Theres like 3 fun songs buried in a 17 song mess of an album that felt like the funkiest slog possible

I kept writing new reviews constantly as I heard this album, I'm just posting them all: This sounds like it's written by someone who grew up on 80s pop long after the 80s, and as someone who grew up on 80s pop long after the 80s I can relate. Listen. There is a continuous line between Scritti Politti - Color Me Badd - Kylie Minogue - Robyn - Carly Rae Jepsen - Charli XCX - Sophie that defines a horrifying amount of my love of pop music. I can't begin to pretend I didn't start to love this album from the ~50ish second mark of the first song. I don't know how this album sounds revolutionary and incredibly dated at the same time, but Scritti Politti sure did achieve it. What even is a Scritti Politti? Ok. Ok. So. Pulling back the curtain here a bit, I have a tendency to go into the Global Stats section of this website and check out the highest and lowest rated albums. The highest rated are all basically what you expect, but the lowest? A lot of artists I'd never seen before. And there, between Grindcore and Industrial acts that bang and crash and inscrutable Trout Mask-ass art rock sat Scritti Politti, which Wikipedia described as a synth-pop band with state of the art studio production. I've been so curious since, how can a band that influenced Haim, Elton John, Hot Chip and Kylie Minogue be one of the worst bands of the best? And here we are, I finally got to listen to it, and y'know what. I see why it's down here, for sure. Sickeningly sweet production, the lead singer sounds like a parody of a boy band frontman, whole thing is like someone asked Max Martin to make a Stock Aitken Waterman track from memory, but also HATED Stock Aitken Waterman. The album definitely has it's misses, A Little Knowledge and Don't Work that Hard are nothing songs despite being so close to the rest because the album sits on a fascinating razors edge, but honestly. I love it. The singles are solid 80s sophisti-pop with Perfect Way being one of the cleanest pieces of Bubblegum ever made and I can hear the reverberations of this album through the next 40 years of music. Goddamn am I annoying. Genuinely though, I think the only way on earth someone would like this as much as I did is if they grew up on the exact same blend of 80s New Wave, 2010s Synthpop, 2020s Hyperpop, Plunderphonics and the Maplestory soundtrack that I did. All that being said, 4, masterpiece of bubble gum that makes the Archies look like Napalm Death, but this isn't quite reaching the Echelons of 5 star 80s nonsense. Appended: Psyche, figured out the edit function, this is a 5, see Leftism review.

Ok, like I get it, the songs are solid enough and the guitar playing is obviously masterful, but my god. Somewhere halfway through Key to the Highway I had my fill and we were halfway through. Album slowly lost me as it went, and Layla did not get me back.

Excellent live album with great musicianship, but it's strongest as a showcase of Kurt Cobain's deep love for music.

Good album, early songs weren't incredible to me but last two are a great end to the album. 0 songs favorites.

I mean it's incredible, genius album 5 stars, no notes, a killer start to finish. 1 Favorite: When doves cry.

Great noise pop, love this genre, Psychocandy is better though and by a solid margin.

One of the best Christmas albums ever. Phil Spector was a genius, too bad he was a piece of shit.

Primo art-alt-rock from the 2000s. Some songs hit better then others but that last song is incredible.

The entire b side is all skips and the lyrics are such 60s European bullshit but the wall of sound production is just top notch and Jackie's a fucking killer opener.

Primo college rock, slow start into a strong middle and end, It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine) continues to be a truly great song

Beautiful soundscape, a bit slow and repetitive but that's likely because it's not really meant for active listening, also the last track has the most animal crossing 1 am flute of all time.

Good 90s sad boy art rock, sounds good, but I can never take 90s sad boy shit seriously.

Yep that's the stones alright

Cheesy 80s, good songs in the middle but too long and the impact of songs about loneliness is somewhat tempered when the sax solo kicks in

Not bad or anything, but once it hits why worry? The rest of the album is interminable and I don't feel like I HAD to hear this album before I died.

Good album, not much to say except it's funny how clear it is this is before album structure became important, literally just a pile of songs

Good experimental rock, I liked it except for the ukulele in the middle

Goddamn this Obama era jangle rock is aggressively not for me.

