I appreciate their anti-establishment positioning but I do not like the music of Rage Against the Machine. I just find it obnoxious and seek to turn it off whenever I hear it.

TIL The Youngbloods wrote "Darkness, Darkness," which is an excellent song (though truth be told, there are cover versions of it that I prefer to the original). But after that leadoff track, I quickly grew bored, and I am picking up a serious "OK Boomer" stench to this entire exercise.

This album gets off to a strong start with the powerfully slow and dense "Svefn-g-englar" but lets up a bit, dissolving into fragments that sometimes sound more like a film score than a collection of songs. No accident these guys opened for Radiohead. I'm listening to it on a warm spring day and it's making me want to take a nap. But I could see putting this on in a certain nocturnal, creative, dark-night-of-the-soul mood.

A musician friend of mine introduced me to The Coral years ago, and while I was immediately attracted to their blend of psychedelia, garage and Merseybeat, and listened to more than one album, I did not listen especially closely. This, their debut, has a varied feel. Singer James Skelly isn’t one for nuance, often evoking the over-the-top bluster of Tom Jones, and the album has a kind of lysergic carnival feel — especially on the hit “Dreaming of You” and the woozy “Skeleton Key.” The songwriting is great. “Shadows Fall” comes off like a reggae sea shanty, “Goodbye” rides a potent riff and Merseybeat rhythm, and “Waiting for the Heartaches” unfolds gradually from its spooky vibes-and-organ intro to become a fierce garage rocker. It’s a reminder I need to spend more time with this band.

A wonderful and seamless blend of funk, swing and African styles. I really need to check out more HM.

Not much of a pop fan, but I admire TS as a successful musician and strong woman who has charted her own path and serves as a great role model for her fans. This is well-done pop that mostly avoids the genre's predilection for bombast and overproduction (with the possible exception of 'I Wish You Would"). "Shake It Off" and "Bad Blood" are genuine bangers, while the anthemic "I Know Places" is infused with doomed romance. Listening to the "Taylor's Version" of this release now as my Gen X curiosity has been piqued.

This album was and continues to be massively influential in defining the sound of post-punk.

Prog is just not my thing, and I could only make it a few tracks in before losing interest. This album sounds like a not-fully-formed version of the band. Weird choice.

I've been an admirer of Dolly Parton since my boys were very young and unsolicited children's books started arriving each month in the mail, courtesy of her and the United Way. She is a saint, yet I've never really delved into her music. Also, and I'm not an expert on country music by any stretch, but I always felt like Dolly Parton was considered more of a novelty and overlooked in favor of a mostly male cohort (Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, George Jones, etc.) but also Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline. Coat of Many Colors is a wonderful listen front to back, fully of life and heartache. Early Morning Breeze lilts on a pretty melody, the harmonizing on My Blue Tears is lovely and the storytelling on songs like Traveling Man and She Never Met a Man (She Didn't Like) embody what makes this era of country music so great. Also, the musicianship and production on this album are first rate.

TIL The Youngbloods wrote "Darkness, Darkness," which is an excellent song (though truth be told, there are cover versions of it that I prefer to the original). But after that leadoff track, I quickly grew bored, and I am picking up a serious "OK Boomer" stench to this entire exercise.

A classic. The Stones at the height of their powers.

Hip hop was definitely in a golden era in the early '90s, yet I've always preferred the East Coast style, from the claustrophobic paranoia of Wu Tang to the fearless creativity of De La, the jazzy cool of A Tribe Called Quest and the clear-eyed storytelling of Nas. On one hand, this is a fun listen, bouncy, funky as hell and full of colorful samples, if sometimes cartoonish. Yet like a lot of the Death Row stuff from this era, it's hard to get past the caustic misogyny and violence. I remain, at age 54, uninterested in how many bitches Snoop will be bangin' in 94.

I appreciate their anti-establishment positioning but I do not like the music of Rage Against the Machine. I just find it obnoxious and seek to turn it off whenever I hear it.

Gotta love Texas psychedelia.

It's albums like this that make me so confused about what Britpop means. To me, it's post-punk, with echoes of bands that came before (Adam and the Ants, T-Rex, The Smiths, Bowie) and after (The Horrors). Nice diverse set of songs.

This album is slammin.

