1001 Albums Summary

Great singles with lots of filler. The Greatest Hits is all you need from Roxy.

I never tire of listening to the Man In Black. One of life's good guys. Had a little weep along to some of the songs on this album.

The Louvre was a decent song and it did get better as it went on. It's vastly better than all the early 70s rock on this list... However, her style of emotive singing does get my goat from time to time. All a bit "6th form talent contest" for my liking. The number of support acts I've heard at small gigs aping Lorde's style ruins it a bit ...

Dear lord. Proof that the early 70s really was the low point for rock music. I hate everything about this album. I hate the twiddly guitars. I hate the trite lyrics. I hate the stadium rock aesthetic. I hate the haircuts. Punk couldn't come soon enough...

I know he'd only get 0.0001p per stream, but I'm not going to make this amoeba-brained Nazi moron even 0.0001p richer by playing his album online. I don't care how "classic" this album is, Kanye can do one.

If this was a white artist singing about whores, would it be alright? No, of course not! I don't care who recorded this misogynistic shit, it's NEVER alright in any context. I'm old enough to remember this coming out, and it wasn't acceptable then, so you can't say we didn't know any better at the time. No excuses. The actual music is/was cool. The lyrics are not. I don't care if they were meant to be ironic or funny or whatever. They really do encourage braincell-deficient men to treat women badly. NO EXCUSES!

Nice to hear this again after so many years. Still sounds great! Kurt always seemed to know where he'd come from and was so helpful to other artists he admired. I loved The Vaselines at the time, but they would have remained completely obscure without Nirvana's covers. I like to think that Kurt would have remained a decent guy if he'd lived. I genuinely can't imagine he'd be a MAGA numpty. A sad loss to music and humanity in general.

40 years old, but sounds like it could have been recorded right now. Side 2 drifted into wispy nothingness towards the end, but still worth a listen. Side 1, 5 stars.

Sorry, I can't separate the artist from the criminal. Whatever next, Gary Glitter? FFS.

Oof. Well, this album is in every "Best Ever" list that's ever been published and I'd never listened to it before, so I was looking forward to it. But, but... it's an unlistenable, jazzy dirge. It's basically one very long song with few tempo changes and Marvin whinging about the state of the world. It has the dullest backing track imaginable. Goes on a bit.

Expected tuneless caterwauling and was not disappointed. Although, to be fair to the lads, Bodysnatchers is a rocking tune (never thought I'd say that about Radiohead...). The rest of this album just cements my opinion of Radiohead as pretentious, irritating, overrated guff.

Before listening to Nilsson Schmilsson, I'd only knowingly heard two of his songs before: Everybody's Talkin', which is a nailed-on all-time classic, and Without You, a maudlin staple of FM hits radio. Disappointed to see that Everybody's Talkin' wasn't on this album. It turns out that his two best-known songs were both covers! Upon closer inspection, it appears that Coconut was a Nilsson song when I thought it must have been a cover of an old calypso classic. Apparently not! Cultural appropriation it might be, but it's a tune nonetheless. The cover of Let the Good Times Roll is irredeemably bad though. Enjoyed the drum solo during Jump Into the Fire, although the first half of that song is horrible 70s rock. Clearly a talented songwriter, but this is not an album I'll ever listen to again. No regrets on hearing it once though.

Mellow. Relaxed. Lovely!

A very odd choice to be Husker Du's sole representative on this list. Makes me wonder if the compilers know the rest of their catalogue, or is it here because they "should be represented" and it took critics so long to catch onto them that they chose their sub-par swansong. A double album which would have been an incredible single album if they'd stopped halfway through. It could have reached Flip Your Wig levels of perfection. That good! It's not even their best double album though. That's the endlessly inventive Zen Arcade. Not even close! Giving 5 stars to the band that invented 90s rock in the mid-80s as I know they won't appear again (and yet there are five Steely Dan LPs on this list...shows you can't trust critics...).

Perfect pop album! One of the two vinyl albums I bought on the same day from Woolworths as a 14-year-old. My first of X-thousand over the years and still one of the best! Perfect pop from the opening chord (telephone bell...) to the final fade-out. Every song a winner. The other record I bought with my pocket money that day was Love Bites by Buzzcocks, which I've probably played more times over the years. Sod it, going to play that one now and pretend I'm fourteen again...

My friend Goo knows a thing or two. She knows that rock music radio had gone stale in the mid-80s. She knows that if you tune your guitars differently, you can invent a new sound. She knows that if you have a strong female singer that takes no shit from the male-dominated biz, you can start to change attitudes. She knows that you won't get heard without big record label money. She knows you have to have killer tunes. Such an important band. This was their breakthrough album. Sonic Youth for the win.

An album of foot stomping bangers. Except three songs. Loses a star for having filler. In my own personal Top 1089 Albums of All Time, Ziggy would scrape in at number 846. Not as good as The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Veronica Falls or Young Marble Giants. Soz.

Plodding early 70s dreariness. Its place in the rock canon says more about which generation the (overwhelmingly white, male, American, no doubt...) critics belonged to than the quality of the music. My first Neil Young album with many more to come. Sigh...

Tom and Jerry jazz with Spike the dog singing. Absolutely dreadful.

If I had a karaoke machine with Bon Jovi on it, I would smash it into tiny pieces rather than sing along to this vapid shite.

When the weekly music papers died around the turn of the century, we turned to Pitchfork for our opinions on the day's music scene. They were often far up themselves with misguided promotion of new-prog nonsense like Animal Collective, but they got it right with Arcade Fire. This album is just beautiful. There are great tunes to leaven some of the Pitchfork-friendly pretentiousness, which sets them far apart from most of their contemporaries. A stunning debut album which they will never better because it's impossible to do so.

I'd never heard this before, but I knew all the songs. If I'd been old enough to buy this on the day it came out, would I have been impressed? Probably! Has it aged well? Mostly! Bravo to those talented moptops!

Excellent, just what I needed on a filthy December Monday having fought through the traffic to do my menial office job for about half of what I should be paid... An album made by millionaires jacked up on Class As sitting around in their mansions writing half-arsed songs about their cocaine addictions... Whoopy-do. The Stones should have disbanded at the same time as The Beatles and saved us all from having to listen to this dreck.

I thought I was going to hate this. After all, metal gets on my nerves big time. But, no! After some of my recent albums on here, this was upbeat and refreshing. At least it has some oomph!

I know someone who knows Kate Bush quite well. Apparently, she's the loveliest person in music, very down to earth and "normal". I'd love to share a pot of tea and a couple of seed cakes with her. As for this album, I was right in the mood for it. Hit the spot! Kate sprinkled the fairy dust throughout the album. Ethereal and a little magical.

Well, I wasn't sure whether I loved or hated this album until the cover of Memphis Tennessee came on and I remembered that there are NO Chuck Berry albums on this list! Chuck did that song so much better... Apparently Buck was a huge influence on Dwight Yoakam. And I'm supposed to be impressed?!

Football commentator Jonathan Pearce loves this album apparently. Does he have good taste in music or is this just one of those albums that had hundreds of thousands thrown at it by the record company and became popular because it was unavoidable? Right, so she has a great voice - she can both sing and rap with equal aplomb. But like a lot of modern R&B records, it has the sort of production that smooths out all the rough edges. It's AOR for the 21st century. As a rule, inoffensive = popular, unfortunately. There's a great record in there somewhere, but it feels sanded down. I like to catch a splinter or two off of the music I listen to. Also, wayyy too long!

Whilst I enjoyed this album, I can't help but think that its inclusion is entirely down to the Julian Casablancas link. I have a few African albums in my collection, but there's no way I'm an expert on the music of the continent just because I know who King Sunny Ade is. If there was a separate 1001 African Albums list, I'd like to see it, but it would have to be compiled by people that know and love the subject. In the meantime, the dozen or so albums in this list that aren't from the Anglosphere feel a little tokenistic, however great they are.

