I always liked the idea of Green Day more than their music. And Billie Joe Armstrong's punk voice has always annoyed me. This is like if the Clash got back together and sucked. Punk bands always have short songs and short albums though, that's a plus, never wearing out their welcome. I think Longview was the first single, definitely one of them. Welcome to Paradise was another hit, albums from the mid 90s had a lot of singles come off them. Basket Case was, and still is, a huge hit. I don't believe these dorks ever actually went to a whore. I'm not sure why people love Green Day and hate Blink-182. Basket Case feels like the song that made Blink-182 believe they should be a band. Five singles off this album, I blame MTV. When I Come Around is the best song on the album. Seriously, Blink-182 straight ripped these guys off, Coming Clean could be a Blink-182 song right down to the whiny teenage lyrics. And the album ends with All by Myself...three assholes being stupid to end an album. Why do bands treat last songs on albums like jokes?
Mariano Rivera's entrance music....I don't love Metallica, but this song kicks ass. Half of their greatest hits are on this album. I never really got all the love The Unforgiven got....there are a number of better Metallica songs so far on this album. This album is impressing me more than I thought it would. Don't Tread on Me borrows a phrase from America from West Side Story...musicians are all musical dorks. Nothing Else Matters is the best song on the album. A lot of long songs on this for a metal album.
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart is a great opening track, great song in general. There's something haunting about Jeff Tweedy's voice and delivery, a yearning or disappointment in his voice. This album was released in 2001. I would have guessed earlier. Jesus, Etc. was the hit and it is well deserved., great music, great lyrics. The whole album is great though. This is one of those albums where you can just put it on repeat and listen the whole day. This is an album too. It hangs together coherently in terms of sound, good sounds up and down the album without anything that stands head a shoulders above or below the other songs. Listening to the whole album makes more sense than picking one or two songs. It's a worthwhile hour.
This is maybe the most Pixies album of all the Pixies albums. I love Kim Deal's voice. They have a sound for sure, but this is definitely them at their peak. I guess they were broken up by the time the Judgement Night soundtrack came out, but they would have been a good candidate to play while Cypress Hill rapped. Here Comes Your Man is the hit, maybe their biggest hit, but I never thought of it as one of their better songs. Monkey Gone to Heaven is much better. Hey has the second most listens on Spotify but I have no memory of it. I like it though. I think that I think I like the Pixies more than I do. A good album, not great.
The only versions available on Spotify are the expanded and deluxe versions. Just give me the original release instead of making me cobble it together. Everyone who dumps on George Lucas for going back and fucking with the original Star Wars movies should think about why they're complaining because bands have been doing this for just as long with reissues and special edition albums. That being said, this album and No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith show the quality of live recordings that can be possible. Young Man Blues is good. The Who has to be The Ramones favorite band. I like this Who better than My Generation Who. I think 70s rock is most superior to 60s rock, maybe the Stones are the only band that I like their 60s stuff better. Maybe there is a cutoff in the 60s now that I'm thinking about it. Pre-67? Ending the album on two super long versions of songs is a risky move although so far I like this version of My Generation better than the studio album version. There's nothing not to like about this version except that it plays better live than as a super extended cut of one song on an album. You can definitely hear what came next for the Who. Pete Townshend is really on it in this one. Why would anyone listen to the studio version of Magic Bus. This version is vastly superior.
I believe this album might have also served as the soundtrack all those Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor movies. I'm dying. This sounds like the music to the Roblox game Bee Swarm Simulator. I bet these guys love the Night Court theme. This had to be added as an inside joke. I guess Rumba Mama's Portuguese shouting at least breaks up the soft jazz. All the fusion jazz songs just blur into one terrible, long, hazy jam.
I'm a closet disco fan. He's the Greatest Dancer was one of the big songs off this album. It's good. Listening to this you realize that disco is like the flamboyant cousin of funk. Some disco any way. Somebody Loves Me is the album playing in the background of a love scene in a bad blaxploitation film. Thinking of You is a good song, better than the hits on the album, a little repetitive maybe. We Are Family! 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates fans go nuts! It's a good song though. This album was better than I thought it would be. One More Time is good too. I definitely like the album cuts better than the singles.
I don't like electronic music that much, but these guys always struck a chord with me. A lot of long songs on this album, not a good sign. This feels like the spiritual successor to Blondie in some ways. Get Innocuous! is a good start although I hate titles with punctuation in them. I have always liked the lyrics, there's a combination or earnestness and silliness that's appealing. North American Scum is a perfect example. Someone Great is their best song, not just on this album, but in their repertoire. It's crazy to think they made a great dance song about losing someone. The driving piano on All My Friends should be annoying but it works perfectly. I really like this album. Title track is the first real miss. The lyrics remind me of the Tiny Rick episode of Rick and Morty. New York I Love You is a bit of a downer and a major tonal shift. I'm not sure how I feel about it.
