A Wizard, A True Star
Todd RundgrenWhen the guy with mismatched shoes outside the 7-11 who’s always talking about alien abductions and government conspiracies hands you a blunt that looks dripping wet and suddenly, starts to make a lot of sense.
When the guy with mismatched shoes outside the 7-11 who’s always talking about alien abductions and government conspiracies hands you a blunt that looks dripping wet and suddenly, starts to make a lot of sense.
One Direction’s “Midnight Memories” for Boomers – two timeless singles and then boardroom-crafted teenybopper filler. Actually, scratch that, because I like the 1D album better overall, and both "A Hard Days Night" and "Can't Buy Me Love" are low-tier Beatles singles, even for the first half of their career. Important for what the Beatles became, sure, but it's the least essential original material in their whole discography, in my opinion. At least the film is actually fun.
Deeply influential to me as a youth, I could never hate Ramones. Now, as an adult, I can rely appreciate how innovative and simple their aesthetic is – sped up rockabilly/girl group/surf rock music with grittier lyrics? Obviously cool and catchy! All the common criticisms normally thrown at them are blatantly from people who don't believe in punk music, or from people who are projecting a preconceived notion about how the band sounds onto the actual songs themselves. The riffs are distinct, the hooks are all unique, and they shift tempos and have enough variety. Now, I do get that sometimes it's a lot in one album, but I wouldn't say that's an issue here (or on Rocket to Russia, for that matter – the stronger album overall). And sure, sometimes the change up is a little against their strengths ("Havana Affair), but sometimes it truly works ("I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend"). Most of all, Ramones are great at their meat and potatoes, and that's mainly what this record is dishing out. If you like punk, you may not think this is flawless, but you're going to like it. And I like it. I may not be spinning this all the goddamn time compared to Gorilla Biscuits or Embrace, but it's a solid classic in my primary genre of choice.
Honesty does not absolve, and this album is proof. Half balladry laid on thick, and half white boi pastiche of American blues and 50s rock 'n' roll without any personal input. I'll give him this, there are moments where I'm almost won over. The melody of "Jealous Guy"; the guitar work on "How Do You Sleep?" (although that's George's contribution, obviously), the strings on "How?" I'm not a big Lennon/Beatles apologist generally, but I'm also not deaf, and I know there's moments, and they're just enough to make me not hate this album, although they're also not enough to fully win me over, either. At the same time, though, there's enough pretension ("Imagine"), straight rip-off ("Crippled Inside"), and downright cringe ("Oh Yoko!") to make me physically grimace, and I can't ignore that, either.
This has always been one of those flawless albums I "forget" exists. In many ways, that's because when I was first getting into hip-hop, this was a typical ✨introduction✨ album. Plus, with time, Common has become a bit of an Award Season Man™️, which I think makes his classics easier to push out of your memories vantage point. Most of all, though, I think this album was very purposefully trying to fly a bit under the radar, at least as much as it could. But it's an album produced largely by Kanye in his prime as a producer, and the two songs that aren't Kanye are by the greatest producer in the whole genre's history, J Dilla. And every single song just hooks me. They're both gorgeous, like flowers in my ears, but also complex while still remaining actually fun to listen to. And the same goes for Common's rapping here. Always technically proficient, most of his discography is filled with unfit bravado or annoying holier-than-thous, and therefore boring. While both of those issues are still present here and may be the albums sole flaw if you look at either to closely – "Go" is a bit awkward, many songs are preachy, most notably "Faithful" and "Be (Intro)" – they're mostly forgivable because Common's storytelling is peak here, arguably the best in the genre's history, and it's only elevated by the context of the production. In many ways, Be is the Platonic Ideal of a hip-hop album: socially conscious, poetic, insightful and observant storytelling, with angelic production and a varied vibe throughout that could be rock a party and a church equally. Sometimes, that idealism can be its own Achilles Heel depending on your mood, but even then, I imagine it's hard to straight-up hate this album, because try as I might, I really can't see this as anything but perfect.
Though I'm now an adult, I'm still a Northeastern girl who was a bit of a pretentious teen, who wore a lot of cardigans, who always carried her poetry notebook everywhere she went, and who maybe once or thrice got a bit high and listened to her Dad's old Simon & Garfunkel albums and had her mind blown. Simon & Garfunkel – both together and in their solo careers – are pretentious bitches who made music for pretentious bitches. I am a pretentious bitch , and I like Simon & Garfunkel. Even at their most annoying here, with the anti-consumerism/commercialism of "The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine" or the unfunny parody of "A Simple Desultory Philippic," I can't help but love them. But really, I love them when they're lovelorn, sentimental, and reflective. And they're that way a lot on this album, and I love it, even if I don't really like folk music. And no, my admiration is not only because I too referenced Robert Frost and Dylan Thomas to discuss a breakup when I was younger. Though that does explain a lot about me, and my love for this album.
The sound of crying into a PBR tall boy. Gorgeous production and there's moments where I almost get it, especially with the orchestration, but overall very much not for me.
As punk as slam poetry [read: not very punk]. A younger version of me may have been more convinced by this, but sometimes, an album comes into your life too late. My frontal lobe is too developed to fall for this, although there's moment that I do understand her role and her importance, and I can't help but bob my head, especially "Gloria" in its second half. Mostly, though, this album is a chore. Ironic, because on the surface, a punk queen who claims she's "beyond gender" would be my style, and maybe with time, it'll grow on me. But for now, smack dab in the middle for me.
In high school, an English teacher once told my class, “Spring has the highest suicide rates – everything’s blooming, and you’re not.” I don’t know why he said this to a room of 16 year olds, but it stuck with me, young and struggling to look her depression in the face and learn how to manage it. Now, here I am, 15 years later, screaming, crying, throwing up, sobbing to this gorgeous album by a man who tried his best to bloom with everything around him. The result is one of the most beautiful albums I’ve ever heard, and it’s a light of positivity from an artist who was so obviously trying to fight against the darkness. I’ve found a new favorite album. And yes, my therapist had to cancel our session this week, how on earth could you tell?
Sometimes a great idea can be so ahead of its time that it physically cannot be achieved at that time. That’s exactly the issue with Suicide. Because the idea is great, I really like the idea, but the execution….falls incredibly short. What this album actually sounds like is nothing close to how it could’ve sounded in theory, and the result is too primitive and too underdeveloped. The fact that it falls short actually does make it an important milestone, but it’s an incredibly hard listen to my ears today.
Boomer Carly Rae Jepsen [extremely complimentary]
Paul really said, “This one’s for the ADHD girlies,” because god, this record is all over the place.
Took me a little bit to warm up to it, but I really was won over. The genre blend is a bit hard to wrap my head around; it’s not quite punk, but it’s not just straight mod pastiche either, and it’s poppy, but not radio pop, more like college radio catchy. It’s very British, and that cultural disconnect might also be my issue. It’s honestly a record I need to sit with more, but even if it grows on me, I know it’s not something I’m going to revisit all the time aside from a handful of songs, if only because the mod-leanings and Britishisms are not to my taste. I’m glad I was exposed to this, however, and still feel this is more of a positive/3.5 rating overall, because even if I’m not despite for a physical copy, I will add a few of these songs to my playlists in the future.
I’m incredibly shocked by how much I enjoy this. It’s poppy enough to keep my ears tuned in, even when I tune out during the more verbose, winding psychedelic guitar parts. I’m also not a fan of when they get super quiet and folky, either, as those moments feel too subdued. The stereo mixing doesn’t do the pop sensibilities justice, unfortunately, but a good song is still a good song. Still, all these elements are small issues, and are mostly kept to a minimum on this record in favor of bright hooks and tight 3-minute song structures. And that’s why it wins me over – the annoying psych moments are never allowed to overpower what’s really just a good pop album with an aesthetic. Honestly, if I’d gone into this blind without knowing the history of the San Francisco scene, I don’t know if I’d even consider this a full-on psychedelic rock album, and that’s a benefit in my opinion. More positive toward a 3.5 with this.
If I had been a straight man born in the UK in the early 1970s who had a notorious affinity for tall French women, middlebrow literature, and frequenting chic cocktail bars, I think I’d understand this album. Alas, I am a queer trans woman born in the US in the 1990s, with a hatred for both the British and the French, and although I too like to read the New Yorker while sipping a Paper Plane, I truly don’t understand the appeal of this album. It’s too dorky and carnivalesque to be artful, but it’s too up-its-own-ass to be camp, and honestly, literally nothing about it stands out. Well, besides its weirdly misogynistic Pick Up Artist ego. I can’t decide if it’s being ironic in an obnoxious Gen X way that I’m supposed to read as ~social commentary~ even though time has made the joke incomprehensible, or if these lyrics are sincere, and if it’s the latter, then this album is bordering on immature, if not fully problematic, to the point where I’d cover my drink if he tried to hit on me at a chic cocktail bar. Either way, I hate this guy’s whole vibe. It took all my strength to not turn this off half-way through. Hell, I wanted to turn it off at the beginning of Track 3, and then I realized I was only on Track 3, so then with each song, it became more and more difficult to sit through this without wanting to cancel my Spotify subscription. Never again, please, or at least not for a long while.
A part of me always tries to argue that this isn’t my vibe when it comes to metal, that I’m not into bombastic, shreddy, operatic ‘80s Heavy Metal™️; another part of me loves the nerdy, DnD, socially conscious, head-banging nature of a lotttt of metal from this era, regardless of subgenre [e.g. Anthrax is my favorite of the Big Four]. Every time I put on Number of the Beast, I can’t help but love it. My head bangs. I get jealous of Steve Harris, and wish I could play bass like that. I dig into the themes. I air drum. I have a blast! But I keep trying to lie and say I only think this album is okay. Part of the issue is that my brain tries to tell myself that I prefer later albums [Piece of Mind and Seventh Son, specifically]. Part of my issue is that deep down, I’m still a teenager, trying to show that I’m not a poser for liking nerdy metal, that actually Death and Cryptopsy and Gorguts are soooo much cooler than this dorky, feminine, poser bullshit because *I’m* not a poser 🤢 But who the fuck am I kidding? This album is so fucking good! Honestly, without “22 Acacia Avenue,” which is only okay, it’d be a flawless metal album. This album makes me want to drive down the highway in the middle of July, windows down, blasting it, banging my head, hair obstructing my driving abilities. I don’t care if it’s entry-level poser behavior to like this album, because I really like this fucking album!
I was born in the wrong era. And by that I mean I’m a queer Millennial who wishes she could’ve gone to the club when disco was hot, but also, like, yes, I know, Strawman Queer Elder™️, I know…but how cool would it have been to hear this album when it was released?! God, it’s so good, and so layered that I find new details after every spin – and to think it’s not even my favorite Chic album?!? Disco deserved so much better.
So this album just invented literally every subgenre of punk – hardcore, noise, no wave, sludge, even fucking jazz punk – and I was completely unaware of how great it was until today? This could be released tomorrow and it would still sound fresh! I’m blown away, and even if some of it is a bit too meandering for my personal taste, I’m still in absolute awe. Historically important, sure, but more importantly, it still sounds amazing to this day. I think I’m about to become obsessed with Iggy Pop.
Despite listening to it in April when I’m not in the Christmas spirit, I still think this is somewhat overrated. The standouts are classics you hear year after year for a reason, sure, but there’s a lot of chaff on this. Of the “four” artists, I’d really say only The Ronettes pull through consistently; Darlene Love is good but not great aside from “Frosty the Snowman,” The Crystals are pretty consistently mediocre considering how much space they take up here, and Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans are easily the weak link here and I thank god they only have 2 songs on this album. And that’s not even discussing Spector’s closer. Like, sure, the production is great, but couldn’t Spector’s Wall of Sound have been exemplified by a non-Christmas album like Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes, which would also do a better job showcasing doo-wop and girl group aesthetics? For that matter, where are the other essential Christmas albums: Charlie Brown Christmas, Mariah’s Merry Christmas, or Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, even if it’s from before the era when the book starts? Sometimes it’s hard to sympathize with a listen at face value when you know its inclusion means the exclusion of other albums with a similar purpose that are as good or even better than what I just listened to, and I think when only half the album works compared to other doo-wop and/or Christmas albums, it’s a fair complaint. Still, it’s mostly good, just overhyped in my opinion. At the very least, you’ll 1000% hear most of this before you die, because they play it every year, and what they don’t play from this album is better left unheard anyway.
Dense as a positive aspect, and retro while remaining distinctly modern. In some ways, it reminds me of Kirin J. Callinan’s Bravado, because I feel like it’s a ‘70s record that just so happened to be released in the 2010s. But unlike Bravado, which can turn abrasive and ultra-modern at the drop of a hat, Kiwanuka always marches forward on a traditionalist path. That isn’t necessarily a slight, because it makes for a seamless album that flows aesthetically and sonically into a singular statement, but sometimes, it also means that, while good, it can feel somewhat bland. It’s so traditionalist that I almost feel like I’ve heard it all before, and without anything fresh upfront to excite me, I’m having a hard time clicking with this. And I get that some of the freshness I’m looking for is in its contextualization, or better, in its recontextualization. In that way, it reminds me a lot of Ethel Cain, an artist I haven’t yet been able to get into because the treasure is buried beneath, and frankly, I just don’t have time to dig for buried treasure any more at this stage in my life. My ears are like the slush pile – if I’m not entranced after the first paragraph, you’re getting a rejection. Which is cruel, because I do like a lot of what this album is doing. It’s just not doing anything particularly unique to my ears to elicit excitement. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if this grows on me by the end of the challenge. To be fair, I feel like that is the intention with this record – you’re supposed to sit with it for a month or six, and then, suddenly, it blossoms into an obvious magnum opus, and you feel foolish for not seeing it earlier. But my first impression is that it’s very good, just not something I’m falling head over heels for any time soon.
