If you hate this album you cannot conceive of true beauty in the world. This has always been my favourite of Nick Drake's albums. His singing, the string arrangements, the Richard and Danny Thompson's contributions, Joe Boyd's masterful production - all just perfect.
I'd like to image I hadn't wasted 54 minutes of my life listening to this soundtrack to an imaginary film. Unfortunately I did and I regret that. It has no redeeming qualities at all and completing it was a chore. It sounds like a music student's composition project. And not a good one. Never again.
5* album, with apologies to MBV for having not listened sooner because I confused them with emo twats My Chemical Romance and Bullet For My Valentine. Turns out I love shoegaze. Who knew?
One of the greatest live albums ever and a favourite of mine for years. I love every note, from the hard rocking of Blackmore's guitar to the bleepy, bloopy proggy noodling of Lord's Hammond organ. I prefer the original album to the deluxe version, so for the true experience I only listened as far as the end of Space Truckin'. The tighter 1 hour run time is a much better package and perfectly formed. Anything else is just too much imo.
Somewhere in the territory between boring and actively unpleasant most of the time. Genuinely my favourite moment in this record was the second or so of silence between the end of the dire Receptacle for the Respectable and the start of [A] Touch Sensitive.
I've never been big on grunge and had only had limited exposure to Pearl Jam. This album didn't really change my views, I neither loved nor hated it. It's just... Ok. I honestly found the songs a bit too long and a bit too samey. Porch was the standout track that I didn't already know that I saved as a favourite. Shorter and more musically interesting to me. It might be a great album but a couple of repeat plays was enough. I doubt I'll feel the need to listen to this in full again.
Not Eminem's best work but it set the tone for what he could do and showcases his latent talent. My feelings are probably coloured by nostalgia because I first heard this years ago in school when I was 15. It brings back good memories and at the time I thought some of this material was a lot funnier than I do at over 20 years remove. Coming to it completely cold I'd probably only give it 3 stars now.
One of the great debut albums. There was nothing like it when it was released. Witty, gritty, loud and demanding endless replays. Lots of stand out tracks too.
A couple of stand out tracks and even then I suspect Take On Me is only as successful as it is because of a genuinely great music video. This is not an album I can ever see myself listening to again. Not terrible but mostly dull to me and heavy on the 80s production that has never moved me.
A solid album from the band's strongest period. I've listened before but not in full for maybe 15 years. I seem to be in a minority but the only song I really didn't like was Jig-Saw Puzzle. The rest was consistently good to excellent roots rocks and blues rock. The stand outs have to be Sympathy For The Devil and Street Fighting Man and years of rock radio exposure has reinforced that but Parachute Woman and Salt Of The Earth the other highlights for me.
If you hate this album you cannot conceive of true beauty in the world. This has always been my favourite of Nick Drake's albums. His singing, the string arrangements, the Richard and Danny Thompson's contributions, Joe Boyd's masterful production - all just perfect.
In its time this would have been ground-breaking and a clear 5 for being utterly new and different. Out of context in the modern day when a child with a bit of software could do this, it's slightly less impressive and I find myself rating it purely on composition and production. Still a great listen from time to time when you need ambient electronic tunes without lyrics whilst working. Pt4 is my favourite, though that might be a British thing having grown up hearing it in every seaside arcade for my entire life. I'll definitely continue to listen to this in future.
I like prog but never really got into Genesis. This didn't swing it for me. Good playing but the song writing was average. On the plus side it makes punk make so much more sense.
A good introduction to a band I only knew for one song. I enjoyed it, on the whole. Probably only 2 songs I'd listen to in isolation. This feels more like an album you listen to in full, with the second half comprising mostly longer tracks. It's not from my favourite period in time, so I'll listen again but not regularly.
I don't know how this counts as one of the 1001 albums I need to hear before I die. It's pleasant enough but entirely unmemorable. I don't even know if it's one of the best 1001 ambient albums ever produced. Inoffensive and worthy of playing in the background when you have work to do but it'll never feel groundbreaking.
