1001 Albums Summary

Typically great Belle & Sebastian, though I didn't enjoy it as much as Dear Catastrophe Waitress.

It's John Lennon without the Beatles.

It's just top notch Stones. 3 big singles, and the other songs are great. "I've Got the Blues" is a great slow blues song I didn't expect from them.

Sonically intoxicating.

I have always loved Sam Cooke, and now I know I love his studio work. I can't find a fair assessment for his crowd work other than to say it was persistently annoying. It felt like a preschool teacher coaching toddlers through his songs rather than an artist having fun with and letting his fans enjoy his songs. Maybe I was in a bad mood, but this was a disappointment.

A+

I didn't expect to enjoy the more artsy Peter Gabriel era Genesis that much, but this was excellent. You can hear a brilliant band with excellent musicians teetering between the artsier side of prog rock and a band that will embark on a quest to pop royalty. It's an excellent album from front to back.

Not being a bug punk fan, it's pretty good. I can see going back to it in the right mood. It's easy to hear how it influenced many that would come after it.

You have to be in the mood for Depeche Mode, but it's good Deoeche Mode.

60s rock is perhaps my favorite, and this is good. The hits are classics, and everything else is mostly well down. The car songs attempt to chase the Beach Boys songs but come up short. I was surprised to hear they existed but not that I didn't know them.

This mostly sounds, to a non-metal fan, like decent metal songs sung by a man attempting to sing while smoking a cigarette and being strangled. It does have Living After Midnight and Breaking the Law. If you think I have to like another Judad Priest song, then You've Got Another Thing Coming.

Monkeys in the Arctic are as rare as British bands that actually sound British when they sing. This album is great.

This is the most misleading album title and cover art of all time. Hiding a brilliant jazz album behind this facade is some double secret agent tomfoolery. I don't know how I have never heard or heard or this before, but I will be revisiting this like an exclusive top shelf speakeasy I've been accidentally allowed entry into and have been told I'm welcome back anytime.

I felt like I was in my 40s listening to something I felt pressured to like in my teens. It's fine, but you know what you've got here.

Excellent. Eclectic yet well done across the board. The deluxe version is a lot to consume in volume, but it's always interesting.

It wasn't quite annoying enough to turn off, but I kept thinking a cat needed help somewhere nearby.

No.

I'm going to feel a little bad if she's deaf, but not too bad, because this is awful. She shouldn't even sing in the shower. If this was some experiment where someone taught her English through song, I guess that's kind of neat, but I hope she learned to speak English and never did this again. The music is OK from what I heard, but I couldn't finish this. Zero stars should be an option.

This sort of unknown to me gem is why I'm here.

I'm not sure I'll listen to anything besides the singles again, but it's far more approachable Gabriel, so I now have two reasons to appreciate him leaving Genesis.

Tim Buckley is a wonderful singer, but the music felt uninspired. I'm not sure what the appropriate ratio of vibration to serious music is, but it's a fraction of this. I felt like I was trapped in a slow moving elevator with music that only felt like it was on a loop.

I knew every song, and they were all hits. Boston isn't my favorite type of rock, but I appreciate Steve Lukather's guitar work, and the vocals are strong. It's really an impressive album.

Prince is one of the greatest all-around musical talents pop music has ever seen. I'd never gone past the voluminous hit singles on this album, and while some tracks seemed to drag on longer than necessary, they routinely paid off in the end. As a very different aside, I, for one, didn't realize how raunchy Prince could get. I did not have Prince singing, "I sincerely want to fu€k the taste out of your mouth" on my lyrical bingo card. You have to really enjoy the more 80s synth elements of Prince to appreciate the lengthy effort of the entire album, but it's an experience well worth having.

A very solid Elvis record with vocal performances that had clearly matured with his intentional work while he was deployed in the Army.

It's definitely a soundtrack, but it's also a good standalone album. You can feel the 1960s of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" give way to 1970s funk with instrumental stops along the way. I sort of want to see Super Fly now.

He's a whiz on the piano, there's no doubt about it, but he sings with the nuance of a dump truck navigating speed bumps. No matter the song, he sings it the same, and usually with the same narcissistic flair. I'm adding a star for the album being only 22 minutes long, but removing two for almost certainly killing at least a couple of his 7 wives. If we start talking about his marriage to his 13 year old cousin, we're going to need negative stars and an extra layer of hell.

I'm not at all certain what I ingested to have that sort of hippie fever dream, but it was fun. Usually an album loses a star for me if I absolutely know I'll never listen to it again, and I'm neither a teenager nor do I possess enough drugs to take down an elephant, so I'm certain I won't likely ever fire this back up, but it's good in it's oddity. It's always sonically interesting, and the lyrics are often poignant and mature for their overall backdrop. There isn't a single song I'll think of as a single, but it's all pretty good.

Here we witness an early Michael Franti before his days of sunshine and acoustic beach anthems, and he isn't pleased with the world. The hip hop itself was great for the time, and his lyrics are poignant while apparently a harbinger of the world to come. I'm sure he is not pleased with how things progressed, but I'm glad we got this album that should have had more traction.

You know what you're getting here, and I see the appeal. I feel it's more influential than it is good, but it's good. It feels like largely the same 2 minute thing with a slightly different feel over and over, but it's still good. Blitzkrieg Bop is still a banger.

It's Elvis Costello, and it's 90s rock, both of which I really like. Yet I was underwhelmed. Maybe I just prefer my traditional view of Elvis Costello and need to listen again later.

Paul Simon hits with some really good deeper cuts I didn't know that were all very solid

There's a razor thin line between perfection and disaster, and Al Green is perfection. He has a voice that no one can duplicate. He soulfully sings a whisper with a voice that's so close to sounding like a distraction or like it would be strange to talk with, but it's a beautiful instrument. It also makes me glad you never hear anyone perform his music at karaoke. Thr music itself is great, and this album is just excellent r&b/soul.

