Why we gotta have organs in 1972?
Has it’s moments but earnest lyrics over background Muzak…meh
This is the blueprint for every rights-free corporate vid track of the 80’s-90’s. Maybe thats really a compliment?
Tracks 7-10 are simply musical theatre
Memory of the Go-go’s was 80’s girlgroup pop but there’s is a bit of edge.
A very minimal amount of edge but less offensive than the pop of the 90’s onward.
Fits the bill so I’d add a 3.5 if possible.
Heavy rotation for years now this one. Love the atmos the songs create.
Always thought there was a bit of a loungy Springsteen vocal sound. Might just be me…
Finally some good fucking food.
You've often heard it said ’there is a fine line between genius and mental illness'. Well if this is the result of either I’m all for it. Even if I won’t ever fully understand it, I just bopped in place for the full 55 mins.
At this point it would be crass to dissect art.
Space Funk with early hip-hop/rap.
OOgly -BOOgly
Early RHCP wishes this was them.
First pass: unskilled noise.
Then caught myself humming the melody once I’d left the room.
Lo-fi, pre-grunge/post-punk are all turn-ons, but they never landed with me the way their contemporaries did. Maybe that’s on me. Other albums preferred (thank you Spotify shuffle)
Currently a 2. If I listened 10 times over the next month likely turns into a 4...
I mean, Drill innit…
Is it a great example? I gather…
Feeling the beats but overall doesn’t move me but how could it nothing really to compare it to. I’m almost as lost as if it were Baroque Choral. I can see the value but wholly under-qualified to judge.
Did learn I learn a great new line? YES!
"Are you stupid in the face?!?"
OMK out...
This is as antagonistic as it gets. I think everything that’s come after is just trying to replicate the angst. Nearly had me clutching pearls, and I don’t even own pearls.
Maybe it's contrived controversy. And maybe it still sells because he can get away with being this angry in America…because he’s white.
Good social commentary. Good flow, beats, and some solid tracks. Some duds.
Feels like the first classic album I’ve come across, but maybe that’s just the hype at the time...
I had a lot of time for the “indie” rock stuff in the early 00’s. This album got a fair bit of play amongst a lot of better ones.
Didn’t make me reminisce as I thought it would though. Some decent hooks and pleasant vibes but impossible to separate now from the antics and spectacle rock that the Libs became.
If these dudes sat beside me in a pub now I’m more likely to roll my eyes at the needy nonchalance than anything else.
A large sigh came out of my face when this one popped up.
Surprisingly, I quite enjoyed the first two tracks. A hillbilly R&B vibe. Maybe even a little Otis Redding-like.
Then the 'ol Hound dog Howl kicked in… I suppose that it was iconic but nah… 50 years of Elvis impersonators may have ruined the brand but still makes my skin crawl.
"Elvis… was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me” (Fuck him and John Wayne)
Another sigher.
Shouty songs with silly lyrics and poorly played riffs. A fuck you to convention of the time.
It’s so hard to be credible as Punk and these dudes were a disheveled boy band… Contrived dissent for profit?
Every artist from 1985 when trying to be edgy pays homage to them so I guess that’s their legacy. Whoopee
If Punk is just a fashion statement these guys are the OGs but if it’s a sound or a movement they are the veneer. Authenticity counts
Well that took awhile didn’t it….
Shocked at how annoyed it made me. There were at least 10 irritating sounds that I can’t ever remember hearing before. The concept of musical theatre just doesn’t work for me. I just don’t like exposition being so blatantly and cornily used. It’s embarrassing. And is “Wicked Uncle Ernie” Fiddling Tommy?! What a musical abomination that song is. I think I’m glad I’ve never listened to the whole damn thing before!
Love Keith Moon on the skins and there are undeniably a couple bangers in here but so much awkward and uncomfortable fluff. Less is more for fuck’s sake.
Grumpy old git gives it a 2. Unfair maybe, take it up with Meatloaf.
Started the album and it felt like expected. While never being mainstream in North America it is taking me back to middle school and the fav band of the cool kids with painted fingernails whose older siblings in Uni got them cassettes scared from nicotine fingers.
Simple songs, sometimes simpler lyrics. Doesn’t inspire much. But then again… like a late night box of chicken nuggets, maybe the simplest is the best.
Who came first New Order or The Cure?
Moody, Haunting, Progressing Melodies, and dare I say Gripping?
