1001 Albums Summary

Every track has great loops and beats but they ultimately suffer from the same fatal flaw: they repeat too much for too long Still, for its time, the production value is great and the sound must have been mesmerizing. This album also played a special role in my teenage years (a decade after it was released) so I’m willing to forgive some flaws.

I got you babe tickled me, and there were some sick guitar riffs. Maybe controversial in the day but seems like a parody now. Funny how you can never tell how something will age

An elegant sound for a more civilized age

Great instrumentalists, I’m just not a fan of the screaming. A couple gems buried in there though

Beep beep. Beep beep. Yeah

For a whole album of covers, at least one of them should be better than just “ok”

The 808 drum machine has become so pervasive a more recently in a highly processed/edited manner, that it feels jarring to hear it so unironically embraced in its naked un-edited original form. Not terrible, but it doesn’t feel as original and groundbreaking as it might have 40 years ago

Bloody alright I like to imagine an adult Gene Belcher rocking out on the keyboard for most of these songs.

Can he kick it? Yes he can! Great sound, unique samples and timeless tracks that still hold up

Style and volume over substance

- You just, like, don’t get it man - K

It’s no Fat of the Land I really like Voodoo People though

Wat

Lance Armstrong’s ex released an album? Who knew?

4 minutes of lyrics repeated to make 42 minutes of album.

I wanted to give Bowie the benefit of the doubt, but none of this felt special to me. Not terrible, but it just didn’t resonate

Seeealand

Is All I Need the greatest love song of the 90s? — I think neither the lyrics nor the production really stand out to me here

Lots of bangers on here. It feels like it has the vibes of a hyper-produced electronic pop song, but you know they’re just jamming. === Special callouts for Cholly and Maggot Brain

More bluesy than I would have thought given their later albums. Still, the seeds are there, and Robert Plant sounds awesome as ever

One star for the line “boom boom pachyderm.” Two stars for the rest

I really appreciated the variety of styles and sounds. Oh, Susannah in particular was a treat. Something about a classic song everyone knows really lets the artist shine through

We bop

I thought I was a fool for no one Ooh baby, I’m a fool for Muse

+1 point for fever

The last few songs do some real heavy lifting to shore up an otherwise unremarkable album. Suspiciously minds in particular was great

They stomp-clapped so the Lumineers could hey

Decent music, but a soundtrack without a film doesn’t really pack the same emotional punch

A fitting origin for Slim and Stan. The extended edition also features a bizarre song from the Wild Wild West soundtrack I hadn’t heard before

Great to hear an up and coming Dre on this classic Snoop album. Also a decent cover of the classic Ben Folds song

They say a computer can make music better than OutKast can damn do it Motherfuckers! (Break!)

I think I forgot about this album before it was even over

Never before or since have the first three notes of an album hit so hard. And the saccharine hits just keep flowing. It’s a classic for good reason

Almost every song would be better as an instrumental

Very generic 80s synth pop. Not my jam

Did not hold up as much as I would have liked. One bonus star for the refreshingly optimistic “Wake Up”

Message in a bottle is an all-timer, but the rest kind of blended together for me

Surprisingly eclectic musically!

It felt like the Beach Boys were doing their best impression of later Beatles but were still very obviously the Beach Boys

Listening to Like a Prayer in 1989 must have been a mind-blowing experience. It holds up!

Very interesting what songs enter the cultural zeitgeist. I think Bang a Gong has some intangible qualities that make it great, but maybe I like it just because I’ve heard it a lot. Other than that, this album felt just ok and not something I need to frequently revisit

A tour de force from start to finish. Billy Joel in his prime. Probably the highest density of all-time greats on any album ever. If you count Scenes from an Italian Restaurant (my favorite Joel song) as three songs, there are more all-timers than tracks.

It felt like a bunch of admittedly talented musicians and producers got together to produce a Kid Rock parody album. Somehow before Kid Rock actually existed. I almost wanted to give a bonus point because he rhymed ducat with fuck it, but the album deteriorates into such low quality, I couldn’t justify it

Ceci n’est pas le Daft Punk

Very good album. I appreciate the real outlaw renegade persona that Cash clearly had among the population at the prison. I don’t feel that way about him, but it’s very impressive what passed for a “bad guy” in the 60s