What we're dealing with here is a total lack of respect for the law.

Ah, Sparks. A band where you're aware of how influential they are, and maybe you know a couple of their songs. But then you think about it, or maybe do a bit of research, and suddenly they're everywhere, permeating through western music through the past fifty years. This album is good. Like, really good. But having This Town as the opening track is the icing. Like so many Sparks tracks, it sounds like it could be a novelty record. But it is not. There is lyricism, vocal excellence, tunefulness... It has so much going for it that it's almost impossible to play it down. Let's talk about Russell Mael's vocals. I put the album on while driving, and despite having this song in my life for, well, my whole life, I found myself thinking "Hang on, are Sparks women?". No. Russell Mael just has an absolutely incredible voice. Ron's keyboards are just as good, balancing tune and melody perfectly. I really don't think I can wax effusive about this track enough. The rest of the album doesn't reach the heights of This Town, but in literally any other context they're superb. The brothers Mael are showing off talent by the bucketload, creating a unique sound that endures. On the back of this album selection, I went off and watched The Sparks Brothers documentary, directed by Edgar Wright (my second reference to Wright in my reviews, but this time in an entirely positive way) and was blown away by literally a fifty year ouvre, including of course Johnny Delusional - a track from their 2015 supergroup team up in FFS - which might be one of the best tracks of the 21st century. I'd say listen to this album. Then go off and listen to more Sparks. Excellent.

Not looking forward to this. My apprehension was fully justified. This album is the emotional equivalent of an oversized mallet wielded by a character from a 1950s cartoon. It is fairly obvious that Jeff had his eyes closed whilst singing for this album, because the music is just so very overwhelming. One is reminded of the Clueless quote - "What is it about college and crybaby music?". Cher was, of course, referring to Radiohead in that quote, but the sentiment (and boy, there's sentiment abound) remains valid for this self-indulgent wankfest.

No. No Bob Dylan. I can't stand the sound of his voice, I can't stand the fawning hero worship, I can't stand his terrible paintings. I flatly refuse to even entertain the suggestion of listening to this. No.

This is the musical equivalent of beige. It's a chicken korma. While it's not actively offensive, I find it genuinely bizarre as to why this has been included on a list of 1,001 albums to listen to. Speaking to my sister about it - she is, apparently, a fan of Taylor Swift - I should be paying attention to the lyrical wit and the musicianship. However - I'd genuinely prefer to listen to White on Blonde, a Texas album from 1997 that's known for being incredibly bland. I can honestly say that Texas is far more interesting, varied, punchy and listen-to-able. I cannot actually dislike this album - that would imply that it caused an emotion other the half-and-half mix of bafflement (as to why it's included) and boredom. Ultimately a nothingburger, I'm finding it hard to justify having written as much as I have about it. Oh well. At least I've listened to Texas again for the first time in nearly 25 years.

Didn't know what to expect from this, not knowing the band name offhand. Started off funky, OK, I like, then we got to "I'm a man" and it capped off a load of psych-funk/free-form that I wasn't expecting at all.

First track seems like a weird mashup between Jane's Addiction and Buddy Holly. By end of this album, I felt a palpable sense of relief that it had finished.

I know this album really well. Let's give it a spin... More disjointed than I remembered - some of it is aggressive and repetitive in a way that I'm not sure translates to today's listener. That said, it's for sure a groundbreaking album that's set off in a direction that others have followed.

Yup. This'll do.

Enjoyable. Kinda what I needed at that moment too, so hurrah for coincidences.

This album is the embodiment of why I'll never pick live music over "produced". Yes, it is clear that there's a huge amount of talent there, but you know what? Producers are talented too, and they make music sound better. I don't need or want to hear people whooping appreciatively and cheering - I can enjoy the music without a live studio audience yo let me know what I should think about it. Let's hear it for studio producers. The most underrated people in music.

First album that I'm not looking forward to hearing. I'll give it a crack. Despite knowing precisely zero about this album or Tom Waits in general, it turns out that my apprehension was entirely justified. This is a falsetto cacophony of meritless free form jazz leading to bad blues. I'm pretty sure that for "Who are you this time" he was singing with his eyes closed because the music is just so damn moving. Can this pish end soon please?

Not to my tastes.

Second set of Kinks. No bad thing. Yep, it's The Kinks alright. Cannot complain even a little bit.

Some cracking bassline in this album. Some great guitar work here. Can't help but feel it would be better with a voice less Elvisy than Elvis, and let the music stand up on its own.

Experimental. Intriguing.

Good stuff, will possibly listen to the odd track again, here and there.

First question on starting to listen to this... Did it become before or after Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon? Apparently after. I would definitely prefer to listen to DSotM, which this album strongly reminds me of in parts. It's not something I could find myself actively listening to, but is pleasant enough to work away as background music.

Yass!

Double yass! Like so many people, I discovered Tori Amos via Professional Widow. This album is not like Professional Widow. Most tracks are a simple piano/singer combo, and while the style is very familiar to those who grew up in the 1990s, it holds up still. Amos is earnest, emotionally aware and just plain splendid. One of the best albums ever recorded.

Not quite what I was expecting, but I am very much enjoying it. Yep. Wish I'd heard it 25 years ago.

Well, it's a listen. Not sure if I'd go for the whole album again, but it does grow quite considerably between the first and last tracks. I can definitely see how this has influenced later work. I was thinking Grace Jones, and it turns out that Barry Reynolds worked with Jones following the release of Broken English.

Challenging listen. Not awful. Not for me.

Great album. Couldn't ask for better jazz.

Not looking forward to this. My apprehension was fully justified. This album is the emotional equivalent of an oversized mallet wielded by a character from a 1950s cartoon. It is fairly obvious that Jeff had his eyes closed whilst singing for this album, because the music is just so very overwhelming. One is reminded of the Clueless quote - "What is it about college and crybaby music?". Cher was, of course, referring to Radiohead in that quote, but the sentiment (and boy, there's sentiment abound) remains valid for this self-indulgent wankfest.

This has way more similarity to both Jeff Wayne's War of The Worlds and Wendy Carlos' Clockwork Orange soundtrack than I remembered. The influences of both are clear, and while there is vast amounts of this album that is theramin and plinky-plonk heavy, it is clear that there's a lot of visionary stuff in it. I'd be genuinely interested in finding out if Jarre had any contact with the BBC radiophonic workshop or Carlos, as it really sounds like there's been a lot of cross-pollination.

A few familiar tracks. Very of its time, clearly influential.

80s hair metal. It may be that Van Halen were the first, they may have been the most proficient, but to my ears the progenitor of 80s hair metal is not distinguishable from so much of the work they inspired. I appreciate the position in history, I even enjoy the genre they were instrumental in creating - from time to time - but I'll not be listening to this again.

Interesting to listen to.

I'd only heard "One day like this" before, and I have to say that I think that song is an updated version of The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony - that is a wrist-slitting dirge with absolutely nothing to redeem it. I put my preconceptions to one side and listened to this, and was actually surprised to find out that some of the tracks on this album have some slight merit. I mean, I don't like any of it. But I can tell that there's some good production and musicianship in evidence. "One day like this" remains an appalling stain on the musical landscape, and for that alone this album gets 1 start. Unforgivable.

While I prefer Simon's later work, this sets out his stall as an immensely talented musician, drawing on influences from many genres. Definitely worth a listen.

Enjoyable.

Yes, yes. The music that shaped a generation, blah blah. Oh well, whatever, nevermind.

No. Just no. Sure, these are better-than-average Christmas songs, but they are still Christmas songs. Curated by a murderer. Just no.

At least they tried. The epitome of what someone who grew up in the shadow of uninspiring britpop comes up with to prove that music doesn't have to be... Well, britpop. This has chord changes for the sake of it. Tempo changes because of course they do. And of course, the orchestra is there because Oasis did it for "whatever" and it kinda worked on that. It isn't a horrible album. But it does not live up to its own pomp and bombast. If they'd toned it down a bit, it could have nestled in alongside every other mid-2000s post-britpop album, but for some reason, reviews and listeners have bought into the sales pitch and here we are on a list of 1,001 albums to listen to.

Yeah, I like this. Surprising I've not heard of her before, great voice. Good instrumentals. Give it a listen.

Didn't know what to expect. Wasn't expecting this. Certainly a new (at the time) way of recording music.

Never heard of him before - not consciously anyway - but I think Harry Nilsson made "Everybody's talking" his own. Great song on an album with few standouts.

Really good background music. Would probably have been exceptional to have actually been there. Not something I would be actively sitting down and listening to, but then I'm not sure you really have to. It's good.

Did I enjoy it? Yes. Would I listen to it again? Probably not. The story of Wacko Jacko is ultimately a very sad one. His huge wealth of talent was pushed forward by a work ethic probably quite literally beaten into him as a child. His music industry connections, the people who stood to make money from him, pushed that forward to his personal detriment. His internalised racism and disturbing, just plain wrong attitude toward and treatment of children may well have existed outside of his wealth. He may well have become a drug addict; so many Americans did through the mis-prescribing of opioids. But ultimately, one can't help but focus on the negative, even while enjoying the vast talent, enthusiasm and hard graft that went into Jackson's career. How much of his ouvre was his own talent and work? A lot of it. But the weaker tracks on this album show that it takes more than a talented front-man to make something great. The great tracks on album are great. But they're a combination of great talents in all aspects. A great front-man alone cannot compensate for mediocre material.

Yass! Pusherman is a truly wonderful track. Mayfield's voice layers superbly with an accompanying bassline from heaven itself and drums and bongos to keep you interested and focused on listening. Freddie's Dead has been part of my listening rotation for years. Superfly itself is just a masterpiece of funk. This is a film soundtrack. I mean, there's no doubt about it, it was written for a movie and it sounds like that. It isn't an album per se, but the quality of the music is just.. Well. Just listen to it.

Will admit to some trepidation before listening to this. I do not like Johnny Cash's music. "Heresy", I hear you shout. But you know what, I just don't. His genre, his semi-spoken, semi-sung delivery. I don't like it. But I have to admit that "when the man comes around" is genuinely a work of exceptional greatness. Reznor himself has said that Cash now owns Hurt. And I kinda agree. Cash sounds broken in a way that Reznor wasn't, physically. The slightly off-key spoken monotone just works so well for this track. I mean, the Nine Inch Nails original is better produced, has more layers and nuance, but Cash's voice and delivery fits so well that you can overlook it. Unfortunately things go rapidly downhill. Bridge over troubled water does not fit. At all. The same can be said for everything up Personal Jesus, which is an intriguing take on Depeche Mode. Sam Hall is actually quite a fun track, I'll give it that. Danny Boy is just hideous. It's the indulgence of someone who is way past his best, remeniscent of an elderly uncle who insists on singing at a funeral. It might be touching, it might mean a lot to the performer, but it is objectively awful. The same can be said for I'm so lonesome I could cry. Tear-stainded letter thankfully picks up the pace, which is genuinely a relief. Finishing up the album is a surprisingly upbeat and swingy tale on We'll Meet Again - which is immeasurably better than Very Lynn's cloying version. After the initial hesitancy, an I glad I listened to it? Kind of. The highs are high. But the lows are really low. Would I listen to the full album again? No. I'd absolutely not. There is no way I would subject myself to Bridge or Danny again, except if maybe I was wallowing in a Hurt-amount of masochistic anguish. Would I listen to the best tracks from this? Absolutely yes.

I never thought I needed yodelling funk in my life, and after listening to Spaced Cowboy by Sly and the Family Stone, I realise that I was totally correct. The rest of the album, thankfully, is much better.

It's nice that this influential album's cover was used, a decade after its release, as the inspiration for the Doctor Who villain Lady Cassandra. The music itself is strong. It holds up well as any of its direct contemporaries, and I think I'd go for this over Jagged Little Pill. Some tracks, naturally, are better than other but overall, I'd probably listen again.

This is an enjoyable album with some classic tracks. I'm not a big metal aficionado, but I can see how this album exemplifies the genre. What I'm not sure of is whether this album created the formula, or just follows it, but it is incredibly difficult to not notice the structure of it. We start out strong, very metal. This continues until we reach the softer, more heartfelt "the unforgiven". We then get a 50:50 softer/harder track in "Whereever I Roam" and then the metal comes back, with a stonking finale in The Struggle Within. It's pressing emotional triggers in a way that were the music less good might seem cynical, according to a defined structure. I can't really criticise that, given how successfully they've done it, but it stands out like a sore thumb. It's reminiscent of so much metal, from the narrative of Bat out of Hell and Use Your Illusions through the later structures of Roots Bloody Roots or even some of the numetal of the mid-late 90s. Would I listen to the whole album through again? Probably not. Would I listen to tracks from it? Absolutely yes.

Interesting choice for a Pulp album. I'd probably have gone Different Class myself. Wow. Party Hard is such a relief! Some good tracks in here. I'm actually genuinely surprised to see it in the 1,001 albums list because while Pulp were clearly an incredibly influential part of the 1990s British music scene.... This is not their best work.

I know precisely zero about this prior to listening to it. Wow. Thinking "OK, this is some light and relatively unchallenging jazz" it turns out to actually be some UK garage. This is going to be a fun ride... OK, so this album is long. I managed to get through Oxygene by having it land on a day that I had a three hour drive. But I didn't have two hours to spare for this. Got about an hour through the first volume and there's some good stuff in here. I'd come back to it out of a sense of completeness, but I doubt it'll enter my regular play. What I can say about UK Garage is that at the time, it seemed world-changing. The direction was new, refreshing and exciting. With the eyes of time looking back at it, though, it seems tame. From UK garage's world-changing start we've seen the birth of dubstep and grime. As important and exciting as it was... It has been eclipsed by its progeny. I feel the same way about what I heard of Sincere as I do about The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. It's a good album, and one that exemplifies a sea-change in music. But they are, perhaps, the giants that other people are standing on the shoulders of.

Exceptional collection of jazz standards.

I can appreciate the technical aspects of this album, but blimey it's boring.

There are some thumping ballads on here, but time has not been kind to many of them. Paradise by the dashboard light is genius. Takes the album from 3 to 4.

No. No Bob Dylan. I can't stand the sound of his voice, I can't stand the fawning hero worship, I can't stand his terrible paintings. I flatly refuse to even entertain the suggestion of listening to this. No.

