In the days when hip-hop was still shaping, a pretty compelling case was made that it should be BOTH hard-hitting and dun as fuck.

Fuck Kanye

Only Amy can make an album full of one song reorganised into several different and make say "You go girl"

Classy

This style fits Alex Turner so well he even forced it onto Arctic Monkeys too.

In the days when hip-hop was still shaping, a pretty compelling case was made that it should be BOTH hard-hitting and dun as fuck.

Stunning classic

Eric twanging his guitar sloppily with the same vocal expression for an hour straight. A classic of grill diners the world over.

As far as pop-punk goes, it's solid. It's just not quite my thing

Fun and dancey. I came to this not quite realising the roots or spread of Madonna's popularity. Now what I know. This is great.

The forever difficult-to-nail-down Zappa and his instrumental monsters have here for us a most intensely head-scratching and fun album.

Living Color bring funk's swagger to the at-the-time dreadfully unstylish swamps of hard rock.

Massive Attack's middle child that got the least amount of love from both the artist and the audience (we don't count the post 90s releases). The duo is banking on a chilled out, largely barebones cosmetics, muffled mix, prioritising vibes over workable writing.

A bunch of hits, a bunch of hidden gems, and a bunch of filler stuff

The bedrock for the people to complain of music from proverbial "back then" being better.

Wow, a whole album that created a generation of to-be-cranky about new music dads.

Classic Cave

For as much of a non-fan as I am of country music, Merle Haggard's freewheeling delivery had a lovely infectious bite to it. His melodies are earworms and his lyrics can also be quite smart.

Having seldom given the White Stripes the time of day proper before, I found myself rocking and enjoying this almost instantly, despite largely thinking of them as a band of a few hits and otherwise standard okay okay alt rock band. I was surprised how much blues and noise influence was present and cleverly executed throughout the album, all tasty and catchy.

Whichever way I shake it, SZA just sounds to me like easy approachable pedestrian music. It is superficially catchy, with big features, flashing mild hints of personality enough to satisfy the disengaged, and not be irritating.

It's fun, not the smartest, but fun

idk how to explain this, but this album sounds like it smells of gasoline and stale sweat.

Back when Lou Reed was still actively channeling the softer side of tVU into his solo projects, he pumped out a beast of an infectious pop-rock album with just enough curious experimental production choices sprinkled around to hint at all the madness he would go on to create later in his career.

the beat does go-go dum-dum

Certainly an album whose enjoyment largely seems to depend on you "being there" in a particular age in rock music. Coming into this now with fresh eyes, unfamiliar with Jane's Addiction as a musical entity, nothing stands out in either song-writing, instrumentation, and certainly not in production. Then again, this was a definite "timely" album that meant a lot in its age and now to newcomers will likely just sound painfully dated and corny.

Oh the naive rusty sound of 80s punk, so soft, so plain. It feels me with warmth almost.

The absolute style and showmanship that King displays is enough to visualise even through this audio-only album. Damn right he's called the King of Blues at the start.

I'm a basic bitch, but that's only because all the basic shit is so good.

A whole bunch of infectious and clever tracks full of character. Not a single miss on this album.

I hate being a contrarian, I really do, but the general confusion to the Smashing Pumpkins' success and popularity has always been nagging at me. Their unnecessarily long, bland alt-rock that was so terminally 90s seemed more a contemporaneous fluke rather than a testament to some musical prowess. Listening to 'Siamese Dream' and comparing that to any of the much maligned recent releases, it does feel like the band has not changed at all, but the sudden clearer production shows that their music has never been good to begin with. Basically, I am not eloquent enough to properly describe my dislike of the band and the album, but it does feel like I am not getting "it" for the same reason I could give a shit about Tagamotchis. I am not a 90s baby, nor do I hold some nostalgic hard-on for 90s stylings. For that, the album sounds to me utterly lacklustre, bearing all its emotional weight in its lyrics (those too can be quite dumb, though), rolling on with some exceptionally weak writing, practically non-existent hooks, godawful unfitting vocals, trite production that makes each song like a bleached monotone mess, and unjustified runtime. And I feel bad for feeling this way, because it seems like I am missing out on some amazing masterpiece everyone else figured out and I am just some Debbie Downer scratching his head.

