Nick Cave has a unique way of making you envy the characters who die in each of the songs on this album, by delivering vocal performances so bad that you’ll wish that you were dead too. Hated the vibe, hated Nick’s singing, hated the production (and the addition of a woman crying or other strange noises throughout). Just total shit.

No review of Eric Clapton is complete without a reminder that he is a horrible racist. That being said, good album.

In my lifetime, I’ve made three or four attempts to get into this album to understand the hype behind it. My conclusion is that it is mediocre - nice instrumentals but a bit too long and few standout moments. It’s just pretty bland R&B with hip-hop drums and a bit of rapping. There’s a couple of great tracks (Lost Ones and Doo Wop), but the rest is pretty boring.

Considering this is my inaugural review for newfilewav, I will treat it with the care and consideration that testifies to my worth as a member of this group. What a joy to begin with this album. The resonant bass takes you straight to the dive bars of Bruce Springsteen’s native New Jersey. The gritty vocals ring home the themes of working class struggle and triumph over adversity. The melancholy organ which crops up now and again testifies to the fact that there is beauty in the struggle. Very enjoyable listen. Personal favourite: Streets of Fire.

Classic Prince - a few sensational songs diluted with some average and a couple poor ones. Favourite: The Ballad of Dorothy Parker. Least favourite: Housequake.

I was surprised I didn’t hate this album more, but the opening couple of tracks weren’t terrible.

More like “The BLAND” by The BLAND. Am I right???

Some great tracks, but as an album it didn’t move me.

I can’t rate this low enough. Unlistenable and unbearable.

El Paso, Big Iron, A Hundred and Sixty Acres = all classics.

Back to Life is a classic but this album wasn’t that great.

Three feels harsh, but four seems generous. This album is a solid 3.5.

Classic.

I’ve never fully understood why this album is always considered one of the best ever. That being said, it is very good and ‘No Surprises’ is excellent.

Hood classic 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Some 5/5 songs, but I don’t love the album as a whole.

Choose your future, choose life.

I found this one hard to rate. It’s an eclectic mix of great, good, and not great. I’m giving it 7/10, which translates to 3.5/5, and I’m choosing to round that number down rather than up.

I’ve had a couple of people recommend Fleet Foxes to me over the years and I’ve never taken them up on this. Now, I realise I wasn’t missing anything special. In fact, I hated this. There’s few genres I hate more than “indie folk”. I resisted giving it one star because there are some moments which are not terrible.

I really like the style, but I feel like it got boring after a little while. I’ve had this album downloaded for a long time, intending to listen to it but it fell below expectations.

Blur have some great songs, but at other times, Damon Albarn’s whining singing voice is too much for me.

If there’s one thing that I’ve taken away from this 1001 Albums challenge so far, it’s a love for Iggy Pop and The Stooges.

There are no dull moments on this album, but it’s just not my kind of thing. Sweet Child Of Mine is 5/5 and there are some other great songs, but a full album of Guns n Roses is a little too much for me to bear. Under the right circumstances, I would agree that the album is 5/5. But I gave it a few tries and I just couldn’t get into it.

Nick Cave has a unique way of making you envy the characters who die in each of the songs on this album, by delivering vocal performances so bad that you’ll wish that you were dead too. Hated the vibe, hated Nick’s singing, hated the production (and the addition of a woman crying or other strange noises throughout). Just total shit.

Superb. “Moonlight Mile” is one of my favourite Rolling Stones songs. I wasn’t familiar with the album, but I loved every track.

No review of Eric Clapton is complete without a reminder that he is a horrible racist. That being said, good album.

The “diddly-diddly-dee” vibes at the start of this album were great, but it got a little bit too “hurdy-gurdy-gurdy” towards the end. I did not like “When Will We Be Married” or “The Stolen Child”.

Like every great jazz album, it goes from moments of 5/5 to 1/5 at a second’s notice.

There’s no real low points, but there are some points which are a bit too cheesy (and a bit too ‘Billy Joel’), such as “Everybody Has A Dream”. That being said, solid album.

Neil Young’s vocals are terrible, a full album is too much.

When this band broke up, the joke was to say “Did you hear that Courtney Love’s ‘Hole’ Has Split?” Anyway, good album but pretty dated.

Incredible.

Pretty good, but 16 minute drum solos are just not my thing.

Started off well, slowly got worse.

