Who am I to rate the musical genius of Ray Charles?
Seriously though, this album was my very definition of a 3/5 - started well, with let the good times roll being an absolute classic, and I was enjoying the listen through the cover of Alexander's ragtime band - after that point though, it slides into a series of interchangeable ballads where Ray moans about people dumping his sorry ass, only picking up for the final track come rain or shine, where he keeps to the subject matter but at least does it in a slightly more upbeat fashion. Would I choose to listen to this again? Probably not, but I wouldn't immediately leave the venue if someone played this to me.
I never realised this album existed, and suddenly the origin of every hip-hop and dnb bongo sample I've ever heard has been revealed to me. Not only that, it's an absolutely banging album, I don't think there is a single track I didn't enjoy - whenever I got bored of the bouncy bongo beats a guitar riff appeared from nowhere to drag me back from the brink of not having fun.
This album starts on a high with Immigrant song, but can't really follow it up - a lot of good riffs but not much that really reaches out and grabs me, although celebration day is close. I'd come back to this album for an enjoyable listen, but it's never going to be one of my favourites.
Listening to this takes me back to seeing Rage headline Leeds festival when they were playing mostly songs from this album. Me and my mate Rich crowdsurfed out while they played Killing In The Name - I got one of the best memories of my life, he got some wanker stabbing him in the leg with a fork.
What a show, what a band, what an album.
On first listen, while taking a pleasant walk through the park, I thought that this album was a confused schizophrenic mess.
And it is. But then, while filling out some paperwork I really didn't want to have anything to do with, I gave it another listen. I get it now - a confused mess it may be, with a frustrating track arrangement and sound bouncing all over the place, but it's one hell of a fun album. You can start in a melancholy mood, but by the time the riff of Come On Eileen kicks in you'll have left that long behind. Standouts for me were Precious, Plan B, and of course the greatest wedding disco track of all time.
A pleasant, enjoyable, non too thrilling listen which loses a lot of its energy towards the end of the record.
The only track I could pick out of a line up would be Fire In The Hole, purely because that piano riff deserves so much better.
I found it hard to get into the right mood to properly enjoy this album - I eventually got there while staring at a troubled bridge over some disappointingly calm water, and it was only then I could properly appreciate the litany of hits this album has to offer.
It didn't quite do enough to make it to one of my favourites, but it came close.
From the get go, this album sounds like something I should be listening to while sitting in a dimly lit bar staring out over a city skyline.
Sadly, this is an activity I engage in on a monthly basis at most, so this album isn't really for me, despite the undoubted talent Sade has.
If I want background music there are better options in every genre, so I highly doubt I'll ever listen to this album again under any circumstances.
I was really excited to listen to this album, but it ended up being a bit of a letdown. Blitzkrieg Bop is obviously a classic, Beat On The Brat had me grinning at the lyrics, but then it descended into a series of samey riffs that didn't do much to inspire me, even the cover of Let's Dance felt a little flat.
I feel like this is one of those albums more notable for the time and place it was made rather than the quality of the contents.
Whenever dealing with lists like this, there are always entries which make me question their inclusion.
This is the first of those, I attempted to fight my way through the album twice but just couldn't get past the fact this man cannot sing, and can't make catchy enough beats to make up for that fact.
Mildly entertaining, but it does drag on a bit.
When I saw this was the daily album my immediate thought was "ooh, I love LCD Soundsystem, but why would you include the worst of their four studio albums on this list??"
Having since listened to it 5 times in 24 hours, I'm prepared to revise the second half of that statement (although I do still think sound of silver is better).
The albums we've had so far have taken a variety of approaches to the problem of where they put the best track - we've had starting strong, finishing strong, and hiding your killer piano riff somewhere in the middle of 30 minutes of mediocrity. The American Dream approach is to build up, slowly at first, to the absolute behemoth that is tonite. The 5 track run from change yr mind to the title track might be the best example of how to direct the energy flow throughout an album I've ever heard.
