1001 Albums Summary

Most songs are really very boring, nothing's happening. However, since I am not into hiphop, it was a bit better than expected (not much). The Shiznit and Gz and Hustlas are the best songs.

It's an okay album, it's missing a really strong energetic song. But there is one incredible highlight: the song One is probably one of the most beautiful guitar based pop songs of the nineties. I would give it a 7/10.

This album kicks off with a great start. But after a couple of songs it becomes one big blur to me, with a sound totally dominated by fatiguing slide guitar and harmonica. 5 out of 10.

I actually liked this better than I expected. There's tons of energy and some songs, especially Climbatize, I do like. Oddly enough it's the hits that I really can't stand. What I absolutely loathe about this album is the 'singing', shouting, vocal horror-thingy.

Yes, well, that's a great album. Sex machine is really too long and some of the tracks are a bit too poppy, but this is clearly a great and influential piece of music.

This is truly horrible. I cannot understand how this has made the list, it really sounds like nothing, and no, that's not a compliment. It's just ridiculous, talentless would-be music. Bweuh.

An absolute killer album. Masterpiece. Everything works. By far the best album I've listened so far and probably one of the best albums of the eighties. And certainly Tom Waits' best.

Generally a very strong album, with pulsating rhythms, a lot of variation, catchy songs. But I have a problem with it, a big one. Opening track 'I Zimbra' is horrible with bizarre, ugly vocals, closing track 'Drugs' is possibly even worse. I don't know what's that supposed to be. It's simply bweuh. Strange. Too bad, without these two tracks I think I would have liked this much better than other Talking Heads albums that I own. Now I don't know.

It's a bit of a surprise to me, I can stand this quite well. I genuinely like 'Everloving', I can stand 'Why does my heart feel so bad?'. It's an interesting nowadays take on blues and gospel. Once again, just like The Prodigy, the best known songs are my least favourite.

I was afraid of it. Man, this is horrible music. Having said that, I can understand and acknowledge that this is probably a very fine album in its genre. The instrumentations are fine, carefully and well done. There's even one song that I, no, not like, but can listen to: 'Pyramids'. The absolute horror is 'Thinkin bout you'. And of course, the latter is far more popular that the former...

Pfff... I think the singing on this album is rather unbearable. Problem: it's all about the singing. It's way up front in the mix. Musically - as far as anyone can tell - it's not really exciting. One exception: Break it up, thanks to a guest appearance by Television's Tom Verlaine. Nah. Not for me. Not extremely bad either. Just meh.

Well, this is a lovely album. But it's also a bit too lovely, it's all going slow, all moody, all bedroom-like songs. You simply want to shout 'hey guys, eat some jalapeños and get going'. A bit more variation in speed, mood, whatever would have spiced things up considerably. I know this was on purpose but still: seventy years on we're in a different mood than Ol' blue eyes was when recording these songs. Also, I really doubt if this is the type of music that suits Sinatra's qualities with his impeccable timing best. Not, I suppose.

I don't think I've listened to this album very intensely often. It's quite a good album, it's got a number of strong songs. Most of them are very well known, but my absolute favourite is the very strong 'Wherever I may roam'. But there are also quite some pretty mediocre songs. Nothing's really bad, it's just not happening in for example 'Holler than them', The struggle within'' and a couple of others. Oh, and, well: it's not really the Metallica from the eighties, is it? But that's their choice, it isn't forbidden to change your style. It's just not as good.

This is horrible. Truly disgusting. It's got nothing to do with music whatsoever. This is not an album (and it isn't even op Spotify). It might work in a club, on a rave or whatever horrible surrounding, but not as an album that you listen to at home. You know what? I even fell asleep while listening the second time. 0 stars, but unfortunately that's not possible.

Oh dear. This is really not very good. How can people listen to this? In every song madam goes completely berserk on the microphone. It's a continuous bunch of vocal bombast. And the music, well, there hardly is any music. Nothing happens, nothing at all. The only song that has a bit more to it is 'River Lea'. The hitsingles 'Hello' and 'When we were young' are worst in terms of sounding like the air alarm during the Battle of Britain.

I think I can see why people like this. It's fairly monotonous but exactly that works. It's a bit too long, like many nineties-albums. This time the track I like best is also the biggest 'hit': C.R.E.A.M. The best hiphop-album so far. Although I liked the musical elements better on Snoop Dogg's album, I certainly think the rapping is much better here.

What a pleasant surprise! I don't own and even don't know this album. The image of Anthrax din not appeal to me. And I think I listened to one other album when I was of the right age, but that wasn't my thing. This is! The star of the album is absolutely drummer Charlie Benante. His drumming is phenomenal, he really carries the band and leads them through the tempo changes smoothly as grease. Best songs? I guess the obvious ones: Caught in a mosh, and Indians - that has a nice hommage to Iron Maiden. And maybe the medley. Great!

A fantastic album. The five star albums are coming rapidly now. I didn't know The Cars before I bought this album, after I read about it in the 1001 Albums-book. They are as good as unknown in Europe. I thought they were a kind of plastic keyboard-driven bubblegum-pop act, but this turned out to be a very very strong album. It's obviously very carefully made, all the songs contain surprising and original details. And there are some great melodies. What more do you need? Highlights? 'Just what I needed', of course, 'You're all I've got tonight' and 'All mixed up'. Nice one.

Pfff. I neither really like nor dislike R.E.M. It's too much middle of the road for me. And that's exactly what I think of this album. It's like pleasant background sound. You keep hoping that something will happen, whether it's a really hard rocking song or a beautiful ballad, but nope, it's like a gentle river bubbling along the countryside. I really don't understand ''You are the everything'; the instrumentation doesn't work and the singing of Michael Stipe is truly unbearable in that song. 4 stars is really too much honour. It's a bleak 7 our of 10 but that translates into 4 stars. But I just can't do that. So I ignore the methodology and adjust to 3 stars.

This is a strange album. It kicks off really well, what's probably side A of the vinyl album has good songs, good singing, nice guitar sound. But then things are going wrong with hard to listen to, very sweetish pop songs sometimes even maimed by silly female vocal choirs. Fortunately closing track 'You will never be no good' gets us back on track. This album would have been much better if at least 'Are you ready to be heartbroken' and 'Andy's babies' would have simply been left off the album. But they didn't do that. I could have given a pop album 4 stars if they had, but no.

What a fantastic album! And what a contrast with Adele I had to listen to less than a week ago. This lady knows how to sing and knows how to use her voice. But perhaps even more important: the instrumentations are fantastic. The highlight of this album (no, certainly not preacher man) is the astonishingly beautiful 'The windmills of your mind'. That song has more variation and more instrumental interesting elements than a whole disc of Adela. Probably: more than the entire discography of Adele. 'Breakfast in bed': that singing is truly magnificent. Yes, I can truly like pop music.

The songs are too long, not enough is happening. 'Ye ye de smell' is quite okay. But whose idea was it to add a 'la la la'-chant to 'Egbe mi o'? That's silly. Watch out when listening this at Spotify. O totally unnecessary SIXTEEN minute long drum solo was later added to the album, in itself kind of weird because it was recorded in 1978, seven years after the album. Weird.

What a terribly boring album. It starts off quite okay with the first two tracks, then it becomes just a pile of bleep bleep without any music. 'Chico's groove' is once again rather listenable. But that's not enough. Really really boring.

Well, this is a pleasant album. It kicks off really well with beautiful guitar work by Carlos Santana and Bonnie Raitt, as well as Robert Cray. The guest appearance by Canned Heat is typical, but Los Lobos really steals the show. Unfortunately the rets of the album is not so good. The guest appearances by George Thorogood and Charlie Musselwhite are less interesting, and the three songs without guest are a bit of a candle burning out. And the production is really eighties. The singing sounds like it's been recorded in the cathedral of Amiens. Boy, that's bad. Still, overall a good one.

The fascinating thing about this album... Try to imagine that once there was a time, in 1967, that this was an anonymous debut by a band nobody had ever heard of, called 'The Doors'. And that you buy it, let the needle down on side A and that you hear 'Break on through'. What a debut. It's magnificent. 'Light my fire' is probably one of the best psychedelic songs ever. Did you ever realize that the Doors are probably the only rock band everyone knows the name of the keyboardist of, and hardly anybody the name of the guitar player? That's fascinating. And yes, there are some weaker moments. And yes, there are other highlights like 'The crystal ship' and 'Alabama'. It's simply a fantastic debut, with Jim Morrison's thing still inside his pants. 9 out of 10.

I really don't understand what this album is doing in this list. It's utterly boring. Most songs are based on one - sometimes rather okay - sample and that's repeated for the entire length of the song. The scratching isn't original and becomes really boring. That's what this album is: boring. Utterly boring. Listen to 'N.Y. State of mind'. Hee, that piano sounds okay. It's repeated, unchanged, maybe forty times or so? The only song that I like a bit better is 'Represent'. But "like" is very very relative.

A perfect example of an album that's been horribly mutilated by eighties production. It sounds awful. The dreams are hilarious, but the keyboard sounds - especially in 'Nick of time', 'Love letter' and 'Have a heart' are nothing but disgusting. This isn't anything like blues, what I expected. It's 90% pop. Listen to that ridiculous 'woo woo woo' chorus on 'Nick of time'... The closing songs are probably the best, ' I will not be denied' at least has some proper singing, 'I ain't etc' is a rather okay piano ballad (with - it's incredible - a piano that actually sounds like a piano) and 'The road's my middle name' (cliche alert) at least has a blues feeling. I'm a bit friendly because this is what albums sounded like at the time. And the second listen was better than the first one, except for 'Nick of time'. That's really a very bad song.

I really don't understand this music. And I really don't understand why this album is included whereas Grandaddy's 'Under the western freeway' isn't. This is a very very mediocre rip-off of Grandaddy. Grandaddy has rock elements included in its music and those are completely missing here. It's a grey mass of boring music possibly suitable for a wellness facility. Musical wallpaper as we call it in the Netherlands. So yes, you can listen to it, hence for the 2 stars.

What a fantastic album. It's one of the best of the list. I mean, you just have to listen to the opening title track, no, you just have to listen to the intro of the opening track. How great can music be? It's the added value of Mutt Lange's production that gives this album so much more than its predecessors. Most characteristic are the backing vocals choirs. Those are magnificent. And this album has one of the greatest songs ever: 'Touch too much'. It hardly has any flaws, every track is enjoyable. Can I give 6 stars? 10/10

This is a surprise. I already owned this album but hardly had any memory of it. It's really excellent. Although it is supposed to be the birth of glam rock, this is far beyond any cheap, cheesy or bubblegum-like music, this is very well thought through rock. It is characterized by a jumpiness that keeps your attention. The arrangements are really strong. And yes, like more often, the big hit (Get it on) is probably the poorest or least interesting track of the album.

An album that played a big role in my life. It came out during my university years and I was totally into alternative rock, so yeah, how could I not like this. It's not perfect because it has some weak moments (Neon wilderness???), it is way too long including a stupid hidden track. But the great moments are so strong that it still deserves a 10 out of 10. 'Sonnet' is one pof the most beautiful songs of the nineties. Well there are many excellent songs, let's mention 'Space and time'. I love it.

This is obviously a very fine album. But somehow I'm missing something, I'm not really getting it. I always have that with Elvis Costello. It has excellent dynamics - 12 very varied songs in 32 minutes. And it has surprising musical features for an English 1977 album - listen to the jazzy guitar in Allison, or the sixties-vibes of No dancing. But to the end it becomes a bit blurry. Closer 'I'm not angry' makes up for that - it might be the best track of the album. 7/10

Once again an album that's part of my collection but never got much attention. It's a strong album though. It starts off really well and punky, reaching a high point in 'The wait'. But then we have to listen to a totally unnecessary and weak Kinks-cover, 'Stop sobbing' How could they make this their debut-single? 'Kid' is pretty weak too, with some country-vibes. But 'Private life' is excellent, as of course 'Brass in pocket' is. The closing songs are good too. Great album, almost five stars if it weren't for the wek songs in the middle.

This is an okay album. There are just too many songs that are a bit 'nothing happens'. However, 'Enjoy the silence' is a truly beautiful pop song. They should have changed the order of the songs, the first two are slow and boring. That's also part of the deal of making an album...

Oh dear... The opening track of this album, 'Fine Time', is probably the most appaling sonic attack I have had to endure during my first 35 albums. What on earth is that? I've got a couple of New Order albums and of course all Joy Division albums, that's nothing like this. It's a really weird album. In fact, it seems to consist of two albums of two different bands mixed randomly together. One band makes uninteresting electronic kind of danceable music, the other one is the New Order I know - though not necessarily in top form - making almost straight ahead pop music with the well known great bass lines played by Peter Hook. The only track where these two bands sort of meet is the closing track 'Dream attack' - and that's by far the most listenable track of the album. Experiment failed...

Music I totally didn't know. My first association was the Doobie Brothers, and hey, there's a cover on this album! But it definitely has a Funkadelic-vibe. Especially because of what makes this album the most interesting: the sometimes great guitar work with a markable fuzz-sound by 17-year old Ernie Isley. The use of ARP and Moog synthesizers is also noteworthy. Less noteworthy: it's a bit weird that, while they are certainly able to pen their own songs - and were once even covered by the Beatles - four out of nine songs here are covers. Summer Breeze is possibly the best song, though, because of the guitar. A rather pleasant surprise.

I do own and I do like this album, despite the fact that it's not really my genre. Upon careful listening I see three reasons. 1 The music is based on the extremely sturdy disco four-to-the-beat of the seventies. Even I can dance to that. 2 This is real music, not just dance music. Interestingly, the book mentions exactly this (I never read the book before I make my review). 3 the extensive use of analogue synthesizers, adding to the second reason. The more extreme songs I like best. 'Around the world' is honestly very boring. The biggest problem: it lasts for more than 73 minutes. Oh dear. Never do that.

What a great album! The opener is truly fantastic, what an energy, what a speed, what great melodies. This album contains a lot of beautiful melodies, accentuated by the great chants. Listen to the chorus of the most famous song: 'Gary Gilmore's eyes'. There's not a real weak moment, maybe it can become a bit too much but fortunately it's only 36 minutes. Definitely one of punk's greatest moments.

This is a really weird album. Whereas most popular music is white folks playing music inspired by music from black culture, this one is the other way around. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Bye bye love is definitely a step up from the Everly Brothers (who didn't write the song, by the way). Songs like 'I love you so much it hurts' simply did not stand the test of times. These absurdly sweet choirs, you cannot listen to that anymore with 21st century ears. And there are plenty of those. That's not really fair of course. But it's not the most exiting music ever anyway.

A very fine album. Some of these songs are even more well-known or popular in different versions, illustrating the song-writing capabilities of Paul Simon. It's very nicely arranged too, maybe just a little too soft on the ears.

Well yes, I like this one better than the hiphop-albums so far. It's got much more variation. 'I'm destructive' is really okay, even mentioning Dutch death metal band Gorefest! However, it's way too long like so many albums of this era.

Oh dear. I don't know if I dare to say this. I'm just not really into Hendrix. No doubt about his music-historical meaning and influence. But his music just doesn't do it for me. This album is also a bit ramshackle, you can hear it's not really a unity. And the sound is not optimal, especially the odd stereo-mix. Yes great songs and I want to mention 'Third stone from the sun' that isn't well known but that I like very much.

It's a bit too obvious what's going on here. Hey, we've got a hiphopband and let's let them rap over a (hard)rock background so white folks will listen as well. It does work, however. 'Walk this way' is a great novelty hit. I don't feel the same about 'It's trricky' - based on the fantastic 'My Sharona' - because the spirit of that song (fantastic guitar work) is totally missing. This album is dominated by an extremely ugly drumcomputer, it's almost unlistenable. Bweuh.

Well, that's a weird one... I had really never heard of this band, although it kinda fits my taste. This is really obscure, and no, you can't find it on Spotify (but you can find it on YouTube). It's a 6,5/10 for me and I'll round that to a four-star-rating but that is a bit too positive. It's really erratic, that's my biggest problem. Oh no, that's not true. My biggest problem is the opening track: 'Firefly'. That's by far the weakest track of the album, I would almost call it horrible. How could they choose this as an opening track? These were the old days that people went to a record store and tried listening to them... Some songs are genuinely nice and beautiful, 'Blue and grey shirt' is probably my favourite, 'Pale and skinny girl' is very nice as well.

My god, this album is way too long. If they would have skipped the last two deadly boring songs, totaling 26 minutes... And I really can's stand the singing: especially 'I used to' is incredibly out of tune. On a positieve note, the JM Jarre-like 'how do you sleep' is rather okay (but again way too long), 'emotional haircut' is a punky energy-song and the best song I think is 'call the police'.

There is no doubt this album is pure genius. It's very well thought-through. It sounds like a suite, no matter which tempo and chord changes there are throughout the songs. Motives are coming back all through the album. And the arrangements are as complicated and fine as can be. Having said that: the composition is in my humble opinion better than the music. For me it's just not happening. And it's a little outdated. That's not fair criticism, but these barbershop choirs, well, that's an acquired tasje. I haven't acquired it.