I have mixed feelings about the Elvis Costello I know. I'm liking this though. He's like a pop Bruce Springsteen. I like this album. He's like if Billy Joel didn't suck. But the ska...all the ska. What is wrong with 70s and 80s British bands?
Looking through the song titles I'm guessing this is techno/EDM because I've never heard of this band or this album. I bet Daft Punk hate these guys for ripping off their sound. They're a couple of space helmets away from being a Daft Punk cover band. The Party, with its stupid Kesha lyrics, is awful. These songs all sound like knock off Midnight Express soundtrack songs.
Spooky rock opening is a bad omen. This has a Velvet Underground/Lou Reed feel to it, Talking Heads too. What You Need is annoying, it's just the bassline over and over and over and over and talking. The Fall has three albums on this list...this list is too British and too middle aged. There's a rockabilly/Chris Isaak/David Lynch soundtrack vibe to Vixen, must have been the time period. This is terrible, repetitive post punk nonsense. This feels very dated. It's the kind of exhausting album that rock critics fall all over themselves to praise but that no one really likes. It's the music of college sophomores. This is a long album as well. You may be Damo Suzuki, but you are also terrible. I am counting the minutes until this is over.
Maybe no artist is more associated with their genre than Bob Marley. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or if it has made reggae kind of a static thing where most of it sounds like a Marley cover band. I consider myself a fan but I'm not sure I've listened to any of the albums rather than greatest hits albums of compilations or playlists. So Much Things to Say is a great song, better than some of the singles that came off this album. A three and a half minute Jamming is a shock, I usually only hear the extended version. Turn Your Lights Down Low is another great song, and the version Lauryn Hill did using the original is great too. Three Little Birds is a great pick me up song. It's hard not to smile a little bit when you hear it. It's too bad they turned him into a mascot...I guess he's Jamaica's greatest cultural export...either him or the bobsledders. Great album.
Another Blur album? Three Blur albums? I know people criticize Rolling Stone lists for having too many American acts, too many white acts, too many etc....but the number of forgettable British albums, multiples of groups that have little to no resonance outside of their time period, and certainly not enough to warrant multiple albums, is astonishing. Blur has three albums and Oasis has two...I guess Damon Albarn won after all. Except Oasis is getting ready for a reunion tour that the whole world is excited for and if Blur opened for them everyone would boo them until Oasis came on stage. It's fitting because they're like a less good Oasis. Song 2....the hit of all hits for Blur...WOO HOO! This feels like a very 90s song. This album is garbage...I'd prefer to listen to Garbage. Chinese Bombs would never get made today. This album feels like it is trying too hard to be....something. I'm not sure if it's something important or something cool or something popular. If American bands were as obsessed with the political environments of other countries, they'd be called colonialists. Keep Star Wars out of your America hating mouths. Ending with an almost nine minute spoken word drag does not help.
Everything they do sounds different but also sounds like Radiohead. I'd say the best adjective to describe that "Radiohead quality" to their music is haunting...a lot of it is due to something in Thom Yorke's voice. The title of Backdrifts makes me want to do an edit of Backdraft with this as the soundtrack. You can hear the U2 influence on this album, Achtung Baby and Pop. Radiohead definitely transitioned to a band that makes albums from a band that generates hit singles. There, There is the best song on the album. A Wolf at the Door has a very ominous feeling about it.
I was listening to less rap by the time this album came out but I should have. It's good. The combination of Dre and Eminem was unstoppable for five years. There were several hits off this album, none bigger than In Da Club, good song. This feels like a last stand of a particular kind of rap music. From the first notes you can tell Dre produced If I Can't, the piano on his turn of the century albums is like a fingerprint. 50 and I both agree, Ja Rule sucks. 50 is a P.I.M.P. Chelsea Handler knows. You don't hear a lot of steel drum in hip hop. 21 Questions is another great song, my favorite off the album. I love you like a fat kid loves cake is a terrific line to work into a rap song. RIP Nate Dogg. This song reminds me of the WacArnold's skit from Chapelle Show...no, no one will love you when you're down and out...also Derek and the Dominos. I always thought Wanksta was overrated.