I often times found the music enjoyable. It's interesting and richly layered. Björk shows she can sing, but far too often Icelandic Yoko Ono's warbling screeches make this punishment I don't think I deserve. At least twice I thought I was having a brain aneurysm. Once, while I was working intently on a task, I sort of forgot what I was listening to and suddenly thought I needed to call 911 for someone needing help nearby. Björk is massively talented though. She made music out of hyperventilation, and I almost thought it was okay. She would have gotten away with that if it weren't a prelude to what I think was some half goat-half man having sex at her. There is tolerable Björk music out there. This isn't it.

It's good in the background and pretty boring if you actively listen to it.

The album title says it all. Just wonderful 60s rock and soul. One of my favorites so far.

I enjoyed it as punk that was more accessible with pop sensibilities. The guitar parts often seemed redundant and stuck in simple loops, but it was a good listen.

This was surprisingly enjoyable. It was just really good early hip hop; a marriage of 80s music and hip hop beats and rapping. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did.

I can't distinguish one sing from another, but it isn't unenjoyable metal. I don't think anyone will approach Iron Maiden expecting greater depth than could drown a field mouse, so it's good for what it is.

It's just really nice music with a very beautiful voice.

This was surprisingly good and will get future listens. I assumed I knew all I needed to know based on the punkish and enjoyable "Get Free," but this album is much deeper and more, well, highly evolved than that.

I have wasted my entire life underappreciating Jeff Beck. This is not just excellent out of context, but considering when it's from, it's brilliant. It sounds like a guide post for what Zeppelin would become, and Beck is amazing the whole way through. Rod Stewart is excellent here in his very early days, too. This would be a 5 star for me except for the weirdly placed "Greensleeves" that is well done but belongs on a different album.

This is a beautiful Bowie effort. It has a few songs you already know as hits, and some lesser known songs that are masterpieces, "Life On Mars?" chief among them. Every last song is well-written, well-produced, interesting, and enjoyable.

Randy Newman makes good songs for movies and specific situations, but they're weird as an album.

It's reggae. As good and as bad as any other reggae.

A+. This was just really solid. An album of a melodic, artsy punk with vocals that continually reminded me of Chrissie Hynde. Saying this as someone who very much enjoys and respects The Pretenders, I wish they were making this music. Forget brass, this is gold in pocket.

Parts of this are soooo good. Parts of it sound like a 15 year old with his first electric guitar.

It isn't hard to imagine the person who hates this guy's voice, but it's unique and well-used. Musically, it's interesting never gets stagnant.

This is just great rock music, front to back.

What an absolute masterpiece. Every song is a hit, and this changed the way your whole industry would release singles. Imagine having a song like "Never Going Back Again" on an album and it's buried so deep in its recognition that it's rarely thought of as a bright spot. Pop records don't get better than this.

I can see why critics are so high on it. Her voice is pretty incredible and an amazing instrument that is well-used on the entirety of the album. The piano work is engaging and, for me, leads a pretty good musical effort. The problem was I was just bored with all the songs. I kept thinking, "Oh man, there is some potential here and I can't wait for the next song to catch my interest. It happened precisely once on "River." Most other times, the lyrics just felt a bit too artsy and forced into a cadence that rejected them. I understand the reverence for this the same way I may appreciate a painting I don't particularly want to look at for long.

What is this? Space funk jazz? Honestly, the songs are all pretty good, except there is either too much martian noise going on or there is one annoying and incredibly repetitive element that makes me feel like I have just been programmed with a trigger to kill any living being within an arm's radius. To be sure, I won't be listening to this again.

I feel like I was haunted by a beautiful ghost. It was really a lovely experience.

Deeply contemplative, this album is full of beautiful juxtapositions between nearly cacophonpous chaos and redemptive meditations. The more discordant, noisy sections are often belabored a bit long before the payoff. The more searing guitar in rock sections are good, though they also betray their age. I could pretty easily guess this album within 2 years with no other context, but that isn't inherently a negative assessment. It's really a wonderful work of art.

They pick their singles well, and they write some catchy musical phrases. Most typically, the guitar particularly stands out, and the whole band really plays well together. But I just can't get over this apparent man-child who can't stop rap yell-rapping at me. Man is his vocal delivery obnoxious when he doesn't just sing. When he does sing, it's nice. But most often, I can't wait to move on.

Pure brilliance. Stevie Wonder at his best in every way. This music stand the test of time while tackling weighty issues. The songs you know are great. The album version of "Isn't She Lovely" only serves to extend the joy and beautiful harmonica work. The songs you don't know are great. Some of the songs you don't know are songs you know; "Pastime Paradise" will be reworked decades later as a hit song in "Gangsta's Paradise." Front to back, a beautiful album. My only complaint is that, on vinyl, they perpetrated that obnoxious trick where sides 1 and 4 are on opposite sides of the same disc with 2 and 3 on the other. Why must they require maximum screwing around with changing discs from the sleeve? Any album where this is the criticism should tell you something.

You need to be in the right head space for this, but, if you are, it's excellent.

I expected this to be all funk similar to but lesser than the theme song, but it's so much more; really good funk, jazz, neo soul, and all throughout an emotional spectrum I didnt expect from a soundtrack for a 70s tough detective movie. All this music made for the movie really nailed the assignment and made me want to see the movie.

I wasn't prepared to like this. I feel like Jack Black's character in High Fidelity when he hears Vince and Justin's demo tape, full of exasperated and disbelieving appreciation. I wouldn't listen to this one in public as he seems to get off on being as crass as his messages will allow, but the music is actually really good. The songs are all well-constructed and interesting. It's just a good listen. If his music kept him from talking publicly, I'd gladly listen to way more Kanye.

What's not to love? Great pop.

What the hell was this French circus metal? No.

