American version of The Beatles - some decent songs, and some that really aren't my thing; Slightly folky indie pop. Cool that this guy was actually friends with John Lennon though. Most famous song in the album is Coconut (as in - put the lime in the coconut).
Blues/R&B, and a precursor to Rock and Roll. Always cool to hear where iconic songs like Tutti Frutti came from, but a lot of the songs on the album had a very similar beat/pattern that made everything feel a bit stale to me. The sax solos and riffs were always a highlight though.
Lightly psychedelic, melancholy, and mostly acoustic. None of the tracks really stood out to me as amazing (though Lonesome Tears was solid), but I generally liked everything.
Not in my usual rotation, but there are several classics in this one, and CCR has a very recognizable sound. Up Around the Bend was my favorite.
Decent, but nothing outstanding. Chill glam rock, almost like a less exciting version of Queen at some points.
Infectious energy and includes several big hits - Welcome To The Jungle, Paradise City, and Sweet Child O' Mine are great. Lots of albums throw together a bunch of distinct, unrelated songs, or they are filled with very similar songs that get repetitive. I think this album finds a good middle ground though.
Not perfect, but way better than I was expecting given it's from 1969 - a lot of it still sounds relatively modern. I liked the orchestral parts a lot, they added some complexity that kept the album from getting stale. Time Has Told Me was pretty good, but my favorites were Way To Blue and Day Is Done.
Like a budget version of The Beatles. Some songs were just comically bad, especially Harry Rag. Two Sisters wasn't bad though.
"Today" is phenomenal and the epitome of 90s grunge, and "Disarm" is awesome too. I didn't dislike any songs on the album, but those two really stood out, along with the guitar whistle/feedback in "Mayonaise" Very vibey, and very grungy rock with some psychedelic and shoegaze elements.
If you set out to make almost three hours of music, not all of it is going to be good. I really didn't mind some of it, even if the lyrics and rhyme schemes were sometimes repetitive, but there were a lot of duds and no diamonds in the rough. "How Fucking Romantic" was beyond horrible, "Punk Love" was just the same words and melody repeated a ton, and "Washington, D.C." was basically a joke song. At first I was thinking I’d give this 2 or (maybe) even 3 stars, but most of the decent songs are in the first half of the album, so the back half was all downhill.
Sounds like TSO but with mostly piano so it’s more mellow, and a little boring because it doesn't have the same kind of energy or emotional range. It seems like a controversial album, but I didn't hate it, I was just a little underwhelmed.
70s rock - not horrible, but definitely not my style, and kinda boring.
I'm biased because Eminem is one of the artists who jumpstarted my interest in music, but this album is a great example of exactly why he got so popular. His alter ego Slim Shady is intentionally problematic. He's a villainous character who says outrageous, offensive things, and songs like Guilty Conscience and the Paul/Bitch skits play on this, using other people to call Slim Shady out. But the album’s main appeal to me isn’t its shock value/edginess. It’s the combination of clever wordplay and storytelling that makes each track memorable. Lines like, “Hi, kids, do you like violence? Wanna see me stick nine-inch nails through each one of my eyelids?” are graphic, creative, and hard to forget, while songs like My Fault create emotionally charged scenes that stick with you.
Overall a nice album, even if it was a little too simple for my tastes. I really can't stand harmonica though so that held it back. Girl from the North Country was my favorite of the bunch.
80s pop with a heavy social change theme. The beats are pretty catchy, but the lyrics just feel extremely cheesy to me because they're so simple and generally vague. I think the issues aren’t as noticeable listening to a single song, but listening to the full album makes it obvious how generic each song is.
Elvis has a great voice, but he always sounds like he’s overdoing it. Beyond that, the album is pretty standard for the time period and takes a lot of inspiration from Little Richard (including a Tutti Frutti cover), so it’s unsurprising that I’m not a big fan.
Overall a decent 70s album, but most of the songs were a little too slow, and the vocals on a couple songs were really annoying. My favorite song was The Whole of the Law because of the sax parts.
I would have liked the album a lot, if not for Nick’s overindulgent (or even somewhat pretentious) vocals. He’s a great singer but he sounds like he’s trying too hard. I didn’t realize at first that O Children sounded familiar because of Harry Potter, but it’s a great song and probably my favorite in the album.
