Journey in Progress
Discovering music one album at a time
690
Albums Rated
3.13
Avg Rating
44
5-Star Albums
63%
Complete
399 albums remaining
Rating Speed
7
Per Week
689
Days Active
Reviews
213
Written
31%
Review Rate
vs Global
-0.1
Avg Diff
3.13
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Average rating over time
Ratings by Decade
Which era do you prefer?
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When do you listen?
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2010s
Favorite Decade
Jazz
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Balanced
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11
1-Star Albums
Taste Analysis
Genre Preferences
Ratings by genre
Origin Preferences
Ratings by country
Rating Style
You Love More Than Most
Albums you rated higher than global average
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yeezus | 5 | 2.77 | +2.23 |
| Kimono My House | 5 | 3.06 | +1.94 |
| Let England Shake | 5 | 3.15 | +1.85 |
| Loveless | 5 | 3.17 | +1.83 |
| Tigermilk | 5 | 3.22 | +1.78 |
| John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band | 5 | 3.24 | +1.76 |
| Sound Affects | 5 | 3.26 | +1.74 |
| The Seldom Seen Kid | 5 | 3.26 | +1.74 |
| 1989 | 5 | 3.27 | +1.73 |
| The Soft Bulletin | 5 | 3.28 | +1.72 |
You Love Less Than Most
Albums you rated lower than global average
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Queens of the Stone Age | 1 | 3.29 | -2.29 |
| Goo | 1 | 3.24 | -2.24 |
| Teenager Of The Year | 1 | 2.99 | -1.99 |
| Spiderland | 1 | 2.97 | -1.97 |
| Slayed? | 1 | 2.89 | -1.89 |
| E.V.O.L. | 1 | 2.89 | -1.89 |
| The Grand Tour | 1 | 2.79 | -1.79 |
| Metallica | 2 | 3.79 | -1.79 |
| Maverick A Strike | 1 | 2.75 | -1.75 |
| Songs From The Big Chair | 2 | 3.74 | -1.74 |
Artist Analysis
Favorite Artists
Artists with 2+ albums and high weighted score
| Artist | Albums | Avg | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bob Dylan | 4 | 4.5 | 3.86 |
| Bruce Springsteen | 4 | 4.5 | 3.86 |
| Miles Davis | 3 | 4.67 | 3.83 |
| Simon & Garfunkel | 3 | 4.67 | 3.83 |
| Beatles | 7 | 4.14 | 3.8 |
| Queen | 2 | 5 | 3.8 |
| The Flaming Lips | 2 | 5 | 3.8 |
| Radiohead | 6 | 4 | 3.67 |
| Kanye West | 3 | 4.33 | 3.67 |
Least Favorite Artists
Artists with 2+ albums and low weighted score
| Artist | Albums | Avg | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sonic Youth | 3 | 1.33 | 2.17 |
5-Star Albums (44)
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Popular Reviews
Rahul Dev Burman
4/5
Burman is like the John Williams or Hans Zimmer of Bollywood: he’s iconic and he’s the master of composing for film. I’ve heard a lot of his work together with Asha Bhosle, but never this soundtrack. I hadn’t heard of Shalimar, but a Bollywood movie starring Rex Harrison seems super interesting.
The title credits music has a James Bond-esque feel to it (not so much as the vocal Bond main themes, but the “James Bond Theme”, “007 Theme”, or the “Suspense Motif” by Monty Norman, John Barry, and David Arnold, respectively). The rest of the songs follow some excellent Bollywood dance numbers interspersed with great suspenseful film music and (what I assume are) leitmotifs.
I’m really glad this album was included in the 1001. This was new to me and this is not the type of music I’ve come to expect from the book.
8 likes
The Zutons
3/5
Recorded in 2003, this sounds like an ode to old school garage rock from the 60s or even 50s, similar to The Cramps. Only problem is that The Zutons don’t execute as well. It sounds fine, but it also definitely sounds somewhat influenced by Britpop, becoming a weird amalgam of eras that just doesn’t work well for me.
1 likes
Run-D.M.C.
3/5
Run-D.M.C. continued to have some great albums, but their debut is a tour-de-force putting not just the band but the genre on the map. “It’s Like That” is easily my favorite song of theirs, and the rest of the album around it is pretty solid.
1 likes
Prince
3/5
Prince is really hit or miss for me. I love Purple Rain, but I really don’t see why Sign o’ the Times is his other album which is incredibly well regarded. Perhaps it’s because of the absence of The Revolution, but I don’t find Prince as interesting with a stripped bare-bones instrumental backing. The title track is good and there are some other solid songs on the album, but overall it’s not really my cup of tea. I was actually considering rating this album a 2 or even a 1 until “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man”, which is an all-time great Prince song that I totally forgot about.
1 likes
Neil Young
3/5
While I think Young is at his best live (my favorite of his albums are Weld, Rust Never Sleeps, and Live at Massey Hall 1971), this is my favorite of his studio albums. Harvest is Young at his most tender, and I think his most understandable. While I love the impacts of ecology on society and vice versa that After the Gold Rush discusses, I don’t claim to understand those lyrics nearly as well as on Harvest. “Heart of Gold” and “Old Man” are justifiably some of Young’s best and most recognizable songs, and “The Needle and the Damage Done” is one of my favorites. While Harvest might feature Neil Young sounding a lot like Bob Dylan (even Dylan thought so), I also think Young’s lyrics here are by far the most straightforward: relatable while still being poetic and containing great folk guitar and acoustic instrumental backing.
1 likes
4-Star Albums (131)
1-Star Albums (11)
All Ratings
Radiohead
3/5
It’s really a testament to Radiohead’s songmaking ability that a collection of songs that were rejected from Kid A are still good enough to be considered one of the best albums ever. “Pyramid Song”, “Knives Out”, “Morning Bell/Amnesiac”, and even “I Might Be Wrong” are some of Radiohead’s greatest, but this album is noticeably less consistently good compared to most other Radiohead albums (except King of Limbs which I can’t find myself to enjoy at all). One of the low points includes “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors” which sounds fine but for the modulated voice. Not sure why but whenever they use computerized voices, it really breaks up the flow of the album for me (also see “Fitter Happier” on OK Computer).
I probably haven’t listened to this in 10+ years, and while I rated this album highly, I definitely didn’t think I’d remember it that well. About half the tracks are definitely forgettable, but I also forgot how much I enjoyed “Morning Bell/Amnesiac” (“releeeease meeeee”) and a few others in addition to the 2 singles.
Supertramp
3/5
For a long time I was familiar with Supertramp only for their silly pop songs like “Breakfast in America”, “Goodbye Stranger”, and “The Logical Song”. I still remember the first time I heard “Bloody Well Right” on the radio ~2008, and was sort of amazed that the pop-rock station I was listening to was playing it, having no idea who the band was. After learning it was Supertramp, I gained a new appreciation for later pop-oriented Supertramp.
Crime of the Century came at a time when Supertramp was transitioning from prog-rock to pop-rock, and it’s a perfect mix, akin to Yes at their best. I think I prefer Breakfast in America, but I don’t think I’d enjoy that as much without having known Crime of the Century.
Paul Simon
4/5
Definitely Paul Simon’s best album I’ve heard. This and Rhythm of the Saints were actually my introduction to Simon, after which I got into Simon & Garfunkel, now one of my all-time favorite groups. Graceland has hovered in and out of my top 100 over the years, and now it sits closer to ~200, but it’s still a favorite album of mine. I’ve always been mesmerized by the cheery upbeat music but often melancholy lyrics, discussing heartbreak, homelessness, starvation, and wealth inequality. Simon claimed that he wasn’t writing protest songs, and simultaneously he was criticized for going to South Africa to record (breaking the cultural boycott against apartheid), but I’ve always appreciated the cultural fusion on the album and understood many of the lyrics to be vaguely underhandedly critical of apartheid and overtly hopeful for a better world.
Black Sabbath
4/5
The beginning of the album, in the vein of Cream or the Moody Blues, sounds like the standard psychedelic blues that was already declining in 1970… but then it gives way to something totally different. Something new. Black Sabbath rewrote the game. They weren’t the only ones doing so, but they were the only ones who went on to devote themself totally to the emerging heavy metal genre, rather than sticking with hard rock or blues rock like Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple. Hell, even the song titles set the standard for metal: “Iron Man”, “Electric Funeral”, “Hand of Doom”, really the only song that doesn’t have a metal title is “Fairies Wear Boots”.
This was one of the first CDs I ever owned that wasn’t a greatest hits compilation. Early on, I skipped most songs that weren’t “Iron Man”, having just begun attempting to play guitar, but over time the rest of the album has grown on me considerably. The album shifts back and forth between heavy metal and psychedelic blues, but it still forms a completely cohesive unit. This is another album which has floated in and out of my top 100, and the guitar solo from “Iron Man” is still probably my favorite moment on the album.
Dolly Parton
3/5
This album seems to be highlighted mostly for its very tender songs like the title track, “Early Morning Breeze”, or “Here I Am”. But this album also demonstrates Parton’s versatility in a way that some of her other great albums (like Jolene, my personal favorite) do not. “Traveling Man” in particular is a fantastic song with humor, akin to Johnny Cash/Shel Silverstein’s “A Boy Named Sue” or some of Jim Steinman’s songs for Meat Loaf. It’s that kind of hilarity: the narrator is in love with an older traveling man and wants to run away with him, but she’s afraid to tell her mom because she knows her mom would disapprove. Meanwhile the traveling man is getting with the narrator’s mom and runs away with her instead. Great song on a solid album.
Kendrick Lamar
3/5
When this album came out, it totally went under the radar for me, I don’t think I really appreciated this as much as I should have. I think I found it to be just another rap album, and it even had skits; I had thought the hip-hop industry had done away with skits by 2012, ugh. But while there’s still parts of this album I don’t particularly like, I think the highs on this album are as high or higher than anything on any of Lamar’s other albums. “Money Trees” and “Swimming Pools (Drank)” are among his best. That said, overall this album is less consistent than To Pimp a Butterfly, DAMN., or even Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. I wouldn’t say Mr. Morale is as good as Good Kid, but Mr. Morale is more consistently good, whereas Good Kid has lower moments. In any case, I’m glad this monumental album ended up on the 1001 albums list.
Tears For Fears
2/5
“Shout” is great, and “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is solid, but most of the rest of this album gets boring quickly. Many songs seemed to drag on to the point that this felt like an hour + rather than sub-45 minutes.
B.B. King
3/5
B.B. King live is the best way to listen. This is probably his best album.
Ryan Adams
3/5
I was introduced to Ryan Adams by his less lauded Cardinology which has a lot more rock-and-roll sound. Heartbreaker is a little more tender, like a combination of heartland rock and folk rock in the vein of Dylan’s Desire or Nashville Skyline (which despite their different “eras” and sounds, have always seemed thematically similar to me). It also reminds me of Neil Young, specifically Rust Never Sleeps with a mix of electric and softer acoustic-ish tracks. Adams is no Dylan or Young, but this is a pleasant album.
Arcade Fire
4/5
It took me a long time to warm up to this album. I loved Funeral on first listen, and Neon Bible probably after 2-3 listens, but it took me probably until after the release of Reflektor to find myself enjoying most of this. Even though it’s probably Arcade Fire's second-most celebrated album, it’s probably my least favorite through Reflektor. It’s definitely less consistent than most of their other albums, the highs are high but there’s a lot of filler, I can’t stand “Rococo” or “Month of May”, and even right after listening again, there’s some more forgettable songs.
I think if a few songs were cut and a few were rearranged to make this into a ~45 minute album, it would be more on par with Neon Bible in my mind as one of Arcade Fire’s greatest. Now, after having mostly criticized this album until now, I do still love this album. At one point it was in my top 100, and the two-part songs (“Half Light” I & II, “Sprawl” I & II, and to some extent “The Suburbs”) are highlights and some of the best tracks of Arcade Fire’s career. I know they started the multi-part songs on Funeral, but I still think that’s one of the more successful things they’ve done over their career, continuing into some of their best work on Reflektor and We.
Justice
4/5
Love that this album is here. I think it's sort of fallen out of favor the longer it's been since release, but it's a phenomenal album rivaling Daft Punk.
Slade
1/5
First album of the 1001 that I haven’t heard before! And… it’s dad rock. They’re not bad though, they remind me a bit of Rainbow but more on the glam side and less on the hard rock/metal side. It’s interesting but certainly not something I’d consider for a top 1000 albums of all time. I could see this being well-liked when released, but it seems quite tame compared to lots of other glam/hard rock of the time. I also think they sound similar to some other bands like The Saints or Twisted Sister which came later, so I can see how their vibe set the stage for later bands to expand and improve on the sound.
Peter Gabriel
3/5
I feel like Peter Gabriel has had a similar career as Lou Reed just 5 years later: both came from relatively experimental rock bands that pushed the boundaries of what pop rock could be, and then continued that blend of experimental and traditional pop/rock in their solo careers. I definitely prefer Reed for the most part, but this is one of Gabriel’s best albums and probably the best example of what his portfolio of music is like. “I Don’t Remember” is my favorite track, followed closely by “Biko”.
Radiohead
5/5
When I started really getting into music, I knew I had to listen to this one. Some of my favorite artists like Muse were heavily inspired by Radiohead’s sound, and this was lauded by many as the greatest album of all time. On first listen, I certainly didn’t think so. I’ve always enjoyed “Karma Police”, but for some reason it took me 5+ listens for Radiohead to really click with me. Now they’re one of my favorite bands and OK Computer has been in my top 100 albums of all time for a while (including a brief stint at #2 and a long stint between 5-10).
Every song on this album (with one exception) is perfect in its own way. And while there’s a lot of different stuff going on and a lot of variety, the songs all come together to form something amazing. Perhaps something that’s surprised me the most about this album is that while it feels a lot like a product of its times, after 25+ years, it’s still just as incredible to listen to. That’s not something I’d say about Nevermind by Nirvana, which sounds dated despite Nirvana putting their finger on the cultural pulse at the time.
“Fitter Happier” is an abomination though. I think I sort of understand what Thom Yorke was going for in writing and including this song, it’s interestingly experimental (spoken by “Fred”, an ancestor to Apple’s Siri) and playfully juxtaposes the hypocrisy of a computer telling us the best way to live a meaningful human lifestyle. But the song just really sucks, it totally breaks up the flow of the album. The rest of the album is so good though that even this can’t bring down the perfect rating.
The White Stripes
4/5
Not my favorite by the White Stripes or Jack White, but it’s easy to see why it’s considered their best. “Seven Nation Army” is a masterpiece and the rest of the album is full of awesome blues-rock jams.
Nico
2/5
I guess I’m glad this album is here, there tends to be a severe lack of representation of women artists in these lists. Nico was a pioneering art rock innovator along with the Velvet Underground, and later on a great songwriter. Having said those positive things about Nico, this album feels incredibly dull to me. It’s like a series of VU demos that were too underdeveloped to make the cut for The Velvet Underground & Nico. The songs were almost all written by VU collaborators and Jackson Browne with very little input from Nico herself.
I think if this were given the same level of songwriting, production, and engineering as The Velvet Underground & Nico, Chelsea Girl probably could have been something exceptional. But for me this just sounds like a very under-developed VU release that they gave to Nico to sing. Nico’s next two albums The Marble Index and Desertshore are MUCH more developed in their own right and Nico wrote her own songs and really made her own brand of art rock. One or both of those albums are really what should have been included in the 1001 in my opinion.
Sebadoh
1/5
On the plus side, this is one of the few albums of the 1001 that I haven't heard before. On the downside, it sucks.
Sebadoh sounds to me like they wanted to be a grunge band but they just couldn't figure out the bite that Nirvana or Soundgarden did, and they also couldn't figure out how to be as interesting or introspective as Sonic Youth or other similar bands from the era... AKA Sebadoh suck. A few of their other albums are tolerable, and I thought this was going to be the same way based on the first track, but it was all downhill from there. Garbage album, absolutely should not be included on this list.
Jimi Hendrix
3/5
The third best (out of three) Jimi Hendrix Experience albums is still quite good.
50 Cent
3/5
This is a great party album, I forgot how fun this is. Not in a dancing kind of way, but in a head-bobbing vibe kind of way. The barking, the random “G-Unit!” shouts (including the “g-g-g-g-g-g-G-Unit”), and the mix of hardcore gangsta and tender introspection are what make this album more than just a product of its time. Some tracks like “Back Down” (the Ja Rule diss track) are dated, and there’s obviously a fair amount of misogyny that was prevalent in music at the time, but on the whole it’s a really enjoyable listen.
Stevie Wonder
3/5
Stevie Wonder had a monumental run in the 70s between Music of My Mind (1972) and Hotter Than July (1980). Fulfillingness is probably my least favorite of the bunch (although I haven’t heard The Secret Life of Plants). It’s still a great album, but it doesn’t have the awesome hits that Talking Book or Songs in the Key of Life had, or the cohesiveness of Innervisions. It’s also not as consistent as Music of My Mind or Hotter Than July, but I think those are more even and the highs are higher on Fulfillingness, which makes them all about even for me. The good thing is that this album is among Wonder’s funkiest.