Maybe it's odd, but I had never listened to an album of Muse. In the nineties I was totally into this kind of music, but in 1999/2000 I turned my attention to jazz and no longer payed attention to alternative rock. So we just missed each other;-) And that's a pity. I think this is a very strong album. Yes, it's very like the early albums of Radiohead, especially because of Matt Bellamy's voice that resembles Thom Yorke's voice extremely. Kudo's to Muse: they succeed in what Radiohead didn't manage. On this album electronics are introduced as an element in the music, but they add something in stead of destroy everything. 'City of delusion' is my favourite track.

It might be a controversial opinion, but I think this is my favourite Steely Dan album. There is plenty of spontaneity here and some edges to the music. I totally love it, it's a masterpiece. Brilliant songwriting. Yes, it must be your cup of tea, well, it is mine. I mean, the opening of 'Do it again' on itself is enough to secure Steely Dan's place in (modern) music history.

Oh dear... This is truly horrible album. I tried to listen to this unprejudiced. I guess I was in my first year of gymnasium when this album came out and I really hated the singles of it. No I listened to the entirety of it and I really hated it. I do really appreciate the singer-songwriter Paul Simon. Just look at my appreciation of 'Bookends'. Bur this is... let's say: appalling. It's an attempt to blend African music with modern popmusic, but it doesn't work. They remain two world apart and the results are ridiculous. I mea, just listen to 'I know what I know'. This can't be serious? 'That was your mother' is not much better, with a totally fucked up accordeon and the ugliest sax solo ever. What on earth were they thinking? Yes, I know it's not really fair to listen to mid eighties music and its horrible production with nowadays ears but this is not just production. This is pop music at its worst.

Totally unknown to me... Certainly topping the hiphop-albums so far. There considerably more music here. I kinda like 'So appalling' and 'Who will survive in America'. I really don't understand why they open the album with the appalling - pun intended - 'Dark fantasy'. Why, tell me why? Interesting thought: how many of the people responsible for over 1 billion Spotify-streams of 'POWER' have listened to the original '21st century schizoid man' (with 37 million streams)?

What a beautiful album! I had never heard of Richard Hawley, this is total very pleasant surprise. It's truly beautiful music, for me most resemblant of Tindersticks - a band that certainly should have been in the book with any of their first three records. Or all three of them. Anyway, back to Hawley. This is a must hear. The arrangements are fantastic with a very tasteful use of baritone guitar, his voice is in the middle between Stuart Staples and Bryan Ferry - yes, my girlfriend was immediately interested;-) Most of all: the song 'The Ocean'... That might be one of the best songs on the 51 albums I have listened so far. Stunning.

A perfect example of an album that has been standing in my record closet for decades and that I never really listened to. and that's a shame because it turned out to be a really great record. I have a bit of a troublesome relation with Bryan Ferry as a singer - that strange vibrato... I don't like Brian Eno, but he had already left the band. The result is an album that meanders between very energetic and swinging rock and strange, very arty songs that sometimes seem to be inspired by thirties German cabaret - a bit odd for an English band in 1974 but certainly okay. The highlight of this album is easy to find: the songs 'All Want is you' and 'Out of the night' are linked in between. The former is a great rock song, the latter is a fantastic rock song. I should have given this album more attention!

My first time listening a Kate Bush album. For pop music, it's rather pleasant. At least enough is happening and there is plenty of variation, in tempo, song structure, arrangements. This is clearly an album with one masterpiece: Running up that hill is accountable for 87% of Spotify-streams and yes, it's an excellent song. The first five tracks have 97% of all streams and that is understandable as well. After these songs, the candle of this album is all but blown out. Furthermore, the at times horrible eighties production gets more and more disturbing. I must mention the absolute low of this album: Waking the witch. My dear, what happened there? Sorry, but I can't give higher than 6/10 for an album that has this song on it. Oh dear oh dear. I'll just listen to 'Running up that hill' one more time, giving it an even higher percentage of streams.

Well, what to do with this one. It's a five star rating, that's clear. It's a brilliant album, no pun intended. But I think it's really an odd one on this list. Together with Charles Mingus this is probably the only hardcore jazz album on the list. Apart from some jazzrock-albums, most jazz albums are of the rather listenable kind. Thelonious Monk isn't listenable. It's all about dissonance and bizarre complex song structures. You need to be a trained jazz amateur to enjoy this, I think. And even then... But man, listen to his solo performance 'I surrender,dear'. To me that's the highlight of this album. There is a reason that one of most popular releases was a compilation of his solo performances. He is so brilliant. He seems to master the basics material a straightforward standard, that he can do with it whatever he likes. The melody is never stated, he picks it up, turns it around, destroys it and at the same time embraces it in the most loving way, he's out of this world. It's exceptional. Another gem is the strange Pannonica with the odd celesta played by Monk. Well, it's on the list, so a well deserved five star rating. But in fact I think it should be on another list.

This is unmistakably a very influential album. On this album, that I never heard before, I can hear a lot of things that I know from other albums. For example, one of my favourite bands, Indochine, clearly have this album in their record closet. I know 'Joan of Arc' very well - I loved it as a little child. I don't know how long it had been since I last heard it, but I still love it. It has a beautiful melody. And what a surprise, I always thought that this was synthesizer music but the reason that song has such a melancholy feel is that is is played on a mellotron. Almost the most non-synthesizer instrument thinkable. It's not great across the board, though. Nice songs and a couple of not so interesting ones.

A very bleak 4 stars, in the regular scoring system a 7/10 but on the low side of 7... My problem with this album is its inconsistency. It's a mixed bag of ideas and not all of these ideas work. I mean, '...And in every home', come on! A misplaced Burt Bacharach kind of song. I like the Costello of 'Beyond belief' much better. And a very exciting moment is the intro - repeated a number of times - of 'Human hands'. The Dsus4-F6 chord progression is incredibly exciting, that is truly a marvel.

I'm really sorry, but I don't really like this album. Yes, the title track is one of Bowie's best songs. But the rest.... No, I kind of like the experimental Eno-tracks but I can's stand the opening dup 'Beauty and the Beast' and 'Joe the lion'. My god, who thought these ugly choruses were a good idea? And Robert Fripp's guitar sound - mangled through a synthesizer, I think - is ugly as hell.

What a strange album. Why on earth they decided to make a studio album and add audience and even more strange: an MC to it? Why didn't they just make a proper live album? Or a proper studio album, instead of an album that has loads of flaws in sound quality - most absurd in 'Roadblock' (an outtake later added, but indeed a studio recording) The quality is very inconsistent, not just the sound quality. Best songs are of course 'Piece of my heart' but even more so 'Summertime'. That's vintage Janis Joplin. But on the same album we find 'Turtle blues'. Pfff.

Obviously not my cup of tea but I do have respect for this album and its maker. Michael wrote all the music, plays a load of instruments en of course sings. He wasn't just a pretty boy, he was a genuine and talented artist and multi-talent. The success of this album is incredible. Six hitsingles out of nine songs. I had never heard the album but of course I had heard almost all the songs plenty of times. Hey, this is the time I grew up, minor gymnasium years. At the time I hated it, I a a lot more nuanced now. The two songs that stand out for me are 'One more try' and 'Kissing a fool' - both of them are characterised by Michael's singing, where in a lot of the other tracks he sometimes appears to rather whisper that sing. 'Kissing a fool' is a weird song on this album - it is a truly acoustic song where all other tracks are defined, and a bit destroyed, by very synthetic eighties-sounds. Not my favourite album of course, but no punishment to listen to.

Oh dear... For the largest part, this is a pleasant album with attractive semi jazz, very mainstream but well made and as always with Astrud Gilberto just nice (easy) listening. But there are two gigantic failures on this album. Parade (a Banda) - or the title reversed - is really ridiculous. It's out of place, it's not nice, it's just laughable. But that's nothing. The duet with her six year old son Marcelo... Come on! The singing is so horribly out of tune, it's simply awful. I repeat: awful. Maybe she shouldn't have recorded eight albums in four years. By the way, the cd version - that I own - is extended with a number of songs with Walter Wanderley, which makes it a better album.

An underrated and neglected gem. Yes, I have it, but I could only buy it long after my Neil Young-era. It simply wasn't released on CD until 2003. And that's bizarre, because this is possibly one of the best if not the best - consistent - album in Young's catalogue. It's truly beautiful and extremely depressing to listen to. But there are such gems on this album: 'See the sky about to rain' with that wonderful arrangement of Wurlitzer e-piano and steel guitar, astonishing title track and the utterly painful 'Ambulance blues' - it's truly fantastic music. 5 stars and a welldeserved 10/10

Once again an album, or even a band, I didn't know that turned out to be a pleasant surprise. I guess I did know 'Everybody knows' (except you)', that must have been on the playlist of the alternative music station I listened to anno 1997. It's not the best song of the album, that's beyond doubt 'Someone'. Closing track 'I'm all you need' is also a gem. The music is very Scott Walker-like. Just a little less edge to it, except 'Someone' - that's why it's the best track of the album. In its weaker moments it also reminds you of Neil Diamond and even John Barry-style James Bond songtracks. Weak point is 'Wimewatching' - it never comes off the ground. It grew on my every time I listened to it. So yeah, good album.

Clearly a very classic, very important, seminal album. Any serious music lover should have this in his or her collection. Having said that, in all honesty, the reputation of the album seems to be primarily based on the three long (jam-)tracks. Although it kicks off pretty well with 'Statesboro blues' the next two songs are rather forgettable; and well, you need to love slide guitar. But then the magic starts to happen with 'You don't love me'. Clearly 'In memory of Elizabeth Reed' is magic. Maybe 'Whipping post' is even better, this is glorious music. Truly fantastic. So for me it's a 8,5/10. Could be either 4 stars or 5 stars, because of the historic significance of this album I'll go for the 5. But it's tight.

What a bizarre album. It starts pretty solid. Then we get a number of very weak songs - I really can't stand Beth Orton's voice - and then we once again have a very strong song. But it's a total Kraftwerk rip-off. And I really mean totally. It becomes even worse, because we get one more Kraftwerk rip-off and two utter Can-rip-offs. These are the strong songs of the album, the other songs are unbearable. Except for the opener 'Silence' which seems to be original and is okay. But this deserves penalty points.

An incredible album. When listening to 'On the beach' I thought: maybe I like this even better than 'Harvest'. No I don't. The problem of this album might be 'Heart of gold'. Every normal human being simply heard that song too many times. By the way, it's far from the best song of the album that's so much drowned in melancholy. There are so many highlights: opener 'Out on the weekend', the title track, 'A man needs a maid', 'Alabama', 'The needle and the damage done' and closer 'Words'. All of these tracks would probably be the best track on most albums. But not on this one. Because there's 'Old man'. That might be the most beautiful song I know. And yes, indeed, 'Out on the country' and to a lesser extent 'There 's a world' are a bit less fantastic than the rest. It's forgiven.

And yet another great album. It's great how Cash plays with his audience, how he fires things up with his characteristic shuffle, but even more so with a couple of very sentimental songs, 'Give my love to Rose' especially. 'Folsom Prison blues', 'Cocaine blues', 'I got stripes' and 'The wall' are truly great songs and performances. There's also a lowlight, with 'Jackson' and to a lesser extent the silly christian 'Greystone chapel'. Sorry ma'am, but I really can't stand June Carters (Cash') singing...

What a mess this album is. But its highlights are truly highlights. I like the long jam-like songs 'Voodoo Chile' and '193 (A merman I should turn to be)' best, but 'Crosstown traffic', 'All along the watchtower', 'Gypsy eyes', the superjazzy 'Rainy day, dream away', 'Burning of the midnight lamp' and 'Voodoo child (slight return' are brilliant. But there's also crap. The first two tracks, the bizarre 'Little miss Strange' and the soundscape 'Moon, turn the tides... Gently gently away' - oh man. This could have been a single album with nothing but highlights of music history.

This could have been a fantastic album. But is isn't, it is way too varying in quality. Let's be clear: the highlights of this album are possibly some of the best music of the eighties. Yes, 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' is a fantastic song. But it completely bleaches next to 'New Year's Day'. That is such a fantastic song! There are a couple more very strong songs on this album, but also some very weak ones. Lowlight is definitely 'Red light'. You gotta be kidding... It's horrible. The beginning sounds like a Mylene Farmer song, not exactly what you expect on a U2-album. It could - and should - have been a fantastic album. Nevertheless, this is an album that proves how good of a band U2 could be. Didn't mention it, but this is probably The Edge at his best.

This is possibly the best album of Zappa's career. And maybe I should say: I'm a big Zappa fan. This absolutely a must hear. It's one of the first and one of the best jazz fusion albums ever. And what a pity it is, that Zappa never really returned to this style. Yes, obviously jazzrock was an important part of his style, certainly in the George Duke/Ruth Underwood time of his career, but this is hardcore jazz fusion and his only album as such. Ian Underwood is incredible here. But Zappa himself even more so. I think this was the first time in his career that he really showed himself as one of the best and highly original guitar players ever. Later on he would issue three-disc-sets with only guitar solos, but here his guitar work is an integral - and important - part of the music. The long solo in Willie the Pimp and even more so on 'Son of Mr. Green Genes' are fantastic. Very renewing in tone as well. But there might be an even better performance on this album: Don' Sugarcane' Harris' electric violin solo on 'The gumbo variation' is beyond unforgettable. Fantastic album.

I don't know.... It's not my thing. It's a bit in between pop and alternative. The arrangements are very original and interesting, the music has enough variation and is interesting enough. But I miss the necessary sharpness for alternative rock, and at the same time I can't really stand the singing. Especially Régine Chassagne's singing in the closing track 'In the backseat', that's... No, I'll leave it at that. Quite an okay album that I didn't know, but not a standout album.

It's horrible. In my teen years I hated the song 'It's a sin'. It's the best song of the album. No, not because my taste in music changed so dramatically (it did, by the way), but because the rest is so horrible. 'I want to wake up', 'One more chance'... Come on. 'It's a sin' and 'King's cross' are the only bearable tunes on the album.

With the benefit of hindsight, this is a fascinating album. It's got all the elements that would make 'Swordfishtrombones' such a master piece. The elements, yes, but not the concept as a whole, and not the greatness. But is a very good album with hardly any weak moments - 'On the nickel' is a bit over the top for me. The highlights for me are 'Downtown' and the overlay sentimental 'Jersey Girl'. Yes, unbearably sentimental, but as such a guilty pleasure. Strong, just missing it, the pieces that would fall together so brilliantly on its successor.

This might be the best pop-album that I've ever heard and it contains maybe the best popsong of the eighties: 'Shout'. What an incredible song that is. I'm always complaining that there's not much happening in popmusic, but on this album that's far from reality. The compositions are very strong, the build-up in the songs - listen to the intro of 'The working hour' and neglect the sound - and the arrangements with.a very clever mix of (sometimes ugly) electronics and real instruments - it's alle great. There are five very strong songs on this album. The three hitsingles in order of quality 'Shout' Head over heels' and 'Everybody wants to rule the world', whereas the almost proggy 'The working hour' and the rather sharp 'Broken' - that's fantastically intertwined with 'Head over heels' are very strong. An album containing these songs would deserve a 10/10. But unfortunately the remaining three songs are much much weaker. 'Mothers talk' is ugly eighties music, ' I believe' is a misplaced George Michael ballad and closer 'Listen' is too long. Nevertheless, it's still a solid five star. I might buy this one.

It's probably my bad. I have never been able to get it, concerning Echo & The Bunnymen. Yes, I quite like the music, it's okay, like a less commercial - which is good, of course - version of U2 with maybe a better singer, but it just doesn't grab me. I've listened five times. And I still hardly can remember any of the songs, except for the opener 'The cutter' which might be the best track of the album. The rest just rolls along, no weak points, no strong either. Sorry.

There's no need to say a lot about this album. Just listen to the first 30 seconds of opener 'Disorder' and you know you are listening to a classic. It's haunting in every way. It can be quite something to listen to if you're not in perfect mental shape... The star of the album to me is Peter Hook. His bass playing is unlike anything done before. Together with guitar player Bernard Sumner with his arpeggiated chords he lays the foundation that lets Ian Curtis shine - shine in a very dark way, unfortunately. Absolutely fantastic album.

I really don't understand how Van Morrison could have turned into a famous singer. His singing is unpleasant to say the least... This album has a big highlight and a very low lowlight. The highlight of course is the title track - that is a fantastic song. But why on earth is that wonderful bassline played on an electric bass????? This screams for a double bass. The lowlight is very clearly 'Crazy love' - that's horrible. A meager 5/10. Because of 'Moondance', the song.

Well, obviously not my thing. The album kicks off with horrible autotune-vocal sounds (can't call that singing). The music is as far away from what I like as is theoretically possible. Songs like 'Put it down'... come on. I can't find any highlight. I want to give some credits to the concept as a whole, the alteration between women's tales and songs. And yes, possibly for the message, but I never give any attention to lyrics. Second positive remark: for the genre the songs are rather varied. Just enough for a two star review or 3/10.

