1001 Albums Summary

I think this music would be absolutely terrific live. I will probably add this to my collection in time as I think it is a grower (I already have some Fela Kuti music).

No, sorry, I really don't like Young's vocal style. I kind of get the songs, and can situate them in the early 1970s (having been there as a kid), but I really don't like this musical style.

I dislike country music, and while I can appreciate the clarity and rhythm of the singing, I wouldn't add this to my streaming library and nor am I likely to play this again. Not to my taste.

Bonkers lyrics, choogling guitar, a sprinkling of glitter - what's not to love? The album where Tyrannosaurus Rex goes electric, becomes T. Rex and which brings a clutch of top notch pop-rock LPs, dominating the charts for a couple of years with some stellar singles.

Technically proficient and well-produced AOR music. I find this rather unengaging. Money for Nothing came at just the right moment with the advent of digital music, MTV and the like. A smash album.

A nice enough album. Has the feel of a label product.

I think this is a workmanlike concept album - it may have made more sense had the projected TV play been made. I don't see why critics seem to laud the quality of the lyrics, which seem rather so-so to me.

Not familiar withe the band, but enjoyed playing this.

I liked this album - once it got into its groove after the title track which I didn't care for. The version streamed had a bunch of bonus tracks that didn't add much. Still, a good album, though I prefer There's a Riot Goin' On.

This is another album which passed me by at the time of release, but which really matches my tastes. I love it.

I have never liked this band. I've played this album a couple of times today and I still don't! Maybe it's a generational thing as I developed my taste in the aftermath of punk and in the post-punk era.

The first of the four great Stones albums, this is really great stuff. Favourite track - Sympathy for the Devil, but really the Stones are on form throughout.

I'd never listened to QOTSA before, though I kind of knew what to expect after Josh Homme's collaborations with Iggy Pop (Post Pop Depression and the live album). I think this is a pretty strong album, particularly given this is a debut album.

This is a splendid debut album, exciting and challenging.

I think this is a horrible album. I played it several times and it just set my teeth on edge. I just dislike folk rock. Taking advantage of the new edit facility, I have upped the score to 3 as it grew on me!

This is pretty good fun, with some stand-out tracks.

This album has The Birthday Party as they lift their game substantially. I've been playing this since release and it's a favourite album.

Highly polished complex pop/rock music. Unfortunately, it's too smooth and just passes me by. Inoffensive.

There's not much left to be said for this album. A total classic, it was one of the, if not *the*, album which set out the possibilities of the recording studio. The songs are top notch. It would be churlish to rate this at anything less than 5. But... I personally find some of the more music hall styles songs rather mawkish. Maybe I've just been exposed to this album for too many decades!

Over the years, the Pixies have grown on me, and this is rather a standout album with great sound, though of course their 'loud-quiet-loud' sonf structure can grate a bit.

Here backed by The Attractions, Costello's second studio album. One of the Stiff Records roster, Costello emerged on the back of the pub rock and then punk explosion and on into the post-punk era and then onwards into major league start status, all of the back of exceptional song craft. This is a fine album, stand out tracks for me are '(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea' and 'Pump It Up', but the whole album is great.

I don't think this album has aged well. I generally like electronic music (including ambient, techno etc), but this one leaves me a bit cold. I have a couple of more recent collaborative Graham Massey albums that I very much prefer. Having played this half a dozen times, it has grown on me. But not that much. No particular stand out tracks for me.

Well, this is a decent enough album, great dance music, but I'm not sure I rate it particularly highly.

I didn't much like The Beastie Boys back in the day, and having listened to this album several times my opinion has not changed. Essentially this is three whiny ranty kids bellyaching over nicely produced beats, and enlivened by some nice samples. I found myself enjoying the samples more than the Beastie Boys. Now to go and listen to some Led Zeppelin! I'd be quite happy not to listen to this album again.

This album strikes me as distinctly average. Critics apparently praised the songwriting, but it comes across to me as rather contrived. I didn't find this a very exciting album, though it must have been good at the time to have an album focussed on 'English-ness'.

When this album came out in 1985, I thought it sounded like posh hotel lounge bar music (except for the first track ('Faron Young'). I've played it a number of times over the years (mostly because of critical acclaim), but I'm afraid my opinion has not changed after three plays this morning. Maybe I just don't get it.

I think this album was one of the early UK punk albums. It's interesting the way T.V. Smith's vocals are so clear, if a little mannered - at a time when (at least according to my memory) many of their contemporaries produced a full-n onslaught. The album is full of good songs. 'One Chord Wonders' is great, though maybe comes across as a bit self-absorbed. the real standout song is 'Gary Gilmore's Eyes', though I think that wasn't on the original album release (it's on the expanded edition available via Qobuz). A really fun listen.

Some albums are slow growers. For me, this is one of those. I bought this album shortly after release, but it was never an instant favourite. However it has grown on me over the years.

This is the last Pink Floyd album I bought and for me really marked the beginning of the end for them as a band. I bought it at release and liked it, but with passage of time I came to think it's pretty dull stuff with continued navel gazing about pressures of upbringing and success. Not something I listen to very often.

Oh gosh, this album is the antithesis of all that I like about popular music. To my ears this is just horrible. I've played the album three times and it is so bland, smooth and unengaging with uninteresting autobiographical lyrics. This is music for people who don't want to listen, but to have it as background music. I hope never to listen to this again.

I hadn't come across Elliott Smith before being presented with this album by the 1001 albums website. On first play, it came across as a pleasant enough record. On second play, it still came across as a pleasant enough record. After three plays I concluded this was a reasonable output for a 'singer/songwriter', and that I'd leave it at that. 3/5

It's an R.E.M album. It's OK. Played several times, it's a bit of a grower I think.

This is a fantastic album, every track is a winner, though standouts include 'Do The Strand' and 'In Every Home...' Sadly this was the last Roxy Music album with the great Brian Eno.

Another album by The Temptations - the second in the 36 albums so far. I've played it three or four times this morning. This is a pleasant enough record to listen to, but I'm not very clear what elevates this to the 1001 records list. Perhaps if I knew more about soul music I'd see some significance that escapes me. 3/5

I dislike country-inflected rock and pop, and I don't care for Neil Young's voice (sorry!). So this album sits well outside my usual envelope of taste. the only track on the album I knew before I played it was 'Heart of Gold', and that irritates me. I did like 'The Needle and the Damage Done". 2/5

Another album new to me! Nice to hear the garage band influences here (I can hear The Beatles in at least one song) though to my ears this doesn't quite convince. So, a good listen, but not an album I'll come back to. 3/5

Horrible.

Well, this is a pretty smooth album of songs. It's inoffensive. I think the standout track is 'Without You'. The low point is 'Coconut'. Overall, I prefer my music to be a bit edgier than this. 3/5

More bland Americana, country-inflected singer-songwriter stuff. 2/5

At last a bit more diversity, this time Femi Kuti. On my first play, the album is an enjoyable listen. But not much more than that. 2/5

I've played this three times now, and I can't say I found this particularly engaging. I think I prefer Costello's earlier material. 2/5

Oh, this is a great album - not one that's new to me. It's short, but its 11 tracks are great, mostly just Drake and his guitar. Quite a melancholy album.

This one of those albums where the UK version differs markedly from the US version - I played the UK version. This is the first album where Jagger-Richards were the writers of all the songs, and it foreshadows the four truly great Stones albums. The lyrical themes tend towards casual and vindictive sexism at times, which to modern ears isn't so great. Still, it's a good album with many strong songs. 3/5

Oh I dislike country rock. This album was torture for me to listen to, it just sets my teeth on edge. 1/5

This a really exceptional debut album. I don't think there's a duff track here, the music and vocals are great. This is an album that has been in my collection for many years, and this was an opportunity to revisit it. 5/5

I like this album, it's got a cracking swing to it. On the downside, I've got no idea what the songs are about - when I searched for lyrics, they weren't available translated. Maybe the album liner notes would clarify, but I streamed the album. But still, just playing the album made me feel great. 4/5

This album comes across as country-inflected sophisti-pop for the grown up market. Not really to my taste, and I don't understand why it's considered one of the 1001 albums. Nice voice. 2/5

Not really sure why this album is here, nor why it seems so highly regarded by the critics. Played, but it just seems to noodle on. Inoffensive. 2/5

This is like Spinal Tap. Without the humour.

This is a very average album that seems to recycle all sorts of hard rock tropes. It all sounds very derivative. I doubt I will play this again. 3/5

This is a pretty average album, somewhat self-focussed. I hadn't realised before that there was a partner album by Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band - I've played it and it's much more interesting than the John Lennon album! 3/5

This album was new to me, and I played through it three times. I am left underwhelmed by this identikit 'new wave' type album that never really distinguishes itself. The songs are all very similar, and on the whole none are particularly engaging (to me, at least). Inoffensive.

This was an album new to me: I played it four times. I really quite enjoyed the record, though I felt it overstayed its welcome at nearly an hour.

Oh god no, not another Neil Young album! This is far from my taste, sorry.

This is a terrific album that I've had in my collection since release. It's a soundtrack to an imaginary film, and was the first of Adamson's solo album, many of which have a cinematic feel. Adamson of was the bass player in Magazine and the Bad Seeds. The whole album is great, but I particularly liked "On the Wrong Side of Relaxation" with Diamanda Galas' vocals and two of the CD bonus tracks - "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "The Man With The Golden Arm". But really, the whole thing makes for an enjoyable listen.

I'm afraid that I never particularly cared for the Cocteau Twins' music, even at the time of original release. I have revisited their albums periodically over the years but I still find their music a bit over-produced and excessively dreamy for my taste. This album is no exception. After listening to it three times, I don't see any stand-out tracks (or, to be fair, any absolute dogs). Inoffensive. 3/5

Well, this is a rather dull album, perhaps Presley's first move towards the cabaret circuit following his spell in the army. I didn't care much for this album, though I've always loved 'Fever', and I can't see why it's one of the 1001 albums I should listen to! 2/5

I'm reasonably familiar with Yes, though it's a band that I really don't like. I find the tracks on this album complex (presumably technically proficient), but rather unengaging. It's not an album I particularly enjoyed - I don't really go for progressive rock on the whole. 3/5

Nice enough, but it just sort of noodles along. I imagine this could be a significant jazz album, but as I'm not a jazz aficionado that passes me by. 3/5

Considering the speed with which this album was written and recorded, it's stuffed with attitude and great tracks. It's also one of the albums which kicked off the UK punk boom. One of my favourite LPs.

I'm familiar with Maggie May, but not the album as a whole. On listening to this for the first time, I do think that Maggie May is the stand-out track. The album comes across like a gang of mates holding a roistering and boozy session down the local. It's quite far removed from Stewart's later more ballad-y output. I liked this. Maybe 3/3.

