Rating: 0.5 God damn it this is so bad. This is like if Jars of Clay or early Creed sung top comments from some poetry subreddit instead of singing about Jesus. I wish this band to be crushed by a shipping container full of fedoras and tiny vests. Read their Spotify bio to be subjected to DEFCON 1 corniness instantly.
Rating: 0.9 This sounded like a group of room temperature IQ aliens released a mixtape and one of the unsold copies plummeted to Earth.
Rating: 0.0 Pawn Stars or Chrome Valley Customs theme song music. Doesn’t matter that it’s done by some guys from a third world country. A hotel bar would be too good for this schlock. Absolutely horrible. Whoever platformed this (JULIAN CASABLANCAS) needs to be investigated, he may be harboring even worse music on his laptop or something.
Rating: 2.8 Leonard Cohen if he wanted to sit and fuck around with song structures and arrangements instead of bang out good songs.
Rating: 2.7 I am not generally a fan of country music so this is a bit of an unfair one to start with. She has a beautiful voice but all of the songs sound the same. Mind you, her one song she does 10 times here is a very good song. Nothing revolutionary but I don’t have anything bad to say.
Rating: 3.8 I had the greatest hits CD when I was younger so I had only heard Big Me and This is A Call before today. I was pleasantly surprised by how clear-cut and cohesive this album was. Foo Fighters came out of the womb a fully-formed band.
Rating: 1.6 I do not possess the proper amount of theater kid whimsy to appreciate this album. What a loud, overblown, expensive-sounding mess. Everything about it annoys me to my core. I don’t fully hate it, there is some genuinely impressive guitar work in this thing, but Queen just never was and probably never will be for me.
Rating: 3.1 The entire time I was listening to this I was thinking… the energy is like if Jimmy Buffett did a moderate and responsible amount of hard drugs. This album sounds like drunk driving on a mostly empty suburban road at 6am on a Tuesday. Nothing bad could (probably) happen to you while you’re playing this album. This record is super tight, obviously well-played and sung, and you can hear them having fun. Just nothing mind-blowing to me.
Rating: 2.8 There were a lot of good ideas here, but the execution just comes off feeling like “more is more.” The first few songs were absolutely flawless and then it just devolved into vocoder nonsense and drawn out, indulgent fiddling. I will admit I enjoyed it as a spectacle though.
Rating: 2.1 Aged horribly. Production is very flat and not a bombastic spectacle like an MJ album is probably meant to be. Terribly overplayed hits lessen the impact of their inclusion on the album. I was very unimpressed by all of the songs I’d never heard before. No reason to listen to this all the way through.
Rating: 2.5 I usually try my best to get the blues thing but it’s hard when it’s so repetitive and every song never really goes anywhere. I understand the appeal of just kicking back and having a good time but my brain couldn’t find anything to latch onto. I can’t fault them for just getting a bunch of legendary skilled players together and seeing if magic would happen. In reality, it was fine.
Rating: 4.1 Far and away the best thing I’ve heard so far. Paves the way for the guy from Modest Mouse and all the other guys who can’t sing but make beautiful music.
Rating: 3.3 Lighthearted, easy listening. Candy in musical form. I really would have liked to see where he went from here. I also understand that albums were typically shorter in this era but I felt like it was over before it started.
Rating: 1.8 This album started with so much potential, and then the Metal Machine Music song hit, and then the 14 minute “drag my balls across the guitar and see what comes out” song hit, and then I just started disassociating and wondering why I’m even doing this.
Rating: 2.6 Remarked that this album could have been recorded on GarageBand, could have had its songs featured on shows like Zoboomafoo or Fetch with Ruff Ruffman. Relatively unchallenging if not a little weird batch of songs and I can’t imagine anyone saying anything more negative than that about this one.
Rating: 4.5 This album is timeless, the hits are still absolutely playable now in any setting and the deep cuts are very interesting detours into more introspective themes. I wanted to save my first five star album for something I have always been a personal fan of but this album just snuck over the line, even though this is my first ever listen. Extremely impressive.
Rating: 1.3 “So, should we build off our first album? I know we had some really good pop songs on there but we didn’t have a lot of commerical success.” “No, I think we’re gonna do some weirdo stuff now and it’s going to suck ass.”
Rating: 0.2 I am so tired of this astroturfed vibe curator nonsense, I’ve had enough for the rest of my life. Incredibly grating, dated, borderline challenging. Makes it worse when you know everything that comes out of her mouth is a lie and she mistreats her fans and everyone around her. Enough Lauryn Hill.