Can anyone explain to me why this earned seven Grammies? This is dreadful easy listening music. Musical wallpaper. And to be honest: I don't really appreciate Jones' singing.

A great album but it could have been a perfect album. It's simply way too long, with a number of songs that can be regarded as fillers. However, the highlights are fantastic: 'Them bones', 'Darn that river', 'Down in a hole', 'Rooster', the incredibly sexy - probably the most sexy song in 79 albums so far - title track 'Dirt', and of course 'Would?'. Typically 1992: almost filling a cd. In 45 minutes this would have been a total killer.

A fantastic album. The first twelve songs - of fifteen - are brilliant, all of them. It's simply a release of an atom bomb of energy, smashing you against the wall in the most positive way. I think I might have heard it maybe once the past fifteen years, but already the first time listening I was chanting alone from the first to the last minute. It's great. Just listen and enjoy.

Jesus Christ, what on earth is this? I didn't know what to expect and I still don't know what I have been listening to. I mean, 'The faith healer' is a fantastic song, reminiscent of Can, truly revolutionary for 1973. But the album follows with 'Giddy up a ding dong', not just a stupid title but also an absurd Racey-like glamrock or glampop-song. In Next we get German cabaret, 'Swampsnake' is a straight ahead blues rocker, 'Gang bang' a boogie-type of song. Closer 'The last of the teenage idols' is three songs in one, ending with something like crooning over a shalalalala-choir. Seriously. Yes, it's an eclectic mix. But if you can make a song like 'The faith healer', why not make a couple of those and fill an album with that?

Well, this is definitely a great album. It took a number of listens, though. You need to get into it. There are a big number of typical Ray Davies jewels to be enjoyed. 'Animal farm' and 'Village Green' - starring a prominent oboe and a harpsichord - are maybe the highlights. A couple of weaker songs as well. It's sentimental as hell. Put it on and drown in sentimentality, for which there is much more reason nowadays.

Again an example I have had in my closet for fifteen years or so and never liked a lot. I was wrong. It's full of gems, the songwriting is incredible and the performances sometimes beautiful. I love the obvious jewish influences, most of all on 'It's lonely at the top'. But the absolute highlight for me is the wonderful 'Memo to my son' - what an astonishingly beautiful melody, however simple (it's an E-chord). I can understand why I never really liked it. Newman is obviously a better songwriter that a singer, and 'You can leave your hat on' for me has been totally f**cked up by the horrible Joe Cocker. But this is first class songwriting.

First of all: I'm totally unfamiliar with Swift's music. Wrong generation. Her success and especially devoted fanbase surprise me, in the sense that she apparently is very popular among people (mainly women) who usually listen to much more challenging (alternative) music than pop. This could have been a rather good pop album, but the production is truly awful. And I mean: awful. It's way too loud and everything sounds so disgustingly synthetic.... It's supposed to be bass guitar, but it all sounds like coming from a computer. The singing is also obviously f*cked with. This point is clearly illustrated by the bizarre cover version that Ryan Adams made of this entire album. The hits are clearly better in the Swift versions, but Adams' album sounds so much better, so much more musical. Fascinating: this illustrates perfectly that Swift indeed is a talented songwriter. Highlight of the album is beyond doubt 'Style'. That's a great song, and yes, probably the least synthetic sounding.

I really don't understand the charm people apparently see in this album. I'm not a big hardcore fan anyway, but in this album I can see anything that appeals to me. It starts of with a 31 second song. Congratulations. In total there are 14 songs in less than 16 minutes. Hardcore is like a stripped down variant of speed metal, without the guitar solo's (admitted, there's at least sort of one on this album), without the tempo changes, with screaming as vocals and without the funny lyrics about satan or rotting corpses. So it's basically speed metal without everything that makes it fun.

I feared this album. It features the awful 'Sledge Hammer', very bad memory of my youth. And what I didn't know: 'Don't give up' as well, another awful memory. So far I was wrong. The first three songs, including the two I mentioned and opener 'Red rain' are actually pretty good. They even sound rather okay for a 1986-popalbum. But then... It gets worse and worse, every song more awful than the last one with an absolute low in 'This is the picture'. What on earth is that? This must be one of the worst songs in 86 albums so far. Eighties production is almost laughable of all the songs bar the first three. In 'Mercy Street' and the aforementioned 'This is the picture' nothing at all happens. My god. On the original vinyl 'This is the picture' was the closing track. People must have been so relieved they could start a new album... But on cd and cassette and since 2002 also on vinyl there is a different closer and that's a lot better: 'In your eyes'. The funny thing is that this album is saved from a very bad review by the two hits I had such bad memories of.

Fantastic. Simply fantastic. What an incredible band, what a team of musicians. The real stars of this album are not Blackmore and Lord, no, Paice and Glover are rockin' like nothing else. Glovers bass work on 'Lazy' is incredible, just like Paice's drumming on 'Space truckin''. These two tracks are the highlights of this album, not the much more famous 'Smoke on the water' or 'Highway star'. It's all good, 'Pictures of home' should be mentioned as well. The B-side 'When a blind man cries' that was later added to the album is also noteworthy, although it's almost over the top. What a musicianship.

This is really weird. I had never heard of this band, although it is clearly linked to one of my favourite bands of all times (TC Matic) and although I have always been totally into European music and certainly French speaking music. This obviously borrows a lot from TC Matic and especially their debut album. Makes me wonder even more why that album is NOT on the official list (it's in the Dutch edition of the book, though). That album is so refreshing, influential and timeless... This is a lot less refreshing because of its industrial influences. It reminds me of Godflesh. The thing is, it's original - listen to the musette-like 'Charlotte' placed in between two industrial metal songs - but it's also too electronic. All instrumentation is done by sampling and that makes songs monotonous. No, not all, there is a real drummer but his drums (midi-drums? not sure) sound very synthetic as well. Last remark: the voice of Franz Treichler reminds so strongly of the voice of Arno at a later age, it's almost bizarre. Kudo's for the innovative character, a rather tough listen though. Just listen to (the album) TC Matic

I had no idea what to expect. Turns out to be singer-songwriter-pop. Yes, definitely pop. And as usual in pop music, according to my taste there's not much happening. But that's not my biggest problem. That's the production choices, and in particular I mean the sometimes horrible backing vocals, the choirs. 'The one you love', 'Gay Messiah', "Crumb by crumb'. Dear Lord, why on earth? It destroys the music. But that's still far from the low point. 'Old whore's diet', with an annoying latin-like rhythm, has truly horrible guest vocals by Anohni. It's not about their voice - it's the appalling vibrato that they use. I can't listen to that. This could have been a better album, the songs aren't bad.

I know this is sacrilege. I'm not into this. It's nice, it's okay, but nothing happens. The standout songs are 'The weight', 'Chest fever' and 'This wheel's on fire' (famous as title song for Absolutely Fabulous). But it's rather telling that I have owned this album for fifteen years or so and that I recognized or remember only one song (The weight) from earlier listenings. Boring.

This is a nice album. I love the use of - at the time - innovative key instruments. The Fender Rhodes sound in opener 'You are the sunshine of my life' is truly one of the most beautiful e-piano sounds I know. The Hohner Clavinet, especially in 'Superstition' is fantastic. Most songs are strong, up to closer 'I believe (etc.)'. 'You and I' is a beautiful piano ballad that some of the famous artists of this day (ms. Adkins) should listen to. But I have to mention 'Maybe your baby'. That's horrible.

Of the six albums of Costello on the list this is without doubt the one too many. It's really not a strong album, I don't understand at all why it's in the book. The album kicks off pretty okay and the second song, 'Kinder murder' is by far the strongest song of the album. That's a true classic. But starting with the fourth track, 'This is hell', songs are only mentionable because they are weak. 'You tripped at every step' or 'Still too soon to know"? Pffff. '20% Amnesia' seems like a nice remembrance of Costello's early days, but the production is horrible. It's only drums, a bit of piano and some Swordfishtrombones-like guitar where punky, distorted guitars should have sounded. Six albums on the list is a lot, and this one doesn't belong there. I guess a couple of the early albums that aren't mentioned should have been more in place than this one. It almost seems like Dimmery and his team have a bit of a knack for Costello...

This is a really difficult album to review, or appreciate. My ears are totally untrained for this type of music. I guess the sitar-improvisations by Ravi Shankar are exceptional, but I have no reference. Also, the lack of melody and droning nature of the music, the total absence of structure (except the raga as basis) make it hard to distinguish the 'songs'. It's just there... Having said that, I liked this a lot better than I expected. The sitar playing sounds impressive, I like the tambura. It's just that I can't stand the sound of tabla. It makes me nervous as hell.

It seems that some people, distinguished music writers, value this album to death. I really don't understand. Musically nothing is happening. I'm listening to James Brown shouting in a mic for 31 minutes. Nothing is exciting. Even worse: in the intro we hear painfully false notes. The saxes in 'Try me'... oh boy. Yes, the charm of a live album, but it's a pain to the ears. Low point is 'Lost someone'. It's eleven minutes of call and response, except that nothing's happening. Not my cup of tea.

Well... It's been long since the last hiphop album. So, here we have the next challenge. Public Enemy was really big in my defining years in my circles. Surprisingly - or not - teens like me, metalhead, started listening Public Enemy and even wearing their shirts. Music press in the Netherlands was pushing them. To a certain extent, I can understand this. Public Enemy to me is a bit the heavy metal-act among the hiphop I've listened this far. (Unfortunately) Not because they use a lot of metal-samples, but because of the nature, rather overpowering, of the music. What I like best is definitely the voice of Chuck D: that is one hell of a voice to start rapping. What I like least is that the album as a whole is first of all waaaaaay too long (it's 1990...), well over an hour, and secondly that there aren't that many highlights. Very few of the songs really stand out. Surprisingly, the most streamed songs are also the ones I like best: 'Fight the power' and most of all 'Welcome to the terrordome'.

I have a troublesome relationship with Joni Mitchell's music. Take this album. There's truly beautiful music, the musicianship by the quite impressive list of studio musicians is astonishing, the production is great, it sounds fantastic. Opener '...In France they kiss on Main Street' and 'Shades of Scarlett conquering' are the highlights. But you would wish that they sometimes break loose, it's all too restrained, too, I don't know, beautiful, too shy I would almost say. Well, it's not all beautiful. 'The jungle line' is a total miss, it's a dreadful song. It's these Burundian warrior drums - quite suitable since I am writing this during the cycling WC in Rwanda - with merely a bit of Moog sounds on top, there isn't even a melody. It could have been 8/10 but because of that song it's a 7/10.

I believe Radiohead was one of the best bands of the 1990s. Their albums The Bends and OK Computer are, in my opinion, two of the greatest of that decade — with The Bends being my personal favorite. I see them as milestones in both the decade and in alternative rock. But when Kid A came out in 2000, I was left confused and disappointed. It felt like the band abandoned everything that made them great, replacing it with electronic bleeps and experimental sounds that didn’t resonate with me. Although some tracks, like Everything in Its Right Place, The National Anthem, and Optimistic, had some structure or echoes of the old Radiohead, most of the album felt aimless to me. I know many critics later praised Kid A as a masterpiece, even calling it the best album of the decade — but I just don’t get it. I respect the band's right to evolve, and I pride myself on having a wide and adventurous musical taste. Still, I find Kid A lacking in the qualities I value in music. In the end, I’m left with one question for the band: Why?

When I listened to Lauryn Hill’s album, I found it unbelievably bad. On the first play it got under my skin so much that I almost quit, but I forced myself to listen again. The second time was slightly less awful, maybe because I was distracted. Still, the whole album feels like one long low point. “Superstar” stood out negatively, and the cover of Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You was, in my view, ruined beyond belief. The only track that made me pause was Final Hour, because it has a flute that actually sounds musical. Carlos Santana also plays a short acoustic guitar part, but it gets buried in the rest. I simply can’t connect with this modern version of R&B at all. Sorry.

This album, which came before Bookends, is seen as Simon & Garfunkel’s real breakthrough. The music is often stunningly beautiful. It opens with Scarborough Fair / Canticle, a gorgeous arrangement where their combined vocals have never sounded better. My favorite moment is Homeward Bound. The beginning is unbelievably beautiful—one of Simon’s finest songwriting moments, with its simple vocal line, plucked guitar, added harmony, and bass foundation. Unfortunately, the chorus is a bit too poppy and cheesy for my taste. Other highlights include the lovely The Dangling Conversation and the sharper A Simple Desultory Philippic, which adds some welcome bite to an otherwise gentle album. Overall, it’s a very good record with no real misses—except perhaps the closer, 7 O’Clock News / Silent Night. The concept is clever, but the execution feels overdone.

I came to this Billy Bragg album - number 100, hooray - knowing only the basics: English, guitar, politics. All true, as it turns out. What makes this record distinctive is its setup — varied instrumentation but no drums. That absence defines the sound: Bragg’s clean electric guitar dominates everything, ringing and chiming for nearly forty minutes without much relief. It’s a sharp, jangled tone that starts out bracing but grows fatiguing. His voice is just as defining — nasal, raw, and steeped in a thick Essex accent. At first I thought of Paul Weller, but Weller sings with far more finesse. Bragg’s delivery feels more like a statement than a performance, and after a while it grates. The album opens well. “Greetings to the New Brunette,” featuring Johnny Marr, is bright and melodic, and “Train Train” carries the manic rhythm its title promises. But after that, the energy fades. The brass flourishes in “Levi Stubbs’ Tears” and “The Marriage” give things a peculiarly English (Purcell) flavor, though they never quite work for me. “There Is Power in a Union” feels like The Pogues stripped of their spirit — more protest chant than song. But the real misstep is “Honey I’m a Big Boy Now,” a painfully off-key piano piece that seems to mistake awkwardness for authenticity. It’s not a bad album, exactly — more an earnest one that wears itself out. I started with a six, but after a few listens, I’m dropping it to a five.

This is Dylan at the height of his powers, when the world was at his feet. Often cited as his masterpiece — and one of the most influential albums ever — it’s also said to be the first rock double album in history. At 72 minutes, it tests the listener’s attention span but mostly manages to hold it together. By this point Dylan had already scandalized the folk scene by plugging in at Newport in 1965, a move that branded him a traitor among purists. For this record, he went into the studio with The Hawks — the band that would soon become The Band — minus drummer Levon Helm, who’d briefly quit. Even without him, the playing here is sharp and vibrant, far tougher than the syrupy debut The Band themselves would later release. You can hear Dylan fully joining the rock revolution, his words and sound perfectly tuned to the pulse of the era. Robbie Robertson’s guitar often steals the spotlight, especially on the bluesy “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” and the driving “Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine).” Other standouts include the swinging “I Want You,” the hazy “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again,” and the haunting “Visions of Johanna” — the song that inspired the name of Dutch band Johan. The album opens with the raucous “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” a kind of proto-punk brass romp that’s more curious than great, and closes with the eleven-minute “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” lovely but languid — a long fade rather than a grand finale. Still, it’s a towering achievement. The Nobel laureate earned every musical, not literary accolade that could be given for this one.

Sometimes I wonder if Radiohead were following a kind of musical version of Marxist theory: first destroy everything in order to rebuild a new and “purer” order. After conquering the world with some of the finest alternative rock of the 1990s, they tore it all down with Kid A and Amnesiac. On the ashes of those albums came this one — a blend of the old, guitar-driven Radiohead and the new, electronic, deconstructed version they seemed to have always wanted. To me, the electronics dominate — perhaps because I dislike them so much that I can’t ignore them. Still, there are traces of the earlier brilliance here: melodies, atmosphere, moments of beauty. Yet where classic Radiohead thrived on haunting melodic lines — the kind that jazz pianist Brad Mehldau or full orchestras would later play — this album feels restless and agitated. Tracks like “Bodysnatchers” and “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” make me tense; opener “15 Step” is even worse, with its messy hybrid of real and electronic drums. I’ve listened to this record many times, trying to form a fair, objective opinion, but most of it simply doesn’t stick. The songs slip away the moment they end — except for “House of Cards,” which has a touch of the old Radiohead magic, that same fragile beauty of “Street Spirit” or “Exit Music (For a Film).” The middle of the album is stronger — “All I Need,” “Reckoner,” and “House of Cards” stand out — but it’s not enough. By the time “Jigsaw Falling into Place” brings back that frantic drumming, I’m exhausted. In the end, despite flickers of greatness, it’s a disappointing record from a once truly remarkable band.