Yoicks, a barrage of shouty metal. Quite exhilarating but it doesn't make for a high quality album. 2/2

Smooth sounding classic jazz album (at least to my ears), much of this is quite familiar. I'm guessing this was pretty unusual stuff 65 years ago. I really quite like this, but I doubt it's something I'd play frequently.

This is a great album, kind of spare sounding. It's an album I didn't pick up on at the time of release, probably got it 20 years too late - but I have the expanded version, (though I don't think the extra tracks add much)! Favourite track is probably Nosferatu Man.

This seems to me to be a Chic record in all but name. I has all the high quality classic disco production skills that one would expect. But despite all that, this record leaves me completely cold. It has no significance for me at all - back in the day if I went clubbing, it wouldn't be at the kind of clubs that played this sort of 'disco music'. I'm giving this 2/5 because of the production. I see from the Wikipedia review that Sister Sledge didn't have sight of the songs before being presented with them on the day of recording, which seems astonishing to me.

I think Frank Zappa was rather over-rated. And this album exemplifies this. While it may have been able to stir the pot on release, I don't think it has lasted well in the decades since its release.

I think this is a pretty good album - it reminds me of the Last Poets brought to the 1990s and the vocals remind me a bit of Gil Scott Heron. As with many hip hop albums, there's a tendency of the tracks to sound pretty same-y, to my ears at least, and I think the subject matter of the tracks comes over a bit dated now.

Believe it or not, in March 2024, this is the first time I have (knowingly) heard Taylor Swift's music. And having played it, I suspect I'll probably never do so again! I think I'm not in the target demographic, and I found the record a bit dull and mainstream. Having said that, Swift is massively successful, so this stuff chimes with many people.

In my view this is the last great mid-period Pink Floyd album, and one that ranks up there with Dark Side of the Moon, before the more misanthropic tendencies crept in. From Animals onwards I think there was something of a downward creep. High point for me is Shine On You Crazy Diamond, but really the whole album is great. And I can still remember guying the vinyl version and loving the sleeve and packaging.

I don't like this style of singing. It was OK I guess, but none of the songs really struck a chord with me, and I thought they were all pretty similar throughout the album.

The SAHB always sound like they'd have been better live than on record. This album is OK, though I think some of the lyrics (Gang Bang is particularly vile) sound a bit poor to modern ears. The Jacques Brel cover is very good.

It's been many years since I last played this album, probably back in the day when I had a vinyl copy (long since sold). The Wikipedia page calls this one of the greatest albums ever. Well, I think it's good but not some kind of masterpiece. Many reviews I see fit this into the psychodrama of the end of The Beatles. It's a good selection of songs.

This is the first time I've (knowingly) listened to a Wilco record, and I've played this three times now. The main impression I have is an album of pretty samey songs which are pretty dull. This isn't an album that challenges the listener, it's all rather smooth pop that in my view doesn't really distinguish itself. So I'd say it'd pretty average. I don't perceive a stand-out track here, but then again nothing's particularly awful.

Well this was an energising record to play, and I enjoyed it. But I don't get why an early 1980s hardcore punk record is so extraordinary that it gets into this list. Maybe I'm missing some impact this record had...

I do like The Doors and I'd rate their debut album very highly. This album isn't as good as that, being very much more of the same, and something of a return to the style after The Soft Parade.

Well, first off, it's good to have a non English language record. I'm not good enough at French to follow this, so I used a lyrics translation site to read the lyrics as I played this record. This album has a really lush sound which, coupled with Gainsbourg's terrific semi-spoken, semi-sung vocal style is top-notch. The album tells a story where the narrator knocks a young (under-age) girl off her bike and then engages his desire for her. You might not expect such content in a modern record, but I guess it's in keeping with Gainsbourg's somewhat louche persona. Weirdly, Melody wants to see the skies of Sunderland and heads off to her doom. Sunderland? Does that have significance in French?

I never really listened to Janis Joplin much before this. This is a great album, except for "Me and Bobbie McGee", where my dislike of country music trumps my liking for Joplin's voice. I wonder what the album would have been like had Joplin lived to properly complete it. And I wonder what her career would have been like.

This album is Springsteen's jump to major league stardom, and the title track is a classic stadium track. Springsteen worked really hard at making this album as strong as it is. The title track is the most recognisable and is very anthemic, though Springsteen's music isn't generally to my taste. I love the cover.

This is an astonishingly boring record.

I think this album marks the beginning of a heavier blues rock style of music, and Cream were one of the early 'supergroups'. I don't think this style of music has stood the test of time, but I do think it was quite an influential album.

I didn't find this a particularly exciting or engaging album to listen to.

I've never been a particular fan of Prince, and I've never playing this record before. On first listen, I was quite pleasantly surprised. However, as the album proceeds, I think there are some weaker tracks there - in fact, the last track 'Adore' is really pretty awful. Overall, this might have been a stronger album has a bit stricter quality control been applied.

In the early 1980s, ABC burst onto the UK music scene with a wildly refreshing cleanly produced pop music. ABC didn't sit well with my tastes at the time (severe post-punk) with its combination of polished pop and occasionally really trite lyrics. In retrospect, the album is quite an achievement of pop production though quite where it should sit in the firmament of the greatest albums I'm not sure. It's difficult to pick out the best tracks - the whole album seems to me at the same level.

I new of William Orbit as a producer for other artists' records, but I'd not listened to any of his own albums before. On my first play, I thought this was nice enough, but not particularly outstanding.

Recorded towards the end of his storied career, this is a cracking album by Muddy Waters - rousing Chicago electric blues by the master (and produced by Johnny Winter, whose backing yelps are audible). Every track is great. Excellent stuff.

This is a classic mid-70s guitar album. Every track is excellent. And look at Verlaine's hands in Mapplethorpe's cover photo!

Well, this is a pleasant album to listen to, though it doesn't grab my attention and noodles away quite soothingly in the background. The back story to the recording (in the wikipedia article) is interesting.

Oh this is a rather dull album.

Well, I think this isn't one of Bowie's best albums, though I do like 'Fame'.

This album seems to have something of a complicated history, with several versions having been released over the years - I think I played the 1992 Rykodisk edition, minus the bonus track. I was familiar with two of the songs ("Holocaust" and "Kanga Roo" through their covers by This Mortal Coil. I like the cover of "Femme Fatale". On first listen, I thought this album OK. On second listen, I liked several tracks, but not the whole album. I listened to the album a third time, and I felt it sounded a bit patchy and unfinished.

Well this is fun to listen to, but it's not something that appeals to me for repeated plays!

The first great Bowie album, this is chock full of excellent songs - it's where he demonstrated serious songwriting talent. Big Warhol/Factory/VU influence here in some of the songs.

While I hadn't played this album before, I was familiar with the title track. After listening to the album several times, I reckon that School's Out (the track) is fantastic, but that the rest of the album doesn't quite match it.

Lovely voice, but I get the feeling I being lectured, even gently. Not really to my taste.

I haven't played this in years since I lost interest in this style of music. I'm really not keen, though I get the point of the album, and Collins' drumming is great. A pleasant enough set of songs to listen to.

This is a rather dull album of country inflected rock, with insipid lyrics.

This record displays the band's influences openly, to the point the whole record comes over as a selection of pastiches. It ends up sounding a bit bland.

I've never really liked Pet Shop Boys - I think it's the rather emotionless feel to Neil Tennant's vocals. This is probably the best PSB album I've played, but I doubt it's one I'll play often.

So far on this site I've had several R.E.M. albums, about 3% of the albums to date! Anyway, R.E.M. is one of those bands I never really cared for back then. Didn't particularly hate them either. After having R.E.M. pushed at my via this list, I think I like them a bit better, but not enough to rush out an buy a copy. It's a pretty consistent album, Sidewinder and Everybody Hurts stand out for me.

I had high hopes for this album, as I have The XX's first two albums in my library. Unfortunately I found this album pretty un-memorable - nothing stood out as good (or as bad) over three listens. I think that's more than enough. I would rank this average, and I thought the previous albums were better.

I didn't really like Scritti Politti when this album was released, and I still find the excessively smooth production, lightweight pop stylings and Green Gartside's vocals a bit too much. But maybe over the years my dislike of this album has moderated. I can see why this is considered an album one ought to listen to, though I really can't give it a strong rating.

I'm baffled as to why this album was chosen, since The Marble Index and Desertshore are far better albums. I'd agree with Nico that the flute isn't great, but I think the sparse sound (presumably due to the absence of the drums and guitars wanted by Nico) is really great. Probably my favourite track is 'It Was A Pleasure Then'.

This is a nice album of quality pop songs, but not an essential album. I guess it's best seen as a development of The Beatles as pop song writers and performers. Some of these songs are really solid efforts.

I've never really taken to U2. I don't actively dislike them, it's just that they've always seemed to be rather an anthemic stadium rock style of music, even when they were a young and upcoming band. I didn't think anything here really stood out.

One of the four key Beatles albums. I can appreciate the importance of this record, but I don't really play The Beatles much, not really my thing.

I'd played albums by Sigur Ros before, so I knew what to expect - an album of lush dreamy music, somewhat proggy in feel. Lyrics mostly in Icelandic. this one of the rare non-English language album in this selection of albums, for which I'm pleased. However I thought the tracks were all a bit same-y, except for the occasional one where the singer's tone grated somewhat.

OK, well I'd not heard of this record before! I found it dull and boring with the same kind of vocal delivery throughout this excessively long album.

When I think back glorious singles like Billie Jean and Thriller, and the albums of the time, I think Bad is just not up there. It really suffers from the production values of the time, making it all sound rather samey and bland to my ears. It was a massive seller at the time, so I guess popularity counts for something.

In my opinion this is one of the truly great albums to come out of the New York punk scene. Originally bought a UK version back in the 1970s with slightly different track listing, after reading a ridiculously dismissive review in a HiFi magazine. It's a really fine debut album, and I think every track is great, but particularly Frankie Teardrop and Ghost Rider. More recent re-releases of this album include Keep Your Dreams. All excellent stuff and pretty infuential on later synth bands.

The music's good but not to my taste. But it's not really a live album if Wikipedia's comment that only about 40% is actually live recording is true (how do they measure that?).

I'd never played a Creedence Clearwater Revival album before, and I listened the first time with some apprehension that it might be another country-tinged rock album so beloved of this list. I found it quite varied in its apparent influences. Country, yes at times, but rock'n'roll, soul, blues, R'nB and all sorts. It was a very enjoyable LP to listen to. It's quite short, less than 30 minutes in the original release version. The stand out track for me is Bad Moon Rising, largely because it's the only CCR song I was familiar with (it was on the American Werewolf in London soundtrack). But the album as a whole enjoyable. Would I play it a again? Well, maybe.

This music rather passed me by at the time (I was aware of it, but never engaged with it). This is a pretty fine album, though it's really a bit long and rather overstays its welcome!.

