1001 Albums Summary

Prog nonsense.

Technically, impressive and worth listening to, but at least on first listening I was not actually moved.

Well that was a lot of fun.

I don't understand what they mean, and I could really give a f*ck.

I will be singing Take On Me until the day I day. But I didn't need the album.

The kind of thing you'd probably like if you like that kind of thing.

I don't know if it's possible for me to "listen" to this again. I mean, I can play it, but (like Murmur or Rumours) it's already so loud in my head.

There was a time I would have tried to love this. But there's too much sawing and just not enough joy or enough anarchy.

Come on. The only way it could be better is if it were tusk.

Some really evocative moments - esp. 8:05 - but the whole time I kept thinking I was listening to a really adept pastiche/re-creation of that moment. A totally unfair perspective, I realize. I bet their shows were fantastic.

All the middle-school feels.

Love the horns, and the technical level is high throughout. But this kind of funk-rock has never really moved me, even if Spotify claims it is the lineal descendant of the ska that I once did love.

What's not to love about her voice? But I feel about this just as I feel about an album of jazz covers by Rickie Lee Jones - very nice, but not what I'm here for.

No thank you.

My son tried to get me into this a while ago, and I had the same reaction this time. It's fine.

Some of the classics of my youth that have popped up here - Rumours, Murmur - have instantly evoked nostalgia, amusement, or wistfulness. This one still gets me in a place that feels present, live, and meaningful. From the first chord on the album, I am engaged.

Not for me.

I had never listened to Chicago before in the context of an album - and the it's a good deal weirder and more interesting than I expected.

Hard to believe I once loved this kind of thing, though never this exact thing.

This album is a freight train. Heavy, not always so pretty (especially compared to the half-dozen records that preceded it), but jesus once it gets going I really remember why I loved it so much. I'm sitting here bopping to TVC15 like it's 1982.

This has been my favorite Beatles record for a long time. This time through did not change that.

5 stars? No stars? I don't know. Ask me to rate "Dayenu." My parents played this in the living room. My siblings and I listened to it a thousand times before we were teenagers. This has been burned so deeply in my brain that it falls into another category entirely.

I can't say I loved it, but as it played in the background I found myself responding to it with small smiles.

Nicholson Baker somewhere describes listening to a late-70s jam fade out at the end of an album track and thinking that the producer wanted you to have the sense that they were just going to keep playing all night. This is like that.

Renee's review nails it.

I think if I had discovered this during one of the late-adolescent periods when I was listening to After Bathing at Baxter's, I would have thought I had found the grail. Now it just doesn't have enough structure to keep my attention for very long, though I really liked some passages (and later tracks that Spotify pulled up after the album was done).

This one and Station to Station (which I think came up last month) were part of the second tier of Bowie for me - not the superheavy rotation of Ziggy, Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Hunky Dory, Heroes, but just below that. Trying to listen with fresh ears, what I mostly hear is the machine-like insistence of Bowie's band, repeating almost loops, and here Eno's pop weirdness (some of which I also really loved during the same era - there's a lot of stuff that sounds like "Before and After Science" in the background here). It's great.

This is just one banger after another. Even the ones that don't grab me immediately remind me of what I love about Burt Bachrach. (Update: it turns out that this is because they were actually written by Burt Bachrach.)

I have come back to this a dozen times since 1985, trying to like it. Still no luck.

As background music goes, so much more satisfying than the Eno.

Love this so much, forty years later. So much weirdness, so much pop. Such great guitars.

There are moments when the record threatens to take off. But then it just sits down.

Help!

This Isn't Spinal Tap. Nor is it Otis Redding. There are some great moments, but I'm instantly hungry again.

There's a lot of Joni I love, and a lot of Joni I don't, and this is closer to the don't.

I'm never listening to this again.

To explain my response to this record I'd first need to summarize Andrew Hickey's 3+ hour podcast on the place of the Dead (in his "History of Rock Music in 500 songs"). And after that I'd be too tired to listen to "Friend of the Devil."

