Liked and could hear lots of influences, like Beatles and David Bowie, that weren’t obvious to me when the album first came out.
Still amazing after all these years. One intriguing song I wasn’t familiar with: “Keep the Customer Satisfied.”
Might just be a little too esoteric and experimental for me. I admire but do not love. The album’s opening is pretty iconic, though.
So smart, so prescient. I would need to listen to the lyrics closely and repeatedly to really get its impact. Besides the songs I already knew, I really liked “Burn Hollywood Burn” and “Can’t Do Nuttin.” “Fight the Power” will be forever linked to Do the Right Thing as one of the best film musical combos of all time.
Transformer was delightful, not at all what I expected. It’s playful and even fun. The instrumentation and arrangements are creative, and Reed has a wry sensibility (and crystal clear enunciation) that somehow I didn’t know about. What a revelation!
Meh, I missed this album when it came out and I don’t find it compelling now.
While Sinatra’s voice is amazing, the album felt monotonous. All the songs kind of blended together for me.
Honestly, I would never have listened to this album if not for this project, and I was so glad to be introduced to it. The songs sound modern and fresh, and the grooves are irresistible.
On paper this band is up my alley, but I failed to get into their music 15 odd years ago and still am not feeling it. I like “Islands” but the album as a whole seemed drab and unremarkable.
Genre busting brilliance. There’s a little bit of everything and somehow it all works together.
Good, with some standouts.
It’s hard to separate this album from me at 17, but it still sounds great. “You Are the Everything” is my favorite now, probably not back then.
Another one suffused with nostalgia for me, but it didn’t live up to my hype. A few songs are magical, and obviously the sound was super influential for Brit pop, but much of the album is forgettable.
5 stars for originality. 0 stars for accessibility and enjoyment. That averages out to a 1. 😂 Maybe I would understand and appreciate better with repeated listens, but I have no interest in doing that, I’m afraid.
It’s amazing that this was 1974–the production is immaculate and you can hear Fagen enunciate every single word. I love the smoothness and ease, but also the bitterness.
Started off strong (and the lyrics are super interesting) but eventually became a slog for me.
I loved this album! Almost every song is a winner. Jazzy and mellow a lot of the time, but also intense.
“We used to wait / Sometimes it never came.” Twenty years later, I still think this album captured something about how life was changing in the twenty-first century. It’s so coherent and listenable. Torn between a 4 and 5 but going with my heart.
Lots of classics here. Enjoyable, but I wasn’t riveted. (Shh, don’t tell Mike.)
I’m just not a huge Dylan person, but I admire the album. “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” is maliciously funny.
The first sentence of the blurb for this album on Apple Music reads: “No matter where you’re at in life, stepping into Pet Sounds can feel like stepping back into childhood.” That really resonated for me, even though my parents were definitely not listening to Pet Sounds when I was a kid. The hooks in “Sloop John B,” for instance, seem to be deeply imprinted in my subconscious. I also realized how deeply influential this album has been, decades later. Like, does Vampire Weekend or The Shins exist without it?
It was fine. I do like “Tangerine” an awful lot.
Some good/interesting songs here but I wasn’t blown away. We can go this deep into Radiohead’s catalog, but apparently we don’t have any women’s albums we can feature?? I know, we’re early in the 1001. Maybe today is the day?
OMG the misogyny, violence, and ugliness. But also: it kind of feels like we’re all living in Eminem’s world now. This is a pretty profound cultural document and piece of art. It’s not always possible to say when Em is expressing his own hate and when he is exposing it, and that seems like part of the point.
I’m sure it’s a personal failing, but I have never been drawn to the Blues, and this album did not sway me.
Oh yay, finally, a woman! 😂😂 But seriously, I thought this was charming and lovely. Her ad libs are so cool—I felt a little like I was in that club.
I forgot about “Thousands Are Sailing.” What a great song, along with others. Maybe it’s the extended version linked here, but the album started to flag for me after a while.
I liked but think The Suburbs is better.
Love the spiky, raw, but still kind of poppy qualities of many of these songs.
I only knew the hits off this album, and I liked this more than I thought I would but am not into the punk / hardcore / rapping thing that Kiedis does.
Still amazing after all these years. (Sorry for the bad joke.)
Just…why?? I can’t imagine putting this on a best of list.
Never heard of them and found album entirely unmemorable. I also made an executive decision only to listen through track 12 on first disc, since that was the end of the original album.
I wish I liked this more, but there were some highlights and overall it was enjoyable.
I found this one fascinating and weird and went down quite a rabbit hole reading all about Gene Clark.
Not quite what I expected. A lot more classic rocky.
