The album that compelled Fleetwood Mac to successfully queer heterosexuality. They were all drugged up to the eyeballs and fucking each other six way from sunday (except John McVie, poor sod, he had to play bass on all Christine's songs about him) and holed up in a studio with next to no windows and still produced a stone cold top 3 album of all time instead of systematically killing each other for sport. Any song on here would be an apex mountain pinnacle for any other band not called The Beatles, take your pick. In fact it's CRIMINAL that they left Stevie Nicks beautiful "Silver Springs" off the track listing (thank you to The Dance and deluxe editions for restoring it), and I like to sometimes think that somewhere, in a CVS, Lindsey Buckingham is at this moment waiting for his quarter mile long receipt to print while the store PA plays "Silver Springs" and all he hears is "you'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you" They never could get away from that sound... 50 stars if they would allow it.

[Review pending as author listened to this album, got up, opened his front door, and walked all the way to Brooklyn to offer himself at the altar of the witch coven Fiona Apple surely created through the power and majesty of this album alone]

The defining album of my generation (late gen x, final year of high school, Cool fuckin Britannia to the core) and I can still remember release day, cutting out of said high school to buy this CD right as HMV opened and then rush home to quickly get it on tape in order to be the first to play it on the form room stereo. Everyone was rapt in anticipation, some were disassociating from raw hype alone... Thank fuck it delivered banger after banger. This and their Knebworth shows were the high water mark for Britpop as a movement, the tide was turning long before Be Here Now jizzed itself onto the public a few years later and the Gallagher brothers and other associated band members became pastiches of their former selves, but it doesn't make this any less impactful. Now they're back, and I'm old as fuck. Almost 30 years later. Ain't life a bitch? But gods, we were kings back then... We were the masters of our fates. We were young, dumb, full of cum. We were mad for it. Anyway, here's Wonderwall...

Breezy psychedelic pop tunes float on by wanting to be a Pet Sounds or a Sgt. Pepper, and truthfully there's not a bad song on this album, but theres also not a lot of great ones either, they're all perfectly serviceable as a single listen through, but only "Time of the Season" stands out as a relistenable, and thats really about it... As middle of the road as psychedelic pop can be.

A perfect Pop Rock album? Definitely a solid track list with timeless classics like "One Way or Another" and "Heart of Glass" but solid gold behind it like "Hanging on the Telephone" and "Sunday Girl", though for that song you should make sure you get the Frenglish version that inexplicable s'est mis au français à mi-chemin. Pourquoi? Je n'en ai aucune idée, c'est vraiment super mimi et bien plus tard Zooey Deschanel a repris cette chanson avec She & Him et elle correspond parfaitement à son esthétique. Mais je m'égare... 4 étoiles

Starts out with a clavinet and doesn't let up on the early 70s funk for the next 40 minutes, only four songs so you know you're getting a god bang for your buck. Standout Track: Watermelon Man

People come for Once In a Lifetime, but stay for the absolute, unrelenting, forward velocity of The Great Curve.

Even nearly 25 years later, this still be flipping in the ghetto on a dirty mattress. Bonafide timeless classic, a standard Miss Lauren couldn't dare to achieve again.

Powerhouse of an album that shot Adele to superstardom. Still listenable as it has a timeless sound, still relatable, still raw in many ways.

Bon Scott's last album and it's in their top three albums, but it never really hit with me. It has Highway to Hell (obviously) but the rest is just .... there

I don't know how this got extended to a double album, it has one good song, and even that is good not because of Eric Clapton, but Jim Gordon's piano in the coda. The rest is filler.

Come for Frontier Psychiatrist but stay for the rest of the album, especially the title track, it's just the epitome of early 2000s sunny dispositions. A ton of samples all layered together to weave a tapestry of feel good vibes, shame the world would come crashing down less than a year after this debuted and feel good jams went on the back burner.

Run from it, hide from it, deny it, it comes all the same... If this Einsturzende Neubauten album is truly one of the 1001 you have to listen to before you die, its probably best to make it your last. It's a full on sensory assault. An harsh dose of unadulterated, raw, violent, uncut sonic sodomy, from the first sound of a sledgehammer wrapped barb wire smashing your into your face to the death rattle of the rusty power drill that's being used to perform trepanation in order to release the pressure that's built up in your brain over the interminable 38 minutes required to listen to this magnum opus of German industrial revolution. Now it would be easy, too easy, to preread the reviews and decide that a 1 is all that's required and move on with your day, but stop and appreciate the chaos, even if only for a few fleeting seconds. Maybe you'll appreciate the nuance of future industrial tools usage like Lee Ranaldo using power tools at the start of Sonic Youth's The Burning Spear....

Wild album in that one song takes up over a third of the runtime, outside of the truly great "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" it feels like a disjointed EP...

What can I say? Overindulgent mid-70s prog rock where pushing song lengths was a sign of creative wankery. But it's pretty much middle of the road alright and parts of it have a *very* good vibe like "The Temples of Syrinx" section of the overarching 2112 suite and "The Twilight Zone" in the second half would be great after popping an edible.

Starts out with a banger but kinda fizzles out like a bottle rocket when really it needs a good diesel engine to carry this along. It'll excite, in moderation, but rarely thrills.

"You go back, Jack, do it again, wheel turnin' 'round and 'round. You go back, Jack, do it again..." Two days of Steely Dan in row, really starting to feel like this was some grand conspiracy to turn me into a hardcore Steely Dan fan. It's like being given a hit of a potent drug without a warning. Like, yeah, I was gonna probably do this shit anyways, but I'd rather initiate it on my own terms.

"KLF is gonna rock ya" I remember this from 1991, and it's aged like piss...

New Wave, Post Punk, Art Pop, whatever... Mostly bland but effervescent in places, rises to high at times but very few and far between

[Review pending as author listened to this album, got up, opened his front door, and walked all the way to Brooklyn to offer himself at the altar of the witch coven Fiona Apple surely created through the power and majesty of this album alone]

It's scored more about the lore behind the album than the actual album it's self. A series of unfortunate events befell this show and the fact Jarrett was able to perform is a massive miracle. Long solo instrumentals aren't my thing, but you can throw this on as background music and be pleased with yourself

If this album was a colour, it would be beige. Offensively beige.

I mean, its one of the greatest albums of all time, the track listing could be a greatest hits for lesser bands... Sure "Brown Sugar" hasn't aged well, but it's wall to wall classics here, including my particular favourite Stones track of all, "Bitch". It's just a non-stop groove and your life is emptier without this.

The album before THE album, starts with "Changes" and you can tell Ch-ch-ch-changes is coming and that's enough to make it 4 stars for me, add in "Kooks", "Oh! You Pretty Things", and "Life on Mars?" and you have a solid album. Good in it's own right, but you really had no idea about what was about to come

Excellent album but ultimately depressing due to the whole "what could have been". Janis and her band lay down a half hour of power, soul, longing, desire... Raw and uncut, flesh and blood. One of the quintessential american albums.

I guess you have to be in the mood for a horn section, I was not.

Pure 80s heaven, how this album produced so many memorable songs is basically criminal.

Personally this album was like a gateway drug into a whole new world of sound, back in 2002 I randomly heard "Do You Realize??" on the car radio and it just instantly clicked with me, I knew I had to seek out the origin of it. What I found was a sonic soundscape that felt like a straight up rebirth, gone was my beloved 90s indie/alternative straight jangly guitar music and what replaced it was music with depth and crunch and searing screams of electronic madness. Sometimes I wish I could go back to that time, that post millennium haze, where life seemed simpler and find this album for the first time all over again.

Never mind the Buzzcocks, here's another post-punk, new wave, arty power rock band... This surprisingly hit me just right.

I mean, it's literally what you think of when you think of classic rock, late 60 blues born from traditional folk songs, not as good as the discography that would follow it, but a solid foundation with some serious grooves.

Just wasn't feeling it, but it's one of her weaker albums.

Bland, uninspiring, basic. I'm struggling with this one as it's just so by-the-numbers that all the songs sort of bleed into one amalgamous blob of jangly guitar music with no real substance.

Like a mashup of the worst parts of R.E.M. and Cake, which is a shame because I love both those bands, but I hated this...

Gonna be brutally honest, I love Ella Fitzgerald, but ain't nobody got 3 hours to listen to non stop Gershwin songs. She doesn't even song for the first 15 or so minutes. I understand the reasoning behind it and it's part of the larger overarching "Ella sings the whole ass complete American Songbook" that last for around 15 hours, but I'm not American and I have no connection to it and it's all very old and tedious...

As soon as the organ hits on the first song (Like a Rolling Stone), you know you're in for a treat but it's the title track that gets me every time with the opening lyrics of "Oh God said to Abraham, 'Kill me a son' / Abe says, 'Man, you must be puttin' me on'"... But, yes, I think it can be very easily done We’ll just put some bleachers out in the sun And have it on Highway 61

Debut album from a small up-and-coming band from a sleepy college town the the south, I see big things from them...

Not his best album (that'd be "Darkness on the Edge of Town"), not his breakthrough album (that'd be "Born to Run"), but probably his most iconic... A track list that plays like a greatest hits (12 songs, 7 (SEVEN) singles), and contains one of my absolute favourite Springsteen tracks (that'd be "Bobby Jean"). Just a near perfect album...

I had Murmur a few days ago and joked that I expected big things from this up-and-coming band... Well this was them at their peak. A phenomenal album that felt like a seismic shift in the culture, loaded with anthems for weird kids everywhere. Starts with "Drive" and rarely gets you go.

First things first, not my jam... I had to listen to this in headphones at the dead of night so no one would catch me. Obviously it's the monster debut album from the preeminent pop star of the 21st century, starts off strong with the title track but then dips when the second song "You Drive Me Crazy" comes in as it's not the far superior single version. Song three, "Sometimes", is pleasing enough for a mushy pop ballad but thereafter is far more misses than hits and full of emotionless generic pre-millennium pop beats that could have been lifted from a preset library. She would go into better things as far as her career was concerned, but was this as good as it got? It was definitely the biggest commercial success she'd experience but it just felt so empty out with a few fleeting moments.

Just a funky chilled album, cut from the same cloth as the likes of Black Star, big beats and big vibes from the verbal herman munsters, the word enhancers.

Very chill album that straddles the gap between trip hop, electronica, and lofi. I LOVED the follow up album ("Carboot Soul") but never really gave. this one a listen, but I'm glad I had the opportunity to tonight, it was a good soundtrack to my mundane tasks, enough to make me stop and bob my head now and then. Good listening on headphones while you're laying back in the cut.

I guarantee that there are very few people in this world who could recall (let alone quote) this, but once upon a time, I actually said to someone, "I used to listen to NIN - Pretty Hate Machine was the best. But Trent sold out, man. The Downward Spiral Sucks." I look back upon those days and I simply wish there had been a wiser man around who could have caned me for my ignorance. I have to admit that of all the things that shame me in my life (and there are quite a few), this was one of the big ones. However, as usual, I am going off track.

I get that this is supposed to be influential, the greater introduction of Bob Marley to the masses and all that, but, honestly, nothing jumped out at me. Telling that with nearly every posthumous compilation, this album accounts for nearly nothing in the tracklistings.

Start of Bowie's Berlin period, the first "side" of arty krautrock synthesiser inspired jams flys by, aided by timely fade ins and outs, and contains the excellent "Sound and Vision" which sounds like it could go on for far longer than its posted 3:03. Try and listen and no have the do-do-do-do-dooos in your head for days. Side two slows down more than a little with the bleak as fuck "Warszawa" and the rest is ambient instrumental music. Truly a tale of two albums smashed together, but it works, mostly. Less than a year later he'd release "Heroes", madness.

How have I never heard of this before??? This is my jam, folksy earnest singer songwriters with great melodies and harmonies. It's very Band of Horses-ish vibes and I loved it wholly.

Very much alright, nothing really stood out apart from some songs sound like Badly Drawn Boy, "The Devil's Eye" especially.

Proto Prog Psychedelic Rock Opera, pretty dull despite its best intentions.

