1001 Albums Summary

I forgot how relatively mellow Pixies actually are compared to how I keep remembering them. I generally like them, and they clearly had some influence on later bands I like more. Doolittle dragged at parts, but overall pretty good.

I know a few people who are really into Arcade Fire, but I wasn’t really hooked in by this one at all.

b-side is really really solid

high points only insofar as I recognize stuff from like radio play. not really a fan overall though

sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me Probably my favorite album I was served this week.

Never spent any time with Joy Division before. I liked this pretty well, nothing really jumped out to kick my ass from a single listen, but I also never got bored with it at any point, which puts it above most of the rest of this week.

I was really caught off guard by how much I liked this. Considering how much time I didn’t spend with it during formative years, my tastes definitely seem to align really well with gothic stuff whenever I come across it. much to think about.

post-punk tends to be comfortable listening for me; this album was fine, but didn’t register as something to rush back to

“Some day I may buy her a ring, ringle-lingle” oh my god shut up you absolute asshole

I liked this a lot, especially the anti-arizona parts, and I’m uhhh better understanding now the roots of my middle/high school teachers in the midwest being so scandalized by rap, lmao. Also something interesting to me is that because I’m very bad at passively picking up on lyrics, I really had to focus in while this was playing. Like the album really demanded my attention in a way I’m not used to.

Irish folk-punk! lotta fun every once in a while

A lot of people whose tastes I generally trust are way into Kate Bush. Idk if I'm sold yet. This was pretty good, maybe a bit slower than 80s music I normally like

Maybe I would benefit from listening to other The Kinks stuff ahead of this, but for now this album was was kinda dull

Sinatra and The Kinks had me insecure for a moment that there’s something broken in me that’s incapable of enjoying music below a certain bpm, but this was totally pleasant!

EDM pre-dating 2010/2011-ish, which was when I first became aware of any of that. This one made for, like, decent focusing music for me, but wasn’t particularly memorable

I liked this a lot more than Suburbs, and the release year was pretty interesting (if I’d had to guess, I would’ve placed this sound around 2008 at the earliest). This wasn’t *quite* to my taste, but it was frustratingly close, and I’m still trying to figure out what’s making the difference.

I’m not very difficult to please with 80s synth pop, and yet this bored me a lot.

I like a couple zeppelin songs, but I never took the time to sit down with any of their albums all the way through. There’s a specific blend of acoustic instruments with later rock sensibilities that works extremely well for me (e.g. Jethro Tull is a band I love *way* more than they deserve by any objective measure. Or like King Gizzard’s use of harmonica hits my brain really nicely). I don’t quite know the exact alchemy there, because there’s a lot of folk rock that I can’t fucking stand, but Zep III is like right in the sweet spot. Loved it.

I, alright. I’ve given country music an honest shot a bunch of times in my life, it’s never clicked for me, this one was no different. Though that said the music didn’t really annoy me as such, and I was never bored or pissed off with it the way I was with the Sinatra album last week, so hey. Wasn’t wild about the Dixie song extolling “rebel spirit”, but comes with the fuckin territory I guess.

I was excited to wake up and find out I’d drawn a salsa album for today, but turns out a full album-length wore me down by the end. It didn’t make for very good workday music, but it’d be great for dancing or cooking. A lot of the song openings decide to get really funky and interesting, and I wish that was more of what the full songs were.

From a position of basically zero prior experience with Springsteen: His two modes on this are either Moaning or Growling. The majority of it is moaning, and I much, much, much prefer the parts where he’s growling.

Incredibly solid album, right up my alley. There’s something I’m trying to put my finger on with this. A lot of the albums I’ve liked during this project will have a few songs that I really groove with, but will also bore me a lot at some other point. Vs ELO here, who held my attention and gave me a really good time the whole way through an entire double album-length of stuff… but at least on first listen, there wasn’t any particular song that yanked me in. A slower burn. Any case, liked it a lot.

Album opened incredibly strong, but tapered off *hard* for me as it went on.

I think this is the first album of this project that I’d actually listened to all the way through before. This is an excellent album, hugely influential, ahead of its time/invented the time. For how stripped-down it sounds compared to later electronic music, it still manages to be really sentimental.

The third 1977 album I’ve been served this week! And turns out to have been a hell of a fitting followup to Kraftwerk, given some of the production history stuff, influences, etc. Bowie’s another of my major blind spots, and I suspect this might not have been the best jumping-in point if I’m going to be lazy and only learn about him at the pace of the 1001 albums generator. I'm sure I'll get another shot soon.

A lady with a very nice voice sings buncha folk songs backed by one (1) or two (2) guitars. I think maybe because of that sparseness, my enjoyment of what was going on varied really wildly depending on the song (I liked the minor key ones a lot I guess?) idk, overall wasn’t really to my taste, but it’s not at all confusing or disagreeable to me that people do like this, I definitely get the appeal! I’m admittedly too much of a fuckin prog rock enjoyer and it would certainly have defeated the entire point of what she’s doing, but yeah I would’ve preferred there be literally any backing instrumentation beyond just a guitar or two.

