1001 Albums Summary

I tend to find a lot of ‘70s hard rock pretty boring, and while this doesn’t really escape the limitations of that genre for me, it does have a lot of energy.

Incredible to think that this is one of the greatest albums of all time, yet it’s probably Wonder’s weaker album from this period of his career.

I just about prefer her later albums - particularly Stories From the City - but this has so much barely-contained energy to it. She still sounds like the most exciting person in music.

Garbage passed me by in their heyday so I only really knew them from The World Is Not Enough thème, which I like quite a bit. There’s some wonderful songs on her, but it’s pretty samey and the standout tracks don’t elevate it quite enough to cohere as a strong statement.

There was a period in my early 20s where I would listen to the album every morning after waking up, partly because “Welcome to the Working Week” is a perfect start the day song, but mainly because it’s wall-to-wall great, punchy songs. An insane start to a career.

When I was at college, I knew a lot of people - mainly girls I had crushes on - who were really into Ryan Adams, so I spent a lot of time trying to understand what people saw in him. Ultimately I just realized I didn’t like his music because it’s a shallower version of stuff I like better, and this is the epitome of that. It’s shallower takes on the kind of alt-country that bands like Wilco were doing much better at the time. The more energetic rock songs hold up better, and suggest he would have had a more fruitful career if he’d embraced that sense of fun rather than trying to be an artist.

Sometimes you listen to an influential album and you appreciate what it meant but it doesn’t have the visceral impact now, and sometimes you listen to Here’s Little Richard and it still hits like a freight train. Musically it’s all very played out at this point, but his energy and passion transcends the decades.

Even though I am more amenable to prog now than I was as a teen, when I was firmly against anything even remotely connected to the genre, i have never really gotten on with Genesis and this hasn’t shaken that assessment. The musicianship is very good, and the concept is an interesting one, but the songs are not distinctive or engaging enough to sell it.

This was the first Dylan album I ever listened to that wasn’t a best of and it was the thing that finally helped me understand what people saw in him. The music is complicated, the lyrics are intricate and tell such vivid stories, and his voice sounds phenomenal. The only knock against it is that it isn’t quite as good as some of the albums leading up it, which is more just an indication of what an insane hot streak Dylan was on at that point in his career.

I’ve never been able to love this as much as Kid A, despite them obviously originating from the same sessions and complementing each other. There’s a few stunning standout moments, most notably “Pyramid Song”, but it doesn’t cohere as well as its sister record. It’s still a very good album, but it doesn’t hang with the absolute pinnacle of their work.

It’s probably dumb that the thing that turned me around on Deep Purple was realizing that “Highway Star” was the opening song to the first Rock Band, but here we are. Aside from that, though, this being a live album does imbue it with a ferocity that their studio albums lack (at least in my experience).

I have tried so many times with The Doors, but every time Jim Morrison starts singing I just glaze over. The musicianship is pretty good, but I cannot stand his nonsense.

There’s some filler in the back half which stops in from being wall-to-wall hits, but it gets pretty close. In hindsight you can really appreciate what a seismic impact this album had on the sound of pop music for the decade after it came out. I mean it was huge at the time too, but you can’t really just the size of the impact crater when you’re under the asteroid.

The influence and importance of the album can’t be denied, but some of the production sounds very thin and the rhymes are a bit clunky and basic in places. Some of the songs retain tremendous impact - most notably It’s Tricky - but its overall not as compelling as its strongest moments.

This was my gateway album into The Bad Seeds, alongside Lyre of Orpheus/Abbatoir Blues, and while I now prefer their rougher and more violent early work than this more polished effort, it’s still a great work of songwriting. “Into My Arms” is truly one of the most remarkable songs of the last 30 years

There’s a couple of great songs on here - I particularly adore the synth bridge in “Just What I Needed” - and I can absolutely see why they were so beloved as part of that New Wave…wave of bands, but as a whole it doesn’t really hit for me.

I lived in Sheffield for nearly a decade, no way I could give it less than a full five.

While this is clearly an important album in the evolution of The Kinks, I like the ambition and songwriting in their subsequent albums much more. Some standouts (Sunny Afternoon remains one of the greatest songs ever written) but the cohesive vision that would soon emerge in their work.

