186
Albums Rated
3.78
Average Rating
17%
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903 albums remaining
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2010s
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33
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You Love More Than Most
Albums you rated higher than global average
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Want One | 5 | 2.91 | +2.09 |
| Miriam Makeba | 5 | 3.19 | +1.81 |
| Spy Vs. Spy: The Music Of Ornette Coleman | 4 | 2.22 | +1.78 |
| Bongo Rock | 5 | 3.26 | +1.74 |
| Wonderful Rainbow | 4 | 2.28 | +1.72 |
| There's A Riot Goin' On | 5 | 3.29 | +1.71 |
| L'Eau Rouge | 4 | 2.32 | +1.68 |
| Cloud Nine | 5 | 3.41 | +1.59 |
| Nilsson Schmilsson | 5 | 3.43 | +1.57 |
| The ArchAndroid | 5 | 3.45 | +1.55 |
You Love Less Than Most
Albums you rated lower than global average
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday At The Village Vanguard | 2 | 3.32 | -1.32 |
| Eagles | 2 | 3.29 | -1.29 |
| Everything Must Go | 2 | 3.11 | -1.11 |
| Modern Kosmology | 2 | 3.08 | -1.08 |
Artist Analysis
Favorite Artists
Artists with 2+ albums
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Nirvana | 3 | 5 |
| Beastie Boys | 2 | 5 |
| David Bowie | 3 | 4.33 |
5-Star Albums (33)
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Popular Reviews
Portishead
4/5
This is a sexy album. I feel like everyone has been subjected to at least one song on this album - either during sex, or in a sultry film scene.
And it fits. Dummy is moody, hypnotic, and drenched in trip-hop atmosphere. Beth Gibbons’ vocals float like smoke over beats that feel pulled from noir soundtracks and dusty jazz samples, creating something both intimate and cinematic.
When it was released in 1994, it practically defined the sound of trip-hop and became the template for countless imitators. It’s dark, but it grooves, and it’s impossible not to sink into it.
1 likes
Crowded House
3/5
On first listen, it feels kind of bland for a ’90s album - like a toned-down Better Than Ezra or Toad the Wet Sprocket. You can hear the DNA of the bands they went on to influence, but this one plays things pretty safe. Still, the melodies and harmonies are perfectly aligned, and there’s an undeniable charm in how tightly it’s constructed. A well-crafted album that values balance and subtlety over flash.
1 likes
All Ratings
David Bowie
5/5
It’s Bowie in his final form.
Eagles
3/5
I liked some of this, some of it felt too poppy?
Pixies
4/5
I've always loved this album.
The Zombies
4/5
I knew "Time of the Season" like probably everyone does, even if they don't know who sings it.
Didn't realize the entire album was that same level.
Really solid.
B.B. King
5/5
There is something amazing about Blues performers, their performance as a unit while free flowing. It’s just amazing.
Adam & The Ants
3/5
At the start: "This is so damn fun, I dig the drums."
By the end: "Ah, so this is where Godsmack drew inspiration from. It's less fun."
As a whole, it's a miss, but it has a couple hits.
Lightning Bolt
4/5
This is like art noise chaos - except whereas other musicians tend to conflict and it becomes dischordent - this bleeds together, feeling like you're locked in a chair, watching Liquid Television/Heavy Metal, just subjected to chaos.
I fully recognize this is out-there and not for everyone, but fuck, if it doesn't hit the notes for me.
The Cars
4/5
I really enjoy The Cars… hits. The Cars *album* is kind of hit and miss.
The highs are really highs, but the lows… are still good.
Joni Mitchell
4/5
Big Yellow Taxi was the main hit of hers I knew.
This album introduced me to a lot more of her sound, and it totally feels like a time capsule of the 70's - pleasant, easy drinking, soothing music.
Sade
3/5
I got laid just putting this album on.
It's sexy 80's r&b and there's a reason "Smooth Operator" is known by everyone.
TIL: it's pronouned "shaw-day"
The White Stripes
4/5
I really enjoy Jack White, particularly during his White Stripes albums. Meg White just kind of comes out nowhere and just does magic on the drums.
As a pair, it's just glorious, beautiful music.
Big Brother & The Holding Company
4/5
Janis Joplin just adds gravitas to this.
This is the kind of album that I'd have dropped everything and headed to San Francisco to be part of the scene.
It just feels like a time capsule, and it pulls you back.
Badly Drawn Boy
4/5
My exposure to Badly Drawn Boy was limited - it's an artist that a few people pushed hard and fawned over, which always turned me off of it.
But sitting down and listening to this whole album - it's really moving, and impressive with how expressive it is.
The Mothers Of Invention
2/5
I am sure this was probably a mind blowing “freaking out the normals” during its heyday.
But in spite of all the intelligent things I’ve read of Zappa, god, this album is just “check out out how wild and zany we are! Are you freak out yet?!”
Moby
4/5
This came out right before I moved to Chicago, and god did the scene kids their love it.
Because of the nature of electronica, I think the way they licensed every track on this album for movies/shows/commercials was a smart, and no doubt lucrative movie that made sure EVERYONE knew who Moby was, or at least, had heard his music.
It's a good album that once started, you just lose yourself in.
Thundercat
4/5
I'm familiar with Thundercat based on his work with other artists, but not his solo stuff directly.
But holy hell, that bass playing is smooth.
The lyrics are all over the map, some of it is so silly, some of it is tight. Overall, it's a tight album.
Gang Starr
4/5
It's kind of crazy that we have so much music nowadays that a group like Gang Starr can be missed.
Classic 90's hip-hop and lyrical styling. Oddly enough - I have heard two of the tracks via Skate 2 and GTA IV.
Dexys Midnight Runners
2/5
The extent of my knowledge of Dexys Midnight Runners is "Come on Eileen" - so this exposure is something else, opening up the doors to what they were beyond the hit.
But it's like… this was the last album before the broke up, and it's fitting, because it just doesn't feel like a solid album, but more of a dying rattle.
The Doors
4/5
This is such a conflict for me.
I was a "fan" of the Doors in my youth. I loved their albums, I read Morrison's poetry, consumed the biographies.
But it's always been clear the band is a sum of its parts, but I think without Jim's chaotic clown persona, they wouldn't have been as big as they were (no matter the "incidents" around him, I think it was before the idea that "even bad news is good news, because everyone is still talking about it."
It's not my favorite collection - but damn if it doesn't bring back memories.
The Good, The Bad & The Queen
4/5
It's Damon Albarn, who I have enjoyed in damn near everything he's done.
And this is a nice powerhouse project of London musicians - pulling out Clash Bassist Paul Simonon out of retirement?
This is such a good project.
Metallica
4/5
The post-Cliff Burton death album.
Is it lacking in bass? Yes. I don't blame Newstead for that, though, he got the short end of the stick there.
It's metal, it's thrash, but it's very… consistent with not a whole lot of variety (it looped on me and I didn't even realize the album ended).
For the era, it was awesome, and it's still worth a listen if you like metal.
KISS
3/5
Cock rock for your parents.
They wasted Satanic Panic on “Knights in Satan’s Service” with some of the most mild “rock” - honestly, I think the songs I know? Are mostly from covers that sound better than KISS’s own work.
And Gene Simmons is a wanker.
They get a 3 for being “iconic” in their era, but meh.
Frank Sinatra
4/5
Sinatra is timeless. The whole crooning era, the music, the mob.
It’s just pleasant all the way round.
Abdullah Ibrahim
4/5
This is an absolute jam.
It’s classic, it’s timeless, it is easy to listen to.
Queen
3/5
It's Queen becoming a little more glam rock.
It's okay - it has hits hit - but the rest kind of falls flat for me.
Prince
3/5
I don't think anyone can say Prince wasn't talented. Dude was a powerhouse, and also had the best Super Bowl half-time show.
It's still an impressive album from 1982 - but aside from the bigger hits (1999, Little Red Corvette) it shows that in spite of his technical prowess, it's still banking on his eccentricities over the power of the music.
Ali Farka Touré
4/5
Shit, did I just become an NPR member and now list "world-music" as my defining personality trait?
This isn't a genre I tend to seek out - something more you encounter unexpectedly.
It's solid - it's worldly. I wouldn't change it if it came on, but it's not exactly something that would always pull me in - there would have to be a situation for it.
Nick Drake
5/5
Nick Drake’s Pink Moon is an absolutely beautiful album. “Timeless” doesn’t even feel big enough for it. I put it on, listened to a few tracks, and quickly found myself pulled in, not just by the music but by the need to understand more about who Drake was.
It’s so simple - just him and his guitar, with the rare piano line on the title track - and that rawness makes it all the more powerful. Nothing gets in the way. Every note feels direct, like he’s playing in the same room.
What strikes me is how pure it is. There’s no attempt to dress it up or make it something bigger than it is. And yet, knowing what he went through, there’s a sadness behind it - especially the idea that he only seemed at ease when he was creating. I can relate to that feeling: the peace that comes only when you’re in the act of making something.
Even all these years later, Pink Moon feels alive, whispering to whoever’s willing to slow down and listen.
White Denim
4/5
I’m pretty sure I caught White Denim live once, and (if I’m remembering correctly) their set wasn’t nearly as tight as what I’m hearing on D. But that was years ago, and bands evolve.
Reading up on them, it sounds like this album marked a turning point - where they found their footing again and rediscovered that spark. You can hear it. The playing is sharp, the grooves are unpredictable but never messy, and there’s this sense of momentum throughout. It feels like a band locked in, pushing each other creatively, and just having fun being good at what they do.
Shivkumar Sharma
4/5
I’ll admit, I never really sought out Indian classical music growing up. Something about it felt off-limits - as a child, I feel like (in America) "foreign music was weird and goofy." Maybe it was my small town upbringing. Maybe because, as I grew older, I associated it more with massage parlors, yoga studios, or incense-clouded head shops than with something I’d actually listen to.
But Call of the Valley surprised me. It’s genuinely beautiful.
It’s carefully composed, melodic, and intentionally structured to tell a story without words. It invites you in, gently. There’s a meditative quality to it, but also a quiet emotional arc. It’s the kind of album you can put on, let play in the background, and then suddenly realize you’ve been completely absorbed. You lose time in it.
Wu-Tang Clan
5/5
This thing still sounds like a basement lab: dusty loops, chopped kung-fu flicks, and nine hungry voices crowding one mic. RZA turns cheap gear into alchemy - minimal, menacing beats that leave space for personalities to crash through. And every voice cuts different: Meth’s grin, Ghost’s technicolor slang, Rae’s street cinema, GZA’s cool precision, ODB’s beautiful chaos, Deck’s razor syllables. It’s grimy and DIY, but the vision is airtight. Staten Island mythology, comic-book world-building, and hooks you end up chanting without realizing.
It’s a cultural earthquake that also works as a front-to-back album: momentum never drops, the skits stitch the universe together, and by “C.R.E.A.M.” you’re fully converted. What more can be said? It blows past expectations because it owns its environment and turns limitation into style.
Standouts: “Bring da Ruckus,” “Protect Ya Neck,” “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’,” “C.R.E.A.M.”
Wu-Tang is for the kids.
Stevie Wonder
4/5
I know Stevie Wonder’s music - I’m no stranger to it. Over the years, friends have pushed his tracks on me, and it’s never been wasted effort.
This album in particular is bold - he criticizes Nixon! Imagine a Black musician openly taking shots at the President today with that kind of directness.