A French transgender Michael Jackson homage? Sign me up! Honestly, all of the politics aside, this is just 80s nostalgia and not done particularly well at that. This music could be the soundtrack to Stranger Things and no one would know it wasn't actually from the 80s. His accent is just heavy enough to make some lyrics hard to make out. It's always interesting that foreign language artists choose to perform in English. America is just so culturally dominant....Happy 4th of July! And now a song about the existence of God placed in an 80s dance pop song. This album is 90 minutes long! 23 songs! Why, France? What did everyone do to deserve this from you? You give us the Statue of Liberty and think you can just dump the rest of your garbage here? Just realized there's an English album and a French album. So it's half that, reasonable....should I listen to the English version or the French version? I guess the French? They were released at the same time so I'm sticking with the English version since I'm halfway through already. Thank God I looked up the track listing. Even at only 45 minutes this feels like a long album. There's a Kate Bush vibe to What's-her-face so the whole album sounds like someone digging in the crates and coming up with a bunch of 80s albums.
This feels like an album that would have been sold on late night television at one point. This music did not age well, I bet it sounded old six months after it came out. Billy The Kid is super corny. I would have thought El Paso was the big hit but apparently Big Iron is the more popular song from this album. Never mind, it was in Fallout so it's got a bunch of listens due to gamers. This album was the definition of meh.
Early New Wave Cure kinda sucks. I'm thirty seconds in, maybe it gets better. It's not really getting better. These songs all sound very similar. This is more "The Cure" than Seventeen Seconds was, you can hear their sound more and more clearly as the album goes on. Kicking off the final song with some recorded distortion and old audio and backwards tape...who told bands this was a good creative direction to take over and over again?
This project will finally answer the age old question of what the best Rolling Stones album of all time is. Or it will leave out one of my favorites and I'll want to quit. Brown Sugar is a great song. Wild Horses is another all-time great song. And Can't You Hear Me Knocking is an underrated Stones effort and one of the best album tracks ever. This album is amazing. Huge hits, great album tracks, a cover, a song that got more famous after it was covered and was in a movie....its got everything. I do think I like the Townes Van Zandt version of Dead Flowers better, but I do like the original. This album might have the most underrated album tracks of all time. Moonlight Mile is another tremendous song and a great way to close the album, it just feels like it's signifying the end of something.
This is a good album. Revolution Blues is particularly good. This is very different from Harvest in a good way. After not loving Ragged Glory recently, this is a really welcome change. I think the angrier Neil Young gets, the less I like him. Laid back Neil is awesome. Motion Pictures (For Carrie) is immediately one of my favorite Neil Young songs, it's very personal.
A double album, we are not off to a great start. Rocks Off is great classic Stones though. Shake Your Hips is a classic blues song...I prefer ZZ Top's La Grange though. Tumbling Dice is the hit and one of the best Rolling Stones songs. You got to roll me. Sweet Virginia is another great album cut. The Rolling Stones might have the best album tracks of any band ever. I know that's a function of the era, FM Radio playing entire album sides rather than just singles. Loving Cup is another great song. Maybe it's not double albums that are the problem, maybe it's the bands doing them so far. Happy isn't my favorite song and it was the other single. Gospel Stones is not my favorite. Shine a Light is amazing.
To quote Moe Szyslak, "Weird for the sake of being weird." The synth beatboxing is terrible. Where is the Line is more like a collection of sounds than music. Not odd that she'd sing a song in Icelandic, but it is not adding to my enjoyment of this album. I bet David Bowie listened to this right before he made Blackstar. The best things that can be said about this album are that it represents Bjork at her Bjorkiest and that it is unique, literally no one else would make this album. More beatboxing to close out the album on Triumph of a Heart.
Buffalo Stance was her big hit and it was everywhere when this came out. I wonder if the Buffalo in Buffalo Stance refers to the city or the animal? I wonder what a Buffalo Stance looks like? Is it her pose on the album cover? An hour of 80s Swedish dance music? That is not an appealing prospect especially when the big hit is the lead single. Manchild is the second single off the album and it is laughably bad. The rapping is hilarious in the context of a Swedish woman in the 1980s. This is classified as New Jack Swing for some reason. This is terrible. The Next Generation is like terrible, socially conscious MC Lyte. This is an awful album and a terrible representation of New Jack Swing if that's how it made the list. This sounds like the rap from a 90s cartoon. My Bitch sounds like a parody song The Lonely Island might do. Nothing says hard like a Swedish woman rapping and using profanity. Closing the album with two remixes is just filler. The stupid "What is he like?" line in Buffalo Stance is doubly annoying in a remix. Two awful remixes.