I'm going to be honest – I thought this album and Panopticon by Isis were the same album until today, solely based on their blue ass covers. At least now I know I have a preference for post-metal over shoegaze, even if that makes no sense intellectually. I don't hate it, though, it's just that sometimes it leans too much into shoegaze, and other times it leans too much into Britpop, and I don't particularly love either of those subgenres. Mostly, I just wish these Brits would stop ripping off the bass riff from "Taxman."
Jazz is a double-edged sword. Sometimes, it's this album's greatest strength; sometimes, it's this album's greatest weakness. Thankfully, it's also Joni Mitchell, so it's still amazing even when it gets a little wobbly, and she's really in her prime lyrically, which is what really sells me on this record. A great Joni Mitchell album [aka anyone else's best album].
Some fun drinking songs for the townie bar jukebox, some flawless ‘70s pop songs, and sometimes, both at the same time. Sometimes it leans too basic or too weird and it takes me out, but definitely a solid time with some essential tracks.
This started out so strong, and I was really expecting to adore it, but then it kept going, and going, and going…. There’s just no consistency, no arch — it starts dark and turns light, and then, after that arch is finished, it spirals into solos and experimentation without reason. The longer it went on with these sparse solos, the more bored I got, and the minimalism made it almost sound amateurish and strained my ears to their limits. I was so desperate for something exciting that the growls pulled me back in! But then the last 2 minutes threw me completely out again. I fully came in with an open mind expecting to love it, but hey, at least The Exorcist pulled out the best section for its score.
Sometimes, doing too much isn’t chaotic and fun, it’s just doing too much.
I suddenly understand why a lot of people turn 30 and start listening to the Grateful Dead as background music to help them focus on their spreadsheets at their white collar 9-to-5 jobs. I was pleasantly surprised by how pleasant this is on vibes alone. And if you want some vibes ✌🏻☮️, this is full of them. But then I started to put on my ✨active listening✨ ears, and all that positivity crumbled to the ground, because Jesus fucking Christ is this unstructured. Everyone is playing a radically different part that doesn’t even sound like the same song. The lyrics are meandering, and there’s barely a semblance of pop song structure here, only a paper bag wisp of a chorus-like melody. This metaphorically sobered me up quick, and I realized I was listening to an ugly band all night!! And realizing this aspect made it hard to fall back into the vibes I felt earlier, and when I did, it instead gave me a whole different vibe 😴 I’m almost impressed by this. How can a band be so sloppy, yet, if you’re only kind of paying attention/are intoxicated, they sound not only tolerable but enjoyable? And I think this is just the nature of jamming, where everything is “correct” but never overpowering enough to be distracting. So a part of me sees the value of this record, but another part of me knows I’ll never revisit it, so maybe praising it for being “good background music to listen to passively” is actually a slight, even if I mean it more positively.
The definition of the phrase, “This fucks.”
Hardcore’s most boring ~important~ band spends a long, mostly boring double album telling you how important they think they are because they’re not *just* a hardcore band. I’d prefer Zen Arcade being on here over this, even though I’m not a fan of that record much, either. If even the band thinks it would’ve been stronger as a single LP, that’s a tell.
Do people listen to Bowie's pseudo-intellectual, "experimental" bullshit and actually enjoy it? Like, do people throw these songs on playlists and play them at parties, or do they listen to this on their commute to work, or while doing the dishes? Do you put this on to relax after a long day?! Or is the love for this album akin to the love for the latest Franzen novel, where everyone parrots the critical praise because it makes them feel smart too, and also, no one wants to go against the tide, so they force themselves to love it because it's what smart people are enjoying right now, and they are certainly smart people. Am I insane for thinking this whole thing sounds like nails on a chalkboard? Even without Bowie's grating affectation, the instrumentals somehow feel full of themselves, like it's all too self-aware of its own self-importance. It feels like the musical equivalent of the self-proclaimed Communist in your Intro to Art History class who won't stop talking about how much better Dalí is compared to the Rembrandt you're actively talking about because it's still September and you're not there yet in the syllabus, and even after the professor tells him we'll get there in November and he stops talking, his presence alone starts to annoy you, because you're just spending every class waiting for him to start talking again. This whole album annoys me, even when it's technically being "quiet" with its experimentations. And honestly, these experiments don't even feel that ahead of the curve! I can hear free jazz and other, earlier synth pioneers all over this album who did these things better and earlier than this fucking record. And that's not even to mention how obnoxious I find Fripp's guitar sound and playing style. Honestly, I want to say "Heroes" is this album's only saving grace, but I don't even really love it all that much as a song. If this album – or Bowie – grows on me by the end of this challenge, it's not because I grew as a person, but because I developed Stockholm Syndrome.
When I was 11, VH1 counted down the top 100 one-hit wonders, and listed "Groove is in the Heart" at #14. They mentioned Bootsy Collins’ participation, who I recognized from the Beginner's Bass book I had gotten that Christmas. I also really liked the snippet they played a lot. So, even though I pretty much only listened to pop-punk at the time, during my next trip to Strawberries Records, I picked up the full CD. My mind was instantly blown. As silly as it sounds, World Clique was my gateway into dance music. (I enjoyed it so much, in fact, that it also inspired me to dig more into the full CDs of other one-hit wonders, which served as my own personal music history education throughout my teens.) While I’ve always loved this album, the older I got, the more it rose in my personal Top 100. By the time I was in college, it was solidly in my Top 10 favorite albums ever, and it’s remained there to this day. It’s bubbly and fun to dance to, but it’s also layered and has all these unique textures that you can unravel if you listen closely. It’s also deeply aware of its lineage, and I think that helps solidify it as a classic, because it’s reverent without feeling academic. This is really what I want most out of music – on the surface, pure fun, and if you want more, you can dig into it, but you can always just enjoy it on that surface level, too. It’s camp and inclusive and cute and catchy and feels communal. I love it so much, it’s flawless through and through.
Definitely not for me, but I totally get the hype around this. I personally think it’s strongest when it’s close to pure ’90s dance, and it’s rarely close enough for me. While everything here does have at least a hint of a dance elements or two [i.e. mostly when it sounds closer to a remix than an original rock song], it’s never enough to distract me from its base influences of British indie or psychedelic pastiche, and I’m not the target audience for either of those sounds. Still, I never once wanted to turn it off, which is insane, given its runtime. If a friend played this for me at their house or in their car, I wouldn’t be bothered. I get how this could be someone’s favorite album, and I now know why it’s on a lot of lists like this, but it’s not for me, simple and plan.
If you ever said, “Damn, I wish I could hear Ella Fitzgerald sing the phonebook,” then this album is for you! To judge it as a singular body of work like any other album on this list feels deeply unfair, and maybe misses the point. It was always meant to be a “choose your own adventure” from a listener’s point of view where you stick to one LP or one side. I’d even argue it was never meant to be an album for public consumption, and that it was actually meant to be used as evidence of Fitzgerald’s importance within the musical/standards canon. That said, Fitzgerald can really sing a song, and these renditions are really a tight. There really is something for everyone here. Ten people could pull out their favorite 10 songs, and you’d likely have ten different new versions. Ironically, I think that’s why this works best in the context of modern playlists, where you can easily pull out your favorites and leave it at that. So yeah, I don’t love all 59 songs here. No one does. If they claim they do, I’d assume they’re just being pedantic and are afraid to disagree with highbrow-ism. There’s some discs I love, and some I hate, although there’s at least one song on each disc that I adore. Sitting and listening to it straight through is a pain in the ass; rating this as I would another album on this list feels oddly disrespectful, too, and judging it by those standards, sure, I’d give it a 3. But this wouldn’t be a 3 like my other 3s, because I’m not on the fence about whether I think it’s good or enjoyable. It would be a 3 by the standards I’ve set out because I don’t like more than 29 of the 59 songs here, although I do get right to that line. I also won’t revisit this as a single sit-through ever again, so long as I actually finish the challenge this go-around, so that also means it should be a 3. But again, that isn’t the point of this album, and I know that. Oddly, this does achieve my main rule for giving 4 stars – would I buy this on vinyl and actually play it? I 1000% would, and I’d be foolish not to if I found it in the bins. I do think there’s better albums to represent Ella, though, but then you run into questions of whether to also showcase other people at the same time, or just give Ella all the shine. Of the songbooks I’ve listened to before, this is my favorite, and contains 2 of my favorite songs ever (“They All Laughed” and “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”), and both renditions are my favorite renditions of those tracks. It’s a hard one to judge, because I don’t regret listening to it. I think Ella Fitzgerald is wonderful, I love her renditions, and I like the Gershwin song book, even if it sounds same-y after 3.5 hours, but then again, anything would. At the end of the day, this is extremely good, and essential listening, but once you find the songs you like, you can just revisit those, or listen to this in bite sized pieces. The only real critique I [and most people] have is that it’s exhaustive, and not an album you sit down to listen to like others, but by acknowledging that, I feel better rating this higher as a collection of songs that are all great. But don’t listen to this in single sitting, or you will be annoyed.
At first, I really thought I was going to hate this, but as soon as the drums kicked in on “Where Do The Children Play?,” I was sold. This man knows how to use dynamics, he knows how to write a chorus, and he knows how to write very poetic lyrics that make you contemplate life that never distract from his pop sensibilities. Maybe I’m just old now, but this really is a warm blanket of an album, and I don’t see how anyone could hate it. My Dad is also a huge fan of this era of ‘70s soft rock from his teens and early 20s, and growing up hearing him play records by Bread and Harry Chapin, it’s funny to realize now how quickly influential Tea for the Tillerman was to a subgenre that basically defined the sound of an entire decade of music. Like, when you imagine ‘70s pop music that was actually on the charts, you’re imagining this folk-rock style that is explicitly drawing from this album. And while I think its copycats added a lot more piano and orchestration, which eventually morphed into Yacht Rock, it’s clear that this album is the progenitor of it all. More importantly, it was the high water mark for the sound, and actually holds up today, unlike those copycats. Glad I finally listened to this, truly a gem.
Eno was just in silly goofy mood 🤪😜🤣 Nothing on here takes itself too seriously, and that is very apparent right away, so it makes all the weirdness and experimentation very easy to swallow. Plus, even when he’s being a weirdo gremlin who doesn’t want to appeal to the masses, Eno is really good at writing a pop hook. I fully walked into this expecting to roll my eyes for 42 minutes, but this is exactly what I want out of experimental music. No matter how weird it gets, it’s fun!!
I really wish I could praise this, because nothing about it is explicitly bad. I understand if people find her voice annoying, especially when she belts, and I also get that this style of music can be boring if you don’t like folk. And while I think those critiques are fair, I also don’t mind anything here. Not to say I would revisit this frequently, but it has its time and place and purpose, both historically and in someone’s record collection. But then I factor how frequently I checked my phone while this was on. Not only to see if the song was over yet, but to do other things. I paused this to go on TikTok for 20 minutes. Twice. I paused this to do chores. I changed the song to listen to other artists not once, but three times! And I think that’s the things – this album is important, but Baez is also incredibly boring. The fact that she doesn’t do anything unique [by today’s standards] with her traditional folk songs suggests that maybe, in the end, while there’s nothing “wrong” with this album, there’s also nothing particularly good about it, either. The only songs I actually enjoyed were “El Preso Numero Nueve” and the CD-reissue bonus tracks. So while I could argue apathy but say it’s still enjoyable enough, I also don’t truly believe it’s actually enjoyable. Important, sure, but I never want to listen to it again.
Damn, 12 year old me would have adored this! It fills that preteen desire for grunge-esque, angsty sounds, while adding something new because they’re not from Seattle. At the same time, a lot of this sounds like an oil and vinegar cocktail of Oasis and The Smashing Pumpkins, which is pleasant to my ears, but also, why am I not just listening to either Oasis or, preferably, The Smashing Pumpkins? I don’t dislike this at all, and there’s nothing bad here, but the longer this went on, the more derivative it felt. Still good, but definitely not essential, and I should’ve assumed that based on the fact that I had never heard of this album before even though I had heard of their debut a million times.
I mean, it's no Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants" or anything, but I guess it's still pretty great, maybe an 11/10, nothing crazy.
I love The Cure so much 🖤🥀😭 And I don’t even love their goth era as much as their new wave era, but this is still amazing!!!
