pretty incomprehensible. But the music, especially "Listening to You" and its reprise that played over the end credits, was as moving a thing as I'd ever heard. I didn't get the original studio album until college. But once I did, it became one of my favorites. I still get a little choked up when I listen to it. Thanks Pete, Roger, John, and Keith for taking me to church. I love you for it.

I've never been a huge fan of The Smiths and didn't expect to like this much but then You're Gonna Need Someone on Your Side started with Peter Gunns a-blazin' and made me all, like, whoa. I also loved the next track, the driving Glamorous Glue, and the last two tracks I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday and Tomorrow. The tracks in the middle were more what I expected and kind of mushed all together for me. But the tracks I liked were enough to push this from a 3 to a 4.

Some of these songs sound like the ones on Sesame Street when they were all, "Look, here's some happy penguins." This album is delicious. I love Nick Drake.

I think my heart just exploded.

This is a simple but compelling story performed as a rap opera in a Brummie dialect that would make anything charming to my American ears. I'm not super interested in listening to any single song as a stand-alone track. But the album as a whole is unique and provided me with a fascinating listening experience today. I really enjoyed it.

Ambitious. Epic. Spacey yet firmly grounded. A fine listen.

Well the lush orchestrations were an unexpected feature. Not quite what I'm used to from Billie Holiday but glad to have been introduced. Happy to float along on the sound of the strings and flutes and her incredible voice.

I've not seen much reason to go out of my way to listen to Elvis Costello in the past but this one hit me just right today with its fun tunes and cheeky lyrics. I had a great time and want to keep it around.

This was fine. I didn't hate it.

We had this one on 8-track when I was a kid. I don't know precisely who in my family "owned" it --- it seemed to just belong to all of us, which was unusual. My mom (now 82) didn't ever listen to a lot of popular music but she can still name Dancing Queen from the opening glissando. I loved listening to this today. ABBA sounds distinctly superb and these are some top-notch pop songs.

Never bad, occasionally great, often meandering in that prog rock noodly, Hobbitty way. Interesting to see this incarnation of Genesis that I'm not familiar with beyond a song or two, particularly hearing how Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins' voices blend. Very pretty!

Wheeeeeee! What a fun ride. Surprises around every corner. My new musical crush.

Funky change of pace from my usual fare. Had a great time.

I've managed to avoid listening to Grateful Dead all this time. Not sure why I was so hesitant but I liked this quite a bit.

So fun. I love this record. Takes me back. Back back back. Super fun!

Catchy and timeless. A great listen.

This was the perfect listen at the perfect time. Why wouldn't someone sing backwards during my stay at The Great Northern Hotel from Twin Peaks? Will I ever want to listen again? Who knows. But it will remain a special memory forever.

Enjoyed a lot of this, got a little tired of it in places. But it does contain one of my favorite lyrics of all time, “The fear of being eaten by a sandwich.”

One of my favorites. Love the melodies, the harmonies, and the layering of the vocals and guitars. This one makes me feel good.

A good solid groove.

Loved this. Lots of variety, rewards repeated listening. Great!

Every time it ends, I just start it over again. And the more I listen the more I like. Breathy vocals and vulnerable lyrics, lovely indie-folk instrumentation. Heart-achingly beautiful. A new favorite.

I'd never heard of Finlay Quaye before and did not know what to expect. I found it an absolute delight, a terrific mix of reggae and pop unlike anything else I've heard. Really enjoyed it.

Had a great time with this today. Lots of fun tracks, great blues, and some very fine piano playing. A+.

I never think of Tom Petty. I don't dislike him but I never feel the need to listen to a whole album. Seems I've been depriving myself. I knew the singles Breakdown and American Girl (the latter of which I love...except when I'm driving alone at night and it comes on the radio and I start to sing along and then I realize I've seen someone sing along to this song driving alone at night and I don't want to put the lotion in the basket and so I turn it off real quick) but I didn't know any of the others. From the first drum beat, I loved this great mix of songs. And at a scant 30 minutes, this album goes down super easy and is never boring.

Spare and simple. Warm and mellow. Pretty. Very nice!

Another album that is church to me. If someone made me choose a favorite album, this might be it. Holy. Holy.

Full disclosure: prior to today I'd never listened to a Radiohead album, couldn't name a Radiohead song. I was looking forward to hearing what everyone else has been talking about for the last 25 years. A couple of the songs (Airbag and Subterranean Homesick Alien) grabbed me by the heart and declared themselves mine immediately. I found Exit Music, Electioneering, and Lucky entertaining. And the rest, even through multiple listens today, just OK. Like I felt with Blur's Modern Life is Rubbish, this album feels to me like a reaction to something and I can't quite tell what that something is but it makes the band hard to pin down, to put in a love-it/like-it/don't-care-for-it box. I love Airbag and SHA enough though to give this four stars.

Less a collection of songs and more a series of horror stories set to music. Upsetting and horrifying but beautifully mesmerizing. Lovely melodies belie their ugly lyrical content. The cover art is an eerie match to the tales inside. Unique and finely crafted. My only complaint is that O'Malley's Bar goes on and on and on. Death Is Not The End seems like it might be a nice ending to all the brutality but even its lyrics aren't particularly hopeful.

Hmmm. I didn't really enjoy this nor did I find it very interesting in its unpleasantness. I found it temporarily and only slightly more interesting when I learned that this is just drums, bass, and vocals. But then my interest waned again. But I'm not mad that it exists. If this is their most accessible album, I'm a bit curious about the others. Those might be more interesting.

Ahhhhhhh, what a voice! Sweet and smooth like silky honey. Released just as I was starting college, this seemed like music for old people to me. I guess I'm old now because it just sounded great today. A genuine treat.

Yes!

This album sounds like the 60s in a rather bland, generic way. The Byrds clearly had an influence on the culture to have a sound that is so representative of the era but there aren't any songs on this album that draw me in, that make me want to listen again. I'm disappointed.

Captivatingly beautiful. Or beautifully captivating. Either way, beautiful and captivating. It's feeding my soul today. I love it.

This is a thing. Lots of feelings here, most of them unpleasant: heartbreak, longing, regret, despair, bitterness (though he doth protest), and a track literally called Anger. But there's also genuine love, contrition, hope, and redemption, not to mention a Funky Space Reincarnation. There are worse ways to process a break-up than making your art. It's obviously completely one-sided --- it made me really want to hear her side of the story. It's very interesting how literal some of the lyrics are. ("Why do I have to pay attorney fees?") It's like listening to someone else in therapy. Lyrics aside, this kind of R&B isn't my favorite and I do better with it in small doses. I doubt that I will ever want to hear the whole thing again, but I can appreciate its place in the history of American music. Fascinating.

Delightful. Once again, I wonder why I wasn't in love with this band in college. They're great!

Not for me. Not today anyway.

Super fun new wave album with a ton of hit singles. Going from squeaky to deep and throaty, Lauper's voice is unlike any other. A great listen for today.

Some very fine blues rock, featuring baby Rod Stewart and some surprising covers (Ol' Man River, Greensleeves). Made me want to close the curtains, put scarves over all the lamps, and sit on a cushion and smoke. I quite enjoyed it.

I knew we were going to listen to a lot of Neil Young in this project and, to be honest, I wasn't looking forward to it. I've never been a big fan of his voice and hadn't given him much of a chance (outside of CSN&Y). Today this pushed all the right buttons. This record is full of feelings and story and musicianship and I love it. Now I'm looking forward to hearing more.

Fun, mostly instrumental fusion of rock, jazz, blues, and funk, with appearances by Captain Beefheart and Jean-Luc Ponty(!). I would call it unexpected, but when I stop to think about it, I have no idea what to expect from Frank Zappa. At any rate, I quite enjoyed it.

Wonderful to spend time with this old favorite.

I don't enjoy much of the lyrical content myself but there are some nice samples, catchy beats, and interesting rhymes. I can see why it's got its fans.

Oh great, I thought, The Temptations! This will be fun! I was thinking it would be songs like My Girl and Ain't Too Proud to Beg. You know, happy songs with choreo. I forgot that The Temptations could go serious, like twelve minutes of Papa Was a Rolling Stone serious. Run Charlie Run is startling and dark. I Ain't Got Nothin' is for and about lonely people. The songs about finding and having love are even wistful and sad sounding. So, no, not overly fun. But good and interesting.

This one took several times through. Listened over breakfast on speakers and just couldn't get enough volume --- wondered if speakers were somehow faulty. Tried again while I worked, on different speakers this time, and got more volume --- better but definitely blended into the background. Third time with headphones and I wish two things: (a) that I'd started with headphones, in a dark room on some nice cushions; and (b) that I'd listened without carrying the full weight of my expectations of Radiohead, a band I don't know much about apart from their reputation. Frankly, this is a much more interesting album than I would expect from a band that is so popular. Perhaps I've underestimated the masses. This is challenging music, not a care-free ride. Songs with nonstandard instrumentation and freaky time-signatures. Sometimes cacophonous, other times just nicely shifting ambient tones or a predictable bass groove. I wanted to hear the details, sometimes to crawl around inside the sounds and figure them out and at other times wanting to just float and let them carry me. And this is all without really hearing much of the lyrics. Maybe that's a whole other level of stuff? Anyway, I like this. A lot. And want to spend some more quality time with it.

I still remember watching for the first time Madonna open the MTV VMAs in 1989 with Express Yourself. That was the moment that my relationship with Madonna changed. If you'd asked me then why I liked it so much, I think I would've said that I just liked the choreography. But watching it on YouTube today, it occurs to me that there may have been a lot more happening for me at the time. Madonna's wannabes were all around me in high school (class of '86) and, while I thought some of her songs were catchy, I didn't quite understand her popularity. She was girly in a way that I couldn't relate to and frankly looked down on. (Hello, internalized misogyny!) But in Express Yourself, the sexy-baby voice from the Like a Virgin era is replaced with a deeper, more grounded sound and on the VMAs, instead of a lacy bridal gown, she and her backup singers wear suits over bustiers, still feminine but with a touch of masculine swagger. The thing that strikes me most of all today about the 1989 VMA performance is that every single aspect is exquisitely designed, rehearsed, and executed. It is very clear to me how high Madonna's standards were and how much she must have demanded from everyone on her staff in order to achieve such perfection. I think now that part of what appealed to young me, without my really being aware of it, was seeing a woman having that kind of vision, agency, and unapologetic power. So, thirty odd years later, I have mad respect and admiration for Madonna as a woman, a performer, and an artist at every single stage of her career. I don't know that Like a Prayer is my favorite Madonna album but it's got a special place in my heart with its elevated (but still catchy) pop next to some deeply revealing material and an appearance from Prince. These are some great songs that changed the trajectory of popular music and music videos.

A spectacular album that hits me right in the nostalgia bone.

Other than Fever, I didn't recognize a single song on this album. Really enjoyed getting to listen to a bunch of brand-new-to-me Elvis songs.

