1001 Albums Summary

Not my favorite Elton John, but still a good one. Undoubted mastery of melody, theatricality, orchestration. Tiny Dancer is and will always be my favorite off of this album, Levon and Goodbye are up there as well. Part of his charm is that he can somehow create such catchy, listenable songs out of such genuinely insane lyrics. I truly think that the universe forced him together with Taupin as a writer because he would have been too powerful without him. I don’t ever really know what the hell he’s talking about, but he manages to make it work *most* of the time.

Janis can WAIL, and I didn’t know she fronted a band until now. It’s a little jammier than I usually like, but it’s absolutely still groovy. Her covers of Summertime and Ball and Chain simply do not stand up unfortunately. Not a fan of Crumb or his work, but this is about the music so I’ll leave it at that. Overall a solid psychedelic rock album!

Misogynistic, violent, homophobic… look, the beats are good as hell and I love a 90s flow. Biggie can rhyme with the best of them, arguably is the best of them and will always be incredibly influential. But lyrically I simply cannot get behind him. I generally am not a fan of Interludes, and this album is no exception. They not only add nothing to the experience, they actively detract from it. If I’m being generous, the album is an interesting study in self-loathing.