246
Albums Rated
3.7
Average Rating
23%
Complete
843 albums remaining
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1960s
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Rater Style ?
58
5-Star Albums
8
1-Star Albums
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You Love More Than Most
Albums you rated higher than global average
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chore of Enchantment | 5 | 2.64 | +2.36 |
| Sweetheart Of The Rodeo | 5 | 2.82 | +2.18 |
| Gentlemen | 5 | 2.9 | +2.1 |
| The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators | 5 | 2.95 | +2.05 |
| Mott | 5 | 2.95 | +2.05 |
| Heartbreaker | 5 | 3.03 | +1.97 |
| I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight | 5 | 3.05 | +1.95 |
| It's A Shame About Ray | 5 | 3.12 | +1.88 |
| The Pleasure Principle | 5 | 3.14 | +1.86 |
| Machine Gun Etiquette | 5 | 3.15 | +1.85 |
You Love Less Than Most
Albums you rated lower than global average
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Californication | 1 | 3.71 | -2.71 |
| Kenya | 1 | 3.27 | -2.27 |
| Ritual De Lo Habitual | 1 | 3.19 | -2.19 |
| Get Rich Or Die Tryin' | 1 | 3.05 | -2.05 |
| Black Sabbath | 2 | 3.83 | -1.83 |
| Chris | 1 | 2.82 | -1.82 |
| Bad | 2 | 3.8 | -1.8 |
| Metallica | 2 | 3.79 | -1.79 |
| The Low End Theory | 2 | 3.7 | -1.7 |
| Slipknot | 1 | 2.67 | -1.67 |
Artist Analysis
Favorite Artists
Artists with 2+ albums
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| The Rolling Stones | 3 | 4.67 |
| R.E.M. | 3 | 4.67 |
| Television | 2 | 5 |
| Pixies | 3 | 4.33 |
| Beatles | 3 | 4.33 |
Controversial Artists
Artists you rate inconsistently
| Artist | Ratings |
|---|---|
| Black Sabbath | 5, 2, 4 |
5-Star Albums (58)
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Popular Reviews
Carole King
5/5
Bangers all around. Even the tired ones you've heard 100 million times hit like a brick when you listen to them on purpose.
3 likes
The Band
5/5
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!"
2 likes
Sade
4/5
I don't know if you need to declare that, before you die, you must hear music that has never gone away. It's like saying "You GOTTA breathe this atmosphere while you are here!" Pretty sure every human hears "Smooth Operator" at least once a week during the process of being alive. And it is flawless. "Your Love is King" only slightly less flawless and thereby more interesting. I wonder if they have to pay Roxy Music's holding company for style royalties. I've always kinda dug the nagging persistence of "Hang on to Your Love", a ballad from a barnacle to a Nantucket whaler of a love. "Cherry Pie" is the secret subdued disco banger hidden in here. As is the audacious conga minute opening of Timmy Thomson's minimalist classic "Why Can't We Live Together." I want to hear that gliding around a roller rink on the moon.
1 likes
Drive Like Jehu
2/5
This music probably sounds great while getting the wind knocked out of you on your cousin's poorly constructed halfpipe, but outside of that, the appeal is elusive.
1 likes
1-Star Albums (8)
All Ratings
Nirvana
3/5
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.
Blondie
5/5
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.
Isaac Hayes
3/5
I always think Isaac Hayes is gonna be funkier than he is.
Bruce Springsteen
3/5
Perhaps the most glaring example of the Springsteen Problem - great songs undone by terrible arrangements
Sigur Rós
5/5
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.
The Coral
2/5
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
Black Sabbath
5/5
This is the Black Sabbath album that belongs here.
Dire Straits
4/5
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.
Nightmares On Wax
2/5
I feel I am about to pay too much for these sunglasses listening to this.
Supergrass
4/5
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.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
4/5
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.
Thelonious Monk
5/5
Actually been listening to this and Straight No Chaser a lot this week. TM is so great at making a broken melody sound complete
Sufjan Stevens
5/5
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.
Black Sabbath
2/5
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.
Simple Minds
3/5
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.
The Band
5/5
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!"
Hugh Masekela
4/5
Charlie Brown Xmas music for the discerning Quaalude user.
Taylor Swift
3/5
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.
Christine and the Queens
1/5
oof. Let AI do 80's retro
Harry Nilsson
5/5
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.
Lou Reed
4/5
It's the greatest Lou Reed solo album and maybe the 3rd best David Bowie album
Joy Division
5/5
Pretty perfect
Run-D.M.C.
4/5
Television
5/5
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.
Queen
4/5
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.
Bob Dylan
4/5
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 Band
4/5
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
5/5
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.
Bob Dylan
3/5
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.
The Youngbloods
3/5
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.
Primal Scream
3/5
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.
The Rolling Stones
5/5
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.
Steely Dan
3/5
"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.
Snoop Dogg
5/5
Unstoppable banger. It sounds as fresh today. Sure, it owes pretty much everything to George Clinton, but I suspect George Clinton owes more back to this album for how its made his thing eternal.
Rage Against The Machine
3/5
There was a week there back then when I thought RatM was the second coming, but I was having a bad week. They were a little too alpha for me. Fugazi for skaters who would go into finance.
The 13th Floor Elevators
5/5
Unimpeachable. Best performance on a jug. Do not operate a forklift or other heavy machinery while listening to this album.
Suede
3/5
Any song I've ever thought was a great Suede single turned out to be by another band. That mixtape is 5*. Those songs actually by Suede, or perhaps just their press presence, always seem to project more cleverness than they actually have. A less-committed Smiths. Echo and the, well, just echo of better English bands from 10 years before. Probably sounded great in a bar in 93.
Kendrick Lamar
4/5
I wish Kendrick Lamar would take over the contemporary pop musical mantle from the Hamilton guy. This album feels like the soundtrack of one I'd actually want to see. He raps like someone executing a flawless parkour routine, bouncing off buildings and jumping off balconies and landing in a casual strut.
Beastie Boys
3/5
Not the Beastie Boys album I would pick nor really have ever gone back to. It has more of the weedy rock haze that I'd associate with Check Yr Head or Ill Communication than I remembered, particular the opening track. The longer songs feel endless, a purgatory spent in the New Style and not getting sleep til Brooklyn. "She's Crafty" came out a few months after Run DMC's "Walk This Way" and it felt like the whole world was sing song like this and like that. The deep cuts can stay there, the hits will be omnipresent as long as white people are still on earth. "Girls" still kinda cracks me up.
Crowded House
3/5
Another weird choice for a band who has a much more classic album, or at lease one that has their signature songs. This sounds like one of those later Squeeze albums - perfectly alright, they are pros, but you barely remember while you are listening to it, much less after.
Doves
3/5
Any plural-bird-name band without a definitive article is gonna be unfairly compared to Swans in my mind. Doves are no Swans. They remind me of the Mighty Lemon Drops, a perfectly fine band I saw open for three different touring acts one year in college: affable, nice texture, but if you stuffed any calendar page from their year into a CD player, 2002 in Doves' case, this is what it would sound like. I like the percussionless "M62 song" and "Where We're Calling From" the best, so maybe the drums are the key to their blending in to the woodwork. "N.Y." betrays a grunge inclination masked in synth strings, winding into a nice arpeggiated guitar. But a lot of nice, not a lot of wow.
Elastica
4/5
"Connection" was omnipresent for a while, like it was put together by a marketing team for maximum impact in the bar 'n' grill background music sector for Q1 '95 , but maybe I never heard anything else by them. The rest of the album sounds like a much more fun band. The songs are barely formed in the best way, each consisting of a good hook, an expertly shoplifted Joy Division or Fall or Stranglers quotation, a cool noise and a sing-song swagger.
Tears For Fears
4/5
It is impossible to hear "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" with fresh ears, but the Teutonic march of much of the rest of the album still hits for me. Yes, "Shout" is ridiculously serious but they do it enough times to wear you down which is a triumphant twining of pop art's form and function. Yes there is a lot of sax in the non-hit recesses. Yes, they are not particularly fun but it was the twilight of the Reagan and Thatcher eras. Yes, it sounds like Yes did in 1985, with all the orchestra breaks. I don't know if I'm making excuses for them or for me, but it still sounds fresh for being so dated.
