1001 Albums Summary

Really fun album. I'll admit country isn't usually my thing, but I enjoyed At Folsom Prison a bit more than this one. Maybe it's the recording quality (this one sounds more dated somehow compared to AFP) or just the song selection. Either way, the best part of listening to both of these albums is definitely the banter between songs. AFP is a 4 for me, so I'd give this one a solid 3.

One of the best debuts of all time and remains my favorite REM album.

An important album, but for me it didn't do anything, and the covers feel like they didn't really add anything meaningful to the songs

Idk... I guess it's fine and objectively like a 3/5, there are a few good songs on it (Big Sur, One Horse Town come to mind after the initial listen), but largely it's pretty forgettable, filled with early 2000s indie cliches, has an overbearing California obsession and the voice is not that pleasent either. In the context of a 1001 greatest albums OAT list, I'll give this one a 2/5.

I love some of Beck's later work (Wired, Blow by Blow etc) but this one just did not do it for me.

This album starts and ends with two classics: "Young Americans" and "Fame." The rest ranges from very good ("Fascination") to solid ("Right") and pretty average/subpar ("Can You Hear Me"). Oh, and there's also a mind bogglingly awful cover of "Across the Universe." I admire Bowie’s effort to make the song his own, but this ain’t it lol All in all, this isn’t really a high point in Bowie’s career. He’d go on to release arguably the greatest three-album run in history with the Berlin Trilogy. You could even argue that some ideas on this album, especially the funk influences, would later reappear on Station to Station, where they’re much more refined and blended with more interesting Art Rock ideas. It’s hard to explain, but this album has kind of a “cheesy, but ironically cheesy” vibe at points. I know that doesn’t make much sense, but I can’t put it into words any better than that. Overall, I’d give it a solid 3.5.