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.

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.

Got that stank on it.

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.

LFG.

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).