I recognized two songs from the radio, only one of which i knew was by Dire Straits. the rest of the album was slow and felt disjointed, and even though it's fairly short, i kept hoping each song would be the last. definitely didn't seem like it would be THE first record to sell one million CDs. But the power of wanting MTV is great, i guess.

There is no version of "my life" that *MUST* include this double live album.

Highlight of this album came when I was listening to the last few tracks while driving two angry cats to the vet, and my partner turns around and says "Oh, are you the wailers?" Otherwise a fine album but indistinguishable from their other two albums on the list.

"Superstition" is great, unfortunately canceled out by "Maybe Your Baby." High highs and low lows aside, I didn't love it.

Maybe unfair to judge an album that I started listening to while waiting to board a red eye flight, and then finished while on said red eye flight, but I really hated this. The noodling and riffing were unbearable, the tracks were sooo long, and I just didn't like anything about the way it sounded.

go on marvin, write a whole album about sex. in seriousness, this was just a solid, well-paced album. vocals are wonderful, instrumentation was great.

i was all aboard until the spoken word piece. the good vibes were sort of canceled out by the lengths of some tracks and the bummer that was the spoken word components of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix"

Really like "Spacelab" and "The Model." Sounds great, trailblazing. I was excited to listen to this one.

Sure was some AC/DC.

I love this album from start to finish.

Surprisingly good live album. I kind of lost interest about 2/3 of the way, but had a decent time listening to it.

When i started the album my first thought was "oh this is some Clapton shit, isnt it." Didn't hate it as much as i thought I would, all things considered. One of those considered things is Eric Clapton though, and the other is repetitive blues riffing, two big "nopes" for me.

really loved this. i wasn't expecting it to be nearly fully instrumental, but that's often a real positive for me and this album was no different. "Larks Tongues In Aspic (Part II)" was the standout track for me. Re-listening to appreciate the build and textures.

Love it. No notes.

Classic but not my Jam. It feels very repetitive in such a high dose, and the album was almost too easy to ignore.

I thought I was going to have a hard time listening to this album critically because I generally like New Order a lot. I've heard most of this album as individual songs. But I have never heard the full album, and \"Face Up\" was new to me with good reason ... such poor vocals. Kind of ruined an album I was enjoying a lot up to that track. \"Sunrise\" is probably my favorite song from this album. But I also must admit I've always thought it was a Cure track. One general nitpick: the rhymey-rhymey lyrics all over the album were grating on me a little since I was paying attention ... but I can't argue with the vibes so it gets a 4.

In terms of music production, vocals, etc, it sounds good. Varied instrumentation, good harmonies. But it draaaaags. The second half of the album was slow and boring and I couldn't wait for it to end. I was tempted to listen to the album at 1.5x speed.

The instrumental start to the first track was promising, but then the singing started. The singer is somehow managing to mimic Bob Dylan and Springsteen at the same time and oooof, that does not work for me. Can't tell exactly why I hated this album so much. Went back and forth for me between "inoffensive" and "want to turn this off" but the vocals ultimately killed it for me. And the length. And the samey-sameness of the songs. I love some fuzzed-out non-structured albums, perhaps it was just really wrong vibes for a rainy Sunday morning? IDK. Tempted to give it 1 star, only giving it 2 for the song "Burning" which stood out from the morass.

14 tracks, 29:04 ... buckle up i think the Ramones exist best as a 2 minute interlude of distortion, affectation, and worst/best lyrics to enliven your evening, your soundtrack, your bar karaoke, your dance night. it didn't seem like even they had the attention span to finish the album. will continue to enjoy songs from this album individually, will probably never listen to the album in its entirety again. 4 stars nonetheless for "Judy is a Punk" and "Blitzkrieg Bop".

Liked the sound and vibes, but got frustrated with the long unstructured songs. This was hugely influential to a lot of music I love, but I didn't enjoy listening to this album.

Some of my favorite S&G songs, some of my least favorite S&G songs... Hard to rate.

This was a really hard one for me to get through. Really strongly disliked the vocals, the lyrics, and the instrumentation. I was surprised how electrified the sound was versus the overall Ren Faire vibes. Hard to parse. Very hard to parse.

I'm having a difficult time rating this. Musically it's very very good, very much up my alley. Vocally ... baffling. But by a few songs in, I kind of settled into the singing voice and stopped hating it so much, and I ended up really liking the album. Kind of blowing my mind that I never tried to listen to this band back in the mid 00s but here we are.

The goodwill built up by the first three tracks on this album was erased by South Side, a track so cringey I wanted to turn it off. Most of the rest of the album was fine, but any time that Moby was using his own vocals, the track suffered. There's a reason that he succeeded by using samples extensively. I never again need to hear his attempt at sexy pillow talk. "Porcelain" and "Natural Blues" are the standout tracks. Highs are canceled out by lows, it gets a 3.

it's always interesting to hear songs you've been listening to your whole life situated within an album. the six (!) singles on this album have structure and polish that the rest of the album did not. i'm not a huge fan of their musical style so the rest of the album didn't add much to my appreciation of their songs but "Looking Out My Back Door" and "Who'll Stop the Rain" are both classic. What is up with John Fogerty's pronunciation of words that rhyme with "burn"? I always assumed "Big wheel keep on toinin' / Proud Mary keep on boinin'" was specific to that song but he does it a bunch in this album too ...

this album has such relentless pace and energy, with a few quieter interludes, and saves two of the best songs for the last few tracks. the middle of the album dragged for me a bit in terms of the repetition in the production but that's typical of this era, and the lyrics are a treatise and need the time. these songs have been sampled so widely that even though i haven't listened to this album through before, it felt familiar. i love the interplay between chuck d's intensity and flavor flav's hype. great album, glad to have heard it at last.

Love it.

Did not enjoy this. I don't like his voice, and the whole album sounded like knockoffs of songs I might enjoy (or might roll my eyes at) rewritten with painfully rhymey lyrics.

I don't mind Beck when he's carving out his own mumbly piece of the "spoken word rock" corner. The sound collage usually works for me, he's good at textures and rhythms. The closer he steps toward hip hop, the less I like it and the less convincing it is. "Hell Yes" was the worst track on the album for me. Didn't hate it overall but wouldn't seek it out.

classic, nothing fancy garage rock. most of the songs are covers, but i liked a few of their originals ("The Witch" and "Strychnine"). i generally love the vibe of these lo-fi recordings, and the singer has a great scream. i can see the influence on future artists. not much more to it. giving it a 3.

i love this album. i don't know how to rate it because i want to be critical for the degree to which it emulates its source material, but it's so committed to the bit that it WORKS. it sounds great 17 years after it arrived. i think the lyrics in particular work so well and lift it into the 21st century. as much as i love the singles, i love the less well-known tracks on this album. works together as an album, works broken out into singles. rip amy winehouse

enjoyed this album sonically more than i thought i would given how abrasive their combined vocal style is. but i really liked the way it sounded, i liked the way they used samples, and i appreciated the dynamics that were worked into it. i like an album that saves the singles until the back half.

Enjoyable! A little repetitive but I enjoyed the subtlety. Kind of surprised this music is not more prevalent within pop culture considering how many bands were clearly listening to them.

Why am I being made to listen to this? So non-descript, no edge, no personality.

I'm generally on board with this type of music but it didn't stand out to me - maybe 1001 albums has been serving me too much post-punk lately. it took one or two tracks to get over the vocalists bizarre affect but once i did, i got into it. no songs really stood out over the others and it was good music to work to but it was not keeping my attention. 3.5 but rounded down.

Poppy goodness! Pretty fun to hear "Alright" in the context of an album not a single scene in a film. Ultimately not my favorite style of music but this was a solid album.

squonky squonky jazz sax and brass, oooooof. i barely made it through the first 10 minutes which were nails-on-chalkboard bad to hear. the album gradually became less bad to listen to, but more boring. i kept wanting to walk away from the second and third tracks to do chores. i kept checking the timestamp. i just didn't want to hear more. then the final track came on and i was into it! i really loved the layering and tones in that track ... and then the jazz horns started again and i was back to disliking it. this album seems to represent a transition moment for this band, unfortunately for me, it's between one genre i am indifferent to and another genre i dislike. i feel unfair giving this album such a low rating since i'm sure the musicianship was very high, but it's just very much something i never want to listen to again.

Can I get a pic for the gram? Great album. I liked the background music, energy, wished I had been listening on something that had a little more bass.

I wish I could deal with her vocal style, but it's not for me. I was charmed by a lot of the very 1971 lyrical choices, and the music sounded good, but I was ultimately waiting for the album to end.

I expected to be bored by nearly an hour of Beastie Boys but there was a lot of variety in the backup music. I particularly enjoyed the songs with hardcore percussion and structure. And all the flutes. Impossible for me to separate Sabotage from the Spike Jonze video for it, and in fact I watched the video immediately after I finished the album.

The vibes between the two albums in this double album set were so different. I didn't connect with the first album at all. The second album was a wild tone shift and while I found it more interesting than the first, I was repulsed by the many food metaphors for sex, the Candyman song, and to wrap it up with a ballad about marriage ... it lost me hard.

