535
Albums Rated
3.13
Average Rating
49%
Complete
554 albums remaining
Rating Distribution
Rating Timeline
Taste Profile
2010
Favorite Decade
Hip-hop
Favorite Genre
US
Top Origin
Wordsmith
Rater Style ?
56
5-Star Albums
30
1-Star Albums
Breakdown
By Genre
Top Styles
By Decade
By Origin
Albums
You Love More Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Ys
Joanna Newsom
|
5 | 2.79 | +2.21 |
|
69 Love Songs
The Magnetic Fields
|
5 | 2.85 | +2.15 |
|
Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
Spiritualized
|
5 | 3.15 | +1.85 |
|
Let It Be
The Replacements
|
5 | 3.26 | +1.74 |
|
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Wilco
|
5 | 3.3 | +1.7 |
|
The Chronic
Dr. Dre
|
5 | 3.32 | +1.68 |
|
Joan Armatrading
Joan Armatrading
|
5 | 3.34 | +1.66 |
|
Endtroducing.....
DJ Shadow
|
5 | 3.35 | +1.65 |
|
xx
The xx
|
5 | 3.36 | +1.64 |
|
Ready To Die
The Notorious B.I.G.
|
5 | 3.36 | +1.64 |
You Love Less Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Dire Straits
Dire Straits
|
1 | 3.72 | -2.72 |
|
Getz/Gilberto
Stan Getz
|
1 | 3.65 | -2.65 |
|
The Wildest!
Louis Prima
|
1 | 3.53 | -2.53 |
|
Ellington at Newport
Duke Ellington
|
1 | 3.43 | -2.43 |
|
Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden
|
1 | 3.4 | -2.4 |
|
Slippery When Wet
Bon Jovi
|
1 | 3.29 | -2.29 |
|
Kenya
Machito
|
1 | 3.27 | -2.27 |
|
The Age Of The Understatement
The Last Shadow Puppets
|
1 | 3.25 | -2.25 |
|
Frampton Comes Alive
Peter Frampton
|
1 | 3.19 | -2.19 |
|
Songs From A Room
Leonard Cohen
|
1 | 3.16 | -2.16 |
Artists
Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Radiohead | 5 | 4.4 |
| Nirvana | 3 | 4.67 |
| Beatles | 7 | 4.14 |
| Kendrick Lamar | 2 | 5 |
| Bob Dylan | 6 | 4.17 |
| Led Zeppelin | 4 | 4.25 |
| Arcade Fire | 3 | 4.33 |
| The White Stripes | 3 | 4.33 |
| Black Sabbath | 3 | 4.33 |
Least Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Dire Straits | 2 | 1.5 |
| The Divine Comedy | 2 | 1.5 |
| Stan Getz | 2 | 1.5 |
| Slipknot | 2 | 1.5 |
| Leonard Cohen | 4 | 2 |
Controversial
| Artist | Ratings |
|---|---|
| Prince | 2, 5 |
| Pixies | 5, 2 |
| Michael Jackson | 2, 5 |
| Neil Young | 2, 5, 4 |
| The Rolling Stones | 4, 5, 3, 2 |
5-Star Albums (56)
View Album Wall
Popular Reviews
Grant Lee Buffalo · 7 likes
3/5
I got a push notification that Trump was deploying the national guard in DC because crime is “out of control,” even though it isn’t. About a minute later, as I was finishing reading about the deployment, America Snoring began playing. Eerie.
This was maybe a 3.5. I liked the title track a lot.
Beastie Boys · 7 likes
5/5
One of my favorite albums ever. If I remember the 33 1/3 correctly, the dust brothers recorded all the samples on the album (104 of them, according to Wikipedia) directly to tape, meaning they’d have to rewind the tape and line up the timing exactly right to layer another sample or vocals on top of it. The care that went into this production is incredible. And they almost got sued by the Beatles, so they’ve got that going for them.
Favorite couplets:
There’s more to me than you’ll ever know / And I got more hits than Sadaharu Oh
Washing windows on the Bowery at a quarter to four / ‘cause he ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s Farm no more
I’m doing 120, plowing over mailboxes / radar detector, to tell me where the cops is
Cash flow getting low, so I had to pull a job / found a nice place to visit, but a better place to rob
Because it’s all high spirit, you know you got to hear it / Don’t touch the mic, baby, don’t come near it
Because I got more stories than JD’s got Salinger / I hold the title and you are the challenger
Nirvana · 4 likes
5/5
Am I going to write this review … by myself?
Another album I loved as a kid. I will always remember the track teammate who would listen to this on the bus before meets. To get himself hyped? To mellow himself out? I never asked and now I’ll never know.
The Nirvana tracks on this are good and several of them improve in this setting (About a Girl, Dumb, Something in the Way), but the covers are the standouts, especially the final track. If you’ve never seen Cobain’s eyes widen before that final “night through,” you need to. I was between a 4 and a 5 coming in, but after I “liked” every song from SITW to the end, I think the nostalgia boost is getting it to a 5.
After finishing the album, I watched this video of a trained singer analyzing his vocal performance on where did you sleep last night, and her shock is palpable at the moment with about two minutes left when he shifts his style:
https://youtu.be/wSxWhsWnP6o?si=5QCfyzMYvRsOudUn
It’s cool to know someone who knows her stuff is also wowed by this.
AC/DC · 3 likes
2/5
But do they like rock and roll? So many unanswered questions posed by the lyrics on this one. I’ll be thinking about it for days.
Solomon Burke · 1 likes
3/5
Wikipedia says this had seven top-100 hits. I had never heard of the artist and was unfamiliar with the songs as well. But I thought it was perfectly pleasant. “if you need me” and “you’re good for me” were two favorites.
1-Star Albums (30)
All Ratings
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
It’s three songs I absolutely love (1983 and the final two (duh)) and then a lot I think is just okay?
Portishead
5/5
I’ve heard this before but never enjoyed it as much as this time.
Kraftwerk
4/5
I was fully prepared for this to be boring—just because something was innovative 45 years ago doesn’t mean it holds up—but I really enjoyed it. The last two tracks were standouts for me.
2/5
Knew I’d hate it, was not disappointed. Starlight was okay.
Frank Ocean
4/5
Thinkin Bout You is an all-timer. The rest of the album doesn’t quite hold up to the standard set there, for me. Plenty good, but nothing that gets to that high. Bad Religion comes closest.
Janelle Monáe
3/5
The Strokes
4/5
The Doors
3/5
One of the first “classics” I owned. My guess before listening is that the first half is still pretty good and the second half isn’t. Open question: will “The End” be Maggie’s new favorite song?
Listening: Soul Kitchen is still my favorite. Twentieth Century Fox still exemplifies the band’s worst tendencies (dumb lyrics, coasting on Morrison’s sexuality). Ugh I forgot about “show me the way to the next little girl” in Whisky Bar. If I remember correctly, the single version of Light My Fire doesn’t have the extended organ solo and is therefore a million times better.
As I remembered/suspected, this is essentially three classic songs (Break on Through, Soul Kitchen, Light My Fire) surrounded by a bunch of filler. (Soul Kitchen wasn’t even a single, so maybe my opinion of that song does not reflect a critical consensus.) The second half before The End feels entirely like an afterthought, and The End is still one of the weirdest songs on a pop record ever. In a generous light, that song is daring and transgressive, but I mostly think it’s self-indulgent and not nearly as smart as it thinks it is. (See also: this band in general.) This album definitely feels like one you’d buy because you heard two great songs on the radio—probably what I did, essentially, as a tween—and then end up feeling disappointed because little else on the record comes close to that standard.
SAULT
4/5
This is one I struggled with when it came out and am struggling with again, listening. The genre jumping evinces an incredible band capable of almost anything, but it can feel disjointed. I know they put out two albums in 2020, but I’d almost prefer they put out four shorter ones: a rap album, an r&b album, a pop album, and a rock album.
But I enjoyed almost every song. I just want it a little more streamlined. Highlights include Stop Dem, Bow, Monsters, and Pray Up Stay Up.
Iggy Pop
3/5
I must have listened to this before because Nightclubbing is vaguely familiar and Dum Dum Boys is a “liked” song on Spotify. On this new listen, DDB remains the lone liked song.
Arcade Fire
4/5
Their second-best album, one of my favorite albums, a modern classic. The only question is 4 (it does drag a little in the middle) or 5 (sprawl ii though…) stars.
I think we’re going 4: as strong as the opening third and final third are, I think the middle third is mostly meh. First four songs + month of may + final four songs = perfect, unassailable, 36-minute record.
Soundgarden
3/5
I think a little goes a long way here. Fell on Black Days and Black Hole Sun: perfect songs, perfect encapsulations of the genre. Then, I don’t care, pick 4-5 of the others and make a great EP.
Drive Like Jehu
1/5
Pre-listening: I think I listened to this a year or two ago while compiling an “early emo” playlist. One song (only), Luau, made the playlist. That doesn’t bode well.
After listening: yeah, don’t care for this. The first album where no songs will make my ongoing playlist.
Alice Cooper
1/5
Boring.
Goldfrapp
2/5
Meh.
Solomon Burke
3/5
Wikipedia says this had seven top-100 hits. I had never heard of the artist and was unfamiliar with the songs as well. But I thought it was perfectly pleasant. “if you need me” and “you’re good for me” were two favorites.
Jurassic 5
5/5
A little long for me, and I think “Hey” and “Acetate Prophets” are obvious weak spots that could be cut. Still, I love this album and it’s bound up in so much nostalgia for me that I can’t not give it 5 stars.
Highlights: What’s Golden, Sum of Us, Freedom, I am Somebody
Marty Robbins
3/5
I think I’m resonating with the gunfighter ballads. Not so much the trail songs. But this is better than I expected.
Highlights: Big Iron, They’re Hanging Me Tonight
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
2/5
This was just okay.
Hüsker Dü
3/5
John Lennon
3/5
Pre listen, I knew I’d heard this before and had two songs (“working class hero” and “god”) on my Spotify liked songs. After listening, much the same.
“God” really blew me away this time; I’d remembered it for the “don’t believe in Beatles” line, which feels shocking/antagonistic/angry, but today the song felt like a Buddhist love song (even though he doesn’t believe in Buddha). Something about renouncing all titles/man-made concepts and just feeling, just believing in the people you love. I loved it. And, knowing John Lennon, it probably is both angry (at his bandmates, at fans who keep clamoring for more Beatles) and optimistic (the dream being over allows for a new dream, of just being “John” without living up to being “the walrus”).
But the rest of the album was just okay. Anyway, I hope this Lennon fellow figures it out. I expect big things from him, say, one year after this album.
The xx
5/5
Intro is so good. But I never return to the rest of the album because I remember it as a let down compared to that song. Being “forced” to revisit it, I found a lot to love. Like a 4.5, decided to round up.
Prefab Sprout
2/5
I added Bonny to my running list of songs from this project. And other songs were on this album too.
David Bowie
4/5
During Summer of Bowie two years ago, I tried to listen to every album 2-3 times. This one was not my favorite. But today I liked it a little more. Perhaps with each revisit it will grow on me a little more. The second half doesn’t do it for me … yet.
Derek & The Dominos
2/5
Before listening, I was familiar with Bell Bottom Blues and Layla, and I liked Layla.
After listening, I added Layla and Anyday to my list. But wow was this a slog. I would call it Layla and Assorted Overwrought Blues Jams. And then they have the audacity to throw that final song at you, which demonstrates they do possess acoustic guitars and can write a song that sounds even a little different from every other song. It was both a breath of fresh air and a little insulting. Now I’m fired up. I was between 2 and 3 stars but I’ve talked myself into 2.
The Offspring
3/5
This is my prediction: this will not age well. But I won’t be able to resist Self Esteem and Come Out and Play.
Listening thoughts: I actually like this more than I expected. It’s juvenile and silly, but that’s intentional, so it’s successful. Not my favorite genre, but good enough for our album today.
Eminem
2/5
This came out when I was 15 and I never listened to it, so I don’t have any nostalgic attachment to it. (I do love the Marshall Mathers LP, though.) Now I’m 40 and clearly not the target audience.
Never been a huge fan of My Name Is. I have always liked Guilty Conscience. I think those were the only two I was familiar with ahead of time, although the beat on Role Model sounds familiar and it was a single, so maybe I heard it at some point.
Much of the rest of it sounds so half-baked and unfinished, especially compared to MMLP, which I think is a masterpiece. I ended up enjoying I’m Shady. Bad Meets Evil was underwhelming, which was disappointing because I like Royce da 5’ 9”.
Christina Aguilera
3/5
Pre-listening thoughts: I think I’m familiar with three songs here. Even in her heyday I was more of a Britney person. I can guarantee I’ve never listened to this album.
Underappreciated was a new find. Dare I say, an underappreciated one?
But I think generally, Christina is not for me because her project is not one I’m interested in. Of the Britney/Jessica/Mandy generation, she’s the One Who Can Sing. No denying that. But that’s not what I want. So when she Sings, it falls flat for me. Not her fault. I’m just not going to keep coming back to this, except for the songs where she’s just doing pop stuff.
Julian Cope
3/5
This was totally unfamiliar to me: hadn’t heard of artist, album, or any song. I didn’t listen to the deluxe stuff, just the original album. But it was fine. At no point did I desire to turn it off, but I wasn’t hungry for any more either. A solid 3.
Drive-By Truckers
3/5
This is firmly in 3.5 territory. I know this band fairly well, this album less so. I enjoy the band but this album was just okay. Every song felt like it was right on the edge of me loving it, with none of them quite getting there. Maybe I need more familiarity with Lynyrd Skynyrd?
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
4/5
Harry Nilsson
4/5
Incubus
2/5
This is going to be a tough one.
Oh I like Stellar, I didn’t know that’s what it was called.
But yeah, this is formulaic and emotionally manipulative. Turntables! Big choruses! Lyrics that seem to be deliberately mixed low! You can pick one or two songs and you get the idea of the whole album.
Sade
3/5
A fun thought experiment here is, what would this album sound like if it came out today and someone was like, “hey maybe cool it with the sax?”
Peter Frampton
1/5
I’m grateful for the opportunity to listen to this because this, even more than many albums on this list, is one everyone says you should listen to, and I never have. Obviously I’m familiar with “show me the way” and “baby I love your way” (and “jumpin jack flash,” but by someone else). But just because I’m familiar with a song doesn’t mean I like it! And even JJF is one of my least favorite Stones songs, so it hardly redeems the rest of this album. This is between a 1 and a 2; we’ll see what I choose.
Kendrick Lamar
5/5
I’m very familiar with this album. Going into it, the only question was whether I’d rate it 4 or 5 stars.
I think this gets better every time I listen. Knowing that the poem is going to culminate in a conversation with Tupac helps.
Going to rate it five stars. It’s so inventive and layered. It would be easier to list the songs I don’t love.
The Pogues
2/5
Meh
Faust
4/5
This was a very nice blend of straightforward rock with weirder elements that kept it interesting.
Method Man
2/5
I think Method Man is very charismatic but not always the best rapper. The production here was mostly forgettable. As one of the first solo Wu records, no one is mistaking this for Ghostface or Raekwon.
