1001 Albums Summary

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 again 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.

Springsteen at less than his best is still very good.

Why is this just listed as a Dolly album? It's right there in the title. Anyway, these are three amazing voices. Quite a gift that they worked together on this.

A bunch of great songs, but also a bunch of filler. Too much Run2Me, not enough Zero for my taste.

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 McCarthy 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.

Probably a 4 with better sound quality. The songs are kind of limited by having about 12 words each, though.

I was close to giving this one a four. The title track, although I don’t actually like it that much, is definitely a classic. And I like their version of you better run at least as much as Pat Benatar’s cover of it, which means I like it pretty well. Most of the rest sounds to me like stuff that the Monkees did in a better way, but it’s still pretty good. And I liked reading about the band and finding out that they were the ones who did several songs I knew and liked, especially people got to be free.

Johnny Cash aside, there hasn't been enough Americana / alt-country on this list so far. What a welcome addition. Ryan Adams is someone I've known *of* way more than I've actually listened to, but that will change. This album hit me really strong right from the gate, and I think it will improve on re-listening.

This might deserve a five just for "Piece of My Heart," one of the best songs ever. (Other wonderful versions are also out there, particularly the original by Aretha Franklin's sister Erma and a cover by Dusty Springfield. Even Sammy Hagar's cover isn't bad!) But while the rest is very good, for me its jam-oriented approach holds the album to a 4. And most of the live audience sounds are apparently studio additions, which is a little weird.

Too droning, too atonal

Much like the other Stevie album, what I hear is an amazing talent who focuses on a type of music I don't really like. "I Wish" is the "Superstition" of this album: a classic I'll always enjoy, with an amazing groove. I also liked hearing Coolio's source, which I didn't know.

I know this one well from (as with Jason's comment in the chat) playing the shit out of it in the 1990s. Haven't listened to much of it more recently except for There She Goes, which has deservedly become a standard. It was a lot of fun to revisit the rest. Other favorites from this trip through: I Can't Sleep, Timeless Melody, Failure, and the epic Looking Glass. So weird, and unfortunate, that this was the only album from these guys. My two minutes of research gave me no insight on wtf happened, just something about doomed by perfectionism.

Listened to the first 3 and I think I got the flavor. Not something I would like in most circumstances, thus the low score. But it did make me think about how my enjoyment of music is very context-dependent. If I were cooking flapjacks in a rural cabin, or driving down a lonely western two-lane highway, or sitting in a diner in a David Lynch movie, this would have been perfect.

I'm a greatest-hits-level EC fan. This is mostly very good -- the unbearable "Moods for Moderns" is the exception. Barriers to giving it 5 stars: it's hard to make out the words in his clever and meaningful lyrics, and it's hard to understand what he's talking about without hitting up wikipedia. That's not a huge deal or a flaw per se; it just means that at my level of enjoying the music otherwise, I seldom will spend the energy to go to Genius or SongMeanings and figure out what, say, "Two Little Hitlers" is actually about. Maybe if I did I'd think it merited a 5.

Gigantic is great, but mostly this is too raw for me to love.

Have I mentioned before how much I have come to dislike dialogue interludes? I really don't care where the motherfuckin' Dominos is at.

I disliked the first few tracks; then it grew on me. I didn't finish but will probably return to it at some point.

A very solid 3. Rio is a great song; the rest is listenable.

based on the first four tracks

I’d heard of the Cocteau Twins before, but I think I’d conflated them with the Thomson Twins, and didn’t actually know the CTs at all. This was quite good.

Bitches, hoes, etc. Motherfuckin' yawn. But kinda listenable in places.

Way better than I expected; tempted to give 4, but it mostly didn't have enough oomph for my taste, and the wispy vocals got tiresome after a while. Favorite tracks: This Must Be the Place... and Jealousy.

Started off good, but I didn't make it to the end.

Had never heard of this guy, but it's quite good. I get notes of ELO and Gordon Lightfoot. Will reward repeat listening.

I was familiar with Live Through This, and like it pretty well. But somehow I'd never heard any of Celebrity Skin before. It's great! I think I put all but two or three songs on my (very large) favorites playlist. I prefer its slightly more polished sound to Live Through This -- come to think of it, it's kind of like how I like Bleach but love Nevermind.

I like Rolling in the Deep quite a bit, but I'll Be Waiting is the standout here. I'll never get tired of that one. Most of the rest doesn't hit me as hard, but it's all very listenable.

