Jangly guitar in all its glory. Great melodic bass lines. But Morrisey's lyrics are the star here. Sometimes he's clever, sometimes he's a petulant child, usually he's moody as all hell, but always he's compelling.
"There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" laps at the shores of genius.
The album Bruce made just for me. Murder ballads, fever dreams, a trail of wreckage... and as it finally winds down he tells us he finds it kinda funny "how at the end of every hard-earned day people find some reason to believe." Is that hopefulness in the face of all that misery, or is it cynicism at rock-bottom? I'm still not sure. Either way I could and will listen to this record 1000 times.
Also, it seems silly to mention because it's so obvious, but this album is a goddamn masterclass in songwriting.
This album grew on me as it went. I actually thought the songs got better near the middle, which means they were probably put in the wrong order, for me at least. A pretty record, but not one I can see myself going back to again.
I did not expect to like this album nearly as much as I did. I'm only really familiar with Roxy Music's big hits, most of which are a lot later. Genres can set up weird expectations. I thought this would be glam rock, and I guess it's most accurately characterized as art rock, but to me this is a really excellent prog rock album. Super interesting musically and goes into all sorts of weird and unexpected places (Soaring electric violin solos! Medieval harpsichord! Oompa band!) And holy shit, what a great rocker Casanova is!
The first time I listened to this I thought it was bizarre but interesting, especially because it's so different from Country Life. I felt it deserved a second listen, which may have been a mistake. Because it did not go well.
This album makes no sense to me at all. Is it a joke album? I think it might be a joke album. Or perhaps all the band members were in different rooms when they recorded the songs? And had never heard them before? Is it supposed to be this discordant and irritating? Eno is definitely playing something only he can understand, and as the album progresses he seems to be ignoring everyone else and starting his solo career.
I think I might hate this album. Sea Breezes nearly did me in. Why are there dueting oboe and electric guitar interludes over the sounds of waves crashing on the beach? And what the hell is going on with the drums? It's 7 minutes long and feels like 70.
One track left. Now you might ask how you should wrap up an album this all over the place... apparently you do it with an homage to The Monster Mash with castanets and saxophone. Fuck me.
This is original, I'll give it that. But it's also the kind of album that is responsible for me saying that I hate art rock.
This record was made by a bunch of very seasoned and talented dudes who really, really, loved playing together, and that's exactly what it sounds like. 70s guitar rock doesn't get much better than this, and I don't think anyone can deny that Layla is one of the very best all-time rock songs.
I'm not much of a Clapton fan, but his guitar work is undeniably great on this album. That said, I like Duane Allman's playing so much more, and I think he's probably the reason Clapton is so good here, as they're so clearly playing off of each other and pushing each other to go further. It's so much fun to listen to, especially on Key To the Highway, Tell the Truth (goddamn that's some beautiful slide playing!) and Have You Ever Loved a Woman. We were talking about jazz and how watching the musicians compete with each other usually kind of leaves me cold... well I guess this is my jazz, because listening to this guys trade solos is just so exciting to me.
Poignant and beautiful. Hurt and Personal Jesus are magnificent examples of what good covers should be. And I love hearing Cash re-do songs with his impossibly gravelly old man voice that he first recorded in the 50s and 60s. Give My Love to Rose is even sadder now! You know how artists will get together and do tribute albums to a musician after they die? I feel like Johnny Cash decided to record one of those for himself, and he killed it.
I remember as a kid when N.W.A. blew up. "Fuck tha Police" was a BIG DEAL, and the white politicians and news commentators all seemed to think that rap music was vile and dangerous. All the parents I knew either agreed or had opinions that were a variation of "You call that music? It just sounds like noise to me!" This of course made all the white kids want to listen to it.
I never listened to rap or hip hop myself, and I was too young to have friends who were into NWA, but I certainly remember Ice Cube being huge. I don't recognize anything on this record specifically, but it has that perfect 90s hip hop sound and was way more nostalgic and fun to listen to than I expected.
That said, this is just not for me. I suppose that gansta rap is not supposed to be easy to listen to, but the constant swearing and especially the misogyny makes this impossible for me to really get into. It's a pretty powerful record though. It's political and angry and he certainly does not shy away from saying exactly what he thinks. Ice-T clearly doesn't give a shit if me or anyone else approves.
This is sort of dreamy and atmospheric in a pleasant way. I don't dislike it, but there is nothing here that really stands out. I actually liked the first song the best because it's basically instrumental. The vocals do nothing for me at all on the other tracks. Overall okay but forgettable.