The Jesus And Mary Chain
3/5
Steely Dan
3/5
Enjoyable album. I was torn between 3 and 4 stars.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
Les Rythmes Digitales
4/5
Beatles
4/5
The Rolling Stones
5/5
Surprised myself—I’ve tried the four “must listen” Stones albums before (Beggars Banquet, Let it Bleed, Exile, and this) and never felt they deserved their reputation. Decided they were a singles band and went back to 40 Licks. This time around, this one really clicked. Favorites include I Got the Blues, Sway, and Wild Horses. Not so much: Brown Sugar, You Gotta Move.
Louis Prima
1/5
DNF. I got the gist. “Jump jive and wail” does make it onto my ongoing playlist.
Sister Sledge
4/5
According to WhoSampled, 7 of the 8 songs have been sampled by other artists, with “he’s the greatest dancer” leading the way—duh, it’s getting jiggy with it. No samples for “you’re a friend to me” and only one for “somebody loves me.” But I get it: these grooves are infectious. Obviously “we are family” is the standout, and it always makes me think of the Pittsburgh pirates.
https://youtu.be/hB4eGNYMDKQ?si=m1lkxpT9CLx9qYxl
The Mamas & The Papas
3/5
I appreciate, but don’t love, their singing.
Doves
3/5
I had never heard of this band, so I set out to read up on them. The comparisons were Oasis, Blur, The Verve, Elbow, Coldplay, Radiohead! How exciting! This is going to be my new favorite band!
Nope. It is indeed a British band that plays rock music. But not my new favorite one.
William Orbit
3/5
Too much of an ok thing
King Crimson
4/5
Reddit’s favorite album. Just listened to this a few months ago as I gave it yet another chance. I think it’s always going to be good, not great for me. Epitaph and ITCOTCK are my two standouts.
Elliott Smith
4/5
Probably my favorite solo artist ever. His third-best album (XO, Either/Or). Even before listening today, I can tell you “Happiness” is one of the most beautiful songs, period, and when the drums drop on “everything means nothing to me” is incredible. The first five songs are all bangers (but the other two albums are all bangers).
This was the final studio album released while he was alive as heroin and depression consumed him.
Dire Straits
1/5
I hated this and I’m afraid it’s going to put me in a bad mood all day. When you hear “Money for Nothing” or “Sultans of Swing” in isolation, you don’t think, “Oh, this is the world’s most masturbatory band,” but then when you are subjected to a whole album, oh boy. I’m a little torn on rating because I do like SoS and Wild West End—maybe those are good enough to get it to a two? But I don’t think so.
Barry Adamson
2/5
Also hated this, but I appreciated its inventiveness. One star for existing and a second star for trying something new.
The Dandy Warhols
3/5
I think of this band as a two-hit wonder, even though Spotify is telling me “not if you were the last junkie on earth” isn’t even their second-biggest song. Let’s see how the rest of the album does.
I like the rock stuff. Less the experimental/droney/shoegazey stuff.
Beastie Boys
3/5
It’s been a long time since I’ve listened to this all the way through. I think I’ve grown and the album has definitely aged. And the group has disavowed much of it, if I remember correctly. What would have been a strong 4-star, bordering on 5, in high school is probably just a 3 now.
Iron Maiden
1/5
It’s a no for me.
Can
3/5
This was fine.
The Black Crowes
4/5
Pre listening: A few weeks ago I saw a car with license plate that was something like “BLK CRWS” and other decals related to this band and I thought, I have never in my life considered for even a moment the idea that the Black Crowes could be someone’s favorite band. Welp, time to find out what the fuss is about and whether they’re just a one-hit wonder.
Listening: this is more fun than I expected. Never going to be my favorite band, but I could see why someone would like them. And, bonus, now I know what he’s saying in the chorus of Hard to Handle. And I know that song is called Hard to Handle! Learned so much today.
The White Stripes
5/5
One of my all-time favorites. Easiest 5 of the project so far.
The Smiths
4/5
Obviously I love these sad bois.
T. Rex
3/5
Pre listen: I know I listened to this a few years ago out of curiosity, but Spotify is telling me I didn’t “like” a single song. Not even bang a gong. So we’ll see what today’s listen holds.
Fleetwood Mac
4/5
The rockers on this, which I perceive to be Lindsey’s, aren’t doing it for me, but I’m enjoying the Stevie/Christine slow jams.
Favorites: think about me, storms, honey hi, beautiful child, tusk (the exception to my rule), never forget
Jamiroquai
2/5
I can tell this is *supposed* to be fun, but it just doesn’t quite get there for me.
Radiohead
5/5
I know this one well enough that I don’t need to listen today, but I still will. You may recall this was the famous “pay what you want” album. I think I paid $10 when it came out, when I was a broke law student.
Highlights: everything except Faust Arp, which isn’t even bad, it just doesn’t meet the standard set by everything else here, IMO.
Please play Videotape at my funeral. Thanks, bye.
Taylor Swift
3/5
The two people in this group, but not every potential reader of this review, will know that I just embarked on a “Summer of Taylor” last year and am therefore well acquainted with her oeuvre. I thought then, and continue to believe upon re-listen, that this is a weaker entry in her catalog. And I submit that “welcome to New York” is one of her worst songs, period.
Highlights: style, shake it off (for at least a couple more weddings before I get sick of it), and bad blood
Pretenders
4/5
Culture Club
1/5
Two songs in, contemplating quitting.
Four songs in, quitting.
Lupe Fiasco
2/5
A widely acclaimed album I’ve never been able to get into. It’s a little too long and I don’t think it’s quite as deep as it thinks it is.
Pavement
4/5
Pre listen: In college, I think my Pavement album of choice was Brighten the Corners. For the last few years, it’s been Slanted and Enchanted. This one, despite having perhaps my two favorite Pavement songs (cut your hair and gold soundz—Pitchfork’s best song of the 90s) has never been tops in the rotation. So, I am generally unfamiliar and look forward to it.
David Bowie
2/5
I listened to this when it came out and then set it aside. Now, as then, I really like Lazarus and don’t care for much else on it.
The Clash
3/5
Belle & Sebastian
3/5
Every B&S album is a grower. This one didn’t hit me on first listen, but I might return to it.
Manic Street Preachers
2/5
Not for me
The Kinks
3/5
Okay, not *everything* on this sounded the same, but I was nervous for maybe the first four or five songs, and “Mr. Pleasant” both sounds like a kinks song and has the perfect name for a kinks song. Entirely pleasant, 3.5, couldn’t bring myself to give it a 4.
Black Sabbath
4/5
I ignored all non-Paranoid Sabbath albums for a while, but then gave the first five or six albums a listen not that long ago, and really liked them. This is maybe my second or third listen to Volume 4 and I keep finding stuff to like. It certainly doesn’t top Paranoid and I’d have to listen to Master of Reality again to compare them, but, standing on its own separate from one of the best discographies in rock, this is a great album. Maybe someone will correct me but I think of these first Sabbath albums as essentially creating the genre of heavy metal and establishing some of its earliest and most enduring tropes. It blows my mind.
Nirvana
5/5
Am I going to write this review … by myself?
Another album I loved as a kid. I will always remember the track teammate who would listen to this on the bus before meets. To get himself hyped? To mellow himself out? I never asked and now I’ll never know.
The Nirvana tracks on this are good and several of them improve in this setting (About a Girl, Dumb, Something in the Way), but the covers are the standouts, especially the final track. If you’ve never seen Cobain’s eyes widen before that final “night through,” you need to. I was between a 4 and a 5 coming in, but after I “liked” every song from SITW to the end, I think the nostalgia boost is getting it to a 5.
After finishing the album, I watched this video of a trained singer analyzing his vocal performance on where did you sleep last night, and her shock is palpable at the moment with about two minutes left when he shifts his style:
https://youtu.be/wSxWhsWnP6o?si=5QCfyzMYvRsOudUn
It’s cool to know someone who knows her stuff is also wowed by this.
Tom Tom Club
4/5
We got off to a rough start, with one of my least favorite genres: “white person in the 80s discovers rapping” (cc Debbie Harry). But after that, I liked this.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
3/5
I owned a Bob Marley record in high school, but it wasn’t this one. And reggae mostly sounds the same to me. Tough to imagine giving a reggae record anything other than a 3: it’s pleasant but I don’t find myself returning to it.
Talking Heads
2/5
Except for psycho killer, this all went in one ear and out the next
Bruce Springsteen
3/5
Pre listening: “oh great, the album with the cheesy synths and the creepy lyrics”
2 minutes later: “BORN IN THE USA, I WAS BORN IN THE USA”
-okay the daddy in “I’m on fire” is her partner, not her actual father. So it’s just about infidelity, not pedophilia. TMYK 💫
Radiohead
5/5
😍
Leonard Cohen
3/5
A Tribe Called Quest
4/5
So, some of this hasn’t aged well. And what are the odds that 2/3 of the NBA players name checked on a song called “infamous date rape” are infamous for sexual indiscretions that came to light after the song’s release?
But apart from problematic sexual politics, this is such a fun album. I feel like you could put this on at any party and it would work. It’s on point (phife) all the time (tip).
Dinosaur Jr.
3/5
Joni Mitchell
4/5
I have tried to get this album for many years and never been quite successful. It’s interesting we got it the same week as a Leonard Cohen one since (a) he’s maybe the subject of this album and (b) I hear similarities between the two. A lot of speak-singing and nothing super memorable on the guitar (shots fired!).
That isn’t to say I hate it. I just don’t hear “greatest album by a woman” or “top three album of all time” when I listen to it.
Metallica
3/5
Maybe it’s just that Enter Sandman is overplayed, but on this listen I felt strongly that Nothing Else Matters is the best song here.
I’d cut 3-4 songs, or I’d make all the songs about a minute shorter. Not sure how many songs need two or three guitar solos. Not sure how many 7-minute epics I need on one album, especially when a song has only minor shifts in dynamics (looking at you, uh, every song except NEM). I didn’t hate anything, and in fact saved several songs to my playlist, but it’s doubtful I’m going to seek out this album in whole again. It’s a collection of songs I like that somehow doesn’t work for me as an album. So, like a 3.5?
Haircut 100
4/5
Yes
AC/DC
2/5
But do they like rock and roll? So many unanswered questions posed by the lyrics on this one. I’ll be thinking about it for days.
Lou Reed
4/5
Moby
3/5
Here’s a question: do I like this album, or have its songs so ingrained themselves in pop culture that they’re inescapable and therefore familiar?
Is sampling field recordings exploitative, innovative, reverential, all of the above?
Are the folk songs enhanced by Moby’s reimagining or are they stripped of something essential and turned into something soulless?
Is the second half of the album a peaceful meditation, a metaphor for a breakdown, or Muzak?
Is licensing literally every song on this album a genius marketing move, savvy business, or evidence that perhaps it isn’t about exposing more people to folk music or anything so “artistic” at all?
Is Moby intending these questions or is he just a hack who stumbled into a profitable gimmick? I think if I thought he were intending them, I could forgive a lot more, but nothing about Moby suggests to me that he is that dude. I don’t think he cares if we think deeply about this. I think he just wants us to dance. Not to diminish that goal, which is fine, but then I’m going to evaluate things differently than if I thought this were a social commentary.
I see on previous listens I have liked five songs here (honey, find my baby, bodyrock, natural blues, and run on). Today natural blues, find my baby, and why does my heart feel so bad are the only three that hit for me. (Also, flower, always, but that’s a b-side.) Bodyrock especially feels … let’s say, of its time. Seeing that “like” is physically painful. It feels very much like a “I was 16 when this came out, this song made everyone dance, I have some nostalgic feelings tied up with it” like and not a “this song is actually good on its own terms” like. I also didn’t hate “my weakness” but I had to force myself to listen to it because I was ready to quit a couple songs from the end.
I think I come down on the side of liking the folk/electronic mashups while having conflicted feelings about them. I found an article from 2000 saying Moby hadn’t paid the Lomax estate (who recorded the originals) or the estates of the performers themselves: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2000/08/09/for-blues-artists-a-sad-refrain/5c0fdb33-682e-4feb-b03d-93edc7c81491/
And more googling didn’t uncover a satisfactory resolution to that story.
So let’s try to add that all up.
+1: introduced a lot of people to the Alan Lomax recordings
+1: incalculable cultural impact
+1: some bangers, for sure
+1: you have to have the idea to mix genres like this and then execute it
-1: exploitative refusal to share credit or profit
-1: the songs that don’t build off others’ work kinda suck, including one of the most lyrically boring rap(?) songs in existence and a generally bland second half
-1: I suspect I’ve thought more about the politics of this album this morning than Moby did while making it
I think we’re landing around a 2 or 3, and I have all weekend to consider whether I should separate the art from the artist/background, be less of a killjoy, just lay back and submit to the inevitability of Moby, and round up to a 3. I’ve already given plenty of terrible people high scores and when we get to Led Zeppelin (for example) that’ll continue, with more exploitation of black artists to boot.
Fela Kuti
4/5
Basically any Fela album is going to get four stars from me.
Butthole Surfers
1/5
wtf is this shit
Metallica
2/5
“No leaf clover” was new for this album, and it’s a highlight for me. And I appreciate the challenge of this. But it’s not a good result.
Prince
2/5
First disc nearly made me quit. Second disc brought it back.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
2/5
It’s wild to me that “under the bridge” and “give it away” are basically perfect songs and everything else here is mediocre.
Johnny Cash
3/5
Listened to Hurt a bunch of times. Listened to the rest of the album just the once, thank you.
Van Morrison
4/5
I think the only song I know going into this is Astral Weeks, and of the three Van Morrison songs I know it’s my favorite. Brown Eyed Girl is too cloying and Moondance is too (bad) jazzy. So, that’s promising, but his hit rate is not high.
Alright, upon listening, I fear I have to give this anti-vax conspiracy theorist his props. This is a beautiful album. It seems the awfulness of brown eyed girl and my mistaken belief that this album would sound like that have denied me some pleasure all these years. Gave it a second listen to see if it was a 5, but I think it’s merely a strong 4.
Germs
2/5
I must have listened to this before because “Lexicon Devil” is marked as liked on Spotify—three times, actually, from different releases. Still love that one. The rest are ok.
My Bloody Valentine
2/5
I’m never coming around on mbv, I’m afraid.
Bob Dylan
4/5
Between a 3 and a 4, I’m leaning 4. If I ranked the songs:
5 stars: tangled up in blue
4 stars: shelter from the storm
3 stars: everything else, with idiot wind my favorite of these
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
3/5
Maps is a classic. The rest I thought was just okay.
Björk
3/5
I’m sure I listened to this when it came out and may have revisited it once since then, but mostly I stick to earlier Bjork. In relisten, I still thought it was just okay.
Beastie Boys
5/5
One of my favorite albums ever. If I remember the 33 1/3 correctly, the dust brothers recorded all the samples on the album (104 of them, according to Wikipedia) directly to tape, meaning they’d have to rewind the tape and line up the timing exactly right to layer another sample or vocals on top of it. The care that went into this production is incredible. And they almost got sued by the Beatles, so they’ve got that going for them.
