Having not been there, this album feels a lot like I how imagine the 70s were: overindulgent, sprawling in new and exciting ways that may not exactly be good, but still pretty fun. Some of these songs I can imagine putting on the 8 track in the AMC Pacer and thinking you're the coolest guy in the world, some of them I hear in a wood paneled basement with shag carpeting. A lot of the sounds I love from much later music show up here, as do a lot of sounds I don't care for. Some of the songs bang (the fuzz in Jet is wild) but then Bluebird is a real stinker. Picasso's Last Words is very clever, but also, c'mon Paul, some of this shit is just elevator music. A lot of good stuff, Paul's Beatles influence is still pretty obvious (good thing) and he's undeniably got a knack for a tune but for my taste overstays its welcome. Starts and finishes with something like a bang, so I guess that's where the head's at.

First song is a certified banger, so how does the rest of the album compare? Well, Let's Get It On is the high point so while it's technically true to say it's all downhill from there, it's not really helpful (though Keep Gettin' It On Is, y'know, about the same high). Any song can go anywhere and the album loses nothing. Easy to put on, easy to listen to. It's not experimental, it does not make a collage of existing music, it does not push the envelope. It's just good, consistent music.

Man, all my notes got wiped out, but I'd call this a transitional album. Clearly Bowie, with all its influences worn on its sleeve, but not fully made his own. While I can agree that 'boring' would be a good descriptor, I think the ambient stuff is pretty decent. Not all music has to go somewhere, and especially not ambient. It's no mistake that there aren't any classic Bowie hits on here, but that doesn't make it bad, just hit-less. The separation between the first half and second half make it feel a bit more like an art project than something coherent, so on that I'm knockin' it down from a 4 to a 3.

I missed this album. In fact, this album made me stop being a radiohead listener, because the whole "pay what you want" thing was something I wanted to support but I was a broke college student, so I never did. Then I fell out of the cycle. Anyway, now that I'm not a radiohead fan, this is a pretty forgettable album.

The opener is a real masterpiece, but the rest of this album is great. A little dated since everything's been plumbed a million times, and a little dated since some of the sounds are just so associated with the time, but still packed to the gills with good stuff. I think it's a victim of that datedness, so it \"only\" gets a four.

Like many Talking Heads albums, it's got a few megahits and then some capable but forgettable stuff sprinkled around it. Not that the forgettable stuff is bad, it's just not really that remarkable. Give it a 3 but bumped to a 4 exclusively for the Take Me To The River cover.

I don't care for dub, and this is an hour long. Probably have to be from the time and place to make it work, but even trying to actively listen I tuned this out. Maybe one day I'll see in it what others see, but I won't be returning on my own.

Holy shit. I've heard the hits but never listened to the album, Prince really was living in the future. Guy had a nose for The Sound and could produce it. This album's got it all, and it feels like it informed a lot of the 80s sound that came after it. I kept having to check the year. Anyway, this rules.

"I'm sick and tired of people saying that we put out 11 albums that sound exactly the same. In fact, we've put out 12 albums that sound exactly the same." That's right. Get in the t-top, loser, we're hitting mailboxes with a baseball bat. Nothing groundbreaking, and somehow too long as an album, but every song rocks.

Jack Antonoff was perhaps the worst person to produce Lorde. Bookends nicely, I guess, in the vein of royals, but everything in between is such a pale Antonoff-based imitation that it makes them worse.

Shit. Stuck in a wii menu that gets worse once the hook goes away. Don't

Finally, an album that answers the question, "What if the Jesus and Mary Chain sucked a lot?" Probably novel in the 70s, but now it's a mostly unlistenable art installation. Let's hear it for Frankie.

Legalize It is a truly terrible song. The rest of the album is a lot better, but goddamn I cannot believe that first track has fans. This is way more layered and varied than the UB40 album I listened to. Really was tempted to give it a 1 based on that first impression, but y'know, this is pretty good.

There was a time when this album probably woulda hit hard, but now it's mostly dated, probably about 20 minutes too long, and not really very interesting. Comfortably in the radiohead catalog with nothing to distinguish it.

It's Metallica. It's not as cool as early Metallica, and it portends later Metallica, but it's still Metallica. The hits are hits, and maybe its the amount of time they spent being played on the butt rock station when I was in high school, but I think they're great.

The natural progression of mid 2000s indie pop, and probably its terminal point. Layered instrumentation, experimentation with The Sound, and lots of ideas jammed into each song. Too bad it just made me think of other albums I could be listening to. Nice as music for a quirky indie flick, but I don't know when in my life I would want to listen to this.

Shit you'd hear in a spin class if everyone in there thought they were too cool for Stanley cups.