Not my favorite. The music sounds fiiiiiine I guess, but contained nothing to make me pay attention other than the ridiculous lyrics. I kept thinking I was listening to the song with the most ridiculous lyrics, only for two songs later to be stranger. Nothing makes me pay attention like "But there goes God/ In his sexy pants and his sausage dog/ And he can't stand Beelzebub/ 'Cause he looks so good in black, in black."

Listened to this for the thousandth time just to be sure it would get a 5 and yes it gets a 5. This is a top 10 album for me. So concise, dynamic, funny. Love the lyrics, the vocals, the percussion.

An old favorite for me, sang it nearly word for word. Impossible to judge, I've spent so much time with it, so it gets a 5.

Not sure what I was expecting with this, knowing the Kinks only by their early big singles ... I didn't dislike it but it was kind of all over the place. Some songs seemed Beatles-y, some were Dylan-y, and some were these quirky very English songs that I understand they moved toward later in their career. Decent soundtrack for cooking dinner on a Sunday evening.

I feel like I can't rate the Beatles bc I'm not qualified or something. This album was very Beatlesy, and while it was novel to hear new-to-me Beatles songs, it was all what I was expecting. Giving it a 3.

A bit boring, but I like it. One of those albums where the singles stand out from the rest of the tracks. "Animals" was my favorite track that I hadn't heard before. "Life During Wartime" is such a great song and Pittsburgh shoutout so my civic pride rounds this album from 3.5 up to 4.

I recognized two songs from the radio, only one of which i knew was by Dire Straits. the rest of the album was slow and felt disjointed, and even though it's fairly short, i kept hoping each song would be the last. definitely didn't seem like it would be THE first record to sell one million CDs. But the power of wanting MTV is great, i guess.

Loved it, but the saxophone kept throwing me off. Sometimes i liked it, sometimes i did not! But the energy & lyrics kept me listening.

Another album I don't know how to rate. Music by technically competent people who everyone likes, but is boring as hell? Giving it a 2.

I could hear so much of this singer's influence in future artists who clearly were listening to him. He's got a great voice, and I liked the album lyrically. It's just not really my type of music.

this album contains my two favorite U2 songs, and started out so strong. but i went from "oh this is my U2 era" to "oh i'm really done with Bono wailing at me" to "ok kind of like it" back to "shut up Bono" by the end.

Not my favorite. I kept waiting for it to be something i recognized but halfway through i realized i was just waiting for it to be the Pet Shop Boys instead. Very boring and I didn't like the lead vocalist's voice. Might go listen to the Pet Shop Boys now.

i listened to this album a lot in the late 00s, and while the band's whole *thing* has not grown well with me, musically i still like the album a lot. i really love the instrumental tracks especially. rounding a 3.5 down to 3.

Not quite sure how to rate this one. In terms of song structure and lyrics, great. In terms of vocals, instrumentation and overall feel of the album, not my style, and I found myself wanting it to be over.

This was a lot of Led Zeppelin. Maybe at some point in time, someone needed an hour and twenty minutes of this, but not me, not now.

great album. i loved the ebb and flow and pacing of it. her voice is fantastic. glad to have learned of this one.

Good, I'm sure. Not my thing ... or at least not in this high of a quantity.

Not really my type of music but it sounded great, especially for a live album

Great listen. I haven't explored much of Frank Black's solo career but I felt this was a very cohesive album that was so listenable.

Fantastic album start to finish. I had never heard this album in full, but there are so many singles from it that I love that the whole thing felt deeply familiar. They walk the line between having a distinctive sound and including a lot of variety within their songs. The album was paced well, nothing felt like an afterthought. Very glad I listened.

I appreciated the tracks that felt more proto-hardcore and was more indifferent towards the rest. Music that was once groundbreaking but no longer feels so is always hard to rate. Hmm. 2.5 rounded up to 3?

sounded great but just got a type of music i enjoy listening to. two or three songs really stood out but the rest sort of blended together into one melancholy, lovely song. 2.5, but rounding up to 3 for her lovely voice and vocal style.

I never know what to make of Roxy Music. This is maybe the first time I've listened to Country Life but I've heard other albums and I never know how to process it. It's not bad, and I don't even really dislike it. But I'm always scratching my head at why it has a reputation for being so influential to so many different types of musicians. I wasn't there, but I'd like to understand it. Country Life did not answer my questions. Fine music, the album was nicely paced and hung together very well. It's a 3.

Not a bad listen.

Not enough of a Bob Dylan fan to enjoy anything beyond the "best of" collections. The album was fine. Nothing interesting or exciting.

Loved it. Very familiar territory for me but a band I've slept on for a long time.

This album is jam-packed with interesting and varying music, my favorite Police song in "Synchronicity II" and some songs I hated too. Short and sweet, fun, a little disturbing.

Did not like this album at all. I like some Neil Young, but not this. The rhymey-rhyming was really, really, really bothering me. His voice felt off, just such a bummer of an album.

Reading about The Kinks trajectory of being blackmailed from touring in the US in the early part of the British Invasion and subsequently leaning into being more specifically English because they had lost their international audience was kind of an interesting story. But this album is the outcome of that and I did not like it.

I love the way this album sounds. There are so many songs I love. My only criticism is about the structure of the album, I felt that the pacing was not great and the energetic start left the last few songs, which were each beautiful on their own, feeling like a let down.

there was an organ solo around 1:04 that i liked quite a bit, but that was one of the few high points on this album. the version of "Smoke on the Water" somehow eliminated all the parts of that song that i like. the drum solos, guitar solos, wailing vocal solos ... the vocals in general ... just added up to an unlistenable, rambling listening experience. i don't think the obvious musicianship outscores my dislike of listening to this album. i'm giving it a 1.5 and rounding it down to a 1.

shout out to the horses whinnying at the beginning of "Sleigh Ride" i'm a fan of this style of musical production, but not a fan of christmas music, so i'm having a hard time figuring out how to rate this. it's all quite familiar, in a way that makes me feel like i'm in a mall in december, and its odd hearing such talented vocalists singing such dirt-simple songs as "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer." but in terms of christmas music, it could be much, much worse. i'm rating this before the album is finished and i'm not going to make myself listen to the rest.

Really disliked. Stylistically and lyrically it was a bummer. This is not one I will revisit.

Loved this album but wish it had pushed its experimental nature a bit further

Not sure if I was just not in the mood, or I just didn't like this album, but it did nothing for me. Never really caught my attention.

A little jazzier (re: too much sax) than I'm usually up for, but I was baking cookies in my kitchen on a rainy Saturday and it was nice to listen to. If I was doing embarrassing mom-dances while mixing up batter, no one needs to know.

I enjoyed this! Much more than I expected to. I'm giving it a 3.5 but rounding down to 3 for that cover of America which baaaaarely even qualifies as one.

i'm surprised how much i actually liked this one. i was imagining that all the tracks would be either like track 1 or track 2, but he actually has more "range" (if you can call it that in this case) than i was giving him credit for. lyrically the themes and topics were about what i was expecting, but the album was pretty listenable.

i was hoping to be pleasantly surprised but this, but i was not. i don't feel that this needed or benefitted from being a double album. "comfortably numb" is the high point.

This album is a 4, minus a full point for that Red White and Blue song, but that was a bonus track maybe? So back up to 3.5. And rounding up bc BREAKING THE LAW BREAKING THE LAW

i liked the album quite a bit but no songs beyong the six (6!) singles and the bonus track really stood out to me. loved the lyrics and her vocals. "All I Really Want" has always been my favorite song of hers and it opens the album so strong. I cannot decide between 4 and 5 stars.

I loved the tone of this albums, instrumentation, and her voice. Beautiful album.

I love an instrumental, and I'm a fan of the tone that they set out in the first track, Green Onions, but 6 or 7 songs in, the album started to get repetitive.

I liked this, but I was also charmed by reading the backstory of the recording of this album, which probably adds at least a point. Good lyrics and tone, and I thought it sounded great for an album that wasn't even recorded in a studio.

the album didn't feel stronger than its title track. i wish i had more to say, but it fell flat in a way i was not expecting, and i found myself ignoring it.

Love this album. I love the harmonies, the melancholy, the weird sound collages, the Sloop John B, the pace. So many ideas packed so neatly into 35 minutes.

Good listening, nicely structured songs, great lyrics.

I'm glad it was short because it was not for me. I really disliked his voice which was not helped by the song writing. 1.5 rounded down.

I enjoyed this quite a bit right up to (but not including) the last track. something about the instrumentation and vocals seems to be a reference point for a lot of newer music that i like, so it felt comfortable and familiar, even though it was new.

Fine. Elvisy. I enjoyed the first half of the album more than the second, which was a little more love-songy than I prefer.

I generally like Talking Heads so I generally liked this. I didn't find much that stood out and made me sit up and go "this!" but on the other hand I enjoyed the entire album. This is a 3.5 rounded up to a 4.

I feel pre-disposed to like this band's sound. Cryptograms is one of my go-tos, and while I don't think the band covers much new ground, what they create keeps me listening. This album felt in this vein -- comfortable, listenable and varied enough to keep me interested until the end.