A man with a very gravely voice sings buncha sleazy songs. God damn I love Tom Waits so much. Most of the songs on here are extremely good and even the ones I was bored with are still compelling because it’s him singing.

Had to skip “Around the World” because I value not having that one stuck in my head for the rest of the week, but yeah, Daft Punk Good. Sitting down with an album from them was a weird experience because that’s really not the context where I’m usually hearing them, but as always with EDM/adjacent it’s pretty much ideal focusing music for me.

I dunno what I was supposed to be taking away from this. The literature on this one calls it “sophisti-pop” which I guess just means “80s jazz + they rap at some point”. For the range of stuff touched on, there’s nothing in here that I can’t find better-done elsewhere.

Obligatory Lebowski

I knew of Blur, but somehow made it this far without realizing this was a Damon Albarn project. Also they’re a solid coupla decades more recent than I’d assumed for some fuckin reason. Any case, I had fun with this one, probably one of the better entries out of the kind of stuff rock bands were putting out during the 90s.

This one grew on me as it went on, but I still think I’m more interested about the album’s thematics and John Grant’s history than I am in the experience of actually listening to it.

Aerosmith’s cute every once in a while, but kind of wear on me during the course of an entire album

I’ve always found The Beatles to be pretty alright, but I’ve never been able to check into the degree of hype and mystique around them (the most interested I’ve ever been in them is a documentary that came across PBS once that was getting into all the studio techniques they’d used to produce the Sgt Pepper album, like the craft end of things was just more compelling to me than the album’s actual music). All that said, I really like Revolver, kind of marks the beginning of the Beatles era that I find more interesting (lol drugs).

Beginning to think jazz, salsa, etc are just kind of a bad fit for how I’ve been listening to the albums each day, because with every one of these my experience has been enjoying the first few songs, but then getting completely sick of it by the end of the album. Like I think this just probably isn’t music to be listened to in silence, by myself, on headphones! but it’s not like I own a bar or a club, so,

First I ever heard of Amy Winehouse was literally news about her dying, so coming late to the party here, as usual. Undeniably excellent voice, though at the end of the day if I’m going for lounge music I’d still probably go for Tom Waits first, just the kind of person I am. GF tells me Back to Black is apparently where her best stuff is, though, so looking forward to that one coming up in the rotation.

First song is literally them just yelling “Chic! Chic” over and over, then the next song is the unavoidable “Le Freak.” It’s a testament to how much I like disco sensibilities, funky basslines etc that I like this album a lot, since on paper I shouldn’t have patience for it.

“Vagabond Holes” is an alright song and an excellent song name. Otherwise album forgettable + way too goddamn long

Knew I was in trouble the second I saw the guitar and hay bales on the album cover. Prine’s a fun lyricist, but I still can’t really deal with country music

Very busy, all over the place, lots of fun!

I generally like funk; this is not the best that’s out there. I like the didgeridoo though.

Even when it got slow, was still very pleasant listening. Soul music, indeed.

British post-punk, don’t have much new to say there

Oh wow, I had no idea this album was as old as this. So, clearly an inspiration point for a lot of the stuff being done in the late 80s/early 90s, just to pull from stuff I’ve covered from the generator, I’m hearing Pixies and Green Day in this. But Violent Femmes doing it a lot better imo.

OK I wasn’t too taken in by Darkness on the Edge of Town, but I liked this one quite a bit. He’s doing more shouting and growling than moaning here, and even when he does do moaning-voice I can deal with it better because it’s not nearly as pronounced in the audio mix.

third album i’ve gone through from this generator; first one where springsteen really clicked for me.

quite good yet put me in a really sour mood

Ohhh it’s the california dreamin people! Lovely harmonizing, aggressive stereo mixing that forced me to switch off of headphones and listen out loud

My grandpa spinning in his grave that I think this is really really boring

I can’t access the hype for them yet, but I got there with springsteen and I know these guys come up again on the list, so got high hopes.

Two Weeks is extremely fucking overplayed to the point it scuffs up the entire rest of an otherwise decent album.

More jazz. I remembered to play it on actual speakers instead of headphones this time, which helped a lot; music intended for a very different listening experience than how I normally do it.

Very nostalgic album, definitely in my personal pantheon. Second half drags a bit, but first half more than earns it.

Double album really long, but the songs are quick and varied, so doesn’t get boring.

what if good jazzy background music, but played on a baseball organ. Nice for an afternoon.

Interesting that they threw a live album on there. If that was on the table, why come they didn’t put Stop Making Sense on there though (according to the wiki)?? Anyway this was decent, fun guitar noodling.

Not the first soul album to come up, but this was one that, like a couple others that have come up, that actually make the genre click for me properly. Liked this one from the start.