This is just magnificent. Her arrangements are unique, and her voice soars to heights equalling the depths of her emotions. Her voice is mature yet playful, exquisitely smooth yet simultaneously haunting when she calls for it. You can feel her pain and exasperation as if the songs are an intimate glimpse into a complex yet relatable soul. Yet, it isn't depressing or demeaning. Give this an honest and attentive listen, and you will be richly rewarded with a uniquely beautiful experience.

There are two brilliant sides to this coin for me. On one hand, you have great 90s rock, truly among the best of the era. And then you have the softer, delicate side that is the Jeff Buckley signature for most people, and it is musical art in a class of its own. Jeff's sparkling guitar tone is second to none, and his vocals match it perfectly. That being said, the two halves stand out so separately from each other that they almost distract one from fully appreciating either. I wish the album felt more cohesive and less discordant for me.

I wanted to like this, but it just fell flat for me. It too often felt contrived, though Monsters was a standout track for me.

I'll say this, Nico is less bad when she's with VU than when she's alone.

1993 Snoop was really into weed, and I don't think that's changed. He was also pretty misogynistic and into hard gang culture, but 1993 Snoop also made great music about it all. Who'd have thought he'd end up the unofficial U.S. Olympic mascot and best buds with Martha Stewart? Anyway, outside of the often unrelated skits I hate that were so prevalent with this type of album, it's a great record. It isn't repetitive and doesn't drag on. The songs are catchy as hell with good musical hooks and arrangements.

There is nothing not to love about this except it isn't longer.

I lived to experience it. Box checked. Next please.

It's grocery store Aerosmith. It's somewhwere between when they were good rock and when they became bad pop. It's still enjoyable and stands up to its age.

The pretend sibling thing will always be weird to me, but it's such a good album. Good blues rock that's often intentionally just a but off in the best way. Jack White helped ignite a bit of a pop culture Renaissance for rock guitar, and we should be forever grateful.

This is one of my more preferred total albums from Elvis I've heard so far. There are some of the more enjoyable elements of Gospel without being religious that really make some great pop songs. Perhaps that made for cultural appropriation arguments at the time, or even know, but it played for me as a very good hybrid. The songs that were new to me surprised me with how much I enjoyed them. The hits I knew well (primarily "In the Ghetto" and "Suspicious Minds") fit perfectly. I love "Suspicious Minds" and pretty much every other version of it I've ever heard, it's a great song, but that fade out and back in always confuses and bothers me. The only disappointment for me was the cover of "Gentle On My Mind." Rather than the wistful stroll honoring a beloved partner, this version just sort of lopes along with no real pace or emotion despite Elvis's voice and inflection. His voice is really strong and mature on the album, though it does at times drift into that more mockable later-Elvis style that feels like a contrived bit.

Don't ask me to describe or define this. All I know is I kept saying, "this is stupid" and then sang along and I liked it.

I always feel bad for this album, sandwiched between 1, 2, and IV. It's still really damn good Zeppelin.

I'm not really sure how to approach this. It wasn't bad, but it was long. Each song was an experience. Let's examine each experience. The first track had me starting off certain the fire sprinklers were going to start raining blood and I best get moving with some garlic and wooden stakes, but by the end, a chipmunk was reading me a paint-by-number picture, and I was no longer afraid of vampires. Track 2 was one of the more enjoyable songs I've heard while on hold for 15+ minutes on the phone. Track 3, I think I was given a drug that made me hyper-focused though unable to move as fast as my brain currently runs. She promised a lot here, whoever she is. Track 4, the vampires are back. Track 5. I think I just woke up floating in a salt water sensory deprivation tank. Then maybe I went to Morocco. I'm really not sure. If this were a movie soundtrack, I'd definitely watch the movie. But I wouldnt buy the soundtrack. Track 6. This is called "Air Towel" and feels like the background music for a video attempting to sell me a newly designed hand dryer. Just tell me the price already. Track 7. This is actually a really cool eastern sounding thing, and it isnt 8 years long. It sort of never builds to anything, but it's good. I wish more of these songs just sort of faded away sooner. Track 8. The album was already long enough. Should have lopped this one off. It kind of progressed and closes out nicely, which was a welcome change. Maybe that's why it was there.

It's beautiful in its own pace, though that can drag on a bit at times. I can see why others say it's boring, but in the right setting, it's really a lovely album. I hope people who found it boring come back to it at a more appropriate time for them.

I'm not sure what I would have thought if I didn't already have a certain reverence for Pet Shop Boys, but I do. You have to like their style and this time frame, but it's really good. "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" is just a great song.

Under the radar great guitar, excellent songs, though it does get a bit slow. But a great album.

This is magnificent. It's a soundtrack for a beautiful life, any life, in all it's pain, joy, heartache, and optimism. The whole album is full, front-to- back, with wonderful arrangements and rich instrumentation on songs that all sound like the perfect end credit track for a truly stunning movie experience. It's contemplative and sometimes sad yet often triumphant. I've never heard this before, but I'll be back often.

Man have I underappreciated Dire Straits.

Good blues done well.

This is a folk music masterpiece. The arrangements and lyrics are a masterclass musical poetry. It's almost ironic that American Pie is the heavy lifter here when it's lyrics are sort of haphazardly thrown together, but it's one of the most well-known sing-alongs of all time. It doesn't really fit the album that well, but it's still an undeniable classic. The rest of the album is where the real magic is though. I can't wait to go through this album multiple times and give more dedicated attention to the lyrics as I do.

Really good classic rock that happens to include Behind Blue Eyes which I didn't hate as much as I remember. I'll still skip it on the radio, but my real hatred for it is due to Limp Bizkit. That's a dilemma. Do you devalue an album because a later band makes a shit cover of one of your songs? That seems unfair. But when that particular turd sandwich propagates Limp Bizkit and lends them legitimacy to some people? That's gotta be closer to two stars. Good thing the rest of the album is great. And it isn't their fault the albums weak link opened the Durst door further. I tell you what, I'd listen to Keith Moon interpretive drum names in the phone book. This album should be listened to and enjoyed. Just stay away from Limp Bizkit.

