interesting - will listen again
If this had "What is Life" and a bunch of total filler, I'd still be tempted to give it a four, because that is one of the greatest pop songs ever. But there's other good stuff on here too, most of which I'd never heard. "Awaiting on You All," "Isn't it a Pity," "If Not For You," and "Let It Down" are some of my other favorites. (I've never liked "My Sweet Lord.") The rest does include a lot of filler but it's mostly listenable.
Accurately titled. I like some Iggy Pop, but I'm guessing this is on the early and more raw side -- I prefer my punk a little more melodic than this. Some good riffs, and pretty listenable, but nothing really grabbed me.
My problem with a lot of metal is the vocal style. Ozzy doesn't have *that* kind of vocal style, but I still find his voice best in small doses. And with some tighter songs. I think Sabbath improved a lot after this album.
I find Alanis kind of annoying, but I'd forgotten how good most of this is, and enjoyed listening to it again. You Oughta Know is a 5-star song. Also like All I Really Want and several others. The bad parts: the a cappella hidden track, one or two of the other slow ones, and everything in Ironic except the chorus.
Nice voice, and I know this is an important album. But it isn't to my taste. (Nor is most R&B and soul, as those terms have been used since the 1980s or so.)
Not what I would usually feel like listening to, but this is great stuff. So smooth. The improv on Willow caught me off guard and was hilarious. (I was ready for it the second time around, but still good.)
I don't really get why Tom Petty became a star. To me his stuff seems competent and listenable but straight down the middle, with his odd voice the only distinguishing feature. "American Girl" is a classic, but I don't think he approached it until "Free Fallin'," many years later.
The first of these that I owned on disc. Have never gotten tired of it. Many great songs, but "One Flight Down" is my favorite.
I like a lot of Bowie songs, but none of them are on this album. "Young Americans" is okay, but it's the best of the bunch.
The title track is a great song. The rest is forgettable. Not sure why it made it to this list.
If I didn’t know the backstory, this might be rated only a 4. But I can’t separate the music from the story here.
I'm always happy to listen to More Than a Feeling. Most of the rest is good-to-great. Most of the lyrics are dull or outright stupid (mainly Smokin', but also, "dancin' in the streets of Hyannis"!?), but the amazing riffs carry the day. Let Me Take You Home Tonight is a fantastic finisher. No one else sounds like Boston.
Some good passages, but the songs lose their freshness after a few minutes and sound repetitive.
The second one to come along in our queue that I've owned in physical form. It's great stuff, but I think he could have used one more uptempo song to give a break from the prevailing mood.
Rounding up from 2.5. Not my thing at all, but interesting. The first track is good.
I don’t at all like the metal growl-style vocals. Or the muted sound of the high-speed drums. The rest is decent though.
It's weird. These guys are about 85% of the way to being Squeeze, who I really like. But I didn't enjoy this at all. Hits some kind of stylistic allergy I have but will not bother trying to describe.
This is good, but musically it's very samey after a while, and I don't usually pay enough attention to the lyrics to get the full benefit of Newman's smarts
Liked this more the more I listened to it. A couple of standout tracks (Grounds for Divorce and One Day Like This).
Based on what I'd heard before, I thought I liked Dr. John. I still like those songs. This bunch of noodling and pseudo-voodoo BS is different. Ugh.
Prog fan here. Owned this one on vinyl. I don't listen to Yes as much as I used to, but I still like this one. Würm is the best; Perpetual Change a close second.
I know this one very, very well. Definitive versions of Young Man Blues and Summertime Blues. And while I'd have voted for tighter arrangements of Magic Bus and My Generation, I still love it.
A favorite of mine. Loved seeing the band do it live on their recent tour. Jesus of Suburbia is fantastic.
Great of course. Particularly nostalgic for me because I taped it off the radio one time before I was buying music, and played it over and over again. Amazingly, I still enjoy most of the songs, especially "For No One," "I Want to Tell You," and "Tomorrow Never Knows."
This is most of what I love about Cash. Only doesn't get 5 because of the truncated Folsom Prison Blues; could have used a few more songs in fact. "San Quentin" is amazing.
