The band doesn't really get into the pocket on this album until track 5 "Need Your Love", and the album as a whole takes off on tracks 6 through 10, which includes a rocking cover of the Fats Domino/Dave Bartholomew song"Ain't That a Shame", and the hits "I Want You to Want Me" and "Surrender". Deserves about a 3.5 for keeping song and solo lengths reasonable, for making it a standard album length (42 minutes) and for resisting the urge to make it a double album. I'll round it down and give it a 3. I might be one of the only people around that prefers their studio albums to their live ones.

More relentlessly monotonous hip hop about the same boring subjects: humble brag, whine about "socially conscious" subjects, rinse and repeat Nothing original here. No thanks. Moving on to the next album.

With a title like Oracular Spectacular, this album does feel like a hipster time travel report from the future (perhaps even now) back to 2007 describing what life will be like in post modern 2.0 internet A debut album, and what a debut album it was. If it were a vinyl, Side A 1-5 is the strength and Side B tracks 6-10 are the weakness. I feel bad for this group because as a debut album they have been doomed, even as they mature experientially and musically, to never reach its groovy heights ever again. 1) Time to Pretend - A confession of pretension is somewhat comforting? And on this track grooving. I also take this as a warning that the rest of the album that follows is lyrically tongue-in-cheek and not to be taken to literally or seriously. 2) Weekend Wars - The Bowie idolatry is on! 3) The Youth - Woefully naive, or sarcastically cynical, I cannot decide which. Love the dreamy production with walking bass and The Beatles-esque harmony. 4) Electric Feel - Love this sound and production. Lyrically, I am convinced this song is just simply about the transcendence of youthful lovemaking, or extolling the society altering affects the goddess Amazon.com. 5) Kids - Ahh, the celebrated callousness of youth. Take what you want from it, but try not to be trapped by nostalgia nor participation trophies. 6) 4th Dimensional Transition - Where the college dorm psychedelia experience meets the road of reality. Love the pulsing tabla groove. Kula Shaker would be proud of this arrangement. 7) Pieces of What - The first song that feels like your standard early 2000s indie blues oriented rock. Not a bad thing, just the first song that did not eschew traditional song arrangement. 8) Of Moons, Birds & Monsters - Jefferson Airplane for the early 2000s. I love the finger food of music history approach in this song, and frankly on this album. A cynical person could say they are being ironic with their sound, but I personally think they truly love these pop forms as much as we do. The lyrics seem nonsensical, possibly chosen for the sounds of the words more than their actual meaning on this song. 9) The Handshake - Feels like a failed effort at Goth inspired songs. The angst is a bit eye-rolling, but then I remind myself that they warned us Time to Pretend not to take anything very seriously. 10) Future Reflections - Feels like a primer for understanding the image chosen for the album cover. All in all, a solid effort but in the canon of music nothing that delineated a before and after. One of the more interesting things to listen to in 2007. on a ten scale I would give it a 3.5, but since we are on a five scale, I'll give it a 4 on the strength of the first 5 songs.

Excellent album. The members of this band had only gotten together in June of 1979 and by 1980 this album would revolutionize the notion of punk and industrial music. On this album you get the proto tracks of industrial and electronic rock that would illuminate the path for groups I love like Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, and many others... My favorite tracks are "Requiem", "Wardance", "The Wait", and "The Primitive".

Before Rammstein there was The Young Gods! This album influenced many of the industrial bands you know by name and other than the rosters of their label PIAS (Play It Again Sam),Wax Trax! Records, Nettwerk Records, and 4AD, not many bands quite sounded like THE YOUNG GODS' L'EAU ROUGE. If their vocals had been performed in English, they probably would have been even more influential. Favorite tracks: "Rue des tempetes", "L'eau Rouge", "Ville notre", and "L'amourir".

Michael Jackson Thriller. What can you say? There were solid reasons that this album was the best selling album of all time for a good long while. Top notch Quincy Jones production. R&B, Dance, Pop, and Rock all well represented. "Thriller", the track is still magic to the ears after 41 years.

I am not one to tell folks what albums they should enjoy, and while I can recognize Doggystyle as influential to the G-funk genre, and Snoop Doggy Dogg's career in particular, it was not something I would want to listen to more than once, unless there happened to be an instrumental version. Love Dre's production, and the performance of the musicians on the track, but the lyrical subject matter is not interesting to me at all. And I get it. I was not and am not the audience intended for this album.

An album that sounds has haphazard as the circumstances that were experienced in Lagos, Nigeria while recording it, it really does propel McCartney to solo artist with a sound and voice. It also sounds a bit like someone took Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Band and passed it through a Bossa Nova pop filter.

Props to Deep Purple for setting the live album format that would become ubiquitous in Rock, but this particular live recording felt a bit too self-indulgent and (my copy at least was) far too little gain. Between performances speech on the mic would be nearly indiscernible.

Three of the most harmless guys from Brooklyn show the world a whole other side to hip-hop with this 5 star album produced and engineered masterfully by Rick Rubin. A classic!

Machine Head is everything that their live album "Made in Japan" is not: lean, tight arrangements, no filler, no self-indulgence, and an absolute joy to listen to. This should always be the first Deep Purple album that anyone hears.

As I listened to this album, it was clear that it was a concept album, and I pondered whether its significance might be because it was the first rock opera concept album. Imagine my surprise when I learned that many rock critics do indeed consider THE PRETTY THINGS' S.F. Sorrow the first of a slew of rock operas that came out in the late sixties and would continue to emerge up until today. It is wild hearing some of the sonic soundscapes tropes we are familiar with, emerge here first. Before Tommy, before The Wall, you can hear how The Pretty Things introduced the notion of dissonance, key change, rhythm, and melodic rephrasing as narrative tools. Having said all that, this is an album that everyone should hear once, but aside from tracks "Private Sorrow", "Old Man Sorrow", and S.F. Sorrow is Born", I'm not sure if I have it in me to hear this album all the way through again anytime soon. A very dark story.

Before I ever heard a QOTSA album, I heard them live on the NIN's WITH TEETH tour. My first impression was that each song was a barely different long dirge from the last one. I considered that perhaps my experience was just a result of the difficulties of mixing sound for an arena setting, but after returning home I listened to a couple of their albums and had the same impression. I suppose sameness is a legit creative choice, but it comes off feeling….I don’t know…lazy? As a drummer, I found the drum tracks pretty boring. Less trance-like, and just uninspired. When the drummer had a chance to imprint an identity on the song, they seemed to just resort to the most straight forward prior examples, instead of putting their own style on the song as a Matt Chamberlain, Dave Abruzzese or Dave Grohl would. Then again, Dave Grohl joining the band later didn't really change this on later records. When I hear them compared to a throwback to something like Black Sabbath, I cannot disagree more. While they explore rhythm as Black Sabbath did, they lack the exploration of dynamics as a group, and they don't possess the charisma/voice of Ozzy Osbourne to keep the listener interested. Kind of just a middling exploration of rhythm at one volume. Now, having listened to this album again nearly twenty years later, I am struck by the banality of their sound. It is like they referenced all the best stoner rock bands without bringing anything of their own to the table. Lyrics are dark and eye-raising, but they feel like they lack a voice unique to QOTSA. What I mean by that is that they feel like could have come from any of the countless stoner bands from that era. There is no Cobain/Dylan/Gordon Sumner/Trent Reznor gems here. The titles of the songs are best thing going on this album, such as: "Mexicola", "Avon", "How to Handle a Rope (A Lesson in Lariat)", "These Aren't the Droids You're Looking For", "Hispanic Impressions", "Spiders and Vinegaroons" (Looked upon Vinegaroons and they look frightening as *#@!). Unfortunately the tracks with the most interesting names were usually the least interesting sonically and lyrically. The tracks I found most enjoyable were "Spiders and Vinegaroons", which has the most creative construction and sonic palette of anything on the album, and maybe "Mexicola" if I wanted something a bit more straightforward, then perhaps the creepy creativity of "I Was a Teenage Hand Model". Not sure why this album is on the 1001 album list. I think if you want to reference stoner/grunge albums of importance to the genre and music in general there are more than enough other albums by other artists that actually bring their own thing to the form than any of these QOTSA albums. Props to the band for the bravery of the album cover choice, both the original and the re-issue. It would be interesting if they would be so brave with the social climate as it is these days.

Aphex Twin's influence on electronic music is such that anyone just picking up this record today in 2023 might not realize how special this album really was in 1992, because everything today sounds like this album. But it sounds that way because Aphex Twin showed the way to getting to this sound. It is not an exaggeration to say that after Kraftwerk, that one of the next huge leaps forward was Aphex Twin.

Aphex Twin's influence on electronic music is such that anyone just picking up this record today in 2023 might not realize how special this album really was in 1992, because everything today sounds like this album. But it sounds that way because Aphex Twin showed the way to getting to this sound. It is not an exaggeration to say that after Kraftwerk, that one of the next huge leaps forward was Aphex Twin.

Trying to be open minded, but this seems like ironic overrated lo-fi indie rock that someone chose just to mess with people. Is this hipster rock? At first I thought Berman's vocal delivery was a choice but now I am certain this vocal delivery is the result of someone who is too high to perform well. I was not impressed with the lyrics, so I was surprised to learn after listening to the album that David Berman was considered a lyrical genius. Really? If I were Robert Dimery I would swap this album out for a Hank Williams Sr album. Particularly perplexing since Robert Dimery wrote a book about the final days of the lives of 100 musicians with Bruno Macdonald that book included Hank Williams.

Perhaps this is nostalgia speaking, but this was THE Faith No More album. All of their quirky arrangements and tonalities, the punk roots, it is all here. I spin this album probably at least once a year since purchasing it in 1990. The third album for the band and the first since parting with front person Chuck Mosley made the most of Mike Patton's vocal and style range to produce an album that perfectly represented the zeitgeist of American rock and roll in 1990. Even if you are not a Faith No More fan, you are still likely to enjoy the standouts of "Epic", "Falling to Pieces", "Woodpecker From Mars", and their cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs". Following the aforementioned songs, I dig "Surprise! You're Dead!", "From Out of Nowhere", "The Real Thing", and "The Morning After". Though I enjoy the bluesy "Edge of the World", I know there are many that do not. In my opinion, the truly miss on this album is the cheeky ballad "Zombie Eaters". It doesn't quite come off.

I think if you have to pick one album to give someone that encapsulates the Bayou Rock sound, it is this one. I was weirded out hearing "Ooby Dooby" and realizing that it seems like a chord change for chord change cover of Tutti Fruitti by Little Richard, and then further realizing that "My Baby Left Me" is a knockoff of the chords of Elvis Presley's "That's Alright". But who can see any film about Vietnam and not hear "Run Through the Jungle" in their heads? And who hasn't heard "Travelin Band", "Lookin' Out My Back Door", "Up Around the Bend", and "Who'll Stop the Rain"? I guess because I grew with John Fogerty's solo career in the 80s it just felt like CCR and John Fogerty had been around forever, so I was shocked that CCR spawned all of this amazing music in just 3 years. Mind blown.

Radiohead is a band that I have been listening to for nearly 31 years.... ...and yet, none of their albums do anything for me. I respect what their music seems to do for other fans. And I am glad those fans have their outlet. Personally, I only enjoy a handful of their songs, the songs that most Radiohead fans would probably cringe about. HAIL TO THE THIEF is not for me.

Groovy dance music from top to bottom. A British guy, not a French guy. Works under many nom de plumes including the Thin White Duke (not David Bowie)

I remember receiving a free iTunes download offer of "Hometown Glory" by this artist I had never heard of named ADELE. I was struck by, as everyone else has been, by the complete power and nuance of her performance. I had not been that blown away by a female vocal performance since hearing Whitney Houston in the 1980s. But, as it usually does, life intervened and I never did get around to checking out her complete album 19. Nor, I am ashamed to admit, did I hear 21 when it came out. I was in the midst of dealing with family crises, and my attention did not have enough bandwidth to seek out new music. I had to rely on the old favorites to get me through. My world started to right itself around 2013, but I did not hear 21 until I saw a social media post by someone sharing her Grammy performance of "Rolling in the Deep" broadcast live during February 2012. This led me back to Adele, and it has been quite a ride. A breakup album, like countless others, but this one kept my attention all the way through. The song arrangement did such a masterful job of telling the narrative of the relationship blowing up and the process of healing, that to my ears you cannot convince me that it doesn't meet the criteria of a concept album. She worked with fantastic collaborators, this much is true, but as a songwriter on all but one of the tracks, it is shocking that something this powerful emerged from a 20-21 year old. A big fan of the The Cure's "Lovesong", the only song she didn't write, I was weirded out initially by her cover, but I have grown to love its place on the album as a whole. This is totally an album that should be listened to in its entirety, instead of as randomly shuffled tracks, as some are prone to do, or as cherry picked release tracks only. Perhaps loathed by others because of its constant presence and massive success, I feel like this is one of those times I cannot help but tip my hat and say, well done, everything Adele Adkins received was well deserved.

TIDAL is good chamber pop for anyone, worthy of Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday, Apple's heroines, and great chamber pop when considering that these tracks were written over a period when Apple was 14 to 18 years old. Poignant lyricism is matched by competent piano composition. Apple has said over the years that she did not want to record everyone one of the songs with piano, and that piano was merely her compositional tool, but Slater insisted on it appearing on each track. I personally think Apple had it right, that some of the songs might have benefited from song arrangements that leaned away from piano and incorporated the other instrumental and genre vibes more. For example "Never is a Promise" could have benefitted from a James Bond ballad song arrangement treatment, and "The Child is Gone" could have benefited from some brass. Of the singles, I think the eclectic Bossa Nova vibe of "The First Taste" is criminally underrated, even if it is clearly inspired by the vibe of Sade. The hits are worthy of the plays. "Sleep to Dream" and "Criminal" haven't lost their potency. I dig the outro of "Carrion", a pleasant way to end an album of teenage darkness. The well known songs lyrics are written well, but it can become easy to tire of the juxtaposition and contrast technique that Apple uses extensively as she exhibits the tidal on TIDAL. As an aside, Jon Brion's fantastic performance on marimba, tack piano, dulcitone, and chamberlain are evocative shades of darkness that really help the songs fill out. Not sure this album belongs on the 1001. A Tori Amos album and a Sade album more than cover the lyrical, musical, and 90s decade better.

This feels like They Might Be Giants met Jonathan Coulson, went to England and wrote the wackiest lyrics about love they could come up with, and then performed with an eye rolling, muscle pulling, wink as Frank Sinatra for hipster chamber pop, but demanded to be taken seriously, even though the word Comedy is right there in the band's name. Not funny enough to be funny and not serious enough to be taken seriously. Just more terrible Nick Cave-ous stuff. The Divine Comedy feels like an acquired taste that I cannot seem to acquire. Or an acquired disease I need penicillin for. I understand what they are doing, but it just seems like a pointless exercise in juxtaposition and irony. "If" is an uncomfortable creep fest. It's like Hannon heard Radiohead's "Creep" and said "Here, hold my tea." The difference being that I think Cannon is trying to be earnest. Not here for the Schmaltz. What circle of hell am I in? This is another one of those albums that makes me feel like we are being trolled by the list maker.

The masters of popular music craftsmanship. Nothing else really needs to be said. Their weakest tracks on any of their albums would be release singles on the albums of other acts. One of my favorite Beatles albums, (my absolute favorite being Revolver) there is just so much here. 60 years have passed since they arrived in America in 1964, and they still remain culturally relevant. I just love this album. Every decade I listen to it during my life, I am drawn to different tracks and learn more about myself as a musician. In their discography, recorded between The White Album, and Let It Be, Abbey Road was not just figuratively crossing the road, but during the decaying process of The Beatles, the band's identity increasingly dissolving back into a collection of individuals. Fortunately these are interesting individuals, and the magic was not yet spent. In the GET BACK long form documentary assembled, from footage by Peter Jackson, we see that the Let It Be sessions were largely an awkward and uncomfortable affair; a group of people at their own wake if you will. The formal decision and announcement that The Beatles had broken up was not made yet, but you can see in their faces, particularly Ringo Starr, that they knew, but that would come later. On this album you can feel producer Sir George Martin's deft touch. Abbey Road still possesses the charm of The Beatles writ large: adventurous songwriting, sonic risk taking, and precise engineering on such tracks as "Come Together", "Something", "Here Comes the Sun", and "Because" with Moog Synthesizer, 8 track recording, and true Stereo sound recording that comes through clearly and gives ever song depth and subtleties. This album set the entire popular music world on a new recording path. So many ideas were sparked by this album and all kept and produced meticulously by Sir George Martin. Songs that could have been silly, like "She Came in Through Bathroom Window", and the entire medley, would, in hindsight, foreshadow the entire dark heroin and cocaine years that awaited society in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. The beloved album cover has been imitated so many times by so many artists that I've lost count. 5 stars.

With a title like Oracular Spectacular, this album does feel like a hipster time travel report from the future (perhaps even now) back to 2007 describing what life will be like in post modern 2.0 internet A debut album, and what a debut album it was. If it were a vinyl, Side A 1-5 is the strength and Side B tracks 6-10 are the weakness. I feel bad for this group because as a debut album they have been doomed, even as they mature experientially and musically, to never reach its groovy heights ever again. 1) Time to Pretend - A confession of pretension is somewhat comforting? And on this track grooving. I also take this as a warning that the rest of the album that follows is lyrically tongue-in-cheek and not to be taken to literally or seriously. 2) Weekend Wars - The Bowie idolatry is on! 3) The Youth - Woefully naive, or sarcastically cynical, I cannot decide which. Love the dreamy production with walking bass and The Beatles-esque harmony. 4) Electric Feel - Love this sound and production. Lyrically, I am convinced this song is just simply about the transcendence of youthful lovemaking, or extolling the society altering affects the goddess Amazon.com. 5) Kids - Ahh, the celebrated callousness of youth. Take what you want from it, but try not to be trapped by nostalgia nor participation trophies. 6) 4th Dimensional Transition - Where the college dorm psychedelia experience meets the road of reality. Love the pulsing tabla groove. Kula Shaker would be proud of this arrangement. 7) Pieces of What - The first song that feels like your standard early 2000s indie blues oriented rock. Not a bad thing, just the first song that did not eschew traditional song arrangement. 8) Of Moons, Birds & Monsters - Jefferson Airplane for the early 2000s. I love the finger food of music history approach in this song, and frankly on this album. A cynical person could say they are being ironic with their sound, but I personally think they truly love these pop forms as much as we do. The lyrics seem nonsensical, possibly chosen for the sounds of the words more than their actual meaning on this song. 9) The Handshake - Feels like a failed effort at Goth inspired songs. The angst is a bit eye-rolling, but then I remind myself that they warned us Time to Pretend not to take anything very seriously. 10) Future Reflections - Feels like a primer for understanding the image chosen for the album cover. All in all, a solid effort but in the canon of music nothing that delineated a before and after. One of the more interesting things to listen to in 2007. on a ten scale I would give it a 3.5, but since we are on a five scale, I'll give it a 4 on the strength of the first 5 songs.

I am aware of Surfer Rosa and The Pixies place in the mainstream crossover of alternative music. I've listened to Surfer Rosa and Doolittle, and frankly Doolittle is the better album, and the more critical album to the genre. After the tracks "Where Is My Mind?", "Gigantic", and maybe "Bone Machine" the rest of the album is largely inconsistent. I think many are allowing their nostalgia to spackle over the huge flaws. They get a 3 for one all time great track and this album's influence on better realized alternative musical ideas that would result.

A very solid final big band record of the era. A perfect record for introducing Big Band jazz to someone. It is all here. It was also the final hurrah and the last barrier before Rhythm & Blues, and Rock & Roll take over the popular music charts, from here on out. The album cover is iconic and may seem subversive for the era, but wasn't really because Atomic Age visual design motifs were all the rage in America at this time. Swing would persist on the charts for a while longer but it was mostly around the personality and charisma of singers (such as Frank Sinatra), and iconic instrumental performers and arrangers (like Miles Davis), rather than the big bands themselves. My faves were "The Kid From Red Bank", "Teddy the Toad", "Splanky", and the "Lil' Darlin'".

One of the last nearly perfect albums of Black Sabbath released with Ozzy Osbourne as the lead vocalist. There are amazing songs to come after this on the 1973 release of SABBATH BLOODY SABBATH, but each album after that only spawned a couple of songs that would stand the test of time before Ozzy left the band in 1979, On the other hand, the first five albums, BLACK SABBATH (1970), PARANOID (1970), MASTERS OF REALITY, VOL. 4, and SABBATH BLOODY SABBATH would define the metal genre for the easily the next 15 years. If someone said they loved metal but hated early Black Sabbath, it was hard to take them seriously. If you had to introduce someone to Black Sabbath for the first time, I would still give them the debut album BLACK SABBATH first, but the next album after that would definitely be VOL. 4. There is so much here. The bangers are the well known "Tomorrow's Dream", "Snowblind", "Supernaut", but don't forget perhaps the best Black Sabbath ballad ever, "Changes". This ballad would set up the familiar heavy metal ballad structure that would re-emerge endlessly throughout the 1970s and 80s. Even "FX" was trippy as hell when it came out. The 1st track "Wheel of Confusion/The Straightener" and the last 4 tracks "Cornucopia", "Laguna Sunrise", "St. Vitus Dance", and the closer "Under the Sun/Every Day Comes and Goes" provides a nice narrative of arc that ends with survival and dare I say a cynical optimism? As an aside, check out one of my favorite covers of a lesser known Black Sabbath song, the Al Jorgensen/Trent Reznor cover of "Supernaut" under the nom de plume of 1000 Homo DJs. Sometimes hard to find, but a fun listen for fans of the Chicago Wax Trax sound of the late 80s-early 90s.