A milestone of my adolescence, this album overlaps my skateboarding years and my first-ever job at a Domino's Pizza store, making for some colorful interaction with the latter's corporate sensibilities. Anyway, while it was fun to hear a few of these songs again, I sold my vinyl copy of this album long ago and hadn't listened to this album in decades until now. I found that Raising Hell by Run-DMC, which mines similar sonic territory, feels more relevant to me today than Licensed to Ill. I also found the Beastie Boys inescapably annoying through the '90s FWIW.

I probably prefer their debut LP Lost Souls, but this is good and I'm glad Doves are represented on this list.

I will acknowledge that "Shout" is a great song, but outside of that, the album lacks bite. While the songwriting is generally good, this album sounds very much like an artifact of its era. Just not my cup of tea.

Grateful for the prompt to listen to Sade, which is never a bad idea. She's a class act, so effortlessly sexy and sophisticated, capturing an 80s version of glamour that manages to sound timeless.

Absolutely love this, and had never heard it before — though I am familiar with MDou Moctar, whose style is similar. They call it desert blues, and I definitely hear the influence of Delta blues in their guitar stylings. Hell of a backstory, too. Really happy to discover this.

Holy fuck, I can't believe I am just now discovering this slinky loveliness. Reminds me a little of the English Beat. Going into my regular rotation.

Her talent as a songwriter — remember, she began working in the Brill Building writing famous songs like "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" as a teenager — is undeniable. This is obviously a major touchstone of the 70s singer-songwriter genre, and it helped define the sound of that decade. Also, I'll take her version of "You've Got a Friend" any day over James Taylor, who makes me cringe.

This is a fantastic album, pretty unrecognizable from the stuff the band had done before this and often credited as the first country-rock album. "The Christian Life" is a great song, and I can't help but think about how it was received by their fans in 1968. Other highlights are "One Hundred Years From Now," one of just three songs written by new band member Gram Parsons, and Woody Guthrie's "Pretty Boy Floyd." For a bunch of country novices, the playing on this is first-rate.

Rhythm Nation starts off with a bang with the title track and keeps it up through the first few songs, especially "State of the World." I mostly ignored this release when it came out, mostly because I (unfairly) associated Janet Jackson with her older and more-famous brother, who by that point was thoroughly creeping me out and putting me off with super high-gloss pop music and his increasingly questionable antics. By the time RN gets to the bubbly "Love Will Never Do (Without You)" and the ballad "Livin' In a World (They Didn't Make)" I'm losing interest, fast. But then it hits its stride again with "Alright" and closes out strong with "Someday is Tonight." Overall, this is a strong example of late-80s sequenced pop-funk with some genuine bangers but some songs weighed down by dated production.

To peruse his back catalog, with its interpretations of Shakespearean sonnets and even opera (Prima Donna, 2009), Rufus Wainwright seems like a man born in the wrong era. I had that sense while listening to Want Two, that he should really focus his energies on writing musicals (which is what sent me looking through his discography). Listening to him makes me wish that my mom, a classically trained soprano who was never short of opinions about contemporary vocalists, were still alive, because I find his voice to be my primary sticking point. While he's clearly not shy about belting it out, to me it's not quite up to the primary billing he gives it in his music. That said, Wainwright is clearly capable of creating lush stirring music — check out "April Fool's" from an earlier release, one of my favorite songs from the early aughts, or Prima Donna (he merely composed the music but doesn't sing). These are strong compositions with good arrangements. "Gay Messiah" is a great song.

Huge amount of respect to this band, but this album feels stuffed with filler and non-essentials aside some very good instrumental pieces.

Bowie albums are always a group effort, as he was a highly selective and demanding band leader and composer who surrounded himself with top talent (Mick Ronson, Carlos Alomar, Robert Fripp, Donny McCaslin, etc.). Here, he enlists Brian Eno to explore krautrock and ambient, with other sonic and aesthetic contributions from longtime producer Tony Visconti, to brilliant effect. Bowie by this point in the '70s was on another level artistically, coming off the effortless-sounding (and cocaine-fueled) art pop of Station to Station to produce what always sounds to me like the future. Low reminds me of a science fiction movie soundtrack, only with fully realized songs and compositions. Brilliant and still ahead of its time.

Ick. What's next, R. Kelly? Puff Daddy?

