1001 Albums Summary

Understandably dated, to my ear. I remember it being influential and important when released originally, but I found it mostly boring. A few catchy tunes. My opinion has been biased by overplays. This is gas station music at this point.

Really enjoyed the amazing line-up of personnel on this album. I had no idea so many great players were on here...and in 1969!

Heard it a lot. Heard it again.

Always fantastic. simple and groovy.

Solid foundational electronica. Some of the vocals are atrocious. Early Tricky.

Not my style.

Made it about halfway through, but I've heard it a few times in the past. Some surprisingly groovy parts, albeit extremely straight and very aggressive. Reminds me of growing up in rural New England.

Fantastic.

Better than I expected. Very similar to The Rolling Stones. Recording quality is awful, but that might be somewhat intentional.

no thank you

classic

This is a seminal album from an influential band.

I have heard this many many times. It is phenomenal.

somewhat dated to a modern ear. groundbreaking at the time of release.

A few bright points in a mediocre effort.

Absolute classic.

Interesting treatment.

brilliant.

Transcendent.

Too country for my taste.

Iconic, required listening

This is some truly terrible singing within some extremely mediocre music. I got about 2 songs through before I had to quit. Really - this has no place in the list.

The title track melody is very similar to Keane's 2004 release "Somewhere Only We Know." Numerous passages are lifted from Beatles songs throughout - it could be passed off as homage. It could also be that all notes and all combinations have already been recorded.

Really excellent. Great bass tone. Some iffy singing.

Ahead of their time. A lot of good grooves on this album.

Delightfully weird.

I enjoyed this. Well-produced bluesy fusion of geographical styles.

Heavier than I anticipated, but pleasing and heartfelt.

Excellent, relaxed, sometimes somber, sometimes funky.

A must-listen, often replayed.

awful.

A classic of an era. A bit whiney in modern context.

I had not listened to this group before. The work has that classic British one-two hop-groove that can be quite funky at times. Lyrics surprisingly heartfelt and relatable - very authentically delivered.

This is cool glimpse into early Bjork - you can really hear some of the same themes that she returns to for Human Behavior many years later.

meh.

Heard this a million times.

It's Neil. Listen to it if you haven't, then after that it's optional.

Objectively imprecise, subjectively gimmicky, occasionally catchy.

This was not good.

Abuser. Whiner. Did not listen.

This is a fantastic, historical album.

This album was influential, and holds up well.

Seminal fluid. ubiquitous claptrap. catchy like syphilis.

This is very, very good.

Get stuffed. RIP Chester.

This album changed my life.

Quality performance from a master in his prime.

Extremely solid rock'n'roll. David doing some of his finest work.

I could only make it two songs into this shoegaze drudgery.

Pop punk before it was cool. Echoes of Bowie, without the inspiration or musicianship. Mostly boring.

It's throbbing gristle - one can only take so much at a time.

Understated yet grandiose. Melancholy and drenched in nostalgia. Consistent.

Some interesting tracks but mostly just a lot of British yelling.

Spare me.

It's Air - it's good.

It's high quality.

started as a strong background album, then shifted to lower-quality and improperly tuned whining.

no thanks.

Listened many times to this classic.

Some sour notes, but mostly enjoyable. Last song is the catchiest.

Masterful.

she's amazing.

Required listening. Always rewarding.

My wife loves this album.

Did not make it through the whole album. Mediocre, occasionally grating, decent drumming.

I was previously unfamiliar with Hawley. It's a certain kind of mood for a certain kind of day. A certain kind of person would really get into it. I liked the progressions, but it all felt like shadow puppetry.

This album is very good. The album art is even better.

This was not good.

This was nostalgic at first, and rapidly became confining.

Some classics.

This has been one of my favorite albums of all time, for a long time. It was a pleasure to listen to it straight through again.

Good music to listen while traveling

literally terrible. I do not know why anyone would ever willingly listen to this collection of noises.

Relatively standard, but enjoyable.

required listening.

Very, very good.

A classic album full of classic sounds. I had forgotten the zany pleasure of "Mother"

meh.

relaxing, good in the background

Better than I expected. At times reminded me of Smashing Pumpkins, other times I heard some distinct Black Sabbath influences....

excellent.

sad, but cleansing.

I did not like this music.

always fantastic

This was just ok.

Very good, funky album with quality rhymes.

mediocre Bjork derivative with quasi-Daft Punk sensibilities. eminently missable.

Eclectic and folky, sometimes slightly off-kilter. Interesting stuff.

This album was "what if David Bowie was not as good?"

old school, aggressive, quite good.

Groovy, blends into the background. Nostalgic for those of us the right age.

