Not my favorite Cohen album, but obviously still great because the man was a genius.
I listened to the BB&THC album prior to Cheap Thrills, and they really did not know what they had with Janis. They only really let her off the hook with Cheap Thrills, and it is absolutely to everyone's benefit. They're a so-so band with one of the best and most emotional vocalists of all time.
My favorite Talking Heads album
Shocking little singing but irresistible rhythms. I found it boring, though.
Beatles albums rarely feel coherent to me in any meaningful way, and Sgt Pepper’s is the worst offender. I like a lot of the songs on this album independently, but it’s lesser than the sum of its parts.
An interesting bridge to 00s indie rock, but not one I personally enjoy
How have I never heard of Neneh Cherry? This album is excellent
Could have been a much stronger shorter album. Hindsight is 20/20, but it’s wild to not have Grace Slick on every single song
Hard to separate my nostalgia from the objective quality of this album. It makes me move, though
I love me some socially conscious hip-hop, but Common has always slid just a little too corny for me. Testify rules, though.
So far I haven't been a big fan of instrumental or jazzy albums, but funk is a horse of a different color. I really enjoyed this one.
This was a fascinating album to get right after War's The World is a Ghetto. Two funk albums that are generally considered a darker turn after the collapse of 1960s Summer of Love optimism. Consider me fully emersed in the time.
I am always simultaneously exhausted by Neil Young while also loving his music. There's an irritating pretention to After the Gold Rush that stems very directly from the fact that it was written for an unproduced movie about how a flood in Topanga Canyon would be some great global loss. Between the always excruciating snobbery of Southern Man and mother nature's silver seed in After the Gold Rush, I just can't deal with this album despite how good some of the songs are.
I love Queen, but I do find their albums messy.
Not a super well received Elton John record, but I have no preconceived notion of what an entire Elton John album should sound like I’ve only heard the hits, and I thoroughly enjoyed all of this album except for the poorly aged Indian Sunset.
The thing I have learned most about myself so far is that I don’t like psychedelia half as much as I thought. I understand that this album is important, but it’s mostly just like listening to Bob Dylan without the genius lyricism.
I think it’s genuinely genius that Dolly opens this album with a song about the most loving mom imaginable followed by a mom who steals her daughter’s boyfriend and abandons her.
Almost every double album has at least five songs that don't need to be there.
A little uncomfortable but I love Randy
It’s…fine? It seems inessential and the only songs I really enjoy were the ones that made me wish I was listening to R.E.M.
I listened through this album three times and couldn’t tell you a single lyric or sonically interesting thing that happened. Absolute snoozer. I’m sick to death of these 90s UK bands.
I never particularly enjoyed a Smashing Pumpkins album before or after this one. Siamese Dream was really their one masterpiece. Gish is fine.
I’d never heard of Sugar before and wasn’t impressed on my first listen, but after my second listen I was fully hooked on this album.
Nice fusion of genres. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the spoken word poetry portions but the music was irresistible
Kurt not doing Smells Like Teen Spirit is wild, true grunge.
Maybe my favorite album so far. I had never heard of her before and this has already made the endeavor worthwhile.
Them: Jim Morrison is the greatest poet of his generation
Jim Morrison: Little girl I'm a cool cat / Look at my new hat
This is just to say I really can't stand Jim Morrison.
One of my most listened to albums of all time...kind of.
The US version of this album was engraved into my bones somewhere around 2005. Every song is a part of me, vibrating at the same frequency as my atoms. I hit New York City Cops and my body freaks out.
Imagine my surprise when I discover that there's another version of this album with a butt on the cover and a song I've never heard before. It's like feeling along the contours of your own body and suddenly there's a bizarre new, but not entirely unwelcome, appendage.
5/5 for the US version of Is This It
The Sensation of Walking Up a Staircase and Thinking There's One Last Step But You Misjudged and You Just Stepped Into Air/5 for the international version.
Prog Rock is not my favorite. My heart sank when I first saw it was a Yes album because I thought it would be an exhausting ordeal. Instead it was just...fine.
I recognize the exceptional musical ability of these guys, but that just never affects me in any meaningful way. I will always take the ugly rawness of punk over the mathematical cleanliness of prog rock.
Kind of a surprise to discover the guy I only know from WOW compilations had a more complex career than most CCM artists. This is still absolutely not my vibe, though. Sorry, Dion.
Probably not essential, but this is another albums that is just etched into the molecular structure of my body.
