686
Albums Rated
2.59
Average Rating
63%
Complete
403 albums remaining
Featured Review
Arc Of A Diver
Steve Winwood • 1/5
If it was possible to apply fabric conditioner - gratuitous quantities of it - to music, this would be the result.
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30
5-Star Albums
97
1-Star Albums
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You Love More Than Most
Albums you rated higher than global average
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gris Gris | 5 | 2.88 | +2.12 |
| Felt Mountain | 5 | 3 | +2 |
| Murder Ballads | 5 | 3.08 | +1.92 |
| Solid Air | 5 | 3.16 | +1.84 |
| Rain Dogs | 5 | 3.2 | +1.8 |
| Clandestino | 5 | 3.22 | +1.78 |
| Beautiful Freak | 5 | 3.28 | +1.72 |
| Feast of Wire | 5 | 3.29 | +1.71 |
| Achtung Baby | 5 | 3.3 | +1.7 |
| The Man Machine | 5 | 3.32 | +1.68 |
You Love Less Than Most
Albums you rated lower than global average
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dookie | 1 | 3.8 | -2.8 |
| Born In The U.S.A. | 1 | 3.71 | -2.71 |
| Ill Communication | 1 | 3.65 | -2.65 |
| A Love Supreme | 1 | 3.63 | -2.63 |
| The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill | 1 | 3.63 | -2.63 |
| The Number Of The Beast | 1 | 3.59 | -2.59 |
| Moving Pictures | 1 | 3.59 | -2.59 |
| Document | 1 | 3.57 | -2.57 |
| Licensed To Ill | 1 | 3.56 | -2.56 |
| 1984 | 1 | 3.51 | -2.51 |
Artist Analysis
Favorite Artists
Artists with 2+ albums
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Nick Drake | 3 | 4.33 |
Least Favorite Artists
Artists with 2+ albums
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Beastie Boys | 3 | 1 |
| New Order | 2 | 1 |
| Megadeth | 2 | 1 |
| Iron Maiden | 2 | 1 |
| M.I.A. | 2 | 1 |
| Bee Gees | 2 | 1 |
| Bruce Springsteen | 4 | 1.75 |
| Prince | 3 | 1.67 |
| My Bloody Valentine | 3 | 1.67 |
| Kate Bush | 3 | 1.67 |
| Common | 2 | 1.5 |
| Van Halen | 2 | 1.5 |
| Green Day | 2 | 1.5 |
| Orbital | 2 | 1.5 |
| Eagles | 2 | 1.5 |
| Elvis Costello & The Attractions | 2 | 1.5 |
| The Jesus And Mary Chain | 2 | 1.5 |
| The Beach Boys | 2 | 1.5 |
| Stevie Wonder | 4 | 2 |
| Metallica | 3 | 2 |
| Aerosmith | 3 | 2 |
| Simon & Garfunkel | 3 | 2 |
Controversial Artists
Artists you rate inconsistently
| Artist | Ratings |
|---|---|
| John Martyn | 5, 2 |
| Siouxsie And The Banshees | 1, 4 |
| Portishead | 5, 2 |
| Pink Floyd | 3, 2, 5 |
| The Cure | 1, 4, 2 |
5-Star Albums (30)
View Album Wall
Popular Reviews
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
3/5
Seriously? Another Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album? Or is that another Crosby, Stills and Nash album? I don't really care. I get how they were very influential and obviously a bit of a supergroup. But... They're not really that different to warrant having more than one entry here.
2 likes
The Crusaders
1/5
The opener ist fine. Too long, though. Which is a fine indicator of the overall impression this album left. It's the worst kind of noodling. It's noodling, but the production tells you that not a single note is actually improvised, which adds an aseptic, sterile quality to this record.
1 likes
Lauryn Hill
1/5
Didn't get why it was so big back in the day, still don't get it some 20 years later. It's a collection of fairly bog standard boring songs with fairly listless melodies, if you even want to call them that. Just doesn't click at all with me. And it's way too long, too.
1 likes
1-Star Albums (97)
All Ratings
Frank Sinatra
3/5
Great voice, lush instrumentation, some interesting drug references. Still... Gets a bit schmaltzy after a bit.
Dead Kennedys
2/5
Tricky. Very mixed bag. I can see how it was seminal at some point, but I'm not really enjoying it (not hating it) today.
Traffic
4/5
First time I actually listened to any of their stuff, although I'd heard of Traffic before. I can see where they got their status from.
The White Stripes
3/5
Some decent tunes, but some fillers as well, and Jack's voice gets a bit old on this surprisingly long record
ZZ Top
3/5
Quite decent and not as... Mindless? As I expected
Beck
2/5
I appreciate Beck has an artistic vision. It's just not one that does anything for me. Also, he should not rap. Ever.
Michael Kiwanuka
4/5
Not as good as Love & Hate. Still very good.
The Doors
2/5
Confirms The Doors are not my cuppa.
Common
1/5
Not my cuppa
Taylor Swift
2/5
Forgettable
The Mamas & The Papas
3/5
Very pleasant.
Sex Pistols
2/5
John Martyn
5/5
New Order
1/5
I like some of NO's songs, but this album is u listenable for me, especially thanks to the production but also Bernard Sumner's surprisingly insecure vocals.
Oasis
5/5
Willie Nelson
2/5
Fishbone
2/5
Prince
2/5
This sounds *incredibly* dated, with the sole exception of the title track, which isn't dripping in 80s production values quite as much as the rest of the album. When Doves Cry is the one track where those production values... Sort of work.
Surprisingly tough to listen to.
Fever Ray
2/5
I appreciate her artistic vision and she definitely has her very own sound, aesthetic and everything. Love her voice, too. But overall, this is just too dark for me and it's a matter of being equally unaccessible (to a point) and me not wanting to actually enter any further.
Buddy Holly & The Crickets
2/5
Van Halen
2/5
80s hair metal and poser guitars at the end of the 70s. Not exactly what I need.
Finley Quaye
3/5
Napalm Death
1/5
Unlistenable is a mild way of putting it.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
4/5
The Birthday Party
2/5
Still a bit rough, but an indication of things to come
Brian Eno
3/5
Still quite revolutionary-sounding, but the repetitiveness isn't balanced that well (yet).
Stephen Stills
3/5
Pleasant
Adele
3/5
The Style Council
2/5
Not what I expected at all. Quite serene, but even while smoothly gliding through snowy landscapes on a high speed train... Ultimately a bit boring.
MC Solaar
3/5
The Temptations
3/5
The The
2/5
Van Halen
1/5
Terrible cover, terrible music.
Bauhaus
2/5
Nirvana
3/5
Flamin' Groovies
3/5
Milton Nascimento
2/5
John Coltrane
1/5
James Taylor
2/5
3/5
New York Dolls
2/5
Leonard Cohen
3/5
Fiona Apple
3/5
Kraftwerk
5/5
Carole King
3/5
The Icarus Line
2/5
I really do wonder why this is on the list. It's not bad as such, but there's nothing here that I would classify as particularly original or standing out.
SAULT
3/5
Red Hot Chili Peppers
3/5
Morrissey
2/5
Ella Fitzgerald
3/5
The War On Drugs
2/5
This is way too Bruce Springsteen adult contemporary for me in songwriting, singing and instrumentation, except it was recorded more recently.
Grateful Dead
4/5
Much less challenging and enjoyable than expected, besides "Feedback".
Radiohead
3/5
Not having listened to this in ages, it made me realise how it is a bit of a let-down after OK/Kid A/Amnesiac.
Green Day
2/5
You believe their conviction and drive, but musically it's just not interesting enough for me.
Gillian Welch
2/5
Orbital
2/5
Eagles
2/5
One star for the title track, the reast really isn't my cuppa. Smells of football dads living it up while also reassuring themselves that they have feelings, too.
The Kinks
2/5
Some interesting instruments take care of providing an air of decorum. That said, not an album I will be coming back to an awful lot.
Beastie Boys
1/5
ZZ Top
3/5
CHIC
3/5
Sly & The Family Stone
2/5
The Black Keys
4/5
Frank Ocean
2/5
Frank Black
3/5
Joe Ely
1/5
Metallica
2/5
GZA
1/5
Aerosmith
2/5
My Bloody Valentine
2/5
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
4/5
Megadeth
1/5
1/5
Fleetwood Mac
2/5
I'm usually very sympathetic to the little sibling of the really popular guy/girl (I'm talking Tusk vs Rumours of course). But Tusk really falls short for me I'm afraid.
Cypress Hill
4/5
Nine Inch Nails
3/5
Country Joe & The Fish
4/5
Garbage
4/5
Billie Holiday
2/5
Aimee Mann
2/5
Foo Fighters
1/5
Lenny Kravitz
3/5
Stevie Wonder
2/5
Maxwell
2/5
Pretenders
3/5
Roni Size
4/5
King Crimson
3/5
Wu-Tang Clan
2/5
Ian Dury
2/5
David Bowie
3/5
Great album and (unfortunately short-lived) return to the scene, but not without a couple of duds towards the end (Boss of me, Dancing out in space),
Heaven 17
1/5
Phew. Especially the production really didn't do anything for me. It just sounds so sterile and lacklustre.
David Bowie
4/5
Peter Frampton
3/5
Le Tigre
2/5
Dire Straits
3/5
Skunk Anansie
4/5
Ride
2/5
3/5
Joan Armatrading
3/5
The Avalanches
2/5
It's an amazing achievement in sampling stuff and assembling things into something else completely. Its very loop-based nature does get on my nerves quite a bit quite quickly, though.
Frontier Psychiatrist will forever stand as an everlasting piece of genius.
Suzanne Vega
2/5
Some decent tunes, but my God, is the mix awful, with her vocals so undefined and remote.
Arcade Fire
3/5
First listen in 15 years. Confirms that it's not a bad album, but my least favourite by Arcade Fire.
The Only Ones
2/5
Public Enemy
3/5
Not my genre, but an excellent album
Keith Jarrett
1/5
Sorry, but this is just too boring for me, never mind I realise this is all technically excellent playing.
Nirvana
2/5
Yadayadayada. Not bad, not my cuppa. Never really was.
John Prine
1/5
It's country. It's got topless women and religion. It's not my cuppa.
The Smiths
3/5
Pink Floyd
3/5
The Floyd album I've listened to the most as a teenager, and the album I've tired of the most.
Simon & Garfunkel
2/5
Muddy Waters
3/5
The Pogues
2/5
I appreciate the lyrics, I do. Shane was a great storyteller. But musically, almost as tough to get through for me as a country album.
Daft Punk
2/5
It's alright. I can see how it was quite groundbreaking, and you see and hear the references all over the place. It's just not my kind of music.
Pixies
2/5
Scissor Sisters
3/5
A pretty fun album, although their Comfortably Numb is still a hard skip. Not entirely sure why it's on this list. But then again... Maybe because there has to be some stuff on the list that's just feel-good enjoyable with hints of Bee Gees, Elton John and songtitles about boobs.
AC/DC
3/5
If there's any AC/DC album that can be enjoyed as a whole, it's this one. But my God, are the drums monotonous.
The Roots
2/5
A very mixed bag for me. I'll revisit some individual tracks but not the whole album.
The Incredible String Band
1/5
The xx
4/5
Boston
2/5
Listening to this turns me into a middle-aged American dad pumping his fists into the air to this and screaming "hell yeah, man" to every single guitar solo on this.
The Modern Lovers
4/5
3/5
Metallica
2/5
The Go-Go's
2/5
Moby Grape
2/5
Aphex Twin
2/5
Ambient music had its time. This reminded me why we're using the past tense here.
Also, it's way too long.
Tears For Fears
3/5
Little Simz
3/5
The Cure
1/5
The Cure. An acquired taste I just cannot get myself to acquire, try as I might.
Fleetwood Mac
4/5
Scott Walker
2/5
Just way too much pleasantness and pomp and circumstance and pathos.
The Velvet Underground
3/5
Elton John
2/5
As usual with Elton John for me... Some absolute killer tunes, but a whole album's worth is just too much. Particularly this one, which is heavy on the really grand piano, strings, big emotions. It's just too much for me. As a side note, the production on the drums really is godawful. Worse than St Anger. There, Elton John and Metallica in one short review.
The Specials
3/5
It's alright.
Bob Dylan
3/5
I really wasn't looking forward to this one. Not after the Royal Albert Hall live album. But. This one is actually alright. Lots of bended/stretched vowels, which combined with his limited vocal range gets a bit tiresome after a while. Still. Quite alright even if you don't listen to the lyrics that closely all the time.
Mudhoney
3/5
Got this after some pathos-heavy early 1970s Elton John. Couldn't have been more delighted.
R.E.M.
1/5
R.E.M. One of those bands like The Cure that have a huge indie fanbase and that, beyond a few individual songs, I really can't get myself to get into. They seem like really decent guys and I respect the way they called it quits without falling out, but at album length, they're really not for me. Well. Actually. I remember liking Monster (is that on this list) a bit more than all other R.E.M. albums. But that's really not saying much.
Django Django
3/5
The repetitive loop bits tend to go from charming to really annoying really quickly.
3/5
It's sort of pink and hardcore and sick but in a way that wouldnt immediately make my mom turn it off.
Jethro Tull
2/5
Buena Vista Social Club
4/5
Hadn't listened to this in ages. Used to like it more than I do now, but I appreciate it's a ground-breaking album in terms of bringing this music and the artists to the wider audience they deserve.
Röyksopp
3/5
A lot better than I remembered it, to be honest. Unfortunately, the incredibly great Karin Dreijer feature is not on this album, though.
Guided By Voices
1/5
Have absolutely no idea why this is on the list. Run-of-the-mill indie stuff. Badly produced, too.
Elton John
3/5
Much better to listen to than Madman Across The Water. Very dated-sounding intro, though, and you do wonder what on earth he was thinking with Jamaica Jerk-Off.
Depeche Mode
4/5
The Teardrop Explodes
3/5
It's alright, I guess.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
2/5
Grand, like, but not something I can get hugely excited about.
Charles Mingus
2/5
I found myself not really liking jazzy albums that much any more, whereas this was grand. Could have done without that last medley, though.
Tracy Chapman
3/5
Not as lo-fi as I expected. Talking 'bout a Revolution has of course been played to death, which is a little unfair to it, because it's a good little number.
On the whole, very solid, but I probably won't revisit this any time soon because it's not really down my alley, even though I do see why it's on the list.
Taylor Swift
2/5
The state of Pop in 2014. And pretty much today still. Well-produced, some catchy tunes, some forgettable ones, some decent lyrics, some cringey ones. At the end of the day... A bit forgettable despite the hits.
Fleet Foxes
4/5
Haven't listened to this in ages, and will surely come back to it. Some distance actually makes me appreciate it and its impact a bit more.
Magazine
4/5
Probably my biggest discovery of this project so far, 150+ albums in. Also gave me a new appreciation of early Midnight Oil (a band I was really into for a good bit, and which is sadly missing from the 1001 albums list).