I’d always left New Order to the eye-rolling club but while lacking any real complexity these are catchy tunes. I cannot deny it any longer.
It’s a 3.75 but I’ll round up...
Are you not entertained?!
Nostalgia is now fully coming into play.
Is it high-quality, premier-skilled, genre progressing artistry?
Nah.
But is it shoe-tapping, beer guzzling rock and roll? Hecking yeah!
Southern rock riffs with scandalous showmanship and pervy lyrics was probably where they peaked. Some of the musical theatre schtick does not.
Somewhere along the line KISS got labelled hard rock/metal and the primitive algorithms (see record shop organising) put them alongside the more garish hair metal. Would they have been as big if they wore denim and t-shirts? Probably not but their following would have been a lot different.
Detroit Rock City is an underrated ALL-TIMER, and for that they get the 4.
Fight me.
Hard to deny this album. So many culturally classic songs. The guitar intros iconic, songwriting top notch. They earned their praise but maybe believed it too much too.
It’s funny how we view Bono’s vocals over 40 years. I would dare say he was an original but with so many imitators over the years he loses authenticity and gets lumped with the rest. Think Dylan, Vedder, Robert Smith…
I’ve always preferred War to Joshua Tree and did not much rate U2 in the 90’s when the became “the biggest band in the world” but even I cannot be pretentious enough to rag on obvious quality.
They get a 3 only because of personal taste.
You’re not going to get me to say anything bad about the national treasure that is Leonard Cohen. First and foremost he is a poet and this is not an album of songs but of poems set to an acoustic guitar.
He is a wordsmith and is obsessed with heartache and drugs. The melancholia is almost palpable and will sit with one for days. There are huge amounts of beauty in there, often there is with sadness.
He’s amazing, and the prose is very good if his gift is not yet fully explored. Nothing sounds anything like the compositions of his older gravelly years, but on ‘So long Marianne’ you can hear the seeds that will blossom later on.
I couldn’t listen to this daily but once every couple months it would be a great reset.
One cannot simply ignore the impact on pop MJ had.
Are the allegations against him hugely problematic? Of course but we are not trying him here for that. It does make listening to PYT extra icky though.
That said the three song run of Thriller-Beat it-Billie Jean has got to go down as the best of all-time. I defy you not to groove and find some happiness there.
Not perfect mind you. The Girl is mine is maybe the most insincere duet since Ebony and Ivory… Sir Paul the 80’s were not kind.
This is the pinnacle of Pop from a captivating people’s imagination sense. It’s not wonder all the fame and attention sent him essentially mad. Who among us wouldn’t? I dare say none of us are inappropriate with kids however… So we’re back there now.
Music alone it’s earned it’s 5 but I can’t go any higher than 4.
Well that was a bit of fun.
Innovators? Cultural appropriationists? Beastie’s are complicated but always in yo face.
Great mix of old school and what would become their signature guitar-wailing rock fusion. Always love the three-headed flow and absurd lyrics. NYC surrealist hip-hop that paved the way for Nü Metal and a thousand terrible dad raps. Definitely culture shifting.
I know top notch MC'ing is always going to have a gross amount of bravado and machismo but the sexist lines do cause 2024 cringing.
Made me feel 12 years old trying to smoke home-rolled cigarettes and riding BMX’s into a lake. And you don’t stop...
This was actually unenjoyable. I wasn’t expecting big things. I know who Travis are but I tried to put any prejudice away and played it in the background.
Only time it caught my attention was when the whininess became unbearable. It’s odd I generally like whininess… (Love to my man Thom)
Soft rock with entle meandering chords, a strings section and vocal ‘whailing’. I guess it might mean something to someone. Just didn’t grasp it. I don’t remember hating “why does it always rain” when it was big but, man, was the bile rising today.
First album on here that has me genuinely wondering how it made the cut. I guess someone’s gotta be #1001.
It’s The Beatles right? I’m not going to trash them but I’m not going to scream into a state of hysteria outside an old theatre.
Some musical technician is going to tell how influential and groundbreaking they were. I could believe that. How the song structures are ahead of their time and revolutionised pop/rock. Great. I’ve just never found myself WANTING to listen to The Beatles.
As this is an early album there was little experimental that I could tell so sounded like straight ahead 60s rock. A few of the later tracks, more obscure to me, were a saving grace.
Still only a 3. A hater would have given a 2 and welcomed the blowback.