This album comes from one of the only three children of Fela Kuti — which is remarkable, considering that Fela at one point had twenty-seven wives simultaneously (for partly political reasons, apparently). It was released in 1995, just two years before Fela’s death from AIDS-related complications — a disease he and his widow insisted did not exist. The album, not Fela’s death, was Femi’s big breakthrough. Still following? For me, this kind of music is difficult to “analyze” in the usual sense. Maybe that’s the point — there isn’t much to dissect. What I hear is a deeply convincing, relentlessly grooving collection of long, jam-like tracks, built on call-and-response vocals and dense rhythms. It’s infectious, no question about it. The main problem is also obvious: it’s a 1995 album, which means it runs for an exhausting 73 minutes across just ten tracks (well, nine — there is a 31-second intro to “Nawa”). That’s simply too long. The extended jams fit the style, of course, but by the time I reached “No Shame,” the seventh or eighth track depending on how you count, I found myself checking my watch. The endless call-and-response stretches could have been trimmed, and the closing percussion solo feels like an afterthought. With tighter editing, this could have been an eight-out-of-ten album. And since I’m complaining: on “Plenty Nonsense,” the drummer chops away so aggressively you could heat a Finnish cabin winterlong on the splinters. Still, it’s a strong, highly listenable record. The standouts for me are “Frustrations” and the excellent “Nawa.”

This album is a monument in itself. Often hailed as the greatest live record ever made — and certainly one of the most influential — it captures The Who at their most feral and combustible. The band that never really fit in at Woodstock — too loud, too aggressive, too fond of blowing things up — set out to make a live album that bottled their onstage chaos. What they delivered was Live at Leeds: raw, explosive, and, let’s be honest, a glorious mess. Everything about it feels deliberate, even the shambolic packaging. The sleeve was designed to look like a bootleg — a plain cardboard cover with a crooked sticker — a wink to the underground tape culture of the time. A style icon of a live album was born. The original 1970 LP contained just six tracks and ran a lean 39 minutes — half of it taken up by a sprawling medley built around “My Generation.” Remarkably, it included barely a trace of Tommy, the rock opera they were touring at the time. Over the years, the album’s scope ballooned through reissues and deluxe editions, eventually swelling into a four-disc behemoth that includes complete performances of Tommy from Leeds and Hull. From six songs to four CDs — excess, meet rock history. I’m sticking to the original release here. Half the tracks are covers: “Young Man Blues,” “Summertime Blues,” and “Shakin’ All Over.” It’s an odd choice for a band that already had four albums under its belt, but no matter — this is loud, snarling, blues-drenched music, brimming with manic energy. Even much of what later passed for “heavy metal” sounds like nursery music in comparison. The highlight, of course, is the “My Generation” medley — a 15-minute descent into instrumental mayhem, with John Entwistle’s distorted bass soloing like a lead guitar, Keith Moon attempting to destroy his drum kit by sheer force, and Pete Townshend veering from clean arpeggios to full-on sonic detonation. It eventually morphs into fragments of Tommy — mainly “See Me, Feel Me” / “We’re Not Gonna Take It” — and becomes something close to transcendence. The finale, “Magic Bus,” is another seven minutes of glorious racket, capped by Roger Daltrey howling into a harmonica for good measure. It’s not perfect — too chaotic, too uneven, too dependent on covers — but perfection was never the point. Live at Leeds is the sound of a band at war with its own limits, and that’s precisely what makes it monumental.

I actually liked this album a lot — much more than I expected to. From the opening and title track I was impressed: a fine melody, offset by what I think is a xylophone (judging by the credits), giving it an uneasy, almost dissonant edge that works beautifully. Great guitar tone too, and the vocals don’t bother me at all. That guitar sound really comes into its own on The Glorious Land — almost clean, but warm and full of character. Where Billy Bragg’s metallic hollowness always grated, this is perfect. Credit where due: John Parish, PJ Harvey’s long-time musical (not romantic) partner, deserves a mention here. All and Everyone is even better — wonderful guitar tone again, a haunting melody, lovely touches of organ and trombone, and superb singing. A fantastic song. So far, so good — until On Battleship Hill. Melodically it’s fine, even slightly country-ish, but Harvey’s vocal choices are baffling. She suddenly leaps into some operatic register — higher than Maria Callas on a good day — and it’s painful. The duet with Parish is nicely done, but if she’d just sung an octave lower it could have been genuinely moving. England continues the misstep, oddly flamenco-tinged and not much better. I don’t get it. Thankfully, the record recovers. In the Dark Places is another strong, stirring song, and Bitter Branches is among the album’s best. Without that unfortunate midsection, this could’ve been an easy 8, maybe even a 9 out of 10. As it stands, it’s a fine record undermined by its own excess — but it’s done enough to make me curious about the rest of her work.

I’ve given this album a fair number of listens. I just can’t connect with it. I was leaning toward a 6 out of 10, but then Spotify’s algorithm shut the door for me. I let it play on after the album ended, and it served up a bunch of tracks by obscure bands in roughly the same genre — and every single one of them sounded better than anything I’d just heard. Worse, two of those songs were actually by The Gun Club themselves, from their second album Miami, and both were clearly superior to anything on Fire of Love. The main reason those Miami tracks worked better is also my biggest problem with Fire of Love: the sound. It’s painfully thin and monotonous, dominated by a tinny guitar tone that tries to be clean but just ends up grating. It doesn’t help that there’s a lot of slide guitar — and as faithful readers will know by now, I have limited patience for that particular sound. That slide guitar makes sense, of course, since this is essentially a twisted form of blues — punk blues, or blues punk, take your pick. But it doesn’t do much for me. I actually own The Las Vegas Story, their third album, which I bought after reading some breathless reissue review in what I think was NRC. I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about then, and after this deeper dive into their debut, I still can’t. If I have to name a highlight, fine — opener “Sex Beat” sets the tone reasonably well. The most striking song is probably “She’s Like Heroin to Me” (substance references not coincidental — frontman Jeffrey Lee Pierce reportedly drank like a fish and likely indulged in a few other habits not compatible with a Tour de France lifestyle). As for low points: well, that would be the entire 40-minute slab of stubborn, grinding blues-punk that makes up the album. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not terrible. If it were, I’d have given it a lower score. It just leaves me cold. And there you have it: proof that not all guitar-heavy music automatically works for me. Though, frankly, I already proved that with my Circle Jerk's review.

This is an odd album. After Pet Sounds — still one of pop music’s great miracles — the Beach Boys somehow stumbled their way here, five records later, to Surf’s Up: uneven, intermittently brilliant, and often baffling. Brian Wilson was still around, but mostly in spirit; the lush harmonies and meticulous production that once defined the band are largely absent. His presence flickers to life in the final three tracks, though — and when it does, you remember just how far ahead of his peers he once was. The title track remains magnificent; “A Day in the Life of a Tree,” sung (rather alarmingly) by their manager, is merely… memorable. Still, there’s much to enjoy. “Long Promised Road” is a genuine highlight, full of that bittersweet Californian glow the band once bottled so effortlessly. Less successful is their sudden bid for social relevance. Manager Jack Rieley apparently urged them to tackle serious issues — an odd idea for a band that built its empire on surfboards and sunshine. The result, “Student Demonstration Time,” is a clumsy blues-rock detour, complete with sirens and moral confusion, crashing through the album like an uninvited guest. Oddly, its message — penned by the now-MAGA-inclined Mike Love — seems to be that it’s better simply not to demonstrate. In the end, Surf’s Up is a curious mix of beauty and misfire — flashes of the old magic, shadowed by strange choices and the growing sense that the world, and the band, had both moved on.

When this album appeared in 2001, it hit the zeitgeist with unnerving precision. The crowd that had once spent the late eighties and early nineties in a chemically enhanced blur on the dancefloor had, by then, acquired mortgages, toddlers, and a deep yearning for sophistication. Lounge music — that gentle collision of house beats and tasteful melancholy — was the perfect solution. You could feel worldly and hip again, just without the pills, the sweat, or the 4 a.m. regret. This record became their soundtrack. It replaced Buena Vista Social Club as the go-to background for semi-upscale restaurants where you could just about hear yourself say “we really should do this more often.” For a while, it felt as though every restaurant in Europe owned precisely one CD — and this was it. The idea, to be fair, is ingenious: take danceable beats and drape them in tango. Instant atmosphere. But as actual music, rather than mood lighting, it wilts fast. On headphones it becomes fifty-seven minutes of politely hypnotic repetition — the sort of music that makes you wonder whether you’re supposed to tip the percussionist for persistence alone. And the execution doesn’t help. The bandoneon player sounds permanently on the verge of panic, the percussionist seems intent on starting a small regional conflict, and the singer — who faintly resembles Dani Klein of Vaya Con Dios — manages to drain all the sultriness from the room. There are flashes of what might have been: “Tríptico” almost works, and the cover of Last Tango in Paris finally delivers a sliver of genuine drama. But most of it remains the sonic equivalent of mood lighting — pleasant, repetitive, and ultimately disposable. Still, it’s a perfect time capsule. You can almost picture the scene: the couple out for their long-overdue dinner, the waiter reciting the specials, and this music softly purring in the background — a soundtrack for people who once danced until dawn and now just want to make it to dessert.

Tim Buckley never made things easy for his audience. Where his son Jeff turned aching vulnerability into pop gold, Tim wandered straight into the deep end — ambitious, challenging, often strange, and occasionally brilliant. Happy Sad (1969) may well be his masterpiece: an album steeped in melancholy and experimentation, where folk, jazz, and something more elusive blur into one hypnotic whole. It opens with Strange Feelin’, a clear reimagining of Miles Davis’s So What — the cool jazz influence unmistakable. From the first bars, you’re struck by the sound of the vibraphone, which gives the album its shimmering, dreamlike atmosphere. It’s an instrument almost never heard in rock or folk, and its presence makes the record both distinctive and, at times, impenetrable. The highlights come early: Buzzin’ Fly, buoyed by Buckley’s supple voice and a flowing melody, is perhaps the album’s most direct moment. Love from Room 109 at the Islander (On Pacific Coast Highway) is sprawling and strange, with bowed bass and shifting textures that shouldn’t work but somehow do. And Dream Letter — an aching message to his estranged wife and young son Jeff — offers a glimpse of the emotional intensity that made Buckley such a singular figure. It’s not all flawless. Gypsy Woman, a twelve-minute suite of wails, improvisations, and sharp-edged guitar, pushes its luck — fascinating in intent, exhausting in execution. But then, that’s part of the album’s charm: no progress without a few derailments. Happy Sad is beautifully melancholic, sometimes difficult, often mesmerizing. It’s a record that asks for patience and attention — and rewards both. For those who only know the son, it’s well worth spending some time with the father. The voice is different, the mood deeper, and the risk-taking far greater.

This record is the sound of a nervous breakdown disguised as art. Suba’s São Paulo Confessions — a collision of synthetic beats, bossa nova traces, and late-’90s club pretensions — feels less like music and more like an endurance test. It’s the sort of album that makes you wonder whether your speakers are broken or your patience. The idea was, apparently, to modernize Brazilian music. What we get instead is a relentless blur of electronic percussion, digital gloss, and occasional Portuguese murmuring, all of it radiating the sterile heat of a malfunctioning espresso machine. “Antropofagos” sounds like a warehouse rave hosted by an MDMA enthusiast with a conga fetish; “Felicidade” resembles a chemical hangover set to a drum loop. There’s history here — Suba (born Mitar Subotić) fled Yugoslavia, settled in São Paulo, and produced Bebel Gilberto’s Tanto Tempo before dying in a studio fire. That Gilberto album at least had melodies and charm; this one just has anxiety and a pulse. To be fair, there are moments — brief ones — when the synthetic textures almost coalesce into something interesting. “Segredo” is the least manic track, and for a minute or two you can imagine what this might have been if anyone had remembered to write actual songs. Otherwise, it’s a 61-minute assault of slick emptiness — music for people who believe nightlife is a spiritual calling. Give me death metal any day; it’s calmer.

This album is a masterclass in sequencing — a lost art, really. Back when records still had sides, the order of the songs mattered; an album wasn’t just a playlist but a journey with a beginning and an end. Who’s Next proves that The Who understood that structure better than almost anyone. It opens and closes with two of the greatest songs ever written in rock music. “Baba O’Riley,” with its legendary Lowrey organ intro (not a synthesizer, despite what most people think), is one of those tracks that instantly justified the price of the LP — the kind you’d decide to buy after hearing the first 30 seconds through the headphones at the record shop. And then, at the other end, there’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” — a thunderous, cathartic closer that still sounds like the end of an era and the birth of something new. Between them, “Behind Blue Eyes” stands tall: tender, then explosive, a prototype for the rock ballad before the term even existed. The rest of the album, though, doesn’t quite reach those heights. “The Song Is Over” exposes Roger Daltrey’s limits as a singer, and some of the material feels uneven, more like connective tissue between the giants. Still, the peaks are so extraordinary that they cement The Who’s place — unfairly overlooked, at times — among the true architects of modern rock. They even toyed with early synthesizers here (“Going Mobile”), something virtually unheard of in hard rock at the time. It’s another small sign of how far ahead they were willing to go. No, Who’s Next isn’t flawless. But when it’s great, it’s as great as rock music gets.

In 1955, Frank Sinatra poured his heartbreak over Ava Gardner into In the Wee Small Hours — an album so cohesive it’s often cited as the first true “concept album.” It’s a masterpiece, but a monochrome one: an extended sigh in blue, all midnight gloom and lonely cigarettes. A year later, he re-emerged — libido restored, swagger back — with Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!, and it’s like someone threw open the curtains. The joy in this record is infectious. Nelson Riddle’s arrangements shimmer with effortless grace, and Sinatra sounds untouchable, completely at home in this universe of winks, charm, and brass. Sinatra may not have had the prettiest voice in the technical sense — Stuart Staples of Tindersticks, say, has a richer baritone — but no one has ever phrased like Frank. His performance on “Old Devil Moon” is jaw-dropping: the way he bends and dances around the melody is as free and daring as Charlie Parker on sax. He doesn’t so much sing the songs as play them, using language the way a jazz soloist uses notes. Cole Porter’s sly wit is tailor-made for him — “Anything Goes” practically purrs — and even the ancient chestnut “Makin’ Whoopee” becomes deliciously risqué in his hands. (Ava Gardner, after all, once quipped that of Sinatra’s 119 pounds, nineteen were... well, censored.) It’s an album that radiates pleasure — sophisticated, a little naughty, endlessly listenable. Maybe it’s a touch too smooth to be perfect, but honestly, who cares? Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! is pure joy on vinyl — a tonic for melancholy, a reminder that charm, when done right, is its own kind of genius.

By 1969, The Kinks had achieved something few bands ever do: four consecutive albums — from Face to Face through Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) — that capture the full flowering of a singular creative voice. And what a finale this is. From the moment “Victoria” explodes out of the speakers, followed by the sharp and sardonic “Yes Sir, No Sir,” you know you’re in the presence of peak Ray Davies — where melody, satire, and melancholy coexist in glorious disorder. Ostensibly inspired by the Davies brothers’ sister and her husband Arthur, who had emigrated to Australia, the album uses their story to frame a larger reflection on Britain itself: its class system, its nostalgia, its quiet disappointments. “Australia” is both hopeful and faintly mocking, a dream of escape that already sounds worn at the edges. The emotional centerpiece, though, is “Shangri-La” — a stunning, orchestrated portrait of working-class aspiration and entrapment. Critics accused Davies of sneering at his subjects, but the song is far too beautiful, too deeply felt, for that. Its shifting structure — gentle balladry giving way to aggression, then back to bittersweet calm — shows a songwriter in complete control of his craft. Even the album’s concept carries a quiet irony: the decline of the British Empire told through the life of a man named Arthur, echoing the mythic King Arthur himself. Not everything lands — “She’s Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina” veers off course — but by then, Davies has already secured his place among the greats. Arthur stands as one of The Kinks’ crowning achievements: humane, melodic, and quietly devastating — the sound of a band capturing the soul of a fading England, one perfect bridge and la-la chorus at a time.

Supergrass’s I Should Coco landed in 1995 — the same year as The Bends, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. In other words, the absolute peak of mid-’90s alternative rock. Yet somehow, these barely-twentysomething lads from Oxford — Gaz Coombes was only nineteen — managed to release the best-selling British debut since Please Please Me. Not bad company, even if Supergrass would never reach Beatles-level myth. This record is, simply put, a riot. A hyperactive, 40-minute burst of unfiltered joy — as effective against gloom as Sinatra’s Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! but delivered through a wall of guitars, grins, and caffeine. Wikipedia dutifully lists The Buzzcocks, The Jam, Madness, and The Kinks as influences, but the lineage feels more Small Faces than Jam, more Who than Kinks. Danny Goffey drums like he’s had three espressos too many and worships Keith Moon; Mick Quinn’s bass lines bounce and punch like John Entwistle in a sugar rush. And yet, I Should Coco isn’t about heritage or reference points — it’s about sheer, combustible fun. From the explosive opener “I’d Like to Know” to the euphoric “Alright,” every track radiates youthful recklessness. “Sitting Up Straight” teases calm before detonating again, while “She’s So Loose” finally slows the tempo — a small masterpiece in miniature. Then comes that moment: “We’re Not Supposed To.” Recorded at double speed and sounding like a helium hangover, it’s the album’s one real misfire — a juvenile in-joke that should have stayed on the cutting room floor. But the band redeems itself immediately with the lazy sway of “Time” and the hazy, unexpectedly intricate “Sofa (of My Lethargy),” which drifts toward something almost prog-like. By then, it’s clear that beneath the chaos, there’s surprising depth — and maybe even a fondness for ’70s pop à la Smokie lurking beneath the fuzz. The pseudo-farewell that closes the record is unnecessary but harmless — like one too many pints after a perfect night out. Minor flaws aside, I Should Coco remains a blast of pure mid-’90s exuberance: fast, funny, and gloriously alive, the sound of youth with nowhere particular to be and too much energy to sit still.