Never listened to these guys back when they were a going concern, so this one’s a fun time capsule and also cipher key for understanding like 50 different memes. Killing In The Name alone resolved so many fucking previously-incomprehensible jokes for me.

Any one of these would be a fine contribution to a playlist, good lord they all sound the fucking same back-to-back on an album.

Incredibly solid funk, some really famous tracks on here that I didn’t realize was them!

Voodoo-flavored psychedelia, very fun and weird. From never having heard of this guy, to liking this album a lot, to looking up more about him, learning I knew a bunch of stuff from him and also learning that he was the visual inspiration for Dr. Teeth from the muppets’ The Electric Mayhem.

I think I like the idea of his states project more than I really care for the music itself

Miserable headphones listen, his voice is so loud in the mix I can’t enjoy the music. Admittedly I might feel different if I understood French and could tell what he was saying lol

BORING.

I have a soft spot for certain types/eras of metal, this is not one of my preferred ones though

Bowie’s one of the figures I’m most interested in getting my head around through this project. Favorite thing I've heard from him so far!

Another thing I’m trying to keep tabs on as I go through this is stringing together influence points toward things I knew before going in. For some reason as I listen to REM, I keep thinking of They Might Be Giants, which is weird because the music isn’t exactly similar. Something in the attitude? I dunno.

There’s a couple albums like this on here where my brain lights up when it hears the recognizable stuff, and then doesn’t retain the rest of the music. Baba O’Riley is indeed really good, but I’m struggling to take an honest accounting of “ok is it genuinely so much better than the rest of the album or are you just really familiar with this” like “do you think these songs are good or bad based on radio exposure, or did the ones you liked get radio exposure because they were the good shit?” I don’t trust the second one as an explanation even if it feels true.

Really good bathtub listening. I’ve heard this one describes as like an album constructed for audiophiles/people who care a lot about precise mixing, which feels true.

I liked this a lot! Kanye really has a gravity about him, where I feel like I interpret a lot of the generator’s other rap/hip-hop selections in context of what they mean in context of things before/after KW's big deal albums

One thing I’m learning through this project is I should probably be putting more reggae into my rotation. It tends to be slower than I usually go for, but otherwise checks a lot of my boxes

2pac’s another Huge name who’s a blind spot for me. I really need to revisit this one; I basically can’t retain lyrics unless I’m literally reading them along to the music, and I wasn’t able to do that when I was playing this.

Didn’t like this as much as 2pac & public enemy, in terms of 90s rap

This one really grew on me! Very pleasant first listen, and then I found myself coming back to it a lot afterward.

Haha god damn I like Alanis. So many choices she makes on here that should be obnoxious on paper, but just end up being extremely charming *“HOWWwOWWowwW apprOAHpriaTe”* absolutely delightful

I think people I know like B&S? I don’t think I did.

I don’t think he’s country, but he’s something adjacent. I liked this, found it pleasant

Hell yeah I love The Departed

What the hell every single song on this is super well-known. Major touchpoint filled in that I had no idea I was even missing

Wish I liked this more, the thing they’re up to seems interesting

Oh my god I loved this. I knew by reputation that Deep Purple’s one of the bands that built the bridge from hard rock to heavy metal, and something about that boundary creates stuff I like way more than straight metal. Lot of Prog in the alchemy here

Yes’s good songs are some of my favorite stuff out there, but the individual albums have a lot of songs that just don’t work for me

I find Steely Dan to be technically boring, but perfectly serviceable cooking & doing the dishes music

Similar to Deep Purple, lots of fun! The arrangements are fast, energetic, interesting. Noticing I’m tending to like a lot of 70s metal, then something happens 80s-00s that loses me really hard.

Influence Alert: Marina and the Diamonds totally bites a whole bunch of influence from ABBA, it’s so obvious after sitting with an ABBA album all the way through (having previously basically only known them from the Mama Mia soundtrack *killed by brick through the window*). I liked a few songs off this one, looking forward to hearing more from the generator

Lol I had people in the 00s recommend flaming lips to me. This was so boring!

With a couple Bowies under my belt by this point, he’s kind of a mixed bag for me; there’s usually a couple songs per album I’ll like a lot, and the rest leaves me really cold. That said, I still haven’t heard anything from ziggy stardust era, so there might be missing context or something still.

Felt really bad that I did not like this. might revisit, could just be it wasn’t good music for taking a bath.

This seemed like something I should like a lot, and instead it annoyed me.

Damn I went in kind of expecting not to like it, and it turned out to be really good! *Trampled to death by approx. 1,000,000 foaming Gen X men*

Way more misses than hits, but still a fun time capsule of what everyone I knew in middle school was blithering about at the time

I feel like I need to read some production history to get the hang of this one

haha oh my god he’s so fucking sleazy on this, I love it

Overall pretty good! Hard to set aside the charles manson mystique around it

Big nostalgia album! "Seven Nation Army" owns bones, the rest of this is distinctly worse, but pretty good still

He has such a good voice! I don’t even like genre he’s doing and I was swept away!

