I think I managed 4 songs before the wave of pop nausea overcame me. Like aural Kendal Mint Cake.

Like being stuck in a hotel lobby in the 1980s.

I'm not sure why this album makes me so cross. Maybe I'm disappointed that I missed out on something because I don't, "get it". Anyway, it's wrong and I'm right. NAA.

Amazing album, so rich and weird. The melodrama and soaring instrumentals are fantastic.

Whiny folk drivel saved by some catchy riffs.

Meh. Bit too shouty. Sorry Miss Jackson is a banger.

An OK album, but it features none of my favourite Curtis Mayfield tracks.

Get in! Love a bit of the White Stripes. Thumping drums, stonking gurt riffs and agro vocals with a touch of whimsy. Lovely.

This album is perfectly fine, until you get to Get It On, at which point it becomes a STONE COLD CLASSIC (TM).

OMG. I don't think I'd ever listened to this full album before. What a joy to find the diversity of tracks on here.

I'm not sure why this album makes me so cross. Maybe I'm disappointed that I missed out on something because I don't, "get it". Anyway, it's wrong and I'm right. NAA.

Worth listening to as a whole album. Most tracks are familiar, but together they really feel on that Low feeling. If you are listening to this regularly, you probably need to take up a team sport or something to get you out of the house.

Yep. Fine. Move on.

Meh. Really not my cup of tea. I checked out their more recent albums, and they were better.

Enjoyable, good glam fun.

Perfectly lovely jazz.

Bit dull

Amazing album, so rich and weird. The melodrama and soaring instrumentals are fantastic.

I think I managed 4 songs before the wave of pop nausea overcame me. Like aural Kendal Mint Cake.

Oh Chef, Chef, Chef. This is how you got that badass reputation, you smooth motherlover

Every song a stone cold classic.

Not my cup of tea at all

Whiny folk drivel saved by some catchy riffs.

Solid gold

Oh no, bit this again

Yeah, s'alright if you're into that kind of thing.

What a classic

If I were in my 70's this would've been my era, and I would be listening to their record regularly. But I'm not.

Why would you do a Beach Boys album without Brian Wilson? It's like The Jackson 3, NSYNC without Timberlake or Destiny's Twins. It's like a poor photocopy of Harry Nilsson on a bad day.

I keep forgetting I kind of like LCD Soundsystem. I think I prefer each song individually though, rather than a whole album at once!

I thought I was going to hate this, "Oh God, not Travis!" Maybe the catalogue of middle of the road 70's whining had lowered my expectations. Maybe Travis have some good riffs, with lovely mellow bits and unexpected angry bits, lyrically sound too.

Love a bit of Floyd!

What a relief. I thought my sense of taste was going after I enjoyed Travis, but thankfully I found this to be fairly drab middle of the road rock. The lyrics were indecipherable amongst all the guitar noodling.

Yeah man, this shit is thoroughly entertaining.

Extremely NICE.

Yeah. Quite fun, but not my favourite Beastie Boys

She sounds bunged up and posh. I sound bunged up and posh sometimes too, but I'm not sure it's something to aspire to.

At last a sixties /seventies album I can get behind. This is a classic. OK, it's a load of whiteboy blues covers with questionable accents, but they make them their own and really knock them out of the park.

You got a problem with Aretha? Yeah? Then you have a problem with me. Don't mess with the Queen of Soul.

Nothing says stealing black music and making it white like Graceland. A beautiful album, with coherent lyrics, made by a proper musician. Well done, Mr Simon.

So good. The Beatles are used as an example of how 10,000 hours of practice can give you mastery of a form. I think I listened to The Beatles, mostly this album for 10,000 hours in our basement when I was a child, so I've mastered listening to them, and I've really got it down to an artform. A lot of the album is quite childish, but so am I, and so was I when I listened to it most. I love the range of songs, the lyrics, and that you can have a song along to most of these.

