Listened for the first time since high school and the highs are high (Scar Tissue still holds up, fight me) but outside of the 3 or 4 bangers everything else was a chore to listen to.
Astonishing - extremely fun the whole way through including the bonus 7" with a ripping live Maggot Brain. If I could do half stars I'd give it 4.5 just to make room for other the two other best P-Funk records, the doo doo song is the closest thing to a low light on this album but it still slaps regardless.
Bittersweet Symphony is of course a bop and the other singles stand out, especially The Drugs Don't Work but the longer songs overstay their welcome - The Rolling People is great for a 3 minutes but lasts 7, Catching the Butterfly feels indulgently long. Not bad shoegaze but the deeper cuts are not interesting enough to warrant their run time. Fun listen but not memorable enough as a whole to be a 4 out of 5.
It's a perfect album - what more is there to say?
I would have given Supreme Clientele a 5 and maybe thinking about this in the context of that and all the other excellent Wu-Tang solo albums is a bit unfair. Some of the skits are over long, as was the style at the time, but the density of absolute bangers on this album is excellent.
Short and doesn't overstay its welcome but a little indulgent in how sentimental it tries to get at times and I didn't love the live rendition of Bye Bye Love. The Boxer and Cecelia are both classics that absolutely stand the test of time and The Only Living Boy in New York is a new favorite.
I think even without historical context this album holds up. It's 14 songs with an average length of 2 minutes per song so it goes by like a punk record except for couple slow songs. Billy Holly's vocals hold up and are still interesting and pleasing to listen to. I listened to this album 3 times and I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would.
First listen and it sounds extremely fresh - it doesn't sound like an album from 90s. Timbaland's production is incredible throughout and combined with Elliott's diversity of flows every song has at least one transition or moment that is a complete and welcome surprise. Although I'm not rating albums based on historical influence - I can't believe how much hip-hop owes to this album.
Tim Buckley had pipes but the overdone writing by Larry Beckett and rambling troubadour style really took me out of it. No Man Can Find The War is solid and I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain has banger qualities yet gets a little tired near the end - the rest though feels kind of forgettable to me aside from little moments where Tim's vocal talent shines through.
As an album it's close to perfect - every track is in its place. Some songs don't hold up on their own necessarily (looking at you Treefingers) but are excellent to set the mood. I think taking this album away from the Radiohead oeuvre and looking at it on its own only makes it better.
I really wanted to like this more than I did. Drunk in Love, Partition, and Flawless are all fun to listen to but on my repeat listen they were the only song I could make it through (and Drunk in Love still feels overlong). I like the front and center female sexuality and think this album got a lot of hype for that but it's not groundbreaking (Missy Elliott did it and everything else better on her albums and with way less personnel). Beats and features feel hollow and as for my own bias I just am not moved by Beyonce's vocals - when she gets rawer and puts some emotion forward like in Flawless I can get behind it but when a voice just sounds "clean" I can't really get into it.
This isn't a part of my score because it's not the original album but only the platinum version was available on Spotify and the second disc really has some terrible features that have not aged well. Kanye's verse on the Drunk in Love remix is genuinely both gross and uninspired:
"Woo, you will never need another lover
Woo, 'cause you a MILF, and I'm a motherfucker
Told you give the drummer some, now the drummer cummin'
I'm pa-rum-pa-pum-pumin' all on your stomach, yuh"
and
"Yup, on the 35th of Nevuary
Yup, you love the way I'm turnt
After all the money you earned, still show daddy what you learned
That cowgirl, you reverse that cowgirl
You reverse, you reverse, and I impregnated your mouth, girl"
Which you know - if the flow is good I can forgive a lot but it's just a lot like something from the cutting room floor of MBDTF. Speaking of which - Nicki Minaj references Monster halfway through her verse on the Flawless remix which reminds me of a better song I could be listening to. This is the most tired Nicki flow I've ever heard and includes a weird long full multibar rest that is reminiscent of Drake just trying to "yeah" his way through his Sway in the Morning freestyle. These two tracks are worth listening to because they're a time capsule of everything wrong with mainstream rap in early to mid 2010s.
It was a shock to me that I didn't enjoy this album more than 2! I like Lenny's guitar but a lot of the songs are too long and even some of the shorter songs like Freedom Train are too repetitive for me (for a rock song). A lot of the melodies are recycled - I liked Fear but didn't like how much it sounded like War Pigs. I also kind of liked the writing in Fear and was curious as to why so much of the other writing felt sophomoric and naive - that one was written by Lisa Bonet! The super Christian stuff near the end like Rosemary was so grating to listen to and felt like a high school creative writing workshop where people with little lived experience are trying to write about extreme circumstance and the sanctimonious Christ stuff on top just really left a bad taste in my mouth. Some good riffs though! I understand why this album created hype.
So close to a 5 but some of the later songs like Under African Skies, Crazy Love Vol II, and the last track just don't do it for me. Practically everything else is a banger plain and simple. A strong 4.
I've never really listened to New Order and I was blown away! I see a lot of people complaining about the singing but I'm a sucker for bad singing. The Perfect Kiss and Love Vigilantes are both big big bangers and I love how Elegia breaks up the album.
I've never listened to a full Sonic Youth album before and this was definitely the one to listen to. Blew me away. I love Kim Gordon's vocals so much and I think Thurston Moore's are a good contrast to keep things fresh. I was about to list my favorite tracks but really I like them all and there's enough variance in the sound that every one of them stands out. Has to be a 5.
