Radiohead for theatre kids

if i was a white middle class suburban dad desperate to formulate some kind of identity by staking a bizarre claim on irish heritage despite my family being in america for 150 years, i would probably love this!

i can appreciate the weirdness and there's some glimmers of stuff here i like, but overall i just find it really grating. they obviously have talent and are clearly pulling on some good reference points but the final product just doesn't work for me. the a cappella shit is just the final nail in the coffin (if i never hear Ambulance again, it'll be too soon) only by the strength of Wear You Out does this crawl up to a 2

bit of a genuine classic innit

really boggles the mind that people try to argue the stones are better than the Beatles. annoying, misogynist, repetitive. at least the beatles paired their misogyny with good music

living on a prayer, the perfect song if you want a more grating and less poetic Springsteen song to play at a Christian fundamentalist wedding

whoever told john mayall he could sing the blues was playing quite the prank, the only question is if the prank was on john or the listening public

Radiohead for theatre kids

fine music that just does absolutely nothing for me

now these boys know how to rock

more backbone musically than 21, but otherwise just sort of "there"

moves effortlessly between mind numbing and annoying. what an achievement!

to quote John Hinckley Jr: "Fantastic songs! RIP David Berman."

wholeheartedly agree that it's significant enough to be on the list, also absolutely not my cup of tea. sorry bjork!

a lot to like here but i simply have never liked michael stipe's voice. sorry mike!

make some cuts, get this down below 35 minutes, and you'll have a solid 2/5 album

billie joe's voice has always been nails on a chalkboard to me, but the music is well enough executed, saving it from a 1

was never a huge Bowie fan in addition to thinking he was kind of a creep, so this never really had any emotional resonance for me as his "goodbye" or whatever but the actual music is objectively pretty good and interesting

never really been one for electronic music but even i gotta give it up for the boys

I'm sure seeing this live would be amazing but taken this way it just feels kind of overwrought and musical theatery. There's plenty of good here but when standard bearer for a Pink Floyd album is Dark Side of the Moon I can't give it better than a 4

not the epitome, but still public enemy

i just so happen to have been listening to taylor swift's discography for the first time, so i feel like I'm in a uniquely good position to speak on this album. as the wizened geniuses in the top reviews so bravely point out, taylor swift is a pop musician. hopefully by the time they finish this list they'll have slightly more open minds and maybe have lightened up like 10%. so of course while I'd love to disagree with them, this just isn't that good even as a taylor swift album. coming off the heels of lover and folklore, her two best albums up to this point, this is a huge downgrade. pretty bland, and mostly just feels like a poor imitation of folklore, but more national-y, which to me is not a good thing. it's too scientifically engineered by pop scientists to ever slip into bad, and it has its moments, but it's pretty much the definition of average, and thus, it gets a big ol' 3

1001 talking heads albums to listen to before you die

stone cold classic

objectively good by nearly any measure but i just don't like piano so let's compromise on a 3

kinda feel like a chump giving every Beatles album a 5 but sometimes you just gotta give it up for the boys

one of my favorite albums of all time, words can hardly do it justice, or at least not my words

i used to love this album, but now, I don't know. maybe it aged poorly or maybe my sensibilities have changed in a way to misalign me from it. still plenty of highlights but it verges on plain ol' annoying too much to me now

on the one hand, pretty innovative and impressive for 1970. on the other hand, I'd pay good money to never hear ian gillan sing again

bit of a genuine classic innit

can't resist anything by joni Mitchell, the voice, the complexity of the music, the lyricism. she's got the goods

leads off with a song that made me think this might be good, but no such luck. ranges from numbers for a musical I'd never want to see to songs that were somehow written with the hope they'd eventually be included in an awful indie movie from 2005. none of the instruments are played with any recognizable emotion, and cocker's voice is better suited to hosting a children's tv show. hard pass

cannot bring myself to care

production is very sterile and inhuman to me, the drum machines make me want to die, cheesy and not in a fun way. bad indeed

one of the standard bearers of the dark age of mainstream music. squeaky clean and totally vacuous production, no subtlety whatsoever, any emotion feels purely artificial, and to top it off i simply just don't like Brandon flowers' voice and overblown, melodramatic delivery. i did like it in high school so revisiting it was kind of fun for that reason, but I definitely won't be listening of my own free will ever again

waffled a lot between 4 and 5 but at the end of the day Essex Dogs clinched it

this was coasting to a cool 2 until he said "noivus" in "I'm Shakin'." the atrocious vocals of "Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy" are just the nail in the coffin

