It's difficult for someone my age to hear this without expecting Paul Simon to jump out from behind a door, but it's a lot of fun, and nice to imagine dancing in Senegal rather than clearing six inches of snow from the roof of the car.
If the goal here is to choose influential albums, this is a clear winner. I thought I was listening to a Nirvana demo.
Exactly the beta blocker some of us needed today.
I know all of EC's pre-1990 albums like my own heartbeat and this is nowhere near the best of the lot. What strikes me, revisiting it now, is that its main contribution is in the cleverness of the lyrics; the songs are straight-up rock & roll tunes (only Watching the Detectives, which was not on the original album, sounds like any kind of departure). Nonetheless, I have to give it at least a 4 for cultural significance and announcing a major talent, not to mention encapsulating my youth. (Also, do yourself a favor and listen to a remaster--the old one sounds like crap)
True story: my mother had Alzheimer's and was confused and agitated and this album calmed her (I never knew her to listen to music deliberately). The voices are gorgeous both individually and in combination, and I feel like I can hear Linda trying hard not to overpower everyone else, as she definitely could.
I didn't actually know this one--Sound Affects is more my jam--but it's excellent, of course.
Interesting choice, because most of it is pretty unremarkable. The two singles are as great as anything he ever did but the rest sounds like an ordinary band (unlike, say, the Cars or Van Halen whose first albums presented an entirely new sound). I'd take Damn the Torpedoes any day.
I've always loved this album, but it's probably hard for the youngsters to appreciate how revolutionary it was for a bunch of young women to write their own songs, play their own instruments, and make a #1 record. I see that it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's an absolute classic, and you would not have your Bikini Kills or Best Coasts without them.
It's difficult for someone my age to hear this without expecting Paul Simon to jump out from behind a door, but it's a lot of fun, and nice to imagine dancing in Senegal rather than clearing six inches of snow from the roof of the car.
If the goal here is to choose influential albums, this is a clear winner. I thought I was listening to a Nirvana demo.
Didn't thrill me, sorry
Not sure I've ever listened to it straight through. Good stuff.
I confess I didn't have time to listen to the whole thing today, but I filled in the gaps in my memory, and even allowing for side 4 it's still totally solid
I am not the audience for this album and my opinion is irrelevant, but I was prepared to hate it and I really didn't. Yeah, it was too long and some of it was offensive (no more so than Mötley Crũe, but that was a performance too). The groove is solid (although when I hear the samples I tend to think why don't we just listen to that?) and the rapping is skillful and the Library of Congress says it's significant, so I'm fine with it.
This doesn't particularly speak to me, but it's clearly influential and all that. I'm totally neutral on this one. And I don't know any French (although I generally ignore lyrics so that shouldn't matter).
I could not make it through 45 minutes of this, but it's nice to see that Cookie Monster has found a healthy way of working out his frustrations. We could all take a lesson from him.
Solid groove, more jazzy than I remembered, definitely cures migraines and arthritis
Exactly the beta blocker some of us needed today.
Kind of boring, frankly. Trying to reach a mass audience in the 80s was a losing game.
This is a hippie litmus test and I still don't pass. I have childhood memories associated with the big hits, of course.
The only upside of this is that 20 minutes of something called Eruption sent me straight to Van Halen.
This is a truly impressive work of art but not necessarily enjoyable to listen to. I'll take Army of Me any day, but I'm kind of lowbrow.
Meh, this sounds like everything else on the hipster radio station. Oh wait... seriously, I had other priorities (two little kids) in 2009 so I missed all the pop-punk action, but this is a gem.
Boring. Too many songs, each one is too long, and they all sound the same. The 90s were a musical sinkhole.
Welcome to the 80s theme park! I had only ever heard Take On Me (and it amazes me that anyone can hear that as anything but the soundtrack to a video--it's barely a song) but the rest of the album is like a template for Europop.
This could be a lot shorter but the good parts are very good and the lads are clearly having fun.
I can't say I'm familiar enough with the old tango to fully appreciate this, but it was pleasant enough. I'm straight-up neutral.