Proto-grunge and obviously a huge influence on the Seattle bands that would soon follow. In your face distortion is the order of the day here, and if you don't like that then your in for a fairly miserable ride here.

Smooth as silk, un-Common-ly good... The "They Say" song with Kanye and John Legend is just peak mid 00s vibes, great soul sample, twinking keyboards, again smooth as all hell. Kinda crazy that the beats Common turned down ended up making Kanye's "Late Registration", think how much better this could have been...

Music to listen to while curled up in the fetal position in that closet under the stairs, rocking back and forth...

There's a point about 1:30 into the second song where Neil Tennant muses "what have I done to deserve this?" and it hit me light a bolt from the blue, what have *I* done to deserve this??? I mean, I signed up for this 1001 albums thing to shake up my algorithm mix way from the same tired old songs, and here I let Pet Shop Boys sully it, We're not at the "how am I gonna get through?" part and I'm questioning how am *I* gonna get through... "It's a Sin" still goes hard though, this was enough to push it up to a mid level album

One of those albums where they, the The Beatles did on many an occasion, took stereo sound to extreme lengths, where nearly every instrument is placed in the far reaches of your aural capacity, except the bass that just grooves along somewhere near the middle. I've never been a fan of 60s music that has, say, the drums only in one earphone (for example) and the wah-wah infused guitar in the other, its so disorientating, and annoying of you need to take one earphone out to talk to someone quickly during one of the many drum solos. Anyway, this is the longest 33 minute album I've ever listened to, mainly because the 17 minute title song *never ends*... Such a drag. And it's not even that good outside the god tier riff. Hell, Nas got more use out of that riff as a sample for "Hip Hop Is Dead" in 2006 and that only uses like 6 seconds of it. I'm yet to 1 star anything (and I've already gotten "Kollaps" by Einstürzende Neubauten), but this came *really* close, it's like 1.5 stars on a good day.

"Fear of Music" is perhaps an apt title, that or, as the excellent "Life During Wartime" repeats, This ain't no party, this ain't no disco. This might be the album that signified the glammed up 70s were dead, long live the post punk, new wave, fuck your disco 80s? Anyway, this is my second Talking Heads album, and I'm a convert, a true believer. Every song brings something new and different from what came before it. This is a truly great album and anyone who says otherwise is a cop. I said what I said....

A perfect Pop Rock album? Definitely a solid track list with timeless classics like "One Way or Another" and "Heart of Glass" but solid gold behind it like "Hanging on the Telephone" and "Sunday Girl", though for that song you should make sure you get the Frenglish version that inexplicable s'est mis au français à mi-chemin. Pourquoi? Je n'en ai aucune idée, c'est vraiment super mimi et bien plus tard Zooey Deschanel a repris cette chanson avec She & Him et elle correspond parfaitement à son esthétique. Mais je m'égare... 4 étoiles

Oh merde! J'ai terminé ma dernière critique avec une touche française, et cela m'a valu un album français en retour, alors je suppose que c'est une chose maintenant?... Anyways, I like the first song, or chanson, called "Amsterdam" as Brel puts his full chest into it, but there after is very hit or miss. The recording is also very rough around the edges, applause fades in and out and sounds like basic stock audio clips inserted between songs, and the overall feel has the taste of half smoked Gauloises and Gitanes cigarettes.

Its hard to imagine 2002, but when this came out, Coldplay were still a small band... They played in bingo halls and high school gyms on the relentless tour for this album that would make them global stars, they played shows to 600 & 800 people early in the tour in Boston and Philadelphia respectively. That's insane... Now, this album is good to great, yes it's played out because how worldly popular the band became, but it was all built off hard work, they pounded the hard yards to be hated by millions and richer than god, with a smile on their face. Screw the haters, put this on and remember a simpler time where you could see a band on the cusp of megastardom for less than $10 in a sweaty ballroom or gymnasium playing the best music you had heard at the time.

Me (glancing at the title): Love & Devotion, sweet, ready for some Depeche Mode, feeling that... Well, ladies and gentlemen, it was not Depeche Mode, not even close, not even the same continent, and that disappointment soured this listening instantly. *Sigh* So yeah, Islamic Devotional singing isn't for me even with my initial disappointment. But I applaud the attempt to break away from the western anglicized norm (though I have had French and German music tossed my way already) and throw in something that's pretty much guaranteed to give you a strong reaction one way or the other. This is my first 1 star, but it is more a solitary star for my personal ignorance.

I only know them from their easy listening reggae infused covers of "Red Red Wine" and "Can't Help Falling in Love" that my mum used to like, so imagine my surprise at full blown political discourse against Maggie Thatcher and the fucking Tories... Get it right up you.

29(!) years ago, I remember skipping school classes so I could buy "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" on cassette and listened to it all afternoon. I was 16 and I’m confident it altered the trajectory of my life. I can still remember the feeling of turning over to side two and being met with "Gold Soundz" and it hitting me like a shotgun shot to the soul. Because you’re empty And I’m empty And you can never quarantine the past This is when Alt Rock became Indie Rock and the too cool for school kids pontificated about Midwestern rock bands from California like it was a secret only to be whispered on street corners. You can never quarantine the past!

90s Rock was officially over in 2001, we'd survived the few years dalliance with Nu-Metal and bands like The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Vines, and Kings of Leon were here to bring the garage band style cool back. Low production values are the order of the day here, make it sound like it's recorded in one take on a busted 4 track in some guys 3rd floor walk-up in the Lower East Side (in reality it was in a basement in the East Village, but who counting here?). Julian Casablancas is dripping in understated coolness, Albert Hammond and Nick Valensi have serious guitar duels throughout, Fabrizio Moretti brings a tribal drum feel but my MVP is Nikolai Fraiture and his driving bass, it kicks in during the title track and then I knew what I wanted to do, I wanted to play bass like that.... But I never could. Anyway, this is a classic, stone cold classic garage rock revival, biblical!

I could listen to Fiona Apple any day, you don't need to tell me to do it. Hard to believe she's less than a year older than me, in 1996 I was still young & dumb yet she sounds wiser beyond the ages we are now some 27 years later.

Their first album was so good that this was so disappointing in comparison, so disappointing that it would take them a few years to even come close to the highs of that first album in their 4th album. This just sounds to bland and by the numbers that absolutely nothing stands out or is relistenable and I'm shocked that many critics rated it so highly.

Very easy to listen to, good background music in a wine bar style vibe. Nothing really stood out but the whole package was a good feeling overall.

"A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-bam-boom!" is the first thing you hear and its still feels as invigorating as it must have felt 68 years ago... Dirty blues classics with a side of boogie-woogie and you're done in under 30 minutes, having had some fun tonight.

Better than I thought it would be going in as I had only heard a few Lore songs prior to this album. Almost every song bar "Liability" was laden with heavy beats and not quite mumbley vocals, and only a handful stood out to me like the aforementioned "Liability" and it's reprise, "Supercut", and "The Louvre" but nothing felt like it overstayed its welcome.

White boy reggae, and it's literally advertised as such. I mean, this is the kind of stuff my dad used to listen to so I'm pretty numb to the staccato reggae chords and fake Caribbean patois they're doing here. But still, massive cultural appropriation by the colonisers, not cool.

Smoother than the slithery smooth backbeat that runs through the first track "Desafinado", downright tropical vibes ooze out of every nook, close your eyes and just imagine you're walking down Copacabana Beach in the 50s, cocktail in hand. Jazz is a misnomer as this is Bonito Bossa Nova, and your hips will sway sitting in your chair.

"Genius Of Love" is the song that has that sample you head a million times before, from Grandmaster Flash to Mariah Carey to Paramore, for that alone this is a solid 3 star album.

I'm skeptical whenever an album outside the original 1001 comes up, and having one so relatively recent is another eyebrow raiser, but god damn this was brilliant. Hard hitting from the first few seconds when the bass kick in and doesn't let up for the full 35 minutes, probably about as perfect as you'll come across in this list.

Short concert, stolen music. The performance is energetic, but, much like Elvis, the cloud of "white man popularising the black man's music" hangs heavy here. Classic rock & roll, albeit distilled.

Loud, obnoxious, mercifully short.

Peak Creedence Clearwater Revival, the absolute height of their collective powers. Simply put, it's one of the best albums ever commited to tape anywhere at any time. So good that most of it was released as double A side singles, imagine "Up Around The Bend" and "Run Through The Jungle" being paired together. Their definitive compilation album, "Chronicle" has SEVEN songs off this, 7 out of 20... Impossible to hate

"Eternal Life" is a very apt song to describe Jeff Buckley, one killer album and then literally dipped into the Mississippi to leave behind a shrouded enigma behind that one album that would live forever.

Breezy psychedelic pop tunes float on by wanting to be a Pet Sounds or a Sgt. Pepper, and truthfully there's not a bad song on this album, but theres also not a lot of great ones either, they're all perfectly serviceable as a single listen through, but only "Time of the Season" stands out as a relistenable, and thats really about it... As middle of the road as psychedelic pop can be.

Built ONLY 4 Cuban Linx, and I'm nowhere near Cuban Links... 18 tracks of mid 90s braggadocio hip hop, if that's your thing. Features nearly every member of the Wu-Tang Clan in some way shape or form and it's widely know that they are nutin' to fuck wit, so I won't.

Four gentlemen and one GREAT, great broad! A great band just cutting loose so nearly an hour, Janis at her most raspy begging you to take another piece of her heart, and you want to... But mainly they are gonna knock ya, rock ya, gonna sock it to ya now.

I remember the original Beta Band buzz and how it was unfulfilled promise, so I went into this with a little trepidation, and was immediately blown away by the opening track, "Squares", but that might have been more to do with the "Daydream" sample/interpolation and how it reminded me of another song that also came out around this time. Where was I? Oh yeah, they close the album with a song called "Eclipse" about questions and answers and people lying but proclaim "And the music we make is not particularly good" and I'm undecided if they deserve the pizza or not.

Listen up people, we're now knee deep in the neo-soul smoothness, and there's only one way out, make peace with whatever deity you choose to believe in (or not, free world) because Maxwell is gonna take you there. Where? That wet spot on the bed, that's where...

But seriously, "Drive My Car", "You Won't See Me", "Nowhere Man", "The Word", and those are just the choice picks of Side A. Side B has "I'm Looking Through You', "In My Life", and "Run For Your Life", so for those counting along at home, that's 7 classic rock staples. It truly changed the game musically, laying the foundations for what would come later, and influencing everyone else to be better... Without this we don't get Beach Boys "Pet Sounds, we don't get Velvet Underground, we don't get evolved pop music... Add in the fact this album was thrown together in around 90 days from start of the writing process after their 1965 August tour of America to pressed vinyl being in people's hands in early December, just an unreal creation in that span of time, and it was their second album of 1965 after "Help!", and 3rd album released within 365 days after 1964's "Beatles For Sale!" was released barely a year before. These mad kids were just chugging along like a well oiled machine, cracking out classic after classic like many normal people draw breath. Despite me gushing over this album, it's not my favourite Beatles album, its barely in the top 5, but it's still an absurdly easy 5 stars and it's about as filthy as the fuzzy bass on "Think For Yourself". It's almost perfect, but I can't abide with "Michelle", a wholly terrible song from Paul McCartney that's only matched by "Ob‐La‐Di, Ob‐La‐Da" and "Wonderful Christmastime"...

The day I learned to play the electronic riff from "Kids" on a Stylophone, the mystical allure of MGMT was gone forever.

Whenever I listen to this, I think of many things, the beauty of the music and lyrics and how unfortunate it is that Neil Young did both, how mad Lynard Skynyrd were about one song, and how the Jimmy Fallon skit where he, as Neil Young, sings a cover of Willow Smith's "Whip My Hair" on his Late Night show still lives rent free in my head 13 years later... Oh well, time to hop up out the bed, turn my swag on.

A Christmas gift for me? Got the gift receipt? I'll keep the songs by The Ronettes and "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" by Darlene Love though...

Some monster hits, and surprisingly strong outside of "Shout" and "Everybody Wants To Rule The World", such as "Mother's Talk" and "Head Over Heels". I was really into this, it has a bit of everything for everyone.

