1001 Albums Summary

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.

It’s fun! No complaints!

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.

Boring. Sorry

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

God I love this album

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…

lmao

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

OH yeah

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

Sure! I had fun here!

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...

Take me out...!

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

I mean...

...unfortunately I do think this is pretty good. Shitty situation to be in. I'm not going to performatively apologize for it or angst about it though. The thing is... hm. How to put this. Basically I think that if more of you guys in the reviews here were women and had spent a significant amount of time confronting the pervasive forces of sexism in society both in general and specifically directed at you/actually even took sexism seriously as a legitimate form of oppression, then maybe you would be more emotionally prepared to handle it when you recognized that good artists were bad people. That, and/or the sitewide average ratings on QUITE a few of the other albums by various male performers on this website would drop by a star or two. I don't know. Anyway enough said about all of this

Just not for me I think

I'm not necessarily a Stones hater or anything but this is just not it yet. Maybe I'd give it 3 stars if so many of the lyrics weren't so gross. I mean maybe they're trying to do an ironic commentary thing in at least some cases but it really doesn't land. Even setting that aside—musically it's definitely no Rubber Soul, for all you can tell on certain tracks that they were trying (it really is pretty funny to take a look at the dates on the Wikipedia pages and realize that the guys got into the studio to start recording this like 5 days after that album dropped... like *2 days* after it got released in North America, which is where they were at the time... I recognize that that day was also like 3 days after they wrapped up some touring obligations/finally had a a schedule clear enough for studio time, but like, that chronology is just always going to read as the Stones hearing Rubber Soul, panicking, and booking some emergency sessions to try and push out something that could compete. lmao). It's not bad, on the whole, it's just really not very interesting to me.

Mercury Prize nomination??? For THIS???? One wonders what was going ON in 2003. Honestly I thought about 1 star here but that's a little meaner than I feel like being tonight

Listened to this one through while walking over to a friend's apartment for a Super Bowl party. Classic all-American experience, I suppose. Had a much better time doing that than actually watching the football game but as anyone else who tuned in this year can probably attest that's not necessarily saying a whole lot. Still: it was fine; it was nice enough; boredom I get, but I don't really understand how these guys inspire hatred in anybody (I mean, at least musically speaking, anyway)

Lovely...

Honestly? Not particularly impressed by this. This is the Jay-Z everybody's been talking about my whole life? Sorry but I guess I just don't hear it. There is just a lot of more interesting hip hop out there

Yeah alright. Fine. Wonderwall is a good song. There, you made me say it. Are you happy now? Whatever. Champagne Supernova? Also pretty awesome. Don't Look Back In Anger? Uggghhhhh okay FINE it's great. One could even call it "anthemic." Like everybody else in the world already has. NO, none of these songs make any fucking sense lyrically; YES, they're all overplayed and derivative and lowest-common-denominator hooliganishly simplistic; YES, they do something to me anyway. So. FINE. Oasis made ONE good album (Definitely Maybe is boring to me. Sorry. I don't think we need to even get into the rest of them. As far as I'm concerned their discography consists of WTSMG + Wibbling Rivalry ONLY)

Oh my god and Jesus as well… always happy to listen to Björk doing. Well. Whatever it is she’s doing

I could probably have done with a *little* less sound in the garden… but I don’t have any specific tracks I’d tell them to cut, so I guess who am I to complain. It’s not like I actively disliked any of the 75 minute runtime… anyway. Waffled between 3-4 stars but I’m feeling generous and the vocals are really something here

I don’t know if this works as a concept album and I definitely don’t think it works as an album that’s 90+ minutes long. We didn’t need all of that. But there are moments

It hasn’t even been three entire weeks since I had to contend with fucking Trout Mask Replica but okay here we go again I guess 😭 -> oh actually that was like... basically normal. Maybe kind of boring, even

Banger after banger after banger...

Sometimes this dude's whiny vocal delivery works for me, and sometimes an makes an otherwise fine-enough-or-even-good track VERY difficult to get through without rolling my eyes. The problem is that which moments are which along the album's runtime is not consistent. I think it's down to my mood/how much attention I'm paying to what I'm listening to more than anything...

