It's impossible to evaluate these records separate from my history (or non-history) with them. In this case, I remember the hits from the time. Kind of ok if they came on on the radio. Never felt the need to investigate the album because I figured I already knew what I was going to get there. And I was right. Sludgy riffs, lazy guitar solos and whine-y vocals. And the songs are so long and boring. Absolutely no regrets that I spend my time (and limited financial means) on Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. and Happy Mondays records back in the day.
Very nice. Very smooth. Very stylish. Very smoke filled nightclub vibes. Very background music.
Hadn't really clocked that Billy Joel is basically the American Elton John. That's not necessarily a negative judgment. My impression is there was quite a bit of this singer-songwriter-y stuff around at the time. This is professional and competent. Can't remember any of the songs the minute after they played. Except for Get It Right the First Time but for negative reasons. Its sort of swing rhythm and exuberant la-la-la-la-la chorus stand out in an annoying way.
I remember this being framed as a ground breaking soul album back when it was released. That it doesn't really sound like that with 2024 ears might be seen as evidence of its influence on pop music since then. It does actually sound quite retro. There's a lot of Stevie Wonder and Prince and Michael Jackson. What I like most is the sparseness of some of the arrangements. Like a lot of albums it is too long.
Not as good as I expected. Somewhere between Kanye's old soul sample style and the minimalism of 808s etc and I am not sure if this works. I think I prefer either approaches on their own. Don't think I will play this ever again. Also, with 2024 ears, it is hard not to hear the nastier tone than Kayne has in voice (and lyrics) these days, already kind of being in there.
This is getting a bit repetitive but this is another one where I knew the hits - when this was released I was seeing a lot of live bands and you could almost guarantee Look Good on the Dance Floor was played at the indie disco afterwards - but never really bothered to investigate further. It's okay. I like the energy and the slice-of-life lyrics (which is why later stage Arctic Monkeys doesn't seem like it is for me). It does have quite a few Young Band Just Starting To Find Their Feet issues. My least favourite one being the tendency to put *all* your ideas is one song.
Another one of those albums where I knew the hits form back then but never made the effort to listen to the rest. And again, in this instance, that seems to have been the correct strategy. The songs I didn't know are pleasant enough but a bit boring and not as good as the hits and the hits you hear on the radio enough to not have to bother with the album.
This is very exciting. The tribal drumming. The glamrock riffs and stomping. The punkrock energy and chanting. The yodelling! Actual songwriting gets a bit lost in the mix; not sure if I'd be able to tell the songs apart without the sloganeering. But who cares.
Would never have thought to seek out an album by the Eurythmics; they are a singles band in my view. The experience of listening to this hasn't changed my mind. It's pleasant but instead of this I'd rather listen to an 80ies station for an hour or a Best of Synthpop compilation. I'd probably also hear the title track but also all kinds of stuff that kind of sounds like the rest of this album but is better. You know, Smalltown Boy for instance.
This is a lot of fun but the shrieking voice and the endless noodling on the guitar (and that terrible cover of the Kinks almost at the start) is *so* not my kind of thing that I will never ever put this on again. The riff from Ain't Talking About Love is great but I'll just play that Apollo 440 single instead...
Impressive stuff. Especially that voice. The band is quite gritty in its funkiness but can't quite match that power. I have played this record a couple of times today and, weirdly, none of the songs are particularly memorable? I just notice that voice doing powerful things and not much else. Apart from Mercedes Benz, which I never want to hear that again even though it's "a song of great social and political import". On the other hand, how is there an instrumental track on here?
I remember what a surprise and a big deal this was at the time. I mean it's difficult to understate how much Nirvana changed music - 'alternative' music, rock music, music in general. And then Kurt Cobain committed suicide and then the drummer made a solo record???!! But musically it makes a lot of sense: it's got the same energy and pop sensibility as Nirvana on Nevermind but a bit more commercial and powerpoppy and without any of Cobain's contrariness (and some funny video's instead. That was this one, right? With the Mentos parody?). No wonder it was a big success. And still sounds pretty good these days. Have no interest in current Foo Fighters but this was nice to hear again. Oh and more people should know about the band's weird Aids denialism advocacy in the late nineties. They like to pretend that never happend but that was some awkward shit and they never really apologized.