Much better than I expected from a bunch of extremely goofy British glam rockers, but still not great. Their music is excessively catchy.
Another excessively dull British rock band.
Catchy, propulsive and innovative. It's not my favorite LCD Soundsystem album, but it's still a solid entry in his discography.
A lot of bangers on this album but also a lot of filler too. I maintain that virtually no double album needs to exist.
Lupe can be a little corny sometimes but this is still a crazy good debut album.
I've never truly enjoyed a song by The Band. They're plenty talented, but this sound is just not for me. I can't even begin to parse the significance of a Canadian band rolling in Lost Cause muck when I can barely even stand to listen to The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down on a musical level.
It’s no Doolittle, but I will always enjoy some Pixies
Based on my experience with other Vietnam-era psychedelic-adjacent bands I expected not to like this one. As soon as I heard the organ I had unpleasant Doors flashbacks. But this actually whips. I re-listened to this album five times yesterday.
It’s sad this is their only album, but after listening to their additional songs like Cuckoo and He Went Down to the Sea…well, maybe that’s for the best.
Absolute history. There’s a lot more R&B in this album than I knew, since I was just familiar with The Message. It was a nice surprise.
Lou Reed was a pretty brilliant guy, I have to say.
I knew way more Isley Brothers songs than I thought. I love the mix of smooth R&B vocals with the rock guitars.
Very influential and important, but not an album I am ever going to enjoy listening to.
Great beats, will never listen to again
Very experimental and jazzy. I prefer License To Ill by far, but this still slaps.
Alright I was gonna be a big curmudgeon about listening to a long album by a 70s rock band I only knew from one song, but this is actually really good. The goofy back and forth between the vocals and guitar in Strange Kind of Woman ultimately sold me.
I don’t love Faith No More, but I really cannot deny their influence on a lot of bands I do like.
I’m a big White Stripes fan, but I really feel like Jack White lost the magic after TWS. This album is good, Jack White is good, but none of it is great. Meg never *seemed* to contribute a ton to the band, but it certainly seems like she’s the bay leaf that added the je ne sais quoi that made The White Stripes so perfect.
A bunch of dull beeps and boops
I know it's heresy, but I'm always inclined against a musician that's considered untouchable by boomers. The album is too long and too weak in spots to be anything other than good. Jimi was an innovative guitar player, for sure, that's undeniable. Whether he actually wrote good songs is more debatable.
The UK: We have Nirvana at home
It's fine though
This dude looks so much like Bill Hicks it's distracting
They do some cool things with percussion but I absolutely despise their rancid vibes
I mean, it’s one of the best heavy metal albums of all time. This is unimpeachable stuff.
It’s cheesy, but I dig the house party vibes. Socially conscious hip-hop is good and all, but I always love it most when it’s just someone gassing themselves up.
Mama Gave Birth to the Soul Children is terrifying, though. A genuinely haunted song.
I think this is a very good album overall. It may just be overexposure, but I really cannot stand Criminal.
It's not Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, but all the pieces are there.
Leonard Cohen's output just before his retreat was strange and fairly dark. It's not as disturbed as The Future, but the man was going through something in the Reagan era and it really shows in this album.
There's a cold intensity throughout this album. His voice is deep and sinister even during lighter songs like Take This Waltz and Ain't No Cure For Love. Meanwhile, First We Take Manhattan is straight up terrifying.
This is all to say, I love this album and I love Leonard Cohen. I think he was right to disappear into a monastery for several years to escape the 90s.
This is really fun. It’s wild that these guys almost single handedly invented the rap album skit concept. I grew up in a world where this was so much a part of hip-hop that I never even considered who started it. Now I know.
There’s maybe a little TOO much going on with this album that keeps it from being perfect, but it’s still a lot of fun just the same.
It just didn’t wow me. They’ve got a good groove, but nothing stood out to me in this album.
I have never been able to get into Elvis Costello and that streak remains unbroken.
Listening to this again really makes me glad that my kid doesn’t listen to this album endlessly on repeat anymore.
Lots of it is catchy, sure, but it’s all just so exhausting and calculated in a way I will never be able to tolerate.
I never listened to Amy Winehouse during her heyday but she’s good. I can see why she was a phenomenon.
Rehab, uh, sure hits in a bad way now though.
This album has always been a slam dunk for me since I was a sensitive and literarily-minded Christian teenager in the Midwest when it came out. Even then, I have to acknowledge that this album is too long and has too many songs.