George Michael can sing, but the subtlety is not a strength of his. All these songs sound flat, like in an unfinished way, and another review mentioned that they've all been turned into club bangers. Which I'd agree with: just about any cover or remix is gonna have more verve than this. Compare to Prince, who took a different tack on sex as a subject matter, and had better musicality and more ideas, half a decade earlier. This is pointless until someone else comes along and spices it up.

Like most of the albums I've been hearing, they start out slow and then get better. This is just kind of standard proggy stuff with a couple of hits of what Queen's hits would sound like. I don't care for it but it's not bad.

This holds up. Big and intimate at the same time, it just rocks. Guitar noodling doesn't outlast its welcome like a lot of dinosaur rock and I'm a sucker for any singer who sounds like their voice went through a cement mixer. I know there are a lot of hits on here but just about anything coulda been a single. Sets the tone.

Smooth, classic album packed with songs that you just kinda know. Easy 5, except...well, I like a lot of the covers more than the originals. This isn't exactly where I spend my time. Sorry, Carole.

Not familiar with this album, although there are a few Maiden songs I like generally. This starts out way rawer than I was expecting (good thing) but maybe too much guitar noodling for my taste. The boys was figurin' it out, but it's really split between the 70s and what Iron Maiden turned into. The production isn't there for the operatic stuff and when it gets arena rock-y it's at its worst. The glimmer of the future was probably pretty exciting back in 1980 but I don't think it's great.

Never heard of this guy. This doesn't hit for me even though I feel like it should. Cannot put my finger on it - wait, it came to me on track 3: if Rusted Root discovered U2. Also: Deluxe edition? 2 fucking hours long? I got stuff to do, man.

It's good, but I'm certain I could defeat Paul in the octagon.

Loved this album when it first came out. Holds up, I guess, but doing the close-listening thing reveals it to be pretty insipid. I mean, these lyrics are trash. 5 star background music album, but what makes it good for that makes it bad for, y'know, listening. Splitting the difference with a 3. Either way, I don't think this is an album you have to hear before you die.

Hilarious that this pops up right after the xx because this is basically the same review. This album came out of the gate hard, then I forgot about it, and re-listening, well, its transportive but it's not great and it's also not something you have to listen to before you die. Their cover Prince's "I Would Die 4 U" is pretty good, though. Not on this album.

Not the best Pixies but still good Pixies. You get a 4 but only because Surfer Rosa and Doolittle deserve 5s and they're better.

This album is a 3: standard surfy, garagey music from the 60s. Every once in a while, a moment jumps out that makes it a little better. And every once in a while, you get something that makes it a little bit worse. I'm gonna play this for my kids.

I don't know how to say this without sounding pretentious, so I won't bother trying to not sound like a huge asshole. Jack White is an immensely talented musician who's forgotten more about music production and history than I'll ever know. But somehow, listening to his music, I get the impression he brings nothing new to the table. Every song feels like, "remember this sound? Well here's how I'd do it." And it sounds good, but also...why? They're all good songs, but it's like an an album of cover songs except instead of covers, they're originals.

Stone cold classic, every song has something to offer and even the skits are all-timers. I read some other people's reviews and saw their complaints and I want to point out that this album is more than the sum of its many parts: RZA's production is simplistic? Yes, it lets everybody have a chance to shine. Rhymes are simplistic? I mean, in the context of 2024, I guess, but there are some all-timer bars here and the interplay is part of the fun. Kung Fu is corny? Sorry man, you're actually lame as hell.

Hey, the hype is real: A live album that's made better by being live! I think Johnny Cash is a) a legend and b) pretty one-note, musically (with notable exceptions) but this album is fun to listen to. That says a lot. I think any other Johnny Cash album would probably get a three from me, but this seems like an easy 5?

This sounds like so many forgotten 80s pop-ish bands, imitating the smiths or the waterboys or simple minds or the mekons or the icicle works or any of those bands. Just kinda throw 'em into a blender. I like those bands, but this is just...more of it? Who cares.

This isn't nearly as sophisticated as electronic music is today, but as an early, and therefore relatively simple, electronic work, it's quite nice! At first I was going to call it ambient, but there's more engaging me here. Der Konzept carries through, the album flows nicely, and each song has something to offer. Great stuff.

Feel guilty giving this a 4 because the highs are so high, but it's too long, there's some weird shit going on in the middle and the fact that its a smorgasbord of sound doesn't mean that everything works well together. Like putting ice cream on a hamburger - it might work at the right time, but it might just be wrong. Anyway, great album with great breadth.

