1001 Albums Summary

Comfy, easy, groovy. Consistent, slightly samey. Music to cook pasta with your wife to.

Cash had obvious charisma neutered by the variety show feel of this too-brief recording.

Rip-roaring and confident right out the gate. I've previously avoided full Clash records - some of these runtimes reek of album bloat - but their debut is incredibly digestible. Easy to trace the lineage from this album to bands like Green Day or Against Me! which, sonically, often lean on emphasizing the "rock ('n roll)" in "punk rock." 3.5/5

This album feels like when you've reached that highest hubristic level of drunk right before your good night turns into a bad night. It feels like a manic episode. It feels both timeless and fresh. Some might call it front-loaded; I think the front is just more hook-laden and the back is more groove-laden.

This has absolutely no business sounding as tight as it does. Precise, spunky musicianship and production. I've never cared much for The Police, so I'm astounded I'm having such fun with this record.

This album is a little juvenile, and the songs where Ocean is in full crooner mode can be boring, but the best of the best are fun, inventive tunes. I completely understand why it rocked the worlds of so many high schoolers when it came out (i.e. my peers) and continues to to this day. 3.5/5

This was my first non-English record on this list and a real endurance test. Quite funky, with a consistent, high energy maintained throughout. I learned I don't enjoy the cuíca, whose prominent screech invoked a response in me similar to the reaction people have toward the St. Anger drums. It's an obviously skilled recording, and although I'm unlikely to revisit it on my own, I'd be happy to hear any track from this at like 1AM at my third bar of the night.

I low-key hated this but all of the singles are all-timers as far as aughts indie goes so there's that. 2.5/5

sometimes popheads ask why robbie williams never landed for americans, and it seems like the answer is some combination of: he's ripping off oasis while they're already on the outs, sonically this album is the most england-in-1997 something can possibly be, and lastly this is pretty generic and kinda sucks. 1.5/5

Unexceptional. At its start I was irritated by its aggressive nothingness, but as it goes on it settles into a more pleasant nothingness

Adequate, nearly lovely, but wholly forgettable

i can't even pretend to rate this objectively this shit banged when i was 6 watching the "In the End" music video on VH1 and it still bangs now

65 straight minutes of metallica in full meathead "censorship = politics, politics = bad" mode is frankly exhausting to take in, but the musicianship is largely excellent. 3.5/5

this record is way too long and inane and i just plain hate the sound of badu's voice to be honest. the album goes nowhere and i found myself hitting the skip button on a lot of it

i mean, it's Pet Sounds. its impact is felt everywhere endlessly, and musicians have only ever benefited from trying to replicate it.

this rips. i was only familiar with "Jesus Built My Hotrod" prior, and although the track is still a highlight for me, i was pleasantly surprised at how much i liked the rest of this as well. music to do skilled mechanical labor to.

starts out alright for what it is, but wears out its welcome quickly. there's a very cheeky unserious masculine energy to this, and it makes a lot of sense how tracks from this ended up on multiple Jackass soundtracks

listened to the 2021 Director's Cut available on Spotify sometimes i ponder how British the 1001 albums are gonna be and then i'm generated a record from the lads who gave us "Doctorin' the Tardis" ambient house might not be for me

1001 Albums Generator recently assigned me At San Quentin, and it didn't do anything for me, so I went into this one unenthusiastic for more of the same. My impression was quite mistaken. This has better sequencing, tighter pacing, livelier energy, stronger performances, better songs. This is everything a live album should be.

an absolute vibe. i've always found third-wave ska annoying but now it seems almost criminal that gen x americans listened to cool, culturally-unifying shit like this and stripped it of its blackness in the pursuit of glorified pop-punk tracks about, like, smoking weed with your girlfriend or whatever

The singles are better than I'd remembered. The Neptunes did solid work with this one - the tracks that lack their touch are remarkably worse. The weaker cuts give MJ-clone energy and the record itself is much too long.

the singles from this album are so synonymous with 'funk' in pop culture that i get little out of this besides the recognition factor. that being said, the record isn't iconic without reason - it's well-crafted, hooky, and there are no bad songs

a comfy listen albeit unmemorable. i feel like this is more impressive as a pop album than a rock album

this flew way over my head. very discordant material, but purposefully, skillfully.