Favorite couplets:
There’s more to me than you’ll ever know / And I got more hits than Sadaharu Oh
Washing windows on the Bowery at a quarter to four / ‘cause he ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s Farm no more
I’m doing 120, plowing over mailboxes / radar detector, to tell me where the cops is
Cash flow getting low, so I had to pull a job / found a nice place to visit, but a better place to rob
Because it’s all high spirit, you know you got to hear it / Don’t touch the mic, baby, don’t come near it
Because I got more stories than JD’s got Salinger / I hold the title and you are the challenger
The Undertones
2/5
Meh
Songhoy Blues
3/5
Pre listen: Don’t know these guys, but if they’re like Tinariwen, I suspect I will like them.
After listening: it’s definitely the same genre, but I don’t get the same excitement from it. Gonna be a 3.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
3/5
Raekwon
4/5
Pre listen: alright, Cuban Linx, here we go again. Another try at getting this album to click.
After listening: it’s about where it always is for me, around a 3.5. I’m rounding up to 4 today, other days I’d round down to 3. Verbal Intercourse is the standout track every time, which is probably just me preferring Nas.
Buena Vista Social Club
3/5
I’ve listened to this before. As always, it’s fine.
Elis Regina
2/5
I listened to the whole album, but it was a near thing.
Sam Cooke
4/5
R.E.M.
5/5
Another all-timer. I got pretty into REM as a kid and ended up owning Eponymous, Out of Time, Monster, and this. A few years ago a podcast I like listened to their whole discography and I listened along. And while I recognize the impact Murmur had, for my money this is their best album.
Everybody knows “man on the moon” and “everybody hurts” but “sweetness follows” and “night swimming” are my personal favorites. There’s something about night swimming, especially. I’ve never been skinny dipping, and I’ve only been swimming in the dark a few times, but a song that’s about nostalgia and water and *feels* like a warm summer night is going to get me every time.
Also, might as well add this, even though it’s a bummer, because it is so indelible in my mind. A classmate died at school during sophomore year. His name was Andy. After school that day, the administration let students commandeer the PA system and I have such a distinct memory of other classmates playing “man on the moon” as we all left school in tears. It’s totally the wrong tone for that moment, but it does use the name Andy. So I can never hear that song without thinking of that moment.
Mekons
2/5
Meh. I appreciate this for paving the way for future alt-country albums, but that’s about the extent of it.
Radiohead
5/5
Coming in I was between a 4 and a 5. This isn’t as inventive as their later stuff. But I think I’m going to immerse my soul in love and give it a 5.
Also, I’m a sucker for the niche genre of “snotty song on the album after the big hit that comments on the massive rise to fame of a grunge band”: Nirvana’s “rape me,” Local H’s “all the kids are right,” and “my iron lung” are part of this illustrious tradition. “my iron lung” and “rape me” even musically sound like the big hits before them. Fun!
Incredible Bongo Band
2/5
Oh boy, that’s a lot of references to what’s at best a tertiary percussion instrument. Let’s see how this goes.
-I know Apache. The sugar hill gang version was a staple at college parties.
-I recognize “last bongo in Belgium” from the beastie boys’ “looking down the barrel of a gun.”
-I hate the more famous inna gadda da vita so this is arguably an improvement.
The Stone Roses
4/5
The last time I listened to this must have been a while ago, because I had two “starred” songs on Spotify, which was its system before “likes.” My guess is that was a decade ago that it switched. On review, I think I’m just going to like one of those: made of stone. Sorry, bye bye bad man.
I was pretty dead set on this being a 3, but I like the last two songs enough to consider a 4. May need to listen again.
Dire Straits
2/5
The Black Keys
3/5
“Everlasting Light” and the rest.
Neil Young
2/5
Pixies
5/5
Nearly a perfect album. Tough to choose a favorite song—Debaser? Wave of Mutilation? Here Comes Your Man? Monkey Gone to Heaven? Mr. Grieves? Hey?
Gigantic is the song that got me into them in high school, Bone Machine is the better opening track, and Where is My Mind is the one every Fight Club fan knows, but this outpaces Surfer Rosa as a complete album.
I will say, if I can offer a note on an undisputed classic, the closer should be No 13 Baby. That guitar solo could fade out and end the album. I think you could swap that one and Gouge Away and improve the sequencing measurably.
Miles Davis
4/5
Marvin Gaye
3/5
Before: “Oh, I’ve only heard one song off this album”
After: “Ah, I get now why I’ve only heard one song off this album”
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
2/5
Nope
Bee Gees
2/5
Better than I expected
Cheap Trick
3/5
I never knew where the “this next one is the first song off our new album” sample that begins the Beastie Boys’ “Check Your Head” album comes from. Now I know.
I had to read the Wikipedia article because I was confused why a band this big would go to Japan and play just 41 minutes. There I learned that at the time of this recording, they were *only* big in Japan and this album kickstarted their fame in the US. That makes a little(?) more sense? They’d only put out two albums, they hadn’t quite hit yet, I can support this now.
Nirvana
5/5
I’m surprising myself with how much I have to say about this. Scattered thoughts follow. The good:
-This rougher sound suits them better than the glossy production of Nevermind and over the years this has become my favorite album of theirs (some hipsters will say Bleach, but I don’t think the songwriting there was quite as consistent).
-Kurt’s fascination with ailments, illness, sickness, and medicine is always so fascinating. Offers a glimpse of what he was going through even at his young age.
-“There is nothing I could say / That I haven’t thought before” is chef’s kiss.
-“scentless apprentice” is the drum part I worked the hardest at learning when I had a drum set. I could play the bass and snare part consistently but it was tough throwing in the hi hat too. Dave’s fills on “all apologies” are also great.
The bad:
-I hear “rape me” as a song about the pressures and trappings of fame. Musically, I love it. Lyrically, maybe choose a different metaphor.
-Although I don’t hate it, I don’t think the album benefits from “Tourette’s.”
Going in, I knew it would be between a 4 and a 5, and I probably am there still after listening. Essentially a 4.5. I was curious if it was on my ongoing “fav albums” playlist and it was, which felt like a tiebreaker. I’ll give it 5.
CHIC
3/5
Don McLean
2/5
Except for the one song that holds up even on 10,000th listen, I won’t ever listen to these songs again.
But, I’ll say it again, I still appreciate this project for forcing me to listen to this much-recommended album.
Aretha Franklin
4/5
Al Green
4/5
Bob Dylan
4/5
I believe “rainy day women” was my first exposure to Dylan, from the Forrest Gump soundtrack. To this day, I don’t get it. Even by the standards of this album, which feels relaxed, loose, improvised, free, that song is a bridge too far. And lyrically, come on. Not the best way to introduce Dylan’s “genius.”
Arcade Fire
5/5
Nearly 20 years ago (11/17/04), I went to a Sufjan Stevens concert in Detroit. Afterwards, I ran into my high school friend, Meghan, who went to a different college. She told me I had to listen to this new band, Arcade Fire. Maybe the day after, she sent me this album via AOL Instant Messenger. I’ve been in love with the album ever since.
In my opinion, there is no better party-starting song than Wake Up. You might say, Joe, “I wanna dance with somebody” exists, and I hear you. But if you’ve ever seen a video of the band playing wake up in the middle of a crowd who are all singing along (https://youtu.be/G8QYnxIjHWg?si=OGDExS_Xe1RdlwfR), you know what I’m talking about. A perfect group singalong experience.
But Neighborhood 1-4, Rebellion, and Haiti are all great too.
Malcolm McLaren
3/5
Wilco
4/5
I might give this four stars without adding a song to my playlist. Just good vibes. (Well, bleak, depressing vibes, but they sound nice.) update: I did add a few.
George Harrison
3/5
Took me 7.75 actual hours to make it through, but I did it. Meh.
Beck
5/5
Muddy Waters
3/5
This was fine
Meat Puppets
3/5
Janis Joplin
3/5
Vacillated between “she has a good voice” and “she’s a good screamer” the whole time
Michael Jackson
2/5
The song “bad” has never worked for me because, while it seems like MJ was bad, he was not this tough guy. And upon listening to this album, several other songs don’t work in the same way. I cannot see MJ as a bad boy or casa nova.
The album sounds dated but I do have to give it to “the way you make me feel.” That still slaps. And “smooth criminal.” So probably a 2.5, rounding down for how I feel about MJ these days.
Public Enemy
3/5
Conscious rap or political rap goes back nearly as long as rap itself. “The Message” was 1980, maybe? But PE revolutionized the genre and brought the sonic tools to match their overwhelming, aggressive lyrics. A PE song feels like every inch of space is filled with sound, and that’s by design. It should feel claustrophobic. So, I was not surprised when Maggie came to me, almost ashamed, to admit she didn’t like it. Liking it is not the point, although modern conscious rappers like Kendrick, J. Cole, and Lupe Fiasco have found ways to serve up sugar with their medicine. In 1990, we maybe hadn’t gotten there yet. At the time, Flava Flav was that sugar, and by our standards, that’s not enough. No, this is supposed to hurt a little.
This one isn’t as good as It Takes A Nation…, neither as successful at accomplishing its own goals nor as fun, but it remains vital. 911 is still a joke in the communities PE cares about. Elvis remains a hero to most. Any number of recent tweets about JD Vance’s wife show there’s still a fear of a black or brown planet. But in the end, it’s an album I admire more than I love. I’m not too cool to still want some bops. I added “welcome to the terrordome” and “fight the power” to the playlist and kept it moving.
De La Soul
3/5
They’re fun but they leave me wanting more
Adele
4/5
Maybe a 3.5 rounded up. But a lot of fun songs here and some good ballads too
LTJ Bukem
1/5
The linked album and the listed tracks do not line up. The linked album is 3 hours long with the final two tracks seeming to be the full album duplicated in one continuous, trackless set. That’s a lot of nonsense for a genre I already hate. I listened to a few snippets and got the gist. One star.
Miriam Makeba
2/5
Her voice is great and I’ll never listen to this again.
Stevie Wonder
3/5
Leonard Cohen
2/5
Parts I didn’t like:
-boring songs
-inscrutable songs
-feeling like I needed an MFA in poetry to even begin to care about the songs
-no melody to the songs
-asking myself “is a pop album supposed to be fun or memorable?” roughly half a million times
-wanting to kill myself both from the songs’ content and their existence themselves, as songs
-that one song where he fingerpicks an arpeggio while he kinda talk-sings? You know the one
Parts I did like:
-only 41 minutes!
-based on that cover photo, Leonard cohen can totally get it
-feeling like a saucy medieval boy
-feeling like if I write some total pompous bs and also strum my guitar a little bit, I too can be a celebrated troubadour
-“hey, that’s no way to say goodbye” and also like a half point for “so long, Marianne”
Can
3/5
I listened enough to be intrigued and I liked it. I think I still need to give it a deeper listen. Maybe the 2-hour anniversary edition. For now, a 3
The Mothers Of Invention
2/5
Definitely one of the albums of all time
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
3/5
I knew The Message (the song) was good, but I was surprised how much I enjoyed the rest of this too
Elliott Smith
5/5
Random thoughts on an album I’ve listened to so many times it’s etched in my brain:
-Angeles, Cupids Trick, 2:45 am, and Say Yes is a murderer’s row to close an album.
-Angeles is guitar goals. I think Elliott remains an underrated player.
-In college and law school I had a job teaching test prep classes. One class was an hour’s commute to MSU and I distinctly recall being obsessed with 2:45 am and Built to Spill’s “I would hurt a fly” during that time period, so I would play those two songs repeatedly for the month or two I was commuting to teach that class a couple times a week.
-“the trumpet’s obviously been drinking, because he’s fucking up even the simplest lines” is such a good line, so specific and so biting, but it still feels like it says more about the narrator’s worldview
-I have a least favorite song (no name no. 5), but picking a favorite is nearly impossible. At various times it has been between the bars, rose parade, Angeles, 2:45 am, and say yes.
Neil Young
5/5
In fifth or sixth grade, I bought this and the Beatles’ Let it Be together, and those were my first “good” CDs I bought. When I bought this one, I don’t think I’d heard more than Heart of Gold, but, I mean, come on, it’s an incredible song.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
3/5
I like the title track and enough of “down by the river” to add it to my playlist, but the rest of this was pretty boring.
Genesis
2/5
Growing up, a Genesis live album (the way we walk vol 1) got a lot of play in our house. I have not listened to them since, you know, maybe 1996, but I thought I got it: cheesy 80s pop.
Turns out the truth is far, far worse.
More than that, though: I assumed this was an unpopular, critically acclaimed cult classic. Not so! This charted in the UK and US! Top 3 in the UK! A hit single! I’m baffled. People of 1973, you know you can listen to older stuff too, right? If the current stuff in 1973 isn’t doing it for you, don’t force it! Look back to the 60s or just sit a year or two out. Help is on the way.
Stephen Stills
3/5
Honestly, I didn’t finish. Ran out of time today. It was feeling like a 3, though.
Beatles
2/5
As it happens, I’ve listened to every Beatles album in the past 2 or 3 months. This is my least favorite. I like the title track and I really like “can’t buy me love.” Other than that, some songs are ok and some are bad. Oh god, are the Beatles about to be a “controversial artist” for me? It’s like the opposite of Neil Young (a couple bangers, a lot of dreck) with this album being the one “miss” in the Beatles catalog.
4/5
I’ve listened to this before but never gotten into it, so I had in my mind that it was a 2/3 album. After listening the first time, I thought it was a 3/4 album. By the end of second listen, I was persuaded to give 4. Very enjoyable.
Beatles
5/5
A perfect album.
Jimi Hendrix
3/5
The Young Rascals
2/5
Tough to imagine an album cover making a worse first impression. Let’s see how this goes.
Very funny to me that this week we’ve had Revolver (two songwriting geniuses at the height of their powers), Axis: Bold as Love (innovative guitar god), and now this album that seems to have been made by a group of enterprising high school students? With the help of their band teacher, they snuck into the studio and recorded their little songs. (Looked at Wikipedia: they were all like 23, so it kinda tracks.)
I was singing along to “I’m So Happy Now,” so I have to give it some credit, but wow, what a difference in the caliber of songwriting and the originality of playing from other albums this week. And I was familiar with “groovin,” but still don’t like it. This was a pretty boring, generic album. Probably a 2 but I could maybe talk myself into a 1 yet.
OutKast
4/5
Because it’s so long, I probably haven’t listened to this all the way through in 20 years. I have about nine favorites that I play occasionally, and I remember the rest being mediocre. Let’s see if this listen bears that out.
I think it’s a soft 4. There’s a lot I love (Bowtie, A Life in the Day…, Take Off Your Cool, Prototype), plenty more I like, and then way too many interludes. But very little is ill-conceived (my favorite things) or boring. I’m going to weigh the stuff I like more than the rest and round up to 4.
Sly & The Family Stone
3/5
David Bowie
4/5
Love Disco Bowie
Little Simz
4/5
I have this album saved as one of my favorites from 2019, but I haven’t returned to it, so I’m excited to do so.
Update: still liked it!
Paul McCartney
2/5
Overall meh, but an understandable meh. You just lost your best friend and your band and you can still write “maybe I’m amazed”? Pretty good
Jerry Lee Lewis
2/5
The Isley Brothers
3/5
John Lee Hooker
3/5
The Jam
3/5
I like this style of music, so this album will get a 3 on the strength of a collective. But really you could have picked virtually any album that sounds like this, and I contend there are *many*, and I’d give it a 3.
