1001 Albums Summary

Grooy grandpa rock complete with a lot of flute playing. Starts of strong with 21st Century Schizoid Man, but hits some rough patches by the time you get to Moonchild

This music feels so closely associated with scenes of old timey people partying in Las Vegas in the midcentury that I almost can't see myself really listening to it except in that context.

A classic! I used to play a prank where I'd pay to play zombie back to back for hours at time at a bar on the jukebox.

Many of these songs were in reliable rotation on the "Butt Rock" stations of my younger years, so I can't hear this music without being transported back to the gas station I worked at when I was 16.

A legendary album! Gets 5 stars because I've been getting a lot of butt rock early on here, and by comparison this is one of the first true "essential listening" albums I've had show up in the RNG.

Is Elvis really good? I haven't really spent that much time listening to his music, but maybe that's my loss.

Initially had some positive feelings about this album. But then on "Faithful" Common tries to imagine if he would "still be runnin' game" on god, if god was a "her." Lonnie Lynn, a man who has won every award available to a musician on god's green earth, wants us to join him in imagining if he would: -Get jealous about other men worshiping his woman (god) -Whether he would be more into god for her mind or her "heavenly body" -If he would still want his ex when he is "wit' her" (fucking god)

A great album of mostly vibey blues music, bookended with two of the greatest Stones songs ever recorded. It would be hard for me to give an album that knocks things out of the park with Gimme Shelter so completely less than 4, but I kinda feel like I needed more than vibes in the middle to give this a full 5. It's a 4.5/5 for sure.

I hadn't realized that Neil Young's ban of Spotify had ended, but there is the link to On The Beach. Anyhow, Walk On has a nice feeling to it, great open to the album. I like Vampire Blues and Ambulance Blues a lot as well. Introspective lyrics all through it. It feels like you're taking a road trip through some moody vistas to nowhere in particular, but that these landscapes are also Young's varied emotional landscape. This is one of those albums that grows on you the more you listen to it, having a hard time deciding if this is a 3 or 4 star so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and go with 4.

I was split between giving a 2 or a 3. This album is extremely over the top rock as theatre stuff, and is not something I want to put on in most contexts, so it's hard for me to say it's better than a weak 2.5. I'd acknowledge it's unique and has had staying power. All apologies to Bates, who does a killer Metaloaf at Karaoke every time. I remember being fairly drawn to this album myself as a teen, probably partially due to the cool album art as much as the teen melodrama of the lyrics. As an adult reading up on this I keep on seeing mentions of how producer Todd Rundgren took Meatloaf for an over-the-top parody of Bruce Springsteen, despite the fact that Meatloaf actually performed this music quite sincerely. I guess the fun with Adam West was that his Batman was also completely sincere. Melodramatic teen feelings set to theatrical power ballads, like if Andrew Lloyd Weber or Wagner was a retro rocker act.

Ahh this is one of those albums where I have to go back and read through the lyrics of each track carefully to give it a proper rating, but I just don't have the time. I'm going with a 4 here because I'd view it more as a slice of history than something I want to return to frequently, but maybe that is miserly. This is the type of album I was hoping to have come up in this project. I didn't grow up listening to rap. But I am well aware of the long shadow cast by the likes of Public Enemy, even though I haven't ever really given their albums a deep listen. Musically this album is almost without modern comparison, extremely frenetic and avant garde. You can really hear the connection between Public Enemy and other Def Jam acts from the 80s like LL Cool J and Beastie Boys, but this stands apart. The samples and energy all add up to something that makes you feel like you are in a specific place and time. It's almost impossible to draw the line between this and popular hip hop from today, maybe like Run the Jewels would be closest?

Sounds a lot like the Buzzcocks! But they're doing something similar 20 years later, so I'd file this as "footnote of 90s britpop" and move on. Also, "Alright" is annoying. There, I said it.

I was aware of Pusherman and had a 3 ready and loaded for this under the assumption that it was the standout on an otherwise unremarkable film soundtrack, but there's a lot more bench strength here than I had expected and I'll probably be listening to this more in the future.

Feel good soul! Perfect soundtrack to serve as nostalgic, inoffensive filler for films that baby boomers watched on dates made from 1975-2000. The fact that the first paragraph of the wikipedia article includes the fact that it was included in "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die" is really telling — there isn't much more to say here.

This is not the best P-Funk has put out. Even the album art seems slightly lazy. George Clinton may have reached the point of diminishing on using drugs for musical inspiration for this one. Just a side note, "Mike Judge Presents: Tales From the Tour Bus" season 2 covers P-Funk and the main acts associated with it and is well worth a watch.

I haven't done enough of a deep dive into 2Pac, so I feel bad giving this a score at all. I am not really into this album, but I understand that this remains Important Music for many people. There's clearly good writing here, I think the music has age badly.

There's a part of me that wants to like this, but I don't. This album provides a lot of ammunition to anyone who wants to criticize prog rock. This would feel more fun to see live.

Only 3.5 songs and then a bunch of noodling, but still good. Was stuck between a 3 or 4, but decided to lean generous, I think this is about the best prog we're going to listen to. Looked at the other reviews and these ones from less generous ratings made me laugh: "Nerd wizard rock that I do not want." "Guess again fuckface!! All you're getting is an album full of scrapped Super Mario 64 music." "Goblin Slop" "You know those girls who really dig Yes? Yeah, me neither."

If Nevermind doesn't get a 5, Gen X is not getting any 5s, and an entire realm of music that follows doesn't get any 5s.

I kind of think of this album as background music for like a coffee shop in a book store so the first time I put it on I absorbed maybe 15% of it at best. Trying to listen more intently now... Run, Baby, Run is ok. Leaving Las Vegas sucks, and Strong Enough sucks and has a toxic message. Everyone has heard "All I wanna do" to the point that I don't even know if it qualifies as music. Ok, got it, this album was created by scientists to make people more likely to complete their Abercrombie & Fitch purchases. I decided this is where I am going to put my first 1. For a moment I paused and thought “is this internalized misogyny? The first female artist our group has reviewed gets a 1? Is it actively actually all that bad when compared with other comparable female artists of this era?” But then after this album finished the algorithm put on a track from Alanis Morissette. I think I’d give Jagged Little Pill a 3-4 minimum, maybe even a 5. Tuesday Night Music Club gets a 1 because it isn’t essential listening. You can die without having listened to it.

This album is so fun! Really creative use of sampling, quick goofy bits in between tracks, really makes it feel like the hip hop of this era had no rules it had to operate within. Must have been the best to live in New York in 1991. I like the flowers in the album art, like this album truly does bloom and spread so many seeds. The only thing that I'm torn on giving this a full 5 is that the humour skews a little too juvenile, like De La Orgee is the sort of thing a 13 year old would think is hilarious. Correction: I have gone back and edited this to give it a 5. If Nevermind deserves a 5, so does 3 Feet High and Rising. I think I gotta listen to more De La Soul. Glad I listened to this album before I died.