674
Albums Rated
2.98
Average Rating
62%
Complete
415 albums remaining
Rating Distribution
Rating Timeline
Taste Profile
1950s
Favorite Decade
Soul
Favorite Genre
other
Top Origin
Wordsmith
Rater Style ?
115
5-Star Albums
98
1-Star Albums
Breakdown
By Genre
By Decade
By Origin
Albums
You Love More Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Bitte Orca
Dirty Projectors
|
5 | 2.69 | +2.31 |
|
Bone Machine
Tom Waits
|
5 | 2.86 | +2.14 |
|
Millions Now Living Will Never Die
Tortoise
|
5 | 2.87 | +2.13 |
|
Spiderland
Slint
|
5 | 2.98 | +2.02 |
|
Nighthawks At The Diner
Tom Waits
|
5 | 3.01 | +1.99 |
|
Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
Bill Callahan
|
5 | 3.02 | +1.98 |
|
Something/Anything?
Todd Rundgren
|
5 | 3.03 | +1.97 |
|
Ambient 1/Music For Airports
Brian Eno
|
5 | 3.07 | +1.93 |
|
Modern Kosmology
Jane Weaver
|
5 | 3.08 | +1.92 |
|
Qui sème le vent récolte le tempo
MC Solaar
|
5 | 3.09 | +1.91 |
You Love Less Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Wish You Were Here
Pink Floyd
|
1 | 4.3 | -3.3 |
|
The Stranger
Billy Joel
|
1 | 3.86 | -2.86 |
|
Bad
Michael Jackson
|
1 | 3.81 | -2.81 |
|
Metallica
Metallica
|
1 | 3.79 | -2.79 |
|
Appetite For Destruction
Guns N' Roses
|
1 | 3.74 | -2.74 |
|
Master Of Puppets
Metallica
|
1 | 3.73 | -2.73 |
|
Californication
Red Hot Chili Peppers
|
1 | 3.7 | -2.7 |
|
Hotel California
Eagles
|
1 | 3.6 | -2.6 |
|
Definitely Maybe
Oasis
|
1 | 3.52 | -2.52 |
|
Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Red Hot Chili Peppers
|
1 | 3.5 | -2.5 |
Artists
Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Neil Young | 4 | 5 |
| Radiohead | 5 | 4.8 |
| Bob Dylan | 5 | 4.8 |
| Tom Waits | 3 | 5 |
| Beatles | 6 | 4.33 |
| Led Zeppelin | 4 | 4.5 |
| The White Stripes | 3 | 4.67 |
| Joni Mitchell | 3 | 4.67 |
| Nirvana | 3 | 4.67 |
| Fela Kuti | 2 | 5 |
| Aretha Franklin | 2 | 5 |
| A Tribe Called Quest | 2 | 5 |
| Elliott Smith | 2 | 5 |
| Neil Young & Crazy Horse | 2 | 5 |
| Ray Charles | 2 | 5 |
| Fiona Apple | 2 | 5 |
| Black Sabbath | 3 | 4.33 |
| Miles Davis | 3 | 4.33 |
| Beastie Boys | 3 | 4.33 |
| Pixies | 3 | 4.33 |
Least Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Metallica | 4 | 1 |
| Van Morrison | 3 | 1.33 |
| Aerosmith | 3 | 1.33 |
| Slipknot | 2 | 1 |
| Eagles | 2 | 1 |
| Massive Attack | 2 | 1 |
| Red Hot Chili Peppers | 2 | 1 |
| Barry Adamson | 2 | 1 |
| The Verve | 2 | 1 |
| U2 | 3 | 1.67 |
| The Prodigy | 2 | 1.5 |
| Yes | 2 | 1.5 |
| Genesis | 2 | 1.5 |
| Elvis Presley | 2 | 1.5 |
| John Martyn | 2 | 1.5 |
| Deep Purple | 2 | 1.5 |
| Pet Shop Boys | 2 | 1.5 |
| Kings of Leon | 2 | 1.5 |
| Doves | 2 | 1.5 |
| The Byrds | 3 | 2 |
Controversial
| Artist | Ratings |
|---|---|
| Amy Winehouse | 2, 5 |
| The Band | 2, 5 |
| Bruce Springsteen | 5, 2, 2 |
| Simon & Garfunkel | 5, 2, 3 |
| Beatles | 5, 2, 5, 5, 5, 4 |
5-Star Albums (115)
View Album Wall
Popular Reviews
The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy
2/5
I wish this was better. I appreciate the attempt at conscious rap, but the lyrics leave nothing to the imagination. It's just so on the nose and literal. The beats are fine, but this doesn't rise above its contemporaries by any stretch. There are just so many better examples of what this is trying to sound like.
10 likes
Elbow
2/5
Never heard of this. Wasn't missing much. It's mediocre "rock" music with a Northern accent. The breathy vocals become grating and creepy a few tracks in. There is a sparse smattering of interesting moments in here that aren't ruined by the vocals. I will happily skip over the bonus tracks at the end of this. Yet another album whose presence on this list confuses me.
5 likes
Neil Young
5/5
In case you didn't get the point from my previous reviews of Neil albums, I'm already a fan of this album. Not only that, but the Ditch Trilogy is probably my favorite three-album run from him. The more I learn about the backstory of these songs, the harder it hits. Deeply felt stories of loss, brotherly love, friendship, overdose, candles snuffed out, etc. Couldn't get much realer than this.
3 likes
The Dandy Warhols
3/5
I live in Portland so I suppose I should like this. I don’t know how much of this band I’ve actually heard, but the first track isn’t ringing any bells.
This has elements of other 90s Portland bands that I do know, like Heatmiser, but more Neil Gust, with little to no Elliott Smith. Thankfully they sound nothing like Everclear. I probably would’ve loved this if I’d heard it closer to when it came out. It’s a little samey for me on first listen. I don’t mind it, though. It’s fine.
3 likes
Dirty Projectors
5/5
One of the easiest 5s I could give. I already love this album. It took me many listens back in the day to get into this one, but I've loved it ever since. Actually, every Dirty Projectors album from this one onward has taken me a few listens to get into, but they grow on me every time. I highly recommend the follow-up to this one: Swing Lo Magellan
2 likes
4-Star Albums (130)
1-Star Albums (98)
All Ratings
Radiohead
5/5
The Velvet Underground
4/5
Van Halen
2/5
The Doors
3/5
Still not a Doors fan. The titular track is fine, but overall still not doing it for me
Prince
2/5
Not the album to listen to if you want to immediately get into Prince. It would be like listening to Bitch’s Brew as an intro to Miles Davis
Curtis Mayfield
3/5
Starts off strong!
Quickly slows down and doesn’t really pick back up?
“Jesus” is a little on the nose but not unexpected.
Has a Marvin type feel to it. Conscious soul.
His version of Hard Times (original?) is a different take and makes times feel much harder than Baby Huey does
Stan Getz
3/5
King Crimson
3/5
My first time listening much past the first track, which I shamefully came to from Kanye’s sampling of it. I have since moved on to much better hip hop and can hardly see the appeal in his music anymore. Needless to say this is vastly superior, though it’s obviously apples and oranges.
The middle section that is seemingly random noises - made by instruments and non-instruments alike - aside, I quite like it. Definitely an underrated prog rock album. Far be it from me to call it a masterpiece as I’ve seen stated elsewhere, but I definitely prefer it to anything by Pink Floyd.
It’s spacious! It’s catchy! It’s interesting! It’s frenetic! It’s difficult to judge on a single listen, but that is my take thus far.
Beatles
5/5
Duh
G. Love & Special Sauce
3/5
Very nostalgic and not as bad as I’d expected!
Fela Kuti
5/5
What timing! Went to a west African restaurant last night and was digging Water (No Get Enemy) and thinking about how it had been a while since I had listened to some Afro beat. It’s impossible not to tap my toes or bob my head when listening to Fela Kuti.
Ministry
1/5
No. Just… no.
Pink Floyd
3/5
Were it not for the Revolution 9-like forays into atonal noise making, this would sound exactly like every other British psych record from the era. Forgettable but I still prefer it to their other more popular albums.
Bauhaus
3/5
I don’t think I’ve ever heard Bauhaus before this. I had heard of them though and I definitely had a much different idea of what they’d sound like. While this won’t make it into a long list of albums I’ll come back to time and time again, I am enjoying it. The best way I can describe it is some combination of Joy Division, Bowie’s Berlin trilogy, Pixies, and My Bloody Valentine. I’m not sure if that actually makes sense though.
R.E.M.
4/5
Blood, Sweat & Tears
3/5
It’s fine. Not really doing much for me personally. I’d rather listen to the Animals or Box Tops for something similar but harder hitting. The Chicago-ness of it all is off putting at best. Tom Jones + Byrds is a combination that doesn’t age well.
Randy Newman
4/5
Aretha Franklin
5/5
Obviously
Billy Joel
1/5
I’ve never liked Billy Joel much. That hasn’t changed.
John Coltrane
5/5
This is one of those ones I’d been meaning to listen to all the way through for a long time. Coltrane was a genius, nothing new there. We knew that.
A Love Supreme, while unlikely to become a favorite of mine, is certainly a work of art that transported me. It’s an experience. One that deserves to be listened to intently. Which I still need to do, but in this listen while working from home, I can say it’s a solid 9/10
The Saints
4/5
Awesome. Reminds me of the Stooges from time to time, which is a good thing. I can also hear bits that likely influenced the likes of Ty Segall.
Rage Against The Machine
4/5
If this weren’t nostalgic for me, not sure I’d have enjoyed it so much, but here we are.
Hüsker Dü
3/5
Not for me, but not terrible. Feels dated to me.
The Who
4/5
A classic. Not my favorite of theirs, but it’s good ol’ British Invasion.
The Prodigy
2/5
A few tracks I recognize from my youth. Something about this type of music makes me feel like I should be on amphetamines at a strobe-ridden rave taking e from someone I’ve never met before.
I’d much rather listen to the Chemical Bros than this. Better yet, Aphex Twin.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
3/5
I respect the heck out of Elvis Costello. I understand this is good, well-written music. I just haven’t found an album of his past This Year’s Model that I have connected with.
CHIC
3/5
Not bad for disco
Blur
3/5
A couple of tracks on here that I didn’t realize were Blur songs. Nearly 30 years after release, it doesn’t stand out above other Brit pop of that era to me. It’s catchy and enjoyable nonetheless.
3/5
AC/DC
4/5
Can’t deny that this rocks. Not my thing but it rocks and is catchy af.
3.5/5
A Tribe Called Quest
5/5
Slightly pre-peak Tribe, but the sampling is there, the rhymes are fun, and it’s still a 5/5
The Sonics
3/5
Bob Marley & The Wailers
3/5
I used to love ska and reggae. Bob Marley is obviously a master. That said, it’s a repetitive genre that is hard for me to get into for very long anymore. The revolutionary subjects of the lyrics make his albums more worth it than most, and I wasn’t repulsed two tracks in like I have been with a couple of previous albums on this list, but reggae is not my go to anymore.
3/5
The Smashing Pumpkins
3/5
I’ve never made it all the way through this double album, despite professing a love for the band on and off through my junior high years. I tried again recently and same. I get turned off quickly by the heavier songs and guttural screeching into the mic. There’s no denying Corgan’s beautiful guitar playing, so I’m not not a fan, but it’s just never fully clicked. Let’s give it another go.
First off, the hits still hit. They’re great. When their songs have dynamic range, I’m in. When it’s all raspy vocals and loud distortion the whole way through, I need a break. When it’s all slow and mopey (not that there’s anything wrong with that), I need a break. Thankfully, the track listing mixes it up every song or two. Had I previously stuck it out through those songs I wasn’t feeling, I’d have gotten much farther. I’m certainly happy that I’m forcing myself to listen regardless. If for no other reason than to know which songs to skip in the future, and to know that there are more gems in here than just the radio hits. But yeah it’s still way too long for me to give it more than 3/5
I can’t finish this review without mentioning that that is not how you spell Galapagos, but it’s still one of the aforementioned hidden gems.
1/5
At its best, prog rock is an exploration of time signatures, key signatures, modes, and technicality. It can be beautiful if you know what you’re listening to.
At its worst, it’s purely masturbatory, try-hard, wandering-aimlessly noise. I’m afraid that’s what this album is to me.
There’s just much better prog than this. Some of it is even by Yes themselves. But this just makes me want to put on better prog. I’m glad the bands that seem to have revived this a bit (Tool aside. Blech) have improved on this genre and just made it much more fun and interesting. Can’t wait to cleanse my ears with some King Gizzard.
1/5
Thin Lizzy
2/5
I'm not sure why we needed a live Thin Lizzy album. Over an hour is much too long for this band of very samey songs. Look, I'm not against The Boys Are Back In Town, but a lot of their songs sound an awful lot like that one. Not sure if any of their studio albums are better - I don't intend to find out - but if this is the best way to introduce someone to Thin Lizzy, then - and I'm sure I'll say this many more times before this list is done - maybe we don't have to listen to it before we die.
Led Zeppelin
5/5
Easily a 5.
Don McLean
2/5
Typical saccharine radio folk.
Nightmares On Wax
2/5
I honestly thought I’d hate this. It’s not terrible, however it’s not something I’m going to sit down and listen to. It’s background music. I can find better background music though. 2/5
Pink Floyd
1/5
The wankfest continues. Title track is easily the most listenable song on here, but that’s a low bar. I just fail to see the genius in any Pink Floyd that I’ve ever heard. Due to the insufferable nature of their fans, I’ve heard a LOT of Pink Floyd. Not for me.
Fun Lovin' Criminals
1/5
Look, 1001 is a big number. That’s a lot of albums! I would struggle to name that many myself. But I think I would round down if it meant that I had to include this album. How is this something I need to hear before I die? It’s like Sublime without the reggae/ska tinge to it and more of a sense of humor about pretending to be hard. Sublime is not someone I’d want to be compared to.
Whoever the main rapper is has zero emotion. The same monotonous voice throughout. I guess the instrumentation is interesting but it ends up being a lot after a few tracks of the same intensity and I can’t even tell if the lyrics are clever enough to make up for it? What is this even trying to be?
Just why?
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
3/5
This was fine
Calexico
3/5
Decent alt-country. Feels very spaghetti western. Not going to go into regular rotation, but I can dig it.
The Smiths
2/5
Trying to put aside my dislike of Morrissey… not working. I still don’t like the Smiths. This is 2/5 only because the band doesn’t suck, it’s just Morrissey that does. Can’t stand anything that comes out of his mouth, even when he’s not cloyingly singing some arguably good lyrics.
The Who
4/5
I’m not super familiar with the Who outside of Tommy and Quadrophenia, so this surprised me. I enjoy it in the same way I enjoy the Kinks albums of the same time (Village Green, Victoria). Fun, catchy, but maybe not as mature or fully realized as I prefer. Solid album for sure.
The Prodigy
1/5
I suppose if I ever want to really annoy my neighbors, or make them worry about my drug use, I know what to blast through the windows.
Fats Domino
5/5
Wonderful stuff. I would put this on when people are over. Makes me feel nostalgic for a time I didn’t even live through.
Footnote: I half expected to hear some lyrics that would sound problematic to some people today (as songs of this era can do), but I don’t think anyone would be offended by these songs at all. That said, it wouldn’t have impacted my enjoyment much anyway.
2Pac
3/5
Not my style or era of hip hop, but I have a ton of respect for Tupac’s lyricism and activism. He knew he wasn’t long for this world when writing this album. I’m glad I listened to it, but I doubt I’ll listen to it again in one sitting.
Femi Kuti
4/5
Energizing. I can’t deny an afrobeat groove, and why would I want to?
On first listen, not as impactful as Fela, but definitely passionate and political.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
5/5
Obviously a five. The harmonies alone.
Black Sabbath
4/5
I pretended to listen to Sabbath more than I did when I was in junior high. Why? I definitely would have liked them. This is a hell of a record.
Finley Quaye
1/5
Ok firstly, not really into reggae/dub like I was in my teens and early 20s, but I think it’s safe to say that’s not why I don’t like this. The singing is bad. It’s clear that he’s from Scotland and not Jamaica. Had he not tried to sound Jamaican, which he did somewhat poorly, it might be worth putting on in the background. But I couldn’t make it through this. 1/5
Santana
4/5
Man I loved this album in my younger days. It’s still enjoyable. A shame that Carlos just kinda cocked it later on in his career. His guitar tone and style, especially after 2006, just sounds… cheesy? But I don’t actually think my enjoyment of this album is hindered by that. I’ll probably come back to this every few years. It’s a classic
Elliott Smith
5/5
I could wax poetic about Elliott Smith for days if anyone would listen. When I find someone that will, we usually get along.
A lot has been said about how sad his music is, but I think it’s very overstated. His music to me is about the mundanity of life. It’s not a bad or sad thing. Yeah sometimes it’s hard to get out of bed, but that’s whats so relatable about it. More so than the love songs that are so overdone by almost everyone else. Mundanity can be just fine. His music is about everyday people. I find some of it empowering even, but I’ll write more about that when I get to XO.
Either/Or grew on me over the years after I first became a fan. It’s not quite as ornate as XO, and it doesn’t rock as hard as Figure 8. What it does do is explore the stories of various people. I assume some of them are about himself in the third person.
When I first moved to Portland, I listened to Either/Or again while it rained on my car. I literally walked down Alameda with my headphones on listening to it again. I didn’t move here because of my love for his music, but it gave the place a little extra familiarity that it wouldn’t have otherwise had.
Easiest 5/5 rating so far.
Sarah Vaughan
4/5
Beautiful. I have little patience for 99% of jazz vocalists, but Sarah Vaughan is the top 0.01% alongside Fitzgerald and Holliday. I’ve known the name, surprised I haven’t heard more of her music before this.
Alice Cooper
3/5
This is fun. I’m enjoying it more than I expected to. Not going to run out and buy a used copy, or put it into any kind of rotation, but I won’t be upset if it comes on again
3/5
Great grooves. Great messages that still ring true today in America, unfortunately. Funky as hell. Great sax. It gets very repetitive at times which is the main reason this isn’t likely to become a new favorite.
3/5
The Temptations
4/5
Dude what!?
Slipknot
1/5
In. What. World. Do I - or anyone - need to listen to this before I die?
There’s a very good reason that I haven’t listened to these guys in 25 years
The Charlatans
2/5
Meh… it’s like Oasis -who I don’t like - but more boring. Not unlistenable or abhorrent. Just unremarkable and I likely will never hear any of this again.
2/5
Paul McCartney and Wings
2/5
Listen. I didn’t expect to love this album. Haven’t been much a fan of Paul since I became an adult. However, I also didn’t expect that I would entirely dislike it. The dude is a schlock factory! Does he have any emotional depth? Beyond the title track, there is nothing of interest here. No intrigue whatsoever. Some of this is downright goofy. It’s love song after love song, with a few nonsensical narratives peppered in. A prime example of how it’s actually possible for one to ride one’s own coattails.
Roni Size
1/5
Oh great, another 90s d&b album… bottom of the barrel, folks. I feel like I woke up to a dvd menu that has been repeating for 6 hours.
I simultaneously learned what the Mercury Prize is and that it’s worthless. If this won over OK Computer and Klaxons won over Amy Winehouse, there’s no justifying it being an award. For fucks sake
New Order
3/5
I’m still new to knowing that I like any New Order after discovering that Blue Monday is by them. I had higher hopes for this one because of that. I do like them probably more than any other 80s synth pop band, but I have some caveats.
This is good overall. Not great. Not one I’ll put on again, knowingly. Wouldn’t mind hearing a song or two. Elegia was great! Otherwise I found the vocals lacking, and at certain points just bad. I can deal with some imperfect singing, but from time to time it sounded like drunken karaoke. This gets a 3 because I honestly don’t hate it, but I’ll probably rate other New Order higher. Looking forward to Substance
Black Flag
3/5
I had fun with this one. I can’t do screamy hardcore much anymore, but it was fun to relive that part of my life. This won’t go into rotation, but it’s a classic. 3/5
If you want a fun experience, listen to Dirty Projector’s full-album cover/reinterpretation of Damaged after this. The album’s name is Rise Above.
Leonard Cohen
4/5
Honestly beautiful. Leonard Cohen has been very hit or miss for me, from the stuff I’ve heard. New Skin For The Old Ceremony has been the only album up to this point that I “get”. This one is elegiac and haunting. Not going to be regular rotation but I will listen again.
Eminem
2/5
Beats are good. Rhymes are clever. Content is just cringey. Definitely makes sense in the context of late 90s white male angst and aggression. I won’t listen to this again
Goldie
1/5
Can we please stop with the drum n bass?
Various Artists
4/5
This has to be one of the best Christmas albums ever put out. I’m not likely to listen to it outside of a week or two before Christmas though. By my rubric, it’s somewhere between a 3 and 4. But since I will come back to it on purpose, even if only one short time of the year, let’s call it a 4. I’m sure I rate other albums at 4 that I listen to slightly less frequently than that!
Billie Holiday
4/5
Billie Holiday. Great as always.