I've never really understood the appeal of Springsteen. Always sounds to me like he's doing drunken karaoke of the actual songs. Specifically on the song Born to Run, there's a quality to the song where it feels like the music is going too fast and the vocals are struggling to keep up. The production of so many of these songs is over the top, fuzzed out and full of wild little instrumental solos that just baffle me. I don't get it. That said ... special shout out to the glockenspiel player who hangs on for the whole song Born To Run, it's my favorite part. Album is a 2.5 rounded down.

Disliked this one quite a bit. Maybe I was in a bad mood, but it was hitting one note, and I didn't want to hear that note. The main vocalist had a stylistic tick that reminded me of Bob Dylan, in a bad way. The highlight was Holiday. I never want to hear Bob's Yer Uncle again.

Had a great time listening to this. This is an album that came out the year I left for college and was extremely widely played, so it felt very familiar even if I had never listened to it from front to back. Really like the textures and tone shifts.

I want to love this album more than I do. That said, I do like it a lot. I just want to be as thrilled with Bowie as everyone else. Maybe someday it will click. Until then, it's a 3.

This was fine. Surprised I didn't recognize any of this, honestly. It seems like music Pandora would have added into my stations based on how clearly influenced they are by the types of 80s goth rock and synthetic rock I love. But it didn't give me much new, just kind of made me want to go listen to Joy Division instead. 3.5 but rounded down to 3.

I thought I had never heard this. Turns out I've just never stopped to learn the name of the artist behind 3 or 4 very ubiquitous songs of the past 15 years. I'm not sure where I stand on this one. I liked it, but I was bored by it. I think it's maybe a 3.

This was a great listen

I tried to find the 1969 recording but ended up listening to the 2000 CD release version instead, with 8 extra songs. Didn't regret it at all. Loved the between-song banter. This is my favorite live album I've listened to for this 1001 albums project. I would probably give it a 4 for just the music, but for the concept behind the recording it gets a 5.

Pretty enjoyable, but ultimately not something I'd listen to without prompting. I enjoyed the "H2Ogate Blues" track which was full of charisma. Also liked "The Bottle". Feeling a 3.5, rounded up to 4.

This album has some really catchy songs, which is its best attribute. It has a sort of overthetop wall of production value that doesn't stop whacking you over the head. I needed less of something (less of the vocals, please) and the band just kept coming back to bring me more. Maybe I missed the moment for this one, or maybe I wouldn't have liked it in 2004 either.

pretty enjoyable, surprisingly musical, especially tracks that sampled orchestral pieces pretty heavily. i find his style to be fairly repetitive though, which negates a lot of what i like about it. 3.5 rounded down to 3.

a difficult one to rate. this was more musical than i was expecting, and when it worked it worked well. but other songs were a little shakier and i found the album dragged at different points. but the influence this album has had on so much music i love was obvious. i'll give this a 3.5 rounded down to 3.

Just loved it. No notes.

I wrote up a whole review but it didn't save. Long story short, i was surprised that *this* was the album that contains "Frontier Psychiatrist," a song that's been bouncing around in the periphery of my music knowledge for almost 25 years. I didn't recognize anything else off the album, and i was very surprised when it started and the horror movie chorus kicked in. I enjoyed it. It was intricately made of a million samples and moved through so many different vibes. Maybe too much of a good thing on one album? The ghostly chorus gives it a 4.

You ever listen to some YouTube video that plays a song you love but in a major key and it sounds really wrong? I kept having that feeling while listening to this album. Take synth arrangements I love, recast them in an upbeat, happy key, overlay them with saccharine-sweet vocals. This is just really really not working for me. Feeling generous giving it a 2.

What's not to like? I especially like the drums in "Photograph." All four of the songs I recognize from rock radio I now know are Def Leppard songs. Prior to today, those songs were in the "Unsorted Rock, 1980s" pile. Thanks, 1001 Albums Generator, for forcing me to ID a handful of that very big pile of generic rock music. 3.5 rounded up to 4.

Started out with a strong "not hating this" which I started to doubt very much about 25 minutes in ... and then there were 2.5 more sides of albums left to go. I was stunned to learn that this is an album about the protagonist of the "sure plays a mean pinball" song. i wasn't paying enough attention to the lyrics to get much more out of it. This one was not for me. 1.5 rounded up to 2.

Really really liked this. This 1001 albums project is developing my love of flute hip hop, who knew. Their flow, the change-offs from vocalist to vocalist, the little interludes of samples, etc kept it varied but consistent. In fact, once it was done, it kept autoplaying Jurassic 5 and it took me about a half hour to realize, and I wasn't mad about it.

I was fairly certain I would hate this. And I'm not saying that I didn't *end up* hating it. But the first half of the album ... I kind of liked. Some parts of it I like a lot. Weird instrumentation, harshness, odd cuts, tonal shifts. It was fun. But I hated the medley of soul covers and all the songs that followed it, except maybe "Just One Victory". A three would be generous here. I'll give it a two.

Long album bug didn't drag. I perked up at the song Cold Blooded and then went back and forth in my engagement throughout the rest. The Questions and Thelonius were my other two favorites. 3.5, rounding to 3.

I wasn't paying attention and accidentally listened to a YouTube rip of the album plus the four extra songs on a bonus disc from the 1995 australian cd re-release. So i was prepared to come here and talk about how much i liked "Year of the Boomerang" but oh well. really like a lot of the guitar and bass work, tempo changes. it felt long, but i had four extra songs. would have been ok with 00:52, but 01:15 was a lot. 3.5 rounded up to 4.

i can read about the influence this band has had on later music that i love, but removed from its context, i was struggling to hear what made this album a standout. i liked the music but found the singer's tone of voice to the grating, and the album just made me wish i was listening to Duran Duran instead. The last track "Time It's Time" was my favorite, with the Ambrosian Singers overwhelming the vocalist.

this feels like a classic debut album. starts so strong with four great songs in a row, then the back half drags. "Rock Lobster" on its own earns this album at least a 3. Their weirdness, the vocals, and the guitars push it up for me; the unevenness of the songs, and the samey-sameness of the back half drag it back down.

The wikipedia page for this album promised me drum and bass. I did not get any drum and bass. It's not the album's fault that someone somewhere mislabeled it. But. I don't go to electronic music for vocal performances and I wish that this album had about 50% of the *words* as it did. It was a good downtempo album to listen to, and the concept was strong.

i'm squarely between 3 and 4 on the rating for this one. the 3 reflects how much i actually like listening to it. 4 reflects what i think about the album's legacy on music i like. I'll round up this time.

This was fine but so generic as to have me wondering how much I've heard before.

This has been on my list for a little while now, and I loved it. Generally a good genre, a good sonic palette for me. I especially loved the Black Steel cover, which ended the album with so much energy (and im a sucker for breakbeats). Is this the first song from 1001 albums that made me want to dance? Certainly no, but in that moment it really felt like it.

I love "California Dreaming" so so so much but I never want to hear "Rose in Spanish Harlem" again, so it's a tough one to rate. The singing is great. 3.5 rounded down to 3.

"So Hard" was probably my favorite track. I wanted more of *something* to make this album more interesting. The album does really work as one monolithic whole. Well crafted, just a little tooooo well crafted.

I knew that there was a band called the Zombies. And I knew a few of these songs. But I absolutely never knew that the Zombies recorded them. The album sounded good and I didn't lose interest, but this is a style of music that I'm just not that into.

This one was not for me. I enjoyed it musically and some of the songs were better lyrically than others. But most of the songs were filled by the rhymiest of rhymes. And rhymey rhymes are my pet peeve.

G-funk from a 19-year-old Snoop? Filthy, but classic.

I hoped I would like this better but I could not. The joy I experienced in this album is looking it up on Google which gave me "People also ask: Who is John Barleycorn and why must he die?"

Liked this one a lot. It was weird at parts but it flew by.

Liked this quite a bit more than I thought I would. Maybe bc I started out listening to a poorly compiled YouTube including a bunch of low-fi live tracks and a techno remix (????) that when I found the real thing, it was coherent, well balanced, and pretty listenable. Elliott Smith's voice has never been my thing so I'm giving it a 3.5 rounded down since I'll likely not revisit it.

This album sounded great. Really enjoyed his voice. The songs were well structured and the album held together well as a piece. This one will be one I come back to.

Feel like at a 3.5 for this one. Cannot decide if I should round up for how much I love the acoustic versions of the three songs from this album on the Unplugged album, or I should round down because I only love them for their acoustic versions on the Unplugged album. You know? Can't decide.

Enjoyed it a lot!

This album is packed. It sounded great. "Going to California" is probably my favorite on this one, but there are so many iconic tracks. I feel like I'm somewhere south of a 5, maybe closer to 4, but I think I'm bumping it up for its concision.

This was a weird one. Some incredibly ubiquitous songs. Really inconsistent and sometimes kinda upsetting lyrics. Amazing vocals. Odd choices in the backing music.