This is adorably creepy and misanthropically cute. The comparison to a David Lynch movie is apt with darkness behind white picket fences --- Susan's House in fact sounds a lot like A Real Indication from the Fire Walk with Me soundtrack. This Could Be Your Lucky Day (sounds nice!)...In Hell (uh oh!). I truly love Novocaine for the Soul, My Beloved Monster, and Spunky (a cat named lola with a violent past is balled-up asleep 'cross her knees). There are a handful of songs that are a bit of a wash for me but I like the general feel.

Funk and rhythm kept me groovin' all day. Loved it.

A beautiful but dangerous circus run by ghosts of soldiers with broken hearts. Lovely lovely lovely.

Poetic and soothing. Really beautiful. I am grateful.

I'd never heard of Elbow, which is either the best band name or the worst. Can't decide. But what a wonderful surprise! I was hooked by the second track (The Bones of You). Many other favorites, including Mirrorball, Grounds for Divorce, Weather to Fly, The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver, and of course One Day Like This.

Zipped through this four times today. Fun!

I had this on cassette, I think. It was super fun to listen again after so many years and hear timeless lyrics like, "Even the Tipper thinks I'm all right." Super. Fun.

Boy, CCR sure knows how to start a song. Even songs that aren't my favorite, I hear the beginning and think, "Aw, yeah!" (e.g. Up Around the Bend). Most of the time, though, they follow through with a great song and exquisite guitar work. Part blues, part country, all bayou, and all rock-n-roll.

Pleasant contemporary country-slash-pop. Blended into the background a bit but was always nice enough when I turned my focus back to it.

Look, I try really hard not to think of anyone's music as dumb but I failed at that today. There's just so much noodly organ+percussion paired with a meandering narrative about an armadillo tank and a fucking manticore that I can take, OK? Capital N. Capital O. Capital THANKS.

It starts with a charming, "Ladies and Gentlemen. How do?" And then we quickly get all the volume and speed I expect from British punk rockers but with lots of unexpected and delightful moments throughout. Tuneful melodies are discernible from one song to the next. I Just Can't Be Happy Today has some incredible drum fills and ironically happy handclaps. Melody Lee starts with a piano introduction that could easily have come from an Elton John track. These Hands is one of those scary circus calliope deals. Lots of fun variety that is more than just Noise, Noise, Noise. Loved it!

I'm pretty sure I've heard this whole album before but certainly not for a couple of decades. I didn't recognize more than a handful of the song titles and was familiar enough with the first couple of tracks. I love the full, bass-forward sound and the shouty singing that seems very 90s to me now. Oh, yeah, here's Breaking the Girl. That's nice and different. Then a bunch of songs. Then Give It Away, which is fantastic. Eventually Under the Bridge plays and that's ok, especially the key change and, surprisingly, the bridge. And then...there are like six more songs. None of which seem all that necessary. I was really ready for it to be over. Really ready.

Really wonderful. She's so good.

Hoots and boops, moans and growls, mewling and heavy breathing. Unlike anything else. Björk!

Obvious in its influence, this record's got some great classic tunes. Holly's guitar chops are on full display. Some of the lyrics are pretty insipid but perhaps that's an indication of the time or the songwriter's tender age.

I like it! Good background music. I'm afraid it won't be overly memorable, though. Even now, I can't keep the name of the band in my head. If you ask me in two weeks if I've ever heard of Death in Vegas, I will probably say no.

This album covers a lot of ground. There's occasional horns, occasional banjo, occasional fiddle. Sometimes they sound like The Rolling Stones, sometimes The Grateful Dead, sometimes ... someone I can't quite put my finger on. (Maybe Bright Eyes? Mountain Goats? Silver Jews? Let me know if you figure out who I'm thinking of...) I blanched at first when I saw the 77-minute length --- sometimes that's just too much --- but the variety of styles kept things interesting. I think any fan of rock music would find something to like on this record, and I can't find anything to dislike. It's really good.

The title track is a stupendous way to open an album (or a movie or breakfast or just about anything). It's one of my favorites ever. Beyond that, I loved the David Bowie-ness of this album. It made for a much more pleasant experience than I expected based on the little else I knew of Iggy Pop.

Slurpees rhymes with herpes. The music was fine and they seemed to be having fun but I was cringing at a lot of lyrics so I didn't have a good time.

Sophisticated and stunning. A remarkable swan song.

I've heard of The The but never listened. They're more interesting lyrically than musically. I think I would've liked them a lot in college but today I am underwhelmed.

This was ok. Every once in a while, an instrument or a lyric would catch my attention but there wasn't much that really grabbed me.

"It's just so LONG" has been my main complaint about some of our albums in the last couple weeks. You know what they say...if the album's too long, you're too damn old, Gramma. I like Ice-T's sound and enjoy the riffs and samples here. But this just went on and on and on. I think I would have enjoyed the 16-track vinyl album more.

This is the third appearance so far by Tom Waits in this project (we're about 25% through). This isn't an album I've listened to before and the first time through, I wondered why this one? He's got so many albums, why choose this one over any others? And what's it adding that the other included albums haven't already given us? It wasn't clear to me at first what made this one different. After two more times through the record, the answers to those questions didn't matter. There's room in my heart for as much Tom Waits as you want to give me.

A lot of fun. Several songs I knew but not in their original form. I was totally groovin'.

Wow. Thank goodness for Grace Slick. Somebody to Love and White Rabbit (two of the greatest songs ever) really elevate this album. The rest is solid 60s rock, some psychedelic, some acoustic folk, some blues.

Really enjoyed this, especially the strong finish with She's Electric, Morning Glory, and Champagne Supernova. Sorry I missed it in the 90s.

Very nice driving blues rock. Didn't know any of the songs but lots of good ones on here. Good good fun.

It is evident from the moment it starts that we are in some very capable and caring musical hands. Listening to Kind of Blue feels like lying in a raft gently rocking on a calm sea. So soothing, so laid back. My soul feels lighter. Each track is its own subtle mood and the shift from one to the next creates a clear arc through the whole piece. Absolute perfection.

I loved the fun party tracks but didn't love so much the earnest serious tracks in the middle. Overall, a good time!

Excellent hip-hop. L Hill's voice is to die for.

I found this very uninteresting.

I have memories of bopping along to this on cassette while driving my mom's car in the summertime, wearing white Keds with no socks. I've definitely always thought of it as pure pop fun. But how great to listen to this with grown-up ears and hear such aggressive musicianship! This band ROCKS! The bass! The drums! These women have SWAGGER! I have a renewed love, admiration, and gratitude for The Go-Go's today.

Three-quarters of an hour of Nick Cave screaming at me. I'm kind of used to it.

There's something about the lead singer's voice that has always rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe he's straining at the high notes? So he gets a little yelly? I found myself dancing to it now and then and I liked it more than I expected it to. So there's that at least.

Super fun. I danced all day.

A nice Happy Days kind of listening experience. Some out-dated gender ideas, etc., but otherwise very, very...nice.

Huh. If you'd asked me yesterday if I'd ever gone through a Bad Company phase, I would've said, no. But as soon as I saw the track listing of this album, I remembered owning this on cassette. And a quick perusal of their album covers made me remember I had at least two others. So, I guess I had a bit of a Bad Co. phase and I forgot! Anyway, this album is great! When I think of Classic Rock, this is exactly what I'm thinking. While I love just about every song on here, my two favorites are the gentle ballads Don't Let Me Down and Seagull. It's so great to hear them again! Thanks so much for jogging my memory, 1001!

Wonderful, wonderful. One of my favorites. Simple, soothing. I wish I still had a beanbag chair to sit in while I listen.

Beautiful and mesmerizing. Each time it ended, I just wanted it to start over again. That happened four times.

Not my usual fare but very enjoyable.

Really enjoyed the first two and a few of tracks near the end but got a bit bored in between. I like his smooth sound.

With delectable harmonies and a groovy 60s sound, this one really got to me. I knew I loved California Dreamin' and Monday, Monday. But I had 6 or 7 other favorites by my third listen. The vocals on The "In" Crowd give me chills on chills on chills. Excellent!

This was ok but I felt like the songs lacked variety and energy. Far from my favorite REM.

I love me some Sinatra, so smooth and charismatic. This album definitely set a mood. It wasn't precisely the mood I was in today but I could see enjoying it more under different circumstances.

Hard-hitting but melodic, this is another album that I think younger me would have really loved. I like it now but it has a ... not juvenile, that seems pejorative, and that's definitely not what I'm going for ... but maybe youthful(?) feel to it that doesn't hold the same appeal as it would have a couple or so decades ago. Still, high marks!

Delightfully uplifting. Super smooth. A great accompaniment to the day.

There's something about this album that I find very comforting. Maybe it's the simplicity of the lyrics where it seems that all there is to life is love and heartbreak. (Maybe that is all there is...) Maybe it's the resonance of the deep voice singing back-up that reminds me of my dad singing hymns next to me in church. It just feels restful and good.

The Doors have such a great and unique sound and this album has some of their best songs.

Complicated, funny, intimate, weird. I love it.

Mmm-hmmm. This album gave me deep deep feelings and left me with few words. This is one of the special ones.

I like this one about as much as I liked their "Fuzzy Logic" a few months ago. This one seems a bit more serious but I can hear the influence of decades of pop music behind them. I don't know that I could pick one of their songs out of a musical line-up but I enjoy listening to them.

I didn't hear much that I didn't expect from T. Rex. I love Jeepster even though I don't know what it means exactly.

Yeah, this is what Elvis Costello sounds like. It's 1978 but not the 1978 that I lived through. I've always wanted to like this album since it seems like all the cool kids do and I was hopeful today that maybe I'd find what I'd been missing. But I didn't. I liked "Brutal Youth" better and that's probably why I'm not a cool kid.

Lush, beautiful, and (and I don't use this term lightly) romantic. Excellent songs and a gorgeous voice. A-plus!

Perfect.

Sailing smoothly from big band horns to jazzy sax and piano to lush orchestral strings, The Genius of Ray Charles is one glorious ride.

Glad to have listened to New York Dolls so that I can say I have.

This was a great soundtrack to cleaning the bathroom today. Super fun.

I was under the impression that I did not particularly care for Mariah Carey's music. I was so wrong! I really dig this album. Outstanding.

I knew I was going to love it and I did.

These are songs with big emotional hooks. Planet Telex in particular met me right where I was today. I really love that one. The rest never quite got me in the same way but I enjoyed the album overall.

Wowwowwow. Complicated and strange in the best possible ways, this album maxes out the scale for originality. Unsettling, beautiful, and totally badass.

Experienced a lot of push and pull with this one. Wanted to like it due to its reputation but I started out underwhelmed. Then found the right frame of mind and got into it. But by the time it was over, I sure was ready. Undeniable musicianship but not much here I’ll feel the need to revisit.

Definitely not my favorite of the PJ Harvey albums we've listened to so far. I'm glad we have those: Dry and Stories of the City, ...

Maybe it was the dehydration headache I woke up with or the noise from the roofers that started too early at my house this morning but there were several moments today when I thought, "I think Morrissey's voice is making me nauseous." Other than that, I didn't find this album to be particularly remarkable.

Every once in a while, I'd think, "Ooh, I like where this is going..." and then The Boos Radley would dodge and go a different and (to me) unsatisfying direction. There were a couple of songs that grew on me after further listening but for the most part, this was just ok.