Terrible, but mundane enough that it didn’t become a pain to listen to.

Prime Snoop Dogg and prime Dr. Dre. This album might not be in my top 10, but it’s definitely in my top 20.

Was the 1001 Albums book sponsored by Neil Young? One great song on here (Harvest), the rest are somewhere between good and boring.

A basic understanding of French will help anyone appreciate avant-garde music. “Avant” means “before”, and “garde” means “anyone-realised-being-experimental-didn’t-equate-to-being-interesting-or-good.” It can also be described as merde-totale (total shit). I did not enjoy this album.

A full album of Cypress Hill is a little bit too much - their voices become a bit grating after a while. That being said, nice beats and a few good songs (“How I Could Just Kill A Man”).

There wasn’t anything I disliked about this album, but there wasn’t much I enjoyed about it either.

Enjoyed this - it’s a 7/10, and I’m afraid 4/5 is much too high, so it gets a 3/5 on a technicality.

I can’t believe I’ve missed this album my whole life, it’s incredible.

Giving this three stars rather than two on account of the fact that Rock Lobster is a classic song. I’m giving it three stars rather than four or five because the B-52s have a unique singing style which is difficult to stomach in such a large quantity. Also, all the songs are so similar that it gets slightly irritating.

Mostly quite boring and inoffensive, with some moments which are entirely unlistenable.

9/10. I think that I need to sit with this album for more than a few days to form a fuller opinion, but it made a strong first impression. I may regret not giving it a full five stars.

Thoroughly enjoyable.

American Pie and Vincent are both incredible songs, but there’s a few terrible songs which bring the average down (Sister Fatima, The Grave and Babylon). If the album finished three songs earlier, it could’ve been a 4/5.

Art rock will always be my least favourite genre. That being said, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this album. It's very consistent, and even the album's more experimental tracks ("It's Business as Usual") were really enjoyable. It feels like this album covers a lot of ground but is still very cohesive in its sound (which is where a lot of other experimental albums fail for me).

Great album. I love any music that can evoke a strong sense of a time or place - I’ve never been to Cuba, but listening to this album feels like Cuba.

In my lifetime, I’ve made three or four attempts to get into this album to understand the hype behind it. My conclusion is that it is mediocre - nice instrumentals but a bit too long and few standout moments. It’s just pretty bland R&B with hip-hop drums and a bit of rapping. There’s a couple of great tracks (Lost Ones and Doo Wop), but the rest is pretty boring.

This album is enjoyable, but not great. Most of the songs on here are pretty forgettable and have the stereotypical Beatles sound. “All My Loving” might be the only great Beatles song on here, but the cover versions of “Please Mr. Postman” and “Roll Over Beethoven” are also pretty good.

A lot of 80s hip-hop sounds very samey, and this is no exception.

A great opening seven Bowie songs, ruined by the closing four Eno songs.

I find too much of The Who's music is drawn-out and their style isn't usually for me. But being a live album, this was a lot punchier and not as complicated as their studio albums. It helps that the only two Who songs which I like "Substitute" and "Magic Bus" are on here, plus a cover of "Shakin' All Over" which is a great song.

Every song sounds so similar that the album started to annoy me.

Enjoyable, but nothing special.

I found myself falling in love with the lead singer’s dreamy voice. When she sang “love me, love me, say that you love me”, I shouted back at the speaker “I do love you!!” I also really enjoyed the Black Sabbath cover - this is how all cover versions should be, they really made it their own rather than trying to imitate the original. I’ll find it hard to move on from this album and leave Nina Persson behind, so I will definitely give it another listen.

This is a difficult album to rate. I’ve always loved Dusty Springfield, but this isn’t her best work. No surprise that it’s her debut - it’s generic 60s pop, without the soul of her later work (“Son of a Preacher Man”, “Spooky”, or “Windmills of Your Mind”). As such, we don’t get her best vocal performances. Wishin’ and Hopin’ is the only song I really like here, and there’s a couple of others which pale in comparison to the originals (“You Don’t Own Me” and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”) - this wouldn’t matter as much if Dusty’s versions were a bit more elaborate rather than just imitations of the originals. The rest is just easy-listening background music.

Sweet Gene Vincent is a classic. I love how he brings in so many funk and soul elements to an otherwise punk record. I also love the humour in songs like Billericay Dickie. My dad used to play a lot of Ian Dury when I was young and he was always one of my favourites of my dad’s favourites, but this is the first time I’ve heard this full album.