This was mellow and good.

very cockney. enjoyable.

mellow, moving, contemplative. As you might expect from Nick.

relatively tired at this point, but still quality.

fantastic.

I found this to be mostly unremarkable, but passable as background music. A few of the more vulgar tracks grabbed my attention, but not in a bad way.

classic hip hop.

I enjoyed this. I did not remember how much like The Beatles they sounded.

jangly and not very musical.

I really tried to listen, but only made it through 3 songs. I respect Cyndi, but this album did a bit too much cocaine.

Yawn.

There is some truly awful singing on this album.

meh.

Always classic.

I enjoyed this. Murky and atmospheric, but also groovy.

Classic.

Very good. He's such a legend.

blah blah, classic blah

very good, although some also very bad singing....it's the genre.

This was not good music.

It is unsurprisingly very good. Jimi is not as good a singer as everyone thinks; I agree with Jimi on this.

this was a mediocre shoegaze that i've already forgotten

very good, beautiful singing and harmonies.

A bit too country for my taste, but good guitar work.

Always gold.

too country for my taste, but much respect.

could not make it more than three seconds into track 1. way too country for me.

they wish they were The Rolling Stones. (They were not)

Good, mellow folk style introspective music.

Pivotal and relevant. RIP Chris.

None for me, merci.

This album was influential to me as a young person, and I had not listened to it in perhaps 20 or 25 years -- and, it holds up pretty well. The samples are somewhat dated, but that tracks with the age of the work.

whinier than i recall.

pretty raw, lots of yelling, almost no dynamic.

squeezed cat vocals forced me to abandon within a few seconds of the first track.

not as bad as i remember.

Very good; an album I had not heard which made me want to delve further into the Costello discography

more warble than groove on this one.

While I can recognize the importance of the work in the Sphere of All Musical Endeavor.... I really just do not enjoy hearing these noises. I've even seen John Zorn in concert, and it's just as unbearable.

I kept hoping for it to get better; it does not. Bargain basement Joni Mitchell.

Passionately unremarkable music that somehow manages to leave the impression of crying in one's sleep.

i couldn't make it through the first song of this whiney, jangly mess.

boring, self-serving, jangly, forgettable

exceedingly forgettable - half the time I thought I was listening to The Pretenders by accident.

when they included melodies from The Lord's Prayer in their song, they lost me.

this is boring and garbled

powerful. transportive. emotional. beautiful.

This made me sad because so many of my friends love this band and I thought it sounded like a bag of cats in the rain.

This was really bad. Like: "Is the tape broken?" kind of bad. Why does everyone talk about this band as if they are iconic or important? I could squeeze my cat in a reverb tank and get a better sound.

James Jamerson's bass work on this album makes it worth listening to.

I do not know what the hype about Wilco is all about. Super depressing, uncomfortable vibe; tuneless meanderings through maudlin manchild minutiae.

middling at best. Tired in places. Repetitive in all ways.

this was not good.

I had to look it up; Steven Wilson is NOT in this band.... They do have a few good moments on here, but mostly I found this album to be resoundingly mediocre.

This one brought back some memories.... Not their best album, but consistent.

I couldn't get through the first track of this absolute garbage.

unlistenable garbage - this is what happens when everyone thinks they have what it takes to create experimental music (spoiler: they do not have what it takes).

It's just very good, very fast, very intense hair/horror metal from the 1970/80s.

This is a little too much Beefheart and not enough Zappa. The whole band was a little to zonked on acid for this one.

It's gorgeous.

This really is a seminal and influential work - and it's also very good. One can hear how this album has influenced so much music produced since it was released.

This was not good - often there were too many layers, with atonal or discordant components, but not in a good way (like Tom Waits might do) -- in a scattered cacophony of navel-gazing moronity.

This is a spastic amalgamation of styles without any real throughline.

This was interesting - I didn't know much about John Martyn before listening to this. Tom Waits does ELO.

This is just very, very good. Smooth, funky, tasteful, masterful.

I will revisit this whenever I want to imagine a David Lynch movie that was never created.

I remember when their single was a hit everywhere. I didn't really understand why back then, and listening to this garbage again has only reinforced my assessment: this is absolute garbage. This verges on offensive stereotyping of authentic speech patterns in disenfranchised communities. This why guy trying to sound black is super cringe.

I really wanted to like this, because so many people reference this band so frequently. ...Alas; this is not good music. It's got emotion, and if that's all you are needing, then maybe this is right for you - but the musicianship and songwriting are dull.

This is good music. It's a vibe, certainly - you have to be in the mood for it... but, if you are: it's good.

overly religious, somewhat overwrought. A real "it insists upon itself" vibe with this one. Not great.