I thought the opening Intro quite amusing. The second track (The Lost Ones) is pretty tedious cliched rapping. The vocals on the third track, Ex-Factor are just painful to listen to as is the fourth track, To Zion. This isn't looking good for this album. And it keeps on going. And I kind of lost the desire to listen to more of this. But I did play the whole thing and I frankly cannot see why this made it into this list of albums one must hear.

The album where Johnny Rotten stepped beyond the confines of punk, Sex Pistols and his stage name, reverted to his real name and released a stonking post-punk album. Next stop the mighty Metal Box! Lydon, Wobble and Levene on top form.

I was completely unaware of Sault, and this album. When I saw the brief Wikipedia description, I wasn't expecting a strong album. However...for the most part this is a good album, though I do wonder if it's possible to consider the impact and influence of a 2020 release in 2024.

Hmm...I'm not sure how to approach reviewing this record. First off, it's the kind of mainstream music that really leaves me a bit cold, and secondly (as a consequence) I have never really listened to Billy Joel except for a few hit singles that were quite inescapable. That said, as I play through this record, it seems like pretty inoffensive stuff, and there are elements there I quite like and it's pretty skillfully put together.

After being one of the leading bands in the UK punk explosion, and after two great punk albums, this double album marked a significant change for The Clash as they moved beyond the confines of the punk format, yielding an excellent set of songs strongly influenced by other musical styles and by observation of disparate ethnic/social groups in London. The album is chock full of great tracks from the title track that opens the album onwards, through Guns of Brixton, and I don't think there's a dud track. This album was in my view the peak achievement of the band, the follow-up, Sandinista was just a bit too bloated as a triple album. The album's cover is excellent, with the perfectly framed shot of Paul Simonon smashing his bass guitar - the fuzziness adds to the energy, and the typographical homage to the first Presley LP.

My first impression of this album (which I've not listened to since its release) are of a nice smooth and well-delivered soul album. I'm not massively grabbed by this - it's a bit too easy listening for my taste. Kiwanuka's voice is great, but I wish there was a bit more passion there.

I was never a Nirvana fan - always felt they were a bit derivative and cliched to my old ears. As a consequence I never really listened to Foo Fighters. While this is essentially a solo Dave Grohl record, it comes across pretty well - I think the drums are really driving the songs forward. So after the first play, I'll be playing it a couple more times - but so far it's pretty good. May investigate other Foo Fighters albums. After a couple more plays, I prefer this to Nirvana.

This was quite a refreshing change from recent albums from this list. I was a student in Edinburgh while Orange Juice and their Scottish pop contemporaries were active. My tastes at that time veered more toward the heavier experimental side of post-punk and while I was aware of Orange Juice, the band never made it to my record collection. The opening title track is a stone cold classic which deserved its chart placing. It's followed by Zeke Manyika's A Million Pleading Faces which makes for something of a stylistic change. Over the next couple of tracks I wondered if the album had run out of steam a bit, but Breakfast Time boosted my attention. (A young man singing about wishing he was young again is quite amusing to this 60-something listener!) Louise Louise is a nice track, followed by Hokoyo - I assume the lyrics are from Manyika again. The two Manyika tracks present a nice change of style in the album. All in all, this was a pleasant listen. I may add it to my Qobuz library.

I never liked Wham!, and I never really listened to George Michael's solo work, other than the inescapable singles. On playing this album, I found it an excellently produced record - very slick soul-influenced pop music, but it really failed to grab my attention. I couldn't really see why it makes it into this list of albums that must be heard. So I get that it was popular and why it was popular, but it left me a bit disinterested.

Well, this is a lively pop-punk album. Enjoyable but not outstanding.

Bland, boring stuff. The vocals sound horrible. One of the worst albums in this list so far. I usually give these albums three plays but this one grated so much...

This is a great album - it was actually the first Sonic Youth album I bought. That may influence my opinion, but it is an album full of solid songs.

This isn't an awful record, it just doesn't grab me particularly. Maybe it's just that it's not to my taste - I had listened to Pearl Jam back in the day but I never really liked grunge. The album just sort of exists. Was it influential? Not as far as I know. But I guess that since Pearl Jam hit the big time with this debut, and continued from there, it clearly hit a chord with the public. For me there's too much guitar histrionics.

An excelllent album, maybe not essential. A bit less twitchy than their debut album, a solid record.

Now, Devendra Banhart is someone I've mean to listen to for ages. I've played the album three times now, and I like it enough to add it to my Qobuz favourites. It took a couple of plays before I could figure out who his voice reminds me of - he reminds me of Marc Bolan's vocal style. All in all, this is a pleasant album of gentle sounding guitar folk. Not sure where the much vaunted 'Psych' descriptor comes in. This is an album I added to my Qobuz favourites.

Another album by a band I didn't know anything about, much less played - it completely passed me by at the time of release. Anyway, this is a nice enough album of downtempo electronica, but not particularly exciting.

This is a fine debut album, like a modern garage band with occasional hints of The Velvet Underground. I'd say that on the downside, that the songs all seem fairly similar, with none that stand out to me. But that said, I played this three times and really enjoyed it.

This is an album of folky singer-songwriter material. It's OK, but really pretty far from my taste. I don't really see that it's an exceptional or great album.

The album didn't get of to a good start for me, sounding a bit like a hotel lobby soft muzak. But it's good to have a non-Anglic record. The downside is that I don't really know what the songs are about.

Released a year or so into Margaret Thatcher's lengthy stint as prime minister, this is a cracking debut album of left wing reggae songs. I wish there was more like this in the charts at the moment as a similarly right wing government folds messily. It's been a long time since I last played this record but it really takes me back. The songs are all strong both musically and lyrically.

I'm pretty familiar with big single from this album, Sledgehammer, but not the album as a whole - it's not something I'd have made an effort to listen to at the time. And I think the mid-80s production values don't serve this album well, at least from a 2020s perspective - it's a bit too polished for my taste. That said, I like Sledgehammer and Don't Give Up. Not an essential album in my view.

Oh god, not another Aerosmith album. Despite the band's energetic enthusiasm, I found this a dull album that doesn't interest me.

Hmm...I'm not quite sure how to rate this album. It has four lengthy jazz-funk instrumentals, each of which sort of noodles away without really being particularly engaging.

I have this album in both the Valentin and closet mixes. In many ways, The Velvet Underground lost the more experimental influence from John Cale when he left the band after the second album (White Light/White Heat), and Lou Reed's songwriting came through more clearly. While I do prefer the first two LPs, this remains a stone cold classic with a clearly influential legacy. Most of the songs here are terrific, particularly Pale Blue Eyes and Candy Says.

Well for me, this is the acceptable end of the progressive rock spectrum and I have something of a soft spot for this album from my student days (when it was only 7 or 8 years after release. The cover is a classic - look at the panic in the eyes!. Anyway, I can give this a strong score not just because I kind of like it but because it was a pretty influential album.

I never really paid much attention to Happy Mondays at the time this album was released and nor was I much into rave culture. That said, I rather like this album despite being about 34 years late to the party.

The Teardrop Explodes is one of those bands which I liked but which never made it into my record collection at the time (youthful financial limitations). Somewhere along the line I acquired a copy of this LP on vinyl. It's a record I do like especially the overall feeling and Cope's vocals. There are some storming tracks here, especially Treason and Reward. As an aside, Julian Cope's enthusiasm for German and Japanese alt rock of the 1970s has opened the way to fresh music pastures for me over the years.

This is a fine album of blues and metal infected garage style music, though in my view possibly edged by its predecessor, De Stihl. It's one of a run of great albums by Jack and Meg White. The sleeve is rather menacing!

I'd not really listened to Kings Of Leon before this. After playing it three times, I think it's OK, not particularly exciting, not particularly bad. The album kicks off quite well with Red Morning Light, and the momentum is maintained through the second track. On the whole, this is an enjoyable album but not particularly outstanding.

Not an album I'd heard before, and it had many good songs. An enjoyable listen but maybe not excellent.

Ugh!

The second of a brace of albums recorded with David Bowie, and a real classic. The whole album is great with a slightly rougher feel than its predecessor (The Idiot), standout tracks are the title track, and of course The Passenger. This album set Iggy Pop's career back on track after his post-Stooges hiatus.

Well, this album came out just as I was starting to take an interest in records. I was aware of Tom Petty, but never really listened to this or any other record by him as we were then in the rise of the UK punk scene and then into post-punk. I guess I'd characterise this as rather old-style rock music. I don't think there's anything outstanding here, but then again, nothing here is particularly annoying. Of all the tracks, I was most familiar with Breakdown, owing to Grace Jones' version, powered by the mighty Sly and Robbie.

Gosh I really disliked this album, partly because I dislike rapping/hiphop and partly because I found the content spectacularly irritating.

This is a pretty good album of electronic house music. I guess it's typical for this style that the album is long and the tracks are pretty similar...but I suppose that in the correct club environment this would be a cracking sound!

I'd not played this before despite having quite a few Tom Waits albums in my collection. The album has a rather nice ambience with the invited crowd in the studio. Waits' voice is characteristically cracked sounding. The odd thing is that because his vocal style verges on speaking, the intro sections between songs and the songs themselves seem to merge together. On the whole I like this album and I've added it to my Qobuz favourites. Not up there with Rain Dogs and later albums, maybe, but it could be a grower.

Gorillaz is conceptually amusing, but ultimately doesn't really deliver beyond pastiche. Which I guess is appropriate. It's a nice enough album.

Hip hop just isn't an interesting musical style for me. At least this isn't full of swearing like some others I can mention, so this album is a bit better than some hip hop that this list has passed my way.

This is a nice enough album, but where it sits among the great albums I'm not sure, given it was released nearly 60 years ago. There appear to be two versions of this album that were released - I listened to some expanded version at over an hour.

Dull, dull, dull.

I've had this album in my collection for some time now, and I think I've got mixed views on it. I love its minimalist pop, but it's sparse sound is something I don't cry out to listen to terribly often. Perhaps it's a bit of its time and place. I don't think the xx ever had a long term future - the second album seemed more of the same and I'd lost interest by the third album.

I'm not a massive fan of The Who, and this is the only Who LP in my collection. It think it's a good album, but the strongest tracks bookend some weaker ones. I'm struck by Daltrey's vocals - absolutely powerful. Also the drumming comes through well on some of the tracks. I don't think I can give this a 5 - maybe 4. I particularly liked Baba O'Reilly and Won't Get Fooled Again.

This album is very long at 1h45m (double album plus an EP). It has a number of damned fine songs, but it is far too long and some of the songs don't really hold my attention. I found the lyrics rather banal. On the other hand, this is his 18th album and he was only 26. He must have been writing and recording songs at one hell of a pace!

I never listened to this album on release, and having played it, didn't find it an engaging album.I suspect many rated this highly owing to the sad circumstances of its release.