My only knock on this album is that I don't feel that it sticks the landing, with emotional haircut/black screen being the weakest duo on the album (pulse wasn't on the original tracklist). If I wasn't such a massive fan of this kind of music in general and of James Murphy in particular, that might be enough to knock it out of my top records.
This album wasn't at all what I expected, and I still am not sure whether that's a good or bad thing!
A pleasant enough listen that I don't think does enough for me to make it a favourite.
I used to listen to this album a lot when I was a teenager, but going back to it I don't think it has aged particularly well.
Heart shaped box is still a great song, pennyroyal tea and rape me have a lot of energy to them, but the album overall seems to lack a certain something.
As with a lot of my 3 stars, I'd go back for a song or two but probably wouldn't listen to the whole thing with any kind of regularity.
I love albums full of energy, and Slipknot definitely deliver. From the moment it began I had a huge grin on my face, which peaked around wait and bleed/ surfacing and stayed there for pretty much the entirety of the record.
Why isn't this a 5 then? Unfortunately, it can't keep up the quality and starts to die off somewhere around the midpoint.
Given my musical tastes, it's no surprise that I thoroughly enjoyed this album.
The strange thing about the rating I'm giving it is that I can't really think of a standout track, I just enjoyed the interesting synth work, breathy vocals, and absolute shredding by whoever is playing bass.
I know that even for its time none of this was particularly new, but I do think this might be one of the earliest dance rock albums that actually holds together as a single record - hopefully we'll get dealt up some earlier ones so I can make a proper comparison :)
I'm a big Bob Marley fan but this album didn't really do it for me - stir it up was a highlight but there wasn't anything else to elevate it.
Pleasant enough to sit through, not pleasant enough to make my top rankings.
I struggled through this one, without really enjoying any track after the first couple.
Is this rating artificially low because I feel like I've given everything else a 4? Probably. But this album is uninspiring enough I doubt I'd listen to it again.
I found this album very hard to rate - it veered between strangely beautiful and strangely boring, and while I enjoyed listening I'm not sure how keen I'd be to repeat it.
As I feel it could have sat anywhere in the 2-4 range I've gone middle of the road, but this is a 3 I'll definitely be listening to in the future to see if my feelings have changed.
After the difficult of rating Shaka Zulu, the random generator has thrown me a bone with the easiest 5* I've given so far.
The album kicks off with seven nation army, and it doesn't even peak there - probably the highlight for me is ball and biscuit, but the entire album up to that point and beyond absolutely shreds.
It's also surprisingly deep in parts - when I picked this up as a teenager Jack and Meg were still pretending to be siblings, so teenage me missed a lot of the nuances of the fact this is an album made by a recently divorced couple, which really does add a whole new meaning to some of the songs.
Another very hard to rate album, some of the songs were hard to listen to, others such as Le Feel Internationale were absolute highlights.
This is very much on the 3/4 boundary, but the sheer interestingness of the sound has pushed me to the higher edge of that.
This was an interesting one - an album that I bought as a teen and absolutely hated!
Adult me has slightly more time for it, but I still think the title track is whiny as hell, and a lot of the songs are barely better than background music.
It gets slightly better from there, with a few good beats and nice raps (highlights for me are karmacoma and heat miser), but due to my entirely arbitrary rating system and the fact I think I'd feel disappointed if you gave me this as a gift, it gets a 2.
What a pleasant surprise this album was! I'd obviously heard of the velvet underground before but I'd never actually heard their music, and this is an album of laid-back rock I've got a lot of time for.
It's probably a 3.5 but today I'm feeling generous.
This album was uninspiring enough that I can't even be bothered to write a proper set of listening notes.
I'm a big fan of piano riffs, guitar riffs, ethereal vocals, and bands with a slightly unique sound - it's therefore no surprise I really enjoyed this album.
There are definite dud notes which stop it getting a 5, but lazing on a Sunday afternoon, prophet's song, and bohemian rhapsody (obviously) are enough to elevate this to a strong 4.
