1001 Albums Summary

Everything it was made out to be! At first I thought it would be 4 stars for me because it felt like a work in a genre I didn’t understand. Then I picked up on the continuity with more recent trippy stuff I like. Then I fully committed when the choir came in. And the riff of Siberian Khatru won’t be denied.

My dear old friend. No idea what I can say about it that hasn’t been said. It’s been with me about half my life. Long enough ago that I got it at a used CD shop, college I think. Its meaning has only expanded for me over the year. I have fantasies about doing a karaoke version of “Free Money” but doubt I could ever keep up. But I’ve certainly said every word many times. Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine…

Guys, I’m sorry, I hate it. I’m old enough to just come out and say I hate it. Maybe it’s just a 90s punk kid hating anything that was mainstream in the 80s. I want to tell a story about how Reagan and the right misappropriated it and all that, but in the end I just don’t care, I don’t want to listen to it. “I’m On Fire” creeps me out, “Glory Days” creeps me out. I like “Dancing in the Dark” and a few other moments, but honestly I was thrilled when it was over and I could put on Nebraska instead.

Wow, I expected to like this, but I never expected to like it as much as this. Of course I knew about Isaac Hayes from his profile in pop culture. So I was just expecting sexy slow jams. Instead I feel like this is reprogramming my priorities in life. The grooves are so great I don't know how to comment on them. The first and last songs (Walk On By, By The Time I Get to Phoenix) were already ones I enjoyed but also wondered if they contained something more... and here it is. No idea how I didn't know these versions existed. Anyway, because I'm just a white boy from Kansas I have no idea where it rates within its genre, but it's definitely a five for me.

This was the first album I've pulled that I knew pretty much nothing about. If you had asked me, I would have guessed that Can was a jam band rather than Krautrock. And that's the spirit in which I enjoyed most of the album. I can see why it's influential and can imagine listening to several of the tracks again. But man, "Ajman" and "Peking O" put me off -- I like me some crazy noises and I couldn't keep track of what was going on. If I listen more will I figure it out, or is this pretty much how everyone feels about the record? I had thought this might be three stars but re-listened to the rest of the tracks later and really liked them, which pulled it up for a 4.

Album 19 - Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath - 4/5 I’m just a casual fan of them so I don’t know that I have anything to offer beyond what other reviews have said: Holy cow, imagine hearing this in 1970 when there had never been anything like it before. Huh, they were pretty bluesy on that first record. For all the greatness that is there, there is something about it that seems unfinished. As much as I enjoy “The Wizard,” after I was done I just found myself humming songs from Paranoid. But I’m glad I pulled it today… helped me get through a stressful parenting day, which I think would make Ozzy smile.

Shoulda been “21.” My respect for Adele is grounded in songs from that time, which my wife and I would play every day to get psyched up on the way to work. I remember feeling a little let down when “25” came out and I guess I still feel that way. There’s no denying the power of the opening track “Hello” … it shows she’s the undisputed master of a certain mood, but it’s not a mood I seek out from music very often. So I kind of get lost in the other tracks that reflect that. I liked the theme and sounds of “River Lea” and “A Million Years Ago”’… but honestly if this comes on I’ll probably switch to her other albums or songs. That probably doesn’t sound like a four star review, but it feels impossible to rate Adele lower. If I had no idea about her other work this might have been a three

I have no problem rating it a five, but my persistent question is why is this THE album everyone seems to own and the #1 rated on the list? I actually think Apple Music’s analysis is pretty good. Paraphrasing heavily, Rumours takes everything interesting going on in the 70s, runs it through an adult contemporary filter, then makes songs out of only the finest parts that remain. So You Make Loving Fun kinda sounds like a Stevie Wonder song and The Chain kinda sounds like a Zep song and Gold Dust Woman kinda sounds like a Patti Smith song. But they’re all just the Mac. I also noticed this time through that the band is incredibly locked in… in a way that feels almost unreal. I think that explains the magic of The Chain especially. So I’m content for it to be one or those mega-records like Thriller. It’s just a *little* too slick to be a favorite record for me. I have trouble imagining anyone breaking down and crying hearing Rumours, and that’s the effect I ultimately want a great record to have. But I’m still humming… don’t… stop… thinkin about tomorrow…

Loved this. Totally different from anything I've heard from the generator so far. Mysterious. Sexy. Political. Amorphous. Grounded in the Black experience yet also feels like it could have been written by space aliens. I had encountered songs from the group on playlists before but didn't get what they were really about until listening through a whole album. Looking forward to further exploration of their mysteries.

I ought to be into this, but I am not. I fit the profile as an electronica-curious 90s kid. I get the role that they are supposed to have played in the evolution of the rave scene. But in practice, it feels kind of flat and tedious to me rather than dark or challenging. I think that to feel what this album is trying to make me feel, I would rather listen to NIN. They were a couple of moments. I enjoyed but to really love it. I think I would need to have been part of the scene.

I have about five different favorite bands at any given time but Radiohead has always been on the list. There’s no point in me adding to the zillions of things that have been said about their greatness but I’ll add a bit about this album. I think you could make the case that this is the best Radiohead album, though I never actually hear anyone make it. I suspect that if I had to rank every single song and assign point values, then add them together by album, In Rainbows might win. Sure, it’s not a giant statement about the future of humanity like OK Computer, but every track feels essential. And I think it opened the door to a future where Radiohead could channel our angst while also being kinda chill about it. They can be who they are but also do stuff like a Bond theme (kind of) and The Smile. That makes me happy for them and for all of us. PS since this is Thanksgiving, I should say I keep a gratitude journal and I’m sure I have written that I am grateful for Radiohead, for Thom Yorke, for In Rainbows, many times…

Every feeling I have about Oasis is colored by nostalgia. But as an American who only had a few records at the time "Wonderwall" dominated the airwaves, it's nostalgia for the singles, not the albums. Nevertheless, every few months, I'll get in a mood and put on "Oasis Essentials" or "I Miss Britpop" from Apple, the same way I'll sometimes do with U2 or R.E.M. I think this is my first time actually listening to the album all the way through. Since I got this one over the weekend, I actually decided to do the first three albums for context. "Definitely, Maybe" and "Be Here Now" felt like I was still listening to the playlist -- good stuff, but eventually it all drifted together into "Yup, that's what Oasis sounds like." But WTSMG gave me a distinctly warm feeling that I think the nostalgia must have been all about in the first place. My preferred track has always been "Champagne Supernova" over "Wonderwall," and I'm glad it comes at the end. in context, it feels more like a concluding statement to a collection of songs that I see now were nostalgic in their own way for the world the Beatles promised us but never arrived. That emotional connection rather than any kind of rock virtuosity is why it's a five for me. "How many special people change..."

Love this guy. Love his collaboration with Bowie. Love this album, though maybe his image on the cover even more than any individual song. Nah, I love "The Passenger" more than the photo, who am I kidding? But in the end I have to give it four stars, I think. There's just too much clowning around for me to say it belongs up there with Abbey Road, Ziggy Stardust, or even a Stooges album. I like it best as a moment in the story of Bowie and Iggy and Berlin, not so much as a moment in musical history. And that's okay. "Here comes Johnny Yen..."