Great Jazz album, likely the best album ill give a three simply because I doubt I'll listen to it again

Good soil album with some strong 80s influence

Not bad or anything, just not for me

idk I just got bored these 70s soft rock story songs never do anything for me

Hell yeah Judas Priest!!

awww yeah I wanna funk

One of the best albums by one of the best bands of all time, unofficial 6 star

Holy shit there is not one millisecond of this album I do not genuinely and deeply hate with all my soul. Cure for the Itch is the best song on this album and it laps the rest so hard and fast that im amazed they wasted their time with other songs.

Theres like 3 fun songs buried in a 17 song mess of an album that felt like the funkiest slog possible

Not every songs incredible, but changes, life on mars and queen bitch immediately found homes among my loved songs

Massive improvement over her other album, there are enough lillith-fair-chick-rock sensibilities in this to be a good enough album to listen to, but it's nothing special and the last 2 songs are so so boring

A solid enough album knocked down to 2 stars for showing me the origin of the "put the lime In the coconut" line is a fuckin TERRIBLE novelty song

I doubt I'm gonna rate any New Wave album below a 4 but this is an easy 5 top notch New Wave-synthpop-new romantics, may be one of my favorite albums now

The good: easily Ye's best production, this is him at his height every songs a 10 out of 10, for example that interpolation of Sigmas somebody to love on bound 2 is immaculate The bad: not one word on this album didn't either age weirdly or badly, the hypersexuality just sounds gross now and man do the socially conscious songs feel unsincere knowing where Ye's head would end up All that being said the production and musicality of this albums still among my favorite rap albums of all time

A classic of 90s gangster rap, strongest as a demonstration of the anger of Rodney king era los Angeles

Not for me

Thankfully I heard this after Scott Walker's Scott 2, because this album is heavily influenced by it. It feels like an attempt to create a 90s version of Jackie, and it succeeds somewhat. The highs are not as high, the lows are not as low, and it doesn't pull off the sleazyness nearly as well. However, I appreciate the sheer theatricality of this album, it goes 10 miles over the top and it knows it. Appended: This has become, over the years since I originally reviewed it, one of my favorite albums ever made.

Beautiful album, exceptional vocalist.

Post-Britpop's refutation of Britpop by simplifying the grandiose sounds of Britpop bores me so much my god this albums BORING

Pretty good folk rock, loved percy's song though i doubt I'll listen to this album again

A powerful album about being both nostalgic for and proud to have risen above the violent place you were raised, while also being immediately obvious just how much the songs on this album influenced rap for the next decade

Sorry, just found this album boring

Very trumpety

Great noise rock, not Sonic Youths best album and other bands would go on to take the noise rock sound farther and better (lightning bolt) but this is a solid album thats great to listen to

fuck its so good i gotta be one of those led zeppelin guys now huh

Solid disco album, a number of forgettable tracks buoyed by two of the greatest disco songs ever made.

Frontloaded with three great songs, then into a huge pile of bloat ended with a song about sexual abuse, a sung prayer to god and the three singers telling each other how great they are, outstandingly uneven album.

Bored me.

R.E.M at their most college rock and most boring, radio free europe is still fun but the rest of the album was eh

I don't like simple musicality, I have a major focus on music over lyrics and I tend to get bored with jazz. This album never had a chance

yep thats what i expected. its complex, difficult, and deeply interesting in a way that i loved. i'd never put a song on a playlist, but id buy a record and put it on every once in a blue moon

i get its early punk, but i didnt hear a song i "got" more then lust for life until L.A Blues and that song clicked

i can hear the influences on 80s hair metal all throughout the album, but its not exactly its zenith

i mean london calling came out the year before can i go listen to that instead? oh, i can? cool.

The theatricality of this albums fuckin great, idk if its the best album ever but i loves every second of it

prog rocks just fun

Jimi Hendrix's strongest work and a fantastic combination of classic blues styles combined with new forms of guitar and sound manipulation.

