Express Yourself is a real bop. Also enjoyed the title track, F*** the Police, I Ain't tha 1, and Something 2 Dance 2. I understand this album is "important", but I greatly prefer the later rap waves with more melody and sampled music.
Much vibier than I had given Björk’s other work credit for! I first became aware of her circa 2007 when I was in my “rip music off my friends’ older brothers’ laptops” era, but I never really connected with Björk as an artist until now. The Debut album is full of passion, much more emotional than the other early-90s Euro dance stuff I’ve listened to. I enjoyed it.
Listening notes:
- Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are is giving Cruella de Vil (edit: Mel Leven paid homage to Monk with the Cruella song for the Disney film)
- Sonny Rollins is IN FORM
- Pannonica is where the swing really comes and gets ya.
- I'd say that hard bop is better with Monk on the keys.
I still remember how David Bowie released this album two days before his death. We lost him too soon :(
Loved:
- Black Star (an odyssey of a title track)
- Lazarus (saxophone and vibey guitar!)
- Dollar Days (more sax, more love)
- I Can't Give Everything Away (the plaintive harmonica moved me to tears, and the lyrics felt like a swan song to us all)
Felt fine about:
- Sue (a fun experiment that mostly works for me)
Did not love:
- 'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore (terrible title, and just a little too melodically dissonant)
- Girl Loves Me (she may love me, but I don't love this song)
Overall I'm really impressed with how experimental Bowie still was in the twilight of his 60s / his life.
None of the Doors songs I’m familiar with were on this album, but the record knits together nicely and is fun to listen to. I’d happily spin it again.
I know how influential Kraftwerk is on many artists that I love, and what they’re doing here with electronic instruments in 1978 is ground breaking, but it’s not an album I’m putting in my regular rotation.
Can you even imagine being around in 1977 and experiencing all of this music in real time?
This is some big, atmospheric, prog rock, and that is my speed. I especially love the Solsbury Hill/Modern Love section, and then the last two tracks. Peter is big and beautiful in his vision. He’s one of the real geniuses of our age. Super fun album, which I feel good about now, but may revise later when we listen to some of his other work.
I’ve had a soft spot for Astor ever since I watched 12 Monkeys in high school. I love the zany sprawl of his bandoneon playing. Really enjoyed this one. I’d still give the edge to his other album, Tango: Zero Hour, but strong output here. I’ve already come back to listen again.
If this isn’t a 5, my rating scale might be broken. From that first organ note on Like a Rolling Stone, you can feel this record declaring a new attitude. Dylan pours himself into every track, gushing forth with his discontents. Breathtaking work. Important for the time, but still important for today.
Not my preferred style of rock, but it's close to a lot of sounds I love. I'm picking up a post-grunge Soundgarden feel, years before lighter-weight acts like Jet and The Hives would arrive on the scene. This album must have been a breath of fresh air for the culture, given that this was getting released during that late 90s "rock is in crisis" period before The Strokes brought rock and roll back in 2001.
The first few songs felt too raw for my enjoyment. Standout favorites were How to Handle a Rope, You Can't Quit Me Baby, and Spiders and Vinegaroons (which was only on the 2011 reissue, I'm now reading). The musicianship was good, but I wanted more interesting lyrics. I remember exactly zero lyrical ideas, 4 hours after listening. That's an issue.
PS - I Was a Teenage Hand Model is a hilarious song title.
You're a 1980s yuppie stockbroker with slicked-back hair and a condo on the 17th floor. Your cellphone is the size of a brick. You work all day in FiDi for a dream that slowly recedes, year by year. What is it all for? Sometimes it feels like a line dance, this corporate hustle; well, that's just the Walk of Life.
You're chasing love too. She has big volume hair, teased and sprayed to the heavens with Aqua Net. Sketches of saxophone wrap you both in a cold hug as she breaks your heart again. Oh well. Nothing new on that front. Why Worry? There's always tomorrow in Reagan's America.
The streets whisper as you walk down their narrowing corridor in fading light. You can’t win this game, but you are not alone. A host of yuppies joins you on the twilight boulevard. You draw strength from one other, Brothers in Arms.
