I feel like I'm too sober to listen to this.

Bland. Average 90's Britpop. Inoffensive background music, really.

Tedious. Tiresome. Bland.

Delightful weirdness from when the century was still shiny and new. I'd never listened to Super Furry Animals before, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to discover them.

Mediocre white men: blues rock edition.

This album has its ups and downs, but it's overall a decent listen.

How had I never listened to this album before now? It's going in my regular rotation immediately.

Two things are contributing to my rating here: 1. Phil Spector was such a terrible person that the average dumpster fire seems pleasant in comparison. He'd been abusing women and children loooooooong before he committed murder at age 63. 2. On a less serious level, I can't stand Christmas music. I can't stand Christmas. Ugh. Even if it wasn't produced by a malignant person, I'd be avoiding this because it's a bad genre-to-listener mismatch for ME as a person. In conclusion, NOPE NOPE NOPE

Probably the best I've heard from U2, but I'm not a straight white man so I'm just not the target audience. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Decent! It's not something I'm ever going to listen to in full album form again, but there are enough classic songs on here that they'll be hanging around my playlists.

I can hear why other people like this... but 50s music is NOT my thing.

My rating is absolutely biased by nostalgia, I've loved this album since I was in high school... the album being 30 doesn't make it any less amazing, though! 🤘

I am not the target audience for this. At least I now have enough experience to state that I don't care for Frank Ocean? I didn't even know who he was before this album came up. Been living under a rock for the last 15 years, that's part of why I signed up for the 1001 albums in the first place. My middle aged horizons have been expanded in a direction I didn't particularly enjoy, but that's growth for you.

If you like slower, sensual music, this is the album for you! Unfortunately, it is not the album for me - I technically listened to the whole thing but I couldn't focus. There's nothing wrong with it, just not my thing!

Oof. A couple of highlights, a couple of tracks that were just plain uncomfortable to listen to, and the rest of it just seemed to highlight how huge an ego George had at the time. I know it's highly regarded, so I tried to like it, but... I'm too conflicted.

Rod Stewart has terrible hair. This has nothing to do with the album or how it sounds, but I needed to get that off my chest. It's almost painful to look at him, his hairstyle is SO BAD. Luckily, I only had to listen to him with this album! It's pretty solid rock music. Not a stand out favorite, but good enough to add to genre playlists. Not bad, not bad at all.

DNF about a quarter of the way through the album. Life's too short to listen to music you hate.

I love Echo & The Bunnymen. I especially love The Killing Moon, a high point on an album I already enjoy. Yeah, this is a biased review, but music taste is subjective, right? I'm happy, that's what matters.

Okay, look. I'm being aggressively subjective in my ratings. I'm not a professional music critic, I'm not preparing a chronicle of important developments in music history. I am but one middle-aged bisexual woman documenting her own personal taste. That said... You know how I figured out the bisexuality thing? The music videos for Only Happy When It Rains and Stupid Girl made me feel funny. The album with Queer on it helped me realize that I'm queer. This album is so significant to my personal history, I was honestly a bit surprised to see it come up in the generator! I love this album to bits, obviously. 30 years later my youthful crush on Shirley Manson has faded into a warm fuzzy memory, but the music will never get old. This is absolutely my idea of a good time.

Ah, the British Invasion band that wasn't, thanks to a performance ban. The Kinks stopped trying to appeal to American audiences a couple of years before this album was released. This album is beautifully, unapologetically English, right down to the title. It's not homogeneous, either - there's plenty of variation between tracks, enough to capture my interest and leave me feeling disappointed after the last track (of 15) ended.

Chester, I hope you have the peace now that you never had in life. That said... listening to an entire album of "Gen X masculine mental health crisis" is painful in multiple ways. Hybrid Theory wouldn't exist in a world with accessible, decent, affordable psychiatric care.

This is very good music... for someone else's taste.

Playful, fun rhyming to infectious beats.

While I wasn't angry to be listening to this (that's my threshold for giving out a one star rating, those are all albums that pissed me off) it's not exactly anything I want to ever listen to again. Wispy tenor with acoustic guitar? Pass.

