1001 Albums Summary

It's weird to think of Talking Heads as a bunch of upstarts, fresh on the scene, bringing their own take on weirdness sounding new and unlike anything else while still feeling kind of punk and new wave. As long as I've been alive, they've kind of been an established band, somebody whom everybody just knows; yet here they are on their debut album just stringing together weird lyrics about the most banal things like modern buildings and reading books, meshing them with some pretty jangly guitars and screechy vocals and bringing that all together in a way that can kind of make me see what it was like to hear these weirdoes for the first time, a whole year before I was born. This may have actually been the first time I have heard this album from start to finish. Don't think it will be the last.

Since I only have time to listen to these albums once each day, I feel like this particular offering has more to offer but a lot of the tracks were unknown to me; I need a bit more time to let them sit & settle. Find that space for us both to grow into one another. But yeah, this was interesting. A band that you know for probably one or two big famous songs... and this whole album demonstrates that this was really how they built their songs. Beach Boysy type vocal harmonies over some really nifty guitar work. Although some of the arrangements can be a little overwrought for my taste, I sense that if I were in the right mood they'd hit the spot quite nicely.

Bizarrely, I was listening to the Swordfish soundtrack earlier today for the first time in absolute years - it has a version of Planet Rock on it, a song I am very familiar with. I was not however, familiar with any of the other songs on this album and it turned out to be startingly inventive, groovy and totally rocking in parts. Wish I could have gotten hold of this way back when I discovered electro for the first time.

I already own this album, but don't really listen to as often as I think I should and then every time I do listen to it, I get the same response as I did listening to it again for this 1001 albums malarkey - it's really, really, really well put together. Beautiful beats playing around with some funky synth and just generally brilliantly constructed hip hop. The music is top notch. The lyrics are ... eh. I'm probably too old to feel the anger oozing out of so many of these. It often just feels like a lot of misdirected rage, but who am I to judge? Some of the songs just sound like macho posturing; a product of their time, perhaps. Nevertheless, there's some really good flow in here, in amongst all the misogny, swearing and violent fantasies.

I enjoyed this, but it didn't really flip my switch. I have a feeling it's the kind of thing that might be more suited to a specific mood and for me it ended up being more background music as I listened to it.

This seems like a pretty accomplished and interesting album... but it's not really doing it for me. The lyrics are fascinating, the arrangements are fun, I like the singer's voice but overall it's not really my jam. I can't imagine ever listening to this for fun, or in fact, ever again...

Wow, an album I am actually very familiar with. This whole Bristol trip-hop scene thing was actually on my mind yesterday. Thinking about how different areas have specific local cultures that sometimes break through and spread and I was wondering how organic that always is... Anyway, this album isn't really organic. I gave it another listen just now to see if age had changed my views but no, I still feel it has the same issues. Perhaps in a Spotify playlists everywhere world it could stand even stronger but for me it still feels like it has no flow - each track is pretty good on its own, but put together and they just kind of jar: there's no real cohesive soundscape of the album itself. It jumps from full tilt reinterpretation of "Black Steel" to the dreamy Portishead sampling "Hell is Round the Corner"... and we do stay in that groove for a fair bit but then "Strugglin'" just slams on the brakes without a lot of breaks. It's a weird little album - the tracks still stand up, the lyrics are often intriguing little snippets of cool and there's lots to enjoy about it, but yeah. Still doesn't work as a cohesive whole for me.

This was great... but left me kind of uninterested. Clapton's guitar playing is incredible at times on this album, everything works together so brilliantly. It just didn't grab me as something that I would regularly seek out to put on the speakers. I am fully aware however, that this kind of thing isn't really a judgement at all and is dependent on mood time of day and all kinds of factors... so who knows. Maybe I'll come back to this one day and fall more in love with it.

This was okay - never really been exposed to much of them outside of their hits. Can't really see myself listening to them often but they do suit a warm summer's day. Minus 1 million points for those incorrect apostrophes, however.

He's a great guitarist but I never got into any of his songs. Thought it might have been an age thing but nah, still don't really get all the love for Hendrix. Call me a heretic.

Very well produced, a couple of great tracks but eh… yet again, this didn’t really grab me enough to make me want to repeat-listen.

I own this and occasionally put it on, but it’s another one of those albums I don’t really think too much about until I’m reminded of its existence in some way. Then when I’m listening to it I always think I need more Flaming Lips in my life. This is a great album, I love the weirdness of the lyrics (the whole notion of Race for the Prize is just bananas) and the arrangements aren’t any less interesting. Listening to the whole thing as I am now but with more attention than usual, I’m struck by the mixing on the drums - they’re quite high up and very present - and also by the way that there seems to be a basic structure for the songs… but other than that, they could just as easily be completely improvised around that skeleton for all I know. (The lyrics hint at that, as do some of the instrumental backing bits.) Idiosyncratic is the best description.

I enjoyed this and there were some real stand out tracks, but it didn’t really fully click with me as an album for whatever reason.

Inventive, original and very interesting. I was pretty familiar with this already but it's - despite its listenability and general awesomeness - not an album that finds its way onto the regular playlists round these parts. I am thinking I should probably endeavour to rectify that.

