No prior experience with this band. Initially sounds... dorky. Drumming is basic and repetitive, and I'm not a fan of the vocals. Apparently, this is related to the punk era, but I don't hear any punk influence whatsoever. On the other hand, there are a few tracks that exude a haunting quality that I dig. Some of the extended riffs and instrumentals (e.g., A Means to an End) are pretty groovy. Twenty Four Hours started giving some punk energy: I'd listen to that one again. Almost felt like a precursor to Paint It, Black. Overall, I enjoyed the back half of the track list more than the front.
Had to skip the back half of Svefn-g-englar because I couldn't stand the "It's yooooooooooou" refrain, assuming that's what they were saying. I had to listen to the album multiple times to find a track that I wanted to capture for a future-listen playlist: no favorites easily jumped out to me. I'm not as enamored of the Jonsi falsetto, but maybe it's just not for me. These vibes make me want to listen to Radiohead instead.
Initial impression - ENERGY. Every song has a driving quality, likely owed to the disco drum beat that they use so frequently, but it works for this style. Immediately listenable, no challenge whatsoever. Relatively simple in the song structure and lyrics, but the feel is consistently strong, and the vocals are a delightful mix of Dead or Alive, Talking Heads, and maybe The Killers. Several of the lead and bass riffs play in my head even the day after listening, and I'm impressed with what sounds the drummer created with a three-piece kit. Kind of curious about their later work now...
I was worried at first about the 44-minute runtime across 5 songs, having never been a fan of psychedelic jam bands. This was a pleasant surprise: the songs are long, but they always feel like they are going somewhere. The artist communicates in longer "paragraphs" of music than we typically see today, and it takes some getting used to. It's a bit like watching The Fellowship of the Ring: quality is all there, and if you're willing to downshift your usual pace, there's a great story to be told. Musicianship on this record is top notch, synths and sax solos included. It's weird and unfamiliar, but never quite unpleasant or overly indulgent.
I ended up listening multiple times, and the songs felt shorter every time. This was the first album I'd listened to from Pink Floyd, and now I'm curious about their other ones.
I saw the reviews comparing this to Ren Faire music and thought, "Toss a Coin to Your Witcher? Let's go!" To my dismay, this was *not* Ren Faire music as I understood it. I would describe it more like Celtic Honkytonk or perhaps the first of the bardcore. Note that I didn't say best because I think others have improved on this format since.
There's usually no chorus, just one lilting vocal melody plus an instrumental interlude, repeated ad nauseum. They make 4-minute songs feel like 12 minutes because there's no hook, nothing familiar to latch on or look forward to. It feels much more akin to poetry with musical breaks than it is music as we know it today. Maybe fine to listen to in a tavern when you're weary from long travels on the the muddy road, but these days more evolved options exist.
I'm keeping an open mind, but if this is what all British Folk music is, then it is absolutely, unequivocally not for me.
Undeniably unique in her delivery: the combination of energy, emotion, and tone was one of a kind. I had heard a few of her famous tracks before but never realized she was largely a blues singer. Certain tracks also evoked similarities to Jimi Hendrix, which I didn't expect but makes sense.
Where it kind of falls apart for me is the lyrical content: pretty much every song is about chasing, lamenting, loving, or being mistreated by romantic partners, often men. I get that she wrote what she knew and blues is largely emotionally driven, so romance is a natural connection, but the motif gets a bit tired as a central focus. I'm also not the biggest blues fan, so that might factor in as well.
Good historical exploration, clearly unmatched at what she did, but this will not be in my regular rotation.
Younger listeners might not realize that Thriller and Bad were ground-breaking achievements in Pop because they introduced the concept of "dropping the visuals" as we now call it being a cultural event. MTV had music videos, but they were largely ads for the song or just featured a visual representation of the band doing their thing. Michael changed the game with Billie Jean, creating an iconic visual moment (steps lighting up) that the song forevermore could evoke. Thriller was just another funky song until the Thriller short film was created with actors, costuming, lighting design, the works. It had a theatrical release overseas and was a major event for MTV, and it spawned one of, if not the, first viral dance video. This guy was creating memes (the Smooth Criminal gangster lean, moonwalk, and more) while crafting a Pop persona, his own mythology that anyone could enjoy and get into. His ability to keep an album in rotation on MTV and the radio waves alike was unprecedented, and it revolved around this use of the visual media that we now all take for granted. Madonna, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and especially Taylor Swift have all taken pages from this playbook over the years, so to say that he created the modern Pop template would not be an exaggeration.
Why this is relevant: Bad is not a particularly great album on its own. It was never meant to be. It generated five #1 hits (because that's what most pop albums were, a collection of singles) and fueled a live show and series of music videos that created iconic moments in pop culture history, but the songs themselves weren't really that special. When you listen to the stuff in isolation, and especially without knowing the bigger picture of what happened before and since these achievements, you don't get the full impression of how it contributed to history and why it has a place on this list of 1001 albums.
