1001 Albums Summary

Worth remembering in 1987 that The Cure was doing moodiness way better and that overseas The Replacements were doing the jangly power pop thing way better. Some nice guitar tones, that's about it.

Dark and morbid but also stands as a singular statement of artistic purpose.

Found a few songs a bit silly (beyond the intentionally silly ones) but I deeply respect this as a showcase of Simon and Garfunkel's abilities as arrangers.

please, please, please for the love of god someone give this a lower rating because I just can't.

It's fun to see the genesis of the quiet R&B ballads that'll be more prominent later in the 70s here; shame I don't like those quite as much.

I get why people like Greta Van Fleet now.

everybody talks about britpop in terms of Blur vs. Oasis but nobody talks about it in the form of Primal Scream vs. Happy Mondays

listening to this, thinking "come on, why haven't the boygenius fans resdiscovered this yet??"

wow I forgot how hard "Candy Says" goes.

important to remind yourself every once in a while that Bob Dylan had *bangers*.

not my all-time favorite by the White Stripes, but perhaps the best demonstration of just how almighty they could sound.

On a relisten, I was struck by how much closer this was to Kraftwerk than I remembered.

new wave is so cool. I wish England was real

Love Spiritualized but never listened to Spacemen 3 so I was taken aback by how straight-up psychedelic this was, but still interesting to hear just a bit of that gospel influence that will eventually really inspire Spiritualized in the back. Last song really sounds a lot like JAMC.

Bob Dylan was 22 when he wrote this. Can you imagine sounding like that at 22? he had no choice but to take the career he did.

look, I'm not a huge Christmas music fan or anything but I can't pretend this isn't without its high points (e.g. the definitive version of "Sleigh Ride"). that being said: what the fuck is going on with the horrifically plodding version of "Frosty the Snowman" on this thing

if there's one thing Kraftwerk fucking loves it's a leitmotif

the title track carries this a lot but also imo if I was the same type of music snob I am today in 1983 I also probably would've been playing this on repeat all the time

I always tend to think of glam as having these two distinct periods where it emerged in the 70s, died out, and the reappeared out of nowhere in the 90s after glam metal got popular with Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, etc. so it's nice to get these reminders that in between it never really died out. Honestly would be interesting to make some connections between this album, glam metal, and the glam acts of our current day (Yves Tumor etc.)

alternates between sounding weirdly formulaic and uninteresting and taking interesting risks that also sound incredibly weird. so, final review: it's weird.

At work I hear a lot of different Pandora stations, and there's one that's just a generic 70s one and when I hear "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" on it I just think "wow". maybe this is controversial but I think this is maybe the best version of the psychdelic soul sound.

great album. I'll claim it as a Chicago classic. appreciated looking this up on Wikipedia too to be reminded that Bonnie 'Prince' Billy took the photo on the cover

I see this album as anticipating the pan-global musical attitudes that other acts like Gogol Bordello and M.I.A. would adopt later on. Unfortunately, I like both of those two acts better than this.

I feel bad but my opinion hasn't changed: no.

Fine, fine.

I do not wish I was a Kellogg's cornflake floating in my bowl. nor do I wish I was an English muffin.

As someone who likes ambient music, it's nice to come back to where it all began. This isn't a terribly interesting insight but like Velvet Underground, it's revolutionary in its approach, but to a completely different end.

I appreciate the progressive musical push that Bowie was going for this time, and on a new listen it's sort of funny he hadn't totally abandoned the soul and funk music he was interested in around this time, but my favorite iteration of this type of Bowie's style is coming later.

I wrote a whole ass Inforoo post about this about various existential crises I have but in spite of all of that this is still a classic.

Ok fine not all ska is bad. Interesting to hear the influence of American R&B on this album of Jamaican music made in England. "I Can't Stand It" sounds like a Stereolab song.

Conceptually very interesting, I liked a lot of the orchestration, but while I respect what they do this is just way too big of a dose of Metallica for me as a single album experience. (on the other hand, this must have been incredible to experience live.)

I don't want to try and bell curve all these albums. These are all classic albums, so hypothetically most of these should get really high ratings. On the other hand...growing up is realizing how much "Elevation" and "Move On" suck. And how little this is an album you have to hear before you die.

Some truly great jammy playing on here accompanied by some truly horrific lyricism.

Very interesting listen. Doesn't sound too dissimilar to me to other artists on the stranger end of the folk/soul spectrum (like Bobbie Gentry, who we're not getting to on this list) but you can also see the seeds being planted for today's singer-songwriters (especially LDR to my ears?) too.

Not my favorite P-funk album but how can I resist anything that makes me shimmy my shoulders this much sitting down?

'Funny' how the repugnant song on here is the one called "Brown Sugar" and not the one called "Bitch".

It's not like there were a huge amount of album-length statements about this kind of Eurotrashy, late 90s dance music that I happen to really like so I'll take it. I wrote about it more elsewhere but I think this is way more noteworthy as an introduction to Stuart Price's excellent pop production work, probably best exemplified by Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor.

A front to back joy, and maybe one of the few times the interludes are what brings the album all together.

Heard War songs here and there of course but never listened to a full album. For some reason I thought they were way dubbier than this? Really enjoyed it though. Enjoyed the meandering, jazzier parts especially on tracks like "The World Is a Ghetto" more than I thought I would.

When GZA said "Iron Man be sippin' rum, out of Stanley cups", he was predicting the future

I knew "Shining Star" going into this and wasn't expecting a whole lot but out of all the funk albums we've been listening to this past week or so this one was by far my favorite. Great upbeat songs to lead off in the beginning before things get stranger towards the end, culminating with a great finale. Fuck it, it's a 5.

A classic? Undeniably. The beats? Amazing. To my ears, the vocal delivery of all 3 Beastie Boys? Still grating.

I've listened to Electric Warrior before, so I was expecting the same kind of crunchy glam rock, but this was way more psychedelic and interesting than I expected it to be. Don't see myself returning to it a lot but still very interesting.

I was expecting pretty straightforward 60s psych, and it's not *not* that but was shocked by the depth on this. The drumming alone stopped me in my tracks more than once! Once it was over, I already found myself returning to those first three songs again, wanting to soak it in again as soon as possible. And if anything, that's a good sign that fuck it, it's a five.

*sighing heavily* I do think I like the Karen O version of "Immigrant Song" better.

I have a tendency to like dense, referential songwriters. I also have a tendency to not like artists who work primarily in overly ambitious epics. Nick Cave is a dense, referential songwriter, and in spite of Ghosteen (which we'll get to) I think this is Nick Cave's biggest epic. It's Spiritualized exaggerated to their logical endpoint...but with more debauchery and more flute parts. Fuck it, it's a 5.

I think this is a great demonstration of Brian Jackson's talents as a keyboardist/pianist and Gil Scott-Heron's talents as a singer/someone who would've posted way too much on Twitter if he had been alive at the right time.

I feel like I wanted to like this way more than I did. However, I think my perceptions have been skewed by the fact we've listened to (relatively speaking) a lot of glam recently and I know who did it better.

Not my favorite by The Cure, but still a fascinating bridge between the chirpy post-punk they'd started with and the romantic goth epics they'd come to embody.

I never like how people use the word 'overrated'. Overrated should never refer to inherent quality; it's a metadiscursive term meant to situate any given piece of media in the context of how other people talk about it. For example, it wouldn't be correct to say "OK Computer is bad". However, it would be correct to say "OK Computer is one of the most overrated albums ever made".

I have a feeling I'm going to overrate the jazz selections because I don't listen to jazz that often, but come on. How could I not give a 5 to something that grooves as hard as this at the beginning and comes down with as lovely of an ambient section at the end at this?

I want to like the music of a guy who's as much of an idealist as this, but unfortunately he's no Woody Guthrie.

The purpose of this exercise isn't really to be objective, but even then I *really* can't be objective about this. "Zero" is one of my all time favorite songs, and as time has gone on I've warmed more and more to the ballads, which I initially didn't like when I heard this album years ago. Sort of funny the YYYs did a synthpop album one time at (what's now) the midpoint of their career and decided to never do that again. What's even funnier is how naturally it worked for them. Fuck it...

It's funny that no matter how boundary pushing the rock album is, if it came out around this time, you'll always hear the blues in it whether it's Sabbath or Stooges.

More focused than The Slider and with better songs. On this listen I get why Nick Cave loves "Cosmic Dancer" so much.

One of the few albums that brings back memories of where I was when I was listening to it for the first time: walking next to the Cannon River in Minnesota on a warming spring day, hearing the opening tuba pomp of “Motion Sickness” and being immediately entranced by how familiar and odd it was at the same time. Hot Chip weren’t the first example of a live band doing electronic music I’d ever heard before, but I hadn’t really heard anyone else do music like this. Of course, having listened to infinitely more music in the intervening 12 years (including a *lot* more Hot Chip), the sound itself is less novel, but the presentation seems more novel than ever. Just in the first three songs, you have the aforementioned tuba/arpeggiating synth of “Motion Sickness” leading into the thumping kicks of “How Do You Do?” leading into the bombastic R&B-pop of “Don’t Deny Your Heart”. Everyone loves “Flutes” for being probably one of the best buildups in dance music, and I like it a lot too, but I take greater pleasures in other moments: the slinky vocals of “These Chains”, the unique romanticism of “Let Me Be Him”. Around this time, I got into Hot Chip’s live act, and they still remain my favorite live band even I don’t really believe in my hyperlaudatory stance that they’re the best live band currently working anymore. That live show still influences my opinion of this album…but I still love this album deeply. I’m glad a lot of you really liked it, too.

Some songs sag in the middle for me but while others have acknowledged the obvious pastiche, it's like the campiest parts of Elton and the Bee Gees dialed up to 11. Or, in other words, I got to the end and thought "well I had a really good time with that!" which is all that matters. "Take Your Mama" is an all timer for me, as is the "Comfortably Numb" cover (idc), but Scissor Sisters wrote probably one of the greatest songs ever and it's not on this one. (and sadly that album is simply not as good.)

I like big, dumb, fun rock music, and this is pretty big, pretty dumb, and pretty fun.

sorry Miles but they can't all be winners for me.

In her 70s, Loretta Lynn embraced contemporary rock sounds from younger collaborators to make arguably the best album of her career. Johnny Cash did 80% of that.

I've been laughing at Teddy's review for like 3 days now but on the other hand........there's so few pure blues albums on this list and ****this**** is one of the ones they go with? I really wasn't sold on this album in general but knowing that this is one of, if not the token blues albums on this list, out of a genre that consciously or not influenced, idk, a solid 90% of the rock albums on this list, feels totally ridiculous. Like I just checked and not even The Fucking London Howlin' Wolf London Sessions is on this list! What are we doing here!

It's weird listening to music on YouTube. It's not like on Spotify or iTunes where the track delineations are part of the medium, differentiated by artist-uploaded 10-second GIFs for each song. It's not like on CD where on any given player sometimes all you see are just the track numbers. And it's not even on like vinyl, where nothing is labelled but the cracks will still you when something new is coming. YouTube albums are you to get lost in. And this is a great soundtrack to get lost in. Fuck it...

one of the biggest surprises for me so far from this project - I did not expect to like this as much as I did! That in spite of the fact that I had never really thought about the fact that "Shout" is fucking six and a half minutes long before!

The hard part with the argument you should separate the art from the artist is sometimes the art is about the artist, and in this case hoo boy is it really about the artist. It seems quaint now to think there was a time when Kanye’s biggest sin was disrupting the MTV Video Award to say Beyoncé had a better music video than Taylor Swift (and nobody remembers he did it to Justice for “We Are Your Friends” too! smh), but he was humiliated so badly by the public, the president, and Lady Gaga that he had to decamp to Hawaii to build up an insane mythos with an insane roster of collaborators about this album that’s kind of…well, you know. It’s a maximalist epic of assholery that somehow follows a hero’s journey from Chicago to getting lost in the rest of the world, an album about Kanye’s own narcissism that somehow ends with him *not* getting the last word. It is, as many others will hyperbolically but correctly attest to, Kanye’s best work as a producer and curator, with the grandiose arrangements and huge drums and mental breakdown-induced vocal panning being matched only by how huge the guest list is. (Do you remember that La Roux sings harmony on “All of the Lights”? Now you do!) Lyrically, some of the jokes and references are tired, but there’s still great details throughout: the devil in the Chrysler LeBaron, different exotic fishes, you love me for me; could you be more phony? In the end, Kanye (mostly) takes responsibility for his faults and comes close to something of an epiphany, which makes everything that came afterwards of course more tragic and baffling and angering. Of course, this album didn’t end up being Kanye’s third act, and every move since has been in one way or another a hard right turn. I haven’t really enjoyed Kanye’s music since The Life of Pablo, and I absolutely haven’t enjoyed watching him turn into an avatar of bigotry. But, for better or worse, he made this album I still love about kicking and screaming against forgiveness, and still getting it anyway.

no thanks!