i somehow wasn't very consciously aware of little simz before listening to this, but that has been permanently corrected

a bona fide classic from one of my all time favorites. joyful and powerful and what music should be

you almost have to appreciate a white guy bringing into reality the most debased, terrible version of what so many white people have imagined all rap music to be

always loved Ball and Biscuit, but the rest just doesn't do that much for me

I've only ever heard more recent stuff from queens of the stone age and never loved it, but compared to this, those albums at least have some unique and interesting artistic qualities even if they aren't for me. the best words to describe this are boring and generic

just dreadfully boring

a combination of engrossing, forceful and endlessly inventive percussion, beautiful and heart wrenching lyricism, and a gorgeous, insanely expressive vocal performance. it didn't hit me quite right on my first listen when it came out, but from then on it's just grown on me more and more; on every listen it just opens up more and more.

the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was getting two albums by the prodigy put onto this list

The TBI Beatles

very pleasant surprise, the vocals are usually what make or break metal for me, and this has exactly the vocal style i typically dislike, so i immediately was a bit down on it but i tried to keep an open mind. good thing i did, because while i never really came around to the vocal performance, the blending of sounds and styles here is really something, and excellently performed. I don't know that I'll be listening over and over by any means but it's definitely interesting, and very enjoyable

this? now this is that kinda stuff i do not like

blandly pleasant music to play in a "cool" clothing store

put this one down as pleasant surprise; like many I'm not usually one for Bob Dylan's voice, but i didn't mind it here and the song writing is pretty good as per usual. but a lot of it feels kind of samey to me, and i can only listen to so much harmonica

probably tolerable if you, like many of these other reviewers, were 13 when it came out and listened to it a lot. i was 13 when it came out, but i did not

pretty enjoyable mix of jazz and prog, like it quite a bit, would have liked it more if Robert Wyatt had kept his trap shut on Moon in June

as someone who hates "Loser" and has allowed my knowledge of Beck to begin and end there, i was extremely skeptical, but let's be real: this shit goes

one of my biggest musical pet peeves is horrible dude vocalists who simply can't accept they have a voice for the newspaper and barrel right ahead into performing lead vocals. the actual music here is good, but Billy Corgan is one of the kings of this archetype, and his singing completely kills the album

starts out so strong through the first three tracks, and then just kind of... keeps going

hopefully brexit will make it more difficult for the english to get their hands on musical instruments

not usually one for instrumental hip hop but this is obviously a beautiful example it. still, I don't think this would ever be a repeated active listen for me, but i can certainly appreciate it. midnight in a perfect world is a banger though

terrible man, fantastic Christmas album

okay: I'm finally convinced that everybody should in fact listen to 4 barely distinguishable talking heads albums before they die

very likely the best version of this sort of thing, which is not saying much

an amazing opening track, a fantastic closer, a pretty good beatles cover, and some other songs i don't quite remember

very pleasant surprise! i think my big criticism would be directed at the length; personally i feel that there are very very few hour long albums that earn it, and there's a handful of songs here that could be dropped and they wouldn't be missed, but otherwise color me impressed

what a coincidence, i was just thinking this list could use even more new wave albums!

really brings me back to mvp baseball 2005

never really gave these guys a fair shake. i miss those days

so insane that I can't help like it a little bit

inject it into my veins

probably my least favorite experience album (I don't think that's a hugely controversial opinion) but Jimi's worst is still better than many's best

i mean, it's not terrible, i guess

i love Bruce, but the production here is just completely limp and lifeless, and it mostly ends up sounding like a bruce springsteen impression

i think 'Zilch' must qualify as some kind of crime against humanity

ADAM RAISED A CAIN

are some of the songs embarrassingly weird and bad? sure. do i still like it? of course

lana is the modern standard bearer of what i often refer to, somewhar derisively, as "weepy music." like, it's fine, but it is extremely not for me, and i have a hard time imagining anybody not critically depressed wanting to listen to this front to back on any kind of regular basis also tolkien should get a songwriting credit on "not all who wander are lost"

do i even have to explain?