Absolutely classic blues, truly incredible stuff

Sadboy singer-songwriter just isnt for me

Classic soul, mindblowing that respect is an otis redding original but arethra definitely does it better

Dramatic singing of covers in a german cabaret style, produced and coworked by the divine comedy. good stuff but very uneven

Led Zeppelin continues to kick ass, not quite 4 levels but still great stuff

Great dance punk, maps is still a classic

Oh thats why theyre compared to the beatles

A classic of rap, but this specific 90s style doesn't click with me very well

Great debut album, but feels like it gets more props as a really great debut then it does as a really great album, it's uneven and the highs are high but the lows are so forgettable

Good reminder that New Wave was the genre of art school nerds, and sometimes that wasn't for the best. Sweet Dreams is still a banger, though.

Listening to this album served almost entirely to make me realise a lot of jokes ive heard before are at kid rocks expense and for good reason, rather be listening to icp goddamn

just an incredible album, loved it

Classic Early metal, makes me wish coven's witchcraft destroys minds and reaps souls was on this list, anyway this album is the most primo shit

Made me question if New Jersey was the most American state, so that really says everything

Imagine, if you will, a goth whose favorite album is Willy and the Poor Boys. Solid album, but my favorites, Blunderbuss, Hypocritical Kiss and Hip (Eponymus) Poor Boy, felt like the songs least emblematic of his style.

Solid 60s psych, real early which is why its here. Janis can certainly wail, to her bonus and detriment. I liked Piece of my Heart and Combination of the Two, but I wouldn't listen to it again.

Y'ever want to listen to a man die?

I mean it's incredible, genius album 5 stars, no notes, a killer start to finish.

You listen to enough New Wave, and you realize how Big Tent it really is. This is definitely closer to a Eurythmics then it is to an ABC, to its detriment for me. It definitely has three killer songs, but even so I wouldn't call it my favorite New Wave jam.

So there's a tendency in electronic music to praise early three hour long albums that invented the genre as genius instead of what they are, which is jingling keys for people doing meth. Goddamn this album is interminable, listening to it is like getting pranked by a friend who sets a song you're listening to on loop without telling you. No wonder the guy from Pendulum thought this guy was a fuck. Got through like half of half of the songs, fuckin hell 1 out of 5 this bores me to hell and back.

Girlfriend in a Coma was intended as a serious re-imagining of a Nina Simone song, which makes the fact that it's hilarious a bit awkward. Anyway, have to say it, The Smiths are incredible sadboy rock and in Morrisey's honor I'll feel slightly bad the next time I eat a hamburger.

Ok, like I get it, the songs are solid enough and the guitar playing is obviously masterful, but my god. Somewhere halfway through Key to the Highway I had my fill and we were halfway through. Album slowly lost me as it went, and Layla did not get me back.

Genuinely entranced by gunfighter ballads like an 8 year old in 1955 watching Davy Crockett, my god some things never change.

Ok, so, I have a bit of a tendency to be flippant in my reviews, so sue me. There's 1001 albums, 1078 if you include the ones removed in future book revisions, which you obviously do because this album is one of them. I'm not gonna write a book report for each one, I work 12 hours shifts suck me dry. However, man oh man do I love the Dirty Projectors. I discovered them through Swing Lo Magellan, an album I definitely own on vinyl, their follow up to this album, and this is just more experimental, complicated, noisy then that was. Amber Coffman and David Longstreth have fascinating voices and the compositions are so chaotic without being obnoxious. The structures of the songs are so visible, even if they look Escherian. I loved this album all the way through, with it's off time fuzz guitar, wails and random key changes it really is an absolute banger. 5 out of 5 bought this album on vinyl the instant I finished it.

One second its bash and crash proto-skatepunk the next its reflective post-punk and the next its a Randy Newman pisstake about genderqueer lovers. This is a defining album in the list of "Albums Mack gets and likes but doesn't much care about" which puts it at a 4.

Do you know how disappointing it is to be excited every day to get a new, cool album to listen to and it's fucking HYBRID THEORY? I'm just copy-pasting my previous review, fucking whatever: Holy shit there is not one millisecond of this album I do not genuinely and deeply hate with all my soul. Cure for the Itch is the best song on this album and it laps the rest so hard and fast that im amazed they wasted their time with other songs.