Sade
4/5
I don't know if you need to declare that, before you die, you must hear music that has never gone away. It's like saying "You GOTTA breathe this atmosphere while you are here!" Pretty sure every human hears "Smooth Operator" at least once a week during the process of being alive. And it is flawless. "Your Love is King" only slightly less flawless and thereby more interesting. I wonder if they have to pay Roxy Music's holding company for style royalties. I've always kinda dug the nagging persistence of "Hang on to Your Love", a ballad from a barnacle to a Nantucket whaler of a love. "Cherry Pie" is the secret subdued disco banger hidden in here. As is the audacious conga minute opening of Timmy Thomson's minimalist classic "Why Can't We Live Together." I want to hear that gliding around a roller rink on the moon.
Songhoy Blues
5/5
This is a jam. There's points where I wanna say this sounds like disco or Talking Heads and realize, oh yeah, other way around.
Orange Juice
3/5
This is one I've tried to get into over the years as it has been cited as a foundation document for a lot of the music I like, but I dunno. Like much new wave pop, the songs are one minute of a good idea dragged out to five. If "Rip It Up" was 2:30, it'd be perfect. Time and place, this honkylypso would have been an excellent antidote to very serious punk in 1982 Scotland but most of it hits me like the other songs on a Police or (English) Beat album.
Fairport Convention
4/5
Love the early drunken reveler Fairport Convention records. The best thing the Byrds ever did was convince FC to plug in their guitars. The slower ballads get a bit arch, but it's so good when they swing into gear. Some of the instrumentation (partic "Matty Groves") would not be out of place on the first couple of VU records.
Sarah Vaughan
5/5
What I want to hear walking in a bar or coffee shop mid afternoon. The kind of vocal jazz you passively listen to or actively ignore. I'm a little fixated on the R on the marquee on the cover. Was it just like that when they took the photo or did some art director have a brilliant idea right before or was there a transfer letter screw up?
Carole King
5/5
Bangers all around. Even the tired ones you've heard 100 million times hit like a brick when you listen to them on purpose.
The Byrds
5/5
Love this album. This album has become something an indicator of an alt-country lifestyle choice, but it really is a beautiful record every time.
Janet Jackson
2/5
Hmmm, I’d say if you need a Janet Jackson album before you die, the one with “Nasty” and “What Have You Done For Me Lately” from a couple years before is the one with cultural impact. The video for the title track was better than the song.
Rufus Wainwright
3/5
I love Rufus Wainwright for his candor and wit as much for his voice, but this album has a little too much remove for it to grab me. Poses is the RW for me, particularly "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk", one of the best songs ever.
Booker T. & The MG's
5/5
In my dream life, it would be southern California weather and we would all get around on roller skates and this album would be the default soundtrack being broadcast on transistor radios laying around everywhere.
David Bowie
4/5
Despite having seen this album cover my whole life, I'm just now noticing he's wearing a hoodie. Always something to discover in Bowie. "Sound and Vision" is one of his best songs, "Speed of Life" his best groove, "Be My Wife" a terrific song I forgot about, "Warszawa" a fully realized chamber piece, and "Weeping Wall" one of his most successful experiments. With all that, a lot of the rest feels a little unfinished, which is in its own right a brave move for a perfectionist, but I'd like to hear "Breaking Glass" as the juggernaut it wants to be.
Marilyn Manson
1/5
I was hoping to die without listening to a whole Marilyn Manson album but life if full of little disappointments. Plus, I feel MM wants you to die listening to his music. Like the photoshop cover and word-burrito song titles, this feels like a pastiche meant to evoke a mood it doesn't quite deliver. He seems to be a horrible person, so maybe he should have dug into that. This is all strobe light and no chainsaw. I do see why guitarist John 5's picture is on the wall at my local Guitar Center, for what that's worth.
Sly & The Family Stone
3/5
A lot wiggier than I remember this being. The last four minutes of "Don't Call Me..." could go, as could all of that fill-the-album-time-with-cocaine of "Sex Machine" but the rest are all hits for a reason.
Pixies
5/5
My third favorite Pixies album after Surfer Rosa and Trompe L' Monde, only by narrow and situational margins. It took me a while to fully come around to the Pixies bc I was a snooty college DJ at the time of their ascendancy and suspicious of anything that other people liked. This group's lara7 and I picked up a tape of Surfer Rosa at a yard sale and driving around to that won me over. Years later I took a road trip with a friend who only brought two tapes - Trompe L'Monde and Blondie's Greatest Hits which cemented that one. But Doolittle is the right entry point, their catchiest, their most aliens-recreate-rock'n'roll-in-their-language.
T. Rex
5/5
Electric Warrior sits imperious in the perfect brilliant/stupid singularity toward which all rock music tends. His folkier music before this is delightfully ridiculous, his heavier music after this is as subtle as a werewolf howl on the moors but this record is a like a lit cigarette trapped in amber - perfect distilled coolness.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
3/5
There's Bob Marley albums I like better, and reggae artists I like better than Bob Marley, but this is an OK one. Plus, it's good to listen him like this on purpose, outside of the omnipresence of his hits in every stoner-adjacent fast casual restaurant and dorm room. As a musician, I aspire to the ironically dead-ass organ sounds on "Lively Up Yourself" and it's impossible to not feel it will be when the "Everything's gonna be alright" repeats hit. Everything won't be, but it's a great template for compassion. There is non-insignificant quantities of filler on this record but "Bend Down Low" is a great party percolator I don't think I've heard before.
Slade
3/5
What a beautiful ridiculous band! Quiet Riot seems even more weird a phenomenon knowing that their hits were Slade covers. This album is so-so, but their singles are solid. They wrote the best rock'n'roll Christmas song ever but it's not on this album. If you are looking for glam rock you need to hear before you die, allow me to direct you to Mott the Hoople.
Beastie Boys
3/5
The presence of this and License to Ill implies that Check Your Heard is on the list, further indicating more Beastie Boys that you might need in one life where other hip hop exists. Side A - through "The Update" is so good, showing their range and command of a banger. The latter half kinda hits like a YouTube beat tape I'd put on to ignore get some work done.
Keith Jarrett
4/5
This one-man jam session is a lot to take unless you are really invested in the nexus of jazz, minimalism, and new age as well as advances in recording piano overtones in a room. I bet 25% of the people in Köln that night had their life changed and the other 75% were looking at their watch and questioning the renewal of their season tickets. I'm into it, but I get why you aren't.
The Cars
5/5
Six out of five stars for the Cars. "Let them brush your rock'n'roll hair" alone puts this album among the constellations and it's not even from the best song, which is "Just What I Needed" - the best rock song ever. If Buddy Holly hadn't died in a plane crash but instead fell into a wormhole to the future and came back to 1978 as Ric Ocasek to show us the way.
Foo Fighters
3/5
There is a Chuck Klosterman quote about the first Van Halen album being the perfect average rock record - anything worse than it is bad, anything better is good. Foo Fighters are the embodiment of the Hagar-era of that metric.
Pixies
3/5
This is the Pixies record that never really grabbed me. All the brio and egregious reverb usage of the Cult, the lyrical inscrutability of extreme metal band and the no-eye-contact of a band that might open for Kraftwerk. There are some great hooky numbers like "Hang Wire" and "Dig for Fire" and "Is She Weird" - the best Violent Femes song they never wrote - but I find myself skipping a lot of the rest.
The Stone Roses
4/5
This album is catchy as a gill net and content-free as that same net pulled out of an unstocked lake. Practice frame for Oasis, who knew where the big fish were.
Parliament
3/5
This album is good, but the Live: P-Funk Earth Tour album that came out of this material is the real must-listen Parliament record. The beat on the studio version gets monotonous, but with an entire 1977 LA Forum stomping along, it reaches the cosmic.
Steely Dan
3/5
"Do It Again" is why audiophile stereos were invented, but then audiophile stereos are what gave us the subsequent Steely Dan albums which gave us the 80's Wall Street greed era which begat tech bros and Elon Musk. So despite "Do It Again" being a stone jam, one must gaze at the album through the dolorous lens of history and stall the waterwheel of unlearned-from mistakes. Let us not be the fools doing the Dan's dirty work. Plus the non-single tracks are so-so.
Beatles
4/5
The side-two medley is the last gasp of their greatness, but a lot of side one is a tired sigh. Even in my most Beatle-adoring youth, "I Want You" gave me the ick, and "Oh! Darling" too saccharine. I've always wished they'd worked more, perhaps, collaborated with purpose, on "Come Together" which is a great song with dumb lyrics. "Here Comes the Sun" is perfect and "Octopus" and "Maxwell" are dopey and fun.
