I’ve been a big fan of this album for years. As a nascent cynic, this one spoke to me when I first found a used copy. Memo to My Son is probably my favorite Randy Newman song.

I need a few more listens and this might go up to a 4. Has a Peter Gabriel feel to me - art damaged orchestral pop.

The first song is a mission statement. The new direction is apparent. When the album veers into heavy R&B, I like it less than the "scary music" they intended to make. There are plenty of other good moments but Black Sabbath (the song) is straight up bad ass. It sounds great echoing down my street in the darkness on Halloween. Beware children!

I don’t remember her voice being this grating. Production suffers as a product of the mid 90s. Most lyrics are super facile and it’s not just Ironic. Not entirely useless given its part in the acceptance of women’s sexual agency, but I didn’t enjoy re-listening to this.

Beautiful voice but the album does not really do anything for me.

Pretty and chill. Impressive that’s it’s all improvised as I understand it.

This is pretty much why I’m here. Revisiting Boston is fine, but this was cool. I’m a fan of Brazilian music like Astrid Gilberto and Os Mutantes but don’t have a particularly deep well to draw from. Liked this record a lot and the samba soul sound. O Filosofo was a particularly great cut.

One of my favorite albums of any time and certainly the 90s. It still sounds great and pretty timeless to me. Ballad of Big Nothing is my favorite slacker anthem. My 21 year old daughter, who loves Elliott Smith, was born on the same day he died and likes to imagine some piece of him was reborn with her. :)

I had heard this album a couple times but I am more familiar with the latter-day side projects than the source, so I’m glad this came up.

I don’t have enough death/trash metal depth to distinguish this from other acts or say if this is particularly good, but I didn’t hate the experience.

New to me and I enjoyed the party the first time through.

I’ve been a big fan of this album for years. As a nascent cynic, this one spoke to me when I first found a used copy. Memo to My Son is probably my favorite Randy Newman song.

I need a few more listens and this might go up to a 4. Has a Peter Gabriel feel to me - art damaged orchestral pop.

Funky and fun.

Never really explored the Waylon discography much despite having multiple Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, etc. albums. I don’t like his voice as much as the others I mentioned, but this is a fun listen with lots of good songs. Happy to be exposed to it.

My Mom loved this album but it still doesn’t do it for me despite loving early Dolly Parton. 80s era country is not my favorite.

I hadn’t listened to it in 20 years and enjoyed the experience pretty well. They are not all great songs, but there are enough good and great ones to make that album better than I remembered.

Pretty, but the crooning got to me eventually.

I missed the years he was decent, so I just associate with his mostly terrible 80s stuff. And Maggie May. This is probably not going into regular rotation but was a lot better than I expected.

I have some small level of affinity towards the 70s hard rock and prog rock sound, but mostly don’t like this album. However, I’ve Seen All Good People is their best song, and it’s not close IMO. Toward the end of part A (around 2:50) the bass and organ finally come in on the last chorus and it’s a glorious moment in pop music. It raises this album from a 2- to a 3. That song is written around the vocal hooks and most of the others are not, so the virtuosity comes off as self- indulgence.

Muscular riff work and aggression, I just don’t have enough interest in the genre to fully appreciate it, I think.

This album shows up a on a lot of best lists, so I’ve tried getting into it a couple of times before. Got a little closer this time, but I’m not a full convert yet. I’ll try again in another 10 years. I really like Faron Young, though.

Happy to add context to my 80s-flavored perception of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and I really liked a few of the songs, including Keep on the Sunny Side, You Are My Flower, I’m Thinking of My Blue Eyes, and Both Sides Now. I’m a Carter Family and Doc Watson fan, so most of their songs resonated. Roy Acuff not as much. While the title track is pretty good, it doesn’t crack the top three versions of that song, IMO. For me, bluegrass is the speed metal of country music, and I have limited patience for it. This gargantuan collection exceeds those limits.

I’m a big fan of the song Kimberly, and I like most of this album. The song Birdland probably moves this from a 4 to a 3 for me. Too long and too much warbling.