I enjoyed this album much more than expected. Quite a lot of strong tracks that I didn't know and really enjoyed. This is definitely an album I'd listen to again.
I like CCR and this is pretty good but definitely not their strongest effort. It certainly defines their sound but it's not as even and polished as other albums.
It took a couple of listens to really appreciate this fully, even though I've always liked trip hop. Definitely better after a second go round but some of the rapping prevents this getting 5 stars. This was a great album in that it created the template for trip hop and the Bristol Sound but their letter albums like Mezzanine are stronger.
A good introduction to Tribe for those who don't know them. Not flawless but a strong and enjoyable album, even for someone who casually listens to hip hop but isn't necessarily a regular fan.
This was a pleasant album but it's not going to set anyone's world on fire. I didn't feel like there were any stand-out tracks. It's a work meant to be taken as a whole because it's regarded as the first 'concept-album' where there's a thematic link between all the tracks for the first time ever, rather than just a disparate collection of songs. That's a good touch but I just couldn't say I loved it.
Not really thing but a very funky thing it was.
Separate the man (colossal egoist) from the art (incredibly well produced hip hop album) and this is a banging record. I've never listened to one of his albums before but I enjoyed this way more than I expected.
I've always liked Once In A Lifetime but I really didn't get the appeal of the rest of this album. A difficult listen for me.
Phenomenal album. So glad this process introduced me to this record. It's much more even and consistent than Ritual De Lo Habitual. I imagine hearing this for the first time in 1988 would've felt how it did hearing Arctic Monkeys for the first time in 2005. A total game changer.
I'd like to image I hadn't wasted 54 minutes of my life listening to this soundtrack to an imaginary film. Unfortunately I did and I regret that. It has no redeeming qualities at all and completing it was a chore. It sounds like a music student's composition project. And not a good one. Never again.
I wanted to love this because it's my favourite period and one of my favourite genres but the quality just wasn't there. Good with a couple of standout tracks but not great. The songs are an uneven mix of psychedelica, baroque pop and whatever you'd class the last track as. The thing that really killed this though was the terrible mastering. Most of the tracks were badly balanced with most of the instruments heavily skewed to the left. Really bizarre and irritating to listen to.
Decent R'n'B album but I felt let down slightly by week vocals. Badu's voice doesn't have the depth and strength of some of her contemporaries and she seems sing from the throat rather than diaphragm, so she lacks the power and richness that would accompany the music well. Enjoyable on the whole though.
This hits me different now to when I heard it first time aged 18 and my only criteria for a good song was the quality of the guitar solo. Still a stone cold classic though. This is one of those rare albums that defines an era, sets a template for its genre and acts as a tentpole for the career of the artists. An absolute monolith in rock history.
Pleasant but unmemorable. No stand-out tracks. Good for being different but it hasn't tempted me into a repeat listen.
Love a bit of glam and enjoyed this madness.
I don't see what all the hype about this album is for. Some good tracks, others ruined by really unpleasant noise. I prefer some of their other work. Great in parts though.
One of the greatest live albums ever and a favourite of mine for years. I love every note, from the hard rocking of Blackmore's guitar to the bleepy, bloopy proggy noodling of Lord's Hammond organ. I prefer the original album to the deluxe version, so for the true experience I only listened as far as the end of Space Truckin'. The tighter 1 hour run time is a much better package and perfectly formed. Anything else is just too much imo.
I've never been able to get into Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. I always found their music to be too dark, too dense and antagonistically difficult to listen to, so I didn't have high hopes for this. I was wrong. It's a great record and one I'll probably listen to again. Not a flawless 5 for me but really good nonetheless. O Children in particular was a standout for me.
I didn't enjoy this album. Musically it's pretty good though not at all what I enjoy, however, the awful po-faced singing ruined it. I can't see this album's appeal. For the same period I'd rather be listening to Sonic Youth.
Not an especially great live performance and not especially interesting songs. Not sure why we all have to hear this. Very short though.