I thought I would enjoy the nostalgia much more than I did.

What was that? It made literally no impression on me beyond mild irritation.

Still so good.

Wanted to have a more critical reaction, but this still sounds amazing.

It's fine. It's not Big Pink, which is great.

This made no impression on me in 1987 and has exactly the same effect today. I'm sure I'm missing something important, but I suspect it's all affective context.

Wow, I just cannot get past minute 10.

This is so much my kind of thing that I am surprised I don't know it. This record led me to the second, Mighty Joe Moon, which I might like even better.

Definitely in my top 50 albums of all time, on the strength of the two incredible covers.

On paper should really like this.

I think this is still my favorite of hers. Somehow both a perfect time capsule (Thom Yorke!) and really moving.

I like the British invasion stuff a lot better after they start writing their own stuff.

I've listened to this a dozen times over the years - it never makes a huge impression on me, but it's always delightful in the moment.

There was some great work here, but also a fair bit of the not-so-focused noodling (especially lyrical) that has kept me from being a solid fan.

The top end of this is as good as anything in his catalogue. Like, "Trouble Man" good. But I forgot how much preachy meandering he stuffs in between the beauty.

I liked the first track all right but it got me singing the Roches’ “Married Men,” which has the same chord changes. otherwise unmoved..

Surprised how vibrant and tight this feels.

There are great moments but it washes over me exactly the way it did in the 80s.

I actually love some of their albums from earlier in the decade, but I never liked this one.

They do one thing very well but a whole album of it is too much.

Not my favorite Curtis album but still so great.

Some really wonderful stuff, and some of the stuff that kept me from loving him during a lot of that decade. I prefer rain, dogs, but I love some of this too.

I guess I forgot how fresh this sounded when it came out. I mean, what sounded like this? Kate Bush? It’s too much. I don’t like a lot of it. But that first track -what a way to introduce yourself to the world.

Not great but fascinating: a band I never literally listened to, flipped past a million times in the bins, and now can put in late-70s-ish context. Reminds me of the acts I did listen to that were fusing noise and melody - Mission of Burma, for one, though I don't like this nearly as much. Can't say I will listen to it again, but there were moments when I shifted it out of the background to find out what I was listening to (like the "chorus" in Caligari's Mirror). Kind of wild to listen to it right after the Velvets, who, at their least formal, seem like a direct ancestor.

How does a record that starts with such a (yes, cringey) banger go off the rails so hard?

Not my absolute favorite from the stunning run of albums in the 70s - that’s maybe Talking Book - but I love this.

I found this surprisingly listenable. But I will probably never do it again.

I may never have listened to this all the way through before. I like it. Clearly lanuched a thousand ships.

A couple of great singles. It’s hard to actually hear it as an album but that may be an accident of which U2 records I paid attention to back then.

I don't think I'd ever considered a Janet Jackson album before. A lot of sameness, relentless, but also infectious.

Goddam that's good. I listened to LR a little bit after listening to the first 30-40 episodes of "A history of rock music in 500 songs" but I don't think I appreciated just how good this is, or how revolutionary it must have seemed in the late 50s. I keep thinking about John Prine's lyric, "At the beach in Indiana, I was nine years old… I heard Little Richard singing tutti-frutti from the top of a telephone pole." Imagine being that kid.

I was surprised how much I liked some of this. Definitely a period piece but when it all comes together (especially when the lead vocals are on the money) it's pretty great.

Technically adept, and must have sounded great in 1992. But now as then I find the performance of hypermasculinity boring and depressing.

Didn't get through all of it, but was surprised how straigh-ahead-rock-album it was. Not bad!

Interminable. Insufferable.

Better than I remember, but was he always so pitchy?

I wanted to like this as much as I love Walk This Way. I don't.

Love the big hit. Mostly interested in the rest as a tour of the songwriting team's versatility.

Maybe I don’t get it. It I found this pretty dull.