Depeche Mode... A long time after Vince Clarke left, but before Violator. Hm. OK. Why pick this Depeche Mode? They were pioneers. They changed (well, Vince Clarke did) music with Speak and Spell. They changed it again with Violator, sans Clarke. This album? Say what? Hell. Even Songs of Faith and Devotion was bigger, better and differenter. The album ain't bad - not by a long stretch. But I'd simply not include it given objectively and subjectively better albums from them.

I like this. I like this a lot.

I forgot about Dre. 🙁

Not on Tidal. Not on Spotty-fry. Not on Hamazon Music. YouTube? Yeah, that's got it. And I'm glad I looked for it, because it's a solid album.

Yup. Happy with this.

Wow. David Bowie really was decades ahead of his time. And several years behind. The title track - Young Americans - starts off sounding exactly like the opening theme of a mid-90s sitcom. The rest of the album is, as Bowie described it himself - a facsimile of soul. He does well for a white boy, but I can't help but think that he's making a gesture at the genre rather than actually contributing to it or bringing the music foward. I suspect this album is considered influential because it is a change of direction from an established artist, shining a light on music that hadn't reached white suburbanites before - at least not in a way that could have been considered acceptable at the time. Knowing Bowie and his understanding and love of music, I think this is very much a case of cultural appreciation rather that appropriation, but that being said, Bowie cannot make (and he's admitted this himself with the definition of "plastic soul") this music his own. A famous white boy putting his money and influence into expanding the listenership of the genre is commendable. I think this - today - might not fly the way it did 45 years ago. It is a good album, and a paradigm shift for Bowie, giving a shot in the arm to soul, but ultimately being derivative in a direction that wasn't mastered.

I mean, it's Led Zeppelin.

Am so conflicted by this. On the one hand, I quite like it. On the other, I don't very much. It's the second Bowie album recommended by this list this week, and like Young Americans, I get the feeling that Bowie was entering into a world made by other people. With his earliest work, he went and did things nobody had done before. With this, it feels like he's latched on to something else. Listen-to-able, but again feels kinda derivative.

Yes. I remember a couple of these tracks from release, and enjoyed at the time. Listening back now I'm pleasantly surprised at how cohesive, catchy and just plain good this album is. Gets five stars for freshness, even after 25 years.

There are some cracking tunes on this album. Bridge Over Troubled Water is not one of them. Do yourself a favour and skip the first track. Promise it gets better.

This sounds alarmingly like it might be country. This is country. This is also awful. Repetitive steel gee-taws, raspy voice, I'm really struggling to find anything to redeem this album. OK, we've got to "Joy" now, and I quite like the opening of this track. Until she starts singing, and I don't like it anymore. The more bluesy guitar is a blessed relief, but these lyrics are samey, pointless and thoroughly unengaging. This is gonna be a one-star from me, fam.

Bragg sounds like he's desperately trying to be Ian Dury on some of these tracks, although without the charm, intelligence or charisma. I get that this music is political, but can't music be both political and fun? Oh, the cover of "tracks of my tears" isn't great.

Not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. Very listen-to-able, unchallenging and emerging at a time this sort of music wasn't The Thing gets this a reasonable, better-than-average 4 stars.

Decent. Varied between thinking "is this a precursor to I, Ludicrous" and "No, this is a bit more punky". Decent listen. Would I listen again? Probably not. Would I turn it off if it came up on random places? Probably not.

Rap. Got to admit that I was falling asleep while listening, and my semi-hazy recollection of the first few tracks was that the beats were pretty repetitive, but the rap flowed really well. I'll have to listen again, but I'm gonna go 3 on the basis of those repetitive beats.

Obviously a classic, but different to what I remembered. It is long and repetitive, with some bits that just make no sense. Chill out music long before chill out. Would I listen to it again? Probably, but not out of anything other than intellectual curiosity.

Enjoyable, though not world-changing.

Omfg this guy's voice is awful. Theremin. More theremin. Yeah, this isn't my thing. Not unlisten-to-able, not no discernable merit.

Got as far as broken heart before my will to live was similarly broken. What a load of melancholic guff.

What is it with the mid 2000s and bombast? Muse clearly think of themselves as ultra-important, and this album has all the nobs turned up to 11. The production on this album is superb, and Muse at least have the chops to not settle into the grim post-Britpop trough-of-nothing that Arcade Fire, Interpol and Elbow wallowed in. This album is overindulgent, self-important and actually not that bad. There's enough variety to keep your attention, and while the pomp and indulgence means that I'll not be playing it again, I'm not reaching for the skip button. 3 stars. If it was less balls out, it'd be far more appealing.

Dozed lightly through it... Perhaps I should have attempted to pay attention to the actual lyrics, but I was too busy wondering if I was listening to 1995. Intrigued by the reviews, I listened again and paid attention to the lyrics. I have learnt that women being turned on, sexually, by money is apparently a legitimate expression of desire. Well, yeah, I guess. Seems a little cynical, but who am I to judge? The second listening reinforced my nusoul impression. It's not a genre I liked in the 90s, and while I have more time for it now, this album is still musically meh.

French-African music - the first non-English-language, non-Western music I've got from this list since starting it nearly 3 months ago. First couple of tracks were a little bit cliche Eastern/Arabic, but the album really opens up with a variety of styles. Definitely listen-to-able.

A live album? FFS why? Music production exists for a reason. I do not need to hear the audience, they can get in the sea for all I care. Let's hear it again for music producers! OK. Track one and I'm skipping the rest of this album. A showboating drum solo may be electric when you're in an audience, caught up with a crowd. But listening at home? Nope, that's not cricket.

Another live album on the bounce? Goddamn it. So James Brown is infinitely more talented than Cheap Trick (yesterday's live album) and its on that basis alone that this album is going to get three stars. These songs, studio recorded and with production involved, would get 5. Hands down. But live albums can get in the goddamn sea.

Might be the second time I've listened to this album since the mid-late 2000s. Did we honestly used to think that Anthony Kiedis could rap? His mouth just can't mouth it, it's really bizarre. The bass is just faultless. The drums can do little wrong. Overall though, this as an album is just that little bit too much of a wall of noise. Individually there are tracks that just fizz with energetic excitement. But considering it as a whole album, adds up to remind us that we can have too much of a good thing. It doesn't hang together as an album, taking us on a journey. It works just as well on random play, and that's sad. It should definitely be regarded as influential; back in the 90s, saying that you had a Chilli Peppers album was kind of like admitting that you breathed air or that the sun comes up in the morning. But that ubiquity seems to stem from their live performances. The Chillis were the gold standard of gigs - not that gigs appealed to me then or now - and I can't help but wonder if their scene presence - and indeed scene creation - is where their inclusion stems from. Album gets a 2 from me, it hasn't aged at all well.

Listened to this earlier today and I do believe that I have forgotten every single last thing about it. It can't have been objectionable, but it sure wasn't memorable.

Not as good as I was expecting it to be - but admittedly I had very, very high expectations. More soul than funk. The talent is extraordinary, but I'd prefer their later stuff.

If this was any more middle-of-the-road, it'd have cats eyes.

Yeah, this is just typical britpop. The fact this album and this band are utterly unknown to me, someone who was a teenager in the 90s in the UK and bought in, at least a bit, to the britpop scene, speaks volumes.

This album is technically adept in a way that's genuinely quite astonishing. This album is boring AF. The lyrics are rather cringey, with frequent suggestions that the listener should obey their master. Whatever, my guy. If you have to tell me, you've lost. Sorry dude. The relentlessly aggressive guitar becomes tiring really quickly, despite the play being adept it fatigues the listener.

This is pretty dang good. Production is tight, rhymes are tight, samples well chosen. Two thumbs fresh.

Not come across Bill Evans before, but this is now in my list of jazz to listen to.

Yeah, the rhymes may be great, but the beats are not doing any favours for me. I'm gonna have to go 2 or 3 tops - the skill and the flow push it towards 3, but the edgelordy skits and the repetitive beats, themes etc push it back down to two. I wanted to like it, I really did.

I'm just straight up not enjoying this.

What? Why? Just why is this in the list? I can only assume that the collator of the list has some kind of deep love for warbling vibrato.

Absolutely not. This is trash. Utter garbage. Pretentious dishwater-grade Britpop. Ashcroft's voice is grating, the guitars are crashy and dissonant. Whiny shite. Probably the progenitors of the ultra-pomp of renting the nearest strings section to play backing while the lead singer grizzles about something of zero consequence, and for that I cannot forgive.

Another live album. The music is good. The songs are familiar, the players are very good. The singing is decent. But it's yet another example of a recording that would have been better with some production. Do not need audience participation.

I can see the talent on display, but blimey it's boring.

I can see the talent here, but this is just that bit pedestrian for my tastes.

The superbole, hype and gushing praise for this album is utterly lost on me. I've tried listening to it several times. I just don't get it. Sure, there's a couple of tracks on here that I've found myself tapping my foot to, and I can tell that it is excellently produced... But I just don't get it. It doesn't click. It may well be pearls before swine, but I just can't take this above a 2 based on the fact that while I didn't enjoy it in any meaningful way, I would not actively go out of my way to turn any given track of it off.

Everything up to Tusk is middle-of-the-road soft rock at best, absolute brain-melting garbage at worst. Tusk is great. Never forget is back to middle-of-the-road soft rock. Would I listen to this album again? Oh good lord no. Not in a million years. Would I listen to Tusk again? Yes.

Absolutely meh.

I own this album, on CD. Bought in the mid-90s I thought it was worth spending a week's allowance on. Having heard it now for the first time in 20+ years, I find myself humming For Tomorrow. For this, and almost this alone, I give the album five. I've got no problem acknowledging when my teenage musical self was "misguided", shall we say, but I just can't here. I came back to this thinking I'd find some egregious examples of crashy Britpop wank... But there isn't. There's just not. It obviously sets up britpop tropes, but each track seems to skirt around the edge of Britpop guff without succumbing. Astonishing. Albarn's vocals fits. Alex James' bass is tight. And the drumming from Dave Rowntree is stellar.

Well this is a laugh a minute.

So Franz Ferdinand saved music. You see, in the early 2000s music just... Kinda stopped. Britpop had given way to awful shite like Coldplay. House music had grown tired, UK Garage had shot its bolt, and the industrial/alternative scene had collapsed into Nickelback, with Evanescence lurking in the wings. The world had "more important" things to worry about. The history that we believed had ended in 1989 became quite historic and very, very present, and music was generally, and genuinely, awful. Franz Ferdinand changed that. Take Me Out is genuinely a masterpiece. The changing tempo. The catchy hook. The evocative lyrics, dripping with self awareness and beauty of language. Most of all, it is fun. Almost the entire album of it is fun, managing to convey its messages in a way that's actually enjoyable, danceable and not filled with the self-indulgent wankery of their contemporaries. I'd like to say that Franz Ferdinand opened the door to the Scisssor Sisters - the other band of the mid-2000s to let "fun" play a part in music again, but I think that Scissor Sisters had found another way in and were able to steal the silverware on their own. The two of them though, genuinely represents a clear signal that music wasn't dead, just very badly burnt. Good on 'em.

Total barrel of laughs. Straight in the bin.

This is the second Sonic Youth album to come up. My review of this album is essentially exactly the same as my first, which I shall quote verbatim here: "Listened to this earlier today and I do believe that I have forgotten every single last thing about it. It can't have been objectionable, but it sure wasn't memorable. "

An exercise in technical appreciation, rather than enjoyment.

As other reviewers have commented, this is 80s AF. The synth is heavy. It's a decent album - not one that I'd turn to again, but definitely representative of its time, and very well produced.

This is the musical equivalent of beige. It's a chicken korma. While it's not actively offensive, I find it genuinely bizarre as to why this has been included on a list of 1,001 albums to listen to. Speaking to my sister about it - she is, apparently, a fan of Taylor Swift - I should be paying attention to the lyrical wit and the musicianship. However - I'd genuinely prefer to listen to White on Blonde, a Texas album from 1997 that's known for being incredibly bland. I can honestly say that Texas is far more interesting, varied, punchy and listen-to-able. I cannot actually dislike this album - that would imply that it caused an emotion other the half-and-half mix of bafflement (as to why it's included) and boredom. Ultimately a nothingburger, I'm finding it hard to justify having written as much as I have about it. Oh well. At least I've listened to Texas again for the first time in nearly 25 years.

100% meh. One track on it, "I'll be waiting", appears very much to be trying really hard to be Pauline Evan's 1992 cover version of Bad Company's "I feel like makin' love". Other than that, it's entirely skippable.

Brilliant opening track. There's strong work on the rest of the album. Many reviews here suggest Python connections with the narration and themes of the music - we should realise that this album was recorded (should one say compiled?) well over a year before Python was first broadcast. Python were Oxbridge - small faces came from East London and the language and cadence of the narration are, while clearly not being Polari, are very much Polari-esque and steeped in music halls the Pythons would absolutely not have known, except by academic interest. The album is definitely worth a listen, and whilst undeniably a concept album, has enough great music to be worth dipping into again. Not faultless, the novelty aspect of it won't reward repeat plays in full, nonetheless I'd say a solid 4/5.

I mean, it's decent The Cure but it hells isn't peak The Cure. Reflective and relaxed, The Cure are pretty unique. While this album has to get a top rating, don't for a second think that this is the best they have to offer. It isn't.

This is from 1980? Wow. I'm actually pretty surprised by this. I've never paid any attention to Iron Maiden - and to be fair I absolutely will not after this - but I was surprised at how punky it is. I was expecting heavy metal, and there is definitely notes of Deep Purple in this - but I was not expecting punk. And there's oodles of it. The drumming is actually pretty swing too. I mean, this album has to get 5 stars because it's both influential and I quite enjoyed it. But does it inspire me to listen to more Iron Maiden? Nope.

There isn't a bad track on this album. There are a couple of truly exquisitely good tracks on this album. Two thumbs freshly, even after more than fifty years.

I knew nothing of this, but as I listen I think that this must be either highly derivative Britpop bilge, Ride being an act that prowled the scene in the mid-90s, but were only picked up by incredibly poncy public school journos writing for NME while trying to convince scene chicks that they were the son of a chip shop owner from Stoke rather than of the EMEA commercial director of a mid-tier bank from Surrey, or the incredibly influential progenitors of britpop bilge, only listened to by whiny Mancunian teenagers. Turns out to be the latter. These guys have clearly heard The Smiths, Inspiral Carpets and The Cure, but manage to take their music away from shoegaze towards the britpop tropes that became relevant four years later. Musically, it's too sweeping melody, wailing guitar for me. But I can see how they'll have shaped music.