You got "Keep On Movin'" and "Back to Life" and a shit ton of absolute surplus filler, a classic example of when an LP should definitely be an EP...

You can hear the sounds that would make it over the crevasse into his collaborations with Bowie in Berlin, the drum sound on "Needles In The Camel's Eye" for instance. It's a real hodgepodge, but ahead of its time.

I like Queens of the Stone Age, but no Nick Oliveri, no party... even if he does appear at the very end. Subsequent albums (Rated R, Songs for the Deaf) would be much better, and there is a still more than a little Kyuss stank hanging around here, but it's perfectly adequate for what it is (or was).

Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd, so super simple rhymes over psychedelic swirls and overdubs that makes it sound like the most transcendental shit ever laid down on tape. It shouldn't work, but it does...

Classic early 90s west coast gangster rap, braggadocio is the order of the day as Ice raps about people being bitches (both genders), gangster hustle shit, and guns going bang. Plenty of mid song skit style breakdowns but Ice changes things up with the hard metal "Body Count" that would be spun off into a legit side project by the same name. They are, of course, infamous for the "Cop Killer" song, but then Ice-T would spend the last 23 years playing a cop on TV, really makes you think... Oh, and fuck Tipper Gore and the PMRC

I was dreamin' when I wrote this so forgive me if it goes astray... An absolute party of an album, a party where Prince fucks you with the funk, and then makes you pancakes for breakfast the next morning. Your purple badness is here giving you the full business.

I don't get the Lana Del Rey vibe, naver have. This is just a whine/drone/white noise generator for people who think they like the 1950s style idea of America that never was. Anthems for day wine drinking bored housewives who can't manage the cadence for the anti-melodic lyrics like "Down at the Men in Music Business Conference" I only mention it 'cause it was such a scene.

This was my favourite album of 2015 and it's no less potent, vitriolic, and on point almost 9 fuckin' years later. A roaring treatise on our fucked up society that really goes to show that ain't nothing changes but the date.

The first time I really remember hearing a Lou Reed song was during the 1993 leg of the U2 Zoo TV tour, Bono would start singing "Satellite of Love" and a pre-recorded video of Lou would duet with him and it was cool. Then came the "Perfect Day" scene in Trainspotting at it was harrowing. And "Walk on the Wild Side" has always been around, I just never knew it as a Lou Reed song. So imagine my delight when all three are on this album. Just a wonderful listen from start to finish.

Psychedelic jazz, man. The in sound from way, way out

Early 90s indie dance crossover that brought us the angelic, divine Sarah Cracknell, who's shimmery silver dress at Glastonbury 1994 *awakened* something deep inside that lives on to this day. "Nothing Can Stop Us Now" is an effortlessly cool summer jam that evokes visions of driving in a top down convertible through villages in Cote D'Azure, scarf billowing out the back. They would go on and make better music, but sometimes it's nice to remember those early days...

By now Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer were long gone and Bob was on a tear spreading the word of reggae. This might be the crowning achievement, a classic album of memorable songs, "Jamming" and "Three Little Birds" being the obvious highlights, but the whole album is a solid groove.

OK-ish album, "Gasoline Alley" and "Cut Across Shorty" being the stand outs, but they also sounded much better when he did them unplugged some 20 years later...

Much like Jerry Lee Lewis, the cloud of "white man popularising the black man's music" hangs heavy here. Classic rock & roll, albeit distilled.

I loved this in 1999 when I was 20, I'm horrified by this in 2024 when I'm 45. I can appreciate the craft and all that, but this was a 3 to 4 star album at best back then, it's not that any more 25 years later.

Hooker gets a second life here using as many collaborators as humanly possible, semi-ironically one of them was Carlos Santana who would run this play back 10 years later... Still, it's the blues by the preeminent bluesman, and the song with Bonnie Raitt "I'm In The Mood" is just pure filth, and I mean that in the best way possible.

New Wave Romanticism abound, sitting in that weird space between outright punk and the likes of Duran Duran. The singles ("Dog Eat Dog", "Antmusic", and "Kings Of The Wild Frontier") are generally good, the rest doesn't hold up to the same caliber...

OK, I get it, it's a masterpiece, but it's also *four songs long*, and one of those songs is split into two to make it a 5 song "long play" album.... Snark aside, its prog rock at its finest as suite of 9 movements encompasses the aforementioned split "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" bookends, then the 3 songs in the middle are just great, title track being the pick of the bunch but don't sleep on "Welcome To The Machine" (an anthem for disaffected youth that resonates way more than "The Wall") and "Have A Cigar". It's truly an album made for listening all the way through as opposed to individual songs. Absolute aside, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" is a great karaoke song as you get 8:45 in before you even need to sing, and it's pretty anthemic when you do...

I always struggled with Sepultura, I dunno why... I enjoyed Max's Soulfly project that came later, this just didn't move me.

Raw uncut punk energy, the jams were, indeed, kicked the fuck out

David Holmes produces a few good songs, but his albums always feel lacking, this is no exception

"Pump It Up" alone makes this a great album, and it's just that, great, catchy, infectious...

Obviously strong Beach Boy vibes, a very strong album (first 12 songs if you can only find the 30th anniversary 2CD edition) that gently breezes along without too much effort for the listener, it goes from soulful pop to dirty funk with amazing ease.

Paul Weller's jazz days, and we don't talk about Paul Weller's jazz days... We ESPECIALLY don't talk about Paul Weller's rap days.

Teen Age Riot takes me bak to simpler times, and this whole album just makes me want to go out and shoot skate videos with fisheye lenses...

Only people who don't love their mothers could hate this. Classic old school hip hop that you'll think you heard elsewhere because most of it was eventually resampled.

I struggled with Hot Chip 10/15 years ago, and I still struggle today, because nothing really stands out.

Hard Heavy Metal, kicking what was left of the 60s in the face. Like nothing you had heard before...

Well, this was an unexpected trip, part environmental psychedelic rock/part bubblegum pop? Brian Wilson was in his decline at this point, Dennis Wilson was half insane also so Carl Wilson and Mike Love stepped up to take some of the load and it shows, the final product is just so disjointed. Aurally pleasing because, hey, it's the Beach Boys in 3 part harmony, but it just doesn't hit like they used to.

Big, brash, bombastic, hair metal. Starts out with distorted feedback and classical organ style synths just to make sure you're ready to fuckin' rock. Has the hits, no filler and sold more copies than you've had hot dinners. Love it or hate it, its exactly what it sets out to be...

The album that compelled Fleetwood Mac to successfully queer heterosexuality. They were all drugged up to the eyeballs and fucking each other six way from sunday (except John McVie, poor sod, he had to play bass on all Christine's songs about him) and holed up in a studio with next to no windows and still produced a stone cold top 3 album of all time instead of systematically killing each other for sport. Any song on here would be an apex mountain pinnacle for any other band not called The Beatles, take your pick. In fact it's CRIMINAL that they left Stevie Nicks beautiful "Silver Springs" off the track listing (thank you to The Dance and deluxe editions for restoring it), and I like to sometimes think that somewhere, in a CVS, Lindsey Buckingham is at this moment waiting for his quarter mile long receipt to print while the store PA plays "Silver Springs" and all he hears is "you'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you" They never could get away from that sound... 50 stars if they would allow it.

"Goddam' Europeans! Take me back to beautiful England", transposing this album 13 years later takes on a very strange story in the post-Brexit landscape, while Polly was influenced by classical poetry while creating some of her own, the tone of the English nationalism seeping through is hard to avoid. It can be likened to the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics where its a throwback to when Britain, or England, was actually Great, now its a sad reminder of whole isolated we feel, by choice.

Thrash Metal at its finest? I dunno, it certainly upped my energy levels for the half hour or so it lasted. First track hits hard and it doesn't slow down, all gas, absolute gas, no brakes.

Good old Goldfap, slow and sensual, borderline AMSR, it's gonna take you places you never knew existed...

That weird transitional period for the Stones, from when they were releasing an album of mostly old blues covers to what would become The Rolling Stones we know and love. And this is made muddier by having two separate UK & US releases (I listened to the UK edition, it's the artwork provided above) where you have two seperate track listings with two good good songs (UK: "Mother's Little Helper" & "Under My Thumb"; US: "Paint It Black" & the aforementioned "Under My Thumb") and a lot of filler... Sometimes overly long filler like "Goin' Home" which is just an 11 minute long jam session. Brian Jones is a tour de force here, he'd pick up any old thing laying around and make it work, so for that this album represents a more mature Stones sound. But 1966 was a hard year for many bands, we got Revolver by The Beatles and Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys and everything else was fighting for a very, very distant third place.

The Nirvana unplugged set, the infamous Nirvana unplugged set, the anti-unplugged while driving MTV producers mad as fuck Nirvana unplugged set, the oh but he's really plugged in and heres some feedback Nirvana unplugged set, the play *anything* but your biggest hits Nirvana unplugged set, the put some shine on the Meat Puppets Nirvana unplugged set, the WTF cover of a fucking Vaselines song and also do a little Bowie and end with a Lead Belly song and there will be no encores Nirvana unplugged set... Bittersweet, but emphasis on the sweet, because this is Kurt Cobain is, by far, at his sweetest here. Far removed from the frenetic live shows Nirvana would usually perform, there would be no diving into the drum set on this show. Instead it would be the swansong of an icon who would be gone less than 6 months later. It's a great live album, the best of the released Unplugged albums, and I could listen to this and shiver the whole night through...

New Order, but with a lot more "utz-utz-utz-utz", very of it's time as the acid house/alternate dance scene was sweeping the nation... There no "Blue Monday" or "True Faith" level banger here, but it's tight as all hell and, again, very of it's time.

Van the jazz man, just lay back, smoke a bowl and let it wash over you like fresh irish spring water. Pair this with his preceding album, Astral Weeks, and you might never be able to function in regular society again... Every song hits just right, every note is crafted with laser precision, even it sounds like Van turned up and recorded this with no thought about anything, just improvising like a demon. Shame he descended into fucking Eric Clapton level madness during COVID, exposing himself to be a raging antivaxer and skirted with a little antisemitism because if you're in for a penny, you may as well be in for a pound. But, that said, people say it’s not the artist, it’s the art and "Into The Mystic" remains an absolutely perfect song...

Surprisingly generic turn of the millennium beats, is this really something that worth listening to? Something worth recommending that someone listen to? I'm honestly not sure it is...

This felt like it was right in my wheelhouse, 90s alternative with driving guitars and great vocals. Started off slowly but built as it went along, I was almost sad when it finished. Standout songs are "Be-In" "Minnesoter", and "Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth", but don't sleep on the instrumental "The Creep Out". And I just want a girl as cool as Kim Deal...

This ain't no disco, its Sheryl Crow... She's very hit or miss, but when she hits its amazing and there's a few tracks on this album that vibe just right. I'd argue the first 4 tracks are ("Run Baby Run", "Leaving Las Vegas", "Strong Enough" and "Can't Cry Anymore") amongst the strongest start to an album at any time, add in the ubiquitous "All I Wanna Do" and that's pretty much half the album accounted for. So basically the singles bopped, the rest is ok but don't quite rise to the same level. Solid middle 3 star album, a good way to pass 50 or so minutes.

How did this come out in 1983? It's got 1990s written all over it. Acoustic punk rock is probably the most punk punk could be, and this is a timeless classic. Everyone knows "Blister In The Sun" but there's not a bad song on here, everything has its own groove and hook like "Add It Up", "To The Kill" and "Gone Daddy Gone", and everything sounds like it was recorded in one straight shot as stripped back as everything feels. Real garage music energy.

Nah, took much work... like trying to solve an escape room before you're allowed to listen to it

Joy Division makes me feel old. I never felt old, like *old* old, until I listened to Joy Division, it was harder music to listen to compared I was listening to before, thematically definitely, it was grown up music... I finally saw what NME, Q, and Melody Maker gushed so profusely about. Finally I was a man. But then I didn't listen to Joy Division for a long time, and then decades later had a chance to see Peter Hook perform the Joy Division albums and being the kind of person I am, I went to experience it. It was an interminable 3 hours standing in a small club venue, my back and legs were killing me, it was way past my bedtime, and those feelings of not being the young man I used to be soured the whole night. Joy Division makes me feel old...

