1001 Albums Summary

Slaps, but sometimes they needed to just let the instrumental shred The open to Cloud 9 is great

Enjoyed this one. Louis Prima has a good voice, the band clearly enjoyed what they were doing. The duets with Keely Smith were solid.

Some great songs, started to feel a little repetitive. Realized I had no idea what Beck's music sounds like.

Has a few good songs, but a lot of the songs are just dreary bluesy messes. 'Paint It Black' is definitely the best song here and the most off-piste compared to the rest of the album.

Interesting mix of early indie rock and LatAm music. Whipping The Horse's Eyes is basically Pink Floyd with maracas and steel guitar.

If not for 'The Party' (excruciatingly bad) this would be a 5. 'Let There Be Light'- impossible not to dance to it. Great dance album.

Real relevant and impactful songwriting- a song about Elvis in..... the year 2000. A plodding and dreary mess of an album. Her singing is muddied and incomprehensible on some tracks. Often times it sounds like she didn't even know what the backing track was while she is singing. The few bluesy and interesting riffs are immediately buried in execrable vocals. Would not recommend.

Starts strong, drags by the end.

Starts strong, remains strong throughout.

Not sure if the vocoder thing on 'Oh, What A World' was meant to be a country throwback to the Talking Box or a modern production technique, but either way, it didn't work. Overall, a decent album. No real standouts.

Tom Sawyer was good. The rest of it was mostly repetitive synth-rock from there, with no real standout tracks

A few good singles, but the rest isn't particularly interesting as an album

Not usually an instrumental fan, but this had enough novelty and variety that I was fine with it

Mr Tambourine Man and Its Alright Ma I'm Only Bleeding are the only highlights on this album.

Sounds like a mailman singing pop rock. I have no idea what the end goal of this music is.

I didn't think I would enjoy this and I definitely wouldn't seek it out. It had moments. It inspired feeling. I could imagine other symphonies. More interesting and varied than a lot of albums I would normally consider better.

Tight hard-core album, just enough novelty to keep it going for the 15-ish minute album runtime

Every song could have been a minute shorter and it would have been a much tighter album. Zack de la Rocha yelling "yeah" and "unh" on every track only gets you so far. Very solid songs and overall structure of the album beyond that. A tighter editing would have made this a 5.

Welcome to New York is the Sbarros of songs about New York. Blank Space is like she's trying to channel Rebecca Black doing a bad Lana Del Rey impression. Style could be a decent pop song if it was sung by someone else, leaned into the cooler riffs and didn't do that terrible stilted vocal delivery (which again, sounds like Rebecca Black). Out of The Woods has some cool stuff in the backing track but is weighed down by Taylor Swift's remarkably unremarkable vocals and by high school sadposting level lyrics. She was 25, she had no excuse on this. All You Had To Do Was Stay- the overdubbed high notes on 'stay' are actually pretty cool, the lyrics are someone in 2009 posting vague half sentences on Facebook for attention but its a grown woman in song in 2014. Shake It Off- okay, I can see how this was a hit. Lyrics are still really weak (and are all about her personal life) but her vocals aren't as glaringly bad or out of step with the backing track in this uptempo dance song. I Wish You Would- honestly, see above. Bad lyrics, boring vocals, nothing to hear here. Bad Blood- understandably a hit. Probably not a coincidence that the two best songs on this album were the product of Max Martin. The song is at its best when it's uptempo and it nearly loses it when it drops and starts talking about band-aids, but it pulls through. Wildest Dreams- somewhat enjoyed this one, but again, Taylor Swift's voice is a mismatch for the song. She's not quite twee enough to give it a haunting quality and she's not got enough depth or range to pull off what I think she is trying here (which is to rip off Lana Del Rey). It just ends up being at best an okay song because it doesn't really do any potential angle for an illicit love song well. How You Get The Girl- A) no one should take relationship advice from T-Swift, she makes this clear in all of her other songs B) this song could not end fast enough This Love, I Know Places, Clean- album filler, again, I Know Places could actually be good if sung by someone else because of the same uncomfortable middle with Wildest Dreams 2/5 gonna let Max Martin have a W here

Album is a bit long, but there are some really nice tracks in here. Not a lot of exposure to grime or British rap, I was surprised by how much I liked this album.