What struck me today was how in retrospect a lot of this album's apocalyptic political messaging becomes a metaphor for the more troubling aspects of Gaye's personal life. I had to stop in my tracks for a moment after really listening to "Don't go talking about my father, God is my friend". The use of uplifting music to mask, misdirect, or emphasize pain (personal or political) is nothing new, but this has to be one of the most consistent, well-executed examples of it.

honestly want to give The Rolling Stones credit for being so brave as to open and close this album with the two platonic ideals of rock songs and then put a bunch of nonsense filler in the middle

I love this album because I too, am waiting for a guy to come and take me by the hand, make me feel the pleasures of another man

It's great that we got Joy Division and The Fall back to back! Joy Division singlehandedly originated all the post-punk of today I love, and The Fall singlehandedly originated all the post-punk of today I hate.

Let's get annoyingly technical. When I've listened to this album in the past, I've just listened to the first two songs since that's what appeared on the original LP version. Easy 5. This time I listened to all 4 songs on Spotify which were on the CD reissue. To be honest, I thought about deducting a point for how long the sax solo on "Observation No Crime" dragged out, but then "Mistake" came on and it's now 5. So, mathematically, where does that leave us? Well, I'm not taking points off of perfection just because a guy played a saxophone just a few seconds too long for my taste.

Every once in a while I like to remind myself I do like folk music that isn't annoyingly drawn out and placid.

why the hell did Salaam Remi want her to sound like Alicia Keys so badly

I said I like big, dumb, fun rock music, and this is certainly that. Loses me slightly near the end but it's also crazy that it opens with an extremely famous guitar solo??

Unknown Pleasures' weirder, somehow gloomier cousin. Absolutely worth it for all time goth banger (?) "The Eternal".

Mazzy Star's whole thing makes sense now.

this guy sucked ass. I enjoyed listening to this a lot. It is very funny to hear people screaming "Jerry! Jerry! Jerry" in the most German ass accents imaginable.

At any given moment, the percussion from "Poor Leno" is just rattling around in my brain.

The greatest artistic achievement ever made by cocaine.

"Reviewing Nothing's Shocking for Rolling Stone, Steve Pond praised Jane's Addiction as "the true heir to Led Zeppelin" and called the album "simultaneously forbidding and weighty, delicate and ethereal", while also distinctly more "hardheaded and realistic" in sensibility than Led Zeppelin's music." bzzt wrong!!

Kinda funny to see comments here that say it's very of its time, I really disagree. I listen and immediately hear the long tail influence this had on so much vaguely electronic-inspired alt rock/pop from the 2000s on, from Metric to Rina Sawayama. The use of samples/other weird production techniques isn't so clever to draw attention to itself, Shirley Manson sounds sexy and tough as shit, and the rhythm section really grooves along the way! A delight all the way through.

This album still blows my mind a little bit every time I listen to it.

important to remind yourself from time to time that Joni Mitchell does, in fact, have the bangers.

The Beatles were so advanced that "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" predicted everything Electric Six did

This isn't so much a "Fuck it, it's a 5" so much as it is a "I don't give a fuck what anybody else thinks, it's a 5."

Fun to see the edges of post-punk coalescing into goth on something like this, too.

It's kind of surprising this came out the same year as Love Changes did because this already sounds like a bridge between 60s psychedelia and the rest of the rock that would come in the 70s. But regardless: the front is a bit less compelling than the first half, but wow "Revelation" goes crazy in about 8 different ways.

Having never listened to this album all the way through before, I was inclined to distrust snowman and ignore any potential Radiohead influence. But, yeah, it's all over this album lol. Somehow the conversion of mid-late 90s Radiohead to a more appealing pop sound generally works for me though even if OK Computer doesn't. Take it up with Thom's depression. I don't know.

I wanted to not give this five stars so bad. But then I heard the opening notes of "Intro" and I couldn't not do it. I have a huge bias towards indie music from this era since it's when I came of age, almost no other band came right out of the gate with such a unique sound that still remains completely original: the duetting vocals, the unmistakable dreamy guitar tone, the minimalist beats. For my money, it's not the best album in The xx's oeuvre (that would be I See You), but sometimes you just know. You just do.

8 distillations of a band firing on all creative cylinders that result in some of the most freaked-out, funky nonsense you've ever heard. And yet, it's perfect.

A lot of moments of true beauty in the arrangements but I'm sorry but when it comes to heartbreak songs Beck's singing style just does not do it for me.

LDR's waffle house jesus freak lyrical turn irritates me to no end. this is where it began and the music is nowhere near interesting enough to make up for it.

definitely too long but then I hear "Dirrty" and every endorphin in my brain gets activated all at once.

This is a funny one. I'm not the biggest Nirvana fan (or, for that matter, the biggest fan of most 90s alternative rock) but this time I heard something different: not the big bang of grunge, but a bunch of punks who were inspired by their artier peers and predecessors to create something different and accidentally started a revolution in the process. Also this time I thought it was funny realizing the album ends with the closest thing Nirvana ever made to a black metal song. Maybe I won't always reach for it right away, but fuck it...

sitting here, stewing, thinking "How can I give this anything else but a 5 star rating", hearing the slide whistle on "Highway 61 Revisited", trying furiously to change my mind,

major, major props for having your album's 15 minute closer be its most compelling song.

Overwrought, overlong, and overstuffed. And yet!

It turns out being metaphorical to the point of nonsensical while being backed by some truly great players ends up meaning you make some truly compelling music.

One of my all time favorite albums. I was going to say "I'll spare you most of the rhapsodizing" - but who am I kidding? I've sang along to "Fell In Love With a Girl" and "Hotel Yorba" and "We're Going to Be Friends" and "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" hundreds and hundreds of times and never get sick of them - the perfect marriage of economical songwriting and playing demanded either by limitation, circumstance, choice, or maybe all 3.

look I know it's a cover of a Duke Ellington song but few songs have ever made me go "what?" as fast as "East St. Louis Toodle-oo"

ohhhh shit! I get it now!!! "The Last Resort" is supposed to mirror "Hotel California" because a resort is like a hotel............fuck.

I'd give this rating just for the way the piano sounds in "Cities" alone.

I don't think I was ever going to write a series review about this in this box but as I sat down to type I imagined an alternate reality where Bruce pulled up Lisa Kudrow instead of Courteney Cox in the "Dancing in the Dark" video and I'm laughing at that right now

My default position towards Morrissey is antagonism, partially because of his...unscrupulous political beliefs, partially because I find him corny. But even I'll admit when he hits me hard, and he hits me hard here on "The Headmaster Ritual" and "I Want the One I Can't Have". My misgivings by and large do not extend to the rest of the Smiths, who are all fantastic here except for artistic choices that make me groan at least a little (e.g. the fade out/fade in on "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore"). Even as a vegetarian myself, jury's still out on the sound effects on the title track. Verdict: Just above a Moo/5.

To make sure I wasn't hearing things, while I was listening I had to google "John Cale" "Paris 1919" "Here Come the Warm Jets". And then to make sure I wasn't hearing things, while I was listening later I had to google "John Cale" "Paris 1919" "twee".

There’s two ways you can look at this project - either as a list of [possibly among] the 1001 greatest albums of all time, or as a list of 1001 albums that are historically important in the development of a wide range of popular recorded music. From the latter perspective, few albums would be more worthy of inclusion to represent the 2010s than this. This was the moment one of the biggest country artists of the aughts became the biggest pop star of the 10s, the moment the metacommentary of Taylor Swift’s celebrity and personal lives became so central to her music in a way that in part helped her become the biggest pop star of this decade, the moment Jack Antonoff began his ascent to a superstar producer, the arguable moment the 'turbopop' sound that was so popular in the 00s/early 10s made its last stand before other styles came to dominate the charts in the years to come. But is it any good? I mean, kinda: there’s four songs on here I’d consider perfect, some that are still pretty good, a few that are pretty shit. (Sorry, “Welcome to New York” may be necessary as an introduction to Taylor’s stylistic shift but wow I fucking hate it still.) The production sounds a bit tinny to me at times. But the perfect songs still tend to win out when it comes to my opinion of this album. The opinions hardly matter though. 10 years after this album out, it’s still Taylor’s world and we’re all living in it.

honestly went into this expecting not to like but then I heard those Prince chords on "Solidify" and thought "wait a minute."

A classic of my dorm room indie era that I always thought was quite pretty and never quite enjoyed.

this is the Talking Heads album I revisit the least often. What a huge mistake on my end.

Having never heard this album before, my first thought was “Wow, a Leonard Cohen synthpop album? That’s so fucking cool.” But then I got to “Everybody Knows” and instead thought “Ok, this is way too on the nose for fucking Leonard Cohen right?” and then I did something I almost never do and checked the global reviews for this album and saw someone insinuate “Everybody Knows” is about AIDS and I’m still so fucking mad about that that I’m pulling off my copy of the pop literary analysis book How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster off my shelf; in that book, Foster makes an interesting comparison between tuberculosis-as-metaphor in Victorian literature and AIDS in contemporary literature as diseases loaded with symbolic potential (to be clear: he is not being as pithy as that summary makes it out to be). At the risk of being overly simplistic (and I know I am) and overly prescriptive (and I know I am), Leonard Cohen would be smarter than to write that sad sack of a fucking song about AIDS, nor does it have any remote metaphorical or symbolic significance to say anything interesting about AIDS in the first place, and to be clear, it is not saying anything about AIDS at all. Oh, right, sorry, I have to review the rest of this album! I wasn't honestly thrilled with it, except for “First We Take Manhattan”, which is so fucking good.

Tyler Mahan Coe once said that Nick Cave is "gospel music for everyone who's mad". It's pithy but true for a lot of Nick Cave's music, and it might be most apparent on this album which manages to somehow be condensed and grandiose at the same time. It plays out like any good church service, doesn't it? Songs like "Papa Won't Leave You, Henry" and "John Finn's Wife" leave me feeling sweaty, somehow, while songs like "Straight to You" leave me reaching my hands out to heaven. If only every preacher was as good as Nick Cave.

unfortunately not my favorite of Leonard Cohen's, but I'm listening to "Avalanche" again and still just thinking "goddamn".

In my review for Nevermind, I said it didn't feel like the "big bang of grunge". This does, almost literally: everything is loud and the songwriting especially is epic. There's a reason why a good Eddie Vedder impression will make anyone laugh, but it wouldn't have been so omnipresent or so representative of a certain type of emoting if it didn't sell the hell out of these songs or if it wasn't just the cherry on top of everything else clicking into place. Fuck it...

Completely fascinating how Stephen Stills clearly had a ton of musical ideas working in this and still somehow barely managed to write any interesting songs.

Is this particularly good? No. Am I completely baffled how so many of you in this group hate this but love Oasis? Absolutely.

At first brush I mostly thought "oh this is pretty Stereolab-like, cool" but then all of a sudden it wasn't, bursting into a more psychedelic haze of more synths, more vocal harmonies, more strings. Good stuff!

A truly fascinating blend of jazz, rock, and country from this and the other side of the border. I found the instrumental pieces most fascinating, highlighting a band that goes from wistful to energetic at the drop of a hat.

I thought maybe overexposure to (What's the Story) Morning Glory? and its consequences had permanently damaged my opinion on Oasis, but upon pressing play I thought maybe I'd been too harsh with my opinion on this band. Upon finishing, I'm not so sure.

Some good live (or "live") performances recorded kind of shitty. But am I supposed to be mad about being asked to listen to Thin Lizzy?

I enjoyed this but for a comedy it can sound pretty dour at times.

A little jammy, a little dancey, a little swampy, and it features John Fogerty singing the absolute shit out of the word "choogling". What's not to like?

In "Racing in the Street", who do you think Bruce wants to fuck more: the guy who built his car or the car itself?

I was listening to this on a walk and kept trying to figure out why this reminded me so much of Inflo's work with Little Simz and SAULT only to get home and Google it and find out Inflo produced this too. Of course! Liked the psychedelic, groovier first half of this more, but it's still a delight to hear Inflo's grandiose arrangements paired with Michael Kiwanuka's voice.