I love this. I LOVE THIS. Makes me feel the way I felt listening to Elvis Costello the first time (Armed Forces 20+ years ago). Love the piano, love the pace, love the themes and the way they wear them so lightly. I think I was only vaguely aware that they were a Britpop band though of course I knew “Alright” from “Clueless.” I’m excited to keep coming back to it. I think my only critique would be that the energy seems to dissipate near the end of the album… I could see this being one where I lose track of the tracks near the end. But there are plenty of albums like that which I have come to love when I pay more attention. Mostly I’m just happy to have encountered this today. Lifted my spirits amidst yucky weather.

I'm a sucker for this stuff, 60s singer-songwriter. I remember being a kid and coming to understand that there was this whole world beyond Dylan and getting into Dave Van Ronk and Phil Ochs and Woody Guthrie and the Anthology of American Folk Music. I get the critique of it all and laughed my ass off at A Mighty Wind but I still fall for it again every time. I want songs that say something, and these guys never fail. Yeah his voice is an acquired taste and yeah there is an awful lot of mouth harp. But most of the tracks transport me to another time and place and make me think about what the heck I am doing in my life. I love the social critiques of "The Partisan" and "Story of Isaac" and "The Old Revolution" and how you could adapt them to any time or place if you want to. But "Bird On a Wire" is still the fav. I think it looks forward to his future, more contemplative stuff. I came to know it through the Johnny Cash version on American Recordings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eY7bGaccWI ... but I think that unlike his famous cover of "Hurt," which made the song his own, Johnny is still just commenting on Leonard's statement of his worldview. Which is maybe just a long way of saying there's only one Leonard Cohen.

Album 30 - Neneh Cherry - Raw Like Sushi - 3/5 I enjoyed this a lot but am giving it a 3 because I don't think I'm likely to return to it. The spirit in which I enjoyed it comes from being a white kid from the suburbs who grew up in the 90s. Sometime in elementary school I started listening to Top 40 radio. For a couple of years there I could probably sing all the words of all the hits, whether they were alternative, R&B, hip hop or pop. I saw the sign and I'm afraid of Americans and I don't want no scrubs and I say hey what's going on. But like a lot of kids my age, I eventually learned what kind of music I was "supposed" to be listening to. As a local radio station used to put it, "no rap, no country" -- a particular kind of white identity. I deepened my knowledge of rock and folk and punk, but wouldn't have admitted how much a younger version of me had loved TLC and En Vogue and Boyz 2 Men. As with any most white kids listening to that music, there was a kind of fantastical imaginary relationship to some of the subject matter. We pretended we were going to a party on the West Side where "all the gangbangers forget about the drive by." Anyway, this kind of 80s hip hop brings me back to that joyous childhood place. It's absolutely a part of my experience of listening to R&B and hip hop today, the understanding that this was an experience I lost touch with through America's never sleeping racial sorting system. In that sense the album is a five. And everyone is right, "Buffalo Stance" is a banger and anticipates groups like Massive Attack. But at the same time I've listened to enough contemporary hip hop at this point that the rap on other tracks seems kind of rudimentary. I'd be happy if I encounter any of these tracks in the wild but probably won't put on the album again.

I have enjoyed every ELO single I’ve ever heard but had never listened to any of the albums. I was excited when this one came up, but then felt disappointed the first time through. I had actually expected it to go much harder in the weird prog rock outer space direction than it does. Folks expressed so much adulation for Jeff Lynne’s songwriting, though, that I decided to go back and listen a few times over the weekend. I think that this time through, I got the gist. I buy everything about ELO being a kind of continuation of the Beatles and especially McCartney style songwriting. I ended up humming bit of “Sweet Talkin’ Woman” and “Starlight.” Cool, okay, glad I tried it again. Yet it’s still a four for me because as much as I love the tunes, I just don’t believe enough in the idea that every rock song would be better with strings attached. There’s no question that the sound Lynne created works on ELO’s biggest hits… I had to warn my wife in advance that I’d be singing “Mr. Blue Sky” all weekend. But to me it limits my overall enjoyment. There’s a specific mood in which I turn to “Mr. Blue Sky” or “Living Thing” and sure, now I might turn to this album instead. Yet it doesn’t feel like it re-programmed my brain in the same way some of the other five star albums have done. I’m glad it’s there, it makes me smile, but that’s about it. “Hey you with the pretty face…”

It's perfect. I just wish we had so much more.

I was a little annoyed by this since I just got What’s the Story Morning Glory? To figure out how I felt about it, I listened to this album too. I determined that I prefer WTSMG even though it seems most people think Definitely Maybe is a more authentic sound. I actually felt kind of the opposite, that WTSMG is distinct if poppier, while Definitely Maybe is more like a Britpop type specimen. But… I like Britpop. I like this more than Pablo Honey. I find even the kinda dumb lyrics charming. “She done it with a doctor on a helicopter”? Sure, makes me smile. And the various kinds of hate Oasis gets makes me want them to give a boost because in spite of it all, I always enjoy hearing them. If we were using a different scale this might be a 4.5 or a B+ or I don’t know what, but tonight I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.

The essence of hardcore. Couldn't love it more. I wanted so bad to be a punk in high school but at best came across as a latter-day hippie. But the kids gave me credit for being "straight edge" AKA too scared to do drugs. "You think you're the only one? Think again... think again... think again..."

This will always speak to a certain place in my soul. My college roommate and I played Damon Albarn's Mali Music project over and over again when reading or studying, which then turned me on to Ali Farka Touré and others. Learned more about him in an African musicology class where the musically versed in the group could explain his skill and influence. Just a great story and a fascinating person. I'm still pretty much an uninformed Westerner so I can't speak to where this particular album might fit into his discography or the larger scene of Malian music, but I love the sound so much I have to give it a five.

I keep giving albums five stars but it’s because the generator keeps giving me iconic shit. I mean it’s THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL. Trent famously apologized for the album when he sent it in but the things that were inside him now seem so necessary for the understanding of our world. For scratching that particular itch, this album beats Nirvana or Pumpkins or even Radiohead. Even if it might not rank as high as those folks’ records on favorite lists, I’d argue its sound and style may be even more influential. And it remains so when you hear it today. Weirdly I think the only part of the album that feels dated now is “Hurt” … because as Trent recognized, it’s Johnny Cash’s song now. But that just shows how much it mattered that folks who were still listening to it, still thinking about, still interpreting it.

Really struggled with whether to give this a four or a five... in the end, I'm going with five. Why: the good moments on it are extremely good and created a portal that brought the whole world into metal and metal into the whole world. For that it deserves eternal glory. My reservations... I always feel like I get kind of lost in the last third of the album. The worst moments make you say, "Great, a Metallica song like every other Metallica song." And even though I like the song, I'd be happy if I never had to hear the phrase "don't tread on me" again in my life. Still... look at The Blacklist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metallica_Blacklist ... look at the artists who took this album so deeply to heart. It's in all of us. When I pulled it at 10 p.m. last night, I put it on to go to sleep, because even though it's metal, it's as familiar and soothing as a lullaby. "And nothing else matters..."

