There are a few interesting melodies throughout and it's not bad as an ambient background track but nothing stood out. Some parts felt unfinished, others just uninspired. Nothing really objectionable, I just don't see any reason to revisit it. The bass clarinet part was neat.
Pros: fantastic 90s R&B + hip-hop, good use of skits, a couple great individual tracks (Doo Wop (That Thing) if nothing else), fantastic vocals throughout (if a little overdone).
Cons: repetitive lyrics, over-reliance on the same style of chorus. Most of the songs have a refrain that's repeated over and over with an oversung call and response. It wouldn't have bothered me once or twice but it got pretty samey pretty quickly.
Solid R&B album, just not quite my taste. The album is very focused on his vocals and he's a capable singer but not my favorite. Clever songwriting, generally good production.
(I hate to say it in 2025 now that we know the full extent of Kanye's problems but there are a couple moments/production elements that feel like there were lifted from 808s or MBDTF)
If I found this on a different day I might have liked it better. Lost is the standout track for me.
Very simple, clean production, good variety across the tracks. I don't know if it's going to enter my regular rotation - I'm honestly just not a big fan of Elliott Smith's voice - but it sorta feels like a rosetta stone for all the later indie bands I do listen to. Definitely deserves a more thorough listen later on.
I liked it a lot more than I expected. I feel like if you can describe something as dreamy French alt pop, I'm either going to love it or hate it for entirely arbitrary reasons.
I loved the instrumentals and vocals all throughout. Some songs are definitely more memorable than others but they're all good.
I will be exploring this more in the future.
Note to self: learn the bass part from Beatrix
I'll admit I'm probably giving this one short shrift but I wasn't super impressed. Papa Was a Rolling Stone is an all-time classic and a couple other songs were kinda nice but this was far from The Temptations at their best.
I'm probably not the best person to comment on it but Run Charlie Run feels like a really clumsy approach to the topic, and from what I'm reading it seems like the Temptations never wanted to do it in the first place.
Papa Was a Rolling Stone is a 5/5, the rest is probably a 2 or 3.
Living After Midnight and Breaking the Law are obviously great but the rest of the album's a little forgettable. One more memorable track might have kicked this up to a 4 but I'm gonna have to go with 3/5
A very fun album. Lots of energy throughout, plenty of variety. I had a hard time taking some parts of the album seriously but I don't get the impression Beck really intends me to.
It's always a little disappointing for me when the first track is the best, you spend the rest of the album waiting for something else as good as E-Pro to pop up. Oh well.
It's one hell of a sample of Chicago blues. From a modern perspective it's easy to hear pentatonic jams over a 12 bar blues and think it sounds cliched, but it would be silly to listen to one of the founders of the genre and complain that he fits too neatly into the genre conventions. This probably won't go in the usual rotation but I'm sure I'll pull up some Muddy Waters again if I find myself in the right mood.
I'm probably being unfair because I only listened all the way through once but I didn't really hear anything other than the singles that I cared about. Sunday Bloody Sunday and New Year's Day are great, almost enough for me to kick this to a 4 on their own, but I don't think I can justify more than a 3 for the whole album considering the rest kinda just washed past me without making much impact.
I don't know that this holds up very well 30+ years later. The vocals and production (both innovative at the time, I'm sure) both feel pretty dated and a lot of the lyrics are kinda dumb. I'd go higher if I were scoring for historical relevance.
Figured I'd go song by song for this one
Taxman has fun music but really dumb lyrics - taxes bad!
Eleanor Rigby is a genuinely beautiful song, no complaints
I'm Only Sleeping is fine, neat reverse audio effects
Love You To - yay it's sitar time! I just wish George Harrison would get out of the way, he sounds bored
Here, There, and Everywhere - a little saccharine but it's a nice little love song
Yellow Submarine is stupid and I hate it
She Said She Said - I like this one, the plain lyrics shine a lot more here than in some of their other songs
Good Day Sunshine - it's not exactly for me but this is at least a good Beatles pop song
And Your Bird Can Sing is pretty solid
For No One - I like this song but it feels like it's building to something and never gets there. The bass is good but the little trumpet solos feel tacked on.
Doctor Robert - it's a fun little song about drugs I guess. I don't think there's anything more to this than "this dude will give you drugs"
I Want To Tell You is fine
Got to Get You Into My Life - a point of light reminding me that the Beatles do occasionally make something I like
Tomorrow Never Knows - I'm not sure the instrumental noise fully works for me but they're doing something interesting with it. This feels like one of those Beatles songs that launches a genre. It's a more interesting use of eastern instrumentation than Love You To, which just had George Harrison lazily chanting over sitar music
I feel like they could have reordered the album, some of the song transitions are jarring (both sides of Eleanor Rigby for instance). Overall I liked it well enough but I don't think I'll ever see what everyone else seems to see in the Beatles. Probably won't listen to it again.
Fun weird prog rock. Breakfast in America is the better album from Supertramp but I appreciate the excuse to listen to one I haven't heard as much. Dreamer isn't their best work.
I hate to keep giving 3s but this is such a perfect blend of good, meh, and bad. Message in a Bottle is good but we've all heard it a million times. On Any Other Day is terrible. Walking on the Moon is great until Sting starts singing. The instrumentals are the main thing keeping this above a 2.
2 star lyrics over 4 star music makes a pretty clear 3. I mostly knew Paul McCartney as the poppiest Beatle so I was genuinely impressed by the variety in the music.
I had a good time with this album but I have to question if this really deserves a spot on a list that's supposed to be 1000 of the best of all time. I think this one could grow on me if I listened to it more, or if I got into the band when I was younger
I was hoping I'd listen to MBDTF and realize we were just on some weird shit back in the day and it wasn't actually that good. I'm very reluctant to admit that it holds up. It's inconsistent, flawed, controlled chaos, however you wanna say it, but if we're fully ignoring the Kanye problem this is like a 4.5. Might be a 5 without the Chris Rock skit at the end of Blame Game.
Fuck Kanye West and everything he stands for.
I like some metal but I've never gotten into Pantera, at least partly because they all seem like assholes. They used confederate flags in their stuff for years, they've had tons of racist incidents (Dimebag Darrell using racial slurs, Phil Anselmo shouting about white power, etc), and honestly just their macho scumbag vibes rub me the wrong way. They even have a song on this album addressing racism, and while the message is ostensibly one of unity, it directly conflates klansmen and black militant groups.
All that said, you can't deny they're an incredibly talented and influential band, driving the transition from thrash metal to death metal. They feel like such a perfect middle point between Metallica and Slipknot. I always had the impression that Pantera was a little sloppier and noisier than this but I was pleasantly surprised multiple times.
The album as a whole is sort of a wall of sound, but they do a good job of mixing up the tempo/vibe just often enough to keep it moving. There are times when Anselmo's vocals verge on cartoonish and I can't quite take him seriously but it works 95% of the time. He can even sing clean sometimes!
Best track: This Love
This is absolutely unfair because there are similar albums that I would rate much higher. My usual approach would be to say "this seems like a good version of a thing I'm just not into" and score it higher but I'm giving in to subjective enjoyment. I didn't have a good time listening to it.
