151
Albums Rated
2.77
Average Rating
14%
Complete
938 albums remaining
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1980s
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Hip-hop
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Rater Style ?
10
5-Star Albums
20
1-Star Albums
Breakdown
By Genre
By Decade
By Origin
Albums
You Love More Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Yeezus
Kanye West
|
5 | 2.77 | +2.23 |
|
Djam Leelii
Baaba Maal
|
5 | 2.79 | +2.21 |
|
Fragile
Yes
|
5 | 3.32 | +1.68 |
|
Strangeways, Here We Come
The Smiths
|
5 | 3.44 | +1.56 |
|
Gorillaz
Gorillaz
|
5 | 3.53 | +1.47 |
|
Funeral
Arcade Fire
|
5 | 3.57 | +1.43 |
|
Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
Wu-Tang Clan
|
5 | 3.61 | +1.39 |
|
The Velvet Underground & Nico
The Velvet Underground
|
5 | 3.62 | +1.38 |
|
The Low End Theory
A Tribe Called Quest
|
5 | 3.7 | +1.3 |
|
Electric Prunes
The Electric Prunes
|
4 | 2.73 | +1.27 |
You Love Less Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Talking Book
Stevie Wonder
|
1 | 3.72 | -2.72 |
|
Blood On The Tracks
Bob Dylan
|
1 | 3.68 | -2.68 |
|
Bringing It All Back Home
Bob Dylan
|
1 | 3.65 | -2.65 |
|
At Newport 1960
Muddy Waters
|
1 | 3.55 | -2.55 |
|
Rust Never Sleeps
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
|
1 | 3.53 | -2.53 |
|
xx
The xx
|
1 | 3.37 | -2.37 |
|
Surf's Up
The Beach Boys
|
1 | 3.31 | -2.31 |
|
Faith
George Michael
|
1 | 3.27 | -2.27 |
|
D
White Denim
|
1 | 3.21 | -2.21 |
|
Are You Experienced
Jimi Hendrix
|
2 | 4.16 | -2.16 |
5-Star Albums (10)
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Popular Reviews
The xx
1/5
I'm straight up offended that this is on a list of albums you have to hear before you die. There have been bad albums on here, but I can always at least believe there's some greater context I'm missing. But this is cardboard. Porridge. An homage to a high street Apple store. I hope I never have to hear it again.
10 likes
Simon & Garfunkel
2/5
There is a level of twee I can appreciate and then there's a level of twee that I find unbearable: this skirts the line between the two. You've got to grind through some gallingly sentimental tracks - weepy junk like 'Old Friends' and the Bookends reprise - to get to the palate cleansing power of 'Mrs Robinson' and 'A Hazy Shade of Winter'. I don't think it adds up to a good album, but it's not bad either. Mid 2*.
3 likes
The Killers
3/5
Enjoying this as an album means fighting against decades of radio overplay for a full half of these songs. It's not always easy to do. But ultimately they were hits for a reason: catchy pop rock, with clever, straightforward writing and a glitzy production that set it apart from its indie rock contemporaries. It's not my favorite Killers album but this one is very good. High 3.
2 likes
David Bowie
3/5
I can't be the only one who heard Bowie was releasing an album called Black Star and assumed it was about his wife. It isn't, color me surprised. Another surprise is that I actually found myself enjoying the rest of this album much more than I did when it was first released. It can be a little indulgent but the soundscape is awesome, particularly the sax that appears throughout, the guitars on Lazarus and the synths on Cant Give Everything Away. A lot of beauty in the lyrics but its also a little weird hearing a skeletal geriatric sing about looking for ass in the big apple. However, although I know very little about David Bowie's music, this feels authentic. High 3* for me.
1 likes
Bob Dylan
1/5
This is kitsch, brute-force lyricism contorted to fit over instrumentals that are just happy to be there. I'm sure Bob Dylan plugging in his guitar was a watershed moment for a generation that just got done wetting themselves over Elvis Presley, but I can't understand from this record how Bob Dylan and his songwriting are considered to be legendary, ('Time is a jetplane, it just moves too fast')
It's all so gauche and obvious and it makes me scared for the inner life of Dylan fanatics everywhere.
1 likes
1-Star Albums (20)
All Ratings
David Bowie
3/5
I can't be the only one who heard Bowie was releasing an album called Black Star and assumed it was about his wife. It isn't, color me surprised. Another surprise is that I actually found myself enjoying the rest of this album much more than I did when it was first released. It can be a little indulgent but the soundscape is awesome, particularly the sax that appears throughout, the guitars on Lazarus and the synths on Cant Give Everything Away. A lot of beauty in the lyrics but its also a little weird hearing a skeletal geriatric sing about looking for ass in the big apple. However, although I know very little about David Bowie's music, this feels authentic. High 3* for me.
Sam Cooke
2/5
The perfect LP for pumping yourself up to go creep on Mary Sue down at the Milk Bar while Dad works out his WW2 trauma on mum's jaw downstairs.
In other words, beyond Feel It (which rocks), this is just too twee for my millenial ears to be able to fully appreciate - I guess we'll have to assume that "[chorus] bring your lovin home to me tonight (yea!) x 10" was a panty-dropper in the 60s (the crowd sounds like they're having the time of their lives).
Sam Cooke's voice sounds really nice, but I just don't have enough musical context to overcome the generational barrier for this one.
Nirvana
4/5
Nirvana unplugged is the best version of this band to me. Lake of Fire, All Apologies and Where Did You Sleep Last Night are especially good, but I like all of the renditions of Nirvana songs at least as much as the studio versions & the covers are all great.
And the fact it's from an intimate live gig really does add something to the listening experience, although Kurt Cobain's stoner drawl ('this was written by the vessaleeeenes') is a little grating when disembodied & the sound of the crowd is annoying in that tickets to this very small event almost certainly went to industry executives and their douchebag friends.
I can get past these petty annoyances: this is a very worthwhile live album and is deserving of its reputation.
Count Basie & His Orchestra
2/5
I think I'd need to be on drugs to get anything out of this kind of music.
The Libertines
2/5
Exhibit A in the case against bands whose reputation has been massively over inflated thanks to tabloid tales of drug addiction and interpersonal conflict. If smacked-out Pete Doherty didn't break into his bandmate's flat in the time between The Libertines' first album and this one, this could easily be considered just another album for the indie rock landfill.
It's not bad at all, but it is just not as interesting as the stuff in the genre that came before and after. High 2*.
Stevie Wonder
2/5
It is very polished and has a few tracks that I really like, but generally it didn't make much of an impact on me. Highlights include Isn't She Lovely and discovering that this was where the Gangsta's Paradise sample came from, (it's such a nice track on the album too).
Willie Nelson
4/5
Damn. I thought I'd hate this but enjoyed it quite a bit. Simple storytelling across 30 minutes which adds up to a very pleasant album.
Gang Of Four
4/5
This is everything great about post-punk: fatalistic political ideas wrapped in catchy and accessible tunes without ever straying into pretentiousness. In that sense, it's everything that The Libertines we just listened to wishes it could be. A star among stars which particularly stood out to me: the bass work. It's a character on every track and feels very familiar as someone who has listened to a lot of punk past this era, which I guess says something about its influence.
Duran Duran
3/5
Imagine going back in time and trying to explain to the people who loved this album that people do coke off of smartphones now. This is all very groovy, very Vice City and highly enjoyable - I don't think there's any song on the whole album that falls flat. It's almost comically shallow, but who cares? It's part of the charm. High 3*, could be a 4⛷️⛷️ ⛷️
Christina Aguilera
2/5
2002 in radio charts: boring white chicks singing about getting their pussy worked over on top of an R&B beat. While that's plenty to get nostalgic about, and while I'd be lying if I said I found nothing to like or respect here (one of these stars is just for Beautiful), this is mostly a lot of oversexed pop filler (is that a fucking thong sewn into your jeans, Christina?!)