I dislike that I really like this album, because it is the album that launched a thousand ships full of jangle pop, Pitchfork-core, pretentious indie bands, and we are still suffering the consequences 50+ years later. But Mr. Tambourine Man is just so happy melodically yet so melancholic lyrically, and I’m a sucker for both of those things. This album is a sweet spot between everything I love in music and everything I hate. Also, I’m a sucker for a fisheye lens, so there’s that.
This New York Doll (🏳️⚧️) is a newfound fan of New York Dolls (🤘🏻)
Straight Outta Compton is one of those Starter Pack™️ CDs you buy when you’re first getting into hip-hop. You latch onto the edge and power of the first two tracks, and you continue to spin it based on name and influence alone until you’re “ready” for actual deep cuts. It’s been almost 20 years since I listened to this in full, and I was worried. My memory told me that I never really loved this the way I loved other Starter Pack™️ albums, so I was expecting to hate it now that I’m older and know a lot more about the genre overall. And honestly? It held up!! It comes out guns blazing with “Straight Outta Compton” and “Fuck Tha Police,” but it continues to hold its own as it goes. The production is an important factor here; even when a song bleeds into verse 4 or 5, the sample-heavy turntablism is ear candy, always keeping a steady groove that’s never chaotic or overwhelming, unlike Public Enemy or The Beastie Boys. The other key factor is Ice Cube, both on the mic and behind the pen. It’s insane how good he is, even by the standards of rap post-1992. His pen game is strong and helps create a lot of the group’s chemistry, although The D.O.C. is no slouch, and MC Ren holds his own just fine. Once Cube’s on the mic, though, it’s over. Honestly, he’s so good, it’s more annoying when he’s *not* on a song. Is it flawless? Not at all. I think the middle is a little weak, where the beats are slow and the rhymes are particularly corny [e.g. “wacky wack,” the entirety of “Express Yourself,” especially given historical context]. It also suffers from way too many verses, awkward skit-like talk, and some dated mixing. But the final leg wins me back, thanks to “I Ain’t Tha 1” and, again, Cube being an incredible rapper, and that energy stays through to the end. Obviously, this is essential listening on historical importance alone. Seeing some reviews about the “violent” lyrics conjures up images of Tipper Gore, and could not miss the point more. Sure, the misogyny/homophobia are what they are, but people rarely lobby those same critiques at ‘80s rock, do they? So I’m glad these lames had to be exposed to this important piece of history. But music is also more than history, and while some of Straight Outta Compton does sound dated, none of it sounds as dated as I initially feared it would. In fact, a lot of it still feels very fresh. Not that anyone under the age of 40 would claim this as their favorite album. Sure, technically speaking, I’d prefer Death Certificate, 2001, No One Can Do It Better, or even Eazy-Duz-It, but none of those make sense without this. Plus, Straight Outta Compton is still a great listen beyond its history lesson, with a lot more hits than misses. I’m won over all over again.
I’m too young for MTV Unplugged, and by the time I was a preteen, Nirvana was already being played on classic rock radio. That said, Nirvana’s studio albums still have an impact when you listen to them; even if I missed it in ‘93 because I was a little newborn, I ✨get✨ Nirvana and why they matter, and when I first listened to their studio albums, I knew immediately why Cobain specifically mattered. This unplugged set, though…I feel like I’m missing something?? It’s good, because Nirvana was a great band and Cobain was charismatic as hell. The covers are cool. These acoustic versions are cool. But there doesn’t seem to be any value to this beyond it being a cool tidbit of extra material for diehard Nirvana fans. And sure, I like Nirvana, but I like Nirvana because I like music, not because I’m a Nirvana fan. It’s cool, but it doesn’t strike me as essential listening. Is it because it broke the mold of Unplugged sets up to that point? Because if that’s it, well, that doesn’t mean much of anything now that Unplugged isn’t a thing. Is it because it was a posthumous release of an important set? Again, that feels like fan material, not essential listening. Is it because it changed people’s perspective about Nirvana and allowed them to project an assumed trajectory of the band based on a performance that had predefined parameters, because once again, cool, but not essential. The only other justification I can think of is that it was just a great live set, but then…just watch the live set, don’t list the recording minus the visuals as essential. This whole dilemma is frustrating, because there isn’t anything “wrong” with this album on a technical level. It’s a good set. I wouldn’t seek any of these versions out, but I enjoyed having this on. As fan service, it goes above and beyond. But that’s all it feels like to my ears. It’s fan service. It’s cool, but not essential.
I have tried for years to get into this record. I’ve listened to it so many times, in a variety of situations. I’ve been sober, and I’ve been under the influence of all the drugs I’m comfortable taking. I’ve listened to it sick with a fever, and on the elliptical at the gym. I’ve listened to it driving home at 3am, and during my commute on a normal Tuesday morning. All my friends have told me why I should adore this album, and so have all the critics and online posters. I know all about the innovations to guitar playing (trust me, I have ears), and I know why they’re an important band. I’ve heard gorgeous stripped-back covers and intriguing reinterpretations. I’ve heard these songs in every day life too, on TikTok slideshows and played through the speakers of an art school house party. I first picked up this CD when I was 15 and listened to it on repeat once I got my driving permit, trying to figure out both the rules of the road and this record. I picked it up because I knew it was important and innovative and I needed to get it and get into it. 15 years later, I’m past getting into it. I’m still just trying to get it at all! I know there’s hooks and pop songs buried beneath, and I know why those elements are buried under layers of fuzz and abstraction, and I get that half of what makes this important is the fact that it buries everything. And I enjoy a few songs, especially the ones where the hooks are right there, hard to miss. But for the most part, even when I see the hooks beneath an ocean of distortion, even if they’re not necessarily 10,000 leagues under the fuzz, I’m not really sure if I even *like* most these songs. I like some, and really like one or two, but it’s not enough to validate how many times I’ve forced myself through this in hopes that it would finally click. And tonight, 15 years in, I was hoping it would finally click. And once again, after a sincere and honest try, I walk away with the same conclusion: Loveless is okay, and I get why it matters, but it is not for me at all. I don’t loathe it, and I’m glad it exists, but I am over trying to force myself to love this. I would never in a million years put this album on for my personal enjoyment, and I’m mature enough to finally admit that liking something because everyone else says you “have to” is dumb. I don’t personally enjoy Loveless, I would never revisit this for pleasure, and I’m done trying.
When this initially came out, everyone from Pitchfork critics to parking garage attendants praised it as a perfectly-timed pandemic-addled exploration of isolation. And at the time, I didn't get it. I generally loved Fiona up to this point, but something about Fetch the Bolt Cutters felt distinctly too self-aware, too deconstructed, too heady. And this is why we sit with records for a few years! Revisiting this was a treat, and made me [finally] realize how amazing it is. I think the original context of the pandemic hurt my initial understanding, actually. Fetch the Bolt Cutters isn't isolationist; it’s begging for community, specifically community from women, which is important because it does so in a culture that wants women to isolate from each other. The percussiveness also works a lot better now after several listens and a bit of time; sure, maybe it's because I'm not stuck in the house banging my head against the wall, both literally and figuratively, but I take it less as a primal scream of anger, and more as a primal scream of femininity, akin to a seance. More importantly, now that I've had time to sit with my initial reaction, I'm able to listen to this and actually pick up the hooks, pick up on the off-kilter grooves, pick up on Apple's inherent pop sensibilities that are still there, just deconstructed like a burger at a 2-star Michelin restaurant. And like that burger, no matter how strange it may have felt to eat it, your taste buds will dwell on it for the next week. Literally, I’ve been humming the hooks to a lot of these songs the last few days, which is cool because they are not “normal” hooks by any means. This doesn't mean this album isn't obtuse – it very much is. It's coded-language, it's a college-level thesis paper, it's difficult and not something you'll get on spin 1, and maybe not even something you'll get on spin 50. I see why this may not be everyone's jam. This is the kind of record that shows the vital flaw of this project, because one day to process an album is not possible for something this dense. But thankfully, this isn’t my first rodeo with Fetch the Bolt Cutters, and this go around, it finally clicked. I'm still unsure if I would listen to this album in pieces/pull out specific tracks, or even play this frequently, because it is a very, very dense and intense full listen, but you don't need to revisit something constantly to know that it's masterful and great for certain situations. And while I’m still going to say When the Pawn... is my preferred Fiona Apple record, I’m deeply, freshly in love with Fetch the Bolt Cutters, and I think I'm finally comfortable saying that she may have a completely flawless discography. So deserving of that Perfect 10 from Pitchfork, and I’m happy to finally be on board.
It’s still severely overrated and I don’t really listen to the tracks on Side A on their own much, but when you sit down and give it a full listen…saying it’s anything less than amazing and pure fun is just being pedantic. And that’s despite the fact that “The Girl Is Mine” is cringey as hell.
I can’t tell if this is pop music made by goth people, or goth music made by popular people. It might be both. Either way, not for me. My reaction to most of this album was, “oh, I respect that as a decision,” not, “oh, I would listen to this again in public” because an idea isn’t a song, it’s just an idea, even if it came first and is a good idea. “Strangelove” is the sole exception; hard to deny that song slaps. Maybe this deserves a revisit later when I’m more depressed, hornier, or both.
Deeply surprised that I didn’t hate it. It’s breezy and chill Boomer Dad Blues-Rock. That’s its strength, but also its weakness, because aside from the side openers, most of it passes by my ears like sand. Don’t know if it needed to be in the book though - it’s not like it “inspired” a ton of bands like it afterwards. Besides all the worst townie bar bands, but that’s no fault of the record itself. But that’s probably why it’s in the book.
I never understood this era of indie music, or this era of Pitchfork-core. I was the target audience of this album – applying to film school, going to hipster house parties, over with her hometown but also hopeless about the future. And yet, I never got this album, or Arcade Fire in general, besides a song here and there. It just felt more trite and put-on, even compared to my own suburban angst. Over 15 years removed, and I still feel the same apathy towards this music, and this band, and this general aesthetic. There's a song here and there that I can't deny, and generally, it's well-made, but it's still trite and it's still put-on – an aesthetic for the then 30 year old journalists to project onto, not one to be consumed by actual Millennials. It's only in the book due to the hype at the time, and the fact that it fancies itself conceptual. It's not going to stand the test of time, and the fact that we now know he's a gross creep helps me not feel guilty about not understanding the adoration.
An immediate Holy Shit ™ album and it rarely lets up. It's both unapologetically sincere and tongue-in-cheek camp, and that dichotomy only underlines the gorgeous tone of nostalgic queer storytelling explored throughout. Sometimes this means it crosses into cringe, and sometimes that cringe is dated and gross and really makes you question if this needed to be a double-album even if compositionally those songs still kinda hit, but then those sore spots are over and you're back into piano-glam greatness. Absolutely great, will be picking it up next time I go record shopping for sure.
There’s an argument to be made that this is the greatest hip-hop album ever made. In a way, it’s the culmination of everything hip-hop aimed to encapsulate since its inception, and it helps that this then shaped the sound of the genre to come while still being in a league of its own because it's so detailed, which meant that almost no one would ever be able to redo this style. This is an example of art that may not be made for me, but I can still enjoy it and give it its flowers. It deserves all its praise as a pinnacle of culture. It is what music is meant to be in my opinion – expansive, confrontational, researched, reactionary, yet still ultimately enjoyable despite all that. But then again, PE was always for the punks. Easily my favorite PE album, because it expands their sound so much, but it feels like it's done purposefully as a way to target their message. Maybe not as important to Music History ™ as its predecessor, but I believe you can hear its impact more. And while it's not my favorite hip-hop album ever, it's solidly in my personal Top 100.
From the first note, it’s obvious that this ruined hard rock for the next 25 years at least. The sound of butt rock, but with more precision, but it doesn’t make me love it. It’s just heavy chugs, and yet not slow enough to give a beat down vibe. It just sounds like the music of a Gen X alcoholic plays in his garage while he lifts weights, annoyed that he doesn’t have a six pack but happy his arms make him look like he could punch a bouncer for kicking him out after he hits on a group of 19 year olds. There are brief glimpses of a more speed/thrash sound that I enjoy a lot more, but they feel more tacked on than sincere. Makes sense, since Pantera themselves said they saw this album as an opportunity to “fill a void” created by Metallica post-Black Album. Also I hate these solos. They take the worst lessons from Van Halen and exaggerate them beyond comprehension. Like it’s worse then Slayer, and that’s saying a lot. I swear I really love metal, I love punk, I love thrash and groove, I love all the subgenres this is pulling from. I just don’t think Pantera is for me; it’s so obvious their influence was brief and bright, and while that’s important to include in a book like this, it doesn’t mean the album holds up with time.
The definition of doing too goddamn much. If they were tighter, it’d be a better record, but I also think that their noodling bullshit is why this album is here. But to normal ears, the drums are too much, the guitar work sounds like the type of shit a 14 year old boy does to impress his friends, and the vocals are just flat out bad. There are no songs here, just jams, and that sucks. Maybe I just need to be stoned in a Trans-Am to get this, but I think this is just White Boomer Dad music history, not actually important.
If this wasn’t made by a supergroup of legends who play better on their worst days than 99% of the global population, no one would say this album is well made, memorable, or noteworthy. Too British and too bland for me to care.