This is very fun indeed, a lot of carefree energy interspliced with a lot of outta nowhere heavy subjects that just stick with you.

The 50s version of soft and corny is still a heck of a fun time, even if its deep cuts are a little too much on the silly side.

Cerebral and distinctly ugly in a raunchy way, where songs are unnecessarily drawn out but impactful nonetheless.

This album definitely overpowered all other YYY's efforts so definitively, I don't think the world at large thinks of them as anything other than dancerock band. Album itself is a little inconsistent for me, with its highest peaks being indeed superb, while its lowest dragging and dripping.

Having never been much of a Nirvana listener or even admirer, this was a tougher sell still. I should not have come into the album expecting to unravel some softer, more intimate side of this much revered band. This is certainly highly rated, provided you already like these songs and Kurt Cobain's atrocious vocals that to a disinterested consumer sound close to that Puddle of Mudd cover of Nirvana. Dumb hot take, but that is how I feel.

On Pulp's arguably most mature release they move a little away from in-your-face catchiness for a more cerebral, sensual, sweaty play. There is some distinctly nasty tone to everything and that makes it all just oh so much more voluptuous.

On 'Rid of Me', PJ Harvey has perfected the "creepy crazy goth girl who will ruin your life" vibe.

Some absolute classic pop bangers on this one, but people forget that the deep cuts are often just as powerful. That said, some of the deep cuts are also rather forgettable. Less \"Listen\" and \"Working Hour\" and more \"Mothers Talk\" and \"Head Over Heels\", please.

I get the history and the influence of this album, but I have also heard an overwhelming amount of significantly better black metal or even bm-esque albums. This is ugly and messy, but I get what it means for the development of metal. Doesn't mean I like it tho.

My inner 90s white girl is a little too stuck up on softness and Fiona Apple to ever give Alanis Morissette her due time. Now that I am going through it and am finding a lot of pretty solid, crushing 90s cuts. Although her vocals can be grating, but they also portray the torn asunder emotionality perfectly.

Really, the album the Rolling Stones started displaying all of their sexy swagger and provocateur demeanor. That said, for every other undeniable hit, the album hits you with a breather or two that only break up the pace, meandering about, being somewhat lacklustre.

Mudhoney's first EP carries on its brief runtime more energy than most of the grunge scene together. A high that was hit once and rarely achieved again in all of the genre's run.

Neil Young is to me an entity easier to appreciate tangentially and enjoy casually than really love andcrave deeper dives into. I find so much of his music appealing and easy to like, but never that easy to love. That is mostly due to his too loose a song-writing technique that mostly leaves a lot of room to want a more satisfying tune or a melody or a hook or sth.

Portishead's biggest and most celebrated release feels like floating through shark infested waters, but like the sharks are on your side or sth...

Not a lot of 'thrills' here, but certainly a lot a lot of supersoft charm.

The album that at one point was Bowie's great return, as well as a return to form, shows a plethora of experimental leanings that would go on to shape his next album three years later. That said, 'The Next Day', being a slightly tongue-in-cheek reflection of Bowie's career (even the cover is a blunt callback to 'Heroes', sometimes suffocates in it's own nostalgia, as well as its insistence on being hip and modern. That is also something that has plagued Bowie's 00s output generally. But 'The Next Day' still stands as a powerful, albeit somewhat rough late career blossom.

David Bowie's swansong has been conceived partially at the decline of his health, partially at its recovery. The rollercoaster of fear and torture has marked the final product immensely. Bowie this channels most of his efforts into near-academic exploration of instrumental and compositional newness, lyrical mysticism, and influential hullabaloo. What becomes of this avant-pro-avant-garde fusion is a masterful and haunting work that can truly only come once in a lifetime. A d what a lifetime it has been.

The The's third record comes just a little short of the catchiness and stylistic all-encompass their previous outing had to offer, plenty fun tracks and musical surprises here anyway.

Ok I'm sorry it this sounds so so dated and rusty. It's like what somebody's dad calls "the underground music".

'Station to Station' has always been among the more baffling turns in Bowie's progression, both in terms of how he ever landed on this patient, progressive fusion of krautrock and soft rock, as well as in terms of it being so difficult to love. I come away being more respectful of the work, than directly appreciating it. So much of this feels like it required a filter that wasn't there and that would only come in the form of Brian Eno and Tony Visconti later on. It is all a making of a truly impressive album that is just just too short of breath and nonchalant in its presentation to grab me.