Starts out as a glam opus before belying any pretense of glamour at all. The arrangements in the first songs are truly gorgeous, with the guitar solo on "How Do You Think It Feels" stopping me in my tracks, while the lyrics start clawing away at the darkness underneath. Of course, all is laid bare by "Caroline Says II", and things only get more devastating somehow by the time we get to "The Kids" and "The Bed". We get a plot resolution but maybe not a moral one, as the narrator intones the "sad sad song" ad nauseum at the end; of course, the irony being that compared to what we've just heard that sad song isn't that sad at all. Meticulously constructed, truly harrowing, but a true head rush.

me, listening to this album, reading this album's description on Apple Music about how a combination of an appetite for jazz rock in the late 60s and the Dead's own unique influences from a variety of other styles made this album stand out: 😃👍 me, listening to the feedback jam: 😠👎

if you listen closely enough you can hear how pieces of this music influenced other artists from all over the globe today (of course, because of the obvious rumba influence Stromae comes to mind, but maybe I'm crazy but I can hear bits of this trickling down into amapiano too). Shame you don't have listen as hard to hear how boring the songs can get and the worst parts of 90s R&B production creeping in around the edges too.

Too much, done too ridiculously. But yeah of course I had a fucking blast listening to it.

We've listened to a lot of live albums in this project so far, and when I've enjoyed them it's often been more so because it's enjoyable to listen to a lot of good songs maybe played with a bit more energy. But this is the first we've done where the liveness feels central to the album - the performance isn't perfect, but it only enhances the feeling. The sweat practically drips from the walls on this album, and does maybe what only the best live albums can do: make me wish I got a chance to see this guy live.

I can get wary about political songs. Not usually because of the politics, but because it's difficult to make political prescriptions into song lyrics without them being impossibly clunky or without them flattening into a lack of specificity. Sometimes, on a micro level, I feel like Tracy Chapman can brush up against the latter. But on a macro level this is an album full of stories of characters pushed to the margins, suffering from domestic violence, addiction, poverty, all wanting something greater. As an album length statement, it's hard to get more resonant than that.

On this album, the Minutemen move at a breakneck pace trough a zillion ideas. They play with instrumentation and dynamics and more often than not go for pretty overtly political lyrics in a way that evokes a deep curiosity about what punk can do. All that being said, its most consistent sound - that guitar tone - sometimes makes me feel like I'm being clobbered on the head across its runtime, but I'm willing to let it slide when there's so much else to pay attention to.

I think your enjoyment of this album will largely depend on the singing style, which is pretty singular when compared to most other albums on this list. I happened to find it fascinating and found myself surprised at how well it joined with the pristine guitar sound, resulting in an effect that's borderline psychedelic. A totally unique combination that's perfect for sinking into.

I just don't get it.

One thing that surprised me as I entered my 30s was that out of nowhere I started enjoying jam music a whole lot more. However, I don't like it *that* much.

Throughout this list there's often an emphasis on finality. It's rare an artist's final statement gestures towards completion unless you're David Bowie and you're making Blackstar, but while Elliott Smith was not a clairvoyant it's hard to at least consider the weight of the lyrics of "Can't Make a Sound" and the final song being a melancholic piano piece called "Bye". All that being said, I'm going to try and have some objective resolve (lol) and acknowledge my bigger problem with the album: I appreciate it trying to straddle the line between early aughts maximalism and intimate folk singer-songwriter presentation, but I don't always think it sticks the landing. It's a shame. I wish we had gotten more from Elliott. In a way, he certainly deserved more.

As with any of Kate Bush's greatest work there's just so much to listen to here - chopped up drum machine bits, ethereal fiddles, unexpected guitar solos, and, uh, per Wikipedia, a cracked fishing rod? Of course, where else could it lead but one of the most powerfully sparse songs in Bush's catalogue with "This Woman's Work" - (mostly) just voice and piano, building and building to its haunting coda of "Make it go away". I wanted to not give it a 5 as a human being who's listened to Hounds of Love before, but come on, you always gotta give props to maybe the most classic auteur pop music ever gave us.

There's another coke-rap opus from 2006 I like more than this one, but the fact that I can say "coke-rap opus from 2006" to describe more than one album remains nothing short of incredible. Fuck it, it's a 5.

Jimmy Smith's organ sounds so dated to the 60s here in a way I don't think I can articulate, so I won't. That sounds like a potential insult but it's maybe my favorite part of an album that just didn't connect with me much for other reasons also impossible to articulate on first listen. Hopefully it'll connect more in the future.

there's a scene at the beginning of the music video for the Bloodhound Gang's "The Bad Touch" where the band stares in faux-shock/amazement at a monkey fucking on TV. In spite of how much he wants me to believe in his rhyming prowess, what the Eminem of 2000 really wants is for me to make that expression every time he drops a well-timed "fuck" or "faggot", but all i can do is roll my eyes. He's extremely fucking lucky he gets one extra point for "Stan".

It sound kind of crazy when laid bare, but 60 years ago a white boy band from a port town in England combined chamber pop, the hottest trends in American R&B, and Indian classical music to make one of the create one of the most adventurous sounds any pop band's ever done.

I will give this album credit for being incredibly well sequenced with the energy going from low to high to low again, as well as for being so emblematic of its time: you can hear the album sitting at the exact midpoint of artists like the Avalanches, Röyksopp, and the Avalanches (sorry but I could not stop thinking about how much this guy was clearly influenced by The Avalanches lol) in the first and last tracks and the bigger electro house that was right on the verge of blowing up in the middle. Unfortunately, though, for as many times as I've heard the "Doctor Pressure" mashup I really, really wish I liked this more than I did.

I've always had a soft spot for Dusty Springfield, a folk singer who came to the US, heard soul music, and never looked back from that. It's fun to hear her takes on R&B songs well known and not, as well as to hear a British take on the sounds coming from places like Motown (a personal highlight of this album for me might honestly be the background vocals of the group the Breakaways) but I like Dusty best less when she's belting and more when she sounds totally laid back compared to the larger than life sounds around her, as on her masterpiece which I can't wait to get to.

*sighing heavily*

There's gotta be a German word for the rush of excitement the opening riff of "Born to Run" makes you feel, right?

honestly I'm maybe giving this a bonus point for how ridiculous the phrase/title "Sex Dwarf" is.

I can really understand people feeling the way that they feel about Genesis or any of its members' solo careers in any direction, but for better or worse through genetic fate I have a deep predisposition to Peter Gabriel.

How can you not be fond of a band that follows up "Blue Orchid", a hard rock stomper with a great riff that wouldn't have sounded out of place on any of their last few albums, with "The Nurse", a fucking marimba piece? There's more than a few things that don't really work here, but I at least admire them for going for it, and it's got 4 songs I've listened to 100+ times, so.

The natural comparison point is Slayer, but I hardly listen to Slayer and think "fuck! I wish there was less music like this" so how could I possibly be mad?

It's so cool listening to music Pitchfork would've given an 8.2 in 1980.

🤘😎🤘

for better and worse, the most excessive dying gasp of the CD era.

One of those albums I ask myself every time I listen to it, "Is it as good as I remember?" and then I hear the opening of "Ex Lion Tamer" and I'm all revved up again. Certainly sowed the seeds for a lot of other music I like, but more importantly it's harder to find finer art punk than this.

Was talking with a friend about the Go-Go's while in the car a couple weeks ago; you throw on "Our Lips Are Sealed" while driving with someone and you can really get the party going. The rest of album is top down just a lot of fun too - a really great example of new wave as party music.

thank god for side B of this album.

wild to be the artist who has the most lingering popular example of a *time signature*.

every hero becomes infallible eventually.

It's dumb to give an album five stars on the strength of one perfect moment alone. But then I hear the opening of "Where Is My Mind?" and I think hmm maybe it's not so dumb after all.

Funny to hear "There's nothing worse than being famous" songs from 1974, way less funny when you know what was going on in George Jones's life. Still, as with any other short and sweet country LP from this time, some pretty good songs, done really well, and easy to replay.

Classic Beck: A little eclectic, a little ironic, a little problematic. The latter isn't for appropriation so much as it mostly for Christina Ricci (!?)'s wild ass Japanese accent. In fact, I wish he's gone for more pure internationalism on this album since it gives the album its strongest moments. After all, M.I.A. was just starting to make a career off of it around this time, and if any established American artist was going to really go for it, well...

Man, the goths were on to something, huh?

ok here's the thing. I'm going to be the biggest Madonna defender in this group. I know. Sometimes you just have to resign yourself to your fate. And yet I remain fascinated by Madonna's midcareer albums all the same. Here we have the lingering influences of trip hop Madonna loved in the late 90s with the rising influence of French house on European club music in the early aughts combined with an odd, uh, country? musical sensibility Madonna never explored before or since at a time when no other major pop star was doing that (I think? It's honestly hard to tell because eve calling this "country-inspired" seems deeply wrong in a way I can't articulate but in a way I'm going to continue doing), just before all of these influences cascaded into Madonna making her easily worst album three years later. I don't expect everyone to like this, sure. But I still find it fascinating years later. The fact that it has all-time great pop tracks like the title song and "Don't Tell Me" doesn't hurt, either.

Ultimately, I have to draw the line at the Paul McCartney collaboration.

it's easy to see why this was revolutionary at the time, but not every revolution is worth fighting for, you know?

I feel like we're about to see some pretty significant taste differences in this group.

everyone who doesn't give this a 5 is a homophobe.

Look, there's nothing I can say about this album that hasn't already been overly exalted by every music writer on earth. And yet: it's all true!

it's kind of funny that two of the biggest indie rock trends among younger bands right now are grunge revival and shoegaze revival because basically no one combines those pivotal 90s rock sounds to sound like this (I'm sure someone will point out 800 regional bands that do but on a national level imo only julie comes close and sounds nothing like this, basically). I only bring up the fact that few, if any, bands sound like this because I think maybe more bands should try for this sound! What do they have to lose?

Not my favorite of the crop of post-Strokes British rock bands but the rips are sharp and Alex Turner mixes both funny and poignant lyrics so I'm satisfied enough.

Goddamn Nile Rodgers and company were in the bag on this one.

Felt a huge rush of excitement hearing the opening synth whoosh of "Running Up That Hill", an excitement that never relents at any point afterwards. The drums sound so big and propulsive, Kate wails for her life on this album, and the songwriting remains as unique as ever. It's more than a little ridiculous that I don't listen to this all the time.

I think I'm at a point in my life now where I don't hate Kings of Leon anymore. Never thought I'd get here. That being said, I'm still not a fan yet.

Abandoning Joel Little’s minimalist electro in favor of Jack Antonoff’s maximalist, piano-centered pop, Lorde explodes the last big teenage feelings one might have into, well, melodrama, in a way that still dazzles today. Lorde invites deep reading, so let’s start at the beginning: “Tennis Court” is a pre-fame lament with a music video that features a memorable close-up, whereas “Green Light” is a breakup power non-ballad wit house piano and a music video that features more than a few memorable close ups. “400 Lux” continues the imagine suburban luxury on Pure Heroine, while “Sober” immediately diverges: horns (!) and overdubbed rhythmic background vocals with an examination of a relationship that only works on the weekends. By “Homemade Dynamite”, the sonic metaphor becomes lyrical metaphor. There’s a lot of relationships-gone-wrong talk on the album, and you may not like that as much as the premature aging anxieties on Pure Heroine (that I may or may not still relate to an uncomfortable amount, even though Lorde and I are both fully adult now). Personally, in spite of what any comparison may suggest, I think both albums remain masterpieces, but we can only talk about this one. I find this album the less personally relatable of the two but goddamn do I feel every moment of this album every time I listen, whether it’s the piano balladry twists of “Liability” or the high-energy beat cuts of the second “in your car, the radio up” prechorus of “Supercut”. Pop artists can only strike pancultural lightning so many times, Lorde’s lucky she got to do it twice, and regardless of what I may feel about Solar Power (though no disrespect if you like it!), I still feel lucky we get to listen to this album.

Still enamored by the blues, still experimenting with different ideas, still capable of writing songs every person on earth will know through cultural osmosis. Sometimes I'm not super thrilled about all those things though.

Fuck it...

Sure, you can see the influence on punk to come on the album, whatever, but more than anything this is just a fun, silly, loud album to listen to at any time.

what a treat to listen to the music my grandparents definitely fucked to.

As always, I like loud, dumb, riffy rock albums like this. But something tells me AC/DC has something even better than this up their sleeve....