I'm not sure I would include a film score on the 1001 albums list as the spots are far too precious. As it is there far too many albums from the same artists on this list and this is just wasting a list spot something far more relevant. If I were to include a film score of popular music, this one would not be it. The score is as middling as the film. If you were going to include recent important French electronica as a film score then work of Daft Punk on TRON Legacy would be a much better choice, or even the American Beauty soundtrack (also from a 1999 film) with which Thomas Newman handles the subject matter far more musically interesting and engaging manner, particularly if you've never seen the film.

While I respect the astute production, it seems despite all the intricate production the songs aren't all that memorable as individuals tracks. The lyrics and vocal performance seem disjointed from the instrumentals completely, and perhaps that is the point artistically, but who knows? I am brought back to memories of brooding people in booths puffing away on clove cigarettes while high on Molly. Personally, of the Bristol sound, I am a bigger fan of Massive Attack's soundscape. Being an adult in 90s, when this album came out, every decade or so I have tried to get into Portishead and their album DUMMY, in particular, but never quite managed to feel anything from their album. If you have also come away with this feeling, I recommend instead, the far lesser known British band of the time, 12 Rounds "My Big Hero" which creates grooves that support the vocals rather than feeling like an endless come down room at a rave. They are also more fearless about exploring other genres. Atticus Ross, a founding member of 12 Rounds with his wife Claudia Sarne, would eventually become the second permanent member of Nine Inch Nails. Perhaps this would have been more interesting as an instrumental only album. I sometimes feel the intent of this album was meant for DJs and not for individuals to listen to as an album. Over the years people have told me they get Bond-esque vibes from this album, but I just don't hear it. This lacks the big bold vocal and instrumental arrangements of the best Bond tracks like "Goldfinger", "You Only Live Twice", "Nobody Does It Better", and "Goldeneye", all tracks released prior to this album. And quite frankly Gibbons doesn't feel like she has the pipes for that kind of performance. If you did not grow up in the 90s and wonder why there were so many rock/electronica albums in the 90s, it was because recording and mixing electronica became far more affordable, with advances of personal computers and the rise of the Internet in the 90s, than it had been prior to the boom in audio DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations), such as Digidesign Pro Tools.

One of the most iconic jazz albums. Love “So What”. Not the kind of music I want a constant diet of, as it requires a ton of effort above shoulders and on a Friday I am ready for some music that works from waist down. Every musician needs to take their vitamins once in awhile.

The best punk rave album of the decade. Production is immaculate. Liam Howlett is a genius. One of the few 90s records that has aged incredibly well. I still listen to this album at least once a year, if not more. While I like their first album Experience, it is this one and the one that preceded it, Music For A Jilted Generation that defined this entire scene. No one quite sounded like them and EVERYBODY tried to sound more like them.

Mad respect for playing all of the instruments on 3/4 of the album, but at the end of the day it is an album that is far too long and should have been pared down to the strong tracks. Competent recording, but in my opinion, after hearing it multiple times, it is not memorable.

The jazz album that inspired a million progressive rock bands. As a percussionist Time Out is, and always has been one of my all time favorite jazz records. Every track is an exploration of unusual time signatures. If this album had only "Take Five", it would still belong on this list.

After the first couple of tracks I really though I was probably not going to enjoy what seemed like a very amateurish hip hop record, but by the end he managed to actually make me feel like his character, Mike, in this Rap Opera, actually learned something among all the acts of pillock and spliffs. It just goes to show that sometimes a listener really does need to give the whole album a chance, because sometimes, just sometimes, there really is a alchemical thing that makes the sum of an album, better than its parts.

Public Enemy displayed a new way of mixing hip hop that was very potent. One of the most densely sampled albums ever made. Hip hop with a punk vibe. I saw them live in 1992, not long after the L.A. riots, and their show was was exciting, with the Black Panther military clad dancers and the massive crosshairs, teasing the potential of explosive social violence, which was fun for a young college student, but is certainly eye-rolling once looked back on through the eyes of a middle aged person. This album , and NWA's "Straight Out of Compton" released the same year fueled the rise of black nationalism and gangster hip hop that the genre would get stuck in for next few years in which artists tried to out anger one another, to quote be more "real" than the next group. Public Enemy also at this time had a ridiculous view of sampling that they extolled as part of their Black Nationalist views that paraphrased went something like, well it was laid down by a black person, therefore its not wrong for me, as a black person, to use it to make myself money. U.S. Law in 1991 would reinforce the legal view that it is not fair to use someone's else work without clearance and compensation. Black polemics aside, this album does groove. Tracks like "She Watch Channel Zero?" rocks, while the single "Bring the Noise" and "Rebel Without a Pause" are aurally top 100 hip hop tracks of all time. Chuck D's rhymes are composed and articulated clearly, which for this aging listener is very much appreciated. And Flavor Flav might be the most entertaining hype man of hip hop. It is definitely an album everyone should hear at least once.

With the exception of "You and I Are Going to be Friends", the rest of the album feels like nothing more than a bunch of half baked ideas that almost approach demo level, but are not remotely album ready yet. I respect the stripped down sound, but come on, this is ridiculous. The most fun you can have with this album is to imagine what each song could have been with a producer and song arrangements that included more instruments. An album that I think does not belong on this list.

Excellent album. The members of this band had only gotten together in June of 1979 and by 1980 this album would revolutionize the notion of punk and industrial music. On this album you get the proto tracks of industrial and electronic rock that would illuminate the path for groups I love like Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, and many others... My favorite tracks are "Requiem", "Wardance", "The Wait", and "The Primitive".

A night of Soul, R&B, and Pop that goes to show that a live album can be more than just a collection of the hits, it can also calcify songs that didn't quite have the impact on the original albums that they appeared, making them more forceful, and how a dynamic group featuring your standard rock outfit buffeted by horns, winds, and string can adapted their performances to the audience that is taking the journey with them on the night. While there is fun to be had while hearing Morrison's compositions in this new light, it was also fun seeing Van Morrison covering songs by his heroes, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, and Willie Dixon. An album that captures a certain vibe of a certain time. A good album, but as I have said before I am not sure that live concert albums belong on this list, given that spaces are limited and important for exhibiting the most varied and best that popular music has to offer.

Not fronting, I am not much of a hip hop fan. So, this double album was too self indulgent for me to care much. Required way too much patience from me. I respect that this is someone's favorite album/albums of all time, but to me it doesn't belong on this list. I sensed these were concept albums, but for the life of me I couldn't figure them out without studying the lyrics, and I am not about to read the lyrics of a 2 hour 15 minute long opus. I was unable to relate to the lyrics that I could make out. I think it was cheeky humor, but who knows? They kind of felt like soundtracks for a pair of "In Living Color" sketch comedy films that I never saw. Not fun, mostly just an endurance race. I enjoyed the instrumentation more than the lyrics. If I had to choose one of these albums over the other, I lean towards The Love Below more than Speakerboxx, but that could just be because I have more familiarity with jazz, and I found the jazzy, bluesy exploration of melody and harmony compositionally more fun than Speakerboxx's more straight southern hip hop, which has never been my jam. I did not particularly like any of the singles. My favorite track was the jazz hop instrumental cover of "My Favorite Things" from the musical broadway show, The Sound of Music, using, I think, samples of John Coltrane's My Favorite Things album from 1960.

Feels earnest and organic. I can see why people credit it with being one of the roots of Neo Soul in the 1990s. Very chill vibe. Personally, a bit too chill for me. I would have loved the inclusion of a couple of upbeat tracks just to change the pace up occasionally, keep the listener sharp, and to keep the album from becoming tranquilizing. It became, after awhile, dare I say, boring? While I respect that he brought Smokey Robinson's "Cruisin'" to a new audience, it just reminded me that I should go add the original to my collection. Ultimately not really my bag. There was a reason that I was listening to very different music from this in 1995.

Rio has Duran Duran exploring all kinds of interesting ideas in New Wave/New Romantic music, and the Patrick Nagel painted album cover was so iconic that it became a signpost that directed the look and feel for the rest of the 1980s. "Hungry Like the Wolf", "Rio", "Save the Last Prayer", yes, but don't forget "The Chauffeur".

My first impression is that It'S BLITZ! feels like an updated version of the Wax Trax! Record label sound from the mid 1980s and 1990s mixed with a Blondie punk vibe, at least for the first 3/4 of the record. Also a bit of Ladyhawke/Metric thrown in for good measure. Good, but not as revolutionary as the music press would have you think. Lyrics are cryptic, but I'm okay with that. I listen to music for the groove, melody, and harmony, not just for the lyrics, as some others do. Also, it is possible the words were chosen for the sounds they make when uttered and not for their meanings. One critic referred to their lyrics on this record as gnomic, and I think that is apt. Lyrical glimpses. Impressionistic, not narrative tales. Her vocals seems range bound, but after hearing her cover of "Immigrant Song" with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, I know that is not case. I would have liked to hear her expand her vocal exploration on this record. Frankly some of the songs, particularly on the back half of the record would have benefited from it. "Heads Will Roll" didn't really do much for me. My favorite tracks were "Zero", "Skeletons", and "Hysteric". If you love this, you might dig 12 Rounds, Collide, The Epoxies, Ladytron, Metric, Florence and the Machine, and Ladyhawke. I found all of them a bit more interesting than this.

A classic that holds up remarkably well. Yes, it is pivotal for the psychedelic rock of "White Rabbit" and the rock of "Somebody to Love", but there is also great folk rock and blues on here as well. The first album of Jefferson Airplane with Grace Slick and new drummer Spencer Dryden, and wow you can feel their impact. Slick's strong vocals have been acknowledged for years, but Dryden's ability cannot be understated, as he tightened the band up considerably and gave Jack Cassady, the bass player, a wider palette from which to improvise. My favorite tracks not only include the singles "White Rabbit" and Somebody to Love", but also the guitar instrumental of "Embryonic Journey", folk ballad "Comin' Back to Me", psychedelia of "Fantastic Plastic Lover" and the heartbreaking "Today". Such a great album.

Tried to get into this album. Even after I finally read about its origin story, tried to go back and live with it, but I cannot shake how passionately I dislike this album. It is barely a step removed from being a spoken word album. In my opinion, the music has to be interesting enough without the lyrics and this doesn't feel interesting enough to hold with or without the lyrics. After all, the music is the meat and potatoes and the lyrics are just a condiment sauce. By this time in the 70s, every singer/songwriter driven project is doing this vibe better than this album, and with more interesting song arrangements . Simply don't understand the idolatry for this record. Pretty forgettable. I know and respect that this is someone's favorite album, but it is not one of my mine. Least annoying songs on this album were "Albuquerque", "Lookout Joe" and "New Mama".

Bitches Brew is a challenging album. Perhaps too challenging, for me at least. One thought that occurred to me many times while listening to this massive opus, was the phrase on the album cover, "Directions in Music by Miles Davis". I kept musing on it and I started to hear the album as less of a series of directions that result in destinations, but rather as if the album were the aural equivalent of a Jackson Pollack painting. Something that was less about the structure and nouns and more about verbs and action. Miles' horn comes in as bursts of emotion leaving bits of sound flying around chaotically, like paints that are being thrown around, dripped around, or in the case of "John McLaughlin" transparently not appearing at all . And once my mind was in this frame, I was finally able to gain an understanding of the album. I was finally able to accept and allow all of the instruments to occupy a general space and time and not assign a particular narrative role. Some might call something with those qualities noise, but I prefer to think that it really is an oxymoronic exploration of controlled chaos. The album cover is amazing as well. I could see someone buying the vinyl of this record just for the fantastic painting, so I thank this album for turning me on to the paintings of Mati Klarwein. Having said all that, it is entirely possible that Miles Davis and collaborators created Bitches Brew as one epic prank.

I wasn't sure I understood or liked folk and folk rock until I heard this record. A brave concept record on Side 1 about the cycle of life. Love the "Voices of Old People", so much audio verite to relate to there. The bookends them breaks my heart every time. The album deserves a 5 just for "Bookends", "America", "Mrs. Robinson", "and "A Hazy Shade of Winter". Still not sure if this or BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER is their most complete album. All I know is that those two albums are easily in the top 5 of folk records for me. I've always enjoyed Simon's albums more than Bob Dylan's, and today's listen through just calcifies that thought for me. Brilliant songwriting. Excellent acoustic guitar. Amazing harmonies. Stories you can relate to. It is all here!

SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE seems so dependent upon the point of view of the listener that anything Cohen wrote as lyrics seems rendered meaningless. The album does not provide earworms to aid the listener's concentration and help with the decoding. By album's conclusion everything was forgettable and I felt no insights about his love nor his hate. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy some of Leonard Cohen's work, but it is songs like "Everybody Knows" and "Hallelujah", released at a time when the song production seemed more fully realized, and I've never enjoyed his songs for what his lyrics might actually be about. Perhaps I see and experience too much joy in my life to truly live inside Leonard Cohen songs. Or perhaps it was just the wrong day for the algorithm to serve this album up for me. Who knows?

The perfect salve after suffering through yesterday's Leonard Cohen drudgery. Muddy Waters' infectious charisma blows your ears back and you cannot help but tap your toes, shake your head, and smile at life's big and little troubles.

Proto space rockstars or not this album does not deserve a place on this list. A most average album where the most charitable thing you can say is that nothing stood out. Give me some passion. Give me some flaws. Give me something. I sort of felt something during "I Want You", but it quickly disappeared. After enduring nearly an hour of droning, the last track "200 Bars" just seemed like someone taking the piss with their cheeky counting. I would have given it a rating of a 1, but it was engineered and mastered well. A boring record that probably spawned a bunch of the boring brit and "dream" pop of the nineties. Pitchfork, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone, Spin; you can all fuck right off. This stuff is terrible. Dream pop the sound that is coming from my ass.

A short, economical album of blistering rock. What a debut album! Solid hooks and dynamic performances! It is all here. The only complaint I have about this album is that classics like "Breakdown" at only 2:42 are far too short. I could have used one more verse and chorus for all of the classics.

Just absolute shit. Avoid at all costs. Stuff like this crap doesn't belong on this list. The thing about putting stuff like this on this list is that it gives a significant source of funding to these people who don't belong on the list, because a list like this generates a lot of streaming and download clicks every year that an artist is on the list. The global history of this challenge shows, as of today, some 9.5 million votes, and while some percentage of people quit and never finish the challenge, it still means significant income generation that I think should go to artists that truly merits musical inclusion on the list. Alright, TED talk over. Stepping down from soapbox.

A solid debut album of mostly power ballads. "Yellow" and "Trouble" are the highlights, everything else kind of meanders around the same ideas. Passable, but not really inspiring either. More bearable and accessible than Radiohead or other Brit Pop. Well engineered and produced.

Despite the manipulative controlling behavior of David Byrne to steal most of the song credits for himself, whether he deserved them or not, Talking Heads is a great, tight, and very creative instrumental band that took influences from everywhere they could. The most enjoyable songs are "Thank You For Sending Me an Angel", "Found a Job", "I'm Not in Love", "Stay Hungry", and of course their version of the Al Green cover "Take Me to the River" (which is better as the up tempo number on their live album, but more on that later) Byrne's voice is mixed low, which makes it impossible at times to make out what he is singing about without looking up the lyrics, and even when you have you still have no idea what he is on about, but the instrumentation is so funky and gripping that you don't care. This band's sound is defined by the wife and husband team of Tina Weymouth on bass guitar and Chris Frantz on drums. No one sounded like them then and frankly no one quite sounds like them now, despite most indie/art bands giving it their best effort. Having said all that, I agree with what others have said on the reviews of Talking Heads albums on this list, which is simply that there are TOO many Talking Heads albums on this list. The only Talking Heads that ACTUALLY BELONGS on this list is the Talking Heads album that is not on this list, and that is perhaps one of the greatest live albums ever recorded, Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense. It should be on this list because not merely that it is a greatest hits collection of Talking Heads, but it features arrangements that actually work, and they managed to present them to a live audience at peak performance ability. So remove all of their other albums, and replace them with STOP MAKING SENSE, which covers their contribution and opens up slots for other important albums.

Possibly THE artistic masterpiece of the 1990s. For the truly hardcore fans it is referred to by its alternative title Halo 8. Easily one of three of the greatest albums of music that was released in the entire decade, the other two also being Nine Inch Nails (Broken 1992, and The Fragile 1999). This is the album that delineated what music was before and what could artistically be realized afterward. When I picked up this album I had limited experience with Nine Inch Nails previous songs. I didn't know what to expect and it was a musically religious experience. From the Russel Mills painting as the cover and the attention given to every little bit of every track on the album. It was the first time I really grasped how powerful a concept album could be. I was aware of Pink Floyd's The Wall, but it did not land with the impact and force that this record did. A production and engineering master class. The remix album Further Down the Spiral (version 1 and version 2 (for the amazing Ruiner and Heresy remixes by Charlie Clouser) might be the single greatest remix album ever.

I had learned of the existence of the band The The from Trent Reznor interviews in the late Eighties and throughout the 90s. When INFECTED came out in November 1986, I recall that it made no impact in our lives in the United States. While termed post punk, with its synth bass and song arrangement it feels like your typical, fun, quirky 80s album. Fun, but there were more interesting albums at the time. Having said all that, a new album came out exactly 1 month earlier than this one, that everyone actually listened to, and that album was Wang Chung's MOSAIC, which seems like a criminal act that it is not on this list. Just sayin'

If rock music were made by NyQuil. Competent acid rock with risks of drowsiness. Feels like they desperately want to be Radiohead/Pink Floyd. As a fan of electronic music, this is the most enjoyable of The Flaming Lips records for me, as the inclusion of the electronic elements makes the sci-fi premise easier to slip into and offsets the boredom of the indie rock a tad.

Hipsters will downplay this record and say that they prefer Bleach, or any other Nirvana record than this one, but this is the record where the strong point of view of Nirvana's punk ideas and production and engineering mastery all came together to make a masterpiece that changed the course of music creation/production and the music business in the United States. The first six songs just slay. Absolute classics and two more awaited the back half of the album. Amazing album for the punk genre.

A fairly boring album from a musical standpoint. Doesn't move the boundaries on a jazz or blues front, nor from a production standpoint. About the only thing that differentiates this album from others is the lyrical subject matter. Perhaps would have been better as a poetry chapbook. Currently unavailable on any of the streaming services in the U.S. Had to make do with an album length file on YouTube, so it was not a pleasant listening experience. Perhaps having better access to it would have increased my rating.

This album is an absolute pleasure. Perfect blend of punk/new wave, reggae, and pop. Performances are amazing. Song arrangements are solid. Lyrics are thought provoking while remaining fun and anthemic. One of my absolute favorite albums. This is the album you give anyone who has never heard The Police. Their other 4 studio albums are great and solid throughout, but this is THE iconic album that shows off everything The Police were about and what they could do.

I own Aerosmith records and have listened to them many times over the decades, but I had never sat down and listened to Toys in the Attic all the way through uninterrupted. I learned that I still love the hits "Walk This Way" and "Sweet Emotion" but I was also pleased to discover an enjoyment for "Round and Round" as well. The only track that truly seemed out of place was "Big 10 Inch Record". My 10 year old self would have giggled and loved it, but the middle-aged me cannot help but roll my eyes. While the album is of cultural importance with its inclusion of "Walk this Way", thereby setting up the creation of the Rap Rock genre ten years later with Run DMC, and I enjoy the record, I'm not sure THIS album in particular belongs on this list.

A fairly long album in the which the sounds of the songs and the arrangements don't seem to differentiate themselves all that much. It became boring pretty quickly. Every time the band starts to do anything interesting sonically, Ashcroft's voice comes in and ruins it. It seems like Ashcroft was writing and performing one album in his head, and the band were writing and performing something else entirely. The self disconnection as symbolized by the disconnection of the voice and lyrics from the music could have been an interesting idea but here it doesn't really work. Features stupid lyrics that sound like they came from a 12 year old, with nonsense like "Oh, the bed ain't made but it's filled with hope, I've got a skin full of dope". We get it, your THE VERVE. You've beaten the irony so much by this point, that it should have formed into steel resolve. Get on with it. I don't find this interesting when Thom Yorke does it, and I don't don't find it interesting when Richard Ashcroft does it. I enjoyed "Reprise" (Because Ashcroft finally shuts the heck up and lets the music speak for itself). It is a shame that more of the album were not instrumental. I might have enjoyed it more. The sonic chemistry between Nick McCabe (guitar), Simon Jones (bass), and Peter Salisbury (drums) is undeniable on this track. Shame those guys didn't kick out Ashcroft out of the band and stay together. It might have been interesting to see what that could have become. I'm giving it a 3 primarily for the work of the engineers and producer who did the best they could with what they were given and to be fair do create a bit of lush sonics at times.

While Thin Lizzy is an excellent hard rock band and one of their studio releases certainly belongs on this list, but I'm not sure another live double album does, particularly when it was created by cherry picking from so many dates and with so many overdubs. Having said that I did enjoy the live segue from the last chord from "Cowboy Song" becoming the first chord from "The Boys Are Back In Town". This album demonstrated that Thin Lizzy wrote and performed solid songs. I cannot help but wonder if Prince early in his career borrowed a ton of Phil Lynott's wardrobe look from this era. It would seem so.

The algorithm gave me this album on a Saturday, and I listened to it in the pre-dawn hours while sipping warm coffee. It was a perfect chill album that explores a bunch of different genres and obviously in 1977 pointed the direction to forge new genres that would not fully be explored until the 90s and 00's. While very experimental with sonic backgrounds, the tracks are tightly focused and realized an album that is only 39 minutes in duration. My favorites were the pre-trip hop sound of "Smiling Stranger" and amazingly lush space rock opus, "Small Hours". While I also enjoyed the bossa nova of "Certain Surprise" and the dub of "Big Muff".

Album was so short that I gave it a 2nd listen and while I’ve struggled to connect with The Smiths in the past, this is a pretty solid album. It won’t make my favorite rotation but I did enjoy the dark humor that is throughout. My favorites were “Bigmouth Strikes Again”, “Frankly, Mr Shankly”, and “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out”.

