First album I’ve rated on here and it’s one I know front and back. What’s new is the mix for the 45th anniversary edition that sounds incredible. That organ in What Goes On is clear as a bell.
Man, I just don't get The Police. On paper, they seem like they're right up my alley. I love reggae, I love post-punk. The musicality is undeniable. But I can't imagine ever just wanting to put on a Police album.
First time listening to this one. Message in a Bottle is a great song I guess, but it's one of those songs that's so completely burned into my brain that it's hard to listen to it objectively. The songs I'd never heard fared a little better. I dug On Any Other Day because it sounds like a Weird Al parody of a Police song.
Im not super well versed in vocal jazz, but Sarah Vaughan is undeniable. I’m not really sure why this particular album is the one selected as her entry on this list. It’s very cozy and intimate, but it doesn’t feel like an essential album. I gotta imagine there’s another one that does her more justice.
I was stoked for this one because I love Breakfast in America, but I’ve never listened to any other Supertramp. Big disappointment. Most of this sounds like bad Pink Floyd and I’ve never really liked Pink Floyd. Mostly dull, but the high spots are Bloody Well Right, Dreamer, and Crime of the Century, especially the stings and sax that come in at the end of the last one. I’ll also give them some credit because Just Blaze took a piano riff from Crime and made the Fabolous track Breathe, which is a better song than anything on here. Overall, I was so down on this I had to go back and listen to Breakfast in America again to make sure I wasn’t misremembering how much I liked that one. Much better album.
What a phenomenal fuck you album. As the LA Riots raged in 92, white America was legitimately scared of Ice Cube and The Predator was his response to his critics in the media and politics, to his former bandmates in NWA, to the LAPD, and to anybody else who wanted to hide behind the pearls they clutched as an excuse to not listen to what he was saying.
Side one has an indisputable line up of bangers. "When Will They Shoot?" was my favorite track at the time and remains one of the greatest album openers in hip-hop history. Next up "Wicked" takes the then hottest shit Bomb Squad style production and throws in some dancehall flavor to make a song so badass that nu metal bands would be covering it in a few years. DJ Muggs drops in for a couple of songs and then of course, the ubiquitous "It Was a Good Day," which would be elevated to the rarified pantheon of rap songs that even people who don't listen to rap know and like.
Nothing wrong with side two, except that it can't live up to side one, which has to have been a conscious decision since side one is packed with Pooh and Muggs songs and they only have one song each on side two. Muggs's "Check Yo Self" is the only undeniable classic and it's nice that we finally get an appearance from the diggity Das EFX after a couple of shout outs. As a 15-year-old mark for a good novelty song, I loved "Gangsta's Fairytale 2" at the time. As a 40-something year old, I still think it's cute and love that Taste of Honey bass loop, but it does come off as a bit of a goofy attempt at a Slick Rick storytelling song. I also greatly enjoy that Cube considers Mr Rogers and Bebe's Kids to be fairytale characters.
I’ve never liked Led Zeppelin. When I went through that inevitable pre to early teen classic rock phase, I somehow managed to completely avoid Zep and a few years later I got into punk rock and Led Zeppelin was the least punk band in existence.
I try to listen with a more open mind these days, but I still don’t care for this band. Electrified blues played by white people is a style of music that doesn’t interest me in the least and holy shit I truly don’t care for the way Robert Plant shrieks with that baby baby baby shit. So I might not like what they do, but I will admit that they do it very well.
Dazed and Confused is the song I’m most amenable to, mostly because it sounds like Black Sabbath. I also don’t mind Your Time is Gonna Come because it reminds me of Lynyrd Skynyrd, another band I like better than Led Zeppelin. The third song I’ll say something nice about is Communication Breakdown, which ironically has a very punky riff and apparently was a big influence on Johnny Ramone’s playing. But yeah, overall this sounds like a big dumb cover band with an annoying singer playing a style of music that doesn’t do anything for me. Baby baby baby ooooh wah yeah yeah yeah.
