There's a difference between "seminal" or "influential" and "listenable". Though really, punk (proto-punk?) just isn't really my genre.
Sort of Doors-like ("We Will Fall" reminds me vaguely of "The End", in that it's a slow, meandering ten-minute song). Maybe it's better if you're stoned? And it's the 60s?
Another one that's hard to listen to. Maybe it just feels like a forerunner of much better indie rock? The title track could be heard as innovative, maybe, or it could just be droning and didactic.
Oh, this is what my parents meant when they said my music sounds like noise!
Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" (yesterday's album) isn't my usual genre, but I genuinely enjoyed it. I didn't really like "The Stooges" and "Meat is Murder" (which kicked off my list), but I could see their merit. This one is leaving me cold in ways the others didn't.
It really tested my commitment to listening to things all the way through and not cutting them short. I made it, but kind of by tuning it out by the end.
ok see this is music.
Do I love Leonard Cohen? Of course. But I admit I love the somewhat more melodic Leonard Cohen, before his final few albums. That doesn't mean I won't happily lay back and let his voice roll over me, just that this wasn't my favorite.
Oh good, I'd always wondered what an Arctic Monkeys was.
I'm kind of surprised: I had no idea that "indie rock" was a genre that I apparently do not enjoy at all. Maybe this sounds like a descendant of grunge, and since I missed the 90s, I don't have the background to appreciate it?
So yeah, pretty much just fell flat for me.
I wouldn't mind liking this album, but it falls into the "respect but don't particularly enjoy" category. (Except "Lost Cause", which I already knew and which is beautiful. Much of the rest of the album uses a lot more discordance, which, good for it, but that doesn't mean I want to listen to it.)
Continuing the "not my genre" trend. I'm not sure I've ever consciously heard a Destiny's Child song (I guess I must have, if one of these is from Charlie's Angels, but), because (a) the 90s and (b) R&B/pop.
It's good. It's really good. It's not like I have to tell anyone that, and I'm not even particularly surprised, but it's really good. Making me listen to albums like this is why I'm doing this.
I wish I spoke better French. (Any French.) But god do I love their sound. I don't know why I never searched beyond "Tilted", the one song I knew, but I should have.
mmmm, tastes like the 70s.
We're past the point that we all have to pretend that disco is bad. Disco is good. (Well, good disco is good, but, like, duh. There *is* good disco, is the point.) Even so, the entire album at once feels like a lot, somehow.
It's obviously quite good. Also just...a lot.
Finally, an album I owned! (Child of the 80s.) Also, *so, so good*.
Sometimes it's hard to tell whether something is genuinely good, or if it's just understood to be a classic and so you don't really have to give it any thought.
I thought about it. This is genuinely good.
I admit, I've never listened to a rap album before. I...am not sure this was the right place to start.
This is bizarre. This is f'ed up, man. (Thank you, Genius, for letting me read the lyrics while listening; and "thank you", Genius, for all the "helpful" annotations.) It's scatological, it's sexual (and not much of it consensual), it's alternately stream of consciousness and articles from Scientific American.
And...I liked it? I didn't hate it. I'm not likely to listen to it again, but I'm not necessarily sad that I listened to it once. (Compare that to "Iron Maiden", earlier in this project, which I really would have been fine never hearing.)
How do I rate an album like this? It's practically in a foreign language (Genius annotations were crucial in a lot of places). I don't dislike it, I'm not going to listen to it again; I respect its art, it's not my taste.
oh god it's indie rock.
It's discordant and the singer sounds somewhere between bored and whiny. I owe the 90s an apology for thinking they invented that.
I've been defaulting to "3" for things where I realize that the album just isn't my genre but it's probably important or influential. (And many albums outside my usual tastes have surprised me into higher ratings.) This one...is just so unlistenable that it's trending down towards a 2. Pray it descends no further.
"Pond Song" was almost OK, even if it did raise the question "Why would anyone listen to this when there's REM?". But the next song started so loud that I literally said "oh god" out loud.
All right, this album now marks the first time in 17 albums that I've stopped listening. I made it through the entirety of the "homicidal alien doctor raps about sexual assault" album, and I was one minute into the final five-minute song on this one when I said "No. No more. Make it stop." And now I know what a 1-star album is.
Yup, that sure is a Dylan album.
Yup, that sure is a Buck Owens album.
(I preferred "Memphis" when it was Chuck Berry. I preferred "Streets of Laredo" when it was the Smothers Brothers. But I did actually prefer this version of "Act Naturally" to Ringo's.)
This one really stretches my ability to set aside "not my genre". I suspect it's really a very good album of...country? Americana? Whatever it is. But it's just not what I want to be listening to.
One of those solid 70s albums. Doesn't quite hit 5/5 for me, but definitely 4/5.
That's just a whole lot of Dylan. I appreciate it, but it's also, well, a lot.
What am I even listening to? How does a band get from here to "Avalon"?
File under "being influential is not the same as being something you want to listen to". (Or at least that I want to.)
