My 1001 Albums Journey

Album	You	Global	Diff
Metal Box Public Image Ltd.	5	2.42	+2.58
Fear and Whiskey Mekons	5	2.61	+2.39
Group Sex Circle Jerks	5	2.74	+2.26
Tago Mago Can	5	2.79	+2.21
Arular M.I.A.	5	2.83	+2.17
A Wizard, A True Star Todd Rundgren	5	2.84	+2.16
Arc Of A Diver Steve Winwood	5	2.88	+2.12
Millions Now Living Will Never Die Tortoise	5	2.88	+2.12
Leftism Leftfield	5	2.9	+2.1
Music Has The Right To Children Boards of Canada	5	2.91	+2.09

Album	You	Global	Diff
The Wall Pink Floyd	1	4.14	-3.14
Metallica Metallica	1	3.79	-2.79
Brothers In Arms Dire Straits	1	3.74	-2.74
Moondance Van Morrison	1	3.71	-2.71
L.A. Woman The Doors	1	3.66	-2.66
Black Holes and Revelations Muse	1	3.59	-2.59
Brothers The Black Keys	1	3.57	-2.57
Blood Sugar Sex Magik Red Hot Chili Peppers	1	3.5	-2.5
Urban Hymns The Verve	1	3.35	-2.35
Blur Blur	1	3.33	-2.33

Artist	Albums	Average
Neil Young	3	5
The Who	3	4.67
The Kinks	3	4.67
Todd Rundgren	2	5
Bruce Springsteen	2	5
Elliott Smith	2	5
A Tribe Called Quest	2	5
M.I.A.	2	5
Fleetwood Mac	2	5
Steely Dan	2	5
Pavement	2	5
Yes	2	5
Talking Heads	2	5
OutKast	2	5
Funkadelic	2	5
Joni Mitchell	2	5
Black Sabbath	2	5
Beatles	6	4.17
R.E.M.	3	4.33
Beastie Boys	3	4.33
Nirvana	3	4.33
The Cure	3	4.33

Artist	Albums	Average
Kings of Leon	2	1
U2	3	1.67
Blur	2	1.5
Pink Floyd	2	1.5
Frank Sinatra	2	1.5
Dire Straits	2	1.5
Red Hot Chili Peppers	2	1.5
Metallica	4	2.25

Artist	Ratings
Public Image Ltd.	5, 1
Bob Dylan	5, 2, 5, 2
Metallica	3, 1, 1, 4

Songs In The Key Of Life

Stevie Wonder

5/5

Arrival

ABBA

3/5

Moving Pictures

Rush

4/5

I used to think I really disliked this album, but it’s actually mostly the fact that I dislike Tom Sawyer a LOT and that bled into the rest of it. I think all of the big prog bands fared poorly in the transition to the 80s, but Rush probably holds up better than the rest of them. The six non-Tom Sawyer tracks are all bangers.

Liquid Swords

GZA

5/5

Damn girl, are you Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth by Killah Priest, because you are a weird and unwanted bonus ruining an otherwise perfect situation

Birth Of The Cool

Miles Davis

3/5

Murmur

R.E.M.

4/5

Nighthawks At The Diner

Tom Waits

3/5

I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got

Sinead O'Connor

4/5

Bringing It All Back Home

Bob Dylan

5/5

I don’t know if it’s a full five because I find the acoustic side to be kind of meandering but damn if every song on the first side isn’t an absolute ripper.

KIWANUKA

Michael Kiwanuka

5/5

Hot damn, this is the first album on this list I have never heard of and am genuinely shook by how good this is.

Odessey And Oracle

The Zombies

4/5

The endless wars to determine who the best British Invasion band was is dominated by the conflict between The Beatles and The Stones. Fans of The Who and The Kinks continue their guerrilla war from the bushes. Yet the fear that unites us all is those fighting for The Zombies, and the small but real chance they might be right.

Ogden's Nut Gone Flake

Small Faces

3/5

The second album I have never heard of before taking this on, and an almost lethal dose of British-ass whimsy. I have no complaints, but it's easy to see how many better artists built off of this framework.

Doggystyle

Snoop Dogg

3/5

I liked it fine enough but there it deserves credit for how it made me, a degreed homeowner and parent who was 8 when it was released, feel like I am getting away with something I shouldn’t over three decades later.

Back In Black

AC/DC

2/5

This one in particular doesn’t do a ton for me, but I will always appreciate that there is something about AC/DC’s guitar tone that makes it sound like hell music for absolute perverts.

Vento De Maio

Elis Regina

4/5

A very pleasant and previously unheard compilation of fusion-inflected samba music. Frankly, this project could use a few hundred more entries like this instead of just being every Brit-pop album released between 1965 and 1998. I know what Blur sounds like, give me what the other 95% of the world listens to.

Blur

1/5

Look, it’s not that I don’t get it, I just genuinely do not like it.

Harvest

Neil Young

5/5

Look man, sometimes these albums don’t really need reviews. I’m not saying critics always got it right, but we have 52 years of evidence saying this is one of the greatest albums of all time and I think they nailed it in one.

Copper Blue

Sugar

3/5

It’s funny that this is what most of Mould’s solo material sounds like now.

Tommy

The Who

5/5

Obviously this is great but I am always going to associate this album with my friend who really wanted to try a raw egg cracked into a Newcastle like Keith Moon drank in the movie before abusing Tommy. Unlike this album, the drink was awful and in no way a seminal moment in prog rock.

Dusty In Memphis

Dusty Springfield

4/5

Alienating everyone in my life with my sincerely held and deep-seated belief that Dusty Springfield is Buffalo Springfield’s husband.

Who Killed...... The Zutons?

The Zutons

1/5

We need to remove every UK music writer's contributions to this list until we figure out what is even happening over there.

Aha Shake Heartbreak

Kings of Leon

1/5

A problem with the original version of this book being released in 2006 is that every awful dudebro indie group that got popular in response to nu-metal was still fresh on people’s minds and as a result I have to listen to Kings of Leon 18 years later.