The album covers a lot of ground from drill-ish songs to jazzy arrangements that remind me of Jamila Woods. This might be a 3 in reality if I had enough listens but I was intrigued enough to spin it 3 times. I will probably listen more times to this.

My favorite Bob Marley album has always been Kaya but that’s only because that’s the one I bought in freshman year of college. Then I bought Uprising and stopped. I stopped too soon. The amount of hits on this record is nuts.

It’s not even in my top 5 Beatles albums but it’s great. When I’m Sixty-Four, A Day in the Life, Fixing A hole are all kick ass songs, and none of those probably are considered a “hit” from this album. It’s hard not to grade on a curve for the Beatles, but the 5 years from 1965-1969 are the most fertile period anyone has ever had in pop music, and so even though this album exists next to Revolver and Rubber Soul and Help and Abbey Road and the White Album and Magical Mystery Tour, it’s still great.

It’s inconsistent like all Sebadoh albums, which is a reflection of how they’re organized and a sort of Minutemen-ish ethos. You’re going to get ballads, noise rock, tongue-in-cheek songs and more. It’s kind of amazing that I had never listened to this album considering I really like III and Harmacy and I’ve listened to every other album. I really can’t explain how I never got to this one, but I’m glad I did. Soul and Fire is super great, and I like a whole lot more. That said, I feel like there are better versions of some of these archetypes in their catalog. Take Think (Let Tomorrow Bee) - it’s a very pretty love ballad. It’s also not as good as Truly Great Thing from III or Willing to Wait from Harmacy.

Forty years later, it sounds pretty rudimentary. Still some bangers on there and middle schooler in me was very happy to hear Son of Buford.

I’m a big fan of the Kinks and this is probably my second favorite album. I’m a sucker for British cultural commentary pop from this era. Australia and Shangri-La take some time to get to, but are the heart of the record for me.

I listened to this several times through, enjoyed it and rounded up to 4 stars. I am an easy mark for this one because I like Digable Planets and Tribe Called Quest which they seem to have modeled their sound on. My main criticism is that they haven’t really pushed anywhere beyond their influences, but it’s a fun listen nonetheless. Incidentally, before listening to this, I kind of thought this was a jam band which is pretty funny. I had heard the name before but never listened to them…probably because I thought it was a jam band. :)

Probably would have been 4 stars to 20 year old me, but that ship had sailed. I will need to be satisfied with Local H and Primal Scream to scratch this itch. Love the filthy grooves and while I don’t mind his growl, it doesn’t do enough to push this farther into my rotation. Glad to hear it on balance, though.

I’ve had the vinyl of this album for years and there are six songs on it. It’s fine, but includes some of the more self-indulgent numbers including Young Man Blues and 15 mins of My Generation. I was surprised and delighted at the 14 songs on the expanded version including some on my Who favorites like Tattoo, Happy Jack and a Quick One. There’s a good mix here of pretty things and raw aggression. Btw, if you’ve never seen A Quick One from The Rolling Stones Rock n Roll circus, it’s worth your time. It’s also live and you can see what this looked like live. As I understand it, the footage was supposed to be turned into a BBC special, but the Who blew The Rolling Stones off the stage and they changed course. https://youtu.be/RJv2-_--EY4?si=Ie-MA3FelDjmHV02

Does anyone need my opinion on this album? I still have the vinyl I bought as a grade schooler and enjoy Beat It, Billie Jean, and Human Nature.

The rapping doesn’t measure up to his contemporaries and seems really OG like Run DMC. The album is mostly notable because the extreme content.

I have always really liked the first two albums of this band where they were grimy, son-of-a-preacher-man mirrors of the Strokes. This album smells like a rock n roll dive in a very good way. They even cover some ground from sleeze blues to tight indie rockers to sort-of ballads. Everyone needs to pay their rent, so I don’t begrudge their turn to arena rock, but that band isn’t for me.

Maybe I would get more on repeated listens, but I’m pretty ambivalent about this album on one listen. They kind of remind me of the Mekons.

I’m a fan of this album and It rewards multiple listens. Even though it is weird and uneven, there’s a lot of breathtaking stuff and new discoveries around every corner.

