The atmosphere achieved by this album is nothing short of brilliant, especially considering its genre. No electronics or funky effects, just expert instrumentation and layering. The vocals are the more obvious stand out. His voice is smooth as butter, setting the standard for this type of music. Wonderful background vocals as well. So much emotion behind it. Great lyrics as well, political and unflinching, while also feeling personal and intimate. While it's obviously a seminal R&B record drawing from jazz and other historically African American genres, I feel a lot of influence in modern rap and hip hop. People like Kendrick Lamar must have listened to a lot of Marvin Gaye. A lot of the tracks flow right into each other, more of that jazzy influence that makes it feel like a cohesive story. I'm blown away by all of the different instruments. Stellar percussion. Moments where the strings, flute, sax, horns, get to stand out. And then his voice is an instrument in itself. It's a masterpiece, plain and simple.

It's impressive how powerful the songs can be with such simple instrumentation. Sure there's a horn section and an organ, but so much of it is driven by drum and bass. The vocal performance has a chokehold on the audience. The screams are captured so nicely on the recording. At times there's this conversation going between James and the audience, they're participants in the performance. Special. The band is tight, electric, like there was a current running through them and each hit was a burst of energy. Vocal control is off the charts good and gets better as the performance goes on. Gritty when it needs to be, clean when it needs to be. It can be soft and intimate one moment and blaring the next. The moment he launches into the medley of his best known song is so much fun, you can feel the thrill sweeping the audience. It's a textbook on how to design a live performance. Obviously there's tons of great musicality on display here and some great bits of songwriting, but this album isn't essential listening because of the music. It's the experience that you get to be a part of. Live performance at its peak.

This album is obviously a landmark in the funk/groove genre. It doesn't resonate with me the same as others in adjacent genres as I don't connect with the songwriting itself. There isn't a ton that feels memorable from a catchy standpoint. However, the vibes are immaculate. I read somewhere that it's "more progressive rock than critics like to admit" and I feel that for sure. Sometimes it feels like if Jimi Hendrix joined Pink Floyd. Unfortunately the repetitive nature doesn't vibe with me as strongly. But the bass and guitar playing and the groove generated by the drums make it engaging. The bass especially is just crazy good, not a ton of albums have that attribute but maybe in funk it's not possible to have a great album without great bass. For its instrumental mastery, vibes being created, bringing this kind of music forward, and the tight interplay of the band, along with what I'm sure was major influence on the genre, it's easy to see why this album is on the list. As far as something that moved me and makes me want to recommend it to others, it falls a little short of the others. I'm glad I listened to it, but I don't imagine returning very often.

What a perfect sound. The original pop punk band? Sets a standard on how to blend the punk sensibilities into something mainstream and fun. Beyond that, they are clearly inspired by all the other genres of the day, disco, new wave, etc. And a lot of the songwriting could receive only minor production updates and not sound out of place today. There's a timeless quality to a lot of it. Debbie's voice is so great, doesn't even need harmonies or anything complicated, just enjoyable to listen to.

A very good album. Maybe even great. A few songs did stand out but ultimately it didn't blow me away as something fresh in its genre. Often felt like an evolved Nirvana record, which is a compliment. But rarely did it feel like something that was pushing us forward. I'll think of it fondly and probably return to some of these songs, but when we're talking about the greatest albums ever made it's tough for me to count this super high.

I'm nearly inclined to give this 5 stars because it's crazy how influential it was. There are sounds solidified on this album that resonated in punk and punk-adjacent music for 30 years. What I mean by that is, of course we're still hearing these sounds and ideas today but for 30 years after this album came out it was still part of the cutting edge and mainstream sound of punk rock. With the exception of maybe Nirvana, The Clash might be the most important band to debut after 1975. The only reason this album doesn't get 5 stars is because London Calling exists and does everything this album does, but better.

I wish I had time to really dig into my thoughts here and listen 2-3 more times to do so. For now I'll just say that it might have the best 3 opening tracks of any album of its ilk, that includes Bruce and the like. The Edge is on another level here, Bono has fully matured, and the band makes simple instrumentation sound like an orchestra.

In the context of this list I'm a little tempted to give this one 3 stars because the songwriting isn't amazing beyond a few songs. But with the context - coming out a year after Kurt died/In Utero, Dave doing everything on it, and a lot of the sound working to define the next decade of alternative music, makes it a landmark release. And the sound and feel of everything is so so good.