Starting off, I didn't think, "I bet this will turn into a Toyota commercial." But it did. I wouldn't imagine that would be the best song on a funk album. But it was. They picked the singles well, but this is otherwise a really noisy album for me, and I found it wholly unenjoyable.

Smoke On The Water is severely overplayed and overappreciated, but I enjoyed more of this album than I thought I would despite the unappealing organ noises. Highway Star is a banger.

I've been sleeping on The Doors all this time. Shame on me. This is so good. I guess I've only ever heard the same clichéd classic rock songs so many times I assumed The Doors were just fine and it was all more or less the same. Oh Contraire. There aren't any real big hits on the album, but every track is distinct and interesting. By the end of side one, I knew I had messed up not diving into The Doors and mistaking them for another decently solid band with a cult following Morrison's death. By the time I was through "Land Ho!," I was seeing new stars in the sky and vowing to change my ways while making this a regular listen. But the time "Maggie McGill" took us home, my vinyl copy was on its way. Brilliant work.

These guys sure traveled a long way from "My Girl" and "Just My Imagination." And they still have the ability, I just don't like the music as much. There are still some pop sensibilities in pleasant adaptations like "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," but they stand oddly next to what is mostly a funk album. And they do funk pretty well, but it's largely unremarkable. Though I do gave some remarks. Now I know that, the next time I'm at a track or cross country meet, and no matter who I'm rooting for, I should never yell, "Run, Charlie, Run!" This album has already saved me from that fallout. Why is the intro to "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" is long? There is no reason for this song as a while to be this length. It's good enough funk, but was this from a 70s Cop Movie with very long credits or a porn flick where the guy just couldn't finish? Mother Nature is one of my more favored tracks. You can feel Marvin Gaye's 60s give way to the 70s, and it's a decent song, but it's just a bit flat emotionally like the bulk of the album.

This is 40 minutes of excellence. It's just great 60s rock and roll.

This started off making me think it would be a nice stepping stone between classic Clapton and his more guilty-pleasure work of the 80s. And then, for some ill-advised reason, Willie and the fucking Hand-Jive shows up in the worst iteration of it I've ever heard. It isn't interesting, it's slow, and it's hard to sit through. Just an awful song. Luckily he slots "I Shot the Sheriff" in here as a cover worth listening to. For me, it's one of only a couple of songs I hope to ever hear again. Things don't get better with "Please Be With Me." What a boring grind this is. And then we get to the monstrosity that is "Let It Grow." I remember hearing this on a greatest hits album when I was a teenager and being bored to tears. The lyrics are terrible (Love is lovely, so let it grow). Musically, it has so much potential. It sounds as if someone attempted to make Stairway to Heaven fit on the B side of Abbey Road, but made them both as absolutely vanilla and uninteresting as possible. The potential sitting there but left dangling so limply makes me want to puke. Was this when Clapton was doing too many drugs, or after he'd sobered up too quickly? What an unfortunate album by a great artist.

What is this discordant psychedelic folk trash? Is this a satire they forgot to make the movie for? If I had just landed on Earth, and this was my introduction to music, I'd head back to whatever music-less galaxy I came from without taking anything with me except deep regret and the satisfaction that none of these songs were catchy enough to be ear worms.

4 tracks and 75 minutes? This is a bad sign, isn't it? Track 1 is apparently live, but there is no clapping, so it's possible it's actually live. I fought with my ear buds for a long time thinking they weren't working but it turned out there just wasn't music for a long time, and I'm using the term music very loosely. There's like 5 and a half minutes of the sound of space whales crying before anything recognized on earth as a musical act takes place. Then there's some sort of space goose battle, I think I died for 9 minutes, though it's possible that either my brain was merely protecting itself or the space geese probed me in some way and I was temporarily beamed up to the mother ship. Anyway, when I came to, the song was mercifully ending. My ears hurt. Did they probe my ears? Maybe this is the best outcome for this journey. The next song is called "Slightly All the Time" which is how I would describe my tendency towards suicide while listening so far. This is much more like music. It's kind of a cool jazz at times, though it's entirely too goddamned long and is best described as the soundtrack of having explosive diarrhea and alternating between phases of having to stand perfectly still, walk briskly, run like hell, and finally release. "Moon in June." Oh good, they've introduced singing into the mix. Now my ears are definitely being probed. I fondly recall a time of space whales singing. I wonder if they were singing about their space whale version of wanting to be home and talking blandly about living through different instances of weather. If they were, they were doing it better than this. Holy space vacuum these lyrics are brutal. It's like stream of consciousness by someone with no consciousness. The latter parts of it is just awful ambient space trash with some sort of alien moaning peppered in. If this the sort of thing we created Space Force to combat, I'm suddenly much more invested in seeing them succeed. "Out-Bloody-Rageous" is more or less how I'd describe this being on the list. This song kind of starts off like a nice, ambient noise suitable for getting settled into a relaxing massage. And then the spacecraft from planet AuralTorture makes its approach. It does launch into some not totally unlikable jazz, so enjoy the few minutes of that before we reawaken to our massage and start the whole nightmare over again. They made this 8 times longer than it needed to be, and it's out-bloody-rageous. There was a moment at the end where I thought, "Wait a minute, this just got good. There is an actual melody and where has this been the last hour and a quarter of my life?" And then I realized the auto-play feature had moved on to Jethro Tull.

After three consecutive days of terrible albums, my hopes were not high for something I'd never heard of by a band I didn't know. But this is so good. Other reviews have come close enough to describing the excellent range and quality of music, and I'm giving it 5 stars so I don't forget to come back to it down the road. It'd a 4.5 anyway.

I just can't get into this. She has a voice alright, but I don't find myself enjoying anything about any of this.