Yet another album I'll hem and haw about rating until I give it a 3. Not bad, but generic. It's good. It's fun. It's fine.

"Proud Mary" is fun. The rest of the album is not. I did not enjoy this one.

sounded great. the song length was consistently longer than i would have liked, but that allowed for the songs to develop their grooves.

I realllly enjoyed this, lyrically and musically. Nicely varied, well structured, well concepted. Sounded great.

It took a bit to gather momentum but I loved the last few tracks. Saxes and clarinets aren't my *thing* so that's saying a lot.

A long album that I listened to in parts between a day of meetings and other stuff I'd rather be listening to. Some of my favorite Beatles songs, some terrible Beatles songs, some inconceivable Beatles songs. Eclectic is maybe the word for it, but it really felt like four Beatles in a trenchcoat trying to sneak into a party for "bands only" .... just break up, buddies.

This is what I was looking for from the Eagles, more so than Hotel California which I previously rated here. Liked Nightingale and Earlybird quite a bit. Strong 3.5 rounding up to 4.

Great album. Probably could argue myself up to a 4 but I think I'm going to stick to a 3.

So. It's on me that I accidentally listened to the "Live from the Basement" version of this album first and then had to go back and listen to the actual album. That's not their fault. I didn't like this album though. I'd rather be listening to other Radiohead.

I was going to give it a 1.5 and round it down to 1, but that last minute of the last track really picked it up to a 2. what is wrong with me.

not my kind of music, and i can't tell if the balladness of it helped or hurt. i think it helped. joe ely got a 2, i'm giving his one a 3. there was some very beautiful guitar work on this one.

Always a joy

this seemed to be a well made record from an era and in a style that i can't enjoy. good momentum but toward the end of the album i kept checking to see how much was left and being disappointed. this is a 2.5 for me but i'm rounding down to 2.

Q: Did I not enjoy this album? A: In some parts! Love "Gut Feeling", that was the highlight. Strong cringes at the lyrics of most songs.

I'm not a honky tonker, sorry.

It's... Beatles. Other people love this, I know this, but I don't understand the hold they have. A nitpick: this album seemed to be from the dawn of the stereo era and they're really EMPHASIZING it with wild unnecessary panning on all tracks. Almost stopped to find a mono version.

Spellbound is such a great opening track. Love her voice, the performances, the tone. Album was well structured and well paced and consistently intense.

i cannot fairly rate this album -- it's a comfort listen to me. so it's getting 5 stars.

Kinda enjoyed this, much more than other Elvis I've had to listen to. I'm going to be generous with my 3

Hmmm. I thought maybe I wouldn't dislike this bc I've been surprising myself with how into weird flute prog I can get, but this album didn't do anything for me. That bent of British traditional music with the harpsichords just isn't my thing.

Wish I'd listened to this full album sooner. Stupid Girl is one of my favorites from that era, and the rest of the album sounded great.

Dancing Queen is iconic. The rest of the album was poppy pleasantness. Not usually my style, but fun away.

Saturday Afternoon Classic Hip Hop Listening Party second entry of the day after Run D.M.C. I can't say I was paying a huge amount of attention to the lyrics, as I was puttering around doing chores, but I enjoyed the production, pacing, and consistency. It has a dark, mellow sound palette that I was not expecting.

I love this album. It's so much fun. This time I found the middle part to drag a tiny bit, but then I listened to the whole thing again as soon as I was done.

I kind of generally like Damon Albarn's sensibilities and there were moments on this one where it sort of cleared up and i could appreciate the song writing, but generally it seemed really cluttered. hard to listen to, i ended up needing to split it up over a few days because it would not hold my attention. it's intricate, but it lacks contrast.

Disliked the first half of the record but starting with track 7 it turned around for me. I ended up liking the songs that were not attempting to be overly lyrical and were closer to the more straightforward rhythm-forward electronic styles I prefer. 2.5 rounded down to 2.

3, mostly for Number of the Beast and Run to the Hills. Maybe if had memories of the time when this music represented the darkest of evils, I'd have more appreciation.

Started off strong. And I generally like Funkadelic ... but one of my least endearing traits is how much I hate toilet humor and so the fourth track was rough and the album never regained ground with me after that.

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Sounded great. Not as produced as Back To Black but sometimes that's OK. The lyrics, the themes though .... difficult. I don't think I'll be returning to this one.

Fiiiiiiine. It's fine. It's worse than fine, actually. It's more Paul McCartney than I ever want.

Have never listened to this whole album, but I'm glad I did! Very very solid album that drives the whole way through. "Basket Case" really jumps out at me as feeling *different* than the rest of the tracks.

this is an album i've heard 1000 times in 100 different contexts. tonight when i listened to it, it felt slow. i feel that a lot with music i liked in my 20s -- i appreciated a 6 minute song then in a way i no longer can. is it my attention span? my exposure to more frenetically-paced music? i'm not sure, but it was noticeable on this album. so i feel like i need to take at least a half a point off for that. will i round up or round down?

Medium-wild, but very fun! Not my favorite genre of music but seemed well executed and well paced. Huge points for originating Jump, Jive and Wail which would briefly take over radio 40 years later.

I don't know why this, of all White Stripes albums, is on this list.

I don't know quite how to rate this. I think it's well executed and her voice is so perfect for this style of song. But the album is very long. I am not sure if I was supposed to listen to songs sung in both English and German, but I couldn't find a version that only included English .... hence, most of the songs twice. That said, I enjoyed this. It's such a particular style from a particular time, and quite specifically a product of the dire political environment of Weimar era Germany.

i loved the first 45 minutes. absolutely beautiful. the last 25 minutes felt so much weaker and i was getting bored by the end of it, which was a bummer. so its a 5 and a 3, averaged to a 4.

Liked it! Snarly, whiny garage rock. Particularly into Sixteen. The album breezed by.

Very chill. Too chill. Sounded pretty, buy I want more than that.

Not really my top genre but the second half of the album is packed with familiar hits.

started strong, ended strong. the middle was fine! it was good! i was bopping along to it at my desk.

I want to collect all the one-off disco songs on otherwise non-disco albums from like 1979-1983 on the 1001 albums list (looking at you, Blondie) onto one comp. The first track was nice, but it got kinda boring afterwards. I think I'm learning that I like weirder jazz than this. Which is weird bc I don't like weird jazz? I don't know. It was a 3.

Fine, good, liked it. I feel like 4 is too generous, but 3 feels too stingy. It's a solid 3.5

Reading about this style of music, it apparently has a bit more political bent to it than I was expecting. Not knowing the language, I hear yearning and nostalgia and assume it's romantic, but that may only be in parts. Good listen either way!

Not my Neil Young. The warbly falsetto was getting to me after a while. Would not pick this one up again.

2.5, solid but forgettable. Rounding up for listenability

Vascillating wildly between really liking it and really hating it. The hatred was of the squonky woodwinds. I don't need anyone to explore the full range of sounds a soprano sax can make. But, when they put that aside, I was getting into it. This is clearly an inspiration to a lot of music I like. Just abrasive as all hell.

This was fine. The titular song is the highlight, the rest seems fillery at parts but goes down smoothly.

Musically liked this. The backing tracks were great. The Beastie Boys' *whole thing* doesn't need more than 35 minutes, however. Took a break around that point. Went back to it begrudgingly, but ended up liking the back half.

i did NOT like this. i can't quite put my finger on why but the vocals are probably it. somehow boring and deeply uncomfortable.

it was pretty good! i really disliked "How Can I Be Sure" but "Groovin'" was nice. feel like i want to knock them for the horrible abuse of stereo panning on "Find Somebody" but i knew going in that when a 1960s album proclaims "STEREO" on the front, there's going to be some panning shenanigans and yet i listened to the stereo version. I feel like most of the record sounded like music that was lower down on the list of songs considered for GOTG: Vol. 1, for if they couldn't clear the rights for the songs they got, but i like that vibe.

very glad I listened to this album through! aside from the singles, there are little hidden gems all over this album. the music production sounds great, varied rhythms brought the excitement level up and back down ... who am i kidding, i would give this album a 5 for B.O.B. alone.

i really like this album, and it's foundational to so much music that i ended up loving through the late 90s and early 00s (and beyond). simple and to the point, great interplay between the instruments.

A really love the half of this album that starts with \"A Forest\". Which is maybe bc one of my favorite mixed CDs given to us by a friend kicks off with that track? There's a minute long instrumental that kicks off side B so it's not technically the first song on that side, but I still think it counts. The first half though? I was down for the sound palette but I didn't feel like any of the songs reached out and grabbed me. 3.5, rounded up to 4.

This was a fun listen. I get lost in conversations about the micro-genres of music of this era, and i have to *imagine* that this was really exciting at the time.

I really expected to like some of this but it just hit me wrong from start to finish. It was boring and sounded bad. This might be my least favorite rock album I've listened to as part of 1001. 1.5 rounded down.

Weird album that combined being very difficult to listen to with being very very good to do work while listening to.