I've listened to the first two tracks a billion times, and look forward to the next billion. When #2 kicks in after "...inherit the Earth" is one of my favorite moments in music. The rest of the concept album is pretty good too. Second side falls off a bit, but "Something for Nothing" is a powerhouse finish. So, even though it's probably Paul Ryan's favorite album, I love it.
this is pretty easy to listen to, if I don't pay any attention to it
this probably deserves a 3, but it gives me happy nostalgic feelings so bumped up a notch
Scattered among the tuneless noodling, this had a few minutes of grooves I enjoyed, but not enough to raise it to a 2.
I'd of course heard of them, but didn't know any of this. Some catchy stuff. Too much talking, though.
Captain Soul is a great instrumental track. I don't care for the rest, although I know this has a few important and innovative tracks. And every sound David Crosby produces annoys me.
And why didn't they call it Fyfth Dymension? Missed opportunity.
Great. I think "Computer Blue" is the only weakness, and it's still pretty decent.
This is for the 1979 US version of the album, which includes the standouts "Clash City Rockers," "Jail Guitar Doors," and "I Fought the Law," among others. It's the one I owned and remember. For the English version, I'd probably drop a star.
Good, varied stuff. Btw OK Go recorded an excellent (albeit not especially innovative) cover of This Will Be Our Year.
I think for this one, the whole is way better than the sum of the parts. The individual songs are pleasant enough, but "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" is the only one I think is great on its own. But listening to the album start to finish is a great experience. Probably even better with whiskey.
Very much not my thing. Freedom is a good song, but twice as long as it should be. The rest is a boring mix of 80s drum sounds and too-breathy vocals.
Gods, this is wonderful. Ten stars.
Maybe a 2.5. I didn't totally hate it, but there wasn't much interesting either.
Riders on the Storm is a great song. The WASP is a weird song that's about 50% great, mainly because of trippy, epic-sounding lyrics like "out here on the perimeter there are no stars; out here, we are stoned, immaculate." The other 50%, sadly, includes a musically stupid chorus and one line in particular that, like the Doors' music generally, has aged badly.
I've liked some other Coltrane (Blue Train), but I don't think I have the musical vocabulary to really appreciate or enjoy this one.
this Desert Blues is good stuff!
I can't stand Morrissey's voice and find the Smiths unbearably pretentious. Some of the music is pretty good, though.
A Paul Simon album I've never heard of, with not one song I recognize by title. This should be interesting. From the timing I guess it's the one before Graceland.
...
It wasn't that interesting. One or two songs that caught my attention, but I'm apparently one of those shallow Simon fans who needs more Kodachrome.
When this popped up I thought I'd give it a 4, because I think REM really hit their stride at Fables, and I wanted to leave room to give it (and probably almost everything following it, at least through New Adventures in Hi-Fi) a 5. But then I listened to it, and realized it's another Revolver. Man, it was great to hear all of these.
This has some commonalities with music I like a lot by Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, but not enough to make me like it.
Ye gods I dislike this. Irritating in every way, except that the vocals are beyond irritating. It's like in Dumb and Dumber when Jim Carrey makes the most annoying sound in the world. I feel bad for some of the other 1's I gave.
This is pretty good stuff, and is when U2's career started to take off. But - I think they made much better records later. Especially, Bono's vocals got much better than the whiny wail he overuses here. And the songwriting improved too.
Love this album. I came to TF way after the fact, as I explored power pop after realizing that I loved Big Star and Matthew Sweet and Velvet Crush and the Bangles and Letters to Cleo and Cheap Trick...
Anyway, great stuff.
On the fence between 3 and 4, but I’m feeling generous and rounding up because the deluxe edition has a second version of the excellent first track.
Maybe should have given this 3, but it caught me in a mood in which I found it offensively boring.
Why is *this* the Madonna album that belongs on this list?
Very very much not my thing
pretty good stuff, although I had a hard time making it stick in my head. Rounding up from 3.5.