With these daily albums, I've been excited to experience the great artists I've been hearing about my whole life, but have never actually listened to. Patti Smith is a perfect example: I know she's huge in the culture, I know she wrote a great book called Just Kids, but that's all I know.
This album is punk incarnate (and it might be the very first punk album??). It's not just the music; it's Patti herself. She's like Dylan in her poetry and rough-around-the-edges singing voice, but her style is all her own. On Birdland, she asks "am I all alone in this generation?" and begs for someone to "please take me up, don't leave me here". That lyric touched me in its raw sincerity.
This is not an album I'm going to spin regularly. But it is an album I'm going to rate highly for its courage and clarity.
There was a very funny cluster of dudes in 9th grade who competed on how many guitar notes they could play per second. For them, the Messiah of Shred was Eddie Van Halen. Listening to him obliterate the fretboard throughout this album, I can understand why.
Super fun record. Surprisingly singable! Runnin’ with the Devil, Feel Your Love Tonight, and Ice Cream Man were my highlights.
The short story is this: I cannot stand Anonhi’s (nee Antony’s) vibrato voice. I understand the acclaim and the comparisons to Nina Simone, but I don’t like it.
This weekend put me in a mood for blunt takes. So here you go: this is forgettable garage rock. It wasn’t hard on the ears, but it didn’t stand out. Meanwhile, it annoyed me to have two white noise songs at the end of a 66-minute album. Don’t do that.
Pure joy. I was dancing yesterday in the office kitchen. I couldn’t help myself. I Zimbra was my favorite new find.
Talking Heads is the band that opened my teenage mind, formed a deep connection point between me and my dad, and inspired many of my own songwriting experiments. And on this album, I was smiling non-stop.
King Contrary Man had a really enjoyable breakdown; that was probably my favorite song. Rick Rubin’s fingerprints are everywhere (clean sound mixing and crisp instrumentation), but “Born to Be Wild” is a huge swing and miss. Terrible cover.
Edit, one week later: it wasn't that good, now that I think back on it. Knocking a star off.
I learned via Wikipedia that this was the first album purchased by Barack Obama. I love that fact.
Man, Talking Book is just a winner, through and through. Stevie was 22 years old, releasing his 15th album! You have the two big well-known hits (You Are the Sunshine of My Life and Superstition), but I think I most enjoyed my introduction to the other tracks: Tuesday Heartbreak, Big Brother, Blame It On the Sun, and I Believe – especially I Believe – are really lovely. Stevie is giving us love songs, move-on-after-love songs, protest songs... breaking archetypes and stretching his wings all at once.
As much as the label seemed to haunt him, Brian Wilson was a genius. For the second day in a row, we're listening to a 22-year-old at the height of his powers. I have always found Beach Boys songs, especially the later work, to possess an almost mystic longing. It sounds like pop - but it's deeper than pop.
No skips on this album, dazzling arrangements, and I really enjoyed the early cut of Help Me, Rhonda (more stripped down and uke-forward than the smash hit single version released later in 1965). I feel like I can hear shades of Pet Sounds building in the background on the second half.
I came in totally blind and had no idea what I was getting into. But wow... as Fela counted to 3 on "Let's Start" and those first brassy Hammond organ notes roared to life, my spirit soared. This has the juice!
Love the albums we got this week. A mix of comfort classics + introductions to musicians I had never heard of.
Très chic! Every song pops. Disco is one of my favorite genres, and this album is stellar from top to bottom. I already feel the pull to return.
We need another 3 Bar Saturday that includes a disco club.
Nostalgic 5/5 for me, which I may revise down to a 4 later. I remember buying Dear Science on iTunes in the fall of 2008, a few weeks before I got my driver’s license. All of my friends were obsessed with TV on the Radio, and none of us could believe how good this new record was.
It’s Pavlovian to listen to now, bringing me right back to those carefree high school days where freedom felt like having the car for the night and a little bit of money in my pocket. Halfway Home still opens as powerfully as the first time I heard it all those years ago. That sweet bass line on the 3rd verse of Crying? Still hits.
Funniest new thing I noticed was how explicitly sexual the closing track Lover’s Day is. That went way over my head back in the day.