Meh.

Some of that lyrical content is red flag material, which is especially unfortunate for Under My Thumb. The back half is way stronger than the first half. I don’t care for most of it besides the opener. Out of Time is great, along with I Am Waiting and Take It or Leave It.

Similar to many Smog/Bill Callahan albums, I liked it but not every song and don’t feel like I need to acquire more. That sounds maybe too negative since I enjoyed the experience.

I think this album suffered from our group due to the obvious similarities with Bill Callaghan - baritone and sing/talk vocals plus generally slow tempo music. I listened to this maybe 10 years ago when it was on some other beat of list and my opinion hasn’t changed. I liked it pretty well, but there is not enough to get me to go deeper. Let’s hope the National isn’t the next album.

I liked this way more than I was expecting. Songs about F$&king didn’t make a huge impact on me 25 years ago when I was introduced to it, but maybe I was just not ready to hear it then. Now I will need to revisit that. Lots of interesting songs here, and I especially liked Kerosene, Bad Houses, and Bazooka Joe.

I rounded up because I appreciate ambition in art, but this is not my thing. I think I prefer Rush when they sell out and are more economical.

While nothing really offended me on this album, it’s way too long and uniform.

I’m not going to say this is punk AF, but it was more punk than I remembered. I feel like it got marketed to me as pop, but it’s pop punk with 80s stylings.

I liked more than I didn’t.

Most Byrds albums I’ve listened too are uneven. This one is too, but more solid than most.

I enjoy this album, but I do think from London Calling on they found their voice whereas this album seems more like someone else’s voice and more typical of British punk music. That said, it has tons of great songs including Career Opportunities which is an all time great.

Some probably find this too precious but I’m a sucker for orchestral pop. I was introduced to this album by This Will Be Our Year which is the best song by a fair margin. Some of the tracks took time to grow on me but did with the exception of only a couple. Colin Blunstone has one of my favorite rock/pop voices of any era.

I don’t have bad word to say about Willie Nelson. This is a great album and a favorite of mine.

After the first two songs, I really wanted to like this, but I really didn’t. In the 80s I dismissed Wham! as a limited, manufactured, corporate entity. I really enjoyed the recent Wham! documentary and that helped me realize how talented George Michael was. The guy knew his way around a pop hook and obviously has an incredible voice. This album covers a lot of styles but mostly badly. We have piano ballads, guitar ballads, folky tunes, jazzy numbers, and, um, a reggae song. The album is saved from 1 star by the first two songs, especially Freedom! ‘90. That’s a real banger.

I went through a pretty good classic rock phase in high school, so I’ve heard this before. I was curious to see if I maybe I was more ready to hear it now. Not really. This is not my thing, and I rounded up for the definitive version of Me and Bobby McGee. Cool rock/blues voice but the whole leaves me cold.

The 9 song original album is pretty good. I definitely didn’t need the 2 disc set version, or two versions of Suicide. I like the idea of the homage to Suicide more than I like the results. I have listened to and like a couple of Spiritualized albums but it was fun to hear this and how that band grew out of the shoegaze scene. I like a fair amount of the genre, so this was an easy sell to me, but not sure how much I’m ever going back. Really liked Lord Can You Hear Me.

I feel like production held back my enjoyment of a lot of Leonard Cohen’s albums beyond the very early stuff. This one seems like the production well matches the content of meditations at the end of life. It doesn’t have a ton of spotlight tracks but definitely gets the message across so I’ll round up to 4.

It’s got Hyacinth House and Riders on the Storm and I really like both of those. When they start blues jamming, I lose interest quickly.

I like this style of music and have listened to some Ali Farka Toure records and Mdou Moctar. It was cool to hear a different take on desert blues, but no tracks really grabbed me and I’m not super sure I will revisit this.

This is the best Smiths album in my view. I can’t quite pull the trigger on 5 stars since my ceiling for the Smiths/Morissey isn’t quite that high. The run on this album from Cemetry Gates through There Is a Light That Never Goes Out is pretty great.