If they ever invent time machines and make them accessible to the general population, my second trip – after first going back and telling my younger self what "transgender" means in hopes that she doesn't waste 29ish years in the closet – will be to go back and smack all my friends between the ages of 11 - 14 and yell at them for not introducing me to Soundgarden sooner. This particular album is a bit too long and has a bit of filler that feels a bit repetitive, but the highs are very high, and the lows are still enjoyable. I just adore this era of grunge, when it was still basically a midpoint between punk and sludge, and Soundgarden feels like the exact midpoint. Will be explore more of their discography right away!
I’m a poptimist and a hopeless romantic. I like what I like, even if it’s a little awkward and silly, and this is definitely awkward and silly both lyrically and musically. It’s not flawless, and works better as individual songs on a playlist than an album proper, but it’s so fun and so right for my tastes that it earns a personal 4.5 stars. Great find for lovers of kitschy ‘80s pop.
In the age-old debate over The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, I have always chosen a Third Coast – The Beach Boys. Unfortunately, my adoration for the group has always excluded this album. Today! is a record of historical importance more than anything, not only for the band, but for music overall. It’s basically the blueprint for the Pop/Rock Album, and the production techniques and compositions cannot be overstated. But albums like this often feel like homework. The real question is: are there exceptional songs? Are they enjoyable beyond their historic significance? Is it in frequent rotation in my house? And I personally answer “well, no, not really” to all those questions. Now, if you’re wondering if these songs are compositionally good, then yes, it’s the fucking Beach Boys. Even the bad songs are well-written. But unlike the albums before this, it’s not kitsch and ridiculous despite its dated sound; it’s just dated, and as a result, it comes across as stale. And unlike the albums that came after it, it’s not consistently throwing gorgeous arrangements and flawless songs at you; it’s “getting there,” but it’s far from consistent. There’s a handful of bright moments, especially in the middle, but they aren’t frequent enough to warrant the rest of the album acceptable. In fact, it’s trying so hard to be “great” that the majority of it ends up feeling forgettable, and some songs aren’t even fleshed out enough to draw you in and be listenable, not just by modern standards, but by the standards of 1965. I’ve tried so hard to see what others see, both today and in years past. And there’s moments where I start to warm to it. Side A starts off weak and uninspired but by “Don’t Hurt…” I start to find The Beach Boys I know and love, even though arguably none of these songs are particular high water-marks in the full scope of their career, excluding “Help Me Rhonda,” even if I love “When I Grow Up.” But then Side B, even though it starts okay, it just…Like, I get *why* the orchestration matters historically, but it’s all so bland and insipid. And then, it ends on the most banal chit-chat in all of recording history up to that point!! Honestly, “Bull Session” is so infuriating, it fuels my dislike more. In the end, while “hate” is a strong term, I can’t say I love or even really like this album. Even when it’s close, it’s never close enough, and that’s why I never relisten to it in full. I’m honestly upset to admit this, because there’s not *enough* Beach Boys on this list imo, so my apathy towards this will inherently make it look like I hate the band overall. But I also can’t lie. Sure, it deserves to be in the book, and it isn’t a worthless listen if you haven’t tried before, but it’s not something I’ll revisit much in full, if ever, and I’ll only pull a couple of songs off of it. It’s a bridge, a piece of history, but I don’t care for bridges or history much if I don’t actually enjoy it.
Is this a great album, or was I an 11 year old kid just getting into music when this first released and it was inescapable at the time? Why not both? It’s relentless with its sequencing. My memory was that the last few tracks kind of sputter out before it sticks the landing, but that's definitely not the case. Maybe my tastes have just become more refined with time, because I actually love Side B more. I think the back half is why this album is even on the list. Sure, the singles were inescapable, but Side B is proof that the Killers acted as a Alternative subgenre-link for indie, dance, emo, and punk, and kind of played a bigger role in modern post-genre aesthetics than one might think. Not that the band itself meant to do that. This album is just serendipitous – right vibe at the right time. It also helps that, musically, this is tight as hell (especially the bass; I've been trying to play like this for nearly 20 years!) I mean, who am I kidding? I’m a Millennial alternative girl through and through. I’ve always adored this album. It’s weird, has a little something for everyone, and makes me dance. Some of my favorite songs of all time are deep cuts from this album (“On Top” and “Change Your Mind” specifically). Personal top 100 album; every listen inspires a full play through. Classic, no need for me to be snobby just because giving Hot Fuss a 5 makes me realize how old I am.
I was raised a hardcore girl during the peak of the "post-hardcore" scene. I read Alternative Press' back pages, where they highlighted "influential albums in the scene" and I then sought those albums out at Newbury Comics like a fiend. I was a "memorize every band on a label" girl. And sure, I don't listen to this music much anymore, but it is part of my DNA. I know my shit. I loved this shit. And that's why I was confused...why had I never heard of this album? Sure, it's well before my time, but that never stopped me. I know my shit, or at least I thought I did. And the answer is simple – this is not "post-hardcore." This isn't even in the scene. Sure, I get that these are retired Dischord boiz, but this music has more in common with post-grunge than post-hardcore. It's chain-smoked and wrapped in pleather, it's wrap-around sunglasses and buzz cuts and 90s Cool, the soundtrack to Need for Speed. It's not part of the scene, it doesn't know anyone who's edge, there's no box hairdye in its medicine cabinet, and this is not being included in the Tony Hawk soundtrack, because it's too aggro. Is it bad? Not for what it is, no. But I'd argue it's bad for what it *aspires to be*, and that's somehow worse. It also isn't my jam. It's not my scene. I find this strain of rock-in-the-wake-of-grunge to be boring, muddled, and macho without reason, which is why I gravitated towards the post-hardcore scene, because at least those boiz were attempting to process their emotions. And this album is not processing anything, certainly not sonically. It just runs together into a single dull slog. There's moments where I see a glimpse of promise, and also understand how they were mislabeled, and I know sometimes it's "once a punk, always a punk," but this has more in common with Shinedown than Fugazi. My question is why this album? Why not Quicksand, or Jawbreaker, or At the Drive-In, or Refused? Fuck, the 1-to-1 replacement for this is Jawbox's "For Your Own Special Sweetheart" (although I'd say Jawbreaker's "Dear You" is maybe a better representation of the scene etre). Who cares if I don't love this – its inclusion is a purposeful exclusion of actually important punk/hardcore albums from the era, and also a deep misinterpretation of what "post-hardcore" looked like and would look like. It's a blatant misinterpretation of a subgenre, and a bad representation. That makes me even more upset. The fact that it's boring made me want to turn it off, which warrants a low rating anyway, but the fact that it has a seat at the table over anyone actually important to the history of post-hardcore warrants my angry rant.
For years, I just assumed Wilco was a twangy country band that tapped into rootsy Americana in a way that made Pitchfork writers give them too many flowers. A friend recently corrected me, saying they're a lot more indie rock than I was imagining, and insisted I should give them a listen. Well, this is serendipitous. And I don't know if that was a good thing. Sometimes, you hear an album and you know it's very good. But you also know it's not totally for you. That's exactly how I feel about this album. Sure, it's a lot more indie – a lot more alt-rock – than I assumed, but it's also very folksy, very twangy, and my Northeastern ass has a hard time with those sounds. And the rock/indie textures here is also something I traditional don't adore, either. Still, there are a lot more moments that I liked than I assumed there'd be, and it's more than half the record. But that's my other issue, too. This is soooo long, it becomes exhausting. And it's exhausting and feels long because it's all over the place. I feel like the best critique of this album is that it could've been a solid 5 stars if it was half the length, and cut down to 10 songs. I have a thing for short albums (maybe punk culture; maybe ADHD), but this throws way too much at me. The issue is that I'm unsure what to cut. I personally prefer the barn burners, but I'm sure a lot of Wilco fans prefer the slow burns. If you cut half this album, do you cut it 50/50, or according to texture? Because 50/50 is the same results to me, and otherwise one is a classic and the other is a bland album I would never revisit. Clearly, I have struggled with conceptualizing this album in my head. I think Wilco's a cool band, I think there's an album by them I may like in the future. Hell, I think some of these songs will end up on a future playlist for me. But in its entirety, I'm not here for Being There, but I'm glad other people are in attendance.
I remember this record better. The highs are incredibly high, and they're largely all Lauryn Hill coming through with some of the greatest verses in hip-hop history. But the lows stand out. Wyclef and Pras are...a lot more boring than I remember them being. It's not like they're bad, but they pale in comparison and weigh down the record on most tracks. The last few songs after the title track feel excessive, and while I don't hate them, the album should've ended with the title track and cut that feature. Maybe it's a sequencing issue, too? Also, the mastering is weird. The fake vinyl sound is annoying as hell. And the skits not being their own tracks ruin this – they're either really bad or outright unnecessary. Golden Age Hip-Hop albums are often bloated, but this would have absolutely benefited from a tight, concentrated edit down to 10 tracks, at least if you insist on keeping the skits. I complain only because it's flaws are obvious, but again, the highs are high. There are stretches of this album where it is just stone-cold-classic after stone-cold-classic, and that basically means the problems come out in the wash. It's still a classic record, and the quintessential "intro to hip-hop album" – I know it was that for me – and that reason also validates its acclaim. It's not a 5 star record, but it's an important record, and one that I think serves an important role in most music nerds' journeys.
Nick Cave is tailor made for my tastes: gothic lyricism, complicated composition, but always enjoyable either as a head-banger hymnal or an intimate therapy session. This album has both, cleanly split between their own separate discs. It's music for lapsed Catholics, and I am one of those lapsed Catholics in the target audience. At the same time, I feel like this is not the best album Nick Cave ever made. Sometime you hear an album you love, and you know you'll love the band overall, but even though you love the album, you know there's something better in the back catalogue, you just need to find it. Oddly, I've seen some people disagree, claiming this is his peak, but I doubt that. While both albums are very good – and let's be honest, they are two independent albums, stand-alone artistic statements – The Lyre of Orpheus feels a bit weaker, a bit too tight to be confessional but too loose to be honest. I also think Abattoir Blues wobbles with the last couple tracks. But don't get me wrong, I'm still impressed with this album. It's not life-changing to me personally, if only because I'm past the age where it would've been life-changing, but I am really really interested in exploring more Nick Cave coming up. I won't be shocked if this grows on me to the point where it becomes one of my favorites by the end of this challenge. Still, at the moment, it has just a smidge too many shortcomings for me to say it's flawless. Great new find, light 4.5.
One of my favorite books ever; one of my favorite movies ever. I've never been the type of person who listens to film scores as their own free-standing pieces of music, but I get why this is included. As a whole, it captures the essence of the story and presents a fully independent aesthetic. I would buy this on vinyl and play it in the background while I had a few girl friends over to gossip and drink off my bar cart. It's good background music, but there's a lot of details to unpack upon close listen. My first listen made me assume I'd never pull out individual tracks, but throughout the day, I kept revisiting this in pieces and I found myself gravitating toward it a lot. I guess that's also why the TikTok girls have latched on to certain songs to use as background sounds. It sounds like girlhood, in its entirety, and in its pieces. Just like its source materials. Which is crazy coming from 2 men. I don't know if their sonic style is really my vibe, but here, it 100% works. Not my favorite film score ever – where is Wendy Carlos' Clockwork Orange interpretations?!?! – but very good and deserving of a listen.
I've never been a psychedelic rock girl, not just because I can't really smoke, but because I find most of it dorky, pseudo-intellectual, and self-indulgent. Even so, I can't deny that the talent of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Jimi obviously had charisma, but all three are tight as hell. There are moments where the skill displayed here just brings me back to when I was 12, first learning guitar, and everything noodly and wonky sounded mind blowing. And then there's the classic high-points, the dense blues-based ballads and hard rockers. It's an album that demands respect. But that's also all I can really give it, too. I respect it a lot. I know it's, technically-speaking, a showcase. But while my 12 year old brain likes the virtuoso noodling licks, my adult brain knows this is trait and self-indulgent flash. It's made worse by Jimi's cringey lyrics. And then there's the blues-based songs, which i find immensely forgettable – including the classics like "Castles Made of Sand" and "Little Wing." I think the moments that sound closest to their debut – the hard rock cuts that are pretty straight-forward with flash segments that don't engulf the song – are easily the high water marks for me, but those moments are basically nonexistent here. Overall, this feels like the limitation of Hendrix's legacy; for all his pure talent, he was still a product of his time, and those times were...incredibly stupid and self-indulgent. Even down to the cover, that Boomer attitude reigns supreme on this album, and it's the exact attitude that turns me away from psychedelic rock in general. Even when it's performed by some of the best, I think this kind of music just will never do it for me. I respect this a lot, but I know the highest personal praise I can give it is apathy. I'm not looking forward to a large piece of this challenge, clearly.
Why this Foo Fighters album??? It's totally passable, but it literally sounds like a man without a band. There's moments, sure, but...this doesn't feel like it's even a good representation of the band. It exists in the grunge/post-grunge grey area, but also lacks the the 90s emo aesthetic the SDRE members would bring once they joined, and those elements are important to the band's overall sound. Although I get it if you're looking for historical documentation of the post-grunge sound, but I don't even know if it's actually the correct historical document to point to (Live's "Throwing Copper" or even Bush's debut would be better inclusions over this for that purpose) Also, The Color and the Shape are *right fucking there*!! Not like it's a flawless album, but by comparison! Aside from "Big Me," this album is completely dismissible. I will forget about this record by tomorrow, which shows how important the next album is to the Foo Fighter's legacy.