It's great that this exists - it helped Leonard Cohen process the rapidly approaching end of his life, perhaps it can continue to help others who are grappling with the concept of death. It's also slow, depressing, a bit too much of a reminder of how harsh life is. No escaping the senseless brutality of existence here. Short of developing a terminal illness myself, I can't see this album in my future. Sometimes three stars indicates mediocrity, sometimes it's uneven albums with a mix of tracks that might have gotten fives or ones on their own, and sometimes it's for good art I just don't mesh with. Three stars. No meshing.

So tedious to listen to that it goes through boring and lands firmly in the "annoying as hell" category. Ugh. It's not that I'm averse to bands experimenting with genre and structure - I regularly listen to Sparks, after all - but I have very little patience for slow, meandering quasi-tunes that never seem to find their way to an actual beat. The funny thing, though... my husband has significantly more conventional tastes than I do, and I'm pretty sure he'd be fine with the tempo but be annoyed by the experimental, jazzy aspect. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Anyway, I'm listening to a Sparks song with a good beat to clean my ears of this nonsense.

Flower power folk, almost painfully earnest in its presentation. Any discussion of 60s music would be incomplete without mentioning Donovan. For me, there's definitely a distinct sort of mood I have to be in to appreciate mellow folk like this... I had this album generated a couple weeks ago, actually, but I put it off until I finally entered one of those contemplative, under caffeinated states. It's a snow day, I've lost my voice, it's a good time to get a little wistful about the way the hippie dream got crushed by an avalanche of late stage capitalism.

Damn, this somehow manages to sound the way a combination of patchouli and dollar store incense smells. If you're the sort of person who likes this music, I'm probably questioning your life choices.

A fine example... of a genre I don't care for. I put off listening to this for over a week after it was generated, waiting until I was in a sufficiently open minded state to give it a fair chance. It's decent for country, but, you know... it's country. Sorry.

Fantastic background music when you're hanging out with a bunch of people over 40. As active listening goes, meh. I'm unimpressed.

I love it when a band gives itself an accurate name. R.I.P. Rick Buckler

Neil Young is one of those artists I've absolutely, utterly failed to connect with or appreciate on any level. We're talking about four decades of me going "ugh" every time I hear one of his songs. So I tried to go into this with an open mind, I really did, but... Ugh. Too slow, too melancholy, too folk/country. I just don't like Neil Young.

I sat on this one for over a month after it was generated, because I suspected I was going to hate the listening experience, but have successfully isolated myself from pop music for so long that I wasn't certain. There's also a certain reluctance to contaminate my music recommendation algorithms, you know? Anyway. Thirty three days later, I finally sucked it up and gave Taylor Swift a listen. Shallow. Hollow. Overproduced. Prepackaged and sanitized for popular consumption. I know I haven't quite made it through 10% of the albums on this project yet, and a few of my all time favorites are still in the future - so I'm going to go clean my ears by listening to one of those. Todd Rundgren, save me!

I've been putting off a few albums I either know nothing about, or know I'm not going to enjoy. This is the last remaining "I know nothing" album to get me caught up. Hmmm. Okay, first impression was not great - indie rock/Britpop isn't my favorite - but I kept going, and then the South Asian elements really kicked in and it got good.

Pleasant yet forgettable; good background music. I don't think this really merits inclusion on the list. It's almost like LCD Soundsystem trying to perform while sleep deprived.

You need to be in a very specific mood to appreciate big beat. The Prodigy has the biggest nostalgia factor for me - elder millennial here - so The Chemical Brothers are already at a bit of a disadvantage. This sounds like playing a racing game on the original PlayStation feels: it was cool when I was a teenager but hasn't aged well at all. Yeah, sorry, this is just as much a snapshot of the 90s as Donovan's Sunshine Superman is a snapshot of the 60s, but with a lot less heart. I'd rather leave this in the late 90s with my sequined spaghetti strap tank top where it belongs.

Damn, somehow I made it into my early forties before listening to this album. It's right up my alley - energetic, experimenting with stylistic differences between tracks while remaining recognizably coherent as the same band. The production is excellent. Some albums I can't finish before I react to them. This album got added to my Tidal library after four tracks. Album and listener were perfectly matched today.

Okay, this is 28 tracks long. Let's see how much of Billy Corgan's BS I can slog my way through. ... four and a half tracks before I noped out. I'm not great at separating the art from the artist, so it's genuinely more difficult for me to hear the artistic merit in Smashing Pumpkins music with my extremely low opinion of Billy Corgan as a person. It is a pretty significant part of the 90s music scene, and very influential on later artists in multiple genres. Three stars, I guess?