With all that said, many of these songs don't hold up so well, and I don't award points for outsized cultural impact alone. This was a remarkable moment and achievement in music production, most of which had nothing to do with the music itself.
Missy's love letter to old-school hip-hop. It was a joy to experience and explore this album as a time capsule and cross-section of what was happening at the time. Gangster rap was the main lane, being hardcore was the only game, and Missy reintroduced playfulness as a viable path to music production. Her collaboration with Timbaland was on point and the beats, grooves, and lyrics are all fresh, but what stands out is her point of view. She takes time to honor the past, comment on the present, and propose a more inspiring future, all while evolving the art form beyond what it had been.
Like many entries on this 1001 list, this record shaped many that came after it because it legitimized a different, less violent, more female-empowered way to approach lyricism and rap. I don't know how many times I'll spin it on a whim, but I'm glad to have encountered this one.
Though this marks the inception and commercial success of Texas Boogie, and therefore is a pivotal moment in history, the album itself is uneven. It's pretty obvious which tracks contributed to the signature sound of ZZ Top years later because those are the only good ones, and it's not many. Some good guitar solos and riffs along the way, though.
On the other hand, Frank Beard is an incredible drummer and doesn't get enough credit for his blues shuffles, funky grooves, and overall tasteful playing.
Every once in a while, I encounter a vocalist that I find difficult to listen to. Neil Tennant is that vocalist. West End Girls is one of my least favorite songs of all time, and this album was a lot more of his "unique" pronunciations that I've read are completely natural, but I find them off-putting all the same. When you rhyme "shay-keeng" (shaking) with "mis-tay-kahn" (mistaken), I hear pretension. What irks me is that these *would* be close to rhyming if they were pronounced similarly. If that's your deal, then use different words so that the music sounds right.
This was a big deal in the 90's HIV crisis, and a lot of folks suffering might have found comfort in the themes that he was speaking to throughout the album. I see why it's on the list, and I wouldn't want to take that away from anyone else. Having not lived through that experience and found an emotional connection with this band or its music, I do not derive any nostalgia or subjective enjoyment from listening.
I gave it two tries and got to a point where the second felt less than unbearable, but I think I prefer the more aggressive synth approach of Depeche Mode vs. this introspective, dreary style.
Apparently peak technical prog rock. Very interesting to experience the musical surprises that were synched perfectly across all instruments, and I can't deny that these guys can burn, which I guess was the point they were trying to make.
The album itself is basically three long songs featuring this experimental long format plus some solo showcases. For my taste, only the Mood For a Day solo was worth the listen. Of the jams, I liked Roundabout the best.
Overall, not sure this is my thing, but I can appreciate its complexity and difficulty, and it's not unpleasant to listen to.
60's boink-a-doink rock with social satire might have been ground-breaking at the time and opened many doors for future artists, but I found it underwhelming. It's clear that the musicians *can* do something interesting and they're choosing not to, which is not the choice I want them to make. Funny, quirky, fun, and ultimately forgettable.
With the current ubiquity of vibe and "mumble" rappers, it's especially refreshing to revisit lo-fi underground grime production, just enough of a chunky beat to give MCs something to flow on. This bars-first approach was huge in the 90's, and Wu Tang was a big reason for that. Track after track of verbal combat that somehow makes nine rappers sound like a cohesive crew, while still weaving in enough personality and humor to give each character dimension.
And they were the first to treat this identity as a brand, to use their self-created mythology to spin off several solo albums and further enhance the reputation of each as well as the whole, ultimately enabling everyone to rise above the alternative of dealing or hustling in Staten Island.
I'll take this raw, lyrics-focused sound that I can actually understand over a vibe rapper any day. When I'm nodding my head to every track, I know we're in a good place.
I'm not sure I buy the whole "bleakest album ever recorded, pure desolation" mythos that surrounds this album because the artist died a few years later. I initially bounced off this record because of my faction to that common lore.
It shifted for me when I read the lyrics and started to understand what he was saying, even if I didn't always grasp his meaning. That caused me to listen more closely to the fact that most of these songs are accompanied by a single instrument, yet they sound like a full production. I'd never heard anything like it before, and I can see why others consider this a timeless sound.
This album is an experiment: what if we took country music vocals and lyrics and layered them over electro-bop, bossa nova, or soft jazz? In short, it's a disaster. EBTG even admits to cringing at their early stuff. For all intents and purposes, the band doesn't find their sound until Todd Terry remixes Missing into a house track. Idlewild is when they're still finding out what doesn't work.
Fascinating origin and history lesson, and kudos to them for being willing to experiment and explore new sounds on a public stage: without that willingness, they never would have become such a heavy influence on 90's electronica. Doesn't make this album easier to listen to, though.