I knew it was a problem because my very gentle morning-time alarm went off while I was listening to this and I didn’t notice for three minutes.
I’ve heard every song on this album before ever hearing this album just because of samples. This is Ur-text hip hop.
It’s really sad that Kanye West died in that tragic plane crash shortly after releasing Yeezus. He was such a promising talent; one can only wonder what else he would have done. Sure he had a few controversies, we’ll never forget the VMAs incident, but I’m certain he would have matured and mellowed out in his old age. Alas, we’ll never know.
MBDTF is a masterpiece of lyricism, beats, production and collaboration. Everyone is firing on every cylinder here. This is a once in a lifetime confluence of massive talents all at the top of their game producing something that manages to break the escape velocity of Kanye’s planetary ego.
Also, DEAR GOD, Nicki Minaj exploded out of this album like a xenomorph chestburster and I mean that in the best way possible.
I played a lot of video games when I was a kid and subscribed to Nintendo Power Magazine, but I never remember seeing anything about a game called Olympia 64. Good soundtrack, though.
I always think I enjoy Daft Punk more than I do because I usually only hear one song at a time. Listening to 70+ minute long album is a different beast altogether.
I have never in my life heard of this guy, but he scratches a Morrisey itch and, as far as I know, is much less insufferable.
By all accounts Grizzly Bear should always be right up my alley. I enjoy sensitive 2000s Indie Rock without a doubt. It’s just that his vocals so frequently vanish into the music that I forget I’m listening to anything. Two Weeks is a standout with that Brian Wilson stank I love to hear, but outside of that this is a forgettable album for me.
Normally I’m underwhelmed by Sacred Boomer Bands, but The Rolling Stones truly are just that great.
I know I should be open minded when going into any new album, but enough past evidence and an understanding of my own taste indicated that an album from 1968 by a band whose name is an LSD reference was just going to be a dud for me.
I'm just never gonna love that San Francisco Sound™
I gotta say it was a good album
I know myself. I would have been one of the dorks at the Newport Folk Festival booing this man for going electric.
Faith is such an incredible banger that I really had high hopes for this album, but it kind of runs out of steam.
There is a truly great album buried within the ridiculous 2 hour runtime of Infinite Sadness. I genuinely believe one of the best albums of the 90s is somewhere inside of Corgan's bloated magnum opus.
I know I’m not entirely motivated by nostalgia. Despite this being the undisputed soundtrack of my early teens, I can acknowledge this album is pretty cheesy. The production is great, though.
I enjoyed this more than I thought I would since Jazz is decidedly not my thing. Never going to relisten, but it was pleasant.
This may actually be a new all time favorite artist for me. This just zings for me, and to think I had never heard of this guy. This is why I do this!
It’s Bob Marley, he’s good.
Very very fun album. This really is something that doesn’t exist anymore as far as I know. I can’t think of any artist today who would sing a silly song about banana splits.
Also, I have gone my entire life thinking King Louie in The Jungle Book was supposed to be Louis Armstrong. Imagine my relief to discover it was actually Louis Prima.
I do not understand why Siouxsie and the Banshees don't appeal to me. I like goth. I like new wave. It should tick all the boxes, but I always am just left cold.
*Me wearing my "I'd Rather Be Listening to Girl Talk" t-shirt*
Wow this is good and very revolutionary but...
*points to shirt*
S
ampling John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness in Transmission 3, though. That’s peak.
I actually like country a fair bit, but when it’s combined with 1980s tinkly synths I’m pretty turned off.
I am Steely Dan neutral. I have no strong Steely Dan opinions.
My tolerance for strained "wow we're so weird and wacky" music is basically at zero. There's lots of unusual music I enjoy, like Slim Cessna's Auto Club, but that has an internal coherence to it that is satisfying and has depth. Frank Zappa music sounds like a beginners improv group getting their sillies out before class.
I understand a lot of this is Dadaist "don't take it so seriously, man" and maybe I am taking like too seriously, but it falls on my ears with all the pleasantry of a grackle.
I misread what year this came out and when I first started listening I thought "Yeah, this is good but it sounds exactly like a dozen other bands from that time" then I realized it came out a full decade earlier than those bands and I realized this was UR text.
I can see the talent, but it's not for me.
I’m a big fan of Kendrick, but I’ve always felt this album is a little bit After School Special. “I tried to have premarital sex but ended up smoking a weed cigarette but it was laced with something bad and I did crimes”
I know it’s more complex than that, but that’s kind of the gist. It’s still a work of musical genius, but nothing is ever going to touch To Pimp a Butterfly.