Finally upgrading to 5 stars after starting at 3. I have to tip my hat to Amelia for the influence here. Rap isn’t the genre I naturally gravitate to, but Illmatic has a way of growing on you. It’s one of the only albums from this exercise for which I keep craving more listens.
I didn’t feel this way at the start, but it started to click as I biked through Chinatown one night with It Ain't Hard to Tell playing. The album's production is great -- the trumpets and record scratch effects feel just right for that classic East Coast rap sound -- and Nas has a silky lyricism that reminds me of The Roots' Black Thought.
My original review said that getting a 3. from me for a rap album was an accomplishment… and now we’re at a 5. Illmatic is one of the stone cold classics across any genre, but now it’s my favorite rap album too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo625D7pBfA - the Penguin Cafe Orchestra later provided the soundtrack for a modern dance video inside of a 1989 Mister Rogers' Neighborhood episode. You really can't make this stuff up.
I discovered this album in the last two weeks, by total coincidence. "The Sound of Someone You Love" has been on heavy rotation in my 'relax + focus' playlist at work and at home. It's a gorgeous song, an earworm, and we'd be talking about a masterpiece album if the other songs were in the same ballpark. Some of them are: Penguin Cafe Single, Hugebaby, and Chartered Flight. I loved the feeling of getting lost in their intricate melodies.
But the other songs, the "Zopf" tracks (which had a larger lineup of musicians playing), were a bit harder for me to get into. Too experimental, too dissonant, even though I can appreciate the genre-bending between classical chamber music and sort of an avant-garde folk sound. The Zopf tracks feel like a separate album, one that doesn't mesh as well with the other four songs, which are more conventionally melodic.
Mariachi Mystery Orchestra 🌵🏜️
I really like the way this album creates a world of its own and pulls you right in. When I was 13, I tried writing a coming-of-age thriller novel that took place in Flagstaff, Arizona. This would have been the perfect soundtrack to it: Desert Noir, starring Pedro Pascal.
Hellll yeah. For hiphop, this is more my vibe: melodic with good groove. My favorites were Work It and Back in the Day (really dug the main hook on this one). Missy is one of the real ones.
Didn’t think I knew anything about The Prodigy, but I definitely knew Smack My Bitch Up (iconic club track) and a couple of others from some dance/electronic playlists.
I can appreciate how this album was taking electronic music forward in the 90s. It starts strong, but the songs start feeling really repetitive toward the end. More variety (even just switching up the drum loop, come on) would have helped a lot.
Wow. I loved this. After a year of my brother priming me on trip hop, Maxinquaye caught me in the ideal moment to lean in and enjoy every song.
This is an ALBUM, complete in its vision and construction. The lyrics complement the music perfectly. From the trance-like tones of Overcome, to the barebones bass of Hell is Round the Corner, to the vibey goodness of Aftermath, I savored it all – and I’ll be coming back on the reg.
I first heard Remind Me on a 2006 Geico commercial: the caveman on the airport moving walkway. This is fun elevator music, I remember thinking.
19 years later, listening to the whole album? Yeah, my teenage take holds up, but “elevator music” is selling it short. If Eple, In Space, or Poor Leno comes on at the club, I’m dancing to it. See you there 🕺🪩 💃
The perfect way to listen to this is walking down city streets. I did that my second time through and it brought the music to life. All of the Ray Charles richness is on display here: we start with big band and then taper down into the sultry crooning as we round the corner into the second half. Let the Good Times Roll, indeed! That track and Am I Blue were my faves.
23 musical ideas in 52 minutes. Thundercat is a walking brainstorm! Can’t wait to see him live at OSL.
My favorites were Jethro, Show You the Way (featuring my favorite musical snack, Michael McDonald 😍), and Them Changes. Honorable mention to I Am Crazy for getting an entire vibe across in 26 seconds. This album was so fun. I also love the cover art: beautiful photography with great light.
I didn't need to hear this before I died. Felt like a waste of time, other than the three-song run from Transylvania Blues to Tennessee. David Berman's off-key singing annoyed me and the music underwhelmed.
Pleasant feelings, summer days, love in the air. This brings me back to my Ireland trip last summer. I’m always here for some blue-eyed soul 😊
It took 34 albums, but we now have our first repeated artist: Fela Kuti.