I think I preferred Screaming Trees by Dust. After Abbey Road (yesterday), we now seen to be listening to some middle of the road bullshit again. It's not bad music, but the chord progressions are so textbook, with the lyrics on Spotify I can sing along, despite never having heard it before.

Singing out of tune and cultivating an attitude like you've made no effort is SO PUNK. Oops, I am so punk I put on Bob Marley & The Wailers instead.

A banger

Ah! An album that deserves to be in the top 100!

Note the best album by not my favourite band.

Yeah. It's OK.

A Change didn't come. :-( I think I prefer the studio albums. Still, Sam Cooke, what a star!

Lovely lovely lovely

Extremely pleasant background music. Crank it all the way to 4 in your local bistro.

Meh

Do you like sex? Do you like albums about sex? Do you relate to the inner city struggles of Harlem? Well, here it is on a plate. Dig in!

Beautiful Christmas cheer. Good will upon one and all.

Blues standard

My grandmother and I concur, Sarah Vaughan is a classy delight.

Jolly pleasant, but not really going anywhere.

Look out! Will everyone PLEASE stop standing in the middle of the road, it's really not safe. What's that? No, I don't care that you used to be Bob Dylan's backing band, this constant flow of traffic over all lanes at once is a disaster. You British bands, just keep to the left and everyone else stay to the right and that way we'll have no troubles.

Yes please.

Grrrrr. Yeah.

Do disappointing. I live a lot of Gil Scott-Heron's poetry, but this just sounded like lift music. I'd heard The Bottle, which was the highlight, but failed to lift the whole album up.

It's your nan's favourite mop-tops. If you've any knickers left over after the Tom Jones tour, chuck em this way!

A solid Doors album.

Yes. All day long. Hit me!

Oh, man, I'm tired and don't need someone shouting at me. Stop it. Even if what you are really singing is, "In my dang a ding a ding a ding dong A sticky sticky son of a gun Ding a danga danga dong dong ding dong Why why never know Why why wack a dong a dang ding dong Then you take it on the bill Ding dang dong don't dong Whoa! I want to love ya!" (Jesus built my hotrod) I think I'd prefer it in a Country and Western style, and I generally hate Country and Western

No comment required

I would've been a terrible Beatle. I don't have the hair.

Fuck yeah

Lovely great trippy swooshing noises. Less aggressive then a lot of his work. Beautiful stuff.

Had some good songs on it.

Like being stuck in a hotel lobby in the 1980s.

Loses one star just for not being Back to Black.

I can see how this could be someone's thing, growing up in a town suddenly they discovered this album and no-one else got it like they did. I found it hard to focus on, like trying to catch a worm, it just kept slipping away and something else would pop into my head.

Beep beep sheep

Good rocking fun

What an album. Superb, funky, smooth. Yes please, Curtis.

Good fun, but a little incoherent.

Oh no. Just ... Don't.

I feel like I should be wearing a one piece flared jumpsuit in a primary colour. Martinis al round! This was a cool slinky album, but also quite irritating at times.

I can take it or leave it or tie it up in a bag with a brick and throw it off a bridge in a torrential midnight rainstorm.

Oooh, look at that boy, he's so quiet, dark and mysterious. The way he avoids all eyes contact and uses monosyllabic responses betrays his inner genius. He's clearly got high emotional intelligence, I can tell by the eyeliner.

Very womad. Benign background music.

I've got this on vinyl and I listen to it whenever I want to feel thoroughly disappointed. It's OK, but pales in comparison to "The Best Of ... "

I got all excited when that one song dropped, and thought this was going to be a barnstormer, but then nothing else dropped. I looked up some of the lyrics and was fairly unimpressed.

Yeah. It's a'right.