This is good - if you like growly, out-of-tune French vocals over mediocre punk.

This was an odd album. It made fine background music, being unremarkable...weird song titles.

better than I had expected, given the tenor of their more popular work.

a bit too dirty for me. Sonic Youth always has been, despite many of my friends really loving them.

This guy puts on a great live show, and gets a great band together, and this album is a great example of that. Whatever your opinions, if you're in the mood for this, then Van Morrison is the one to serve it.

jangly. underwhelming. I still don't get what people see in these guys.

This music might be good if you're shitfaced, blackout hammered drunk and you don't care about melody, rhythm, feeling, or sound quality. Why would we harken back to a time before good music existed?

Damn near perfect. RIP Karen.

This really is a fantastic album. Almost entirely instrumental, including some really groovy odd time stuff. Orchestral layering of modern instruments, repeating motifs - it's very good.

This is not music for me. This might be music for someone, but for me it was just noise (and not in a good way).

This album and band are "important" but also "not super easy to hear." Everyone should spend some time understanding the messages, but wow: the delivery is hard to take. Jello Biafra's spoken word stuff is a bit easier to stomach.

If Aerosmith grew up listening to Oasis and weren't as dedicated to their craft, this might be the junk they recorded. I swear a few of the songs were literally the same song.

This album is a vibe. Very "early 2000s" in the ethereal folk/rock realm, but perhaps a more tasteful offering amongst the reams of drek.

This beat my expectations - I had previously only heard Lou Reed's more popular works, and this surprised me by having good musicianship and arrangement.

This is a reminder that George Michael was one of the great talents of the previous century.

Good, classic DnB

Power pop, indeed. Big Star was not on my radar but I have heard some of these songs.

I enjoyed this album.

I don't like her vocal delivery, but I can't argue with anyone who is a fan. She is a rock god. I prefer her work with The Pretenders.

Not my bag. Exceedingly middling Clash rip-offs.

This had more electronic elements to it than I expected (the description says "rock band" but they do use a lot of samples and familiar drum patterns).

I was skeptical, but this album surprised me. It was ahead of its time, and covers a lot of territory - at times coming off like a Zappa song making fun of pop music of the moment, and other times a very Eno/Byrne sound collage with intrinsic value.

i wanted to like this, but i did not. too screechy for me.

I can see why this is an Important Artist for music history, but it's not super enjoyable for listening.

I was pleasantly surprised by this album. At times they did a U2 vibe, other times they hit a nice progressive note (their reimagining of King Crimson's "Moonchild" was a particularly nice moment).

everyone should hear this album.

Rock bottom, indeed. Skip this one if you don't like meandering, maudlin, quasi-orchestral humdrum.

I heard some iconic samples in this album (Buffalo Girls Go Round The Outside).... an interesting blend of afrobeat and hip-hop.

Despite including Rod Stewart, I enjoyed this music.

boring.

I never really clocked how many of these songs sound exactly the same as each other.

Only one track was available on YouTube Music, but this led to a whole day of listening to Ladysmith and other similar artists. Perhaps too overtly religious for me in some cases, and of course I don't know the language... But, this music is absolutely gorgeous.

I liked this quite a bit - it seems like it was ahead of its time (or firmly within its own time...) I could hear their influence on many of the artists of today.

it's very weird, kind of sloppy in some places -- but also very good.

This contained more electronic / sampled / programmed stuff than I had initially expected. It was a palatable but bland melange.

This is a fantastic album that everyone should hear.

if you step on a cat it might sound better.

This was some of the most disappointing Dancehall/reggae/dub I've had the displeasure of hearing in a long while.

do yourself a favor and skip it. Not sure what all the hype is.

i was bored by this music

I've heard a lot about this band. They have been overhyped. This was passable hair rock, but the singing is strained and the instrumentation somewhat boring.

This was quite bad. I did not enjoy this.

I couldn't even get 3 tracks into this maudlin, reverb-drenched navel-gazing drivel.

80s British power-pop is boring. Fight me.

If I wanted to hear oversaturated and rambling nonsense, this would be my jam.

it's good. it's not "Portishead in the 90s" good, but it's good.

Absolutely fantastic - exemplary Latin dance tunes by masters of the craft.

This is some low quality entertainment.

It really isn't all hype; dude had a special talent. Tragic, emotional, raw, beautiful. If you're in the right mood, this is the right music.

Some enjoyable music, but largely ignorable.

I enjoyed this - a cool mix of influences and styles.

This is some early-days electronic music, and I liked it.

This is a stylistic and melancholy album, with some really nice vibes. It's a toes-in-the-water, sweater-by-the-fire, read-a-book-in-a-forest kind of vibe.