The singles are obviously excellent, as to be expected from songs that are pillars of 80s pop, and while the rest wasn't bad, they did feel a little weaker, with most of the songs feeling a hair too long. Most of the material felt like the same riff or synth pattern repeated, and a little more shakeup would've been appreciated. Still a great album with fantastic performances from the band.

Beautiful, sensual, romantic, and positively dripping with gothic charm. A record that makes me think about my sexuality every time I put it on. Dave Gahan's sultry baritone feels like getting serenaded by a vampire, just divine.

Love the layered production, the way the organ and keys would create this wall of noise underneath the vocals gave me chills every time. Thought it was a little samey at first, but the B-side knocked it out of the park. Definitely going to return to this one a lot, such a unique sound in a ubiquitous style.

Jimi is a good songwriter and an easy contender for GOAT guitarist, but he's always struggled to put together a consistent album. Great highlights, with a lot of filler.

A pretty enjoyable disc 1, but good lord above does disc 2 feel like treading water. Happy and Shine a Light are good, but that's about all I can remember; side C was genuinely a blur for me. If I could split the scores, I'd give disc 1 a 4/5 and disc 2 a 2/5, so I guess that evens out to a 3. Maybe if I break up the discs on a relisten, it'll go down easier, but for now, this just felt like too much of the same thing. I'm already rather lukewarm on the Stones, and having to listen to over an hour of their material was a lot to ask-- that being said, I did genuinely warm up to them after the first couple songs, before, again, tanking.

I wish I could talk about jazz the way I can talk about other genres, but I will say that this is some really, really good stuff. A very diverse range of sounds and emotions condensed into 40 minutes. Powerful.

I love Bowie, but soul is not his wheelhouse. Title track is great, the rest was fine. Not offensive, but not particularly captivating.

Full disclosure: This is a much better album than I expected. I've had a lifelong dislike/distain for GnR, and I was *dreading* seeing this come up for my daily album. But... it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. In fact, I would choke back my own bile and say that this might actually be genuinely good. It's got a good sound, Slash is a very competent guitarist, and Axl has more range than you'd expect (granted he spends most of the album sounding like a nasal middle schooler but hey). My rating is me still not wanting to give the band credit (and finding a lot of the lyrics here to be, let's say "disagreeable") but also having to admit this is actually pretty good. Probably not going to listen to it again, though; out of choice.

Just impossible not to smile listening; I mean that literally, I had a wide grin on my face for most of the runtime. Wall of Sound + Christmas music is a genius combination.