But that’s Stevie Wonder: fearless, brilliant, and impossible to pin down. His music is amazing, his lyricism and compositions pure magic.
And this record sits right in the middle of his “classic period," where he was firing on all cylinders and producing one masterpiece after another. It’s proof of why he’s rightly considered one of the all-time greats.
Eagles
2/5
“I’ve had a rough night, and I hate the fucking Eagles, man!” – The Big Lebowski
Yeah, I get the hate. The Eagles have always felt like the corporatocracy of rock. Solid musicians, sure, but they manufactured themselves into a polished product rather than a genuine movement.
They built on the fading hippie energy of the ’60s, then cashed in big. They were the first band to break the $100 ticket barrier, making them a symbol of music-as-commerce.
As T-Bone Burnett put it:
“[The Eagles] sort of single-handedly destroyed that whole scene that was brewing back then.”
Sonic Youth
4/5
Sonic Youth remain one of the great mysteries in music for me. They sit in this strange, almost impossible space - an art-alt-rock band that turns improv and jamming into something both dissonant and strangely structured. It’s chaotic, but it’s chaos with a purpose.
Daydream Nation is the purest form of that idea: sprawling, noisy, jagged, yet meticulously assembled. It’s the sound of guitars being pushed to their limits - tuned, detuned, layered into walls of feedback - and still it all lands as something musical, something alive.
I’ll admit: I didn’t get it when I was younger. It felt too abrasive, too inaccessible. But with time, I grew into it. Now, I can hear the beauty inside the noise, the way Sonic Youth bends the rules of rock until they create something entirely their own.
Radiohead
4/5
Radiohead is the band that first nudged me toward more experimental, “out-there” music. OK Computer feels like a leap forward from The Bends - which is already a fantastic record - but this one pushes into something stranger, more layered, more unsettling.
The little anecdotes from this era, like Baz Luhrmann approaching them for songs or the wide range of artists taking notice, just show how much their reach had expanded by this point. They weren’t just another rock band anymore, they had become the band everyone wanted to tap into.
For all its reputation as a challenging or cerebral album, I find it surprisingly easy to listen to. It flows beautifully, and I can just put it on, chill, and let it carry me along. It’s immersive without being alienating, being a perfect balance of ambition and accessibility.
Common
2/5
This one’s tough.
The Soulquarians’ production is incredible - warm, soulful, and locked-in. “The Light” and “The 6th Sense” are classics, and “A Song for Assata” is powerful. But then you get hit with jarring moments of misogyny and homophobia, which clash hard against the album’s conscious, liberation-focused vibe. It’s a record that sounds amazing, but it’s hard to enjoy because of those contradictions.
Led Zeppelin
4/5
This album will always feel special to me because of high school, when my friends and I bonded over it. It marks a real progression for Led Zeppelin - shifting from hard rock into more folk-inspired sounds, while still showcasing their incredible musicianship.
At the time of its release, it actually received mixed reviews, with many critics not knowing what to make of the sudden turn toward acoustic and folk influences. But in hindsight, that change in direction feels crucial. It showed the band’s willingness to evolve, absorb outside influences, and prove that they were more than just volume and riffs.
It’s a pivotal moment in their history, reflecting growth, experimentation, and a unified focus as a band. A turning point that expanded what Led Zeppelin could be.
Michael Jackson
4/5
The “King of Pop” (though here still very young and not yet crowned), Michael Jackson was already a household name from his Jackson 5 years. Off the Wall marked a huge departure, proving he was more than Motown singles and family fame. Teaming up with Quincy Jones and a host of top-tier musicians, Jackson delivered an album that blurred disco, funk, soul, and pop into something sleek and boundary-pushing.
I wasn’t really a Michael Jackson fan growing up, as his his style never clicked with me, but listening to this record, it’s impossible not to hear the raw talent and sheer musical power. Tracks like “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” and “Rock with You” cemented him as a solo star, while the deeper cuts showcase just how versatile he could be.
At the time, critics were positive but somewhat muted, often dismissing it as just another disco album. In hindsight, though, it’s clear Off the Wall was a pivotal turning point for Jackson’s career, and maybe for pop music itself.
Green Day
4/5
I feel like everyone had this album when it came out. At the time, all the rocker kids thought it was cool to hate Green Day for “selling out.” But the truth is, they left their indie label on good terms and simply blew up, and I feel like there’s no way an indie label could’ve taken them further after the first two albums.
This was pop-punk at its best: polished, fun, and catchy. Too many people associate that polish with being fake, but Green Day has always been true to themselves. Dookie wasn’t a betrayal of punk - it was an entry point. It brought punk rock into the mainstream, and for a whole generation it was the first step down a rabbit hole of discovering indie punk bands that influenced them.
I love this album. It’s fun, it’s raw in its own way, and it deserves all the love for opening the door to punk for so many.
Steely Dan
3/5
Steely Dan is a band I could just never get into. I tried. I really did. Years ago I worked at a restaurant/bar where our chef loved Steely Dan - he played them every night. And still, it never clicked for me.
That’s not to say they aren’t talented - far from it! Their musicianship and songwriting are undeniable, and I know they’ve had their share of hits. But for me, it never went beyond casual recognition. Countdown to Ecstasy, their second album, is often praised by fans for being looser and more jam-oriented than their debut, but I find myself listening and still feeling like it just isn’t my thing.
For some people, this is sophisticated, jazz-tinged rock at its finest. For me, it’s music I respect more than I enjoy.
The Velvet Underground
4/5
The Velvet Underground’s trippiness and weirdness has always meshed well with me. Pale Blue Eyes is such a beautiful song, and this album shows the band leaning into a more melodic, polished sound compared to the abrasiveness of their earlier work. It wasn’t a commercial hit at the time, but it’s aged into one of their most admired records.
What I love is how they managed to smooth things out without losing their edge. Coming off their raw beginnings, this feels like a shift towards accessibility that still stays true to who they are. Oddly enough, when bands like Green Day did something similar -sounding more polished and moving labels - they got accused of selling out. The Velvet Underground didn’t get that criticism, just indifference back then. But history has been kinder: this record proves they could be both strange and beautiful at the same time.
Cat Stevens
4/5
Cat Stevens is such a unique musician - instantly recognizable, with a voice that feels both fragile and powerful. I feel like everyone knows at least one of his songs, even if they don’t always realize it’s him.
Tea for the Tillerman is probably his most beloved record, packed with some of his biggest hits like Wild World and Father and Son. It’s a beautifully intimate album, easy to put on and just lose yourself in the emotions. The stripped-down arrangements make it timeless, while the lyrics wrestle with themes of growing up, change, and spiritual searching.
At the time, it solidified Stevens as one of the defining singer-songwriters of the early ’70s, standing alongside artists like James Taylor and Joni Mitchell. Decades later, it still resonates. Proof that simple, heartfelt songwriting can be as powerful as any elaborate production.
Manic Street Preachers
2/5
I’ve heard of Manic Street Preachers. They’re one of those bands whose name always seems to float around, but when it comes to their actual music, it just doesn’t land for me. This album felt ultimately forgettable. It came and went without leaving any impression, and while I know it has a following, it just isn’t something I’d return to.
That said, Everything Must Go holds a major place in the band’s history. It was their first album after lyricist and rhythm guitarist Richey Edwards disappeared in 1995, a moment that shook both the band and their fans. Instead of collapsing, they regrouped and pushed forward, reshaping their sound into something more accessible and anthemic. Critics and audiences embraced it as a triumphant rebirth - but for me personally, even with that weight behind it, the music itself still doesn’t connect.
Tears For Fears
4/5
Quintessentially ’80s through and through. I was always a fan of them - Shout, Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Head Over Heels - their blend of new wave and prog rock just hit me hard and made me an instant fan of this album.
I don’t know if they ever created anything beyond this that struck me quite as deeply, but Songs From The Big Chair remains a perfect snapshot of what may have been their peak. The title itself is fascinating: it was taken from a TV mini-series about a woman with multiple personality disorder who only felt safe “sitting in the big chair,” and the band felt the songs reflected that sense of fragility and safety.
It’s an ambitious, glossy, and emotional record that cemented their place in my music history and still feels monumental today.
Coldplay
4/5
This album almost suffered from its own success. It was everywhere when it came out, with radio saturation making sure everyone knew the songs, and soon enough it became "cool" to hate Coldplay. But strip away the backlash, and what’s left is a strong debut by a group of genuinely talented musicians.
Parachutes might not be bursting with cultural relevance, but it was exactly the kind of record people needed at the time - something earnest, melodic, and quietly optimistic. As a debut, it’s damn impressive. Critics often brushed it aside as being “too bright and cheerful,” and honestly, when it came out I didn’t want to hear that either. Revisiting it years later though, it’s clear just how capable Coldplay were right from the start, and how well these songs still hold up.
The Temptations
5/5
I think everyone in my generation has heard at least one Temptations song, but Cloud Nine shows them taking things in a new direction. This album marked their move into funkier, more psychedelic territory while still holding onto the Motown polish that made them legendary. You can hear the influences of the late ’60s swirling through it, but it never strays too far from their roots. The result is fresh, funky, and full of energy - an album that makes you want to keep moving. There isn’t a bad track on here, which only reinforces how monumental the Temptations were, not just for Motown, but for popular music as a whole.
Queen
5/5
My first teen job was at Burger King, and one of the managers there loved Queen. He’d play them constantly, and this was back when radio stations would sometimes spin entire albums straight through.
This record always takes me back to those days. Queen is undeniably one of the greatest bands of all time - Mercury’s voice, May’s guitar - it’s just a powerhouse of talent. Queen II was their “harder” album, but it still feels so fresh. It doesn’t fit neatly into rock, and it sure as hell doesn’t belong in hair metal. It’s just… Queen.
Germs
4/5
The Germs were pure chaos and raw inspiration. I can’t help but wonder how many bands wouldn’t be what they are today without their influence. GI was the epitome of “better to burn out than fade away” - just one album, yet it left an indelible mark. With ties to Pat Smear and even Belinda Carlisle (The Go-Go's), their story is as strange as it is tragic. Darby Crash’s life ended in a heroin overdose at just 22, but not before he and the Germs released what’s widely considered the first true hardcore punk record.
Pixies
4/5
If surf rock ever hitched a ride on a UFO, it would sound like Bossanova. The Pixies took their snarling, off-kilter energy and launched it straight into orbit. Warped guitars that crash like waves, reverb that echoes through the cosmos, and Black Francis screaming like he’s channeling transmissions from deep space.
It’s a strange blend: beach party vibes colliding with interstellar static. “Velouria” may have been the hit, but “Dig for Fire” is the track for me - laid-back, hypnotic, like a campfire on some alien shoreline.
Bossanova is what happens when you ride the surfboard straight off the beach and into the stars. A cosmic, surf-punk fever dream that still feels completely its own.
Jimi Hendrix
5/5
If modern times had a mythology, Jimi Hendrix would be carved into its pantheon. Before him, there wasn’t anyone quite like him - and after, even those who tried could only trace echoes. Electric Ladyland is more than an album; it’s a spell, a masterwork that feels both a product of its era and something utterly timeless.
The sheer fluidity with which Hendrix blends his guitar, voice, and bandmates is staggering. It’s not just musicians playing, it’s alchemy. Every track is meticulously crafted yet alive with improvisation, that paradox of perfectionism and freedom that only he seemed able to hold.
