1001 Albums Summary

Well, it's highly acclaimed but Achtung Baby is still my fav. Too many hit singles in the first 15 minutes - the band's greatest hits of their career! - I would've liked them more evenly spread through the record.

Screeching guitars galore. This is where it all began – the album that laid the foundations of hard rock. While undeniably iconic, I personally prefer the more polished evolution of the genre of the raw sound of this album. Give me Def Leppard or Whitesnake any day!

What did I just listen to: a Chic album or Sister Sledge album?

With its fusion of jazz and rock, the album undoubtedly stood out back in the day. Personally, I liked Beginnings, which has the kind of easy-going feel you'd expect to hear on British radio on a mellow morning or when walking into a branch of UNIQLO. Questions 68 and 68 offers a glimpse into the softer fluffier sound that Peter Cetera would go on to embrace in the 1980s, and Listen has a groove that I could totally see Jungle covering (if they did covers). But then it all goes off a bit off the rails with a 7-minute guitar masturbation called Free Form Guitar. If it were free FROM this guitar...

A classic. One of their best - or perhaps the best? Rolling Stone's readers certainly think so.

Didn't leave much of an impression, but I'll give it another shot.

Flows smoothly with sparse vocals, focusing instead on bluesy jazz-rock guitar riffs with Latin beats thrown in. The result is a captivating fusion. Standout tracks: Oye Como Va & Hope You're Feeling Better

I'd rather listen to Rick Astley.

I can definitely see how My Generation left its mark on music, but maybe it was perfect for THAT generation – not so much for mine. Are there really four more albums by The Who on this list?! P.S. The Kids Are Alright sounds like a Beatles track.

Never liked him

This is the reason why I signed up for this project - to discover albums like this.

What I got from The Marshall Mathers LP is that Eminem had a 'gay' experience — a gay man giving him oral pleasure — and realized men might be better at it than women, which clearly didn’t sit well with him. Standout track: the Dido collab.

I loved "Crazy Love" back in the day so it was great to revisit the 2000s, the heyday of UK garage. The album is a tad too long though and gets repetitive.

It's listenable alright, but give me the ones from the heyday of their/his commercial success - late 80s / early 90s. Standout tracks: Breakdown, Fooled Again (I Don't Like It), Luna.

Solid background music.

Just couldn’t connect with this album. Maybe I wasn’t in the right mood, but then again, isn’t this kind of shoegazing, grungy indie rock exactly what one listens to in such moments? (Apparently, it even made NME’s Top 30 Heartbreak Albums list.)

It’s hard to judge this album objectively – I’ve never been a Blondie fan, and Heart of Glass ranks among the most annoying, whiny and overplayed songs for me. So I approached the parent album with some bias. That said, it’s actually not bad. Ironically, despite its massive global success, Heart of Glass might just be one of the album’s weaker points.

A new discovery for me, and like other users, I find it hard to compare their sound to anything I've heard before. An intriguing blend of indie, garage, blues and rock. Standout track: Street Joy

I cheated and put on some Evanescence instead.

Say what you want, but it's a surprisingly good album.

Amazing. Listened to it twice in a row. So many tracks have that instantly familiar feel - you’d think they were singles, only they weren’t. Standout tracks: Maybe Your Baby, I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever).

Bizarre!

A refreshing change from the delicate subtlety of Chopin.

Who knew they had more than one song?!

Brilliant! Listened to it twice on repeat. So far, the best album I’ve discovered thanks to this project. Dramatic, occasionally overblown, raw and sentimental at the same time. Standout tracks: Lover, You Should’ve Come Over; Dream Brother.

I recognised a couple of tracks

One of those albums where the songs all sound kind of the same. My Spotify was (inadvertently) set to loop, and I didn’t realise I was halfway through a second round. I suppose that’s what you’d call cohesive. Not bad at all. 4/5

Listened with my headphones on, as another reviewer on here suggested. Not usually my kind of music, but really liked this one – must be the headphones (Cisco, mind!). Standout track: Starship Trooper P.S. Didn't realise they were the outfit responsible for 'Owner of a Lonely Heart'.

A nice change from all the 1970s alternative rock that dominates this list – something more recent for once. Not exactly my usual style, but I’d listen again. Perfect dinner-party flex: “Oh, you don’t know Thundercat? Let me put it on…” Standout track: hard to pick just one since it all flows together so fluidly, but I’d say “Show You The Way”.

