I was super excited to dig into this one, because I know her big radio hits and have loved her voice, but never really dug much deeper. Thoughts are this -- she had a fucking incredible voice, but boy can you hear the life dissatisfaction in her lyrics that presumably led to her substance abuse. I love the jazziness, but there are a lot of gender assumptions and gender role acceptance that doesn't work for me in almost 2023 as it probably would have twenty years earlier. Stand outs for me: You Sent Me Flying, Fuck Me Pumps (which is very musically repetitive and catty as hell, but I like it in spite of that), and (There is) No Greater Love. Also, the UK version of the album has a cover she did of Someone to Watch Over Me, which is STELLAR.

I have, for much of my life, found The Doors to be overly hyped, self-indulgent, self-important bullshit. This album doesn't really do a whole lot to change my mind on that, though there are three songs that I really dig (Roadhouse Blues, Peace Frog, and Indian Summer - the last despite the fact that it's really kind of a nothing song, but it hooked me nonetheless). That said, there's some definite shit on this album (Blue Sunday: snore; Ship of Fools: more snore; Land Ho! is so bad that I turned it off) What I will say in terms of this album's importance that it ends up on a list like this is that you can definitely hear influences from other artists who came before (Land Ho!, for instance, borrows heavily from Ob-la-di Ob-la-da) and that ended up being passed on to more modern acts (such as how you can hear elements of the opening of Peace Frog in the opening of Smells Like Teen Spirit). So in terms of influenced by and influencer of other acts, it's definitely still relevant even 53 years later.

Death? Zombies? A War Pigs cover? This album truly is The Real Thing! What can I say? It’s EPIC!

So... Yeah. Yeah yeah. This is fine, but I'm not sure it's a "must hear before death" album by any means.

Not my favorite Smiths album, and I'm definitely sitting here eating murder, but still a classic from my youth.

I don't think going down on someone in a theater is particularly "perverted," and that line has always annoyed me since 1995. It's potentially rude, classless, inconvenient, uncomfortable, or any other number of adjectives, but unless you're at a Sunday matinee kids musical or something, it doesn't really scratch the surface of perversion.

Fuck the establishment. No notes.

Had I listened much to them in high school/early 20s, this would make me want to run through a brick wall. Coming to it later in life makes me feel like it's a bit juvenile, but not bad.

How the hell had I never heard of her before? Her soulful vocals intertwined with a mix of soul, disco, folk, blues, and a little poppiness of the 70s is incredible. I ended up adding five of the ten songs on the album to my "liked songs" on Spotify, and I wouldn't go out of my way to avoid any of the other five. This is a really stellar album!

Here's my biggest takeaway -- bossa nova is probably not my go-to genre of music. I will say this - the quality of the songwriting is stellar, it's just not what I'd generally seek out to listen to. So my rating here is based on merit rather than personal taste.

First CD I ever had, bought with my own money when I was 13. 35 years later, it still holds up. And yes, I still have the CD I bought then. :)

As a child of the 80s, it was hard not to be completely caught up in "Take On Me," but in the years since high school, it's become so ubiquitous and overplayed that it's not really a favorite anymore. So I wasn't sure what to expect from the rest of the album -- I'd listened to it here and there as a kid, but probably not since the early 90s. New Wave hasn't ever really been a huge draw for me, but this album is a lot more musically complex than I was expecting. I'm not sure that it's going to figure heavily into my regular rotation of stuff I listen to, but it's very well done.

I mean come on, it’s Prince. How much better can it get?!

Take the more annoying parts of Pink Floyd, mash them with the more annoying parts of The Beatles, and somehow make it all worse than either of those bands could dream of being. I don't think there's enough weed in the world to make me really dig this album. There are a couple tracks that I'd listen to again, but ultimately I'm sitting here realizing why it's been out for 21 years and I'd never heard of it before. I can say that they have some really great lyrics in some of the songs, but overall my takeaway is this: Of all the albums I listened to in 2022, this was one of them.

Very 70s, but in a good way! There are definite Beatles influences here, some Simon & Garfunkel parallels, and honestly? Get It On (the song that everyone knows) is probably the weakest track on the album. There's an awesome blues number called Lean Woman Blues that absolutely *slaps* and is going into my rotation of liked songs. I'm not sure that I'll come back to this on the reg, but it's definitely re-listenable!

Well that was utterly charming. My dad was always a huge fan of jazz/swing/big band music, but he died when I was young and I never got to experience it with him the way I might've had I been able to listen and explore it as an adult with him. Anyway, this just put me so much in mind of him and felt so at home that this is absolutely going into my mix of albums!

This is a load of crap and I stopped listening partway through because it was so bad that I didn't want Spotify to think I somehow liked it and alter my listening algorithms too much. I will never voluntarily listen to this again.

I don't generally love a lot of modern/secular Christmas music for whatever reason, but this album is great even if Phil Spector was a complete monster. Prior to listening to this I was under the impression that the Jackson 5 version of Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town was the best version out there. I was apparently wrong. And Darlene Love's Winter Wonderland is sublime. Then again, is there anything that she can't do perfectly?!

The absolute best. No notes.

My whole life I've said that I wasn't a TP fan except for American Girl. So after hearing things from him/them for the last 46 years, it's possible that maybe I was wrong? My impressions of this album: Track 1 (Rockin' Around (With You)): Meh. Track 2 (Breakdown): Do not like. Never have. Active dislike, in fact. Track 3 (Hometown Blues): Okay, I actually liked that one. Track 4 (The Wild One, Forever): Wait, I liked that one, too. What the heck? Track 5 (Anything That's Rock 'n' Roll): Three in a row?! Track 6 (Strangered in the Night): Nope. Back to meh. Track 7 (Fooled Again (I Don't Like It)): A step up from meh, but not quite to liking status. Track 8 (Mystery Man): Profoundly simplistic, exceptionally likable. Track 9 (Luna): Okay, active dislike on this one, too. Track 10 (American Girl): MAKE IT LAST ALL NIGHT! Legit one of my favorite songs ever.

