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.

I don't think I'm gay enough for this album

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.

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.

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.

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.

Incredible richness of voice. Beautiful arrangements. Really fantastic.

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 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.

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

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 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.

I think this is probably Bob's second best album but it's still light years behind his best

There's a few clunkers but the hits are all absolute monsters. Not my favorite White Stripes record but undeniably great.

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.

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.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness. - Oscar Wilde

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.

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.

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.

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 Temps break bad, and find their opus as a group. Double it up with Curtis Mayfield's Curtis for a one-two punch.

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.

There's some definite jams here, and I can understand the appeal, even if it's not fully my speed.

Church music with drums or My Morning Jacket without everything that makes them interesting. Your pick.

Am I the only one who's ever wondered how much heroin Lou Reed was able to purchase for $26 in 1967?

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.

It's inoffensive, but none of us needed this.

Sometimes, an album can be influential and beautiful and also an absolute chore to listen to.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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?

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?

This is a perfect album to put on in the background of an intimate dinner party (complimentary)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A completely middle of the road T. Rex album is still better than most non-Bowie glam rock, tbh.

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.

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"

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.

A perfectly good glam rock record that doesn't have the one song by this artist you want to hear.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I don't think I'm gay enough for this album

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!

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.

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"

"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.

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.

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.

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.

I regret to report that everything on this album (except So Appalled) still slaps

I have long suspected that Devendra Banhart is not For Me, but "Insect Eyes" is a hell of a song

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.

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 only mistake on this album is putting Gimme Shelter first, where it immediately dwarfs everything that comes after.

It's a really solid album - especially the back half - but I genuinely don't get why it's such a cultural touchstone.

Parts of this really get going, but it feels weirdly inaccessible to me, despite my long-standing love of post-punk. Not sure why.

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 ⭐

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is a very charming album that I will never have occasion to listen to again, except, perhaps, if/when Willie dies.

Who knew that half of Jack Black's vocal stylings in Tenacious D were just aping Cat Stevens?

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!

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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"

The second half of this album feels like a dirty, stupid trick.

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.

This is truly an album where the title is self-descriptive.

Even Maxwell's Silver Hammer can't get me to drop this from 5 stars to 4.

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 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.

A technically sound and thoughtful album that absolutely did not resonate with me.

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

The singles here are fantastic, and the band is tight throughout, but those things don't fully sustain the entirety of the album

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

This is better than the other Love album. I don't know what else to add.

Possibly America's tightest band, ever, at the peak of their powers. What an album.

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.

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.

I am apparently not a Joni type of gal

Paul Simon should not have known what Gatorade was in 1971.

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.

It's the best 73 minute middle finger to an ex-wife that anyone has ever written.

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

What an odd little album.

I was *shocked* how underwhelming this is, outside of the few songs we all know

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.

The Most American Album by The Most American Band (note: I said Most, not Best)

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.

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.

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 are a pretty good band but it remains extremely funny that they peaked on the first song on their first album

This really filled in a blind spot in my cultural knowledge, and it was a joy to listen to.

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.

Absolutely not for me. "Run" was pretty good though.

The songs with Grace Slick leading the charge are reliably fantastic, the others are wildly inconsistent.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Do you think Lana has ever had fun?

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"

Everything in here is less impressive and longer than you remember.

I could listen to the Novoselic/Grohl rhythm section for hours on end. What a duo.

Hot take: Desolation Row might be the weakest song on this album

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.

Being at the midpoint between The Stone Roses and Oasis was a very good place to be in the 90s, as it turns out.

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.

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.

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.

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?

A beautiful, haunting album that closes with its most powerful songs. Not typically my thing, but Welch's talent is undeniable.

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.

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.

The tail end is a little sluggish/a downer but the first 10 or so songs are a hell of a collection of tunes.

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 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.

It turns out sometimes, when everyone says something is great, they're actually right

I'm beginning to think every Steely Dan album is between a 3 star and a 4 star with no outliers.

Even what Kanye and Chappelle have become in the last 19 years can't diminish how fantastic how excellent this is. A classic.

I fuckin' hate the Eagles, man, but Life in the Fast Lane alone keeps it out of the basement. That song has the goods.

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.

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

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.

Just listen to this album and focus on Andy Rourke's bass. It's an incredible way to spend 35 minutes.

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.

Is Khruangbin just Can with a Xanax problem?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.