Great, edgy pop.

Funky, sexy, grimy, and vivid.

A fun evening out in a seedy Irish pub in a bad part of town. Fun for a while, but ultimately fatiguing and not a place you necessarily want to revisit often.

Funky fun and a party on record. Would be a great live experience, but as a studio recording it can get a bit repetitive.

Anthemic Beatleesque Britpop that it’s hard to truly dislike, but it’s too simple and derivative to truly be great. Blur kicks their ass.

Silky smooth and sexy. Makes one thirst for a martini. Strengthens with every listen. Does have a certain samey-ness throughout

An album that is more important than enjoyable, but it does retain its ability to jar even after 50 years and you can hear a lot of the future of music in it.

Jazz, rock, psychedelia and inspired musicianship with a few great melodies to boot. A prog classic with all the occasional interludes of indulgent noodling.

The smoothest of smooth R&B and a full albums of tracks to smash to. Overlong in parts, but the highs are truly outstanding.

A shambolic masterpiece, with terrific songwriting enhanced by emotionally resonant performances complete with mistakes, tempo problems, and Young missing notes left and right. A truly great album.

I hope you like “Who Do You Love” by Bo Diddley because it’s half the record. This is classic 60s era live psychedelic noodling in the same vein as The Dead’s Live/Dead. If you like that, this is a masterpiece. If not, you might find this a self-indulgent bore. I’m in the middle.

An artist I was not at all familiar with prior to this book. A world music fusion of funk, samba, and rock. Terrific songwriting and orchestration. Maybe a little less cuica on some tunes? If you want to know what created David Byrne, this is it.

Van Halen's debut album. That seems about enough.

A fun and often funny hyper-British proto-punk romp. Kinks meets Madness with a touch of Gary Glitter. Good times.

The definitive proton-punk album and one that still sounds fresh and fun decades later. It almost excuses the mind-numbing stupidity of the lyrics. The Stooges would put out better albums, but this one clearly helped set the direction for the future of rock.

A really fun album, remarkably early punk album that combines great tunes, solid musicianship, punk attitude and sneer, and a bit of spice with horns. I had never heard this album before and I'm now going whole hog into the Saints catalog. If you like early punk (Ramones, Damned), you will surely like this.

A punk rock opera, complete with progressive rock staples like multi-part suites. It sounds ridiculous, and it would be if the songs weren’t so damn good.

It has its moments, but on the whole seems inconsequential and a curious inclusion on this list. Numerous artists from which it is derivative would seem to have been better choices.

This is where it becomes obvious that this book was written by British music critics, because this is essentially a UK version of Weezer, but with worse songs, singing, and guitar playing. There are at least three Weezer albums that should have made the list ahead of this. All that said, this is fuzzed-out Power Pop with a Britpop flair, so what’s not to like?

It’s got an unmistakable ‘Dad rock’ vibe, and the under-developed songwriting can give the tunes a bit of sameness. But the band is tight, the guitar playing awesome, and it washes over you in a pleasant, warm bath kind of way that can make for an enjoyable listen.

Rewarding repeated listens, what comes across initially as self-indulgent chaos reveals itself over time as a lyrical, emotionally rich, and vivid musical experience.

Overly long, but a trippy psychedelic journey executed by a tight band of true believers. Great entry point into a rewarding deep dive into the phenomenon of Hawkins.

A Dylanssqur collection of folk tinged short stories that is unlike most of Springsteen’s catalog. Delivered with a stripped down authenticity that fits the material

The guitar tone is irritating. The vocals are irritating. The 90s alterna-rock cliches are irritating. But Billy Corgan could write a good pop tune and there are some gems here as well. That said, its almost never worth the effort to find them.

B-minus grade 80s synth pop that pales relative to peers like Human League, New Order, and Depeche Mode, but still mostly fun and listenable if you are a fan of the genre. A more funky and danceable variation that at times sound like a combo of Chic and Kraftwerk

Fantastic album that combines great melodies, ragged and crunchy performances, and a couple of Young’s best tunes.

I love The Police, but the criticism that they are more of a singles band and that their albums are replete with filler is valid. There are also some elements, like the white reggae and Sting's self-importance, that can get cloying. But man what a tight, talented band with a gifted songwriter in Sting. Synchronicity is when they just began to jump the shark, and it's probably fortunate they broke up shortly thereafter. That said, there's plenty here to like - highlighted by Synchronicity II and a slew of hits. Not quite a 5-star record, but a damn fine one.

The fun novelty song "American Pie" dominates most of this record, and is nothing like the rest of it - a bunch of 70s era California folk singer-songwriter stuff in the vein, if not the quality, of Jackson Browne. Few of the tunes are all that memorable, and they can run together with a certain mopey sameness. It makes for an erratic listening experience, and not a particularly great album.

Bjork arrives with a major statement record and establishes herself as a creative force to be reckoned with. An incredibly visual and emotional record, brought most to life by the visceral sense of being inside a dance club. It’s less cohesive than some of her subsequent albums, but is nevertheless an astonishing debut.

An LSD soaked, naively childlike musical experience in the style of Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd, some killer tunes (title track, “Season of The Witch”, “The Fat Angel”, “Celeste”) are interspersed amongst overly long hippy-dippy workouts (most egregiously, “Legend of a Girl Child Linda”. Most of the songs are simple and repetitive, which gives their 4+ minute running time an overlong feeling. An interesting exploration with some good tunes, but not a great album.