Kraftwerk
4/5
I didn’t know I would like Kraftwerk this much. It was especially fun to work on a computer while listening.
If you like this, I can’t recommend FWY! enough. Check out the track HWY 101
2/5
I’ve avoided listening to Muse for years. Mostly because acquaintances that were fans had otherwise middling taste in music at best. That kind of describes how this sounds to me.
It’s almost like a parallel universe Radiohead where they try to be more radio-friendly. Both too edgy and not edgy enough. It’s a little try-hard at times.
I don’t hate it. My ears weren’t ever really offended by it, I just was kinda bored by it. For something that sounds so grandiose, it’s remarkably non-compelling.
The White Stripes
5/5
I can still sing along with every one of these songs. Im dating myself here but I remember seeing the Fell In Love With A Girl video on MTV when it came out. Absolutely a perfect album to me.
John Lennon
2/5
I used to want to like John. Then I gave into not liking him because his solo work just didn’t do it for me, and that’s ok. Now, knowing more about his shithead past, and how he wrote songs about it there were somewhere between a brag, an excuse, and a lament… I just don’t think he was all that great on his own. That and he helped make one of the worst Nilsson records.
Needless to say, I wasn’t looking forward to this record. If I never hear the song Imagine again, it’ll be too soon. Jealous Guy is beautiful if you don’t read into it too much. And Oh Yoko is kinda fun, but the rest is just a yawnburger.
Maxwell
3/5
It’s fine. Not my taste but good for what it is. Like a 00s Luther Canaria Vandross
Soundgarden
3/5
This was on the radio when I was growing up. I loved Black Hole Sun after seeing the video at an impressionable age. I must have been 8 or so given the year. Haven’t listened to them on purpose much since then, save for playing a lot of lonely solo Rock Band in college, and 90s playlists that I am sometimes subjected to.
I won’t say I hate or even can’t stand Soundgarden. I even get the appeal of Chris Cornell’s voice! But as I’m listening to this 30 years on… I can’t say that I miss this era of music. Maybe it’s because some bands in the later 90s took this sound and ruined it for me? Godsmack and the like certainly couldn’t have helped. I guess I just like the Portland scene from that era much more than Seattle. Or Duster and other slowcore bands. There was definitely much more interesting stuff going on in 1994 than you’ll hear about from most people. Sorry for the semi-rant.
With that out of the way. I don’t hate this. There’s talent here. Like I said, Chris Cornell gets attention for his voice and it’s well deserved. I just don’t think this is the best distillation of what I want to hear in rock music. Personally anyway. It’s reaching for something but not getting there. Maybe trying to sound darker than they could realistically pull off. It’s just not for me, so I give this a 2.5 rounded up to 3. But barely. Usually a 3 is “I like this but I probably won’t listen again” but this one is more of a “not for me but I get why people like it”
Buffalo Springfield
4/5
Neil Young and Steven Stills. Not sure what else to say
David Crosby
2/5
Is it bad? No. Is it great? No. Did I need to hear this before I die? Certainly not. I’m much more of a Young and Stills fan than I am of this. These feel like a bunch of throw away tracks that got recorded and didn’t have anywhere else to go.
Dweee doh dit doh dit dee doh doh det
Bad Company
3/5
It’s a little hard not to like this. Sure it’s cheesy 70s rock, but I know 90% of these songs through osmosis and I don’t hate hearing them. I’m not sure why this is better than other bands that seem otherwise similar to me. Helps that it’s only 35 min long. Lots of songs about fucking and wanting to fuck and who he wants to fuck, so it gets quite repetitive in that way. Otherwise, I like it but I probably won’t be listening to this whole album again.
Fleetwood Mac
5/5
It’s tempting to say “how could I not like this?” But I think actually the album might actually have a couple of duds. It’s not a perfect album, but it’s really close and I’ll forgive them for the duds. Especially if I let Silver Springs end the album. Shame that one didn’t make it on the official release. It’s clearly the best Fleetwood Mac song.
MC Solaar
5/5
Fantastique! I had no idea this would be so good. Like Tribe but French. I will definitely listen to this again.
Traffic
2/5
Meh. Not impressed. Blends in with a lot of other early psych rock. Not a pain to listen to, but I didn’t need to hear it. Also Joe Cocker’s version of Feelin Alright is better.
Beck
4/5
Man… Anyone who says that Elliott Smith is too depressing (which I think people only say because he committed suicide) has clearly never heard this album.
I’ve often felt that Beck is one of the very few musicians/bands that I’ve consistently liked throughout my life, regardless of what else I’m into at any given time.
Anyway, this is really good. I appreciate it for what it is, which is Beck’s first real attempt at an album without a bunch of dancey sample-ridden tracks. “Lost Cause” has long been one of my favorites of his. So I want to give this a 5 but I don’t know if I can handle this again in one listen. It’s devastating. Like Blood on the Tracks it’s probably one of the best breakup albums. But unlike BotT, it’s not going to go in regular rotation.
Emmylou Harris
3/5
I haven’t heard much Emmylou before. I expected this to be a poor introduction given how late in her career it was, but I thought it was pretty great. Not sure who produced it but it reminded me of Norah Jones’ first album, sonically. Comforting. Not likely to listen again, but happy to have listened.
Nitin Sawhney
2/5
I’m getting very tired of all of these dnb albums. I’m only 82 albums in, though, so I’ll try to endure.
At least this one is somewhat interesting. The south Asian influence is a nice touch. It’s not nearly as repetitive as, say, Roni Size. It is, however, still drum n bass, which I think I can definitively say is not a genre I’m a fan of.
I’ll tell you who does successfully combine south Asian sounds with electronic music: Four Tet. This is almost as chill, but instead of wanting to hang out or clean the house, I feel like I’m stuck in the waiting room of a bougie hair salon while my girlfriend spends an inordinate amount of money on a haircut.
Common
4/5
This has been one of my favorite Common albums for a while. Pretty much anything by the Soulquarians from this time period is going to be my favorite ____ album. So I’m coming into this biased.
That said, some of this hasn’t aged well. Particularly his use of the f-slur. I’ve read that he apologized and vowed to never use the word again around the time his next album came out, so that’s nice, but it’s still hard to hear in this, especially because he seems to emphasize that word in the line.
Another downfall of this album is the length. Others have mentioned this. It’s somewhat front loaded.
But it’s hard to ignore the production on this. The beats are phenomenal, Questlove’s drumming is amazing as always, the features are kind of a who’s who of that era of conscious/underground hip hop, and Com’s flow is distinctive and comforting.
Common is not my favorite MC, but I have a lot of respect for him. The caveats take away one star from this. This is not an album I constantly find myself going back to, but I very much enjoy the tracks that I enjoy.
LCD Soundsystem
5/5
I don’t know why I had it in my head that I didn’t like LCD Soundsystem. This album is fantastic. How often is dance music heartfelt and even sad?
I hear elements of Talking Heads, Kraftwerk, Bowie… Little Richard even. It also reminds me of peers: Spoon, Cake, White Stripes, Ghostland Observatory…
It’s rare that I don’t want a 6 minute song to end, but “Someone Great” fits the bill.
This is hype music for millennials. This is music to get you to have fun cleaning the house. This is brilliantly crafted pop music.
Charles Mingus
4/5
I find Mingus challenging. In a good way! But challenging nonetheless. It’s brilliant jazz music. Sometimes I really understand what is going on and sometimes I’m lost. But I’m here for the ride. This isn’t my favorite of his. I prefer Pre-Bird and Ah Um.
To me, this one’s less catchy and more of an impressionistic piece. For some reason it evokes a bustling/chaotic 1950s NYC or something similar. Not somewhere I want to spend all my time, but it’s fun to visit every now and then.
Radiohead
5/5
I haven’t listened to this one. Not specifically for this project anyway. I’ve heard Kid A countless times.
I’m somewhat of a Johnny-come-lately with Radiohead, but Everything in its Right Place has been my go-to to test headphones for a long time. I won’t get into why I didn’t used to like them, but they more recently became one of my most listened to bands. But honestly I don’t listen to anything before Kid A. It’s that good of a career change.
DJ Shadow
3/5
I could have sworn I’d listened to this before. I’m quite familiar with the album cover, and its existence, but I don’t believe I’ve listened to this before.
I’d say I’m a fan of hip hop, but beats albums are rarely something I like to listen to - Dilla, Nujabes, Oddissee, Karriem Riggins notwithstanding. I can’t say this one is really doing it for me, either. I appreciate its significance and quality. It’s definitely well crafted, but as far as wanting to put this on… it’s not chill for any significant length of time, and I’m not much of a partier these days.
I don’t hate it but I just don’t think I’ll come back to it.
Machito
2/5
I had never heard of this. A bit of a letdown if I’m honest. It feels very much like the music you’d hear in some 60s movie where they’re trying to convince you they shot it in the Caribbean, but being unwittingly condescending about it.
Im not mad I listened. It wasn’t long enough to care much. But I doubt I’ll listen again. The horn jabs become quite annoying real quick.
Genesis
2/5
I can’t believe this is still going. This has been teetering on interesting the whole time, but hasn’t gotten there once.
Pavement
4/5
Not my favorite Pavement record, but better than I remember. It’s good, but not their peak imo. It’s a little all over the place, which might be part of the appeal for some but for me a couple of their later records pull it off better.
The Smiths
3/5
Not my favorite Pavement record, but better than I remember. It’s good, but not their peak imo. It’s a little all over the place, which might be part of the appeal for some but for me a couple of their later records pull it off better.
The Beach Boys
2/5
I find it hard to stomach this era of music. It’s corny as hell. I’m not sure I like the Beatles around this time either. Maybe it’s because of what that generation left in its wake, but it’s hard to listen to music this optimistic and cheeseball. I appreciate their influence but this ain’t no Pet Sounds. But hey, it’s less than 30 min!
Cowboy Junkies
2/5
I wanted to be generous to this album. I just was bored by it. It’s way too slow. It’s not that I mind slow music. I’m a big fan of slow core so that doesn’t bother me at all really. I was just bored. I kept waiting for anything interesting to happen, there’s no hooks, nothing catchy going on nothing. Even ambient music has more interesting things going on and that’s not a knock on ambient music. I’ll listen to music for airports over and over again for the rest of my life. I’ll never listen this album again.
The most interesting thing about this album isn’t even their song and it’s not even a cover that I want to hear again The album is an hour long, but it felt like two, and that was with skipping quite a few of the tracks halfway through.
I’m getting tired of writing the question why did I need to hear this before I die?
Dire Straits
2/5
I get that Knopfler is technically good at guitar. But there are a few things I don’t like about this. It’s cornball. And I can’t believe I never noticed the f-slur being used in Money For Nothing! Not cool, but it was a different time. I’m just not into this. That Kenny G-style clarinet solo was excruciating too. Glad this is over.
Mariah Carey
3/5
Good grooves. Singing great but not as perfect as I thought out remembered. Definitely sent me back to junior high dance
Steely Dan
4/5
I’m a little surprised at how much I enjoyed this. It’s kinda corny - which I just panned The Beach Boys and Dire Straits for being. Cheesy, but the sense of humor in it feels more authentic. But it’s also smart and a little funky.
Ricky is clearly a classic. Listening on my commute, I had a hard time not thinking of that scene in Say Anything when John Mahoney is singing along in his car.
I liked it, not loved it. But didn’t expect to like anything beyond the singles. Pleasantly surprised.
Eagles
1/5
The dude is right. This shit sucks. I’m scared to look and see how many other Eagles albums are on this list, but I’m not looking forward to Hotel California.
Jurassic 5
4/5
Fun stuff. I’ve heard some of their stuff before. I’ve always liked it, but never really listened much. Maybe I will now.
Miles Davis
5/5
What in the world could I say about this that hasn’t already been said?
Van Morrison
1/5
I don’t know how much of this I can listen to before turning it off. I mean, he hits the notes, but Jesus Christ does his voice piss me off. The instrumentation is good, kinda Van Dyke Parks or something. But it doesn’t make up for the voice one bit. Fuck this. Almost sounds like someone found a lost Nick Drake album but lost the vocals and grabbed some drunk Muppet off the street to provide them. I’ll just never understand the appeal.
Joni Mitchell
4/5
This is no Hejira, or Court and Spark, but there’s nothing like a Joni Mitchell record in the morning to lubricate the eyes.
Billy Bragg
4/5
I already know I like this album, but I’m not sure if I’ve listened to the whole thing in one sitting, so there’s still something new to hear here. But as a fan of both Wilco and Woody Guthrie, I’m a bit biased.
David Bowie
3/5
Alright, it’s time I finally admit that I’m not as big of a Bowie fan as I’m “supposed” to be. This album is fine, but it’s no Ziggy. And I think I’m always wanting Ziggy.
Serge Gainsbourg
3/5
This is kinda good. Don’t read the Wikipedia
Bob Dylan
5/5
This has been my favorite Bob Dylan album for many years. If I remember correctly, it’s the first one that I really connected with. If it weren’t for Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, I’d call it a perfect album.
Circle Jerks
2/5
I know these guys were kind of pioneers in hardcore punk. The acerbic nature is not lost on me, but it’s not very clever, it just feels so juvenile in a way I can’t connect with in my late 30s. There are some moments of attempting to sound politically aware. I guess I just prefer the Dead Kennedys who did it with more style and wit. Jello Biafra just kinda put everyone else to shame when it comes to protest lyrics and political satire in punk songs.
2/5
I like jazz. I like some experimental music. I even like some experimental jazz. In fact, I like Ornette Coleman! This album, not really. Much like the Circle Jerks album I listened to right before this one, it’s not for me. I get it, but I’m fine with only listening to this once.
But hey, you know what? I’m glad I read a couple of reviews first. I was ready to give up, thinking the whole album was going to sound like the first 10 minutes or so, but there ended up being a few tracks that had a bit of an actual groove to them. It’s not going to bring my rating up much but it’s a 2 with a caveat.
Nas
5/5
This is an incredible album. For some reason it never clicked for me. This time it did.
Liz Phair
4/5
It’s not like I’ve never heard of Liz Phair before, so why didn’t anyone tell me how good she actually is?
The Sabres Of Paradise
1/5
Not surprised I don’t like yet another British electronic album that I’ve never heard of. Seriously, if going to a number as high as 1001 means I have to listen to this before I die, maybe shorten the list by however many British techno albums you were planning on including. Or at least give me some Aphex Twin (I know he’s Welsh) or Four Tet. For fucksake
The Who
3/5
I’m 8 tracks in and I’m ready for it to be over. I never could get into the Who much. Maybe it’ll get better, so I’ll stick it out…
It does get slightly better. But not enough for me to give this any more than 3/5. I just don’t want to listen this whole thing again. It’s fine, it’s just long and the first half was pretty tedious.
It feels like this one is part British Invasion, part concept. Content-wise, it’s not all lovey dovey, early Beatles type schlock, but the sound is still there. I much prefer all these boomer Brits after they’ve experimented with LSD. Maybe the Who had before they made Tommy, but it’s just not there for them. I’m looking forward to revisiting Quadrophenia. I remember liking that one more.
The Stone Roses
2/5
They sure did like that jangle in Manchester back then, huh? I don’t necessarily hate this. There’s a few cool things going on here, and it’s way less insufferable than The Smiths. I don’t expect to come back to this. It’s a little too long and I’m not the biggest fan of famous Manc dudes apparently. Apparently lead singer is a Covid conspiracy theorist and this album inspired Liam Gallagher to sing in a band one day. So yeah. I’m not going to feel too bad about not rating this highly.
Dire Straits
2/5
Why is this so corny? I mean, the guitar is good, technically, but the singing ruins it. It’s so try-hard-boomer-cool. This is a reluctant 1.5
Nick Drake
5/5
Time has told me, this is an incredible album. How he made such a full album at a young age, I’ll never know.
R.E.M.
4/5
I like it! I don’t think this will be my favorite REM album by the time this list is done, but I had fun listening.
4/5
The Good, The Bad & The Queen
2/5
Not sure how to explain that it sounds interesting but it’s not? Some of these songs just go on without doing much. They overpromise at the outset and then never deliver. Reminds me of times where I come up with something I like on guitar, loop it, and then lose all interest in playing along with it after a few minutes but the loop keeps playing in my head. I wouldn’t make an album out of those, but that’s me.
Damon Albarn is hit or miss to me, I like the Clash, and I love Tony Allen, but this is not quite a sum of its parts.
The Dandy Warhols
3/5
I live in Portland so I suppose I should like this. I don’t know how much of this band I’ve actually heard, but the first track isn’t ringing any bells.
This has elements of other 90s Portland bands that I do know, like Heatmiser, but more Neil Gust, with little to no Elliott Smith. Thankfully they sound nothing like Everclear. I probably would’ve loved this if I’d heard it closer to when it came out. It’s a little samey for me on first listen. I don’t mind it, though. It’s fine.
The Doors
2/5
As time goes on, the less I seem to like 20-something boomer white dudes playing the blues. Give me a break.
Speaking of boomers, Lester Bangs in Almost Famous put it quite succinctly: "Jim Morrison is a drunken buffoon posing as a poet."
I'm not sure if I'll agree with Lester about the Guess Who, but they're not on the list, so I guess I could just listen to them without spoiling it. Then he proceeds to forcibly put Iggy Pop on right after, which I definitely agree with. At least this is less than 40 minutes.
Elvis Presley
2/5
Don’t be a □
If the choice is Beatles or Elvis, I’m definitely a Beatles man. Hard to believe this came out anywhere near the Summer of Love.
3/5
I’m sure this is fun to thrash around to while drunk at a dive bar. Not really my thing right now.
Syd Barrett
1/5
I don’t think I’m going to make it through this entire thing. Not a fan of any adoration of Pink Floyd add to that a healthy dose of exploitation of someone with a mental illness and I’m incredibly uninterested.
Bruce Springsteen
5/5
I was fully prepared to not like this as much as I used to. I haven’t listened to it in several years, but it’s still great. Can’t say I’d like it if I didn’t have a nostalgia for it, but here we are.
Tom Waits
5/5
I've acquired the taste for Tom Waits long ago after seeing him live in Columbus, OH. Must've been 15 or more years ago now. Still one of the best shows I've ever seen and we were in the nosebleeds.
Bone Machine isn't one of his albums that I'm super familiar with. It doesn't feel like it will topple my favorite (Swordfishtrombones), but it has all of the elements of later-career Waits. That snarly voice, the non-traditional instruments, old-timey yet industrial, whimsical yet dark. There's no way I'd ever rank any of his albums lower than a 4.5.
Missy Elliott
3/5
This would be a 4 if it didn’t suffer from that early 00s production bloat and Timbaland’s one trick pony production. This sounds just like an early Justin Timberlake album.
The B-52's
5/5
I am feeling the same kind of surprise that I felt when I thoroughly enjoyed the first Devo album. I didn’t know the B-52’s outside of their ubiquitous radio hits. Now I know that they are pioneers of post-punk and I’m into it.
Prince
4/5
I was already mostly familiar with Purple Rain because I don't live under a rock. The previous Prince album I got was not my cup of tea. And honestly, Prince isn't really my thing in general. I think the thing about his music that generally turns me off is the very-80s sounds used. It's something that makes much of that decade unlistenable to me. Prince can pull it off, but I don't see him becoming a favorite of mine.
...But when he's good he's good! And Purple Rain is fantastic. The energy is there, it's got feeling, it's got heart, and those 80s sounds really kind of faded away pretty quickly.
Dolly Parton
3/5
It's hard for me to make myself listen to country music, but this classic country (Dolly, Merle, Hank, Willie, Johnny, etc) always surprises me. And who doesn't like Dolly Parton?
This is by no means a new favorite, but I enjoyed listening to it. "The Mystery of the Mystery" is a nice reflection on how little we know (more God than I usually care for, but not obnoxious). "Early Morning Breeze" is a nice reminder to enjoy what you've got. I wouldn't say any one track stood out to me among the others, but I wasn't wondering when it would be over.
The Cramps
1/5
This is annoying. No thanks.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
5/5
70s Neil Young is so great. Some of his lyrics are incredibly silly, but I love the simplicity of his music.
It's cool how this live set transitions pretty smoothly from solo acoustic into full band.
I don't know, man, don't expect me to give less than a 4 on any Neil Young from this era. I'm a sucker.
Elbow
2/5
Never heard of this. Wasn't missing much. It's mediocre "rock" music with a Northern accent. The breathy vocals become grating and creepy a few tracks in. There is a sparse smattering of interesting moments in here that aren't ruined by the vocals. I will happily skip over the bonus tracks at the end of this. Yet another album whose presence on this list confuses me.
Jamiroquai
1/5
Yeah, wasn't looking forward to listening to this one. I had forgotten about Jamiroquai for about 15 years or so. I wish I could forget again. It's one thing to be influenced by Stevie Wonder, it's another to basically ape his entire package. The cloyingly sweet togetherness lyrics are uninspired and overly cliche. I'm sure these session musicians went on to back other more deserving artists, but their talent is wasted here.
The Mamas & The Papas
3/5
The harmonies are amazing. Very dated now, but it's hard to argue that this is poorly done, even if it's not my favorite thing.