I was something of a latecomer to the Pixies party - while they made it big in the UK's indie/alternative scene, it wasn't until they were in one of their comebacks that I finally caught up with them. Indeed, I bought Surfer Rosa as a triple vinyl LP set only a few years ago, packaged with Come On Pilgrim and a live album. It's a cracking debut, with strange, oblique lyrics and excellently produced by the late great Steve Albini. Later, the loud-quiet-loud style of Pixies' music became something of a cliche, but here it's refreshing and exciting.

Oh a stone cold classic! This is a fabulous riposte to the excesses of early 1970s rock music that ushered in punk rock. 14 songs in 29 minutes!

This is pretty dull stuff. I kind of like the music, but the vocals come across like a gang of loads of people contributing random violent braggadocio. Oh, and I was streaming an expanded edition.

Well, I wasn't familiar with this album at all, though maybe aware of the single Sexy Boy. This is nice enough but a little bland - I prefer things a bit more abrasive.

A great album and one of three where Talking Heads worked well with Brian Eno producing.

Where does being influenced by prior musical style swing into pastiche? For this album, I fear it's pastiche, competently executed and arranged but for me a little hollow.

I'd not listened to more than an occasional track by Jefferson Airplane, so I was keen to give this album a (virtual) spin. Clearly a very influential album and a significant one for the period.

Jazz isn't my thing really. The album was OK, but I'm not clear what makes this considered a great album.

This is a great album and massive fun to listen to. I regret never having seen The Cramps live! Standout tracks are TV Set, Garbageman and Fever, but the album as a whole is just a great listen throughout and a nice mix of covers and originals.

Fleetwood Mac had a long and crazy history from the excellent blues band with Peter Green to the later AOR band that produced the massive Rumours (and losing several guitarists along the way). It's hard to disagree that Rumours was a massively important and well-crafted album. But Tusk must have been designed to follow Rumours with something a bit different. For this, I think the band deserves credit. But I think the end result is a double album of AOR pop/rock that is surprisingly bland. I didn't find much of this album notable.

This is one of the truly great post-punk albums. The songwriting is excellent and the production by Martin Hannett exceptional (though the band weren't so keen). I love every track on this album.

I suppose this is one of the great singer-songwriter albums of the early 1970s. But it's really not my favoured genre, and I found it a bit dull other than the title track.

Well this is the archetypal metal album, and pretty good at that. Massive heavy riffs complemented by surprisingly socially conscious lyrics (even if rather naive/banal at times) and a sense of humour at times. All this belies the vague satanist aura that the media surrounded the band with. Top track would be Paranoid, but really they all have their appeal, even Planet Caravan, which I used to find rather dull. Maybe I am mellowing with age. An important album that set the stage for the emergence of heavy metal. On the other hand, the rise of many imitators may not have been a great thing!

It's not clear to me why this is considered a 'great album'. To me, this is pretty bland.

As others have noted, the two sides differ quite a bit in general tone. This album, along with other Neu! albums and with other German bands of the period have had a big influence on later bands, particularly in the general post-punk genre and beyond. Neu! 75 is a really absorbing album.

This was The Jam's third album and their first truly great one. There's not a duff track here, and all originals bar one. I think my favourite track is 'Down in the Tube Station at Midnight'.

Well, I'd not really listened to the Red Hot Chili Peppers before, and I found this album really quite dull. Maybe back in 1999 I'd have had a different view. It's quite a tight album with solid songs but somehow doesn't engage me.

This album is one of my favourites, and I think it probably shows haw Hendrix saw his music evolving. Alternately bluesy, jazzy and heavy, it has a real mix of styles. The top tracks for me would be Voodoo Chile (slight return) and All Along The Watchtower, but really I love every track.

Well, it's not offensive but it doesn't enthuse me. Just not to my taste.

I remember this as being immensely popular but also rather controversial because of Simon's relationship with the South African musicians. That aside, it's a lovely sounding album, if not to my taste. The thing is that the mid-80s production is so perfect and so smooth that the songs just pass by.

This is an album I was fully expecting to like. But playing it was so unrewarding - I spent the time trying to place all the influences. I disliked the vocals and I found the album strangely unengaging and repetitive.

This is a great 1968 psychedelic album, and a bit of a game of two halves. The second side is a bit weird, and I'm in the camp that thinks Stanley Unwin's narration benefits the record.

This album has an fantastic sense of fun about it - I can fully believe Sylvain Sylvain's view that producer Rundgren captured their live feel. Despite being labelled 'Mock Rock' by a UK TV presenter back in the day, this is a fine debut album that had a great influence on subsequent punk acts, especially those of New York. From the opening track onwards there's a huge energy rush in this album, in large part due to David Johansen's enthusiastic singing. Luv the album.

I have never listened to Herd or Humble Pie, but I find the immense popularity (particularly in the USA) of this album rather astonishing. The music is pretty bland and just kind of washes past me. Maybe this is a personal taste thing? But frankly it brings into question what actually gets an album into the list. An album may be a consummate example of musicianship but nevertheless doesn't actually chime with the listener. Are huge sales figures and popularity enough to get on the list? I'm usually looking for a challenging or influential album, something that prompts others to shift boundaries. So, anyway, Frampton Comes Alive! just leaves me a bit cold.

Accomplished musicians, but for me not an exciting album. I understand this was seen as quite influential in the years following its release, but it's not an album I'm likely to play in the future as it's not a genre I care for.

This album is something of a development from The Specials' first album, and that itself is something to be praised. Retaining the overall ska sound of Two Tone, you can discern a variety of styles in the mix. The Wikipedia article refers to the adoption of 'muzak' styles as picked up in their tour of the USA. Dammers is said to have seen this as a slightly off-kilter and subversive approach as the band continued with their social commentary in the lyrics. Whether this approach is completely successful is open to question, but I certainly enjoyed playing this album. Unfortunately, Dammers' approach seems to have generated disquiet in the band.

Well, a fun album - but is it a great album? I don't think so.

Oh, I don't like the cover, but let's get on and give this a play. Well, I found this rather a dull album. Much preferred the earlier album Maggot Brain

This is one of those albums that polarise opinion. And I'm one of those who do love this album. It's wildly over the top - Billy Mackenzie's soaring vocals and the extreme 1980s production values see to that. I absolutely love it.

An album of sad songs! Supposedly the first concept album, plus I can see why Tom Waits cites it as an influence. But the problem I have with it is in the lack of variety - with the music mixed down to the background, Sinatra's (excellent) vocals are really to the fore making the whole album sound pretty much the same. And in the modern era where great albums are generally full of songs written by the artist(s), an album such as this seems somewhat out of place. It's not an album for me I'm afraid.

I was quite keen to play this, not being familiar with tango, let alone new tango, but really it left me cold. The vibraphone makes it all sound a bit like elevator music. The Montreux audience seemed to love it though.

This may have been influential on thrash metal bands, but I wish it hadn't been. Not a genre I care for, and I didn't like this album. I'll give it a point for the sleeve design and a point for influence.

No sorry, this is manufactured pap music that exploited a vulnerable young woman (and continued to do so for many years), and which was marketed on the back of dubious sexuality. If I could rate this zero I would.

Well, I guess that Carole King is a top notch songwriter, and this album set the template for similar singer-songwriters but really not my cup of tea.

It's been a long time since I heard this album. And it's really good to have a non-English language album on this list! Of course the challenge then is to grasp what the songs are about. Nevertheless, for me this was a pleasant album to listen to, and it made me want to kill time in a Cuban bar with a daiquiri.

Not being familiar with this band, I was quite looking forward to this album. Indeed, I rather liked the opening track, but as the album proceeded I was less and less enthused. I dislike country music and any such influences, and this was rolling in them. And it went on rather too long, being a double album. Rather average, I thought, but I guess that reflects my taste.

I'd never heard this before, and I love it. It's now in my collection.

I think setting this album in its mid-1970s context is quite difficult. But the opener (Shining Star) is a cracker. I felt the following tracks were a bit too mellow to hold my attention. Some massive flares on the sleeve photo!

I'm really not a fan of country music, at least in general terms as I kind of like Johnny Cash (particularly his late recordings). I've approached this album with some enthusiasm, and played it three times. I know that some live albums have been heavily edited and rerecorded, and I don't know to what extent this album may have been finessed, but it does come across as one of the finest live albums I've ever listened to. Possibly the finest. Cash is really in his element as he interacts with the audience and the prison warders. The songs are damned fine too.

Mixed feelings about this album, which doesn't seem to hold together too well. The opener, Devil's Haircut, has a riff that I swear is straight from The Seeds. And I liked it. Other tracks seem to be informed more by hip hop standard rapping rhythm, which I find a bit limiting. It's a nice enough album, with a few highlights, but I think it's not a great album.

I love electronic music. But I prefer music that's challenging, and I'm afraid that an album of electro-tinged dance music misses the target here. I do think, however, that it's a question of how this is played. I reckon (were I to be back in my clubbing days), that I'd love individual tracks in the club situation. But not really as a rather lengthy album.

Only one album in Holly's short life. It short but full of classic songs. Wonderful.

From a 2024 perspective, this album has some strengths but quite a few weaknesses. (And from a review perspective, its existence in several variants doesn't help!) I think KLF were key players in the acid house club scene, so naturally there are going to be some good tracks here, but quite a few duds, for example where the samples are better than the complete track. Good but not great.

This appears to be one of those albums by one of those bands that featured in the great late-60s diversification into different musical styles (and into super-groups). I can't really fault this record, though it doesn't really grab me in the way that popular music really should. I'm glad I listened to it though.

This must be one of the most grim, bleak and unrelenting albums in rock history, and probably all the better for it. Released the year after the seminal Transformer, it's a concept album. I like it a lot.

This is the album where The Cure moved forward into atmospheric post-punk, almost gothic territory - stimulated by Robert Smith spending time with the Banshees. It's almost sound painting. The single A Forest is excellent, as is Play For Today. An enjoyable album, and quite influential on other bands around this time.

I like Nicka Cave and the Bad Seeds a lot, and have most of not all of their albums. However, I'm not clear why this among that huge body of work was chosen for this list. It's not a bad album, but it's not up there with Cave's best work. I suspect it's to do with sales, with the album boosted by Where The Wild Roses Grow featuring Kylie Minogue getting into the charts. The album's a mixture of traditional and cover songs with originals by Cave, and it has a rather stellar collection of collaborators.

I can remember this album's spectacular popularity when it was released. I was, and I still am, perplexed by why it was so popular. I'm listening to it many years later, and it still seems to be a mediocre record.

This is a cracking album, especially given the circumstances it was recorded under. I would claim to be a Leonard Cohen aficionado but I did like this one.

This is a pop album that fits well to the early 80s pop world. Catchy tunes, great percussion. Despite the songcraft, a lot of this album comes across as a bit twee, not helped by the band's image. Chief songwriter Nick Heywood left after the release of this album and soon after the band folded (bar some later reformations). So, I found this album better than I expected, but I don't see it as a great or influential record.

