U2 sucks. Which is probably just how Gen Xers feel about sixties and seventies rock. We all want to burn down what came before. Can’t understand how this is a totemic album if the eighties. Because the rest is so much worse? The hits are good but repetitive. I probably would have loved it if I were born in 1970 and 17 when this came out. Alas, I wasn’t, and I don’t. Bono’s carefully triangulated liberal Irish Catholicism - I wanna drink with my lefty friends but not offend the pope or Reagan, challenge them, convict their hearts for Jesus! but not offend - is exhausting. As is his keening wail. As is his self indulgence. And that thumping rhythm that a hundred bands drove to death - looking at you, Coldplay. Like all these albums, maybe great for someone sometime. Now a period piece curiosity at best. I’ve found what I’m looking for, elsewhere.

Really wanted this to be a four, and went back and forth throughout, but it errs just a bit on the side of cerebral and Radiohead-y. If it would just swing or rock a little more, I'd love it. Be weird, be loud, be atonal, be angular, but make it sound like something humans will enjoy listening to. Lots to like here, and with another listen or two it might be a four. I really want to like this band, though I'm not sure why.

Some great crunchy guitar early and gorgeous vocals and production. But forgettable and repetitive songs with dumb lyrics.

Baba and Blue Eyes and Won’t Get Fooled all great. Just because I’ve heard them more? Are they radio played because they’re better, or do we think they’re better bc they’re radio played and familiar? The Who are an undeniably great band. Daltry Moon Entwistle Townshend. They rock. But seventies cock rock kind of sucks. Lyrics are bland and dumb. The Who seem committed to this juvenile shit like oh we all peed on the wall, we’re bathing in baked beans. Guess it made the greatest generation angry which must have felt good but it ages poorly.

Better than The Who and Queen. More straight hard rock. Gets boring after an hour, but a forty minute highlights cut would slap. These guys can play. Chugging drums, blazing lead, nice little double lead lines harmonizing guitars. Who and Queen probably better live. Solid late seventies live rock.

Listenable for Come Out and Play, and Self Esteem. The rest is pretty generic nineties pop punk. Come Out and Play gets most of its charm from surf rock - Pulp Fiction? Two stars for the energy and production and humor and those tracks. Otherwise forgettable and obnoxiously intentionally juvenile and repetitive and lyrically offputting.

Badass. Hard. Nasty toward the end. But musically prescient and tasteful and a good time for all.

Meh. Not my thing. Virtuosic playing and nice incorporation of classical motifs. But to jagged and not enough melody or harmony or swing or groove for my taste. Feedback and other noise lands as more annoying than sublime. Talent to burn, and maybe their other stuff is great. But this isn’t for me. Took three attempts to listen thru and the effort was hardly worth it.

I like. Late sixties Brit pop. Beatles and early Bowie vibes. Very English, including a startling condemnation of war in The Butcher. Time of the Season is a masterpiece that too much radio play can’t ruin. Production lyrics everything from the future. Those two are five star. The rest are good and would probably grow on me but not enough punch to rise above three. Surprisingly tame for a band called the Zombies! Strong three stars, maybe four with more listens.

Perfect rockabilly rock perfection. Buddy and the boys are a platonic ideal of the form, and I won’t hear a word against them. Twenty five minutes of bliss. If you don’t like this you don’t like American music.

Stop singing at me. Gorgeous voice and production and really sophisticated songwriting. Clearly surplus talent. I guess he’s queer which adds a star automatically. But this kind of baroque over the top - more Beethoven tho - is too much for me. Maximalist pop. There must be a time and place for it. I’d rather listen to Bowie any day. White people and white men in particular just lost the plot after grunge and the dominance of rap/rnb. Doubling down isn’t the answer.

Bob showed me again how great Frank can be. His voice is everything you could ask. But the self pity and drippy strings get old quickly, and an hour is about twice as much as anyone needs. This started at five stars and steadily declined. Wants more variety and shorter run time. Rich beautiful white guys feeling sorry for themselves spoils like milk.

Better than any non Kendrick rap album I’ve heard in a long time. Good beats and not too much distracting side stuff. Feels old fashioned, with choruses and straightforward raps. Dre is weird and talented and with that voice, while Boi flows with the best. Close to four stars, but I’m in no hurry to listen again, so three. Still, the hits hit and the rest is just fine.