It's great if electric blues is your thing, which it isn't really for me.

What a weird old cool thing this album is.

My hippie seventeen year old self loved this to pieces.

Impossible to bring objectivity to this one, but subjectively speaking it is objectively incredible.

Pleasant, groovy, didn't totally hold my attention.

There are probably a half dozen Dylan albums in my personal top 100, but I don’t think there’s a live album in the top 1000.

Pretty much everything that’s great on this record is recycled from one of the other of the hits, especially the masterpiece. Who can blame them? Three stars because Pretty in Pink.

A couple of tracks had my head bobbing. But this felt old and unnecessary.

Really grew on me - listened several times during the day. Lovely retro sound and appealing character.

Delightful - a very different sixties than Revolver, but passionate and charming and tight without being mannered.

What the what is going on here? Some prog, some blue-eyed soul, some fantastic beats, some filler. A couple of tracks that just don't cohere. A couple of tracks that, however dated, still really really work. Sometimes I felt I was stuck in '70s Leo Sayer groover and at other times I was listening to the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack. 3.5 stars for the successes, where Winwood's talent really shines through.

Some lovely bits - the stepmother song has never left me, all these years later. Too clever, too, and the Gacy song freaks me out.

What a funny ride. Enjoyed it more and more, but the tonal shifts were a little hard to take. Kind of reminded me of discovering "Ultravox!" in a bin, except I think I'd give that one 5 stars. 3.5?

I've liked some Ely in the past, but nothing really stood out here.

"Name of the Game" was the first song I recorded from the radio onto my cassette recorder, and if that song were on this album it would get 5 stars.

Maybe my mood and the record just weren't in the same place, but I found this really tiresome.

I saw Byrne's big-band show (festival set version) a few years ago, and loved the faux-martial joyfulness of it. I guess I hadn't listened to this record for a long time, because here's that sound, right there at the start.

Every so often someone puts "the cutter" on a playlist and I think, wow, I really underestimated this band. Then I listen to this, and yep, a track or two that really moves me, but the rest feels flat and distant. 2.5 stars.

Nostalgia and craft get it to 4.

Talk about a guy finding his groove.

Top end of this is great. But by the end I remembered why I hardly ever listened to them back in the day.

That was fun.

On paper, meaning in a review, this is just the kind of thing I like. In reality, not so much. I loved the freshness of Uncle Tupelo and the drone of Son Volt but Wilco has rarely moved me.

I listened to this every day, practically, in about 1981. A couple of years ago while I was trying to finish a book, I discovered that Spotify had the seven disc version of this. I listened to it on repeat for so long that at the end of the year I was in the top 1/10 of one percent of Fleetwood Mac listeners. Some albums are just burnt so deep that it’s impossible to have anything, but I got reaction to them, and my gut reaction to this one is five stars.

Still charming and playful after all these years. Makes me nostalgic for the 1980s and also somehow nostalgic about the nostalgic feelings for Simon & Garfunkel that this produced back then. It's a little hard to listen now without also thinking about Simon's reactionary politics about the South African liberation movement, and his breaking of the cultural boycott. A solid 4.5.

Worse than I remember, and I didn't like it then. By turns dull and exhausting.

Some really good tracks, and an already-retro early 80s sound that really crunches. But my attention really wandered.

At its best, it made me want to listen to Peter Gabriel. The rest of the time, it made me hate Peter Gabriel.

This was never and will never be my kind of thing.

The highlights here are many and spectacular. One of the great voices.

It's not my favorite from this era, but this era punches most of my buttons.

Maybe for what it is, it's great.

I have never liked this stuff.

These were the Rush tunes on my high school radio station, and my verdict is pretty much the same now as it was then: some great moments, Geddy Lee's voice periodically shines through, but way too much self-important prog-ish noodling.

Couldn't make it through the whole thing. Muddy and dull.

Bi-modal reaction: the big booming hits are still great; the meditative songs have become unlistenable.