Prefab Sprout
4/5
I love Prefab Sprout. A master class in mass-appeal idiosyncratic art-pop. Those synths are an anchor in the harbor of 1985, the only thing keeping this album from being timeless. I have had "Appetite" in my head since I saw the video in high school and I'm still not sure what its about. The only real digs I have against this album is how front-loaded it is and those gated drums, but it's how the world was back then.
Lauryn Hill
4/5
This is still a beautiful, singular album, but damn those songs take forever. No wonder she's always late for her shows.
Ella Fitzgerald
3/5
Masterful performance and recording but I cannot imagine a situation where I would not feel ridiculous putting this on, save being a ATF agent tasked with driving a doomsday cult from their compound.
Radiohead
5/5
Low-key one of my favorite Radiohead albums. I love the shaky rage, the introspection harmonies, the way the digital aspects flood in through the cracks of a rock band. Phasers set to melancholy. Also, the best album cover for a band that makes definitive album cover statements. It's not the Titanic-sinking iceberg that OK Computer or In Rainbows are, but I love how it looms out beside you in the fog.
Patti Smith
5/5
This album will make you understand why the entire boy's club of early punk fell completely in love with Patti Smith. I go back an forth about whether this or Radio Ethiopia is my favorite - this is more feral, the latter rocks harder - but she was an electromagnetic rock creature radicalizing knuckleheads everywhere.
The Beta Band
3/5
It's a pretty, breezy record but The Three EPs, made famous by the same movie that needlessly steered a generation away from the pleasures of Belle and Sebastian, is the one you need to hear.
James Brown
5/5
I mean, c'mon. If you don't give this five stars, you are clearly not ready for star time
Goldfrapp
4/5
How did they not do a James Bond theme? Like a lot of trip-hop, it feels highly derivative in the best possible way, like an expertly filled plate at the buffet that makes your tablemates go "Ooooh, I didn't see the dumplings!". Alison Goldfrapp is a true songbird, the production is smart and in just the right part of her shadow. Great Theremin usage. This was a delightful surprise.
Willie Nelson
4/5
This was one of the records my mom bought after the divorce, along with a lot of Neil Diamond, so it is woven into my upbringing. It's a beauty of a standards collection. I was going to list the Willie albums I prefer, ones that lean on his original material, but then "Blue Skies" came on, and I thought why would I want anything else? It stops just outside the city limits of treacle, elevating the tiredest of songs with a weary, elegant resignation. It's making something out new of what's left. If you can't open your heart to his version of "All of Me" you may want to have a doctor confirm you have one. This version of "Unchained Melody" is what plays should our wretched souls ascend to heaven at the end. So yeah, essential.
Produced by his neighbor Booker T (of and the MGs), recorded in another friend's house, with the harmonica recorded in a shower stall. Also I love that he insisted on keeping Susanna Clark's (wife of songwriter Guy Clark) signature on the cover painting.
N.W.A.
3/5
It's difficult to listen to this as a thing unto itself with it being peak "rap older white people listen to and reference." But unzip that baggage, the energy and anger is still potent. It's a monotonous listen, but then that same-damn-thing-every-day-ness is what it seeks to express. I feel the singles are maybe more important to hear than the full album.
4/5
A feast for the headphones, especially "River of Orchids". XTC is one of those bands I wouldn't really recommend one album - I'd rather you sign up for my semester-long lecture series so we can discuss them at exhausting length. There will be field trips to Swindon and extra points will be awarded for throwing eggs at Todd Rundgren's house. That said, this is a good one, like glimpsing one last gallop of a unicorn before it disappears into the woods.
Louis Prima
2/5
This kind of personality schtick jazz from the 50s strikes me as music for people who aren't really into music. It's like eschewing standup comedy to just see Gallagher smash the watermelon over and over. I'm sure Louis Prima was a hoot live, but I'd rather hear a Sam Butera and the Witnesses record. "Night Train" slaps.
The Sugarcubes
4/5
I've often wondered what became of Einar, the spoken word guy the Sugarcubes - he didn't stand a chance once Björk warped the timeline. He served on the Reykjavik city council for a while, so that's good. This was a meteor killing off the dinosaurs at the time, but I hear a lot of Oingo Boingo, Go-Go's, 4AD roster, etc in it now. It has a sweet menace to it, feeling like it was inaccurately translated at some border checkpoint and made all the better for it.
Funkadelic
4/5
Goofus banger. It’s been a quarter-century since I last listened to this one, but I could feel the anxiety that comes with attempting to be rational in an irrational world lift as the toilet humor pledge was recited.
The Cure
4/5
Not the Cure album I would pick, but upon relistening - Elemental Cure. If you crack on them for being gloomy and mopey, it's right here. If you love the Cure for putting together excellent pop music with startling economy, also here. If you think their songs all sound the same, yeah ok. If the Cure makes you feel the feelings other people get from pop music, and your default dance move is to sway like there's a cigarette in your left hand, it's on!
3/5
I talked to John Zorn on the phone once for an hour as a prelude for an interview that, after I went out and bought the albums of his he suggested we discuss, elected not to do. Cold, but it's dog-eat-dog for an independent label owner. This was one of the albums he didn't want to talk about, that it had been talked about to death. I will say if you like this explosion of saxophone and drums and joy and rage, it's more of a gateway into Zorn's peculiar sonic world than it is Coleman's. If you plead for it to stop, than neither is likely for you. If you ever thought Oingo Boingo would sound better tumbling down a mountain, get ready!
Ali Farka Touré
4/5
In a more impulsive era, I cajoled a clerk at an incense shop to sell me the store’s copy of Ali Farka Toure’s The Source because I was so spellbound by it. This is more bluesy than that one but is nonetheless hypnotic.
Cocteau Twins
4/5
The most fun and accessible Cocteau Twins record, if those are metrics that should be applied to them. I didn't really appreciate them at the time when their excellent posters adorned the apartments of the goth-adjacent (also I fell asleep at one of their shows), but my daughter and friends' daughters all have had a Cocteau Twins fixation that made me come around. This album is a gem that could stand a remaster to really makes it glow.
Elliott Smith
4/5
No matter how much you turn this album up it is still a whisper from a kid just trying to feel things. I suspect he was kind of adored to death after that Oscars performance, so this sweet document from right before is all the more precious.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
4/5
Perfect disposable NYC lifestyle rock, the kind that the Strokes aren't really good enough to do and LCD Soundsystem are too good to do. I feel cooler when it's on and don't even notice when it leaves.
Siouxsie And The Banshees
3/5
Siouxsie and the Banshees are the Jefferson Airplane of goth, not just because of an enigmatic female singer but also because their albums have one or two clear classics (Spellbound : White Rabbit) and the rest of the record is not quite at that level.
Abdullah Ibrahim
3/5
I like the ska-jazz... skazz, maybe? feel of the opening track, and the safari-groove on "Tuang Guru" but the rest sounds like "Yep. That's jazz alright." I say if you are gonna spend your 1001 token on him, the cinematic African Space Program album under his pre-conversion name Dollar Brand is a more rewarding, if more challenging, listen.
Ali Farka Touré
3/5
There is a whole lot of Africa to listen to without including a second Ali Farka Toure forced date of an album with roots magpie Ry Cooder doin da blooze. The record is ok but, dude. Pass the aux cable.
Pink Floyd
3/5
Being the most turgid Pink Floyd album is an achievement unto itself.
B.B. King
4/5
I like hearing these dinosaur songs actually roam the earth as wild animals instead of the slick way blues is usually presented. It should be a strict prerequisite for blues jam participants to hear this version of "Everyday I Have the Blues" before they are allowed up there with their fedora and $2K guitar.
Gary Numan
5/5
This album is mathematically and emotionally perfect. We, as a species, will likely never again reach this singularity point of longing and fear and make it this catchy.
Aimee Mann
4/5
It sounds like a good song playing at Walgreens.
Donald Fagen
3/5
This sounds like every other song playing at Walgreens.
Fats Domino
3/5
I am saturated on Fats for this life, thanks. I do like the drums actually allowed in the mix along with that jackhammer piano.
The Killers
3/5
The Killers are like a brightly, expertly papered wall with no hooks to hang anything on it.
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
4/5
This album gets cooking at the halfway mark, but the first six songs are a slog. I prefer Acme or Orange when they mostly shout "BLUES EXPLOSION" over slam-on-the-brakes rock. It's a limited technique but it works when they do it.
