An angry, eloquent punk-pop tunesmith with a hell of a band to drive the bangers. Favorite track: Radio, Radio (which also contains the best lyric: "And the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools trying to anesthetize the way that you feel"). Honorable mention: Lipstick Vogue (madman drummer), Pump It Up.
I may have listened to this album more than any other in my life...it's one of rock 'n' roll's goats. It's a miracle that this rag tag band of drunk and high degenerates were able to take a break from their LA sleazeball lifestyle to capture the level of focus and clarity on this record. Slash and Izzy with all-time guitar interplay. Nobody with the range or power dynamics of Axl here. Favorite track: They throw the molotov with the opening guitar notes of Jungle, immediately followed by Axl letting the world know that his is the one that says bad MF on it. This one still rules from start to finish every time it comes on. Slash isn't quite in the top level of the rock 'n' roll soloist Hall of Fame pyramid with Hendrix, Page, and EVH...but he's in the tier right below with Angus, Joe Perry, etc. In the immortal words of my daughter when she was six years old about the Paradise City outro: "Slash doesn't wanna slow down."
Dropping the horny-ass rock n roll sledgehammer, as they always do. Bon's a beast. Malcolm's the riffmeister general. Tight rhythm section for Angus to go apeshit over. "[She had] the body of Venus with arms."
Concrete jungle and Little Bitch (minus the misogyny) are my shit. Great vibes, love the ska rhythms, and for the life of me I can't remember a single melody or lyric having just listened to the entire album. Actually that's not entirely true, as the little bitch riff was lifted straight from brown sugar.
Late Muddy. He sounds great, as does the band. The best songs on here are re-recordings of a few from the 1950s. Recorded in three days.…the way it should be.
Such lush and interesting instrumentation throughout. Paul's bass lines (and lead guitar on the title track and good morning good morning) off the charts. Ringo playing those tasty drums. A Day in the Life is that genius shit. Probably could have left its last few seconds (5:11 mark) on the cutting room floor. I do appreciate the lyrics: "I Never Gucci Any Other Way." 🤪
Chuck that, Nile! Good times is a perfect disco song. Bass line got Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers writing credits on Rapper's Delight. Per Wikipedia, "Queen's John Deacon reportedly used the songs bass line as inspiration for his own bass line for the band's 1980 single another one bites the dust." The ballads are fine…and on a seven song album "fine" can't afford to be making the cut.
Facelift and Out-Bloody-Rageous have really nice grooves once they finally get going...but I nearly turned the album off after its first two minutes (looking at you, "gloopy space synth noise").
Ashcroft knows how to write a good song.
Like a great '60s garage band with Roni and the Ronettes singing.
Ballads? We don't need no stinking ballads!
Only note: I wish the cheesy 80s synth on our lips are sealed was replaced with a 1960s sounding keyboard/organ.
Did they borrow the Attractions drummer for this? #beastmode
If I was the male vocalist for the Sugarcubes I would say, "why don't you go ahead and sing everything, Björk, so that I don't sound like a fucking fool." Nobody else like her, epitomized by the combination of grit and sweetness and range (within the span of three seconds) in the chorus to birthday.
One real song across the first five tracks. Middling until Maybe I'm Amazed and it's like "oh yeah, this dude's one of the greatest pop songwriters ever!" Then the big finish of drum noodling/zen chanting/heavy breathing.
Perhaps the greatest illustration that all you really need to sound big and strong as hell is drums, bass, and a guitar (with delay pedal). Admittedly it helps to have Moon, Entwistle, and Townshend playing those instruments.
Classic Dre production and Snoop at his slinky laid-back best. Has a healthy number of the greatest hip hop tracks of all time, with no filler (besides the always unnecessary, though occasionally hilarious, skits). This is a five star album with a one star deduction for the rampant misogyny (which, arguably, could have been a four star deduction). Dre's go-to high synth sound hasn't aged terribly well.
Perhaps most notably, the album contains music history's best random insertion of a baseball play-by-play announcer, in order to detail Meat's loaf gleefully scampering around the proverbial bases.
Meat should have locked Steinman's piano out of the recording studio and told him he only wanted bangers, the result of which would have been one of the greatest rock 'n' roll albums ever. The highs are incredibly high (the rockers, especially every time he starts talking real fast)…The ballads are ballast.
Now THAT'S realer than Real-Deal Holyfield, and now you bachelor degree holders know how I feel. Singer, guitarist, songwriter, bandleader extraordinaire.