Shleep

Robert Wyatt

3/5

Putting a late career solo album by a Canterbury Scene veteran on this list was almost as baffling as the album itself. Filled with great compositions ruined by bloviating vocals and run times, I don’t think anyone needs to listen to this before they die but at least it’s fascinating.

This Is Fats Domino

Fats Domino

3/5

Another unreviewable album. If you have any interest in music made in the last 70 years, it’s worth a listen to compare where it came from.

American Pie

Don McLean

1/5

I resent being made to listen to any album where the best song is American Pie by Don McLean

That's The Way Of The World

Earth, Wind & Fire

4/5

The fact that this is the only Earth, Wind & Fire album on this list but there are two by Kings of Leon should put both this project and the concept of ranking things in serious doubt.

You've Come a Long Way Baby

Fatboy Slim

3/5

I get how this is Important and maybe even Good but you have to understand that I am the exact age where this album and everything it influenced has just become the soundtrack to payday loan commercials my entire adult life. Also, why does Fatboy Slim look like a lost member of Whose Line Is It Anyway in any picture

The Fat Of The Land

The Prodigy

4/5

Look, my most prolific internet presence is posting screenshots and video clips of PlayStation 1 & 2 games. You cannot play the amount of early PSX games that I do and still give this album an unbiased review.

John Prine

5/5

At the time of writing this, Toby Keith has been dead for less than 48 hours and the story where Kris Kristofferson says what Keith did to country music is what pantyhose did to finger fucking is making the rounds. Appropriately, the debut album by Kristofferson’s protégé is a pure example of going commando and getting right in there.

A Wizard, A True Star

Todd Rundgren

5/5

It’s fun when you listen to something for the first time and immediately realize this is the album all your favorite artists glommed onto when they were weird teens.

Licensed To Ill

Beastie Boys

3/5

License to Ill is no Paul’s Boutique, but it’s my understanding that most albums aren’t.

Master Of Puppets

Metallica

3/5

Did you know the guys from all those SalesForce conferences and podcasts used to have a band?

Tuesday Night Music Club

Sheryl Crow

3/5

The World is a Ghetto

War

3/5

It’s very cool to hear music so vibrant and exciting while simultaneously knowing that it influenced a list of artists so awful that it should be framed and put on public display in The Hague.

My Generation

The Who

4/5

Bongo Rock

Incredible Bongo Band

5/5

I signed up for this project to expand my musical horizons and I gotta say that unfortunately giving an album with a seven minute long bongo-centric cover of In a Gadda da Vida is pretty par for the course for me.

Bryter Layter

Nick Drake

4/5

Brilliant Corners

Thelonious Monk

3/5

D.O.A. the Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle

Throbbing Gristle

3/5

Its a small but important distinction to note that it’s called 1001 Albums To Listen To Before You Die, not 1001 Albums To Enjoy Before You Die. Three stars.

The Modern Dance

Pere Ubu

4/5

A very good album that becomes even better when you hear David Thomas’ vocals and your broken brain transports you to a world where the entire album is being performed by Muppets. Four stars.

Pearl

Janis Joplin

4/5

Mermaid Avenue

Billy Bragg

3/5

This is the first album on here that I’ve given three stars where it feels like it is a failure of imagination on my part.

The Velvet Underground

4/5

Peter Gabriel

5/5

This is the most British-ass thing I am giving five stars, except for all the other Genesis albums I’m going to give five stars.

Music for the Masses

Depeche Mode

4/5

Ghosteen

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

3/5

Utterly beautiful music that does absolutely nothing for me.

3 Years, 5 Months And 2 Days In The Life Of...

Arrested Development

4/5

Sure, it’s an evolutionary dead end for hip-hop but evolutionary dead ends can be super cool. Just ask the platypus.

Green

R.E.M.

5/5

I know this album is perfect, you know this album is perfect, so instead of wasting your time I want to give a shoutout to the user that wrote a cover article length treatise on why you should watch the Chris Elliot sitcom Get A Life for their review instead. Five stars.

Thriller

Michael Jackson

5/5

I try to save a 5 star for something that was truly transformative for me but this music has been in the background since I was born, who am I to say it wasn’t?

Scum

Napalm Death

2/5

Actually, you know what? I already listened to music before I came over. Yeah man. I’m good, really.

Funeral

Arcade Fire

5/5

I was 19 when this album came out, and obviously it felt like the most important piece of music ever recorded, as things released when you are 19 tend to do. I really resent who I was at the time so I expected to hate this, but it brings me no pleasure to announce I am incorrect and misty-eyed while listening to it in my driveway. Five stars.

Catch A Fire

Bob Marley & The Wailers

3/5

Not for me, but that’s fine.

Ray Of Light

Madonna

4/5

It was extremely brave of Madonna to release an entire album of PlayStation 2 boss fight anthems a full three years before anyone on the west had access to a PlayStation 2. Four stars.

Throwing Muses

4/5

Live And Dangerous

Thin Lizzy

4/5

It's weird that the powers that be chose a live album but at least it's an absolute banger of one.

Shake Your Money Maker

The Black Crowes

1/5

I don’t know if this is an album to listen to before you die but it definitely feels like an album you’d have to listen to while you die at the hands of the most chinless white man in a fedora to ever exist. One star.

Better Living Through Chemistry

Fatboy Slim

2/5

The good: I just met this hot girl and she wants to take me to a rave? The bad: They put blood in the emergency sprinklers? How do you even keep it from coagulating? The good: Oh hey, is that Wesley Snipes? The bad: Why does he have a katana? Two stars.

Tago Mago

Can

5/5

Young Americans

David Bowie

3/5

Ironically, this album would have been an easy five stars before this project jumpstarted a love of soul music inside me. It’s still good I think, but the self-imposed “plastic soul” descriptor is incredibly apt. I love Bowie, but I don’t see myself coming around for this one all that much. Three stars.

Meat Is Murder

The Smiths

4/5

Fucking fine. Four stars. Whatever.

Bossanova

Pixies

4/5

I don’t know if the worst Pixies album from the original lineup is really essential, but I guess it’s fine to say people should really hear an album where they are very good but also kind of boring.

