My 1001 Albums Journey

154

Albums Rated

2.51

Average Rating

14%

Complete

935 albums remaining

Rating Distribution

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1960s

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5-Star Albums

1-Star Albums

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Albums

You Love More Than Most

Album	You	Global	Diff
We're Only In It For The Money The Mothers Of Invention	5	2.47	+2.53
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Wilco	5	3.3	+1.7
The College Dropout Kanye West	5	3.31	+1.69
Figure 8 Elliott Smith	5	3.32	+1.68
Ready To Die The Notorious B.I.G.	5	3.37	+1.63
Oar Alexander 'Skip' Spence	4	2.46	+1.54
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere Neil Young & Crazy Horse	5	3.55	+1.45
Bright Flight Silver Jews	4	2.68	+1.32
Doolittle Pixies	5	3.75	+1.25
Highway 61 Revisited Bob Dylan	5	3.77	+1.23

You Love Less Than Most

Album	You	Global	Diff
Songs In The Key Of Life Stevie Wonder	1	4.07	-3.07
Let's Stay Together Al Green	1	3.76	-2.76
Tea for the Tillerman Cat Stevens	1	3.69	-2.69
Young Americans David Bowie	1	3.62	-2.62
Brothers The Black Keys	1	3.58	-2.58
Gorillaz Gorillaz	1	3.53	-2.53
1984 Van Halen	1	3.51	-2.51
Arrival ABBA	1	3.5	-2.5
The Marshall Mathers LP Eminem	1	3.49	-2.49
Pretzel Logic Steely Dan	1	3.4	-2.4

5-Star Albums (12)

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Popular Reviews

The College Dropout

Kanye West

5/5

One of the greatest tragedies in recent music history is that the dude capable of making this record turned into such a broken, confused, hateful person. Sucks. Anyway, this album is a monumental piece of art. Absolute game changer in hip-hop. Easy 5.

3 likes

Oar

Alexander 'Skip' Spence

4/5

Wow. This is why I was so excited for this 1,001 project. 70+ albums in, this is the first one that has truly been a pleasant surprise. I've got a pretty wide and eclectic listening background, and have obviously heard Moby Grape, but never knew the story of this record. Fascinating and sad, and some really cool musical moments, many of which feel far ahead of their time. Glad this was included in the list!

1 likes

1-Star Albums (37)

All Ratings

Blood Sugar Sex Magik

Red Hot Chili Peppers

3/5

Abraxas

Santana

3/5

Superfly

Curtis Mayfield

3/5

Let It Bleed

The Rolling Stones

4/5

Are You Experienced

Jimi Hendrix

4/5

Pretzel Logic

Steely Dan

1/5

Billion Dollar Babies

Alice Cooper

1/5

MTV Unplugged In New York

Nirvana

5/5

Figure 8

Elliott Smith

5/5

Warehouse: Songs And Stories

Hüsker Dü

1/5

Paranoid

Black Sabbath

4/5

Maverick A Strike

Finley Quaye

1/5

Foo Fighters

2/5

Broken English

Marianne Faithfull

2/5

Tapestry

Carole King

2/5

A Night At The Opera

Queen

2/5

Tank Battles

Dagmar Krause

2/5

Birth Of The Cool

Miles Davis

2/5

Legalize It

Peter Tosh

1/5

Brothers

The Black Keys

1/5

Toys In The Attic

Aerosmith

1/5

Kenza

Khaled

1/5

Green

R.E.M.

2/5

Document

R.E.M.

2/5

Bright Flight

Silver Jews

4/5

Run-D.M.C.

3/5

Highway 61 Revisited

Bob Dylan

5/5

The La's

1/5

Among The Living

Anthrax

1/5

Iron Maiden

2/5

Surf's Up

The Beach Boys

2/5

The final two songs are fantastic. The rest suffers from a decided lack of Brian Wilson's influence.

Triangle

The Beau Brummels

1/5

One-sided triangle.

This Is Hardcore

Pulp

2/5

First two songs are great. Then it's a slow, long decline into too many notes filling up every bar of music.

Songs In The Key Of Life

Stevie Wonder

1/5

Blood And Chocolate

Elvis Costello & The Attractions

1/5

Boring and basic.

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

The Smashing Pumpkins

2/5

I wanted to enjoy this so much more than I actually did! I owned this double CD as a teenager, and was hoping it was stand the test of time...but nope. Truly a bloated, 'we-need-an-editor' album. Just look at the listens for each track on streaming platforms. The singles on this one have over 25, 50, and 70 (!) times as many listens as the most of the deep cuts. Yikes. Long live Siamese Dream...

Band On The Run

Paul McCartney and Wings

2/5

'Band on the Run' would be a great song if you only had to hear it once, instead of 6,347 times.

Odelay

Beck

4/5

Funky, baby.