the contrarian part of me always wants to not like bob dylan but there's really just no helping it

really boggles the mind that people try to argue the stones are better than the Beatles. annoying, misogynist, repetitive. at least the beatles paired their misogyny with good music

untouchable

beautiful and mesmerizing. probably a 4 on a lot of days, but Cybele's Reverie and Emperor Tomato Ketchup, among other tracks, just hit me perfectly tonight

absolutely serviceable

is it good? hey, sure, but when I'm getting this a few days after blood on the tracks i gotta make some kind of differentiation to indicate how great blood on the tracks is

what is there to say that you can't read in the other reviews? as we all know, he's very technically proficient, and the production is fantastic, but the lyrical content is just abysmal. clearly, he's being intentionally outrageous and provocative and trying desperately to be funny, but it all falls flat, to put it mildly. this sort of peurile 90s outrage is just endlessly tiring. and to top it off, hey, he can't help it, but i just really dislike his voice

not the most mindless house or big beat album I've been saddled with by this list, so there's that. I'll throw it a +1 for the KLF also being very bonkers and interesting

somehow my first time listening to nine inch nails; enjoyed it quite a bit, but probably will never seek it out on my own again

it's bad, it's good, it's aggressively not music as well as very musical. comes closer to 'art' than many many albums on the list. really there's nothing i can say that hasn't been said already, but i gotta slap a 5 on it just for the novelty, influence and vision (if you can call untreated schizophrenia vision). there really are many snatches of genuinely catchy and enjoyable music here, but i think only someone interested in developing some schizophrenia of their own would want to listen to this front to back on anything approaching a regular basis. as they say, fast and bulbous

there is just something about Nick Drake and I that is fundamentally incompatible. i have never been able to come remotely close to wrapping my head around what the appeal is. it's just so dreary and boring to me, no matter how many shots i give him happy for everybody that loves and appreciates him, but that will never be me

pretty funky tunes

do i like it? not really. but it's definitely interesting, bracing, and quite obviously very ahead of its time. I can't really say i hated it, although i do hope I'm able to go the rest of my life never hearing "Girl" again

like probably many other white people my age, Kanye was a big entry point for me into rap, and was essentially the only hip hop i listened to for a good while (very embarrassed to have been a "everything but rap and country" kid in middle school). now, I've exposed myself to much more rap & hip hop and i just find my tastes have changed. the actual quality of production is pretty unimpeachable but the style of it just does nothing for me. a lot of it is weirdly weightless and the sounds just don't wow me the way they did back in 2010. and of course many of the actual lyrics are eye rolling how much of this is just a subconscious response to what Kanye has become? probably a lot, i dunno. i try to listen unbiased but there's just an inescapable level of slime over all of it now. i want to say my diminished view is honestly come by, but truly i can't say how much my opinion of the man is causing me to be less generous than i otherwise would be. but, hey, I'm not a professional critic, i can afford to be biased

beautifully realized and fulfilling piece of art; that being said I don't love what she's doing with her voice here as a big time Rid of Me fan, and there are some stretches that are definitely on the grating side. have to give it up and give it a 5 for the excellent realization of a vision, but this is not something I'd ever have going on repeat

generally just quite tiresome. he's got a good flow and the beats are fine if not anything to write home about, but the lyrics are just completely lacking in any artfulness or subtlety. i tried to be on bored at first but it really just wears on you. the beats and music start to blend together, the lyrics just get lamer and stupider

interminable and frankly just kind of lame. james hetfield's voice also just does not sound great in that weird way a lot of 90s and 2000s metal vocals sound that i can never quite describe. I'm sure this would have been cool to attend, but as a recording it is miserable and neverending

now this is some genuinely interesting freak music. very dramatic, weird and eclectic, and laibach themselves and the NSK state are fascinating. can't imagine I'll be reaching for this over and over, but very happy to have been exposed to it

listened to this album for the first time a little over a year ago and didn't particularly care for it. guess i grew a brain since then

can't think of a worse mega-successful band. musical styrofoam packing peanuts, absymally bad lyrics, somebody should remove Bono's vocal chords, may god have mercy on their souls

better than the last echo and the bunnymen album i got on here, which is frankly a vague memory (just the kind of impression you'd expect an "album you have to listen to before you die" to make!) a little more squirmy and sonically interesting than a lot of its ilk. it almost thrums and dare i say crackles at points! however, the obvious and embarrassing bias towards British music (especially all the post-punk and new wave) is getting more than a little tiresome. it's really too bad that hardly anybody outside of the US and UK has made any music in the last 70 years. ah well

i feel like every song immediately exited my brain after listening, but overall it's pretty much fine. however, It's A Shame About Ray is one my least favorite songs of all time so that's an automatic deduction right there

some undeniable bangers (don't stop til you get enough, get on the floor) and some undeniable stinkers (she's out of my life, I can't help it)

reheated and disposable. if art decorates space and music decorates time, this is auditory motel art

when i finish this list, I'll look back on this album and think "which one was that?"

