It's uh, ok I guess? Yup this is indeed a woman singing country.
Every song is the same. Lyrics, content, voice, melody, instrumentation. We get it, your husband sucks.
For one song it was alright, for half an hour it was a snoozefest.
1.5/5
Favourite song: Don't have one, they were all identical.
First time listening to Bob Dylan (yeah yeah I know).
I can't tell if he's great or if he's an alien that has only read the Wikipedia page for 'singing' and doesn't realise you don't need to sing every word in 7 different pitches.
I /think/ I'm quite enjoying it. Music that you really need to chew on to get the full impact of the storytelling in the lyrics - and this is one of the few times - out of hundreds of albums I've listened to - I can say it really feels like a guy telling you a story over the top of a guitar.
I don't think it's quite my thing, which is why it's only a 4/5 not a 5/5, but it's a very solid 4.
I do not particularly care for hip-hop coming into this, and...this album isn't gonna change that. I did, however, like it more than I expected. It's pretty okay. I can see why it's liked so much and why it's a foundational album. It's just not particularly one for me.
Favourite song: It's Tricky (duh. that song fucking rules)
I think the algorithm must be checking my previous review because yesterday I said "hiphop isn't my thing" and today I get another hiphop album...and it's pretty great actually. Next up, please can I get some good country to get the taste of Loretta Lynn out of my mouth?
It's just super fun. Certainly gets a bit too wacky at times (what the fuck is De La Orgee) but it's great fun to listen to and has a great funk to it. I might go back and listen to this again some day actually.
If you're like me and think "nah hiphop isn't my thing at all", I'd strongly suggest giving this a listen.
It really doesn't feel like it's a whole hour (!!) and it's damn good.
Favourite songs: (3 Is) The Magic Number, Me Myself and I
Okay yeah this is some grimy and dirty rock and roll for sure. It's weird to consider Iggy Pop as an actual musician and not that old guy who never wears a shirt and has a face on his stomach.
Liking it more than I expected definitely. It sure has raw power.
Powerful, raw, musical. I actually don't particularly care for Search and Destroy unlike seemingly every other reviewer, and Penetration suuucks, but the rest are pretty okay.
3.5/5.
Favourite song: I Need Somebody.
Adele has a fantastic voice.
Hello is a very soulful, booming ballad.
Everything else is the most bland, radio filler shite that is not just repetitive, boring to listen to, repetitive, a waste of time, repetitive -- but also feels so fake that it's offensive.
Also where the hell is the bass? Why is the piano so exceptionally thin and tinny? I just got good speakers!
COMING OUT OF MY CAGE AND I'VE BEEN DOING JUST FINE
C'mon, even if you ignore the absolute dominance this album had in terms of the mid-2000s zeitgeist, it's just wall-to-wall alt rock bangers. I don't care that "I got soul but I'm not a soldier" is cheesy nonsense.
Album continues to slap. Fantastic.
Favourite track: All of it tbh.
..this is the great Lou Reed?
Guy has the lyrical ability of a 7 year old and the glam rock isn't anything special. It's not actively bad to listen to, but it sure as hell ain't good.
Perfect Day is excellent however.
If you aren't a fan of electronic music, this isn't going to change anything for you.
I am not a fan of electronic music.
What the hell is this (derogatory)
It's eccentric and eclectic. The last third is definitely the best part of it. I was pretty set on a 1-2 but Stay Hungry and Take Me to the River are super funky and bump it at least a point.
I don't know how I feel about it. It's certainly fun, but I don't know if I actually like it?
The singer's voice is so goddamn whiny.
What the hell is this (complimentary)
Yesterday I had Talking Heads and my review was "What the hell is this (derogatory)"
This album is everything yesterday's wanted to be, but better. Eccentric, eclectic, funky, fun as hell. Total utter nonsense.
I only knew of them for Love Shack, which I still don't really like.
I mean there's still a solid third kinda ehhhh songs but they're definitely a minor part of the album.
It wasn't a rock
It was a rock lobster
Rock lobster!
Rock lobster!
ABSOLUTE CINEMA.
'The album was a commercial failure upon release, and its rejection by both critics and the public resulted in the group's disbandment in 1987.'
Yeah I can see why.
'The album was later described as a "neglected masterpiece" by Uncut, and was selected as one of the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.'
Did Dimery get paid to put this on the list? It's absolutely fucking awful. At least the other 2 1/5s I've given out so far had SOME, REALLY TINY, BUT SOME redeeming factors.
This is absolutely awful. Boring and weird in a way that isn't even "they tried something new and it missed the mark but it was an attempt" but just they tried to do the boring thing, missed, and produced something even more boring.