Kanye West
5/5
I used to love this album. I think it’s fair to say I’ve soured on all of West’s music since he outed himself as an anti-semitic douchebag, and I have a hard time enjoying any of his music past or present. I’ve especially soured on the lyrical content and found much to be desired, especially compared to West’s first 2 albums of Yeezus.
MBDTF is a masterclass in production, sampling, and collaboration, and it shouldn’t be underestimated how massive this was in 2010. It’s still one of the best rap albums ever made, and certainly one of if not THE best art rap/pop rap/whatever you want to call this genre albums ever made.
Pretty much every song is a masterpiece, and it’s a shame that they were made by such a colossal asshole. Whatever happened to the Kanye West who wrote “Balding Donald Trump taking dollars from y’all”?
Tim Buckley
3/5
This is one of the most appropriately titled albums ever. At times melancholy and at times positively nostalgic, this is the type of music that cheers me up when I’m feeling down, but makes me a bit sad when I’m in a good mood. I don’t know how else to describe it, but I get a similar feeling with much of Sufjan Stevens’ and Leonard Cohen’s music.
This isn’t my favorite Buckley album, but it represents a transition period from his baroque pop to his more experimental folk jazz style. This was also the first album where he wrote all his own material. The pairing of vibraphone and Buckley’s sort of experimental voice go together so so well. The use of voice as a tool to make interesting sounds more than just conveying the lyrics is a wonderful thing.
Pixies
3/5
This is easily the weakest of the “holy trinity” of Pixies albums. Bossanova has a much poppier sound than their other albums, which I mostly don’t love. It’s an interesting product of its time, with a grunge-pop rock hybrid, but it also feels much older since it consists of 14 songs for a total of 40 minutes (less than 3 minutes per song). This feels like the perfect dose; I think I would’ve gotten bored after an hour of this sound. I don’t think I’ve listened to this album in 10+ years and my meh-to-okay rating from then still holds up. I gave the same rating to other Pixies albums and I think I’ll definitely be re-assessing those assuming they come up within the 1001. I can’t imagine Bossanova is on the list without Doolittle or Surfer Rosa, but we’ll see.
Christina Aguilera
3/5
Really? This is one of the 1001 albums? Well ok, I guess I’ll give it a shot.
A little more than halfway through, and I’m actually enjoying this a fair amount. Many of the songs are more rock oriented, some are R&B oriented, and some are the ones I know and eye roll at like “Beautiful”. Despite the differences between songs, it all feels cohesive. Interestingly, every song on the album was written or co-written by Aguilera except for “Beautiful”, which is the one part of the album that doesn’t feel like it belongs. It’s a major pop ballad though so it made sense to include it to help drive sales. Overall, I found myself liking this much more than I had expected, to the point where I listened to the deluxe edition with 2 extra tracks: a b-side and a remix.
Common
3/5
Common is a little boring but I respect what he does. This is a solid album with a great ode to Chicago. At least this album is much better than Like Water for Chocolate.
The Shamen
3/5
First album on the 1001 list by an artist I hadn’t even heard of. Despite that, I knew I was getting into an electro-house album by the artwork alone. The early 90s vaguely futuristic “tribal” art and font ooze chill-out house. Very fortunately, this is something closer to The KLF than to The Orb. I love the former (a little dancy), and I can’t stand the latter (very ambient). While The Shamen fall somewhere in between, the album overall edges towards The KLF and away from The Orb. Many of the songs do drag on and get boring before they end; I can’t imagine enjoying extended versions that probably would’ve been typical at clubs.
Leonard Cohen
3/5
Songs of Love and Hate is right. So much emotion behind this, even though it's maybe not my favorite Leonard Cohen.
Funkadelic
3/5
The title track is probably the best funk/rock instrumental ever, and then there’s some other songs which range from fine to solid. I feel like Funkadelic were at a point in their career similar to Black Sabbath at Paranoid: coming from psychedelic/blues roots, this was the album where they really began to develop their sound that made them famous. Oddly enough though, I felt like Parliament releases contain their funkier side where Funkadelic releases are more experimental rock.
Definitely not my favorite Funkadelic/Parliament/George Clinton/Bootsy Collins/etc. album, there’s a handful of Parliament albums I prefer along with One Nation Under a Groove (which contains a bonus EP with a live version of “Maggot Brain”). A lot of Maggot Brain feels like a fusion of James Brown and Jimi Hendrix, with a little Miles Davis thrown in. Further on in Parliament/Funkadelic’s career, I don’t think I can rightfully compare them to anyone; they’re the ones who get imitated, not the other way around.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
3/5
Yeah Yeah Yeahs are an interesting group. It looked like Karen O was primed to take the mantle that was developed by the riot grrrl movement, but after this album they started to go the more refined indie route rather than the garage punk status they had with their first couple albums. I do like some of the back-and-forth punkish sound and then softer sound with “Maps”. It reminds me a lot of The Breeders or Garbage. Overall unfortunately I think I prefer both Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ self-titled debut EP and their later album It’s Blitz to Fever to Tell. Fever is definitely an essential album for this list though.
The Doors
3/5
None of the Doors’ albums matched their self-titled debut or the follow-up Strange Days, but this one comes close. Really everything in their discography is very good, albeit there’s not a lot of albums considering Jim Morrison’s early death. “Peace Frog” is the highlight of this album for me. While rather upbeat it’s fairly political, condemning actions of the police (both for Morrison’s on-stage arrest in New Haven and the mishandling of the 1968 DNC convention protest in Chicago).
John Martyn
2/5
John Martyn is a little boring. I remember enjoying Solid Air, but there’s a lot less interesting things going on with this album. Martyn seemed to be doing in the 70s what Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel were doing in the 80s-90s, so props to Martyn for being ahead of the curve. But One World just doesn’t really do much for me.
Deep Purple
3/5
This album is really what pushed Deep Purple from psychedelic rock into hard rock or metal, but it’s also one of their least interesting albums I’ve heard. Their earlier Concerto for Group and Orchestra was a wonderfully weird prog-rock romp, and the later Machine Head and live Made in Japan set the standard for what hard rock should be. In Rock was a transition, and it has some cool elements of prog-rock (the 7-10-minutes each “Child in Time” and “Flight of the Rat”) and metal (“Speed King” and “Bloodsucker”). A deluxe version of this album contains “Black Night” which was recorded in the same sessions but only released as a single. I can’t really see why that was left off the album, it’s as good or better than most of the rest of the stuff on the album.
The Who
4/5
The Who at their best. I listened to the original album which only contains 6 songs including 3 covers and a 15-minute version of “My Generation” with some awesome jam elements. I also listened to some sort of super deluxe version which I believe contains the whole concert, a little over 2 hours long, which includes a full performance of the album Tommy and a considerable amount of banter between songs. My favorite bit of banter is Daltrey narrating what the lyrics describe in “A Quick One, While He’s Away”.
It’s interesting to me what they chose to release on the original LP of Live at Leeds. They could have easily made it a double album and included bits of Tommy or perhaps some other amazing live songs like “A Quick One” or “Happy Jack”. Still a great live album, but surprisingly I prefer the full live set to the condensed 37-minute version.
Girls Against Boys
3/5
I’m not sure what I was expecting getting into this (probably something like Sebadoh who I dislike), but… a post-hardcore band from Washington, DC formed from Fugazi and Soul Side alumni was NOT what I was expecting. I can’t believe I’ve never heard of this band. This is at least as good as what Fugazi was doing around this time period. It leans heavily into bass and drums with a lighter touch on the guitar, and that’s something that I think differentiates the sound from Fugazi and other post-hardcore acts. I really like this one, I’m glad this was included.
David Bowie
3/5
David Bowie has so many excellent albums that some great ones go somewhat forgotten. The Next Day was heavily eclipsed by Blackstar a few years later, and it can’t compete with Bowie’s 70s masterpieces, but it’s really his best between “Heroes” (1977) and Blackstar (2016). “The Stars Are Out Tonight”, “Where Are We Now?” and “Valentine’s Day” are some of Bowie’s best tracks, even considering all the great songs he released in decades prior.
Hole
2/5
Generally I’m not a huge fan of grunge. I don’t mind Nirvana much and I do tend to like Pearl Jam, but I can’t stand Alice in Chains or Temple of the Dog and can’t say I really like Soundgarden at all either. Hole falls somewhere in the Soundgarden territory. This is an important grunge album, and Courtney Young’s vocals are impressive, but mostly this album doesn’t do a whole lot for me. I do think I’ve enjoyed this slightly more this time than in the past, so maybe it will keep growing on me.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
3/5
I’ve never been a huge reggae fan but the more I listen, the more I get into it. It’s easy to see how Marley and crew catapulted the regional genre onto the international stage.
The Velvet Underground
3/5
VU really should have had Maureen/Moe Tucker sing on more tracks, she sounds good on “After Hours” despite that song being a little less interesting. This album is probably VU’s poppiest and folkiest, and in a way their least experimental. But it’s by no means worse for it. “Candy Says”, “What Goes On”, and “Pale Blue Eyes” are all fantastic songs. VU seem to be channeling The Beatles on this album: it can seem tonally all over the place, but it's still congruent and overall it works very well.
Beatles
4/5
Speak of the devil, this isn’t exactly the Beatles album I was referring to when I said that VU were channeling them yesterday, but it fits: this album is basically a bunch of poppy singles thrown together, so it’s not completely tonally consistent (compared to, say Revolver or Rubber Soul or even Abbey Road), but it’s a wonderful collection of songs that you can’t help but enjoy.
Fleetwood Mac
3/5
Fleetwood Mac’s follow-up to Rumours was never going to hit that pulse again, but it is pretty good. Fleetwood Mac came a long way from their blues rock roots in the 60s into pop rock perfection on their 1975 self-titled album and 1977’s Rumours, and then waned a little with Tusk and afterwards. Tusk feels like they were experimenting a bit and toned down the arrangements and mixing compared to Rumours. It’s not bad, and it’s a neat direction for the group, but it’s not great. It also feels way too long, like they were trying out too many things and decided to just include everything on this double album. But it ends up being quantity over quality and gets boring by the end, to the point that I’m barely interested by the time “Tusk” (the second-to-last track) comes on. That song is hella good though.
Morrissey
3/5
Most of post-Smiths Morrissey is bad to mediocre, but this album is actually quite solid. It sounds pretty similar to britpop that was already waning at this point (Arctic Monkeys, The Libertines, Keane) but still sounded good.
Elvis Presley
4/5
This album and the prior Elvis TV special are my two favorite things Elvis has ever done (if “Suspicious Minds” had been included in the original release of From Elvis in Memphis, then it would probably be my favorite, but it’s interesting that the original release left out one of Elvis’s best songs). They’re the culmination of a decade of Elvis changing music forever and then a few years of garbage music that probably could’ve been great with different collaborators. These two albums were truly a comeback, and while it’s hard to say they’re the highlight of his career (when clearly he was at his peak in the 50s), these are definitely the highlights for me. The more modern recording technology compared to the 50s and the shift to a type of soul music is what really makes this album for me. The Elvis TV special was like a victory lap of great music Elvis had recorded over his career, but Memphis had Elvis recording new tracks incorporating elements of every part of his career: pop, rock and roll, country, blues, soul, and gospel. I’d actually be hard pressed to find an album that blends so many different genres so flawlessly.
One thing that’s awesome to me is that this was recorded in the same studio as Dusty Springfield’s Dusty in Memphis only a few months later, and the two albums feature most of the same backing musicians. Both of these albums are the best of their respective artists’ careers, and it goes to show how important the recording location and collaborators are to making great music.
Queen
5/5
Oh boy, this album is amazing. It’s often overshadowed by A Night at the Opera, but Sheer Heart Attack is something amazing. I’ve been loving when albums pop up on this listen that I own on vinyl. I try not to be one of those “rah rah rah, vinyl is better than any other music format” type of people, but on this album I’ll truly say that vinyl is the best way to experience this:
The first time I listened to this album, it was on iTunes, and there were minor split-second gaps between songs (probably because it was a shitty pirated copy but it may have been an official iTunes purchase, I can’t recall). This completely breaks the flow of the 3-song medley on the first side of the album: “Tenement Funster”/”Flick of the Wrist”/”Lily of the Valley” which really should be played in a row uninterrupted (unless you just listen to the only slightly edited single version of “Flick of the Wrist”).
On the record, the first side opens with “Brighton Rock” which is a slow build of carnival noises into Brian May’s chugging guitar and Freddie Mercury’s bizarre fast-sung vocals, and contains what may be May’s best guitar solo recorded. The intro to the first side of the album is completely juxtaposed by the jarring opening of the second side, “In the Lap of the Gods” which begins with a shrill scream from Mercury and Roger Taylor, which then dies down into a weird fever-dream of sorts. The medley and the borderline jumpscare of an intro to the second side of the album are really what set the vinyl apart from other formats for this album.
Although it’s hardly Queen’s best, this is an amazing album, and one I love to put on regularly.
Dire Straits
3/5
I always think I don’t really like Dire Straits but then I listen and I’m like “oh yeah this song is good. Oh yeah, this one too.” and on and on for most of the album. Brothers in Arms definitely has its best songs near the beginning, and gets weaker as it goes along until the final track which is solid. I feel like there’s too much of a synth sound in everything by Dire Straits or Knopfler (e.g. The Princess Bride soundtrack), when they could have easily excelled as a hard rock act. I think the biggest problem is the synthesized drum sounds, which just sound so weak on these tracks. I guess they seemed to do alright for themselves though.
Side note: I’ve heard “Money for Nothing” dozens if not hundreds of times, and somehow today was the first time that I thought “wait… is that Sting singing backup vocals?” and looked it up, and yes, it is Sting. Can’t believe it took me that long to realize that.
Frank Black
1/5
I’ve listened to this once before and did not enjoy it. Three songs in and I feel the same way again. The Pixies really just didn’t do anything nearly as interesting after breaking up. At least The Breeders and The Martinis were sort of doing different things than Pixies and were relatively better for it, but Black Francis/Frank Black sort of just seems like he wanted to make poppier Pixies songs here, and I think he at least succeeds at creating a Pixies-esque sound, which is not something that The Breeders or The Martinis seemed like they were really trying to do. However, it’s an unfortunate continuation of the downward trend that started with Bossanova. You’re better off turning this off and listening to Doolittle or Surfer Rosa.
Solomon Burke
3/5
Solid little album which collects some of Burke’s singles from 1961-1964 plus some additional tracks. It hints at Burke’s gospel ties but mostly stays firmly in the style of rock/soul that other great musicians like Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, or even Ray Charles were doing around the same time.
George Harrison
4/5
First of all, this album is way too long. It’s a daunting triple album (almost unheard of at the time in rock music, and to some extent still basically unheard of), not everything’s going to be a hit. The first 6 or so songs clearly outshine everything else on the album. The first disc includes the hits, the second disc contains some rejected Beatles songs (which are better than Let It Be), and the final disc contains the Apple Jam. If I was releasing this album, I probably would’ve eliminated the Apple Jam and released it as its own album. Though had that been the case, it definitely wouldn’t have reached the audience it did, including me. Usually when I complain about an album being too long, I have suggestions on songs to cut, but it’s hard to do that here. It’s a monumental effort and a bit too daunting, but the quality doesn’t suffer.
Second, this is not necessarily the best post-Beatles album, nor is it my favorite (John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is my favorite), but with this album George Harrison solidified himself as the heir to the Beatles in the wake of their breakup. And I think it’s the best breakup album ever made. Lennon went off in a different art-pop direction. McCartney didn’t really make anything very good for another 3 years (until Band on the Run). And Ringo… I can’t honestly say I’ve ever listened to a Ringo Starr album, though some of his singles are decent. A bit of everything that made the Beatles great towards the end of their career is present on this album, including the collaborative effort: Derek & the Dominos formed as a result of them meeting and performing together on this album; Badfinger performed on many of the tracks; the honorary 5th Beatle, Billy Preston, is here; Klaus Voorman; Alan White (the future drummer of Yes); Ringo plays on most tracks; even John and Yoko show up for some background handclaps; Harrison co-wrote songs with Bob Dylan and performed some on this album.
After this album and the Concert for Bangladesh, Harrison really didn’t do much of note until the Traveling Wilburys. But I truly believe that this album alone solidifies him as the greatest Beatle post-Beatles.
Roni Size
2/5
I didn’t love this the first time I listened, but I really don’t remember it at all so it’s basically like listening to something new. Speaking of albums that are too long, this is over 2 hrs and gets old fairly quickly. I wish the album was more drum&bass than trance, it’s at its best when the drums are constant and rapid and the bass is booming, but unfortunately that tends not to be the case on most of the album. “Matter of Fact” was a highlight to me.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
3/5
Probably my second favorite RHCP album after Stadium Arcadium, and probably the first one of theirs I listened to. I think it contains some of their best songs with the least duds of any of their albums (although it does have some duds like “I Like Dirt”). Probably their most consistently good album.
Steve Winwood
3/5
Winwood is quintessentially 80s: that blend of soft rock which isn’t quite pop, but also incorporates trance amounts of soul and jazz into it as well, while also somehow having almost entirely synthesized instruments. Overall consensus: meh.
Le Tigre
3/5
Who did this font better: Le Tigre, or Spongebob? Anyway, this is a great dancepunk/riot grrrl album, full of everything that made/makes riot grrrl great, but somehow even more fun. It’s refreshing to hear such a thorough criticism of Rudy Giuliani from 25 years ago.