I’ve never quite known what to do with Alice Cooper. Not the man, not the band, not the circus around it all. On the one hand there’s Halo of Flies, a sprawling, genuinely brilliant track I grew up admiring. On the other, there’s Poison — a cartoonish embarrassment that soundtracked the late ’80s in all its synthetic glory. Reconciling those two has always been impossible. Listening to Billion Dollar Babies again, carefully and with the best headphones I own, hasn’t helped. The album is part glam rock, part prog, part theatrical stunt — often all at once — and while that sounds intriguing in theory, in practice it mostly blurs together into something neither clever nor thrilling. The title track threatens to turn into an epic but never quite gets there; Unfinished Sweet wanders from sugary glam into a brief jazz-prog passage that’s far more interesting than the rest of the song; No More Mr. Nice Guy is fine, catchy enough, but hardly the classic it pretends to be. The record’s tonal confusion peaks with Mary Ann, a honky-tonk piano detour that feels like a dare — or filler. And when Cooper leans into his infamous “shock rock” persona on I Love the Dead and Sick Things, it’s hard to feel shocked or even amused. Mostly, it just feels like theatre that’s outlived its shock value. There are flashes of originality here, sure, but they’re buried under gimmickry. The result is an album that never quite decides whether it wants to be clever, scary, or just loud — and ends up being none of the three.

I’ve always known Suede were supposed to be one of the pillars of early Britpop, but somehow they completely passed me by in the ’90s. Revisiting their debut now, I can finally answer the question of whether I missed something crucial back then. Short answer: no. There is one undeniable strength here, and that’s Bernard Butler. His guitar work is gorgeous — all chiming arpeggios and beautifully shaped melodies, played with a sense of character Britpop guitarists spent the rest of the decade trying to imitate. If there’s a hero on this record, it’s him. The problem is the other half of the equation. Brett Anderson’s vocals are… an acquired taste, to put it kindly. The fluttering, almost yodel-adjacent delivery can work in theory, but on quieter tracks — of which there are many — it quickly becomes grating. And that’s the other issue: for all its reputation, the album contains surprisingly few songs that actually move me. I gave it plenty of chances, including the full “super-headphones” treatment, but the spark just never arrives. There are exceptions. Pantomime Horse is the one moment where the band truly clicks: dramatic, dynamic, rising and falling with real intent. If the rest of the album had that kind of shape and force, we’d be having a very different conversation. Animal Nitrate comes close, though Anderson’s vocals push it back a step. And The Drowners, one of the supposed highlights, is the kind of track they could easily have left on the cutting-room floor. So no — I didn’t overlook a masterpiece in my youth. I’m still curious about the follow-up (Dog Man Star, before Butler’s dramatic exit), but this debut mostly confirms that not every glittering relic of ’90s guitar music was actually gold.

In hindsight, I See a Darkness arrived at a strangely fitting moment. The ’90s were winding down, the millennium scare was brewing, and most of us — children of the post-punk era now shuttling kids to hockey at 9 a.m. — were quietly ageing out of the louder corners of guitar music. Which is exactly when Will Oldham, newly trading under the mildly ridiculous moniker Bonnie “Prince” Billy, released an album that every self-respecting cultural-lefty tastemaker insisted was essential. I bought it at the time, full of hope… and was greeted by A Minor Place, easily one of the most bewildering opening tracks I’d ever heard. Not the ideal gateway for someone raised on decades of roaring guitars. But I kept listening — six full spins for this revisit — and the album gradually revealed itself as something remarkable. The songs are sparse, fragile, quietly devastating. Oldham’s thin, wavering voice shouldn’t work, yet it absolutely does; the arrangements are understated but beautifully judged, avoiding all the corny Americana trappings you might fear. And the writing… these are genuinely exquisite little miniatures. Unflinching, deeply sad, but gorgeous. The highlights come thick and fast: the title track (immortalised later by Johnny Cash), Nomadic Revery, Another Day Full of Dread, Death to Everyone, Madeleine-Mary, Black, Raining in Darling. Seven out of eleven isn’t a bad ratio. And even the rest never dip below “good”. It’s funny, really — how those of us from “generation zero” spent the ’90s marinating in gloom, blasting Smashing Pumpkins and Therapy?, and now look back on that decade as one long golden afternoon. But this record still hits straight in the chest. Especially its title track, which gets uncomfortably close to the bone. My single piece of advice for newcomers: skip the opener on first listen. Trust me. Everything after it is worth the journey. For me, it’s an easy 10/10 — an album I can return to endlessly without it losing any of its quiet power.

Going from the quiet, mournful intimacy of Will Oldham straight into Lars Ulrich’s wood-chopping assault that opens …And Justice for All is… bracing, to put it politely. It’s the kind of whiplash only middle-aged ears (and midlife midriff) truly appreciate. This album carries a lot of baggage for me, not least because it was my first encounter with Metallica back in 1989, borrowed from the library and taped onto a Maxell cassette for 50 cents. Fourteen-year-old me didn’t quite know what to do with these endless, bone-dry songs, James Hetfield’s vowels stretching into the horizon, and the total absence of anything resembling a “hit.” Even One — soon ubiquitous on MTV — didn’t exactly help. And then there’s the elephant in the room: Jason Newsted, who might as well have spent the recording sessions drinking beer on the lawn, because you cannot hear a single note he played. The bass is so thoroughly erased it has become part of the album’s mythology. Add to that Ulrich’s infamous cardboard-snare sound, and you’ve got one of the strangest production choices in the history of a band that was already capable of strange decisions. The guitars, at least, sound massive. The bigger issue: why is this the album in the book? Master of Puppets is a no-brainer, and sure, Metallica (the Black Album) earned its spot through sheer cultural saturation. But if you want another early Metallica record, Ride the Lightning wipes the floor with this one: Creeping Death, Fade to Black, Ktulu — it’s their real masterpiece. Instead we get this bone-dry monster. Dimery and co. never seemed to know quite what to do with metal anyway. But here’s the twist: after revisiting the album seriously, I have to admit it’s much better than I remembered. Yes, it’s too long. Yes, the songs are absurdly stretched. Yes, the sound is exhausting. But every single track here is strong. The staccato riffing is some of the tightest the band ever recorded — truly a high-water mark for thrash precision. Hetfield and Hammett might not be virtuosos in the strict sense, but the sheer accuracy and force of their playing is astonishing. And while Ulrich’s imagination behind the kit is limited, his blunt-force approach is undeniably effective. There’s even a case to be made that this is Metallica’s “prog” album: long, multi-section compositions, plenty of dynamic shifts, and a surprising amount of structural ambition. One absolutely earns its status as their major breakthrough, bombastic video and all. And the near-closing instrumental To Live Is to Die — with the ghost of Cliff Burton wandering through it — is a real standout, its clumsy acoustic bookends somehow charming amid all the pomp. So yes, I sound critical, but the truth is: this is a very strong album with no genuinely weak tracks. It deserves respect — though not at the expense of Ride the Lightning, which absolutely belongs in the book. If we need to make room, that ill-fated S&M orchestral experiment can quietly exit through the side door. Meanwhile, in the background: pok pok pok pok — Ulrich ratatatatata — Hetfield & Hammett (silence) — Newsted

This album contains one of the most beautiful songs I know. For years I even considered it the most beautiful — a position I no longer defend quite so fiercely, especially since another Cash track from the same series is now a strong contender. But let’s be clear: one transcendent song does not make for a great album. And this is not a great album. A step back. This is the only entry in the book from Cash’s ‘American’ series, the career-reviving collaboration with Rick Rubin that began in 1994. Cash, 62 and recovering from drug addiction, had drifted far out of view. Rubin — the man who had launched everyone from LL Cool J to Slayer — asked him to record for his newly renamed Def American label. The pairing was unlikely, the success extraordinary. Cash suddenly found an entirely new audience, especially among the culturally left-leaning Americana adopters I mentioned before. And as these things go, one successful album became four, then five, then six; this one was the last released during his lifetime. Which makes it all the more puzzling that this part of the series is the one included in the list. For what it’s worth, every other entry in the American cycle is rated higher by allmusic.com — and I tend to agree with them. The only plausible explanation is that this album contains that astonishing high point. The whole concept of the series was simple: give Cash stark, minimally arranged songs — sometimes classics, often not — and let that impossibly deep, weathered baritone do the rest. In this case, Nine Inch Nails’ rather unremarkable “Hurt” becomes, in Cash’s hands, something genuinely overwhelming. The video, with its foreshadowing of June Carter’s death, only heightens the effect. It’s a masterpiece. The album, unfortunately, isn’t. It starts well: a punchy “The Man Comes Around,” then Hurt, then “Give My Love to Rose,” which adds little to earlier versions but does no harm. And then the record veers off a cliff. Covering “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is already risky, but Cash’s version — a duet with Fiona Apple — is catastrophic. I’d listened to some of her much-praised debut out of curiosity, and it seemed fine. But here? To borrow my partner’s reaction when I played it for her: she insisted she could record duets with Johnny Cash, because she could not possibly sing any worse. And trust me, the bar in our household is low. Things recover briefly: Sting’s “I Hung My Head” works, and so does “Personal Jesus.” But much of the rest suffers from the same fatal flaw: the tempos drag, and Cash seems unable to find the right phrasing. He is one of the greatest singers modern music has produced, yet on this record even he repeatedly misses the mark. “In My Life” — that simple, beautiful Beatles classic — is a complete misfire. “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” is lifeless. And then come the real duds: a plodding “Danny Boy,” a strangely inert take on Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” (even Nick Cave can’t salvage it), and finally a closing “We’ll Meet Again” that sounds like the forced sing-along on a school trip bus. So yes: “Hurt” is absolutely extraordinary, one of the most moving recordings I have ever known. But an album is more than one perfect song, and this album simply isn’t good. Why not include the first American record instead — fresh, revelatory, and far better executed?

This album is a perfect example of an on the one hand / on the other hand record—but one side of that equation so overwhelmingly outweighs the other that the end result is simply a great album. Not a 10/10, because it really does rattle and creak too much for that, but my god, what a joy it is to listen to. The real difficulty, listening now, is that it’s almost impossible to reconstruct just how fresh this must have sounded in 1991–1992, when it was recorded and released. That two-sided character has everything to do with how the album was made. The lo-fi quality isn’t a pose; it’s structural. This debut was literally recorded in a home studio, in ten days. Which is, of course, ironic. Yes, jazz records used to be cut in a single morning or afternoon—leaving the rest of the day to record another album, so the musicians could fund the next batch of heroin—but by 1991 it was far more normal to spend months in a studio. Pavement did not. That lo-fi approach didn’t disappear later—subsequent Pavement albums still sound rough around the edges—but Brighten the Corners would be the first to sound genuinely “professional.” So let’s start with the other hand. Of the fourteen tracks here, a few could easily have been left off (“Fame Throwa,” anyone?). Almost all of the songs would sound objectively better with a cleaner recording. Stephen Malkmus’s singing—he more or less is Pavement, by the way; can anyone actually name the other members off the top of their head?—is, charitably, unstable. And yet: who cares? Because the one hand is a gloriously fresh album packed with genuine gems, and throughout it all you hear the sheer pleasure of making music. It opens brilliantly with “Summer Babe.” “In the Mouth a Desert” is the next high point, even if Gary Young’s drumming—recorded in his own house, and soon to be his Pavement swan song—is a bit lumberjack-like. “Conduit for Sale!” isn’t a highlight, but it’s worth mentioning: it sounds like a hyperactive, drug-fueled ’90s reinterpretation of the baseball commentary from Paradise by the Dashboard Light. For me, the album really takes off in the final stretch, with a superb quartet: “Loretta’s Scars,” “Here,” “Two States,” and “Perfume-V.” “Here” is the obvious standout. It was memorably covered by Tindersticks, which is fascinating because Stuart Staples’s James Bond–baritone turns the song into something entirely different. It’s still the best track on the album, even if Spotify listeners don’t seem to agree. The Tindersticks version isn’t on Spotify—it was a B-side later collected on Donkeys 92–97—but you can find it on YouTube. Oddly enough, the closing track “Our Singer” is one of my personal favorites, while Spotify ranks it dead last. Music like this was copied endlessly throughout the 1990s, which is why its original shock value is no longer immediately audible. Bands everywhere adopted that ramshackle, half-finished aesthetic. As a devoted Studio Brussel listener back in the day, I heard Pavement’s fingerprints all over Belpop. Of course, Pavement weren’t alone: Guided by Voices loom large, and if you go back further, Big Star—especially Third / Sister Lovers—clearly left a mark. The difference is that Malkmus and Scott Kannberg were far more liberal with the distortion pedal. And look at that: I’ve now named all three musicians on this album. After this, Pavement would expand into a proper five-piece, complete with an actual bassist. None of this really matters. What matters is that Slanted and Enchanted is an eruption of musical joy. In all its imperfection, it comes remarkably close to perfect.

I don’t quite get it. In theory, I should be the ideal audience for the blues entries on this list — there aren’t many of them, and so much of the music I love either flows directly from the blues (rock and its cousins) or dresses itself up in blues form (jazz). Add the central role of the electric guitar and a parade of guitar heroes, and you’d think I’d be helpless before it. And yet… not much happens for me. The Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker albums were fine but nothing special (though Hooker’s collaborations album worked better for me). This one, from B.B. King, lands squarely in the “Muddy Waters” category: pleasant enough, but ultimately forgettable. I gave it at least six listens. More even than with Queens of the Stone Age, the music just evaporates the moment it’s over. Not a single song really sticks. If I must name highlights, they’d be “It’s My Own Fault” and “Please Love Me.” Beyond that, the only consistently impressive feature here is B.B. King’s unmistakable guitar tone — genuinely beautiful, though I wish the album showcased it more. The playing itself isn’t especially spectacular, in my view. The audience on this live recording puzzles me as well; at random moments they respond with near-hysteria, though I can’t for the life of me hear what triggered it. I honestly don’t have much more to say. A perfectly decent live blues record that, for me, leaves no lasting trace.

The summer of 1992 was one of those rare pauses in life you only get once. Exams finished, university still weeks away, and nothing remotely urgent to do. One of the highlights was Pinkpop, then still a one-day festival — soaked in relentless rain, and home to what is now widely remembered as one of the most legendary performances in its history: Pearl Jam. I honestly can’t remember whether I knew Ten at the time, apart from “Alive.” I was still transitioning from metal teenager to alternative student, and Pearl Jam sat right on the edge of my comfort zone. But somehow this album hit an entire generation at exactly the right moment. In the early nineties, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, the old certainties had evaporated. Europe felt peaceful, free — and oddly empty. No grand ideals left, just a vague, shared melancholy. Ten seemed to give that feeling a voice. Coming out of Seattle, Pearl Jam occupied a crucial middle ground. Soundgarden and Alice in Chains leaned too heavily toward metal; Nirvana was more punk. Pearl Jam, by contrast, wrapped similar emotional weight in melody. Eddie Vedder’s voice — one of the best I’ve encountered so far in this project — and, frankly, his looks, didn’t hurt either. His lyrics about fractured families and emotional dislocation resonated strongly with the latchkey generation, of which I’m part. The album isn’t flawless, but it hardly matters. Its three clear peaks — “Black,” “Alive,” and “Jeremy” — are all exceptional, each easily good enough for a top-ten list of songs I’ve encountered so far. “Black” is one of the great rock ballads; “Alive” builds perfectly to its simple but devastatingly effective guitar solo; and “Jeremy,” which grew on me with repeated listens, is gripping even without a solo at all. Mike McCready’s guitar work deserves a mention: Fender Stratocaster, wah-wah pedal, Hendrix clearly hovering somewhere in the background. Influence, yes — but well used. Nitpicking weaker tracks feels beside the point. Ten is one of those albums where the book’s title applies without argument. It’s also the only Pearl Jam album on the list, and the only one I own. The band suffers badly from the unrepeatable-debut syndrome: later records never tempted me, and even seeing them live years later, it was still the Ten songs that mattered. Then again, trying to match Ten would be an almost impossible task.