i enjoy the musicianship on this album quite a bit both on its own merits and due to personal bias as an enjoyer of new wave. the thing that brings this down is that costello's voice sounds like shit from a butt

i was a fan of all the hits going in and those are still the major standouts. pleasantly surprised at how guitar-driven and satisfyingly noisy this was. admittedly repetitive but fun. 3.5/5

What a pleasant surprise. This absolutely rips. Phenomenal powerhouse vocal performance backed by the most maximalist, genre-smashing, sensual, bombastic production money could buy. Even the cover songs are transformative. I fucking loved this.

a little sparse for my taste, but cohesive, cozy, easy, and absolutely the blueprint record for this sort of thing. 3.5/5

hugely risky. ambient and eerie. albums to listen to when you want something low-stimulation that makes you feel bad but in a comfy way.

this is not really my taste but i recognize that it's executing the vibe it's going for near-flawlessly. 3.5/5

Yes? No

my first foray into roxy music. mostly bored me. huge dissonance between the cover and the contents. was not expecting my highest praise of this record to be "this sounds sorta like the slightly lamer talking heads albums". 2.5/5

I enjoyed the gentler, slower tracks, but the more uptempo ones didn't hit for me Across the board, it seems like this album has the reputation it does because it can function as an effective gateway drug for pop-listening people to seek out weirder music in a tame, approachable environment

this record is the uncanny valley of music. it's almost music, but it's not soulful enough to be music. it's like the royalty-free music that plays in porn or like music made for a film to demonstrate the evils of when musicians lack creative freedoms.

experimental, playful, and chaotic. a fantastic find.

Let's start with what doesn't work - most of the Nirvana tracks sound worse here than in their studio recordings, it's a rough vocal performance from Kurt, and the MTV Unplugged production sounds a little slicker than I want. Now, what does work - the setlist is wonderfully curated, the cover song performances are fantastic, and the sheer display of personality and taste. Also, frankly, "off" renditions of Nirvana songs are still Nirvana songs. 4.5/5

2 stars at 8:30am but 4 stars after a full workday a little overwrought and eventually it's like "alright that's enough of that" but good lyrics and love the guitarwork

the absolute blandest 70s soft-rock known to man interspersed with occasional sparks of innovation and humor. there's merit to the idea that this record is worth loving or praising but this left me so cold and bored

quite fun and nervy. absolutely cracked guitar work - divinely jagged and noisy. album really *feels* like the work of a bunch of 21 year olds which is one of the most beautiful things about it

listened to the original LP. this album truly went in one ear and out the other. i was surprised at the extent this *doesn't* feel like a live album (i am told the remaster differs on this); it's all technical showmanship and feels very tight and regular

soft, comfy, easy, gentle. ideal album to listen to on a weekend afternoon where you don't have responsibilities but you do have a porch beer

profoundly mediocre and it's not even live. boggles the mind how this "yeah i'm a rock n roll guy and i fuck girls and i shred" shit has ever been anything other than embarrassing for everyone involved

"Friends of Mine" -> "Time of the Season" is an instant favorite example of whiplash album sequencing great collection of songs to listen to while getting up to some twee Wes Anderson shit

just listened to this full thing twice in a row. it's sad boy autumn i normally bristle a bit at this countrified indie-folk sound, because it tends to come off as a bit smug, inauthentic, or above itself. but not only is this record free from those trappings but it also, with its grim sincerity and sparse arrangements, really hits. 4.5/5

i know intellectually that this is not a 1/5, that the original compositions are beautiful and these rearrangements are very deliberately, thoughtfully abrasive - i know that my reaction to the thing is the record working as intended. but this project is ultimately for my own amusement and reference, and i very much did jump ship after 12 minutes because the listening experience stressed me out real bad.

