454
Albums Rated
3.63
Average Rating
42%
Complete
635 albums remaining
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2010s
Favorite Decade
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Top Origin
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111
5-Star Albums
10
1-Star Albums
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You Love More Than Most
Albums you rated higher than global average
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Suicide | 5 | 2.46 | +2.54 |
| Dr. Octagonecologyst | 5 | 2.69 | +2.31 |
| 90 | 5 | 2.69 | +2.31 |
| LP1 | 5 | 2.8 | +2.2 |
| I Am a Bird Now | 5 | 2.84 | +2.16 |
| Blood And Chocolate | 5 | 2.92 | +2.08 |
| Future Days | 5 | 3 | +2 |
| Nighthawks At The Diner | 5 | 3.01 | +1.99 |
| A Seat at the Table | 5 | 3.01 | +1.99 |
| Germfree Adolescents | 5 | 3.04 | +1.96 |
You Love Less Than Most
Albums you rated lower than global average
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Doors | 1 | 3.95 | -2.95 |
| American Idiot | 1 | 3.77 | -2.77 |
| L.A. Woman | 1 | 3.67 | -2.67 |
| Heaven Or Las Vegas | 1 | 3.37 | -2.37 |
| American Pie | 1 | 3.28 | -2.28 |
| Youth And Young Manhood | 1 | 3.1 | -2.1 |
| Heartbreaker | 1 | 3.03 | -2.03 |
| Highly Evolved | 1 | 3.03 | -2.03 |
| A Little Deeper | 1 | 2.81 | -1.81 |
| Life Thru A Lens | 1 | 2.73 | -1.73 |
Artist Analysis
Favorite Artists
Artists with 2+ albums
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| David Bowie | 4 | 4.5 |
| Talking Heads | 4 | 4.5 |
| Michael Jackson | 3 | 4.67 |
| PJ Harvey | 3 | 4.67 |
| Radiohead | 2 | 5 |
| Kanye West | 2 | 5 |
| The Clash | 2 | 5 |
| Stevie Wonder | 2 | 5 |
| Prince | 2 | 5 |
| The Rolling Stones | 4 | 4.25 |
| The White Stripes | 3 | 4.33 |
| U2 | 3 | 4.33 |
| Beastie Boys | 3 | 4.33 |
| Jimi Hendrix | 3 | 4.33 |
| Beatles | 3 | 4.33 |
| Bruce Springsteen | 3 | 4.33 |
| Black Sabbath | 3 | 4.33 |
Least Favorite Artists
Artists with 2+ albums
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| The Doors | 2 | 1 |
Controversial Artists
Artists you rate inconsistently
| Artist | Ratings |
|---|---|
| Green Day | 5, 1 |
| Björk | 5, 2 |
5-Star Albums (111)
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Popular Reviews
Beastie Boys
5/5
Paul's Boutique is both a perfect album and one whose feats can never be recreated. Truly 1 of 1, and maybe the greatest hip-hop record of all time.
8 likes
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
5/5
This might be controversial, but I think this is a a crown jewel in Costello's discography, even better than King of America, which came out the same year and is generally regarded as a masterpiece. It's every bit as good as his first three albums, but where those were brash, angry, and taut, this is brutal and anguished. It's the sound of a man who has aged and grown, both as a person and as a musician, but who still harbors a lot of uncomfortable feelings. Really fantastic.
2 likes
The Kinks
5/5
It's a rare quality for a band to be almost universally mood-improving, but the Kinks really are, at least for me. Even their more introspective songs, like "Do You Remember Walter" are jaunty - so jaunty, in fact, that it's the basis for one of the all-time upbeat songs, ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky". And of course Green Day took the riff from "Picture Book" for "Warning", one of their most upbeat, Major Key songs.
But what makes VGPS special is that its sonic and thematic cohesiveness is not really replicated anywhere else in The Kinks' discography. It's also the final album they made during a yearslong ban from the United States, which gives the album such a deeply English sensibility that it became a sort of ur-text for Britpop.
1 likes
Beastie Boys
4/5
"Girls" is kind of a disaster, but I think Licensed to Ill gets kind of an unfair reputation as being like, obscenely puerile or juvenile. Most of the songs hold up shockingly well, considering they were written and performed by three guys who couldn't even buy their own alcohol when the album was being recorded.
1 likes
1-Star Albums (10)
All Ratings
Queen
4/5
It starts out as a sort of glam Led Zeppelin but you can literally hear them figuring out how to Be Queen as the album progresses. Maybe part of that is the bold/insane choice of putting all the Brian May songs on the A side and all the Freddie Mercury songs on the flipside but it has the effect of making Queen's evolution in sound part of the subtext in a satisfying way.
Also, Ogre Battle fucking whips.
The Smiths
4/5
I'm not sure any band has better captured their own demise than The Smiths did here. Sonically, it feels like a perfect coda for one of the strongest 5(ish) year runs any band has ever had.
Simon & Garfunkel
3/5
This is the point where Simon & Garfunkel start to work for me, but it's still a little too soft and a little too uneven. There are a few real gems here though.
Joan Armatrading
4/5
Incredible richness of voice. Beautiful arrangements. Really fantastic.
Björk
5/5
Marvin Gaye
3/5
This album is a great affirmative argument in favor of editing and being concise. At 30 minutes, it's good. At 35 or 40 it would drag *a lot*. I do wish it had a second big single to buoy the back end though. I'd give this 3.5 if fractional stars were allowed.
The Doors
1/5
The Doors have all the same problems as the Red Hot Chili Peppers - three gifted musicians and a gibbering fool for a frontman - but none of the self-awareness or entertainment value. What a dogshit band.
Happy Mondays
3/5
I didn't really have any background on Happy Mondays before this. I don't think it's something I'd actively seek out but I can imagine it being good background music for a party
k.d. lang
3/5
kd lang is both supremely talented and not really for me. "Miss Chatelaine" is a bop. "Constant Craving", the one song I knew prior, is a hell of an album closer.
The Velvet Underground
4/5
The albums with Cale are more interesting, but I am not sure they're actually better, though they're also doing radically different things. At any rate, Doug Yule Rules.
Bob Dylan
4/5
I think this is probably Bob's second best album but it's still light years behind his best
The White Stripes
4/5
There's a few clunkers but the hits are all absolute monsters. Not my favorite White Stripes record but undeniably great.
Suicide
5/5
It's not a perfect album but goddamn if it isn't close. So much music I love sprung forth from this moment and these sounds.
The Psychedelic Furs
3/5
I enjoy the sonic palette that The Psychedelic Furs play with, but the songs get a little samey, with the exception of Mr. Jones, which is superb. Possible I was not in the right headspace, though.
Spacemen 3
2/5
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.
- Oscar Wilde
Bob Dylan
3/5
Bob as a writer is undeniable. As a composer of music, pretty damn good. As a singer, an acquired taste. But for as good as the songs themselves are, structurally and lyrically, the sparseness of his earlier works lacks a little something for me.
Kraftwerk
4/5
It's a 4.5, but I'm rounding down instead of rounding up because it's an album I used to put on in college to write papers to. Half a point seems fair for evoking that particular sense memory.
Eurythmics
3/5
The first six tracks are like a 4.5, the last four are like a 2.5. Gonna round down to a 3 but it's really a 3.5.
Hanoi Rocks
2/5
There's no reason for this album's inclusion in this project. It's exactly fine. It's largely unmemorable, but it's competently made and inoffensive.
The Temptations
4/5
The Temps break bad, and find their opus as a group. Double it up with Curtis Mayfield's Curtis for a one-two punch.
Slint
4/5
My pirated this album off of a torrenting site maybe 13 or 14 years ago and, as sometimes happens, I never actually listened to it. What a fool I am.
Manu Chao
3/5
There's some definite jams here, and I can understand the appeal, even if it's not fully my speed.
Fleet Foxes
2/5
Church music with drums or My Morning Jacket without everything that makes them interesting. Your pick.
The Velvet Underground
5/5
Am I the only one who's ever wondered how much heroin Lou Reed was able to purchase for $26 in 1967?
Simon & Garfunkel
5/5
I love "Cecilia" and "The Only Living Boy in New York" as much as anyone but Bookends is far and away the peak of Simon and Garfunkel's time together. A daring, emotional, conceptual A-side about life and aging backed with a B-side full of the finest singles they ever put together. Just fantastic.
Jacques Brel
2/5
It's inoffensive, but none of us needed this.
Brian Eno
2/5
Sometimes, an album can be influential and beautiful and also an absolute chore to listen to.
The Who
4/5
It's weird listening to this in full for the first time in 2024. Of course I'd heard songs from it before, but it's not as easy to grasp how monumentally different this album must have sounded in 1965 compared to their peers, versus, I dunno, how Black Sabbath must have sounded relative to everyone else in 1970.
What I'm saying, I guess, is that this album sounds so *normal* to a modern ear that it's easy to underestimate how influential it was. But the fact that it *does* sound like a typical rock album of later vintage is maybe the best evidence of that influence.
David Bowie
5/5
If you're gonna do a metric ton(ne?) of cocaine and get a little too interested in creating a quasifascist alter ego, it better be for a good reason.
This is a good reason.
N.W.A.
5/5
It's unreal how timeless this is, even when it extensively samples the Steve Miller Band. MC Ren and DJ Yella are two of the most underrated figures in the history of rap.
The Specials
3/5
The first Specials album lives up to the band's name. This, the second, doesn't look nearly as good in comparison, but it's still one of the strongest "sophomore slumps" you're gonna find.
Otis Redding
5/5
I can't believe I've never listened to this before. It's utterly incredible. Redding's take on "My Girl" blows the Temps out of the water, which is an insane thing to attempt, much less achieve. What a collection of songs.
Metallica
4/5
There are a few skippable songs - maybe 2 in each half of the album - but the cumulative effect of Metallica, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, a tremendous crowd, and a setlist that includes almost every great song they wrote from 1983-1999 results in a live album as big, as powerful, and as charged as the band deserves.
I probably could go long on this album, but I'll try to keep it brief
It's hard to divorce this album, which came out in the fall of 2000, from the events a year later that radically recontexturalized it. I think, in the public consciousness, this album is a response to 9/11 – after all, who can forget Bono revealing his American flag jacket lining during the Super Bowl Halftime in 2002? - when the album was actually subject to the most improbable series of events a new piece of culture has probably ever endured.
Listening to it now, maybe 15-20 years from the last time I last heard it, and in the same age bracket Bono and the Edge (late 30s) were in when they made it, what I hear is a secular gospel album, and a pretty damn good one. There are meditations on the losses of parents, friends, and relationships. There are songs of great gratitude for both natural born and chosen homes and families. There's hope and despair in equal measure. There's an earnestness and poptimsim that the cynical young man can write off that the thirtysomething can't deny is where U2 is, and always has been, at their best. That's especially evident in the first half of the album, which lines up four mammoth singles in a row, but it's also true on what should have been the album closer, "New York" (the less said about "Grace", the better). Is it all a little schmaltzy? Yes, undeniably. But when the songs are so expertly crafted to hit the pleasure centers of one's brain, who cares?
Steely Dan
4/5
I guess now that I'm in just about 36 I'm obligated to fawn over how remarkable it is that something this technically proficient and dense can also be so incredibly catchy and pop-informed at the same time?
Laura Nyro
3/5
This is a perfect album to put on in the background of an intimate dinner party (complimentary)
Parliament
5/5
The smartest thing George Clinton did might have been the aesthetic divisions between Parliament and Funkadelic. Parliament was designed to be more accessible and pop oriented, while Funkadelic was the home for the collective's heavier, more 'out there' sounds. By separating these competing artistic impulses, they could simultaneously put out records like Funkadelic's Let's Take It to the Stage and Parliament's Mothership Connection. Both are extraordinary albums, but you couldn't make a cohesive album by picking and choosing songs from each. Mothership Connection was beamed directly into homes across America thanks to the enormous success of "Give Up the Funk", and with it, the course of music history was indelibly altered. The success of this album opened up the world to the entire P-Funk collective. Without it, you don't get The Chronic, but you also don't get Speaking in Tongues. It's really impossible to understate the importance of Parliament, or of Mothership Connection. Listening to it, you can almost hear the tendrils of P-Funk reaching out to influence damn near everything that came after.
The Rolling Stones
5/5
I don't think I can say much about this that hasn't been said a thousand times over. The Stones put out four near-perfect albums in a row in the span of five years, despite losing Brian Jones in the midst of that period. Sticky Fingers has maybe 3 of their 10 greatest songs and it might be the fourth best of those four albums. Incredible.
Jazmine Sullivan
4/5
This is the first album from this project that I've listened to, having not heard it before, and thought "I need to listen to this more and really wrap my head around it."