Listening now, you can pick out the fingerprints he left on later generations. I swear you can almost hear a line running straight to Ween’s surreal grooves. Tight, daring, cosmic: this is Hendrix at his most expansive, and it still feels like music made for a future we’re still catching up to.
Eminem
5/5
Love him or hate him, Eminem is the epitome of a white guy stepping into hip-hop and proving his talent could stand on its own. This album didn’t just make him famous - it cemented him as one of the most controversial and technically brilliant rappers of his generation.
The Marshall Mathers LP is an album of pure frustration. Critics at the time accused him of exploiting shock value, but it feels less like a calculated stunt and more like a cathartic release. He was suddenly thrust into stardom, overwhelmed by attention he never asked for, and this record sounds like him emptying all that chaos into the mic. Anger, humor, misogyny, storytelling, social commentary - it’s all thrown at you with breathtaking speed and precision.
What makes the album so powerful is that the contradictions never resolve. He raps with homophobia, then later shares a stage with Elton John. He lashes out at fame, yet leans into it with full theatrical flair. It’s messy, offensive, brilliant, and human, a raw glimpse into a man wrestling with his demons in real-time, and letting the world watch.
Two decades later, the impact still lingers. It’s not just a landmark in Eminem’s career, it’s a landmark in how music can be both art and controversy at once.
4/5
If this came out today, you’d have people howling about “when did country go woke?” - which is hilarious, because country, real outlaw country - Cash, Kristofferson, and the rest - was always about grit, freedom, and pushing back against the rules. Loretta planted her flag right in that tradition, making it crystal clear she wasn’t someone to mess with.
What really makes this album matter is the context: in 1967, Loretta became the first woman in country music to have a gold record. At a time when Nashville wanted women to be soft-spoken and demure, she was putting out songs that told cheating husbands to get their act together or get lost. It was revolutionary! Country’s first real shot across the bow for women saying, “we’re not just background singers, we’ve got our own stories to tell.”
Yeah, the album can feel a little “one note,” but that’s more about the constraints of its era than any lack of talent. Taken on its own terms, it’s classic country - tough, plainspoken, and dripping with conviction. Not necessarily my go-to, but it’s a damn strong record that carved out a space for women in country, and it still resonates today.
LCD Soundsystem
3/5
LCD Soundsystem is one of those groups where the highs are undeniable - when they land, the hits are fun, smart, and instantly memorable. But outside of those peaks, a lot of their catalogue drifts into repetition and tedium for me. Sound of Silver is a perfect example: it contains some truly great tracks that capture their clever mix of dance-punk and art-rock, but the rest can feel like filler if you’re not fully on board with their style. It’s not really my genre, but I’ll admit, their best songs are a blast.
M.I.A.
3/5
M.I.A. is a cultural whirlwind. Her debut Arular blends hip-hop, dancehall, grime, electro, and global beats into something that feels fresh and borderless. It’s a political album at its core, carrying the energy of her activist roots while also being wildly danceable.
It’s striking in retrospect, however, as this record introduced her as a sharp, genre-smashing voice with something to say. The tragedy is how her later trajectory got overshadowed by flirtations with conspiracies and fascists, a far cry from the raw, urgent activism that made Arular such a powerful debut.
Maxwell
4/5
I really enjoyed this album. It came out in the mid-’90s, a time when it probably would’ve flown right past me, but damn, it’s such a smooth, funky jam. You can feel the fingerprints of Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Barry White, Stevie Wonder, and Prince all over it, and Maxwell channels them beautifully without ever sounding like an imitation.
Some of the instrumentals had me half-expecting Barry White to drop in and just say anything. The whole thing has that silky, romantic sound of an earlier era, yet it feels timeless. What really strikes me is how much it stood apart from the R&B and hip-hop dominating the charts back then. It’s more intimate, lush, and patient. A slow-burning classic that sounds like candlelight and velvet.
Nirvana
5/5
I almost don’t feel qualified to comment on this one.
It’s basically sacred ground. It’s the holy grail of grunge, and I absolutely love it. The thing is, Nevermind didn’t just define an era, it shifted it. Every song feels burned into rock history, raw and melodic in equal measure. It’s one of those albums where even if you’ve heard it a thousand times, it still feels like discovering something dangerous and alive.
Depeche Mode
5/5
I credit this album with introducing me to that gothy, synth-driven aesthetic. It has that moody pulse that somehow feels both mechanical and deeply human. There aren’t many albums that sound this distinct right from the first playthrough. You can hear its fingerprints all over later artists, especially Nine Inch Nails.
Depeche Mode’s cultural reach can’t really be overstated. Violator isn’t just a snapshot of a moment in time, it’s a blueprint for what comes after. Every track feels intentional, sleek, and haunting in a way that still resonates decades later.
Marvin Gaye
4/5
Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On is more than just a collection of songs, it’s a full damn experience. The tracks flow seamlessly into one another, pulling you into a story that feels both deeply personal and universally relevant. It’s no wonder this album is often called one of the greatest of all time, as these are some of his most iconic songs, and they showcase his genius as both a vocalist and storyteller. You can feel his passion and purpose in every note.
Janelle Monáe
5/5
Wow, what an incredible album. Going in, I wasn’t sure what to expect; it sounded too ambitious, with influences ranging from Bowie to Fritz Lang to Stevie Wonder. But Janelle Monáe somehow pulls it all together in a dazzling mashup of soul, jazz, classical, and sci-fi.
It’s more than an album, it’s a cinematic experience, a full-blown world you can step into. Every track feels intentional, layered, and bursting with creativity. I honestly want to see this as a film - it’s that vivid and imaginative. Monáe doesn’t just blend genres; she builds an entire universe out of them.
Pearl Jam
4/5
Pearl Jam feels like the soundtrack to a very specific moment in time - the early days of grunge, when everything felt raw and real. Ten might not be a perfect album, but it feels honest. Having seen them live, I get it, the power, the connection, the way Eddie Vedder’s voice seems to pull the whole crowd into his world. There’s something timeless about that. You can tell why he’s lasted, why the band still matters. This album is where it all started, and you can hear the spark that turned into something lasting.
The Kinks
4/5
It’s interesting how many albums in 1001 fall into that category of being lukewarm upon release but later recognized as pivotal, and I feel this is no exception. Face to Face marked a tonal shift for The Kinks, moving away from their raw early sound toward something more introspective and thematic. You can see why it’s often cited as one of the first true rock/pop concept albums.
This is the sound of a band beginning to experiment. Not just musically, but narratively, weaving character studies and social commentary into their songs. It might not have made an immediate splash, but in hindsight, it feels like the bridge between the early British Invasion energy and the more artful, story-driven albums that followed. A fine and fascinating entry in The Kinks’ evolution.
Miriam Makeba
5/5
A weema wop, a eema wop…
African music has always been such a deep well of inspiration, and it’s easy to see why. There’s so much rhythm, joy, and spirit in it that countless musicians have drawn from it, with them sometimes paying homage, sometimes outright ripping off. You can hear echoes of Makeba’s melodies and traditional African sounds throughout Western music, from “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” to Elton John’s The Lion King soundtrack, which wears its African influences proudly.
This album captures that essence beautifully. It’s vibrant, alive, and full of energy - the kind of record that reminds you why so many artists look to Africa for musical soul and inspiration.
Blondie
4/5
Reading about this album, it sounds like it was as much a lesson in discipline as it was a musical milestone. The band had a bit of a reputation for coasting on attitude and fun, but producer Mike Chapman really pushed them to focus and refine their sound, and it shows.
Parallel Lines is packed with singles and showcases Blondie at their creative peak - sharp, stylish, and effortlessly cool. It feels like an album that was ahead of its time yet still managed massive success when it came out. Decades later, it still sounds fresh, vibrant, and undeniably influential.
Supergrass
4/5
This is a band I kept hearing about and being told to check out, but I never really dove in until much later. My first exposure was the “Pumping on Your Stereo” video, with that cheeky, over-the-top energy perfectly sums up what makes them so good.
Listening to "In It For The Money" now, it’s clear how much fun they were having. It’s confident, loud, and full of that Britpop swagger, but it also feels sharper and more musical than most of their peers. They’ve got that classic British rock punch, with clever hooks, fuzzy guitars, and a kind of joyful chaos that makes me wonder how I didn’t become a bigger fan.
Def Leppard
3/5
Def Leppard is one of those bands that, if I’d been around during their heyday, I probably would’ve been a fan. They blend right in with the hair-metal scene of the ’80s, with big hooks, big hair, and even bigger choruses. I don’t usually seek out their music, but I’ll be damned if they aren’t one of the best at the time doing it. Pyromania is pure, polished rock spectacle, the sound of a band made for stadiums.
Gram Parsons
3/5
So Emmylou Harris was relegated to a footnote in this album because Parsons’ wife didn’t appreciate their relationship, but this album, delivered right before he overdosed, feels both desperate and sad. It’s got that old-school country sound, but it’s full of heart and honesty. You can hear the pain and beauty of someone who was trying to reconcile his love of country, rock, and soul into something timeless.
Historical note: Released posthumously in 1974, Grievous Angel became a cornerstone of the country-rock movement. Though it didn’t chart high at the time, its influence spread wide, shaping the sound of artists like the Eagles and paving the way for Americana decades later.
Aretha Franklin
5/5
Of all the albums I’ve heard so far, this one feels like the most obvious inclusion. Aretha Franklin isn’t just a legend - she is soul music.
Everyone knows the hits, but hearing them together on Lady Soul reminds you just how untouchable she was. The performances are powerful, the writing is sharp, and the collaboration among the players (from the Muscle Shoals rhythm section to guest guitar by Eric Clapton) makes it clear how much talent surrounded her. It’s one of those albums that captures everything that makes music timeless - passion, precision, and pure feeling.
Sarah Vaughan
4/5
Yeah, her forgetting the words in the middle of a song was such an awesome moment to capture - it’s real, it’s human, and it makes the performance even more endearing. I get that this kind of jazz isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s good. The live recording is impeccable, with every performer having perfect tone and feel. It’s such a brilliant snapshot of late 1950s jazz, being warm, alive, and effortlessly cool.
Pretenders
3/5
The Pretenders are one of those bands I’ve always known, but never really got into. Their era produced a wave of poppy, new-wave, post-punk acts that all sort of blurred together, kind of like how post-grunge and nu-metal did later on. That said, this debut is undeniably solid: sharp, confident, and full of attitude. Chrissie Hynde’s voice and presence stand out, but overall, it doesn’t quite blow me away. It’s good, just not personally essential.
Nirvana
5/5
This album showcases exactly why Nirvana - and especially Kurt Cobain - were truly one-of-a-kind. Rather than giving in to pressure to perform their biggest hits or bring on mainstream guest stars, Kurt insisted on doing it his way: dim lighting, funeral flowers, Pat Smear on second guitar, and even the Meat Puppets joining for a few songs.
He filled the set with deep cuts and amazing cover choices - from Bowie to Lead Belly - crafting a haunting, stripped-down performance that feels more like a wake than a concert. It’s raw, vulnerable, and unwavering in its vision. That refusal to play the game is part of what makes this album so powerful. Kurt held his ground, and in doing so, gave us something unforgettable.
The Stooges
4/5
At the time, Raw Power didn’t break big — too raw, too chaotic, too ahead of its moment. But with hindsight, it’s crystal clear: this is the blueprint. It’s unpolished, feral, and loud. I get why it didn’t chart then, but I also see exactly why Iggy Pop became the icon he is now. Bowie helped shape the mix, but Iggy is the energy.