As much as I like some of their songs individually, I’ve never been that much of a Queen guy, and I tend to find their albums pretty grating. This is no exception.

This was a huge album for me as a teen, and directly led to several friendships when I went to University and bonded with people over how much we all loved Joy Division, so there’s obviously a lot of good memories and nostalgia wrapped in an album which is actually quite bleak and distressing. It doesn’t have quite the impact on me that it had then, but the sheer ferocity of the music and the sense of Ian Curtis being on the edge of something horrible is hard to deny.

Their cover of “Only Love Will Break Your Heart” is the standout for how well it reconfigures the song to make it both eminently more danceable and even sadder, but the rest of the album is also very good, blending a lot of different sounds together to create a pop record that still feels pretty singular.

Though I think Pulp’s This Is Hardcore is the better - in fact the *best* - Britpop is dead album, between that album and Blur you have a pretty definitive statement of intent from two bands who benefited from that label and also were determined not to get trapped by it. “Beetlebum” sets the stage immediately with its woozy, burned out on excess tone and lyrics, signaling a break with their previous sound and a more personal lyrical style. The nods to Pavement and similar American acts abound, but on this listen I was struck by just how much of Bowie is laced throughout this, most obvious on M.O.R. which is a deliberate homage to him and Brian Eno, but also on “Strange News from Another Star”, which from the title on down sounds like something Bowie would have recorded circa his time in Berlin. A thrilling record, both within the context of Blur’s discography, which it represents such a sharp break from, and as a record in isolation. “Song 2” may have been overplayed to the point of cliche, but that first blast of distortion still hits like a freight train.

For me, his best album. A collection of great songs that also represent his burgeoning ambition. True birth of a superstar stuff.

There’s not a lot of real standout tracks on this, but the mood and tone of it is very intoxicating, and the shifts in Mitchell’s sound to include more jazz influence and different instrumentations make it a rewarding listen as someone more familiar with her folkier work.

I’ve always preferred Beggar’s Banquet and Let It Bleed, in no small part because I tend to roll my eyes at double albums out of principle, but even if this has some of the bloat that turns me off double albums in general, there are so many great, punchy songs on it that it always wins me over.

Not my favourite White Stripes album, but the most important one since it was the record that really got me into them and made me want to listen to everything they had made before and would make in the future (even if that proved to be very short-lived). “Seven Nation Army” still bangs, even if it has become part of popular culture in the most obnoxious way (being badly yelled off-key at sporting events).

Pretty fun! I’ve always thought of Slade as a novelty act on account of their inescapable Christmas hit, but this shows that they had real chops when it comes to writing entertaining, meat and potatoes rock. Not my cup of tea, but still good.

Despite some absolutely seismic songs - namely Firestarter and Breathe - this one has never chimed with me as much as the Prodigy’s earlier albums. The more aggressive sound is just not as appealing to me as the giddy fun of the first two records.

I tend not to like this kind of Jazz - I’m more into stuff from the ‘60s and ‘70s when it gets more free form - but this is a lot of fun. So many iconic songs played with verve.

This was the last album from Kanye that I really dug, and even with everything that has happened with him since - artistically, personally, politically - it remains a bracing and thrilling record.

Confirmed my general impression of Billy Joel, which is that when he’s writing really specific story songs, he’s great, when he’s writing more generic pop he writes the most vapid pablum.

[Paul Rudd as John Lennon voice] Greeeeat record

The only knock against this album is that it isn’t Rumours, which is also true of every other album.

More like 4.

Real shame that he was a monster, because this is truly the perfect pop album.

Half this album is beautiful reinterpretation of great songs, while the other half is songs that were bad to begin with and are not improved by having strings thrown on. Skip every track from Load or Reload and you’ve got a classic.

Probably one of the four or five most important albums in my life. There’s scores of bands I wouldn’t have discovered if I hadn’t listened to this at 16 and investigated more bands with a similar sound, multiple decades-long friendships that were made and enriched by being fans of Pixies and this album in particular, and also the songs just whip.

As an adolescent/teen I would feel bad about disliking Manson’s music because I thought it meant I was too soft for metal or something, but listening to it now I’m gratified to discover that it’s just bad. “Beautiful People” unfortunately still slaps, but the rest is posturing, tedious stuff.

