Before listening to this album, I had never considered myself a Stones fan ... and I still don't. I don't hate any of their music and I don't love any of it. This album has a few nice moments, but the issue is that Mick Jagger has no singing ability at all. It's honestly extremely impressive how successful he has been in spite of that.
Sorry, I just don't get Neil Young.
Couldn’t decide if it wants to be boring or annoying.
This is one of my all-time favorite albums—one of the greatest vocal performances by one of the greatest recording artists of all time. I've listened to it so much over the years that it doesn't really hit the way it used to, but still. I remember hearing Ray's version of "You Are My Sunshine" for the first time and feeling like a musical hole had been ripped open in my brain (in a good way). Every fucking note this guy sings here is just perfect. I don't love the choral stuff, but it works anyway—Ray is just that good. At this point, the ballads hold up the most for me, especially "You Don't Know Me" and "Someday (You'll Want Me to Want You)." The way his voice just overflows with emotion ... the guy was unbelievable!
I’ve never been a Kanye guy but I enjoyed some of the songs here more than I expected. I like the insanity and aggression of it more when I realize that it’s sincere—he is actually insane.
At times they sound like a cross between Elvis Costello and Steely Dan, and there's no shame in that. I wish the lyrics tried either a little harder or a little less hard. Musically there's some interesting stuff going on. This is a provisional score — I could see it going up or down on further listens.
It's a normal part of life for a lot of men: you get a little older, get married, have a kid, drift apart from your high school buddies—and so you start a mediocre rock band. It's just a bummer when the man is Paul McCartney, he's still in his 20s when he starts the band, and his high school buddies were the fucking Beatles.
I really wanted to like this, but the songs are just so boring. Paul and John needed each other.
I have to criticize you like I should. One bonus star for two undeniably iconic tracks, otherwise pretty unlistenable.
Imagine if you were talking to someone and they said this was their favorite album.
I know it's heretical to give this any less than five stars, but I think if we're being honest we should admit that it's a challenging and uneven album. The highs are Mt. Everest, but there are lows. And Jimi really should have taken vocal lessons.
Silly but a lot of fun. And I understand Tenacious D a bit better now.
Pleasant but a little dull. Love Stanley Turrentine, but in the proper dosage.
You have to wonder how often Stan Getz got laid while playing his own record.
Pretty cool background music, but too many songs that sound like 5 minute intros to another song.
I’ve never understood the adulation for this record, which inspired a lot of self-serious noodling in the world of jazz over the ensuing years.
Expected to love this, but there are a LOT of skippable tracks for me and I don’t get why they spend half the album rapping into a fuzzy landline connection. Still gets 3 stars for overall vibe and Sure Shot, Sabotage, Root Down, and Get It Together, but it’s a soft 3.
Sounds like they grabbed a random guy off the street and asked him to sing.
I’ve always found Pink Floyd unobjectionable but boring.
Not really my shit, but you have to respect it.
I suspect you really had to be there
I have a hard time explaining why, exactly, U2 sucks so hard, but they do.
Some great stuff, but also kind of annoying, if I’m being honest. Still giving it 4 stars because I wuv the Beatles. Interesting how much more of the lead singing John did in the early days.
Actually totally fine to die without listening to this pretentious noise
I expected to like this more. Cool beats and production but the songs didn’t really jump out and grab me.
If you don’t fuck with Mr. Blue Sky, I don’t fuck with you.
Aside from that absolutely legendary track, though, I thought this was weaker than some of ELO’s other albums (Discovery and Time are really good). It’s a 3.5 but I’m rounding to 4 to honor Mister Blue.
Loved it for one song. Liked it for two. Got pretty old after three.
The guitar playing is pretty fun — and unlike Frampton’s musical inheritors, he knew the value of keeping his solos to a tasteful length! — but the songs got a little shouty and monotonous.
“Cool conga solo—I wish that was the entire record,” said no one ever. I give it a bonus star for the musicianship and general raucousness.
I find Donald Fagen’s voice really really fucking annoying on this album in particular
I mean what more could you possibly want from music. One of the greatest singers and songwriters of all time, singing his heart out on some of the very best songs he ever wrote, and it's funky and soulful as hell. I guess my main quibble is that the lyrics are odd and, on a lot of the songs, kind of impossible to retain/sing along with.
But anyway. Disc One, on its own, would be one of the greatest records ever made. Dayenu. Aside from the unlistenable jazz-rock fusion track, it's like a greatest-hits album. Sir Duke - I Wish - Knocks Me Off My Feet - Pastime Paradise, all that in a row? That's 1990s Michael Jordan, but album tracks.
Disc Two is a little more far-out and uneven, but it also rules!
7 stars.