I wasn’t sold at first, but it only took a couple songs for me to get into it. I don’t think Dolly will join my rotation of frequently played artists, but I’d happily listen to this full album again. I’m not a big fan of the singalong-esque style that I feel pops up at times, but she avoids the repetitive cliches modern pop country is known for and has a very inoffensive sound and lyrics.
Pretty good - latin psychedelic rock/jazz fusion leaning towards prog, and probably an inspiration for bands like Zeta. The album had a good mix of styles too, from very jazzy guitar/piano solos (Black Magic Woman), to more tropical or beachy music (Oye Como Va), to songs I could see in some older videogames (Se a Cabo), and more traditional 70s rock (Hope You're Feeling Better)
A much better album than I expected it to be. Not amazing or anything, but just generally good electronica and ambient chill music with enough variety to keep it from getting stale.
Funky and fun to vibe to. It really starts off on a high note with some great psychedelic rock in Maggot Brain , but it slowly drops off after that (other than Super Stupid, which also had some great solos)until you get to Wars of Armageddon which ends with a screaming lady and fart sounds?
Supposedly the best live album ever, but I wasn't impressed. It isn't bad or anything, I just expected more than generic 70s rock. My favorite live albums usually have extended solos, unique sound mixes, and an unpolished feel to them in general that this mostly lacks. I listened to the original six track album instead of any of the super long expanded or deluxe versions.
Just a very bizarre album, and not at all something I'd expect to find in this list. I like some of the experimental aspects of it, but the weird voices and sounds take things too far for it to be enjoyable. Several songs have annoying high pitched vocals and what sounds like a kazoo, one has people chanting with plugged, nasally noses, and another includes a decent sax piece that starts to screech at the end. Most of the songs sound distorted or creepy enough to belong in a horror playlist
Blues rock, but a little grungy, like The Blue Stones, The White Stripes, or Arctic Monkeys. I'm a fan of The Black Keys and this style, but I couldn't help but feel like most of the songs would have benefitted from a more energetic playing/singing style. Tighten Up and Howlin' for You didn't have this issue, which explains why they're so much more popular than the rest of the album, which is good but has a lot of filler songs that drag on.
It feels wrong to rate Bowie even this low, but while the album sounds like him and fits his style, most of the songs are forgettable or a little awkward. That said, both Changes and Life on Mars? are hits, and I liked The Bewley Brothers a lot too. It's cool to hear this album even if it's not his greatest hits though because it was the start of him finding his unique sound.
I don't listen to too much jazz, especially not with vocals, but this wasn't bad. I wished it was more uptempo at times, but Willow Weep for Me was a highlight, and Just One Of Those Things was decent too. I really prefer listening to original songs though so I didn't like that every song in this album was written by someone else.
The intro was probably my favorite part of the album - the rest was alright, but I thought there was too much growling/screeching, to the point that it took away from some of the solos. My issue with Jazz (or instrumental bands, actually) is that sometimes the players focus on making music that is technically difficult instead of fun to listen to. There wasn't too much of that in this album, so it wasn't bad, but still something that came up a few times.
I wasn't a fan of the start - I'm not sure how Lust For Life got so popular, but both it and Sixteen have good melodies which get repeated way too much, and weird lyrics (asking about lotion, hypnotizing chickens, and lusting after a sixteen year old?). After that the album got a lot better for me, with The Passenger being my favorite, probably because Holiday by Green Day uses the same exact chord progression.
The sort of basic music you'd expect to hear playing in a hotel lobby. There's nothing wrong with that, it's inoffensive and hard to dislike, but I can't help but feel like this album would make for such a boring concert. Superstition is pretty awesome though.
This is exactly what comes to mind when I think of British punk rock. There aren't any standout songs and they all sound pretty similar, but I can't say I disliked any of them either. The lyrics are nothing special in my opinion (though they definitely fit the punk label), but the whole album has great energy and would be perfect for a live show.
Very grungy, mostly high energy, but some songs are a bit too simple for me to really get into them. Standouts were Generation Genocide (instrumental intro to the album), Into The Drink, and Broken Hands (more vibey than the earlier songs). I thought Don't Fade IV was a bit of a dud, and I didn't like the harmonica in Pokin' Around - the rest of the song was pretty good though.