Not more Brit pop! I never realized exactly how overrated the genre was until I started this project. I did re-appreciate “Lucky Man,” and “Bittersweet Symphony” is canonical, but that’s about it for me.
I love how you can see Metal and punk coming out of this. Pretty irrepressible spirit.
Wow, so this is where alt-country comes from! I’m embarrassed that I always just dismissed the band because of its name. These songs are amazing—I’m between a 4 and a 5.
Some gorgeous melodies here, like the somewhat disquieting “Thirteen.” I wasn’t quite as taken by this as our last couple from the same era, but I can see the innovation and influence of Big Star.
I’m a big fan of what I consider ELO’s signature sound. It’s so Beatlesque (Kinks, Beach Boys) but also so forward looking. I do think this album needed an edit; it felt a little baggy.
Probably really a 3.5, but I’m rounding up because “Down by the River” and “Cowgirls in the Sand” are epic.
Looking forward to Nic’s comments (his 33 1/3 book on this album comes out in 2026!!) but I love this one as much as I did when I first started hearing it around the dorms in the late 80s. Are there are any mediocre songs? Not to my ears. It’s raw, jagged, desperate, angry, melancholy, sometimes ugly, but also buoyant, silly, and sexy. It sounded and sounds completely distinctive, instantly recognizable.
There were some moments when I got really into this, but other times I lost the plot. That might be partly a lack of cultural context on my part.
I owned this on cd but haven’t listened to it in decades. She’s doing some pioneering work fusing rap, funk, soul, and pop, especially as a female artist with a strong lyric point of view, but disappointingly, the production sounds dated and some of the songs are mediocre.
I don’t own the album but know most of these songs—it really is packed with classics. Robert Plant’s voice is insanely good. One star off for the mean anti-woman stuff.
I saw we were back with the Blues and my heart sank a little. But actually I ended up really enjoying this. The music just moves, and it has a New Orleans (Delta?) kind of jazzy vibe in places that is awesome, as are Waters’ vocals.
There are a couple of beauts, and I just rewatched the video for “New Frontier,” which is sublime. I can’t believe the assortment of music that I watched on MTV in those early days. But most of the album did not impress me.
Not my thing, but I like that the “random” generator paid its respects to Ozzy, and there was more diversity to the music than I was expecting.
More muted than I thought it would be. Somehow the live atmosphere didn’t come through for me.
I think this holds up well. They sound both very identifiable as a turn of the century band and very much just themselves.
Oh generator, I don’t have time to listen to 6 discs, amounting to more than 3 hours of music. However, I wish I had that much time because the songbook is spectacular. Fitzgerald’s voice is smooth and silky but also so powerful, the lyrics are often genius, and the melodies are gorgeous. Plus the arrangements and instrumentation. This is definitely going into my permanent rotation.
Hmm, there were some moments I could kind of get into, but this felt too much like the Muzak of my childhood.
You couldn’t have paid me money in 1998 to listen to this, and I just did it for free and enjoyed much of it. 😂 Twenty five plus years later, I can appreciate that there is craftsmanship here and that he’s bringing together genres in ways that have since become standard. Plus, some of the songs are just good!
Perhaps not the epochal album it was heralded as at the time, but still sounds tight and was fun to listen to. Between a 3 and 4 for me, but rounding up because it ends on such a high note with “Take It or Leave It.”
Not a big fan of their sound, though how could you not appreciate Grace Slick’s voice, and of course the two big songs here deserve to be classics.
This was truly weird, mostly in good ways, though some of it did not land for me. I can see the influence on Prince and others.
Fun listen. He’s so exuberant as a vocalist and trumpet player, and I love the big band inflected jazz. The songs did get repetitive after a while, though.
My hopes lifted after the first song, which was catchy, but they quickly settled back down. Mid, as the kids say.
Now we’re talking. These songs purr, crackle, groove. Each one is worth listening to in its own right. What a talent Badu is.
Too much mediocre Brit Pop!!
I’m interested by how ground-breaking their sound was but also how you can hear affinities with less “cool” rap of the time.
Oh I really loved this. I’ve listened to plenty of her songs but had not made my way through a whole album. The songs are gorgeous and often moving (you can hear the Jack Antonoff of it) but avoid the obvious pop choices for more surprising ones.
I was reminded that “Vincent” was momentarily popular with my friend group in high school. This is at the intersection of too on the nose and even cheesy, and kind of fun to listen to.
I have respect for Sonic Youth on paper, but this was more visceral and accessible than I thought it would be. Particularly loved “Cotton Crown” and “Master-Dik.”
