1001 Albums Summary

Bias Alert: This was a formative album in my life, having listened to it probably a hundred times when I was in high school, and numerous times in the years since. I simply cannot spin this album without thinking of how much I loved it 24 years ago when it came out, so an objective review is not in the cards. There's a lot to hate about this album if you're looking for it, especially if your'e approaching it with only 2024 ears. A lot of the content is overly provocative (to give all the benefit of the doubt to Em) or downright shitty (to give no benefit of the doubt to Em). The truth is that it's in the middle, having been made 24 years ago. The music hits almost exactly the same as it did for me in my Mazda B2000 Pickup truck in 2001, driving around town. Eminem's flow remains undefeated, and is one of the most unique artists in history, and this album is him doing his thing at the peak of his powers.

On this album Beck does a thing entirely different than he did on the album before -- Sea Change is part four in this series, and arguably the most successful. Every song on Sea Change is sad, slow-moving, powerful, and it's kind of impossible to think that the same guy that claimed songs as 'Mothefucker', 'Beer Can' and 'Jackass' came back a half decade later and put together this masterpiece. This album is someone getting over a breakup in full view of the public with beautiful melodies, and from his pain comes one of the greatest albums of the turn of the century. Paper Tiger, Lonesome Tears, End of the Day, Little One all pop for me on this album.

One of the quintessential rock albums, Boston's 'Boston' makes for an absolute blast of a listen. At under 38 minutes and only eight tracks, the album has zero down time and is more or less the perfect classic rock album. As someone who grew up in America, I had obviously heard many of these songs played on classic rock stations growing up, but had never actually sat down and played the album straight through. I was enthused to hear that the energy and vibes of 'Peace of Mind' (the best track, IMO) more or less are evident with every song. This album is famously the greatest freshman offering from a band in rock history, and I think it's warranted. A tremendous, lean, exciting listen.

One of the handful of greatest albums I've ever enjoyed listening to over the course of my lifetime. There are eight absolute bangers on this album that I would put up with any other rock songs in the category of 'Songs That Make You Want To Go Crazy', and one song ('Know Your Enemy') that is in the inner circle of my favorite songs of all time. I don't know what newer generations think of Rage Against the Machine, how they have aged into a new era, but to me and my 40-year old viewpoint they remain as relevant and important as ever, and their music -- This album especially -- continues to be unlike anything made before it or since.

This album is an absolute classic, and established Green Day's permanent presence in a space that hadn't totally existed before them -- pop-punk. Sure, it was around in some way, but this album really would set a course to defining a sound that blink-182, the Offspring, and countless other bands would eventually inhabit. 'Dookie' is thirty eight minutes and change of the perfect combination of sweet, syrupy pop hooks and the most accessible part of the underground punk scene -- from the attitude all the way to the instrumentation. This album is excellent start to finish, contains almost exclusively massive bangers, and can be enjoyed by almost everyone. Not many albums in history are able to do that.

I've already heard the 1-2 songs on this album really worth someone's time, and despite having come of age around the time when this album came out I wasn't very susceptible to being pulled in by this one. There's not a lot in this album that has aged particularly well.

This sounds like a whole lot like a white guy went backpacking abroad for a month and came back to America and had it all figured out. I'm sure that this album was well received 35 years ago, but in 2024 I just don't think it hits as well musically or comes off as earnestly.

The Score remains undefeated, almost 30 years later. It's astounding how much the sound of this album, released in 1996, would influence and straight up dictate what the underground rap scene would sound like for the next half of a decade. Wyclef and Pras are great on this album, of course, and act as a perfect compliment to the singular talent at the apex of her powers, Lauryn Hill. Hill is so good on this entire album that it makes you wonder how she's not wildly viewed as one of the greatest artists that has ever been produced (I guess some may think she is, though I'm not sure that enough people know as much about her as you'd hope). The late 90's underground hip-hop sound/vibe is really my favorite genre subcategory, so I'm always going to be drawn to this sort of an album, but this is a total one-of-one record, an All-Timer that should largely be considered one of the handful of albums that everyone should hear.