My heart sinks every time I see the years 1971 and 1972 appear on here as the albums are invariably rammed full of pretentious noodling from drug-addled hippy goons (99% blokes). Well, thank goodness for Marc Bolan, someone who understood that life needs more than noodling. At a time when every other critical darling was so far up their own rectum, Marc remembered that the milkman needed something to whistle on his morning round. So yes, there is a fair amount of pretentiousness going on here, hence the 3 star rating, but there are also some banging tunes. No idea what Jeepster is about, but what an absolute belter it is! Bolan and Bowie are just about all you need from this era. Everyone else can get in the sea, quite frankly.

A lot of screaming on here. I presume they were screaming to be let out? Strong "little people of Stone'enge" vibes going on. I've heard better live performances from third on the bill bands at my local pub.

Um, well this sounds just like the music my grandad played on a Sunday morning in the 1970s. As he grew up in one of the poorer parts of London before joining the navy and fighting in the war, I think he related to the stories told in country music about hardship and loss. And they are good stories, well related by the talented Dolly. I don't especially connect with these songs myself, but I do appreciate the skill and craft that went into making them. My grandad didn't necessarily have the coolest taste in music, but his C&W collection was infinitely preferable to my uncle's Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull albums, which scarred me for life 😬 I miss my grandparents and their tasty Sunday dinners...

Am I the baddie? Everyone else seems to like this tedious white man faux-blues dadrock. Saved from one-star oblivion because I know that Brothers In Arms, their other album on here, stinks to high heaven. At least this one wasn't made for MTV.

"Please hold the line. One of our operators will be with you shortly..."

Subtitled: A collection of Bowie b-sides and outtakes.

90s shoegaze done right! Even though they were moving away from pure effects-pedal-rock at this point... If you want to hear the Boos doing pure shoegaze, check out their first album, Ichabod and I, my personal favourite of theirs. Although their best song - Barney (... And Me) - is on this album. NME'S Album of the Year for 1993, which is why it's on this list. It loses a star for being 20 minutes too long, but then it was Peak CD Era when every other album was unnecessarily bloated.

1968; Three blokes down the pub: Let's bang out a load of covers (because we can't write our own songs). Let's play them all out of tune. Let's record them through a condenser microphone on a cheap tape recorder and release it as an album. Stoned Rolling Stone critics: This is incredible! So original! One of the all-time greats! Me in 2025: Get in the sea, lads. Absolutely unlistenable.

There is more than one version of this album, but it was no hardship listening to both! The version recorded in Jamaica is my preference. I have to admit that I prefer the older Wailers, produced by Lee Scratch Perry. The Marley albums created for American and European audiences feel a little watered down, not tuff enough, hence a one star reduction.

Being from the original punk generation, where The Clash's first album was Year Zero and everything that came before it needed sweeping away, I've always had a downer on Led Zep. One of those bands that the irritating, arrogant, know-it-all older kids at school all liked (see also: Rush, Yes and Genesis). Therefore, they must be shit. Hence, I've never listened to a Led Zep album before. But do you know what? I didn't hate this! There are some godawful tracks on here that deserve my punky disdain, but it's impossible to dislike Immigrant Song, Bron-yr-aur Stomp and Hats Off... (which is the best Robert Johnson pastiche I've ever heard apart from early White Stripes)! Overall, not terrible, although a lot of bands that copied them are.

I first heard Cities aged 14 on a local radio station's "alternative" show. I saved up my pocket money and bought Fear of Music. I was a weirdo then. I still am. Fuck the straight world with its boring music. I ain't got time for that now.

I was going to make a joke along the lines of "Call of the Poppadoms" or something similar, but then I actually listened to this... Absolutely lovely. If this is playing the next time I'm in my local Indian, I will be very happy indeed.

Perfect in every way, even though Phil Spector was a murdering scumbag.

Crispy, crunchy beats. Snap, crackle, bop! There's some terrific stuff on here - BOB, Gasoline Dreams, Ms Jackson... But, as others have said, it's just too long. Just because a CD has a 73 minute capacity, it doesn't mean you have to fill it to the brim. Loses a star for being 30 minutes too long.

I really, really wanted to like this, but it felt so bloated and self-indulgent. I wanted to sing along to some killer tunes whilst dancing my nuts off, but I can't imagine dancing to this, and there were no songs with catchy hooks. I really wanted to like this album, but it went nowhere and did nothing for me whatsoever until the last song, which was completely bonkers and saved the whole thing from being a single star letdown.

Flabbergasted that this band are on the list. Not because they're bad - quite the opposite! I've heard so many tedious classic rock albums from the early 1970s that I'd forgotten how great some of the underground bands of the early 2000s were. Americana, alt-country, call it what you like, but there were a few excellent artists updating the sounds of the American south-west around this time. Calexico and The Handsome Family were the two I listened to the most. Both still sound fresh to these jaded ears. Having said all that, this is my least favourite Calexico album. Typical! The Black Light and Hot Rail both enthuse me more than this one.

An overblown, pretentious, pompous, annoying, overrated turd of an album which goes on and on and on. And on. Wankstains on the silky sheet of classic rock.

Any album that includes Let's Go Crazy and When Doves Cry ain't going to be a one star record. However, I didn't hear much else on here to make me want to go back and listen again. That 80s electrofunk sound isn't for me.

Question: Is there a more perfect opening four albums than those by the Talking Heads? Answer: No! Possibly only equalled by contemporaries Echo and the Bunnymen. I brook no argument, sire 🧐

Started off by liking the rocking garagey stuff. Not so keen on the jazzy slowies. Nodded off halfway through.

The results are in from the juries all across Europe, and it appears as though Norway has scored nul points... Utter shite. Sounds like a punk band created by AI.

There's a fine line between loveliness and tedium when you produce an album full of long, slow songs. The Cure mostly fall on the right side of that line on Disintegration.

What a difference a decade makes! To think that this was the popular sound of 1955 and then compare to the music of 1965! The Beatles, Stones and Motown still sound reasonably modern. This feels like music from a different century. Even just two years later, the first Chuck Berry album came out, which might as well have come from a different planet... I appreciate the quality of the voice and musicianship, but oof, this sounds as ancient as the pyramids!

Oh dear, this band ticks every single box in my List of Irritations: Up Their Own Backsides-Faux-Cleverness, Dad Rock Smoothness, Unnecessary Jazz Syndrome, Smug Punchable Faces... The band that invented FM Rock, FFS. They even managed to annoy me with the novelty tune about East St Louis Street. I love novelty tunes done well with some affection for whatever is being lampooned, but I felt as though they were laughing AT Duke Ellington's composition, not laughing along WITH the country's musical heritage. An insufferable album from a pair of insufferable beardy twats.

The band that named themselves after a steam-powered dildo. Honestly, I'd rather spend 40 minutes being dry-rogered by a strap-on steaming hot dildo than to ever have to listen to this pompous FM radio rock ever again. Absolutely excruciating.

Lukewarm meat and potatoes rock music with tasteless, lumpy gravy and the gristliest, chewiest meat that may well be boiled raccoon. Axl sings like a wasp has flown into his Y-fronts.

The people who dropped tabs to this in 1990 are now 60 years old and run corporations. The first half was trying too hard to please and is generally dull. The second half is more experimental and is far more interesting.

The good: The samples, the flow, the general feel. Top quality. The ugly: The lyrics. The misogyny, the violence, the homophobia. Unacceptable. I don't care if this was autobiographical or whatever, I fucking hate this shit. And yes, my opinion would be the same if they were white before you condescendingly call me racist.

"Iron Maiden are an institution" apparently. Should be locked up in an institution for crimes against music IMHO. Spinal Tap got it spot on. That film wasn't a spoof, it was reality for the likes of Iron Maiden.