0/5 is too generous.
Day 13
It's alright. It's not bad or anything; I quite enjoyed it. I really don't know why it's on the list though as it's just completely okay country.
3/5
I found it kinda...thin, musically. That's All I Ask and Either Way I Lose were great and had really solid depth. The rest felt like they were let down by the lack of musical support for Nina Simone's great voice.
Maybe that's just the style of music and it's not for me, and that's okay.
+2 songs into the rotation.
I'm going to assume this is one of the seminal albums of DnB and Jungle as genres and that's why it's on the list. I can respect that.
It's also incredibly repetitive drum loops and someone screwing around with every button on their electric keyboard. I guess you need to be in a dark club dancing at 1am and not doing your Christmas shopping at 2pm to enjoy it a bit. Or at all. Also good god it's long. At least 3 times too long.
This sure is some dad rock but damn if it's the smoothest dad rock there is.
Look, it's coming into this with a lot of negatives: I hate the fuckin' eagles, man; it's a genre that really isn't bringing anything new or exciting to the table; it's not doing anything new or exciting to the table.
But...it's just so god damn /good/ at being radio-friendly rock that you can imagine your 50 year old dad doing bad air-guitar to that you have to love it.
It's just kinda unfortunate that it goes for more piano relaxed ballads at the end. That knocks it down to 4/5. It would've been a 5 if it had kept the first 2/3rds up.
Look, I get that this is probably one of the most important albums on the list...but it really is Blitzkrieg Bop + 12 worse Blitzkrieg Bops. And Blitzkrieg Bop isn't particularly good.
Also I absolutely hate his singing. So yeah, it gets a 2/5 because half an hour of Blitzkrieg Bop is at least okay.
Day 18
What a fucking fantastically bizarro album. Sometimes you get those bands that are known for one or two hits and then you listen to the album and you get a hodgepodge of random really crap nonsense. This is half of that.
You get Seven Nation Army, and then "huh, did I accidentally put my streaming into shuffle mode and it's playing a completely different artist? Nope, that's Jack White." Repeat for the whole album. Somehow by jamming the most random songs, styles, everything together they make a wonderfully cohesive and just fantastic album.
I remember having this as a kid and finding it kinda dull and unexciting and I have no idea how I came to that conclusion.
5/5, no questions or asterisks. (2nd 5/5)
If you want huge orchestral indie-pop, you don't need to look any further than Arcade Fire. That being said, it was a bit same-y. Really good, but..
Look I hate Christmas music and I hope Phil Spector is burning in Hell right now
But if you have to give me Christmas music, I'd happily stop being a total scrooge for an hour or so and listen to this. I think this is exactly the place where the wall of sound is unquestionably the right production choice.
It can't be 5* because it's Christmas music but it gets a 4.
It's pretty damn funky I guess. It was a lot less funky than I expected (in terms of, I vaguely know Parliament out of the P-Funk collective).
I can respect that the opening track is a sick 10 minute guitar solo but I also don't...want...a 10 minute guitar solo....I want some funky distorted guitar in a normal song or 4.
It's not bad, but it's not my thing. It's also kinda lacking in cohesion. But it is funky.
Also what the hell is Wars of Armageddon. Just...really ruined the ending.
The Bees - Sunshine Hit Me
Day 22
Before listening I figured it was going to be pretty good if inoffensive lofi indie pop that I wasn't sure why it's on the list, probably 3.5 rounded down to a 3.
After listening I realised it was very uninspired and quite boring inoffensive indie pop that I have absolutely no idea why is on the list. Like a 1.75 rounded down for the sheer gall of thinking this has any place on a list of albums to listen to, let alone the ones you must listen to.
I'm starting to build a theory here: they (the publishers) wanted to get a proper reason to re-release the book every few years and they can't just put the same list of songs in it...so off Dimery goes and grabs anything he's vaguely heard of that got nominated for the Who Cares Award for Best Indie Folk Album Released On A Tuesday and dumps them in to say "look! new albums!". Only explanation I've got for some of these.
Again, this isn't actively bad music to listen to. It's just really boring and kinda crap (a 2/5) and its existence on the list insults me, when my streaming service list of bands and albums that aren't even hinted at are nowhere to be seen.
It is ok at best. It's country, and I would say I don't like country -- but I gave that Lucinda Williams album a 3/5 because it was surprisingly fun and listenable.
This one is not great. It's just kinda too...well, country. Also the twang of the guitar is beyond parody. We get it, country has a line of lyrics followed by a really loud steel guitar twang riff but you don't need to make it 10 times louder than the rest of the song and also do it every damn time.
Not actively bad so it doesn't get a 1, but it's not great so it doesn't deserve a 3.