I wanted to love it but in the end I just like it. 1) I had only ever heard “Take On Me,” which is obviously legendary. So I was happy to hear that it’s a new wave album and not twelve different versions of the same thing. 2) But it never quite solidified into anything that felt essential or compelling to me. Not driving enough to be like the new wave I like most, not quirky or spacey enough to be like the synth pop I like most. 3) I appreciated the ideas behind a few of the songs and would be happy to encounter them again, but I don’t think I’ll ever wake up feeling like I have to listen to this album today. It’s too bad because it was close… I might have given it 3.5 or 7/10 on a different scale.

Thanks to listening to this and reading about it, I learned about Asian Underground and how it influenced all sorts of other stuff I like. And the album itself grew on me, but not quite to the point where I can imagine returning to it in the future. I disagree with the folks who say it's just drum and bass plus Asian instrumentation... I can hear that there are some real ideas there. But I felt more like I was listening to some cuts by a session museum who contributed to some other record I really like... I can appreciate it but don't feel like it changed me in the way I like a record to do.

I couldn't listen to it properly here in the US but was able to find most of the tracks. I didn't have strong feelings about it overall. It reminded me of being in high school and buying a CD based on a track I'd heard on the radio... oftentimes those bands seemed perfectly nice, even clever, but there's no mistaking the feeling of "oh, so there's no magic here." I liked a few moments along the way, but as soon as it was done I put on a mix of new wave stuff I enjoy a lot more.

A subreddit user recently asked us to provide our 100 favorite albums. I knew Bowie would need to be in the top five, so I put in Low at number 3. Hunky Dory ended up at 17, which in retrospect seems like a mistake. There are plenty of days in which it is my favorite Bowie album and even my favorite album of all time. Why? The same explanation everyone has: this is the album where Bowie becomes Bowie. But it might be more accurate to say it is the album where he most clearly demonstrates the process of becoming Bowie 1.0. Bowie 1.0 (before Berlin) was the changeling who became Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke, and all the less developed characters in between. Bowie 2.0 (Berlin and after) was David Bowie, the man, sharing what it was really like to be him (while also donning occasional costumes). If Bowie 1.0 is Major Tom, Bowie 2.0 is “We know Major Tom’s a junkie.” But David Bowie wasn’t a known quantity before Ziggy Stardust. People still thought he was a novelty artist, a one-hit wonder, a theatrical freak dabbling in rock and roll. He covers a Tiny Tim song on Hunky Dory; listeners wouldn’t have been crazy to group the two together. Looking back, we can see the genius of his earlier output, but very few people were paying that much attention in 1971. (Since I got this one over the weekend, I also listened to Divine Symmetry, a four-disc set that explores the process around “Hunky Dory,” including demos and live performances. You can tell from those sets that while the songs were great, the story of the album or the artist or the band is far from worked out.) So when Bowie sings about “ch-ch-ch-ch-changes,” he isn’t yet referring to his protean public persona. He’s talking about what it is like to be him, or the people around him, or the contact high formed by the connection of the two. There is so much “thou” in this album, whether it is the angelic rising generation of “Oh! You Pretty Things,” his newborn son in “Kooks,” or the grabbag of name checks: Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, Churchill, Himmler, Greta Garbo, Aleister Crowley. Bowie was such a chameleon that he was always afraid of becoming of whoever was around him, yet here he seems to have no shame around it yet. Why not write a song about Bob Dylan the same way Dylan wrote a song about Woody Guthrie — isn’t that just what we artists do? And yet. Dylan’s first album was an unabashed tribute; Bowie is up to something different here. Would you really want to be the object of “Queen Bitch,” “Song for Bob Dylan,” or “Andy Warhol” (which apparently made Andy leave the room the first time he heard it)? Each of these songs shines a spotlight on the difficulty and tension of worshiping other artists. “Andy Warhol, Silver Screen, Can’t tell them apart at all.” It was Warhol’s whole deal, of course, but are you comfortable with someone calling it out so clearly? As others have observed, these references to the pseudo-reality of film are the throughline of “Hunky Dory,” showing up in most of the songs. Bowie is aware that he is seeing, experiencing, projecting, critiquing, all at once, without ever quite making it into a film school seminar (thank God). It’s this detachment that make things like the flirtation with fascism tolerable. This used to bother the shit after me, but the best explanation I’ve read is that Bowie is shocked by the extent to which he is fascinated by the same set of ideas as Himmler and others. He wants to be as pretty as “the coming race” of “Homo superior” yet also frightened about what that means. And eventually that all congealed into the much more accessible character of Ziggy, the self-loathing starman who can’t quite save us. But for now, it’s just Bowie being weird as shit and making it sound like chamber music. I still have no idea what a tactical cactus is, yet the phrase gets stuck in my head all the time. That’s Hunky Dory to me, the crazed hidden notebooks that foreshadow everything yet also refuse to be any one thing themselves.

The only reason I hesitated about giving this a 5 is that Doolittle exists, and that’s one of my gold standards for what a rock album can be. Surfer Rosa is not that… even in a 34 minute record, there’s songs they could have cut. But the tracks that work work so goddamn hard. “Bone Machine” brings all Black Francis’s absurdity and perversion and violence and beauty right from the outset. “Cactus” impressed Bowie enough for him to cover it. Everybody feels like they have a “Broken Face” after they hear it. And “Where Is My Mind?” Like everybody my age, I got to know it through the last scene of Fight Club. No sane person likes everything in that movie, but the choice to end it with that song make the last scene sufficiently transcendent that you think, “Wait, maybe that IS what I want.” You met me at a very interesting time in my life… Yet it’s also a silly song I sing with my preschooler. “Daddy, play the swimming brain song…”

The fact that I like metal at all is entirely due to the fact that my high school girlfriend was into it. She’s now my wife, and even though I will independently play Metallica or Tool, it all still feels like I borrowed it from her CD collection. And she *hates* Slipknot. So this is not my scene. But approaching it with fresh ears, I can see why someone might like it. There are certainly days I feel the feelings expressed in “Gematria” or “Dead Memories.” Overall, though, this kind of metal feels kind of tedious to me… oh, you are going to do that with the drums *again?* I hope it’s helping some kids get by somewhere, but I’ll stick with my wife’s CD binder.

This is a bit underpowered since it is Christmas Eve. I kinda missed the whole Amy Winehoise moment in pop culture… I heard the hits but did not understand the devotion to her or how deeply folks felt the loss when she died. I didn’t do the deep dive I might have preferred in response to getting this album but I do hear how much of a storyteller she is, and an unflinching one, which I love in a songwriter. I’ll return to it and her other work.

The OG rock Christmas album, so glad it’s on the list.