i actually don't hate this, and i find side b especially whimsical and fun as an experience, but the music doesn't really hold up and i feel no pull toward individual songs. it is also frankly too british

crazy how much better than the rest of the record "Superstition" is - the rest isn't bad to listen to, but sounds very milquetoast

as a person whose cat is named shalimar i had higher expectations for the album named shalimar it was solid. someone in the reviews called this morricone-esque and i really felt that

dislike the majority of the vocal performance and there's an extra-80s sheen to how this sounds that i don't fuck with but the instrumentation really goes

if every song was equally as good as Sara or Tusk this would be one of the best records of all time

this album dropping when i was the tender age of 0 means i mostly associate fiona with legions of vh1-airplay adult-alt knockoffs of this sound and like, while this record feels clearly successful in its aims of being pop-soul singer-songwriter shit, it is also responsible for some of the worst tunes to touch my ears and some crimes cannot be forgiven

earlyish rock history is so funny because audiences were like "what if a song was long" like, yeah man, what if album goes in one ear and out the other but is pretty vibey and unobjectionable

i was listening to this while focused on a separate task, and most of the tunes passed by without notice. music is rarely so easy to ignore. but i did a double-take for "Sitting by the Window," a standout

i've tried and failed to like this record many times over the years. i still hate track 1 and the record is almost *too* cohesive - many songs are great, but few stand out - but i'm excited this finally clicks with me the same way it does for so many others. for me, this scratches an itch somewhere between the twee twinkle of ipod-commercial indie and the moody introspection of a conor oberst type.

time and time again, our most forward-thinking musicians are gender non-conforming autistic people

the perfect marriage between the decadent, bombastic 80s rock and the cynical, brooding 90s rock yet to come this isn't completely to my taste (perry farrell's voice is... a lot), but "ted, just admit it..." is phenomenal and it's easy to listen to this record and understand how it felt big and important for people

powerhouse pop perfection. these songs have weight again now that i'm not hearing them on the radio 5x an hour. the memories of overexposure kill my desire to listen to this again on purpose but i completely get how this was a must-buy record at the time.

inoffensive ren faire music - a bone-headed take of mine is that everything that sounds like this sounds the same to me. 2.5/5

this album has many pleasing, soulful, comfy production choices and arrangements, largely thanks to the features - it sometimes feels like the entirety of southern rap is here - and overall the genre-mashing is successful. but lyrically this album is such ego-stroking dumb dogshit. trying to pass off as a good-times hard-guy record, barely disguising a deep insecurity. calling himself the soul machine like a goddamn comic book character. stupid.

songs to sign your divorce papers to

incredible, atmospheric, haunting, dizzying, energetic, beautiful. peak goth culture when 1001 Albums Generator assigned me The Scream a few weeks ago, i found it charming how 'green' yet filled with potential the band's music felt to me, so i found it very rewarding to get to listen to a more experienced, unique, confident version of the Banshees music is a thing we all find when we're meant to, yet that can't stop me from beating myself up for not giving Siouxsie more of my time sooner

I've always scoffed heavily at terms like "male manipulator music," and I wouldn't say the fact Morrissey is uniquely, viscerally repellent to so many whilst retaining a melodramatic, borderline whimsical self-awareness about it is the MOST interesting asset of this record per se, but let's just say I do understand the urge to canonize this record in this way. It's basically the blueprint for morose, outcast, wimpish dickheads who wish to have their moment in the sun.

vintage bluesy good-times pervert rock has really never been my thing, i gotta be real, and this record does nothing interesting to make me reassess my bias

i'm not even grading this one on a beatles-shaped curve it's just alright

the audio equivalent of a warm mug of tea and a huge slice of soda bread

good energy! really enjoy the quality to this recording where the vocals have that arena echo but the lead guitar riffs are big and crisp

55 years later everything laid out here still seems incredibly dominant within a certain type of person's idea of what it means to be cool

overlong. tons of filler and a lot of noodling around. i listened under ideal conditions (high) and, even then, it took only a few tracks to feel exhausted "would?" is still great and there is a lot of satisfying guitar elsewhere on the record too. it's overall fine

hauntingly beautiful voice. boring. 2.5/5

an album that asks: what if you were in love and you were in new york at the time? 3.5/5

production goes crazy. pretty even split between poetic bars and the stupidest (for better or worse) lines you've ever heard. wish there was less gooner shit but i suppose that's essential to the experience.

every song is overly long, and the flows and rhymes are instantly dated and mega corny in that 1990 fresh prince way, but i almost admire the intersection between this album's brazen stupidity and its sex-positivity

