I liked the second track - interesting beat. (Jungle Line)
The jazz influences on Harry's House / Centerpiece are nice too; overall this is an interesting track - lyrically as well
I really like the vocals on Shadows and Light - the way those harmonies kick in! GREAT ending track
I didn’t think I was at all familiar with this album beyond having heard the name Van Halen before and then Jump started playing. Evidently I was very mistaken. It remains to be seen if I know any of the other tracks as well.
Neutral on Panama. Don’t hate what’s happening in the guitar but this one word chorus is pretty cringe
Honestly I think the above remarks could characterize a lot of my reactions here
Gotta say I don’t love this one about the legs
Yeah on the whole I think it’s okay. Certainly it’s not bad but I don’t think I’d revisit most of the tracks. Some of the instrumentation is impressive (as I guess you’d expect from a band named after its lead guitarist) but some of it’s kind of tacky
Another one I'd heard before... and am happy to listen through again! My current favorites are Chicago, John Wayne Gacy Jr., Predatory Wasp of the Palisades, and Casimir Pulaski day, but we'll see if anything else stands out to me on another run through it
Update: I really like The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders! Love the switching time signatures punctuated by the clapping. Whole album really hits as an Experience when heard start-to-stop: I don’t do that enough with this music (or music in general really - though my 2025 goal has been to work on that, hence partially this 1001 undertaking!) - usually I just listen to the four songs I cited above within various appropriate playlists
Okay I guess I finally have to learn what Brian Eno sounds like… one of those things I’ve felt I should do forever and have never actually wanted to get around to. Well this is what the project is for I suppose. Here goes.
Actually I have definitely heard this first track before and honestly? It’s a bona fide banger. Not sure where I know it from… it sounds like something that would have been in a soundtrack. I’ll look it up.
This second track is kind of interesting too actually. I think the electronic beeping breakdown section in the middle is a little over the top but I’m not ENTIRELY opposed…
I like the third one too! Yes even with that vocal delivery - I think it’s working here! The ambient sounds are really adding a lot as well. I can imagine a totally different arrangement under this same vocal track that would have been much more straightforward and less moody but this is better.
Found track 1. Velvet Goldmine. Which totally tracks; I was literally thinking about how a lot of songs have that vibe. I’m surprised I remembered it as I’ve only seen that movie once… but it is a great song so I guess it made an impression on me! Honestly all these songs are great. Why was I expecting this to be insufferable noise music??? Is it just because I’ve seen his name next to the Velvet Underground a bunch of times and I’m also unfairly biased against that band because I hate the sound of Nico’s voice so much? Is this really as much ambient as people can handle? Are his later albums drastically less melodic or something? WHY wasn’t I on top of this album earlier….
Okay I didn’t love the one about the dead finks but it has its place on the album/is way more interesting than annoying and the richness of the layered vocals in the next track won me right back over. I’m listening to the last one now and oddly enough the instrumentals remind me of nothing so much as walking to the exit of Space Mountain after riding the ride… a feeling of satisfied post-climax and the same sort of technofuturist optimism you get walking past all those outdated sci-fi “postcard from another world” displays… I looked it up and Space Mountain opened in 75, one year after this album was released, so I’m not crazy/I am in rec connecting dots here (<- not connecting shit)…
Okay finished! Five stars! I’m glad this one came up early for me!
III was the first Led Zeppelin album I ever listened to start-to-finish, and in some ways it’s still my favorite, even though I have listened to IV since then. There’s just not a bad or boring track on it, and yes, I’m including Hats Off in that assessment. (The vocal effects!) Immigrant Song is a classic, Gallows Pole and Bron-Y-Aur Stomp are proper romps, Since I’ve Been Lovin’ You has that great moody atmosphere… Great stuff. I was happy to see it turn up.
Oh god, it’s these guys. Rio used to get stuck in my head all the time when I was a kid. Also every time we played the Rock Band video game we’d end up doing Hungry Like the Wolf. God I hated Rock Band. I was so bad at it and it made me so mad because I was supposed to be a Music Kid (choir, piano, etc.). I don’t even know why we always picked that song. I think we just thought “juices like wine” was funny. Anyway those were the only two songs I knew from this album until today. Okay, confession time, I started typing this while Rio was playing fully prepared to get snarky starting in this sentence - something along the lines of “I don’t know if I was missing out on all that much” - but Hold Back The Rain is playing right now and I’m unironically having some fun here. Like, hang on, I have to actually give a fair listen to the rest of this album before I can say anything else.