I was so glad to arrive finally at Nirvana. I didn't really know anything from this album apart from the singles Heart-Shaped Box and All Apologies, both of which I like a lot. The first listen through was rough. Maybe I was tired, hot, crabby. But I just couldn't find the groove of the album, couldn't find more than a hint of greatness. Second time through, though, I fell into the pocket. The sound is raw and fuzzy and real, like having your ears scrubbed by a loofa. There's poetry and pain and humor in the lyrics (which, to be honest, I still can't understand without reading them --- but there's treasures to be found there). At the time of this writing, I've not yet listened a third time. But I just might.

I didn’t think I much liked The Cure but the first half of this album had me thinking it was going to get 5-stars from me. It kind of wore out its welcome after about 30 minutes but I really did love the first half.

This was the perfect thing for a rainy Sunday afternoon. It felt sophisticated, intimate, and warm. Loved it.

To be honest, this is an album I've been dreading. I've never much liked Springsteen and I feel kind of defensive about it. There was no chance of listening to this with a completely open mind even though I tried. Most of the songs were new to me aside from the anthemic title track. I was surprised how theatrical they were and am equally surprised that he's not yet been Mamma Mia'ed (i.e., there's no Bruce Springsteen jukebox musical yet, that I know of). The songs are BIG both in sound and in story. I loved the quote that Springsteen wanted this album to sound like "Roy Orbison singing Bob Dylan, produced by [Phil] Spector." I think that's pretty much what he did. However, there is a young white American east coast dude-ness to this music that puts a wall between it and me. I can certainly appreciate it but I don't identify with it much at all. Interesting to read later that compared to previous albums, this one "includes few specific references to places in New Jersey, in an attempt to make the songs more identifiable to a wider audience." I'm interested in those earlier albums --- I think their specificity might actually appeal more to me. Overall, I liked this one but I am not yet a convert. Give me another and we'll see.

Good solid bluesy country folk, reminiscent of Bonnie Raitt, Sheryl Crow, Alison Krauss. Very nice.

I remember being very unimpressed with this album when my sister bought it in 1982. My opinion hasn't changed much in 40 years.

This is fine. I don't really like it much but I'm not angry at it. It's catchy here and there but I don't think I'd choose to listen again.

It takes talent to be this quirky, silly, and fun and not tip over into the annoying. But these are just the cool cats to do it. I love this album from start to finish. I need more of this feeling in my life.

When we listened to our first Tim Buckley album (Happy Sad, ~270 albums ago), I said I would look for more from him. So I was excited to see his name again. This one's a bit more folksy, less jazzy, and Buckley sings in a much higher register for much of this one. I enjoyed the early tracks on the album with more of a 60s protest or psychedelic-folk sound. Once we got into the Knight-errant wond'ring whither his lady'd wandered, I was out.

Completely different from anything we've listened to so far. I wasn't completely unfamiliar with Laibach but, if I'd ever listened to this whole album, it was thirty years ago and I didn't remember all of it. I found it compelling, frightening, and funny, and spent the day falling down a Laibach rabbit hole. This is exactly the kind of thing I'm here for.

I was busy during grunge and wasn't paying much attention. But when I think of grunge, I think only of the dudes and shame on me for that. This album is superb!

Oh man, am I a sucker for a rock opera. I love American Idiot's scope, structure, variety, and ambition. Equal parts rock and musical theater, this fits right into the pocket of my tastes.

I was prepared to suffer through this for an hour based on some of the band's visual imagery but then it went in some unexpected directions and I ...did not hate it. There's lots of screaming and ridiculous speed but then, all of a sudden, a shift into melodic singing or a groovy rhythm. Lyrically, the band punches up (or in), not down --- they're mad but they seem take it out on appropriate targets. I'm unlikely to choose to listen to this again but happy to have had my expectations surpassed today.

Unique and hella catchy. L.O.V.E. M.I.A.

For no very good reason, I've not listened to much David Bowie aside from the hits. That's a real shame. This is stellar.

After being very unimpressed by The Fall's Live at the Witch Trials, I had rather low expectations for this one. It easily cleared that bar. Some of these songs have a rockabilly feel with vocals that aren't really on what I'd call a reasonable pitch but --- hear me out --- not in a bad way? Not a favorite by any means but I'm warming a bit.

Oh, yes. I wouldn't have thought it would be so fun to listen to the blues but this was fun! Really great.

Really great in the background today. Caught my attention now and then in a very pleasant way.

This is fine. Not much I want to revisit.

There are several Alice in Chains songs in which the combination of melody and vocal quality are very compelling and I would say almost beautiful. These are qualities that offset the despair and hopelessness in the lyrics. With this album though, I got all the despair and hopelessness but very little of the beauty. I liked Rooster and Junkhead.

Nice and ethereal background stuff again. Nice.

Wonderful! A terrific voice and variety of styles. Very very enjoyable. More please!

Another just ok from me. Some fun pop synth sounds mixed with punk drum fills but nothing much that grabbed me.

I've heard of Fleet Foxes but I've never listened to them. If I've heard any of these songs before, I think I probably assumed it was a group from the 60s or early 70s. I'm reminded of Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Neil Young. Lyrics have a specificity that give them emotional heft beyond the usual clichés. Very nice indeed.

Never heard of 'em. But this is some good solid early oughts rock/pop. I really liked Words, N.Y., Pounding, and Caught By the River. Good show.

Super groovy and fun! Yeah, baby!

Reading the description and listening to the opening track, I had extremely high hopes for this album. I love a rock opera and the first song has all the right features: coherent introductory narrative, interesting instrumentation, singable tune. The rest was enjoyable but not quite up to the level promised at the beginning. There were moments I was reminded of The Beatles, The Who (obviously), Yes, Pink Floyd, and even The Beach Boys. Definitely worth listening on headphones for some nice stereo. Glad to know of it as a piece of rock history.

This is musical greatness from start to finish. Especially the finish --- Going to California and When the Levee Breaks are a one-two punch to my guts I love them so much. This album is a gift.

A heavy metal album where the songs all sound different? That's pretty swell. I am super impressed with the differing styles of the guitarists and Rob Halford's deft vocals. A pleasant surprise.

I had to keep starting this one over because I kept forgetting to listen. By the third time through, I sort of liked most of the songs but only sorta. I won't remember it.

Never heard of 'em before but this was a fun groove with many surprises.

To my surprise, I was very into this for the first hour. My listening notes consisted of a couple of notable rhymes: "Vandross" rhymes with "pants off" and "breasteses" with "messages."

A fun pop-punk, summertime vibe, like it should be coming out a transistor radio tuned to an AM station in the basket of your banana seat bike with coaster brakes.

I love this album. The Cars have a unique sound among popular bands of their era. Every song on this record is so good. So good.

A fun and funky blast from my past. It's been a while since I listened to this album but it is still very enjoyable.

As with the album Stardust, I am again struck by the deliberateness of Willie Nelson's music. Every note, every tempo, the order of the songs...all show a clear intent and purpose, nothing ad libbed or left to chance. Despite the murderous themes in the lyrics, I feel safe with Willie at the helm. This is music that makes me feel good.

I can't believe I've never listened to this. A masterpiece.

This was a pleasant background for my activities today, though it seemed to last forever. (It didn't help that my Apple music kept getting hung up between songs so I thought it was over several times before it actually was.) Interesting to hear how Dylan evolved from his earlier albums. Very different but still very good.

This was new to me. Definitely heard the influence of Nick Drake in early tracks. But then I might've mistaken Dreams By the Sea for Isaac Hayes or Curtis Mayfield. Nice mixture of sounds. Solidly enjoyable.

Well. The first track is a re-telling of Ingmar Bergman's film The Seventh Seal which sounds a bit like the opening of a late 60s/early 70s TV show that reminds us each week of the show's premise (à la Gilligan's Island, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Brady Bunch). That just seemed a little strange to me. The rest is less weird and very much of its time. Walker's voice and the orchestrations are lounge-singer cheesy throughout. But that is not necessarily a bad thing. The music definitely evokes an era and gets better with multiple listens. Walker's wikipedia page is fascinating and I am interested in hearing something that would cause a reviewer to say "imagine Andy Williams reinventing himself as Stockhausen."

A tremendous title track and a bunch of spacey instrumentals. Interesting.

As much as I've heard this album (on account of my husband plays it sometimes), you'd think I'd be able to tell the songs apart. Other than The Headmaster Ritual and the title track (on account of its farm noises), I really can't. I would never choose it but I don't mind it.

This was about what I expected. Well, I don't think I expected the singer to sound like that. It's clear that what he's doing takes great skill. But to my ears, it's not really worth the trouble. I found it not all that interesting and only slightly annoying.

Really? Sonic Youth again? I still am not getting it.

Wonderful. I was delighted.

The first album I ever bought. Still great.

This is not music that speaks to me. I got the gist early on and then had to listen to the rest. Next!

There was something about I.G.Y. and New Frontier that made me inexplicably vaguely uncomfortable in 1982. That seems to have passed. This is nice.

This is fine. Pleasant enough. But every song kind of sounds the same. It's fine.

Goodness. Goodness gracious. All hail The Queen. This is church.

I like this album a lot. I can hear the old school influences like David Bowie and The Beatles and more contemporary bands like Pavement. But I'm also getting a stronger, more specific POV from this band than on Modern Life is Rubbish, which I liked but couldn't love. After yesterday's Aretha, I'm feeling stingy with my 5s but I'd give this a solid 4.5 if I could.

First things first: All I Wanna Do is a brilliant, brilliant pop song with its evocative imagery and beyond-catchy chorus. (It once caused my exuberantly drunk brother-in-law to attack me and my husband with a lint roller.) That's a lot for the rest of the album to live up to and unfortunately it can't quite reach the bar. But Crow is a talented musician and this is some solid southern country rock mixed with a few other styles (smoky piano ballad We Do What We Can is another standout).

Springfield's full, soulful voice is the perfect instrument for these timeless tunes. Beautiful.

I could swing with Frank all day!

Freaking finally! I've been waiting for this one. These songs are gorgeous, deep, and timeless. They help me celebrate the good times and help get me through the bad. Love it love it love it.

There's something about Traffic that just makes all my chakras line up or something. They just feel good to me. I like their tunes, their instrumentation, and the yearning quality of Winwood's voice. Good good good.

Only familiar with Time of the Season, I did not expect The Zombies to feel so light and optimistic. I love almost every song on this album. Terrific!

My feelings about this one swing wildly from love it to hate it and back again. These songs are cinematic and epic and total cornball. But somehow it all works and I'm closer to love it than not. The Jacques Brel covers in particular sound just right coming from Walker.

Whoa! Don't know that I've ever listened to this whole album. I couldn't really connect to Prince when this was new. But grown up me thinks this holds up very well indeed. Superb!

Strange Brew and Sunshine are both great. The rest did not leave much of an impression. I can tell that it's "good" but that doesn't mean I "like" it.

I kind of wish I hadn't been paying attention to any of the lyrics because I actually did enjoy the music here. But the words... My goodness, these guys sound like they are just SO MAD at their moms. So much whining. So very much whining. Too bad.

Very good. Nice instrumentation and heartfelt lyrics. I like it.