So, I accidentally listened to the Love & Devotion reissue, i.e. twice as much qawwali music as I ever really needed. Love Songs (1/5) was a very repetitive, uninteresting release, which perhaps preemptively soured me for Devotional Songs (2.5/5), whose tracks' energy and power I vibed with more. I feel no desire to listen to this again and sometimes wonder whether wishing 1001 Albums Generator had more genre diversity is a monkey's paw situation.

frankly, sounds incredible, considering it was contractually obligated and all a little boring but weirdly relaxing as background music

most of this is bluesier than i like, and i worry i'll never learn what makes a jazz record objectively good vs. not good, but "peaches en regalia" is quite lovely

albums like this are why i use this website. a great find.

most of the record is a bit monotonous but concrete jungle is so fucking good

a stone cold masterpiece and lifelong favorite. growing up, i always admired it mainly as a guitar record, with its bombastic, dense sound, but in this listen what i've honed in on is the percussion goes absolutely mental. jimmy chamberlin off the shits

i don't hate this, and i admire much of this on its own especially when compared to the toxic landfill that is 2016 in music, but i also readily acknowledge it's basically only interesting because it's bowie's final bow "blackstar" (song) is immense and powerful, but there comes a point where giving this album kudos feels like rewarding an aging musician for simply still putting effort in

standard, inoffensive, unmemorable. bookstore-cafe esque album

soaring and overdramatic, almost cinematic, and brett anderson has the voice of a fallen angel

recently poked fun at some gen-z folk singer on tiktok for doing CCR-esque vocal affectations in some pass at maturity as if fogerty himself didn't record the prime shit when he was (checks notes) 24 years old this is, in all likelihood, a 4 but it is straight up just not my jam. grapevine cover goes hard tho

i don't doubt that kid rock was capable of sincere friendship and love for rap and for his detroit scene, but this whole record is the most brazenly insecure poser shit i've heard in my life. so much of the output is literally just kid rock trying and failing to sound hard and cool, and any redeeming value is either lifted from other artists or contributed by them directly. that this was popular or influential to anybody is almost certainly less due to the product itself and more due to the distinct edgy landscape of the late 90s desperately, cynically seeking to fill some faux-rebellious void. this sucks.

some really fun musical arrangements here. more variety than expected. the type of groovy that's equally good for letting loose and for locking in

clearly succeeds in its aims, though the final result feels a bit like muzak. pleasant & forgettable.

i've tried many times over the years to like elliott smith but i always find that, even though i like many individual songs and love a select few, listening to full albums mostly feels repetitive and sleepy

the spirit halloween of albums, but "i love the dead" is worth the price of admission

had to space this out over multiple listens, as it is a bit sonically overwhelming, but i like this! reminded me a bit of like, if belle and sebastian got real noisy and experimental with it. 3.5/5

one has to chew through a lot of derivative britrock filler to get to enjoy the (comparatively) more thoughtful and listenable meat of this record. i did like hearing early hints of what albarn might achieve with gorillaz

simply, incredibly lovely. i played this album a second time immediately after the first. it lured my cat to seek out the source of the sound and make herself comfortable in my lap, ears facing my laptop speakers. i've never seen my cat react to music like this. a miracle 4.5/5

van halen's 1984 has a weird aura in the respect that, like, intellectually i understand this is an album whose target audience is horny drug-addled adults, but emotionally i struggle to imagine this sound impressing anyone over the age of like 12 i came into this album with fondness for the singles and left it with slightly less (but still some) fondness, perhaps because i'm also no longer 12 alex van halen was a beast on the kit tho

regrettably my brain filters a lot of this through a generalizing "this is oldies music" sheen that makes me bored by a lot of this record. but i can see the vision and why this would feel special at the time. 2.5/5

a handful of solid country-rock tunes, but some boring ones too. had heft and depth i wasn't expecting going into it. i think i prefer the version of this sound that distilled its way into 21st century indie-folk but i don't mind this