“That’s where I got the idea for ... the title for the “Hot Rats” album: There’s a recording that I picked up in Europe that had ... “The Shadow of Your Smile” with Archie Schepp playing on it, and he played this solo that just sounded to me immediately like there was this fucking army of preheated rats screaming out of his saxophone. That’s what it sounded like.”
Bill Hader adds his perspective: "Girls do not like Frank Zappa. You can't get a girl in a car and play Hot Rats and be like, 'Willie the Pimp.' And they're like, 'Is there any music to this? Is there any lyrics?' I'm like, 'Oh, that's a guy singing. His name's Captain Beefheart.' And they're like, 'Can we put on TLC or something?'"
Wasn't looking forward to slogging my way through this…Then he started singing and I was like DAMNNNNNNNNN! Then came some Alan Lomax Smithsonian field recording-sounding "song." Then came Mama Roux and I was like DAMNNNNNNNNN! Then more field recordings. Finally, in his greatest contribution to music history, he concludes the album by saying, "Golden teeth and golden tones, welcome to my presence...let there be teeth!" And there was Teeth.
If you're going to call it yacht rock, at least call it yacht rock for geniuses. Michael McDonald backing vox on every song ever, please!
The B.B. King ("singer, guitarist, songwriter, bandleader extraordinaire") of white boy swamp rock. Incredible that CCR released three all-time classic albums in 1969. Keep on chooglin.
Appalachian dulcimer players of the world unite!
A great sounding and well sung bunch of perfectly fine, unmemorable country tunes. Cool title though.
Three wah tracks on Billy Jack: it is so choice.
Pure voice. Incredible musician and social commentator. I hear the influence on Prince all over the place.
One of many five star Mayfield albums.
Pretty good songwriter for a 22-year-old.
🤪
Raw power right out of the gate.
I enjoy Chuck Mangione. Not, however, on an album by the dude who played the Sultans of Swing solo. Your Latest Trick is offensive coming from Knopfler. Not a bad song, just a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad arrangement. Get that nights with Delilah shit out of here and turn up the guitar.
Singer, songwriter, banjo-player extraordinaire. Beautiful folk. I was delighted every she intentionally played the occasional solo note outside of the scale (on Revelator, most notably).
wishing well is the best prince song of 1987…other than every song on sign o' the times.
Iommi guitar double-tracked, Geezer on low end, Ward bashing, prince of darkness. What more do you need? Keep it simple stupid.
Wah Wah Watson was the star of this album...which isn't optimal if you're the Temptations.
Missed opportunity at the end of Horsin' Around: instead of Paddy McAloon shouting "HUH!", the album's producer Thomas Dolby should have yelled "SCIENCE!"
I liked Bonny and Appetite best. Didn't care for the general cheesy jazz lite vibe overall.
Most bands would kill to have eight hits over the course of their career. Boston went eight for eight on their first album. The poor man's American Queen. 🚢
Apparently spelling has no correlation to a band's ability to rock and roll!
Not my cup of tea, although I did enjoy yes and faster. I'm pretty sure I didn't understand a single lyric.
Now THAT'S how you use synthesizers in the 80s (glares at Knopfler, again). Gore explained his early objectives for Depeche Mode, saying, "My dream was to combine the emotion of Neil Young or John Lennon transmitted by Kraftwerk's synthesizers. Soul music played by electronic instruments." Their next album would be a five star classic.
While I might give the album three stars taking nothing else into consideration (All of the Lights remains tremendous), I have to consider this from earlier this year:
Kanye West, also known as Ye, escalated his antisemitic rhetoric by releasing a music video titled “HEIL HITLER (HOOLIGAN VERSION)” on X, featuring Nazi imagery and the lyric “So I became a Nazi, I’m the villain,” continuing a disturbing trajectory of antisemitic behavior that includes selling swastika-themed merchandise and praising Hitler. The video, which quickly amassed over a million views, follows a brief Twitch livestream in which Ye gave a Nazi salute and shouted “Heil Hitler” before being banned within minutes for violating the platform’s guidelines.
The zero stars of that so far outweighs any musical value that the result my first one star review.
Slip-not for me. Liked the guitars, the drums when he wasn't overplaying, and the occasional "Dave Grohl vocals."
Trump and his goons are the zombie scourge of the earth. Donald, please don't kill my mom by throwing her out of a window.
The original indie band. The original version of the Gallagher brothers relationship. The soundtrack to Wes Anderson (along with Mothersbaugh and Desplat). Waterloo Sunset. Five stars.
Give me that backwards guitar on Book of Saturday every day.