The Clash

3/5

Thought this would be more fun. I get including London Calling, obviously, but the debut instead of Combat Rock or Sandanista seems like a mistake. Oh well...

Let's Stay Together

Al Green

1/5

Let's yawn together.

Revolver

Beatles

4/5

Sure, it's great, but they still hadn't reached their peak yet. They were knocking on the door of true genius, but Taxman, Good Day Sunshine, Doctor Robert, etc. are still stuck in their early mode of songwriting. For me it's Sgt. Pepper's when the five-star albums begin.

The Boatman's Call

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

2/5

Transformer

Lou Reed

3/5

Perfect Day is a perfect song. The rest is just fine. Seems like a 'time and a place' record.

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

Neil Young & Crazy Horse

5/5

Absolute masterpiece.

Being There

Wilco

4/5

Ready To Die

The Notorious B.I.G.

5/5

This 5 comes with an asterisk. Yes, it's a little bloated, yes, the skits are lame, yes, we don't need Puffy as a hype-man... But Biggie's lyrical gift and his flow are just unreal. Absolute classic of an album.

Cloud Nine

The Temptations

2/5

Fear Of A Black Planet

Public Enemy

2/5

I love rap, but I've just never enjoyed Chuck D. Sorry!

The Band

4/5

Want One

Rufus Wainwright

2/5

The Village Green Preservation Society

The Kinks

4/5

Raw Power

The Stooges

3/5

Beach Samba

Astrud Gilberto

1/5

About as exciting as a bowl of cereal.

Cross

Justice

1/5

Gorillaz

1/5

I would rather hit myself in the thumb with a hammer a couple hundred times than listen to this album.

Heroes

David Bowie

3/5

Oedipus Schmoedipus

Barry Adamson

2/5

Queen II

Queen

2/5

Not a band I love, but they sure were a lot more fun & creative later in their career. Once again I'm surprised by the need to include an early, formative (but not actually very good...) album from a band on the 1,001 list.

KE*A*H** (Psalm 69)

Ministry

3/5

Total surprise. Don't like the vocals at all, but the guitar riffs and the drums are great, and the sound production is perfect for what they're going for. Happy to give this a 3.

Getz/Gilberto

Stan Getz

2/5

The Doors

2/5

Arrival

ABBA

1/5

The Hour Of Bewilderbeast

Badly Drawn Boy

4/5

Excellent, creative, weird little slice of indie music. It's a shame he didn't do anything even remotely as interesting after this.

Goo

Sonic Youth

4/5

Tea for the Tillerman

Cat Stevens

1/5

Watered down music for people who like going to church.

This Is Fats Domino

Fats Domino

3/5

Scott 4

Scott Walker

2/5

Repeater

Fugazi

4/5

The College Dropout

Kanye West

5/5

The Infotainment Scan

The Fall

2/5

Young Americans

David Bowie

1/5

Plenty of 'necessary' Bowie records. This isn't one of them, and the fact that he's already in here like eight other times makes the inclusion of Young Americans even more egregious.

The World is a Ghetto

War

3/5

I don't usually love this genre, but this album was pretty damn good. City, Country, City especially. Strong 3.

The Poet

Bobby Womack

1/5

Putting the 'ack' in Womack since 1944.

Oar

Alexander 'Skip' Spence

4/5

Olympia 64

Jacques Brel

2/5

Loved the first song. The emotion and style of unguarded singing...very cool. Unfortunately, after that it pretty quickly lost its novelty for me. Glad it's on here, though. Refreshing to get something so different.

Rubber Soul

Beatles

3/5

I think when I was younger I would have automatically given this a knee-jerk rating of 5. I mean, it's Rubber Soul, right? By the Beatles!?! But honestly, it's not that good. They just weren't there yet. Revolver was a big step forward, and by Sgt. Peppers they had finally truly broken free. Rubber Soul, to me, still has too many trappings of the early Beatles, and some of them sure haven't aged well. So (shrug) a 3 it is.

Traffic

1/5

If this were really traffic, it would be the kind at 5:00 in the afternoon, when all you want to do is get home, but cars are backed up on the freeway, and everyone's angry, and someone keeps honking their horn, and it's too hot, and you're hungry, and there's nothing good on the radio, and a mosquito is buzzing around in your car, and you're almost out of gas, but you also have gas yourself...in other words, Traffic sucks.

Close To You

Carpenters

3/5

Surprisingly not bad, especially the second half, where they put some of their more adventurous songs. Some cool Beach Boys style vocal harmonies. I expected to hate this, but I'll give it a generous 3 stars.

Wild Is The Wind

Nina Simone

3/5

Back At The Chicken Shack

Jimmy Smith

3/5

One more hater here, for the five-star system. Because this record is better than a 3, but it sure isn't a 4. Wish I could throw it that 7 out of 10. Or better yet, the 7.1 / 10 it deserves.