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, well it certainly feels like it'll last forever. Double albums are usually a big ask, a couple of hours is hard to give to something you weren't planning on listening to and the link through on this went to the 92 song dep deluxe edition that runs for nearly 6 hours. FUCK. THAT. I hadn't really heard much outside of the monster singles this thing produced and I was somewhat pleasantly surprised at times, but it was mostly that nostalgic trip back to the mid-90s of my youth, and all I really came away with was that Billy Corgan is a madman when he's inspired, but that mad Billy Corgan could really use an editor.

One of those Springsteen album you either love or hate, its insanely stripped back as it's literally dems that got released. A departure from the E Street Band sounds of The River, Darkness On The Edge Of Town, and Born To Run that preceded it, and radically different from the Born In The U.S.A. that would follow, its solid Springsteen storytelling, but you need to be ready for the bleakness that come from it.

Very mid-80s sound, bass is non-existant and everything sounds reverb-y. Now Suzanne Vega, I mean I like her next album that had Luka & Tom's Diner, but this one sounds like another artist I'm struggling to remember, maybe all mid-80s albums just sounded the same, you could tell me this was Carly Simon in her Coming Around Again era and I'd probably believe you

I'll paraphrase my review of The Slim Shady LP from a month or so ago: I loved this in 2000 when I was 21/22, I'm horrified by this in 2024 when I'm 45. I can appreciate the craft and all that, but this was a 3 to 4 star album at best back then, it's still that 25 years later even if most of it hasn't aged well at all. Gone are the real childish antics and guests like Royce da 5'9" and MC Get-Bizzy and replaced with a far more polished production but somehow angrier about everything and now has guests guests like Snoop Dogg. It's crazy to look back and remember how generation defining this album was to the angry white boy demographic, add in Limp Bizkit and 1999/2000 really set us up for the 25 years of simmering hatred and insanity we've had since...

Classic lady doing classic shit. 1968 was a fire year for Aretha between this release and the later Aretha Now and the fabulous Aretha in Paris live album. Easiest 5 stars yet..

Medulla... Oblongata? Bjork always had weird albums, but this may be the weirdest. It's almost borderline inaccessible.

Overly pretentious, maybe, but "Keep The Car Running" in a jam...

Mark E. Smith doing Mark E. Smith things.

Early proto-Britpop (predates Oasis debut by a year) but let's make it queer coded and goth-y sexy, basically pop an Amyl Nitrate and let yourself relax in to the couch...

Debuting Pavement sounded a lot like an electric Violent Femmes, definitely not a bad thing. A solid opening album, and fulfills the early 90s criteria of fitting on one side of a 90 minute cassette with plenty of time to spare.

Ethereal, sad, post-60s-hippy folk music perfection. Nick Drake really was built differently, this is everything Cat Stevens wished he could be, instead Drake makes it all sound so effortless.

I don't really know what this is, or tries to be, but it ain't it...

Yoshimi was my gateway into the Flaming Lips discography, and this is just a lush sound that really ended the 90s on a high. I hate that I never got to hear it when it came out as summer 1999 was a transition for me from college to "working adult" and this really captures my vibe perfectly.

A musical and cultural renaissance for Simon here, some may call it appropriation of South African street music but I feel like it was shining a light on artists like Ladysmith Black Mambazo who would have never seen the light of day due to apartheid and the cultural boycott on South Africa. It's a good to great album, it passes time effortlessly, I wouldn't argue if you gave it 5 stars, on another day I might have too. I just found most of it semi-forgettable as I went about my day while listening to it, like a half-remembered daydream.

Sparks doing Sparks things, influential and years ahead of the rest.

Mostly mid beats over funky basslines, surprisingly bouncy for 9am when I choose to listen to it

Ubiquitous barely begins to describe this album as basically every track appeared in an advertisement or movie trailer of some description over the years. People hate this because of that overexposure, but it's a solid album, some tracks hit with a vengeance but it's the more chilled guitar instrumentals that resonate with me.

Name an instrument, any instrument.... Go ahead... Chances are this album contains it. I realised this during the Marimba infused "Clap Hands". It's really an eclectic mix of weird as fuck songs, hard to get into but harder to put down. Like riding the Alice in Wonderland ride at Disneyland while tripping.

That was the Partridge Family's "Doesn't Somebody Want To Be Wanted?" followed by Edison Lighthouse's "Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes", as K-Billy's Super Sounds of the '70's weekend just keeps on truckin'

I often wonder how recency bias feeds into the whole "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die" schtick, because we've come across more than a few 2000s era album that have, unfortunately stank like shit. This one doesn't, thankfully, but it's also nothing close to a must listen, its just a lot of mid 00s angst over mid beats...

I liked "Black Hole Sun", always have, but Soundgarden as a whole was always difficult for me to really get into and this is no exception. It's long and meandering at times, and you really need to be in a particular mood.to appreciate it fully.

Psychedelic Blues is apparently the way to my heart, "Roadhouse Blues" goes without saying, but the rest of this album was just a straight up groove on my frequency. Very little of the greatest hits appear here, but in some ways it was The Doors at their tightest.

As others have mentioned, beautiful music by a reprehensible human. And, like other case, you're supposed to separate the art from the artists but.... 5 stars for Phoebe Bridgers (and boygenius), and Mandy Moore, and everyone else this monster tried to destroy. 0 stars for him, 3 stars to split the difference

Hey, it's got "Tom Sawyer" and "YYZ", it's great!

Buffalo Springfield would go on to arguably greater things via Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and this album is just kinda here... Folksy rock and down tempo is the order of the day here, and it can be pleasant at time, great at others but overall it feels like its less than the sum of its part.

This is just bad (not 1 star bad, but pretty bad), probably why I hadn't heard of Cee Lo before Gnarls Barkley.

The funk gonna get you, whitey.... Just a masterclass in grooves and vibes.

Polarising Metallica album, to some they sold out, to some it was the gateway to metal. It was my gateway to metal, so my judgement is pretty clouded. I loved this as an early teenager, they wouldn't sell out till Load in my eyes, but this was epic, brash, loud, deep, meaningful, meaningless. As soon as "Enter Sandman" kicked in, I knew loud guitars was that which I desired (not fuel not fire), not the indie dance and acid house rave scene that was sweeping the nation. Grunge hadn't come around yet, Britpop was years away, so metal was my jam, much to my parents derision. The aforementioned "Enter Sandman" lets you in to what this album is all about, it gently lures you in before Lars bass drum kicks you in the gut, Kirk and James guitar play is a shock to the system and they let Jason be heard... Bob Rock's production can be problematic but he's in his element here. It's a fucking monster of an album in every sense... And it lost the Grammy to Jethro Tull.

Not their best work as they veer more towards the synthesizer sounds of the mid to late 80s, only "The Perfect Kiss" stands out...

5 Stars, no questions asked, no response needed. Simply one of the best albums ever by one of the best bands ever. This is the one, everything else is just amateurs.

The tip of the spear for the British new soul singer revolution, Adele and Duffy would soon follow, but while the vibe feels right, the whole package just comes off as somewhat unauthentic. Sure Amy has the look down with the beehive so and smokey eyes, but it's hard to look past the near constant tabloid sensationalism about her much storied drug abuse and fractious relationships. They tried to make her go to rehab... It's genuinely a good to great album, but in a post Amy world is hard to listen to and not wonder what might have been if she had gone to rehab.

I liked all the Talking Heads albums this this thrown at me, I liked the Eno album too, so logic dictates I should like this. I did not.

As I listened to "Knoxville Girl" I couldn't help but think that Nick Cave would eat the shit out of this, so imagine my delight when, if fact, he had eaten the shit out of that. He did it better...

Just a great album, perfect length, bookended by absolute killer songs in "Thunder Road" and "Jungleland" and it feels like the whole album tells a story. Sure it's not an impeccable production, but its a history alerting tour de force by this debuting classic-era E Street Band line-up. Timeless, and AMAZING live.

Oh great, The Beta Band... Again. Clearly the author of 1001 bought into their hype and wasn't saying no to any editorial comments. Below average at best, God awful at worst.

I can take or leave ELO, Jeff Lynne wishing to be the fifth Beatle? Whatever. This is mostly moderate stuff and even it's highest high in "Mr. Blue Sky" has been watered down in recent years to the point that I almost hate to hear it.

2 tracks, side A and side B, of improv jazz. Chilled out background music, just a serious vibes album. The trumpet man is gonna take you to the unknown destination, and we're gonna have fun along the way.

It feels like another Radiohead album I'm supposed to like... And I mostly do, but sometimes I'd rather listen to The Bends, you know?

Has an album that promised so much ever delivered so painfully little? After the monster 21, it was always going to be a hard act to follow and while I openly adored 19 & 2, I listened to this once in 2015, the day it came out, and here we are just over 8 years later and I finally gave it my second proper listen and I'm still as let down as I was back when. I hope we don't have to review 30 later on, because there's only so much I can bear, let's just pretend Adele blew her vocal chords completely out at that last note of her Albert Hall concert, never to sing again... Shall we?

Meat Loaf may be singing here, but rest assured this is all Jim Steinman, Meat Loaf is merely the conduit these song chose to make their way into our world.

Janelle Monae is just a different species from the rest of us, we're just here living our humdrum lives and she's out there absolutely LIVING. Nothing is beyond her level and this album, this DEBUT album, just gives and gives...

You can't give an album that has "Baba O'Reilly" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" anything less than 4 stars just for those two songs alone, but "Behind Blue Eyes" makes it an easy 5.

Is this Sonic Youth at their most accessible? Most mainstream? They're still doing their own crazy thing but maybe the rest of the world finally caught up with them? Maybe they were still streets ahead of the curve?

Again Psychedelic [whatever] proves to be my weakness, and Psychedelic Funk should be a crime, and George Clinton should be put on trial for being far too funky for the rest of the world to stand.

A few good well known sons but its 90 low tier rock, proof that a memorable music video can make a middling song better.

First things first, how the fuck is this pile of shit 20 years old? Retro glam rock wankery thats good for 1 song and they somehow made a career out of it. Where's the justice in THAT? I mean, sure, it was probably better than the sludge that was bubbling around in 2003, but let's be honest, if Justin Hawkins didn't have a glammed up onesie split down to his taint in the video for "I Believe In A Thing Called Love", would anyone really care?

I had Funkadelic a few days ago, now I get Parliament and that means George Clinton is responsible for me being *at least* 72% more funky this week. I'm super funky, fresh and fly, y'heard?

You gotta boil it down to the essentials. It's like Cube says, "Life ain't nothin' but bitches and money."

Pure unadulterated rawness here, usual artists take time to grow into who they want to be.... Not Polly, she's kicking arse right out the gate.

Would Sir care for a starter of some garlic bread perhaps? No, thank you. I will proceed directly to the intravenous injection of hard drugs, please.

This album introduced me.to the wonder of the Theremin via "Richard III", and "Late In The Day" still hits the right notes, the rest of the album is mostly forgettable though.

If Orange Juice has a rancid or off flavor, then it's gone bad... Applies to this too.

Give this lady her flowers, long overdue.

A beautiful album that might have been *too* good in retrospect. The start of the Elliott Smith downfall can be traced here, bigger acclaim and bigger visibility leading to a bigger record deal and bigger expectations that leads to bigger problems. But let's just accept it for what it is, a beautiful album.

Tupac is always a weird one for me, I didn't really hear much until he was dead, and the last album was all very much Gangsta Rap and I was past all that. This one is more mellow in that regard, more introspective? Mostly dull.

The bassline on "A Certain Romance" floored me in 2006, and still does in 2024... Oh, in five years time, will it be "Who the fuck's Arctic Monkeys?".

This is the good stuff, a slew of killer covers like The Temptations "My Girl" and Rolling Stones "Satisfaction" and, weirdly, Aretha Franklin's "Respect".... via a quirk in the space/time continuum, apparently he recorded this two years before the superior original came out, go figure.

Psychocandy, qu'est-ce que c'est?