A totally idiosyncratic sound and a truly top-down great collection of songs. Always think this came out in like the mid-90s and have to remind myself this was only 7 years after the Ramones.

ok it's already clear that I'm the Madonna stan in the group so I'm not even going to try and hide it. And I want to give this a 5. I partially think that any album that has "Like a Prayer", the song, on it, deserves a 5. Any album that has this much collaboration between Madonna and Prince (!!!) on it hypothetically deserves a 5. But.......while I'm willing to hype up Music at the expense of any reason, this is where I gotta take off the rose colored glasses. This is definitely where Madonna became too big too fail, where Pepsi couldn't stop Madonna then or where Lady Gaga couldn't stop her in the future. But are the songs all that great? Some of them definitely not. "Love Song" comes up short as the almost fanfiction-worthy collaboration of the 80s, and "Dear Jessie" goes for cute and innocent but ends up too maudlin. Of course, though, there's other triumphs - the anthemic triumph of "Express Yourself", the barely-proto-new jack swing groove of "Keep It Together". It's a shame, because if you'll forgive the critical pretense this album feels like the apotheosis of all of Madonna's 80s ambitions. But it's not the true Madonna 5. (which imo is True Blue. If you want to fight me on that though I get it.)

ok, fine, fuck it, just about any time Nile Rodgers is involved, give it the five, what the fuck ever,

I said fuck it once, and fuck it again:

I'm sorry I can't stop thinking about the use of the 'oriental riff' on "A Passage to Bangkok".

Deeply pleasant, arranged and performed well, very acoustic. Has a kind of perfect almost snowglobe-like quality I associated with other artists from around this time like Norah Jones. I appreciate the modern (for 2000, at least) sound it's going for but it's not my favorite MPB I've ever heard.

Fuck it...

I am a huge Janelle Monáe stan. I would love to give this album a 5 for that reason alone. However, as a huge Janelle Monáe stan, I have listened to their other albums, and I know two things: 1) as far as robot-themed epics of love and race and revolution go, The Electric Lady is superior and 2) as far as groovy-ass R&B albums that touch on as wide of a thematic and sonic ground go, Dirty Computer remains the best* (*read: my favorite) album of the 2010s. That being said, this album remains ambitious in scope, silly at times in execution (on purpose), and with some all time bangers left over - if you've never gotten chills from watching the "Cold War" music video, well, I'm assuming you've never logged on to YouTube before. This laid the groundwork for Monáe's best work, but wow, what a foundation.

Allow yourself to forget any White Stripes nostalgia for a second. And, it may be harder, but allow yourself to forget any ca. 2009 Raconteurs/Dead Weather nostalgia. This album is way better than Icky Thump, right? And probably way better than Get Behind Me Satan, right? It's a testament to Jack White's creativity across multiple projects that I frankly *don't* give this a five, but just because it doesn't immediately go for the hard blues rock stompers doesn't mean this album sucks. Au contraire: as a Jack White stan, the only reason I'm not giving this a 5 is because the ending doesn't totally live up to prior Jack White albums' endings. Unfortunately, with hindsight we can say it'll be another decade before Jack White solo gets his bearings again (I say that specifically because imo Dodge and Burn is a 5) but to this day I still deeply enjoy this album and find it a highlight of Jack's catalogue.

you can only trust yourself and at least this black sabbath album.

Ok, let's think about this for a moment: pop music's most preeminent avant-garde artist made an entirely acapella album? That features some near-unbelievable classical harmonies from a whole choir of similarly ethereal voices? And it's got a member of the Roots doing beatboxing throughout the album? And somehow Bjork doesn't sacrifice her songwriting abilities for a second on this album? Well, I'd love to give it a 4, as a human being who's heard Post and Homogenic before, but I'm not grading on a curve!! Fuck it, it's possible only worthwhile acapella album ever made deserves a 5 too:

not their best!

All the pieces are there, and I appreciate QOTSA for including a couple of genuinely interesting instrumental tracks here, but I think it's hard for me to think anything else knowing QOTSA's most invigorating works are just around the corner.

Sometimes you feel like you want to rate albums higher than they maybe deserve just for the history, but then I hear the pulsing, drilling opening riff to "The Robots" and I'm already losing my mind and shimmying my shoulders a little bit. Everyone who says "Kraftwerk invented techno" is wrong, but the DNA for most of the electronic music that came after that I love is all here. But in a way, the history doesn't matter. This album fucking slaps on its own and always will.

There are so many albums on this list I give 5s to that I want to dissect in minute detail. And here's what I'll say about this Franz Ferdinand (2004): this is so much goddamn fun.

I mean, come on.

the first two albums I ever got into as a kid were New Order's Republic and Madonna's Ray of Light. The rest of my ratings here are just an argument between those two albums.

some people say they wish they could hear a song for the first time again. I feel the opposite here - I wish I could live in the immediate, familiar warmth this album gives me every time, the way listening to the best songs feel like greeting an old friend.

Why does anyone give a shit about live albums? If you're purchasing a record, you should be judging that album on its own merits. Otherwise, if you're just looking for a few great songs, you should just pick up the greatest hits compilation. Personally I think the answer is the same reason anyone gives a shit about live shows: hypothetically you'll be getting the most perfect version of any artist on record, but with live music there's always the tension that something could go wrong at any time. Of course, on a live album, that tension can be manipulated the way it can't with an in person concert. But even as a live album lover maybe no album better manipulates that tension than At Folsom Prison. You hear it immediately with the alleged, certainly edited prison applause roaring for “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die” followed immediately by the at least slightly more off the cuff bleeped-out swearing incident on “Dark as the Dungeon”, and later with the loose laughter of “The Long Black Veil”. What can’t be manipulated is that, in spite of it all, Johnny Cash sounds best at his rawest, and here he sounds raw as hell with the Tennessee Three backing him for some hard ass honky tonk. The bonus comes from the added support of Carl Perkins and June Carter Cash, who all may as well share star billing with Johnny the way they bring their absolute A-game. I’ll give special credit to June, whose wailing on “Jackson” sends shivers down my spine every time. But, ultimately if any great album puts you in the headspace of its sound for its running time, any great live album should put you right in the moment of when that show happened, and in spite of any trickery that happens, goddamn does it put you right in Johnny Cash’s shoes in 1968 California.

Portishead may be one of my favorite bands relative to how little they’ve actually done. Maybe that’s their secret weapon, maybe it isn’t. Beth Gibbons seems content these days to relive the past for 3 minutes a night while otherwise jamming out to increasingly elaborate folk rock arrangements, while Geoff Barrow seems content these days to bitch and moan constantly on Twitter. But for a few cosmically perfect moments, they created some truly impossibly perfect music. Dummy and s/t will get the (rightful) credit for defining a singular sound that, perhaps tellingly, no 90s nostalgist has really tried to revive since, but Third may still be my favorite Portishead album: a group so hellbent on doing something new they threw so much sonic spaghetti against the wall and basically all of it stuck. Please listen to “Machine Gun” again, maybe one of the most conceptually insane recordings of our era that should not work but does anyway, and the listen to how it’s followed up by “Small”, which sounds like 90s Portishead reduced to its most simplest terms: a simple guitar figure without any notable effects followed up by what I assume that’s a synth that sounds like a violin before bursting into a 60s keyboard/drums arrangement that sounds like ‘traditional’ Portishead but with the melody all wrong.I could play this game forever. It’s so easy just to describe how unique and wild every arranagement on this album is. But then what’s point? That’s the more interesting part: for all the despondency of the first albums, maybe nobody has ever come together to sound more alone than these three people on this album. Let me revel in the darkness again.

We'll probably talk a lot about meaningless terms throughout this exercise, but at honestly with historical perspective few may be as useless as "proto-punk". It's hard not to listen to this album and conclude that this point in musical history, you could listen to as many blues records as your heart desired, record a rock record, and 10, 20, 50 years later people would ascribe whatever genre they wanted to you. But in the truly freed spirit of this album you can hear at least the spirit of the punk yet to come; for the most contemporary reference I can think of I honestly feel I hear more than a little Viagra Boys in this album. But all that entrepreneurial spirit would be worthless if the album itself wasn't good. Fortunately, it still fucking rocks. Honestly, it's best if you abandon any intellectual exercise here in the first place: this all about fuzz and imperfection. Surrender yourself to the sound and let the history do the talking.

Wild Beasts' Spotify description states they are "flamboyant" and "sensual", which I guess means "falsetto" and nothing actually flamboyant or sensual.

It’s hard for me to *not* get emotional here. I’ll start upfront with the important acknowledgment: I know Prince was not always a good person. He elevated women on stage and behind the scenes, but treated some of them, including Sinéad O’Connor, like shit. But, on a gut level, it’s hard for me not to see Prince’s music as a symbol both for a very particular time in my life and the apex of an entire culture I lived and breathed. It started when I lived in Minnesota and a friend gave me a flash drive that opened my mind to a whole world of music I hadn’t give much thought about before, from Bob Dylan to Prince Nelson Rogers. And in the blink of an eye, I was still in Minnesota when he died, and overnight the symbol became a synecdoche. Every billboard was purple. But there’s a reason six million people, from the masses gathered outside the First Avenue in April 2016 (myself included) to the conservative dads I talked to around bluetooth speakers at their lake houses later that summer. let this represent them: it’s impossible to deny how good the music is. Let’s ignore the legend. How many albums have you heard before that open with anything more purposeful than “Let’s Go Crazy”? How many albums have you heard before that have as popular *and* weird a single as “When Doves Cry”? How many albums have you heard before that has a song that still lifts your soul out your body no matter how many times you hear it like “Purple Rain”? Prince used his insane guitar guitar skills, yalping vocals, and Linn LM-1 to make an album that I’d like to think would still be a favorite of mine - or anybody with any sense’s - all time favorite albums in spite of any larger than life personal significance. I know I’m being hyperbolic. Let me be hyperbolic once more: sometimes whenever I listen to just about any popular music I think “what’s the point in getting opinionated on this, treating this like high art?” Well, Prince wrote a song about a woman jerking off in a hotel lobby and it only reinforces my belief in pop music as high art every time.

If you look on Wikipedia, you’ll see that The National is defined as a “post-punk revival” band. I never quite got that until I relistened to this album. I do think this is the National’s best example of a post-punk album. It's also their most goth album, especially since indie anthem “Bloodbuzz Ohio” stands out so much in sharp relief to the rest of the album. Drummer Bryan Devendorf has always been this band’s secret weapon, but here his drumming *really* stands out, especially when contrasted with the hazy effects piled on to almost every other instrument. Meanwhile, Matt Berninger is at his most dour here on songs like “Terrible Love” and “Lemonworld”. Personally I think he hits the mood best on my all-time favorite National song “Pink Rabbits” on Trouble Will Find Me but the cloudy mood is more undeniable here. After all, this is the album that gave us the almost too on-the-nose “Sorrow”, the song the band played for six hours for a Ragnar Kjartansson piece that is interesting on its own merits and emphasizes this album’s qualities. Can you imagine six hours of “Apartment Story” or “Mr. November”? Of course not. All of which is to say: this isn’t my favorite National album, but it’s easily their most successful at creating a very specific mood, one which I hope I don’t want to return to often, but one that’s certainly worth immiserating yourself in if you want to stick a toe in.

For reasons I'd like to think are rational but probably aren't, I want to hate just about everything Simon and/or Garfunkel does. I find the songwriting on the folksier 60s material way too goofy, or I find Paul Simon's later work not interesting enough relative to how much he risked to cross the cultural boycott line. And yet here it all makes sense to me. I listen to "Cecilia" and understand why Paul Simon wanted to do that in the first (in addition to understanding, in some sense, Vampire Weekend's whole deal); I listen to "Baby Driver" and I get where the folk scenesters were coming from at their most energetic (in addition to understanding, in some sense, Edgar Wright's whole deal); I listen to "Keep the Customer Satisfied" and I feel like I understand more of where pop music thought it could maybe go in a post-Beatles world (in addition to understanding, in some sense, the producers of Full House and/or whoever wrote the theme song). I don't think Simon & Garfunkel will ever be my favorite due to whatever prejudices I may have on my end. But even if you're a hater, you should be able to admit when your enemies made some good points.

I listened to this when I was a teenager, didn't like it, and never revisited. Now I really like it? Am I getting old enough to appreciate downtempo?? *gulp*

It's cliché at this point but it bears repeating: this album isn't *really* ambient but you can't *really* dance to it either. So, what is it? Well, Brian Eno, a guy who comes up one or two times on this list, once wrote "ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting." The problem, of course, is that SAW85-92 isn't really ignorable, per se. But you can pay attention to it at any level while listening and it'll always be perfect, with Aphex Twin's surprising ear for melody maybe being the secret weapon here. It might not be the best album for a sleepless night, but in a pinch it'll work for a restless one.

exhausting.

How can you not give a five to a band of poets, nay, artistes, who balanced the poetry and beauty of trying to capture everything from nonbinary identity to adolescent heartbreak in 33 rambunctious yet beautiful minutes alongside a song about getting a hard-on?

a truly beautiful album I wish wasn't so marred in my mind by some things that happened two decades later.

It's kind of funny because while every element of the signature Prodigy sound (aggressive breakbeats, acid synths, sample hooks) is all there, it still sounds like a setup for the classic Prodigy sound we all know, just because neither Keith is involved on vocals. But as a pure head rush from start to finish, it's hard to beat this. If the rave doesn't sound like this, I don't want to come.