That's a mark of quality, to be sure. Excited to spend more time with this.
4/5
War might be the band whose body of work is most unfairly eclipsed by their famous singles. "Low Rider" and "Why Can't We Be Friends" are great pop songs, but their first few albums are so rich and varied, and this is probably the best of them (and certainly the best album they made after Eric Burdon left). Like The Temps' All Directions, can be paired with Curtis Mayfield's Curtis for an excellent evening of listening.
GZA
5/5
In a lot of ways, this is the greatest album from the Wu-Tang Clan, collectively or as individuals. The only thing that gives me pause from making that claim ironclad is that when I'm not listening to Liquid Swords, I basically forget it exists. I don't know if that's a me problem or a problem with the album. When I am listening to it, though? Whew.
Earth, Wind & Fire
3/5
As peerless as "Shining Star" and the title track are, my brain always comes to Earth, Wind & Fire prepared to dance, and this is very much EWF's Quiet Storm, music-to-fuck-to album. It's a very good take on that, but it's also the province of artists who do it better.
Beastie Boys
5/5
Paul's Boutique is both a perfect album and one whose feats can never be recreated. Truly 1 of 1, and maybe the greatest hip-hop record of all time.
T. Rex
3/5
A completely middle of the road T. Rex album is still better than most non-Bowie glam rock, tbh.
Love
2/5
Unclear if this is wankery or frippery or some combination of both. It's technically sound but it's not really engaging or entertaining for the most part.
Led Zeppelin
4/5
Is it a hot take to say Led Zeppelin III is the best of the numbered Led Zeppelin albums? Because it absolutely is and I don't think it's particularly close, even with an entirely skippable song in "Friends"
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
3/5
For reasons I can't fully articulate, I have steadfastly avoided almost all of Nick Cave's work. I genuinely don't know why, but I had this intense resistance to it for like, 15 years, maybe more. Listening to this doesn't offer any clarity on the matter, as it's overall pretty good! "O Children" is kinda bullshit, but the rest is solid or better. My first thought upon starting the album was "Tom Waits with clean vocals", which is hardly a bad lane to occupy.
Mott The Hoople
2/5
A perfectly good glam rock record that doesn't have the one song by this artist you want to hear.
The Cure
3/5
Like Queen II, this is the sound of a band figuring out their path. Unlike Queen II, there is a cohesiveness to the proceedings that is very pleasant. The downside of that cohesiveness is that, while the album makes an excellent sort of tone poem, the songs themselves largely don't stand out from one another, leading it to feel a little long in the tooth, even though it's only 36 minutes or so.
Radiohead
5/5
There are two Radiohead albums that will get a 5 from me, and this is one of them. "Climbing Up the Walls" is eternal. Everything else that can be said about OK Computer has already been said.
Miles Davis
5/5
Sometimes I put this on and I lie on the floor and let it wash over me in waves and in those moments, everything is right and good in the world
Billy Bragg
4/5
Once in a great while, life gives you an album exactly when you need it. Today, for me, that was this album. It helped haul me out of a personal and professional malaise that had been hanging over me for a couple of weeks. I can't put my finger on exactly why, beyond that Bragg has always been someone whose worldview I largely share, but it was just what I needed.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
4/5
Of all the albums we've heard so far, this more than any other makes me wish we could give half stars. It's a tremendous album, one of the top 2-3 of 2009, but it's not *quite* good enough for 5 stars. The pacing is a little off, and it ends on bit of a whimper.
That and well, there's one YYYs album better. Consider this a 4.5 that got knocked down by the system.
The Stooges
4/5
I am not always in the mood for "We Will Fall", but when I am, the run of 1969-I Wanna Be Your Dog-We Will Fall-No Fun hits like a sledgehammer. Back half is a little more slight, but it still rips.
The Who
3/5
I listened to the full extended edition, all ~77 minutes of it, and I have to say, while I appreciate the brevity of the original release, it feels insane that they chose Substitute over Tattoo or Happy Jack, for example.
Also, I'll say it: you don't need a 15 minute version of My Generation. Half that would have been plenty.
T. Rex
4/5
People call The Smiths a singles band, but T. Rex is both their forebear and superior in every regard. Almost every great T. Rex song is a single without an album. But Electric Warrior represents the rare convergence of their more cohesive albums and their pop chops, and it's their best record for it.
Hot Chip
4/5
Made in the Dark but I can see now that that was a mistake. This is probably my favorite of their albums on only one listen.
Scissor Sisters
2/5
I don't think I'm gay enough for this album
The Cult
3/5
Two albums in a row with absolutely abominable cover songs smack in the middle. What are the odds?
Also: this is not an essential album! It's just fine!
Miles Davis
4/5
It's funny to consider that this comp was released only a handful of years after the somewhat unorthodox songs on it were recorded. In the intervening time (~7 years), he recorded and released like two dozen albums that revealed him to be the future of jazz, making this album's title neither premature nor a misnomer.
Johnny Cash
3/5
It's all a bit morose, particularly considering that the entire record was recorded before June passed away. The arrangements are nice enough, and Cash's voice aged with uncommon grace, but this album is only notable because it was his last, and because of "Hurt"
John Lee Hooker
3/5
"In the Mood" is a scorcher, and the title track is a real solid groove, but I'm not entirely sure why this album is on this list, beyond being a notable late-in-life success for a legendary artist.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
3/5
The album wisely starts with its best song, Cinnamon Girl, which is a shrewd choice. After that, it's at its best when Young is playing and not singing.
Jimi Hendrix
5/5
Truly a situation where 4.5 stars is warranted, but impossible. The original US tracklist is a 5/5, the British is a 4/5, and the extended tracklist combining the two is smack in the middle. There's a couple songs I could live without - ironically, I'd be fine forgetting "Remember" - but it's still such a superb and transformative album I feel obligated to give it the 5.
Tears For Fears
5/5
All due respect to Speaking in Tongues, Stop Making Sense, Thriller, et al, but this is the best album of the 1980s that doesn't involve Prince. Just a masterpiece, end to end.
Kanye West
5/5
I regret to report that everything on this album (except So Appalled) still slaps
Devendra Banhart
3/5
I have long suspected that Devendra Banhart is not For Me, but "Insect Eyes" is a hell of a song
Hugh Masekela
3/5
There are some really fantastic tunes on this, but it runs a little longer than it needs to. I think the perfect jazz album comes in under an hour, always, and usually under 45 minutes. But Masekela was a blind spot for me prior to this and now I feel energized to look into some of his other work, so that's exciting.
Marvin Gaye
5/5
It's often said that pop culture goes in cycles, but if there's any evidence that all of society goes in cycles, too, it's that this album is as meaningful and resonant in 2024 as it was in 1971, 1991, etc.
The Rolling Stones
5/5
The only mistake on this album is putting Gimme Shelter first, where it immediately dwarfs everything that comes after.
Joy Division
4/5
It's a really solid album - especially the back half - but I genuinely don't get why it's such a cultural touchstone.
The Fall
3/5
Parts of this really get going, but it feels weirdly inaccessible to me, despite my long-standing love of post-punk. Not sure why.
Fela Kuti
5/5
If your political album is so effective that the government comes to your house and kills your mother because of it, I think it's safe to say you deserve 5 ⭐
Nick Drake
3/5
The album is fascinating as a document of someone completely receding into himself until he fully disappears. There's a certain mystery to it: Drake's intonations are both hushed and emotionally opaque, as if he feels compelled to speak but cannot possibly articulate anything real and true. The end result is a half hour of beautiful, delicate songs that are almost impossible to connect to.
Amy Winehouse
2/5
Amy's vocal talent is undeniable, even though she was 19 or 20 when she recorded this. The problem is that outside of a couple of songs, the production is corny as hell, and has aged terribly. You can see why she came to dislike the album in few years between its release and her death.
Van Halen
3/5
The first half of the album hits like a cannonball to the chest - four of their 7 most played songs on Spotify are the first four songs of the album - but it's wildly uneven after that. They're almost certainly over-represented in the Rock Canon, but their singles are pretty much all aces.
Todd Rundgren
4/5
I have to admit, when I pulled this up in Spotify and saw the impressively low play counts, I thought "oh, another one that no one ever listens to." So far, the low play count ones have been pretty underwhelming.
You can imagine my surprise - and delight - when this was a weird, psychedelic romp. Not at all what I expected from the "Bang the Drum All Day" guy. I don't know exactly when I would re-visit this, but it was a revelation all the same.
Charles Mingus
5/5
There might be more consequential figures in the history of jazz - no one is shoving Miles, Trane, Monk, Billie, Duke, Ella or Louis off the 7-headed Mount Rushmore. There might be more popular jazz musicians - Brubeck, Herbie, Getz. But I'm not sure there is a better, more versatile jazzman than Charlie Mingus, whose bass playing is so good he was sought after by almost everyone I've already named, and who was so gifted he proved to be an excellent pianist as well.
The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady is a towering achievement. A 40 minute ballet, with liner notes from his therapist, composed for eleven players (an undectet?), you could listen to it every day for a year and find something new to appreciate each time. Of particular note is the classical guitar of Jay Berliner, who would go on to play on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, an equally towering work. But I digress: Mingus is king.
Joy Division
4/5
This is better than Unknown Pleasures in that it is much more unsettling and more cohesive throughout. Still not as good as New Order though.
Willie Nelson
3/5
This is a very charming album that I will never have occasion to listen to again, except, perhaps, if/when Willie dies.
Cat Stevens
3/5
Who knew that half of Jack Black's vocal stylings in Tenacious D were just aping Cat Stevens?
Jerry Lee Lewis
4/5
Spotify is a fucking mess and has this album missing 4 songs (5 tracks), but fortunately they exist on other Jerry Lee Lewis live comps and someone compiled them into the album as it's supposed to be.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2ByHepTROnG0HoQqsYIFXe?si=bbc8abdbd1a44790
When taken as a whole, it's a pretty fantastic document of one of rock's legendary live performers at close to his peak. It rips right along, and you basically know every song already. A fun listen!
Röyksopp
4/5
It's wild to consider that if you played this for most people, they would recognize its best song as being the soundtrack to a Geico caveman commercial
The Stone Roses
3/5
The album isn't bad enough to call it a "bait and switch" but if you're gonna throw two incredible singles in the first two slots on the album, you better have at least one incredible single in the second half.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
3/5
He can write a riff sometimes, and he can write lyrics sometimes, but I am increasingly of the opinion that he can't do both in the same song unless the planets align. I don't get it.
Steely Dan
4/5
There are not many albums that have contributed more to rap music while being excellent in their own right, and none of the others have the greatest athlete in a sport named after them. Really impressive influence on this one.
Abdullah Ibrahim
3/5
I say this as a compliment: this is perfect background music. People might or might not notice it, but it sets a mood without being intrusive.
Jane's Addiction
3/5
The album is a wash of good sounds and dumb lyrics, more tone poem than anything actually poetic, especially in the first half of the album. Then you close, essentially, with Mountain Song, Jane Says, and Pigs in Zen and you go "oh, so these weirdos do have some legit range"
Small Faces
2/5
The second half of this album feels like a dirty, stupid trick.
Garbage
4/5
I went into this thinking that there was no way that this was as good as my memory of it. It felt like a perfect example of nostalgia - something that is far better remembered than reexperienced. In actuality, it was the rare thing that stands up to the scrutiny of the cynicism of age. Shirley Manson's voice is eternal. Butch Vig's production - especially for an album from the mid 90s - largely holds up. The singles are iconic; the album cuts largely rip. I'm not sure I've ever really listened to another Garbage song or another Garbage album, but I also don't think I need to. This is that satisfying.
Isaac Hayes
4/5
This is truly an album where the title is self-descriptive.
Beatles
5/5
Even Maxwell's Silver Hammer can't get me to drop this from 5 stars to 4.
Big Brother & The Holding Company
2/5
I accidentally put my note and rating for this album in with The Band's self-titled, which is great and I would have given a 4/5 to.
This is deeply unimpressive. 2/5.
Bill Evans Trio
3/5
Bill Evans was sort of a blind spot for me, because he kind of siloed himself and his trio off from most of the other jazz greats of his era, but this was really enjoyable.
Joni Mitchell
3/5
A technically sound and thoughtful album that absolutely did not resonate with me.
Beatles
3/5
I can't in good conscience give an album that has 10 songs you could easily dump in the trash anything higher than a 3
ZZ Top
3/5
The singles here are fantastic, and the band is tight throughout, but those things don't fully sustain the entirety of the album
Echo And The Bunnymen
3/5
I don't think this is THE Echo and the Bunnymen album, but it's still a damn fine record. I think I would probably give this 3.5 normally, but I'm feeling generous after several threes in a row
Love
3/5
This is better than the other Love album. I don't know what else to add.