Jane's Addiction
1/5
Never have understood the appeal of Janes Addiction. Did someone once put on three different Van Halen albums at 45 through cheap speakers and go "that's our sound" ?
The Lemonheads
5/5
Consistently delightful album for decades. Not a thing out of place, yet never tiring.
Al Green
4/5
Al Green's Greatest Hits (the one with him shirtless on the cover) is the definitive Al Green record. The title track gleams from the Mt. Olympus of pop music for a reason, and "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?" is what you hear on your soul's transmigration to Purgatory. The rest of this album is reliably groovy and expertly crafted but not that memorable.
Santana
3/5
This is one of those records that is actually less than the sum of its parts, even though the parts, particularly Carlos Santana's guitar and his rhythm section, are excellent. The songs drift along like barges over-loaded with great musicians and then are gone. The surprise here is "Hope You're Feeling Better" with that red laser organ tone and hard Funkadelic groove. More of that, please...
The Doors
4/5
This record totally holds up, even the ridiculous "The End." Any cracking on the Doors is well-deserved but the spooky, easy decadence of this record is infectious. Bubblegum gothic. Plus, I haven't heard the garagey non-hits like "I Looked at You" and "Take It as it Comes" since college.
LTJ Bukem
1/5
I suspect LTJ Bukem would be unable to distinguish Level 1 from Level 13, much less justify why this particular trance compilation over the countless others form the 90s needs hearing before leaving the planet depicted on the cover.
Peter Gabriel
4/5
The new wave anthems that sounded so good in my generic Walkman in 1986 like "Red Rain" and "That Voice Again" don't grab me anymore, but I am struck by what a grown-folks stone jam "Sledgehammer" still is. An updated remix of "Don't Give Up" would've been right on time with the recent Kate Bush renaissance. Peter Gabriel should have left "world music" for David Byrne to handle and just gone full R&B elder after this album.
The Stooges
5/5
I cut my chest up in a hot Detroit ballroom with five stars for Raw Power. Even for Bowie's original clunky mix but especially for the redline one Iggy did the early 2000s.
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
This album gives the fussy baroque of 1967 psychedelia the right kick in the bell bottoms. The non-hits were a treat, not having heard them for ages. Holds up spectacularly, which is not something I'd say for his other albums.
Bob Dylan
4/5
This is where he channeled his squirrelly energy and skills at preparing word salad into making narrative sense, a gentle counterpoint to the feral joy of the Basement Tapes that came out the same year. There is a lot of baggage that comes with liking or not liking Dylan, but these are some of his best lyrics.
4/5
What a surprise! I thought I didn't like this record because it's no Los Angeles - an arguably perfect punk record - but its not trying to be. They discovered hard rock melody and complicated grown-up feelings left behind in the practice space and are excited to share them.
Kate Bush
4/5
Kate Bush is the new wave Stevie Nicks, the wise older sister/wild aunt a lot of people need in their lives.. "Running" deserves all the praise it gets, but "Cloudbursting" is the one off this record that still gets to me. Otherwise this album doesn't quite speak to me like it once did. It would probably make for a smash Broadway adaption.
Michael Jackson
2/5
Must we? "Man in the Mirror" is one of his greatest tunes, a rare moment of self-critique from the most profound ego of the 80s. I'm surprised to find "The Way You Make Me Feel" here - I thought it was from an older album or maybe a Stevie Wonder song. The rest of this album sounds and had always sounded phoned-in to me, hyperactive autopilot designed to fatigue a Solid Gold dancer.
Frank Sinatra
5/5
This is one of those laser-guided missile Sinatra albums, equal parts wide-eyed golly gee, you're just the greatest, and eye-roll droll. It's interesting (to me, anyway) that this CD release cover was changed to have a more flattering portrait of old Blue Eyes in the background from the original album. That's focus, baby.
"Old Devil Moon" is one of my favorite Sinatra tunes, and "I've Got You Under my Skin" is perfect. "I Thought About You" is a stealth banger.
Also, this album title gets an extra point for inspiring Renaldo and the Loaf's "Songs for Swinging Larvae", a record nerd joke that makes me laugh every time I think about it.
4/5
All I'm sayin'... This album is a high camp delight. The ubiquitous hits "The Look of Love" and "Poison Arrow" are the peaks here and the only ones I'd heard before, but the strings and the breathless delivery throughout sell it. The final two tracks - a fussy orchestral "The Look of Love Part 4" and drunken cabaret version of "Poison Arrow" as "Theme from 'Mantrap'" is chef's kiss emoji good.
The Dandy Warhols
3/5
The Dandy Warhols have the thick, swirly neo-psyche sound dialed in perfectly and get that a sense of humor is what's missing in indie rock, but boy, do they need an editor. "Don't bore us, get to the chorus" posters should be put up all over their (I suspect) immaculate studio packed with pristine vintage gear.
The Go-Go's
4/5
So good! The two singles are unstoppable and "Skidmarks on My Heart" was a mixtape staple back then. I just read that Belinda Carlisle's tenure as the drummer for the Germs was cut short because she had mono - the most adorable LA punk anecdote ever!
Rush
5/5
Classic. Rush gets a bad rap for being nerd music for nerds (also a fair accusation), and Randian associations, but I suspect everyone on the planet gets at least a little fired up when they hear that intro to "Tom Sawyer." "Limelight" is built on on of the best guitar riffs ever, and a call to arms for theatre kids for decades. The merits of the pyrotechnics throughout the rest of the album depend on if you a connoisseur of such. And, looking at him, what did you think Geddy Lee's voice would sound like? Am I being defensive? Such is the lot for a Rush fan.
Public Enemy
3/5
I loved Public Enemy at the time, but that time was almost 40 years ago. Like most hip hop from that era, this album just hasn't aged well. Fear of a Black Planet is a better album with more depth to it if you are adverse to listening to any rap music made after 1990.
The Icarus Line
2/5
Ugh. It gets one point off the bottom because I feel these guys feel whatever these terrible feelings being expressed are, but this kind of grooveless fight club music just doesn't do it for me.
Drive Like Jehu
2/5
This music probably sounds great while getting the wind knocked out of you on your cousin's poorly constructed halfpipe, but outside of that, the appeal is elusive.
The Beach Boys
3/5
I have a perverse love for squeaky clean vocal groups making their psychedelic record (see the Beau Brummel's' Triangle) and this, is the corny old Beach Boys trying to make sense in a time (the 1970's) that has passed them by.
It half works. "Feel Flows", one of the first written by Carl Wilson, is low key one of the Best Beach Boys songs ever. "Disney Girls" also touches that place where my heart should be. The Brian tracks, the last three culled from the styled Smile sessions, stand out for his brand of lysergic pudding and the fairy-tale EP he insisted they add as a bonus single is a goofy pleasure. The rest is as cool as your parents trying to rap.
Pink Floyd
3/5
It's an impeccable slog, which sounds like one of the things money might described as being.
Electric Light Orchestra
4/5
"Turn to Stone" and "Mr. Blue Sky" and "Sweet Talkin' Woman" are lines of pure dopamine on the mirror tray of the late Seventies. The rest of the album feels good like a massage or a fancy candle, inarguably pleasurable but doesn't linger.
I used to hate ELO so much I received a merit badge for it, but I heard a Cajun band do "Hold On Tight To You Dreams" and my mind lit up like a jukebox bubble light.
Small Faces
2/5
I should love this. The players are great. The sound is great. The songs aren't bad. I love a B-team British rock band that never invaded the US. Great cover! But the record has never adhered to me. This is one of those rambly albums that was probably a more fun to make than listen to.
Calexico
5/5
I love the hell out of this record. The production is crystalline and perfect, like the glass in a window of an abandoned house, letting the melancholy of the songs shine though like the morning sun. While it's not the strongest track on the album, their performance of "Not Even Stevie Nicks" at JazzFest one year made me a die-hard fan.
Little Simz
3/5
I like Little Simz as background for the naked beats and the percolating murmur of the vocals, but I don't know if this is even the best Little Simz record, much less for this list.
R.E.M.
5/5
I listened to this album so much in high school it shows up in my fingerprints. It could use a re-master - it sounds thin by modern standards - but it is peak R.E.M. before they became beloved by regular people, unabashedly precious and jangly and teenage mysterious and despite that, kinda fun, which was a new thing for them.