I'm finding that a lot of these early to mid 90s rap albums are not aging particularly well, it's hard to not view these through a modern prism and find them utterly reprehensible. I mean, I loved this 30 years ago but now it either horrifies me for its graphical content or repulses me for its childish immaturity, how can I really be objective?

I dunno, should I give a bonafide classic 5 stars just because it's a bonafide classic? Should I weigh the pros and cons of each track though a modern prism and say things like "Fire" is some basic ass lyrics; it's just "let me stand next to your fire" over and over... Should I say something inflammatory like, while Hendrix's guitar playing was revolutionary at the time, he's really just a cut rate Jack White and can't hold a candle to The Edge. No, that would be foolish, because this is a bonafide classic and it deserves its 5 stars, deserves and earns.

Repetitive? Yes. Did it need take up an entire CD runtime? No. Worth it? Absolutely.

I believe Billie Eilish awes a lot to this album, so its no coincidence they both came into the world around the same time period. This marks the time where Bjork went full weird, 90s Bjork was at least accessible. 2000s Bjork just went off the deep end sonically.

This is, by far and away, the glamorous indie rock and roll Brandon Flowers croons about...

Without this there would be no Run-D.M.C., and without Run-D.M.C. there would be no Beastie Boys (seriously, Rock Box was basically proto-Licence To Ill), and no Beastie Boys would make me sad... THis whole album hits hard and is wheelin', dealin', got a funny feelin', and rocks from the floor up to the ceilin' And it's like that, and that's the way it is...

Opens with "I Wanna Destroy You" that sounds like it's a cross between The Byrds and Cheap Trick and not a million miles away from Gigolo Aunts, and all I could think of was how good it would be for an odd throuple 2 camera BBC Two 90s sitcom starring two hideous guys and a blonde bombshell. It would run for 3 series, so around 18 episodes, and then a christmas special reunion episode years later when one of the guys has a huge tax bill to pay after his bid to transition to America failed spectacularly... But I digress.

Starts off strong with "My Sweet Lord" and "Wah Wah" inside the first few tracks but then it just gets drawn out, like does track 4's "Isn't It A Pity" need to be 7 minutes long with an album ending-style coda? And then the actual album ends on a series of instrumentals that play like 12 bar blues... It could have been 5 stars, but it just keeps dragging itself down

This is a trip, the story behind it and the aftermath of it is wild, critique of military juntas and politically motivated deaths aside, this album is a straight up party groove. It's a strange juxtapose to be reading the wikipedia entries on the album and, indeed, Fela Kuti's life while chair boogieing to the beats they laid down.

I've already had Low and rated it 3 stars in the past so it's time to have a day of reckoning about David Bowie in Berlin. It wasn't all that great... Don't get me wrong, the first half is stupendous but, like Low, the second half falls apart as Brian Eno gets a little too involved and it's all new agey ambient instrumentals all over again. If you took the first half of Low and the first half of this and smooshed them together it would be a top 5 all time album. Bowie in Berlin was more than the sum of its parts.

One good song, and a lot of jangly guitars. Worse bands that this have done a lot more with less...

Not Beck at his best, but not at his worst either. A few stand out tracks like the Rock Band video game banger "E-Pro" (that glomps on Beastie Boys "So What'cha Want") makes it rise above plenty of other releases, but we're far from peak Beck here, but thats ok.

They'd get better in the second album with songs like "Dream Baby Dream", but this... this ain't it. Basic, monotonous, beats straight from a Casio keyboard and the blown out screaming in "Frankie Teardrops" is enough to plunge this into the depths for me.

Good to great, you can't deny its impact.

The end of The Attractions, Elvis would ditch them for a solo life of being an international art thief... Says it all really.

Now, I grew up in the West of Scotland and I've heard 1,001 names for Irish catholics that would make your blood boil and your toes curl, and the N word WAS NEVER ONE OF THEM. "Accidents Will Happen" is a bop though, as is "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding"...

Trip Hop, but not quite... Not quite Massive Attack, not quite Portishead, Not quite Sneaker Pimps, somewhere in between but not quite.

Breezy british pop rockers with a surprisingly long album that never outstayed its welcome. 15 songs crammed into a pacy 40 minutes means most are sub 3 minutes, perfect song length. Otherwise it's a wholly unremarkable album, it just is, it feels super cozy and warm but I'd not consider it a *must listen to* album.

I like Queen, but... Confession time.... I've been alive for 46 years nearly, and never actually listened to one of their albums. I grew up on the Greatest Hits albums, and some of those appear here, but the rest are just kinda meh?

This sucked, not a one star level of sucking, but it sucked all the same

Never really got into Motorhead, everyone knows that one song "Ace of Spades" (I knew it from an episode of The Young Ones, dating myself a bit) but I couldn't name another by them, so a long ass live album probably isn't the best way to ease yourself in... Hard rock but hard listening too.

Classic singer songwriter doing classic songs shit, loaded with songs you know/knew but couldn't put your finger on. Also it's the emphasis for the "Beautiful" Broadway show, how many albums can say that?

Painful plain 80s British New Wave band playing painfully plain music for the masses. The 80s was a dark time, you can't tell me otherwise...

This might have the best opening combo punch of any album, "Running With The Devil" followed by "Eruption" followed by a cover of "You Really Got Me" on a debut album to, what a way to make a mark.

One f the few albums I remember getting released on 9/11, its alongside Ben Folds "Rockin the Suburbs" and They Might Be Giants "Mink Car" with the latter being one of two acts of terror put upon the American public that particular day... This was alright Jay Z, but it would get exponentially better when he would perform the best bits of it on MTV Unplugged...

I wasn't a fan of U2 in the 80s, my dad was, I became a fan of U2 in the 90s through Achtung Baby and the retina searing intensity of the Zoo TV tour. "Where The Streets Have No Name" is an experience played live with the dark build up and soft red lights all cascading towards the crescendo when the house/stadiums lights are turned up and everyone goes fucking bananas, so that was my vision when I started listening to The Joshua Tree in the 90s. And the album version of Streets doesn't live up to that memory, core memory, its flatter, the bass is dead in comparison, its just so overproduced. Same goes for the other songs I knew so well like "Bullet The Blue Sky" and "With Or Without You" but instead of being down that these versions just didn't live up to the later interpretation, I realised that age and wisdom had made them that much better. (Tangentially they d a different composition of "Even Better Than The Real Thing" when they play it live nowadays and its fucking sick and I would have killed a man for spouting such heresy back in the day) So, myself being advanced in age and wisdom, a relisten to this was like meeting an old friend, things have changed, but its comforting all the same. It has an absolutely killer side A.... "Where the Streets Have No Name", "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", "With or Without You", "Bullet the Blue Sky", and "Running to Stand Still" is a HALL OF FAME WORTHY run of hot shit after hot shit AND THEN you get "Red Hill Mining Town and "In God's Country" You people don't deserve to be this close to perfection.

There comes a point where eventually you stumble into someone you know, maybe not well nor personally, but you're kind of acquaintances all the same. You know each other on a first name basis but you're not pals who hang around. Well, this is my storey about such a person. The Time: Spring 2001. The Place: Glasgow... I was a fairly recent dropout from college, I was unemployed and as part of my burden on society, the jobcentre offered me a place at a little college 3 days a week to learn how to build PCs and assorted IT related menial tasks because I told them I was a web designer (go figure). Now for those 3 days over a few months we had different people come in and show us the ropes, like Pico (real name unknown) taught us how to built networks, how to crimp cables and put the appropriate connector on them and wire it all up properly; Ken taught us how to put things together in a PC chassis while regaling us of far fetched stories of how a crunchy keyboard really meant you had a bajillion spider eggs in your keyboard instead of, say, toast crumbs; and finally Alex, he was a cool younger guy who didn't try to bullshit us, he took everything Pico and Ken taught us and tied it all together, he also had a million music recommendations because he ran open mic night at a music pub in Glasgow. One of his recommendations was Carboot Soul bu Nightmares On Wax and to this day it remains a favourite of mine for comfy lofi beats, but I digress. After a few months I got a job not doing PC builds and left the course to become a functional member of society and within a few years I had up and moved to America to follow my dream. So now we're in 2004, and firstly, THIS WAS NOT 20 YEARS AGO, how dare you, and secondly we're invited to go see a fun little show run by local alt radio station 99X at The Masquerade in Atlanta. Killer lineup, literally because it was The Killer co-headlining with one Franz Ferdinand. The Delays, The Whigs and Scissor Sisters were also on the bill so eat that people. Glorious night, went down in Masquerade lore, floor almost collapsed but you could have put me straight through the floor when Franz Ferdinand came on and the singer introduces himself. Its fucking Alex Huntley from Anniesland College. So I give him a knowing nod and he ignored me and that's how we've remained to this day...

Not my favourite Metallica album (that'd be the Black Album) but it's perfectly ok to me. The last of the classic line-up and has great bangers on it list the title track and "Battery". Absolutely overindulgent though as no song clocks in at under 5 minutes.

I'll be contrary, Side A sucks, solo Bob Dylan with an acoustic guitar and a harmonica is a blight on humanity. Side B is literally electric in comparison and the (as yet not named) Band are tight and being a judas never sounded so good.

The Offspring were always just there, doing their thing, neither too offensive not too bland, just doing their thing. "Come Out And Play" and "Self-Esteem" still bang 30 years later. And I'm always interested in albums released around specific dates (see Jay-Z's Blueprint entry a few days ago), and this one came out the day they found Kurt Cobain's body, weirdly morbid...

A return to the classis Blood Sugar Sex Magik lineup, and the Chili Peppers are locked in a groove alright, but outside of the 4 or 5 singles this thing spawned the rest is kinda middling. RHCP are good as a "greatest hits" band, you loved the radio friendly songs you've heard a lot of, but any deep cuts are just not hitting the same.

It aint no "Paper Planes", I'll say that much.

Finally something different, after 2 weeks of stuff I pretty much already owned, we get into something that I wouldn't normally stumbleupon. This was so relaxing, just a peaceful vibe. Stuff like this is why I signed up for this

I said for Sheer Heart Attack "I like Queen, but... Confession time.... I've been alive for 46 years nearly, and never actually listened to one of their albums. I grew up on the Greatest Hits albums, and some of those appear here, but the rest are just kinda meh?" and this can be echoed here. Hard to believe this is the same band as 80s Queen.

Psychedelic Appalachia, a little bit country, a little bit bluegrass, a little bit rock and roll, and a good ol' time.

Rock really never sounded so dirty as it did in the mid 70s, and this album is borderline proto-hair metal, so its practically dripping with the sauce...

Overtures, Undertures, themes and motifs.... Nerdy theatre kids would eat this up. Most gravitate towards "Pinball Wizard" obviously, it's the showstopper, but the ending sequence of "We're Not Going To Take It" with the extended "See Me, Feel Me" & "Listening To You" motifs repeated from "Go To The Mirror!" is just superb. Doesn't feel as long as it is, and honestly, it's only 74 minutes...

Dave Mustaine and the lost art of holding a grudge

A mixed bag, no one particular style, a mish-mash of everything really. Solsbury Hill remains an all timer though.

Jeff Beck lifts this up, but it's still fairly generic psychedelic tinged rock pop, 1966 was loaded with this style.

Solid debut, some genuinely good songs like "Everything Is Not Lost" and "Yellow" always makes me smile. Pretty sucky that people have basically review bombed this based on their unbridled hate of the band now

Proto-Flaming Lips and about 100 songs long, but rarely going over 2 minutes per track, quite a trip. LoFi taken to the absolute lengths of low fidelity as it sounds it was recorded on a handheld tape recorder.

Cyndi either has a voice you love or hate, but how you can hear "Time After Time" and say you hate that voice is beyond me. Classic mid 80s pop, hits all the right notes, ticks all the right boxes.

4 all time songs in "Candle In The Wind", "Benny And The Jets", "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" and "Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)" amd, frankly, I've given other album 5 stars for much, much less...

I love the lore behind some the albums on the list, like this one. Willie was tired of the overproduced Nashville sound, holes up in a new studio in Texas and laid this down in under a week, including mixing. Like, how? More talent in his pinkie finger...