Truly an innovative direction in music and the start of triphop as a genre.

Aw hell no. Dylan can get in the goddamn sea.

I was hungover like anybody's business while listening to this. A few tracks I didn't quite have associated with The Pixies. Good album. Solid 4/5.

Cracking album. Holds up well today.

Ultimately meh, it's well produced and well performed, but just meh.

Pretty good.

Asides from the first track, this album is superb.

Decent. New direction musically, and you won't be able to find fault with either the performance or the production. I find it doesn't capture me though. Am I humming Sweet Dreams today? Nope.

How odd. After Bloog Sugar Sex Magik I was almost reluctant to play this. The first tracks did nothing to reassure me. Then scar tissue came on and it was a genuine reaction of "oh yes, of course! This is why people like the chillis." It (scar tissue) goes on just a tiny bit too long, and otherside takes just a tiny bit too long to get going. I'm surprised at how badly otherside has aged, and my desire to skip every track other than road trip was nigh on impossible to resist. Overall, this is a hugely forgettable album with a couple of good tracks.

I'll get one thing clear. I think Curtis Mayfield is one of the most talented, influential and all-round spectacular artists to have spent time on this blue spinning orb. This album is soulful and magnificent. Apart from Jesus. Despite Jesus, this is still a Curtis Mayfield album and it has to get five stars. If you've given it fewer, you need to give your head a shake.

Well this started out as rather well produced meh, but rapidly shuffled through to some prog rock, then into some heavy metal and then into to just good old fashioned rock. Genuinely quite surprised by it, but I suppose I shouldn't be. Excellent drums, guitars, bass - and who can say a single solitary thing bad about Freddie Mercury's voice? Cracking. Would I listen to it again, all the way through? Well no.

Not as good as Mezzanine or Blue Lines. Still good.

Zoo Station - what in the parted buttocks is wrong with the production of this? It sounds like a concert bootleg from someone with a tape recorder in the khazis. Muffled, echoey, generally unpleasant to listen to. The next track - one I vaguely remember from the 1990s - is by a sheer fluke of coincidence called "one", and it is shit. Bono's voice is grating, incapable of holding a note and generally reminiscent of a third rate pub singer. Now we move on to "to the end of the world" and I don't want to think that the bass is hitting some resonant frequency where it's overpowering, but the guitar's soaring pomposity makes me think they've spent too much time listening to Ride, and the overpowering bass is actually deliberate. I can't finish it because it hurts my ears. The first forty seconds of "who's going to ride your wild horses" is enough to convince me that this album is going in the bin. Byeeee!

As expected, Mingus took me on a journey. Some good places, others pretty dark. The musicianship on display here is amazing in ways I would struggle to express, so I'll take an easy cop-out and just give it five stars.

Love underworld. I am a little bit surprised that we didn't have dubnobasswithmyheadman or Beaucoup Fish, but hey. I've listened to SGitI no more than a handful of times in the past decade, so let's put it on. As I sit here, I am becoming increasingly impressed. As the music builds, I find myself wondering about the Americans who don't have even the first clue about what "second toughest in the infants" might mean. It isn't all killer, no filler though. There's quite a bit of dull on here, and that does stand in stark contrast to dubnobasswithmyheadman. But it's good enough to get 5 stars, even if it is too long.

OK, so Wild Wood itself is one of the best tracks of the early 1990s. The rest of the album, I'd take or leave. But Wild Wood is the tits, yo.

Well this is really not an album I was expecting from this list. Am I glad to have heard it? Yes. Can I see where it might have been influential? Also yes. Does it hold up as good music? Kinda. Sometimes. There are some highly repetitive noise tracks in this and they properly start to grate after a while. Not having read any user reviews yet, I'm almost entirely sure that there will be a swathe of 1-star "terrible"s, but there something here. The militarism is difficult to get past. I don't know if it's genuine or a pisstake, and am almost reluctant to look into it. Will I be listening to this again? Heck no. Though I do reserve the right to play people German language Queen covers from time to time.

Yeah, with a couple of exceptions, this is a bloody good album.

Oh hell yes! I absolutely adore The Divine Comedy. I don't even have to listen to it today to know that this is a work of genius. Hannon's voice is sublime. I'd rather die than be deprived of Wonderbras and thunder thighs.

I don't think I am going to like this. I didn't dislike it as much as I was expecting. Two. Ish.

I mean it's OK...

Ray Charles is definitely a genius, but this is not really the album I'd use to demonstrate that. This is great music for listening to while wallowing in a nice hot bath. Not something that rewards close listening.

What we're dealing with here is a total lack of respect for the law.

On first blush, I thought that this was going to be utterly typical numetal pap. After careful listening, I can confirm that this is utterly typical numetal pap. It isn't actively offensive, but it is dull. Meh.

Some corking tracks on here. Worth 5 stars for David Watts alone.

Listened to the first couple of tracks. Feel absolutely no desire to listen to any more.

Well this album feels long. A lot of it is unpleasant to listen to. In fact, none of it is pleasant to listen to.

It's not a popular opinion, but I reckon I could happily live my life without Bowie's music. There's a couple of decent tracks on this album - literally a couple - in Starman and Ziggy Stardust. Five years is an absolute chore and almost had me skipping. I understand his influence and his talent, but his music just isn't for me. Not actively unpleasant (Five years excepting) but by no means something I'll go out of my way to listen to again.

Not objectionable, one stand-out track that I remember (Bow) but mostly I'm left feeling a little bit underwhelmed. I prefer more whelm in my music.

I mean, it's The Kinks. I'm never not going to love this.

No. No. Thrice no.

Probably ahead of its time, but there's only, like, two tracks on here I actually liked. Overall pretty meh, as I'm fairly certain I can't remember anything much about it beyond the two I tapped my foot to.

The musicianship on this is astonishing. Prince can get a bit samey though - I prefer the tracks to the album.

Some good tracks. Not something I'd listen to again.

Well I first discovered Deep Purple in the late 1990s and it has probably been a decade or so since I took the time to listen to them. Highway Star was always one of my favourite tracks, but honestly, listening to it again this time I'm utterly blown away. This is from 1972, nobody had done Heavy Metal before Deep Purple, Led Zep and Black Sabbath and this album absolutely exemplifies the genre. Love it, and although Smoke on the Water has become a massive cliche, this album rocks so goddamn hard. Amazing!

What can I say? This is one of the best albums of all time, and you should definitely listen to it before you die. For preference, you shouldn't just listen to it. You should HEAR it. The issues that are raged against are still here now, unfortunately. It's shame that everyone who already knows this already knows, because the people who don't or won't like this music on the basis of its messaging probably won't be changed; even when someone sets themselves on fire.

The supergroup Cream were indeed influential. And popular. The musicianship shown is exemplary. Sunshine of your love is the only track on this whole damm album that sticks in the memory. I remember enjoying a couple of the other tracks - no more than a couple - but not enough to have them stick in my mind. Most of it was not aggressively bad... Just meh. And for that it gets a meh score.

God this is tiring. It's everything the Beach Boys did well sixty years ago, diluted with twee baroque guff interespersed with novelty tracks like "Mrs O'leary's Cow". If ever there's an example of the artist being put before the art, I think this is it. What utter wank. Good Vibrations is the only good track on the album, and it was done better sixty years ago.

Can see where they're coming from. Enjoy it on the right mood. Not in regular rotation.

Couldn't get into it.

This is dull as ditchwater. Straight up did not enjoy.

Man, come on. I had a rough night and I hate the fuckin' Eagles, man!

Didn't gripper me, but there were some good tracks. Solid 3/5 from me.

Some great tracks in here. Promise to try is awful. Like, almost bad enough to tempt me to drop a star from the rating. But then Express Yourself is Madonna's second best ever song (Material Girl beating it) so it's gonna have to keep that fifth star.

Yeah, this is not a preferred flavour of guff. It's tolerable, which is more than can be said for other examples of this sort of guff, but there are too many occasions where she sounds like she's singing with her eyes shut.

Enjoyed it, although some tracks had the peculiar problem of a ripping bass line and a great rhythm, but let down by the melody. Four.

Started badly, turned good.

Interesting. Beck from 2002. Hadn't heard any of this before, and while not exactly objectionable, Beck really is one morose motherfucker right here. I'm sure if you'd just been sacked, your other half had dumped you for your mum and your best mate decided that they'd rather take up stoat farming in the Hebrides than talk to you again, this would be an ideal soundtrack. But for a nice run out on a May evening when you just wanted to put a few miles under your feet - it just won't do at all.

This is another really good example of music that would be better produced, rather than live. I mean, the live performances are superb - genuinely remarkable - but the reliance on "first take" recording means that there's so much in here that could be made better. The drums, I don't think, were mic'd particularly well, so they sound rather clipped and tinny. The balance between Joplin's singing and the music is not great. I mean, this music is brilliant. Truly brilliant. But it would have been so very much better in a studio. Even a mediocre producer could have taken this from brilliant to world-changing.

I appreciate he has a silky voice. I understand that he has a corking songwriter, and the calibre of both the instrumentals the production are sky high. But it is Frank Sinatra. He can be nothing but the epitome of cliche crooning.

What an album!

Solid choice for the list. Joy Division sure were influential.

It's Led Zeppelin. What isn't to like?

Surprisingly varied. Some corking tracks on here, with few (if any) that were a chore. The twee nonsense of Adam Ant's theatrics distract from a very talented musician.

Yeah, this continues my view of not actively disliking David Bowie, but not liking him either. If this was anyone other than Bowie it wouldn't be in the list.

Right, so the bluegrass on this is about the best collection of bluegrass you can get. The proto-country of this is barely tolerable. The overriding thing to say about this though is that long album is long. Like, really long. After an hour you're thinking to yourself 'holy crap, is this not over yet?' and no, it isn't. There's another whole hour left to go. Jesus H Christ, this is longer than China's famous march. It's longer than John Silver. It's longer than the way to Tipperary. If it was a kitchen appliance, it'd be made by De'Longhi. Ice ages could come and go, and this album will still be playing. It should have been released as three albums, and for that I have to take a star off. The bluegrass is 5 stars, the proto-country takes down to 4, the length makes it 3.

I don't think this is as strong an album as either Exit Planet Dust or Surrender, but the brothers Chemical sure are good enough to get one of their weaker albums into this list. Saying that - "it doesn't matter" is one of TCB's finest tracks. Bonkers, bassy, interesting enough to keep the ear and visceral enough to carry you off somewhere else. It's going to be five stars, obviously.

Singing with his eyes shut. Skip.

Hard skip.

Well this is repetitive. I've given it a decent go, and while it isn't awful I can't imagine anyone would put it in a list of must-listen-to albums. It is just absolutely, 100% pure meh.

I didn't like Radiohead much at the time - and I've got to admit that while a few of their songs are really good, I have never really been able to mesh with their vibe. Saying that, the good really is good and both the production value and musicianship are superb.

I like Nick Cave, but I don't necessarily enjoy this much Nick Cave.

On the one hand, this is actually fairly good. On the other, it's live, which is always a shame.

Some good tracks in here. Best Bowie I've heard yet.

A work of genius. Angry, melodic, no wasted notes or words.

Hmm. This may be an interesting experience. Karma Chameleon is a time-honoured classic, but while the rest of the album is good, I can't ever imagine a situation where I'd play it again.

Starting this with an open mind, it appears to be country music. I do not have time in my life to subject myself to it.

Well. What a remarkable album. One hell of a set of pipes, and she knows. Confident, capable, what isn't to like?

I maintain that there was absolutely no good music released between the end of 2001 and the middle of 2005. This album, released slap bang in 2003, emphasises that point admirably. I quite some of the Yeah Yeah Yeah's stuff. This album is painful. It is disjointed, lacking in theme. They scale up the anarchic without compensating with hooks, beats or talent. It is cacophonic in a way that assaults the earballs in a thoroughly unpleasant way. The drums just don't work. The vocals don't work. The guitars, guess what - don't work. The bass is tight, but doesn't fit with anything else. It's just seventeen different varieties of wrong all mashed up in a bucket, and I hate it more than words can express. Saying that. It's probably the best music to have emerged in that timeframe.

Decent. I think I prefer less of the cure though. They've created brilliant music, but one can be overwhelmed.

Meh.

OK, the first thing to talk about is the use of homophobic slurs. This is from the early 80s, and there sure was a different attitude back then. If the use of the slur is what puts you off this music, I'd say you've kinda missed the point of the song. That said, we can review the album. Which is excellent. Genuinely brilliant. Local lads done good.

Funky beats and the flow is there. Listening to an album from thirty years ago talking about police brutality and corruption sure does make me sad. Would I listen to it again? Don't see why not, but it's not as strong as some of its precursors and contemporaries.

Gimme Shelter is great. While the rest of the album probably does have some merit as an exercise in blues, it doesn't really appeal beyond the opening track. Gimme Shelter is worth 5 on its own. In the context of the album, I'm gonna have to drop that a touch.

No idea who this is, which doesn't bode well. And it appears to be a live album, so it's got that going for it too. If I vote it higher than 2 on general principle, it's going to be an amazing record. OK, so I've listened to it and it's a 4 star. Her voice is nothing short of amazing. The band are well mic'd and tighter than a gnat's twat. Obviously if this were studio recorded it'd be five stars, but there we go...

This was pretty cool.

Enjoyed.

Canny. Some questionable choices - the circus thing was pretty bleak, but otherwise an enjoyable enough album.

Can't fault it.

"there she goes" is part of the soundtrack of my youth, but I could honestly not name you a single other track by The La's. Which I think probably says all that needs to be said about them. Just having "There she goes" makes this a 4 star album - but the rest of it is 100% forgettable.

Well this is a lot better than I was expecting, but there is absolutely zero chance of me listening to it again. Sad rock, talking of situations and characters I cannot relate to. Springsteen's voice is gravelly to the point of railway ballast, and I'm not going to pretend that I enjoy that. The music is evocative and melancholic - but it evokes images I do not understand, and it makes no attempt at explanation. Take, say, Tori Amos. I have zero frame of reference, but her music and lyrics set a scene so completely and compellingly that you don't need to have experience to understand and empathise. Springsteen literally explains in one his songs what the cubic capacity of his car engine is - and that needs reference and understanding of allegory that is not provided by the song itself, or set up anywhere else in the album, leaving you uninterested and othered by it. I mean sure, you can look up what the American street racing scene wss, and how it might have fed into what's going on in the song, but it's assumed knowledge for Springsteen and that's alienating. I suspect that this sort of thing is why Springsteen is loved so much by the people who love him. If you "get" the yarns he spins, it probably clicks into place for you. It makes you feel heard and understood, and damn anyone who doesn't get it. If you don't, you're really left with a voice that you can't call refined and a competent but overtly sad set of rock tracks.