A nice mellow groove.

Sweet, smooth, ooey-gooey mix of pop, jazz, folk, and country. Delicious!

Sure. Sure.

Rocked my socks off for the first half or so. Got a bit repetitive but still a good time for the most part.

Well, this album contains one of my favorite songs (America) with some of my favorite lyrics ("Kathy, I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping. "I'm empty and aching and I don't know why."). So already that's a 5. But then there's also Mrs. Robinson, Save the Life of My Child, Old Friends, Hazy Shade, and At the Zoo. And more. So good. So very good.

Not a lot of surprises here. It's fine but none of it really seems like mine. Feels like being at a party where I don't know anyone but I don't really feel like getting to know anyone either. And the feeling's mutual.

I thought I had an idea of what to expect from "The King of the desert 'blues' singers," but I really didn't. My first listen, the music was mostly background for work and was, at best, unobtrusive or, worse, boring. It didn't seem to have the hooks I expect from blues. But on a second, more focused listen, I started to appreciate it more. It's not an easy listen for my ears --- unexpected timing and rhythm, lyrics in a language I don't understand --- but it is interesting and different and I do like it.

Wowee! Range is the word for this album. Songs cover a wide range of styles: there are a few covers of tunes made popular by American "girl groups" like The Shirelles and The Supremes, three Bacharach/David numbers, one written by Ray Charles, and one by Kander & Ebb. But Springfield also demonstrates remarkable vocal range, from a deep growl to a chill-inducing soulful belt to a lovely light head voice. (My husband kept asking, "Is this the same person?") The lyrics display sexual and romantic power that must have been unusual in 1964. Even Wishin' and Hopin', which advises us to give one's true self up to get a man ("Do the things he likes to do. Wear your hair just for him."), also encourages us to make the first move since it won't happen if we just sit passively wishing and hoping, etc. And it's fascinating to note the shift in tone when some of these songs, clearly written for men, are sung from a woman's perspective --- Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa hits me very differently sung by Dusty Springfield than sung by Gene Pitney. I absolutely love this album. Can't get enough!

I loved the title track and then the rest just sounded like The Smiths. I don't dislike their sound but I have a hard time distinguishing most of their songs from each other.

This provided me a fun afternoon dance party today.

Since I am old and the kids' music (anything released after 2000) doesn't tend to appeal to me (or so I think), I did not expect to like this much. What a great surprise! I love SZA's vocal fry and appreciate her P.O.V. I found several of the songs very moving. Maybe the kids are all right. (Ooh, I shouldn't call a woman in her 30s a kid. But, you know what I mean. The youngs. Signed, Gramma.)

I thought I wasn't cool enough to like Lou Reed. I was wrong. This album is fantastic.

I was in a very bad mood when I started listening to this. Even at its relatively short running time of 34 minutes, it felt like a slog, a chore. Soul-numbingly mediocre. I came back to it later, in a much better mood and, while I still didn't love it, I didn't quite feel the same animosity. These songs sound like they're not fully done yet. If I were their producer, I'd say, "Good start, y'all, now go back and finish them."

A fun endless dance party to accompany my boring workday. Very nice!

Smooth and easy. A nice massage for my addled brain.

I had a dance teacher who used this album in class a lot in the early 00s. I liked it so I ended up buying it. A few of the songs are barely noticeable ambience, melt into the background/use in commercials kinds of things. But many are catchy or interesting or both. I enjoyed revisiting this record today.

Never quite been my thing. I'm glad to have listened but am not completely won over.

Copied to cassette from a friend's CD, this one spent a lot of time in my walkman in college. Pour Some Sugar and Armageddon It were constantly on MTV but the rest of the album is just as solid. I love especially all the songs with one-word titles: Women, Rocket, Animal, Hysteria, Excitable. This is some really great 80s hard rock.

I made an "ew" face when this came up and now that I've listened I think my face should apologize. I loved it! These kind of rock-n-roll theatrics are totally my thing. I kind of wish I hadn't been looking at the lyrics because there was a very nice musical theater surprise awaiting me in the song Gutter Cat vs. (no spoilers). In addition to that one, I loved the jazzy Blue Turk, the epic My Stars, and the White-Album-esque Alma Mater. This was great unexpected fun. (But p.s. it's kind of cruel to assign School's Out homework to a college professor one week before the start of the school year.)

Hooray for Birdland! It is great. The rest is not as great --- sounded like a record of 80s TV themes, putting everything in soft focus like Cybil Shepherd in Moonlighting. I give Birdland 10 stars and the rest 3.

Great samples. Very entertaining. Loved it.

Smooth, sexy, powerful, and empowering. I feel like kicking the patriarchy's ass today. More so.

This album was part of a specific place and a specific time in my life from which it cannot be disentangled. If it hadn't been with us then, would I love it so much now? I don't know. In any case, I do love all the spacey synths and Numan's nasally singing and the times when his voice breaks and the times when the bass drives everything forward, on and on. I can't tell if giving every song a one-word title is pretentious or its opposite. (Today, I say "opposite!" but I'm guessing if someone else did it, I'd change my mind.) I'm glad he was there then and I'm glad he's here now. Also: Cars.

At 83 minutes, this double album didn't leave a lot of time for multiple listens but my response to my first listen is Wow! This is epic! I love the addition of the female backing vocals, which help provide a gospel church atmosphere. Again, it's a long album and I had so many thoughts and feelings that I can't recall many of the specifics. But overall I really enjoyed this.

I got excited by the opening track and thought this might be another hidden gem. But after that, things were pretty and pleasant and rather ordinary.

This album is great! I. LOVE. EVERY. SONG. Do you hear the bass? Amazing! Here are some stories about Duran Duran. 1. I have relatively recently had a dream wherein I was running around an indoor flea market singing the "You make me feel alive, alive, alive!" part of the title track repeatedly at the top of my lungs. 2. When the album came out, there were families that had MTV and families that did not. Mine did not and this created a particular kind of desperation in me for music videos. At a party at the home of one of my dad's work colleagues, the kids all shuffled into the living room, where the host's kids were watching TV, the oldest daughter controlling the remote. She clicked on MTV where the video for Rio was starting but said, "oh, I've seen this" and clicked away and I died a little inside and still remember it a full 40 years later. 3. I have a friend who tells the tale of decorating a Christmas cookie in 1983 with the name Duran Duran and her mother storming out of the kitchen and proclaiming with complete sincerity, "Christmas is ruined!" I think that is very funny.

I’m not sure I needed to hear this one before I die but now I have. Very silly. Very spoodly. I did enjoy the handclaps on Don’t Say Motherfucker, Motherfucker. I predict that I will use “I’ve got a headache in my pants” as an excuse to get out of something before the end of this week. I won’t listen to this again.

I really loved some of this and really hated some of this.

Very fun in English and in French.

Spectacular.

Man, I did not expect this to be so BLEAK. The Brothers Gibb are sad. I'm glad that in a few years they will know that you should be dancin'. Yeah. This is soft and gentle if depressing. Seems I like most the tunes written by Maurice, which are the ones that sound most like The Beatles.

My brother had this on 8-track and I remember being vaguely afraid of the cover image so I don't think I ever listened to the whole thing. But I've always loved the title track and Jet and Nineteen-Hundred and Eighty-Five (but if you'd asked me yesterday about that last one, I wouldn't have realized I know it). The album is fun! Had a great time listening. Would do again.

My favorite by one of my favorites. Wonderful.

My bestie included a couple of these songs on a mixed tape back in the day. (Thanks bestie!!!) But I'd never listened to the whole album before today. Superb story-telling and lovely tunes. It's darn good.

Still not completely in love with Radiohead but I'm closer? Once again, there were a couple of songs that felt like something special. The rest is better than fine just not quite there.

It took until about track 3 for this to heat up. Hints of Bowie obviously but also Talking Heads, U2, Kraftwerk. Some good dance beats in here.

I love their raggedy vocals and quirky, specific lyrics. They've got a bit of a 70s AM radio sensibility that I find quite charming.

Wow! Smooth and personal. A great listen this morning.

Hm. I think I miss the grinding. I found this kind of boring and generic. (Sorry.)

If you want to make me feel good about your record, there are worse ways to start it than by sampling Led Zeppelin's When the Levee Breaks. The lyrics are silly and often sophomoric. I definitely don't feel like I'm the intended audience. And that's a bit of a shame because there were lots more fun samples and catchy delivery. Another band that's better when I can't really hear the words.

I was expecting a band called Primal Scream to be screamier. They weren't! Mostly chill dance vibes here. The dance tracks are far better than the others. Star, a song with a message, is particularly on the nose and a little cringey. But overall, I enjoyed this. Groovy and sedate.

OK. I've never been a fan of Bryan Ferry's voice and really was't looking forward to the Roxy Music albums I knew we'd have to listen to as part of this project. The glistening ladies on the cover weren't helping with my dread either. But then...I loved it despite myself. I'm still not enamored with the vocals but this is bold and theatrical and I want to hear it again. I also want to give the cover models some towels and some warm, comfortable clothes.

This is badass.

I'm a big fan of Ritual de lo Habitual but had never bothered listening to the album that came before. There were glimmers of light on Nothing's Shocking but mostly I heard a band that hadn't quite found what they wanted to be yet (or at least what I wanted them to be). More spoodly hard rock than the theatrical circus that was to come.

After listening to Born to Run and The Rising, I thought I'd be ready to like this and went in pretty optimistic. But I'm afraid this did not go well for me and my ear holes. The songs that were familiar had worn out their welcome long ago and the songs I didn't know didn't really speak to me today. I'm a little jealous of Springsteen fans because their feelings for him seem to run so deep. (I'm sure I feel like that about somebody else. Lots of somebodies else. But, you know, no such thing as too much love, right?) I'm pretty sure there's a Springsteen album that I could love. I will keep looking. p.s. Anyone else find the line "Hey, little girl, is your daddy home?" monumentally creepy?

Since this is our 400th album, I'll accept an album of epic length without (too much) complaint. I definitely enjoyed Speakerboxxx more than The Love Below but both contained some excellent tracks. Loved GhettoMusick, Bowtie, Church, and Knowing from Disc 1; and Behold a Lady (whatever tf that means), with its literal "clap-clap"s, and the jazz version of My Favorite Things played at break-neck speed from Disc 2. I don't know if I'll ever listen to all 2 hours and 15 minutes again but a playlist with the aforementioned favorites might make me very very happy.

Great to hear such a significant piece of work even if it’s not particularly my bag. Interesting to hear the different voices and styles. It’s clear why this album was so influential.

Wow oh wow was I bored by this.

I love being able to identify a band by its bass player. This is good good fun. Danceable and soulful and a punch of nostalgia. Just great.

Except for the parts that sounded like the alarm on my phone, I very much enjoyed this. Fun dance grooves with tiny melodic surprises.

Well. This was hard to listen to. It's nihilistic, misogynistic, and violent. It made me feel sick to my stomach most of the time. And yet...there were moments where I was in awe and even felt a sort of delight at some of the genius rhymes. I can see why he was considered one of the greatest rappers. And I think I've heard enough.

At first, this was just loud and muddy but it finds itself about half-way through. Some great energy.