Most of this record is forgettable landfill '70s-recollection-of-the-'50s nostalgia-rock filler, and Tom Petty sings like he has a cold, but like. "American Girl" is an unimpeachably perfect song on an album whose cover is a leather-clad man with golden hair eye-fucking you, and somehow neither song nor album hit the charts? This is madness

i hated how the synths sound on this but could see myself listening again; at the end of the day i love some witty self-deprecating tossed-off gay-guy snark

suspicious minds is a hell of a tune and then the rest of the album is there also. i'd listen again if the mood struck but think i prefer soulful elvis over hubba hunka badboy rocker elvis

underwhelming, considering how enormous "my name is" felt at the time. generally succeeds as proof of concept for the slim 'persona' but little else. the 'serious' songs are overall best but too grim to enjoy. definitely prefer the two records which followed this.

tremendously cohesively beautiful; pleasant albeit melancholy; a warm bath on a rainy day of a record

a lifelong favorite and simon & garfunkel's magnum opus

a bit droning and lacking energy. i definitely prefer a cheekier morrissey compared to what's on display here. 2.5/5

not a standout record, but there are a couple decent tunes. i enjoyed "religion i & ii" sonically and, additionally, find that the amount of people who're angry or dismissive of these tracks only makes them better. a lot of the record is filled out with now-standard post-punk guitar-work that i always love, but with john lydon's "ain't i a stinker" style of vocal screeching over it. this shit wasn't charming in the sex pistols, and even less so now. i found this very similar to siouxsie sioux's debut record, which i listened to for this project two months ago and enjoyed significantly more. one of the benefits of this project is it has better enabled me to reflect on observations like this and develop a stronger framework for thoughts like "why do i find this album kinda mid"

none of these are my favorite bruce songs per se, but this is certainly the bruce album with the most undeniable earworms

This album sounds like when you're at an outdoor stadium concert and it's the opening song and the band really stretches out the intro and there's an anxious lull as you're waiting for the first verse to properly start... that feeling, but extended for 60 minutes. The instrumentation doesn't deliver the spontaneity you'd expect from a jazz band or jam band - The War On Drugs is heartland rock not dissimilar from The Killers albeit with inexplicably greater hype - so the overall sensation is basically akin to edging.

a vibe. slightly repetitive. no real standouts

i was unable to track down this full album in proper, but liked what i heard. this is the audio equivalent to a y2k-era screensaver, in a great way. really easy to see myself getting lost in this and playing video games at 2am like a degenerate

lovely, but very samey and unchallenging and doesn't have a lot to offer besides the quality of the vocals. "don't know why" has been stuck in my craw for the past 2 decades, but the title track is the album's best offering. 2.5/5

many reviews on here are bombing this record because it didn't live up to a preconceived notion the listener entered with. like maybe they were hoping, by listening, they would understand what devotees have come to love, and so they're lashing out. i don't really have that issue. i just think this album is boring in a boring way. "friend of the devil" is pretty solid though.

Phil produced the shit out of this, but the Wall of Sound is not really a sound I seek in my Christmas music. Count me among the many who wish the list's token Christmas album could've been the Vince Guaraldi Charlie Brown recording

tried listening to this in the afternoon when i was suicidally depressed then at night when i no longer felt that way. this album only really clicked when i was suicidally depressed. checks out

One of those records where you can see the embryo of the 1990s start to take shape, as post-punk morphs into alt-rock via R.E.M's distinct cynical righteousness The production is flattering to every instrument, and Stipe's voice sounds incredible (as always!)

i appreciate this more than i like it, and i find the album taken in as a whole better than its individual parts (though 'here come the rome plows' is a brilliantly propulsive track) i think the math-rock elements prevent me from fully "getting it" and provide sort of an emotional distancing effect relative to the post-hardcore i really vibe with, but i had a good time

the only one of these mid-90s british electronica records that's actually required listening most of the record is samey to my ears but contains a rich ambiance and is executed very well

I don't enjoy most of this album. I hate MJ's voice. Most of the production is the purest and stinkiest '80s cheese. Its influence is responsible for an onslaught of falsetto'd bad boys (e.g. Timberlake, Chris Brown, The Weeknd) who've never bested Michael's appeal. But "Smooth Criminal" is an all-time heater and, for better or worse, Bad is his magnum opus. It's the first record of Michael's to feel like it's coming from the perspective of a living person with problems as opposed to several micromanagers in a trenchcoat, which adds a layer of interest on top of the raw talent and earworms that've always been there.

