I'm not eager for this style of music to be rediscovered and reconsidered, but I'm not as bitter or cynical about it as I was in my early 90s teens. The singles are undeniable, and lyrically this is grittier and riskier than most of the other 80s hair metal debris still casually lying around. I struggled to find much to enjoy outside of those singles, but I get how someone who played this tape over and over and over and over again would find their way into its nooks and crannies.

I really wanted to love this, and have tried many, many times in the past. I admire the musicianship, but it just leaves me cold. It's an example of a very good thing that's not for me.

I've somehow never given much thought to Tears For Fears outside of their singles. This was a pretty solid album front to back (though the ballads left me flat). The Genesis albums from this era have a certain hold on my imagination and I imagine if i had come to this closer to real time, it would have been formative. But will I ever listen to it again? [looks around; whispers] Probably not…

The musicianship is clear, but at some point one track was just floating into the next with no discernable unique qualities, and I think that's where jazz lives for me: Love and admire it, but there are no songs I jump up for, no songs that get stuck in my head, no songs I can't wait to revisit. The masterpieces transcend that; this wasn't one of them.

I've been listening to this since it was released in '96, and revisiting it was a joy. This kind of grunge-meets-trip-hop-meets-elliott-smith is right up my alley and this one in particular hit me at a perfect moment as I was increasingly living in the tension of inner turmoil counter-balanced with a growing sense of wonder about the world. All the melancholy and minor key dirgeness balanced with exceptionally inventive arrangements and production are still to this day pretty dang close to perfect. The Eels have gone on to have a pretty legendary run of albums, but this one will always have my heart, even though more interesting albums are ahead. That said, is this one of the 1001 albums you must hear before you die? Probably not. But I like it better than every "classic" album this list has thrown at me so far.

Thoughts I had while listening to this: "Finally, the perfect soundtrack for a lazy Sunday" "Wasn't this featured on 'NOW That's What I Call Music 32'?" "That riff just kind of tunnels its way into your brain, doesn't it?" I don't know, man. I want to be the kind of music lover that can appreciate this. I was so excited to check out an album I'd literally never heard of before that enough critics thought worthy of a list (even one as big as 1,001 albums.) But I didn't appreciate this on any level. I'm guessing it's hugely influential and there are artists I adore who were completely turned on by this. I can imagine this being a foundational record for Aphex Twin, Autechre, Whitney Houston. Oh, not Whitney Houston. Who am I thinking of? (That being said, I listened to '20 Jazz Funk Greats' and there was some actually great stuff on there.)

There's something about that riff on "Sunshine of Your Love" that makes me want to sink way down into my floor, write shitty poetry and let the whole thing take me over. It occurs to me that I'm not nearly high enough to properly enjoy this*. What to make of this one? Should an album be held captive by the heights of one song and the impossibility of sustaining that height**? Are the lows enough to knock a star off even if they're all well and good and I just don't appreciate psychedelia (and dumb British stuff like "Mother's Lament") all that much? Should I rate an album five stars because it's clearly a five-star album and therefore it deserves its flowers, or is this project personal enough that I ought to just stick to my gut and give it four stars? I did just give an Eels album five stars ostensibly for shits and giggles, and this is certainly more deserving of that rating. But, I am nothing if not inconsistent about my music tastes. What am I rambling on about now? Maybe I *am* high enough to properly enjoy this***? * I'm not high at all, just for clarification. ** Though Jimi did it three times right around now. *** Still not high at all.

It doesn't elevate the form like "Is This It?", "Turn On the Bright Lights" or "Fever to Tell," but it's holding up well and it did what it set out to do as well as one could, no?

Another perfectly fine album that seems like an odd inclusion in this list. Since there are better Goldfrapp albums, does that mean you need to hear MULTIPLE Goldfrapp albums before you die? That's hard to co-sign. Anyway, three stars.

Undeniable, even though it's not really for me.

Sometimes I read a review prior to listening to an album in a genre I don’t connect with in order to have some context for what makes it great. In the case of Shadowland, it was Mark Deming’s review from allmusic.com. He painted a picture of a masterpiece of country music and, since all I really knew of KD Lang was “constant craving,” I dove in expecting the water to be warm. I love many albums that fit the alt-country tag, and I grew up embedded in a town with abundant access to concerts featuring some of the genre’s most famous acts. And I can spot the magic in a Patsy Cline song and a Hank Williams album one, and some modern country like Sturgill Simpson or Kacey Musgrave has made it past my moat and taken up residence in a year-end list. All this is to say, I *want* to love this. And I even feel bad *not* loving it. But this genre just isn’t for me, despite kind of sort of seeing what Mr. Deming was going on about.

Not much to say here. The first bona fide masterpiece of this project for me and the first that lives somewhere in my own top 100/head canon shortlist. Just 11 straight shots of pure adrenaline to the system. Every time I revisit it, it gets better, and that's like 25 years of revisiting at this point.

Sure.

On one hand, this is a blessed album, overflowing with ideas and ambition and beauty. The production style influenced almost every rock band I love today. On the other hand, the ceiling on how much I could like the style of music Brian Wilson made is like a 3/5. Let's split the difference. Also, "A Mouthful of Sores" has permanently tarnished my ability to not giggle when I listen to the Beach Boys. IYKYK.