very impressive and deserves its spot on the list, but i personally am not a fan of hour long solo piano recordings, regardless of proficiency or significance

after noticing some discrepancies with the lyrics, i dug around and learned that on spotify (as well as at least apple music according to another reviewer) tracks 4-7 are actually tracks 4-7 from their first album. can you just swing over to the debut and play the correct Mystery City songs there? no, that'd be too easy, Bangkok Shocks of course has the correct tracks 4-7. this works for and against my initial impressions, as it means both the vile lyric "the sweet taste from the lips between your legs" (which sent me down this rabbit hole) and my favorite song (Cheyenne, mislabeled as Lick Summer Love) are both not actually on Mystery City. without this valley and peak, it's pretty unremarkable. more fun and less grating than the glam metal bands they'd influence, at least

usually I'm at least somewhat generous to stuff that tries to be "artsy" like this, but this just feels super forced and pretentious. there are a couple glimmers of enjoyable music but as everybody and their dog has pointed out, his voice is just unlistenably bad. is there supposed to be some point being made by the juxtaposition of the awful vocals and the passable-to-good music? possibly, but just because you do something bad on purpose doesn't make it magically not bad

pretty economical way to make 44 minutes feel like 90

first time really listening to the kinks, i was hoping i could say "more like The Stinks" but unfortunately it was good so i am unable to put "more like The Stinks" in this review

a voice i would usually find to be a turn off but oddly works for me, and the musical backing is by and large gorgeous. my political sympathies also make me inclined to like the bastard, and after all I'm always a sucker for this folk shit

often I'll just leave the review blank for 5 star albums where i have nothing to add that hasn't been said a million times already here and elsewhere, but sometimes i need to write something just to emphatically underline that sentiment. this is one of those times

sure there are some songs I don't love (namely Two For The Price Of One which is terrible) but on the whole this is just very fun, very well made and actually fairly interesting pop music. Arrival is more fun, but this is the better album

the light at the end of the tunnel that is 90s electronic music

i mean i obviously appreciate how important this album is, and it has some real bangers, but it's just not something I'm gonna be listening to on a regular basis. at only 25 minutes it's short and sweet but there are still songs i just don't care about. 5/5 for deserving a spot on the list, but 3/5 in my heart

i really like this in theory but in practice i don't want to hear David Thomas's vocal performance ever again (can't believe he had time for this band on top of running Wendy's!) challenging in a way that doesn't feel forced or (excessively) pretentious. not something to throw on in the background for sure, but active listening is certainly rewarded here. again, i just wish there wasn't some unwritten rule about post punk vocals being insufferable 85% of the time

i went in expecting to really hate this, but instead i only mildly disliked it 👍🏻

somebody kill me!!!! soul crushingly lame I'm sure this was a thrilling release for people working at advertising firms!!!

i can appreciate the weirdness and there's some glimmers of stuff here i like, but overall i just find it really grating. they obviously have talent and are clearly pulling on some good reference points but the final product just doesn't work for me. the a cappella shit is just the final nail in the coffin (if i never hear Ambulance again, it'll be too soon) only by the strength of Wear You Out does this crawl up to a 2

when i got shleep on here a couple weeks ago, i figured that Robert wyatt's voice must have changed as he aged, or he was doing a little late career experimentation or something. apparently, no, he's just been rocking with this god awful vocal style the whole damn time

never have been and probably never will be the right flavor of gay for sufjan stevens, but i can recognize that this is almost objectively good, even if it doesn't really do anything for me. a begrudging 4

i mean it's not gonna be in heavy rotation for me by any means, but I'm always gonna be a sucker for this sort of thing to a certain extent. also you can't not laugh when it's a guy named "Ramblin' ______" and half his songs are about bugs and cocaine

basically didn't know any chicago past 25 or 6 to 4 (which is kinda lame but gotta admit is still a banger) this is pretty fun and well made, and the boys are technically good musicians, but it's a little too long and just kind of cheesy. overall: solid but not a hit for me

good thing no one was around when i listened to this because it meant no one heard when i blurted out "oh, shut the fuck up" when he started singing Amazing Grace

not an ounce of fat on this bad boy

kinda felt like it would never end. otherwise passable to good!

there's definitely stuff here that didn't age, uh, gracefully, but there's a lot more that's still very relevant and sonically it's just so fuckin heavy and powerful

great first try, boys! oh, this was their second album? well, nevertheless,

was i high in the bath tub while listening to this? sure, of course, so what?

