Jangly, fried, teeth-grinding garage psych. Paranoid, wired, unsteady on its feet. The Elevators lock into a hypnotic churn. Equal parts desperation and vision. Frayed nerves and burned-out synapses, barely holding it together. The hum of minds pried open a little too far.
No filler anywhere. Just Coltrane pushing a single idea until it burns. It’s the sound of someone who means it. If you only hear one album before you die, make it this one. Then go back and listen again.
Late-night show music. You know, those wet fart sounds from Paul Shaffer and the like. Music for announcers to introduce tonight’s guests. I bet they know music theory.
Why do I even bother with this challenge? Klaxons were the flavor of 2006 or 2007—hyped to the ceiling, gone in a flash. A few catchy indie dancefloor fillers, sure, but that’s it. No classic, no masterpiece—just a relic clinging to retro playlists it hasn’t earned a place in. Nobody needs to hear this record. Who’s still spinning this? Not me.
A monument to Radiohead’s complete inability to turn influences into good music. It’s art for people who confuse references with substance—a chore to sit through. All the cool sounds are here, but they’re dead on arrival. It’s the thinking man’s Coldplay, an expensive wine with no taste. So smug, so shallow, and so sure of itself while delivering absolutely nothing.
It’s got something, and they use all the right vintage instruments and tools - but completely drowned out by the elevator music they made. This is what they play when you’re put on hold calling a cool company. 3/10
Chris Cornell’s voice genuinely hurts my ears. That howly, strained style does nothing for me. The lyrics? Terrible. That kind of drum production—like it was recorded in a garbage can—is easily top 3 worst for me. Somehow, the singles are the weakest tracks on the album. Soundgarden’s never been my thing, and probably never will be. I can’t name a single song of theirs I actually tolerate.
Folk punk, allegedly. Sounds more like the drama club crashed a frat party. A-side is all whine and campgrounf tunes. “Blister in the Sun” has been played to death, resurrected, and killed again. B-side improves. A bit like Television if they started busking. That this sold 2 million copies is either proof of a marketing miracle or a cosmic joke.
It sounds like the house band on a 90s talk show got stuck in a loop with the cheesiest bits of soul and funk. Slick, lifeless, and smug. If we’re talking early 70’s soul I’d rather listen to Lee Moses or Alice Clark.
A classic, sure—but Blue Lines now sounds like it belongs in a ’90s museum. Influential, yes. Timeless, no. Dated sounds rarely makes for great records. This one’s just a fine one.
Springsteen throws everything at the wall—burnt-out motels, punch-clocks, engines that won’t start, dads who communicate exclusively through silence. His voice sounds like it’s been marinating in bad coffee and fried potato grease. Some songs blur, but the atmosphere holds. The drum sound is killer—tight, dry, nothing fancy. Perfect sunday morning record.
This is coward music. Chris Martin croons like a man who’s never been punched and it shows. Coldplay make music for people who think pacing around a clean apartment counts as suffering. It’s the musical equivalent of beige—polished, lifeless, bland. Music for people hearing music for the first time, and sadly, they get this
A shrug of a record—dreamy, muted, and fine. Some nice textures, a consistent vibe. It’s easy to like, but just as easy to forget. Pleasant enough while it’s on. One of the 1000 albums to hear before you die? Only if you’re out of time and there’s nothing else around.
Warm, smooth, and loose in all the right ways. Sometimes it dips, but the highs are undeniable. Don’t understand the lyrics, but it feels like an after party. Also famously a Rod Stewart theft. Great housecleaning music—and I mean that in the best way.
Moondance is the wrong Van album for this type of Albums you need to hear-list. Polished, limp, and smug. A couple okay grooves buried under dinner-party jazz and some truly shitty tracks. One of his most boring “classics.”
It’s time for yet another album that shouldn’t qualify for this list. New Wave by The Auteurs is a nice jangly, catchy, and buzzy cocktail with hints of glam and classic pop, sure, but nowhere near the best 1001 albums in history. Solid, but definitely not essential.
Ranked as one of the best live jazz albums of all time, but—it’s not. Sure, it’s nice enough, mostly saved by LaFaro’s bass lines doing the heavy lifting. And man is it heavy. If you’re after music that’s basically a warm bath for your ears while you cradle a Sunday coffee and let the paper (or app) spill bad news, this’ll do.
A monument to Radiohead’s complete inability to turn influences into good music. It’s art for people who confuse references with substance—a chore to sit through. All the cool sounds are here, but they’re dead on arrival. It’s the thinking man’s Coldplay, an expensive wine with no taste. So smug, so shallow, and so sure of itself while delivering absolutely nothing.
