1001 Albums Summary

PLONK PLONK PLONK PLONK PLONK

doesn't even have "Boris the Spider" on it

never been a fan but i dig the mood of this album. "Agent Orange" is great.

pavement were my favourite band in jr high so this was fun

i get that jaco pastorius was the best bass player in the world. wayne shorter's 60s solo records and work with the jazz messengers are some of my favourite jazz albums. but goddamn if this isn't some of the worst shit i've ever heard

lifelong bowie fan but this wouldn't even crack my top ten bowie albums. doesn't do anything ziggy didn't do much better.

full of little surprises that reward close listening. "space odyssey", set in the far-off future of 1996, is the only misstep, and it's too goofy to hate. great album

i know she wrote 'em but there's no world where i would listen to these versions over the shirelles or aretha.

not as much fun as i remember jethro tull being. kind of a drag.

always psyched to see something outside the pop/rock sphere on this list. i only knew tito puente from his brief stint as music teacher at Springfield Elementary. this is good fun.

maybe not my thing but its creative and weird. some big hooks and wild beats. "jezebel" sucks tho

was psyched to find something completely new to me (never heard of it!) but it just reminded me of better things (country feedback, evan dando's gram parsons obsession).

one of his great "____'s G_____ On" records. this one's a concept album about a guy who likes to fuck. i like to imagine the look on the faces of the guys behind the console when marv dropped "stop beatin' 'round the bush." the title track remains funny, horny, ecstatic, unimpeachable, even after so many bad movie needle drops have turned it into a cliché. funnier and hornier still is the reprise "keep gettin' it on" at the end of side a, reminding you that he is, indeed, still gettin' it on ten minutes later. fucks my shit up everytime. love the drums at the end of "please don't stay." love the little red toque. love the pacman-ass typeface on the cover. last record he told us "god is love" and here he tells us sex is love. law of commutativity. we're all sensitive people with so much to give.

loved it.

despite years of recommendations from big boi and my friend jack, i've never latched on. still, i dig the invention and the self-consciously weird stuff even when the worst bits feel like performance poetry. and who could dislike a song about falling in love with a computer program from 1989?

side three is pretty good. the rest sucks.

the talking guitar parts are corny as hell, but my heart sank even more when he pulled out the acoustic. how has he managed to convince us this was a rock record for 50 years? who can explain the staying power of this record? was it the wayne's world joke? lisa bonet and big mountain? spotify tried to sell me frampton comes alive keychains and throw blankets.

try as i might, i've never been a fan. he gets a lifetime pass for his half of "shipbuilding" tho. reading contemporary reviews of this record is a real lesson in how poorly we can predict what will become a classic. oh well. "a man out of time" and "you little fool" are among his best, i figure.

not sure why kendrick has such a problem with this guy he seems chill

you just know he suggested calling it "stingchronicity" at least once. andy's always been the star member for me, and he's got some cool guitar parts here. some fun synth across the board. "mother" is great and makes me wish the guys had let themselves had a bit more fun sometimes.

i grew up in the napster/st. anger era so i've never known a world where these guys were anything but corndogs. coolest thing they ever did was help raise the alarm on the west memphis three, but it took the dixie chicks to find the real killers.

kim thayil's a cool guitarist and i dug some of the psychier songs, but the rest is mid90s dross.

yeah this is a lot of fun

timbaland drops an all-time worst guest verse on the last song

i've been walking around shouting "THIS IS RELIGION!" in a johnny rotten voice all day. my wife is annoyed, my cat worried. has got to be one of the worst songs ever recorded; the spoken word version doubly so. a real twat, this guy. the guitar on annalisa and public image is interesting enough to elevate the album to a 2, which really just means i'd take it over most 70s prog.

there is no conceivable universe in which this is essential listening

the beginning of a pretty incredible 70s run (don't skip the live album or the ep), even if it is the baroque outlier. this was my first time listening to the whole album in ten or fifteen years, and it was even better than i remember.

they're the best there is at what they do, and what they do sucks

i had their poster up in my bedroom as a teenager and i loved Sister and Daydream Nation, both of which are better than this record (i also had Goo, which is probably worse). now i figure they're kind of a buncha jerkoffs. one of us hasn't aged well. either way, i'll never forgive 'em for being bullies to Nardwuar.

there was one summer i listened to this on my discman on repeat. i met a girl at summer camp who also loved it and she was the first girl i ever dated.

produced by mutt lange, so every song is a fiddle away from shania or a synthesizer away from loverboy. at least they sang about relatable things like being a woman or working for the weekend.