I love Nick Drake. River Man is an amazing song. This is THE album if you're feeling low. What an amazing talent gone too soon. It brightens up as it goes on. I prefer Pink Moon, but this is a great album.
I think I like The Bends and am giving Radiohead too much credit for everything else. The title track is awful. They are close on some of these songs but this is a miss for me. This album sucks. Optimistic is good...it's like throwback Radiohead. There are diminishing returns on the weirdness. The back half is better than the first, but it's not that great. Motion Picture Soundtrack is better.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but the asynchronous parts of modern hip hop and electronic music are distracting at best and awful at worst. George Clinton in a rap song?!? What's old is new again. An intro and an interlude in the first three tracks...not a good start. King Kunta is a step in the right direction though. These Walls has that Thundercat sound, I like it. I think I need to pay more attention to his lyrics because the music and his flow just don't add up to him being considered one of the greatest rappers of all time. I don't like his crying voice on u at all. Ronald Isley too? The Blacker the Berry is militant but it is good. i is the best song on the album...I love The Isley's That Lady. The last song is 12 minutes long. Not a strong way to end an album. A simulated conversation between Kendrick and his hero Tupac...make it a YouTube video.
Normally, blue-eyed soul is my jam, but I'm finding I don't love Motown era R&B all that much. The more psychedelic songs are even worse. The title track is the hit and it's the best song on the album. The music is fine but this seems like a really odd choice considering the soul albums left out.
My god, Rush sucks. I'd say they should never give nerds bands, but Led Zeppelin rules. One twenty minute side and then a normal B-side. Geddy Lee has the worst voice I've ever heard. This might be the worst album that people actually listen to on the list. Prog rock is terrible. At least this album is short. Ayn Rand is both long-winded and pedantic. Two words you probably don't want associated with your rock and roll album. That being said, I appreciate the desire for freedom and the line "You don't get something for nothing/You don't get freedom for free" is true and maybe they should have stuck with that one lyric on a song on an album with different song rather than a 20 minute space fantasy story based on Atlas Shrugged. One of the worst albums by one of the worst bands.
Hurt is a great song and this is a great cover. You get two different takes, but the same beautiful pain. His interpretations of some of these songs are great. There's a group of great performers, I'm thinking mainly Cash, Nelson, Dylan, whose covers or reinterpretations have a very different feel than they would if sung by a younger artist or at a different time in their lives. First Time Ever I Saw Your Face is another great take on a great song. Good lord, I can feel the tears welling up when he does In My Life. Not as big a fan of Desperado or I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry...hard to cover Hank.
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down is a strong contender for best cover ever. Up On Cripple Creek, overrated. Whispering Pines, underrated. I like this but Music from Big Pink is better.
This apparently is "cool jazz" which means that all other jazz must be "square jazz"? Whatever you call it, I like it better than more freeform jazz. This is pretty good. I would definitely listen to this again. Move and Moon Dreams are particularly good.
This suuuucks. Bamboo Banga is one of the worst songs I have ever heard. British rappers sound corny as hell. The same way the words "my lord" said aloud in a film by someone without a British accent sound odd, rap music and British accents just sound off. Without Slumdog Millionaire becoming the hit it did, M.I.A. would just be another weird act with no following in the UK. It doesn't get better with BirdFlu. Oh my god, it's like a challenge to see if she can make each song more annoying than the last. Every song on this album is awful. Nothing screams "serious musician" like having children rap on your album. She just steals lyrics. Where Is My Mind? from the Pixies and some lyrics from Paper Planes. In '92 I was most certainly not listening to this awful, awful album. I think it would be safe to say that in America M.I.A. is a one-hit wonder and she still managed to get two albums in this project. I'm not going to say she alone calls into question the validity of the methodology used to put albums on the list...but she might be Exhibit A. Two albums? There are so few American rap albums on this list already. I like Paper Planes less because this album is so bad. Come Around with Timbaland is the best song on the album.
Kung Fu movie dialog! Technically a samurai movie in this case. Liquid Swords is a good opening track. Wu-Tang is forever...and is also all over all of their solo albums. RZA's fingerprints are all over the albums he produces the same way Dre's are. This wasn't the first Wu-Tang solo effort but it feels very much like an extension of Enter the Wu-Tang focused on GZA in a way I don't feel like Tical by Method Man was. Although, at the same time, Return to the 36 Chambers by ODB also has a very Wu-Tang feel. I love Ghostface Killah's flow. 4th Chamber is the best song on the album. Shadowboxin' with Method Man (also great) is another good song. Great album.