Plain and simple: lo-fi, bad-ass punk rock.
Belle & Sebastian
3/5
I just can’t get into Belle & Sebastian. They’re perfectly fine musically, but the vocals always strike me as monotonous, like someone reading a story in a sing-song voice rather than actually performing it. It’s odd, because I can hear how this album influenced bands I do enjoy, like The Decemberists and Death Cab for Cutie, yet it still doesn’t land for me.
While those later groups took Belle & Sebastian’s introspective, bookish style and gave it more warmth and energy, If You’re Feeling Sinister feels emotionally distant, like it's clever, but detached. I can respect its influence, but it’s not one I’ll be coming back to.
Belle & Sebastian
3/5
It’s strange - this debut feels more alive to me than If You’re Feeling Sinister, even though that one gets all the critical praise. If Tigermilk had been my introduction to Belle & Sebastian, I might have been more forgiving toward their later work. There’s a rawness here that hints at something special, but for me, their sound still leans too far into the bland and understated. I can appreciate what they’re going for, but it never quite clicks.
Bob Dylan
4/5
It’s always fascinating to read how this album was met with mixed reactions at release, only to later be recognized as a masterpiece. It’s a reminder that sometimes you can’t judge an album right away, you need to give it time to sink in, to be lived with before it reveals its depth.
What stands out most is how personal it feels, almost autobiographical, but still universal in emotion. Dylan balances raw vulnerability with poetic precision, showing exactly why he remains such a monumental influence in music. It’s a deeply human record: reflective, weary, and timeless.
The Smashing Pumpkins
3/5
I always think of that Simpsons moment, when Billy Corgan is introducing himself, “Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins,” and Homer replying, “Homer Simpson, smiling politely.” It’s the perfect encapsulation of Corgan’s self-seriousness bumping into the absurdity of the world around him.
Reading about this album just reinforces what’s already known: Corgan’s a notorious control freak. Stories from people who’ve worked with him paint the picture of a guy who’s both obsessive and petulant, and you can hear that tension all over Siamese Dream.
It’s not my favorite Pumpkins record (that honor goes to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness), but Siamese Dream feels like the blueprint for it. You can hear the band evolving, the layering, the production ambition, the emotional sprawl starting to take shape. It’s the sound of a band learning how big they could really get.
The Kinks
3/5
This is unmistakably The Kinks—Ray’s songwriting quirks, Dave’s bite, the whole British-music-hall-through-a-rock-band filter—but it’s also a pivot point for the group. You can hear them stretching, testing where their sound can go. A few tracks absolutely land: sharp, charming, melodic in that “only The Kinks could write this” way. But there are also moments where the experimentation feels more like searching than finding.
It’s not a bad record—far from it—but it has that classic “transitional album” energy: a band pushing past the formula that worked, trying to see what else is possible. Interesting, sometimes brilliant, occasionally uneven. A necessary step in their evolution, even if it’s not the album I’d hand someone as the entry point.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
Man… what’s more American than CCR? And what’s more American than a band imploding because one guy insisted on steering the ship while everyone else wanted to be collaborators instead of a backing group? It’s mythology-level stuff at this point.
The irony, of course, is that the dysfunction doesn’t dilute an ounce of how absurdly good they were. This record has that unmistakable CCR gravity—John Fogerty’s voice cutting straight through the mix, the band locked in with that swamp-rock precision, every track sounding like it’s been road-tested on a highway at dusk.
It’s a shame they never found a way to keep it together, because Cosmo’s Factory feels like a peak that could’ve been an era. You can’t help but imagine what they might have made if the chemistry and the egos had aligned instead of colliding.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
4/5
Man, I just enjoy Bob Marley. I never went through the “white Rasta” phase growing up—though I definitely knew a few—but I always understood why people tried to tap into that vibe. There’s something magnetic here that feels half-poetry, half-gospel, this invitation into a worldview rather than just a genre. Catch a Fire is one of those albums that radiates warmth and purpose; it’s music with intent, but it never preaches. It just pulls you into its rhythm and lets you sit in it.
I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of reggae. When it’s done at this level, it feels timeless.
Justin Timberlake
3/5
You can hear The Neptunes’ fingerprints all over this record—those clipped drums, the rubbery synths, the hyper-clean rhythm-first production. And it works; they were at their peak in this era. But even with all that talent behind him, this still feels like Timberlake in a transitional state.
There’s a very self-conscious “don’t see me as a boy-band kid anymore, I’m edgy now” energy running through the whole thing. It’s not bad—far from it—but that posture feels a little forced, a little premature. You can sense the talent, the charisma, the spark, but it’s like he’s trying on personas rather than inhabiting one.
It wasn’t until FutureSex/LoveSounds, where Timbaland had far more control and the sonic world got darker, stranger, and more confidently adult, that Timberlake really snapped into place artistically. That album felt lived-in; this one feels like an audition.
Still: Justified is a solid debut, a clear upgrade from his *NSYNC era, and a blueprint of what was coming. It’s not the best work of Timberlake, The Neptunes, or Timbaland—but it’s where the evolution really started.
Rufus Wainwright
5/5
I knew Rufus mostly through his piano pieces—the ones that feel like he’s singing directly into your living room. Want One is _like_ that… but blown up to cathedral scale. It’s Rufus fully unrestrained: orchestral, theatrical, and absolutely unapologetic about being larger than life.
What surprised me is how coherent it all feels. He piles on drama, strings, choirs, crescendos—yet nothing collapses under its own weight. It’s still him at the center: that voice, that melodic sense, that emotional clarity. The simple songwriter I knew is still there, just dressed in full regalia.
It’s beautiful, decadent, and unmistakably Rufus.
Snoop Dogg
3/5
Is Snoop Dogg an amazing rapper? Absolutely. Is he a sell-out? Also absolutely. Both things can be true, and holding them in tension actually highlights why Doggystyle lands the way it does nowadays.
Set aside the modern persona—the memes, the corporate partnerships, "Snoop Lion" the family friendly rapper, the “Uncle Snoop” cultural ubiquity—and go back to 1993. Doggystyle was a singular force. Snoop arrives fully formed: effortless cadence, rubber-band flow, a conversational cool that no one before him had captured at scale. He doesn’t sound like he’s rapping; he sounds like he’s gliding. And Dre builds the runway for him—G-funk stretched to its most luxurious, sinister, and cinematic form.
Lyrically? It’s misogynistic, violent, and unapologetically immersed in the world that shaped him. That tension of a slick delivery over grim reality is the album’s architecture. It’s not moralizing and it’s not romanticizing; it’s reporting filtered through swagger and wordplay. Snoop uses poetry the way a street raconteur uses storytelling: to turn survival into mythology.
Doggystyle is foundational gangsta rap, a debut that feels like a greatest-hits reel, a moment when talent, production, and cultural timing snapped perfectly into place. Whatever Snoop became later, this record is the document of an artist operating at raw peak power.
That hasn't aged well.
The La's
4/5
I only came in knowing “There She Goes,” but the rest of the record reveals a band with a surprisingly deep melodic instinct. It’s a tour of tight songwriting, jangly guitars, and a kind of effortless charm that feels like the missing evolutionary step between ’60s British pop and the more modern Britpop wave that followed in the 90's.
Wikipedia mentions The La’s as an influence on Oasis, and you can hear that lineage immediately, with the La’s refinement of the Beatles’ tunefulness into something lean and contemporary, and Oasis later take that same DNA and blow it up stadium-wide. This album sits right in that transition point: concise, melodic.
The Beach Boys
4/5
This isn’t a bad album, not by a long shot, but when you set it against the full weight of the Beach Boys’ catalog, it doesn’t sit near the top for me. What is interesting is how much more inward and aware it feels compared to their sun-bleached early work. There’s a personal, almost confessional tone running through it, paired with a sharper social consciousness that you don’t always expect.
It reads like a transitional record, a moment where they’re still carrying the harmonic DNA everyone knows, but bending it toward something more reflective, even uneasy. The commercial reception backed that up: it charted well, enough to show the public was still listening, but the material itself signals a band in the middle of an artistic pivot. Familiar, yet distinctly not; a break from the past without completely abandoning it.
The Offspring
4/5
Call it a sell-out moment if you want, but Smash was an undeniably fun blast of an album when I was a kid. It isn’t as hard or as snarling as the deeper punk catalog, but that’s almost the point - this is the record that proved punk could explode into the mainstream without losing all its bite. It’s fast, melodic, sneering, and accessible in a way that helped define what pop-punk would become. This was a gateway drug for me and a few of my friends: still gritty enough to feel rebellious, but polished enough to get radio play. Foundational, even if punk "purists" rolled their eyes.
Harry Nilsson
5/5
I did not expect to love this album as much as I did.
You can hear the influences a lot of artists took from him.
Guns N' Roses
4/5
An old classic.
David Bowie
4/5
Deep Purple
3/5
Their two most popular tracks on this album are also their longest 😆
Old school stoner rock.
Van Morrison
3/5
Not my style. It’s good, it just needs that “fit.”
Beth Orton
3/5
This is the soundtrack to a John Cusack 90’s rom-com
CHVRCHES
4/5
The Rolling Stones
5/5
Sly & The Family Stone
5/5
Love this album from top to bottom.
Ghostface Killah
4/5
I'm not a hip-hop aficionado - that being said, there is a reason Ghostface Killah has had such an illustrious career.
Tina Turner
4/5
Quintessential 80's. Synth, big hair, drugs, Bobbie Brown.
Pretty sure this was played a lot at the roller rink.
The extent of my knowledge is The Bodyguard, "Private Dancer" and Kevin Costner (which I've never seen) and the chorus to "What's Love Got to Do With It."
Metallica
5/5
It’s simply a fantastic metal album.
George Harrison
4/5
I feel Harrison was the most over-shadowed Beatle. Always behind Paul and John, never getting as much focus and I feel his solo work shines.
Sonic Youth
4/5
The album that was Sonic Youth going from "artsy and out there" to "trying to be more polished."
Franz Ferdinand
4/5
This is such a fun jam.
Pere Ubu
3/5
They have a sound and quality that could've been created at any point in time, so it's even more bizarre that this album was from a band from Cleveland in the late 70's.
Jane's Addiction
3/5
You know Perry Farrell was one of the last people to be with Taylor Hawkins before he passed?
And that he's a notorious drug addict with impulse control issues?
Yeah, Perry Farrell sucks.
"Godfather of alternative" or not, he's done more bad than good.
Janet Jackson
4/5
She achieved just as much fame as her brother - she had so many hits and impact in music.
Growing up in the MTV era, I guess it's no surprise how familiar I am with a lot of her music - from her appearances in films/soundtracks - she was a cultural powerhouse.
And then the bullshit over the Superbowl.
She deserves more respect than that.
While the "New Jack Swing" may not be a style I seek out, her album is damn catchy and socially conscious, so it deserves all the love it gets.
Elton John
4/5
Elton John is just a phenomenal musician.
I don't love every song he does, but his hits fucking slap hard, and his "lesser" songs still are pretty damn good in their own right.
I didn't grow up listening to him, it was more of a post-teenage re-introduction to his music that really made me appreciate it.
Joni Mitchell
3/5
Listening to this while driving through the mountains of Colorado feels oddly appropriate.
The music is beautiful, but her singing - it feels more like narration mixed with poetry.
The Young Gods
4/5
So these were the forefathers of industrial, and they’re Swiss?