I've written that I like big, dumb, fun, rock music in so many reviews throughout this project. And there may be albums that are bigger, dumber, or more fun than this one. But how many of them had the almost supernatural combination of right singer, right producer, right band at the right time? Quickly: none of them. If you don't know by now, you never will.

There's nothing worse than listening to someone who is clearly deeply talented and boundlessly creative make something you spend every second finding increasingly unpleasant.

If you zoom out too far, the description of this album gets a little funny: an incredibly talented pop music video dancer channels Kate Bush at her breathiest, Dev Hynes at his most sophisticated, and Sade at her horniest to create a fusion of indie, R&B, and electronic music that just may have set the template for a lot of popular music today. But that weirdly feels like I'm over and underselling it at the same time. First, the underselling: twigs is a pretty great songwriter, something that doesn't get acknowledged very often. The album expands upon the pleasures of the first EP into jams about wanting to steal someone's man ("Two Weeks"), making out ("Hours"), and masturbation ("Kicks"), while ruminating on being the object of that same desire ("Video Girl", "Pendulum"). The production remains in line with mid-10s trends while still sounding like almost nothing else of the time: the post-James Blake bass of "Two Weeks", the upright bass of "Lights On", the drums that feel like they're referencing Björk and trap music on "Numbers". I will admit at the end here I'm a bit biased: LP1 was my #1 album of 2014 then and I don't think there's any other album on this list that matches up with my personal rankings from any given time. But to this day, this album remains a hallmark of the possibilities of what post-genre pop artists can do, no matter what tradition you may perceive they're tied to most.

listened to this totally coincidentally of knowing this was the selected album today to commemorate Ozzy. But of course, when it comes to Black Sabbath, Ozzy was a very important cog in a machine that arrived, accidentally and purposely, with a singular vision that birthed an entirely new world of rock music so many of us still cherish. So: viva Black Sabbath, viva Ozzy Osbourne, viva metal.

I'll start off by acknowledging I'm a little disappointed this is our only chance to talk about Sleater-Kinney, imo one of the most crucial bands in the rock canon, but at least we get to talk about one of their best works. But somehow that's even underselling it a bit - "one of their best works" means one of the greatest punk albums ever made, the album where Corin Tucker's wailing vibrato reaches into the straosphere, the album where Carrie Brownstein's guitar interplay provides the contrast to keep you on your toes the most, the album where Janet Weiss sounds like she's pounding down with the most almighty force. And yet, in spite of all that strength, you still get some of the band's most tender moments, like the all time gay breakup anthem of "One More Hour" or the scene-famous meditation "Buy Her Candy", to say nothing of the great almost B-52's like rock hooks of "Words and Guitar" or "Little Babies". There's a moment for everything, and for 36 brief minutes you get a chance to scream out maybe everything you've ever felt.

Nina Simone has a lot of albums and I won't pretend I've listened to all of them nor will I pretend to know if this is the best one. But this encapsulates Nina Simone's ability to make really compelling music across a wide range of styles and has some of her best/most notable songs, so how could I not give it a 5?

House music isn't necessarily a genre that lends itself well to albums. And why would it? The real heads will point out all the singles, remixes, and DJ sets that make up the canon; dance music is an ecosystem that thrives across formats. But Daft Punk came out with an album more or less right out the gate and gave the genre one of its most defining statements. Full disclosure: Daft Punk is my all time favorite band, so I will likely get hagiographic. But Homework remains a testament to what house music can do. Discovery's disco samples and high pass filters constitute the sound Daft Punk are probably best known for, but Homework plays more like a punk record in spirit, if not in song length or style: every track homebrewed, every sound explored. You can hear something like the genesis of the true 'French house' sound in the pulsing bassline and repetitive vocoder in "Around the World", but also the rip roaring acid of "Rock 'n Roll", the Chicago-style groove of "Burnin'", the uplifting gospel-influenced dance music of "Phoenix". All of this would be pointless though if it still wasn't so much goddamn fun to listen to though! The chopped samples, squalling 303s, and vocal effects still tickle my ears, and I still haven't even mentioned the warped porno soundtrack synth and almighty thumping bass of stone-cold classic "Da Funk", whose towering might commands so much attention it only made sense that Daft Punk basically played it with some minor tweaks and mashups in Alive 2007. While I mentioned Daft Punk developed more singular sounds for their albums later - the aforementioned French touch of Discovery, the minimalist vocoder post-punk of Human After All, the overly expensive studio-wizard virtuosity of Random Access Memories - the delight here comes from the constant kid-in-the-candy-store moments you get. Daft Punk themselves certainly weren't shy about where these influences came from - halfway through the album you get "Teachers", which cites a whole litany of American DJs (many of whom still perform regularly FYI!!) but with this album established themselves as titans so forcefully when Laidback Luke did an updated (and, sorry, weirdly badly produced) edit of "Teachers" a decade later he basically did so to build up to honoring Daft Punk at the end. Unfortunately, Discovery, my all time favorite album, is not going to be on this list. But I'll still always give the seed that sprouted the plant a five.

A deeply beautiful album about transformation that hits me right in the heart, which is maybe what all good music should do to you most.

The queen sounds very much of her generation here, for better (the wild genre-bending sampling across the production) and worse (sorry but I laughed out loud at the line asking why we give quarters to video games but not to homeless people). Let's split the difference: a great document of where rap was in 1989 and where some smart people wanted to take it further.

I thought about rating this album lower for a second because the singles, or really the two biggest singles, from this album loom so large it feels almost impossible to not be let down a bit by anything else. But the more I listen to this album, I find myself anticipating the highlights more.....while also being more excited to hear what comes between. Of course you've got one of the greatest disco songs of all time and the song that may as well be the most prototypical example of new wave imaginable, but there's so many nods to New York punk, girl groups, and softer balladry in between that overall this album becomes such a joyous exercise in listening to a band explore the whole world in front of them all at once. Maybe this band just got lucky with divine inspiration for a few songs that still stick generations later. But also, most bands aren't Blondie, either.

certainly the better of Taylor's COVID-era folk/indie records.

Only John Prine could have a happy song about illegally smoking pot and the most devastating song you've ever heard about illegally doing heroin two songs apart and get away with it so effortlessly.

sufficiently jangly.

not my favorite Underworld release but there's at least two stone cold genre classics on here so I can never be that mad.

I gave Blondie a 5 a few weeks ago so I can't fully endorse any album that makes fun of new wave. (Don't ask me what I think about The Hold Steady.)

I wasn't sure if I was on the same wavelength of what Andy Partridge was doing on here but eventually I sunk into the rich orchestral sound. Unfortunately, then I heard the lyric "F U C K/is that how you spell friend in your dictionary?"

Really not sure how to rate this one. Generally not a fan of any acapella styles and I think there's a limit for how long I could keep listening to this leader/harmony response style over and over again. But the album doesn't overstay its welcome, and those harmonies are breathtaking. I'll take the over.

Never been a huge George Michael fan but I did enjoy this album more than I thought it would. one question: did "I Want Your Sex" *need* to be nine and half minutes long?

I want to balk at the usual suspects - the length, the ploys at psychedelia. It turns out I remain charmed by Jeff Tweedy all the same.

I tried to be more critical of this. I really did. But I can't pretend like I just didn't write an overly effusive Pixies review that talked about Doolittle as the origins of most of the indie rock that I listen to without writing an overly effusive review about this album about the origins of most of the synthpop that I listen to. A lot of it was being in the right place in the right time - you couldn't write the Human League story without the letters 'MTV' being in there at any point - but unless you've got the goods, you won't get to the right place anyway. "Don't You Want Me" is one of the greatest songs any of us all will hear at any time on this list, a unique duet of success, resentment, and failed romance set to one of pop music's most propulsive beats. But beyond that one moment of white heat, every other song reads like Kraftwerk if they were 25% more human. Like I think millennials might know "Seconds" better from the LCD Soundsystem cover, but listening to the original today I'm kind of floored but its proto-trance sound. Speaking of, I used to wonder about why James Murphy bragged about having this in his record collection and now I don't wonder much anymore.

This is in a lot of ways the proto-cool-rock-kid record, so I don't know why I was expecting rapping over 60s synthpop or something along those lines instead of very well executed and very loud blue-eyed soul & blues that if you squint hard enough leads to punk music a decade later. But at least Mr. Beefheart had an ear for making sure it never sounded that corny.

In my mind, for whatever reason, when I try and mental map what the beginning of the most nebulous genre of all time, "indie rock", was, I think of Pixies. Sure, their forebears and contemporaries are obvious, and their signature sound of harsh guitars with wildly varying dynamics is nowhere close to what anyone would call the average sound of indie rock today. But it's hard for me not to look at everything else at the 80s and think "ok this album's success is where the ever shifting line started". So then what? Give this a 5 because this is the primordial soup where half the music you listen to today comes from? No! I'm giving this a 5 because I love listening to it! My main criticism is sometimes I feel like I should be more put off by the tryhard silliness of lyrics like the reference to Salvador Dali becoming the sole focus of the chorus of "Debaser" and then I listen to the rest of the album and I find myself charmed by the silliness. The contrast is always the point. The silly versus the artsy. The loud versus the quiet. The minimalist versus the maximalist. Ten years ago, a drunk woman at a Pixies show told me "Someday you'll understand this" as the band played "Here Comes Your Man". I think I do now, but not for the reasons she thinks.

there's a lot of spaghetti thrown at the wall here and the only piece that actually sticks is the one Neil Young threw just by himself.

I always heard a lot of 2000s indie artists talk about how The Hives were the greatest live band working at that time and I didn't believe them and then I saw them and then I got it. And then I read that this was essentially a greatest hits compilation designed to get them to hit it big in the UK and I thought "there's no way they could get a bunch of pre-Strokes garage rock songs to sound like that and make it work" and guess what? I should have trusted The Hives again.

There's a lot of albums on here I'm deeply familiar with I give 5s to because they bring so much joy; on the other hand this is an album I'll give a 5 to because of how much it devastates me every time. I always love a lyrically dense songwriter and Joanna Newsom is maybe the most lyrically dense songwriter on this whole list, with words so allusion and symbol heavy you could write multiple disserations on "Monkey & Bear" and "Sawdust and Diamonds" alone. I could see the storytelling being grating....if it wasn't backed by moments of pop-level clarity: "But still, they have got to pay the bills, hadn’t they?” "Why the long face?" "And all those lonely nights down by the river..." I'll leave the interpretations up to you, but if you're not moved alone by incredible orchestral arrangements and/or use of treble-heavy harp motifs to their maximum effect here I'll be judging you a little bit. Or, maybe to put it more gently: If you can get through "Cosmia" without getting at least a little teary, you're a stronger person than I am. Ys is a late era folk revival album that's not-so-secretly some of the highest art we're going to get on this list, and if all you can hear is "wow Joanna Newsom sings kinda funny", well, that's on you.

listen, I have to give a 5 to the album that did the biggest business on my walkman.

Above all else, I am a Big Boi defender. I think if there's one benefit to this split LP style, it's that Big Boi really gets to stretch his legs and flex his creative muscles even if his impulses are less eccentric. Big Boi might have my favorite deep cuts on the whole album; I hear "GhettoMusick" and I am immediately energized every time, and I love the way the horns on "The Rooster" tickle my brain. Speakerboxxx is just so much fun and really hints at what he'll do later with stone cold classics like "Shutterbugg". Meanwhile, of course Andre goes for Prince and lands in his own idiosyncratic universe that's always way jazzier than I remember it being (see: the cover of "My Favorite Things" I kind of love?). I always think I'll be put off by the longer excursions like "Prototype" and "Vibrate" but the former remains another of my favorite OutKast songs and the latter has a fantastic hook. It's hard not to be shadowed by the fact that humankind's global anthem "Hey Ya!", the most played song possibly ever, is on it, but you know what? I still think "Hey Ya!" is great. Both sides suffer from bloat, the fact that the two sides are so different from one another remains melancholy in a way few works match (the closest parallel I can think of is watching the White Stripes' Under Great White Northern Lights documentary), but all told I remain above all else impressed that this works at all.