This was not a fun listen for me. Bluesy rock is never my favorite, and live jamming of blues rock even less so. Took me forever to even finish listening to the album bc I just didn't want to hear more of it. I'm sure the musicianship is good and for that I'm rounding my 1.5 up to a 2.

this album sounded good but was so slow and lethargic that i was struggling to pay attention to it. the slurred vocals made me feel like i had accidentally hit "0.5x playback" on my app. Sunday Sun was the highlight for me.

This album was new to me even if some songs were not. Birds and snakes and aeroplanes, etc. I really love Michael Stipe's voice and the band's instrumentation and the general vibe on this album. Left of west and coming with in a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck. Some of these songs live rent-free in my brain slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn. Locking in, uniforming, book burning, bloodletting. In general I liked the album, maybe except the two final songs. Light a candle, light a votive. Mountains sit in a line. Leonard Bernstein. It's a 3.5, rounded down to 3. Birthday party cheesecake jelly bean boom

Great voice! I would say this was mostly music that I would listen to ... and then there was the Elvis song and some other songs that were not by cup of tea. The last track was beautiful.

I've listened to this album a whole lot of times and I love it. In terms of precursors to music I love, I think it holds up well on its own. I may quibble with the length and pace of some of the tracks, but that drops it to a 4.5 which just gets rounded back up.

Loved this. Beyond the vocal performance, I really enjoyed the guitar parts, thought they cohered really well as a *band* despite the act being named for the lead singer. Sure glad I got over my dislike of female vocals at some point in my late 20s (*glances suspiciously at the uniformly male rock singers I was raised on*)

Lovely and filled with classics.

Uncanny pop nightmare-scape, but not in a bad way. In a really, really good way.

Good. I liked the style though I found it too slow and not weird enough.

Really, really disliked this. Aesthetically, sonically, lyrically. Oof.

This was a joy to listen to. I love the rhythm section particularly the bouncy basslines.

i liked this generally, the guitar just sounds so great ... but i found myself wishing for a bit tighter editing to cut it down from more than an hour

I thought I would like this from the first few minutes. The percussion and rumbly bass were promising, but the sameness of the growling vocals and the song structures really started to make it drag. By the halfway point I started checking at the end of every song to see how many were left. So maybe hearing one of these songs loud in a bar would work for me, but hearing a dozen of them while sitting at my desk was not a good time.

This whole album hit me wrong. I'm just not a fan of this style of folk - the turns into carnival music and bard-like high fantasy in particular.

Enjoyed it. The disco-esque intro really threw me off but it quickly resolved into what i was expecting.

going in to listening to this album, i had only heard the four singles. i didn't know if we were going to get more songs along the lines of "Rumour Has It" / "Rolling In The Deep" or "Set Fire to the Rain" / "Someone Like You" and that was going to weigh my opinion one way or the other. almost every other song on the album was in the latter category of boring love ballads, unfortunately. I really, really dislike "Set Fire to the Rain" in particular, so it was quite slog. this kind of soaring love balladry is so intensely boring. The album was a 2.5, but I'm feeling *generous* when I round it up to a 3 for the first two tracks.

Very nice and very boring. I know I've heard music by this band before.

The variety of song structures and singing styles was a positive and a negative for him. Some hit, many missed. Listening to this again did not give me insight into why all my college friends were into this album, but did clarify for me what I didn't like about it then. 3 is generous.

I love this one. This album is an old comfort listen for me. Hearing it makes me think of being on an airplane, being on a train, going somewhere.

This was good in parts, a bit boring in parts. An enjoyable listen over all.

I'm not sure what I was expecting but it wasn't this. Not that it was bad -- I feel like I could name 5 albums it reminded me of, all of which were probably taking influence from this, rather than the other way around. The album's own lack of attention span was probably not a great accompaniment to a work day where I was struggling to pay attention ... throw in some random slurs and I have no idea how to rate this.

Great soundtrack to solo highway driving. Surprised I've never heard any of this but will add it to the roster for future travel. Loved singing along 🤣

Enjoyable, nicely paced.

I enjoyed this while driving across Pennsylvania on the Turnpike. Especially liked the first (saga-length) track and the last track

My Beach Boys listening has been primarily confined to Pet Sounds and one best-of comp. Help Me Rhonda is on that comp. I think that's actually all I needed to hear of this album. The songs are so *verbose* in such a boring way. Not what I wanted to hear.

I accidentally split this album over two days and I think that benefitted my appreciation bc this album is long, but the last half is so charming and personal that im glad i had a fresh attention span for it. Through the Wire is great. Currently listening to the runout of "Last Call" 20 years later. Well. It's a good album at least. It was a 3 yesterday, but it's a 4 today.

Given the backstory of this album, which seems to hinge on an "ends justify means" 70s-era lack of regard for human suffering if good art is produced .... I liked this quite a bit. Probably not enough to revisit but it was interesting and I loved the way it sounded.

There were a lot of songs with very rhymey rhymes which is a pet peeve of mine, and overall it just felt like boring pastiche. A decent listen while at work but I think it could have been shorter and more to the point.

This was a good listen. Not really my thing but it certainly sounded great.

how to rate this!?! it had everything! all the instruments! all the vocals! all the melodies! all three songs i recognized! the tremendous length! i go back and forth on whether i find it engaging and thrilling or silly as hell and i think that's the line they're trying to ride too. kinda wish it was a more condensed single album without as much filler but that might be a lethal concentration of pop. better not find out.

This was ffffffffff fine. Stylistically it felt all over the place and a lot of it I did not enjoy.

Saturday Afternoon Classic Hip Hop Listening Party is a hit. Enjoyed this one, good production. Like a lot of music that was groundbreaking 40 years ago, the hardness has been eroded by the changing context, and I can't access that past.

This was a great listen. I always feel unqualified to judge music this old, but it had a lot of personality. 3.5 rounded up.

Did not enjoy any part of this one. 1.5 rounded down for that first song, yikes.

This was a rough listen. I really loved what they were doing with electronic music. The vocals got me down. I can't quite figure out how to rate it, like both a 4 and a 1. It gets a 3 but with an asterisk that it probably should be a 2.

Another album I cannot rate with any degree of objectivity, as it was a very frequent listen for very many years. I love how it works as an album.

Liked it at first but it wore on me.

I didn't really enjoy this as an album very much. "Brass In Pocket" is a song where I guess I've just never heard the title or the artist and I was shocked to find it on this album.

Started off kinda strong then started dragging, but it kept pulling me back in. the last instrumental track was my favorite of the album and I can figure out whether that deserves a whole extra star. There is a strong 4 star record in there but for the filler, so it gets a 3.

I mean .... this is just a work of art. I love it, I listened to it to confirm it gets a 5. I've been singing The Great Curve since and I'm happy about it.

This is silly and fun. But very samey-samey, with the rhymiest of rhymes, and it does NOT need to be 56 minutes long. A solid 2.5 but it's getting rounded down bc I will certainly never listen to this again.

Was just...not my jam. I can't quite pinpoint it.

This was a weird listen, drum and bass in broad daylight while sitting at my desk in my office. It was good, and it's music I genuinely love. Couldn't contain the head bopping when the beats kicked in. But the length and the long ambient interludes weren't really working for me. 3.5, rounded up for breakbeats.

This was great for the singles. Did not know that Cyndi sang "Time After Time" so that was a delightful realization. The rest of the tracks beyond the singles weren't as strong .... 4.5 stars

Can I recognize this as being a lovely, classic and beloved album while also being not my thing?

I put this off for a long time bc I'm repulsed by the cover art. I wasn't wrong. I really disliked this.

I don't mind this version of Neil Young compared to some of the other albums of his we've been served by the randomizer. The songs were ranging between nicely rambly and a little *too* rambly. it's a rare 40 minute album where i'll complain about the length, but the jamming on the last track had me wishing it would wrap up. almost a 3 but not one i'll come back to.

Not really my preferred Tom Waits mode.

I was rooting for these guys, trying to become a real band, but this album was not great. I think the track with the vocal warmups was honestly my favorite. Overall not sure why this needed to be on the list.

Very very not for me. 1.5

I did drunken group karaoke to "Psycho Killer" once, which is ill advised, because you cannot replicate David Byrne's vocal tone, but more importantly everyone had forgotten that there's a whole verse in French. Except me. I sang the French verse by myself. Don't do group karaoke to "Psycho Killer." Your group does not know how the song goes. They just don't. Generally speaking, I love a debut studio album and this one has a lot of the energy and rough edges I'm looking for.

At first I was impressed by the production and energy, but by the 40 minute mark I felt like the consistency of the production and energy was wearing on me. Still an impressive record. Listened to every minute of that Outtro track too and went on a roller coaster of "this is cute" -> "this is going on a bit long" -> "omg wtf this is neverending" -> "...I kinda love this"

A good album! Liked the singer's vocal manner. Could have been shorter but liked it overall.

I liked this more than I remembered liking it when I was in college. Pump It Up is a great song, but unfortunately Elvis Costello's vocal delivery style puts me off. 3.5

Electronic albums on this list have been an odd bag. The culture seems to exist outside of the "album era" to the point where they don't know how to structure an album. Which is to say: this album was overly long and poorly structured to me even if I didn't dislike any of the songs per se. It's the risk of doing an album project like this.