The Isley Brothers
5/5
Possibly America's tightest band, ever, at the peak of their powers. What an album.
Metallica
4/5
I don't consider myself a part of the core Metallica Fanbase, even though I like a great many of their songs and albums, and I'm too young to have any particular animus towards the thrash metal equivalent of Dylan going electric. Like Dylan, Metallica took a huge chance in expanding their sound and songwriting and reached a career peak. Good for them.
David Bowie
5/5
It's not Bowie's best album, but it might be his most interesting, and that's saying something. It's also the inspiration for my Inforoo avatar.
Joni Mitchell
3/5
I am apparently not a Joni type of gal
Paul Simon
4/5
Paul Simon should not have known what Gatorade was in 1971.
Stan Getz
5/5
There truly is no better music to put on when you are driving by the ocean with the windows down because it's 80 degrees in October for some reason. Immaculate vibes album.
Marvin Gaye
4/5
It's the best 73 minute middle finger to an ex-wife that anyone has ever written.
Coldplay
3/5
You can hear so much Bends/OKC Radiohead influence here, especially in the guitar tone late in the album. They really could have become a much more interesting band than they ultimately did
10cc
3/5
What an odd little album.
The Who
2/5
I was *shocked* how underwhelming this is, outside of the few songs we all know
Van Halen
2/5
I swear what I am about to say is the truth
For as long as I have known about this album's existence, I have assumed the little cig-smoking cherub was "supposed" to be David Lee Roth. I do not know how or why I came to that conclusion.
Anyway, Panama rocks.
Guns N' Roses
4/5
The Most American Album by The Most American Band (note: I said Most, not Best)
Don McLean
1/5
First of all, it's insane to make a 10-song, 36 minute album and have the first song be fully 25% of the album's running time.
Second of all, Don McLean is wack as hell. Billy Joel with an acoustic guitar without any of the charm. The only person to have been definitively bested by a Weird Al parody. An abusive piece of shit, too. Extorted his own wife and daughter, essentially. The day his music dies will be a joy.
The Mars Volta
3/5
Starts strong, kind of peters out. Spotify automatically played The Widow after, which probably did not do this album any favors, but such is life.
Yes
3/5
It's very weird to spend a half an hour listening to noodly prog and then have "I've Seen All Good People" come in as clear as a bell in comparison.
The xx
3/5
the xx are a pretty good band but it remains extremely funny that they peaked on the first song on their first album
Muddy Waters
5/5
This really filled in a blind spot in my cultural knowledge, and it was a joy to listen to.
Aimee Mann
4/5
Some people are just supposed to sing, and Aimee Mann is one of those people. I'm not a superfan or anything, but literally any time I've ever heard her voice, I've enjoyed it. That's rare talent.
Spiritualized
2/5
Absolutely not for me. "Run" was pretty good though.
Jefferson Airplane
3/5
The songs with Grace Slick leading the charge are reliably fantastic, the others are wildly inconsistent.
Elton John
5/5
When people use the term "magnum opus", this is what their frame of reference should be. A sprawling collection of songs both glamorous and tragic from one of the greatest performers of our lifetime (and his equally talented songwriting partner). Magnificent.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
5/5
This might be controversial, but I think this is a a crown jewel in Costello's discography, even better than King of America, which came out the same year and is generally regarded as a masterpiece. It's every bit as good as his first three albums, but where those were brash, angry, and taut, this is brutal and anguished. It's the sound of a man who has aged and grown, both as a person and as a musician, but who still harbors a lot of uncomfortable feelings. Really fantastic.
Solomon Burke
2/5
I feel like it's important that I heard this and understood Burke's place in music history, but I don't see a compelling reason to come back to this.
Talking Heads
5/5
In truth, I would give this like, a 9.3/10, because I think Seen and Not Seen is a little weak in comparison to everything before and after it, but in the absence of that level of granularity, what am I gonna do, not give it 5 stars? Yeah right.
Beck
4/5
It's remarkable, when you consider Beck's career prior to this album, that he was essentially able to write a soundtrack to a Paul Thomas Anderson movie that doesn't exist.
Lana Del Rey
2/5
Do you think Lana has ever had fun?
Donovan
3/5
There's no good reason why Donovan should have known what Green Lantern was in 1965. It feels like an anachronism. I don't like it.
As for the rest of it: a little underwhelming! Those two mammoth singles dwarf everything except "Bert's Blues"
Christina Aguilera
2/5
Everything in here is less impressive and longer than you remember.
Nirvana
5/5
I could listen to the Novoselic/Grohl rhythm section for hours on end. What a duo.
Bob Dylan
4/5
Hot take: Desolation Row might be the weakest song on this album
Amy Winehouse
3/5
Hard to know what was a bigger hindrance on Amy Winehouse's career - her alcoholism or Salaam Remi's production.
Thank god the Ronson tracks are immaculate, at least.
The Verve
4/5
Being at the midpoint between The Stone Roses and Oasis was a very good place to be in the 90s, as it turns out.
U2
5/5
At the risk of becoming the U2 Defender in this project, Achtung Baby is a hell of an album. Coming out of the 80s, where their search for something real and true ended with the most earnest disaster of all time - Rattle and Hum - U2 took the longest break of their career.
When they reemerged with Achtung Baby, they looked, sounded, acted like a different band. The beating (and bleeding) heart is still there at the core, but they found a way to both accept and skewer the notion of their own megastardom. For most of the 90s, they existed in a sort of Max Headroom-surreality, until another high profile disaster - 1997's Pop - set them back on their more earnest, "normal" track (where they've stayed since).
But the two good albums from this period of reinvention, Achtung Baby and Zooropa, are weird and fun and exciting and might just be their two best albums. I'd give this 4.5 if I had the option, but absent that, I'm gonna round up and say this, more than anything, is The Essential U2 album.
Depeche Mode
4/5
I don't want to say that the Depeche Mode albums before Music for the Masses are skippable or forgettable, but the first three don't hold a lot of magic past the singles, and while Some Great Reward presages what comes here, it lacks a certain muscle. This is the album where DM got that muscle.
Fleetwood Mac
5/5
It's a fucking miracle this album even exists. That it is as beautiful and emotional and strange and timeless is a testament to their collective genius, and perhaps to Mick Fleetwood being the ultimate glue guy and bandleader. What an impossible record.
The Mothers Of Invention
2/5
This was my first Frank Zappa album, and barring other Frank Zappa entries in this project, it will be my last. Why do people like this junk?
Gillian Welch
3/5
A beautiful, haunting album that closes with its most powerful songs. Not typically my thing, but Welch's talent is undeniable.
The Clash
5/5
About once a week I think about how fucked up it is that Joe Strummer died at 50 when we really could have used him during the absolute trashfire we've all endured over the last 20 years or so.
Fortunately, we have a pretty tremendous body of timeless, increasingly evergreen music, and London Calling is the very best of it. Not that it's all Strummer's doing, of course. Mick Jones cowrote 15 songs with Strummer, and sang lead on half of them. Simonon and Headon are one of the four of five best rhythm sections of all time, and Simonon's "Guns of Brixton" - his lone solo writing credit in The Clash Discography - is a contender for the best song on the album. London Calling is all four operating not only at the height of their powers, but on the same wavelength, and it's arguably the only time those two things fully aligned. You can hear that cosmic alignment if you listen to London Calling back to back with any other Clash album; it's a giant among men.
Boston
5/5
I'll say it: it's the single greatest debut album in the history of rock music. Can't even pretend to apologize to Appetite for Destruction, which is a distant second. This is the perfect Classic Rock album.
Bob Dylan
3/5
The tail end is a little sluggish/a downer but the first 10 or so songs are a hell of a collection of tunes.
Sinead O'Connor
3/5
I'd only heard a few Sinead O'Connor songs prior to this, and I have to say, the thing that I was most taken aback by is how similar her manner of singing is to Bjork's, who put out Debut a few years after Sinead put this album out. I had never considered that there might be an influence there - in large part because it's not present on Nothing Compares 2 U - but now it's impossible to ignore.
The White Stripes
5/5
The White Stripes reeled off an impressive run in their all-too-brief tenure, but this is their best. It's cohesive, but without compromise. Play it loud and stand back.
Pink Floyd
4/5
It turns out sometimes, when everyone says something is great, they're actually right
Steely Dan
3/5
I'm beginning to think every Steely Dan album is between a 3 star and a 4 star with no outliers.
Common
4/5
Even what Kanye and Chappelle have become in the last 19 years can't diminish how fantastic how excellent this is. A classic.
Eagles
2/5
I fuckin' hate the Eagles, man, but Life in the Fast Lane alone keeps it out of the basement. That song has the goods.
Talking Heads
5/5
There are some Talking Heads albums that I won't give 5 stars to, but this isn't one of them. A great leap forward.
The Band
2/5
With the exception of like, 2 songs, this sounds slight, almost demo-like. I genuinely question if Janis Joplin would have been a big deal if she hadn't died
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
It's a testament to Bruce and company's chops that this album hasn't been ruined by boomers and republicans grossly misunderstanding it for 40 years now.
The Smiths
4/5
Just listen to this album and focus on Andy Rourke's bass. It's an incredible way to spend 35 minutes.
John Cale
4/5
I had never listened to any John Cale solo album before this, and I have to say, Paris 1919 is a hell of a record.
I don't really know how to describe it, exactly, but the phrase "Welsh Harry Nilsson album" popped into my brain near the end. Make of that what you will.
Can
5/5
Is Khruangbin just Can with a Xanax problem?
The Kinks
5/5
It's a rare quality for a band to be almost universally mood-improving, but the Kinks really are, at least for me. Even their more introspective songs, like "Do You Remember Walter" are jaunty - so jaunty, in fact, that it's the basis for one of the all-time upbeat songs, ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky". And of course Green Day took the riff from "Picture Book" for "Warning", one of their most upbeat, Major Key songs.
But what makes VGPS special is that its sonic and thematic cohesiveness is not really replicated anywhere else in The Kinks' discography. It's also the final album they made during a yearslong ban from the United States, which gives the album such a deeply English sensibility that it became a sort of ur-text for Britpop.
R.E.M.
3/5
REM had a lot of great singles in the 80s (and a couple more in the 90s), but every album track surrounding them is like church music for people who spend Sunday mornings listening to A Prairie Home Companion
Taylor Swift
3/5
In which Taylor tries to write "You're So Vain" and "You Oughta Know" as many times as she can with as little mystery as possible.
The Jam
4/5
Paul Weller is somehow the midpoint between Alex Chilton (the man) and Alex Chilton (the song). I can't explain it either, but it's correct, and it's good.
Sheryl Crow
3/5
The songs that pop *really* pop. The songs that don't *really* don't. Some genuinely great tunes in here, though.
Deerhunter
4/5
I think I slightly prefer Fading Frontier, but I'll be damned if this isn't one of those rare albums that gets better and better as it reaches its final song. He Would Have Laughed is an unreal closer.
The Allman Brothers Band
4/5
"In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" is kind of proto-Steely Dan?
Talking Heads
4/5
I said previously that there is are Talking Heads albums I wouldn't give 5 stars to; this is the only one from 77-84 that that's true for. It's a good album, undoubtedly, but it's also clearly a transitional album that suffers a little in retrospect. It's telling that the biggest song here is a cover: More Songs lacks the punch of Talking Heads 77, but it also lacks the muscle and hookiness and expansiveness of the subsequent three albums. It's still compelling and propulsive, but there's no originals here that belong in the Talking Heads pantheon.
Leonard Cohen
4/5
The world is fucked, but at least some people can sing about it humorously, so that's gotta count for something, right?
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
2/5
Did you know that death?
Leonard Cohen
3/5
Guy knew two things: how to write lyrics and be sad
Pearl Jam
4/5
Leaving Brother and State of Love and Trust on the cutting room floor remains inexcusable, but just about everything prior to "Release" is a firecracker.
Queen
2/5
Every member of Queen comes in to each album bringing one thing to the table, and it's always the same formula
Mercury: I have written a jaunty gay operetta in which I briefly allow myself to get angry.
May: I have written four academic papers on quantum mechanics and those in turn have inspired me to write three blistering riffs and one strange, sad ballad.
Taylor: I have written a song about my new girlfriend, an Aston Martin V8.
Deacon: I remembered my bass this time!
Stephen Stills
3/5
A beautiful and undoubtedly influential album by probably the most overlooked member of CSNY, it is nonetheless "not really my thing" enough to revisit as a whole. There are some keepers here, though.