Unfortunately, the title track is what can only nominally be considered a blues track - it's really a Santana track, so I was a little suspicious at first, but thankfully things pick up quickly after that. Robert Cray's guitar on "Baby Lee" is fantastic, and "Think Twice Before You Go" actually made me want to get up and dance. Friends, NOTHING makes me want to get up and dance, so that's saying something. Charlie Musselwhite's harmonica on "That's Alright" is more than alright. And Hooker's deeply soulful vocals and lyrics on "My Dream" and "No Substitute" round out a really enjoyable album.

It's not bad at all -- in fact, musically it's very good, it's just not my style.

Disco is fun and kicky, but not always what I want to sit and listen to at length. That said, this is really good!

I think you're gonna find, when all this shit is over and done, I think you're gonna find yourself one smilin' motherfucker.

I would definitely listen to more than once, though it starts out real weird and ends real weird, but often weird is good, so give this a go!

I don't think I'm cool enough to be blown away by them. I really want to be, I'm just not.

Okay. So here's the thing -- I'm a big fan of garage band/grunge, and I'm glad to know where some of its origins were, but that's about the only thing this album has going for it. Only four out of twelve tracks on the album were actually written by the band, and one of them (Psycho) blatantly rips off "Do You Love Me" by the Contours, written by Berry Gordy, Jr. Ironically, that is one of the songs they cover on this album. I get that in the 60s it was a pretty common thing to have songs done by multiple artists, but this is a band of five white guys from Seattle dumbing down a lot of great music written and recorded by Black artists. Disappointing.

Somehow I'd never heard of this band despite this being their 15th album. It's probably not anything that I'd choose to sit down and listen to, but something about the beat and generally forgettable vocals makes it fantastic background music for working. People say that EDM (which this isn't, but has some similarity with beats) is great for working, and I may understand a little why.

I liked this wayyyyyyy more than I thought I was going to. Definitely going into my "things to explore more" list.

I really dig the beats, but a lot of it feels pretty generic Brit-punk/post-punk to me.

It's fine - I don't have anything against it, necessarily, I just don't have anything for it, either. I'm not a big electronica devotee, so not really my jam.

The music is relatively simplistic and can be a bit repetitive, but that works well to highlight some of the truly beautiful work with the lyrics. It's not a record that I am likely just to sit down and listen to unless I'm having one of those melancholy days where I just need to be all up in my feelings, but overall it's a good album. The one exception to it being good is the track "Black Hair" which sounds like someone smoked about a pound of weed and grabbed an open mic with nothing prepared and just happened to see a woman with black hair in the audience. Oh, and with an accordion.

The first track is called Song of Joy, so I think, "Oh! That sounds hopeful and like maybe it'll be more upbeat than the usual dirges he sings!" Boy howdy I was wrong. The Stagger Lee adaptation is a travesty. There are three tolerable songs on this album, and they're only tolerable because they have other people carrying the load for him. I really just don't get the appeal for Nick Cave. Pretty much everything he's ever released makes me want to throw myself in front of a bus. Or (more probably) want to throw him in front of a bus.

Perfect late 90s/early 00s vibe before they got lame in later years. People love to shit on this album, but they're wrong.

Awesome radio songs, awesome non-radio songs, 90s punk at its absolute best!

You absolutely MUST respect the Queen of Soul. This album is magnificent, start to finish, and anyone who says otherwise is objectively wrong.

Good, but not life-changing. Proud Mary is amazing (though I knew that before launching into this endeavor), the rest is good, but feels a little repetitive at times.

I really REALLY like the music and the beats, but I don't think the vocals are great. But given that I'm an old fucker who doesn't love a lot of modern music, I would actually listen to this album more than once.

Self-indulgent and insufferable. I turned it off after Cousin Kevin. I don't give a shit about Tommy or anyone else in his family. It gets a second star simply because I recognize the cultural influence, but I still think it's shit.

Okay, so I'm rating this a 4 simply because I think that they'll make me give up my NYC residence if I don't rate it favorably. It's hard to deny how influential they were, not just locally, but on American punk in general, but if I have to be perfectly honest, there are other things in the genre I like better. And CBGB's might've been an institution and have the awning in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and all, but it was a shithole club, lol. (The "true New Yorker" police are about to knock on my door any minute, I know it.)

Unremarkably fine.

There's nothing about it that I don't like, but there's also nothing about it that I love.

I really enjoyed this and could listen to it "over and over again, my love." My only only real gripe is the feud between Neil Young and Spotify so that I can't add any of these songs to my normal playlists, but even that I get.

They're fine, and I won't turn them off, but I won't turn them on.

Are there any bad tracks on this album? I'm not sure there are. There are some that aren't as good as the others, but I'm not sure there's anything outright *bad* about this, and there's plenty that's outright awesome.

I'm surprised by how many people rate this album super high. I love folk-pop from the 60s and 70s, love women singer/songwriters, and was pretty much raised on this stuff. Yet despite all of that, I find it a little insipid. She certainly had a beautiful voice, but musically it's all just boring. And the cover of Help is an abomination.

The entire album is basically rehashing/reworking the very recognizable musical riff from the titular song and developing new songs around that. As a result, it feels extremely redundant even though it's incorporated in different ways in each song. But a big ol' snoozefest for me, even with the novelty of a flute in rock music.