It's Jazz. I feel like this is one of those albums where like, if I were well-studied in jazz, I'd be able to hear the innovations here, but it sounds like normal jazz to me. 7/10.
Good album but very frontloaded -- the five real classics here start the album, and they've permeated popular consciousness so much that they make the latter half of the album feel inessential by comparison. I do enjoy a lot of the second half, granted, but I wish the running order were more balanced.
Good. The songs maybe get a little long and repetitive at points? But the solos rock and I think even the repetitive parts have this droning, hypnotic quality that work in its favor.
Strong glam rock album. The piano playing is the highlight here, specifically on Aladdin Sane and Time, but there's some fantastic guitar work as well and everything is presented with Bowie's usual boundless energy that infects all of his music. This is a bona fide classic.
This is the second jazz album I've gotten in 5 rolls and I have a feeling my thoughts on all of them are going to be the same -- it's good jazz, sounds like good jazz, musicians are talented, and I would probably appreciate it more if I were more familiar with the ouvre of the jazz canon.
I will say the length of this one is egregious and I'm choosing to only listen to Disc 1. I get that this is a famous performance but in general, I'm not fond of live albums because they never sound or feel as essential as being there in the moment, watching what's going on.
It's okay but everything kind of sounds the same? There's only so much you can do with this specific sound texture.
I agree with the top reviever in that this is not an album that was ever meant to be actively listened to, so I am only willing to score it so high. It's effective at what it does, though, and I get the historical significance.
The three singles that everyone knows are obviously iconic bangers. The other 7 songs are a lot more of a mixed bag and feel like they come from a different, 60s psychedelica inspired album. I'm not sure if this contrast was intended or not and I'm not going to complain about the existence of Kids or Time to Pretend in this world, but it is some STRANGE sequencing.
The true classic MGMT album is Little Dark Age imo, and I hope it appears on this list.
Coldplay is fine when listening to their songs in isolation, but an absolute drag to listen to in album format. There is at least some instrumental and tempo variety here, but everything drones on and on, and like with a lot of pop albums they frontloaded all of the better songs, making the latter half of the album an absolute slog.
I don't really want to give this a 2 because I do genuinely like some of the stuff on here, it's just way too much of this sort of pop at once.
Solid R&B. Sounds slightly corny and a little same-y, even in the back half without the medley, but not in a bad way.
Rap is not a good genre for me. I can't relate to most of it and, most critically, I have audio processing issues that make it very difficult for me to understand lyrics. That means most rap for me lives or dies by its beats, and with a few exceptions most rap is not musically or structurally interesting enough to engage me.
In this case, the beats are good, but they are offset by 50 Cent's AWFUL singing and generally mediocre flow. There's also EIGHTEEN songs of this, so as much as I want to reward the production with a star, I cannot in good faith say I enjoyed listening to this.
Too much of the frat boy vocals with not enough behind them. There's some good guitar work here and obviously Fight for Your Right is a banger, but I don't know, everything blends together on this one and frankly a lot of the vocal work is obnoxious.
Solid hard rock without a real miss on the album, although not to the level of a 5-star record. Everything is sequenced well, there's good guitar work, and while the songs can get a little drawn out everything still feels well-paced.
These guys are blatant Bowie ripoffs (which makes sense considering Bowie wrote their biggest hit), but as a Bowie fan I don't mind. They stay within the style of Bowie's more straightforward rock songs of the era and do a lot of cool stuff with dynamics in particular. There's not a lot here that feels innovative for 1973, but again, I feel like I'm only saying that because these guys wear their Bowie influence on their sleeves.
Found this one a bit boring but I'm not really a Jack White fan. I guess as a minimalistic indie experiment it's fine, the singles are decent, and nothing really offended me here. Just not really my cup of tea.
Banger after banger. The majority of this album is in the classic rock canon, so I don't have much to say that hasn't already been said.
The inconsistent audio mastering of this on Spotify is insane, though.
Maybe I'm just in the mood for this right now, but I jive with this more than I do with most metal. I think the lean length of the album helps -- the songs don't have the bloat that say, a Metallica album does.
Granted, the solos have the same problem most metal solos have, where in general they feel more concerned with being fast than with being musically or melodically interesting, but the songwriting covers for those deficits well here.
Kind of boring. I've heard this before and I like it slightly more than the first time, but this sort of indie rock isn't my thing.
In my head, this is what the 90s sounded like.