This has always been for me the ultimate example of how strict adherence to the concept album form harms the work. There’s some incredible songwriting here and a compelling story that is well-told, weighed down by a lot of filler songs that stop it short of perfection.

I can understand why this was met with confusion and hostility when it came out since it’s so different to what people would have expected from Crosby, but as an almost wordless expression of grief, I think it creates an incredible atmosphere.

Always nice to listen to an album by a band who I know for one or two good songs and discover that, shockingly, they have a bunch of other good songs as well. Wonderful mix of bombastic synth pop and more ethereal moods.

It’s a tremendous compliment to the strength of Kraftwerk’s discography that I saw this come up, thought “oh, one of their lesser albums” and then was subsequently reminded that it’s basically nothing but bangers. The purest and most danceable distillation of their whole aesthetic.

This is basically a four star album and a six star album back to back, and which is which changes every time I listen to it. This time Speakerboxxx was the six star.

I can excuse music being bad, but not being boring.

One of the most powerfully stupid records ever made.

It will forever be bookended and overshadowed by Nevermind and Kurt’s death, which is a shame considering this, for me, is Nirvana’s best record. A spiky, introspective record that manages to walk the almost impossible balance act between attacking the idea of making a record for a mass audience while also making a bunch of really catchy, unforgettable songs. A miracle.

Smooth beats and a nice workout for my extremely rudimentary French. Going to have to check out more of his work.

I can’t believe someone would willingly make music this boring. The first time he tried to write a song, Mark Knopfler should have put down his guitar in shame and lived a quiet, unassuming life as a monk to atone.

As much as I love Radiohead in general, and how important this record was to me as a teenager first getting into music, I now find the experimentation of it more frustrating than exciting, and can’t help but think of it as a stepping stone between two more exciting albums.

As with a lot of Zeppelin albums, this is a mix of some of the greatest, most totemic songs in all of the rock canon, mixed in with songs so forgettable that they always seem new to me.

Korn were never one of my bands since nu-metal as a genre really didn’t do anything for me (with the notable exceptions of System of a Down and Deftones) but “Freak on a Leash” is pretty undeniable. The problem is that nothing on the album really comes close, so it all feels pretty samey. Very bracing way to start the day, though.

Buoyed somewhat by four absolutely titanic songs, but even the album tracks have a fizz and charm to them that is undeniable.

None of the songs come close to touching the title track, which is one of the best dumb rock songs ever written, but they manage to maintain its relentless energy and play well within the restrictions of Lemmy’s extremely limited range.

One of the great dumb albums

No band better fits the idea of “clearly very talented musicians, but not for me” than Rush. If only they made songs I liked.

The platonic ideal of a 3-star album that could easily by 5-star if it was half the length (or maybe 30% of the length considering how many of the longer song drag). Some of the best songs of Billy Corgan’s career, and all time frankly, mixed in with a lot of forgettable half-formed ideas.

As someone who only really knows Alice Cooper from his hits (and his excellent appearance in Wayne’s World) and tended to view him as extremely boring, I was pleasantly surprised by how odd and digressive this album is, playing with a bunch of difference sounds and genres from psych rock to Broadway. That same scattershot approach prevents it from being particularly good, but it is at the very least interesting.

Most of the album consists of very charming R&B and primitive rap that feels of a piece with what a lot of other pioneers were doing at the time, then “The Message” itself plays and it feels like a transmission from an entirely other dimension.

Was really excited to revisit this one until I remembered that the songs I really like from this period of Rufus’ career are all on Want Two. Still good though.

I remember being so excited when this won the Mercury since the singles sounded so unlike anything that was going on in UK pop at the time. Listening to it now, it still sounds distinctive and several of the songs are fantastic, but the moralizing in many of the lyrics now come off as a very naive.

The only triple album I would ever willingly subject myself to in its entirety, and have done so on multiple occasions. A beautiful collection of lovely, funny, playful songs, none of which overstay their welcome.

Potentially my most controversial opinion about this album is that “Maps” is one of the weaker songs on it. By no means bad, and it’s easy to see why it became a genuinely generational rock album, but for me YYYs strength has always been in their loud and feral energy, their ability to capture the feeling of being young, drunk, horny, and ready to fight the world.