A nostalgic listen from the days when we used to, er, "collect" car badges. We were young and stupid and this was our music. No regrets.

Absolutely no way I'm listening to this all the way through! Yet another example of a piss poor album from the early 1970s clogging up this list. It seems like every time critic Robert Christgau farted during this period, it was written down and treated as gospel. Substandard versions of songs I don't like in the first place? No thanks! Also...hang on, this was only Volume 1?! Dear lord... White Van Man Sings The Blues (Extremely Badly) DNF, unsurprisingly.

Madness moving on from their ska roots. Influenced by music hall, Saturday night TV variety shows, Spike Milligan, and 60s artists such as The Kinks. I approve! Even so, the very definition of a Singles Band. Always at their best on the 45s.

Well, there's certainly a lot of samples! I was hoping it would be a surprise hit as everyone seems to rate this. Left me cold though. I won't be revisiting. You can't dance to this. You can't sing along...what were they aiming for? Impressing hot girls? Impressing nerdy boys? Impressing hot nerdy girls?Impressing critics? Definitely scored with the latter option. Just failed to impress me...

The dictionary definition of Tedium. Make the boring man go away, mummy!

2011 was Peak TV Reality Show time, was it not? When the general public were impressed by loud singers that made dogs howl... This was so bland. The only time I normally ever hear music like this is at the dentist where they play Radio 2. Thus, I associate stuff like this with anxiety and pain. It's certainly painful on the ears. Also... it's 5 years since her last album. Must be due "35" in 2026? God help us all 😬

John Grant, formerly of a band I've never heard of, got together with a band that was on a CD given away with Uncut magazine circa 2005 that I didn't listen to... He then proceeds to make a dull album that could have been released in 1972 (and be hailed as a genius by Robert Christgau...). A couple of decent folk rock tunes, but mostly will be used as a cure for insomnia in this house.

Kanye, mate...you do realise that your heroes hate you, right?! Hitler would have sent you to the gas chambers because you're Not Aryan. Trump would gladly have you shot in the street by his personal death squads because you're Not White. You are the Suella Braverman of hip-hop. A useful idiot. Massive twat.

Pretty boring. Yet another artist whose only worthwhile albums are of the Greatest Hits variety. Elton's "deep cuts" are dreary as heck.

Despite being British and growing up with Depeche Mode as a constant presence both in the pop charts and in the type of "alternative" discos I used to frequent, I've never listened to one of their albums. I assumed I wouldn't enjoy 45 minutes of their goth-synth sound. I was wrong. This was ace! It turns out that 45 minutes of synthpop in one sitting isn't too much, after all. The goth phase must have come later. I still don't think I'd like that, but I'll probably give it a chance at some point.

Well, I guess PE were Black America's answer to Bob Marley. They were hugely influential worldwide with their political messaging, which still resonates today with White Power supremacists in the White House. Powerful stuff and mostly devoid of the misogyny and homophobia of gangsta rap, which came later and ruined hip hop for me. Not as varied as Yo! Bum Rush The Show or It Takes A Nation..., but still pretty essential.

Along with MBV, the last rock band to do something different with the traditional guitar/bass/drums/vocals setup. Unfortunately, that unique sound was heard on Come On Pilgrim, Surfa Rosa and Doolittle. Bossanova is more of a straightforward rock album and easily the weakest of their initial run of LPs. I want to give it five stars coz Kim Deal (how are The Breeders not on this list, by the way?), but it really isn't a five star album and probably wouldn't be in my own personal 1001 list despite my love for this band.

Utterly unlistenable. The guitar sounds like a dying whale. Fusion music is the worst. I wouldn't eat chicken and chocolate on the same dish, so why would I want to listen to a mixture of latin, jazz and dying whale rock guitar in the same song? Lock it all in a box and shoot it off into space. Torture some poor bloody aliens with this shit, not me!

YOWWW! I feel good after this one! Wild, outta sight! I would have liked to have been in the audience for this. Probably would have joined in with the screaming 🙀

I love three minute pop songs. Two of the greatest ever written are on this album. Walk On By and By The Time I Get To Phoenix are bone fide classics...or at least the originals are. Extending these perfect pop songs beyond the 10 minute mark isn't big and it isn't clever. It's just annoying. Nope!

Fabulous! Played this whilst I was working and found it to be the perfect background music for my task today. Mellow and mellifluous. All artists should pose with their pets on their album covers from now on. When I'm World King, it'll be the first - and most important - law that I mandate.

I was quite happy when this album appeared this morning. I'd never heard a Paul Simon song that I'd disliked before today. Sadly, I found a lot of the lyrics supercilious. If Paul was starting out on his life journey now, I reckon he'd be an insufferable Instagram influencer, full of pointless and annoying life hacks. Saved from a one star rating by Julio, which I can't find it in my heart to hate, even if it is a bit sub-Dylan.

I'm going to Moss Side next month. Terrifying! This will not be the soundtrack to my visit though. That will be something more lively and with tunes.

Well, that was as bonkers as I wanted it to be! Full of grooves, tunes and madness! How did George Clinton access my nightmares? The fear of being eaten by a sandwich is a recurring theme in my subconscious...

Expected sub-Radiohead noodling, but was pleasantly surprised by the variety of sounds and moods. Yes, it's experimental, which normally translates as "unlistenable", but I actually enjoyed this. It would be a great soundtrack to a Moomins film. Hemulens would enjoy this. And yes, I do know they're singing in Icelandic and not Swedish... Hate the cover though. That foetus is a scary bugger.

Fabulous album, but like many early 1960s collections, there's an awful lot of cover versions! Not necessarily a bad thing when they're done well, as they are here. It's only taken me my entire life, but I've only just realised that green onions are the American equivalent of spring onions - my least favourite type of onion. Ah well. Nice in some Asian cooking, I suppose, but NEVER RAW!

Conflicted about this one. I grew up with The Smiths. Morrissey articulated the feelings of the socially awkward young man so well, it was hard to believe that he was actually a flag-shagging friend of the skinheads - the vile idiots who would chase us down the streets and give us a good kicking if they caught us just because we were different to them. There had been clues - the "Reggae is vile" comment, for example, but hey, perhaps Morrissey just didn't like reggae. Fair enough, the music had been commandeered by the likes of Sting, who was clearly not one of us...it didn't mean Morrissey was racist. And when he urged us to "Hang the DJ", we took that to mean Radio 1 daytime DJs, the gatekeepers of popular music at the time. And let's face it, 80s chart music was, and still is, some of the worst music ever made, so fair dos. Every time he said something slightly dodgy in an NME interview, we gave him the benefit of the doubt as Morrissey understood us. Surely he was just being contrary? I've given other right-wing morons one star just because of their views, but The Smiths meant so much to me and my generation, I'm judging their albums on musical merit. Yep, I'm still a delicate boy/man, but it appears I'm also a hypocrite. I'd rank this as their third best proper LP, behind The Queen Is Dead and the self-titled debut (which isn't on this list, astonishingly, despite its massive impact on my generation). It's overly-maudlin in parts and it was probably the right time for them to split. Even so, five stars for the feelings of inclusion that The Smiths gave to me and other painfully shy young white boys at the time. With sincere apologies to my non-white friends. I'll rip into the racist twat when one of his solo albums turns up...