Has all three of the vitamins: sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. My favorite tracks were not only the singles of "Welcome to the Jungle", "Paradise City", and "Sweet Child O'Mine", but also "Mr. Brownstone", "It's So Easy", and "Rocket Queen". This album, their next 2 EPs and 2 full length albums would be a major reason that the overwhelming presence of rock was propelled into the early 1990s.

After listening to this I can see why, as soundtrack producer for David Lynch's LOST HIGHWAY that Trent Reznor included 4 Barry Adamson tracks. With this album coming out 5 years before, it seems that informed some of the sonic ideas on The Downward Spiral whether it was conscious or subconscious. You can also hear influences of this on one of my other favorite albums David Bowie's 1995 concept album, OUTSIDE. In 1989, this was probably the first album I can remember that ever tried writing an entire film soundtrack for a non-existent film. These days it is an old hat idea that many artists have tried. Groundbreaking as it might be, it does feel like it overstays its welcome a bit. I started feeling my attention wane at around track 11 of 15. I do understand why it is on the list, though. It did influence many other acts, their albums, what was possible, and how they would present those ideas us in meaningful ways throughout the 1990s and up to the present. This set the scene for Trent Reznor to assemble the craziness behind the soundtracks for not only LOST HIGHWAY but also NATURAL BORN KILLERS.

I wanted to like this album, really. I could hear that great effort was put into the songwriting, the engineering, the production, and the performances, but other than the folky psychedelic track of "No Other", the album seems rather dull. The album is mostly a mix of various forms of soulful country rock, folk rock, and just generally the California singer songwriter sound of the 1970s. No better than 100 or more other records that came out during that decade in these genres. On the other hand I am not a fan of this sound from The Eagles or Neil Young during this era either. I find all of it rather tedious. If you are a big fan of the aforementioned artists perhaps you will enjoy this more than I did. Not a bad record, but not a special one either. I enjoyed it more when he was a bit more experimental.

On the surface the instrumentation and vocals are gorgeous. While "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" is an all time classic, the meaning of the lyrics also rings a bit untrue once you look into the families of The Temptations, and their rock solid Dads. All Directions is a very tight album of 8 songs that only occupies 35 minutes, of which 12 of them was spent on the iconic "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone". *Chef's kiss* You can see why they won all the awards with this album. Well deserved fellas. The Temptations are at their peak powers of psychedelic funk and it sounds glorious. When people think back on The Temptations, this is often the sound of them that bounces around in their imagination; it certainly did in mine. My favorites tracks were "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" (which I only learned today was a cover of a song by The Undisputed Truth), "I Ain't Got Nothin'", "The First Time I Saw Your Face", "Mother Nature", and "Do Your Thing". Such a smooth pleasure to listen to on a Friday morning. Really sets the tone for a bright weekend.

There is an undeniable kinetic energy between Johnny Cash and his captive prison audience on this album. Tight, classic Country & Western songs that are hilarious and heartbreaking.

I've never been much of a Prince fan. I always felt like Michael Jackson was the more consistent great pop performer, and I've never liked how Prince treated anyone within his sphere. He seemed like an egomaniacal prick, but this is probably the most listenable of his works, even if it is ridiculously long. I enjoyed 3 of the songs, but only one of them was a single. Not really into the rest of it.

I love big band. I dig Ray Charles, but Ray Charles doing standards doesn't belong on this list. His release WHAT'D I SAY is why he belongs on this list and yet it its not included. WTF? These covers are no better or worse than anyone else that the time. Nothing notable here. About the release itself, my only complaint is that I wish the horns weren't distorting so much.

Not one wasted note. The master of efficient songcraft, Buddy Holly really was one of the greatest songwriters of all time. This whole album is a joy. It is so clear how their sound inspired not only the sound of The Beatles but sound of many of the pop acts that would follow for the rest of time. Hard to believe this album of 12 songs only has a duration of 25 minutes. Losing Buddy at such a young age was such a loss for music. It would have been fascinating to see what his songwriting would have evolved to become over the musically rich years of the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

In 2006 someone heard that I liked prog rock bands such as Rush and Yes, and they emailed me the mp3 of "Knights of Cydonia". I was not all that moved by it, and promptly moved on with my life. I had never really delved into the rest of the album, until today. In my opinion, BLACK HOLES AND REVELATIONS is your typical Muse record that rips other people's good ideas but doesn't provide any truly of their own. I admire the bands that Muse admires, I just don't admire what they tend do with the influence. For example, when I hear this album, I hear "Dude, we love Rush's record 2112". I love Rush, but I'd love to hear a Muse record, not a pale Rush knockoff. Perhaps I am being harsh. I confess that Matt Bellamy's singing style and vocal sound is very unpleasant to me. He sounds like Thom Yorke, and I cannot stand Thom Yorke's voice either. Asides from the lyrics that are overly paranoid about everything, Muse does hold together as a tight rhythm section. If you can ignore the lyrics and Bellamy's unpleasant croon, there is a fairly tight electro prog act underneath all of that. After listening to the album, I actually added "Map of the Problematique" to my favorites, but I definitely don't think this is an album you should hear before you die. If I were to recommend a Muse album for this list, it would be their 2018 album SIMULATION THEORY, which I think shows something a bit more original of themselves, while still showing off all the prog geekery and power rock that fans of Muse enjoy.

On this album George Michael strayed too far from what made him successful on FAITH, which is a shame because while I don't believe this album belongs on this list, I do firmly believe that FAITH does. It is clear that with his collaboration with Aretha Franklin in January 1987 really affected how he went about writing and arranging his second album. LISTEN WITHOUT PREJUDICE VOL. 1 is a very different album, but of the 10 tracks included only 2 of them remotely approached the dance genre that his fanbase had grown accustomed. The rest are version of adult oriented rock. He probably should have gone with a more even split to keep his FAITH fanbase appeased. The album presented comes off a bit more like Roger Whittaker, rather than George Michael, particularly compared to the kineticism of FAITH. I love me some Roger Whittaker, but that was not George Michael's core fanbase. After the iconic coming out track "Freedom '90" I enjoyed the Lennon-esque "Praying For Time", and the bossa nova laced "Heal the Pain".

I am a fan of this genre, and among the big beat albums of the day this was one of the weaker ones. It benefitted by coming out after The Chemical Brothers and Prodigy had already warmed up the U.S. audience. After the propulsive opening of "Right Here, Right Now" and "The Rockafellar Skank" it is a long fairly samey sounding slog before "Praise You", and the rest of the album finishes on a more interesting exploration of "Love Island" which has another John Barry sample in there, after the one in "The Rockafellar Skank", and finally the nice techno "Acid 8000". For much of the album though Cook wasn't able to keep me, a fan of the genre, interested all the way through. I've given YCALWB 3.5 stars for competent engineering and production, but as the rating stands, I'm leaving them with a rating of 3. There are other more interesting electronica acts at this time, particularly Prodigy, Meat Beat Manifesto, Orbital, Apollo 440, Daft Punk, and Paul Oakenfold just to name a few.

A very quick half-an-hour meal of Soul food. This album is worth listening to just hear her work the lyric "Everything is copacetic now" into "Niki Hoeky" just as naturally as the wind whispers. Highlights on this virtuoso soul album include the classics "Chain of Fools", "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman", "Sweet Sweet Baby (Since You've Been Gone)", and "Ain't No Way", but really there are no weak tracks on this album. I was blown away by how lush Tommy Cogbill's bass was on all these tracks. After Aretha's voice, his bass is the thing that keeps all of these Soul and Gospel tracks bubbling, bouncing, interesting and constantly propelling forward. He and drummers Roger Hawkins and Gene Chrisman do a great job of leaving enough space for Aretha and the backing singers, which by the way includes Cissy Houston (Whitney Houston's mom) and Franklin's sisters Carolyn and Erma to spiral around Aretha, as she explores the vocal melodies.

I've heard songs of Bob Marley & the Wailers here and there all of my life, but I've never truly sat down and listened to entire album of their work until today. I was already a big fan of "Waiting in Vain", having heard it decades before when Annie Lennox covered the song and I was introduced to it. I enjoyed hearing the original as well as "There Little Birds" which I had heard countless times before. As an atheist, who is not from Jamaica, and does not like weed, there was not much on this album I can relate to. I respect the performance and production quality, and their place in popular music history, but I am not likely to put this album on again, so I cannot give this a higher rating than a 3.

The album is lyrically dense but her vocal performance is detached from the music, and perhaps that is the emotion she is trying to convey, but I was having difficulty emotionally relating to it, and therefore did not enjoy it much. I think the arrangements could have benefited from also exploring dynamics to keep from feeling quite so similar to one another. I prefer a different album of hers than this one. Also, apropros of nothing, I am aware that it is just the image of Joni's wrist and upper hand bleeding through the cover image, but it really looks like a penis on the cover and I'm having trouble unseeing it. It is unclear to me whether that was intentional or not.

The reach of The White Stripes imagination finally match their grasp on their fourth album Elephant. Gone were the incomplete song fragments that littered the previous three albums. Meg White's singing on "In The Cold, Cold Night" makes me wish that she were the lead vocalist on all of The White Stripes tracks instead of Jack. But, at the end of the day, after "Seven Nation Army", it is just your typical The White Stripes album. Anyone know why there is nearly an extra minute of silence after the conclusion of the final track "It's True That We Love One Another"? I expected a hidden track, but nada.

Thi rating is not so much for the quality of this particular album but for the albums that it would inspire from other artists down the road.

Sophisticated funk that's super chill. You might even say it's super fly. My personal preference is the instrumental track "Junkie Chase" over the lyrical tracks, although I did add "Superfly" to my rotation. It seems to me that disco age has to give thanks to this soundtrack and Isaac Hayes (Shaft) for forming the foundation from what was to come in the middle and end of the 70s. You can also hear what will influence and be referenced by the hip hop and neo soul crowd that would come in the late 80s and all the way to the late 90s.

Lyrics that were occasionally funny. I do enjoy him a bit more than Dylan. The music structure was the standard folk country, so that became a bit tiresome after awhile when it became clear there would not be any song arrangement surprises. Was worth a listen but probably won't make it into my regular rotation.

Far more accessible than the other albums of The Velvet Underground. I can see why it is derisively called Lou Reed's first solo album. I enjoyed all of the songs to one extent or another. My favorite track was "What Goes On". Least favorite "The Murder Mystery", which is an interesting thought experiment of song arrangement, but definitely not the sort of thing that I am going to want to listen to again.

I am a big fan of post punk/new wave/modern rock. Having said that, aside from "Pretty in Pink" and "All of This and Nothing", the Steve Lillywhite produced Talk Talk Talk is a long dirge of samey sounding punk/post punk that has not yet quite made the turn toward the more interesting sound of modern rock. They also have not stopped mimicking the sound of The Sex Pistols and truly created their own sound yet. The album that the algorithm pointed to was the remastered album re-released in 2002 instead of the original. This is relevant, because not only is it remastered, it is also longer because it includes all kinds of bonus tracks, and for some weird reason that re-ordered all the tracks which I don't think suits this album at all. I recommend listening to the 10 track original that was released in 1981 and is available on most streaming services. Alas, there is not much memorable here. Talk Talk Talk didn't even make my top 50 for albums released in 1981, much less make my top 1001 for all time. Personally I feel their best album are to come over the rest of the 1980s, even though others criticize them for being over-produced. I don't buy this BS that somehow less production makes an album more sincere or authentic.

These guys created a sound of their own that is unmistakable. Every song is tight. Just a wonderful blues rock album from the early 1970s. Proto hard rock and metal.

Recorded after losing Ava Gardner, “In the Wee Small Hours” is aching swing that is a joy to listen to.

I've heard many of these tracks but I've never listened to the entire album all the way through in one sitting. Such a consistent album. You can hear so many albums in genres of hard rock, metal, grunge, and funk that will arrive in the future, due in part to the influences of this album. A very good album even if it is a tad too indulgent. One hour twenty-two minutes is ALOT of Led Zeppelin to take in. The two Johns, Bonham and Paul Jones, make this album soar. Perhaps the most consistently tight I've ever heard this rhythm section play. Robert Plant's voice grates, but the rhythm section and guitar work is so tight that you can basically ignore the vocals and still have a grand ole time.

Linkin Park doesn't really add anything here that nearly two decades of industrial, hard rock, and new wave hadn't already added to the genre. There have even been countless other bands that had mixed these styles together, by this point and this one is a boring as your typical Korn, Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down, Limp Bizkit, and Deftones records. The only notable thing about this release is that had come to the party late, just as it was winding down. Your average suburban teenager in every community had already submitted to a genre that had been growing since the late 80s, and everybody was getting ready to move on. Having said all that, in the end, (see what I did there?), I enjoyed the singles "Crawling", "In the End", and further into the album the songs "Runaway", and the instrumental "Cure for the Itch". Hybrid Theory is a competent but ultimately forgettable album. Probably won't make my rotation, so it gets a 2.

Loved this!

I enjoyed the straight edge hip-hop first track which was a pleasant turn for this genre, particularly in 2002, but after hearing the entire album I'm a little puzzled why this is on the list. It is just another hip hop whine about poor life which this many decades into the format is getting a bit tiresome. I understand that it won a Mercury, and it is a competently produced album, but that doesn't mean it merits a spot. Aafter all, in the United States you can throw a dime in any direction and hit a dozen female hip hop acts that were doing this 2002 at this quality or better. What makes this one stand out? Beats me. The rhymes are passable, but Ms. Dynamite isn't presenting them in a new way. Hip hop as a genre is less appealing to me because while I love rhythm, I also prefer the music to focus less on lyricism and more on sonic exploration, and I find messaging to be a real turn off, which is not the strengths of hip hop. A notable debut record, but not something that belongs on this list. Passable tracks for me were "Natural High" and "Watch Over Them" but the rest of the themes were the typical trite of the genre.

This album is weird for me because it has never been my absolute favorite U2 album, but I've always loved certain tracks of this album, only those tracks keep changing as I mature and age through life. Having tracks that appeal to me at different stages of life has been a fairly rare in my extensive listening experience. It was and always has been a personally challenging record to listen to in the best of ways. Hard to overstate level of post Cold War optimism that this album was recorded under in 1990-1991. This is also one of those albums that coaxed me into entering the catalogs of whole scenes and bands that I'd never considered before. It was also one of the first albums that I really paid attention to who engineered and produced the album, which has made finding albums I might enjoy much easier over the years. I learned a ton about Krautrock, the Berlin dance scene, industrial music, etc. which led to a deep dive in the Wax Trax! Records dive on the American side of the pond as well. This album also made it clear to me how and why a band might want to change their sound, and what that might mean, which was also a revelation as a musician. This is part of a run of truly remarkable records that Flood produced in a 7 year period that might be hard for any producer to challenge short of Sir George Martin with The Beatles. A run that would include U2's The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, Zooropa, Nine Inch Nails' - Pretty Hate Machine, Broken EP, and The Downward Spiral, and Depeche Mode's Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion. Perhaps 8 of the greatest albums ever recorded that defined the sound of late eighties and all of the nineties.

Lush funky arrangements that suffers from pacing issues that requires considerable patience. I say this as someone who routinely listens to tracks that can exceed 10 minutes by bands like Yes and Rush. 4 tracks with a duration of 45 minutes tells you all you need to know. Some of these tracks could have shined brighter had they been mixed down to single length versions, which after reading more about this album, sounds like what they eventually did. Not digging the spoken word intro, it should have been a separate track as a lead in to the song proper, so you could skip right to the song. Did not dig the lyrics of any of the songs, but the instrumentation was on point. Props to his arranger Johnny Allen. In my opinion "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" was the only song on the album that justified its length. I think the last track was probably inspired by envy over William Shatner's spoken word masterpiece album The Transformed Man that was released a couple of years earlier.

The Fabulous Thunderbirds kind of blues if sang in Songhai and recorded with Mali sensibilities.

An annoyingly a-musical album that relies entirely too much on the lyrics, like most of Leonard Cohen's catalog. The only track I enjoyed was "Tonight Will Be Fine".

For me Nick Drake's music is generally more enjoyable to listen to and contemplate than those of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, or Tom Waits, all of which I just find overrated and annoying.

The moment when it became clear that while Nirvana were punk with punk credentials there were solid song arrangements beneath all those distorted guitars and screams. The first live album by the band, and in my opinion, probably the best. It was an appearance that also showed how wide of the music listening habits of the band really were with covers of The Vaselines "Jesus Doesn't Want Me For A Sunbeam", David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World", The Meat Puppets "Plateau", "Oh Me", "Lake of Fire"and a Lead Belly version of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?". Solid performance through and through, never overstays its welcome, and plenty of surprises to keep the listener going, which frankly really was a complete surprise at the time that the show and album was released.

This was a pleasant surprise. I somehow missed this album when it came out. Michael Kiwanuka has a knack for capturing the authentic sound of the 60s and 70s soul while introducing modern little tweaks here and there that do just enough to keep you interested and wondering what might be coming next. I agree with others that this album works really well as a complete album and not just a collection of singles. I certainly have my favorite tracks but I think I will keep them to myself and just ask that people give the whole album a listen to. I think they will find it worth it. I also enjoyed that Kiwanuka wrote many of the lyrics of the songs from a universal point of view and especially from a viewpoint of compassion and hope. On the few songs that delved into subjects that have been done to death recently, the song arrangements and performances were done so well that I still enjoyed the track, despite disagreeing with the viewpoint of the message, and that is a pretty nifty magic trick to accomplish. I can see why he toured with Adele in 2011. She opened the decade with a classic and he closed the decade with an equal classic of his own.

Gets tedious pretty quickly. Pretentious early 2000s "message" music. Totally fresh and innovative? New York 1980s hip hop of Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash is calling on line 1. Paul Simon's Graceland on line 2. Neneh Cherry on line 3. Feels like people were blinded by things other than the music.

A very good album to chill and ease into your Monday morning with. One of the more interesting DJ albums out there. Shadow does a remarkable job of representing multiple styles and weaving things together in ways that might sound conventional today but were mind-blowingly fresh for 1996. Furthermore the number of endless hours of listening to vinyl it required to just nab a few second sample here and a ten sample second there requires supreme patience and taste. I think way more effort was put into the creation of this album than you might think. Also as someone who has some experience with this method of production, props to Shadow for managing to create this with the technology available to him as an indie artist in 1996. Definitely the type of album that totally deserves to be on this list. This is the album that inspired the groundbreaking albums from Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, Massive Attack, Radioplay, and countless other acts from 1996 up to now. For some that would be an indictment, but not in my view, as I enjoy the endless amount of diverse sounds and interpretations it has created. You can tell this came from someone who just loves music, of every type, from everywhere. My favorite tracks were "Building Steam With a Grain of Salt", "Stem/Long Stem (Medley)", and "Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain (Medley)

Fairly chill album. I wasn't a fan of the ironic commercialism album concept that they were attempting. I prefer their more anthemic fare with wider appeal than the niche comedy bits. I cannot help but wonder if a record like this was influential upon the members of Monty Python when they would conceive and perform Monty Python's Flying Circus television series only a couple of years later. My favorite tracks were "I Can See For Miles" and "Sunrise". After experiencing this album my favorite albums of The Who have not changed. Who's Next, in my opinion, is still the definitive album of The Who. For inclusion on this list, this record is middling.

The album cover is fire. The music on the other hand is a bit meh. Competent performances, but nothing that truly stands the test of time. Janis' voice, like Joe Cocker, Robert Plant, and Axl Rose gets a bit gimmicky and tiresome after awhile. None of these tracks made it into my regular rotation.

While I did not enjoy their other appearance on this list, the film score for The Virgin Suicides, I did find this earlier work to be far more interesting and enjoyable. As might be expected from the down tempo genre, it is a very chill album. I can attest that this was the kind of music that was being played in the chill rooms of raves, to ease people back from the chaos of a rave and towards humanity. Top notch production and mixing. For me, the vocoder in "Sexy Boy" was maybe the only seriously jarring thing on the album. It is also clear that while AIR takes their cues from all kinds acts, Yello, Curtis Mayfield and of genres prior to them (bossa nova, lounge jazz, krautrock, 70s era film scores) it is equally clear that this album has influenced the sound of acts since its release by reminding modern acts that smooth jazz from our earlier canon can be reinterpreted in fun and unusual ways, and therefore an album worth having on this list. Having said all that, it is the kind of album that now having heard it, I likely won't put the whole thing on ever again. However I did add a couple of tracks to my regular rotation, which is a step up from their The Virgin Suicides film score album. Another listener on here noted upon this release that the line between relaxing and wondrous and kind of boring is a thin line, indeed it is, and they do cross it at times. I was not a fan of "Sexy Boy", "All I Need", or "You Make It Easy", lest you think I disdain Beth Hirsch, I think she is great, I just didn't feel anything with these tracks. My Favorite tracks were the Curtis Mayfield inspired "La Femme d'argent" aka the Silver Woman, and the smoky acid jazz of "All I Need", the 70s cinema lushness of "Talisman" and "Ce Matin-La" aka "This Morning".

Another live album. This one is a blues rock jam of mostly covers that is a bit too self indulgent for my tastes. I enjoyed the tracks that were shorter, had vocals, and included organ solos. The others were bit too samey after awhile. I don't think I'll be re-visiting this album in the future and none of the tracks made into my regular rotation. I've already got plenty of blues covers in my collection already.

The band doesn't really get into the pocket on this album until track 5 "Need Your Love", and the album as a whole takes off on tracks 6 through 10, which includes a rocking cover of the Fats Domino/Dave Bartholomew song"Ain't That a Shame", and the hits "I Want You to Want Me" and "Surrender". Deserves about a 3.5 for keeping song and solo lengths reasonable, for making it a standard album length (42 minutes) and for resisting the urge to make it a double album. I'll round it down and give it a 3. I might be one of the only people around that prefers their studio albums to their live ones.