Kings of Leon
2/5
I don’t quite understand why these guys got as popular as they did. I guess they just seemed to hit the right pulse at the right time, and to me these guys fill the same niche as Creed or Imagine Dragons. But unlike Creed or Imagine Dragons, Kings of Leon don’t seem to be a band that people love to hate, although I feel like they should be. I never really got into Kings of Leon. I’d groan when “Sex on Fire” or “Use Somebody” came on the radio, I can’t stand those songs. Aha Shake Heartbreak released before the album containing those hits, and frankly it this album is much better than Only by the Night and anything KoL have done since then (at least among things I’ve listened to). Although “The Bucket” is just as groan worthy. And gosh, while I’m listening to some of these songs for the first time in 15 years, some of them are garbage.
Side note: I didn’t think these guys were actual brothers, for a while I thought they were doing a shtick like the Ramones because they don’t really look alike to me.
Miles Davis
5/5
This album took me a few listens to get into it, but I think I prefer it to Bitches Brew or anything else in Miles Davis’s jazz fusion era. Throughout his career, Davis managed to put together some of the best jazz musicians at the top of their game. This album features Wayne Shorter on sax, John McLaughlin on guitar, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock on keys, Tony Williams on drums, Dave Holland on bass, and Joe Zawinul on organ, with production by the incomparable Teo Macero.
This is also one of the only albums where I prefer the “ultra-deluxe” version: The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions. At 3 ½ hours long, it contains some tracks from Filles de Kilimanjaro, rehearsals for the songs which ended up on In a Silent Way, and a number of outtakes and otherwise unreleased tracks which are all up to the same standard of quality as the two tracks that made the final version of In a Silent Way. This is definitely not something I believe of Davis’s other “The Complete [album] Sessions” box sets.
This 40 minute version is definitely the better way to listen to it, but if you like it, check out Filles de Kilimanjaro next, and if you like that just as much, maybe check out The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions.
Beatles
5/5
Probably The Beatles’ most coherent album, despite it being the last they recorded before they broke up. Amazing start to finish with the exception of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” which was apparently a nightmare for everyone but Paul. Harrison’s two songs on the album are probably the best: “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something”.
Aerosmith
2/5
Oddly this was one of the first CDs I ever had, but it took me years before I listened to the full album. There’s a few of Aerosmith’s best songs like “Janie’s Got a Gun” here, and overall it sounds like 70s Aerosmith which I guess is good for them. I’m not a huge fan though.
Jack White
5/5
I’m generally a fan of most of Jack White’s projects, and it seemed like he held the reins and had most of the creative control with The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, and The Dead Weather, but that’s even more the case on Blunderbuss.
Prior to the release of this album, I wasn’t super impressed by “Sixteen Saltines” (it’s now grown on me more), and I was concerned that White wasn’t going to be able to make something as great as his old stuff without a backing band (even though one of those bands was just one additional person). But I was corrected in multiple ways: the amount of talent on this album is immense, all brought together by White and, yes, under his complete creative control. And the music recorded is all fantastic. It’s like a mix of the amazing songwriting of The White Stripes plus but with crisp production added. I know that not everyone loves that because Jack White became synonymous with garage rock and a sort of lo-fi style of production, but I think the fine engineering on Blunderbuss is for the better.
I had the pleasure of seeing Jack White live touring for this album at the inaugural Firefly Festival in 2012; he and his band put on a great show. There were some snags with the sound not working great, but after they sorted it out, everything was perfect. I’ll never forget the end of that night, when all the concertgoers were filtering out of the festival grounds to the tents or parking lot all chanting “Seven Nation Army”.
Pulp
3/5
I tend to love Pulp, and I had rated this album well previously, but it’s just not doing it for me today. Jarvis Cocker of Pulp is masterful though, he writes some great songs and the band plays like Bowie.
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
3/5
Mostly a bunch of soulless blues covers with a few individual songs. But wow, these guys are amazing at their respective instruments, Clapton obviously on guitar but also Hughie Flint on drums and John McVie (later of Fleetwood Mac) on bass. Mayall himself is really the weak link here, and it’s no surprise that Clapton later went on to have a bigger career.
AC/DC
3/5
I always forget how much I enjoy AC/DC. Not as great as Back in Black, but this album presents the best of AC/DC from the 70s era which had some blues rock and arena rock as well as the 80s era which went more into metal and hard rock. This was also the first AC/DC album produced by “Mutt” Lange, more famous for his work with (and marriage to) Shania Twain. Mutt was bigger on arena rock in the 70s-80s before diversifying his production sound in the 90s.
Harry Nilsson
3/5
This is a nice bunch of soft rock/folk rock songs and then all of a sudden… “Coconut” which is just bizarre here. Not a lot of congruence among songs on the album but most of the songs are solid.
The Cure
3/5
Not my favorite Cure album. It’s pretty good but mostly forgettable. The first time I ever heard “A Forest” it was a remixed version, and it’s probably just nostalgia but I much prefer that to the original.
Kate Bush
3/5
I’m not the hugest Kate Bush fan but I give her props for the unique music she was making. I really wish I enjoyed her music more, because I really respect what she’s created, but it doesn’t always vibe with me. The first side of this album is all awesome art pop songs, and the second side is a weird concept about a lost woman. The concept album thing is definitely something Bush would delve deeper into on later albums like Aerial. Hounds of Love is definitely her magnum opus, although it’s not my favorite of her albums.
The Isley Brothers
4/5
With the exceptions of “Shout” and “Twist and Shout”, this album contains all the best music that the Isley Brothers ever recorded. It’s a re-invention of the Isley Brothers as a funk group, as opposed to the more straightforward R&B music they were making in the 50s and 60s. About 15 years into their career, the Isleys proved how versatile they were.
The Cramps
4/5
Even if “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” was the only good song on the album, this would still be excellent. But this awesome song is surrounded by other similarly great goth-punk/psychobilly songs. It’s like The Cramps committed to a weird novelty aesthetic but then really stuck the landing and came out with some awesome tracks that were ahead of their time while still relevant for the shifting music scene of the early 1980s. Their covers of classic rock and roll artists are just as at home as their original tracks, and they really make the covers their own. Particularly “Sunglasses After Dark” with the fun “Ace of Spades” interpolation thrown in the middle.
The Zutons
3/5
Recorded in 2003, this sounds like an ode to old school garage rock from the 60s or even 50s, similar to The Cramps. Only problem is that The Zutons don’t execute as well. It sounds fine, but it also definitely sounds somewhat influenced by Britpop, becoming a weird amalgam of eras that just doesn’t work well for me.
Sly & The Family Stone
3/5
Not my favorite Sly album, but it’s an interesting funk piece that gets a little deeper soul. It’s a more mature sound that many other funk and soul artists of the era were also adapting (like Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, or Stevie Wonder).
Green Day
4/5
Just great song after great song, it’s amazing this album came out as early as it did. Green Day defined the sound of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater years, just 5 or so years early. So many pop punk, skate punk, or ska punk bands based their sound and attitude off of Green Day, from blink 182 and Sum 41 to My Chemical Romance.
3/5
I’ve listened to a few albums by Liars already, but this was new to me. They’re sort of hit or miss. The experimental/noise-rock style doesn’t really hit for me, but They Were Wrong definitely fuses more industrial music rather than just being straight up noise rock. I think this is my favorite album by Liars I’ve heard so far.
Donovan
3/5
Mostly a bit boring but the starts to both sides of the album (“Sunshine Superman” and “Season of the Witch”) are both great. It’s also very exemplary of mid-60s psych-rock.
Alice In Chains
2/5
AiC is really everything I don’t like about grunge. I know that a lot of grunge is an opposition to the status quo while also projecting an aloofness that’s absent from punk music. But other major grunge acts like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, or Soundgarden brought so much passion, anger, and even joy into their music. Every musician in Alice in Chains sounds like they don’t want to be making music, as if recording is their 9-5 that they’re sick of and dying for retirement. I know that making music IS work, but it doesn’t need to sound so uninspired.
Having said all that, Dirt is my favorite Alice in Chains album and it’s easily their most tolerable.
The Monkees
2/5
I guess this is the first Monkees album where they were afforded (some) creative freedom, after the band was originally a fictional group for the TV show with the music written by others and recorded by session musicians. I hate to say it, but the industry machine that created The Monkees did a better job making songs than the Monkees themselves. At least at this stage before “Daydream Believer” was released.
Yes
3/5
The first great Yes album, they jumped onto the prog rock scene with this album and continued to develop the genre over the next couple years (although I haven’t heard the first 2 Yes albums which are apparently solid proto-prog albums that proved the band in the same way that In the Court of the Crimson King did for King Crimson). Yes cement their style of prog rock which includes close harmony, the electric organ, funk-jazz interludes, and prominent bass lines that sometimes rival the guitar licks.
Joy Division
4/5
Possibly an unpopular opinion but I definitely prefer New Order to Joy Division. That is not to say that I think it’s better off after the death of Ian Curtis, if anything I think the rest of the band continued in his footsteps and their sound evolved naturally into a new era. It’s insane that he was only 23 when he passed. His voice is tremendous on this album, like a punkier Jim Morrison. I think that if he had continued living, the band probably would’ve continued to trend more in the direction of New Order’s style, but possibly with darker overtones to complement Curtis’ voice.
More than the songwriting though, the production on Unknown Pleasures is incredible. There’s an interesting technique like Phil Spector’s wall-of-sound which is unlike anything from the late 70s/early 80s, and predates the similar shoegaze sound by 10 years. While I think that many of Joy Division’s best songs were released as non-album singles, Unknown Pleasures contains a lot more interesting material than Closer. “Disorder” and “She’s Lost Control” in particular are my favorites and hint at what’s to come from New Order.
Prince
3/5
Prince is really hit or miss for me. I love Purple Rain, but I really don’t see why Sign o’ the Times is his other album which is incredibly well regarded. Perhaps it’s because of the absence of The Revolution, but I don’t find Prince as interesting with a stripped bare-bones instrumental backing. The title track is good and there are some other solid songs on the album, but overall it’s not really my cup of tea. I was actually considering rating this album a 2 or even a 1 until “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man”, which is an all-time great Prince song that I totally forgot about.
Marvin Gaye
3/5
This is a solid album but among some of Marvin Gaye’s other work, it’s a little weak. Lyrically, Gaye mostly discusses his ex-wife Anna Gordy, and he really toes the line between standard generic heartbreak music and dissing Anna. It turns out sort of weird, but it also interestingly demonstrates a few of the stages of grief, namely anger and acceptance. Soul music is by definition passionate, and anger is a passion. But it’s still very interesting when anger comes through in soul.
Rahul Dev Burman
4/5
Burman is like the John Williams or Hans Zimmer of Bollywood: he’s iconic and he’s the master of composing for film. I’ve heard a lot of his work together with Asha Bhosle, but never this soundtrack. I hadn’t heard of Shalimar, but a Bollywood movie starring Rex Harrison seems super interesting.
The title credits music has a James Bond-esque feel to it (not so much as the vocal Bond main themes, but the “James Bond Theme”, “007 Theme”, or the “Suspense Motif” by Monty Norman, John Barry, and David Arnold, respectively). The rest of the songs follow some excellent Bollywood dance numbers interspersed with great suspenseful film music and (what I assume are) leitmotifs.
I’m really glad this album was included in the 1001. This was new to me and this is not the type of music I’ve come to expect from the book.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
3/5
I always underestimate how much I like CCR until I listen again. Willy and the Poor Boys is my favorite of their albums, but this is probably second or close to it. Considering they were only active for about 4-5 years, their productivity was almost as high as the Beatles or Dylan compared to a similar time period. “Up Around the Bend” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain” are highlights from the album, but a few other tracks surprised me with how much I enjoyed them, like “Travelin’ Band” and the cover of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” which interestingly retained some soul elements while mostly being performed in CCR’s iconic swamp rock style.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
Probably my favorite Stones album, the two bookends of this album are my favorite songs by them. “Sympathy for the Devil” is a masterwork, easily my favorite song of theirs. And “Salt of the Earth” is a really underrated Stones song. Sung primarily by Keith Richards, it’s a bit of a naive attempt at an ode to the common person, something John Lennon later went on to do a lot in his music. But it’s still an endearing song with a really cool gospel-like vocal distinction. Gospel is certainly a genre the Stones toyed with a lot, but I think this ended up being gospelly without being in your face about it. The rest of the tracks are fine, but nowhere near as good as the opener and closer.
The Clash
3/5
I assume this is supposed to be the original British release, which is great despite the later US release including “Complete Control”, “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais”, “I Fought the Law”, and a new version of “White Riot”, all some of The Clash’s best songs up until the release of London Calling. The Clash excelled at making covers their own. “I Fought the Law” is a great example of this, but “Police & Thieves” is a song that really fits in with the rest of Joe Strummer & Mick Jones’ repertoire.
Kendrick Lamar
5/5
I think everyone knew when this came out that it was something special, something that would become an instant classic and have immense staying power, changing the shape of modern music. It’s the 5th highest-ranked album of all time on Metacritic, and it’s quickly risen to #17 on Acclaimed Music, #19 on Best Ever Albums, #19 by Rolling Stone, #7 by Consequence of Sound, and #1 on Rate Your Music. With the possible exception of Rolling Stone, it’s the best rap album ever in all of these lists. Nearly 10 years after release, I’d say it for sure holds up. It’s an absolute masterpiece.
Sometimes when you gather so much great talent together on one album, it doesn’t equal the sum of its parts. That’s not the case here. There’s a variety of producers including Thundercat and Flying Lotus. There’s a variety of guest musicians like Snoop Dogg, SZA, and Robert Isley. But it’s really Kamasi Washington who shines above all else (other than Kendrick Lamar himself of course): while he only plays sax on “U”, he arranged strings and instrumentals for most of the album, and in my opinion that’s what really skyrockets this album to the heights it achieved. Regardless of how good the lyrics are (and Kendrick’s are bar none), you need great backing music to get the songs to stick in your mind.
Elton John
3/5
Two of Elton John’s best songs back-to-back start the album, but afterwards it gets much less interesting. Still, less interesting than “Tiny Dancer” and “Levon” is pretty good. After Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (by far Elton John’s best album), Madman Across the Water is probably tied with Honky Chateau for my second-favorite.
Goldfrapp
3/5
I’ve enjoyed a few other albums by Goldfrapp, including Seventh Tree which I love. But even though Felt Mountain was the debut that made her big, I just can’t get into it. Most of her later albums either lean much more into dance or much more into folktronica. Felt Mountain is almost strictly ambient electronic, which sometimes I’m into but just not with this album.
Thundercat
4/5
Thundercat’s expertise in hip hop production is in full force here, despite this album being largely a tribute to old school jazz as well as the jazz fusion of Miles Davis. Even the album artwork seems to have Thundercat’s upper half of his face mimic Miles Davis’ hair and angry demeanor from that era. But contrary to the photo, this album is just so fun. It’s playfully bizarre without being so bizarre that it ever gets anywhere close to being difficult to listen to. It’s great background music for chilling out or partying, and it’s also great music to vibe to without any other distractions. Great album all around.
4/5
Obviously an absolute classic, but this is really the one Beatles album which has soured on me over the years. It’s still amazing, but while I hold Revolver and Abbey Road in utmost esteem, and the White Album, Help!, and others have grown on me, Sgt. Pepper’s and Magical Mystery Tour were once in my top 100 of all time and have both fallen out, Sgt. Peppers’ much more so compared to MMT. Perhaps it’s because of the “concept” that they just can’t seem to stick to, or perhaps it’s because some songs seem like total throwaways (“Fixing a Hole”) compared to other amazing songs (“A Day in the Life”), so the whole album feels a bit disconcerted. All that said, Sgt. Pepper’s cultural impact and influence on the music industry are massive, and anyone who listens to popular music should all be glad this album exists. Also… fabulous album artwork, possibly the most iconic of all time.
Neil Young
3/5
Listened to this a couple days after Neil Young was added back to Spotify (Joni Mitchell doesn’t seem to be holding out either anymore, not sure when that happened). I tend to like Neil Young but this album never really resonated with me. There’s some good songs but nothing that stands out too much. Young is at his best live, and Live Rust contains a great version of “Tonight’s the Night”.
Throbbing Gristle
2/5
I want to like Throbbing Gristle, but on this album they get so weird that they borderline turn into the Residents. I say I want to like them because their music is so strange, and also because their first album is called The Second Annual Report and their third album of experimental industrial music is called 20 Jazz Funk Greats.
Really only one song was bearable and the rest was hard to even call music. I mean… “United” is a new version of an earlier song they made which they considered too accessible so they sped it up so it’s shortened from 4 minutes to 16 seconds, and it’s totally incomprehensible. But the one bearable song was “AB/7A” which I actually really liked.
Fela Kuti
4/5
Ginger Baker is a name I’ve never heard of before, but I’ve heard his music loads. He was the drummer for Cream and Blind Faith, then traveled Nigeria with Fela Kuti learning more about African music. I suppose Baker is probably partially responsible for Fela Kuti gaining prominence outside of Nigeria. Baker performs on the final 2 songs on the album (and the bonus track recorded 7 years later which is included on later releases of the album), and he performs almost as excellently as The Africa ‘70’s longtime drummer Tony Allen.