It's kitschy and disjointed, far from Pink Floyd's best work. A chore to listen to from beginning to end.

Very interesting album from the period before punk solidified into a real genre. You can hear the origins of New Wave, and it's interesting how much just deeply misanthropic lyrics can contrast with the light, synthetic sound here. 4/5

Nothing particularly remarkable. Not a bad slice of bluesy psychedelia but nothing really stand out.

Probably the best album by The Flaming Lips as a whole album, and certainly the one most open to influences outside of their normal well.

This album surprised me. A lot of depth to the lyrics and the production. The Little interpolation of Gershwin in 'Hallelujah' was a special delight. Goodbye Lucille #1 and Horsin' Around are particular highlights. Not really my normal style, but definitely a good example of 80s Britpop, and I am surprised I hadn't heard anything on it before. 4/5

'Fast Car' and 'Talkin' Bout A Revolution' are fantastic tracks- but the rest of the album is thoroughly forgettable generic singer-songwriter tracks. I know that some of that is because her album inspired a revival of the genre, and so a lot of those artists were following in her footsteps, but I still feel like this album was missing just one or two more good songs.

It's a Frank Sinatra album. Nothing particularly interesting or compelling here. He's got a good voice.

Nothing particularly compelling, a disjointed piece of tropicalia kitsch

Not their best work. No standouts from the album.

Decent Brit pop. Have to love the confidence it takes to put an instrumental waltz in the middle of the album

A lot of cringe worthy songs, with a special shout out to the lame rap duel with Fred Durst.

Good British prog.

I will never understand the rockist obsession with live albums. This is good- it's Nirvana, but its not better as a live album.

The album that launched 30,000 bands. A remarkably good album which still sounds fresh to this day.

I will never understand the rockist obsession with live albums. This sounds like a jam band doing covers in a city park for a free weekend show. Every song is too long, they spend too much time on random riffs and asides, and the vocals (where they even show up at all) are way too low in the mix. I can only imagine people falling asleep at this show. 2/5 (+1 because some of the guitar riffs were cool, if not worth the 15 minute 'medley' they were a part of)

Decent, some of the covers (Lilac Wine) were particularly lacking.

If you told me this was a parody album of 70s rock I would have believed you. Remarkably bad lyrics, weird production, questionable arrangements. Nothing really of value here.

Second noise rock album of this whole thing. Less of interest here. Like spoken word poetry over uninspiring beats and ambient noise

Workmanlike late 60s psych-rock. I'm sure in its day it was groundbreaking, but here they sound like also-rans.

Solid country rock album, interesting layered arrangements, Neil Young's songwriting still shines through. There's a reason this was a standout album for the era.

Tight, atavistic rock'n'roll. You can tell their songs on this album were honed over years of playing live. Easily the greatest Cramps album.

Remarkably boring album. Astounding this came out in 2004 and sounded so boring- like they didn't have music to look back on.

Maybe I just don't have the ear for it, but it seems completely unremarkable. The random moans from listeners on the live recording were also very jarring.

Not quite Harvest Moon but a solid addition to the Neil Young corpus.

Decent synthy-guitar pop from the 80s. Not really my thing.

Great space cowboy/cosmic Americana music

The vocals feel at various times like parody or caricature, the backing tracks are mostly insipid and boring, the lyrics are all forgettable mush.

A few good songs, a few bad songs. Overall an interesting acoustic-new-wave kind of thing, even if it doesn't have anything particularly stand out about it.

Boring blues-rock album

Good pop-rock album from the late 70s. Surprised at how much I liked Vienna, everything that wasn't already a hit single was otherwise filler.

