I'm both a psychiatric and addictions registered nurse and a Kanye West fan. I've observed Kanye's career with equal amounts of hope and dread for many years now. In nursing school we watched a clip of Kanye on Jimmy Fallon speaking honestly and thoughtfully about the reality of being bipolar. Imagine having mental illness involving delusions of grandeur, believing you're one of the most important people on earth, except that in your case, you kind of are one of those people-- and on top of that, you're surrounded by sycophants who pay their bills by cosigning every paranoid or grandiose thought in your head. In this way I feel like Kanye has never really had a chance to get mentally healthy the way he was on this album. There are flashes of what's to come on The College Dropout. Ye drops a few self-deprecating bars, then gleefully raps about how his inflated ego keeps him afloat. He also constantly references surviving that brutal car wreck which maimed him and was clearly a traumatic event for him. But overall, it's someone that younger people never had the chance to know, sadly: an optimistic, wise-cracking genius who seemed to be very aware that he was on the brink of superstardom. I loved this album so much when it came out. These days, I cherish it as an almost perfect work of art created before the artist's mental health fell to an unimaginable, possibly irretrievable low point. I used to feel joy when I listened to The College Dropout. Now I feel nothing but sadness and yearning. I know that Kanye symbolizes something different to everyone. To many he is a mouthpiece for true evil, and that is a fair way to view this man. To me he's a symbol of the colossal failure of the mental health system I'm a willing participant in. It is hard to me to square the era of Kanye we hear on The College Dropout with the man he has become today. I miss the old Kanye.

This is a very good album but Michael clearly hadn't found his groove yet. The rock and roll edge to Michael's voice is completely missing on Off The Wall. Too much ooooooh, zero shamone.

Imagine you're in a band with Grace freaking Slick and you're like, hmm yeah, we'll give her two songs, then let her sing a line here or there on the rest of the album

I confess that I was never a Tori Girl when I was a nineties teen, but she's grown on me in adulthood. I saw her play in Boston last summer and one of her first tasks was to summon the Salem witches from across Boston Harbor to exact revenge on our behalf. If that moment isn't Tori Amos in a nutshell, I don't know what is. It is difficult to imagine a world that holds Alanis, Lady Gaga, and even Chappell Roan in its hands were Tori not there to clear a blazing path for them all. She is angry and contained, weird and wonderful, and there is no one quite like her. If you couldn't quite connect with Little Earthquakes and you don't understand what the hype is all about, I recommend reading wrestling legend Mick Foley's beautiful 2010 Slate article "The Wrestler and the Cornflake Girl," about how Little Earthquakes' Winter gave him a new perspective on both his own life and the world at large. That article made me curious to give Tori another chance, and I'm so glad that I did.

Despite being an American Southerner, until now Joe Ely is someone I only knew of via his proximity to The Clash. Upon first listen, he feels like someone I should've heard throughout my entire life. My only beef is that he can't quite hit those George Jones high notes he's always striving for.

I'm really not understanding all the hate for this album. Yes, it contains materialistic subject matter, though far less than his peers at the time. Hov understands this, it's literally what Renegade on this album is about. I do feel like there are better and more important Jay-Z albums that should be on the list: The Black Album, Reasonable Doubt, and probably 4:44 are all worthy of inclusion. That's more a critique of the list than of Jay-Z, however. This album was absolutely everywhere when it came out. Every song could've been a single. It's incredibly influential, full of hits, and is completely deserving of its place on the list.

Tokyo is freaking fantastic.

Absolutely did not go on this journey thinking I'd listen to one album and start hunting down records by a band singing about the rise of fairy royalty on Halloween.

I'm pretty sure they play this when I get my eyebrows waxed.

The album tracks are meh but my god the singles are bangers

One of the easiest five-star decisions on the list for sure. It's a shame that more of the artists who influenced Dylan in the making of this album aren't included on this list.

I am a psychiatric and substance use disorder registered nurse and I've had a lot of patients describe this band as an enormous influence on their recovery, so I come to this with an open mind and an open heart. This is schlocky, overproduced mediocrity. But don't worry, I'll never tell my patients that I feel this way.

When he started naming all those instruments, I began to contemplate purchasing a one-way ticket to London so that I may commit seppuku on the front steps of Virgin Records

Easily one of the best punk albums of all time by one of the most important and influential punk bands of all time. Minutemen were arguably the first band to fuse hardcore with punk and it changed everything. You can hear the influence of Minutemen in so many later bands that broke and made it big: Fugazi, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and especially Sublime. The loss of D. Boon permanently altered the sound of punk and in my mind is one of the most significant untimely losses in rock music history.