I have been trying to figure out what was really going on in Michael Jackson’s music since I was a little kid. An origin story: Around the time my dad walked out, my mom and sister and me recorded this video at the mall. It was part of this touring MTV exhibit where you could put yourself in a music video. It’s mostly us and a family friend swaying around aimlessly to “Bad” … I think I attempted some preschool version of break dancing. But on the last “Who’s bad?” there was this perfect freeze frame of us all. It came to symbolize the new kind of family we were creating after Dad’s departure, which of necessity was less traditional, more improvisational. I think MJ symbolized that for my mom and she remained a fan throughout the various scandals. I got older and too cool for MJ, too cool for pop. Too faux-sophisticated to admit that for a few years in the 80s all us kids wanted to be this protean child-god-man creature. Even though the text of his music was often about romance, the subtext pointed to these weird internal cosmic struggles that clearly none of us understand even now. And of course it is mixed up with his own trauma and the trauma he visited on others. Every time I try writing about this, that’s the stumbling block… I want to research things like what the heck was going on with the Moonwalker arcade game, but then I just think of the poor kids. Anyway, I was disappointed to find that revisiting Bad at the album level doesn’t illuminate all that much. The filler here truly is filler… maybe the hits aren’t as great as those from an album like “Dangerous” but on that record you can see the search for a theme, and the theme here is clearly “Let’s do Thriller again.” But the other half is legendary singles. I think maybe by the time of “Bad” the music video had become so dominant a form that the artistic energy beyond the singles went there instead of into the album. Maybe I’ll have figured out more by the time I get to Thriller. Until then, Shamone, lay it on me, etc.

I really believe this is a perfect, indispensable album. I first listened to it a few years ago when I wanted to understand Talking Heads better (I only knew their hits). This one intrigued me because I had never seen the cover before, unlike the later albums that popped up when “Burning Down the House” or “Road to Nowhere” streamed. “More Songs About Buildings and Food” doesn’t have a song like that. In re songs, someone wrote a while ago that for all the changes in how we consume music in the last century, the song remains the basic building block. But every once in a while you have albums that truly function as albums, where the songs fade into the background. The collection is really what matters. I do NOT mean operatic concept albums, which are okay in their place. If those are epic poems, a collection album is something like William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience… an arrangement of verses that reveal transcendent themes. “More Songs” is doing that in relation to our contemporary corporate civilization, looking through David Byrne’s alien eyes. There are so many fun turns of phrase and observations. Yet it’s also fractal… you can zoom out, zone out, just jam to it if you want. Weirdly it is an album you can work to. I think its palatability is due to the fact that Brian Eno is confident enough to treat Byrne and all the other member bands as instruments, just another part of Eno’s quest for music that is “as ignorable as it is interesting” (as he said of ambient). Dude had just made Low with Bowie, he could do anything. The uniform tension of the first nine tracks is finally released courtesy Al Green in the “Take Me to the River” cover. I don’t think I understood the brilliance of this cover until I heard it on the album… it really is like being splashed in the face with cool water after running a marathon. It provides just enough asymmetry to remind you that this music was made by humans and not intelligent machines. Anyway, I could listen to this every day, and just might for a while!

The starting point here is that Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” is my favorite album. It is pure yin energy in its darkness, its doubts, and its devotion. It is in a class by itself. So in some ways I can’t even compare “Court and Spark” to it, but I think my best story about it is that it is Blue’s yang counterpart, brilliant and brash. And I can see that in some ways it is so much more challenging because here a woman is being braggadocios and brilliant in a way pop music had never quite seen before. She’s hip, she’s horny, she’s a wizard, she’s Joni. So I could see why for may people this could be here greatest album — no doubt about it being a 5 for me.

I have a playlist called “remedial hip hop” where I try to collect all the gems I missed over the years due to internalized boundaries of genre and race. When I heard this album, I enjoyed it enough to put the title track on the list. And there was a friendly funkiness I enjoyed across all the tracks. But at the same time, I’ve heard enough hip hop at this point that the critiques of the album expressed by other reviewers hit home. It does kind of feel like your friend who everyone said would be the next Lauryn Hill… you can still like them even if that didn’t turn out to be true. That’s kind of how I felt about this… enjoyable but not life-changing

This was fun, especially some of the instrumentation, but nothing about it really stayed with me.

It feels wrong that I'm about to give three stars to The Temptations, but I'm afraid that's how I feel about this one. The turn toward a funkier sound is brilliant, and the tracks that actually sound that way are really enjoyable. But much of the record is in the 60s Motown style... timeless when applied to the right material, but nothing particularly inspiring here. I suppose it's an album that matters more as a sign of where the group (and the whole culture) were heading, but I don't think it's one I'll return to for a complete listen.

This project is making me into a Talking Heads fan for sure. I knew them from their hits and once dove into More Songs About Buildings and Food, so I knew I liked the deep tracks there. Buy this is also quite enjoyable to me as a whole. Love the jangle pop turn on “Heaven” … “Life During Wartime” has long been a fav and sadly seems more relevant than ever.

Even though I enjoy going to shows, I’ve never really gotten live albums. This famous one is no exception… it seems like everyone was having a really good time, but I don’t really understand what’s special or different about it.

When I first started getting into Dylan, I picked up CDs pretty indiscriminately, including a lot of the newly available bootlegs and live stuff at the time. I found it all pretty distracting while I was still trying to get to know the core material, so I've got a chip on my shoulder about a lot of this stuff. At some point I just don't care about how Bobby messed around with the songs on any particular day. However, this recording represents such a specific moment in history and such a pivotal transition that I was fascinated by it. I love that he did an acoustic set and an electric set and how much it pissed people off. I love the messy mix of material from Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde. It's the rare live album I could actually imagine returning to with some regularity.

Love Iggy, love The Stooges. They sound more like my platonic ideal of punk than the Ramones or the Sex Pistols. "Search and Destroy" is one of my go-to tracks from them but I've listened to this album less than the first two. I love how much of The Doors I hear in it plus James Williamson's guitar. Always leaves me happy and energized. Why not give it five stars? It's honestly just because I feel self-conscious of how many fives I've given out so far! We'll see how that holds up as the project proceeds.

I read that this album was conceived as a kind of palate cleanser after Pop and the PopMart tour. That's the era in which I first became aware of U2 and I think it permanently damaged my ability to hear them clearly... there's something off-putting about claiming to be the biggest band in the world, even if it's all with a wink. Anyway, the album strikes me as pleasant but not much more. I know the big U2 albums are yet to come and I feel like I'll dig in deeper then.

I enjoy Pulp's overall sound and Jarvis Cocker's talk-sing style, but I ended up liking this album less than I had hoped. "The Fear" is solid... the British seem to keep finding new ways to explore modern listlessness, and I'm here for it all. But I found myself kind of lost in the later tracks. Like a lot of these 90s albums, it seems a little too long and unfocused. I would probably give it 3.5 if that were an option, but for today it's just a 3. I wouldn't be surprised if I return to it later and feel differently.

I feel surprisingly won over by this album. I had always thought of Sting and the Police as kind of corny, perhaps because of their hits or their representation in pop culture. Or rhyming “cough” with “Nabokov.” But my mind grew more open when I found “Synchronicity” in my father-in-law’s CD collection after he died. This was a guy of broad but cultivated taste, and over the years he only held onto the books, albums, and movies he truly loved. He knew more about poetry than anyone I’ve ever met. I wish I knew what he had heard in this album. So I listened to the album with his ears and I heard the poetry in it, the references to everything from dinosaurs to Paul Bowles. I feel intrigued rather then creeped out by “I’ll Be Watching You” and “Murder By Number.” And of course there’s “King of Pain,” which to me always transcended whatever ideas I might have had about the group. So it’s a five, maybe the most surprising five I’ve given so far, even if it may have been obvious to many other people.

