1001 Albums Summary

I was nine years old when this was released, so by the time I reached my teenage years this album wasn't exactly new. While I didn't consider myself a RHCP fan back in those days, the titular track was absolutely impossible to escape and I, like most of my peers, must have heard it a hundred times without ever sitting down to actually listen to the album. So even though I hadn't done a full listen-through until now, this one was a nostalgia blast for me personally. It pulled me back to middle school summer breaks and high school house parties. Having listened to the entire album now, I can't say I love it. If my scale is... 1 Star - I actively loathed it and was counting down the minutes until it was over 2 Stars - It wasn't a bad experience, but this is only time I'm going to listen to it in its entirety 3 Stars - It was pretty good; I'll probably think about it some other time in my life and be in the mood to listen through it again 4 Stars - It was great. The only thing keeping it from a 5 is that I'll have to be in a certain mood to queue it up again, but this one's sticking with me and it's inevitable I'll listen through it again. 5 Stars - Absolutely fantastic; this is 100% going on my revisit list, I'll never question throwing it on when it comes to mind, and it would take an unreasonable amount of re-listens for me to get tired of it. ...then Californication is a 2.5 for me. If I never listen to it in its entirety the rest of my life I won't feel like I'm missing out, but it'll probably forever be kind of there for me just because of nostalgia.

I've got no background or context for Morrissey...but this one was difficult to get through for me. Something about the way his voice floats over the music just doesn't sit with me. It's almost like the music could be any random track and he'd be singing the same lyrics in the same way and it wouldn't change anything. There's nothing wrong with this obviously but it makes the whole thing sound jumbled to me. If a song has lyrics, I want the meter and melody to line up with the meter and melody of the music; this felt like he had a list of poems and any one could have been overlaid over any other track on the album and it would've been the same experience. Don't bother timing your words with the beat of the underlying track, just stretch out a few words randomly and let the rest of the sentence catch up with the beat at the end...blegh.. I kept waiting for a melody to sneak in...something that I could hum along to, something that would stick in my head... But honestly, having listened through the whole thing I don't think I could hum a single bar. I remember nothing about what I just listened to because musically it's so bland. This was hurdling towards a 1-star for me, but he stopped singing for a decent span in The Lazy Sunbathers and my head moved a little bit so I'll give it a 2.

This is the second Morrissey album I've been given, and my opinion hasn't changed. From reading others' reviews, it seems like there's a lot of 'I rated this 1 star because he's a twat', and 'this guy is a twat but the music's great, so 5 stars from me'.... I feel like I'm just listening to completely different albums than the people that enjoy this on its own. There's nothing ground breaking about the music itself, it's just okay. So, you take okay backing tracks and Morrissey kind of just drones his poems over them while they play in the background. I swear to god they just record him crooning and they pick a backing track afterwards. It almost sounds like he's making up some lyrics free style, but he's trying to fit too many syllables into the bar so he just kind of stretches random words out or fires off 8 syllables in .2 seconds to kind of catch up with the music. No reason or rhyme (literally, in a lot of cases). It's hard to imagine anyone head banging or even dancing to this stuff. It's hard to imagine anyone feeling the urge to sing along when this stuff comes up on the playlist. It's hard to imagine hearing these lyrics and actually thinking "wow, profound". So I guess even though I'm of the opinion that music serves a bunch of different purposes, and there are many different ways music can be called "good", Morrissey misses the mark on all of them, for me at least. 2 stars since I didn't want to die while I listened to it, but I'm never firing this one up again.

The first three tracks were pretty hard for me to get through, but Out-Bloody-Rageous kind of saved it for me. I'm a sucker for tippy tappy guitar doodly doos, I just wish the rest of the album was in the same arena.

I gave up after No Xmas for John Quays, which ended up being literally the same two notes repeated in the same rhythm for 4 and a half minutes straight.

It had some merits, but the singer's voice did not do it for me personally. All I could hear were lisps and vibrato.

I have to give this one a low score purely due to the mix being so bad. Virtually every single song has one of the tracks playing 100% in one ear, and another track playing 100% in the other ear. It didn't sound cohesive at all; in Monday, Monday if I turned the volume up loud enough to make out the guitar in my right ear, the vocals in the left ear were painful to listen to. Lowering the volume so my left ear stopped bleeding made it so I could barely hear the guitar in my right ear. It probably isn't fair and it might be a pleasant experience if I was in a room with speakers, but listening to this one all the way through with headphones made me want to vomit. Stereo mixing probably wasn't mature when this was produced...I'm glad that folks figured out if you want to record in stereo you shouldn't pan the tracks THAT hard...

A few tracks (The Becoming, Hurt, Reptile) pulled this from a 1 to a 2 for me, but overall it's just a little too noisy. The first track made me think my headphones might be on the fritz, but the rest of the album got a little more cohesive.

I was tempted to grade this on a curve since it's Pink Floyd, but if this was an album from a random band I'd never heard of before I may have even given up halfway through. I give 2s to albums that I'm never going to listen to again, but I didn't actively wish were over already. Unfortunately this is one that I was just counting down the minutes for. Maybe if I was on acid it'd resonate, but I wasn't.

I'm not a Beatles fan as-is, adding in the hard left/right panning for instrument/vocal tracks made this one a pain to get through. I know there's a mono version floating around out there and maybe would have bumped this to a 3 but I can't be bothered.

I simply cannot stand Bob Dylan's voice. It's like he picks a note for each song and insists on making every single word he sings be that note. Every line sounds like he's struggling to get it out, like if he doesn't put a little more "umph" into it at the end he wouldn't be able to finish the sentence. The frustrating thing is I liked some of the instrumentation on this one. In Tombstone Blues there was a moment where the guitar came in with a solo and my head started bobbing, but then Bob comes in with that "euuuuurrrrah" screechy thing he does to let the world know he's about to sing another line and my nose automatically wrinkled like I'd smelled something offensive.

I just can't enjoy this man's voice. I actually liked most of the instrumentation (sans harmonica), but that's kind of like saying I'm enjoying this bowl of ice cream that happens to have a dog turd plopped on top. I guess I could just eat around it, but.....no. There's plenty of turd-free ice cream out there, so I'll pass on this one.