I’ve given Rush an honest try before, they just never clicked for me. Decent, but...something’s missing

Bob Dylan might be another case of I Gotta Sit Down With The Lyrics, bc on first listen I just found him kind of grating.

Lmao I love this album. Title song’s whatever, but Hungry Like the Wolf makes me smile so fucking much

Rare example of pure country music I found pretty engaging the whole album

Unlike with The Who and Nirvana, I am very sure the popular songs off this one are the actual good ones lol. Mr Brightside and Somebody Told Me are A-OK, the rest may be safely left in the past

One of my all-time favorite albums. "Halleluhwah" alone earns them a spot in heaven, an I'm extremely into the rest of it

This one really knocked me on my ass, clearly a big influence point for a whole bunch of bands I like a ton.

This is the fucking thing with 80s metal, man! If each of these songs were like 50% shorter, this would’ve been really solid, but as is they’re not interesting enough to justify how long they make you spend with them.

I like Never Loved A Man more than this one, but Aretha Franklin all-time excellent

Really stripped-down, deliberately no-personality. Pretty interesting experience!

Ohhhhh these are the Louie Louie guys! Fun mix of rock, blues, etc. Seems kind of Of The Time in terms of baseline late-60s/early-70s bands.

Nice soul/jazzy, which usually starts to bore me after a whole album, but was kind of nice to have on while I was writing the rest of these entries.

This was fun! 70s hard-rock/metal continues winning! Kiss is such good dad rock, people were pearl-clutching about this eXtreme rock & roll from these guys, and nowadays the band members are super old, as naturally happens to people. History tells us that indeed Kiss was far from the worst influence on the teens of the time

Really interesting sound that’s extremely of the time but also very distinct to them. The jazz organ's a very The Doors move, but the bass playing kicks things into high gear

I like Beck a lot, and I have a really hard time pinning down what exactly it is that he’s doing here, because it’s bouncing around and settling between a bunch of different stuff. Definitely putting a pin in this one to come back to and connect influences up to, I would’ve figured it to have come out a solid 8 years after it did. After some time thinking about it, this came out only something like a year before Lonesome Crowded West, and the two albums are definitely sitting near each other in my mind

The first track tricked me into thinking I’d like the album more than I did

what’s this one fall under, grunge? post-punk? Grating.

Very weirdly beach boys sound out of them on this. deliberate joke? Not gonna research it.

drum & bass, drum drum & bass, drum drum bass, drum & bass, I am very bored

This turned out to not be great running music, but I went back to it at work, and it is seriously beautiful and calming, I was blown away

Undeniable talent, each of these songs is great, though the entire album did start to wear on me after a while. Still though, you make Purple Haze, you can do whatever you want.

This is very CHUGGA WUGGA metal, and at the end of the day I prefer when my metal’s more uuWAAAAAAAAAGH *orchestral interlude* *bagpipes*

I’ve been dreading Radiohead coming up on this, and I know there’s a few of their albums on here. I’ve never, like, plunged into their archives for a comprehensive study, but I’ve given them an honest shot many times, and aside from parts of In Rainbows, I really dislike what they do. And this is frustrating to me, since I know a lot of people who really like them; like with country music I can just write it off as alien tastes, but these are people whose tastes I otherwise align with! I just walk away from the music feeling sad or annoyed, what am I missing?!

I played some guitar hero, but not that much; I imagine some Motörhead stuff had to have made it into that game, right? seems like the right genre. Any case, guitars fun, songs are sleazy in such a tryhard way it’s alternately charming and off-putting. Also not relevant/bad taste or whatever, but Motörhead fans I’ve seen around on the internet are some of the most obnoxious fucking dweebs on the planet

Buncha all-time great songs on here; a sound that shows its age, basically because it defined the age

Oh it’s the Come on Eileen guys! This wasn’t the album with that song though. Generally enjoyable and I like the vocals in particular, but definitely falls under “forgettable pop” for me

I only knew these guys from Bittersweet Symphony, and turns out this one doesn’t sound much like that at all. Mellow, drifting sometimes into droning.

at-90s/early-aughts latin fusion is such a specific, yet recognizable sound

Alright, I liked this one! There was still a little bit of audio channel stuff that hit my ears wrong toward the beginning, and “We Suck Young Blood” brought the whole album to a screeching halt right in the middle, but I liked most of the rest of the songs

This was a lot of fun, though after two albums from their members on here, I’m suspecting the generator’s not a good way to get oriented with Wu-Tang stuff.

There’s a lot of Elvis songs that I like a lot, but none of the ones I knew beforehand were on this album. He’s definitely one of those where it’s nicer for me to put his music on in the background, or work him into a mixed playlist rather than sitting & focusing on a whole album of him

album opens incredibly strong! Started to blend together as it went, but since I like what it’s up to, everything’s good!

