1001 Albums Summary

Oh no guys I heard them say the n word

Pretty vanilla music for a guy with a wild reputation.

Chill, good vibes. All the songs sound a little similar though.

Nice! Seemed like a seminal album for its time, one that set a standard for rap going forward.

Nostalgic, intimate, good set list. Hard to overestimate the sense of persistent emotional authenticity Nirvana gave us at the time. I mean they were doing this while radio stations were blasting the Crash Test Dummies and Joan Osbourne. Also hard to overestate how good an idea the unplugged model was. Drummer sucked though.

Yup. Good one

I was too dismissive at first: 'just another album my parents had 40 years ago.' but I was surprised how well produced the album is, how much attention was put into generating two distinct sounds separated by album sides. Side A more like classic 70s Police: loud high hat, counterculture tin punk. Side B something more progressive and foundational for 80s music, like synth drums and clear plain voice singing. Collectively, the album seems designed to spell the death of disco and I don't know, I think I'll listen again.

Huh, weird band and weird to have not heard of them. This was about the time I was latching on to the yeah yeah yeahs and rilo Kiley, so I'm surprised these guys didn't make my feed but maybe those algorithms weren't very robust yet? Maybe I listened to too much Eminem then? And were those lyrics about pirates I heard?

An iconic album, but confusing for me. When I first heard it I thought it was maybe a parody of rap because he made so many raspberries and goofy impressions. Eminem's voice is so high I also thought he had to be gay, but then all the lyrics never made sense and Dr Dre was on it. I had to re-listen to this album years later, only after hearing subsequent Eminem albums, to better appreciate it as an origin story and as an era marker in millennials' choke slam into adulthood.

Crap

Pretty pretty pretty good. I'd listen again, good commute album.

2 stars for their impact on humanity or whatever. Sorry I dislike the beatles

What? No, please no. Just fuck off, the absolute worst of overplayed 90s ear worms Sheryl Crow is. If you're going to be nostalgic about the 90s, be nostalgic about Beck, Lauryn Hill, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, Sinead O'Connor, Whitney Houston, Nirvana, Notorious or so so so many others.

A few too many sad beach boys songs, but overall a good album. I'd listen again.

This album is good. Some involuntary head bobs for sure. For the vibe she's trying to create with those beats, I would listen to Kruangbin, Massive Attack, or Valerie June first, but I'm happy to add Solange to the mix.

Sorry Radiohead, this album you hate is great.

I think I'd be as likely to listen to this album again as I would a Zeppelin album. To that extent, I'm surprised I'm less familiar with this band.

I guess I'm starting to realize just how big the baby boom generation is, based on how many would have been needed to vote all these 70s albums into the top 1001.

Great album.

Good songs that are nevertheless hard to listen to in a full album session, since they all sort of sound the same.

Well well well punch me in the butt plug, I didn't know Neil Young made upbeat, irreverent music. Good job Neil, nice album.

If the Brits had to choose the greatest British band from the 90s, I'm sure they would say Radiohead or maybe Oasis. But if Brits had to choose the second greatest British band of the 90s, they could do worse than to say the Verve (Chumbawamba comes to mind, for instance). Of course, A Northern Soul does little to help the band's case. It is clearly one of the Verve's early trial and error albums, composed almost entirely of a crapulous, never ending grunge guitar riff. And God help them, the lyrics are rife with the worst trends of 90s rock: over indulgent pathos, oh so misunderstood, and generally super cringe. It seems evident that 2/3 the way through the album, someone put their foot down and demanded to include some songs that didn't all sound the same. 'History' is the point in the album where this happens. It is still underdeveloped as a song, but the immediate and persistent pairing of orchestral strings with not-unending-echo-guitar-riffs-for-fucking-once suddenly produces a workable sound, insisting on a sense of reemergence and discovery that plainly motivates the band. The next few songs, which still aren't really worth listening to again, similarly demonstrate more stuttering willingness to experiment. The Best 1001 Albums seems to include the lead-up efforts for several bands' most iconic albums, as if to demonstrate the bands' story arcs from mediocrity to legends, and they do so here with the Verve. The album is still shite, and I will not rate it well, but I love hearing the Verve's dramatic machinations and side quests on their path to British 90s rock glory, which would reach a triumphant apex two years later with the album Urban Hymns. It opens (and now I know why) with 'Bittersweet Symphony' in all of it's orchestral resplendence.

This was one of those albums my parents insisted on buying and listening to on repeat, intent on believing it was quintessential alt rock, not just autistic Sheryl Crow. Forced to listen to the legions of similar artists from this era, I'd sooner hear Liz Phair's music than Lucinda Williams. I suppose it doesn't need to be said, but this is one of the albums that make me feel temporarily deflated and cynical about 1001 Best Albums. Like why am I hearing Lucinda Williams before any other 90s women musicians? Surely there are enough albums from Lauryn Hill, Mariah Carey, No Doubt, Sonic Youth, and dozens more, that bump out Lucinda Williams. Oh, I just wiki-ed her, I guess she's pretty prolific. Sorry, she just sounds like a silly goose to me.

This album is on frequent rotation in our house. Excellent music.