I feel like there's an ocean's worth of context that I am missing, listening to this album in 2024 rather than when it came out. I have read the reviews and understand it, but I don't *feel* it in my bones the way that is probably necessary to truly *get* the fact that this is essentially the beginning of punk music as a viable mainstream/counter-mainstream genre. That I am appreciative of. But, that said, it sounds a lot like a hollower, less robust-sounding version of many punk acts to come after it. Tonally I love what's happening, but a lot of the music falls flatter for me than I am sure it does for others who have grown up with this album.

We seem to have a collective amnesia about the quality of Coldplay as a band in the early days, in large part due to Chris Martin's antics as well as their deterioration into musical dust as the years have passed. Make no mistake -- Parachutes, and then A Rush Of Blood To The Head (which this review is not at all about) remain one of the greatest 1-2 punches to start a musical career in contemporary musical history. With timeless songs as Yellow, Shiver, Trouble, and Sparks, Parachutes (which this review is completely about) is an album that almost is unfairly lumped in with everything the band did post-X&Y for no other reason other than the fact that they were weirdly made by the same collection of people. When Coldplay is dead and gone, and we have removed the context that exists around them and their career, this album will hopefully live on as a great piece of work.

Songs like 'John Wayne Gacy, Jr', 'Chicago', and 'Jacksonville' sound like essential tracks to mid-aughts indie rock burned CD mixtapes, especially twenty years later, as the sound of that era continues to calcify the further away we get from it.

Here's a question I posit to nobody in particular: Is Jimi Hendrix being forgotten about culturally in a way that other historically great rock acts have not? It sure seems to me to be that way, and I'm unsure of why. Anyway, his talent and style is on full-blown display on this album -- which, to be clear, is made up purely of absolute bangers. There are, of course, well-known classics like 'Hey Joe', 'Purple Haze' and 'Fire', but beyond that you have tracks like 'Highway Chile', with a riff so simplistic and gnarly that it would make early-era Led Zeppelin jealous. You have 'Red House', a track that sounds like it single-handedly transitioned blues into the rock genre. 'Manic Depression' is a track that sounds like it was written in 2027, not 1967. Again, I bring up the thing about Jimi Hendrix's legacy because I'm not sure young people listen to (or even know about) Jimi Hendrix. I mean, I guess young people don't really listen to rock music period, so it makes sense... But Jimi Hendrix is an absolute legend, and 'Are You Experienced' is his greatest produced feat.

Part of me feels like this is the exact sort of album that I'm doing this entire exercise for? I mean, it was fine, but Avant-Garde German Ambient Pop is simply not something I'll ever come across in my day-to-day life. I... Liked this just fine? Sounds a little bit like if Trey Anistasio was born in war-torn Poland 30 years earlier, and though I'm not going to be seeking out Holger Czukay in the future, I cherish the small amount of time I spent with him today.

Brutal. I know that part of what I miss is not having lived through this, but I cannot fathom how this kind of music was thought to be the best we could muster at the time.

Joni Mitchell has been a black hole for me musically my entire 40 years of life. I had this idea of her as quietly sitting on a small stool, baring her soul, and while I know that that is indeed a part of her bag of tricks, I was astonished to hear the vibrant instrumentation on this album. It felt like this album was built in order to showcase her versatility as a writer of melodies and hooks, and has officially slid into first place on the list of 'Greatest Albums I've Never Heard Before This Exercise'.

Cyndi Lauper has always struck me, as a child growing up in the 90's and early aughts watching VH1 for hours a day, as very annoying. I was aware of 'Time After Time' and 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun', and the former is extremely cheesy (though OK) while the latter is brutal. But this pre-conceived bias towards her is why this exercise of listening to all these albums is good -- I was confronted full-on with having to address whether this bias was something based in reality or based in making a black/white decision one time while I was watching tv on a Saturday afternoon when I was 11 years old. I am happy to report that my findings were inconclusive. This album had a lot of really fun, really interesting pop instrumentation, but also a great deal of annoying Cyndi-Lauper-ness going on. For the full experience, throw on 'Yeah Yeah' in which you have this wonderful horn hook overlayed on top of her being, like, demonstrably *way too much*. I don't think Cyndi Lauper is for me, but I hope that my foray into this album at least shed some of the unfair assumptions I had and instead replaced them with barely fair assumptions that I know will hold forever, again, without thinking much about them.

