1001 Albums Summary

Used to be my favorite artist of all time, still think they're great but listen less often now. Great album though.

Bland, repetitive and poorly produced with awful lyrics. As someone who doesn't typically pay too much attention to lyrics, when I do notice them and they negatively impact my enjoyment of the music it's a huge negative.

Some fine pop rock/new wave but nothing special or memorable.

Great afrobeat album, 4.5 stars.

Bland and uninspiring instrumentation and arrangements, the last two songs are decent but I won't be revisiting this.

Fantastic, great arrangements and songwriting.

Starts strong, fades a little in the middle and bounces back for a good finish. Cool and eerie.

Been a while since I'd listened to this, fun and unpredictable.

The limitless potential of sample-based hip-hop, a little indulgent and bloated but still a great album.

There's a few good songs at the beginning of the record but it's too repetitive.

It might be somewhat interesting as a document of where the stones came from but this is a bad album, one I could not wait to be over. Not sure why it's on this list.

One of Bowie's best, manic yet slight.

Production is fine, but Dan the Automator shines way more on Deltron 3030, his production is a little too subdued here. The lyrics are awful and really take away from this project. There's a few songs I'll come back to but it's too long and lyrically off-putting to revisit as a whole.

Raw and powerful, essential hardcore punk.

Maniacal in the best way. Not for everyone but I'm glad this was on the list, I've got a new avant-garde jazz catalog to dive into now.

Adele can certainly sing, but the compositions and lyrical content are too one note. Rolling in the deep is an amazing song though.

As someone with little exposure to the UK hip-hop scene, this was a cool album to listen to. Full of energy and immaculately produced; doing this at 17/18 is incredible.

Outside of Three Days, which to give them credit is amazing song, this was an annoying listen. Shrill vocals and the terrible late 80s early 90s hard rock aesthetics.

Only album I've given up on so far, trite and boring. Why is this on the list.

Starts strong but tails off, the second half is much weaker than the first.

Filled with bland instrumentation, shrill vocals, and terrible 90s alt rock-isms this album is a mess. The fact that this is compared to Carole King's masterpiece Tapestry is a joke.

Hard hitting and progressive, essential east coast hip-hop.

One of the greatest albums of the 21st century and Kendrick's magnum opus. A brilliant collage of soul, jazz, funk and hip-hop.

Some good ideas here but they need to be fully fleshed out.

Mediocre pop rock. There seems to be a lot of albums like this on the list that could be replaced with more varied and interesting choices.

The first side contains some great renditions of some of Dylan's greatest songs, Visions of Johanna being the highlight, but side two is where everything comes alive and this turns into a great live album. Dylan and The Band are raw and energetic, bringing an extra energy to already fantastic songs like Ballad of a Thin Man and Like a Rolling Stone.

Good album but a little overrated, drags in the middle and isn't the Stones' best work.

The definitive 90s hip-hop album, and one of the greatest albums of all time. Nas combines incredible poetry and storytelling with hard-hitting beats from DJ Premier, Pete Rock and Large Professor, arguably 3 of New York's greatest producers, to provide an intimate look at life in Queensbridge.

Noisy and hypnotic, alternative rock at its most essential.

Little of value outside the decent singles at the start.

There's some killer riffs and cool passages here, but the songs blend together by the end of the album; I also would've liked to understand a little bit of the lyrics.

Quality drops towards the end but the first 3/4 is very good.

There's some decent singles here but it's one of Bowie's weakest 70s albums.

There's 6-7 fantastic tracks here, mostly the ones that open and close the album, I Am The Resurrection being the obvious highlight of those. There's some filler here but still a very good record.

Not a whole lot of interesting music here, just a mediocre blend of blues, country and pop.

Like DEVO but if they were completely devoid of all that makes DEVO great, kitschy and annoying.

I was apprehensive when I saw Rod Stewart's name but this is a solid album, nothing too different but there are some good tracks on here.

An interesting yet uneven blend of latin and indie rock.

Far from their great records in the 80s, bloated and uninspired songwriting and compositions.

Clearly a step below their later work, both in terms of the beats, which are too skeletal and not hard hitting, and with lyrics that veer into corniness as well as the presence of some weaker hooks. It's still a good album but one in which the group is still finding their footing.

Morrissey sucks and I've never vibed with The Smiths' style of indie/jangle pop.

Songs so good you wish they were longer.

This album has a weak middle section but there's some solid songwriting on display here.

A giant step into mediocrity, never settles on a good sound beyond a few solid tracks (the noisier ones towards the start of the record).

