1001 Albums Summary

Really good. Heavy emotional stuff.

Ah, so the Beatles were a fluke. He's right, this band should be on the run after putting out this album.

I really, really wanted to give Bob Dylan a fair shake, but by the time "Ballad of a Thin Man" hit its thirteenth fucking verse all of my goodwill was gone. We've all admitted that he can't sing for shit, but I am baffled by the claims that he's some great songwriter. Tiresome.

This would get 5 stars for Natural Woman alone. My only complaint is it's TOO SHORT

Had been holding off on listening to this one, for fear that it would be too bleak or upsetting, based on some of the description. Surprisingly light and pleasant, definitely one to revisit with a more analytical eye.

its a yikes for me on that last one john

when did this become 1001 albums that'll make you WANT to die

honestly slaps

Hey, Robert, could you speak up a little?

Saccharine and syrupy, but also, in like, kind of a nice way?

I really don't know what to rate this, because if I'm being honest I think there were only about five words on this album that I could understand. Extremely listenable, though.

Shocking, considering how insufferable I found "Freak Out!", that I would be so taken by this album. Zappa works a lot better without words for me.

Should be longer

Pretty wild to record an entire album in Simlish

weirdly really vibed with this. 5 stars I guess

Two awful songs really weighing this down.

Eh, I'm not harsh enough. This probably deserves a two but I had too many moments where I wanted to be listening to ANYTHING ELSE, so fuck it.

I can absolutely imagine this being incredible at a concert or anywhere surrounded by hundreds of people on similar drugs. Listening to this alone on my bike? Torture.

When she said "you know that I'm no good" I didn't realize she was talking about this album! Damn!

Five stars just for "If I Learned To Play The Violin". Funniest song I've ever heard.

Not my favorite Talking Heads album but that's not saying much

rating this 5 for the 5 year old who probably loves this

I'm sorry, my rules are strict; if you have a song with the lyric "little girl", you lose a star, no matter how good the rest is.

Not sure at the start, ended up kinda digging it.

if I could only remember a single track from this album

That feeling where you're like, "I know this band, right? I've heard of them, what's their big song?" all throughout the album, and then finally a song starts that you recognize and it sucks

More heads should have rolled.

Sort of terrible but sort of good? Seems to be a love it or hate it type record, so both emotions seem valid. Suppose I'll land in the middle but I'm really reconsidering my rating strategy.

The part in Aisha that goes "aaaaaaaaa"? Five stars for that alone.

This one's complicated. "Brothers In Arms" has always been my mother's favorite song, and I can't fault her for it. It's atmospheric and melancholic, reaching emotional heights that most of the other tracks in the second half fall short of. Anyway, I listened to a LOT of Dire Straits all throughout my childhood. A lot of the 'best of' tracks came from this album. And those are great. Incredibly catchy melodies, and I finally understand that these are probably the reason why I ever considered playing the guitar (I was bad at it). I think So Far Away kinda sucks, I've always thought Walk of Life was just a bad Sultans of Swing, some other tracks bored me so much I didn't even remember what they were called. There's a homophobic slur on Money for Nothing... but that song is still Money for Nothing. And above all, the title track is actually stunning, and I've been humming it for days now. Yeah, it's hard denying that.

This album coming out in 1991 feels wrong somehow. It has a very classic sound. Not a bad thing, and quite nice to listen to. I do really enjoy "Four Seasons in One Day", I've always liked that one for some reason.

He's white? ... he's white.

I guess I get it now. This feels like an album I'd have in my car, if I had a car. I don't love U2, but this is a genuinely great album.

There's a few really good tracks on here, but a lot of those even wear out their welcome for me by going on just a bit longer than necessary.

It's good, but I'm also, like, weirded out? But like, in a good way? So... that's good?

Fuck it. Five stars. Masterpiece. Powerhouse.

Moments of absolute brilliance in the miasma of continuous sound. At times fantastic, at times interminable. But that's art, baby.

I had two cans of Monster today, biking back and forth between our old apartment and the new house, trying to get the last of our stuff out. Heart racing, music pumping, I mean, man, I got stuff DONE today. Was it the energy drink? Was it the riffs? I still didn't understand a single lyric because Hetfield sounds the way he sounds (not as bad here, but still). Whatever it was, I was a beast today. Brutal.