I really don't know what to do with The Beach Boys. Sometimes I think they're better than The Beatles and other times I think they only served to deliver Brian Wilson into the world to bring us Pet Sounds.
Surf's Up is a weird one. It has moments of sheer brilliance like Long Promised Road and the titular Pet Sounds castoff track but also Mike Love message-music slop like Don't Go Near the Water or the jarring and incongruous Student Demonstration Time.
I guess it ends up falling in the middle because of the very high highs and terribly low lows.
Still not a fan of E.C., but there’s a few good ones on this album.
Eminem is genuinely one of the greatest rappers of all time and an absolute genius when it comes to rhymes. It’s unfortunate that he uses those powers to make music for dudes with poor emotional regulation who blame all of their problems on people not knowing “the real them”.
Unfortunately, The Marshall Mathers LP has more of that kind of music than Slim Shady and The Eminem Show.
The dude can rap though.
Starts very strong with Darkness, Darkness and Smug which made me think I was in for a really good time. It unfortunately descended into the mostly just okay.
I can see the very clear influence on Neil Young, though, and that’s very worthwhile.
I barely even like The Beatles
Seeing that this is the top rated album of the entire 1001 albums generator project, it's difficult not to want to be a contrarian and give it a lower score than 5. That's crazy, though. It's Rumours! It's a fantastic album, emotionally fraught and wall to wall certified hits. There never has and never will be another album like it.
I'm sure it's brilliant. I really really wish I could understand and appreciate jazz, but it's all a bunch of toots and thunks and means nothing to me. I fully recognize my inability to understand instrumental complexity is a me problem. It sounds nice, though.
It's Cash, so obviously it's good. It's fun to hear his showmanship and interaction with the audience. The prison series was pure genius and marked him as a man of the people and a true outlaw country musician.
It's ultimately marred by the censorship and edits. I'm sure the concert itself was excellent, but only the people who were there that day got the true experience. We the listeners at home have to be satisfied with fewer songs and a version of Folsom Prison Blues that is cut short.
This is very cool stuff, shame M.I.A. is a lunatic.
Remember when Moby claimed he dated Natalie Portman in his book and she was like "I hung out with him as a teenager and realized he was a creepy old man"? And there's like a picture of a shirtless Moby with a worryingly young Natalie Portman?
Remember when Jonathan Safran Foer left his wife because Natalie Portman was nice to him once and he thought they were going to date? He ended up dating Michelle Williams, though, which is still pretty good.
That's about how interesting I think Play is as an album.
Better than I thought a Rod Steward album would be. The "Slint-Eyed Woman" thing is weird, but whatever, it was 1971.
I'd always bounced off of Sigur Ros in the past, but I actually felt myself vibing with this album a lot. It's musically fascinating and very relaxing.
Not a The Band fan, man. You can keep your load.
He sounds nice enough but there is nothing interesting or novel about this album.
What a sinister threat of a title
Dull and incoherent. What are we doing here?
I have tried so many times to appreciate Frank Ocean but he’s just so boring to me. He sounds nice, but dull.
Alright, Def Leppard. You win this round.
In 1997, the Christian rock band Geoff Moore and the Distance released a cover of The Who's "I'm Free", using the lyrics about a previously deaf dumb and blind kid becoming a cult leader to be about Jesus instead.
I dunno, I think that's funny.
I think lyrically she’s good, but I really have a hard time with Nico’s voice
I’m far more amenable to country music than a lot of people, but honky tonk is just a bridge too far for me. I’m sure Joe Ely is the finest honky tonk man there is, though.
2nd Law is my favorite, but this is still an all timer.
This the THIRD Deep Purple album I have had in under 200 days and folks I am sick of it
I really shouldn’t even be allowed to rate jazz because I don’t get jazz. It’s good I think?
These "Big in Japan" albums are always fascinating, and I also find it interesting that these live recordings are the ones I'm most familiar with from the radio. I'm not a huge Cheap Trick fan, though.
Incidentally, this has to be one of the worst album covers I've seen so far. This was really the best picture y'all had from the concert??
I knew I couldn't fairly assess this album because I despise the genre, the juvenility and Fred Durst himself, so I casually put on the album with my unwitting son in the car.
His immediate review was "Eugh, what IS this?"
So, one star.
Time to get sad ( • ̀ω•́ )✧
My issue with most Beatles albums is their lack of coherency, but Revolver hangs together way better than most.