Short, loud, fast, iconic and great.
Way better than I first expected and really picked up after the first couple of tracks. Great ambient music to work to. Not memorable but the context of the album marks it out as significant. Will listen again.
Mostly rapid angry bellowing with a couple of witty tracks thrown in. Mercifully short at 35m 3s.
Solid album with some great tracks and it's well produced too. Just too long for my taste. To be great, a record needs to be tighter. When the running time is 71 mins there's too much opportunity to put weak tracks on there that detract from the overall score, which is what happened here. When it's good it's really good though. Supergrass have always been one of my favourite underrated British bands of the nineties.
Pretty good but not perfect.
Excellent punk album.
Pretty much perfection.
A great album but a little too bloated with a couple too many instrumentals. When a record runs over an hour there's always the chance it'll contain tracks that detract or stop it being 5 star and although this is good, it needs to be a little tighter. I really liked it though and was both pleased and surprised by the eclecticism. A really enjoyable listen.
I didn't think this was outstanding and probably not my favourite in LCD Soundsystem record. Too long as well.
A bit samey, which isn't necessarily a bad thing when the opening track is Ace of Spades but it didn't achieve greatness through its lack of variation. And as someone else pointed out, Jailbait has some really problematic lyrics. Very enjoyable though.
Not at all what I expected and really good. The album that has really surprised me most 50 into this exercise. Will definitely check out more Sisters of Mercy.
Somewhere in the territory between boring and actively unpleasant most of the time. Genuinely my favourite moment in this record was the second or so of silence between the end of the dire Receptacle for the Respectable and the start of [A] Touch Sensitive.
5* album, with apologies to MBV for having not listened sooner because I confused them with emo twats My Chemical Romance and Bullet For My Valentine. Turns out I love shoegaze. Who knew?
Soft rock really isn't my thing but this was much more enjoyable than I expected. Would definitely listen again, though I much prefer Winwood's earlier group work.
Stonking album. A couple of all-time top tracks and everything else is great too.
A strong, very even album but not enough standout tracks for me to make it a 5*
I really struggled to decide what to make of this album. Clearly some talented musicians making something that sounded very much of its time and had some flashes of virtuosity in more than a few places. I found it a bit too uneven though, lurching between disparate genres and styles. I didn't care too much for the vocals either. But I didn't hate it and I've saved If'n as a stand out track. I definitely won't listen to the whole thing ever again though.
I was a teenager when this was released and I really liked it at the time. I've since grown up, my sensibilities have changed and though the quality is still there, the whole thing is just a hot problematic mess of misogyny and homophobia. There's some monster talent on this, great beats and hooks by Dre and some great tracks like Stan that will always stand up but now it's hard to listen to. I won't be coming back.
This sounds like what you'd get if you searched "90s grunge" in a royalty-free music library. It's like the diegetic music you'd hear in the background of a teen film set in 1992. Like a previous reviewer said, it's like it was produced by an AI trained on existing grunge albums. Its biggest flaw is being dull and having nothing new to say. I'm not a huge fan of the genre butni know what's good and this just isn't. I'm honestly surprised it's in the list.
Not as bad as some people make out but also not as great as others say. Chris Martin should really sing an octave lower, not that falsetto he goes for. I heard it once and it's much better. There are a couple of good tracks her but the mastering on Shiver made me really angry. Once all the instruments kick it I kept thinking my speakers were clipping but no, it's just their crappy production.
Strong
5* in spite of, not because of the twee nonsense of Maxwell's Silver Hammer and the execrable Her Majesty.
Solid enough but unmemorable to me. I liked it more than later period Aerosmith that I've heard in the past.
I'm not angry, just very, very disappointed. I was in my mid teens when this came out and hanging with a crowd who were really into this (I wasn't), so any enjoyment was largely as a result of nostalgia, rather than excessive quality. The tracks I didn't hate were The One, My Way, Rollin', Take A Look Around and Hold On. Some of those had catchy hooks or half decent tunes. The album as a whole was far too bloody long, Fred Durst's whiny, posing anger is laughable and I didn't think much to the production. And I listened to it in full, so the final track with its looping laughter made me righteously angry. Still not the worst album from this project that I've endured, so I can't rate it 1 star.