I'm sure this would be a good laugh in a pub or open mic night setting, and it has a certain wit and charm that was apparently lacking in the more serious alternatives in rock at the time, but I have no desire to revisit this with headphones and a careful ear.
The first time I heard this, I thought it was the horniest thing I'd ever heard. Second time, utter desperation. In both cases, raw and unfiltered. It feels like a tone poem set to sparse trap beats.
She is clearly skilled at singing, though she chooses to breathe most of her lyrics. I'm not sure we'd have gotten the same Billie Eilish if not for this offering years prior. The intimacy and privacy of thoughts shared draws the listener into the music unlike most other albums.
With all that said, this album revolved around a neurotic, clingy, passionate, unapologetic person swimming in their thoughts. It's not particularly comfortable listening when I'm not going through something similar, but I can imagine it gives voice to these thoughts and feelings for those that resonate with it.
I've been going through this sonic adventure with an intention to save one song from each album to a "1001 playlist." Ideally, that selection sits at the intersection of what I like most, what most represents the album or artist, and what might be less popular/obvious.
In the case of Guero, my difficulty was in selecting the song that most sounded like Beck, because they *all* do, and yet each is very different. There are so many genres and styles packed into this album that I found it challenging to choose which to add, and he executes each perfectly with his own spin so that it never feels like he's merely trying on a new sound.
The songs themselves are immediately accessible pop fodder without being trite or formulaic, and they also reward deeper/repeat listening. I didn't know this guy had so many Grammy awards from so many different eras in his career: after hearing this album, I'm planning to check out his discography.
Expected to dig this one and was interestedly put off by the production choices to make it sound intentionally chaotic because "the world was confusion at the time." Zoo Station is one of the worst on the album for me. Apart from its singles that I already knew, only Till the End of the World and Love Is Blindness stood out to me.
I found it more palatable when treated as a live album. Maybe their live shows sound exactly like the over-produced recordings. Why you'd want to intentionally make a trashier recording is beyond me, but apparently it worked for them.
This is some of the funkiest, tightest musicianship I've ever heard, and they stay locked in with the same groove for minutes on end so that the people can keep dancing. Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards are the greats that several generations and genres studied in the decades following, and it's no wonder: this record is a production masterpiece. I can imagine this would be a perfect set for disco night and am very glad I was introduced to it.
4/5 + 1 more bonus point for inspiring the birth of both House music and commercial rap.
PS. I learned that "disco sucks" was more about racism and homophobia than it was about music.
Incredible production on this one - the way they double and triple one person's vocals to make them sound huge is unprecedented genius, and the way the two voices harmonize or complement one another to create one Super Voice is impressive. I also had no idea how solid the musicianship was on this record. The drums, keys, guitar, even the sax rocked all of my socks.
Not every track is a banger, but 5 out of 8 (for me) is a solid effort, and the surprises were delightful.
Devo with less virtuosity and more politics that don't interest me. This is a fine concept album with glossy funky side A juxtaposed with darker synth pop side B, and several of the songs come close to something, but it's never the whole package. Some temporary earworms, but nothing that I would describe as "good."
I'm not a very good singer, so I tend to stick with shower tunes and occasionally karaoke. I certainly don't professionally record my voice and force others to listen to it. Not only is Elvis Costello not constrained in this way, he deliberately leans into his mediocrity. Props to him for having the unearned confidence to both create nonsensical melodic progressions and fail to execute them at nearly every opportunity, but it's not fun to listen to this. I hear he's an amazing songwriter, but I couldn't get past this wilfully incompetent delivery to appreciate any of that even after seven times through.
1 star for his performance and another for The Attractions, who are actually a very tight accompaniment section in every song.
I easily forget that this music was made in 1988 because it sounds so timeless and perpetually relevant. Tracy Chapman's debut is a masterpiece in folk storytelling. No song ever overstays its welcome, even when there is intentional repetition. What I appreciate most is that she is music first, message second: it has to sound good before anyone cares what you're singing about. Coming off Imperial Bedroom, this was a breath of fresh air.
The accompaniment is also perfect. It is just enough to add to the emotion and never overshadows the vocals or the message. The a capella tracks and passages are equally effective. This was a standout for me, having listened on repeat during a very long jigsaw session and never gotten tired of it.
Rather than a concept album, this felt like an album of concepts. Half-finished song ideas weaved among a few complete thoughts. Very basic lyrics suggesting that not much time was invested in their polishing. It's a great vibe overall: I felt like I was listening to snippets of transmissions from a cosmic radio station. I just wish they had leaned harder into that concept (add static, channel changes, etc.) to pull the album together. Interested to hear their canonical best (which this was not because it barely included Kim Deal's contributions and was allegedly a rushed product).
Sleeper keeper: Down to the Well