my favourite beatles record. the red canadian version was one of my first lps. this version has more songs, unfortunately including "you can't do that," one of john's spousal abuse anthems.

some cool production

https://youtu.be/t5Tg_-LDyfg?si=3b8QVwn8z2yul-c_

coulda sent this up with the voyager spacecraft instead of those gold records. it would have served the same purpose. timeless but frozen in the seventies. universal but swedish as hell. even at their corniest ("the tiger," "dum dum diddle") they've got more hooks than a barrel of monkeys. if i had written "knowing me knowing you" i'd retire and die happy.

these guys would call the cops if you offered them a joint

i wish i could play this record for my the cure- and my bloody valentine-loving 16 year-old self.

he's got skills but you'd swear he invented internal rhyme according to the hype. the best rapper of all time if you've never heard rap before or you don't listen to black people. if only he'd used his powers for good. instead we get more gay jokes about nsync over some of the weakest beats in hip hop history. shit sucked when it came out and its just embarrasing now. best moment is the LFO parody.

shit sucks

one of the first cds i ever owned, but this was the first time i've listened to it in maybe 20 years, and though i'd reach for murmur, new adventures in hi-fi or up most days, i can't deny this might be their best set of songs, and the band never sounded better. but what struck me this spin was how formative and album this was for me in the late 90s. it not only acted as a gateway to lots of indie and college rock, but michael stipe offered a model of masculinity i could relate to and hadn't seen before. so yeah, maybe i am who i am in part because of this record.

ps1 racing game-ass music

so much of the 90s sucked in this exact way

this shit was everywhere when i was in junior high - it's honestly much worse than i remember

"all my friends" is fantastic. the rest feels like a joke i'm not in on

hated every second of it

sags a bit after runaway, but it wouldn't be the best album of whichever decade it belongs to if we lost "yeezy taught me." an incredible album all the more because of its flaws, meanderings, and self-indulgence. he err... reupholstered the game with this one.

kicks off maybe the strongest five-album run of rock history

"rednecks" is still scathing, and "louisiana 1927" feels more prescient than historic in the wake of katrina. light-hearted and furious, often in the same song. human kindness overflowing.

a few interesting moments but it doesn't do anything that a truckload of other 90s albums didn't do better

goth elrond

remember that scene in high fidelity where two green-haired teens start a shitty band called the kinky wizards and their music blows john cusack's mind to the point that he reconsiders his entire life? this album sounds like the kinky wizards.

didn't think compilations and archival recordings like these would make it on the list. the bootleg (just a name) series has a number of bright spots i'd take over bobbadee's studio albums any day - the isle of wight concert on vol. 10, the piano demo of "i'll keep it with mine," all seven drunken hours of the basement tapes. this one is a good way to spend an hour and a half but won't set your world on fire.

were we a serious nation, we'd put rick danko's face on the loonie. "give me five timbits for a danko," we'd say. "sour cream glaze." levon got an elton john song, manuel got the stick shift, robbie got his screwdriver. garth got a twofer with the river AND wayne's buddy. it's only fair.

a game i like to play with double albums: cut it down and resequence it to 45 minutes. any singles, demos, outtakes from the recording sessions are fair game. here's my tracklist for the white album: 1. Glass Onion 2. Martha My Dear 3. I'm So Tired 4. Sexy Sadie 5. Don't Pass Me By 6. Julia 7. Revolution 9 8. Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me & My Monkey 9. I Will 10. Cry Baby Cry 11. Why Don't We Do It In the Road 12. Happiness is a Warm Gun 13. Long, Long, Long 14. Hey Jude alternatively cut "revolution 9" into a few short tracks and put it in between tracks, rap skit-style. if you won't let me have "hey jude," replace it with "rocky raccoon" 3 times.

set your strats to "quack," boys sure, some people miss that "money for nothing" is in character, but that doesn't change the fact that it's just a rich asshole making fun of working class people. at least the weird al version had a message we can all get behind (that beverly hillbillies was a tv show that existed).

classic wu tang clan.

i bought this the day it was released, same as i did with funeral (not so much a brag as evidence of my being a dyed-in-the-wool pitchfork-reading piece of shit.) it was my 18th birthday. i remember being disappointed by Neon Bible at first but i still played it on repeat for months. at least it had a better version of no cars go than the original ep. listening for the first time ages, just a few weeks shy of its 18th anniversary, i gotta stand by my gut reaction. no cars go might be their best song but the new material doesn't do anything that Funeral didn't do better. their records go downhill pretty hard after this one. years of the band's insufferable cornballism and rock star bullshit have revealed them to be as shallow and phony as every other rock band that came before them.