JAY Z
4/5
I don’t think this quite deserves its reputation, which is roughly “rap album of the 00s,” but it is a lot of fun for about the first half of the album. (That is not an endorsement of the subject matter of “girls, girls, girls,” but it *is* an endorsement of the soundscape and rapping on “girls, girls, girls.”)
“The ruler’s back” is a great opener. “Takeover” goes so hard (even if I think “ether” is better). “Izzo” is a fun pop song. “U don’t know” was a club banger. “Heart of the city” still sounds great.
I’m not sure I like more than one song after “heart of the city,” and that’s “renegade,” about which I do agree with Nas that “Eminem murdered [Jay-Z] on [his] own shit.” So it’s tough to give this a 5. Probably a 4.
Fleet Foxes
4/5
Wore this (mp3) album out in 2008/09. If I recall correctly, they got rockier on the second album and kept moving in that direction, but I could have done with another album or two of folk music and harmonies. (I mean, the only point of “heard them stirring” is to flex those harmonies.) I know I listened to Shore, their 2020 album, and I definitely enjoy Helplessness Blues, that second album, but this is the only one I return to with any regularity.
Sex Pistols
3/5
The Flying Burrito Brothers
2/5
I thought I was going to like this a lot. When the fuzzy guitar kicked in on the first track, I thought we were going to have a really innovative album of genre mashups. Instead I ended up thinking that it was mostly a country album that never got quite as weird as that first song augured.
Os Mutantes
2/5
Meh
Koffi Olomide
3/5
Fleetwood Mac
5/5
My favorites change every listen, but this time I felt:
5/5: The Chain, Dreams, Don’t Stop
4/5: Go Your Own Way, I Don’t Want to Know, Never Going Back Again, Gold Dust Woman
3/5: You Make Loving Fun, Second Hand News
2/5: Songbird, Oh Daddy
I’ll be honest. I wanted to do that to see if this was a 4 or a 5, and I don’t think that helped. It’s a very 4.5 album.
Led Zeppelin
5/5
Two classics of the ‘70s in a row. No doubt in my mind about the rating for this one. With any luck, Horses, Marquee Moon, or London Calling is next.
In junior high, when I bought this album for the first time, I was fascinated by the mythology around it. No name. The four symbols, each representing a band member. The artwork. I really wanted to figure out what Stairway to Heaven’s lyrics were about. My mom told me they’d play it at her high school dances but no one could quite figure out how to dance to it. I distinctly remember Amazon letting you play 30-second snippets of songs on RealPlayer(!) and the StH snippet began at “your head is humming and it won’t go…”; why that has stuck with me all these years is unclear. (My favorite solo in rock history [#basic] begins about 50 seconds later, so well beyond RealPlayer’s reach.) My dad said Misty Mountain Hop was his favorite, which even today strikes me as such a hipster choice. And when I learned the Beastie Boys sampled When the Levee Breaks, I thought that was the coolest.
As an adult, the album is imprinted on me, even if some parts seem a little sillier now. Battle of Evermore feels like a Spinal Tap joke, with LOTR references. The Ted Lasso joke that Stairway is a fingering exercise isn’t totally off base. Four Sticks remains skippable.
But it’s not falling below 5. Liking StH is cliche, I don’t care, it’s cliche because it’s one of the greatest rock songs ever. Black Dog, Levee, and Rock and Roll rock. Evermore and California show the range the band had. MMH is fun. A great band at the height of their powers with only minimal stealing from other bands (sorry, Spirit).
The White Stripes
4/5
The White Blood Cells - Elephant - Get Behind Me Satan run is incredible, but this is the weakest of the three.
Nine Inch Nails
3/5
2/5
I didn’t listen to the deluxe edition, just the regular. That was enough. Probably a 1.5.
Green Day
4/5
For once the shoe is on the other foot here, because I know this is an album Maggie knows well, and I’m not entirely sure I’ve ever listened to the whole thing. I owned Dookie, as was required of all junior high boys in the mid 90s, and I like the singles off Warning (2000) more than most people do, but I was out on GD after maybe 2002.
So, after listening, I knew the singles. It was basically impossible to miss them as a 20-year-old in 2004. Didn’t know the rest. And I know this is supposed to be a political album, but I didn’t pay enough attention to lyrics to catch a ton of that, after the title track. Definitely liked the album, though.
The Smiths
3/5
Keith Jarrett
2/5
Four million people bought this? Why?
Soft Cell
2/5
This is the album people think of when they say they hate 80s music. Or at least it will be for me.
Eric Clapton
2/5
Growing up, my parents owned “cream of Clapton,” which is a greatest hits album, get your mind out of the gutter. “I shot the sheriff” and “let it grow” were on there, and I still like let it grow. The rest of this album sucks.
Peter Gabriel
3/5
“Sledgehammer” and “in your eyes” are classics. I thought the rest was a little dated and thought him growling “EXCELLENT BIRDS” was silly.
Stevie Wonder
2/5
As much as I’d like to be a fan, I think Stevie just isn’t for me.
SZA
4/5
I like this
Giant Sand
1/5
I got far into this, but at the end of my commute to work I was still five songs from the end and hadn’t enjoyed a single minute, so I’m calling it. I didn’t *hate* it, exactly, but it’s firmly in the bottom 20% of albums in this project, so I’m giving it a 1.
Solange
3/5
5/5
Duh
Common
3/5
I get a little annoyed with people praising Common for being conscious rap. He’s not that different from a lot of other rap artists. There was one song maybe on here where he mentions police violence. The rest of it was just 00s-era hip hop, nothing special. I do like Testify and The Food. The rest was common.
Merle Haggard
2/5
This grew on me a little. Just a little, though.
Prince
5/5
I thought I disliked or was meh about half the songs, but then I listened and that’s not true. (“Take me with u” through “darling Nikki” is a fine run that I’m now convinced only feels weak relative to the rest of the album.) Plus 3-4 classics. 5 stars.
DJ Shadow
5/5
David Bowie
5/5
I hadn’t heard this until Summer of Bowie and it immediately leapt onto my favorite albums list. It’s so good.
Beck
3/5
Super Furry Animals
2/5
Meh
Red Snapper
3/5
Leonard Cohen
1/5
Hated this so much I searched the list to see how much more LC we have to endure. Two down, two to go.
The Verve
3/5
In the late 90s, we all fell under the spell of a long, rambling British pop song that felt vaguely spiritual and uplifting. Champagne Supernova. Tender. The Universal. All You Good Good People. And yes, Bitter Sweet Symphony.
This album dares to ask the question, “What if we made the whole plane out of those songs?” And let me tell you, unless you’re Blur, you just don’t have two of them in you. Two great ones, at least. (I did kind of like Lucky Man, I’ll admit, but it’s under 5 minutes, so I’m not even sure it counts, and it’s certainly not at the level required to justify this experiment.) So it’s a pretty disappointing album all told.
Arctic Monkeys
4/5
Senior year of college, my job involved a significant commute 2-3 days a week. This was the soundtrack to that commute (at least for the second half of that school year, since the album came out in January at the start of my final college semester). Didn’t have to listen today, because I know it pretty well. Dancefloor and Fake Tales are indie classics.
Mercury Rev
3/5
I’ve listened to this fairly recently—maybe within the last year?—because it was always one of those albums you hear about as important, but I had never before listened to it. Then, as now, it was fine. Goddess on a hiway is my highlight, and it seems Spotify users agree.
Joy Division
4/5
I would like to like this album more. Then I could justify wearing the t shirt or owning the record, with some of the coolest artwork ever. But I just think it’s good, not great.
Minor Threat
2/5
Not my favorite.
Amy Winehouse
3/5
It’s fine
Curtis Mayfield
4/5
I needed this. I needed this album generator to tell me, “You know you like Curtis Mayfield, yet you’ve never listened to a second album by him. Why is that?” Thank you, Daddy Album Generator.
Joanna Newsom
5/5
This is my third-favorite album by her, but it’s the one most beloved by critics and the fanbase. I think she’s the best lyricist working today.
Emily: a chorus? Weird.
M&B: Monkey’s speech reminds me of Donald Trump. His love for his followers is just and earnest. They just need to unlearn their allegiance to this life of service and follow him. And as long as they keep their fancy clothes on for a little while longer and dance appropriately, the reward of the bountiful hills will be theirs.
S&D: The idea of a lost baby (miscarriage? abortion?) waiting for you in the afterlife is heartbreaking.
The “I wasn’t born of a thistle” part, so good. “Enough of this terror, we deserve to know light.”
Only Skin: I know it’s not the point of the song, I know it’s not a love song (or at least not an unambiguous love song like we’re used to in pop music), but “I’m starving and freezing in my measly old bed / I’ll crawl cross the salt flats to stroke your sweet head” is a lovely phrase. Actually the whole part with Bill Callahan is amazing.
Cosmia: the one I’ve spent the least time with, this just means it’ll be my favorite five years from now.
An album that rewards repeat listens. Instrumentation and lyrics on point. Some people don’t like her voice but they are wrong.
N.E.R.D
3/5
This was ok
Eels
4/5
I was introduced to Eels in high school when, I swear, even though this seems implausible to me, “Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues” got radio airplay. I have been a fan ever since, albeit an inattentive, not at all completist fan. Still, I’m thankful I worked my way backwards, because “Electro-Shock Blues” is a five star, stone cold classic album.
This album is good. It will not replace ESB at the top of my Eels list. But it definitely has the same dark sense of humor and vibe that I love from this band.
Queen
2/5
Meh album from a meh band
Elvis Presley
3/5
Funny to think millions went crazy for this.
Michael Kiwanuka
4/5
Before: This album has a reputation on the subreddit as one of the gems of this project that people discover through this and immediately love, so I’m pretty excited.
After: very much enjoyed this. I think four stars for now and then a few months from now I’ll kick myself for not giving it five.
Also, after yesterday’s album from 1956, pretty incredible to get this leap in production value.
Sonic Youth
4/5
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
3/5
Miles Davis
4/5
Buddy Holly & The Crickets
3/5
Johnny Cash
3/5
A lot of totally fine albums lately. I’ll say for this one, I used to think he really did shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Turns out, no, just a song.
George Jones
2/5
Pros: I love steel guitar. Totally underrated instrument.
Cons: literally everything else
Deee-Lite
2/5
Don’t judge a book by its cover, but with that cover, we’re already in 2-star range.
Other bands have eponymous songs (e.g., the song “Black Sabbath” by the band Black Sabbath, off the album Black Sabbath), but something about adding “theme” to it really irritates me. Like it’s this classic motif we’re all supposed to know already. “Oh is that the Dee-Lite Theme?” I ask. “Yes,” you reply testily, as if I’d just bugged you to explain, yet again, which animal the flute represents in Peter and the Wolf.
In fifth grade—probably around the time I learned about Peter and the wolf, honestly—one of my classmates gave a speech on “how to give a good speech.” And it was fine, but with that topic, you really have to nail the speech, which is what my teacher told my classmate. This memory comes floating back to me as I hear someone intone “I just wanna hear a good beat” repeatedly over a pretty bland beat. Beat-wanter, heal thyself.
Jimmy Smith
4/5
Oasis
3/5
I’m not sure when I last listened all the way through this one (if ever). I usually stick to a handful of songs I know and love.
And after listening, I know why I stick with those. The gap between the four songs I love (rock and roll star, live forever, supersonic, and slide away) and the rest is large.
Gillian Welch
4/5
This genre is not my favorite, and that’s probably the difference between a 4 and a 5 here. Because within the limitations of this genre, I think Gillian Welch is the best.
Every song here is a (n Americana) banger, but you don’t end the album with a 14-minute song unless you think it’s a big artistic statement deserving of that space on the record. Luckily, it is (glares intently at The Doors).
This post talks about it well: https://www.nodepression.com/i-dream-a-highway-gillian-welchs-song-of-america-explicated/
But at its simplest level, I’ve always heard it as three things: a lament for an old way of Nashville/country music that isn’t coming back (in 2001! I wonder how she feels now), a love song in the style of an Odyssey—returning to someone from your past, and a death song (where the You is God). I’m not at all confident the lyrics support all of that, just a vibe I get. But what a beautiful, mysterious way to end the album. Sublime.
Megadeth
2/5
The Divine Comedy
1/5
If I made my own 1001 albums list, it would absolutely contain some terrible stuff that I personally adored, and I’m convinced that’s why albums like this one are on the list. I skipped the last two songs.
Green Day
5/5
I had some fear that this wasn’t going to hold up and it’d fall to 4 or even 3 stars. I needn’t have worried.
Because this album has such an emotional hold on me, I went to reviews to see what people who gave it less than a 5 said. It looks like there are a couple basic camps. One, people who think it’s too rudimentary, silly, or adolescent. It is all those things. Still a 5. In fact probably mainly a 5 because of those things. Two, people who protest that it isn’t punk enough. It’s not pure punk, true. (I’d say pop punk but wouldn’t get mad if someone said pop.) But I’m not upset with the album for not being something it’s not. It’s a fun, dumb pop punk/pop album.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
4/5
Adele
4/5
Better than I expected!
The Divine Comedy
2/5
Dexys Midnight Runners
2/5
I just know they were like, “what’s so hard about making Station to Station? We’ve got seven good long songs in us too!” Reader, they did not. They had one good short song in them that isn’t even on this album.
James Brown
3/5
Dolly Parton
2/5
It’s fine
G. Love & Special Sauce
1/5
I didn’t know Stoned College Roommates of America got to lobby for spots on this list
Tom Waits
3/5
A new one to me, but not my favorite. Waits can be hit or miss.
Pixies
2/5
There’s a reason people only listen to the two Pixies albums before this
Talking Heads
3/5
I’m sure I’ve listened to this before, but it isn’t one I know well. I know I love “born under punches” and, obviously, “once in a lifetime.” I have a distinct memory of once in a lifetime coming on the radio once when my dad was driving me to school and I was like, “WHAT is this?” (I think I had a similar reaction to a Frank Zappa song on another trip to school.)
Overall, just okay.
Talking Heads
3/5
I think this band is just ok
Jazmine Sullivan
4/5
I really liked this when it came out and put it on my list of favorite albums from 2021.
Ah yes, I forgot how great “lost one” is.
Scott Walker
4/5
I’ve never listened to Scott Walker before and my impression of him was that his music was cheesy, ornate, ostentatious, over the top. This is . . . close to that. But I’ve mostly thought it stays on the right side of the line (not “angels of ashes,” though). I like it.
Fishbone
4/5
I knew the band but had never listened to this album. I really liked it. I considered five stars but I think it’s more like a four. A few songs I really loved, like “mighty long way,” “bonin in the backyard,” and “change.”
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
3/5
Little known fact: “fooled again (I don’t like it)” is about the people who bought this album on the strength of “breakdown” and “American girl” and then learned the rest of the album wasn’t good.
Still three stars because it’s pleasant enough. A genre I like, an artist whose hits I enjoy, doesn’t overstay its welcome, this was never going to be below 3. But it’s two great singles and not a lot else.
Yes, Bob!
Reviewing in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau said, "Addicts of updated nostalgia and rock and roll readymades should find this a sly and authentic commentary on the evolving dilemma of Harold Teen. The songs are cute, the riffs executed with more dynamism than usual, and the singing attractively phlegmy. And like they say at the end of other cartoons, that's all, folks." Correct! He gave it a B+. Arguably, B+ = 4, but I’m sticking with my 3, despite my concurrence.