It's not what I would sit around and listen to… But it is what the cool underground kids in college would sit around and listen to.
One of the great "I know I'm about to die" albums, along with Cash's American Recordings, Zevon's The Wind, and Dylan's Time Out of Mind.
Fun fact: You Want It Darker's choral intro was inspired by another track 1 album title: Bobby Brown's Don't Be Cruel.
This land was made for you and me. And Charles Starkweather.
Apex Pete. While bookended by two of the great rockers, the album is primarily driven by acoustic guitars. And the incomparable tandem of Entwistle and Moon. The yin yang of Macho Man Daltrey and Lady Townshend's vocals is so rich.
One last masterpiece from the greatest of all time. And what a song to end it on (I don't count her Majesty): all four guys both rocking together and having their individual moment to shine.
Coincidence that they waited to put Busta as the album's final verse? I THINK NOT! Nobody wants to follow that.
(Rawr! Rawr! Like a dungeon dragon.)
I hope this won't be another one of those unabridged paranoid hippie monologues I seem obliged to sit through.
Great, simple (a compliment) arrangements of some ol' cowboy songs.
Even on the millionth listen, Limelight still rules.
One-trick pony, but at least it's a trick I've never seen before?
J. D. Considine wrote in The Rolling Stone Album Guide that the record defined the ambient aesthetic while providing a name for the genre. Plus now I feel super chill.
This was the first album I had never heard of the artist or any of the songs.
Keeping those white boy blues alive.
Significantly schmaltzier than I anticipated...but the lesson is that selling your soul to Delilah can win you the album of the year Grammy over Tom Petty twice in the same year (Full Moon Fever, Wilburys Vol. 1.).
Although Life on Mars is my favorite song on the album, I prefer my Bowie with guitar rather than piano. Give me the main acoustic riff from Andy Warhol or the electrics on Queen Bitch any day
More like skunk butt amirite?
I appreciate her evolving as an artist, especially continuing to incorporate jazz.
Aka "Scottish Strokes by Scottish Strokes."
Elvis is at his best with the attractions. I prefer angry young man guitar Elvis to Bacharach Elvis…And we get some of both on this album. Kinder murder, 13 steps lead down, My science fiction twin, and just about glad are the high points. 15 songs was too much: had he cut four or five of them this would probably be a four star album.
You's a penguin-lookin mf. OG beats by Dre. Poor Eazy...he didn't stand a chance. Welcome to the world, snoop. Just another mf day for Dre. Did what's his name get after you yesterday? The first half of the album is SO good it makes up for some filler on side two.
Steve Howe you elf looking bad MFng guitar genius. Is this nerd rock at its finest?
I have to take back what I said about Yes yesterday: they can have the best British nerd rock title. Steely's the best American nerd rock.
Reelin in the years: one of the best guitar solos ever.
An embarrassment of riches, embracing so many types of music from one track to the next: guitar hero rock, string quartet pop, twee pop, Indian drone, 50s doo-wop ballad, and a sea shanty (just to name the first six tunes). Tomorrow Never Knows is the first, and still the best, trip hop song. One of the greatest album covers ever.
Great concept, sound, songs, players, and singing. Heck of a debut.
Jimmy Page, riffmeister general.
Rap at its finest. We need more rappers like Chuck D....but that's kind of like saying we need more guitarists like Jimmy Page, bassists like James Jamerson, singers like Otis Redding, and mirror holders/dancers/foils like Jerome Benton.
Mapping Madonna's pop sensibilities onto electronica and ambient sounds results in an incredible album (and directly leads to my favorite song from the last 33 years of her career on her next album, what it feels like for a girl).
"We looked deep down inside the very core of our souls and there was a little Ringo sitting there. Oh sure, we like telling people it's John Lennon or George Harrison, but when you really look deep inside of Soundgarden, there's a little Ringo wanting to get out." -Kim Thayil
8 songs, 32 minutes, three hits that stack up well against any other trilogy on an album ever, so many memorable riffs. Ed's still the guitar goat here, but also brings that innovation to the keyboard AND writes his most accessible and economical collection of songs. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any video of Roth and Michael McDonald writing I'll Wait.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's the white boy bossa nova show!
Pretty punk rock to call it the Pretty Fucking Dirty tour. Pretty mind-expanding guitars. Sugar Kane should have been a hit.
Insett Swedish Chef gif here.
Hypnotic. I have pretty much no context for this: I don't know what he's singing about (and could only find lyrics in English to one song online). I would love to have a sense of how this seemingly very traditional sounding music fits into modern Senegalese culture.