Loads of bands borrowed the Jesus Lizard and Birthday Party blueprint, all sporting that big-room, Albini-dry drum sound—but only a few nailed it. While Rye Coalition went full ‘rock out with your cock out,’ Icarus Line turned inward, channeling PIL’s sinister squall. Loved it when it dropped, but it’s feeling time-stamped now. Still solid—just nowhere near a 1001 best album contender.
A list of 1001 albums to hear before you die, and yet here’s more of the same bland, forgettable drivel. ABBA with folk and electronic fluff—perfect for when I’m gasping for my last breath. Great timing.
Boring, sweepy synths that work in the film but flop alone. I’m repeating myself, but this is not an album to hear before you die.
Jimi’s been played to death and it’s a lot of wank, but you can’t ignore the cultural blast radius he left behind. The rhythm section carry the weight; the guitar just gets the headlines.
Haircut 100’s Pelican West has some postpunk DNA, but it’s ultimately drowned in unbearable production and bad songs. Garbage.
Jangly, dissonant, and freeform collides with machinelike repetition. Feedback snarls in the background, everything locked in a relentless groove. Lee Ranaldo’s traditional two songs, as usual, blow the rest out of the water, adding an angular, off-kilter punch to an album that already cuts deeper than most. This record just does not fuck around.
Can’t argue with the title track, but the rest is thin gruel. A pop sheen over grit that never quite surfaces. Wonder if the rednecks ever noticed it’s not a victory lap but a eulogy.
Why do I even bother with this challenge? Klaxons were the flavor of 2006 or 2007—hyped to the ceiling, gone in a flash. A few catchy indie dancefloor fillers, sure, but that’s it. No classic, no masterpiece—just a relic clinging to retro playlists it hasn’t earned a place in. Nobody needs to hear this record. Who’s still spinning this? Not me.
Carries his fathers torch, sure—but the production and polite horns make it feel more lobby than Lagos. Fire dimmed, not out.
Finally, an actual classic in this graveyard of try-hards. Floodland doesn’t just sound big; it sounds like it was recorded inside a cathedral being demolished in slow motion. Pure eighties excess, draped in synthetic fog. Doktor Avalanche thunders like a nuclear countdown with eyeliner, steamrolling every cheesy orchestra stab in its path. There isn’t a single weak track. Not one. And then there’s Andrew Eldritch… goth Elvis in a leather trench, preaching the apocalypse with that voice like velvet decay. It’s pompous, bleak, glorious. The end of the world never sounded this sexy.
This is piss in a pint glass. Boring, smug nonsense built on tired British clichés. Working-class music for people who watch the working class from a safe sistance. Not clever. Not deep. Just happy-go-lucky garbage dressed up as something smart. Music for mental toddlers.
Unlistenable, self-important drivel masquerading as punk. I fucking hate The Clash. If you search “mediocre” on Wikipedia, Joe Strummer’s name is found somewhere between “performative politics” and “men with nothing to say.” If you genuinely love this album, you were either lied to as a child or you lie to yourself daily.
A double album from a band mid-divorce. Some great moments, sure, but mostly the sound of two guys refusing to edit each other out of fear or pride. Bloated, brittle, weirdly tidy for a band built on raw nerves. I love Hüsker Dü. But this? Their final and weakest album? On the list? Not Zen Arcade? Not New Day Rising? This was the moment it clicked: the people behind this list have no idea what they’re doing. Not a clue.
Sad hipster cowboy discovers reverb and makes an okay album
The Predator is peak angry Ice Cube, back when he was a menace, not a meme. Some tracks still hit, but the whole thing feels like a time capsule from when dudes wore Raiders hats and said “biatch” with a straight face. Time hasn’t been too kind to Cube or the beats—but hey, nostalgia’s a hell of a drug.
This isn’t a Byrds album I would’ve picked for this list. Or maybe it is. I listen to it fairly often. It’s spiteful (they fired Crosby mid-session and replaced him with a literal horse on the cover), spacey, and kinda great. The sound of a band politely imploding. And tucked right in there is Wasn’t Born to Follow, a clear signpost toward Sweetheart of the Rodeo, where they finally got their act together for five minutes and accidentally invented country rock.
Before the acid, before the breakdowns, before Mike Love turned into Mike Evol. Early Wilson magic: sun-soaked harmonies, teenage heartbreak and hooks that basically invented the Ramones. Simple, catchy, irresistible.