I've learned more recently about the Beach Boys from listening to Andrew Hickey, so I no longer think of their music as stuck-in-1960 teenage fluff oldies. This has some great stuff on it, especially the wall-of-sound songs. And I think it will reward repeat listening; I'll definitely put it on again. "I'm Waiting for the Day" is my favorite, and I'd never heard it before. Rounding down from 4.5 because I don't like "Wouldn't It Be Nice," and that's the biggest hit here.
I prefer my punk a bit more pop- and less proto-, but this is good stuff. Too bad they only made the one (I think - haven’t done much research on them).
I somehow missed AIC the first time around. I think they were big during the -10 years I was mostly listening to singer-songwriters. This is pretty good but seemed monotonous after a while. I should listen to more of it.
Has some great songs, but the whole is not nearly as good as Purple Rain. Several tracks (especially Automatic) are way too long, and Something in the Water (Does Not Compute) is outright awful. Drop that and shorten several songs and it might be a 5.
Could use some tighter edits, but I love the epic sweep and hammering rhythm of many of the tracks.
Okay, but not great. Don’t know the genre much.
I know, I'm a Philistine. This would be a higher rating, but I really dislike the strangled wail that makes up 2/3 of the vocals.
Criminal is a wonderful, 5-star track, and Carrion is pretty good too, and I like her voice -- but most of the rest of the album doesn't grab me.
My first reaction was, why is a one-hit wonder on this list? Having read a little more of their bio, I guess it's probably because of their major impact on the New York club scene, dance music, etc. Also, I guess they had more than one hit. But I don't like dance clubs or scenes, and although the music is inoffensive I don't find much here for me. Rounding up from 2.5 because Groove is great, though.
Had heard of but not heard these guys. Pretty good; not crazy about the lead vocalist's voice. Rounding up from 3.5, partly because so many of the songs have really strong endings that I quite enjoyed.
This seems complicated and interesting, but not enjoyable. No memorable songs; a lot of cool sounds that would be good as the soundtrack for a Blade Runner knockoff where a guy in a trench coat is walking down an alley.
I mostly know Dusty's hits, and they are wonderful. Most of the songs aren't quite as good here, although I really like Anyone Who Had a Heart (Bacharach/David; no surprise it's good). But as a debut it's fantastic, and I love her voice so much it carries through even the weaker songs. Rounding up from 4.5
Falls off steeply after Jet.
Easy 5 for me, as forecast when we rated Murmur. Exhuming McCarth" and Strange are my favorite not-as-well-known-as-the-two-massive-hits tracks. I didn't realize the latter was a cover for a long time, but it and Superman and Toys in the Attic and the Hindu Love Gods album confirm my opinion that REM is a great cover band, as well as great at most other things. Anyway, back to this: the last four tracks aren't as flashily great as the rest, and I confess that back in the day I didn't listen to them as much as the part before, but they are excellent too.
Before this album, I would have said "yeah, ZZ Top is okay, I like a few of their songs." I mean, La Grange and Jesus Just Left Chicago aren't particularly original, but they're great songs. This album changed everything. Its mix of synthetic dance-club drum tracks and weird Richard Marx-esque vocals and general pop aspirations was awful, but also was monstrously successful, meaning that I heard it (and saw the terrible videos) constantly. On top of everything else, I think they are the worst lyricists in pop music:
"She might get out a nightstick, and beat me real real bad...by the roadside."
"Gimme all your lovin'...all your hugs and kisses too."
"I'm needing someone like you, that I just wanna do love to."
TV Dinners almost seems profound among this dreck. They should have gone back to being fake Zombies.
Smooth and pleasant. I knew Chatelaine and Constant Craving, but had not heard the rest. Enough variety within and among the songs that it held my attention. I almost deducted a star for the lyric "The ground on which we leave on" in the otherwise excellent Season of Hollow Soul.
Except for once in a lifetime, I find this boring. Many of the songs have a cool sound or groove, but then repeat it monotonously for way too long.
Didn’t catch these guys the first time around, although eventually, I heard this song Madness, but I really like this. Has a Kansas-like prog quality to a lot of it that I really enjoyed.
It turns out that while I like the concept of Björk, I don't like her music, which is aggressively unpleasant. (At least on this album. I sorta remember thinking "Army of Me" was an okay song.)