Shut up already...damn! And I mean that as the highest of compliments.
A great Midwest rock n roll band. Nielsen's the best.
This was good, I enjoyed listening to it, and I love the Detroit roots. It's simply not at the same level as other albums I have rated four stars (hunky dory, brothers in arms, fragile, low end theory, doggystyle, for example).
A perfect album. All killer no filler.
Very listenable (both Common's raps and peak Kanye production)
Sinead was one of one. 4.5 star album bumped up because she's punk rock. Singing about abortion and police violence/racism...and boasts the best Prince cover ever (yes, even better than you, Manic Monday). Refused to accept her Grammy wins and pissed off half the world protesting rampant child abuse in the Catholic Church (who came out looking better on that one). She would have told the rock and roll hall of fame to go f themselves had she been alive. ❤️🇮🇪
Christmas albums do not get better than this. Am I a hypocrite for turning a blind eye to Spector actually murdering someone? Yes, yes I am. But I'm not holding that against Roni!
Sick guitar on the first two tracks...chef was cooking!
To quote renowned music critic Austin Powers, this sort of thing ain't my bag, baby.
Great voice after all the years.
That's the genius shit. Dead at 45, as terrible a loss as Lennon. Fucking guns.
"With the world exploding around me, how am I supposed to keep singing love songs?"
"They call me little tough guy and I play the maracas!"
I thought Merle was born with facial hair.
I always appreciate when guitarists are playing chords and I have absolutely no idea what they are doing. The Strokes (and all the rest of those bands) clearly spent a lot of time listening to this.
He could have never put out another album and coasted on "greatest hits" tours based solely on this one for the rest of his career. Isn't it a wonderful world that that's not what happened?
Impressive debut. Easy to see why she was on Lilith Fair: significant influence on '90s and '00s artists.
My first favorite rap album...and it may still be. Scrub!
If the White Album is five stars, so is this. What makes you think you're the one is my favorite Mac deep track.
Uneven. Really enjoyed the blissful tunes. Edgy tracks not so much.
Just lovely. Could have been released in 1956 rather than 1986.
The horn intro to track nine came on and I suddenly heard Flav's voice coming out of my mouth: "Dammmmmmmmnnnnnnn boyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy...who knew PE did Rump Shaker!"
😉
The hits were hits for good reason! Incredibly well crafted. I will always be grateful to Lynne for his contributions to Full Moon Fever, Into the Great Wide Open, and the Wilburys (glad he reused the opening Summer and Lightning acoustic part to start End of the Line). And...he had much better songwriters to produce in those cases.
Mudhoney's first single: August 1988. Nirvana's: November 1988. Seems like the two biggest differences were Kurt's love of the Beatles and the fact that they had Butch Vig producing.
A couple nice Eastern-influenced guitar licks. I'm not real sure why it's on the list.
Who had "toy piano" on their Green Day bingo card when Dookie came out?
Detroit muscle. Alice was more of a singles band than an album band...their original greatest hits is a powerhouse. Most importantly, WE CAN'T EVEN THINK OF A WORD THAT RHYMES!
Combines a bit more pop sensibility than usual with the glorious guitar noise mosaic we have come to know and love. Tunic is just a gut punch.
Had never heard Hide In Your Shell before. Loved it!
Couple big '80s lite pop hits here.
Brian Jones's apex...before the swift nadir. Acoustic Keith is the best Keith. Can't believe they left "i'm just sitting on a fence" on the cutting room floor. Misogyny hypocrite alert!
The greatest reinvention from one album to the next in rock n' roll history.
Hipster McLachlan? Let a great singer sing. The Then Again Version of Central Reservation makes me think I better go listen to Trailer Park (assuming that's where more electronica is).
Quite a flex to have Bowie as your backup singer and keyboardist.
Had never heard of this album or any of these songs. They were fine. Cool connection to the soft bulletin and that Levon and Garth are on here.
Helluva title and album cover.
Listening to this 35+ years after its release, it seems pretty clear Mustaine's a crazy-eyed prophetic madman who was way ahead of his time in the subject matter he was writing about. Cover art unbelievably poignant and applicable (bonus points for including actual world leaders, including H.W.). Also, listening to his rhythm parts in stereo, he has the precision of a Swiss watch. It would never have worked for him to stay with Metallica (one egomaniac too many)...and it says a lot that they kicked him out for being TOO much of a drunk. I've never been a Megadeth fan, but this shit rules.