AC/DC
4/5
This is the album where AC/DC got their shit together, integrated the targeting systems on their love/hate missile and reinvented rock music. I prefer Malcolm Young's vocals to Bon Scott's (who died shortly after recording this album) mostly because Back in Black and For Those About to Rock dominated my adolescence, but the corralled chaos of him makes this album largely perfect except for the blues drag of "Night Prowler."
ABBA
4/5
I don't recognize a single ergonomically precise song on this album, making it a weird 1001 choice for the world's most known band, but I'm into it. The opener had me hoping this was the ABBA Krautrock album I didn't know I needed. The stifled disco cabaret of "Head Over Heels" is delicious enough to belay the disappointment that it was not the Go-Go's tune - close your eyes and imagine that. I miss the full endorphin flood of what makes ABBA ABBA, and the soft rock leanings get a little cloying, but still.
Daft Punk
4/5
I don't want to love Daft Punk but I do. They deliver the goods sitting right there in previously delivered goods.
Van Halen
3/5
I forever lean on the Chuck Klosterman rating system: Van Halen's "And the Cradle Will Rock" (not on this album) is the perfect average rock song. Anything better is good. anything worse is bad. So in that spirit, I give this a 3, even though I think it's a little better than that but not much.
OutKast
4/5
Break! This album is still fun as hell. When I go OutKast, I usually go to the more orchestrated Aquemini, but the sparse beats framing Andre3000's not-quite-outsized-yet persona is excellent. It feels like actual 2000 rap music, yet experimental in the right balance. A rare instance of great hip-hop interludes. Some of the guest-heavy tracks like "Snappin'" take me out of it, but otherwise, rock solid.
Neil Young
4/5
This is the Neil Youngiest of all Neil Young: ragged at points, nasal to the point of scheduling an ENT appointment, incandescent, too personal. He and the band are playing in the practice room in your dried up old heart and it's up to you whether you let it rock like a human or call the cops like a narc.
Jungle Brothers
3/5
One hopes De la Soul and A Tribe Called Quest are on this list representing the Daisy Age, so I'm not sure this smart but monotonous excursion by fellow travelers is that necessary. I had this tape, but don't remember any of this except for "U Make Me Sweat" where he goes 'Diane DIANE?" Great cover art!
Radiohead
4/5
Aw, sweet young pre-electronic, terrible graphics Radiohead. The preferred Radiohead album of the all rig, no gig, pedalboard-obsessed guitarist. This is a good record, but just nowhere the Titanic-sinker that OK Computer is. "High and Dry" is such a beauty. It could've been "Creep"-level ubiquitous were we a more sensitive species. "Fake Plastic Trees" is a epic heartbreaker. The rest is a little like a U2 without the unifying ego or a Stone Roses who doesn't dance.
Duke Ellington
2/5
This throws down the gauntlet for how complete a "Complete Live at ____" record can be with the Star Spangled Banner and the committee chair spending too much time on his intros. I'm surprised it doesn't include orders from the concession stand. Once they get to the music, it's cool but not the best recording.
Deep Purple
2/5
This album sounds like Guitar Center on Saturday afternoon. Everyone in there has the spirit and two good ideas but it doesn't gel. Machine Head is the only Deep Purple you need and that is a stretch of the term "need"
Tom Tom Club
4/5
In high school, I got sneered at by a cheerleader for putting on a Tom Tom Club tape at a student council Carnival Ball decorating meeting, and later in life, she became an assistant coroner and was on a short lived reality-cop show about my home town and came off seeming like a horrible person while I am a ray of sunshine, so thanks Tom Tom Club! BIT IT buh bah BIT IT forever!
Grateful Dead
5/5
Whatever you feel toward the Dead, Grateful or otherwise, is valid and earned, and the dead can take it, but this is their one legitimately great studio record. This one is about leaning into the songs and Jerry's folk and bluegrass proclivities as opposed to seeing where they can be stretched. I am into the live Dead, but I always wish there was more strummy acoustic like there is on this record.
Their voices and harmonies are humble and sweet here as opposed to being shouted over a PA the size of the moon. Produced on purpose instead of relying on a stoned sound guy in a baseball stadium. Proves there is actually a great band up in there. I love it.
Blood, Sweat & Tears
3/5
The kind of album the best high school band director in the Midwest conference would make. My band has been working up Satie's Gymnopedies so the opening was a surprise. Not sure it's a great surprise, partic the goofy Zappa-via-Sousa 2nd part, but a surprise.
I have read that this album is one of the first big pop albums recorded on a 16-track tape machine, giving them uncharted layering territory to explore, but they could have ranged farther. David Clayton-Thomas delivers the goods as the Husky Voice of the 70s To Come on the hits, but then the other vocalist only serves to make this album sound like well-crafted and anonymous easy listening. "And When I Die" is much jauntier than I remember, making me wonder if another version polluted the oldies radio of my upbringing.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
5/5
One of those that I think I never need to hear again, and yet every time I do, it sounds even better. How a band this loose sounds this tight is a mystery of record production. Also John Fogerty's raspy voice is one of the best instruments in rock 'n' roll.
Meat Loaf
4/5
It would get 5 stars if it weren't so subtle.
Eminem
3/5
"My Name Is.." is 1999 incarnate. Aggressively commercial, obnoxious, funny in a Jackass way, smartest move possible. Super catchy. A clown horn honking a hope that we would do better in the next century and well... we kinda used it as a template instead, missing the joke. The album as a whole is one hit, all skit.
The Dictators
2/5
Stradling the line between between parody and terrible. They get points for being the goobs that inspired a lot of better NYC punk bands, and honestly liked it more than I thought I would given the sing titles, but not great.
The Damned
5/5
I love this album so much. "Smash It Up" is one of the catchiest hooks in all rock music. Cinerama punk with a great sense of humor and killer playing. Perfectly produced. So happy it is punk week at 1001.
Linkin Park
2/5
I don;'t hate it, but this strikes me as something made by committee. The only reason they had people do it is because AI wasn't there yet in the year 2000
Massive Attack
3/5
The sound of hooking up with someone in the 90s. I don't remember the big single (by Spotify numbers) "Unfinished Sympathy" at all. It's loaded to say this is by the numbers trip hop because Massive Attack punched in those numbers. I like how they create thick atmosphere about almost nothing, but I get tired of the vocals in pretty much every song. Also doing a cover of a song using samples of that song ("Be Thankful") is a real feat of postmodernism.
The B-52's
4/5
Any time I think I have an idea that is too weird or unrelatable, I remind myself that every adult in my generation knows and will do "Rock Lobster" at the slightest provocation. Timeless record, because what conceivable time could this be from?
Black Sabbath
4/5
I was hoping the languid blues cold open was a continuation of a final fadeout on Masters of Reality, like a drugged-out Finnegans Wake or something, but Black Sabbath does what Black Sabbath does - fill the shadows of one's heart with a gothic potential and actually offer something different. The fathers of bleak metal were really a hippie rock band of the finest order and Vol. 4 might be the peak, album-wise., of that trajectory. RIP Ozzy, god of teenagers, scourge of uptight parents, most successful myth maker since the Greeks or at least Kiss, one of the greatest male singers in rock.
50 Cent
1/5
Yo shorty! Gonna pass due to the outsize portion of my life that 50 Cent has taken up simply by declaring it someone's birthday. He gets a point for continuing to publicly vex fellow has-been Diddy.
Alice In Chains
2/5
Alice in Chains woke some kraken in the American males of my generation that is still wreaking its havoc on our dwindling armadas. It is the oversized Ford pickup of hard rock. Sure, powerful, immaculate, unstoppable, but not the kind of vehicle that has ever helped an actual loser in any palpable way like a beat up Toyota Tacoma has.
CHIC
3/5
Nile Rodgers is the master of the perfectly innocuous jam. Legit enjoyed listening to "Le Freak" for the first time on purpose instead of on a school bus speaker or in some boutique from which I would purchase nothing. "At Last I am Free" is total torture tape material - a Branch Davidian would surrender his child bride by minute 5. The rest is solid statistical median good music.
Portishead
5/5
See my Massive Attack review from the other day and add a star. How Portishead never did a Bond theme is beyond me.
Traffic
4/5
Not my favorite Traffic album, but I love this band. They put a soul groove into hippie excess in just the right amounts, accentuating the positive of both. Plus, Steve Windwood is a double threat of killer vocalist and organist. And I'm into the overuse of the flute.
The Afghan Whigs
5/5
This album kills. All the grunge records that came out around this sound like boys cosplaying as degenerate men compared to this. The melodrama is delicious the atmosphere oppressive yet, in a glimmer, uplifting. What a band!