Robbie Williams
1/5
If you've ever wondered what kind of ego it takes to sustain a cocaine habit so ferocious you can namecheck both Kate Moss and Charlie Sheen, look no further.
Jane Weaver
3/5
I have no idea why this album is on here, given that it is seemingly only notable for appearing on this list, but it was decent! Opens strong but peters out as it goes.
Calexico
3/5
I felt like I was listening to the score for a Robert Rodriguez movie for most of this, though this gets long in the tooth sooner than any of his movies do
Oasis
5/5
To paraphrase Mitch Hedberg: You either love them or hate them. Or think that they're okay.
I know which camp I'm in.
Thin Lizzy
5/5
I kind of expect this album to be rated lower by folks who maybe only know "The Boys Are Back in Town" and "Jailbreak" or whatever, but my god, what a document of a band at the absolute peak of their powers, not realizing the cliff they're about to fall off of.
The slower, heavier arrangement of "Still in Love with You" is maybe the greatest live recording of a song, period. We would all kill for a love worthy of a song like that, played like *that*. Good god.
The Pharcyde
5/5
Some of the beats are slightly different on Spotify for some reason and I am not sure why 🤔
Creedence Clearwater Revival
3/5
Perfectly pleasant punctuated by powerhouse pop smashes
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
Filled with doubt, Bruce heads to the interior, both of himself and of America, and finds that no matter how far you drive, desperation is creeping up behind you.
Michael Kiwanuka
4/5
If this thing was like 10 minutes shorter, I'd give it a 5. It's lush, it's beautiful, but it wanders off the trail a little too far too often.
Lou Reed
4/5
Well, this was more beautiful and more depressing than I expected.
Grateful Dead
2/5
No thank you, sirs.
Koffi Olomide
3/5
It's never a bad time to be exposed to more world music, and this was pretty pleasant
Meat Loaf
4/5
Reject insincerity.
Embrace cornball.
Sam Cooke
5/5
You know how they only filmed Elvis from the waist up the first time he was on TV, because they thought his swiveling hips would scandalize the youth into fits of unbridled horniness?
RCA worried that Sam Cooke's *voice* would do that.
Tracy Chapman
5/5
Goddamn, what a voice, both in the sonic sense and in the literary sense.
Minutemen
5/5
There's a reason that one of the most important subculture documentaries of all time borrowed a line from "History Lesson, Part II", and it's because when D. Boon says it, you can't help but believe it. Minutemen were probably the closest thing the 80s had to The Velvet Underground, in that everybody you love loves them and everybody who loves them started a band. D. Boon's untimely death, not long after this album came out, only reinforced their stature.
Baaba Maal
3/5
I never know how to rate these things that are beautiful but are also things I will never really go back to after this. I think 3 is the only thing that seems fair?
The Doors
1/5
A strong argument for sobriety.
Frank Zappa
3/5
It turns out when you leave the wankery lyrics aside, the music is pretty good.
Elliott Smith
2/5
I feel confident that Elliott Smith's longest and worst album would not be on this list if it weren't also his last.
Pete Thomas, though! That's something.
Kate Bush
2/5
if you need music to get ready for the ren faire
Ghostface Killah
5/5
This came up in the randomizer in a surprisingly timely fashion. There's a commercial that's been airing during the US Open set to "The Champ", and it's the rare commercial that I want to turn *up* every time it's on. So of course I put the album on a couple of days ago, and of course it holds up. It will rightfully go down as the Last Great Wu-Tang Album, the final major peak of the collective's career of joint and solo records. There's a good chance it's the best album from 2006, even.
Jimmy Smith
4/5
There's something about the Hammond organ that just acts as a natural mood elevator.
Eminem
3/5
Few songs explain the cultural development of America better than "Stan" and "The Real Slim Shady"
Beatles
5/5
In the span of 1 calendar year, the Beatles released Help! (August 6 1965), Rubber Soul (December 3 1965), and Revolver (August 5 1966). There's an argument to be made for each as the first great Beatles album. For my money, it's Rubber Soul, but Revolver is almost certainly the more important one. It is the soundtrack of their minds being splayed out on the carpet. Everything before Rubber Soul is one thing. Everything from Revolver on is on another level.
Mylo
4/5
Cotton candy doesn't have much nutritional value but sometimes you just want cotton candy.
Dusty Springfield
3/5
It's really easy to forget that Dusty had PIPES. This was a nice reminder, even if none of the selections are definitive for her or the songs.
Michael Jackson
5/5
This is actually the best Michael Jackson album. Take that, Thriller.
Bruce Springsteen
5/5
An album so good and so definitive that Bruce has been ping-ponging back and forth between trying never to make a second Born to Run and always trying to make a second Born to Run. Pretty good problem to have, tbh.
Soft Cell
4/5
The rest of the album is (sex?) dwarfed by Tainted Love, which will outlive us all, and maybe all other pop songs, but the entire affair is a buzzy, bristling thrill. "Say Hello/Wave Goodbye" is a masterpiece.
Peter Gabriel
4/5
I was never a Genesis guy, and certainly never a Peter Gabriel's Genesis guy, but man, does the guy know how to make songs that sound unlike anything else. He really and truly does have all the tools in his bag and he steadfastly refused to use the same one twice for the first decade or so of his solo career.
Metallica
4/5
Lotta albums I like but don't fully love in this stretch. I almost feel bad for giving out so many 4's but that's firmly where all of these belong. Very good with moments of greatness.
The White Stripes
4/5
When you think about it, it's pretty impressive that this is probably the worst / least consistent White Stripes album, because its only real flaw is that it just sort of peters out.
David Bowie
4/5
Let this be a lesson to you: "Across the Universe" is a fucking disaster no matter who records it.
Sepultura
3/5
It would have been cool if I had known about this sooner
The Soft Boys
4/5
Robyn Hitchcock has long been one of my musical blindspots and this album, at least, makes me regret that. What a blast.
Sly & The Family Stone
5/5
I'm long on record as saying that Sly & The Family Stone is the greatest American band of all time. It's legitimately possible that every album with the full Family Stone behind Sly is worthy of 4.5 or more stars. Just an unparalleled run.
Ramones
3/5
More important than good, but still fun.
A Tribe Called Quest
4/5
People's Instinctive Travels starts out slow, but after about 10 minutes it becomes clear that this is a staggeringly rich, deep album that rewards repeat listens. That Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad did this on their first album is mind-blowing. The only real demerit is that Phife, Tribe's secret sauce, was not yet committed to the group as a serious endeavor, so he only appears sparingly.
Christina Aguilera
2/5
I listened to this horny mid-2000s retro maximalism on YouTube in incognito mode because I simply could not have the algorithms get that fucked up.
Wire
3/5
Incredibly important and influential to a lot of albums I like a lot more.
The Go-Go's
4/5
Just a pure fucking delight.
The Band
3/5
if you've ever wanted to know the answer to the question "What would it sound like if a bunch of Canadians made Civil War songs?" this is a pretty good proximal answer
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
The lyrics are *extremely* hit and miss, but the sounds are fantastic. Hendrix really shows a lot of range on Axis, from the proto-metal of "Spanish Castle Magic" to the lilt of "Little Wing" to the spacey "If 6 Was 9." And of course, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell anchor the entire affair beautifully (literally, in Mitch's case - he plays the news anchor in the opening track)
The Everly Brothers
3/5
If we were rating the Everlys on influence, it'd be a 5. Undeniably shifted the entire course of pop and rock music with their output between like, 58 and 61. But listening to it now, it's just nice, quaint stuff. Fuller in sound than you would expect, though.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
5/5
"Take Five" gets all the headlines, but "Blue Rondo a la Turk" and "Pick up Sticks" are among the all-time great album bookend pairs.
Queen
3/5
The highs here are stratospheric. The lows have are buried in the sand up to their heads, pretending to be mermaids.
Louis Prima
3/5
If I had a nickel for every time this project had me listen to "I'm Just a Gigolo" I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it's happened twice.
Michael Jackson
4/5
It's not Off the Wall or Thriller, but it's still a very very good pre-crisis Michael Jackson album.
Morrissey
4/5
In retrospect, this complicated and complex bit of 2000s maximalism ended up being Morrissey's last stand as an artist worth listening to - in both senses of the phrase. The songs here are brimming with life, but it wouldn't belong before his career, and his personality, underwent a rapid putrefaction that persists to this day.
Van Morrison
5/5
Van Morrison simply did not miss between November of 1968 and 1972, when he put out five consecutive five-star albums. This was the second, and by far the most popular, in the streak, and who can argue with it? It displays an unreal range of songwriting, composition, and vocal chops, and that's just the first four songs.
Beastie Boys
4/5
"Girls" is kind of a disaster, but I think Licensed to Ill gets kind of an unfair reputation as being like, obscenely puerile or juvenile. Most of the songs hold up shockingly well, considering they were written and performed by three guys who couldn't even buy their own alcohol when the album was being recorded.
Pixies
5/5
"Is Surfer Rosa better than Doolittle?" is a question I don't think I could answer at gunpoint.
G. Love & Special Sauce
2/5
This isn't bad but I feel like it's partially responsible for a lot of dumb shit we allowed to get popular in the last 20-30 years, like Fun Lovin' Criminals, Dave Matthews, Kid Rock, Cage the Elephant, and some of the less good early Beck records.
Dr. Octagon
5/5
There are a lot of albums I love, but there are few albums that I am dead sure I love more than anyone I've ever met. Dr. Octagonecologyst is one of those albums, and to such an extent that I've drafted a 33 1/3 book pitch for it multiple times.
Some albums sound of their time, some sound ahead of their time. Dr. Octagonecologyst somehow does both at the same time. If the time it was ahead of ever comes, I'll be shocked and delighted in equal measure, just as I am every time I listen to this album.
George Jones
3/5
Jones has maybe the quintessential Country Voice, and the songs are really gut-wrenching and beautifully composed, but I am also totally not the audience and almost certainly never will be.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
4/5
It's pretty remarkable that four guys with such distinctive creative voices were able to function at all, much less as seamlessly as they did in various configurations for much of their career. There's an argument to be made that this album has the best songs Young ("Country Girl"), Nash ("Our House"), Crosby ("Deja Vu") and Joni Mitchell ("Woodstock") ever wrote. Stills is no slouch here either, but he has some pretty incredible songs elsewhere in his oeuvre.
Beck
4/5
I love this album, it might be in my top 3 Beck albums, but it should end on Farewell Ride; Rental Car and Emergency Exit are extraneous
The Style Council
4/5
I wonder how many frontpersons have two bands as good as or better than The Jam and The Style Council?
The Cure
5/5
This is not my favorite Cure album - it is so immense and devastating that I go back to the others more often - but it is almost certainly their greatest work. I don't even know what else to say about it.
Tim Buckley
3/5
I went into this one truly blind. I had no real sense of who Tim Buckley was or what his deal was, nothing. I really loved the first two thirds of this, which were light and jazzy in a kind of spectral way, but the last third kinda lost me. Still, there's a couple songs here I will come back to, I think.
Coldplay
2/5
The trajectory of Coldplay, I'm realizing, is one rooted in reinforcement, and maybe more so than any band in recent memory. They continually followed the path that gave them the widest possible appeal, and as a result, a lot of the more interesting, less pop-oriented stuff - like the second half of this album - stops appearing the further you get into their career.
Supergrass
2/5
I finally know the difference between Supergrass and Supertramp
Steely Dan
4/5
Is "Dirty Work" the best second song on an album? Ever? Find me a challenger.
Mariah Carey
3/5
It's a little more mellow than I prefer my Mariah, but it's hard not to involuntarily fall into the laid back groove.
Madonna
3/5
The two big singles from this are good songs, but they also belie how fantastically weird the album around them is. The rest of what's here sound like Madonna was listening to a lot of Air, but also sort of presages hyperpop and the wider crossover of French House? Like Homework was already out, and "Around the World" had had a little impact, but this album came out two months before "One More Time".
It's not a *great* album, but it is a fascinating one, and a great example of Madonna's ability to anticipate trends, even in the middle portion of her career.
Stevie Wonder
5/5
FFF is an album that has always eluded me in some way. It's unlike anything else from the Classic Period, and that is undoubtedly due to Stevie's near death experience/coma less than a year before it was released.
It's a dark, sometimes bleak album; Stevie, who was like, 23? 24? when he wrote and recorded this was confronting his mortality, his abilities, and the world he returned to in the wake his accident. When Stevie asks "Can I play?" twice in the outro to "Boogie on Reggae Woman" - a song that I don't believe features any other musicians - it's not just him taking a solo; it's him proving to himself that he's still got it.
