I had a feeling I was going to dig this. I love the lore that Dennis Wilson was the ONLY Beach Boy™ who actually lived the lifestyle they sang about lmao. He was the only actual surfer, and he would go out and surf and bang chicks in the sand and come home and tell his brothers Brian and Carl and his dumb cousin Mike Love all about it, and they romanticized it into their whole band identity. Which maybe contributes to how surprising and impressive a record this is. Dennis was always just the surfing drummer to me but this absolutely solidified him as his own dense and potently creative artist. This single album might rival the entire output of The Beach Boys™

This is real solid country, the kind of country I can fuck with. It helps that there's a nice undercurrent of psych that elevates it beyond pure Americana into something entirely else.

“old as shit” That’s all I originally wanted to say about this album and, I guess, about Elvis too. It’s just so funny to me that this bland milquetoast bop got so hot, it really reinforces the weird state of pop music before then and just how musically stunted everyone was. I can appreciate the historical significance, but that’s about it

Kinda crazy that this is actually Michael’s FIFTH solo album. I always thought this was his first solo album. That’s wild. Next you’re gonna tell me that he’d been singing and making records for over ten years before he broke through. Wait, WHAT!? This kid was a seasoned veteran by age 20, with fifteen albums between his solo work and The Jackson 5. I always considered this the “Michael Disco Album” but I’m guessing some of his others are too. I’m not gonna fuckin listen to any of them to find out, though. I have a lot more appreciation for this album now than I used to. Especially since it seems like the LAST real album of the disco era in general.

While I absolutely love Bowie, and think that "Sound and Vision" is one of the greatest songs he's ever made, the ambient back half of this album supplants the first half. HOWEVER, I think it’s something that’s more obvious and highlighted in contemporary music consumption. As a streamed album, or even on CD, you lose the fact that the ambient stuff is clearly the B-Side of the record originally produced for vinyl and compartmentalizes the two halves. For some reason, that let me appreciate the instrumental, ambient half much more. And if you didn’t like any of the ambient stuff, you never flip the record, and just stick with the A-side bangers. But how can you NOT love “A New Career in a New Town”? That and “Sound and Vision” are sooo fucking good.

This is nice. Lukewarm. It's "fine." It's just sort of... there. While listening to this album, I just kept thinking about if I would have liked it when it first came out in 1969 if I was alive then. I haven't done that with any other album yet, so it's interesting to me that I was hyper-focused on it. I feel like I would be super dismissive of this album for stuff like In the Court of the Crimson King, Abbey Road, Zeppelin, CCR, and Zappa. It's a concept album, and I LOVE concept albums. But in 1969 there were a good number of better concept albums by King Crimson or The Who or Genesis, and I'd have been too obsessed over those to give this a real chance. The fictional version of me in 1969 would have rated this a 1 or 2. But I have the hindsight of historical value, so I'm gonna bump that up to a lukewarm 3.

Incredible debut. RATM hit the ground running. They are a great example of a band that snuck through the cracks during the height of grunge, a time when execs were scrambling to find the next Nirvana and signed every metal band out of Los Angeles. RATM had the juice, though. It was just a completely different juice. A BETTER juice. A juice that makes you want to smash your face against the wall, but in a GOOD way! FUCK YEAAAAAAAAAH! FUCK YOU, I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!! Unless you tell me to do my taxes, then, yeah... I'll do that.

I was stoked to listen to this album. I like the B-52's! At least I thought I did. Rock Lobster is a killer but the rest of this album doesn't really resonate. I'm honestly a little surprised this band hit like it did and was so successful in 1979. Who knew that a band ushering in the 1980s by doing a sendup of 1960s surf rock would be so popular? Did people like things ironically back then? Nah, this is sincere as shit.

"We don't give a damn" yeah, no shit man, me either. Why was this album included? Was someone in the band related to the author of 1,0001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die?