Nice blend of prog and pop, I'm glad this was on the list. As someone who likes prog, I'd somehow overlooked them.

Might have been influential to a lot of great music I like, but there's far more interesting proto-punk elsewhere.

Another Rod Stewart project, another fine roots/blues rock album. There's nothing spectacular here, just some solidly written tunes, Stay With Me being the highlight.

Live Johnny Cash: easy 5 stars.

12 perfect pop songs.

Killer first half, slows down at the end but still a very good debut with greater things to come obviously; 3.5 stars.

As a fan of Bowie, this album does not deserve to be on this list, it's a mediocre re-tread of his great work in the late 70s. Apart from the title track, nothing stood out at all. Do 5-6 Bowie albums have a spot on this list-absolutely, just not this one.

A fine yet unspectacular fusion album.

Scatterbrained in the best way.

A mediocre blend of Dylan and Bowie.

Runs out of ideas fairly quickly but there's some good tracks here.

Powerful politically charged music, Kuti as his most essential.

More interesting in some ways than Rumours; a greater variety in songwriting and composition, but uneven in parts.

There are incredible highs on this record: the first 12 tracks are a sensational blend of rock, jazz, reggae, ska and other genres; but excluding the brilliant closer Train in Vain, the last third of the record fails to repeat the successes of the previous songs.

After the first three songs, I was unsure as to why so many people had a problem with this record. Sure the songs were long, but they didn't overstay their welcome and had a real force behind them; the second half of the record illuminated those criticisms I had seen. As someone who loves longer music (Swans are my favorite artist), the performances start to drag and lack a sense of direction, sure there are great moments or stretches of a couple minutes, but the totality of the later songs lack a certain cohesiveness that the first three had in spades.

Alt-country greatness.

There are jazz albums I listen to more often and prefer to this one, but every time I return its greatness is immediately evident.

Two great songs followed by eight mediocre ones.

The Kinks as they approach greatness with their next two albums, Waterloo Sunset being the obvious highlight.

A great closing track preceded by 7 average new wave songs.

Style aside, there aren't any memorable tracks on this album apart from the ones I've heard endless times on their own (Shake it Off/Out of the Woods).

Following the great Bittersweet Symphony, there's an hour plus of the most insipid Britpop ever recorded. I'm far from the biggest fan of Oasis but at least they know how to write some interesting songs unlike these guys.

Songs that sound like they were written by middle schoolers who just discovered the blues, with horrible singing to boot.

Exactly the type of album I was hoping to discover, as my knowledge of African music outside of Fela Kuti is severely lacking. A great project.

Icy brilliance.

I was a huge fan of this album when I was 14, I am no longer 14.

11 brilliant pop tracks thrown through a meat grinder and melted on the face of the sun; as essential and brilliant as they come.

A little better than the other britpop albums I've gotten so far but not by a whole lot; there's way too much of it on this list.

Needed some weird shit after a string of formulaic albums.

Excellent album, just the type of overlooked project I was hoping would be on this list.

The closer aside this is a great album.

Saccharine-ness aside, I really enjoy I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, and Where the Streets Have No Name is a solid opener, but the rest of the album is so forgettable and horrible.

If this was punishing in any way I might have actually enjoyed it.

Exactly what this list needed, more mediocre, live rock music from England in the 70s. Yawn

Foundational but outdated, The Message still hits all these years later though.

A great album from a horrible person.

Some nice beats but thank god for Rakim coming along soon after this.

Outrageously great.

The best Smiths album, but I've always failed to understand its overwhelming acclaim. There are some great songs on here (namely the title track and bigmouth), but to me it lacks cohesiveness and has too many weak tracks.

The same as every other Smiths album, some nice songs to pick out but doesn't work as a cohesive project.

I love Radiohead, but this album contains too many 90s alt-rock-isms and has a weak track list. Revisiting this for the first time in a few years, I was struck by how bored I was for most of the runtime, and how mediocre most of the songs were. Street spirit is a great closer, but this is an average album propped up in acclaim by the rest of their incredible catalog.

Probably the weakest of their 70s material, some solid tunes here and there but nothing approaching the peaks of this era.

37 minutes of otherworldly bliss.

3.5 stars; better than the other Beck album I've gotten (Guero), but all the interesting ideas are in the first half of the record.

4 great songs to start then the quality falls off a cliff.

Listened to the Smile Sessions.

The least interesting of their first 3 albums.

Finally a good britpop album, helps that it doesn't stick only in that lane and incorporates a broad set of influences.

Joni's greatest achievement.

Such a step down from Funeral.