This will be…interesting. Ha. First off, this album is LONG, over an hour—20 minutes longer give or take than everything else I’ve been fed from this list so far. ELO clearly have a deep and abiding love for pop songcraft but I can’t stand their sound. God so much fucking falsetto. I don’t know anything about ELO but I’m willing to bet this band is mostly the vision of one person—going to check now. I was right! Jeff Lynne. Good for him. Bad for me. It’s taking everything in me to finish this album and I’m three songs in. I bet if I listened to this four times in a row or if I grew up listening to it I would love it. But that is not the case. Every time there’s a verse I like the arrangement gets more complicated and overwrought—Big Wheels being a good example of this. I do think a lot of it is just the big slick production that’s putting me off, it makes it hard to “hear” the songs with so much instrumentation and just Jesus it’s so fucking smooth and even. I also can’t stand the strings. Also listening the Mr Blue Sky for the millionth time (but for the first time on headphones!) makes me never want to listen to music again. God fuck this album. Objectively it’s very well done and blah blah blah but fuck. Fuck this album. Maybe it’s me but I want to kill myself more and more the longer I listen. Seriously. Stone cold garbage. Those stupid strings. Stupid stupid stupid strings. It’s like they got some Ok songs and made a sandwich but then put a big thick layer of mayonnaise on it and so all you taste is mayonnaise. And mayonnaise is fine but. You know. IT HAS ITS PLACE and that place is not in my ears. I seriously might not listen to music for the rest of the day after listening to this album. It’s too long, too coked-out, too ornate, too fucking obnoxious. If it was 2/3 the length my opinion would probably be different. It’s like watching someone masturbate and they just won’t stop. Think they’re done? Nope! Too bad. Jeff Lynne just keeps on wankin’. And wankin’. And wankin’. Anyways. Self-indulgent twaddle. 1/5 for overstaying its welcome.

Displays so much of what I appreciate about musicianship and so little of what I appreciate about songcraft. I bet the JHE was really fun to see live while high though.

Much, much better than I anticipated. September is the song I am most familiar with by them and it has suffered from overexposure but this album is really good—these guys really know how to play. It’s a stark contrast to yesterday’s pick, which was mostly undeveloped ideas. These are fucking songs man! I’ll listen again.

I forgot that I had blocked Spotify from recommending The Rolling Stones until I got to this album, which gives you an idea of how sick I am of this band. However, I have never listened to an album all the way through. This one features one of my favorite songs by them, Sympathy for the Devil (because of the Master and Margarita). We’ll see how the rest stacks up. Ok after listening this sort of confirms my idea that The Rolling Stones were rock’s original hipster posers. That being said, I do lament the time when a band could record this many albums in quick succession because it allowed for more looseness and spontaneity, which bolstered confidence and was good for creativity. I would be hard-pressed to think of a band of similar stature operating this quickly today (which would be a false comparison regardless, popular music is so much more fragmented today). In any event, I get it, but it’s still kind of a big meh for me.

Wow I haven’t listened to this one in a minute. Pink Floyd’s proggy elements have always been tempered by a solid sense of popular songcraft and this is the pinnacle of that. Sure, it’s druggy and a little pretentious but not so much that you can’t enjoy the songs outside of the context of the entire album. Time for example is just a good song, period. That being said, I forgot about all the synth washes. And saxophones. Anyways, whatever, happy to revisit this one, which is more than I can say about the bulk of the boomer bullshit on this list.

Bottom line is Adele is an amazing vocalist, there aren’t many people with her talent and ability, there’s a reason she’s on this list. I was actually looking forward to listening to this album when I saw it was next —partially because it’s the first in this project that I actually remember when it came out (every other album so far was released at least ten years before I was born). And I have to say: Hello is an amazing song, truly, and Adele is a singular vocal talent. But the tendency toward the anthemic and melodramatic is not for me and there’s a lot of that here, as well as some dates production flourishes. Love in the Dark is a standout track, absolutely devastating. I would have a hard time listening to it again, it’s so raw, and the emotional content is tough to navigate but Adele handles it very well. Sweetest Devotion is the predictable hopeful ending song because otherwise this album would be a serious downer, though I enjoyed that track least of all.