Cools punks used "Reign in Blood" to get into metal; dorky punks used "Among the Living." I have always been a dorky punk, and I think this may be my favorite thrash album. If you were a preteen who liked comic books, Stephen King, and were a bit too politically informed for a middle schooler, you're going to like this album, even if you're now a full-on adult. I'm this album's target audience. My biggest gripes with it have always been the mixing being a bit muddy (your producer was right, guys), and that the songs are a bit too long, but that's more a critique with them being a thrash band instead of a punk band, which is a personal problem, and not a valid critique. This said, I don't think there's a bad song on here, it's just pieces of songs that I would rearrange, which is a testament that this is great if the critiques are mostly about personal preference. Easily my favorite thrash metal album.
Some killer, but no Thriller.
This feels somewhere between a DJ mix and a dated Golden Age Hip-Hop album. Clearly, the fact that it exists in that grey area is historically important, but the result is oddly boring. The growing pains of that innovation are evident. Even as a fan of both genres, early House can feel a bit repetitive, and early hip-hop flows can lack a bit of charisma while also feeling lyrically preachy. Combined here, during both genres' toddler years, the result is bit of a drag, sonically and intellectually, and requires a lot of active listening for something that isn’t actively engaging, at least not by modern standards. The length is certainly not a benefit, and the inclusion of cool jazz elements only ties an anchor to the album's foot. Now, most of this would be forgivable – this is one of the first albums to Do This™ sort of thing, after all – and even if I found it bland by today's standards, I'd have to respect it for setting up those standards. But all that goes out the window the second they're joined by their contemporary peers, who all sound so modern and fresh on the penultimate track. That alone basically negates any credibility I was about to give this album out of “respect.” The thing is, though, I really liked their debut when I was going through the Rolling Stone Top 200 Hip-Hop Albums list a year ago. Maybe because that album had clear standouts and obvious singles. And maybe that’s why this was included in the book over their debut; this is clearly meant to be an album-length statement. There’s brief glimpses of something like a single here and there, but those are cut off in favor of the DJ mix element, and I think that makes this inferior. I get the sense from some lyrics on this record that they were a bit bored by the idea of chart success, but "I'll House You" is miles above any highlight I could find here, and feels more historically important, too. Sure, this is also an important album, but important albums aren’t required listening if they're not enjoyable. And while none of it is ever technically bad even despite its age, sometimes I think being boring is a worse offense, especially when you’re supposed to have been the inventors of hip-house, a subgenre that's all about energy. If time mellows your art out to the point where you sound like the antithesis of your creative mission, then maybe you never achieved the original goal in the first place. I worry that sounds harsh, because again, my main complaint is that it's just a poorly-aged product of its time, but I physically cannot imagine anyone rating this highly if they never grew up listening to it when it came out.
It's incredibly hard to hate Dolly Parton, unless you're being nit-picky. If her voice doesn't charm you, you at least have to respect her skills, especially for the genre. Similar, even if you don't love the country-twang of the music, you can't deny the flawless talent of Nashville studio guns, and specifically with Dolly, it's hard to deny her skills as a pure songwriter. This is why Dolly has become one of maybe five exceptions to the phrase "I don't like country music." Personally, she was my main exception, at least until I actively worked to be less closed-minded, and while I still have difficulty being open to the genre (aside from female singers), I've never once had trouble with Dolly. She's just that good, and her music is truly captivating. All of Dolly's talents are on full display on this album. Her voice can be transcendent, especially when she sustains a note. The playing on here is out of this word, especially the bass/rhythm section. Most importantly, Dolly's songwriting is sharper than anything. Sure, the title track is great, but then there's the storytelling of "Traveling Man" that pulls you in like good gossip, or the grooving "Here I Am" that nods to stylistic changes to come, with its sonic breathing room that almost gives it a call-and-response record. "Early Morning Breeze" is like a country-fied Joni Mitchell, and "My Blue Tears" and "A Better Place to Live" just feel they'd inspire a small town bar sing-alone. You can bob you head to this, or you could sit with it like poetry – what more could you ask of music? I do feel like the main weak points here are the Porter Wagoner songs. Sure, they're still good, with great performances, but they all feel palpably backwards-looking, and it doesn't help that they slow the momentum of the record down in a way that isn't reflective like the title track, but more like, "Okay so the A&R said you need a ballad here, here, and here." On a 10-song record that's not even 30 minutes long, 3 only-great songs stand out. Those songs aside, there's very few slights you could give this album on face-value. In the context of Dolly's full career, though, I do think this is one of her weaker "classic records." Personally, I prefer "Jolene" or "Love is Like a Butterfly" overall, if only because they cut down Wagoner's influence a lot, or even "Here You Come Again" through her '80s output, though I accept that my love for those albums is more the taste of a queer Poptimist having fun and not listening with critical ears. Still, I think in some ways, there's a lot of hype around "Coat of Many Colors" as "the greatest country album" that makes me roll my eyes a bit, even against Dolly's own discography. But that should not in any way be misinterpreted to mean I dislike this album. In fact, I think if you were trying to sell country as a genre to anyone, this might be your most well-around example of everything the genre can offer. This is a lot of words all to say that Dolly Parton is a national treasure with a ton of great albums, and this is one of them.
This album proved 3 things to me: 1. The '90s were a decade of excess that ultimately harmed American society in ways that can still be felt today. This album is an excellent example. While this critique isn't really the album's fault directly, it's still a clear product of its time that can be used as a clear sign of trouble to come. 2. The Loudness Wars ruined music, but at least they started out with the worst offender first and got it out of the way. When the levels clip, these songs become almost unlistenable, even at a low volume. Why is the bass rattling? Why are soft guitar licks mind-numbing? Why do the cymbals sound like static? A remaster would fix this a lot, but then we'd still be faced with Point 3. 3. RHCP are burdened by the Prog Rock Band Dilemma™️. They're so talented that they struggle to hold it together 90% of the time. Like a gym rat who can't help but flex his arms when he's flirting with a girl at the bar while talking about the Joe Rogen Podcast – your muscles won't cover up your gross personality, no matter how impressive they are. Also like a gym bro, the RHCP are sexiest when they're just sitting there looking pretty. The ✨soft✨ songs like "Scar Tissue," "Otherside," "Californication," and "Porcelain" all stand the test of time, and while they do have small moments where you see through the sweetness and get the obnoxious musical jerk-offs, it's nowhere near as mind-numbingly insufferable to sit through as "Parallel Universe," "Get on Top," "I Like Dirt," or "Purple Stain." Normally, the juxtaposition of the annoying noodling songs with the pop crossover cuts would annoy me, but here, the latter serve as a much-needed breath of fresh air, especially on an album so long and exhausting. Hell, this album starts to overstay its welcome the instant Kiedis sings, "Ding, dang, dong, dong, deng, deng, dong, dong, ding, dang," with full sincerity. In fact, Kiedis sings some of the most stupid, inane lyrics I've ever heard. His lyrics are almost more annoying than the flashy playing, honestly. This album is maybe the beginning of the end for rock music as popular culture. I think it should be included in the book not because it's essential listening, but because it's a sign of the end. Sure, it was insanely popular at the time, but that popularity is a Faustian curse. Few other pure rock albums since have gone on to achieve Californication's level of success, and all the other examples I can think of are more niche, or equally braindead. In a way, this was the future RHCP's vision of music always predicted, adding too much rock to soul/funk and adding too much groove to rock to the point where neither sound reflected its point of origin when they played it. When you do that, you essentially kill the genre you're trying to actually exist within. And while RHCP aren't the only suspects in the murder of the genre (U2, Coldplay, even Gorillaz and the White Stripes, or arguably Arctic Monkeys and Imagine Dragons today, who are both trying to raise Rockism from its hospice care deathbed), this album encapsulates all the red flags into one time capsule. Californication is mostly a so-chaotic-it's-forgettable slog of tracks freshened up by a handful of decent gold nuggets of moderate value. But this is not the gold rush, it's the bottom of the barrel, and the only reason we're holding onto the nuggets here as a culture is because they're some of the last ones we'll ever see.
It's motherfucking Prince, arguably my favorite artist of all time. From his self-titled album up through Love Symbol, I'd argue that even a bad Prince song would be anyone else's best. Therefore, there's no such thing as a bad Prince album. It's all down to personal preference. And Sign "☮︎" the Times is a matter of preference. I've always felt like this is a Critic album, not a Fan album; it's boundary-pushing, expansive, and indulgent – all qualities critics fawn over when executed by the darling du jour who already has multiple classics under their belt. Personally, I always find these types of albums exhausting. They become instantly dated, because they use too many "new" sounds, which make them experimental for the era but old-fashioned a few years later. They're long-winded, which means more great material to mull over upon release, but the cream rises from these albums over time and become the only worthwhile pieces. They're too much of a good thing, and they often engage the egos of artists with already-huge egos, and it makes the music embarrassing over time. To me, Sign "☮︎" the Times has all of these flaws. Songs like "Housequake" and "It's Gonna Be A Beautiful Night" are pretty unexciting by today's standards. There's a lot of only-great songs here – "Hot Thing," "U Got The Look," "Strange Relationship" – and I sincerely think this would've been his best if it was only a single disc. (Again, personal preference; I dislike most double albums). And there's moments where Prince is at his most...Prince, and not in the gender-bending, sex-icon sense, but more in the moralism, the religiosity, and even the playing. The title track is easily the worst offender, but also it's there on "The Cross," though better executed, or the extended outro sections of "Playing in the Sunshine," or the molasses build of "It's Gonna Be A Beautiful Night." Yet despite this, there are tons of high points on this album, which, given the amount of sheer material on this thing, is impressive. "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" is easily my favorite Prince song, and songs like "It," If I Were Your Girlfriend," "I Could Never Take The Place of Your Man," "Starfish And Coffee," and "Adore" are all career highlights. Career highlights from a man who has an entire decade dedicated to career highlights. Again, a bad Prince song is still another musician's greatest achievement, and so a messy double album is still a great album. If someone argued this was their favorite Prince album to me, I'd get it completely. Because this is an excellent album, just not flawless to me. But flawed Prince is still incredible and iconic, so this remains required listen.
This is a fun little 2-for-1 package: a greatest hits album and a live album! It's a shame that there's no proper Thin Lizzy album in the book, because they're great, but their strengths are on full display here. And really, there's a lot of strengths seen throughout Live And Dangerous. Amazing playing, breakneck speed, raw power, and charisma off the charts. Not only on the singles – although the high-tier songwriting is even clearer in these live renditions for songs like "Jailbreak," "The Boys Are Back in Town," and "Still in Love with You" – but also on the more unique deep cuts, these hard rock gems that only pimple-faced, dorky stoner boys would've known at the time. I think the combination of fast, face-melting playing and Lynott's stage presence are the backbone of this album, and make its live show runtime feel tolerable for not being in the crowd proper. Still, I think there's two glaring issues. The first is Lizzy's more prog-adjacent tendencies; songs like "Emerald," and "Johnny the Fox Meets Jimmy the Weed" are...exhausting? Nerdy? Embarrassing? Choose your adjective, I just find that they drag the vibe down from cool to chess club real quick. I'd also argue that Side D, while a great capturing of the essence of a live show, starts to wear thin on me, and makes me recognize that the album is probably overstaying it's welcome. But those negatives are minor when compared to the energy displayed here, even if largely overdubbed. It's a great live album and I'd gladly listen to these renditions over the original recordings moving forward.
Inevitably, there will be albums in this challenge that not only push me outside my comfort zone, but beyond my depth of knowledge and comprehension. The New Tango is the first album I've encountered so far that makes me feel this way. I know nothing about Tango, so how could I begin to appropriately appreciate the New Tango? If this were still 2009 and my 1997 Toyota Corolla stick-shift was still kicking, and I had this stuck in the CD player connected to the tape deck until I bothered to pry it out, I could see this growing on me. There's clear talent on display here, that's obvious. The more this leans into jazz, the more I enjoy it. Burton's talents as a vibraphonist are captivating, and "Vibraphonissimo" is a clear stand-out. I also like the energy of "Nuevo Tango," which is where I think Piazzolla brings the biggest jazz influence for himself. However, the rest of this album feels dependent on either a smooth jazz element or classical elements. And I’m as unfamiliar with those sounds as I am the tango. And maybe it’s my unfamiliarity with those genres, but the whole thing felt very melodramatic in a way I find disengaging and uninteresting. The fact that these moments eclipse the avant-garde, the jazz, and even the virtuosity of Piazzolla and Burton both, as well as the backing band, feels like noteworthy sticking points. Even the violin is louder in the mix than Piazzolla, which feels counterintuitive. I wonder, if I were to see a video of this performance, would I be swayed? Do I just need to revisit this later? I sat with this for a few days, trying to revisit it and feeling unable to ever feel the desire to even want to examine it and sink my teeth in, and I think that’s the root of my issue with this album. It’s not that I don’t understand its importance or its compositional brilliance, it’s just that, really, this is not the sort of album I enjoy. It’s not one I’d revisit aside from trying to continue to “get it,” but it also seems like it’s not the album that’s going to sway me to enjoy this style of music any time soon, though it does as much as I think any album could to get me to the line. But here I am, still at the line, and my honest reaction is apathy and respect, nothing more.