TWO ryan Adams albums on this list??????

eclectic, engaging and funky; finally a good "electronic" album on the list (although I don't think that does it justice)

still gestating here but this is definitely still an amazing debut. as a side note i apparently gave raising hell 3 stars? hopefully they invent time travel soon so i can shoot myself in the head before clicking that. 5 stars for raising hell

without this list, i would have in fact died never listening to this, and upon my arrival in hell would have been dutifully informed i had missed out on some classic British jangle pop. "thank god" i would have said

i could almost get behind this musically but it is just soooo saccharine and twee

if i was a white middle class suburban dad desperate to formulate some kind of identity by staking a bizarre claim on irish heritage despite my family being in america for 150 years, i would probably love this!

if i had any suspicions that many of this site's users were dull, pretentious men, then the reviews for this album certainly would have done nothing to confirm them! 👍🏻

i truly expected to absolutely hate this, and while I didn't, i did also go out of ny way to make sure i listened to the album as originally released (not the one disc version the spotify link here leads to) and good lord there is no album that can justify a 2 hour and 20 minute length, and certainly not when that album is entirely drum and bass. I'll toss it an extra star for not making me 100% bonkers which is an achievement, but if I'm grading this as an album listening experience than holy shit you will never ever catch me putting this on again

by all rights, i should love this, but it just doesn't really do that much for me! hard to put my finger on it, but it's just missing some sort of oomph. feels kind of paint-by-numbersy, which is obviously an opinion i can only have with 50 years of hindsight of music no doubt influenced by it and having heard Apache sampled a million times, but i never claimed to have rational opinions. if somebody put it on i wouldn't complain but I'll probably never reach for it myself

i simply can't fathom why such an annoying and utterly forgettable album was removed in later editions of the book!

feels a lot more like poetry read over music than a lot of rap, unfortunately I'm not the biggest fan of poetry. musically it gets pretty repetitive but there are some nice moments, and i do appreciate the well expressed political sentiments (which i am of course biased towards) but sonically there's just not that much to write home about

i want to go back in time and stop myself from ever learning about this website

I don't think this is really horrible or anything, and i do recognize the cultural significance of destiny's child, especially in hind sight as the jumping off point for Beyoncé, but this whole thing just feels extremely cynical and barely even like an album. in terms of content and themes, there's absolutely no cohesion or consistency here-- to jump from Bootylicious right into Nasty Girl is some crazy whiplash, and then when you sprinkle in all the god stuff it doesn't feel like an album at all but just a mish mash of songs scientifically designed to hit as many segments of the population as possible. there's no overarching ideas and you really don't get the impression this is intended to be listened to as an actual album at all, you're just supposed to pick out your favorites and ditch the rest. again, not awful, but it gets a 1 for the cynicism of it and for barely even qualifying as an album

uncle music (derogatory)

for some reason i feel like this maybe doesn't deserve 5 stars but damn it just hits idk

barf

perfect album, but only if you want to show someone why this era of music was so fucking lame

is it good? not really. will i be listening to it front to back all the time? definitely not. is it more interesting and engaging than 60% of the stuff on this list? absolutely. is Hamburger Lady cool as fuck and AB/7A a banger? you know it

i just don't like bjork! you can't make me!

somebody please kill me before the next Tom waits album comes up (this is definitely better than the other two I've had to listen to so far but i still hate it)

of course it's 5 stars, please, it's funkadelic, i would allow George clinton to cut my head off, you are silly if you expected a different rating

i have a nostalgic soft spot for nu metal but this is just kind of vaguely annoying to me

short and sweet 🌺

put me to sleep (literally) but not in a bad way

the platonic ideal of Average Metal

my least favorite fiona apple album and still absolutely fantastic

put me to sleep (figuratively) but in a bad way

there's that thing people say about film scores, that you hardly even take notice of the greatest ones when actually watching a film. in that sense, this certainly achieves its stated goal

i really appreciate the restraint they showed in keeping this to a brisk, mind numbing 75 minutes

after 5 listens i finally perceive the truth: this is pretty good

on different class there was some interesting stuff going on sonically in spite of Cocker's massively unlistenable voice. here, the music is boring and his voice still sounds like he's auditioning for the part of a carefree and lively tree on a nicktoons animated series

i remember the first time i heard this a couple years ago, the names "Primal Scream" and "Screamadelica" led to me to believe i was about to experience some cool as fuck weirdo psychedelic punk music, and instead i just got some fairly psychedelic rock with a big heaping helping of grating house music. at least Loaded is a fucking banger