I started trying to get into jazz as a teenager and I’m not sure I’ve ever quite succeeded. But I never had trouble getting into Monk. His unique takes on time, melody, and harmony always get into my soul as surely as Radiohead does. Returning to this album I think my favorite was “Pannonica” but I’m always up for “Bemsha Swing.” I actually heard it the first time in this Medeski Martin and Wood medley with “Lively Up Yourself” which is just fun: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=75Ma7X2-Pfw Anyway this music puts me in such a state of bliss that I wonder how I give fives to anything below that standard. But I seem to like everything, so on to the next.

Not for me. I enjoy some metal and find some incredibly dull. What makes this a 2 rather than a 1 for me is that I can catch glimpses of where it influenced later bands I like. But it felt like every time I encountered a moment I liked it was quickly overwhelmed by an obnoxious vocal or a repetitive riff or incoherent lyrics. It’s sort of the opposite experience of listening to Metallica… they have their annoying moments but they seem small in comparison to their overall spirit. I just didn’t hear that kind of soul in this music, tho some I guess a few moments showed me why people might.

My dad went through a Celtic music phase when I was a kid, so it’s entirely possible that I’ve heard this before and didn’t realize it. I remember a lot of Dad’s stuff seeming a little stiff at the time, yet it left me with the sense that this kind of music (and really any kind of return to a folks music tradition) was a good thing, so I’ve gone down lots of those roads as an adult. Anyway, this seems like a pleasant meander through the tradition, a nice middle way between bands like The Chieftains and Dropkick Murphys, neither of which I could ever quite love. I’m not sure I’m in love with these fellas either but I enjoyed how organic and eclectic it felt, like a really skilled group sitting down in a pub and just playing whatever came into their heads. That sometimes left me scratching my head but mostly made me look forward to whatever came next.

I honestly don't think I can explain why I wasn't into this... I've had the same experience with Nick Cave before. I look at all the pieces and think that it ought to be music I really like, but I end up sort of listless about it all. Sorry I don't have anything more profound for what is clearly an impactful album for many people!

I picked up this album not long after I first heard Mermaid Avenue. I felt happy to get to know Billy Bragg better, but it didn't change my life. I hate to say that decades later I feel about the same. Solid songwriting and I couldn't agree more with his politics, but it also feels like it's missing some vital component that makes me fall in love with an album. The weird thing is that I know Bragg can do it, because I do feel that way about Mermaid Avenue and some of his other songs. So altogether even though I am happy to see my old friend Billy, I'm also a little surprised to see this album on the list.

One of those albums where you wonder how anyone in the world dislikes it. The band and her voice are perfectly calibrated. The sound is so warm that you feel like you are right there. She's one of those performers like Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell where you can tease out a subject to any given song, but mostly all the songs are just what it's like to be inside this particular person's head. Or more like heart for Janis. As with the Jimi albums, I just wish there was more.

Conflicted about this one... wish I could do 3.5. I love the Replacements’ overall sound, how they occupy this particular intersection between punk and indie and jangle pop. I can hear their influence in so many bands I like. But I’m not sure there was a particular moment on this album that wowed me. When it was done I found myself humming their later singles like “Alex Chilton.” At the same time, I keep replaying the album looking for that moment and never stopped enjoying it. So I think I’ll give them the four in the end and play it one more time.

Album 66 - Neil Young - Harvest - 5/5 “Dream up, dream up, let me fill your cup / With the promise of a man” But only the promise.  In my first semester in college, my dad told me he wanted to meet up with his old roommate in Chicago and see Bob Dylan. He had four tickets and wanted to know if I could come and bring a friend. Of course, I said, but my own roommate was busy and I didn’t know anybody else yet. So I e-mailed the dorm listserv and asked if anyone wanted to go see Robert Zimmerman. A couple of guys caught the reference and I ended up having them draw straws for it.  Afterwards we sat around drinking and talked about Dylan — his many eras, his epic genius. Somehow Neil Young became a point of comparison… someone said that as much as he loved Neil Young, he could fit all his favorite Neil songs onto a single CD, but he could never do that with Dylan. It all seems a pretty blinkered way of viewing art, but we were also just kids sizing each other up.  With a more mature mindset, though, I can say:  Dylan never made anything like Harvest.  Don’t get me wrong, he’s my idol. It ended up being a great show. He had a killer band that went on extended jams. He covered Warren Zevon and the Stones. But I also remember seeing my dad’s awkward interactions with his old roommate that night and finally realizing that he had no friends. From then on his life would be increasingly characterized by confusion and decline. There are days I would hate him and there were days when he was too disconnected from reality to hate.  Even though it sounds smooth as a pristine pond, Harvest speaks to that kind of desperation, which i think Neil Young must have carried with him his whole life. Each song is almost a life story but not quite. Needles, words, a maid, a heart of gold — what does any of it mean? Even “Alabama” is not quite a protest song in comparison to “Ohio.” Harvest doesn’t quite make sense and doesn’t ask you to make sense of it, just listen.  In counterpoint to that room full of Dylanologists in college was a late-night ride with a spindly girl. She lived in our dorm but nobody really knew her or would say anything about her. My friend said she looked like a lost yearling. But somehow I ended up in her pickup truck in a drive to perform some errand in the suburbs. We sang along to “Harvest” the whole way. After “Old Man” she said “that song is everything.” I wondered if she would become a significant person in my life after that but I think I only saw her a few times ever again.  “Old Man” is everything but is by the same token incomplete. The patriarch yields to no particular interpretation or thesis. But I would say this — a writer I like noted that some song lyrics lie through their very composition. “I Walk the Line” is a lie. “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” is a lie. If you’re so certain, fellas, then why put so much effort into the song? And “doesn’t mean that much to me to mean that much to you” is most certainly a lie.  Many years later my dad ended up in my care. And also in my car, a lot. After a certain age I realized he didn’t care that much about anything I had to say. Plus he was in the middle stages of dementia by then anyway — he regularly insisted we all said he was “demented.” When we would drive around the city for his fairly pointless medical appointments he would repeat phrases off of billboards and say things like “Didn’t we go there with your mother once?” Hell if I know. So it made more sense to play music, typically albums I’d gotten to know from his own collection. When I put on “Harvest” one day, I knew “Old Man” would be waiting and decided consequences be damned. But when we got there I saw him off in his own world, mouthing the words, telling his own story. Dad exposed me to so much good music but I’m not sure we ever had an honest conversation about any of it, much less what it might mean for him and me.  He died not long after, passing a few minutes after visiting hours ended one night. I’ve made my peace about it all. I was lucky enough to have a father-in-law with whom I could  discuss every steel guitar note if we pleased; he also grew up without much of a dad and knew not to make too big a deal of it.  And now I have my sons and I get to make up my own story. I pushed the baby around today in the stroller, talking in a stream of consciousness as I always do. Exposure to language is good. I told him about this album and what a harvest is. Completion and finality. A bounty and a scythe. A promise fulfilled but only through a degree of destruction. He’s young enough that I don’t have to fill in the gaps and I’m old enough that I have no desire to. “Old man take a look at my life, I’m a lot like you.” It’s any old man and young man, any father and son. It invites YOU to finish it. And by the time he’s 24 I’ll probably still be trying.