The Money For Nothing riff is the main attraction here, and while it is a very very good riff (all-time Great, even), the song’s still scuffed up by how badly the slurs aged. The rest of the album’s pretty mellow, contextually good listening

Dang, this was like Fleetwood Mac levels of not realizing how much I recognized the songs on here. Also The Doors are surprising me with how much psych/prog they have going on, I had always thought of them as just kind of a rock band

Folky Indy like this tends to leave me cold. Not all the time, but this one did in any case. I think the make/break quality for me is I prefer duets and/or solo woman singer over solo man singer

Alright, this is country-adjacent music I like: Really pleasant voice singing about old west & cowboy things

There’s interesting drumming on some of the songs, and a couple tracks on here feel like a direct antecedent to something like Vampire Weekend. Goofball music for sure

It’s Jimi Hendrix, you know his stuff! I liked this less than “Are You Experienced”, but still a great time

Blues w/ Jazz organ doesn’t impress me the same way it might’ve before I started this albums project, found this kind of grating after a full album of it

I think I really like how distinctive Cohen’s voice is, but that alone didn’t really sell me on this. Honestly has me reconsidering the reasons I like Tom Waits so much, like it’s clearly not just about being won over by interesting vocals. The music backing Cohen’s voice was just kind of boring to me

I’ve grown to appreciate ABBA over the years, even if they’re often not my taste. Arrival has some classics on it, but overall I kinda found it less interesting than The Visitors had been

I’ve liked all the Joy Division that’s come across my radar for this project, but haven’t been able to access, like, true enthusiasm for them yet. They are a definite, definite influence point for a lot of great acts that came after

On paper, live metallica + full backing orchestra is a hilarious idea, but also symphonic metal is absolutely a guilty pleasure of mine, so I was excited to hit play on this. Even though the runtime on this one’s over 2 hours, it’s pretty fun overall. I stand by my original complaint with Metallica, though--every individual song overstays its welcome by half

This one kicks ass! Some research reveals Brian Eno was involved in making this, which makes a ton of sense in hindsight. Band/album name & especially album cover had me nervous this was going to bore me, but instead it kind of re-sold me on the 1k1 albums project after what had kind of felt like some doldrums

Hard Rock Cafe

Really interesting kinda pre-punk thing, lots of the reception to this seems to indicate it was very influential to genres I’m not otherwise super checked into

Bit too slow for my taste, most of the songs felt dull

The kind of music I could pretty easily spend all day with, but on the scale of things, I kind of wish it had more texture to it

Stupid

I spent about half this album wondering why I recognized his name until I got to the lime & coconunt song (simply called “Coconut”, apparently!), which was like somebody slapped me. What’s crazy is the rest of the thing sounds nothing like that! Most of the rest of the album sounds like the halfway point between Beatles and Elton John, it’s great! Seriously, I wish I could explain better what it is about this that’s like, similar to Beatles and other late-60s brit acts like Kinks, Monkees etc, but different in a way that I liked way more. Like it incorporates blues a lot more, maybe?

*Immaculate* production, excellent sound, boosted Snoop into the mainstream, all of which put more tension than usual on finding the themes kinda dumb & gross.

The bones on this are fine as far as folky rock goes, but the songs go on way too long for how simple + repetitive they are, and not much variety between them.

I like his voice, and I *really* like the variety of stuff he’s doing in this

“Shoegaze”, eh? The second half starts doing some interesting stuff, but the first few tracks don’t have enough stuff going on with the synth loops to hold my attention

Punk that passes the time just fine

At first it reminded me a lot of sega genesis music (compliment), but then the vocals started kicking in and the effect was ruined

The only Massive Attack I’d heard before was “Teardrop” (yeah, yeah, because it was the House MD theme, yes), so I was very surprised to put this album on and get british hip hop (or I guess “trip hop”, apparently? not familiar with that one). Way more fun than I expected!

Not as iconic or joyful as Trans Europa Express but still a lovely time. Always bears repeating that it is ridiculously impressive how far ahead of their time Kraftwerk were

Title song’s irredeemably scuffed up by The Celebs, but I liked this a lot more than I thought I would. I imagine (heh) it was probably pretty difficult for people to have normal reactions to beatle solo work back when it first released

It’s rare that I’ve been blown away by what they’ve got. On this one, “Sympathy for the Devil” was good but overstayed its welcome. Out of their stuff that’s come across the generator so far, I liked Let it Bleed more

I don’t think there’s ever been a better album opener than “Tutti Frutti”

I’m generally pretty positive on this one, “Nude” kind of brings the thing to a screeching halt

God damn I really like Chuck D’s voice

Steely Dan’s come up a few times on the list now, and I have the same issue as always. It’s really close to the kind of thing I like, but it feels empty

Clearly very influential! This was really cool, but I think I’m zeroing in on liking 80s-era punk more than 70s and 90s. Violent Femmes and Dead Kennedys were more interesting to me

lol I have a soft spot for SOAD, they feel like they should be grating, but instead I’m just having a good time