I rounded up to two stars due to the wit, but I really didn’t like his voice or the production. There’s an element of theater or melodrama that I like in the Magnetic Fields, but I would rather hear about electric eels under the covers rather than riding your lover like a horse at dawn.

Initially I had a strong negative reaction to the production on this album and the first song, which sucks despite being very real for Paul Simon. I listened twice and liked it much more on the second listen. I’m not choosing to listen to this over Graceland or There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, but it was pretty interesting to see how some of the songs would transmute into songs from Graceland. You Can Call Me Al is a dumb, catchy song that bears resemblance to Cars Are Cars which is a very dumb song. Similarly, Hearts and Bones sure has things in common with Graceland, especially when he says “are traveling together.” The melody and phrase is really close to “my traveling companion is nine years old”. Train in the Distance has elements that sound like Under African Skies. Glad I heard it but not sure I will go back.

This was an interesting album to listen to since I’m not sure I even really like it but I definitely appreciate it. I really, really like the drums/beats used. All the instrumentation is creative and evocative. I actively dislike the vocals. I think her voice is perfectly fine but the vocal lines aren’t my thing and irritate me. I think they are going for haunting/creepy but I just find them overwrought and grating. I really like The Rip which I already knew and Magic Doors which I didn’t already know.

Not a ton of depth beyond the two hits and 40. It turns out Under a Blood Red Sky really is a better “early” U2 document and there are other U2 albums that have a more cohesive and distinct idea rendered.

I bought this when it came out on the strength of The Concept. It’s solid and without waste tracks, but when I want something in this era of power pop I tend toward Lemonheads, Matthew Sweet or Weezer.

I hadn’t listened to this album as a whole in at least 10 years. My memory was of an album with great singles but also filler. As a 30 year Flamingo Lips fan, I’ve admired their ability to push their ramshackle psychedelia to different places, and that always made Soft Bulletin a bigger step for me and a near perfect album. This album and the one that follows, kept playing in the same sandbox that got forged by the boom box experiments and then Zaireeka. There are a lot of good songs here besides the big three (Fight Test, Yoshimi 1, and Do You Realize) including Are You a Hypnotist?? and In the Morning of the Magicians and that got me to 4.5 stars. It’s not Revolver but it’s a really good record and it has the state song of Oklahoma (Do You Realize), which is probably the coolest thing Oklahoma has done in the last 30 years.

I slightly prefer the darker energy of There’s a Riot Goin’ On but there’s a reason half the greatest hits album comes from this one. I hadn’t listened to it before and so I’m glad it’s on this list even if it is a bit uneven.

Not enough hooks besides the title track to get me interested.

This band has 52 million Spotify listeners, so I’m obviously missing something. I couldn’t wait for this to end.

I’m glad this was on the list since I’ve never heard of this band but liked a fair bit of contemporaneous bands like Grizzly Bear and the Dirty Projectors that mixed prog rock with indie. White Denim introduces some southern rock elements that at times reminds me of My Morning Jacket and even the Allman Brothers. I was really between a 3 and 4 and might regret the score I gave this, but I don’t see myself going back to this a ton.

When I first bought this album in the 90s, it had this little extra on it which helped me understand the melodic universe that lived in Brian Wilson’s head for a little while. This is a background song on this album and it touches God. https://youtu.be/scIncjf0y0E

Weird and wonderful. I’ve been a fan of this album for a while along with the 60s garage rock, proto-punk stuff from the Nuggets compilation more generally. I like the primitive, drum/rhythm forward sound. I also appreciate their strange back story. The front half is stronger than the back half, but still very glad this exists in the world.

If I rated this purely on the likelihood of me listening to it again, I would have rated it a 3. For some reason I have never really loved Alice In Chains despite them ticking a lot of boxes. However, I recognize this album is very good. It’s full of great metal riffs, big hooks, authenticity, a unique soundscape and production.

Starts off on a heater but loses steam after the first 3 tracks. I’m a bigger fan of two other Prince albums at a minimum.

I appreciated this more than I thought I would. Had not listened to it in 30 years and it held up well.