Like A Prayer

Madonna

2/5

Title track is solid gold. The rest of it is pretty lackluster for me. I bet at the time it was pretty special, but I think it suffers, now, from 35 years of artists doing this type of music bigger and better.

Bitches Brew

Miles Davis

3/5

Lady Soul

Aretha Franklin

2/5

Leftism

Leftfield

1/5

Space Ritual

Hawkwind

3/5

The Marshall Mathers LP

Eminem

1/5

Bad cheese doesn't age well.

If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears

The Mamas & The Papas

2/5

Porridge is too hot, porridge is too cold.

Devotional Songs

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

3/5

Pornography

The Cure

2/5

Abbey Road

Beatles

5/5

Wonderful Rainbow

Lightning Bolt

3/5

Ten

Pearl Jam

5/5

The Downward Spiral

Nine Inch Nails

4/5

The Colour Of Spring

Talk Talk

3/5

Hotel California

Eagles

2/5

Very much a hotel. From the carpets to the bedding to the little bars of soap...

The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway

Genesis

2/5

I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You

Aretha Franklin

2/5

Odessa

Bee Gees

2/5

Court And Spark

Joni Mitchell

3/5

1984

Van Halen

1/5

Wet, microwaved, cardboard crust. Way too much red sauce. Chunky, high-moisture mozzarella. They might say, "Hey, at least it's still pizza." But is it? The culinary abomination you're putting in your mouth, because you have to eat something, right? Is it? Is it even pizza...?

The xx

1/5

Have you ever spent 39 minutes examining a carpet?

Pacific Ocean Blue

Dennis Wilson

1/5

Interesting backstory doesn't make a boring album more listenable.

Country Life

Roxy Music

2/5

Hail To the Thief

Radiohead

4/5

Another head-scratcher. OK Computer and Kid A are absolutely necessary in this collection. I get including Amnesiac (which is actually my personal favorite) and I even understand The Bends...I guess. But Hail to the Thief? Is it good? Yeah, even great at times. But it's not Radiohead at their best, and by this point in their career they already have four albums listed! Seems like a no-brainer for the editors to dump this one and In Rainbows, and include a couple records from under-represented genres, or just from a couple artists who didn't make it in. It's my same beef with Bowie, Morrissey, Dylan, Elvis Costello, The Byrds, etc... Anyway, HTTT is a fine album. Strong 4 from me.

New York Dolls

2/5

Led Zeppelin III

Led Zeppelin

2/5

Immigrant Song! Plus a bunch of other songs...

Endtroducing.....

DJ Shadow

4/5

Awesome. I like to picture the guy spending years creating this, poring over every transition, every sample, every beat... Some very cool moments. Solid 4. Wish I could give it an 8.7 out of 10.

Tarkus

Emerson, Lake & Palmer

1/5

Yikes.

The Notorious Byrd Brothers

The Byrds

2/5

Thys rycord ys boryng.

Head Hunters

Herbie Hancock

3/5

...And Justice For All

Metallica

3/5

Looooved this album when I was 11 years old. In 1992. Needless to say, it hasn't aged well. The funniest thing about listening to it now is how out of place most of Hammett's solos sound. It's like they decided to go for the less thrashy, more math-and-groove rock (which they would get right three years later on the black album), but he hadn't yet figured out how to tame the wild, noodly arpeggios to fit the new mood. The other unexpected aspect I found bothersome was Lars' drumming. I learned to play drums while listening to Metallica in the early 90s, and I always loved his metronomic work with hi-hat, kick and snare. So it was surprising just how masturbatory it all sounds now. Like, he just had to turn every...single...beat into a clinical exercise. Again, by the black album, he'd figured this out, and the economical but pounding (and masterfully recorded, as opposed to this hot auditory garbage) drums of that album make this style seem like a kid showing off. Which Lars always was, I guess. Anyway, I'll give it a strong 3 for nostalgia, and for Blackened, One, and To Live is To Die.

We're Only In It For The Money

The Mothers Of Invention

5/5

Yes!!!!!!! I'm 112 albums into this experience, and for the first time I'm listening to a truly great record that I've never heard before! I had a friend try to turn me on to Zappa years ago, but I must not have been ready for it. So glad I got this one yesterday. The mix of competent musicianship (ignore the bad reviews on this score; they don't have a clue) and broad, eclectic humor reminds me of Ween and NoFX. The sound collage stuff reminds me of Olivia Tremor Control and the Microphones. The scattershot, mini-movie feel to the sequencing feels like a precursor to the best moments in experimental rock to come, from Tom Waits to Radiohead to Black Midi. Happily giving this 5 stars, and looking forward to listening to it again and again!