There’s a review of Spring Breakers that I really like, where the reviewer points out that it’s a movie that makes more sense now, in hindsight, because instead of getting Harmony Korine’s hot takes on America’s youth, you get a dead-on time capsule of a very specific time & place--a zeitgest, over now, that at the time didn’t seem aware of its own mortality. I was thinking a lot about that when listening to Oracular Spectacular; I was actually pretty shocked to see it’s as old as 2007, because the era I vividly remember it from was 2011-2013 aka my college years aka a time when the hits from this were ubiquitous instead of showing their age. It’s another one of those where exactly half the songs on here got way too much exposure, while the other half you’ve never heard in your fucking life. Most of the unknowns were actually pretty fun, with the exception of “Youth” which was so awful it single-handedly knocks the whole thing down a rung of my esteem. Fun trip down memory lane!

I’m slowly triangulating my reggae taste, for the most part this was pretty good, didn’t stand out very much, but a couple of the songs (”Signing Off”, “Reefer Madness”) are long instrumental pieces that I thought were really cool and engaging

This was an interesting one for me; I consider myself a huge Talking Heads fan, but also their big deal albums for me all come from their middle/later years, like Remain in Light onward. So even having grown up with their stuff around, I never really checked out their earliest offerings.

Outstanding side A existing in tension with kind of a dull side B. I dunno, this one really excited me at the start, but I didn’t end it with the same enthusiasm

Knowing them only from “Wonderwall”, this was pretty good. At its best made me think about underwater cities, which is a winner for me. iirc there’s like a fan feud between them and Blur? going off this, I think I’m probably Team Blur

Dire stuff, I was correct to give them a miss back in the day

I have no idea about who this guy is or his deal in general, but this was really interesting. Album length kind of uncalled for, but on the other hand a normal length wouldn’t have been enough to get lost in, which was very fun with this

Grungy, forgettable

Spotify reactivated autoplay without permission, and it took me a solid hour to notice the album was done with.

Had to dig up a mono release because the stereo mixing was way too aggressive for headphones, but overall pretty fun weird folky mishmash thing

Sex Dwarf saved this from 2 stars

This was fantastic! I feel like concept albums haven’t been in vogue for a good long while, so I really really loved how big she went with it here.

I feel like by 1993 it was long past time to evolve past this kind of sound

Album went a bit too long. The number of songs was correct, lots to get lost in, and they go a lot of different places, but the songs mostly overstayed their welcome. c. 2012 I was using Pandora a lot, and for some reason it was absolutely obsessed with serving me up instrumental covers of “Kashmir”. Which I guess was fine, just confusing.

Johnny Cash is great, and I like how much this benefits from being a live album, really shows off how charismatic of a performer he was

Foundational album of a low-key influential band, but not one of my preferred releases from them

More of a stereotypical ‘80s sound compared to Crocodiles, by which I mean less along the lines of synth pop, and more grandiose, lots of orchestral stings, etc. A Bigger sound that I think benefits them

I expected to have a bunch of thoughts on Muse and whether their stuff has aged very well since my high school days when I was super into them, maybe some ideas on the distinctly Nolan-movie-style bombast, evaluating whether I still like it etc. What I thought about instead is how I never really listened very much to this as a full album, usually I just skipped between the singles. The big fuckoff Cosmic Arena Rock pieces show their age, but actually still land alright, but in between them are a whole lot of bad filler pieces that really drag the whole thing down

The type of techno that Strong Bad was making fun of

Band continues to be mids

I’m a tough sell on most post-50s/60s country music, and I liked this quite a bit

Think I liked Rain Dogs better, he was sleazier on that

I got excited when I realized it was going to be all instrumental, but it never really rose above passing the time alright

This is the most dated-90s shit I’ve heard in my life

Hey this was extremely good! I don't think I could have survived school years if I'd been checked into gothy stuff, but their music continues to be fantastic

Prince is kind of unrivaled among artists for me listening to his full albums and counting the number of songs I recognize from radio play, that I had no idea where from him. Incredible talent, RIP

*Sheer Heart Attack* is good, *Night At The Opera* is great, "Bohemian Rhapsody" is genuinely good but wildly overrated and overplayed, not even the best one on that album (which would be "Prophet's Song", tyvm)

I understand Fugazi to be really influential for what would become grunge, but it and most of its descendants aren't really my kind of thing

Song for song, it's got like a 2.5 for 5 hit rate for me ("21st Century Schizoid Man" & "Epitaph" are great, title song kinda depends on my mood), also historically this album was almost singularly responsible for inventing prog rock as a genre (compliment), even if I enjoy its successors more

I've listened to enough Radiohead by now that I actually am getting the appeal of them and appreciating them more, so the new nemesis of my generator project is Bob Dylan. Like it's just been what I understand to be his good shit on the list so far, and I have really, *really* not been enjoying him. I have to assume the problem is I'm just not getting something, but for now I'm not grasping the source or intensity of his appeal to people. Like with "Desolation Row," which I understand to be a very well-regarded song, he's clearly going hard w/ the lyrics, but it was such a chore musically? 11 minutes of the same structure and strumming going on endlessly, so by like Verse 138 it's like god DAMN shut up I can't take any more! put in a bridge section or something!