I don’t really want to talk about this

In theory this sounds like a really cool album but in practice I just did not enjoy listening to it that much :/

There is just something SO fundamentally unappealing about the genre of song that goes "I'm a prisoner with a troubled past and I sure do miss my mom/wife/grandma :("... Maybe if you actually valued and respected your mom/wife/grandma half as much as you think/say you do now that she's an unattainable ideal/nostalgia-filled memory/symbol of Life On The Outside floating around in your head, then you wouldn't have committed the kind of senseless violence against your fellow man (or. You know. Her, maybe) that landed you in prison in the first place, which she would undoubtedly have warned your ass about. Your ostentatious musical performance of regret now that you've tasted the consequences does not do all that much to stir my pity. That said. Johnny Cash is Playing A Character here and, whether or not I care for the character particularly on a personal level, he sure is absolutely nailing the part—and the people he's parodying seem to think so too, if the crowd noise here is anything to go by. Final verdict: kind of an incredibly fucked-up album in concept, tbh, but in execution it mostly works for me. Somehow.

Now THIS is an album

I have a lot of respect for Björk. I think she should be allowed to do whatever she wants forever, up to and including killing all the men on this website who make an entire bit out of hating on her in performative and frankly rather misogynistic ways at every opportunity they’re given and at many they aren’t (if I had a nickel for every time I’ve seen out-of-nowhere Björk dunks in highly-rated reviews for albums she had absolutely nothing to do with… I might not be rich, but I’d have more than two). All that being said I don’t think many tracks from this particular album are going to be entering my usual rotation. Neat to listen to once though. Some cool atmospheric stuff happening

If I'd had to listen to this man asking me to light his damn way a single more time I don't know what would have come of it to be honest with you

I think this is fun!

CLASSIC tracks. BANGER tracks. God. The Smiths, of course, have a reputation for being mopey, angsty, sullen, depress-ing/-ive, etc., and I get it, I really do, I know all those moody lyrics well enough to sing along to every one of these songs, but personally I'll never be able to listen to the jangle of the guitar on this record without breaking into a grin. (And some of the lyrics really ARE quite funny, besides..!) Incredible, incredible, INCREDIBLE work...

I love it when women...

Some of this is objectively pretty neat. But I just can’t bring myself to care about it all that much.

Fuck everything, but I DO actually kind of love this. Surprising everybody, including me. I complained a lot about Since I Left You/the very concept of "sampledelia" as a genre a few months ago, towards the very start of this whole 1001 endeavor (it was album #14 for me) but I guess I've grown as a person since then. Also, importantly, these guys actually added something original on top of/in conversation with the other work they're referencing (Since I Left You did not really bother to do this). Also, importantly, these guys are fucking hilarious (Since I Left You did not make me laugh even a single time. This album, on the other hand? Oh my god...). Anyway. If my coworkers (STEM field) ever do make good on their threat to drag us all to karaoke I think I might be performing The Sounds of Science. Until that day, though, I'll be relistening to this album trying to learn all the words, and to try and puzzle out all the layers/samples/little jokes I've missed the first time around. (Because I'm sure there are tons... some of which I might learn to recognize soon, even... there were already several in there that I wouldn't have caught before I listened to their source albums as part of this project. Which was very fun and exciting! I do feel like I'm getting a proper musical education here... I'm becoming enlightened. Still not enlightened enough to come around on Since I Left You though, I guess. What can I say. Sometimes things that are critically acclaimed on Pitchfork are not actually very interesting)

Very interesting to be a member of Gen Z, constantly vaguely bitter about the lack of freedom/offline opportunities for socialization and experimentation and low-stakes mistake-making that people my age and younger have grown up with, constantly bombarded with thinkpieces written by people our parents' age about the emotional stuntedness of our generation in sanctimonious tones as if the way they raised us and the world they built to raise us in had nothing to do with causing it, et cetera, et cetera... and then to listen to tracks like Mother on this album. I suppose to some extent every generation really does feel they're facing some of the same struggles... The music is, of course, pretty good here, but not quite good enough the whole way through that dealing with an 80+ minute runtime doesn't feel like a bit of a chore. Still, it's one I wouldn't mind doing again.

Okay so do you remember those math problems in grade school where two kids started running laps around a track at different speeds and you had to figure out how long it would be before they lined up next to each other again? That’s track 1. Answer: too long. As is the rest of the album. This is nothing. There is nothing here. I guess it is probably pretty fun if you're at the club though

This is basically a 3 star album that has Superstition on it but like… it has Superstition on it

I liked the back half of this much better than the front half. I think it could grow on me if I give it the chance. Will revisit

Fuck yeah... aggressively British aggressive shouting... for better or worse, I really do eat this shit up. Punchy! Fun!