Cheap Thrills is fine I guess. I’ve got no issue with it being live, actually kind of like that, but I do have an issue with boring, bland blues rock. And this doesn’t do much for me, Janis wailing included.
Hahaha. This is as far from a masterpiece as you can get. Every track sounds like it was written by a marketing team in Converse for people who think rebellion is a font choice. A soundtrack for kids grounded for the weekend. A middle finger pointed towards yourself.
This is music for walking in a light breeze, maybe on a long pier or something. When it’s good. Then the white reggae hits. The calypso-adjacent nonsense. The supermarket background muzak. It makes me want to eat a bullet.
Mopey, mid-tier filler. Background music for folding laundry. Why is this on a list meant for timeless classics? Stop cramming in these bland, post-Britpop nobodies. This isn’t “must-hear before you die.” It’s “accidentally heard once and forgot while still alive.” Did an NME intern time travel to 2025 and upload their playlist by mistake?
Jangly, fried, teeth-grinding garage psych. Paranoid, wired, unsteady on its feet. The Elevators lock into a hypnotic churn. Equal parts desperation and vision. Frayed nerves and burned-out synapses, barely holding it together. The hum of minds pried open a little too far.
Kickstarted a whole new era in ad music for cellphone plans, frozen yoghurt chains, gyms, and eco-friendly detergent commercials. Not that bad, not that good. Just… there.
That jangly shrug-rock, saying-nothing self-important garbage. What came after this became the soundtrack to either sipping lapsang tea while journaling or eating shrimp with mid-priced white wine.
Art school in-jokes, lad pub grim, headache all the way down. Music for radio rotations, warm lager festivals and corporate fairgrounds.
Pints raised, shirts off, veins popping. Folk for lads who never liked folk. Everyone bought it for Come On Eileen, then quietly shelved it. Rightly so. It’s provocatively bad.
Drop the needle and the weekend materialises. Several riffs here, like on every VH album, that other guitarists can only dream of writing. Big, dumb, perfect.
Late-night show music. You know, those wet fart sounds from Paul Shaffer and the like. Music for announcers to introduce tonight’s guests. I bet they know music theory.
Four tracks. Forty-five minutes. Heavy and slow. No fat. No mercy. Velvet voice, strings, sweat and grind. Backed by the Bar-Kays perfectly in the pocket. There’s other R&B album like it and I should listen to this more often.
A yawn in album form. Weird lyrics that sound like a youth pastor having a breakdown.
Loud, packed, full of hooks, none of them friendly. Tight and overloaded on purpose. Still makes everything else sound mild.
Not a classic. Not even close. A couple cool tracks, but most of it is mild, safe and radio friendly enough to offend no one, even in 1967. Background music for people who think rebellion means skipping church.
Sounds like it was made by the kids in gym class who refused to take off their hoodies and thought detention was a personality trait. The minimal lyrics read like the kind of try-hard rage you’d scrawl in the margins of a biology textbook next to an anarchy symbol. The music feels less dated than expected and the drum programming is honestly pretty fucking cool. I’m not jilted, so this album clearly wasn’t made for me, but I still catch myself nodding along
It’s commercial and radio-friendly country music. Kinda nice, but devoid of soul.
Horns scream, bass wanders, everything spirals into a beautiful nervous breakdown. One point off for making me feel like I should be shooting heroin instead of sitting on the couch eating chips.
There are a lot of great Fela records and some of them should be on any essential list. This one with Ginger Baker isn’t one of them. Just a live album. Pretty good. Mostly a ploy.
The Eagles’ debut is The Band for people who iron their jeans. Smooth, safe, and dying to be rustic.
The soundtrack to your middle school teachers wet dream. Smooth, sultry, and smug about it. Saxophones, silk sheets, and a perfectly chilled chardonnay.
Ah yes, bootleg live recordings. The kind you need hear before you die. Or not.
Love Tortoise. Been spinning this since it dropped. But “albums you need to hear before you die”? Please. It’s not even their best one. Fantastic background music for doing literally anything. Except dying.
As a free jazz aficionado, this is basic—lightyears from Ayler, Coltrane, Sanders, and Coleman. But damn, finally, a real classic. Take Five is in my headphone test rotation—if it doesn’t slap, the cans go back. Top 10 basic jazz you need to listen to. Cooler than anything you’ll ever make.
Music for vacation after parties, drinking Calvados and couch-locked, zooted out of your mind.
Cash sounds more alive in prison than he had in years. A rowdy crowd fuels him; the energy’s sharp, sweaty, and mean. One of the greatest live albums ever.