Urgh, my second Kate Bush album, both either side of the excellent Hounds of Love, both unmitigated shite...

My one abiding memory of Kasey Musgraves was her killer Coachella 2019 performance that included this great bit of banter during the live rendition of "Velvet Elvis" "When I say 'yee,' you say 'haw.' Yee! (Haw!) Yee! (Haw!)" "When I say 'yee,' you say 'haw.' Yee! (Haw!) Yee! (Haw!)" "When I say 'yee,' you say 'haw.' .....! (Haw!) ... I didn't say fuckin' Yee!" Played them like a fiddle... Started real, ended weird, par for the course when you used to do shrooms at Bonnaroo I guess.

Your favourite rock band's favourite rock band... Soaring guitar solos, epic drum fills, driving bass and organ, and a falsetto voice to die for. Speaking of Rock Band, Foreplay/Long Time was so much fun to play on that game

Absolutely stunning. Wasn't sure what to expect but this left me awestruck, tight three piece drum, piano and bass jazz band and Sarah has the range, good lord does she have the range.

Anther artist I had previously enjoyed through their greatest hits release, and more than a few appear on here. This felt absolutely stripped back, just one man and his guitar, everything else melts away. Every song hits just right, warm feelings, even in the sad songs.

Dylan met the Beatles in late 1964, decided to turn electric, then proceeded to record this album in the space of 2 days (TWO FUCKING DAYS) in early 1965 and released it months later, to call it a seismic shift in the musical landscape is an understatement. Shame so many people just go "oh shit, another Dylan album" and proceed to downvote each subsequent iteration, but fuck, this has "Subterranean Homesick Blues" with its proto-rap lyrical flow (Dylan was an OG MC not Kurtis Blow) AND "Maggie's Farm" that set Newport aflame, its a great album.

Doesn't even have the version of "Tainted Love" that segues into "Where Did Our Love Go?", and the rest is pretty down and dirty sleaziness... Minimal beeps and boops make up the soundtrack to a thousand nights in gay clubs across the land.

Bad, and not in the 80s "bad meaning good" way, just.... Questioning how this made it onto this listing.

Very much of its time, this was the sounds of the summer of 1998 for me, but 25 years later (almost) I was fully expecting it to have aged badly, but by the time I got to the fourth track, "Gangster Trippin", I was fully invested and chair boogying... It's a layered cake of repetitive banging beats, pitched sequenced sounds, repetitive sampled vocals, I can certainly appreciate the craft that went into it, moreso that it was done without the modern tools people take for granted, I mean he produced it using C-Lab Creator on an Atari ST that was already pretty old by 1998 standards (watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLjgXPDzeZo to see how homebrewed his studio was). Nostalgia ain't what it used to be, but I enjoyed this trip down memory lane, though it does get a little weak in the back end aside from "Praise You".

Electronic bossa nova? Not quite as good as I hoped it would be. Alright background music but nothing you'd seek out to listen to.

Slow and melodic for the most part. The Spotify version was incomplete so that might go against it, only real standout for me was the cover of "Nature Boy"

War? What is it good for? The funk apparently...

"Street Fighting Man" and "Sympathy For The Devil" aren't enough to lift this mediocre Stones album up to the pantheon of later releases. Brian Jones would be cycled out before his unfortunate death, so in many ways it's the end of one era and the start on a new...

Honestly, only really heard their Breakfast In America album before, and the lonesome harmonica this opened with really belies the shit you're about to get into. Yes, its MOR Prog Rock, but it is very well produced MOR Prog Rock, its not pulling itself at the seams like some Prog Rock of the 70s was doing, nothing overstays its welcome, its quite punchy in comparison to the 10 minute+ sweeping epic songs Pink Floyd and Rush were doing

I had to find this album, the digital equivalent of digging through crates of vinyl, simply because it's nowhere to be found. Not on Spotify, not on Apple Music, not on YouTube Music, only available as a YouTube video of the whole album. And it's weird as fuck, fuzzy everything, Doors-like keyboards, seemingly random lyrics, basic beats that Meg White would be proud of. Actually, this is the birth of The White Stripes 30 years early.

"Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before" Urgh, Morrissey. The original incel?

Afrika Bambaataa. Zulu Nation. Touching little boys since the early 80s. I know, separate the artist from the art, but the artist is so vile... "Renegades of Funk" now belongs to Rage Against The Machine, listen to that version instead.

Nico thought of herself as a bit of a chanteuse, many others did too. Warhol liked her, she was a bit of a muse of sorts, so he insisted she sing for The Velvet Underground, but she'd still go solo and the Velvet Underground were along for the ride but this would not be anything like a follow up to that album. We're in for avant garde shit here, that's to say we're in for some shit here. Shit production. Shit voice. Shit everything. Not 1 star level shit, but not far off...

Dolly Parton is a saint! Marvel in her technicolour deam coat.

Who said it was open mic night? Because that's what it sounds like

"Crosstown Traffic", "All Along The Watchtower", "Voodoo Chile" YES! The rest? Ehhhhhhh ... Still a classic though

I can appreciate Woody Guthrie, I can appreciate Billy Bragg, I can definitely appreciate this.

Honestly, doesn't live up to the 5 star album cover

So the Killing Joke is an iconic Alan Moore/Brian Bolland Batman graphic novel that explores the origins of the Joker, how Batman wrought him onto the world, and how a cycle of systematic revenge, physiological torture, and, basically, man's inhumanity to man, is really just an ouroboros and those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. It's a 3½ to 4 star Batman story and a 2½ to 3 star animation adaptation. This has nothing to do with anything I just said, but I hope you find what I said more enjoyable than this album.

My favourite album of 1991, one of the most important years in music history that included (but not limited to) the following albums: Nevermind by Nirvana Achtung Baby by U2 Screamadelica by Primal Scream Loveless by My Bloody Valentine Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers The Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest Blue Lines by Massive Attack Foxbase Alpha by Saint Etienne Apocalypse 91 by Public Enemy Dangerous by Michael Jackson Black Album by Metallica Out of Time by R.E.M Use Your Illusion I and II by Guns N’ Roses Its just that good. Every song is utterly timeless.

Had Rock Opera, so why not a Punk Rock Opera. Simultaneously too short and yet some songs feel too long. 20 years later and I'm still surprised Green Day had this in them

If you come looking for Back To Black style stuff, you'll be disappointed. There are hints of the future, but its all oversexed, after party vibes

As with a lot of 60s artists, their debut is basically a lot of covers and while it all sounds really good, its still cover versions.

Experimental, Avant Garde Jazz... So you know they're just making this shit up

I like the singles, but the rest is just kinda .... I dunno, there. I applaud Damon Albarn pivoting far away from the jangly guitars of Blur to try something absolutely different.

Absolutely perfect, 10 songs, under 45 minutes, ranges from moody personal stories to sweeping epics, and contains an amazing amount of Bruce live show staples like "Badlands", "Racing in the Street", "The Promised Land" and "Darkness on the Edge of Town". The Boss at his best, and, by this point, the classic E Street Band line up were just clicking

Much like Jerry Lee Lewis & Elvis Presley, the cloud of "white man popularising the black man's music" hangs heavy here. Classic rock & roll, albeit distilled.

Whats with all these so-called "super producers" making bland as fuck albums? Eno does it too... I can kinda hear the sounds Madonna must have heard when she wanted Orbit to do Ray Of Light with her, but on its own it just sounds so.... I hate to say bland again, but definitely dated

I can remember the moment I was introduced to the White Stripes, they appeared on Jools Holland on BBC2 and banged out "Hotel Yorba" and I was all in, 2 minutes of insanity. The acoustic version on the single I bought days later sealed the deal. Simple garage rock that somehow sounds amazing. And this is a Meg White appreciation post

This was the sound of 2005 indie folk-y rock at its absolute zenith. It has everything you could possibly need, a cohesive narrative, both the meta "an album a state" project and indeed the Illinois stories that made up the songs. And for a brief shining moment, it seemed like Sufjan Stevens was your favourite artists favourite artist, even getting name checked songs by Snow Patrol (that felt so mid-2000s to even type), everyone loved it, NPR, Pitchfork, Stereogum, Rolling Stone, and every blogger with a pulse. And, most importantly, it still holds up nearly 20 years later. a true timeless classic.

I'm still Team Oasis 30 years later, Modern Life Is Rubbish? Well, yeah, and so is this album...

A ok to good album that's weighed down by history, A few really good songs like "Jealous Guy" and "Gimmie Some Truth" and the title track is good if you're a teenager looking for greater meaning to life, but for Lennon is was absurd hypocrisy since he was bigger than jesus and richer than god. And then Gal Godot had an idea....

Lucinda Williams was one of those artists I had never heard of until I moved from the UK to the US, being introduced to this was a revelation. To me Country music was either old people from the 70s or earlier like Johnny Cash or Kris Kristofferson and Tammy Wynette or Loretta Lynn, or mediocre 90s pop crossovers like Faith Hill and LeAnn Rimes, so to encounter the in-between space that Americana genre existed in with artists like Lucinda and Emmylou Harris was an eye opening experience. This album moved me, it's downright filthy in so many ways with songs like "Right In Time" and "I Still Long For Your Kiss" but it's the consecutive punches of "2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten", "Drunken Angel", "Concrete And Barbed Wire" and "Lake Charles" that keep me coming back. You should also listen to her 2005 Live @ the Fillmore album

How *do* you follow up one the the greatest albums of all time? Apparently ask the record company for somewhere between $1m to $1.4m, spend most of it on blow, hire a university marching band, and record enough stuff to make a double album... Though it's a bit telling that when they eventually made a Greatest Hits album, only "Tusk" and "Sara" made the cut from here.

A cool Post Punk, Proto-Grunge, Sonic Youth sounding. Digging it. Gimmie that distortion,

Utter Prog Rock wankery, 3 songs, 37 minutes long. Rick Wakeman just banging his fingers to nubs on any keyboard he could find. Acquired taste, and I fear this exercise of listening to 1001 albums has led me to acquire that taste.

Honestly, not my kind of music, but it has the utterly timeless "Fairytale of New York" and that alone rises it above a lot of other things.

Timeless classics, sultry lyrics, absolutely effortless.

Throwback old style crooner vibes that sounds like the soundtrack to a movie that never got made.

Not a feel good album, not a fun, happy, upbeat bop, it's just Nick Cave with his usual haunting beauty, this may plunge you into the depths of grief you never knew you could go to.

Supposedly peak Beatles, or peak pre-Pepper Beatles, and while I do like "Eleanor Rigby" and "Got To Get You Into My Life" the rest kinda falls flat or not at all (looking directly at you "Yellow Submarine"). Rubber Soul was better, Pepper would be next, this kinda is just there almost out of contractual obligation...

Ok early 90s metal, but memorable to me because Rob Van Dam used "Walk" as his entrance music in ECW and that fuckin RULED

One of those, what you hear isn't what you heard live albums... The extended version has the live performance but the original was fabricated and mixed and mashed from live and studio overdubs. I usually love live albums but this one is a little overly live with crowd noise, I can see why they fudged it up with studio replacement

It feels like another Radiohead album I'm supposed to like... And I mostly do, but sometimes I'd rather listen to The Bends, you know

Bee Gees pre-disco concept album, let that marinate in your brain before listening, cherish that moment because it all comes tumbling down.

Mark E. Smith doing Mark E. Smith things.

You on point, Phife? All the time, Tip Well, then grab the microphone and let your words rip

For some bands the jangly guitars are just that much more janglier. This is one such band of that late 80s shoegaze alternative scene, miles better than the earlier review Psychocandy album, the noise and distortion has been pared back significantly and the jangle pop is starting to rise.

Unexpectedly enjoyable, solid beats and flows, can't hate. Very much in the Kanye West Late Registration space with lush production but feels a little like the Wish version of that era Kanye, not that that's a bad thing...

So southern, so swampy, what do you mean John Fogarty was born in California? Mans as Louisianan as anyone in history

Yeah, no, mostly irredeemable nonsense.