Rating: 2.5 I feel like The National’s target audience is 35-45 year old men, and I’m not even close to that age but I do like them approximately twice as much as when I was younger. So maybe the prophecy will come true? Maybe I should actually review the album and say that it is otherworldly beautiful at times, horribly slow, boring and corny at others. Like there are some seriously bad lyrics all over this project. The highlights are all at the beginning of the album.
Rating: 2.7 Very listenable and surprisingly fun for the “very first metal album.” It all kinds of runs together and there’s no one song that stands out from the other though. More likely to put you to sleep than to entertain you at all.
Rating: 2.7 Ice Cube is very charismatic, it is very easy to believe everything he is saying in his songs is happening/has happened. The production was great at first but then I felt like I was listening to the same song 14 times. And full disclosure, I’m not the biggest rap fan on Earth.
Rating: 4.2 I used to fall asleep to this album semi-regularly when I was younger, so I never realized how much interesting stuff was in the latter half of the album. There’s like a weird Red House Painters song and another discordant one that sounds nothing like anything else they’ve ever made. I mean, it’s Coldplay so there’s an embarrassing earnestness to everything they do but I do appreciate them taking semi-risks with their sound before they dove full-on into commercial slop.
Rating: 2.8 I’m not easily swayed by the energy of live performance. The music was very enjoyable and the (surprisingly mush-mouthed) Jerry Lee Lewis had the crowd in the palm of his hands.
Rating: 0.9 This sounded like a group of room temperature IQ aliens released a mixtape and one of the unsold copies plummeted to Earth.
Rating: 2.9 All I was thinking the whole time was that this sounded like the music of Crashbox (which I am aware came out after this album did), FutureCop LAPD, C + C Music Factory and Insane in the Brain all smashed together. If every song didn’t repeat itself for nearly its entire duration this very plausibly could have been a weirdo masterpiece.
Rating: 0.0 Pawn Stars or Chrome Valley Customs theme song music. Doesn’t matter that it’s done by some guys from a third world country. A hotel bar would be too good for this schlock. Absolutely horrible. Whoever platformed this (JULIAN CASABLANCAS) needs to be investigated, he may be harboring even worse music on his laptop or something.
Rating: 3.1 Didn’t waste my time, weird in an intriguing way, musically rock solid and surprisingly listenable album considering what I’ve heard about this band before. I also greatly enjoyed the cameo of Sumo from Clarence in the one song.
Rating: 1.9 Laughably stupid. Early metal at its most trashy and ignorant. I understand that Lemmy spent his entire life partying himself to death but his music doesn’t HAVE to reveal that so openly. With all this being said, the songs are all pretty much straightforward, don’t drag and you could probably put this stuff on at any bar and everyone (me included) would probably enjoy it so I’ll give it credit for that.
Rating: 3.0 A great step forward from their last album (ANATO) I had to listen to, even though the other album came out first. The other album wanted to beat me over the head with the band’s musical prowess and theatrics, while this one more so gently showed me. I genuinely appreciate that.
Rating: 3.1 There are some of the juiciest and tastiest riffs ever on this album. This version of Smoke on the Water is a lot more flaccid than what I remember. Overall, very good and right on the cusp of being an album I’d come back to.
Rating: 1.2 Preferable to herpes, I guess.
Rating: 1.8 There’s just a permeating stench of lameness all over this album. No offense to anyone who likes this stuff, but you probably got beat up a lot in high school.
Rating: 4.4 This was extremely close to a five. This album introduced heavi-er metal to millions of people. They manage to make discordant screaming and everyone banging their instruments as hard and fast as possible sound like a radio friendly cakewalk. Case in point: the first five songs are disgustingly excellent. My only criticism is this album is bloated with some samey songs near the end, which can’t be the case on a true fiver.
Rating: 1.7 Freak on a Leash is a great, foundational nu-metal song but everything else was borderline unlistenable. Some of the lyrics were very very bad and the album seemed very unfocused, especially in the second half which seems to be a common problem with albums on this list.
Rating: 1.1 Also known as “albums for your auntie to get fucked to.” I’m not going to get anything out of this sorry.
Rating: 3.7 Wonderful album. Excellent synergy from everyone involved. Very long album but they change it up enough from song to song enough to make it cruise instead of grind like a lot of these longer albums do.