beautiful music and i want to like bill callahan more, but he's just another case of a voice I don't like at all. he can't help that though, and he's brilliant when it comes to all the stuff he can

i dunno, it's pretty good, but i can't really stand the very very 80s pop sound on full display here. i can appreciate that she's touching on the subject matter she is (including the sample of the newscast about a shooting is a pretty legit move for an album this big and mainstream) but it doesn't really feel like she has anything specific or novel to say. I'm a broken record on this, but it's also too long, I'm now thoroughly convinced that CDs, digital formats, etc were all mistakes since at least when everything was on vinyl artists had to know how to exercise some restraint. it's good, but it has a lot of flaws that keep it from being a heavy rotation album for me

useful at least for defining the word "grating"

never really been my fav Beatles album, although "got to get you into my life" is one of my fav songs by them. if this was the only beatles album on the list it'd skate by with a 5 probably but when there's so many, you gotta grade on a curve

sure, i had a horrible ex who loved LCD soundsystem and i always found them annoying, but I'd be willing to look past that if this dweeb could produce a pleasant or interesting sound with his voice

i do think big bad pop zeitgeisty albums deserve to be on this list; after all, it's just "albums you must hear before you die," not "the best albums of all time." influence and significance and reach have to carry a lot of weight too that being said, this album is wholly unremarkable, there are others that would fill this niche/time period better, and I'm surprised this one ever made the list and equally unsurprised that it was removed from future editions. two thumbs way down JT

annoying voice and weightless music: truly emblematic of 2007!

many other complaints but the disgusting sound of lips on the opening track are basically an automatic 1 on their own

explosive, righteous, powerful, and just fucking cool as hell sonically. one of the best albums on the list flat out

i appreciate the goofiness and tongue-in-cheekness of it all, but goddamn you cannot make your album this long when you have so little to say

i harp a lot about albums being too long, but here's an exceedingly rare example of an 80 minute album that actually earns its length

horrifically generic and boring glam rock, solidly in the category of "will be impossible to recall exactly how it sounded two months from now"

not offensively bad, but just kind of boring and very repetitive. a lot of what you hear here sounds like first drafts, both lyrically and musically. pass!

a huge dork's idea of the kind of music you'd put on for sex

perhaps this list's biggest problem is the number of repeats there are when there are still so many amazing and artists (especially from africa, Asia and latin America) that are totally unrepresented. this is a pretty good album, but when it's the fifth led zeppelin album on the list and (in my opinion) markedly not as good as the others, it feels like a waste of a spot that could have gone to a band like Amanaz or Yellow Magic Orchestra

this feels so far ahead of its time. innovative sounds, cool riffs, leftist politics, sign me up

as a self identified britpop disliker and somebody who didn't like their first album on this list all that much, i was pretty amazed at how good and eclectic this is. basically every song is good, while covering a lot of territory but still coming together in a pretty cohesive and tight package. definitely one of the most pleasant surprises for me on this list!

starts out strong, gotta give it up for Enter Sandman, despite its overplayedness, then Sad But True is good and later on Wherever I May Roam kinda goes... besides those you're left with 45 minutes of forgettable to serviceable music

exhausting

on the one hand, it's self evidently really good. on the other hand, 3 hours of it is way way too much and i will die on the hill that this is not an 'album.' split the difference and call it a 3

me and my 8 awful smelling housemates recorded an album this summer. none of us had ever touched an instrument before and we all think we're the smartest person in the world. hope you enjoy it!

enjoyable, interesting, impressive, and actually fits the definition of an album you "should listen to before you die." probably won't be throwing it on all the time but I'm richer for having heard it

i hated this immediately, but unfortunately, a twisted compulsion to give every album a fair shake and listen to them in full means i have subjected myself to a shockingly self indulgent 3 hours of twee nick cave demos this is the worst album on the list so far by a wide margin. any jazz musician should be able to legally kill Stephin Merritt for Love Is Like Jazz. they would have played this at gitmo, but then they wouldn't have anybody left to torture after it killed everyone

just one black mark here: nick cave's abysmal and out of place performance on "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," but Fiona Apple on "Bridge Over Troubled Water" more than cancels that out

what do you think the odds are that Robert Dimery was a teenager/young adult during the new wave and britpop eras?