Sigh, more Euro-weenie stuff I’ve never heard of… (Listens.) Hey, this is really good! Lover her voice and the lush emotionalism. 4.5.

Rounding up a little here because: (1) almost every song has a very cool 30 seconds or so, before in most cases taking too long to wrap up, and (2) the L7 cover is excellent.

One time in college a friend played some of Rain Dogs at me and I thought, "what is this unlistenable shit"? But 20 years later I heard it again and loved it. Tom Waits has the folk-blues-rock growly weirdo genre sewn up. This isn't my favorite collection of his songs, but it's solid. Earth Died Screaming may be my favorite -- it's (I think) a great cry of environmental protest.

I only listened as long as it took for our dog to wake up, bark, run around the house, and demand to be let out. And to figure out that this is like the parts of King Crimson albums that I skip past to get to the good stuff. Not for me, even though there are good grooves from time to time.

Rounding up from 4.5. I've casually enjoyed the White Stripes, but had never heard most of this. Great stuff. Can't really figure out why Jack White's voice works, but it does. The guitar is the star, of course.

IP is a walking piece of beef jerky who seemingly never wears a shirt, but (and?) he does good work. About 1/3 of these didn't land for me, but the rest were excellent, especially the propulsive title track. I'm going to go watch the beginning of Trainspotting now, and maybe Repo Man for good measure.

Liked this way more than I expected. Couldn't stand a few songs, but quite enjoyed a few, particularly Slow Down Baby. Later edit: BTW I didn't get around to listening to the second disk.

Made it 1.5 songs in. I don't even dislike this style of music, but this is shite.

Opens and closes with two of the greatest, most distinctive, most iconic rock songs ever. In between, with the exception of the mediocre Midnight Rambler, are a bunch of good-to-great songs. "You Got the Silver" is an excellent slightly obscure one. The Merry Clayton vocal on Gimme Shelter is one of the best 30 seconds of listening you can find, and takes the song from great to all-time great. Jagger's "woo!" after her voice breaks is an excellent little contribution that I never noticed until it was pointed out to me a couple of years ago. And speaking of Merry, the documentary 20 Feet From Stardom is worth your time.

I gave this a good 10 minutes; life's too short and I have stuff I want to listen to that won't upset my dog and give me a headache.

I like Rundgren when he decides to rock: Wolfman Jack, Couldn't I Just Tell You, and Slut were excellent. (And see especially the amazing Open My Eyes from his previous band Nazz.) As for the rest, some of the Carole King-ish stuff, like the opening track, was okay, but not really my bag. Didn't like most of the rest much, although Rundgren was clearly talented and had an impressive range. Too much experimental meandering for my taste, and it was too long.

Didn’t get far

I could quickly put a triple album together of Lou Reed / VU songs that I love. They're spread a little thinly on this one, although Satellite of Love is one of my favorites.

I love the title track and Funeral/Love, and Saturday Night's better than all right. Candle is great too, and most of the rest is pretty decent. The exception being Benny and the Jets, which I hate so much it singlehandedly drops it to 4. Not a fan of the Jamaica song either.

Why is this on the list? Boooooring

I heard some of this back when it was a hit and liked it well enough, but had pretty much forgotten about it. Was great to revisit -- smooth and pleasant throughout.

Smooth and cool, but not quite for me. Caetano Veloso is a fantastic name.

High 3, rounded up. I like the crashing noise of it; some of the vocals aren't my favorite. And could use a little more variation among the songs.

The more I listen to Redding beyond Dock of the Bay (which is great, but I've heard it plenty) the more I love it. His voice is amazing, but I think a huge part of the appeal is the Memphis Horns. They make everything they touch great.

I may not have been in the right mood for this. Started okay, but didn't hold my interest.

Not my favorite Ray Charles stuff, but it's still very good.

Every Kate Bush album I've ever heard has had 1 to 3 songs I love, and then mostly a bunch of pretentious bullshit. This is at the low end of the former and the high end of the latter.

I still don't really like Morrissey's voice, but this is pretty good. Enjoyed it much more than the Smiths album. Billy Budd was my favorite.

Didn't need to play it again to rate it. Tangled Up In Blue is an all-time great; Twist of Fate, Idiot Wind, and Shelter from the Storm are regular great; the rest is not bad.

Cool sound, but I don't like the songs. Or the cartoonishly dire vocals.