Mostly great fun. Exemplifies the 60s in my mind. I can even excuse the myriad issues with Little Girl in the 4th Row as relics of a bygone age. Ballad of a Useless Man is oddly catchy for a song about an alcoholic living on the streets. And Melody for an Unknown [Woman] could have used even fewer words if you ask me. But overall, this is a good time capsule and just a good time.

Utterly delightful.

Trying to break my heart? That's not that hard to do. And it's extra tender today so maybe this doesn't mean much but break my heart it did. (And I wasn't even really paying much attention to the lyrics.) Melancholy vocals over sad piano on a gray and gloomy day felt just perfect.

Clever and funny and good-hearted. The Kinks can play for me any day. And talk about rhymes: Consortium - awarded them, vernacular - Dracula, affiliates - and billiards. God save Donald Duck, vaudeville, and variety!

I find it very hard to think about this one as an album since many of the songs are so familiar outside of this context. The songs that weren't hit singles stand out because they are equally as good but seem relatively new to me. Other than the horrifying Run for Your Life, I've got no beefs with this record. (And honestly the rockabilly twang of Run for Your Life is so goddamn catchy that I kind of love it, too. <shakes head and tsk-tsks at John Lennon>)

Other than One, I'd not heard any of this before. It's great! Really great! Much more accessible than Master of Puppets but a little less radio-friendly than Metallica (the black album). Right in the sweet spot. Loved it.

Incredible. Didn't want it to end. Until the last song. I was kind of glad when that one ended. But overall, super-top-notch!

Fun and interesting.

Oh, sure. The Youngbloods. I know them. Wait...do I? Am I confusing them with The Yardbirds? Oh yeah: come on people now, smile on your brother... That's them. That song's not on this album though. The only song I know on this album is Darkness, Darkness because Ann Wilson (of Heart) did a cover on her amazing album Hope & Glory. I love that cover. And I love The Youngbloods' original. I love a lot of this album. It's definitely 60s but not overplayed. Interesting instrumentation. Speaking of...there are a few instrumental bits that go on a little long but that's my only complaint. This is good good stuff and I want to hear more.

I enjoyed the driving bass intros on a few of these. There's a lot about this album that brings Jane's Addiction to mind --- the vocals in Song #1 in particular and the guitars in Brendan #1. I found a lot to like.

Sublime. More like this please!

Okee dokee. I listened to that. What's next?

Deliciously soulful. A great soundtrack for a chill Friday evening after a long, hard week.

I find this kind of music rather silly. When I wasn't bored, I was embarrassed for all of us. My favorite parts were the spoken word bits where the guy sounds like Hans Gruber stating his demands to the miracle that is the Eff Bee Eye. "The following people are to be released from their captors: In Northern Ireland, the seven members of the New Provo Front. In Canada, the five imprisoned leaders of Liberte de Quebec. In Sri Lanka, the nine members of the Asian Dawn Movement. Small babies should be placed inside the special cocoons and should be left, if possible, in shelters."

I'm really loving all of the exposure I'm getting to The Beach Boys with this project. And it's fun to read about the goings-on around the recording and the release of this record. Do You Wanna Dance hits you with the Phil Spector-ish wall of sound, making it clear why Wikipedia classifies this as Orchestrated Rock. I love the complexity of the lyrics on side 2 of the album hinting at where Brian Wilson is headed. A gem!

I wasn't in the right place for this today. Very little of it was appealing or even unappealing in an interesting way. To me. Today.

The kind of 80s brit pop that I tolerate more than enjoy, this one had me bopping along pretty good.

Soulful and sexy and only a little silly. Heart!

This was a favorite of mine back when it was new. So most of what I felt listening today was nostalgia. They're bass-y and shout-y and if the songs were new to me, I don't think I'd appreciate them as much today. But this one has the benefit of familiarity.

Electrifying. So many great songs.

Another solid groove for a Saturday dance party. Really enjoyed it!

To me this album means home. It is heartbreaking but gorgeous and exhilarating. I love every moment.

Making us all want to Get It On is what Marvin Gaye does best.

Nice to wallow in the Muddy Waters today. Appreciate hearing it from the source.

I wasn't looking forward to 2 hours of the Smashing Pumpkins. I remember kind of disliking them in the 90s. Based on what? I do not know. So there was a lot of music here and I only had time to listen once but I really really liked it. I think I'd like to narrow it down to about 10 songs instead of 28 but I really really like those 10.

Yes!

This was different. Creepy and then so completely not creepy that it was kinda creepy. And then just ordinary. I appreciate having listened to it but I can't say that I really liked much of it.

No real surprises. This is what I think The Cure sounds like. Tolerable but not my fave.

Yes, I love the title track. Sure, I love Sara. Beyond that, these songs aren't familiar. For the most part, each one reminded me of a different Fleetwood Mac song that I like better. I liked it a lot but I'm disappointed that I didn't love it.

Smooth, rich, and wonderful. Made me feel good. Home IS where the music is. Heart!

What a difference two years makes! I did not much enjoy the experience of listening to AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted (1990) a couple of months ago. The Predator (1992) showed a tremendous leap in musical maturity. It's intense and serious and compelling but still finds room for humor and play. There were parts that made me feel ill and sad and angry, so it wasn't all a good time. But it was a good listen.

First listen, I didn't mind it. Seemed ok. And then I hit "play" again. And I did not have a good time. That and I spent far too much time and energy thinking about and talking about whether the cover was sexy or a joke. I'm back to disliking Roxy Music again.

My super-cool housemate had this CD back in the 90s. I hadn't heard it in decades. It's still great. Wonderful to hear it again.

Jamiroquai! When you want a 70s sound but not from the 70s. Really fun and funky grooves. I love it!

Stevie Wonder exudes love and light. He makes me feel good.

Wow. There are a lot of songs here. But there's a lot of variety in style and instrumentation so I never really got bored or tired, just overwhelmed by the assignment. Thematically, yeah, they're all love songs of a sort. Some are silly, some are sweet, some are poignant, some heart-breaking. Lyrics are worth paying attention to for sure. So much to love.

A couple of these songs are strong 5s for me (Movin' On Up, Loaded) and I already knew and liked Come Together from Trainspotting. I had a good time grooving to the rest. I will want to listen again.

Hey everybody! There’s a twist contest in the kitchen and you’re all winners! This was fun and these guys are still playing. Fun!

What makes this good and not just complete nonsense? I have no idea but good it certainly is. Unusual, weird, noisy, and really really good.

Some catchy beats. Not a ton of variety. Quite long. Not my favorite.

Fine. I think I won't remember it at all.

A different kind of punk sound. Interesting to read how much they influenced artists I like. Disturbing lyrics at times. But a good listen for today.

The instrumentation is lovely and Nico's vocals sound raw and authentic. No autotune here. Deliciously soothing.

I hadn't heard this one before. Lots of spoodling and those high Yes vocals. I enjoyed it just fine.

An old favorite. Still excellent.

A hometown friend gave this to me, kind of out of the blue, right before I left for college. I would never have bought it for myself but I listened to it sometimes and enjoyed it. Still, I was surprised to see it on this list. I don't know why! It's really good. There are bits that certainly smack of the 80s but mostly I think it's aged pretty well and it's more suited to me in late middle-age than it was in my (rockin') teens. Very nice!

On our honeymoon in London, we had dinner with an old friend who was living there. The conversation turned to music and he sheepishly admitted to being a fan of Robbie Williams even though his flatmates made fun of him for it. When I returned to the US, I ran across Williams' The Ego Has Landed in a used CD store and picked it up out of curiosity. It quickly became one of my favorites and it still evokes strong and specific memories of where I was living and how I spent my time that year. I only today found out that Ego is a compilation of songs from prior albums, including Life Thru a Lens. So today's listen was a fun mix of songs that I know well and songs that were new to me. I love it!

I did not find this particularly interesting.

I knew When Will We Be Married, Jimmy Hickey's Waltz, and Carolan's Welcome from a show I was in a few years ago and I love those tunes! Based on that, I kind of expected a more "traditional Irish" sound from the album. The bulk of the album is kind of generic folksy rock, none of which did much for me. I do love When Ye Go Away. That's my new favorite.

This seemed very adult. Not in a bowm-chicka-bowm-bowm way but in an I gotta wear a suit and do my taxes kinda way.

I love this. Sophisticated and very very cool.

For being so short, that was kind of a slog. I started rockin' out a couple of times but for the most part was just waiting for it to be over. Couldn't understand a word.

This was going along pretty great until after Smoke on the Water and its holy trinity of rock chords. Long spoodily, uninteresting solos made the rest feel like an eternity. The band sure does sound great live and the songs are good but these jammy solos get a big no-thank-you from me.

I listened twice today and both times this flew under my radar for the most part. I didn't hate it but nothing stood out.

"I'm a boss in a fucking dress!" is the line I've always wanted but never knew. Still not my genre, but this was an interesting listen for today.

This is the kind of album that makes it clear why this is "albums you must hear" and not "the best albums." I'm glad I listened to this once and I will not likely choose to listen again. But I've got respect for musicians who say, "I've got an idea for a song," and then just record a song that's 50 seconds long --- no padding, no filler, no long solos, just...here's the song. Lyrics don't need to rhyme or make sense --- the whole album felt very stream-of-consciousness and I appreciated that. The songier songs sounded like 60s British invasion covered by a grunge band and even some of the vocals sounded a bit like Paul McCartney.

Well this just smacks of quality. This isn't the Bee Gees I grew up with but it is top-notch!

Love the bluesy, hornsy sound of this band. Some of the songs go on too long (I had to stop Free Form Guitar and come back later), but great to hear the origins of some very familiar songs.

Overwhelmingly powerful and deeply expressive, Nina Simone is an incredible gift.

Wonderful. Improved my day.

Quirky and fun. Liked it just fine.

"Smack My Bitch Up..." Why? Oh, who cares. Fuck off.

Mostly underwhelming 90s indie rock. Makes me wonder if we all avoided feeling feelings in the 90s? Some of the more punk-sounding songs are fun.

A Kanye West album definitely wasn't on my wish list for Christmas so I took the day off and didn't listen. Too bad Ye is such a public mess because a lot of this album is truly great. Yeah, some of it is misogynist-ick and some of it is just plain ick. But several of the songs really got to me in a way that's hard to reconcile. Once again, I am failed by a one-dimensional scale.

Funky and jazzy early 90s hip-hop. Very enjoyable.

More subdued than the Pet Shop Boys I'm used to. Sophisticated class.

I don't think there is any song that starts cooler than "Golden Years." This album is great!

Warm and magical. I wanted it never to stop.

I'd always avoided this album because the bean business from the movie Tommy kind of freaked me out as a kid, so the cover made me nervous. But this is silly and fun and I had nothing to worry about. I love it.

I would like that hour back.

My expectations were low after The Notorious Byrd Brothers and the first few tracks had me nervous but it really turned around for me around track 5. First of all, they appealed to the grammarian in me by correctly singing "between you and me" (instead of "you and I") on Time Between. After that, this album was shimmery gold in my ears.

Varied, interesting, and fun. Will listen again!