What an odd album. I kept waiting for one of the tracks to resolve into Werewolves in London but it never did. Not an enjoyable listen for me.

Put me in a good mood. I was humming "Brimful of Asha" for a long time afterwards.

What a great listen. Maybe my favorite jazz album so far? Felt much more contemporary to me.

Quite liked it. Very varied, so the weirder moment never lingered.

I had a productive afternoon of drafting plans while listening to this which is *not* its intended purpose. Sounded great and I enjoyed it despite the language/culture barrier.

What to say about this one. Listened to the full thing on a flight and then listened to each of the singles a bunch more times to round out the flight time. The singles are standouts on the album. I liked the whole back half better than the front half. A very solid 4.

I didn't hate it but it got very repetitive for a 38 minute album. I did enjoy the dual singer arrangement.

How to average "3" and "yikes"... It's not music I'm going to like by itself, and while I *know* that it's in parts satirical, it's still *uncomfortable*

Incredibly uncomfortable listen. Not bad musically per se, but not to my taste, before we even get to the narrative that defines this concept album.

It was fine! Didn't like it as much as Aja (words I cannot believe I just typed) but I appreciated the concision.

Pastiche that goes down smooth is kinda an art form, I guess. Very familiar, maybe in too big a dose.

Was going back and forth between enjoying the variety and thinking they had *range*, and enjoying the variety and thinking they were just throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what would stick. It's a lot of music packed into one album. The rare album where I liked the back half better than the front. Cannot believe they manahed to ride this and their follow up album to relevance into the 2000s.

Another solid but kinda boring album with one or two super memorable songs.

Filled with hits, beats, samples, hooks. Some songs toward the back half of the album were a little samey, and I feel like there's maybe a much more concise 40 minute album in here (though I wouldn't drop the two tracks that were included on the CD but not the vinyl album, I liked those). Really great listen though.

The singles are super familiar to me from rock radio, but I had never heard this entire album. The album is extremely consistent, but personally I don't need such a large dose of those riffs and that singing. I can hear in it some qualities that later music I really liked would pick up and play off. Lyrically .... laughably obvious rhymes and clunky constructions abound. If I gave it a 4 it would be for Enter Sandman ... I think I'm giving it a 3 though.

Foundational to much more meaner music that would come, but in 2024 it made a nice listen on a vacation day morning while drinking coffee and lazing around. That's the march of time, I suppose. The album sounded great.

Liked this more than I was expecting. I'd heard them before in playlists of bands with harsher, noisier or just weirder sounds and the Stone Roses always stuck out as too normal in that context. But by itself it was a really nice album. 3.5.

There is no version of "my life" that *MUST* include this double live album.

Having never heard of this band (yet somehow knowing Mike Watt?), I didn't know what to expect, but I generally liked it a lot. The parts with the more typically rock, less funk bass worked better for me, but the album clipped along and the singer sounded great.

My preferred Neil Young continues to be in another castle, but this is definitely closer to what I'm looking for in his work.

This list has been teaching me a lot about Madchester ... I did not care for this album but it was interesting to learn about the place this non-electronic band had within the history of electronic music. Weird album though.

Four great songs balanced out with the rest of the album, which felt fairly nondescript. I think "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish" is my favorite on this album.

Liked it! Kind of nondescript to the extent that I didn't realize it was over when my app started playing some other mellow electronic instrumentals.

Pleasant, poppy, but not my thing.

Liked this much more than I had guessed I would.

Super solid album. 3.5

How do I rate this. Shamefully, I don't think I had ever listened to this whole album. Very little of it was unfamiliar, however, between the radio hits and the Unplugged set. Hard to fairly rate, but it was a good listen and I liked the parts I didn't know.

Not my absolute favorite Björk but still pretty great. At the free jazzier interludes I kept thinking my music player had started a new album, but no. Human Behavior is so good I can't give it less than 4 but it's a 3.5.

Liked this a lot! Garagey, kinda messy, very much my thing. 3.5

I ate some delicious spicy ramen noodles for dinner tonight so I was actually good on noodles ... unfortunately this album delivered almost nothing but noodles. noodles in this style, noodles in that style. unending noodles. a strega nonna pasta pot of noodles. 🍜

The recording sounded OK but I didn't feel like the live format really helped this album. I had a good time listening though, how mad can I be?

Enjoyable. This list has been my main exposure to English electronic artists of the 90s who primarily put out singles but then eventually thought, why not do a full length? This is probably the most successful one of these so far in terms of structure and scope.

Loved this! Tempted to give it a 5. So intricate and interesting and packed a lot into a short run. That last track was a little twangy for my taste, so I'll give it a strong 4.5

Hey! It's The Doors! I don't have much to add about this record. No real nostalgia power for me, but I do like their cover of the Alabama Song.

There's odd stuff that I like, and then there's odd stuff like this album. The first track was maybe closet to the first category, but that was absolutely eroded by the back half of the album.

sometimes it's good to be challenged by an album. sometimes you spend your drive home quietly muttering "what the fuck frank zappa" over and over.

I really loved this. The album felt connected to a lot of the post-rock from 10 years later in a way I was not expecting. The song "Three Days" could have been its own EP, not in a bad way. Unexpected 4.5

Liked some of it. I feel like this might be an album more than any other album we've heard here, where it really benefits from hearing the artist's earlier work to get the context of this. I'm glad I procrastinated on this and waited for "Songs of Leonard Cohen" to be randomized at me.

Maybe unfair to judge an album that I started listening to while waiting to board a red eye flight, and then finished while on said red eye flight, but I really hated this. The noodling and riffing were unbearable, the tracks were sooo long, and I just didn't like anything about the way it sounded.

Listened to this on a plane and could barely distinguish the lo-fi fuzzed out sound from the background engine noise. Listened again on a highway in a rainstorm and it was clearer. I like the Stooges, but I don't think this is one I'll be adding to my playlist.

Another airplane listen which held its own against the noise and discomfort of modern air travel. Varied and interesting.

This was kinda a fine listen, light and jangly but with dark lyrics. I kept waiting for something familiar but nothing ever jumped out until their cover of Mrs. Robinson.

Not sure how to rate a double album with a couple of great songs -- enduring classics -- and a lot of songs I wouldn't want to hear again. I don't think it does a good job as an *album* if that's what we're rating. 2.5

Highlight of this album came when I was listening to the last few tracks while driving two angry cats to the vet, and my partner turns around and says "Oh, are you the wailers?" Otherwise a fine album but indistinguishable from their other two albums on the list.

Unclear how they toured on this album for a year and a half and became such a massive band. It's ok. It strikes me as occupying an uncanny position between the music of the 90s and the music of the 00s. Coldplay will become the 00s ... but just not quite yet.

Some of this was pretty great especially To the Moon's Contractor and Red Eye to Jupiter, which stood out as compellingly weird. The album got more interesting as it went along.

Honestly thought this was older than it was. I'm generally here for garage-y rock and the album really flew by, but I'm not sure I'd be able to pick any of these songs out of a lineup.

I don't think I like Tom Petty enough for this dose of him. I do like American Girl enough to be surprised when it was the last track on this otherwise pretty boring album. 3 mostly for American Girl.

Super classic, sounded great.

I liked this a lot, especially the more experimental parts. I was trying to forgive the more nu-metally parts but then I learned Jonathan Davis guests on this album so 🤷 3.5

Loved the originals, kinda meh on the covers. Particularly the last four tracks. 3.5

This is an uneven album. I love Golden Years but that's not quite enough to get it up to a 3 for me. The crooner-y stuff is not my style.

Phenomenal. Her voice made me like this style of music. 4.5, loved it.

Made for a fine afternoon of driving around and not paying all that much attention to this music. 2.5

Liked the first half a lot better than the second half. 2.5

Ehhh, this was a lot of Green Day for me. The singles from this album are some of my least favorite Green Day singles, and the rest of the album didn't do much to redeem it.

Liked this less than the other Ali Farka Touré album on the list but it was still enjoyable.

Well crafted, and I can see that it definitely set the pattern for psych rock from the 60s.

Pretty good. Very CCR.

To extensively paraphrase The Dismemberment Plan's song "Ice of Boston": Turned on the car at 9am, with the radio on, This Derek & the Dominos album on about how Eric Clapton would rather form a fake band in order to write love songs about Patti Boyd than be normal about it and at least not directly involve George Harrison in that whole mess, And I sat there, head spinning, staring at a stop light, And I thought to myself "Oh, Clapton, dude, I hate you but, oh! Get a life!"

I realized during this album how little time I spend listening to uncaveated rock music. This is like, rock music. No prefixes, nothing. Vocal wailing, guitar neck slides, lots of the same tempo. Overall well crafted i guess, just extremely generic.

This was fine. It was nice and light and unobjectionable. I was obsessed with my mp3 of "Don't Know Why" in the early Kazaa years, but I ... don't.... know ..... why ..... I didn't download the whole thing.

If this were instrumental I may have like it more but the singing killed it for me. When I started to listen to it the first time, I reacted negatively and turned it off. I came back to it and stuck it out, but only barely. Really unlistenable for me.