Okay, we’re back. Yeah I mean to be honest most of these songs are bona fide bangers. Those synth soundscapes/xylophone solos are really doing it for me here. The Chauffeur has got a great melody. The 80s have never been a decade I’ve ever felt any kind of media-manufactured nostalgia for, at all (not even at the height of the mania for Stranger Things, a show I have watched and enjoyed) but listening to this… I kind of get it. It’s never going to be my thing exactly, but it’s kind of awesome for what it is nonetheless. That’ll teach me not to knock these things until I’ve tried them
I went into this completely blind. I’d never heard of this album or of these people. I don’t know what I was expecting exactly based on the cover art but it really was not this. Granted, I don’t know how I fairly could have been expecting this. I didn’t realize that you were, like, ALLOWED to Frankenstein this many samples together. Like, legally. It is surprising to me that an album like this could ever receive a mainstream release. It is surprising to me that apparently they’ve even been allowed to make some MONEY off of this. The whole concept feels like a reinvention of fanfiction by and for men who spend too much time on Pitchfork. Let it not be said that I’m opposed to the existence of fanfiction or that I don’t think it has its place as a form of creative expression, but is that place really on widely cited and respected lists of “Best Albums Of All Time”? Apparently. You can get away with a lot if you’re a man I guess
It’s not terrible. (Not all of it is terrible. Some of the beeping/record scratch noises were really annoying, and whatever the hell that tinkling on the high frequencies of the opening/title track is was legitimately, physically painful to listen to, to the point where I thought that something had to be wrong with my headphones/debated quitting the whole thing then and there.) There are some good moments and decent grooves buried under the avalanche (ha) of unnecessary repetition and too much random noise. If it was playing in the background at a party or something I wouldn’t walk out of the room. But to me that’s pretty much all it’s good for, effectively—background music you don’t think too much about. The guys at Pitchfork can go on and on about how intricately woven this tapestry of sound is (this album sure did find its target audience there) but the thing about creating an album that’s an intricately woven tapestry of sound is that all the weaving in and out of so many tiny fragments of different tracks means that there’s just not much of actual substance to hold onto. Every time something interesting starts happening, it’s played out before I feel like we’ve really explored what’s interesting about it. And every time something interesting starts happening, I think about how I could just go and listen to whatever track they ripped it from in the first place.
Ahead of its time, sure, but only in the sense that it predates AI-generated music cobbled together from bits of the existing musical corpus by machine rather than man by a solid twenty years. 2 stars feels a little generous. But again, there are some good moments. And objectively it’s an impressive work of audio engineering. I’ll give it that much, just for that.
I think perhaps if I were an alien creature from Jupiter who did not have any command of the English language or any understanding of human sexual politics I would enjoy some of the beats on this. However in real life I'm a female Earth Person, so, you know. It's not like I'm coming to this exercise expecting to hear a whole lot of respect for women from every album in the compilation but the lyrics on this one are just flat-out *gross* in addition to being dehumanizing. Not a pleasant listening experience.
Redeeming qualities? That organ vamp on Earth People? The fact that it (eventually, finally) ended? I don't know. Final verdict: a strong piece of evidence in favor of the theory that the world might be a fundamentally better place for women if men were forbidden from making music. And possibly from practicing medicine as well.
I mean they’re just all bangers
Like, this shit is DEVOID of substance, bro
First album I’ve encountered where I genuinely can’t understand why ANYONE would believe it belongs on this list. I don’t even know if I can say that I hated it because it wasn’t even interesting enough to hate. But I definitely can say that every tedious second all of these dull repetitive thudding/scraping/gurgling/beeping sounds played for was a second I spent being keenly aware that I was never going to get to have that time back to spend on listening to music that feels like it might actually speak to someone’s human emotional experience. Not a pleasant way to spend an hour and seventeen minutes (!!!) of my afternoon. One star experience, in fact. Sorry
Second day in a row I’ve gotten one of the twenty albums listed under “lowest rated” on the global stats page? What are the odds. Actually I did the math. Taking into account that I had 1089 - 27 = 1062 albums to go before this occurred the odds were (20/1062)*(19/1061) = ~0.034%. I guess I did get one of the *top* twenty albums a few days ago so maybe it’s only fair. Well anyway. I hate to be basic and follow the crowd, but, like, yeah, I didn’t really enjoy this one any more than yesterday’s, so, in my opinion there's a pretty good. reason they're both down there in the rankings. At least this one was half an hour shorter than Haunted Dancehall? I would say, at least it had vocals and should thus have been a little more interesting to listen to than Haunted Dancehall's aimless beeping, but actually the vocals might have been my least favorite part of this album. I had a Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds album just this past Saturday that I enjoyed (Abbatoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus), so I know that the guy is capable of producing vocalizations that don't make me feel like joining in on the other side of his one-way screaming match, but he really didn't do it for me here. :/