i hope everyone involved feels bad about what they've done

he's got better songs but iunno if he's got a better album. great musicianship from Clover and spunky production from Nick Lowe. two cost'lo records down, only four to go.

this was great! i could see it growing into a five star record for me over time

i'd give this five stars for "all tomorrow's parties" alone. that song is a black monolith and i'm just a buncha stupid apes

if you like speakerboxxx check out big boi's first proper solo album.

woof

Jesus built you a hot rod and this is all you've done with it?

i bought this record on a whim as a teenager, an easy mark for the original artwork and the title, and having a basic idea of who the guys were. i'd still put it in my top 3 of the talking heads extended universe. it's still funny, danceable, and surprising after however many years. newer pressings have cut one haram track but it's not a major loss. cultural appropriation was always the point. hindsight is what it always is. if the "psychedelic african" guitar hooks you, check out King Sunny Adé, who is shamefully omitted from the list to make space for three kings of leon cds, i guess.

sounds like 2004, for better or worse

i usually skip pre-bruce maiden but this was great. the production's not as bad as its reputation. most of the songs hold up, but charlotte the harlot sucks.

some headbangers and some buttwigglers

"chocolate cake" is one of the worst songs i've ever heard. and they made it the opening track and a single. unfortunately the rest isn't much better.

cracks me up when plant gets all i'll-have-what-she's-having mimicking page's guitar. corny shit!

this was famously a simon and garfunkel reunion album until paul erased art's bits and claimed it for himself. hard to tell who came out on top there; maybe garf saw the writing on the subway wall. but there's a few high points: the magritte song is lovely and it's always great to hear nile rodgers pop up. cars are cars is stupid as hell.

a great album, more fun than they say and not as big a leap from his overlooked early 2000's work as they'd have you believe (compare "where are we now" to "heathen (the rays)" or "valentine's day" to the one about uncle floyd). overshadowed by blackstar, maybe. not a difficult record, but one that takes a few listens to unfold. sideman david torn returns with some excellent guitar work. i dig the artwork too.

too many skits, too many songs. but the highs are some of the highest of the decade.

bowie's best

the only drug they're gonna take off the streets is ambien. at least daft punk had the smarts to bring in nile rodgers to lively up their retrofetish horseshit. they worship a guy who said "don't look back" but make some Lot's wife-ass music.

take a drink every time there's a chord change

a blast

consider the third lp as bonus tracks (do the same for Sandanista)

a document from a beautiful moment that seems like an alternate dimension now. the posse cut here is much better than the single version. but what good is a posse if they don't stop you from rapping lines like "her breast provides the nutrition for growth"

this album was inescapable in the late 90s. it was fun to revisit it.

i dunno if this site will ever make a real fan out of me, but this was the most enjoyable of the three costello records i've heard

for gods' sake man, put on a shirt

i was introduced to belle & sebastian the proper way: a mix tape from a weird goth girl a grade ahead of me in the early 2000s. i liked salinger and mcsweeney's and wes anderson so this shit was catnip to me. unfortunately they never had the good graces to give it a rest; they grew into a parody of their worst tendancies and we just grew up. "we rule the school" is the high point here, but the real dorks know their EPs were always better than their albums.

came for 0-3-5 but found jesus. lament the dearth, er, death of heavy metal organ.

helpless is great

kind of astonishing that you can have the most interesting guitarist of the 90s alternative rock scene, an incredible bass player, and a guy who looks like will ferrell and still be the worst band in music history. everything kiedis touches turns to trash.

give the people what they want

a big part of growing up is learning it's ok to not give a shit about sonic youth

i get how this woulda been cool in the 80s

title track holds up, the rest is mostly fine. but that across the universe cover is a war crime.

always psyched to see something outside of the anglosphere on this list. this was fun, but unfortunately the late-90s-ass production really holds this back. it's introduced me to raï music though, and i'm looking forward to digging into the genre.

i got this on the 55th anniversary of paul quitting the band. beep beep; beep beep yeah

this sucks guys

"Too Much to Dream" is an essential single from the wild west era of psych rock. Underground is probably the better album from these beleaguered boys, who remain a cautionary tale of record label meddling. Those unconverted to goofy-ass early psych are best served by Nuggets or uh... the pack-in CD from the June 2003 issue of Uncut, both excluded by the list's bogus no-comps rule. It's worth checking out the two lysergical, er, liturgical albums credited to the band but mostly performed by studio musicians, if only as a curio. They swap the late 60's silliness for late 60's self-seriousness, to a detriment. Free the Prunes!