This used to be pure joy. Now it’s something else. The music is still the music. What’s always been infectious and transcendent is still infectious and transcendent. But now there’s other emotions too. Complicated, confusing, and ultimately icky emotions. The joy is compromised. And if this record is designed for peak fun as its sole reward, what’s left in its wake?

Lovely voice, some interesting arrangements, and a whole lot of songs that were appropriated, which tarnishes my ability to just enjoy the darn thing.

This one is special. It hits all of my buttons. It makes me want to go back and knock my other 5-star albums down a star. After all these years I'm still being hooked by new grooves or hearing a new lick. (By the way, I peeked at what's ahead and since it won't be coming up, let me here suggest "On the Corner" as required listening if you were into this one.)

I kind of loathe U2 most of the time, though this is one of the two U2 albums I ever spent my precious Columbia House/BMG pennies on (the other being its follow-up, Zooropa, which I adore; an opinion that I've discovered is out of step with the U2 core fanbase.) I'm fairly certain I owned this on cassette and then re-purchased a used copy of the CD later on. So, like all albums from about 91-94, there's a ton of nostalgia here since these songs made up at least some of my coming-of-age soundtrack, and "Mysterious Ways" was in the alternative MTV rotation by the time "Smells Like Teen Spirit" came to obliterate my small-town-Iowa worldview and forever change me. Anyway, the first half of this album (plus "Mysterious Ways") is big, anthemic rock at its absolute finest. Banger after banger after banger. The second half (minus "Mysterious Ways") is meandering and overproduced. It's the same production that takes the songs in the first half into the stratosphere, but since the melodies aren't strong, the heavy handedness becomes both meat and potatoes. I've often wondered what a Rick-Rubin-Wildflowers-era version of U2 would have sounded like. "Tryin' to throw your arms…" and "Ultra Violet" especially feel like they would have benefitted from taking the foot off of the arena-rock/KROQ-hit gas. But also, "Mysterious Ways" is on here. So, four stars I guess?

The sharp exit from the transcendent, world altering title track into the acoustic guitar at the beginning of "Can You Get to That" is always so jarring; I want like 34 more seconds of silence or atmosphere. But since it's P-Funk, it more or less feels at home with their entire fun-but-scattered-and-inconsistent catalog. Still, there's nothing that could have followed the opening title track that would have felt worthy of its wake. Eddie Hazel made me feel the things all the elder statesmen said guitar music could make you feel. The rest of the album ranges from decent to pretty good, but "Maggot Brain" is a minor miracle.

There's a whole rang of music from this time period that I just kind of roll my eyes at and can't really meet on its own merits -- this, Bobby McFerrin, "Kokomo." The whole thing feels inseparable from Chevy Chase mugging for the camera in the 'Al' video. That said, it's hard to hate on this album. Everything is fun and poppy, and there's clever Simon-y wordplay on most songs. Mbaqanga music is fun. But Graceland is so old fashioned, and the lyrics so rarely fit the music in any meaningful way, that it feels like Paul Simon wrote some catchy pop melodies and pasted a layer of mbaqanga music on top of it. I think I can understand why this all felt dynamic and new in 1986, and I guess pop artists get to be inspired by stuff (it seems like he at least tried to create some level of equity for the musicians he brought in to help him create this) so I shouldn't just cynically yell 'Appropriation!' like someone yelling 'Bomb!' on an airplane, but also it doesn't really inspire me to go any deeper into its influences, which … ideally it would? Also, why is this called Graceland?

Another album that hit at the right time in my life to love it well beyond its merit. "Vow," "Stupid Girl," and "Queer" are still in my personal heavy rotation. "Milk" is on a shortlist of my very favorite songs. It was fun revisiting this as a whole, though a lot of this sounds the same. At the time bringing all of these elements together at once felt groundbreaking for mainstream modern rock radio; it was as vibrant as anything in the post-Cobain era. It was fun revisiting this in whole. Bumping it up a star for its personal meaning to me.

Im a fan of reggae and many of its offshoots. And also this sucked.

One of those albums that demands you listen on good headphones as loudly as you're willing to go. You want the wall of sound to overwhelm and the gorgeous, haunting melodies to emerge and worm their way into you. I'm completely swept up by shoegaze and My Bloody Valentine is the best of the genre. I came to My Bloody Valentine very late in life -- after even this 2013 album was released -- writing them off as some kind of horror rock band that I had no interest in, so I didn't get to participate in the roller coaster of emotions that accompanied its sudden and startling release 22 years after it was begun after so many false promises and waylaid hopes. I've often wondered out loud if my whole life trajectory would have been changed by discovering Loveless in real time. Its hold on me is so complete that I imagine my younger self wandering through my hometown desperately searching for one likeminded fan of music to lay on a floor with and let the unstable tuning of the tremolo arm wash over us. The intimacy of the soft, sweet mix of Kevin and Belinda's voices buried so deep in the mix that they make you lean all the way in demand (in my mind's eye) to be pictured like the light of an early 90s indie movie projected through dusty air onto the screen of a worn-down theater that hasn't yet been scooped up by AMC. Their music lends itself to romanticizing a soundtrack to my teenage emotional turmoil, falling in love every other week, desperately wanting out of the house, longing for a place in the world that I can just be myself and not be shoved into lockers for it. mbv isn't quite the monument that Loveless is, so I don't return to it quite as often. It's essentially broken into three distinct sections. Tracks 1-3 could fit onto Loveless seamlessly. Tracks 4-6 feel like a step into something new, possibly what a proper follow-up to Loveless would have felt like in the early 90s. Tracks 7-9 are stark departures with pummeling percussion only really hinted before now on the final track of Loveless, though there it was nearly a proper dance track. Those last three tracks by nature can't sink into your psyche quite the same way and so it's taken many more listens to find their melodic heart, especially buried in "Wonder 2." I don't know that I actually like the last three tracks so much as I feel obligated to like them, though on the right day I can find them invigorating.