I've previously stated that there was no good music released in the early 2000s, and this entry continues to supply hard evidence for this assertion. One of the greatest quotes from Star Trek: The Next Generation is "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not failure, that is life." and this album is the musical embodiment of this observation. There is nothing wrong with this album. Jones' voice is perfect. The production values are superb, the songs are almost faultless. But does it win, given it does so much right? Does it hell as like. Overall, it is musical wallpaper. Beige in a way I've not heard since Taylor Swift's Evermore. Not actually offensive, because that would imply that has affected you in some way, this has the substance of blancmange.

In 1999, Jessica Hynes and Simon Pegg teamed up with Edgar Wright to produce Spaced - one of the most brilliant television programmes ever crafted. Spaced did things with single-camera comedy that had never been done before, and paved the way for Wright to direct big-budget Hollywood films, for Pegg to make multiple appearances in fan-favourite film franchises such as Mission Impossible and Star Trek, and for to Hynes continue with Bafta-award winning comedy performances. Why do I mention Spaced? Well, the third episode of the first series is called "Art", and strongly lampoons talentless, self-congratulatory avant-garde "performance" through the character of Vulva, played by David Walliams in probably the least intolerable performance of his career. I could easily imagine some of this album being the soundtrack for one of Vulva's art installations, in that many of the tracks are hacky, avant-garde hogswill with few identifiable merits. Thankfully, not all of the tracks are atrocious, there is some good stuff in here. Not enough to make me want to tolerate the rubbish, though.

I straight up don't like the Stone Roses.

Way better than Fever to Tell, this album does, unfortunately, contain "Skeletons" which I simply had to skip.

Goddamn it live albums. Just no.

I've never been able to "get" The Happy Mondays. The vocals are painful, whiny like shoegaze but with added Mancunian sly arrogance tinting it. The beats are poppy, but honestly I can't pick through it to reach any value. Weirdly, I quite enjoy some of Black Grape's stuff, however Shaun Ryder very much ditched the whininess for that. Bez is Bez, and his contribution to the actual recorded work is so close to non-existent that it might as well be called non-existent.

Ah, Sparks. A band where you're aware of how influential they are, and maybe you know a couple of their songs. But then you think about it, or maybe do a bit of research, and suddenly they're everywhere, permeating through western music through the past fifty years. This album is good. Like, really good. But having This Town as the opening track is the icing. Like so many Sparks tracks, it sounds like it could be a novelty record. But it is not. There is lyricism, vocal excellence, tunefulness... It has so much going for it that it's almost impossible to play it down. Let's talk about Russell Mael's vocals. I put the album on while driving, and despite having this song in my life for, well, my whole life, I found myself thinking "Hang on, are Sparks women?". No. Russell Mael just has an absolutely incredible voice. Ron's keyboards are just as good, balancing tune and melody perfectly. I really don't think I can wax effusive about this track enough. The rest of the album doesn't reach the heights of This Town, but in literally any other context they're superb. The brothers Mael are showing off talent by the bucketload, creating a unique sound that endures. On the back of this album selection, I went off and watched The Sparks Brothers documentary, directed by Edgar Wright (my second reference to Wright in my reviews, but this time in an entirely positive way) and was blown away by literally a fifty year ouvre, including of course Johnny Delusional - a track from their 2015 supergroup team up in FFS - which might be one of the best tracks of the 21st century. I'd say listen to this album. Then go off and listen to more Sparks. Excellent.

Hey wow, J5 in the 1,001! I'm surprised, but I do like their brand of MCing, so despite not having heard this before today, I'm looking forward to listening. Well, I'm about halfway through this album, and what I can say so far is that it is the absolute tits. The flows are every bit as good as J5's earlier work, the beats are every bit as good as their previous too. I like this a lot. A lot a lot.

There sure aren't all that many hip hop concept albums, and this might even be the first. The first few tracks had me questioning my sanity. Is this ICP? Nope. ICP don't rap about underwater concerts. With 30 years reflection, this seems - well - kinda childish. I'd imagine that some 14 year olds would snigger along to the lyrics. Despite that, it's classic hip hop done actually pretty well, with good beats and excellent flow. Sure, some tracks needed the judicious application of the "skip" button but in the main, I quite enjoyed it.

Not objectionable in any form. Nothing that suggests I would ever listen to them again.

Good. Bluesy. Strong work.

Oh, every different flavour of yes! So this is a brilliant album. Northern Irish. Equally angry as joyful. An almost perfect rock album. The only criticism I could level at it is that it doesn't include "It's going to happen".

I should probably like this more than I did - but just seemed like background. Never once engaged me on a conscious level.

OK, so while I didn't actually listen to this today, I know that this is a brilliant album. Neu! took the foundations of krautrock and built a template for electronica, punk, post punk and so much more. Cracking stuff!

I have absolutely no memory of what kind of music this was. Listening to some of it again (to refresh my memory of yesterday's forgotten run through) I find myself wonder why it was included. It's fairly uninspired rock and roll. Bizarre.

What can anyone say, its Ray Charles. The man was a hell of a performer. Bit cruel of to have made him sing some of the lyrics in careless love, mind. One thing I will say about this is that you should listen to it in two goes. It does get challenging after a while.

First track - skip. Country. Second track - skip. Accordion. Third track - do I listen to this? It's a bit psychedelic. A blind gentleman who's the painter of women? Skip. Fourth track - OK. Let's give this a crack. There's an unfortunate ukele (or is it a banjo?) backing. But I didn't skip. Fifth track - take the pretty young girls, they don't get better. Yeah, seems a bit paedo. All the pretty girls -stop crying because you can look better... So paedo and misogynistic. Double win. Sixth track - I think I'm losing the will to live. Skip. Seventh track - skip. No comment needed. Eighth track - is this over yet? Ninth track - oh, gods it isn't. Ten. Let's channel our inner Zorba the Greek and combine it with our very best corn-worshipping guff. Last track - at least this is a bit more upbeat than the last one. Overall. Did not enjoy. Won't listen again.

I thoroughly enjoyed this.

It's probably fair to say that George Michael was trying to put some clear blue water between his Wham! pop image here. There's some great stuff on this album, and while I think the songwriting is great, this is not a perfect album. There are too many overblown love songs. George Michael's voice suits upbeat and poppy way better.

I'm sure that this appeals a great deal to many people, but I honestly find the majority of it quite tiring. The lyrics have really not stood up well. Even at the time "Love in an elevator" appealed most to the puerile sniggering teenager. It just seems so silly.

Straight up classic. This album was game-changing in so many ways. Taking p-funk samples and creating g-funk. The flow! Second to none. This album redefined rap, changing the West Coast paradigm and, without any question, powered the social movements that altered the whole course of the 1980s. The lyricsm, the power, the anger. It makes me genuinely a little bit sad that after 35+ years of young black men drawing attention to their issues, the systemic oppression... After god alone knows how many platinum records and oblivious people singing along to lyrics born out of pain, there's still bitches who only want them for their money. Straight Outta Compton has aged, it's true. The beats, the flow, the loops - have aged like fine wine. One could argue that the misogyny, homophobia and casual violence have aged like milk, but that might not be the best analogy. Misogyny is just as much a problem now as it was in the 1980s. Homophobia is thankfully decreasing, but in the US, at least, causal violence is still ever-present. As social commentary this album gets lots right and lots wrong. As music - it gets almost everything bang on right.

Something something something, well renowned, famous, blah blah dear god this is dull and I don't want to listen to any more of it.

Worth it just for Connection. Anything else good on the album is gravy.

Well this starts out with a truly appalling cover version of Curtis Mayfield's classic "Freddie's dead", which took about forty seconds for me to truly hate. However, we've now moved in to a more enjoyable ska-ish feel. Is this the link between two step and California aka? Pouring Rain is dismal. It has the ska horns, some of the basslines - slowed to a dirge. Terrible. Overall - this album has some great ska on it. Anything that isn't ska is bunk. And that Mayfield cover makes me want to cry.

Frankly Mr Shankly is a twee monstrosity that had me reaching for the skip button. I know it's over actually got me pressing it. Never had no one ever is a dirge. The bass line for cemetery gates has my interest. Yes. This is actually quite enjoyable. Best track so far. Bigmouth strikes again has some cracking drums. And again, the bass is highly engaging. I don't like the backing vocals, which seem to have been pitch shifted up. The boy with the thorn in his side is The Smiths at their finest. Simple, Morrissey's vocals fit absolutely perfectly and again the bass lines are just wonderful - if there's anything to criticise it for, it's the 8-stone weakling of a finish. Vicar in a Tutu seems like a return to the twee mess of Frankly Mr Shankly, however the bass keeps you interested. Not interested enough though - my mind is wandering to how that bass could easily be the backing for a hootenanny. There is a light. Wow. Yes, so THIS song is The Smiths at peak. The imagery of the lyrics. The soaring strings. This just works. Some girls are bigger that others. Well this is all kinds of question marks about Morrissey's attitudes to women, sexuality and, frankly attention to detail. Thankfully, this is a quite a short album. There are some genuinely timeless classic tracks on here. But overall I can't really get past the twee filler tracks. Would I listen to some of these tracks again? Absolutely, 100% yes. Do I think that The Smiths were a supremely talented act that deserve recognition? Yes. Would I listen to this exact album again, as an album? Nope.

Some psychedelia, I'd imagine.. "You're gonna miss me when I'm gone" does some really interesting things. The unique sound of what some research tells me is known as an electric jug adds some weirdness and otherworldliness to the track that works really well. Onto the second track and there's a total reframing of the music, like they drop a cog and hammer down the accelerator, changing lanes and blasting past the caravan they'd been stuck behind for four miles. Track three - splash 1 - is a bit of a let down - too slow and not really in keeping with the album. Reverberation picks the pace back up again. I think the age of the recording might be a factor here - but the bass sounds muddy somehow. It could be a production choice, but it just doesn't quite fit. Overall, this is a great album - pioneering, but immediately placed to its time. It should be 4 tracks shorter, but overall I enjoyed it.

Dull as ditchwater.

This is excellent. Like Jarimoquai twenty years before Jarimoquai, with the added bonus of not having Jay Kay anywhere near it.

Pretty good.

The first track - about kissing the teacher - has aged like yoghurt. Was it even acceptable in the 70s? So many of the tracks on this album are good. Multi layered pop that's danceable, fun and hold up to repeated listening. The exception is the titular "arrival", which is just hot garbage, sounding like someone who's never been to Scotland imagining what it's like to see the sun rise over a loch.

This. I first came across this way back in the year 2000. I was given a geet massive stack of CDs by a Northern Irish colleague and this was by far and away the most memorable, packaged as it was in a pill box, blister packed CD and patient safety notes. My colleague was herself a pharmacist, so it stood out even more. The ingredients are here for post-Britpop pomp and grandiosity, but we're never punished by it. It's like driving to Lake Garda on a lovely summer day. The journey of the album is twisty roads, tunnels and insane pensioners driving knackered old fiats way faster than should be even possible - but with a satisfying regularity you're rewarded by breathtaking views. The grandiose pomposity is there, but it's in the distance - to be appreciated - rather than stuffed down your throat, like some of Spiritualized contemporaries were wont to do. The production is faultless, using almost every knob on the control board at least once. It is never less than slick. Try as I might, I just can't dislike this album. There's too many associations with good experiences. Listen to it. Let it wash over you. You can, if you want, drive this album like an insane Italian pensioner. You can seek out the racing line, hug the corners and overtake buses on blind corners, and I'm sure it'll be absolutely great. But I'd prefer to let it show me its curves and stunning scenery.

Despite dismissing QotSA back in the day, I've mostly enjoyed this. Not ultra-keen on the novelty album aspect, but the tracks that rock rock hard. People who enjoyed this, be sure to listen to The Divine Comedy's version of Noone Knows. It's extraordinary.

Yeah, I'm sure this is good and all but it just isn't my bag, baby.

Well I don't hate it. It sounds like perhaps the most proggy that prog rock could be.

What is it with college and crybaby music?

Meh.

Well, I know a couple of CCR tracks from here and there, but never listened to this album before. It's actually really good - very rock & roll. Sure, there's some country-ish twankiness (you can leave off the T if you prefer) but overall, this is rock & roll front and centre. And it's pretty damn good. Up Around The Bend is just a brilliant track - the opening! Wow! Could listen to this all day.

It's led zep. Kashmir is the standout track. Rest of the album is good, but Kashmir takes the cake.

Rockin' Chair was a very fast skip. The rest of the album is tolerable - nothing to write home about,

Oh. My. God. This is terrible. After skipping the first three tracks due to the uncomfortable bleeding out of my earballs, I have decided that this is officially the worst album on this list, joining Jeff Beck and Bob Dylan in the accolade of being music that actively makes me want to injure myself to spare me from the putrid filth that's invading my head. I'm pretty sure that if I took the time to tell you how much I actively disliked this album, I'd have grown old and died before I finished. This. Is. AWFUL.

Soultastic. She'd a lovely voice, and were I trying to seduce a woman in the 1980s I might even have put this on the stereo. Instead, it is the 2020s, and such things are probably "a bit cringe". So I'll listen to it once. Appreciate her voice and then move on with my life.

I can only begin to imagine that this live album is in the list because Motörhead - as a band - are tighter than a fat gimp's leather knickers. Lemmy has a dreadful voice - it's gritty, hoarse and barely in tune. The crowd noises are distracting and irritating. Everything wrong with a live album is right there. But it's tight AF. As a live album, it does not encourage me to listen to Motörhead. An extra star simply for the talent of the band.

Straight up did not enjoy this.

I mean, I've nothing to say against it.

Musically this is pretty nice, if a touch boring. The sort of thing you might put on if you wanted to slip in and out of consciousness while still being able to wake up and be alert when you needed to. Say, on a long train ride.

I don't even need to listen to this again to tell you that it's great. I mean, I will listen to it again. But that's mainly because it's great, not because it's on the list.

Not Objectionable. Tbh I slept a very deep sleep through this.