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

2/5

Honestly Bob, I could have done with a lot more structured wheelin’. I generally enjoy Bob Dylan and can understand why this was a landmark album, but I struggle to enjoy this 62 years later, especially over some of his later material.

Pink Flag

Wire

4/5

Another 4 star classic I have nothing to say about. It’s good!

3 + 3

The Isley Brothers

3/5

Its extremely fun to know the studio versions of all these songs having absolutely face melting guitar parts left off the singles.

Born To Be With You

Dion

2/5

I get why people who know and care about how music is produced love this Phil Spector-backed album, but the only real enjoyment I got out of it was imagining people’s shock when they looked at the cover and then found out that it was actually the guy in the liner notes that was a murderer.

Cheap Thrills

Big Brother & The Holding Company

3/5

This album gets so much worse when someone besides Janis does vocals

If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears

The Mamas & The Papas

3/5

It's A Shame About Ray

The Lemonheads

3/5

Perfectly fine.

C'est Chic

CHIC

4/5

Lives up to the name

The Gilded Palace Of Sin

The Flying Burrito Brothers

4/5

They Were Wrong, So We Drowned

Liars

4/5

Picture Book

Simply Red

1/5

You know how the British press lost its mind for like a half decade because Pippa Middleton had a visible ass which was seen as manna for a starving nation? Including this album on the list is the blue eyed soul equivalent. One star.

Coat Of Many Colors

Dolly Parton

5/5

Obviously this is five stars. Come on.

Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots

The Flaming Lips

2/5

The Flaming Lips were one of the most perfect bands of the 90s, releasing a string of all-timers from 1990’s In A Priest Driven Ambulance to 1999’s The Soft Bulletin. Eagle-eyed readers may notice that this overproduced and cloying album was released in 2002.

Metal Box

Public Image Ltd.

5/5

Obviously great, and a fun companion piece to all the whinging people do about basically any remotely challenging album in the reviews.

Doolittle

Pixies

5/5

You do not need me to tell you this is five stars.

Only Built 4 Cuban Linx

Raekwon

4/5

Tellin’ Stories

The Charlatans

2/5

The Message

Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five

3/5

Ten

Pearl Jam

2/5

This is a rough one because I understand how important of an album this is, the members of Pearl Jam seem like genuinely good people, and I can understand how structurally this is supposed to kick ass, yet this album does absolutely nothing for me whatsoever.

Electric Prunes

The Electric Prunes

4/5

For Your Pleasure

Roxy Music

4/5

It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

Public Enemy

5/5

Obviously an unimpeachable classic but I get even more enjoyment out of imagining what this sounded like to conservative parents in the late 80s. If it sounds like the album was made with a suite of dental tools to us, it must have been like a Victorian child exploding after tasting Doritos.

Sail Away

Randy Newman

4/5

Ritual De Lo Habitual

Jane's Addiction

4/5

The most annoying album I’ve given four stars to.

Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes

TV On The Radio

4/5

The Joshua Tree

U2

2/5

A quintessential two star album for me. I get why it’s Important but dear lord what a slog.

In Utero

Nirvana

4/5

Colour By Numbers

Culture Club

1/5

With all due respect to Boy George, an incredibly brave individual who did incredible work in normalizing queerness in a time notoriously unfriendly to the concept, this album is basically unlistenable.

S&M

Metallica

1/5

I did not enjoy this but at least it was over 2 hours long.

The Holy Bible

Manic Street Preachers

4/5

Dear Science

TV On The Radio

5/5

Oar

Alexander 'Skip' Spence

2/5

Wish I liked it mate.

Brothers

The Black Keys

1/5

Imagine devoting your whole career to essentially making multiple demo reels proving you are the perfect band to make the opening song to a James Bond film and yet you remain unselected. One star.

MTV Unplugged In New York

Nirvana

5/5

Something Else By The Kinks

The Kinks

4/5

Ellington at Newport

Duke Ellington

5/5

Definitely Maybe

Oasis

3/5

Easily my favorite of the 800 or so britpop albums on this list, which only sometimes feels like saying “this pebble permanently lodged in my shoe is surprisingly smooth”

Cut

The Slits

3/5

A perfectly for. Album and maybe one of the first punk albums by a pure nepobaby?

Darkness on the Edge of Town

Bruce Springsteen

5/5

Obviously five stars, I don’t have anything else to say about it.

Joan Armatrading

4/5

The Wall

Pink Floyd

1/5

A difficult thing for me to reconcile has been how so much of the music from the late 70s and 80s that I love was a response to the prog and hard rock from a few years earlier that I also love, but relistening to this bloviating mess has been shockingly helpful.

Beautiful Freak

Eels

5/5

Not the best album from the 90s to get five stars from me, but it is the most album from the 90s to get five stars from me.

Either Or

Elliott Smith

5/5

Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols

Sex Pistols

2/5

Natty Dread

Bob Marley & The Wailers

4/5

Beauty And The Beat

The Go-Go's

4/5

Lust For Life

Iggy Pop

3/5

System Of A Down

4/5

Getz/Gilberto

Stan Getz

3/5

The Wildest!

Louis Prima

5/5

An invaluable lesson I’ve learned from this project is that pop music will never be hornier than it was in the fifties, as evidenced by this album where you hear King Louie from The Jungle Book achieve orgasm no less than a dozen times over 32 minutes. Five stars.

Tubular Bells

Mike Oldfield

4/5

Imagine how much more fun our world would be if instead of the opening movement, The Exorcist instead used the section where a guy makes monster sounds over a wailing guitar solo for its main theme. Four stars.

Let's Get It On

Marvin Gaye

4/5

Palo Congo

Sabu

3/5

This album is a lot of fun, but as always the real treat when listening to one of the vanishingly rare world music albums on this list is reading the racist reviews from nerds apoplectic that they had to leave their comfort zone of Metallica or Blur or whatever.