I was thinking Rammstein/industrial/MLWTKKC/NIN - and it seems they definitely owe their sound to The Young Gods.
Sly & The Family Stone
3/5
A blend of funk, rock and soul.
Sly & The Family Stone are a classic.
For me, this was more of a "really enjoying the highs, not really enjoying the rest."
Paul Simon
4/5
So Simon took a lot of shit for breaking a "cultural embargo on South Africa" because of apartheid.
But he was looking to showcase black musicians, which makes sense that their local music collective championed this and people didn't, since it was spreading a predominantly "black sound" - by a white guy. But it reads like he paid the musicians well (many who didn't know who he was), and showcased a lot of their local music/styles.
David Bowie
4/5
So this was written under an NDA as it was Bowie's return to music after taking several years off from heart surgery.
Bowie is simply timeless, and it's a good album - it feels like it touches on a lot of history, and his different personas (in the sound, too, which makes sense, since he hired a lot of people he'd worked with prior).
Hole
4/5
I’ve always felt Hole received more hate than they deserved. Courtney Love in particular has long been treated as a lightning rod, often overshadowed by gossip and controversy rather than taken seriously as a musician. But Live Through This makes the case that Hole was never just hype or tabloid fodder - they were a genuinely great band.
This record feels like the culmination of their early energy, sharpened into something both raw and strangely polished. The guitars are abrasive yet hook-filled, the choruses stick in your head, and Love’s voice vacillates between a sneer and a scream. You can hear the band’s growth from Pretty on the Inside that they’ve kept the fury but refined it into songs that cut deeper.
What really stands out, though, is the perspective. This isn’t just an album about being angry at an ex or railing against the system in the abstract. It’s a scorned woman album, but the scorn is directed at society itself - it is targeted at the way women are looked at, diminished, commodified, and silenced. Songs like “Violet” and “Miss World” take direct aim at the contradictions of femininity under a male gaze, while “Doll Parts” is almost unbearably vulnerable, as if Love is peeling back the armor to reveal the insecurity underneath.
It’s easy to see how many modern female alternative and indie musicians owe something to Hole. You can hear echoes of Live Through This in everyone from Mitski to Wolf Alice to Olivia Rodrigo when she leans into distortion. The combination of unflinching honesty, jagged guitars, and the refusal to soften rage for palatability paved the way for a whole generation.
Nearly thirty years later, Live Through This holds up not just as a relic of the 1990s alternative boom, but as one of its most essential documents. It’s an album that’s as confrontational as it is catchy, as painful as it is cathartic. And it proves that the dismissals Hole received at the time say more about how we treat outspoken women than about the music itself.
R.E.M.
3/5
I was never a big R.E.M. fan. They always felt too vanilla - they SOUND amazing, I'm not denying that - just they always seemed shallow and vapid, like a corporate pop band - but then again, that could also just be me not clicking with Stipes voice, versus the solidly polished band playing behind him.
It's a good album, no doubt. I love "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" - but really, that's it for me. They felt like a band that had a few awesome hits, but a lot of "sounds good" output.
The Divine Comedy
3/5
Irish Neil Diamond? I mean, Neil Hannon.
This album is all about grand gestures - orchestral swells, lush arrangements, and a voice that could sell out a Vegas residency if it wanted to. It really does have that Neil Diamond energy - but dressed in Irish charm and a bit more irony. I admire it, even if it’s not quite my cup of tea.
Jane Weaver
2/5
This one feels like a bit of a random inclusion on the 1001 list. Modern Kosmology is clearly psychedelic folk, leaning into the cosmic and experimental, but without doing anything that feels particularly groundbreaking, especially for an album released in 2017.
Jane Weaver is definitely talented, and there’s a cohesive aesthetic here. But to my ears, it sounds a bit like a female-fronted version of The Doors: swirling, trippy textures, hypnotic grooves, and mystic leanings. It’s fine, competent, atmospheric, but I didn’t find myself getting pulled into it emotionally or sonically. Nothing here blew me away.
The Clash
4/5
What can be said about The Clash that hasn’t already been said a thousand times?
This album is the sound of a band evolving. They took their punk rock roots and pushed beyond them, folding in blues, reggae, and straight-up rock ‘n’ roll. It came out of a period of writer’s block and frustration, but also of reinvention—changing how they worked as a group. The result feels alive, restless, and fearless.
It’s tight. It’s good. I put it on and ended up listening to it three times in a row without even realizing it, because the flow is that seamless.
Orange Juice
3/5
What in the new-wave, post-punk?
I came in unfamiliar with Orange Juice, but Rip It Up hits with this funky, jangly energy that feels like a left-turn from the punk ethos. It’s got that vibe of bands who traded in straight-ahead aggression for rhythm, groove, and synth sheen—like when punk dipped its toes in reggae or disco, then suddenly sprouted keyboards and polished edges.
The title track was their biggest hit, even breaking into the UK Top 10. It’s also notable for being the first Top 40 UK single to feature the Roland TB-303 bass synth, years before it became the sound of acid house.
It’s good, it’s smooth, it’s a jam.
Miles Davis
5/5
Kind of Blue is considered Davis’s masterpiece - and it’s easy to see why it’s often hailed as one of the greatest jazz albums of all time. If you have even a passing respect for music, you know who Miles Davis is.
What makes this record remarkable is the process: the musicians weren’t given rehearsals or elaborate scores, just a few sketches and loose frameworks. From there, they improvised, and out of that spontaneity came a work of art that feels effortless. That’s the essence of jazz, and it’s also a testament to how tight and in sync this group of players were.
It’s timeless, fluid, and versatile - you can imagine Kind of Blue as the soundtrack to so many different moments in life. It’s not just background music; it’s a mood, a presence, a world you step into.
Cee Lo Green
2/5
This album doesn’t feel particularly essential. It isn’t groundbreaking, and it’s not even Cee-Lo’s strongest work. It’s listenable enough, but it breezes by without leaving much of an impression. Nothing here really justifies its place as a “must-hear before you die” record. What makes that even clearer is how much stronger Cee-Lo’s work became afterwards, especially with Gnarls Barkley, where his talent and creativity really took off in ways this album never quite achieves. The Timbaland collaboration is the standout here, easily the best track on the record, but even that isn’t enough to elevate the whole album.
Funkadelic
4/5
George Clinton & the P-Funk All-Stars were my second concert ever, and even with only a vague awareness of their catalog, I was instantly pulled into the party. That same energy lives here. This album is pure Funkadelic- funky, fresh, and irresistibly danceable. It’s the kind of record that makes you realize how impossible it is to talk about funk without talking about George Clinton and everything he touched.
Historically, One Nation Under a Groove was their commercial peak, a defining moment where funk stretched out into the mainstream without losing its edge. The title track alone became an anthem, but the whole album showcases that blend of groove, humor, and psychedelic weirdness that made P-Funk a movement, not just a band.
Portishead
4/5
This is a sexy album. I feel like everyone has been subjected to at least one song on this album - either during sex, or in a sultry film scene.
And it fits. Dummy is moody, hypnotic, and drenched in trip-hop atmosphere. Beth Gibbons’ vocals float like smoke over beats that feel pulled from noir soundtracks and dusty jazz samples, creating something both intimate and cinematic.
When it was released in 1994, it practically defined the sound of trip-hop and became the template for countless imitators. It’s dark, but it grooves, and it’s impossible not to sink into it.
Muddy Waters
4/5
I don’t know why, but I’ve always felt familiar with blues music. Maybe it’s the seamless way the musicians lock together - riffing, improvising, and still sounding like a cohesive unit.
Some people in my group discussion found this album to be a drag, but for me it’s the opposite. Hard Again is a jam. It’s musically incredible, and it’s the kind of record I could throw on anytime.
This was Muddy Waters’ big comeback in 1977, produced by Johnny Winter, and it brought him roaring back into the spotlight after a quieter stretch in his career. You can feel that energy here. It’s raw, powerful, and deeply rooted in the blues tradition while still sounding alive and immediate.
Rush
4/5
Okay, Rush, I’m sold. For the longest time, I was kind of put off by them. Maybe it was Geddy Lee’s falsetto that didn’t sit right with me, or maybe it was some of his comments about other musicians leaning too much into fantasy. Whatever the reason, I never really gave them the chance they deserved.
But Moving Pictures changed that. This album is solid. I get why they have such hardcore fans now. Lee’s bass lines are phenomenal, Neil Peart’s drumming is on another level, and the whole band plays with such precision that it’s almost impossible not to get swept up in it.
It’s also no accident that this is often considered Rush’s masterpiece. Their most polished, focused, and accessible album. It balances progressive rock complexity with arena-ready hooks, making it not just a high point in their catalog but maybe one of the defining rock albums of the early ’80s.
Leonard Cohen
4/5
I’m a sucker for this style - acoustic guitar at the core, with orchestral accompaniment layered on top. It adds gravitas, a weight that tugs at emotions and makes every note feel monumental.
There’s a reason Cohen is so often quoted: his music aches with his soul, dripping with raw feeling. This album in particular captures that balance of intimacy and grandeur. The arrangements amplify his words without overshadowing them, leaving you with the sense that every song is both deeply personal and universally resonant.
5/5
Holy hell, I forget just how staggering this album is. From the opening notes to the final crescendo, it plays out like a space-opera concept record - the kind of soundtrack you’d expect behind an animated sci-fi epic. Muse pulls from everywhere: you can hear the Depeche Mode darkness in the synths, the futurist pulse in the rhythms, and even flashes of spaghetti Western grandeur in “Knights of Cydonia.”
It’s theatrical without being cheesy, cinematic without losing its grit. The whole record is drenched in a sense of apocalypse and possibility, like the world is ending but it’s doing so in glorious technicolor. Few albums feel this big, this ambitious, and still manage to stay cohesive.
This isn’t just a rock album - it’s a full-blown event.
Deep Purple
3/5
It’s wild reading about the legacy of this album, because my main question is: was it drugs that made people want these 10-minute songs with endless guitar and drum solos? I get the appeal of seeing it live - when you’re in the moment, the improvisation and sheer musicianship can be electrifying. But as a recorded album, it feels like a marathon.
There’s no denying Deep Purple’s talent or their role in shaping hard rock and metal, but listening straight through, I found myself drained. The extended jams stretch beyond what I’d call engaging, and I kept checking how much time was left because I was ready for it to be over.
I understand why it’s considered iconic. A snapshot of the raw power of 70s arena rock, where excess was part of the experience, but for me, it’s more of a historical artifact than an album I’d throw on for enjoyment.
Billy Joel
4/5
Billy Joel is one of those artists who feels like he’s always been there. His songs were part of the background of my life growing up, and they still sound timeless today. The Stranger helps showcase why - Joel has a gift for crafting melodies that could land in any decade and still feel perfectly in place. This album is packed with songs that are both easy to listen to and rewarding if you lean in. Whether you’re following the storytelling in his lyrics or just getting lost in the music, The Stranger feels like a record that speaks to everyone.
John Lennon
3/5
It’s weird how much of the myth of the man gets shattered by reality. Songs of love and compassion, while being a shitty father, partner, and friend.
That’s the cognitive dissonance that hangs over Imagine. It’s gorgeous, idealistic, peaceful, but it’s hard not to hear the hypocrisy bleeding through. “Imagine no possessions” from a man living in a mansion. “Give Peace a Chance” from someone who couldn’t make peace at home.