Am I rating the album I'm listening to (not bad, if you like that sort of thing), the conceptual art project it represents (kind of odd) or its influence on the next generation of electronic dance pop (significant)? Did I even listen to the right version? I'd lean toward a 2.5 with an extra .5 for Tammy Wynette.
There's a lot more going on here than straight-up 1978 punk--a little power pop, a little glam, maybe even a little prog noodling. Whether they were hugely influential or just riding a bunch of waves I don't know, but I'm ok with it.
Very pleasant
I believe the International Bureau of Weights and Measures uses this as the standard for 5-star albums.
I like this better than the Dead, but it still strikes me as a bargain-basement Band (or Byrds). But I listened to 8:05 three times.
How can you hear "FREAK OUT!" and not smile? Some of the album is disco perfection (crying out to be sampled) and some of it feels like very technically accomplished backing tracks.
Abrasive, repetitive, grating, monotonous singing followed by shouting. Make it go away.
Can't say I know enough about Bollywood music to judge this, but it was pretty entertaining.
Lots going on here; I'm sure they're great live. I'm rounding my rating up from 3.5 despite the fact that they are at least partly responsible for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
It's very hard to listen to this objectively, as Back to Black is so much better. But I can imagine being impressed with her in 2003 even if these songs aren't great.
I am baffled. The Pet Shop Boys released 15 albums? And three of them are on this list? And Neil Tennant didn't come out until 1993? This album is a fine example of their output but nothing stands out for me.
These reviews are an argument for listening to the albums in chronological, rather than random, order. Listen, kids, there would be no Nirvana or Pixies without Bob Mould. In my personal pantheon I rate Grant Hart a little higher as a songwriter and I therefore like Hüsker Dü a bit better than Sugar, but I'm not going to split hairs. Totally solid power punk.
Brighter and bouncier than most of what I think of as millennial rock. Perfectly pleasant.
That wah thing sends me right back to junior high. I didn't get it then and, having listened to the whole album for the first time, I am even more confused now: were all those junior high boys really into all this noodly meandering? Was Do You Feel Like We Do always 14 minutes long? Was it all about the hair?
I bought the patchouli-scented album in 1990, I saw the tour (from the worst seats in the Oakland Coliseum), and I see no reason to back down now. Definitely Madonna's best album and its influence reverberates through several generations of women in pop. And hello there Prince!
Listening to this for the first time in 40 years, I am noticing is how slow it is--even the relatively peppy tunes kind of drag, so I can see how newcomers find it dull. They were clearly a work in progress, but nothing else sounded like this in 1983. (But yes, this and Reckoning are their best albums, and I am shocked at how long they kept it up as they got duller and duller.)
Moby may have done more to promote the work of Alan Lomax to the general public than Pete Seeger; too bad they're all on X when they hear it. I'm somewhat seduced by its propulsive catchiness and then I listen to a couple of real songs and think nah, this is well-marketed trash.
Can't say I made it all the way through, but I got the gist. What did a bunch of dudes in Iowa in 1998 have to be so mad about? Did they invent the 90s thing of throwing in the little melody between the screaming to show they know what it is? No thanks.
A nice album of 70s-esque R&B; I'd never heard of them but I can definitely see keeping this around. It is not surprising or bothersome in any way that an R&B album is infused with racial consciousness (maybe some people missed the 60s?) but the fact that this has a lower overall rating than Moby is truly disturbing.
A great achievement in both rapping and sampling; my only complaint is that it's hard to listen to both at once.
I can definitely listen to it, I might be able to appreciate it, but you can't make me like it.
Leaving aside the issues of Dylan's genius and his voice, there are some pretty good songs on here (and a couple of duds). I'd give it a 4.5 if I could.
If I'm going to listen to this for an hour I'd better get a plane ticket at the end
This is very beautiful and wicked depressing
A little more chill than most jangle pop bands of the era (and by chill I guess I mean boring; I listened twice because I thought I missed something but it turns out I didn't). Reminiscent of The The, but not quite the genuine article. I'm giving it a 3.5.