Good solid 80s pop that wasn't overplayed, at least in my neck of the woods. If I were creating the soundtrack for a movie that was set in the 80s and I didn't want to go with the obvious choices (Don't You Want Me, Come On Eileen, (I Ran) So Far Away), I might choose this. I loved the first half and was less enchanted with the second. The piano solo on Uncertain Smile was especially nice. Really good!

The music of a quirky circus (a Quirkus-TM). Organs, strings, woodwinds, horns, musical saw. I'm not in love with it but if someone I lived with had it in their regular rotation, I wouldn't be mad.

Good, more Chemical Brothers. I still really can't tell one song from the next (for the most part) but I like the sound.

Sometimes you hear and album that makes you say, "Holy cow, I need to recalibrate my rating scale." This, folks. This is what a 5-star album sounds like. From simple piano melodies to wailing electric guitar over sax and horns, the story packs a heavy emotional punch. I'm overwhelmed.

Well, I was apprehensive about what could possibly follow the perfection that is Lou Reed's Berlin, and seeing our fourth Tom Waits album had me wondering how this one was going to stand out from the others. I shouldn't have worried. The 1001 Generator had my back. Nighthawks at the Diner is an intimate night in mid 70s Los Angeles with a performer who is doing precisely what he was meant to do. The songs themselves are wonderful but so is the interstitial patter, poetic and musical enough that it was likely scripted and rehearsed but seemed completely spontaneous. Waits often laughs at his own jokes and had me laughing out loud, when I wasn't tearing up. Really fantastic, start to finish.

Pleasant, unobtrusive electronica.

I love me some Stephen Stills. This is lovely. Top notch!

What? I actually like an album by The Fall? Yes, I guess so! Surprisingly fun and danceable.

Am I the only one that's confused by the fact that there is Pulp but then there is also Blur? Those are pretty much the same word, right? I love Common People (Shatner's cover with Joe Jackson is one of my favorite things on earth) and I got excited about I Spy and Disco 2000 the first time through. But then I was kind of bored by the rest of the album and, listening again, even Spy and Disco'd lost some of their luster.

Summer of '83. In the high school auto shop building. Poking paper napkins through chicken wire tacked to a flat-bed truck, building a float for the Central Wyoming Fair and Rodeo Parade. A Thriller cassette is in a boom box. Each time a side ends, someone is there to flip it over and press play. When we get to that part of Wanna Be Startin' Somethin', everyone stops and yells "Yee Haw!" (Though the Apple Music lyrics tell me now it's "he ha." Whatever.) This was the soundtrack to our lives for more than a year. It changed everything and it meant a lot.

Of Kraftwerk's Trans Europe Express, I said, "Their music doesn't make me FEEL anything." Well, I guess today is a new day because I felt great listening to The Man Machine. I loved the lasers and the dance beats and just generally had a good time.

This is a great album. Songs are distinct, both musically and thematically, and O'Connor's adept vocals still haunt even thirty years later. Lots of good songs that add up to a satisfying, unified whole.

"Being kicked in the closed mouth Or smiling with no teeth They're both choices, yes But it's impossible to eat" Oof. Why haven't I ever heard this before? I have some theories... Really great early 90s hip-hop sound with lyrics that are still too relevant. I would understand if folks thought it preachy but I'm in the choir so I say, "testify!"

This is hard to listen to. I felt sad and tense the whole time knowing what's around the corner. I was also embarrassed for the audience whose yeahs and whoos feel inappropriate, insufficiently reverent given the performance's now understood weight. The album is undeniably poignant and historic but I doubt I will ever seek it out again.

Delightfully bonkers.

Very fun, especially for someone who doesn't like driving.

I don't have particularly good reasons but I found this utterly dreadful today. Inexcusably mundane. Really, really, really did not like.

Hmmmmm. To me, this is the least appealing of Bowie's records so far. I can tell he's going for a bit of a soulful R&B sound and I can appreciate that but for the most part these songs don't particularly grab me. (And I disliked outright the cover of Across the Universe.)

I've got no hope of being neutral about Einstürzende. They're one of my husband's favorites. I hear them whether I like it or not. So I might as well find reasons to like them. This album's noisy and rather unpleasant, but it's not chaotic, not just loud noodling and screaming. I couldn't tell you what their intention is, but I can tell they've got one. It's hard to tell from this album but there are songs on later albums where Blixa's voice is actually soothing. On Kollaps, we only hear the stuff of nightmares. Still, this is different! I would much rather listen to something that disturbs me with noise than to something that disturbs me with boredom. So, thumbs up!

OK. This is the least "huh?" of the many, many Sonic Youth albums we've listened to so far. If this had been the only one, I wouldn't be so mad. It's not bad. There are songs I actually would like to hear again. Good work, everyone.

Aw, I love this one from my walk-man days. Great bluesy, southern rock sound.

I'm not ever going to love Morrissey. This was fine though.

Very nice! Björk-ish but not Björk. Will want to listen again.

Someone gave me this CD thinking I would like it. I listened to it a bit and, though some of the tunes appealed to me, the album was never a favorite and now it just seems tired.

Feeling a little meh about Elvis Costello going in but I'm glad to say, I like this one! I like this one a lot! Varied styles from song to song. Hard to pin it to a single decade. A range of feelings. Lots here to like.

T. Rex has some fun hooks and a distinctive sound but a kind of limited range. I got tired of this album real fast.

(a) I can't stop looking at the cover. Her hair, her eyes, her lips, her teeth. The shine and color on her face. Beautiful but disquieting. (it's not a bruise, is it?) The hyper-real/non-reality of it. This image took up a lot of my brain space today. (b) I am completely unfamiliar with FKA twigs, a fact that earns the album extra points after what feels like several repeated artists over the past few weeks (a lot of white dudes I already know and some I've heard enough from already). (c) Like many others, this faded into the background a bit in the kitchen during dinner prep and was much, much, much, much, much more compelling and interesting with headphones and more focus. I'm intrigued and want more.

There are few who could charm me this much by singing about whores and Chinamen. But Tom Waits does. I'm not sure what a fifth Tom Waits album is adding to this list. No matter. I love it still.

Wow! This is a lot of impressive music. A wonderful change of pace. I loved the interstitials that caught the musicians talking. That really added to the homey cozy feeling. Loved it.

I was making a cringey face through much of it but there are a couple of tracks that are incredibly catchy and I enjoyed them despite myself. I especially appreciated the vocal delivery on some of the rap tracks --- an intensity in West's voice and the intake of breath that made the stakes seem high even as the words themselves seemed pretty banal at times. I had to look at the lyrics to blood on the leaves to make sure that I was hearing correctly that the main thrust of West's lyrics are about partying and doing Molly against the sample of Nina Simone's Strange Fruit. But again, the song is hella catchy and I listened several times. I don't want to hear much of this again but I thought about it a lot today.

A wonderful surprise. Sophisticated pop tunes that could be from almost any era. Lots of tracks made my love list.

In my review for Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness I said, "I remember kind of disliking them in the 90s. Based on what? I do not know." There was so much of MC&tIS that I enjoyed that I was kind of looking forward to hearing more from these Pumpkins. Cherub Rock validated my feelings that I had really missed out back in the 90s --- man, that song is an absolute peach! The rest of the album did not nearly agree with my earholes as well as that one, including the singles Today and Disarm, which might have been what put me off the band in the first place. And I found that by the end of the album (half as long as MC&tIS but still over an hour), I'd grown quite tired of their schtick. Still though, Cherub Rock, you guys.

Wheeeee! This put me in a GREAT mood and that is not an easy thing to do. Fits perfectly in my brain.

Yep, that's CCR all right. No surprises. It's fine.

This was fun (except when it wasn't, and even then it was just kind of dumb). I already knew (Get a) Grip but all the rest was new to me. I laughed out loud at the dopey delivery of the first line of Princess of the Streets (She's gone and left me. I don't know why.) and Peaches (Strolling along minding my own BUSINESS.) The prominence of the organ keeps the tone light and makes this band stand out from others of their genre. Well done!

It's historic and ground-breaking but I feel a bit ragged after listening to it.

I was quite well-taken with this one. It was thoughtful and poignant, emotionally deep. Well done.

Much less noisy and more musical than I'd assumed from the description. Outstanding! Very enjoyable.

OK. Reggae's not my favorite but I tried my best to keep an open mind. The first track, Lively Up Yourself, had that typical Reggae thing going but it felt super chill and was catchy. I loved it. No Woman, No Cry was familiar and warm. So far so good. However, the beat and the tone don't vary much and I got pretty tired of it after three or four tracks. So I think I can appreciate it a bit at a time --- I would not mind if any of these songs shuffled up in a playlist now and again --- but I don't know that I'll reach for this album as a whole again any time soon.

I think a lot about how the way I grew up interacting with music (in the 1970s and 80s) is so different than how folks interact with it now (in the 2020s). In my day, I'd hear a song on the radio several times. If I liked it, then I might call the radio station to request it and then wait around until they played it. If I really liked it and had baby-sitting money, then I might buy the 45 (rpm vinyl record of the single). If I really liked it and had no cash but I did have a blank tape, I'd hold my tape recorder up to the radio speaker and record it, mildly cursing the DJ for talking over the intro and/or the fade-out. I wouldn't buy a whole album unless there were at least two singles I liked on it AND I had money. Further, there was virtually no way to listen to an album that you did not yourself own or have access to via a friend or sibling. So it was extremely rare to hear an album just once. If you heard an album, you'd hear it over and over again. And if you'd spent money on it, you'd do that even if you didn't particularly like it beyond the hit singles that brought you to it. But there was a sense of ownership of a song --- "I had that on 45" --- ownership that made the song a part of you. From LPs, we moved to cassettes and to CDs. When iTunes came along, I ripped my CDs to mp3s, at first just the good songs and then, as I got bigger and bigger hard drives, the rest of the albums. (I still have all those CDs. I don't know how to get rid of them.) I also paid for songs and albums on iTunes for a long time. I feel a sense of ownership of all of those songs. Now I subscribe to a streaming service and I haven't really figured out a way to curate the songs that I want to "own" because in some sense I own them all. Whenever I want, I can listen to a whole album once and feel no obligation to ever listen again. Often in this project I base my rating at least in part on whether or not I want to hear the record again. I think that's partly due to this training in my formative years. Loving an album, or even liking it, means having it and listening to it again and again. But maybe that's not necessary any more. Anyway...I did not know of ELP's Pictures at an Exhibition before today. I liked it just fine and I appreciate it as part of the culture but I don't particularly want to hear it again, so I think I'm going to give it 4 stars. But I also think, if I'd heard it live, without the question of whether or not I'd even have the option to experience it again, I might give it 5.

Creates a groovy atmosphere. Simple and nice.

I don’t know enough about this kind of music to say anything informed or intelligent about it but I liked it and could use a bit more love and devotion in my world.

The first few tracks I can only describe using the non-word "prancy" --- maybe it brought to mind circus ponies? I came into "She Comes in Colors" expecting something like the Stones' "She's a Rainbow" but got Madonna's "Beautiful Stranger" instead --- either would have been fine and this is by far the best track. I don't think I'll remember much about the rest.

Another gem from Joni Mitchell. We are truly blessed.