One star again. Sorry. I can only pray the next one I get is a little more fun. Maybe this is just the cosmic price I have to pay for getting to spend last Sunday with Ziggy Stardust (#8 highest rated in the global stats, also for good reason)? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
…. are you even FUCKING serious right now lmao
Okay, context. I spent much of my review of Thursday’s album complaining about how my Wednesday and Thursday albums were two of the twenty lowest-rated albums on the global stats page (and justifiably so, in my opinion) and concluded with a wish for something more fun. And after a brief, admittedly fun interlude spent with A Tribe Called Quest on Friday, my Saturday album is the lowest-rated one in the entire book. I’m starting to feel that my generator isn’t really being entirely random with me right now… did I offend the Music Guy gods when I called Since I Left You “fanfiction by and for men who spend too much time on Pitchfork”? Is this some attempt to force me to get with the Pitchfork program? This album has a 9.5/10 on that website, incidentally, which is a fact that only makes me more convinced than ever that the people who run and frequent it are more interested in the idea of themselves as Cool Enlightened Music Appreciators than they are in the idea of actually appreciating music. I’m sorry but I really do find it hard to believe that anyone puts this kind of thing on and just, like… enjoys it. But I guess I shouldn’t say these things in reviews anymore lest I have to deal with some even crazier shit tomorrow. RIP
All that said. I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t hate this *quite* as much as I hated the Wednesday/Thursday double whammy? There were a few moments. Maybe two or three moments. Probably all of those moments happened on AB/7A. The thing about this album is that any rave reviews it gets are all applauding it for being So Very Fascinating (no one, of course, is brave enough to commit to the obvious and objective lie that the music is Good) but I just don’t see it, really. What’s fascinating about overhearing your neighbors to either side having barely-intelligible conversations with people through the walls (Valley of the Shadow of the Death)? What’s fascinating about the ramblings of a six year old layered over a crying baby and some vague synth noises (Hometime)? I am willing to concede that Hamburger Lady is pretty notably repulsive if you listen to it closely. But that’s mostly down to the lyrics, and the band didn’t even write the lyrics—they took them from a letter written by some other guy. My overall impression of this album: a series of vaguely creepy soundscapes that get a little creepier if you start thinking about them a little harder, but, like, why would you bother. You could spend the time doing literally anything else.
If I don’t get something I can feel justified giving at least two stars to for at least the next two days in a row I am going to scream and bang on things for forty-five minutes, record it all with my shitty laptop microphone, add some synth, release it on vinyl, and eagerly await my well-deserved critical acclaim. Please. I am one month into this project. By all rights I shouldn’t have had to deal with this much shit yet. Have mercy
Certainly nothing to complain about here. I love having an excuse to end up on the Cole Porter Wikipedia page. Good stuff
Debated with myself a bit on whether to go two or three stars on this one. If it was half the length it is I would probably have been debating between three and four. I didn't have strong negative feelings about any individual track (and on most of them I skewed positive-of-neutral) but 130 minutes of this stuff... it's a lot. But I get that they were going for the whole campfire-evening-with-the-band vibe, and I respect that—it makes sense for the kind of music this is. Earns the three from me in the end.
Can I make a confession. Can I say something that’s going to make some people very mad. I don’t like Imagine.
The track, I mean. The rest of the album’s fine, or better than. Crippled Inside? Banger. Oh Yoko!? Banger. How Do You Sleep? Jesus Christ but I’d hate to be Paul McCartney listening to that one. Banger, though, for better or worse. Jealous Guy? Jesus Christ but I’d hate to be Paul McCartney listening to that one, for an entirely different reason. Doesn’t it just tear your heart out? (Yes, I am a “Jealous Guy is about Paul” truther. While I’m out here saying things that are going to piss a certain kind of Lennon fanboy off anyway I might as well get that one off my chest too.) Isn’t that piano just the most beautiful thing?
…But Imagine? Like yeah I mean personally I don’t think he deserved to die for it but those lyrics from his voice at that point in his life… they do grate. They wouldn’t even be good lyrics coming from anyone else, to be honest. Some “Karl Marx for two year olds” shit we’re all supposed to pretend is profound. And the melody and instrumentation are not interesting. Sorry! It would bother me a lot less if it weren’t for the entire rest of the world deciding that it’s his masterpiece and playing it twelve thousand times. But as it is… I just don’t get it. I say enough! Stop it with that song!
