This is a great piece of what I guess I would call transitional R & B/pop music. It is reminiscent of a lot of Motown records from the earlier part of the 1960s, but it’s clearly going in a different direction than the kinds of (mostly) love songs you’d hear by Stevie Wonder, the Supremes and the Temptations. The songs are longer, they’re more experimental, in terms of both arrangement and lyrical content, and there’s quite a bit of variety in terms of what they’re about and how they’re structured. As a big hip hop fan, I found myself recognizing snippets of songs that other artists (NWA, Redman, Nas, Snoop) had sampled who knows how many times. It’s a fantastic album and while I was not at all surprised I enjoyed it, I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed it. It’s GREAT!
While it’s got some really great songs (Movin’ Out, Only the Good Die Young), I’ve never been a huge Billy Joel guy. I am NOT a fan of songs like Just the Way You Are and other songs just don’t really stand out to me as all that special. It’s a good album, but not an all-time great in my view.
I’ve listened to this album, I don’t know many times. Initially, I was disappointed because it was so unlike either OK Computer or The Bends, both of which, like most people, I absolutely adored. But the more I listened, the more it grew on me. Radiohead took a big swing with this album going in a very different direction, especially given all the anticipation for the album not had been years since OK Computer and that was universally lauded. I respect the hell out of what they were trying to do and in the end, it really worked!
This is a hip hop classic for sure. I'm a big fan of the genre and I think it has evolved in a lot of ways since the early to mid 80s when it was in its infancy. I tend to agree with the conventional hip hop enthusiast's position that the 90s was the golden age, but there is some great stuff from this period and certainly from the recent past and present. The slow jam style of rapping that this early dynamic duo engages in on some of the tracks definitely feels a little rickety and unsophisticated at times, but there are some total bangers here and some other very good tracks that make this album essential listening for anyone that really appreciates hip hop. Not quite Illmatic or The Chronic, but very very good nonetheless.
This is a train wreck of myopic and insipid pop music with the notable exception of Dancing Queen. It's the first time I've listened to a complete ABBA album and it will be the last. I like a lot of disco-era dance music, but this is pretty terrible.
I couldn't make it through five tracks: this album is the epitome of boring white people music. I literally can't separate it from being stuck in a chair, my mouth agape, having my teeth cleaned as this crap coos from the speaker softly. Just awful
This album probably doesn’t do it for me as much as it does for a lot of music critics, but I totally understand why they think so much of it. Harvey is a phenomenal song writer, with all kinds of range and lyrical complexity. I just don’t enjoy every track quite enough to give it 5 stars instead of 4. It’s a really great listen though!
It's a hard rock banger with a bunch of classic hard rock anthems like Hells Bells, Shoot for Thrill and You Shook Me All Night Long, not to mention the title track. Some of the other tracks on the album are very enjoyable as well, but there are a couple that don't quite work as well. If you like melodic screaming and grunting, rhythmic guitar riffs and big drums, you could do a whole lot worse.