I prefer more modern folk music, but this wasn't bad - America sounded very familiar, Mrs. Robinson is famous, and A Hazy Shade of Winter is an absolute classic. The rest of the album ranged from mediocre to decent, but since most of the songs were relatively short, nothing dragged on enough to bother me.
Mostly simple rhyme schemes, but very fun since they don't take any of it seriously. She's Crafty and Fight For Your Right were my favorites, while I thought some of the songs like No Sleep Till Brooklyn and Brass Monkey were too repetitive. The obnoxious voices started to annoy me later in the album, but I liked them at the beginning because they added to the unserious/sarcastic vibe.
Several classics, with Black Dog, Stairway to Heaven, and When the Levee Breaks, but there's something to like in just about every song, and there are several genres represented throughout the album (albeit with a rock tinged Led Zeppelin sound) The whole album is good, but Stairway to Heaven is on a whole other level, and almost makes the rest of the songs sound slightly worse in comparison.
Very inoffensive rock, but I didn't notice any standout songs. While I don't feel like I need to come back to it, I'd happily listen to the full album again. Annie was probably my favorite out of the bunch, but Blue, See That Animal, and Stutter are also playlist-worthy. I don't like that they apparently ripped off other artists with a few songs, but at least none of those were my favorites. Maybe they would have sounded better if they stuck with original music.
Not really my thing, but Willie's got a great voice. I do like that the full album tells a story, and pretty much any song could be put in a western. The main melody that repeats across the album is great, but I think I'd rather listen to it in smaller doses. Time of the Preacher Theme was probably my favorite, while I wasn't as much of a fan of some of the faster paced songs like I Couldn't Believe It Was True or especially Down Yonder.
While Ella Fitzgerald is a great singer, I don't understand why this album is on this list of albums when it's just a collection of songs other people wrote. This isn't too different from including a cover band instead of the original. As far as the album itself goes, I don't think it's anything special, and it's way too long for anyone to actively listen to it.
I could see some of this album fitting in as background music for a video game, but in my opinion it's really bland - if I want to listen to EDM, I'll put on some modern house music, not some repetitive beats to zone out.
Very Bob Dylan coded. I wasn't really liking the first few songs, but Paradise was so catchy that I think it made me like the rest of the album more than I would have. Still, this isn't really music I'd choose to listen to unless I'm in the right mindset.
It's hard not to picture most of these songs being played during a 70s disco, especially since funk was mainstream then. Too much gospel singing for me and I'm not usually a big fan of soul/funk music, but there are some fun beats sprinkled throughout the album.
Not for me. Would definitely fit as the soundtrack of an action sequence in a movie, but this kind of background-noise electronica bores me.
Like Michael Jackson but less iconic. Still pretty good, it just isn’t my favorite genre.
Miles Davis is great, but this album runs into the same issue I have with a lot of jazz albums - it’s just a series of musical phrases without any overarching theme or melody. As impressive as some solos can be (especially live), a solo by itself isn’t a song.
You Can Call Me Al is a classic, but the rest of the album was very hit or miss for me. I also don’t like that he was involved with South Africa during apartheid or that Chevy Chase was part of a music video, but that doesn’t affect the music, just my opinion of Paul Simon.
Please just put down the harmonica Gene. A bunch of the other criticisms people have are valid too, but I just really don’t like all of the harmonica in this album.
Mostly mellow 60s folk/folk rock. Not bad, but kind of forgettable.
It’s not perfect because a lot of the same chords are reused and the tempo is similar in most songs, but the overall melody ‘template’ for the album is very catchy, and on a re-listen you can hear all of the differences (like in the bass line and drums) that make some songs better than others. The songs sound very similar sometimes, but I wouldn’t have favorites if they were that similar. Longview, Welcome to Paradise, and Basket Case are definitely my favorites, while the closing song All by Myself sounds a bit off and doesn’t really fit with the rest of the album.
The epitome of disco music. I kind of liked My Forbidden Lover, but in general I just wasn’t a fan of the album. Good Times sounded very familiar, but apparently some members of the band wrote We Are Family the same year, it was just released by a different group.