So I’m knocking off a star for that. Still, it does earn the other four, though, I think. My feelings about John Lennon at this point in my life are much more complicated than I have time to get into right now (maybe whenever John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band turns up in my queue I'll give that particular topic its due. Or maybe when I get Rubber Soul…) but I can and will say: I do respect him for being brave enough to so often put the ugliest and most vulnerable parts of himself out there into the public eye for us to pass judgement on. Probably he shouldn’t have done all that, to be honest—I don’t think it was any better for him than the primal scream therapy, in terms of actually leaving him in a mental state conducive to leading a healthy and productive life during much of his last decade. But it means I get to listen to Jealous Guy, so for me it's a win.
New to me. Good shit! People should put more organ in stuff generally speaking
I thought I had no idea who these people were and then every track sounded familiar. My mother has this CD player that mixes discs together to play over the house speakers and this album was always in the rotation back in my middle school/high school days—I just never knew or thought to ask her what it was called, I guess. There were other important teenage things going on in my life. Simpler times… Five stars is probably one more than I’d give without the nostalgia factor, but nobody’s ever truly objective about anything anyway, et cetera et cetera. Call your mom, everybody, she wants to hear from you.
I have often wished that more of the shooting-for-clever-and-interesting ~experimental~ ~art~ records that end up on lists like these contained tracks that were actually Listenable on, like, a basic musical level. Props to these guys for pulling it off. Some real bangers (The Sacro-Iliac, The Worst Band in the World) on this one. Some pretty funny lyrics, too ("But we're working on it!). I'm not going to claim that ALL of the lyrics have aged particularly well (...Hotel...), but I am going to give them at least some benefit of the doubt on having written the questionable ones as imo it's pretty clear they're going for satire with those tracks on the whole. And the tunes? I'm hooked. Fuck the haters! I'll be back for more of this one.
Huh. I’d never actually listened to a U2 album before this, probably due at least in part to having been a very contrarian grudge-ready fourteen years old when they did that stunt where they forced their new album onto everyone’s iPhone whether or not they had any interest in it or indeed knew who these U2 people even were yet. This is pretty good stuff though. I’d go back to it for sure. I’ll probably keep slamming that skip button out of spite whenever a Songs of Innocence number turns up in my life, but I won’t hold it against the band’s prior work anymore. Hearts and minds were changed today. That’s why we do this project I guess
I wish I was the kind of person this really hit for but I guess I'm not. I didn't have a bad time listening by any stretch but it just didn't make me feel much. I'd be willing to try it again at some point to see if it grows on me but I'm not especially eager to put in loads of hours to force it to do so. I see why people praise the musicianship so highly though
Oh I like this a LOT actually
Second day in a row I got something from 2019. Seems the generator might be having a bit of a moment. I'm not complaining, though, this was enjoyable!
I mean just for starters it's at LEAST an hour too long. Additionally a significant percentage of that overlong runtime was physically painful for me to listen to. I wish I could give this at least two or three stars to pretend I'm enlightened enough to appreciate what apparently a lot of intelligent and respectable people consider a groundbreaking masterpiece but given the number of times I seriously considered turning it off and making it my first DNF album and possibly also throwing my phone across the room I would feel too dishonest doing so. At least it's over now thank God
This album more than anything else I've ever listened to made me viscerally aware of how every twelve-bar blues song is actually just the exact same song. However. The stage presence and charisma of this man was enough to make thirty-five minutes of it before a live audience compelling all the way through anyway. I'd even take another half an hour if it was on offer. Bonus points also for the Chicago mention
Big Star was a much better band when it had Chris Bell in it but some of this is kind of interesting too I guess
I can't look at this album cover without thinking about Damon Albarn in drag which tells you a bit about some of the things that are wrong with me I guess but unrelatedly: holy shit!! This was my first time hearing a lot of these songs and they truly are all bangers. Perfect from the very first track. I had kind of a shitty day at work today to be honest with you but having this album on repeat the whole time made it just about tolerable. Everyone say thank you to Debbie Harry
Looked at this album cover and thought, "Oh yeah, I know this one." It turns out I only knew disc 1 of this one. They really committed to that 69 bit, I guess. I commend them for that. At the same time—three hours?? At the same time—I'd tell them, "no fucking way, you have to cut some material off of this," except I don't know what I'd tell them to put on the chopping block first. A three hour album in which no significant chunks of the material are, like, objectively, memorably bad? Serious accomplishment. We're back to commendations.
I don't know. I think I have to knock off at least one star on my personal listening enjoyment scale, because, like, the book of love is LONG... and indeed occasionally boring. I maintain that most of its best material is on disc 1, though of course I'm biased because 1. That's the stuff I knew already, and 2. That's the stuff that came before I started wondering, "hey, wait a minute, how many more hours am I going to be at this for?" (But, like, I Don't Want To Get Over You is SO funny... A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off is a bop, and also funny... The Book of Love is gorgeous, truly...) Also, the primary vocalist's voice is... it works well with the vibe of this material, but it does get hard to take in large doses, and—as I and doubtlessly every single other person to ever review this album have previously expanded on—the whole album is a VERY large dose. But on the whole? It's really good stuff. I'm glad to have listened to the whole thing through within a short time frame at least once, and I'm looking forward to revisiting some of the new tracks from discs 2 and 3 as well as my old favorites from disc 1 going forward.