This album fascinates me. How did k.d. lang go from a weird fringe country artist (from Consort, Alberta, no less!) with tacky-kitsch outfits and an ill-advised vegetarian political agenda, to putting out an album like this? It's impossible to categorize--the instrumentation covers every genre except possibly country! I love the dark moody songs the most: Wash Me Clean and Season of Hollow Soul are standouts.
I saw her live a few years ago and she did a ton of songs off of this album. It was at the Jubilee and the sound was perfect and I think having heard them performed live with a full band made me enjoy this album more than I otherwise would have, as it's a bit too adult contemporary for my tastes. But these songs really are lovely. And I think k.d. lang has one of the most beautiful voices ever recorded, so honestly I'd probably listen to her sing anything.
This is why I like this project--I would probably never have listened to this album otherwise. World music isn't usually my thing, but I loved this record. The guitar work is so interesting and filled with what sounds like super eclectic influences. "Soubour" is just awesome.
This also helped me remedy some of my ignorance around what Mali has endured in the last decade, as I went down a pretty deep Wikipedia wormhole reading about Timbuktu and Ansar Dine and desert blues. Gotta love militant extremist religious groups who literally BAN MUSIC and force musicians into exile. Apparently there is a documentary film called "They Will Have To Kill Us First" that Songhoy Blues feature prominently in which I'm sure is well worth watching.
This album deserves at least a 4, but since we agreed on giving ratings based on our own personal tastes I am reluctantly giving it a 3.
I love early B.B., especially the live stuff. His band is always great and he has the audience eating out of his hand from minutes one. This is documentation of a professional at work. There are other Bluesmen who are more unique, but there's a reason that B.B. King carried the Blues torch for decades as the genre's popularity ebbed and flowed, and that reason is obvious here.
I will also never get tired of the bit at the end of "How Blue Can You Get?" It always makes the audience scream, and it pretty much does the same to me.
I loved James Taylor so much when I was a teenager. I thought he wrote the prettiest songs I'd ever heard, and that's still true in some cases--Fire and Rain is perfect melodic gorgeousness. His fingerpicking is just lovely too.
But when I listen to James Taylor now, I can't help but think about that old Dennis Leary bit where he says that if people are allowed to sue metal bands for making their kids suicidal then he should be able to sue James Taylor for turning him into a pussy in the mid-70s. Like seriously, some of this stuff is so saccharine it makes my teeth hurt. "Blossom, smile some sunshine down my way! Lalalalalala!" <Barrrfffff!!>
And he really should not be allowed to do Blues. "I'm a churning urn of burning funk!" No, James. No, you're not.
I love Gillian Welch and can listen to David Rawlings' beautiful guitar playing all day. This album isn't as good as some of their others, though. Most of the songs are slow and all kind of end up blending together for me. By the end I was bored.
Sort of moody and ominous, and interesting to hear the transition from their earlier synth-pop albums towards the experimental post-rock sound they apparently have on the next two albums. I enjoyed it, but 80s stuff is rarely a favourite for me.
I did not like this album. It honestly made me wonder about the criteria for making it onto this list. I don't think I had heard this one before, but I know their previous two albums quite well. I went back and listened to them afterwards and I think Sweet Oblivion is by FAR the superior album. Although maybe that's just the nostalgia talking...
Anyway, this record is really pretty bad. There are a few decent tracks, but it's almost like you can hear that grunge was already on its way out when this was released. And I appreciate them trying to incorporate some psych influences but it just doesn't work. "Traveller" is a very sad Pink Floyd imitation, and the weird insertion of sitar and hand drums and harpsichord on other tracks doesn't sound cool, it just sounds, well, weird.
I nearly gave this a 1 but my grungy little pre-teen heart wouldn't let me. Also I am saving that for The Eagles.
Wow, is this ever not for me. Wankery for adolescent male nerds and the men who were once adolescent male nerds.
Seriously. You have this shrill lunatic screaming about how they are the priests of some temple or something, and then suddenly you have to listen to a guy literally tune his guitar over waterfall sounds for three minutes. And you're only a third of the way through the first song! Good god.
And it just keeps going and going and going. It took everything I had to get through until the end.
Sometimes the drums are cool.
This is one of my all-time favourite albums. I am still stunned by the maturity of Fiona Apple's songwriting. She wrote these songs when she was in high school. I was also writing songs in high school. Suffice it to say that they were not like this.
When this record came out I listened to it in secret, partly because it was mainstream and popular which I didn't think was cool, but mostly because I was so jealous of her. I didn't understand how this girl (who was my age!) was writing lyrics like "You'll never touch these things that I hold/The skin of my emotions lies beneath my own/You'll never feel the heat of this soul/My fever burns me deeper than I've ever shown/To you" when my lyrics were more like "I'm so alone, no one will ever understand me, I'll write it in a poem, very very sadly".