This album is a banger that never fails to put a smile on my face. In a turbulent era, Sly managed to make protest music that made you feel good: Affirmative, funky as hell, and a band comprised of Black, white and female musicians. It's a joyous revolution.

I remember my initial impressions of the Pixies when I first heard them in 1989, how their songs carried this incredible catchiness balanced by so much weirdness. There’s Kim Deal’s bouncy bass and sexy breathy vocals, Joey Santiago’s ferocious guitar lines and then this lead singer named Black Francis who sounds crazy as fuck, with childlike yelps and growls and lyrics that mask something terrifying. Songs like “I Bleed” legitimately frightened me, while “Here Comes Your Man,” “Mr. Grieves” and “Dead” evoked in me skewed cinematic western vibes. While “Doolittle” had nowhere near the (immediate) cultural impact of Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” it felt like a satisfying way to slam the lid shut on hair metal and all the other tired ‘80s music trends of the day and usher in an exciting new musical decade.

It's fun to imagine how this album must've landed in its time — 1971, my birth year. It was kind of a stylistic shift from Tyrannosaurus Rex's early hippy stuff, yet the mystical flourishes to Marc Bolan's songs may have appealed to the more adventurous-minded members of that waning scene. Plus, rock and roll was evolving into new forms. And it's *just* tough enough to appeal to fans of Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and other hard rock and heavy metal acts of that era (though his wearing of makeup and high heels probably made a lot of those burnouts reluctant to admit it). Fun fact: Longtime Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti produced this album, which I did not previously know but definitely tracks.

Since we're all critics here, I would have nominated Catch a Fire as the best Bob Marley and the Wailers album, and listening to this, it's clear why. This was the first BMW album without Peter Tosh or Bunny Livingston, and they are missed (especially the former, who lent the band a toughness and a second skilled songwriter and singer). But this is still a fine release. "Rebel Music" is one of Marley's best anthems, "Revolution" locks into a stirring vibe and the addition of the I-Threes as backing vocals is wonderful. Sadly, I think the song "No Woman, No Cry" is in danger of joining my list of songs I never need to hear again, thanks to the cassette version of Legend that played every day in drawing class during my senior year in high school.

This strained my patience right off the bat and granted, it's hard to commit to a Big Dumb Rock record like this in the middle of a work day. I warmed to it slightly as it went on. Wonderin Y is a legit good song and Look at Last Nite and I Won't Let it 'Appen Agen both managed to pique some interest, despite the tiresome, deliberately misspelled song titles. I don't love the singer at all. Mostly I hear in this the roots of many lamentable things: AC/DC, Twisted Sister, Motley Crue, etc. I could have easily died without listening to this, turns out.

Once upon a time I was a fan of the Beasties. I went hard for Licensed to Ill when it came out, and I stuck with them through Check Your Head. And then suddenly ... I was done. Chalk it up to the nasal delivery and overuse of vocal effects, the lingering echoes of their past juvenilia, and especially their commercial and cultural ubiquity as the '90s wore on. It felt like you couldn't get away from these guys for a while there. As for Ill Communication, I like the instrumentals, their sampling and mixing reflect skill, and it's always cool to hear Q-Tip and Biz Markee guest rap. I think I just really don't like them as rappers. IIRC we've so far had just three (?) hip hop releases on this list, and the Beastie Boys are worthy of two slots?

This is nice. I read that this performance was 100% improvised, which is impressive. I'm also guessing from the crowd noise that the Part II c/the fourth movement/whatever you want to call it was an encore.

I listened to this album on a channel called Classic Rock. The top comment is from a guy who talks about the custom hi-fi setup in his 1965 Pontiac GTO. “Cars were blaring along with meatloaf, Styx, Edgar Winter Group, Warren Zevon, Kansas…” and so forth. So that pretty well grounds this recording in time, place and cultural zeitgeist. Like a lot of music of its ilk, I feel no need to revisit some of these megahits, which are probably playing right now on your local Boomer FM album-oriented rock stations. But past the first few tracks, I hear a tension within the band between the vaguely retro bubblegum pop hits of “Good Times Roll” and “My Best Friend’s Girlfriend” that made this band famous and more adventurous fare like “Moving in Stereo” and “Don’t Cha Stop.” Suspecting there may have been multiple songwriters, I checked, and they’re all credited to Ric Ocasek. Which I supposed figures: In addition to marrying Paulina Porizkova, he went on to become a sought-after producer, with credits on albums from the likes of Bad Brains, Weezer and Guided by Voices.