How have I never heard of this before? When I pulled up the album on Amazon Music, it's 40 songs and 2.5 hours which is too much of anything. Except this is so good. I've rarely - maybe never - heard so many bands that would later come along within a recording. It turns out the original was only 10 tracks, but all 40 are worth it.

Both halves are good, but it's a lot to listen to.

This is the most European 80s thing on the planet. And that isn't a bad thing. It isn't a great thing either.

They took all the good parts away from "Everybody's Talkin'" and "Teach Your Children," and made them both more boring. That's a feat. I don't understand enjoying their harmonies. Highly overrated in my opinion.

This is just excellent front to back. Unlike the interludes on most hip hop albums that feel so contrived and don't serve the music, these fit a n album theme and often times directly speak to the track while coming across as completely genuine and candid recordings. The music itself is just good hip hop and r&b. I didn't expect to like this as much as I did, but it's a serious winner for me.

A+. Stands the test of time. Well-written, great songs, varied and interesting music. This is an absolute classic for a reason.

Trash

I've never liked Beastie Boys. I've just always found their style of rap annoying, but it's pretty easily dismissed on this effort as the distortion is always at 11, and they're hard to understand. Judging by the early line that sounds like it's perhaps a sample saying something about sticking his dick in mashed potatoes, I don't think I'm missing any enriching cultural experiences by not focusing on the lyrics. All that said, it's a pretty good album musically speaking. I was absolutely not expecting so many genres and influences to show up and make for such an interesting album. I just may come back to this.

Like the girl in science class you won't admit to your buddies you kind of like, it's weirdly ptetty in its ugly way.

It's no Blonde On Blonde, but nothing else is. It's still a great album with wonderful lyrics, and it's clearly Hootie's favorite Dylan album.

Dusty Springfield is so much better than this. Her singing is great, but this is just a collection of underwhelming covers I'll never listen to again.

I forgot how good this is. Is it full of awful themes and words? Yes, but in a performative way that feels like binge watching a dark psychological drama. The juxtaposition of his chaotic rap verses with catchy-hooked choruses of varying pop sensibilities pulls you right into the messed up world of his carefully crafted characters.

It's a fine early Elvis offering. Of course there's plenty of the typical-of-the-time white guy doing black music in a less impressive way, and this is far from Elvis at his most mature vocal work. There is much better Elvis music out there.

A very emblematic album for this genre with a couple of absolute gems.

I will never understand how this got popular. There are some catchy songs, namely the actual singles and "Knowing Me, Knowing You" are good pop songs. I'd like to see someone less ABBAish take a run at that one.

Every one of these songs sound like they could he found in the background of a 90s movie about tech or drugs. They're all catchy enough, but they're all the same. A little goes a very long way here.

Kind of beautiful. I'll never listen to it again.

One of my all time favorites.

I wanted to like this. She sings well and has a nice voice. The racial and cultural commentary is all spot on. It's just that none of it is compelling for me. She sings in a way that shows she has a pretty voice but fails to make me want to listen to it. I liked the percussion at first, but it started to just feel like someone annoyingly tapping a pencil on a table. The racial aspects feel so common that they make it all just feel generic. Anyone who is listening isbalmost certainly to have already heard these basic philosophical points. Anyone who needs to hear them is just as certainly not drawn to the album. That doesn't mean they arent worth repeating or the album wasn't worth making, it just doesn't do much for me.

What a wonderful album. Beautiful songs, interesting arrangements and chord progressions, tight musicianship, crisp voice, just an excellent album all around.

That voice. The way she builds songs that are full of tension and swell to a sense of triumph or at least hope. And the songs that feel like they've lost hope. They just make you feel. It's beautiful.

I love weird, drunk sounding Tom Waits. I had to pause for something after the first song, and without listening closely, I wondered if I'd just listened to a drunk Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh. I decided to listen to every song as if it was an alternate version of Winnie-the-Pooh characters, and it was a good listen.

I can see why some people really like it. I regular liked it.

Stop yelling at me.

I've been wrong my whole life about these guys. I still don't like their vocal style, but this is brilliant. It's an absolute master class in sampling.

The first half of this album is exactly what people who love U2 claim they are. The 2nd half of this album is exactly what people who hate U2 claim they are.

What's not to love? This is brilliant.

I can't understand how a masterpiece so wonderfully composed, arranged, and produced has only songs with lazy fade outs. Brian Wilson apparently never never learned to end a song. Despite the Beach Boys harmonies being at their peak, I just don't care much for Brian's voice, yet it all works so well. Those minor quit quibbles out of the way, this is as good as anyone says it is. It's an absolute game-changer from a production standpoint, and deserves more praise than it gets.

Is this a joke? A paraplegic drummer records an album produced by another drummer. You'd have had equal success giving a bag of broken rubber chickens to a 3rd grade class and telling them to make an album. In fact, I'm fairly certain I heard a gaggle of broken rubber geese at one point, and I thought to myself, "So this is why they don't make rubber geese." I was saving a 1 star review for Kid Rock, but this gets one too. Though I'd rather listen to this than Kid Rock. I'd most prefer the 3rd grade class with recorders and rubber chickens.

I'm not typically a fan of 90s harder rock, but this is just great across the board.

It was good jazz. Then it wasn't jazz. Then it was jazz. Then it was kinda jazz. Then it was again. Then it wasnt. It was good the whole time.

At times reminiscent and always brooding, The Cure play their quintessential emotional music in true sonic beauty. Most of the album tends to flow well with the odd break for the singles which almost take you out of the moment, though they're great tracks too. It's really a good listen if you're in the right state if mind at the right time and in the right place.

I found out that aggrieved and bragadocious British rap isn't for me. Extremely repetitive rap without compelling flow or interesting lyrics. The pseudo-tough guy act was hard to swallow. ("I hit MCs like croquet." Hard core stuff there.) Somehow, both Dizzee and Billy Squire were improved on "Fix Up, Look Sharp," so cheers to that synergy. It was

If it ain't perfect, it ain't far off.

