My 1001 Albums Journey

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Journey Complete!

Finisher #613 to complete the list

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1089

Albums Rated

3.33

Average Rating

100%

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Featured Review

Talking With the Taxman About Poetry

Billy Bragg

Well, this marks my final album of the list. Always knew this day would come. All in all I must say that this project has made the past three years quite enjoyable, even if the list itself is moreso good than great. Way too much Elvis Costello, way too much Madchester shit, and not nearly enough global representation beyond the Anglosphere and their colonies. Still, the album a day process has really broadened my taste for weird shit. I grew to love post punk and whatever the fuck The Residents were doing, so shoutout to them. Also, Junkyard is a 10/10 album and I will die on that hill. Even though no one asked, I’m listing my personal top ten on the list as a point of record. Because after all isn’t that what this project is all about? 1. Fleetfoxes - Fleetfoxes 2. Neon Bible - Arcade Fire 3. LP1 - FKA Twigs 4. Dummy - Portishead 5. Locust Abortion Technician - Butthole Surfers 6. The Archandroid - Janelle Monae 7. Kind of Blue - Miles Davis 8. The White Album - Beatles 9. Since I Left You - The Avalanches 10. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Some Nazi, idk Oh yeah, and this Billy Bragg album is okay I guess.

Rating Distribution

Rating Timeline

Taste Profile

2010

Favorite Decade

Soul

Favorite Genre

Top Origin

Generous

Rater Style ?

188

5-Star Albums

1-Star Albums

Breakdown

By Genre

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Top Styles

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By Decade

By Origin

Albums

You Love More Than Most

Album	You	Global	Diff
Duck Stab/Buster & Glen The Residents	5	2.04	+2.96
Junkyard The Birthday Party	5	2.15	+2.85
Locust Abortion Technician Butthole Surfers	5	2.39	+2.61
Suicide Suicide	5	2.46	+2.54
Scott 2 Scott Walker	5	2.62	+2.38
Phaedra Tangerine Dream	5	2.73	+2.27
Yeezus Kanye West	5	2.74	+2.26
Atomizer Big Black	5	2.75	+2.25
Group Sex Circle Jerks	5	2.75	+2.25
Alien Lanes Guided By Voices	5	2.76	+2.24

You Love Less Than Most

Album	You	Global	Diff
Made In Japan Deep Purple	1	3.28	-2.28
Permission to Land The Darkness	1	3.13	-2.13
Something/Anything? Todd Rundgren	1	3.03	-2.03
Fire Of Love The Gun Club	1	2.98	-1.98
Reign In Blood Slayer	1	2.97	-1.97
Viva Hate Morrissey	1	2.96	-1.96
Aha Shake Heartbreak Kings of Leon	1	2.94	-1.94
Street Signs Ozomatli	1	2.88	-1.88
Greetings From L.A. Tim Buckley	1	2.84	-1.84
All Things Must Pass George Harrison	2	3.81	-1.81

Artists

Favorites

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Artist	Albums	Average
Miles Davis	4	5
David Bowie	9	4.33
Beatles	7	4.43
Radiohead	6	4.5
Arcade Fire	3	5
Beastie Boys	3	5
Kanye West	3	4.67
The Doors	3	4.67
Blur	3	4.67
The Cure	3	4.67
Jimi Hendrix	3	4.67
Kendrick Lamar	2	5
Fleetwood Mac	2	5
Aretha Franklin	2	5
Common	2	5
Iggy Pop	2	5
Yeah Yeah Yeahs	2	5
Lou Reed	2	5
Johnny Cash	3	4.33
Queen	3	4.33
The Beach Boys	3	4.33
Nirvana	3	4.33
Nick Drake	3	4.33
Beck	3	4.33
Led Zeppelin	5	4
Brian Eno	5	4
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds	5	4
Tom Waits	5	4

Least Favorites

Tap an artist to see their albums

Artist	Albums	Average
Public Image Ltd.	2	1
Tim Buckley	3	1.67
Kings of Leon	3	1.67
Todd Rundgren	2	1.5
Emerson, Lake & Palmer	2	1.5
Orbital	2	1.5
Morrissey	4	2
The Byrds	5	2.2
Echo And The Bunnymen	3	2

Controversial

Tap an artist to see their albums

Artist	Ratings
The Smashing Pumpkins	2, 5
The Mothers Of Invention	1, 4
Deep Purple	4, 4, 1
The Rolling Stones	4, 5, 5, 3, 2, 2
The Velvet Underground	3, 2, 5

5-Star Albums (188)

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It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

Popular Reviews

Dis-really ain’t that good.