Enjoyed this one more than I expected to, and it turns out I already knew most of the songs. Dave Grohl clearly picked up a lot of songwriting cues from Kurt Cobain — "Alone + Easy Target" sounds like a Nirvana B-side. His talent at marrying loud, distorted guitars with catchy melodies recalls his former band, Husker Du and Weezer's Green Album. And the riffing on "Weenie Beanie" (what is it with these song titles tho) foreshadows his later collaboration with Queens of the Stone Age. But as the song titles suggest, it's probably best not to focus on the lyrical content.

The history of popular music is vast enough that there are few acts deserving of multiple entries in a list of 1,001 albums to listen to before you die. So it goes for the Beastie Boys, and so it goes with this album by the Pixies. Hadn't listened to this one in many years. It's a fine album, but it lacks some of the spontaneity and playfulness of previous albums like Doolittle or Surfer Rosa. And perhaps most importantly, it lacks Kim Deal, who was a key ingredient in this band.

This is one of those hyper-evocative albums for me: It brings me right back to my college dorm, where I first heard it and listened to this album most often. To me, this album would be worth it for the reprise of the lovely “Waterfall” into “Don’t Stop” alone. It’s sonic magic, with its trippy tape loops and hypnotic rhythm. “Elizabeth My Dear” clearly cops its melody from Simon & Garfunkel. “Shoot You Down” is effortless cool and "Fool's Gold" feels like being on drugs at a rave. Too bad they fizzled out after a mediocre sophomore release, but at least they gifted us with this brilliance.

Alongside other artifacts of humanity, this is one of the albums I'd pick to place inside a probe that gets launched deep into space in the hopes it's one day discovered by an alien civilization — and not just because of the cover or extraterrestrial theme (though maybe that helps). It's just strange and funky, it might make the aliens shake it, and it makes humanity sound queer and fun. More terrestrially, it's the sound of peak '70s Me Decade drug-induced hedonism freak flaggery, an album that would echo through so much hip hop decades later.

TIL the song "Dirty Work" was performed by Steely Dan, and I think it says something that I was never curious to learn more about it despite being fed a steady diet from FM rock radio while growing up. "Do It Again" evokes some nostalgia for whittling away hours in video game arcades. The rest of this album is just an occasionally depressing document of the soft middle of the '70s: The hippie idealism of the '60s has been dead and buried, everyone's numbed on quaaludes and TV dinners, and punk rock can't arrive soon enough.

The song "Come Together" is like pop cultural canon at this point, with its iconic and inscrutable lyrics ("He got monkey finger / he shoot Coca-Cola"), and then there's the killer medley on side 2 (this is the first album in this project that I listened to as an LP, not streaming). There's even a murder ballad ("Maxwell's Silver Hammer"). I think I'd give it 5 stars except that I feel like "Something" is out of place on this album and sounds more of a piece with the material they'd release later on Let It Be, an album they actually recorded before Abbey Road.

I'd heard of this band but never listened to them, and I'm sure I appreciate this much more today than I would have in 1985, when my tastes generally didn't lean in this direction. Shades of Sade and Orange Juice, whom we've already covered on this list, and even The Smiths. It has a certain elegance. Produced by Thomas Dolby, I read.

Lauryn Hill is an incredible talent and this is a diverse and heartfelt album full of top-notch bangers. You can definitely hear how its influence reverberates decades later. But the interstitial chatter gets tiresome.

As many of you have noted, this is a difficult assignment not least because of its length, spread out across the equivalent of four discs worth of music. It's also a weird fit stylistically with the typical fare of this project. Nearly 3/4 of the way through it, I can confidently say that this is no better or worse than any of Ella Fitzgerald's recordings tackling the Great American Songbook composers. I own copies of Ella singing the Cole Porter songbook and the Rodgers and Hart LP, and honestly, pick any of 'em, they're all great (and yet, this is the only album cover of the three that eschews an image of the singer for one of a white woman's face, WTF). Ella Fitzgerald has a voice like a bell on a clear, cold winter night. What a treasure.