George Michael
1/5
I like Queen too George, but the 80s pop production on this is making my ears bleed. And what the hell is going on with the songwriting here? There's a whole five minute track dedicated to unpacking the "monkey on your back" idiom (Why can't you do it? / Why can't you set your monkey free? /Always giving into it / Do you love the monkey or do you love me?), after we're done begging for sex in the most appalling way imaginable (Sex is natural sex is good/ Not everybody does it/ But everybody should/ Sex is natural sex is fun/ Sex is best when it's one on one). I don't think the young gentleman you're singing to will appreciate the implications of that last line George, and frankly neither do I.
This is commercial and mindless, and the sound has aged so poorly that I can't imagine what anyone could still get out of this record unless they're nostalgic or looking to get turned out by George Michael.
3/5
This is pretty good with some nice guitars and ideas. It wears its The Kinks influence on its sleeve, which isn't a terrible thing, but the album really started to bleed together for me by the last few tracks and I had no real desire to listen more than once. Low 3.
Yes
5/5
This is cool as hell. I feel that this has a very diverse sound such that it consistently demands your attention without becoming a chore. In the best way possible, large parts of this reminds me of the most enchanting video game background music ever, like a Sonic stage on acid or something. Best of all, there's no pretence that any of these lyrics really mean anything, so you never get the grating pretentiousness you might otherwise expect from such an eccentric album. Maybe there's one or two tracks I could do without, but that won't stop me from giving this a 5*.
Big Black
3/5
This is noisy and aggressive and I don't know if I approve, but after spending some time disassociating to Kerosene I came to the realization I was enjoying myself? As far as noise rock goes, it is eminently accessible and entertaining. 3*.
Coldcut
4/5
How cold can coldcuts get? Pretty cold. Whats That Noise? is a sick album. It's a top shelf blend of acid house and DIY hiphop, cutting some unhinged samples (probably why it isn't on streaming) with dirty dance music and some really surprising vocals.
Stop This Crazy Thing and Smoke Dis One are undoubtedly highlights, but there's fun to be had all through. It overstays its welcome just a little, and it's slightly of its time, but that doesnt matter: that time was evidently awesome and so is this.
Portishead
4/5
I enjoyed this alot, very immersive and well-realized. Incredibly, this sounds like it could have come out in the last five years, both in terms of production quality (it is beautiful with good headphones) and style.
It's undoubtedly plundering the best of what was going on in hip hop around this time, but equally there are significant elements of Dummy's intricate soundscape that have had major moments in recent popular music: the atmospheric, almost gothic aesthetic is all over the Lana Del Rey-Lorde-Billie Eilish pop lineage, and the vibe-heavy, emo-on-benzos production had a moment with a particularly shitty kind of rap coming out in the late 2010s, and lofi hip hop more generally.
Who knows much direct influence Dummy had on those artists but at the very least it speaks to how ahead of its time this blend of sound was. There may be contemporary Portishead analogs that I find more interesting (that are hopefully on this list) and the vocalist wears thin by the end, but this is a high 4 for me.
ABBA
3/5
As my first real listen to ABBA I was expecting to be horrified by whatever it was that's given them their eternal mass appeal. But actually I was sort of encouraged at how creative and earnest all of this is.
There are some strange moments. Tiger is the band's apparantly urgent PSA about the dangers of big city life, told through the eyes of a serial rapist.
But if these quirks are the cost of having creativity in pop music, I'm here for it. I'm interested in how Abba was able to churn out so many enduring hits without becoming formulaic: I guess the Swedes really are just that good at pop. Fernando is probably my fave. High 3.
The Velvet Underground
5/5
Howd we go from the evidently mainstream sound of big band Sam Cooke to this in just a few years? And then on the other side, its crazy that punk hadn't really gotten going at this point yet VU&Nico sounds like something that stuff would have refined into as opposed to taken inspiration from.
This fucks. It fucks big time.
The xx
1/5
I'm straight up offended that this is on a list of albums you have to hear before you die. There have been bad albums on here, but I can always at least believe there's some greater context I'm missing. But this is cardboard. Porridge. An homage to a high street Apple store. I hope I never have to hear it again.
Van Halen
2/5
This sort of music has been referenced so many times in popular culture that it has calcified into something that's very difficult to take seriously as a millenial coming to it in 2024. It's the music that needs to be playing when the newly arrived Terminator walks into a bar filled with tough guys, its the motif for the muscle-car driving douchebag that's nailing the protagonist's crush, it's what the washed up deadbeat dad on One Tree Hill (or something, whatever) has on the record player while he's bottoming out with a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Antony and the Johnsons
1/5
I'm committed to listening to every album on here at least twice, but this one is a test from the lord himself. Melodramatic, humorless, uncreative. I cannot fathom how this album can be on any best-albums list that isn't merely the personal fascinations of the most boring creative arts graduate you know.
It's a slap in the face to every great dreary album that has taken seriously its obligation to not be boring in its pursuit of capturing crushing sadness, and I take this 1001 Albums list less seriously having listened to this.
Nirvana
5/5
A classic. It's heavy, angsty, energetic, screamy and noisy; somehow thanks to Kurt's undeniable vocal presence and razor sharp production these things make for an intensely palatable album. And between all these things, there's a poetry that I really can't put into words, but I get it.
Electric Light Orchestra
3/5
It's as if someone took a Beatles record and made it interesting. I like this a lot. The strings are used to terrific effect and there's a great range of sounds and production quirks thay makes it an engaging listen. It peaks with the opening 'Turn to Stone', and it's afflicted with the banal romance vernacular of the era (how many times does the word 'baby' occur on this album?), but I'd be happy to come back to this. A high 3*.
Bob Dylan
1/5
This is kitsch, brute-force lyricism contorted to fit over instrumentals that are just happy to be there. I'm sure Bob Dylan plugging in his guitar was a watershed moment for a generation that just got done wetting themselves over Elvis Presley, but I can't understand from this record how Bob Dylan and his songwriting are considered to be legendary, ('Time is a jetplane, it just moves too fast')
It's all so gauche and obvious and it makes me scared for the inner life of Dylan fanatics everywhere.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
3/5
I know what a heathen is, but I'm not sure what it means for him to be back deh pon di wall.
It's good natured, entertaining music. It's not something I'd seek out but I found myself getting lost in its atmosphere and groove. Warm 3*
Beatles
2/5
This was obviously breaking new ground when it was released, but as a pure listening experience in 2025 all you're left with is safe, rudimentary, admittedly high energy rock music and absurd lyrics about motor transport and threatening to kill your girlfriend if she ever leaves you.
No doubt Beatles fans will tell you that John Lennon imitating the sound of a car horn is groundbreaking stuff, but it doesn't make this album any less ridiculous as a mostly first time listener - especially if you already know what a phony shithead Lennon was.
2*, barely.
The Smiths
5/5
The Smiths at peak creativity. They'd more or less just put out the platonic ideal of a Smiths album in The Queen Is Dead, which makes their willingness to depart from that and experiment with new sounds all the more satisfying on this one. It's still undeniably a The Smiths record at its core - morose, ironic lyrics atop irresistibly catchy compositions - but this is a tantalising glimpse into where thos band might have gone if they hadn't broken up.
Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before is an all time song for me.
Keith Jarrett
4/5
Beautiful and hypnotic - how it is this sounds so good would be way beyond my musical knowledge to articulate. The story behind the concert is interesting and if by chance it's all true it's a great example of the artistic power of working under constraint, but really I just think this is tremendously passionate improvisational piano playing by a savant.