The only reason not to love this album is because you (rightfully) hate the singer, and even then Thriller is still an undeniably excellent album.
They may not be my favorite, but so few bands can really lay claim to being *the* sound of their era. Tears for Fears so perfectly encapsulates the mid-80s in sound and style. There's a reason these songs are used to immediately set time and place in movies set in the 80s (and also inexplicably Marty Supreme which was set in the 1950s), just like Fortunate Son and Time of the Season are used as shorthand for the late 60s. For better or worse, this album IS 1985.
Catchy at first, exhausting by the end. Scissor Sisters songs are meant to be listened to one at a time with a good buffer in between. A whole album is...challenging.
More eclectic than 21 with an infusion of new genres but...less electric.
Two stars because he gave us Jeff
While it's unusual for an entire band to exist just to showcase the guitarist, you really couldn't pick a better one than Johnny Marr, and The Queen is Dead showcases him like none other.
Without Johnny Marr and his loose, jangling, texturally rich guitar the 90s would sound entirely different. You can feel an entire new era of rock roiling beneath the surface of this album, dark and emotional and experimental.
I...think there was someone else in the band...his name escapes me.
Kinda like Scissor Sisters who I had a few days ago, The Darkness is fun for a few songs but a whole album gets old quick.
Well he's a punk rocker yes he am
Every now and then I'll have an album that I found profoundly boring on first listen but just kept playing because there was a small something I latched onto. This is one of those albums. I liked The Shining right away, but was generally uninterested in the rest of what I heard but I looped back around to hear The Shining again. Next thing I know, I'm three listens in.
It's not perfect--too long by far--but maybe a new favorite band now.
This is, without a doubt, still a very good album, but it did get overblown a touch on account of it being David Bowie's swan song.
Ich interessiere mich heute viel weniger für den Marxismus als in meiner Jugend.
The song Black Sabbath is about a man losing his mind as Satan approaches, but if you play it backwards it's about a man feeling better because Satan is going away.
No, Barry B. Benson, I do not like jazz.
I really thought I loved Beyonce's music because I've pretty much only listened to Lemonade (5 star album btw) and some of Cowboy Carter (3 star album with a 5 star album buried somewhere within). This is trash, though. This is the worst and most hollow modern music has to offer with occasional flashes of Beyonce's pure talent shining through the murk of bullshit. Flawless is the only song that I genuinely enjoyed here.
I'm also a 40 year old white dude, so it was in no way made for me.
You're alright, Goofy Grape
I'm not one to take offense easily, but christ alive Under My Thumb is a fucked up song.
I saw Britrock and some band I had never heard of and my butthole immediately clenched in anticipation of another dull anglophonic experience. Fortunately, Skunk Anansie goes hard. This album is far more mid-orgasmic frenzy than post orgasmic chill.
As an aside, I initially read the name as Post Orgasmic Chili. That's a better time to eat chili than pre-orgasm, but still not an ideal chili experience.
I don't care what anybody says, it's sad that his dad murdered him.
This was tough because I really like Tom Waits, but this is my least favorite mode for him. I think it's cool that he captured the jazz club vibe, but I don't like jazz. I think it's cool that he mixed comedy and spoken word into a musical album, but I didn't actually enjoy it that much.
Music only a music critic could love
I am a true slut for 2000s indie rock, and even then I have never been able to get into the Arctic Monkeys
I do miss the raw intensity of early Nick Cave, so everything post-Lazarus until Wild God has been a little disappointing. I can't deny the ethereal brilliance of this album, though.
Nick Cave went through it. I saw him perform during the Dig, Lazarus, Dig!! tour back in 2008 and then again during Wild God in 2025, and he is a different man. The cold, dark aloofness of a tortured artist has given way to a warm and passionate yearning to connect to humanity. His writing, his music, his presence are all changed. He faced death, processed it through three melancholy albums, and now seems to be a healthier and more peaceful person.
Still, it's four stars for me because I fell in love with a sinister heroin fiend. The fiend had big and beautiful teeth, and the man he became has gossamer wings. He can take me soaring now, but I miss devouring raw meat with him, our faces bloody and primitive on the cold earth.
I don't even need to relisten to know this is an automatic 5 stars, although I relish the opportunity to do so. Even without the meta-album factor of Nick Drake's tragic death, this is still such an astoundingly beautiful work. It's just one man, his guitar, and crippling depression sieved through an unearthly gift for musical poetry. It's the anguish and ecstasy of life all in under 30 minutes.