Rush
3/5
If you downpitch the music so that Geddy Lee's voice sounds "normal", Rush sounds a whole lot like so many other rock bands from the 70s/80s. I don't like many of those bands. I kind of like Rush. I wouldn't say I like Geddy Lee's voice, but for some reason it's the key to me liking this band at all.
Wu-Tang Clan
5/5
I hear new stuff every time I listen to this. It's brilliant and clever. I'll just sound like the white guy dweeb that I am by saying much more.
Pere Ubu
2/5
Every time this starts to get interesting, it gets obnoxious again.
Ray Charles
5/5
What’s not to like?
Sly & The Family Stone
4/5
Apart from "Sex Machine" going on a little too long, I thoroughly enjoyed this. I was bopping my head and making the stank face while working at my desk. Nice.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
3/5
Well, to start, I'm already quite familiar with their first two records, and if Fever To Tell isn't on the list but this is, I'll be very upset and confused. I remember not taking to this album when it came out, but I'm going to give it a fair shot. First couple of minutes are reminiscent of Blondie. Nothing wrong with that, but not the Yeah Yeah Yeahs I fell in love with in the early 00s.
After listening to the whole thing, it was enjoyable, but not a standout album to me.
John Martyn
1/5
Why do I get the feeling this is going to be a major wankfest and I haven't even pressed play yet?
This is not off to a good start.
Yeah, no. The guitar sounds like a fart with reverb and delay on it. His voice makes Michael McDonald sound like Pavarotti. The album art should have stayed hanging on that basement wall in the 70s. This is terrible.
Taylor Swift
3/5
This is fine. I've liked some of her newer stuff much more than this. Some of these songs go on for at least 30 seconds longer than they need to. They're just repeating the same words and it makes me anxious for the thing to end. For a pop record, though, I’m not opposed to it. I think I’d love to dance to it, but I was listening to it at work, which is quite the clash of vibes.
Michael Jackson
1/5
It’s really difficult to come at this with an open mind. I tried, but even the couple of times I absentmindedly started tapping my toes, it was only for a couple of seconds because I would remember who I was listening to.
Those woos and eeheeeees and chh-chamonnnahs are ridiculous. Why did he do that?
The synths and drum machine sounds exemplify everything I hate about 80s pop music.
The love songs are trite and trying really hard to sound sexy. That style of love song always gives me the creeps, even without the context here.
There’s a growing list of artists of all types whose art is no longer accessible to me because I can’t get past what they did. It’s impossible to view their lyrics, jokes, and movies through an untainted lens anymore. Even if he truly wasn’t a pedophile, he was definitely a guy with severe mental illness who had weird, creepy, ill-advised sleepovers with prepubescent children.
All that said, Smooth Criminal is really hard to not like, even if I can’t fully enjoy it. And Thriller, depending on the mood I’m in when it comes up, may get a slightly more generous rating than this one, but Bad, in my opinion, is just not good or deserving of a list like this.
Sade
2/5
I’ve known the name Sade since I was at least 12 or younger. I have no idea if I’ve ever actually heard her music. I also had no idea she’d been making music for 15 years by the time I’d even heard her name...
Smooth Operator is definitely familiar somehow. The rest of this, not so much. For smooth R&B, this isn’t the worst. I don’t mind this as background music, maybe at a kitschy cafe that’s stuck in the 90s with all the collected knick knacks and shit on the wall. I am not entirely convinced that I needed to hear this before I die, other than to provide some variety. There’s certainly something to be said for that in the context of a list that feels heavily skewed toward otherwise forgotten and ignored britpop bands. I’m definitely not as upset by it as I have been previous albums on this list.
TL;DR: Not something I’d pick, but I wouldn’t have heard this otherwise, so it gets some points for not being a predictable pick while not being terrible.
Eagles
1/5
There are a lot of 70s schlock rock bands that sound like each other and are hard to tell apart. Some of them I've listened to for this list. All of them I've kept an open mind. One or two of them, I actually enjoyed! Honestly!
The Eagles are just bad. I almost wish they blended into the crowd. I couldn't make it through an entire song on this album. Even at their peak they are just plain insufferable.
Marianne Faithfull
2/5
Yes, the backstory is sad. I feel bad. So bad. For her and her child. But you really need to know that context to appreciate this album, or really, her voice for what it is. And the music is well done. But the voice is grating. I’m always reluctant to rate female artists poorly. Lord knows the incels doing this project can’t stand listening to any women, no matter how talented. But I’m having a hard time listening past her voice here. It gets points for the musicianship of the backing band though.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
5/5
I’ve known that Nick Cave is someone I should probably listen to. One of my best friends is a huge fan, but this is the first time it’s actually clicked. The other stuff of his that I’ve listened to has been good, to be sure. But this is absolutely brilliant.
Elvis Costello
3/5
Not as good as his next album, Last Year's Model, but one of his 2.5 albums that I jive with. I'll save the explanation of my disappointment with his overall career in reviews for those other albums.
GZA
3/5
I enjoyed the beats. Heard some clever lyrical combinations. Mostly faded into the background. In a good way?
Tricky
2/5
This is just long enough to be annoying and doesn’t stand out among the seemingly infinite hours of triphop that came out of the UK around this time. It even SAMPLES Massive Attack. Nothing to see here.
Shuggie Otis
4/5
Guns N' Roses
1/5
I wasn’t looking forward to listening to this and then I looked at the track list and realized I hear just about all of these songs against my will on a regular basis. I don’t hang around GNR fans, that’s just how annoyingly ubiquitous Sweet Child Of Mine is. Fuck this music and anyone over the age of 14 that listens to it on purpose.
Metallica
1/5
Yesterday, GNR. Today this… I feel like I’m being recommended music by a 11 year old white boy who is just getting into music.
The Rolling Stones
3/5
Not sure this is an important *Stones* album even. It’s not bad, but there are so many better and more influential Stones records that are more important to listen to to understand the context of later rock acts.
As an album, it’s fine. They hadn’t quite found their sound yet, but there are some toe tappers in here.
The Young Rascals
2/5
I really could make a better list than this. This one’s not terrible, but again, apart from the single, don’t think it’s important to hear this. A hit single does not a good album make.
OutKast
3/5
I love OutKast but this is long for a double. It’s even long if you think of it as two separate solo albums, which it kind of is.
Still some amazing tracks on here. I enjoyed it, but 2/3 of the way through u was ready to listen to something else
Willie Nelson
3/5
I’m not usually into this crooner wannabe album sorta thing but Willie gets a pass because he’s Willie and because Booker T produced it.
Jeff Buckley
5/5
I was VERY into this album 15 or so years ago (in my 20s). I believe I got into Jeff Buckley toward the end of high school, because I remember listening to "Last Goodbye" with a group of friends around and telling the girl I had a thing for that she might like it, and a different friend gave me shit because they played it all the time on a radio station that we listened to a lot at the time. If I have my memories correctly lined up, that would've been summer '04. So, shit... 20 years ago...
Anyway, I wasn't expecting to enjoy this much having not listened to it in probably 10 or more years. I never lost appreciation or respect, but I just don't still listen to very much from that time in my life. Tastes evolve, times change, and so do we.
Well this dude's voice is still as impressive as ever, and the music doesn't sound as dated as I'd thought it would. For a 30 year old record, it holds up quite well. Is it fair to call it timeless? His influences are clear, his training is obvious... This album is very good. I might even let the Legacy Edition bonus disc section play out...
Coldplay
2/5
Things I texted my equally judgmental brother while listening to this:
“Chris Martin’s hero must be Bono”
“Coldplay is just U2 with even less edge. Pun not really intended but allowed”
“This is a band full of people whose sole purpose in life is to have a song played during the end credits of a 2010s ABC prime time drama. “
“Coldplay is music for people that would like Radiohead if they were more optimistic”
That last one… I know they don’t sound much like Radiohead, but people do compare the two, and those people have a relatively unnuanced ear for music.
Louis Prima
4/5
That was incredibly fun
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
I really like this album… for the first half. It starts to drag around Foxey Lady. I’ve always preferred Axis to this one.
The Young Gods
1/5
Not my thing. Maybe would get another star if I understood French, but I don’t.
Television
5/5
This is just great. I don’t have a lot to say about it other than I wish I’d listened to this whole album before, instead of just the title track.
The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy
2/5
I wish this was better. I appreciate the attempt at conscious rap, but the lyrics leave nothing to the imagination. It's just so on the nose and literal. The beats are fine, but this doesn't rise above its contemporaries by any stretch. There are just so many better examples of what this is trying to sound like.
Moby
2/5
Immediately after pressing play, I have the answer to what that song that mumbling that gets stuck in my head is from. I've been trying to figure that out on and off for a few years, but it's difficult to google a mumble.
That might be the most positive thing I have to say about this before it's over.
Ok, I suppose I should give Moby some credit for not making each track drag on for 7 minutes like so many other electronic albums on this list have done so far. However, it's still too long as a whole, and that's without the b-sides they've tacked onto the end of any streaming copy of this album I could find outside of youtube.
Beastie Boys
3/5
Listen, I’m an enormous Beastie Boys fan, but this is arguably their worst album. Give me Ill Communication or Check Your Head or Paul’s Boutique and we’ll talk about how much I love them and think they are underrated for how talented they actually were.
Gorillaz
3/5
Leave the filler out and this is actually a great album.
Big Star
2/5
This is a terrible introduction to Big Star. There are some stand outs, like Kanga Roo (Jeff Buckley’s cover of it is great too), but it doesn’t rise to the level of their debut.
The Fall
2/5
Reviews are right. The vocals ruin it, but the backing musicians aren't bad. Not much to add to that.
OutKast
5/5
One of my favorite hip hop records, even if it suffers from the late-90s trope of unnecessary skits as tracks.
Public Enemy
4/5
I forgot to rate this when I listened to it a couple of weeks ago, but it's fucking fantastic. The end.
Yes
2/5
They start with the only decent track. The rest is Wankfest™
Steely Dan
3/5
I like Steely Dan’s singles, but honestly I got kinda tired of this by the end.
Blur
2/5
“How much Damon Albarn can we fit on this list?”
“Well, he hasn’t put out 1001 albums of his own yet, so keep cramming them in there!”
Jeru The Damaja
3/5
This one surprised me. I didn't expect much from the cover art, but I ended up liking it a lot. Apart from "Da Bichez". It was a different time.
Joni Mitchell
5/5
Are you trying to make me cry? I shouldn't be listening to this while trying to get work done. I should be in a bubble bath, sipping a pinot noir.
Honestly, the first time I heard this one was because I had just learned about Jaco and found out he played bass for a string of Joni records, so I drew a bath - probably my first since childhood - drank a bottle of red wine, let it all wash over me, and cried.
Nothing about me should like Joni Mitchell, especially because she's the epitome of what my mom would listen to, whose taste in music I've often been skeptical of, but had she ever listened to THIS Joni, I might've never thought that.
Easily 5/5. This is artistic genius.
The Black Keys
3/5
Listen, I love the Black Keys. Or at least I LOVED them. They were my favorite band for years after I heard Rubber Factory for the first time. I subsequently bought a bunch of their records and a guitar pedal or two to try to sound like Dan Auerbach. This was one album after the one where they started to lose me. It's not terrible, but they started to get too slick and clean-cut. On the one hand, I was glad they weren't sticking to their predictable low-fi garage blues rock, which I'm sure would've gotten old. On the other hand, I didn't want them to go so radio-friendly. Good for them for making a living on their craft. Bad for me. I still have their first few albums on vinyl - except, somewhat ironically, for Rubber Factory - and I might put one on after listening to this.
...honestly, after listening, this still has some kickass tracks, but what I said above is still accurate and this is still a 3/5 at best.
Def Leppard
1/5
I am dumbfounded by the high ratings given to this album. This is heavily produced garbage. The 80s were the worst thing to happen to the world: Reagan, Thatcher, day-glo clothes, coke, synthesizers, and hair metal. Barf.
Mudhoney
2/5
I went through my grunge phase in middle/high school nearly a decade late. I wore flannels and ripped jeans in 2001. I've known about Mudhoney for at least that long, though I've often confused them with Meat Puppets (in name alone). Meat Puppets were good. This is... fine, I guess? I can at least understand why it would be on the list, given that it's one of the earliest examples of grunge. It's just not super listenable, I'm not tapping my toes, I'm not expecting to have any of this stuck in my head, I'm not going to go out and listen to the rest of their discography. But I have finally listened to a Mudhoney album, so I can check that off the list of things I never really intended to do.
Stand out track is definitely "Broken Hands" which is the first time they show that they have the capability of at least a little dynamic range. Otherwise, much of this sounds like teenagers playing their instruments loudly with novice ability. I guess if that's your thing, cool, but it's not what I want to listen to. My eardrums are already dead from my time listening to stuff like this.
Stan Getz
2/5
I admittedly haven't listened past Girl From Ipanema previously. Doing so now, I don't feel as if I've missed out up to this point. I consider this a part of some sort of music appreciation class. It's important for it's importance. How that came to be, I'll never really understand. Sort of like reading Dickens now. So what?
Beth Orton
3/5
I recognize Beth Orton's name from the early 00s listening to an independent radio station in upstate NY, but none of these songs ring a bell. I'm pleasantly surprised by this given that I don't look back fondly on a good amount of the music I remember hearing on that station (A Perfect Circle, Korn, lots of ska-punk, and plenty of emo, none of which aged well).
I'm not sure why wikipedia slaps a folktronica sticker on this one. There are maybe two or three tracks that rely on the triphop style. This is mainly sparse acoustic, or bigger orchestral band stuff.
My main gripe with this is her voice. It's 90% beautiful, but there are moments where she's doing something strange with her voice that doesn't work, or she's kind of out of key for a syllable. And not in a cool/weird/intriguing Patti Smith kind of way, just in a way that makes me wince. It doesn't ruin the whole album for me, but it makes it hard to give this a higher rating. It's also just shy of 1 hour, which makes it feel like it drags on certain songs.
Again, I don't hate this, it's just teetering on the edge of too polished and not polished enough which is kind of annoying. I wanted it to fall to one side or the other.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
Jesus, why hadn't I listened to more Nick Cave before doing this? I think this is the second of his I've gotten and I'm loving it.
Cat Stevens
4/5
Cat is so much more than his hippie radio hits. His melodic lines are gorgeous, and his introspective lyrics are relatable. This isn't my favorite album of his, but it's an easy listen regardless.
Sufjan Stevens
4/5
This is making me feel things. I haven't listened to this all the way through for the better part of a decade, but it's transporting me right back to 2007ish when I first heard this. Was VERY into this and his other albums at the time. I haven't been able to handle his newer more somber stuff because, well, I can't handle how sad it make me feel. But this is joyous and/or weird throughout and it's hard to hate, at least for me. This one holds up well for me.
Tom Waits
5/5
I have this on vinyl. It’s not my favorite Tom Waits record, but it’s one of my favorites for being somewhere between a stand-up album and a crooner album while falling somewhere on the vaudeville spectrum. There’s not much like it that can actually pull it off without being annoying and played out (a la Richard Cheese, for example). At least for me. I get that he’s not everyone’s thing, so I have to give this a slightly higher rating than I might otherwise to help skew the rating that much higher. But it’s still at least a 4.3/5 for me
Elvis Presley
1/5
I've never been an Elvis guy. The affectation in his voice has always rubbed me the wrong way. "One-Sided Love Affair" is the most ridiculous example of this. It's goofy af. And that must be it because I've fully enjoyed other musicians playing similar whitewashed "blues"/early rock n roll who don't sing like this. Blech.
Boston
2/5
Oh, this sounds like a band named after a place!
The Police
1/5
I'm not a huge fan of The Police, but I can tell you this is not even THE record of theirs you should listen to before you die. In fact, it doesn't appear that their debut, which is arguably their best, isn't even on the list?! They should have stopped at one album with Sting disappearing into tantric obscurity and not becoming some sort of Bono type twat who makes a duet album with Shaggy. The only good thing he did after that first record was play Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen.
Despite its title, this album is all over the place. Parts of it sound like some shit attempt at making a Television song, while others sound like post-prog Genesis, yet other parts are just radio-friendly schlock. I didn't expect to rate Boston higher than this, but it's really just that irritating.
Also I couldn't help but laugh when I thought I heard "walking in your foodstamps"
David Bowie
5/5
Bowie at his best. Highlights are "Kooks" and "Oh! You Pretty Things"
The Zutons
1/5
I don't know who killed the Zutons, but if they weren't already dead, I'd be tempted. This is bad even for early 2000s.
This sounds like a bunch of kids were in a ska band in high school, then heard The White Stripes and failed miserably at aping that sound, while one of them refused to learn something other than sax.
This keeps threatening to get interesting but never does. Closest it comes is "Confusion" which almost sounds like early 70s Kinks, but there's a persistent sax that sounds like a clown's bike horn. What exactly was the idea here? *checks wikipedia* "The band was originally a four-piece, before Payne's girlfriend Abi Harding began joining The Zutons on stage for a couple of songs mid-set, playing simple saxophone lines. The other band members liked the way her saxophone enhanced their sound and Harding became a full member, contributing vocals and sax." ...dear god...
Foo Fighters
2/5
The second album is better. This is really underwhelming after the first couple of tracks.
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart
1/5
I first heard of Jah Wobble when I heard Eno/Wobble's Spinner. Loved it. Then I learned that he came from PiL, so I decided to not seek out any of his other works. Well, judging by this, I was right to ignore his output. "Icky" is the best word I can come up with for this. Is that a Casiotone drum kit? This is "world music" for people who don't like brown people.
This better not throw off my YouTube algorithm.
Arcade Fire
3/5
It’s fine. I like their next couple of albums more.
The Offspring
1/5
This is worse than I remember.
Joy Division
4/5
I've never been as big of a fan of this album as I am "supposed" to be, but this listen felt a little different. I enjoyed this more than I remember, and I thank them for their part in influencing probably every band that came after them that I like.
Small Faces
3/5
Started out sounding like early Tame Impala, but kinda descended into some weird mid-century British humor audiobook. It was fine.
Bob Dylan
5/5
To some extent, I understand not liking Bob Dylan. On the other hand, the lyricism alone are worth the Pulitzer he won. And once you get used to his schtick, the weirdness of his voice and delivery makes it that much more fun.
Not my favorite Dylan album, but it's not far behind.
Kendrick Lamar
4/5
I first heard this on an Amtrak to Chicago on a trip to visit my best friend. When I asked him what I should listen to he told me Good Kid, M.A.A.D City and this one. In that order. I didn't know what to expect, just that I had heard a lot of great things about Kendrick and wanted some new rap to listen to. I had no idea that anything like this existed.
Sure, jazz has been used as a backdrop for hip hop since its inception, but this was the first time I had heard it being used as original compositions rather than samples. Not to mention the power behind the lyrics on so many levels. I'm glad I listened to the two albums back to back like that. And I'm glad this album holds up nearly 10 years later.
Metallica
1/5
I'm baffled by the staying power of Metallica. This is unimaginative angsty rock for 11-year-olds. Grown men who think this or Master of Puppets are a worthwhile listen are trying to compensate for their perceived lack of masculinity. Embrace it, dudes. It's ok to enjoy colors other than black and red and to not beat your girlfriend.
Devendra Banhart
3/5
This was never my favorite Devendra Banhart record. In my opinion he peaked about two or three albums later. This one is fine
Solomon Burke
3/5
Decent chill old school soul. Nothing earth shattering, but I'm happy having listened to it.
Deep Purple
2/5
Honestly very mediocre at best. Even hearing Smoke on the Water I was blown away at how incredibly boring that famous riff is. The staying power of some of these classics is mind boggling unless you take into account the amount of 11 year olds who learned how to play guitar by someone teaching that riff to them real quick.
Digital Underground
2/5
Corny. I'm not sure if they got any better after 2Pac joined the following year, but this album does not make me want to find out.
Beastie Boys
5/5
This is the best Beastie Boys album. And the Beastie Boys are one of the best bands to come out of the late 80s/early 90s. A rare example of dudes who got too famous too young and still managed to have a respectable career. After putting out one poorly-aged debut album (whose irony is STILL lost on the frat boys who don't realize the Beasties were making fun of them), they cranked out 3, 4, and 5 star albums until the untimely death of MCA.
Say what you will about a trio of dorky white kids from privileged NYC upbringings trying to rap, but I think there's a strong argument that they weren't trying to be anything but who they were in the end (again, Licensed to Ill notwithstanding). They pulled it off, and managed to become a fantastic funk band in the meantime. I will never not love the Beastie Boys, and this is their masterpiece.
RIP Yauch
U2
2/5
This is not nearly as bad as I was expecting. It's like if The National (no offense to the National) had grown up in Ireland during the Troubles. Or if the Smiths (every offense to the Smiths) had a different, yet equally similarly singer.
This is before Bono "started believing in his own myth" as my brother put it. I still don't care for U2, but as far as supposedly classic albums on this list that I've gotten so far, it's close to the middle between "yeah this deserves its reputation" and "we really need to reassess why this is considered great".