People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm

A Tribe Called Quest

5/5

The Healer

John Lee Hooker

2/5

Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge

Mudhoney

3/5

Hounds Of Love

Kate Bush

4/5

Water From An Ancient Well

Abdullah Ibrahim

2/5

High Violet

The National

3/5

This is pretty good but if you are anything like me and this is the first album by The National that was released after you stopped keeping up with new bands, today’s selection also acts as a friendly reminder to schedule a prostate exam and/or mammogram.

Stephen Stills

1/5

I went back and took an edible and this album still couldn’t do it for me.

Ready To Die

The Notorious B.I.G.

4/5

A Love Supreme

John Coltrane

4/5

Arular

M.I.A.

5/5

Move over Peter Gabriel, we have a new champion for Most Annoying Album I Awarded Five Stars

Elephant

The White Stripes

2/5

Somewhere there is a wretched man rending his dri-fit polo over the fact that the White Stripes started using a bass in this like some sort of Millennial Dylan going electric.

Face to Face

The Kinks

5/5

Jack Takes the Floor

Ramblin' Jack Elliott

2/5

Rain Dogs

Tom Waits

5/5

Home Is Where The Music Is

Hugh Masekela

4/5

I went back and took an edible and this album still couldn’t do it for me.

Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim

Frank Sinatra

1/5

Dude I don’t want to listen to this. Why is it important? How does this possibly reflect the zeitgeist of 1967? Who cares 57 years later? If it is not necessary to eat at a mediocre Italian restaurant where the owner plays accordion while maintaining eye contact on slow nights before you die, then I should not have to listen to the music he’s playing along with.

Very

Pet Shop Boys

5/5

Very by Pet Shop Boys is an easy five stars because not only is it an album that brought me near to tears upon my first listen but did so while sounding like the unreleased soundtrack to a Sonic the Hedgehog game.

Madman Across The Water

Elton John

4/5

Africa Brasil

Jorge Ben Jor

4/5

Hotel California

Eagles

3/5

I used to hate The Eagles but in the dotage of my thirties I am coming around on them. The Eagles are the crisp light beer of rock. Pleasant enough, and that’s what most people are probably looking for in music. I don’t love it but I’m glad this album makes people happy.

Ctrl

SZA

2/5

I absolutely get why this is on the list but it’s not for me.

Led Zeppelin

3/5

I absolutely get why this is on the list but it’s not for me.

If I Should Fall From Grace With God

The Pogues

4/5

It brings me no pleasure to share the realization that as The Arcade Fire is to millennials, The Pogues are to generation x. Four stars.

KE*A*H** (Psalm 69)

Ministry

3/5

Seventeen Seconds

The Cure

4/5

Pieces Of The Sky

Emmylou Harris

4/5

Nick Of Time

Bonnie Raitt

1/5

Why is she pressing the button on her utility belt on the album cover? Is she about to emit a smokescreen so she can escape and listen to something that doesn’t sound like a plastic donut tastes? Why did she not give us the same option? One star.

The Age Of The Understatement

The Last Shadow Puppets

3/5

Why is it that when a bunch of British indie pop stars want to cosplay as The Kinks they get to release an album but when i do it i just get supervised custody and a sharp reminder of existing restraining orders from the office of Dave Davies? Three stars.

Rumours

Fleetwood Mac

5/5

Obviously this is five stars. I’m not happy about it and like to pretend I’m not a Fleetwood Mac fan but I also didn't build my entire personality around contrarianism.

GREY Area

Little Simz

5/5

Murder Ballads

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

3/5

I do not enjoy Nick Cave but I know enough to understand this is a skill issue on my part.

Illmatic

Nas

3/5

The Bones Of What You Believe

CHVRCHES

4/5

A Rush Of Blood To The Head

Coldplay

2/5

Odelay

Beck

3/5

We get it Beck, you ARE a little stinker.

Ramones

5/5

London Calling

The Clash

5/5

Woodface

Crowded House

4/5

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

The Smashing Pumpkins

4/5

Bug

Dinosaur Jr.

3/5

Kings Of The Wild Frontier

Adam & The Ants

3/5

Phrenology

The Roots

3/5

Pretzel Logic

Steely Dan

5/5

Group Sex

Circle Jerks

5/5

Music Has The Right To Children

Boards of Canada

5/5

The ArchAndroid

Janelle Monáe

3/5

(Pronounced 'Leh-'Nérd 'Skin-'Nérd)

Lynyrd Skynyrd

4/5

Unfortunately this album completely rips ass.

Slanted And Enchanted

Pavement

5/5

This is one of my top five albums of all time and another listen didn’t change that.

This Year's Model

Elvis Costello & The Attractions

5/5

Grace

Jeff Buckley

2/5

I do not mean any disrespect for the dead but I really have to wonder if this album would be on any kind of lists if Jeff Buckley didn’t have the good business sense to die after releasing it. Two stars.

Ágætis Byrjun

Sigur Rós

4/5

Eli And The Thirteenth Confession

Laura Nyro

3/5

I wish I liked it more!

Guero

Beck

2/5

Honky Tonk Masquerade

Joe Ely

3/5

The problem with this list is that there are hundreds of fantastic albums that don’t rate more than 3 stars to me.

Bert Jansch

2/5

Wish I liked it!

Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

Arctic Monkeys

3/5

Machine Head

Deep Purple

3/5

Bat Out Of Hell

Meat Loaf

5/5

Do you ever think about how almost immediately after Meat Loaf died Andrew WK re-emerged to take the throne of making piano heavy operatic rock that is horny on an almost spiritual level while also being a weird libertarian? Nature always finds a way. Five stars

Peter Gabriel 3

Peter Gabriel

4/5

Frank

Amy Winehouse

4/5

White Ladder

David Gray

1/5

This album was so big that contemporary music writers were calling David Gray the 21st century Bob Dylan, a claim both a) incredibly stupid and b) true in a way that speaks much more to the quality of this century then the talents of the asshole responsible for “Babylon” One star

Superfly

Curtis Mayfield

5/5

Close To The Edge

Yes

5/5

Remain In Light

Talking Heads

5/5

3 Feet High and Rising

De La Soul

5/5

Look, this is obviously an unimpeachable classic and five stars, but I started to skip the skits after learning that we only have a limited amount of time on earth and you don’t strictly have to use it listening to what teens in the gifted and talented program thought was funny 35 years ago.

