1001 Albums Summary

This album is wild. What a concept piece.

Dusty Springfield is the sound of the American diner. I always thought Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels made the mockingbird song up. Turns out Dusty Springfield sung it on this album.

Heroes is still a great song. The rest of the album still feels like it exists because it was fun to make, not because you might like it. It's art, in that it was created because the artist felt compelled to create a thing, not because you might like it.

Listening to the whole album for the first time in 2024 is ... fine. My Generation's stutter gimmick doesn't age well as an aesthetic choice.

Their cover of Only Love Can Break Your Heart remains one of my favorite songs of all time. The rest of the album feels like 90's dance schlock.

The Art of Peer Pressure and Sing About Me, I'm Dying Of Thirst are remarkable songs.

I didn't realize how much Cheryl Crow did a Joni Mitchell. Much wow.

It's strange to listen to Jim Morrison sing about monogamy.

A few thoughts. 1. This album would be really funny if it wasn't a reflection of gang culture and gang culture wasn't one reflection of centuries of systematic exclusion. Yikes. 2. The music is catchy in an incantation-like-Annabel-Lee kind of way. Four second sequences that are repeated and rhymed on top of for a few minutes. 3. I'm grateful for the women in my life. 4. I'm okay without more of this in my life.

Maybe I'm a little weird. I cry a little bit every time I listen to this album. Rage Against the Machine makes me want to be a better citizen. An angrier citizen. A citizen that doesn't take dysfunctionality in our system sitting down.

This album goes to 11.

Man. Alcohol can be brutal. What a talent and what a tragic waste.

Morrissey isn't much of a singer, eh?

Oof. More Morrissey. This seems like the album you make when you feel like the world deserves your music and yet they have the gaul to complain about it.

If This Is Spinal Tap had been made in the 90's it would have been about this album.

Wow. This is a fantastic album.

Eh. :shrug:

The End Of The Rainbow is a bit of a haunter.

25 years after it stopped being relevant, I can say with some degree of confidence that I'm on team East Coast. Please don't play this for children.

This was probably shocking and exciting when it came out. Now, it just feels like sitting in a diner ordering something greasy.

It's surprising how transgressive music was before wokeism.

I'm kind of blown away by how much of this music I've heard in other places.

This is the embodiment of 1960's cringe.

Everybody wants to be some flavor of Bob Dylan. David Gray wants to be Acoustic Techno Bob Dylan.

Given enough money and fame, artists tend toward fart sniffing.

Nirvana was what bad kids listened to when I was growing up. I thought the song Rape Me was about someone asking to be raped. So did this kind of terrible kid I grew up with. Justin, you know who your are. Turns out it's a song about how most rapes are repeated offenses and are done by someone close and that Nirvana was trying to speak up about it. Who knew?

When I Kissed The Teacher should be retroactively renamed Entrapment: Making a Pedophile.

Still better than Tim Buckley.

1970's experimental schlock. The kind of unlistenable music that's fun to make and that critics love.

Fun 1970's blues rock. This probably felt fresh when it happened.

This was my first time listening to a Dolly Parton album. I wasn't expecting it to be so contentful and wholesome. Dolly doesn't write cheap rhymes. While I'm not anxious to listen to more country, I liked this album way more than I expected.

Eh.

Killer Queen is an absolute banger. The rest of the album is significantly less interesting.

Courtney Love's not great.

One man's therapy is another man's strip club soundtrack.

It's fine.

Gillian Welch was perfect for the O Brother soundtrack. Not my jam beyond this context.

The problem with strong niche aesthetics is that the domain space is pretty small and once it's been explored all future iterations tend to take about the same shape. Moon shoes are pretty fun the first time though.

This album being so good and it's being so good being such a cliché feels bad, but man is it good. Good good bad good. Much wow.

A bunch of bangers by John and Paul. A couple weird pieces from George. Ringo chewing paint chips. Another solid Beatles abum.

A decade before its time. Better than I would expect for a one hit wonder.

Fairly listenable 1970's guitar nerd navel gazing.

The one's hard. On the one hand, if they hadn't done so much acid they might have noticed how badly their contract would screw them. But on the other hand, this album would sound completely sober. I don't think anyone really wins here.

I forgot about Cloudbursting. Waking The Witch probably contributed to the Satanic Panic, which makes me giggle. Jig Of Life wants to be the soundtrack for a fight scene in The Witcher until it turns positive and you realize it's about childbirth.

Tokyo is a phenomenal track.

Shangrila hits a little too hard for a 40-year-old man.

Stevie Wonder defines groove.

Bring your own drugs.

I'd only heard Stephanie Says until I listened to this album. What a breath of fresh air after Tago Mago by Can.

It never gets better. :|

Remarkable musicians. Obviously very talented. I listened to it quietly on tiny speakers while doing something else as a flex. Who's your boss now, Pantera?

Dear God really goes for it.

Sister Sledge must have back problems from carrying Will Smith around all these years.

I can see this album being really impressive when it came out. I think its energy and message were already part of the Zeitgeist when I came to consciousness. It feels unimpressive and honestly kind of weird in a way that hasn't aged well. It's probably important. It's not for me.

Listening to Soul II Soul feels like discovering the fossil of form that evolved into something more successful. It provides context for its more successful progeny. It's a transitional form.

Public Enemy is the transitional form between Grandmaster Flash and NWA. Neat. Holds up pretty well.

Kind of surprised how much I like this album. Groovy. Doesn't feel like 1991. I'm not enamored of sexy ladies singing on top of techno. This does it in a way that isn't ... offensive in a dated and painful way. It feels more like someone had a thought and explored it.