For some reason this album always puts me behind the lawnmower in the front left corner of my parents' front yard. Side 2 accomplishes more than some well-regarded concept albums.

I feel like Perfect Day sums up this album for me - genius songwriting which could be better covered by others. (Reed's Perfect Day is a really good track, but Kirsty MacColl's version with Evan Dando is definitive.) It feels unbaked in places - the weird oompah-band horns, half-hearted use of background vocals, inexplicable Dixieland band on the last track - and yet I kept thinking about other bands I'd love to hear cover the lesser-known songs. Certainly good as an album, with multiple standout tracks, but absolutely full of potential as a songbook.

I suppose this 4 rating is dependent on the context of listening on a Sunday morning. It's a great Sunday morning album - terrific grooves to get moving, but a lush production and comfortable tempo that remind you you're not actually going anywhere. Just enough pop song emotion to connect, but again, nothing that's a heavy lift. I also like the structure to this album - opening with Chic Cheer and Le Freak, and closing with (Funny) Bone, as reminders that disco is party music, around a generally smoother, more soulful middle. Like a good party.

OK, I'm glad I listened to this because now I have some sense what the big deal is with Kanye. Definitely some great tracks and creative production. Ultimately for me and my musical taste, the album is way too long and about halfway through it started to sound repetitive (or I lost focus and couldn't hear the innovation between tracks... which is much the same thing).

Amazing. Every track a banger. All the opulence and excess I want from glam rock. I'm glad this came up pretty early in my 1001 Albums journey because it made me recalibrate my stars.

I liked the musicality, the lush production, and the variety. It is a big album, but they did a good job with mixing up the sound environment to stay engaging. I found it a good balance of funk, R&B, and hip hop. And I know not everybody enjoys skits, but I thought they worked; they sounded like someone cared about making a blackout-speed sketch that actually had something to say. I liked some of the down and dirty treatment of sex. (I'll Call B4 I Cum, for example.) Other tracks veer into a misogyny that's almost unlistenable. I know we have to leave room for music that documents society without necessarily upholding it... but at some point, dude, you've made your point and maybe you should step away from the porn. Watch a cat video instead or something.

If the point of a soundtrack album is to interest me in the film, it worked. I really want to know how these multiple different sounds are used, from Western horns to '60s pop to the Indian classical music-influenced Bollywood sound. It reminded me, in a way, of Adrian Quesada's Boleros Psicodélicos, as a place where multiple musical influences were meeting in new technologies. (In fact, Mera Pyar Shalimar reminded me very specifically of a couple tracks on that album.) All that said, only 3 stars because, as individual songs, some gripped me and some failed to. Worthy musical experiments but I don't see a lot of re-listening potential for me.

Didja ever get the feeling you've been cheated? I tried to listen with historical ears, mapping out possible influences and paying attention to the elements that will show up again in other punk and post-punk and heavy metal bands. And with open ears; honestly it struck me as less noisy and more competent than I'd been lead to believe. (Much as, yeah, better musicians and better producers are going to take these ingredients and make better albums.) But it's so hard to separate from the story - the naked cash grab, the naughty boys saying naughty words and pretending it's revolution, the overwhelming boringness of nihilism. And, frankly, it was never written for a middle manager in his mid-50s. There just isn't anything there for me, except a historical artifact. The great rock and roll swindle, indeed.

Definitely not what I was expecting, given that my knowledge of Iggy Pop is mostly "Lust for Life" and "Candy" and "The Passenger." Very moody and synth-driven; Bowie's fingerprints are all over it and while Lou Reed wasn't directly involved, I hear his influence very loudly. It's good, but I'm not clear what makes it a top 1000 album. Maybe in a different mood or environment I'd feel differently. (Though in its defense, it feels like the last 3 times I said that, I also said those albums wore out their welcome. At a tight 39 minutes, The Idiot gets points for being concise.)

There are a couple fun singles on this album, and a bunch of fair ones. If one of these songs came up on a mix while I was at a cookout, at the beach, walking the dog, driving with the windows open, I'd think that was fun. But there's no combination of 2 songs that I particularly want to listen to in a row, and three is right out. As an album, there's just nothing here to hold my attention.

I had truly forgotten what a magnificent vocalist Michael Jackson was. That seems stupid as I write it, but his work on Thriller is so much more supported and nuanced than his later work, free of breathy unsupported tone and overaccentuated frilly consonants. The same can be said of Quincy Jones' production; quintessential early 80's synthesized sound which will eventually be overdone, but here still have human nuance to them. The other thing which occurred to me is how much more I *watched* this album than listened to it. It's honestly hard to hear Thriller, Billie Jean, or Beat It and not play the video in my head.

As long as humans keep getting their hearts broken, we'll need big, overdramatic torch songs, and Adele may be the current queen of the genre. Adele's skill with a sad song gives us confidence when we have none, recognition when we feel alone, and on this album, acceptance when we need to move on. Is it all a bit much? Of course. But that's what the sign said on the way in, and when you need a torch song, nothing else will do. All that said, I do think the uptempo numbers on 21 work better for me than those on 25, and it's not clear to me why they both belong on an "essentials" list. But that's a critique of the list, not the art. To end on a high note, River Lea has amazing bones and deserves a raft of covers in different genres. I want to hear it in blues and Americana and roots rock...

It's the sound of the night. I admit that I don't have the music theory or jazz history knowledge to understand its revolutionary aspects; I just know that it's a fundamental sound, an immediate and vibrant connection to other places and times and moods. It's distilled cool.

Sounds like it would make for a pretty good workout tape, or a mix to listen to while driving (though that might lead to speeding tickets). Fun enough to move to. It's possible that part of my problem with electronica is that I mostly know the genre through use on TV or movies. So the songs all seem about a minute or two too long. After about 3 minutes, I feel like we've established we're in a club/crime scene, Keanu Reeves has shot a bunch of guys, Vin Diesel has flipped a car over an orphanage, I get it, let's move on. That's not really fair to the music, but it's the cultural reference I have.

One for the "what ever happened to my cassette of this album?" pile. A delightful blast from the past, even if I was halfway through it before I realized I didn't actually know what was on this album and what was on their second, "Time's Up." Skillful mix of metal, pop, and soul.

I absolutely adore this album. I love Jeff Tweedy's way of putting words together. (Pro tip: read his book "How To Write One Song.") I loved the crazed arrangements and instrumentation, the attempt to make something stunningly beautiful that will also make a record exec have an absolute fit. I love the way that thinking about this album makes me feel like I'm getting smarter. I love the fact that I finally listened to a "deluxe version" of an album and the "unified theory" remasters sound totally different than the originals, and maybe designed a bit to piss off fans who only want the album preserved in amber. I even love the way it made me ask if I've been too hard on prog rock. (I don't really think I have, but maybe I can listen with bigger ears.)

My biggest take from this album is that CCR's cover of Good Golly Miss Molly deserves to be more famous than their cover of Proud Mary. Really excellent work on that track, bringing a heavy blues-rock sonic environment while not losing the swing and swagger of the original. Apple Music tells me that the 7-minute "Graveyard Train" and "Keep on Chooglin'" are designed to establish CCR's cred in the jam-focused San Francisco scene. Maybe that's true, but to my modern ears they're each at least a minute too long, if not two. And that sums up a lot of this album for me - clearly some good stuff but also a lot of self-indulgence.