They lost me by that line about the spaceship ass and to be honest I don’t feel like they worked especially hard to get me back
Felt like a bit of a cruel joke seeing the generator spit this album title out when I've been sick the last few days tbh 😔 Anyway the music is fine I guess
Thought this was a 3 star album on the first listen but I let it loop and actually the more times I listen to these songs the more I like them. And of course I have to thank it especially for teaching me about the song "They Won't Go When I Go" which is an EXTRAORDINARY piece of music (this cover as well as the original)
One of my favorite genres of song is always, like, Scathing Critique Of American Excess, written by: Guy From A Different First-World Country. Never fails to make me laugh. Anyway I’d never heard of these guys but I like their style okay
God. I don't know. This album is hard to review. Femme Fatale would be a truly great track if it wasn't Nico singing it, but it IS Nico singing it. Heroin and All Tomorrow's Parties (a song to which Nico's vocals are much better suited, in my opinion) are astonishingly good, but European Son is unlistenable. The lows are pretty low... but to be fair, the highs are also pretty high. And I respect the influence it had on everything that came after. 3.5 stars, rounded up out of generosity
Literally two days ago this generator had George Michael introducing me to my new favorite song "They Won't Go When I Go" and now here comes another excuse to listen to it fifty seven times. Funny how these things always seem to happen... anyway: not only "They Won't Go When I Go" but actually all of these tracks are great!
It has been 5̶ 0 days since my last George Michael album... well, who am I to complain, I'm having a nice enough time. This album isn't exactly my thing/I don't feel all that likely to revisit it at least in full (the title track I'd certainly come back to) but I respect it and found it fun at least the once through.
I kind of wish I didn't like this stuff to be honest but I do
One major banger + an assortment of minor ones... fun!
Yes alright fine it IS true that there ARE two or three tracks on this monster album so bad that they merit knocking a star each off the rating (you can feel free to guess which ones) but without those tracks this would have been a seven- or eight-star album so I feel perfectly justified in handing it a five anyway. This album has Dear Prudence on it! It has I'm So Tired! It has Helter Skelter! Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey! Happiness is a Warm Gun! It's got fucking Blackbird, for Christ's sake! It's the bloody Beatles' White Album! Shut up!
Really pleasantly surprised by this one to be honest!
Honestly even three stars feels like it might be a little generous. I guess with these guys you just had to be there maybe
Holy shit, this stuff is GREAT... completely new to me—I'd never even heard of the band (shows you how much I know, yeah, but in my defense I was born in the year 2000)—but I'm all over it now. These kinds of discoveries are what we do this project for I guess
...I mean, I DO think Stairway is extremely overrated, but in fairness to it, it would be pretty much impossible for ANYTHING to live up to THAT much hype. In a vacuum it's still a banger. Every song on here is a banger to at least some degree. Shoutout to Misty Mountain Hop for being the namesake of one of my family's dogs (we didn't name her that, she was called Misty before we got ahold of her) (still one of my favorite Zeppelin tracks) (entirely unrelated to the dog though. tbh I'm not that big of a dog person and I don't live at the family home anymore anyway). Shoutout to this whole album for being great for blasting on repeat above the background noise of industrial machinery (very long day in the lab yesterday, much improved by having something fun to listen to). 👍
Pleasant surprise here; I was NOT expecting to enjoy this at all, but it’s pretty solid the whole way through. I would give it a three as it’s still not really my kind of music exactly, but after reading some of the other reviews on this website I have to round up to four stars to deliver some justice/reward it for pissing off so many idiots. Lots of guys down there complaining about the ~disgusting~ lyrics who I bet didn’t take half as much issue with Dr. Octagonecologyst/whatever their favorite classic rocker had to say about his experiences with fifteen-year-old groupie girls/etc. I’m not even a fan of the ideas of “reclaiming” words like bitch/ho/whore/whatever generally; I don’t actually find the idea of styling myself as a sex object any more “empowering” than I do the idea of denying/suppressing the existence of female sexuality at all. But that’s not really what this album is doing, if you're fair to it.
THIRTIETH??? studio album?!??? I honestly think nobody should be allowed to make thirty studio albums. They ought to cut you off and take away the microphones after number twenty-five or so. THIRTY studio albums. Insanity. What can you possibly have left in you by that point in time? Well Bob Dylan had To Make You Feel My Love left in him I guess so maybe I ought to be eating my words here. But then the other problem with all thirty plus Bob Dylan albums is that they have Bob Dylan’s vocals on them. Though we’ll always have the Adele cover version etc. etc.