Beatles
4/5
The Offspring
3/5
Didn't hate this nearly as much as I thought. Actually sort of enjoyed it besides the fact it's probably 4 or 5 songs too long.
Feels a bit weird to give this a 3, but that's where we are.
Sade
3/5
Incredibly well-produced - and the profuxtiin is fairly timeless, too, especially considering what decade we're in here. There's also more happening here musically/instrumental than I expected. Sonically, it's very much started its own genre, so it deserves to be on the list.
And yet. It's very... Adult contemporary, content-sounding and sort of lacking in drive. And I know I'm being mean to Sade here, without wanting to.
Frank Sinatra
2/5
An album to fall to sleep next to your old lady by.
Kendrick Lamar
2/5
Rap/hip-hop generally isn't my cuppa at all. I've listened to Kendrick before (not this album) and he's an artist from that genre I actually enjoy, and this album is no exception. That said, I won't spin it many more times going forward.
Siouxsie And The Banshees
1/5
Tubeless shouting over angular guitars. One song after another, after another after a Beatles cover in the style of tuneless shouting over angular guitars. Gets very tiresome very quickly for me.
UB40
2/5
As happens often while working through the 1001, this is one of those albums that you dread as it comes up. You know it's in a genre that doesn't do anything for you, and it's also from a band you have a life-long aversion to. So me giving this two stars is quite the compliment because I can appreciate it actually broke new ground as diaspora reggae, with very socially conscious lyrics to boot. And its miles removed from the boring, trite rubbish they would produce later. And yet. It's reggae, and it's UB40.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
3/5
Enjoyed it more than I expected. That violin in Running Dry was unnecessary, though. Still - grand old album.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
5/5
Ah, a Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, and one of their finest at that. "Runaway" is an eternal masterpiece, and "Zero" is a perfect opener.
Crosby, Stills & Nash
2/5
Yeah, they sing in great harmony and at times it sounds almost classical. Which is exactly why I can appreciate others liking it - but me, not so much, despite the psychedelic elements thrown in.
Jamiroquai
3/5
I forgot how funky they could be. But.
It feels like an extended series of jams, often with ad-libbed lyrics that you wish they hadn't put on record. So it feels like something enjoyable in a club for an hour but not as enjoyable for an hour in record.
Jerry Lee Lewis
4/5
Lots of energy, and probably not a minute too long (or short).
Elliott Smith
2/5
Easy listening, but a bit... Boring. Apologies to the fans, I know lots of people hold him in very high regard indeed.
Wilco
3/5
Nick Drake
4/5
Shuggie Otis
3/5
The Good, The Bad & The Queen
3/5
Franz Ferdinand
5/5
What a smashing debut album. Basically, their first three albums are outstanding and fairly untouchable.
Sabu
2/5
Just not my cuppa. A bit too... Hectic?
Grant Lee Buffalo
3/5
DJ Shadow
2/5
Elevator music. Well-crafted elevator music. Still. Elevator music.
3/5
The Vines
2/5
It's pleasant enough, but I have no idea why this is on the list. As in: Zero idea. Particularly considering it's an Australian band while other Australian acts like Midnight Oil and Regurgitator, which were much more groundbreaking at their time, are missing.
Beth Orton
3/5
Queen
3/5
Some true gems, as you would expect from Queen, and probably more coherent as an album than most of their albums. Still... More noteworthy for the gems than as an album as such.
Neneh Cherry
1/5
Very, very much of its time. She's really getting very excited about really bad electronic versions of hi-hats and tambourines. And that's in the first few seconds of the album, which has a surprising amount of cringeworthy production, raps and lyrics. I mean... She's definitely matured since then, but I can't bring myself to give this 2 stars. It's just... Phew. It has so much really bad 80s stuff on there in bloody 1989.
Van Morrison
4/5
Double live album from the 70s. Oh dear. But. This is very well recorded. Not precisely sure why it's on the list, but I did enjoy this way more than I expected.
Beastie Boys
1/5
I find myself a bit ill-equipped to really judge this. The hits are familiar territory, of course, but I was never hugely into them. In fairness, it's easy to appreciate that this was groundbreaking, mixing rock riffs and rap, all produced by Rick Rubin, no less. And it hasn't aged as badly as a lot of other 80s stuff. Some clever lyrics at times as well. That said, there's a lot of cringey stuff there, too, and the constant shouting voice and persona get old really quickly. Lastly, Fight for your right doesn't get any less obnoxious with time.
The Crusaders
1/5
The opener ist fine. Too long, though. Which is a fine indicator of the overall impression this album left. It's the worst kind of noodling. It's noodling, but the production tells you that not a single note is actually improvised, which adds an aseptic, sterile quality to this record.
Beatles
4/5
Iron Maiden
1/5
Marty Robbins
2/5
Lots of stories of lonesome men, grief and a certain degree of idiocy. Not a whole lot of musical variety.
Merle Haggard
1/5
The Young Gods
2/5
Fugees
3/5
Ice T
2/5
2Pac
1/5
The Temptations
4/5
Nice enough, and it of course has one of the greatest tracks of all time on it (you know which one). Torn between 3 and 4 on the whole, and this is the lucky album that gets rounded up because I did a lot of rounding down recently.
Queen
2/5
Oh, second Queen album in as many weeks. I was hugely into them around the time Freddie died, and have since taken a more nuanced view. They're one of the major singles bands to me but never really did it for me as an album band. And this album confirms that. Very much. There are sooooo many ideas in this, but they're not very focused. Sure, Bohemian Rhapsody a few years later also had tons of idea, but the song structure actually made some sense and was coherent. Whereas here there's a lot of "oh, let's just stick this chanting and screaming here, attach the weird guitar overdub to it, too, because, hey, props to Brian, we can't leave that out". The production is also weirdly muddy and overall it ends up not being a particularly coherent or great album.
Prince
1/5
Going through this list makes me realise that Prince for me is a lot like Queen. Some indestructible hits and great individual songs, but by God, I really can't stand most of his albums as a whole. This is just so steeped in 80s production. Including tons of synth drums, which is ironic considering there is a bloody big drum kit on the cover.
Also, a lot of the songwriting isn't... Really going anywhere. Except to the next 80s synth sound.
You can put all of these songs over any big hair 80s romantic drama movie abomination. And I don't mean this in a sort of nice, nostalgic way. Although I'm sure many will.
John Lennon
2/5
Phew. Freed from the Beatles, I have very little time for any of the individual members. John particularly. This is an album with one evergreen that's been played to death... And then there is a whole bunch of incredibly mediocre songs that are variations of blues routines and Beatles-esque ballads and Beatles references. And I get that John wasn't a particularly peaceful person in his younger years, and he was openly compensating for that with all his peace and love stuff in the 70s. But my God, is this getting dreary really and cringey quickly.
Having said all that. It's well-produced and I'd much rather listen to this again than to Sign O the Times by Prince. That album got 1/5, so this has to be a 2/5.
Sister Sledge
3/5
Fairport Convention
3/5
KISS
1/5
Musically I enjoyed this way more than I expected. Which really isn't saying much, because I expected 1/5 on that front, which this isn't. Quite.
But my god, if this isn't an incredibe collection of cringeworthy lyrics, I have no idea what is. So... It's between 1 and 2 stars. Tough one because I'd be marginally less inclined to turn it off than other stuff. Not sufficiently so to round up to 2 stars, though. So there you go. Enjoyed it more than I expected and it still only comes in at 1/5
Leonard Cohen
1/5
Oh dear. Great lyrics and songwriting drowned in 80s production. I really wish somebody did a reworking of this album. Jo Cocker did a cover of First we take Manhattan which isn't going easy on the adult contemporary production, but it still stands so tall above Cohen's original in that regard, it's not even funny. And the whole album is like that, and First we take Manhattan isn't even the worst offender (that title goes to Jazz Police). I thoroughly enjoy Cohen's last four albums, but this is such a hard pass for me... So... Dear estate of Leonard Cohen, can we have a more timeless rework, please? Because there are some good songs here, buried beneath all that shitty production.
Bill Evans Trio
2/5
Pleasant background jazz.
Elvis Costello
2/5
One of those people where I perceive they're held in high regard - and I absolutely can't connect to what they're doing. It's pleasant enough, but it doesn't stand out to me in any way.
Boards of Canada
2/5
These guys have listened to a lot of Kraftwerk and decided to do their own. With mixed results. Doesn't really stand on its own feet, and the bits that are not obviously Kraftwerk-esque aren't that convincing, really. Kosmischer Läufer does a better job of emulating Kraftwerk while still being more than just an hommage.
Arctic Monkeys
5/5
Hadn't listened to this in ages. Oh boy, what a reminder of the great storytelling and incredible musical assuredness it was to revisit this album 18 years later.
The Stranglers
3/5
Love
3/5
Michael Jackson
3/5
I know it's an iconic album, and yes, some indestructible smash hits are on this. And I know why it's on the list, and how culturally important and influential it was/is. Still. I give out stars based on how much I enjoyed this, and on that basis, it's a 3/5.
Lauryn Hill
1/5
Didn't get why it was so big back in the day, still don't get it some 20 years later. It's a collection of fairly bog standard boring songs with fairly listless melodies, if you even want to call them that. Just doesn't click at all with me. And it's way too long, too.
Dexys Midnight Runners
4/5
Honestly, I knew the song everybody knows off of this album. So... I didn't really know what to expect. Not much, maybe. And actually... This is a GRAND album.
Amy Winehouse
4/5
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
3/5
Seriously? Another Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album? Or is that another Crosby, Stills and Nash album? I don't really care. I get how they were very influential and obviously a bit of a supergroup. But... They're not really that different to warrant having more than one entry here.
Sonic Youth
3/5
Okay, I guess, doesn't particularly excite or offend me.
Mercury Rev
2/5
Boring.
Sparks
2/5
I can see how this was kind of groundbreaking in its theatricality and ESC-compatible campness at the time. Yet: Bit too much for my taste, especially the vocal flourishes, and I prefer the traces this album certainly left in the mainstream.
The Cure
4/5
Oh dear. The Cure. Again. Why? A band I never really got the hang of. But. This has the one single song of theirs I truly appreciate, Lullaby. And Lovesong.
And. Fuck me, this is a grand album overall and I wouldn't mind listening again, in fact, I kind of want to.
Nirvana
3/5
Yes, groundbreaking, a bit hard to connect to it for me because teenage/twen angst and anger isn't really where I'm at right now. At all.
Anthrax
2/5
Yeah. Uhm. I lose interest in this very quickly. I mean. It's not total shit, it just doesn't interest me, and I'm not entirely sure why this is considered a groundbreaking album. So. 1 star? 2? 1 seems unfair.
The Cars
2/5
Raekwon
1/5
Yeah. No.
Stevie Wonder
2/5
There is that one fairly funky Stevie Wonder album on the list, which I enjoyed. There is also this, which is Stevie Wonder as I originally got to know him - the somewhat schmalzy adult contemporary singer of ballads and writer of songs that don't quite want to make you dance, and all sound vaguely similar and familiar. I have much more time for funky Stevie than I do for schmalzy Stevie.
Mike Oldfield
2/5
A lot weirder than I expected. Wish I hadn't read up on what Oldfield has been up to more recently. But anyway. It's a grand album, but maybe a bit too instrumentally wankerous and too influenced by medieval melody lines and instrumentations. It's also one of those big ones on the list that I was very much aware of but never actually gave even the shortest of listens. Glad I did, but I probably won't come back to it very often if ever.
The Flaming Lips
5/5
I'm selective buying music these days, but I actually own a physical copy of this. So.
Santana
3/5
A lot of songs that have been played to death, of course. Astounding how many this album has, I had no idea.
Simon & Garfunkel
2/5
Phew. Uhm. Not sure how this is really an album, to be honest. One vinyl side of concept, followed by a collection of non-album singles and miscellaneous songs.
Liked it more than I thought I would, but it's still Simon & Garfunkel, a duo that certainly earned its place, albeit not necessarily in my frequently played artists playlist.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
3/5
Music to drive across the USA by.
Music to write Tarantino or Coen brothers movie scripts by.
Kind of too short for either, really.
Tina Turner
2/5
As others have stated before me: A classic example of 80s production, which I'm the first to say hasn't aged well at all. Although this is still way better done production-wise than Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man, which is probably the lowest depth the 80s sunk to. His estate should really consider doing a re-recorded version to strip off the 80s shite.
Wouldn't be a bad idea for Private Dancer, either.
Weirdly, I can't stand the Rain somehow works with just that production.
PS: Oh dear, this also contains not one but two butcherings of classic songs by The Beatles and Bowie.
Cocteau Twins
2/5
Knew the band name, had no idea what to expect, except I thought they had male vocalists. Got 80s ethereal female vocals with a influence from something I can't quite point to any more because the kids are listening to a song about a rhino having to poo.
Bebel Gilberto
3/5
The Cure
2/5
There's Disintegration, and there's the rest of The Cure's catalogue.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
4/5
Hadn't listened to this in ages.
Such a mixed bag.
The first two songs are a showcase of outstandingly GOOD 80s production. I mean, there is such drive - the opening/title track clocks in at over 10 minutes, doesn't really have THAT many different lines of lyrics, and you're still entertained the whole way through.
War and Two Tribes are good. Then comes a cooldown. Grand.
Then it gets... A bit tricky. I kind of get the Springsteen cover, but then... Bacharach? Then something that showcases bad 80s production and boring songwriting. And then an instrumental that probably inspired Enigma.
And then...a sort of bebop/rockabilly song about fisting. Anal fisting. Not what I expected and something I need to remember to slip onto an innocent-sounding playlist alongside Bobby Brown Goes Down.
Then two more decent tracks with very driving bass lines, and of course: The Power Of Love, a love song to love which makes it so universal and timeless.
In the end... When I first listened to it I didn't quite realise how gay the whole album is (well, I was 16 or so, not gay myself, lived in a very rural area... so a lot of the references and not so hidden innuendoes went totally over my head), and the fact that even on repeated listens, you can delve in the gayness - or just ignore it and enjoy what is mostly a very decent, driving, danceable album. Plus an outstanding, no holds barred pompous, romantic ballad, done very right. All of which was and is probably part of the continuing appeal of the songs and the band. And my God, Trevor Horn can produce.
And damn, on finishing the album, I want to put the title track back on. Just skip San Jose and Wish The Lads Were Here, and you're looking at a great album, honestly.
Peter Gabriel
4/5
Another example of fairly GOOD 80s production. Sounds much less dated than most of its contemporary albums. And there are so many layers of keyboards, percussion, interesting time signatures and rhythms (especially for songs that would broadly qualify as pop) to keep you interested even on the 200th listen of eg Sledgehammer. All without ever losing focus.
What irks me the most, I suppose, is a certain perspective Gabriel tends to have in his lyrics, which... I can't put my fingers on.