Another fucking Stones album? Great. Honestly it’s impossible for me to objectively rate this boomer shit because I have been obliged to listen to so many of these songs so many times. Do I really need to hear Wild Horses again? Great song, not sure it belongs in Mick Jagger’s mouth though. Sounds like it should be a song by The Band. Same with Dead Flowers, with its idiotic put-on accent. If taken in earnest, these tracks just strengthen the impression I got after listening to Beggars Banquet (how many RS albums are on this fucking list anyway?): the Stones are hipster posers, so adept at imitation it obscures their originality. Sister Morphine highlights this, because it is an amalgamation of their strengths with whatever they were obsessively listening to when they wrote this album. So that’s my favorite track. Also Brown Sugar has always been creepy, even if you take away all the slavery references.

Much more varied and confident than I thought it would be. It’s interesting too because you can hear so many bands mbv influenced in this album—particularly Pavement, Sonic Youth, Jawbreaker, and the Smashing Pumpkins. YMMV though because the production value is ah, not great. Certainly not at the level of those that followed in their footsteps. I appreciated how sonically diverse this album was—the feel may be similar but the songs don’t all sound the same. That being said, it’s abrasive enough to be difficult for everyday listening. It’s hard to think of who they sound like. Definitely merits revisiting, just maybe not today.

This will be…interesting. Ha. First off, this album is LONG, over an hour—20 minutes longer give or take than everything else I’ve been fed from this list so far. ELO clearly have a deep and abiding love for pop songcraft but I can’t stand their sound. God so much fucking falsetto. I don’t know anything about ELO but I’m willing to bet this band is mostly the vision of one person—going to check now. I was right! Jeff Lynne. Good for him. Bad for me. It’s taking everything in me to finish this album and I’m three songs in. I bet if I listened to this four times in a row or if I grew up listening to it I would love it. But that is not the case. Every time there’s a verse I like the arrangement gets more complicated and overwrought—Big Wheels being a good example of this. I do think a lot of it is just the big slick production that’s putting me off, it makes it hard to “hear” the songs with so much instrumentation and just Jesus it’s so fucking smooth and even. I also can’t stand the strings. Also listening the Mr Blue Sky for the millionth time (but for the first time on headphones!) makes me never want to listen to music again. God fuck this album. Objectively it’s very well done and blah blah blah but fuck. Fuck this album. Maybe it’s me but I want to kill myself more and more the longer I listen. Seriously. Stone cold garbage. Those stupid strings. Stupid stupid stupid strings. It’s like they got some Ok songs and made a sandwich but then put a big thick layer of mayonnaise on it and so all you taste is mayonnaise. And mayonnaise is fine but. You know. IT HAS ITS PLACE and that place is not in my ears. I seriously might not listen to music for the rest of the day after listening to this album. It’s too long, too coked-out, too ornate, too fucking obnoxious. If it was 2/3 the length my opinion would probably be different. It’s like watching someone masturbate and they just won’t stop. Think they’re done? Nope! Too bad. Jeff Lynne just keeps on wankin’. And wankin’. And wankin’. Anyways. Self-indulgent twaddle. 1/5 for overstaying its welcome.

Holy shit the Police were talented musicians. Stewart Copeland is just an astonishing drummer to me, so subtle, so articulate. They had a great sensibility but for me the drumming makes this album. Truly. Like a lot of bands on this list, I’m only familiar with the greatest hits. Listening to the album cuts, I was surprised by the “talk singing” style Sting used on a few of the tracks. Good for variation but not good in and of itself. It was like they were channeling Talking Heads. The new wave and punk elements are also more prominent on the album cuts. This is the first album presented to me so far that I would voluntarily revisit and a welcome respite from the cocaine-infused bloat of ELO I got yesterday. My daughter loved it too, rocking out in her high chair while she munched on cheerios. The best thing about the Police is that they can appear straightforward but the wonderful pop hooks belie a sophistication and artistry that rewards further listening. Great album.

This is a perfectly adequate blues rock album that isn’t mixed very well. Clapton is Clapton, and Ginger Baker’s drum sound sucks. Also, Jack Bruce can’t sing. Not terribly annoying, except for that one song about the poor baby in the fake accent. Probably I should give it a relisten but my stomach for this type of crap is pretty limited. Strange Brew is a good single and Sunshine of Your Love blah blah blah. ToBU doesn’t really hold up though, does it?

