My 1001 Albums Journey

Albums Rated

3.16

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1033 albums remaining

Rating Distribution

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Taste Profile

1990s

Favorite Decade

New-wave

Favorite Genre

Top Origin

Tough Crowd

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5-Star Albums

1-Star Albums

Breakdown

By Genre

By Decade

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Albums

You Love More Than Most

Album	You	Global	Diff
Kollaps Einstürzende Neubauten	4	1.91	+2.09
The Dreaming Kate Bush	5	2.97	+2.03
Remain In Light Talking Heads	5	3.67	+1.33
Who's Next The Who	5	3.91	+1.09

You Love Less Than Most

Album	You	Global	Diff
Born To Run Bruce Springsteen	2	3.64	-1.64
Chelsea Girl Nico	1	2.63	-1.63
Hotel California Eagles	2	3.6	-1.6
Diamond Life Sade	2	3.42	-1.42
Pretzel Logic Steely Dan	2	3.4	-1.4
Pretenders Pretenders	2	3.35	-1.35
Welcome To The Pleasuredome Frankie Goes To Hollywood	2	3.11	-1.11
Make Yourself Incubus	2	3.08	-1.08
Back To Black Amy Winehouse	3	4.02	-1.02

5-Star Albums (3)

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Popular Reviews

My Generation

The Who

4/5

Love this collection of early recordings from one of my favorite bands of all time. So many hints of great things yet to come from the group and its individual powerhouse musicians. Makes me smile, end to end.

1 likes

1-Star Albums (1)

All Ratings

Low

David Bowie

3/5

Liked it, didn’t love it. Appreciate Bowie and Eno, to be sure, but I haven’t dug deep into the catalog of either. This album was no doubt influential in and representative of its time, but most of the music sounded … familiar at this point. A-side was recognizable as Bowie, for better and worse. B-side, though pleasant, had me ready to move on before it was over. Very glad to have kicked off my 1001 Album Generator journey with this work. I had never heard most of this music before and haven’t listened to an album all the way through in along time. Good stuff. This is going to be fun.

My Generation

The Who

4/5

Ten

Pearl Jam

4/5

Tough to separate early 90s nostalgia from the music, but this has held up well, both as an end-to-end album and on the strength of its individual tracks. Seminal stuff. Makes me want to pay more attention to all the subsequent Pearl Jam albums I neglected over the years.

Back To Black

Amy Winehouse

3/5

Undeniable talent and some really good music, but I isn’t really connect with this one. Good listen, but perhaps a bit too retro without enough innovation to really capture my interest and imagination?

James Brown Live At The Apollo

James Brown

4/5

I’m a sucker for live albums, and this is a wonderful historical artifact. Interesting to connect some of the sounds and rhythms here to early Who from a couple of days ago on my Albums Before You Die journey. Good stuff. Short and sweet, from back when a full length release could clock in at just over 30 minutes haha.

Made In Japan

Deep Purple

4/5

Deep Purple is a much deeper band than I knew based on prior, limited exposure. (“Smoke on the Water”? Meh.) Generally appreciated the extended jams and prog elements more than some of the riff rock, but it’s hard to complain. ‘Cause there’s a DRUM SOLO haha. And copious rock organ. And — surprise! — vocal wailing that foreshadows the best and worst of “hard rock” yet to come. Good stuff. A nice surprise.

Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music

Ray Charles

3/5

Important artist and no doubt an important album. But I liked it, didn’t live it. Probably ought to revisit some other time, when I’m more in the mood for this sort of thing and can give it my whole-hearted attention. Not the right music for me, right now., on the day it happened to come my way.

Beach Samba

Astrud Gilberto

2/5

Well, I’m not sorry that I gave this a listen. It’s lovely, pleasant stuff. But I don’t know enough about this style of music to understand what might differentiate this album from others of the genre or era. I also want really in the mood for this, I think. I might pick a track for an interlude as part of a radio show. Would be great background or soundtrack music for a party or film going after a certain vibe. Perhaps just wasn’t the right soundtrack for me on the day I gave it a listen.

The Age Of The Understatement

The Last Shadow Puppets

3/5

Good stuff. Love the more bombastic, sweeping, cinematic tracks BUT I found myself wishing, more often than not, that I could leave this behind and go listen to some Arctic Monkeys haha. But that’s not really in the spirit of the thing, is it? So the good news is I appreciated this more on the second listen than the first, and I imagine I’ll revisit this again soon after I scratch that Arctic Monkeys itch.

Pretenders

2/5

I didn’t think much of the Pretenders back in the day, and I have never explored beyond FM radio staples, That seems okay after hearing this debut album. It’s a solid 1001 ABYD inclusion, though. Some obvious but not too obvious influences of the time. A few new twists that had lasting impact on artists yet to come. Appreciate Chrissie Hynde’s talent, influence, and longevity as an artist. Have to admit, though, that only about half of these songs connected with me, and my faves were generally not the radio hits.

Exodus

Bob Marley & The Wailers

3/5

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

Arrested Development

4/5

Chelsea Girl

Nico

1/5

Wild Is The Wind

Nina Simone

4/5

Elvis Presley

3/5

Pretzel Logic

Steely Dan

2/5

I wish I could articulate exactly why I hate Steely Dan as much as I do. Surely a band with multiple albums on this list do not deserve such contempt. Still, I can’t bring myself to 1-star this. It’s not WTF bad like the Nico album. The music is objectively good, meticulously so, and perhaps that’s the problem. There are high standards at work here, and cleverness, and some irony. But gimme danger. Rough edges. Please.

Welcome To The Pleasuredome

Frankie Goes To Hollywood

2/5

Bandwagonesque

Teenage Fanclub

3/5

Kollaps

Einstürzende Neubauten

4/5

Blood On The Tracks

Bob Dylan

3/5

Dummy

Portishead

4/5

Highway 61 Revisited

Bob Dylan

4/5

The Grand Tour

George Jones

3/5

Remain In Light

Talking Heads

5/5

Hail To the Thief

Radiohead

3/5

Diamond Life

Sade

2/5

The Dreaming

Kate Bush

5/5

Well, Kate Bush officially joins the ABYD 5-star Club. Criteria seems to be an artist or album I’m not already very familiar ++ significant repeat value in that I feel like I could listen to it, intentionally, forever and don’t want to move on. I don’t want to move on after 2-3 listens. These rating are all relative, of course, so this one could have been influenced by the fact that its predecessor was Sade — meh — but The Dreaming is now in good company with Talking Heads Remain in Light and a near 5-star Eiensturzende Neubaten debut. Something about the production techniques and sensibilities of the time period seems to really be resonating with me, as both a music fan and hobbyist music maker. Hmmm…

Ingenue

k.d. lang

2/5

Leftism

Leftfield

3/5

The Number Of The Beast

Iron Maiden

3/5

Elephant

The White Stripes

4/5