I'm so confused. The first Mothers of Invention album I got made me so irrationally angry. But then I got "Hot Rats", and I found it one of the greatest things I'd ever heard. I thought I just liked Zappa instrumentally and that was it. But no, actuality, I really enjoyed the Mothers this time around. I feel like the jokes worked a lot better here. An acquired taste?

Brilliant debut. All-time classic.

Actually kind of pleasant. Loses a bit of steam, but eventually won me back with the bonus track.

mid

Surprisingly, I actually liked this. Mick sounds good for a change.

It's weird. It's kind of shit. "What if Sparks were Talking Heads", alright, that sounds fucking terrible and also brilliant. Would rather listen to either of those, but this does make sense. Blow-up doll song is stupid as hell. It rules.

Whenever I think an album might be kind of shit, the reviews are inevitably full of people proclaiming it as a masterpiece. Inexplicable.

So the Joy part is ironic, eh?

Just utterly hilarious.

Great, especially when Gibbons does her weird Bjork impression

Metal is so funny. They're all like, "I'm a real sicko! Blood and guts and gore!!! SATAN!" That edgy shit just gets funnier and funnier as I get older. Would be embarrassing if it didn't also rip.

This album came out the same year I was born! I like to think I've aged better.

Everything here is pretty great, which is why it's insane that the whole thing ends on a fucking FADE OUT????

Saw another review mention the mixing, but it really knocked my enjoyment not being able to fucking HEAR HER for half a song. Whether it's Apple Music or just the album, I don't know. There's a lot really good here, and as a debut too.

Man, I'm disappointed. I only knew Green Light off this album and always quite liked it. I thought I would really enjoy this album. It was... okay? Pop doesn't have to be fun, and it doesn't even need to be very original. But it needs some ideas. It's like... Whenever there's a clever line in one of these songs, I'd find myself impressed and paying attention. And then immediately that line is just repeated as an incredibly weak hook. The passes/champagne glasses rhyme is cute! Don't make it your entire song!!! Come up with a chorus!!! Stop running out of ideas so fast!!! Fuck!!! And like, I still halfway enjoyed it. There have been worse albums, so it's going down the middle.

Probably a decent album to have sex to. But that's a really specific context, and I'm not going to go through the effort to make sure.

This would absolutely be okay as background music to write to or something, but also, I've heard better video game music for that purpose.

how embarrassing

I'm being harsh, but the first song on this album made me want to immediately swerve into oncoming traffic. By some point I thought, alright, maybe there's a few hooks on here that work, and then Bad Blood started playing so traffic seemed alluring again.

It's a bit of a vibe. It's a very Sfinks festival type of music, where I might want to pay attention to a song or two, and enjoy it well enough before wandering over elsewhere to grab a beer or avoid the weed smells, or just wander around to see if someone I know is nearby and has literally anything to say

Kinda reminds me of U2, but worse. Kinda reminds me of Oasis, but worse. Kinda reminds me

Starts off promisingly funky. Loses steam pretty quickly. A shame, because it's barely 40 minutes long. Title track's great.

What do you call this type of music where someone plays one distorted chord over and over again for six minutes?

Three or four. Dinosaur song made me laugh out loud. Not sure if that was serious.

That's it. Nice and easy. Just slam down for thirty seconds and get it over with. No edging on this record. A straightforward angry wank and you're out.

Normally I feel like I need to really dislike something to give it less than three stars. It is pleasant enough, but I paused it halfway and forgot about it entirely by the time I picked it back up. Whenever I find myself thinking "is this the last track then?" several times in a row, I know it's not really for me. Again, nice enough, but just incredibly unremarkable.

Atmospheric, to be sure. It sounds nice, but I constantly found myself singing other improvised melodies over the undulating sequence of chords and moans. It's not Jonsi's fault that my melodies were uninspiring, of course.

Mostly instrumental, sometimes chill, sometimes spooky. Nice. Soundtrack potential.

Really struggled to decide what I'd rate this album. I've often had people around me who loved reggae, and never fully been able to buy in myself. Bob Marley certainly seemed like the most accessible one, at least, and this album is for sure. I mean, this is the answer to the question "which studio albums could also be considered greatest hits albums" because the second half is just iconic track after iconic track. I cannot deny that. I usually reserve 5 stars for stuff that I personally adore, but I cannot deny that this is a particularly strong album, one of the most deserving inclusions on the list.

It is SO funny to sing about independent women who can buy their OWN diamonds without needing a man, and about how hot your booty is, before launching into "Nasty Girl" and shaming a woman for not wearing clothes and telling her men won't respect her. Let that nasty girl have her tits out if she wants!!!