Well, with a name like that, how can it NOT be all kinds of fun

Just not very interesting. Don't know why it's here

Occasionally (Roadrunner; I Wanna Sleep In Your Arms) Jonathan Richman sucks at making music in a way that is actually a lot of genuine fun and almost endearing. But most of the rest of the time he just sucks at making music like any man who sucks at making music. It grates after a while :/ My Certified Woman take here is that it's kind of obvious why the character depicted in many of the lyrics is apparently having so much trouble finding a girlfriend

Yes, there's an obvious standout track here, but honestly it sounds like the guy is having so much fun the whole way through that everything else is a lot of fun for the listener too. I like it!

Overcompensation, I think, is the word I’d go with. I pity George Harrison. I do. He did get kind of a raw deal at the tail end of the Beatle years. But he pities himself more, and that's his entire problem. This album feels like an accumulation of resentments. Every journal entry prompted by every petty slight from '67-'70, fleshed out into a track here; even on the ones that, on their faces, have nothing to do with inter-Beatle squabblings, you can almost hear him saying, with a considered smugness, "Take THAT, John-and-Paul. You thought this wasn't good enough for an album? You were WRONG about me." And sometimes they were. There are some great tracks on this album; we all know which ones. But sometimes they weren't. This album didn't need to be a triple album. But George, it seems, felt some deep need to have it all out there; to prove himself; to say everything he had to say about what he felt was his unfair treatment at the hands of the other Beatles for the whole world to hear. And then it turned out that, unless you want to count I've Got My Mind Set On You, he didn't have that much else to say, for most of the rest of his solo career. That's the tragedy of George, I guess. As far as I can tell he carried a Beatle-related bitterness with him all the way up until he died. Paul and Ringo seem to have made peace with the ugliness of the ending some time ago. Even John, supposedly, was at least a few serious steps into the process of mending his relationship with Paul when his life was cut unexpectedly short (though some of the most significant testimonial on this is of course coming from Paul, who seems to have undergone a surgery to weld a pair of rose-tinted lenses into his eye sockets, so, grain of salt). But George? Interview transcripts I’ve read from the people close to him seem to suggest that even at the end, things were strained. Clips I’ve seen from Anthology (which I ought to state in the interest of transparency that I’ve never sat down and watched in full) show him looking at Paul and even the camera like he's thinking about homicide; like, if he didn't need the money at that point in time, he'd have been anywhere else in the world. All of this, combined with the fact that his solo career was so rocky, combined with the fact that he died relatively young... it all gives me the impression of a life that was stunted, a potential that was never fully reached, because one way or another, he was never able to let the scab alone and move on. For all that he made it public knowledge that he didn't want to be defined by his Beatles legacy... well, is it really getting away from something if you let a powerful resentment of it live in your head for over thirty years? If the album in which you can't stop talking about it all is the only one most people remember you for, because that's the one you poured quite so much of your energy and talent into? TOO much, of your energy and talent. This album is way too long, even setting aside the Apple Jam. It’s also overproduced. We don’t even need to get into a Phil Spector discussion here except to say, well, you know. Layers and layers of tracks on tracks, because we can, because THIS will really knock them over, THIS will really show them, THIS will make them listen to me and realize I had as much to say as they did all along. Horns; reverb. In-your-face. My favorite song from this album is Run of the Mill. I don’t have the album version of that song on a single one of my playlists. The one that I keep coming back to is the demo: just George and his guitar; a beautiful melody, when it's not being overshadowed by the brass. Lyrics that really break your heart. It's you that decides, which way you will turn. I don't know if George ever really managed to commit to a decision to turn away from what being in the Beatles made him feel. For that matter, I don't think John and Paul were ever his worst enemies. I think he was always his own.

Surprisingly convincing 70s Stevie Wonder impression from some white Englishmen in the 90s, but, like, we could always just be listening to a 70s Stevie Wonder album. Not sure why this gets a separate spot on the list. Oh well. Not a bad time

I guess I just don’t see it. I was bored for most of this. The guitar sound is cool enough but the songs it’s being used in service of… it just doesn’t feel like there’s much there

Wow. I love divorce

Tina Weymouth I would still do anything for you...