I say “almost as excellently” because Baker’s absence isn’t really felt on the first 2 tracks. The drums are the core of Afrobeat and Fela Kuti’s specific blend of international funk and regional Nigerian music. And no drummer is more important to this regional music than Tony Allen.
One thing I’m amazed by is how early in Kuti’s career this was recorded. This was recorded in 1971 and released only a month after it was recorded, which is crazy by today’s standards, especially considering how good the recording sounds given the minimal post-production and engineering the music received. Everything else I’ve ever heard by Kuti was recorded later in the 70s or 80s, so this marks the first thing by him I’ve heard. It’s a great album, really shows off how talented Kuti, Allen, and the rest of the band are well before their other albums.
Green Day
4/5
I believe this was either the first or second CD I ever bought for myself (Stadium Arcadium by Red Hot Chili Peppers was the other). This came out when I was in middle school, and I enjoyed the music and the general anti-establishment vibes without really resonating with or understanding the political implications. A few years later, I kept an early music diary in high school and I re-listened to this album and wrote a fairly extensive entry. I think this was maybe the first time I really attempted to understand the plot of the punk-rock-opera and wrote it down as I understood it (I believe I was remarkably close, except I think Green Day intended only St. Jimmy to be a figment of Jesus of Suburbia’s psyche, whereas I thought Whatsername was as well). I think more so than albums like Tommy or The Wall (which may be technically better albums), I prefer this as a rock opera, because the story is not just more straightforward and easier to understand, but also a more encompassing and important story. But in 2008-09, I wasn’t exactly a politically savvy highschooler. I was fortunate enough that my family was relatively unscathed by the financial crisis, and I didn’t quite grasp how 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan really affected me and my fellow citizens of the US and the world.
Listening again nearly 20 years after release, I think I resonate with this album even more than I did as an angsty teenager. There’s a general sense of ennui present throughout the album that seems to put a finger on the pulse of the millennial generation. There’s a consensus that something and maybe everything is wrong, but no one’s able or willing to make things right. But ultimately despite how fucked up everything is, “There’s nothing wrong with me. This is how I’m supposed to be in a land of make-believe that don’t believe in me”.
John Cale
2/5
This is easily Cale’s most accessible music outside of the Velvet Underground. The orchestral arrangements are great throughout the album, and Cale’s composition is good but he’s just not a good singer unfortunately. Probably my favorite Cale album up until Hobosapiens which surprised me with how much I enjoyed it.
Talking Heads
3/5
I love Talking Heads, but then whenever I listen to one of their full studio albums, I realize what I really love are Talking Heads’ greatest hits and live albums. There’s some great tracks on 77, but there’s also some lackluster songs that sort of just drone on in the background. Compare that to Stop Making Sense which is an absolute tour-de-force of all of Talking Heads’ best songs up to that point pumped full of even more energy than on the studio recordings.
Even with David Byrne’s broken French, “Psycho Killer” is just an incredible song. Byrne’s robotic voice fits in perfectly on tracks like “Don’t Worry About the Government” and “Uh Oh, Love Comes to Town”. The rest of the tracks are good but mostly forgettable. While I don’t think Talking Heads made a bad album during their ~10 year run, I also don’t think they made very many exceptional studio albums. This, their debut album, is pretty close though, and it’s one of my favorites of theirs.
LCD Soundsystem
4/5
I realized I feel almost the opposite about LCD Soundsystem as Talking Heads: I went into this album thinking that I enjoyed a few songs but didn’t love the rest. Turns out I forgot a lot, every song on this album is great.
“Get Innocuous!” is a great dance-punk banger, “Time to Get Away” is a great fuck-you to LCD’s old manager, “North American Scum” is dancy but also a contemplation on what it means to be a New Yorker and how their high culture compares to that of Europe. “Someone Great” is a memorial to James Murphy’s therapist. I listened to this song for the first time the day I first watched the movie Metropolis, and I always associate the two. The lyrics are mostly about Murphy’s therapy sessions but also seem to me to contain some social commentary similar to Metropolis. Add to that the lyric “surprised you were human” and the robotic backing music, and I almost associate the song with loving and losing Maria, the robot from Metropolis.
“All My Friends” is one of the greatest songs of the decade and all time, an amazing ode to friendship whose repetitive piano part is steadily joined by other parts in a steady crescendo. “Us V Them” is a weirdly upbeat earworm which is a critique of the music industry, then “Watch the Tapes” is an ode or maybe an elegy to partying. “Sound of Silver” is a repetitive question on what nostalgia really means, and then the grand finale “New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” is both a love and hate letter to NYC as well as seeming like a preemptive farewell to LCD Soundsystem, despite their (first) farewell not coming until years later. Awesome album overall.
Travis
2/5
The Man Who is mostly endearing if a little boring. Their biggest single “Why Does It Always Rain on Me?” doesn’t appeal to me much, but there are some other solid melancholic ballads on the album.
CHVRCHES
3/5
I’m glad to see this album on the list. I once bought what I thought were tickets to see the group in NYC, and it turns out when we got to the venue, the concert was actually a “CHVRCHES DJ set” despite what the tickets said. Well… the DJ didn’t even play ANY CHVRCHES, so I don’t know what the fuck we bought or what I even went to see. Had a reasonably good time, but this album is definitely better than the DJ set which definitely wasn’t CHVRCHES.
Al Green
3/5
Pretty much all of Al Green’s good material was recorded and released in a span of about 2 years, which is incredible considering the consistent quality of the 5 albums. The thing that most impresses me about Green is his ability to cover songs and make them his own. There’s a Bee Gees cover on this album that I had no idea was a cover. Green’s soulful cover is completely original to the Gibb brothers’ pop-folk original.
Daft Punk
3/5
Prior to Random Access Memories, this was my favorite Daft Punk album. While “Around the World” is definitely a highlight, “Da Funk” is my favorite Daft Punk track and easily one of their most underrated songs (maybe more forgotten than underrated, since this was one of their first singles, released 2 years before the album). The album feels like flipping through French house radio stations, which makes sense because Daft Punk didn’t originally intend to release all these tracks on one album. They aren’t really connected at all, but the way the songs are arranged really cements this as a cohesive album.
Eric Clapton
3/5
Possibly my favorite of any Clapton album with the exception of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. That said, my least favorite song is perhaps the most popular: “I Shot the Sheriff”. IMO not one of Bob Marley’s good songs, and Clapton’s lame cover is even worse. I think the album overall compared to many other Clapton (or Cream, etc.) albums is because these are mostly faster-paced rock-and-roll covers of blues songs rather than the slower-paced blues-rock tracks on albums like Fresh Cream or Blues Breakers.
Blue Cheer
2/5
Not really much to like here. The music here is mostly heavy blues which was a precursor to metal music, but you’re much better off listening to early Black Sabbath than this. Half of the songs are covers which really just aren’t good. And the originals aren’t any better: soulless singing, uninspired guitar and drum solos, just all around mediocre. As a proto-metal album, I can see why this was included, but I’m really glad that Black Sabbath and others developed the genre into much more interesting music.
Fela Kuti
4/5
This is Fela Kuti’s magnum opus: an absolutely scathing political piece which criticizes not just the Nigerian military junta but also the individuals who become soldiers and commit atrocities on behalf of their superiors. Where most anti-war protest songs you hear by American artists criticize the leaders without going so far as to criticize the individual soldiers, Kuti goes all in on pissing off the soldiers who mindlessly follow orders (aka “Zombie” or “Mr. Follow-Follow”).
The story behind this album is also crazy: Kuti had a large compound (which he called a Republic) within Lagos which housed his family and musical entourage, and contained homes, recording studios, and a health clinic. After the release of this album, the Nigerian military raided his compound, destroyed almost everything, and brutally injured many of the people there, including Kuti’s mother who died from these wounds. The Nigerian military government then declared these acts as committed by an “unknown soldier”, really just playing into exactly what Kuti was criticizing.
Anyway, it feels weird to dance to music that’s so angry, but the music is also just so funky that it’s hard not to at least bop your head.
Dead Kennedys
4/5
These guys are generally very left-wing in their criticism of conservative politics and American love for property and violence, but they also criticize authority in general (including the current left-leaning governor of California) as well as hippies who they view as not doing enough to take action. Dead Kennedys are angry, and rightfully so. They criticize Khmer Rouge for their genocide, the US for their complicity, and the general public of western nations for their lack of care for fellow humans on the other side of the world. There’s some awesome protest songs in here, and on top of all of that, the cover of “Viva Las Vegas” fucking slaps.
Madness
3/5
Nuts that this was never released in the US, it’s easily at least as good as One Step Beyond…, the only other album by Madness I’ve heard. Most of this album gets more experimental and veers away from the 2 tone/ska of their earlier work. That influence is still there, but there’s more pop, punk, and new wave here. “Our House” is quintessentially new wave, and it’s easy to see why that’s Madness’s biggest hit.
Ice T
2/5
I think I somehow like Ice-T as an actor better than a rapper.
Fleet Foxes
4/5
This is such an interesting album. I love Fleet Foxes, and while all their subsequent releases have been pretty good, I don’t think they’ve released anything as good as this. It’s basically folk gospel music made by nonreligious city boys, so it’s a totally different take on the genre(s) than pretty much anything I’ve heard before. Mostly though it still conforms to the indie rock style that other people in Fleet Foxes’ demographic were creating around the same time, like Grizzly Bear, Iron & Wine, etc. Just more acoustic and with more close harmony. “White Winter Hymnal” is one of my favorite songs; it has the most vivid imagery of any song I know.
Metallica
2/5
Metallica is sort of a weird band to me because I absolutely love Ride the Lightning and see that as the peak of thrash metal, but the rest of their material tends to lean much harder into rock than metal, resulting in a sound sort of like Guns ‘n’ Roses but just not as pleasing to my ears. Maybe it’s that their singer isn’t as good as Iron Maiden’s but also not as gritty as Judas Priest's (for example). I do enjoy Master of Puppets and some individual tracks from many of Metallica’s other albums, but …And Justice for All really just doesn’t do much for me. I had the pleasure of seeing Metallica play once, and their fans seem to be a really weird mix of counter-culture and current or former military. Not groups of people you usually see hanging out together, so I guess props to the band for appealing to such a wide variety of people.
Hüsker Dü
2/5
I’ve heard a decent amount of Hüsker Dü before, but their sound still continues to surprise me each time. Before listening, I assumed they were metal based on their band name (the umlauts mainly) and even some song titles (“Masochism World”, “59 Times the Pain”, “Bed of Nails”), but their genre sounds much more like alternative rock or slightly punky rock in the vein of R.E.M. or Pixies albeit much less experimental or interesting (not that I particularly love either R.E.M. or Pixies). I think on average of everything I’ve listened to by these 3 bands, I maybe rate Hüsker Dü higher than R.E.M. and slightly lower than Pixies, but I’ve certainly heard much better and much worse by those bands. Hüsker Dü is consistently mediocre, despite their shift from harder punk on Zen Arcade to this much more mundane shit on Warehouse. I think these 3 bands are also great bridges from punk to grunge, Hüsker Dü more so than the others.
David Bowie
3/5
If I were to rank my favorite David Bowie albums, this would probably be pretty low (heh) on the list. But it’s still a fantastic album, that just goes to show how amazing Bowie is. The first half of this album consists of songs with a similar vibe to his earlier albums, particularly Aladdin Sane, and I love all of them. “Sound and Vision” is an all-time great Bowie song. The second half of the album, starting with “Warszawa” co-written by Brian Eno, is mostly instrumental songs (all but “Subterranean”) and all have the minimalist vibe that I don’t love nearly as much as the first half of the album. The Eno influence is clearly there despite him only being credited on the one track. I do like the songs thematically though, because it blends the desolation Bowie saw in post-war communist Eastern Europe with his own drug addictions that he was recovering from at the time.
Nine Inch Nails
2/5
The first time I listened to NIN, I really didn’t care for him/them. I’ve grown more interested in industrial music since then though, but it’s interesting that this wasn’t really my gateway, considering how The Downward Spiral is one of the most accessible industrial albums I’ve heard. I can’t really pinpoint why, but it doesn’t really appeal to me. Maybe it’s because of the alternating whispered and screeched vocals of Reznor or the weird cuts from very quiet to very loud or ending the song at an odd spot. But the instrumentals are brilliant, and I’m surprised I don’t like Reznor’s origins better considering how much I love what he’s done more recently composing film soundtracks. Hell, it’s crazy that the guy who wrote lyrics like “I wanna fuck you like an animal / I wanna feel you from the inside” composed the soundtrack to a Pixar movie (Soul, which is brilliant).
Kelela
2/5
I thought this was a new album to me but apparently I have listened to it before. Kelela’s clearly immensely talented but this style of slow-jam R&B unfortunately doesn’t appeal to me much. It’s pleasant while I’m listening but doesn’t make enough of an impression that I retain much of it after listening. I do remember liking her 2023 album Raven slightly better.
Marty Robbins
3/5
Robbins is one of the most interesting figures in music I’ve ever read about. Mostly a country & western musician (as on this album), he helped develop the outlaw country sub-genre, forayed into blues, pop, and folk, had a small film career (mostly playing himself and/or a singer), and then even had a career as a NASCAR driver. And he was apparently a decent racer, with a handful of top-10 finishes.
I know songs like “El Paso” and particularly “Big Iron” have become meme songs, but it does take a catchy tune to get to meme status. And “Big Iron” is definitely that. You can definitely see the origins of outlaw country on this album, not necessarily in the pacing or style of instrumentation, but definitely in the lyrics.
Led Zeppelin
5/5
I know it, you know it, every aspiring guitarist knows at least a few notes of it: Led Zeppelin IV is one of if not THE greatest hard rock album of all time, with “Stairway to Heaven” as one of the most well-known and technically impressive guitar solos out there.
But “Stairway to Heaven” isn’t the only great song on this album. They’re all great. Any Led Zeppelin greatest hits album will have to have at least 3 songs from this album, and it’s a bit of a crapshoot which ones get selected. “Black Dog” opens on a bang with “Rock and Roll” keeping the blood pumping. “The Battle of Evermore” and “Misty Mountain Hop” are both Lord of the Rings-inspired tunes which are probably the most unique on the album. “Four Sticks” is another bop, “Going to California” is the lightest song on the album, and “When the Levee Breaks” is probably the heaviest.
At the time, bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple were developing the heavy metal genre, which at that point was tied closely to blues rock. Led Zeppelin IV mastered the genre as a combination of the 2, and I believe that they mastered it so well that they basically ended the genre as it existed. After 1971, bands either veered further into metal or blues, but not both anymore. Obviously there are counter-examples, but there’s no better example of a genre which has reached its peak in a single album.
Run-D.M.C.
3/5
Run-D.M.C. continued to have some great albums, but their debut is a tour-de-force putting not just the band but the genre on the map. “It’s Like That” is easily my favorite song of theirs, and the rest of the album around it is pretty solid.
Alice Cooper
3/5
I’m always surprised how much I like Alice Cooper’s music. “Elected” and “No More Mr. Nice Guy” are probably their 2 best songs, even next to the awesome anthem that is “School’s Out”. The lyrics are all mostly a little stupid, making what they consider tongue-in-cheek jokes about sexual harassment and necrophilia which don’t really do it for me, but the sound of Alice Cooper’s voice is incredible. The way they make one or two people sound like a chorus is pretty cool with the way they recorded the album. The rest of the band all play like they’re having a blast on stage, even in the studio.
DJ Shadow
3/5
Endtroducing is a marvel, it revolutionized hip hop, electronic, and ambient music. It’s an album crafted almost entirely with samples, making something totally new out of scraps and pieces in a way that had never really been done before. Although it’s an amazing piece of technical production, unfortunately the album generally doesn’t really appeal to me. I think I’d feel differently if the album was 100% instrumental and didn’t have breaks with spoken word samples. Unfortunately those bits really just take away from the immersion for me and dilute what is otherwise a fantastic ambient instrumental hip hop album.
Pixies
3/5
I find it interesting but a bit odd that this album is put on a pedestal about as high as Doolittle, when I find Doolittle to be clearly their best album and far superior to their others. Mostly this is fine, and it is definitely better than Bossanova or anything else by Pixies other than Doolittle. But really the album would be almost entirely forgettable if it weren’t for “Where Is My Mind?” which is phenomenal even next to “Gigantic” which is solid. Some of the early songs on the album are great as well, but the final few songs don’t do it for me and leave a stale taste in my ears.
Calexico
3/5
Calexico’s music always feels pleasant but it’s a little more mellow than I like. I think there are some other indie folk-rock acts like The Decemberists which are more interesting, while there’s also Iron & Wine and Bon Iver who are even more mellow but I think do a little better with remaining interesting. Calexico is probably at their best when they really lean into the southwest/Tejano style like on “Close Behind” or “Güero Canelo”. The former is by far my favorite song on the album.
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
2/5
I want to like this a lot more than I do. It’s experimental, avant-garde classical pop which should theoretically appeal to me. But at its best, Penguin Cafe sounds boring or mildly pleasant, and at worst it’s harsh on the ears. At least other experimental groups like the Residents or Throbbing Gristle put some humor into what they do. Penguin Cafe on Brian Eno’s record label just really doesn’t inspire me.