The Prodigy
4/5
I loved this album (and the “Breathe” video, omg, I’d never seen anything like that) so much in junior high I distinctly remember asking my parents if we could fly to Australia for my birthday to see them in concert. You’ll be shocked to learn that was a no.
After listening: still like it. A little long, a little repetitive, but solid.
Scissor Sisters
4/5
I didn’t really know what to expect and liked this more than I anticipated. “Glam rock” conjures some bands that aren’t my favorite. But maybe now this band is my favorite glam rock band?
Abdullah Ibrahim
2/5
There are a few jazz albums I like and then there’s stuff like this that all sounds the same
The Byrds
3/5
It’s ok
Iggy Pop
4/5
It seems like The Idiot was more Bowie and this was more Iggy. Love Bowie…but this far surpasses The Idiot. 4.5
Michael Jackson
5/5
Foo Fighters
3/5
Sugar
4/5
Sometimes you feel like a real dummy. When I was in sixth grade, “dark side of the moon” was probably my favorite album. Did I explore any more of Pink Floyd’s catalog? No, I did not. I probably did not know a single other song they did—except the “teachers leave those kids alone” song that got radio play—until college. This has proven to be a mistake. (If you, dear reader, have not heard of this obscure art-rock band called “Pink Floyd,” you should change that.)
So it is here. I love Bob Mould’s solo stuff (especially the sunshine rock album). I don’t love Husker Du, exactly, but it’s fine enough. Did I ever ask, “hey did Bob Mould do anything for the, like, 20 years in between those projects?” Nope! Stupid. Dumb. [insert saved by the bell gif]. “Did Bob Mould, grunge grandfather, play music in the 90s, the grunge golden age?” What an obvious question to ask, he said, wondering why he never asked it.
Anyway, I loved this from the first minute, obviously. I was singing along to helpless the first time I heard it; that’s undeniably catchy. This is like pure nostalgia for an experience I never had in the 90s but, at the same time, kinda did listening to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, etc.
The Flaming Lips
4/5
Radiohead
3/5
Duke Ellington
1/5
I made it about 45 minutes
Laura Nyro
4/5
This is an album that’s on my playlist of my favorite albums, and I have seven songs from it “liked” on Spotify. Those are signs of a five star. But today it didn’t hit me that hard, which speaks to how subjective these things are. I’m calling it four stars today, but anyone who reads this should know at one point it was a 5 and it may be a 5 again in the right circumstances.
Various Artists
3/5
It’s a good Christmas album, but it’s still just a Christmas album
The Monks
3/5
Rage Against The Machine
5/5
Got this in high school. You cannot imagine how hard “killing in the name” hit in high school.
Yes, I still love this.
A Tribe Called Quest
4/5
I’m sure I’ve listened to this before, but the only songs I was confident I knew were “el segundo” and “can I kick it.”
I thought about a 5, but I think it falls short. The back half felt weaker than the front half and even the original length (setting aside the remixes on the 25th anniversary edition) is maybe a little too long.
Mike Oldfield
2/5
Liked this more than I expected to! A solid 2!
TV On The Radio
4/5
I have heard this before. I have DLZ saved as a liked track.
After listening, I also “liked” family tree. I generally think TVOTR is a 3.5 band who are good for 1-2 songs I like per album. So it is here. I’ll round up to a 4.
Adam & The Ants
2/5
Van Halen
3/5
I assume everyone has heard five of the first six songs? I like “ain’t talkin bout love.” And then the other songs were fine. Oh, wait, “little dreamer” I like more than the rest of side two. Two songs to the playlist.
Stevie Wonder
4/5
Better than our other Stevie albums
Kraftwerk
3/5
I didn’t love the title track, but the rest was enjoyable
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart
3/5
10 songs, 51 minutes on its face isn’t super long. But when every song is the same idea—let’s marinate in an unchanging, unceasing rhythm for 4-6 minutes—it feels so much longer than it is. I even scrolled through the last two songs (patience: exhausted) and the same beat was playing at every point I stopped. A lot of two-minute ideas extended to five minutes. I think I might even love this if every song were a minute shorter.
Muddy Waters
3/5
Solid, dependable, workmanlike
Otis Redding
4/5
I’ve noticed a trend in my reviews where I explain why a very good album doesn’t quite deserve five stars. It is tedious even to me. Yet here we are again: this is cheating. You take one of the greatest soul singers, give him a lineup of great soul songs, and then package it as an album. This isn’t an album the way we understand it. This is a greatest hits, an all-star game, a dream karaoke situation. I’m not giving this five stars.
Yes
3/5
This was fine. “I’ve seen all good people” is great.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
3/5
The Human League
2/5
I knew this would be a struggle and it was. “Seconds” was surprising in a good way, though.
Lightning Bolt
3/5
Maggie told me this was awful. I thought it was fine, at times enjoyable. I didn’t hate it. Maybe a 2.5.
Lynyrd Skynyrd
4/5
The math on this one is tough. Three of my favorite classic rock songs (Free Bird, Tuesday’s Gone, Simple Man), one of my least favorite (Gimme Three Steps), and a bunch of other songs that, yep, are adequate southern rock album tracks.
Dusty Springfield
3/5
Nothing unpleasant about this, but nothing that wowed me either. I thought it wore out its welcome just a touch, although as I write that I’m enjoying the final song. Maybe cut 2-3 just before this final one.
Fela Kuti
4/5
Not too many people can make an anti-war album so good the military retaliates against you. Fewer still can do that with an album that sounds this good musically.
The Sabres Of Paradise
2/5
I think of myself as someone who likes dance music, but this website probably thinks I hate it because it keeps serving up these boring albums.
Rod Stewart
2/5
Meh
Santana
3/5
Beforehand, I was familiar with black magic woman and oye como va, both of which I think are fine. The real surprise for me here was “Hope you’re feeling better,” which I genuinely loved. This is a 3 album with one 5 song on it, as far as I’m concerned.
Run-D.M.C.
4/5
Morrissey
3/5
Alexander 'Skip' Spence
4/5
I’m a sucker for a good backstory. This interested me before I even turned it on. And then, it was pretty good to boot.
Holger Czukay
2/5
No thanks.
The Smiths
3/5
This was pretty good. I really liked stop me if you think….
Dr. Dre
5/5
Something that’s always bothered me: if he’s unfadeable, couldn’t I *try* to fade this? It would presumably be fruitless, because he’s unfadeable, but asking me (politely) not to try fading this right after you’ve told me you’re unfadeable feels suspicious. Are you as unfadeable as you say you are?
The album as a whole: unfadeable. Don’t waste your time trying to fade this.
Björk
4/5
I remembered not liking this, but I really do. I think I just don’t like it *as much* as Post, Homogenic, and Vespertine.
Thelonious Monk
2/5
This was ok
Brian Wilson
3/5
I don’t get it.
Here’s what I think happened: Brian Wilson is a genius. He is also a perfectionist. Faced with the singular failure of his 60s-era career, he spent approximately 35 years tinkering with this album, ultimately producing a work filled with half-baked ideas. Again, he’s a genius, so some of them kind of work on their own, but there’s no sense of cohesion.
Billy Joel
2/5
Going into this: “Scenes from an Italian restaurant” is the one song of his I like. “Movin out” and “just the way you are” are among my least favorite pop songs by anyone.
Listening:
-okay, “Vienna” isn’t bad either. Am I just a fan of Billy Joel deep cuts?
-I didn’t realize how many truly awful people got most of their personality from “only the good die young”. Late ‘70s high school yearbooks hate to see that song coming.
-“she’s always a woman” is a new contender for least favorite Billy Joel song. Got a metric ton of competition. River of dreams is *tough*.
Alright, two songs I like. I want to hate “only the good die young” but it is catchy, I will admit that. Just hate the lyrics. And then six truly terrible songs I would prefer not to hear again for the rest of my life. Let’s call that a 2.
Funkadelic
4/5
According to Wikipedia, the first six songs of the version we found on YouTube were the original LP, and the last two songs were part of a three-song “bonus EP” that came with the record. No word on that third song. Anyway, if it were just the first six songs, probably a 3 for me. They’re all fine. I especially have fond memories of Ice Cube’s “Bop Gun,” which heavily samples “one nation under a groove” and was a staple of high school cross country. But a little long, a little repetitive.
But those last two songs, wow. Huge fan. Especially the final one, which sounds like a funk “Cortez the killer.” They were enough to boost this to four.
Underworld
4/5
Fun
M.I.A.
4/5
Somebody in my senior thesis cohort learned I liked rap and slipped me a burned CD-R with this on it. What a kindness.
James Taylor
2/5
I like “fire and rain” and I think his voice is pleasant. Here he uses it in service of an incredibly boring album.
I’m not sure when I would ever listen to this. Not sure what mood this sets.
Nirvana
4/5
Beastie Boys
3/5
Strangely meditative for a rap album*. I felt very at peace. But it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. I may have to return later with different expectations.
*Sabotage excluded.
Beatles
4/5
The most overrated album in existence. People were sad because their favorite band broke up and they haven’t stopped feeling those feelings for 50 years.
Still, I don’t dislike it. Last year I rated it 7/10, this time I’ll give it a soft 4/5. The medley is fun and I love Oh Darling. The rest of the first half, meh. I could live without hearing Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, She’s so Heavy, Come Together, Something, or Here Comes the Sun ever again.
Love
2/5
This was coasting to a 3–fine, nothing special, but not bad either—until that last song, which was interminable.
Doves
3/5
Two albums into my Doves journey, I get it. The long songs where they can really build are the highlights. I just wonder if they ever get confused about which song they’re playing live: is it the soaring long one or the other soaring long one or the other soaring long one? “The Cedar Room” was my favorite track from the other album and I honest to god thought they were playing it again 2-3 times on this one.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
3/5
The Doors
4/5
I think I tapped out of Doors fandom after the much-heralded debut album. So I’ve never listened to this before, but I really liked it. The opener, especially.
The Cult
1/5
Wikipedia mentions a review calling this the “worst version of born to be wild.” I think, well, I have to listen to that right now. I made it 35 seconds. It was indeed terrible. Now I have to listen to this whole album with that first impression.
Earlier in this project I wrote that I was giving an album 1 star because it was in the bottom 20% of albums in this project. I feel some embarrassment over that comment because a standard bell curve wouldn’t produce an even 20% in each ratting 1-5. (The album did suck and I stand by my 1.) I just noticed yesterday that I’m awarding 5s at a rate of about 1/10. Analogizing from that, I should be awarding 1s at approximately the same pace and I’m not. This was a borderline 1/2 for me, but armed with this new confidence to award more 1s, I’m giving it a 1.
Also, “love removal machine” sent me scurrying to my guitar tabs app to see how close that riff was to “start me up.” Pretty close! Different enough for copyright purposes, I’d say, to be fair. And then the singer’s way he sings “baby baby baby baby” in that song is awfully similar to Robert Plant in “babe I’m gonna leave you.” So that song, at least, reminded me of two much better songs, which was pleasant.
Getting to “born to be wild” this second time is so strange. I swear he’s singing worse (on purpose?) on this song than on the other songs. If I could confidently say this was a parody, I might like it more. But I don’t think it is.
“Outlaw” was perhaps the worst song on the album, and I gave up on it. And I was offended that they called a song “Memphis hip shake,” which implies fun, musicality, and coolness, all of which this album lacks.
Simon & Garfunkel
3/5
America is great, Mrs. Robinson is great, and I thought the rest was meh. “At the zoo” maybe meh-plus. I had to restrain myself from throwing my phone across the room while Paul Simon was singing about being a boysenberry jam fan. He’s just the worst.
David Bowie
3/5
Joan Armatrading
5/5
Jeff Buckley
5/5
Easy five. A beloved childhood favorite.
Elton John
4/5
Liked this more than I expected to
Khaled
4/5
I really liked this! And it sounded more contemporary than I expected
Eagles
5/5
I cannot recall ever listening to this album, yet I knew virtually every song. When I was a small, small kid, I definitely listened to a ton of Eagles, especially Greatest Hits vol 2 (which explains knowing four of these), The Long Run, and Hell Freezes Over (which explains another three of these). Ah, there we go, only “try and love again” hasn’t been permanently etched into my brain. I knew I’d know the first 3 big singles, but it was a pleasant surprise getting hit with nostalgia on every other song, too. “Hotel California” was one of the first songs to make me realize lyrics can have deeper meanings, too. (Before that, I was not probing Kriss Kross for meaning. They’ll make you jump. Full stop.)
Also, in the “life is funny” category: distinctly remember listening to “the long run” on cassette tape while I played video games, age 10 or so. Today, how’d I listen to this album? On my phone while playing video games.
Hard not to give that a 5: I’ve loved all these songs for a long time. Maybe not “life in the fast lane,” which sounds the most dated, but some of the others hold up. I may have to hand in my hipster card.
I will also say, apart from any nostalgia: these guys can write a great final minute of a song. I’m not confident the songs in whole would stand on their own if I was just hearing them for the first time, but the last minutes of Hotel California, New Kid in Town, and Try and Love Again introduce musical ideas that are the best parts of the songs (the entire solo of HC is its best part), the final minute of Wasted Time complicates its lyrics interestingly, and the final minutes of Victim of Love and Life in the Fast Lane just thump you over the head with their respective best parts, which is never a bad songwriting idea. The final minute of The Last Resort is a fitting coda to the song and album. I award no bonus points to the final minute of pretty maids. You really blew it, pretty maids.
MGMT
3/5
Those three songs (I don’t need to name them, but just in case: time to pretend, electric feel, and kids) were inescapable in 2007-08. I think I even saw these guys at Lollapalooza around then.
And, as I remembered, the rest of the album is just okay. Between a 3 and a 4 on the strength of those three songs and some scattered nice moments, but I think ultimately a 3 reflects the whole of the album more accurately.
The Who
4/5
Dion
4/5
Five minutes in: this is the Runaround Sue guy?
This is my jam. I like runaround Sue and its frivolous ilk, but this feels so stately. I’m into it. My least favorite song is the last one, “good lovin’ man,” which feels more like what I expected from Dion.
Eurythmics
2/5
The past couple weeks have had me feeling like a big softie, ratings-wise. Luckily this shitshow came along to remind me what it is to hate.
Mostly “2” songs + “sweet dreams” = potential 3, then minus 1 point for “this city never sleeps” = back at 2
2/5
Ah yeah, another two. We’re on a roll.
Johnny Cash
3/5
Radiohead
4/5
“Kid B” is a little less accessible or fun or, let’s say, good than some of their other entries. But I still like it.
Rapid fire “last song on Radiohead album” power rankings:
Street Spirit
Life in a Glasshouse
Motion Picture Soundtrack
Videotape
True Love Waits
The Tourist
—-big gap——
A wolf at the door
Separator
Blow out
Miles Davis
4/5
Liked this more than I expected to. Didn’t expect all the guitar, which was a pleasant surprise. If it were shorter, I would have listened twice. This may go on a playlist for when Maggie is out of town.
Led Zeppelin
4/5
Great: Whole Lotta Love, Heartbreaker, Ramble On (not a lot of bands could pull off this many sexual innuendoes and a gollum reference on one album)
Good: The Lemon Song, Moby Dick (an all-time “oh yeah, *this* riff” song), Thank You, Bring it on Home (another one of those riff songs)
Meh: What is…, LLM
Carole King
3/5
This album is beloved by millions, so I want to be clear that I’m the one who’s wrong. But it just sounds like a decent pop album to me.