Thrash metal has always been my least favourite genre. So far, I’ve been won over by Metallica and Megadeath, but Anthrax is the worst of the worst.

This album grew on me the more I listened. Had it at three stars after the first listen, but it worked it’s way up to four.

Very very good.

Lot of great stuff on this album - Sunday Shining and Ultra Stimulation are highlights. But there’s also a lot of filler - if the last four tracks were removed then I think this would be a great album. Red Rolled and Seen feels like the background music of a Crash Bandicoot game - there are a couple other tracks like this which are repetitive and irritating. Regardless, Finley Quaye remains Scotland’s finest reggae artist. I feel confident in saying that’s something nobody will ever take away from him.

Definitely the most enjoyable 'experimental' album that I've heard so far. My favourite tracks were "I Won't Leave My Wooden Wife For You, Sugar" and "Love Song For the Dead Che". I really like the psychedelic style and I particularly like the musical interludes where it reverts back to a more typical 60s style - it even sounds like a parody of a particular band/song at points. E.g. The beginning of Stranded in Time sounds like a parody of Eleanor Rigby to me. But, despite it's strengths, it was quite drawn out and there are a few weak tracks. Considering the album and the band are both called 'The United States of America', I feel compelled to slap a 25% tariff on this review.

I really like this style and I think Loretta Lynn has the perfect voice for it. Country music really peaked as a genre in the 1960s.

I think this early stuff by The Who is so much better than all the experimental stuff that followed. I've never really liked the song 'My Generation' and my favourite tracks on here are the cover versions of old souls/blues songs. That being said, it's a very good album overall.

Simply incredible.

Disappointed because I loved Debut, but this album was really boring.

Absolutely Sweet Marie has been my favourite Bob Dylan song ever since I seen George Harrison performing it at the ‘30 Years of Bob Dylan’ celebration concert. I don’t love all the other songs quite as much, but it’s a great album nonetheless.

I can’t believe that I find myself leaving a five star review for a Björk album. This is what the generator is all about!

Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang was the first rap song I heard and loved (via Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas). I completely appreciate why people would knock points off this for the misogyny and the juvenile humour. Alas, “Bitches Ain’t Shit” just hit different when you were 14 and hadn’t yet spoken to a girl. Dre and Snoop had the same effect as the Tate brothers - they let young men mask their anxiety behind machismo and aggression. Much less harmful than the Tate brothers though, as the defence was always that music isn’t to be taken literally. It was cathartic nonetheless. We all know that this doesn’t hold up today. But what does hold up is the seamless production, the social commentary and the g-funk. Dr. Dre single-handedly created the west coast sound which still comes through in rap music coming out the west coast today, more than 30 years later. Credit is due to George Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic. In an era where intellectual property lawsuits were clamping down on the art of sampling and crippling hip-hop, George Clinton seen the future. Being an artist who owned his masters (very rare in the 90s), he let Dre use his material however he liked (for low-to-no cost, if I recall correctly). Dre turned the P-Funk to the G-Funk and the rest is history.

Good background music.

I didn’t realise it was possible for Lou Reed or the Velvet Underground to make an album this bad.

A mixed bag - some really nice songs (Aura Borealis), some fine songs, and some terrible.

Quite surprising - I didn’t expect songs like Emperor’s New Clothes and Jump in the River. I expected Nothing Compares 2 U, and then nine sad (perhaps political) ballads. The latter of which is not my thing, (I also don’t want to seem like a defender of Thatcher’s Northern Ireland policy, but it’s hardly comparable to the Tiananmen Square massacre). That being said, I really like the punk elements of this album and it would’ve scored another point or two from me if the whole record was more ‘Jump in the River’ and less ‘Black Boys on Mopeds’.

I’ve heard this album a couple of times before today, and always felt like it wasn’t really thing. But, I found myself listening to it on repeat today - it went from a 2/5 this morning, to a 3/5 in the afternoon, to a 4/5 in the evening. It definitely took me a few tries to appreciate it, but now I do.

Made for Pitchfork journalists.

A very strong 4.