Miles Davis
4/5
Look! It's Miles Davis from jazz! This album is immediately appealing, well-mannered and restrained, none of which being I'm looking for out of Miles Davis or John Coltrane. It is gorgeous, but a little anodyne.
Beatles
4/5
It's not my early Beatles go-to (that would be A Hard Day's Night) but the three-in-a-row "All I've Got to Do" and "All My Loving" and "Don't Bother Me" is pretty killer.
Billy Bragg
5/5
Billy Bragg's Back to Basics tape saved my life on an extended family vacation in my teens and Wilco was my new favorite band when this emerged. I don't know how much of an actual collaboration this was - the documentary portrayed this more as two factions in detente - but it is a beautiful, heartfelt album filled with great songs.
Coldplay
3/5
Reviled as the Nickelback of not being Radiohead, Coldplay is ok, if a little non-adhesive. "Clocks" is deserving of its 1B streams, a legit beautiful song. The rest hits like an unenthusiastic massage: thanks but it's not really hitting the spot and you can stop now. No need for this to go on for an hour.
The Fall
4/5
Hell yes. The first full-length rinky dink foray from greatest weird band in the world. It's difficult to explain/justify the appeal of the Fall to the unsold because they are not all that "appealing", and I think there are better entry points to their endless catalog (Grotesque and Bend Sinister) but this is still quality mutant humanity asserting itself.
The Rolling Stones
5/5
The second best Rolling Stones album after Exile. Problematic, open like an untreated wound, windswept, depleted, punching bag rock.
Prince
3/5
Recognizing this is heretical, I like Prince's persona more than I like Prince's music, particularly a whole album's worth. The title track and "Little Red Corvette" are brilliant. but much further in, I want someone to make him stop that drum machine and the keyboard stabs, and no one will.
I do enjoy the fact that an album this big has a cover drawn with magic marker. See, that's a great Prince move!
Goldfrapp
4/5
A second surprisingly great record from Goldfrapp on this list! Delicious Beatleque production and sound touches on this without sounding necessarily anachronistic for its time. Great songs, if a little samey throughout, but it's a great same!
Tracy Chapman
4/5
This album is great, and I'm glad she's being rediscovered, but I just got over having "Fast Car" stuck in my head for 30 years so gonna pass on actually listening to it again.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
5/5
Killer. I have the Neil Young appreciation gene, so when people say they don't like his voice, I hear you, but I don't really know what you want from the world. I've listened to this album countless times and it still feels fresh and desperate and immediate, and full of romanticized Crazy Horse magic, which it was - the band had been together for about a week when they recorded it and Neil had a 103 degree fever when he wrote a bunch of the songs in one afternoon. That cover photo is the best pointillist painting ever.
A Tribe Called Quest
2/5
It seems wrong to say this, but this album didn't really do anything for me. I recognize their importance in hip-hop's development and get what they are getting at, but it just feels like one bass note over a minimally divergent boom-bap beat for 48 minutes, with the raps so drowned in the mix they never reach the surface. Maybe if I had it on headphones in the subway or something, the context would connect and it would feel perfect.
Eagles
3/5
Good: The guy "the Dude" from The Big Lebowski is based on was in town for a film festival and I got asked to take him out to a bar, where he did actually order White Russians and he dropped enough hints about who he was that people around us kept putting the Eagles on the jukebox to troll him into doing the "I fucking hate the Eagles" bit over and over.
Indecisive: Eagles greatest hits is the only CD my dad ever bought. Not sure if he ever played it, or if he did, what in.
Bad: Listen to the drums and rhythm guitar on "Hotel California" closely and realize in horror that they invented white reggae while inventing soft rock.
Stevie Wonder
5/5
Such a great record. It doesn’t have the punch of Talking Book or Fulfillingness before it but has a wider cinematic scope and precise personal execution to it. I could get by without ever hearing “Isn’t She Lovely” again - it’s hard to express how omnipresent Stevie Wonder’s more saccharine hits were in a gen X upbringing - but it the one I tend to return to the most.
Ryan Adams
5/5
All killer, no filler. This was a very transformative record for me, one that made me say, "I should get a guitar" accidentally out loud in my cubicle, and the guy in the next one sold me his for $10 and it led me to who I am today. I can still sing every word of this thing, which made it feel personal when it was revealed what a scumbag normal old predator rock star he is. But, if you can separate the art from the artist (I manage to compartmentalize enough to still love the monsters that are the Rolling Stones) this record is a must.
My Bloody Valentine
4/5
It's cool that this album exists so that many a hapless guitarist can daydream about what pedalboard configuration will allow them to recreate that one swoon on "When You Sleep" while they waste hours at unfulfilling office jobs or socializing with people who are not guitars.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
1/5
If, at the AI prompt, you typed: "soundtrack for jr high school locker room-themed bar n grill", this album would appear.
The Police
4/5
The Police's answer to Who's Next, or maybe those 80's King Crimson albums. The big ballad hits on side two sound out of place vs the weirder frenetic songs. The Breath/Pain/Finger adult contemporary block floats like a marshmallow in a gas tank.
3/5
The title track and cover photo collage alone should get this 5 stars. The removal of the "kick out the jams mf..." intro on "Kick out the Jams" on Spotify is a war crime and thereby loses a point. The rest of the album is so-so, losing another.
Beach House
4/5
I dismissed the whole dream pop thing this band embodies as Bed Bath and Reverb until I watched Twin Peaks: The Return and it clicked. This is cinematic music, detached with purpose so that you flood in the empty spot next to where the pretty girl is singing, which is not what I usually want our of music, but I can dig it.
Neil Young
4/5
I feel for you Neil haters. They could at least spread these out a little more. Love this record. I've thought about or sung to myself "I dreamed I saw the silver spaceships flying in the yellow haze of the sun" at least once a week for the last 20 years.
John Coltrane
5/5
Flawless. Just weird enough to stand out from most basic jazz classics, deliriously expressive, but still wholly accessible.
Television
5/5
Pretty unstoppable record. A friend of mine started a Television cover band and leaned into the 70s boogie aspect under the famously angular surface of their thing and it made me love it even more.
Blur
4/5
They are topmost among those post-Smiths very English smarty bands that I feel I should like more than I do. The first two songs are five stars, but the rest struggle to stay in focus for me, and I feel I should apologize for feeling such a way, which is peak Britpop, earning this just above average.
Machito
1/5
I like hooty Latin dance music as much as someone who cannot do those dances can, but I felt jostled by this record, and am opting to just get out of its way. Plus, terrible cover!
Sonic Youth
4/5
I was super into this album sophomore year of college, one of the first I taped during my first show at the college radio station. I remember trying to sell some friends on it back home and realizing I was really parting ways with them. The strummy riffs of “Schizophrenia” and the waterless surf of “Catholic Block” are what comes to me first when I hear the name Sonic Youth, though now I think they have better, more fleshed out material. “Hot Wire My Heart” might be their most fun song.
Gorillaz
3/5
"Clint Eastwood" is as dumb and perfect as anything Damon Albarn has done, proof-of-concept for a half- or maybe too-baked idea that really got rolling a few albums later. the rest is good enough but not enough good.
Green Day
3/5
Nth generation Integrity Punk meets Meat Loaf in a suburban mall about to shut down. This would make a great musical for people who like musicals, and it did! If I had an aggressively normcore teenager who suddenly glommed onto this, it would warm my heart.
David Bowie
4/5
I have bandmates who proclaim this their favorite Bowie record but they also love Tool and Queensrÿche and wish our fun little psyche garage band was more like Tool and Queensrÿche, which tracks. It's interesting, uncompromised, very much feeling like this was his vision out at the rim of the abyss, but like a lot of eras of Bowie (that whole techno decade), it's not what I go to Bowie for.
Basement Jaxx
2/5
This music sounds like I am about to pay too much for sunglasses at a place next to a Chipotle.
The Libertines
4/5
This is a great snotty rock record, rife with swagger and longing. The rare UK tabloid fodder rock that actually delivered on the hype.
Bob Dylan
4/5
This album feels like it was almost recorded clandestinely just as the real weird bird that is Bob Dylan hopped out of the folk music nest. Three of his greatest songs up in here.
