This has made me realise I am literally always pleased to hear the scissor sisters; in the shop, out for food, in The Club, at a party, in a taxi. Queer people make the best pop and I would go to war to defend this belief. Lots of songs I didn’t know already that I really liked along with the famous bangers. Filthy/Gorgeous is like being hit by a bus (positive).
First reaction to the first 10 seconds of the first song: Jesus Christ!! Okay!!! It’s the 70s!!! Solid Top Gear driving compilation album music. I am surprised by how much I like this. Get freaky, boys. I don’t know if they actually made it onto the School of Rock soundtrack but they sound like they should have (this can be taken as an insult or a compliment depending on personal inclination). I always thought I was born to be a father not a mother and this album has proven me right. I like how big it is, I like the wail/scream singing. Really enjoyed myself. All that’s left to say is: rock got no reason, rock got no rhyme - you better get me to school on time.
I think (unsurprisingly) this woman understands me very deeply. Song one - I want a gun and the world is crazy. Song two - I feel the innocence of a child l and everybody has something good to say. I appreciate well represented mood swings. It’s New York! She’s not going to bed early! She’s capturing moments! She’s feeling everything intensely! Powerful, huge for my culture, utterly utterly stunnin.
I will be revisiting this album a lot, I can tell. Thank God I’ve found her before I turn 30 - it’s taken too long already.
I’m far from the first person to notice this but: Bono seems like a bit of a cunt, doesn’t he? It’s all technically fine, I suppose. I’m just quite bored by it, and the ones I know already I wasn’t excited to hear. It drags. I think it’s for blokes who identify as stoic and see their volatile hometown relationships as reminiscent of Burton and Taylor. The harmonica interested me when it reared its head - I liked Trip Through Your Wires. But overall, a big old shrug from me.
I am grateful that overall the album is short but I still don’t think that makes up for an 18 minute opening song. Some fun riffs and range of vibes musically but the use of sound effects is utterly ridiculous, the vocals are insufferable, the lyrics annoying, the overall concept deeply tiresome. Put me in mind of the worst of Andrew Lloyd Webber. My first DNF.
The vibe is good. So far it’s reminiscent of the soundtrack to a video game that has both sweet and alarming elements. OH, SEXY BOY! OF COURSE I’VE HEARD THIS! A song I truly believed existed only in the realm of perfume adverts. I like this gentle, pleasant, wistful energy.
What if every Beatles song was Eleanor Rigby? Introducing: Leonard Cohen. He’s spinning yarns. The Stranger Song slaps. He’s getting some good lines in, surprising rhymes (often all I need to be impressed, because we’ve been rhyming in English so long now). Is every song about a woman he feels bad for? Bc if so fair play. A wet Bob Dylan? Stories of the Street is excellent, as is One of Us Cannot Be Wrong. GOD, do I like Leonard Cohen? I think I might you know.
SCHOOL OF ROCK BABYYYYYY! I’m having a hoot. You can really hear how influential this was. The cover is great. Trying not to dance while I’m cleaning toilets. Found myself wanting more when it ended, which hasn’t happened often. I’m going to listen again to see how I feel.
The album title has already annoyed me, which isn’t the best start. I accept that if the song ‘sweet young thing ain’t sweet no more’ was by Hole, or any riot grrrl band, I would like it, but that is because CONTEXT MATTERS. ‘Need’ is winning me round - I can hear what it influenced - namely a lot of the grunge and riot grrrl that I like. I am quite bored, though. Every time I think I’ve reached an opinion they do something I find musically interesting, and then they do something I find tiresome. The spirit behind ‘Hate the police’ is so valid, and the repeat of ‘mommy’ is excellent, but they really didn’t have to say the n word to get their point across. We did know by the late 80s that not everyone can say that. A confusing, frustrating experience for me. Spotify tells me they never matched the commercial success of their contemporaries, and I can see why.
Cover is fantastic. I only know The Hit, and i
Well, this is deeply unpleasant immediately. Second track marginally better. Who is this for?? I am struggling. It’s too much and not enough at the same time. I can see this is bridging a gap between something and something else, but the experience is bad. Not for me.
Mistakenly posted my review on someone else’s page on this group but I will repost here. Is this pre-grunge grunge? It’s the kind of music I like, anyway. That bass and melodramatic lyrics performed as though under duress. Yes please. Here comes your man - a bit like REM in places, a bit like Stone Roses in others. I can hear the smiths, I can hear the fall, I can hear the velvet underground, I can hear Pulp, I can hear my beloved Hole. Is this happy sad??? La La Love You is amazing. Also great (insane) cover. I will be revisiting this.