As with Van Halen, AC/DC is a band I mostly disliked back in high school, whose brand of dumb fun I've come to appreciate over the years. Shoot to Thrill is my favorite song of theirs.

Some great stuff on here, even if most of the band's biggest hits aren't. Guessing it belongs on the list because it's the one where they seized creative control. I'll again recommend the Andrew Hickey podcast episodes on the Monkees: https://500songs.com/podcast/episode-144-last-train-to-clarksville-by-the-monkees/ and https://500songs.com/podcast/episode-162-daydream-believer-by-the-monkees/. The Bob Dobalina throwaway is weirdly hypnotic.

It's a bit above 2. I quite liked A Minha Menina. On the other hand, I skipped multiple songs after 10 seconds to a minute. Kept thinking, why is this here and what great album is it displacing?

Not my thing, but I do like some of the tracks -- just not the super-long, super repetitive ones. And it's obviously important, even prescient.

I remembered this as more polished-sounding than the other Hole album we listened to, but I'm not sure that's right. I'll have to listen to them both again in sequence. Which will be fun; this is great stuff.

Decent. But, I knew two Spirit songs going into this: Nature's Way, which is vomitous treacle, and I Got a Line on You, which kicks ass. Guess which one is on this?

Sympathy for the Devil and Street Fighting Man are powerful, fun, iconic, era-defining classics (a la Gimme Shelter and You Can't Always Get What You Want from Let It Bleed) that I still enjoy. Salt of the Earth and No Expectations are sneakily excellent, laid-back gems. The rest is pretty decent; enough for a 4.5 that rounds up to 5.

Skill and talent, but I thought most of the non-famous songs weren't that good.

A rougher listen than Nevermind, but still great. All Apologies is one of my favorite songs, period.

I liked this way more than I thought I would. Enjoyed the furious energy of it, and the fun groove of the middle bit. Down side: too much nonmelodic squeaky bouncing around.

After a painfully slow start, this really got going in the middle with Cold War, and from then on it had impressive variety even if I didn't actually like most of the songs.

The many Big Star songs that I love, I love as much as anything. But there are too many clunkers on this for a 5. Wondering a bit about calling this an "album," since I think it's a clump of two albums that may have had some release weirdness. With this pair on the list, I hope we'll see #1 Record/Radio City too.

3.5, really. Two great songs: Bell Bottom Blues (my favorite) and Layla, a bunch of quite listenable blues-rock jams, and a clunker (I'm Yours). Couple of other thoughts: (1) Clapton's voice is fine, but I just don't like the harmonies. I think they sound actively bad. Not sure why. (2) A bunch of basic blues lyrics in succession is kinda boring. BBB is poetry; the rest are blah.

I didn't realize I liked Al Green so much. Smooth, yes, as he famously is, but there was also a lot of fun variety.

My favorite jazz album. I'm not musically savvy enough to get all the innovative and cool time-signature stuff with Take Five, but I do love the sound.

Same as the previous Kate album: one track I love -- Love and Anger -- and a bunch of diverse semi-experimental stuff I don't like as much.

Good stuff. My nitpick with it is that I don't like how Donald Fagen uses the upper register of his voice, like the phrase "reelin' in the years" in the chorus of that song. Dirty Work is great.

This is perfect. Boulder to Birmingham is the perfectest part. Along with whenever she is singing.

This is on the high side for a 3, but that might be my Cure ceiling as I don't like Smith's voice, and about half of the songs on this album (especially the second half) were booooring. But I did like the melodramatic orchestral sound, especially on the punchier tunes.

Pure unpleasantness. Did not finish.

Every now and then there would be a bit I liked, but never a whole song. Most of the instrumental parts sounded like a nightmare calliope.

This is about 2/3 great songs and about 1/3 kinda middling ones, plus Fourth Time Around, which just annoys me because it (I think?) is a snarky response to Norwegian Wood while being not nearly as good a song as NW is. Thus the 4. My favorites are Most Likely, One of Us Must Know, Stuck Inside of Mobile, and I Want You.

Some pleasant sounds here and there, but I'm not into this genre at all.

I know that they are lyrically angry and important, but I lacked the energy to track what they were saying very closely. Some great songs though. Weird story about the disappearance of one of the founders. Unpleasant cover art by someone I’ve learned is an important Young British Artist.

It's more croon-ish than the kind of country I like most, but this is excellent stuff. Listened to it while driving home from a hike and found myself doing some serious toe-tapping.

This is fine.