Mostly I fear it just doesn't really do it for me... sorry. Wish it did
Well, I'd certainly rather hear these guys singing Mr. Tamourine Man than Dylan, I guess. Re: the Wikipedia entry—I believe no one who hasn't spent some time in a legitimate choral ensemble should be allowed to use the phrase "complex harmony singing" because, like... I find it quite simple, actually. Lmao. Whatever. None of this is unpleasant, I just don't really think I was in the mood for it today. I'll come back when I'm ready for all the jangle.
ugggggghhhhhhhh why is every shitty electronica album a fucking hour long
God I used to love the Girls Just Want to Have Fun song when I was six years old and didn’t even really understand what it was about yet. 80s synth pop is really not to my adult musical taste but I can’t argue that I had some fun here even now
Once they made us do an arrangement of Shining Star in my Catholic high school choir. Imagine approximately 40 white girls—no, actually, I'm sorry, stop imagining. Don’t do that to yourself. Anyway, you'll understand why even thinking about that particular song has filled me with a visceral dread and repulsion for years... imagine my surprise upon learning/rediscovering that in its original context it actually IS kind of a bop after all. So, extra star to the whole album just for overwriting some extremely unpleasant memories associated with that particular track. 👍 Some other pretty good stuff happening here too lol
My experience of this album was not improved by the interruption of four Youtube songs per track on average. In fairness if I was a streaming service I wouldn’t go out of my way to make this stuff available either. Honestly not anywhere near as terrible as any of several other hour-long electronica albums this generator has put me through so far, though
I kind of vibe with this stuff
I'm sorry? Am I the only one who thinks that the lyrics on this album might be some of the cringiest ever recorded? I don't even care that much about lyrics generally but like, lmao. This shit is APPALLING. I'm cracking myself up reading through all the Genius pages. "Oh, my next girl, yeah / Will be nothing like my ex-girl" | "Well her eyes, they're rubies and pearls / And she's not made like those other girls" | "There is nothing worse in this world / Then payback from a, a jealous girl" | "And that's me, that's me / The boy with the broken halo / That's me, and that's me / The devil won't let me be" | "I am the bluest of blues"—why is nobody TALKING about this... Auerbach & Carney be normal about women and/or write something that doesn't sound like a fourteen-year-old's half-assed homework for the poetry unit in freshman English class challenge, failed 15 times over...
The music here (boring) is not remotely good enough to redeem lyrics this low-effort. Two stars anyway though because I really did have some fun with the whole thing. I mean. I am the bluest of blues. lmfaoooooooo
My hottest Radiohead take: I'd take this album over The Bends any day of the week, no hesitation. As a band I think these guys just work best for me when it sounds like Thom Yorke is wailing out from some cyberspace torment nexus they've trapped him inside. It's about the atmosphere...
Yeah okay FINE. Take the stars
Oh man. Oh god… I mean, what to even say. If I’m ever going to get a lyric tattooed somewhere on me then “And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make” is, for sure, a top three contender. Thank you for everything, The Beatles—still, now and forever, the best to ever do it. <3 <3 <3
This whole exercise is really making me reconsider whether or not I actually dislike 80s music as much as I thought I did…
Can't quite give this five stars because it turns out you CAN have too much of a good thing/some of it started to get pretty old after a while... but there's definitely a 5-star 40-minute album buried within it somewhere
There are better Nick Drake albums
If instead of being negative seven-eight years old when this album was being recorded I'd had the chance to weigh in on the production I would have begged Liz Phair to transpose every song up by a major third—for her own sake, because some of the vocals here sound downright painful, and also selfishly so that I + the thousands of other women these songs have spoken to over the decades could have an easier time singing along with them—but that's literally the only change I'd ever ask for. Truly an incredible record. The kind of emotional range you have to have as an artist to pull off both "Shatter" and "Flower" with a convincing air of authenticity, not only on the same album but BACK TO BACK... and this is not even touching the masterpiece that is "Divorce Song" just one track earlier... I could and have listened to this album all day long. Thanks for everything, Liz <3
I don't know guys I'm starting to feel like tonight might be the night or something
As much as I love some of the Bowie albums of the early 70s, I hadn't listened to this one before today. I'll admit I came in fully prepared to give it a nice four stars, rounded up from three out of sentimental generosity—I mean, I'll always be grateful to the man for what he gave us during the glory days, but the glory days were quite a while ago. He recorded this album while sixty-eight years old and terminally ill. Etc.
