Little Richard's unique voice is obviously the most striking thing about this album. Other than that, it's slightly repetitive, with all of its 50s era bopping simple blues pattern. I felt like I heard 4 or 5 songs, some of them 4 times.
The majority of the album feels like 80s electronic dance club music, although the final song, King's Cross, stands apart from the rest of the album. The electronic music is tolerable, but feels a little corny to me. King's Cross is a more serious song, and stylistically much more like the "serious songs" that respected rockers like Phil Collins or Don Henley produced during that era.
It's Prince! That's a statement by itself. Prince set the bar in his own variety of extremely suggestive funk. It is undeniably extremely fun and catchy. All of the radio hits retain are just as fun as ever, and songs that are less often remembered, like Something in the Water, are just as fun as the radio hits. Perhaps I'm more prudish than most, but I didn't see the "genius" in the sex obsession in Prince's music. I just felt like the music was shallow, approaching lecherous. But even if don't consider this to be a good moral code, you can still enjoy the album intensely. I did.
Disclaimer: This album requires several focused listenings to appreciate. I'd like it more, the more I listen. This album is embarrassed in the company of genuinely great Metallica like the Black Album. Musicianship and lyricism appear at several points, but much of the middle of this album is simply aggression, without substance to back it up. The album sets the tone early, with Battery, an impressive song, but also a good case study in the difference between technically impressive music and good music. Orion would have been a good conclusion for the album. It's a good song on its own, and it also returns to the theme of Battery. Every guitar solo on this album is worth hearing, in context, so you should listen all the way through, if only to appreciate the guitar solos. This album would be much better if Destruction Inc. were dropped from the lineup.
Maybe I just don't appreciate it, but I found it hard to pay much attention to a whole album of the same thing. I enjoyed the sound a little bit, but didn't see all that much to see in it.
Intolerably boring. Obviously, I'm not the biggest fan of punk. I've heard more unpleasant noises, but never such boring noise. By the second half of the album, I couldn't even get through most of the songs. The Ramones at least had the decency to impart enough "oomph" that you'd have something to listen to, love it or hate it.
The title track is one of my favorites, and frequently wins radio station polls. The rockers are always fun, and make this one of my top picks. The Eagles reliably deliver the full, polished sound of a real rock band, even in the songs where they're whining instead of rocking. I appreciated the slow songs more this time, since I listened more consciously than I usually do. All in all, I greatly enjoyed the album. I was a little exasperated by Don Henley's perpetually bleeding heart, but that might just be a lack of patience with his slow ones. I loved every song on the Boys of Summer alblum, and I don't have as much trouble with Rufus Wainwright's bleeding heart.
I can't believe I'd heard so little of Donovan before this! This album leans heavy on psychedelic, but it does so much more, and it shows a lot of the sound that I'd thought was a Doors trademark. Donovan clearly deserves to be remembered as a first generation innovator of rock music, rather that the also-ran, hanger-on to the Beatles and Bob Dylan that I'd thought he was.
I really enjoyed this, and I don't do Hip Hop in general. The entire album communicates a great sense of humor and a positive worldview. It's also catchy enough to engage me even though I don't really like rap. My understanding of the history is that Run-D.M.C. created that punk-rap sound that makes Rock Box distinctive, although the idea was actually Rick Rubin's and they'd never heard the punk backing when they recorded their vocals. It clearly influenced the Beastie Boys, and led the way to their other guitar backed tracks, like their Walk This Way collaboration.
It's fine, but I don't see how it could hold your attention for that long. I found it uninteresting.