This was a shocker. I loved it when it came out, played it all the time. Now a lot of it just seems screechy.

I'd rather listen to a Red Hot Chili Peppers double album than sit through this again.

I really do like some of their work a lot. This did nothing for me.

Cmon.

Influential? Maybe - I hear Father John Misty and that Swedish guy too. Where it gets pop traction I really like it.

Asymptotically close to perfect.

No.

I only knew the later volume (1968). This is fantastic.

My least fave of this amazing run. 4.5

Snoooooooze.

Extraneous “opera” bits don’t diminish the ambition or the number of matchless bangers.

A cool reminder that they were glam before they were huge. But I might not return to it.

No way to be objective about this one. It has carried me across the Atlantic so many times. Nightswimming is a top-10 cut for me.

Some of this is great. But the good songs all sound kind of the same, and so do the not-so-good ones.

Such a pleasure to hear this intentionally.

I came to the Smiths late and eventually came to like a lot of The Queen is Dead. But listening to this (and the previous Smiths selection) reminds why I initially found them incredibly precious and tiresome.

I was not prepared to dislike this as much as I did. Tween me thought "America" was magnificent and profound. But this is clearly the weakest of their albums.

I'm glad I stuck with this past the first track. I like it so much better than I expected, and "Exiles" reminded me why the Roches wanted to work with Fripp. 3.5

I appreciate the vibe but this has never been my thing.

I was excited to listen to this, and Victoria was terrific...and then I got alternately bored and annoyed more often than was fun.

Dull.

This sounds even better than I remember from the last time I fell into the ELO rabbit hole. 4.5

What a delight.

Some great grooves. Some filler. Harmonies are for real. 3.5

This was a fairly shocking disappointment - I love a half-dozen Neil albums and like a lot more; I've always thought my ignorance of this key trilogy in his development was a bit of a cultural blind spot. But I just didn't dig this--meandering and often not that musical to me anyway.

Important, maybe? But I couldn't take it.

I appreciate the energy, and this is way better than the American versions that would follow, but it's a rollercoaster - here and there I got caught up in it, but two minutes later I'd be looking for the exit.

Great, exhausted, classic, enough.

They bring some lovely, infectious energy...and then they bore me.

Not the strongest of the NC albums we have been served but some lovely stuff.

I once loved this. So much. Can barely listen to it now.

If I have to listen to a solo CSN record, it better be a Stills record. A couple of pretty good tracks, but a lot of it half-baked and indifferently produced.

Solid, groovy blues rock, especially the first side. I guess I can see why people say it's the first heavy metal record, but that feels likes special pleading.

For as long as I've had favorite Dylan records, this has been in the top three.

Not many albums from 1969 hold up like this.

unexpectedly charming. and not just because of "act naturally."

The highlights are superb. Then there's the minstrelsy.

I really wanted to. I couldn't.

They urgently want me to agree that they are having the best time ever. I'm not buying it. That said, as I got deeper into the record ("California Waiting") I started to 1) love the guitars and 2) get the Pavement vibe they were maybe going for the whole time.

At first it seemed like pleasant background music. Then it started to grow on me.

I genuinely didn’t know what to make of this.

If this is not a 5, what is? Deathless bangers.

oh god. never again, please.

I get why I never actually paid attention to this before, but it was surprisingly pleasant to focus on.

Not absolute top shelf Beck - meanders more than the ones I find either really original or really chill.

Still not remotely moved by this.

I tried.

Whew. About half of it is middling solo Simon. Half of it is unlistenable. Nothing remotely as good as “Duncan” or “Late in the Evening.”

I like it fine. But it's not Rain Dogs. 3.5

Spotify described this as glam and I realized this is much closer in time to glam than to today and now I have to go to bed.

A little repetitive after a while, but the fun seems real.

After reading a bit about them I begin to see the outlines of the joke, but it's about as funny as Monty Python in Dutch.

Nuh-uh. Insufferable.

Last time I went back to this it did not move me at all. This time, mostly as background music (!), I kind of loved it.