Regardless, this certainly is a groundbreaking album in terms of songwriting, blending avantgarde and world music influences with an incredible catchiness.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
3/5
Reggae isn't my scene at all, but this was quite enjoyable.
Supergrass
3/5
I can see why this is on the list, but honestly I prefer their later work and Gaz's solo albums because they're stoll playful but... A bit more focused/refined.
Echo And The Bunnymen
2/5
Sorry, this just doesn't do anything for me. It isn't rubbish, but I just can't connect to this album.
Lou Reed
3/5
Jorge Ben Jor
3/5
I have no clue about this kind of music, so I don't know if this is really a standout album in its genre. But I enjoyed it.
Tito Puente
2/5
Roxy Music
4/5
Eagles
1/5
I really hate the fuckin' Eagles.
Dr. John
5/5
The list needs more of this vibe.
Billy Bragg
2/5
So Billy Bragg and Wilco - both of whom I'm not exactly a fan of, but don't have anything against, either - write music to go with unsung Woodie Guthrie lyrics.
Which...you know. Is grand for Guthrie fans, I suppose. Because they also stay really close to how music by Guthrie himself would have sounded.
But I really, thoroughly do not get why this made the list. It's perfectly fine musicianship, combined with perfectly fine lyrics. But if Guthrie had written, recorded and released the music himself, this wouldn't be one of the Guthrie albums on the list. So... Why is it on the list with Bragg and Wilco doing the honours?
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
2/5
So, yeah, Clapton can play guitar. Besides that, this, to me, is a totally unremarkable blues album that also clocks in way too long.
Led Zeppelin
3/5
Oh. One of the classics I know but have never actually listened to. Decent album. Won't go into my heavy rotation, but it did give me an appreciation of why Led Zeppelin are still held in such high regard.
Talvin Singh
2/5
There was a time when I would have enjoyed Indian instrumentation over western beats more than I do now.
System Of A Down
4/5
Blondie
3/5
It's obviously got two standout tracks in One way or another and Heart of Glass. The rest isn't bad per se, but not very interesting. The drumming with its too frequent cymbal use for single accents is actually surprisingly annoying to my ears.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
2/5
Another Elvis Costello album. And I am still left eternally wondering why he has the status that he has. This is... Okay.
4/5
Saint Etienne
2/5
It's an okay album. Music to scratch your itchy feet by.
Calexico
5/5
Love this album, love its predecessor a tiny bit more. Still... As the predecessor isn't on this list, this gets the 5/5 from me that Hot Rail should get. Not to belittle this one at, all, it's a very solid 4.5 in any case for me. Both are outstanding albums that whenever I listen to them make me wonder why there isn't more music out there in a similar style.
M.I.A.
1/5
Oh Jesus. My first association... PAPER PLANES. Turned from a dancefloor favourite to an annoyance. Also, hasn't she turned into a bit of a conspiracy nutjob lately?
Anyway, on to the music. Phew. I appreciate the layers expertly laid on top of each other and all sort of making some sense. Nothing here is a coincidence. You can also hear loads of influences. First two that come to my mind have a connection, even - Tom Tom Club and My Life In the Bush of Ghosts. The thing is: So many of the choices made are just so annoying to my ears. High-pitched repetitive samples. Give me a claustrophic feeling of being on some sort of trip without an off button, when I've only had a glass of beer. Which of course means there IS an off button to what I'm experiencing.
Jimmy is weirdly annoyingly catchy in a way that might make me want to come back to it in the same way I sometimes need a dose of Gwen Stefani's Watcha Waiting for. But by and large, I never want to listen to this album again.
George Michael
2/5
There was this one guy at school who really liked George Michael around the time of this exact album. And somebody later lent me the Ladies & Gentlemen compilation. None of it connect at all. George Michael has since grown into this somewhat odd figure in my head whom I sort of followed and who I have an appreciation of sorts for because... Well he had a huge influence on pop music, and the amount of hit singles he had with Wham! (and what incredibly hard to shake earworm each single is) is just astounding. So I felt well-prepared to do as the title implies - listen without prejudice (and don't you hate when there's a Vol 1 in the title and no Vol 2 ever happened?). And here's the long and short of it: Freedom! 90 is a great track. I skipped the rest of the first four songs. And then comes Cowboys and Angels, and the mood shifts quite a lot. The whole Symphonica stuff a few years before his death kind of makes sense. Songs like Cowboys & Angels or Mothers Pride shows his ambition. They also show where and how he saw himself. Problem is... I don't really have much time for the tons of symphonic albums pop stars did for a while. Also, he's just way too self-important. Then follows an incredibly sugary pop song, a song not quite as catchy as Freedom! 90, but with some funk nevertheless, plus a reprise - and that's it. So. Three decent tracks, a lot of ambition, but ultimately a really mixed bag for me.
Stevie Wonder
2/5
Very seriously... Why are there three Stevie Wonder albums on this list? Or are there even more? It's the third I got, anyway. This is probably the one of those three that actually belongs. But as others have already observed... There are some kick-ass numbers on this album, and then you have the sickly-sweet stuff that drags proceedings down a lot. Because there is just so much of it.
Randy Newman
2/5
It's fine. His vocals are surprisingly imperfect in quite a lot of places. Not sure if I find that charming.
Bruce Springsteen
1/5
This was an album I really dreaded. As it turns out: Rightly so. Serious case of having to separate the art and the artist for me. By all accounts, Springsteen seems to be a good guy, and for those inclined to go and see him live, he absolutely delivers the goods.
But my God, I cannot stand this. Born in the USA is so obnoxious in how it trots out the same keyboard riff for over 4 minutes. Followed by another song that stretches out precisely one idea for over 3 minutes. Next up: Basically the same idea and chord progression as Born in the USA, but arranged in a kind of country barnyard rock style. And it kind of... goes from there.
Also, the lyrics are just so incredibly in-your-fucking-face, I can't bear it. Sure, not every piece of lyric needs to be a super-subtle poetic masterpiece. But all of this is like... the equivalent of a letter a 17 year-old who's never been away from home and who's never been one to read or write much would send home while being away on an excursion for a week.
Drive Like Jehu
4/5
So this was recommended to me ages ago. And I haven't listened to this in ages. Still holds up really well and I'm pleasantly surprised to see it on this list.
Cocteau Twins
2/5
Why is there a second Cocteau Twins album on this list when they both sound absolutely indistinguishable from each other?
Okay, I'm being harsh. This does sound a bit different from Treasure. But not sufficiently so to warrant two entries on this list for the same band.
Has elements of Kate Bush hiring Peter Hook as the bassist, plus lyrics that definitely inspired Sigur Rós.
I can't say much more about this. It's not rubbish, but for me, listening to this drove home that dream pop really isn't my genre.
Lana Del Rey
3/5
Honestly, Norman Fucking Rockwell! should be the Lana Del Rey album on this list. None other. By a long shot.
That said... listening to this album again made me appreciate it a bit more than I did previously. There isn't a bad song on this, and it's impressive to se her development as a songwriter.
However. There were too many times here when a decision was made to never go beyond a very tame mid-tempo at best. And given the production and instrumentation is pretty much identical on all songs, it's an album that easily sort of drifts into the background, and at some point you realise it's over. Which is a pity, because there are some great songs here.
Crowded House
3/5
Besides the hit on this album, this was my first conscious exposure to Crowded House. I enjoyed this, actually, and this really tastes a LOT like Wilco. Or the other way round, given these guys were first. I have half a mind of checking out some more of their stuff.
Radiohead
4/5
Gorillaz
5/5
Hadn't listened to this in ages. My god, I'd forgotten how seemingly flawlessly it combines elements of genres I don't particularly love into one really fucking tight, grooving album that just makes your feet move and your head nod rhythmically.
Solomon Burke
2/5
The Allman Brothers Band
2/5
Over an hour's worth of blues noodling.
Little Richard
3/5
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
Old-fashioned in a fairly timeless way.
Sigur Rós
5/5
The Who
3/5
Very ambitious but ultimately also a bit pretentious and definitely too long.
Orbital
1/5
Tiresome.
Gil Scott-Heron
3/5
I adore "I'm new here", Scott-Heron's late masterpiece. I also enjoy some of his earlier songs. But this, at album-length... It's not bad, but doesn't engage me at all, I'm afraid.
Curtis Mayfield
3/5
Pretty decent album, flows nicely. Doesn't stand out as such, though.
Lupe Fiasco
4/5
I'm not hugely into this genre at all, but this was a great listen. Totally unexpected, too. Good stuff.
Thundercat
2/5
Wants to be smooth and... Something else, I'm sure. Ends up being tedious to my ears.
Tim Buckley
2/5
Folk rock. The good kind. Kind of. Still folk rock.
Linkin Park
1/5
I hate the fucking Eagles. And fucking Linkin Park.
Genesis
2/5
It's very much conceptual prog-rock, isn't it? Sort of in the vein of Tommy and The Wall. It's a genre that, for me, hasn't aged terribly well at all. Partly because it has a tendency to take itself too seriously, leading to unnecessarily long albums.
The Jesus And Mary Chain
1/5
Needs more reverb and distortion. Also, not enough cowbell
Rage Against The Machine
4/5
Iconic and whatnot. In this kind of became what the album and the band set out not to be.
Red Snapper
3/5
It's alright, but with the power of hindsight probably not an entry in the list that anybody would or should be fighting tooth and nail to keep.
Slade
2/5
Happy Mondays
2/5
I can see how they were groundbreaking, I just don't think it holds up that well some 35 years later. And Shaun Ryder's voice has an irritating effect on me after a few songs.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
3/5
Definitely a unique album at the time it came out. Some good tunes, some forgettable ones. What strikes me, and maybe I'm biased because I'm listening with a cold on the couch, is how nervous and uneven this album feels.
Black Sabbath
5/5
I knew a couple of songs, even did a cover of Paranoid ages ago with a band I was in. But I never really gave Black Sabbath much credit. Turns out - credit is definitely due. Great album. And it's in luck because I'm torn between a 4 and a 5 and feeling like I'm giving out too few 5 star ratings.
The Verve
3/5
I hated this band when this came out. It had so many ubiquitous songs on it. When I saw this come up here I dreaded it. Turns out time has turned me a lot milder towards it. I accidentally made it through the whole expanded edition and it was grand.
Nas
3/5
The samples and lyricism are outstanding. It's got a nice flow to it, too.
But to me, not a seasoned hip-hop listener at all, the lyrical content tends to be very repetitive, variations of the same two themes.
Still, if there's a hip-hop/rap album that gets 3 stars from me, this is probably it.
Teenage Fanclub
1/5
Hard no. Some feedback guitars followed by sugary sweet, unengaging melodies and lyrics.
Elvis Presley
3/5
I'm not an Elvis guy. He's grand, like.
Klaxons
4/5
All over the fucking shop. They tend to be better when they're a bit more melodic (to my ears, anyway), and that's saying something because I gave Teenage Fanclub a 1/5 for being to sugary-sweet melodic.
The album is a wild ride, but I wanted to listen to it again after an hour of listening to something else. So... That's a good thing, I guess.
Joy Division
2/5
The Ian Curtis biopic, Control, is one of my all-time favourite music-related films. In the context of that movie, Joy Division's music really works for me. Flawlessly.
Outside that context, though, I appreciate how they broke new ground, and I appreciate the odd song. But overall, their debut is just a constant gloomy droning sound, claustrophobically produced, that prevails.
The Go-Betweens
2/5
Reminds me a bit of The Smiths. With the advantage of the singer not being as obnoxious as The Smiths'. And the disadvantage of this album being a tad bit more boring than any Smiths album I know.
Tom Waits
5/5
The absence of new Tom Waits music in almost 15 years (and no sign of this changing any time soon) is made more bearable by the existence of his back catalogue, this album being one of the greatest entries in that discography.
Hearing this for the first as well as the 20th or 50th time, it's still utterly original and intricate in its themes and instrumentation. And its vocal delivery, of course.
Sam Cooke
3/5
This is not really my favourite genre or decade. But. It does put me in a good mood. And sort of makes me sway and tap my feet.
Some of the recording/editing artefacts still audible are a bit odd, though. Like this was a bit of a rushed job that nobody bothered to clean up in the last 60+ years.
Koffi Olomide
2/5
It's not bad per se, it's just boring to my ears. And it makes me wonder... If this is on the list, why isn't any of Amadou & Mariam's albums?
Gang Starr
3/5
The Replacements
2/5
Songhoy Blues
3/5
The White Stripes
5/5
The first song is a bit too omnipresent, of course. Still... On first listen after ages, it's a great album.
Nick Drake
5/5
Not a folk person usually, but I can get down with this.
Dusty Springfield
4/5
Some outstanding tunes, but also some duds. Which is a shame - at 20 songs, it comes in long, and cutting the four or five songs that aren't quite up there with the rest of them would still have been an album's worth of material.
A bit curious in retrospect how much she sings about boys/him/he and it does sort of make you think about her image at the time and how she must have felt about that.
Steely Dan
3/5
Adult contemporary dad rock of the not-so-cringey kind.
Jack White
4/5
I'd previously given this less credit than due, I think.
Ryan Adams
3/5
He was quite popular in the indie scene (as I followed it) ages ago. I didn't get it back then. Tastes change with age, so I thought this was as good a chance as any to give Adams a second chance. Turns out I don't find it as bad as I did back in the day but it's still a 3/5 at best for me.
Norah Jones
3/5
It's all very competently played, with a very unexcited, laid back attitude and atmosphere. Which makes it perfect to play in the background while sitting in a café, or while having a wine with your significant other and reminiscing.
It ultimately also makes the whole album a tad boring.
Tom Waits
4/5
It's definitely a rough listen, which I've come to expect with Tom Waits. That said - I really enjoy it, even though it's not an album for your elegant dinner party.
Liz Phair
3/5
It's okay. Not particularly memorable for me, despite the sex-laden lyrics.
The Doors
4/5
Much better than any other Doors album I've listened to so far. Starts off with a weird alternating pattern of generic blues rock and stunning, original song.
Alanis Morissette
5/5
Jesus, this is almost 30 years old. I feel old now.
This was revolutionary in how it gave voice to a sort of female anger. Definitely not the first, but incredibly influential and successful at the same time. Pity that the most annoying song on this album - Ironic - became its most successful track.
Portishead
5/5
This was such an eye-opener in its depth, musicality, atmosphere... Everything. For some reason I hadn't listened to this album for ages, and relistening to it, it hasn't lost any of its impact and ages incredibly well.
Duran Duran
1/5
80s new wave pop shite. Sorry.
Duke Ellington
2/5
William Orbit
3/5
One of the better electronic/ambient records from that era.
Bonnie "Prince" Billy
2/5
Not a particularly exciting or uplifting record.
Green Day
1/5
This makes me aggressive, and not in a good way.
Meat Loaf
4/5
Pathos, instrumentation, vocal delivery... Everything is turned up to 11 on this album. Which sometimes makes it seem a bit pretentious, but even that was obviously part of the equation when it was conceived.