Live At Leeds

The Who

5/5

Moondance

Van Morrison

1/5

School's Out

Alice Cooper

2/5

I bet if you have gone your entire life without seeing or hearing Alice Cooper that everything about this album would seem like an elaborate gag from Achewood. Two stars.

Aja

Steely Dan

5/5

Shalimar

Rahul Dev Burman

4/5

Figure 8

Elliott Smith

5/5

Five stars, and I’m not just saying that because as a 38 year old white person I am legally obligated to believe this is one of the greatest albums of all time.

World Clique

Deee-Lite

4/5

I think a lot of people question why this is on the list, but I question why the list isn’t more like this instead of being full of the entire discographies of any Britpop band with a single domestic violence charge between them.

Da Capo

Love

2/5

Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul

Otis Redding

5/5

Heaux Tales

Jazmine Sullivan

2/5

Virgin Suicides

Air

3/5

Wild Wood

Paul Weller

1/5

Document

R.E.M.

4/5

The Low End Theory

A Tribe Called Quest

5/5

A Hard Day's Night

Beatles

3/5

Unknown Pleasures

Joy Division

5/5

Microshift

Hookworms

1/5

Oh boy, another mid British rock band I’ve never heard of! :/ Oh hey, there is a connection to Joanna Gruesome’s vocalist Lan McArdle. That’s one of my favorite modern bands! :) Oh no, the connection is that Lan made some extremely credible sexual assault allegations against the vocalist of Hookworms public! :(

The Köln Concert

Keith Jarrett

4/5

The Madcap Laughs

Syd Barrett

2/5

Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

3/5

Another Nick Cabe album, another three stars from someone who doesn’t really get it.

Venus Luxure No. 1 Baby

Girls Against Boys

4/5

Orbital 2

Orbital

4/5

Time Out

The Dave Brubeck Quartet

3/5

Teenager Of The Year

Frank Black

2/5

It’s been thirty years and that is enough time for us to acknowledge how altruistic and brave it was for Frank Black to break up Pixies and immediately release a double album proving how inessential his talents were to their success. Two stars.

Deja Vu

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

5/5

Sweetheart Of The Rodeo

The Byrds

3/5

Elvis Presley

3/5

Aladdin Sane

David Bowie

4/5

Daydream Nation

Sonic Youth

5/5

Tapestry

Carole King

5/5

I don’t think I’m going to listen to it again any time soon but it is pretty much perfect

Arc Of A Diver

Steve Winwood

5/5

Average reviewer on this site: The guy from Traffic released an extremely plastic sounding yacht rock album 🙄 Me, a paragon of taste: The guy from Traffic released an extremely plastic sounding yacht rock album 😍 Four stars.

Pictures At An Exhibition

Emerson, Lake & Palmer

4/5

It’s commonly accepted that 1986’s Dragon Quest was the first role playing game to feature distinct boss music when fighting The Dragonlord, but most people don’t know the genre was accidentally invented 15 years earlier when ELP performed a prog interpretation of Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition

Raising Hell

Run-D.M.C.

4/5

A five star album that gets two stars knocked off for revitalizing Aerosmith’s career and one added back for being indirectly responsible for SSX Tricky.

Strangeways, Here We Come

The Smiths

4/5

Real Life

Magazine

5/5

Absolutely perfect

Hot Rats

Frank Zappa

5/5

Absolutely perfect

The Number Of The Beast

Iron Maiden

5/5

Maiden is one of my favorite bands of all time and while this is a five star experience, it’s a bit baffling that this is the only Bruce Dickinson album on the list when it’s arguably the worst of his eighties run. The highs are as immaculate as ever, but both Invaders and Gangland are kind of bad in a way the band avoided for the rest of the decade.

Inspiration Information

Shuggie Otis

3/5

Roger the Engineer

The Yardbirds

3/5

Absolutely perfect

Beach Samba

Astrud Gilberto

5/5

Kid A

Radiohead

5/5

Look, I was 15 when this album came out. Kid A took ten million elder millennials by the throat and made us an order of magnitude more annoying. I am not socially or biologically capable of giving it less than five stars.

Suicide

4/5

Blue Lines

Massive Attack

3/5

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme

Simon & Garfunkel

3/5

Unhalfbricking

Fairport Convention

3/5

Talking Heads 77

Talking Heads

5/5

Channel Orange

Frank Ocean

4/5

James Brown Live At The Apollo

James Brown

4/5

Honky Tonk Heroes

Waylon Jennings

4/5

The seventies were such a powerful time for albums about dirtbags you know.

Buffalo Springfield Again

Buffalo Springfield

4/5

Raw Power

The Stooges

4/5

Fragile

Yes

5/5

Exit Planet Dust

The Chemical Brothers

4/5

The Colour Of Spring

Talk Talk

3/5

1989

Taylor Swift

4/5

Groovin'

The Young Rascals

3/5

Architecture And Morality

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

3/5

Low

David Bowie

5/5

Third

Soft Machine

3/5

Congratulations to the late Alex Harvey for making the horniest album thus far.

Roxy Music

4/5

You Want It Darker

Leonard Cohen

4/5

Debut

Björk

5/5

Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

OutKast

5/5

Look, I am 39 of god’s own years old. This album is Quadrophenia for people in my cohort and we aren’t allowed to give it less than 5 stars. Still, I feel vindicated in this relisten in thinking as a contrarian 18 year old that Speakerboxxx is the much better half as I listened to it on computer speakers in Foobar2000.

She's So Unusual

Cyndi Lauper

5/5

On The Beach

Neil Young

5/5

Thinking fondly about when Neil Young released the Pono, a $400 FLAC device shaped like a prism to listen to his music at the highest possible fidelity as I rock this album on my iPhone speaker in a loaner beater that’s vibrating so hard that it can travel across dimensions. Five stars.