Elvis Presley
3/5
Probably Elvis’s best album until his comeback era, it’s iconic and pretty much introduced the world to album rock and roll, But under a modern lens, it feels incredibly disjointed, as if every song were recorded at a different studio with different production styles. The album wasn’t the musical standard in 1956, so this can be mostly forgiven for really helping to promote the format as the norm. That said, while it’s a great collection of songs, it feels about as cohesive as a greatest hits album. And since Elvis has so many hits, a greatest hits album may be a better bet to listen to than his album debut. The compilations The Sun Sessions and Sunrise present his music that was recorded at Sun in Memphis, and in my opinion present a better, more cohesive time capsule of early Elvis.
Public Enemy
4/5
Awesome seeing this right after Elvis, since “Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me”.
My introduction to Flavor Flav was one of those MTV dating shows, and not even the original Strange love or the one he starred in, Flavor of Love. I think it was one of the spin-offs of the spin-off like I Love New York or something. Anyway, he was the weird dude who sometimes showed up in this sorta trash television “reality” dating show. It absolutely blew my mind that this goofy guy with the clock was also in the iconic hardcore East Coast political hip hop group Public Enemy. I was familiar with Public Enemy in 2007 when I watched that crap MTV aired, but I just never made the connection until years later. EVEN THOUGH HE WEARS THE FUCKING CLOCK on the album cover of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Well anyway, even though It Takes a Nation… is generally considered Public Enemy’s best album, Fear of a Black Planet is my favorite. I also think it’s the album that most effectively utilizes Flavor Flav, and the album where Chuck D is at his best. On most other albums, I feel like Flavor Flav is either a bit annoying or severely under-utilized. Fear of a Black Planet hits the sweet spot: Flav adequately hypes up the other rappers on most tracks while also getting a killer track of his own here, “911 Is a Joke”.
The first few songs build up to “Welcome to the Terrordome” and the album stays very dynamic and politically conscious throughout while closing out with their best song “Fight the Power”. Really my only problem is that the skits, interludes, and radio bits bring the flow of the album down.
The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy
3/5
Michael Franti has had an interesting musical career. His start in industrial hip hop led to Hiphoprisy and then later to a much more lighthearted reggae-inspired sound. But he never lost his dedication to explicitly political lyrics which advocate for civil rights, social justice, peace, and de-escalation. While his more recent reggae group Spearhead comes at these topics from a positive viewpoint, Hiphoprisy is more critical of the status quo. And I think most of what gets discussed on this album is specific to issues of the early 1990s while remaining extremely relevant for the problems of today, and the lack of solutions from decades past.
The Velvet Underground
5/5
At the time of release, this was probably the greatest rock and roll album ever produced. It’s the perfect combination of talent, all the way up and down: mostly written by Lou Reed but with the tenderest songs sung by Nico, backed up by Sterling Morrison on guitar/bass, John Cale on viola/bass, and Maureen Tucker on drums. Produced (mostly) by Tom Wilson, who got his start with eclectic jazz musicians like Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor, then worked with Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel on some of their tenderest folk music, before moving to VU and The Mothers of Invention, who were both sort of jazz/rock/folk fusions. And of course all brought together, managed, and produced by Andy Warhol. While Warhol gets a lot of credit for this album, his impact can’t be understated, and his involvement is way more than just the iconic cover design.
The songs are all fantastic, with my favorites being “Sunday Morning”, “Heroin”, and “I’m Waiting for the Man”. I’ll also add that it’s pretty unique for the time period to have a woman drummer, especially in an almost all-male group.
Buck Owens
3/5
This is the kind of album I love in the 1001 list; the book is so rock-centric that it’s almost entirely American and British artists, and while the “world” music inclusions are great, they’ve been really surface level so far. But I am surprised by the inclusion of an American country artist I had never listened to and barely heard of. And it’s a pleasant album at that; I was expecting something more novelty like Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, and while I’ve Got a Tiger does have some of that novelty, it’s also just about as good quality music and solid earworms. Can’t say I’ll go out of my way to listen to more Buck Owens (and the Buckaroos), but this was a fun listen.
Randy Newman
2/5
I really just can’t get into Randy Newman. His piano playing is pleasant, but his voice is incredibly annoying. Even though he’s been a songwriter for other artists, I just really can’t see his talent the way that others do. He does tend to have solid humor in his work, but he’s much better suited for children’s music like Toy Story than adult-oriented rock.
Tom Waits
3/5
Tom Waits seems really out of time and out of place, sounding like a NYC subway performer, or maybe a 50s cabaret singer, or a slam poet who accidentally wandered into a recording studio. I don’t always love Waits’ music, but I love the weird shit he does and how much he’s been able to experiment over 4 decades while keeping relatively the same feel to his music. Hard to say whether or not this is my favorite Tom Waits album, I like just about everything I’ve heard equally.
Beastie Boys
4/5
Aw yeah, this shit is fantastic. More of a rock and roll album than a hip hop album, it doesn’t matter, it’s all fantastic to listen to. Every song on this record is great, many of them have been staples of my road trip playlists for years. Even though I’ve listened to this album tons of times, one thing that didn’t strike me until this listen is how much they talk about White Castle: they bring their dates to White Castle, get kicked out of White Castle, sneak alcohol into White Castle, praise White Castle’s fries, and juxtapose White Castle and the Nile. Actually, “Slow and Low” is a cover of an unreleased Run-D.M.C. song where the only lyrics they changed were to remove self-references to Run-D.M.C. and replace them with Beastie Boys and White Castle.
Frank Sinatra
3/5
Probably my favorite Sinatra album but that’s not saying much because I’m not a big fan. I appreciate what Songs for Swingin’ Lovers and other Sinatra albums did to embrace and elevate the album format, but the slow crooning vocal jazz just doesn’t really appeal to me. I much prefer either a more upbeat style of vocal jazz like how Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald often sing, or a slower more deliberate style of Billie Holiday or Nina Simone. Sinatra’s vocal style is also so often imitated or parodied to the point where he just doesn’t sound particularly unique. At the time of release, I know he was, but to modern ears he just doesn’t stand out.
a-ha
3/5
“Take on Me” is the clear highlight here, but a-ha are way more than a 1-hit wonder. The whole album is full of some of the best new wave music ever made, with incredibly crisp production and wonderful fusion of synth programming and played instruments, a type of fusion that often failed during this era. Many of the songs sound modern enough that they could’ve been released by a band like Future Islands in the 2020s.
GZA
3/5
This is probably my favorite album by a former Wu-Tang Clan member. I’ve enjoyed some Raekwon and Ghostface Killah albums as well and they’re pretty close, but I think Liquid Swords is on par with Enter the Wu-Tang. Usually I don’t love skits in the midst of songs, but I think GZA accomplished this way better than any other rapper I’ve heard, mostly using dialogue from the film Shogun Assassin (which I should probably check out). The production for this album is incredible, especially considering it was recorded and produced in RZA’s basement. I’m unclear how advanced RZA’s home studio was, but I can’t imagine it rivaled The Firehouse or The Hit Studio where Enter the Wu-Tang was recorded and mastered (respectively). RZA and GZA made miracles on this album, it sounds over a decade advanced. Ghostface Killah’s Fishscale from 2006 and Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II are of similar quality, but they’re both over 10 years later and were recorded at more developed studios.
Happy Mondays
4/5
This is such a fun record, one of my favorites from the baggy/Madchester scene in the late 80s/early 90s. One part jangle pop, one part dance/trance, and one part classic rock, this album is more than the sum of its parts. Really just banger after banger that aren’t really club/rave songs, but still tremendously fun to dance to.
Sepultura
3/5
I really wish I liked this album more. Brazilian heavy metal with a bit of a basis in MPB (Música popular Brasileira) sounds like a surefire win in my book, but unfortunately that promise just doesn’t really deliver. “Roots Bloody Roots” and “Ratamahatta” are really the only songs I like. The former is just a great groovy metal track, and the latter is probably the most Brazilian-sounding song on the album with a basis in post-samba rhythm. Still though, these two tracks bring up the rest of the mediocre metal into something solid enough that I’d give the album a positive spin.
The Beach Boys
4/5
Easily The Beach Boys’ best record up until Pet Sounds. “Do You Wanna Dance?” is my favorite early Beach Boys song, and most of the rest of the songs are solid as well, including the classic “Help Me Rhonda”. But what the hell is the “Bull Session with Big Daddy” even doing on the album? A 2 minute interview excerpt where it sounds like the present band members are only half-paying attention just sounds like the record studio wanted to pad the track listing. It’s a shame, since The Beach Boys had some solid non-album singles released around that time that probably could have been included.
When you compare this to The Beatles’ Beatles for Sale and Help! released around the same time, it’s easy to see how the two bands were on equal footing, vying for the title of the best band in the world. Obviously that went to The Beatles only a few short years later, but the era from 1965-1966 which included the release of this album and Pet Sounds cemented The Beach Boys as one of the best ever.
Fiona Apple
4/5
It took me a while to get into Fiona Apple. I guess I considered her super-long album titles to be too pretentious and never took her music seriously. But I listened to Tidal for the first time probably 20 years after its original release, and this debut effort is my favorite of hers other than 2020’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Apple’s voice is tremendously powerful, and the fusion of hard rock and blues into what is essentially indie pop makes the whole album a powerhouse to listen to.
The Waterboys
3/5
This is supposed to be a departure in sound from The Waterboys’ previous albums (like the excellent This Is the Sea), but I don’t hear too much of a difference. Both are pretty solid folk rock with some clear punk influences.
Dirty Projectors
3/5
This album was on my wishlist for a long time, and when I finally listened, I was a bit disappointed. That’s not to say it’s a bad album, just not really what I was expecting. On further listens, and listens to other Dirty Projectors albums, I think I’ve begun to enjoy this album more, although I much more enjoy their follow-up Swing Lo Magellan.
The Allman Brothers Band
2/5
Allman Bros and Grateful Dead always seemed pretty similar to me, despite their slightly different genres/backgrounds in blues vs. psychedelic folk. Both are known for their extensive live sets that include jam songs that seem to go on endlessly. And both have released new material on live albums the way most bands only do on studio albums.
At Fillmore East is not my favorite Allman Bros album, in fact I don’t like it much. And I do actually love a few of their studio albums like Eat a Peach or Brothers or Sisters. Fillmore East just seems to go on way too long. It was released as a double album, with sides B and D consisting of one 20-ish minute song each. Side D’s “Whipping Post” is an Allman Bros classic, and the studio version on the band’s self-titled debut is solid. This is a good live recording, and although it meanders around a little too long and a little too timidly for a while, it’s still a fun recording to listen to. But side B’s “You Don’t Love Me” is a mess: it starts to get stale under 3 minutes in and just continues to meander around to the point where the band members don’t even seem concerned with how they sound, they’re just content to play a lame beat and strum mildly for about 15 minutes. This should not have been included on the album. “Statesboro Blues” and the instrumental “Hot ‘Lanta” are both solid but the rest of the tracks are only about as good as the first couple minutes of “You Don’t Love Me”: mediocre at best.
I wish I enjoyed this album better, because I DO like the Allman Brothers Band; they have some great studio albums and they generally sound fantastic live: I’ve heard some great live tracks of theirs, for example the 16-minute “Jessica” from Wipe the Windows, Check the Oil, Dollar Gas. It confuses me that At Fillmore East is typically considered their highest-regarded album when it leaves much to be desired for me. Also… what’s with the lack of drum solos? There are 2 drummers in the band: Jaimoe and Butch Trucks and they’re both awesome, but really don’t get their time to shine here.
3/5
This is not PJ Harvey’s best album, but it’s probably her first great album. Her first few (Dry, Rid of Me) were more rooted in punk and even grunge, by Stories, Harvey ended up with a more encompassing rock sound, drawing from many different sides of rock, like punk, blues, indie, grunge, britpop, and (in particular on this album) folk. Easily my favorite album of hers until the masterpiece Let England Shake. The duet with Thom Yorke on “The Mess We’re In” is good, but the tracks where Yorke provides backing vocals are even better: “One Line” and “Beautiful Feeling”. None of these songs are even the highlights on the album though, “This Is Love” and “Good Fortune” are my favorites.
Bob Dylan
5/5
Simply one of the greatest albums ever recorded. Dylan obviously has many incredible albums, but this is easily his best double album. Unlike some double albums which don’t justify their runtimes, Blonde on Blonde retains its fantastic quality throughout, including on the final 10+ minute track “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”. Blonde on Blonde is probably one of Dylan’s most diverse albums thematically, but it retains a cohesion that can only be achieved by great mixing and production. This features Dylan at his most tender in “I Want You” and “Just Like a Woman”, at his silliest in “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” and “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”, at his darkest (at least for several decades) in “4th Time Around”, and also his deepest dive into blues and R&B and his first delve into country. But the whole thing still retains Dylan’s trademark folk rock sound and passionate literary social commentary that embrace all of his music. Blonde on Blonde also completes probably the best trilogy of albums ever recorded in a 1-year span, begun by Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited, both of which are also nearly flawless albums. Only The Beatles could rival that kind of quality and quantity.
George Jones
1/5
I mistakenly thought Jones was the musician whose song killed the Martians in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! I was wrong, although it would’ve been appropriate. I appreciate the inclusion of some Nashville Sound country music which I otherwise don’t get much exposure to. But Jones just doesn’t do it for me, there’s other similar musicians out there with a much more palatable and even impressive sound: Glen Campbell, Tammy Wynette, Charlie Rich, even Dolly Parton has similar music that just sounds sooo much better. At least this is under 30 minutes.
Simon & Garfunkel
5/5
Another nearly perfect album. This was S&G at their best, both in Simon’s songwriting and in Garfunkel’s tender voice. Even though they broke up right afterwards, this album shows their greatest congruence, tenderness, and even love for each other. Paul Simon wrote “The Only Living Boy in New York” about his loneliness when Garfunkel was out of town for an extended time filming a movie. Really the only song that feels out of place on the album is the live version of “Bye Bye Love”, which is a fine cover but just doesn’t fit in with the rest of the pieces here. The duo recorded a number of songs which didn’t make it to the album, and this one got picked instead. This is a shame, because bootleg and demo recordings of songs like “Feuilles-O” are brilliant and would have flowed beautifully with the rest of the album. Even though this album is a notch below perfect, it’s still one of my all time favorites.
Mott The Hoople
2/5
Pretty much the only good song by Mott the Hoople was written by David Bowie, and it doesn’t appear on this album. Mott is very lackluster; at times they sound like the type of psychedelic folk that Dylan or The Byrds were making in the late 60s and at other times they sound like early glam rock like Bowie. Problem is… all of those artists had moved on by 1973 into bigger and better (or at least different) projects, and Mott sound dated even in 1973.
White Denim
3/5
This is the first White Denim album I’ve heard; I could have sworn this was a singer I recognized, they sound so similar to Jim James of My Morning Jacket or Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I was surprised that there was no one I’ve heard of in White Denim. This was a fun southern rock album which was polished enough that I wouldn’t consider it garage rock, but in the same vein. There’s some major influences from blues, psychedelic rock, and 60s rock and roll as well, to the point that parts of the album sound like it could’ve been recorded decades ago. Overall solid album, and I’ll probably check out more from White Denim.
Fugees
3/5
This album sounds like the archetypal late 90s-mid 00s hip hop album, until you realize it was released in 1996. I’d argue that not all of this album holds up: the skits are distracting, the use of samples is a bit too in your face; but this album set the standard for almost all hip hop for years afterwards. I enjoyed this album a lot more than I remembered, and I really appreciated some of the songs I didn’t remember at all like “Manifest” and “Zealots”.
Mariah Carey
2/5
Mariah is an undeniably talented singer, but this style of 90s R&B is just really not for me. This was moving much too slowly for me up until the final track which was almost more of an outro. I much prefer Daydream to this album.
Everything But The Girl
2/5
Aside from the vocals, it sounds like pretty much all the instruments are played on a Casio keyboard. I’m sure that’s not the case, but everything is synthesized to the point where it sounds amateurish. Using a drum machine for percussion isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the way it sounds here is basic and at the same time seems to be mastered oddly where it’s louder than other pieces which should maybe be more prominent. I haven’t enjoyed much by Everything but the Girl, but this might be my least favorite.
Metallica
4/5
I mentioned in my review for …And Justice for All that I liked this album. That’s not entirely true: when I first listened in 2014, I really did not enjoy this. My rating on besteveralbums was 45/100, which is the second-lowest rating I gave to anything in BEA’s top 100 (at the time), and the bottom 5% of ratings I gave to albums in AcclaimedMusic’s top 500. That said, I had the pleasure of seeing Metallica in 2014; they were at a festival and I was more interested in pretty much everyone else who was playing, but I got a kick out of how much the crowd loved Metallica even more than any other big name artist like Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters, or Rihanna.
Years later I listened to Ride the Lightning and loved it, and reasonably enjoyed Kill ‘Em All also. After “Master of Puppets” appeared in Stranger Things, I encountered a lot of people who weren’t previously into metal music who were now giving it a chance, and I relished in the opportunity to recommend albums which had been my gateway into metal (mainly Iron Maiden). But I also relooked at Master of Puppets and realized I now really enjoyed it, so I guess consider me one of these Stranger Things bandwagoners.