It's easy to make fun of Madonna and her urge to always chase the latest musical trend and work with the currently in demand producer. It gets quite silly at some point in the 2000s. But I have to say that here she kind of hit bullseye. I'm not saying that triphop was still at its zenith in 1998 but (more than) 25 years later that doesn't really matter anymore and this actually sounds quite timeless. It hasn't dated as much as other music from around this period (or later Madonna records even). Lovely space-y production. It doesn't feel forced at all. The songs are quite nice. Frozen is lovely. And Skin is a nice discovery. Probably could have done with the last couple of songs (especially The Power of Goodbye).
I hadn't really realized that before James Brown invented funk he was a pretty decent r&b singer. This is from that period and pretty standard of the genre although in the second half the atmosphere gets more loose and meandering and theatrical and you can kind of see what direction Brown might be heading in. I am not entirely sure if it works as an album per se, but that's largely due to my slight aversion to live albums. When the trade off is between the energy of a live recording and the care and attention to detail of a studio version, I usually prefer the latter but, to be honest, this might be one of those instances where it could be argued that it would have been impossible to create this kind of electricity in the studio.
Can't believe I never really listened to this. It was ubiquitous in the 90ies and I listened to a lot of music that sounded like this and was inspired but this but somehow never got around to the origin story. With 2024 ears it sounds quite dated. I like the film soundtrack samples with a hiphopbeat aspect but the scratching and the endlessly repeated film dialogue samples feel, well, very nineties. It's also quite serious. I got more into this kind of thing when it turned into fun party music (Fatboy Slim, Wiseguys etc). Might be related to the fact that I've never smoked dope in my life...
I think it would really like this album without all the boring blues stuff.
I played this a couple of times actually (and even watched an old concert of Martyn that happened to go out on BBC2 the other day) and I still don't quite know what to make of it. And maybe that's the problem. I like the vibe; the sort of experimental, jazzy approach to the serious-seventies-man-with-guitar trope. But there is quite a bit of stuff that's too noodle-y for me and there's too much pretend blues-y stuff at the edges and with that in mind I can't really tell if I find the actual songs contained within pretty and convincing enough.
I don't think it's fair to evaluate this as an album because this is basically a collection of previously released singles; the songs weren't necessarily made to be listened to together. That doesn't say anything about their quality or significance. The title track is probably one of the most important songs in hiphop/electronic music/music in general and still a lot of fun. The rest all sounds pretty much the same and all the songs are quite long as well and that together makes listening to it in go a bit of a slog.
This is very nice and polite and also incredibly boring. A fluffy cloud of husky vocals and twinkly piano. Background music for the most middle of the road coffee shop you can imagine.
With 2024 ears it's a bit difficult to understand why this was such a shock at the time. It's pretty tame. And a bit plodding to be honest. Other, later punkbands were faster, angrier, had better songs. Okay, maybe there's never been another punk singer as 'sneer-y' as Johnny Rotten. But for instance the stuff he did with PiL sounds fresher and more forward looking than this.
One of the least likely Big Rockbands ever. In the nineties I used to listen to quite a few garage rock bands - lots of bands on the Crypt label; New Bomb Turks etc - and see them live when possible. They always played small, sweaty venues and were usually great fun. My first impression of the White Stripes was that they were the latest incarnation of this strand of bands. Some of their riffs were bigger and better than those of the bands before but the difference was marginal and it puzzled me why they broke through in the way they did. Get Behind Me Satan doesn't really help explain it either. It's one of the ones after Seven Nation Army and they try very hard to broaden their sound - pianos, marimbas - but also still have room for simplistic, fun songs like My Doorbell.
No, this is not for me. My brain just doesn't do 'poetry' and the very intense and very serious and very theatrical spoken word-ish presentation doesn't help. I like songs and melodies. Not endless freakrock work-outs with caterwauling vocals. I am a bit puzzled why this is always classified as punk. Apart from the shout-y vocals, it doesn't really sound that punk. The band just sounds like any sixties or seventies rock band. Maybe a bit wilder than average, but not that much.
Found this harder going than I expected. It's very Joy Division-y but with a, let's say, more distinct singer. Very echo-y. Lots of icy atmosphere. I liked the songs with the sort of tribal drums, especially Hanging Garden but overall I think I prefer the happy, upbeat The Cure of Love Cats and Friday I'm In Love...
God, this was unescapable in the late nineties. I can see the appeal. It's got a good story with layers and layers of authenticity and it sounds very warm and just familiar and at the same time different enough and the songs are quite pleasant (if rather repititive). But it's also very safe and even then it was very much background-music-in-a-coffeeshop kind of stuff. I like to think that the success of this project was part of the inspiration behind the subsequent and still ongoing wave of rediscoveries and reissues of, ugh, 'world music' from the sixties and seventies. I have no wish to put on this album ever again.