Far too much discussion about "suckin on ding songs" for my liking. Bring on the Nico years.

I completely missed Liars the first time around. I heard people talking about them constantly but I never took the time to check them out. I truly regret that. What a weird, fantastic album.

This album's inclusion is a perfect example of the overrepresentation of English tastes in this list. Despite being from NYC, Fun Lovin' Criminals never took off in the States. They were huge in England, though, so much so that the singer moved there in order to capitalize on his fame abroad. This is the first time I've listened to them and I get why they never caught on in the US. They're simply not that good. There was much better hip-hop available nationally (and locally, if you lived in a city with any sort of a rap scene, either burgeoning or established). England can have this.

I'm both a psychiatric and addictions registered nurse and a Kanye West fan. I've observed Kanye's career with equal amounts of hope and dread for many years now. In nursing school we watched a clip of Kanye on Jimmy Fallon speaking honestly and thoughtfully about the reality of being bipolar. Imagine having mental illness involving delusions of grandeur, believing you're one of the most important people on earth, except that in your case, you kind of are one of those people-- and on top of that, you're surrounded by sycophants who pay their bills by cosigning every paranoid or grandiose thought in your head. In this way I feel like Kanye has never really had a chance to get mentally healthy the way he was on this album. There are flashes of what's to come on The College Dropout. Ye drops a few self-deprecating bars, then gleefully raps about how his inflated ego keeps him afloat. He also constantly references surviving that brutal car wreck which maimed him and was clearly a traumatic event for him. But overall, it's someone that younger people never had the chance to know, sadly: an optimistic, wise-cracking genius who seemed to be very aware that he was on the brink of superstardom. I loved this album so much when it came out. These days, I cherish it as an almost perfect work of art created before the artist's mental health fell to an unimaginable, possibly irretrievable low point. I used to feel joy when I listened to The College Dropout. Now I feel nothing but sadness and yearning. I know that Kanye symbolizes something different to everyone. To many he is a mouthpiece for true evil, and that is a fair way to view this man. To me he's a symbol of the colossal failure of the mental health system I'm a willing participant in. It is hard to me to square the era of Kanye we hear on The College Dropout with the man he has become today. I miss the old Kanye.

There are some U2 albums that are essential listening. This isn't one of them.

Never has an album cover so accurately provided a preview as to its content

How is this a live album!!?? It's studio quality, zero errors! Insanity!!!

I was a teenage girl in middle America when The Slim Shady LP came out. I have no different opinion of this album than I did when it came out. I dreaded clicking on the review for this, but I was pleasantly surprised. I am heartened by all the men who loved this album in their youth but are now alarmed by what they hear. Eminem in 2024 seems more complicated and interesting than the Eminem on this album: endorsing a Black woman for president; risking an enormous fine to kneel in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick. I wish he'd address his past in an honest and open way, but he's apparently too much of a chicken to do so, despite being willing to take a stand in other ways. All the men who used to love this album but are dropping ones and twos now, that's what gives me hope for this country and for our collective future.

One of the easiest five star reviews I've had.

When I was four years old, Boy George was my first crush. Now that I've grown up to be a lesbian, it all makes sense.

In hindsight this is a gimmicky album, at least the production is. Despite this, it's a rare no skips record. It's bananas to think about what Amy could've accomplished if she'd achieved sobriety. She was a genius and that's evident in every breath she took on this album.

I was fourteen years old when I heard on the radio that Kurt died. I was in the backseat of my family's ancient minivan at a random crappy street corner in Memphis. It was a Friday afternoon and I didn't leave my bedroom until the following Monday morning when I had to go to school. The truth is that this live album isn't very consistent. This version of Come As You Are is dialed in, like something you'd hear at a bar off the interstate on a road trip. On the other hand, these versions of Something In The Way and Where Did You Sleep Last Night are some of the darkest, most evocative music you may ever choose to listen to. It's some of his best work. In the thirty years since Kurt died, I have watched countless friends die in the most awful, fucked up ways. At least a dozen overdoses and a few really dark suicides. I'm a dual diagnosis psychiatric and substance use disorder nurse now. I don't listen to Nirvana very much these days, nowhere near as much as I did in my early teens. But I think of Kurt often when a patient comes up to me during detox looking sweaty and sick and needing comfort meds. Where Did You Sleep Last Night runs through my head at least once a week when I'm digging through my med cart for Clonidine and Valium. I long for a time traveling societal redo where medication assisted treatment was possible for Kurt. It didn't have to be this way.

I've been listening to this album regularly since the year it came out and it still makes me cry