That said, this is a very front-loaded album. The second half is quite uninteresting, teetering on irritating. I'm not going to come back to this ever, but Sunday Bloody Sunday is actually a decent listen still.
Pet Shop Boys
2/5
As a child of the 80s I feel as if I have the right to wonder why that decade was allowed to happen. This is the epitome of everything I hate about 80s pop music, except the singing is also shit on top of it. There's some funny lyrics peppered in here and there ("I love ya, you pay my rent"), but nothing about these synth sounds aged well to my ears, so the joke gets old quite early on. This is 1.5 at best, which rounds it up to a very reluctant 2.
Iggy Pop
4/5
I loved this! I'm not terribly surprised, but there are a lot of one hit albums on this list, and I only knew the titular track before pressing play. That is to say that I didn't realize I already knew "The Passenger", and I'm not sure I knew that was Iggy Pop when I had heard it previously. I was surprised by the variety in style contained in such a short record by a dude I mostly know from the Stooges and being Michelle Trachtenberg's dad on Pete & Pete.
Paul Simon
4/5
Paul did some strong work from the last S&G record up until Graceland. This is probably my third favorite off that list.
Led Zeppelin
5/5
I’m a III and II man myself, but I don’t remember this being actually as good as its reputation. Stairway is still incredibly overrated though. Might be the weakest song on the record.
The 13th Floor Elevators
3/5
It's fine. I don't think I was missing anything by only hearing the Nuggets/High Fidelity song.
5/5
It's hard to top Hunky Dory, but following it up with Ziggy Stardust is a good shout.
Lorde
4/5
Some of the best pop music these days comes from Lorde. It's not my personal favorite music, but I respect the craft and I honestly think she's underrated for what she does. She was 16 when she recorded her debut and 19 when she recorded this one, yet is arguably better at writing songs than people twice her age.
Lou Reed
5/5
Absolutely one of my favorite albums of all time.
John Cale
4/5
Pretty into this. It's like a Welsh Loudon Wainwright III or Randy Newman.
Iron Maiden
2/5
Not nearly as bad as I expected. It's still not my thing, but I'm enjoying this in the same way that I enjoy the occasional listen to Holy Diver. The album art is shit though.
Dr. Octagon
1/5
This list has terrible taste in hip hop.
T. Rex
5/5
Easily one of the best glam albums.
Radiohead
5/5
The more I listen to this, the less I think it’s my favorite Radiohead. But it has Pyramid Song and Whose Army.
Funkadelic
5/5
What's not to like?
The Slits
3/5
I wanted to like this more. It was fun overall, but some of it was grating.
Massive Attack
1/5
Please no more trip-hop. This is terrible. The lyrics are completely juvenile. I don't need a genius songwriter for everything I listen to, but this is painfully bad. The tracks drag on, there's nothing interesting about them, especially not for the length that they run. It would be fine if this was on in the background, I guess, but I could choose many things better.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
1/5
I just listened to Massive Attack before this. This is the same thing but with an annoying band instead of annoying synths. The shitty raps, the shitty lyrics, the obnoxious attitude... it's uncanny. The only thing missing is an *almost* good female singer, but don't worry Anthony Kiedis chimes in with his not-good-enough singing voice. This is tiresome and I'm only three tracks in. I didn't have much faith I'd enjoy this, and I clearly wasn't being harsh.
4/5
I think I really like this? I had to listen to it twice, which is the first time I've done that for this list, and I'm 1/4 of the way through now. It teeters on the edge of being a too hippyish, but never goes too far over to the other side. I didn't expect the production to be as good as it is, but it apparently was produced by David Briggs, who produced all of my favorite Neil Young records, as well as a few other records I like, so it's no surprise.
I hear hints of Big Star in this as well. I don't know what to chalk that up to other than being relatively underground rock groups from the early 70s...
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
3/5
This is good, but it didn't make for an uplifting commute home. I've liked a couple of the previous Nick Cave records I've gotten so far, but this one was the hardest of them to listen to so far.
LCD Soundsystem
3/5
Dancy. Some fun tracks, but not as good as his earlier albums.
Bob Dylan
4/5
Can't deny that this is powerful shit. Masters of War still hits harder than just about anything I've heard from modern artists. There's a couple of goofy songs at the end though, and it's clear that he hadn't perfected the goofy side of his lyric writing quite yet.
The xx
3/5
I'm ambivalent about this. It's not bad, but it's nothing I haven't heard before even though I haven't heard it before. Reminds me of Whitest Boy Alive or early Chad VanGaalen.
Super Furry Animals
1/5
Wow, that album art is not promising.
I was totally expecting another shitty British drum n bass album, but it's just a bland early aughts Welsh alt-rock band. This reminds me of someone who pretends to have taken acid before but they're just going off what they think it would feel like based on having heard Flaming Lips and the one time they got way too high on weed.
Best thing I can say about this is that there are some interesting things going on hidden among the layers, the problem is that they're covered by so many other layers that it just turns to shit. I probably would've loved this back when it came out when I was 15.
The fact that the 20th Anniversary Edition is two volumes on Apple Music and comprises of almost 7 hours of tracks kind of just sums up how annoying this is. It's not even all that terrible, but it is incredibly tiresome. Could've been a solid 2, but as I write this, I'm only halfway through the original 13 tracks and I'm not sure how much more of this I can listen to.
The UK bias wins again, but it's not a win for me.
Prince
4/5
I've always respected Prince, and thus tried repeatedly to connect with his music. I've failed many times. But listening for this list, he's 2 for 3. Sign o' the Times was not my favorite listen, but I'm wondering if I should go back and try again because this and Purple Rain are undeniably good. Maybe there's a proper order to listen to his albums in order to "get it"? I'm not ready to announce my conversion, but I feel more qualified to compliment someone on their Purple Rain t-shirt now.
Part of it is that I'm too white to be this funky, but also because of the 80s-ness of it all. That said, he was clearly an incredible guitar player and a fuckin weirdo, but in a much less icky way than MJ was, which is saying something because these lyrics don't leave much to the imagination.
Anyway, this is great. Even beyond the hits. Little Red Corvette has always been a favorite of mine. I'm not sure if Around the World In A Day is on this list, but that has my second favorite Prince song: Raspberry Beret.
Screaming Trees
2/5
Little known fact: Dust is named after what it was meant to collect.
The Beta Band
2/5
I have previously enjoyed a bit of Three E.P.s and was hopeful that this would be similarly interesting. That's actually the problem: it's too similar. More UK bias? Maybe. At least this one is relatively chill to have on in the background while I nothing of importance.
Laibach
2/5
How silly. Maybe this would be more enjoyable if I understood German, but those synth sounds grate on the ears very quickly. It's cheeseball and metal at the same time? Certainly unique to my ears, but not for me.
David Bowie
3/5
This is a weird one, even for Bowie. Very cinematic, as opposed to his usual theatricality, with a tiny bit of early chiptune on one of the tracks. I know the Berlin Trilogy is influential for a lot of bands that I'm a fan of, but this one doesn't do it for me. I'm glad I listened though.
The Flaming Lips
3/5
I've listened to this countless times since it came out, but it's been a while. I do occasionally get the title track stuck in my head. I have a memory of listening to this on the bus on the way to class and thinking that a woman was actually screaming during Yoshimi Pt. 2. The blood curdling scream was very realistic and scared the shit out of me because I thought I was going to turn around and see some scarring shit.
I like this album alright. Do You Realize?? is still a great love song. Title track is good. There's some catchy stuff in here.
That said, I think it's kinda muddy at some points and I just want to skip a few tracks.
Every one of these reviews eventually turns into me indirectly critiquing the album itself by questioning the spirit of the list. I really think a lot of albums edge their way onto this enormous list by having a couple of good songs. I was hoping to be introduced to some albums that are good from start to finish, but I think at least half so far have been questionable in that regard. I could have done without listening to this album as a whole again. I think even back in the day I didn't love this one start to finish. These ethereal psych albums end up sounding so self-indulgent to me. This is Dark Side for Millennials - and that's not a high compliment coming from me.
This gets a soft 3 only because I can't give it a 2.5.
Saint Etienne
2/5
Zzzzzzzzzzzzz
Bob Dylan
5/5
Yes it's great. Yes Bob Dylan is brilliant. Yes this deserves to be on the list. There's a surprisingly small number of obvious inclusions on this list though.
Crowded House
2/5
I can’t say I’m disappointed because I hate Don’t Dream It’s Over and I don’t hate this. I also don’t like it and I’m not sure why I needed to hear this. 2 feels harsh and 3 feels too high. I’m going to round down from 2.4 to a 2.
Britney Spears
3/5
Knowing what we now know about Britney's contractual obligations... this is a difficult listen. Even removing that, it's not objectively terrible, but it's certainly not my taste. Britney gets an added sympathy star, but this would otherwise get a 2/5
I remember being suspended from 7th grade for standing up to my bully in a fight and seeing the video for Baby One More Time for the first time on MTV while being forced to stay with my grandma for that week while I was grounded. If I'm not mistaken, it was timed such that I was grounded over spring break as well, so watching a channel I wasn't normally allowed to watch at home while they aired video of spring break parties with scantily clad women between music videos full of scantily clad women while staying with my very Catholic grandma was confusing, to say the least.
That said, this transports me right back to 1999, which is not a year I care to relive. For more on that, see me next review, which is, I shit you not, Korn's Follow The Leader. Fucking hell...
Korn
1/5
Getting this after Britney's Baby One More Time is hilarious. I loved this album when I was 11. Thankfully I wasn't old enough to participate in things such as Woodstock 99. What a shitshow late-90s American boy culture was. Anyone who is surprised that something like the Trump era would come out of a culture that produced, just a decade and a half earlier, this and Limp Bizkit hasn't been paying attention.
To Korn's credit, they are indeed not Limp Bizkit, but that is an incredibly low bar. Fuck the record execs that gave shit like this the greenlight.
Amy Winehouse
2/5
Great singer. Terrible lyricist. I remember Back To Black being better than this one. The lyrical content hasn't aged well and the album drags at points.
Dion
2/5
This should not be over an hour. What a snoozefest. Phil Spector was such a one trick pony when it came to production, and his other tricks... well, let's not go there.
David Holmes
2/5
"Let's Get Killed" is what I'll say to my brother when we finish listening to all of these albums because then, finally, we'll be able to die.
Rush
3/5
I've enjoyed some Rush in the past, but this isn't doing anything for me.
KISS
3/5
Fun, glam-y, rockin.
The Soft Boys
4/5
I had no idea what to expect here, but I think I liked it! Maybe not as much as other post-punk of its era, but I'll be revisiting this one at least once.
The Cure
4/5
I didn’t expect to come out of this project liking the Cure, but here we are.
Ray Charles
5/5
Hard to hate anything this man did.
Meat Loaf
4/5
His name is Robert Paulson
But really why am I enjoying the shit out of this? When I was growing up, i had BooH II on CD, and wasn’t expecting much from its predecessor but this is a pleasant surprise. It’s the perfect intersection of Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Alice Cooper, and the few redeemable qualities of Billy Joel, with an outsider musical theater kid mixed in. And it’s a toe tapping good time.
Frank Sinatra
4/5
I thought I’d be bored by this. I wasn’t.
Fleetwood Mac
4/5
I’m kicking myself for not listening to this on vinyl when I still lived with my parents.
Kate Bush
5/5
I’m kicking myself for getting rid of my copy of this on vinyl that I probably got for less than $10 in 2009ish.
Crosby, Stills & Nash
4/5
I don’t think I like C’s songwriting as much as I like S and N’s. Strong album with a dud or two.
John Martyn
2/5
Flashes of brilliance lost in a sea of terrible lyrics and vocals of a guy that sounds like he either just woke up or is on heavy opiates. Either way, there was no soul in most of this. The backing band saved it in the parts where it teetered into listenability. I wouldn’t ever listen to this again and I almost stopped listening multiple times.
Muddy Waters
3/5
Good blues album if a bit repetitive.
Fela Kuti
5/5
Wow. Even the drum solo is listenable. Fela Kuti was absolutely worthy of all the praise.
Joy Division
2/5
There’s only so much off-key monotonous Ian Curtis I can take.
Public Enemy
4/5
Very listenable. I don’t have much else to say.
Wild Beasts
2/5
When this started I expected to like it, but then the singing started. It’s not that he has a terrible voice, but it clashes with the sound of the band. The band sounds a bit like The National otherwise, who should probably be on this list instead of this album.
Fleet Foxes
5/5
Millennial CSNY without the messiness of four competing songwriters. The Fleet Foxes pull off what it seems Mumford & Sons and The Lumineers and their ilk seem unable to. Their second album might be a little stronger in terms of having impactful lyrics that communicate the sense of ennui pervasive in our generation. I am their target demographic! Oh well.
The Stooges
5/5
I will never not think of Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs exclaiming “IGGY POP!” and then forcing the DJ to play Search and Destroy. Precisely the energy this album demands. Just listen and rock out.
Bruce Springsteen
2/5
I appreciate the bait and switch nature of the title track. I love how modern republicans think it’s some sort of anthem, rather than the indictment it is. I also think Glory Days is still a banger. Outside of that, this album, sonically, is just so very 80s that I can’t imagine listening to it start to finish again. I really expected to give this a solid 3 but it’s a 2.5 at best.
Kraftwerk
2/5
I had high hopes for this after Man Machine, and man do I love and support public transit, but this just didn’t hit me the same way.
Johnny Cash
4/5
I’m not always into Johnny Cash but this album is wall-to-wall fun.
Kendrick Lamar
5/5
Easily one of the best recent hip hop records. I think I even like it more than TPaB.
Silver Jews
4/5
Unexpectedly great. I've been hearing about Dave Berman for years, and now it's clicking. Got this Lou Reed meets Townes Van Zandt/country-Stones vibe to it. It also makes me wish J. Mascis would make a country record (maybe he has idk). I can't stand his voice in Dinosaur Jr, but it's basically the same voice here and it just works. Not sure if I'm a new fan, but I'll probably come back to this at least once.
Eric Clapton
1/5
Nah, I'm good.
Living Colour
1/5
Oh, come on.
Van Halen
2/5
I thought following up Living Colour with this would feel like a relief, but honestly this is just annoyingly squandered talent. The guitar licks are just obnoxiously show-offy instead of interesting and the vocals are technically good, but I couldn't care less about what he's singing about, except that some of it is creepy and groomy/pedophilic. Guess what? I didn't need to listen to this before I died.
Neu!
3/5
This is more my vibe, though I think I prefer Harmonia.
Leonard Cohen
2/5
I really really like a couple of Leonard Cohen albums. This is not one of those. It's not new to call him a great poet with shit music, but it bears repeating.
Queen
4/5
After being subjected to Van Halen a couple of albums ago, I can confidently say that THIS is how you do flamboyant guitar rock. When I was a wee lad, I wore out the Killer Queen segment of my Queen's Greatest Hits cassette. That song still holds up. I had no idea the rest of the album would be so good. God damn! Now I'm Here is a standout non-radio track to me that could have easily been on the radio.
Kings of Leon
2/5
How many of these types of albums do I need to hear before I die? Bored by this.
Lloyd Cole And The Commotions
1/5
"Oh, yay! More jangle pop!" - not me
On the one hand, it's not the Smiths or Morrissey. On the other, it's still not good and Lloyd Cole might have a worse voice than Morrissey. At times I wonder if I'm way too sober at a karaoke bar.
Bee Gees
1/5
Ugh that vibrato is incredibly grating. I don't think I'll be able to make it through the full hour at this rate...
Thankfully that has subsided. I didn't know the Bee Gees ever did anything other than disco. I won't say this is good and I wouldn't call it terrible, but it definitely does not rise above its contemporaries. This just sounds at points like countless other mid-career Beatles album facsimiles.
You know what? Never mind. The vibrato is back. I got halfway through and wish I hadn't.
Radiohead
4/5
I'm much less familiar with this Radiohead, but I've heard OK Computer a few times. While I prefer just about every album that came out after this one, I do feel this is where they really came into their own. Their albums preceding this are relatively boring and a bit of a slog. It's nice to revisit this one, but it's still not the one I gravitate towards when I want to listen to Radiohead.
Lucinda Williams
3/5
I feel like knowing the context of how influential this album has been for a lot of my favorite modern indie acts gives this a higher rating. It's great Americana, but 25 years on it sounds a whole lot like a whole lot of other stuff, which is probably a testament to its influence. This isn't typically my style of music, but I can appreciate it for what it is, and that is heartfelt country music.
The United States Of America
3/5
The ring modulator on her voice is actually pretty cool! I had begun thinking that this list had two types of 60s rock albums on it: predictable and repetitive. This is neither. This is psych rock that actually sounds experimental and interesting, as opposed to experimental for the sake of experimentation (for which there is a place, but usually, I'd argue that place isn't on record).
That said, this is too long.
Beck
4/5
Beck has been someone who I have enjoyed throughout my life. This and Mellow Gold were a part of my early radio listening memories. Given that, these songs will always sound like 1996 to me. This album is essentially Beck's Paul's Boutique (also produced by Dust Brothers). Groundbreaking in a lot of ways, but I know his content matured a couple of albums later, so while this is fun, it doesn't exactly speak to me on a deeper level than just being fun, which leaves it somewhere between a 3.5 and a 4.
Motörhead
3/5
This rocks. I'm not much of a metal/hard rock guy, but I might use this to get pumped up some time.
Sonic Youth
3/5
I've tried to like Sonic Youth for years and this is probably the closest I've come to it, but there's still something not quite hitting right. Honestly, some of the guitar solos just sound kind of like... what I play when I jam with my friends? And really it can be better described as either trial and error noodling or fretting a bunch of strings and hoping it sounds cool. Which is more of a negative toward Thurston Moore's playing than it is a compliment to my own.
Maybe one of the other SY records on this list will land better.
M.I.A.
3/5
This is so incredibly maximalist at points that I want to turn it off, but it's not exactly unenjoyable. There's some great biting cynicism and satire baked into the lyrics throughout the album, and I don't know of much else that sounded so punk in that way since Rage. All that said, I don't know that I would have listened to this again on purpose if I weren't participating in this project...
Deep Purple
1/5
I didn't like Machinehead, and I don't like this one. The singer sounds like a blowhard singing so overly earnest. The guitar is unremarkable, the organ is completely unnecessary, and the effects on his voice make it unintelligible which is somehow worse than being able to understand the words he's singing.
Hugh Masekela
5/5
This was great jazz that I had never heard before. Just fantastic. I will be listening to this again and delving further into the rest of his catalog.
George Michael
2/5
I wanted to give this a fair shake, but it's just so whingeingly over-earnest and saccharine that I just can't take it seriously.
The Black Crowes
2/5
Aerosmith + RHCP = The Black Crowes
This is not a good thing.
Isaac Hayes
4/5
Have this on vinyl. Such a vibe.
Dizzee Rascal
2/5
Glad I stuck with it, but the first few tracks didn't draw me in at all. I don't think I'll listen to it again though. Far too much EDM influence for my tastes.
Bruce Springsteen
2/5
I haven't listened to every Springsteen album, but I haven't liked anything he released after Born in the USA - and I'm even lukewarm on that one. This doesn't really hit me any different. While I appreciate the timing of the album release and the sentiment that goes along with it, it just feels so forced and more like a cash grab riding the coattails of tragedy, which he gets away with largely by not being obviously cynical about it. However, I could list several albums released this same year that deserve much more recognition than this one.
Tracy Chapman
4/5
This is one of those albums that I like in spite of the seemingly similar albums that I don't like.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
5/5
This is the album that got me "into" jazz. I had a percussion teacher in community college that encouraged us to bring in a song for the beginning of every class period to share with the class. One of the songs he shared was from this album. IIRC it was Blue Rondo A La Turk, but I mostly just remember thinking how cool it was that the time signature was so different from what we were learning to play in an introductory class, yet it was so easy to tap along with while simultaneously sounding impossible to improvise against. The fact that this became so popular in its time while bucking tradition in that way is still kind of mindblowing to me.
I had the pleasure of seeing Dave perform live at the Rochester International Jazz Festival and, despite being worried about him as he gingerly ambled to the piano - he was only a few years from death at the time, after all - when he started playing, it was as if no time had passed since he recorded this album. Amazing musician and composer and I can't not give this 5 stars simply for having changed my musical taste in the way that it did, but it didn't need that help because this album holds up. Time Out is timeless.
The Rolling Stones
2/5
Honestly this feels like a half-assed album by a band I’m already sort of ambivalent about. There are a couple of great tracks, but the rest sound more like demos than finished tracks, which might be cool if I were more of a Stones fan, but I’m not.
David Bowie
3/5
This is much better than the albums that most late-career greats have put out. Really, though, on its own, it's fine. Nothing stands out and I'm not finding anything worth going back to. Listening to this at work and nothing pulled me out of my routine to find out what was going on with the music. In fact, most of it passed me by with no notes. The closing track is dark and moody as fuck though and I'd probably listen to a whole album of that. 2.5/5
Jane Weaver
5/5
I'm not sure why this is on the list, but I'm enjoying it. The drumming is fantastic, the combination of krautrock, jazz, space rock, and synth pop is hitting the spot for me. The title track's 6/4 groove really cinched it for me. I will definitely come back to listen to this and maybe explore the rest of her catalog.