Oh, I remember this one. I remember the purple drapes and the candles. I remember Kurt Cobain's cardigan and Daniel Johnston t-shirt. I remember the two blokes from the Meat Puppets joining at some point. So yeah, I mostly remember the video registration but I don't think that reflects badly on this as an album. Doing an Unplugged session for MTV was an Event. Acoustic versions of songs are very rarely Just As Good as the original. It was about the atmosphere. And Nirvana actually fare better than most other bands. The versions of Come As You Are and All Apologies are terrific. And they do a couple of interesting covers.
I really only knew the band from their big Hollywood soundtrack hit and, as far as I had given them any thought at all, I probably figured they were American. Pretty In Pink is still a banger but the rest is more of a slog. It throws all the appropriate new wave shapes but the actual songs are quite leaden and the guy's voice doesn't particularly help in that respect. Can't see myself returning to this one any time soon.
Not a live album. Even though it sounds like it. Not just the crowd noises (added afterwards) but also the loose, off the cuff atmosphere. There's lots of soloing and freak-out moments. Not really my thing. Lots of screeching and hollering from Janis Joplin. Also not a big fan. A cover of Summertime. Some blues-y things with more soloing. Also not for me. There even seems to be bass solo at some point. I liked the opening song. Had a nice punch to it, in a hardrocking r&b sort of way. The rest not so much.
It's okay, I guess? Not something I expected to say about a live album by one of the most exciting soul singers at the height of his powers. He does the hits and it all sounds very tight and professional but he races through his set almost as if on autopilot. Not entirely sure what the added value of this being a live album is over a regular best of album.
My favourite album back when I was in my late teens and early twenties. Still remember every Kim Deal bassline, every Black Francis whisper, every Black Francis howl, every guitar explosion. It's a bit loud and aggressive and frantic for my current musical tastes but Debaser is still the perfect pop song and I really really enjoyed listening to it again.
Classic album of course and the hits are still loads of fun but I also quickly realized why I don't go back to the album as a whole very often: all those skits and joke tracks are really annoying and totally ruin the flow.
One of those records that catches a moment where, maybe not all, but a lot of stars suddenly align. Amy's voice and where she was at in her career (and, in a sadder way, life trajectory, see for instance Rehab). Mark Ronson as a producer. The Dap-Kings as a backing band. They'd all been around and they'd all go on to do other things (except for Amy obviously) but here it catches all of them not necessarily at their best but at their most hungry and exciting. It might be strange to say but this retro thing sounded new and fresh back then and nobody did it better than Amy does here.
If this 1001 albums project has taught me one thing it's that I don't like the blues. It's just too boring and too repetitive with too much emphasis on authenticity and the outpouring of deep emotions and not enough catchy chorusses. My first encounter with the Stones as part of this project was somwehat tainted by my attitude towards the blues so I wasn't really looking forward to go back to their oeuvre but I was pleasantly surprised by this. Yes, it is blues-y (I could do without the final track) but they do something different with it. The songs are short and punchy and sometimes do really strange things (I can't imagine what Paint It Black sounded when heard in the sixties). I will definitely revisit this one.
Very smooth. I can imagine really liking one of these tracks if I'd hear it on the radio or a playlist in between other things. But a dozen or so of these slick orchestral cheese balls in a row is a bit much.
This is quite a surprise. On different fronts. It doesn't sound particularly seventies. The sort of synth-y funkiness it has, I associate much more with the early 80ies. I knew that bands like Duran Duran were inspired by Bowie but I hadn't really realized that Bowie sounded like this that early. Other thing is that as someone who doesn't really like Bowie's voice (too performative) it does actually work in this context. The music is quite dramatic and staged and the result is that voice and songs and production actually match in terms of atmosphere and intensity. The ambient tracks on side 2 are a bit dull.
For me Beck is the pop prankster who did lo-fi stuff like MTV Makes Me Want To Smock Crack (and Loser) and then cleaned up his sound and made weird electrofunk masterpieces like Sexx Laws. The Serious Singer Songwriter Beck never did it for me. This is particularly dull. And very long.
This sounded very exciting when I was fifteen (tbh I don't think I heard this one back then, except for the hits. I definitely had Use Your Illusion on tape. I and II). It still sounds quite exciting but also bloated and a bit silly.