Glorious abandon. Janis is fearless.

Well, my stars. You're gonna have to gimme a minute to recover from all this...charisma. This album is deep, soulful, sexy. I enjoyed the pants off it.

I was ready to write the whole thing off as not really my thing based on the first couple of tracks but found myself really enjoying They Always Come, Yeah We Know, and Let It Ride. Still not really my thing but not terrible.

Liked it better the second time through. Listening on headphones revealed layers that weren't obvious on speakers. Feels like it would benefit from repeated exposure.

I listened to Dark Side on 8-Track a lot in my teens. Today brought back memories of doing math homework stretched out on shag carpet. There are still parts of this album where I fully expect to hear the music fading out, followed by the ka-thunk of the tape changing tracks, and the same song fading back in. The lyrics certainly hit my 54-year-old ears differently than they did at 14. I'd never actually understood much of "Us and Them" and reading the streaming lyrics today nearly knocked me down. (Instead, I looked up to see a baby with giant blue eyes staring at me and we held each others' gaze for a good minute on the bus. That was intense.) I'm relieved and grateful that this album is still as good, if not better than it always was. It does not seem dated, does not feel tired. Every fall on the college campus where I teach, as the kids are settling into their new dorms, there are always Dark Side posters on display at the pop-up poster sale on the quad. I take some comfort in the fact that the teens too still find it good.

I really like Belle and Sebastian but I find their songs really hard to tell apart and they have SO many! This isn't my favorite B&S album but it's nice.

Light-weight and youthful. Concerned with boys and girls and they're getting together or not. Fun.

A smooth, old-school R&B feel in this hip-hop record. I enjoyed the groove.

An absolute gem of a record. Social justice messages with a party sound and exquisite musicianship. Very fine!

I do like the sound of a Bunnymen song. Lots of la-las and do-dos. Pretty!

Great psychedelic rock sound and cover art. Their influence on later acts is apparent. Glad to have heard it.

The bones of a great album are here. The songs have beautiful melodies and nice instrumentation. I like the quality of the vocals and hear some lovely poetic lyrics here and there. And yet... There was something about this album that felt like I was being held at arm's length. The message I picked up was, "Look how sad I am. You could never understand such sadness." I don't dislike sad albums but I think a good one says, "I'm sad and I can see you're sad, too. Let's be sad together." Perhaps it was my own mood going in. I was already pretty down and felt like High Violet didn't leave much space for me to bring in my own sorrow.

I'm very familiar with a few of these songs. I liked the album but definitely started to tune it out after a while. I respect a singer who's not afraid to sing off-key.

Bluesy and moody. A lot of songs with a maritime theme. I had fun.

Very 70s. Very British. Kind of odd. Kind of silly. Very fun.

Oh! So much better than the last Siouxsie and the Banshees' album we had. I love this one!

Not particularly my favorite style nor subject matter but it gets points for being a welcome change of pace. Very Lawrence Welk!

A very fine punk rock record. Fast tempos and clever lyrics that are both funny and horrifying.

Oh, I tried. I tried I tried I tried. It's fine. I don't hate it. But there's not much for me here.

A distinctive and glorious sound. Thumbs way up.

I generally enjoy my reggae in smaller doses but this felt cool and soothing today. The reggae rhythm bounces along under almost every song but the lyrics are moving and uplifting and the second half of the album left me feeling all right.

Other than maybe there's one or two songs that aren't adding much, this album is really something. This is a much more mature effort than License to Ill, lots of growth has happened in between. I was dubious about the claim in Sure Shot about being through with disrespecting women but they lived up to that promise throughout the rest of the tracks. There are a variety of styles that shine on this album --- a few tracks are exactly what I expected with distorted shouty vocals (not a bad thing) but then there were punk songs, straight-up funk instrumentals, and even some Klezmer violin. The last few tracks are a paean to Buddhism and enlightenment. This album is bold and inventive and kind-spirited. Good work.

Not unpleasant but very bland for the most part. I doubt I would've finished it if I didn't "have to." I'm glad I stuck it out because the last two tracks were quite striking, elevating the overall experience.

Absolutely enchanting. I was enchanted.

Holy smokes! I'd never quite registered the banjo-picking that comes in on the instrumental section of Take It Easy. That's quite something. Nice to listen to classic country-tinged rock from the early 70s. It gave this witch-ay woman a peaceful easy feeling for sure.

A Smiths album I actually liked! I played it three times! Super catchy and I could tell the songs apart. Finally!

This is very fine storytelling. And not just in the lyrics. The music itself tells a story. It is no surprise that Newman has been so successful as a film composer. His songs themselves are cinematic. The opening and closing tracks are deviously beautiful: lovely melodies bring you in and then the lyrics kick you in the teeth. I'm sure I knew it at some point but maybe I'd forgotten that Newman wrote "You Can Leave Your Hat On." Listening to this album, it struck me how similar Randy Newman and Tom Waits are. I would love an album where they cover each other's tunes.

I love this band. Surrender is one of my favorite songs. This album is exhilerating and fun!

I hadn't listened to any of Arcade Fire before this project and I found their album Funeral (our album #65) bold and theatrical. I felt an arc and an intention. I listened several times. Now it's a year and a half and 500 or so albums later and maybe I'm tired and maybe it isn't fair to compare this album to the previous one but that's what I found myself doing. I heard glimmers of what I liked about Funeral but overall found The Suburbs much less compelling. I don't particularly want to devote much attention to it again.

Other than My Sweet Lord, I hadn't heard anything on this album that I can recall. It is long and there's a lot to take in for one day. My immediate reaction is that there are maybe a couple too many long instrumental jams (maybe...) but some very sparkly gems in here as well. I think that after a bit of time with this one, it will rank among my favorites.

Wowee! This is a super fun jam. Loved it top to bottom.

I enjoyed a lot of this, bopping twixt different styles with lyrics whose satirical nature was easy to miss when I wasn't paying attention. I think these Mothers were likely a retroactive influence on Lenny & Squiggy. I can live without hearing the last two tracks again though.

Mathematical fact: the set of all people who dislike Johnny Cash is a subset of the set of all people who are actually monsters. This is divine.

Mr. Young continues to grow on me. I found this very moving.

Goodness Gracious. I cried and laughed out loud. Outstanding. Truly outstanding.

Delightful. A ray of sunshine, with a bit of shadow. Just the way I like it.

I'm not at all familiar with this band and even after listening to Everything Must Go, from what I read about them, I still don't know much. This record plays like a concept album or a rock opera à la Green Day's American Idiot but I guess it's not? Almost every song feels epic. I loved many and disliked none. Very glad to have made its acquaintance today.

Listened to ten and a half tracks. I don't need to hear more.

Absolutely invigorating. I feel vigorous!

Huh. I thought I really liked Van Morrison but, aside from the songs I already knew, I found this rather unexciting.

I believe we have well-established that I am a sucker for a rock-n-roll piano. No surprise then that this album speaks to my soul. Sing it, Brother Elton!

Welp, I really shouldn't have read his Wikipedia page or the iMusic description or talked to my friends about this album before doing today's homework. It was super hard to give this an unbiased listen. I personally have always loved Wishing Well and might even place it in my top 100 songs of all time. (Might. Definitely not top 10. Probably not top 50. But maybe top 100.) But it seems some of my friends hate it and I don't know who they are anymore. Also, TTD', now known as Sananda Maitreya, sounds kind of insufferable and I kind of couldn't stop thinking about that today. I'm not completely sure why this album is here.

It's hard to believe that this is the band that will record Tommy and Who's Next just a few years later. I appreciate that about The Who: early Who sounds totally different than what I think of as "later" Who (even though it's not that much later). I like this album just fine. It feels rough and youthful. I like imagining seeing this version of the band in a cramped and smoky venue.

It's fine. I appreciate that it was recorded in a refurbished church. Love the pipe organ. It's interesting lyrically. But musically it mostly left me cold. I'm not going to rush to hear any of it again.

I was in a bit of a foul mood earlier today but listening to this, I could only imagine skipping gaily along in a bright yellow sundress stopping only to sniff the blossoming camellias. Delightful.

God damn it. I had no intention of enjoying this asshole's music so much. But I did.

Some solid fun punk. Fun.

Except when I wondered if my speakers were broken, I very much enjoyed this. Its Steve Reichian rhythms and instrumentation kept me buoyed and focused at work.

Ah, this is much more what I expected from Black Sabbath: shadowy, moody, bass-y, guitar-y, long noodly segments. I don't dislike it but it's not nearly as appealing as Paranoid and Vol. 4.

Captivating chuga-chuga-chuga rhythm all the way through. They seem fascinated by death but largely against it, which is nice. I liked it!

Funktastic! Highly recommend!

Very nice. My Oh My, Silver Lining, and White Ladder in particular felt special.

For a punk band, these guys sure seem to have their shit together.

Prominent bass with some great guitar underneath. David Bowie’s prints all over it. I dig.

Dexy's vocal affectations get on my nerves a bit but this was a fun, mostly upbeat soundtrack to cleaning my bathroom today. (I know his name's not Dexy.)

I enjoyed most of this. Varying styles and some good special guests.

I listened twice but nothing much grabbed my attention.

Mournful and lovely. Hold on.

Nice instrumentation. Mostly quiet and very pretty.

Here's the thing about a Rush song for me: there's always a part in it that I go, "oh yeah, that's the stuff," and then there are large chunks of the song that do nothing for me. Also, you start talking about a "solar federation" and typically I'm out. And yet...there's quite a bit here for me to like and I definitely appreciate Rush's whole deal.

I had fun rocking out to this album. I think it would have been a heck of a thing to experience live. I did feel though that the songs were a little samey-samey and the hour and twenty minutes felt long.

Unique style and combination of instruments give a relaxing ambient sound that I thoroughly enjoyed. An hour of soft groovy beats.

Interesting and enjoyable throwback.

I like the general sound of it and the edginess of the lyrics. I don't know if this is so but it seems like the kind of music that would play over the end credits of a tv show popular with millennials (not an insult).

I'm really appreciating the opportunity to hear more of Bob Marley. There is some good variety here, both in lyrical themes, and musically --- there's a lot of that typical reggae beat but also a good bit of not that. I was especially taken with the first four tracks: Concrete Jungle, Slave Driver, 400 Years, and Stop that Train.

Wow oh wow oh wow. This is some very powerful stuff. Why wasn't this band, like, Nirvana big? So good.

One of Madonna's most mature albums. Very entertaining, very catchy. I love it.

This felt like a smooth, creamy, sexy massage for the soul today. Perfection.

Some nice Leonard Cohen with a lot of mouth harp. Boing-boing-boing.

As an album, I found this rather tedious. I did, on occasion, find myself banging my head. But I don't really feel the need for more than one of these songs at a time.

Another from this master story-teller. It's hard to tell a lot of the songs apart but there is good and challenging and deep stuff here. It made me sad and angry and even laugh out loud a couple of times. In addition to Blowin' in the Wind (one of two songs I can play on the guitar) and Hard Rain, I particularly appreciated Masters of War and Oxford Town.

It’s really a shame that the subject matter and cover photo are so revolting because musically I fucking loved this record.