Rating: 2.2 This is just butt rock for guys who never went to church. Or perhaps did go to church and caught the preacher fucking their mom.
Rating: 1.3 God, what the is this? These guys are hacks of the highest order. How did they stumble into a massive hit record where every song sounds like a song you’d be tortured with at a supermarket in hell? I mean not the worst thing I’ve ever heard but if this is their most popular album I’m going to be found dead by the end of this exercise, as I know there’s a few more U2 records in here. Arrest everyone involved.
Rating: 4.7 Bonafide classic. Arcade Fire, as a concept, is an idea that should be too weird and corny to work. Reading their Wikipedia page makes them sound like an annoying art kid collective that just decided to fuck around and see what stuck. I mean they play the fucking hurdy gurdy. Despite all that, right out of the gates (for 10 grand!) they scraped together something insane and beautiful. I had never heard the entire album before and I only came away more impressed than I already was with them.
Rating: 0.5 God damn it this is so bad. This is like if Jars of Clay or early Creed sung top comments from some poetry subreddit instead of singing about Jesus. I wish this band to be crushed by a shipping container full of fedoras and tiny vests. Read their Spotify bio to be subjected to DEFCON 1 corniness instantly.
Rating: 3.2 Pleasant mix of traditional songs and original ones from the artist. Classic country is perfect background music to help you get stuff done. Judging by how slow all of the songs are on this album they could likely put you to sleep too. Or help you do nothing. Those are the only three scenarios that exist after all.
Rating: 3.9 This was exemplary. I thought people were playing up how haunting this album is, but the fact you can hear his labored breathing and shaky voice at several points throughout conveys a profound sense of finality. I guess I’ll find myself going backwards through Bowie’s long ass catalog since this is the first of his I’ve heard all the way through.
Rating: 3.2 Short, succulent, nothing too crazy. Two absolute classic songs, two very good songs and the other four will put you to sleep. Perfectly symmetrical. The buck for southern rock pretty much stops here and I’m not blown away, but satisfied.
Rating: 2.3 Music for a bygone era where people went out and danced for fun instead of doing exercises like the one I’m doing right now. I mean it’s fine but if you listen to this in your free time you’re probably pretty weird.
Rating: 2.5 I feel like we got our independence from Britain so I should be legally exempt from hearing a British woman do R&B for like an hour or something like that. I’m mostly kidding, it wasn’t bad.
Rating: 2.2 Brian Eno needs to be sent to space prison and put in a cell with strange microorganisms that will invade his brain and kill any desire he has to ever record music again.
Rating: 1.7 Boring old boomer rock, but not a cool boomer like one that drinks beer and Monster who you’d catch out on the riding lawnmower. More like a creepy boomer who has 3 pet parrots and wears a bathrobe with no underwear all day.
Rating: 1.6 This is pretty bad. A lot of discordant screaming and songs that wander all over the place and never really go anywhere. Almost like this guy needs some kind of band or something to make REALLY good music. What a shame that never happened huh?
Rating: 3.1 There are a couple of serious bangers at the beginning of this album. Then at the end you’ll be screaming and crying at them to do something instead of playing their instruments really quietly and whispering at each other. I hate everything about the aesthetics of this band. What are you guys even doing?
Rating: 3.5 I feel like one of this guy’s songs is in Elf. I’ll be really scared if it isn’t, because that would mean this man’s extremely unique and commanding voice has been visiting me in my dreams.
Rating: 1.6 Just as dumb as their non-live material and Lemmy is three times as mush-mouthed in person.
Rating: 3.4 This could have been great if the lyricism was more creative. A lot of these albums have this problem. The music will be the most beautiful and magical thing you’ve ever heard and then they’ll repeat “TIIIIIIIIME THE REVELATOR” 25 times. I have some kind of hard-wired mental avoidance for repetitive noises so this held this album back from being excellent for me.
Rating: 3.1 Live albums do not sway me. There is nothing on a live album that is better than anything that’s been put to record in a studio. Except for that one album. You’ll know when I get to it. Sam Cooke is good.
Rating: 2.8 Leonard Cohen if he wanted to sit and fuck around with song structures and arrangements instead of bang out good songs.
Rating: 2.7 Not a lot of energy, average beat selection, the lyricism is obviously head and shoulders above what you would get on your average hip hop album today. Not bad, just nothing I’d recommend to try and blow someone’s mind.