Dads of the world unite, your sleazy sweaty raunchy tunes are here in their goofiest form. Its only real saving grace is the rather tight instrumentation.

The centrepiece in The Who's run of four near flawless albums, where every stylistic turn is justified and works to expand the broader musical intent. It's a perfectly infectious album that helped define the absolute heights of the 1970s, let's call it "alternative" rock.

The Sonics certainly nailed a sound that was trendy yet fresh at the same time, what with its surfy spinning guitar riff skipping set to rough vocals and dissonant lo-fi production. Pretty fun stuff.

Terminally 70s pop-rock with the time's signature softened mix and a hit streak that seems almost effortless. That said, some of the songs do come off as secondary cuts to their much better fleshed out counterparts on the very same album, but a vibe is a vibe.

Even at their lowest, LCD Soundsystem still can make a sound crisp yet nostalgic, rife with instantly infectious beats and tunes that just scream style and glamour, drenched however in maturity. Sans a few of the more head-scratching lyrics.

At one point of my deep youth, this must have been my favourite record. To my shock I had recently discovered that it has been a terribly long time since I have actually listened to this. And it still holds up to a degree. There is a level of tack dominating the lot of this album, yet the cuts that were always bangers still do rock like nobody's business.

Deep in the days when Queen liked to sprinkle a note of prog rock in the mix, 'Sheer Heart Attack' is all adrenaline and no pop, yet somehow manages to sound accessible and slick.

Unconventional in the traditional way for Sonic Youth, noisy and yet somehow perfectly sensual and sensitive.

Debuts often strike of amateur or misguided inspiration, but in Talking Heads' case all that really results in is that the music is above and beyond unchained from the ethics of conventionality. They shriek in fun and beat down some parasitic earworms.

Did not expect a band named after a fantasy burrito to play catchy and heartfelt music.

Not my favourite of Monk's, but the general chaotic looseness is so distinct and entrancing, I can't turn it off.

Jarrett's magnetic use of all possible improvisational techniques is kind of a show off more than it is a free-flowing unified work. There are definite earworm highlights, but there are also entire swaths that serve only to show his skill over the instrument.

The king of the annoying "good guy" nerd music makes an annoying "good guy" mod album that to one extent or another informs the worst of Costello's future (non-)efforts stylistically.

Our parents' horniest music also just so happens to be one of instrumentally most progressive futuristic pop endeavours of its time.

I'mma go and be a dick, but this album and this band has always been the epitome of bland competence: skilled enough to appreciate, yet devoid of personality or song-writing chops to actually impress. I am obviously in the monirity on this, but that's where I sit. (the only songs worth the note are "The Boston Rag" and "Pearl of the Quarter")

Mott can bring out some energy for sure, but the glamour of yesteryear is largely lost in the general genericness of it all.

'Trafalgar' is a sufficient amount of 70s saccharine cheese with the genuine heart Bee Gees often had, even if their lyrics so rarely come off as poignant as they think they are.

I have spent quite some time avoiding Billy Joel, mostly cause I remember him to be a sappy mom-pop star, but this is actually some lovely soulful singer-songwriter music with genuinely soft and catchy tunes all over.

The album where everything quintessentially Queen coalesce: theatrical writing, soapy vocals, hardhitting rock tunes, stellar instrumentation, aggressive queerness, and also it is the album that could be single-handedly blamed for the creation of Muse and other operatic rock pastiche bands.

'Green' definitely suffers from autopilot syndrome, despite them obviously trying out new things with this more pop-oriented, softer direction. It would go on to define the bulk of their later work, but they also never seemed to have recovered from the fatigue of recording this.

Fleet Foxes' debut is at times employing the swerve of instrumental experimentation the band would start utilising heftily on following records, but for the main part is packed with cutesy genteel tunes that'd melt the heart of even the most pessimistic of doomscrollers.

The album, in all its electroacoustic Latin smoothness, has a general carefree sexiness to it, drenched in humidity and wetness (from the weather and the arousal). All so laid-back, I can definitely see (hear?) why this was a revelatory record to many a listener at the time 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die came out, probably a huge entry point into South American music in general.