The first reggae album I ever bought. Played it loads at the time, but haven't listened to it in over 30 years! I'd credit UB40 and the 2-Tone bands for introducing me to Jamaican music, for which I'm forever grateful. But if I want to listen to reggae now, I don't go to UB40, I'll slap on a Trojan compilation or a Lee Scratch Perry album. These artists, along with punk bands such as The Clash, taught me to be a kind, empathetic person towards people who were different to me, because I sure as heck wasn't taught that at school or by 1970s/early 80s popular culture. Memories of growing up on a British council estate at a time of massive social upheaval then. Thatcher was just beginning to dismantle the post-war consensus. All of our current problems stem from the Tory government of that time who influenced Reagan, who in turn inspired successive right-wing governments worldwide to crack down on the workers whilst syphoning off the world's wealth for themselves. Bastards, the lot of them. Thanks to UB40 and their contemporaries for showing us there's another way away from the Daily Mail worldview. Eternally grateful for that. However, there's far better reggae out there. And by the way, the last three tracks on Spotify weren't on the original album, so you don't have to listen to them!

Pleasant enough background music which had rave reviews in the British broadsheets at the time, but it's really just early 90s coffee table music which means nothing to me.

I do like listening to blues music, but this album reminds me of a particularly dull Jools Holland show. With Jools guesting on piano, obvs. Hilariously, Spotify carried on after the album finished, playing songs from other old blues artists, and it took me 10 minutes to notice that they weren't BB King...

Excellent pop-rock album, one of REM's best. Full of tunes to hum along to. Used to have this on tape. Need to get a hard copy on vinyl or CD!

It's the end of a long evening. I've been DJing to a packed dancefloor, but it's time to pack up and go home. How do I get everyone to leave? Rah rah rah squawk squeak scrumble! That did the job nicely. Thank you Mr Zorn! The sound of cats fighting and drums falling down flights of stairs. I quite enjoyed it!

Oof, I had this playing in the background whilst working. Stopped for a moment to check it out properly and heard the diarrhoea/gonorrheah rhyme. Eeeeeewwww! Otherwise, I took little notice of it. Just washed over me. The general feel though... preferred to the over-produced Lauryn Hill; not as hardcore as Public Enemy. Kind of middling hip hop.

Preferable to Purple Rain, which drags a bit. This album has a lot more oomph, being propelled by the drum machine high up in the mix. And the title track is an all-time banger. Has my approval.

If this was all Grace Slick, it would be a nailed-on five star album. She's a fantastic singer. Unfortunately, a lot of this record is bog-standard hippie shit. Still...White Rabbit! What a song! 😍

1990s background music for dinner parties. As Half Man Half Biscuit said in The Light At The End Of The Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train): "She stayed with me until She moved to Notting Hill. She said it was the place to be. Where the cocaine is fair trade And frequently displayed Is the Buena Vista Social Club CD"

English public schoolboy fourth-form poetry backed by overblown, pretentious proggy music...UGH, NO! I hate this record with every muscle, sinew, anterior cruciate ligament, artery and vital organ in my body. More bloated than an anaconda's stomach after swallowing an entire horse in one gulp. Contains more shit than a constipated elephant. Pink Floyd are an insufferable, pompous group of arses.

Checked on Discogs, and the album in question here is the second "disc" on Love And Devotion on Spotify... I didn't hate this, but also found it hard to love. Lots of similar-sounding grooves over seven minutes long in a language I don't understand. It would be just fine in a festival field in the sunshine with a pint in one hand, but it's not something I'm going to listen to at home.

Reminds me of the time I made a guitar out of a shoe box and a rubber band. I wandered over to my work colleague at a nearby desk playing my rudimentary guitar and serenaded her with Dy-na-mi-teee. Channeling my inner Harry Hill. She told me to go away.

Not my generation or my home country, so missing a lot of context around why this is so popular. All I can hear is a lot of overly-emotive singing, typical turn-of-the-decade (60s/70s) noodling, and far too many cover versions. I didn't completely hate it as I like most of the songs they covered and they didn't ruin them too much (even the super-lengthy Grapevine...), but this album (and band) mean absolutely nothing to me. Oh, the guy sitting with his legs out looks like my Uncle Derek! Didn't know he was in Creedence!

Much too busy to listen to a 2 hour long album today, but what I did hear was just fine. Definitely heard more tedious music than this from the early 70s!

A band I've always disliked for their pretentiousness and their love of drug culture. Having said that, I was in the mood for this! Perhaps I shouldn't have walked out of their festival gig after one song a couple of years back after all! Ha ha!

Tax exiles dressing themselves up as "runaway outlaws"?! Wankers. Loses several stars just for that. Lyrical themes included hedonism. Ah, true men of the people then. Rock and fucking roll... As for the music, it's a derivative blues rock dirge with no redeeming features whatsoever. 70s Stones can fuck right off.

Classic grunge! This is more like it after so many narcoleptic "classic rock" albums! Not as good as Nirvana's contemporaneous Bleach, but still up there with the rest of the best of late 80s Effects Pedal Rock. They blew Soundgarden off the stage when I saw them play together during their first UK tour. Fuck me I'm sick!

As a huge Nirvana fan, I looked forward to Dave and Krist's first solo offerings with great anticipation. I bought this the day it came out, played it twice and was bitterly disappointed. I've never bought another Foo Fighters record since. Listened to this again for the first time in years and... found it disappointing. Kurt was the talented one!

Huge influence on Lisa Simpson.

Didn't get into this at all! Man whose whole schtick was to scare teenage boys in to buying his records and go to his concerts forgets to write tunes that the milkman can whistle. Typical po-faced 70s rock album with one well-known song. So boring.

Sounds like pretty standard metal to me. Growly voice (not singing), the usual riffs and solos. I'm supposed to be impressed?! By what, exactly? Technical proficiency, presumably? Meh. I just can't see how this is different to any other metal album ever made. They all sound the same to me. Boring! Next please!

Lovely vibe. Picked my cat up off my lap and we had a little dance around the living room to Le Freak. Expected this to be Le Freak plus seven fillers, but it was better than that. Savoir Faire was an enjoyable jam.

An absolute banger! Even so, dithering between a 4 and a 5 star rating as there are a couple of sub-par tunes in amongst the indie classics. Took the choppy guitar sounds of post-punk (which wasn't particularly popular in the late 70s - it certainly didn't get any airplay outside of the late-night John Peel radio programme) and took them on to the dancefloor and into the charts 25 years later. It's true that there were a lot of bands around at this time using similar influences that all sounded the same and became known (rightly) as landfill indie, but FF had wit and personality to spare. Far and away the best indie band of the period. A big shout out to their forebears The Yummy Fur here as well, a band I absolutely adored at the time and still listen to!

I'm quite happy "fading away", thank you very much Nigel. Presumably you are too as you approach your 80s. I must admit, I did a big sigh when this - my third(!) - Neil Young album popped up this morning. Especially when I read it was a live effort. But you know what? I don't *think* I would have fallen asleep during this performance... Oh, who am I kidding? I would have nodded off at the 100 Club during the Pistols' iconic performance. Need to do something about this narcolepsy thing. Anyway, the first half is very Dylanesque. Side two is rocking Neil, but totally spoilt by the godawful Welfare Mothers. What was he thinking? The best Neil Young album I've heard so far, but that's not saying much!

My musical journey: Small boy: Glam and Radio 1 chart music (Tiger Feet, This Town Ain't Big Enough For the Both of Us, Crazy Horses). Big boy: Punk and beyond (The Jam, The Clash, The Birthday Party, Siouxsie). 20s: Full-on music addict. Anything new and interesting (C86, Blast First, 4AD bands - Cocteau Twins, Shop Assistants, The Pastels, Killdozer, Pixies, Big Black, SONIC YOUTH!). Anything old that influenced the new (The Shangri-Las, Bo Diddley, The Kinks, Velvet Underground, The Modern Lovers). Beyond 20s: Still obsessed, but more narrow and picky in my tastes nowadays. Current favourites: Westside Cowboy, Humdrum, Tulpa. All with roots in my musical past. I still love all the music I grew up with (why wouldn't I?) and Sonic Youth still blow me away. They were like nothing else that had gone before. Detuned guitars, feminist, punk attitude...Bad Moon Rising, Sister, Daydream Nation, Dirty, Goo and Evol are all still essential albums. Radical and quite, quite brilliant.