Ugh. I should hate this more than I do according to, "people" but fuck them, it's got some catchy ones. This album is very middle of the road 2pm traffic updates coming next. It's sponge cake with decent jam; the excitement of junk mail when you've been at home too long; that clean numb feeling of strange teeth after the dentist's given you a really full-on polish; the smell of opening a jar of Asda's own brand instant; landscapes you don't remember in the family photo album; the back of the head of the person next in queue which is the twin for your presumably long dead school teacher's pate.

Every song would be improved by someone shouting, "THE ACE OF SPACES, THE ACE OF SPADES" at the end of each verse.

Yeah. It's good.

I don't like folk music. Therefore this isn't folk music. It must be some obscure subset of punk.

Why, Who? Why?

Love PJ Harvey, but she's not easy listening. This is one of her finer albums.

It's like these guys have studied how to be the most background of bands.

Lovely stuff

Solid gold banger.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. I thought John Martyn was all twee fiddledy diddledy stuff, but it was punchy and varied and had loads of good riffs that stick in your head after the song had long gone.

All the songs were a bit samey and I don't speak their language. It sounded nice, but I didn't know what it was about. Were they pro Mali or dissing it?

Listening to the lyrics I thought made it was trying to address misogyny, but the whole attitude of the album seemed to be in a tone of gangster rap, so I was confused. Like when people go to the opera to see La Boheme dealing with issues of poverty.

I took the time to listen to you whine about everything. Now go and tidy your room and tell your little friends it's time to go because their mum's will be expecting them back for tea.

Lovely. God save her Maj from getting the AIDS again

Roadrunner is a decent song. All the others are weighed down with trying to be The Velvet Underground. They do a good job, but it's just not that great.

It sounded like Nigel got a kick ass backing band! The vocal stylings have a lot of similarities.

Absolutely lovely. I wish this were as good an album as carboot soul, but it still takes me back to the drowsy days of chillout rooms and basement flats with tea in chipped mugs and the smell of weed, tobacco and damp.

Yes please. A sold Beatles album.

A really nice album. Worth listening to twice.

Wow! An album that clearly deserves to be in some Top X Albums of ... list. Incredibly listenable, varied and interesting.

I got all excited when I glanced at this album, because I love Bad Manners. Such disappointment! I get that this was probably ahead of the curve with a lot of blues rock, but I feel like it probably inspired a lot of middle of the road mid eighties crud, so that's not a good thing.

Not great

The absolute Bible of funk. I think I've listened to this album 4 times this year before it came up in this list. I smack my fingertips like a chef. Mwah!

Nope. Not for me.

Before I discovered Billy and Ella and Nina, I sung along to Aretha in The Blues Brothers. What a winner. This album bangs out hit after hit, with all the force of Aretha's almighty lungs and beautiful vocal chords. Great backing, great tunes; loved it!

One is Stevie's least crap albums. I love Stevie, but a lot of the album tracks don't stand out.

What a fantastic album. I may have to watch the film again.

Really good covers of songs I don't much like in the first place = 2 stars. Bonus star for Hurt and Sam Hall, though.

I think I've figured out how to be myself after listening to this album.

Whiny singing style: quite contrived. I feel like the musician is more into the guitar playing than the singing. The lyrics don't connect with me personally, so I find it hard to give a shit. Maybe you can't win with me though, the lyrics are VERY easy to understand (well enunciated and not jumbled in strange rhythms). If they were less hard to understand would I like them more?

It was not terrible.

Undeniably a force in songwriting.

No thanks. Not for the likes of me.

Oh yeah!

Great stuff

Track 1, I thought I knew Randy Newman. That guy from Toy Story, right? Track 4, yup, I've heard all I need to.

Very enjoyable.

I've got a raging boner for the king and fuck you if you can't stand him. Unless it's on racist grounds... In which case fair enough.

Surprisingly good.

When I was a boy, my sister and I had a record player in the basement and a small selection of records including Pretzel Logic. I thought it was dull then and I haven't changed my mind.

What terribly terribly waffly wank

At last! An album which deserves a spot on this list!