My Old School is a good song, but the rest of this didn't move me. I have just a nodding acquaintance with SD, but as an album this seems inferior to the other one we listened to, and also not as good as Aja, which should be on this list somewhere.

Man in the Mirror is great, and the other hits are catchy. Liberian Girl and I Just Can't Stop are awful, though admittedly I dislike almost all R&B. I've always found the braggadocio of the title track kinda ridiculous.

Mutilation, Here Comes Your Man, Debaser, and Monkey are fantastic. The rest are hit or miss for me. But it's still great.

Didn't like her voice; didn't make it very far.

Man Out of Time is a pretty good song, but I didn't like the rest of this at all. I mostly like only his uptempo songs, not whatever this stuff is.

Not my favorite Willie, but still great.

I knew a handful of Oasis songs before; had only heard one on this album. This was great. I like the snarling vocals and the wall of sound. Rounding from 4.5.

Eh, some of this was all right.

what is this and why is it here?

This was an easy one. I don't especially like the idea of unplugged performances, especially when the band is so fantastic when plugged in. But man, this is great. I've already cited All Apologies as one of my all-time favorites, and the version here is maybe the best, ramping up the song's sense of guilt and longing to a pitch that's almost unbearable, especially when you think about where Kurt was and where he would be going. Where Did You Sleep Last Night is amazing too. Other favorites: About a Girl and Come As You Are. But it's all great.

I know what linguistic reappropriation is, but I can't get past my revulsion at the language in this and very many other hip-hop records. (And the misogynistic and homophobic stuff, also not great, isn't reappropriation.) Sets my ceiling low. And since I didn't like it musically either, the rating doesn't make it to the ceiling.

3.5. I liked all of this (except the penultimate song) quite a bit. I dig the combination of the ethereal vocals and the propulsive beat on most songs. Will listen to again.

I thought this was interesting, varied, and at times powerful, but something about it -- maybe Buckley's voice -- didn't fully work for me.

The title track -- an all-time great, of course -- and V-2 Schneider do all the work here.

Between 3 and 4 on this one. The excellent first track, and a couple of others, bump it to 4.

All the Way from Memphis is kick-ass glam rock. The rest is mostly decent-to-good glam rock. I like glam rock.

I don't like all of them, but these are some great songs. I like the brass, wherever it crops up. Without You may be a bit sappy, but man is it good. Also, today I realized that I'd been thinking of Harry Nilsson and Harry Chapin as the same person.

This was a pleasant surprise. I'd never heard any of it before, but liked most of it quite a bit. My favorites were Uncomplicated, Crimes of Paris, and Next Time Round. There was a lull early on; I really only like uptempo Elvis, so the album's hit I Want You was the low point for me.

Got monotonous quickly

I like some of the grooves, especially in the middle tracks, but this is too quiet, too meandering, too boring.

I think I said in my one-star review of Eliminator that ZZ Top was capable of making good music. This is what I was talking about. Jesus, La Grange, and Move It On Down the Line are the best but it's all pretty listenable.

White Light/White Heat is the only song on here I've returned to (and that a lot) over the years, but the rest is pretty impressive. For a droning eight-minute story-song, The Gift is amazing. Blew my mind the first time I heard it, back in high school when I borrowed the album from my friend Marc. And Sister Ray works even though it should be three or four separate songs.

Like a Rolling Stone is titanically great, and the title track is close behind. The rest are mere classics. Easy 5.

Clear why this is on the list. Great songs even if mostly not quite to my taste.

Four great songs by my tally: As We Go Up, Game of Pricks, Motor Away, and Alright. The rest ranges from pretty listenable filler -- the guitars are always great -- to a few that are kind of annoying.

My reaction on seeing the album come up: “Oh, sure, Zep 4, easy 5 rating. Wait, I forgot Black Dog *and* Rock and Roll are on this one. Can I go higher than 5?” Such a pleasure to listen to it start to end. I thought long ago that I'd filled my lifetime Stairway quota, but that was apparently wrong. It deserves every bit of its overplay during the album rock FM years of my youth, and every one of its 1.3 billion plays on Spotify, and whatever other airing it gets. Every other song on IV is a classic too. This isn't even my favorite Zeppelin album (that would be Physical Graffiti, and yes I'll be pissed off if that's not on this list) but it's perfect.

Several greats. I didn't like the Murder Mystery at all.

VF are a greatest hits band for me. Blister and Gone Daddy Gone are great; Kiss Off is pretty good; the rest is just bad.