She has a good voice, but this is some Starbucks-ass music. Fine if you’re trying to put a baby to sleep or something, but for me this is the musical equivalent of tasteful floral wallpaper. It’s pretty, it’s bland, it’s stuck in the past, it takes no risks, doesn’t have much character. Not my bag at all.
Only holding back the fifth star because all the Stevie Nicks songs are so much better than the others and there aren’t enough of them.
Barely a dozen albums in and already another Led Zeppelin? Ugh. I do like this a bit more than the first one. I think Robert Plant’s vocals are buried a little more in the mix, which helps. If they took them out entirely it would be even better. There are a few songs I don’t mind like the one they wrote about Godzilla. I dig the mellotron. God this album is long,
Finally! After a stretch of being served up 60s-70s rock I either appreciate but don’t connect with (Elton John) or straight up dislike (Led Zeppelin) I was beginning to feel like I had a knee jerk negative reaction to boomer music, but then Neil came along to reassure me that no, I love some of this stuff. I never owned this particular album so there are a few album tracks that were new to me, so even better.
Early 90s Lenny Kravitz was one of 14 year old me’s first ideas of what cool was. He had a nose ring and dreadlocks and was married to Lisa Bonet. He had a song about racist cab drivers where he used the f word. His music was theoretically the kind of thing I would put on if I ever got the chance to make out with a girl. Super cool super edgy.
For all those reasons I was looking forward to revisiting this album from my youth. Turns out this music plays a lot better to a tween who’s just getting into music than to a aging music nerd with decades of listening to all the people Lenny’s ripping off. This is boho poser music of the highest order. This is the guy who pulls out a guitar at the party. This is the trust fund hippie who’s always bumming smokes. These songs are reasonable surface level facsimiles of the Jimi/Sly/Beatles type Lenny is going for, only with some astonishingly trite-ass lyrics. I did listen to a little of Mama Said just to see if all of it is this dorky and thankfully it does improve a bit. I guess since it eventually led me to the real stuff I’m ok with Lenny Kravitz as gateway music for a kid who was still playing with action figures a year before he dubbed this album onto a cassette.
I think the first time I heard Lenny Kravitz might have been on Square One TV (look it up, kids) when they were doing a segment on racism and a cool girl a grade above me pointed out that they were playing Mr Cab Driver and I pretended that I knew the song. Seems appropriate.
Great, more boomer rock, but at least this was a band I listened to in my youth. I was just the right age when the Oliver Stone movie came out to get sucked into Doors-mania. I bought the tapes, read the bio, even made an oil painting of Jim Morrison in art class.
Listening now with fresh ears, this is pretty corny. I like the organ-heavy production, but the spell is broken every time Jim Morrison starts yawlping his way on the track with his embarrassing poetry. It’s almost stupid enough to sound like parody and I can enjoy it on that level, kind of like how I have to listen to his obvious acolyte, Danzig.
Interesting, but so elliptical I feel like I need more time to digest it.
Mehco and the Blahnnymen. It’s not awful, just not particularly interesting, like a dull Cure. Pretty sure I didn’t need to listen to this before I die.
Definitely not.
This one kind of blew my mind. I was big into Coldcut and Ninja Tune during the trip-hop era of the mid-90s, but I never knew how long they had already been around, much less that their first album was this kind of late-80s Lisa Stansfield-type house. But they also got Mark E. Smith and Queen Latifah on there as well? Weird. I can't really listen to this era of music because it just sounds extremely dated and reminds me too much of middle school. It was interesting to learn about Coldcut's roots, but yeah, I think I'll stick with Let Us Play.
Rating it a bit higher because I like the bass lines and some of the grooves, but the songs themselves are pretty forgettable. No hooks, they don’t really go anywhere, and every one is at least a minute too long. Some of them take a minute+ just to fade out. Maybe that was a thing at the time? Kind of reminds me of U2 with eyeliner.