The vocalisations are where he loses me - major douchechills. But it's no big deal. I'm glad I found this.
Dire Straits
4/5
This is great. I had wrongly written these guys off as shopping mall rock, turns out they're actually unbelievable musicians. Money For Nothing is an outrageous track - most memorable opening and riff I can remember hearing in a long time. And there are similarly sick moments all over the album. Maybe some of it is overlong. But I enjoyed the whole thing.
High 4*
Derek & The Dominos
2/5
The critics had it right the first time. Indulgent, garish and manufactured, it's the kind of shit that could only come from people who think they can do no wrong, and that as long as they can be recorded the world absolutely must hear them.
Look no further than the cover of Little Wing, which takes so many liberties in smothering a classic tune in pomp that it loses all character.
It gets a star for Layla, but even that seems worse when put in the context of this album.
Buffalo Springfield
2/5
It's alright but didn't really make any type of contact with me. Mr Soul and Broken Arrow are the peaks - other than that I couldnt tell you a single thing about this.
Queen
4/5
There are magnificent peaks on this album, and it's not just the radio superhits: tracks like The Prophet's Song (a pleasant surprise which somehow rivals even Bohemian Rhapsody in its scope and execution) and the furious, seething Death on Two Legs prove that this album is much more than its singles. It's a progressive record bursting with creativity, even if some of the material in between the peaks are somewhat grating.
I could do without the Taylor/May solo tracks. They’re good singers, good enough that you wouldn't be surprised to find them fronting their own bands in this era, but that's precisely the problem: it’s the moments that Freddie takes a back seat that the album starts resembling the more run-of-the-mill rock of the 70s. Hearing Taylor croon about his Alfa Romeo dispels some of the magic cast by Freddie's bombastic vocals.
However: if handing the reins over to the rest of the band for a few tracks is the cost of being able to deliver insane vocal harmonies like in Bohemian Rhapsody and the May-created Prophets Song, I really can't complain too much.
Easy 4.
Suicide
2/5
I don't know. It's simple and twisted and hard to listen to. But it took a while for me realize that there's no real point to the discomfort, no thesis it's striving to realize in any serious way. When the album culminates in Frankie's Teardrop, it feels shocking for the sake of being shocking (and even that falls flat in a world where cartel execution videos and extreme sexual violence are a couple of mouseclicks away). If there was any doubt, the fleeting political and social references there've been up until that point are exposed as flimsy excuses.
It's as empty as it is confronting, and yet there's a certain charm here that has pulled me back for multiple listens. God knows why.
Guns N' Roses
2/5
There are three tracks worth hearing on this album, and they happen to be the top 3 most streamed GnR songs on Spotify. I don't even need to name them - it'd be literally impossible for anyone reading this to guess wrong. And it's true, they're all-time great songs.
But the rest of this sounds like Visiting Day from The Sopranos got a record deal. Putrid stuff.
Orbital
3/5
I liked it. Though I'd love to hear a fan of this record explain the artistry behind having your entire opening track be 1m 43s of a man say 'when time becomes a loop'. Not a great foot to get off on. The rest is good bar a few more irritating moments. 'MONDAY' being a highlight.
Marianne Faithfull
3/5
There's a great moment on the final track when Marianne angrily sings things like 'whyd ya let her suck your cock' and 'why'd ya spit on my snatch?"
Such is the energy of Marianne Faithfull. This was a lot of fun, with an attitude and sound that feels very modern.
Coldplay
4/5
Coldplay cannot possibly deserve half the hate they get considering how good this album is.
It's 10.5 tracks of perfectly distilled radio-ready pop rock. Catchy & surprising production with effective lyrics; pretty without making you want to retch. If it's guilty of anything, it's success - this sound ended up being replicated and refined beyond all charm through the 00s and early 10s both by Coldplay themselves and many shit bands imitating them. But the earnest tastefulness of this album survives all that. 4*
Jean-Michel Jarre
4/5
Strong homosexual undertones.
The Police
2/5
I should really like this album. Sting is an interesting singer and a good writer. The instruments - particularly the drums - are stellar. It's able to be poignantly simplistic (Every Breath You Take) and it's also able to be intricate and complex (Synchronicity II).
But this is all too polished, which wouldn't be a problem on another record but is a rather big one on an album that is so consoicuously in search of some kind of a sharp edge.
Simon & Garfunkel
2/5
There is a level of twee I can appreciate and then there's a level of twee that I find unbearable: this skirts the line between the two. You've got to grind through some gallingly sentimental tracks - weepy junk like 'Old Friends' and the Bookends reprise - to get to the palate cleansing power of 'Mrs Robinson' and 'A Hazy Shade of Winter'. I don't think it adds up to a good album, but it's not bad either. Mid 2*.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
1/5
‘Pocahontas’ captures what I find so risible about Neil Young. It starts by describing the Native American genocide in boilerplate terms: 'they killed the buffalo', 'they came with their firesticks', 'modern life is all shingled roofs and taxicabs'. It's trite, but harmless. Next though, he describes how he wants to fuck Pocahontas so she can tell him how she ‘felt’ about it, while Neil (we can imagine) noodles on the guitar and tells her how she's 'totally right on, man'. The track's final image, and I suspect Young's real fantasy, is of he and Pocahontas sitting around a fire discussing indigenous rights with Marlon Brando.
Shortly after this track there's a corker about how Welfare Mothers make better lovers. Here Neil is even more out to sea than he was with the Native Americans, with the only touchstones he can conjure being the city laundromat and loitering on the street with her multitude of children.
I guess you could say that anything Neil Young is about the guitar playing: make a fucking guitar album then Neil, and keep your trap shut. 1*
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
2/5
Clinical, sterile blues music. It leaves me totally cold.
Def Leppard
3/5
As entertaining as this album can be, there's only so much I can get out of this kind of music - at its core it is empty which is okay. That said, this album is about as much as I can ever see myself enjoying this genre.
The Mamas & The Papas
2/5
Every aesthetic impulse I have is telling me to hate this music. And I think I do actually hate it. Just look at them sitting there in their bathtub, like someone photoshopped The Shaggs onto a Papa Roach album cover. California Dreamin is a classic, Monday Monday is good too, and props to them for letting the fat one into the band long before such things were done. If only that were enough.
Waylon Jennings
1/5
This sort of music is so image-conscious that I cannot take it seriously as genuine artistic expression.
Like, you know exactly what the preoccupations of this album will be before you ever hit play. Being a lonely cowboy is hard. Being a lonely cowboy while also getting lots of pussy is especially hard. Being ‘free’ (which I guess just means being away from lawmen and cities and soap) is cool. Drinking gin from a jug is also cool.
You see a track called 'Low Down Freedom' and you can practically write it yourself: lamenting about having to leave the girl who's just spent the evening 'fitting' the singer's body (gross) because all that freedom is irresistible to a wild cowboy like he.
Every creative decision is made to satiate people who would burn down the hootenanny if this music didn’t fit within these very narrow prescriptions. We should not indulge them.
Tom Waits
2/5
I am utterly indifferent to this. It peaks with the title track and then never gets back there.
Stephen Stills
2/5
To adapt a quote: everyone has an album in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay. I can't help but think of this listening to Stephen Stills and the other virtuoso (apparantly) guitarists this list seems to love so much. They're boring and overly manufactured and despite the attempt to pretend otherwise with ever more absurd band names (I'm surprised this band wasn't called Johnny and the Seabass), it's just a thinly disguised vehicle for Stills' celebrity.
Beatles
3/5
I get it, it was groundbreaking and massively influential and the generation that made 'Surfin Bird' a hit were lucky to be there. But that counts for very little towards the listening experience when you're hearing it first in 2025, by which time we've had 50+ years of development and experimentation by bands much less heavily commercialized and most importantly not fronted by John Lennon, who may be the most insincere and grating frontman ever.