This is obviously too much of everything, but it's great this stuff exists precisely because of it - even though I definitely won't start listening to this album on a more frequent basis now.
Nick Drake
4/5
So all three of Drake's albums are on this list. This is number three for me (so I'm through now). And yes, they're all very good. But they're also not that vastly different in the grand scale of things to warrant putting all three of them on this list.
Haircut 100
2/5
First thought in my mind: Huzzah, more British new wave. Yeay.
And this totally delivered on that expectation. Which means I'll never listen to this again.
The Police
2/5
First actual Police album I ever listened to. The hits are absolute standout tracks, some of the other songs are okay, some are unnecessary.
Also...I think Stewart Copeland is an outstanding drummer, but on this album it often sounds a bit like even when he's doing tons of little fills and other things, he's still bored and adds more stuff still. Which is often a bit too busy for my taste.
Simon & Garfunkel
2/5
Simon & Garfunkel, a duo that certainly earned its place, albeit not necessarily in my frequently played artists playlist.
And Jesus, I expected some more acoustic guitar singer/Songwriter stuff like on the previous S&G albums I got, instead, this album launches straight into its title song that pulls absolutely no stops on the pathos - it's MUCH more sappy than I remembered it. A sort of pseudo-Greek/Latin/Italian/no idea folky thing follows, which is fairly awful.
It gets a tiny bit better after that.
The good news is: Simon & Garfunkel have 3 albums on this list, which makes this the last one I'll have to listen to.
The Jam
2/5
Another British album that did things back in the day, I guess. Doesn't do much for me, though.
Pixies
3/5
Eminem
4/5
I knew precisely one track from this.
This is ridiculously well-produced and mixed. Everything is precisely where it needs to be and gets precisely the right attention in the mix.
There are the lyrics, of course - honestly, I hear a lot of what is often interpreted as misogyny as an obvious dig at misogynists. But yeah, if this was the shit right now and my kid was listening to it, I'd probably be worried, too. That said, there are bits in the skits on this album where there isn't that much distance between the artist and his art. And there are also songs that aren't... That great. Still... Overall, and considering it's not my genre at all, and I hadn't listened to this before at all, it's still an excellent album, and and album that definitely belongs on this list.
Jane Weaver
3/5
Not as great as I thought it was going to be after the first few songs, which I really enjoyed. Still - very solid, and a nice musical hange on this list.
Kings of Leon
2/5
I used to own a physical copy of this back when it came out, actually. Then I realised I also owned some Strokes, some White Stripes, and very deliberately didn't own any Lynyrd Skynyrd. I also realised how incredibly annoying the singer's voice is after a short while.
Later still they put out stuff I legitimately detest. So... This gets a 2 because I need to be able to go lower in case any other of their albums come up.
Joni Mitchell
3/5
Manic Street Preachers
2/5
This, along with having seen them live in 1998, confirmed my suspicion that my overlap with this band is precisely one song: If you tolerate this your children will be next (not on this album).
Pere Ubu
4/5
Ooohh. This slaps. Early premonitions of Drive Like Jehu or Mclusky or Future of the Left. Weird for sure, but good weird.
And it's so cool to hear something so original here.
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
Ute Lemper
2/5
Not as terrible as some reviews here make it out to be, but nowhere near as good as Ute Lemper and the people who made this album obviously think it is.
Very self-important.
Eminem
2/5
Second Eminem album within the space of a week. Production is once again ridiculously on point. And again I can't help but feel that a lot of the controversy about his lyrics at the time had to do with insufficient listening comprehension. Or lack of willingness to pay attention. Which isn't to say that there isn't stuff in there that isn't up to scratch. But for a lot of the big items at the time, there's mostly a very obvious second layer. Most obviously in Stan, where it's clear the artists doesn't condone quite a lot of what he's expressing in his lyrics.
I also realise it's a - welcome? - change to listen to the uncensored version rather than the cleaned up edits that MTV used to play all the time.
Overall, though, this is a bit too aggressive compared to the Slim Shady album (which I gave a 4/5), and not as melodic/playful, and I was kind of glad when it was over. So... As I kind of feel like I'd listen to the Slim Shady album again, while I'd give this a pass, we got a 2/5 on our hands here.
Bruce Springsteen
2/5
Marginally more listenable than Born in the USA.
Springsteen is one of those separate the art from the artist cases for me. He seems like a genuinely sound person, but I cannot for the life of me bring me to enjoy his music.
Alexander 'Skip' Spence
2/5
Echoes of Dylan, Joplin, Drake... And forebodings of Bill Callahan.
Not very interesting despite the backstory.
Beatles
3/5
The amazing thing with this album is that within two years of it, they made Rubber Soul, then Revolver a year later, and Sgt Pepper's another year later. You really wouldn't guess from this collection of songs.
Massive Attack
3/5
Much like Portishead - which absolutely holds up to this day - I remember this as an outstanding album. Listening to it now, though, it's still very well produced, but not nearly as moving, swallowing you whole, as I remembered it to be.
John Grant
4/5
An enjoyable wild ride of an album. Covering folly sounds to electronica and pop and it still kind of makes sense.
Kraftwerk
4/5
It's a weird one for sure, because it kind of loses the Trans Europa Express theme about halfway sure, so I feel it's an album that cheats me a bit. And while I've got Schaufensteruppen as an earworm a day later, I'm not that fond of that song.
So all in all, from their classic period, it's not my favourite album, but still a very good one.
Radiohead
4/5
Morrissey
3/5
Separating the art from the artist is an important skill. I actually enjoy a lot of Morrissey's music, especially his solo stuff. But my god, is he an insufferable prick.
2/5
Hard to listen to because the sound quality is just so crappy
Run-D.M.C.
3/5
Grand, like.
Talking Heads
4/5
For some strange reason, Stop Making Sense, a clear 5, is not on this list. Remain in Light is, though. And while very good and innovaative in terms of the way they work with effects, repetitive riffs etc., the songs sound a bit too restrained at times compared to Stop Making Sense.
Killing Joke
4/5
I got this the day after Remain in Light by Talking Heads and I was surprised how much common DNA there is to these two records. Enjoyed it way more than I expected and want to listen to it again.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
3/5
The concept sounded preposterously pretentious when I read it, and the first few notes confirmed my fears. But then it was actually alright. I mean you kind of have to applaud the ambition shown here. That said, Deezer gave me a deluxe edition, which adds a historically important second live recording of the same songs. And I wasn't really keen on going through the whole thing twice in a row. So does that make a 2 or a 3? 2 seems a bit mean-sprited. But not being keen on a second listen isn't really material for a 3...
ABBA
3/5
Fucking ABBA. Incredible songwriters that make it seem so easy to write strings of earworms. Top-notch production, too. Very questionable aesthetic choices, including this album cover (trademark (R) against the band name and all). How kind of sugary it all is, though. It really isn't my kind of music, but those earworms still work on me.
Oh - Money, Money, Money is a great song.
Tough to rate, because I'm fine never listening to this album ever again (except Money, Money, Money), but do think it's an achievement.
Miles Davis
5/5
The Cult
2/5
It's not shit, but does absolutely nothing for me.
Kate Bush
2/5
I can see how much of this was quite ground-breaking in the mid-80s. The expressive dancing, the production, the sampling, Bush's voice of course. But for me, it's very dated sounding with its really clean production and liberal use of what I think is fretless bass. And it isn't something I really have any ambition to revisit, although I absolutely think this album has earned its place on this list.
CHIC
3/5
Mile Rodger is the master of funky production. The songs themselves left me a bit wanting, though, as a few of them maybe dragged repetitively on a bit longer than strictly necessary.
Beatles
2/5
This is the sugary Beatles. Yes, even what they did in their early days became very significant very quickly (coming from playing rock 'n' roll covers), but for me, the Beatles started to become interesting around the time of Rubber Soul/Revolver.
Thelonious Monk
3/5
Jazz. Jazz, jazz. Jazz.
Jazz.
Jimi Hendrix
5/5
I didn't enjoy "Are you Experienced" as much as I'd expected. So I started listening to this with some hesitations. And here we are: 5/5.
Bill Callahan
4/5
Haven't listened to this in a while. Absolutely stands the test of time. Eid ma clack shaw being the standout track for me.
Isaac Hayes
2/5
I expected a banger... It's Isaac Hayes. And then I realised this really is just a soundtrack album. Not songs from the film, but the music that accompanies various scenes in the movie. A disappointing and a bit boring exercise.
Nina Simone
3/5
Bruce Springsteen
3/5
I my first reaction to getting this was "okay, this is Springsteen album #3, and can we please be done with him, then?".
Now. That was a bit unkind towards this album, which, to me, is way more bearable than any of is other stuff. It isn't so overly 80s adult-contemporary produced, and basically a collection of songs and stories not dissimilar to Bob Dylan, harmonica and all.
I actually found that the original Born in the USA Demo was on the tapes that were the foundation for this album. Lo and behold - in that shape, it's actually a very listenable track.
I'll never be a fan of Springsteen's, but this album actually takes some of the edge of my overall dislike for his music.
Pet Shop Boys
4/5
My first introduction to Pet Shop Boys, and I really got into them for about two or three albums after this. Still a great, great cover, too. The production seems a bit sterile on renewed listen, but nowhere near as bad as a lot of other stuff produced in the 80s.
One More Chance is probably the song on this album that has aged the worst to my ears.
The Smiths
4/5
Robert Wyatt
4/5
His voice is certainly an acquired taste, but musically, this was a surprisingly diverse, interesting and enjoyable experience and I can absolutely see myself going back to this a few times.
Jazmine Sullivan
2/5
I expected to want to turn this off two songs in, and... I didn't. So in that regard, it's a success, I suppose. There's a lot of trying to figure out life. Love, sex, and money, specifically. And I think the fixation on the money bit is what just rubs me the wrong way. Especially when sort of mixed up with love and sex, as in the immortal line "that money keeps that pussy wet". Yes, the song as a whole also has bits in there that look at things from a perspective of not having money. But the catchy, endlessly repeated bit is about that money keeping sexual organs in a state of arousal.
Earth, Wind & Fire
2/5
So for some weird reason, I of course knew the band's name but never consciously heard any of their stuff. And for some reason I had always grouped them into the same kind of adult contemporary dad rock genre as Chicago or Boston or Springsteen or whoever.
I was relieved to realise how wrong I was.
But.
There are cool funky bits here, but nothing that would disqualify it from being a soundtrack to make love to your partner by
But by God, is All About Love a schmaltzy song.
Carpenters
3/5
This is all very pleasant, peaceful and all the arrangements seem effortless. They even manage to not screw up a cover of Help!
Iron Maiden
1/5
This is just a bit too much testosterone-overdosed fist-pumping. 1970s/80s heavy metal, basically. I can't see myself ever going back to this for any reason whatsoever.
Black Sabbath
4/5
Miriam Makeba
3/5
Ash
1/5
I used to own this. And on re-listening to this after about 20 years I had the same feeling I had when I decided to sell my physical copy back then.
This album starts with one or two songs that really kick you. And then the songs get gradually worse and boring and the singer's vocals really annoying and... Dare I say off-key?
Metallica
2/5
Exhausting.
The Velvet Underground
2/5
Pearl Jam
3/5
LCD Soundsystem
2/5
I'm aware Bowie was a fan, and I was looking forward to my first full album listen of anything by LCD Soundsystem.
I was underwhelmed.
Ramones
2/5
It's the Ramones. Which means it does absolutely nothing for me, apologies to everybody who holds them dear to their hearts.
David Crosby
1/5
American 1970s folk with sugary melodies and vocals. Does not float my boat.
Soundgarden
5/5
Hadn't listened to this album in absolute ages and was prepared to be a bit disappointed. I wasn't. At all. Such a confident statement and so many great tracks.
Queen
2/5
I had a Queen period around the time Freddie died. I came out of that period with an appreciation of what incredible hit writers they were - and what incredibly mediocre album writers. Which also means: any good Queen song you've probably heard to death, and any deep cut is not really worth your while. This is no exception. Death On Two Legs is almost an exception to the deep cut rule I just mentioned. Besides that... There are more. musichall-esque novelty songs here than I remember. Some of them INCREDIBLY annoying. Plus that car song which even 30-odd years ago I found incredibly stupid and which hasn't gained much since. And a faux country folk stomp song makes as much sense to me today as it ever did. Ie very little.
All of that said... Yes, their sort of erratic writing/output is part of what made them create the outstanding stuff they certainly have in their discography. Like Bohemian Rhapsody. And this album definitely was influential in the way it was written and produced (so much better than previous Queen albums!). I still don't really enjoy it an awful lot as an album.
Beck
3/5
Why on earth does he keep trying to rap. He shouldn't. Ever. Ruins many a good song on this album.
The 13th Floor Elevators
4/5
Coldplay
4/5
The Last truly great Coldplay album. It's a cliché, but boy, was I disappointed in their trajectory from here on out.
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart
1/5
Julian Cope
2/5
Blur
2/5
Some obvious bangers here, but as an album, it's surprisingly incoherent although I applaud their fearlessness at this point in their career.
Elis Regina
3/5
Various Artists
2/5
The original formulaic Christmas record. Plus cheesy spoken words from Spector himself. It's all a bit much.
Dexys Midnight Runners
2/5
I liked their hit album, and this isn't bad. But it has absolutely no business being on this list.
Adele
2/5
Jesus, how much pathos can you put into a single album. This is all just too much, and doesn't really interest me at all, although she is obviously a talented singer. But really... Getting through this was an absolute chore.
Deee-Lite
1/5
I hated this kind of music back in the day and listening to this now I found my stance on this has absolutely not softened.
Brian Eno
3/5
Funkadelic
3/5
Wow, Wars of Armageddon is an incredibly annoying piece of cacophony. Other than that, it's grand, but not necessarily something I'll come back to very often.
Run-D.M.C.
2/5
Coldplay
4/5
Cyndi Lauper
2/5
Very confidently girly - and very 80s.
The Stone Roses
2/5
This apparently holds a special place in a lot of people's hearts and minds. It's my first time consciously listening to this band and it's all decidedly forgettable to me.
Rufus Wainwright
1/5
Does less than nothing for me. Orchestral Thom Yorke? I like Radiohead, but I couldnt make it through this.
Radiohead
5/5
The Rolling Stones
3/5
With some of the 60 years (!) of hindsight, there's a bunch of very questionable lyrics here. So in that sense it is very much of its time. It has some great moments, too, though.
The Beach Boys
1/5
As somebody already pointed out: It very recognisable as The Beach Boys. The pioneers of having a signature sound. Which they've driven to an absolute extreme because to me, every song sounds exactly and precisely like any other song by them. Possibly with rejuggled lyrics, but I can't even be sure their songs actually do have different lyrics, because... It wouldn't even be necessary.
Also, thanks to those legendary harmonies it all sounds so sugary sweet you're at risk of getting diabetes from listening to this
Dire Straits
2/5
The intro riff for Money for Nothing is still quite the thing, even though I've heard that song way too many times. Besides that, though, we have annoying 2/4 pseudo-rockabilly pop song and an incredible number of really slow, ultimately boring, songs.