joan's cool

i only knew them from the tony hawk pro skater 2 soundtrack before this. not a big thrash guy but this is pretty great.

this is pretty campy and fun but some of the songs go on too long and some of them just suck

yknow aside from the starfish it's a pretty unremarkable breakfast

even as a bee gees apologist and baroque pop fan, i can't recommend this in good faith. listen to the '69 best of instead.

he called it the stranger cause listening to it is an existential ordeal

ever wondered what it would sound like if nick cave covered emf's unbelievable?

i love neil young as much as the next canadian, and he made some great records with crazy horse, but i've never really dug this one.

this is good! i remember picking up a jam compilation as a teenager and not really digging it, too bad i hadn't found this record instead.

i know there are albums ranked lower overall but i don't think i've seen one with so few 5/5 reviews

title track remains killer (i only knew it from the version on the jackie brown soundtrack) but the rest is a little too cool jazz for me.

definitely the worst album i've been generated so far

pretty good for a ZWAN side project

don't need to tell you about the harmonies but there's some surprisingly great guitar work here too

levon's great but the rest of this is pretty overblown and silly. indian sunset might be the worst thing ever written

mostly shit but i like it when they sing about gollum

a singles band who tried too hard to be an albums band. this is a cool cultural artifact with a few great songs but the same rule applies for all who albums: just listen to the fantastic comp Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy instead and have a great time.

remember that time a buncha pigeons shit all over these guys at a concert? good times.

this list needs more african music but this ain't the way to do it

not really my thing but it's a lot of fun. pharrell is a buzzkill tho.

great soundtrack for replastering the bathroom walls on a long weekend

ecstasy is a helluva drug

they shoulda packed it up when Syd quit, as Gilmour was a lousy replacement. they were a great space rock band but this album marks the beginning of a journey up their own ass. dull, painfully literal stuff. pick up Relics, a comp of their early singles and film work, instead.

i bet this is great if you're a 42-year old with a fetlife account

i'm not a fan of the band or jack white's bullshit in general, but i do have a bit of nostalgia for this one - my best friend in high school was a big fan and a few of these songs were on mix tapes we traded- the whole first side was pretty familiar. the nurse is a stand-out track. but even the 35-second song feel too long by about half.

https://youtu.be/VKvNn70m4PA

my dad had s&g's greatest hits playing on an endless loop at home when i was a kid. i could no sooner rate the sound of our old dishwasher.

i listened to it twice in a row and then the deluxe edition. can't remember the last time i had an album like that.

what are your twenties for if not experimenting with drugs and hare krishna?

less than a quarter of the way through the list and this is my fourth cost'lo record. it woulda been kinda cool to include some of his later experiments like his jazz stuff or his collab with the roots rather than include six of his pretty good pop albums. as always, there's a few very good songs and a few stinkers. i like the north american cover better.

this album was huge when it came out. a few of my friends played it on repeat all of summer 2009. it holds up

jailbreak is one of my favourite albums - this is an odd choice to represent the band, but it's still very good.

the legend is better than the songs, but there's something particularly ghastly about this late-career reenactment. yer better off listening to smiley smile, which is a better album than its reputation and a lot more fun than this. those unsatisfied can dig the smile sessions released in 2011, or dewey cox's masterpiece "black sheep" ("i want an army of digeridoos... fifty thousand digeridoos!")

bangerz

honk shoo honk shoo mimimimimi

the oasis of the 2000s (both suck)

groovy shit

advanced stuff

strong contender for worst album cover on the list lol

presages britpop but not as good as a lot of the albums that would come in its wake. good guitar sound tho

the worst part about being murdered by nick cave is that you'll die knowing he's gonna sing one of his little shitass songs about it

they really were a killer group, and it's a shame vince's later shock-shlock eclipsed these records in the popular imagination. check out dennis dunaway's bass on bdb. my older brother was crazy about all eras of alice, and indoctrinated me as a baby. a thrift store copy of this was also one of my earliest lps, unfortunately missing the $1000000000 bill.

even as somebody who loved think tank and the solo albums, this is pretty self-indulgent stuff from damon. other gorillaz albums, especially plastic beach, are a better use of your time.

it sucks, but it sucks in weird and creative ways

hard not to like this one

america's a great song

the little racist motif in "passage to bangkok" made me spit out my coffee.