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
4/5
Well that was cool. Some tracks stood out more than others. Some stopped me in my tracks to listen closer. Some were a bit weird, and I'm not sure if it was good weird or not. I've known about this music as a fan of Erased Tapes, but hadn't taken the time to listen to an album of theirs, so I'm glad I did finally.
The White Stripes
4/5
I didn't expect this to hold up as well as their previous albums, but it really does. This kicks ass. The marimba is great. I want to sing along to Little Ghost over and over.
Supertramp
2/5
Yeah, no.
Norah Jones
2/5
Clinically executed, but that's kind of the problem. I tried to lose my virginity to this album at least once or twice, so it makes me cringe just a little bit more because of that.
Method Man
3/5
I'm not exactly sure what happened, but I was bobbing my head the whole time.
Garbage
3/5
There are tracks on this album that sound too much like an American version of triphop, which I don't like. At other times, it's *painfully* 90s. But it gets a small ratings bump for still somehow not sounding like much else at the time. That said, it felt like a racing game soundtrack.
Leonard Cohen
5/5
The fact that everyone who covered Hallelujah did it better does Leonard Cohen a disservice because his first three albums are absolutely fantastic.
Megadeth
2/5
Despite being the best of its kind so far, it's still 80s shredfest metal, which is so devoid of any content other than lust, hate, cars. And the guitar solos are booooring. This one straddles the line between so-bad-it's-good and so-good-it's-bad.
I just don't care about this genre.
Ice Cube
3/5
The misogyny of these early hip-hop records does not age well, but everything else about this is a great listen. And he fucked around and got a triple double, so how can you even argue with that?
Portishead
5/5
This is lumped in with trip-hop, but, according to their wikipedia page, they "disliked being associated with the term", which I totally understand because, unlike every other trip-hop album I've heard, this doesn't suck.
I hesitate to give this a 5-star rating because I'm trying to leave that for albums that I think I'll return to relatively regularly. Even though I'm not sure I will listen to this frequently, I can foresee the occasion arising from time to time and I'm not mad about it.
Paul Simon
2/5
I often fall short of loving Paul Simon's work, but I do enjoy about half of S&G's albums, as well as his first few solo records.
Other white musicians have been inspired by African music. This isn't a bad thing. Talking Heads took inspiration from afrobeat and turned it into post-punk masterpieces that have aged like fine wine. This, however, feels different but bad. The shitty synth sounds, the muddled layering of indigenous-sounding choral tracks underneath obnoxiously cluttered lyrics, the poor-man's-Jaco bass tone, the schlocky/smarmy/saccharine lyrical content... it's all so try-hard. And I probably wouldn't even like Call Me Al if the music video didn't make me like it in the 90s.
Sonic Youth
3/5
Sonic Youth has a way of seeming really cool, as if I should like them, but this album continues the trend of me *almost* liking them. It's the closest I've come to liking an entire album of theirs. Maybe one day it will click...
Pulp
4/5
I generally can't stand the 80s sound. There are albums from the 80s that I enjoy thoroughly, but other than this one, I can't name one that I've enjoyed that also sounds like it's from the 80s. Maybe because the Gen X ennui doesn't sound so self-serious here.
Scritti Politti
2/5
Crystal Light National Aerobic Championship anyone?
Just like that video, this is disturbingly mesmerizing.
David Bowie
3/5
I enjoyed this more than I expected to. As I've mentioned in other reviews, I don't generally care for Bowie as much as I feel like I should, particularly from Aladdin Sane on. This one was the right kind of weird and dark, I guess.
Paul McCartney
2/5
Junk indeed. This is the beginning of a decades-long slog of schlock
Queen
2/5
Despite having the most (over)played Queen song on it, the rest of this album is largely unrecognizable as Queen. Some of it sounds like another band entirely, and that's not a band I would go out of my way to listen to. This album feels disjointed, and too experimental for its own good. Maybe I'm missing something, but I didn't really enjoy this one very much. To their credit, though, Bohemian Rapsody has to be the least annoying overplayed major hit from the 60s and 70s. Unlike Stairway, for example, I'm not sick of it. But it can't carry the rest of the album on its back.
Stevie Wonder
2/5
"I Believe..." is such a strong way to end this otherwise collection of cloyingly sweet, saccharine love songs that just don't live up to the soul and groove I've grown expect from Stevie. "Superstition" obviously a classic, but other than those two, this is forgettable.
Depeche Mode
1/5
The 80s were a mistake.
Talking Heads
4/5
This isn't my favorite Talking Heads album, but wow... going from Depeche Mode to this is like following up McDonalds with a Michelin star restaurant.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
2/5
I often think CCR are overrated, but it's hard to deny how tight they were. I still don't love Fogerty's affectation (no one from the Bay Area ever sounded like that without laying it on thick), but rock and roll is strong with these boys, that's for sure. Unfortunately, to me they sound somewhere between Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Doors (better versions of the two), neither of which are a compliment. It's a hell of a 29 minutes though, even if I don't fully enjoy their sound.
"Wrote a Song For Everyone" sounds a bit like The Band, and I wish more of this sounded like that. That cover at the end is a big thumbs down though.
Ms. Dynamite
2/5
This is decent, but is not a stand-out. Looks like this was removed from the list in later editions, but I'm confused how it got on there in the first place. Sounds like early solo Justin Timberlake and I'm not sure if that says more about him or her.
Black Sabbath
4/5
Younger me is kicking myself for not listening to more Sabbath sooner.
Metallica
1/5
I wouldn't even download this for free on Napster.
a-ha
1/5
Calling an album by a one-hit-wonder one that you must hear before you die is certainly a choice.
Ute Lemper
2/5
This isn't exactly bad, but I can say that I won't listen to this again. I also don't understand why this is included on the list. If you're going to include something like this, might as well include a Leonard Bernstein recordings as well. Not to mention this is a bunch of covers of songs mostly by artists who already have albums on this list, some of whom I'd much rather listen to (Tom Waits, Nick Cave), and some of whom are already on here too much (Elvis Costello, Divine Comedy). Again confused why 1001 seemed like the right number when so much of this list feels like filler. I'm not going to give this a 1 only because I'm not unimpressed and I'm not exactly mad that it exists, but I can't give it more than a 2 because I don't want to finish it and I won't listen again.
Run-D.M.C.
3/5
This has some staying power, but Dumb Girl doesn't age well. Walk This Way is great until Steven Tyler butts in. Tricky is a classic. The rest is a stark reminder of how far hip-hop has come in the last 40+ years.
Suzanne Vega
3/5
No Tom's Diner???
Look, this isn't exactly outside the realm of what I enjoy. This is a precursor to Fiona Apple and Liz Phair, hell I'll even admit to enjoying Tori Amos and Ani Difanco... It's also unfortunately the precursor to Lisa Loeb and Sarah McLachlan. The singing is nothing to write home about and neither are the lyrics, which have that poetry-forced-to-fit-a-melody feel to them rather than being a fully-formed song. Paul Simon does the same thing, but here it sounds very Lilith Fair.
I'm glad I stuck it out past the first few tracks, though. It really seems to gel toward side 2.
Siouxsie And The Banshees
4/5
Well, that kicked ass.
Radiohead
5/5
I know this isn't their strongest album, but it's still one of my favorites of theirs. It's miles better than anything before OK Computer, and more palatable than King of Limbs or Moon Shaped Pool. It's also the album that convinced me they're not quite as overrated as I had stubbornly thought. I was listening to an Andrew Bird Pandora station high as fuck, washing dishes at the end of a shift at a bagel/coffee shop I worked at after college and "Punch Up At A Wedding" came on. As they layers built on themselves I thought "who the fuck is this and why haven't heard them before" and then Thom started singing and my heart sunk. Fuck... do I like Radiohead now?
Nirvana
5/5
My god was I obsessed with Nirvana and Kurt for a solid 5 years. Had I been in my early teens a decade earlier, it would've been their heyday. Being 10 years behind didn't stop me from ripping the knees in my old jeans and wearing long underwear underneath. It didn't stop me and my best friend at the time from headbanging for the entire 5 minutes of Teen Spirit at our 7th grade dance while everyone else cleared the floor. It didn't stop me from hating Courtney Love and Hole for far longer than necessary. It didn't stop me from pouring over his journals when they were published.
I'm now 11 years older than he was when he died and I was fully expecting to have a more measured response to this album, listening to it just over 30 years after his death, but honestly this is still brilliant. Nothing sounds like this despite so many other bands and albums being labelled grunge. Sure, he was immature, troubled, disdainful of his earned fame, and allegedly played an easier version of guitar, but I'm still compelled by this music. Which says something for someone who is otherwise ambivalent-at-best about most other music that was on the radio in the 90s.
Q-Tip
3/5
The sampling/beats were great. I enjoyed it well enough, but it doesn't stand out. This tracks with the other times I've tried listening to Tip's solo work. I LOVE Tribe, but this is just fine.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
1/5
One of the top reviews for this blames critical disdain for prog on forcing "critics to engage with the music". I disagree strongly. There is good prog out there and it doesn't require a 20-minute piece of music. I'm not even 5 minutes into this and it already just sounds like they threw spaghetti at the wall and read it like musical notation. I don't hear emotion in this. I hear ploppy organ and drums being played like it's a 4am drum circle at a music festival.
I need to cleanse my ears with some King Gizz after this.
Aretha Franklin
5/5
I don't know how you could not like this.
The Killers
2/5
This is the culmination of the scourge that is Britpop. Any redeeming qualities that may have been there in the beginning, anything that was maybe kinda good... that's not here.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
1/5
Ugh.
Laura Nyro
4/5
Never heard of this before. What a breath of fresh air after The Killers and RHCP! This is Laurel Canyon suffused with Van Dyke Parks, Nick Drake, Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, and just... the Bronx. It's much closer to Melanie (Safka) than it is to Joni. The jazziness is there, the soul is there, the fun and poetry. I didn't know what to expect but I listened to it twice.
The War On Drugs
2/5
I've never been able to get into this band like I did Kurt Vile, who deserves an album on this list much more than they do. No wonder he left the band to do his own thing. Superficially it sounds similar, but I'm quite bored by this as it ends up all sounding like one long song if you're not paying close enough attention. It doesn't help that they average 6 minutes per song. I hear nothing interesting in this that makes me want to go back and listen again. It's not that it's terrible, it's just not quite anything?
M.I.A.
2/5
Not sure why MIA is on here twice. Looks like it was removed in later editions. I like her music in theory, but every time I actually try to listen to more than a song or two I'm anxious for it to be over. Her story is wild, though. Very confusing stuff in her adult life compared to her seemingly working-class ethos, like being romantically involved and having a child with a Bronfman, then becoming a born-again? I'm confused. Doesn't change my opinion of the music, but it does make me question her protest lyrics.
Michael Kiwanuka
5/5
Holy shit. I might have to buy this. Refreshing, original, well-rounded, and just overall very listenable music.
I want to listen 1001 albums like this instead of the predictable "classics" and questionable/British filler.
Kanye West
1/5
I liked this album a lot when it came out. How do you go from near GOAT-level status and saying "George Bush doesn't care about Black people" on live TV to MAGA hat wearing, Hitler-praising, Trump supporting chud? Not listening to this one again.
Dirty Projectors
5/5
One of the easiest 5s I could give. I already love this album. It took me many listens back in the day to get into this one, but I've loved it ever since. Actually, every Dirty Projectors album from this one onward has taken me a few listens to get into, but they grow on me every time. I highly recommend the follow-up to this one: Swing Lo Magellan
Metallica
1/5
Oh for fuck sake. Two hours? Absolutely not. I can't stand this band.
The Temptations
4/5
Man, listening to this while walking around town is guaranteed to make you feel like a badass.
The Clash
5/5
It's a little hard to be objective on an album that I owned on CD in high school and listened to regularly on the bus. Then again, I find myself dancing around the house and singing almost all of the words despite having not listened to it in a few years. The fact that this is still getting me excited after 20 years of listening to it probably says something when there are plenty of albums from my high school years that would make me cringe.
Quicksilver Messenger Service
2/5
Much like a zinfandel, this is boring jammy shite.
Bonnie Raitt
2/5
This is not my cup of tea, but given my expectations for hating this, I'm pleasantly surprised. It's kinda good in the same way that mid-80s George Harrison is good - "Got My Mind Set On You" era George, that is. It's not really what I'd go out of my way to listen to, and if I were to walk into an establishment that was blasting music that sounded like this, I've made a few wrong turns, but yeah, that's a long way of saying "this ain't that bad, I guess".
Still just a 2 from me, but saying I like it will win me brownie points with my partner's mom, so I'm willing to listen to the whole album.
The Rolling Stones
2/5
Once again, I'm sitting here wondering why the Stones are so well respected. The woo woo's are only slightly less insanity inducing than the "electric jug" in 13th Floor Elevators.
I'm also sitting here wondering how Townes Van Zandt isn't anywhere to be seen on this list, but these schmucks get to pretend to be country for an entire album and I'm supposed to accept that just about every album of theirs is necessary listening.
I do like Street Fighting Man though.
Minutemen
4/5
This is riiiight up my alley. I hear a lot of their influence in other bands that I like. Slowcore and post-punk bands for years would cop sounds from this band. For once, some obscure but influential band is actually something I want to listen to!
The Allman Brothers Band
1/5
I don't dislike the Allman Brothers entirely, but this is way too much of them. I get that jam bands were supposedly better on the road because they just built on the songs and improvised, but goddammit man, I don't care enough to listen to that shit, and that's why I'm not a fan of jam bands. Just because an explanation makes sense doesn't make it easier to enjoy. If you're not Dvořák or Shostakovich, I probably don't have 20ish minutes to listen to a single track of your music.
The last song on this album is called "Whipping Post" and, not to be dramatic, but that's what it feels like.
The Zombies
3/5
Very lovey dovey hippie dippy. If we look around at what else was going on with music, this may seem like it was right on time. And there's an argument to be made there, but the Kinks, for one, had already been doing this sound for a couple years by the time this album came out, and had already moved on to something more interesting. What little they had left of that sound was a backdrop for biting social commentary about income inequality in the UK. Not this tireless whining about love.
That said, this is an enjoyable listen. Not very challenging, but not every album needs to make me think. I don't expect this to be something I listen to many more time and need to own on vinyl or anything like that, so it gets a solid 3.
Willie Nelson
4/5
There's not much to dislike here. Just classic outlaw country at its finest.
Ali Farka Touré
3/5
I love Malian music and I've enjoyed Toure before. This was relaxing and enjoyable as the rest of it, but I fail to understand why Ry Cooder is needed (ever). He seems to be one of those dudes that only Boomer music critics and record store owners like and they all fawn over him. I would have been happy for him to have produced this, but don't need to hear his schmoopsy poopsy guitar tone added to this otherwise beautiful music.
That said, this is the most I've knowingly enjoyed anything from Ry Cooder, yet I'm not sure why Toure needs two albums on this list when there are countless other musicians from Mali that fit the bill. It's good and I like his music, but, at least to my ear, his albums are all quite similar to each other, so we get the point after the first one.
Bebel Gilberto
2/5
Hooboy... Do I need to hear this? Nepo-baby makes boring music that sounds almost no different than her boring father's. Not for me.
Neil Young
5/5
I'm just finding out that this is part of Neil's "Ditch Trilogy", so I decided to listen to this (already one of my favorite Neil Young albums) in sequence with the other two: Time Fades Away > On The Beach > Tonight's The Night. I'm so happy I did. What a follow-up to the comparatively schmaltzy Harvest! (Harvest is still a great album, but one of my least favorite of his from that era)
Don't let the album's title fool you, for even a short glance at the album art will clue you in on what's to come. On The Beach has it all: a catchy rock tune to start it all off followed by seven tunes that drag you through the ditch with him, three of which are titled "___ Blues". I love that he essentially did all of this just to shake off the the expectation that came with the success of Heart of Gold.
Traffic
2/5
More roots music aped by Brits who can barely sing. Too much organ and flute for me. The mixing on Stranger to Himself is questionable. Rhythm piano panned to the right with a guitar solo panned to the left, both weighted about equally... I'm not sure why that was the choice. It sounds like there are some good musicians in here, particularly the drummer who keeps a nice groove on most tracks, but Steve Winwood can stop singing pleaseandthankyou
Paul Revere & The Raiders
3/5
This was fine I guess.
Beatles
2/5
No I never SAWR them at all!
Fiona Apple
5/5
I'm a pretty big fan of Fiona's already, but I'm admittedly way more familiar with Extraordinary Machine on, so this is almost a fresh listen for me apart from Criminal and Sleep To Dream which, if you grew up when I did, you couldn't avoid hearing at least a few times.
I'm struck by how mature she already sounds here. It's a bit slower than her later records, but this is fucking strong songwriting for an 18 year old. I was quite prepared to see lots of disparaging reviews for this given that female voice = bad here most of the time, but I'm pleasantly surprised. Well done y'all!
My main complaint is that there are no other Fiona Apple albums on this list. Wtf. She gets even better than this, so if you like this, go listen to at least the next two albums of hers.
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
1/5
I was primed to hate this seeing Clapton's name, but I decided to give it a chance since Cream isn't the worst, so how bad could this be? Well it's really fucking bad. It's mostly boring white guy blues, and then the singing happens and it's absolutely atrocious. Not for nothing, but there's not a high bar to cross for blues singing. It's not known for virtuosic vocals. But, no really, this is like really fucking bad singing.
Little Girl, to top it all off. Gross. Why was every rock god from the 60s and 70s a pedo?
Coldplay
2/5
I am once again grateful that I can turn off my listening history on Apple Music while I listen to this so that my algo doesn't get fucked up.
Lauryn Hill
5/5
A bit long, but man are there a lot of reviews here that are unfairly negative. This is an amazing album with incredible range. I would drop the interludes/skits. Far too many and the album would probably be under an hour without them, and it would be easier to put some of these on playlists. My god, though, so many of you chuds are so incapable of enjoying female artists or rap of any kind.
2/5
There are FIVE fucking Damon Albarn albums across all editions of this list. The only one I enjoyed has been Gorillaz, and even that was hit or miss. He also managed to make Tony Allen sound like shit. There's no way he's equally as worthy of a listen as Tom Waits, Led Zeppelin, Lou Reed, nor indeed more worthy of a listen than The Kinks or Talking Heads, for fuck sake!
Barry Adamson
1/5
Some of these start out kinda cool, but then the shitty drum loop starts and THEN he starts his pseudo-sultry spoken word shit.
How in the world does it end up that seemingly 1/3 of alll 1001 albums I must hear before I die were all trip hop albums from the mid 90s? I think I’d rather die tbh
The Rolling Stones
2/5
Meh.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
3/5
I'm not expecting much from this that I didn't get from the other Marley records on this list. There's no denying his artistry and social commentary, but sometimes I feel that if you've heard one reggae song, you've heard them all. Let's see...
Alright, it's good, but I stand by my original assessment. Other than Toots & The Maytals, this is pretty much the only reggae I can stand for an entire album, but I'd still rather listen to something else.
The Mothers Of Invention
4/5
Honestly, this is way more musical than I was led to believe it would be. Sure, it's not radio-friendly, but there's some wonderful musicianship here, the production is great, and it's genuinely goofy and sounds like they're having fun. I laughed multiple times. The least musical parts of this album are comparable to Revolution 9 or some bullshit that Pink Floyd put out and is seen as revolutionary for reasons beyond my understanding.
I've tried listening to Beefheart and Zappa a few times over the years and found no entry point. Even when I found one or two songs I thoroughly enjoyed, it still wasn't an entry point into a deeper understanding of their larger catalogs. But this might actually do it for me. I have lots of respect for Zappa, and used to enjoy watching old interviews of him speaking out strongly in defense of free speech, but respect doesn't equate to enjoyment. Now I finally feel like I get some of the hype.
That said, I don't expect this to go into my regular rotation. I might put one or two songs on a playlist though. I am genuinely glad I listened to this before I die.
Dr. Dre
2/5
Honestly, I can't even put myself in the frame of mind I would have had to been in to enjoy this. I agree with an earlier commenter noting that this album essentially signaled the end of rap's golden age (Tribe, De La, Run-DMC, etc). At least NWA was speaking truth to power. This just feels like punching laterally instead of punching up. There's a few good beats on here, but the lyrics all blend together for me and the skits kinda gross me out. Lots of homophobia and misogyny, which comes with the territory/era, but it's just not fun to listen to with today's ears.
Songhoy Blues
4/5
Haven't met a desert blues album I didn't like. I'm surprised I haven't heard this.
Honestly, as good as this is, I'm shocked that Tinariwen isn't on this list. They basically invented desert blues. Check out the album "Aman Iman" by them.
Also great:
Nomad - Bombino
Ilana - Mdou Moctar
Music from Saharan Cell Phones - V/A
Earth, Wind & Fire
3/5
I somewhat intensely dislike "September" so I wasn't expecting much from this, but starting off with "Shining Star" is a good way to shut me up, apparently. This isn't something I'd put on to listen to normally, but as a background for those dinner parties I never host, this would be perfect. I wouldn't mind owning this on vinyl to look at and be proud of my well-rounded collection.