I liked the combo of Bit Part in Your Life and Alison’s Starting to happen. Overall not for me but this must have gone so hard if you were 15 in 1992 and liked skateboarding and were in love with the weirdest girl in your class and considering becoming a stoner. There is sweetness throughout and I can see why people like them but musically it did not Excite me and I think I am prejudiced against (some) American Things.
Listening to this on a sunny day has made me much more well disposed to it - if it was British Grey outside I would feel insulted, I think. The spoken bits and vocalisations are really fun. Charmed by the inexplicable babies. Pedro Navaja was a good time. I may be wrong but it sounds like they had fun making it which for me goes a long way - the Mamma Mia principle.
No but for real he’s right and he should say it. Some outrageous rhymes straight out of the gate but I’m obsessed. ‘Good for asthma’ is a wild claim pal. Whatcha Gonna Do, No Sympathy (very funny to use this platform to just complain about your friends) and Till Your Well Runs Dry stood out to me. I think this man is having big feelings and I love that. Immediate points gained for using the word ‘workers’, immediate points lost for inevitable misogyny.
An all time great. Huge for my people (intense women). She ran so Avril Lavigne could also run. Christ- she was 21 when this came out!! Literary references coming thick and fast. It’s just an incredibly well put together, cohesive album that is at once fun and serious. Longing for ‘intellectual intercourse’. I love this woman. The big hits have not lost their impact: ‘and every time I scratch my nails down someone else’s back I hope you feel it.’ THAT’S REAL VENOM. THAT’S GREAT SHIT. ‘I’m high but I’m grounded. I’m sane but I’m overwhelmed.’ The songs that are not huge hits deserve to be - You Learn, Forgiven (‘You know how us Catholic girls can be’). Head over Feet is, for me, one of the most relatable love songs I’ve ever heard - being sort of angry that someone is nice to you and that you have fallen in love with them. ‘I hear you’re losing weight again, Mary Jane, you ever wonder who you’re losing it for?’ FUCK YES. Send it into space. Transcribe it, bury it, carve it into stone a thousand times, we have to let humans in 2000 years find this.
Hello again to Deep Purple who I only discovered through this website. I simply like them and I cannot deny it. Just keep shredding etc. I consider ‘boring me’ the biggest musical sin, and for some reason Deep Purple do not bore me. Pictures of Home slaps. Oh and this album has The Big One! The whole thing feels like one big song, like you’ve stepped into their world for 40 minutes, and I don’t mind being along for that ride at all. I like all the weird shit they keep throwing in. I think I love Deep Purple. Embarrassing but I must be true to myself.
Is this for men who wear those ‘boys get sad too’ t-shirts? I like ‘nobody broke your heart, you broke your own’ as a repeating refrain. He’s evidently working through some stuff with these slightly twee indie folky emo ballads and that is fair enough. Undeniably a poet. Pictures of Me is great. He should have been a lesbian. It’s too maudlin for me but if you love maudlin then this is your guy.
I know The Hits and I’ve given Pet Sounds a couple of tries but this is absolutely unknown to me. I am immediately enjoying how creepy the opening song is. The cover is harrowing (complimentary) - could be something from The Classics but I don’t know what. Long Promised Road is Uplifting. Take a Load off Your Feet is very silly but very good. Student Demonstration Time is absolutely brilliant. It’s so layered musically and lyrically and stylistically. I love how many weird sounds we’ve got involved. I hear whispers of RAM. A Day In The Life Of A Tree is genuinely moving and fair play to them for giving a shit about pollution in 1971. If you gave loads of woodland sprites and their tiny critter pals access to a studio, they would make an album like this.
I do like getting weird with it, and this is getting quite weird with it. Is this serious or silly? Perhaps both. It reminds me in places, and I apologise to the heads for this, of the bits of the white album I like the least. Somewhat relentless. Enjoyed the piano. What’s the drug that makes you see little elves and had it been invented by 1967 and were they taking it? Am I being mocked? Started rolling my eyes about halfway through Interstellar Overdrive, which I think demonstrates remarkable restraint. If you announce you are doing a story about a Gnome then you should actually tell one, boys. 0 plot. And why are they rolling their Rs so much?
I admit it - I like The Boss. I understand his love of The Workers, The Unions, women, towns that aren’t what they were, the trauma of deindustrialisation, the violence of becoming useless. I am a manual worker after all, and from a place that would make Springsteen misty eyed (Grimsby). I am also in love with a man who loves The Boss, so I have developed an extra fondness for his brand of straight camp, his intense form romance. I just think it’s fun - is it not one of the gayest album covers of all time? Puts one in mind of Homer taking Bart to the steel mill. Dancing in the Dark is a good love song. I just wish he wouldn’t say ‘little girl’ quite so much.