So before they were a soft-rock behemoth, Chicago was a tedious, meandering blues band. Got it.
I am not in a mood to rationalize misogyny today, so I just listened to a couple of tracks so I can confidently agree that his rapping is indeed deft and I don't need to hear the rest.
Wow, this is freaky--it's like I landed in an alternate universe where the Beatles, the Who, and Pink Floyd didn't exist. Maybe psychedelic rock operas are like lightbulbs or intermittent wipers--if one person hadn't invented them someone else would have, so you can't give anyone the patent. This one is fine, if you're in the mood.
Not being a huge Bowie devotee, I'm trying to understand what everyone loves so much about this one. Nice funky backing, true. And a funny reference to Fiddler on the Roof in Stay. But apart from the singles, which I like fine, nothing about this grabs me. Sorry.
There's nothing compelling about this album. It is from an era when I was really not paying attention to new music, so I might be tempted to discount it as being a product of a dull era, but I liked the Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs albums when they came around, so I can only conclude that this is slop.
I know all of EC's pre-1990 albums like my own heartbeat and this is nowhere near the best of the lot. What strikes me, revisiting it now, is that its main contribution is in the cleverness of the lyrics; the songs are straight-up rock & roll tunes (only Watching the Detectives, which was not on the original album, sounds like any kind of departure). Nonetheless, I have to give it at least a 4 for cultural significance and announcing a major talent, not to mention encapsulating my youth. (Also, do yourself a favor and listen to a remaster--the old one sounds like crap)
When we got Slipknot, everyone said at least it isn't Linkin Park. Now I'm thinking at least it isn't Slipknot.
It's a paradox: you can focus on the groove to ignore the offensive lyrics, but if you focus on the groove you'll just go put on a Parliament album.
This is very lovely and clearly influential--I hear echoes of many British guitar dudes. It's interesting to me that guitar-picking tunes that hearken back to the agrarian past in the UK are called folk and in the US are called country, but someone else can figure that out.
21 songs, 35.5 minutes! Admirable. I like my punk a little poppier (I'll take the Buzzcocks any day) but this is a solid roadmap for a generation of British punk bands.
So much rougher and rowdier than the sweet-voiced crooner I was familiar with. Also notable that he wrote all these songs, which we hear now as standards (in the play and movie One Night in Miami his character gives a long speech on the importance of owning your copyrights). And finally I was delighted to learn that Def Leppard referenced Cooke in Rock of Ages. In short, this was both entertaining and educational.
Hard to rate this album strictly on its own. Booker T and the MGs were the backbone of Stax and had a few great singles, but were primarily an unparalleled backing band. That said, this is fun to listen to, so I'm giving it a 4.5.
I saw them once and it was the most excruciatingly loud thing I've ever experienced, so I played this very quietly. It had its moments, but I can see why they lean on volume. (And the Cure cover was a treat.)
And Your Bird Can Sing is in my top 5 or so songs ever, so that's that. Listening today it occurred to me that if you heard these songs for the first time knowing nothing about anything you might not believe that the John songs and the Paul songs (never mind George and Ringo) were by the same band. If I knew my Beatles chronology better I might suggest that this album planted the seed of their eventual divergence. (I tend to think Paul's a sap but his beautiful songs are very beautiful, and For No One is one.)
I would have to listen ten more times (which I guess I might) to really comprehend all the lyrics, but the fact that they used the samples to create a new, chaotic sound is enough for me.
Nothing about this appeals to me, and I assume that if I knew French I'd like it even less. (I guess Tommy is a concept album about child abuse too, but frankly I never liked that all that much either.)
Bloated and overwrought, with too many Paul songs (and Paul at his music-hall cheesiest). It seems that many of the 5 ratings are rooted in nostalgia or basic respect, and I can understand that--this is the only Beatles album I listened to in full before age 20, as I inherited it from an uncle who died young--but I have never voluntarily listened to a single one of these songs since. I'm being generous giving it a 4.