kind of conflicting, the beats and production are so cool and ahead of their time, but the lyrics definitely leave quite a bit to be desired. they're just kind of lame, without that much interesting to say and one thing i can never stand in hip hop of any era is an over reliance on repetitious lyrics. I'm not all that bothered by the content-- he's playing a character, 90s hip hop had a lot of content like this, whatever-- but the character is the only thing there, he's not saying anything novel or interesting, he's just inhabiting a marginally interesting character. but if i just threw this on and paid no attention to the actual lyrics, then that's some good music

finally, an answer to the question: "what if the rolling stones were good?"

an evil creep with some admittedly catchy/hooky stuff here buried under a ton of mediocre shit, in addition to being way way too fucking long (do you really expect me to buy this as some kind of 'masterpiece,' marilyn?) and as always his shtick is just so performative and lame. considered in a vacuum it's probably actually a 2 but I'm feeling particularly ungenerous towards it

I'm sure it's just a coincidence that every album by a black woman that hasn't been formally inducted into the """canon""" gets poor reviews on this site

I've always found the national to be kind of dull, pretentious and certainly quite overrated. I don't think you could really call this "bad" but it's absolutely not for me

not bad, definitely overlong and it steps a little too much into perhaps my most hated genre, electroswing, but overall pretty enjoyable

probably neat when it came out but now it just makes me think "why am i not just listening to either the Beatles or CSNY?"

honestly I wasn't expecting much but this is pretty cohesive and pleasant, with some pretty beautiful portions. plus who doesn't love a Manson family connection!

i had never heard of Skunk Anansie but this was a super pleasant surprise: funky, hard edged or beautiful as needed, and just plain cool sonically, with an amazing voice from Skin. will absolutely be checking out more of their discography

pretty nice to clean the house to

simon i love but once you get garfunkel in the mix? that's my time to catch a little shut eye

keep going, I'm sure the next forgettable new wave album is the one that I'll finally love (at least karma chameleon is good)

cool weirdo shit

some really cool riffs and hooky songs punctuated with extremely grating moments. bonus points for a band name I've always found to be eye rollingly annoying!

there will be a speaker in my tombstone that plays 1983 on repeat

like all frank sinatra, tops out at "nice background music." I can't really say it's bad obviously but you will never catch me actively listening to frankie by choice. great example of a 3 but I'm feeling spiteful so minus 1 point for all the dumb guys who think frank Sinatra is the pinnacle of music

blandly pleasant

it really blows my mind that Q-Tip doesn't come up more in conversations about the greatest rappers of all time, not to mention how talented he is as a producer. this is so funky and groovy & lyrically dense and cool, especially when you put it up against almost all of its contemporaries

twee 2010s indie pop rock drivel

i feel like Sisyphus except instead of rolling a boulder up a hill it's listening to mediocre new wave albums

i still don't love his voice but I'll be damned if i don't pretty much love everything else here. after all, guys like me are mad for turtle meat

it wouldn't be until Hey There Delilah that this level of cloying, twee irritation would be surpassed

I've been listening to ELO since i was a kid, and honestly, this is not nearly my favorite album of theirs. it's their big pop album with many of their huge hits, but i just think it's a lot less interesting than a lot of their other work. it's probably also the album that introduced me to the concept of an album being too long and having too much filler. i still love it, and comparing it to the rest of this list in general, it's gotta get a 5, but if Face the Music, Eldorado, ELO 2, etc etc were on here it'd be getting a 4 just in relation to those

better than a lot of the new wave/post punk on this list, lots of interesting and varied sounds, but also a very good example of what i call 'post punk voice' (guy who mostly can't sing and instead puts on a flat affectation as if he's the second coming of ian curtis)

there's nothing wrong with cribbing from your inspirations, lots of great art and especially music does it, but you do have to put something interesting or novel into the mix, or what's the point? i liked Idiot Brother at least

i dunno, by all rights i should probably dislike this, but I've always loved tracey Thorn's voice and for some reason the whole package just really hits. good thing I'm not a real critic because 'it just hits' probably wouldn't fly!

blandly pleasant!

it's so against my brand to like this. french electronic duo? this is devastating. absolutely unfair that this is so groovy and ominous and thrumming

I'm shocked that a hit 80s song that represents almost the entire modern legacy of a band comes from an otherwise completely forgettable and/or annoying album! probably the only time that's happened

anybody who says Fairytale of New York is their favorite Christmas song should be treated with the same contempt as somebody who names Die Hard as their favorite Christmas movie

pretty good but not particularly noteworthy

there's something very funny about Bowie bringing a band back from the brink of death so that they can continue on as a two-bit imitation of him

this is fine for what it is but for me personally i can't imagine a scenario where I'd put this on over a grateful dead set. simply a matter of taste, i think everyone only has room for one jam band in their life!