But the shape of the whole album still mystifies me, even as compelling as it is. The haunting, funereal "They Won't Go When I Go" is conspicuously placed on the second side of the album, a centerpiece of reckoning amid songs that are tonally disparate in comparison. The drum machine - maybe the only one I can think of Stevie using - on "You Haven't Done Nothin'" is conspicuous in its machine-like chug.
Altogether, this feels like the Classic Stevie album I still have the most to learn from, and that is a rare thing for an artist so celebrated.
Michael Jackson
5/5
Today I learned that you can run to almost any song on Thriller but absolutely not "The Lady in My Life"
The Rolling Stones
3/5
I had no idea that the Stones had an 11 minute loose improv song in their repertoire
CHIC
4/5
It's weird to consider that CHIC, one of the most iconic acts of the disco era, released their first three albums in 77, 78, and 79, right as disco was in its waning days. C'est Chic is the middle of the three, both chronologically and in quality, but it has the highest heights of any of the three - "Le Freak" on the first side and "I Want Your Love" on side two. Not many albums have *one* song that good, much less two (or three, or four). The only real drawback is the sequencing of the extremely mellow, contemplative "At Least I Am Free" right after "I Want Your Love". It's such a stark comedown that it kind of sucks the life out of everything after it; it should be the last song on the album.
The Mamas & The Papas
5/5
These arrangements are upsettingly beautiful.
Wu-Tang Clan
5/5
I know I said previously that Boston had the greatest debut album but I probably should have specified *rock* debut album. Because this, this is the greatest debut album of all time.
Green Day
5/5
I think it's possible that pre-9/11 Green Day has somehow come back around to being underrated? At the bare minimum, Tre Cool and Mike Dirnt are deeply underappreciated as a rhythm section. They're both tremendous here, from start to finish.
The Offspring
2/5
There's a couple solid songs here, but the vibes, to me, are kinda fucked.
Justin Timberlake
2/5
Listening to this now, knowing what we know about his and Britney's relationship, makes segments of this almost sickeningly narcissistic. There's still a couple bops - hard not to with the Neptunes and Timbaland so heavily involved. Also, Bubba Sparxxx is here.
Cornershop
3/5
Like one out of every 20 albums on this list is a clear case of "the Brits are at it again", and this is no exception, but for those of us born in the late 80s, somehow two of these songs became kind of iconic in America. The first was obviously "Brimful of Asha", especially the Fatboy Slim remix, but the second was "Candyman", which featured prominently in an early Nike campaign for LeBron, while he was still on his rookie contract with the Cavs. It was one of the last times in the internet/pre-streaming era where it felt like there was a portal for weird British stuff to latch on in the States (see also: Dizzee Rascal, Roots Manuva, et al). Sometimes I kinda miss that time.
David Bowie
4/5
There's a couple clunkers here - almost every Bowie album has one or two, to keep it interesting - but the highs are stratospheric. I'd give it 4.5, but I can't say it's near enough to perfect to give it 5 as an overcompensation.
Duran Duran
4/5
Just a rock solid New Wave album. Is Duran Duran underrated?
Missy Elliott
3/5
Front half of the album is absolutely loaded, but it's like 20 minutes too long; most of the back half is pleasant but kind of unremarkable, for the most part.
Joni Mitchell
4/5
There's a distinct possibility that if I'd heard this album before the other Joni album on the list, I would have reacted much differently to that one. I had no idea she had this kind of range.
Sebadoh
4/5
I owe an unreasonable amount of my musical taste to the greater Amherst area, but even I was surprised that this album is on this list. Not that it doesn't deserve to be - there's maybe as many as 3 Sebadoh albums that I'd give a 4 or better to - but they just seem like a fascinating little cul de sac artist.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
5/5
There's a legitimate argument that "Legend" actually is the best way to experience the Wailers, because there's almost no songs *missing* from that comp that should be there - including most of Exodus.
Except, for some reason, every single track on this album (the live No Woman, No Cry you all know is much different than the studio one presented here).
This is a slow burn, a potent mix of joy and politics and growing spirituality that is best enjoyed with your full attention. It rewards close, and repeat, listening more than most albums.
Kendrick Lamar
5/5
Listening to this for the first time since the Super Bowl, it's fascinating how that performance feels so deeply indebted to everything that's going on here, despite the fact that the two share zero songs in common. Someone more talented than I should write some longform piece about this, I'd read the hell out of it.
Destiny's Child
3/5
An insane choice to put "Nasty Girl" out as a single, and an even crazier one to put it on the album right after "Bootylicious". Whiplash.
The Birthday Party
3/5
If there's a worse album cover in this project, I'll be *shocked*
Femi Kuti
4/5
Femi rules, but I'm sort of lacking the depth of knowledge to figure out if this is a 3, a 4, or a 5, so I'm splitting the difference and giving it a 4.
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
I dunno if you guys know this, but Jimi Hendrix had some issues with excess
Massive Attack
5/5
It feels temporally impossible that these songs are nearly 35 years old. How?
Dusty Springfield
4/5
Just a lovely, lovely record from top to bottom. Sometimes auteurship is not all it's cracked up to be.
2/5
The singles on this album are so much better than the album tracks, which is an insane thing to say for an album where I will never revisit even the best of the singles, but it's true
Lynyrd Skynyrd
3/5
You do, in some circumstances, have to hand it to them. There's some real solid songs here, and Free Bird last is a triumph of album sequencing unlikely to be beaten.
Foo Fighters
5/5
This is probably the most flawed album that I will nonetheless give a 5 to. I just love it too much.
Dire Straits
3/5
Most of these songs go on too long - the LP version might actually be superior from that perspective, honestly - but there are some undeniably gems here. I wouldn't say it's as good as the British apparently think it is, but it's a real solid rocker.
Sonic Youth
5/5
If you ever need to explain the concept of je n'ais ce quoi to someone, play them a few post punk albums by other artists then play them Daydream Nation. Virtually any adjective you can apply to those bands and those albums - angular, disaffected, dissonant, incendiary, jagged, muscular, sneering, etc - also applies to Sonic Youth, but there's an unidentifiable *more* to SY, especially on Daydream Nation, that those other bands, many of them incredible in their own right, simply do not have.
Neil Young
3/5
When Neil Young doesn't use his "She Don't Use Jelly" falsetto he's a lot more enjoyable to listen to
The Rolling Stones
4/5
these guys might be onto something
Wilco
2/5
I gave it a fair shot. Wilco remains extremely not for me, and that's fine.
4/5
I recently described Beck's album Sea Change as the soundtrack to a Paul Thomas Anderson movie that doesn't exist as a way of describing its emotional arc.
Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), on the other hand, quite literally *is* a soundtrack to a movie that doesn't exist. As the Kinks' ban from the United States wore on - this was their last album before they regularly toured the US again - Ray Davies collaborated with a British filmmaker on a story, and this album was to roughly mirror that production.
Only, to paraphrase Jonathan Frakes: It never happened.
What was left was an intensely personal album that lacked the shield the movie would have provided. It's a concept album, about the Davies family, growing up in England during the war, conflictual feelings about national pride, and loss. It's a really strong set of songs, though I could live without Princess Marina.
The Beach Boys
5/5
If you graphed talent on the Y axis and debilitating mental illness on the X axis, Brian Wilson would be as far to the top right as possible.
I think it was *probably* worth it.
Screaming Trees
4/5
Very fascinated that this is the only Screaming Trees album on here (Sweet Oblivion is bigger, and better, though not as fascinating), but not mad about it. It's still a great album, and Lanegan sounds as good on it as he ever did.
The Stranglers
3/5
I didn't know that I knew the Stranglers, but "Peaches" is featured in one of my favorite movies, Jonathan Glazer's Sexy Beast. The rest of the album falls short of that admittedly very high peak, but it's a solid, fun experience. Is it good enough to warrant a place in this list? Maybe. Maybe not. It's close.
Arctic Monkeys
4/5
We're probably less than 2 years away from the British press anointing another band as the saviors of rock and roll for their generation.
Fortunately, with Oasis and Arctic Monkeys, they weren't all that far off.
Sister Sledge
4/5
Nile Rodgers probably has the most out of whack ratio of "importance to music history" to "recognizability" of anyone. Everything about his musical style is instantly recognizable, even to the average person - whether it's Chic or Daft Punk or here with Sister Sledge - and yet most people couldn't name him if you showed them a photo, couldn't tell you his name if you played his songs. Truly incredible.
The Sledge girls, pretty incredible too, by the by.
Kate Bush
2/5
if you need music for the ride to the ren faire
Goldfrapp
2/5
I almost wish this had been worse because it's less offensive to me that an album try something out there and miss than it is to be technically sound but dead boring, like this.
Kings of Leon
1/5
My expectations were low, but this was *shockingly* bad.
Lorde
3/5
I remember liking this much more when it came out than I did on re-listen here. Maybe I wasn't in the right headspace for it. I would have given this a 4 on the memory of how much I enjoyed it; I'm giving it a 3 here. I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle.
John Lennon
2/5
There are a few songs here that are musically stellar, but it's hard not to listen to Lennon's lyrics and hear a small, deeply insecure man whose big picture idealism is perpetually at odds with his dented ego.
Snoop Dogg
4/5
A few genuine bangers, surprisingly little filler, even considering the interludes. Never really lets off the gas pedal. Gets into horrorcore rap a little more than I remembered. It's a 3.5, but I'm feeling generous.
New York Dolls
4/5
This is an album that's like, a 3 for how much I like it and for the sound but a 5 for how indescribably important it is.
Count Basie & His Orchestra
3/5
I'm not sure I'd ever like, sit back and absorb it the way I do latter jazz greats, but this is the kind of thing you can put on and absolutely no one will be mad at you, and that is increasingly valuable in these trying times.
AC/DC
3/5
I don't think I can, in good conscience, give any AC/DC album more than 3 stars, even though no one has done what they do better than them.
Violent Femmes
5/5
No band has ever done more with less. A masterclass in spinning desperation and angst into gold, and most of it written before Gordon Gano could even legally drink. Honestly, it might be the best album ever written by a teenager.
Madonna
4/5
It's a much more evocative, moody album than I expected, which was a pleasant surprise, but frontloading it with two of the greatest pop songs ever written and following those with a Prince collaboration creates an imbalance. Imagine if you get the emotional peak of "Express Yourself" at like, track 5 or 6 or 7? Would hit in a totally different way, energy-wise and thematically.
The Fall
3/5
I gotta be honest, I have never listened to an album by The Fall before this and I was half-expecting it to be a mishmashy mess, and it is, sort of, but in a way that makes sense rather than distracts. It's like a knife fight in an alley.
The Specials
5/5
I asked Jerry, he told Terry / Terry sang a song just for me / Lynval gave a message to me / Rhoda screamed and then she asked me / Where have all the rude boys gone?
James Brown
5/5
Recorded in late 1962, and released in the middle of 1963, this recording represents two unique inflection points in James Brown's career.
As heard here, he is at the absolute apex of his career as a soul and R&B singer. In 1962 and 1963, Brown is the most beloved entertainer in the Black community and it isn't remotely close, even with the ascendancy of Motown - Little Stevie Wonder's first big single, Fingertips, came out the same month as Live at the Apollo - happening in Detroit.
It also captures the last moments before Brown reached a crossroads that would make him the most popular (and influential) solo artist on the planet. By mid 1964, JB would begin the history-altering pivot, effectively creating the funk genre with "Out of Sight".
While Live at the Apollo doesn't include live renditions of any of the peerless funk jams he became most widely known for (you'll want 1970's Sex Machine for that), it's a remarkable performance that shows an incredible performer whose talents could (and excesses) could not be contained, and who was about to springboard to mythical status, and for all those reasons, it's absolutely worthy of a 5/5
The Clash
5/5
The Clash achieved something with their debut self-titled album that is maybe one of one in music history
It is both the best album in a genre - in this case punk - while also not the best album the artist made - because London Calling is undeniably better.
Pretty fucking impressive, honestly.
CHIC
4/5
Peaks early, as basically every Chic record does, with the eternal "Good Times," but then it settles into a simmering groove that is perfect to put on while you're cooking a fancy meal for someone you wanna sleep with
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
3/5
If we are being charitable and including "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel", which is maybe the most important recording of the last 50 years, but which wasn't originally part of this album, there are 3 incredible songs here: that, "Scorpio" and "The Message"
Unfortunately the rest is basically filler. It was early days, they were figuring things out. It's fine.
The Police
4/5
Despite the presence of a couple songs that are among the best in their catalogue, this has a fascinating unevenness to it where you can almost hear the band struggling with, but ultimately, finding their way through, their sophomore slump. It was really the only time in their career, brief though it was, that they came in not sure what to record, but they became a better band for it.
The Smiths
4/5
Minus one star for Vicar in a Tutu
R.E.M.