I love the electronic genre, but even I found this fairly boring. Not as interesting as Darkdancer by Les Rythmes Digitales, another club album, which also happens to on this list. And neither of those albums is as interesting as Paul Oakenfold's Bunkka. I am unsure whether that album is on the list, but if not, it should be.

Didn't like this album when it came out in the '90s, and I really tried to give it a chance this time around, but unfortunately I still don't. I agree with others. A muddy mix. A poor pastiche of far better artists ideas, from David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, T. rex and The Beatles. The hooks aren't particularly fetching. One of the most overrated albums I have ever heard, from one of the most overrated bands I've ever heard.

One of the glam rock albums that actually rocks from that period. Also a concept album that is not recognized as frequently as its contemporaries. While the single "School's Out", gets all the attention, I actually also loved the cheeky humor of the glam rock rewrite of "Jet Song" from the musical West Side Story as the renamed "Gutter Cat vs. The Jets" along with "Street Fight". My other favorites were the jazz loungie snark of "Blue Turk", the blues of "My Stars", the rocking rebellious "Public Animal #9", but perhaps my favorite track on the album is the instrumental "Grand Finale" that works in bits of the "Jet Song" melodies as closer. While I enjoy bits of David Bowie's THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST, I actually enjoy SCHOOL'S OUT, which was also released in 1972, more. SCHOOL'S OUT, in my opinion, is a better mixed record and shorter, and tighter collection of songs at just 36 minutes.

Of the 1 hour 11 minute runtime the only bit I liked was the interlude "Hey Sugah (Interlude)". That's about the only truly nice thing I have to say about this album, aside from great jazz/funk/soul/r&b instrumental performances that bring forward sounds from the 60s and 70s. It is terrible to say, but truly if you were to take off Badu's vocals, I just might have enjoyed this album, but the vocals aren't doing anything for me and become monotonous pretty quickly. I feel like the songs were left without their own vocal identity. Take "In Love With You" in which Stephen Marley put his vocal stamp on the song and then Erykah comes in with the same phrasing and dynamics she has been using the whole album, which just kills the momentum he created, until finally in the outro their vocals start to really shine together. A neo soul album that won't disrupt the sipping of an an early morning cup of coffee, but is certainly not going to get the emotional or physical senses going like that cup of coffee will. Perhaps an album for a demo I am not the member of. Wouldn't make my list of 1001.

Such a great and complex rock opera. There was no other album out there that was quite this ambitious about entropy, from the repurposed Kabbalah references that litter the album, to Jesus Christ Superstar references repurposed. A worthy spiritual successor to David Bowie's DIAMOND DOGS, Nine Inch Nails THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL, and the character of Alice Cooper. All made into something new, chaotic, and beautiful. Brian Warner portrays the supernatural Antichrist antihero supernatural presence that is birthed on this album. A presence that doesn't have a grudge against any particular group or people, but rather has an obsession with destroying all of humanity itself. He takes the piss out of everything under the sun, including himself. Trent Reznor and Dave "Rave" Ogilvie's (producer of highly influential industrial act Skinny Puppy) production is glorious. A beautiful balance of glam, metal, hard rock, post punk, thrash, electronic, industrial music that tells the first tale in the rock opera trilogy. Warner's vocal delivery explores all the dynamics, from whispers to blood curdling screams. ANTICHRIST SUPERSTAR was a reprieve from a sea of borings albums at that time that were predominantly hip hop, grunge, and ska. My favorite tracks include "The Beautiful People", "Dried Up, Tied and Dead to the World", "Tourniquet", "Cryptorchid", "Wormboy" , "Mister Superstar", "Angel With Scabbed Wings", and "Kinderfeld". This album's recording would also produce the incredible non album release tracks "Long Hard Road Out of Hell" and my favorite that ended up on the LOST HIGHWAY soundtrack, "Apple of Sodom". Ahhh, misanthropy at its best. Chef's kiss!

What can I say that hasn't been said? One of the funk classics. If it sounds stale to new ears, it is only because so many bands borrowed elements of this record as inspiration for their own voyages in funk. It has been estimated that at least 100 well known artists, including luminaries such as Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Queen Latifah, D'Angelo, and Janet Jackson have sampled the title track on the album, "One Nation Under a Groove". I had to listen to this album on YouTube as it was no available on my streaming service. If it had been available I would have added "One Nation Under a Groove" and "Into You" to my library. "Promentalwashbackpsychosis Enema Squad (The Doo Doo Chasers)" was one of the few tracks on this album that never really worked for me.

Never understand the Hot Fuss for this album and I still don't. I wanted to like this because I love 80s production techniques, don't I hear any good 80s influences in this. If I want an American doing a fake British accent with vaguely post punk/new wave backing it, then I'll throw on Ministry's With Sympathy, which truly is a banger. If you actually want an 80s throwback turn down the guitars in the mix and amp up those synths. For a great example from that decade check out Chrome's BUSINESS CASUAL. The band is tight, but the vocalist sucks. Brandon Flowers shout/talk style is grating. Abstract lyrics that don't really seem to illuminate a narrative or emotion. I'm told these songs on the front half of the record were popular, but honestly, I've never heard any of these songs before. After hearing the whole album, nothing stuck with me. Like seriously, I don't hear any earworms hooks on this album, must less outright hits. I crave some vocal melody or instrumental hook that I cannot help but hum on the way out of my house and there was nothing that stuck with me. I don't hear any energy or stadium anthems. And yet, they claim they are indie rock, but are anything but. In the middling. This album just keeps revealing to me how the naughties (00's) were the worst decade of popular music over the past 75 years by a wide margin.

After I listened to the complete album it seemed that the interesting innovative songs were all on the front half of the album and all of the more boring traditional Rolling Stones blues in the back half. I enjoyed the instrumental and songwriting explorations of "Paint it Black", and "Lady Jane". Doesn't feel as groundbreaking or essential as an album from The Beatles, particularly Revolver which came out the same year, but it did show that The Rolling Stones weren't only capable of Rhythm and Blues and could stretch a bit more. "Going Home" could have been trimmed without sacrificing the essential. All in all a few high spots here and there but ultimately a middling album, particularly knowing what kinds of things they will go to record later.

Over the years someone will invariably ask me, so what do you think of Tom Waits? And I'll tell them that he is a quirk that I have not been able to wrap my ears around. That Tom's voice and lyrical obsessions takes me right out of the songs. They will nod like knowing parents and ask me, but have you sat down with one of his albums. And I'll say yes, but I couldn't get through them. Until today that is. For, as I was put off by just about every Tom Waits thing I had heard from his albums that changed when I heard BONE MACHINE today. Still not one iota of interest in his lyrical obsessions, but man do I love me some quirky percussion driven soundscapes, and holy hell does BONE MACHINE have it. I enjoyed the weirdness and did not enjoy the throwback traditional songs. My favorites were "The Earth Died Screaming", "The Ocean Doesn't Want Me", "Black Wings" , and "Let Me Get Up On It". Now having said all that, 3 songs and a fragment earns only a 3. Still think he is way overrated. Just like Nick Cave, Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan are way overrated.

Over the years I've only enjoyed exactly one Sonic Youth track, "Titanium Expose" and can bear the rest from the album that it comes from, GOO. Unfortunately, this album did not change that perception. Still feels like a bunch of half-baked ideas lyrically and musically that are not really going anywhere.

I was unaware of this album or band when the algorithm served up LOST IN THE DREAM. After hearing the album and reading about their influences, I feel like this is one of those albums that far surpasses the influences on the band that released it. My favorite tracks were "Red Eyes", "An Ocean in Between the Waves", "Burning", and "In Reverse". A beautiful set of tracks about despair, isolation, introspection, and possibly even a hint of hope.

One of the greatest of all time in the electronic space. Sounds pedestrian today, but that is because nearly everybody in many different genres were subtly influenced by Kraftwerk with their modern compositions that include synths and effects. This album was more sophisticated in scope and production that their 1977 album TRANS EUROPE EXPRESS. Ironically I think that "The Model", perhaps the most well known song from this album, is actually one of the weaker from this album. I added all of them to my collection and to my rotation. My favorites were "The Robots", "Spacelab", "Metropolis", "Neon Lights", "The Man-Machine". Their production on this album makes this kind of recording look easier than it was in 1978 to record electronic music. This album would prove pivotal to the development of artists like Gary Human, which then helped kick off the entire New Romantic/New Wave era in Great Britain and elsewhere. Most of what is great about 1980s music was inspired by earlier Kraftwerk, whether they knew it or not at the time.

After hearing GUITAR TOWN it isn’t much of a stretch for me to hear a through-line of Country Rock from Hank Williams through Steve Earle straight on through Garth Brooks. One of the more enjoyable Country albums I've heard in the past 4 decades.

I love listening to dark albums, so this one didn't spook me or depress in the least, as it has others in these reviews, but at the end of the day it is just more of the same boring schtick by Leonard Cohen about the same handful of subjects that he is obsessed with. In my opinion, music is the melodies, harmonies, and rhythms by which the lyrics are delivered. The lyrics themselves are not music, and and ike most of Cohen 's catalog there is nothing instrumentally melodic, melodically, or rhythmically interesting going on here. No real substance, just more smoke and mirrors to memorize the hipsters. This is my third Cohen album and I haven't even gotten to his album that is most bearable of his on this list. This artist is waaaaay over represented on the list. It is just weird to me when people compare him to Johnny Cash or David Bowie, as he does not possess the musicality or lyricality of either of them.

First half of the album is middling rock/progressive rock. Back half of the album is the interesting electronic moods and textures that Eno would become known for, giving a hint of AMBIENT 1: MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS to come.

Funny story, my wife, back in the late 1990s almost ran over Mr. Robert Zimmerman when he jaywalked into the traffic of our small town in Oregon. So, I've heard Bob Dylan live and almost heard him dead. Where to begin. He can't sing, his guitar strumming is tedious, and his harmonica sounds like it is in a life and death struggle to liberate itself from him. He wrote a few standards that over the decades have lasted the test of time and has been overrated ever since. His lyrics are supposed to be masterful but often just sound like pedantic moon June spoon simplicity. Lyrics: A song does not make. This live double album was a complete waste of listening time. It is at times like this that the list strains credulity.

While I love all genres of rock and jazz, I have also always loved and lived in the worlds of electronica, dance, and industrial related genres of music as well. So, if I am being honest, this album feels like it was rewarded when it came out for virtue signaling in the LGBT community rather than for musical merit, as there were many more interesting albums in the genres of ebm, dance, disco, and pop rock albums that were released in 2004 when this album came out. Just off of my head I could name Mind.in.a.Box's LOST ALONE, Assemblage 23's STORM, June Reactor's LABYRINTH, and Chromeo's SHE'S IN CONTROL, all of which have lasted the test of time versus this one.

I confess, I have never really been a Radiohead fan. I detest most of their albums, particularly Ok Computer. Honestly, this is their only album that I actually enjoy in the slightest, and of the 11 tracks available I only truly enjoy 6 of them. Everything that I find annoying about Radiohead had largely gone away (everything but Them Yorke's voice unfortunately) and was replaced with their interpretation of Krautrock, Eno-esque Bowie Low Cycle exploration, Ambient, and Electronica, all of which are genres I had been enjoying and frankly they bring to it a sound that not quite been heard like this before. My favorite tracks are "Everything in its Right Place", "Kid A", "The National Anthem", "How to Disappear Completely", "Optimistic", and "In Limbo". I don't everything else quite works and I cannot make heads or tails about what they were trying to do with the silences during "Motion Picture Soundtrack" and "Untitled".

Yum, real significant music for once. No lame Britpop, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, or Nick Cave to be seen. Just glorious big band jazz that the likes of the world had never seen.

Heard bits and pieces of this over the years but this is the first time all the way through. Masterpiece! Love the production!

Much more fun and accessible for me than BITCHES BREW to listen. Just wish it also had an album cover that was an iconic painting.

I enjoyed the tutorials before each track was performed. Very educational about the differences in approach between Western music and Indian music at the time of this album's release in 1957. I can hear how influential this album was to so many of the artists whose albums would come out in the late 60s and early 70s.

One of my absolute favorite albums of all time. The production, performance, and the thoughtful songwriting is as a great all around. There is a reason why many people to this day think that "Everybody Wants to the Rule the World" is the most perfect song ever written. At 41 minutes SFTBC is a lean album that makes the most of every note. It doesn't get bogged down in its philosophical leanings and introduces audiences with accessible versions of subgenres that were lesser known at the time. My other absolute favorite album of theirs is ELEMENTAL, released and record by Orzabal after breaking up with Curt Smith in 1993 is also an album I recommend listening to all the way through. Fantastic explorations and tight songwriting. This album and THE HURTING make clear how much their sound was affected by the loss of Ian Stalney after he left the band following this album. I just love this 80s sound so much! A decade when bands were given enough money and studio time to really explore sonic adventures and often the musical freedom to go on those voyages, unlike the music since then that is often given the freedom to explore but lacks the money, experience, or expertise to really make the songs and production shine, and record companies are unwilling to really stick with artist development to really draw out their best.

More relentlessly monotonous hip hop about the same boring subjects: humble brag, whine about "socially conscious" subjects, rinse and repeat Nothing original here. No thanks. Moving on to the next album.

This band was waaaaaaaay ahead of its time. This could have been an indie rock album from the last 20 years rather than an album that is actually 53 years old. CAN came back from the future to let you hear what was possible. This magnificent album is one of the major reasons why we have such an interesting music scene in the present. Thank you CAN for pointing the way. The first half is the accessible song formats and the back half is the experimental half. Choose your voyage.

A formative prog folk rock album that deserves to be heard, but not one of my absolute favorites from the 70s. I would give it a 5 for its place in history, but I cannot. For the record, I dig the flute inclusion and enjoy exploration through wide and varied instrumentation, whatever form that takes, but after this album sold over 7 million copies and once Ian Anderson learned how painter of the album cover, Burton Silverman was ripped off, and he chose to do nothing to help the painter's cause against the record company, not even to speak out about it, which I find particularly reprehensible. So, a 4 it is then.

Before Rammstein there was The Young Gods! This album influenced many of the industrial bands you know by name and other than the rosters of their label PIAS (Play It Again Sam),Wax Trax! Records, Nettwerk Records, and 4AD, not many bands quite sounded like THE YOUNG GODS' L'EAU ROUGE. If their vocals had been performed in English, they probably would have been even more influential. Favorite tracks: "Rue des tempetes", "L'eau Rouge", "Ville notre", and "L'amourir".

"The Age of the Understatement" feels like a modern mish mash of spaghetti western, 60s mod, and maybe a tangential sprinkle of surf rock. While I admire the creative ambition of this project, I confess that I am a bigger fan of the source material than this album. It does not quite manage to reach the epic John Barry-esque of the best Bond music, rather it feels like the kind of sonic sandwich spread that would be slathered all over LUTHER episodes. I am unmoved and unimpressed by the lyrics and the singers' performance of them. Feels like the music would be far more moving without the lyrics and singing altogether. As if the most interesting parts were composed by Owen Pallet and performed by the London Metropolitan Orchestra. I think where the lyricist failed is that they tried to cram too many lines of lyrics into the songs, which is unsuitable for the genres they are referencing. If they were really clever they would have kept only the absolute necessary best bits and gave the songs space so that they could really reach climax, of which many of these songs never quite feel like they do. They also could have benefited from having singers that actually have expansive voices like Tom Jones or Shirley Bassey, or rather whoever they would be these days, to truly call back to to what made those genres special. I cannot compare it to the work of The Arctic Monkeys, as I am not familiar with their sound. Until today, I had never heard of them. I appreciate that the album was brought to my attention, but I ultimately don't think it belongs on this list. Two stars for the work of the arranger, and conductor.

I found The Louvin Brothers a pleasant mix of traditional country, folk, and bluegrass with a delightful undercurrent of darkness and horror. I had fun hearing their interpretation of the classic murder ballad "In the Pines" of which modern audiences are probably more familiar with from the Kurt Cobain's cover of the traditional song with the Lead Belly title of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?". One thing this listening project has done for me is to educate me about the murder ballad format, and how much I am growing to love them. This whole notion of the evolution of the murder ballad over the past centuries and how each artist over the years subtract lyrics, or add lyrics, and sometimes change the title of the song, in order to tell a tale that is relevant to that artist in particular, is fascinating to me. My favorite tracks were "In the Pines", "Katie Dear", "Knoxville Girl", and "Mary of the Wild Moor".

As a young drum student, I was taught that in addition to the rudiments, to be a more complete set drummer, I needed to master four styles of drumming: swing, shuffle, blues/rock, and bossa nova/samba in order to increase my chances of being prepared for most kinds of gigs. This advice proved to be very wise. When learning bossa nova/samba I did a ton of listening to this record by Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd. And what an approachable record it was for my young ears.It was fun revisiting this album so many years later and enjoying how forward thinking this genre clash of American swing jazz solos with latin backed rhythm patterns really was. It is still a great album that really cooks. This record might seem quaint but really it was mind blowing for the old cats of jazz who were moving out of big band and into bebop, free jazz, and eventually fusion. Without this record and others from this era that would prime American audiences to recognize Latin music, I am not sure that acts like Carlos Santana, Miami Sound Machine, etc. have quite the large impact in the U.S. that they so clearly have had. I feel like I should be drinking something out of a glass with an umbrella in it. It is that kind of smooth jazz.

Bossanova is more garage/grunge music that is presented with more consistent song production and writing than their previous albums and yet they still never compromise their core sound. It is easily the most consistently enjoyable album of The Pixies on a track by track basis. Having said that it does not have a generational single on it on the level of "Where Is My Mind?" from SURFER ROSA or "Wave of Mutiliation" or "Here Comes Your Man" from DOOLITTLE, but ultimately I enjoy Bossanova more as an album, and the previous albums as a collection of songs that I can cherry pick songs I can bear. I enjoyed the lovely surf rock nods in "Ana" and the instrumental "Cecilia Ann" (which is a cover of a Surftones track), the post punk of "Dig for Fire" and "Hang Wire"; and the beautiful "Havana".

This country rock sound was ubiquitous in just about every pub band playing in a rural bar in small towns all over America whose only other buildings were a post office, a gas station, and a country store. The Flying Burrito Bros. did this sound well, but honestly they are not bringing anything to it that had not already been there in the scene. Critics would have you think so, as would other artists later, but there were a ton doing this, just not many bands had an inside track like these guys did by being in The Byrds. Glen Campbell, Neil Young, and countless other outlaw country acts were already bending toward this direction. Well produced, but no favorite track. Not a lot of differentiation here. Sounds like one 37 minute long track interrupted be brief pauses. However I do recognize their importance as a proto modern-country rock band. As an aside, I love the band's collective furrowed brow in this cover image. Hilariously, ironically unpleasant look for a group of guys about to enter a gilded palace of sin.

An album and artist I had never heard of but after hearing it, I feel like this the kind of record I had hoped to discover on this list. Accessible enough, but wholly new as well. Instrumentation that holds up regardless of lyrics. Hhe has a sound of his own that no one else quite sounds like, and it is a sound that is pleasantly quirky with his instrumentation and arrangement choices. I also love that this album doesn't shy away from studio fun that goes missing on most indie rock/folk rock albums. Dig the album cover. Conveys tons of symbolism and is beautiful to look at. I found this way more interesting and tolerable than an Elliot Smith record, and I say that as someone who has lived near Portland, Oregon my whole life. Heard more than my fair share of Elliot Smith over the years. Pleasantly surprised as most of Brit Pop and Chamber Pop of this era usually bores the shit out of me, but this was truly a fun album that reflects and elevates Damon Gough's influences. If I have any complaints it is that at 63 minutes, it does run a tad too long. I prefer to leave an audience hungry for more, rather than risk overstaying their welcome.

I dig the Chemical Brothers and that is why I know that the album of theirs that blew everyone's minds and that should be heard before you die is DIG YOUR OWN HOLE, not this one. This is good, but DIG YOUR OWN HOLE was great. That is only reason I am giving this 4 stars instead of 5. My favorites on this album include "Leave Home", "Song to the Siren", "Three Little Birdies Down Beats", "Chemical Beats", "One Too Many Mornings", "Life is Sweet", and "Alive Alone".

Been listening to Bob Dylan for decades, and I still have not acquired his disease. There are only a handful of tracks of his that truly enjoy., and only one of them, "Shelter from the Storm", is from this album. The rest of the songs on here are just more of the same old tired Bob Dylan tropes. His narratives are not enough to lift tired, boring instrumental choices and arrangements for 1974-75. That's right, I did not enjoy "Tangled Up in Blue". Another Bob Dylan album that doesn't belong on this list.

The first time I encountered an Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force track it was "Frantic Situation" from the breakdance(breaking)/hip hop culture film Beat Street, released in 1984, used under a musical montage. In fact that film got me into breaking for few years until I decided to focus all of my attention on drums and percussion. This album 2 years later, with the iconic "Planet Rock" is more tracks of the early fun hip hop vibe, that is suitable for hip hop dancing, breaking in particular, but is not the kind of thing that I would put on to listen to passively in the background. This gets a 3 from me for being a proto pioneer with this album that influenced much of the evolution of the New York hip hop scene over the rest of the 80s, particularly a group like The Beastie Boys.

After listening to this entire album, I am still perplexed why this album and this artist interests or moves anyone. I'd give it a 1 but Dr. Dre did give it some production props that deserves at least a 2.

This is the album that not only has the all time classics of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", "Time After Time", "She Bop", and "All Through the Night" but lesser known gems "Money Changes Everything" and "When You Were Mine" and cheeky Betty Boop song "He's So Unusual". SHE'S SO UNUSUAL was important because Lauper's inversion of songs that she covered from a female perspective and her use of a mix of styles including rock, afro-carribean, reggae, boop, and synth-pop influences that prepared American audiences and set the stage for other artists to break through not long after this record, particularly Madonna, who would take Cyndi Lauper's vibe and run with it. Given the seriousness of the subject, Lauper's album manages to be fun and not cringy or preachy, with her cheeky delivery. This album also has the gorgeous full 80s production that so many on this challenge denigrate, but I say to hell with you, I love the "overly done" 80s production style.