I have always dug this record.

It's not my favorite -- that's got to be Red or 1989 -- but it is my daughter's, so I have heard it a *lot*. I'll rate it honestly if you promise never ever to tell her. 3.5 for intermittently good songwriting, weird scansion, and the lesser of her two duets with Bon Iver.

Her best album, including a high percentage of her best songs. Honestly, it could be "Down to Zero," "Love and Affection," and a half-hour of "Metal Machine Music" and I'd still give it four stars. I do have to admit that "Water with the Wine" gives me the creeps.

Inoffensive at times, but always dull.

Not even in my top 3 Stevie and still a 5.

I dunno, man. I know it's a classic, but it leaves me cold. For what it's worth, my daughter loves it, normally a good sign that I am wrong.

Meh.

Still love Sweet Child. Otherwise still find this unlistenable.

So unexpectedly boring.

There's a reason one of these tunes has ten times as many listens.

Side 2 is a meh album by a band that was once better than that. Side 1 is much worse than I remembered.

I like the idea better than the execution.

Ooof no thank you.

All the Todd - brilliant, loopy, soaring, excessive - in one place. 4.5

Starts so strong but falls off until I can’t really listen to it anymore.

Not her best record but it is relentless in mostly a very good way.

What a fine groove.

Some pleasant grooves. A lot of filler.

They sometimes sound great, and a lot of the tracks have a cool riff. But it's all at the same 11.

Heresy in my household to say this, but I mostly just don't get it. One or two tracks hit a wailing sweet spot, but I continue to find him not compelling.

I was liking it okay. Then it ended and PJ Harvey picked up and I was instantly so much happier and more engaged.

oh my god. no no no.

The older I get the madder I get about the blues-rock as plunder. But I also (grudgingly) appreciate the technical expertise and at times the real feeling Zep brought to their work.

I’ve heard his name so often and never consciously listened to him. Influence is clearly 5 stars. But I also dug it - less ironic than early Dylan but that makes it kind of lovely.

Is this one star? five? My past and present are at war.

The hit plus a few other great moments. How to rate that? 3.5

A couple of her albums literally enchant me. This isn't one of them. But it's got some great moves and it reminds me of those others periodically.

Maybe I'm Amazed starts it at 4 stars. The rest is McCartney's whole career since ~1968: some lovely bits, some rank cheese, wildly uneven writing, and that incredible voice.

So, so boring.

2.5

I have tried to give this album its due so many times. I just don’t get it.

I like a bunch of Silver Jews tunes, and not one of them is on this album.

The Bono-ness is a lot, as always. Underneath, there are some very fine little songs (Stuck in a Moment is just hook after hook).

Not their best, but a lot of what made them great is audible here.

Meh

Try as I might, I never could enjoy this.

So dull!

Maybe 3.5. It’s about as good as I remember in the high spots. But it’s not all there.

Some perfect pop. Some nicely off-kilter stuff. Some random almost unlistenable tracks. 3.5

So many funny little ideas. It often sounds like he’s just noodling around on the synth, and then this amazing Roxy music it pops up.

I'm sure this is someone's cup of tea. I couldn't take it.

Through the shitty speakers of my clock radio in 1982 - along with the equally terrible sound system in the old Volvo - this really didn't sound very good. I put them in the same category as bands I really didn't like, like The Fixx. I can't say I love it now. But something here really got me bopping along.

How in the world is this on this list.

Height of her powers

The parts are so much less than the sum of the whole.

I refused to listen to this again; I hit my limit sometime in high school. And yet: after refusing, I found myself singing one of the minor tracks.

This would be 4 1/2 or even five stars for the originals, three stars for the covers and instrumentals.

First guitar line of the big hit is all my brain and body need of this.

Masterpiece.

Sir Paul. You take the good with the bad, and there's plenty of both here.

It seemed so fresh at the time. Now the noodling is too much.

Not my thing.

Surprisingly lovely in places.