Literally none of these tracks are the stand-out New Order tracks. It's a decent enough listen, but New Order did so much betterer.

Decent album. I thought it was going to be some usual late 60s psychedelia, but ended up going pretty Indian. Definitely worth a listen.

So this OK. Some great tracks, but they ain't half drowned out by the vast amounts of filler that doesn't really add anything of any worth. If this was cut down to 6 or 8 tracks it'd be great.

They blew a chicken man in Philly last night, and they blew a piss house too? Yeah, I'm not digging this even slightly. Dirge followed by dirge. Until "state trooper" which starts out nice and shows promise, but is ultimately a bit shit without actually going anywhere. It almost imperceptibly gathers pace in a way that, if it actually went anywhere, could be considered threatening... But then it just literally fades the fuck out, achieving absolutely nothing. And is instantly followed by another dirge. Open All Night is almost a straight up beat for beat cover of Dire Straits Walk of Life, but without the upbeat pleasure of it. A couple more dirges for good luck and yeah, I've heard all I need to. This is a rock solid one-star bag o'shite.

Not for me. Less awkwardly awful than I usually find country music, but I would actively avoid listening to it again.

Yes, yes and thrice yes. This is a good album, and my life is better for having listened to it. Yours will be too.

I was not hugely grippered by this on the first listen. It may grow on me, but it gave me no reason to try and work it into a regular location. Nothing offensive, but that's just how it is sometimes.

A&E is the absolute standout track on this.

Well this isn't awful but it sure ain't good. It seems to revel in broken melodies and dissonance, without the charm needed to carry it off.

I struggle with this. Thundercat's work is always rich, multi-textured and exquisitely produced - but never, ever manages to engage me. This album inevitably ends up in lists of "albums to test your speakers with", and I can see why. There's a lot going on, and audiophiles love it because you can choose to focus in on an instrument at a time - it's made so much easier because they all appear to be doing their own thing. I can appreciate it, but I can't like it.

As other reviews have noted, this is eighties as fuck. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Turner's voice is incredible. Powerful, expressive and unmistakably hers. Majority of the tracks on this album suit her voice perfectly. "I can't stand the rain" is aggressively horrible. It's better than Miss Elliott's cover, but that isn't saying much. It's raspy, repetitive and a hard skip from the tracklist. Private Dancer is a bit sad. Would I listen to this again? Nope. Would I object someone else playing it within earshot? Nope. Do I see the significance of the album in its historical context? Yep.

I was not looking forward to listening to this. I like the style of "Style". The rest of it seems to be middle of the road pop tosh. Completely forgettable, moderately inoffensive pink noise. The sort of thing you'd expect to hear at a school disco.

Decent enough.

I'll admit to knowing absolutely nothing - zero, nada, zip - about Kid Rock. When putting this album on, I thought to myself that it was a harder-edge, rappier pastiche of a Beck album. Odelay for aggressive ex-High School American Footballists who, no longer bound by sportsism, are now free to snort coke from the tits of girls who are anything but ex highschoolers. It does not bear continued listening. The point was made in the first couple of tracks and as it progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Kid Rock is not a good performer. I tire of it. Won't be finishing.

Lemmy's voice is rough as smashed concrete. The band are awesome. The lyrics were typical rock fayre until "Jailbait", and now I feel ill. How the fuck did they get away with it? Why hasn't it been deleted? Lemmy would have been 35 when this album came out. Grim.

Well this is from 2002, so is doubtlessly awful. Except it isn't. This is hip hop that goes in unexpected and rewarding directions. Tracks that tickle your earballs delightfully. Tracks that make you feel slightly uneasy. Tracks that flow. Tracks that pop. I will be listening to this again. Given the year - unbelievable!

Good stuff, but I can honestly say that it's unlikely to enter rotation.

Well, the first track of this is deeply unpleasant. Nothing subsequent has yet to persuade me anything different.

This is an extraordinary album. Difficult to overstate the influence that Numan had on music - taking electronica mainstream and paving the way for new wave, synthpop and - you might have to stretch your head around this - industrial rock and metal. One of the best, most delightful stories in music involves Numan. After a prolonged period of writers block, Numan felt himself at a loss. Nothing he tried was working, music had dried up and left him feeling a bit rubbish. And then he came across Nine Inch Nails. Listening to Reznor's work, Numan pressed some industry connections and asked if maybe he could talk to Trent at some point, thinking that he would be brushed off - after all, NIN were by this point on a massive upward trajectory on the back of The Downward Spiral. Trent Reznor heard of this and said "What, are you shitting me? I listened to Gary Numan literally every day.". Reznor wrote in support of Numan's US immigration application, and they've worked together on multiple occasions. So onto The Pleasure Principle. It is absolutely chuffing brilliant. Soaring synth, interesting and compelling bass lines, and as listen-to-able now as it would have been 43 years ago. Hooks aplenty, a legacy still cited today and genuinely new (at the time) directions in music make this a very, very worthy entry into the 1,001 albums.

Quintessential 80s metal. It follows "the formula" of all the metal bands - rock, rock, ballad, more rock, then an almost wistful love song. I mean, it works even if it is trite and a bit dated. Hilarious looking back on it that so many people took it seriously when it's so clearly a pastiche.

Yeah, so I really enjoyed this. A lot. So much so that I had to look up Hookworms - an act I'd literally never heard of. And I rather wish I hadn't. This album game me strong Spiritualised vibes - and that cannot possibly be a bad thing. Catchy, melodic and multilayered, this album stands up. I might even go an listen to their first two albums. Just don't go looking into the band and you'll be blissfully unaware of the need to separate art from artist and the context its made in.

First track - had Bjork heard this before recording Big Time Sensually? Holy shit. Just glanced at the album notes and these guys are Icelandic. So yes, Bjork had definitely heard this before recording Big Time Sensuality. Second track is also strongly Bjorkish in vocal vibe. I mean, the music isn't, but the vocals sure are. Hah. Reading the notes more, the lead singer IS Bjork! What a journey of discovery! The album is great. Can really see the evolution of Bjork as a singer and artist. I wonder if the rest of the band have gone on to other stuff?

I rather enjoyed this. I mean, it's impossible to anything about this album without mentioning Lovefool, which is one of the biggest singles of all time, ever - ever! 4. It does lean slightly towards samey, but it's enjoyable pop so you can kind of forgive it.

Doo Wop (that thing) is a cracking track... The rest of this album gets boring real quick. Urgh. The cover songs are genuinely awful.

Take a load of fanny?

The Stranglers. Difficult to say more than that.

Well this is extraordinary. Definitely one of the best.

Queen. Afraid the ubiquity of Queen records have diminished their value a little, but it's still a cracking good album.

I actually enjoyed this considerably more than I thought I was going to. This was released at a time when George "Dubya" Bush was making America look awful, for having elected an idiot. How simple those times were!

Given my dislike of shoegaze, this isn't as horrible as I'd expected. But not something I'd choose to listen to, and not something I'll finish listening to today.

Wow, I love Blue Turk. I was not at all expecting this from Alice Cooper. Wow. There's a lot more to this than I would have guessed. I like.

July 12, 1979. Comiskey Park, Chicago. A sad, sad and tragic day. Disco, when done well, has no equal, musically, for danceability, for joyfulness, for pure hedonistic pleasure of moving your body. This album has some cracking good disco on it. But also some crappy disco. The slow end-of-the-night numbers are just plain uninteresting,, even though they showcase the talents of the performers admirably. The higher energy disco hits, though, are superb.

First track - what pretentious bilge wank is this? Second track - OK, this is a bit of jazzy Propellerheads, and who can ever dislike a Hammond organ? Other artists have done film soundtracks, both the obvious ones where there's an actual film, or people like The Real Tuesday Weld who do soundtracks to novels. I guess it's an interesting idea, but by the time we reach track "Sounds from the big house" we're forced to conclude that this is the soundtrack to a shitty 80s film, probably starring a very badly cast household name actor as the drunken and off-the-rails detective lead. Russ Abbott, or maybe Guy Siner. Whoever the lead actor is, the director is clearly gurning towards Michael Winner.... Actually wait. Did Tony Maylam hear this before directing Split Second? Ultimately, this might be "a good idea", but in concept it's meh and in execution it is just a bit rubbish.

A so-so album with not much going on, and then BOOM, The Killing Moon enters the frame. And suddenly the inclusion of this album kinda makes sense. One track shouldn't be an album-maker, and while there's some other good tracks here, but nothing stands out like The Killing Moon.

Punky. Fine. Nothing to write home about.

Everything in its right place. Track and a half. How to disappear completely. Oh my dear heaven in jeebus, I need to slit my own wrists. Overall this album is bad. The production value is there. An abundance of talent is evident. But why focus that all, laser-beam tight, on making you miserable? Yeah, no. Couple of very good tracks, but it doesn't make up for being crybaby music.

Well, from the chaos emerges order. Not something I'd go out of my way to listen to, but am I put off by it? No.

Merely good until Venus in Furs, which is a straight up masterpiece.

Absolute epitome of meh.

Due to an accident with the play button, I actually started listening to This Old Tune by James Kant. I was thinking to myself "Hey, I never realised the xx did this! This is cool!". Unfortunately, I realised that I was listening to the wrong thing fairly quickly and actually started listening to the xx and all I can say it's probably one of the less dismal albums to be released between 2002 and 2010. Did I object? No. Would I recommended it to a friend? No. Would I rather be listening to Hugo Kant? Yes. I mean, it's not bad. But it just kind of exists.

Well the first track set the tone as being 80s AF. Is Leonard Cohen meant to sound like a dodgy pickup artist? I mean, I'm literally never going to listen to this again. It's like being subject to the boring guy in the pub, except he's crooning at you instead of just talking. The lyrics are a bit "yeah, rightoh mate".

Sigh. Let's try and get this over with. OK, so this is bad. Like, genuinely not very good. I had forgotten quite how much I loathe, despise and detest "in da club". As far as I'm concerned this album isn't quite the nadir of early-mid 2000s music, but it is damned close. It's almost irredeemable. I'm trying hard to find something good about it, but I just can't.

I don't really need to listen to this to know I'm going to love it. I listened to it. I loved it.

I only knew Poison Arrow, but the rest of this album is great in the same way. Thoroughly enjoyed.

It legit annoys me that I like this. I shouldn't like it. Mathers is an obnoxious, homophobic asshole. His lyrics are disgusting, his delivery cocky and irritating. But the record bounces. The flow is fluent, the imagery is vivid. God that's annoying.

Indulgent. Not awful, but not for me.

Well, this is an album I'd not heard of before, and I'm not sure it could be any more perfect. I'd not even heard these versions of the tracks I had heard before. Great stuff.

I have a small problem with reviewing this album. I can listen to Jimi, but I can't hear him. There's a difference. Just because I'm listening to him, it doesn't mean I'm hearing him. I also cannot jump.

After the first track, I'm prepared to believe that this is going to be an absolutely awful album. It possesses all of the pomp and self-aggrandizement of the worst of the Arcade Fire, Elbow-y type shite that infected the mid-2000s. I've made it as far as "Little Faith" and I've decided that there is nothing in this album for me. I've no time for this kind of guff.

I approached this with caution. Having previously been subjected, via this list, to Bone Machine, I fully expected this to be similarly atrocious. In fact, the first couple of tracks are quite nice, bluesy stuff. Then comes track 3 - Dave The Butcher - which is the exact kind of a cacophonic bullshit that I was fearing. It sounds like a college kid has been given the brief to make something that sounded like a haunted circus. Johnsburgh, Illinois starts off with a beautiful, perfectly recorded and produced piano solo. And then he starts singing in that broken voice. Nah. Next track track - 16 shells - is actually quite engaging, in an Americana sort of way. But I think he needs to see a voice coach. That sound cannot be good for his larynx. Town with no cheer. Bagpipes? Srsly? I get the very real feeling now that Tom Waits is deliberately trying to be antisocial. Especially when it leads straight into be being played on a Stylophone. Then we coast along in a bit of bluesy Americana until Gin Soaked Boy, which is great. And we round off the album with an abrupt nothing. Difficult to rate this, because while the bad stuff is bad, the good stuff is great. If I didn't think he was trolling, it would probably get a 4. But I do think he's trolling, so I will bestow a punitive 2.

Yup. Thoroughly enjoyed this.

I enjoyed this, but then I knew I would. John Lee Hooker is The Tits when it comes to blues. This isn't quite what I expected, being a touch more 80s than anything I've heard by him before. Good though.

A lot of Indian covers of rock and roll tracks. Interesting, but nothing that's making me think anything over and above some good, if uninspired musicianship.

Interesting Indian chillout album.

It is actually dirty. But that's just fine. I managed a very deep sleep whilst trying to listen to this. I'll have to give it another go sometime.

It's a decent album, but a couple of tracks stand out way more. I can't divorce this, as a work, from the stories that go with it. I think that had it not been such source of speculation, rumour and newspaper inches it wouldn't be as highly rated as it is. Shortly after the release of this album, Stevie Nicks was approached by Bill Shatner, who proposed marriage. Looking at the Star Trek money, Stevie considered it briefly before realising that she didn't want to be called Stevie Shatner-Nicks for the rest of her life.

Yeah, I enjoyed this a lot.

I knew Frontier Psychiatrist. Turns out I also knew Since I Left You, without actually knowing that it was The Avalanches. Frontier Psychiatrist can be a little overpowering. It's a great track, but can get a bit tiring because there is loads going on, and it's difficult to keep abreast of all the things there are assaulting your earballs. However - in the context of this album, it is amazing. This album is amazing. Speaking of keeping abreast - you need to, because this album is absolutely, 100% The Tits. I was not expecting it to be. I was in the market for this sort of thing back in 2000/2001 - and it didn't hit me. I wish it did, because I think it may have changed the course of my life. I'll say again. This album is The Tits. If there's anything I'd want to give more than 5 stars because it has gone over and above what I was expecting, what I was hoping for, and what I need to hear, it's this. There's some great albums in this list - and very, punishingly few of them come close to how good this is. Man, this is GOOD.