I thought I knew what to expect from Blondie but I was wrong! Really fun punky pop songs like One Way or Another and the disco rhythm of Heart of Glass, but also more than a hint of 60s girl group and an unexpected Buddy Holly cover. Debbie Harry kicks ass.

Wait. Did I just say a few days ago that Music is one of Madonna's most mature albums? I did. But so is this. More like yoga class than a dance party, this one goes down real easy. And Ray of Light is one of my feel goodest songs.

Boy I sure am tired of hearing about AKs. Some of the beats are catchy.

In college, a group of guys in my dorm cluster formed a band and called themselves Vivid Arctic and I think that made me biased against bands with Vivid or Arctic in their names. Shame. This is fun and upbeat and I bopped around the whole time. Loved it.

Pleasant music, nice voice. Would enjoy it as a party was winding down with folks sitting around quietly talking, not quite wanting to call it a night yet.

Very listenable, at times glorious.

Fun to have a straight-up dance album. Not sure why this one but I enjoyed it.

If you asked me what 70s pop music sounded like, I'd hand you this. This is a long album and I think there are probably some songs that I could do without but there are also some real gems. I don't think I carry it in my brain all the time as such but when I listen to it, it's clear that "Hello, It's Me" is a genius pop song. I was prepared to be outraged at a track called Slut but even that was catchy and kind of pro-slut it turns out.

I did not connect with this at all. They get a 2 instead of a 1 because of the cello and glockenspiel.

A few facts about the song We Are Family: 1. It is on my top 10 list of favorite songs. 2. It's one of very few that I can safely claim to know all the words to. 3. The "hey-hey-hey-hey-yah" on the chorus after the first verse is maybe my favorite moment in pop music. 4. I went to a dance convention in 1979 and learned a dance to this song and to this day, every time they sing "I got all my sisters with me," my brain says "brush-hop-step, brush-hop-step" in rhythm. Anyway...it's so great to get a legit, straight-up disco album. The upbeat songs are divinely danceable and the slow jams have lovely lead vocals and rich back-up voices. Moreover, the love grooves lack the faux earnestness that such songs often display, tending to make me more uncomfortable than anything. The ballads on this album were sweet and authentic and just as appealing as the dance tracks. A really great album!

I enjoyed the moody vocals and easy beats. Definitely liked the first half better than the finish.

On paper, this seemed like the kind of thing I wouldn't like at all but I took their advice from the first track and enjoyed myself throughout. Some impressive horns and saxophone and rockabilly guitar here and there highlight a fun variety of styles. It made me happy.

Mostly delicate and mesmerizing and then occasionally fuzzy and noisy. I loved it.

A lot less catchy than I expected but still a great and compelling album.

I've heard of Captain Beefheart a lot but had not ever listened and expected something much weirder. This is a charming, fairly unweird, blues-rock album and I liked it very much.

I was excited to listen to this one since it seems all the cool kids are into Television. I did not however particularly enjoy most of it. Guess I'm still not a cool kid.

My husband bought this CD for me a while back thinking I'd like the title track and he was right. The rest of the album is kind of more of the same so it's a good thing I like it. I found this much more enjoyable than some of the metal we've heard. I did skip Jailbait. Nobody needs that.

Wonderful. An absolute treat.

Not familiar with this at all. I absolutely loved a couple of tracks and enjoyed most of the rest.

This is a great time.

There are a lot of them but these songs are lean and clean. Nothing goes on too long nor does anything really meander. I love especially Three Girl Rhumba, 1 2 X U, and Mr Suit.

I love the title of the album, the cover art, the instrumentation, the twangy harmonies, and the old-timey lyrics. (Well...not the lyrics where the women have no agency which is...a lot of them actually... and certainly not the wtf lyrics of Knoxville Girl. Seriously, wtf?) These guys sure can sing! Nicely different from much of the rest of the 1001.

I enjoyed the heck out of this dance party. Great fun!

Hmmm. I was excited to listen to this. I love Feel Good Inc. and Dare from Demon Days but maybe the fact that I never listened to that album more than once should've been a clue as to how I'd feel about this. With a lot of these songs, I felt like the musicians just weren't that interested in making music, which makes sense to me after reading about its inspiration being the soullessness of pop music. A lot of this did feel soulless. Which is an interesting thing to try, I guess? But it obviously makes it hard to connect with.

A lot of down-tempo, repetitive tracks made this rather tedious. It's fine but not my favorite.

I'm familiar with all these songs but, looking at the list of titles, I couldn't sing any. I think that's because they're musically pretty similar and all run together for me. But I also don't think that the music is the point of this album. It's the lyrics. The songs are melancholy and sweet with a touch of menace and lyrics that occasionally make me catch my breath. Nick Cave's a master.

I can't tell one song from the next but that's ok. I was engaged and entertained throughout.

This music isn't pretty. Not even pleasant. And sometimes the sounds are what I'd call downright ugly. The lyrics are so rapid that I'm not sure of many of them. But this album is never boring. I was surprised at how much I liked it.

Great mix of styles and voices. Enjoyed it mucho.

So many complicated feelings. I feel like I've been kicked in the teeth while listening to some pretty piano playing. Oh, Randy Newman, nobody does satire like you.

Hello, old friend. It's been too long. You still sound good.

Surprised to see an album from such a well known band without a single familiar title. But no worries --- this is quite comfortably Queeny. There are pre-echos of more familiar fare like our beloved Bohemian Rhapsody and the Flash Gordon soundtrack. Interesting to hear the difference between the white and black "sides" of the album and to hear other band members taking lead vocals from Freddy Mercury.

Wow. There is an awful lot happening here and some of it is fantastic! Layers of rhythms and styles. Just so much going on. Sometimes it feels completely comfortable and sometimes nicely unexpected. I don't have time for multiple listens today but I know I like it and want some more time with this one.

As many times as I've heard them, American Pie and Vincent both still give me chills. The rest of the album is more of the same: evocative poetry set to lovely folk guitar. Very moving.

Had it on while I was working and it was fine. Tried to listen again on a walk and kept hitting fast-forward. Not unpleasant but not very interesting.

Parts of this were amazing and then there were the parts that were amazing but for far too long. I do love Whipping Post though.

"Nice and smooth." I love The Kinks. They have a kindness, a gentleness, a cuteness about them that makes them unique and endearing. David Watts and Waterloo Sunset are two of their best.

Outstanding! Eclectic mix of great songs. I am quite well-taken with this one.

An absolute delight. Quirky and funny but seriously good. I want to listen to this a lot.

Another classic album I've never listened to. In fact, I'm not convinced that I'd ever listened to the entirety of the title track before this afternoon. This was a grooving 60s soundtrack for a sunny day, knitting lace on the patio.

I think it's interesting that my first exposure to Rod Stewart was probably Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? at the age of 10. Or maybe Hot Legs, the year prior. I can imagine that songs like that felt like a huge betrayal to fans of these earlier records. I've since filled in a lot of the gaps but I'd not heard any of these particular songs except those I knew by other artists (Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Elton John). A lot of the songs have a country tinge to them that I wasn't sure would work for me but they absolutely do. I feel lucky that Rod Stewart became a singer instead of a professional footballer.

This didn't quite hold the magic that Kind of Blue and In a Silent Way had for me. Solid, soothing jazz though.

Wow. Phenomenal. Groovy, psychedelic, and fun.

I was rather looking forward to more from The Mothers after enjoying most of Freak Out a couple of months ago. Unfortunately, I found this one a bit tedious. Not particularly interesting sound wise and not particularly funny nor profound words wise. It seems like these guys had some fun making it but that doesn't necessarily translate to fun for us what listen.

Pure, haunting, beautiful.

At first, this just had a vague 90s indie sound that is not generally my jam. But I warmed up to it pretty quick. Her voice has an interesting atonal tone and I found many of the songs musically and lyrically compelling.

Sorry, boys. Gramma is old and tired and you're just too darn loud. I liked some of the funky bass bits. I might've given this two stars if it were fifteen minutes shorter Three, were it thirty.

If no one's using Terry Underwear as their drag/burlesque name, I call dibs. I love B&S and I love this album.

Warm and cozy. Love this collaboration.

I feel so hip!

I expected something much weirder after everything I’ve heard about this record. All I hear is beauty. Kudos!

I'm familiar with most of these songs individually, but I don't have a lot of listening experience with this as an album. Interesting to hear how close in sound they were to the 1950s, with Revolver and Rubber Soul just a few short years away.

Lovely and moving. Like being gently rocked to sleep.

Amazing. Just...beyond...everything. If heaven has a DJ, they play The Pogues a LOT.

I don't know this band but there is something about the name Kings of Leon that I find a little off-putting. I found the record at turns super-catchy-fun-rockabilly and then annoying. More fun than not, though.

When they started singing, I thought, "Oh god no." There's that whiney, alternative 80s voice that drives me bonkers. It wasn't all like that, but a lot of it was.

Beautiful, unique voice.

Really enjoyed this. Funky and relaxing.

I listened to this on a plane, coming home from a vacation with my oldest and dearest whom I only see in person once a year or so. So I was a little sad but this music made me happy. Very fine.

Mellow and lovely. Very very nice.

Drags a bit in the middle but overall really terrific.

I think I might’ve overdone it on the Neil Young today. Or maybe 1990’s era NY just isn’t my thing. These songs are long with lots of guitar jamming that didn’t appeal to me at all this afternoon.

I love the title track and the cover of Sonny and Cher’s The Beat Goes On and I appreciate this album's cultural significance but the rest of the tunes on this record don't quite do it for me the way some of Spears' later records do. I hope we get to hear more from her.

Funky and soulful. The apparent blueprint for all cop show scores of the 1970s. I felt like I was listening to an episode of Charlie's Angels.

Outstanding.

This went on for a very long time. And then it went on for another 45 minutes. So. Long. I hadn't thought about Marilyn Manson in a very long time. Do people still make music like this? Are people still shockable? Is Marilyn Manson still mad at his mom? I did appreciate the lyric, "I wasn't born with enough middle fingers." I have felt that emotion.

I bought this CD when it came out but, judging by how unfamiliar the songs are, I only listened to the whole thing a couple of times. A nice 90s dance sound throughout but nothing as memorable as the title track.

Quirky and sweet. Glad I listened.

A wonderful way to spend an evening.

I spent the first few tracks trying to figure out where I'd heard this voice before. Finally had to bite the bullet and look it up: Ute Lemper's Punishing Kiss! Yes. Makes perfect sense. I'm guessing the ratings of this album are going to be pretty split --- I spent as much time hating it as loving it. The vocals are annoyingly affected at best, creepy and menacing at worst. But the theatricality of this album got way under my skin. I do think this is an album that I needed to hear before I died. Very unique. Very interesting.

I've had this one in my library for a while but there's a lot here, so I'm always appreciating new things. This is a good one.

Huh. I'd forgotten about Dirty Work. This album is great.

I am completely charmed.

Wonderful. I wish it was twice as long.

I really thought I was going to love this one but then it was a lot of falsetto singing about Jesus? Good but maybe not great.

Yep, that's Joy Division. Lots of bass and talky-singing. It's not something I'd choose to listen to but I don't mind it.