Seriously though, this is good and funky in an innocuous way, but not so innocuous as to be offensive and boring. Also not innocuous enough to ignore the sometimes-obnoxious falsetto. The album benefits from being relatively short. It just feels a bit like the fabric of black American music at this point that it's hard to deny its power. At times, though, this just sounds like interstitial music for SNL, which is not necessarily their fault. That said, if they were white, they might just sound like the Bee Gees which wouldn't be good at all. I'm confused...
Happy Mondays
1/5
Boy, Manchester really sends their best don't they? With all due respect to all you Mancs out there reading this, but fuck this, fuck Morrissey, fuck the Smiths, and fuck City.
The Bees
3/5
Pleasant. Chill. Not much else to report.
George Harrison
5/5
I've gone in and out on the Beatles over the years. Never so far out as to dislike them, but I'm currently in a place where I don't really feel the need to listen to them when there's so much new and great music coming out.
That said, I will always love George. He's my favorite Beatle, and honestly the only reason I keep coming back to them. John was a self-absorbed piece of shit, and Paul is just so obnoxiously optimistic in his songwriting. Nothing against Ringo, but he's unfortunately the butt of the joke. His first solo record is only a decent listen because George wrote and played on much of it.
But George... I know he wasn't a perfect human, but I just relate to him so much more than the other three. I even love his shittier later albums in spite of myself.
This album is obviously long. Third disc aside, this is on an incredibly short list of actually good double albums (like I said, ignore the third disc, it's actually a bonus disc anyway). If I'm honest, the only other double albums I can think of that I actually enjoy all of are Blonde on Blonde and Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You.
The first disc hits strong and hard. So many memorable guitar riffs.
"I'd Have You Anytime" is sexy as hell. Co-written with Bob Dylan.
"My Sweet Lord" almost makes me want to believe in a god.
"Wah-Wah" is an incredible fuck you to his former bandmates.
"Isn't It A Pity" A reflection on how even the best of friends can part ways with animosity and not able to reflect on what they once had with gratitude.
"What Is Life" is a little on the nose, but still way better than any love song McCartney ever wrote.
"If Not For You", a Bob Dylan, follows up that love song with another love song that, again, doesn't make me cringe. Listen to Bob's version on New Morning.
"Behind That Locked Door", a message to his friend (you guessed it) Bob Dylan encouraging him to open up more. Lovely sentiment. Gorgeous country song.
"Let It Down" turned down by the Beatles, is a lusty proclamation of desire, with some sultry guitar licks.
"Run of the Mill" remains one of my favorite songs. A song about feeling wronged by a friend. Basically saying "you were a dick and everyone sees it but you, but you're too proud to just say sorry".
"Beware of Darkness" has helped remind me to get out of my own head sometimes. "Watch out now / Take care, beware / Of thoughts that linger / Winding up inside your head"
"Apple Scruffs" breaks up the seriousness a bit. Honestly silly, but it's a cute song of appreciation to his/Beatles' fans.
"Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)" has some of the most gorgeous ringing guitar notes I've ever heard. I just love this song, and yet, this is the first time I noticed the "Ohhh Sir Frankie Crisp" in baritone buried in the mix.
"Awaiting On You All" is a rebuke to organized religion, and I love his message that you don't need corrupt institutions to believe in something bigger than yourself. I think the first time I heard this I was in the middle of reading Be Here Now for the first time, so I was pretty receptive to this vibe. And, again, kick ass guitar.
Title track paints a much lovelier picture of son lamenting his mother's death than anything John could pull off. It's about the general transience of life, but the poignancy of his mother's passing during recording is another level.
"I Dig Love" is just catchy as hell, and you know what? Good for you George! You deserve love.
"Art of Dying"... dude wasn't even 30 and was already at peace with death. Weirdly catchy.
The repeat of the title track, I'm not entirely sure why.
"Hear Me Lord"... life sucks sometimes and it feels like no one's there for you. Damn, dude.
That concludes the actual album. The following instrumental tracks, take em or leave em, are decent, but skippable for sure. It's already a long album - and my review is somehow longer - but it's nearly perfect to this point and that's what I'm basing my rating on.
The Kinks
4/5
Not the strongest showing by the Kinks. It pains me that this is what gets put up as one of their must listens when they have albums like Muswell Hillbillies. That said, this is still stronger than other British Invasion drivel. They wrote about everyday Brits instead of waxing poetic about fleeting lust/love or performing masturbatory psychedelic jams. Their later albums are much better yet completely absent from this list save for this album's immediate follow-up. How in the fuck do you not include Lola?
Japan
3/5
This surprised me. I typically can't stand the new wave/heavy synth sound, but I don't mind this. It's not my taste exactly, but there's something about it that I respect. Maybe it's the guitar and bass that's still prevalent. Maybe it's that the dirt and grime of the 70s hadn't been washed away yet. Whatever it is, this is both more gritty than Spandau Ballet or Duran Duran, and less dirge-y than Joy Division (though there is some of that). Consider me impressed.
Arcade Fire
4/5
Great listen front to back. I look forward to getting the Suburbs.
Electric Light Orchestra
3/5
It's really hard to release all this music at once and have it be great or even good from start to finish. I enjoy me some ELO, but this is suffers from the same thing just about every other double album suffers from. There are some bangers, and I will always sing Mr Blue Sky at the top of my lungs when it comes on, but most of this could’ve been left for the 50th anniversary deluxe edition or whatever.
The Byrds
2/5
It's music in album form and it's certainly from a year in the late 60s.
Aerosmith
1/5
Some of this was not as bad as I expected, but it's still incredibly derivative and bad. The innuendo is not clever or cute.
Buena Vista Social Club
2/5
The only reason this got any play Stateside is because of Ry Cooder. It's great that this introduced people to a type of music that they might not have otherwise heard, but I don't think Cooder needed to insert his boring white boomer self. I used to own this on CD and would listen to it occasionally because I thought it was important to hear stuff like this, but I always lost interest after track two. Still true today. I'm sure there's plenty of great Cuban music, but more often than not, this just ain't my thing.
Killing Joke
3/5
Had never heard of this before. I enjoyed it but I'm not sure why. I found myself bouncing to the beat. Feels very tribal and lizard brain in a weird way. I don't think I'll listen again, but it's good for what it is.
Adele
2/5
Maybe it's because there are tons of copycats since this album came out - I honestly don't know - but I'm incredibly tired of this sound. I feel like I'm at a multinational grocery store chain. Her singing is technically good, but it grates on me for reasons that I don't know how to explain. Something about the way she sings certain vowel sounds and how her voice breaks repeatedly throughout. Rumor Has It there's a grocery store in hell that just plays this on repeat.
Simon & Garfunkel
5/5
I don't care for the title track, but once you get past that, it's nearly perfect. Nothing Paul Simon did before or after quite compares.
Alanis Morissette
4/5
This is one of the first albums I ever owned on cassette. I got it for Christmas around the time it came out and my mom asked me how she could bleep out the bad words. When she realized that was impossible she just sharpied them out of the liner notes and demanded that I not sing along to those parts.
I can't believe how well this holds up honestly. As other reviewers have mentioned, it sounds precisely 1995, yet its dated-ness is somehow a positive here. I got Adele's 21 album before last, Alanis was also 21 when this came out, but I appreciate the immaturity of this one much more.
4/5
Iron Butterfly
1/5
I really can't take this list seriously. This is another on the list that is only on here for a single song, which are not worth listening to in order to get to, and even when you get to it, it's... 17 minutes? That's how you make a less than 40 minutes feel like an eternity.
Echo And The Bunnymen
3/5
I'm surprised to find out they have more than one album on this list. I enjoy Killing Moon, but this album is just fine. It gets extra credit for being 80s British music that doesn't completely suck.
Muddy Waters
3/5
This is good for what it is, but honestly, I've never connected with Chicago blues. I'm glad I listened though.
I used to enjoy this album and I apparently still enjoy this album.
Fugees
5/5
This is one of the pinnacles of hip hop. The possibly racist depiction of an Asian restaurant owner is unfortunate, but it's overshadowed by the brilliance of the lyrics throughout.
MGMT
3/5
I didn't realize I hadn't listened to this whole album before. It's not bad. I'm still not a huge fan though.
Jazmine Sullivan
2/5
Im not saying this is bad, because it’s not. But it’s one of those time and place albums. I felt really weird listening to this at work, even with headphones.
Solange
4/5
Great stuff. Chill vibes.
Hole
2/5
It’s a bit too poppy for me but there’s some catchy stuff on here.
Snoop Dogg
2/5
Sigh. This would be fun if it wasn’t so disgusting.
The Psychedelic Furs
2/5
I forgot where I was when I had to stop listening to this the other day. Couldn’t figure it out because they all sound the same.
Malcolm McLaren
2/5
I’ve had a distaste for McLaren for so long I forgot why. Seems like maybe he’s surrounded by controversy, like stealing the limelight by being around much more talented people than himself? This album doesn’t convince me otherwise.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
3/5
I like CCR more when Fogerty isn’t singing. It’s fine most of the time but he lays it on too thick.
Cornershop
2/5
Boy, this is a roller coaster, but, like only the first hill. Starts off on a high note (I’m being generous. The first two tracks are fine) and continuously descends into more and more boring folktronica or whatever. Here is yet another example of a one hit wonder that doesn’t deserve an entire album on the list.
Miles Davis
3/5
I tried listening to this when I was much younger and less familiar with jazz in general and didn’t “get it”. I’m not saying I get it now, but it’s a little more palatable. Once you get past the first disc, there’s a lot more fluidity and less of a cacophony of sounds. The first couple tracks feel like everyone’s doing something interesting, they’re not playing the same song, but are all in a similar key so it doesn’t sound exactly “bad” but it is certainly tiring trying to figure out what’s going on. Maybe that’s my barrier to enjoying this, but that’s usually how I enjoy music so I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do about that.
Here’s a rare case of I don’t think I’ll listen to this as a whole again but it should absolutely be on this list. On enjoyability alone, this gets 2ish, but its importance (and I’m not sure there are more than a handful of other albums I’d argue this for) gets a 3.5 so we’re going to go with a 3.
Lightning Bolt
1/5
This is making troubleshooting a Python script even more stressful. This is the type of music you have to sit through because you didn't want to miss the opener.
ZZ Top
2/5
There's something I like about this in spite of myself, and there's a lot I don't like about this. I have no idea how to rate this.
That was what I thought during the first couple of tracks anyway. After finishing it, I like it a lot less. It's like if you took Dire Straits and added distortion and a dash of misogyny. And I don't like Dire Straits.
Spiritualized
4/5
This has been on my radar for years, but this has been my first full listen through the whole album. I wasn't previously into slowcore/post-rock as much, but it has come to be one of my favorite genres, so this is definitely clicking with me this time around. I am loving it and will probably go and listen to his other albums after this.
Drive-By Truckers
1/5
This sounds like I was invited to a friend-of-a-friend's birthday get together at a shitty townie bar with some random shitty band playing. I can't tell if they're a joke band or serious. And this is 1.5 hours long? I don't think I'll make it through one hour of this. Yikes.
Jerry Lee Lewis
1/5
Mega paedo. If I didn't know anything about him, this would be a 2, but I do.
The Incredible String Band
1/5
What the hell did I just listen to?
Al Green
5/5
Man, I've had a string of such terrible albums... calling this a welcome reprieve is an understatement. Al Green can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned.
4/5
Fantastic. Why didn’t anyone tell me about her or Liz Phair before?
Van Morrison
2/5
I can’t for the life of me figure out how this guy had such a successful career beyond his days in Them. His voice is terrible! This is like boomer Dave Matthews. It’s just music old people have sex in tents to.
Green Day
2/5
Entirely predictable. There were even a few songs where I thought the album had started itself over for some reason because so many of them sound the same. I skipped over Boulevard of Broken Dreams because I don't ever need to hear that again.
On the one hand, there is such little evolution in their sound from their Dookie days that this sounds so sophomoric. On the other hand, they tried so hard to create meaning here that just falls flat for me. Maybe if I were at a more impressionable age when this came out...
The Yardbirds
2/5
Much of this is nearly indistinguishable from its contemporaries. Nothing memorable, nothing offensive, just another album that I'm not sure needs to be listened to before one dies.
Napalm Death
1/5
I might have been into this 25 years ago when I was 13. Best thing this has going for it is its brevity.
The Specials
4/5
Man… pure nostalgia. I’m tempted to give this a 5, but I don’t and won’t listen to it that much. But this really is some of the best ska produced outside of the first wave of Jamaican ska.
Neil Young
5/5
Perfect album. No notes.
The Verve
1/5
This death rattle of britpop really milks every moment until it's beyond dry. Every song doesn't need to end in a repetitive slow fade, ffs. Whinging wankers wax wailingly without windup. Where's Wonderwall?
Wilco
4/5
This is admittedly as long as I just complained about The Verve's album being. But this is early Wilco, not the overrepresented genre of britpop. I'm already a Wilco fan, but hadn't listened to this album all the way through before. It won't supplant A Ghost is Born or Sky Blue Sky as my favorite album of theirs, but this is peak alt-country right here.
The Last Shadow Puppets
2/5
This is a head-scratcher for me. I'm not sure why it's on this list, for starters. Secondly, I'm not sure why it was made? I'm not saying it's bad. It's pretty well-executed, but like, who asked for something like this? I'm tempted to leave it unrated, but that would bother me just as much. It gets a 2 because, as I've tried to stick to throughout, a 2 isn't so bad that it should've never been made and I'm offended to have been suggested it (that would be a 1), but it's not good enough to be a 3 (This isn't for me, but it's objectively good and I'm not mad I listened to it, but I likely won't listen again). This is a 2: I'm not offended by this, but it shouldn't be on the list (especially if you're going to leave out Built To Spill entirely).
Count Basie & His Orchestra
4/5
Well that was fun!
Richard Hawley
2/5
Look, I hate to be the guy that constantly wants this list to live up to its name, but c'mon... No offense to this guy because it's not bad, but I didn't need to hear this. It's not for me and I don't understand why it was picked.
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
3/5
Surprised by how much I enjoyed this. I still don't love 80s synth music, and this album drags after a few tracks, but this is better than any of the rest I've heard. That said, LCD Soundsystem did it better.
Caetano Veloso
3/5
I was expecting a Brazilian Donovan just by looking at the album art. I can't say I'm disappointed. My track record with Brazilian music in general is not great because I'm not a fan of the Gilberto family or bossanova. While I prefer the likes of Tim Maia or Milton Nascimento, this is still great and has the benefit of being relatively short.
Dexys Midnight Runners
1/5
I'm already sick of one hit wonders with entire albums on this list, and this one doesn't even have their hit on it! Turns out they were big in the UK before that one, but that does not a must-hear album make.
This guy's whiny voice is on another level. His voice breaks on just about every syllable and it's not endearing. And his voice isn't good otherwise. I wouldn't get back together with someone crying at me like that either. And then he has the balls to do an entire song in falsetto that made even MY throat hurt.
Otherwise, this just seems like an album full of barstool sing-alongs, which is exhausting.
Cocteau Twins
4/5
This is a vibe. It's the rare example of an album that I pretty thoroughly enjoy without being able to pick out a hook or standout track. I'm getting Kate Bush meets MBV. Right up my driveway.
10cc
3/5
I'm not sure if this benefits from my J Dilla bias, but I enjoyed this. It's a little all over the place, but I kind of don't mind it here. It feels like what my music might sound like if I knew a little more music theory and just let the ADHD do the talking.
Also, maybe I'm crazy, but I'm hearing some Nilsson influence in a few of these tracks. Weird to hear that coupled with distorted guitars more akin to Kiss or T Rex. And then there are the pseudo-yacht rock vocal elements. This is wild, but I'm here for it.
Suede
3/5
What's with the intentional cracking of the voice? I might like this more if that hadn't been the choice. It IS a choice, right? And they're not the only British band from the 80s that sounded like this. Except that it looks like this came out in 1993? Well, I'm confused then. This sounds at least 10 years older.
That voice and the clear Smiths influence both turn me right off. The more punk tracks redeem it somewhat, but I won't be going back to this.
2.5/5
Neil Young
5/5
In case you didn't get the point from my previous reviews of Neil albums, I'm already a fan of this album. Not only that, but the Ditch Trilogy is probably my favorite three-album run from him. The more I learn about the backstory of these songs, the harder it hits. Deeply felt stories of loss, brotherly love, friendship, overdose, candles snuffed out, etc. Couldn't get much realer than this.
Pretenders
4/5
This kicks so much ass. Punky new proto-new wave. Reagan and Thatcher hadn't quite yet influenced the culture of maximalism that we'd see for much of the ensuing decade. I've always liked Chrissy Hynde's voice, idiosyncratic as it is, and even though I only know Brass In Pocket (which I didn't know by name), I found this an easy listen.
Sinead O'Connor
5/5
Before listening to this yesterday, I mostly only knew Sinead O’Connor as the butt of jokes when I was a kid in the 90s. Nothing terrible, just that she was the only thing to compare other bald women to. And then she shot back into consciousness when she passed away a couple years ago. Between those two things, I only knowingly heard her cover of Nothing Compares 2 U (thanks mainly to it being sampled in a mashup by Girl Talk). Given that, I had little expectation that I’d enjoy this. I figured she would be respectable but not my thing, much in the way that I falsely assumed the same of Tori Amos.
But boy was I wrong. I wouldn’t say this is “my thing” or my taste, but I wouldn’t say the opposite either. I was blown away by the rawness of this. The pure bare emotion dripping from every track. And the aforementioned Prince cover is quite the banger. I don’t really have any critiques for her, just for my assuming ass.
The Darkness
2/5
Not only are they one-hit-wonders who shouldn't have an entire album on a list of must-hear albums, but they really shouldn't have more than a song or two. Come to find out, they have several albums and are still playing, recording, and touring. The joke that went too far, the dead horse that was beaten beyond recognition, the point that they beat you over the head with over and over for two decades. Maybe I'm just no fun, but their only good song is the one you think it is.
Again, I'll say: where is Built To Spill? No one can possibly think this is more worth listening to than Perfect From Now On.
Steely Dan
4/5
I already reluctantly enjoyed Steely Dan more and more every year, but I just watched that Yacht Rock documentary on HBO the other day, so this is like cosmic timing. Now that I have a little more context, yeah. It's good. I don't have to like that I like it, but I like it.
Tim Buckley
2/5
I've always been disappointed with Tim Buckley given who his son was, and this relisten didn't really change that opinion. Not bad, just not deserving of a spot on the list over others.
Morrissey
1/5
The answer to the question "what's worse than The Smiths?" Wish this guy would just shut the fuck up.
Sisters Of Mercy
1/5
This is a joke, right? Too many albums from the Brits and the 80s on this list.
The Verve
1/5
This is torturous. Caught between wanting to sound like Radiohead and Oasis, but none of the good parts of Radiohead and only the bad parts of Oasis (of which there are many). I'd say that I can't believe there's more than one album from this bore of a band on this list, but that would have required me to not be paying attention for the last 400+ albums.
Case in point: "On Your Own" this is horrible drivel. A very skippable track. I encourage you to do so before the vocals kick in. You might want to skip the following one too.
Also, this is a more general observation: they're really just making Deluxe editions of any album these days, aren't they? Who needs an extra two hours of this sonic atrocity?
The Residents
3/5
Maybe it's because I got a second(?!!) Verve album yesterday, but I somehow prefer this to the endless amount of Britpop on this list.
Brian Wilson
3/5
I much prefer Smiley Smile to this boomer nostalgia tour. I mean, it's good and all, but there's nothing new here except Brian Wilson's less-good voice.
Klaxons
1/5
Was expecting britpop, the starting beat made it seem somewhat promising, but then they started singing. AND THEN THERE WERE ACTUAL KLAXONS. Please just stop.
Skepta
2/5
Didn't like Dizzee Rascal, don't like this. Not convinced I'd like anything else that's considered grime...
Honestly, this dude has good flow, but his lyrics are so cringe.
Public Enemy
3/5
I'm not really in the mood for this today, but I can tell it's good so I'll try to be objectively subjective if that's a thing... First thing that hits me is how, although I'm already aware this is the case, I'm still somehow surprised how often it's confirmed that nothing has really changed in the last 30 years.
Otherwise, while I think this is good at what it does, it feels like Public Enemy are starting to run out of ideas on this one. Their previous couple of albums aged surprisingly well. This one feels more repetitive and drags at many points. It does get better in the second half, imo.
Still, Chuck D is as effective as ever and it's hard not to take a man with a voice like that seriously.
The Kinks
5/5
I love this album. It's top three Kinks for me.
Talvin Singh
1/5
Part of me was hoping that by beginning this project, I'd be forced to rethink my preconceived notions of particular subgenres of music that I think I don't like. Alas, I still don't like drum n bass or whatever this would be. I've enjoyed a lot of Four Tet's experimentations with sampling South Asian music in his electronic tracks, but this is just more shitty, drawn-out 90s British electronica that doesn't add anything to the conversation.