I think I might be biased here because I still have such vivid memories of seeing this album being performed live (hilariously, in English by a French artist in Spain) in what might still be one of my favorite concerts I've ever seen. On the other hand, I think the performance wouldn't have been so good if the music didn't demand it. It's an odyssey through remembered 80s and 90s pop/R&B, filtered through contemporary production techniques (e.g. GarageBand loops, which I plainly do not care about) and a very contemporary attitude. Of course, it's hard not to view this album through today’s lens of Rahim's full openness as a trans man, but you could read him in interviews at the time expressing that this album was more 'macho'. It certainly has that attitude and swagger, especially on the sexier tracks like "Girlfriend" or "Damn (what must a woman do)" and in the live performance's pyro and huge cast of dancers. But there's also so much room for tenderness and exploration on this album, especially on perhaps the album's best song "Doesn't matter", which musically builds and builds and builds to a point of no resolution while the lyrics take romantic desperation and turns into something existential. The easiest interpretation is that this is an album about identity, and it is, but I see it more as an album about navigating all kinds of complicated relationships: from the fan adoration of “Comme si" to the potentially homophobic partner of “Feel so good” to the sex worker of “5 dollars”, all transformed into pop music that best expresses Rahim’s most dramatic tendencies while still being reined in enough with deep grooves and great hooks.

The joke I always make is that if Loveless is god, Souvlaki is the son and Nowhere is the holy spirit. What I mean is if you've listened to as many power pop and bedroom pop or independent shoegaze bands as I have, you expect the same thing every time but judge the music based on how it meets your expectations. But someone had to set those expectations in the first place. And, in my opinion, Ride set those expectations pretty spectacularly nearly 35 years ago.

Phil Spector comes out of everyone to show just how middling adult contemporary music can be. bonus point because Dion himself does sound quite nice.

Phenomenally groovy. Phenomenally ridiculous.

there's a lot of playing around with tempo and dynamics here across the album which I always appreciate. wish I responded to the songs more.

Fiona Apple's Spotify bio says "Her roots lay in jazz, show tunes, and classic '70s singer/songwriters" and well, this is where you certainly hear that the most!

languid, beautiful, desperate.

Usually when I review albums like these I know I like a lot I try and research some historical/interpersonal details that influenced the musical direction of the album but here every detail I find weirdly makes me more confused. On paper, the trajectory makes sense: two very creative musicians butt heads and swap places to very successful careers in different directions. But how did that headbutting result in this album? Well, All that's left are my thoughts: the most common reference points for this point in the 70s seems to be glam rock but there's almost nothing glam about this to me aside from the cover; it's high psychedelia through and through, with what's perhaps Bryan Ferry lyrical magnum opus here. There's a part of me that wants to go "boooo I wish I liked every song a little bit more". But who the fuck am I kidding. Fuck it, it's a....

The Beach Boys will always find a way to write the best vocal harmonies you've ever heard over the dumbest songs you've ever heard.

combining the energies of punk music and northern soul into one package so raucous and delightful you almost think they're about to reinvent ska from first principles.

I'm afraid this may be the only chance we'll have to talk about D'Angelo. It's hard not to feel disappointed about that, especially after his recent death, but there's always joy in thinking about why you find joy in one of your favorite artists. To explain that, I'm going to do something I almost never do here, which is cite outside sources. First: in a recent review of Dijon's 2025 album Baby (a very good album in my opinion), the critic Ivy Nelson said "R&B is so often a genre of precision, at times increasingly so as it’s become less played and more programmed over decades of development. Where can an artist go now but deeper into the error?" A thought like that only makes sense now because so many R&B artists throughout time have not-so-secretly made some of the most precise music imaginable sound loose, sexy, and fun; to wit, I always think of a video of Thundercat discussing his favorite bassline, describing how Brown Sugar bassist Raphael Saadiq schooled him during a rehearsal: the bassline on "Lady" has only three notes. Unfortunately, D'Angelo only got to release three albums in this life; fortunately, all three highlight his virtuosity so much we can nitpick at differences. Brown Sugar is 90s neo-soul at its least produced, stretched to an icicle of melodic so precision so tight any rumbling would cause the whole structure to collapse. We thank you and we love you forever, Michael Eugene Archer.

The back half of this album couldn't hope to compete with the first half. But wow, what a first half.

Ultimately here's what I love about this project: this was a band I knew nothing about, this was an album I knew nothing about, based on their titles I thought I was going to hate it, and I was kind of blown away. If you've ever seen and loved any noise rock band in a small club (which, ideally, should be most of you here), this plays like your favorite club band giving free rein to do whatever the hell they want and going for it. It's loud, kinda punky, kinda psychedelic, kinda heavy on the weird samples, and all in all makes for a pretty unforgettable listening experience.

One of life's bigger disappointments is that you'll never be in a movie standing on a beach, gazing furtively at a lover you may never have, the shots cutting back and forth between you and them while this album plays in the background.

Some genuinely very funky stuff in here more in line with 80s styles than I'd expect from the bombastic soul I knew already by Bobby Womack, but when he starts entering full preacher mode near the end of the album it starts to drag on just a bit too much.

I feel weird for writing a lot about Adele here since I’m not even a particularly huge Adele fan, especially compared to others I know, but I find her so fascinating as a musical figure for how she came about and what she represented at a very specific time. (Full disclosure: I’m American so I’ll be talking about that perspective. I don’t know what would’ve changed if “Chasing Pavements” was a bigger hit here.) Picture this: it’s 2011. The Hot 100 is dominated by uptempo, largely dance-oriented songs by women like Britney, Katy, Gaga, and Rihanna. “Rolling in the Deep” came out as a single the fall before, but climbed slowly up the charts until it hit #1 early in the summer like a load of bricks. It wasn’t in a totally separate universe from other dance-pop songs on the radio at the time: it’s got a *very* stomping 4/4 beat and a percussive backing vocal that if you squint recalls disco while not really sounding like anything else. But this was a classic, classic R&B song, not super unlike what Amy Winehouse had done with Back to Black but bigger than ever before. (Worth noting too that sadly Amy left us shortly after this song took off in the US.) All of this while she was signed to XL! XL!! I’m a big fan of most of what XL Recordings has ever put out so I’m biased here, but Adele’s inclusion on that roster is lightly insane if you think about it for more than .02 seconds. Imagine if songs by their other R&B-referencing artists like The xx’s “Islands” or Jai Paul’s “BTSTU” took off like wildfire in the US. The mind boggles! All the same, Adele took off, and followed up that song’s success with “Someone Like You”, which really, really did not sound like anything else on the charts at that time. For me, it’s hard not to draw parallels between her and Mariah Carey, whose huge success in the 90s was at least in part a reaction to the exposure of ‘fake’ singers like Milli Vanilli. But Adele didn’t change much in the broader musical landscape: neither throwback R&B nor piano ballads came to dominate the charts, maybe because there were already other belters like Gaga who were just working in a different style, maybe because Americans in that era just wanted to fantasize about being in the club more than anything else. Who knows what happened, but Adele herself continued to thrive in her own lane for years and years to come. So what of the album itself, then? For its history listed above, I think it’s totally unique, especially as far as 2010s records go. Aside from Adele’s classic soul voice, it stands out for some uniquely piano-heavy arrangements, and I honestly kind of love how hollow the drums the sound on a lot of the more uptempo numbers (especially "Rumour Has It”. What is going on with that snare!!) But due to overexposure and the fact that I was 17 when this album came out, so many of these songs feel embedded in my DNA in a very specific way. I will fist pump every time during the second chorus of “Rolling in the Deep”. I’ll lift a lighter, or at least a phone flashlight, up for “Set Fire to the Rain”. And I’ll always shed a tear for “Someone Like You”. I think this album represents a very specific artist who could’ve really only hit once in a very specific era, and I don’t miss that era necessarily, but I’ll always smile along and wave my hands up in the air every time I hear the record.

*taking a huge hit of my joint* girl.........

The Star Trek sample at the very beginning tells you where it's going to go: this album is spacey. A lot of tracks have synth pads almost reminiscent of ambient music and there's stretches where the track will just be drums and those synths, allowing your mind to wander freely with your feet still planted firmly on the floor before being called back in by one groove or another. This is most obvious on electronic classic "Halcyon and On and On" but also on "Planet of the Shapes" and "Lush 3-2" honestly. I wouldn't really call the end result psychedelic, but more dreamlike; not the vibrant colors of 2001: A Space Odyssey but maybe more like floating in blank antigravity. But Orbital isn't here to leave you content in that state for too long: these tracks pulse just as much too, especially other electronic classic "Lush 3-1" but also on tracks like acid workout "Remind". The final product as such goes in a lot of different directions, ending up in the same universe as other 90s rave records but doing something pretty different in the process.

I'm going to be honest: I somehow knew very little about the Flying Burrito Brothers and I was prepared to be turned off after "Christine's Tune". But I'm glad I stuck around - this album is a fascinating combination of country and psychedelia that feels like a lightning-in-a-bottle moment for this specific time, down to the country recitation the references Chicago '68 on closer "Hippie Boy". In the intervening decades, country and rock have influenced each other in different ways, but seldom in a way like this.

I've been kind of down on the Chemical Brothers lately. I saw them DJ last year the Portola festival and didn't leave as wowed as I was hoping; after being impressed with their visuals and less impressed with their music at their live set at Coachella 2023 I entered the DJ set hoping for something explosive like their famed sets of yore but didn't quite get that. The expectations for the Chemical Brothers are high in the US. If you're an American fan, they take on a near mythic status because, to be frank, Americans do not give a fuck about the Chemical Brothers and consequently they never play here. Everyone speaks of them in apotheotic terms here. Every time I felt let down by them, I felt like I was letting down their fans. I hadn't listened to this album in a while, and my expectations were tempered. They shouldn't have been. This album still rules, and probably remains the best big beat record of any kind. "Block Rockin' Beats" explodes rap samples into arena house so loud it'll shake the tinniest of speakers and from there they build up, transitioning from song to song that feels like the energetic DJ sets I'd been hoping for, tumbling through tacks like "Elektrobank" and "It Doesn't Matter" that take inspiration from acid, breakbeats, and house without dropping the energy. If "Block Rockin' Beats" is the buildup, the comedown is equally satisfying, with closers "Where Do I Begin" and "The Private Psychedelic Reel" entering dragged out, blissed out psych territory that feels like watching the sun rise after the "Setting Sun" of a raging night out. It's perfectly sequenced, a full rave in 63 minutes. Satisfaction guaranteed here.

David Berman was a pretty great songwriter, huh?

Classic country LP stuff: extremely short, dense with songs that are either great to immediately stand out or good enough to be pleasant and never bog down the album. It just so happens that Buck Owens is way more fun than most other country stars of his era. The version on streaming is the 1995 streaming version that includes live versions of "This Ol' Heart" and "Act Naturally" from [???], which are both whatever but again whenever I hear "Act Naturally" all I can think is 'damn Buck Owens was good'.

I think I'm ruminating on this because it's the 10th anniversary of both of these albums and both were included on this list, but it remains a truly fascinating coincidence that in 2016 two artists known for long, great careers released poignant albums about death very, very shortly before they died. There’s no point in comparing Blackstar and You Want It Darker much beyond that, other than both were very acclaimed albums that musically weren’t too similar with what else was going on in music in 2016. Blackstar is strange, jazzy, and operatic; You Want It Darker is stark, acoustic, and while still metaphorical, arguably more direct. This is not to say it’s simple. The title song addresses God and Cohen’s failings over a rollicking bassline and some truly awesome choral singing from Cohen’s childhood synagogue, while the album’s most arguably heartwarming and straightforward song, “If I Didn’t Have Your Love”, features lots of delightful piano/keyboard/organ interplay. Still, the dread lurks everywhere: in a devastating double entendre, “Traveling Light” suggests Cohen is leaving little behind in his current state while ascending to starlight in the heavens, while tellingly the album’s coda is a portion of “Treaty”, whose lyrics suggest a surrender to love both human and religious in all its contradictions: “I wish there was a treaty between your love mine”. Personally, I’m nowhere near as spiritual of a person as Cohen was in any sense of that word, but no matter the language used the struggle Cohen describes here is universal. Fortunately, in person at least, he seemed at peace. While listening to this, I was reading profiles about Cohen from around this time, and above all else, it appears that in spite of any health problems, he continued to work relentlessly. In one New Yorker profile, he said “I am a tidy kind of guy. I like to tie up the strings if I can. If I can’t, also, that’s O.K. But my natural thrust is to finish things that I’ve begun.” And what else can you say but “thanks for finishing this one”?

I love weird pop, and my bar for weirdness is pretty high, but even by Kate Bush's standards I think this might be her weirdest work. That's a compliment. In a lot of ways, when we think of 80s pop I think we tend to think of Madonna's post-disco grooves or The Human League's icy synthpop, and not almost puppet theatre-sounding plucky piano/bass as Bush goes back and forth between unconvincing cockney and soprano "oh oh! oh oh!"s while singing about a failed bank robbery. And yet that's third single "There Goes a Tenner", Bush's worst performing album single ever. Reading up on this, it seems like the public was just not ready for this, which makes it almost crazier in retrospect that *this* was what preceded the blockbuster that was Hounds of Love. And yet I was pretty fond of this! Of course, "There Goes a Tenner" isn't the only song describing a failed crime on here; my personal favorite is the extended sparrow killing metaphor in the star-crossed smuggling love story "Night of the Swallow", and there's also other songs of escape like "Houdini". Unfortunately this isn't my favorite collection of Kate Bush *songs* but this album might genuinely contain her best vocal performances and some of her most fascinating musical choices; to wit on both ends I direct you to the vocal modulation on "Leave It Open" which anticipates The Knife/Fever Ray a full 25 years or so in advance. This album is true oddity and should be a delight for everyone, even the non-fish people here; submit to the vision and enjoy the ride.

