This album was incredibly front-loaded. The first 5 tracks are all great and some of the best that The Killers have ever put out, but it takes a sharp dive in quality afterwards for the rest of the album. The lack of consistency in quality is what drags the score down so much.

This album feels like it was hugely influential for the direction that 80s rock eventually took, alternating between camp and sincerity. It's clear that the sound of this album was influenced by Meat Loaf's involvement with the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I do think that nearly every track felt like a Midwest goodbye--you think it's ending, but it stops by the door to talk for another 10 minutes. It's hard to take any of the album seriously, but it's a fun enough listen. 3.5/5 stars

Never before has an album been the cause of so many early 2000s teens getting sued by their favorite band. Typically known as the "Black Album" by fans, this is a classic from the most prominent of the "Big 4" of metal, home to several headbanger classics like "Enter Sandman" and "The Unforgiven". I'm 100% sure this is a favorite album of many far-right idiots, due to its use of the Gadsden flag snake and the track "Don't Tread on Me", despite core members of the band publicly denouncing Trump's politics. In the last third of the album, we get a break from the standard heavy riffs and growly vocals, taking us to an almost pensive place with "Nothing Else Matters". While a classic, this album does suffer somewhat from too many songs sounding too similar--indeed, 2/3 (or more, depending on source) of the album is in E- or A-minor and a similar bpm. Favorite track: Nothing Else Matters Hidden gem: Wherever I May Roam 3.5/5 stars

Violent Femmes sounds like it was designed as the Gen X response to the cocaine-addled "more is always better" grindset of the 80s. This casual, intentionally low-effort blending of 70s folk rock with punk sensibilities helped pave the way for modern alt-rock. While I understand the universal need to communicate the loneliness we all feel sometimes, as a woman in her mid-30s, it's hard for me to relate to the specific expression of that loneliness made by an 18-year-old boy starved for sex. As a lover of alt-rock in general, I am pleased by the foundations of the genre I see in this album. Favorite track: Kiss Off 3.5/5 stars

What little I've listened to of Bob Dylan in the past has never left me with a good impression of him. As a benchmark of album goodness, I determine whether it has any songs I would like to hear again. I can say with absolute certainty that there isn't a single track on this album where I feel like my life would be diminished were I to never hear it again. The instrumentals are fine, even good in many songs. But every single song would be improved by the removal of Dylan's singing. He sounds like he's drunkenly improvising on every song, constantly throwing in chaotic shifts of volume and emphasis on words. The last hour of karaoke at a Wisconsin bar sounds significantly more polished than anything that comes out of Dylan's mouth. I hate that there are 7 Bob Dylan albums on this list, but I look forward to maybe finding one song that I like from him. Least disliked song: Shelter from the Storm

Sigur Rós is a group I had heard of, but had never listened to, so I was excited to finally give them a listen. The first half of Ágætis Byrjun gives us complex, layered ambient soundscapes of evoke a sense of pensiveness and self-reflection. Heavy reverb on the vocals and some of the instruments contribute to a dream-like quality. A seamless flow from one track to another helps keep the listener in that mental space. Each track on the album builds in energy until we hit the climax near the end of Viðrar vel til loftárása. As the climax dissipates, we are left with a feeling of hope in the eponymous track Ágætis Byrjun. The final track of the album, Avalon, returns us to an inchoate soundscape that turns our minds towards the future and leads us to ask, "okay, what's next?" I'm sure I'm missing something in the lyrics with my complete lack of knowledge of the Icelandic language, but I really enjoyed the album in spite of that. Perhaps the meditative quality of the album would be inhibited by my understanding of the lyrics, and perhaps that's part of the point. Given that Sigur Rós makes use of a made-up language (Vonlenska) in many of their later songs, I can't help but think that the actual words of their albums are merely another instrument, an auditory vehicle for the mood they're trying to set, rather than bearing deep semantic significance. Favorite track: Flugufrelsarinn 4/5 stars

I feel like a bad sapphic woman for not having listened to much Kate Bush before, and even worse now for not liking her more than I do. I get that she's doing an experimental kind of pop music, but it just didn't resonate with me that much. There are some good tracks on the album. Running Up That Hill is a classic and a genuinely good song. I also really liked Hello Earth, but the rest of the album was pretty forgettable for me.

A classic of prog rock. I enjoyed 2112 a lot, especially finding new appreciation for Alex Lifeson's guitar skills, but it felt like all of the tracks after the opening 20-minute suite were just tacked on. It didn't feel like there was the same cohesiveness as the rest of the album.