There's a spiritual nature to Isaac Hayes' records that just leave me floored every time, contemplating conversion to Scientology, and Hot Buttered Soul might be the best example of that. It's ironic that I already played this independently from the challenge earlier this week, because it'd been a while since I listened to it in full, and it really is *that* good. I used to listen to it while writing college papers, because it's excellent background vibe music, but you can also fully engage with it and find something new and rewarding to fixate on. You could argue that the track length, detail, and the singularity of this album are a sort of Achilles Heel, as they're strengths to the album proper but weaknesses if you want a more casual listen, but I wouldn't. No other 18-minute song in the history of recorded music makes me sit my ass down faster. The fact that 75% of this album is cover songs is crazy, because this is cohesive as hell, an Artistic Statement™️ if I've ever seen one. While I think it may be just outside my personal Top 100, there's a magic to this record that I can't deny. It's essential to a whole half of American music history in a way that I can't understate, and it holds all the allure I'm sure it did upon release 55 years ago.
Doing both too much and not enough simultaneously.
To write and release an album this harrowing, this deeply painful, so palpably learned and lived in, drawn from knowledge so obviously acquired from terrifying experience after terrifying experience, all before the age of 20, you have to understand one thing – womanhood is a petrifying risk, and the path to the summit via girlhood is a cliffside walk all the way up. But even the hauntings along the way can be genuinely gorgeous under the right, delicate light. Fiona Apple knows how to cast that light just before the beauty wilts. Every song here, from the sparsest piano ballad to the most orchestrated pop single, blurs the line between sensual and eerie, mixing dark lyrics delivered in a whisper across a variety of old-school pop and jazz aesthetics. It sounds like they were plucked out of the tradition, or like they've always been here. But only Fiona could've made these exact tunes, modern but universal, designed to pull tears to your feet. This is just one excellent example in a discography filled with multiple examples that only overshadow this record because, again, she was a teenager when she wrote these; a part of me doesn't care that I think "The Child Is Gone" and "Pale September" are only good, because I still am in awe of them, along with everything else here. This is music so emotional, words can't describe the tears, so it's better to just listen for yourself and bear witness.
When the guy with mismatched shoes outside the 7-11 who’s always talking about alien abductions and government conspiracies hands you a blunt that looks dripping wet and suddenly, starts to make a lot of sense.
There’s a such thing as having too many ideas at once. I’m normally a fan of this era of turn-of-the-‘90s pop that blended hip-hop, dance, r&b, and synth-pop into a chaotic soup, but normally, all those artists either had a) a standout hit with a couple supposed-to-be minor hits [because most were one-hit wonders], and/or b) a dominant genre they fit within, where they used all the other genre aesthetics as textures to their sound. This album doesn’t have either: “Buffalo Stance” charted, but it is really difficult to imagine how or why with today’s ears; meanwhile, the rest of the album is just an onslaught of different of-the-era sounds, all of which are done poorly for the time, and sound worse together today. I see the appeal of Neneh Cherry on paper, especially for 1989, a year of changing tides and potential, but the execution is subpar. It’s not bad in a campy way, either, it’s just deeply forgettable. I guess it’s valuable to see how weird pop music was at this time, but there’s better reference points than this.
One Direction’s “Midnight Memories” for Boomers – two timeless singles and then boardroom-crafted teenybopper filler. Actually, scratch that, because I like the 1D album better overall, and both "A Hard Days Night" and "Can't Buy Me Love" are low-tier Beatles singles, even for the first half of their career. Important for what the Beatles became, sure, but it's the least essential original material in their whole discography, in my opinion. At least the film is actually fun.
Elvis Costello made emo/pop-punk albums before those genre labels existed. As a grown-up emo/pop-punk girly, I am the target audience for Elvis Costello. Great record with only a couple missteps, big fan!!
At first I was going to be a bitch and roast this – and to be fair, it does start off on a very unappealing and difficult foot – but as it went on and with a few more listens, I warmed up to it a lot. It’s far from the most interesting no wave/industrial music ever, and I think a lot of the ideas for its strange, dark cabaret elements work better on paper than on wax, but it’s ambitious and animalistic and chaotic, which was 100% the goal and they definitely achieved it. Personally preferred the more straight-forward metal tracks, but I still respect the weird musique concrète tracks a lot. With a little bit of an open-mind, this is pretty enjoyable, especially if you like heavy music, experimental music, or both. It’s not going into instant heavy rotation if only because I have some semblance of sanity, but it’s a cool discovery that I wouldn’t have found without this challenge, which is pretty cool I think!!
I've always felt that Radiohead is sonic Ambien, with the lyrical depth of a teenage stoner and the experimental depth of said teenager's father when he's pickin' up that ol' six-string. This album is proof that I'm not just a hater. And I'm kind of disappointed, because it started out a bit more energetic and emotive! But alas, by track 3, my eyes glazed over, like they almost always do when I listen to Radiohead, and it was all downhill from there.
I was already being actively sold on this album as soon as I put it on, annoyed that I had somehow avoided it in my youth despite it being an obvious and known influence on the Midwest emo and 2000s pop-punk bands I loved at 17. Then "Androgynous" came on, and my nonbinary transfemme ass just started sobbing. Shout out to these drunk punks for being allies in 1984 😭💛🤍💜🖤😭 And shout out to them for being the first hardcore band to break the mold in a way that's actually cool while still making a killer hardcore record!! I'd ask "where has this been all my life," but I'm just ecstatic it's in my life now. Brand new favorite album, will be playing it into the ground for years to come.
This one’s hard for me, because I like Bob Dylan, but I don’t think I love Bob Dylan. I understand him as a poet, as a folk artist, as an important contributor to the American Music Tradition™️. There are plenty of Dylan songs that I enjoy, lyrically, intellectually, emotionally in my bones. There’s also a lot of Dylan songs that I hate – the more band-oriented, the abstract, the allegorical, and worst of all, the long-winded. Blood on the Tracks has both of these Dylans. Not to an exhaustive degree – in fact, it’s probably an even split of the two – but it’s just enough of a 50/50 divide that I’m torn. The raw songs that return him to his roots, like “Tangled up in Blue,” You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” and “If You See Her, Say Hello” really hit me, even though I’m not going through a divorce or anything. And I think this album benefits from the fact that it starts very strong, and it ends pretty strong. But then there’s this middle section of longer songs, filled with allegory and abstraction and meandering Dylan-isms, and it just drags me down, and it takes me out. “Idiot Wind” and “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts” are the worst offenders by far, but I’m also only okay with “You’re a Big Girl Now” and “Meet Me in the Morning,” and the actual closer, “Buckets of Rain,” is a bit too much of a wallflower for my taste. And I understand why these songs are the way they are, why they’re on this record, and the purpose they serve, but they just do nothing for me. I’m struggling to imagine if this record could grow on me. Dylan can have that effect. It also feels like a record where I’ll always revisit certain tracks, but rarely the album in full. But then again, the elements I dislike have always been the elements I dislike about Dylan. In the end, I think I’m slightly beyond neutral (a 3.5; this is where the 5 star rating system falls apart, at least at a glance), but not far enough to say I’m fully on board with it, at least not yet.
Theater kid music (derogatory) Very well done for what it is, no doubt, but a tedious chore to actually listen to unless you have a brain full of Sondheim songs.
For background music I'm only supposed to hear while I'm in line at TSA, it sure did trigger a mini existential crisis. Honestly, I just can't believe the goofy little gremlin who made Here Come the Warm Jets also made this gorgeous ambient album. Like, the range!!! Full transparency, though, I think Music for Airports is one of those albums where a star rating feels inappropriate. It's kind of removed from pop music criticism. I'm not going to actively listen to this all the time, but I do thoroughly enjoy it, and I will definitely listen to it passively. But it's also not an album that I'm meant to "enjoy" by definition; it's an artistic statement, closer to a composition than a pop album. That also means it's a bit unstuck from time, and places Eno in the lineage of your Bachs and your Beethovens and your Mozarts, not in line with his contemporary rock/pop peers. At the end of the day, though, this is a gorgeous album, a genuine work for art, and essential listening that I really enjoyed, and I'll be using this as my writing background music moving forward.
Always had a problem with this record, to be honest. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but I think it’s severely overhyped. Obviously the lyrics are as pointed as they are on any PE album, and the production is great, but compared to the rest of their discography? I just don’t see how you can listen to Fear of a Black Planet and still say you prefer It Takes a Nation, because the follow-up improves on this album in every way. That doesn’t discredit this album’s influence, but a lot of influential hip-hop records get discredited all the time because they became “instantly dated.” And a lot of elements here are very, very dated: the DJ mix vibe, the turntable/interlude tracks, the BPM, the song length, Flavor Flav’s role as a hypeman, etc. Even some of the lyrical critiques feel very 1988 [“Channel Zero” especially], and while politics go out of fashion quick, they shouldn’t feel this stale on a supposedly “timeless” album. It’s not bad, and I get that it inevitably has to be here, because I know contextually it meant a lot. I just think it doesn’t deserve the hype as the genre’s pinnacle when it’s not even the best PE record.
Call me crazy, but I don’t think the local bar band should’ve let the barfly sing with them while he’s actively blacking out. At least they’re a tolerable bar band, even though, based on their blues-heavy riffing, I know the other patrons would try to hate crime me if I tried to get myself my usual fruity little drink.
It really catches you while it’s in a rough spot. The mix is strange, the playing feels out of sync, and it starts out with a pretty obvious rip-off of the “Light My Fire” keyboard riff. You just know these guys are C+ musicians at best. When the vocals came in, I immediately went, “Oof, that’s a choice for this dude to sing.” And so, Side A continues on as a messy, mediocre, forgettable slog. This isn't atypical for particular this era of psychedelic 🌼Flower Power🌸 drivel, but this is notably bad. I do get how the fuzz guitars and organ sounds can add a little ✨something something✨, but it’s not done well enough to even feel influential. In fact, I’m hearing a lot of flubbed notes throughout. In many ways, this is the quintessential $1 record, or worse, one thrown into the basement stacks, meant to be forgotten forever. And then the title track comes on. And like, it doesn’t need to be 17 minutes long, but it works. Despite the musicians behind it, it works. It doesn’t save this album or validate it or elevate it to the status of an essential piece of art to listen to before you die, but it saves it from an eternity of basement mildew by giving it something worthwhile. Unfortunately it’s not worthwhile enough to make it worth anything close to legitimate praise.
Sometimes, there’s nothing much to say about an album. It’s fine. It’s relaxing. It’s jazz. It’s solid. They’re all great players. The organ tone is cool. It’s not inventive, but it’s not offensive, but that’s also not much of a compliment. It’s fine. Cool, I guess? It’s not an album that stands out in your mind once it’s finished, and while it’s never bad, that fact alone brings it down a peg for me, because if I won’t remember it next week, it shouldn’t be in the book, especially a book that excluded so many jazz classics from this era.
The contemporary praise for this is astounding, and made me anticipate one of the most jaw-dropping albums ever. Instead, I got Portishead Lite™️, with some bland rapping that draws from ‘80s American pop-rap. It’s serviceable, but not at all memorable, except when it moves away from trip-hop and/or is lyrically crass for…the sake of commentary, I think?? There’s a reason no one has heard of this unless they were alive and/or living in the UK in the mid ‘90s.