One of my initial thoughts listening today was that the production sounds dated and thin. Top review on the album page for this project mentions how great the production is.
I think, man, her voice is not for me. Top review is about how well she uses it.
I think, lyrics are fine but nothing to write home about. Top review: these are “highly evocative” lyrics. Evoking what? Maybe top review just doesn’t know what words mean. Carole King: “winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call…” That reviewer: “wow that is all the seasons! I felt them!”
I do 100% agree with the second review that women are underrepresented on the list. And I don’t have any issue with this being on the list, given its immense popularity. Still, between a 3 and a 4 for me. I really like “it’s too late” but that’s about it. Oh I do kinda like “you make me feel like a natural woman,” but I greatly prefer Aretha’s version.
Nick Drake
3/5
The title track is great, but he’s always hit or miss for me.
Pink Floyd
5/5
Another one of the albums that got me to move from top 40 to indie/alternative stuff in middle school. And probably still the classic rock album I put on the most. Just an absolute classic from top to bottom.
As I think more about this, I remember that sixth grade was incredibly difficult for me. A new school, roughly 3x the size of my elementary school, with new cliques to navigate. A lot of my friends seemed to adjust quickly, and I didn’t. School was harder and I didn’t coast to the best grades anymore. I was in the middle of puberty. I felt like everything was changing too rapidly to keep pace and that made me terribly sad. And at the end of the school year my dad announced we were moving. Against that backdrop, this album came into my life. There has rarely been a sixth grade American child so primed to 100% *feel* “The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older / Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death.”
“Time” and “Money,” especially, got their hooks into me. (I have tried to make a career of “do goody good bullshit.” “Money” may legitimately have been my introduction to class consciousness.) You can have alarm clocks on a pop record? You can use a cash register as a drum machine? You can have a “Breathe” verse at the end of “Time”? I was awed at a record with instrumental tracks. I didn’t understand having a guest vocalist (say, on “the great gig in the sky”) and that just fed into the mythos of this album: you can do that? I heard this before Abbey Road so the two-part “medley” of songs at the end also blew my mind. This album changed how I thought about albums and music in general, and it has been a steady companion since. There will not be an easier 5 in this project, because I think no album better meets the criteria.
Todd Rundgren
2/5
The medley of covers almost saved this (by which I mean a 3). But I think the rest of it was bad enough.
New York Dolls
3/5
It’s fine. I think in 1973 I would have loved it. But in 2025, I just want to listen to the Clash, Ramones, or Strokes, or whoever else obviously grew out of this.
Ali Farka Touré
3/5
This was a great “listen while working” album today, and I suspect it would be a lovely “easing into Sunday morning” album too. But I can’t imagine any other times I would put it on.
The Notorious B.I.G.
5/5
Going in, I already know this is between a 4 and a 5. The difficulty in rating this album is that about half of the songs are absolute classics, and the other half are okay or worse than okay.
Upon listening, I enjoyed enough of the “bad” half that I feel comfortable elevating this to a 5.
“Juicy,” “Warning,” and “Things Done Changed” deserve all their hype, but to this day I’ve never heard a song like “Suicidal Thoughts.” It’s so dark but at the end of an album filled with such bravado, it’s striking and intense. Tough to say I “love” it, exactly, but I love the creativity and vulnerability.
Depeche Mode
3/5
Boston
3/5
Besides “more than a feeling,” I can never remember which songs on this I like. I had the first three songs liked on Spotify, so there was some pleasant anticipation because I could not remember what those other two were.
And then there’s the rest of the album! Don’t get me wrong, I would have bought this too based on those three songs if it were 1976 and streaming didn’t exist. But the rest is a letdown.
The real revelation is the Wikipedia page. I assumed Boston was, idk, Journey but better, or Aerosmith but less toxic. But it’s just one genius dude?
“Scholz is an MIT-trained engineer who designed and built his own recording studio in an apartment basement in the early 1970s. A fan of rock music throughout his teen years, Scholz began writing songs while earning his master's degree at MIT. The first Boston album was mostly recorded in his basement studio, primarily using devices he invented. After the success of Boston, he founded Scholz Research & Development, Inc. to develop and market his inventions, many under the Rockman brand. Scholz holds several patents related to his work at SR&D over the years.
He was described by AllMusic as an "un-rock n' roll" figure who did not enjoy the limelight of being a performer, preferring to concentrate on music, production, and inventing new electronic equipment. In more recent years, he has dedicated much of his money and time to charitable work.”
Never again will I talk shit about Boston. Except to say this album is three classic rock songs and not a whole lot else, and the rest of their catalog is totally forgettable. Okay, NOW I won’t talk shit about Boston.
The Kinks
3/5
I don’t think I’d ever heard “afternoon tea.” I liked it.
Miles Davis
3/5
Funkadelic
5/5
First song’s first riff sounds like Radiohead’s “a wolf at the door.” Second song clearly sampled in sleigh bells’ “rill rill.” Loving this so far, not just because of these connections. Oh there’s another one — Atmosphere’s “Los Angeles” uses the same PA announcement that’s in wars of Armageddon. Almost like this is an influential album.
I’m between four and five but I listened to this probably five times this weekend, so I think I’ll round up.
Hugh Masekela
4/5
My Bloody Valentine
3/5
I’ve really tried to get into this over the years. Never have. Is today the day? Or is it my usual thoughts: an incredible first four seconds and then not much else after?
Okay, I do like it more than that—more than four seconds. But none of these songs ever get in my bones. They’re fine and then I forget about them. “Sometimes” got closer to that this time, and I like the riffs from only shallow, when you sleep, and I only said.
B.B. King
3/5
Didn’t expect to ascertain the origin of a primitive radio gods sample today.
Wu-Tang Clan
4/5
I knew this would be between a 4 and a 5. But I think when I listen to this normally, I play “bring da ruckus” and then skip straight to “cream.” The cream / method man / protect ya neck / tearz run is great, but the first half of the album is not my favorite.
Beatles
4/5
This is my favorite of the early-career stuff. But a lot of that credit belongs to Motown. And there are some real clunkers here too. Four stars.
Rush
2/5
The one memory I have of anything Rush-related is of other drummers at band camp geeking out over Neil Peart. I appreciate Peart, but I’m never going to fall in love with a band because of their drummer. Mayyyyyybe John Bonham, but that’s about it.
I’ve heard Tom Sawyer on classic rock radio but have never willingly listened to it until today. And (three songs in) I’m getting exactly the vibe I expected of Rush: it’s complicated and technical, but it isn’t pleasing. Oh I’ve heard Limelight before. Meh all around.
R.E.M.
4/5
Tim Buckley
1/5
I was thinking “2” the whole time, but honestly, I don’t think I enjoyed more than a minute of this. I was wishing for it to be over by song three. If that’s not a 1, what is.
Queens of the Stone Age
3/5
I can’t be mad at more 90s rock. That’s my wheelhouse. But it is really funny to think of the 1001 authors sitting down to be like, “you have *got* to hear this average example of a genre already well represented, both in pop culture and in our book, before you die.”
Stan Getz
1/5
39 minutes my ears will never get back
Bob Dylan
5/5
I don’t think I’ve listened to his version of Mr. Tambourine Man in a million years. William Shatner ruined it for me. But it’s really a great song.
Chicago
3/5
Here’s the give and take of Chicago: I really liked the horns on the first song. I was into that song almost from the jump. Then there was, like, a three-minute instrumental break in the middle of the song. When they’re doing pop, I think I really like them. When they’re doing jazz, I’m way less into it.
Oh here’s another one: Poem 58. Were there lyrics before about 5 minutes into this? I zoned out and now I like the last 3 minutes.
This is probably a 3.5, but closer to a 3. A 3.49 album? Anyway, 3 it is.
Bonnie "Prince" Billy
3/5
Bee Gees
3/5
5/5
When I think back to the mid 90s, I have such a fondness for albums like Dookie, Blue Album, and Mellon Collie…, but in truth I think it took a while to warm up to them. This one, though, I loved immediately. Except for “she’s electric,” I love every single song. And I learned we are a house divided: I think “cast no shadow” might be the best song here, and I think “morning glory” might be the most fun song here; Maggie thinks those are the two weakest. Like the Gallagher brothers, we too are at odds. Will we go our separate ways for 20 years only to reunite for that sweet, sweet reunion-tour cash? Time will tell!
Black Sabbath
5/5
Side A has to be in contention for “greatest first four songs on an album.” Second half is a slight let down, but anything would be.
Another pivotal childhood album. My friend who grew up to be a gigging bassist got into the Dead, this album, the Doors, and Blue Oyster Cult in junior high, and introduced me to all of them. (I don’t *think* he was getting stoned in junior high, I just think his parents were, and they introduced him to this music.) BOC, meh. The Doors, meh. GD is hit or miss. But this album stuck and has never gone away. Odds are extremely high I’ll practice Paranoid, Iron Man, or War Pigs on the guitar later.
And I don’t think it’s a hot take to trace back all my favorite sub genres of metal to this album, “Planet Caravan” in particular. The band Sleep doesn’t exist without that song, I’m convinced. (I now see the top review for this album credits “Electric Funeral” for sludge metal. The review’s not wrong. The real marvel is the diversity of sound among these songs, and the credible claim several of them would have on later subgenres. It’s a little like hearing a foundational document of a religion that later had all kinds of schisms.)
Bob Dylan
4/5
Einstürzende Neubauten
2/5
Five days after seeing a standup comedian reference this band in her set, we are blessed with this: the least liked or second-least liked album in the collection. Certainly not my favorite album so far, but far from my least favorite. At least it’s not fucking Peter Frampton.
Oh hey, I actually liked the title track! What a fun surprise. I was totally expecting a “I respect this but I don’t like it” album and I maybe like it ever so slightly more than that. Not going to get a lot of airplay in the house, though.
I’m actually torn between a 1 and a 2. I was never bored! That’s good! But I only liked the one song. I’ve given 1s to albums with songs I liked before. Much to consider. You know, I think I’m going 2 for the simple reason that I do think this is worth listening to once, which sets it apart from much of the 1s I’ve awarded. This is very much in the spirit of the project and I appreciate that.
White Denim
3/5
Big Brother & The Holding Company
3/5
The White Stripes
4/5
I don’t think this is as consistent as Elephant, but it is the album that got me into this band, and I love it.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
3/5
I think “our house” is one of the best songs in the pop canon, I think “helpless” is also pretty great, and then there’s also the rest of the album!
Stereolab
2/5
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
2/5
Led Zeppelin
4/5
Owned this as a kid but would rank it third behind the other two LZ albums I owned: I and IV. Listening to it today, man, if it were just disc one and “ten years gone,” we’d all remember this as one of the greatest rock albums ever. If my math is right, that’s about a 50-minute album chock full of bangers. Instead the second disc is so bloated. At least on streaming, you don’t have to remove disc one just to play the one song on disc two that’s any good.
Nina Simone
4/5
Korn
1/5
It seems “got the life” got its hooks into me so thoroughly when this first came out that I still like it. The rest, though…
Frank Sinatra
2/5
Meh
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
2/5
Pearl Jam
5/5
My memory of this album, which I owned as a child, was that tracks 1-6 are a surefire 5-star side A, and side B is forgettable. But lemme tell you, once the chorus hit on Garden, I knew this was getting rounded up from the 4.5 it probably is. Oh, and Release is great too! Side B is fine! It may not have Even Flow, Alive, Black, and Jeremy, but who does?
The Who
2/5
For the entire first half, I was debating how long I’d have to listen to give this a fair shake. I decided I’d go through “pinball wizard,” the one song I knew I knew. I did that. Then, I had to run a quick errand and while doing that, I got through “go to the mirror,” which I actually liked. That was one of those “I’ve heard this song before but didn’t know it” songs. From there, it felt like I was pretty close to the end, so I decided to finish it. Oof. What a mistake. Each of the final three songs had me itching for the stop button. But I did it. Bravery. A 1.5 rounded up.
Slade
1/5
I’m getting, like, insecure AC/DC? Each song should be maybe 20% slower to let it breathe and strut a little more.
Also, and I fully cop to being a huge nerd, the misspelled titles just make it harder to remember the songs. If I liked “mama weer all crazee now,” (and I don’t, to be clear), it takes an extra half-second to translate that into “mama, we’re all crazy now,” which is an unnecessary barrier to replaying it. Real unforced error, Slade.
Robert Wyatt
3/5
One of the top reviews on this site says that if you hate this album, stop after one listen, but if you kiiiinda like it, listen again and see if it grows on you. That latter describes me well. I listened twice today and I think it’s a 3.5, but it has potential to keep going up. There’s something quite charming about the album. I especially liked Alife, with Sea Song and Robin Hood trailing just behind it.
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
3/5
Musically, I really liked this. Personally, *I* might have written fewer lyrics about gang bangs, but to each their own.
Nick Drake
5/5
I find it hard to believe I’ve never listened to this all the way through—I went through (what I then considered) a big Nick Drake phase in college, and there isn’t that much to sustain a “phase”—but this felt like a discovery. Maybe I just haven’t listened in 15-20 years because I didn’t get it then. Maybe I just listened to “pink moon” on repeat? I knew “one of these things first,” “fly,” and “northern sky,” but I really liked some of the others I was un(?) (less?) familiar with. “Hazey Jane I” was a standout. I much prefer full-band Nick Drake to solo Nick Drake, it turns out.
Alanis Morissette
4/5
Hole
4/5
My memory of this album was that it was “doll parts” and not much else. Actually I think it’s really solid! Although “doll parts” does remain my favorite.
Dr. Octagon
3/5
Fine. I liked “earth people” and “blue flowers,” but the song that actually made me sit up, my clear favorite, was “bear witness,” which barely has any lyrics. Maybe says something about something, that.
Depeche Mode
4/5
Air
5/5
Van Morrison
3/5
I liked this okay enough. I think I slightly prefer it when he is being jazzier and less poppy.
TLC
3/5
Verdict:
Crazy? In 2025, there is something “crazy” about having Diddy intoning “crazy, sexy, cool” on your record, but I can’t blame 1994 TLC for including him. I doubt they knew. “Ready to Die” only came out two months before this album; Diddy hadn’t even gotten big yet. I give this a 1/10 crazy.
Sexy? Yeah, so much so I’m surprised we had this in our house when I was 11.
Cool? In the 90s, you could not get cooler than this album. But its production now feels a little dated. I haven’t even watched the Waterfalls video and its CGI attempts. So, not awarding full “cool” points.
The Clash
5/5
Pre listen: Oh man. Will this be a 4 or a 5? I love basically the first 12 songs, but then I usually skip to Train in Vain. Been a long time since I’ve listened to tracks 13-18. Also, the most iconic cover in rock: Elvis reference subverted, incredible picture.
In high school, we had a spirit week theme day called “clash day.” Most people wore stripes with polka dots or orange with red. The coolest guy in band class wore a shirt that said “Rudie Can’t Fail.” Perfect. No notes.
Listening: everyone says this, but it’s amazing how many genres are represented on this album. Nearly every song is a different style.
I’ve owned this album for 25 years and I genuinely have no memory of ever listening to “I’m Not Down.”