This was cozy, kinda reminiscent of mid-period Jethro Tull on a good day

Classics of 60s music, nothing really revelatory here

Ok here we finally have a gothy entry that I'm more neutral on. Mellower than I was hoping for. Release date surprised me a bit, it released further back than I would've expected

*Supernatural* soundtrack-type music, lol. Classics of Dad Rock. "Peace of Mind" is the only worthwhile song on here, but it unironically rules, basically single-handedly elevating the whole album

Cultural touchpoint filled in, basically. I love the idea of these guys more than I actually enjoyed listening

This one really won me over as it went. At first I thought I was going to be in for 60s nostalgia masturbation, but as the thing went on it was incorporating more contemporary sensibilities that fused really well

I'll admit to having a soft spot for "Karma Chameleon," but the rest of this is fucking awful, just the blandest stereotype of bad 80s pop

It's not a perfect heuristic, plenty of exceptions etc, but I'm finding something that separates a lot of good 80s pop music from bad is that the good acts really, *really* took a lot of influence from funk. This is great stuff!

Black Keys are generally pretty fun, kinda wear down over the course of a whole album. 2010's kind of the tail end for this sort of sound being fashionable, the bass is mixed more heavily, we're not quite to the point historically of dubstep being shoved in everyone's faces for half a decade, but it's hard not to think about that coming as this starts to die off

She's great, and I really regret that I wasn't listening to this in ideal circumstances--slow dancing in a dimly-lit room

Obligatory Lebowski

[Trump Voice] "Freewheelin' Bob" This one has been my favorite Bob Dylan to come across the list so far, still leaves me cold

Like this came out same year as Freewheelin' Dylan's thing, and I am *way* more interested in the musical ambition of this. Late jazz in general goes to really interesting places!

Slow maudlin Indie, extremely not to my taste

*S o u n d C o l l a g e* I love both Eno and Byrne, and I like to put this album on every so often, but it's also not the best work either of them was doing around this time

Malian blues! Very cool sound, and the band's history is really interesting! I am all the way invested in this

[every review about how weird, growly, jangly, and off-putting this is, but *as a compliment*]

Easily my favorite offering from that generation of aughts alt-rock, makes me kind of sad that "Mr. Brightside" went the distance to be enshrined as a classic of the time but nobody really cares about "Take Me Out" anymore

Clearly heralded a lot of how 90s rock ended up going, though I think I prefer other acts occupying that space. The particular guitar tone they lean on really grates on me after a while, and this one was a double album

'80s metal stays losing. idk thrash has never been my thing, but I'd still pick metallica over these guys any day. All that speed & momentum, and nothing interesting done with it. Also they're setting off my Dad Rock alert, where the lyrics and themes probably freaked out a lot of parents when this first came out, but these days it just seems cute

Never actually sat down and listened to the title song, I basically only ever hear it driving or shopping; it's fun if overplayed, but the rest of the thing wasn't anything to write home about

I've shared variations of this point before re: Cohen, but, like... One of my partner's favorite genres is like acoustic singer-songwriter stuff. "Sad man with a guitar" music, as she calls it. And I cannot stand sad man with a guitar. What I need when I'm down is "Sad lady with a piano." Any case, I'm not Leonard Cohen's audience, and that's ok (I can sometimes work with "sad man with piano" though, like I really like Warren Zevon a lot)

Big fan of solo Peter Gabriel work and both Genesis eras, but it's been a good long while since I sat with the old 70s stuff. Somehow aims for both grand and cozy, and manages to make both work

I try to not immediately reach for "I did not in fact need to listen to this one before I died" when I don't like one, because at 1089 entries on the list, obviously there's going to be some duds in there. But geez this one was skippable. A late-90s attempt to update crooner shit to modern sensibilities, no thank you

I'm in favor of most jazz most of the time, and I really have been enjoying hearing from this 60s-70s era where historically, rock would've been in the process of completely overtaking the airwaves, and so the jazz artists start getting up to even more ambitious experiments. YES, I like jam music, YES I like prog,

I used to feel pretty positive on new wave, in theory; by now, though, the generator's served me up so much mediocrity from this era and made abundantly clear how many of these acts were one-hit wonders. This one was kind of a breath of fresh air, like with Depeche Mode I actually *get* what makes them appeal beyond "Enjoy the Silence"

Synths cover of Modest Mussorgsky. Came out 1971 and sounds exactly like 90s jrpg fight music, chef's kiss no notes

the sound design of this really swung for the fences, bringing in a lot of found objects, literal industrial machinery etc, which did admittedly grate at times (grew up next to neighbors that liked to bring out leaf blowers at 7AM, fuck off suburbs). idk, this definitely wasn't my favorite thing by a long shot, but the rest of you goons deciding this is your literal collective least favorite thing in the archive is really uncalled for, considering some of the dreck that's in this list.