if you looked up "disco" in the dictionary, this album would play like one of those singing birthday cards

how many interludes do you think it took for the recording academy to decide stankonia wasn't getting album of the year this record is almost too much of a good thing at times, but "b.o.b." is a 6-star song if i've ever heard one

the fact there are at least 2 rap albums in this project (see also: Sex Packets) that are full-on scifi concept albums about having depraved nerd sex with women is honestly beyond belief

One of my favorite memories from high school is the time I, freshly dumped, solicited my AP Lang teacher for breakup-music recommendations, and he came into class the next day with his own CD copies of two The Cure albums and Blood On The Tracks for me to borrow. It has always been hilarious to me to remember myself, 17, crying over the dissolution of my month-long long-distance relationship with my Tumblr mutual, grasping for straws for kinship with Dylan's tender divorcee donkey-braying. At 29 I have yet to fully get the appeal, but "Shelter from the Storm" is a lovely song at least.

really cool and atmospheric albeit incredibly dated as an artifact of mid-2000s williamsburg lmao

This album was composed and produced beautifully, though it has a dated feel which may prevent me from coming back to it regularly, especially in the tracks which more heavily feature Mike Love "Good To My Baby" was a personal favorite, and "She Knows Me Too Well" also shines for its sort of proto-emo insecure misogynist lyricism. One could have fun spinning this and the Blue Album back-to-back

unpretentious groovin' guitar rock. apart from "la grange," tracks are unmemorable and bleed together a bit.

Misanthropic, weary, percussive raging. Front-loaded yet filled with bangers. Some of the white-boy rap and electronic stylistic flairs age poorly and do not complement the strengths of the band. Everything great about this album is improved upon by Iowa (2001), though this record gets kudos for being the more pioneering force of the two.

technically proficient but repetitive and i got bored

gentle & relaxing

ethereal. beautiful. demands your full attention.

the ratio of stone-cold 5-star songs vs. filler is honestly 1:1

aggressively-earnest feel-good "love you girl" album the funkier front half is much stronger than the back half

Similar to Blackstar, this is an album whose esteem seems nearly entirely supported by the spectre of death that surrounds it. But while I am generally weary of the whole self-conscious swan song thing, Cash has always carried himself as a seasoned man anyway, so the vibe is thankfully more-or-less business as usual instead of feeling so ceremonial. 3.5/5

as someone with a poor tolerance for prog i didn't mind most of this. it's a bloated, arrogant album in the way prog often is, but feels harmonious, energetic, urgent. there are many skips, but it warrants a relisten.

a revelation yet frequently annoying, a contradiction existing within it in much the same way it exists in a lot of the downtown new york rock canon

so, so long and so, so late '80s. several bangers despite this

quite lovely and soothing, but many tracks felt underdeveloped and left me yearning for more. 3.5/5

my 2nd CCR album in this project and the 2nd CCR album that failed to do anything for me. it's not bad it's just there

album that makes you feel like you're at the rave in the beginning of Blade (1998) i've heard some of these songs so many times over the years that they've lost some of their staying power, but the deep cuts are some real heat too. "ruiner" is a new favorite

lacks cohesion as an album, though the majority of the tracks are successful genre-fusion experiments that are both atmospheric and enrapturing

if a siren lured you out to sea to start a new life, i imagine this album would play in the underwater nightlife scenes. the production is so bouncy, and bjork's vocals bring a quality simultaneously bubbly, sensual, and haunting. it's no wonder so many rockists hear debut and make an exception for bjork, with her trip-hop-jazz-electropop and all, this record is so charisma-forward that whatever music one normally prefers barely matters once you're hooked.

a fun listen. i'm not the biggest fan of the kind of squealing horns you often see in jazz, so after a while that grates on me, but the tempo and energy vary enough to keep it light and prevent a repetitive experience

On paper I feel like I should be appreciating this more than I do, but most of this is just fine. I've enjoyed what I've heard of Loveless, and I find it confusing when people rate these records equally, as Loveless is an obvious step forward and all-around is a huger revelation of a listen. The band sounds very green and uneasy in their debut, but with clear potential.

some tight grooves and guitar parts i can appreciate in isolation but, as a whole, nothing to write home about