So, I think I’m going with 5. It remains my opinion that tracks 13-18 are “filler,” but I still like them, if that makes sense. It’s four-star filler. There are a dozen-ish classics on this album and I don’t care to penalize it for being ever so slightly bloated. Train in Vain, Rudie, Clampdown, Supermarket, Death or Glory, and London Calling all on one album can persuade me to forgive all sorts of things.
Also, I listened to a remastered version and I noticed a couple small differences. There’s a little guitar lick around 2:17 of Rudie that I hadn’t heard before, and I swear the vocals on Train in Vain are pushed more forward in the mix than previously, which gives it a more vulnerable sound. I think in other places it’s less muddy too. Fun little details.
Sarah Vaughan
2/5
Maybe it’s just because the song title “honeysuckle rose” put me in mind of this, but her voice reminds me of honey. But, it’s used in service of songs I do not care about or particularly enjoy.
I thought I kinda liked jazz before this project, and now it feels like I’m learning I hate it? I just have very specific jazz interests.
Frank Zappa
3/5
Pretty fun
Lorde
4/5
When this came out, it got a large amount of hype, and I really tried, but I didn’t get it. I maybe liked it a little more today, but still not fully there. I want Lorde to be a different artist than she wants to be here. That’s fine. She’s allowed to change as an artist and I’m allowed to not follow her. This is like a 3.5, but I’ll round up.
T. Rex
3/5
The Waterboys
4/5
The Beach Boys
3/5
Violent Femmes
3/5
Nas
5/5
It probably took me a dozen listens to “get” this when I bought it in college, and then it became an obsession. Now it’s probably a top 10 album for me, and in my (hardly unique) opinion the greatest rap album of all time.
The Pogues
3/5
The Mothers Of Invention
3/5
Maybe 3.5? I didn’t have time to listen multiple times today but I’d come back to it
fIREHOSE
3/5
Earth, Wind & Fire
3/5
In my head, “shining star” was kinda cheesy, but I was wrong. Maybe I never paid attention beyond the chorus before. The verses are really fun.
I didn’t know “that’s the way of the world” was called that or that it was by EWF. I thought it was called “hearts afire” and wasn’t written by any single band but had more or less always existed in the collective consciousness.
Loved those first two songs! Then there was the rest and this fell from “potential 5?” to “at least a 4?” to “3.5, rounded down.”
Supertramp
2/5
As luck would have it, just two or three weeks ago I decided I needed to listen to the whole of Supertramp’s classic album “Breakfast in America,” because I never had. If that’s on the list, that’ll be a 4/5 debate when it comes up.
But bad luck for this album, I think, because I was expecting another collection of non-stop bangers and this ain’t it. Just okay.
Youssou N'Dour
3/5
Really liked the second song, but overall just ok
Mudhoney
2/5
No thanks
Iron Butterfly
2/5
The first five songs existed somewhere on the spectrum of meh/fine. The title track has a good riff, no denying that, but at 17 minutes it wears out its welcome. When we faded out to a drum solo (and not, say, to a still-overwrought-but-permissible conclusion) around 6:40 I clenched up in fear of what the next 10 minutes had in store for me. When the guitar came in around 12 minutes I thought about how other grand rock epics like Stairway or Free Bird manage to fit all these ideas into 8-9 minutes. Then I went back and tried to figure out where the song should have ended. I’d say 2:30, but I could also allow 3:20. Everything after that is unnecessary.
Bob Dylan
4/5
Thought this was my favorite Dylan. I think maybe it’s just four great songs (wind, masters, rain, think twice) and that deceived me into loving the rest.
The Go-Go's
4/5
I knew the two hits, obviously. And I kinda expected the rest of the album to be poppy filler. It’s so much more interesting than that. I loved “Tonite” and every other new-to-me song was solid. The two hits are undeniably fun but they are not what I love about this album, which is its punk insouciance. (Although I do think “we got the beat” benefits from the context of the whole album, which seems to draw out elements of that song I hadn’t focused on before.) I thought about 5 but I think it’s merely a solid 4.
Also I think if I had bought this album in 1981 and then Belinda Carlisle made “heaven is a place on earth” six years later, I would have rioted.
Tricky
2/5
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
1/5
I listened to one song and skimmed a few others. I feel like I get it.
Django Django
4/5
This was a lot of fun. Don’t think it has the makings of a 5, but a solid 4.
Television
4/5
The Cure
3/5
Sonic Youth
3/5
Sepultura
1/5
I made it over halfway!
Fugazi
3/5
I respect these guys so much for their ethos, but this album doesn’t do it for me. Much prefer 13 Songs and In on the Kill Taker.
The Smashing Pumpkins
5/5
Not a true “no-skips” album because Silverfuck exists, but otherwise basically perfect. If I made a list of my 100 favorite songs, I wouldn’t be surprised if Today, Disarm, Soma, and Mayonaise all made it. Easy 5.
LCD Soundsystem
4/5
Tracks 1-5 good, tracks 6-8 abysmal, track 9 again good. I don’t think I can give a 5 when 1/3 of the album sucks.
David Crosby
2/5
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
1/5
To be fair, I don’t think listening to this sleep-deprived in the fever-induced haze of a viral infection did it any favors. On the other hand, I don’t think there are any conditions in which I would enjoy it.
Rahul Dev Burman
2/5
I usually like Bollywood but this one wasn’t for me
The Killers
4/5
Blue Cheer
2/5
If Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath birthed good metal, but bad metal exists, it must follow that bad metal came from somewhere outside of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Pretty sure Aristotle said that. I think we’ve found the ur-bad metal.
John Prine
3/5
I really like “Angel from Montgomery.” I’ve never clicked with “Sam Stone,” despite any number of people who call it a classic.
Black Sabbath
4/5
For obvious (ozzvious?) reasons, I was listening to Ozzy more than I usually do. Guys, I think he’s pretty good.
After the first three tracks (US version), I was contemplating 5 stars, but I think it settled into 4. Honestly, a relief. If I had to consider dethroning Paranoid as the best Black Sabbath album, I might spiral.
Jack White
2/5
It just feels like to be an album you “must” hear before you die, it should introduce you to something new you can’t get elsewhere. And I’m struggling with what that might be for this album. “Imagine the White Stripes but at like 40% of the vitality?” “Blues rock with the production of 2012?” The songs themselves don’t really do it for me and then there don’t seem to be any historical or cultural reasons to hear this.
Oh, okay, there it is: “I’m Shakin” is a fun 50s/60s revival. So, like, one song. Is there a 1001 Songs … project?
The Libertines
3/5
I have a vague memory of them being so hyped when they came out, but I never got into them. Smart decision.
The Modern Lovers
3/5
Gary Numan
3/5
Bon Jovi
1/5
I like “livin on a prayer.” It does a disservice to too many drunken college nights to pretend otherwise. But I won’t say any of these songs are good.
I wonder if I could learn the guitar parts to this entire album in a day. Oh, maybe not: I see a couple scattered measures in some of the guitar solos that would be tricky for me. I couldn’t play the “raise your hands” riff, especially that harmonic run. Maybe I could get to 90% in a day.
I mean this sincerely: in “wanted dead or alive,” is he a cowboy or a rock star? If he’s a rock star, nobody wants him dead. If he’s a cowboy, he doesn’t ride a steel horse. A steel horse is, I assume, a tour bus. I would guess he’d say he’s both a metaphorical cowboy *and* a real rock star, but then the writing is full of mixed metaphors and it’s just bad. A loaded six-string isn’t a thing. What makes you say you might not make it back? Sir, we are talking about a Wednesday night at an arena in Minneapolis, not the OK Corral. What about being on the road makes you a cowboy? When the best explanation for a song’s lyrics is “we didn’t think about it for longer than about five seconds,” that’s not great.
I know “raise your hands” from a movie. What movie, Google? Oh, it’s Spaceballs. I kinda thought that was a fake bad song they made up for the movie. Guess not! It is a real bad song Bon Jovi made up and then voluntarily chose to include on an actual album people paid money for.
Between a 1 and a 2. On the one hand, there’s no artistic merit to any of this and my “crass sellout” alarms are blaring. On the other, how many times have I screamed “whoa-oh” in my life because of this album? That’s worth something.
Okay, so I wrote that last paragraph with about four songs to go on the album. And those songs sucked. I’m going to give this a 1, add “livin on a prayer” to my ongoing playlist for this project, and note that my nostalgia for that song is very strong and the 1 rating is not a reflection of good times had at parties and weddings. It is a reflection that Bon Jovi fucking sucks.
Buzzcocks
3/5
Wilco
5/5
Before I started listening, I thought there was a chance this would be only a 4. It’s one I have no childhood affinity for. It’s grown on me over the last 20 years—was maybe a 2 or 3 the first time I listened in 2002. There were definitely listens when I thought it was boring and bland.
But then I dove in and there was no way it would be anything other than a 5. On headphones, which is not how I usually listen, there were so many interesting sounds. I love the lyrics. At this point it’s just a trusty companion. I’ve got reservations about so many things, but not about this album.
Laibach
3/5
I didn’t understand most of this, but I thought it was really fun. Is “industrial camp” a genre? Because that’s what this felt like.
I am a little worried this is all pro-Nazi propaganda. Let’s see what Wikipedia says:
“Laibach has frequently been accused of both far left and far right political stances due to their use of uniforms and totalitarian-style aesthetics. They were also accused of being neo-nationalists. When confronted with such accusations, Laibach is quoted as replying with the ambiguous response "We are fascists as much as Hitler was a painter".[29] Laibach concerts have sometimes aesthetically appeared as political rallies, and the members of Laibach are notorious for rarely stepping out of character. When interviewed, they often answer in wry manifestos, showing a paradoxical lust for, and condemnation of, authority.”
That’s hilarious. I no longer assume this is Nazi propaganda; I think it’s just absurdism or parody. I think I love this band. This is probably a 3.5, rounded down.
Alice In Chains
3/5
I owned an Alice In Chains “greatest hits” album in high school. I see now it was called “nothing safe - best of [a box set].” But they were always behind Nirvana and Pearl Jam, in my estimation.
As an adult I’ve come to appreciate Layne Staley’s voice much more. And Jerry Cantrell’s, for that matter. That has elevated my appreciation of this band. The unrelenting gloom is still maybe a little much for me—just a thought, but maybe the 30-minute Jar of Flies EP would be a better intro to those who are unfamiliar with this band—but I like this.
Also, they really have a knack for devastating final lines. See Would?, Nutshell.
The Flaming Lips
3/5
Spiritualized
5/5
Twenty-eight years ago this week, my family was on vacation. I think we went to NYC, but it may have been Toronto. On our drive home, we stopped at a gas station and I picked up a copy of Rolling Stone with Puff Daddy, who was then one of my favorite rappers, on it.
Cover in question: https://www.ebay.com/itm/284352921187 - I did not recall until now that Jeff Buckley and Prodigy were also on the cover. I got a lot out of this one magazine.
Enjoying Puff Daddy has not aged well. Luckily, the issue has redeeming qualities. On top of the articles on Buckley and Prodigy, in the back of the magazine were short reviews of albums. And that week Rolling Stone reviewed this album, which had come out about two months prior. (If they reviewed it a week earlier or later, I may never have heard of it.) They gave it 3.5 stars in a review that, reading it today, doesn’t jump out at me: https://web.archive.org/web/20010919072038/http://www.rollingstone.com/recordings/review.asp?aid=27747&cf=1304
But in August 1997, we didn’t have blogs or Pitchfork or anything like that. We lived under the tyranny of radio. And I think 3.5 stars from the famous music magazine for an album I’d never heard of but sounded cool inspired me. I bought the album without having heard a second of it and hoped for the best.
I don’t love every second of this album. It is a little long—cop shoot cop is great, but it could still work a few minutes shorter. I’m not always in the mood for some of the rockier songs. I’d probably cut “the individual.”
But I know when I turn it on today I will feel much the same way I must have felt twenty-eight years ago when I first heard it: this opening track is one of the most gorgeous things I’ve ever heard, I didn’t know music could do this, Puff Daddy could never. At its best—for me, that’s the title track and cool waves, which is not to say other moments aren’t great—it is an album of transcendent beauty. For that, and for being another one of those pivotal albums that moved my musical taste to a different place, I will always love this album. As the common wisdom holds, you never love music more than the music you discovered when you were 13.
Also, big shout out to Wikipedia for this:
“The original 1997 pressing of the album features the edited version of the song without the intended Elvis Presley lyrics; that version runs 3:40, does not have the subtitle "(I Can't Help Falling in Love)", and did not need to credit Weiss/Peretti/Creatore. This brings the album's run time down to 69:41.”
When I first heard the version that interpolated “I can’t help falling in love” a few years ago, I thought “how did I never notice those lyrics before?” It turns out, I didn’t notice them because they weren’t on my 1997 CD. Phew. Not insane.
Kate Bush
3/5
Is it a 3? Is it a 2? Every other song had me ping-ponging back and forth. I’d like a song ok or think there was a great bridge in it, then the next song she’d growl (like a hound of love?) and I just couldn’t do it.
I think, on balance, it’s a 3. I really liked “night of the swallow.” I really disliked the donkey impression that ended the album. Such is the duality of this album.
Grant Lee Buffalo
3/5
I got a push notification that Trump was deploying the national guard in DC because crime is “out of control,” even though it isn’t. About a minute later, as I was finishing reading about the deployment, America Snoring began playing. Eerie.
This was maybe a 3.5. I liked the title track a lot.
David Ackles
2/5
Steve Winwood
2/5
Yep, definitely a Steve Winwood album. Honestly, this was going to be a 3 but the last two songs bored me so much it’s dropping to a 2.
Booker T. & The MG's
3/5
Tortoise
3/5
I saw Tortoise live in a warehouse in Dubuque, Iowa, in maybe 2010, which was awesome. They had some synth I’ve never seen before or since that was played like a marimba.
Janet Jackson
3/5
The Allman Brothers Band
5/5
Queen
3/5
Dusty Springfield
3/5
Lana Del Rey
4/5
I’m familiar with a few of her albums, but I must have skipped this one. I think she’s a little of a one-trick pony, but it worked for me here.
Machito
1/5
If this were some objective rating of music, I’d definitely go higher. But it’s not—to be honest, it probably can’t be objective. And I really don’t like this.
Morrissey
3/5
Primal Scream
3/5
Ray Charles
4/5
What do you get when you combine a genre I generally dislike and an artist I’ve never gotten? Genuinely one of my favorite discoveries of this project, obviously.
Run-D.M.C.
4/5
Sebadoh
3/5
I need to come up with a keyword I can ctrl+f for to indicate an album I need to return to. I’m giving this a 3 now, but it could be a 4 or even a 5 with more listens, I think.
The Sugarcubes
2/5
This was tough to get through. Every time I noticed him, the male singer(s?) was ruining a perfectly good Bjork song.
Siouxsie And The Banshees
3/5
The Velvet Underground
3/5
The Cure
4/5
Oh hell yeah, let’s go. One of the best opening tracks on any album ever. Then pictures of you? Come on. What a 1-2 punch.
This is an album that justifies its run time, and each track justifies its own length, because the whole thing is so cinematic and immersive. (Looking at you, Metallica’s black album.) I don’t quite love it enough to give it a 5, but it’s also early September and the sun is shining. Give it a couple months and this will hit just right.