Never heard his before. Loved it.

An exquisite and powerful album with an iconic album cover to boot (not the one pictured here for some reason.)

There are some really stunning moments ("Golgotha" being my favorite) and while I don't know how this would ever fit into a regular rotation of music for me, I sincerely appreciated listening to it. Also, I didn't know the connection between this album and Paul Simon's Graceland. Hearing them so close to each other thanks to this project did admittedly make me appreciate Graceland a little more in hindsight, or at least appreciate Paul Simon championing them.

I have to admit that I've never once listened to a non-Toy Story Randy Newman song. It's very, very hard to hear this on its own terms and not hear some version of "You've Got a Friend In Me" on every track and I gave up trying about 20 seconds into "Every Man a King."

Boy, they sure can write an anthem, can't they? There are moments on this album where I think, "Is this one of the greatest albums ever made?" But then something else from the era will follow it -- Daydream Nation & Sign O' the Times are the same year; Surfer Rosa is a year away -- and I'll remember that U2 just doesn't turn me on or have its way with my soul. Alas.

What am I missing? This is so boring. These guys are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This is a hugely popular album and I just don’t get it at all. It doesn't even have the decency to be cheesy and fun. (Also, second album with a Chevy Chase connection so far!)

Not the kind of music I'd pull up regularly but I enjoyed hearing this. Lots of energy; would clearly have been dynamite to experience live. I got a little burnt out on it halfway through though.

I've never really connected with Johnny Cash, though I've heard this a bunch of times and admire it a great deal. The trappings of the setting and his banter are more compelling to me than the actual music, but that's no fault of Mr. Cash.

Even though I haven't spent a ton of time with this album, I felt like I knew every song by heart and every riff brought with it a flood of sense memories. When I first listened to Black Sabbath in earnest, the music felt so much less dangerous than the stuff happening in New York in the 70s that I didn't understand how they had a reputation as the church's Public Enemy No. 1. Ozzy's public image in the 90s and 00s didn't help anything. It all seemed like a parody of itself. A few years ago I listened to Master of Reality in earnest for the first time (possibly for the first time period) and it was just a right-place/right-time situation where everything clicked and I couldn't get enough. I'd spent so much time tracing the lineage of my favorite 90s bands through Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Roger Waters, and/or Page & Plant that I never fully appreciated how much more influential Black Sabbath were on some of the giants. Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots and the Smashing Pumpkins all owe a far greater debt here than to whatever was happening at CBGB's. Paranoid is one that deserves more of my attention. Aside from the ubiquitous War Pigs/Iron Man/Paranoid triumvirate, "Planet Caravan" caught me off guard in the best way, "Jack the Stripper" was a whole lot of headbangin' fun, and the sniveling vocals wrapping themselves around the monster riff on "Electric Funeral" went a long way to explaining how these guys could put the fear of lucifer into an impressionable young fundamentalist. Reserving a star because Master of Reality is ahead and Vol. 4 has, to my ears, so much more going on songwriting-wise. But this is a stone-cold classic.

There's a lot going on here. I made it halfway through and needed a break and a glass of water. Ministry freaked me out as a kid and they still freak me out a little now. That said, there’s interesting stuff here. Is it essential? Meh.

I mean, it's Abbey Road. Every song is perfect*. The medley might be the pinnacle of their entire output (I still get chills when "Golden Slumber" gives way to "Carry That Weight") I'm so glad they stuck it out for "one last album" despite the imminent fracturing, and clearly** had so much fun doing it. What a gift this album was. Even the two silly songs are fun and well produced. And the medley... just 16 minutes exploding with creativity and musicianship and killer riffs and special moments for each member individually and as a foursome. What else is there to say? Amongst the most five-star albums to ever get five stars. *two silly songs probably excepted **from the various documentaries and outtakes you can hear if you want to do a deep dive

Pink Flag came out the same year as Nevermind the Bollocks and The Clash's first album, so it's disappointing to me that this didn't make as big of an impact as those two records, though I suppose not surprising. Anyhoo, Pink Flag rocks. (Wire was/is still putting out quality records as recently as 2020 and have a massive back catalog filled with little treasures, which is certainly preferable to the beautiful corpse of the Sex Pistols.)