I liked this pretty well, especially the first song and One Horse Town, but could have used a bit more power in this pop. And too much of the lead vocal had a wispy gut-shot quality that I wasn't crazy about. Still, I'll probably check out some more by these guys.
I’m metal-ignorant enough that I barely know the difference between Megadeth, Motörhead, and Metallica. I like loud guitars, but don’t like the common metal vocal growl or, often, whatever that drum style is called. This didn’t offend me in either of those ways, so I dug it. Will listen to again.
Some good songs, some cool sounds, but mostly not melodic enough for me, and I don’t like one of the (two?) main vocalists.
Preconception going into this: MM was a music impresario who put the Sex Pistols together. Cool!
Result of listening: Well, that was different than I expected, but not terrible. Parts were pretty catchy. Guess it's on this list because it was influential in popularizing Afropop or world music or the like. Maybe South African music particularly -- I caught a reference to Soweto. It does seem like it may have been delivered without giving any credit to the actual musicians on it.
This was very long. Not built 4 my tastes. Too many repellent words, and I couldn't follow any of the stories, which left only the music, and that tended to be a single phrase repeated for an entire song.
This all sounded about like I expected ND to sound based on the handful of songs I've heard before, and that's pretty good.
I had a hard time deciding what I thought of this. Haven't heard of them and didn't read anything about them. Sometimes I thought it sounded like a pretty good bar band, sometimes like brilliance. Sometimes like cool psychedelic rock, sometimes like aimless noodling. Some songs were great, and some were okay but went on way too long. In the end I decided to round up from 3.5.
I don't have anything to say that I didn't have to say about the last SY album. I still feel like there's something I'm not getting about them.
This mystified me when I bought it based on a good review after it came out, but I've come to love it. Much of it, anyway. It has about a dozen wonderful songs (esp. Grand Canyon, when my boy walks down the street, the luckiest guy), some that are fine, some that are trifles, and some that are pretty rough listening. The self-conscious cleverness is a little off-putting, but I still like this a lot.
Okay, not great. Supertramp has one song I love: Goodbye Stranger. It's not on this album. I like a lot of individual passages and parts of songs, but most of the songs have flaws (e.g. the chorus of bloody well right) that undermine them.
This has one total powerhouse (Maybe I'm Amazed, probably McCartney's best non-Beatles song apart from Live and Let Die). The rest is pretty listenable but none of it really stuck with me.
Rounding up from 3.5. Maybe influenced because I know this is regarded as great. Also, there’s a batshit organized-crime story behind its recording. Anyway, this would be really good to listen to by the fire with a glass of whiskey.
Glad I heard this -- can you get to that was the only song I'd heard before. Good grooves. The first track is abominable but most of the rest is very solid.
A charity 2 because I couldn't make myself listen to the second half, which seems a little unfair. But I did not enjoy this at all.
Good stuff! Liked the droning, fuzzy guitars. Will listen to more from them.
For all Stevie's amazing talent, I just don't like many of the songs on this album. YATSOML is good, and Superstition is an all-time great, but I only liked one or two others.
Had not heard of them before. Reasonably pleasant, mostly, but forgettable Euro-weenie blandness.
A bit of a letdown from Document for me, but it's still great. And listening to it again, I thought I need to play this more often. "Stand" will always make me smile (partly because I think of Chris Elliott throwing newspapers at the beginning of Get a Life). And the untitled track is a perfect closer, following the downbeat minor key of I Remember California.
I like this better than the Bjork solo album, but I think it still doesn't quite do it for me. Will re-listen, though.
Disclosure: I ran out of time to listen to this and only got about halfway through. But I'm pretty confident in the rating. Doesn't have my favorite Santana songs on it (She's Not There, Evil Ways, Smooth, a few others) but I like it pretty well. Occurs to me that Carlos S. is an unusual sort of guitar virtuoso in that he fits himself into what sounds like a giant band with all kinds of other instruments. I really like the big jams, like the song that flows out of the end of Black Magic Woman.