Brilliant album, made even better by the contrast to my previous day's album by Limp Bizkit. Hints of the Beatles, the Kinks, The Who and The Clash along with their own style. I knew of the Jam and their most famous songs but most of this was totally new to me. I shouldn't have spent so many years out off by tragic middle-aged dads and their 'Well-end' haircuts. Will definitely put this in rotation in future.
Dated now and yes, the lyrics would be problematic if released today but in its time a decent album. A little earlier than my favourite period but it has some killer 2 part harmonies that set the trend for the genre for bigger bands that followed. Solid contribution to the canon.
I've listened to a lot of Bowie over the years and somehow hadn't heard of this album or any of the tracks on it. It's like finding out you've got a sibling you didn't know about. Albeit a sibling who isn't as good as the ones you already knew.
S'alright I suppose. Design For Life was the standout, though I knew it already. I don't think I'll be going back for a repeat listen.
I've never liked Radiohead before and this isn't the album to convince me. A couple of catchy hooks here and there but then the vocals spoilt it for me. Is this even in the top 3 Radiohead albums? I'm pretty sure it's not.
One of the longest hours of my life. Wanting an album to end is not a sign you're enjoying it. It has a couple of better tracks but none were especially memorable to me. Just a useful reminder of why I've tried to get into The Fall before and never managed it.
Enjoyable but is it groundbreaking? Probably not. Unique though.
I really enjoyed most of this. Judged against the rest of his body of work and considering whether it merits inclusion in this project, I concluded that it probably doesn't. A great listen all the same.
Why? Half the already very short album is 'skits', so beloved of rap and R'n'B. They are presumably supposed to add context but detract from the experience of listening to the music. Am the tracks seem utterly forgettable. Plus there's a lot of the awful mumbly triplets that Snoop Dogg has complained us ruining and homogenising rap. Snoop knows the score. Bin this right off.
I was the sort of pretentious twat who listened to this and loved it when I was a student. 20 years on and it's still great. There's nothing else quite like it. Not perfect but definitely one worth hearing.
I liked the opener and Which Way To America as a dig at the reality of life in Reagan's America but most of it was a bit too much for me. I can see why it's on the list but I can't see me ever listening again in full.
The sort of album you'd have seen advertised on TV in the UK in the early 2010s with a breathless voiceover from Zane Lowe, deeming it to be the album of the decade. It isn't. It's not bad but nothing much really stood out. Lots of layers and textures that benefit from being heard on a decent set of cans but no hooks or stand out months. I can why some people hate it.
Nope. Maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind but I don't think I enjoyed any of this. It was so maudlin and the jarring with vocals grated, as did the energy-sapping guitar. I feel like I need a hit of caffeine after this.
It got better than I expected at first but I expected it to be awful and it was merely annoying.
Ok. Not memorable though and a little uneven.
On first listen I'd have rated this 2 or 3 at best. Due to a disrupted and broken listening session first time round I returned a couple of weeks later and listened properly in one sitting, this time with a decent pair of cans. It transformed the experience and immediately elevated this album to 4*
A very polished album with impeccable production. It's somehow too polished, too shiny and largely unmemorable to me though. And it suffers from my main complaint about disco - most tracks last too long without actually going anywhere. Luckily the album is only 41 minutes, otherwise I'd have been going spare with boredom.
I didn't enjoy this as much as I hoped. But bad and a real groove in places but I felt a bit let down by a few tracks.
I've listened to Bob Dylan on and off for years and never been a huge fan. There have just been odd songs I liked. I've owned a few albums but never made the effort to listen before despite knowing he had a few golden runs. This album is absolutely the way in for me. Just perfection. I loved it from start to finish. Judas to some but he has the best music when he went electric. The folk side is still incredibly strong though.