Zombie is a groovy Afrobeats listen, but the sound didn't jump out of the speakers in the same way that Fela’s "Live!" album with Ginger Baker did. It's more mellow and refined, but it doesn’t match the infectious energy of his earlier work
The best parts sounded reminiscent of Bowie. And what do you know: this was a Bowie collaboration. Call me crazy, but I’d rather just have Bowie.
I’ll give it a couple of stars for being interesting music, but I think this is another example of prioritizing experimentation over payoff. For an album with so much flow, I never found my entry point.
Some older kids at school once asked me if I liked Lynyrd Skynyrd, and I said “yeah, I think his music is pretty good.” They all laughed at me, and you know what? It’s one of those things I’ll never live down.
Anyways, this album is southern fried rock and I like it. Cliche or no cliche, Free Bird is so good.
James Taylor is a national treasure, and this is a sweet baby fastball of an album. I've loved Fire and Rain since I was young, and it’s surrounded on this record by gem after gem.
Robert Wyatt sounds like a dehydrated water chestnut.
The only thing saving this album from 1 star is that odyssey of a third song, which was inventive and very fun.
Ah, so this is the music that Spinal Tap was making fun of. Got it.
I don’t mind heavy metal, but this album is just hell and death on every song, with guttural yells in place of singing. I couldn’t wait for it to end.
A good album that I’d listen to again, especially when I’m wanting to feel a little wistful in the San Francisco fog. Beyond the lyrics, the music actually sounds like the breakup of a long-term relationship, which is good work from Beck. My main knock on Sea Change is that the individual songs don’t distinguish themselves nearly enough.
I’ve never been able to get into R.E.M., and this album didn’t really help the cause. Michael Stipe’s voice kind of annoys me, and the mandolin soft-rock sound isn’t my cup of tea.
Good artists teach you, through their work, how to experience their work. Tom Waits does exactly that. This was so unique and interesting: cafe society jazz with a layer of grizzled beat poetry on top. It was the wrong decision to listen to this on the airplane, so I paused. Leaving it for this morning’s coffee and stroll through the San Francisco fog? That was the right decision. Tom Waits, you’re a good teacher.
I can't believe this is Cyndi Lauper's debut album. She shows up on day 1 with all of the punky panache that we recognize her for today. This is the part of the 80s I love. Cyndi > Madonna, forever and ever and ever.
I had a great time with this record. Time after Time is one of my all-time favorite songs, and Girls Just Want to Have Fun deserves all of its acclaim (and is on the short list of songs you recognize from the first note played), but I also really enjoyed the opening song and When You Were Mine (an inspired Prince cover). That being said, I didn't click as much with the second half of the album, so I'm sticking with a 4.
A day-one album with zero skips. I remembered almost every lyric on the first listen this morning, which makes sense when I think about the hours I spent in the mid-2000s learning Clocks, The Scientist, and Green Eyes on piano/guitar. Huge influence on my own songwriting. Hard to overstate how seismic this music was for me and my friends.
As much as I roll my eyes at the current place Coldplay occupies in the culture, A Rush of Blood to the Head holds up so well, and it’s clear to me much it shaped my adult taste in music.
A good ambient album overall. I really liked The Big Ship. The other songs were interesting at points, but not as engaging and immersive. I could see myself listening to this at work during focus time. A lawful good 3 for me.
Full of timeless hits, raw sexual energy, and general love for life. I really need to see this movie to experience this album in full, but even without seeing it, I can feel the genius of Prince through the speakers. I wish this was something I grew up on, but my parents (probably wisely) thought I should experience Prince once I was older. Well, here we are, and Purple Rain is excellent.
A no-skips album for the ages. Maybe it's more than a feeling, maybe I'm born with it (or maybe it's Maybelline), but I really love classic rock (largely because my dad loves classic rock). And this is maybe the best beginning-to-end classic rock album I've ever heard. Beautiful, clean instrumentation, and an array of songs that all sound like they belong on the greatest hits compilation, but nope they're all on the DEBUT record for Boston.
My favorite new finds were Peace of Mind, Foreplay / Long Time (holy shit that was god rock, an actual space quest), and Hitch a Ride (excellent range of dynamics, with the song starting smaller and building masterfully to that final crescendo).
