It's hard to not read this album as one long suicide note so that clouds it for me. It's their most cohesive, but least hooky record. It always makes me feel the next Nirvana album would've been the one.

This album feels it was put together by record execs and it was one of the times they got it absolutely right. They didn't know what to do with Blondie so they did everything and it worked.

I always think Isaac Hayes is gonna be funkier than he is.

Perhaps the most glaring example of the Springsteen Problem - great songs undone by terrible arrangements

Heard this when it came out walking into a record store and started to ask what it was and the cute girl behind the counters just went shhh and sold it to me.

This feels like a vanload of ideas trying to be a band. I wasn't sure if it was for me until I heard the reggae number and knew it was not

This is the Black Sabbath album that belongs here.

This album would be four stars even without Sultans of Swing, one of the best songs ever. Mark Knopfler is one of the sliest of modernists, gently coaxing us into the (then) new wave.

I feel I am about to pay too much for these sunglasses listening to this.

I don't remember this at all but "Richard III" is a great track two jam. I would've been into this at the time.

perfect but loses a point for the line in Oliver's Army. He knew exactly what he was doing when he put it in there.

Actually been listening to this and Straight No Chaser a lot this week. TM is so great at making a broken melody sound complete

I get why people think Sufjan is too much but I love this and the Michigan album and Seven Swans all the way. "John Wayne Gacy" and "Casimir Pulaski Day" both can make me cry when I'm in a human mood.

Def not the Black Sabbath album I would pick. I was really hoping to discover the Smithereens' "Behind the Walls of Sleep " was a Sabbath cover but no dice.

I had "Promised You a Miracle" on a high school mixtape from an exchange student and the jam sounds as fresh today. The rest is OK.

I love this album with my whole heart, though I always think about the look they must have had on their faces when Bob Dylan popped in saying "Hey I made this painting for the cover! You guys like it? You can be honest with me!"

Charlie Brown Xmas music for the discerning Quaalude user.

The thing I like about TS is that when she's derivative (maybe always) she puts her whole self into it. It's literally not for me, but the people it is for get all of it.

oof. Let AI do 80's retro

You could hold you own discussing pop music from 1930-1970 having only heard this album. He created trop rock (Coconut) and hair metal (Jump into the Fire) on the same record in his bathrobe.

It's the greatest Lou Reed solo album and maybe the 3rd best David Bowie album

Pretty perfect

This album is an easy win, nearly perfect and even better for the places it isn't. A friend of mine formed a Television cover band and did this whole album live once and revealed the 70s boogie that lies inside those icy guitar lines, which only made me love it more.

I'm picturing a post-Tommy The Who marching across Mordor, triumphant with banners aloft, legions in their wake when there is a wisp of white smoke over a golden hill and Queen gallop in like the four horsemen of rock opera and cut through Townsend's flank like it's warm butter. Sure, the Who will win the war, but for a moment, this one unit had them by the throat. "Is that a sitar *and* a vocoder?" Cmdr. Townsend gasped as Freddie's Daltrey impression on "The Loser in the End" stole the actual Daltrey's girl even though he didn't really want her. Brian May is in full wizard frenzy, lightning bolts and whirlwinds. No one knows the names of the other two, heroes anonymously mourned by rhythm sections for time immortal.

I'm a Bob Dylan type, but on the fence about this classic. There are great rambly numbers like Stuck Inside of Mobile and Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat but dreary slogs like Visions of Johanna and Lowlands. Too much harmonica. If you hate his singing, wait 'til you get a load of his harmonica playing! Loses a star for Rainy Day Women 12 & 35 - the dumbest things he's done, including his boutique whiskey line. But gets it back for the hair/stare/scarf combo on the cover.

The third best album by the Band after Big Pink and Stage Fright. I'm a fan, but could get by in life without ever hearing The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down again. Across the Great Divide is a weedy beauty of a song. A lot of the rest runs together much like the cars in a demolition derby. I though I hated Up on Cripple Creek for years until I listened to it on purpose. The recently departed organist Garth Hudson really shines on this record.

Dolly Parton albums tend to be, erm, front-loaded with whatever her single was at the time and a lot of filler, but this is one of the exceptions. I love the one-two punch of a mother’s love in the title track and the high camp of her mama stealing her secret boyfriend in “Traveling Man.” “The Mystery of the Mystery” is country gospel existentialism of the highest order. “Early Morning Breeze” is a spooky beauty that could have been a Lee Hazelwood cut or even a VU b-side.

They are really putting you Dylan/Band haters through the paces. This is a classic I never come back to bc who needs to hear “Blowin’” ever again? It is laden and lugubrious with folk reverence and watching Bob develop his shtick in real time, but “A Hard Rain” and “Don’t Think Twice” are total bangers.

Produced by Charlie Daniels - that's his devil-trouncing fiddle on "Darkness, Darkness." It's an affable progressive folk-rock record, wide in its stylistic reach and expertly played and produced, but it doesn't really feel like even the band are that excited about it, which makes me wonder if they were on it or was this done by CD and session musicians. The "come on people now, smile on your brother" debut album is better and sounds like a band. I think you can safely die without hearing this one. "Ride the Wind" is lounge magic, though.

Weird choice for 1001 given that Primal Scream has two other legit decade-defining classic LPs in Screamadelica and XTRMNTR. Seems like it was put together to re-sell the Trainspotting single, which is mostly good for the Jean-Jacques Perry sample it is built on.

One of my favorite albums ever. A magnificent, ragged sprawl in answer to the well-mannered smorgasbords other bands were making at the time. Death of the sixties dirty bomb. The bit from "Rocks Off" - the sunshine bores the daylights out of me - is one of the best lyrics in music. You may think this album is a mess, and you'd be right, but Three-Ball Charlie up on the cover knows what's up.

"Rikki" is a pretty solid groove if you wish Wings was meaner. "Night by Night" is for people who wish Wings wasn't so funky. "Any Major Dude" is the about the eighth best Wings song ever. The rest of the album is on par with Wings' Venus and Mars. If comparing Steely Dan to Wings doesn't reduce your Dannist adversary to a stutter, substitute Styx in there.