3/5
REM, it turns out, is just a band whose album cuts do nothing for me. Gimme a greatest hits comp and I'm good.
James Taylor
3/5
You won't catch me saying a negative thing about James Taylor
Japan
3/5
This is another of those albums that's probably more important than it is incredible to listen to, sitting as a key album in the lineage of synthpop and new wave. Still, it's a good album.
5/5
I genuinely don't think there's anything I can say about this album that hasn't been said before, because it's so good and everyone knows it, but I will say this: it might be have the best album *title* ever. It's certainly one worthy of envy.
Rush
2/5
I will defend Rush's right to make music like this but you can't make me like it
The Yardbirds
3/5
This is one of those sort of... foundational texts of British rock and roll that I'm glad I listened to - there's a couple of really fantastic tracks here - but can't see myself revisiting much, if ever. I'd give this 2.5 if that were an option. Rounding up feels correct, here.
Bebel Gilberto
3/5
I've alluded to it before, but it's important to have a stable of good albums you can put on at certain gatherings that will both add texture to the function and not distract from it. This is absolutely one of those albums.
Eagles
2/5
Witchy Woman saves this from absolute scorn
Radiohead
5/5
SPOILERS
still my favorite radiohead album
END SPOILERS
Bob Marley & The Wailers
4/5
The Wailers are just so much better when Peter Tosh is in the mix. He's the perfect counterweight to Marley.
The Cars
5/5
Ocasek and Orr are a lead duo for the ages. The Cars (the album) indelibly changed the sound of music in a way that people should write books about. Long live The Cars.
Sigur Rós
4/5
Sigur Ros is one of few bands where the live experience far surpasses the recorded experience. That's not to say that this album, or any of the others, aren't good; it's more that the songs take on new dimensions live
Le Tigre
5/5
Some day, if we're lucky, we'll learn not only who took the bomp, but who took the ram
The Who
4/5
Not looking at the track list going into this one, I was fully prepared for there to be at least a few throwaway songs. It was the 70s, the Who had just done Tommy and would soon do Quadrophenia, which are both maximalist to absurd degree, you gotta figure some of that is gonna bleed through here.
Nope! Three bangers, a great ballad, the first/only good John Entwistle song, a couple of solid album tracks, and the soundtrack to the most memorable Nissan commercial of our youths.
Janelle Monáe
4/5
I do sometimes miss when Janelle Monae was making these insanely intricate, operatic albums - some of the compositions are so lush and gorgeous it stops you in your tracks - but these structures were also clearly kind of a gilded cage of Monae's own design, and that feels really evident in the back half of The ArchAndroid.
Chicago
3/5
These guys loved trains and numbers. How many of them do you think would be on the spectrum today?
Ryan Adams
1/5
What an asshole
Alice Cooper
2/5
Alice Cooper is maybe the foremost artist of the album era who is great but doesn't actually have any Stone Cold Classic albums. There's like 2 or 3 killer songs on every record, some interesting deep cuts, and a couple absolute nutbar choices. Every time.
Jack White
4/5
Jack White, like Tom Waits before him, sets out to make the best dive bar band you've ever heard.
Like Tom Waits, he succeeds, albeit in an entirely different type of dive bar.
Black Sabbath
5/5
You might think you've heard Iron Man too many times in your life, but what you've actually heard too many times in your life is the first 30 seconds of Iron Man.
The rest of it, I need to occasionally remind myself, is an absolute fucking masterpiece.
Doves
3/5
This is nice enough, but I also have no idea why it's here. Is it notable?
Björk
2/5
I love Bjork. But I've heard Medulla before, and I didn't love it then, and I don't love it now. I admire it. It's a remarkable work of art that I feel nothing about.
Jeff Beck
4/5
I did not expect to like this as much as I did. Figured it'd by showier and more wankery, but no. A delightful romp that doesn't overstay its welcome.
Derek & The Dominos
3/5
This would have been a 4 if they'd ended it with Layla.
The Pogues
4/5
Long live Shane McGowan, and god bless Jem Finer and Spider Stacy
Kanye West
5/5
Rated without further comment.
Orbital
2/5
The sounds are good but the album is far too long
Queens of the Stone Age
4/5
I don't think we needed the three extra tracks on the reissue but they don't quite cost the album any stars here. It just feels more frontloaded with the added songs than the original release does.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
As this project wears on, I've learned that 60s CCR was pretty legit, but 70s CCR sort of becomes self-parody at a certain point. This may seem to be an insane thing to say about a band who released *FIVE* studio albums in 1969 and 1970, but it makes sense if you think about it. They clearly were gonna run out of steam doing that.
Fortunately, all of Green River is well before that; they're really clicking here.
Kraftwerk
3/5
There's a string of Kraftwerk albums that are like, foundational texts of all synthpop, and this is probably the synthiest of them, but it's also the one I like the least. It's still great to put on when you need to get into a certain headspace, though.
Doves
2/5
This is such a "the brits are at it again" pick. It's fine.
The Velvet Underground
3/5
I'm glad that many artists I enjoy enjoy the Velvets, but like 60% of the time, it's not for me
Brian Eno
3/5
Remarkably gay album by a remarkably straight man
Franz Ferdinand
5/5
Listening to this again for the first time in a decade, maybe more, I was delighted to find that it sounded as good as I remembered it sounding. Just a meticulously well constructed album. Really fucking fun.
Funkadelic
5/5
There are 7 songs on this record and 4 of them are among the most important songs in the foundation of multiple genres of music. In so many ways, an unprecedented album.
Arcade Fire
4/5
My feelings about Arcade Fire as they currently exist are very complicated. Win Butler has shown no contrition, no humility, no regret in the wake of the many allegations against him. The only consequence he, and the band, seem to have suffered is that their new music is about as engaging as wet newspaper.
Knowing what we know now does make parts of Neon Bible feel different. (Antichrist Television Blues) and its manic street preaching feels like absolute snake oil now, and it didn't used to. Bad Vibrations feels ominous in a different way, but it also makes me hope, now, that it's true. That the things Win is running from do eventually consume him and drag him to the bottom of the ocean.
Still, this album, and particularly its closing salvo of Windowsill - No Cars Go - My Body is a Cage, is so inextricably tied to an emotionally turbulent time in my life, and I have to honor that version of me, who survived long enough to write about it.
The Crusaders
3/5
It's very funny how much jazz critics do not like this compared to how much everyone else (correctly) enjoys it.
Leonard Cohen
3/5
A beginner's guide to Leonard Cohen
Song is in a minor key: it's about death. He may get horny later.
Song is in a major key: it's about sex. Someone may die later.
Sufjan Stevens
5/5
There's really not a song here that doesn't still work, even 20 years later. I still think it should have ended with "The Tallest Man" though.
Supertramp
3/5
I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this.
Siouxsie And The Banshees
5/5
Everyone should listen to more Siouxsie. She is an absolute force of nature, and never moreso than she is here.
Klaxons
4/5
I unapologetically love this album and have for a long time. It's just a fucking blast.
Electric Light Orchestra
4/5
Am I becoming ELO-pilled as I progress through my late 30s?
Run-D.M.C.
5/5
A 4 on quality, a 5 on influence. Gotta round up, I think.
Cream
4/5
I'm pretty sure everyone in this band is/was an absolute asshole, but I'll be damned if they didn't know how to construct a song.
Madonna
4/5
I have to say, as we've been going through this and we've been confronting different eras of Madonna, her instincts keep winning me over. She was reliably ahead of the curve, sometimes to the extent that her albums - like this one - were not as highly rated when they came out as they will be/have been in retrospectives.
Cocteau Twins
1/5
I have tried to 'get' this album several times in my life. I don't think there will be another.
Neil Young
3/5
On every Neil Young album in this project, there's like 3 songs where I think "oh, I get it, I see why people adore him" and then there's 2 songs where I think "those people are morons". Here, at least, the former take up the bulk of the running time.
Herbie Hancock
5/5
Herbie is the greatest living jazz artist, apologies to Sonny Rollins, Marshall Allen, Chick Corea, et al.
Head Hunters is eternal.
k.d. lang
2/5
kd lang has incredible pipes and she puts them to a wide array of country & western and honky-tonk standards. it's not really my cup of tea, but it is impressive to hear how she bends her voice to suit each song.
Giant Sand
2/5
it's interesting, i guess, but why is it notable?
Deep Purple
4/5
I feel bad that I didn't listen to this while careening down the highway at 95 mph, but other than that, I have no regrets. I have undersold these guys.
Johnny Cash
5/5
This is probably the most important country/western album ever recorded. It's also probably the most important live album ever recorded.
That it's also really fucking good is just icing on the cake.
Beastie Boys
4/5
It's funny how little Sabotage fits with the rest of the sonic landscape of this album - even considering Heart Attack Man - but like, how could you *not* put it on the album?
Another question worth considering: is this the second best Beastie Boys album?
Portishead
5/5
Born as I was in the late 80s, this was the first Portishead album that came out when I was of an age where I could appreciate it. As you might imagine, I came to their discography in reverse order, which might actually be the best order?
Anyway, the point of all this is that Third holds a special spot in the development of my musical taste, and I still love it, nearly 20 years on.
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
3/5
I do not doubt that this is an Important Album, and I do not regret having listened to it, but it is also not my speed. But I am feeling generous.
The Stooges
3/5
There are three Stooges albums. They are all great. This is the least great of the three.
Blur
3/5
Outside of Song 2, which remains as anthemic as any nonsense song ever written, Blur's self-titled, maybe more so than any other record in their discography, hints at Damon Albarn's growing need to expand beyond the bounds of what Blur was. The dingy sounds that would come to define large swaths of the first Gorillaz album start to leak out here, 4 years before its release and a couple of years before it was recorded. In that way *Blur* is fascinating as a document of both a band and its frontman in periods of transition.
Deep Purple
4/5
Insert Shaq "I apologize. I was not familiar with your game" meme here.
2/5
I gotta be honest: I listened to this and I cannot recall a single thing about it. Which I guess means it also wasn't terrible, but still.
Songhoy Blues
5/5
I don't know how I am consistently surprised by how great West African psychedelic guitar rock is but it happens 100% of the time. This might be the best one yet, though. An absolute heat rock.
Wild Beasts
2/5
This was pretty good background music but it doesn't really seem essential in any meaningful way?
I am surprised that I missed a band that was beloved by Pitchfork in the late 00s, though.
Rage Against The Machine
5/5
This album came out 33 years ago, as of this writing.
The final single, the album-closing firebomb "Freedom" came out about 31 and a half years ago, bringing the case of Leonard Peltier, a wrongly-incarcerated Native American, to wider national attention with its music video.
Leonard Peltier's sentence was commuted to indefinite house arrest in January of 2025.
Freedom. Yeah, right.
Alice In Chains
5/5
Twelve perfectly depressing songs about despair, trauma, substance use, and death.
There are few albums I like more.
Green Day
1/5
It makes total sense that this became a successful Broadway show.
The Roots
4/5
I might have a longer piece in me on this, but I'm putting the note here
Phrenology is to The Roots what Ill Communication is to the Beastie Boys
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
3/5
OMD is one of those bands whose name had previously led me to ignore them. It's such a ridiculous mouthful of a name.
Turns out, like many things, once you get past the cover, the contents are pretty good. Nothing incredible - I'm not sure this album needs to be included in this or any other canon - but it's a solid record.
The Smashing Pumpkins
4/5
Something like 14 of the 28 tracks here are absolute heaters, which is an unreal hit rate for a double album, especially one from the mid-90s. Another 6-8 are good but not great. That the album mostly justifies its 2 hour run time is a miracle the likes of which we will probably never see again.
I think, in my heart, this is probably a 4.5/5. I don't think it's quite good enough to give it the benefit of the doubt 5/5 here, though the presence of a handful of all-time bangers tempts me.
Frank Sinatra
3/5
If we should have nostalgia for anything we didn't experience from the 1950s, it should be singers whose voices sound like velvet and cigars. Not enough seduction these days.
Pantera
2/5
Pantera is fine. This is fine.
Prince
5/5
Any performer, regardless of field, who is destined to be discussed among the greatest in their profession has a moment where they realize they have the power and talent to do anything they want. Whether that's Jordan scoring 63 against the Celtics in the 1986 playoffs or Dylan going electric or whatever, there is always That Moment.
For Prince, 1999 is that moment. To paraphrase "All the Critics Love U in New York", nobody's as sharp as he, and he knows it.
Tricky
4/5
Some albums just make you want to do a little opium and fuck, and this is maybe foremost among them.
Dr. Dre
3/5
Here's a hot take: an instrumental version of The Chronic would be just as influential and probably more enjoyable to listen to. Dr. Dre is the only rapper who actively gets hidden on his own albums, and he's right to do it.