I only recognise the name Tom Petty but have absolutely no idea of his music. It's pretty good. Sure, it's just pretty straightforward rock and roll but it's pretty good at that. I'd give it a 3.5/5 but I'm feeling generous after a run of really kinda crap stuff, so it gets rounded up.
I need the most vibrato singing you have.
No, that's too vibrato.
It's certainly...musically flawed, but you can absolutely tell Anohni is putting all of her emotion into every line. It's raw and a bit odd but I can't say it's lacking in heart.
Someone else put it best: this is hippy poetry spoken over music without any real coherence to it. It's like a more pretentious and all together worse Bob Dylan.
It's bad! It's bad! It's bad! Ooh! Heehee!
I've been flip-flopping between 2 and 3 for a while. I settled on 2. It's basically just the hits and then filller, and even the hits are like 35% too long. Just cut out half the random noises. It's so annoying.
Another review called this Dark Side of the Soul and it fits. It's a beautiful masterpiece of funk and soul and jazz, of songwriting and instrumentals. I would've said that giving me an album with a 13 minute long instrumental track in the middle would be an eye roll but it's great.
There's no way this can be as bad as people are saying, right?
Turns out yes, it can be! This sucks. It is just bad. It's not psychedelic or shoegazey or ethereal or epic or experimental or anything like that. It's just shite.
I mean I don't particularly care for it. The beat is okay, but it's kind of the same beat for the entire album.
I think all the reviews going "how DARE a black woman sing about SEX this is the worst thing EVER MADE" who also turn around and go "hell yeah, all of these rock and roll albums from the 70s and 80s are the best things ever made" need to shut the fuck up.
I wish I could've said it was a surprisingly enjoyable album and give it a higher score out of spite but alas. It's not really for me.
All that being said, "You could never trivialize pussy" may be the best lyric ever written.
Musically it gets like a 2 because...it really is the same song for 50+ minutes (and there is One in the middle) and there is zero bass and the drumming sucks. Don't tell Henry.
However it is a lot of fun to just turn your brain off and go hell yeah, and One is a masterpiece, so..
If it wasn't SO DAMN LONG it would be a 4. but it's at least 20 minutes too long. Seriously, not every song needs to be 8+ minutes if you're just going to thrash out the same chords for 4 minutes straight of that.
It's wall-to-wall pop-punk bangers. A hell of a lot of fun and just a really enjoyable listen.
33/1089
Hey, do you ever think "I would love to listen to some twiddly prog rock that is fun and funky but I really don't care enough to put on a 3 hour space opera with 30 minute long orchestral arrangements that consumes all your mental energy to listen to"?
well have I got a 40 minute twiddly prog rock album that is fun and funky and not a pretentious epic slog for you. sometimes you just want a bunch of dudes noodling on a guitar for a bit.
The best Radiohead album. I will not be taking questions.
Okay, putting aside the whole Kanye debacle...I can't fault it for being weird and experimental but it doesn't sing for me at all. It's just kind of boring and not fun. When every 30 seconds you decide to change up the entire song, for the whole album, it's just a mess.
This is possibly the weirdest one I've gone "why is this on the list" to so far. I mean as an album goes, it's fine. It's about as "yeah this is okay" as is possible to get. It's not bad, or good, or anything other than okay. Which...is why it's so odd that it's included. They're not a no-name britpop indie band who really like church organs or a british 80s new wave band's 5th album on the list. It's literally just the most okay 90s punk rock imaginable.
This review is more thought than I had for the entire listening duration.
One third in:
I kind of expected this to be just Sweet Dreams (and a bunch of filler) but it was pretty good actually. I don't particularly care for synthpop, and I don't really care that much for Sweet Dreams either..but yeah I can see why it's a classic.
3/5
After finishing the full album:
Turns out there's like 1/2 hour of pretty good synthpop and then 40 minutes that feels like it goes on forever and keeps going "monkey monkey"...? what the hell is the rest of this. Gets marked down for just really flopping hardcore for too long.
Day 38/1089
I vaguely recognise the name The Temptations but I haven't exactly listened to much Motown. Or much of anything before 1990 actually. I mostly listen to midwest emo and pop-punk.
Mostly soulful, partially funky, all around fantastic album. Full of emotion, full of great music. I was torn between 4 and 5, then realised all the reviews were talking about Papa Was A Rolling Stone and it wasn't in the track list on tidal. for some reason they don't have it in this album? but they have the full song on other albums? So then I went and listened to a 12 minute song, loved it, and it very clearly is a 5/5 album.