I’ve listened to several Led Zeppelin albums as part of my music self-education – some thanks to this very project – but none have quite grabbed me like this one. Of course, there are the obvious standouts: Trampled Under Foot and Kashmir. (I'm the only one, am I?, who hears a similarity between the guitar riff in TUF and Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Out?) Tracks like these alone make the album a classic. But Disc 2 (Sides 3 and 4) is full of underrated gems. Some reviewers on here have dismissed it as filler – common with double LPs – but I think this disc, with its bluesy rock, is where the band truly shines. This is actually the only review I’ve written while the record was still playing – Sick Again is on as I type. And yes, I’ll listen to this SICK double album AGAIN right now. Standout tracks: Trampled Under Foot, Kashmir (the obvious choices from Disc 1); In the Light, Ten Years Gone (wow!), The Wanton Song (it’s harder to pick favourites on Disc 2 – they’re all so good).

This could’ve worked as a moody soundtrack to a bleak indie film I’m not sure I’d want to watch.

I gave up halfway through - am I expected to listen to one hour of this?!

Despite all the 1-star (and some 2-star) reviews floating around here, it wasn't that bad at all. Maybe it just seemed better after having to endure a Beastie Boys album.

Don’t know why everybody’s complaining about this one – it’s actually pretty good! Sure, it’s not exactly the kind of album that’ll make you want to dust off your disco shoes, but it works as a solid introduction to EDM in general because it blends – and bends – so many different genres: drum & bass (Storm 3000), tribal (Space Shanty), ambient (Melt), among others.

Finally! An album I can give 5 stars before even hitting play – one of my all-time faves. Those riffs never get old. Know what? I’m actually gonna give it another listen now!

Not my favourite DM album – that honour would go to Violator (or the one that followed it) – but in the grand scheme of this list, which is riddled with some truly baffling choices (and a fair bit of dreck), this one stands tall., hence a 5 star rating. A dark, moody and powerful record from a band right at their peak. Standout tracks: Behind The Wheel, Never Let Me Down Again, Little 15

Since this one often pops up on all sorts of Greatest Albums lists, I’ve given it a few listens over the years – as part of my music education. Unfortunately, this time around, it left me just as indifferent as on previous attempts.

According to the stats on here, Indie is apparently my least favourite genre. Yet this one, labelled Rock/Indie, is absolutely awesome. Go figure. Standout tracks: not to sound too banal, but basically all the singles.

I love how this album attracts the most polarized reviews – from one-star one-liner putdowns ("Dump by Aerosmith", "Gross", "band should’ve died with the ’70s") to full-on five-star worship. I wish there were some kind of stats here showing the rating distribution – it would probably be one of the starkest in the whole project. For me, it’s a solid 4/5 because their next one, Get a Grip (1993), still reigns supreme. Standout track: Janie's Got a Gun (and I've always wondered if they were nodding to Def Leppard's Billy's Got a Gun)

A great album from beginning to end. I still maintain though that Track 2 (The Working Hour) should’ve been placed further down the running order – it’s a bit too slow and jazzy, and comes too soon. I’d move it to third, followed by Everybody Wants to Rule the World – that would’ve made for a better sequence. Standout tracks: too hard to pick – it’s a cohesive album overall filled with (commercially successful) hits. A rare combo!

Nice one!

I prefer Moon Safari (1998)

Masterpiece

Gave up halfway through - sorry I didn't spend my formative years in the US

One of those albums everyone should listen to as part of their music education – but not one I keep coming back to. Life on Mars is a masterpiece. Other standout tracks: Oh! You Pretty Things, Kooks

Not really my cup of tea, but I instantly recognised several classics. Thanks to this project for nudging me towards music I wouldn’t normally listen to. Standout tracks: Bridge Over Troubled Water, The Boxer

I totally get it why it gets ranked so high.

It was brilliant then, it is still excellent now.

Yes I did listen but it didn't leave a lasting impression. I mostly found myself recognising the big hits: Use Somebody, Revelry and, to a lesser extent, Sex on Fire, which was utterly ubiquitous back in the day.

Just what I needed as background music this morning when I had to get some work done.

Not my favourite band or genre, but this was a good listen

One of my faves (Version 2.0 is even better!). Grabs you from the first chords of the opening track and doesn't let go till the end. Standout tracks: Supervixen, Only Happy When It Rains, Vow, Stupid Girl