Delicious! Just weird and noisy enough, lovely passages, funny, German, real fuck you we're having fun energy. I’ll listen again and it may well be a five. This is a true find, totally unknown to me before today. Why I tried this whole project. Krautrock!

I like it very much.

U2 sucks. Which is probably just how Gen Xers feel about sixties and seventies rock. We all want to burn down what came before. Can’t understand how this is a totemic album if the eighties. Because the rest is so much worse? The hits are good but repetitive. I probably would have loved it if I were born in 1970 and 17 when this came out. Alas, I wasn’t, and I don’t. Bono’s carefully triangulated liberal Irish Catholicism - I wanna drink with my lefty friends but not offend the pope or Reagan, challenge them, convict their hearts for Jesus! but not offend - is exhausting. As is his keening wail. As is his self indulgence. And that thumping rhythm that a hundred bands drove to death - looking at you, Coldplay. Like all these albums, maybe great for someone sometime. Now a period piece curiosity at best. I’ve found what I’m looking for, elsewhere.

Fun! Some tracks very like U2, except good. Semi intelligent dance pop. Not something I listen to much but when I do I’ll certainly check this out again. Forgettable, but in a good way.

Is this progressive rock? Why does it so often refuse to dance or swing. This is why Dead > any prog - they too get weird but always come back to dance. Still, close enough to my wheelhouse that I’ll listen at least once again. There’s good stuff here, not least the cover art.

Now this is cock rock done right. Aussie incorrigibles with ten songs about one thing - the highway to hell is slippery indeed. It’s base but knows it, and though every song sounds like the one before, it’s a good song sound, and the band takes itself exactly unseriously enough. Inimitable vocals, massive guitar and throbbing rhythm section. Throbbing indeed.

Sparkling English post punk or pop punk or something that still sounds fresh nearly thirty years later. And it dances. Melodic and varied enough I’d like to listen at least again and again at least. Anticipates Spoon and a lot of other music but much less precious and self aware. Back when white musicians didn’t think so much (of themselves).

Chill, man. Probably sounded fresher when new - this sound has been done and done since. Not interesting enough for a four, but not bad at all.

A thoughtful take on core country, doing what it’s always doing by figuring out how to look back just right. Mostly it succeeds, though not always (“Fingernails” wtf). His voice isn’t beautiful or memorable or ugly enough to be great, and neither are the songs. It’s probably one of the best country albums of its year or several years, though I doubt that’s saying much. I’d like to hear it at least once more. Can’t hold a candle to Lucinda Williams.

Two stars because Bubbles loves them, and because they're nerdy Canadians, and because Alex Lifeson seems like a genuinely wonderful human. But while Geddy's bass is solid, his voice is everything bad about post-Zepplin male vocalists - nails on a chalkboard. They can play, "Tom Sawyer" is fun, and they're probably fun live, but this is barely listenable.

Delightful. The full-Reagan (or Thatcher, I guess) album cover got me, and the ridiculous name. I'm here for it all - that weird 80s voice lots of people did, being a million miles from U2 and bands like Rush, talking through the songs, the heavy British accents, the surprising instrumentation (steel guitar!) - all of it, a breath of fresh air after a few heavy lifts.

Too spare, too strident, and - I never thought I’d say this - too British. I like the lefty fuck your Seeger thing. But yeesh it gets old real quality.

This was once my favorite Beatles album and, who knows, may be again someday. These days my favorite Beatles are on the knife edge between their bopping youth and experimental middle period, rich and stoned and sick of fame and the road but still entirely under Brian’s thumb. Still, this must be the world’s greatest swan song by the world’s greatest (studio) band by far.

Really wanted this to be a four, and went back and forth throughout, but it errs just a bit on the side of cerebral and Radiohead-y. If it would just swing or rock a little more, I'd love it. Be weird, be loud, be atonal, be angular, but make it sound like something humans will enjoy listening to. Lots to like here, and with another listen or two it might be a four. I really want to like this band, though I'm not sure why.

Just funky enough. Great lyrics and voice. Could easily become five stars.