The world knows this is two solo albums fused together in an effort to boost sales and not piss off hip-hop heads, so you have to take the sum of each part. To Big Boi: A good but never great first solo effort. He’s always been a great rapper with great classic tastes, but often those tastes feel derivative, not expansive, and that is very much the case here. It has its moments, but even at its height — “The Way You Move” — it’s never exceptional. Worse, Big Boi shines in comparison to other rappers, which is why he’s shined post-Outkast on his features, not in his solo albums, where there’s just…too much of him. The biggest issue is that this sounds distinctly 2003/2004 with its cluttered, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink production style, which doesn’t help its case when it wasn’t particularly unique even for its time. It’s also way too long, which is, again, clutter. It’s never horrible, but it’s never special, either, except in how dated/annoying it can be stylistically. 3/5 To André: Doing everything can certainly prove a point, but that doesn’t mean you *should* have done everything, because sometimes it can distract from the point entirely. There are soooo many ideas here that I would adore with some hard editing, and/or even the balanced addition of a Big Boi verse. I know this has been compared to Prince a lot, but even at his most ambitious, Prince stuck to a style, and that’s The Love Below’s biggest issue – it has no singular vision. (Ironic, given that Speakerboxxx’s main issue is that it has too narrow of a sonic vision.) It goes from R&B to rap to jazz like an undiagnosed kid in a candy store. And the lyrics are equally childish, especially from a Top 5 Dead or Alive Rapper who’s known first and foremost for his pen game. I can’t rate it too poorly because it does include “Roses” and “Hey Ya!,” but even a couple all-timer songs aren’t herculean enough to save this mess, even with the midpoint boost from some fine but not good neo soul tracks that still suffer from André’s excessive horniness. Speakerboxxx may be monotonous, but The Love Below is a chore, and that’s a greater offense. Some think this messy sort of chaos means the album was ahead of its time, which it isn’t, it’s extremely dated, but ignoring that, it feels like an artist burning out in real time, and time has kinda proven that narrative true. The man literally became a jazz flutist, which is cool, but maybe that’s the direction of someone who’s done all he can do in the pop realm. Based solely off of The Love Below, it seems like all he could do was “Roses” and “Hey Ya!” Which is still better than most of us can do, but I don’t need the rest of the mess to get to the diamonds. In conclusion: if a sample of Aaliyah’s “Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number” makes me want to listen to THAT R. Kelly apologist song instead of your song just so I can be listening to Aaliyah instead of you, then you’re doing something wrong. But hey, cool jazz cover of “My Favorite Things.” 1.5/5 OutKast has always been greater than the sum of its parts. I get how this ended up on this list based off sheer popularity, but it’s bad representation. Still, the sum of the parts here result in the same feeling the whole gives me – a couple great singles from two people who can’t work with or without each other, making one feel numb and the other feel manic, making me feel respectively apathetic and exhausted.
In my experience, fans of The Rolling Stones tend to be really vocal defenders of “what rock and roll used to be,” and really vocal crusaders against, “the shit they play on the radio now.” No one likes these people, but they all seem to like The Rolling Stones. I never really knew why, but their attitude alone convinced me to avoid the Stones at all cost. After listening to the traditionalist wankery of Beggars Banquet for the first — and probably last — time in my life, I now know why those people all really like The Stones.
A great introduction to Fela Kuti and Afrobeat. It’s an upbeat genre, despite the fact that Kuti instills a lot of political messaging into it, which is obvious even from the song titles alone, but that contrast really works. It’s hard not to groove along to this, and the energy and charisma are intoxicating. The inclusion of Ginger Baker on the back half does a lot to ~dumb down~ the rhythms for a Western audience, but honestly, I prefer Tony Allen’s playing on his own. Honestly, Baker’s inclusion brings this down a notch, because it feels purposefully introductory. And frankly, those back half Westernized tracks feel a bit boring toward their end. And I’m not even talking about the drum solo, which is just nerd shit, anyway. Not that I didn’t also use this as an introduction, but now that I’m revisiting it, I can see why it’s both essential if you’re new to Afrobeat/African music, and inessential once your ears get tuned. But it’s great because Kuti is great – he has like 4 or 5 grade-A classics under his belt, excluding this album. And the fact that this is still great on top of that proves his power as a songwriter and band leader. A great listen regardless!
Johnny Cash does excellent stage banter + a couple pretty good songs.
I don’t know if Simon & Garfunkel ever made a flawless album together, but Bookends is as close as they got. There’s a real sense of an Album-with-a-capital-A going on, with the orchestration and seamless transitions, with the concept narrative and high production value. The issue is that Capital-A-Albums mean songs/interludes that work in context, but not on their own. Plus, personally, I think this swooning version of S&G isn’t my preferred version of the boys; I like them quainter, a bit closer to their roots in the scene, and a little less purposefully shooting for high-brow. Still, I just love these two pretentious, precious boys dearly, so yeah, I’m a fan of Bookends.
I walked into Dirt expecting to love it – grunge that teeters on the brink of alt-metal? Sign me up! – but in practice, it’s just the template for every post-grunge pseduo-sad but still masculine band from 2002 that got too much airplay on Hard Rock/Real Rock™️ radio throughout the 2000s, indirectly ruining radio as a whole. While AIC ekes out above those guys, it’s not by much. There’s cool tonal elements here and a couple excellent songs (“Them Bones,” “Dirt,” and “Would?” – all notably the opener, midpoint, and closer), but there’s a LOT more songs that are only “pretty good.” They play around so much with tempo and style changes that my ears can never really catch the groove, literally or figuratively, and a lot of the layered guitar work feels tacked on, especially for the solos. And boy, does it overstay its welcome. Not at all the record I expected, and frankly, while it’s perfectly fine, I’m left a bit saddened by how underwhelming this felt. If you want dark and grimy, listen to actual sludge metal, and if you want something more uptempo, listen to any other grunge band. You won’t regret listening to Dirt, sure, but you’d find more substance by listening to others instead. This is just trying to have too much of both lanes, and becomes a master of none as a result.
I wish I liked this album more than I did, but aside from the obvious bulldozer of a title track, I found this record oddly boring. I could say the tracks were way too long, that there’s a little too much ‘80s-era synth experimentation, or even that there’s very little material here with hit potential, but that’s not what struck me as odd, because I typically like new wave despite these issues. Really, Sweet Dreams just gave me the sense that Eurythmics are a Greatest Hits band. So, in a strange twist, this boring, mid-level new wave album with one stellar song and a couple decent but forgettable cuts made me explore more of their discography, and I discovered that, while their next 3 albums are all better than Sweet Dreams, Eurythmics are, in fact, a Greatest Hits band. That said, Annie Lennox’s Diva? Pretty fucking great! Should be in the book over Sweet Dreams, easily.
David Foster Wallace ruined an entire generation of middle-class white men. But at least this has a groove that prevents it from ever becoming as annoying as it sounds like it would be on paper.
I want to be kinder, because for a Made for TV band, it's pretty impressive that they even got to make their own thing. But, also, maybe they were a Made for TV band for a reason.
This style of music really went out of fashion way too fast. I know it's ephemeral, but there's something about it that makes me so giddy and teleports me back to being a teenage girl talking with my friends on the kitchen phone about nothingness while my Mom pretends not to listen. And I was doing that almost exactly 50 years after this came out! Also, I really, really like this style of production. Everything sounds crisp. Those drums? Ugh, my god, so good! Also that guitar sound. And those harmonies are tight as hell. I do think A Date with... is still a bit too ephemeral, and doesn’t stick with me as much as I would like/as much as other teen pop from this era. Still, this is leagues above the copycat shit The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and all the British Invasion boy bands were doing only three or four years after this, so for that alone it deserves praise.
What the fuck did these lads put in my tobacco tin and why am I kinda okay with it?!?!?!?!?! 🫨💨🌀🌛😵💫
I like what I like, and I like stupid but strangely introspective pop-punk bands. I’m more surprised that I like it done by these Mad Lads, because often UK-isms prove to be a barrier for me, but I guess my love for pop punk clearly supersedes everything else. Not like this is flawless, life-changing, or even essential, arguably. But what pop punk album is?
Since I was 13, this has been my go-to answer whenever people asked me my favorite album. It's not my most played today (that's Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides), and it's not the one that had the biggest impact on my brain chemistry (that's The Shape of Punk to Come), but when I think of albums I both love listening to all the way through and can make no critiques about, I think of Purple Rain. Music is 1000% subjective, but Prince makes very convincing arguments that sometimes, music can be objectively good, and Purple Rain might be the closest to an "Objectively 10/10 Album" in the entire history of recorded music. From the guitar solo on "Let's Go Crazy" to the drums on "Darling Nikki," from the chart-success of "When Doves Cry" to the second half of "Computer Blue," to the flawless climax of the title track – there is not a wrong note, not a single wrong melody, absolutely nothing you can lobby against this album. It's poppy, it's danceable, it's intellectual, it's sexual, it's romantic, it's easy to listen to for fun, and easy to listen to if you want to cry. Every track could be someone's favorite song ever. It's the sort of album that requires a full listen every time. It's a masterpiece, a high water mark for Prince, for rock, for funk, for pop, and for music in general. Easiest 5-star review ever. I have a bad feeling this is going to be the listening high-point of this challenge, but then again, that would've been true if I had gotten to it on Day 1088, too. "I'm not a woman/I'm not a man/I am something that you'll never understand" 🖤💜🤍💛
To my own surprise, I don’t hate it, but it definitely doesn’t feel essential in any way. It feels less put-on than The Suburbs, that’s for sure, but it still believes it’s deeper than it actually is. But the melodies are also very catchy, and while the compositions are a bit overwrought with twee orchestration, it never reaches the tipping point where it becomes annoying. I do think a lot of these songs overstay their welcome, though. I also don’t love Butler’s voice, its tone gets under my skin, and I personally would’ve loved to have more of Chassagne’s vocals doing these songs instead. I think this album actually helps me understand my disinterest in Arcade Fire. Musically, while it’s not my personal typical cup of tea, I think it’s very good and interesting, although it’s always at risk of crossing the line and becoming “too much.” At the same time, lyrically, it feels pretentious and try-hard, straight out of a bad poetry workshop. They are the definition of “one step forward, two steps back” for me. On top of that, while I know they were big at the time, I’m not convinced that they actually had any influence; almost two decades later, I don’t hear this sound or aesthetic coming from anyone who wasn’t originally from this scene. And that makes it feel unessential. More importantly, the pros and cons of listening to this albun even out in my ears, and I’m still not putting on Arcade Fire any time soon on my own volition. But at least Neon Bible is a tolerable listen, so there’s that.
A rather embarrassing fact about me is that I cannot understand a British accent at all. I know it sounds fake – a lot of my friends think at first that I'm bullshitting them, especially because I'm mostly okay with an Irish or Scottish accent, and accents in general, too – but it's 100% an auditory processing issue. I don't know why, but a British accent sounds like mud in my ears. That's important, because I literally had a hard time understanding this album, and this has always been my issue with The Clash. I should like this band more than I do. Of the first ✨big✨ punk bands, I think The Clash had a bigger impact on the direction and sound of punk, not only in the UK but in the States, too. (Literally who is doing The Ramones or The Sex Pistols today? It's all based on The Clash, and this album, or earlier proto-punk bands.) But this record just does not impact me like I want it to. Even when a song is 2 minutes long, somehow, The Clash makes it sound like it goes on forever. Politically, I agree with them, but when I read the lyrics, it feels kind of underwritten, especially given their reputation as a lyrical band. And again, I cannot for the life of me understand the vocals at all. I like that it's not entirely aggro but still always has edge, but sometimes there's also too much breathing room on a track. I like the influence of reggae, but they also seem to be doing it a disservice, somehow. And these things are all distractions I can't get over. And believe me, I really want to like this album. I would like a song, like "Career Opportunities," and favorite it on Spotify, and then it goes into the Oi! breakdown, and it loses me, and I'd unlike it. I did this for over half the album – a pump fake 4 star record, if you will, where little choices would get under my skin and turn me off completely. It does lose some steam in the last leg, sure, but for most of this, I truly think this is a "me issue." I don't hate it, but I would never revisit this for any reason. Is it important? Yes. Is it essential listening? Yes. Does it belong on the list? Absolutely. But do I personally enjoy it? Unfortunately, I think the answer is no. Simply put, I just think, for some weird reason that goes against my tastes, The Clash are not for me.
Sgt. Pepper's ruined music for a solid decade. That, or, I just find Bowie obnoxious. This is so overloaded with ephemera. I hate the soul pastiche. I hate the 50 additional, unnecessary instruments. I hate these pseudo-conceptual lyrics. I hate the way Bowie sings. I hate the way Bowie ENUNCIATES his words! It's everything and the kitchen sink, and it's all just fabricated drama for the sake of drama, which means it can't even be called camp because, per Sontag, it's too self-aware that it's being campy, and that is maybe exactly why I hate this. I knew I never liked Bowie and could never get into this album very far no matter how many times I tried, but truly, listening to this was the biggest chore of this whole challenge so far. I turned it off several times because it just got under my skin. I hate this album. I hate Bowie. Worst album I've heard so far.
I knew I'd eventually get to an album where my gut reaction was, "I need this on CD, and I need to be stuck in a situation where it's the only CD I have on hand because it's in my Walkman, and then, and only then, would I like it." Unfortunately, those days are long gone, and I somehow missed Big Star back when those days were very real, even though I knew they were important and influential and a point of reference for so many bands. A part of me wants to say this is two records. The first part belongs to Bell, who I don't really see as an "forefather of alternative rock," but rather a fairly mediocre mimic of CCR and other one-hit-wonder rootsy blues-based hard rock groups like Kansas from that era. I don't particularly like that sound, really at all, but I especially don't get this version as an alternative to mainstream rock. I find most of these songs to be filled with too many bells and whistles, and I also find Bell's singing to be annoying. But, then again, sometimes, the Bell songs are very tight and the guitar fucks, and I'm sold. Obviously there's a bit of nostalgia for the That 70s Show theme song "In the Street," an obvious lightbulb moment, sure, but I think my favorite Bell song is "My Life is Right." Then, of course, there's the Chilton songs. Recently, my Spotify has been suggesting "September Gurls" as an autoplay song, and I do like that song, so I'm not surprised that of the two, I like Chilton's songs more. "Thirteen" is obviously a standout, not only for this half of the record, but for the album in general. But at the same time, some of the Chilton songs on this half are wayyy too drab, way too quaint, and felt like Paul McCartney pastiche, and I mean that as an insult. And here's the thing, I want to say it's 2 records from two different solo projects, but I can't. "The India Song" ruins that, not just because it's bad, but because it's by neither of the band leaders. And then the closer is a duel-song of nothingness. But even when I want to make this clear distinction, I can't, because I can hear Bell and Chilton cross-pollinating, especially on Side B. And that cross-pollination? It's not for me, but sometimes, it's almost for me. If I'm generous and say this is a 10-song record, I like more than half of it, and I like 3/5 songs each songwriter brings to the table. But do I *love* them? Ehhhh, not really. I get how this is cool, but I don't find it particularly interesting for its time. On top of that, I can see the seeds of a great band, but they're also not ✨there✨ yet, not just because they're allowing shit like "The India Song" to slide into the track list to appease their poor bassist – they're still learning from each other as collaborative songwriters, and they're not done learning, and it shows. Still, I like enough material here to be intrigued. I wouldn't buy this on vinyl today, but I could imagine revisit it and liking it more. Honestly, the hype may have fucked with my brain chemistry, but while I don't get it, I at least get its allure now, which is enough to justify a relisten once I'm further on with this list.