The Scream

Siouxsie And The Banshees

3/5

London Calling

The Clash

3/5

Time Out Of Mind

Bob Dylan

2/5

Imagine if they made a new Star Wars movie, but instead of weird-looking aliens, exciting space battles and well-choreographed lightsaber fights, the whole thing was just a bunch of scenes filled with rebel commanders and empire politicians filling out reports and doing daily chores. That's this album. It's like Dylan took the earlier version of himself as a songwriter and musician, fed that version a steady diet of porridge and prune juice, made him read nothing but Reader's Digests and watch Friends reruns, and then set him loose in a Men's Wearhouse to find inspiration for some new songs. If this album were anyone but Dylan it wouldn't have made more than a ripple in the musical and cultural world of 1997, and we certainly wouldn't be writing about it today. 2 stars, I guess. I save my single star ratings for albums I don't like. It's not even that I don't like this. It was boring in '97, and it's still boring almost three decades later.

The Nightfly

Donald Fagen

1/5

I'd rather eat styrofoam peanuts than listen to this. There should be a zero star option.

Beyond Skin

Nitin Sawhney

1/5

Huh.

Green River

Creedence Clearwater Revival

3/5

Listening to this album in full reinforces what I'd always felt about CCR. They're a singles band. The rest of the album serves as filler for the two or three great cuts. Shrug...

All Hail the Queen

Queen Latifah

3/5

Peter Gabriel 3

Peter Gabriel

3/5

The Cars

3/5

Time (The Revelator)

Gillian Welch

3/5

American Pie

Don McLean

1/5

Yikes. So many good albums that could have been on the list. So many good genres that are underrepresented. Don McLean...? Really...?

Nick Of Time

Bonnie Raitt

1/5

Lust For Life

Iggy Pop

2/5

Halcyon Digest

Deerhunter

4/5

In The Wee Small Hours

Frank Sinatra

1/5

Dank piñata.

Here's Little Richard

Little Richard

2/5

Home Is Where The Music Is

Hugh Masekela

2/5

1989

Taylor Swift

3/5

Maybe the greatest argument yet for a better ratings system. This is better than a 3, but I just can't in good conscience give it a 4. Which is weird, because if it was a 0-10 point scale I'd probably give it a 7. With decimals it would be a 7.2. And I know that rounds up to 4 out of 5. But I just can't do it! Aaaarrrggghh!!!!!!!

Tellin’ Stories

The Charlatans

1/5

Oh great, generic Britpop! Just what this list needed! On another note, take a look at the overall rating of this album. If you saw an average of 2.5, you would consider it firmly in the middle of the road, right? Wrong. Because of the absence of the zero-star option, ratings get inflated. Look at the bar graphs, and you'll see that this record has more ratings on the left than the right. It's a sub-mediocre album, and yet its average hovers around 2.95. With a 1-5 system, the total is 15 and the average is 3. It's like saying the lowest grade you could give a student is 20%, even if they had done zero work, or skipped the course entirely. We need a zero-star option!!!

Stardust

Willie Nelson

1/5

Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots

The Flaming Lips

3/5

I really liked this album when it came out. It felt very much of the time. Sadly, it hasn't aged particularly well, with Wayne Coyne's vocals being the worst part. I like my share of 'weird' singers, but his nasally twang just doesn't help, especially over the course of a full record. I'll happily give it a 3 for the title track, In the Morning of the Magicians, and Do You Realize??

Arise

Sepultura

3/5

Swap this one for Chaos A.D. and it's a win!

Songs From The Big Chair

Tears For Fears

3/5

Damaged

Black Flag

2/5

Blonde On Blonde

Bob Dylan

4/5

Fun House

The Stooges

4/5

Iggy Pop was the badass that Jim Morrison wished he was.

Elvis Presley

1/5

What a goblin.

Drunk

Thundercat

2/5

Dr. Octagonecologyst

Dr. Octagon

3/5

Long live the weirdos!

Appetite For Destruction

Guns N' Roses

3/5

Bryter Layter

Nick Drake

3/5

Clandestino

Manu Chao

2/5

Pet Sounds

The Beach Boys

5/5

At Mister Kelly's

Sarah Vaughan

2/5

The Wall

Pink Floyd

4/5

Haven't listened to this in its entirety for maybe 25 years. I was surprised at how well it held up. Yeah, it's bloated, but it didn't feel overwhelming. I mean, the structure is the point! Happy to give this a 4.

Modern Kosmology

Jane Weaver

2/5

Jane Weaver must be one of the editor's cousins, or girlfriends, or something like that. It's the only way to explain the inclusion of this album. It's not even that bad; it just has no place on a 'must-hear' list. It's like the editors wrote down every album from 2017 on the wall, and then threw a dart. Baffling.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Wilco

5/5

Teenage Head

Flamin' Groovies

2/5

Rock 'N Soul

Solomon Burke

3/5

Stripped

Christina Aguilera

1/5