Still, it’s one of those records that transcends its creator’s flaws. The melodies are hauntingly simple, the production has this ethereal warmth, and for a brief moment, you can believe in the dream he’s selling - even if he couldn’t live it himself.
Meat Loaf
3/5
It’s a wildly theatrical album - and I think that’s exactly why it never fully clicked for me. The music and presentation are incredible: Jim Steinman’s “futuristic rock Peter Pan” vision paired with Meat Loaf’s over-the-top, powerhouse delivery. Every track feels like a full-blown production, bursting with drama and emotion.
Maybe that’s the thing, it sounds too grand, like it belongs on stage with lights and pyrotechnics rather than just coming through headphones. During the era of glam rock and theatrical excess, I never quite knew how to take it all in. Listening now, though, it’s hard not to appreciate how solid the musicianship and storytelling are. Even if it doesn’t make me a true Meat Loaf convert, I can see why this album is considered a rock opera classic.
Fleetwood Mac
5/5
It’s wild how many songs from this album are just part of the collective consciousness - you don’t even realize you know them until they’re playing. It absolutely earns its place as one of the greatest albums of all time. What blows my mind is how much chaos surrounded it: drugs, heartbreak, breakups, betrayals, and yet they turned that mess into something so cohesive and timeless.
By the time they got to Rumours, this was their eleventh album, but their first with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, and you can feel that spark! It's like that perfect storm of pain, talent, and chemistry, where every track feels deliberate, like a group of people baring their souls but still making sure the music never cracks under the weight of it all.
It’s nearly impossible to find fault with this record. It’s emotional turbulence transformed into pop perfection.
PJ Harvey
4/5
For a lot of us, our first exposure to PJ Harvey came from the Batman Forever soundtrack - a strange but fitting introduction to her otherworldly sound. From there, she kept reappearing in circles connected to artists I followed, through Dave Grohl, Josh Homme, Alain Johannes, Mark Lanegan - always at the edges of something dark, creative, and magnetic.
Her voice is beautifully haunting, and Let England Shake channels that ethereal presence perfectly. It’s unsettling in the best way, a ghostly, poetic experience that feels both intimate and apocalyptic. It’s the kind of album that creeps under your skin while you’re still admiring how beautiful it sounds.
Alexander 'Skip' Spence
2/5
This one was kind of a slog. It feels lazy and thrown together, like something you’d politely describe as “listen to what my kid made.” It’s discordant, disjointed, and never really comes together. The critics call it “acid-charred,” but that almost flatters it; the phrase doesn’t make it any more appealing. I honestly think Oar gets the attention it does mainly because artists like Tom Waits and Beck covered songs from it.
Spence himself was clearly a complicated guy, and a product of his era. People love to point out that he played every instrument on the album, but you can tell. Nothing feels in sync. It’s less a showcase of raw creative genius and more a hot mess from someone who was given the chance to create, but didn’t quite have the focus or clarity to pull it together.
Crowded House
3/5
On first listen, it feels kind of bland for a ’90s album - like a toned-down Better Than Ezra or Toad the Wet Sprocket. You can hear the DNA of the bands they went on to influence, but this one plays things pretty safe. Still, the melodies and harmonies are perfectly aligned, and there’s an undeniable charm in how tightly it’s constructed. A well-crafted album that values balance and subtlety over flash.
Beastie Boys
5/5
This is one of those albums that slipped under the radar when it first came out, only to be rediscovered and celebrated later for how ahead of its time it was.
It’s wild to think that an album like this could never be made today - the sheer number of samples alone would make it prohibitively expensive to produce.
I first heard Paul’s Boutique much later in the Beastie Boys catalog. I loved Licensed to Ill, but this one didn’t cross my radar until the late ’90s or early 2000s. It’s a big creative departure, probably thanks to working with The Dust Brothers, but it feels like the start of the real Beastie Boys sound, with that funky, funny, unpredictable energy that defined them from then on. Honestly, if this album dropped today, it would still sound fresh.
The B-52's
4/5
When their debut dropped in 1979, they really were unlike anything else. You had punk getting darker, disco fading, and new wave just starting to take shape… and here comes this Athens, Georgia band with thrift-store surf vibes, outer-space camp, and a dance-party heartbeat. “Rock Lobster” alone feels like it arrived from another planet, yet somehow it makes perfect sense the moment it hits.
What’s so cool is how they turned what could’ve been a one-off novelty sound into a full aesthetic: bright colors, layered harmonies, quirky spoken-word parts, and a rhythm section that could move. It’s strange, joyful, and totally self-aware, like they knew exactly how absurd they were and leaned into it.
Wilco
4/5
…I’m not even sure how I first came across Wilco. I remember downloading track after track on Napster back in the day just to burn the album, ending up with multiple versions of “Outtamind (Outtasight).” I listened to it then, but at the time, it just felt too country. Back then, it wasn’t “cool” to like anything that leaned toward bluegrass or Americana (a mindset I’m very glad I grew out of).
Wilco is kind of magical. Being There feels like the spark that lit the folk-Americana revival so many later bands tried to capture. It’s like country music for those who were tired of what “pop country” had become in the ’90s - no offense, Shania Twain (I’ll always love you).
This album is pure, simple enjoyment. Like sipping iced tea on a hot summer afternoon, sitting on the porch, letting life slow down for a bit.
Peter Gabriel
5/5
This album is packed with great songs, and even better memories. It somehow felt legendary even before I ever heard it, like one of those records everyone knows is special. Every time it plays, it still makes me smile, just a gentle reminder of how timeless great music can be.
Rod Stewart
2/5
I know Rod Stewart - the hits, the raspy charm - but none of those songs are on this album. Honestly, I’m not sure why Gasoline Alley made the cut for the 1001 Albums list. It’s an album of covers, and while his voice is always distinct, there’s nothing particularly special or groundbreaking here. It just feels like “another Rod Stewart album.”
That said, Gasoline Alley is often cited as the album where Stewart really began to blend folk, rock, and soul in a way that defined his early solo sound. It marked the start of his transition from Faces front-man to a solo artist with a unique identity, even if, listening today, it doesn’t fully capture the energy that made him iconic later on.
The Smiths
3/5
It’s very telling that this list was compiled by a Brit — it’s oversaturated with British sensibilities, and The Smiths are right at the center of that.
The Smiths live forever in Goth and Emo history, but I’ve never enjoyed Morrissey’s delivery or voice (though I once saw a cover band that nailed his vibe without being a jerk or showing up late). Personally, I’ve always been more drawn to Johnny Marr’s guitar work, which I feel is the real heartbeat of the band.
This album is… fine. It’s distinctly The Smiths, and I don’t think anyone else has ever quite captured their sound, but to quote Family Guy, Morrissey “insists upon himself.” After years of being bludgeoned by his persona and presence, the whole thing just feels exhausting.
Cowboy Junkies
4/5
This is another group I was familiar with but never really dug into. I knew their cover of “Sweet Jane” (which I’ve always loved) and their haunting “Blue Moon” medley, but that was about it.
Listening to The Trinity Session now, it’s striking how different it feels from most of the late ’80s style of the time - sparse, intimate, and beautifully restrained. The atmosphere is so natural it almost feels like you’re sitting in that church with them. It’s timeless in the best way: an album that could be put on at any moment and feel completely right.
Violent Femmes
5/5
No notes. Folk punk perfection that everyone knows but can’t remember where from.
TV On The Radio
4/5
A stunning debut that feels both alien and intimate, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes announced TV on the Radio as one of the most imaginative bands of the 2000s. The album hums with static and soul: a mix of art rock, gospel harmonies, and fuzzy electronica that shouldn’t work together but somehow does.
“Staring at the Sun” hits like a signal through interference, shimmering with longing and defiance. “Dreams” expands that energy into something almost cinematic, like it is all pulse and atmosphere. Even the quieter moments, like “Blind”, feel dense with emotion and experimentation.
There’s a rough magic to this album, a sense of artists unafraid to collide beauty with noise, melody with abstraction. It’s messy, hypnotic, and full of heart - the sound of a band inventing their own frequency.
Todd Rundgren
4/5
At first listen, this absolutely sounds like a “did drugs to make this album” record: chaotic, colorful, and bursting with ideas that don’t always fit together. Reading about it while listening makes the experience even more fascinating: praised by critics on release but a commercial flop, it’s one of those “music nerds love it, the public does not” albums.
It’s clearly a passion project, and as it unfolds, it shifts from acid-fueled experimentation into something surprisingly focused and deliberate. By the end, it’s hard not to admire the ambition. The praise makes sense, even if the lack of mainstream success does too.
Rage Against The Machine
5/5
Man, is there a more politically charged band? Rage Against the Machine stands as one of the most explosive debuts in rock history: a pure collision of fury, groove, and purpose. Zack de la Rocha’s lyrical fire burns over Tom Morello’s inventive guitar work, backed by a rhythm section that’s as heavy as it is precise. Every track hits hard; there isn’t a weak moment here. Kneecap might carry a similar revolutionary spirit today, but RATM remains unmatched - a band that sounded urgent in 1992 and feels even more relevant now.
New York Dolls
4/5
I’d known of the New York Dolls forever, I just never really dug in. The handful of tracks I’d heard always felt too campy, like they were trying too hard to shock. But in retrospect, that was the point: they were intentionally outrageous, gleefully obscene, and absolutely committed to “freaking out the normies.” It wasn’t just an aesthetic, it was the mission.
They never hit it big commercially, but their influence is massive. You can draw a jagged, lipstick-smeared line from this album through punk, glam, and hair metal. They were the chaotic spark before the fire.
And then there’s the wild twist: Todd Rundgren produced this, the same year he dropped his acid-drenched A Wizard, A True Star. Somehow, he managed to bottle the Dolls’ live-wire energy in the studio. Even the band said he nailed their live sound. Total chaos, glam swagger, proto-punk grit - this one earns its place in the 1001.
Dexys Midnight Runners
3/5
This album sounds like early ska, as Ryan put it—and I think that’s an apt description. I’ve never listened to Dexys Midnight Runners much beyond “Come On Eileen,” but surprisingly, Too-Rye-Ay is a really fun album. It’s full of energy, brass, and a kind of scrappy charm that feels both soulful and a little chaotic in the best way. You can see how they stood out in the early ’80s scene with that mix of punk attitude, blue-eyed soul, and folk influences all mashed together.
The Yardbirds
3/5
I only knew one Yardbirds song before this, and going in, I expected Jeff Beck’s guitar work to steal the show. While it’s certainly inventive for its time, I wasn’t exactly blown away. The album sits in that fascinating in-between space - blues roots giving way to early psychedelia - and you can hear rock evolving track by track. Nothing truly grabbed me, but it’s a fun, energetic listen, and a glimpse at how the genre was reshaping itself in the mid-’60s.
Beck
3/5
This album feels like Beck stumbled upon a keyboard, a sampler, and a pile of half-finished ideas, and decided to make something wild out of it. The result is both chaotic and inspired. When it hits, it really hits: the highs are electrifying, full of inventive production and genre-hopping energy. But some tracks feel messy and unpolished, like experiments that never quite gelled. It’s not Beck’s most refined or cohesive work, but it’s a vivid snapshot of his creative range and willingness to take risks.