Of course, it's more like "Country and Western Music in Modern Sounds", but at least for a brief a moment in 1962 it's kind of remarkable Ray Charles set a template for what popular music could be like across multiple genres. I will say the Vol. 1 LP has done serious business on my turntable but Vol. 2 hasn't as much, regardless of which volume is your favorite you gotta admire just how much this man openly defined the scope of pop music.

A really fun mishmash of the dancier corners of pop, R&B, and rap that anticipates a lot of what came in the next decade, from a soft launch of the Massive Attack aesthetic on the Robert Del Naja-produced "Manchild" to a lot of Robyn's 90s career. Really enjoyed this one.

wow this picks up a LOT in the second half!

Entrancing in a way that I find hard to describe. You can try and start with the obvious. "Krautrock" gives the genre its namesake (even if it wasn't where it was born), but that wouldn't be special on its own if I didn't love every pounding moment of the 11 minute track that somehow gets more intense the more repetitive it gets. But there's about as big of a shift as you can get into "The Sad Skinhead", a short reggae song with actual lyrics! I think maybe that's what I like so much about this album: it's not being inventive in one way (though that's not bad on its own either), it's about trying and largely succeeding at being inventive in a lot of different ways! Fuck it, it's a 5.

The world needs as many "pretty fun at 4PM at a festival" bands as it can get.

fun to hear Ray Charles leaning more into full pop music and the "side A big band"/"side B ballads" idea is interesting but a part of me wishes the album committed more to either choice.

Interesting to hear an album that hints at both the janglier end of indie music and the emotional aspirations of bands like U2 while ultimately sounding like neither and playing like a full pop album. You feel like you could hear an album a lot like this coming out today.

You know how every once in a while you'll watch a classic Hollywood movie that has a bad reputation but you think maybe those opinions are wrong and you go in hoping to enjoy the spectacle of the whole thing but you end up hating it in the end? This is a soundtrack to one of those movies.

🤘🤪🤘

It's funny relistening to this album so soon after listening to Faust IV, because it's fun to think "ooh this is where krautrock was established as a genre!" immediately followed by "but, okay, outside of long tail stylistic impacts, how many successful krautrock bands have there been since?" Well, I can think of at least one....... Stereolab is kind of a weird band conceptually, right? a 90s band that combined krautrock rhythms, loops, Marxist philosophy, and 60s pop influences and parlayed them into cult status in the UK, Europe, and North America. My personal favorite Stereolab album remains Dots and Loops, the album that truly turns elevator music into high art, but that's not on this list so instead here we are with Emperor Tomato Ketchup. It's the first Stereolab album where they really started experimenting with loops, resulting in a way that (at least abstractly) resembles the buildup of electronic music, and listening to it now, adding a lot of groove to it! This album is as heady, as artsy, as maybe pretentious as you want to imagine it to be, but relistening to it now, both in full and in clips while writing this review, I'm shocked to discover just how much *fun* it is! It's hypnotic, it's repetitive, and yet here I am anyway shimmying my shoulders listening to 30 second bursts. It's unlikely we'll get many more albums like this on this list, it's unlikely we'll have many more bands like Stereolab, it's unlikely I'll enjoy any other album on this list the same weird way I enjoy this one.

sorry but it was just so viscerally unpleasant to listen to seven self-indulgent complaining songs interrupted by one song complaining about someone else complaining.

The funny thing is before I went into listening to this album I was incredibly prepared to defend the KLF from naysayers in my group. If you have any memories of them at all, surely you remember how they combined satire and genuinely interesting production techniques to build a uniquely weird pop mythos that emboldened the best of cheesy eurodance while drawing attention to how ridiculous any pop music is. The problem is they also made The White Room, which dares to ask the question: what if every album Orbital made in the 90s was equally spacey and four times as stupid? You can see where the comedy lies on the edges of every song. But then, if you're like me, you'll listen to the "stadium house" versions of every single after this album and realize that's where the magic lies if you, also like me, love ridiculous pop music and ridiculous parodies of pop music. The story behind the version of "Justified & Ancient" with Tammy Wynette on vocals is legendary. The wimpy serious ass version of "Justified & Ancient" that repeats itself *twice* on this album is fucking stupid, and not in the good way. From their inception, the KLF were destined to point out how easy it is to manipulate the pop charts and get the people moving. Shame they didn't follow any of their advice on their most lasting album.

The Temptations for 9 songs on this album: wow! 🤯 Love sure is crazy!! 🫨 The highs put you on cloud nine 🥰⛅ and the lows can drive you wild! 😓🤪 The Temptations for 10 unrelated minutes on this album: kids, get ready for the funkiest psychedelic jam you'll ever hear about why you shouldn't run away from home.

Tito Puente does, in fact, have the bangers.

I guess it was inevitable that the Pet Shop Boys were going to explore every 90s dance music trend eventually, but I didn't think they'd do 1) all of them at once 2) in addition to their usual theatrical synthpop they'd been doing their whole career. I honestly like those distinctly 90s dance tracks a bit more, like the piano house of "I Wouldn't Normally Do This" and the high-energy euro stomp of "A Different Point of View". What I like less is how jarring the transition from one song to the next can be. I suppose I sort of wish it flowed more like a DJ set, building up in energy across the album to the banger cover of "Go West" that closes the whole thing out, a neat summation of how the Pet Shop Boys could take camp and make it deeply pensive. I'll split the middle here.

Sometimes, it's about the vibe, and holy shit, what a vibe.

Epic in scale and scope, but unlike so many other ambitious albums of the era, the songs on here are what keep you coming back every time. In fact, most of the rest of this review is going to be song titles from the album: "Love's In Need of Love Today"! "Sir Duke"! "I Wish"! "Isn't She Lovely"! "As"! It's still Stevie's magnum opus in the popular imagination for good reason, showing him at his peak as performer, songwriter, and bandleader (seriously, check out the album credits, which are also fascinating) that even at its most serious is still just so full of joy and....well, life!

For me I don't think anything else on the album matches the rush of the title track, except for hearing "Moss Garden" and realizing Brian Eno is really about to hit it big on ambient music.

call me old fashioned, but I think if you're going to do a 20 minute prog suite about a half-armadillo tank fighting a mythical creature, you should at least have something in the music or lyrics to indicate that's what's happening.

For the most part I like the Chemical Brothers more at their more uptempo. But this is perhaps their most hypnotic work, taking the synths from acid house and the beats from hip hop and turn it into something pretty psychedelic. And, come on, basically no electronic artist before or since has ever been lucky enough to make their grand entrance on record with a sample as perfect as "the brothers gonna work it out". Just writing it I know it's going to be stuck in my head the next two days.

was going to write a joke review about waiting for the "Louie Louie" cover to happen, and then the "Louie Louie" cover happened! Can't say these guys didn't know themselves.

It's awesome to hear Ray Price's truly all star band here, and it's interesting to hear the sounds of 60s popular country bubbling throughout this album, but I wish I was a bit more wowed by the songs, especially since this also arguably marks the genesis of Willie Nelson's career: there's his opener "Night Life" and if you're a Kacey Musgraves fan like me you'll probably recognize "Are You Sure" (which Nelson also recorded later) as the hidden track that closes out Pageant Material. But so it goes. Definitely worth listening to for at least checking out its place in history alone.

Eleven songs I have mixed feelings about and one that is one of my favorite songs of all time. of course, I'm talking about "The India Song" oh my god lmao could you imagine.

Easy recipe to get five stars from me: Step 1: Play the A and E notes on a piano ad infinitum. Step 2: Add drums Step 3: Write a few thoughts down on how hanging out can take on different significance as you get older. and that's it! Thanks, Chef James Murphy!

Truly psychedelic, in the sense that when you listen it feels like your perception is being altered to the point where it feels hallucinatory. This album has so much goddamn ambiance in a way that feels totally original, even (or especially) more so than other Dr. John albums, including the one that gave a pretty famous festival its name. That comes maybe at the expense of having tighter songwriting, but on the other hand who cares? If you're coming here to this project specifically for at least a partial music history lesson, this is a can't miss.

The worst part about revisiting this album is realizing how much it sounds like the Beatles. then the best part about revisiting this album is realizing how much it sounds like the Beatles.

Who could forget about Harry Nilsson's greatest contribution to popular culture: 'Ken lee.......tulibu dibu douchooo.....'

This review is going to sound incredibly mean, but trust me when I mean this as positively as possible: this is the musical equivalent of going to a local Rocky Horror screening where the queens on stage only remember 80% of the lines.

Sometimes, the art kids are right.

I admire Method Man demonstrating that articulation difficulties don't have to stop you from going hard. I admire RZA a lot less for demonstrating that you can successfully half ass most of your work if everyone remembers the bigger group project you're working on.

I like Bob Dylan. I like hearing the different versions of these songs. I like thinking it's funny anytime anyone is a dick to Bob Dylan for playing electric guitar. It's that simple.

Every song on this kinda sounds like falling in love.

This is one of those moments where I have to take a step back and remember that the only reason why "Waterfalls" seems like such an obvious part of the cultural fabric to me at this point is because it's such a goddamn good song in the first place. And relistening to this album, it's even more remarkable how much it stands out in relief to the rest of the songs on this album, which are often so goddamn sexy in ways that I didn't remember. "Red Light Special" of course, but "Switch"? "Let's Do It Again"? That genderfuck cover of "If I Was Your Girlfriend"?? Goddamn wow. I think musically I still prefer the Y2K futurism of FanMail, but this remains a triumph on its own.

even at face value, a pretty great album marred by how absolutely insane "China Girl" is.

The psychedelia of rock, the smoothness of orchestral pop, the unique Brazilian rhythmic influences: when they talk about the cannibalistic nature of the album, they're not kidding; the fact that it birthed an artistic movement is more remarkable. Veloso has distanced himself away from this album in recent years; especially since he was so young when it came out I can see why but I still find it remarkable all the same.

I instinctively grabbed a tissue during "Take Care", so what do you think?

Oh My God Holy Shit How.

I'm always embarrassed that i kinda like everything at urban outfitter

I had this weird constant realization listening to this album that in spite of the fact that "alternative rock", whatever that may mean to you, was really coming together as a genre in the 90s, not a lot of it was really punk in that classic 70s Ramones-style way. Elastica really embodies that here in a way that really caught me off guard, with a lot of 90s polish that takes it somewhere pretty interesting. It's hard not to admire where they were going with this.

X are so lucky this album picks up quickly, because the first third of this album always has me questioning why I even liked them in the first place.

I have what you may call a slight bias here. I’ve been a huge fan of CHVRCHES ever since the single for “The Mother We Share” released in 2012 and the first reviews I read indicated critics mostly thought ‘We’re already doing retreads of Silent Shout?’ But CHVRCHES were primed more to hit hard as the poptimism movement was just starting to take off and critics were starting to thaw on electro influences and enormous pop hooks: you can hear The Knife’s DNA in here if you want to, but you could also just as easily hear parallels with Tegan and Sara’s Heartthrob or Taylor Swift’s 1989. To this day this album remains my favorite from that era just as I was coming of age, but there’s still so many listening pleasures especially in the deep cuts: the dark arpeggiating synths of “Science/Visions”, the double-time power balladry of “Recover”, and fuck it, I’m a Martin apologist: even on the shoegaze-pop of “You Caught the Light”. The synth textures eventually got smoothed over on follow-up Every Open Eye (which I also love) and things maybe got stretched too thin by Love Is Dead (though I still maintain that Screen Violence is still great 5 [!] years on). And while we can discuss the synths on this album at length, the beating heart of this band remains Lauren Mayberry, who on this album especially marries wordy, often cryptic lyrics with dynamic-shifting vocal performances that don’t go all the way into belting territory but probably don’t need to, either. The end result is pop music that’s a little pretty, a little polished, and a little jagged. Even if it sounds ‘dated’ now it’ll still always be my polestar for the 10s synthpop revival that I’ll still probably always love.