The singer sounds like the second-worst person in the world. He'll probably be the next president of the USA. And the music is just a horrible noise. What's next on this list? Skrewdriver? Hard pass.

The lowest-rated album on the list! Excellent! I'll probably love it! Edit: Nah.

Not "bad" meaning "good". More like "bad" meaning "paedo"

Nothing wrong with this, but it just feels like one of those LPs that you see in a neglected corner of a charity shop, dusty, covered in fingerprints and scratched, with the cover sporting a 59p price sticker from Woolworths, a little bit sticky and crinkled round the edges. Once, much-loved by someone's grandad. Now, unloved and unwanted just like nan's thimble collection. Fashions change. Time moves on.

Before my local pub shut down when its lease expired, it had open decks nights where amateur DJs would bring their record collections along and play them in one hour slots. I heard so much Sly Stone and Funkadelic during those evenings and it was... just fine. Listening to this on headphones today without a few beers inside me, and it's... just fine! Just without beer.

Every time I visit the Rhondda Valley in Wales, I sing Help Me, Rhonda to myself. Even though they're spelt differently. Interesting fact. This Beach Boys album was pleasant enough. I appreciated the wall of sound and the harmonies, etc. It also had a few toetappers. Nice!

Protopunk, my arse! This is what would have been called "pub rock" in the UK. Pretend punks, playing at being rebels. Bantz isn't funny. Really, really bad.

Michael lives near me! Other people have seen him out walking his dog! I'm wondering what breed his dog is. Hoping it's a golden retriever.

Sounds like the kind of music a committee consisting of middle-aged men in salmon pink acrylic jumpers would come up with when asked to produce an album of "chilled indie". The Postal Service cover Young Marble Giants (two infinitely more brilliant bands who should have been on this list!).

Goodness me, this is tedious! Speaking as a dad, could you stop calling this "dad rock" please? This music now sounds so Jurassic that it should be called "grandad rock" instead. Honestly, if any child of mine ever bought me a "dad rock" CD for Father's Day (featuring such toe-curling drivetime "classics" as Smoke On The Water), I would immediately disown them *angryface*

Imagine you're a music journalist around the turn of the century. The paper you work for had been serving the hype machine for 50 years by bringing the underground kids the "next big thing" on a weekly basis. Some of these (inevitably) guitar bands had gone on to be genuinely popular with hit records and everything! But what if the record company PR teams stopped serving you up the good stuff? Because let's face it, most music journalists didn't discover new talent by going out and finding it, they mostly regurgitated press releases... Circa 2000, we (the music-obsessed indie kids - the people who bought the NME and kept their advertisers happy) were being fed some absolutely dire new bands to love. Remember Jet? The Vines? The D4?! There was good stuff out there (there always is - Sleater-Kinney, Belle & Sebastian and Camera Obscura produced some astonishing records during this period - too feminine for the idiot journos though), but the industry wanted to sell us a bunch of unimaginative macho rock n roll bands who didn't have an original riff between them. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were a part of that cohort. Their one saving grace was Karen O. An actual woman amongst the sea of dull-witted posturing men! It wasn't enough to save the press, but at least this New York band weren't identical to all the other shite out there. Fever To Tell is an okay album from a period in rock's history that the music journalists of the time should be thoroughly ashamed about.

I'm an old person and I don't really need to be doing this challenge as I've been obsessed with music since teenagehood. Crinkly, dessicated and covered in liver spots, that's me. If I've ever wanted to hear something, I've probably heard it by now. But there are a few exceptions. This is one of them. People whose opinions I trust rate this album very highly. Should I still trust them? Yes! Nice and mellow. Good vibes! When the album stopped, Spotify played The Left Banke - another band I've always meant to listen to. That was even better! A purchase required on my next record shopping trip! But not for Love! Expensive day, ha ha!

I know it's unlike me to be argumentative (ha ha), but Brian Wilson wasn't the first troubled genius to create an odd concept album. That was Joe Meek with I Hear A New World a few years earlier - an album which would be battling with Throbbing Gristle for last place in popularity if it was on this list (it should be!). That aside, Pet Sounds is a terrific album! Another one that I've always meant to listen to and had never got around to doing so until today (that's two in a row this week!). I might buy this one!

Honestly, all I can see in my mind's eye is a cartoon orang-utan singing. His voice is so familiar from The Jungle Book! Also, there definitely should be more songs about rascals IMHO.

Imagine members of Soft Machine had to give up being freeform musicians and applied their undoubted randomness skills to other occupations... Imagine one of them performing surgery on you and you wake up after an operation to find your knee bone is connected to your head bone, your head bone is connected to your finger bone, etc. You'd have similar feelings of discombobulation as listening to their cats-on-piano "music" for over an hour. Physically and mentally scarred I am after an hour of this bollocks in my ears... Bollocks in my ears? Sounds like one of their surgical manoeuvres 😬

Music for swinging pangolins.

Oh dear. If this album, which tells the story of a rich, entitled, middle-aged man shagging an underage girl (an "illicit romance" as it's described in the Wikipedia article about the album) was a morality tale about, you know, NOT doing it because it's BAD, it might be acceptable. But reading about Serge and his Epsteinian/Trumpian predilection for sexual partners "on the younger side", I fear this was the "real" Serge singing about his real life. Automatic one star rating for paedos, however good or bad the music is (it's actually not terrible...). Shame on the compilers for including this in the list.

You can tell when an album is regarded as a classic, because you can buy merch via Spotify! Tempted by the Respect skinny pink T-shirt. Especially if it really makes me look skinny! Good luck with that 😅 Anyway, Otis Blue really is a "classic", unlike a lot of the drivel I've heard since starting this challenge. The voice! The horns! I could listen to this all day. It's an easy four, bordering on five, from this jury.

The first three Ramones albums are absolutely perfect in every way. A huge influence on my musical taste. Yes, I know all the songs sound the same, but that's the point. Get a formula that works and stick to it! Brilliant! If I had a time machine, the first thing I'd use it for is to go see an early Ramones gig at CBGBs. And then I'd go kill Baby Hitler. Priorities...

My mate used to put on punk gigs at our local 200-capacity venue. Most of the bands in the scene consisted of decent people. The Offspring certainly weren't. They were a bunch of arseholes, by all accounts. Opportunistic moneygrabbers who latched on to the scene and copied the "popular punk formula" for hits and fame. Very unpopular with anyone unfortunate enough to have dealt with them. Zero stars for being twats.

Flipping heck, not this lot again! I only had their first album recently - that one had all the emotional heft of a dead fox lying at the side of the road after being hit by an SUV on the school run. This one is the same fox, but with its eyes pecked out by crows. It sounds like the sort of thing my daughter used to make on her Barbie song generator on Windows XP. Please, no more xx!

None more 80s! Scritti Politti were an art-punk band, contemporaries of Crass and Spizz Oil circa 1979. You can still hear the arty influences in the references to philosophers and Greek mythology, but the music by this point was squarely aimed at Smash Hits readers and Top of the Pops viewers. You can't really blame Green for this. He was a good-looking, intelligent lad from Croesyceiliog who must have been fed up with living in squalour. He knew his way around a tune, so why not try to be a pop star? The weekly music press in the UK cheered him on and...yep, they made it to the top of the charts. I quite enjoyed it! Give me this over-produced, glossy 80s pop over authentic, beardy bores like Van Morrison any day of week!

Yes? NO!!! I can't stand noodling. I can't stand musicians who show off at the expense of a good tune - well done on getting your Grade 8s, lads. I can't stand 1970s Beardy Man Rock. This is so not for me.