As an aside some of the reviews on these Beatles albums are deranged: so moist and overwritten that it almost feels like you're interrupting an intimate moment by reading them. Move on, people!
The Smiths
4/5
It's quintessential The Smiths: upbeat, quirky pop instrumentals behind poetic ornery storytelling. It's an unbeatable combo. The bass on this really shines, especially in deeper cuts like Rusholme Ruffians but really all across the record. And it's got one of my favorites - This Joke Isn't Funny Anymore, which is the band firing on all cylinders and the archetypical Smiths track for me.
4/5
This is a really unique blend of rock, jazz, reggae and psychadelia that massively works for me. It's content to wander & take its time but isn't afraid to ramp up when necessary. And I'm not much for Jazz but its contribution here is essential. Great album, high 4.
4/5
What a great album. Pretty much every song here is good except Exit. I don't get the hate.
Megadeth
2/5
This is unbelievably corny and pretty insubstantial. There are some nice melodies and cool moments with the guitars and a sense that the band aren't taking themselves very seriously anyway that I find kind of endearing: these elements make me think that maybe in another universe, one where I had ADHD or was angry at my Christian parents, I could have talked myself into liking what Megadeth is doing here. But this is not that universe, and I got very little out of this album other than an idea that maybe I'd have been on the side of the satanic panic after all.
LL Cool J
3/5
This is technically very tight: the production is progressive and immaculate, while LL Cool J's delivery and rhyme schemes are extraordinary. Subject-matter wise, a lot of this falls into the category of 'why do we need to know this?'', but as a vehicle for the technical prowess of LL Cool J and his producers this is a good album. Title track is unreal but it's all very listenable.
Wu-Tang Clan
5/5
This deserves its reputation.
Hard to come up with anything that hasn't been said a million times before. I love this album - to me it's pure rap at its best. RZA's production is godlike (especially love the sample loop on Can It All Be So Simple and the way the Kung Fu theme is worked in throughout) and, it's intricate and layered yet still sounds raw and stripped back, providing the perfect platform for the group to come in with some of my favorite delivery and flow ever.
It might also be the only hip hop album with these skits that I don't find totally grating after a few listens. They slot right into the raw atmosphere of the album and don't feel as obligatory as they would on many hip hop albums in the next 10 years.
5*
Pixies
3/5
I like it as very servicable alt rock record which still kanages to carve out its own character. The singer's voice is so distinctive and used to great effect, with the oscillation between quiet intensity and unhinged screeching making for a very diverse listen and allows the album to hit some emotional notes that might otherwise have been out of reach. Some of it is forgettable, such that the album bleeds together although it never quite gets boring.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
3/5
The shitty blues projects this list has given us so far may have put me off this kind of music for life, but this just about draws from enough sources & avoids the tropes of the genre enough for me to enjoy.
Tracks like Who'll Stop the Rain show that its possible for this kind of music to be overtly political without feeling debased and unpoetic, and Long as I Can See The Light show how broad a range of influences the band is working with.
It's not perfect. I Heard It Through The Grapevine didn't need to be that long and I think CCR knew it. Ooby Dooby is what I brace for when I'm about to hear a blues record, & that same 'doo-doo-do-doooo' scat rears its head throughout this. And of course, it's blues, so there's gotta be a track called 'My Baby Left Me'.
But this all sounds good to me. Solid 3.
The Electric Prunes
4/5
Genuinely trippy and surreal. The creative highs come in tracks like I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night, with this distinctive vespine buzz oscillating between channels creating a distinctive psychadelic sound. Small decisions like reverbing the band on Get Me To The World On time are similarly effective on what could otherwise be generic rock and roll.
I dislike the nightmarishly dour The King is in the Counting House, which is how I imagine it sounds to be dosed with LSD and wheeled through the royals exhibit at Madame Toussads with your eyes stapled open.
So this isn't perfect, but it's a rare psychadelic rock album that lives up to the name.
The Velvet Underground
4/5
This is good stuff. Minimalist in its own way, it still covers a surprising range of sounds- not something you'd expect after their debut with Nico. I enjoy all the experimentation here, with perhaps the lone exception being The Murder Mystery. Playing a different set of lyrics in each ear simultaneously is sadistic.
Jeff Buckley
3/5
Musically this is really enjoyable. Vocally and lyrically, Buckley disappeared up his own ass, where the rest of the world would inevitably follow - and still remain- after his death. He's obviously a great singer with real range, but here he uses it to go in circles over the same subject matter - fear in love - and only occassionally does this lead to anything insightful or revelatory. Those occasions are beautiful, but it's telling that the album's unmissable peak is a rendition of a song Buckley didn't write in Hallelujah - though to his credit it is the definitive version of the song.
Kanye West
5/5
Ye at his creative peak. A wildly engrossing take on punk & industrial music, the energy on this is crazy: the breathless antagonism of New Slaves, the horns on Blood on the Leaves, and for my money an all time closer in Bound 2 - all beautiful. And Kanye's distinct sense of humour is out in force here, perhaps the last true glimpse of it we ever got before Kanye stopped being in on the joke (to borrow a phrase from Boyd). But there's an attitude that runs all the way through, even on lesser tracks like Send It, that really brings this together into a cohesive musical statement, something Lou Reed described as 'supreme beauty' in his review of the record, one of my favourites.
Then there's the meta: after putting out one of the most commercially and critically successful hip hop albums ever in MBDTF, itself an olive branch to the mainstream after his Taylor Swift fiasco, it took a lot of balls to follow it up with something as abrasive and uncommercial as this - something the album is self-aware about and plays on for great effect ("first you make them like you then make them unlike you" and the terrific "he'll give us what we need, it may not be what we want" choir lift - a textbook Kanye sample amid Daft Punk's production). Yet it has stood the test of time as one of the most raw, unfiltered and well realized hip hop projects of the 21st century.
It's remarkable how clear of a peak this is for Kanye: unless you count the transcendent Kids See Ghosts, it's the last time we got a cohesive, fully formed project from him - which isn't to disparage all of his later stuff, but none of it - not even Pablo - received the same care and attention that Yeezus did.
Brian Wilson
3/5
Being a funny person I know a thing or two about laughter, so when I saw the concept behind this album I knew I had to listen closely. And it's a very good album. Its inevitably a maximalist endeavour, but the sheer range of sounds and cadences you get thrown at you is dizzying but exciting. Heroes and Villains & Good Vibrations (which I gather didn't debut here) are such meticulous musical journeys that they almost sound strained, but they're great songs.
Parts of this get so quaint and off the wall that it brings the good vibes to a screeching halt. ("I threw away the candy bar and I ate the wrapper/when they told me what I did I burst into laughter"). But even some of those tracks - like Barnyard - retain such musical vision that it's hard to write them off in any real way.
I wouldn't say any of this left much of an emotional mark on me, but I'd happily give another shot in future. High 3.
Michael Jackson
2/5
The horns on the opener are so distinct they become songs unto themselves, yet the rest is forgettable. That's how a lot of this album is for me: there are some ideas, moments and quirks that are pique my interest; everything in between is a drag.
TV On The Radio
3/5
My only experience with this band and album is the excellent use of DLZ in Breaking Bad as Walter tells the methheads to stay out of his territory. The rest of Dear Science is pretty good too. It's got a thick but pleasant atmosphere that's sort of hard to pin down: is it optimistic? Pessimistic? Cynical? Sardonic? Somehow the band manages to tread the line between all of these. There's a mildly embarrassing 'sah random XD' vibe that rears its head on this occassionally but nothing we havent seen before out of an alt rock band of this time - I'm thinking of Dancing Choose. But the music is so tight, some lyrical missteps are easy to ignore: eg Love Dog sounds like it might only a few rungs above Phoebe's smelly cat song from Friends, but it still works when couched in the moody palette the band is working with here.