I know some of this from various Charlie Brooker vehicles. Bit silly, bit sinister, quite glum. Sounds more and less modern than it is, which feels like the intention. It’s beautiful but I don’t know if I’m particularly enjoying myself - like The Great Gatsby. Christ, this is sad. Could we have a bit of a laugh, please? I feel like I’m on a comedown. Some optimism from the final track - too little too late I’m afraid.
A fantastic cover. This is silly, heightened, fun. They are shredding like their lives depend on it. Lots of this is so famous that I had no idea I knew it already. Aw, they’re talking about Ring Wraiths. DWEEBS! It’s not really my thing but compared to other albums I’ve heard from this time in this sort of genre the lyrics are refreshingly interesting. At this stage, I appreciate competence.
When I saw McCartney live the opening twang of Drive My Car dragged genuine uncontrollable Beatlemania screams from deep inside me. The cover is brilliant, the title is brilliant, the mood is brilliant. It is The Weed Album, after all. They’ve bought a sitar and by God they’re going to use it. Nowhere Man is a gentle, empathetic attack on us all and I find it incredibly moving. Michelle is delightfully lovely, and so is The Word, though the laziness of John’s line ‘in the good and the bad books that I have read’ astonishes me every time. In my Life is MONUMENTAL (and sort of about Paul, right?). A song tentatively accepting that nothing will ever be the same again, generally and also specifically, but with no conception (because how could they have imagined it?) of how much that is true. There is absolutely an undercurrent of bitterness to this album, which comes to a head properly when Run For Your Life pours a bucket of cold water over the good times and the misogyny becomes unignorable, casting everything that went before it in a new light. I suppose he did burn down the house in Norwegian Wood, I suppose the woman in Drive My Car is being mocked, I suppose they could be more fair to the women who have broken their hearts (What goes on, think for yourself, you won’t see me, Girl, I’m looking through you.) I used to wish they had just not included the final song, but now I see it has its place, and pretending it doesn’t belong on the album is cowardly. It unfortunately does, but it’s why I cannot award full marks.
I love the girl from ipanema already - delightful. Music that makes me wish I could dance. Music for lying back on grass, watching blossom flap limply in a warm breeze. Feel like I’m drinking red wine in a restaurant On The Continent that’s about to close, or aboard a Gondola. The romance of it all! This is utterly charming, fun, beautiful, delicate without being feeble. I love a bit of sax and they have not been stingy with it. I like it when an artist wants the listener to have a good time.
Never heard of them but a husband and wife folk duo is pretty cute. I’m imagining Nuts in May, which may be unfair. Withered and Dried - Linda has a lovely voice - mate, I think I prefer your wife. I enjoyed the title track. I am also sick of working every day!! Very different approach musically but vibe wise almost identical themes to Arctic Monkey’s first album, as well as Hard-Fi’s seminal ‘living for the weekend’. God this is maudlin. It is technically good, but even the ‘upbeat’ ones are wistfully sad. Also, you never hear about ‘briar’ except in folk songs. ‘Little beggar girl’ could be subtler. The lyric ‘there’s nothing to grow up for anymore’ pissed me off. I guess I’ll just top myself then Rich, cheers for that mate.
Silly space noises - it’s the late 70s. Planet Claire uniquely interesting for me because it’s my mum’s name. What a thought. 52 girls is a very funny concept. It’s nice listening to music that doesn’t take itself too seriously, it’s nice that it’s fun and dynamic and experimental without trying to be actively unpleasant. Obviously it’s annoying. I just like camp, I find it more interesting than other kinds of annoying. I like it when women are involved in art. I enjoyed Rock Lobster.
Oh hell yeah. The title of the album could not be more correct. Scale wise it is epic and intimate. I needed this today. ‘You know when they said love makes the world go round…that’s the truth.’ He is right and he should say it. Really enjoyed the long spoken word build up to the last track. A teeny bit misogynistic right at the last moment - a shame - but mostly sweet. My instinct is that this man loves women too much - but I’m going to look that up. Aye - four wives and eleven kids. Oh and he did the Shaft music! Shame about the Scientology but that was well after he recorded this smooth slice of hot buttered soul.
I only fell in love with Bob Dylan a couple of years ago, but it has been an intensely passionate love affair that is showing no signs of chilling out. I am entirely unfamiliar with 90s Dylan and his voice is baffling. Still some solid lines though - standing in the doorway is great. Million miles is slinky. Tryin to get to heaven - yes please. Til I fell in love with you - slinky and silly. Not dark yet is beautiful. WOAH I DID NOT KNOW HE WROTE TO MAKE YOU FEEL MY LOVE? Has Bob acknowledged Adele. I have to know. There are some lazy lyrics in this album but I enjoyed myself nonetheless - they are only lazy in comparison to Bob Dylan, and that feels unfair, because there’s no-one else you could reasonably compare his lyrics to.