Overblown, overegged, totally self indulgent, too much, too long, but in a *good* way. In a really good way in fact.
Yes, this is what I remember the 2000's to sound like. House for the rock-kids. It's electronic but it's also got riffs, distortion and sort of recognizable song structures. Or: each track is a collection of highs and lows that sort of mimic the traditional verse-chorus-verse structure. This is another one of those albums where I am very familiar with the hits (inescapable at any indiedisco back then) but never bothered with the album. The non-hit album tracks are pretty good, better than expected actually, but honestly it's the hits I will keep coming back to.
Bluesrock. Slicker than the White Stripes. Also much less interesting.
Liking this a lot less than I did in the past. Nothing to do with Morrissey's political viewpoints (they don't help, but mainly with his current material) and I still like most of the more uptempo ones - The Boy With a Thorn and There is A Light are vivaciously swirling and pretty much perfect, Bigmouth is wonderfully strange and bouncy but Frankly and Vicar in a Tutu are bouncy and annoying - but the slowies are often quite dreary and lachrymose and not in a good way.
Pre-Losing My Religion REM is a bit of a mystery to me. I know some of the albums, some of the hits, but I am not quite sure how it hangs together and what the story is. Looking forward to exploring it though; hoping this project will help in that respect. This is the one just before the big breakthrough and I get the impression it is the band at their most rock. Which I like. I was familiar with songs like Pop Song 89 and Stand and Orange Crush and I always really liked that side of REM. The album as a whole is a bit of a mixed bag. Not everything has stood the test of time but I liked exploring it. Especially enjoyed discovering You Are The Everything. Very much sounding like an early attempt at Losing My Religion with that mandolin. But that same mandolin on the Wrong Child is a bit dreary. Hearing World Leader Pretend makes me understand why the band gets compared to the Smiths. Four stars feels a bit generous but three is too mean.
From before their disco days (and after their weird psychedelic sixties days). It's all ballads; quite sombre. I am not quite sure if it is grown up/sophisticated (and *good*) easy listening or saturday night light entertainment/common denominator (and *bad*) easy listening. I keep going back and forth. It has some nice moments - occasionally it sounds quite Beatle-y - but you can also imagine most of these songs being covered by Westlife or Boyzone and they're bringing out the stools when they perform it on Wogan. No squeaky voices, that's certainly a plus. Three feels generous but two is too mean.
This is the pop/fun Madonna. From long before the William Orbit collaborations and Evita and all that. Nothing wrong with pop/fun but it doesn't really lead to good, coherent albums. This has at least one banger - Express Yourself - and another couple of enjoyable singles in a dance-y but quite tinny funkpop vein. It also has a quite unexpected (to me) Prince feature that's not more than okay and some dreary ballads and other filler. I 1000x rather listen to the Immaculate Collection.
The first band t-shirt I ever owned was a Jimi Hendrix one. Not sure why exactly. I really only knew the hits when I bought it and I was much more into Dinosaur Jr and the Pixies and Happy Mondays at the time anyway. This may be the first ever I have listened to one of his albums back to front. It's nice. It's got some of the hits I did know back then and some other stuff that is a bit trippier. The psychedelic side occasionally seems more important than the writing of actually catchy songs but those hits are indeed really really good.
Very nice collection of yelp-y, piano bashing early rock'n'roll. Goes a bit too far to call this an album; it's a handful of singles and their b-sides basically. Energywise it just has one level all the way through but in small doses this is lots of fun.
I'm one of those people who lost interest in Radiohead after OK Computer. I liked Creep and Fake Plastic Trees and Paranoid Android. After that it all got too noodle-y and too serious for me. The nervous, jazzy drumming and the convoluted chord progressions and Thom Yorke's whinier and whinier vocals and the lack of interesting melodies, it just really really grates on me. This has all of those things in spades. It's a wonder I made it all the way to the end.
My 7th most favourite album of 2003 according the Google doc where I write down my end-of-year lists. Between the Fiery Furnaces and, ehm, Fannypack. I have not recollection of a Fannypack album at all. Number one was Mates of State. 2003 was a good year for music.