A journey through a world where everyone's secrets are out in the open and love is a transaction. The title track, with its smarmy charm, sets the tone for an album that revels in its own cynicism. Cohen, ever the poet of the smoke filled, dimly lit bar, delivers lines like "If you want a lover, I'll do anything you ask me to" with a voice that suggests he's both offering and mocking the deal. The album's standout, "Everybody Knows," is a jaded anthem for the end of the world. Cohen's gravelly voice, accompanied by a somber piano and ominous synthesizer, paints a bleak picture of a world where corruption, addiction, and disease are commonplace. But hey, at least the song is catchy! If you're looking for an album that will confirm your suspicions that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, look no further

The post movies Elvis comeback was in full swing and, thankfully, he's not entirely cribbing on black artists music here. Some genuine good songs like "Suspicious Minds" and "In The Ghetto" but don't sleep on songs like "Only The Strong Survive", the backing band as tight as hell throughout.

This is why I got involved in this, something so extraordinary that I'd never normally listen to. Break the cycle of westernized anglicized music and melt away with this. The only sad part is it was far too short...

My third Talking Heads album in this list and I think I love them all, this is no exception, it bops along at a steady pace and everyone loves "Psycho Killer"

Nick Drake just makes it all seem so effortless...

A level above the usual Britpop dross of the time, hard rocking and produced by Oasis producer leant some credibility to these gangly teens (at the time). I enjoyed it at the time and I enjoyed it now, but it's not setting the world on fire at any time in its existence.

Starts out with a bit of a rockabilly country twang, but it was fairly middle of the road 80s jazz infused synth pop (shout out Thomas Dolby) from there onwards. Neither soaring too high nor sinking too low, always average on average.

Polly Jean is really on her game here, I've already had the raw shock of Dry and the later folksy poetical political Let England Shake, and this is the middle of those two extremes. Polished, but not overly so; rocking, but not overly so; accessible; but not overly mainstream... Quite possibly her absolute peak. Was her "Good Fortune" slipping away?

Normally I don't mind The Police, but weirdly this one bar "Synchronicity II" and "Every Breath You Take" was forgettable by the time you reached the end, and you can tell it's the end, they were done. At least they dropped the white boy reggae act by now.

"Laura" is an all time bop. Anyone who says otherwise is a cop.

I mean, it has "Orange Crush", "Stand", and "Pop Song 89"... Thats it, thats the review

The "Sweet Jane" cover is the absolute shit, the rest doesn't quite match up to it but it's not that bad either.

LAWDHAMMERCIES, we got the angry white boy demographic music again, why did they (the demographic) hate everything? Parents? Women? LIFE??... and why I did not notice that at ALL at the time? To show how far we've come (or how far the past had fallen) "Wait And Bleed" was nominated for a fucking Grammy. They continue to be nominated for Grammys, so maybe I'm the one in the wrong?

Dinosaur Jr. do one thing, play it loud, and they do that well. Proto-shoegazing grunge, my jam.

Elvis is back from the army and he's still doing the covers. His version of "Fever" pales in comparison to Peggy Lee's original. He'd soon disappear into the movie era and wasn't interesting again until he had to comeback again a decade or so later.

Another "attempt to separate the art from the artist" , but it's hard... a great album from a truly shitty individual, and I'mma let you finish because he was a piece of shit long before his mental illnesses took hold in the last 10 or so years. 4 stars for the album (good the great but not his best) / 0 stars for the antisemitic Nazi turd he is / 2.5 stars to split the difference but in this case I'mma round it down.

A pretty good live recording, but a live from prison album is something not enough artists do nowadays...

Humpty Dance and a whole lotta future sex love drugs, if thats your kink.

Never heard of this band before, and I was put off somewhat by the 27 song long running order, but if you listen to the first 13 that made up the album, its a fun, raucous garage band punk rock sound. And the trumpets!

An absolute masterpiece, origins of trip hop right here, add in Shara Nelson and it's just the right tone. "Unfinished Sympathy" remains an all timer as well.

The transition from britpop to indie rock, and yet most of it sounds very much the same... Song 2 remains a banger and the official celebration music of your favourite hockey team scoring a goal 25 years later

Folktronica? Sure, why not...

This, much like "Lilac Wine", is sweet and heady, and packs a literal punch. Just so overwhelming at times, its just unbelievable that this was leftovers from other sessions for previous albums.

Starts off with a high pitched dentist drill to the more sensitive crevasses of your brain and really goes downhill from there

Loves me the singer songwriter genre and Joni Mitchell is S tier for this. One of her better albums, but it's no Ladies of the Canyon...

Music to run down Princes Street in Edinburgh to... Add in The Passenger and this becomes a fairly iconic album.

Watch out, here come the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, fresh of their indie darling status, and they're gonna dance till you (the royal you, personally) are dead, but you know they won't love you like I love you... They finally crossed over into art pop and are not above committing glamorous murder on the dancefloor. This entire album is bitching way harder, way longer than it has any right to.

I feel like I'm supposed to like this, because, hell, John Peel loved "Teenage Kicks" to his dying day (and beyond)... and I do like that one song a lot, but the rest doesn't hit the same highs.

Starts off cozy, literally the PS1 startup sound and the intro to Super Street Fighter II Turbo... but thereafter it just didn't fully resonate with me, not to say its not masterfully crafted, a lot of soul was clearly poured into this, this side of R&B just isn't my vibe. It consistently praised as the hottest thing to ever come down the pike but, sadly I suppose, I just down see it and it just feels overly long... 2012 just wasn't a good year overall.

Sounding like some weird procedurally generated soundtrack from a video game, it rises and falls in time with whatever you're doing.... Working from home? Folding laundry? Cooking dinner? Walking the dog? Having another existential crisis? Everything matches, everything vibes. Its amazing. 51 years old and it scored my mundane life perfectly.

Generic 80s pop rock mixed with even more generic 80s pop rock with a shot of 80s pop rock as a chaser. Stir well, pour into a higher than room temperature mug and serve.

Finally, I've already landed on The Dreaming and The Sensual World prior to this and its the big payoff. Hounds OF Love is a certifiable masterpiece, its got the monster hit in "Running Up That Hill" but it's also got "Cloudbursting", "The Big Sky", and "Jig Of Life", its got production for days, like that gated reverb drums on the title track. Kate deserved to be a pop star, shame she released this 20 or 30 years before its time.

Couldn't be more MOR if it had yellow lines painted down the middle of it.

Madonna's last good album? Good in a artistic sense, but it's really William Orbit's Strange Cargo III part 2... Strange Cargo IV? Regardless, the last time Madonna moved my needle.

Felt like the shift away from down and dirty grunge into a more nuanced alternative rock world. This raised the bar, the singles like "Disarm" and "Today" just lift everything higher as, simultaneously, Billy Corgan descended into madness... You can just hear the proto-Mellon Collie songs if you listen hard enough.

Starts out with a stone cold banger of an instrumental in the title track, but everything else is just dripping with the understated funkiness of 4 guys just jamming on an organ, drums, bass, and guitar.

Bland, forgettable, in fact I have no recollection of this band even existing. Are we sure this wasn't some weird A.I. Mandela effect / Baader–Meinhof phenomenon (pause for irony) where they take the sonic signature of a dozen bands and try to make the most pleasing sound out of it in a lab but instead this heap of boredom lurched out instead.

Sweetly soothing, borderline twee and breezy. Just a gentle hug for whatever is left of your soul at the end of a long week and 300+ days into this endeavour.

Don't threaten me with a good time... I mean, its the goddamn White Album by The Beatles... A band being torn apart never sounded so good, so many killer songs on this double album. "Dear Prudence", "Glass Onion", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Blackbird", "Birthday", "Helter Skelter", "Revolution", "Savoy Truffle".... Just typing that list out gave me blisters on me fingers. But it also has "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" so lets not say it's perfect by any means. Honestly, a lot of it sounds like throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks, but when it sticks its so so good that you can forgive the mediocre (or way below in Ob-La-Fucking-Di's case) efforts.

Good music to drift off to, I suppose. Didn't really do much for me, sounded very "ye olde lute player" lyrically though.

One of those albums where people say "this is it, this album will *change you*" and you're like "ok, lets give it a listen" and once it ends you find are absolute unmoved in the slightest... Is it me? Is my soul lacking something? No, it's Ride, Ride are the ones who are in the wrong....

"You Want It Darker"... Is that a question or a threat??? I'm treating it as a threat. Like Leonard Cohen said to me personally, "I'll give you something to cry about" and instead of beating me with a sack of valencia oranges, he, instead, cursed me with old fashioned mental disease.

I had Shleep a few days ago and now this and its probably even worse then that. Shorter, yes, but every song, if you can call it that, is interminably long. SO. BORED.

It's no Ingénue, thats about all I can say.

"The Buddha Monk on the hunt for machine gun funk" is one of many bars I've absolutely glommed from this album, so let me get raw with my southpaw style while puffing on a fat blunt from Cuba... One of the better Wu Tang solo albums, Method has that drawly flow thats just superb, literally sucking in all the air in the room as he does it. RZA production is sublime also, just a great album overall.

Influential album that ushered in the loud-quiet-loud era of rock. Good thing it's a total banger, Black Francis is in fine form, Kim Deal is driving with her bass, Lovering and Santiago are tight as all hell and there's no wasted time in the sub 40 minutes runtime (always good when it fits one one side of a 90 minute cassette). Hard to pick a favourite song but "Hey" has a special place in my life as it was the first baseline I learned and could still play it 100% on expert on Rock Band some years later.

I'm usually down with the jangly guitars, and this starts out super jangly with "I Will Dare" then I found out the jangly guitar part was played by Peter Buck of R.E.M.... They fooled me, they weren't jangly at all. They were just dull college rock. Not cool man.

Another 20 year old album comes from the vault to remind me how old I am now... This was near perfection at the time, and frankly it still is, I could listen to this any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Everything is crafted so god dam well, from the plinky plonky piano opening of "Tunnels", to the hero's journey sound track of "Wake Up" to the haunting fragility in the ending tack "In The Backseat", it sparks nothing but emotion and memories.

Biggest selling album of all time, sold 1 to 2 million copies A WEEK for almost a year. Contains monster songs like "Beat It", "Wanna Be Starting Something", "Billie Jean", and "Thriller". It also features a goddamn Beatle *and* Vincent Price. So yeah, you could say this is good...

Title track aside nothing on this really stood out and for a double album that's a lot of hard listening. Very disjointed, very over indulgent...

The last album in his lifetime, here Smith struggles to recapture his apex of Either/Or, and it's clearly an evolution over a revolution. It feels different, it's almost upbeat, in it as intimate as before but the soul is still shining through.

The defining album of my generation (late gen x, final year of high school, Cool fuckin Britannia to the core) and I can still remember release day, cutting out of said high school to buy this CD right as HMV opened and then rush home to quickly get it on tape in order to be the first to play it on the form room stereo. Everyone was rapt in anticipation, some were disassociating from raw hype alone... Thank fuck it delivered banger after banger. This and their Knebworth shows were the high water mark for Britpop as a movement, the tide was turning long before Be Here Now jizzed itself onto the public a few years later and the Gallagher brothers and other associated band members became pastiches of their former selves, but it doesn't make this any less impactful. Now they're back, and I'm old as fuck. Almost 30 years later. Ain't life a bitch? But gods, we were kings back then... We were the masters of our fates. We were young, dumb, full of cum. We were mad for it. Anyway, here's Wonderwall...

Urgh, Morrissey is a fucking twat, but this is a hell of an album, it cannot be denied.

The last Beatles album (Let It Be doesn't count as that was just reworked from the Get Back sessions), in-fighting and tension was so much that many songs don't feature the full band. Speaking of individuals, the songs here definitely show that... John was getting bluesy with "Come Together" and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)". Paul was waist deep in "granny music" with shit like "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" that had already been bumped from The White Album and derided in the Get Back documentary. George was still riding that "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" high from the White Album with the truly great "Something" and "Here Comes The Sun". And Ringo had "Octopus's Garden", can't have them all Ringo, but you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, at least you got a badass drum solo on this album. Then they just went their separate ways and stopped recording a month before this was released and George Martin scraped together bits and bobs to make the suite medley that ends the album. Its The Beatles, so I'mma give it 5 stars, but the end of The Beatles is definitely a bittersweet thing.