Okay, so like, The Velvet Underground but more fucked up and with lots of screaming. I can vibe with that.

Dated and lame as fuck. They sound like a rejected Gorillaz feature. Also, their album art makes me irrationally angry.

My thoughts exactly.

1-Star Albums (27)

D.O.A. the Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle

All Ratings (1089)

Easily the second worst thing Germany has ever done.

Okay, so like, The Velvet Underground but more fucked up and with lots of screaming. I can vibe with that.

The zany name really got my hopes up. “The Gilded Palace of Sin?” Come on, I can practically feel the hardwood church pew against my backside as I listen to this snore-fest.

I consider myself a fan of the Rolling Stones. However, the sheer douchebaggery of this album was a little hard to stomach.

Finally, music for yuppie socialists.

This album hits like flat beer on a cloudy day.

Heavy metal for silly little goofballs (me)

Was gonna give this three stars but that Pink Floyd cover was diabolical.

Meh

This is peak frolicking music. Hate on this album and I’ll harvest the copper wire from your walls.

Don’t care how “influential” this supposedly was. This is just edgy racist dogshit. Listen to The Doors, The Cramps, or some Howlin’ Wolf instead. Hell, listen to literally anything else.

Can’t tell if this is really good or really bad, but I’ve decided to be a glass half-full guy today.

This album smells like chlorine and piss.

“Yor twistin’ mah MELON-man!”

Today I learned that Pinball Wizard was part of a really boring rock opera… and that the preceding song is about the kid getting fiddled by his uncle. Cool.

Sipping coffee while listening to Waits yapping over a saxophone just hits different.

Had some good moments. A little too 90’s for me though

I bet this sounds really good to people who love loud-ass harmonica solos.

Sounds like I wandered into a Wes Anderson film. 9/10.

Music for shoe stores

I absolutely hated Pere Ubu’s first album when I listened to it last year. Now I find myself weirdly enjoying this. Even David Thomas’s god-awful voice has grown on me like blight on a tree… or perhaps some kind of malignant fungus. 7/10

Not Short Enough🥀

I dunno, listening to this didn’t feel very justified to me.

This shit isn’t raw, just half baked.

This is the sixth Elvis Costello album I’ve had to wait out. Getting real tired of this guy’s ironic rockabilly-bubblegum-hipster shtick by now.

First two songs are absolute bangers. The rest is just Billy Joel.

Love the bisexual album art

I have fond memories of seeing this album cover as a kid and assuming this must be the most boring shit ever. I take it back now — they somehow make prog rock catchy. If anything it could actually benefit from being a little more toned down.

Loved Dylan’s lyrics in this one. Hated just about everything else.

This album sucks leprechaun balls.

“Gun” immediately bumps this to a 10/10.

Essential music for when you’ve got a really tall ice cream cone and one of the scoops falls off and starts melting on the ground

Fascinatingly terrible. Fuck it, this is kinda awesome.

Utterly cringe-inducing. I can’t believe this clown gets two whole albums on the list when more significant artists are left off.

If you’re an edgy twelve year old who loves rhymes about bodily fluids and sexual assault, boy have I got an album for you.

I have tremendous respect for Young as an artist, but this album honestly feels so dated that it’s almost naive. No issue is actually examined in depth (love will overcome hate; respect the earth; etc.) and neither the lyrics or instrumentals are interesting enough to salvage it. The hippies failed, liberalism capitulated to tech oligarchs, and hatred won the arms race years ago. Gimme some Daft Punk to listen to.

Boring. Nauseating. Creepy. Pretentious. Calling this album shit is an insult to shit. Also, whoever made the album art should probably be put on a registry.

This reaches Owl City levels of twee at certain points, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it.

Not really sure why this is on here instead of Demon Days but it’s alright.

Well that was a slog. I legit thought Black Lake was about to end like eight times, but then it just kept on going.

Solid gold. Orange Moon is one of the beautiful songs I’ve ever heard.

No offence, but if you enjoy this shit I’m just gonna assume you’re a twice-divorced deadbeat who thinks billionaires should pay less taxes.

Dis-really ain’t that good.

This gets a very conflicted 5/5 from me. While Common’s album is a lush bouquet of poetry over old jazz and soul beats, the hatred of queer men (like myself) is truly cringe inducing, and one of the most glaring blind spots of older “conscious hip hop.” You can’t preach tolerance and hatred at the same time. It’s definitely from a different era, kinda like its album art, but I can’t help but find it beautiful.

If gentrification had a soundtrack it would be this album.

What a fucking slog. Even the standouts aren’t that good. A waste of time and oxygen.