I was mean and called this "unflavored rock music" when I was talking about it while listening. There's much more to it lyrically than I gave it credit for, but the nature of the music is .... rock .... and a whole album of it was too much of the same thing. 2.5

Actually had fun listening to this live album and my jaw dropped when I realized this is where the canonical version of I Want You To Want Me.

Listened on a stressful day and enjoyed it. I love In Your Eyes, can't be less than 4 bc it has In Your Eyes on it

it was fine. i don't really get the whole *Blur* thing or why this band/album would have been in a tabloid insult war with other mid-90s british bands, but i'm not british so, ...

I don't like her voice or the vibe of the album, not for me. Made me feel like I was stuck in a 90s rom-com montage. 1.5

"Come Out And Play" was on constant rock radio rotation when my little brother and sister were 4 and 7 and at each others throats *alllll thhhe tiimmmeee* and all i picture is my mom singing this song driving down the highway with them fighting in the back seat. other than the singles, this felt very samey-samey and long. dude loves that narrow vocal range and makes the most of it, i guess. 3.5

*puts album on* ... "hmm, I'm beginning to think he's not actually talking about love" *gets to 'lemon song'* ... "😐" I liked it more than Physical Graffiti but less than Led Zeppelin IV

One of those albums where it's all one song but I kinda like the song so 🤷 Pretty In Pink is just the much more highly produced version of the song that appears 8-10 other times on the album.

After enough Tom Waits albums I feel like I could make Tom Waits Song Character Generator, where you put in your intials and birth month and it gives you an anachronistic profession, a characteristic (a personality flaw, perhaps a disfigurement?), and a place of origin that only sounds sketchy because it's being mentioned in the context of a Tom Waits song.

I like this album but on this re-listen I was getting frustrated with it for some reason. I can't put my finger on it but I think I was expecting more of a flow, more of an *album*, that wasn't quite there. 3.5

Can I forgive the back half of this album based on the merits of the front half? It was long, an hour long, but the hour felt like an hour and a half. It starts at a 4 but those last two tracks drag it down to 3.

Pretty good but not my style. I love the sound of the recording.

This was beautiful and chaotic and discordant.

Lucinda ... I don't know how to rate this. Was I more charmed by your accent than the music? Probably. It was pretty repetitive, but I enjoyed the music. 2.5

Sounds both quite disheveled and also quite precise. This album has dirtbag line cook energy. I did not hate it but i did not need that great a quantity of it, either. 2.5

I think I liked this a bit more than the previous album by this artist on this list. Sounded great, and not knowing much about the music except that it was probably not intendes for this purpose, it made an excellent companion for errands and commuting.

I never followed up on this album when it was released, after having spent quite a lot of time with their previous album. Seven Nation Army is such a standout track on this one, nothing else matching the energy.

My life is full of technically competent nerds with synthesizers and with no pop sensibilities. This album is what happens when you let them try to make a pop album. Charming and quirky. I kind of can't believe "Let's All Make A Bomb" hasn't been discovered as a low-cost needle drop for an Atomic Blonde type film.

Loved it! Could have done without the duet with her kid, but the parade song grew on me.

That sure is Little Richard!

This suffered from the syndrome where music that I like, which came later, was clearly influenced by this band/album, but it makes the album seem derivative rather than inventive. Fortunately this is the kind of music I generally enjoy and I'll take an instrumental album any day of the week. 3.5

Sounded so much newer than 1994. I was really imagining a lot of this fitting in with radio rock of the late 90s and wondering why I had never heard it. So engaging and well-produced and loved the bass.

Really good. This one grew on me and won me over by the end of the album. So stripped back and free of embellishment. If I imagined adding high flying harmony or additional textured background music, it morphs and shifts into other folk and folk-adjacent music I've enjoyed.

"We Are Family" is obviously a classic, but the rest of the album was boring and full of love ballads. 3.5 for the disco parts, 2 for the ballads.

"Superstition" is great, unfortunately canceled out by "Maybe Your Baby." High highs and low lows aside, I didn't love it.

This had ingredients I'm familiar with but an end result that took me from curiosity to indifference to outright hatred. Tempted to give it a 1.

Really liked this one. The recording sounded great.

This was fine. I like the genre so I'll forgive some of the cheesier tracks.

I don't know how to rate this one. It was much more .... subtle .... than I was expecting from an album with this title and cover art by a band with this name. Cannot judge this by any of those attributes. It was a nice dream. A little boring. Very long.

2/10 worst Elvis impersonator. it's like this guy has never even heard Elvis. --- it was at least kinda interesting to listen to an album recorded before he figured out what Elvis sounded like. And who can argue with 28 minutes?

Lots of hits and recognizable songs packed into a tight album length. In terms of classics, it's hard for me to argue against this one.

Wasn't expecting to hate this, but the singer's *affect* really grated on me. Otherwise unremarkable 60s rock. Not for me.

I liked this quite a bit. Melancholy but kinda comforting on a pretty bleak day.

I don't like their style of metal enough to give this fully 5 stars but it's a strong 4.5. Even though this is a lot less familiar to me than the big radio hits in the 90s, I prefer this sound, I prefer Hetfield's voice on this one, and it has an instrumental track which I always appreciate.

i like this a lot less than i like other circa-2000 indie alt-country.

I can't decide where to place this one. Musically fine, lyrically both fine in that I thought the lyrics sounded well-written, but then you actually understand the content and think about what he's saying ... and then his vocal tone just grates on me the entire time. 2.5

This was not going to be my thing. Lyrically it's very not my thing. Musically whatever. The few rock-ier tracks have a thing I've heard in a few 80s/90s country albums on this list: very synthesized-sounding casio-ass backing music. Immediately sounds not like *country* music but like *80s* music (derogatory).

How to rate Mellon Collie & The Infinite Double Album? There are some real standout tracks that I love. Then there are 18 to 20 more tracks that are fine at best. Lows don't quite fully outweigh the highs? But I'm not going to ever reach for this full album.

I liked this a lot. Don't know much about the music but sounded good. 3.5

I don't for a minute believe that this guy uses sex to avoid talking about things.

I don't really like this album so I'm going to be petty and subtract 1/2 a point for each song with either "little girl" or "in the wink of a young girl's eye" in the lyrics. Which leaves 3 points for Dancing in the Dark. Perfect math.

It would be great to live in a world where the music was the problem to be solved with regard to air travel. I feel like I understand this album more in relation to *contemporary relational art* than to album-based music. Both in regard to the clear thesis and also the tendency of artists to conveniently find solutions that can fit their own immaculate sense of aesthetics. In other words, I'd love to come across this in a museum with an indecipherable text on the wall and a small listening booth. I would be utterly baffled to come across this in the wild.

Maybe the car was the wrong venue for this, I don't know. More boring than other comparable electronic music I like. Nothing stood out.

This has been my favorite of the Big Beat albums we've listened to so far. I felt like it really hit a stride toward the middle of the album, with a combination of breakbeats and basslines that I enjoyed enough to forgive a cameo from a Gallagher brother. Very enjoyable overall.

Surprised how much I liked this. To me it sounded like it hewed a little more closely to what I would consider folk than country. Vocals sounded great and it had a lot of variety packed into 33 minutes. 3.5, rounded down for all the murderousness.

Sure was some AC/DC.

A couple of classics I love anchor the back half of this album. I didnt find the front half to be as engaging, maybe too harshly mixed? Solid album though. 3.5

Music that made me feel like I was overhearing the soundtrack to the movie of whatever activity I was doing (driving my 25 minute commute, is what I was doing). Enough horns and variations to perk me up from time to time but otherwise pretty tame, innocuous and *jazzy*

Ive done most of my Smiths listening via a comp downloaded from Kazaa in 2004, but it really says something when a comp includes 9 of 10 album tracks. This album would get a 4 for "There Is A Light And It Never Goes Out" by itself, but i knew going in that it would be a 5.

I thought I would get bogged down in the length of this double album (1001 albums is at least 1100 albums if you count all the doubles, its cheating). Pleasantly surprised that it flew by and I enjoyed it. The choral backup singers do a lot of heavy lifting. Varied enough to be interesting and well arranged. "O Children" kinda makes me cry. 3.5 for the whole endeavour.

I kind of had some high hopes based on the intro to the first song but it settled into an album I found grating to listen to. Not sure if it was his vocals or just the blend of 70s rock stylistic element . Or both. 2.5.

Finally, a song by this band that I recognized. Some of it is nice, a lot of it makes me want to listen to other music I like better. The last song made me want to turn it off. 2.5

Enjoyable! I had a colleague in my car en route to a site visit ... she's maybe 10 years older than me ... and my music app kept trying to start playing this album even though I kept pausing it, so I eventually explained to her the 1001 project and she was like "oh let it play, i liked this way back when!" 3.5

I was dreading this I was correct. Sometimes I can forgive a singer songwriter's voice and lyrics if I like the music, but not this one. Just very much not my style. 1.5

This has been on my list to listen for a long time and I wish I had not snoozed on it. Really enjoyed it. 4.5

I had a wild weird time listening to this. There's something about the mix that makes his voice sit uncomfortably on top of the music and it's probably *supposed* to be that way. To my shock, I have heard "My Friends" before somewhere, maybe my music app has figured out I'm in the 1001 algorithm, I don't. Feels like an album I may have listened to a lot in my twenties when I had a lot of room for sadboy folk-adjacent music. I'm giving this a 3 but I want to be clear that it's not a three, it's both a 2 and a 4.