This is music for people who think doing drugs makes them more interesting, and that is why they do them. No one would care about this adequate but unmemorable album if this guy hadn’t been in Pink Floyd. You shouldn’t have to know the whole tortured artist acid casualty story to provide context for why this album merits revisiting 50 years after its release. Has a bit of the feel of being obliged to attend your friend’s band’s house show, Like this is fine or whatever I guess but I will never voluntarily listen to it again.

When this came up I was like, I’m not in the mood! But it really is quite, quite good, even if you can’t separate it from its source material (I have not seen the movie but I read the book ages ago—the album features spoken excerpts from the text). Air are not exciting, as artists, but of course that’s not the point. Interesting work, would revisit. I appreciate that as the album progressed I got more and more into it.

So. Even coked up David Bowie gets the benefit of the doubt, for me. However. This is not my favorite version of Bowie. It’s not hard to listen to but it doesn’t grab me the way other music of his does, especially once he got more focused and sober.

It’s interesting to me that the popular song form spread by the Beatles—verse chorus verse middle eight chorus coda (and all the variations, sometimes with an intro, etc)—is really etched into our consciousness such that songs which don’t have such a clear structure sound unfinished, which is most of the material here. There are some very fun grooves but they sound like parts of songs. Moonbeam song is good, and How Can I Be Sure of You is a standout for me, and the Coconut Song is fun but the album as a whole feels like a collection of half-finished ideas by an extremely restless mind. Songwriters’ songwriters are always going to have it rough. Probably merits a relished.

This is definitely the type of thing I would put on to impress other white people. Very good, cool grooves, excellent musicianship. Easy and fun to listen to. This is why Hammonds became cool. That being said, there is something about jazz guitar I will never understand or enjoy. I get why people play jazz and why people go and see jazz—the witness of a process—but I don’t understand listening to an archive of that process with the attendant mistakes and imperfections, unless it’s a live album and even then. But whatever, but whatever, it’s good. My appetite for jazz is just limited.

This was super fun, wish it had a few more moments like the opening of the first track, but because it’s such a tight, manageable length—about 33 minutes—it will be easy to revisit. I might even do it today! I am of course biased because country rock and honky tonk are more in my wheelhouse than boomer rock, which is the majority of what I’ve gotten so far. That being said, I am unfamiliar with Mr Ely and will have to explore more. A breath of fresh air. Great lyrics, right band. Good album.

Man. I am not interested in listening to this self-important twaddle, but here we go. All right this is actually much more enjoyable than I anticipated it being, so long they aren’t singing. I doubt I will ever give it another listen, but it certainly rocks harder than I expected it to. I wish the bass were more prominent in the mix is my main complaint. That and if I was treated to jazzy nutcracker as an encore I think I would’ve left early to beat traffic, that shit is idiotic (and I love the Nutcracker no lie, Tchaikovsky is brilliant and it is on constant rotation at Christmas). Anyways, if they had just restrained themselves from singing (or hired a better vocalist…?) I would’ve rated higher.

Interesting! I was talking or thinking about Cyndi Lauper yesterday but now I can’t remember why. People love her but until I was an adult I thought she was a one hit wonder. So we’ll see! I know she’s got pipes. This is so good, it’s weird. Much more musically sophisticated than I thought—I always assumed this was her first album but let’s look it up. Ok so yes debut album but she had a few years of professional music experience prior and it really shows. Witness is my favorite. Fuck this album slaps hahaha. Definitely worth a revisit! I knew Lauper had a reputation beyond my limited consideration and now I see why.

Jesus Christ this guy is talented. I relistened to this album again over the weekend. Wonder doesn’t have the best voice but it is distinctive and the songs are just so great. He’s an amazing songwriter. This is the first five star album I’ve heard. Everyone wants to be a little like Stevie.

Missed a day and wound up listening to this one ON Halloween, which is appropriate. This is exactly what I thought it would be actually, the punky goth kids I was briefly in a band with have obviously listened to this album 1000 times. It’s good! Just probably not for me. More enjoyable than My Bloody Valentine but I am less likely to revisit. Still good.