This took nine months to record?! How? Why? Bloated, so-called "alt rock". Alternative to what though? Very mainstream sounds. The only saving grace were some interesting lyrics written from the female perspective. Definitely prefer the first two albums - similar lyrically, much rawer musically. Contemporaries Bikini Kill and Babes In Toyland were infinitely better than Hole. Neither feature on this list, although Kathleen Hanna's Le Tigre do. Looking forward to that album - guaranteed five stars.

Utterly unique and completely brilliant. There's never been an album like this, before or since. Billy McKenzie is much missed in these parts. Love, love, love! 😍 Incidentally, for those in the reviews complaining about this album being one hour and 40 minutes long, you've been listening to demos and B-sides for the final hour. Check Discogs or Wikipedia for the original tracklisting!

I appreciate the skill of the musicians and the anti-apartheid stance, but this is a bit bland and rambling for me. The final track, which actually sounded like it came from Africa, was the only tune to really engage me. A soft no.

Amazing! I've had three albums this month that I've always meant to listen to and never got around to doing so. Pet Sounds was superb; Forever Changes was worthwhile; now this! For me, the 1960s are musically defined by The Kinks, so anyone who sounds like The Kinks are alright by me. This sounds like The Kinks, so good job lads! Played right through twice without skips and will buy a vinyl copy the next time I'm in town 😎

It's mid-70s funk. It's okay, I suppose. There was a lot of this around in the 1970s. I would skip EWF on Top Of The Pops (for a trip to the kitchen to get a Tupperware beaker of cherryade) whilst waiting for something I liked to come on. I appreciate it more now, but would never play this by choice. The upbeat funky tracks get three stars. The slowies one star. Averaging out at two stars.

Before listening: Okay, I know nothing about Fiona Apple other than the reviews I've read on here and there are RED FLAGS! "Grammy award-winning", "jazzy vibes", MARIMBAS FFS! Is she going to be an American Adele and ruin my bank holiday?! Or is she going to be more like Angel Olsen or Cat Power (this would be fine as I like both). After listening: Strong Chrissie Hynde vibes if she'd been a 2000s solo artist instead of in a new wave band circa 1979. I do like a lot of modern female solo artists...the aforementioned Angel and Cat, Jesca Hoop, Nina Nastasia, Kathryn Joseph, Laura Marling...all slightly different from one another, but what they do have in common is an "otherness" that sets them apart. I didn't hear that from Fiona. She sounded "popular", playing "normie music". I can see why she had a Grammy nomination and Jesca never will. Even so, at least she's not Adele, so not all bad.

Competent pub rock band, copying Brian Jones's record collection. Would have been a good night out, seeing them in 1964, chain smoking and spilling pints of mild on your local's already sticky carpet. The equivalent nowadays would be The Foo Forgers or No-waysis or any other tribute band putting out an LP which ends up on a "greatest of all time" list. Where on earth are Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley on this list? Nowhere, of course, but all the white bands that ripped them off are most assuredly here, and in large numbers. I couldn't finish this album as it annoyed me too much.

As with Husker Du and Warehouse Songs... what a bizarre choice to be the sole entry for this band on this list! Not sure I'd even place Bubble and Scrape in Sebadoh's top three, let alone a top 1,001 albums ever list. Bakesale is their best album and it's not even close! Harmacy is second, then it would be either this or Sebadoh III. So there! This brand of ramshackle lo-fi was my go-to music in the 1990s. See also Archers of Loaf, Killdozer, Shellac and so on. And me and Lou Barlow were basically twins. I'd see his photo in the music press and think I was looking at myself! Anyway, Bubble and Scrape is a bit messy in parts. Never liked the experimental stuff. But when they performed actual songs, Sebadoh were unbeatable. Giving this a five even though it isn't. The five goes to the band rather than this particular record, the same as I did for Husker Du.

Oh, I don't know. It's obviously hippy nonsense, but I can't help liking it. At least a little bit... Although he did name his children things like Astrella and Nebula, poor sods. Harmless I guess, but I bet they had the piss ripped out of them at school 😔

I've had a lifetime to work out that I'm not really a fan of 70s funk, stiff-limbed, joyless Englishman that I am. However, this was quite fun! I'll never listen to it again, hence the three star rating, but it passed the time perfectly pleasantly. I nodded my head and tapped my toes at the requisite moments. Made sure nobody was watching first, mind you 🧐 Can't have anyone seeing me having a good time...

The ubiquitous FMac, or at least they were in the late 70s. You would hear this everywhere. Every older person owned this - it was prime dinner party music. I preferred this to Rumours at the time, which was the other FMac album that my dad would constantly play. Haven't heard this since I left home as I associated it with, well... boring adults and their boring dinner parties (sorry, mum and dad and your boring friends). What about now? Now I'm a boring adult? Dear lord, NO! Sounds like a compilation album of different artists as it flits from one style to another, none of which are "my" style. The bit where they try to sound like Devo is particularly embarrassing. Mate, you're a boring old hippy, stop pretending to be punk 😐 Just stick to the FM radio rock. You were good at that!

Used to get him mixed up with Buffalo Tom. He was probably on cassette tapes given away free with Melody Maker. If so, this would have washed over me as I would have been listening to bands like Pixies, MBV, Pale Saints, Throwing Muses, etc, all of whom were far more interesting and with "new-sounding" music. This is a Bowie/REM rip-off and is a teensy bit dull. Not completely without merit, but definitely not for me.

Ooh, an album with a "reputation"! This should be interesting... I can hear where Broadcast got their inspiration from! Like!

A photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of the blues. An homage to an homage of an homage of the original music. Sounded dated the day it came out and sounds even worse now. I never want to hear this sub-Stones dreck ever again.

I've heard so many "political" albums in my life, nearly all of them by punk bands. Nothing wrong with that, but they're clearly preaching to the already converted. No normie is ever going to hear your message if you're screeching it over loud guitars which sound like cats are running up and down the strings. Which is why folk is a better medium for political messaging. At least you're not putting off normies with horrible noises. Tracy Chapman was huge for a couple of years. Her messages of hope may have cut through and converted a few people to the side of the angels, which is why she was important. Good job, Tracy! Having said that, I found this a little bit too "coffee table folk" for my tastes.

Utterly and completely brilliant. My favourite Bowie album by a country mile. Released in the days when vinyl and cassette were the only options, so intentionally split in to two distinct sides. Side one is krautrock perfection. Side two is the best ambient music I've ever heard (not usually a fan). Bowie should have spent more time depressed and locked up in his bedroom all alone with no friends like 13 year old me 😅

In the Oasis v Blur Britpop War, I was very much on Team Blur. Oasis were Pissed Up Ladz Ladz Ladz Music. Blur were the sensitive art school kids, which was very much my side. By the time Blur came out, I was getting a bit bored of the Britpop scene, but still liked this album as a swansong. Song 2 was clearly taking the piss out of American rock. Hilarious that it was their breakthrough in the so-called land of the free! Anyway, definitely not their best album (Modern Life Is Rubbish wins that award), but still a decent effort and the last Blur record that's worth your while listening to.

Well, I wasn't expecting the scratchy Gang of Four guitar work to start the album. Fair play to Peter for listening to some of the post-punk sounds of the day and incorporating them into his sound after being in the least-punk band in history! Other bands I can hear are the Associates, Penetration, Monochrome Set... genuinely amazing! After the first song, not so amazing as Phil Collins's drums come to dominate 😭 Stars gained for the post-punk sounds, the politics and the incredible Games Against Frontiers and Biko. Stars lost for allowing Phil Collins anywhere near a recording studio.

The Mancunian Cate Le Bon! Or is Cate the Carmarthenshire Jane Weaver? I like a lot of music that sounds a bit like this, but have never really gravitated towards Jane. Sorry! It's perfectly fine and I'm sure I'd like it more if I listened multiple times. Hang on, isn't she the Mancunian Laetitia Sadier? Or is Laetitia...etc, etc.