Make Yourself

Incubus

2/5

I did not enjoy this and do not think it belongs here, but I’ll give it two stars because of the scene in Stealth (a movie about a jet that becomes sentient and downloads every MP3 on the internet so you know it’s a bad guy) sets fire to a bunch of people while Pardon Me plays.

The Gershwin Songbook

Ella Fitzgerald

3/5

Rust Never Sleeps

Neil Young & Crazy Horse

4/5

Being There

Wilco

3/5

Rip It Up

Orange Juice

4/5

Aqualung

Jethro Tull

5/5

Gold

Ryan Adams

1/5

Look, if I skipped every album written by an abuser I would be listening to two albums a month but this one is too close to home. One star on principle, fuck off Ryan.

Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)

Eurythmics

4/5

At Newport 1960

Muddy Waters

3/5

Parallel Lines

Blondie

5/5

Trafalgar

Bee Gees

2/5

Before this I had no idea that The Bee Gees had a pre-disco career. Now I understand why that fact evaded me.

Millions Now Living Will Never Die

Tortoise

5/5

Paul's Boutique

Beastie Boys

5/5

Modern Life Is Rubbish

Blur

2/5

Killing Joke

5/5

B-52's

The B-52's

4/5

Rubber Soul

Beatles

4/5

Jazz Samba

Stan Getz

4/5

Smash

The Offspring

2/5

Pink Moon

Nick Drake

4/5

One Nation Under A Groove

Funkadelic

5/5

If you ever wanted a case study in just how joyless and incurious 60% of 1001 Albums Generator users are, check out the reviews for this classic. Page after page of “waah, this is too long and weird and funky!” Like that isn’t the point you stupid motherfucker Five stars.

Be

Common

4/5

Duck Rock

Malcolm McLaren

3/5

Heaven Or Las Vegas

Cocteau Twins

5/5

Like A Prayer

Madonna

3/5

Bone Machine

Tom Waits

3/5

Hot Buttered Soul

Isaac Hayes

5/5

The Village Green Preservation Society

The Kinks

5/5

My biggest complaint about the list of 1,001 albums you have to listen to before you are allowed to die is that 80% of it consists of every single British pop rock album from 1965-1995, but I have to admit they really nailed it in this one case. Five stars.

Trans Europe Express

Kraftwerk

5/5

Your New Favourite Band

The Hives

3/5

They were not.

Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd

2/5

I wish I liked Pink Floyd. It feels like I am breaking a major Dad Law by just not enjoying it.

Dig Me Out

Sleater-Kinney

4/5

Stand!

Sly & The Family Stone

4/5

Iron Maiden

3/5

There are only two Iron Maiden albums on this list, which makes this one a baffling choice. It’s not BAD, but it’s also not at all indicative of what the band would become. If you really wanted to represent the pre-Bruce Dickinson era, Killers is a legitimately good album. This is perfectly fine but I can’t imagine it’s anyone’s favorite.

Frampton Comes Alive

Peter Frampton

1/5

Look, most of the music I love basically boils down to a British person jerking off with their guitar yet I still could not hang with this absolute slog. One star.

Konnichiwa

Skepta

3/5

Grime really isn’t for me but I can respect that this is a pretty good example of it. Plus, it’s a great opportunity to read stunningly racist 1001 Album Generator user reviews, which is one of my favorite ways to while away an afternoon. Three stars.

Savane

Ali Farka Touré

3/5

Stankonia

OutKast

5/5

Rattlesnakes

Lloyd Cole And The Commotions

2/5

I wish I had any strong feelings about this.

The White Album

Beatles

5/5

Two thoughts that should not be controversial but are: 1) The Beatles are my distant third favorite British Invasion band after The Who and The Kinks 2) The White album is an unimpeachable 5 star classic and an all-time great, but it can be very annoying.

Nevermind

Nirvana

4/5

Are You Experienced

Jimi Hendrix

4/5

Brothers In Arms

Dire Straits

1/5

Slippery When Wet

Bon Jovi

1/5

Californication

Red Hot Chili Peppers

2/5

Rejoicing In The Hands

Devendra Banhart

4/5

Cross

Justice

3/5

In 2007 I spent so much time at house parties where this album was in constant rotation that I ended up in a psychiatric hospital. In 2024 it made for a perfectly pleasant soundtrack to my morning jog. 3 stars for a grim reminder that time comes for us all.

Queen II

Queen

5/5

I’ve Got a Tiger By the Tail

Buck Owens

3/5

Supa Dupa Fly

Missy Elliott

5/5

New Boots And Panties

Ian Dury

4/5

Back To Black

Amy Winehouse

5/5

L.A. Woman

The Doors

1/5

After The Gold Rush

Neil Young

5/5

The Atomic Mr Basie

Count Basie & His Orchestra

4/5

Parachutes

Coldplay

2/5

In Our Heads

Hot Chip

3/5

Rock 'N Soul

Solomon Burke

4/5

Lady Soul

Aretha Franklin

5/5

The Genius Of Ray Charles

Ray Charles

4/5

Remedy

Basement Jaxx

3/5

Juju

Siouxsie And The Banshees

4/5

Blue

Joni Mitchell

5/5

Another five star album i am not in a hurry to listen to again.

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band

John Lennon

1/5

I was in high school when George Harrison passed and remember all my friends in bands saying something along the lines of “The Beatles are dying in the order of their talent.” Having since listened to John Lennon’s solo career since then, I can confirm he would have lived forever if that was the case. One star.

Fred Neil

1/5

Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

Wu-Tang Clan

5/5

Absolute all-timer.

Olympia 64

Jacques Brel

4/5

Faith

George Michael

4/5

For how much he talks about it, I hope George Michael finally got to have sex at some point. Four stars.