I had never even heard of this group before today, but I've listened to the album 3 times now and it's a masterpiece. Feast of Wire is a gorgeous fusion of latin instruments (classical guitar, trumpet, accordion) and musical figures with a variety of genres--indie rock ("Not Even Stevie Nicks"), jazz ("Crumble"), and country ("Sunken Waltz") to name a few. Each song on the album feels different, but they all come together to form a cohesive whole. Several instrumentals and short interludes break up the vocal tracks, giving the album a sense of different acts or chapters. I wholeheartedly recommend this album and I'm only sad that I didn't discover it sooner. Favorite track: Quattro - World Drifts In

Aretha Franklin is one of the great vocalists of the 20th century and she showcases that talent well in Lady Soul. I'm pretty new to listening to soul music outside of a few ubiquitous classics, so it may just be a feature of the genre, but a lot of the time, her vocals seemed more focused on showcasing her virtuosity, with quick runs up and down her range, rather than creating a cohesive whole with the instruments. Favorite song: Groovin'

Curtis Mayfield brings us those traditional soul vocals along with classic 70s funk instrumentals. I found myself grooving throughout the album, but it was hard to pick out any particular song as a stand-out.

It's nearly impossible to escape the influence that Elvis had on the American zeitgeist of the 50s and 60s. Despite never having specifically tried to listen to any Elvis music before, I found myself recognizing many songs on this album, simply due to their ubiquity in movie and TV show soundtracks (especially Blue Suede Shoes, Tutti Frutti, and Blue Moon). The album has good energy and I can understand why it would have been popular in 1956, but nearly every song on the album simply feels too short--no song is longer than 2:45. It's as though he had an idea for hook for a song, but never developed it past that. I could see this as a sort of demo for a longer album, but it's hard to see it as a full-length album in its own right. He breaks out a merely okay falsetto on several tracks that I feel genuinely pull the songs down. It feels clumsily jammed into the songs to satisfy some musical trend of the times, perhaps trying to channel the crooners of the 40s and early 50s.

Iggy Pop may be the godfather of the punk genre, but this album isn't anything special by today's lights. I did discover that "Lust for Life" is almost certainly what Jet sampled for "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?" I didn't appreciate the overture towards underage girls in "Sixteen". I'm not sure what was going on in "Turn Blue", but it feels pretty racist from the lyrics. I don't feel any desire to listen to this album again, even though it did have some decent tracks in "The Passenger", "Tonight", and "Neighborhood Threat". Favorite track: The Passenger

Some good vibes here, but a lot of the album is grating or forgettable.

This album feels 10 years before its time, as though it fits right in with the edgy alt-rock of the early 2000s. Most of the tracks on this album would be at home in a sleek urban sci-fi/fantasy film along the lines of The Matrix or Underworld.

I'm giving Prince the respect he deserves with my rating, but it's one of those cases where he was just so iconic at the time that everyone copied and built off of him to the point where the original doesn't sound as special as it should. I want to go back and give this a deeper listen later.

An okay album, but generic and forgettable. I really don't understand how this made the list in the first place. The biggest hit on the album is a cover. This is just another example of the UK-centric bias on this list.

Genuinely good album that in some places felt a decade or more before its time. Favorite track: Free Money

This album was incredibly front-loaded. The first 5 tracks are all great and some of the best that The Killers have ever put out, but it takes a sharp dive in quality afterwards for the rest of the album. The lack of consistency in quality is what drags the score down so much.

This album is a big step up from Blood on the Tracks (or rather, the latter is a big step down from this). As an early album, I think Bob Dylan hadn't quite developed the horrible vocal affect that plagues his later work. I feel like the instrumentation is a lot more varied and interesting than I'm used to from Dylan. I genuinely didn't hate it, which is saying a lot. The last few tracks on the album start getting very annoying, which brings my rating down a star. Favorite tracks: Subterranean Homesick Blues, Maggie's Farm

Good production and great vocals, but it wasn't really my kind of music.

Great stuff from a legendary quartet. Definitely a staple of 70s rock and deserving of its fame. Favorite track: Almost Cut My Hair

Brown Sugar is a refreshing R&B album that draws instrumentals from jazz and funk. D'Angelo has a great voice and the album shows it off, as well as throwing in harmonizing with backup singers. The only bad thing I can say about the album is that some of the songs overstay their welcome, but even when they do, it's still a groove. Favorite track: Lady

This was the first album of my own I ever got, for my 10th birthday, so I'll always have a soft spot for this album in my heart. I haven't listened to it in probably 20 years, so I thought coming back to it as an adult would feel like coming in with a fresh ear, but I found myself singing along to every song on the album. ...Baby One More Time defined an entire generation of pop music with its formulaic industry production, the key changes in the middle of most songs, and the occasional guitar solos thrown in. Britney's vocals remain emblematic of the bubblegum pop genre. While my music sensibilities have changed, this album holds up. Favorite track: From the Bottom of My Broken Heart

Clearly a hugely influential album in the jazz genre. There were several places where I caught musical figures and rhythms that have been sampled by artists I wouldn't have expected. Blue Rondo a la Turk and Take Five both had parts that had been borrowed by Nobuo Uematsu for use in Final Fantasy 7 and 9. I enjoyed listening to the album, even though jazz isn't really one of my go-to genres.