Meh

Think of this as the twee, desperate ramblings of an alcoholic American trying to keep up with the British invasion, then you may see the beauty of it as I do. Sure, it's 70% utter bobbins, fuelled by frozen margaritas and too many meetings with record execs, in the heat and ennui of affluent 70s California. Sure, some of those earworms are sung loud and desperately in the halls of asylums for the insane. But you can be sure when you've ratched Russian Doll and Gotta Get Up starts up for the seven thousandth time, a little smile will creep across your face and your your will tap along.

Nice enough.

Husker Dön't? Many of my friends with excellent good tastes like Hüsker Dü, so I'm missing something.

Wiffly piffly rinkerty tink

MORE COWBELL!

These hippies! Not my thing.

A proper good album.

Better than I thought it was going to be.

Classic. It's not my favourite of their albums, but it is a timeless wonder.

Lovely stuff. Thanks Nick. I feel like I should have read the lyrics in preparation for listening because the odd line I picked up was highly literate, but snippets here and there didn't coalesce into anything sensible.

Oh no. I thought this was going to be an undiscovered classic. How wrong I was: indulgent, twee nonsense (sorry, Paul).

It looks like Courtney Love could be a contender for the 1001 best fucks in the world, but I'm not sure why this album is here.

When the opening chords of Cry To Me pounded in, my heart pounded, \"Another Banger!\" Thinks I. But then, that was the one good song, what a disappointment!

A lovely accompaniment to the Wu Tang docudrama on Disney+ It's all guns, bitches and homophobia, which is not my jam. One liners in foreign slang with great rhythms and samples does tick my boxes though.

She's best when she's on the helium.

Great stuff. I'm just not a big fan of The Fall. This is one of those things where a lot people I respect think they're the best, but I just don't really get it.

Having this alongside The Fall was interesting. Both if their vocal stylings were unique and mildly annoying. It's a fine set of songs though.

Pleasantly surprising, this one. Hints of Autechre and ambient droning, whereas I think I expected something like a bad metal score to a slasher movie.

Wanting less than 3 stars is incorrect, and you should try harder on your next listen.

Really good. I liked it.

Classic album. At times cheesey, at times pop, but I love the hooks and their version of killing me softly. I understand that it was overplayed on Radio 2 for a long time, but I still have love for this album.

Five stars all day everyday and it's not even my favourite DJ Shadow album. I listened twice just to prove a point to you all. I'm not sure what that point was, may be that I'm a dick, but that's for you to decide.

If I listened to folk music This might be the kind of folk for me And if I wrote lyrics for folk songs I might sing them over these tunes Kind of witty sentiment and A fag packet bar chord structure Old twenties Americana Or contemporary satire If I listened to folk music This might be the kind of folk for me

Banger after Banger, but I want really in the mood this evening. Undeniable quality, mind.

Pretty good.

Barely a shower goes by where I don't belt out a song or two from this album.

Well... that was a thing. I'm not sure how I feel about this, but I don't know if I want to listen again. It was probably innovative and unique at the time, but it's a bit dull to listen to now. I've just listened to their modern work, and found it much more interesting. It's still borderline art/bullshit, mind.

Is the singular for tedium tedia?

Everybody knows this is meh.

Initial reaction, "Oh why bother? Who wrote this stupid list?" After the album, "If this was my lift music, it wouldn't be so bad to live another floor up."

Oh no.

No. No no no no no no no.

"Can you sing it as if you have constipation throughout?" anon, Sound Engineer

I feel like I should like this more; funky basslines and humorous lyrics. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, but it's just not in my top albums.

Insipid, middle of the road and dull. Oh, no, sorry that was 90% of the albums thus far. This is quite cool and a bit more interesting. I'm not sure if listen that often though.

I don't hate this as much as I should. It's perfectly fine benign middle of the road stuff.

Lovely stuff

You know what? I think this album deserves to be in this list!