Yawn. I'm not getting this at all. I can appreciate the artistry and the lyricism but it's not grabbing me at all to be honest.

This was a revelation, I never really got into Jeff Buckley before - he somehow just completely passed me by in my teenage years. Really enjoyed the textured sounds at work here.

I mean, it's Johnny Cash. Can't really be bad to that. Classic live album but I do feel like I need to be in the right mood to listen to this.

Music was good, didn’t like the vocals. Appreciate the craftsmanship at work but this did nothing for me.

Bizarrely, I'd just talked to a colleague about metal and how it felt so incredibly powerful and lifechanging and visceral back when I was an edgy teenager and.... it just doesn't any longer. It feels a bit tame. Having said that, Megadeth is still as good as it gets. But I think I've always been more of a Rust in Peace fan, personally.

I liked this more than I thought I would but it's not the kind of thing I can see myself putting on often... ... although if I ever do get a nice little home to call my own, with a little area I can sit and watch the rain bucket down and batter the windows, I could see this spinning on vinyl as I had a cup of tea and settled into my favourite comfy chair.

I always read people banging on about Dire Straits and how amazing they actually are but I'm only really familiar with them through the later stuff that has been played to death. (Except for The Sultans of Swing off this album, which I did rate but assumed was just an anomaly.) I ignorantly thought I was familiar enough with them and just didn't get it the same way as all those people who banged on about them... but this album has proven me utterly completely wrong. This is astonishingly good. Might pop off and buy this now.

Liked this a lot more than I remember liking Pavement way back when.

Enjoyable, pleasant enough - some great tracks, Annie Lennox has a fantastic voice... but this album was not really something I would return to repeatedly, I think.

I haven't listened to this in a long time. I remember the first time I heard it and it didn't really click with me - I think I'd been oversold on them to be honest. They were total indie darlings at the time. I still don't put this album on very often but it has grown on me substantially. It's fascinatingly inventive and just really really fun to listen to.

This is ... familiar. It's also got this peculiarly timeless feel to it. It feels a lot more modern than 1968 but still with that old bluesy guitar vibe to it. I must away and find out more about Jeff Beck now.

Remember the two big hits of this album - never really got into Eels at the time but they were never a band I would turn off if their song came on the radio. Novocaine for the Soul still plays in my head on occasion, although I had forgotten about Susan's House until I listened to this. The album is pretty solid but doesn't feel like anything that would make it on to my regular playlist... don't think it would have at the time it was released either, had I bought it way back then. I definitely appreciate the craftsmanship in the lyrics more now than I would have then... Funny how some things just connect with you and others don't.

Meh. Never really got the Charlatans. Don't really like Tim Burgess' voice - it's got a similar nasal whine to Liam Gallagher's voice and it cuts right through my patience... They're an okay band, I don't go out of my way to avoid them, but I can't really say they interest me in any way. Couple of good songs that are fine but I didn't make it through this album - North Country Boy nipped my head to the point of needing a decent vocalist chaser.

This was ... okay. Didn't knock my socks off, didn't make me all that interested in a repeat playing. I do like a lot of Eno's later music when he voyages off into ambient soundscapes. This... was not that.

Pretty sure I listened to this a while ago off my own bat and was surprised at how mellow it actually is compared to my teenage perception of angst fuelled rage driven guitar noise. Although it's far from a chillout album, it all just seems so much tamer nowadays.

It's a classic, innit? Not all the tracks hold up but the guitars are still blindingly good.

Knew a few of these but was surprised to find that this whole album didn't grab me as much as I had anticipated. Perhaps it's a grower.

Well, this is something of a classic - there are some brilliant singles on here and of course, an all time favourite album track, Love Island. There's not really a lot to say about this, except it was great when everybody started getting into Fatboy because I'd been a big beat enthusiast since I bought a weird grey covered Skint record with a name I could barely read and thought it just said FATBOD SLIM... you have indeed, come a long way baby.

Ha! I don't need to listen to this... I heard Common's latest song on the radio a few weeks back and I think I cracked my issue with him. He's got flow, he's got skills but his songs are just not terribly interesting - for me at any rate - except for those ones with the catchy samples expertly woven into them. So on this album, it's The Light and everything else... just doesn't really grab me in the same way that it does. I want to like Common more, I really do - even if he did try to kill John Wick.

Better than the last Megadeth album I reviewed. Love this.

While I technically did not listen to this, I pretty much know this album back to front, having owned it on cassette and having played it to death when I was much younger. It's a funny little album - it sounds very different from what went before and it leans a little more world music. The lyrics too were pretty out there - I always remember that one song that finishes up with a shadow on the door of a cottage on a Scottish loch and it's about pollution ... or environmental damage... or maybe I just completely didn't get it. I love the title track, Tea in the Sahara and there's another song about some stalkery dude that's pretty good as well.

I really enjoyed this - having recently been listening to their "The Center Won't Hold" album and wondering where all the thrashy guitars and waily vocals went, this was an interesting comparison - I just can't believe I missed this the first time around.