John Grant
2/5
I didn’t expect this album to sound like it did given the album art. That said, while the music was pretty, sometimes beautiful, the lyrics left me wanting. They’re very weak. No poetry there. Much of it quite literal and sung by a voice that is not quite good enough to elevate the words. Quite a frustrating listen.
Donald Fagen
2/5
Listen, I like Steely Dan, but there’s no need to push your luck. This is fine, but doesn’t need to be on the list.
Oasis
1/5
Definitely not.
Pixies
5/5
One of the best things to come out of both Boston and the 80s.
Beatles
5/5
I often forget that they got great just before Revolver.
Beatles
5/5
This has long been my favorite Beatles record. As I get older, it definitely loses its luster but I still love it. There are some incredibly weak tracks on here, and honestly a fun project is to re-sequence this record to make one really great LP rather than a double album with several peaks and valleys. Overall brilliant but not perfect by any means.
Parliament
3/5
I prefer this to most any other funk from that era, but it’s not always my cup of tea. I’d certainly put this on at a party, but I likely won’t come back to it.
Brian Eno
5/5
I was in airports and airplanes almost all day yesterday and could’ve used this. But I already am quite familiar with and enjoy this and other ambient works.
5/5
This gets credited as being proto-new wave or something, but to me this is one of the best punk records of all time. This shit kicks so much ass. It hits the ground running and goes for half an hour and never lets up. I especially love the sudden end of the janky, schizoid Too Much Paranoias into the gentle, surfy intro to Gut Feeling which then builds back into an anxious screed. Absolutely brilliant. I’m a little surprised this isn’t more highly rated.
This is the 6th 5 star album in a row for me. I am worried about the next few albums.
Germs
1/5
I want out now.
Sly & The Family Stone
3/5
Some real headbobbers in this album. I can tell why it’s often sampled. Feels like more of a mood-setting background album than something I’d put on in the car.
Arctic Monkeys
2/5
I am not the target demographic for this. My late ex loved this album and I could never truly get into this guy’s stuff. From a distance this hardly stands out from its crowd of early 00s bands.
The Rolling Stones
2/5
I don’t like the Stones as much as I often think I do. This is supposedly their best, but it’s quite hit or miss for me. It starts off strong, but by track 2 I’m usually annoyed enough to turn it off. After forcing myself to listen to it as a whole, and while there are a couple of other songs that I like here (Tumbling Dice is awesome), I wasn’t missing a whole lot by not listening to the whole thing before. I’m still baffled by these Brits playing shitty versions of American blues music and getting away with it for several albums in the 60s and 70s. Not to mention the way Mick is singing throughout. It’s like when Dylan tried to sing with a different voice on Nashville Skyline. Like, okay, sure but why? You sound obnoxious. Knock it off! It just doesn’t resonate with me.
How is this supposedly better than Sticky Fingers?
Slade
2/5
It’s fine. Reminds me a bit of Meatloaf but not as good.
Ash
2/5
I didn’t think I knew this band but Kung Fu stood out as familiar. It’s kinda fun, but clearly not memorable enough for me to have figured out the band’s name. Some of the rest of this reminds me of Neil Gust’s contributions to Heatmiser. By which I mean underwhelming. And their press photo on Apple Music is cringe. They sound kind of adjacent to the 90s indie music that I’m into on some tracks, while the rest just sounds like generic 90s pop rock. They just don’t do it for me. Another one hit wonder from the UK that somehow managed to get an entire album on the list.
Taylor Swift
2/5
I’ve listened to and enjoyed other TS albums but this isn’t one of those. As a 38yo straight dude, I don’t think I’m the target demographic for her, but I don’t find her lyrics to be all that deep or her singing to be anything special. It could also be because I’m not a Bon Iver fan. Given that she’s the biggest pop artist in the world, I’m clearly outnumbered so I’ll let y’all enjoy it.
Sigur Rós
5/5
I did not expect to like this as much as I did. I remember hearing Sigur Ros in the early 00s and thinking they sucked or were boring or something. Maybe I've just grown into them, or maybe I didn't give them enough of a chance back then, but either way, this is an immediate favorite now.
Roxy Music
3/5
That wasn't quite what I expected, but I think I liked it!
Drive Like Jehu
4/5
Not sure how I feel about this. There are elements that I love, that remind me of bands that I like mentioned in other reviews. There are elements that make me want to skip to the next track or turn it off. But the more I listen, the more I am enjoying it. It definitely scratches that hardcore itch for me. I'll likely still reach for Slint or Fugazi first though.
Sex Pistols
4/5
Honestly kinda hard to claim this isn’t a fun album to listen to.
Ozomatli
2/5
Oh I used to listen to a lot of Ozomatli back in the day. If I remember correctly this was the album where I lost interest. So the fact that this album made the list but not their superior debut is pretty funny to me and indicative of a lot of the choices in this book. This should be interesting…
After giving it another listen, yeah, this doesn't hold up. The only reason I like their first album - and I barely do - is because I heard it at the right time in my life. I would likely not enjoy it if I heard it for the first time today. And this album is definitely not nearly as good as that first one. I'm sure they put on a great show, which is still evident from this album, but as far as a listening experience goes, this is a nah from me.
The Flaming Lips
2/5
Just as I'd remembered it. Front-heavy and still not that great. Has moments that are pretty cool, but it's not worth sifting through the entire album to find them.
The Band
2/5
Self titled is 10x better. Honestly surprised how little I like this comparatively.
Slipknot
1/5
There’s a second Slipknot album in this list?!
Janet Jackson
2/5
I'm sorry, this kind of pop music just didn't age well. Even if we forget about who her brother was, this is just pablum.
Gram Parsons
2/5
I don't know what I expected Gram Parsons to sound like but it wasn't this. I appreciate it for what it is, but it's too twangy throughout for me. There are a few standout tracks, but I don't expect to listen to this again as an album.
The Velvet Underground
3/5
Listen, I like VU, but this is a slog for even VU fans, right?
Fatboy Slim
2/5
While more tolerable than a lot of electronica on this list I’ve encountered thus far, still very skippable. I vaguely remember a lot of this from listening to it on my Walkman riding the bus to school in 1998 when I was an equally annoying middle schooler. Half a star added for being a Seagulls supporter.
Miriam Makeba
5/5
I think what I was looking for when starting this project was a bit naive, given that it’s not called 1001 Albums You Probably Haven’t Heard but Definitely Should. This album would be on that list. This I gorgeous. Not something I was likely to discover independently. A very pleasant listen.
The Shamen
1/5
With a name like The Shamen, they have no business being this terrible.
The Blue Nile
2/5
This list is not disabusing me of the notion that 80s music sucks.
Pet Shop Boys
1/5
The most soulless dance music I've possibly ever heard. Someone should have taught them to use the swing property of their quantization setting.
Nirvana
5/5
To say that I listened to this a lot in my teenage years is an understatement.. I may have been about a decade late to Nirvana, but I still wore the knees out of my jeans and wore flannel in the humid Upstate NY summers of the late 90s/early 00s. I was very much looking forward to giving this a listen for the first time in years. Would I enjoy this if I hadn't gone through a grunge phase? Dunno, but I'm enjoying it now. To this day, on the rare occasion that I get to sit at a drum kit, I inevitably bang out the Scentless Apprentice intro.
Magazine
3/5
This is decent but possibly only because I generally dig post-punk. There are a couple of standout tracks among several forgettable ones.
Billy Bragg
3/5
Great activist songs, albeit quite long.
Soul II Soul
2/5
Thanks for reminding me of that single from my childhood. I didn't need the rest of the album to come along with it.
George Jones
3/5
Country af.
Eminem
3/5
Well I still remember a hell of a lot of these lyrics despite not having listened to it in probably 20 years. I listened to this all the time on the bus in high school after it first came out. I can’t say it aged well, but as a piece of morbid entertainment, it’s entertaining. Helps that enough time has passed to know he is likely not a murderer. I’m not sure he deserves as many Grammies as he has won, but he does have a way with words.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
5/5
Standing on the shoulders of giants like The Breeders, Sleater-Kinney, Le Tigre… nothing at all wrong with that.
Nirvana
4/5
Most of this is at least as good as I remember it from my younger years, from a time when I had yet to play guitar, so I never really noticed how poorly tuned it was for a lot of this. Regardless, it’s cool that they decided that previous Unpluggeds were just bands doing nothing but play their songs, changing nothing other than their electrics to acoustics. Nirvana wanted instead to adapt their songs to the format. And to great effect. I think Tiny Desk owes a lot to this particular album, but maybe that’s a little grandiose.
Red Snapper
2/5
The last thing this list needs is another electronica album. There’s not enough crystal in the world to make me enjoy any of it. This particular one benefits from me having never heard it before and therefore tire of it.
Pixies
5/5
I’m reminded that it took me several listens to this album to really end up liking the Pixies, and ultimately to love them. This is certainly their “best” but I’m partial to Surfer Rosa. Still 5/5
Doves
2/5
The UK bias rears its ugly head again! It’s not that this is horrid, but I didn’t need to hear it and I won’t listen to it again. Most tracks have some good stuff going on, but then go on for another two unnecessary minutes. I’m tired now and I’m supposed to go to the gym later. I might have to save the rest for later, but this isn’t getting better than a 2 anyway.
Tears For Fears
3/5
Definitely the upper echelon of synth pop. I'm not usually a fan of the stuff, but this is as enjoyable as it gets. Also, I can't be the only one for whom the Dennis Miller Show ruined Everybody Wants To Rule The World.
Hole
4/5
I, like many immature boys in the early-aughts, blamed Courtney for Kurt's death. In retrospect, the "evidence" is all incredibly suspect and knowing more about her now and at the time, is not plausible. In fact, it's far more likely for him to have been able to commit the s-word on unimaginable amounts of h than it is that she killed him, much less conspired to have him murdered. Worst of it all is that I never listened to Hole because of it. Go listen to her WTF interview and you'll see her for the tragic figure that she is. This album is great, actually.
Pantera
1/5
More like trash metal, am I right?
Giant Sand
2/5
Why does the opening track sound like it was composed for a SNES game? Overall this is boring. The singer sounds like he's trying really hard to sound cool. I don't get the sense that his singing voice actually sounds like that. He probably idolizes Nick Cave and early Tom Waits, not that there's anything wrong with that. It's in the ballpark of some great indie releases from the same era, but misses the mark. The try-hard lyrics and imperfect, barely-singing vocals ruin some otherwise decent instrumentation. How you gonna put this on here but not Sparklehorse or Grandaddy? OR BUILT TO SPILL FFS
Jimmy Smith
5/5
Thanks to the Beastie Boys, I was introduced to Jimmy Smith a while back. Let me tell you, he does not disappoint. Ever. I have picked up several of his albums on reputation alone and they've all been worth it. This is no exception.
Soft Machine
1/5
People listen to this sort of crap on purpose? I would give this zero stars if I could.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
4/5
I was already slightly familiar with Nusrat from Jeff Buckley's awkward cover of Yeh Jo Halka Suroor Hai on Live at Sin-e. Not that this is something I listen to often, but I really do appreciate the meditative nature of these songs. I'm sure there's a lot of generalization and simplification of Sufi culture in my understanding of it, but it's hard to deny the beauty of their art.
Prefab Sprout
2/5
This 80s album doesn't stand out from other 80s music. This is not a must-hear because, despite having never heard it before, I feel like I've heard it before.
1/5
Oh, I am absolutely not listening to this. Rest assured, dear reader, that I have listened to this. I listened and enjoyed Limp Bizkit multiple times in my youth, but that was 25 years ago and there are not enough rose-colored glasses in the world to make me remember this fondly. And that's without adding in the context gained from watching those Woodstock 99 docs.
Spiritualized
3/5
This is good but by minute three of most songs, I’m ready to listen to something else. Probably better as background music for getting stoned and doing some watercolor. Not great when you have a lot of tedious work to do.
Jefferson Airplane
3/5
This is fine. I definitely prefer Grace Slick to the dude singer(s).
The Avalanches
2/5
Oh boy. I’m annoyed already.
The Pogues
2/5
Just listening to this gave me a hangover.
Bob Dylan
5/5
Two things the average 1001albums reviewer doesn’t appreciate: Bob Dylan and female musicians. Not to sound all holier than thou, but this is one of my favorite albums.
fIREHOSE
4/5
This will do. It's no Minutemen, but it's 1000% better than the tripe I've been getting lately.
Robert Wyatt
1/5
I recently got Soft Machine's Third, so, being that this guy is in that band, it comes as no surprise that this is terrible.
Doves
1/5
I just got their other album the other day. I’m not going to listen to this because there’s absolutely no way this band should have two albums on this list and there is not a single Built To Spill album for fucksake
Todd Rundgren
5/5
That was fantastic. Oddly enough, I picked this up on vinyl years ago but this is my first listen through of the entire album. I don’t know why, but now I know I made a great choice back then.
Ian Dury
2/5
Why exactly?
Booker T. & The MG's
5/5
Certified classic.
Shack
2/5
Why though?
Hanoi Rocks
3/5
I didn’t expect to like this. Undeniably fun. Immediately hearing the influence they had on early King Tuff, who I thought was more an amalgam of many things than so directly impacted by a smaller handful of artists.
Belle & Sebastian
3/5
Hard to listen to this and not be transported straight back to my college years. Never got super into them, but this was my favorite album of theirs, and I always respected them. Chill morose-but-optimistic vibes.
Burning Spear
2/5
Listen man, I appreciate that reggae is an important genre for Jamaica, but I’m so bored listening to this.
Guided By Voices
3/5
Fairly enjoyable. Not sure I understand the hype here, but I’m sure it hit different back in the day. At least it’s short.
Marvin Gaye
5/5
What can you say about one of the best albums of all time?
The Thrills
2/5
Brits go to California and write an album about it. Next please.
King Crimson
2/5
I’d really rather not listen to another King Crimson record, but I guess I’ll try to suffer through this… the first few minutes are not helping your case though. Get on with it! As far as prog rock from the 70s goes, it’s better to sound more like Sabbath than, idk, a synth orchestra, so some style points are in order, but otherwise, I’m exhausted by this.
The Pharcyde
3/5
A bit juvenile for me. There’s good potential here, but much like the Beasties’ License To Ill, it’s a caricature of itself. Too much rapping and singing about tail chasing and not enough cleverness or originality.
Passin’ Me By is a classic, but knowing that they would later record Runnin’ makes this album a bit of a disappointment.
Beach House
4/5
Makes me impatient for warmer weather in the middle of March.
Underworld
1/5
90s British electronica. Hard pass
The Undertones
3/5
I’ve had a run of mostly shit albums for a while now, so maybe grain of salt, but I was pleasantly surprised by this. They’re like a Northern Irish Buzzcocks. Fun, unpretentious (post-) punk.
Astor Piazzolla
3/5
Sure, I guess. I don't know enough about tango music to know if this is better or worse than others. I'm not very into it, but the arrangements and musicianship are obviously very good. Extra star for this actually being a surprising addition to the list.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
3/5
Seems I'm not alone in really wanting to enjoy Elvis Costello, but I apparently don't like him beyond This Year's Model. This is probably the last of his albums that I can stomach, but barely.
Madonna
2/5
Ok, but... hear me out... what if we *don't* need to hear this before we die?
This takes the worst parts of early aughts pop music and mashes it together with the worst of British electronic music. I don't have anything against Madonna in general, but this is not a good representation of her best music by any stretch.
The Coral
1/5
There's plenty of bad "psych" rock (if that's what this even qualifies as) on this list from 60s/70s bands. I don't need to listen to a revival of that poorly executed crap. Give me something good an innovative. If it's going to be derivative, at least have it derive from something decent and listenable.
The xx
3/5
This is maybe slightly better than the other The xx record on here? I don't see how they deserve two spots when there are so many better examples of albums everyone should probably hear before they die that aren't on any version of the list so far.
Linkin Park
1/5
Hated this when it came out and I was the right age demographic for it. Hate it now. That this shit has a lasting influence is an indictment of my generation’s more pedestrian tastes.
Einstürzende Neubauten
1/5
This is the second album like this on the list? Laibach wasn't a good enough representation of this garbage, we had to have two? Just baffling decision after baffling decision. I'm really dreading hitting submit every morning. Being at least halfway through now, I'm too stubborn to give up, but my average rating is steadily sinking below 2.9
Les Rythmes Digitales
1/5
The poor man’s Daft Punk. I don’t even like Daft Punk
The Go-Go's
4/5
If the 80s sounded more like this, I'd be more of a fan of the rest of the decade. I like this though!
The Replacements
4/5
The album hits the ground running with a catchy riff and keeps the energy going throughout. I wish I had heard this when I was younger. I would've loved this in high school when I was obsessed with the Clash. This is so well-rounded. You can't predict what the next song will sound like based on the first, but it's still a cohesive sound.
Run-D.M.C.
3/5
This album turned 40 last year. While the beats and synth are almost hilariously primitive, I feel like this is worth a listen for anyone who is into hip-hop. The message is there and it still hits in a certain way.
Tim Buckley
2/5
Jeff definitely improved on his father.
Elastica
4/5
Sure, they clearly "ripped off" Wire and The Stranglers, but as a member of The Stranglers said, "so what? Of course there's plagiarism, but unless you live in a vacuum there's always going to be." I dig both. I hear some clear influence on Sleater-Kinney and the like. This kicks ass.
Ananda Shankar
3/5
I appreciate the effort, but I prefer actual ragas from unc.
PJ Harvey
5/5
I'm about halfway or more done with this, and so far, if nothing else, this list has taught me two things: A lot of acclaimed music does indeed suck; and PJ Harvey kicks ass.
John Prine
5/5
Absolute classic. Can't go wrong here.
Turbonegro
2/5
I get that this is parody, but no Weird Al? No Tenacious D? It's a shame that this isn't paired with better lyrics, because it might actually be enjoyable.
The White Stripes
5/5
Thanks for reminding me how great this band was.
Tito Puente
4/5
That'll put some pep in your step!
Jeff Beck
2/5
I've seen this guy's name around my entire 4 decades of life and I still can't figure out what's supposedly great about him. Feels very average and, as such, not deserving of a place on this list.
Beatles
5/5
Hard to say this isn't a masterpiece, but I've heard all of the Beatles songs so many times I'm kinda bored of this. Still a 5
Air
2/5
Chill background music. Good movie. Doesn’t belong on the list, however.
Grateful Dead
1/5
Here I was thinking that Phish were a shitty interpretation of the Dead. Come to find out they’re both a cruel joke.
Ffs don’t open with a quarter-hour “song” that goes nowhere. This is why you don’t try to make are *while* tripping balls.
The Mars Volta
5/5
Oh, hell yeah, nostalgia tour here we go!
Keith Jarrett
4/5
That was quite pleasant. Definitely a needed chillness.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo
3/5
I’m ok with this. Helps that Paul Simon isn’t ruining it, even though I keep expecting his sad excuse for afrobeat to drop in at any moment. I think what’s on Apple Music is actually a re-recording of it, but it’s pleasant.
Bert Jansch
3/5
I don't have anything terrible to say, but I also don't have anything nice to say.
Bad Brains
3/5
I don't know man, I'm going to be generous with my rating here, because respect and all, but this ain't for me, and feels quite dated in 2025. Being that I'm the same age, I can't say I don't relate.
I wanted to enjoy this more, but at least it's only half an hour. I have Songs in the Key of Life, which, no matter how good, is going to feel like an eternity in comparison.
Violent Femmes
3/5
This is fun for a while. Not going to be a new favorite. For some reason I always picture Bobcat Goldthwait playing in this band.
Stevie Wonder
4/5
Ok, Stevie is great, but this album is way too long and the baby crying on Isn’t She Lovely always makes me uncomfortable. There are some undeniably great - masterful even - tracks on this, but I could speed run Mario 3 faster than this. 3.5/5
How does this have an average rating of nearly 3 stars? Pure schlock. What a joke. They couldn't even get people to buy this album at release, they had to make everyone go through the trouble of deleting it from their iPods.
A Tribe Called Quest
5/5
No notes.
Badly Drawn Boy
3/5
A bit sleepy, but overall inoffensive. Not far from my tastes when I was in my 20s in the 00s-10s. I know I gave this guy a listen back then too, but never really gelled with me.
Merle Haggard
4/5
Country used to be, like, really good.
Stephen Stills
2/5
This is a distillation of the Baby Boomer generation blowing smoke up the collective future population's ass. The messaging here is great and all, but how long after this would they shatter all illusions that they believed any of it?
Sonically, this is fine. Doesn't rise above its contemporaries, but it doesn't drag on too long, and it's pretty well produced, all told. That Jimi solo is alright but honestly sullied by its inclusion here. Any good goes right out the window by following it up with a Clapton feature. Barf.
The Pretty Things
2/5
Wasn't expecting to like this much at all, but I'm somewhat pleasantly surprised to find that it's not completely terrible. The album art, however, is. Additionally, it's a bit tiresome to listen to some of this reverb-laden early psych for very long, let alone an hour. Of course, there's the obligatory sitar.