Well. That goes to show you how little I know. This album works amazingly well as a swan song, it really does—oh me of little faith, worrying it would be schmaltzy or doddering or both, where instead it's genuinely powerful and introspective—but, also, crucially, it just WORKS, as an album. The music is all still there. And the performance... Christ alive. Imagine being sixty-eight years old and terminally ill and still having it in you to pull off Girl Loves Me... Nobody was doing it like him, and very possibly nobody ever will again. Thanks again for all of it, David <3
PJ Harvey did the title track better. See, this is always the problem with Dylan—he does write some good songs, but I’d rather be listening to anyone, literally anyone, else in the world performing them. Makes it quite difficult to figure out how to review his albums. Whatever three stars it is I guess I don't have a ton of time to spend thinking about this right now
I just don't get the hype, I really don't. I almost feel kind of bad about it but :/
Some of what's happening on The Murder Mystery is pretty interesting. Pale Blue Eyes is alright. None of it is BAD, really, but it's not the kind of music I listen to and then immediately think "holy shit I need to start a BAND". I'm glad it works so well for some people though
Finally a Neil Young album that's actually as good as all these Neil Young albums are supposed to be...
No one told me that the "lol Stranger Things" album turns into a concept album about drowning halfway through? Awesome. I don't even love Running Up That Hill that much to be honest with you (I'd like it more if they let me cut out the bridge...) but the rest of this really bangs
“This is the album on which Radiohead FINALLY UNLOCKED THEIR FULL POTENTIAL as the MOST INNOVATIVE AND CLEVER AND CREATIVE ROCK BAND EVER”—incorrect. This is a pleasant-enough, certainly-above-average-but-ultimately-nothing-crazy rock record that happens to have Fake Plastic Trees on it as well. They didn’t get ALL the way out there into the groundbreaking stuff until album #3. That said. Yeah okay it DOES have Fake Plastic Trees on it. Just and My Iron Lung back-to back are a pretty fantastic one-two punch, also. I don’t know maybe from another band I *would* give this 5 stars but I said in a review a few weeks ago that I preferred Amnesiac and I’m going to make a point of sticking to that particular hot take. 4/5, nice work guys, you’re almost there, don’t worry you’ll get it next time
Wire's Pink Flag 2: Electric Boogaloo. Or maybe I just feel that way because all these British punk male vocalists apparently all sound legitimately indistinguishable to me. (Like, I had to poke around on Wikipedia to confirm that none of the Wire guys were singing on this record as a side project, and even now I don't know if I'm entirely convinced.) But there are commonalities enough in the instrumentals too, I think... Anyway, I fucking love Pink Flag, and jokes aside I loved this album too. Those basslines... those hooks... the way the guitars just slice through you... I could (and did) have this on multiple times in a row without wishing for a break. Awesome discovery; thanks to the generator for this one!
When the generator threw this at me actually and literally two days after it gave me the excellent Hounds of Love I could only assume it was trying to invite me to spit out an unfavorable comparison to that later masterpiece except joke's on everyone, I actually like this album EVEN BETTER. Holy shit/oh my fucking God
Strong-armed this onto the living room speaker system for a soundtrack while the whole family did the Christmas morning gift unwrapping routine/accidentally invited the damned "separation of the art from the artist" conversation back into the household re: Phil Spector's murder conviction/got my sister's boyfriend signed up on this website. Merry Christmas to all. Ring-a-ling-a-ling-a-ding-dong-ding
I was a sixteen-year-old girl on 16 June 2017
I really do have a lot of admiration for Damon Albarn’s versatility as an artist. He could do grunge—simultaneously hilariously and convincingly, here—but none of those grunge guys could have done anything on Parklife. He could do Pavement, if Pavement didn’t grate to listen to. (Don’t come at me—I do like a couple of tracks here and there, but—). Anyway. Is it embarrassing to have a Blur phase in the year 2025? Yeah but also whatever. I’m not ashamed to admit that I spent a lot of time January-March this year with these guys. Kind of neat/funny to get this album right at the end of the year—invites reflection. I do really like the overall vibe of this one, even aside from any nostalgia—it’s one of those “whole is greater than the sum of its parts” things for me, I think. Not that the parts themselves are bad. This album has Beetlebum and Song 2 on it and that’s just for starters. But listening to it start-to-finish… it’s an experience I’m always happy to take the time for
Opening lyrics: "Remember when people thought the world was round?"