I wasn’t expecting covers, but I liked many of his interpretations, especially of “Satisfaction.”
Not as uniformly strong as I wished it was. Love the big three, though, which are spiky, electric, and have great pop hooks.
One of my all-time faves, and seriously underregarded, imo. What can’t Monáe do? She moves seamlessly between genres and makes them her own. The album is both eccentric and poppy, full of weird intervals and luscious hooks. I just love it.
I almost gave this a 1. Most songs are blah and the vocals are unexpectedly awful in a couple of places. A couple of songs are better, elevating it to a 2.
This listen clarified for me that The Killers were never really an indie / alt band (despite the title of the last song!). They’re a mainstream pop rock band, and they know what they’re doing when it comes to crafting big pop rock songs. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense that “Mr. Brightside” became a studio anthem.
Okay, I had never actually listened to this album before. It’s worth a lot of listens. They only ever sound like themselves, and at the same time, you can hear how they absorb global genres and lay down a kind of blueprint that later western artists have continued to follow.
Yikes. “Under the Bridge” is a classic, but most of the rest are forgettable, obnoxious bro rock (well I guess you have to give them credit for helping to invent that category).
I cannot overstate the degree to which 12 year old me absorbed this album. I still love it and think it represents the epitome of great 80s pop: bouncy, synthy, with an undercurrent of darkness. And Lauper’s voice is a gift.
Really strong throughout. It was kind of a comeback album, right? But it may be their best. They mastered that place where punk and pop meet.
It’s enjoyable to listen to Willie sing almost anything with his mellow, restrained, poignant voice, and the arrangements are often lovely.
Ooh this was fun. Silky smooth, delicious, full arrangements. Sounds completely contemporary.
I just find these songs so beautiful. The album is cohesive too—it’s all one melancholy, wistful, and a little funny vibe.
Never much of a Rod Stewart fan, but I can see why this album made the list. There are some real charmers here, especially “Country Comfort.”
Sounds both ahead of its time and completely of its time. Some of the songs did not click for me, though.
Brit Pop strikes again. This album is completely forgettable, wannabe Oasis. I did not need to hear it in this (or any) lifetime.
How had I never heard “Country Honk” before? I enjoy this version of the Stones.
Gothic synth. The hits still resonate; some of the rest are interesting but not spectacular.
Never heard of her before, let alone heard her music, but I was completely blown away by this album. Or maybe mesmerised is the right word. The production, the lyrics, the melodies—all are stunning on a first listen, blending folk, electronica, and pop. First time I’m giving 5 stars to an album I didn’t already know and love.
Not exactly my thing, but lots of admiration for this politically fearless, smart, head-on album.
This is the third Blur album we’ve gotten. 😳 It’s not bad—the first half is pretty good, in fact—but it’s not great either.
Really wanted to love this one, but the title track is in its own league.
Could use an edit, but there are a lot of highs and they’re really great. It’s a wonder how The Clash is able to sound so angry and so joyous at the same time, and their pop instincts are impeccable.
I love the mordant humor of songs like “Girlfriend in a Coma.” They definitely anticipate (and skewer) the incel mentality. But some of the tracks are just ho-hum.
Truly an all-time classic. The lyrics, the production, the arrangements, the hooks—all are stellar, and Lauryn Hill is the magnetic center of it all.
It was fun hearing The Eagles becoming themselves on this album. I had a little trouble deciding if the overall vibe was a tiny bit lacklustre or whether it was just mellow in that early 70s way. 3.5 would be my preferred rating.
You can’t deny the influence of this album, and I did enjoy a lot of it. But it’s really ugly and crude too. That’s Kanye, I guess.
There are no weak links here. Lou Reed and Nico have two weird, great voices, and the music breaks new ground while somehow also seeming understated and modest.
At times, I was totally on board with the trip hop complexity. At others it bogged down for me.
Never heard of him before but honestly found this album pretty delightful. Kind of meditative, yet also propulsive.
It brings rap and pop into the new century, looking backward and forward. I did eventually yield to exhaustion: just too much goodness.
Like a small precious jewel. It does one thing and does it perfectly.
I know I’m supposed to like this, but at the end of the day it left me cold. “Guiding Light” was an exception.
The more folky songs were pleasant; the more psychedelic ones droned on a bit. Kind of mid.
There are some poignant songs here, but how can you compare to his older stuff? The structures seem more basic and the lyrics less specific, like he’s playing it safe.
I was skeptical, but this lovely collection of songs won me over. I enjoyed their retro, sun washed, melancholy sound. There are some real songwriting chops in evidence.