Tres Hombres

ZZ Top

4/5

Wild Is The Wind

Nina Simone

5/5

I’m a Lonesome Fugitive

Merle Haggard

3/5

With The Beatles

Beatles

3/5

Abbey Road

Beatles

5/5

Will The Circle Be Unbroken

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

2/5

Brown Sugar

D'Angelo

4/5

Axis: Bold As Love

Jimi Hendrix

4/5

Os Mutantes

4/5

Ill Communication

Beastie Boys

5/5

Loveless

My Bloody Valentine

5/5

Band On The Run

Paul McCartney and Wings

5/5

Homework

Daft Punk

4/5

Street Signs

Ozomatli

3/5

Fever To Tell

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

2/5

While my main issue with this book is that someone thinks it’s vital that I listen to every single brit pop album released before I die, a close second is that came out when it was released seem to be picked solely on the pitchfork buzz they had rather than actually feeling important or vital. Two stars.

Reggatta De Blanc

The Police

4/5

Casanova

The Divine Comedy

2/5

Music For The Jilted Generation

The Prodigy

4/5

Blood On The Tracks

Bob Dylan

5/5

Stripped

Christina Aguilera

3/5

Technique

New Order

5/5

Siamese Dream

The Smashing Pumpkins

5/5

It’s a real shame that William Patrick Corgsn released this and Gish, two basically perfect albums, and disappeared never to be heard from again. (Takes a huge sip of coffee and checks Wikipedia) Oh. Oh no. Five stars.

Safe As Milk

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band

3/5

Felt Mountain

Goldfrapp

2/5

Finally, torch music for perverts fucked up on ketamine stolen from a police horse.

Talking Timbuktu

Ali Farka Touré

3/5

Foo Fighters

3/5

Music in Exile

Songhoy Blues

3/5

White Blood Cells

The White Stripes

2/5

Metallica

1/5

The Chronic

Dr. Dre

3/5

Marquee Moon

Television

5/5

California

American Music Club

2/5

Exodus

Bob Marley & The Wailers

5/5

The Lexicon Of Love

ABC

5/5

Maggot Brain

Funkadelic

5/5

I Should Coco

Supergrass

4/5

American Beauty

Grateful Dead

1/5

A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector

Various Artists

5/5

Christmas music… to DIE for Five stars.

Me Against The World

2Pac

4/5

American Idiot

Green Day

4/5

The Trinity Session

Cowboy Junkies

2/5

Tusk

Fleetwood Mac

5/5

All Directions

The Temptations

3/5

Warehouse: Songs And Stories

Hüsker Dü

4/5

Sex Packets

Digital Underground

3/5

I’m beginning to think this Humpty guy fucks. Three stars.

Immigrés

Youssou N'Dour

4/5

Mothership Connection

Parliament

5/5

I am of the exactly correct age to vividly remember PCU, a 90s college comedy which culminates in P-Funk playing a frat house rager to save the day, playing on Comedy Central roughly twice a week after school, leaving me with both specific feelings about Jessica Walter and an inability to give a George Clinton album less than 5 stars.

Melodrama

Lorde

2/5

Off The Wall

Michael Jackson

4/5

Vol. 4

Black Sabbath

5/5

Cypress Hill

5/5

Third

Portishead

3/5

Follow The Leader

Korn

2/5

What saves this from being a one star album is the fact that I was 13 when it came out. I was obsessed to the point that I had the lyrics printed out and would pore over them like holy texts until my dad found them one day and sold my entire cd collection, using the credit to buy two used Stryper albums so I could have heavy music that honored God.

Born To Run

Bruce Springsteen

5/5

Before And After Science

Brian Eno

3/5

The Slim Shady LP

Eminem

1/5

Beggars Banquet

The Rolling Stones

3/5

Selected Ambient Works 85-92

Aphex Twin

5/5

If you are like me (and I pray for your sake that isn’t true), putting this album on will induce a Proust-grade flashback to using Xtal as the menu music for the unusably slow SNES emulator on the Dreamcast with a Teletubbies splash screen in 10th grade. Five stars.

All That You Can't Leave Behind

U2

1/5

Clube Da Esquina

Milton Nascimento

3/5

Highway to Hell

AC/DC

4/5

Something/Anything?

Todd Rundgren

5/5

Larks' Tongues In Aspic

King Crimson

4/5

Rage Against The Machine

4/5

All Hail the Queen

Queen Latifah

4/5

The Score

Fugees

4/5

Rocks

Aerosmith

1/5

Is This It

The Strokes

4/5

Ocean Rain

Echo And The Bunnymen

5/5

Modern Kosmology

Jane Weaver

5/5

Low-Life

New Order

4/5

Justified

Justin Timberlake

1/5

Kala

M.I.A.

5/5

All I wanna do is (Gunshot) (Gunshot) (Gunshot) (Gunshot) (Cash register sound) Kiss Luigi

Green River

Creedence Clearwater Revival

3/5

Dire Straits

2/5

Shaft

Isaac Hayes

4/5

Younger Than Yesterday

The Byrds

4/5

To Pimp A Butterfly

Kendrick Lamar

4/5

Broken English

Marianne Faithfull

3/5

My Aim Is True

Elvis Costello

4/5

Mask

Bauhaus

3/5

Led Zeppelin IV

Led Zeppelin

3/5

Entertainment

Gang Of Four

4/5

American IV: The Man Comes Around

Johnny Cash

5/5

As a casual fan of both artists, it is extremely funny to me that Cash took one of Trent Reznor’s best known songs and said “hey, this is mine now” right before dying. And it’s arguably not even the best cover on the album! Five stars.

Gorillaz

2/5

This entire album is the sonic equivalent of Damon Albarn walking around the British Museum of History and thinking “wow, I can’t believe we did all of this.” Two stars.

Black Holes and Revelations

Muse

1/5

There's A Riot Goin' On

Sly & The Family Stone

4/5

In Rainbows

Radiohead

4/5

The Hour Of Bewilderbeast

Badly Drawn Boy

3/5

The Seldom Seen Kid

Elbow

1/5

It’s very hard to believe that the sun never set on the British Empire when they willingly subject themselves to this shit.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

Iron Butterfly

3/5

Duck Stab/Buster & Glen

The Residents

4/5

This is currently one of the lowest rated albums on this site and while it’s not exactly an instant 5 stars for everyone, I would argue this whole experience would be much more rewarding if the author dug deeper with inclusions like this instead of the complete discographies of everyone who ever feuded with a Gallagher brother.