Oh, good grief, NO! I tried, I really tried, but this is anti-everything I like about music. Hated it from the opening bar until it thankfully finished 40 minutes later. Give me a tone deaf singer, a guitarist who only knows two chords and a drummer banging on a biscuit tin over this overwrought nonsense every day of the week. Jeez.

Music for overweight, male, virginal digital engineers with an acne infestation. This imaginary man is in his thirties, hasn't had a haircut in over a year. Indeed, hasn't washed his hair in over a year as "the natural oils make it clean". His bedsheets are stained with skidmarks and the aftermath of other solo bodily functions. There are takeaway burger wrappers all over the bedroom floor. In the unlikely event that he would ever persuade a woman back to his place, she would run a mile upon seeing the absolute state of it. This guy loves AC/DC because in their world hot babes are plentiful and gagging for it. He can lose himself in the music for 40 minutes and pretend he's an attractive, beefy stud who pumps his fist in the air to some solid riffs at an imaginary concert with his imaginary friends, some of whom are potential girlfriends (with boobies and everything!). I am DEFINITELY NOT describing myself here, ha ha!

Taking the kitsch sounds of the 1950s and early 60s and updating them for what felt like a brave new decade, The B52s absolutely nailed what fun, inventive dance music with a nod to the past should sound like. Along with The Cramps and The Rezillos, they "got it". If Joe Meek had lived, he would have adored The B52s. I loved this album then, I still love it today. Tastes don't change as you get older. I'm not suddenly going to start listening to po-faced "real rock" now. If you don't love Rock Lobster, and think that Genesis or the Floyd are the pinnacle of music, we can never be friends.

Oh, ANOTHER rape fantasy album. What's the excuse this time? I've had Serge Gainsbourg. That was fine because it was France in the 1960s and they didn't know any better... Then last week I had AC/DC with an album full of non-consensual sex, but that was okay because it was an era-defining hard rock album... And this is acceptable because the male lead is a rapping alien?! An alien gynecologist who has sex with every single one of his patients? And it's supposed to be funny?! Riiiighhht... Unlistenable.

The beigest, dullest album I have ever heard. No redeeming features. It just...exists. If punk was the Blank Generation, then this album surely represented the Bland Generation. Forgotten everything about it within 30 seconds of it finishing.

Mr Mumbles mumbles through a whole bunch of songs about cars and factories. Or at least I think he does. Hard to tell with all the slurring. This music means precisely nothing to me. Maybe if I lived in the hellhole of suburban USA with its endless, ugly, nature-free concrete deserts designed specifically for cars, I could relate to some of the lyrics (whatever they are). I'm absolutely sure that Bruce is on the side of the angels, but flipping heck, his albums are a chore to listen to! Plinky plonky mumble mumble, etc, repeat for 40 minutes until the sweet relief of silence... This would be a one star album by anyone else, but like the vast majority of the world outside the MAGA cult, he's vehemently anti-Orange-Moron-in-Chief, so gets an extra star for being a decent human being.

Kicking off the century that's likely to see the majority of life on Earth wiped out by human/capitalist greed/stupidity, it's an art project featuring a member of Blur! My son and his friend loved this album at the age of 7 or so. The cartoon characters appealed to them, I think. I just heard sub-par trip-hop/Fatboy Slim pastiches. I mean, it has its moments, so isn't completely devoid of merit, but I think I'll put it to one side and remember it as a small boys' introduction to modern music.

Plinky plonky, there's a donkey. Zzzzz.

As ever with this kind of music, if I was at the Womad Festival, the sun was shining and I had a pint in my hand... perfect! Otherwise, it's merely pleasant enough background noise.

The Jam were the most popular band in the UK when they split up. Everyone was keen to know what Paul Weller was going to do next. And he came up with... this 🤮 The clues had been there on the final Jam album, but this was still a massive letdown. Piss poor jazz and Weller rapping on this crock-of-shite album. Paul loved his retro fashion, tried to make The Style Council a "lifestyle brand". But if this had been my lifestyle, I would have curled up in a ball of embarrassment and never left the house. The two big hit singles are reasonably catchy, but that's not enough. Just cringeworthy.

I get it. I completely get it. If I was a teenage girl in 1963, an avid reader of Non-Threatening Boys magazine, I'd hear The Beatles for the first time and be completely smitten. They spoke to girls in a way that I suspect few other artists did at that point. And they had the tunes and the looks! The girls wanted to snog The Beatles. And the boys wanted to be The Beatles, so they captured the hearts and minds of an entire generation. Critics could enjoy the music a couple of years later when it became more complicated and "meaningful", but for the time being, normal people had a band that spoke to them. Excellent album.

Possibly the best funk/soul album I've had so far (there have been quite a lot!). Although this might be the worst cover art yet! Happy to have heard this once, but will probably not search it out for another listen. When Little Stevie Wonder became Big Boy Stevie Wonder. Dunno what else to say really! Most unlike me!

Wintergreen-flavoured music for the Rod Flanders in your life. Unflavoured for me!

My immediate thought upon seeing the album cover is that the colours are very autumnal, but we'll let that pass. The music is the important thing here. So, I know the big hits and never felt the need to switch channels when they came on the radio, but didn't like them enough to rush out and buy the long-player. I was right not to do so as there's nothing else here that engages me. It's fine, but I'll never listen to it again. Honestly, I could just copy/paste that last sentence on to so many reviews on here...

I know Robert Wyatt for his fantastic interpretations of At Last I Am Free and Shipbuilding. I also know him as the drummer in the very boring experimental band Soft Machine. Now I also know him for a bang average comeback album from 1997 that a few critics wet themselves over and the general public ignored. For once, I'm on the side of the general public.

I've always hated this band and this album in particular. Pretentious, English public schoolboy bollocks masquerading as an important art statement. It appears as though I'm one of the 1% who sees no worth in this album. So be it!

By coincidence, this album has appeared during the World Cup with Brazil playing Morocco over the weekend in an entertaining game. This would have made a decent background noise as I always turn the commentary off. I'll play this the next time Brazil are on at a sensible time! Cool album with rump-shaking beats. Good stuff!

The middle of Bowie's three glam albums, and the weakest of the three behind Diamond Dogs and Ziggy Stardust. Really let down by the dreadful Stones cover, unfortunately. However, there's enough here to elevate this above most of his contemporaries. The Jean Genie is a guaranteed floor filler for any DJ. Panic in Detroit and Cracked Actor also rock, so plenty still to love.

Firstly, to all the quarter-witted Americans in the reviews hating this just because it's BRITISH...The Divine Comedy are an IRISH band. There is a difference, you know. Anyway, love the references to Cold Comfort Farm and the general Carry On brand of comedy. Possibly not aged well in parts, but it would have been taken in the spirit intended at the time. Indeed, The Divine Comedy had a huge number of young female fans when this came out. There's a massive difference between Neil Hannon's attitude towards women and someone like Dr Octagon. The former is a rascal who will pursue you, but to whom you can say no and he'll accept that. Not so sure about Dr Octagon. Anyway, how The Divine Comedy got two albums on this list is a bit of a mystery, but as I said, they were popular at the time and it was good to hear this again.

I'd been religiously buying the UK music press every week for over 20 years when this came out. This was still pre-internet so there were few other ways of finding out about new music (evening radio shows by the likes of John Peel and Janice Long were the only way of actually hearing interesting new music back then). Fanzines and word of mouth were the best sources for new music, but there was also the odd journalist at the NME or Melody Maker that had similar taste to me, so if they said something was decent, I would often go out and buy a record without hearing the artist first. Anyway, the British music press were all over this Aussie band in 2002. I bought this on CD from HMV, took it home, whacked it on and was severely unimpressed. It was the moment I lost all trust in the NME. A year or so later and they stopped producing the printed version. I think I listened to Highly Evolved twice, filed it away and forgot about it until today. Listening again, it's mostly bang-average shouty rock music with some Beatles-esque psychedelia mixed in. Better than Foo Fighters (not difficult!), but not as good as The Strokes or The Hives (the only two rock bands from this period that still sound worthwhile to my ears). A middling early 2000s rock album that was way overrated at the time. Really, it's just okay. Maybe I'll give it another listen in 25 years...