Just a massive flop tbh. Then the last song does sound like a bad rendition of happy birthday which really soured it all
Basically the Ramones but better in every way: more aggressive, more raw, more punk. That being said, I'm just not a fan of 70s/80s punk. It's so...empty.
I did not know about Layla or Clapton going into this, so I get to approach it from a clean slate. It's okay blues rock, but it's also so bloody long. It doesn't need to be anywhere near this long.
Wikipedia suggests it was Clapton's attempt to show he could produce good music as part of a band instead of as a guitar noodling showoff, but then this album is just unnecessarily full of guitar noodling showoffness.
It's both nothing special and also a drag.
Every girl may be crazy about a sharp dressed man, but no girl is crazy about sloppy boring dad rock that even your dad thinks is shit.
I get that 80s "classic rock" is kinda formulaic but this is taking the piss. Also come on, literally every song is about wanting to have sex except the song about tv dinners (which is probably about having sex with tv dinners).
(Wonder)wall to (Wonder)wall britpop classics. It holds up fantastically. Just a wonder(wall)ful album.
I felt like I was listening to a clown at a pretentious child's birthday party hosted by some art snob rich parents who don't really get the whole children thing but are trying their best to work out what children like.
It was upbeat and trying to be fun but it was mostly boring. Also I want to give them 1/5 just because of how much pronouncing equator as "eh-COO-AY-tuh" annoyed me.
It was pretty good. I knew the two big songs (Changes and Life on Mars) and they were still fantastic. The rest was pretty great too. Not quite Ziggy Stardust levels (the one Bowie album I actually do know, plus a couple of other songs) but if the rest of his stuff is this level of pretty good - and I imagine it is - I'm looking forward to it.
On the surface I should've loved this: somewhat experimental with a ton of fuzz and effects that still sits in the "an album of songs" space rather than the region of soundscapes and noise.
Started off pretty promising, then slowly went down, and down, and the last stretch was just awful. It sounded like a high school battle of the bands except rather than get music lessons or singing lessons to learn more than 3 chords they spent all that money on guitar pedals.
47/1089
It finally happened - one of the top/bottom 20 albums.
After finding Bad...well, bad - I was ready for disappointment with this one. But no, I get it now. This is why he's the King of Pop. Funky as hell, catchy as hell, not just endless "ooh! ahhh! awh-awh-awh! hehe!". It's short, sharp, and to the point without filler or fluff.
Thriller-Beat It-Billie Jean back to back to back is also absolutely amazing.
I want to rate it lower because it's not my sort of music and I got kinda tired of him on the radio, but I cannot in good faith when I liked it this much.
God damn it's a good album.
What have I done to deserve this bland, whiny, boring indie pop shite?
And I like whiny indie pop.
The review.
I was expecting to be disappointed when I saw soft rock from the 60s, but it was pleasantly alright.
the first half was really boring ambient soundscapes, and the latter half was really boring electronic rock soundscapes.
Well, it finally happened. In the same week as I got Thriller, too.
I mean I'm not going to doubt the influence or impact of this, but I also don't like to rate on that. I prefer to rate on how much I enjoy listening to it.
Unfortunately this album was basically an experiment in "how little enjoyment can we force the listener to have". I'm very glad that the whole thing was not like I.B.M. (that was a little too abrasive). I can respect the sheer gall of releasing this and it sure as hell isn't boring even if I didn't particularly enjoy it.
"Oh you like music? Name every sound."
Throbbing Gristle: well
Also my cat seems to be very confused. He normally doesn't care when I play loud music but this one has him at full attention for some reason.
I'm very glad I had Throbbing Gristle yesterday to prepare myself for this. It's not exactly an approachable album coming in blind.
Look, there's not much to say. Even for someone as clueless as me who knew all of 2 Stevie Wonder songs (As and Superstitious), this is a gorgeous album full of absolutely fantastic songs. Guy can sing and the songs are so musically rich. I refuse to believe this is a double album (!) and his 18th studio album (!!) and there's like 1 or 2 filler songs at most.
I am very glad that this project, even 50 days in, has opened my ears to the Motown sound because I'm really enjoying it.
Day 52/1089
I do not care for Elton John. He insists upon himself.
Probably not fair to judge elton as "guy singing on a piano" versus the "guy singing on a piano" of yesterday (stevie wonder), but he just...isn't all that great except for Tiny Dancer. He lacks the oomph or much of anything.
Also did he just look around and pick random objects to write songs about? oh yeah let's write a song about...holiday inn. yeah that sounds good. indian sunset seems to be just a bunch of native american stereotypes jammed into a song. razor face is...what?
sex! sex! sex! sexy sex sex! sex!
jesus christ dude do you have literally anything else to do than to write generic hard rock songs that don't even pretend to be about something other than sex