I remember opener I Should've Known from back then. Catchy song with a cute bit where she sings the ellipses (dot dot dot). Rest of the album is more of the same. Pretty ok singer-songwriter-y stuff with a bit of a powerpop edge in the rockier tracks. Albumlength I am less keen on the explicit smartness - in the lyrics and occasionally in the excess of different musical ideas in one song - than I was back then in that one song. I liked when she hooked up with Ted Leo for (a tour and) an album but I am unlikely to back to this album any time soon.
The title track plus 11 other organ instrumentals. Don't think they're meant as such but with 2024 ears it all sounds quite cheesy. I imagine they saw themselves as a hard rocking rhythm & blues band or something but some of tracks have a bit of a James Last kind of vibe. The album is over before it has the chance to irritate too much.
I think I prefer the later Clash, when they're starting to incorporate more wide ranging musical influences; not always successfully, but they sound pretty one dimensional here. This is an okay early, shout-y punk album but I want more from life than that I think.
Great songs. Great sound. Country as a serious, grown-up musical genre; sans rhinestones and cowboy hats. Nothing wrong with a bit of dress up now and then and authenticity and seriousness are often overrated but this album takes the country vibe and instrumentarium and makes something timeless out of it.
I like to think of myself as very much pro-Taylor Swift but I do have to admit that I kind of gave up paying attention to her albums after 1989. Even the fact that at some point she started working with the guy from the National - theoretically right smack bang in the middle of my indierock listening middle aged white male wheelhouse - didn't make me jump back in. This is one of those album with Aaron Dessner. It's nice. The songs are well crafted. The lyrics are pretty smart. It sounds very grown up but also nothing stands out. I keep waiting for it to get going. It kind of sort of does a bit in Long Story Short but it's a bit too little, too late for me.
Not saying I think I am familiar with *all* of (pop)music history, but I wasn't really expecting to encounter a band I had never heard of as part of this project. Not entirely surprising that it is a (late sixties and early) seventies rockband I didn't know. It's kind of by numbers stuff for the era. It's sort of progrock-y but not as away with the fairies as someone like Pink Floyd. I think I would have preferred it if they either went all Led Zep-y hardrock or all experimental and spaced out. This in between vibe is not really working for me. I like that one of the band members stepdad is in the band but that's about it.
Acoustically strumming Bob Dylan with loads and loads and loads of droning verses in each song is not my favourite Bob Dylan.
No. From the punning album title via the hyperactive bass playing and the pedestrian drumming and the singer who can't sing, or rap, and writes the worst lyrics to the dreary ballads. Just no.
Found this more interesting from a music historical perspective than as a listening experience that I am planning to revisit any time soon. Here you've got a band only a couple of years after the Beatles doing something that with one foot is still firmly in the sixties 'beat' music tradition (those neat little back up vocals for instance) but with the other is exploring wilder, more psychedelic pastures. You can hear them moving towards, say, Pink Floyd and Deep Purple (via the Doors). As an album it too uneven for me and the songs aren't particularly memorable either.
Had to play this a couple of times because it confused me. Turns out I like the song The Jungle Line and dislike the rest. Jazzy singer-songwriter music with too many chords and too-convoluted-to-be catchy melodies. The Jungle Line is a strange experimental ditty combining sort of tribal drums (apparently it's the first ever use of a sample on a commercially available song) and burbling electronics sounds. It's wonderfully weird and way ahead of i's time. I can live without the rest of the album.
Sounds like rock music trying to figure out what it is (and isn't). Quite exciting but as an album quite uneven. I could have done with less blues-y influence and more punchy songs like My Generation.
Pixies were my absolute favourite band in my late teens. I must have played this album thousands of times on my walkman going to and from school. I probably played it even more than Doolittle. This is a bigger and slicker sounding album - that's the surfrock influences at work - but it is just as varied. I think that's what I liked about the band foremost: they did angry shout-y stuff, grungy and intense songs, more poppy tracks, fast ones, slow ones. I am easily bored. Listening to the Pixies I am not.
I largely ignored this one at the time. A bit strange, because I was a big fan of the breakout singles a decade or so earlier. Listening to it now I think I was right to pay not too much attention to it. Maybe you get more out of it if you listen to the words but it doesn't half go on a bit, does it? The production is nice. Bit Human League. Bit Bowie. But my god, those songs are long.
It's got quite a lot of Jonathan Richman and just like with his oeuvre I like the hits (Blister is great, as is Gone Daddy Gone) but the rest leaves me cold. The combination of overactive bass with the scratchy acoustic guitar and tinny drums just makes it sound like a couple of street corner buskers shouting to get the attention of passing tourists.