The world must have felt a little empty in 1971 as the Beatles were breaking up. Harry Nilsson seems like he's trying to pick up where Lennon-McCartney left off, but it sounds like minor-league work. I did laugh out loud when I realized that this is the Coconut song guy.
The air left my lungs as The Trinity Session swung into gear. Where did this album come from, and how did it arrive in 1988?
This is pitch-perfect atmospheric country-folk rock, if such a genre exists. Any of these songs could have been used on Twin Peaks, or a David Lynch western noir movie if he had ever bothered to make one. The plaintive longing you can hear across each of the songs is devastatingly sad, but what a mood it cultivates. I'm so glad I discovered the Cowboy Junkies through this listening exercise.
Eric Clapton is a figure I've heard about my whole life without hearing his music. Well, now I get the hype, because this hit me right in the sweet spot. We got the blues, boys!
Bell Bottom Blues, Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad, and Layla were the standouts. The main knock on this album is that it is LONG, but I'm not docking points for that. A long album is a great thing if you're buying an LP in 1970. It's only a bad thing if you're living in 2025 and trying to listen to 1001 albums in the midst of working too much and traveling too often.
I was excited to listen to Surfer Rosa because I saw Where Is My Mind? on the track list. Sadly, that ended up being the only song I enjoyed. I'm not sure how to define the Pixies genre (college rock? surf country punk rock?), but I'm sure that I don't like it.
Wild Wood is an enigma. It sneaks up on you. I kept fading in and out of paying attention, but the music kept grabbing me. I somehow feel this could become one of my favorite albums if I kept listening. The closing tracks - Shadow of the Sun and Holy Man (Reprise) - are especially delightful. It doesn't feel like 1993 deserved this music, not least because Paul Weller came of age in the 70s.
‘Lads on tour' 80s pop? No thank you. This sounds like a major-key-only tribute band to The Cure playing cover songs with whiny vocals at a minor-league hockey game in Dayton, Ohio. And they didn't even have the decency to include Come On Eileen.
Hard pass. 1 star represents how I feel about this particular slice of the 80s.
I generally enjoyed this. Neil Young is the most familiar member of the quartet to me, but the CSNY sound is bigger here than Young's solo work, sitting somewhere between the two 70s sounds I grew up on: singer-songwriter and full-on rock.
This album will grow on me. For now, it's a 3. I plan to come back and work my way deeper into it.
Very weird, but also very good? I am conflicted on how to feel. The persona created on this album is a doctor that preys on women – blegh. But the rap flow and music production is super enjoyable, and I felt entirely taken with this smooth 90s East Coast hiphop sound.
If I treat this as the musical equivalent of a horror movie, designed to transgress our moral sensibilities, I really liked it. I don’t agree with the lyrical themes, but I had a great time with the record.
The sound of Incubus brings me back to the days of listening to P.O.D. in friends’ basements, but I’m not really nostalgic for nu metal. There wasn’t much on this album that stood out to me, and the lyrics are a little whine-boy for my taste.
I love this Donnie Darko soundtrack.
For real, though: SFTBC feels huge and atmospheric and eternal. When I was growing up, I came to realize that Tears for Fears belonged to the cool part of the 80s, the New Wave branch inspired by Joy Division. Even as a teenager, I could tell that Shout was a monumental song, Everybody Wants to Rule the World a melodramatic anthem, and Head Over Heels heartbreaking in the love it described. But despite very good familiarity with the hits, I’d never heard this album from beginning to end until now. I’m really pleased with it. It flows nicely between bigger and smaller numbers, and there’s a strong sense that the individual parts are there in service of the whole. This would have been one of my favorite albums when I was 16, no doubt. As it stands, it’s a really really good record.
I took Tarkus on a bike ride by the Bay and had a good time with it. The 20 minute prog rock title track was my favorite, but the quality dipped for me on the Side 2 songs. One little tangent: I enjoyed picking out the influence on this album (The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, even Little Richard!) as well as the music it influenced in turn (Rush and Genesis).