Amy Winehouse
3/5
Yes, Amy Winehouse can sing like the best ever girl at karaoke and was had an electromagnetic, tragic persona, but outside of "Rehab" (not on this album), her music feels pretty by-the-numbers R&B
Van Morrison
5/5
Magical. From what I gather, he recorded these spare with just guitar and then the jazzy arrangements were dubbed in after by the producers and it was the best idea ever. If you only know him from the saccharine hits and the loutish clown he has recently become, get ready to fine out why Van was once the Man.
Metallica
2/5
I like plenty of metal in its various alloys but Metallica albums sound tinny to me. Leaden. Ore something. I could go on. I don't dig them, but the pleasure of making metal puns is all mine.
Animal Collective
3/5
I, narcotic lightweight, ate a THC chocolate espresso bean at a party once that had me feeling like I was on an endless rollercoaster ascent and nice people were trying to talk to me about nice things but all I could think about is WHEN ARE WE GOING TO GET TO THE TOP GODDAMMIT and experience a similar feeling with this record, which I suspect was influenced by slightly harder stuff. I do like staring at the cover.
Sung Tongs is the AC record for this AC.
Johnny Cash
4/5
I was wishing they'd just leave that old man alone by the time this fourth installment of forced life-support came out, but then I heard the heartbreaker that is "Hurt" and then "Personal Jesus" and thought maybe Rick Rubin really is a genius like they say. "In My Life" is almost unfair how poignant it is in his ragged voice, and they even managed to find a decent song inside "Desperado." Docking one point for all the sub-par apocalypse movie trailers the excellent title track has inspired.
Depeche Mode
3/5
It seems weird to say now, but Depeche Mode were very important to me as a budding small-town new-waver in the 80s and this album seemed a disappointing populist turn. "Personal Jesus" was their "Shiny Happy People" to me, except about heroin. If you read "Shiny Happy People" as a heroin song, maybe it's a better song.
I don't hear what I used to hear in their early albums so the Depeche Maginot line is less defined. The hits are giant, but airless. They don't have the same gothic romance or musique concrete elements to them as Some Great Reward and Black Celebration, which is probably why people like them.
Chicago
3/5
The album that launched a thousand marching band directors!
My view of Chicago has softened in my dotage - I no longer seek a window to jump out of when they come on. I even kinda liked “Does Anyone Even Know” for the first time listening to it on purpose instead of over a loudspeaker at a public pool. It still stands as a less-than-satisfying complicated answer to a simple question, which seems an apt synopsis of Chicago.
Struck me that there are a lot of numbers in Chicago titles. I’m sure some an horn player has somewhere broken the code.
Todd Rundgren
3/5
I feel like there is always someone in music circles trying to sell you on Todd Rundgren they way we were led to believe people in trenchcoats in big cities would try to sell you a watch. I don't hate watches, am kinda dazzled by their intricate mechanism sometimes, but I quit wearing them at the advent of cell phones, and feel a same "Impressive, but don't really need it" toward Todd Rundgren.
I do love when he produces other people's records (XTC Skylarking, Patti Smith Wave, New York Dolls debut)
Fugees
4/5
What I like about this is how loose it is, which is also what I tire of with this album. The album goes on for-evvvver, like watching a spark inch up the fuse to a dud firecracker. The two singles are covers or largely covers ("Ready or Not" borrowing heavily from the Delfonics original) which struck me at the time as an old record company move - have these fresh faces do stuff from the catalog. The version of "No Woman/No Cry" is dumb, a warning against giving Wyclef Jean too much latitude.
The deep cuts like "Zealous" the "The Mask" hit harder for me, paving way for the inventiveness and lack-of-editor in Lauryn Hill's career. Overall, the stoney, self-care vibe is a balm against the blatant self-promotion plaguing 90's hip-hop. It was a turning point that groups like Outkast took up and ran with.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
4/5
I like the heaviness of this album. It's the one where Bob meets the gravity which is placed upon him. But also, I really like the vocoder/talkbox touch in the one of those endless repeats of "Movement of Jah People", which I've never heard before despite having been a white guy who once lived in a college dorm.
LCD Soundsystem
5/5
LCD Soundsystem nail that hipster shrug I want in NYC rock and yet somehow sneak in actual warmth among the beats and drugs and this is them at their peak. Each song on this album evokes a scene I'm sure I'm not cool enough to be invited to, but I am there. "All My Friends" is the sweetest minimalist song ever.
Goldie
2/5
Actively listening to this album, esp a 20+ minute opener, is a big ask. We should be hearing 30 seconds of this in the underground warehouse club scene of a cop procedural, caged go-go dancer looking on as a guy in eyeliner is shook down for information. Or on the apartment stereo of a person who is taking too long to sell you these drugs. What I'm saying: this is situational music, and the laptop in my office is not the situation.
Miles Davis
4/5
This album is not for everyone - certainly was not upon its release - but the way Miles Davis and his band cut themselves loose from the polite tether of the jazz that made him famous is thrilling unto itself, and the music is a real step toward the interstellar.
Steve Winwood
3/5
"When You See a Chance" is the template for every major network theme song since its release, but I don't know if he gains or loses a point for that.
De La Soul
5/5
It's amazing how well this holds up. An alternative to the macho posturing that comprised(s) a lot of hip-hop also without being a mirror-gazing affirmation session. De La Soul feel like real actual people you would know or even be on this record. Their sampling is peerless, even all these years later. Great skits, infectious beats, amazing flow, funny, smart, warm, real.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
It's taken a lot of soul searching and abandoning the biases of youth to accept Creedence into my life, but I am richer for it. This is not the album I'd pick - I feel we did Green River already - but its still a good one. No one can make a recording studio sound like a tin roof chicken coop the way CCR does.
Jimi Hendrix
5/5
Not having listened to this since maybe high school, I'm a little floored. Guitar, yes, of course, but goddamn Steve Winwood again, on organ on "Voodoo Chile", takes it Valhalla. The variety on this record! 60s baroque pop vs blues workouts vs Tom Waitsy-hipsterism vs studio interstellar excursions. I love an album that feels like it could be a radio station. And "All Along the Watchtower" deserves every play it's ever gotten.
The Police
4/5
Adorable bangers most of the way through (the clunky ones like "Contact" are at least interesting. I kinda wanna cover "Does Everyone Stare") and a fleet of dreamboats on the cover! The Clash and PIL and Specials laid all the reggae-punk-pop groundwork before them, but the Police really made it blossom into its own thing.
Richard Thompson
5/5
This and Shoot Out the Lights (their marriage crumbling in real time in the studio with the latter) are staggering advancements in portraiture of complicated people living complicated lives and finding tragedy and beauty in it. The Lord invented the electric guitar so Richard Thompson could one day play it on the opening for "Calvary Cross" and how you don't fall in love with Linda on the title track is beyond me.
The Smiths
4/5
Maybe "How Soon is Now?" was on the cassette I had on that last night of the fair when this album created me, and it seems one star less without it. Otherwise, every squirmy teenager needs this record and the warning fable that is Morrissey today to keep a hand on the tiller.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
Typical of their great run of albums between Aftermath and Exile, this is a hodgepodge of what they do best. I never get tired of hearing the cosmic "Gimme Shelter," the goofy "Let it Bleed" and the arid "You Got the Silver." "Midnight Rambler" feels like filler - when the Stones get dismissed as a blues cover band, this is evidence it's not their strongest suit. Capping off an album built on self-pity and resignation with "You Can't Always Get What You Want" is a piece of track sequence poetry.
The Mamas & The Papas
3/5
I have a soft spot for the M's & P's, some of the sweetest music to come from terrible and terrorized people, but I don't know that they are really an album band. A greatest hits would probably do you better. A great undersung (though likely offensive by modern standards) album to come out of their poisoned honey universe is John Phillips The Wolfking of LA.
Led Zeppelin
3/5
'Immigrant Song" is a great thesis statement, "Out on the Tiles" their struttiest, "Tangerine" a sleeper great tune that makes me happy every time I hear it. The maypole folk songs are good, but not what I board a heavy dirigible for. A lot of the rest is nice enough bluesy soundtracky mood pieces I've publicly thought might be Pink Floyd until the vocals hit.
Joni Mitchell
3/5
I know I should like Joni Mitchell records better than I do but I like them exactly as much as I like them
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
4/5
I love Neil Young and even I'm feeling, "Enough with the Neil young already"
David Bowie
4/5
I like this album, better than Blackstar, to be honest, and it feels like that actual final statement of the David Bowie I loved over the years, though of all his catalog, its not one I'd put on this list.