Y'see? This is what this whole project is about. I can tell you with 100% certainty there is not a chance in hell I would have listened to this album outside of this project, but man is it an interesting one. Was skeptical going in after having to listen to Timeless, wasn't pumped about another 1990s era English 75+ minute long electronic album, but most every song in this album is different and interesting, and I loved sitting down and listening to *the majority of this. Certainly won't be going in my absolute top tier or anything, but I'm definitely glad I listened to it. Attached sounds like a song that would play at the entrance to EPCOT and I'm not going to pretend I don't appreciate that, and Crash and Carry just DRIVES.

Alright I know I'm an easy 5 but this is one of my favorite albums of all time. Yeah, I know this is like, top three defining albums of my high school years, but it still holds up as a sadboy masterpiece. Jamie XX's production is impossibly clean through every inch of this album, with songs sounding crisp and new and some, like Night Time, building to a climax that sounds incredible. This is one of those albums I both love and am confident belongs on this list, a masterpiece of sad indie that shaped the 2010s and propelled the career of one of the best producers of the 2010s. Also, I mean, this album has 0 skips. Not one skip on it, its incredible.

Honestly thought I'd like it a bit more then I did. Berlin Trilogy era Bowie? Art Rock? Experiments with Electronica? Honestly, going in I thought it would be a slam dunk. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a great album and I'm glad I heard it, and I'd probably fall in love on listen 6, but on listen 1? 4.

I can see all the bits and pieces here that make it an 80s, west coast classic, but I'm not listening to it for 75 minutes without getting honestly kind of bored. Also, the idea of the skit in rap albums was a terrible idea, and they're never any good.

I kept writing new reviews constantly as I heard this album, I'm just posting them all: This sounds like it's written by someone who grew up on 80s pop long after the 80s, and as someone who grew up on 80s pop long after the 80s I can relate. Listen. There is a continuous line between Scritti Politti - Color Me Badd - Kylie Minogue - Robyn - Carly Rae Jepsen - Charli XCX - Sophie that defines a horrifying amount of my love of pop music. I can't begin to pretend I didn't start to love this album from the ~50ish second mark of the first song. I don't know how this album sounds revolutionary and incredibly dated at the same time, but Scritti Politti sure did achieve it. What even is a Scritti Politti? Ok. Ok. So. Pulling back the curtain here a bit, I have a tendency to go into the Global Stats section of this website and check out the highest and lowest rated albums. The highest rated are all basically what you expect, but the lowest? A lot of artists I'd never seen before. And there, between Grindcore and Industrial acts that bang and crash and inscrutable Trout Mask-ass art rock sat Scritti Politti, which Wikipedia described as a synth-pop band with state of the art studio production. I've been so curious since, how can a band that influenced Haim, Elton John, Hot Chip and Kylie Minogue be one of the worst bands of the best? And here we are, I finally got to listen to it, and y'know what. I see why it's down here, for sure. Sickeningly sweet production, the lead singer sounds like a parody of a boy band frontman, whole thing is like someone asked Max Martin to make a Stock Aitken Waterman track from memory, but also HATED Stock Aitken Waterman. The album definitely has it's misses, A Little Knowledge and Don't Work that Hard are nothing songs despite being so close to the rest because the album sits on a fascinating razors edge, but honestly. I love it. The singles are solid 80s sophisti-pop with Perfect Way being one of the cleanest pieces of Bubblegum ever made and I can hear the reverberations of this album through the next 40 years of music. Goddamn am I annoying. Genuinely though, I think the only way on earth someone would like this as much as I did is if they grew up on the exact same blend of 80s New Wave, 2010s Synthpop, 2020s Hyperpop, Plunderphonics and the Maplestory soundtrack that I did. All that being said, 4, masterpiece of bubble gum that makes the Archies look like Napalm Death, but this isn't quite reaching the Echelons of 5 star 80s nonsense. Appended: Psyche, figured out the edit function, this is a 5, see Leftism review.