I found this an interesting album, with its focus on using the human voice for most of the music. I think this is an album that would repay more listening than I could offer it over a 24h period! I'm not wildly keen on Bjork, but I can see her obvious qualities as a rather experimental artis shine through here.

Oh dear. more hip hop. The album is a bit too long.

I never liked Duran Duran at the time, and while the passage of time has made these songs better in my memory I'm still not fond of them. For me this is a rather dull album.

This is one of those albums that make me wonder at its inclusion on this list. An extra point for the limp attempt to illustrate the title on the cover.

I like Spiritualized - have had this album since release. This album has a strange mix of gospel and psych with a good dose of space in there.

Awful music, awful sleeve.

Really dull noodly jazz funk wannabbees. Really overstays its welcome.

After the 'instructional' first track, this album was rather pleasant to listen to, though perhaps not something I'd play very frequently. Good extend the range of albums in this list.

Oh my. Getting it on...loving to ball...plus a load of sadness in there.

So Ray Charles' first album was released in 1957, and this was his 7th....released in 1959. That's some work rate. I'd had minimal exposure to Ray Charles, and I was expecting great things from this album. But I really didn't care for the big band arrangements and the old classic songs. I really didn't see this as a particularly great album.

I bought this album back in the pre-internet days when finding this kind of music was a bit of a challenge. Ordered it via a record store in Edinburgh. This album started my love of Einstuerzende Neubauten's music, and I've followed their albums since then. This album is a massive rush of heavy percussive music made with heavy duty metallic objects, some are 'found' objects, some constructed. The album sleeve has a photo with the band and their kit laid out - reminiscent of the back sleeve photo of Pink Floyd on their Ummagumma album. I'm not sure this would be the best pick of Einstuerzende Neubauten's catalogues - later albums become increasingly contemplative, but by golly it's an album this list needed to have. I notice that recent CD versions of this album include the cassette-only release Stahldubversions. In style this would be classed as 'industrial punk' I guess, and Einstuerzende Neubauten was one of a number of bands of this style. They did have an influence on subsequent bands, particularly as Fairlight samplers enabled the incorporation of 'found sound' into pop music. I'm thinking of Depeche Mode's 'Construction Time Again' for example.

I wasn't a massive shoegaze fan back in the day, so I'm pleased to listen to this album, which displays a bit of diversity in style. As so many albums of that time, this one kind of overstays its welcome at well over an hour. But still, a solid piece of work.

Brat-rap.

This seems to me to be a reasonable album mostly stocked with cover versions. The Stones-penned songs are a bit derivative. At the time of release, this might have been seen as an exciting album, particularly with their live performances, but really it's not a patch on their late-60s output.

The original album was pretty short at 29 minutes - something of a blessing since this is pretty dull. At least the country/folk aspects aren't too strong for this record.

Not keen on the sampled lyrics of the opener "Smack My Bitch Up", but other than this it's a great album. Favourite track is "Firestarter".

Overly busy production and average songs. The singing really grates. Maybe this is a taste thing, but it's not a great album.

Turns out this album is considered to be untitled, and it seems to be only available as the first 10 tracks of the compilation "In A Doghouse". This is a great post-punk/alt-pop album in a similar vein to the Pixies and The Breeders.

If any album convinces me that overblown production, an excessive swelling string section and over the top vocals don't convey much in the way of emotion, it's this album. It comes across like a pastiche of the kind of performance characteristic of 1960s/1970s light entertainment TV shows. I'm not familiar with The Divine Comedy - maybe this is a deliberate pastiche?

Not to my taste, this album really overstayed its welcome. I thiught the songs dull.

Paul Weller's musical career really hasn't been stuck in a rut - from The Jam's rise as a mod band on the back of the punk explosion through The Style Council's mannered pop to his long solo career. On first listen, I wasn't particularly engaged by this album, which seemed to veer between soul-inflected songs to more AOR type material. By my second listen I rather liked some of it a bit more. After three plays I think this may be a grower. But I'll still give this an average score I think. Inoffensive and a bit 'grown-up'. The album is over 30 years old (how time flies)!

The whole Britpop malarkey mostly passed me by, but I did buy this album on release. The standout tracks are really the various singles - particularly Bittersweet Symphony and The Drugs Don't Work. I think that the album is overlong with some of the tracks dragging a little. But that being said, this is a sterling album.

The advent of the CD induced many artists to produce albums of excessive length: this is one such. While it starts with a refreshing sonic blast, the sad truth is that this album is over-long and lacking in variety. It's the kind of shock-rock-pop that teenagers play to antagonise their parents. Shallow and boring.

I'd heard of Arcade Fire, but never listened to an album of theirs before Well, this is a *nice* album. It's not outstanding in my view, rather inoffensive, and well put together. Average.

This seems like a nice solid reggae album, pleasant to listen to but not to my general taste. I didn't care for the title track, but the rest was fine.

Well, I love Ray Charles' voice, but I find the arrangements with all the strings and backing vocals rather too much and a bit same-y. Ultra-smooth.

Generally not a metal fan, but the energy here along with the rap style vocals and political statements make this a massively energetic and exhilarating album.

Ah yes...mid-1990s, the album nearly fills a CD. It's a bit long. But that said, this is quite a varied collection of songs, varying from pretty techno-focussed stuff to softer, more introspective tracks. I prefer the more techo tracks, but in general I liked the album. May add to my collection.

There's too much hip hop/rap in this list. This more of the same.

Aside from the casual misogyny, this is a cracking album of pub rockers turned punks at the start of the UK punk scene. For me, the combination of the rumbling bass, overlying keyboards and the growling vocals contribute to an overall tight band.

This sort of album is one of the reasons I'm working through this list of albums. I'm far from being a jazz aficionado so I can't form a particularly informed opinion of this record. Essentially, I found this a rather pleasant record to listen to. I can't say it's brilliant, can't say it's rubbish. The wikipedia page refers to composition, but to my ears it sounds like a bunch of skilled musicians noodling around together (with pretty good results). If I was feeling uncharitable I might suggest it sounds like lounge bar music at times. But given I found it a nice record, 4/5.

This isn't the sort of music I like. It's a bit over-produced, and while the sentiment behind the songs, I think it's a bit average.

Three tracks in and this is one of the most boring albums I have played in a very long time. Turgid, plodding and dull. I played this album three times and if I never hear Lambchop again I will be delighted.

I am far from being a massive Bob Dylan fan, but I absolutely love his run of mid-60s albums: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blond On Blonde, which I think really shook up rock music. Highway 61 Revisited is an all time classic album, great music exceptional lyrics and very influential.

Turns out I knew several of the songs before I played this album. The best thing about this is the band's name. The worst thing is the horrible sleeve art. The music itself sits somewhere in between. Early 1970s AOR soft rock, with jazz and latin poking through. For me, this is an example where high skill level in songwriting, musicianship and production don't result in a great album.

I like Leonard Cohen's albums more that when I was young. I rate this quite highly, and I think it will repay closer, more careful listening.

I've played this album a number of times over the last few years, and I reckon that as a body of work it's overlong and a bit rambling. I get many of the references in politics (but being non-US may miss some). I could hear similarities to other bands in there, notably the Gang of Four. On the whole I reckon this is only an average album.

First of all, clocking in at over 2h, this is really too long. I'm getting an album to listen to every 24h - this album is over a twelfth of that period! On my first play, I quite like this album. Whether it gets more plays depends on what I'm doing today! As far as I can tell, as a body of work it's pretty mediocre. Might have been better with a bit more quality control.

Well, it's OK. I find his voice grating at times, but it's an OK singer-songwriter album and not offensive. The real high point for me though is his cover of Say Hello Wave Goodbye, which is one of my favourite ever songs - and I think he does it justice. This album was massively popular. I'm nit sure why, but it is a solid piece of work.

I think the Yardbirds was one of those mid-60s bands who's impact was greater than their music. Certainly they seem to be emerging from the blues-based music into a slightly psych-tinged style here. Not bad, but very variable in track listing (UK vs US versions).

I get the sense these guys would play well together particularly live. Greta musicianship, but the whole album seems rather complacent about their status as a 'counterculture band'.

This album sees Dylan moving to stronger songs beyond the basic fold songs of his first album. Some of the songs on this album are stunningly good, though some are not quite so strong. I'm not a huge Dylan fan, but I see this album as on a trajectory toward his first truly great period - from bring It All Back Home through Highway 61 to Blonde on Blonde.

I confess to never having heard of Shack before, much less this album. Well I have played this album a couple of times. It seems to be well-written, maybe a bit overproduced, but ultimately quite dull to my ears.

While I'm not a massive fan of shoegaze, it is a genre I kind of like. I bought this album on release (I think partly because it was on Creation!). It's a significant album in the sense it one of the main shoegazy type albums and influential in that genre. I bet these guys were great live.

I found this a rather dull album. One or two standout tracks though - Don't You Worry... being one of them.

A dull plodding album with little that stands out.

A cracking album and a good example of the talented work of the time, with socially conscious lyrics.

This is a very highly regarded live album, often touted as one of the greatest live albums and a recording of a band at the peak of their power. My streaming service doesn't have the original 6-track version, but a longer 14 track version. All in all I think this album falls very much short of its reputation as a great (the greatest?) live album. And in that respect I doubt it really ought to be on this list of 1001 albums - I reckon that some of The Who's studio albums are way better than this.

Eurythmics were a key part of the mid 1980s UK synth-pop scene. I really loved their chart singles, and have one of their albums (Touch). That said, and despite their importance to that genre, I think this album doesn't really match the quality of the singles - these are the best tracks on this album. The title track in particular is particularly strong.

This is a rollicking good album, great cover, cracking tunes and some pointed and some maudlin lyrics. I bet they were a fantastic live band.

More hip hop? Sigh...well let's give this a listen...well, it's pretty dull samey stuff throughout. Not my thing at all.

Hang on just a minute, this is the second Pogues album in three days! Surely it's going to be more of the same sort of stuff as Rum, Sodomy and the Lash? Do the Pogues really merit two albums in this list? Well, lets give this a play... I think the production is a bit smoother than on Rum, Sodomy and the Lash. The songs seem strong, and I particularly like Fairytale of New York. The cover's rather good, better than the US version. On the whole I think I prefer this to Rum.

There are two genres of popular music that I really don't care for, probably because of cultural background. The first of this is hip hop, and the second is country and western music. My heart sank a little when this album came up, particularly since I aim to listen to each album two or three times. Perhaps mercifully, this one is only 33 minutes long. Aside from the tooth-grating C&W flourishes such as yodels and pedal steel, the album is at its best when Joe Ely is rocking out. Unfortunately those moments are all too fleeting. I can't really rate this particularly highly, though I note from Wikipedia that Ely was quite broadminded when it comes to crossing genre boundaries. I think this and subsequent albums may have been more influential than I know - for example on The Clash's growing interest in Americana.