I know less than nothing about this band. I do not like that Wall Street songs but they won me back with the second, even though it finishes super weak. The longer this goes on the more it’s like a…musical? The British sure love their concept albums I guess. It’s interesting and it can be fun but…man I don’t know. They can’t help themselves—they just HAVE to be a little clever. It is almost intolerably goody sometimes. THAT BEING SAID bonus points for sounding entirely original and clearly having a good time with it. Probably a few more listens and I would be a fan. Probably.

I was wondering when this was going to happen—an album I am not just familiar with but intimately familiar with. I probably know every word just about, and have listened to some of these songs dozens if not hundreds of times. I am familiar with how the album was recorded. That being said, my Pumpkins obsession probably peaked before I turned 18, and that was a long time ago. I didn’t realize how ornate some of the instrumentation was, there’s a lot going on here. Probably why I’ve always preferred Mellon Collie. Also I have never been happy with how the drums were mixed on this album. It’s like Billy Corgan was scared of being overpowered by Jimmy Chamberlain’s drums. There are so many good songs on this album, I have never been tempted to skip any of them, even though he could’ve left the strings off Spaceboy. Obviously I’m biased though. This album has tunes for days! And Billy is an interesting and powerful vocalist, though it’s something he wasn’t able to maintain as he aged.

Interesting. I have heard of, but am not familiar with, Mercury Rev. I feel like Q was really into them in the 90s. This is much different than I thought it would be. How? Well it’s much worse for example. It’s more over-orchestrated symphonic shit. I thought punk erased this crap. This would not have survived the first two tracks were I not committed to this project. Yeah this is fucking terrible. ELO-level terrible. Like a made-for-TV musical. Plus his voice isn’t good OR interesting. I wonder if this is a one-man vision too. Two-man, so that’s cool I guess. And they’re American, which surprises me. Just a little too much whimsy for my taste. Yeah, no.

I will probably like this and also be sad. Ok so the thing I am most impressed with is the assurance in her voice. She sounds remarkably mature for someone in her early twenties and her projection is fantastic. The first two tracks are the most familiar to me and are the strongest—one could almost make the case that you don’t need much more than that—but for me the rest of the album wound up being unmemorable. But god damn, Fast Car is probably one of the best songs ever written, it’s so fucking good and Jesus is it sad.

I mean. The spoiler part of me wants to revisit this album and find it has lost its luster but these songs are buried so deeply in my psyche it is impossible not to love it (except maybe the gleeful paean to a serial killer—that remains a little weird to me). The production flourishes are sublime. What I took away a fresh appreciation of is George’s compact, elegant guitar lines and the absolute perfection of Here Comes the Sun. Five out of Five, forever.

The fuck…? I have never heard of this artist, but this album is fun. Kind of like Goldfrapp meets Liza Minnelli. YMMV but this is so far mostly pretty good. She’s a great vocalist.

I guess you had to be there. Reminds me of when I really wanted to get into this kind of music because I thought it was cool but raves make me anxious and I don’t like drugs so…no? Trance music is whatever. Too long for an album. Good length for a set or a show, bad length for a piece of standalone art. But interesting and clearly good and thoughtfully made, just not really my thing I guess.

Well. Love me some Dan. That being said, this one was not my favorite. The greatest hits and other highlights of their oeuvre are pretty much it for me, there are some clunkers on here that don’t even approach the pinnacle of their abilities.

Ah yes, one of my favorite albums about death. I forgot how much I loved Fight Test but honestly, besides that song and Do You Realize I don’t feel like any of the other tracks stand out. Ah well.

It was ok, he sure does have a quirky sense of humor. The strings with the piano pretty much guarantee I won’t be listening to most of it again any time soon, but I would explore more Randy Newman in the future.

Now that is a shitty album cover. This isn’t at all what I was expecting. I was definitely expecting more—harmonica? Maybe a Black Crows feel? This is much more interesting and out there, though it definitely falls into a genre I typically don’t stay in for long, kind of Melvins-adjacent. Bet their live shows were fun though.

Malcolm McLaren? The Sex Pistols guy? Yes, that guy. This album is quite the amalgamation of sounds and styles but like, he’s not that good at any of them. If ELO (my Lodestar of Shit) suffers from a well-polished sameness, this album suffers from whatever the opposite of that is. Bonus star for trying something new I guess.