I generally love 80s pop music, and I was aware of his one hit wonder status as someone shunned for thinking so highly of himself and his excellent voice, so I was prepared to really enjoy this album. I did not. It's a one hit wonder for a reason, and jealousy wasn't it.

It's just so boring. Pleasant and pretty enough musically and lyrically though not without its occasional lazy feeling annoyance (everybody do like a monkey if you wanna go on and be funky" struck me as particularly lame. All of "One Big Love" in fact was a hard pass for me). It's just overall very, very boring.

I've come to realize any Curtis Mayfield day is a good day.

This is much better than I ever thought it would be. I needed wikipedia to make sense of the whole story, but it's well done and perfectly cohesive. Thoroughly enjoyed.

This single album is a greatest hits album for most hall of fame careers. It's the best selling album of all time, and is so good that it harbors gems like a duet with Paul McCartney that is mostly forgotten when discussing this record. The most awkward of its tracks simply suffered from a mix that wasn't a great song for Michael's voice but would go on to be reworked as an R&B smash for LL Cool J. There's an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo buried in here just in case it wasn't the consensus ultimate 1980s album. And none of this addresses the cultural phenomen of Michael Jackson or the music videos that came with the album; foremost is of course Thriller, an absolute artistic game changer. He carried on with so much more after this alongside the tragedy of his life, and he had a hall of fame discography before this, but this was the mountaintop. He could write these songs for every instrument or element he wanted included and knew how to massage out exactly what he wanted the listener to experience while achieving precisely that. Even with its age apparent in places, it's exactly what a pop album should be.

Not so much sounds of country and western as songs from country and western performed by Ray Charles. But they're great, and Ready proves they're great songs without the jangly stringed instruments the title would suggest.

I was prepared to hate this, and I did not enjoy the noisier tracks, but I found most of it to be pretty decent.

Good music with an okay voice. \"There is Power in a Union\" is an extra star on its own.

It started with a pretty decent song. And many pretty identical songs followed.

Anyone who doesn't give this 5 stars should have their ears taken away.

This is like a Cindi Lauper worst hits album. It has all of the most grating parts of her voice, all the worst 80s synth elements, and not one catchy song.

Annoyingly dissonant, incessantly odd for the sake of oddity. Supposedly they're is a story to this. I think the UFOs battled the robots and absolutely nobody won.

It's not my all-around favorite Prince material, but it's still Prince. It's Let's Go Crazy and When Doves Cry. And Purple fucking Rain.

I really liked the music, and the lead singer has a great speaking voice, but he doesn't sing with it. Or rather, he doesn't know how to as an attempt is made. This could have been really good.

Meh. It's decent country done well enough. The lyrics are occasionally poignant and outkick the expectations I had.

Better than I expected. There are some really, really good songs. But his voice is still terribly grating.

It's fine.

More "Nostalgia a 42 year old man could experience while walking his dog and his neighbors would never guess what he's singing along to" than "something you need to experience before you die," but the nostalgia is there.

The next time I find myself scanning the radio dial and come across the soft rock station, I'll know who sang "Sweet Love." She has a lovely voice, and this brings back those synthy mid-to-late 80s late night McDonalds dine-in vibes.

Sonically interesting with some good songs. Plenty of unique percussion and engaging rhythmic elements. The music is good, and the tones and textures always sound good. Except his voice. Man I hate his voice.

I wonder if the word "cure" in The Cure a noun or a verb? That's the most inspiring thought I had listening to this dark wave noise. There are some The Cure songs I like, they just aren't found within this brooding Halloween soundtrack.

I can't believe I enjoyed this, but I did. A precursor to so much 80s glam rock garbage to come, but so much more fun. Don't take it seriously, and it's a fun listen.

This is my second album by The Doors. Morrison Hotel proved to me I've been sleeping on this band. L.A. Woman proved I've been sleeping on Jim Morrison as a singer. Really good stuff.

This was pretty enjoyable. A little synthy for my every day tastes, but she makes a fine group of singles.

If this guy sane karaoke at The Red Lion, they'd send him right up the road to Sammy's.

The music is good, but Icelandic Yoko Ono strikes again.

There is good music under all the ridiculous noise.

O.B.N.O.X.I.O.U.S.

Das ist langweilig.

Brian Wilson was a tortured genius, and Pet Sounds was proof of the genius. Smile, in it's resurrected effort decades later, is proof of the torture. It attempts to revive the brilliance of Pet Sounds, but it just comes off as chaotic and haphazard. Even the reworking of Good Vibrations is just...less. Perhaps that's why it's was included, so Brian Wilson could subtly tell us not to judge this effort against the 1960s brilliance, but use this as a guidepost on which to compare where the true high water make may have been if this had been completed back then. As it is, it feels like a disoriented children's album.

Beautiful

Some decent stoner hippie stuff. Some good grooves and nice blues licks, but it's like they let a 13 year old set up their guitar effects pedals. It eventually gets pretty annoying.

My first reaction is that this reminds me of a lot of the country-tinged oddities we saw in all those 90s pop/rock bands like the Gin Blossoms or Wallflowers (most favorably done by the Gin Blossoms with "Cheatin'").I really like this fusion, though this feels a little too pointed at it at times. The vocals are wonderful when Gram and Emmylou entwine around each other, though Gram occasionally falls flat on his own. On the whole, this left me wanting more.

Anyone rating this a 5 should immediately be barred from voting in elections of any importance. Like anything over where to order in lunch for work. Maybe even that. I'm glad I'm listening to this at work. At home, I'd be forced to go into my garage and drink an 18 pack of Keystone Light while thinking about finally working on that trans am on blocks in the yard and hoping my old lady isn't overcooking the pot roast. It's as AC/DC as it gets, isn't it? Thinly veiled sexual innuendo at every turn that just happens to have Angus kicking ass while Brian Johnson burns up his throat. It's fun, it's sometimes catchy, it's usually the same, and our simple human brains like what we've heard repetitively. It's like if Nebraska were kind of fun. Not a lot of fun, and definitely stupid junior high stunted-growth fun, but kind of fun. There's nothing really WRONG with enjoying this album, I just want to raise my kids so they don't.