Calexico
3/5
This was my first time listening to Calexico, and while I don’t have strong feelings about it, I found myself enjoying the album more than I expected. It’s not necessarily a genre I seek out, but the mix of desert rock, Americana, and cinematic atmosphere worked well. From what I’ve read, Feast of Wire is considered the point where the band really came into their own, and I can see why, as it feels confident and cohesive. I might not go out of my way to revisit it, but if they were on the bill at a show I was at, I’d happily stick around to watch their set.
Faust
3/5
The name sounded familiar, maybe just because of the word “Faustian,” but none of the tracks rang a bell. Listening through, it feels like a precursor to bands like The Beta Band, and I can hear shades of other prog rock influences that came later. It’s not bad by any means, though some of the songs tend to drone and stretch on a bit. The opening track runs nearly twelve minutes, but it almost justifies its length when the drums finally kick in around the seven-minute mark.
Overall, Faust IV has a laid-back, hypnotic quality - an album you could easily throw on in the background and let it carry you somewhere strange and mellow.
Linkin Park
4/5
This came out at the height of the nu-metal era. I wasn’t their biggest fan at the time (I knew the hits), but I did enjoy their work - especially their later collaboration with Jay-Z. Reading about how Chester Bennington was a late addition, and that the original Xero demo became the foundation for the album, really surprised me. It shows just how much Chester brought in terms of songwriting and identity.
Back then, the album felt too polished for my taste, which is ironic, since I liked Korn, whose albums were also produced with a lot of polish after their first album. Looking back now, though, that polish wasn’t just studio sheen; it came from a cohesive band that blended their influences into something sharper and more focused than some of their peers of that era.
The Modern Lovers
4/5
The Modern Lovers sound timeless in the best way. Honestly, if someone told me they recorded this in a home studio last week, I’d believe them. There’s a raw, effortless charm to it - light, fun, and full of that restless energy that clearly went on to inspire bands like The Strokes. Even their Spotify photo (aside from one member) could pass for any indie group from the past 30 years. I was surprised to realize I already had one of their live tracks, “Egyptian Reggae (Live),” in my library, and this album has the same kind of offbeat joy. It’s an easy listen that still feels fresh decades later.
Jazmine Sullivan
4/5
I went into this unfamiliar with Jazmine Sullivan’s work, and I was genuinely impressed. The album feels more like a conversation: raw, honest, and told unapologetically from a woman’s point of view. It explores sexual freedom, vulnerability, and the complexities of love and self-worth with striking confidence. Calling it a “concept album” makes perfect sense, as it plays like a narrative journey, weaving personal reflections and spoken interludes into something cohesive and powerful.
The Black Crowes
4/5
I remember hearing this back in the ’90s - unapologetic, straight-up rock. You can hear the callbacks to the classic ’70s bands that inspired them, and that’s no dig, it’s quite the compliment. Like those acts, The Black Crowes feel timeless. Shake Your Money Maker could’ve come out at any point in the last 35 years and still fit right in. It’s fun, tight, and you can tell these guys play together so damn well.
Parliament
4/5
Another P-Funk album is always a win for me. There’s really nothing to add beyond that - it’s pure intergalactic funk perfection. What’s wild is how it dropped during a turbulent time in the ‘70s and still managed to transcend it all, becoming a timeless, joyful, cosmic classic.
And at the heart of it all? Bootsy Collins, laying down some of the funkiest basslines ever recorded. His grooves don’t just sit in the pocket; they define the pocket. Combined with George Clinton’s wild imagination and space-age vision, Mothership Connection feels less like an album and more like a transmission from another planet. Funk, freedom, and pure attitude from start to finish.
Hanoi Rocks
3/5
This one’s a bit puzzling as an inclusion. It sounds like a milder Mötley Crüe - more pop-rock gloss than hard rock grit (at least by my standards). It’s fine, but I don’t fully hear the “must-hear” significance here. Still, given that Hanoi Rocks has been cited as an inspiration for Guns N’ Roses, Ratt, and Poison, I can see how this might represent an evolutionary bridge, taking the glam-punk of the New York Dolls and nudging it toward the full-blown glam metal that dominated the ’80s.
MC Solaar
3/5
Often called one of France’s greatest rappers, MC Solaar delivers something that’s both unmistakably 90s. My French is absolutely terrible, so there’s a cultural and linguistic divide here, but even without understanding the words, the flow and delivery sound effortless. The production feels right at home with the era’s boom-bap beats, and if he were rapping in English, it would easily fit alongside early 90s hip-hop greats. I’ll need to dig into translations to really grasp the lyricism, but even without that, it’s impressive to hear how fluid and musical his French rhymes are.
Alice In Chains
5/5
An album recognized as a masterpiece on release, and still regarded as one today. Something about the early ‘90s felt different: there was less of that “fans love it, critics hate it” divide, and more genuine mass consensus. Of course, it was also still an era of pay-to-play radio and label politics, so maybe another decade or two will reveal even more overlooked bands from that time.
Dirt remains a powerful and brutally honest record - unflinching about addiction, relationships, and self-destruction - all wrapped in that unmistakable, heavy-lidded ‘90s grunge sound. It’s dark, cathartic, and timelessly raw.
4/5
This album is pure, high-octane chaos - and I mean that as praise. I wouldn’t call myself a jazz aficionado, but I know when I’m hearing mastery. Zorn takes Ornette Coleman’s compositions and detonates them: every note feels like a collision between precision and mania. The split-channel recording, where each horn attacks from its own stereo side, is a brilliant touch, as you can literally hear the duel. It’s an all-out assault of improvisation and control, technical brilliance and raw nerve. Definitely not for the faint of heart, but absolutely worth the ride.
Radiohead
4/5
The sophomore album from Radiohead is where the band really started to find their identity. Pablo Honey was a solid debut, but The Bends feels like the moment they leveled up, refining their sound, deepening their songwriting, and balancing experimentation with melody. The highs are great, and even the weakest tracks are still “solid” listens. It’s one of those albums that you can throw on repeat and just get lost in, proof that Radiohead were already evolving into something special.
Coldcut
3/5
This one took me straight back to the ’90s. I first discovered Coldcut through a CMJ magazine I picked up in ’97 (I looked it up). It’s fun, sample-heavy house music that instantly reminds me of my time in Chicago, with its energetic, playful, and full of that era’s DIY dance spirit.
Coldplay
4/5
An excellent sophomore effort that proves Coldplay wasn’t interested in making Parachutes v.2. Instead, they expanded their sound, a little more ambitious, more layered, and emotionally sharper. The songwriting feels confident, with sweeping production and a balance between intimacy and grandeur. A solid album that solidified their place beyond the “new Radiohead-lite” comparisons.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
4/5
This album stands out because, unlike artists who just lift riffs and call them their own, Costello and The Attractions are open about the sources that inspired them - they use them as a foundation and build something new. Some of the comparisons in reviews feel like a stretch; people try to label it as everything from new wave to punk to even heavy metal. But really, it’s just a sharp, energetic pop-rock record. It’s catchy, focused, and confident - the sound of a band that knows exactly what it’s doing without needing to fit into any trend.
Gary Numan
3/5
A groundbreaking yet strangely distant album, The Pleasure Principle feels like an early glimpse into today’s discussions of the tech-driven music landscape. My first exposure to Gary Numan was through Fear Factory’s collaboration, which makes revisiting the original even more interesting, as it’s mechanical, minimal, and intentionally cold. Numan’s use of Moog synths and rejection of guitars gives the album a machine-like pulse that mirrors its themes of technology and alienation. It’s not explosive, but it’s distinct - a calculated, robotic statement that feels more relevant now than ever.
Neil Young
4/5
On the Beach captures Neil Young at his most raw and introspective. It’s folk rock stripped to its bones: weary, poetic, and unguarded. Young’s songwriting here feels less like performance and more like confession, steeped in the disillusionment of the era yet timeless in its emotional weight. It’s hard to critique someone so deeply woven into the fabric of rock history, and this album simply reinforces why Neil Young remains one of the great storytellers in music.
The Undertones
3/5
An infectious record that blends punk energy with pop sensibility. Hypnotised captures the band’s knack for youthful hooks while showing evolution in their songwriting. It’s still got that teenage charm and cheek, but with more polish and confidence. The result feels like a bridge between raw punk and the more melodic pop-punk that would come decades later: fun, catchy, and unpretentious.
Pulp
3/5
I’ve known Pulp for years, at least through their bigger tracks, but sitting with this album didn’t hit me the way I hoped it would. It has that Morrissey/The Smiths dynamic - strong band, poetic frontman - but the overall impact lands softer for me. Jarvis Cocker’s writing is absolutely poetic, but it doesn’t connect with me on the same level as other lyric-driven artists. No knock on them; it’s just not quite my lane.
The Gun Club
4/5
I’m honestly a little annoyed with myself for only discovering this band now. This hits squarely in my wheelhouse: lo-fi, garage-leaning punk with a bluesy undercurrent that gives it some grit without overcomplicating anything. It’s raw in all the right ways. Simple, direct, and exactly the kind of thing I fall for.
The Temptations
4/5
A phenomenal, deeply funky record. It has that unmistakable Temptations groove - tight, fluid, and confident. I’m pretty sure I saw them live (or a later lineup? Cover group?) when I was a teenager, and the energy on this album lines up with what I remember: an absolutely commanding performance from a group that knew exactly what they were doing.
2/5
This one just doesn’t hold up. Their first two records had a raw edge and some genuine energy - even though it was juvenile, it was at least coherent. Here, it feels like they doubled down on the chaos without any of the intention. Yes, there are a couple tracks everyone remembers, but as an album it’s scattered, uneven, and honestly feels like it was pushed out the door because the momentum was there, not because the material was ready. The title almost ends up being the most accurate summary: a silly joke wrapped around something that doesn’t quite land.
Emmylou Harris
4/5
Unapologetic, simple, and genuinely beautiful country. It’s a reminder of an era when the genre leaned on real talent rather than affectation: no gimmicks, no exaggerated twang, just a stunning voice and immaculate songwriting. Harris makes it feel effortless, and that’s exactly what makes it great.
Iggy Pop
4/5
Another case of an album slipping past its own moment - one pressing, sold out, and then gone - only to grow into its reputation later. Pop and Bowie were on a creative tear here, and you can hear both of them sharpening each other. The Doors-style pulse running through parts of the record just makes it hit even harder, for me.
Q-Tip
4/5
I can't speak strongly to Q-Tip - I just know he's damn talented.
TV On The Radio
4/5
TV on the Radio always sound like they’re creating inside their own private workshop: not a cramped box, but a vast room full of gears, horns, synths, choirs, and electricity. Their records tend to blur together in the best way: a continuum of controlled chaos, orchestral heft, and anxious groove. Dear Science sits near the top of that arc. It’s a record where every experiment lands - big, brass-laden arrangements, rhythmic twitchiness, and melodies that are both dense and memorable. Even if the albums blend in memory, the feeling never does: they’re consistently brilliant, and this one is them firing cleanly on all cylinders.
The Pretty Things
4/5
Often cited as the first true rock opera, S. F. Sorrow isn’t just historically interesting—it’s a fascinating document of a band punching well above their commercial weight. Knowing they brought in Norman Smith (fresh off work with both The Beatles and early Pink Floyd) explains a lot: the production has that unmistakable late-’60s studio bloom—layered vocals, LSD-like guitar textures, and a kind of optimistic melancholy that sits right between Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Sgt. Pepper.