Am I glad I listened to it before I died? Maybe, though I also doubt I'd be lying on my deathbed saying "I wish...I wish I had listened to Roxy Music's debut album. Doctor, do I still have 42 minutes and 15 seconds to live?"
The Queen and the Soldier on its own would make this a phenomenal album. (Of course, we're deep into "exactly my tastes" territory.)
I feel like reviews of this album, especially retrospective ones, probably include phrases like "one of the most important new voices of" and "a richness of sound that" and whatever. Doesn't matter, it's just a very, very good album.
"Hey, ChatGPT, generate me a concept album, but, like, *real* arty." Four songs in, my conclusion is: I do not like Sufjan Stevens.
...of course, I've decided that by song four or five (c'mon, "John Wayne Gacy, Jr."? Your stepmother in Decatur?), and then I discover I kind of liked "Chicago" and was genuinely moved by "Casimir Pulaski Day".
Even with that said, though, I understand why critics liked this album, and I also understand why I don't.
I don't know Blur's music at all, but I was pretty sure I've heard something by them before. So when this started...I swear I thought, "Is this a prank? Did someone upload a fake album to YouTube?"
Wikipedia explains what I kind of gathered, that they're "Britpop" and specifically that they're influenced by "British guitar pop" like The Who and XTC. It sounds like a throwback to an earlier era. But...maybe not in a good way? It's the first album I've hit so far that I wanted to shut off not because it's bad but because halfway through I'm like "yeah OK I get it".
By the end it was so droning that I nearly bumped it down to 2 stars, but, OK, not-my-genre-etc.
One lesson from this album: even though punk is not my genre, I don't have to hate it.
Another lesson: I don't have to like it, either. I bet this is a great punk album. But.
My era, but never really my music, so it's interesting to listen to it. Thoughts: boy, GNR sure have potty mouths, don't they. Also, yeah, OK, this is some really solidly good music.
I wish I hadn't listened to this literally right after The Dark Side of the Moon, because nothing will ever be a 5 if you listen to it right after that. But it's a 4. "avant-pop cabaret" is not a genre I was familiar with (though I should have known "written in part by Elvis Costello" would be part of that), but it worked for me.
OK I get why critics love this. And people who lived through the 60s and may still be having acid flashbacks.. But boy is it hard to listen to now. I didn't hate it, but I also won't be putting it on again.
There's nothing wrong with this album, but I didn't find much to distinguish it. Somewhere around two-thirds of the way through Side 2 I realized I'd kind of tuned it out and was letting it play in the background. Which isn't fair to the album, but also, it kind of says a lot about what the album is like. Or at least what my take on "jazz rock" is.
I like a lot of these songs. I like Bob Dylan in general. But an entire album, a double album of that, of this very similar-sounding incomprehensible droning, plus yet another eleven-minute....yeah. OK, Bob.
My thought three songs in: This is clearly an album that music critics love, for one of three reasons. First, they're on acid. Second, they can see something in it I can't. Or third, they want you to understand that they're not so basic that they only love Dark Side of the Moon, but no, see, if you haven't listened to Syd Barrett you can't *really* understand Pink Floyd...
Probably the second. But maybe the third.
By the end, though, I think this album has worn me down. I'm embracing its psychedelic innovation. My consciousness is open. The universe flows through me.
As someone who missed the '90s, "Britpop" is an alien genre to me. (Though I can totally hear the influence of, say, The Kinks.) This...seems like a pretty good example of it? The only song familiar to me was "Alright", because it got discovered by advertisers five or ten years ago.
I mostly get it. I don't love it, but that's very much a "not my genre" thing.
It kind of sounds like early versions of Talking Heads songs I'm familiar with. But...even preliminary Talking Heads is good music.
1960s Soul: Another "not my genre" unlocked! (Not fair. Much more my genre than Britpop or pre-post-punk or alt-noise or whatever else this thing has fed me.)
Good voice, though.
I'm not sure what to make of this one. It's probably an excellent instance of (checks Wikipedia) Trip hop/jazzstep/breakbeat/chill-out/electronica/downtempo. Which leaves open the question of whether I liked it.
Maybe I'm being too generous with my 4s.
Ten minutes (i.e., three songs) in, I feel like I'm not going to hear anything that's going to change my mind about this album. It's, well, 1978 punk. Perfectly good 1978 punk, but still. I can practically hear everyone they've influenced in their music, which is also (a) to their credit and (b) a reason I'm not feeling blown away.
Well, OK, a few surprises--I appreciate the warping of the 50s-girl-group sound on "I Can't Do Anything", and the title track does stand out. But still.
I promised myself I'd try to make it all the way through every album. I had to stop #17 (Bug) a few seconds into the last song, but otherwise I've been OK.
I stopped this one halfway through. I guess avant-punk Krautrock is so far outside my comfort space as to be unlistenable.
Ugh. Part of the problem with this, I think, was that it was a film soundtrack, which is just very different than most "albums". I *think* it was "it's a soundtrack" and not "it's a Bollywood soundtrack"; I think I was more put off by the swelling instrumentals than the sound of the music itself.
Whatever it was, though, it just didn't work for me.