This is fun! This is new wave? The hits are great and the rest stands up, ages well, just quirky enough.

Magnificently hard, driving. The Who wish they rocked this well. Anticipates AC/DC but far less juvenile. Gets the hard rock screech right without Daltry’s peacock ego or Plant’s tiresome overuse. Love this.

I’m too young to have been listening when this was fresh, and now it sounds every bit of thirty-something, and I mean that as a compliment. Queen is a hell of a rapper, and the Golden Age sound here before everything became gangsta is very nice indeed. Feminism good beats great raps nothing to dislike. An hour doesn’t feel too long.

What fun! Vibrato sneer is friendly and fun. Crunchy punky little pop songs and takes itself not at all seriously. Nothing not to like!

What’s left of my early teen misogyny really wanted to dislike this, and dismiss it like I did when I was thirteen and it was inescapable. But it’s too funny, surprising, smart, feisty, and strong to be swept aside. And far too Dylanesque.

Gorgeously produced and played and lyrically moving but goddamn it I hate voice vibrato.

I hate this. I can turn it really far down in the background and it's kind of like a sound machine. I can imagine loving it if I were twenty in '86 and dancing drunk in a sneezy basement club. On some good uppers. But this sound that feels like it defined a certain kind of angsty Gen X eighties alt rock is something I do not like. Makes one yearn for the wrecking ball of grunge and rap 'round the corner.

I admire this, but I don’t like it. Heavy raw wild intense. But not my scene.

Not really my vibe but the voice wears surprisingly well, something Husker Du and Billy Bragg and others could learn from, and should have. This album is as old as me and has aged nearly as well. Blister in the Sun sounded fresh when I was fifteen and still makes me smile. Add it Up, et al. Hard not to like!

It’s fine. The hits are great, and Dre’s production is delightful, as always. Doesn’t deserve to be so popular, though deserve has nothing to do with it.

Two and a half, I guess. I respect this Britrock thing, but it doesn't really move me much. Feels like a period piece. Would listen to other Kinks, though.

Cute. And impressively angular for peak-disco era. But angular ain't my thing, and this wears thin quickly. Butchering "Satisfaction" is some kind of statement, I guess. I can't get no.

Inconsistently brilliant. Tons of variety, perhaps too much. Broken Arrow is a weird Beatles-y collage thing, no thanks. But the first three or four really go - rock, country, jazzy. 3.5 rounded down to 3 for the inconsistency, but there's lots here to like, especially Neil Young.

Magnificent groovy funky fun. Doesn’t really reach a consistently transcendent level but it is consistently great.

Well, I love this. Haven't heard other Zappa, but this is just my cup of tea - jammy, complex, weird but disciplined, astonishingly talented, head-bobby. Instrumentals, and Captain Beefheart! One of my favorites of all the albums so far.

The first half is stronger than the second, but that's to be expected since the first half is perfect. Van the man!

Punky and fun. But it goes on too long, and is inconsistent. There are some stretches of 4-star rock in here, with all the right snarl and swagger, but too much indulgent mediocrity to rise above a 3.

James Brown has always felt punchy to me, like the band is boxing my ears. I wish they’d settle into a groove and ride it. But I think it’s a feature that would have made them a joy live. And you can hear it here, this gets an extra star for the euphoric Apollo audience. Also, the man can sing, and his band kills.

Adele has an extraordinary vocal instrument. Shame to waste it on this tripe. Everything is overdone - vocals, lyrics, production. I bet in a room with an acoustic group and good songs she’d slay. Bonus point for just how remarkable her voice is, but otherwise insufferable.

I suffered through this. Bonus star for Ganster Trippin, which tripped me down memory lane to being 13 and thinking it was great. Also when I hear Fat Boy Slim I see in my mind Christopher Walken dancing. But this shit is obnoxious. Repetitive, grating, juvenile in all the worst ways. I’d have to do a mountain of ecstasy to get in this groove; even then I’d want something less idiotic.

Good but not great. Without the focus and melodic genius of Ziggy.

Beautiful atmospheric late nineties French well electronica. Has aged so much better than contemporaries like Fat Boy Slim. Anticipates the sound Theivery Corporation made their brand. Tres bon!