Stylistically, it’s very much a product of its era, but in the best way: kaleidoscopic, imaginative, occasionally bizarre, and always melodic. The narrative is loose and strange in that late-’60s “concept album as literature” way, but the record works even if you ignore the storyline entirely. It’s just a deeply listenable psychedelic rock album with more ambition than most bands of the time dared to attempt.
Not every moment is towering, but it’s absolutely worth throwing on, letting it wash over you, and appreciating how much future “rock opera” DNA starts right here.
Lauryn Hill
5/5
This one is tough to pin down precisely because it’s become larger than itself. On the surface, Lauryn Hill—Ms. Hill, as she insisted—was a once-in-a-generation cultural force: a vocalist with a joyful, resonant tone, and a rapper with technical command, emotional clarity, and absolute conviction. The fusion of those modes was already impressive with the Fugees, but here she delivers something far more personal, musically daring, and self-authored.
The complications come later. There are the lingering stories about the supporting musicians who felt sidelined by her success. There’s the question of whether her later volatility—fights with fame, faith, and bipolar disorder—ends up overshadowing the original work. And there’s the broader tension between the mythology of a lone genius and the real, collaborative labor behind this record.
But taken strictly as an artifact, this album is extraordinary. Its songwriting is airtight. Its production still feels handcrafted rather than era-bound. And the emotional range—from righteous fury to spiritual exhaustion to quiet gratitude—is unusually cohesive. The fact that it stands as her only true solo album weirdly elevates it: no decline phase, no diminishing returns, no uneven discography. Just one peak so sharp and so singular that it more or less fixes her legacy in place.
Whether she ever followed it is almost irrelevant. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is a definitive statement—one of the rare albums where the artistic high point and the cultural high point are the same moment.
Led Zeppelin
5/5
This is the record where the band stops hinting at greatness and just lays it out—track by track, member by member. It’s engineered almost like a showcase reel: Bonham’s drum groove on “Whole Lotta Love” and the “Moby Dick” solo, Page’s riffs and production quirks, Jones’ low-end architecture that quietly dictates the entire record’s swing, and Plant stepping fully into the swaggering frontman role.
What makes it endure is how effortlessly it welds blues, proto-metal, psychedelia, and that signature Zeppelin heaviness into something that feels inevitable in retrospect. A chunk of the modern rock/metal vocabulary essentially takes root here. Several tracks aren’t just classics—they’re foundational.
Easy 5/5.
The Auteurs
3/5
New Wave is an interesting listen—not because it hits you aurally, but because it seems deliberately understated. It has that early-Britpop DNA, all the mannered vocals and stylish melancholy, but it never quite pushes into the sharp hooks or swagger you expect from the era. The whole record feels… light. Not flimsy, just politely reserved, almost as if it’s allergic to taking a big swing.
Nothing here is bad. It’s well-constructed, carefully arranged, thoughtful. It just never really grabs you by the collar. Luke Haines clearly had ideas, but they come out more as sketches of a mood than as songs designed to dominate your head for days.
And Andy’s line is pretty hard to beat: “We have Blur at home.” That’s basically the vibe. Competent, occasionally charming, but overshadowed by the bands that took this sound and turned it into something undeniable.
A pleasant listen—but not a sticky one.
Beastie Boys
5/5
Some albums aren’t meant to be dissected, they’re part of your DNA. Ill Communication lands there for me. The Beastie Boys were one of the first bands I ever connected with; I still remember finding my brother’s Licensed to Ill cassette and instantly feeling like I’d stumbled onto something amazing.
By the time Ill Communication came along, they’d already become one of those bedrock artists—funny, loud, chaotic in the best way, and constantly evolving without losing the core energy that hooked me as a kid. I can’t pretend to be objective about it; this album is woven into my musical upbringing. I just love it, full stop.
LCD Soundsystem
3/5
LCD Soundsystem is a band I should adore on paper. And when they land a hit, they absolutely nail it; those tracks feel alive, immediate, and unmistakably theirs. But the deeper cuts on american dream drift into that trademark LCD sprawl, and that’s where they tend to lose me. I get why people fall hard for this band—their love of the craft is undeniable—but something in the longer, more repetitive grooves just doesn’t quite click for me. The highs are excellent; the rest feels like it’s aimed at someone with a slightly different dial than mine.
The Waterboys
4/5
Hard to believe this came out in 1988—the record feels practically era-less. If you told me it was recorded sometime in the last decade, I wouldn’t blink. This is my first real dive into The Waterboys, and what jumps out is how fluid their identity is. They’re pulling from folk, rock, Celtic traditions, and a bit of loose, jangly Americana in a way that never reads as “retro” or trapped in its era.
It’s one of those albums where the songwriting, the playing, and the overall vibe feel completely unmoored from the timestamp—like it could’ve been made at any point after the electric guitar became a standard tool. The band sounds locked-in and confident, but also relaxed and exploratory. It’s a tight record, but not stiff; it feels lived-in.
A surprisingly timeless introduction to a band that seems to exist slightly outside of musical chronology.
Red Snapper
2/5
I’m honestly not sure why this one made the list. Red Snapper’s whole niche is that live-instrument trip-hop/jazz hybrid—upright bass, breakbeats, noir-ish atmospheres—but here it feels strangely hollow. The record is sparse in a way that doesn’t build tension; it just drifts. Nothing really anchors itself in memory, and even after a full listen I’m left with no strong impressions—good or bad, which might be worse.
And digging around doesn’t help: even the usual historical signposts are missing. The Wikipedia entry is thin, critics didn’t seem to rally around it, and there’s no compelling narrative that explains why this album is supposed to matter. It’s not offensive or incompetent—just weightless.
Björk
3/5
Björk is one of those artists I kept hearing about long before I ever really listened—almost a rite of passage in music-nerd spaces. For years it felt like critics reflexively praised her simply because she was avant-garde, the subtext being: it’s unconventional, therefore it’s genius, and if you don’t get it, that’s on you.
Coming into her catalog from that angle creates tension: sometimes her work genuinely lands, sometimes it veers into “artsy for art’s sake,” where the aesthetic experimentation feels more performative than organic. Debut sits right in the middle of that push and pull.
What is meaningful here—beyond the music itself—is that the album really is a debut in the truest sense. It’s her first fully self-composed solo statement after years of being part of other projects and scenes in Iceland, punk bands, jazz collectives, the Sugarcubes, etc. You can hear someone stepping out with complete agency for the first time, trying on ideas, mixing club music with chamber-pop instincts, and shaping the foundation of the eccentric, fearless career she’d build afterward.
Some of it hits squarely for me; some of it feels like she’s pushing the “I’m different” lever a bit too hard. But overall, I enjoy Björk. Even when I’m not fully on board, I’m always interested. She’s one of those artists where I’ll never turn off a track—because even the experiments that don’t land still feel like they come from a place of genuine curiosity.
Nirvana
5/5
Kurt Cobain has become so mythologized that it’s hard to hear this album without the weight of all the stories—people imitating not just his music but his vices, as if self-destruction were part of the creative toolkit. In Utero is paradoxical in that way: it feeds the myth while simultaneously grounding it. The sessions are marked by Cobain being focused, sober, and absolutely uncompromising about the band not becoming a polished rock product. Bringing in Steve Albini—a famously abrasive engineer with a near-religious devotion to raw capture—was a deliberate act of defiance. And even that wasn’t enough to stop the label meddling with a couple tracks afterward, which only reinforces the album’s central tension: Nirvana trying to claw their way back to being a band instead of a brand.
What makes In Utero endure is how unmistakably “Cobain” it is. Older songs reemerge with new venom. The adolescent snarl is still there, but it’s sharpened by the exhaustion of someone suffering from the success they never wanted. You can hear a man wrestling with a trajectory that feels inevitable and wrong at the same time.
It’s a brutal, beautiful record—massive in its emotional weight, unvarnished by design, and still one of the clearest expressions of grunge’s capacity for both abrasion and honesty. Nirvana are considered one of the greats for a reason, and this is the album where all the contradictions that made them great are left fully exposed.
Pink Floyd
5/5
I’ve always been a Pink Floyd fan, and while this isn’t the album I personally reach for first, it’s hard to deny how powerful it is. You can hear a band wrestling with the weight of its own success, in a kind of creative vertigo. Dark Side of the Moon didn’t just make them famous; it rewired what they thought their careers were going to be. When you actually reach the summit you’ve been climbing toward for years, what’s left to push against?
That tension saturates this album. The sessions famously drifted: long periods of aimlessness, experiments, jams, false starts, like they needed to exhaust every distraction before they could face what the record really wanted to be. And then it crystallized into something stark and vulnerable: a tribute, a longing, and a quiet admission that success can hollow you out if you’re not careful.
“Shine On You Crazy Diamond” isn’t just a eulogy for Syd Barrett—it’s a mirror the band had to hold up to themselves. Wish You Were Here feels like the sound of a group trying to re-anchor their identity, trying to remember why they even started making music in the first place.
It’s beautiful, yes, but not in a polished way. More like the beauty that comes from honesty after a long period of drifting. A band suffering from their own success, rediscovering purpose through grief, nostalgia, and a plea for connection.
Bill Evans Trio
2/5
I enjoy jazz, but the bass work on this record loses me. Instead of feeling like a deliberate, exploratory jam, the lines often drift into something that reads more like unfocused wandering. When the trio locks in, it’s wonderful - Evans’ touch is unmistakable, and the group interplay can be gorgeous. But the bass solos break the spell for me. They feel less like intentional improvisation and more like hesitant, almost chaotic meandering. There’s a looseness here that might click for some listeners, but to my ear it comes across as confused and a little sloppy.
Death In Vegas
3/5
This one caught me off guard. It moves like dark dance music, but with a swagger that’s closer to rock noir than anything in mainstream EDM. I’m not exactly fluent in dance subgenres, yet this album pulled me in immediately.
The Iggy Pop feature was a highlight—his presence raises the whole record. Instead of feeling like a token cameo. And then you hit “Aladdin’s Story,” where the Stones influence is unmistakable: a slow-burn groove, a sense of danger, that late-night, half-ritualistic pacing.
What really sealed it was what auto-played afterward: PJ Harvey and Mark Lanegan. That algorithmic pairing felt both obvious and correct. It tells you exactly where this album sits—electronica with dirt under its nails, orbiting the same gravitational pull as the darker corners of alt-rock.
The Contino Sessions turned out to be way more in my lane than I expected.
Incredible Bongo Band
5/5
Holy hell, this floored me. I went in with zero expectations and got hit with a crash course in the DNA of hip-hop. Track after track is a stack of samples from hip-hop history. It’s almost disorienting: you hear a groove and your brain jumps across decades, mapping every beat that borrowed from it.
What makes it work isn’t just the “hey, I recognize that break” novelty; it’s how alive the record feels. These arrangements have that cinematic, borderline-chaotic energy where percussion leads the charge and everything else just hangs on for the ride. You put this album on and suddenly the most mundane moment of your day acquires a swaggering, funk-forward soundtrack.
It’s an absolute blast—one of those rare records that doesn’t just play in the background, it instantly reframes the space you’re in.
The The
3/5
This scratches an itch—my soft spot for New Wave and that proto-Vaporwave/Post-Punk ambiance. What stands out is how uncluttered the album is. Matt Johnson doesn't overwhelm the listener with production flourishes; instead, he builds these clean layers that feel direct without being simplistic.
Surprisingly enjoyable, and honestly a perfect midpoint between New Wave’s cool detachment and the kind of atmospheric melancholy Vaporwave later exaggerated into nostalgia-as-aesthetic.