This seems like it could be an origin point for one thread of prog. Unfortunately, it's the gratuitously weird and folky part I don't like very much. It's like Jethro Tull's Thick As a Brick meets the bad parts of early King Crimson meets a Monty Python song minus the humor. But, points for being totally bananas.

Not a big CCR fan; I find some of Fogerty's lyrics annoying and stupid, and his voice grates a bit. But this is pretty solid. Put Fortunate Son and Proud Mary on it and it would have most of their best, I think.

Time to Pretend is great. I found the rest, well, not spectacular.

This was a strong 3 for me, but I thought after the first couple of tracks it fell off too much to earn a higher rating.

Most R.E.M. albums would be a 5 for me, including maybe all of their first 10, plus Eponymous and Monster and maybe a couple of others. Even among that group, this is a standout. Man on the Moon is one of their greatest, Drive is cool, and Nightswimming and Everybody Hurts are two of their best quiet tracks, but I'd forgotten some of the excellent subtle songs in the middle. One other thing that struck me during Find the River -- and to anyone paying attention this was old news by the end of Radio Free Europe -- was the excellence of Mike Mills's backing vocals.

Music wasn't 100% to my taste, but I I liked their whole vibe.

Too raw for me, but some great bones here. (As shown by R.E.M.'s amazing cover of Strange.)

I have the impression that this album was thrown together out of what the band had done up to that point over a year or two as Pete scrambled to learn how to write songs, Roger struggled to find his singing voice, and Keith and John (already fantastically skilled) decided whether to stay in the band. So, it's got trifles, blues standards, one wild virtuosic goof (the Ox), a few very solid early singles (The Good's Gone, A Legal Matter), and at the core the amazing powerhouse pair of The Kids Are Alright and My Generation, which hit like a pair of very different hammers and show what the band has evolved into. (That being, for most of my life, my favorite band.)

This was a real pleasure to listen to -- think I'd never heard the whole thing. It's a pretty soft 5, and probably should have been a single album. But it hit me at the right moment. One other note: I tend to prefer the McVie & Buckingham songs to the Nicks songs, but "Storms" is great. Maybe my favorite Stevie song now.

Peace Frog may be the only Doors song that doesn't sound dated to me. It's great. And I still like Roadhouse Blues. The rest is typical Doors filler. Adds up to a 3.

this was really good! Had not heard any of these before. Might rise on re-listening.

A nostalgic one for me; I think I owned it on cassette. And I really like this as the album that finally got one of the great blues artists making some money, after the usual story of decades of scraping by in a system rigged against him. The first few songs are the strongest, especially the title track.

Some of this was pretty good.

this is my favorite of the Smiths albums we've had so far

Other than Bodysnatchers, which is fantastic, this album kind of washed over me. Not bad but I wish it'd had more songs like that second track.

I won't always be in the mood for this, but for the times when I will be, it's perfect.

I liked the riffs and a couple of the songs. Needed more melody.

Among the very first albums I owned. Everything is good, Tom Sawyer and Limelight are great, and Red Barchetta and YYZ are super cool fantastically great.

I love glam rock, and just based on the handful of songs that I know and love (Bang a Gong, of course, also Jeepster and 20th Century Boy) think T. Rex was among the best. Enjoyed this too although nothing jumped out at me the way those favorites did. I should work my way through Bolan's whole catalog.

Not my favorite Van Halen, but very good. Might have been a 5 but I want to make space between it and some of their earlier work. Also, it might be suffering from the fact that I heard Jump two billion times when it came out. Surprisingly, though, the song holds up.

Mainly for America, Mrs. Robinson, and Hazy Shade, but Save the Life of My Child and Fakin' It were fun, and new to me. Overall, tonally way more varied and interesting than I'd come to think of S&G. There's an unfortunate lull after America for several songs, but forgivable.

Four songs that kick all kinds of ass (Aqualung, Cross-Eyed Mary, Hymn 43, Locomotive Breath), in distinctive ways. Some interesting filler. A closing track I'd never heard that is pretty damn good. Two more observations: (1) the "hey" after the "do you still remember" line in Aqualung, and the moment in Locomotive Breath when the guitar slams in, are amazing. (2) Rush got mocked in the Onion for being nerdy-guy music to drive away women with, but (partly based on my wife's reaction) I think JT might be right up there.

Still not my thing.