Peter Gabriel going way over the top with his creative vision. I don't find it particularly appealing - I enjoy the Phil Collins version of Genesis way more - but maaaaaaaaaan, the sheer effort that was poured into this. No wonder Gabriel split from the band after this.

Meh.

While this didn't knock my socks off, it's perfectly good Senegalese music. Yeah, the synth element is a bit of a giveaway that it's from the 80s, but it is what it is and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

So, uh, I tried to listen to Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and fell asleep. Nice refreshing 7 hours, but not a great endorsement. 2002. I was 18 when this album came out, and I remember being politely baffled by all the people who loved it. It's perfectly lovely music, I don't hate it, it's just not giving off the energy I look for in music I actively listen to.

Quiet storm is typically way too smooth and mellow for my taste, but I'll give Anita a chance... Smooth. Mellow. Great music for other people. Doesn't feel particularly essential to the history of music, unless you're specifically talking about popular 80s music that wasn't new wave. Meh.

Nirvana! A pleasant surprise for my Gen X husband, who has to deal with my eclectic tastes and my decision to take on the 1001 albums. 😅 Scentless Apprentice is brutally unpleasant to listen to. The other eleven tracks range from fine to excellent, but the screeching. The screeching! Extremely skippable track. I know this is the final finished artistic product of a tormented mind, but eeeeeeesh. Love the Albini production, love Albini's snarky dismissal of Nirvana as a band. I was 9 when this album came out, and I liked MTV back then (before it turned into a reality show dumpster fire) so a few of these tracks are woven into the soundscape of my youth. I have my biases. Four stars. Yeah, Scentless Apprentice is that bad.

Day 81 and I finally get the first of nine total Bowie albums within the one thousand and however many (since we're listening to all the albums from all editions). Also the first of those nine chronologically. Bowie was, what, 24 when he made this? First listen was through my phone speaker while skeining my latest handspun yarn. Not the best sound quality, but the mellow meditative activity paired nicely with the softer piano melodies on the album. Gotta relisten with headphones on sometime later. Dang. This is some good stuff. Welcome to my music library, Hunky Dory.

Hot damn! This is big band/swing proving - quite explosively - that it never faded into irrelevance. Phenomenal.

There's something about that country guitar twanginess that I find really off-putting. I wanted to like this album more than I actually did.

Hypothesis: whatever genre you happen to dislike, you will think there's way too much of it as you work your way through the 1001+ albums in this project. I've seen people complain that there's too much electronica. Too much post-punk. Too much Bowie. It's not Maxwell's fault that he helped me form this hypothesis, as I reacted to his music with "WTF, more R&B?!" but I did not enjoy the listening experience. For me, the project has too much R&B. Sorry, Maxwell; it's not you, it's me.

I have a pre-existing bias heavily in favor of this album. I'm not going to fight the bias. 5/5 kickass Queen album, will absolutely keep listening to

What the fuck? This came out when I was 8? *double checks release date* Is Michael Franti a time traveler? Did he escape from our current hellscape back to 1992 to give us a (distressingly unheeded) warning? I'm sad now.

Beautiful, avant garde, definitely interesting enough to hold my focus. Another delightful experience. For the other listeners on the same journey of discovery: if you don't like Waking the Witch, never hand me the aux. I'm in my happy place here.

Is this an album you must listen to before you die so you know what not to do if you make an album of your own? Yow.

Boring boring bland blah beige WHAT THE FUCK?!?! That was certainly different.

It seems, from reading other reviews, that Born To Run is an album you either connect with or not, regardless of how you feel about Springsteen as a person. I'm in the camp that appreciates Bruce Springsteen more for his personality than his music. Failure to connect. I'm not his audience.

I can't.

Okay. Led Zeppelin made some pretty fantastic music, but they also made some pretty tedious music that's difficult for my ADHD brain to stick with... and yeah, this particular album is nearly impossible for me to get through in one sitting. Good songs individually, but MAN. It's a lot.

This is chill, you can definitely put this album on and get shit done, but the quality isn't consistent to my ears. Some tracks are absolutely amazing, some are meandering and lose me partway through. I think it averages out to a 4 star rating overall.