Kinda as always with the Beatles, and especially this era of them, the production history of this is a lot more interesting to me than the music itself. It's good, but I find it musically less interesting than Revolver, and historically less interesting than White Album

Endlessly funny to me that these guys were 100% a California production rather than actual swamp people, but either way this album rules. Even though 1969 is basically the 70s already, I give a lot of credit to 60s bands that didn't just try to sound like the Beatles or Beach Boys

I didn't like their debut album when it came across the list, but I liked how weird and energetic they got with this one

per wikipedia, "conceived as a soundtrack to an imaginary film", although music from this was then actually used in David Lynch's "Lost Highway." Really fitting choice for that movie, though, there's an underlying spookiness to this that I really appreciated

I think I was kind of chilly on The Cure last time they came up, but I really enjoyed this one. Felt like it was keeping the pace up a little more

Knocking out both Morrissey reviews here since I basically got a double feature: I hated these. Morrissey's like a chik fil-a kind of topic, where the main cultural impact I get exposed to is a million people very loudly flogging themselves for being such big fans of the awful person/franchise, but then you go check out the thing for yourself and it feels like you're being pranked because the idea that people are out there having such strong positive association with them in the first place is such a tough sell to me. It's a mediocre chicken sandwich, and extremely boring, grating music! Come on!

lol this ended up being pretty fun, had a very specific 90s brattiness that shows its age, but is kinda charming for it

I had a better time with this than Dookie, but I think that's mostly from familiarity (I'll cop to kinda liking "Holiday/Boulevard of Broken Dreams," but otherwise I've really disliked their stuff). I'm definitely in the age cohort such that this one was a big, big deal to people when it came out, so it was nostalgic to play this and realize I knew each song on here really well. But it's also interesting to pull the lists of what else was going on in rock music at the time, and 2004 had a lot going on! Like that's the year that brings us Franz Ferdinand and "Hot Fuss," Modest Mouse released "Good News," White Stripes had just put out "Elephant" the previous year... idk I know emo went strong into the aughts, but my personal big music touchpoints for that era tended to be alt-rock/indie stuff.

Never been the audience for this kind of mellow R&B. Kind of the same problem I run into with Dylan, the music itself doesn't land at all for me, which has me then zoning out on the lyrics, which is unfortunate, because I understand those to be the main draw here!

Post-punk's hit-and-miss for me, and this one's got plenty of both. It's an interesting reference point for like... There's a spate of psychedelic surf rock groups that cropped up in the 2010s that clearly came from this type of roots, but the journey from here to there is still pretty murky to me

Didn't care for the last thing from her (Pieces of the Sky, 1975), didn't care for this. There was pretty clearly some effort made to modernize the instrumentation to the era, which sometimes made for interesting fusion, because she's still doing country singing over everything. Like they had synths in the 70s and weren't using them back then, so I'm fascinated that the year 2000 apparently called for bringing them in

This one's apparently really divisive among the generator audience, but suits my ADHD brain just fine. I think for me it's like... 4/5 for musical enjoyment (at the end of the day, I liked "In A Silent Way" more), 5/5 for interesting production story, 7/5 for album art.

With only a couple examples under my belt by now, I think I like trip hop generally, while also finding it distractingly british sometimes

I always like hearing C.S.N.&Y., but I also find myself wishing a lot of the time that the rest of their stuff was as angry and bitter as "Ohio"

Classic touchstone of Dad rock (maybe Mom rock actually? I think the Police albums we had on the shelf were hers in any case). I thought I knew what I was in for with this based on knowing only "Every Move You Make" and "King of Pain", so I was impressed with how different most of it was from those, like the A-side was often discordant and evil in a way that was really interesting

Hendrix's last album, and I think also the last time he's coming up on my generator list. It's easily my favorite of them; it feels more energetic than the others and he's putting guitar pedal effects to wonderful use. Obligatory "Watchtower" hot take: the original's actually pretty decent as far as Dylan goes, but he still comes out looking like a drip compared to what Hendrix does with it

Only knowing him from "Hallelujah" I was kind of gritting my teeth heading into this, expecting the exact kind of singer-songwriter music that I can't deal with, but I ended up being really won over by this! the backing arrangements really elevate his voice & make the thing work for me

Fond memories of my dad playing this one on nighttime car rides. There were only two songs on here I set aside on the project highlights playlist, but when the thing's good, it's great. It was incredible to look up stuff about this, each new detail more insane than the last. E Street band fresh off of "Born to Run?!" Todd Rundgren producing it after nobody else wants to touch this? One of the best-selling albums of all time, but barely seems to have sparked any imitators?? (in the US mainstream at least. A young Tobias Sammet was probably extremely warped by listening to this, entire subgenres of metal owe a lot to it, etc)

unbelievable that these bozos got two albums onto the list