Giant Sand
5/5
Giant Sand exists in their own pocket universe, which is my favorite kind of band. Haphazard but weirdly precise about it and mood all the way through the eerie desert night. Glad to see this on here mostly because it takes the pressure off of me handing out flowers at the airport, trying to get people to listen to Giant Sand.
David Holmes
4/5
Here's what I want out of this list! Knew nothing about David Holmes but liked it a lot. Right up in that Fatboy Slim era where DJs were crafting great cinematic songs that can exist outside of the club. Makes sense that he became Steven Soderbergh's go-to soundtrack producer. I find a lot of DJ-ish things a little ephemeral (my own bias) so I don't know how crucial this is, but I quite enjoyed it.
Justin Timberlake
3/5
Being a stubborn jouster of the ever-revolving pop music windmill, I'm surprised to like this. More organic than the icy "Sexyback" material with which I'm more familiar, kinda like a pre-Thriller Michael Jackson, it still feels over-caffeinated for these weary ears. I might feel different if it was 2002 and I was 23 on the prowl.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
5/5
As jazz goes, it's a little square, but as musicality goes, it is an celestial geodesic dome that can fold down into something you can carry in a shirt pocket.
Willie Nelson
5/5
This is a staggering beauty of a record - reverent classics mixed with dreamy little vignettes, sounding like it was recorded in a motel room on an answering machine. One of my favorites.
2/5
This is one of those psychedelic albums with a much better title than music. I expect more than a congenial choogle from the nightmare realm of Dr. Sardonicus.
Arrested Development
4/5
I remember them mostly for the ubiquitous feel-good singles but there is a lot more Public Enemy-level swagger and sonic density to the album than I would've guessed. Dig it.
David Bowie
3/5
5-star album cover on a 3-star Bowie album. If he'd done the lightning bolt thing for Scarry Monsters, it'd be perfect. Otherwise, it's the most Springsteen Bowie album, even though it came out before most Springsteen albums. I suspect time travel was involved.
AC/DC
5/5
This album is fully coded into my genome so I may not be the most unbiased opinion when I say it's why electricity was invented.
Stan Getz
5/5
Listened to this a couple days ago on a gorgeous day, windows down, coffee in hand, etc. One of the best records ever made. The perfect balance between vibe and virtuosity, neither getting in the way of the other.
Slipknot
1/5
I'd say I hate it, because I do, but I wanted to be open minded. Than the scratch DJ showed up.
Hot Chip
2/5
New Order called and would like their whole deal back. Scritti Politti is on line two.
Beatles
5/5
This might be their best, right where a gig-hardened super-tight Beatles give way to the hermetic studio alchemist Beatles. The catchy idiots ("Beep beep! Yeah!") transition into armchair existentialists ("Making all his nowhere plans for nobody"). Even the cutest boys in the world become gruesome on the cover and that typeface launched a thousand psychedelic posters. It's the Panama Canal lock and dam complex of 1960's popular music.
The White Stripes
4/5
Despite "Seven Nation Army" being THE White Stripes song, I don't know this is the album I'd pick. I'm partial to Get Behind Me, Satan and White Blood Cells is the foundation document, but really any album of theirs is good. "Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine" is a highlight deep cut on this.
Michael Kiwanuka
4/5
Great vibe in a Khruangbin, non-specific jazzish/exotica/orchestral soul way. I like how the poppier beats give way to something more introspective as the album goes on. This kind of thing doesn't really stick with me, but I dig it while it's on.
Leonard Cohen
5/5
Imagine being a tin-eared poet who says, sure I'll record something, and you drop a thermonuclear song like Suzanne to start your album and career. The whole thing is like a new continent surfacing in the ocean just as you are contemplating a move.
Elliott Smith
4/5
Great fully fleshed pop rock album. Recorded partly at Abbey Road and it bears a McCartney baroque pop influence. His ambitions meet his realizations, especially in the schmaltzy piano songs. Great albums by suicide victims is a weird, grim genre. If you can divide this from his tragic trajectory, this album is a timeless classic. Otherwise , it will leave you scouring for clues as to what went wrong.
Steve Earle
4/5
This is a big one for me, a frequent flyer in the CD player of our Corolla for the first years of my marriage. The production feels dated but the songs still hits like a guardrail. Funny, irreverent and heartbreaking. "Someday" still chokes me up a little at the chorus.
Cream
3/5
This is a turgid oldies airwaves filler that earns its keep because it gave way to "White Room" on the next album after it. I do kinda dig "Tales of Brave Ulysses" as it cobbles a song out of all the good ideas Cream had, seeing a prog epic through in under three minutes.
Pixies
5/5
I had a snobbish eschewal of Pixies having been a college DJ during their ascendancy, but one Saturday, Lara7 of this group and I picked up this tape at a yard sale and it made me a convert. It was our practice to buy a tape at the first garage sale and listen to it for the rest of the day rummaging through people's detritus, and that day we struck gold.
Madness
4/5
Nice surprise! This album never made it to the US despite "Our House" being an omnipresent hit (it and a number of the songs from this were included on the self-titled album from 1983) the one that showed everyone this clown car of a band had more depth to it.
I really love Madness. This ambitious album encapsulates English slapstick and eccentricity laced with just enough English melancholy and class struggle and every once in a while you are reminded they were tight as hell. I was gonna say this isn't the Madness album I'd pick, but I'd never heard it before.
Mott The Hoople
5/5
Mott the Hoople is like a David Bowie who might also help you move to a new apartment. What I want out of BIG ROCK - swagger betraying vulnerability, knuckleheadedness laced with insight, Olympian inaccessibility woven in with "That could be me." "I Wish I Was Your Mother" is one of the weirdest conceits for a great love song. This and Brain Capers are two of my favorite rock albums ever.
The Saints
4/5
(I'm) tempted to say you are a contrarian who needs their list-making credentials revoked if you pick this over their classic (I'm) Stranded, but it's a great record with a lot of stylistic range.
Buena Vista Social Club
4/5
If you worked in a bookstore from 1997-2007 or have a partner who has, you may be entitled to compensation from the Buena Vista Social Club. Outside of that, this is still a great record that makes me smile and sway every time I hear it.
Nirvana
4/5
Holds up.
Depeche Mode
4/5
I didn't care for this at the time despite being a DM superfan in high school, but it has grown on me, esp "Never Let Me Down Again." Assuming this is about Dave Gahan's then burgeoning addictions, it's poignant and a little heartbreaking. "The Things You Said" and "Behind the Wheel" lean into Kraftwerk territory to great effect, and "Little 15" brings all the eldergoths to the yard.
There's a lot of the experimental-y musique concrete stuff I liked them for, so I'm not sure what my deal was. I think it was that regular people liked "Strangelove" and had to rectify that one of my favorite bands was actually popular. (Cue "To Have And To Hold" as I close my yearbook and put it back on the shelf.)
Def Leppard
4/5
Ray Charles
2/5
The “French sex comedies” of ubiquitous thrift store records. I like Ray Charles. I like country music, at least the era of it he is mining. I like modern sounds! A deficit of the sum of its parts.
R.E.M.
5/5
Aww this sweet ol record with the oddball intros and the open hearted sophomore poetry workshop lyrics and sound effects still sounds great. Makes me want my old bike and busted Walkman. REM was at their best when they could just barely reach the music in their heads. So many great tunes but the one I always come back to is the wistful “We Walk.” It has a hold-hands-in-the-parlor romance to it.
Stevie Wonder
4/5
Layers like a patisserie croissant, equally buttery.
R.E.M.
4/5
The big radio turning point for my then favorite band. It made me so mad - REM was the rare Southern cultural entity that wasn't an embarrassment - but a more enlightened me can see this record is solid power pop, a natural progression, and the radio bent toward them instead of vice-versa. I even kinda like "Stand" now - all those key changes! I saw them on this tour and at one point Michael Stipe sat at the end of the stage in a lotus position while the band attempted a version of Cameo's "Word Up" so yeah, they were still on a journey.
The xx
3/5
OK I listened to the wrong The xx album since they all kind of have the same cover. I liked the one I listened to first (2009's xx) a lot and give it 5 stars. This is less for adding more to the deal. The former makes the scene and doesn't exist at all. This: meh pop music.
King Crimson
3/5
ELP wants to give you a wizard battle. Yes, at its heart, wants to please people. King Crimson wants people to do math problems.
I like it, but I imagine the wonkiest album by the wonkiest band is a big ask for a lot of people when there are those great Adrian Belew-era King Crimson albums out there.