Cornershop
3/5
I expected to hate this because of that incredibly annoying remix of Brimful of Asha. Which isn't actually on this album. And lo and behold... The original version is grand, like, and it's a grand album. Could have done with maybe a couple songs cut from it that make it feel a tad bit long in the end without being really that inspired pieces of music. Could have otherwise been a 4/5 candidate.
AC/DC
3/5
AC/DC is kind of stupid, but kind of cleverly so. Four to the floor and riffs and licks that all sound vaguely the same - and are immediately identifiable as AC/DC. Oh, and they're making sure to hammer home the chorus. Again. And again. Touch too much (which I'm assuming is about premature ejaculation) being the one that really stuck with me here - half the song was just that phrase repeated.
I've turned off other stupid rock shite and given 1 star for it, but somehow I never felt like turning this off, although I'll never listen to this whole album ever again. Because... Why would I? Still... Better than KISS by several light years.
De La Soul
3/5
Not my cuppa, but kind of a fun one regardless.
Roxy Music
3/5
Pretty cool and impressive stuff, especially for 1972, although probably not something I'll be playing an awful lot.
Fela Kuti
4/5
Barry Adamson
2/5
I kind of get why this is on the list, as Adamson manages to create atmospheres and scenes in my head. But as I'm not an A&R person, nor somebody who's looking for somebody to write the soundtrack for my next movie, it's a fairly pointless album to me.
John Lee Hooker
2/5
John Lee Hooker with aseptic 80s production and collaborators, kicking off with Santana rhythms and smoothness. The album you didn't know you needed. Because you didn't need it.
It's the blues album your parents may have, who have zero time for blues music otherwise.
U2
3/5
Jean-Michel Jarre
4/5
Groundbreakingness understood although it's not necessarily something I'll put on an awful lot. But... It's also something I'm sure I'll listen to again at some point.
Waylon Jennings
1/5
Erykah Badu
1/5
Kinda boring for my ears.
Paul Simon
1/5
Another album with/by Paul Simon. Way too many on this list. When maybe one Simon & Garfunkel and one solo album (Graceland) would make sense.
3/5
One of the first of its kind and it's a bit unfair towards this album that you tend to judge it by all that muzak that replicated its formula and was played ad nauseum in wine and beach bars in the late 90s and early 2000s.
So it sounds a bit clichéd now, but it was a major blueprint for that cliché.
How do I rate this, though?
The Mothers Of Invention
2/5
It's alright. Like. Uhm. It has these seemingly unironic pieces that sound like they want to be the Beach Boys (Anyway the wind blows) as well as bits that make you wonder what on earth obliged them to put them to tape, let alone press them onto a record. Besides a general appetite for tomfuckery (The Return of the Son of...)
It's also rather long.
You could say I didn't care much for it but realise some people may disagree with me on that. Not a lot of people, though. Loud people, probably.
Ananda Shankar
3/5
There's a sitar on the cover of this album. There's a sitar on the songs of this album.
There's now a sitar echoing in my ear canals.
Bit of a novelty album.
Jungle Brothers
1/5
This does absolutely nothing for me.
Astrud Gilberto
2/5
Kid Rock
1/5
Precisely as shit as I expected.
The Sabres Of Paradise
2/5
Very much of its time. Really tiresome in a surprisingly large number of places. Benefited much less than you'd expect from being the album I got right after Kid Rock.
The Pogues
3/5
I enjoyed this more than Rum Sodomy & The Lash. Fairytale of New York is a stone-cold classic, of course, and actually as indestructible and Shane seemed and felt in his younger years.
Puts me in the mind of banter and craigh with the lads and lasses down at the pub, with pints aplenty and some singing along.
This album also made me realise that Shane was a great, great storyteller - but the band were absolutely top notch as well.
Having said all that... Listening to this sober on the commute to work, by song 10 I definitely started to feel hung over and regretful of having had one pint too many. The last one was probably off.
Justin Timberlake
2/5
It's better than expected, but still not great. Outstanding production doesn't make a great album, and beyond this taking home the prize of "producer and singer most trying to be the next Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson" I'm not entirely sure what to make of this.
But yes, all questionable nastiness from Timberlake towards Spears aside, Cry Me A River is a great pop song.
Gary Numan
2/5
I can absolutely see why this is on the list. But the cover makes me feel queasy. And the vocals show very little variation while being in a range that I find curiously annoying after a bit.
Dennis Wilson
3/5
Definitely influenced Peter Gabriel. Not sure I'll be coming back to this much, though.
M.I.A.
1/5
Slightly less unpleasant than her other album on this list. Which means... She has TWO albums on this list. Why?!?
Deduct one star because....down with that sort of thing!
4/5
Bob Dylan
4/5
Cat Stevens
5/5
The Residents
3/5
What a trip. Can I give all scores at once?
The Prodigy
3/5
Much more enjoyable than I expected. I hated them back in the day and in this case my view has softened with time.
The Magnetic Fields
2/5
69 - nudge, nudge, wink, wink - love songs. It would have been nice if they hadn't left quality control to the listeners. Because I'm very sure there is an album's worth of good love songs on this. But very definitely not over three albums' worth.
Bobby Womack
2/5
It's a smooth affair, but nothing that really stood out to me.
MGMT
3/5
The three hit singles are supremely annoying, mostly thanks to their repetitive, squeaky keyboard riffs. The rest is actually quite decent.
Youssou N'Dour
3/5
Sufjan Stevens
4/5
The Specials
2/5
I know they earned their place. But this was a tough one to listen to, not least because it's an album that shows how hitting all the notes you're trying to sing isn't always that easy.
Led Zeppelin
3/5
So yeah, if you're a full-on rock fan, this is the shit. It's what led the way for many that followed. But. It's not that markedly different from their debut, which is also on this list and it does feel like they're ovrrrepresented a bit. But then... I'd rather have another LedZep album than yet another album from Simon and/or Garfunkel.
Jeff Buckley
2/5
Absolutely not what I expected, and I don't quite know what to make of it, to be honest. His vocal acrobatics are impressive but also tend to get a bit tiresome.
It's grand, like, but doesn't really float my boat at all, I'm afraid.
Neil Young
2/5
Another Neil Young entry on this list. If you like Neil Young, you'll like this. If you don't, you won't. Which yet again show how some artists and genres were considered with great nuance - oooh, this establishes him as an artist and it should be on the list because of that, but on THIS he wrestles with his inner demons like on no other album, whereas on THIS he plays the best guitar he's ever played. Which - over 420 albums into this - is getting supremely annoying, especially because other genres, acts, and countries are treated with a much broader brush if not completely ignored.
Laura Nyro
3/5
Motörhead
1/5
Lemmy was the quintessential hard rocker. Quite the character. An institution.
I knew that much before listening to this. Now I also know that I do not care one little bit for the music his band made. And there's "Jailbait", a song that really hasn't aged at all well thanks to its topic of "better not ask her age" girls being backstage.
Tom Tom Club
2/5
This album absolutely deserves to be on this list. It showcases how much Frantz and Weymouth brought to the sound of their main band. It's also an early adventure in sampling, and making something out of fairly repetitive patterns and riffs. It's no wonder elements of this album have been sampled so much.
But.
As an album, it's not a very enjoyable listen for me. It's often more like listening to a sound library than to a music album.
Fiona Apple
2/5
I like her album "When the pawn..." (the title goes on for a bit longer than that). And everything since is just not my thing in the end. Firstly, you obviously have to wait ages before anything is actually released. And then you listen to it, admire her voice, admire the care she puts into every little sound. But then you also find that her songs sound like they're about to burst open into something truly great and transforming. And then they never really do. Instead you end up feeling like you're listening to loads of great ideas arranged fairly chaotically and without enough focus. A bit like a weaker Tom Waits album. There, I said it.
Also, lyrically were still mostly looking at variations of the same themes as 25 years ago.
Kate Bush
2/5
I respect Kate Bush as an artist who certainly has a vision and absolutely sees it through. It's a pity I really have no idea how to like her music more than I do.
Madonna
2/5
A very mixed bag. Some really crappy songs and some decent ones.
3/5
Everything But The Girl
1/5
Everything But The Girl before their uber-hit Missing. You realise very quickly indeed why they weren't big before Missing.
I find this incredibly boring and the worst kind of synth-dominated aseptic 80s ballad. Yes, the whole album. Extra point deduction would be well-deserved for combining gratuitous 80s sax with senseless, soulless programmed cowbell on "I always was your girl". But 1 is the lowest ranking already.
Madonna
3/5
Shit, this is actually a decent listen.
Fats Domino
4/5
The title makes it look like a compilation album, but it isn't, as Wikipedia tells me. It's Fats' third studio album. And I expected a decent, but sort of middle-of-the-road R&B/rockabilly sort of affair. It isn't. It's a great collection of tunes. It really is, and it's a delight to listen to.
Marvin Gaye
3/5
I mean... It's very sexually-minded. An album to make love to your lady/gentleman by. But this album has been so influential (and thus deserving of its place on this list) that it's really become the blueprint of a trope that's been hard to take seriously since Flight Of The Conchords' "Business Time".
Incredible Bongo Band
3/5
I expected a novelty album. And it sort of is. I mean... A (insert slightly off-kilter instrument here)-oriented cover of Satisfaction is as novelty as it gets.
But. It's an enjoyable listen. Very much so.
Brian Eno
2/5
It is what it is. Not made to be actively listened to on headphones. So I used it all wrong and ended up a bit bored.
The Slits
2/5
British punk from the late 70s
50 Cent
1/5
It's like Eminem without any of the humour or self-reflection that redeemed parts of his discography.
The Damned
2/5
Funkadelic
3/5
I actually enjoy this more than Maggot Brain. If only they could keep themselves from taking a stroll down noodling street at least ever other time.
Rush
1/5
This is too much of everything. Show-off musicianship. Mediocre, self-important lyrics. 80s production. 80s song structures and melodies. Wow. This is truly terrible. Truly, truly.
Bob Dylan
4/5
Did you know Dylan is in Electric LaDYLANd? Well, there you go.
This is probably my favourite Dylan album so far on this list. Weirdly. Because it has a lot of simple country & western style shuffle numbers on it, which I tend to not enjoy greatly. Still, it has a certain drive, which is good. That said... This is Dylan album number 4 for me, and that's a lot already, and a lot, too, considering there are three more waiting for me.
The Clash
2/5
London Calling is obviously the better album.
Holger Czukay
4/5
What a breath of fresh air on this list! I'd heard of him as one of the founding fathers of Krautrock, but never listened to any of his solo stuff. Glad I did!
Slayer
1/5
To quote one Alan Parzridge: "Just noise"
Love
3/5
It's a grand album, like. But why there would be another album by Love on this list besides Forever Changes is a mystery.
Emmylou Harris
3/5
Not usually my genre, but this is a very decent listen - and from knowing Midnight Oil's Breathe, Malcolm Burn's really organic production is instantly recognisable.
The Sonics
2/5
That's a LOT of high-pitched wows/waaaaahs and similar screams, and too loud in the mix. Well. "Mix", as if this had actually been mixed.
Van Morrison
2/5
Wow, does his voice get on my nerves really quickly.
Bob Dylan
2/5
Ray Charles
2/5
Pleasant, unexciting. The background choir mostly a bit too sugary for my taste.
Public Enemy
1/5
Frank Zappa
3/5
Lots of noodling.
Lynyrd Skynyrd
3/5
I expected to hate this. And it's actually a fine album. Whether it was one that I would have gone "crap, never listened to that one" before I pass on to the next world... I'm not sure. But it's a fine album. Simple as that.
The Fall
3/5
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
2/5
Not something I'd listen to for pleasure, to be honest, because it's... Just a bit too unknown for my ears to enjoy. You can tell it's well played and produced, and it's a breath of fresh air to get something on this list that isn't more or less American or British mainstream/mainstream-adjacent stuff. Still... Hard to go for more than 2 stars.
Deep Purple
4/5
Beach House
2/5
Okay, but fairly boring after a bit
Prince
2/5
I'm always surprised how Prince has some immortal hits - and how I find most of his albums absolute chores to listen to. Especially the 80s stuff. Not dissimilar to Queen, who have some immortal hits, but who also have mostly mediocre albums.
Baaba Maal
3/5
Rocket From The Crypt
2/5
Some other review had it right - it's weird how every song sounds like something that would stand out as kicking ass if it was played on the radio, but as a whole album, this just sounds very same-y. Very reminiscent of Monster Magnet. With slightly less testosterone and a bit more polish.
Basement Jaxx
2/5
It's very of its time. Where's your head at is a great track. But it isn't on this. So if you feel like getting an idea of the sound of late 90s/early 2000s hedonism... This is probably it.
The Stooges
4/5
Not their best album, necessarily. But still a great album.
The B-52's
4/5
A real fun album from a band I had kind of dismissed as not that relevant in the grand scheme of things. But this is good. Truly. One wish, though: A proper remix/remaster, as this really sounds very tinny.
Miles Davis
3/5
I used to like jazz much more than I do now. This is grand, though.
Kanye West
1/5
Oh, goodie. A genre I don't enjoy, and an artist who's an absolute muppet of a person and a waste of space. Listened to a bit of it and am glad I can go ahead and not listen to it with extreme prejudice, not having to bother with separating the art and the artist.
Fatboy Slim
2/5
Groundbreaking I guess, also a bit tiresome after a while I'm sure.
Donald Fagen
2/5
Polished, overproduced pop jazz. Meh. Not really noteworthy at all.
Soft Cell
2/5
Well, there's Tainted Love. Indestructible no matter how many people cover it, how many times it gets played on the radio, at your uncle's 3rd wedding reception, 80s night at the local nightclub, etc.
Also, Sex Dwarf is an interesting song title - but the song sort of fails to deliver on it.
There is a lot of 80s electronica, angst and cold neon lights turned into music. Gives me a nuclear world war teenage angst, cold neon light feeling that I don't appreciate much at all.
Bon Jovi
1/5
They have a knack for churning out catchy riffs and hook lines. And the man himself as a private citizen seems to be a decent human being.
But. By God, the catchy tunes and riffs are so stupid any annoying. Well, except for the bass line and drums at the start of Keep the Faith, before the rest of the band joins in. But that's a different album, anyway. But there's Livin' on a Prayer here, which also starts with an okay bass line before the keyboards come in and all the rest, making it an 80s hair rock anthem. Well, it's socially conscious, much like Springsteen's stuff. But by God I really can't stand the music.
If you're wondering: A friend of mine at school was hugely into them, that's why I srill know more about their discography than I wish to know.
It's all a bit too much.
And yet. Drunk at my uncle's 3rd or 4th wedding reception, I can't guarantee that I won't be air-guitaring and air-fist-pumping to Livin' on a Prayer. So Bon Jovi has that questionable honour over KISS in my hook.