You know what? One Direction *was* right, "Baba O'Riley" *is* the best song ever! Somehow, I missed The Who entirely, besides the singles and the classic rock radio staples, but none of those songs motivated me to dig into a full album, for some reason. Which is funny, because listening to this, I realize The Who is an album band. The singles are great, but in context, they're even stronger, and somehow hold a bigger impact. "Baba O'Riley" is great when it's on the radio, but it shines best as an opener, and the same can be said about "Won't Get Fooled Again" as a closer. "The Song is Over" is an incredible side closer, and while on first listen I thought it should be the real closer, I actually like that Side B is just this all-killer-no-filler assault of talent and songwriting perfection. As a band, they're all on the top of the mountain; I could focus my ears to any one of them and be blown away (particularly by Moon, whose drumming is fascinating, even today). But you don't need to be a musician who nerds out over their playing abilities, because it all still gels extremely well. Unfortunately, "My Wife" is on this record, which prevents it from being flawless, and because this is such an Album-with-a-capital-A, I won't be pulling out individual songs frequently, but I'm still floored. Now I'm excited to get to hear what else they have to offer. Honestly, thank god there's more of this band on this list, because if it's all like Who's Next, then I'm going to have a great run with them.
Chaotic muchness. Esoteric and vast, the product of a bookish talker influenced by queer Christian guilt. I’m old enough to know that Sufjan isn’t the cottage-core, quaint songwriter teens today think he is. I’m fully aware he’s a product of the Keith Herrings of this world and the maximalism of the 2000s. I was the target demographic for Sufjan when this album came out, and I knew that, but I still hated it. I didn’t know how much I was the target demo — I still thought I would die in a small New England town, I still was deep in the closet, I still thought I was above this level of pretentiousness. Still, my friends, from the punks to the hipsters, always insisted Sufjan was great, I just needed to give him another chance, especially this album, if nothing else. And so I tried, multiple times over the years, and yet, though I did warm up to it gradually with each revisit, I always walked away feeling negative toward this album. Maybe Brooklyn has finally rotted my brain after 8 years, maybe I can finally see the queer themes now that both Sufjan and I are fully out, maybe I’ve finally accepted that I’m annoying, but, whatever the reason, I’m finally positive on this album. I’m not 100% convinced yet that it’s a masterpiece. I still find the filler tracks deeply annoying, even if they are melodically sound, because I hate songs that only work in the context of an album and nowhere else. I still find this a bit overwrought, and in the finally stretch, its sprawl goes from exhausting to grating, though never so bad that I want to turn it off. As a result, I do find the first half much, much stronger, and wish it had stayed with those first 12 tracks only, or maybe go up to 15 songs total and stop. I do find it annoying and a bit like “I took a bunch of Adderall, grabbed a encyclopedia, turned to the index, read every article under the ‘Illinois’ header, and here’s everything I learned, no filter,” and that’s a bit annoying. But when it works? God, does it work. There’s just this magic to Sufjan’s nondescript descriptions that gets at the soul of something deeply Millennial, deeply post-9/11, dare I say chronically online, but oddly early to it, like a Wikipedia article sprint in an attempt to make sense of the chaos around you. It’s this longing to be a capital-A Artist™️ in a world where that no longer happens often, and by naming everyone you want to be compared to from the history books, it clicks. Also, sonically, this is very good. I think this album definitely has a singular sound, and if you don’t like that sound, 75 minutes of it can get boring, but I think he plays around enough in that sound to push its boundaries that it warrants its length. I do wish he went further with it, but this man said he would make an album for every state, so I think the sprawl here feels minimal compared to whatever sketches he may have had on file. As I said, I’m not 100% sold here, but I’m pushed just over the edge enough to know that I’m basically a fan of this, and will grow more confident with that the next time I listen. It doesn’t sell me on Sufjan, though, and I think if this book was written today, he’d have a lot more representation, and that would make me like this less because I know I don’t like his latest indietronica approach at all, or even Carrie & Lowell. But if we’re only stuck with Illinois, I’m feeling that Illinoise, baby!!
I think MGMT is to Millennials what The Moody Blues is to Boomers. Good, sure, but mostly, you had to be there to get why it’s important. Their importance feels intangible. Words can’t really explain what it is about the music itself that matters. If you weren’t there, sure, the hits are still solid, but it never feels particularly unique stripped of the context of the time. I truly believe that once all the Millennial critics retire, MGMT will go the way of The Moody Blues, directly toward the bargain bin. But as a Millennial? Fuck, man, I don’t even like this album as much as my friends, and I still love it. It’s too fun and was the soundtrack to too much of my life for me to not adore it. It’s got a couple stinkers, but there’s just something about this album that speaks to that Great Recession era of pain. It summarizes what the kids now call Indie Sleaze that to me felt like we were all just trying to numb our collective shitty adolescence. It’s gaudy but somehow sexy, cheap but kinda chic if you squint. And I think there’s a bit more steam in its engine for the moment, as long as the American economic remains in the drain, which is why it’s remained a critical darling and found some newfound fans. I doubt that will last forever, though, because things tend to get better, eventually, and even if they don’t, new voices come onto the scene to represent the pain. But until then, “Oracular Spectacular” will remain beloved in my household, and will continue to be until I die and someone else throws my copy in a bargain bin.
It feels extremely important if you’re British, but otherwise? Eh, okay, I guess?? Honestly, if the production didn’t feel so insanely dated even compared to its contemporaries, I’d enjoy it a lot more. I get that it’s trying to sound dated in an attempt to sound timeless, but frankly, that choice is a brick wall that holds back a lot of the potential magic here. I also don’t love the Bowie pastiche, but that’s more a personal gripe with Bowie — these songs are better than Bowie’s, even if they’re rip-offs. Still, this is the closest to a 4-star rating an album can get without achieving it. It’s a sloppier Kirin J. Callinan, or a more sophistipop Pulp. I see its influence, and I like a lot of the songs, but something always holds it back. A chipped gem is still chipped, after all.
Controversially, this may be the peak of The Cure’s goth post-punk era for me. I had to sit with this truth a lot, because I don’t personally love them for their goth era. Do I really want to rate this a 5/5? Does it achieve that status, even if I would place other albums by The Cure above it? Is it a bit sloppy, a bit loose with its playing? Yes. Is that maybe the result of an amateurish first attempt to shift the band’s entire aesthetic? Maybe. Are there a couple of instrumental songs that are just padding tracks? Sure, but strangely enough, I would listen to them out of context from this album, too. Despite its obvious critiques, this album just has a mood, a vibe, and that vibe is like a siren. It’s an enticing record, a life-changing record, even. I know it was for my high school girlfriend, who went from twee to goth a week after she first heard this and “Juju.” (Thankfully we’re cool now, so there’s no hard feelings around this listen.) There’s a pop sensibility here in “A Forest,” “Play for Today,” and “M” that appeals to me, keeps me going as a listener. And that’s then mixed against this very cool, slow-brewing darkness in songs like “Three” and “Seventeen Seconds” that perks my ears up, and I can’t avert my eyes, like I’m seeing a wolf during a walk in the woods. Honestly, I think I’m just trying to justify my emo love for The Cure, one of my favorite bands ever, and that’s silly. My emo heart loves The Cure and this is some of their best 🖤🥀⛓️🖤
My aunt got trampled by the crowd when she went with my Dad to see Fleetwood Mac at a sold-out show in ’77, literally breaking her arm just to see this band at their absolute peak. Now, I play her copy of this album religiously once a month, and hold it with the same reverence I’d hold any family heirloom. This is simply one of the greatest albums ever made. It’s one of those records where it’s so good, it’s not even fair to put it in a personal top 10, because yeah, everyone with ears adores this record, unless they’re purposefully being a contrarian. It’s the definition of “this sounds like a greatest hits album” because every song is just so deeply integrated into pop culture by now. There are no weak songs; my least favorite song, “Second Hand News,” would be a high-water mark for any other band, and only pales in comparison to the rest of the record it opens, because on its own, I adore it. I even go to bat for the McVie songs, because “Oh Daddy” and “You Make Loving Fun” are maybe my favorite songs here. It’s femme and witchy and sparkly thanks to Nicks, it’s reflective and somber and sultry thanks to McVie, and it’s bitchy and biting and masculine thanks to Buckingham. It’s rocking, it’s heavy, it’s pop, it’s folksy, it’s jazzy, it’s got a bit of everything for everyone. And even after decades of listening to it, today I still was hearing new elements I never noticed, which is the sign of a record that transcends criticism, in my opinion. This record is a cultural touchstone, so important to modern life that it’s now hard to see a world where it doesn’t exist. Flawless flawless flawless!!
I like what I like, and as someone who listens to DJ mixes on Soundcloud while she works, this is 100% up my alley. I just like everything about it – the gaudy female vocals, the frequent cutting, the sample flips to give the illusion of lyrics, the tacked-on raps. It is the Platonic Ideal of an NYC Block Party circa 1985, even though this is from 1989 and was made by two Brits. It is a hard album to rate, though. Not as a matter of personal taste, because again, I know this is to *my* taste. But it’s hard to listen to some albums on this list and not consider what is “missing,” especially when you consider genre pioneers. And this album/Coldcut feels distinctly ~lesser~ if the focus is to highlight innovators. It took slightly too much research to figure out why Coldcut was influential, or if they even were influential at the time, even though I could identify flags like the Tommy Boy US label distribution or the remix of “Paid in Full” being on that album’s CD reissue. And while I walked away concluding that Coldcut is, in fact, an important band in the history of House/Electronic music, I can’t help but wonder if Inner City’s “Paradise” or Fingers Inc.’s “Another Side” would work better as pioneer representatives, or even Lords of Acid a few years later, even if “Lust” is more New Beat/Techno. Still, I can justify “What’s That Noise” as perhaps influential on the DJ mix aesthetic so many use today, although I’m not entirely sure if that influence is as direct as others. Then again, House/Electronic music is not an album genre, and the pioneers can’t be easily summarized in a list like this. I can’t shake the fact that this is not on streaming, though, and all the YouTube comments are noting either a single track’s use in the Japanese game show Gaki no Tsukai (which is already a niche within a niche of online cultural awareness), or its inclusion on the 1001 Album list…which means this probably isn’t even directly influential to DJs today. “What’s That Noise” seems to suffer most from the fact that it sounds secondary, even for its time, and therefore can read as inessential. If you can strip your brain away from the challenge and listen to it on its own merit, though, I think this is a wonderful ‘80s House album, and if you like turntablism, sampledelia, and DJ mixes, you’ll probably enjoy this like I did. Ultimately, I think it earns its keep on this list, but I’d feel better saying that if early House was better represented overall.
What the hell is this? Is it new wave, synth rock, or even just straight-up dance? Or is it post-punk, maybe even dance-punk? Are New Order savants, or can they not play in sync, either with themselves or a metronome? I can’t tell if this is avant-garde pop genius, or a sloppy mess of punks going pop, and it just so happens that they’re early enough to the party that not having a handle on how to play with new technology earns them respect instead of ridicule. But then they take a perfect song like “The Perfect Kiss,” which, despite their sloppy playing, is still a well-written song, and add in stock sound footage of frogs and other bullshit. Or they meander with songs like “Sunrise” or “Elegia” and just rip off their post-punk contemporaries [including their former selves] with less finesse. The closest they get to winning me over is “Sooner Than You Think,” but there’s just soooo many overdubbed guitars that don’t gel together well, it just pulls me out. And then there’s songs like “Face Up” that feel completely out of place on this record, way too uptempo and new wave oriented to even sound like the same band. I think if it was even slightly tighter, I’d be okay with it, though not fully in love. Yet if it was any looser, I’d be a lot more upset that I had to listen to this. The fact that it’s only 8 songs makes me feel a lot more apologetic, honestly. As it stands, it’s just too messy and undefined to convince me of its supposed unique genius. Maybe next time New Order will stick to a singular vision and actually care about playing well together.