Setting aside the impact of Ozzy's death, it was such a treat to listen to Paranoid again. In my opinion, it doesn't really matter if you like heavy metal or not. This album is still going to work for you.
The guitar, bass, and drums are each so cleanly composed across all of the songs. Ozzy doesn't do a ton of singing on this album, but when he does, it feels just right on top of the music's tapestry. And there's a ton of variety across the song styles. My favorite is Planet Caravan, a gem of a song with lots of blues and psychedelic roots on display.
I love this record. Thank you, generator gods.
Finally some house music on the 1001 albums generator, let's go!
It's really cool that this peaked at #3 on the UK Albums charts (unsurprisingly, it didn't even chart in the US when it was released there later in 1995). A poster child example of music that Europeans embraced long before Americans were able to wrap their heads around the genre.
The album itself is enjoyable enough, and very good background listening at work. But compared to Underworld and Aphex Twin, my EDM ride or dies, none of these songs other than Melt (loved this one) got their hooks into me. Maybe that changes with future listens, but for now this is a solid 3, nothing more.
Damn. Michael Kiwanuka is cool.
This feels like an album in the classic sense: connected songs that tell a sequenced story. It defies genre, though there are dashes of jazz, soul, funk, and pinches of chamber pop throughout. And most of all? It's patient. My listening experience was one of being led by the hand through a new land of sonic expanses. I felt good with this album.
3 of the most famous songs out there, in a row, on the same album. Iconic. It would be crazy to see Elton live during this period. Absolute energy freak.
The weak spot is the second half of the album, with a bunch of bouncy tracks that all have the Elton John sound but aren't particularly unique. I mean, this is not the worst problem to have: the man was bouncing off of the walls with ideas. But I would have preferred the punchier, 40-minute version, with the A-sides plus Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting.
The Go-Go’s! A band I’m aware of as important to music history, but I couldn’t have named one of their songs before today (I recognized We Got the Beat, but didn’t know it was a Go-Go’s song). Forcing functions like this are what excites me about the 1001 albums list. I’m broadening my music knowledge, baby.
As an album, this is full of cohesive but enjoyably distinct songs. It’s new wave, yes, but the most bubblegum pop version of new wave I’ve encountered. That being said, after two full listens logged, I’m having fun, but it’s not sticking with me as much as I would have hoped. I think I kept hoping for a centerpiece anthem that never arrived.
When we talk about bands that created genres, and about albums that serve as soundtracks for the culture, you can’t look past Rage Against the Machine. In fact, when it comes to the sound of the 90s, two specific albums come to my mind: Nirvana’s Nevermind and Rage’s self-titled debut. The decade isn’t the same to me without this music, and neither are its movies: The Matrix immediately sprang to mind as Wake Up began.
This albums works so well in balancing anger with clarity about where the rage is directed: against the power structures of law enforcement, education, and authoritarian government. Tom Morello’s guitar hums with energy, and Zach de La Rocha’s vocals are a firehose spray of political poetry. RATM appealed to me when Owen showed me Bulls on Parade when I was 13, and it still appeals to me at 32, even though I’m now very much part of the machine being raged against.
Damn - just a completely unified album, with comprehensive thematic vision and stunning execution from beginning to end. This is a live wire of violent electricity, a truly great record.
It took me a couple of listens to realize it, but this is definitely a cut above standard 80s pop.
The catchy music did more for me than the lyrics. Love is a Sign actually sounds like falling in love with those harmonica and guitar lines, and the instrumental breakdown at the end of You Can’t Say No Forever had me bobbing my head along. The best vocal melody is on Streets of Your Town, with that “round and round, up and down” refrain. Quite good.
Overall, this is a solid album that I’m glad I listened to. But it also made me realize how good U2 was compared to the rest of the 80s.
The definition of music you want playing in your home as background to something else -- cooking, cleaning, working, having company over. As Latin cafe society music, it's beautiful. But compared to Gipsy Kings, say, this music does not enter the foreground. It's a playlist for your crib, not something you're going to put on as the main attraction.
Really enjoyed some of the songs: Schizophrenia, Catholic Block, Pacific Coast Highway, and White Cross all felt like a bridge between Joy Division and Interpol, which basically leads to the indie rock of the 2000s that I came of age listening to. Now I get why a lot of the bands I love cite Sonic Youth as a major influence. But the noise rock songs found elsewhere on this record are not my jam. For some of these tracks I shall return, but I’m probably not coming back for another full album listen.