Love the vibe on this album. Even the lesser known songs are appealing, and “Sympathy for the Devil” is one of the greatest ever.
Hard to imagine a better opening song than “Hell’s Bells.” I’m teaching Macbeth right now, and it would play perfectly in the Porter scene! The album is tight and rocking (of course). I’m no AC/DC fan but considered giving it a 5.
Underwhelmed by The Undertones. Seemed like completely pedestrian punk rock. Maybe I would feel differently if I grew up listening to their stuff, but I can’t recover whatever it is that made them special.
There’s a staggering immediacy and intimacy to this album. It’s hard to believe it was recorded over half a century ago. Imagine writing a song for the audience (“San Quentin”), performing it for them (twice!), and the experience becoming a legend.
I kind of like the slinky oddball electronic songs on the back half and thought the first half was solid.
One of the greatest ever. Even the “minor”songs are electric.
Has not aged well. Maybe didn’t start off that great either, though the crunch, the buzz, and the whine are definitely iconic of the Dre sound and that era of rap.
Love me some Pet Shop Boys. They were ahead of their time and our time too. So danceable and fun, so melancholy and smart and politically astute. “King’s Cross” is a stunner I don’t remember hearing before.
I’m ashamed to say I never listened to this album before. It’s punchy and edgy and full of energy. Would there be Avril Lavigne or Olivia Roderigo or Willow without them?
This is my Rubicon. Cannot cross.
Poignant and moving, and wonderfully creative. Plus it’s not every day that a song is named after a seventeenth-century revenge tragedy!
A little silly, but obviously they were onto something.
Four songs in 48 min is wild. I got a little lost in the middle, but it was an enjoyable ride.
Kind of appropriate to listen to this while 30,000 feet in the air. I can appreciate the Dead and this was not an unpleasant experience, but I confess to not really feeling them.
Peak TS and an almost perfect pop album — there’s not a bad song on it.
The 17 year old was intrigued enough about “Thrasher” to ask who the singer was. That was one of my favorites on the album too. Overall, a little uneven.
I wasn’t sold on this later version of The Cure at first—I missed the jagged, manic edge. But the baroque lugubrious qualities grew on me and I ended up a fan.
Kind of fun to hear one of the early ventures into prog rock.
Ska is too narrow a label for the range of musical sounds and arrangements here. Sometimes I heard New Orleans jazz, sometimes mariachi. Overall quirky and brilliant.
Melodic and pleasant but didn’t really stand out for me.
I feel as if I should like this more than I do. I was a little bored, tbh. Maybe it’s better appreciated live? Or maybe I am just so conditioned to funk’s use in pop that the unadulterated thing is too concentrated for me at this point?
I’m a Garbage fan, but this album is not as consistent as their next one. There are some hits (“Queer” is phenomenal) and a few misses, and Shirley Manson sounds a little too restrained at times.
Struggling for words to describe The Band’s sound—rootsy and rocking, spare but also emotionally resonant is the best I can come up with. “Cripple Creek” may actually be my least favorite because I’ve heard it too many times; there are so many gems other than that. “The Unfaithful Servant,” for example.
I own this album but hadn’t listened to it for at least twenty years. Orton’s voice is remarkable, and the album creates an evocative moodscape, dreamy but grounded.
Some greatness here, of course, but I was surprised by the blah quality of several of the lesser known songs.
I think of reggae as a highly specific genre, but the album reveals Bob Marley as versatile across many genres, yet always himself. I could have listened to this all day.
I was in no way prepared for this album. I thought I was getting an album’s worth of “School’s Out” the song. Instead I got something far more playful, funny, and ambitious: a true concept album. I loved the West Side story motif and so much else.
Some of it is just sonically past my limits, but other parts are more enjoyable. I definitely hear the influence they’ve had, with the combination of gauze and something more percussive and hard-driving, all the way to the likes of Billie Eilish.
I think I heard “Catch me if you can” or variant in several songs, a sharp message in this Vietnam era album, but layered in luxurious waves of folk country rock. Sidebar: I don’t like when the linked version of the album is padded with deluxe and bonus tracks. I only listened through “Space Odyssey,” the last song on the original work.
Amazing that this was the #1 Billboard album of 1973. It’s a really sophisticated blend of genres, and I liked but didn’t love it, though maybe it would grow on me with repeated listens.
Meh, I don’t know. I tried and failed to get into them decades ago. Just lost in the wall of noise for much of this album, though some moments did break through.
It’s hard to listen to this with fresh ears since, amazingly enough, all the songs are classic rock radio staples. And PF have always been too ponderous and self-important for my tastes. But they also had a keen sense for melody and the guitar work and arrangements can be stunning.