I have something of a love/hate relationship with Radiohead albums; I don't care too much for OK Computer, while I prefer Kid A and Amnesia. I find Thom Yorke's vocals a bit difficult at times, and I think that's the source of by reserved opinion of the band's work. I was interested to listen to this album, coming as it did after Kid A and Amnesia, and located as a rather political commentary. And I do rather like this one.

Another hip-hop record. Is there no end to these on this list? Nasty words, OK rhythms and the usual boring vocal delivery.

OK, I was only dimly aware of fIREHOSE before this. Since this is a pleasingly short album, I've played this several times now. I'd characterise this as sitting on the folkier/garage end of the SST roster. It's OK, but for me it doesn't set the world on fire.

Well...I'd never heard of The Zutons before, let alone played one of their albums. Was it going to be some sparkly SciFi inspired music (given the band name). I've played this twice now. And I have to say it was pretty disappointing. As the album started, I was thinking it all sounded a bit like a spirited attempt to replicate The White Stripes, but then it descended into a bunch of derivative dull tracks. I can't for the life of me understand why this album (largely composed of pub rock knees up type songs) could be considered a great album.

Pretty goos]d for a debut, but probably not the best Spiritualized album.

Well, this debut album is strikingly well played. But I don't find it particularly engaging to listen to. It's rather too easy listening and smooth for my taste. Plus I don't like country rock. When I started buying albums, and before I formulated my own tastes, I had at least one Eagles album (Hotel California), but really it was nothing I could relate to in the mid to late 1970s. And I moved on from smooth easy listening country rock.

I played this once. I was rather pleased it is a short album. Best track - Mrs Robinson. Otherwise very dull.

I thought this pretty dull, not something I'd listen to in the future. Teddy Bear more than Grizzly Bear.

This album is far too long to give it a reasonable number of plays. But I felt that the record would repay further lsitening, seems to be a diverse set of songs.

This is the kind of record that if you don't care for the lead vocalist, you're really not going to like it - the vocals are mixed really up front. I don't care for the singer at all. The whole thing smacks of easy listening that you might hear in an old film, or maybe the Swingle Singers. The only redeeming feature is that that they (rather bizarrely) cover the Sab's Iron Man in the same style. Sorry but this is not for me at all, and I played it through twice.

Ugh, I don't like country music. Interesting that this was her 19th album, and the first to have a majority of the songs self-composed.

This is a great, if somewhat conventional record, coming after the more Cale's more experimental work before and after Cale's stint in The Velvet Underground, and while he was shaping the future of rock music as a producer. Not my favourite Cale album, but full of fine songs.

Another rap album, a genre I don't really care for. But I listened to it three times and I kind of like some aspects of it. Rap delivery always seems quite samey to me, and I guess the critical thing here is whether one can go with the lyrics and gain from them. To some extent, that's going to be (at least in part) dependent on the cultural references. One thing I'm really not able to form an opinion about is the extent to which this album was influential on other artists.

Well there is of course the backstory to this, a re recording of one of the famous lost albums of the 60s. Originally intended to the the follow-up to Pet Sounds, everything went awry as Brian Wilson hit the rocks with mental health issues that took him out of action for decades. This album definitely sounds like Brian Wilson's Beach Boys of yesteryear - possibly due to similar collaborators, and garnered quite a bit of press adulation. I'm not really persuaded it's *that* good. After three listens, it was really coming across as a bit of a pastiche of Pet Sounds era Beach Boys.

Scott Walker has a lovely voice. His career trajectory was pretty weird, from the Walker Brothers through a series of increasingly respected solo albums to some pretty experimental work. I love Bish-Bosch and Soused, his collaboration with Sunn O))). This album has pretty lush orchestration, and is said to have been influential on other artists. Personally, I'm in a bit of a quandary as to how I should rate this. At times it's a bit too smooth for my taste, but Walker's voice just comes through it all.

This kind of music really isn't my thing. Having said that, I was surprised by how many of the songs on this album I knew. I'm not sure why anyone would regard this album as a 'masterpiece' (c.f. the Wikipedia entry). It's pleasant enough, but some of the songs are just a bit too twee. And then there was the rumpus about song authorship.

Well, another folk album on this list. I didn't care for the cod mediaeval twiddling or the vocals, and I couldn't help but wonder if Buckley's early demise contributes to its critical standing.

This is an excellent and highly influential album. Kraftwerk were an important band in moving from synthesisers as a means of emulating conventional musical instruments to using them as instruments in their own right. They influenced many post-punk bands, and even house music bands.

This is a great atmospheric album, especially as a debut album albeit after a time working as a session musician. Creates the Sr. John persona, all swampy, bluesy and psych.

I played this album twice. And then discovered that I'd actually listened to a thing called "Endtroducing Re-Emagined" It's very dull and not at all engaging. Then I found the 'real' "Endtroducing...." and it's a whole lot better. Not brilliant, but rather pleasant to listen to!

This isn't a very thrilling record. It's all very nice, but plodding and unmemorable. Doesn't grab my attention. At all.

This is an interesting amalgam of rock and soul. But does it escape the influences?

This is the only Deep Purple album I am familiar with. And after playing it through twice, I don't think it has stood the test of time (53 years since release). I think the individuals in the group are accomplished, but collectively, they make music that seems to me to be plodding and banal, particularly the lyrics. I suspect this album was influential on other bands through the early 1970s, but really in the mid-2020s it's not a very exciting listen (and not at all challenging).

To these ears, this album and its follow-up 'For Your Pleasure' are the greatest Roxy Music albums - before Eno got the heave-ho. Both albums are fabulous additions to the art-rock/glam genre, and were some of the strong influences on some of those post-punk bands that followed the great UK punk explosion of 76-77. The album is full of great tunes and (at times oblique) lyrics. I listened to the US release which includes the great single 'Virginia Plain'. What a stomper! This album is a clear 5/5.

An excellent album, but not my favourite Echo and the Bunnymen record (which would be Ocean Rain). But it still has some great songs - notably the opening slavo of The Cutter and Back Of Love.

This is 63 minutes of excruciating pap.

I can see this as a painstaking trawl through collected sound bites from a huge record collection, and assembled using a computer. But at the end of the day, it all sounds like a mish mash produced by a scratching DJ. As an album, the tracks all sound pretty samey, it's technically pretty accomplished but rather lacking in musicality and emotion. Probably fairly influential in club scenes at the time. I've played it twice now. Will I play it again? Most probably not.

This is a very smoothly produced rock/pop album from Peter Gabriel and a stellar cast of musician side-kicks. It's not my kind of thing - in 1980 I was listening to a range of post-punk and alternative music albums. The album is really smoothly and well produced. Too much so for my tastes. Top tracks for me are Games Without Frontiers and Biko.

The singles on this album are fabulously crafted pop (though I've always disliked Fernando). The rest is really filler, so this is far from a great album. 3/5 for the singles.

It's been a long time since I last played this album, and i don't think time has served it well. It's great musicianship, but ultimately 'just nice'. I've grown accustomed to recording artists writinh the majority of tracks on their albums, too.

Oh, a sad album. Plodding and a bit forgettable. Not for me, I am afraid so not something I'll play again.

This is terrific stuff.

Never heard of this band or album before, and after a single play I'm not sure whether this album should be on this list! Re-hashed matal/glam/punk tropes with risible lyrics.

I've never been sure why the Unplugged MTV thing was conceived - was it a view that noisy rockers couldn't play instruments without being plugged in? Whatever, it usually offers a new view of a band. In this case I think Nirvana took the chance to play several cover versions, and in fact my favourite track here is the Bowie cover (The Man Who Sold The World). Oh, and the Leadbelly cover is good too. The album's OK, but not being particularly keen on Nirvana, I can take it or leave it.

A great debut album. I have most of Harvey's albums, and I might have chosen a different one for this list.

Oh dear.

Kraftwerk is a band I like, but after three plays, this album wasn't up to their best. The best track here is 'The Model', and the rest seems a bit like filler.

A remarkably dull and plodding album. I remember Band on the Run having a bit more vim to it than it actually does. This isn't an album I particularly cared for, and I'm unlikely to play it again. It does have an amusing cover.

This is a lovely album. I see some reviews on this site saying that the singing wasn't in English, but to my ears much of it is. Anyway these are the singers who made Graceland. I'm not sure how much of an international profile they have, presumably since the group was founded in 1960 there is a turnover in members over the years. A nice album, but not something I see myself playing often.

Well, I guess it's an amusing concept for an album but the jingles get in the way of the songs. And not so many of them seem particularly strong to me. Love the sleeve artwork though.

I reckon bands like Arcade Fire attract an audience who remain loyal. People like me who never really listened to the band and come to the record a while later often miss that audience's experiences. So I played this pretty much unfamiliar with the band and found it a bit dull and average.

Gosh. The Mekons. I've long been aware of them, but never really listened to them. I can't say as I understand why this particular album is on this list. I thought it a fun ramshackle romp, but not a great album.

As a massively popular and big selling AOR rock debut, this deserves to be on this list. But I really don't like it at all. It's the kind of music that made punk so necessary. I have dutifully played this album through.

Well, I like this album enough to have it in my collection on vinyl. That said, is it a *great* album?

A later period Elvis Presley album...in the context of contemporary expectations of albums where the artist wrote most, if not all, of the songs, this is something of a throwback. And where the songs are written for Elvis, and all the music and backing singers are from the studio, I can't see this as a classic or great album, just a studio product. I always wondered what Elvis Presley might have done had it not been for Parker and his determination to make Presley a minor movie star and low grade soundtrack writer. That said, In The Ghetto is pretty fine.

Regarded as one of the great foundational psych albums of the 1960s, I have this in my collection, but rarely play it. I'm not sure how to rate this album. I don't see it as being as influential as other albums from the mid to late 1960s, and the tracks are a bit variable. I like the often weird lyrics and the general sense of coming to the end of the trip that was the mid-60s.

I've never been a great fan of Joni Mitchell's music. It's just that it doesn't really meet my general taste in music. I had never even heard of this album before, or indeed any of the songs. I found the album interesting for some of the musical approaches, but I felt that Mitchell's voice seemed to be somewhat separate from the music.

Should this have been a double album? It's an impressive collection of songs, considering relationships within the band were getting very strained. But by 1968 I think more sophistication in the lyrics was expected than is shown in many songs here, especially the pastiche songs and the more twee songs. That said, there some absolute crackers in here, possibly the majority. I even like Revolution No9.

This album has a particularly ridiculous cover. Musically, it seems quite spirited, but ultimately a bit cliched. The singer sounds pretty grumpy, and the band just sort of bang away. Not my sort of thing, and a bit headache-inducing when played on headphones.

Well, I've never really been a Moby fan. It's not that I dislike his music, more that I've never really played it except when an album turns up on this list! I kinda like this one, but I feel that the intervening quarter century since release hasn't served it well. The multiplicity of samples are a bit distracting, as I recognised some of them, which perplexed me as I tried to identify them.