Softened pop-rock with occasional political undertone, but also one that conveniently abandons all of its genuine edge for the sake of simplistic appeal. The few hits and a deep cut here or there hit hard, but otherwise the album drags and has the crisis of song-writing; a noticeable issue with all U2 deep cuts.

It's soft indietronica with post-rock progressions and it can be sweet and it can be boring.

Among the Smiths' more low-energy, stripped-back albums that not so pull the curtain, as much as they allow a short peek at the band as excellent song-writers and Morrissey as an excellent shithead.

I'll be damned this album is so lush and tender. Fiona whips out on her debut something most musicians cannot accomplish even after decades of recording, a subtle and sensual semi-pop album yet heartbroken on the downlow and oh so catchy. How even at its most laborious and long-winded it maintains infectious writing is beyond me.

Roy Orbison's protege be sounding like Roy Orbison's soft-hearted offshoot. In a good way.

With all that time passing since, this type of booming pop drenched in tacky synth strikes as little more than irritating and dated.

i couldve sworn these guys are dirt boggers from some drowned farm in Louisiana or sth

Latifah jumps a bunch of contemporaneous styles and influences like nobody's business and pulls them all off effortlessly with the appropriate help of some very appropriate feature guests.

Revisiting the old Eminem, having mostly blanked out on the work for the past decade or so, and after him descending into crude dad jokes and struggles to maintain some edginess, I cannot quite filter this album through all that knowledge. All of this is just a few notches under the hard-hitting banger factory it once was revered as. Now it all sounds like an angsty rebellious youth but with a better budget. Such is my dumbass lukewarm 2024 take on Eminem.

Richard Hawley's lush adult contemporary music actually works quite well and some of the cuts here are downright gorgeous. There's a good reason "The Ocean" was such a hit. That is, besides the times the album sounds like sensual mum muzak.

The hits are spectacular and even the deeper cuts have so much vibrant energy, I cannot help and get hyped. That said, every longer track goes on unnecessarily long and really ends up dragging the whole thing.

The B-52's are quite the pinnacle of twerpy music. I can imagine their impact at the time being akin to Ed Sheeran or whatever prematurely married straight white people listen to these days.

General deconstruction of what music even is to a point of balance between quirky and creepy.

I imagine this is was Tool of its era with significantly more stoned fan base.

Even knowing the whole evolution of doom, stoner, and heavy metal and how hard and harsh it can get at its peak, Black Sabbath's debut still sounds gnarly and filthy in the most guttural way possible. (didn't even need guttural vocals to achieve that)

The more straightforwardly beats-oriented Chemical Brothers album before they started branching out to give Gorillaz all the inspiration they needed.

don't you just hate it when you find music that is a real breath of fresh air, but then the band members just have to turn out to be complete shitheads?

When it's nice it's nice, however for all the talk of world influences present on the album, none of them really amount to anything beyond occasional bleached backdrop for this signature white people music.

It really does show that half of this album was recorded while high as a kite on LSD, doesn't it? All its aimless doodling and running in structural circles do come off as a working of people not quite in tune with the passing of time.

Tediously obnoxious and obnoxiously tedious, along with some disenchantingly mediocre vocals that bring the already stumbling flow down several notches.

Really the grand Paul McCartney fuck you to the other Beatles, as in "I can make an album and make it slap, all soft rock jams, and you can't stop me".

A lot of no nonsense hip-hop tracks that are so delightfully 00s with appropriate levels of pettiness too.

I bet this must have been a contentious album among the artsy crowd back then. It is obnoxious to say the least, but in a minimally endearing way.

Why the bare and thin production makes me feel so uneasy I cannot tell, but something about it makes even the most beautiful pop song here feel a little tonally out of place. Like I'm being judged by the ghost of pop.

Although still amid finding their footing fully, the Gorillaz debut is a fun mish mash of Albarn and co's skill in writing and producing acquired in the past, as well as a handful of perspective ideas to be made better in the future.

Classic album with some now ironic lyrics, considering the members turned out to be snitches and cry babies. Still slaps like few other things ever.

Why I find Snoop's own presence on his most celebrated album so inconsequential and easily overshadowed? Not to mention half the songs are more akin to sketches and snippets than fully fleshed out works.