Very tough sledding for me. Only giving it a 2 to acknowledge their significance and the fact that there is some substance to the music, but this was in no way an enjoyable experience.
Daffy and kind of fun. I don’t think honestly I really understand what is going on here.
I’m not sure this needs to be on the list. It’s enjoyable enough, but it’s kind of standard issue Beck (which is good, don’t get me wrong). I can’t help but feel that there may be overlooked worthier contenders. Janet Jackson, say?
Meditative off-center melodies and lyrics. You hear the folk and other traditions he comes from, but he makes them his own. I would need to listen to this a number of times to fully appreciate.
Smart, prescient, uncompromising—but also just great beats.
Really not a standout, in hindsight. “Stop” is probably the best song on the album.
Perfect music for Thanksgiving prep. Love the Cold War vibe that is both spacey and swingy.
Illmatic has it all: Nas’s gritty, real lyrics and incredible flow; nonstop hooks; jazzy, cool arrangements. Still the rap album to beat.
I was working a temp job in 1987 just as this album was breaking, and my slightly older teenage coworker told me a story about partying with Guns n Roses which I wish I had written down. Anyway, this has not held up very well, imo. A lot of the songs sound, well, juvenile. It’s getting three stars because it also has three enduring classics.
Part of the problem here for me is lack of context (which I don’t have time to rectify), but I didn’t find this terribly compelling or interesting.
I enjoyed it in an atmospheric way, and I appreciate its political assertiveness, but it didn’t make a big impression.
I did not own this album back in the day, though like everyone, I knew each of its many hits. But I was really kind of blown away by how strong this is all the way through. Her voice is a wonder: it can do all kinds of things and she’s not afraid to make it really flawed, like, appropriately, on “Perfect.” The album is a template for the singer songwriters who came in her wake. No Taylor Swift without Alanis.
Soundgarden coaxes a space where pop, rock, punk, and metal can co-exist. That’s one way of describing grunge, I guess. Tuneful songs and Chris Cornell’s voice make it all cohere.
Solid, well-crafted collection that is pretty palatable to a non-metal head (me).
I missed the boat on this (and anything country adjacent, for that matter) in the 80s. There’s something so fresh and refreshing about this album, even almost 40 years later.
I like the musical theater vibe of many of these songs, and “Panic in Detroit” is pretty amazing.
Sounds a bit like warmed over Sgt Peppers. Not really doing it for me.
Okay, interesting to hear the early version of ZZ Top. I knew only “La Grange.”
I knew a bunch of these songs from classic rock radio (thank you, Labor Day/Memorial Day countdowns) but hearing as a collection was pretty stupendous. The singing harmonizes with the guitars and the guitars battle and play. This may be the apotheosis of guitar god rock.
Smooth and yes, spacey. Even a little playful. I liked it.
She takes control over every song and doesn’t let go.
I’m a Rufus Wainwright fan: I love his voice, his theatricality, and the meandering, intricate quality of many of his songs. But I do not think this album belongs on this list. It’s fine, but just blah, compared to his other work, let alone to a body of great albums.
What a treat. So accessible and even catchy without sacrificing complexity and polyphony.
Some great songs here—the live album is a little bit hard to compare to a regular one.
More mediocre British pop. Found it very boring; my family was begging me to stop listening in the car.
I wasn’t particularly impressed, though the energy was fun on some songs.
Thanks, generator, for this sparkly gift.
This is a debut that snaps and crackles. The punk energy is palpable, but the sound is more diverse than just punk. Chrissy Hynde is really one of a kind.
This band has never connected for me. “Jeeper” is perhaps the best of the lot.
More metally / hard rock, less punk than I was expecting, though the generator is teaching me that those lines were very porous in the 70s. I can’t say I really enjoyed most of these songs, though.
Has a pastiche effect, some of it successful, though some parts also just feel a little betwixt and between.
Just okay for me. Hard to live up to someone like Aretha, whose album we listened to recently.
My heart sank when I saw this album, fearing more brit pop, but this is pretty good. I didn’t fully appreciate the apocalyptic theme or whatever it was, but there are good hooks and lots of fun callbacks to all kinds of bands and genres from the 70s and 80s.
Sometimes I find it difficult to really listen attentively to Motown doo-wop because it sounds like the landscape of life, literally the background. This has some of that quality, but also songs that make you sit up and take notice.
Rock of all flavors mixes here, sometimes even verging on the incoherent.
Lots of fun: airy but also somehow grounded, and always delightfully bizarre.
I can’t get past the silly parody version of The Monkees. These songs sound like burlesques of 60s sounds.