Pink Floyd has always struck me as a curious phenomenon — not so much the band itself, but its fans. Ever since I first encountered a devout Floydian in high school, I’ve noticed how absolute the devotion often is. For many fans, Pink Floyd doesn’t just sit alongside other great bands; it seems to eclipse them entirely, as if it offers access to some higher musical plane. And within that already select group there’s an even smaller inner circle: those for whom real Pink Floyd only exists with Syd Barrett. Approaching this album as something of an outsider, I have to say: this is a remarkably strong debut. Not quite perfect — it’s a little too chaotic and uneven for that — but it comes very close. And opening your first album with “Astronomy Domine” takes either enormous confidence or a certain level of madness. Possibly both. This record is psychedelia in its purest form. If someone asks what psychedelic music actually sounds like, you could do far worse than play this album. Barrett’s presence dominates everything, and knowing what would soon happen to him — his mental collapse under the combined weight of talent, pressure, and drugs — is sadly audible throughout. The music feels unfiltered, playful, experimental, and occasionally unhinged. There are plenty of highlights. “Astronomy Domine” is a phenomenal opener, while “Interstellar Overdrive” — an intense instrumental eruption — is one of the most unforgettable tracks here, even if it would have made more sense as the album’s closer. “Matilda Mother” is rich and melodic, “Pow R. Toc H.” flirts with jazz abstraction, “Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk” veers wildly between pop, surf, and psychedelia, and “Lucifer Sam” rides a wonderfully sly, almost James Bond–like guitar line. The album ends in near-chaos, and not entirely convincingly — another sign that this brilliance came at a cost. I don’t worship this record, but I absolutely admire it. It’s a fantastic debut, full of ideas and imagination, and one can’t help wondering what Pink Floyd might have become had Barrett remained healthy. Then again, it’s entirely possible that the band’s later, almost absurd commercial success only happened because they didn’t stay up that particular tree.

It was finally time for hip-hop again — and not the old-school variety I’ve mostly encountered so far, but something more modern, more expansive. And to be fair right away: my usual complaint doesn’t apply here. This album actually contains music. Real instruments, real musicians. Pino Palladino turns up on bass — a man whose résumé borders on the absurd — and several tracks feature proper drummers. Sonically, there’s ambition and breadth. And yet my appreciation remains limited, for one very obvious reason: this album is far too long. At 83 minutes (including a remake), it demands an almost supernatural level of inspiration to justify its own existence. Even Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, created by Billy Corgan at his creative peak, doesn’t fully manage that trick. Common certainly doesn’t. The result is exhaustion. The length flattens everything. Very little stands out because everything just keeps coming. If forced, I’d single out “A Song for Assata” as a genuine highlight, along with the remake of “Geto Heaven.” The big hit, “The Light,” I actively dislike — the R&B crooning smothers the track and drains it of urgency. Elsewhere, there’s heavy borrowing from George Clinton’s Parliament-era funk, which is hardly a bad lineage. Tracks like “A Film Called (Pimp)” and “Cold Blooded” wear that influence openly, even sampling Parliament directly. But influence and ambition aren’t enough. After three and a half listens, the album becomes a kind of sonic slurry — talented, well-intentioned, but ultimately overwhelming and shapeless. That’s the real disappointment: there is talent here, clearly so. It’s just buried under sheer excess. This could have been a much better album at 45 minutes. At 83, it’s simply too much of itself.

In 2009 I read an intriguing book by Elijah Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll, which argues that the history of popular music is usually told along the wrong lines. Critics obsess over artists who later came to be seen as revolutionary, while largely ignoring the music that most people actually listened to at the time. The result is a distorted canon. We endlessly discuss the Beatles, Louis Armstrong, or Duke Ellington, but forget about artists like Perry Como, Guy Lombardo, or Paul Whiteman — musicians who sold vast numbers of records and shaped the everyday musical environment of their era. That idea helps explain why albums like Groovin’ appear in this book. The question is whether they justify their place. This is, unmistakably, pop music. Pleasant, vocal-driven, carefully arranged, and largely free of instrumental excess. Nothing here is designed to challenge the listener; it’s meant to charm. And often, it does. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. The album flows smoothly, the melodies are agreeable, and there are no catastrophic misfires — though “I’m So Happy Now” comes close to sounding like pop detergent. What’s interesting is that the album’s strongest moments arrive when the band briefly steps outside the pop template. “Find Somebody,” by far the least-streamed track, is also the most adventurous, with an unexpectedly sharp guitar line that almost feels like a distant premonition of ’90s alternative rock. The audience, apparently, didn’t know what to do with it. The same goes for “You Better Run,” another highlight with a surprisingly muscular guitar presence. The more popular songs aren’t bad, though. “How Can I Be Sure” is a lovely single, elevated by an unusual accordion part, and the title track “Groovin’,” while undeniably sweet, is also irresistibly catchy and genuinely charming. Its sunny, almost Californian feel is amusingly misplaced for a band from New Jersey, but it works. Does Groovin’ belong in a serious account of 1960s pop history? In a year like 1967, when far more daring music was being made, maybe not on artistic grounds alone. But that’s precisely Wald’s point. This is the kind of music a huge audience actually embraced, carried with them, and were shaped by. It may not score highly on some imaginary Bach Index, but it captures something real about the era. So no, this album didn’t shake the world. But it does offer a clear snapshot of what mainstream pop sounded like when much of the supposed revolution was happening elsewhere. And that, in its own modest way, makes it worth hearing.

There are very few albums that seem to mark a ceiling for an entire genre — records after which the common consensus is simply: it doesn’t really get better than this. Master of Puppets is one of them. I’ve always had a soft spot for Ride the Lightning, mostly because of a handful of truly world-class songs (“Fade to Black” above all). But returning to Master of Puppets with focused, repeated listens — often on excellent headphones — has noticeably raised my estimation. This album is not just great; it is remarkably consistent. There are hardly any weak moments. If I have to name one, it would be “The Thing That Should Not Be,” which starts promisingly but never quite takes off. That’s about it. One immediate difference with its successor is obvious: this album has bass. And not just a little. Cliff Burton is everywhere, and he dominates the record in the best possible way. Knowing that Burton died during the tour for this album — thrown from the band’s bus during a crash in Sweden and crushed beneath it — inevitably colours the listening experience. He was an extraordinary bassist and songwriter, and it’s impossible not to wonder how Metallica’s trajectory might have changed had he lived. Musically, Master of Puppets strikes a rare balance between brute force and structural ambition. The title track is rightly famous, with its almost prog-like architecture and shifting sections (one wonders how much Rush was being played in the rehearsal room). The album opens ferociously with “Battery,” whose gentle acoustic intro is obliterated by staccato thrash riffs so tight they still sound alarming decades later. From that point on, the album never drags, despite running close to an hour. Two more highlights stand out. “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” is, for me, possibly the album’s finest song — already something of a metal classic by the late ’80s. And then there’s “Orion,” the instrumental centrepiece. Metallica were unusually strong at instrumentals during this period: “The Call of Ktulu,” “To Live Is to Die,” and here “Orion,” which is unmistakably Burton’s showcase. His distorted bass intro, the mid-song bass passages, and the surprisingly lyrical playing in the slow section reveal a musician with far more musical depth than the genre’s clichés would suggest. Lars Ulrich, by contrast, remains functional rather than inspired here — especially in that slower middle section. One can’t help wondering what Neil Peart might have done with it. The album closes with “Damage, Inc.,” mirroring “Battery”: another deceptive calm before an onslaught of razor-sharp riffs. In the end, it’s quite simple. If you have little interest in thrash metal but want to hear one album that shows the genre at its absolute peak, look no further. Master of Puppets earns its reputation without effort, apology, or nostalgia.

Usually, after a few listens, I know exactly how I’m going to approach an album. An angle presents itself, an opening paragraph forms in my head, and once I sit down behind the Mac the words more or less write themselves. Not this time. I genuinely didn’t know where to begin, so I’ll start with the hesitation itself. This is an album I’m very clearly split about. It’s considerably better than I feared when it came up in the randomiser—but dear me, parts of it are thoroughly sabotaged. I was young at the time, but this is my era. Toppop and probably Top of the Pops were weekly fixtures, and Culture Club were impossible to avoid. Much of that had to do with Boy George: flamboyant, androgynous, unapologetically colourful, and utterly unlike anyone else on mainstream television at the time. The band scored two undeniable monster hits: “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” and, of course, “Karma Chameleon,” which opens this album. Judging by their slow disappearance from lists like the Top 2000, Culture Club may be fading from collective memory—but those songs remain textbook examples of early-’80s pop. I’ll be honest: I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of having to listen to Karma Chameleon again for this project. And yet, approached without prejudice, it’s… fine. Catchy, professionally made, and perfectly understandable as a mass hit. The harmonica is irritating, but it’s survivable. Things even improve with “It’s a Miracle,” which might actually be the better song. So far, so good. Almost alarmingly so. And then enters the element that ruins this album for me. Helen Terry, the band’s regular backing vocalist, completely takes over the sound—especially on “Black Money,” “That’s the Way (I’m Only Trying to Help You),” and “Church of the Poison Mind.” Backing vocals are part of pop music, obviously. But her soul-inflected, octave-leaping, attention-grabbing style overwhelms everything in its path. It doesn’t just dominate the songs; it actively derails them. Worse still, it pulls Boy George’s otherwise quite pleasant voice off course with it. That’s a shame, because there are decent songs here. “Stormkeeper” suffers from another pet hate of mine—soapy, rubbery bass—and a truly obnoxious saxophone, yet somehow still manages to be listenable. The closing track, “Victims,” starts as a syrupy ballad (with, yes, backing vocals), but then takes an unexpectedly interesting turn: the tempo shifts, the structure loosens, and for a brief moment the focus moves away from vocals toward the music itself. Structurally, it’s easily the most interesting piece on the album. The real surprise is “Miss Me Blind,” the most refreshing track here, largely thanks to a genuinely good guitar solo. The sound is processed, almost synth-like, but it works—and probably because it fits the aesthetic. Unsurprisingly, in guitar-averse Netherlands it wasn’t a hit, while in the US it was. In the end, this album leaves me firmly torn. I’m simply not a pop person. Once music revolves almost entirely around vocals—and especially when those vocals are pushed to theatrical extremes designed to impress rather than serve the song—I’m out. There’s enough quality here to prevent outright dismissal, but also more than enough to explain why this will never be an album I truly enjoy.

This album is unquestionably a monument in music history. To get the final verdict out of the way immediately: it’s a crying shame that three genuinely poor covers made it onto the tracklist. I’ve said before that an album doesn’t have to be flawless to earn a ten from me, but this is just a little too much dead weight to ignore entirely. That said, the monumental qualities are overwhelming. This must have landed like a bomb in 1965, because music had simply never sounded like this before. Looking at contemporaries puts that into perspective. The ferocious debut by The Sonics came out about six months earlier—essentially turbocharged rock ’n’ roll with a prominent saxophone. The famously abrasive album by The Monks followed half a year later. Heavy, yes, but still something else. What we hear here is much closer to the birth of hard rock. The Kinks had already taken a decisive step with “You Really Got Me” in 1964, introducing distorted guitars and power chords to the mainstream. But on this debut, The Who unleash genuine sonic violence. Nowhere is that clearer than on the closing track, “The Ox,” a wildly energetic instrumental where Pete Townshend lets his guitar drown in feedback—presumably through early Marshall stacks—while Keith Moon completely detonates behind the kit. His drumming is outrageous throughout the album, but here he sounds like he’s actively trying to tear the song apart. Streaming statistics tell a strange story. Much like Kate Bush’s catalogue being reduced to a single song, My Generation has been flattened almost entirely into its title track: nearly 94% of all streams go there. In one sense, that’s absurd, because it ignores how strong the rest of the album is. In another, it’s understandable. The song is a defining statement of the 1960s, musically and culturally. “Hope I die before I get old” wasn’t just a lyric—it was a declaration by four young men who never imagined they themselves might one day become elderly statesmen. Roger Daltrey is now well into his eighties, Pete Townshend not far behind. Keith Moon, true to form, never made it past 32. Listening now, it’s astonishing what he does on this record. Take “The Kids Are Alright”: on the surface it resembles fairly pleasant proto-pop in the Merseybeat tradition, but Moon’s drumming simply refuses to behave. The same goes for tracks like “La-La-La-Lies” and “Much Too Much,” which sound like early Beatles played by a band on amphetamines—which, realistically, they may well have been. On “The Good’s Gone,” Moon essentially invents a drumming style that would be copied by countless heavy rock drummers in the 1970s. Back to the title track. John Entwistle’s bass solo—had anyone ever done that on a mainstream rock record before late 1965? The song collapses into near-total cacophony, driven by Moon’s war-like pounding. Daltrey adds his own act of rebellion with the famous fake stutter in “Why don’t you all f… f… f…,” daring the listener to finish the sentence themselves before neatly dodging it with “fade away.” Everyone knew exactly what was meant. This album explodes like a long-buried V2 suddenly going off beneath London. Which only makes it more frustrating that three unnecessary covers blemish the record. Their presence makes sense historically—the influence of American R&B and blues is unmistakable. Two James Brown songs (“I Don’t Mind” and “Please, Please, Please”) point clearly to that R&B lineage, while Bo Diddley’s “I’m a Man” represents the blues side. But these covers pale next to the original material, all written by Townshend, with “The Ox” credited to the band plus Nicky Hopkins. The originals are fresher, more daring, more explosive. “Please, Please, Please” in particular is a misfire. I don’t give half points. On musical grounds alone, this is probably a 9.5. But given its place in history—its sheer impact and influence—it really can’t be anything other than a ten.

Once again I don’t quite know where to begin—but this time it’s not for lack of ideas. There’s simply so much to say. Let’s start with The Velvet Underground themselves. I’ve always had a soft spot for them. Their debut with Nico—the banana album, for anyone who’s been living under a musical rock—is an absolute masterpiece, to the point where I once had it framed on my wall as a kind of homage. Not for the cover art, but for what it represents. I also own the two albums that followed, including this one, but until recently I knew them less well. In fact, I first encountered several of these songs through the live versions on Bettie Serveert’s tribute album. The podcast guys famously dislike The Velvet Underground—save for one of them—but that tends to happen with music that stubbornly refuses to stay within the lines. Despite the title, this is not the debut but the third album. In a way, the banana record was already eponymous too, just with Nico’s name added. What really sets this album apart from the first two is a major lineup change: John Cale was gone, replaced by Doug Yule. Lou Reed wrote all the songs. And while I’ve never truly connected with Lou Reed’s solo work—some albums, yes, but nothing that really grabs me—this record absolutely does. This is, quite simply, an outstanding album. Its opening alone is remarkable. Sequencing matters, and here it’s almost counterintuitive. “Candy Says” is a quiet, tender, fragile song—not at all what you’d expect as an opener. And yet it works perfectly. The album contains several songs in that restrained, intimate vein, and those are largely what it’s remembered for. “Pale Blue Eyes,” by far the most streamed track, sits back-to-back with “Jesus,” sung jointly by Reed and Yule, who also sings lead on “Candy Says.” Drummer Maureen “Moe” Tucker is also given the microphone, which is… debatable. She provides a second vocal line on “The Murder Mystery” and sings solo on the closing track, “After Hours.” Her lack of conventional vocal ability arguably exceeds her lack of conventional drumming ability—she’s famous for her minimalist style, after all. The singing is wobbly, especially on the last-call, lights-coming-on closer. And yet, in a strange, almost hypnotic way, it works. “After Hours” is a genuine earworm. Besides, anyone claiming Nico could sing might consider either starting or stopping medication. For me, however, the real highlights lie elsewhere: in the uptempo rockers and in the album’s one truly experimental piece. The first category includes the magnificent “What Goes On” and the even more magnificent “Beginning to See the Light.” On the former, Doug Yule plays an organ part so absurdly simple that it almost invites you to play along—and yet it’s devastatingly effective. Those basic chords lift the song like a rocket launch. “Beginning to See the Light” is an absolute beast of a track and, not coincidentally, the standout moment on the Bettie Serveert tribute. And then there’s “The Murder Mystery.” Where the band mostly colors within the lines on this album—certainly compared to the first two—this track veers off entirely. It grates, it’s uncomfortable, at times borderline painful, and it goes on far too long. In other words: it’s fantastic. This is music that challenges and provokes. Naturally, it has the fewest Spotify streams. Yes, it’s nearly nine minutes long and takes up over 20% of the album, but still—people could try a little harder. Is the album perfect? No. “Some Kinda Love” drifts into a Grateful Dead–style Americana haze that’s far less compelling. But before that becomes an issue, the aching beauty of “Pale Blue Eyes” arrives to put things right. Listen to this album. Give it more than one spin—it may take a moment to settle in. But once it does, you’re left with a quiet, strange, deeply rewarding masterpiece. And don’t skip “The Murder Mystery.”