I'd give it a high 3 but this is one I wish I had the time to spin more than twice.
Stevie Wonder
1/5
I've got the same issue with Talking Book as I do with most of this kind of music: it pretty much only has one gear, which is 'sugary crooning'. In fact you can scan down the tracklist and get a nearly complete idea of where the album is going to go - you could probably even guess at a couple of the verses on each track and only end up being off by one or two words. That's whatever: it's a Stevie Wonder album after all, noone is looking for Keats. But it leaves me with a feeling that a lot of the smiling romance of this album and others like it is insincere and commercial & I resent having to spend any energy digesting it. Superstition rocks, though.
Paul McCartney and Wings
3/5
I can dig this. On some level it's the standard fare of any post Beatles vanity project. But then there are glimpses of something deeper and troubling just out of view that I find oddly engrossing here. You can see it in the urgent sax on Mrs Vanderbilt and the not-very-assuring twist it puts on the 'Whats the use of worrying?' chorus, or the generally concerning Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five (this plays a darkly amusing role in the novel Glamorama by Brett Easton Ellis). It's the sound of a screwball stoner comedy set in Liverpool but directed by David Lynch - like at any moment McCartney could stop dead in the middle of a song and start addressing the listener personally. Just when I start to think I'm imagining it, another musical flourish comes along to convince me that this is all meant to be a little bit weird. Just me?
The xx
1/5
"And the winner of this year's Paper Merchant of the year award: Wernham, Hogg & Partners!" Applause. The lights go down on the sparsely packed conference room in Hull's Premier Inn as a bloated troupe of polyester and cholesterol make their way up to the stage to accept their prize, to reap the year's sow. The XX's Crystalline plays as they do, practically an anachronism in this cursed purgatory but Phil the middle aged conference manager insisted. He heard it on an iPod commercial and knew this was the dynamism the Paper Merchant awards needed. But the effect is more like having a Beatles cover band play a dementia home: it's a cruel simulacra of artistry, barely real enough to find some tortured resonance in the few braincells left in the room but nothing that'll knock them off the course the Lexapro has set for them.
It sucks, basically. History will not be kind to this era of popular music.
Love
3/5
Interesting music. It sounds like a Beatles album only with some edge. The guitar probably makes the whole record: so crisp and groovy and a character all the way through. I'm not a huge fan of the lyrics (by the time I'm done singing / the bells from the schools of wars will be ringin). Id take that over some of the sockeningly banal subject matter of their near contemporaries, though.
Ray Charles
2/5
One of many albums I have listened to in my lifetime. In some ways it's just like all the rest - you hit play and then the music starts coming out of whatever device you've chosen to listen on. But in other ways it is much more. For instance, the hex code of the particular shade of red on this cover is #E2231A, which approximates to something called Tropical Red. Have I ever seen that before? Who can say.
Violent Femmes
4/5
A laugh riot. Some of these lyrics are flying a little too close to the sun (this is going on your permanent record, dont be distressed, im impressed!), the angst can be overwhelming and I really should hate the nasally whine of the singer's voice, but these things totally work together when arranged just so. In that way it reminds me of The Flaming Lips. Good stuff.
Nina Simone
4/5
Powerful stuff. The ambiance on this is unlike anything else, with an intense, almost excorciating vocal performance playing off (usually) barebones instrumentals. The signature blend comes in track 2 with Four Women and its striking, looping piano melody - famously sampled in Jay Zs The Story of OJ (and by extension one of the best diss tracks ever in The Story of Addidon by Pusha T).
How could so much sugary shitbop be getting worldwide attention at the same time Nina Simone is putting out stuff like this?
Baaba Maal
5/5
Genuinely brilliant and hypnotic. The record shuns conventional musical storytelling in favor of a kind of unintrusive, enchantingly repetitive lolling almost strays into ambience, but the characterful vocals defy even that label. It is almost like the more sophisticated original video game music in how it's constructed - something like a West African take on Neir Automata's background music.
I'm hesitant to give this a 5 considering I have no idea what this gentleman is singing about - but I think even if it turned out to be a call to genocide I'd be able to vibe out. I'll trust my gut that this about love and peace though, 5*.
Johnny Cash
3/5
The record defines what it means to have a good live audience. The charged reactions of the prison population throughout all this is just fantastic. I could take or leave the music, largely.
The Louvin Brothers
1/5
Painful. Just a couple of rungs above worship music on the listenability ladder. At least worship music is ostensibly to help get you into heaven. This is inane and aimless.
Country Joe & The Fish
2/5
It's interesting as proto psychadelia but I just can't jive with the folksy sensibility of this one.
Snoop Dogg
4/5
This is ludicrous but a lot of fun. Yeah, it's almost embarrassingly misogynistic and it isn't very clever about it, but it's such the epitomosation of the early 90s west coast sound that I can't hate it.
As a new listener there is something just a little inauthentic about it - the price of Snoop becoming an astoundingly inauthentic sellout later in life I guess. But I can get past it.
Soul II Soul
4/5
Really cool. Just as soon as you've had your fill of the buttery pipes of Charlotte Kelly you start getting a heavy dose of Jazzie B and his disaffected-yet-soulful rapping. It's on his tracks where the album really starts to feel like the UK twin of A Tribe Called Quest (something I'd never have thought to look for) - I find it interesting that this released the same year as Low End Theory. I bet they hung out. And if it's possible to get sick of both of the leads before the album's end, there are some very vibey instrumentals like African Dance. And if you then get sick of that too, you can go fuck yourself.
High 4*.
Alanis Morissette
3/5
A blitzkreig of optimistic 90s fempop. Seriously, it'd be hard to make a record more emblematic of this era of popular music. In fact, so efficiently does she boil the whole aesthetic down into one lyric ('I've got one hand in my pocket, and the other is holding up a piece siiiign') that it would have made Hitler's most diligent logisticians blush.
Don't get me wrong, none of this is meant pejoratively. It's very well executed. More than just a forgettable token of the time. Like, I'd never have guessed an Alanis Morrissette album would contain this much litetary biblical allusion, but here we have it. She even shows a flash of Marianne Faithfull in track two where she accusingly asks her ex if his new beau will go down on him in a theatre. Yknow, like Alanis did.
Not quite what I expected but very happy to be surprised. High 3.
Metallica
2/5
This isn't for me. It reminds me of sweaty band tshirts and dirty goatees. And something about the way this is produced and mixed is really off putting. It's too smooth and overly clipped, which makes a mockery of the vibe the record seems to be going for.
Maxwell
2/5
It's like elevator music if someone was shooting a porno in there. I enjoyed some of this but mostly it made me feel seedy.
David Holmes
2/5
It sounds more like the soundtrack to a film than something that stands on its own, and it's ultimately a boring listen. There are just way more interesting things happening in this genre of music at this time.
The Afghan Whigs
3/5
This is some poignant stuff. It captures the disintegration of a relationship at a moment that I've gotta think is a universal experience: where there's still enough passion left to spark bitter, hateful arguments but where both parties already long since have crossed the rubicon and left no more space for true reconciliation. That's a bitter place to be and the tortured guitars, solemn drums and poetic lyrics portray it all beautifully. Despite being perfectly functional for this concept, I don't think a huge amount of the vocals here. Against the frantic subject matter this style of singing gets too close to scattered rambling for me, which I'm sure was part of the plan but doesn't make for great listening.
Still, it's a very well realized album that captures a truth about modern relationships in a highly creative way. High 3.