What a fascinating album. Arguably each song is worse than the one before it (depending how you rate Wasted Time and Victim of Love), which is unusual—usually a band tries to spread out the best songs, but this is super front-loaded. Which is not to say it's a bad album! More on that later.
I was also struck by how much the ballads seem to foreshadow a lot of what was to come with 80s hair metal, musically speaking.
1. Hotel California — On the Mt. Rushmore of classic-rock epics, up there with Stairway to Heaven and Don't Fear the Reaper. It doesn't hit the same on the thousandth listen, but that's not the Eagles' fault. If you claim not to like this song you're a pretentious dweeb who took the wrong lessons from The Big Lebowski. (I do think that movie single-handedly tanked the Eagles' reputation among college-educated Millennial men.)
2. New Kid In Town — Not the most amazing composition ever, but it's a nice little melody and Glenn Frey sings like an absolute angel.
3. Life In the Fast Lane — A little cheesy, but that guitar hook absolutely rocks.
4. Wasted Time — Here's where things start to descend into dreary non-powerful power ballads. This is the best of the bunch. The lyrics are actually decent.
5. Reprise — okay fine
6. Victim of Love — You could argue this is better than Wasted Time. It rocks decently hard. But the title is so fucking cheesy, it taints it.
7. Pretty Maids All In a Row — Boring proto-power ballad
8. Try and Love Again — On repeat listen, this might actually be kind of good? There's one part at the end of each verse that really hits, musically. Where he sings "day by day" the first time through.
9. The Last Resort — Another shitty ballad, but I give it a little bump because it turns out they're writing about American consumerist decadence and the spoliation of the West ... points for getting political.
Nothing could have prepared me for this mix of old-school rap and Paul Simon-less Graceland. Weird, but inoffensive.
Aside from the music and the singing, this is quite nice.
This was a very important album of my adolescence. All these years later, it still sounds somehow sent back from the future.
Would I love it if I were encountering it now for the first time? I don’t know. I can’t actually imagine choosing to sit and listen to it all the way through anymore. Some of it gets pretty noisy.
Still, it holds up—the epic Dust Brothers production, Beck’s off-kilter but weirdly poignant lyrics … and of course, Where It’s At.
This is a really good album, one I've listened to quite a bit. What keeps it from being 5 stars for me is the lack of variation — the songs largely sound pretty similar to each other, given the pretty narrow sonic and stylistic range on offer. But I'm a fan.
This guy can really sing. There's some Michael Jackson, some Stevie Wonder, some gospel, and also some Neville Brothers-esque weirdness. The 80s of it all is not really to my taste, but it's funky and soulful enough that I think it still works. Imagine if this guy had come around 10 years earlier, or perhaps 10 years later.
I guess this is good if you like bland 2010s pop, which I do not.
I was looking forward to discovering some nice deep cuts, but no — you’ve got the three awesome songs everyone knows, and the rest is kinda filler. Also, I think CCR is a band best enjoyed one song at a time — the sound gets a little old when you sit through an album. Still pretty good though!
I’ll be honest, I only skimmed this one. Reminds me a little of that dogshit Lou Reed album. If you can’t sing or compose music it’s really okay to just be a poet!
I’m hot for Hot for Teacher
I confess I did not finish the album. I nonetheless feel qualified to say: this sucks. It's like he's doing vibrato and falsetto AT me.
The poor man’s Oasis. The overall sound/vibe is good, the lead singer has a cool, Liam-ish voice, but the songwriting isn’t really there.
This will be one of my more controversial negative reviews. I respect this at a 5-star level, but on an actual “do I enjoy listening to this?” level … I like country, but Johnny Cash’s voice and musical backing get old for me pretty quick—it’s hard to listen to a whole album.
A few great songs, the rest a little bleh. Funny how he and Paul traded these diss tracks that unintentionally illustrated how much they needed each other musically.
Has some good moments, very impressive for a 19 year-old, but she’s not fully formed here. I had never listened to this album and I was surprised at how heavy the hip-hop/neo-soul direction was. Interestingly enough, the more retro sound of her next album comes across as much more distinctive and original.
Is Dion a good singer? I’m still puzzling over this.
Could really have done without the Phil Spector bloat in the background.
I love the DJing, have never cared for the MCing.
I listened to this a ton in high school and college but I don’t think I was ever wild about it. Weirdly it seems to not be available on Spotify. Three stars from memory.
Some beautiful moments, never musically unpleasant, but limited by the monotony and formlessness of the songs.
Also, here’s a weird fact for you. When Marvin Gaye and Anna Gordy started dating, he was 21 and she was 38 (or thereabouts). What the fuck!
Stevie Wonder chord progressions, ELO lyrics, funky bass lines, ripping guitar solos, exquisite production, with a sexy millennial fembot on the cover … I can’t sit here and say I didn’t like it.
Pretty good, but held back by a limited sonic palette.