My thoughts exactly.

Dated and lame as fuck. They sound like a rejected Gorillaz feature. Also, their album art makes me irrationally angry.

Damn, what a missed opportunity. Anohni’s voice really shines in the slower, more melancholy portions of this album. It’s soulful, sad, and a little eerie like Nina Simone. Unfortunately, she seems more drawn to a high-pitched, quivering warble that comes off as cloying in a way usually reserved for opera singers. The album’s tragic mood feels contrived as a result. Maybe she had the wrong species of bird in mind when she wrote this?

I’m sure those electric jugs sounded amazing when they were stoned off their asses making this album.

Kill it with fire.

British mediocrity strikes again.

The spoken-interlude-industrial complex must be stopped.

I wish more punk music sounded like this.

This is the fifth (FIFTH!?) album I’ve gotten by The Byrds, and I can now say with confidence that they embody everything I hate about this era of pop-rock. They don’t have the catchiness of their rock and roll predecessors nor the experimental curiosity of their contemporaries. Their psychedelic influences are surface level at best, suggesting that they themselves don’t know how to use them beyond trendy imitation. Take, for example, this verse off Renaissance fair: “I smell cinnamon and spices / I hear music everywhere / All around kaleidoscope of colour / I think maybe I’m dreaming.” Geddit? He’s high. He’s SINGING about being high. Pretty groundbreaking for ‘67, right? Mind Gardens is also unbelievably bad, with clumsy poetry and a reversed recording of a guitar that drills into your skull. It’s lobotomy without the bliss that follows. When it isn’t riffing off far better bands, it just sounds goddamn boring. Maybe I’m being harsh because I’m in the last stretch of albums, or maybe —just maybe— these guys don’t deserved the amount of representation they got in the book.

In this cheese wheel of a record, Cohen’s self-serious baritone is glazed over with layer after layer of eighties production. The resulting heartache feels more akin to acid reflux than romance. ‘Everybody Knows’ is a damn good song though.

Not to be that guy, but I’m always a little thrown off by people complaining that shoegaze has too much reverb. Like, isn’t that the whole point? It’s like shitting on jazz for having too much improvisation.

Why is he in a microwave?

Happiest marriage in 1960s Tennessee:

There’s a song on here called “Dictatorshit” which is a powerful political statement if I’ve ever heard one. Could have hit a lot harder if they named it “Dicktatorshit” though.

This is the fourth (and hopefully final) Morrissey album I’ve got on this list. I’ve been patient, but I think now is the time to give this asshole the 1 star he deserves. While I’ve made an effort to separate the art from the artist, “Bengali in Platforms” and its not-so-subtle racism was the last straw for me. Even ignoring that song leaves nothing but a mediocre, down-tempo Smiths album where he meanders verse to verse without a hook or memorable line in sight. He somehow makes a song about killing Margaret Thatcher boring. Fuck this mopey, spinach eating prick.

Okay, so there’s a lot to unpack here and none of it’s good. We’ve McLaren, a Brit, mixing South African melodies stolen from Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens with New York talk radio, then he throws in a dash of hiphop, square dancing (!?), and the odd pan flute to capture a vague sense of exotic “otherness.” It’s so phoney and uncool that I’m baffled anybody could find this listenable, especially with McLaren’s saying words like “ebonettes” and “mambo” with his thick North London accent. I cringed so hard I may have given myself whiplash. Hard pass.

This album has absolutely no reason to be on the list, but it’s so cheesy and over the top that I couldn’t help but enjoy it. I’m all for this cabaret of cringe.

A very typical Y2K girlboss album. Wouldn’t normally have a problem with this, except it weirdly preaches love and empowerment while also engaging in slut shaming, then tops it with some “God loves me” BS. It comes off as shallow and socially conservative as a result — the kind of music you’d blast when your friend calls you out on your toxic bullshit.

Speaking from experience, this music is perfect for when you wake up and realize you’ve gotta mark 20 final essays by midnight to meet the academic deadline. For just a little while I felt like a PI reading over case files in 1970’s Miami as opposed to a TA deducting grades for improper formatting styles.

Really?

Started out beautiful and got progressively more tedious as the songs went on (and on).

Journey Complete!

Talking With the Taxman About Poetry

Rating Distribution

Rating Timeline

Taste Profile

Breakdown

By Genre

Top Styles

By Decade

By Origin

Albums

You Love More Than Most

You Love Less Than Most

Artists

Favorites

Least Favorites

Controversial

5-Star Albums (188)

Popular Reviews

1-Star Albums (27)

All Ratings (1089)

Generous

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