Joanna Newsom's singing reminds me of Björk, unpleasantly mannered. It was immediately obvious to me that this wasn't to my taste. There didn't seem to be much connection between the phrasing of the vocals with the quite lush instrumentation - it's as if this is a recitation of words that just happens to have music in the background. Each track is quite long and they feel interminable to me.

This album came out at a good time for me! I loved it from the moment I first heard it as it filled this wonderful intersection between the alt music I liked, transgressive pop and out and out pop. The three singles on this album are top notch, and the rest of the music is great. I can remember being at a night club when they showed the infamous Sex Dwarf video! Top tracks - Say Hello Wave Goodbye, Tainted Love (of course!), Sex Dwarf. Soft Cell were in the vanguard of the synthpop explosion in the UK charts.

Fun and a pleasingly short album. But I think it sounds very much of its time - no bad thing for 1981!

A massively influential album that led the grunge charge through popular music in 1990s. Despite its huge popularity, I'm in two minds about this record. On the one hand, it doesn't seem wildly original, but on the other it its a pretty rousing listen. I think it deserves a lift from 4 stars to 5 on the basis of its influence.

First impression - what a horrible cover. Second impression - an equally horrible record.

This album sees Motorhead at their pek, I reckon. Rousing, stirring, fast, heavy - I get Lemmy's insistence that this is rock'n'roll and not a record that fits some of the other metal labels. Probably foreshadowed speed metal. Best track is the title track, but really other than that the album is a bit let down by the lyrics.

I bought this album on release, and I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with it. I like the music on the album (maybe connected with the way it was recorded), but at times Thom Yorke's vocals really grate, notably on the whiny Paranoid Android. Nevertheless, the overall point of the album is strong, it was a huge seller and I'm inclined to give it a 5. I do prefer subsequent Radiohead albums.

Dull smooth songs about sex.

I quite enjoyed this album - the arabic songs have a really exotic feel, and it's good to have an album on this list that's not English language. The downside is that I've no idea what the songs are about. Except the cover of Imagine. That's a bit dull and doesn't seem in keeping with the rest of the album. At 78 minutes, they could have omitted it. So, a nice record, but not one I think I'd play frequently.

I suppose this is nicely crafted AOR, but for that reason I found the album really unengaging. I can't relate at all to mid-70s AOR albums. Dull stuff to my ears.

Heavy, glam, flamboyant, complex - Queen as I recall them from their heyday were always exciting, if not something I'd choose to play. Queen II sees the band in the middle of an extraordinarily productive period in the mid-70s. In reality, I think they were still moving towards a significant place in the rock pantheon, and while many of the elements of future greatness are here, I don't think this is a truly great album.

I'm not really a metal fan. I know this album is usually said to be the first heavy metal album, and I supposes that might be true, but really their next album, Paranoid, is far better than this.

10 tracks of perfect synth pop. The story of how the Human League split, leaving Phil Oakey without synth players; how Oakey found and recruited two schoolgirls in a club on the eve of an international tour; how they reinvented themselves as a premier synthpop band...every track is great.

Oh! Frank Zappa! Now there's a recording artist one is *supposed* to really like but I've always struggled with his work. This album is in my collection, but I cannot remember the last time I played it. Time to break it out for a play...I think I originally bought this because Captain Beefheart does vocal on Willie the Pimp, which is my favourite track here. The rest of the album's tracks are instrumental, and with strong jazz-rock leanings I'm ambivalent about them.

After being squeezed out of Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett continued his downward trajectory of mental health. For this (and it's follow-up Barrett), former bandmates did their best to coax actual songs out of Barrett, and of those two albums, this is the better. The version I have has a load of out-takes which don't serve the album well and are best ignored. This is a collection of psych-inflected songs with a dose of English whimsey, and it's an album I really like. Whether it's a game changer, I doubt. I don't think that the music press and industry (and, let's face it, music fans) did Barrett a great service by over-egging his legend. There are loads of compilations that frankly scrape the bottom of the barrel, which is a bit of a shame really.

Well, these guys are having a party! That said, this isn't an album I think I'd play much, and I'm not in a positions to say why this is considered an album I needed to listen to!

At the outset, I confess that whenever I've listened to Prince's music I've never found it particularly engaging. Maybe it's an age thing. I've played Purple Rain three times now. And that is three times too many. It's shallow, crass and dull music. It seems to be a product of a sex-obsessed bloke in frilly shirts and high heels. I just don't get why Prince has acquired this aura of god-like genius.

I'm not sure why this is included in the list. Is it because it was so massively popular? I don't think popularity is an indicator of quality. To me, this is bland and over-produced and lacking emotionally.

This isn't a particularly exciting album. I mean, it's a nice enough album that revisits punk and post-punk stylings, but it shows its influences so strongly that I'm not surprised they got hit for plagiarism.

Inoffensive. Just not the kind of music I particularly enjoy.

This is all a bit dull to my 2024 ears.

I'm sorry, but I just don't like Neil Young's voice.

Ian Dury emerged out of the UK pub rock scene into the punk mileu with this fantastic album of character portraits. It was a very popular album, despite its often risque lyrics. I can see why it garners some poor reviews from an international audience as lyrically it's located in a very English, if not London-centric, vocabulary. But for those of us in our teenage years at the time, this album came at a time when the musical landscape was changing rapidly and it fit well with the Stiff Records roster of (often oddball) artists. A great album, probably Dury's best.

So I can recall Terence Trent D'Arby exploding into the charts with this album and its accompanying single, Wishing Well, and I can remember his voice. However several decades further on, and I think I'd qualify my enthusiasm by noting that the music hasn't perhaps lasted as well, and he does tend to over do the vocal gymnatics. But what happened to him after this album? I played this album three times this morning, and at times it felt like I was listening to Heaven 17. Then I looked at the Wikipedia page and saw that Martyn Ware produced nine tracks (and Glenn Gregory provided backing vocals for one of those. So there you go. In rating this album, I note that this isn't really the sort of music I'd really want to play, but I think it's a polished debut. Perhaps a little too polished.

This was an interesting album, but before I played it, I was wondering how he'd spin out four tracks into an album that's 46 minutes long. After playing it, I think that this would have made a good half album if only Hayes had shortened the tracks, especially By The Time I Get To Phoenix. To spin out Phoenix to nearly 19 minutes is a bit execrable, and I didn't much like having the whole thing explained to me for 8 minutes of that. Maybe this sort of noodling out songs into long extemporisation was in the air at the time (viz. Vanilla Fudge).

I've got this album in my collection, but I don't think it's that great. Most of the shoegaze stuff passed me by at the time, and even when My Bloody Valentine reappeared with this album, I wasn't convinced. The critics were, but what do they know? The tracks seem a bit long. It's all a bit wavery, to the point that if I had this on vinyl, I'd think I had a defective pressing. If a shoegaze album should be on this list, I don't think it's this one.

This is a cracking album with excellently crafted synth-pop with judiciously added instrumentation and backing vocals - and with a political edge to it that caused the lead single to be banned by the BBC. The original vinyl finished with a lock groove - though I only have the album as a digital copy after my vinyl copy was lost in a burglary. I think most of the contemporary music critics would have backed Ware and Marsh (with new recruit Gregory) over the remaining members of The Human League but in fact both bands were very successful.

This was the first album I ever bought! Back in 1977, as I was a late starter in getting interested in music, and I'd heard so much about this album when I was at school. Anyway, I think this was a bit of an achievement at the time, with its inclusion of field noises/found sound and the general assembly of songs into a coherent whole. To my modern ears it perhaps sounds a bit plodding, with (at times) clunky lyrics, but there's no mistaking this album for anything other than important. Unfortunately, touring this album to set the scene for quite a bit of introspective music later in Pink Floyd's career - I'm thinking of The Wall and beyond.

More than three hours of Ella Fitzgerald singing Gershwin! Frankly this isn't an album that I need to listen to, it's far too long. She's a great singer, but I I don't care hugely for these songs or the musical style. And did I mention this album is well over three hours long? This isn't really an album so much as a whole pile of Gershwin songs.

Yoicks! I don't care for country music, and I'm not a fan of any of these three ladies' music.

Back in the day I found Billy Bragg a bit strident. Nowadays I like a bit of stridency. I am looking forward to playing this album. And after a couple of plays, this is an album I did enjoy. I'd say my preference is for the overtly political songs, and overall I did like the additional musicians compared to other 'solo' Bragg albums.

This is a great album, and one of a bunch of good albums, but is it White Stripes' best? It's very derivative of blues rock albums of the 60s and 70s, but I think the simplicity of the band makes this pretty great.

I really disliked the caterwauling vocals.

So, considering what was going on in the post-punk era of the late 70s and the early 80s this is quite a dull and plodding album, and I don't think it has stood the test of time. It all seems a bit bland AOR. It's not offensive, but it comes across as a bit soul-less - maybe because it was all played by Winwood as overdubs. I liked the LP sleeve design.

Well, this was a lively enough album, but to really be a fan you'd probably have to have been part of the big internet related publicity thing. And all credit to the band for how they managed all that. I didn't really notice any stand out tracks here.

Bit of a mixed bag, this album. I liked the first two tracks, but can take or leave many of the rest. I think this will repay more listening so I'll add it to my Qobuz favourites.

I do like Spector's wall of sound production style, I like some of the groups here, but I detest these Christmas songs.

At the outset I thought this might be rather a good album. But as it went on it was a pretty stodgy treacly affair. Didn't really care for it.

I think it's difficult to rate this album without thinking of the later Beatles albums which had such an impact on rock and pop. While appreciating The Beatles' contributions, I've never really cared to listen to their music - maybe it's so ubiquitous. For example, I doubt I've ever played this album before, but I was familiar with every track on this album. From reading the background of this album on the Wikipedia page, I can see that The Beatles, their management and their producer were begining to flex creative muscles (over sleeve design, for example) in the face of what looks like complacency on the label's part. And while this album was part of the move into international stardom, I don't really think the songs stand out particularly to me - still too much focussed on girl-boy relationships without real subtlety. I think the strongest songs are some of the cover versions. I suppose in retrospect there's a direction of travel to be perceived.

I was a bit late in developing enthusiasm for the Pixies. They seemed to have singlehandedly made the soft-loud-soft pattern for alt rock into a bit of a cliche. Although I did have some Pixies albums in my collection, it took me a while to come round to appreciating them, most probably after The Breeders' first two albums were released. Anyway, now I think this album is a significant gem and quite influential.

Another band I'd not really caught up with at the time. I rather enjoyed this album, which I suppose reflects a less derivative Britpop. This'll go on my Qobuz favourites and I'll listen to further Charlatans albums.

Oh, we've already had Johnny Cash at San Quentin...which I think I preferred to this earlier recording of a prison album, which has less engagement with the audience.

This album sounds like the soundtrack to a wild party! At times the Cuban sound seems to move into a rather African call and response feel. To me, however, the album seems a bit same-y, so while I reckon it's great party music, it's not something I'd add to my collection.