Still. What a chore to get through this.
The Boo Radleys
2/5
Kelela
2/5
A bit boring.
Dion
2/5
Schmalzy.
The Jam
3/5
Very decent indeed.
Joy Division
2/5
I loved Anton Corbijns biopic about Joy Division and Ian Curtis. And I absolutely know why they're on this list. I just find Joy Division incredibly hard to listen to because Ian Curtis wasn't really that great a singer, and the production is a bit too wonky.
Japan
2/5
Fairly ahead of its time given it's from 1979 but sound like Duran Duran in the mid-80s. Still not my cuppa.
Big Star
2/5
Okay, but groundbreaking how exactly?
The Chemical Brothers
1/5
This gave me nervous ticks and made me aggressive when it was new and fresh and exciting. It's no longer new nor fresh, and seems a bit formulaic in hindsight (which I know is a bit unfair). It still gives me nervous ticks and makes me aggressive, though.
Steely Dan
2/5
You could listen to this on repeat as background music and still not remember a single song the next day.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
5/5
No idea what I'd make of this if I came across this without ever having listened to any Nick Cave besides Wild Roses maybe.
As it stands, I know this album but just haven't listened to it in ages - great to get back to after ages, and it's still absolutely excellent.
Echo And The Bunnymen
2/5
Another one of those obviously influential British albums I don't really enjoy that much.
The Thrills
3/5
Really low-key enjoyed this. The band name is obviously very misleading, though.
Would have been a 4, but then I found it's actually from the early 2000s, which is exactly what it sounds like. So not quite as trailblazing as I thought initially, when I was somehow under the impression this was an 80s or 90s record.
Kendrick Lamar
4/5
It's one of the few rap/hip-hop albums I ever owned, which is saying something for me. In the end I did realise it still simply isn't my genre, try as I might.
Still, as great a hip-hop album as I've ever encountered.
Shivkumar Sharma
3/5
Pleasant and surprisingly timeless. Not very exciting, though.
Rod Stewart
2/5
Not as bad as I feared, but still absolutely not what I was missing in my life. Although Stewart's later works fall into that category to a much higher degree than this, which I wouldn't mind playing in the background. As long as it's not on repeat.
Wire
1/5
Another British post-punk album. Hooray. Not.
Led Zeppelin
4/5
Yet another LedZep album.
This is outstanding, though.
George Harrison
4/5
I feared this, because I like George - who doesn't - but tend to find his solo works a bit too sugary at times. But once My Sweet Lord was done with (mercifully early on), this turned out to be a bloody good record that I really enjoyed. Could've done with a bit less instrumental stuff at the end, and I also never, ever want to hear My Sweet Lord again. Still, a solid 4/5.
The Byrds
1/5
I somehow thought The Byrds were a bit like... The Small Faces or something.
But Jesus... Country, and somewhat Christian country at that. Absolutely not.
Bee Gees
1/5
Quite the schmalzfest. Tough to get through and more reminiscent of Engelbert Humperdinck and the likes than of the disco stuff they produced later.
New Order
1/5
Blue Monday, True Faith, a few songs from the Get Ready album. The more New Order I listen to, the more I'm convinced that that is the entirety of works that justify New Order ever existing in the first place.
This album, or any track from it, certainly doesn't justify the band's existence.
Lou Reed
5/5
White Denim
3/5
Sisters Of Mercy
4/5
Very 80s, but strangely enjoyable because of their gusto.
The Beau Brummels
1/5
Notable for being a sort of generic 1960s folk-rock-pop with very up-down-up-down vocal lines, telling stories about painters of women and timekeepers and suchlike. Always on the verge of achieving a certain likeness to Cat Stevens or even Syd Barrett in sound and quality of songwriting. But not ever getting there by a long shot in the end.
Mekons
1/5
This is pretty shitty.
Peter Tosh
3/5
I dreaded this (see what I did there?) a bit. Reggae isn't my scene and tends to annoy me a bit after a relatively short time. This is fine, though, and would be absolutely grand as the soundtrack to a day at the beach with a cocktail or two and/or an ice bucket with a bunch of bottles of characterless beer.
The The
2/5
There is more than one The The album on this list. That makes absolutely zero sense even if you don't hate them as much as some reviewers here do.
Essentially 80s, but not even iconically so.
The Rolling Stones
3/5
I consider this to be one of the Stones' great records. Alongside Let it Bleed, released within a year of this one. And yet, besides one or two standout tracks, as an album it never gets even close to a 4 out of 5.
The Young Rascals
3/5
Moby
4/5
Phew. This was definitely groundbreaking when it came out. On relistening after 17 years (according to my last.fm account) the looped sample on Find My Baby gets really annoying really quickly. Still, it's amazing how quickly it feels really familiar again, and for the most part, the production still holds up today.
It's almost a pity how every single track off of this 18 track album has become an acoustic wallpaper for at least the Western world, thanks to Moby's very liberal approach to licensing his songs for ads, movies, TV, games, and anything else you could conceivably stick a soundtrack on.
Bad Company
2/5
Paul Rodgers, way before he became a part of Queen + Paul Rodgers, which was of course the best Queen incarnation we've been allowed to witness.
Nah.
This sure is an album full of songs in which the singer expresses his desire to fornicate all day and night. Using various different 1970s-compatible rock expressions for that desire.
And this is still not quite as terrible as you might expect.
My Bloody Valentine
2/5
Another one of those bands I'd heard of before but never actually listened to. And another band I know I won't be coming back to an awful lot.
808 State
1/5
Some other review: "This album has some of the most complex and beautiful drum programming"
Narrator: "It doesn't."
The drum programming, just like everything else, is incredibly repetitive and tiring and it's yet another semi-obscure and - at best - semi-relevant British album on this list that makes you wonder why you're bothering with this project.
Marilyn Manson
3/5
I definitely had to do a mental distancing exercise before listening to this, and for a moment wasn't sure if I wasn't gonna skip this. But... I haven't skipped any of the first 509 albums I got, I'm not gonna skip #510.
I was familiar with Marilyn Manson before and actually owned two of the middle-period albums, but had never listened to this album in particular.
Trent Reznor is all over this, as is a good portion of glam-rock and sickness. And I'm afraid to say it definitely has aged - but not terribly. I can still see how this would be kind of cathartic while you're driving at speed after losing your job, having a big (verbal, I feel I have to point out in the context of Marilyn Manson) fight with your partner, or any other such event.
Stevie Wonder
2/5
Grand, but a bit same-Y after a while.
Cream
4/5
Appreciate this more than anything Clapton ever did solo.
The Psychedelic Furs
2/5
They don't sound like I expected them to. Not a fan either way.
Aerosmith
2/5
It has its qualities. But contrary to my 16 year-old self, I don't and can't appreciate them any more. This is all much too dad-rock for me. My 16 year-old self also hadn't realised how much of this album, including the cover, is really about sex. Not sure if that lack of awareness at 16 is reassuring or not.
Pink Floyd
2/5
Much has been said about the genius of Syd Barrett. And this shows some of it. Unfortunately, See Emily Play and Arnold Layne aren't on this, although Bike and Astronomy Domine are. Still... This is very much a band still trying to find its style and footing. It's historically important because it's the debut of one of the most influential and impactful bands ever. And because it's the only full band album with Syd Barrett. But as an album, it's very eclectic and erratic.
Cheap Trick
2/5
Not that well-recorded. Still pretty okay to listen to. Why exactly it's on this list, though, I have zero idea, given its run-of-the-mill 70s rock.
Small Faces
3/5
Very much a demonstration of how you should always ignore mono versions of albums unless you're a music historian. Stereo versions here are infinitely more listeneable. The quirky spoken word segments are really annoying after a bit. Besides that, enjoyable.
Curtis Mayfield
3/5
Starts off great and funky and cool and smooth. And stays that way, but you kind of lose interest a bit because the songs start to sound very familiar.
Paul McCartney and Wings
2/5
This reaffirms my conviction that RAM is the only worthwhile McCartney album from the 70s. The only other McCartney album besides RAM I even bother with is III.
Dagmar Krause
2/5
Brecht-Eisler rather than Brecht-Weill. The dramatic agit-prop lyrics are obviously very similar. Eisler's music definitely comes across as less pop-oriented and easy to listen to than Weill's.
I like that this is on the list because it's such an unexpected entry that actually broadens one's perspective (whether or not one actually enjoys it) rather than just being the 20th British New Wave album, or the 5th Simon & Garfunkel album. It's adds to the mystique that this album is pretty unavailable these days.
In conclusion, though... I prefer somewhat more modern adaptions of Brecht/Weill/Eisler's works. This sounds fairly true to the original and it kind of gives me nervous heart jumps.
Talking Heads
3/5
A very daring record even today, over 45 years after its release. Weirdly, I feel that the production of Byrne's vocals on this album really lacks in comparison to the live recordings on Stop Making Sense*. It just seems a little unfocused, which, coupled with Byrne's vocal style, can get a bit much or downright irritating at times.
Unfortunately, this is, once again, one of those albums on this list that make me complain. Talking Heads have three albums on this list (77, Fear of Music and Remain in Light). Which is a lot, really, given they only ever released eight studio and two live albums before they split up. Considering there are a lot of live albums on this list, the mind boggles how Stop Making Sense is not on this list, and honestly... Fear of Music is probably the one that could be dropped in its stead.
LCD Soundsystem
2/5
Inititially, I liked this better than Sound of Silver. And then I realized it just started to sound like a lot of other bands put through a blender. Various 70s/80s British New Wave bands, plus Joy Division, Flaming Lips, Talking Heads... I mean... It's not bad per se, but I really don't get the fuss about this project.
The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy
1/5
Seems pretty pointless.
The KLF
1/5
I remember liking how the band/project was retired. And based on that, I expected their music to be a bit more subversive. It couldn't be any farther from it. Incredibly polished, mainstream shite. The kind of music that never had any redeeming value for me, but still blocked the airwaves at the time and got stuck as an earworm in your head.
Big Star
4/5
Enjoyable eclectic mix, certainly a band and album I'm glad I came across here.
Can
3/5
I can see music now. It's weirdly fringed and chevroned with visible reverb.
Pentangle
3/5
It's not my thing, but I still appreciate this being on this list because for what it is - folk, medieval-esque folk music - it's quite decent.
Brian Wilson
2/5
Coincidentally (or not), I tried to listen to this storied album last year. I made it 4 songs into the record before abandoning it.
One year later, against the background of Wilson's death, nothing has changed.
All of Wilson's trademark sounds are here - the obnoxious harmonies, the busy vocal multi-tracks... And the fact it all unfortunately does not interest me in the least.
My Bloody Valentine
1/5
How much distortion can you put on ALL the recording tracks? How far back into these layers of distortion can you put the distorted, droney/dreamy vocals?
Listen to this album to find out.
Solange
2/5
I do enjoy this a bit more than most of what Solange's more famous sister does. But it doesn't quite connect with me musically, although I appreciate the audacity present in the lyrics (both sung and delivered as spoken word).
Richard Thompson
1/5
Country-folk. I'm sure it does something for some people. Not for me.
Jimmy Smith
2/5
Einstürzende Neubauten
3/5
It's not an album I would recommend as such. It's an experience, though, and as such highly recommended and something this list needs more of.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
2/5
Even by Cave's standards, this is a heavy and dark affair. It's more like a gospel album than a classic Bad Seeds album, and sonically, the layers of keyboards and piano, with lyrics more spoken that sung, and very sparse background singing is just too homogeneous, and it makes me feel numb - which mightn't even be completely against Cave's intentions. But I honestly was glad when the album after this with Warren Ellis brought energy to proceedings again, and the next band album actually featured the Bad Seeds again not just in name.
The Rolling Stones
3/5
It's fine. But honestly, it doesn't particularly stand out. I mean... There are the one or two or even three standout singles, but there are 18 tracks here. It doesn't give me much reason to revisit it again, honestly. It also begs - again - the question why there are so many Stones albums on this list. It's like the authors want to convince people that the Stones are/were more than what we've seen of them in the 80s. Honestly, though - Let It Bleed and Beggars' Banquet (both also on this list) make that point much more convincingly than this... Okayyys collection of songs.
B.B. King
4/5
Coming from a Rolling Stones album (Exile on Main Street) to this is like a breath of fresh air, even though nominally, this and the Stones aren't miles apart.
Sinead O'Connor
4/5
I enjoyed this more than I thought I would, to be honest. Not my new favourite record, but a worthy entry on this list and I'm delighted to have listened to this.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
2/5
It's fine. Reggae. Not my scene. Third Marley album I've encountered here and it really is a case of... They all sound EXACTLY the same to me. Fine. But... Absolutely identical.
David Holmes
2/5
Very much of its time. On a bad say, this would trend towards 1/5 for me, but it's been an okay day, so... 2/5.
The Shamen
1/5
This is like a remix of Pet Shop Boys and Kraftwerk, but much, much less interesting/refined than either.
Nanci Griffith
2/5
Bruce Springsteen
1/5
Sorry, with the first chords and that voice... I have no time for the musician Springsteen even though the person Springsteen seems to be a decent guy.
Bee Gees
1/5
The SECOND pre-disco Bee Gees album on this list that I got so far. Both had absolutely zero business being on this list. Absolutely none. Incredibly uninspired, schmaltzy middle-of-the road shite.
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
4/5
Good stuff. Out there, yet listenable. Never heard of this bunch before and I'll probably dive into their oevre a bit more. Good entry on this list. This is what I'm here for.
The Pretty Things
4/5
Cowboy Junkies
1/5
Fairly boring.
Harry Nilsson
2/5
Some surprisingly groovy numbers. And some not so surprising schmalz.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
1/5
Costello album #3 for me. I still do absolutely not get people's fascination with him, nor why on earth he has three albums on this list.
Goldfrapp
5/5
Iggy Pop
4/5
Kate Bush
1/5
Kate Bush is a national treasure. She's broken boundaries, pushed limits, strived to fulfill her very own vision with little or no compromise. She also seems to have quite a self-deprecating sense of humour. So, what's not to like?
Well, the fact that her vision just doesn't align with my tastes at all. I'd sit down for a pint with her and I think she'd be great company to chat away an evening. I'd just hope she'd never bring up her music in conversation so we can avoid that awkward silence - or, after a few pints, my very wordy way of trying to express that I mostly appreciate the theoretical concept of what she's doing and how she's doing it, but not so much the actual result.
Cee Lo Green
3/5
It's fine. Not sure why it's here, but it's fine. Mind you, I didn't pay much attention to the lyrics, but when I did, they tended to be a bit cringey. Starting with that spoken word intro with Cee-Lo's son.
Michael Jackson
2/5
He was never really as funky as on a few of these songs again, and it's a bit of a milestone as the one before Thriller, and his first album with Quincy Jones, and the production is bloody tight. So, yeah, monumental - in a historical sense as well.
I just don't dig it an awful lot, except for the first and last song.