The only American Idiots on this album are the political naïve members of this band. This cam out while I was an adult already, so I was able to see through all of their bullshit. About as terribly boring as the other albums on this list from the naughties. It really was the worst decade of Pop Music going all the way back to the 1950s. It seems that the albums that were really worth listening to, that managed breaking new sonic ground in the 2000s were not included at all on this list. For three chords and boredom, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is the only song that feels at all like an earworm on this album. I applaud the band for trying a couple of new things, but ultimately this a formulaic mess of a punk rock opera album that is also way too long for a punk rock album. What is more concerning is that are no new fresh ideas for the genre on here. Stormtroopers of Death did this idea better with SPEAK ENGLISH OR DIE way back in 1985 and their concept album character Sergeant D. There are countless other punk rock acts, NOFX is another, who did all of this more interestingly than these guys. About the only positive thing I can say is that Tre Cool, their drummer, is the best thing about this band and he shows it again on this album.

Great album that marries thrash metal to speed metal. It was fun hearing what might have been riffs that were actually flamenco patterns that would traditionally be played on an acoustic guitar laid down with heavy distortion and whammy bars. Quality album, but lacking any tracks that I had to add to my collection.

Bizarre choice for this list. Not one of the great hip-hop records over the past 45 years, but it does have that one nostalgia track that everyone has heard at least once, "The Humpty Dance". Old school rhyme style that is pleasant enough, but the stories aren't all that memorable, and the tracks go on for way too long. A 65 minute record that should have been trimmed down to a tight 43-45 minutes. The beats and samples are competent, but nothing that truly blows your mind. I will take this any day over a Gangster P-Funk album, so there is that. It is a party record, but I cannot imagine losing my shit at a party over this. For those who say you had to be there to appreciate this record, I was there, IN HIGH SCHOOL, when this record came out and I wasn't moved by it then either.

MUSIC FOR THE MASSES is truly and exceptional album, which is saying a lot, because for many Depeche Mode fans it ranks only 6th after VIOLATOR, SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION, SOME GREAT REWARD, ULTRA, and BLACK CELEBRATION. It was the first album that allowed Depeche Mode to become an arena act that could play arenas anywhere in the world. With the band becoming the first alternative act of the 1980s to be able to fill the Rose Bowl Stadium on their 101st and final show of the 1987-1988 world tour. Bascombe's production, coming after working with Tears for Fears on their career defining album SONGS FROM THE BIG CHAIR and Peter Gabriel's all time classic SO, was perfect for expanding the sound of the band with more guitar work, and more of a rock, soul, and gospel influenced exploration with synths and vocal harmonies.

After listening to 160 albums, my first Wax Trax! record has popped up and I was surprised it was this album and not an album of Ministry, KMFDM, or Front 242, etc. but rather the acid jazz of Nightmares on Wax. I have seen some criticisms of this record being repetitive or on hold music, but it must be understood that this album was largely played in cool down rooms at raves (legal and illegal) and clubs, which were everywhere in England by 1995. They would have high intensity acts like Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers, and Prodigy in the main rooms, and the hours of pre-dawn you would find people in the chill/cool down room listening to acid jazz like this and by other bands to bring them down from the madness of the rave before they reintegrated into reality.

Banal, boring, samey music that people who were blinded by their nostalgia are in love with. I did not enjoy it 26 years ago when it came out and I dislike it even more know. Clearly has influences from thrash (Suicidal Tendencies), punk (Stormtroopers of Death (the real SOD), and metal bands (Sepultra, Death, Slayer )that are far more interesting and memorable than they are. Even their Middle Eastern vibe just feels like revisited Dick Dale. Which is fine, but not necessarily groundbreaking.

Amazing that this band knocked out 3 all time albums in around a year.

May have influenced greats, but it feels pretty middling and samey. I am not convinced that this album is a necessary evolution to get to the greatest marriages of pop, punk, and new wave, so probably not something that I will revisit. I don't think it belongs on the list. Doesn't feel like essential music. Nice music, but not particularly noteworthy. The kind of music you could put on a period late 70s British film that will give a vibe but not distract from the scenes in progress. I hear a lot of comparisons to The Clash, The Kinks, The Who, but frankly they remind me most of a lesser quality Men at Work (even though Men at Work wouldn't form until 1978 when this album was released). I think I prefer Style Council instead.

The lyrics aren't intended for me, so I am not surprised that they don't land with me. From a sound and vibe point of view it is hard not to notice the similarities to another famous grunge/punk band at that time that was led by her deceased husband. Girl Nirvana. While there is nothing inherently wrong with that, it does come off as fairly derivative, and therefore not the kind of groundbreaking I would hope to hear on this list. Didn't like it 1994, don't enjoy it now. Honestly, I would not have picked Hole for this list. If I were going to pick a riot grrl pioneer, I would haven chosen Joan Jett, The Runaways, or even Suzi Quattro, among many others. "Doll Parts" was the only track I sort of enjoyed.

Not my jam. Quite samey, quite quickly. If music were a wraith, it would be G. Love and the Special Sauce. As the songs played I felt my life-force being drained. None of the tracks made it into my playlist.

I like the musicianship. I like the bravery of trying many genres on one album. It's called folk rock, but I didn't sense any of that. I heard rock, pop, reggae, ska, and psychedelic. Unfortunately none of the songs stuck with me after listening to album.

Being from the Pacific Northwest, it was impossible not to hear a track or see a concert of Mudhoney at some point in time in the late eighties and early 1990s. They were everywhere. One of the earlier punk/grunge bands that spent a great deal of time traveling down to Portland, Oregon regularly for concerts. While I recognize their role in keeping Sub Pop Records alive and opening up the burgeoning scene to the more polished grunge acts that would follow them in the forms of Alice In Chains, Mother Lovebone/Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, I am still not that quite into their records much. Having said that, I did dig the tracks "Generation Genocide", "Good Enough" , and "Fuzzgun '91" enough this time around to add them to my playlist. A 4 for their role in the evolution of grunge, but a 2.5, rounded up to a 3 for the actual execution of this particular album.

I admit I was not familiar with this record, so it was a pleasant surprise. I did enjoy the tracks "The Cisco Kid", "Where Was You At", "Four Cornered Room", and "Beetles in the Bog", but did not find myself digging the others. This is a nice album although I think I might be more partial to their 1975 album, WHY CAN'T WE BE FRIENDS. It is a great album when you realize that your favorite track on the album is not the single, "The Cisco Kid", and is instead the final track, "Beetles in the Bog". In the same club of groove and funkiness as Sly and the Family Stone and Santana, only with more love and friendliness. Not a bad club to be in.

Today was my walking workout and this was a very pleasant album to listen to while walking. My favorite track was the proto-new age title track "Call of the Valley". I've always been a fan of Chris Spheeris' work and this music feels like it was probably an inspiration for him, particularly the track "Bombay" . If you dig the countless other World and New Age artists that came in the decades after this, you will likely dig this as well.

A whole lot of meh. . Props to him for finally expanding his instrumental palette, but I am perplexed why critics keep enjoying this shtick. It's like no one is brave enough point out that emperor has no clothes. The tracks "Love Interruption", "Freedom At 21", and "On And On And On" were bearable. "Love Interruption" frankly sounds like a poor knock off of a Robert Plant/Alison Krauss collaboration. Honestly, another Jack White driven album that no one needs to hear before they die. I would not be surprised if it comes off the list in further editions of the book. It gets a 2, instead of a 1 because Bob Ludwig mastered it.

It is an alright album, but not his best album. The best track is definitely "While You See a Chance". This is not the Steve Winwood album that deserves to be on the list. The album that deserves to be on the list is BACK IN THE HIGH LIFE AGAIN (1986). That was the album that sent tremors through the music industry, with many pop acts adopting the afro-carribbean vibes after that album became a smash hit.

Top 1001 album of all time? I'm from the Pacific Northwest, from near Portland, and Elliot Smith has always been overrated. This album wasn't even one of the top albums of the 1990s, much less of all time. That is one of the longest 36 minutes I can recall. Every song sounds pretty much the same. Very little differentiation. The lyrics are, well, let's put it this way, we get it, you saw My Own Private Idaho once. If he had not died in such a spectacular way, I doubt anyone would have given him this much thought. He would just be another indie rock Harry Nilsson wannabe, another Hound of the Buskerville.

They are not as tight as the Ramones, nor are their songs as sophisticated in their arrangement at this stage, but they do have the seeds of what would become that classic Clash punk sound. This album was definitely an influence on so much of the punk sound that would develop from the 70s up to the present. Has all the trademarks of the typical punk protest album with the predictably whiny punk lyrics that we have all come to expect. Not particularly sophisticated but can be a nice, short, noisy groove in the background. Definitely better than the debut albums by fellow compatriots Sex Pistols and The Jam. I far prefer London Calling and Combat Rock, but this is competent, even if it is a little cheesy. As a side note I would enjoy the other Mick Jones side projects following The Clash even more. Favorite tracks "London's Burning" and "Police & Thieves".

Feels like they had aspirations of Sonic Youth, The Jesus and the Mary Chain, and My Bloody Valentine without the compelling hooks or song arrangements. Just endless amounts of feedback noise masturbation with little to no differentiation between songs. Lyrics don't matter, as you can't possible discern what is said without reading them, so who cares? Perhaps one of the most pointless albums I have ever heard. Favorite "songs": none Definitely does not belong on this list. Just keeps proving my hunch that the Naughties were the worst decade of popular music ever.

A truly great album. Always inspires. Never gets boring. Lots of variety in the exploration. Sonically profound without being divisive. If you have favorite group that uses electronics, they were likely influenced or affected by this record. "Subterraneans" might be of one the best ending tracks to an album ever. I was fortunate enough to see David Bowie's band perform this track with Trent Reznor on saxophone in 1995, and it was very moving. Favorites: "Speed of Life", "Breaking Glass", "Sound and Vision", "A New Career in a New Town", "Warsaw", "Art Decade", "Weeping Wall", and "Subterraneans".

An interesting album because I've always enjoy the US3 album HAND ON THE TORCH, and this album was already presenting that jazzy fresh hip hop sound a whole year before US3's album came out. Not sure how I missed this album back then. I'm don't generally enjoy skits on hip hop albums and it was the same with this one. But I did enjoy that this group has a wacky sense of humor that doesn't border on mean or cruel as other hip hop groups around this era. Having said all that, it is hip hop, and I really did not find any of the tracks compelling enough to add to my collection.

Love this album. Without this album what would we do for the soundtracks of films that star John Cusack? Seriously though, this album was a revelation. A doorway into a secret world of all age shows done by DIY bands all over the U.S. and U.K. An indie album that showed that all of the preconceptions could be thwarted. An acoustic punk album that pointed the direction of indie rock for the next three decades. An album whose song arrangements rocked layered with truly sincere, heart wrenching, and funny lyrics that didn't require a British accent, sneer, or guitar distortion to make them seem heavy. Pocket tight rhythm section that could walk that fine line of rocking and allowing space for the wonderful melodies and harmonies of the acoustic punk to shine threw like beams of moonlight. Recorded during the summer of 1982 in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, the home of Dungeons & Dragons. You can just imagine the legendary adventuring hijinks these guys were getting up to in-between recording and playing out. Amazing that these tracks were largely written and performed by a bunch of eighteen year olds.

Middling surf and garage rock. Doesn't reach the level of Dick Dale & His Del Tones, who were also performing during this era and changed how people viewed surf music and garage rock. Competent covers but nothing special. Sounds like your typical bar band from anywhere around the west coast at this time who were all trying to imitate The Beatles. If the album were mostly originals I could take it a bit more seriously. I honestly don't think this album belongs on the list.

This was not my first listen of this album in its entirety. I am a David Bowie fan, but this record never had impact on me that it had on my friends and colleagues. My album favorites have always been LOW and OUTSIDE, and EARTHLING, with a just smattering of singles here and there from all of his other albums. "Starman", "Ziggy Stardust", and "Suffragette City" are the only tracks off this album that have ever captured my imagination. Depending on my mood on any given day I can go for "Moonage Dream" and occasionally I am up for "Rock n' Roll Suicide"; but I never been into the rest of the album, no matter how many times I hear it. I recognize its importance in the evolution of pop star as art/artifice persona as well its importance as a concept album, but I find it difficult to justify giving it 5 stars or even 4 stars, and I certainly don't think it is the 9th most important album of this exercise, which is where it sits among the global rankings on the list as I listen to it today. So 3 stars it is.

Listening to the final track on this album, "Mother's Lament", a choral song sung by the band member's about a mother losing a child when the album first came out is a much different experience than darkness of knowing what experience awaits Eric Clapton nearly 24 years later. From a percussionists' perspective Ginger Baker, before Neil Peart really opened eyes about what kind of role a rock drummer with jazz chops could have in a band. His use of toms and double bass inspired all kinds of ideas that helped propel a ton of drummers throughout the 1970s. Favorites: "Strange Brew" and "Sunshine of Your Love" Personally I feel that Cream's FRESH CREAM belongs on this list more than DISRAELI GEARS and therefore this album gets a 4 instead of a 5 that I would give to FRESH CREAM for breaking new ground and also having far more tracks I enjoy than DISRAELI GEARS.

Solid composition, recording, and arrangement. Is far more interesting and refined than your typical pub band of the time, and manages to walk a fine line of just enough progressive rock, jazz fusion, folk, polka, and blues to keep it interesting but not too much to frighten off the mainstream pop rock listeners. A 70s proto record that was 2-3 years ahead of its time. At 57 minutes Traffic's second album TRAFFIC has great pacing, but begins to test one's patience. I mean, props to them for providing value for a time when you had to actually purchase an album for a sizable chunk of cash, so you couldn't help but be cautious about which albums you committed to buying. Favorite songs: "You can All Join In", "Feeling' Alright?", and "Medicated Goo".

I enjoy Dolly Parton, so it pains me that while this album is critically acclaimed, and while the narrative lyrics are earnest and well written, the music and the arrangement itself is fairly generic and samey for country music, particular in the 1970s and becomes a tad boring after awhile. "Coat of Many Colors" and "Here I Am" were the only tracks I truly enjoyed off this album. Everything else was meh.

Dug the fun funky Afrobeat music. I would have preferred this album be studio cuts and not be live. The chatter between tracks is nice to hear once, but I wouldn't want to return to it every time I would like to play a track. Probably amazing to experience if you were there, but the tracks are a tad too long to keep interest all the way through unfortunately. I dig me some Ginger Baker, but I don't his presence added anything to this album. Feels like Ginger lending his name to get Fela Kuti a wider audience reach more than anything. While I did enjoy the final track, the drum duel, as a drummer myself I could easily imagine others more than happy to skip this track. I definitely think that Fela Kuti deserves an album on this list, I just don't think it is this one. I think it should probably be ZOMBIE instead.

One of the easiest 5 rankings ever! A tragic event that nearly breaks up the band, but despite that they record THE masterpiece record of their entire career instead. Easily one of the top 25 rock records of all time. The band that defined the pub rock genre. A masterclass of pure rock. My absolute favorites "Hells Bells", "Shoot to Thrill", "Black in Black", "You Shook Me All Night Long", "Givin the Dog a Bone". "and "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution".

The last great album that I enjoyed from RHCP was BLOOD SUGAR SEX MAGIK released in 1991, so CALIFORNICATION is not one of my favorite Red Hot Chili Pepper albums. I didn't really enjoy any of the songs on this album. I remember not enjoying any of the singles when the album came out in 1999 and that hasn't changed with the passage of time. The mix and the production leaves a lot to be desired. This album doesn't bring any of the magic of BLOOD SUGAR SEX MAGIK where it felt the band had discovered a new vibe. It feels like a cynical rehash of "Under the Bridge" from that album over and over and over intermixed with cringey lyrics like "do you smell like a girl when you smile?" I wish that the electronic producer path had worked out because I would have liked to have heard that album. I can imagine that being something that I had not already heard a billion times with RHCP. They would eventually take the path previously not taken with the release of BY THE WAY, so perhaps I am being too harsh. And perhaps Frusciante's reintegration into the band really did require doing an album of 15 songs that really doesn't move the band or their sound forward. But at the end of the day we are left with an album that is way too long and cannot maintain its vibrancy throughout. I couldn't even find the hits that are supposed to litter the first half of the album and I am someone who enjoys a lot of the RHCP catalog from the early eighties right up through BSSM. This was definitely NOT an album that everyone needs to hear before they die. Even Flea, as recently as 2023, thinks that BLOOD SUGAR SEX MAGIK is their best album. That is the album that should be on here. I won't be listening to this album again.

I'm a big fan of The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel, so you would think this would be up my alley, but this album sounded a bit samey from track to track for my tastes. Apparently there were iconic hits, but none of the tracks really grabbed me. It appears that all of their songs that I enjoy are on other albums in their career, particularly those with Neil Young, which is weird because I typically don't enjoy Neil Young's solo career. Great harmonizing but I found the songs boring pretty quickly. I'd rather just listen to another Simon & Garfunkel album. If I had to a pick a track I might want to listen to again, I guess "Marrakesh Express" was okay.

Enjoyed the drums, but far too childish for me. Not sure why it is on the list.

For me it is quite simply one of the most enjoyable albums not only released in the 1990s, but of all time. One of those few albums were the hype is entirely deserved. First time I heard this album I was stunned. There was no other album that sounded at all quite like this. A masterpiece in this genre that no one else other than Depeche Mode has managed to approach since. I love every track on this album. The album was so great that the tracks "Dangerous" and "Mephisto" which were B-sides and did not make the final track list are also amazing. A perfect marriage of electronics, guitars, and 80s production techniques at the height of Martin Gore's songwriting, Alan Wilder's arrangements, and with a producer in Flood that was at the height of his production prowess.

While I was listening to primarily 80s metal, pop, jazz, electronica, and industrial in my youth, it was my Dad who introduced me to this album. My rebellious youth mind wanted to reject this album but my heart betrayed me and opened up completely to this music. "Cool Water" and "El Paso" were regularly played in our house, which was a perfect backdrop between the John Ford films playing on the TV. Marty Robbins always seemed a bit more bad ass than the rest of Country music, except perhaps Johnny Cash. I'm sure the outlaw black cowboy outfit on this album cover didn't hurt, far, far long before Outlaw Country Music was a thing. When you play this album you convey that you are a badass that won't be tamed by anyone's opinion.

Had its time and place but it doesn't do much for me. I had an older cousin who rode on the back of a Harley Davidson everywhere who loved the heck out of this music but I never really warmed up to it. Performances are undeniable. Very tight group. Definitely an influence Southern Rock/Country Rock, so it probably belongs on the list, but I cannot see myself seeking anything off this album again after this exercise.

Typical whiny Neil Young. I don't like preachy music. Not a fan. Waaaaaaay too many albums related to him on this list. I really struggled to get through this album. Few gems on this album, and when they turn up they just remind you how someone else has covered them so much better than the original songwriter. Definitely won't be revisiting this album anytime soon.

In my opinion, WAR was the most complete U2 album prior to the release of THE JOSHUA TREE. Favorite songs "Sunday Bloody Sunday", "Seconds", "New Year's Day", "Drowning Man", "The Refugee" , and "Two Hearts Beat As One". The music is not only interesting sounding for the time, but manages to increase audio production quality without losing any urgency or vitality. A more interesting album to me than The Clash's LONDON CALLING.

Like most albums by The Who, they've got three big hits and a bunch of middling songs. But boy were those hits fantastic! "Baba O'Riley" is the template for new wave before punk had even happened yet. Further, this song has had a massive cultural impact that is hard to overstate. "Behind Blue Eyes" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" are great anthems. The first communicated in quiet suppressed rage and depression of a failed personal relationship, that could easily be misheard as a ballad, and the second a cynical stadium anthem song about the futility of revolution. Outside of its time and place it is probably an album with a rating of 3, but taken in context for its time and place and the impact it had on much of the music that come over the next 50 years, it is easily a 4.

Important because of its injection of latin rock into the mainstream of popular music in the United States. The hits were the covers of "Black Magic Woman" and "Oye Como Va", that appear in the first half of the album that sort of is a concept suite about meeting Abraxas (which in the Bible is a word for God), as a black female. The playing and arrangements are inspiring, while the flip side of the album trails off into what feels like middling collection of blues driven riffs and roars that are occasionally accompanied by standard Latin American rhythm sections.

Easy listening country music. A pleasant album that accurately depicts what it is like the for those of us who have worked the night life for decades. Tight performances and the dynamics were handled with the subtlety of an experienced pro.

While I prefer most Fleetwood Mac albums to many other comparable bands, TUSK, is one of my least favorite Fleetwood Mac albums. The Flawed masterpiece from Fleetwood Mac that deserves to be on this list is TANGO IN THE NIGHT. Far more interesting sonically and definitely far better produced than TUSK which honestly does not deserve a place on this list. Favorite tracks from TUSK: "Think About Me" and "Brown Eyes".

The worst thing about this band is the singer/songwriter Mark E. Smith. Everybody else in this band sounds skilled and on top of their game. His speak singing style is performed terribly and feels uninspired. We get it, you heard a Stooges record once. The lyrics tend to get lost in the mix, so it just sounds like someone hanging around in the background talking over the band constantly. After a few songs I felt the urge to tell that guy to shut the fuck up and let the band play. Even by post punk and indie rock standards this album sucks. I'll give 2 stars for everyone but Mark E Smith's contributions. If I were forced to choose favorites based entirely on the instrumentals, it would be "It's a Curse", "Paranoia Man in Cheap Shit Room", "Service", and "Past Gone Mad".

One of the post punk/goth great albums of all time!