Rating: 0.5 This album commits the worst sin an old album can commit: sounding old. They don’t have ears for a hit at all, they just do the twangy boring Creedence Clearwater thing worse with a fake and more atonal Jim Morrison on vocals. I almost fell asleep and crashed my car listening to this. Stay far away.
Rating: 3.4 He sounds like Robert Smith and Tom Waits had a kid that outperforms both of them by 100 times. A little bit too haughty and corny sounding for my tastes but I’d try it again someday if someone forced me to listen to it.
Rating: 1.0 There is not a single song worth listening to on this album that isn’t already in Target commercials. Another sleep-inducing twangfest.
Rating: 0.4 I can’t answer the question posed in the album title but I’ll happily kill them a second time if I have to.
Rating: 2.2 How can an album with Jump, Panama and Hot for Teacher get such a low rating? Well I’m pretty sure I heard all of those songs in every 80’s nostalgia bait movie I’ve ever watched and the rest of the songs will put you to sleep better than a lullaby on cough syrup.
Rating: 2.9 The lost soundtrack to a Tony Hawk game where you play as a kangaroo. Never came out for some reason.
Rating: 2.7 The beats are like weird horrorcore-ish beats which I thought was pretty cool. Otherwise I just don’t care that much about mafioso rap that much and I can’t tell apart the various features so that was all lost on me.
Rating: 3.8 Whimsical, non-annoying prog which is extremely hard to come by. I am very afraid of anything by Genesis without Peter Gabriel because I’m not sure this would work at all without him.
Rating: 4.2 I have a lot of thoughts about this one. 1. This is the coolest and most experimental/weird thing the biggest band on earth could have done at the time. Whoever takes over that title from Taylor Swift when she gets old and tired should take notes. 2. The first half of the album is almost impossible to criticize. Back in the USSR, Dear Prudence, Glass Onion, While My Guitar…, Happiness is a Warm Gun and Martha My Dear (and Blackbird, I’m So Tired is just okay) in such quick succession is one of the greatest runs of all time. I’m not even THAT opposed to the widely hated song (that I ignored on purpose) that’s in the middle of all that. 3. The second half has a ton of skips, and songs like Yer Blues and Revolution 1+9 are genuinely bad and unnecessary. The three best songs on this side (Helter Skelter, Savoy Truffle and Cry Baby Cry) are comfortably worse than all of the songs I named for the first half. 4. Out of all of the stuff they threw at the wall for this album, I would say more of it sticks as opposed to the minority that goopily slides down the wall. 5. Now for a little personal justification— is this album more influential than the two albums I’ve rated 5 stars thus far? Most likely. Does it have a better crop of songs? Debatably, if they were trimmed down. The only problem is I would not listen to this album front-to-back like I ecstatically would for some other Beatles albums. I’m not upset that they dumped everything they had onto this huge, edible but slightly shoe-leathery steak of an album, but there’s a perfectly cooked filet in there if they cut it a little differently. For reference if anyone actually reads this: the two albums I’ve rated 5 are Rumours by Fleetwood Mac and Funeral by Arcade Fire. And I’m only on day 50 something. Maybe my opinion of this album will improve or get worse based on all of their other work on this list I get to hear.
Rating: 0.1 Nah.
Rating: 3.2 This album is engineered and produced very well, I don’t have quarrel with any of the personnel on the album as they are very talented, the problem lies where 1. an untrained ear like mine can barely tell the songs apart and 2. it is very boring especially towards the end.
Rating: 0.6 The Black Keys and their wretched Lorax soundtrack Bastille ass millennial sensibilities need to retire now. The whole thing was offensive musically, tired lyrically, and pointless conceptually. I think this species of weird gross hipster is dying out and it can’t come soon enough.
Rating: 3.5 Really cool album. You have to be weird guys to make rockabilly Nirvana songs and whatever they have going on here is working. I would have gone with a different name though, I thought I was going to be dying of cringe and corniness but I really had the exact opposite reaction.
Rating: 1.0 What if we made Oasis suck ass… and put one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard (You’re A Big Girl Now) on there too… and for good measure be so irrelevant in the US as a result of our impenetrable Britishness that when we tour there we have to be “The Charlatans UK…”
Rating: 3.7 I’ve never heard post-punk like this before, it’s no wonder this band was never huge in America as far as I know because this is a perfect example of weird music that isn’t weird enough to garner a significant amount of attention. If not for The Twilight Hour (the weakest song by far) and a couple of the songs at the end being too long and repetitive this album could have pushed into the upper echelons of those included in this project.