Muddy Waters
1/5
It's kind of expected that this sort of music treats its lyrical content as an afterthought, but here things are so dire that if I didn't know better I'd think I was being mocked. Like I'm being dared to sing Ive Got My Brand On You to myself in the self checkout queue at Tesco. Ditto with Hoochie Coochie Man - what the hell is the point of any of this? If you're telling me this is all about the musicianship then fine, but you can't also tell me there arent thousands of other people in midcentury America that have made this exact record, or that you couldnt go to Blues night down at your local and hear pretty much the same thing.
Please, no more blues.
Goldfrapp
3/5
It's Enya on benzos, which I kind of like, but (rather appropriately) I doubt I'll remember ever listening to this. I didn't even realize it was in English until the second track. Whatever - not being into numerology or cereal grains I'm clearly not the target audience for the annoying whimsy of this album. Even so, I thought it was pretty good.
The Pharcyde
3/5
I had fun with this. The flow is insane and right up my alley. It's pretty stupid but I get the charm. Like the startingly misogynostoc 4 Better of 4 Worse has the lead rapping very recognizable venom and threats at some girl over the phone, with her blase reactions forming a kind of chorus which ends up being oddly (and almost certainly unintentionally) poignant.
Led Zeppelin
2/5
Strippers have to dance to something.
Wilco
2/5
This starts off promising, but quickly deteriorates into a confused mash of a bunch of different styles that I mostly hate (putting these kind of vocals atop banal Americana is an abomimation). I can see why it's on here though - aspects of this seem to have become the blueprint for a lot of indie music that would come out in the ensuing 15 years. In fact, I had to check that vocalist and chief songwriter Jeff Tweedy wasn't quietly fronting all those bands too. But no, I guess this was just influential.
It's not horrible. High 2.
The Gun Club
2/5
Making punk music is a tightrope walk between being entertaining and being authentic, which is difficult at the best of times. If you're doing this as a California bred band appropriating southern music without any irony whatsoever - like The Gun Club is doing here - you may as well not bother. It's shtick. And I don't get it.
By the way, how about that n bomb in For the Love of Ivy?
The Kinks
2/5
I like the music like I do most of The Kinks output - it's unpretentious and highly competent and more often than not thoughtful and jaunty.
Where I hit a wall here is in the concept: it presents as an examniation of old England - beautifully realized in the lyrics - but try as I might to find some deeper commentary on the fallacy of golden era nostalgia, I keep coming up empty. After a few listens I'm forced to accept that it's totally unironic, and the nostalgia here is meant solely for indulgence. And I think I'd rather rub sandpaper over my eyeballs than listen to geezers wheeze about how much better things were back then.
Gorillaz
5/5
Phenomenal. Each of these tracks is a world unto itself, so well realized and inventive that to listen is to be immersed. Clint Eastwood is one of the best hip hop tracks of all time in my opinion: the distinctive loop at the start is immortal by now, as is the chorus (I aint happy, im feelin glad / i got sunshine, in a bag / im useless. But not for long / the future is coming on). It's simple but profound, seedy in a way that manages to be universally appealing. But the whole album is gold, with incredible production that's made for you to get lost in with a good pair of headphones. In a broader sense, it's a brilliant successor to Portishead's Dummy, another entry on this lost I loved - both projects make be immensely proud of British alternative hip hop.
Shack
1/5
That an album so utterly unremarkable and devoid of artistic adventure would choose a picture not of a warship but of a picture of a picture of a warship as its cover art is about the only poetry to be found here. A rare level of tedious to inspire passionate hatred. One day, the spiritual successor to a shitty British catchphrases-and-wigs sitcom like Mrs Browns Boys will come here for its theme song.
I've rated less listenable projects higher but the sheer banality of this offends me, as does its inclusion on this list.
Fela Kuti
3/5
It's mostly interesting as a document of a distant political struggle, though its criticisms are universal enough to be understood by pretty much anyone. The title track is the essence of the album, and it's great - funky and direct, with the timbre of Kuti's voice is such that it comes across exceptionally rich and crisp on record. The rest of the record's 4 tracks never really expand on that though, so if youve heard Zombie youve heard the lot.
An appreciative 3* from me.
Talking Heads
4/5
Hard to believe there was space for a record as off the wall as this among all the shit I usually associate with the 80s. It's gushing with energy and creativity, and really makes you wonder where some of the musical ideas on here came from. Even the outtakes bang. Lyrically, it's sometimes too art-student-unleashed for me. I think of Once in a Lifetime: the chorus is poignant and pretty, while the spoken interludes are just garish and trite. Yet I love the song.
Moby
4/5
Timeless. I'd believe it if you told me this came out in the last five years. What really shines about this album is Moby's ability to find unlikely combinations of samples, musical textures and melodies to consistently capture a vivid feeling that almost defies description - a sort of ethereal, hypermodern nostalgia or something. And to be able to continually evoke this feeling throughout the album without repeating himself, while using totally distinct vocal samples, is quite impressive.
If I had a criticism, it's the other edge to that sword: relying so many samples as the primary vocals, memorable as they may be, can make it seem a little impersonal. That's probably why this has been so heavily stripmined by the advertising industry over the years - that isnt Moby's fault, but it is a part of my reaction to this.
But that's nitpicky - this is a satisfyingly evocative record.
Black Sabbath
3/5
Not what Id been led to expect out of Black Sabbath. Ozzie Osborne really bit the head off a bat to this music? That story takes on new layers of comedy when you picture it coming during a performance of Cornucopia (too much near the truth they say! Keep it til another day! Let them havetheir little game! Delusion helps to keep them sane!).
Otherwise I don't really know how to feel about Vol 4. It's theatrical and a bit ridiculous - how seriously am I supposed to take any of this? But the instruments go pretty hard, I like Ozzie's voice and there's a charm to some of the lofty, pompous lyrics.
My ultimate take is that this prince of darkness angle has aged very badly.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
2/5
Well intentioned, groovy music that I found pretty repetitive. Is Bob Marley a singles artist? Is Babylon the only historical touchpoint that reggae artists recognize? Should I turn this off and play Madden? Just some of the questions running through my mind as I listened to this.
The Isley Brothers
3/5
Funky and high tempo. What else is there really to say? Makes you want to go out and shoot up a McDonalds. I can't picture a situation where I'd ever put this on, but I didn't hate it whatsoever.
Public Enemy
3/5
Public Enemy's energy and deliberate, focused writing are what make this album. There's a slew of topics they set out to target centred around race, and they score direct hits pretty much every time. They're also drawing from an incredibly rich well of samples, so varied that it's dizzying. My favorite instance of this all coming together is Burn Hollywood Burn, the thesis of which is as simple as it is effectively communicated (Like, I guess I figure you to play some jigaboo /
On the plantation, what else can a nigga do?). The main knock I have is that despite this range, the project started to feel a little one-note by the end, but only just.
High 3.
Arcade Fire
5/5
If the last time you played outside with your friends could be distilled into music, this'd be it. The genius of this album is that the band understood that growing up and coming of age is fundamentally about pain and loss, and further understood that the music doesnt need to be overtly morose to capture this truth. I hear that iconic, nostalgic opening melody on Neighbourhood 1 and as it swells into grand, lush instrumentals and Butler's pleasantly screeching and desparate vocals, it feels like the gravity of these sad truths couldn't possibly be explored any other way. The whole album is like that. And it never cops out, never offers a remedy - Wake Up is arguably optimistic as it gets and even that reads more to me like Holden Caulfield's dream of catching children from going over the cliff edge in Catcher in the Rye - it's a well intentioned but futile attempt to help the kids stave off the abyss of adulthood. The closing track's sad metaphor - the rite of passage that is going from travelling in the peace of the back seat to learning to drive yourself - does not sugar the pill. Growing up is painful.