I never listened to this album. I did, however, listen to about 80% of it over and over and over again in the form of individual kazaa downloads of varying quality. So I have fond memories of some of this stuff, while the arrangement, and some songs, are completely new. Anyway, jazzy hip hop? I'm in. fun album. Not necessarily an all-timer in the gotta-hear-it-before-you-die vein, especially since, well, it drags, but it's a great sound and easy to put on.

Full disclosure, my wife picked the title track as our wedding dance song, so I'm predisposed to have a soft spot here. Ok, now that that's out of the way: she's a good singer with good arrangements and there's nothing here that really blows me away.

Hell yeah, man. Look, part of Tom Waits' appeal to me is his persona - it's like the whole thing is performance art that isn't a performance and isn't really art. So I'm gonna be looking at this album through that lens, because if I didn't know who Waits was, but had this as my introduction, it'd probably get a 1 or 2. It's a tough listen to kick off, shit banging and clanging with Waits' unique voice kind melted in the middle. If a different Tom, like Tom Delonge or Tom Jones, put this out, it would be shit. Norah Jones this ain't. But that's part of the appeal of this album, too: it's something different, built deliberately and, at least to me, challenging in a way that's not so far gone that it's inaccessible noise. It's all stripped down to the bone, for better or worse. I really love a couple of songs on here, like really love. Sometimes it's worse, I think I'd like some new arrangements of stuff. Not my favorite Tom Waits' album, but definitely one that stands out. I don't know what kind of curve to grade this on, so I give it a 4. I have no doubt it was realized as expected, and I like Tom, but the challenge on some of these tracks is a bit much.

Insanely horny. Like, the perfect album for teens to do clumsy heavy outside-the-pants petting in 1996. Waterfalls is, of course, a megahit, but this brand of R&B is really not where I spend my time. It's obvious how this album was a huge hit: slick, well produced, well sung, but it has the unfortunate position of having set the tone rather than being superlative, so it's kind of forgettable in that sense if you didn't grow up to it blasting sex-vibes straight into your teenage brain. Which I didn't.

Nice little album by a nice little singer who inspired thousands of shitty imitators, so he might be guilty of war crimes.

I never got into Nick Cave for whatever reason, even though he's supposedly adjacent to a lot of musicians I do like. Maybe my head wasn't in the right place. Maybe I thought it was a bit overwrought, directly sighted at Theater Kids and Former Theater Kids. Anyway, this album's pretty good! A little long, but I can respect the craft, and you know what, I'm gonna listen to it more than a couple of times. Maybe it even makes it into The Rotation. Good to put on and zone out and good to listen in. No skips! Tunes that get stuck in your head! Somber, erudite songwriting that isn't the southern gothic character exploration that turned me off the first time! Maybe I am a Nick Cave fan, I'll have to revisit some other stuff. This album hits.

Talented guy, and sad story, but this album, while creative, is super uneven. I guess when your brain fragments into itty bitty pieces you have a lot of ideas. Definitely an album you should hear before you die, but not because it's a screamin' classic. I admittedly don't care for this kind of psych but there's enough here to keep me interested even if I don't think it's good. You know who I bet loved this shit? Jeff Mangum.

David Bowie is obviously an all-star, and there's not a bad song on the album, but as a cap A Album it's just ok. Lots of different songs with different sounds stuck together. Luckily, it's got Changes and Life on Mars, so even if everything were dogshit it would still be good.

Absolutely an album you need to hear before you die, but you don't have to like it. Which I don't. I don't quite hate it the way some people do, and Paul Simon is obviously talented, but this shit is so fucking twee coming from a 45 year old man. A something of a developmentally-arrested manchild myself, I can relate to Not Growing Up, but something here leaves a bad taste in my mouth in much the same way K records albums do. I liked the self-titled album, so why not this? I mean, it contextualizes You Can Call Me Al in a way that I hadn't heard before that somehow makes me respect it less? Maybe it's how much it informed Vampire Weekend, a band I also think is talented but annoying. Also, the intro to Northern Exposure. It's hooky and catchy and I bet it would've found purchase in my brain if it had been associated with some Proustian element that makes me look back on it with fondness. Contextuality, the theme of this album. Anyway, this is the first time I've listened all the way through and probably the last.

some of this sounds incredibly dated but some of it is really great. Obvious influences on stuff that came later, but a lot of it makes me feel like I'm driving a Pontiac Fiero while on coke, posters of buxom women in really high hipped bikinis on the wall of my room. I know it's the EDM way but some of the songs overstay their welcome, and I should admit I'm not a fan of acid house. I dunno, I think this might be a bit like the Velvet Underground where there's some good stuff but most of the stuff that came later is better. I zoned out on the second half of this album - seems a bit more relaxed. Anyway, I think I gotta give it a 3 because, while I'm sure this hits for some and was a banger back in '89, I could just play sonic the hedgehog.