Really close to giving this a 5/5. A masterclass in beats and rapping. I know a lot of it isn't his most famous stuff, but this is some of my personal favorite stuff I've heard from him. The thing holding his albums back for me is that they're too long. If it was a solid 10-12 tracks, less than 40 minutes, just the best stuff, I probably would give this a 5 but I feel that there's filler here and particularly in the second half things don't flow as well.

I started this album and thought it was dumb, but once I got into the groove, read up on him a little bit, I started to get it pretty quickly. Still, it's not resonating with me in a profound way. There are moments that have stellar singing and I like the avant garde feeling of a lot of it, probably setting up a lot for future artists. So based on the influence it must have had I need to give it some props. But the actual songs and music are rarely stand out to me, unfortunately. A couple bangers for sure, but it's more the willingness to go absurd or creative that stands out than the songwriting.

The beats are so clean, the overall production smooth as glass. It feels like less sampling and more like composition. The opposite of Wu Tang and other contemporaries, but still part of the same story. Even when they are using samples, it's so damn clean. The rapping is such a great bridge between the late 80s/early 90s stuff and what we would get in the late 90s into the 2000s. Obviously very influential, a turning point. Just a stellar album all the way around. Maybe a little bit of filler, but not enough to ding it. He's obviously one of the best rappers, incredible rhyming.

While I'm not giving this 5 stars, it might be the one I'm most interested in returning to. The ethereal sounds, sometimes bordering on the Daft Punk era of EDM, other times sounding like Angelo Badalamenti, and often tapping into the other Northern European sounds, it's a journey.

I really wanted to love this album, and at the beginning I was into it, but I had trouble getting through it unfortunately. That could have something to do with my personal tastes, but it's meaningful. I see this as the perfect transition album between 80s hair metal and 90s heavy metal. It's clear that bands like Avenged Sevenfold worship these guys, and that they were really trying to take the things they liked about the 80s and inject it with raw energy, making metal abrasive again. Dimebag kills it and I love the sound. It's just that the songs aren't as gripping as I'd hope. It's an odd one too because depending on how a song was striking me I considered 2 or 4 stars, so I think 3 is the right answer for me.

It's an excellent album. Michael Stipe is a criminally underrated singer/frontman. I don't have a whole lot else to say other than the vocals were enthralling throughout. The last 4 songs aren't quite as strong as the first two thirds of the album, but that's not enough to pull it down, especially since I do like the last song quite a bit. A unique album for its time and just a great listen.

I'll start by saying that there's no way to give this album 3 stars. It's either amazing or just bad music. I have to go on the lower end because I didn't feel like there was enough of an attempt to bring more cohesion to what are very interesting sounds and techniques. That's probably part of the point, but that doesn't get it done for me. As an art installation, an experiment with equipment and soundscapes, it's a very cool piece of work. I don't have a problem with it being on this list or anything like that, and I'm sure thousands of people hear it with the right mindset and at the right time of their life and it's deeply inspirational for them. Trent Reznor and Johnny Greenwood I'm sure were influenced either directly or at least indirectly. But it's missing the mark for me to feel like what they did holds weight. Maybe if I knew German?

Wow! I knew the name, but did not know that this is what it was all about! If I didn't know better, I would have assumed this was the late 70s or even much later. The fact that they were this aggressive and raw, but also tight, at this point in history, is so awesome. There's a mix of jazz, R&B, blues, hard rock, and more on here.

What a refined sound, a great culmination of the previous 15 years or so of music. The vocals and performances are perfection. Unfortunately though I don't feel the songwriting is strong enough for this to be a top top album. For that reason I want to give it 3 stars. A couple of the better songs are covers and not particularly interesting covers. When compared to something like Stevie Wonder, this feels a bit ordinary. These guys are legends though.

Ethereal. Chilling. Entrancing. Imaginative. Genre-spanning. I would put this in the 4.5 stars category I think. Not as widely appealing and era defining as what I think a 5 star should be.

I dunno, this is without a doubt a good album. I'm just not feeling how it could be considered leagues above others of its genre. The second half is sorta weak as well. I dig this band, there is good stuff going on. But it doesn't feel like a breakthrough or a must listen.

What a cool album. Definitely falls in line with the approach of The Beatles, ELO, Flaming Lips, and so on that explore the intersection between dreamy psychedelic vibes and utterly listenable pop rock. I wish there were a few more stand out tracks, but they do a great job and I love the production.