The Zombies! Yeah! When you are a Beatles devotee, like I’m sure many of us are, it can be a relief to encounter other British Invasion bands, like picking up a novel after studying scripture. You see other possibilities, even if some of them seem incomplete. In this album you’ve got the psychedelia and the organ and the haunting harmonies — all stuff I expected from what I already knew. But there’s also a songwriting style that’s surprisingly contemporary on the tracks I hadn’t heard before. There were times when I thought I was hearing a group that grew up listening to Belle and Sebastian playing in a throwback style. Exactly what I wanted but also different from what I expected. Also I’ve been listening to “Time of the Season” my whole life and I still can’t decide if it’s more sexy or spooky, and I’m just fine with that.

’ve tried several times to get into Nick Cave and it has never quite worked. It’s weird because the musical style and the stories in his songs should fit me to a tee. Anyway, this one finally worked for me, and I was enthralled by the darkness and the violence the whole way. Maybe it’s because I had “Straight to You” as an anchor. I know I have heard it before but did not expect to encounter it here, so perhaps it was a cover. Went back to it and listened a couple times between trips through the album. I also know and love “Into My Arms” from a movie soundtrack… both of them most certainly my kind of semi-bleak but utterly devoted love song. Maybe I’ll end up a fan after all!

I’m beginning this project while also beginning the project of trying to be a Buddhist. A lot of that requires letting go of assumptions and just being in the moment. So I tried to let go of whatever feelings I have about Lorde, her debut album, and the choice of this one for the book over that. What I heard was a smart pop artist in the vein of those I love now (St. Vincent, Caroline Polachek) and those from the past (Kate Bush). There’s danceable stuff, dark stuff, a great mix. And she doesn’t particularly sound like someone trying to be anything but herself, which is all I want for her after her early stardom. Guess I let that slip in there, but I hope that’s what I’d want for anyone.

I get it but I don’t get it. I heard moments in this that I liked, and I could see how the production may have influenced dozens of artists I enjoy. But it mostly felt kind of aimless, like a collection of deep cut Dylan songs someone was playing slowed down with weird instrumentation. I did like “Grey/Afro” though… wish the whole album sounded like that.

I remember sitting with a friend a while back who walked me through the whole taxonomy of metal and I could barely keep up. But I feel certain that iron maiden is the kind that I like. Musically soaring but not pretentious. Theatrical but also funny about it. Killer riffs that don’t take over the whole song. Hard as hell, but I can still understand the lyrics. That is how I have felt about these guys whenever I have encountered them, but I had not listened to this album before. I gathered between a four and a five but I think I’m going with a four in the end because aspects of their sound still seem unfinished. It’s tough though because those elements that feel less totally metal than their later albums are also a part of the charm. It is definitely an album I will put on again.

After decades of neglecting hip hop, i started with this album a few years back. I’m still not educated enough to explain why, but you can feel from the first moment that it’s a masterpiece — the perfect combination of cool and calculating with pulsating, dynamic, and alive. Returning to it this time I felt how much I jazz is in it… made it harder than the first time to pick a favorite track and so I just go back to the beginning and start again.

First album I’ve gotten that genuinely made me say “what the heck is this noise?” Yes, along the way I could hear echoes of plenty of other bands I like with a “noise” sound from Fugazi to Deftones to White Stripes, but not to the point that I could find my way through this more abstracted form. Maybe if I really studied it I could discover more, but not today.

“I can’t believe the news today Oh I can’t close my eyes and make it go away How long, how long must we sing this song?” I’m not a huge U2 fan - I get on a kick where I play their hits or The Joshua Tree about once a year. I had never listened to this album. But this is the U2 I am here for — still raw and morally urgent. And particularly poignant as we in America face our own Troubles.

This is pure 80s comfort food for me, but every time I hear it I also wonder if it is anything more than comfort food. I love every track as well as the production… critiques of commercialism be damned, everyone needs a “Let’s Dance.” But unlike that album or other Gabriel tracks, there isn’t a moment that turns me inside out and make me wonder what life is all about. Some days that’s okay though. It’s a particularly good time for “Don’t Give Up” with our good friend Kate.

Guys, I don’t know what it is about these live albums. This one had everything going for it yet somehow I felt less musically educated by the end. I think it had to be something about the form itself. It’s almost a kind of pornography to me, a genre that promises intimacy but in the end just reminds you of an experience you aren’t actually having. I don’t want to hear other people root for an encore fifty years ago. The one love album I’ve gotten that I could relate with to was the Dylan “Royal Albert Hall” one, but that’s because I processed it as the historian I once aspired to be. For the rest I just feel like answering “no opinion.” It all gets me a little down, looking forward to what’s next.

The generator god is mocking me, since I just complained about how live albums feel unsatisfying. And “God loves those whom he corrects” … I was actually kind of into this one, possibly because my expectations were so low. I knew next to nothing about the band… my impressions would have been “older British metal band with a stupid umlaut.” But I found the sound surprisingly engaging. Reading on their Wikipedia page, they say they never exactly thought of themselves as a metal band, but a rock and roll band that fit in well with their contemporary punk cousins. And that’s exactly what I hear, a bunch of guys having fun drawing on elements of all three genres while also celebrating the ace of spades. I’ll be curious to see if I like the studio version more or less than this.

This is the first album I’ve encountered here that actually made me angry. I recently noticed that Rihanna is not in the book, which has led me to say about every album I encounter, “Do people really need to hear this before they die more than they need to hear Rihanna?” My wife said, “I didn’t know you were such a big Rihanna fan” but the point is that I’m not — she’s just an example of a very popular artist with some interesting things to say who is emblematic of a certain time AND is not in the book. So why is Woodface here and not Rihanna? I couldn’t find anything in the sound. It’s a kind of warm jangle pop I usually enjoy but there are a dozen other bands that do the same thing. Is it the songwriting? Nope, I didn’t hear anything particularly original. Is it emblematic of a certain time in music history? If so, not in any way I understand… you could just have plausibly included Dave Matthews or Letters to Cleo or the Gin Blossoms or Third Eye Blind or any number of reasonably pleasant bands that broke through on 90s radio. I can see from reviews that some people love it and I hate to yuck anyone’s yum, but I honestly feel there are so many better choices.