I’ve always considered this to be the first of the great Beatles albums — when they shed the last of the rock ‘n roll boy-band stuff and sound distinctively modern — though they still have another level to reach with Revolver.
I like the songs where he sings, but the screechy metal stuff is just not for me. Respect the craft of it but find it unpleasant.
Sounds like a Lonely Island parody
Kinda fun but not really my bag
I love B.B. King. The medley of Sweet Little Angel to It’s My Own Fault to How Blue Can You Get is tremendous. Loses a star for monotony. That’s the thing about a genre built around playing the exact same chord progression on almost every song.
The absolute worst kind of music, sorry
It was okay work background music
Bruce Springsteen seems like a cool guy, but I’ve never been able to get into his music. I find it somehow … not very musical. Bonus star for looking incredible in jeans and a white tee. An inspiration to a lot of men.
I don’t like punk rock, but if I had to listen to one punk record, it would be this one. Billie Joe’s singing saves it for me — it’s melodic and not shouty. Doesn’t hurt that this is the first album I ever owned!
This guy has a really cool sound. Way gentler than I expected for a band called T. Rex. Not sure how often I’ll return to this, but it’s good.
My pick for best rap album of all time. The perfect blend of gritty, jazzy beats with clever and soulful rhymes. Usually when people claim that gangsta rap is a form of street poetry it’s bullshit, but in this case it’s true.
Yellow and Trouble are A+ songs
Need to listen again more closely. Cool vibe, kind of Donovan-esque at times, way jazzier (mostly in a bad way) than I expected
Fine background music, hilarious to think of this as something someone believes to be of extreme cultural significance
Probably the apex of Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles career
In high school I thought Robert Plant had the most incredible voice in the world. Now I find it a little screechy and insufficiently soulful.
The ingredients are pretty good, but somehow got assembled into a shit sandwich
I love Nina Simone when she’s good, but her catalogue is super uneven. The repertoire and arrangements are not always well considered. I had never heard this album and I must say I was not missing out.
I listened to like 6 seconds of this — reminds me of the music that would be playing during a nightclub scene in John Wick or Blade.
Jazzy folk, and it somehow works.
I have always been and always will be bored by this.
Jacques … use your inside voice dude
Of course this one gets me out of the woodwork. Dope samples + amiable, goofy rhyming = a good time, every time.
I bought this in high school and tried pretty hard to like it, but punk rock just ain’t my bag.
Quite shouty, innit? Fine for what it is I guess.
One of the first classic rock albums I ever listened to. I was curious whether it would hold up to my adult ears. The answer: fuck yeah. They get so much sound out of the trio format. Tales of Brave Ulysses goes so damn hard. Really cool mix of melody, blues, and psychedelia.
Fine as background music but it’s outrageous to me that this is considered a classic album. It’s elevated elevator music.
Golden Slumbers is my favorite 90 seconds of Beatles
Listened to about 5 seconds each of 5 songs and it sounded like the most annoying shit I’ve ever heard, other than Come On Eileen, which obviously is good
We simply did not know how good we had it in the 2000s
This is pretty sick, even if not something I’m often in the mood for.
There are things about this that I really like. Clever lyrics, awesome guitar playing. Knopfler has a cool, somewhat Dylan-ish singing style.
But I can’t really get into it because there’s an almost complete lack of emotion in this music. The whole album is at kind of a low simmer of ironic detachment.
Beautiful, if not exciting
I thought Kanye sucked before it was cool
This rules. Probably her most consistently good full album.
I will say two things. One, it’s recorded/produced like dogshit, considering it was 1968, not 1958. Two, I sometimes find her voice kind of screechy.
Love the One You’re With is a certified first-ballot hall of fame banger. After that, things get pretty boring. Great musicianship, some sick guitar solos from Jimi and Clapton (imagine having Jimi Hendrix as a sideman on your album!), but overall the songwriting is not great — and the lyrics in particular are just terrible. Stills also isn’t a great singer, though he has his moments.
All-time banger + great guitar playing - boring songs - terrible lyrics = 3 stars.
I listened to the first few tracks and it was le boring
Brian, eh, no.
To be fair, there are some extremely clever lyrics here. Clearly a bright guy. Also to be fair, and this is basically always true, I only made it through a handful of tracks.
Loved this 20 years ago, love it now. The first 6-track run in particular is just insane. You could say it’s a repetitive album, but you could also say this is why albums exist. Incredibly cohesive. Imagine how fucking powerful this guy will become if he ever discovers a third chord!!
I’m tickled by the existence of this. “Old British folk songs set to electric guitar etc” is just a great concept. And “Matty Groves” goes hard as a motherfucker.
I do wish the singer had a more compelling voice — she’s fine, nothing special.
Has there ever been a successful cover of a Stevie Wonder song in history? I can’t think of one. Just don’t do it.