There are very few songs over 6-8 minutes that I really like, so I was pretty skeptical starting off on a four song album with an average track length over 13 minutes. The first two tracks are tight, funky and fiery. They carry this to a 4 for me. There’s nothing wrong with the latter two tracks, but the horns in the first song blew my mind.

I’m a fan of Fiona Apple. This album has her vocal style, themes and aesthetic represented with the vocal jazz-inflected pop, torch singing, etc. I think she has two better albums - When the Pawn… and Idler Wheel - and that’s probably why I’m having trouble adding another star because I’m unlikely to spend a ton of time with this one despite a fair amount of really good songs like Shadowboxer, Criminal, Pale September and Carrion.

This was a fun and pleasant way to spend 48 minutes. The big single totally dominates this record. There aren’t a bunch of other big missed singles here.

It’s a great record from a super cool time and place in music that undoubtedly influenced many of my favorite bands. Tom Verlaine’s vocals are polarizing, but I really like them. The song structures are particularly strong so it’s not just kick ass guitar licks. The “hits” are front loaded but there aren’t any bad songs in my view.

It was hard to take this all in through one listening. I probably would have given it 2 stars but I feel like with more listening a some favorites would emerge given the musical terrain covered. I also rounded up for having a maximally idiosyncratic guest list that included both Kendrick Lamar and Kenny Loggins.

While I like two Radiohead albums better than this, it’s a massive change from the previous album and I love a band that doesn’t rest on its laurels. The opening of this album is wonderful. The very first noted let you know what is coming.

I was happy to listen to this since I knew the name but had never really listened to her music. Until yesterday, I didn’t even know she was British. With that said, most of the songs that I knew are better in other versions, like the Shirelles’ Will You Love Me or Georgie Fame’s Do Re Mi. I rounded up to 3 stars on the strength of Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa. I had never heard that and loved it.

I was a fan of this album when it came out but have realized over time that I like fewer songs than I did 20 years ago. His flow still sounds great, better than most current rappers. The original album was 16 tracks and that was probably too long, so pushing this out with 5 additional tracks was a poor decision.

I’ve always admired the very odd song structure of the title track. Jet is fine for me as are a few others. I liked Mamunia and it really sounds like a John Lennon song. That kind of makes me like it more, thinking Paul is channeling something he is missing. I had never listened to this album. I had owned Ram for awhile as a thrift purchase and really didn’t like that album. This one was much better to me so I’m glad it came up.

I’m between a 4 and 5 on this album, but I will round up. All three of my kids (22, 19 and 11) know and love It’s the End of the World… completely independent of me. That’s kind of amazing, and fitting for what you could argue is their best song. I don’t really like the late album run of Fireplace to King of Birds. I appreciate them trying something outside their comfort zone with Lightning Hopkins, but that one in particular work. That said, lots good ones on this record and Distrubance at the Heron House is a personal favorite.

I’m not a Texas Blues fan, and certainly not this commercialized, antiseptic version of it. The last song with different production could be a Motörhead song, but that’s not enough to get this album out of the basement.

Pleasant voice, reasonable melodies, but not a ton to grab me.

I’m a big fan of the record, even if the party kind of stops after the first half. I like the contemplative and atmospheric second half, even though it doesn’t have a Crosseyed and Painless or Once in a Lifetime. When I think of this album, I now think of this Onion article which, ummm, hit home. I have this album on vinyl and I’m pretty sure I’ve made my daughter listen to it. https://theonion.com/cool-dad-raising-daughter-on-media-that-will-put-her-en-1819572981/

Better than I expected given what I knew of Muse. It’s too melodramatic and perfectly engineered for the arena for me to like it without reservation but I suppose I admire their craft.

I have a great deal of respect for Bjork. I don’t think it’s very easy to maintain a commercially viable life in music when you are so incredibly idiosyncratic. She has an absolutely unique sound, and I like it reasonably well. That said, I’m not sure I’ve ever truly liked an entire album of hers, including the Sugarcubes, but rather I like some individual songs. The closest to liking an album is probably Vespertine, not this one.