What is this? An album featuring songs that were ubiquitous on top 40 stations when *I* was a teenager? I didn’t think that was allowed. I thought the purpose of this list was to compile music-critic-masturbatorily esoteric underground stuff or Gen X nostalgia or both. Well I guess it’s MY turn on the nostalgia roller coaster… People in some other reviews complain about filler here. I guess that’s fair. You can kind of tell listening to this that the album as an art form was largely dead by 2015. Long live the age of streaming/playlists/whatever I guess. But honestly… none of this is bad, and the big numbers are so huge that they almost HAVE to pull the thing to an above-average rating anyway. And anyway, like, it’s Adele. Are you really going to complain about her singing ANY song to you

Shoutout to The National who like me are from CINCINNATI OHIO... #cincinnatimentioned... Don't let "Bloodbuzz Ohio" (great track) scare you off—it's a super underrated city, tbh, and probably even nicer if you don't personally have any memories of teenaged angst or loveless homes tied to it. Stop by sometime when I'm back in town and I'll give you a tour!

I'm rounding this 3.5 up to a 4 because 1. RAM isn't on this list for me to give 5 stars to, so #justiceforRAM; 2. Paul is my favorite and I'm not ashamed to admit to that bias. #justiceforpaul. Anyway. This is fun! Not all of the lyrics make a lot of sense but who cares about that. Jet is great! The title track is great! Let Me Roll It is FANTASTIC...

This stuff is GREAT

As ever with a Dylan album you do KIND of wish that it was anyone else in the world actually singing the songs... but I found myself wishing it a little less than usual on this one. I don't know if that means he's growing on me, or if the vocal delivery just works better than usual with this particular set of songs. I guess we'll find out next time I get one of his albums here (I think I've got like three or four of them still to go? God, why so MANY... it's not like this random harmonica guy is the BEATLES or anybody...)

“the albatross” in this case being, of course, a per-track runtime that is consistently thrice as long as would be required to make whatever musical or lyrical point we are going for, and being, unfortunately, not at all gotten-rid-of in any editing process,

Well. You can’t give Morrissey more than 80 all-time classics. Or whatever it is they say

There's so much mythology around this one that it's hard to review. I don't know. My honest thoughts are basically: it wasn't as magnificently powerful as I kind of expected it to be, based on the way people talk about it; it wasn't as atrociously artless and nasty as I kind of expected it to be, either

I think that if it takes you until 3 minutes and 40 seconds into your opening track before you add a second musical note to either the instrumental or vocal tracks then you're moving at the wrong pace. Like, what are we doing here. Why did this album have to be 73 minutes long. I don't know actually I didn't mind having it just as background/ambient while I was working today—it wasn't, like, outright unpleasant or anything—but I am just never going to put this kind of thing on to pay attention to/feel inspired by

Damn. Apologies to Jefferson Airplane, I guess; I was not familiar with your game… I still think you should have called yourselves something different though if you didn’t want people to assume you were fundamentally ridiculous

:/

I’m actually kind of surprised by the fact that I find this so awesome but…

By all accounts this is the peak of jazz. I don't doubt it. I guess I wish that I could manage to feel a bit more compelled by jazz than I ever do in reality... I like to think I could manage it if I brute-forced it. Just listened to this album multiple times and really got intentional about paying attention to everything that was going on. But I didn't have time to do that yesterday, though. Well it was quite nice as background music anyway

Why are we doing all of this...

Okay actually this is pretty fun…

Courtney Love is SO cool, actually

Okay sure, I guess...

Now THIS is where it's really at with these guys...

I mean, this is definitely only on the "important/influential" list because it's riding the coattails of Bowie's earlier work, but, you know, *I* had fun...

It will always and forever be fucking hilarious that they actually committed to sending Elvis to the military against his will. BTS-type situation. Anyway he seems to have done okay for himself on the comeback album

I could really have done without certain of the interludes but

Self-awarely stupid, but oh my god it really is so much fun...

Okay okay...

Ah. More Dylan. This one did feel thematically appropriate for Memorial Day…

Miles Davis again? I just had Miles Davis like 2 weeks ago… okay, well. Sure. It’s fine? It’s just never going to be inspiring to me…

How can you not have a good time with this stuff...