"i don't wanna be the type of guy / who lives alone, reading books / and never eats a pizza pie" as someone who both reads books and enjoys pizza, i could not relate to their music

this came out right as i was starting university and my best friend at the time was obsessed with it. now i'm twice as old lol.

at least it's only 27 minutes long

pixies coulda wrote heart-shaped box but nirvana could never write tony's theme

camp has never been trou lou, but this is a solid album by any measure and it bankrolled his career so i say god bless it. i too like to watch things on tv. take coney island baby, street hassle, new york, blue mask, animal serenade, take no prisoners, or junior dad instead. our man's at his most generous at his most demanding. the glory of love, give it to me now.

hatful of hollow and louder than bombs are more essential but this is their best studio album

the band are cool but nick's desperate spooky man shtick is so corny

better than the arctic monkeys, but most things are

this man's music and character are repulsive to me

shanti/ashtangi might be the worst thing she's ever done; at least american life embraced the inherent comedy of her billionaire buddhist schtick. the english lyrics here don't fare much better (candy perfume girl would be embarrassing for anyone to sing, let alone a 39-year old). the production still sounds pretty good, but the songs don't hold up well enough to bother unless you're a big madge fan

gets points cause "queer" was on big shiny tunes 1

sweaty ass

cool record

undignified

it all rings a bit whacky whack coming from a bluetooth headphones empresario and the star of amazon prime's war of the worlds. i guess we got played like a poo butt. but the title track, fuck tha police, and xpress yself hold up. dig the closing cut as the missing link between 80s and 90s hip hop.

i like emmylou, and i like willa cather, but i can't abide dave matthews

the title track's cool, and he makes something great out of nin's pissbaby song. of the rest, the folkier numbers fare better than the pop covers. despite the sentimental production and the presence of some godawful guests (fiona apple, nick cave, john frusciante, don henley), i do have a soft spot for this. 'cause it reminds me of my dad. covers i wish he had recorded before he died: dan johnston's "speeding motorcycle" smashing pumpkins' "bullet with butterfly wings" jonathan richman's "pablo picasso" roky erickson's "i walked with a zombie" john lennon's "oh yoko"

well it sure is white

not a perfect record (sail away is forgettable and welfare mothers regrettable) but it's one of my favourite neil albums

this sucks

i was 13 when this came out and i loved it. it doesn't hold up as much as soft bulletin but its still fun

this is cool

this is very good

king curtis! popular opinion woulda put his 1970 solo debut here, but i like it when the lesser known albums are included.

one of the surprises of this challenge has been learning that i am apparently a brian eno fan

this record was huge when it came out. i knew every song despite never intentionally listening to it.

one of my favourite albums since i first heard it in high school. the rykodisc track listing (which seems to be the one linked here, though many songs are missing on spotify) is the best one.

love you billy

nice surprise appearance by jim reid!

wtf is that top comment man aretha rules. Young Gifted and Black is also an essential record (not on this list)

have you watched Annette, the Sparks musical starring Adam Driver? it rules

yknow i always thought she was wearing a big hat but it's her arm.

unpretentious 90s rock

grading this one on a curve a bit - it's great but it's nowhere near as good as Low so I gotta dock marks a bit

a good record when you're 13 years old, and 13 year-olds deserve their own good records. but it's tough to take it seriously as an adult.

if big boi got hair, good album y'got there if big boi be shorn, that album be borin'

"today was a good day" is his second greatest achievement (after using amazon prime to save the world)

i listened to this at 6 am after my bachelor party. i don't remember much

i got this on my wedding day lol. not a great omen. i like dylan a lot and have listened to all his albums but honestly i've never seen what others see in this record.

had this cd in my car stereo for most of high school

"jesus, etc" is one of the best songs of the 2000s but the rest of the record never grabbed me much. it was on my ipod for at least ten years but i mostly just listened to that one song.

my introduction to ray charles was a pepsi commercial but this is a bigger artistic sell out

this record made a huge splash when it came out. i didn't get it then but i appreciate it now

ernie can shred

one of the worst parts of growing up is watching your friends become steely dan fans

surprising album

papa was a rolling stone is great

hell yeah

i kinda liked the last track but the rest sucked

i love the monkees.

"suspicious minds" (his best song) woulda bumped this up to 4 stars, but it's a bonus track. i don't make the rules.

i thought the title track was the worst song of all time, but they made 8 more that are somehow worse