4 for her voice, 2 for the repetitive nature of the songs. 1 for all the men mentioned.

🎵The only song I need is the Ace of Spades, the Ace of Spades.🎵 But of course there were 11 more songs. Not too bad for a live album.

Not my absolute favorite Depche Mode but I still like it a lot more than some other albums on this list I've given more than 3 stars to.

I'd give a four for the first half of the album, for the interplay between the vocals and the music, the flow and pacing, but the parts I was drawn to didn't really carry through the back half of the album. A 35 to 40 minute version would be stellar. 3.5

Lovely! I'm given to like bossa nova and adjacent music so this was a good time for me.

Every time a new side came on I had a glimmer of hope that it was my music player auto-playing a *different* Stones album but alas, it was still this one. I really disliked this.

Not enjoyable necessarily but I'm here for this level of distortion.

I expected to like this more and yet I was waiting for it to end.

I did not enjoy this. Tainted Love is a classic and I hoped this would be good, but it is not. 2.5, rounded down.

One of my favorite Rolling Stones songs (Gimme Shelter) and then the rest of the album just really fell flat for me. 2.5

.tI kroW dna skloF pissoG rof 4 ot pu gnidnuor ,5.3

Felt more like a collection of songs than an album. Some good, some about putting limes in coconuts. 2.5

Snappy album, and quite enjoyable for a genre I don't particularly like.

I had forgotten how much I like this album. I must have spent half of college listening to this because I remembered every part of every song. Somehow in hindsight it's become "the one that 'There, There'" is on, but there is really great stuff throughout. It felt a little long listening to it now but it's an hour that's packed with ideas. 4.5

Really didn't care for this one

This was quite sad and discordant as expected. One of my old colleagues loved this band and nothing goes better with sitting in a windowless basement office on an otherwise lovely summer day than Bonnie "Prince" Billy. If you're into that kind of thing.

That was exactly what I expected! Pretty good!

Ive never been more unsure how to rate an album. I don't generally like this style of music or singing. But it made me feel unbelievably melancholy while driving home after a nice evening out and then ... as Spiraling was on, drove by a deer that had been hit by a car and its breath was illuminated by the headlight, and I'm now *wrecked* on my couch ... this album was lovely but I never want to hear it again

You can do much worse than having your hit song be about being denied entrance to Studio 54 bc Grace Jones forgot to put you on the door list.

Kind of an old comfort listen from college days. I haven't gone back to it and I had forgotten most of the tracks, but it really feels like such a cohesive album. 3.5

Oh Neil, when am going to get to listen to music you wrote that I actually like? I know it's on this list somewhere, and I know it's not your fault that some guy put *so, so many of your albums on this list*, but oof. Another miss for me.

I could be flippant and say that listening to this sounded like listening to a comp of lost early tracks by U2, The Police, The Smiths, Tears for Fears and, maybe, the Banshees minus Siouxsie? -or- I could be earnest and talk about how this was a really interesting listen that lies at the intersection and the origin point for a lot of music I really enjoy (and some which I don't), with 70s-holdover organ and little post punk influences and a singer who can somehow do Sting, Bono and Morrissey. Either way this is a strong 3.5. Listened twice to most of the tracks on the album.

I can't wrap my head around why I hated this so much. On the surface, sounds similar to a lot of other music I like, but I wanted nothing more than to turn it off during almost all of it. It took 5 attempts to get through it, so it was not even an issue of mindset, or venue, or time of day. I have nothing insightful to add, sadly. 1.5

This is exactly what I think of when I think of both the movie "Road House" and the band "The Doors" Definitely not my favorite, got me down. 2.5

Good album for Saturday afternoon listening. A little heavy on the saxes for me but overall enjoyable. 3.5

Good way to spend an afternoon at my desk doing administrative work. Tapestry was my least favorite song but the rest was pleasant and familiar. 3.5

A great album to scream along to.

Fine, funny in parts, but overall pretty boring.

More Elton John than should be consumed in one sitting but it was alright for Saturday afternoon listening. A bit sloggy at parts. 3.5

While it was fun to learn the origin story of the That 70s Show theme song, this album was otherwise fine and okay and decent to listen to.

This felt kind of like listening to one really long version of "Sultans of Swing" and I'm not necessarily complaining about that. Decent enough soundtrack to Sunday evening cooking. Singer's voice sounds so much like Bob Dylan to me. 3.5

Feeling the urgency of this music more acutely as a 41 year old in 2024 than I ever did when I was first encountering it as a young, sheltered rural kid with no context.

Me: "Why has no one told me this is this good?????" Ron Howard narration: "They had." Better late than never. This was excellent from start to finish.

I'm not sure that listening to album-length works while sitting at my desk writing emails is the optimal means of enjoying 90s techno, but this was pretty enjoyable given the circumstances. Album flowed nicely. 3.5

A style of music I don't connect to. Sounded good enough.

The first half of this album was solid, listenable, a little boring, but fine. The back half was disjointed and at times seemed musically bad. 3 for the first half, 1 for the second half.

Such an odd, uneven album. Has probably my favorite beatles song on it but then also Taxman. 2.5

an odd tour of the fallow music landscape of 1998. 1.5

I really wish this were a vanity project by a singer I wanted to listen to more. Liked the arts that sounded like James Bond soundtracks, but then the rest sounded like Arctic Monkey. Which is cool, fine, I don't mind the Arctic Monkey, but just seems like a waste of the London Philharmonic.

Third Elvis Costello album on the list, more than 400 albums in ... this one kind of felt like the first I connected to, driving around on a stressful day like "yep, that is music". If I started to pay too much attention to it, I liked it less. What is the aural equivalent of unfocusing your eyes to see the tiger in the magic eye poster? That's what I was doing with this album. Neither good nor bad, but definitely music.

This entire album only served to get "Suburbia" stuck in my head. 3.5

This felt like if you were making a movie about the music of the 60s but somehow couldn't get the rights to any of the big songs you wanted so you pulled together a group to make song *similar to* the obvious choices. Some Beatles, some Simon and Garfunkel, a dash of Doors, some Jefferson Airplane? But sounding kind of bad? Truly not for me.

silly as hell, joyously so. 3.5

are we *sure* that Catching the Rainbow is not by Radiohead? The 60 Songs episode about Bittersweet Symphony really gave me a primer on the history of this band which was, as far as i had previously known, a one-hit wonder. Glad to have listened to the whole album though, I liked it quite a bit. 3.5

Thought I would like this more. I enjoyed the first half but the second half started grating on me. Solidly in my wheelhouse but not going to become a relisten in the genre.

This album felt like some compilation of outtakes and rarities enjoyed only by people who already love the artist, to the point that i was relieved when "Baby I'm Amazed" crashed in out of nowhere, making me more confident that I had not put on the wrong album by accident. 1.5 stars

1966 was a good year for writing songs about taxes huh. Most of the 60s music that is nostalgic for other folks my age because their parents are core era boomers is lost to me. "Sunny Afternoon" has ended up in my nostalgia wheelhouse bc Jimmy Buffett covered it on his 1994 album "Fruitcakes" which was one of the first CDs my dad bought.

Happy to stick to the singles, thanks. I do genuinely like Sweet Emotion. Not much more to say about it. 2.5

What would you call the british The Postal Service? Unfortunately I thought this would be a funny joke but now i'm on the wikipedia page for Post Office Act 1969 .... Pretty enjoyable, good soundtrack for an afternoon at work.

This kind of dragged toward the end but I enjoyed the beginning. Not quite a 3, it's a 2.5

I liked this a lot less than the first album we've listened to by Nick Cave, and probably a lot less than any of the other albums yet to come. The second half of the album with a few duets carried my attention much more but I think that murder ballads are just not my thing. 1.5

Pretty OK listening on a rainy December day. I don't really need or want more Oasis in my life but I didn't hate it. 2.5

Lovely. It's not Billie Holiday's fault that driving around doing normal holiday-season city activities while listening to this album made me feel like I was hearing the soundtrack to my very own Rob Reiner holiday romcom. 3.5

the formula of singing 8 songs about murder and then 1 or 2 about jesus never fails to crack me up. this music sounded great and he has a really good voice.

Just not a fan of this one. I think I need there to be more song structure if there's going to be this much singing.

This was not enjoyable. 1.5

This album was incredibly heavy and an unsettling soundtrack to an unnecessarily long drive in pursuit of name-brand pyrex measuring cups my little sister asked for for christmas. An absurd mismatch, but I'm glad i was alone and not destracted because it's really beautiful. Like with many double albums on this list, I don't know why it needed to be so long. It felt at times more like soundtrack than songs.