kind of a blessing in disguise that Spotify only has the shitty version, because for someone like me who doesn't have a ton of exposure to straight ahead Indian music (despite its relatively outsized influence on music in the anglophone world) it actually helps you appreciate the real thing more when you first accidentally get exposed to the same music only executed much more poorly

coming from someone that would usually say this as a compliment: this is just a whole bunch of noise, however.... she do be busy sucking on my ding dong 🤷🏻

i love music created only for licensing!

kind of a novelty but also i listened to it back to back 3 times so it was doing something right

john lydon's shtick is as always very tiresome, but Fodderstompf deserves some recognition as perhaps the worst album closer of all time

nah, skipping this one. really, the only purpose of this project is to broaden my own horizons and i heard this back when it came out, i remember it, no reason to give him even the tiny useless amount of money from streaming it. it was fine back then. I'm sure it holds up fine, but I'll never be listening again of my own volition

slick, gaudy and utterly vacuous

i think i just missed the boat on the white stripes. if i had listened contemporaneously, I'd probably be able to appreciate it more or at least have some nostalgia, but coming to them fresh in the 2020s, having already listened to plenty of blues, 70s garage rock and proto punk, I don't hear anything from them i wouldn't rather get somewhere else. not bad but just doesn't do anything for me. minus 1 point for jack white's nasally voice that feels even more untempered than on later albums (and not in a good way)

i dig it but compared to their first two albums it feels a lot weaker. less raw emotion and vitriol in Iggy's voice, the groove i love so much in the first two is gone. still great and its influence is pretty clear to see though

like every other elvis costello album this hits me absolutely nowhere, no real strong feelings about this, although i did find it to be about 15% more grating than his other albums

it's not very pretty or even particularly good but there is something affecting and tragic about the whole thing, both in the story behind its recording and musically. octopus does actually kind of slap though

actually ended up liking this much more than their later albums! sure, you could say it's a little derivative for the time but it's much more fun and wat less overwrought than tommy or who's next. you either die the good who or live long enough to see yourself become the bad who

it's definitely good but i don't know if it really warrants a spot on the list, i feel like this is one for a nirvana fan, not the general public. thinking of the list as a broad liberal arts education (which i feel is the basic premise) this feels sort of like an advanced chemistry class. like sure it's valuable, but it's something you pursue further as an individual, not something that should be part of the foundation

now this is my shit: i love desert blues, i love the guitar tone, i love how hypnotic and groovy and by turns lively and relaxing it is

the pinnacle of steely dan's career: recording Peg so that De La Soul could sample it in Eye Know

after years of cultivating a vaguely continental European vibe, bowie boldly declared "actually I'm just a german guy now"

killer queen is of course a banger. there were some other songs too, i think

utterly, painfully, unremarkable music paired with a voice that can be described as generically good but will never be hailed as unique or particularly interesting. I'll give rufus the benefit of the doubt that this was a labor of love and the result of his true artistic expression, which actually does make it somewhat impressive that it sounds like it was created exclusively in response to the feedback of focus groups

this is what you'd write to be the in-universe music of the main character's band in a crappy 80s movie

pretty good but left no real impression on me, and didn't seem particularly noteworthy or significant for the era. guess you had to be there!

it sucks

having never heard of this band, their name and wikipedia excerpt (1993 indie rock) gave me the impression that i was about to listen to one of the 90's Most Licenceable Albums but thankfully those expectations were subverted. instead i got some pretty cool post hardcore with a little industrial mixed in for good measure. the vocals aren't my favorite but they're low enough in the mix for me to tune them out and enjoy that guitar tone

this prick'll crank out some decent tunes now and again

I believe it was Shakespeare who once said "van BORRISON,,!!!!! bitch"

actually I'd have been quite okay dying not having heard nick cave's entire discography

i think if i had been way into this at the time I'd probably love it, but as it stands it's just fine

Richard Becomes Asleep

look I'm not saying this is totally without value and that scott walker lacks talent or skill, but i am saying that i found it boring and annoying

yee haw

cannot fucking stand Lemmy's god awful voice and while I don't think lyrical content exactly constitutes a moral affront or anything, Jailbait (among others) does make me personally feel very skeeved out (which could possibly be forgivable if it was a banger (it isn't))

pretty pleasant one to just let wash over you, but doesn't really stick with me

i prefer her more country stuff but Constant Craving is an absolute banger

always a sucker for a little twang but i don't really feel anything else off of this that would compel me to return very often