I have all but forgotten, drunk on the highs of 'Revolver's many classics, that the album is so instrumentally naked, and often irritatingly thin.

You can clearly hear all the zany production ideas that would go on to inform his work on Bowie's 'Heroes'. It's quite fascinating hearing the individual details and clearly picking up where they fit in the Bowie mix.

Look, I am willing to admit that this is some fun spastic instrumental album, if you are willing to admit that it is also exhausting and obnoxious.

Have completely forgotten that Coldplay at one point managed to be both hard-hitting and sensual at the same time, while staying at the forefront of indie genre-ification (when indie became a genre and not a status descriptor).

Having only known Willie Nelson as a country legend and a favourite of old crooners, trying out his music in full for the first time I expected a lot more nasally groans and whinings about outlaws and the countryside or whatnot. I certainly did not expect to be moved by the gentle, intimate song-writing this much. Much more sensitive and sensual than I had it pinned. A bit too simplistic, especially in the lyrics, but I suppose it needn't be more than that.

While I acknowledge that the mixing is ass half the time and the album is practically just Black Sabbath trying to be Led Zeppelin for some reason, it is extraordinarily fun with riffs for days, tunes to split a head open, surprisingly even decent vocals from nasal king Ozzy, and every other song a classic (and a handful of duds in between, sadly, but whattaryagonnadoo)

Beatles at their most bloated with their stonermost songs and most deserty mix, yet also incredible lulls and most questionable creative decisions, let's not kid ourselves. Could have been trimmed a bunch and released as two separate albums, as the double-album of it all was wholly unnecessary.

I swear Bill Callahan must have had an old man's wisdom since he was a teen...

I am not quite the pedantic analyst of details that can pinpoint the minutemost microscopic aspect of this album that makes it good. All I can really do is say it do be good.

It is what it is. Jimi being crazy good, even though nowadays you learn his moves in Guitar 102.

Beck's main big boy release is a curious attention jump from sensual terminally 90s quaintness to brutish roughness, and then back and forth between those two.

Out of their albums, why is this one on the list?

I bet those praising this only ever spin the highlights anyway and skip the tedious muddy gunk that makes up 80% of the album. It definitely has higher highs than 'Siamese Dream' and does not quite reach the levels of utterly annoying as that album. But it still suffers from the very same issues, Corgan being an insufferable presence lyrically and vocally, writing being uneven at best and monotonous at worst, the runtime being longer than dying from blood loss and about as pleasant.

Let's not beat around the Bush or Buckcherry, this album is a great basic bitch stadium rock quite symptomatic of 00s.

Initially crafted as a soundtrack to a crime thriller that does not exist, but could pass for a horror movie at times.

For every undeniable timeless adult contemporary classic banger there is also a dud that really feels so much like a studio-pushed afterthought to make the album with "those famous songs" also have other songs. Yay for "Set Fire to the Rain" or "Turning Tables", nay for "Don't You Remember" or "I'll Be Waiting".

Turns out if you add extra fuzz on your soft-spoken indie rock it makes all the difference.

I struggle to say a whole lot here besides just that it is an admirable, easy to listen to 80s pop album. A few earworms, a few duds too. Very typical.

One of Bowie's many unfortunate throwaway albums for a paycheck. One or two good songs and a slog of nearly anonymous outdated trends that are as tacky today as greasy pompadours.

Funky, hippy, hoppy, and peppery, and entirely a vibe before a substance.

Never been a fan of U2's brand of soaring arena sized pop music that relies too much on the soar as its primary song-writing method. 'Joshua Tree' at every turn only works to reaffirm that disinterest in me.

Banger after banger here, don't pretend it ain't so.

ELP are indeed great instrumentalists, but scarcely are more than that...

The soundtrack to 'Shaft' really is a standalone fully conceptualised album on its own, ain't it? A whole lot of smooth, sexy, fun, and adventurous tracks that just scream 'cool'.

Fuck Kanye

Cleaner and more refined than their debut, featuring more questionable lyrics and themes, but ultimately a miles ahead grander record and about as solid as late-60s can get.

When your uncle says that music is not what it used to be anymore.

How this album feels sleazy both musically and in character is beyond me, but it is a sleaze that makes you want to join in.