Well, this album was delightfully weird. I absolutely loved a lot of the instrumentals, but the tracks with vocals on just didn't land as well for me.
From the colonies sounds like it could soundtrack one of the jokier spaghetti westerns and it will be a while before I can get it out of my head!
A strong 3, but a 3 nonetheless.
A really enjoyable listen with some very upbeat tracks that put me in a much better mood than I was when I started - sadly no standout songs for me (I can't get over you comes close, but is listed as a bonus track) puts it solidly mid tier.
Musically, I was surprised by how modern this album sounded to me - I had a number of albums released in the 00's that drew a lot of inspiration from this kind of sound and I never realised quite how far back it went!
Much as I hate to give the album this rating, as I absolutely love Billie Holiday's voice - it's not really an album as much as it is a bunch of songs on a record.
Many of those songs sound the same, and it's a bit of a dreary listen to fight the whole way through them. I'm a fool to want you and you don't know what love is are both good songs, but in my opinion the rest of the album is just sub-par from that point on.
I'm not a huge fan of anything labelled as prog rock, and at first listen I was unimpressed by this album - it went down slightly smoother on a Saturday morning repeat, but this isn't one I'd listen to regularly.
This album started promising, with Boy Meets Girl being quite a good song - unfortunately, even the other singles (love plus one, fantastic day) didn't rise to the same level.
Frankly this has gained a star as I quite like both new wave and the album name.
Another album I'm not entirely sure why it made the list - sure it's impressive the songs were written by a 17 year old, but they sound like it too.
It's pleasant enough but there's not a single track I could pick out, the overwhelming impression I've been left with is that music from the mid-90s really sucked if this album got picked, and given what was going on in the UK at the time that's a real shame.
I quite enjoyed this album - fresh, bouncy, couple of good tracks with Wolf of Velvet Fortune being a highlight, and short enough to not overstay it's welcome.
I'll definitely come back to this one.
While I liked this album slightly more than the first one thrown up by The Byrds, I still find it mostly uninspiring with no tracks that really hook me. I toyed with giving it a 3, but that's only relative to their other music. I just don't enjoy this as much as the majority of the other albums.
I remember greatly enjoying this album when it first came out, so when I saw it in my backlog I jumped straight to it.
What I got was an album of two halves - the first half (more of a third, really) showed why grime music in general and this album in particular was so great, songs about hopelessness and boredom rapped over discordant beats in a style that still stands out.
The remainder was much more the kind of bravado I can never take seriously when it's delivered with anything other than an American accent.
Fix Up, Look Sharp, Jus' a Rascal and I Luv U were stand out tracks, but ultimately this album was just a little bit too lacking for me to give it a rating of an album I'd be keen to buy.
I'm not usually a fan of smooth jazz, and I don't particularly love albums with no stand out tracks.
It is therefore bizarre how much I enjoyed this, I felt relaxed and much more focussed throughout.
Is it one of my favourite ever albums? No, but it's close!
An absolutely brilliant album by a band I've never heard of!
The first couple of tracks were nothing special, but the album kicks off the moment the Friction guitar riff starts, and never lets off from there.
Oh Moby, you were so close to making a great record.
The entire first half of the album is spectacular, with Honey a strong intro track and Why Does My Heart and Natural Blues being other highlights.
But then it all falls apart, and I think that happens around track 13 - Down Slow feels like a natural place to close the album, but then it continues, inexplicably, with 6 tracks of forgettable trip-hop.
A good listen therefore, but too bloated to be a great one.
A little bit uninspired, but not entirely unpleasant. Definitely one of the most impressive voices of the albums we've had so far, badly let down by the backing tracks.
I do think the album delivered what little it had to offer early, then tailed off towards the end, with even a strong cover of Down To My Last Cigarette unable to rescue it.
I think this might be the peak Bob Marley album - chill vibes throughout, featuring all of Exodus, Jamming, Three Little Birds and One Love. A slow start loses the shot at the fifth star but I very much enjoyed listening to this.