Arctic Monkeys
2/5
This does nothing for me. It's like The Libertines: it's the same empty, overly refined music that wants desperately to be anything but. At least The Libertines were first. And on heroin. The writing here really is - and I hate to use this word - sophomoric, telegraphed plainly by that god awful album title. Get out of your own ass, Turner. There's nothing good up there.
The Killers
3/5
Enjoying this as an album means fighting against decades of radio overplay for a full half of these songs. It's not always easy to do. But ultimately they were hits for a reason: catchy pop rock, with clever, straightforward writing and a glitzy production that set it apart from its indie rock contemporaries. It's not my favorite Killers album but this one is very good. High 3.
The Adverts
3/5
I like it. It's like if Sex Pistols took the music more seriously. It's still very rudimentary, which I guess was obligatory for punk of this era, but I'm charmed by tracks like Gary Gilmore's Eyes.
George Michael
2/5
Less preoccupied with getting his back blown out than Faith, so this is already the more interesting album. And the production here has aged better, too - simple loops and an jazzy palette, it's really not bad at all. But I dunno, I still struggle to connect with this. The lyricism, the rhythm of George's voice, the untempered optimism. I find it all too quaint. Like your high school piano teacher woke up one day and was suddenly certain that he needs to put a record out to save the Middle East. Maybe it's a generational thing.
Elvis Presley
2/5
Essentially a cover album, which is a problem because I largely find Elvis Presley preposterous.
The Teardrop Explodes
2/5
One of many redundant psychadelic rock albums on this list.
Goldie
3/5
Its long, but Goldie probably envisioned people would be listening to this in a derelict council estate with a totally filfthy sound system and outrageous pingers. Adjusting for that, I actually really enjoyed this. It takes you to some trippy and unusual places and if you embrace the length you end up under a sort of hypnosis for the whole thing.
High 3.
The Who
3/5
The concept never quite took off for me. It's at its best on tracks that don't depend on the album to work, the obvious peak being Pinball Wizard which is great.
But then what the fuck was going in with Do You Think it's Alright and Fiddle About? I've never heard anyone get such a bang out of describing their childhood sexual abuse. By this point on the album, Tommy has already been struck dumb by earlier misfortunes - which I guess is preferable to the implication that Tommy got molested into becoming an all pro pinball player, but then why bother with this detour at all? It's weird in a way I don't think was totally intended and sours me on the whole idea of this record.
The poorly recorded live stuff at the end of the 2013 Super Deluxe might be my favorite part of the whole thing.
Tepid 3.
3/5
What starts off promising - A Little Help From My Friends and Lucy in the Sky being a sublime way to kick off - quickly collapses into the same quirky flower power pulp we're used to. By 'Within You' we're back to the sitar and the thin spiritualism has taken over once more.
I dont care for the Sgt Peppers idea either - I suppose we are to put a premium on this because theyre the first people to invent a fictional band or whatever people say about this. I can't think of a more annoying place to be than in the room when they were brainstorming this concept in 1967. And what do they do with it? Nothing. It's forgotten by the second track.
Kate Bush
4/5
What a great album. Jig of Life rules.
Frank Zappa
4/5
Total vibe. Varied and creative, Zappa is a magician when it comes to getting the max out of an instrument and making it serve the broader, insane vision he has for a track. Like five separate times I got lost in a sax solo or a drum beat or violin and ended up feeling like it's as good as those instruments ever sounded. I struggle to connect overly with Jazz, and that's still an issue here - like, what is any of this supposed to mean? - but it doesn't hurt my enjoyment of this one too much.
Led Zeppelin
2/5
I enjoyed the softer tracks - things the girls out on the floor would have a tough time moving to. Stuff like That's the Way. But the rest didn't move me.
The Youngbloods
2/5
Something about a troupe of rich boys from Greenwich Village singing like theyre black sharecroppers from Mizzou makes me itch. It's alright.
Black Flag
1/5
Kidzbop punk. As if drinking a six-pack - not shooting heroin, not even smashing a 40 - is worth making a song about. The final word of this album is 'Noone comes in!!! Stay out!!!'. It conjures the image of a pimply teenager slamming the door on mom.
Tears For Fears
4/5
A brilliant album that puts a pensive and solemn spin on the synth pop of the time. There's so much I love here: a well placed sax will always drop my panties and it happens again and again on the album. The Working Hour - sublime. My favorite Tears For Fears track is Head Over Heels but I never realized that its iconic melody is quietly used in the track immediately before it, which beautifully sets up the moment when it explodes into being on the piano in Head Over Heels proper. It's all very rewarding.
White Denim
1/5
The world is filled with virtuoso musicians. Most of them will make a shitty album if you let them. Here's the proof. This was boring to an annoying degree and I shan't be returning.
The Beach Boys
1/5
I'd rather listen to my parents have sex than put this album on again. There are too many heinous moments to count: 'four martyrs earned a new degree, the bachelor of bullets'. 'Trees like me can live if all this earth can give is pollution and slow death'. I don't have the words to describe my despair when I realized they'd written a whole song about feet. Was this popular among anyone who wasn't being viciously bullied in the 70s?
Hateful 1* from me.
Fun Lovin' Criminals
2/5
I like the palette of sound here, but something about these guys' use of ebonics is giving me late career Steven Segal vibes. Ultimately it feels like a novelty act better left in the 90s.
Fela Kuti
2/5
This is too one-note for me.
Gary Numan
2/5
I really like how this sounds, but once youve heard the first couple of tracks you've heard everything this album has to offer (albeit Cars, arguably the hest implementation of this recipe, comes later).
I have a gut feeling this is most significant because of its influence - it is a pretty wild sound for '79.
Daft Punk
3/5
This is a well crafted and entertaining ride. It makes you feel like you're taking part in the dying hallucinations of a very disturbed robot, which you damn well can't say about any of the shitty blues clones this list loves so much.
There's a limit to how much I can enjoy this as an album - by Rock n Roll I was ready to pull the plug though Indo Silver Club and Alive won me back over - but I give it some slack considering this kind of music was certainly not made to be listened to at home, alone, in pjamas.
Michael Jackson
3/5
It's a fun album with a decade-defining sound based on my experience with GTA Vice City radio. It's weighted heavily towards its singles, with the only true essential tracks being the back-to-back trio of Thriller, Beat It and Billie Jean. These admittedly make for a terrific run, but the rest is forgettable (but still highly listenable).
U2
2/5
Everything that comes out of Bono's mouth here is preposterous. 'Did you play Jesus to the Lepers in your mind?' 'Who's gonna ride your wild horses?' 'Lips move but they cant talk, tryin to throw your arms around the world' (this one's about you, isn't it Bono?)
As bad as these lines are, theyre made so much worse by Bono, who delivers them like he's giving the Sermon on the Mount. That's ultimately all that you can focus on, because everything else is made to blend into the background.
Not great.
Jimi Hendrix
2/5
More an album to vibe to than anything. I think probably the notable thing about this - cutting edge guitar playing - has been dulled by all the other playing we've heard since the 60s.
Butthole Surfers
1/5
It's as intricate as it is juvenile: unfortunately that just leads to an irritating record. Long stretches of trite, edgy garbage are only occassionally interrupted by fleeting moments of lucidity, which are far from frequent enough to make this enjoyable.
Adele
4/5
Proof that finding a winning formula isn't always the same thing as being formulaic. Here, there are enough distinct configurations for Adele's explosive crooning, laser-precise crescendos and startlingly effective songwriting to add up to a very entertaining album. High 4.
Run-D.M.C.
3/5
It's an iconic album if nothing else: an opening four track run of Peter Piper, It's Tricky, My Adidas and Walk This Way practically lays the blueprint for the next ten years of hip hop. Some of the production isn't quite to my taste and it's somewhat eclipsed by the exciting stuff that would follow shortly after, but it still holds up great. High 3.