What really lowered this for me was that clear winking desire to "elevate" mall muzak offerings with that specific brand of smug Bush-era liberalism. I believe Rufus could have made good music instead, he has it in him, but he made Dear Sister which is just the worst. I know that's "the point" but there's not love or fun like a Residents song it's just disgustingly and puke-inducingly sweet in tone. This whole album is a Poe's Law situation,
This is an extremely important album in the history of hip-hop that cemented it as a popular and viable genre of music. That being said, when I listen in 2025 or in 2020 or 2016 I feel like it doesn't hold up on its own merits. Peter Piper, It's Tricky, and My Adidas are a blisteringly good start to the album but I feel like Walk This Way was so popular at the time because it was a bridge and intro into rap and I just don't find it fun to listen to when that novelty is stripped away. The rest of the album feels a lot more middling - not bad but not something I'm going to go out of my way to listen to. You Be Illin' has cultural cache but I get tired of it halfway through and it's a short song! I love rap and I love the history of hip-hop but plucked from its place in history and listened to as an album alone it's a 2 for me.
It's good! It's consistent, it's more than just the hits. I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed it but the second side holds it back just a bit.
This album goes so hard. I never listened to Underworld or much house music at all but I'm such a sucker for the effortless gothic cool of tracks like Confusion the Waitress and Pearl's Girl. The first two songs are great but too long for me and it makes the album feel top-heavy whereas I think the most interesting ideas start with track 3.
I like noise music and things like Suicide but the application of feedback to these songs, other than maybe Just Like Honey where it felt more restrained, really doesn't feel like it accomplishes anything but novelty. I get how influential this album is but it really was a slog to listen to and I feel like for noise to be interesting/successful it has to also be provocative and this was not. Just hard for me to get on board.
I wanted to like this but The Bogus Man was 9 minutes long
There's some good stuff here but also a lot of bad stuff that doesn't feel particularly artful or interesting in why it's noisy and short and weird especially in contrast to the more fleshed out songs. It just feels confused. There's a version of this album I'd give a 3 but I never want to listen to it all the way through ever again so it gets a 2.
Not bad music but no bangers - makes it a 1 by default. Reminder as to rubric:
1 - no bangers or truly painful to listen to as an album but maybe 1 banger
2 - 1-3 bangers but the rest of the album is so bad I don't want to listen to it again
3 - Anywhere from 1 to half of the album's worth of bangers and the rest of the album is alright.
4 - High density of bangers necessary - can have one skip.
5 - Not necessarily all bangers but works high density of bangers and works as a cohesive album. No skips.
While Bobby Womack here has no skips - there are no bangers. It feels wrong because the music isn't incompetent or anything but there's just no bangers here.
The Jam is a blindspot for me and maybe I'd feel differently if it wasn't? Probably not, there's a distinct lack of bangers and it veers to the corny pretty frequently. Feels a lot like the grating naivete of that first Lenny Kravitz album but this guy was older and should've known better.
A game-changer when it came out but I feel like so much of it is overlong and self-indulgent to a degree I don't have patience for anymore (end of Runaway, Blame Game). Trying to separate the art from the artist, there are still some parts of this album I just don't want to listen to on a second listen and that keeps it from a 5 - which is good because I didn't want to give that Nazi a 5 anyway.
A beautiful album that bridges Motown and funk. I much prefer the A-side but solid all-around.
Perfectly cromulent radio psych rock but nothing stands out enough for me to be ranked any higher.
I adore the sad sleaze of this album, there's not much else like it. If you listened to a version without Like A Friend on it (which is a single B-side that is technically not on this album but is on the Spotify version) - please do yourself a favor and give it a listen.
The only other Sonic Youth album I've listened to at this point is Daydream Nation which I gave a 5. The magic of that album is diluted here, a lot of the songs feel like grunge songs with noise piped on top instead of emergent structures built from the noise while Kim or Thurston mutters at you, which is much more my jam. I really liked Mildred Pierce and Tunic though.
Where has this been my whole life? Demented blues punk and the singer sounds weirdly like Jonathan Richman. It's like if someone merged the Modern Lovers with the band playing instruments made from corpses in From Dusk Til Dawn. Slaps.
Grunge with musicality and I'm a sucker for Kim Gordon's insane vocals.
It's a great and genre-defining album but I really just am not a Beach Boys person. I understand that Brian Wilson was a genius and RIP but for me a 5 is an album I want to listen to at least once a year and I probably won't listen to this all the way through ever again. I Just Wasn't Made These Times is an incredible song though that I truly adore.
As an album I have to give it a 3 because it's overstuffed and I'll never listen to it as an album again but good Lord the songs that are bangers in this record are all timers
This is that good shit, baby, that pure uncut weird shit. I adore this album
Did not think I'd be ready to give Cyndi Lauper a 5 but here we are - this is perfect 80s pop infused with a punk sensibility, some great ska-like horns on some songs, crazy and unique voice, dense with bangers. I've had to listen to a lot of 80s pop for this list and will have to suffer a lot more but this is the best.
This is unfortunate because I love Isaac Hayes but it's a soundtrack! It just doesn't hold up as an album like Hot Buttered Soul. Really uninspired pick for the list in my opinion.
SOAD along with Rage Against the Machine rise above the nu-metal label slapped on anything vaguely metal from the 90's to early 2000s by 1.) being extremely fun and inventive and 2.) being overtly political. Compare P.L.U.C.K - a moving track about the Armenian genocide to something like Break Stuff by Limp Bizkit which just channels the general but ultimately impotent rage of genX and the elder millennial. SOAD tries really hard to make you not take them seriously but it's hard not to when you really listen to the lyrics - it's woke circus metal and it's brilliant.
Didn't like this one Frank, kind of just music for jerks