Headphones: on. Volume: at the high end of the range that's safe for one's hearing. Me: getting absolutely lost in the music. My criteria for five stars seems to be a lot more lenient than some other listeners on this project. I'm not after technical skills, I'm after how the music makes me feel. Did I enjoy the album enough to add it to my library? That's a five. Violator really needs the headphones, though. It's not the same just echoing through my kitchen while I figure out what ingredients need to be used for dinner.

What the fuck did I just listen to? I appreciate creativity and experimentation. I usually appreciate post-punk - my love of recent post-punk revival bands is what led me to this project in the first place. It's just... on a personal level, as a listener, I'd like this album more without that infernal country-style twang.

The fact that this album came up a few days ago and I saved it for my next bout of insomnia... yeah, that about sums it up. Dull but occasionally useful. 🥱

The style of this album doesn't really suit me as a listener. The country and gospel elements are off-putting. It's not terrible - it lands somewhere between meh and annoying.

This is one of those albums that's absolutely amazing if you're in the correct mood for it, and mediocre otherwise. I was not in the correct mood today. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Goddamnit, I do NOT want to deal with more tedious white boy ego tripping bullshit. Red Hot Chili Peppers would be a lot more enjoyable if it was just instrumental - Kiedis is awful. AWFUL. If I found this in my household CD collection, I would give it away.

After the first three songs, I honestly forgot that I'd put this album on for the project instead of personal listening enjoyment. It's right up my alley, excellent stuff.

I have some money here for you, so reach into me and grab it And I've never understood why anybody likes Lenny Kravitz I see no reason for this to continue I don't have anything else to put in you Now go back home girl, and do whatever it is that you do - from the song "Lenny Kravitz" by Electric Six

Meh. Something I've realized about myself, going through this project - while music that's too smooth, like quiet storm, gets low ratings for bouncing right off of my ADHD brain, the twangy sound of "country" grabs hold a little too well, and ends up annoying me so much I automatically deduct a star. Even the finest Johnny Cash album can't squeak past four stars with me. And this is... okay, I hear the bits that influenced a lot of later acts, but I wouldn't necessarily call it good music. What do I like? Skillful use of electric instruments, like guitars and synth. I also react more favorably to eccentricity than to mainstream pandering. I'm currently listening to the Django Django album that I know is somewhere in the generator, wishing I was reviewing something I vibe with today. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Oooh, another delightful discovery courtesy of this project. A playful, fun concept album with excellent beats - no boredom here!

Ehhh. Overproduced and sanitized, too pop. Somehow, despite the correlation with Neil Tennant coming out of the closet shortly after this album was released, it feels... bland and inauthentic? Probably the production giving me that vibe.

I have a decent tolerance for Aerosmith in small doses - which is handy, since I married a Gen X white guy who loves listening to classic rock stations in the car - but an entire album is a bit too much. Plus there's that thing where Steven Tyler is a shit human, and his vocals aren't even that good. Yeah, there's a couple decent tracks on here, but making myself listen to the whole thing was annoying. I save one star ratings for albums I hate, and I don't outright hate Pump... but it's a fairly low 2.

TV On The Radio! Yay! Oh man, I haven't listened to this album in... *checks last.fm stats* ...five whole weeks! Gosh, it's been such a long time since late February. This time I've got my tortoiseshell cat trying to stick her tail in my eye, so it's still technically a new experience, right? Anyway. My biggest disappointment is knowing that there's no more TV On The Radio left for me to review in this project. However, Tunde Adebimpe is releasing his first solo album in a couple of weeks, so I still have something to look forward to!

This list of albums you MUST hear before you die was put together by someone who really loves British post-punk, huh? I also enjoy British post-punk, so I'm not mad about it.

My thoughts can be summed up by a photo of a cat with wide eyes and ears flattened back.

2013. David Bowie, in his mid-sixties, puts forth one heck of a creative effort, but he does not sound good for a man in his sixties. His health must have already been in decline; Blackstar was his farewell, this is the dark themed lead up to that farewell. I mean, it's damned good for what it is, the musings of a powerful talent contained in a weak flesh vessel that was breaking down. It's got to be taken in context, though.

Oh wow, this is an album I'd put on if I had to explain what Gen X was like back in the nineties to modern kids. I'm an elder Millennial with a Gen X husband, I've got a definite soft spot for a portion of that cohort, but I feel like I'm just a bit too young to truly appreciate this... drunken jam session? That's what it sounds like, anyway.

Good music with bad lyrics.

Definitely not my thing. Yeowch.

This was a tedious listen.