Definitely a lot more experimental than some of the other jazz on this list. It was fun to see the inspiration for the song "Cruella de Vil" from 101 Dalmatians in "Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are". I wasn't as impressed with the instrumentation with this album. Decent album and I appreciate it as a piece of art, but it's not something I see myself listening to again.

Elliott Smith feels like the Wes Anderson of musicians. His work is beautiful, but is always tinged with sadness, longing, and nostalgia. He uses a lot of modal mixture to straddle that line between hope and despair. It's a masterfully crafted album and made me cry more than once. Favorite tracks: Alameda, Cupid's Trick

Not really my cup of tea. There were some good tracks in "The Seed" and "Complexity". I found the beats messy and the vocal rhythms uninspired.

Not Paul Simon's best work. Much like Bob Dylan, he has a habit of talk-singing through these rambling stories with uninteresting instrumentation. It wasn't all uninteresting in the case of Graceland; sometimes it was actively annoying, like when it crossed over into polka territory with tracks like "Gumboots" and "That Was Your Mother". There were a couple decent songs--"You Can Call Me Al" is a classic and "Crazy Love, Vol. II" was pretty okay. As a result of those two songs, I can't give this a 1 star rating, but only barely.

I'm not typically into soul as a genre, but this album wasn't too bad. I was impressed by the feminist themes (self-ownership, sex positivity) Dusty incorporated into some of the songs like "You Don't Own Me", especially given that this was released in the '60s. Favorite track: Anyone Who Had a Heart

I mostly enjoyed the album, but at the end of the day, some of the songs sounded like he was doing his best Bob Dylan impression, which I didn't care for. Where they lack Dylan's poetic flourish, they make up for it with much better instrumentation. The album felt pretty front loaded, as the latter half of the album had several long instrumental sections (e.g.,"The Haunting Idle" and the first two minutes of "In Reverse") that could only be described as ambient music. Favorite track: An Ocean in Between the Waves

This album was just generally boring. No part of the music stood out. It was kind of just a wall of droning instrumentals and vocals, signifying nothing. It wasn't actively bad, but it made me feel literally nothing but impatience for it to be over.

I'm not entirely sure I could pick out any specific song as a standout, but this album was a groove and I could listen to it all day.

This album felt like listening to the cast recording for a musical theater production, but lacked any of the context of such a production that would give the songs their emotional force.

This album was a great example of the blues-y origins of rock & roll. Fats has an iconic voice and I enjoyed several tracks on the album. Favorite tracks: Blue Monday, Trust in Me

Genuinely enjoyed this album. I had listened to a few of Beck's singles before, but never Sea Change in its entirety. Like a lot of artists who straddle the folk and rock genres, Beck doesn't shy away from exploring the bluer side of the emotional spectrum. I liked the instrumentation on many of the tracks, incorporating melodies and countermelodies from instruments you wouldn't expect from the genre. In the last 90 seconds of Paper Tiger, there's a duel between the guitar, strings, and bass that is just sublime. Favorite tracks: Paper Tiger, Lost Cause, Sunday Sun

I didn't find this album to be anything special. I know the Stones are very critically acclaimed, often in the same sentence as the Beatles. My favorite track was "Paint It, Black", but even that was an independent single that they threw onto the US release of the album to sell more copies.

Not a big fan of the music itself, and even less of a fan of the lyrics and themes of the album.

I enjoyed this one. I can't find too many faults with Surrealistic Pillow. Grace Slick's vocals are simultaneously smoky and ethereal, carrying the listener through the haze of late 60s folk rock. The instrumentation is similarly impressive--the guitar work on Embryonic Journey stood out to me in particular. Favorite track: White Rabbit Hidden Gem: D. C. B. A.-25

A 70's rock classic, CCR delivers good jams in "Travelin' Band" and "Up Around the Bend" and some interesting long-form pieces in "Ramble Tamble" and the 11-minute cover of Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine". I can understand that the vocal style may not be everyone's cup of tea, but having grown up listening to a lot of classic rock from the era with my dad, this album feels nostalgic. Favorite track: Up Around the Bend

The first three tracks on the album feel like a big mess with unintelligible vocals due to poor mixing. Suede picks up after a faulty start with good energy on "Moving" and an immersive soundscape on "Pantomime Horse". The rest of the album didn't really move me, so I don't feel like I can give it more than 3 stars.

Nothing noteworthy about this one. Just generic 70s rock. I literally put it on and didn't realize it had ended 40 minutes later.