Just really not it for me… I actually might prefer it without the vocals—which I hate—but then I suspect it would only put me to sleep. :/

Hm. Okay. Well I actually don't know if I needed to hear this one. I feel kind of slimy about it all to be honest. Next, PLEASE

Completely inescapable my pre-teen/early teenage years anywhere there was a radio and/or a piano and a kid who could manage the chord progression in “Someone Like You”. Makes me almost nostalgic

God this is just too much fun. I mean there’s one track on it that I don’t really want to talk about but, you know, I don’t really want to talk about it. Other than that? No notes

I didn’t listen to this album. I listened to a playlist I cobbled together myself that matched the track list of this album on Wikipedia, which is apparently what everyone else had to do as well. No idea if the specific recordings I grabbed were the same ones that went on the original release here but same song title, same artist, close enough at least. I had fun! Lots of respect to this guy for being one of the originals

I’m being a little generous here but I really am starting to get a bit sick of this guy. How many more of him are on the list again

I actually think this is pretty fun

This is very. Hm. Oh I don’t know. Listening to this feels kind of like listening to some man going on and on about how great he is in some capacity, half-demanding and half-begging that I heap praise upon him. Whether or not he’s actually as good as he thinks or wants me to think he is (and I kind of think these guys might be, like, technically this record is THERE) it kind of makes me determined to convince myself he’s not, out of spite. Also the whole thing really does just invite Zeppelin comparisons that are… not necessarily always very favorable (Zeppelin is just so much more FUN…). But. Ugh, I don’t know. I want to give it two stars, and maybe I should, for the number of times I found myself rolling my eyes at all the flourishes and wails, but I don’t know if I can quite manage… sometimes the braggart men do manage to win you over in the end, however much you hate both parties involved for letting it happen

I could take or leave the title track, and I do think that the album cut of I Dream A Highway could have stood to lose a few verses (save some of those for live performances, you know) but this is really really lovely. Elvis Presley Blues in particular has gotten into my heart and soul, and I don’t think it’s ever going to leave. Do you ever just feel SO SAD for reasons that you don’t even know if you fully understand

Cocaine and peppers will do this to a person. Honestly maybe more people should try it

What are we doing here. Why am I listening to this

Hm... more enjoyable than I expected

"Why does this sound SO familiar" -> actually looks attentively at artist's name -> I had these guys' studio album literally 1 week to the day ago. Lack of creativity on the generator's part. Anyway, call me duly impressed that they can pull all this off live—but not, like, particularly deeply moved by any of it

You do kind of have to give it to Elvis I generally find

Mm... fine if you're into this sort of thing I guess

This kind of thing really just does not do it for me

It improved as it went on but… just not really my kind of music. Doesn’t help that this is my third day in a row with this kind of thing

Let's all be very honest here and admit that the only thing that's particularly remarkable about this album is the fact that it was made in the twenty-first century... most everything on it having already been played out rather comprehensively in the work of artists fifty and sixty years earlier. The music's nice, inherently, I guess, but for real emotional impact it's relying heavily on nostalgia bait that just does nothing for me. To be even more honest I ought to say that I'm always kind of suspicious of men from relatively-modern times who produce apparently heartfelt homages to the mainstream culture of an era predating second-wave feminism...

I really don't think or like to think of myself as a particular fan of 80s synth pop but this stuff is sort of undeniable

Oh do I like this a lot more than I even feel like I should…

Happy Fourth of July to me... this is fine I guess

Everyone calling this a Radiohead/Queen hybrid in these reviews is more correct than I would have thought possible

I don’t know I just kind of feel like everything that these guys have to say to us they also say on the other album about the sex being on fire. Could we not have just picked one of them to include

I don’t know how well all this has aged… I mean “Dumb Girl” obviously has aged like a milk and just straight-up curdled but even some of the rest of it feels a bit stale. You can just tell it’s relatively early for the genre, and speaking as someone born on this side of YK who has no real teenage nostalgia wrapped up in it it just doesn’t stir a lot in me as an album. That said, individual tracks are of course undeniable (It’s Tricky, You Be Illin’) and I do always feel some obligation to respect the pioneering voices in ANY genre… we’ll call it a solid 3/5