I came to this album with a fundamentally positive bias, largely because of “Glory Box.” That track was played endlessly during my Studio Brussel years, and for good reason: it’s genuinely strong, and it explains perfectly why Portishead broke through with it. The band’s formula—languid electronic beats, sparse atmospheric guitar lines, and Beth Gibbons’ voice floating on top—works there exactly as intended. Call it trip-hop, call it post-club comedown music; either way, it makes sense, and as a hit it’s fully deserved. But that formula really only works once. My first and biggest problem with this album is Beth Gibbons. I simply cannot stand her singing. Partly because she spends far too much time in an absurdly high register, producing sounds that are physically unpleasant at higher volumes, and partly because she almost never seems to sing properly at all—mostly she mumbles into the microphone. Ironically, “Glory Box” works precisely because she finally sings with some force. I would genuinely be curious to hear this album with a different singer—someone with an actual alto voice, singing cleanly. The second problem is the production. Too often this album turns into a parade of “quirky” studio tricks and random noises. Scratching, sound effects, odd textures—it’s everywhere, and it almost never helps. In early hip-hop, scratching made sense; here it just sounds misplaced, sometimes bordering on self-parody. At its worst, it feels like the producers were throwing every strange noise they could think of into the mix, regardless of whether it served the song. Which is frustrating, because when the band chooses a more restrained palette, the music suddenly comes alive. “Sour Times” benefits enormously from its Morricone-style guitar line. “It’s a Fire” is lifted by a simple organ part. “Roads” has a beautiful electronic piano sound, though it’s again undermined by Gibbons’ glass-shattering vocals. Along with “Glory Box,” these form the album’s stronger core—four tracks where the potential is obvious. There are flashes of brilliance elsewhere, too. The muted trumpet in “Pedestal” is inspired—Miles Davis knew exactly why that sound works—but even there, the song is eventually sabotaged by unnecessary sonic clutter. “Wandering Star” is the low point: the gimmicks completely derail it. Interestingly, my appreciation increased significantly when listening on headphones. Over speakers, the album mostly irritated me; on headphones, its atmosphere and textural ambition come through more clearly. It also highlights what trip-hop does well in general: tension, mood, and the occasional use of heavily processed guitars as color rather than force. You can almost hear different strands of early-’90s British music colliding here—shoegaze textures, dance culture, and post-rave introspection. That’s what makes Dummy so frustrating. Somewhere in its DNA is a genuinely strong album. With a different singer and far stricter production choices, this could have been something remarkable. As it stands, it’s intermittently compelling, often irritating, and ultimately hard to digest.

Album 131 already, and somehow we’re still largely Beatles-, Stones-, and Zeppelin-free. Bowie has barely shown up, while The Who and Metallica are nearly done, and Elvis Costello is here for the fourth time. Of his six appearances, I already decided Brutal Youth was one too many. My Aim Is True and Imperial Bedroom earned respect rather than excitement. This one is different. This is a genuinely great album. In just over half an hour, Costello fully earns his reputation as a songwriter. This record is an uninterrupted run of sharp, near-perfect pop songs—pop songs, yes, and deliberately so. For me, this is the archetype of new wave. Not The Cars, and certainly not Culture Club, whatever Wikipedia may claim. This is punk energy filtered through musical intelligence: still edgy, still lean, but with melody, structure, and craft punk never really cared about. These are songs built around vocal hooks rather than brute force, instantly memorable without being disposable. That doesn’t make it “pop music” in the pejorative sense—just pop songwriting of the highest order. Like the Beatles, which is clearly one of the reference points, even if Costello himself cited the Stones around Aftermath as a major influence. You can hear both. The other great strength of the album is the band. This is the first appearance of The Attractions, and while bassist Bruce Thomas and drummer Pete Thomas are excellent, it’s keyboardist Steve Nieve who really elevates the material. His organ lines are everywhere, and they’re glorious—playful, elegant, and absolutely essential to the album’s identity. This is also what truly separates the record from the punk explosion that had already burned itself out by 1978. There’s hardly a weak moment here. “This Year’s Girl,” “The Beat,” the gloriously slinky “Pump It Up,” “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea,” “Lip Service”—it’s hit after hit. Even “Radio, Radio,” which I accidentally heard via the remaster bonus tracks, fits seamlessly into the aesthetic. So: is it a 10? Probably not. It lacks just that last bit of friction or challenge that would push it into the absolute top tier. But a 9 feels slightly stingy too—especially given how lukewarm I’ve been about Costello elsewhere. Let’s say this: 36 (or 42) minutes of pure musical pleasure. And today, I’m feeling generous.

I’m not even going to try to map George Clinton’s exact place in music history. I simply don’t know enough, and that seems like an excellent reason not to pretend otherwise. A quick look at the George Clinton “family tree” already borders on the surreal: seventeen guitarists alone, plus a mysterious “Sir Nose” subsection I still don’t fully understand. Suffice it to say that Clinton’s musical universe is vast, influential, and wildly sampled—over three thousand times, according to WhoSampled. By the late seventies, Clinton’s empire had split its personality across two main outlets: Parliament, leaning toward funk and soul, and Funkadelic, supposedly the rockier counterpart. One Nation Under a Groove is often framed as the place where those two worlds collide, neatly summarized by the song: Who says a funk band can’t play rock? But that collision never quite turns into a full embrace. The album opens with the title track, a straight-up funk anthem. It’s solid, groovy, and historically important—but for all the talk of guitars, they barely register here. The second track starts as smooth soul-funk with a choir that, frankly, I find pretty unpleasant, before abruptly mutating halfway through into a guitar-driven rock passage, as if half the band swapped places mid-song. It’s an interesting idea, but also oddly disjointed. That pattern keeps repeating. Some tracks lean heavily into rock, others resolutely into funk, and a few gesture at synthesis without really committing. “Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad” (yes, that’s the title) sprawls endlessly and tilts rockward; “Into You” does the opposite, funk first with guitar hovering politely in the background. The nominal closer, “Cholly (Funk Gettin’ Ready to Roll),” is pure funk—no rock pretense at all. Complicating matters is the version I heard. On CD, the album continues with bonus tracks, including a live take on “Maggot Brain.” That radically shifts the balance. Suddenly we’re deep into guitar-heavy territory, and “Maggot Brain”—one of the most extraordinary guitar performances ever recorded in its original version—inevitably steals the spotlight. But that song belongs to another album, another moment, and another guitarist entirely. Its presence here distorts the listening experience. All of which leaves me with mixed feelings. This is undeniably a good album, and even the moments that don’t quite land are worth hearing. Still, for a record supposedly about merging funk and rock, it often feels more like alternation than fusion. The two styles dance around each other rather than truly locking in. With the bonus tracks, I’d give it an eight. Without them—judging the original album on its own terms—it’s closer to a seven. And as always, the original album is the one that really counts.

I got fooled again. I’d already started writing this piece and confidently typed 3/10 in the title when a small Wikipedia footnote caught my eye: the last four tracks were added for the 1998 CD reissue. That detail changes everything—and not in a good way. Because in its CD form, this album runs for 72 minutes. That’s not indulgent, that’s punitive. At least thirty minutes too long. Those four bonus tracks alone add over twenty-three minutes, including the near-endless “Ko wone mayo,” which stretches past nine minutes while almost nothing happens (except, bizarrely, a sudden burst of unintelligible French—apparently the only time on the entire album). The closing track, “Taara,” is outright dreadful. The bonus tracks don’t just weaken the album; they actively sabotage it. In fact, there is one clear highlight: “Sehilam.” Every single time I listened—and I forced myself through six full spins—I thought the same thing when that track came on: this is where the album should have ended. Not only because what follows is weak, but because it’s genuinely the perfect closer. By the time “Sehilam” starts, you’ve drifted into a kind of half-sleep, and suddenly there it is: the most uptempo, most swinging, most musically engaging piece on the record. A proper finale. Which, originally, it actually was. Stepping back a bit: we’re in Senegal. I happened to start listening on the day Senegal won a heavily discussed Africa Cup final against host nation Morocco. The album was recorded in 1984 but not released until 1989, which I only realized afterward. Sonically, it holds up surprisingly well for both dates. But sonics aside, there simply isn’t much there. Two acoustic guitars (often treated with chorus), two voices, and occasionally a kora, a balafon, or some light percussion. Mostly, though, it’s just voices and guitars—and the voices dominate. Oof. Minimalism can work. Nick Drake made an entire classic with little more than voice, acoustic guitar, and about three piano notes—but that album lasts 28 minutes and already flirts with monotony by the end. This one clocks in at 72 minutes on CD, or roughly 50 in its original form. Double oof. The album does start well. Opener “Lam Tooro” sets a mood: a lovely, atmospheric guitar line with expressive singing on top. It’s hypnotic, almost ritualistic. You think: okay, this might go somewhere. But then it doesn’t. From there until “Sehilam,” it dissolves into a grey blur of vocal textures where almost nothing happens. And yet, this album was—and still is—lavishly praised by critics. I honestly don’t understand why. Spoiler alert: artists like Ali Farka Touré will show up later in this series. Not to lump all West African music together, but compared to this, that work is far richer, more varied, and far more engaging. Non, merci. I’ll grudgingly add one extra point for the shorter original runtime, but if I were to bump it up any further—to a three-star rating—I’d be placing it alongside something like Johnny Cash. And frankly, that’s just far more pleasant to listen to.

The finger-picking Canadian bard who managed to enchant an impressive number of women with his, ehm… Well. Let’s move on. Only two albums ago I wrote about Pink Moon by Nick Drake, and the parallels are obvious enough to be distracting. Both artists debuted in the late sixties. Both make restrained, intimate music built largely around acoustic guitar. Both operate in a space where song and poetry bleed into each other. And both are far more about mood and atmosphere than spectacle. But the differences matter more. Leonard Cohen is, first and foremost, the poet. There’s a reason people still argue that he, rather than the actual Nobel laureate, should have received the Literature Prize if song lyrics were going to be honoured at all. Nick Drake’s genius lay in his guitar playing — intricate, fluid, quietly astonishing. Cohen, by contrast, is not a remarkable guitarist in any technical sense. His strength is language, phrasing, and the gravity of delivery. Vocally, both hover somewhere between singing and speaking, though Cohen leans far more toward recitation. His voice isn’t conventionally beautiful, but it is unmistakable: dry, intimate, slightly weary, and perfectly suited to the material. It draws you in not through range or power, but through authority. Musically, this album starts strong — very strong. Opening with “Bird on the Wire” is almost unfair. It’s one of Cohen’s most famous songs for a reason: simple, dignified, emotionally precise. The arrangement deserves mention too. Unlike Pink Moon, which commits fully (and sometimes almost stubbornly) to voice-and-guitar austerity, this album uses a small backing band. Subtle additions — a well-timed organ line here, understated rhythm support there — add warmth and depth without ever feeling ornamental. For a while, it works beautifully. There’s also a quiet reminder of Cohen’s Canadian identity in “The Partisan”, partially sung in French. It’s a striking moment, not least because the female voice delivering the French lines — drenched in echo — is completely uncredited. History, as ever, is selective. After those early highlights, though, the album begins to level out. Not badly — there are no weak tracks here — but the palette becomes increasingly uniform. The tempos stay mostly low to mid-range, the arrangements remain calm and acoustic, the emotional register controlled and reflective. Even with tasteful instrumentation, the music never really breaks out of its own restraint. At 36 minutes, that’s just about right. Any longer and it might have tipped into sameness. So: a good album. A beautiful opening track. Consistently solid songwriting. No missteps — but also not much in the way of surprise or drama. Cohen’s art here is about precision and tone rather than momentum. There are still four Leonard Cohen albums to come on this list. We’ll see where the journey leads.

I wouldn’t call myself an expert on American accents — far from it. Sure, everyone hears a Southern drawl, but I couldn’t reliably tell a Texan from someone from North Carolina, despite the small matter of nearly 2,000 kilometres between them. And yet: I put this record on knowing almost nothing about Billy Joel, and within seconds of “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” my first thought was: this guy is from New York. Or, as he himself pronounces it somewhere on this album: Nijoe Yawk. A quick check confirms it. Jewish too, for what it’s worth — though that says nothing about the music. What does say something about the music is the genre label attached to this album in the spreadsheet I use to keep track of things. It says: rock. Sorry? Where exactly is the line between pop and rock? It’s clearly drawn differently in the US than in Europe, and even within my own head there seem to be at least two dividing criteria. The first is instrumental: rock, to me, is primarily guitar-driven, while pop leans more toward keyboards, acoustic instruments, or a broader palette. By that standard alone, this album is quickly classified. Aside from the opener, this is overwhelmingly a keyboard record — hardly surprising from someone best known for “Piano Man”. The second distinction I keep returning to is structural. Pop is vocal-centred: the song exists to carry the vocal melody. Rock allows the music itself more space to breathe, stretch, and sometimes dominate. By that measure too, this is pop — albeit very well-made pop. And that matters, because one of my standard complaints about pop music — that too little happens — simply doesn’t apply here. The Stranger is a finely composed and carefully arranged album. Take “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”: a multi-part suite that borders on prog, though its roots lie just as clearly in classical forms. Call it what you like; it’s ambitious, clever, and it works. This is generally considered Joel’s peak, and it’s easy to see why. The record is packed with hits: “Movin’ Out”, “Just the Way You Are”, “She’s Always a Woman”, “Only the Good Die Young”. Curiously, the most streamed track isn’t one of those, but “Vienna” — a lovely song I somehow managed to completely miss for decades, despite its almost absurd streaming numbers. And yes, it is genuinely good. Not everything here lands for me, though. “Only the Good Die Young” is bland to the point of irrelevance. “She’s Always a Woman” is, to my noise-trained ears, unbearably saccharine. “Just the Way You Are” could have been a beautiful ballad built around that delicious Fender Rhodes electric piano — but is instead brutally sabotaged by an aggressively ugly saxophone solo. I remain baffled by the historical moment when someone decided that saxophones were a good idea in pop or rock music. To be fair, the sax does work in “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”, where it’s part of a rich and varied instrumental texture. Elsewhere, interestingly, a flute is used to far better effect — notably in “Get It Right the First Time”. That flute, along with an alarming list of other instruments (organ, multiple saxes, clarinet, flute, and even tuba), is played by Richie Cannata. The combination of woodwinds and tuba is… unusual, to say the least, but somehow that’s not the strangest thing on this record. One last curiosity: the first seven tracks average hundreds of millions of streams, while the final two barely scrape eight million each. People, it seems, don’t listen to this album all the way through. Even the title track “The Stranger” — one of the least streamed — strikes me as one of the album’s finest moments. A beautiful melody, an unforgettable little flute motif, and a neat reprise at the end of the record. It’s a shame, really, that a handful of truly tedious tracks — yes, “Everybody Has a Dream”, I’m looking at you — drag the whole thing down. At its best, this might be the strongest pop album I’ve encountered so far in this series. And as for that genre label? Rock? No. This is pop — just very good pop.

I often complain about music in which too little happens. So let me offer the opposite as an example, to make my point clear. Take one of the less immediately obvious tracks on this album: the title track, “The Bends.” Just listen to it. How many genuinely brilliant ideas are packed into this single song? No, it’s not a cluttered prog-rock mess where everything happens at once. Everything here is focused. Every element belongs. And then, just over three minutes in, the song suddenly shifts direction. The tempo goes up, the guitar gain goes up, and against that wall of sound comes a surprisingly melodic vocal line, almost functioning as counterpoint. Just when you’re about to start headbanging, the track collapses into a moment of calm — and ends with a cracked-voice farewell. This is music. Dear musicians: this is why we buy albums. And the kicker is that this isn’t even one of the best songs on the record. By now I’ve worked my way through 148 albums from the list, plus two additions of my own. And then the random generator throws up one of my all-time favourites. I can hum practically every note on this album — though any other enthusiastic attempts at sound production are strongly discouraged, for reasons I’ll come back to shortly. No need for five to eight careful listening sessions this time. I’ll admit I was slightly nervous. Over the past nine months I’ve learned a lot, changed the way I listen, opened myself up to music I’d long dismissed — sometimes to my own surprise. So the question was fair: how would an album that dominated my student years and early adulthood hold up? I don’t listen to it that often anymore, mostly just individual tracks. Would it still stand? Or would I suddenly discover weaknesses I’d previously ignored? It stands. Completely. There are no weak tracks here — only songs that are more or less spectacular. This isn’t just music, it’s Music. It’s outrageously good. Yes, that’s hyperbole. But so is the album. The exquisitely built “High and Dry.” The even more beautifully constructed “Fake Plastic Trees” — one of the greatest songs ever written. The ferociously propulsive “Sulk,” in which Thom Yorke increasingly starts squealing like a pig (and I mean that as a compliment). And so on, and so on. It’s a 48-minute journey through Valhalla. And it feels shorter than that, even though 48 minutes is already pushing the upper limit of ideal album length. Then, just when you think you’ve reached the end, there’s the closer: “Street Spirit (Fade Out).” Mon dieu. Mein Gott. Dear Lord. Dio mio. Goosebumps. Possibly tears. Or simply singing — shouting — screaming along with Yorke’s anguished wails. The poor (now deceased) neighbours of my parents were surely not the only victims of students in the second half of the 1990s who couldn’t resist singing along to this album at full volume — especially during the fortissimo passages. Or worse, the falsetto sections, like those in “High and Dry.” If you can listen to this music without feeling compelled to do that, then frankly this album isn’t for you. Then music isn’t for you. Unlike many critics, I find this album clearly superior to its successor, OK Computer. It’s rougher, less calculated, less overtly produced. Speaking of production: this album sounds absolutely phenomenal. Everything is perfectly placed. You hear every instrument, every detail. The balance between vocals and music is flawless. Special praise is due to the rhythm section. Drummer Philip Selway seems to have invented the concept of effectiveness, while bassist Colin Greenwood plays superb lines throughout. No one here is individually “brilliant” in the flashy sense. There are hardly any guitar solos. But the music is brilliant. It’s like a football team without a Cristiano Ronaldo — a side that excels through collective intelligence, flawless execution, and ninety minutes (or rather: 48) of perfectly applied tactics. Is there nothing to criticise? Yes. The album cover is hideous. Truly awful. And yes, I’ll once again weep openly over the fact that after OK Computer this band decided to make Commodore 64 game soundtracks instead of continuing to create the most brilliant alternative rock ever recorded. Or almost the most brilliant — I still have about 900 albums left to go, and at least one of them might yet surpass this. But that will come. For now, I’m going to sit here and enjoy the music, filling the room at an entirely irresponsible volume.