Pulp
3/5
Britney Spears
2/5
I like the title track. “You drive me crazy” is ok. Everything else I really disliked.
Motörhead
4/5
This. Was. Awesome.
Roxy Music
1/5
I thought about a 2, but I couldn’t make it through the whole album and that’s usually a 1
Tom Waits
4/5
A little disappointed this is the latest Waits album on the list. Justice for Mule Variations and Real Gone!
Tom Waits
4/5
This album was not familiar to me, but it’s great. Especially, the songs backed by strings are so beautiful.
4/5
I like Dylan and I can point to other reviews to support that, but I’m not sure why we need a live album of his on the list. I’ve gotten the appeal of other live albums here (Sam Cooke, Allman Bros, James Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis — all energetic performers who brought a little something extra live). Not the case here.
And if we’re going to hear this concert, we really deserve to hear the part where the dude calls Dylan “Judas.” That’s the whole point of this concert!
https://youtu.be/RViHf4fABxI?si=cZS7a9SGHUoG8q75
The Zutons
1/5
I was not looking forward to this at all. I felt like I knew what it would be just from the cover, the terrible band name, and the Wikipedia snippet clipped here.
Suspicions confirmed. Got to track six.
Stan Getz
2/5
I made it all the way through and I was only a little bored
Marilyn Manson
3/5
I think I listened to this whole album once in 1996 or 1997 and didn’t think much of it then beyond liking two songs (beautiful people, tourniquet). As an adult, it was a genuine disappointment to learn how easy the guitar riff for Tourniquet is / how everything cool about its sound is pedals or production.
Let’s see if the adolescent hatred hits more now, when I’m a middle-aged man!
And: embarrassingly, I did kinda like it.
Suicide
2/5
This album peaked in the first two songs. When every song after that was basically the same, there were diminishing returns.
When Springsteen says he modeled “state trooper” on “Frankie teardrop,” I get it. Especially that yawp at the end.
Elvis Costello
4/5
“Less than zero” and especially “Alison” were my jams in college. Haven’t been impressed by any Costello album on this list yet, but this is my favorite of his.
Pere Ubu
2/5
Pet Shop Boys
2/5
LCD Soundsystem
3/5
I like them so this was probably never going below a 3, but I think this is too long and not up to their usual standards. “I used to” and “American Dream” were favorites. A lot of the rest could have been cut.
GZA
4/5
Aphex Twin
3/5
Sly & The Family Stone
3/5
A little disappointed in this one. Just ok
The Specials
1/5
This is a 1/2 borderline that I didn’t finish. Some of it felt meh, which is maybe 2-ish, but I was actively repelled by some of it, which is more 1. With apologies to the band, sometimes it’s just more fun to take an extreme stance, so I’m going 1.
Pavement
4/5
I usually just listen to “two states” and “trigger cut,” so it was nice to listen to the whole thing. Can’t be a 5 because there’s too many things that aren’t even really songs and are annoying to boot, but the songs that fit traditional notions of songwriting are great.
Jean-Michel Jarre
2/5
The top review on this site states that “everyone over 35 knows” who this artist is and knows at least one song off this album: “pt. 4, obviously.” What circles do you guys run in? Never heard of this before, never need to hear it again.
Sleater-Kinney
3/5
Always feel like I should like them more—I love basically every band they influenced—but they never quite hit.
Franz Ferdinand
3/5
Sabu
2/5
Elvis Presley
3/5
Neither of these Elvis albums has been bad, but I’m still disappointed there’s a third one in our future
Basement Jaxx
3/5
26 years of trying to figure out what the hype is all about on this album. “Red Alert” works for me sometimes and sometimes it sounds incredibly cheesy. Once again I am asking someone to tell me why this is so revered.
Girls Against Boys
4/5
Jane's Addiction
2/5
Ghostface Killah
3/5
Probably a 3.5. We’ll see how I feel when it’s time to put in the rating.
Arcade Fire
4/5
Like the first four songs (especially keep the car running), like the last three songs (especially my body is a cage—I hope somebody got to be surprised by the drop today), despise the stuff between.
Gram Parsons
2/5
David Gray
3/5
In college I was in the habit of making mix cds that included the songs I was enjoying at the moment. One month that included “this year’s love.” Cut to a week later. My girlfriend, her two roommates, and I are taking a road trip to help her find an apartment in the city she’s moving to after graduation. She puts on my mix cd. Second song: this year’s love. One of the roommates starts bawling. I learn it had been her “song” with her boyfriend, and they had just broken up like a week prior. Oops. We skip that song. That is my enduring memory of the song now, how I inadvertently emotionally sandbagged an unsuspecting young woman. Still a good song, though.
Babylon and Sail Away are also good. The rest, meh.
American Music Club
4/5
The Last Shadow Puppets
1/5
I’m glad Alex Turner has an outlet for … whatever this is. Just leave me out of it.
The Avalanches
2/5
Ladysmith Black Mambazo
3/5
I’m never mad about some LBM, but I also never feel like I need to hear 45 straight minutes of it, either.
Boy, I sure hope no washed-up singer songwriters exploit this group and somehow also end up on this list! (Foreshadowing!)
Frank Sinatra
3/5
Honestly this felt like banger after banger for this genre. I knew most of these just from cultural osmosis. It is also the case that while I was thinking “oh another incredible jazz standard delivered with impeccable skill by the best guy ever at this,” I was also thinking “3…3…3.” So I think we’ve determined what the highest possible rating is, for me, for this type of music: 3/5.
Jeff Beck
2/5
I liked “Blues Deluxe.” If this album had been 7 minutes long, and just that song, that would have been great.
Justice
4/5
I’m pretty sure I saw them at Lollapalooza when this album was big. Genesis, DANCE, and Phantom Pt 2 are favorites. IIRC, second half of the album kinda falls off a bit. Time to see if I remember correctly.
Later: It is as I recall, although DVNO is fun.
Leonard Cohen
2/5
I genuinely liked Tower of Song. Laughed out loud at “THEN WE TAKE BERLIN.” He’s so fucking self-serious, I hate it. And I wonder who thought Jazz Police was a good idea. No one thought to stop that? But again, I do think I like the last song enough to save this from a 1.
The Stranglers
2/5
Barry Adamson
2/5
Neil Young
4/5
Tough to beat tracks 2-4.
Portishead
3/5
Goldie
2/5
Am I going to play this again? No. But do I think listening to it on my headphones, sober, while doing legal research, is the optimal setting to give it a fair shake? Obviously not. Goldie didn’t write this while simultaneously blue-booking; how can I expect to enjoy it when I am?
ZZ Top
3/5
Expected this to be a 2. After listening it’s a 3. That’s about all I have to say about ZZ Top.
Oh wait. Sometimes you encounter a song where the disparity between the strength of the music and the godawful lyrics is so vast that it feels like the song is begging to be sampled and put to better use by some superior artist. “TV Dinners” is such a song. The website “who sampled” has no records of it being sampled, other than one cover version. A shame.
Slipknot
1/5
The Roots
3/5
Strange to have this one but not Things Fall Apart on the list.
Kendrick Lamar
5/5
It’s interesting he calls it a short film because I do think it’s paced like a movie. I like BDKMV and backseat freestyle a lot, but mostly the first half or so is just scene-setting and rising action. But everything from maad city on is a classic, like how a great movie will build to an exciting conclusion.
If there was an award for “greatest 12 seconds of a song,” 5:24-5:35 of maad city would be a strong contender.
Also, mild hot take: the vision of TPAB and Damn might be greater, but this and GNX are more fun. This is the Kendrick album I play the most.
Dennis Wilson
3/5
Mudhoney
2/5
Led Zeppelin
4/5
Linkin Park
2/5
Two albums I owned as a kid in a row! One a revered classic, and then there’s this pile of shit. In my defense, it was hard to avoid some clunkers as a teenage boy who liked music in the early 00s. I had forgotten about the instrumental track, though, and I think that’s okay.
Cyndi Lauper
3/5
Peter Tosh
3/5
Manic Street Preachers
3/5
Björk
4/5
I have no memory of ever listening to this album, so it was a real delight to open the album page and find I’d previously liked five songs. Now I feel like I’m in for the best possible outcome: an album I like and that I get to “discover” all at once.
Manu Chao
2/5
Bob Marley & The Wailers
4/5
N.W.A.
4/5
Randy Newman
2/5
k.d. lang
3/5
Rufus Wainwright
3/5
Slipknot
2/5
John Martyn
3/5
Cat Stevens
3/5
PJ Harvey
4/5
Jacques Brel
1/5
Never again
Fred Neil
2/5
Sonic Youth
3/5
Bert Jansch
2/5
The instrumental medley was the best song. Not great for a singer-songwriter.
Public Enemy
5/5
I’m very familiar with this but I’ve never thought about what I’d rate it, exactly. I told myself that whatever I thought it was leading into the final three songs, which I know to be some of my favorite songs ever, I’d add one to that score to account for those final three. I thought it was a 4 before those, I’m adding one, 5.
I liked “beautiful day” when this came out and “elevation” is kinda fun, if a little goofy. So I was curious which way this album would go after the first four songs, which I’d heard before. It didn’t go well. We were already comfortably in 2 territory before “Grace, it’s the name for a girl / It’s also a thought that changed the world.” So now I have to consider if 1 is on the table.
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
4/5
On first listen gonna give it a 4, and then return to it later
The Soft Boys
3/5
The Pretty Things
2/5
Simple Minds
3/5
Dexys Midnight Runners
2/5
Grateful Dead
4/5
The Rolling Stones
3/5
A 3.5, rounded down for not being a 4
Ananda Shankar
3/5
Really liked the long song, the rest was just okay
Ali Farka Touré
4/5
Norah Jones
3/5
Liked the songs I knew (don’t know why, come away with me, shoot the moon), didn’t love anything else. Easy listening.
Supergrass
3/5
Thirty seconds in, I found myself wondering if an album had ever been bold enough to put its worst song first and then progressively improve until the final track. I couldn’t think of one like that. This one started meh but did vastly improve. I went from 2 to 3 to maybe 4 over the course of the album, and that’s no easy feat after starting with that first song.
The Young Gods
3/5
The Rolling Stones
2/5
The Magnetic Fields
5/5
I know this is going to be a 4 or 5, the issue is I don’t get to disc 3 often enough to remember it with the perfect recall I have of discs 1 and 2.
Disc 1: perfect, no skips, wouldn’t change a thing
Disc 2: slightly more inconsistent but still contains some of my favs (I shatter, papa was a rodeo, you’re my only home, asleep and dreaming, epitaph for my heart), if this were a standalone disc I’d probably still give it a soft 5
Disc 3 would probably be a 3/4 borderline. I like underwear, acoustic guitar, ferdinand, gin, and zebra (“Zelda looks lonely” kills me every time), but I don’t think the rest are memorable.
Still, even a 5 + 5 + 3 is a 4.33 average and I’m comfortable rounding up for how strong the first two discs are. The math doesn’t have to be perfect.
Massive Attack
3/5
Def Leppard
2/5
I’ve never intentionally listened to Def Leppard before today, and yet I “knew” three songs from this (photograph, too late for love, rock of ages). Pretty impressive staying power for DL. And I even liked one song (photograph)!
Belle & Sebastian
4/5
“Get me away from here” has been one of my favorite songs for 20+ years, but I don’t think I’ve ever listened to this album all the way through. Oops.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
5/5
My father was born in 1954, so it was mandatory that we own Chronicle in the 1990s. That, along with Fortunate Son’s inclusion on the Forrest Gump soundtrack, was my intro to CCR. I think this is our third CCR album of this project? And this one has eight songs from Chronicle, all of which I love. When eight songs from the same album form the backbone of a beloved greatest hits album, I’m going to award a 5. Ramble Tamble is pretty great, too.
Also, there’s something very endearing about this nonsense of an album cover.
Pink Floyd
4/5
I don’t think I’ve ever listened to this before, I just know the big songs through cultural osmosis (ABITW, mother, hey you, comfortably numb, run like hell). But, pretty good
The Replacements
5/5
I played this 2-3x/day virtually all of 1L year. Easy 5. Might have to listen 2 or 3 times today, too. Update: 2.5.
I once read a review that panned “seen your video” because the reviewer thought it was a childish, immature swipe at other bands. Dude. The next song is called “Gary’s got a boner.” The childishness is the point. The immaturity exists alongside the more “mature” songs androgynous, unsatisfied, sixteen blue, and answering machine, but the songs here are usually yes-and, not either-or. This album has a song about getting your tonsils removed that’s also a class critique. It has a serious song about 16 being the hardest age. An answering machine is an antagonist … and I totally buy it. That tonsils/class solidarity song is three songs away from one of my favorite love songs of all time (I will dare) and two songs away from a Kiss cover. The album encompasses the whole of the adolescent/coming of age experience, equal parts idiocy and maturity. Everything about this album is perfect, and everything about it is imperfect, at once. An all-time favorite, possibly one of my five favorite albums.
And also, a lot of sellout videos in 1984 sucked.
Beatles
5/5
Been sort of dreading this one because it’s maybe the quintessential 4.5 album for me. First disc unimpeachable (except wild honey pie, which even they would probably admit is a throwaway, so no points deducted). Second disc a lot iffier, especially rev 9. Here’s what I wrote 1.5 years ago when we listened to every Beatles album over a summer:
“I remembered this as a good first disc and a mediocre-to-bad second disc. Upon repeated listens in just a few days this week, I think it's more like a masterpiece of a first disc and a second disc most artists would claim as their best work. It may simply be that the last time I listened to this all the way through was in high school (when "I'm So Tired" was briefly my wakeup song on my cd alarm clock--don't act like you're not impressed) and nowadays I have more patience for the softer ("Long, Long, Long", "Honey Pie", "Mother Nature's Son", and perhaps especially "Cry Baby Cry") and weirder ("Savoy Truffle", "Everybody's Got Something to Hide...") tracks. I had a very hard time picking a favorite track, and there are five or six others that might get it on some other day [editor: that day, and today, it’s while my guitar gently weeps]. The audacity is a double-edged sword: I'm impressed by pulling off 20+ outstanding songs in multiple genres, and a little put off by the handful that have never done it for me (number nine, number nine, number nine). It's a bold, incredible album, but a 10 feels generous for an album where I'd say there are 4-5 skips, including an 8-minute one.”
I gave it a 9/10, and that’s where it stands today, too. Felt a few songs overstayed their welcome (Birthday’s “welcome” lasts about two seconds), but I have to acknowledge that’s probably influenced by having another double album and a triple album in the last ten days. Both were great, as is this, but I’m tired, boss. (And I swear if we get that Ella Fitzgerald album tomorrow…) But even though I struggled through the second disc, it doesn’t feel right to give it a 4/5. The album as a whole is better than that. Very soft 5, with a strong glare directed at Revolution 9, Birthday, Sexy Sadie, the final halves of Helter Skelter and Yer Blues, and Good Night.
Suzanne Vega
3/5
3.5 rounded down
Lauryn Hill
5/5
John Coltrane
5/5
Favorite jazz album, favorite jazz song (psalm)
10cc
2/5
Kings of Leon
2/5
There’s absolutely no way I need to hear one KoL album before I die, let alone three