Prince
5/5
I mean, what can you even say. It's 9 perfect songs sequenced perfectly. It's the greatest soundtrack ever recorded. It's the greatest solo album ever recorded (all respect to the Revolution, though). It's the greatest American album of all time. The superlatives are endless. The album is eternal.
Gorillaz
4/5
I think there is a version of this album that I would give a 5/5 to - drop a couple of songs, make 19-2000 the Soulchild remix - but I don't think Damon Albarn ever could have made that album. As I alluded to in my comments for Blur's self-titled, he was clearly overflowing with ideas that were largely too weird for Blur. Lots of them turned into this album, and the accompanying "G Sides". There's something like 25-30 songs from the Gorillaz sessions, and nearly all of them are interesting, and most of them are good. Can't really blame Albarn for doing a little too much, all things considered.
Stevie Wonder
5/5
Meticulous. Flawless. Quintessential. Immaculate. Irreproachable.
The National
2/5
Aside from a select few tracks, the discography of The National remains sedating for me, even despite their drummer's best efforts
Jurassic 5
3/5
I assume this is the only Jurassic 5 album on here, and I get why. It's a fun, throwback record full of posse cuts, and it has a very high peak with "What's Golden" and "Thin Line" at the midpoint of the album. I'm not sure it's better than the J5 LP, or Quality Control.
What I am sure of, though, is that it's very rare for a guest MC to body an entire rap group and every other guest on the album the way Kool Keith does on "DDT"
If nothing else, I'm glad everyone gets to experience that.
Simon & Garfunkel
4/5
In retrospect, putting such an elegant, languid ballad as the opening track on an album that is otherwise pretty uptempo probably should have been a sign that Simon & Garfunkel were flying too close to the sun.
Elvis Costello
3/5
I love Elvis Costello more than anyone except, apparently, the person who wrote 1001 Albums, because Brutal Youth, while fun, is probably his 10th or 11th best album, if we're being totally honest, and I know for a fact that there's only 6 total on here.
Def Leppard
2/5
This album has sold 20 million copies, which seems crazy, until you remember that every strip club in the world probably bought 5 copies because it was the only reliable way to access "Pour Some Sugar on Me"
3/5
I think this is one of those albums that's more important than it is good. The title track, Rocket Reducer, and Starship all rip, but some of the in between songs don't stick around after you're done listening. The rawness and urgency of the record is what makes it memorable.
Black Sabbath
4/5
The most popular song on this album is the worst one.
Thankfully, it's out of the way pretty early and then it's bombs away.
B.B. King
5/5
Prior to listening to this, all of my listening experience with BB King had been listening to his studio recordings, and even that was sparing. To hear him, and his band, in the full throes of a live performance, is illuminating. It's so easy to think of the blues as a slower, sadder, more deliberate style of music, but here, King and co. are are raucous, almost toying with the crowd as they go. It's fantastic, and full of joy.
Can
4/5
It's like the densest dessert you've ever had. It's really good, but it's almost impossible to consume in one sitting.
Television
5/5
I'm not sure I'll ever fully grasp this album, but I'm happy to try for the rest of time.
Emmylou Harris
3/5
I don't think anyone really dislikes Emmylou Harris; her voice is too mellifluous and her arrangements are too pleasant to ever inspire that kind of negative furor. But while those things are true, it's also true that she is not an artist I will ever really reach for out of some unnameable intrinsic need. I'd probably go for Neko's unassailable pipes and deep well of emotion first, if I were looking for a similar soundscape. Still, I am glad I spent the time with this one.
Moby
4/5
As broadly loathsome as I find Moby as a person (#TeamNatalie), I must admit, this is very good. I do not want to consider the moral and ethical quandaries raised by his use of Lomax field recordings at this time, thank you.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
5/5
Fuck the haters, this album rules
Aphex Twin
4/5
While I am a pretty big music nerd - I am doing this whole thing, after all - I have a pretty minimal grounding in ambient electronica. Counterintuitively(?) there's a lot to digest here, and I actually do want to try, which is not something I have felt from a lot of albums in this project that were hitherto unknown to me.
My initial feeling is like, 3.5/5 but I can see it going up with repeat listenings, so I'll be a little generous here.
The Vines
1/5
"Get Free" almost keeps this from being a 1/5. But not quite. Why the fuck is this even here?
Einstürzende Neubauten
2/5
This is like when I watched Tetsuo: The Iron Man
I don't really know what's going on, there's a lot of clanging, and everyone seems upset.
The Smashing Pumpkins
5/5
Whether or not The Smashing Pumpkins qualify as a grunge band is a very personal and subjective choice, as likely to lead to an argument among a segment of Gen Xers and elder Millennials as anything you can think of.
Regardless of whether they were stylistic peers of the bands they shared the Singles Soundtrack with, they were peers in the larger world of alternative rock in the 90s, and while Nirvana and Soundgarden and maybe even Alice in Chains hit higher heights (before tragedy inevitably struck), none of them has a better three-album run than the Pumpkins run that begins here, with Siamese Dream, and ends with Adore.
Siamese Dream - comfortably the shortest of the three at a brisk-for-the-era 62 minutes - is also the greatest of the three. It establishes the sonic palette that made the band a powerhouse for the rest of the decade: the layers of guitars; Chamberlin's array of drum styles, tones, and techniques that range from breezy to military to thundering; Corgan's knack with a hook or a lush arrangement. It's a beautiful, nuanced album, sequenced perfectly, and making it nearly destroyed them. That it didn't is a miracle, but even if it had, it would have been worth it.
U2
4/5
There are times when I can be convinced that Sunday Bloody Sunday is the greatest opening track in rock history. It's a shame that latter day U2 can't figure out how to write anything half as good as even the least impressive songs on War.
Eminem
2/5
Even before Beats, Dr. Dre was a hardened capitalist: the only three songs he produced for this album are the only three songs released as singles, and even though he's only featured on Guilty Conscience, he has a writing credit on all three.
Tom Waits
5/5
There is no artist whose body of work rewards the listener for going in chronological order the way Tom Waits' does. Here, as Prince would later do on 1999, the artist refines his persona and his technique across an impressive, sprawling double album into something incredible, heretofore only partially glimpsed in his previous work. In both cases, the best was yet to come, but it's incredible to hear Waits see the whole picture, to feel it all click.
The Replacements
5/5
I think part of the reason this album has such enduring appeal, beyond it's tightrope walk of angst, agita, and humor, is that it represents a moment we've all had - but not all capitalized on - in life. A moment where a talented but habitually slacker-ish band finally put it all together and made something truly masterful. And not as a fluke; the albums that follow this are every bit as masterful in ways that, say Hootenanny did note foretell.
We've all been that person, not living up to our potential, shooting ourselves in the foot, tripping ourselves up at critical junctures in our lives. But in Let It Be, there's the moment we all aspire to, where we absolutely fuckin' nail it.
Fatboy Slim
5/5
I skipped a few albums to get this in with Aphex Twin and Moby in the same night, because they sort of represent the three most successful prongs of electronic music in the 90s. Moby had the enormous crossover appeal by tapping into the pop consciousness of American music; Aphex Twin had the critics swooning (especially in the UK) with his darker, minimalistic techno
Fatboy Slim sort of occupied the middle path between them, at least from an American perspective. I remember hearing his remix for "Brimful of Asha" on the radio here, including, yes, WBCN, which is featured on this very album.
I can't say I heard that particular phone call that plays as the lead-in to the superb "Rockafeller Skank" but there's no doubt in my mind it's legit. BCN used to get some insane calls, especially during the evening show, which I'm pretty sure this was, given that the DJ in the clip is Bradley Jay (which is confusing, given that the caller's name is also Brad).
That infectious enthusiasm about Fatboy Slim was a real thing for about 4 or 5 years, spanning the turn of the millennium, but it inarguably peaked with the video for "Praise You", which starred and was directed by Spike Jonze (made while he was working on his debut film, Being John Malkovich). It was inescapable, and the album became inescapable, part of the soundtrack to the last couple of pre-9/11 summers. Those times didn't last, and weirdly, neither did Fatboy Slim; he basically stopped releasing new music 20 years ago. But it's not nostalgia speaking when I say that this album still absolutely cooks, more than a quarter of a century later.
Arcade Fire
4/5
Regine is a wonderful singer, but I am deducting approximately 0.6 stars for her trying to be Bjork on "In The Backseat"
New Order
4/5
I was astounded to learn that Love Vigilantes is a beloved New Order song, because my first impression of hearing it was "what the fuck is this" and I only felt that more intensely as each far superior subsequent track came on.
Astrud Gilberto
2/5
Everyone involved in this album aside from Astrud did Astrud dirty
Brian Wilson
4/5
It is genuinely a miracle this thing exists. I wish it existed as he initially intended, but this is a pretty impressive simulacrum.
PJ Harvey
5/5
There's a very strong chance every PJ Harvey album in this project gets 5 stars from me, even though I so rarely think to put her on when I'm listening to music at work, around the house, in the car, etc. I have a weird relationship with her music, but it's almost all fantastic.
William Orbit
4/5
This goes right into the memory banks for "albums I can write to," which sounds like a niche use case, but I write like 2000-3000 words a day for work, and sometimes albums with more traditional instrumentation or lyrics I can understand and think about end up feeling distracting. This is really good stuff to thwart that. Great for my ADHD.
Elliott Smith
3/5
This was significantly better than the other Elliott Smith album. Not sure I'd come back to this one, but I wouldn't be as bummed out about this one.
Culture Club
3/5
Did you know that in 2008, Boy George was convicted of chaining a sex worker to a radiator and beating him?
Neither did I until after I listened to this, which was pretty good. The abuse did sour me on it a little, though.
Echo And The Bunnymen
5/5
It's strange to consider that for most Americans, this band is almost exclusively known for The Killing Moon's appearance in Donnie Darko, a movie whose soundtrack is more influential than anything depicted on screen.
What has always struck me about The Bunnymen, especially in comparison to their post-punk peers, is how big they sound, even as just a quartet. Not loud, necessarily, though there are well placed uses of volume, but more the sense that their sound could fill the largest house of worship you could build. And yet despite the enormity of their sound, they generally eschew any pull they might feel towards "anthemic"; there is no Teen Age Riot, there is no That's When I Reach for My Revolver, there is no How Soon Is Now? They occupy the space between those things - plaintive and mournful, propulsive and intentional, ambitious and angular. You might have a religious experience listening to them, but they can't guarantee that it's gonna be a *happy* one.
The Prodigy
4/5
Every Prodigy album is a pipe bomb (complimentary)
Cowboy Junkies
3/5
That "Sweet Jane" cover really brings an otherwise uneven effort into port safely.
808 State
5/5
You see an album with a song title like "Donkey Doctor" and you know it's either gonna be one of the best albums you've ever heard or the worst.
This, blessedly, is the former. Bop city.
Johnny Cash
4/5
You might think that I'd go harder on this album, given that we already had At Folsom Prison, which is inarguably a more important album, but At San Quentin is arguably a more fun album to listen to. It's clear that they improved their recording process from Folsom the year before, but the song selections here - aside from "San Quentin" getting the OG "N****s in Paris" in Paris treatment - are stronger, especially the debut(!) of "A Boy Named Sue", which kills.
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
3/5
I was prepared to write this off as just another British blues-rock album in a world where there's a seemingly endless number of them in "the canon" or whatever, but this one had a little more juice than I anticipated.
I am choosing to give the entirety of the credit to John McVie, who is here on bass in his pre-Fleetwood Mac days.
Talk Talk
2/5
so uh
Is Spirit of Eden somehow *not* on this list?
The B-52's
5/5
I can't say for certain, but I feel that there is a strong chance that this is the only album ever put out that was beloved by John Lennon, David Byrne, Madonna, *and* Kurt Cobain.
Yes, they're all generational weirdos, but they're all weird in pretty drastically different ways, and none of them are weird in the same way that the B-52's are. I think that speaks to how broad their appeal is. That an album so deeply unusual, and mostly devoid of hooks, went platinum is a testament to how big the circus tent is. In the world of the B-52'sobody's too cool, or too uncool, to dig this.
Ramblin' Jack Elliott
2/5
Sure, I guess?
Air
4/5
It is probably not fair to Air that the most iconic thing about this album is the way Girl Talk used the sample of "Sexy Boy" on Feed the Animals, and yet...