Besides those, there's way too much smooth schmaltziness on this. I mean... that whole sequence of songs from Off the Wall onwards (except for the final track) is just... tough to listen to for me.
fIREHOSE
3/5
This is a weird one. No idea what it's doing on this list, but I'm sort of glad it's here because it's a good listen, without being just more of the same stuff you already find on this list or hear(d) on the radio all the time.
Joni Mitchell
2/5
Unexpectedly cool second track. Not terribly exciting or interesting besides that.
Sleater-Kinney
2/5
Especially the vocal production is a bit too raw and grating for my taste. And I fully accept that a lot of people will say that it's a sacrilege to say that because it's that grating quality that actually defines this record and makes it great.
I still find this more than decent - I just find myself preferring their later records, which to me still retain plenty of rawness. But, contrary to this album, they don't sound like the've done a proper studio recording of all the instruments, but took all the vocals from a rehearsal room recording done using a cheap tape recorder.
Fun Lovin' Criminals
2/5
Hmmm. Odd. When I saw this generated I immediately went "oh, cool, I remember this, it's a fun little album".
But listening to it, I can't help but feel this is really... juvenile.
Especially compared to Tito & Tarantula whom I incidentally listened to not too long ago as well, and whom I associate with the same period.
So... dated in sound and lyrical content, not as much fun as I remembered, but not objectively horrible, either.
Tangerine Dream
1/5
Music of the spheres. Which means: Not very exciting or interesting or anything much at all, unless you're under the influence of mind-altering substances.
Sure, the sounds are groundbreaking for their time, so I know why it's on the list. But I may just as well just listen to the surf rolling in and out again for hours at the beach.
Turbonegro
3/5
As such, the idea of denim-clad Scandinavians playing very much into a "we're gay hard rockers" image, stereotype, and story seems a bit dated now. But. Back in the mid 90s, when this band gained traction, it was... Maybe not liberating, but a sort of bold statement in the rock world, which was still fairly homophobic at the time (this was before eg Rob Halford came out).
As such, though, the novelty factor of back then has become a kind of "you had to be there to get it" situation. Like... The singer used to launch fireworks from his ass during gigs.
Still... I hadn't listened to any Turbonegro in over 11 years before this (thanks, last.fm) and I would have expected it to have aged way worse than it has. It's still good fun, partly because it's just so on the nose all the way through.
Björk
1/5
This album marks, very precisely, the point where Björk lost me. Everything before this, I truly enjoy. This album and everything that has followed, I don't.
I remember all the reviews about how daring she was here, what an achievement this was, and so on. None of which is wrong, strictly speaking.
I just found it to be absolutely unlisteneable. And the interveninh 21 years (dear God, TWENTY-ONE YEARS?!) have changed nothing about that.
Herbie Hancock
3/5
A bit too noodly in places, but generally decent enough.
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
3/5
If you've listened to - and ideally enjoyed - some of Tom Waits' more experimental output, this probably won't shock you THAT much.
It's obviously not mainstream at all, and in 1968 it was a fairly groundbreaking record. Kind of still is.
Found it enjoyable enough - compared to Björk's Medúlla, for instance - but it's not something I'll be putting on very frequently, or the next time the in-laws visit.
Slipknot
1/5
Not as hard on my ears as I expected, but absolutely not enjoyable, either. So... Is that 1/5 or 2/5? Considering I have as little appetite to finish this as I did with KISS or Björk's Medúlla, I'm afraid it's 1/5
Björk
3/5
The last Björk album I truly enjoy. Hadn't listened to this in ages, but it still holds up quite well, even though the production does place it into a specific point in time. Not unpelasantly so, though.
Paul Weller
1/5
Very generic-sounding. Supposedly British, but the vocal styling and baby, baby, baby lyrics give away the game of wanting to be the next great 1970s all-American songwriter.
It's really a 2/5, but because it's way too bland and also way too long, and I didn't sleep well last night, here we are, 1/5
The Auteurs
2/5
And another middle of the road, unremarkable British album that I can totally see somebody getting into back in 1993, but which has very little relevance beyond that point in time. It's not technically garbage, but it would hardly make the top 100 list of albums in its release year, why on earth should I make this something I listen to before I die?
John Martyn
2/5
I already had his Solid Air album as part of this project before. Which I loved. One of my discoveries in the 1001 project. This one though... It's fine, but I have no idea why it's on the list; it doesn't stand out in any way, really.
Jacques Brel
2/5
Some good storytelling (well, as far as I can tell with my rusty French skills), and some really intricate arrangements. But some of the lyrics are very "rhyme, or I have ways of making you rhyme", and musically, it's kind of same-y as the lyrics/storytelling takes center stage.
Black Sabbath
3/5
So I had the self-titled album (4/5) and Paranoid (5/5) before this. And somehow this is only a 3/5 for me.
A Tribe Called Quest
2/5
PJ Harvey
3/5
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is my favourite album of hers, while her earlier albums are a bit of an acquired taste for me. That said, this was quite enjoyable and a welcome change from some of the same-y stuff on this list.
Arrested Development
2/5
Circle Jerks
3/5
The production is something to behold here. If you wanna even call it that. Quite bemusing that the TRUST Edition of this album that I listened to actually has some demos as bonus tracks. Wait, the album wasn't just demos already?
You can clearly hear that in terms of rawness and lyrical subjects, Circle Jerks were a major influence on Turbonegro specifically.
What else can I say... Everything's very much getting straight to the point here. If the main message is that you don't care, why spend more than 35 seconds of song on it?
Gram Parsons
2/5
Except for the occasional rock beat, this is too much of a schmaltzy country affair for me.
Ravi Shankar
4/5
One of the type of albums I'm here for.
Ryan Adams
2/5
The amount of artists who at the very best should have ONE album on this list and who instead get more (sometimes way more) is absolutely ricidulous. Ryan Adams is absolutely somebody who falls into this category. It's not shit as such (fairly annoying fairly quickly, though), but how on earth this is relevant or interesting enough in anyone's book to say one's life would be less complete without having listened to it is absolutely beyond me.
The Associates
1/5
Oh gawd, what a piece of self-indulgent, sulky rubbish. Truly terrible, including the worst version of Gloomy Sunday ever recorded and released on the unsuspecting public. I'd rather untangle 20 of those slinky stair hopper spiral things than listen to this again.
Dusty Springfield
4/5
Pink Floyd
5/5
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
3/5
I enjoy Cave's piano-based songs as much as any reasonable human being should and does. This album is weird, though. There isn't a single bad song here, but it's a "Nick Cave & His Piano" album, not a Bad Seeds album. And at album length, I do miss the drive and the unexpected elements the whole band usually brings to proceedings.
David Ackles
2/5
Not as bad as some reviews here make it out to be. Not as good as some other reviews do, either.
Black Flag
2/5
So this is the famed Black Flag. What Henry Rollins did before he became the Henry Rollins we all know, love, and go out for ginger brews and violent discussions with.
It's an album for that rare species of testosterone-driven youngsters with a weak spot for alcohol and destruction. I'm not in that demographic any more, and probably never really was.
The xx
2/5
It's not bad, but as their groundbreaking (and much better) debut album is already on the list, this album has absolutely zero business being here. Zero.
Hugh Masekela
2/5
It's great background music. In a room with people. Not so much when you're trying to work. The musicians know what they're doing, the arrangements are intricate... But in the whole I really can't get into this, and it feels like it's partly my fault.
Buffalo Springfield
4/5
I appreciate Neil Young, but I can only take him in certain limited doses. Except when he does stuff like the Dead Man soundtrack, which should be on this list but probably isn't.
Anyway... After a bunch of Crosby, Young, Stills, Nash, Surname, Something albums I was already presented with here, I came across this and was thinking to myself "sounds a bit like early Neil Young but not half as boring or annoying". Then I found out that it is actually Neil Young I'm hearing.
Talking Heads
3/5
Talking Heads. Formed in 1975, did the ultimate concert film/live album and their final tour by 1983, split fairly acrimoniously in 1991. Way ahead of many others. This album showcases how the band definitely influenced the singer - and actually also how the singer was sure to outgrow the confines of the band at some point. As an album, though... Bit of a mixed bag as a lot of the production and vocals are still a bit unrefined somehow.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
2/5
There's a drum kit on the cover, and the first time you actually notice the drums is over half way in. False advertising.
Brian Eno
2/5
A great illustration of why Brian Eno is very well known as a collaborator and producer, not so much as a solo artist. Because this is all very well produced and clever, but not that... Concise as an album/collection of songs.
Big Black
2/5
Definitely found Einstürzende Neubauten's Kollaps as well as Trout Mask Replica far more enjoyable than this. And I'm unsure whether this still deserves its entry on this list. I'm sort of leaning "no" - and then I'm leaning "hold on a minute".
Next thing then is whether it's a 1/5 or 2/5 for me. I just handed out a bunch of 2s and it's definitely not particularly worse than those - if anything, it's more interesting than some of of them.
Nitin Sawhney
3/5
All this easy listening stuff with heavy infusions of jazz, samples and electronica - which is my attempt at describing "Café del Mar" without using that exact phrase - was... very easy to listen to when it was the hot shit. And I did enjoy a lot of that back then (without being overly into it). Grand music to work on an essay/novel/lengthy email to, or to make love to your partner to, or to cook to, or to dust off your shelves to, or to stare blankly at the ceiling to.
It sort of still is, but for some reasing it really hasn't aged well. Maybe because it carries a sort of carelessness and easy living attitude that's difficult to recapture these days. Both because of the state of the world - but also because I'm not in my 20s any more and there's just more responsibility and less time to work on some essay/novel/lengthy email, to make love to your partner, to cook, to dust off your shelves, or to stare blankly at the ceiling (except in depression, in which case this album doesn't help at all).
Kind of a weird 3/5 because the world would be a better place if this was more easily enjoyable today. And aspiring to go back there isn't a bad thing.
Ray Charles
3/5
I enjoy Ray Charles' uptempo numbers a bit more than the ballads. So it's a hit and miss album for me, and I'm not quite sure how this qualifies for this list AS AN ALBUM rather than an okay selection of songs.
Isaac Hayes
4/5
Four tracks is all you need. Isaac Hayes is the master of very sample-able little fragments and layers and additional layers in his songs - so well-written and arranged, and he gives the songs plenty of room to breathe on this album.
The one song that unfortunately keeps me from giving this 5/5 is One Woman. Yes, it's a very romantic song about cheating, and that's great. But this is the one song where I feel the orchestration is just too over the top, to the point where I picture him performing it on some schmalzy musical revue show my grandparents would have enjoyed.
Soul II Soul
2/5
The Last Shadow Puppets
4/5
Afrika Bambaataa
2/5
Some people really enjoy this kind of old school hip-hop/rap. And they tell me what I'm missing because I'm not giving it a chance. This project definitely made sure I got plenty of chance to give this genre a chance. And confidently say "sorry, not for me".
Björk
4/5
This was such a breath of fresh air back when. 32 years ago, scaringly enough. Besides Like Someone In Love (which is just a bit too much - she executed the same general idea much better with It's all so Quiet later on), this is a truly delightful album to me still before she went into a direction my ears didn't want to follow any more.
Eels
5/5
I hadn't listened to this in ages. One of the few, very few, albums you get back to years and years later (29 years later, to be precise, even though that realisation really puts me in a bad mood) and realise again that it's an absolute stone-cold classic.
Elastica
2/5
Some grand tunes here, but overall probably a "you had to be there" kind of situation.
Megadeth
1/5
A bit like Metallica but with fewer catchy tunes. Still unsure if that's a good or a bad thing. Leaning bad.
David Bowie
2/5
I'm a fan of Bowie's. And I appreciate that some people really love his pseudo-soul period. I really don't. Besides his two mid-80s albums, this is the album out of his catalogue that could most easily do without. Including the rather unnecessary Across The Universe cover in which Bowie sounds like a parody of himself.
The one redeeming song is the pleasantly funky Fame at the end.
Throbbing Gristle
3/5
Delighted this is here, it's a breath of fresh air - and the perfect soundtrack to an irritating dinner party various couples break up on before all having make-up sex in the backseat of the cab back home.
Aerosmith
2/5
My third Aerosmith album in this project. Not to say they haven't earned their place in some hall of fame or other. But. Three bloody albums? That I need to hear before I die? Absolutely not. One would have sufficed, and honestly, I wouldn't care if their one entry on this list was Rocks, Toys in the Attic, or Pump. Their all very, very similar in what they deliver and how well their represent Aerosmith as a band.
Sly & The Family Stone
2/5
It's okay. But sort of too meandering for my taste.
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
3/5
A bit of a trip. Not a bad one. I think.
Arcade Fire
4/5
I know they've sort of fallen out of favour with a lot of the indie scene in the meantime. But this is still a great album, and a great reminder of what a great band they can be and what a creative force they represented when they entered the scene with this debut album.
Beastie Boys
1/5
Hip hop isn't my thing. Yes, clever lyrics and samples and things. The result just leaves me cold or annoys me, though.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
3/5
Dinosaur Jr.
1/5
This annoys me. Doubly so because this is here and none of Menomena's albums are.
Tricky
4/5
Sounds very much of its time these days, but it's still a grand album.
Blue Cheer
2/5
I was born way too late for this. Or I'm not enjoying a spliff quite often enough to enjoy this. Probably both.
Hole
2/5
I'd heard good things about this and was really looking forward to it. But I was left feeling a bit underwhelmed. Maybe because it's definitely a sort if teenage angst soundtrack and that's just quite far from where I'm at these days.
The Waterboys
4/5
Caetano Veloso
3/5
The Flying Burrito Brothers
1/5
Great band name, great album title. Shitty country music.
Muddy Waters
3/5
The Black Crowes
1/5
Sounds like Southern rock for tough guys who deep down just want to be loved, but they're misunderstood because everybody just sees them getting wasted and into fights so everybody mistakes them for violent drunkards.
Alice In Chains
4/5
Tim Buckley
3/5
Very dreamy kind of album, not exactly what I expected when I saw it being classified as folk. So I'm that sense a pleasant surprise. It also doesn't sound at all like a 1969 record. Well. Maybe like a 1969 George Martin-produced record. Definitely stands out in more than one way - I just don't see myself coming back to this an awful lot. Maybe when I'm retired and in need of something to get me in a somber mood before joining my family for Christmas.
U2
5/5
Funny how my hate U2 gets. This was a fairly groundbreaking album back in the day - U2 goes Eno - and it still holds up quite well indeed. Let's just not dwell too much on a lot of the stuff they did a bit later and enjoy this for what it is.
The Cardigans
4/5
I used to hate this band, and especially this album, because Lovefool was played way too many times on the radio, and it seemed so sickly sweet.
And then I discovered Gran Turismo, Long Gone Before Daylight and Super Extra Gravity. And then I revised this album and have to say... Great album. Even Lovefool is bearable in the context of this album.