Rating: 4.9 So close to a perfect album- but I will abstain because I don’t like Faust Arp or Weird Fishes that much. However, when an album is this trim and has this lineup: 15 Step 10/10 Bodysnatchers 9/10 Nude 10/10 Weird Fishes/Arpeggi 7/10 All I Need 8/10 Faust Arp 6/10 Reckoner 10/10 House of Cards 9/10 Jigsaw Falling into Place 10/10 Videotape 9/10 that means Faust Arp gets a pass. What a monumental album, definitively one of my top 5 favorite ever and I’m so glad despite his spotty post-2000 coverage the editor couldn’t ignore this masterpiece.
Rating: 2.4 Yeah I get it you shred but can you do something to not put me to sleep?
Rating: 3.2 This is the first album on the list I’ve heard that I can reliably call BUTT ROCK. I did not know Incubus had so many concentrated hits on this one album. I would like to write more but I’m currently 8 beers deep and a cop is about to pull me over after this red light.
Rating: 1.7 It wasn’t unpleasant per se, but it was kind of like listening to ambient noise. He just drones on forever about shit that doesn’t matter and randomly plays a harmonica in between. Making that sound moderately pleasant at all is in fact a talent but as of now I’m in the minority of people who just don’t enjoy this guy. I guess I have like 10 more albums to find out for sure.
Rating: 3.6 Very easy on the ears, you never needed to focus too hard because he doesn’t say too terribly much but everything sounds so clean and smooth. This guy is like Bob Dylan if he didn’t have whiny lyrics and a harmonica and an annoying voice.
Rating: 2.7 My girlfriend and I were having sex to this album (figured I’d kill 2 birds with one stone) and she was getting where you’re supposed to go and then that song that says “FISH CAKES!!!!” started playing and she started laughing so hard we had to stop early. Fuck you Bauhaus.
Rating: 2.4 Look man nothing against this guy, doesn’t appeal to my sensibilities though and I just sat there looking like I wanted to punch a hole in drywall the whole time I was listening to this record.
Rating: 2.9 They should put Fats Domino on in the background at supermarkets instead of whatever they’ve got going on now. Music from this time period has no fat and is so easy to listen to. I’m not sure how all of the songs fit as an album (as far as I know it’s just a collection of all of his early singles?) but I wouldn’t turn any of these songs off.
Rating: 1.5 Cornier than the Iowa-Nebraska border.
Rating: 1.1 Why is this idiot gooning on the track like a fucking clown, how about singing the FUCKING SONGS!!!
Rating: 3.4 Perfectly adequate offering of whimsical and fun songs. If you listen to this in your free time you probably have sex with the lights off though.
Rating: 2.9 I had a dream that I was throwing up and bleeding to death a mere hour and a half after listening to this album so there’s something off about it. Someone send me an envelope addressed to “Big Socks” at the address encrypted within this paragraph if you have the answers.
Rating: 3.1 LL Cool J is such a cultural institution at this point (not quite to the point of Ice Cube or Snoop Dogg or whatever) but I think his music is getting less and less praise with time compared to his peers and I feel like that’s not necessarily fair. He had some pretty weird misses (Milky Cereal wtf) but I felt most of this album was appropriately bombastic, very easy to follow lyrically (maybe less talking about killing people would be nice but that comes with the territory) and had a varied beat selection that gave birth to one iconic song (Title Track) and almost 10 good ones.
Rating: 0.1 I need Traffic to play in traffic.
Rating: 1.5 I can’t understand this band. Everything they make sounds like background music from an educational VHS tape in 1985 yet I’m supposed to hail them as the most innovative thing ever. Not happening buddy.
Rating: 1.8 This guy never could hang he has good songs but likes to sperg all over the place and make a lot of bad ones in the middle. He’s either at 0 or 100 all the time.
Rating: 2.5 This was actually the second CD I ever owned. It’s the same exact song 10 times. It’s as fine as fine gets. If you wanted to play an alien a few songs to show them the most basic popular music possible this would be the album you’d choose.
Rating: 2.7 I liked it okay. Probably edgy for the time but just about put me to sleep in this current timeline. Not sure why this album is considered top 10-20 all time in many circles.
Rating: 2.3 Could have been absolutely fantastic but so many boring repetitive fucking around songs in the middle. This is an epidemic and needs to be remedied immediately.