The day is Friday, March 21st at 2:30 A.M, and I have been sitting in a hospital room for the last 20 hours straight, supporting my wife in a labor induction process that is starting to seem like it will take 3 days. My wife is asleep, and I am lying on a deeply uncomfortable couch unable to sleep because I have been on the night shift for the last 6 months. The only things I have heard over the last 20 hours outside of my wife and nurses has been 20 straight hours of a baby heartbeat over ultrasound and 10 hours of food network reruns. I set the scene, dear reader, to underline that I am currently apocalyptically bored, and it is in this boredom I have decided to undergo the task of listening to the third hour+ long English electronica album of this list, three of what is probably 200. and it's just making me more bored abysmal. I have put the album in it's entirety in my Spotify queue, and to make sure I don't overshoot and accidentally listen to even more samey electroslop that autoplays after this album ends I have put Perfect Way by Scritti Politti. This is no longer a review for Leftism, this is now an appended review for Scritti Politti: Scritti Politti, when heard after 70 minutes of this, is a 5 star magnum opus, and I'm sorry I doubted it.

Impossibly chill and smooth, it's just genuinely fun to listen to this. Incredible musicianship, crisp songwriting and a suite of singles and legendary songs, I cannot think there exists a human on earth that can't jam to reeling in the years.

The annoying thing about The Beatles is that they genuinely are that good. This isn't even close to their best album, probably best described as the first album in an 8 album run that defined western pop music. The whole album is insanely listenable, and songs like Norwegian Wood show just how cutting edge and influential they were every single album. 4 Stars according to the rating system I've been using and am outlining in text for the first time below: 5 Stars: A great album I love, and one which I will be purchasing physically to have as a part of a permanent collection. 4 Stars: I get why the albums on the list and I like it, but it isn't going in the permanent collection. 3 Stars: I get why the albums on the list but I don't much care about it. 2 Stars: I get why its on the list but I hate it. 1 Stars: Either: I understand why its on the list but I hate it with the core of my being, or, I don't know why I listened to this, and it could be removed from the list tomorrow.

Maybe I've just been in a weird place emotionally recently but this album made me cry. Probably the best album I'm giving a 4.

White Rabbit is one of my favorite songs ever and was a genuine factor in the naming of my daughter, which should really underline just how boring the rest of this album is. I get why its on here, the defining album of the San Francisco Sound and one of the most important records of the hippie movement, but my god do most of the songs do literally nothing.

Originally, my review for this album was "Country Music for people who voted for Reagan", but then I googled Steve Earle. Turns out he's a lifelong socialist and, like, genuinely incredible. Lifelong Pro-Choice, supporter of people with autism, strong focus on being anti-capital punishment. He protested against the Iraq War, Steve Earle sounds awesome. Too bad every song that sounds like yours for the next 40 years would be made by shitheads. 2 stars, which includes the bonus one for Steve being cool.

I wrote a longer review earlier, but I restarted my computer and lost it and I don't care enough about this album to rewrite it. Blah blah boring blah blah free form guitar is weird and sucks blah blah 2 out of 5.

The highs of this album are absurdly high. Boyz, World Town and XR2 are bangers that really show the skill of M.I.A and Switch and how incredible the global influences are, and Paper Planes is a genuine classic that will be listened to for decades to come. The lows, however, are really low. Mango Pickle Down River and 20 Dollar are terrible, just terrible. Major Lazers's Guns Don't Kill People, Lazers Do does what this album does, with the same personnel, better in my opinion.

I did this album a disservice by listening to it on spotify, in my gaming chair, while playing Marvel Rivals, which is what I've been doing for the majority of these albums. This album should be listened to in a grand music hall, played by a jazz orchestra of masters, accompanied by a wonderful ballet. I feel like listening to it how I did meant I only got half the experience. Despite that, this album is a masterpiece, and it should say something that despite feeling like I did the album injustice in how I listened to it its still a clear 5 out of 5.

For three days now every time I would try to listen to this album I'd get about 2 minutes into a song and just switch to youtube. 1/5 This came out a year after Pyromania, people had an idea of how Hair Metal worked by now how is this album this boring.

It's enjoyable enough, but I didn't hear anything that made me any amount of genuinely interested in this album.