Animal Collective
2/5
Ah, I remember that for its nausea-inducing cover art. Not so much for its music. Coming back to it reaffirms that 10 years down the line, I'll remember the nausea-inducing cover art. The music, not so much.
Trying to qualify this a bit more... It's Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - The Album. Way too many ideas and sounds and voices and noises in there to make for any kind of coherent listening experience. In fairness, this is partly my fault because I've never taken shrooms.
The Notorious B.I.G.
2/5
I'm just accepting of the fact that rap/hip-hop by and large isn't my thing. But. This has some truly great production. There's so many sounds and samples and bits and bobs to discover while I'm trying to ignore the spoken word part.
Serge Gainsbourg
4/5
The subject matter is a bit icky and it definitely helps that it's a 1970s album, not a current one. Although it must be said that even back then, Gainsbourg and this album in particular were quite controversial, and he did bask on that controversy to a point. But beyond all that, it's seriously an incredible album musically.
I'm hard-pressed to find words of my own that convey my feelings about this better than a review here that already exists. It reads as follows (slightly abridged):
"This is music for your aunt. [...] This album has no legacy, it has influenced nothing noteworthy. It's stale white bread in a cabinet that smells faintly of mildew and is lined with a tacky layer of faded orange and green plastic sheeting. This is an album that was meant to take up space at a Goodwill or a Salvation Army in between Barry Manilow and a six volume Christian music box set that's missing two records and the vinyl is warped. Once you have heard Neu! you never have to hear this album."
As such, it's a perfect representation of anything Rod Stewart has ever recorded.
Mylo
1/5
Very drab, very of its time. Also, this is a genre that's designed to sort of blend nicely into the background while you sip your cocktail at the Café del Mar. And this album blends into that whole soundscape. So an album that doesn't stand out in any way in a genre that doesn't stand out at all, either.
Adam & The Ants
2/5
Yes. Ants. Pants. Bass lines. Why not. Where are the Ants now? When did they last lift things many times their own weight? Is there a special place in heaven for them? Have I listened to a sufficient quantity of British post-punk/new wave/new romantic albums yet? Ants. Spiders. Music. Bass lines. If anybody has anything left to say it's their sacred duty to keep stumm.
The Who
2/5
There are a bunch of The Who albums on this list. Why this live album - which is fine, but doesn't transcend the studio versions of the songs contained, nor the live album format itself - is beyond me.
Funnily, there are also a number of Talking Heads albums on this list, but "Stop Making Sense", the one actual live album that does transcend their studio work and - to a point - the live album format, is not on this list. The mind boggles.
Prefab Sprout
2/5
It's fine, but not having got attached to this album when it came out (ie not benefitting from a healthy dose of nostalgia about how it helped me get through my first heartbreak), it's very hard to find it remarkable at all.
2/5
First song has vocals that are vaguely reminiscent of Sting's Police-era vocals.
After that, it's more like a bunch of okay-ish psychedelic-era Beatles outtakes, with some Beach Boys harmonies thrown in occasionally.
Honestky not an essential listen. The band history is more interesting than this album, I'm afraid.
Destiny's Child
3/5
The keyboard sounds in the intro to Survivor are absolutely awful. I'd never realised this.
Fine pop Album otherwise.
Janelle Monáe
3/5
Monáe is obviously incredibly talented and she also - which isn't a given - seems like a genuinely cool person. And I really want to like or even love her music. Because nominally, it sounds like it would be right up my alley.
The problem is - besides the occasional song here and there, somehow... her music doesn't quite grab me. But I'm willing to keep trying.
The Police
3/5
First half sounds like a bunch of Police outtakes that would have been fine if they'd been left on the editing room floor. Then there's MOTHER. A monster of a song. The there are a hunch of songs we've all heard way too many times. Which stands as a testament to how well they did what they did. But it's also okay they stopped after this.
Lucinda Williams
1/5
It's the female equivalent of dad rock. Mum folk/country. Consequently gets exactly the same rating.
The Beach Boys
2/5
Yes, it's well produced. And yes, the arrangements are quite elaborate.
But this is all too sweet, too much harmony, and the lyrics I really couldn't care less about. It's like the Beatles without the elements that actually made them interesting and groundbreaking.
Hanoi Rocks
2/5
Sounds like generic Scandinavian glam rock. Maybe influenced Hellacopters or Turbonegro by showing that Scandinavians can play rock. Or maybe I'm making that up or imagining it. Makes me want to eat fries and grilled sausage with spicy sauce. But maybe I'm just saying that because somebody is carrying a bag of fries on the subway I'm currently on.
Willie Colón & Rubén Blades
3/5
It's fine, but having not grown up on this kind of music, it's very hard for me to tell one song from another, or from the Buena Vista Social Club album. My apologies.
Aretha Franklin
4/5
Johnny Cash
5/5
Words fail me.
Girls Against Boys
4/5
What a breath of fresh air here! Reminds me of a German band called Pelzig I really enjoy, and who were clearly influenced by this. There's urgency, pressure, tastefully played instruments avoiding any sort of cliché, and tunes, hooks and some catchy one-liners.
The Streets
3/5
I really enjoyed this at the time for its catchiness and for putting whatever that accent is called front and center. It also had a massive impact on the scene - and it's the album where Skinner got the balance between catchy tunes and his spoken word delivery and storytelling just right. Lad-culture was a big thing at the time and this sort of came from that but really disected how shitty ladness (is that a word?) really is/was.
Having said all that, the more removed I am from that point in time and that age in my life, the less I am able to connect with it.
The Saints
2/5
Here's another punk rock album that is fine and would have been enjoyable had you been into that scene back when it was a scene and this album was new and fresh and you were hungering for more stuff that has echoes of The Stooges, but with some melodic outbursts. 48 years later, in the context of this list, it doesn't do anything for me.
The Fall
3/5
This was generated for me right after The Saints' "Eternally yours", which had been released 8 years prior. It's fair to say punk hadn't really evolved an awful lot in those 8 years. Well, this is a bit more rough and experimental, in fairness. And it has Mark E. Smith.
Stephen Stills
3/5
A bit too country-tinged for my taste, and a bit too long. Quite a bit too long. Not bad as such, though, and more enjoyable than the stuff he did in his Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, and whoever else years.
David Bowie
2/5
I hold Bowie in fairly high regard. Lots of people hold this album in very high regard. I'm not one of them. It has a few good tracks, but the Eno-influenced/-provided keyboards overall don't do it much good. My least favourite of the Berlin trilogy.
Common
2/5
It's fine, but another one of those artists where you go "Grand - what, they have MORE THAN ONE ALBUM on this list? Why?!"
X-Ray Spex
3/5
So, I had two punk albums before this, and I'm not a big fan of punk. It's alright. It has its place. But this was quite delightful. Female punk for a change. And what drive.
Two issues for me... the singer's voice gets a bit hard to take whenever she has longer sections of straining to to reach heights her voice isn't well-suited to. Also, the album is a tad too long.
The Pharcyde
3/5
Jefferson Airplane
4/5
As bags go, this is an astoundingly mixed one. Stellar tracks right alongside eg a blues improvisation that makes you wonder what made them put it to tape and then actually include it on the album.
Ray Price
2/5
Music to get wasted on eggnog by.
Les Rythmes Digitales
1/5
It sounds like a parody of 80s wannabe French electronica that never went anywhere. Which in itself isn't a full album's worth of parody I'd necessarily need.
But to make matters worse, this seems to be meant kind of seriously.
"Music make you lose control" the annoying loop in the second song goes. Yeah, well, this kind of wants me to throw moth balls into oncoming traffic.
TLC
2/5
An okay pop album that was hard to escape at the time.
Dr. Octagon
1/5
There are a couple of seconds here and there that make me go "ah, that's a cool sample". But it doesn't last long and it is embedded in tons of lyrics, beats and scratches that I don't care about.
Manu Chao
5/5
World music, but catchy. What's not to like? Except the fact that this has unfortunately served as backdrop music in way too many sleazy backpacker joints.
Still an outstanding album, though.
The Electric Prunes
3/5
Some bold lyrics. And by bold I mean dripping with youthful male horniness.
Musically, though, this is quite enjoyable, if maybe tilting a bit too much into quirkiness in the 2nd half.
Badly Drawn Boy
2/5
Didn't get what the fuzz was about when he was big in indie circles around the turn of the century/millennium. Still don't. It's very nondescript, not really offending, but not really offering that much besides maybe being a good soundtrack to an afternoon in the English meadows, sipping red wine, falling asleep, waking up and wondering if that record is still playing, or playing on repeat, and if it's actually still the same song.
Emmylou Harris
2/5
Too much country schmaltz, although she does have a great voice. But. Way too schmaltzy, I cannot emphasise this enough.
The Jesus And Mary Chain
2/5
Steeped with 80s production with a vocal delivery and mix full of premonition. I'm old enough to have lived through the 80s,but I have no connection to this at all. And it doesn't work for me, listening in 2025.
Queen Latifah
2/5
There's an album by Queen Latifah called the Dana Owens (her birth name I believe) album. It's an album on which she pays Hommage to jazz, soul and blues. A beautiful album, very well-performed and produced. Need to put that on again, and I'm glad I own a physical CD of it because it's not available on streaming.
Anyway. This is not that album. At all. It's a hip-hop/pop affair. Which is grand, but not my cuppa no matter how many albums of that genre are thrown at me by this project.
The Hives
4/5
Quick and to the point. Every single track and the album as such. It's a compilation, though, so... No 5/5 even though the tracks themselves would warrant it, but can't go awarding compilations a full score because they're basically cheating.
The Who
2/5
Funny how pleasant and Beatles-knock-off-esque the first few songs sound. Well, besides the fact these fellas have a hyperactive drummer, ie the polar opposite of Ringo who was primarily concerned with serving the song.
Then comes My Generation (the song), which suddenly takes the whole Beatles/Beach Boys schtick and transcends and breaks it apart. Including implied use of the f-word.
And then... Right back to the sound of a Beatles B-side. With that hyperactive drummer somebody threw in there because they thought why the heck not. And then some fairly... Dare I say embarrassing soul/blues knock-off attempts... Daltrey attempting to sound black (which is a category I'd normally not even apply to anything, but that's very clearly what he's doing) in "I'm a Man".
The Ox finally gives the hyperactive drummer his proper due. Fun track.
Very underwhelming as an album, though.
David Bowie
4/5
Dexys Midnight Runners
3/5
Three albums on this list. These guys have one über hit, but three bloody albums on this list.
And...the one with the hit is decent enough, actually. There is absolutely zero reason to include more than one album of theirs here. Take your pick... This one or the über hit one. Doesn't matter much. They're both more than half decent. One of those two is absolutely enough, though.
Lightning Bolt
3/5
It's a great album to listen to first thing in the morning as you're getting up over an hour earlier than usual as you're heading to catch a train for a business trip you're semi-enthused about.
Thankfully, don't find myself in that situation very often. That said... I now have something to fall back on the next time I do.
Eric Clapton
2/5
Clapton recorded this after coming out of a heroin addiction. Curiously, after that experience, he managed to produce an album devoid of any kind of grit. It's the epitome of faceless corporate rock, soulless covers included. Expertly played, though. 1.5/5 really, but I'm feeling generous today.
Orange Juice
2/5
Talking Heads with a somewhat less challenging vocal delivery but also fewer - way fewer - catchy melodies and hooks.
Screaming Trees
4/5
Scritti Politti
1/5
AI slop didn't exist in 1985.
Which leaves us with two options.
1) This was recently generated by AI and subsequently inserted into music history by also generating Wiki articles, reviews, and so on.
2) Scritti Politti were way ahead of their time because they managed to foresee and emulate AI slop at a time when people still thought of Salvador Dalí when you were talking about images with weirdly shaped and numbered hands and fingers.
Patti Smith
3/5
It's very reminiscent of Neil Young to me. It's fine, and I appreciate it was groundbreaking at its time. But it doesn't grab me like other music does.
The Byrds
3/5
Notorious, you say?
Space Odyssey is an incredible letdown compared to Bowie's song of the same name. The album is fine.
But notorious, I'm not sure. Sure doesn't sound like it.
The Verve
2/5
Urban Hymns is a surprisingly good album given it's got two really annoying hits in it.
This, though, has zero business being on this list. It's not crap. But it's utterly forgettable.
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
3/5
Yeeeeeeeehaw.
Banjo-picking good.
Mudhoney
2/5
Vocals are more off key than on, production is drenched in muddy honey.
Siouxsie And The Banshees
4/5
This, to me, is what many people say Patti Smith's "Horses" is supposed to be.
Weirdly, I first encountered Siouxsie via her first and so far only solo album, Mantaray, which is quite a different affair from this one. I really like both for how she seems to be doing her thing, and I truly enjoy both Siouxsie incarnations.
Nico
2/5
Her voice is instantly recognisable - and quite the acquired taste.
Honestly... Her work with Velvet Underground is on this list, and very rightly so. But this album just doesn't match that quality at all.
Astor Piazzolla
1/5
Tango doesn't agree with my circulatory system. It gives me a feeling of being on the verge of a heart attack, or, at the very least, severe cardiac arrhythmia.
Steve Winwood
1/5
If it was possible to apply fabric conditioner - gratuitous quantities of it - to music, this would be the result.
Joni Mitchell
3/5
Public Image Ltd.
2/5
It's not as un-enjoyable as some reviews here make it out to be. But it's certainly not what I expect to hear on a Sunday afternoon playing Rummicub at the old people's home. And it's very certainly of its time.
George Jones
1/5
Country is as country does.
Sarah Vaughan
3/5
Portishead
2/5
11 years after their previously last album, Portishead released this, promising the next album wouldn't take that long. Over 17 years later and there's every chance Third could have also been correctly titled Last.
It's quite the departure from their previous work.
It's my least listened-to Portishead album, and with over 17 years between its release and me writing this review, I can finally say that the reason is simply that it is their least compelling album. It's Anxiety Attack - The Soundtrack. A huge, menacing, cold block of cold, hard steel that drags you in while always remaining impenetrable, keeping everything and everybody outside. If Stanley Kubrick hadn't already found the perfect soundtrack for the monolith in 2001... this album would be the perfect alternative.
Geoff Barrow recently said that he's shocked by the notion that anybody would have sex to the first two Portishead albums in particular. I dare anybody to actually have sex to Third without being on some kind of Leaving Las Vegas-level mix of uppers, downers, antidepressants, and whatnot in their system.
SZA
3/5
A lot better than I would have expected from the genre description and of course from the rather stupid cover.
Gene Clark
2/5
I listened to this earlier today and hardly remember what it sounds like.
Massive Attack
3/5
As others have said, the Light My Fire cover is absolutely unnecessary in itself and also spoils what would have been a perfectly good ending to a perfectly fine album. Aged a bit better than Blue Lines to my ears, but the question has to be asked... Why more than one Massive Attack album?
Iron Butterfly
3/5
Title track is great, rest is a bit so-so.
Robert Wyatt
4/5
Enjoyably unenjoyable