On today’s listen, I think I enjoyed the album even more than before, to the point where I’m now considering a 4/5 re-rating, well above the 2/5 I gave it a decade ago. As a whole, Master of Puppets is a criticism of war (“Disposable Heroes”) and senseless violence (“Damage, Inc.”) organized by people with power who pull strings to get others to do their dirty work (“Master of Puppets”). There’s also criticisms of religion (“Leper Messiah”) and familial abuse (“Battery”), and it’s all topped off by some amazing guitar, drums, and bass. I’m still not big on Hetfield’s vocals, but in general the lyrics on this album are better and the vocals have a lesser role than on later albums.
I’m glad I’m going through the 1001 Albums to Hear Before You Die list and reevaluating albums which I previously didn’t like, because I’m realizing how great shit like this is.
5/5
In 2008, I had a burnt CD of entirely Muse songs, and over half of them were songs from this album. I used to listen to it near-daily on my drives to and from work (and occasionally on breaks), and songs like “Map of the Problematique” and “City of Delusion” still give me nostalgia for a time in my life that otherwise wasn’t really all that great. Funny how music can do this.
For a long time, this was my favorite album of all time, Muse my favorite artist, and “Knights of Cydonia” my favorite song. The last one is probably still true, there’s nothing like the feeling of blasting the song while cruising down the highway with the windows and sunroof wide open. And I don’t even like driving. Black Holes and Revelations has been eclipsed as my favorite album, but it’s still in my top 10 favorites and is likely to remain there for a long time.
Muse was the first artist who really made me listen to and appreciate their albums and not just listen to as background music. Muse’s quality has taken a big hit in the years since this album was released, but they still hold a special place in my heart for opening the gates to what is easily one of my greatest passions in life: music. That’s not to say the trio from southwest England are high art or the greatest musicians ever, but they were to me for a long time. And quite frankly I couldn’t think of a better band name in that regard.
Tom Tom Club
3/5
This Talking Heads-adjacent group has a similar vibe, so of course it’s pretty solid. Tom Tom Club are slightly poppier while still retaining the weirdness that makes Talking Heads great. Many of these songs are incredibly groovy and easy to dance to, it’s no surprise that “Genius of Love” has been prominently sampled in pop, hip hop, and R&B songs in the decades since its release. The cover of “Under the Boardwalk” is phenomenal, they really reinvented it into their own dancey bop. I’m not a big fan of “Wordy Rappington”, their other big single from the album, but it’s a good opening song because of how weird it is with its spoken/rapped sections, typewriter sounds, and a verse in French (which is way better than David Byrne’s French). The rest of the album that follows just gets more and more fun.
Motörhead
3/5
The title track is a great piece, brings memories of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 and evokes driving way too fast. The full album doesn’t quite keep the same frantic pace of “Ace of Spades”, but a good portion of the album stays pretty close. While Motörhead set the standard for speed metal with this album, it really isn’t much more than a bunch of mediocre support for a great single.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
I’m a sucker for adaptations of the Orpheus & Eurydice myth, and while this isn’t the clearest adaptation beyond the title, it’s still littered with references to the ultimate musician’s tragedy. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds have been remarkably consistent in quality over about 40 years of recording, even if they’ve been extremely inconsistent in style. Garage rock, polished art rock, ambient/minimalism, they do it all. But this style of gothic rock is my favorite, most similar to their 1988 Tender Prey, probably my second favorite of their albums. It’s a double album but it doesn’t feel bloated. There’s enough diversity in sound to keep me entertained throughout but not so much that it feels disjointed. I do think this could have been released as two separate albums, but there’s enough similarity (blues vs. tragedy) that I think it’s all fitting together.
The Jam
4/5
In the history of rock music, The Jam are criminally underplayed and underrated, particularly in the US. Maybe I’d feel differently if they got any airplay on US classic rock stations, but I can’t say I ever heard The Jam until I was well into college, and when I discovered them I fell in love almost immediately. They’re the perfect blend of rock, punk, ska, and new wave that defined the transition from 70s to 80s rock and even set the stage for late 80s into 90s rock. They drew from 60s mod which later got bigger again with Britpop.
This is my favorite album by The Jam, although all of them are close. “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight” and “David Watts” are where they’re at their punkiest, but they can get softer on tracks like “English Rose”. Not a bad track in the bunch.
The Pharcyde
3/5
Really interesting fusion of jazz rap, conscious hip hop, and boom bap with some humor thrown in. Combining that was really ahead of the times, and this album doesn’t feel dated at all unlike lots of other 90s rap albums.
Stevie Wonder
4/5
Easily my favorite Stevie Wonder album. “Living for the City” is an absolute masterpiece, and I’d consider it his magnum opus. Wonder followed many other musicians at the time who were transitioning from Motown-style love songs to socially and politically conscious protest music. Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and others got there sooner than Stevie, but Stevie ranks up there with the best of them. He critiques systemic racism, drug abuse prevalent in black communities due to lack of resources, and also just rips on Richard Nixon which is an awesome diss track. There’s also more standard love songs and songs with more upbeat messages like “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing”, “Golden Lady”, and “Higher Ground” which together seem to convey a message that there’s a lot going wrong, but we have to cherish the things going right and work hard to correct the things going wrong. Granted, we haven’t made much progress as of 2024 correcting the societal ills of 1973, certainly not as much progress as someone from 1973 would have hoped for, but there’s still millions and even billions of people fighting the good fight.
This album is also a masterpiece of production. What could have been a series of disjointed messages is linked by Wonder’s absolutely brilliant mind. He played almost every instrument and layered everything on top of each other for a coherent sound that ties the whole album together regardless of the tonal shifts. He isn’t given enough credit for some of the production techniques that he helped develop, like the extensive use of overdubbing which was later used by Bruce Springsteen, or the blending of non-studio and studio sounds that became prevalent in rap music. It’s scary but awe-inspiring to me that Stevie nearly died in a car crash (…he was the passenger) right after this album’s release and then released another brilliant album a year later.
R.E.M.
2/5
R.E.M. are really hit or miss for me, some of their albums sound great but other highly revered albums of theirs really just fall flat for me. Green is somewhere in the middle. Some of their best and most recognizable songs like “Orange Crush” and “Stand” are on the album, but there’s also garbage like “The Wrong Child”. There are a few artists who I’d prefer to listen to greatest hits albums; most of them are groups like The Supremes who released tons of amazing singles but not a lot of great albums. R.E.M. released lots of albums which are critically acclaimed, but to me their quality and consistency is all over the place and I prefer just to listen to their hits.
Sufjan Stevens
5/5
Funny that this album came up in the 1001 queue while I was visiting Chicago. I absolutely love this album. The song “Chicago” never fails to cheer me up while I’m feeling down, but paradoxically gives me a sense of nostalgia and melancholy if I was already happy. It’s my comfort song and my comfort album, something I can return to to revel in the brilliance of the human mind.
This has been one of my favorite albums since I first heard it. When I first created a top 100 albums chart, it was ranked #4, and in over a decade since then, it’s remained in slot 2-3 while other albums have come and gone in the #1 spot.
I have a vision of a film version of The Devil in the White City (the nonfiction story of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair), or perhaps a musical or a ballet, which is set to the music of this album. The architects and engineers dance around their table to “Come On! Feel the Illinoise!” H. H. Holmes paces the hallways of his murder hotel to “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” The first Ferris wheel is constructed to “The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders”. Holmes reckons with his murders to “They Are Night Zombies!!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!” Daniel Burnham surveys his great white city to “The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts”. I guess the Illinoise musical will have to do, along with whatever film ends up being made by Leo Dicaprio since he has the rights to adapt The Devil in the White City.
Stereo MC's
2/5
This isn’t really for me. It’s an early UK hip hop album but there are much better British rap artists who came later. There are much better acts that do the trip hop/acid jazz thing like Portishead or even Jamiroquai, and there are much better British rappers as well. I guess the fusion is sort of unique, but the sound that Stereo MC’s record still just doesn’t sound that unique. For better takes on the same general sound, listen to The Shamen, Tricky, or Happy Mondays instead.
Carole King
4/5
King had been writing pop hits for over a decade before she finally decided to sing some herself. Included here are songs already made famous by Aretha Franklin and The Shirelles along with many other new tracks. This album is what I think of when I hear the genre descriptor “singer/songwriter”. Simply a beautiful album.
Beyoncé
3/5
Probably my least favorite of the Beyoncé albums I’ve heard, but it’s still very good. The majority of this album is made of absolute club hits, and they just keep coming. I always seem to think “Formation” is on this album, I feel like it thematically fits in a little better on this album than Lemonade, although obviously it wasn’t recorded when this album was released.
The xx
3/5
I’ve always enjoyed The xx but never really been wowed by them. At least until Jamie xx released his solo album In Colour which leaned much more into electronic dance music than The xx’s indie rock/pop. I See You definitely shares some dance vibes with In Colour, especially on “On Hold”, my favorite xx song. I hope The xx will get together again and release more, it’s been 7 years and I’m hopeful since Romy had a 2023 solo album and Jamie xx seems to have an upcoming release in 2024. Maybe we’ll see them record together again soon.
Minutemen
3/5
I’ve heard this a few times before but I always forget that in the middle of a bunch of awesome punk jams is the Jackass theme song. It surprises me every time even though it really doesn’t feel out of place.
A double album with 45 tracks, most are only 1-2 minutes but there’s still a good amount of variety and not just straightforward punk. There’s political protest songs, protest songs ABOUT protest songs, songs the band members wrote to each other, incomprehensible philosophical musings, and linguistic changes from slang to complex grammar a la James Joyce. Even at the short song length, they really packed a ton of good stuff into this relatively reasonable run time.
Duran Duran
4/5
This album exudes 80s, right down to the artwork. I didn’t give Duran Duran a chance for a while, mostly based on seeing their Live Aid set. For some reason, I decided to pick up this album on a whim and I sorta fell in love immediately. I hadn’t ever heard the title track before but loved it, and “Hungry Like the Wolf” is the ultimate new romantic 80s anthem. I don’t think I’ve ever changed my opinion of an artist so quickly.
Bob Dylan
3/5
I saw Dylan live around 2012-ish and… he was awful. His voice was totally incomprehensible and the band wasn’t great, to the point where I didn’t realize what song he was playing until I could sort of make out “zhuzhed up in blue” and I was like “wait… is this a song I recognize?” Probably just a bad day for him, or he was phoning it in, because he’s continued to make great music in the studio since then, and I’ve heard good things from others.
Dylan had an amazing run around 1963 through 1967 or so, and then had a series of not as good albums in the early 70s. It’s hard to say Blood on the Tracks was his comeback album because his prior albums weren’t bad, but they all paled in comparison to his run in 1964-1966. It’s also hard to say Blood on the Tracks was a return to form though, since he was constantly re-inventing his sound. But Blood on the Tracks certainly meets the quality of his mid-60s song making, and it’s a highlight even in a career full of masterpieces. If you like this album, definitely check out More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series Vol. 14 which is basically just alternate recordings of each song on the original album, all still wonderful.
The Killers
4/5
I’m sort of amazed The Killers aren’t a one-hit-wonder. I love so much of the music they’ve made, but they definitely peaked with “Mr. Brightside” on their debut album, which still stands head and shoulders over everything else they’ve done. The whole first half of the album is full of songs which I’m glad became hits for the band, since I love each and all of them. The second half of the album is a bit weaker, and so this isn’t my favorite Killers album despite having some of their best songs.
Portishead
4/5
While American rappers developed the techniques of sampling, British electronic musicians began using similar techniques to create a completely different sound, and hence trip hop was born. Portishead didn’t invent trip hop, but what they did on Dummy with completely non-digital sampling was revolutionary and paved the way for plunderphonics and mashup music. While other early trip hop artists like Massive Attack and Tricky sound dated to me, I’ll never fail to enjoy early Portishead. Part of being an electronic music act who records non-digitally in the studio means they sound fantastic live. Check out Portishead’s Roseland NYC from 1998 for my all-time favorite recordings of many of these tracks.
U2
3/5
Achtung Baby is an interesting album, and I think it presents U2 at the pinnacle of their songwriting capabilities. Many of the songs thematically and lyrically seem like they would have fit perfectly on The Joshua Tree (my favorite U2 album), but they stylistically shifted their sound to purposely re-invent themselves in the wake of their unsuccessful live/studio album Rattle and Hum released between Joshua and Achtung. Rattle and Hum is definitely a let down after such a massive 80s career for the band.
I appreciate how during the rise of grunge, U2 got a bit darker but strayed further away from the garage rock style and got more electric and dancy with many of the tracks here. They maybe seem to have been inspired by acts like Nine Inch Nails in incorporating a harsher sound, but don’t dive too far into that style to alienate themselves from their arena rock sound.
I do really like this album, but what I like even more is the cover album released for its 20th anniversary: (Ăhk-to͝ong Ba͞y-bi) Covered. This is probably my favorite cover album of all time; it includes covers by artists who U2 clearly took inspiration from when writing and recording the album in 1991 (e.g. Nine Inch Nails, Patti Smith, Depeche Mode) as well as musicians who were at their peak or close to it in 2011 like The Killers, Jack White, and Snow Patrol. So many of these covers are superior to the original, but none more starkly so than White’s “Love Is Blindness” which pours brutal emotion into an already emotional track. Obviously this fantastic cover album wouldn’t exist without the original being as great as it was, so I thank U2 for a wonderful album.
Aerosmith
3/5
Probably Aerosmith’s best album with some of their best songs. But while I think Aerosmith wrote some catchy tunes, they definitely walked (this way… heh) so that others could run, including Run-D.M.C. with their re-interpretation “Walk This Way” or Shania Twain whose “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” sounds suspiciously like Aerosmith’s “Uncle Salty” (but in a good way, Twain’s song is so much better.
Orbital
3/5
I get The Orb and Orbital mixed up, and I sort of groaned when I saw this album pop up on the 1001 list. I was thinking it was a different album by The Orb which I had heard, but this was actually a new one for me. Orbital are a bit more upbeat techno compared to The Orb’s more ambient sound, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much Snivilisation drew me in throughout its runtime. I think it’s actually my favorite of the 3-4 Orbital albums I’ve heard so far.
The Clash
4/5
This album feels a bit too long, but I’m also not sure that I’d be willing to cut enough material to make it fit on a single LP. The few songs between the title track and “Rudie Can’t Fail” are a bit weak and feel out of place compared to how strong everything else on the album is. That said, as a whole the album is excellent, and doesn’t face anywhere near the length issue of their next album, Sandinista! which is a massive triple album with about 2 ½ hours of music. At barely over an hour, London Calling is much more manageable, and has some of The Clash’s greatest tracks including the title track, “Lost in the Supermarket”, the aforementioned “Rudie Can’t Fail”, and my personal favorite Clash song “Train in Vain (Stand by Me)”.
Most of the tracks on this album offer social commentary and critique but often with a sense of doom and gloom. While “Train in Vain” is more about a relationship than anything, it does offer a sense of hope at the end of all the doom and gloom. I don’t know if this was intentional by the band, it seems more like a last-minute addition of a more commercial-sounding song to help drive sales, but I interpret it as a light of hope: the world’s going to shit but at least we have each other.
Skunk Anansie
3/5
I’d never heard of this band before, but they have a great name and great album names as well (like this and their earlier album Stoosh). Skunk Anansie have their roots in punk and moved a bit into nu-metal in the 90s: Wikipedia lists the genres here as hard rock and alternative metal, but I think the punk shines through more than anything else. I’ll definitely check out more music from the band. I was pleasantly surprised by this.
The Triffids
3/5
I loved The Triffids earlier Born Sandy Devotional, and Calenture definitely keeps up a similar folk rock sound just without managing to ever hit the highs of the former album.
R.E.M.
2/5
This might be my least favorite R.E.M. album, or at least my least favorite of their more acclaimed albums. They do have some good material, some of the songs are catchy like “The One I Love” and “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”, and I do like “Finest Worksong”’s funk-infused aesthetic, but the rest of the album just doesn’t appeal to me. I’m not a fan of Michael Stipe’s voice, despite his admittedly solid songwriting, and I think he registers at far too much of a whine pretty much throughout all of Document.
Talvin Singh
3/5
This sounds like the 90s trip hop equivalent of George Harrison going to India and coming back and infusing sitar into all his music. The big difference is that Singh is of Indian descent, grew up playing tabla, and spent years in his childhood studying the instrument and Indian classical music in India. OK ends up being a much more earnest fusion of western and eastern music, and I can’t say I’ve heard anything quite like it, aside from maybe Thievery Corporation (who are much more like George Harrison than Singh). When using the word “world” as a genre descriptor it’s usually a copout, but here it feels appropriate since Singh fuses ideas from India, Japan, the UK and Europe, and beyond.