I didn't even listen to this on the day, I instead listened to the day before's suggested album (Avalanches - Since I left you) twice more. God that's a brilliant album. Anyway. The Score. I have to admit, I've spent 25 or so years actively trying to avoid the Fugees. I absolutely hated "Ready or not" when it was released. I wouldn't want say I like now either, but I dislike it less intensely. I also disliked Fu-gee-la intensely on release, but that's grown on me. I quite often meow it to my cat. She humours me, although I suspect that she prefers it when I meow the Robocop theme to her. Scanning down the track list, I see we've still got Killing Me Softly With His Song - and guess what, I absolutely detested that back in the 90s too. The odd part of all this is the fact I clearly dislike Lauryn Hill rather than The Fugees, because the rest of this album is really jolly good. The flow is great, the beats mellow, relaxing and expertly constructed. It's hard to rate this album, because the strong dislike I have for the flagship Lauryn Hill tracks really does detract from the actually really bloody good rest of the album. I can skip a couple of tracks and enjoy the rest.

Yep. Pretty much AC/DC.

This album is loud.

Last night is the stand out track here. The album is not offensive, some of the baselines are catchy, but the relentlessly strummy guitar coupled with showboat electrics gets dull real fast. Strum strum strum. Yawn.

Well this is OK. Enjoyed listening to it, but despite the fact it tries to be experimental and outlandish, remains pretty tame without all that much to push the envelope

I've been putting off reviewing this for a few days, mostly because I wanted to find a positive thing to say about it while not offsetting that nice thing with how fundamentally boring it is. The beats are tepid and monotonous. His voice is tepid and monotonous. Yes, I'm sure the flow is there, but man I do not enjoy listening. It's certainly different to have a rapper sample cheesy lounge music, rather than the usual funk, soul and disco staples. Sure enough, this album is reminiscent of one of those torpid 70s flicks about a sales executive for a packaging company having an affair with his secretary. These samples come straight from the scene where he lays in bed smoking while his secretary showers in the hotel en-suite. It's not interesting there and it isn't interesting here.

Seeing this in the list gave me a visceral, audible "Oh fuck" reaction that is based solely on the fact that Brimful of a shite is one of my most hated songs in history. Cornershop. A literal cold shake, along side Toploader's "Dancing in the moonshite" and absolutely anything by Bob Dylan or Elbow. Listening to the first track did not start well, filtering in with an accordion - a musical instrument with zero redeeming qualities - and continuing with overly repetitive licks that make me want to stab myself. Brimful of course gets skipped - I'm not a masochist - and we're taken into more repeating scratches before a delightful tabla/sitar bit, marred at the end by yet more identical scratch loops. I love the idea of British Asian mixup music, but Cornershop don't possess the ability to do it. It's gimmicky, amateurish and unrefined. Are we wanting to be catchy Britpop fusion, trip-hop fusion, psychedelic fusion or something in between all of them? God, I find it difficult to express how much Brimful has tainted this whole album because nothing I've listened to is anywhere close to as bad. But yet my head is unable to dissociate between abject torture of that track and everything else on the album.

Listened to approximately 12 seconds of each of the first two tracks. Easily enough to tell me that I'm gonna be tortured by this shoegaze atonal bilge.

As I lay here listening to Da Capo, I wonder why this uncomplicated poppy 60s fayre has been included on the list. At which point Seven and Seven Is starts being a pre-punk, pre-surf punk delight that genuinely surprises me by being from 1966. We then go straight back to uncomplicated 60s pop fayre that - wait a minute - is actually complicated quite a lot by an awesome bassline and some tempo variations that I proper was not expecting. Thumbs up.

This is so amusingly twee that it's almost impossible to realise how controversial Iron Maiden were. Tshirts with Iron Maiden artwork on them will literally never see a washing machine, let alone be put in one with some detergent. Music is not always inseparable from its listeners. Almost anyone can enjoy, say, hop hop without being clad in trousers that fail to adequately cover the arse, an American football jersey five sizes too large and a backwards baseball cap. It is absolutely possible to enjoy psychedelia without being dressed to the nines in tie-dye linens and reeking of patchouli. It is not possible, however, to be an Iron Maiden fan without having body odour that arrives several minutes before you do, and stays past your departure by several hours. Perhaps said body odour has become semi-sentient? Maybe it gains sustenance and succor from the music itself, as if the exact frequency and harmonics provide life-giving force to it, like something from an episode of Doctor Who? Anyway. This album does exactly what it sets out to do, which is to be the kind of balls to the wall heavy metal piffle that is lapped up by the sorts of people (and their accompanying body odours) who lap up balls to the wall heavy metal piffle.

I feel this is another inclusion because of who they are rather than what the work is. It's OK. But not a new direction or enjoyable enough to warrant inclusion.

An act I was aware of the music of, but not in a way so as to have actually known who they are. The first track on this album seems like a bit of a whiney white boy lamentation. Lovely sax though. The second track is great, and probably (I don't know yet) the only track from the album I knew previously. The intro strongly reminds me of The Cars, which can never be a bad thing. When it gets going, it's a much more upbeat white boy feeling, pop-punk, being poppier than punk. I like this track a lot, including the showboat guitar piece. Third track is a different vibe entirely. That bass sounds like it could be an organ at times. But then so does the lead guitar. Breaking down is the name of the track, and the drums are great. The vocalist is fits in nicely around a varied, but thematically cohesive tour of pace, tempo and rhythms... And that actually is an organ, isn't it? Fourth track - City of fun - picks up the pace wonderfully. Lots of reverb on the vocals. Showboaty guitars again. Tight bassline. The Beast is another irksome white boy lamentation. Although the bassline is pretty neat. Unfortunately, the rest of the album becomes quite fatiguing quite quickly. There's nothing, per se, wrong with it, it just feels like it doesn't add anything extra.

I'm listening to the 2012 remaster and what in the parted buttocks has been done to this? The levels are dismal. His backing vocals are more prominent. The hi-hat synths are uncomfortably prominent and genuinely, I'm afraid I almost can't listen to it. What on earth was the producer thinking? The way you make me feel isn't quite as bad as Bad. But it still reeks of terrible remastering. Thinking it couldn't possibly be such inept remixing, I checked out the video on YouTube, and it actually is terrible. The album - well. It's Michael Jackson. He done had problems. He was insanely talented in ways that very, very few people could hope to match. But he had problems, and the resolutions of which were insulated from him by vast amounts of money. Album has to get a 3.

I'm almost entirely certain that I'm going to hate this. Before I even put it on. However. The first track has started nicely. His voice is lovely. Please don't fuck this up, Tim. Tim. You've fucked this up. You're closing your eyes when you sing this, aren't you? Oh noes! My emotions! On the plus side. This album is only 6 tracks. Unfortunately they're all 6+ minutes long.

Without having to listen to this again, I know it to be one of the best albums ever pressed to vinyl. Dury's lyricsm is unparalleled. His imagery, wordplay, delivery, pitch - everything - is almost perfect. The Blockheads are tighter than a gnat's twat. Wake up and make love with me is a song that achieves a perfect balance between romance, passion and frustration. Sweet Gene Vincent starts beautifully, capturing the skill of the Blockheads, before exploding into a rock and roll delight. The production is spot on. Balanced, exactly the right amount of vocal reverb. Partial to your abracadabra - more beautiful musicianship from the Blockheads. Dury sounds hoarse. This is not problematic for me. My Old Man is a masterpiece of storytelling songwriting. I can imagine that those with no frame of reference may find this difficult to love, but for those who understand the understated admiration, the difficult to express love and the hardness that was expected of working class father/son relationships - this is just perfect. The swinging bass and the soaring sax absolutely counterpoint the socially enforced difficulty - "all the best, mate, from you son". Mate. The word contains so much, and it's just tucked in there like nothing. Billericay Dickie is a pure delight. "I had a love affair with Nina in the back of my Cortina, a seasoned-up hyena could not have been more obscener." - just bloody marvellous. Clever Trevor follows on from Billericay Dickie by being almost a diametric opposite character. Dickie is not a blooming thickie - but is certain, wiley, confident. Clever Trevor on the other hand is nervous, vacillating and caveats everything he says. It's a perfect juxtaposition. "If I was with a woman" is the closest thing this album has to a bad track. It's cynical and unpleasant. Blockheads is angry, powerful and aggressive. "I'm pissing in your swimming pool"- Dury is railing at the harsh commentary received in relation to the polio he suffered as a child, and serves to underline how purely goddamn talented he was. Plaistow Patricia is also angry - but with more humour and probably utterly eludes definition by anyone born after 1991, or outside of England. How on earth is a millennial born in Omaha supposed to understand what "She's got a siamese cat in a council flat" means? Siamese cats are expensive, and fussy little pricks. Council flats are social housing, usually pretty low-grade. Patricia clearly pretends to be posh. And she isn't. Blackmail man is a wild ride. But it only really serves to bring us to Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll. Which is a classic for all time. Yes - this truly is one of the 1,001 albums to listen to. Sod that. It's one of the 101. Maybe even the 10.1.

Decent enough, I guess, but I'll not be going back to it. Probably too "of its time" - particularly Squeeze took the style and made it better.

Fantastic album. Good beats, great samples, excellent flow. Worth it, 100%.

Jolly good.

This really isn't doing anything for me. Seems like a tired mashup of a dozen different styles, none of them done particularly well.

Funky, souly. I like it.

Yeah, something else I just don't get. Simon & Garfunkel seem to make decent enough, pleasing enough music that for some reason is revered as being the best thing ever, ever, 4! despite never actually going beyond decent enough, pleasing enough. Paul Simon on his own is absolutely extraordinary. I can only conclude that Art Garfunkel acts as a brake on him.

This is interesting, although I wouldn't go as far as compelling. I didn't think I'd like it. It grew on me. I'll probably consider listening to it again, but it won't be soon.

It might be easy to dismiss this as plinky plonky scifi-ish synth, but it's actually really bloody great. The music has structure and texture. It creates an image, it sets a mood. Sure, it's not Kraftwerk's first stuff, and it expands upon, rather than creates electronica as a genre - but it is cohesive, skilful and really appealing to listen to. Try listening to The Robots on headphones while walking. It's almost impossible not to fall into step with the beat. Great stuff.

I know it's the Beatles, but this is such a meh example of the Beatles that I can barely finish writing this revie

Really good. Unmistakably The Undertones. Not as snarky as Sharkey often is. Wednesday Week is the clear stand out track from this album.

Bits of this album are exceptional. Some bits are irritating. Halleluwah is great. Fifteen minutes of bonkers rhythm that just sucks you in. Peking O is annoying. Overall, I love Can. So this is getting the full five stars.

A masterpiece.

I have never, before today, heard of these people. I approached it knowing literally nothing. And it's really good. Tracks that are just on the edge of familiar while being absolutely new. This will definitely be listened to again.

Dark. Brooding. Influential.

Track 2 - thinkin' bout you - is so awful that it made my ears bleed. Actually... Is this a parody album? This opens out into almost pastiche R&B. It's like Sexual Chocolate for the 2010s. The "not musical" interludes are grating. He dives all over the place, putting in little asides that just don't make any sense. "Crack rock" might be a highbrow critique using meta to illustrate how hard drugs just don't fit in - but no, it just doesn't fit in. There's actually quite a lot to like about this. His voice is lovely. Clearly he's thought about what he's doing. There are some lovely refrains. And some of the lyricism is quite nice. Maybe it can win me over, but I'm half way through it now and I'm not liking its odds. Nope. Showboating indulgence. Had he gone for a more restrained, nuanced approach without the over-the-top attempts to be new, different and away from the mainstream then the pastiche R&B might actually have worked. But it swings three times and the poor bugger only gets the walk.

Fun fact - I used to drink in many of the same pubs and bars as Badly Drawn Boy, living as we both did in Chorlton in the early 2000s. This album is expertly penned. The musicianship is lovely, the production is impeccable. It is also dull as ditchwater, with maybe two or three good songs on it.

I've heard of Moby Grape before, but never to my knowledge heard their music. It's very decent. They do things with genre and timings that work well. Their guitars and drumming work well. Their songs are catchy. I like.

This is very high pitched. Your tweeters will not like the tinniness of this. It's... OK. There's a couple of decent tracks here, but it isn't great. Won't be listening again any time soon.

Yeah, it's OK. I mean, it's obviously better than OK, in that it is structured, performed and produced beautifully. But it just doesn't gripper me. I like to be grippered by music, and this has left me feeling unfortunately un-grippered. Which is a shame.

Don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting this. I rather like it.

Tired, overplayed and no longer fit for the modern age.

This is an interesting album. On the first listen I was really fired up about it, as she does things I wasn't quite expecting from 1968. However, it is a bit too out there for the sake of being out there. Especially towards the latter tracks, where she seems to be writing vocal cheques that her voice can't cash. The lean towards ostentation makes me want to give this a 3. Her voice, when in its lane, is superb. Which makes me want to go 5. The compromise has to be 4, hasn't it?

Did I need to listen to this again to rate it five stars? No. Did I listen to it again anyway? Yes. This album is magnificent. Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown, waiting for someone or something to show you the way. Yes - it is probably music for gadgies like me. I first heard this in the 1990s, as a teenager. And I thought it would never be me. But here I am, loving the album still. The production is superb. The music is superb. The guitars are superb. The vocals are superb. Everything fits superbly. If there were a list of perfect albums, this one has to be on it, probably quite near the top. I know I'm going to sound like a massive ponce when I say this, but listening to this album on a REALLY good stereo, in a darkened room, while sipping on a glass of port is one of the most heart-bendingly beautiful experiences one can have.

I mean, it's OK. Considerably better that the other Byrds album from the list, but I'll not be going out of my way to listen to it again.

Do I like Billy Bragg? No. Do I like Woody Guthrie? Also no. Do I like this album? Absolutely not. Dirge after dirge, I'm turning this hogwash off.

Another album to add to the list of "perfect" albums. This record is extraordinarily good. Pretty much only Björk could get away with taking possibly the catchiest, funkiest four-on-the-floor riffs you could come up with, and then buggering off to the khazi. In There's More To Life Than This, she has some sheer Icelandic bollocks and just nails it. Some just cracking tunes on here, and the production is through the roof. Listen to it on decent headphones or a good stereo and marvel at how it all just fits together. Brilliant.

When I saw this come up I thought to myself "aren't 10cc the guys who did 'I'm not in love'?", but didn't really think much more about it until I was actually listening to them. Well. I really enjoyed it. Couldn't even begin to describe the music, other than catchy, innovative and really well constructed. Having enjoyed it, for no other reason than absolutely no reason, I mentioned to my sister that I'd listened to it and really enjoyed it. Turns out my sister knows a guy who's good mates with Graham Gouldman, who is actually in 10cc. OK, so that means nothing to you, reading this review, but I thought it was pretty neat!