Honestly, a pretty good showing from Dylan here. He still indulges his worst tendencies to have songs run on endlessly, only to fade out after seventeen verses of tiresome references. Less would genuinely be so much more. The fact that he sounds like that is honestly what I mind the least about Bob Dylan. At least he tells some alright stories on this one. But please. Some radio cuts, please.

Another journey of "I know this band's name, but why? Surely not for being able to mimic what I remember Pearl Jam sounding like? Which of their songs was a hit?? Oh, this one! Yeah it's the best track on the record. Go figure!"

Lydon can fuck right off with this

Yikes dog

I'm white

Listenable! Unobjectionable! Some of its, dare I say, nice, even!

Kind of grew up with this, because my sister loved this album, but it still surprised me that it came out in 1996. That's a full five years before Shrek! How early in production do you think they started on the My Beloved Monster scene?

on closer inspection, these are loafers

No, I'm pretty sure if you were Christian, your name might have still been Michael.

Sounds a bit like if The Cure were neurotypical

This is quite unexpected, but I was tempted to skip so, so many times. Just when I was getting really sick of the awful 2015 production on some of these tracks, they wisely decided to strip back the instrumentation for the last few tracks. Doesn't help much though. When "All I Ask" comes around, she sings "what if I never love again?", and I just want to shake her. Girl, have some self-awareness. Clearly, you have and you will love again. Apparently it's all you do. Calling this album 'mature' is laughable. I'm in my thirties now, and maybe I just can't handle this level of mid-twenties self-seriousness. Her stuff on 21 was better, across the board. "When We Were Young" is just about the only song that actually resonated with me, I think especially because it's such a funny thing to say in your mid-twenties but it feels vulnerable and genuine, and it has a profound tenderness for its subject that suggests more than what it says, and that has a sense of melancholy that isnt entirely focused on her own inability to let go, or at least, understands that things are inevitably going to change.

This one only had three reviews before I wrote this one. Presumably because most people, uh, didn't care strongly. Some of the best parts of this sound like Nick Drake, but some of it also sucks. Weird one to rate. We're gonna go mid.

stars for emmylou tbh

I didn't very much like it, actually.

Feels bad rating this so low, but genuinely each track is too long and repetitive. Some tracks aren't even that long and they still feel like they drag! Obviously what's there is good, which is why it's been sampled and reused so much, but at its core this is a record that kind of explains why disco was so maligned. I like disco, I'm European, but this was a bit tiresome.

As S&F albums go, not really their strongest offering, but the songwriting is still top notch.

Entirely inconsequential and bafflingly identity-free

(gif of that little girl side-eyeing the camera, the one from the video where her older sister finds out she's going to Disneyland)

The second half is really quite bad.

"Dreaming of You" was one of my favorite songs, back then. It's pretty good, still.

Brilliant

It's crazy that U2 made such a great album with Joshua Tree - and yet almost everything else they've done afterwards is unbearably boring.

He was like, "all right, maybe I can make my own voice sound less annoying if I contrast it with this fucking harmonica."

Kind of fun?

Albums I liked when I was 13 very rarely hold up. This one does. No notes.

the amount of times he calls nsync gay on one album is honestly kind of embarrassing

It's good, obviously, but I feel like "Man's Not Hot" ruined any chance of me taking this kind of stuff seriously

Hmmmm not hot

Is "corny" short for corn-fed? I'm European and I don't know what this is.

Like, I get it, but I struggled to really /like/ it.

It's the kind of music that sort-of exists

Made me wonder if I'm more into Stevie Nicks than into Fleetwood Mac as a whole, as I really enjoyed her tracks the most. A lot of the McVie stuff was rrrrreally mellow. I am not sure what about this is supposed to be such a "huge departure" from Rumours, which it followed up. Some of it sounds like it could be B-sides. It's messy, and it's long, but absolutely worth the listen.

Okay, I think? I don't know, I listened to it yesterday and I already do not remember it at all.

Happy to find out this one has mostly songs she wrote, as I really liked the songwriting. Never been sure if I like country, but I'm becoming a dad, my tastes are morphing, and I found myself getting a bit choked up at SEVERAL points. Not every song, but the gorgeous voice and tone still shines through. Have to let my gut speak on this one.

Begging someone to tell these guys they could write songs about literally anything else if they wanted

Doesn't even have Love Shack! Would be lying if I said I didn't vibe though.