This was different from how I expected it - lots of spoken word and interesting samples scattered throughout. It sounded more modern than I would have thought the whole album would - I mean, I know the big tunes off the album but it was still a pleasant surprise to hear something so fresh and intriguing.

Liked this a lot - technically brilliant, super tight instruments and just driving powerful tunes. Not always sold on some of their songs but this was a good introduction to a lot of things I'd never heard before and really helped me warm to them as a band.

Know next to nothing about Kendrick - enjoyed some of the flow on this, but nothing really spectacular leapt out.

Didn't listen but I am intimately familiar with this, having been at university at the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st. Beautiful, esoterically weird and just the right thing for the right time but never wrong no matter when it comes on.

Absolutely fantastic - I have his 2005 essential mix which I still play to death... and yet, somehow never actually listened to this brilliant album. Which I have since ordered.

meh. This really didn't interest me at all. Great voice, interesting ideas - really average execution if you ask me. Price Tags was almost great... but none of this was stand out good to me.

Never got into them, always found them a bit pretentious and try hard. Some songs are okay - I suppose, wouldn't turn them off if they came on the radio but eh. Overrated.

I really like Lana Del Rey but... it was the Born to Die album that I first discovered her and I feel like that sound is more my kind of vibe: dark but bubble gum pop, if that makes any sense. I see that she's continued to deconstruct the American dream with this album but honestly, I wouldn't put this on a 1001 albums list - you'd want to have Born to Die for that. I feel it's a much stronger album all around.

Quite liked this, not really sure why I never got big into them way back when. Oh yes, yes I do - remember reading about them in Melody Maker and hearing tracks hither and thither but never actually seeing a single Sebadoh anything in any record shops.

Really liked this - not even sure why I am typically unaware that The Dictators exist. They feel like they should be more famous than they are, and I know I've heard them before. This still felt like a bit of a surprise though.

Good lord this is terrible. I mean, technically competent - but it's awful, awful, awful. Derivative and of no substance whatsoever. I could imagine the only way you'd like this is if you'd grown up with it. Even then it'd have to be a guilty pleasure, surely.

I mean ... this album is stellar. Do I have to take notes? I saw it come up and smiled, clicked play and away I went. Unlike Eat to the Beat, this is a straight up all killer no filler album - I often find myself randomly singing bits of tunes off this for no reason; somebody saying it's 59 minutes past the hour is enough to get 11:59 firing off in my head.

Not something I would ever normally listen to but seemed to suit the mood perfectly this laidback Friday morning.

I have this and it's nowhere near as good as her debut. It's pretty dull, if I'm being honest - nothing on it really grabs me in any way. I will give it another go though, since it's popped up in this challenge...

Oh wow. I remember buying this at a car boot sale and I still absolutely adore it. It's pure over the top silly spectacle, a prototype for shock rock - Marilyn Manson did nothing that Alice Cooper hadn't already set in motion. Still put this on and rock out from time to time. It's interesting when you read about Alice Cooper's sound basically changed later on so that they could be more commercially successful - mind you, that doesn't mean that Trash and Hey Stoopid aren't also awesome.

Oh cool, an episode in which I continue to not understand why this band is famous. The guitar work is good. Everything else is just noise, I have never got this band and apparently never will.

Big fan of the Zombies since I was first introduced to them by a massive Canadian singing "Time of the Season" at karaoke in the wee hours of the morning. This was therefore a delightful chaser after the Jon Spencer Blues Shitplosion that preceded it.

Oh nostalgia hard. This is the good shit.

Meh. Keep waiting for John Cusack to appear behind my shoulder and mope about his lost girlfriend or something.

Never been much of a fan of Joni Mitchell. She's kind of meh. Pretty voice, some good lyrics but her singing style is yawnsome at best and irritating at worst.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this.

I mean... it's okay. It's hardly an album that you need to listen to before you die though is it? It's not groundbreaking or mindblowing - this is all (so far) the same kind of shit I've heard before. It builds off people like Shadow & Dr Octagon and doesn't really beat out its own trail along that path... for my money.

Not what I was expecting at all, tbh. Still sounds really fresh too.

This was a nice little gem. Really unique but also reminiscent of a bunch of things it probably influenced. I heard Zappa in here, I heard Faith No More in here, I heard a lot of grunge precursors in here...

I don't really need to listen to this - I grew up on it. My uncle played it once, recording it onto cassette from the vinyl. I loved it... Later on I'd pick up a copy on yellow vinyl all for my own. Then I'd move to Japan and sing Surrender or I Want You To Want Me at karaoke; visit the budokan, but never actually be inside. This album wove it's way into the fabric of my life, and I can't imagine not knowing it.

I just ... never really got Yes. They're innovative but just... meh. They're like bad jazz for guitarists.

I want to give this less than one star. Ouch.

what even is this nonsense

When this came out, I felt like I had walked into a room at the tale end of a joke - I didn’t get it. Still don’t - the band does pretty well musically but Liam Gallagher has such a nasally annoying voice I remain baffled at Oasis’ success and continued popularity. All these five star reviews have me mightily flummoxed.

How many Led Zepp Ellin albums are on this list? I swear this is the second one I've had in as many weeks.