It's been 25 years since this record came out and I still kind of want to be Fiona Apple.
I learned from Wikipedia that this is a compilation album of Miles Davis tracks recorded in 1949-50. I also learned that "the music consisted of innovative arrangements influenced by classical music techniques such as polyphony, and marked a major development in post-bebop jazz. As the title suggests, these recordings are considered seminal in the history of cool jazz." So it's important, and I tried really hard to listen for the new things they were doing. But the only jazz I know well is swing so probably I should have listened to some Dizzy Gillespie first or something.
As a jazz philistine, I can at least say that there is nothing I dislike about this album. But it didn't move me. It sounded like the type of thing I would have played at a dinner party in my early 20s to make myself appear grownup and sophisticated.
If I'm really being honest, I have an unpopular belief that most people only listen to jazz to make themselves appear grownup and sophisticated. This is a great album for that.
I had never heard of Miriam Makeba before listening to this album, which is sort of shocking because she was incredibly important both as a musician and as an activist for more than 50 years. She has a wonderful voice--she's capable of conveying a huge emotional range, which is especially impressive when the listener (me) can't understand the lyrics and has to go on tone and expression alone.
"Liwa Wechi" was easily my favourite track. Haunting and lovely.
My low rating is simply because world music rarely does it for me. I really wish I enjoyed it more because I know that I am probably missing out on so much.
I wasn't sure if I would like Sinatra and Jobin together, but it totally works. I'm always going to prefer the original singer for Jobin's biggest songs (esp. The Girl From Ipanema & Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars), but Frank does a great job with every track on here. Further proof that the guy can sing anything.
This is great, but it suffers from being way too long, even for a double album. The Big Boi album dragged for me, but there are a few tracks I loved, especially "The Rooster" which is so P-Funk and so good. Andre 3000's record is the weirdest, catchiest, most interesting record I've listened to in a long time. It's also completely hilarious. "Hey Ya" is still one of the best pop songs of the last 30 years.
This is a solid album. I love that Bowie had everyone convinced that he'd retired from music when he released it. 66 years old and he still had it going on.
I love Merle Haggard so much. Here he is at the peak of his powers. Bakersfield at its best.
I had never heard of this band, and as soon as the vocals started on the first track I was like, well, this is gonna be a 2 at best. But the lyrics are great (and often hysterically funny and crass). So I started to think about it like it was Cake and the deadpan talk-singing got easier to take. In the end this album was sort of weird and wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I really didn't want to listen to this. I don't hate Eminem but I have never felt any desire to listen to him. I got through this album, but I sure was glad when it was over. It gets so repetitive by the second half. And as I listened I couldn't stop thinking about all the moronic suburban white boys who worshipped Eminem in the 2000s.
Some of this was edgy at the time and some of his lyrics about the frustration of being stuck in a cycle of poverty hit pretty hard, but his constant whining about his ex-wife is so childish and lame. "My Name Is" and "Guilty Conscience" are fun. The rest is definitely not.
A raw, dirty, aggressive, primal, shirtless howl. Possibly the greatest American rock & roll record ever.
I didn't dislike this as much as I expected to, but I still thought it was pretty bad. For so-called "shock rock" this is so boring! Maybe the live shows would make it better, because this sounds like a soundtrack to a campy musical more than an actual album. The fact that this scared and horrified parents is bizarre. It's laughably tame, so much so that "I Love the Dead" actually made me laugh out loud.
Beautiful, nostalgic, poetic melancholy. I listened to this endlessly when I lived with Jen. We'd study and write term papers to the slow songs and dance around the house together to "So Long, Marianne". I've wanted to learn "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" on the guitar for about 20 years.
The originals are actually quite beautiful, but the covers (especially "Light My Fire") resemble the most painful of muzak. I'm sure this was an interesting idea in 1970 but it's not very interesting now.
Maybe I haven't heard the right stuff yet, but reggae is so boring to me. This album is fine, but sounds exactly the same as every other Bob Marley song I've every heard except for "Could You Be Loved". That one is cool, but sadly it isn't on this record.
One of the best live albums of all time. A genius at the height of his powers. Listen to that band! How tight is that horn section?? I could listen to this a thousand times and never get bored.
She has an amazing voice, obviously, and these songs are written to showcase it. I still think "Rolling In the Deep" is a great song, but the rest is a little dull. Still I'll take Adele a thousand times over Celine Dion.