Takes me back to college, and to the years past college through which this CD stayed on more or less continuous rotation for me. But it had been a while. Because of the ubiquity of Call Me All, I'd forgotten about some of the other great songs, even Boy in the Bubble. (Also, go watch the music video for Call Me Al again, the one with just Paul Simon and Chevy Chase. Still understatedly hilarious.)

Not bad at all. Might rise to a 4 on re-listening, but I felt like moving ahead to the next album.

Good. I should listen to it again, and to more Blur. I mostly missed Britpop the first time around.

I don't know how to rate this exactly, since it's so far into rock's ancestry and away from even the jazz I'm moderately familiar with. Enjoyable enough and it helps me enjoy the (very faithful) Roth cover more to hear the original Just a Gigolo / I Ain't Got Nobody.

This is good stuff! Glam-punk, I guess? Don't know much about them except that they were important. Sounds like the Clash listened to them a lot. Also, I just learned that the band's guitarist was named Johnny Thunders. A stage name, but still -- cool choice.

Leonard Cohen wrote some amazing songs, and I like his voice, but the sound of this album is terrible. The stacked female backing vocals clash with his style, and the bright synthy sound sucks.

Pretty cool. I should re-listen.

I still like Falling to Pieces a lot; Epic a little less so but it was fun to hear again. The War Pigs cover is decent. The rest has moments but nothing stands out.

Not bad at all, but too uniformly slow and mournful for my taste. I like Beck more when he rocks a little.

This is the one album I looked ahead on, checking to see if it was on the 1001 list. If it hadn't been, I might have bailed on the project. It's one of the first that comes to mind if I ask myself, what's a perfect album? A few small things I love about this: the snarl of the chorus in Joy, the bouncy rhythm of Can't Let Go, and the poetry of phrases like the title, "once we rode together in a metal firecracker," and "concrete and barbed wire."

A lot of cool sounds. Will return to this.

I'd heard not quite half of these before, and they're mostly great -- Starman and Suffragette City especially. I figured the rest would be a letdown, but not so. Star and Rock and Roll Suicide were my favorites of the previously unknown-to-me batch.

Like Van Halen, Def Leppard is big dumb fun. They lack the air of being in on the joke that VH had during the Roth era, but on the other hand their songs are better than those of humorless Hagar-era VH. Anyway, I'm giving this a buoyed-by-nostalgia 4 rounded up from 3-something. There's no song on here as good as Photograph (DL at their best), but Animal and Pour Some Sugar on Me are excellent and a lot of fun. Most of the rest are at least tolerable. (Love Bites being the exception.)

I like these guys. There's a monotony to the sound after a while, but the four or five hits are excellent.

I don't know these guys very well. Like the wall of sound approach on many songs, and the crashing drums, and the epic feel. Not crazy about Coyne's voice, but it's tolerable most of the time.

Aha! I'll start to catch up on my rating backlog with a freebie -- i.e. one I know well and love. Some of my favorite things: the way the first track and Sally McLennane combine the trad instruments and beer hall stomping with ass-kicking rock; the cool and evocative instrumentals (Paddy and Cats); the historically mournful closer; and the fact that thanks to this I can more or less pronounce "Cuchulainn."

I liked almost every song. Good stuff. Will listen to more.

Pretty decent. As with much of their work, there are a bunch of songs with good grooves that get kinda old after a while, but two or three great ones (Wartime and Memories in particular here) to elevate it.

I read that this album was "critically acclaimed." It's very not for me, though. Maybe not for anyone; I have a feeling that the critics were suffering a collective delusion, and that this particular emperor is buck naked. One good thing about it though: the song Duchess, which Neko Case covered much later, is not bad. And her version is awesome. She's dismissed it as too much belting, before she learned to modulate her voice, but I think it sounds terrific.

I'm rounding up here partly because I think PJ Harvey is cool. The songs are not my favorites of hers; a little dissonant for my taste. Much like a lot of Sleater-Kinney, who I also like but think I should like more than I do. Still, there are some very cool riffs and it's all listenable.

Excellent stuff. Songs sounded a bit similar after a while, but all good. I do think some of the additional elements, like brass in the background, are why I like Cornell's "You Know My Name" (main song from Casino Royale) so much. Some wrenching song titles in here, given Cornell's later death.

Rating this based on about half the album, which was all that was readily available on Spotify. But I enjoyed that. Our House is still fun and appropriately enough triggers nostalgic feelings for me.

No need to listen to rate this one. Epic, great, fun to listen to still.