Johnny Cash has long been one of my favourite artists and this is in my top 10 albums of all time. When I was 8 years old, I loved ‘Cocaine Blues’ so much that I changed my status on MSN Messenger to “Lay off that whisky, and let that cocaine be” - I was fortunate to have parents who had faith that the developing mind of their child would not be moulded by violent hyperbole in music. To this day, I have not yet woken up one morning, snorted cocaine, then shot a woman down. I’m proud of that fact. At a time where the courts in the United Kingdom are stipulating in the bail conditions of budding rap artists that they must not release music with any violent lyrics, I yearn for the type of societal understanding that placed Johnny Cash at the heart of Folsom Prison to play for the inmates and I am thankful that this was recorded for posterity. It is a true testament to artistic freedom of expression. The songwriting is 10/10 - it can be violent but also funny, or moving and sad. In my view, it will always be the best live album ever recorded because the cheers of the inmates create a palpable energy. And finally, Johnny Cash has a unique talent for covering songs where he can make you forget about the original completely - the cover of The Green Green Grass of Home is one of my favourites.

This was excellent - 4.5.

Nico sounds amazing on every song she’s on. The only thing preventing this album from being a 5/5 for me is European Son. I can see why it’s regarded as one of the best albums of all time by so many.

Not much to like about this album, but not much that I hated either.

The live version of ‘No Woman, No Cry’ is so iconic that I only realised upon listening to this album that I’d never actually heard the studio version before. The studio version sounds like a knock-off in comparison.

I love some R.E.M. songs, but I’ve never loved an R.E.M. album. For example, Pop Song 89 and Orange Crush were excellent, but The Wrong Child and Hairshirt were not enjoyable. They’re great songwriters, but I think part of the issue is that I’ve never liked Michael Stipe’s singing. Now that I think about it, he doesn’t sing but rather talks through my favourite R.E.M. song (Man on the Moon), and yells through the other (Shiny Happy People). Anyway, 3.5 stars.

A lot of 80s hip-hop leaves much to be admired, and this album feels almost like a parody of that style of music. It’s got a great energy, but the lyrics are so cheesy. If you like rap music about getting good grades in school and uncontroversial social messages like “public libraries are cool”, then this is the album for you.

Very strong 4. Only issue is that I had it on repeat all day and I started getting tired of it (which is probably my own fault).

Some of his best work.

I was already really enjoying this album (and was likely to give it a five), when Mercedes Benz came on and unlocked a core childhood memory. I had forgotten about it for 25 years, but my mum used to sing Mercedes Benz to me to try and get me to sleep when I was very young, (I can only assume she had already tried all the more traditional lullabies). I played the song for her to confirm and she recognised it instantly. I’ve now been playing this album all weekend. Mercedes Benz aside, it was always going to be five stars.

Superb. Had it on repeat all day.

Anything less than a 5 might be controversial, but a couple of the songs were just a bit too morose for me. Other than those few tracks, it would have been an easy 5.

Wall-to-wall bangers.

I really like this and took my time before writing a review because felt it had five star potential. But after a few listens, it just feels a bit too long. Not as good as ‘Dirty Computer’.

Agree that this is overrated. There are some standout brilliant moments, but the most that can be said for the rest of the album is that it's like listening to a collection of really good jingles from TV adverts.

Some of Elvis’ best work.

Most people would say "Tom Cruise" when asked "who's your favourite mental scientologist?", but for me, it will always be Isaac Hayes. Every second of this album is incredible.

This album was a nice surprise. Despite being a huge fan of A Tribe Called Quest and Outkast, I had never heard the opening and closing tracks with the verses from Phife Dawg and André 3000. It is a bit dated, but really nice early 90s vibe.

Every Beyoncé album I've ever heard has been somewhere between average-good. This is definitely at the 'good' end of the spectrum, but I'm still baffled when I see it appear in places like Apple Music's 100 Greatest Albums of All Time. There are a couple of weaker and more forgettable tracks (e.g. Rocket).

Deserves it's status as one of the best albums of all time.

Very smooth, I liked it a lot. It could be a five, but I'm giving it a four for now.

I know Anete is going to hate me, but I can’t give this album a five because of “The Battle of Evermore”.

My most controversial music take is that this is the most overrated album of all time. For me personally, it's somewhere between a 3 and a 4 - I have given it the benefit of the doubt because the highlights are so incredibly strong ('Sloop John B' and 'God Only Knows'). Beyond them, there's a couple of good tracks, but I never understood the appeal of this whole sound.