1001 Albums Summary

One of the more salient aspects of this live album is the prevalence of the vocals. I think they overshadow the actual instrumental by quite a bit. I also think the clapping by the audience is also perhaps a bit too loud and can be distracting. The songs themselves are alright, they do not standout too much but they aren't bad either.

I had never heard of DJ Shadow before, so I had no expectations going into this album. I have to say that I was quite impressed by this album, especially since it is quite outside the genres of music that I normally listen to. I found the instrumentals to be well constructed and engaging, and the album does not stick to a certain sound for too long. The overall atmosphere presented by this album is very pleasant and I could definitely see myself relaxing to this album in the future.

A very well-written and executed rock album. I have never heard a full album of this band before and I was quite pleased by the experience. I think Fogerty's vocals shine throughout the album and the riff quality is solid throughout.

I am not sure about this one. There just seems to be something that is missing here. I guess it's decently constructed but it just doesn't light the spark for me.

This is probably the first album of this journey that I would say that I don't like. I think some of the later tracks like Union Square, Blind Love, and Downtown Train are very good, but overall I found this one unpleasant to listen to. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to enjoying this album for me is Tom's vocals. It seems he is one of the artists where his voice grates on me and it detracts from the rest of the music. However, I would also say I am not the biggest fan of the instrumentals either. A lot of the songs kinda sounded they came out of some Banjo-Kazooie game, and it was quite the juxtaposition with the tone of the lyrics.

Overall, a very solid rock album. Everything just seems to sound well done on this album. I would say my least favorite moments would be the opener with how the singer vocalized "precious" throughout the song. Later songs in the album like Brass in Pocket and Lovers of Today stand out as strong tracks to me.

"This is a Missy Elliott Exclusive" is just as annoying as DJ Khaled yelling "DJ Khaled!" and "We the best music!" before every fucking track. Really doesn't help that none of the tracks here are nothing special. I just don't really like anything here: the flow, the beats, the lyrics. There really is nothing here.

Wow, This one befuddles me. As much as I disliked Missy Elliot's Under Construction, I at least could understand why it was part of this collection. You cannot convince me, however, that this has ever been viewed as good. I was probably looking forward to the end of this album roughly a third of the way in, and I don't think I'll ever listen to anything from it ever again. I don't think I've ever been as tempted to say "it's just noise" about an album as I have been here.

Prior to today, I don't think I've ever voluntarily listened to a Taylor Swift song. By that, I mean I’ve never opened a music player/streaming service, went to a Swift song, and clicked play. This is primarily because I have involuntarily heard too many of her songs too many times because of her complete proliferation throughout society. "Maybe this won’t be so bad, there’s no way they can all be bad" I lie to myself as I bring up the album and scan through the track list. "Look, you don’t even recognize the title of the opener". I then hit play and realize I very much do in fact remember "Welcome to New York" and I had just undone my brain’s years-worth of efforts to memory-hole this piece of garbage. Every song that I recognized prior to listening to this was terrible. "Blank Space" was worse than I remember it being, and my undying hatred for "Shake it Off" has never died from the many bus rides during middle school that this song plagued. Outside of the ones that everyone knows, most of the other tracks are still very dull synthpop songs which are not helped by the fact that Taylor is one of the least favorite vocalists that I have listened. I’ll hesitantly admit that "This is Love" might actually be a good song. Nevertheless, it’s not going to save this album from the fact that everything else is terrible.

It took maybe the better part of one minute for me to figure out I hated this. The guitar here feels like it’s lifeless most of the time and I pretty much despise all of Pharrell Williams’ vocal inflections that he uses throughout the album. It’s not like the lyrics are anything special. I know comparisons are generally not too fair, but this album came out the same year as The College Dropout, and I couldn’t help but think about how much I’d rather listen to that album than this one. “Backseat Love” (probably the worst song on the record that I had to pause midway through because it was so bad) made me think of how much I’d rather listen to the indie rock group The Backseat Lovers. I think that “Jump”, “Breakout” are tolerable, while “Drill Sergeant” (without the hidden track) and “Maybe” are actually good. Well, when my experience with an album is so poor that I can only think about other albums I’d rather listen to, it’s no shocker that it’s going to get a 1/5. Currently, it will end up as #2 lowest rated album, still decently ahead of 1989.

As its name would suggest. The Holy Bible is an album that sits at the top of music. Unlike most albums to come out of this sphere of music in Britain in the mid-90s, this is a bleak look at the darkest aspects of human life. Prostitution, politics, mental disorders, and genocide are amongst the many topics that this album rages about throughout its 56-minute runtime. Richey Edwards, who is perhaps described as the band’s lead lyric conceptualist (as it was primarily his fellow bandmates who would arrange his ideas into viable songs) would disappear from the globe, presumably dead a few months after this record released. In terms of the music, one of the most striking features here is that every song here is a driving rock banger, creating a perfect juxtaposition to the subject material of the album. The guitars sound phenomenal here and James Dean Bradfield’s vocals are perfect here. I don’t think anyone else could have performed these lyrics here any better as they manage to encapsulate the disillusion with life that this album was written with. The lyrics themselves are expertly written, where they convey the disposition in their writer while also retaining a bit of poetry and without being extremely in-your-face about it that one might expect with this kind of album. These elements combine to make one of the greatest listening experiences of the 90s. This is one of the few albums that I call perfect, a 100/100.

Back when I began getting into listening to music, I started by going through System of a Down's discography, which I quite enjoyed. Once I had sufficiently treaded through that, I had to decide where to go next. I ended up thinking to myself "Well, I've heard that Radiohead is pretty good, I'll listen to them" and started my Radiohead journey with The Bends. It took a few listens, but I eventually realized that this album was special. The first song that really stuck with me from this album was "High and Dry", which is a brilliantly simple song that is executed to perfection, really carried by Thom Yorke's vocals, which I think are at their absolute best on this album. He has this angelic quality that never really shows itself on Radiohead's later albums. The album itself is just rock perfection. The guitar riffs and melodies are jaw-dropping, and well-complemented by the drums/bass as well as those phenomenal vocals. One aspect that I really appreciate about this album is the balance; there's a great balance between more driving rock songs ("The Bends", "Bones", "Just") and more laid-back ones ("High and Dry", "Fake Plastic Trees", "Bullet Proof ... I Wish I Was"), as well as balance between more simple and more complex songs. It provides a wholistic rock experience that is executed at the highest level. it's not just Radiohead's best effort. It's the greatest album ever made.

In my head, I feel like I have a bias against pre-90s albums. They make up a very small portion of my listening outside of what I do for this project, perhaps I partly think they are limited by the technology that was available at the time and I get it in my head that it won't be that great. Then, when I listen to an album like this, all those concerns go away. Of course I knew the hits from this album (who doesn't, and they're amazing) but the entire album is excellent throughout. 70s Elton John is an extremely strong vocalist and he shines through on all the tracks, and the compositions are excellent as well. Definitely a 5/5 from me.