Just sublime soul lady doing sublime soul lady shit, a tremendous cover of "Respect" that meant she took ownership of the song, the title song is passion unbridled, and "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" is a timeless classic. The start of a run that has rarely been equalled in music; this album followed by Aretha Arrives in 1968, then Lady Soul, then Aretha Now, then the Aretha Live in Paris live album in 1969. 18 or so months of solid gold bangers.

Nah, how can I purge this from my Spotify history? I'm afraid its altered my algorithm is a sinister way.

I'll quote a smarter writer than me... "Experts at the Smithsonian Institution reportedly questioned Monday why new art was still being produced after the pinnacle of aesthetic and creative potential was reached in 1990 with Megadeth’s fourth studio album, Rust In Peace. 'As the unquestioned apex of the entire history of the creative arts, Rust In Peace is the finest and last necessary piece of human expression'" A fun review for an ok album, well a good to great album.

I know Rod Stewart was involved in this album, because it sounds like the dirty rock of the Faces sound at the time, not a bad thing, but at the same time pretty derivative.

From the opening few seconds you know this is going to be god tier, that distinctive fuzzy sound, split stereo in full effect, they literally kick down the doors of perception. "Break On Through (To The Other Side)", "Soul Kitchen, a bitching cover of "Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)", "Light My Fire", and the epicness that is "The End"... They had no goddamn right to be this good this early.

Psychedelic Rock man, it's my true weakness, and this kicks off with a great vibe in "Kicks" that continues on with "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone" and "Take A Look At Yourself".

Late stage Bowie just feels sad, not as sad as Black Star being his deathbed release, but this is an artist in decline literally trying to gloam on the better times by reinterpreting the Heroes album cover for purpose. Nothing here stood out, nothing felt "you must listen to this before you die" worthy. It's just there.

I've already had The White Album and Abbey Road picked for me in the last month or so and already had Rubber Soul and Revolver in the last 10 months, so going back to Sgt. Pepper is like snuggling into a warm blanket. Though the transition from the Rubber Soul/Revolver era to this is STARK, they went away and changed everything, and free from the constraints of recording and touring endlessly they almost perfected everything... Production, songwriting, instrument choices, and general vibes is off the charts. The only downside is the often derided "granny music" McCartney song, following on from the deplorable "Michelle" on Rubber Soul, we get "When I'm Sixty-Four" here and it was only going downhill on other albums after that. But some scholars wish to include "She's Leaving Home" and "Lovely Rita" from this album too... Still 5 stars, the most important album in music history, and all that.

Very of its time, and the gorgeous cover of "Go West" launched a hundred football chants (mostly along the lines of "you're shit, and you know you are"), and its probably the most accessible PSB, almost anthemic in comparison to earlier releases.

I've had Fela Kuti & Africa '70 before, so at least I knew what I was getting into with this album, Ginger Baker was a change though for the second half... Its super tight afrobeats, and time just washes over you to where it has no meaning anymore, and soon enough the hour has passed and you crave more.

I keep saying this any time interesting world music comes up, but this is why I signed up for this. Brazilian Samba mixed with funk I'd never normally stumbleupon. Just a chill time, solid chair boogying and it has the song "Taj Mahal" that some might recognize as the song Rod Stewart ripped off for "Do You Think I'm Sexy?"

Come for the hip hop and hardcore and alternative rock, but stay for the jazzy funk instrumentals but don't play this on your dad's stereo at home, only under hip-hop supervision. It has a lot of that 1-2-3-1, 2-3-1-2, 3-1-2-3 verse flow as they pass the mic along, and it all just sounds so good as this album is loaded with hot bars. I must have listened to this album a bajillion times in the 30 years since it came out, worn out CDs, hard drives and now solid state drives with this thing just banging. You'll either love it or hate it. RIP MCA

How does one rate this through a modern lens? Problematic skits, problematic lyrical content, problematic producer who seemed intent on appearing as much as possible with "yeahs" and "uh huhs" on every goddamn song. "Juicy" and "Big Poppa" are obvious bangers, but "Machine Gun Funk" is the lowkey MVP of the whole album for me.

I mean, its fuckin Bad Brains, the preeminent hardcore band of their time, and they're going reggae and funk...

The first 35 seconds of "Bone Machine" is all you need as an introduction to the Pixies, the drums, the bass, the guitar, and Black Francis yapping in the background, thats it, get past that and you'll utterly appreciate this un-80s album that set the table for rock and grunge that came after it. Everything is short, punchy, and near perfect.

There's just something wild about David Bowie and Iggy Pop getting so fucked up on whatever that they had to move far, far away from the American scene in 1976 and then go on an all time tear of recording and releasing 4 outstanding albums in a year. 1977 was a special time, before my time though. This album is dark, moody, brooding as they weaned themselves off the addictions. It's hard to tell who was the catalyst, Bowie with the music or Pop with the lyrics.

A literal journey into electronic music, hypnotic and relaxing, and like most car journeys, I end up falling asleep halfway to the eventual destination.

Just a jizzy jazzy party, riffs and riffing, sax and sex.

Liars, everywhere... They were the liars when they thought they could create music, the list creator was the liar when they said this album was worth listening to. I will say, track 2 "Steam Rose from the Lifeless Cloak" being the musical manifestation of a migraine, that pounding feeling of blood through your veins like native drums along the Orinoco, is the only reason I didn't give this a 1 star.

Blues with a worldly twist, great ambience. Something I'd never normally listen to, but I'll Definitely give this another spin

Not so much an OutKast album as two solo albums packaged as a double album. The division is quite obvious, Big Boi's Speakerboxxx has big beats and solid bars and guests to die for while Andre's The Love Below is mega overindulgence and the first stop on the road that leads to jazz flute albums. Can the two halves equal a whole? For the most part yes, but the amount of skittish interludes on The Love Below pulls it down for me.

Starts off a little funky, but not overly funky, but then transforms quickly into elevator muzak. Not on the same level as other Steely Dan albums here, and honestly sounds like the inspiration for late 70s/early 80s Chicago albums. Make of that what you will...

That monster Alice In Chains sound, the Layne Stanley voice, the Jerry Cantrell guitar, it's here and in full effect as they are at possibly the peak of their powers. Loaded with songs you half remembered like "Rooster", "Them Bones", "Down In A Hole", and "Would?". This mix would sell millions and was worth every penny.

The author of this book must have an Elvis Costello kink, there's no reason to explain how many times ol' Declan has appeared... Anyway, another bland album that has 2 hot songs, in this case "Alison" and "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes", but is that enough?? Maybe the 1001 author should just have included an Elvis Costello greatest hits album and spare us the misery of 6 of his albums? Oh well, 4 down, the only way is up, right?

It has "America", "Mrs. Robinson", and "Hazy Shade Of Winter", what more do you people want from a sub 30 minute album?

Always skeptical when a recent album appears, but this was released 3 weeks after George Floyd's murder and seemed to encapsulate 2020 pretty perfectly. Strength in unity.

Lenny in his early psychedelic rock phase, but not really... A little funky, a little bit in his feelings, has quite reached his Hendrix guitar shredder phase of the early 90s. So it's hippy music, mostly, 20 years too late. But my one abiding memory is a friend who'd change lyrics of songs while singing them, so we gotta let dogs drool (LET DOGS DROOL)

Music to listen to while you kick back in a warm bath, enjoying a bottle of wine, and just let the Beck-ness of it all wash over you. And then when you're nice and toasty, pop open a vein...

Not enough albums containing songs that endorse beating up kids with a hefty lump of wood. Truly different times... This is pure punk, three chords, repetitive beats and bass, simple lyrics also repetitive. So repetitive I lost track during a three song stretch of "I Don't Wanna Go Down To The Basement", "Loudmouth", "Havana Affair" and and couldn't remember when one ended and another began...

Now, I'll admit I bought this CD back in 2000 and I loved it then, and I haven't listened to it, or anything else by him for that matter, in probably 20 years now... And what seemed earth shattering to my naive reptile smooth brain back then is kinda boring now. It's just dull turn of the millenium indie music innit? I still enjoyed songs like "The Shining", "Another Pearl", "Magic In The Air", and "Disillusion", add in a couple more and a killer EP they would make, but this was just too long and too stuffed with filler like instrumental tracks to be enjoyable as it once was. And don't get me started on the aural assault that is "This Song", do not wear headphones for that.

It's the fuckin' Germs man, the fuckin' GERMS! And it's not as great as the legend suggests. 15 1 to 2 minutes songs that are so hardcore punk, this band can barely play but does speed thrashing, and 1 10 minute long slog that overstays its welcome by about 9 minutes. If not for the expanded lore of the legend of Pat Smear and the knowledge of what could have been with fuckin' Belinda Carlisle on drums, this would be a solid 1 stinker. FUCKIN' GERMS MAN! FUCK-IN' GERMS!

Their equivalent to The Beatles White Album, a long double album that's a little incohesive as it feels like all manner of shit was thrown to this particular wall to see what would stick, where the highs are so so so good ("Trampled Under Foot", "Houses Of The Holy", "Kashmir", "In My Time Of Dying", basically all of disc 1), but the lows are pretty meh ("Down By The Seaside", "Night Flight", "The Wanton Song", "Boogie With Stu", "Sick Again", basically all of disc 2). But it's Led Zeppelin so you can forgive most of it.

I gave Sound Of Silver a 3 and said "its just a lot of mid 00s angst over mid beats" This is worse than Sound Of Silver because its just a lot of late 10s angst over even lower than mid beats

As Peter Fonda said in The Wild Angels "Well, we wanna be free, we wanna be free to do what we wanna do and we wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time... And that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna have a good time, we're gonna have a party." This album soundtracks that party.

Bob kinda goes solo here, no more Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer but this has the classic "No Woman No Cry" and the rest is a solid mix of chill vibes and biting social commentary.

"Dr. Octagonecologyst introduces the character of Dr. Octagon, a homicidal, extraterrestrial, time-traveling gynecologist and surgeon" so you know we're getting low level porno skits and a rough theme thats held together by hopes and dreams. In reality its shit level hip hop, even with Dan The Automator at the desk

Flashing back to downstairs in the old original 13th Note on Glassford Street in Glasgow, Belle & Sebastian were releasing new EPs every other month and life was simpler, or I was simpler, but I digress... Upbeat, but not overly jaunty, twee, but not overly cutesy, just a chill laid back jam session in your living room with old friends.

Proto-Prog Rock, lots of weirdly familiar riffs that you can't quite put your finger on. The Hammond organ and jazzy bass are the real stars here.

A good old time, just great classic rock and roll. Contains "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", "Up On Cripple Creek" which were released as a killer double a side singe, both fronted by Levon Helms voice. Ridiculously good.

A return to the form of their first album after a few albums just wantering the wastelands. Killer list of singles here: "Sex On Fire", "Use Somebody", and "Revelry". I know so many bands who would crawl over miles of broken glass for a list like that in their greatest hits.

"Constant Craving" remains an all time song. The rest of the album doesn't rise to that level. Still better than her country debut that's already appeared in my list.

Indie Folk is also in my wheel house apparently... I loved this, so soft and gentle, wrapped up in a blanket with a nice cup of tea.

Jack White can be hit or miss, and this album is a hodgepodge of many different styles... Blues, Rock, Soul, Country, Folk, he's got it all, a 5 tool player. But honestly, 3 good songs in "Love Interruption", "Sixteen Saltines", and "I'm Shakin'" and a shit load of filler.

One banging tune and a lot of questionable choices....

"Seven Nation Army" dominates this, it's the alpha, the omega, there's no way around it, it has more plays on Spotify than Pi has digits... And it's not even the best song on this album... Because that would be "In The Cold, Cold Night" as Meg steps out from the drum kit and lays down the haunting tenderness as if to say "I'M Karen Carpenter, bitch" , and "The Hardest Button To Button" would go before it too. Stripped back even more from White Blood Cells, this was White Stripes at their peak, the king and queen of the alt rock garage scene.