Something I learned only recently: Greg Rolie, the lead vocalist on this album (and on all of Santana's first few albums) co-founded the band with Carlos, and after leaving Santana went on to co-found Journey with Neil Schon. I found this out because I was looking up who was that really good vocalist on some of Journey's earlier tracks, e.g. Anytime, before they decided to entirely give over to Steve Perry's awful whine.
Pretty good, and showed me there was more to the Verve than Bittersweet Symphony. (About which I vaguely remember there's one of those unjust music-IP-troll stories in which the band gets screwed and some parasite benefits heavily.) Liked Drugs Don't Work, Space and Time, a few others quite a bit. OTOH I found a few songs dull and repetitive. So, a 3.
This would be a five, probably, if I liked Biafra’s vocal style more. As it is, there are a bunch of good songs and a couple of duds. I like that they are about something. And the one two punch of Holiday in Cambodia, followed by Viva Las Vegas is a great way to end the album. The first is a solid angry classic, and the second shows they don’t take themselves too seriously. I think I always like a punked up cover of a standard.
This was great! As a casual Pixies fan up to now I knew five or six songs; I think Velouria was the only track from this one that was even slightly familiar. I liked practically all of this a lot so it's hard to single out other tracks, but some of my favorites were Cecilia Ann, Allison, Is She Weird, and Stormy Weather.
I've been a Green Day fan for a long time. Saw them live on the recent tour when they played Dookie and American Idiot through, so now we've covered both in this list. I think this is a good pairing with American Idiot: this being more singles-focused, AI more thematic. On this album, Longview and She are the standouts for me, but I like it all.
I liked several of these songs very much: (Drawing) Rings Around the World, Sidewalk Serfer Girl, a couple of others. Note: I'm a little confused about track names and which ones I heard since I started with the deluxe edition and then reverted to the original, and the track listings are very different. One thing I'm sure of is that Juxtapozed is atrocious, though. That and some of the other more aimless tracks pull it down to a 3 for me. But I appreciate the variety and am glad to have found this.
Kinda like the Bjork situation: I think PJ Harvey is deeply cool, but I don't like her songs so much. They're okay, and all have interesting parts. But this album is mostly too dissonant, and the songs too loosely structured, for my taste.
I'm a Springsteen fan, but this has never been one of my favorites. Tough for me to separate how I feel about many of these songs' quality from how their ubiquity during my college years made me sick of them. I'll take them in turn. Forgive the length.
- Born in the USA: great song but I can only listen to the live version. On this one, drum monotony strikes again, and there's nothing musically interesting about the last several minutes. Live version (on the 3-disc compilation that came out a little after this) adds a lot of oomph and some screeching guitars that are very welcome.
- Cover Me: okay song, not quite as overplayed
- Darlington County: great song. Why wasn't it a single? Sounds like something from the River.
- Working on the Highway: So-so. A little too much forced yee-haw for my taste.
- Downbound Train: The one song I had to hear again to remind myself what it was. It's okay. Like a rocked-up outtake from Nebraska. Nits: (1) Calling a train "downbound" seems weird. (2) Bruce says "mister" too much. (3) I don't like the keyboards.
- I'm on Fire: good track. Points off for the creepy little girl/daddy thing, which Bruce's lyrics have always had too much of. (He's not alone in that, of course.)
- No Surrender: great song; I don't need to hear it anymore.
- Bobby Jean: maybe the best on the album.
- I'm Going Down: boring.
- Glory Days: objectively a good song, but I'm heartily sick of it. Can't decide if the "speedball" lyric deserves points off; it's so bizarre I almost like it.
- Dancing in the Dark: great song, and I can still listen to it and enjoy it, but I've always hated the monotony of the drum track.
- My Hometown: kinda boring downbeat end to the thing.
All adds up to a 3.
Mostly this doesn't do it for me. Rounding up from 2 point something on the strength of Paper Planes.
Moderate-level U2 fan as I may have reported before. This is the band at the peak of their powers, I think. Pretty sure this was one of the few CDs that my wife and I both brought to our marriage, but it's been a while since I've played it all the way through and I'd forgotten about some of the songs. Not a bad one in the bunch; most are full-on great. Mysterious Ways may be their best kick-ass radio-friendly anthem, and I don't think I'll ever get tired of it.