Radiohead
4/5
Radiohead’s first great album influenced a generation of wannabe edgy rock musicians (including some of my favorite bands like Muse). For me, the only thing that doesn’t elevate this album from the level of great to masterpiece is the production. Which is interesting because starting with OK Computer, Radiohead and Nigel Godrich are often the absolute pinnacle of what production can accomplish. “Planet Telex” and “Karma Police” (from OK Computer) were really the two songs which got me into Radiohead, and the rest of The Bends followed, particularly “Fake Plastic Trees” and “Just” which I always forget how much I like.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
2/5
This album unfortunately doesn’t appeal to me as much as I feel like it should. I love Neil Young and respect the hell out of him, but Déjà Vu sort of pales to CSN’s 1969 debut without Young. I think the live 4 Way Street with Young is the best that the group has, but that also features a lot of Young’s solo stuff performed live. It really surprises me that Déjà Vu is the best-selling album of any of the members’ careers, but I suppose I can be glad for that because it furthered Young’s career in particular and allowed him to record and release some of his best music later in the 70s and beyond.
Count Basie & His Orchestra
5/5
I forgot how amazing this album was. Basie had been leading his band for over 20 years at this point, but he managed to capture some of the best big band music ever recorded. It’s the perfect confluence of great bandleading, interplay between musicians, and arrangements (by Neal Hefti). Probably the best swing/big band jazz album ever recorded.
Madonna
1/5
Madonna’s hit or miss for me. She has some great albums and great music, but this one is just so… boring. Not at all like her great synthpop from the 80s, or dancy trip hop Ray of Light released just before this album, or the later disco-esque Confessions on a Dance Floor. Music is just so much lamer than what she's capable of.
Beck
3/5
This is probably Beck’s most fun album. His earliest albums like Mellow Gold and Odelay are great but don’t get the blood pumping like Guero does. Most of Beck’s other great albums like Mutations, Sea Change, and Morning Phase are all softer and more folkish. And Midnite Vultures… well I guess I forgot about that one because it’s funky as hell and probably more fun than Guero actually. But Guero’s still a great album with some of my favorite songs of Beck’s like “Girl”.
David Bowie
4/5
This is probably my favorite Bowie album without a “hit” song. Sure, there are a number of singles from this album that did actually chart very well, but it’s not like “The Jean Genie” or “Drive-In Saturday” (while great songs) had the staying power of “Sound and Vision” or “Heroes”. Maybe I’m not making much sense, but I guess my point is that this whole album is good, with very few highs and lows. Although the Rolling Stones cover is interestingly enough probably the low point. “Time” has recently become one of my favorite Bowie songs.
The Streets
3/5
I don’t like this nearly as much as Original Pirate Material, and I think somehow The Streets’ production has gone down in quality since that first album. But the story told throughout the album is well framed and well presented, hitting emotional highs and lows (mostly lows) that definitely resonate. I’m generally not a fan of Mike Skinner’s style of delivery, mainly because other British hip hop artists like Kae Tempest, Dizzee Rascal, and others manage the distinctly UK-style spoken word-esque rapping much more successfully. I do appreciate how the story on the album revolves around a missing 1,000 quid and broken TV which the narrator paranoidly blames on his flatmates, friends, even his new girlfriend (who wasn’t in the picture when the grand was lost and the TV broken), and the “happy” ending is that the grand was in a shoebox that fell behind the TV, which broke the TV. “Dry Your Eyes” would actually be a very good pop or R&B song if performed in a different style.
Germs
3/5
Not much to say about this album other than it’s a succinct hardcore punk album that’s solid but doesn’t really stand out. Pretty cool that it was produced by Joan Jett though.
Venom
2/5
Venom seems to be inspired a lot by Motörhead, Deep Purple, and other heavy metal bands rather than strictly metal bands. But they also managed to pave the way for thrash metal, death metal, and of course black metal for which they lent the name. Generally I think I prefer the more melodic metal of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, or the even heavier thrash of Metallica. But the black metal of Venom did help certain specific Scandinavian metal genres develop which lead to bands like Opeth, Emperor, and others. I think Venom are unfortunately outclassed by Slayer who were doing similar things in the 80s.
Pixies
4/5
Doolittle is Pixies’ best album by far and it’s not even close. “Debaser”, “Monkey Gone to Heaven”, “Here Comes Your Man”, and “Wave of Mutilation” are justifiably among the most well-known Pixies songs, but there’s also some seriously underrated songs here, like the punky Dead Kennedys-esqu “Crackity Jones”, the angsty “No 13 Baby”, the country-blues “Silver” or the proto-grunge almost bluesy “There Goes My Gun”. Kim Deal is at her best on this latter song along with many other tracks on this album. It’s easy to see why so many influential bands from the early 90s like Nirvana and Pearl Jam were heavily influenced and inspired by this album.
Ali Farka Touré
3/5
I really love Mande and Songhai music, or desert blues. And while Touré was an innovator and played a big part in bringing that style to an international audience, he just isn’t my favorite performer in the genre. This album was the first of many Touré albums I listened to, and it’s definitely grown on me since then. It’s not my favorite of his (that probably goes to his 1990 album The River), but Savane presents some of the final songs he worked on before dying of bone cancer at 62. These songs have a sadness to them but also an acceptance of death to come, akin to David Bowie’s Blackstar. Savane does also have some great talent on it other than Touré himself, like Bassekou Kouyate on ngoni (a string instrument).
The Black Crowes
3/5
I’ve seen The Black Crowes twice, which is 2 more times than you’d expect for someone who really doesn’t care about The Black Crowes at all. They’re a decent enough live act, and when I listen to this album I forget that they have some pretty fun blues rock music.
Pink Floyd
4/5
Great album, though I don’t particularly care for the storyline/concept Roger Waters put together. But there’s some fantastic songs here, beyond “Another Brick in the Wall” and “Comfortably Numb”. It contains some of the best instrumental moments in Pink Floyd’s career, like “In the Flesh?”, “The Happiest Days of Our Lives”, and “Run Like Hell”. I think I prefer The Wall to some of Pink Floyd’s more highly praised and/or technically impressive albums like Wish You Were Here or Animals.
Janis Joplin
3/5
Janis Joplin has steadily grown on me over the years. At first I found her blend of blues and hard rock a little harsh, not to even mention her voice. But the amount of passion she throws behind that voice is incredible, and it really shines on the songs she wrote or co-wrote, like “Mercedes Benz”. The production on this album is far superior to that on the garage rock-sound of her albums with Big Brother and the Holding Company, or even her earlier solo album. Pearl was produced by Paul Rothchild, who produced almost all of The Doors music, and I’d argue that The Doors’ 60s output was some of the tightest production of the era.
If Joplin had not died after recording this album, I’m sure she would have gone to create more fantastic music. But it’s hard to believe anything could top this. The original songs are wonderful, and the covers are so iconic that it’s hard to believe they’re covers.
Erykah Badu
2/5
This is a great album held back significantly by the use of a drum machine. Drum machines work in some genres like new wave and industrial music, but on a funk/soul/hip hop-infused album, I really think you need a true drummer who can put some passion and flair into the work that a drum machine is incapable of. Questlove does drum on some tracks but his touch seems light and it’s hard to discern. Otherwise, Badu herself is great, but I really feel like she’s held herself back on all her albums but not involving more meaningful percussion.
Throwing Muses
3/5
On their debut album, Throwing Muses sound like a mix of Pixies and Siouxsie and the Banshees. It’s an interesting bridge between new wave and indie rock, which the Pixies themselves also function as. I don’t think Throwing Muses reach that level, but they’re an interesting group.
Neil Young
3/5
While I think Young is at his best live (my favorite of his albums are Weld, Rust Never Sleeps, and Live at Massey Hall 1971), this is my favorite of his studio albums. Harvest is Young at his most tender, and I think his most understandable. While I love the impacts of ecology on society and vice versa that After the Gold Rush discusses, I don’t claim to understand those lyrics nearly as well as on Harvest. “Heart of Gold” and “Old Man” are justifiably some of Young’s best and most recognizable songs, and “The Needle and the Damage Done” is one of my favorites. While Harvest might feature Neil Young sounding a lot like Bob Dylan (even Dylan thought so), I also think Young’s lyrics here are by far the most straightforward: relatable while still being poetic and containing great folk guitar and acoustic instrumental backing.
KISS
3/5
Most of this album does present some great hard rock songs and party anthems which are fun to listen to, but it leaves something to be desired. There were some odd choices in the production/mixing of the album that left a bad taste for me. It seems like they wrote about 30 minutes of solid songs but needed to justify more to release a full album, so instead of adding another song they just added a few minutes of radio static at the beginning and ends of the album, which sort of ruined the experience of listening to this as an album. I’d rather listen to the single edit of “Detroit Rock City” than the version presented here. There’s also the weird choice of adding children’s giggling to “God of Thunder”, which I think would have been better without that and the other overdubbed sound effects.
Duke Ellington
3/5
In 1956, Ellington’s career was approaching its twilight, but this performance at the Newport Jazz Festival and album recorded there brought back his career from the brink. Ellington takes a bit of a backseat as bandleader, letting some of his band members perform some crazy solos, and I think this tactic improved not just Ellington (and his band)’s sound, but also jazz as a whole. Paul Gonsalves’s saxophone solo reinvented Ellington’s classic song “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue”, absolutely blew the audience away to the point of near hysteria, and remains one of the best live saxophone solos ever recorded.
Blondie
3/5
This is THE new wave album. The perfect blend of pop and rock with a little punk thrown in, while remaining incredibly accessible. I saw Blondie around 2016 and Debbie Harry’s belting out “One Way or Another” was still great nearly 40 years later.
X-Ray Spex
3/5
Proof that punk can be fun to the point of being silly. A lot of other punk is tongue-in-cheek funny while still being angry or critical of the status quo (Sex Pistols), or self-deprecating humor (Ramones), but X-Ray Spex is in your face about shit as mundane as plastic bags. Not a favorite album of mine but it also set the stage for many more punk and alternative acts, especially the riot grrrl movement. The first time I listened, I wasn’t a big fan of Poly Styrene’s voice, but it’s grown on me the more I’ve heard.
Hugh Masekela
4/5
While featuring a fairly standard lineup of instruments (though Masekela himself plays flugelhorn rather than trumpet throughout most of the album which is interesting), the percussion and overall composition on the album feels more derived from Afrobeat. It’s a really interesting fusion of styles, with themes that pay tribute to black American as well as African themes, heroes, and places. The style of spiritual funk-infused jazz feels similar to what American jazz musicians like Charles Mingus and John Coltrane were doing a few years earlier: fusing anger and spirituality into critiques of the status quo while remaining hopeful for a better future. In this way, Masekela protests apartheid while conveying the joy of black Africans.
Megadeth
3/5
Not my favorite Megadeth album. I feel like Megadeth had sort of an opposite trajectory as Metallica: while Metallica came on the scene as pioneers in thrash, they gradually shifted their sound to be a little more standard metal and accessible for everyone. Megadeth started thrash-ish, but got more into extreme thrash as their career went on. I think Peace Sells is pretty clearly thrash, but not as extreme as Rust in Peace, which I much prefer.
Steely Dan
5/5
Possibly the greatest lineup of no-name set musicians ever. I’m not a big fan of Steely Dan, but this album is so perfectly performed and produced that it’s hard to deny how amazing it is. The fact that Walter Becker, one of the two permanent members of Steely Dan, didn’t perform on a few of the songs really shows how much of a masterpiece of collaboration this album is. If there’s any album highlight though, it has to be Wayne Shorter’s sax solo on the title track.
The Prodigy
3/5
I truly feel there’s never been a group like The Prodigy, before or since. If they had been more copied or part of a group of bands performing similar music, I think their unique style would have developed a unique genre name, like grunge for Nirvana et al., but as it stands The Prodigy consider themselves electronic punk. They fuse rock, dance, electronic, punk, some metal, and most importantly big beat to create a sound that’s easy to dance to, but also incredibly furious in a way that most dance music isn’t.
The first time I listened to The Prodigy, I did NOT like their sound. Maybe I was too turned off by the violent nature of “Smack My Bitch Up” (which I still am, despite the fantastic sound of the song outside of the lyrics). Maybe my taste in music has just grown more genre-diverse in the 15 years it’s been since I first heard The Prodigy. But with this listen, I couldn’t help but bob and fist pump to most of the tracks.
Elvis Presley
2/5
Certainly an album full of Elvis’s standard sound, but without anything that really stands out, except for “Fever” which is a good cover but substandard compared to Peggy Lee (who also wasn’t the original). Just overall mediocre compared to most Elvis efforts.
Eminem
2/5
Eminem is clearly immensely talented, but the purposefully caustic subject matter of his lyrics really turn me off. Maybe I’m too sensitive, but songs where the protagonist discusses spousal or domestic abuse are just… really difficult for me to listen to. Beyond the subject matter though, while Eminem is at the top of the game as a lyricist, his instrumentals and backing music are mostly uninspired compared to many other rappers, and I think that’s the main reason I’ve never really been able to get into him. Also while I dislike skits in albums and am very pleased that turned out to be a fad, the skit where Eminem’s lawyer Paul Rosenburg tells the former to “tone it down” is actually pretty funny.
The Thrills
2/5
While I’ve never heard this album before, there’s nothing particularly unique about them. Sorta standard indie rock infused with Britpop that was released just as that style was starting to fade from popularity.
ZZ Top
3/5
The album’s fine and all, but the most important thing to know is that ZZ Top has a member with the last name “Beard” who’s the only one of the trio without an immense beard. Ironic.
Kate Bush
3/5
The Dreaming doesn’t really have any standout songs the way The Kick Inside or Hounds of Love do, but the album as a whole is beautiful, and probably my favorite of Kate Bush’s. It’s also one of the most apt album titles ever, considering the wonderfully dreamy pop sounds she’s able to put together.
Buena Vista Social Club
4/5
I used to really love this album, but I think it was more of a gateway into Latin/Cuban jazz and other music, to the point where I’ve listened to so much of the genre that this doesn’t really stand out any longer. I will say that crediting the album to “Buena Vista Social Club” as the artist doesn’t really do justice to the amount of talent involved. American Ry Cooder (himself a specialist in world music despite my finding his music mostly really boring) helped conceive of the project and bring the musicians together. There’s tons of legendary Cuban musicians like Cachaíto on bass, Manuel "Guajiro" Mirabal on trumpet, Compay Segundo playing guitar and singing, Rubén González on piano, and Omara Portuondo singing. Many of these musicians were in their 70s when recording, which is a testament to their immense talent and popularity.
The Stooges
2/5
Never been big on Iggy Pop and the Stooges, and this album is the weakest of their three albums in my opinion. It doesn’t have any solid songs cementing the album like “Search and Destroy” on Raw Power or “I Wanna Be Your Dog” on The Stooges, it’s just a mishmash of primal rock songs. I do appreciate what this album and The Stooges overall did for music, because they seemed to have inspired the punk and garage rock movements. I also feel that Iggy Pop improved dramatically once he started working with David Bowie and Brian Eno.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
4/5
An absolutely lovely cool jazz album, the track “Take Five” is iconic. I’m not always a huge fan of Dave Brubeck: his frequent use of unusual time signatures can sometimes be off putting, but he delivers here. 1959 was such an iconic year for jazz though, with Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and Charles Mingus each also releasing some of their best albums. So while I do think Time Out is excellent, it’s completely overshadowed but other jazz masterpieces.
Beatles
4/5
This is probably the weirdest mishmash of styles and tone I’ve ever known put on an album. But it all works. That’s just a massive testament to The Beatles’ songwriting abilities (collective and individual) that they were able to channel something amazing while the band was falling apart. From any other artist, a double album with so little cohesion would have been a disaster (e.g. Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait), but somehow an hour and a half of songs as varied as the proto-metal “Helter Skelter”, folksy “Mother Nature’s Son”, completely avant-garde “Revolution 9”, and borderline novelty songs like “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and “Piggies” actually fit well together. This album is far from flawless, but its flaws help define it.
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
4/5
The title track and really the whole album are defining examples of early hip hop and Sugarhill Records as a whole, but this is also probably the best electro-funk (or just “electro”) album of all time. The song “The Message” itself is a masterpiece and sets a really high bar of quality. The rest of the album is phenomenal though, with the intense electro of “Scorpio”, the excellent sample of Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love” on “It’s Nasty” as examples.
3/5
I love The Kinks’ prior album Village Green Preservation Society, but most of their other albums fall flat for me. Village Green is their only album which is good all the way through. Most of their other albums feature a good song or two and then a bunch of crap.
Arthur is sort of in the middle of the pack. As a concept album, it’s solid (especially since it was written as the soundtrack to a play), but the songwriting quality doesn’t match that of Village Green. “Victoria” and “Shangri-La” are good, and some other songs are solid as well, but the album as a whole just feels like a poor attempt to duplicate Village Green which is far superior.
Cypress Hill
3/5
For the longest time, I thought Cypress Hill was named after the neighborhood in Brooklyn and represented East Coast hip hop, but they’re actually named after a street in the LA area. Generally not super interested in these guys but “How I Could Just Kill a Man” and “Hand on the Pump” are solid. Also anyone else think B-Real sounds similar to Danny Brown? Both have sort of weird slightly grating high pitched voices while rapping which turned me off at first but I grew to really like.