For a millennial or a Gen-Z listener this may be almost impossible to imagine, but I grew up with two Dutch TV channels. When I was nearly fourteen, a third one was added. A year later, the first commercial channels arrived. On those two public channels there was exactly one afternoon per week of children’s television: Wednesday afternoon. The rest of the time? Test card. Hours and hours of it. I genuinely miss that thing. So what did you do if you wanted to watch TV? You turned on the Germans, of course. ARD and ZDF. And what did you watch there? Westerns. For about fifteen years I was convinced that cowboys spoke German, and Native Americans too—very convenient, really, since they understood each other perfectly. Cowboys were also the most popular carnival costume for boys when I was young (cap guns! which never worked because the paper caps got wet), with “Indian” as the obvious alternative. My older sister devoured the Arendsoog books; I collected Lucky Luke comics. Westerns were everywhere. And that’s the point. Roughly between 1960 (or a bit earlier) and 1975, the western was a dominant cultural force. TV series like Bonanza and Rawhide were hugely popular. Cinemas were flooded with westerns starring heroes like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood (who became famous via Rawhide), anti-heroes like Lee Van Cleef, or figures somewhere in between like Charles Bronson. From cheap pulp to the highly regarded Italian classics by Sergio Leone. “Spaghetti western” really does refer to the culinary preferences of its creators. To complete the cultural puzzle: these Italian westerns, often starring Americans, were frequently shot in southern Spain for the landscape. And yes, if film soundtracks were on this list, Ennio Morricone’s score for Once Upon a Time in the West—C’era una volta il West, obviously—would be a very strong candidate. We’ve already encountered those unmistakable Morricone guitar lines elsewhere. Which brings us, finally, to this album. Released right at the beginning of that western boom, it didn’t just reflect the genre—it helped shape it. This record is often seen as a high point, and possibly a catalyst, of the country outlaw movement. Almost all the songs deal with deeply immoral cowboys who usually meet their end by bullet—often several. Sometimes justice prevails. The title “They’re Hanging Me Tonight” is pretty self-explanatory. This album is an absolute pleasure to listen to. Stick to the original twelve tracks and you get just over 35 minutes of pure enjoyment. (The CD adds three bonus tracks, including the original mono version of the massive hit “El Paso.”) Marty Robbins is a wonderful singer with a warm, expressive voice. By modern standards he uses rather a lot of vibrato—a common feature in country—but it never becomes annoying. While listening I kept wondering: Robbins came to prominence slightly before Elvis Presley. Presley, who also started in country, exploded when he crossed over into the contemporary, black-influenced music of the time. Listening to Robbins’ voice, you can imagine a similar path—musically, at least. He didn’t have Presley’s looks or sex appeal, though he did have disastrously right-wing political views, an obsessive love of NASCAR racing (which he funded with his music income and occasionally did quite well in), and a heart condition from a young age. He died at 57, having released 52 studio albums. Right. Back to the music. Twelve songs, lots of lyrics, relatively short runtime—you’d expect musical simplicity. And yes, it’s simple, but never dull. A gently ticking drummer, a bassist, acoustic guitar as the backbone, and a prominent male backing choir. That choir does date the album somewhat (though far less offensively than Ray Charles’ barbershop backing vocals), but it’s never distracting. The bassist deserves a mention. Bob Moore mostly plays tonic–fifth patterns—root note, fifth, back and forth—creating that wonderfully bouncy PLOEM-ploem rhythm. It’s incredibly effective here. And yes, this is the same Bob Moore who played on early Elvis recordings. That iconic bass line on “Fever”? Same guy. One warning: don’t listen on headphones. Like many albums of this era it uses constructed stereo. Music hard right, choir hard left, Robbins dead centre. Extreme panning, and frankly unbearable. Picking standout tracks is almost pointless. There are no weak songs. The big hits “Big Iron” and “El Paso” are obvious highlights. One more thing worth noting: despite the brevity of the songs, they contain more key changes than Chic’s eight-and-a-half-minute “Good Times” (which has none). Try “The Hanging Tree”—technically a bonus track, but still illustrative. This album never reaches genius level; the music is too simple for that. But it is immensely enjoyable, expertly crafted, and completely confident in what it does. Bang bang.

I’m afraid I’ll have to enlist my colleague V. at some point. V. is a huge music lover — possibly even more so than I am — and because he’s just a few years older than me (a full secondary-school generation, say), he actually grew up in the era of post-punk, synthpop, new wave, whatever you want to call it. That’s exactly where my problem lies: where on earth do the boundaries between those genres or movements actually run? There’s at least one more that needs adding: new romantic(s). I do know that the excellent Duran Duran and the dreadful Spandau Ballet are usually filed under that last category, and I’ll eat my broom if ABC, today’s band, doesn’t also end up there. Synthpop seems like a fair label too, although there’s quite a bit of organic music in the mix. That said, there are also lots of very prominent synthesizers and, especially, string orchestras straight out of a box. That box is the Fairlight CMI. I’d never heard of it before, but apparently it was the go-to machine for almost every major pop act in the early eighties — so much so that Phil Collins felt compelled to point out in the liner notes of No Jacket Required (1985) that no Fairlight was used on that album for strings or brass sounds. Source: Wikipedia. The thing was also a major competitor to the Synclavier, which Frank Zappa completely lost himself in during the eighties, with fairly disastrous results. If you’re feeling brave: listen to Francesco Zappa. At that point, you’re honestly better off with James Last (who actually made some pretty decent music… singing aside). Anyway. ABC. This is a very strong album, regardless of which box you want to put it in. To me it clearly falls under the broader label of pop, and from that perspective it’s remarkably good. The music is entirely vocal-centred, the melodies are pleasant, and the album contains songs with massive hit potential. Pop, in other words. The Look of Love (Part One) became a big hit, but Poison Arrow and All of My Heart also did very well. All of My Heart… what a formidable song that is. My subtitle for Tears for Fears was “A monumental pop song on an excellent pop album.” That subtitle would have worked just as well here, with All of My Heart as the monumental pop song. Fine, the outro wasn’t strictly necessary, but the song has one of the most beautiful choruses I’ve come across so far, supported by gorgeous fake synth strings. Absolutely stunning. That’s what really stands out to me on this album. It’s overflowing with synthesizers, drum machines, artificial sounds, and — to make matters worse — one of the band members, Stephen Singleton, plays saxophone. Joy. And yet, all those sounds and arrangement choices that I’m not usually fond of don’t detract in the slightest from the fact that this is simply very good music. Because yes, my standard complaint about pop — that not much actually happens — does not apply here at all. This album, 37 minutes long and ten tracks (really nine, or even eight), is packed with ideas: varied melodies, tempo changes, contrast, everything you could want in music. Real musicians are at work here, and it shows. In short: big kudos. A very pleasant introduction, since I only knew a handful of the hits.

Let me start by saying this: I know virtually nothing about Christina Aguilera. I believe she’s a fairly major star. No fewer than two of her albums appear on this list. Why? I genuinely have no idea. This is absolutely dreadful. Utterly meaningless pop music, with not a single discernible quality — not even when judged by the standards of that particular corner of the music market. Of course, that’s hard for me to assess, and perhaps I’m just talking nonsense, since this aesthetic is about as far removed from mine as it could possibly be. So who knows: maybe I’m just a sad, whiny man with grey hatred. But surely this is just garbage? Just listen to Infatuation! Garbage. Horrendous garbage. Please explain to me what I’m supposed to find good about this. In Impossible we once again get 132 million octaves per word. Very impressive, completely unlistenable. There is no music here at all. Someone banging a cardboard box with a ladle — at least that’s what it sounds like — is the musical highlight. Ugh. Fine. I’ll concede this much: Make Over is slightly easier on the ears. It has a bit of bite, some surprising arrangement choices, even a touch of daring. Naturally, it has very few streams, because the audience for this “music,” in quotation marks, obviously doesn’t want to be challenged — what are you thinking, behave yourself. On the other hand, one of the big hits, Fighter, is also marginally more tolerable. At the same time it’s painfully fake, dripping with that “I’m going to make a tough rock song with distorted guitars and stuff, you know, because then I’m tough” energy. Did I mention this album runs for 77 minutes? My god. If there is a god, then this is not his work but that of his good old counterpart with the cloven hooves and pointy tail. That little red guy. This album is utterly exhausting to listen to. Almost any 77-minute album is, but this one is extreme. And that’s entirely down to La Aguilera herself. She is belting at such a level that it’s borderline surreal. Track after track she screams the diaphragms out of the studio microphones. And to maximise the odds of success, every single song spans roughly 132 billion octaves — after all, you can’t be sure where the membrane’s weak spot is, so you might as well hit every frequency with every word. A quick Google search yields mixed verdicts. Some say this is a textbook example of the loudness wars; others claim it isn’t, because there’s supposedly more dynamic range. All I know is that I repeatedly found myself reaching for the volume knob to turn it down again. Aguilera’s shrieking practically bruises my ribs. It is genuinely exhausting to be subjected to this. Utter trash. Why am I supposed to listen to this?

Lately I’d hit a bit of a dead end. I listened to this album. Then again. And again. Not that it was strictly necessary — I’ve known it for fifteen years or so. But I simply couldn’t bring myself to start writing this piece. Earlier this week, over coffee at the office — as these things go — I spoke to colleague V. He more or less explained to me the differences between new wave, post-punk, synthpop, new romantics, and then casually added blitz (never heard of it) and gothic. According to him it’s all a continuum, which didn’t stop him from firmly slotting bands into neat boxes and looking faintly horrified whenever I tried to put one in the “wrong” compartment. Eventually he asked what my next album was. I answered, of course, The Band. He pulled an even dirtier face than when I misplaced a genre, laughed, and asked: “Is that the one with ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’?” It is. And we established that we relate to The Band in roughly the same way. Of course it isn’t bad. But we’re both baffled by the way some people worship The Band as if they practically invented music, as if the book 1001 Albums could just as well have contained only their two records and called it a day. That, I think, is why I couldn’t get started on this review. I now see that when I wrote about Music from Big Pink, I subtitled it “Time for heresy again.” I almost reused that subtitle here. Or something close to it. Because I can’t really do any better. I just don’t get it. Again: at times The Band certainly make good music. But this is a messy, odd, uneven album that never truly reaches great heights. Let’s start at the beginning. Who ever opened an album like this? We’re dropped straight into a line of lyrics, with no context, no melodic introduction — not even a bicycle bell to guide us in. The song, “Across the Great Divide,” turns out to be a sort of pastiche of Little Richard-style old rock ’n’ roll. Not very convincing. Weak, even. “Rag Mama Rag” is one of the stronger tracks, as is the aforementioned “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” The same goes for “Up on Cripple Creek,” marked by that clattering clavinet played by Garth Hudson — a distinctive sound, I’ll give it that. I can’t deny that I quite like “Whispering Pines,” despite pianist Richard Manuel singing in a register that might have made Maria Callas raise an eyebrow. But after that, we’ve more or less had it. The remainder of the album is largely weak and rambling. “Jemima Surrender” and “Rockin’ Chair” are simply poor songs. “Look Out Cleveland” is yet another attempt at retro rock ’n’ roll. Throughout the album we hear rather poorly played, largely unnecessary brass parts — an incomprehensible production choice. I suspect this band — The Band, yes, I’ll make the obvious joke — would come across better with tighter production. In Canadian terms: a bit more On the Beach and a bit less Harvest. Oh, and I suppose I should mention it. Levon Helm’s voice — at least on “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Jemima Surrender” — is… distinctive. I think I rate this slightly higher than Music from Big Pink, simply because it contains a handful of strong songs. But the band’s reputation exceeds the admiration I can muster by an almost absurd margin. Fortunately, for the purposes of this project, I’m done with them. And I doubt I’ll be spontaneously putting on a Band album — either of the two I own — very often.

Always exciting, a recent album. From an artist I’d never heard of, and about whom—along with this record itself—precious little information can be found on the almighty internet. That doesn’t change the fact that this is a fine album. Not that those two things—the amount of online information and my appreciation of the music—have much to do with each other anyway. So where does this sit? Think Howe Gelb or his former band Giant Sand. Think Will Oldham, but with a sturdy baritone instead of a fragile quaver, and a little more rock, a little less country. Somewhere in that vicinity. Bill Callahan was 43 when this album came out and already on his sixteenth record. The first fourteen were released under the name Smog—though that, too, was essentially just Callahan. This second album under his own name earned him broad acclaim. And rightly so, because again: this is a strong and beautiful record. On first listen (half-distracted, watching the Games) I wasn’t particularly impressed, but with each spin the album grew. The instrumentation is restrained, yes, but the overall sound is warm, atmospheric, and beautifully recorded. Not sparse, either—there are elegant strings, and “All Thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast” features a particularly fine horn arrangement. It’s also one of the album’s tougher moments. A special mention—and, for once, a bonus point—for the lyrics goes to the closing track, “Faith/Void.” Built around the line “It’s time to put God away,” it feels like a mantra. The sentence is repeated twenty times, plus eight variations (“I put God away”), which is both excessive and somehow entirely fitting. Musically, it’s one of the high points: hypnotic, incantatory, and quietly resolute in its embrace of a life without a higher power. The encouragement prize goes to drummer Luis Martinez. His playing is extremely economical—borderline simplistic—but it works. High-level effectiveness. A fine example is the subtly syncopated beat in “Rococo Zephyr,” one of the album’s standout tracks. I have just one quibble. The filler preceding that evocative closer—the instrumental (unless you count a distorted female voice as singing) “Invocation of Ratiocination”—is entirely unnecessary. Still, I’d happily hear more from Callahan. This is a pleasant surprise, especially given how dismal most recent additions to the list have been. Bill advances to the next round.

The first mildly astonishing fact about Prince is that he was actually called Prince. Not a stage name like Elvis Costello (born Declan MacManus) or Chuck D. (Carlton Ridenhour), but Prince Rogers Nelson, born in 1958 in Minneapolis. Sometimes reality shows an unexpected flair for branding. Asked two simple questions—what’s his most rock-oriented album, and what’s his best?—the algorithm answered twice: Purple Rain. For once, the machine wasn’t bluffing. This is rock. Not in the denim-and-beer sense, but as a genuine fusion: the album achieves what One Nation Under a Groove by Funkadelic flirted with but never quite consummated—a convincing symbiosis of rock and funk. Or, less delicately, a seamless conversation between Black and white musical traditions. Prince had already mastered the funk template; here he injects stadium-sized guitar heroics without sacrificing groove. He is routinely described as one of the greatest guitarists ever. The more ardent members of the congregation will happily promote him to greatest drummer, keyboardist, producer, shoelace-tier and possibly municipal planner as well. Let’s remain calm. He was a very good guitarist—just not obviously superior to Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck or John McLaughlin. That said: the opening note(s) of the solo in “Purple Rain”—a simple D–F dyad, two-thirds of a D minor chord—remain one of the most recognisable gestures in pop history. Not complex. Just perfect. A masterclass in restraint before lift-off. Elsewhere, the album repeatedly wrong-foots me. “The Beautiful Ones” begins in precisely the falsetto-funk register I tend to endure rather than enjoy, only to pivot into a cathartic rock outro where the scream replaces the squeal and the guitar finally earns its keep. “When Doves Cry” drives like a rock anthem despite being almost entirely synthetic. “Let’s Go Crazy” is practically orthodox rock, albeit filtered through purple neon. And yet this is not a guitar album. It is a monument to machines: Yamaha electric pianos, Oberheim and DX7 synths, Memorymoog, Linn drum machines. So much of it comes out of a box, and somehow it breathes. That may be Prince’s quietest triumph as producer: the electronic drums often sound startlingly alive. (We will draw a discreet veil over the percussive hiccuping of “Take Me with U.”) Even the backing vocals—usually my personal kryptonite—behave themselves. Occasionally they even contribute something approaching charm. Microscopic charm, but still. Is it flawless? No. “Baby, I’m a Star” is all calories and no nutrition; “Darling Nikki” is more notorious than necessary; “Computer Blue” slightly overreaches. A straight musical 9 might be generous. But as a statement—proof that funk and rock can co-exist without either losing its accent—it earns the upward rounding. Of the Prince albums I know, this is the one. The purple summit. And if that conclusion happens to align with artificial intelligence, I choose to interpret that not as surrender, but as corroboration.