AC/DC
4/5
It doesn't matter how many times I listen to this album, I will always be surprised when I remember that Shake a Leg exists (right before I skip it)
Public Enemy
5/5
1971 had What's Going On and There's a Riot Goin' On
1990 had AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted and Fear of a Black Planet
no one has really risen to that level of dense, political outrage in the decades since, even though we continue to have to fight for every goddamn thing we deserve. it's not for lack of trying - Kendrick has certainly come close - but I think it speaks to how expansively and deeply Public Enemy was growing and evolving between Nation and Planet. There's no way those titles weren't intentional, related choices.
The Last Shadow Puppets
4/5
I was listening to a lot of Arctic Monkeys in the early days of the band, and yet I somehow missed this? What the hell was I doing?
Thelonious Monk
4/5
I like Monk, but for some reason, he's not a "go-to" jazz figure for me. This album has me thinking maybe I should change that.
Hawkwind
4/5
When I saw the length of this, I sort of rolled my eyes a bit. I was not really ready for such an extensive listening experience. I ended up splitting it into two sessions - one for each LP, basically - and I found the entire affair surprisingly enjoyable. It finds a nice groove and settles into it, but it never gets boring. The sci-fi interludes - which often sound like something from a contemporary Doctor Who season, in a good way - keeps the listener engaged, curious, and *just* a little off balance, and then the music comes in and you're off and running again. A really fun listen.
The The
3/5
When it comes to The The, I was only familiar with their first album, Soul Mining, which has "This Is the Day" and had a sort of critical reappraisal in recent years that caught my ear. I never went further into their discography than that though, so this was a welcome excursion. What's here is, perhaps as the title implies, darker and bleaker than what's on Soul Mining. It's a very cohesive album, but that bleakness gets a little long in the tooth by the end. Had there been a little levity laced in, I would probably have bumped this up to 4/5.
Soundgarden
5/5
Sometimes, an album just fuckin' rips, you know?
X-Ray Spex
5/5
Poly Styrene is on the Mount Rushmore of punk women. What an icon.
Robert Wyatt
3/5
I was unfamiliar with Wyatt's oeuvre, or his story, before listening to this. I'm not sure any of it necessarily explains anything, though.
FKA twigs
5/5
If you do a Punnett Square for pop stars and the variables are "horny/not horny" and "fucks/doesn't fuck", FKA twigs is undeniably in the "horny/fucks" square.
Everything But The Girl
2/5
This was fine. It got better as it went. I am not sure it needs to be here, but I'm not mad I had to listen to it, at least.
Arcade Fire
3/5
I was a big fan of Arcade Fire when this album came out. The only time I saw them live was on their 2010 tour in support of this album, in fact. It was a genuinely great show, though it was unseasonably chilly for the first week of August, and the show was outdoors.
All of that is preamble to say that this album is not nearly as good as I remembered it being. There's a handful of songs here that are among the band's best, for sure. The first four and final four tracks on the album are fantastic little suites. But the middle 8 is sluggish, punctuated only by the high point of "Month of May". Listening to this stretch now, I find myself wishing that someone had argued for making that middle portion leaner.
Fugees
5/5
I am willing to entertain arguments that Lauryn Hill is the best living rapper, even though she has written approximately 3 new verses in the last 25 years.
Black Sabbath
4/5
A note to all bands: 5-10 songs, less than 40 minutes. Bring your best, leave them wanting more. It always works, and it has rarely worked better than it does here.
Willie Nelson
4/5
Before listening to this, Willie Nelson was more of a caricature to me. I knew "On the Road Again" and the legend of him smoking a joint on the roof of the White House with Richard Nixon. I'd probably heard "Sad Songs and Waltzes" a few times. If I'd ever spent more than a few minutes at a time considering Willie, I can't recall, so it was nice to spend a half hour or so with the album that made him a genuine household name. I don't know that I'm likely to dig much deeper into his extensive discography - he's 93 years old, and per a cursory search, he's released 103(!) studio albums - but at least now, I can say that I get it.
Mercury Rev
3/5
I was fully prepared to drop a 2/5 on this Flaming Lips-adjacent bit of ephemera, but "The Funny Bird" was so good that it genuinely caught me off-guard, and earned this an extra star.
Sleater-Kinney
4/5
To be clear, three of these stars are for Janet Weiss, and one is for Corin and Carrie.
The Incredible String Band
2/5
This note affirms that I did, in fact, listen to this.
Nina Simone
4/5
I don't know if there is a definitive Nina Simone album, in part because of the circumstances of the industry, especially for Black artists, and for jazz artists, in the 50s and 60s, but this is probably as close as a studio album of hers gets. Everything central to her existence - her Blackness, her voice, her rage, her love, her grief - is here, and she sounds incredible throughout.
Daft Punk
3/5
You can just tell these guys were brimming with ideas, and some of them are transcendent on the level we would see on their subsequent albums. But there's a lot of stuff here that mostly feels transitory - like a people mover in the airport, guiding us from height to height. I think on balance I would probably give this a 3.5, but I've been too generous lately, and if every Daft Punk album is on here, there's gotta be some stratification, because the other three are *not* all 5s, but they *are* all better than Homework.
Ms. Dynamite
1/5
No thank you.
Talking Heads
4/5
Some absolute album sequencing wizardry from Byrne and co. here. The album immediately hooks you in with a quintessential Talking Heads pop song, "Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town" before getting progressively weirder over the next several songs before closing with maybe the four best songs on the record - "Don't Worry About the Government", "First Week, Last Week", "Psycho Killer", and finally, the impossibly perfect mania of "Pulled Up".
P.T. Barnum is often quoted as saying that the key to a great show is to "always leave 'em wanting more," and on Talking Heads: 77, when that final chord resolves, you're satisfied, but you don't just want more, you *need* more.
Eric Clapton
3/5
I must begrudgingly admit, this was pretty good, and I say this as someone who has never particularly cared for the cover of "I Shot the Sheriff"
The whole affair is a lot more buoyant and fun than you would expect from a recently-off-heroin sometime-bigot.
The Sugarcubes
3/5
The Sugarcubes were a pretty good band that are almost entirely an afterthought because of how brilliant Bjork was, almost immediately, in her solo career. Not sure there's any other group who so quickly became a footnote.
Cee Lo Green
3/5
We, as a culture, have moved on from Cee Lo Green, and he deserves that, but for a few years, he was really cooking. This album suffers from typical 2000s bloat, but virtually every song that wasn't produced by Cee Lo himself is pretty solid, and the parade of mostly Atlanta-centric guests gives it a real party vibe at times. But there's a lot of chaff here.
Crowded House
2/5
I can imagine the author of 1001 Albums realizing he had omitted Crowded House, looking at the discography, and intentionally picking the least compelling of the four albums people actually care about, just to be contrarian.
Fairport Convention
3/5
You have to imagine Ann and Nancy Wilson must fucking love this
Antony and the Johnsons
5/5
This is one of those albums that is so deeply emotional that its brilliance is almost hard to bear, like a flashlight in the pitch black of night. There aren't many of them, and I find them difficult to revisit, but they're undeniable.
Paul McCartney and Wings
5/5
Maybe people bristle at "Bluebird" (they shouldn't, it's one of McCartney's best arrangements, Beatles or otherwise) or at "Picasso's Last Words" (okay, maybe) but I think it's hard to quibble too much with an album where it's clear everyone involved is having a blast, especially when the hooks and the vocals are all immaculate.
Queen Latifah
4/5
Queen Latifah? The actress from the 2004 major motion picture Taxi?
Alexander 'Skip' Spence
3/5
You would think, given that I have dedicated my professional life to working with people at the absolute nadir of their mental health, that this album would speak to me more. Skip Spence wrote almost everything here while he was institutionalized after having some psychotic delusions about his bandmates in Moby Grape, and while that story is fascinating, the songs themselves are, as you might expect, a little hit-and-miss.
Aretha Franklin
5/5
The greatest to ever do it, at her peak.
Badly Drawn Boy
3/5
There are a couple of songs here that really save this from being an otherwise unremarkable 2.5 star affair.
Blondie
5/5
If I had the time and the patience, I would write a paean to this record. I adore it that much. I don't think it's technically perfect or anything, but that's where the beauty lies. It's this amalgamation of pop, punk, disco, and new wave, and it came at the precise moment in music history to max out on all its influences. Parallel Lines is an open door to and from each of those genres, and its success - it's honey-sweet, hooky, propulsive success - allowed countless others to cross between worlds in their footsteps.
Run-D.M.C.
4/5
Honestly, I think this album and Raising Hell are probably in a dead heat, objectively speaking. Both hugely influential, both very good albums at a time when rap was not an album genre. But where I erred on the side of caution before and rounded Raising Hell up from a 4.5 to a 5, I think, because I just don't have the same fondness for it, I have to round the self-titled down to a 4.
Still tremendous, though. Rock Box and Sucker MC's have aged like fine wine. Loud, brash, potent fine wine. So probably more of a red than a white.
Todd Rundgren
4/5
If you're a musician with any level of talent but no coherent vision, and you're gonna make a kitchen sink record, this is probably as good a mark to aim for as you can find. Just about everything Rundgren throws at the wall here works, even when it probably shouldn't. What a fascinating record, truly.
John Prine
4/5
Okay, it's possible I should have been listening to John Prine a lot sooner.
Ravi Shankar
3/5
I just think it's neat
Teenage Fanclub
2/5
This has some moments that really hit that Heroin Lite sweet spot of early 90s alt rock, but I struggled to connect to it for some reason. Not sure if that's on me or the music.
Solange
5/5
Beyonce may be a better performer, more facile with capital B, capital I Big Ideas, and maybe the most collaborative pop star of our age
But Solange... since the elevator, Solange has been the best writer and the best singer in the Knowles family, which is saying something. Just thinking about "Cranes in the Sky" makes me feel things that almost no other song in recent memory can. Hearing it? Perfection.
Underworld
3/5
If I could put a gif here, it would be the one of the blond mullet kid at the computer giving an enthusiastic thumbs up.
The Adverts
4/5
You have to admire the commitment to brevity, both in form and in career length. Get together in '76, write a dozen or so rippers, tour like mad, break up in '79 when your second album flops and your manager electrocutes himself. Too many punk bands wouldn't have heeded that omen and forged ahead, marring their legacy. Not the Adverts.
3/5
I was not expecting such a bizarre, occasionally beautiful, album from the guys who made Drums and Wires. Do they have other surprises in their discography I should look into?
George Michael
5/5
There are two arguments this album allows you to make
1) That George Michael was the greatest pop singer of all time
2) That George Michael was the most handsome man to ever walk the earth
Malcolm McLaren
3/5
I don't know if this is a good album, but it certainly is an interesting one. Even a fun one, for the most part. My brain says it's a 2, my heart says it's got some je nais c'est quois that the other things I've given a 2 simply lack. I'm gonna follow my heart here.
Pet Shop Boys
2/5
Anodyne, antiseptic, engineered and machined within an inch of its life. They undermine what I know is a deep well of humanity and understanding by putting it in the most perfectly machined box. An utter disappointment.
PJ Harvey
4/5
I think this is maybe the one PJ Harvey album in this project that is not quite worthy of a 5. But it's close enough that as I'm typing this I'm second-guessing myself. What a body of work.
Sarah Vaughan
5/5
In a beautiful bit of cosmic convergence, I happened to listen to this the night I saw Richard Linklater's superb film about Lorenz Hart, the first writing partner of Richard Rodgers.
A Rodgers & Heart tune, "Thou Swell", from A Connecticut Yankee, is arguably the centerpiece of this gorgeous live offering from Sarah Vaughan. Never on a live record has a performer seemed so comfortable, so at ease, so in command of her instrument - even when she admits she doesn't remember the words, in one of the albums most honest and remarkable moments. It's like she's been living in these songs her entire life; given that most of the songs she sings here are as old as she was at the time, maybe she had.
The Human League
4/5
I'm a sucker for albums that are sequenced well, and this one really caught me. It opens with a good but not great salvo of singles, peaking for the first time with "The Sound of the Crowd", before it settles into a middle section of less hooky but still solid album cuts. These, for some reason, include a cover of the theme to the theme to the great Michael Caine gangster movie, Get Carter, and a song that is allegedly inspired by Judge Dredd, which at that point was still a comic character. That song, "I Am the Law", flows seamlessly into "Seconds", which kicks off the final, meticulous stretch of the album. "Seconds" is great, maybe the best song on the record to that point. Then they hit you with "Love Action", a song that would be the best song on any other synthpop album (and still comes awfully close here), but isn't, because the album closes with one of the most monolithic singles of the 1980s. Talk about finishing strong.
The Hives
4/5
In 2000, the Hives perfected the punk rock equivalent of a roller coaster straining not to derail itself, and they have largely maintained that delicate balance for a quarter of a century. A miracle.
KISS
2/5
Detroit Rock City and Shout It Out Loud are undeniable. They alone keep this mess out of the basement.