Beatles
4/5
I’d argue that Rubber Soul is THE album which led to the album itself becoming the definitive format for rock and pop releases, rather than singles/individual songs. The next 2 Beatles albums (Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s) furthered this trend, but this is where it began. Rubber Soul is where the Beatles started becoming more poetic and deeper in their lyrics (even if they didn’t really mean anything, they’re not just standard puppy love songs anymore) and experimental in their instrumentation. And while this isn’t a perfect album, it is very very good, and its success allowed The Beatles (and many other artists) to develop perfect albums.
Jeff Beck
3/5
“Beck’s Bolero” is by far the greatest instrumental rock song I know of. Recorded in 1966 with Keith Moon of The Who, Nicky Hopkins of The Rolling Stones (starting in 1967), and Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones who would go on to form Led Zeppelin, it’s probably the greatest group of musicians on a single track that isn’t some kind of charity thing like Band Aid or We Are the World. There’s some disagreement about who wrote the song between Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, with Page generally receiving writing credit despite the song being called “Beck’s Bolero” and released as a Jeff Beck song. I’m inclined to believe that Page is really the author. The reason for that is because almost everything else that Jeff Beck has written has been garbage.
Most of this album consists of covers of blues standards or re-recordings of songs from when Beck was in the Yardbirds. A handful of songs were co-written by Beck and Rod Stewart and they’re terrible. In fact, Rod Stewart is really bad on the whole album. Not that I like his music much to begin with, but his delivery is particularly insufferable here. Jeff Beck is an extremely talented guitarist and it’s a good thing this album is credited to him, and that there are a handful of instrumentals here. Because otherwise if Rod Stewart was leading, the album would probably be total garbage.
So yeah, I could go on and on about how “Beck’s Bolero” is one of my favorite songs of all time, but the rest of the album is okay or bad.
The Jam
5/5
Definitely my favorite album by The Jam. “That’s Entertainment” and “Start!” are masterpieces, but what really draws me in on this album are some of the deeper cut mod pop gems like “Man in the Corner Shop”. The tone of Paul Weller’s voice sounds marvelous throughout this album, but his “la la la la la” on “Man in the Corner Shop” really drives this home for me.
Dire Straits
3/5
I always feel like I don’t like Dire Straits and maybe I’m not huge on any of their other albums, but I do think their debut album is quite good. “Sultans of Swing” might be an overplayed classic rock staple, but man is it a banger. Before they started to get a little synthy, Mark Knopfler owned the guitar solo, and there’s quite a few good ones on the album in addition to the epic “Sultans of Swing”.
LTJ Bukem
3/5
For a 2+ hour drum & bass album, it’s a little too mellow to hold my interest all the way through. It doesn’t help that it seems like Bukem front loaded the best songs as the first few tracks, particularly “Demon’s Theme”. For a compilation of songs from different artists on Bukem’s record label, the album overall sounds quite cohesive, and it’s clear Bukem and his collaborators all had similar musical instincts.
Slayer
3/5
It’s absolutely nuts that this was produced by Rick Rubin who at the same time was also working on Licensed to Ill by Beastie Boys and Raising Hell by Run-DMC. He’s probably one of the most accomplished producers of all time, and helped popularize both thrash metal and hip hop at the same time in the late 80s.
Reign in Blood is a very good thrash album, and while I won’t comment about the maybe/maybe not Nazi sympathies the band has been accused of, in general I think lyrics dealing with actual horrors of war and individual violence are definitely more “metal” than worshiping Satan or horror mythology, so I guess I give Slayer credit for that. Generally though the lyrics are weak compared to the instrumentals, particularly guitar and drums which are awesome.
T. Rex
3/5
I think I’ve given this album a bad rap in the past, because it is quite good, and a shining example of glam rock. This album is at its best when it gets as close to David Bowie as possible, for example on “Cosmic Dancer” and “Planet Queen”. These songs would have easily fit in on Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, not just because of their titles and space-age lyrical themes, but because of the orchestrations and smooth vocals. “Get It On (Bang a Gong)” is iconic and along with the fantastic “Jeepster” does a good job cementing the album. But where it really falters are the more bluesy songs like “Lean Woman Blues” and “Girl” which fall flat compared to the more glam-esque songs. Overall though there’s a lot more that I like here than I originally remember, and “Girl” has grown on me even if “Lean Woman Blues” hasn’t. “Mambo Sun” is a great opener, and “Like a Gas” feels like it would be a great closing track. “Rip Off” is the actual closing track and it’s fine but it feels like the album peters out at the end.
The Avalanches
4/5
FKA twigs
3/5
Meat Loaf
5/5
The Rolling Stones
3/5
Fred Neil
2/5
3/5
The United States Of America
2/5
Bob Dylan
5/5
Napalm Death
3/5
Tangerine Dream
3/5
Simon & Garfunkel
4/5
The Gun Club
3/5
Merle Haggard
3/5
Hot Chip
3/5
Lou Reed
4/5
The White Stripes
4/5
Nirvana
3/5
Led Zeppelin
3/5
Suicide
4/5
Beastie Boys
3/5
Jimmy Smith
3/5
James Brown
3/5
Pavement
3/5
Goldfrapp
4/5
Led Zeppelin
3/5
Pet Shop Boys
4/5
MC Solaar
3/5
John Martyn
2/5
Nas
3/5
Lana Del Rey
3/5
Aphex Twin
3/5
David Bowie
3/5
The Smashing Pumpkins
3/5
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
Sheryl Crow
2/5
Pink Floyd
4/5
LCD Soundsystem
4/5
Muddy Waters
3/5
Lauryn Hill
2/5
The Fall
3/5
The Stooges
2/5
Coldcut
4/5
Prince
3/5
Steely Dan
3/5
Paul McCartney and Wings
3/5
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
3/5
Manu Chao
3/5
Ryan Adams
3/5
The Saints
3/5
Red Hot Chili Peppers
3/5
Jane Weaver
3/5
N.W.A.
4/5
Björk
3/5
Dexys Midnight Runners
3/5
Echo And The Bunnymen
2/5
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
2/5
Radiohead
3/5
New Order
3/5
G. Love & Special Sauce
3/5
Beastie Boys
4/5
Baaba Maal
3/5
Emmylou Harris
3/5
Deerhunter
3/5
Curtis Mayfield
3/5
The Police
2/5
Ute Lemper
3/5
Van Halen
3/5
Brian Eno
3/5
The Replacements
2/5
Soft Cell
2/5
De La Soul
3/5
Megadeth
4/5
k.d. lang
3/5
Fats Domino
3/5
The Band
3/5
David Bowie
3/5
PJ Harvey
5/5
Beatles
3/5
Black Sabbath
3/5
U2
3/5
Black Sabbath
3/5
Bob Marley & The Wailers
3/5
Kanye West
3/5
Public Enemy
3/5
The Offspring
3/5
Frank Sinatra
2/5
David Ackles
2/5
Bob Marley & The Wailers
3/5
Bruce Springsteen
5/5
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
3/5
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
3/5
Sly & The Family Stone
4/5
Neu!
3/5
Paul Simon
3/5
King Crimson
3/5
Dexys Midnight Runners
3/5
Rush
3/5
Beatles
5/5
Suede
4/5
Spacemen 3
3/5
Miles Davis
5/5
Alice Cooper
3/5
ZZ Top
2/5
Rod Stewart
2/5
Buddy Holly & The Crickets
3/5
Bonnie Raitt
2/5
The Mars Volta
2/5
Johnny Cash
4/5
Gang Starr
3/5
Miles Davis
4/5
Super Furry Animals
3/5
Neil Young
3/5
Lorde
5/5
The Beach Boys
4/5
Paul Simon
3/5
Blood, Sweat & Tears
3/5
The Vines
2/5
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
3/5
Sam Cooke
3/5
David Holmes
3/5
Scott Walker
3/5
Moby
4/5
Jimi Hendrix
3/5
Depeche Mode
3/5
Klaxons
3/5
The Pogues
4/5
Jean-Michel Jarre
4/5
Culture Club
3/5
Aretha Franklin
3/5
Can
3/5
4/5
The Charlatans
3/5
Aretha Franklin
3/5
Doves
2/5
Jungle Brothers
3/5
Nick Drake
3/5
Kraftwerk
3/5
Various Artists
4/5
Elbow
5/5
Funkadelic
3/5
Rufus Wainwright
3/5
Afrika Bambaataa
3/5
3/5
The Only Ones
2/5
Astrud Gilberto
3/5
Drive-By Truckers
2/5
Talking Heads
4/5
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
3/5
Os Mutantes
3/5
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
3/5
Bruce Springsteen
5/5
Ananda Shankar
3/5
Pentangle
3/5
The Doors
3/5
Metallica
2/5
Shuggie Otis
2/5
Adele
4/5
The White Stripes
3/5
Christine and the Queens
2/5
Joan Baez
2/5
Eminem
2/5
Ice Cube
3/5
John Lennon
3/5
The Who
3/5
Sonic Youth
1/5
Bruce Springsteen
5/5
The Velvet Underground
3/5
Kraftwerk
5/5
Gene Clark
2/5
SAULT
4/5
Beck
3/5
Tom Waits
2/5
The Bees
3/5
Rufus Wainwright
4/5
Radiohead
5/5
Mike Ladd
3/5
The Dictators
3/5
The Smiths
3/5
4/5
Tori Amos
3/5
Van Halen
3/5
Adele
3/5
Tortoise
3/5
The Notorious B.I.G.
3/5
Supergrass
3/5
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
1/5
Richard Hawley
3/5
Death In Vegas
3/5
Sugar
3/5
William Orbit
2/5
The Rolling Stones
4/5
Def Leppard
2/5
Little Simz
4/5
Brian Eno
3/5
Buzzcocks
3/5
Tim Buckley
3/5
Drive Like Jehu
2/5
The Pogues
4/5
Hookworms
4/5
Terence Trent D'Arby
3/5
David Gray
3/5
10cc
3/5
Radiohead
4/5
Björk
2/5
Red Snapper
2/5
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
4/5
My Bloody Valentine
5/5
Abdullah Ibrahim
4/5
Dagmar Krause
2/5
Bonnie "Prince" Billy
3/5
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
4/5
Big Brother & The Holding Company
3/5
The Prodigy
3/5
Gene Clark
3/5
Caetano Veloso
4/5
R.E.M.
3/5
OutKast
3/5
Nirvana
3/5
Bruce Springsteen
3/5
Aerosmith
3/5
George Michael
2/5
Manic Street Preachers
3/5
The Soft Boys
4/5
XTC
2/5
Curtis Mayfield
3/5
Mudhoney
2/5
Finley Quaye
1/5
Grateful Dead
3/5
Shack
3/5
Kanye West
5/5
Jethro Tull
3/5
Cyndi Lauper
3/5
Eurythmics
3/5
Franz Ferdinand
4/5
Aimee Mann
4/5
Dennis Wilson
4/5
Antony and the Johnsons
3/5
The Who
4/5
Fairport Convention
3/5
The Cars
3/5
Hanoi Rocks
2/5
Faith No More
3/5
Wu-Tang Clan
3/5
The Young Rascals
3/5
Skepta
3/5
The Flaming Lips
5/5
Prefab Sprout
3/5
Tina Turner
3/5
The Associates
4/5
Joan Armatrading
3/5
The Style Council
4/5
Waylon Jennings
3/5
Manic Street Preachers
3/5
The Doors
3/5
The Residents
3/5
Johnny Cash
3/5
Otis Redding
5/5
David Bowie
3/5
Marianne Faithfull
4/5
Orbital
2/5
Nightmares On Wax
2/5
Killing Joke
3/5
ABBA
3/5
Snoop Dogg
2/5
Fishbone
3/5
Janelle Monáe
5/5
The Who
3/5
Pink Floyd
2/5
Sigur Rós
5/5
Blur
3/5
Elastica
3/5
Stephen Stills
3/5
Fiona Apple
4/5
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart
3/5
Destiny's Child
3/5
The Strokes
3/5
Arrested Development
3/5
UB40
2/5
Morrissey
2/5
Iggy Pop
3/5
Bob Dylan
5/5
Joni Mitchell
3/5
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
3/5
The Byrds
3/5
Joe Ely
3/5
Louis Prima
3/5
Nick Drake
4/5
Leonard Cohen
4/5
Ravi Shankar
3/5
Ozomatli
3/5
Thin Lizzy
3/5
Oasis
3/5
CHIC
3/5
Gang Of Four
3/5
The Good, The Bad & The Queen
3/5
The Flaming Lips
5/5
Creedence Clearwater Revival
3/5
Doves
3/5
Scissor Sisters
3/5
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
3/5
The Monks
3/5
Van Morrison
4/5
Orange Juice
3/5
3/5
Guided By Voices
3/5
The Boo Radleys
4/5
The Beach Boys
4/5
Isaac Hayes
3/5
Television
3/5
Massive Attack
2/5
The Modern Lovers
3/5
The Smiths
3/5
The Chemical Brothers
3/5
Julian Cope
3/5
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
3/5
Joni Mitchell
3/5
Willie Colón & Rubén Blades
4/5
N.E.R.D
2/5
Slint
1/5
Sarah Vaughan
3/5
Ramones
3/5
Nick Drake
2/5
Muddy Waters
3/5
PJ Harvey
4/5
The Undertones
3/5
Todd Rundgren
3/5
The Chemical Brothers
4/5
Queens of the Stone Age
1/5
A Tribe Called Quest
4/5
Neil Young
3/5
Queen
5/5
The Libertines
3/5
Giant Sand
3/5
PJ Harvey
3/5
Adam & The Ants
3/5
Carpenters
3/5
Pink Floyd
5/5
Michael Jackson
3/5
The Undertones
3/5
Metallica
4/5
Talking Heads
4/5
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
4/5
The Kinks
3/5
Run-D.M.C.
4/5
Belle & Sebastian
5/5
Common
2/5
The Stooges
3/5
Kate Bush
3/5
Taylor Swift
5/5
Stan Getz
4/5
Bill Callahan
3/5
Meat Puppets
3/5
Ice Cube
3/5
The Coral
2/5
Burning Spear
3/5
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
3/5
The Kinks
5/5
Sonic Youth
1/5
The Cure
2/5
The Rolling Stones
3/5
The Sugarcubes
3/5
Morrissey
3/5
Billy Bragg
3/5
Jorge Ben Jor
4/5
The Youngbloods
3/5
The Damned
3/5
Solange
3/5
The Darkness
3/5
The Blue Nile
3/5
Haircut 100
3/5
3/5
The Teardrop Explodes
2/5
Ride
4/5
Suede
3/5
Fever Ray
3/5
Cat Stevens
3/5
Les Rythmes Digitales
3/5
Garbage
3/5
Sonic Youth
2/5
M.I.A.
3/5
John Lennon
5/5
Crosby, Stills & Nash
3/5
Tom Waits
2/5
The Yardbirds
2/5
The Psychedelic Furs
3/5
Screaming Trees
3/5
Public Enemy
3/5
Lou Reed
4/5
MGMT
3/5
Rocket From The Crypt
3/5
The Everly Brothers
3/5
Gillian Welch
3/5
Peter Frampton
3/5
Heaven 17
3/5
Gorillaz
2/5
The Verve
2/5
Dinosaur Jr.
3/5
Ali Farka Touré
3/5
Hawkwind
4/5
Siouxsie And The Banshees
2/5
The Fall
2/5
Nina Simone
4/5
The Mothers Of Invention
3/5
k.d. lang
3/5
Stevie Wonder
4/5
Brian Wilson
3/5
Elliott Smith
3/5
Simon & Garfunkel
5/5
Stereolab
4/5
Khaled
4/5
System Of A Down
3/5
Stephen Stills
3/5
American Music Club
2/5
Mj Cole
2/5
Rush
3/5
Quicksilver Messenger Service
3/5
Lucinda Williams
3/5
The Smiths
3/5
Richard Thompson
3/5
Amy Winehouse
4/5
David Bowie
3/5
Jazmine Sullivan
3/5
The Police
2/5
Elton John
4/5
Guns N' Roses
4/5
Sparks
5/5
Violent Femmes
4/5
The La's
2/5
Randy Newman
2/5
Roxy Music
2/5
Jurassic 5
3/5
Missy Elliott
3/5
Lightning Bolt
3/5
Saint Etienne
3/5
Silver Jews
3/5
The Zombies
3/5
Leonard Cohen
3/5
Billie Holiday
3/5
Dusty Springfield
4/5
Motörhead
3/5
The Dandy Warhols
3/5
Jeru The Damaja
3/5
Beth Orton
3/5
Astor Piazzolla
3/5
Spiritualized
4/5
TV On The Radio
3/5
Mudhoney
2/5
Tim Buckley
3/5
3/5
Elliott Smith
2/5
Baaba Maal
3/5
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
2/5
Jane's Addiction
2/5
Eels
4/5
The Byrds
3/5
Big Star
2/5
Pere Ubu
3/5
Youssou N'Dour
4/5
Public Image Ltd.
2/5
James Taylor
4/5
The Byrds
3/5
Linkin Park
3/5
Wire
3/5
Boston
3/5
Led Zeppelin
3/5
Michael Jackson
3/5
Kraftwerk
4/5
The Who
3/5
Songhoy Blues
4/5
Michael Jackson
4/5
Genesis
4/5
Machito
4/5
Brian Eno
3/5
Billy Joel
4/5
The Fall
2/5