Were they a proto punk pioneer? Yes. Does that mean their album belongs on this list? No. With the exception of "Kick Out the Jams" there is nothing else of value on this album, except for the forward thinking intro of the psychedelic "Starship" at the end of the album. It should be noted that pretty much every cover of "Kick Out the Jams" by anyone else is performed and recorded better than the original. My favorite was a collaboration between Henry Rollins and Bad Brains from the PUMP UP THE VOLUME film soundtrack. By the way, that entire record is amazing. This on the other hand is a terrible recording of live performances carried out over two days in 1968.

Another crappy Neil Young album? Really? The only good thing about this is the buried vehicle on the album cover. For the love of mike, please no more Neil Young.

They don't seem differentiated from each other much which makes the whole album feel pretty samey fairly quick and thus fairly forgettable.

Way too long. "Mama Said Knock You Out" is the only track that has stood the test of time in the wider musical community. The album is more of the same boring humble brag that litters pretty much most of, if not, all of the hip hop albums of this era.

I was a teenager when this album came out, but because of the circles I traveled in, that it was before the Internet, and that the The Cure did not get much radio play over here, I did not discover DISINTEGRATION properly until the mid-1990s. I am embarrassed to admit that as a major Spider-man fan I was honestly drawn into the album by his appearance in the lyrics of "Lullaby" when I finally did discover this album. I don't fit the stereotypes that people tend to ascribe to fans of The Cure. While I did have a penchant for black clothing I was not a huge fan of Tim Burton films and I've never smoked, much less clove cigarettes. I don't drink and I've never dabbled in hallucinogenic drugs. Despite that, as the years have passed on this album just keeps growing on me. I've come to understand the songs in new and profound ways that were previously unknown to me when I was younger, which is the best thing you can say about any music album in your collection. One of the best albums to chart self existential isolationism. A person literally coming apart at the seams, untethered from everything and everyone they ever believed in. "Lovesong", I think, with no hyperbole, might be one of the most beautiful and poignant love ballads ever written, IN ANY GENRE. So many classic great songs that have stood the test of time: "Plainsong", "Pictures of You", "Lovesong", "Lullaby", "Fascination Street", and of course "Disintegration". Hard to believe the album is 72 minutes long. Among the easiest 72 minutes I've ever experienced. It has inspired and continues to inspire millions of musicians in terms of its lyrcism, musicianship, sound, and production. The romanticism revisitation of musical motifs throughout the album were unusual for the time this album came out and has been mimicked numerous times since. It really is the magnum opus of the band. A fucking classic!

This is a Bruce Springsteen impression of Bob Dylans. As someone who does not enjoy Bob Dylan albums this makes this one of the most boring albums I’ve ever heard.

It is a painful experience getting through hip-hop in English. In French hip-hop is completely inaccessible.

An amazing debut album that firmly planted Van Halen on the Rock map. 5 out of the first 6 tracks are rock classics (including one heavy cover of The Kinks "You Really Got Me". It is the B side of this album that descends from greatness into merely being good. An easy 4 for quality, innovating, and standing the test of time. It's not their best album as that would be a toss up between 1984, 5150, OU812, or FOR UNLAWFUL CARNAGE. Not only did this album sell well, but I remember a bunch of those sales coming from guitarists who bought the album just listen to "Eruption" over and over in an effort to figure out Eddie Van Halen's fretboard tapping style.

I have to be honest. I have not received any enjoyment from the country rock tinged singer/songwriter movement of the 1970s. Cannot stand any of them really.

It took a track or two to adjust but soon I was digging the wild instrumentation choices and how they were used on this album. I love (no pun intended) that there is so much variety of genre on this album. It probably pissed off music critics, but it made this very short album a surprise with each track. Favorites: "Orange Skies", "The Castle", and "She Comes In Colors" I enjoyed the sonic composition of "Revelations" and the excellent performances (at least instrumentally anyway), but I could have done without the lyrical meditation on blowjobs. Who knew Han Solo was a LOVE fan?

While I am a fan of the genre this is not one of the stand out albums from the genre, so I am genuinely, no sarcasm at all, perplexed why this was added to the list. As I said before this spot on the list should be occupied instead by Oakenfold's Bunkka, an album that really changed how people arranged and recorded dance and electronica music. Produced well enough to escape reaching a 1, but not culturally relevant at all, so a 2 it is.

While it may seem tame now this album was seismic in influence. So many pop stars and indie bands owe something to ABBA in general and this album in particular. Such a refreshing album after the doldrums of the California singer/songwriter era in the first half of the 70s. Favorite tracks: "Dancing Queen", "Knowing Me, Knowing You", "Why Did It Have to Be Me?", "Tiger", "Arrival", and "Fernando".

As a big fan of Buddy Holly and the Crickets, I want to like Waylon Jennings music, and while I respect the place this album has in outlaw country's formation, it doesn't hit resonate with me the way a Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, or even Marty Robbins album does.

I agree with one of the original critic's, Jerry Gilbert of SOUNDS Magazine, that Nick Drake's songs, particularly on this album beg the need for wider instrumentation and backing tracks. Also, all Nick Drake could benefit from dynamic changes occasionally, even if your subject matter is depression. While I respect that folks resort to busking, I don't want to listen to a whole album of arrangements that barely amounts to a demo tape. More agreeable than Bob Dylan albums, but still pretty tedious, no matter the subject matter. Well written lyrics, but I prefer a sonic palette that explores a wider breadth. Poetry is not music. Overrated by recent hipsters. No better or worse than his other album that I heard on this list FIVE LEAVES LEFT.

Usually I am open to cabaret and musical theatre, but the melodies and hooks don't seem very compelling. Sounds like the kind of terrible thing you'd hear in an off broadway show, or rather the thing that inspired the terrible off broadway show compositions in the first place.

Acceptable quality lyrics but performed over the vamping of the most middling of blues and jazz scales you've ever heard that ultimately sounds like one long uninterrupted track. In my opinion the work of the bass player should have earned them the bulk of the royalties. Not much, if any real music elsewhere. Rather it seems an excuse for a spoken word album that also doubles as a half-assed stand up act. Wait's voice is still really annoying.

Nice arrangements and production but at the end of the day it is The Beach Boys cynically reaching out with hippie BS for a money grab. The whole point of The Beach Boys as a band was escapist rock. A place where you could leave the body politic behind for a little while, and get away from everyone's struggles for awhile. Somewhere to live in pure joy for a bit. This album is cheese ball eye-rolling boring protest rock album in the first half and a bit more fun, mature, and interesting on the back half but still a mixed bag of oddities. It makes clear that Brian Wilson was the only great composer in this band. Everyone else was often more miss than hit. "Feel Flows" was fun from an instrumental performance vibe and doesn't feature the lame lyricism that the protest songs suffer from. "A Day in the Life of a Tree" is an interesting re-imagination of gosepl music from an environmentalist point of view. "'Til I Die" is a pretty melodic song but darker than an abandoned mine. Cheesy lyrics drag this album down but the production and performances manage to drag it back up to a 2.5, which I will have to round up to 3.

I've never liked this album. After all this time it still feels like the album that the band made before they really understood what makes for good hooks and songs. It is definitely not on my list of albums that must be heard before death. I would include one of their other more polished albums than this one.

I somehow missed hearing this album or any of its songs over the past four decades and I can honestly say I don't think I missed anything. It wasn't really my jam, but I applaud the audacity of Jim and Meatloaf taking the piss all the way to the bank. Not a Todd Rundgren fan either, but I'll give it a 3 for the cheeseball production. No favorites. I'm glad to move on to the next one.

Horrendously overrated band and album that couldn't end fast enough. This was a painful listen.

Anyone who has seen my ratings knows that I've been harsh on the album releases that came out in the first decade of the 21st century. So, it might come as a surprise that I think this is one of the few standout Pop albums from that first decade. One of the those albums where it is clear that performer and their producers were all forging together in the same direction and the result is an album that honors the Michael Jackson influence that is so obviously present with everyone associated with this album.

Ahh the prog glory of Yes. It was a guy named Paul down the hall from me in university who learned that I loved Rush and thought, well then you might like Yes. And boy was he right. When I heard their cover of the WEST SIDE STORY broadway standard "Something's Coming" that was on the flip side of their 1968 debut single "Sweetness", I knew that something wasn't just coming, something cool had already arrived and some twenty something years later I had been missing out. While this album is not my favorite of theirs, I still love "Yours Is No Disgrace" and "I've Seen All Good People: A. Your Move, B. All Good People". The rest are solid recordings, performances, and arrangements, but "I've Seen All Good People" in particular is transcendent, and takes me to those exciting years when music was vital and a musical adventure awaited in every new person and place met. Besides who can't dig a band who regularly writes epic songs adapted from books like STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert Heinlein and THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien, and has the good taste to get Roger Dean to paint your later album covers? Their no RUSH, but who is?

Unlike most of his contemporaries, at least Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam knew how to write folk songs with solid instrumental hooks, instrumentation choices, and arrangements. It is solid enjoyable songwriting, even if I personally don't agree with his lyrical points of view.

There seems to be no notable reason for this album to be on the list. A very ho hum brit pop release from the late 1990s that is a rehash of a sound from 5 years earlier in the decade.

After listening to this record, as a producer I would have suggested only one change, which was to take the instruments in the higher registers and encourage them to drop them down one octave, in order to let Poly Styrene have that entire register to her vocals, because it was difficult at times to enjoy the vocals because there wasn't enough headroom for them to shine. As a fan of grrl rock and punk, I am aware of the influence this band had on the grrl rock and punk throughout the late 70s and 80s, so it gets a 3 instead of the customary 2 I would have given this record if they just were just an ordinary punk act that came along decades later.

Other than "Respect" the album doesn't really shine the way you'd expect from an Aretha Franklin record.

A common and monotonous hip hop album about the same three subjects as always.

Great instrumental and production performances and a fantastic album cover painting, but at the end of the day it is all ruined, as it always is by the singing of Elvis Costello, with his narrow range and terrible intonation that keeps the songs from soaring. Another waste of space on the list. I've never understood how Elvis Costello managed to pull the wool over so many critics eyes. Way, way overrated. He tries on different genres, but is not often able to authentically live in them.

Completely new to me, but finally a gem on this list. I'll admit I was a bit apprehensive at the length and was a tad skeptical that a debut album could pull off what the amazing album cover hinted at, but even while every track was not a favorite, I absolutely loved the ambition of this album's sound and story. The production is top notch. As the album ping pongs around through time and various genres, she credibly explores the sound of Shirley Bassey, Lauryn Hill, David Bowie, Wizard of Oz, Metropolis, Diana Ross, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Michael Jackson, Outkast, and Prince among many others, and it was fun picking out the music, broadway musical theater, novel, and film references littered throughout. Lots of the depth here that takes repeat listens to catch them all. "Make the Bus (featuring Of Montreal) reminds me of 70s era David Bowie Glam Rock. While she doesn't quite have the pipes to pull of a Shirley Bassey-esque performance, I did really what she managed to put down in "Sir Greendown". The counterpoint of the songs big bold 60s big band ballad sound contrasting against the medieval imagery in a cyberpunk metaverse was fascinating. She manages to pull of the Bassey-esque siren's call in "BaBopBye Ya". An album for fans, such as a myself of concept albums like Rush' "2112", David Bowie's OUTSIDE, Billy Idol's CYBERPUNK, and Radiohead's KID A. Favorites: "Sir Greendown", "Make the Bus (featuring Of Montreal)", and "Wonderland", "57821 (featuring Deep Cotton)", and "BeBopBye Ya"

One of my favorite Beach Boys albums. A ton of favorites. The album that inspired The Beatles to try song arrangements and sounds even further afield. It inspired most of the rest of Western Popular music. A very influential album. Indie Rock's sound basically began in earnest with this album. Favorites: "Wouldn't it be Nice?", "You Still Believe In Me", "Sloop John B", "God Only Knows", "Caroline, No", and of course the tour de force instrumental and title track "Pet Sounds".

A tacky hour of a dude bragging about his newfound wealth. Ick.

Middling rock, even for the 90s, that was only made notable by a member of the band seeing the film Eddie and the Cruisers one too many times.

Inoffensive, but not bringing anything new, just playing very old blues and marrying it to 60s rock (think The Rolling Stones) and 70s soul sensibilities. Feels like it should have appeared in episodes of LUTHER. Doesn't have a wide enough scope to be in a Bond film, but could saunter into a Guy Richey picture. Not bad, but nothing that reveals anything new in the genre. Nothing played or performed that makes me feel like that could only come from The Black Keys. I wish they put something of themselves in that was uniquely their own sound instead of trying to carbon copy others.

Quirky. “Pablo Picasso” was hilarious. I became aware of this song by David Bowie covering it on his 2003 album REALITY.

I had heard "Sympathy for the Devil" before when it was used in the film INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE in the mid-90s, but had not heard anything else off of BEGGARS BANQUET. So, I was excited when this album came up because I was looking forward to lots of unbridled creativity in the same vein of "Sympathy for the Devil". Unfortunately, with the exception of "Factory Girl", the other tracks felt like a melange of Blues/Roots Rock sameness. It feels like everyone in British rock, or hell rock from anywhere at the time was truly experimenting more with music composition and arrangement and pushing the boundaries forward than The Rolling Stones. I have immense respect for Glyn Johns as engineer, but I have never enjoyed ANY of the albums that Jimmy Miller produced. BEGGARS BANQUET was technically recorded well, and the instrumentalists in The Rolling Stones performed well, but at the end of the day it cannot save the album from being boring.

Beautiful live performance with a crazy story.

He spawned the things about Bob Dylan that annoy me the most, and he doesn't have the songwriting chops of any of the folk greats, so no Yodeley - heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee hoo hoo!

461 OCEAN BOULEVARD is mostly covers, and that is okay, but while the whole album is a technical specimen, it ultimately sounds soulless and lacks the vitality of the originals. The result is a fairly ho hum boring album that brings neither creative inspiration nor swelling emotion.

I tried this album when it came out in the 1990s. Did not enjoy it then, but I hoped that maybe my opinion had changed as I got older. At the end of the day, it was more bearable than Oasis. Albarn gets better with Gorillaz, but compared to what was going on elsewhere in the music world in the 1990s, PARKLIFE was pretty middling. Technically produced but no new ideas on this album, just a rehashing of previous British band's ideas. The polka track, "The Debt Collector" truly feels like the band taking the piss. Their fellow citizens Pop Will Eat Itself made a far more interesting record that also came out in 1994, DOS DEDOS MI AMIGOS. Far more creative than this album, and I would argue has a sound that is aging better than this album. Seal's 2nd album was also released in 1994. A far more impactful Pop album that year, in the U.S., and around the world, and I'm not sure it is even on the list, which in my opinion is a huge mistake. An aside about the album cover. I don't think animal cruelty is a good look. Spanish bullfighting gets justified criticism from the Brits, so when will dog racing also be made illegal in the UK? Non Sequitur Thought not related to this album at all: Am I the only one that feels like they missed a massive moneymaking opportunity by not partnering their "Song 2" with the chocolate drink Yoo Hoo in an ad campaign?

This entire album just sounds like a grunge record from Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins released 10 years too late. Listeners should just stop fucking about and go listen to the real thing. The Vines bring nothing of themselves or originality to this album and therefore it does not belong on this list. There were plenty of bands that were releasing original and vital records in the naughties and this is not one of them; and frankly this lists' record of selecting records from the naughties has been utter shite.

Such a strong debut album filled with awesome harmonies! Nobody ever quite wrote songs and performed them quite the way the Mama and Papas did. They do a fine job of walking a very careful line between somber and self-reflective and never fall entirely into the entirely too easy morose. An album filled with hooks that leave you humming all day. Undeniable all-time classics in "Monday, Monday", "Go Where You Wanna Go", and "California Dreamin'". Fantastic takes on covers of "I Call Your Name" by Lennon and McCartney, "Do You Wanna Dance" by Bobby Freeman, and "Spanish Harlem" by Leiber and Spector.

This is the definitive album from the funky punks of City of Angels. They came to the attention of most of us when they they appeared in a Red Hot Chili Peppers poster photo taken in the famous crosswalk across from Abbey Road studios, wearing nothing but socks covering their family jewels. Their cover of Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground" on their album MOTHER'S MILK would give glimpses of what kind of performance and song arrangements they were capable of, but they would not breakout in the world's consciousness until the release of this album. Their music brought everyone from skater punks to funk purists together. Favorites: All-time classics "Give it Away", "Suck My Kiss", "Blood Sugar Sex Magic", "Under the Bridge" and lesser known tracks "Breaking the Girl" and "Naked in the Rain". To those who keep calling it white rap, you are missing the point. It is and was SoCal funky punk.

The album that defined the glam rock genre. Without this album you don't have a glam rock David Bowie era. Without this album you don't have half the hair metal bands of the 80s, who were all influenced by Marc Bolan's sound and look.

Not my favorite McCartney solo albums (that would be McCartney II), but it is a very good album. Thankfully, as a songwriter McCartney has the the good sense to know when a concept has been played out and leave the audience wanting more as he moves on to something else. He also keeps things interesting by providing lots of variety in his compositions and taking risks (like the outro Glasses on the back half of Hot As Sun) and the homage to the indigenous tribe of "Kreen-Akrore". McCartney's solo album, lauded as a progenitor of lo-fi albums is waaaay better than any of the other lo-fi artists at the time. I'm looking at you Neil Young, etc. I enjoyed this album very much. It does have the feeling of intimately sitting in with a master songwriter who is at the top of his craft. All lean hooks, no fat, no indulgence. It is kind of crazy to realize that with "Live and Let Die" and BAND ON THE RUN coming in 1973, he was only going to get even better.

This is a challenging album, no doubt about it, but kudos to the band for taking the risk. Tres chic 90s angst is replaced with 2000s The Great Recession paranoia and despair depicted by a slew of Minor 3rd chord progressions over adventures in multiple genres. I'm not a fan of Gibbons voice, but fortunately the instrumentals and arrangements or so crazy on this album that I have plenty of other interesting things to listen to on these tracks.

Nick Cave's music never speaks to me. I find his singing annoying, the lyrics trite, and the arrangements and instrumental selections boring, no more matter which genre he approaches. While he may have been experiencing true pathos after the collapse of his relationship with PJ Harvey, this comes off as a terrible inauthentic artifice of hymns and blues. This god and drug addict expels no heartbroken true wisdom on this album. Here is a secret that not many seem to have caught on to: Nick Cave is a not a particularly gifted lyricist. How he has managed to fool so many for so long is baffling.

Captures the 90s spirit of everything but the kitchen sink. It's worth listening to at least one time.

The albums it inspired are far more important for people to listen to than this one.

While RUMOURS is a fine album, it is not my favorite album from Fleetwood Mac. Perhaps I don't click as much with this album as others because I have not experienced divorce or addiction. The latter the reason for the former on this album. I only enjoyed "Dreams", "Go Your Own Way", "The Chain", and "Gold Dust Woman", which were already in my collection, and I think the album cover is actually underwhelming. I honestly feel that TANGO IN THE NIGHT is a better album in every way.

So far, this album is my favorite of the Slipknots on the list. Having said that , Slipknot has multiple albums on this list while classic thrash bands like Suicidal Tendencies have zero albums on this list. That seems nutty.

Competent covers, not bad, not great, just okay. I've never been a fan of Rod's 70s era work. I much prefer his music once he gets to the 80s, and the more interesting soundscapes with CAMOUFLAGE and OUT OF ORDER being peak Rod Stewart.

A seminal record for the punk movement, for sure, particularly in the United States, but while I appreciate their influence, you've heard everything they have to offer once you've finished listening to "Blitzkrieg Bop". A comedy act that masqueraded as a band.

Pleasant enough arrangements with lots of instrumental flavors, but lacks the kind of strong hooks that were released in albums by fellow colleagues in the music industry during the year of 1969. I can see why it was not a commercial success that year. Also, a bit too self-loathing about British life in my opinion. I understand it is a tradition to take the piss, but after awhile the pessimism gets tiresome. As a fan of concept albums I do give them credit for holding the story together over the whole album. The theme is clear and consistent. In my opinion, by 1969 their best songs such as "All Day and All of the Night", "You Really Got Me", and "A Well Respected Man" are all behind them and it was middling albums from here on out. Favorite track: "Australia"

This album never came up in anything I was consuming so, you can imagine my confusion, when, after hearing this album, I discovered how many copies it sold. How many relatives does she have in India? As has been said by others this album is smooth in production, and performance, but the problem for me is that there is nothing on this album that screams to me THAT THIS IS A SONG THAT ONLY Norah Jones would perform that way. I expect that to be the bare minimum of a bar to leap over for an album to be relevant on an all time list. There is no personality. It sounds like many, many other highly competent performers I've heard over the years in jazz bar lounge, hotel bar lounges, and jazz festivals. The difference? They did not have the Ravi Shankar name association to get a deal done with Blue Note Records. The best albums reveal to you what a performer/performers personality and inner thoughts are. You come out of this album as in the dark about what makes Norah Jones tick as you did going in. Super boring, and this is from a guy who loves Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield, Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, Peggy Lee, Patsy Cline, Barbra Streisand, Nat King Cole, Seal, and countless others that Norah is drawing upon but not moving forward at all. I cannot imagine myself feeling an insatiable urge to listen to this again. Definitely not an album that belongs on this list. Even worse is that this jazz rock record is included but the authors don't include Sting's THE SOUL CAGES or TEN SUMMONER TALES? Both of which are essential albums to this jazz rock genre. I have to wonder if Gordon Sumner stepped on the authors' dicks or something. Perplexing protocols for this list.

Their abandonment of Bob Dylan covers and creation of the first major British folk rock album raises my esteem of this album over UNHALFBRICKING that also appears on this list. As someone who is not a British citizen, it was fun hearing traditional British and Celtic folksongs that I was unfamiliar with performed as folk rock. It was the sort of album that left me whistling jaunty tunes the rest of the morning.

Better than OK COMPUTER and HAIL TO THE THIEF and worse than KID A. The only 2 tracks I enjoyed were "All I Need" and "Reckoner". As an album, I personally don't think it works. I'm also convinced that Radiohead is way over represented on this list due to recency bias. Still find his voice annoying as hell.