It sounds great. Totally my vibe. You can hear so many early sketches of funk, soul, r&b, and hip hop in this music, like seedlings of genres that are yet to sprout. I just had trouble getting all the way into it because I didn’t carve out enough space to sit and focus. My fault, not the music’s.
Horrible band name, ridiculous album title, ugly cover art, terrible music. The best moments were when the music became so stupid that I started laughing. Thank you so much for making 75 minutes of hot dog flavored water. I’d pay money to guarantee that I never encounter any of this again.
I’ve heard about psychedelic music before, but I didn’t understand what it was until now. The Dark Side of the Moon is atmospheric and humongous in its sound and scope. It sings about the world, but then it offers you a doorway through to the other side of a new experience. Far out, man. This album is cool. I get it now.
Once in a Lifetime is a perfect song, maybe the single most impactful song I've ever heard. Any album that includes it is going to be pretty close to a perfect album. Enough said.
Below average for me. I like Afrobeats and house, but this feels like kid stuff in comparison to what came before (Fela Kuti) and what has come afterward (too many to choose from, but WizKid comes to mind first). The end of the 80s produced a lot of boring beats, in hip hop and dance music especially.
I always thought Jimi Hendrix was just a rock god. I didn’t realize he was also a blues god. I really dug this album.
I think I’m too square to enjoy punk. This had nothing to offer me beyond the other punk I’ve listened to. Give me the Ramones or the Sex Pistols, but a big skip on this.
I never realized it when I was listening growing up, but when you boil the sound down to its most essential parts, the White Stripes are punk! Seven Nation Army, Girl You Have No Faith in Medicine, and Ball & Biscuit are the most explicit examples of this, but the feeling lingers even over the slower tracks.
I was really impressed by 1) how much of this album I remembered from my teens and 2) how good it still sounds after 20 years. Great blend of thumping rock and folksy storytelling in the songs.
Lots of good music owes some credit to this Tom Tom Club sound. Good funk and lots of fun. Genius of Love is a classic, very recognizable from its use as a sample in Mariah Carey's Fantasy. Under the Boardwalk had me bobbing my head pleasantly at work. Overall, the record moves just a little too slowly for my full enjoyment, but this is a solid entry in the album canon.
What an unbelievable follow up to What's Going On. In his sophomore effort after breaking free of Motown's creative control, Marvin makes the seamless transition from social consciousness to sexual awakening, and everyone goes: "yep -- after speaking truth to my society, now you're ministering to my libido." One of the greatest sonic segues we'll ever see.
32 minutes of hot and heavy soul, soaked in the sweet honey of desire: a real garden of delights for the senses. Felt unlawful to listen to in the morning. You just get the urge to make incredible love to this music... after all, that's what Marvin would have wanted from us.
The 1001 album exercise has shown me that the double-edged sword of growing up with Bowie (and Elton and many other rock stars of this era) is that I fell in love with the greatest hits without ever listening to the albums they came from. As a result, I'm sometimes disappointed by the "lesser" songs that I'm not familiar with, at least at first. I really enjoyed this album, but I need to spend more time absorbing it before it can earn my full five stars.
It's a big step up from Germs, but the new wave that I like is more of the synthesized-sound of Talking Heads, Duran Duran, Blondie, Depeche Mode, Joy Division, and Tears for Fears. This is still too punky for my liking.
Tangentially, I got a big kick out of the names of Magazine's other albums: The Correct Use of Soap; Secondhand Daylight; Magic, Murder and the Weather; and No Thyself.
Surprised by how much I liked the whole album! I think I actually prefer it to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, which suffers from a bloated runtime. This one, on the other hand, never loses its mojo. I especially liked All the Nasties with its gang vocal bridge refrain. Tiny Dancer, of course, is also a certified bop.
Long time “aware that the Everly Brothers exist”, but first time listener!
In a word, I enjoyed this. It’s basically the live skiffle band at the 1955 prom in Hill Valley: Marty McFly is trying to avoid Biff Tannen so he can fix up his own mom and dad, and the Everly Brothers are crooning “Earth Angel.”