This album does not so much sound like a fever dream, but a full on fever, sweaty and delirious.

I may be slightly tired of old metal and what was viewed as heavy back then, but I cannot deny that Iron Maiden do bring out some of the most memorable hooks and riffs all around here.

What a blast of an album. Turns out the rich kids are quite similar to you and me after all.

Pink Floyd's biggest, loudest, most ambitious project to date was basically the bedrock for many a prog band after it to keep pumping obnoxiously loud and long concept albums with little regard to their own pretentiousness. But 'Wall' do be good still.

See, if you trim an album to just the hardest, nastiest songs, and make it under 30 minutes long, you'll hit gold.

I'd say that of all the outdated 90s music, this fares rather well...

Squeezed somewhere between the vehement punk scene that'd at the time proclaim this an "experimental album" and a world of today that has grown too accustom to such expressions that burst and drag like shrapnel slowly mutilating your innards, Television's bombastic debut is a force to be reckoned with, establishing the stylistic standard to come and still managing to sound fresher than half the shit that has come out since.

I once again find myself utterly annoyed by Elvis Costello, missing any point of swagger completely.

I appreciate Ramones and this album in terms of history and influence, but I may have got around to it way too late to appreciate the music and be influenced myself.

Teenage Fanclub is as Teenage Fanclub does, musically stuck somewhere at the precipice of 90s rock'n'roll and britpop, deliberately never embracing either fully.

To really understand the impact of this album and this group is a mix of you-had-to-be-there and you-have-to-listen-to-a-ton-of-electronica (and a few other things). It helps a lot that the album is akin to a cloud gently letting sunbeams through.

when a pure vibe becomes pure doozie. this band ain't just the song "Apache", it is also incessant energy that keeps levelling and levelling

I've completely forgotten that Coldplay at one point managed to be both hard-hitting and sensual at the same time, while staying at the forefront of indie genre-ification (when indie became a genre and not a status descriptor).

Much like 'Zen Arcade', a collection of tracks that was made for the stage, not so much for the recordings, stretched out to unnecessary length where even the most outstanding songs start blending in and becoming mush.

The one with the obnoxious overplayed hits, yeah.

The inevitable bloated concept rock opera album, their 'The Wall', if you will, is a clunky, chunky, messy drag with a curious song here and there but mostly moving sluggishly, making each new minute a chore and all the more unpleasant.

It is what it is, African-American music whitewashed in the loudest way possible.

Although greatly influential and packing some of their tunefulmost songs, 'Abbey Road' is still marred by inconsistency in pacing and tone, quite typically for the Beatles.

Amazing, they've predicted both Siri and the rise of Dell Computers with album title alone.

I am just so indifferent on their moody one-dimensionality so intent on capturing only the faintest of musical ideas, quietly empty and emptyingly quiet. Poor vocals, questionable production, non-existent progression. That "Intro" is about as loud and curious as the record really gets.

Definitely feels dated nowadays, but you cannot deny the charm and the style. Flash and the crew make even the most mundane things look cool.

Definitely verging on a spiritual religious experience, but I suppose my general state of mind going into it was not open-hearted or downtrodden enough to fully appreciate the impact. It's like going to church as an atheist who has their shit together, it's difficult to get dragged into the dogma.

Making the edgelords feel validated and mainstream, doing lord's work.

Terminally 70s rock music that also takes itself not at all seriously. As a result you have a fun album that is however a bit dumb and unnecessarily self-deprecating, which is forgivable.

'The ArchAndroid' feels not like a single artist's debut, but a culmination of various collectives' collaborations deep into their careers. Janelle Monae proves her ability to transcend simple genre or style, it just blasts into every direction and succeeds beyond expectations.

It sure is good, although I fear I must have missed the window of time in which this album would have blown me away or been as influential as it is on others.

Ambient always first evokes images of forests, more so than airports, but I can easily also picture myself awaiting the dry void of a crowded plane in a dry void of an architecturally indefinable airport.

At one point Chicago the band was not a sleazy, sultry, cringy smooth rockers to woo the middle-class spinsters, but an actually talented jazz-prog-fusion band with gut and grit, instrumental palette, song-writing chops, adventurous sound.

An overlooked timely punk album, attitude and all, often testing listeners' patience, but getting the message across surprisingly poetically.