First I admit this album was not created for me, but honestly I felt that this, for good copyright sample reasons, was not as enjoyable as their previous album. I was familiar with the Anthrax cover of "Bring the Noise" before hearing this album so I enjoyed that track, and less so everything else on this album.

Smooth jazz pop. Truly the best of the Steely Dan albums. I enjoyed the hit single, the bossa nova inspired "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" the most, but there is certainly some quality arrangements and performances on this album. I think some, if not most, will think of this as just pleasant background music unfortunately.

This was painful. Think I'm going to settle down with a Roger Whittaker palette cleanser... Not a fan of the albums he has produced nor of his solo work. Maybe one day the song "Paris 1919" will grow on me, but I doubt it. This album didn't do anything for me.

Once, when I was young I found a copy of this cassette in the road, while walking, and that was my first exposure to Laibach, and the industrial music genre. This tape blew my mind. The most esoteric thing I had been listening to prior to this discovery was the Swiss Godfathers of Electronica, Yello (whose absence from this list, by the way, is unforgivable). Mind blowing that they managed to make this album while trapped in the Soviet Union (now modern day Slovenia). It broadened my horizons about the notion about what music could be, and urged me on a path to discovering all kinds of bold and adventurous music. It was a path that would lead me over the next few years to Ministry, KMFDM, Die Warzau, Skinny Puppy, Sister Machine Gun and countless other acts that were within the sight of the industrial genre. This is definitely one of the formative acts and albums that impacted not only the industrial genre, but eventually the genres of dance and pop. Their Wagnerian and Kratwerk influences shine through in a completely. new sound.

A competent pop album that has that one hit that we all dig (whether we want to admit it or not). The cover of Sonny Bono and Cher's "The Beat Goes On" was fun as well. Wasn't the first female pop star around, but was certainly one that came around at just the right time to capitalize on the large millennial tween audience, borrowing every marketing technique developed by Madonna and her handlers in the previous decade. It certainly didn't hurt that she and her fellow contemporaries who would also breakout in the music and acting careers over the next few years had all primed their audience with their multi-year appearances on the Disney Channel's reboot of the Mickey Mouse Club.

Rush is one of my favorite bands. Just putting that out there first. Having said that, this is not at the top of my favorite albums list of Rush. I understand why the authors probably included the album, but frankly I probably would have selected other Rush albums over this one. It is true that this album was a big reason why their career continued, but, IMO, PERMANENT WAVES, SIGNALS, PRESTO, ROLL THE BONES, COUNTERPARTS, and TEST FOR ECHO are all better albums that I would considered including over this one. Unlike certain artists that get four and five spots on this list, I feel like this is a band with such varied and unique eras of sound that have influenced so many different genres of bands, and demonstrably so much better musicians and song crafters than many of the artists on this list, that it is beyond silly that they don't have 4 or 5 albums on this list, at a minimum. As others have stated the gem on this album is the 2112 overture, but after that I like "Lessons" and "Something for Nothing" also.

Without this album the world wouldn't have a ton of hip hop. Tracks I enjoyed: "Give up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)" and "Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples".

Brit rock from the 1990s really was among the most boring music coming out in the world. Dreadfully bad retreading of terrible Elvis Costello stuff. Not the first time I'd heard stuff from this album. My first contact was the track "I Spy" from this album when it appeared on the Mission Impossible soundtrack. Was one of the weakest tracks on that soundtrack. Best British album that came out in 1995? Not this one. It was David Bowie's OUTSIDE. While bands like Pulp were trying to make albums that sounded like David Bowie from the 1960s and 1970s, David himself had moved on and was making challenging records in new genres. Just like Blur, London Suede, and Oasis, Pulp managed to make another album of boring ass indie rock that is bereft of actual emotion and relies entirely too much on turn of phrase lyrics and not enough on sonically interesting music with good hooks.

In my opinion DOCUMENT is the first R.E.M. album that held together over the course of the whole album in terms of performance, instrumentation, and songwriting. Also the first R.E.M. album to have some bangers in the form of "It's End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) and "The One I Love". Outside those two songs the album is pretty meh.

First time hearing this album, but I can already their influences on other bands I've listened to over the years, particularly acts like Suicidal Tendencies and I cannot help but wonder if their sound inspired Chris Vrenna's drum ideas in Nine Inch Nails songs like "Wish" and "March of the Pigs". It feels like Offspring was probably a big fan of this band as well. You can hear this inspiring the earliest years of Metallica's thrash years on albums like KILL THEM ALL. OUT OF STEP is the kind of sound that I respect exists in the world, but also the kind of sound that I don't want to hear daily, so I probably won't be putting this on again real soon. I need a little more melody and harmony in my diet these days, but I probably would have loved this album when I was 13 or 14 and was quite deep into the skating and freestyle world. I particularly would have been attracted to their straight edge mentality. I also respect the rhythmic tightness of this band. Very tidy, given that it is incredibly easy to be sloppy in this genre.

An utterly forgettable album except for that one track, and that one track is only memorable because the entire groove that is great about the song was sampled from a different band's previous hit. I was a fool that bought this album in 1997. Totally regretted it. Their previous album was bollocks, so I should have known. Ironically the songs don't have much, if any, verve at all. The album is way too long. Ashcroft's lyrics leave a lot to desire. The drums are boring, the guitars are boring. One of the most boring albums I ever owned. Way, way overrated. Maybe if someone had separated the wheat from the chaff to get under 45 minutes and did some passes on the remaining songs, supplying them with varying tempos and dynamics so that they actually feel like they go somewhere once in a while this album might have been saved. I feel dirty giving them additional streaming income by listening to this lump one more time.

The album was definitely influential. There is no denying it, but I would argue it influenced hip hop for the worse. Did not enjoy the messaging and was bored by the production when it came out. People keeping saying it aged poorly, but it was always a collection of bad ideas that appealed to a group of listeners, not just black, that wanted to burn the world down. 2 stars for the influence, but you couldn't pay me to listen to this again. Irresponsible childish bullshit.

A throwback album to the production days of Quincy Jones, Jimmy Jam, and Terry Lewis that is about subject matter that I cannot relate to. Recorded well, but didn't resonate much with me, and I suspect this album won't have a place on this list long term.

I wanted to like it given the tragic back story, but it did not quite come together. I do hear influences in there that were expressed on David Bowie's LOW and Radiohead's KID A. It was unfortunate we didn't get to hear what it might have sounded like if it had been completed before his accident.

Music is not defined by poetry. Everyone who is honest with themselves confesses that Bob Dylan is not a great musician. This is a list about 1001 albums of MUSIC that we should all hear at least once. By the definition that I just laid out this is not a great album of MUSIC and it is a matter of perspective and opinion whether it is even an okay, or great album of poetry. I really did not enjoy this. Listening to his music is a slog. That harmonica is murder on the ears. Occasionally his songs sound better when someone else performs them, but more often than not they always fall flat. "Like a Rolling Stone" is bearable as quality folk. The rest is just tedious. Bob Dylan is quite possibly the most overrated American artist ever. A part of me wants to give this one star, but I confess that the performances by the other musicians, the engineering, and the production is deserving of more. The only problem here is Bob. So, two stars it is.

While they have never been among my favorites of the metal genre, there is no denying that this album has the hooks from beginning to end, and that they certainly influenced so many of the bands and sounds that would spawn in the metal genre right up to the present.

Among their contemporaries this was one of the punk albums that was easiest to listen to, but that was also probably why they were perhaps less influential to the late 70s and early 80s punk scene than say Joy Division, Sex Pistols, The Clash, Killing Joke, and The Ramones. I can hear how and why they influenced some of the artists I enjoy. Favorite tracks: "Fiction Romance" and "Autonomy"

One of the best harmony bands ever. Brian Wilson was not only a great singer but you can hear the attention to detail on these tracks as their producer as well. It was also a nice expansion of their sound with many more instrumental choices to complement the more complex songs that Brian Wilson and Mike Love had written. This album does have a number of my favorites, including the Bobby Freeman cover of "Do You Wanna Dance", "When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)", "Help Me, Rhonda", and "Dance, Dance, Dance".

Still one of the all time bangers. So many solid tracks, most of the them standards that get played everywhere and by everyone, all the time. My favorites are "Taxman", "Eleanor Rigby", "Here, There, and Everywhere", "Yellow Submarine", "Got To Get You Into My Life", and "Tomorrow Never Knows". REVOLVER Opened the door to so many new pop genres, and revealed inspired production techniques that everyone else would quickly adopt. What is there to say about this album that hasn't been said by more articulate people than I? Also, I love "Yellow Submarine" and I will not apologize for it.

I wanted to like this album, but her voice, lyrics, and compositional sound choices didn't move me in the least. None of these songs stood out as something I felt like I needed to hear a second time. I found the album far too long for this genre. Tempos needed more variation to give the songs a little more independence from one another. I am beginning to realize that if an album turns up on here, and it has been either nominated for a Mercury Prize, or even it won the prize, there is a very good chance that I will not enjoy that album. Too often I have found those albums to be incredibly boring, pretentious chores. As boring as a Norah Jones record. I'll take my Suzanne Vega records and let myself out.

This Lorde album feels more inconsistent than her previous effort PURE HEROINE. Album felt algorithmic. I'm also not a fan of her singing style. None of the tracks stood out to me as bangers that had instrumental and vocal ideas that really captured my attention. While critics lauded her for more mature songwriting subjects on this album, I felt the subject matter on this album actually felt a bit more, please forgive me, sophomoric. On PURE HEROINE she explores her own views on class, wealth, and gender, and on this she explores breakups, hookups, and crying in her taxi. Most of it didn't quite evoke anything for me. I did enjoy the "Hard Feelings" half of "Hard Feelings/Loveless" when it felt like not only the lyrics came together but the sonic ideas got some bold risks, but then it was gutted when the conventional arrangement of "Loveless" began.

Sound quality is pretty atrocious, but the vitality and songwriting is definitely there. I had heard of this album but never got around to listening to it. Glad I finally rectified that. A fun tongue-in-cheek album in a world that often takes everything far too seriously.

I enjoyed the solid 80s production, but I was not a fan of her singing style which seems averse to expressing a melody or a hook. A lyrical and vocal style such as hers seems to undercut the heft of her lyrical story. I prefer the way Tori Amos handles this by giving her vocal melodies more weight, and not shying away from vamping traditional verse/chorus ideas. Bush is all over the place. I really did dig the instrumentals. A great jazz rock/fusion vibe that I would have enjoyed listening to even more if the vocals had been stripped out altogether.

Meh. I prefer Rod Stewart’s solo career albums.

Adequate production, inoffensively boring and generic from a songwriting point of view. GOLD adds nothing new to the genre, even for 2001 standards. The only artistic risk taken on the album was his album cover with the upside down American flag. The lyrics don't resonate and his vocals are annoying.

For me, this is the definitive Prince album. Every song, but the cringe worthy "Darling Nikki" and the "Computer Blue" suite, are absolute bangers. Love the 80s production. It wasn't soul, r&b, or pop. It was just pure Prince.

Such an enjoyable proto-soul album comprised of a bunch of singles that were never meant to be an album but work seamlessly nonetheless. A soul singer that probably does not receive the amount of attention in the wider circles of music outside the Soul genre that he very much deserves. He deserves to be in the conversation of greatest soul singers with the likes of James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, and Sam Cooke.

I enjoyed 90s dance, electro, and industrial, but Fatboy Slim was never one of them. I find his mixes to be generally way too ordinary. This was okay for a very brief period of time in the 90s before groups like The Prodigy, and The Chemical Brothers showed that you could more than this and expand the dance format in so many interesting ways.

A sublime 80s enjoyment when playing with gender appearance wasn't already old hat. Annie's pipes are legendary. I was introduced to this album when they performed at the 1984 Grammys which I happened to watch with my parents. I was captivated by Dave Stewart's performance on the electric violin (an instrument I had never seen at a rock concert before) and Annie's Elvis Presley outfit, complete with sideburns. Features great synth and electronic production at time when it was not easy to both before MIDI became a thing. MIDI had only been introduced in the early part of 1983 before Stewart and Lennox put to work later that same year, meshing the sounds of Kraftwerk with soul and R&B that contributed to the formation of a new genre of artists that would become Romanticism 80s pop. This album would inspire many of the band and genres to come in the 809s and all the way to present.

Wow, did this list get this one wrong. More overrated 90s Brit Rock. An album that is not only not an all time classic, It wasn’t even truly relevant in 1994-1995 when the most relevant post punk/grunge female fronted bands that do belong on this list were Garbage in 1995, and The Cranberries in 1994. The album is a long 40 minutes, if you know, what I mean. Truly a bit of a slog. The only truly banging song on here is the hit, "Connection", and everything else sounds a bit too samey, with the exception of "Indian Song" which sounds like they were influenced by Kula Shaker, whose breakout album also came out in 1995. While their wikipedia article makes it sound like they were a success in the U.S., I can assure that as someone who lived through that era, they were insignificant to the American music scene. Not as insignificant as Justine Frischmann's previous project Suede, but they were certainly not turning heads in the Portland or Seattle scenes.

One of the more relaxing and fun art rock albums from the 80s, as this album cover suggest. Very creative production and solid performances. Different enough from the Talking Heads to merit the spinning off of this new act Tom Tom Club from the whole.

A modern update of the classic South American/European tango as filtered through modern electronic production techniques. Interesting, from a technical point of view but loses its emotional impact the longer the album goes on. My favorite track: "Triptico"

Complete waste of time.

A modern update of the classic South American/European tango as filtered through modern electronic production techniques. Interesting, from a technical point of view but loses its emotional impact the longer the album goes on. My favorite track: "Triptico"

Modal jazz that should be listened to at least once in your lifetime. Even if you don’t understand what is going on, as a musician, you will be better for it. Highly respected, but honestly not my favorite jazz album.

I can imagine younger people dismissing this album as just more dad rock, but the four hits off this album, "So Far Away", "Money for Nothing", "Walk of Life", "and "Brothers in Arms" were very influential and appeared everywhere in American and British culture. "Money for Nothing" was super influential to me personally. I heard Sting's falsetto "I Want My MTV" in MTV commercials on television long before I heard the entire song proper. It is not an exaggeration to say that this song almost singlehandedly popularized MTV, particularly among the working class in the rural and suburb areas who only recently were given access to this new fangled thing called cable that was necessary in order to receive MTV. (In my age group there were only three channels that anybody cared about. MTV, HBO and CINEMAX (SKIN-A-MAX to those in the know)). I am always surprised by how many people misunderstand why Mark Knoplfer used the gay slur. If you listen carefully to the lyrics, it was a pro gay rights stance that mocked those that used the common slur at the time in a clever wordplay. While "Brothers in Arms" was about the futility of war after the short Falklands war had concluded between Argentina and Great Britain, it resonated with many in the United States, whose relatives had served in Vietnam and then witnessed the harsh cancel culture treatment those vets received when they returned home to the United States. It was also used to epic effect in the Season 2 finale of The West Wing, in the episode "Two Cathedrals" which I also found very moving. An album that is another example why much of the most well crafted music was made in the 1980s.

For me the lyrics mostly don't land, but there are Infectious grooves even if it is not my favorite Talking Heads record. Favorites: "Life During Wartime", "Memories Can't Wait", "Air" and "Drugs" For my money the best version of "Memories Can't Wait" is the cover by Living Colour. I remain convinced that those of us experiencing the list would all be better served if they dropped any one of the Talking Heads albums on the list for the inclusion of STOP MAKING SENSE instead.

These cats can cook. 4 tracks with very different vibes that all groove infectiously with fun-kiness. Now here is an album everybody needs to hear at least once. A pivotal proto fusion funk album that became highly influential for latter seventies funk and disco, 80s hip hop, dance, new romantic, new wave, and pop acts that we all know by name.

Nothing special here. Doesn't deserve to be on the list.

I am a big fan of new wave and new romantic sounds of the 80s, and while I respect that Talk Talk took a creative risk, I preferred their synthesized pop sound. I never enjoyed their post rock at all. The alchemy doesn't seem to work. Doesn't have the pulse pounding thrill of new wave and doesn't have the soaring inspiration of Tears for Fears or Peter Gabriel, which is what I think they were going for here. Technically astute recording, production, and performances, so I wanted to enjoy it but it never seemed to get out of 2nd gear. I did not come to like any of the songs and ultimately it felt like a borefest. The 80s had many fantastic albums and this was not one of them.

I enjoyed this album particularly when I realized the lyrics, as someone who is not a British citizen, weren't relevant to me and could just sit back and enjoy the fine song arrangements and performances. Tight, short songs, but honestly the album does drag a bit from sameness around song 11-12 of 15. Honestly that is better than many of the albums chosen for this list.

I unapologetically love New Wave and New Romantic music, particularly if it is from the 80s. So, as a purveyor of said genres, I enjoyed the first 2 tracks on this album, and wondered how I could not be more familiar with this band, but then I heard the rest of the album fall into a black hole of ballads that it never recovered from, and I then realized why I had never heard of Prefab Sprout's STEVE MCQUEEN. The recordings are well done from a technical point of view but creatively they never elevate beyond the first couple of tracks, and they never maintain the kind of propulsive intensity required for an album so boldly named after an actor known for his passionate speed and adventuring hobbies.

An album that expanded the acid jazz movement of the mid and late nineties and was the album that got Stephen Soderbergh's attention which resulted in him tasking David Holmes with making the iconic acid jazz score for the 2001 remake of OCEAN'S 11.

Here comes my usual hip hop review: More relentlessly monotonous hip hop about the same boring subjects: humble brag, whine about "socially conscious" subjects, rinse and repeat Nothing original here. No thanks. Moving on to the next album.

We were so close to a post racial world before stuff like this nonsense took over the lizard brain of politics. Too many people identify themselves by ethnicity and sexuality, which is weird because neither is an identity, they are merely meaningless adjectives. Michael Kiwanuka appeared on this album. I enjoy and respect Michael's abilities as a performer and songwriter, so I would recommend instead that the listener go and savor his album KIWANUKA instead of this nonsense. That is an album that actually makes interesting melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic music that shares humanity and elevates it by expanding the big tent for everyone rather than vilifying and shrinking the tent with polemics. I'm giving it a 2 simply for the production chops.

I've been a lifelong fan of most of David Bowie's eras, but I've never been a fan of Brit-Pop since listening to Suede's COMING UP in 1997, and the barrage of Oasis, Blur, and The Verve records throughout that era. This album manages to capture more of the DIAMOND DOGS, THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST, THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD, vibes that I am convinced that DOG STAR MAN references. All of which makes the album a bit more listenable than the records of the previously mentioned bands but not by much. The best British Commonwealth music, of the 90s, in my opinion, is actually the albums of Depeche Mode, The Cranberries, Seal, Sting, The Prodigy, Billy Idol's CYBERPUNK, U2, and The Chemical Brothers who were all creating something new instead of desperately trying to recapture an era of British rock and pop that had already been explored to death.

I did not enjoy this album.

A sloppy country blues rock record that never seems to go anywhere. One of the most boring albums I’ve ever heard.

As a huge fan of these genres of music and particularly knowledgeable about the 1980s music scene, I want to say that I love this album and that it was influential, but I don't and it wasn't. This came 2 years after Gary Numan's genre defining THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE, and 1 year after Depeche Mode's A BROKEN FRAME with "Leave In Silence", "The Meaning of Love", and "Shouldn't Have Done That", and came out the same year (1983) but after albums by genre defining acts Tears for Fears (THE HURTING), New Order's genre defining POWER, LIES & CORRUPTION which featured the tracks "Blue Monday", "Age of Consent", and "Ultraviolence" and Eurythmics SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS, and that is just what going on in England, not too mention all of the genre defining work that was released in the U.S. (The Cars for example) by this point. It is not a bad record, but is not particularly notable either, at least not notable enough to appear on this list.

An easy 5. One of the few Bruce Springsteen albums I actually enjoy. Filled to the brim with the favorites "Born in the U.S.A.", " Cover Me", "Downbound Train", "I'm On Fire", "I'm Goin' Down", "Glory Days", "Dancing in the Dark", and "My Hometown". There are no weak songs on this album. It does a fine job of walking the line between loving the U.S.A. and recognizing where improvements could be had. Where NEBRASKA was a drag and sounded like it was poorly recorded, BORN IN THE USA was an album that was filled with characters who lived a vibrant life, while still exploring working people's thoughts and issues, the characters do so with dignity and grit. The album's recording felt more technically skilled and rewarding. By including synths and electronic explorations on some of the album's biggest hits it kept the album relevant for all audiences and not just the core rock and folk audience of Springsteen's earlier years. The 80s had become a great time for sonic exploration as the audiences were increasingly accepting of artists exploring sounds in all kinds of instrumentation and genre. Additionally, the 80s would be the peak of recording budgets by major record labels, which allowed from more interesting ideas to be developed fully. Much, more so, than in previous decades. In my opinion the 80s is probably the best decade of English language music recording and performance. Ignore the naysayers. This is THE Bruce Springsteen album to hear before you die.

The songs don't stick out from one another, so they lack personality to differentiate from one another. The only thing that made itself known was how annoying the interludes were. They came off as self important pretension. Please, you grew up with money. Your Dad was a very successful Xerox sales executive. You went to private school. Yes, life is an exhausting challenge for people of all ethnicities and backgrounds, not just yours. No one is saying don't have pride in yourself. What I think people are trying to say is that it is childish to need everyone to publicly celebrate you, in order for you to feel okay about yourself. Your problem is an internal one that only you can fix, not an external one that was imposed upon you in the 21st Century. Let go of the past. Back to the music. When a lovely instrumental arrangement and performance is a bit more interesting, as in the case of "Don't You Wait", the song is let down by a vocal performance that never feels like it is ever fully unleashed, or unlocked. The songs should be driven by the vocal melody, but they never feel like they are. Perhaps some of that could have been ameliorated by just giving the vocals a bit more heat in the mix. Also perhaps it would have helped if a vocal melody began a track and the instrumental joined, rather than in reverse, which seems to be the case most of the time on A SEAT AT THE TABLE. I also think the album would have been helped by a bit more differentiation in the tempo from track to track. Everything tends come off as a bit of a ballad or fugue. It gets 2 stars for competent instrumental production and engineering.