Me, immediately: haha I'm in danger
No but seriously, this whole thing was a pleasant surprise, on the whole. I always hate to see the "electronica" tag turn up because most of the time I can't stand that shit (sorry)—but this is one of the times it works okay for me. Still not exactly my thing, necessarily, but I didn't rush to shut the music off when the last track finished and we looped back to the start of the album. I'd listen to it again tomorrow without complaint. 👍
I’d never really listened to these guys before—unless you count the time in summer 2024 when I was being a tourist at Edinburgh castle and walked past them doing an afternoon sound check on my way out through the temporary stadium they’d put up there for a concert that night. They seemed cool—I took some pictures and figured I’d get around to listening to an album or two eventually. Verdict: they are cool! I had fun!
Hm. Well I don’t know about all of that
Yeah this one is really nice
I think in the age of streaming it’s honestly criminal not to separate out the hidden track from the final song in the playlist into its own separate track if there’s going to be this much silence otherwise. What if you wanted to put one of those last songs into your playlist? Fortunately I guess I have no real desire to put any of these songs into any of my playlists. Two stars feels a little harsh honestly as I didn’t have a BAD time listening to any of this, but I’ve given plenty of 3 star ratings to albums with at least a couple tracks I’d actively enjoy revisiting, and I’m just not feeling that desire for any of these here. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This would honestly deserve five stars for "The man ain't got no culture [HARMONICA JANGLE]" in the Dylan parody alone... classic for a reason
It’s obviously a ridiculous sexist myth that Elastica were only successful because Justine Frischmann’s lame-ass boyfriend secretly wrote her songs for her (women are just as capable as men of remixing Wire numbers, I assure you) but I do have to admit that it’s pretty damn funny to entertain the idea that Damon Albarn was out there penning catty lyrics about his own erectile dysfunction. Anyway, everyone should stream Stutter a hundred times
Huh. My first XTC. Not at all what I was expecting (somehow I had managed to get the vague and obviously incredibly mistaken impression that they were, like, a hip hop group or something) but a pleasant enough surprise... I'd be interested to see more from these guys
… hm. I don’t know. I got pretty bored. I respect it for the role it played in inventing the genre, apparently, but the genre was improved upon in subsequent records from other groups. Can’t see myself ever having any real desire to revisit any tracks off this one -> two stars it is
“Personnel” section of the Wikipedia page on this one is fucking hilarious. Uncredited. Uncredited. Who gets credited? Oh I see, the English guy. The Portuguese guy. The “Mclarenettes” (excuse me while I go and vomit). Malcom McLaren: “impresario”. Lmfao. And all this on top of 87 uses of “female” as a noun referring to a human being. Wow. And the end result is not even particularly enjoyable to listen to. Lmfaooooo
IT’S GETTING TO THE POINT WHERE I’M NO FUN ANYMORE… yeah
I just really can't do it with these metal vocalists I'm sorry
It's all pleasant to listen to and I'd happily have it on in the background anytime, but there's not nearly as much about this that really grips me as there usually is in a Bowie album. Just the nature of ambient music I guess...
Just does not interest me at all unfortunately
YES. Tina Weymouth I'd do anything for you
Hm. This is interesting. Absolutely BIZARRE album to have ended up on this list (like, seriously, WHY is it here...) but I'm kind of into it... I want to hear this woman sing to me some more, and the instrumentation here really is great. Glad to have been given a reason to listen
No one is more surprised than I am to find myself actually kind of vibing with some of this tbh
I mean. I MEAN. I mean…
It would honestly be embarrassing how much I love this album, if I could bring myself to feel embarrassment about it. This morning I wrote a whole essay about it and the Beatles and the role both have played over the past few years in my life/my friendships/my first extremely tame forays into drug use/my falling out of love with cynicism and misanthropy and ironic detachment, etc. etc., which I got as far as copying and pasting into this review box before I decided: no, come on, too many words, and more damningly, WAY too personal. Not the right venue. Maybe I really should just start up a Substack. ANYWAY…
Setting aside all of that. There’s probably nothing I can say about the album in and of itself that hasn’t been said a million times already by a million other people who’ve loved it just as powerfully as I do, or more. They’re great songs. Fucking OBVIOUSLY everyone should listen to all of them before they die, preferably as many times as possible
I’d probably try writing a snarky review about this but honestly nothing I could come up with could possibly compete with the world-class comedians in the comments section of the YouTube video where I was forced to go in order to listen to it because streaming services seem to want nothing to do with it (which, you know, I get it). I genuinely wish I could give it 1 and 5 stars simultaneously. I don’t want to split the difference and give it 3 stars because 3 implies “mid”/“mediocre” and whichever way you slice it that’s the one thing this album ISN’T, but, like, what else can I DO... I feel like I’ve just discovered a secret second axis on the good/bad sliding scale. Final verdict: 3i stars. Now I need to figure out which of the people in my life I’m going to bully into sitting down and listening to this with me for a second time through because I’ve got to do it to/with SOMEBODY