From a music history angle, you can hear so many early sounds and styles on this album that would later be refined and deepened by the likes of the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and Simon and Garfunkel. I did enjoy this, but I'll round down to a 3 while saving my 4s and 5s for the acts that later built on this early, good work.
Pretty good listening, but nothing special or attention grabbing. From my Wikipedia reading, I learned that Hugh Masekela is important for bringing a uniquely African flavor to jazz and for writing several protest songs that were important in the South African anti-apartheid movement... pretty cool!
This album didn't send me anywhere amazing, but it's fun to hear some early Afrobeat influence on a genre that I enjoy (jazz). I hope we get some proper Ethio-jazz at some point: Mulatu Astatke or Hailu Mergia would be awesome.
Inside this Sonic Youth album, there are two wolves 🐺
The good wolf comes out on songs like Starpower and Secret Girl, when the music dissolves into a melodic soundscape of exploration. You don’t know where you are anymore, but you like it.
The bad wolf, predominant on E.V.O.L., sounds like the ritual slaughter of electric cattle.
Given how obsessed I was with indie rock in the 2000s, it’s strange that I never really gave much mind to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. This would have been a teenage favorite album if I had found it when it was released. It has the same disco infusion of the Killers’ Day and Age, and Heads Will Roll and Zero are magnificent tracks.
All that said, I just don’t see myself coming back to this. Indie rock is a time capsule to me now, tinged with nostalgia. I go back to feel the old feels, but there’s no appetite for new additions to the collection.
Complicated feelings. On the one hand, this album was likely the first exposure to African world music for Western audiences, so in that sense, it's groundbreaking. But it now seems clear that Malcolm McLaren lifted many of the musical ideas for Duck Rock from the South African artists who performed on the recordings but weren't credited on the album. Really tough reality, since I was rather charmed by the goofy, eclectic range of songs on this LP. There's some really fun early hip hop and African / world music here: Buffalo Girls and Soweto are the standouts, but Duck for the Oyster is laughable — it sounds like a country jamboree song performed by Chuck E. Cheese.
Was ready to give this a 4 for unexpected freshness and, most critically, for not being another punk album, but I'm downgrading to a 2 because Malcolm McLaren is a culture vulture.
I've never enjoyed Willie Nelson's voice all that much. His singing sounds to me like he's untying a knot in his throat.
That being said, the instrumentation is really nice, though it's subtle. This album fits nicely into a rainy day curled up with a book on the couch.
Early forerunners of the Strokes, 25 years later. Marquee Moon itself is a good song, but the others feel to me like more of the same post-punk rock that we've been getting ad nauseum from this list.
This is good punk (good singing voice, melodic songs, understandable lyrics), but I don't like punk, so this still gets a 3 from me.
When I was a preteen, at least 50% of the music on my iPod had to be Christian music. Call me crazy, but I don’t think this album would have qualified.
Incredible lyrical content by GZA and superb production by RZA. Samurai sagas and rap is such a good combo. As soon as I finished my first listen, I went back to the beginning for round two. This is hip hop at its finest.
I get major nostalgic feelings when I listen to Stairway to Heaven. I still remember my dad showing it to me on a roadtrip to Georgia when I was 13. He raved about how it transitions mid-song from a 70s folk ballad to a true rock song with one of the best solos out there. I'll never forget him saying "these guys were considered pretty heavy rock for my day," which is a hilarious statement in retrospect. And you know what? I'm in my early 30s and I still think STH is a top 10 all-time song. That's saying something.
This album is just one of the absolute classics: high and low dynamics, philosophical lyrics, and a combination of sounds and production styles that launched a thousand imitators. Pretty easy 5 for me.
This is why I love the 1001 album generator: because once in a while you come across an album that you love, but which you never would have heard of or listened to otherwise. This was funky, delightful, psychedelic, and orchestral all at once.
This sounds so much better, more swingy and pure, than the corporate 80s pop of Brothers in Arms, the other Dire Straits album we’ve reviewed so far. Mark Knopfler’s guitar is so sweet here, especially on Sultans of Swing.
