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 Scmilsson, 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.