I am almost allergic to Neil's voice, but I often really like his guitar sounds. And these are excellent songs.
This is really a 3.5, but I'm being xmas-generous and also trying to give fewer 3's. Pretty good but could use more variety. The guitars reminded me a lot of the more melodic subset of Clash songs (Death or Glory, say). Which is a good thing.
The title track is great, and the other folk-rock tune is pretty good. The rest is kind of ho-hum, but fine.
Too Much to Dream, which I knew a little, is the only great song, but the rest was decent, and sometimes enjoyably weird.
I mostly disliked Van Halen when I was in my teens and 20s; thought their songs were stupid, and the hits were massively overplayed on the AOR stations I was listening to. At some point in the last 10 or 15 years something flipped, and now I really enjoy their brand of stupid, loud, *fun* rock. (I've had similar changes of view as to Def Leppard, Joan Jett, and Bon Jovi.) I think it helps that they always seem like they're in on the joke -- until the Hagar years that is, because Roth's persona really helps sell that bit. Anyway, this is really good Van Halen. I imagine it's on the list because of Eddie's guitar work, but another thing I've realized is that the band wouldn't be anything much without Michael Anthony's backing vocals. (Sorry, Van Halen drummer, whoever you are. I like your sound too but you're probably the least essential.) The end of Eruption / beginning of You Really Got me is an amazing kick in the ass that I've always loved, even when I didn't like the band.
First three songs and several of the later ones reminded me of 1980s arty college-rock bands I liked such as Thrashing Doves and Let's Active. But this was 1980, so I guess it may be on the list because of being pioneering in that genre. (Genre?) The talky imitation-Velvet-Underground stuff didn't work as well, but I'm still giving it a 4.
"Every man knows he is a sissy compared to Johnny Cash." Fuckin' A.
2020 seems late for the theme to be considered what makes this sensitive. Sometimes-interesting collage of styles that I mostly don’t like. Stop Dem was good.
Up from 3.5, in the holiday spirit. The Darlene Love stuff is amazing; much of the rest is good, but the Bobby whatever wasn't. And I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause is still unbearable.
This genre has a low ceiling for me. Didn't finish.
Not an EJ fan particularly, but this is pretty good.
I know Donovan was kind of important, and I know I like at least one of his songs (First There Is a Mountain), but this is a dull album. Except for Legend of a Girl Child Linda, which is awful -- sounds like the boring type King Crimson songs that I don't like. (I do like King Crimson and prog generally, just not the pseudo-Renaissance ballads.)
Up from 3.5. Great piano sound.
Based on her voice, on the handful of songs I know well and love (Big Yellow Taxi, River, Both Sides Now, California, Chelsea Morning, Raised on Robbery), and on kind of her whole deal, I love Joni Mitchell. If I'd been in 17 in 1974 -- and although I'm old, I'm not that old -- I would definitely have had a crush on her. But only ROR is on this album, and while the rest is good, it's not quite as good as the songs I love. And there's a clunker or two. Anyway, bravo Joni, and I hope we have more albums in the queue.
I probably need to listen to this more. Some good stuff for sure.
More like seventeen hours. Dull stuff. The Cure is like the Smiths without the interesting parts and the good guitar. Friday I'm in Love is a great song, though.
A wonderful album, even though like C&S it doesn't have most of my favorite Joni songs. Brings back personal memories of the mid-1990s when I was heavily into a bunch of singer-songwriters. Not so much Joni, more people I could see live at local joints, but all of them were influenced by her. River is achingly beautiful.
I should probably listen to this more. Okay, but so far it didn't grab me.
Excellent stuff. My only gripe is that the quiet interludes go on too long.
Part way through and I can tell this is a solid 2 for me. The rapping is okay, though not my thing. The spoken interludes are just awful.
The timing was great here, following a pretty weak run by the RNG. But I'd have given this a 4 in any case. Two or three great pop-punk tunes (BB, Judy, Boyfriend) and a bunch of very good ones.
I saw Jason’s review and couldn’t help diving in to see if it was really that bad. For whatever reason, this worked for me.