Boring slice of late 90s alt-rock, not much to recommend a second listen here.

Some truly great songs here and a blueprint for what rock'n'roll would become. Suffers in part as a product of its time- it comes from before albums were the unit of expression, so there is definitely some filler and some sameness here that wouldn't fly for a later effort. Still a 4/5 even with that.

Sad indie pop, not treading any new ground sonically or lyrically here.

A bit overly long and it definitely feels like it could be two albums at various points but even despite all that- it's the White Album. Probably The Beatles at their best.

Boring, noodly 70s rock.

Weird album. Definitely doesn't sound early 90s. Almost Beatles-esque guitar pop at points. Don't fully know how to evaluate this one.

Proto-punk with some bluesy elements.

Crazy to think how groundbreaking nu-metal sounded at launch

A decent look at the genesis of new wave and the Burundi beat but you can tell it was rushed and has some filler

Just overly slick jazz noodling and crooner-y lyrics. No standouts.

Sadboi gamer lyrics with dead mall backing tracks. If it was a comedy album, maybe it would be a 2.

Decent, you can hear what it led to, but nothing particularly compelling.

Groundbreaking for its time, sure, but comes off sloppy and purposeless as a full album.

90s Brit rock. Catchy, occasionally.

Will never understand the hate for The Eagles. This is just fantastic songsmanship from start to finish.

Overly long, plodding, no real songs of note.

Live albums should not be on the list, in general. In particular this live album does nothing to demonstrate why anyone would listen to Cheap Trick, why anyone did listen to Cheap Trick or why anyone should. It's some generic hard rock songs with terrible mixing interspersed with screaming fans. The inclusion of live albums is self-indulgent nonsense and this one barely constitutes an actual album.

Fantastic album start to finish. Interesting arrangements and progressions, great vocals and lyrics.

Some of the tracks are interesting but nothing particularly so, mostly just pointless avant garde jazz noodling.

What a weird album. Operatic, dramatic and remarkably silly. Meat Loaf has some solid vocals here. It's just such a weird album to classify- it's piano driven pop calling itself rock with a heavy metal album cover. I don't know that I would ever want or need to come back to it, but it wasn't bad.

Just a bunch of sad, drawn out ballads, nothing interesting in the arrangement or lyrics. Her voice is fine.

90s Britrock, the one song everyone knows stands out (Song 2, they're not exactly waxing poetic with titles here), the rest is all album filler noise.

Manages to sound fresh and retro at the same time- hardening back to 90s conscious rap and hip-hop with what I suspect was a deliberately dated sounded.

Not even the best Adele album- the album in which her formula had grown stale, her songs lost any ambition, and her technical talent just wasn't showcased like in 19 or 21.

Brief moments of brilliance, a little too corny around the concept at times

I'm sure it was impressive at the time but now- its boring. Kids can shred like this, and it hasn't stood the test of time.

What a dreary, boring slog of an album.

The dubbed string and flutes are particularly bad, no standouts

Pop punk at its finest.

Folk music- never new but it never gets old. Some weird arrangements (I feel like Dink's Song was mislabeled)

Beautiful, ethereal, haunting soundscapes.

A Metallica album with an orchestra? Alright, fine. A Metallica album live? Sure, whatever. Both together? No one was asking for this, and no one is better off for it existing. Don't know who is on vocals for this album but they're particularly bad.

Paul Simon is singlehandedly responsible for some of the worst music of the 80s. Dude should have quit after accidentally knocking it out of the park with Sound of Silence. A boring dreadful listen that manages to straddle world music, cheesy 80s production and inexecrable singer-songwriter

Some very solid songs but enough filler that it felt much longer than it was.

In retrospect, the White Stripes were much more of a singles band.

A pointless, disjointed mess of an album. Like the 2000s got together to figure out if you could make music unpleasant to listen to that still managed to not provoke any strong emotions in the listener.