With exception of the cover of "Greensleeves", I found the rest of this album to be a fairly boring blues album. Performances are competent but the choice of covering so many standards feels less than inspired. Yes, Jeff Beck's playing is crisp and technical, but this type of blues rock is very tiresome for the 2020s.

One of the first times on this list that I was introduced to something I had never heard or even heard about. I am glad for the illumination that has shed my ignorance. It is clear that this album influenced the sounds of the albums by the American band Talking Heads, from the first track "Ponta de Lance Africano", even if David Byrne didn't later include a cover of the track on his 1989 compilation album BRAZIL CLASSICS BELEZA TROPICAL. This was a fun album for me. I enjoyed the Brazilian Pop from the mid-70s that was a refreshing change from what was going in 1970s American and British music at the time. Rhythmically driven as you might expect from Brazilian music, it also has lovely vocal melodies, with joyous backing vocals. Hard to feel down or with lack of energy while listening to AFRICA BRASIL.

A tad long, but a banger. Not the best album of 1994, but definitely among them.

They have great taste in music samples, but like all hip hop albums it just makes me want to listen to music of the original artists instead of paying any attention to these mutant forms of them. The samples just serve to remind that there is better ACTUAL music out there. Not among my favorite albums of 1990, much less of all time. Probably will not revisit. Did not add any of the tracks to a playlist.

It should been a red flag to me that both Pitchfork and Robert Christgau like this album. Generally I've noticed a personal trend that albums that Pitchfork or Robert Christgau enjoy, I more often than not do not enjoy. I am not a fan of this guy's voice or the vocal melodies they prefer, particularly French Canadian Bjork is not for me. None of the songs made me really take notice. Sounds like pretty much every other filthy hipster indie rock band I've ever heard.Started to feel tedious pretty quickly. I wish songs progressed more rather than just vamping on the same hook with softer or louder dynamics through the whole track. Album cover just feels like an homage to the work of Terry Gilliam in Monty Python's Flying Circus. Which for an album named FUNERAL seems like either a disconnect or a joke that I am not getting.

I began this list exercise not being much of a fan of Taylor Swift, but now I realize that I am a fan of the musician and songwriter part of Swift. I am not a fan of the icon (whatever prefix is used before that word) side of her. I ended up loving the Pop explored on 1989 and I am astonished that the same artist pivoted and recorded EVERMORE as well. Given her musical origins I guess I should not have been. This feels like it easily could have been written and recorded by Suzanne Vega. As an adult of a certain age, I appreciate EVERMORE'S themes things coming an end and loss. The aim was to make an album that reflected themes of Fall and Winter and it works. When listening to this album for the first time, I can feel the frostbite forming on the tips of my ears and the tears warming my frigid cheeks. I do wish that we lived in world where artists felt comfortable enough not feel the need to deliver perfect vocal performances that may or may not be realized by use of things like Auto Tune and other corrective measures in the mixing process. I think an album like this could have been elevated even further if there were a few more imperfections in the process. It is apropos that the God Algorithm served this fine album up on a dark December day. I suppose this means that at some point soon I will have to warm myself by exploring the stated themes of Spring and Summer on FOLKLORE.

I was not moved by this album when it came out in 1990 and I remain unimpressed. It is boring compared to Depeche Mode's VIOLATOR, for which Neil Tennant has admitted was the inspiration for this album. I love Harold Faltermeyer, the producer of this album, but he is certainly no Mark "Flood" Ellis at the peak of his power. I am a huge fan of all electronic and synth pop music, particularly from this era of music history, but this album was such a dud. Pet Shop Boys' most important albums continue to be PLEASE and ACTUALLY. This list ignored both of those albums. Instead they put this lame DM ripoff on this list instead. Those albums had relevance in the United States electronic scenes, while this one did not. As you might imagine, I don't think this album belongs on this list. Other, much better albums got bumped to make room for this one.

3 stars for their clear influence on various sub-genres of the American punk/garage rock scene but also on the rock and industrial scenes. Most notably White Zombie in the late 80s and early 90s, as well as Ministry. The momentum doesn’t carry throughout the whole album but it is enough for proof of concept. I would not classify this as among the best rock ever recorded, not even the among the best released in 1981, but it was a fun diversion despite its silly sophomoric lyrics. If not for its influence in the development of a sub-genre it would not belong on this list on its own merits. So many more interesting albums in the 1980s that this list loves to ignore.

I can see why this album was her most successful. It is probably among the most entertaining songs I've heard in a Joni Mitchell album. It is short and focused at a mere 36 minutes running time. I enjoyed the playful jazz rock arrangements and the wild instruments choices (jazz flute anyone?) far more than I did the other jazz rock album of hers' on this list. But, too many of the songs felt like she was trying to shoehorn in too many lyrics. While the songs are okay, I think they really could have shined with the less is more lyrical approach to really let the best lines land and breathe. Then again she has always been too much of a poet and not enough of a singer. Suffers from the same disease that Bob Dylan and Neil Young have. Too much poetry, not enough music. These weren't my favorite Joni Mitchell songs but I did enjoy "Help Me", Trouble Child", and "Raised on Robbery". You can really hear the inspiration she had on artists like Tori Amos. That said, I prefer Roger Whittaker myself.

A post punk/goth rock album that continues to shine years later.

You can hear how they acted as bridge and an inspiration for bands like Depeche Mode, The Cure, New Order, Duran Duran, and Gary Numan. Their track "Despair" has delicious undercurrents of David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy, particularly "Subterraneans". The rest of the album lays the ground work for the emerging 80s New Romantic, New Wave, and Goth Rock movements that will come. My favorites are "Despair", "Alien", "The Other Side of Life", and "A Foreign Place".

Of his three albums I prefer this album the most for its accompaniment which features fine performances and arrangements by his collaborators. These arrangements, a sort of early chamber pop/folk leave a ton of audio fun to digest. Unfortunately this album is held back by what all of his albums are held back which is Nick Drake's weak, unemotional voice. Without peaks and valleys, and consistent articulation, it renders his lyrics indecipherable and unimportant. It ends up sounding like they recorded him strumming on a guitar and simply laid it over the top of the lush arrangements, which should be great, but just feels slightly disconnected from each other. The songs are competent, but I think these songs could have truly shined with a proper singer than can bring something more than the distant detachment that Nick Drake presented when singing. He sings better than Bob Dylan, but my tiny dog can leap over that bar. It is as if Drake had never heard of the concept of dynamics, or was too drugged up to attempt them. Consequently, the most enjoyable tracks on here for me were the purely instrumental tracks of "Introduction" and "Bryter Layter" (jazz flute anyone?), "Sunday". Personally, I don't think any of his albums deserve to be on this list. His is a tragic story, but his tragic mythos shouldn't be the reason for his inclusion when the facts don't hold up. Typical mistake of this list that mistakes poetry for music. If he weren't British, I doubt the British list makers would have insisted upon his inclusion. I'm giving it a 3, though with almost any true emotive singer, this could have easily been a 4 or 5.

I had not listened to this album in its entirety in a very long time and it held up far better than I remembered. My favorites were "Stop", "Obvious", and "Been Caught Stealing". It gets a 4 for Casey Niccoli’s contributions even though perpetual asshole and narcissist Perry Farrel keeps trying to erase her from their history as well as steal royalties from his fellow band mates.

Delightful R&B/Soul renditions produced with his patented wall of sound.

When forced to pick a side in the Metallica vs. Megadeth divide, it's easy, I'm a Metallica guy, but I do respect what Mustaine and crew managed to pull off here given their lack of resources. It is not as refined as Metallica, and this doesn't hold up to their 1986 release MASTER OF PUPPETS, but then nobody else in the thrash scene could create the kind of masterful thrash and metal that Metallica were making either. While this is 2nd place behind Metallica, this is far better than most of the rest. The transitions, harmonies, and counter melodies need work, but Megadeth would get there eventually, even if it was inconsistently. A rating of 3 seems fair for being on an all time list like this for its influence, while lacking the all-time execution that would deserve a 4 or 5. My favorite of this album was "Good Mourning/Black Friday".

Only enjoyed the title track “Marquee Moon”.

“My Name Is” is good but I couldn’t endure much more of the album after this song.

So many favorites on this album including: "Break On Through (To the Other Side)", "Light My Fire", "Back Door Man ", "The End".

I am a fan of metal music, but I've never been much of an Iron Maiden fan. Personally I find this band and album overrated, but to each their own. This is not my first time through this album but it has been a long time. This time around the only track I enjoyed was "Children of the Damned". Yes, I did not enjoy "Run to the Hills". I am really not a fan of Bruce Dickinson's vocal style. For better or worse they did influence a bunch of metal bands, so they probably do deserve to be on the list. I didn't hate it, nor did I love it.

If you want consist country music from three country legends who finally worked together on one album for the first time, then this the album for you. The performances and writing are fine, but this album was so relaxing that I may have nodded off. I don't know if that is a bug or a feature. I added the track "Rosewood Casket", after learning that Dolly's mom wrote the song, and after learning what the song and particularly the ring mentioned in the song meant to her.

One of the foundational albums for the synth pop dance genre. The only album of theirs that belongs on this list.

I was working in the Portland scene when this band secured their Capitol records deal. This album was super hyped and of course as an idyllic 20 something music fan I picked it up, but I quickly realized it was one of the most over hyped boring albums I had ever heard. As boring as Weezer and the other Brit Pop wannabes with nonsensical lyrics to match. I listened to it maybe 2 more times through before I gave it away to a nephew in Portland who was nuts about them. I then returned to the far more interesting acts and albums from Nothing Records, Depeche Mode, Yello and the more creative acts that I was listening to at the time. The Dandy Warhols didn't have a track I dug until they did "We Used to be Friends" which was used as the show theme for Veronica Mars. Also way, way too long. I would recommend The Dragonflies from this time frame and geography instead. Unfortunately their music is practically nowhere to be found online. If you do find them give "Brenda Mars" or "Critical Nature" a listen. Way more fun than this stuff. Definitely not an album that needs to heard. Sounds like every other middling northwest rock act from 1990 to 2010.

I wanted to like this, as dance is usually I genre I love, but it felt repetitive in a very inorganic way and bored the heck out of me. I also was not a fan of Sarah Cracknell's vocal style. Way too breathy for me. The only track of theirs I truly enjoy is “Like a Motorway” from their 3rd album.

An excellently written, performed, and produced crossover album for Kacey Musgraves who was known for more traditional country music before this album. GOLDEN HOUR is a fun collection of risks taken on so many different genres and Musgraves manages to navigate that very tricky line between kitschy and sentimental. Truly a type of country/pop crossover I had never quite heard before and thus really does belong on this list.

INNERVISIONS really does sound like the album that laid out the template for a big chunk of the modern R&B/Soul sound that would emerge over the next two decades. "Higher Ground" was already in my collection but I enjoyed being reminded about the funky hit "Living For the City" and being exposed to the drug recriminations of "Too High" as well as Wonder's attempt at the Santana-esque latin rock/boss nova with "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing".

An album that might be a must for guitar players, but does not need to be heard by anyone else. I was shocked to learn that this still has not been removed from later editions of the book by the authors. Perplexing. So many truly fantastic, amazing, great albums that are not on this list only to waste a spot on something as unworthy as this. /smh

As someone who really enjoys electronic acts of many genres from the past 5 decades, I am sincerely perplexed why this is on the list? Clean production but not particularly inspired, even for 1994.

The rap rock band. Political rock for those that are bent that far left, of which I am not, but still features serious grooves of a Black Sabbath magnitude mixed in equal parts with thrash punk. Enjoyable, even if by the time you reach the back half of the record, the songs begin to run together into a shade of rap rock beige. Quite bit of conspiracy theory idiocy. Has the classic bangers "Killing in the Name", "Freedom" , and Neo's own "Wake Up".

While I love their first album, and a smattering of tracks from their other albums, I only enjoyed "Waiting For The Sun" from this one.

After hearing this album I can hear why this punk rock/dub influenced album (along with The Specials debut record) was such a serious influence in the post punk scene of the late seventies and early eighties. All the bass playing on this album is fantastic, even if the lyrics reflect some truly daft political ideas. "Damaged Goods" was already in my library. 3 Stars for influence, bass playing, and that 1 punk standard.

A solid collection of swing tunes performed excellently by the legend Frank Sinatra. "You Make Me Feel So Young" and "I've Got You Under My Skin" were in my collection before I heard the rest of the album.

An okay blues rock and folk rock performance, but nothing sounds truly inspired or groundbreaking, even for 1971. While I understand that this was a number one album in 1971 both in the U.S. and the U.K., this record has aged and doesn't feel as vital or fresh anymore. Half of this album is covers, and these covers aren't performed in a new or interesting way from the original. "That's All Right" was meh, though it did become a beautifully rendered guitar version of "Amazing Grace". Should have just recorded "Amazing Grace" and left "That's All Right" off the album. The other half of the record is fairly straightforward (and therefore boring) originals with the exception of the standout hit "Maggie May". "Tomorrow is a Long Time" sounds better because it was not sung by Bob Dylan, but the rest of the song arrangement is fairly boring, although I do thank them profusely for leaving off the harmonica. The guitar playing is well done, no doubt about it. Martin Quittenton's tender intro to "Maggie May" is evidence of that. I dig Rod Stewart, but I preferred his performances and work in the 80s and early 90 where he took more creative chances than he was taking in the 1970s.

A technically well engineered and produced album. I enjoyed the track "You Will You Won't". While it is a respectable album, I am not convinced that its impact is such that anyone truly needs to hear this album before they die. Feels sort of like a favor for someone they know.

Definitely a hardcore classic that set the mold for much of the hardcore bands that were to come throughout the 80s and 90s. As a lifelong tea-totaler Rollins straight edge-ish leanings always made this band more interesting to me than most of the punk bands out there. I personally love the tracks "Rise Above" and "Gimme Gimme Gimme". Now, having said all that, it is clear that the debut album is pretty rough and clearly recorded on a very limited budget. I can see how listeners today would be pretty hard pressed to enjoy it on first listen, but let me tell you, it was mind blowing at the time to hear a Black Flag record on cassette in the early 1980s for the first time.

I did not enjoy this album when it was recommended to me back in 2003 and I did not enjoy this album now. I usually love female fronted rock acts. I love Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cranberries, 12 Rounds, Paramore, The Pretenders, and Blondie among a bunch of others, but this did not seem to have the quality or doing something as interesting as those luminaries. I think I might have enjoyed it more if the low end (doesn't have to be a bass guitar) were there to anchor some of these ideas. I'm not a fan of the early 2000s White Stripe-ifcation of rock that refused to use something in the bass range of the spectrum. Additionally I really wish that the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs had used dynamics as a tool of section phrasing and song phrasing. Everything quickly becomes an audio blur on this album through the relentless use of turning every knob on every song to 11. It renders most of the album absolutely forgettable. I think far too much is made of Karen O. I am not convinced that she is truly a great vocalist. I haven't really enjoyed either of the two albums from the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs that has appeared on this list so far. Furthermore this gives more evidence to me that the worst decade of popular music in the world really was the naughties (2000s).

Quality instrumental arrangements with vocals that was exotic on the first half of the album, but began to grate by the second half of the album. Despite this, I am glad to have discovered this album through this project. These were the type of albums I had hoped would be recommended.

Not relaxing, just boring. I don't hear much creativity, not even for the Dream Pop scene. They call it dream pop now, but we would have called it darkwave or even goth back in the day. Sounds like a tired uninspired version of Black Tape For a Blue Girl or the other Projekt Records stuff that sounded fresh in the late eighties and throughout the 90s, even into the early 2000s, but seems a bit dated and boring now. Certainly not vital or required music to listen to before you die, but the engineering and producing was done well, so 2 stars.

So, like many of the others on this list I respect Ella Fitzgerald's voice, and by extension George and Ira Gershwin's songs, but there was no way I was going to listen to over 3 hours of these songs in less than 24 hours, so, I needed a plan. What I decided to do, at the behest of my partner, was to al low ChatGPT to randomly choose 10 tracks from the 73 available. On the basis of Ella and the Gershwins' quality of performance and composition this gets a 5, but out of protest to the authors of this book blatantly breaking their own rules that compilations, greatest hits, and furthermore box sets, are not allowed for other artists, then this gets a 3. I find this particularly galling because we have many artists from the 50s and 60s whose careers were comprised greatly of singles releases (45s) who would benefit from greatest hit compilations that are unduly punished do to the fact that they did not have many LPs, or the ones released do not encompass their most vital works. While I am ranting, I am going to add that I find it ridiculous that the decade of the 1940s, when popular music (particularly Western popular music) really became a force, was not even included in this list.

My favorite tracks on this album are what another listener termed as the 'gloomy instrumentals' on the B side of the album. Sure, I love the title track, but the back half of the album gives me the LOW vibe that I dig so much. Love the synths, the piano, the broodiness. Favorites: "Heroes", "V-2 Schneider", "Sense of Doubt", "Moss Garden", "The Secret Life of Arabia"

An album that was not all that relevant, even in 1991, and is definitely not relevant to this list at all anymore. Fine album, but not all time great. That said, I did enjoy the track "Is This Music?" and added it to my collection.

Unfortunate that I cannot stream this album in the U.S. other than YouTube because it is fantastic. I never thought I needed a Beatlesque/Prog Rock arrangement by XTC, but here we are. I see that it is available on iTunes and I am strongly considering purchasing it, or perhaps purchasing the singles that I enjoyed the most. Favorites: "Rivers of Orchids", "I'd Like That", "Easter Theatre", "Greenman", "Your Dictionary"

A classic that helped define disco with elements of Aretha Franklin soul and James Brown funk that help set the stage for Pop music over the next decades. Helped inspire diverse genres such as Hip Hop, New Romantic, New Wave, Electronica, and even far reaching into inspiring acts Chicago Wax Trax! Records acts My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult and Ministry with Industrial Rock. Favorites: "He's the Greatest Dancer", "Lost in the Music", "Thinking of You", "One More Time" and of course the Disco classic "We Are Family".

"Sound of Silver" by LCD SOUNDSYSTEM is mixed and engineered well, but honestly just feels like a sort of tired throwback to the sounds of Yello, Metropolis Records acts, Dancing Ferret Discs acts,, and bands like Einstruzende Neubaten from 2 decades before them, and even bit like the collage rock style that we used on our first album. I respect what they do, but I'm not convinced I would feel compelled to hear these tracks again. All of the track would have benefited by keeping them instrumental and removing the vocals. I almost enjoyed "Someone Great", but my experience was ruined by a piano line that was echoing the vocal melody being to far forward in the mix.

It is YES and prog rock, so it wasn't all bad, but on the other hand it is not one of my favorite YES Albums. Those albums would be FRAGILE (which also came out in 1972), 90215, and Big Generator. I personally would not have included it on this list.

A way too long double album. Personally, I feel like there is enough filler that it could have easily been cut down to 1 album. Props to Stevie Wonder for giving his fans all they could handle, but it was a struggle to digest this much in less than 24 hours, and becomes a tedious on the back half of the record. I enjoyed the jazz fusion/rock of "Contusion", the funkylovefest for the big bands of yore in "Sir Duke", "Pastime Paradise" (the source of the sample for Coolio's "Gangster's Paradise", and "Isn't She Lovely".

Well performed, recorded, and engineered reggae/dub but by the time I reached the halfway mark of the album the song arrangements were so similar that the album began to sound monotonous and repetitive. No favorites.

They may have influenced my favorite bands, but that is no reason for this list to force me to endure 5 miserable albums from them. Cocaine, another bad idea, was also influential the 80s as well. You're not going to make me experience that bad idea as well, are you? Here is a tip. If Robert Christagu and Pitchfork agree on something, you know it must be pretentious bullshit.

A groovy afrobeat sound that features delightfully funky horn and woodwind interplay. If I have only one reservation, it is that the album's tracks begin to drag because each track on average is nearly 13 minutes in length. It is clear that Kuti loved American Jazz. I added the title track to my collection, the cheeky improvised "Taps" tagged onto the outro of the track in particular brought a smile to my face. That very rare protest album that makes sure to entertain first before making any political criticism.

"Maggot Brain", the title track didn't resonate with me quite the way it seemed to with others. Skilled guitar player, no question, but Hazel's guitar solo did not rock my world. Favorites: "Hit it and Quit it" and "Super Stupid". I respected the creativity of "Wars of Armageddon", even if I don't think I will feel ever feel compelled to return. I am not convinced that anyone "needs" to hear this album before they die.

I enjoyed the instrumental arrangements even if they were overly long and meandering, but to listening to her voice was very challenging for me. While the lyrics may irritate, I'm familiar with the Medieval ballad structure that Joanna is using to frame her songs. It is not disturbed Disney, as I have read some call it. Medieval ballads were not the love songs that we refer to when we use the term ballad in the modern parlance. They are stories, often epic ones, told in song that often don't use a rhyming structure we would recognize today. When I was young, I read a ton of the Robin Hood medieval ballads that were structured this way. While I am sympathetic to her process, and commend her for the effort, I don't find the quirky result charming. I think if these were edited down into the most potent bits and sang by someone else I would probably enjoy it more. Her singing often feels unintentionally disconnected from her subject matter. I love me some unique voices, often to the point I have convince others to give them a chance, but this is a bridge too far.

First time listening to the entire album and it is definitely a masterpiece. Completely holds up over time. A pleasant palette cleanser after the past week's selections on this list. Nilsson seamlessly slips into each genre and wears them as comfortably as the bathrobe on the cover of the album.