We can't not talk about "Groove Is in the Heart". It seems so emblematic of an era where the rules of sampling were still being figured out, where it was just starting to be cool to combine influences from as many genres as possible on the same track, where house music as we might call it today was just starting to take off. And yet it remains totally idiosyncratic - if you can think of the wave of sung/rapped psychedelic breakbeat songs with weird sound effects it inspired, I'd love to hear them. But, probably like a lot of you here, I'd never listened to the full album before, and was kind of surprised to hear that most of it is pretty straightforward house music, with its only real connection to "Groove Is in the Heart" being Lady Miss Keir's unmistakeable voice. You even get a nod to the rising acid movement on "What is Love"! It's tempting to say that by this point, most producers still hadn't figured out how to make 'dance music' as we'd call it today work in album form, but while this isn't my favorite dance album we've heard on this album it's certainly not a bad one to grab a drink and settle into the groove with. The sound does veer back and forth between more and less synth-heavy tracks, but I see that at this group that had one foot pretty firmly planted in club culture pushing the limits of the sound they established for themselves as far as they could go. In a way, it reminds me a lot of what Purple Disco Machine does these days, though that may be heavily influenced by me seeing him close a set once with an especially transcendent "Groove Is in the Heart" remix that eventually slowed down into a near ecstatic conclusion. I never really know how to evaluate these albums that have one ingrained-in-the-fabric-of-our-culture hit, but fuck it, I'm going to dance and have some fun to this one.

I've spent a lot of time on here thinking about what sounds "dated" and what doesn't, and if that concept even carries any currency or not, and it's kind of funny because this is album came out basically a minute before COVID happened and to me it already sounds like it only could've come out at a particular place and time: at the end of the long tail of psychedelic indie rock popularized by MGMT (tbh) and exemplified by other bands around this time like Kikagaku Moyo, and at the end of the long tail of dancey post punk popularized by LCD Soundsystem (tbh) and exemplified by other bands around this time by bands like Factory Floor. There's something a little krautrocky about it, a little "indie kids on the dancefloor" about it, a little trippy about it, and all of it kind of works! I don't know if this is the best spot this band could've landed on with this sound, but I guess we'll never know otherwise for reasons you can find out on your own. Shame all around.

going to say something incredibly sacrilegious here and say I liked this more than most George Michael songs I've heard.

You know, sometimes it's adolescent in the worst way (especially on "Jezebel"), but you could only really only make this album when your young imagination is firing on all cylinders and you're putting a relatively limited collection of tools to their best possible use. Even having listened to so much grime since, this still makes me go "wow" every time.

the worst parts of 90s American alt rock and the worst parts of 90s britpop and the worst parts of 90s punk on both coasts. I was going to say "I don't even disagree with a lot of their politics" but then I've thought about it more and jeuss christ I think American Idiot is more eloquent than this. what the fuck ever.

Kind of shocked how two years after their debut the Damned were already going in a much more new wavey direction. Honestly, the moment I realized what was happening I thought I was going to hate it but I think it's impossible for me not to have fun listening to these guys.

I will be honest as an American my first instinct when I heard these very earnest, kinda slow, kinda Coldplay-ish bands is to make fun of them. But I always end up enjoying myself more when I fight the urge and succumb to the waves of pleasantness.

Many years ago, when I was about to listen to Screamadelica for the first time, someone told me it sounded like acid house meets psychedelic rock. That was a lie. This is acid house meets psychedelic rock, and while my expectations were thoroughly met here, I feel like this would be a full 5 if I was dancing to this in an English field at midnight.

on one hand, this is a fascinating document of how blues and R&B music influenced a new generation of British artists in the 60s in a way that you can really see lead to the development of some true talent and some absolutely classic music. on the other hand, this is an okay covers album.

Jon King: Love is LIIIIKEEEE! / Relations of PRODUCTION!!!!! Andy Gill: *squalling as fast as possible* Hugo Burnham: *snare fill* me: holy fuck this shit GROOVES

For better or worse, we’re stuck with the peak indie narrative forever. From 2008-2010, we got an all time run of records by indie bands that guaranteed them huge amounts of critical acclaim and prime spots at festivals for at least a few years before other cultural forces ebbed that tide. You know what I’m referring to: Merriweather Post Pavilion, xx, Bitte Orca, Fleet Foxes, Veckatimest, This Is Happening, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Vampire Weekend, It’s Blitz!, Actor, Halcyon Digest, Teen Dream. And you know what? Dear Science is still my favorite album from that brief supernova era. All those albums I mentioned cover a wide range of styles and if they have a common denominator it’s that they’re done by bands who A) made mostly guitar-based music and B) began expanding their sound in one way or another. It’s both easy and hard to describe how TV on the Radio made that jump: they traded the noise of their first three releases into cleaner production, more synths, and a wider range of genre experiments than before. Opener “Halfway Home” suggests a punk ethos but belies it almost immediately with Tunde Adebimpe’s wordless, poppier-than-ever vocal hook. From there, we’re off, jumping right into “Crying”, which features one of my favorite of Adebimpe’s vocal performances as well as one of my favorite synth melodies that jumps in near the end of the song; lyrically the song calls for a revolution but it’s ambiguous if it’s personal or political. Arguably the most openly political song on the album is its funkiest; “Red Dress” opens with the album’s most iconic lyric (“Hey jackboot! Fuck your war!/‘Cause I’m fat and in love and no bombs are falling on me for sure”). Its verses condemn contemporary racism backed with a Fela via Talking Heads groove that ends with each instrumental part cutting out from the song. In between, you’ve got some truly gorgeous ballads, particularly “Family Tree”, a paean to relationships deemed taboo by regressive attitudes, and some true bangers, like the drum’n’bass-inspired “Shout Me Out”, where its narrator pleads for a relationship that may be failing. Dear Science navigates its contradictions with a deftness you seem from few other artists. This mostly comes from the aforementioned ambiguous lyrics, delivered as strongly as ever by Adebimpe, one of indie rock’s best singers, but just as well from the rest of the band, who deliver all their best performance on this album. The only reason I can’t give more individual credit is because outside of Adebimpe, each member of the band gets multi-instrumental credit and my copy of the record doesn’t indicate who did what where. With that in mind, the climax of the record comes with maybe its most unique and enduring song, “DLZ”, suffused with paranoia from its opening synth/drums riff to Adebimpe’s infinitely creepy “la la” riff to its increasingly complex metaphors, leading to its famous closing: “This is beginning to feel like the dawn of the loser forever”. Earlier I said this was my favorite “peak indie” album since that’s the specific time it came out of, but honestly if I had to pick its closest sonic parallel it’d be tune-yards’ whokill, which came out at the end of that era a little bit later: both albums share indie rock influences but also influences from jazz and Afrobeat and pop, filtered through their respective artists’ increased prowess and budget in the studio compared to before. I make this comparison not to say they exemplify a genre or era, but that they both represented something unique that probably couldn’t be replicated again. For their part, TVOTR went on to make Nine Types of Light (whose a-music-video-for-every-song concept is definitely worth checking out, especially since it preceded Beyoncé by a few years) and Seeds, two pretty good albums whose creation was overshadowed by the death of drummer Gerard Smith from cancer in 2010. Smith is excellent here, and his contributions on this album loom large over his legacy, but I don’t want to reduce the album to a singular contributor either. Dear Science is a singular meeting of the minds, an album that’s incredibly fun to think about and even easier to groove to.

It was very funny reading about this album on Wikipedia being cited as having a "heavy-thunderous blues sound, which would later be known as heavy metal" because I kept thinking "wait isn't this just a pretty good example of 60s San Francisco psych?" and sure enough!

There are so many hard partying, hard riffing hard rock albums I've defended here. But you gotta draw the line somewhere.

Oh yeah!! All right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s hard for me not to write about this album in the context of The xx’s 2026 tour, whose sole purpose seems to be reminding the general public “hey guys, we’re totally still friends and totally still a band and totally not breaking up any time soon!” Notably, The xx are not performing any new music on this tour, nine years after I See You came out, instead emphasizing solo cuts they’ve made in collaboration, including Romy’s “Enjoy Your Life” and Oliver Sim’s “GMT”. The tour emphasizes how great The xx are/were as a festival act…and at least inadvertently advocates for a not-so-secret agenda of mine: emphasizing just how great I See You is. Full disclosure: I write an album of the year list every year and I See You was my favorite album of 2017, and looking back it still holds that spot. Also, I’m huge fan of The xx and while this is an entirely subjective opinion, I think this is their best album. On a pure gut wrenching level, I think this album dispatches ambiguity in favor of directness (or at least, as close to directness as they can get) that accurately describes the loss of control and difficulties in maintaining self-esteem in adult gay relationships (especially on songs like “Say Something Loving” and “A Violent Noise”) that frankly often hits close to home, with the band’s best solo performances to date from Romy (describing the grief in the face of the loss of a loved on “Performance”) and Oliver (describing generational trauma on “Replica”) serving as additional highlights on the album. Beyond the lyrical/vocal highlights, this is clearly where Jamie was starting to flex his might as electronic producer extraordinaire to complement his bandmates’ guitar skill in austere indie and R&B styles to transform them into something slow but maximalist on this album (see the insanely sexy “Lips” or the energetic vocal sample chop on “On Hold”). The sleeve of the vinyl record of this album is a reflective metallic surface, designed to reflect the audience whenever they held it up. It’s funny, because while I of course see parts of myself reflected in this album, these days I hear just as much confidence from the members of The xx, pushing their sound to places they’d never thought to explore before, embracing a new era that may never happen. I want new music from The xx so badly. I’m not sure I’ll ever get it. But when I see them again in a few weeks, rest assured I’ll scream along just as loud to “Say Something Loving” as I did in my car 10 years ago. The xx always made music for feeling above all else, and I’ll never stop feeling this music deep in my chest.

Now that more than 10 years have passed since Beyoncé released the self titled album, it's maybe more interesting to think about this album in conversation with the rest of her work and where the artist was at this time. I (hopefully) don't need to tell you what a phenomenon "Single Ladies" was, making I Am... Sasha Fierce just as much of a phenomenon, ensuring that even a few years later "Halo" was still my high school prom's theme. She followed it up with 4, still my personal favorite Beyoncé album, the first she released after an advertised personal break and a formal professional breakup with her father Mathew Knowles as manager. I love the way 4 explores various corners of R&B music, but it didn’t set the world on fire as much as its predecessor did. Enter Beyoncé the album, dropped without warning on December 13, 2013. I still remember opening up iTunes on that day and seeing just how wall-to-wall plastered Beyoncé and her videos were plastered all over the interface. Don’t call it a comeback, especially since it came only two years after 4, but the hype was immediate and powerful. The album itself only spawned one huge single (“Drunk in Love”), but it was hard to think of an album that was as much of a capital-E Event as this one, especially because the visual album was such a novel concept (and will, sadly, probably stay that way). In fact, it’s hard not to think that the success of Beyoncé’s self titled album on iTunes was probably what inspired U2’s ill advised publicity stunt to give every iTunes user a free copy of Songs of Innocence a year later, whether they liked it or not. As marketing, Beyoncé played it right, and she backed up with a pretty great album. Listening today, my main take on the album as a whole is that this a portrait of Beyoncé as she saw herself in 2013: starting to reminisce on the past (as evidenced by the Star Search samples), starting to see herself as more of a feminist leader in pop music post-“Run the World (Girls)” (as evidenced by the outro on “Partition” and all of “***Flawless”), someone bouncing back and forth between big pop songs and more luxuriating R&B moments, and a new mother (it’s not my favorite song but it’s hard not to be moved by “Blue” as a closer). This album covers a LOT of ground, highlighting Beyoncé’s ability to meld genres and mesh with the stylistic talents of songwriters/producers as diverse as Sia, Pharrell, Caroline Polachek, The-Dream, Drake, Ryan Tedder, Boots, and Frank Ocean. How you feel about each individual song will depend on your personal preference; there’s a lot of songs I love on here (especially “Blow”, “Partition”, ‘Jealous”, “***Flawless”, and “Rocket”), but there’s also a few that that probably should’ve been left off on an album that was pretty notoriously pared down from 80 songs to 14 (especially “Mine”. I liked Drake a lot at this time and even this felt like way too little effort from him). Those tracks are what knock this album down a bit for me, but the visual album itself gets a 5 from me: making a lot of music videos for an album wasn’t the most original concept, but basically no one before or since had done it with this level of production. I think a lot about Beyoncé jamming around a roller rink in a Wonder Woman t-shirt singing about getting eaten out. What came next is history in its own right: Lemonade became an album inextricably tied to its creator’s personal life in a way probably no one was expecting in 2013 but still stands as a hallmark in Beyoncé’s discography (4 is my favorite Beyoncé album but gun to my head Lemonade is the best), and that in turn was followed up by Beyoncé going into full genre curation with the explorations and interrogations of classic house music and classic country music. At this point now it’s harder than ever to say what Beyoncé’s next move is, but only because she so definitively changed the template for how a popular musician could surprise their audience. Bow down bitches.