Night Life

Ray Price

3/5

Chore of Enchantment

Giant Sand

3/5

Come Away With Me

Norah Jones

3/5

Black Metal

Venom

3/5

Disintegration

The Cure

5/5

The Last Broadcast

Doves

2/5

It’s incredible how often this random number generator can sense I am facing a bad day and assign me to listen to the most mid British slop imaginable because NME sucked it off for six weeks straight 25 years ago. Two stars.

If You're Feeling Sinister

Belle & Sebastian

5/5

McCartney

Paul McCartney

3/5

Autobahn

Kraftwerk

4/5

The Predator

Ice Cube

5/5

Achtung Baby

U2

2/5

Tragic Songs of Life

The Louvin Brothers

3/5

Darklands

The Jesus And Mary Chain

4/5

Suede

1/5

Soul Mining

The The

5/5

...And Justice For All

Metallica

4/5

The Visitors

ABBA

4/5

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Beatles

5/5

Dummy

Portishead

5/5

NEU! 75

Neu!

5/5

Head Hunters

Herbie Hancock

5/5

Peggy Suicide

Julian Cope

4/5

Connected

Stereo MC's

3/5

We're Only In It For The Money

The Mothers Of Invention

2/5

The Sounds Of India

Ravi Shankar

3/5

Leftism

Leftfield

5/5

American Gothic

David Ackles

4/5

Pacific Ocean Blue

Dennis Wilson

5/5

I am almost halfway through listening to every entry in 1001 Albums To Listen To Before You Die and while it is an absolute slog, moments like loading up a Beach Boys solo album and finding out that actually heroin was only the second biggest influence on Spiritualized’s whole deal make it worth it. Five stars.

In The Wee Small Hours

Frank Sinatra

2/5

Here Come The Warm Jets

Brian Eno

4/5

Kenza

Khaled

3/5

At Budokan

Cheap Trick

5/5

British Steel

Judas Priest

4/5

Superunknown

Soundgarden

3/5

Apple Venus Volume 1

XTC

3/5

A Seat at the Table

Solange

4/5

The Man Who

Travis

2/5

Another entry in the beloved music catalog “601 Albums You Must Listen To Before You Die And Also 400 Bad Britpop Albums From The 90s”

Blood Sugar Sex Magik

Red Hot Chili Peppers

1/5

Few things underline the inherent cruelty of time’s passage as much as how vibrant this album must have seemed to white rock fans at release but by the time I was cognizant of music less than a decade later, saying RHCP was your favorite band was polite shorthand for saying thanks but no thanks to having a personality.

Myths Of The Near Future

Klaxons

2/5

The Good, The Bad & The Queen

1/5

G. Love And Special Sauce

G. Love & Special Sauce

1/5

Respectfully: what the fuck is this? Beck and Sublime already had enough to answer for but I’m pretty sure this is ultimately their fault.

Lam Toro

Baaba Maal

3/5

Hot Fuss

The Killers

4/5

Call me old fashioned but I don’t think we should celebrate murderers by canonizing their otherwise pretty good Duran Duran tribute act in a list of essential albums. Four stars.

Trout Mask Replica

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band

2/5

Zombie

Fela Kuti

5/5

Fear and Whiskey

Mekons

5/5

Don't Come Home A Drinkin' (With Lovin' On Your Mind)

Loretta Lynn

3/5

Gentlemen

The Afghan Whigs

3/5

Urban Hymns

The Verve

1/5

Whatever

Aimee Mann

4/5

Vespertine

Björk

3/5

Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo

Devo

5/5

Crooked Rain Crooked Rain

Pavement

5/5

Drunk

Thundercat

3/5

Coles Corner

Richard Hawley

1/5

It turns out getting the guitarist from Pulp to make a heartfelt tribute to the early days of rock and doo-wop sounds almost exactly like The Magnetic Fields by and for straight people, and it’s exactly as cursed and baffling of a prospect as it sounds. One star.

Let England Shake

PJ Harvey

3/5

Destroy Rock & Roll

Mylo

4/5

Destroyer

KISS

3/5

Miriam Makeba

4/5

american dream

LCD Soundsystem

3/5

Our Aim Is To Satisfy

Red Snapper

4/5

The Libertines

3/5

Rock Bottom

Robert Wyatt

1/5

I would like to stop hearing albums by this guy now.

Heavy Weather

Weather Report

5/5

Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs

Derek & The Dominos

2/5

Angrily giving this two stars because unfortunately Layla absolutely whips ass.

Blonde On Blonde

Bob Dylan

2/5

Pornography

The Cure

4/5

xx

The xx

3/5

Only By The Night

Kings of Leon

1/5

Hysteria

Def Leppard

3/5

The College Dropout

Kanye West

5/5

Unfortunately this is a five star album I will never listen to again

Space Ritual

Hawkwind

4/5

Court And Spark

Joni Mitchell

5/5

Paranoid

Black Sabbath

5/5

I cannot objectively rate this album. It was one of the first secular albums I ever listened to after trading a playset of Magic cards (Craw Wurm, specifically) to borrow a friend’s CD copy of it so I could tape it. I thought it would be impossible for music to ever be faster or harder than Electric Funeral. My grandmother cried when she heard it. 5 stars.

Nothing's Shocking

Jane's Addiction

3/5

Le Tigre

5/5

Rings Around The World

Super Furry Animals

3/5

Live At The Harlem Square Club

Sam Cooke

5/5

When I Was Born For The 7th Time

Cornershop

1/5

The Rise & Fall

Madness

5/5

Live At The Star Club, Hamburg

Jerry Lee Lewis

1/5

Do you ever just listen to the voice of an early rock and roll star and just know in your heart that they had a deeply problematic relationship with one or more teenage girls?

The Sun Rises In The East

Jeru The Damaja

4/5

Power In Numbers

Jurassic 5

3/5

Logical Progression

LTJ Bukem

3/5

Bluesbreakers

John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers

1/5