I first came across The War On Drugs as Diane Nguyen dropped Bojack Horseman off in rehab at the end of series 5 of, well, Bojack Horseman. It's a scene that more or less stopped me dead, being a perfect culmination to a near-perfect series of a near-perfect tellyshow. Unsurprisingly, the music selection was near-perfect. The album though - well... I like it. It's like Dire Straits came back from the early 1980s, stopped off in the early-mid 2000s and picked up Death Cab for Cutie then had an illegitimate love-child called The War On Drugs. I like it a lot. But I'd not choose to listen to it when I wanted to be lifted, spiritually or emotionally, to a happier place.

Wasn't expecting the first track to be anywhere near as funky as it has turned out to be. I was expecting track two to be as country as it is. Grim. Track three seems pretty dad rock. Was this in the soundtrack for Withnail and I? Track four kinda defies explanation. It's slow rock with the dirty streak of country manifesting as thread-like veins beneath the surface. Track fives rocks out a bit more. Oh, this track is called Woodstock. That makes sense. Look, I know that CSNY are the ultra-revered supergroup, but I ain't buying it. It's exactly what you'd expect from a supergroup, and this is not a ringing endorsement. Everyone seems to be waiting their turn to do their bit, especially in track 6, which lurches hither and yon, veering between ostentation and banality. We have definitely all been here before. Our House stands out. It is simple, unpretentious and, frankly just lovely. The same can be said of 4+20, which seems to call out to Gordon Lightfoot. Country Girl veers wildly back to ostentation, with crashing chords, dramatically emphasised organs and melodrama rippling like the muscles of a wiry old man. It's the sort of track that has everything dialled to 11, and honestly, I can't wait for it to be over. We finish up the album (after skipping the remnants of County Girl, god what a chore) with a gloriously upbeat and funky Everybody I love You. Again, it's the supergroup taking turns to do their turn. Each turn is exemplary, but... Like the whole album, it's actually pretty damned unremarkable.

I've got to admit that I've tried this album quite a few times over the past decade and a half...but I've never 'got' it. You're started with a wall of noise, but the album rapidly becomes less than the sum of its parts. It just doesn't hang together as an album, despite many of that tracks on it being quite good. I understand the legacy of it. But it doesn't fit together. And that's a shame.

Having skipped out on this for two weeks - life generally having got on top of me - I come back to this after being recommended the absolutely dismal Urban Hymns by The Verve. Well. Is this seriously from 1982? Like seriously? And from the former manager of The New York Dolls and The Sex Pistols? Wow. This album is piggin' great. It comes at you from every direction - hip hop, hodown, electronic, African - it's all over the shop, yet still completely coherent and cohesive. I'm genuinely impressed.

Never heard of this, or them. About a third of the way through I'm thinking "does this fella want to be Bowie?" About a third of the way through I ponder if that he would perhaps prefer to be Prince. Then it started being pompous and orchestral, which demanded that I look up and find out if it was from the mid-2000s and yes, it just about was, released in 2008. Which is a shame. ... But hang on there. Red Dress. This is a bad song, but it is at least not the dirge/bilge of mid-2000s post britpop wankery. I don't think I am the target demographic for this album. I can find very little to redeem it. It doesn't engage me, I'm not blown away by the production and it seems pretty derivative.

Music from skinny white boys. Rip is up is brilliant. There are some decent enough tracks peppered through the rest of it, but I guess "who they are" is the key thing for this album.

Has he got himself caught in his zip?

It's difficult to offer a decent take on this album. On the one hand, it's absolutely piggin' great. On the other hand, it is tied to its time in a way that becomes rapidly uncomfortable. I was really pleased to hear Yo-Yo contributing to "it's a man's world", which goes a little way to showing that Cube knows his brand of misogynistic rap is "a bit much" but does it make up for the juvenile attitude of the rest of the album? Yeah, naw. I appreciate that Cube is a parody of himself and of the genre, but its not explicit enough to not be seen as genuine. He is bloody good though.

I'm listening to this hung over as a motherfucker, and all I can think of is that this is, in music archaeology terms, the missing link between heavy metal and hair metal. Last child has quite a funky bassline. Other than that - I got bored of it very quickly.

You may have to resort to YouTube to find this as it doesn't appear to be listed on either Tidal or Amazon Music. Once you do find it though, well, what a cracking lite album. The music, the voice, the pace - all spot on.

Knowing nothing about this, I was slightly apprehensive about the title. Poetry is garbage, and there was a fear in my mind that this might be - the horror - folk rock. Thankfully it isn't. What it is is is soul. I mean, it's uncomplicated, soully and ultimately forgettable, but it's not exactly bad.

This is Stevie Goddamn Wonder. Of course it's five stars. The man is a musician beyond musicians. Innovative, talented.

This is exactly what I'd imagine of an album by Beth Orton, except without having "She cries your name" on it. I'm almost entirely certain that it's haunting and beautiful and shit, but dear gods it is boring. It is the soundtrack to a low budget independent film where a mid-to-late-twenties woman breaks up with a forty-something man because he's incapable of socialising without alcohol, doesn't want to settle down and hasn't had quite enough of a health scare yet to convince him to start jogging daily. As she sits sobbing on the back of a bus, Beth Orton's music highlights how broken her heart is. I am the forty-something man with the low-grade alcohol dependency and all I can say is "FFS pet, WTF were you thinking? Listen to some Dido instead, at least that has some remix value."

This started out really strong, but tried very hard to lose my attention. By the time "dance with me" finally came around, I just wanted it to be over. For 1976 I can see how it has influenced others, however it's pretty clear that it is derived from Velvet Underground, Kraftwerk and Neu! so I guess swings and roundabouts? Will be difficult to go higher than 2 for this simply because it lost me so quickly after such a good start.

Second Stevie Wonder in, like, two days. And I do not object even slightly. This one is objectively a better album than Fulfillingness' First Finale, with Wonder doing so much that was technically cutting edge, and yet still sounding amazing. And, of course, this album has Superstition on it. One of the best tracks ever recorded.

This is an album that gets itself all over the shop. If you fancy testing out some new speakers, people will tell you to use this album. I can't for the life of me work out why. I have tried more than once to listen to this album. Each time, I think to myself "There must be SOMETHING" to this - but every time I find myself reaching the same conclusion. This album is just really really boring. It is obvious and boring. It's exactly the sort of distilled wankery that plagued early-mid 2000s music, in that it is full of trowelled-thick sweeping orchestral tosh. Many of the tracks are painfully repetitive. The middle section of Svefn-g-englar is basically the needle stuck in the groove of some antisocial blighter making the noise "Tjú", which is warbled so frequently that I think I wanted to boil my head before it was even halfway finished. I've seen in places that this is an album for millennials, something that may just solidify that I am not a millennial. Others have said that they use this album to journey through sweeping soundscapes, to lose themselves in imagery - and bully for them. I am just left with mental pictures of Professor Brian Cox looking gormlessly into the middle distance in front of a greenscreen backdrop, waiting for some clever chaps from the BBC to composite in an elaborately rendered 3D animation of some nebula or other. It holds almost zero interest for me, and I find the love for it perplexing. When I listen to this album I am reminded that Spiritualised exist, and released Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space two years before this. Ladies and Gentlement is just better in every conceivable way. I just don't get it. I don't have to, of course, and if you enjoy this bilge then power to your elbows, may your nipples explode with delight etc. It's not for me.

No. No. Thrice no.. This album is interminably wanky and Richard Ashcroft is a massive wanker.

The first question that leaps to the fore is "will this be as bad as I expect?" The first track starts out strong, being bluesy AF. His voice starts and hang on, his broken voice works so well for blues. Amazingly - and I stun myself here - the album continues to be very good. I think there was one track that I found less satisfying, but yeah, this was not at all a bad listen.

This is decent. Not something I would regularly go back to, but certainly nothing to object to.

To quote Austin Powers... "And now for the music of Mr Burt Bacharach" This album is "luvvie duvvie" in the extreme. Saccharine sweet, and incredibly twee. But also expertly put together and really rather lovely

This is a superb album. I loved it in the early 2000s and while I prefer Ha!, this is a really great album too.

Another album where, having listened to it merely yesterday, I can remember almost nothing of. Let's play it again. OK, so yeah, this seems really quite well produced. I'm not exactly grippered by it, but it is diverting. Perhaps it's a grower?

I want to like this. I really do. But I don't. It is dull. It is not fun. Yes, it's a different direction for The Beach Boys and I'm sure it was considered groundbreaking at the time, but do I enjoy it? No. I do not.

I almost forgot about how much I enjoy French hip hop. This is a particularly good example of it, too.

Ella's voice is, quite frankly amazing. Gershwin's songs are amazing. Sure, the whole of this album is twee and predictable, but that's because this has set the standard by which it is judged. It is the alpha to a vast array of artists and performers, and the inspiration for music way beyond what's on this platter. Unashamed in its commerciality, this is probably the epitome of crowd-pleasing musical standards.

To quote Holden McNeil - Well look at this morose motherfucker right here. Some artists will lift your spirits. Leonard Cohen will not. He will make you wallow in misery, with - to be fair to him - the occasional glimmers of hope scattered about the place. But while this is not at all my bag, I didn't actually object to listening to it. Not the best, but also not the worst.

Punky, in the dad kind of way. Clearly inspired the likes of I, Ludicrous and Sultans of Ping. Enjoyable.

This album is worth five stars just for Pictures of You. The rest of it is almost irrelevant. I mean, fortunately the rest of the album isn't bad.

I have no objections at all to giving this album four stars. It is very difficult to find, which is a shame. I guess some mild licensing issues?

Yawn. I mean, it's all a bit samey. Perhaps if I were driving around the back roads of Hicksville USA this might be a good soundtrack, but I'm not so it isn't.

DNF on this one. I'm sure it's all very impressive, but it didn't hold my attention for very long.

Some really good funk, let down only slightly by Jay Kay being a prick.

This sounds way ahead of its time. Late 70s, really? Impressive.

I know that Kendrick Lamarr is viewed as some sort of god, but I cannot for the life of me work out why. "Bitch, don't kill my vibe" makes me want to question why he's putting that voice on. The flow vacillates wildly between "hey this is pretty decent" and "ohmygod, what is this amateurish tosh?" The whole album seems to delight in wobbly bass, which doesn't half get tiring after a while. TBH, not sure I'm going to sit through the rest of this.

What the actual shit?

Sympathy for the devil gets this a five star rating in the bag. Anything after this can only detract. And bugger me, the rest of the album detracts. "No expectation" is a blues/rock chore. "Dear Doctor" is a blues/country chore. "Parachute woman" is Mick Jagger straight up doing a bad cosplay of John Lee Hooker. White boys can't blues. It doesn't open out to rock and roll again until track 6, "Street fighting man", and even that seems kinda repetitive and whiny somehow. Prodigal Son is an excellent track, but also a cover version of some actual blues. Stray Cat Blues comes around, and like the titular cat is has no home - neither with rock or blues. I feel as if I've heard enough at about the time the drums start to get interesting and am compelled to not skip just to find out where Charlie Watts goes with it. Factory Girl comes up interesting, with some genuinely very good percussion and the fiddles work incredibly well with Jagger's un-Jaggery vocals. Salt of the Earth sounds like the third act opener of a rock opera, rather than the final track of a Stones album. Overall, this album starts with one of the best tracks of the twentieth century and then immediatly falls to shit. It does get better, but other than a straight up cover version and a couple of passable Stones tracks, this album fails to live up to its opener.

I had hoped, on getting a fleeting first glance at the album art, that this might have been a jazz album. It is not jazz. It is the countriest of country music. Not something I'd ever want to listen to.

Doubtlessly one of the best rock albums of all time. Bonn Scott's voice is perfect for this style of music. There's not a dud track on here. Each individual element is in itself perfect, and add up together to be somehow better. Thankfully AC/DC seems to have avoided the questionable lyrics that many of their contemporary bands seemed to delight in too.

There are some good rocking tracks on this. There are some interminably long and boring tracks in this (looking at you Can't You Hear Me Knocking?) album. Has it stood the test of time? Kinda. Is it way past its best? Also yes. Is it good for four or five stars? Even three? No.

You know, I don't think I've listened to this album for nearly twenty years. Stoosh is such a good album that any time I want to hear Skin belting something out with her - let's be fair now - absolutely incredible pipes, I'll go straight to that. That's not to say that this isn't a good album. It is a good album. But as I listen to it, I hear some little production issues that put me off a little. Skin sounds like she's in a room just slightly too small for her. There's some late 90s compression going on too, where the recording doesn't do justice to the material. It feels flatter than it should be, and that's a shame. Because Skin's voice is able to be beautiful, fragile and indeed angelic in the quiet moments. And like a furious angel, she can tear the flesh from your bones with it during the loud parts. But there's not enough to difference in this recording to capture that, which is almost a crime.

White boy music from the 1980s that I have literally never heard of? WHERE DO I SIGN UP? But really - this is utterly tepid. If it were any more middle-of-the-road it'd have cats eyes. This is the biggest "Huh?" in just over a year of doing 1,001 albums. It isn't terrible, but it sure isn't good.

Really? Really really? OK, so obviously Williams comes from the background of Take That. He's got some talent, we can't deny that, but what he has in spades is ego. This comes through more than anything else on this album. He went to great lengths to ride the post-Britpop, post-boyband wave and collected songs that complimented his style. Can't fault him - he plugged in with exactly the right people at the right time. Is his style enduring? No. Clearly not. Was he of his time? Yes. This album is almost painfully 1990s. As someone who was there, "Angels" cannot help but bring back images of the penultimate song in the nightclub, when all the girls had sensibly gone off to find taxis home, this song would come on and a load of beery-teary blokes would stand in geet big circles, arms draped companionably over each other's shoulders, singing this at the top of their lungs to demonstrate to any straggling women that they were decent blokes and not beer-swilling monsters. This album is OK. It's not great. It's certainly not something I'd include in list of must-listens, but it's OK. One thing I will suggest though, is to go off and find the video of Robbie Williams on stage with Tom Jones at the 1998 Brit Awards. Williams is trying so very hard, bless him. He's doing well. The crowd are enjoying him. It's good. And then he introduces Tom Jones and the crowd goes FUCKING NUTS. Jones outclasses him effortlessly in every possible way. It's so cute to watch Williams strut around trying to get himself noticed while Jones has the crowd eating from the palm of his hand. Can't recommend it enough!