Imagine hearing this when it first came out. It's slightly harder to wrap your mind around what that would have been like only because you've been hearing it and all the others inspired by it for so long, but it's still a mind bending experience to hear this for the first time in its entirety no matter the age or year.

A bunch of songs from the alternate 1985 in Back to the Future II. I now need a tetanus shot.

Pretty good for the umpteenth British punk album, but it's just as repetitive as the rest of them.

This put the No in Notorious.

Excellent. I'm stunned I've never heard this before. Great mid-90s rock that feels slightly ahead of it's time. Exists perfectly alongside Oasis and predating some of the more poppy Foo Fighters efforts. Loved it.

This was good. The distinction between American and British folk is a thick enough line to render them completely different genres. This is so well done. Equal parts bard-like rumination and highland excitement, it could pass for a soundtrack for a very good film. Really enjoyed this all around.

Some of it wasn't just noise, but not much.

Yeah, the 2 singles were enough.

I wish I'd known this name was a pre-listen suggestion. Terrible in all the worst ways.

I wish I could give this an extra star for showing up on a Saturday.

U2 isn't as bad as people who hate on them like to say. And they aren't as good as people who love them believe. This album is good, and they picked the singles well.

I was new to this, and I've never liked Metallica. It started off with a really nice Spanish guitar. I immediately assumed I'd misjudged. I wondered for a second if I had accidentally found a Mariachi tribute to Metallica. And then Metallica started. There are times throughout where there is a melody and slower actual music, but it's mostly fat chugging through an anal aneurysm in my ears. I will never understand how people enjoy this. It's like everyone got swept up in thinking they're supposed to like it the way everyone did with Dave Matthews Band 20 years ago; some sort of dirtbag peer pressure. Imagine Napster being shut down over this garbage. I tried to just ignore it and listen in the background at work, but ignoring Metallica is like having a picnic in a cow pasture and ignoring the flies. I got through it, but I'm not the better for it. I wonder if there is a mariachi version I can go enjoy.

This is a fine concept album. I feel like it's the old school type I need to sit down and listen to with the lyrics at hand. His singing isn't very good, but it's a nice speaking voice for these stories. Made me want to listen to Murder By Death and truly enjoy music similar to this.

This is a simply beautiful album with wonderfully constructed songs. It's brilliant lyrically and musically, and maybe most importantly, despite being loaded with singles and hindsight Billy Joel staples, it's all in the perfect order. It would have been possible to screw up an album with Scenes From an Italian Restaurant by not melding these songs together into a coherent album. There are upbeat and slow songs that play off each other rather than clashing. It just flows perfectly. It should be almost impossible to follow Scenes with...anything. And yet Vienna comes in and just picks up and somehow bridges the gap to Only the Good Die Young. Scenes and Only the Good Die Young are both fine songs, yet they shouldn't exist within 2 moves of each other, but they found a way to sandwich them around Vienna and make it work so perfectly. Ending this whole thing with the gospel-like Everybody Has a Dream and the reprise of The Stranger just brings it all home perfectly. It's a great, synergistic album, and yet the songs can pretty much all stand alone and be great out of the album's context. This is an easy 5/5. It should get an extra star for Scenes. 6/5.

Funktastic

It has the decency to only be 15 minutes, so I will give it one whole star. Honestly, if the vocals weren't dog shit, the rest of it may have been fine.

He should have been a poet rather than a poet who sings like Mr. Hankey.

The most overrated band of all time doing unplugged versions of their sloppy covers and original noises. How we got Dave Grohl from this wreckage is a miracle no historian has been able to explain. It was nice of Pat Smear to show up to this and help out with a tuned guitar, because Kurt wasn't going to do that. And that guy simply cannot sing. He'd be cut off and kicked out of a townie bar's karaoke night where they put up with the burned out town bicycle who thinks her cigarette coated vocal chords sound like Janis Joplin. Simply awful, and this nonsense where we have to pretend Nirvana is something to be reverent toward is absolute trash. F-

This was fine. Sounds like a band you'd go out to listen to on a lazy college night. They probably have one song everyone really likes when they play live, but it isn't on this album.

I assume this was the end result of some punch card where if you get last place in enough battle of the bands you get an hour of studio time. Some bands will use dissonant chords and sounds as an effect in a song. These guys do it every second, and the effect is they suck.

Other than being too long, it's pretty excellent. I struggle to cut anything to make it shorter, but it could have been split into two albums. The rain medley is absolutely brilliant and should have been the end of the album. It feels a bit dusty after that. Strangely, the breakdown during Summer and Lightning is my favorite part of the whole album, but it feels like it's almost just lifted from Steve Miller's The Joker. Jeff Lynne on the whole is absolutely brilliant and underrated by John Q Public. Losing a star for length, but this is an all time great album.

And here's Brick Tamlin with your official review: LOUD NOISES!!! Now over to Charles Barkley for his thoughts: Turrible. Thanks, Chuck. Turn this shit off. 0/5

Exceptionally pedestrian. Was this whole list a scheme to get people to listen to this one album?

Here I am, 42 years old, listening to Steely Dan. The conversion to midlife is complete.

Decent background for a not so great video game.

R.E.M. at their best.

"Tainted Love" was the kernel of undigested corn in this turd sandwich. If that's the best song on your album, it's time to pack it up.

The B-52s were late to the psychedelic party, and someone cut the drugs wrong.

It's good, but often times feels a bit musically hollow. Her singing is beautiful, and I love the vibe it's striving for, but less would have been more.

Masterpiece.

Less would have been more.

Actually pretty good. Kind of like having Bjork front The Pretenders. I mean that in a good but still distracting way.