This was the first time I grew to have an understanding that Rod Stewart had a band prior to his solo career, and that the band actually seems to be quite good. Faces is literally like if I said 'Rod Stewart is a pretty great singer, but all his songs are too lame' (I do say this!) and 'he should start a band with some much cooler, maybe blues-y tracks' (I don't say this, but in retrospect I should have!). Yes, I had heard 'Ooh La La' and 'Stay With Me', but prior to today I had never actually placed those songs to an actual band. Now that I know, Faces is on the radar and I anticipate discovering more of them in the future.

Kind of loved this. Sarah Vaughan is obviously one of the greatest voices from the early part of contemporary music, and she's in her element in this environment.

Was pretty familiar with this album growing up, as my parents would play it a lot. There's some good classic rock, I love the sprinkling in of Paul McCartney to a lot of these songs without calling attention to it... But I can't help but feel like Clapton is on his final legs here of trying to make it work in a band. 'Layla' is obviously an all time jam, and there are several great songs on this album, but there's also a lot of filler, and (much like a lot of the non-iconic classic rock albums from the late 60's all the way to the late 70's early 80's), there's just way too much bloat.

What a thrill ride this album is. Just constantly interesting stuff going on, taking you in different directions and everything just sounds amazing. Loved this.

Just a top-to-bottom perfect album.

At my most generous, I'm apt to consider this one of the dozen or so greatest albums of all time. Though it was released in 1987, it feels like the single thread between the glam-arena rock of the 1980's and the direct backlash to that, the grunge movement. Slash as a guitarist is simply a one-of-one, creating licks that sound more 'alive' than anyone else before or since. Axel Rose is at the top of his game, and the band as a whole is firing on all cylinders. While 'Sweet Child of Mine', 'Welcome to the Jungle' and 'Paradise City' have since become justifiable anthems, those songs so barely scrape the surface of the album. 'Mr Brownstone' is a perfect encapsulation of Slash's ability to create guitar hooks that sound like they've come to life and are walking down the street, interacting with the locals. 'You're Crazy' rips through a dusty desert in a stolen convertible and pops the emergency brake at the chorus, just for the fucking fun of it. Through it all, Slash is both the stabilizing force and the chaotic evil instigator, the true heir to the throne of the thrash guitar solo that Eddie Van Halen brought into the mainstream almost a decade earlier. Crank your headphones or stereo up to 17 and just let this album course through your veins.

Could have been great, but this really wasn't for me.

So, I'm 41 years old. I really like the idea of what Meat Loaf is doing, broadly. I am really into over-the-top theatrical music that is taking itself super, super seriously. I really do. But Meat Loaf is also like super annoying, I think. I don't know if I was born 25 years earlier if I would be All In on what he's doing, but I suspect that I would not be. Ultimately I could just wave this away and say 'whatever, Meat Loaf is clearly Not For Me', but I think it goes a little deeper than that. I think Meat Loaf as a project is interesting, and intriguing, but I think that it's entirely too much in a way that becomes grating. I'm sure there are many out there that will hate the dismissive tone of this, but I think that what Meat Loaf IS as an artist is the sort of thing that should be aging gracefully -- We as a society are so much more into people doing their thing, no matter how weird or niche it is -- but I think the opposite is happening.

If you wanted to be generous, you could say that this really speaks to a specific time in America. Rage -- suburban, white rage -- was in vogue, and this was the exact soundtrack that was demanded by that demographic. If you wanted to not be generous, you could say that this kind of content speaks to America now more than ever, and that grosses me out. I was the PRIMEPRIMEPRIME demo for this album and band, having been 14-18 in the years of Limp Bizkit's surge into super-relevance, and been a white guy growing up in medium-rural America. To this day I still don't quite understand how this kind of music speaks to people. Politics/culture aside, I don't think this aged gracefully at all, and I say that while also pointing out that this was aggressively terrible at the time. If you want to hunt and peck for things to enjoy, there are some good bass lines, some sick riffs from time to time, and occasionally the 'band' trips and falls into a chord progression that sidles almost all the way up to 'not bad'. Save your time, both by not listening to this album, and also by never thinking about Limp Bizkit again.

Kanye is a whole... Thing now, but it's impossible to deny just how good of a run he was on from like 2004-2011. This album is either the end of his epic run, or the culmination of what he'd been building towards for a whole decade, depending on where this album lies in your personal heirarchy of his early career output. I won't spend any internet ink here discussing the merits of this near-perfect album. It's an exceptional piece of work.