I had a feeling I was going to dig this. I love the lore that Dennis Wilson was the ONLY Beach Boy™ who actually lived the lifestyle they sang about lmao. He was the only actual surfer, and he would go out and surf and bang chicks in the sand and come home and tell his brothers Brian and Carl and his dumb cousin Mike Love all about it, and they romanticized it into their whole band identity. Which maybe contributes to how surprising and impressive a record this is. Dennis was always just the surfing drummer to me but this absolutely solidified him as his own dense and potently creative artist. This single album might rival the entire output of The Beach Boys™

This was such an interesting window into a specific point of time. Beck hit at the perfect moment; a great combination of right place, right time, but with the talent and ambition to back it up. It's easy to dismiss Odelay as "weird" but it's a unique triumph. Beck was able to take all these seemingly disparate sounds and entire GENRES and cobbled them together into a distinct sound that actually resonated for the moment.

I absolutely LOATHED this album when it was first released. I HATED the singles, and thought the concept of the band was DUMB, even though I love CARTOONS. Luckily, I came to my senses when Demon Days was released, and it forced me to re-evaluate Gorillaz. This is a strong debut and a great thesis statement. While I've grown to love the radio hits, this album's best tracks are deeper cuts. I think Demon Days or Plastic Beach deserves to be on this list more than the self-titled, but here we are.

Bro fuck this guy and his crooning ass bullshit. Bossanova was already out of style by the time this fucko got his hands on it, only to slather it in his bullshit. Fuck this era and lazy-ass style of "not-actually-singing-but-sort-of-talking-slow" music. Fuuuuck him. If it wasn't for Antonio Carlos Jobim this would be a 1-star.

Deliciously atmospheric. Wonderful for both background music while you work or do chores, but also eclectic enough that you could sit and focus on nothing but the music itself

Sitar Phish

I can appreciate, culturally, what they've done for the zeitgeist, but that doesn't mean I have to ENJOY listening to them.

As I get older, I realize I'm much more of a George guy

Honestly comes off as a parody sometimes

Wild that this is from 1994. Super ahead of its time. Was this the start of trip hop? Or at least what truly popularized the genre? Not the best Massive Attack album, but absolutely still essential.

The Hardest Button to Button (jk not hard at all)

Eclectic as shit

I'm a sucker for The Smiths, even though Morrissey is a real piece.

For some reason, I went through a huge REM phase when I was 9 or 10 years old, which is kind odd, right? Like, what child actually goes HARD for this upbeat and optimistic janglepoppy stuff? But then I realized that it must have to do with its close adjacency to early, proto butt-rock. It's kind of the perfect segue band for a kid with growing musical taste: REM's music feels juuuust polished and melodic enough to catch a kid's ear but still "grown up" enough to feel cool and sophisticated.

This shit rips. What else is there to say? It's a classic for a reason.

Initially jarring, but once you get past that, it's a pretty fun album.

this is like, the jazz I pretend to play when I make fun off jazz

Crazy how much the landscape of popular music has shifted so much that it's impossible to imagine an act like this taking any sort of hold if it came out today

One of the very first CDs I was gifted was a Ryan Adams CD, or maybe it was a Bryan Adams CD? Anyway, I returned the fuck out of that shit and exchanged it for a Creed CD.

This shit is mad annoying, actually. Sort of reminds me of a local band playing a college house party and they’re so annoying you want to bail but you can’t leave because you spent $5 on that red solo cup for keg access and you need to get your moneys worth because you’re a broke underage student who only works 12 hours a week and have blown through most of your financial aid even though you pirated, like, HALF of your textbooks so you could pocket the difference so you just drink foamy beer and scornfully clown on the the band from the back of the room

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm proto-butt rock

Oh, wow. Song 2 was actually the second song on the album. Whaddayaknow?

Thin Lizzy? More like Thick Glizzy, am I right?

shit's weird as hell in a good way

A cultural touchstone. It's hard to express just how ever-present this album was at the time, and the stranglehold it had on the people. It's an incredibly 90s-sounding album, but not in a bad way.

It's tough to put this one into a box because while the music itself is really nice and great, the fact that the lyrics are not in English makes it very hard to connect to anything on a deeper level. Like, okay, I don't know what the fuck I'm actually listening to. I just got more annoyed as the album went on

Love it. Pearl Jam is directly responsible for seeding some of my favorite acts of the 90's like they're some sort of Mother Vampire. Plus, their band is named after cum n jizz hahahahahahahahahhaahhahahaahah

Devastated to discover there are SEVEN (7!) Neil Young albums on this list.