"Critics and audiophiles applauded the album's high production standards", says Wikipedia. "Smooth jazz-rock from the 1970s..." Oh, good grief, I'm going to hate this. After listening: Yep! Genuinely a contender for the worst album I have ever heard. If I ever get kidnapped by nefarious actors who wish to torture me, just play Aja and I'll give you whatever you want before the first bar is even over! Excruciating!

I appreciate and recognise the fact that Hendrix could play the guitar like few others. Obviously a generational talent, and over the years I've tried to enjoy his music, but it really doesn't do it for me. I totally understand why others enjoy this, which isn't the case for a lot of other albums on this list, and if I'd grown up listening to this, I might have been on your team. This album has its moments, but I don't really want to hear Hendrix shredding and yelping for over an hour. Soz.

An artist I've barely listened to, but when I did, I thought "Oh, so this is where Stuart Murdoch got all his ideas from!" Not so much on this album though, with its stripped back production. Just one man and his guitar. It's a good'un. All my gentle hippy friends who rave about Nick are good people. I get it!

I'd much rather listen to a bunch of demented, one-eyed space goblins than yet another Steely Dan album. This is funny, has personality, was unique at the time. Deserves its place on this list 110%!

I have a double album of TV themes from the 70s and 80s stashed away in my collection somewhere. Did Ronco just steal this album and slap a different cover on it? Jazz rock fusion is the worst musical style ever! However, I loved the live rumba tune, so going to add a star just for that. "More manic rumba, less synthy jazz fusion" should be general lifestyle advice to make the world a better place.

As I own about 220 of the albums on this list on either vinyl or CD, I tend to get one album a week which I know very well. This is this week's example. I went through my Bowie period as a pretentious teenager thinking it would impress girls (clue: it didn't and it doesn't. Just be clean and have a nice haircut - girls find that infinitely more impressive 😅). So, I played Hunky Dory dozens of times. I wrote lyrics on my college folders. I replaced my original personality with a fake Bowie-lite persona. I'd make mixtapes for girls I liked which would invariably include some Bowie. And still girls didn't find me attractive! Anyway, I genuinely loved Hunky Dory then, and listening again today with no desire whatsoever to change myself to impress the ladies, I still bloody love it! NB: I'm starvin' for me gravy!

As with every other REM album I've ever heard (and I've heard a lot, as my wife is a fan), I like it, but I don't love it. I think every album they've ever made is a four star effort, and this is no exception. Consistently consistent, that's for sure.

Initial impressions: a poor man's Shellac; sub-par At The Drive In; Jesus Lizard's younger, disappointing brothers; an unfunny Killdozer; grunge, but gone mouldy 15 years after the event. Hmmm, I've heard thousands of records like this. Not sure what makes it stand out from any of the above, more talented noisy bastards. I think you had to be in the moshpit to have fond memories of this. Merely okay.

Wind chimes made of human bones rattling away in a stiff breeze whilst your scary Uncle Barry jibbers on about some imagined injustice he suffered at work thirty-odd years ago. The wind whistles down the chimney as a pigeon falls into the grate, bringing down years' worth of soot. The pigeon shuffles around on its one unbroken leg rasping out its final breaths as Uncle Barry prepares to put it out of its misery with a tibia taken from the wind chimes. Auntie Lou pops her head round the corner intending to ask Barry if he'd like a nice cup of tea, but sees the struggling pigeon and steps in front of her demented, dribbling husband just as he brings down the tibia with all of his frustrated strength. Auntie Lou screams as tibia meets skull. Her skull...

Music for anteaters to wander through the Pampas to, wiggling their big fluffy tails from side to side as they go hunting for delicious, juicy termites. Not so much for me as I head to the kitchen hunting for chocolate biscuits and a nice cup of tea.

An album years ahead of its time as it pre-empted Spotify bulking up every other album with B-sides and throwaway tracks from the original sessions. What were they thinking actually releasing some of these songs on an actual album? Jamaica Jerk-Off shouldn't be anywhere near the finished product, and it's not the only stinker here. Hello, Sweet Painted Lady, I'm looking at you! A double album that really should be a single album. It would have been decent with a bit of quality control. Presumably Elton was surrounded by "yes men" at this point. Someone should have been brave enough to take out the scissors and have a right old snip. Four stars as a single album with the hits plus the best of the rest, loses two for wasting my time with some utter tripe.

Fabulous voice. Superbly written songs. It's just...a bit much, especially when you consider this was one of EIGHT albums dedicated to what were the great American songwriters of the time. Of the time, of its time.

This is music by, of, and for my generation, so I know it well. And of all the albums in this genre, this is my favourite, despite the presence of my generation's second-biggest dickhead, Noel Gallagher, on Setting Sun. Number one being his brother, obvs The biggest dickhead on here is the writer of the top-rated review of this album (as of today). Fuck me, I hope I never bump into that grumpy old goat at a party! Anyway , I could listen to Where Do I Begin? all day, every day, and never get tired of that drop! Absolutely bloody brilliant!

An accurate portrayal of life on a British council estate in the early days of Thatcher, with all the violence, racism and misogyny that was rife at the time. Having grown up on an estate at that time myself, this was a hugely important record for me and my friends. We weren't taught at school or by our families not to be racist or horrible to women. These behaviours were normal in British society at the time, as incredible as that might seem now. I learned how to be a decent human being from bands like The Specials and songs like Doesn't Make It Alright. Incredibly important to have role models to relate to as a teenager. Without The Specials, I might well have turned out to be a pink-faced Stop The Boats gammon, slapping my bitch up if she disobeyed me. Not only all this, but they introduced me to Jamaican music as well through some of their covers (Monkey Man, You're Wondering Now, etc)! I've listened to so much 60s ska and rocksteady in my lifetime because of The Specials. Brilliant music! Thank you so much, Coventry Automatics!

Side one: Well, that sho' was funky! Side two: Pleasant enough AOR on the whole. Doesn't do it for me. Three stars for side one and one star for side two. Two stars overall, which is a shame. Full-on 60s Motown Temptations would be a five, but for some reason, there's little to no 60s Motown on this list 😔. It's not like they didn't make albums in the 60s...they did, but serious critics don't think albums of popular peak Motown are worth our while. Fuck it, going to dig out some classic Supremes and Martha Reeves and have a little dance...

The only acceptable metal band. If the entire genre had started and stopped with Sabbath, it would have saved my ears a lot of pain over the years.

Hmmm, I don't wish to bee too waspish, but I'm going to have to find the insect repellent, Mr Sting! Anyway, all together now, lads..."Massage in a brothel!" (14-year-old boy humour...).

Poo bum willy bristols. Sorry, nothing to do with the album, I just wanted a top-rated review 😅

The band and album which invented post-punk. Or was that Wire with Pink Flag? Anyway, essential listening if you like this sort of thing (I do!).

I am so removed from popular culture. I went for a day trip to Cardiff last year and the place was heaving with young people in American football shirts. Eventually, I worked out that someone called Kendrick Lamar was playing at the rugby stadium. I didn't know who he was. I've still never heard any of his music. Ah well, here goes... Blimey, is this what normal people listen to? What a silly voice this man has. Should be a voice actor for a gopher in a cheaply produced children's cartoon. Perhaps he would then stop talking about his dick for a few seconds. I'll stick to my own parallel, Kendrick-free world, thanks!