This guy really knows how to start a good song, then ruin it. There are a lot of good beats in this album, but most of them are mashed together in a really grating way. I had a hard time understanding why this album would be included on this list at first - it’s not critically acclaimed, there are no big hits on it, and it doesn’t appear to be influential or historically important either. A bit of digging, however, shows that the artist has worked with a few big names (Madonna, P!nk, U2) and is relatively popular in the UK, so I assume this is one of many albums which the author included due personal preference.
Mild, a bit relaxing, and nice to listen to in the car. Simple, a bit boring, and hard to pay attention to.
How can a band named Primal Scream release an album named Screamadelica, and not include any screaming? This was disappointingly tame, even with a mashup of genres. Honestly, some of the songs were alright, but nothing grabbed my attention and the neo-psychedelic parts were kind of underwhelming.
I’ve listened to Lupe Fiasco before but never paid much attention, and clearly that was a mistake, because this album has (almost) everything I look for in rap. Kick, Push is great, with a beat reminiscent of old school hip hop that Lupe uses to tell a story. The Instrumental sounds a lot like a Mike Shinoda/Fort Minor song, and Grammy award winning Daydreamin’ is a major hit and so catchy. It isn’t all perfect, especially since the outro drags on listing names, but this album is really solid, especially for a debut album.
Dream Letter and Sing a Song for You weren’t bad, but for the most part these songs were way too long and slow. Buckley has a smooth voice, but when you drag notes out like that, vibrato starts to sound like inconsistency.
Beetlebum was pretty good, and Song 2 is super popular for a reason. The rest of the album was filled with more average rock tinged Brit pop - it wasn’t bad at all, and I’d happily listen to the full album again, but it just wasn’t very memorable.
As much as I liked the jazzy yet modern sounding melodies and Amy’s voice, the lyrics of several songs were problematic and kept me from enjoying the album. They’re objectifying, demeaning to both herself and the men she talks about, and it almost feels like she recognizes this fact and makes excuses for it.
It’s a little extra, but that just comes with the territory of 80s new wave/post punk. The album isn’t as creative as anything Bowie put out, and several songs just blur together, but overall it’s catchy music I could see any retro or goth clubs playing.
Thriller, Beat It, Billie Jean, Pretty Young Thing - half the album is a Michael Jackson greatest hits playlist. Honestly, the genre isn’t my favorite, but some of these songs are so entrenched in the cultural zeitgeist that it’s hard not to enjoy them - Thriller makes me think of Halloween, and I’ve heard Beat It in more contexts than I can remember. The rest of the songs are nothing special, but they don’t drag the album down.
So much distortion and feedback that it’s hard to make out the already chaotic instrumentals, and the singer is all over the place too. I like high energy music, but you need more than energy to be great. There were a couple cool solos, but they were hard to make out in the cacophony.
A lot of the album sounds more like 80s music than 90s, but I think that’s mostly just because it’s britpop/rock. Some major hits in this like Shakermaker, Live Forever, and Supersonic. My favorite was Supersonic, but I was surprised at how much Portugal. The Man references Oasis - It’s easy to hear similarities in some of the melodies and occasionally lyrics.
My first thought listening to this was “This is so simple, I bet I could make this” which might sound cocky, but there isn’t anything too complex or profound in the album. That said, Jarre making this in the 70s makes it much more impressive - we now live in a world where electronic music is more accessible than ever for both music makers and consumers, so while it may be pretty simple compared to modern techno/house music, it’s pretty awesome for something so early in the genre. Still, if I rate this purely based on how it sounds… it really is a bunch of random laser sounds put over some soothing chords and keyboard melodies.
Overall a great alt rock album, with a bit of grunge and weirdness mixed in. Starts with a fun intro, before transitioning into a bunch of Catchy 90s alt rock like Velouria (which Weezer has a good cover of, even though I’m not usually a fan of covers), Allison, and All Over the World, with a couple of goth-tinged songs mixed in. The second half of the album wasn’t as memorable for me, but I think that’s just because there aren’t any weird/different songs to break things up. Most of the songs are great but not amazing on their own, so I think listening to them all together (with stuff like Is She Weird mixed in) made the experience better.
Starts off with the absolute banger Blue Orchid, then has a jarring cut to marimba in The Nurse which fits the vibe of the album better. I always like The White Stripes, but this one just doesn’t have the same ability to hook you in and keep your attention the same way a good riff can.