Soundgarden
3/5
Chris Cornell has a powerful vocal presence, and the guitars go pretty hard. I can kind of see that if I sat in a darkened room long enough, maybe with some oxy and headphones and an unwashed band tee, I could really get into this.
But there's a lot to overcome. There's a tendency to ruin otherwise listenable songs with a ill-concieved decision - a guitar that's a bit too high pitched or an agonizingly elongated vocalization. Vapid writing isn't saved by using bigger words. Soundgarden fans still look like they smell of stale beer.
I wouldn't go back to it but I can no longer say I hate this kind of music.
The Go-Go's
4/5
Love it. Infectious and groovy. Maybe it goes on too long, like there weren't enough ideas for a full album. But the energy is undeniable and unabated.
Simply Red
4/5
Fuck it, I love this. Hucknall's vocal style could have had him fronting a hard rock band, but instead he chose to use his powers for an incredibly smooth pop and soul mashup. It succeeds. It's also got a really neat poetic sensibility to it which helps distance it from some of the cheesier pop music of the time.
Orange Juice
3/5
This is crazy ahead of it's time. It sounds more like a post-indietronica band riffing off the 80s than anything Ive heard that was genuinely from the era.
There's nothing else here quite like Rip it Up, a beautifully mellow song that as an opener casts a shadow over the rest of the runtime. The rest is scattered, but not unenjoyable.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
1/5
Bob Dylan lite. In other words, oafish writing stretched over unintetesting music.
A Tribe Called Quest
5/5
An effortlessly cool classic. Like most of Tribe's output, this is just operating on a different level to anything else in the genre, starting with its emotional register: it's positive & upbeat and even though it's a serious record with serious things to say, it never loses sight of that optimistic core.
And everything else Tribe does well is at its best here. The flow, writing and production are sublime, with Phife Dawg and the basswork being particular standouts. Not only that, there's a confident restrain to this which is why the decades have been so kind to this: it is timeless.
Frank Ocean
4/5
This sounds as fresh as the day it was released. Super Rich Kids is the high point for me - the opening piano chords always put me in the mood for this project.
It's far from unimpeachable, though. I think Frank Ocean's writing is vastly overrated - there are some genuinely toe-curling bars here (Cotton candy, Majin Buu, close my eyes and fall into you - Ocean's part of this track is like listening to Jayden Smith free associate to the word pink). In virtually every song, I can count on being sucked right out of it by an equally terrible idea by Frank.
However, the overall standard here is very high and it's very easy to go back to.
The Who
3/5
What a good time. Being a live gig, there's an added dimension of personality here that takes the music - already vibrant and characterful - to another, more intimate level. Any questions I might have had as to the point of this live album was eradicated by A Quick One While He's Away - it's a stunning rendition that could only work in this format.
I'm glad the people of Leeds were able to catch a glimpse of culture if only for one evening and pray they were able to take a piece of it home with them.
The 13th Floor Elevators
2/5
Psychadelia never sounded so square. And in 1966! Surely there were questions over whether this was actually a CIA psyop. I mean:
Instilling values the sick define/
That keeps the fabric that keeps you blind/
And ties your hands and cloaks your mind/
But on my stilts, I'm above the slime
If you imagine that this is actually coming out of Langley, suddenly it all makes sense.
The Triffids
3/5
This is too literate and poetic to be lumped in with a lot of other boring 80s rock music that this might be mistaken for. Tracks like A Trick of the Light show what these guys are capable of: simple but evocative writing and a kind of slow, mellow instrumentation that complements it very well. High 3.
Joy Division
4/5
This is powerful stuff. Love the understated, rigid guitar work and the baritone crooning of Ian Curtis - these are the key contributors in what ends up being a beautifully compelling brutalist art project. I'm convinced!
Giant Sand
3/5
I like this. It's as if an angsty cowboy heard Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division and thought that's something country music needs. He was onto something. It's not as bold or off-the-wall as that record, but I still like what's going on.
Stephen Stills
3/5
In the guitarist vanity genre, this is one of the better projects this list has served up. The songwriting is less a vehicle for mastubatory guitar playing than is usually the case with these; in fact, the best moments of this have nothing to do with Stills' guitar playing at all (the strings and piano on Church, for example). Low 3.
Air
4/5
There's no better album to put on when you're up past your bed time and need something to come down to. Eclectic though these sounds are, they all speak to a painful, happy and above all highly recognizable nostalgia - like it's something that could provide the soundtrack to your last day by the seaside with distant family that you might never see again. It's soothing but a little sad.
Deee-Lite
1/5
This should have been kept in the 90s toybox where it belongs.
The Thrills
4/5
An under-appreciated incarnation of the indierock zeitgeist. The crazy thing is I always thought this was an archetypical 'rich indie kids from California with too much freedom' project (with some self-awareness; this was part of the charm). I'm finding out now they're fucking Irish!
And you know what? Paradoxically, the imitation (satirization?) of that sound makes the record feel more geniune, somehow. Regardless, I just love the thematic hook that repeats throughout the album: so much for the city. It feels true.
Nostalgic banger. Big Sur and One Horse Town are my favorites.
The Police
2/5
I dont know what to make of The Police, or Polizia as they're known in Italian. After years of working in a chain department store, you come to hate a certain kind of easily digestible rock music. That's all this sounds like to me.
1/5
I can find something to enjoy in almost anything. This sucks completely, however.
OutKast
3/5
Not my favorite OutKast album, but you've got to appreciate how bold and experimental this was for an early 2000s hip-hop project. It's like a competent artist looked at the vapid frivoloty of what was charting in the genre at the time and thought 'let's do this, but make it respectable'.
It's too long, but surprising production choices on every track keep it from becoming tedious. It's also still got the unmistakeable vibes of an OutKast record, led by the unbelievable flow of Andre 3000. So the floor here is
very high.
Strong 3!
Bob Dylan
1/5
If you asked the most pretentious person in the world to free associate to shitty folk music, this is the record you'd get. I present the definitive poet of the led-poisoning generation:
"I went into a restaurant lookin' for the cook
I told him I was the editor of a famous etiquette book
The waitress he was handsome, he wore a powder blue cape
I ordered up some Suzette, I said, "Could you please make that crêpe"
Just then, the whole kitchen exploded from boiling fat
Food was flyin' everywhere I left without my hat"
Absolutely grotesque. The lyrics aren't always this frivolous, but even the less offensive lyrics are still sung by Bob Dylan, who as ever sounds like a kazoo being played into a barrel of oil.
Empty ramblings scraped across elementary-level rhyme schemes. 1 star.
Blood, Sweat & Tears
2/5
A little bipolar. At one end is the buttery smoothness of Sometimes in Winter, at the other the toe curling barndance jiggery of And When I Die. I don't know.
Barry Adamson
3/5
Pretty cool. So vivid that you can picture the kind of film that it'd go with - something a little noirish, maybe a hard boiled cop film with a hint of dystopian scifi. Listening to it on my way into work made me feel as though I were doing important things on behalf of the authorities. It's an interesting dynamic - less than a true album but more than a soundtrack, it sort of becomes its own form. I appreciate it.
Minor Threat
2/5
'My First Rebellion'. This album is the monotonous, repetitive herd of white sheep - I am the black one, bounding far away.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
3/5
Why not?
Supertramp
2/5
Plodding and kind of boring. Maybe I'd feel differently if I was sitting on my porch smoking a fat one.
Kelela
1/5
Generic pop wuth that meth tweaker percussion the 2010s loved so much. There must be hundreds of albums just like this one, I dont get what's so cant-miss about it.