Sounds like when Bond girls do ketamine in the Alps.
I never got this band, and listening today only confirms it: these guys sound painfully, unmistakably middle class. Like leather jackets bought from Zara.
Where King Crimson said NO, Yes said YES ABSOLUTELY with a big grin and a tambourine. This is prog rock that wants you to feel good about yourself, and that’s exactly where it loses me. It’s too jangly, too sparkly, too eager to uplift. I don’t mind virtuosity or ambition, I live for it sometimes, but I want it dark, not tuneful. This album never clicked with me.
This is the soundtrack to that little café you just slide into for a coffee to go when you’re on vacation. Volume is a little loud and you just want to leave as quickly as possible.
Annoying on paper, great in execution. Awkward, clipped, and smarter than most bands ever get. You don’t have to like it to admit it’s solid.
If you weren’t into punk, metal, indierock or synth in the 90s, you probably drank herbal tea and listened to this. You cared about music. But only this little.
Whale noises for agile coaches and lean experts… or for IKEA showrooms.
Soulless disco and corporate funk.
Sounds like Christian-adjacent campfire stuff. Fake wisdom and that limp “don’t worry” glaze. Tea for the Tillerman is spiritual wallpaper for cowards.
I don’t want to live in a world where a Lenny Kravitz album is considered essential.
Overrated, yes. But still a layered melodic gem. Odessey and Oracle is a classic for a reason, even if the praise sometimes drowns the music.
Most overrated faux indie there was. Sure, some great songs but god, it’s boring half the time. Worst drummer in rock history doesn’t help.
Still holds up. Sharp, bratty, and fun. For me, this is the only Le Tigre album that exists, and honestly, that’s fine.
Coked-out riffs in a muddy mix. The production’s a mess but the music is wild, ambitious and brilliant.
No
Broadway musical with distortion no thanks
Radio music about nothing
Britpop’s grown-up brother with mod grit. Some great moments, but not quite transcendent…or whatever.
Funky boys get moody but still frat house cruise control. No thanks.
Pretty good cooking music
Languid, narcotic grooves swirl in reverb-soaked haze. Less about climax, more about drift. Feels like floating in slow motion. Easily a 4/5 trip.
No filler anywhere. Just Coltrane pushing a single idea until it burns. It’s the sound of someone who means it. If you only hear one album before you die, make it this one. Then go back and listen again.
In one ear, out the other type stufg
Overplayed to death. Great production props up okay material. Iconic? Sure. Essential? Debatable.
Nu-psych with some gems, but also plenty of bland filler that drifts into forgettable background noise.
It’s a bar fight where the piano’s drunk, the drums are flirting, and Mick’s yelling scripture at you through a mouthful of biscuits.
ABC’s superpower is weaponized genericness, so smooth, shiny and formula perfect it stops being wallpaper and starts feeling like the wall.
Raw, swampy punk-blues chaos that crackles with danger. Every note feels like setting fire to midnight.
Sharp, swaggering new wave bite with hooks, heartbreak and danger wrapped in leather and eyeliner.
Slick, overpolished sludge. Critics and fans call it genius, but it’s really glossy boredom.
Loved it in ’92, still kinda great. Smart, funky, hopeful hip-hop that aged better than most of my playlists. On revisit it’s less of the politics I remembered, more average Christian vibes.
Aretha’s voice is flawless, but it leans too hard on gospel. For me, the churchy vibe drags it down and makes it uninteresting.
This is the kind of music made by someone who is simply doing what he wants. Unfortunately, what he wants to do is make garbage music. Over the course of his career there are a few shiny things buried in the trash, but you will not find them on this album.
Dinner music, like music you put on at real low volume.
Marketed as “psych,” but it’s sleek indie-electro with reverb slapped on. No grit, no trip—just polished loops dressed up as depth. Modern garbage.
Sad dudes mumbling over weak riffs and a man narrating a grocery list recorded in a walk-in freezer. Critics call it a classic, I call it nap fuel.
Greatest jukebox album ever made.
And here we are again: some totally average album gets canonized on the “1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die” list, as if my ears haven’t suffered enough. It’s perfectly fine. I’ve heard it before, liked it in the same way I like plain toast, and then never thought about it again. Just listened to the whole thing, and I probably won’t hear it again until 2034—by accident.
If you ask anyone of geriatric age, into punk, this is gold. I find it just above passable.
Funk so tight it struts in polyester. I roll my eyes and eat it up every time.