It might sound silly, but this is a sort of sacred music to me, even though I never owned the album or anything by them. When I was 17, this was my girlfriend’s music. I pretended to like metal and she pretended to like Bob Dylan. Now we are married; I actually came to like metal and she DEFINITELY doesn’t like Dylan. I didn’t know it when this was in the air in 2000, but I was in the process of becoming part of her family as my own family fell apart… before too long, both my parents would divorce another set of stepparents, with more relationships abandoned and shattered. They both died alone. Meanwhile I became more and more like an adopted kid at girlfriend’s house, forming my own relationships with her mom and dad and all her siblings. I remember all of us sitting together and crying after 9/11. She was a middle child and by the time we were together her tastes were being shaped from the older and the younger siblings. Her older brother brought the Metallica and Zeppelin… her younger brother brought Linkin Park and Fall Out Boy. That wonderful kid died unexpectedly of a chronic condition when he was 21. So for us his music especially is a sort of portal not just to when we were all together, but also to the pre-9/11 time when the world order didn’t not seem quite so savage. Yes, it’s all pretty angsty depressing music but it also came from a world where teenagers could get depressed about relatively normal things as opposed to society falling apart at the seams. No, it’s not a 5 album to me and I don’t listen to it that often. I get the various ways in which it is overproduced and corny. However, I think folks also sell it short by judging it against youmuch more accomplished metal. I think it makes more sense to view Linkin Park as an emo band incorporating metal, hip hop, pop, and electronica as it suited them. That’s the side of them that still appeals to me, anyway, when I go back and listen to them. It’s all a little overwrought, a little over dramatic, and for some moments it’s exactly right.

Conflicted about this one. Love the Byrds, love their sound, love the influence they had on so many others. Yet I’ve always found myself a little lost in their albums and rhe same is true here. Couldn’t quite find anything that made me say, “Heck yes, so glad to listen to this song at this very moment.” Putting it down as a 3, expect I’ll rate other albums of theirs higher.

Just so happy listening to this tonight, thinking about how it influenced so much of the music I love today but how it also stands on its own. If I didn’t know what I was listening to I might imagine that it is dream pop from today with 80s throwback elements. But there they were, imagining this kind of sound before I was even born. I’ll admit I hesitated about the 5 because I’m not sure it affects me as deeply as, say, Beach House… but certain moments certainly do, and this is my first listen to the entire album. Anyway, giving it all five stars because I feel like I am truly in these folks’ debt because of their influence.

A friend and I once took a trip up the Pacific coast and played lots of our favorite music. When we got to Led Zeppelin IV, I asked what he thought the worst track was. We reluctantly concluded that it's "Misty Mountain Hop" ... reluctant because we both loved the Middle-Earthy side of LZ, but it just doesn't have the same soul as the other tracks. I had never heard Jethro Tull before this (except maybe "Aqualung" ... I certainly knew that riff). But I kind of had the same feeling I had on that car ride... dang, I want to like this as much as everything else in its category, but I just don't. It sort of feels like the kind of rock and roll you would grow if "Misty Mountain Hop" was your stem cell. Maybe an interesting experiment, but not the one I would perform. Anyway, I'm down with flutes and prog and social commentary, but it just didn't come together for me in a way I relate to. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who have "Misty Mountain Top" as a favorite song and this as a favorite album, and power to them...

Based on my prior ideas about Suzanne Vega, I expected to rate this a 4 or even a 3. I liked her pretty well and put on her greatest hits about once a year, but also kind of slotted her into the category of music made by people who listen to NPR for people who listen to NPR. Which is me of course, but I also expected it to be sort of cerebral and narrow in the way NPR can be. Nope, she fooled me. When you pay closer attention, her lyrics are dark and savage, yet still delivered in that relatively narrow range. It disarms you. I had heard an undertone of menace before in her more popular songs like “Tom’s Diner,” and obviously “Luka” has its sublimated violence. But sit with this long enough and you realize you are listening to a poet who takes no prisoners in her portraits of others and herself. I have to give the self-titled a 5 for convincing me she is a dark genius and deciding to check out all her work. There may be a longer essay in me somewhere about the sound and the lyrics and where they fit into my impressionistic history of folk music. I don’t have the energy to make the whole case tonight, but I feel like her sound is a sort of yin companion to the yang of Paul Simon. Paul Simon adopted various sounds after S&G but they all make you feel positive about most anything, even if it’s whatever the hell happened to Julio down by the schoolyard. Suzanne Vega also has this quasi-commercial 80s folk sound, but she somehow twists it in a way that everything she says is a little bit unsettling, even though it sounds perfectly lovely. It’s how I felt the first time I heard “Tom’s Diner” without the dance beats… you think, “Oh, maybe this isn’t the cheerful slice of life that I thought.” I think so many of her songs here do that, even though by all accounts she’s a perfectly lovely human.

As a child of the 80s raised on 60s pop, I never quite knew which story to believe about the Monkees. And I’m not sure I really care, I like the songs. Yes they are Beatles imitators but 1) aren’t we all and 2) at their best, they are a bit more relaxed than the Beatles, letting out a different side of the sound. This album is just a 3 for me because I don’t hear anything absolutely essential in it, but I enjoy it nevertheless.

This band was ubiquitous when I was in college so I come in with a bit of a chip on my shoulder against them, a feeling that I've heard it all before. And the same goes for their lyrical themes... suburban alienation in the 2000s, I lived it, man! But actually listening to this as a complete album won me over a bit. "Keep the Car Running" captures the Springsteen dimension of the band well, "No Cars Go" feels like a fragment remembered from a dream amped up to 11, and I was weirdly affected by "Windowsill" ... even though it has just the same themes I said I was tired of, I felt like I heard them in a new way, sort of the same way I feel listening to Phoebe Bridgers. Anyway, I'm not ready to give this one a 5, but it makes me think it might be time for me to admit how good Arcade Fire actually is a decade or more too late. Inevitably I'll listen to some of their other albums over the next few days. Side note: Weirdly, the only album from them I really got into when it came out was "Reflektor." Maybe because of the Bowie cameo? More Régine Chassagne? Pretending to be a different band?

To me this is weirdly a kind of anti-album. I know all the songs, love many of them, and appreciate the sound when it wanders into my life. But I almost never play the album, nor do I see it as one I’ll share with my kids one day (whereas I’ve already found moments where I’ve decided it’s time for them to bear Help! or Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots). It’s not just that I like other Paul Simon records more… it’s something about how when you put the 80s pop Africana sound at album scale, it becomes more grating. The accusations of appropriation become more salient, even though I’ve never known what to think about all that. So it’s a 4 for Paul and Ladysmith Black Mambazo and a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires, but not so much for Graceland.