Oh hell yeah hahaha

Sledgehammer is an amazing song Uh…I used to own this album but I don’t remember barely any of this album except Res Rain and In Your Eyes. It’s definitely more self-serious than I recall, in kind of a silly way. Hrm.

Honestly, I could not tell you a single title on this album. However, it is comfortable and unostentatious jazz in a mellow timbre which begat much of the same. I would jump off it again.

I only sort of listened to it.

I mean. I don’t know, I’m kind of sick of this project.

This was great! Rosie really loved grooving to the first track in particular, and it set us up for a whole afternoon of fun listening.

Wayyyy different than I expected—solid.

I think I like it, but I think I have to be in the mood. The older I get the more I realize I am not interested in the affectations of the cool kid bands.

All day all night is new to me and a particular highlight, it almost suggests a what could have been for reggae. But it’s hard not to wonder what that song would’ve sounded like in a group that could really sing, the Temptations as a recent example from this list comes to kind. What is undeniable is that the Wailers had tunes, much more so than most contemporaries. Good shit, better than the hits.

Oh good more wonky live bullshit from a non-canon 60s American band. We’ll see if I get through this one. I can’t do it. These fucking sloppy, self-indulgent guitar solos are killing me. Time to listen to Leonard Cohen instead.

All right! I can’t be objective—I love this album!

Bob Marley reveals by opposite example just how boring most reggae music is. However! I only half-listened. I’m sure it’s fine.

Meh, I couldn’t finish it

I anticipate some poorly-recorded high energy nonsense! And I mostly right! All these songs sound the same!

I think I missed my window on Sonic Youth, it’s good and it’s interesting but the pose, man, the pose! Too cool for school. Kim Gordon in drag. But I like it, I just out grew the irony.

It all sounds the same to me, just inoffensive background music. Not good, not bad. I understand why people like it but I never found a way in.

The cover is terrible lol. So. Is it enjoyable? Yes. Does it sound a lot like MF Doom? Also yes. Which is fine, but at some point this specific type of rap sort of becomes a genre unto itself? Like with THAT type of beat and structure and whatnot. It’s not bad, it’s just not all that interesting anymore. Like it just didn’t age well.

Aw man. All I can say is, it doesn’t appear I have been missing much by not listening to this band for the last quarter century. More or less perfectly executed and more or less perfectly vanilla. Fine if you don’t want your music to be too interesting. For me I guess I just find Chris Martin’s vocals to be merely passable and I don’t think his lyrics are that good. But they have some catchy tunes so whatever. YMMV.

Baroque alterna-pop is my guess. Maybe I was right? I don’t remember. He has such an unusual and interesting style but I don’t recall loving it. Maybe worth revisiting but I think the timbre is not my jam.

I remember when Pardon Me came out and I really liked it, Drive less so though it has grown in me. I always assumed this was their debut album but obviously that’s not true, I had to look it up but it’s way too sophisticated to be a first album, they are a very tight band. I don’t know. Incubus falls into the category of Why didn’t this grab me when it came out? Like, why Tool and not this? It’s emotional, the lyrics are pretty good (if less opaque), and the musicianship is rock solid. So who knows? They’re good, it’s just not my thing.

Oh my god, Morrisey. The perfect thing if you’re feeling morose but also sort of fancy in a literate way and don’t care about anyone but yourself! I mean the ego that just drips off this is so great it’s absurd. Hard to take seriously but totally great, it’s more fun than it should be but I think maybe you have to have a dark sense of humor to inhabit this head space. Even if you separate the cranky racism from Moz and can set it aside, there is no way you can listen to this music and not conclude that the lyricist is absolutely insufferable. Good tunes though!

I’m not going to listen to this, it’s January’s

Surprisingly ominous and dark. I think I like it? YMMV if you can stomach the incessant upbeat.

Aw man. Maybe it’s better than CSN. It is better than CSN! But I am taking away a star for broken arrow, this song fucking sucks. It’s interesting that the background of the group is that it’s basically a bunch of solo work, it makes for a more interesting listen. More Specials was the same way, which suggests that I appreciate variation more than artistic cohesion.