76 minutes of music to wait on hold to while a city natural gas clerk takes a nap.

Skilled enough pop-soul from when the English were being introduced to it. Beatles did it better a year later on Rubber Soul, though, and Dusty doesn't do anything too interesting here.

Early 90's Seattle really was an insane scene, so many incredible bands were created, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam. Mudhoney is not one of those bands.

An album 60% as good as 36 Chambers gets 60% of the score 36 Chambers will get.

This is just awesome to listen to. If there's anything this project has taught me, it's that I have a soft spot for Prog Rock, and this is primo Prog. All 5 songs do their own thing in enjoyable ways, I even loved the 10 minute song where they noodled around with the volume on 2%. I was excited to get this album and man was it as good as I hoped.

As someone who married a Jersey Girl, never has it sounded so miserable to be with a Jersey Girl. Tom Waits just is not for me, Nighthawks at the Diner annoyed me and this bored me, take this gravely voiced nonsense somewhere far away from me.

Orchestra pop, Baroque pop, Chamber pop, I don't care what you call it I love it. Absolutely one of my favorite genres of music, and I'll be a lot more positive on it then a lot of other genres. This isn't close to the best example of Chamber pop on this list (The Divine Comedy, my beloved) but it's great stuff. The Funny Bird is beautifully explosive and Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp is one of the best album finishers I've ever heard. Absolutely love it.

This isn't quite where Can't Buy a Thrill was, but it's still a great album. Also my daughter loves Steely Dan and stops crying when I put them on so bonus points for that.

More like there's some mediocre funk goin' on.

I mean you know this a 5/5 so let's talk about Blondie. Did you know Blondie, specifically Debbie Harry, helped to put rap on national TV for the first time? In the early days of rap, it was the sound of the Bronx while New Wave and punk were appearing in Manhattan. Instead of staying completely separate, there were crossovers as the grafitti artists bridged the gap between the two art scenes. The downtown New Wave groups started to adopt rap styles in their songs. That's where Blondie's 1980 hit Rapture came from, and it was in 1981, on Valentines Day, that Debbie Harry, after bringing them onto the show herself, introduced the Funky 4+1 as they performed on SNL. That's The Joint by the Funky 4+1 is awesome by the way. Anyway, this isn't even Blondie's best album. That crown is held by the 2001 CD reissue of Autoamerican, which includes the first printing of their hit song "Call Me" on a Blondie album. Call Me fucking rules, it was produced by Giorgio Moroder and it fucking DRIVES, like all of Moroder's songs. It was also recorded for the soundtrack to the movie "American Gigolo" for some fuckin reason. A lot of the early synth masters did soundtrack work. Giorgio did Chase for Midnight Express. Jan Hammer did the theme to Miami Vice. Vangelis did Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire, and Wendy Carlos did The Shining and Tron. Funny how that works.

Genuinely an incredible album of early Metal that is as fun to listen to now as it was back then, I assume. You wanna know what album I wish was on this list? Coven's Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls. Came out the year before this one and is awesome Proto-Metal. Anyway, 5/5 already rated it before.

There was a good chunk of this album where I just forgot why my original review was "Good 90s sad boy art rock, sounds good, but I can never take 90s sad boy shit seriously." This is a great album, why couldn't I take it seriously? Then came "Fitter Happier", and that audio rendition of Fight Club reminded me why immediately. They just didn't have problems in the 90s, did they? Oh no, guys well off, healthy and happy, what a pig in a cage. Yawn, boring, next, 4 stars though the rest is great.

The problem with these 90s electronica albums is that they're absolutely interminable. For the first, like, 4 songs I was feeling a three, its not bad rave and the world elements are definitely neat. Unfortunately, there's 15 songs on here and they get worse and worse as the album goes. Tapped out at Hear Me, just didn't need to hear any more from it.

It's fine R&B but I could not have needed to hear this album less. This could have been a clean 1000 albums instead. Honestly this could have been like, 300 albums but whatever.

I didn't realize how many great Arena Rock songs came from this album alone. Wow, crazy. Anyway, Foreigner is better. So is Styx. honestly so is loverboy and journey better then reo speedwagon though, so thats something