Selections like this one make me wonder whether my review should be about the album itself or the choice to include it in the list of 1,001 albums. Back when this album was released, it felt like Radiohead was starting to get high on its own supply, like the band was convinced of its own importance, and hearing it today bears that out. While there are some nice moments, this is a dreary listen. A slog. Nowhere near Radiohead's best work, before or since.

Like longtime critical and cult favorites including Big Star, the MC5 and the Mekons, who I failed to appreciate or fully understand when I was younger, I'm just now getting around to Patti Smith. This is a terrific album from an artist who must've sounded like a breath of fresh air in 1975. A highlight is "Birdland," which works like an audio poem, buffeted by evocative guitar feedback and piano refrains. I hear her influence in the later work of Nick Cave, another highly literate and multitalented singer-songwriter who brings a strong storytelling element to his work. I need to own this album.

I don’t remember thinking this about them back in the day, but The Beta Band has some really pretty songs, like "Gone" and "Quiet." Maybe it has to do with frontman Steve Mason’s soothing and calming vocal style, like a quietly confident man in no hurry to convince you of anything and content to let his songs speak for him. But there's actually a lot to the music: slammin’ trip-hop beats, motorik rhythms, tasty basslines, cool electronic flourishes, nice harmonies and earworm refrains, all contained within engaging songs. It all adds up to a highly pleasant and enjoyable listening experience. FYI Allmusic calls this band “post-Britpop.”

I have to include this amazing quote from the late Wayne Kramer, via Wikipedia, on how James Brown influenced the MC5's live debut LP, Kick Out the Jams: "Our whole thing was based on James Brown. We listened to Live at the Apollo endlessly on acid. We would listen to that in the van in the early days of 8-tracks on the way to the gigs to get us up for the gig." Musically, this album captures pre-funk era JB. But it's still the call-and-response emcee-bandleader format for which he is known, and the screams from the audience reinforce its place in time and cultural importance. "I Don't Mind" and "Try Me" sound like 1950s torch songs, a side of him I hadn't heard before. The backing band is top notch, as you'd expect. Also have to give props to the excellent design incorporating a watercolor (I think?) on the cover.

This is nice, like a mix of trip-hop and cabaret. Alison Goldfrapp has a lovely voice that occasionally recalls Portishead's Beth Gibbons (especially on tracks like "Pilots") and has great range. It's spooky and enchanting and makes me want to check out more of their albums.

I'm a little torn by the inclusion of this, an album of well-known standards, from the artist who wrote songs as good as "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground," "Whiskey River" and "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys." It was even controversial in its day, coming from the figurehead of Outlaw Country. And yet, I cannot deny this is very good — especially "September Song."

It's hard to separate this album from all the controversy and mythology that surrounded its release, yet the amazing thing is how vital and current the most incendiary tracks sound in 2025. "Straight Outta Compton" makes me want to march and burn shit down. Ice Cube, who wrote most of the lines (even for the others), is a skilled rap lyricist. The album definitely wanes in energy and relevance as it wears on ("I Ain't Tha 1" is a low point), but there's no denying its cultural impact or its influence on hip hop. Also, I love the last track, "Something 2 Dance 2," an old-school electro tack-on that seems to almost undermine the group's gangsta credentials. It's like a hip-hop Nuggets entry, great for a mix tape full of obscurities.

XTC has always seemed to me an acquired taste, and I've simply never acquired the taste (due partly to Andy Partridge's voice). This album of lushly arranged chamber pop is clearly well done, yet like everything else I've heard from the band, I simply fail to connect with their very off-kilter British vibe. This album draws comparisons to Sgt. Pepper's and the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds," and I can see why. But I don't see how this one really advances on their sonic or cultural accomplishments.

Even though he totally ripped off David Lee Roth, this album is a real hoot.

This is a quirky album of rank-and-file post-punk that dropped out of left field — a place called Iceland — at a time when this brand of angular guitars and charging rhythms were no longer in vogue. That's entirely my jam. It features a charismatic and big-piped chanteuse named Bjork, whose lack of vocal restraint sometimes chafes. "Birthday" remains a great song, wholly distinctive in its sound, while other highlights include "Mama," "Blue Eyed Pop" and "Coldsweat." Unfortunately, "Motorcrash," one of the early singles from the album, and "Delicious Demon" are serious duds that suffer from ridiculous lyrics. What is this about taking a bath and being squeaky clean? I'd probably give this an extra half star if I could.