I have an endless appetite for Frank Black’s weirdness, so I don’t mind that this is a double album. I appreciate the way it takes Los Angeles/Hollywood/California as its backdrop without letting it dominate the album… “Calistan” and “Ole Mulholland” in particular make you think about the crazy and beautiful Golden State. “Pixies go to the beach” is an apt descriptor, though it doesn’t quite reach the transcendent madness of the best Pixies albums. “Used to be sixteen lanes / Used to be Nuevo Spain / Used to be Juan Wayne / Used to be Mexico / Used to be Navajo / Used to be yippy-ay-i-I don’t know”

It’s interesting going through this list as a hip hop novice. I’m familiar with stuff played on the radio and a few big names, but can feel totally lost when I encounter something off the beaten path. That was definitely the case with this — had zero knowledge of Kool Keith or any of his many pseudonyms. Musically, it instantly worked for me… trip hop is the most natural connection between hip hop and the music I like best. Loved the jazz foundation. Loved the spooky sci-fi sounds and samples. The lyrics were definitely a shock having no idea what I was heading into. I’m used to gangsta rap braggadocio but wasn’t quite sure what to make of dinosaur farts and violating medical exams and Donald Duck giving head amidst the more accessible sci fi and horror tropes. Honestly I was a little disturbed that I was so into it. I think it all worked for me because once upon a time I was a historian of medicine, so I know that the vast power we give to doctors is pretty contingent. Right below the surface are all the weird mad scientist tropes and the juvenile violence of cutting people open just to see what’s inside. I like that true character of Dr. Octagkn blows all those subtle distinctions apart. Yeah, asometimes it’s silly or a little sick. And agree with everyone who says most rap albums of this era could be shorter. But I also appreciate that this era allowed for stuff that got sooo weird.

It’s easy to dismiss this as just “pop” Beatles or the distilled essence of Beatlemania. But at some point I realized that every element that makes up the later more adventurous Beatles albums is there in the early ones, and sometimes even in a purer form. This time I noticed it in a kind of dark wistfulness of the ballads, best exemplified by Paul's "Things We Said Today." Paul's ruminations temper some of the violence of John’s lyrics, which I always notice and try to look past. Both must have been necessary to make Lennon-McCartney. How might it have looked if the darkness was the centerpiece of the album? Here’s a hint. Listen to Dylan singing “Things We Said Today” in 2017: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YV2k-GAfT0w I bet he knew how dark it was in 1964. I read elsewhere that he first thought the countdown at the beginning of "I Saw Her Standing There" was "One two three fuck" which is an incredibly punk rock thing to think at the time. Now imagine the album is called THINGS WE SAID and it’s all about the gap between public image and immediate desires. The Beatles were very much dealing with that at the time. For an appropriate core sample see this laudable collection or anecdotes involving Paul’s girlfriend Jane Asher: https://withthebeatlesgirls.tumblr.com/post/629985790874746880/pauljane-excerpts-within-the-context-of-beatles/amp Before Yoko, before LSD, John is trying to get Paul’s girlfriend to talk about masturbation very much against her will. Paul says “You can’t do that!” So perhaps that song, always heard as a possessive boyfriend, is actually John's memory of Paul reining him in. Certainly the song isn't just about cheating, but the IMAGE of cheating. "Everybody's green / 'cause I'm the one who won your love / But if they'd seen / You're talking that way they'd laugh in my face." Don't think this is about the girl, John -- and aren't you married? The next line in "You Can't Do That" is "Please listen to me if you wanna stay mine." IF.  And IF does even more work in "If I Fell." An incredibly beautiful song in melody and harmony, one I sing when I'm rocking my kid trying to get him back to sleep, but doing that also makes you realize how weird the lyrics are. The conclusion of the song is about making a former lover cry out of jealousy, presenting this new love as an act of revenge -- red flag much? But also the entire thing is happening in the singer's head because of "If." And he isn't in love with her -- he is contemplating what it MIGHT be like if he fell in love with her. To be clear I'm not trying to ruin anyone's rah-rah Beatles experience -- these songs are all the more profound for all this emotional turmoil and subtlety. I'm just trying to argue that they aren't straight up love songs, they're the lads seriously struggling with themselves and their relationships with others. In that context, the happy songs hit different. In "When I Get Home" could be John rehearsing the talk he needs to give his main chick while he's still with his side chick. "Can't Buy Me Love" is a pleading negotiation. "A Hard Day's Night" offers the usual patriarchal transaction -- I work so hard that you should "give me everything." Do I even need to explain that "I'll Be Back" is a threat? What exactly is the emotional tenor of "You could find better things to do than to break my heart again" ... because I think it's just devastating. But it's something peppy, something happy, something up-tempo, something snappy, as Tom Hanks says in "That Thing You Do." There's nothing dark to see here, no contradictions, nothing to make you want to cry "Help!"

Perhaps a 3.5 upgraded to 4 by nostalgia. When we had Sirius satellite radio, my default station was Lithium, the 90s alternative station. They used to have an ad that said, “If Nirvana hadn’t written the song Lithium, what would we have called this station? Rooster?” Followed by a short clip of a tortured vocal from the Alice in Chains song. That’s pretty much how I’ve always thought of Alice in Chains, as a kind of backup to the grunge acts of my youth. My wife confirmed it when I showed her I had Dirt this morning and asked what I thought of them. “Those are the kinda good songs they play between the really good songs,” she said. So I tried to explore them here as more than 90s grunge radio filler. And I found a lot to like. I agree with many reviewers here that the first three songs are a great series of riffs, maybe more metal than the stuff I knew from the radio. And I definitely enjoyed running through the hits again, especially “Down in a Hole.” But overall I don’t know that it changed my mind about these guys so much. I love the sound but am only so-so on the songwriting, particularly because it stays in such a narrow emotional range. I think music can be dark, heavy, brooding, Gothic, whatever, but still give you some room to breathe, and I did not feel that way by the time I got to “Would?”

Definitely my kind of music, absolutely influential on music I listen to today, but I’m less certain it’s an album I would actually play on any given day. There are certainly moments where I thought, “Great, this is 90s techno made ahead of its time in the 80s, but do I really want to listen to 90s techno today?” At the same time, there are some songs that are just transcendent. They feel like minimalist classical compositions up there with John Cage and all those fellas. By the way, I shared the impression of many reviewers that Aphex Twin was dark stuff I would not look forward to, even though I knew he was cited as an influence by many of my favorite artists. Maybe that’s a consequence of the image he presents to the world… in any case that impression is gone now and I am eager to learn a lot more about him and his work.

Note: I started writing this as a 3/5 and then I remembered how much I love the bluegrass bits. And ending on “Both Sides Now.” This is the real country music. That was an article of faith at Dad’s house growing up and I won’t disavow it. The songs, the artists, the style — yes. Yet I’ve never actually liked the album as much as I’m supposed to. Ani DiFranco sang: “People used to make records / like the record of an event / the event of people making music in a room.” As a historical event, this album is a 5/5 no question. It turned minds back to the foundations of country music and inspired all sorts of new artists and sub-genres. And that was a really important thing to do when the Nashville Sound dominated and when folks got all their music through albums or the radio (which wouldn’t have been playing a lot of this stuff at the time). It’s like a seed ark for country sounds. But there are now so many different ways to encounter this music that I don’t think the album feels nearly as essential as it once did. You can easily listen to the original recordings of so many of these songs or you can listen to more innovative covers. You have the access to labels like Smithsonian Folkways that will help you better understand where all these sounds came from… and WITHOUT the artificial barrier between the races. And alt-country and roots music are alive and well. The seeds have sprouted and thrived. So it’s not a record I frequently put on or recommend. I guess I process it the same way I do most of the live albums in the book… I’m glad it happened, I appreciate it as a student of history, but I’m not likely to return to it all that often.

Love love love this funky shit