Blimey, long album is long! Some decent tracks here - especially for 1970 - but by golly gosh there's some self indulgence about. "Let it down" is interminable. It could do with being 7 minutes shorter, and no mistake. I feel that someone, somewhere in the process of making this should have said "Look George, I know you were a Beatle, but I really think you should trim the playing time by about ⅔ here mate..." It's just too damn long. If he'd put this out as three separate albums he'd have got one very good album, one good album and a pile of dross. But it somehow made it into the wild being over two hours long. And that shouldn't have been allowed to happen.

Back in the early-mid 2000s I was given a burnt DVD containing (among other things) the entire catalogue of Pet Shop Boys releases. Everything, singles, albums, best of mixes - if it had been released, it was copied there in glorious 320kbps MP3. There were a LOT of Pet Shop Boys tracks - to the point where a random play of mp3s from my selection would pop up with one of them every four of five songs. And I'm afraid that this has rather polluted the Pet Shop Boys for me. They are an important act in the history of electronic music - but this selection is from 1993 when they had broken a not insubstantial amount of ground already. Saying that, I've tried to listen objectively. Is this a good album? No. Is it an important album? Also no. Why is it included on this list? Because Pet Shop Boys. It's the artist, not the album being honoured here. And that's a shame.

Mitchell's voice is silken, her music understated. And holy heck it is a difficult listen. I can't describe these as songs. They're long-form narrative stories set to music. I tried to pay attention to the "lyrics" (story) whilst listening, but so often found myself just totally zoning out, because everything is enoted in much the same way. This album is, for sure, an experience. But not one I'd wish to repeat any time soon.

This starts out "oh so Beatles-y" and continues to be unmistakably The Beatles throughout. Special mention needs to be made of Norwegian Wood, which is a track which surely must sit up near the top of greatest recordings ever made. I feel somewhat guilty of calling it that, given I've just this morning absolutely slated Joni Mitchell's Hejira for being long-form storytelling, but it is just brilliant. I also need to mention how absolutely bloody horrific "Run for your life" is. Say what you like about the misogyny of gangsta rap or dancehall - this is it, right here, pure and unbridled. Grim. Norwegian Wood puts this album to 5 stars. Run for you life knocks it down to 3.

Well, I've never heard of these guys before. I guess what they're doing sounds more 90s than 80s so I can imagine that they're that influential type that nobody outside of the music industry has ever heard of, but apparently inspired everyone else to make music that is both good and popular. Nothing wrong with this album - it's not too long, not to short. And does sound ahead of its time.

Listening to this, I'm thinking to myself "This is music for sex isn't it? They've gone out to create sex music. And they're twins. Ew." Turns out that thankfully they're not twins at all so the sex bit is less uncomfortable. This album is quite a lot like sex in that I don't get it. Other people, who do get it, seem to love it.

This is an album with a couple of genuinely great tracks on it, unfortunately these are few and far between, tucked between the very wankiest of 80s ballads and sad white boy dirges. Donnie Darko did Tears For Fears an absolutely solid favour by using Head Over Heels in one of the most memorable scenes of the past 30 years. Without it, would we still be considering this album? I most certainly would not.

Another Pet Shop Boys. Joy. The sheer chutzpah of Neil Tennant to record a track called "Being Boring" when his vocal style is so close to monotone. The things about it - the damn thing about it - is that his voice is as close to perfect as it can be for these synths. The synths are great.

Based on the album art alone, I thought I was going to hate this. He looks like exactly the sort of person who bores the tits off everyone at house parties by singing sad songs, obviously with his eyes closed, because the music is just so damned emotional. Listening to him though, I actually quite like it. Remarkably upbeat, he weaves in a few lovely-sounding diversion, some jazz, some bossa nova, some soft rock - it's quite nice. I don't think I'll ever care enough to listen to the lyrics, but it's quite pleasantly pleasing background music.

This album is The Tits. Usually, if I were to hear martial arts film quotes interspersed through an album, I'd assume that the artist was targeting specifically to the sort of awkward, friendless no-hoper who wears cat ears and buys "Katanas" online. His low-grade steel will be pride of his collection, alongside his waifu bodypillow. Of course, the whole sorry lot would be under a cloud of stench that's managed to develop its own personality. This is not that album. The beats are great. The flows are great. The lyrics are catchy and engaging. The film quotes are referenced with a wink rather than an adolescent stiffy. And the album builds. It takes you as a listener on. Journey. I like it. I like it rather a lot.

This isn't exactly an easy album to listen to, but it is worth a listen.

This is a live album? Skip! By Metallica in the late 1990s? Double skip!

I'll be willing to wager that there isn't much to be said about this album that hasn't already been said. Almost 30 years ago, I "studied" this album for my music GCSE. It was nearly 30 years old then, and plenty had been written at that point. This album is exceptional. Musically wonderful, diverse and each track is curated wonderfully. Stand-out tracks are Within You, Without You and, of course, A Day In The Life. A Day In The Life might be one of the best tracks ever recorded... well, ever. I'll say something though - when I last listened to this album, I sure wasn't listening to it on the kit I have now. I've heard more of the instrumentation this time around, and it all fits together splendidly. Even the de-tuned piano at the start of A Day In The Life fits perfectly. I remember thinking, at the age of 15 or 16, how the language used in She's Leaving Home was extraordinary. I'm not usually one to apply literary criticism to song lyrics - but this is just a masterclass in it. No reason is given by the girl for why she left. No reason is given by the parents. Despite this, it is clear as day why she did. Every utterance of the parent's lament is about themselves - "How could she do this to us" - "What did we do that was wrong?" - at no point did they attempt to see that their daughter was an individual, with her own thoughts, feelings and wants. It's just great.

Enjoyable, jaunty music that's dark AF. Hadn't listened to this before, or anything much my the Pogues but appreciate it now I have. Would I listen again? Maybe. Not as a day to day thing though.

Well, I'm sure that this was a groundbreaking album that helped bring synthpop to the British mainstream, but lordy I think this is dull. What it says in a whole album could probably have been achieved in 2-3 tracks. Maybe if Vince Clarke had been involved, they'd have been more interesting.

I rather enjoyed this. Stand-out track was Sabrosa. The Beastie Boys sure have cleaned up their act. There's lots of nice samples in here, and lots of great breaks and beats.

Immediate five stars - I know this is going to be superb because a) it's Stevie Wonder and b) it's Stevie Wonder's best album. Important things to note - this is an INCREDIBLY important electronic album. Yes, this album is chock to the brim full of synth. Wonder basically took all of the latest bleeding edge stuff - literally hundreds of thousands of dollars worth - and made an incredibly funky album using synths. This is also one of the most influential funk albums, soul albums, pop albums - it's just, absolutely 100% deserving of its accolades.

It's disposable pop. I spent a lot of time listening to the Everly Brother on my walkman back in the early 1990s and I have to say that these are not the best songs to illustrate them. They harmonise well, and they're mostly inoffensive, but far more interesting things were happening in music, driven by people who were not as straight and white as the Everly Brothers. What the Everly Brothers did was to decant some of this work into a nice white boy package, to make it easier to sell. It's a shame that we don't have more recognition in this list for the now sadly mostly forgotten inspirations.

Gosh, this album reminds me so very much of the mid 1990s. Of course I had (probably still do) this on CD. Lots and lots of people did. What strikes me about it now is how hilariously emotionally undeveloped it is. "I'm here to remind you of the mess you left when you went away" - sorry pet, he went away. Your emotional response is no longer his concern. How can we forget her breaking into another guy's house and getting upset to find a letter from another woman. Hyew lass, why not try not being a creepy stalker, laying in this guy's bed so you can, um, smell him? Honestly, it's the 90s equivalent of going through somebody's text messages. For all the emotion and talent on display in this album, I'm fairly sure that the problem was her. This thought is pretty much solidified by "head over feet" - the man she describes is doing the minimum fucking possible. He listened to her. He held the sodding door open. Clearly the catch of the century. Um, yeah. I'm guessing that she'd been self-selecting asshole blokes then getting upset upon finding out that he's an asshole. Finding a Prince has nothing to do with kissing frogs. Probably a better place to start is "Not a pond". Get some self respect. I guess that this album is quite good in that we'd had decades of whiney white boys being able to put their teenage inexperience and dismal ineptitude onto vinyl, and yeah, it's sure nice to have a woman do that, but it's still whiney emotional ineptitude being shown here. All that being said - this album was massive, and did shift a paradigm or two, which has to be acknowledged. And I mostly enjoyed listening to it again for the first (maybe second) time in a decade or more. Biggest surprise was the absolute reawakening of my hatred of "Mary Jane". I had completely mentally erased it from my memory of this album. For the aged familiarity of non-single tracks like Perfect or Right Through You, Mary Jane stirred memories of having to skip the track as the only genuinely bad track on an otherwise great album. I was honestly surprised at both how much I disliked it, and how completely I had managed to remove it from my memory of an album I must have listened to hundreds of times. Rating this album may be tricky. Because I really do find it (now) to be painfully immature, with a hilarious lack of self awareness or introspection (something most whiney white boy music has in nauseating overabundance) present. The music slaps though, and her vocals are generally pretty good. The production is great, and it genuinely is an album that changed music. I'd err towards 5 stars due to the impact of the release, but its underdeveloped character and the inclusion of the godawful Mary Jane does have to lock it down to a high 4.

This album slaps. Got some cracking good stuff on it. Would recommend.

I know that I'm going to love this. Green Onions is one of those "Epitome of cool" tracks that simply can't help but make you feel like you're the smoothest human to ever stalk to face of the planet. Second track comes at you with the Hammond organ croaking out a slightly clipped, muted tune. The backing is great, but when we come onto track 3, Jones is making that organ sing like a Yukon bear trapper on his annual visit to the brothel. Sure, the band is great and there's not a note out of place, but the organ is in this like Blackpool rock. It's magnificent. Track four up and we've got such a funky sound it almost hurts. Mo' onions? Mo' funk! Mo' organ! It isn't as cool as Green Onions, but it uses similar,well, everything. After this is Twist and Shout, which isn't as good The Beatles or Ray Charles' covers. Mildly let down, the Hammond becomes soulful and down tempo. We go further towards melancholy in track 7. Lonely Avenue, track 8, turns bluesy, with the Hammond doing the Lord's work, intricately replicating what you've come to expect from a Louisiana bluesman's harmonica. Track 9 comes upbeat, and I'm here for that. "One who really loves you" gives us intricate melodies and we move on apace with a nice short track that once again makes you want to get up and dance - and you know you'll feel great doing it. Track 11 comes around to blues again, and to be honest it's a little boring. The twiddliness reminds me a little of Withnail and I, but not quite in the way I'd home. Comin' Home Baby is a nice gentle finish to a superb album. Although nothing will reach the heights of Green Onions, Mo' Onions does come close. And Green Onions alone would get this album a 5.

God Country Home is awful. His voice is terrible. Out of tune. Whiny. Skip. I've made it as far as "over and over" (track 4) and I'm going to have to abandon this. The instrumentals are OK-ish, nothing to write home about, but his voice is absolutely fucking awful. He can't hold a tune any more than I could hold the plums of an enraged bull elephant. This is dismal. People actually like this crap?

What garage band tripe is this?

This is probably the best The Jam album. Couple of scorching tracks here. Not a huge amount of filler. Good.

Rock and roll. Less refined than contemporaries. But that was probably the intention.

Some of this album is even kinda OK. Unfortunately a larger percentage of it is appalling. Like, uncomfortable to listen to appalling. "England" was the first of it to get a skip. Warbling tosh, the sort of thing you expect to hear from a talentless 2nd year university student at an open mic night. "Written on the forehead" needs to get in the sea.

Having made the mistake of reading the reviews here before listening to anything beyond the first half of the first track, I was kind of expecting this to be utterly awful. It isn't. I mean, it isn't world-changingly amazing, but it's pretty decent-ish experimental music, happily released at a time that the music world had taken a battering of the absolute void that was 2002-2008. The music industry was reeling; they'd evacuated their bowels so completely, with such violence and vigour that it had taken their brains out with it. "Oh noes!" they thought. "Napster and Limewire and torrents and Apple Music are going to ruin us!", wailed the music execs. And they sent their lawyers. Wave after wave of lawyers, all claiming that a teenager putting half a dozen of their favourite songs on limewire meant tens of trillions of "unrealised revenue". Indeed, Limewire was sued in 2012 by the Recording Industry Ass. of America for $72tn. $72tn! The World Bank tells me that the GDP of the entire USA in 2012 was $16.25tn, which just goes to show how ludicrously delusional the music industry had become. The Fear Of Piracy ruined music in the mid-2000s, like some eviscerating beast. Any executive with any record label was more acutely aware of the myriad lawsuits against teenagers and college students than of the talent and aspiration of up-and-coming artists. Declining revenues - which would normally be a bad thing - were ascribed to piracy, and yet the music that they made available was dismal. Colour me a conspiracy theorist, but declining music sales could easily be shown as proof that piracy was ruining them - and it might actually have been in their interest to continue pumping out dismal music and dismal artists. This album doesn't really fit that theme, though. Before being recommended this, I had literally never heard of the album or the artist. So clearly the music industry weren't pushing this down our throats in the way that they were for, say, The White Stripes or The Killers. But this album is better constructed than a The White Stripes or a The Killers album. Whilst there are some clear gurns to the camera telegraphing how new and "innovative" this album is, there's also a clearly constructed method to how the album progresses. And that's quite refreshing. Would I rate it as a must-listen? No, clearly not. But is it as bad as the reviews here make out? Also no.

Who on earth is John Martyn? What is this album all about? Turns out that this album is The Tits. It's just great. Unashamedly absolutely fan-piggin-tastic. Which of course means that John Martyn is going to be a wrong'un. Of course it means that. It has to mean that. Let's do some research. Oh, yes, there it is. Alcohol and drug abuse, spousal abuse, generally being a bit of a dick to a lot of people. Hmmm. Why is it that people who are so damn good at music are always such turds? If we can divorce the art from the artist, this is 5 stars. In this case - I think I probably can.

This is quite enjoyable, in an over-the-top and theatrical way, complete with its questionable lyrics. Jackie is clear and away the stand out track.

Yeah, this holds zero interest for me. It is bad reggae. Nice, maybe,that it opened people up to reggae. But beyond that, nope.