This is a very good album, but I think there are one or two points where I thought it veered towards cliche, with one or two songs coming across as a bit gauche.

This isn't my favourite musical style, but as I began to listen to this album, I did like it, though it dragged a bit. I think Buckley was quite influential even though his album sales were not great.

I think this is the third Nirvana album I've had on this list. Whereas Nevermind blasted the band into international stardom, it's not so obvious to me why this album is so essential.

This may be a matter of taste, but I've never really likes Baez' voice. I think this may be the first time I've listened to one of her albums all the way through, and I didn't find it very enjoyable. I find her voice and singing style dominated the songs and made everything rather harsh. I could only play this once, and it seemed a bit interminable. I get that Baez was a big figure in the folk resurgence and was important as a social activist, but in that context I'm not sure a debut album of covers of traditional songs is so significant.

Well, Rock Lobster was a great single, and I can see from Wikipedia that there were several singles drawn from this album. The whole retro-glam-punk schtick is pretty appealing, as it was for Scottish band The Rezillos, and it's a fun album to play. I don't think they really had enough material and the last track is filler. But the other songs are great, often with pretty idiotic lyrics.

Well, I have something of a love-hate thing with Thom Yorke's vocals, particularly on OK Computer, but I really rather enjoyed this album, which I'll add to my streaming favourites. Probably not as important as OK Computer but pretty enjoyable.

This is a great electronic album, with rather quirky vocal stylings. The album was new to me, but I like the following two albums, so I was up for this.

Ugh. I dislike Country music, and this album is no exception. I think Gram Parsons was influential in bringing a country sound to many bands he worked with, but I doubt this album was.

A Stones album from their great days. The opener is one of the greatest rock songs of all time, but it's a shame about the lyrics (to modern ears). A good set of Stones songs with a bit of a country blues tinge.

A, what can I say, one of the great Bowie albums, which along with the other 'Berlin' albums was very influential. Perhaps not the best of his albums, but a 5 star album nonetheless. Tracks here range from ambient to quite heavy.

This is the first massive solo album from Michael Jackson. I didn't particularly care for it too much - a bit too pop for me, but there's no denying it was hugely influential. However, I far prefer Thriller to this album.

I had never heard of Drive Like Jehu before it popped up on this list, so I was keen to play it. Wikipedia describes it as "post-hardcore", whatever that is. I played through the album a few times, and I thought it quite fun to listen to. Probably something that fill well into the scene at the time.

Well I found this a pretty dull album that sort of washed by me.

I like blues, though I'm not a massive B. B. King fan. That said this is a good live album, and unlike some other reviewers I think the audible responses of the audience add to the atmosphere of the recording. And King's guitar really sings.

I think this record has dated rather a lot - it is likely to have been pretty influential. The Everly brothers seem to have been up there with the movers and shakers of the late 50s music world. It's an album that in its lyrical content brings out the broader sophistication of rock and pop music after the mid-60s. Not an album I'm likely to play in the future.

This album (and Finley Quaye) was unknown to me until now. It's a pleasant enough mix of reggae funk and soul that comes across as bit of pastiche.

Back in the mid-70s when I was a student and just embarking on a life of listening to records, Leonard Cohen was always touted as this depressing figure. But really his music is so much more than that. Not so much to my taste, but this is a cracking debut album.

From his Wikipedia bio, Mylo seems like an interesting chap. But I found this album dreary dull stuff. Not something I'd be keen to play in the future.

Like others, I couldn't find this album on my streaming platform, but did on Youtube. It's good to see an album that's not Western-Anglophone. This album is a nice enough thing to listen too, but really it didn't grab my attention, so it's unlikely I'll play it again.

This is a truly dreadful and boring album.

As a manufatured pop brand (rather than band), Some of the Monkees' singles were really rather good. I don't really know the ins and outs of who actually played on their records, but with this album they were flexing their creative muscles. The problem is that this just isn't a great album. from the opening Beatles pastiche, the songs are just dull.

Coldplay are massively popular. I suspect this is because their music is rather bland. I played this album twice and it just passed me by as I zoned out. It didn't attract my attention at all. But that said, it seems to have attracted a whole load of accolades, as has the band itself.

I knew of Pavement, but I'd never listened to them. Love the sort of ramshackle sound, which does remind me of early The Fall music (though I don't concur with Mark E. Smith's claim they are a rip-off). This is great stuff and I think I'll add it to my library.

This is a fun album, not the greatest. I'd only heard 'Stupid Girl' before playing this record.

New Order is a band I really tried to like over the years. Unfortunately I never took to them, finding them distinctly ordinary. Lyrics are clunky, boringly delivered, and (mostly) the music lacks engagement.

It's always good that a non-English langauge album turns up on this list. Unfortunately, this album is a little too long and not of a style that really grabs me - essentially not to my taste, and nor do I clearly see how it fits into influencing music - though I guess it may have been highly influential in Brazilian music.

Played this twice now, and I think this is OK, but really is there anything novel here? the first track put me in mind of Led Zeppelin, other tracks were reminiscent of early 70s Stones and Faces. Sort of bar-room heavy rock/R&B. Might be fun to see live but it does seem a bit derivative to me.

This album just sort of washes along past me.

I didn't expect to see this album come up! I like Morrissey's lyrics - often oblique, often startling, sometimes straightforward - and I've liked his singing since The Smiths, but I find the music a bit anodyne.

As someone who was really into post-punk music, I'm not particularly familiar with Cyndi Lauper - she always seemed to me to be trying very hard to be wacky, zany and outrageous, but always ending up looking a bit gauche. That coupled with her voice, which always seemed a bit grating to me, has meant I've never spent much time listening to her music (though I heave heard 'Girls Just Want to Have Fun' - rather too many times). So when this album came up on the list, I was keen to give it a go. I think I lasted three tracks. I know this was popular, and Lauper probably shifted gazillions of units, but I don't think this is a great album, nor is it an album one must listen to.

So, an album constructed with myriad samples, plus the usual braggadocio vocals. This all makes for an album which sounds a bit like a single track on repeat. And what's more, my music streaming service only appears to have an extended 20th anniversary version. This isn't a musical style that appeals to me.

I don't think Peter Gabriel had moved on far from his roots in Genesis by the time he recorded this album, and it's far from his best. It's not clear why this album makes this list - I thought it pretty uninteresting. I liked the big single from the album (Solsbury Hill), and the cover is very good.

My first reaction was - great, an album I'd not heard before. My second reaction was - it's nearly three hours long! I don't think I can play this many times before I'm presented with the next album... Some of these songs are amusing or interesting, but as a whole the exercise of recording a three hour album of songs about love songs is really rather self-indulgent. Having said that, maybe it's something I'll come back to.

This is a cracking good album by a band forced from Timbuktu to Bamako and later to achieve global popularity. They kickstarted the Desert Blues as a genre

This is one of the great Pink Floyd albums and was a key player in the English psych scene. With band leader Syd Barrett at the helm, it's a mixture of psychedelic whimsy, imaginative lyrics, and the beginnings of the 'space rock' jams that Pink Floyd were famous for. Sadly Barrett's mental health meant a line-up change for the follow-up album and the band carried on their experimental ways until the next great album The Dark Side of the Moon. But really this is possibly my favourite Pink Floyd album. I have it on cheap vinyl (in stereo) and on CD in the original mono.

Not really to my taste, though I enjoyed listening to this. The album as a whole had an interesting vibe, and I can see how Martyn attracted an audience for his music.

I'm afraid I find Bruce Springsteen's albums pretty dull stuff, and this is no exception.

This is a classic "live" album - live in quotation because of the disputes over how much of this is actually live versus studio overdubs. I saw Thin Lizzy live around this time, and the album does seem to match my recollection of the gig. Despite this not really being to my modern, more experimental, taste in music, I think it remains an important document of the band at their peak and as they navigated the changing musical landscape of the time. I reckon the lyrics are all a bit cliched and trite, but the songs are delivered with great gusto. I eventually grew out of this stuff.

Texan bar room blues. I didn't find this a very exciting album - if I wanted to play white Texas blues I'd prefer Johnny Winter's The Progressive Blues Experience.

Oh, I really don't like this kind of noodly-doodly jazz-rock. This is truly horrible. I never want to hear this album again.

This is the second CCR album I've had so far on this list, and I think by this album their creative juices were fading. There's a bit to much chugging along in some tracks.

I thought this was pretty good fun as an album, though the only version my streaming service had was an extended 2CD version. I'm not sure how influential it was, but I definitely enjoyed it.

I was introduced to The Fall by a room mate back in 1979 with this album. It is an absolutely terrific post-punk clatter of an album with Mark E Smith's vocals to the fore. I still don't think it's the best Fall album, but what a debut. I went on to buy pretty much all their albums as they were released - until Smith died in 2018. This is an essential album.

This is a horrible novelty album.

Nice, smooth, unchallenging, lyrics abound with cliches. Not my cup of tea, but it's popular music that fills stadia worldwide.

Prior to getting this album on the list, I had never to my knowledge ever heard this band (though I had heard of them). Side one appears to consisy of an extended workout of versions of Bo Diddley's Who Do You Love. There more Bo Diddley on side two as well. All in all, it's a pretty ordinary sort of psych album. Not something I'd rush back to.

Well, I though this pretty unexceptional stuff, but maybe that's because this sort of singer-songwriter music isn't really to my taste. Kinda like the sleeve.

Not my cup of tea, really, but I reckon this is a bit of a classic album from a period in Elton John and Bernie Taupin's careers where they must have so inspired and productive. This isn't an album I had listened to all the way through before, but I'm glad I did - barring a couple of clunkers, a solid set of songs with a strong thematic approach. Not an album I'll play much in the future though.

I didn't care much for this record, and really didn't see why this was an album I must listen to. It seemed pretty run of the mill to me.

At the outset, I quite liked this album, despite the tedious rap vocal delivery. But by the end of the album most tracks were sounding pretty much the same. After a second play, the album is sort of growing on me. After a third play I liked it enough to favoutite it on my streaming account.

This is the third Beastie Boys album from this list so far. I hated the other two - how about this one? Boring. Like the others.

This is a lovely album to listen to. But as a monoglot anglophone, I've no idea what the songs are about!

Well, it's not offensive, but it's not an album that particularly grabs me. It's too long.

It's a long long time since I listened to this album - it will be interesting to see if the reality matches my recollection of an elaborately recorded and produced album with some real standout tracks. Over the years, I wouldn't class Queen as a favourite band, but I'm going into this with a neutral approach.

A stone cold classic and one of the albums that launched post-punk as a genre. Every track is a winner. 47 years old, and it still sounds fresh. Magazine never really troubled the charts, but there were three further studio albums before they disbanded (and another 30 years later), all of which were great. But this album is the one that burst on the scene as the first flush of punk waned and reinvigorated things.