That said, the writing seems pretty good for a band that is mostly forgotten. The arrangements are decent and there's some breadth to the sound throughout. I won't come back to this, but I can understand why some would enjoy it.
Mudhoney
2/5
Eh. Nothing of note here. I've heard the first track before. I think on the 1996 documentary Hype! which is about grunge and worth seeing, along with Doug Pray's follow-up called Scratch, which is about turntablism.
Anyway, this is middling at best. I'd give it a 2.5 if I could.
Gene Clark
2/5
This is pretty and all, but mostly unremarkable.
Dinosaur Jr.
4/5
I’ve long respected J Mascis much more than I’ve enjoyed his singing. This is the first time an album of his has been enjoyable to me enough beyond the guitar work to keep me listening.
Bon Jovi
1/5
The top review for this opens with “One of my absolute favourite things in the world is how much hipsters loathe 80s Bon Jovi.” and I’d just like to say that I loathe Bon Jovi in any decade.
New Order
2/5
It takes a lot for me to enjoy 80s cheese-synth and this album is a lot, but that’s not what I mean by “a lot”… the opening track is the epitome of this. There are some tracks here that aren’t obnoxious in that way, but are still very Manchester-in-the-80s and I just don’t care for it.
Aphex Twin
3/5
The use of the word Ambient here confuses me because some of these tracks don't fade into the background, nor do they feel fitting for any room or space I'd be able to relax in. I much prefer Drukqs, but this is enjoyable in the sense that I know this guy is a smart musician, but it's not enjoyable in the sense that I want to listen to it a bunch. If I only heard this, I would expect to not like any of his stuff. I wonder how many musicians on this list I've written off because Dimery represented them poorly by choosing a less than representative album? For example, Bad Brains I know had a great debut album, but if all I heard was the one presented to me on this list, I'd never expect to enjoy anything else by them.
Anyway, this gets a 3/5, but mostly because this is my only chance to rate Richard D James.
Duke Ellington
4/5
Fantastic. I am typically not a fan of big band jazz, but this is just right.
Supergrass
4/5
I wasn't sure what to expect here, but I'm pleasantly surprised. It's fun and not long enough to get Superannoying. Not really my thing, but it's almost my thing?
If you like this, check out a Welsh band called The Bug Club.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
2/5
The most interesting thing about this is that the cover art (by Costello himself) is where the movie Napoleon Dynamite (his nickname for himself(?)) gets its name.
Actually, upon further digging, the writer/director apparently didn't know Costello used that name previously.
'He later said, "Had I known that name was used by anybody else prior to shooting the whole film, it definitely would have been changed ... I listen to hip-hop, dude. It's a pretty embarrassing coincidence." Hess claims that "Napoleon Dynamite" was the name of a man he met around 2000 on the streets of Cicero, Illinois, while doing missionary work for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.'
Learning all sorts of things today, but what comes as no surprise is that I still haven't found an album by Elvis Costello that I like other than This Year's Model.
Weather Report
2/5
I don’t know how to feel about Jaco Pastorius. On the one hand he played bass on some of Joni Mitchell’s best work. On the other hand, there’s this. I’m not sure how much a joke this is, if at all? If you listen to Vulfpeck who are very conspicuous influenced by this album, in particular Teen Town. However, Vulfpeck clearly is just having fun and often being playful. This however, if they are being playful, are doing so with such sincerity that it comes off as mostly cringe. I agree with the commenter who said it sounds like it should be the score for some buddy cop comedy from the 80s. I understand that this is performed wonderfully, but I just can’t take it seriously.
Mj Cole
1/5
This is terrible wow
Kacey Musgraves
3/5
I was surprised by this. Not something I’ll likely come back to, but the production on this has kinda that indie sound to it, and it’s not so country that I feel like I need to be doused in bud light and draped in an American flag, so its got a leg up there.
808 State
1/5
Absolutely not.
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
4/5
Honestly I love this. Beefheart had been challenging for me in the past but for whatever reason this hits the spot right now. Puts a lot of the Nuggets material to shame.
Bill Callahan
5/5
Instant favorite. Callahan/Smog has been circling my radar for most of this century, and it’s clicked for brief moments here and there, but this time it’s for sure. The driving pulse of this picks up unexpectedly and almost imperceptibly at first but carries through to the end. This is speaking to me for sure.
Tangentially, I’m reminded of all the times I’ve tried to enjoy Mountain Goats or Magnetic Fields for more than one or two songs but failing. Either Bill Callahan is the best version of that oeuvre, or I need to give them another chance too.
Sam Cooke
5/5
Can’t go wrong with a little Sam Cooke.
Travis
1/5
Wow these all sound like the same boring song. If this is post-britpop, that means britpop just transitioned into this schmoopsy poopsy Coldplay sound that also lasted way longer than it should have. They seem to be trying to ape Radiohead, but no one can seem to pull that off and not sound overly earnest. There’s so much emotion forced into this over-produced schlock that it has no feeling.
Aerosmith
2/5
Only thing impressive about this is how many people found it worthy of 5 stars.
Barry Adamson
1/5
How did this guy earn two spots on the list? Where is Built To Spill? Modest Mouse? Neutral Milk Hotel? Like them or not, they at least influenced musicians who came after them and are way more deserving of everyone’s time than whatever the fuck this is and all the endless triphop and britpop I’ve had to endure or ignore. I really am not enjoying this project much anymore.
Mekons
1/5
What the hell did I just listen to? What were you Brits doing over there in the 80s?
Kings of Leon
1/5
The amount of incredible musicians left off this list so that Kings of Leon could have two albums when they hardly deserve one. If I wasn't so far into this list, I'd be giving up on it for sure.
Scott Walker
3/5
Starting with a Jacques Brel cover is one way to get my attention… I have long heard about the mystique and cult following that Scott Walker has, but I think this is my first exposure to a full album. I dig it. In some ways it sounds like a musical, but if musicals sounded like this, I’d be more apt to enjoy that genre. The guy had real chops.
The Style Council
2/5
Not sure what this is about. Some weird novelty album that I for some reason needed to hear?
Cypress Hill
4/5
Didn’t know these guys were this good! Would love to give this a closer listen some time.
Slayer
1/5
Thrash metal is… not my thing.
Gotan Project
2/5
Less offensive than lots of other electronica. I still feel like I fell asleep and woke up to the DVD menu repeating forever. This isn’t something I’d listen to and analyze and it doesn’t make me feel anything other than anxious for it to end.
Milton Nascimento
3/5
I usually brace myself when I’m told something is Brazilian music. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed plenty of Brazilian musicians (e.g. Tim Maia, Os Mutantes, Seu Jorge, Jorge Ben), but they’re typically not what I’ve been taught to expect. I think what I typically don’t like is bossa nova or Brazilian jazz from middle of the last century. This, on the other hand, is a pleasant surprise. I find this incredibly pleasant to listen to. I can even hear guitar techniques that Paul Simon clearly aped.
I don’t have a lot of analysis to give but I think this would be great dinner party music.
ABBA
4/5
How is this so good??
ABBA
4/5
I think I preferred The Visitors, but I’m still enjoying this in spite if myself.
Nico
2/5
Love/hate on this one. An entire album of Nico’s singing is usually too much, but there are moments where it really works, almost ironically. Which can also be annoying. That said, she somehow made a James Taylor song enjoyable, so points for that.
Emmylou Harris
3/5
A little too Jesus at times, but I dig this for what it is.
Can
3/5
I mean, it’s alright. Dunno if I needed a third Can record to listen to, but I didn’t hate it. It’s a groove.
The Damned
3/5
I’m surprised I’ve never heard this before. This is totally something I would have listened to in high school. Pretty decent for what it is and it clocks I’m at under 40 min, so that feels like a win.
The Specials
2/5
I'm not convinced we needed more than one album from this band. Their first is a classic, this is largely forgettable. Free Nelson Mandela is legendary though.
Tangerine Dream
3/5
I know that "this isn't on my streaming service of choice" is a bit of a cop-out, but literally can't find or figure out which is the original release anywhere, and based on the descriptions, I doubt I'd enjoy this very much, so it's getting a very generous 3.
Basement Jaxx
2/5
I don’t think I needed to listen to this. Maybe I’d have danced to this in the naughties but I certainly don’t want to listen to this while sitting at my desk in the year of our lord 2025
Fugazi
5/5
Straight edge never sounded so cool.
Julian Cope
1/5
I’ve tried writing songs of my own before and self-doubt always creeps in thinking the lyrics are shit and I’ll sound like a twat, but I don’t think I need to worry so much about that. If I keep it under an hour, nothing can be that bad. I can probably count on one hand the albums that are longer which don’t grate on the nerves.
Kate Bush
4/5
I don’t usually expect to like an artist’s “later work” when the first few albums are as good as Kate Bush’s are. That and it’s difficult to follow something as incredible as Hounds of Love. Sure, this might not compare, but damn… I really like her.
The Jam
3/5
Didn’t expect to enjoy this, but it’s solid post-punk
The Notorious B.I.G.
3/5
First off, fuck Puffy.
If you can ignore the misogyny, this is very good. If you can’t, it’s still pretty good, but super uncomfortable.
Sepultura
1/5
My best friend in 8th grade loved this shit. Me today does not.
Country Joe & The Fish
2/5
Gimme an F!
Gimme a U!
Gimme a C!
Gimme a K!
What’s that spell?
FUCK (this shit)!
Van Morrison
1/5
Hell no.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
For fuck sake. Won’t say I didn’t like this but won’t say I’ll listen again.
CHVRCHES
2/5
I’m feeling way to cynical for this.
Terence Trent D'Arby
2/5
You know what? I’ll pass.
Fred Neil
2/5
I’m bored.
White Denim
5/5
Not the White Denim album I would have chosen, but I’ll take it! Vastly underrated band. Check out their album Corsicana Lemonade.
2/5
Something about this is just not my thing. It’s great punk, the harmonies are fun, the tracks are simple and short and aggressive… check, check, and check. But for whatever reason X doesn’t usually land for me. Not sure why.
Sebadoh
3/5
This was a decent listen. Very much of its time on the indie scene. Nothing really stands out as especially notable or catchy though. I’m still annoyed that Built To Spill isn’t on this list anywhere, especially with the inclusion of this…
Steve Earle
1/5
I am a day older than this album. I sure as hell hope I’ve aged better.
Bobby Womack
4/5
Just like some good ol Kentucky Fried Chicken
Grant Lee Buffalo
1/5
I’m like 30+ albums behind, but I keep revealing albums every day. This isn’t making me want to chip away at that number.
Take Soul Asylum but make it even worse somehow!
Honestly this sounds like if you took every 90s folk rock act and blended them together into one bland soft rock smoothie.
Led Zeppelin
3/5
This barely makes the list of Zeppelin albums you need to hear before you die.
Megadeth
2/5
Didn’t care much for Rust In Peace, didn’t expect to like this much either.
The Beach Boys
3/5
Damn weird timing. Or is it? RIP Brian Wilson
Feel flows is a vibe
Led Zeppelin
5/5
One of the best debut albums from the 70s
Tom Waits
5/5
Masterpiece.
Frank Ocean
4/5
To the reviewer who said “This music is the soundtrack for the beginning of the degeneration of music and society as a whole…” etc: how you gonna put that on Frank Ocean. I’m absolutely baffled. You don’t have to like his music, but to say the logical outcome of the musical industry after this is Takashi 69 is just batshit insane.
Now that’s out of the way, this isn’t 100% my cup of tea, but on the right day, it 100% is. It starts with the boot up sound from a PS1, so points for nostalgia. Followed by Thinkin Bout You, which is an earworm if I’ve ever heard one.
I enjoy that this is basically sad boy r&b which I didn’t know was ever a thing before i originally heard this album. “You know I’m something of a sad boy myself”
Dead Kennedys
5/5
Crucial in my radicalization in my youth. Angry enough to kick ass. Satirical enough to still be fun.
Queen Latifah
2/5
I want to like this but it’s about as mid as her acting. It’s passable but that’s about it.
N.W.A.
2/5
This is a rough listen. I mean, yeah, fuck the police, but this didn't age well otherwise. Yikes. Groundbreaking as it may have been, I'm glad we're mostly past the bitches and hoes stuff. Also, Ice has said some shady shit in recent years. I don't feel like I need to worry too much that I'm being a lame white dude about this.
Cocteau Twins
4/5
I still am not sure how to pronounce their name, but by the time Elizabeth Fraser starts singing, I forget that I care.
Dennis Wilson
3/5
Oh gosh, this is so very 70s. I can't decide if that's the good or the bad part about it. At times it's proto-yacht rock, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's a bit long for my liking, but I might just not be in the mood for this sort of music right now. Overall: Mid.
Sparks
3/5
Not always gonna be my thing, but I could totally get into this on the right day. Fun glam rock, if a little camp for my tastes.
The Libertines
2/5
This sounds like just about every other indie rock band that was recording music in 2004. Not sure why it's 15 minutes need to be any longer than that.
Queen
3/5
I don't think I'm familiar with a single song on this album despite wearing out my Queen's Greatest Hits cassette in my youth. Their sound hadn't quite come into its own, yet. This sounds a bit more like other 70s bands than I expected it to, but there's no mistaking Freddie Mercury.
Supergrass
2/5
I already got their other one, which was decent, but not worthy of two albums. It’s good for britpop, but that’s a low bar, amigo.
Leonard Cohen
4/5
Turns out I'm an early Cohen fan, but not a later Cohen fan. The king of the nylon string dirge. I totally get why folks wouldn't like this, but I like rain, overcast skies, and Elliott Smith, so it's no surprise that I do.
Thelonious Monk
5/5
I'll take Monk over (more than?) half of this list.
Little Richard
4/5
Hard to go wrong with Little Richard. It's just fun.
Fairport Convention
4/5
What a voice! I don't know what I heard of theirs before that made me think I didn't like this, but I'm very much into this right now. It's feeling like rainy London town here in Portland, Oregon right now, so that might be helping set the atmosphere. Whatever the reason, this is hitting the spot.
The Birthday Party
3/5
I didn't hate this! A younger, more punk Nick Cave. I'm actually kinda surprised at the low overall rating. The album art doesn't do this any favors though.
Paul Simon
2/5
I would consider this the beginning of sharp decline in quality of Paul Simon albums.
Sleater-Kinney
4/5
Classic riot grrl. Classic PNW indie rock. I can understand how her voice could get to be too much, but I think that’s a feature not a bug.
Happy this is included, but still baffled by the Built to Spill snub. They should also be in the book.
Neil Young
5/5
I know this is Neil’s best selling record and the best selling album of 1972, but it’s actually one of the ones I listen to the least. Great record, and it might be perfect if not for the inclusion of “A Man Needs A Maid”. Not a great song, weird message… it’s a shame it’s smack dab in the middle of Side A. Would be easier to overlook if it ended the album. This may be the only of his albums I’ll give less than 5 stars, but rounded up from 4.5 so I guess it doesn’t really count.
The Byrds
2/5
Essential only as the precursor to much better music
Peter Gabriel
4/5
I like Peter Gabriel despite myself.
The Who
4/5
Undoubtedly one of if not the finest of Who albums.
Patti Smith
5/5
Two things to say about this:
1. Patti Smith is such a badass.
2. This is the only way I want to listen to Van Morrison.
The Chemical Brothers
2/5
“Lost in the K-Hole” A Memoir by Elon Musk
I find it strange that people sit down and listen to this sort of thing (sober). I enjoyed their videos in the past, but this album is just too much. Club music for people who don’t go to clubs.
Amy Winehouse
5/5
I mean, yeah.
Pavement
4/5
Not my favorite Pavement record, but Pavement is Pavement.
Black Sabbath
5/5
Once again baffled by my younger self for not having listened to more Sabbath.
Common
3/5
Loved this when it came out, but as time goes on, I find myself less and less impressed with Common (don't get me started on his acting)...
The Band
5/5
On an inexplicably long list of duds and way too many classic rock albums, this one stands out to me. Certainly one of my favorites of its contemporaries. Jawbone and King Harvest are enough for me, but there are no duds here.
Genesis
1/5
No. Just no. Are these people sadistic?
Ali Farka Touré
4/5
Solid, chill
Björk
4/5
I haven’t listened to this in a long time, but I was really into Björk for a couple of years around the time this and Vespertine came out. I’m not much of a Björk fan anymore. I don’t dislike her now, but it’s no longer my thing. This listen though… I don’t know if it’s just the Dolby Atmos, but it hits different this time. It’s very atmospheric and immersive. Her voice is still gorgeous to me I guess. I’m also a sucker for weird avant-garde vocal shit (i.e. Dirty Projectors, with whom she did a collab EP a few years back). I wasn’t expecting to give this much more than 2.5 or 3, but it’s a solid 4. I am, however, annoyed that there are 4 of her albums on the list but they didn’t include her actual best album, Post.
Simon & Garfunkel
2/5
Meh
Isaac Hayes
4/5
Not mad about this.
Tortoise
5/5
Honestly surprised at the low score for this. I guess I'm the odd man out for liking chill instrumental post rock.
Belle & Sebastian
3/5
Transports me back to my youth.
Fiona Apple
5/5
I see Fiona, I rate 5
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
5/5
I like this album a lot, but it set me up for disappointment thinking that he would put out at least one other great album. Not the case. Oh well, this is still great.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
5/5
Neil and Crazy Horse hit the ground running with this album. No skips.
Miles Davis
5/5
Finally some jazz… not enough of it on this list. This isn’t my favorite Miles record, but it’ll suffice. He’s not even my favorite jazz trumpeter and I think his second quintet is where it’s at. Check out Lee Morgan if you want something more exciting. He could’ve been more legendary than Miles if he hadn’t been murdered by his wife…
The Smashing Pumpkins
3/5
Not as into Pumpkins as my peers at the time, but this is certainly their best.
David Bowie
3/5
Outside of the singles, I get kinda bored with this. But man are those singles great.
Janis Joplin
3/5
RIP
Beck
4/5
When has Beck not been good? I don't think there's been a time in my life that I wasn't a fan.
Ryan Adams
2/5
Listen, I was a 27 year old white dude once. My favorite movie around that age was High Fidelity. That was 13 years ago when I also liked this album, but I also didn't know how much of an actual POS this dude is.
If you can separate the art from the artist, that's great for you! Part of me wishes I could, but I can't and don't enjoy this anymore given the subtext.
Boards of Canada
3/5
Not typically my thing, but this album is great for chill vibes.
The Byrds
2/5
The Byrds and I just never really hit it off.
Sonic Youth
4/5
The only Sonic Youth record I sort of "get"
Leonard Cohen
4/5
Fantastic album. My first intro to Leonard Cohen's music was his work from the early 00s and it's just terrible. The poetry is there but it's incredibly hokey when paired with whatever budget instruments it sounds like he's using. But here, in his prime, he's fantastic.
James Taylor
2/5
[MichaelScottyellingNO.gif]
Massive Attack
1/5
So we all need to listen to every Massive Attack album before we die? Even though they all sound incredibly similar to each other?
U2
2/5
Astrud Gilberto
1/5
It's just so cloyingly sweet. I don't think I'm ever in the mood for this.
Dusty Springfield
5/5
Ella Fitzgerald
3/5
I'm with the top reviewer here. I haven't even listened to this yet and - two things: 1: I already know I thoroughly enjoy Ella and own one or two of her records. 2: Compilations aren't fair for a greatest of all time type list except in the rare occasions where it's the only way to listen to an artist's output (I can't even think of any examples, but there may be some). So, with that in mind, this is (tops) a 3. Which fits my rubric anyway. A three is something I appreciate or even like, but I likely won't listen to again. Sorry Ella, it's not your fault.
The National
4/5
I'm a dad now, so I am required to enjoy this.
The Rolling Stones
5/5
The Stones at their best.
Pixies
3/5
This isn't the best Pixies album by any stretch...
Elliott Smith
5/5
This is a top 3 of all time for me. I seriously don't see this as depressing music. Sure there are a couple of straightup sad songs, but I find hope in the dreariness. Portland misses you, Elliott.
Ramones
4/5
4/5
Aerosmith
1/5
Nah dude. Nah.
Derek & The Dominos
2/5
Clapton can get fucked.
Thundercat
4/5
I've liked this album since it came out. Hard to believe it's been 8 years. I had never been so interested in bass guitar before finding Thundercat. What a weirdo. I love it.
Big Brother & The Holding Company
4/5
I have this on vinyl. Fantastic music. And Janis could sing, man. Crazy to think how young she would've been given that she eventually joined the 27 club. Makes me feel old. Cool R Crumb artwork.
Beastie Boys
5/5
Banger after banger. So glad they followed up that juvenile first album with this. The following 2-4 records are even better.
Joni Mitchell
5/5
Other than Fleetwood Mac, Joni made the best mom music there is.
Stevie Wonder
3/5
I always think I like Stevie more than I actually do...
Simon & Garfunkel
3/5
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
My main issue with Hendrix is that his albums drag at times. Difficult to want to listen to the end.
Slint
5/5
This is one of the most surprisingly enjoyable albums of all time.
Rufus Wainwright
3/5
Otis Redding
5/5