Immigrant Song makes a great start to the album, but the rest of the songs are drastically different. The folk influence/acoustic focus takes away from the impact Led Zeppelin’s sound usually has, and they don’t adapt to match it very well. There are still some great sections and riffs throughout the album, but they happen in spite of the overall sound direction, not because of it.
Bitter Sweet Symphony is a classic and sounds more modern than it is, and Sonnet is also great but sounds more like regular britpop. Nothing else in the album specifically caught my attention, but it’s just solidly good music, with some of the songs leaning slightly closer to a psychedelic vibe than the rest of the 90s britpop album.
Starts off like any other average 80s alt rock album, but Taste the floor has white noise covering the whole song making it hard to hear, and several other songs are similarly noisy because of the amount of feedback used. It’s a good album to include on this list because the experimental, borderline psychedelic sound influenced shoegaze, but it’s not a good album by itself.
A great album start to finish, with lines on par with any of the best old school hip hop artists. It’s also refreshingly positive, and the beats are more musical than some rap songs. My favorites were Thin Line and Freedom, but I liked almost every part of the album.
Starts off good, and keeps getting better (except for Fitter Happier, which seems out of place). Let Down, Karma Police, and No Surprises are all major hits, and Exit Music precedes a couple of them to really kick things off. Makes me wonder how much Radiohead’s sound influenced Manchester Orchestra, since they have the same slow singing style, just with less of a rock vibe.
Starts on a high note with Let the Good Times Roll but the rest of the album doesn’t quite match up, probably in part because the tone shifts to slower jazzy soul music for most of the album. It’s still not a bad album overall, it would just work best as background music in a nice restaurant.
The title of the album couldn’t be more accurate. It’s a bunch of stories about gunslingers and cowboys sung as if narrating an old western. A lot of the melodies are repetitive, but the stories are pretty interesting so that makes up for it.
It takes something really special for me to like ambient music, and this album just doesn’t have it. It’s still enjoyable, but very forgettable. Considering none of the songs are big hits individually, I wonder how much of the album’s success came down to marketing it using the internet and riding on the popularity of OK Computer
It's Tricky is a classic, and the lyrics are fun throughout the album, but there's very little variety in the beat. Their cover/sample of Walk This Way is great, but I think it's mostly Aerosmith that makes it good (despite this version charting higher than the original on release).
Starts off with three incredible songs, and while the rest of the album can't quite compare with the start, more hits are sprinkled in. Out of 13 songs in the album, 5 are phenomenal and 8 are still pretty good.
Overall a very sad album, especially Between the Bars, No Name No. 5, 2:45 AM, and Say Yes. I didn't know he had ties to Portland until listening to Rose Parade, so that was a cool connection to make, even if the song isn't really about the parade (it's about self-congratulatory events like the Oscars).
I like the message, and the album has more variety than some of Public Enemy's predecessors like Run-D.M.C. That said, it feels unpolished compared to other major hip hop artists at the time - Eric B. & Rakim, Gang Starr, etc. were putting out higher quality songs.
Pretty generic britpop. It’s not bad, but most of the songs blend together.
Sounds like if an indie pop artist like Dora Jar went acoustic and lost all enthusiasm. The lyrics are well written, but there aren’t any climaxes or even much variation in the energy of the songs so I was a bit underwhelmed.
I’m not a fan of the constant vibrato she uses, and this era of country isn’t my favorite either. I didn’t mind some of Willie Nelson or John Prine’s music, but this is worse.
Most Brit pop/rock sounds pretty similar to me, but a few songs in this album branched out a bit from the genre. The choruses got a little repetitive sometimes, but it wasn’t bad.
Noise rock with almost all of the emphasis on “Noise” Experimental music like this isn’t always bad, but there’s a line between something being experimental music and it just being noises, and this album crosses that line several times.
The songs are alright, but Johnny’s energy is contagious so I didn’t mind it. The idea of someone singing about cocaine and murder at a prison while recording it for a live album is hilarious though.
I wasn’t sure if I’d like this because so much electronic music is repetitive and either annoying or boring. While this was definitely repetitive, I’m surprised to say that I never got tired of it. There were some bad parts but I really enjoyed the majority of the album. Da Funk and Funk ad weren’t as repetitive so they were my favorites, along with the classic Around the World.