Hm. I will admit I had a look at the cover art/list of genres on this one and hit play with the firm intention of ultimately writing a review clowning on the Mercury Prize for handing out nominations and even wins to any old whackjob, but this turned out to be a pleasant surprise. I will probably never listen to any of it again tbh but I didn’t dislike any of it either. Though I will say that if you consistently can’t hit the highest note in your song even in the studio under optimum conditions you should maybe just consider transposing it down a whole step or two, like, come on, even/especially from an indie whinerboy this kind of vocal delivery isn’t actually endearing when it’s literally every time, it’s just cringe

More flute than I previously thought possible on a rock record. A distracting amount of flute. Enough flute that I found myself barely paying any attention to any of the lyrics. Which I gather from some other reviews here is probably a good thing. Well the instrumentals earned four stars for sure and I find I don’t particularly want to go back and re-listen to the vocals trying to figure out how many stars’ worth of subtraction they merit so…

I still and forever have just so much admiration for Tina Weymouth

Well it SURE is The Beach Boys…

...Okay, WELL. I MEAN

Lovefool is so undeniable that I can't give any fewer than three stars to any album that contains it. But I did think pretty hard about it.

I like the vibes here!

If I am ever asked "what is the best way to stretch an hour into a seeming eternity" my answer WILL be "put on one of Those electronica albums—you know the ones—in literally any environment other than high off your ass at the club". Too boring by far to actually listen to and too annoying by FAR to just tune out as background noise. I'm honestly dubious about the merits of this one even if you ARE high off your ass at the club but that's not an environment I've ever spent very much time in so I don't know. Maybe under the right circumstances it can be fun? I can't think of any other reason why it would be suffered to exist. The REAL question is what the HELL it's doing on a list like this one...

Now THIS is the kind of thing I came to this project hoping to discover… I’d literally never even heard of these guys before, but I like their story and I like their sound. I only wish this album was on my streaming service of choice so I could more properly add it to the rotation but I know I’ll be back to it on YouTube every so often…

I respect the vision here and I'm happy for Joanna Newsom that she was able to find creative fulfillment in making this album but I am unable to kill the part of me that cringes thoroughly enough to enjoy it really at all. Wow. I did not need a Wikipedia page to tell me that this woman went to a Waldorf school growing up. I DID need a Wikipedia page to tell me that she is indeed related to Gavin Newsom which is kind of wild I guess

I think I’ve made it clear already at this point how I feel about this general type of album. This one was a bit of fun in a few places. Not really enough to justify the hour-long runtime though

Easily easily EASILY one of the top five albums to have on repeat during a frankly disastrous workday in the lab, or indeed at any point in time. Single-handedly made today survivable for me. Has soundtracked any number of memorable moments in my life. Two thirds of the songs on this album are INDIVIDUALLY worth all five stars here. Literally insane that any group of people let alone one as dysfunctional as this managed to put something like this together. But perhaps of course it is the disaster and the dysfunction that really makes it all happen... please join me and the generator apparently in manifesting good results from my own work today...

Another day of hell at work; another friendly and familiar album to get me through it. I could honestly do without the big For Tomorrow single but most of the rest of this is pretty great :) Yes it IS chimney-sweep music but chimney-sweep music kind of hits sometimes. I don’t know what to tell you

Okay, cool, dude

Mostly I'm in agreement with the woman who interrupts track 2 to ask Ice Cube why he keeps calling women bitches all the time

Shoutout to the Isley brothers who like me are from Cincinnati, Ohio...

I had a bit of a cold-shock flinch reaction to the first track, but once I understood what exactly I was dealing with I was 100% on board for it. This is NEAT... this is COMPELLING... "16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought-Six" is a seriously incredible song... oh yeah. I'm here for sure

Mm. Okay I guess

She's so cool... she's SO cool...

Oh my god

I’m such a sucker for this kind of thing that it’s really quite embarrassing

Naming this shit "leftism" is fucking right-wing propaganda. Lmao. Okay there's the quip. If I'm going to elaborate some: in comparison to the other house/electronica albums this generator has put me through so far this is honestly not that bad on a minute-to-minute basis, but, of course, 1. "in comparison to the other house/electronica albums this generator has put me through so far" is a pretty low standard, and, 2. of minutes there were sixty-nine (nice) (NOT nice! an HOUR and NINE MINUTES of my life! that's too many by at LEAST half!)