Love it. Not as good as Dirty Computer, but literally fantastic.

Not as strong as I remembered. But I remembered it as strong as chilli pickles and Social Workers, so it's still a 5 from me.

Music to be listened to with subtitles. My little beard had now been smoothed into right-on correctness.

I found the singers voice really offputting: so breathy, husky and with vibrato on everything. I ended up just listening to how much I disliked it, rather than to music. This was most apparent, when there was a lovely Rufus Wainwright sounding track in the middle all of a sudden.

I like that one tune.

Nice. Far too nice. Terribly horrifically nice. Eminently forgettable, not bad, just not great.

Well hello, someone wants to sit on Queen's throne.

Oh no, it's like being stuck in the mind of a horny 55 year old woman with poor taste.

Overated

All sounds like one long song from the Bill & Ted's movies to me.

Frank Sinatra makes me feel like Fred Astaire (but less tired).

Bag of shit

Nice stuff. Good work Bob.

Tedious. Spotify says they were more responsible than any other band or artist for the entire folk rock movement. Fuckers.

Fab stuff. Mostly instrumental bobbins, but with good beats and little samples of this and that. Sometimes a bit self indulgent. I get why others mightn't rate it, but it's right up my street.

Synthetic manufactured pop. I hatred myself for singing along and doing my little dancer in the kitchen.

Is a zero stars rating possible? Thankfully none of those times were catchy.

I was really not bothered. I listened to it two days ago and it made no impression at all.

A solid block of rock. Deservedly good.

Sublime

Woe is me, gloom and heartbreak.

Was it a great album? We'll come to that. Was it overplayed? Yes. That summer, that winter, all the Bourne films, and a lot of tedious wankers really loved this album. What did it do well? Great samples, interesting lyrical bits, a range of styles, nice to here some old stuff in a modern style that want just a cover version with a heavy beat. What did it do wrong? Too many instrumental mood pieces. Was it a great album? Yes, for its time. It was brave and innovative. It doesn't age that well though.

Pleasantly surprised by this. Not entirely the middle of the road fare I've come to expect from this list. What was "mother" all about? Quite fun.

F-ing marvelous. Solid gold songwriting, attitude and riffs.

You know when someone labels the Christmas presents wrong and you are given a lovely floral scarf, which would really suit aunty Susan? That's how I feel about this. In this metaphor aunty Susan has perfectly good taste, by the way. In an alternate reality, I had a flatmate who was obsessed with Elvis Costello and I learned to love this album along with the rest of his back catalogue, and I could carry off a floral scarf with panache and lavender eau de toilette.

Just brain-melting goo.

Probably a great album, I'm just not that into Prince. It all feels like a mid 80s party.

Solid rock. Like a pebble or some't.

Ra Ra Ra . Quality noise.

It wouldn't work on Spotify, so I streamed it from YouTube, every 2-3 songs, I'd think, "Oh, this is different, nice interesting change ... " and then find I was listening to an advert. It's good solid guitar noise, which I want to like, but when I find myself enjoying the jingles more, it's very telling.

Very nice.

Can't go wrong with Jimi.

Eminently pleasant as background music; full of hits; I didn't really notice when it went on to Spotify autoplay and kept on churning out 80s synthpop, though, so I wasn't gripped.

Absolutely love this one.

Rollicking good fun

Decent stuff

Better than I thought it was going to be. It sounded like a load of Portishead samples! I didn't understand much of the lyrics, though.

Oh, that was lovely.

Not terrible pop, but not great either.

Oh, so this is why people like The Smiths. Not bad.

Nice. Sounds more modern than 1979!

Classic. That girl at uni loved this and played it over and over and I liked her so I listened to it over and over and agreed it was amazing. It's OK.

Possibly the worst thing I've heard so far (in my life).

As good as ever.

Pleasant

MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP

Very enjoyable.

A load of reckless white boys roaming the American suburbs at the end of the 60s. What's to like?