If you're going to be a former Beatle trying to make it in a post-Beatle world, it's a hell of an effort. Really great album.

Where has this been my whole life? Absolutely beautiful piano. Not only will I be returning to this often, I will be seeking out much more of his music.

Wonderful Springsteen. Darker, broody, powerful.

Imagine a world where Simon and Garfunkel never met. I doubt that world much would be different, but I wouldn't have had to listen to this. I have faith Paul Simon could still have figured out Cecilia, and I may miss that far off cannon blast reverberating drum in The Boxer, but I think my life would be better.

Excellent. And now I know where that line in the Barenaked Ladies song "One Week" came from.

Excellent hidden gem here. Sounds like it could have been from a movie soundtrack for a weird late 90s or early 2000s movie like Snatch. Very much a 1960s The Animals feel with plenty of well-done instrumentation you may not expect.

A bit too industrial and tedious, but it did lay the groundwork for a lot of good things to come.

Is this a joke? The whole thing? Lowest common denominator music with clown makeup. At least Beth was on this album, but when that is cornier than an Iowa deer's shit.

Interesting, enjoyable. At times sounds like Rhett Miller of Old 97s doing some of the more eccentric Bowie stuff, sometimes feels like it's getting to Springsteen's trapped in a blue collar vibe. The organ is great. Pretty solid album I may or may not ever go back to. Actually very glad I experienced this one before I died.

Chill.Good. Good chill.

So emblematic of the 90s, in a good way.

Against my better judgement, I gave this a listen. And I'm not sure I get the hype. This feels like an album people know they're supposed to like but they secretly don't care that much. The music is fine. The skits are caricatures at best. The last track is some sort of rambling autobiography that feels like a toddler telling his parents about a field trip. I'm giving this 2 stars for it's actual work and removing one more for good measure.

Pretty good and clearly a precursor and inspiration to so much more that would follow.

The effect of this on everything that would come later cannot be overstated, but listening to it so long after takes a lot of the bloom off of the rose. The real thorn for me is the Mickey Mouse gee whiz backing vocals. At the timez, it was certainly a perfect bridge to what rock and roll was becoming, but it's honestly just annoying now.

The music is great. The statutory rape is not.

I couldn't find a way to pull the cartridge out so I could blow on it and put it back in hoping for it to work. It would be decent ambient noise if not for the constant Nintendo skipping fuzz noise.

I really like some VU stuff. I really don't care for others. This has some of each.

This was mostly pretty good. The rapping and beats were good, and he has a great voice for this style. Musically, it got pretty annoying. It sounded like some annoying electronic alarm was going off for too often, and the depth of the musical phrases was as shallow as an August puddle on Arizona.

These guys are just good at what they do. This album would be a hell of fame greatest hits for most bands.

This oscillated between absolutely terrible and not awful. The floor is very far below ground, and the ceiling on it is of an average single story home. They could have been pretty decent in an alternate dimension.

Come on now, nobody HAD to experience this.

Grandly performative and well done, sort of like a Meat Loaf album. If they're serious with it, I hate it. If they're just having a laugh, I love it.

Really good music. Didn't grab me as emotionally as Neon Bible. Good new band for me though.

I really expected to like this more. She's a fine singer and the music is good. I just found it boring.

Nowhere near good enough to be this damn long.

Really good electronic music. This is the sort of hidden gem that makes so much else on this list worth struggling through.

Performative British art rock with a heavy splash of glam. Proof this can work if done well.

People seem to either have a pure hatred or absolute obsession with The Smiths regardless of the music. In this case, I really (unexpectedly?) enjoyed the music here. It was more upbeat and engaging than the brooding mundanity I expected.

Pretty much all songs I could expect to hear on the alt rock station but none I would stay for.

I kept thinking all of his mental health problems and his singing alike could have been solved by an effective laxative, and then the lyrics "I'm on warm milk and laxatives" came along and proved my theory. Easily the most overrated band of all time. I'm going to go listen to Foo Fighters to remind myself something good came of all this.

No ray of sunshine, this one. It's as melancholy as sad bastard music gets, but it's well done.

It certainly has the distinction of being the most sophomoric album I've ever heard. It doesn't even border on being juvenile, it marches over the line ridiculously. It could have been fine otherwise, but this is perhaps the most misplaced album on the list so far. The music itself really isn't bad, at least not abrasive.

I didn't know I needed this.

This felt like I was in a late night McDonalds in the 90s and this muzak played while I waited.

This is incredible. Not the album or the music but the fact that this came out the same year as Let It Be. Yowza.

Terrible. This is the worst voice ever to grace radio airwaves. At least I know now that the songs I immediately change on the radio are actually the best of what they have to offer.

I don't say this often, but this album wasn't long enough.

Pretty good for kind of weird 80s stuff. The drums are great.

More like Snore-chestral Ma-snoozers in the Dark, am I right? I think I'd call this synthmospheric, and that doesn't carry great connotations.

This sounds like a malfunctioning robot toy with the batteries dying but taking an ummercifully long time to complete the agonizing drain.

I really liked Want One. Not so much Want Two. I want Want One, but I don't want Want Two too.

A whole lot of vocal masturbation going on by David Lee Roth, and maybe some actual masturbation from the sounds of it. I would be tempted to say the same about Eddie Van Halen's guitar work, but it's more like a kid doing tricks he wants to show off. They're both GOOD at what they do, but it just isn't that cohesive for me and rarely comes off as music I want to listen to.

No.

These guys could be great with a singer, and they'd be pretty good without one.

Good Times indeed. Masterful bass and guitar throughout.

I was not expecting this, and it showed up the day after Brian Wilson passed. It's truly beautiful. The music of Student Demonstration is a bit cheesy, but it was well-timed given current events. Really a great album from front to back.

Lovely music, and he has a very nice voice. It's too bad his vocal cords have Parkinson's.

I hated this less than I hate other Bee Gees music.