Love this album, it’s an all-time fav for me. It gets overshadowed by TCATS because that one had bigger hits, but I love the rawness and energy of this one.
Top-tier vocal performance, but some of the songwriting isn't great and the album as a whole feels too long. Still an enjoyable listen with some high highs.
Has held up really well and still hits hard. Very formative for me, musically
I think I’d heard like 1-2 tracks from this one before but had never heard of this as an album and was unaware of its status as a classic. Really solid!
Besides the fact that some of the Pumpkins’ best work is on this one, the stylistic range between the tracks is just staggering. There are a good number of tracks that I could do without, (the album’s final stretch is borderline terrible), but you have to respect the creativity.
Pretty solid mid-period Beck album although I think it’s maybe Beck’s 4th or 5th best. Sounds like he wanted to do ‘Odelay’ again.
I haven't listened to a ton of actual 80's glam metal stuff like this; I didn't hate it but I was hoping it would be sillier/trashier/catchier or something.
Enjoyed this one more than I expected to. Lots of fun to sing nonsense lyrics along with.
I think this is objectively a pretty solid album (although it is EXTREMELY of its time and the songwriting isn’t anything spectacular for the most part) but it turns out I just find Madonna’s overall corniness and self-importance too big of an obstacle to enjoy her music.
Somewhere out there, there's a universe where I don't hate Robert Smith's voice, and am a huge fan of The Cure.
Wasn't feeling this one at first, but it grew on me a lot by the end. I think my appreciation for Vampire Weekend helped me out here.
'Oh Baby' is a great start to the album but I feel like it was kind of downhill from there. I've never been a fan of James Murphy's talk-singing thing, and most of these songs are just soooo loooong. I haven't listened to LCD Soundsystem's earlier albums in a long time, but I remember them being a lot more fun; maybe I'm misremembering though.
Classic country has never been my thing, but this was fine. Reminded me of stuff I’ve heard from Dolly Parton from around that era.
I've always respected Talking Heads more than I actually like them, for the most part. I cannot in good conscience give this less then 4 stars because it's so unique and interesting to listen to, but I will say that little here would rank among my favorite TH songs.
Really enjoyed this one. First ‘new to me’ album from the list that I went back and listened to several times.
Great songwriting, great production. The singles still hit even though I’ve heard them a thousand times.
Decent UK punk that wasn't as down-the-middle as the first couple of songs suggested.
I was kind of ready to hate this, and while it wasn't really my thing, I respect it for being a lot more varied than I was expecting. I liked the songs that were more laid back more than the 70's hard rock stuff.
Not bad by any means; definitely a little forgettable though, and it probably doesn't help that I already listen to a fair amount of music in this vein that is more up my alley. The best songs here struck me as a not-as-good Daft Punk.
The words that kept coming to mind as I listened to this were 'pleasant' and 'sleepy'. I listened to it early in the morning, but I think it would work better as a winding-down-for-the-night sort of listen.
Hell of a debut. Miss this scrappy, up-and-coming version of Kanye so much. This is almost hard to listen to, knowing where Kanye has ended up. That said: this is undoubtedly a great album but I forget how hit and miss it is.
I was kind of excited to check out some Adele deep cuts, but unfortunately most of this album just didn’t do anything for me. You can’t deny her voice, but I didn’t think anything of the non-single tracks came anywhere close to the actual singles.
This is going to sound INCREDIBLY STUPID but I never realized how west coast g-funk Tupac was. I've never listened to more than one of his songs at a time and I guess most of my focus is on his unmistakable voice/cadence. Anyway, this was pretty good even though I've never really been a Tupac guy.
Man, I was turned off by this one almost immediately. It just sounds like someone told her to sing in all caps all the time. It sounds like she looks around the room and says 'listen to this, 'y'all' before every take. I will say that the production is pretty fantastic and that I would have had a hard time placing the time period that this came out. Anyway, this felt like a real endurance test and I couldn't wait for it to be over.
This was an interesting listen; I think I had only heard a little over half of it before but the half that I had heard as been burned into my brain. I've never been a huge fan of GNR but you have to respect how fully-formed of a debut this is. I can't imagine how this crazy would have sounded back in 1987.
Great performance, great energy. I like that they kept the stage banter in there as part of the recording.
I've never been a Pink Floyd fan, so I didn't have that as a jumping off point for this album. I also wasn't aware of the mental health stuff surrounding the creation of the album until after I was done listening, and maybe the context makes these songs more interesting in a way, but I could not wait for it to be over. This just came off as a bunch of tossed off screwing around to me and I kind of hated most of it.
Not really for me, but it's inoffensive enough that it was a pleasant listen, and the harmonies were pretty top notch.
This was pretty cool; kind of a dark jazzy detective movie soundtrack-type of thing. Some pretty cool sections here and there.
I’m giving this 3 stars because I can appreciate it on an artistic level, but God help me, I just don’t think I’ll ever be able to stand David Bowie’s voice.
God help me, I just don't like this kind of jazz.
I don't think I've ever listened to this type of music for more than a couple of minutes. This wasn't unlistenable or anything but I will say that if I was a quitter this would have been my first DNF.
Here’s another classic album that I had never heard all the way through. I thought that the quirks of Alanis’ voice would get super annoying over the course of the album, but that part ended up being fine.
I listened to Portishead quite a bit in college, and always preferred the second album to this one. I haven’t listened to either album all the way through in probably 25 years, but I’ll have to go back and give that second album a listen there’s no freaking way it’s better than this one.
Really enjoyed this one. Very 'all killer no filler'.
Music that sounds this 80's is always going to have a bit of an uphill climb as far as my enjoyment of it, but I found most of these songs to be pretty boring even outside of how extremely 80's they sounded. I recognized 'Walk of Life' - that song is pretty good; I had no idea what that song was called or who it was by before I listened to this. Also: I was surprised to find out that these guys are British
Thirty seconds into this one I thought 'oh man, this is going to be super annoying', but it ended up being kind of charming and fun. I don't think I would have enjoyed it that much if the singer didn't have a hilarious cockney (I think?) accent.
Early hip hop like this tends to not age well, but I still found this to be pretty enjoyable. I'd say the beats have held up better than the bars. When I was a kid I somehow went from MC Hammer to NWA, but I think something like this would have been a better middle ground.
This is their mountaintop album as far as I'm concerned. You could definitely trim the fat in a couple of places, but for the most part it's solid all the way through with some really high highs. 'B.O.B.' remains untouchable, and I'm still blown away every time I hear how Andre 3000 is able to rap over the beat on '?'
Possibly my favorite front-to-back Beatles album. I'm not a huge Beatles fan or an expert by any means, but I think of this as the album where they were really starting to get creative but before they got kind of bonkers (for better or worse). This was kind of their sweet spot in terms of overall quality as far as I'm concerned.
I dug this; very fun and breezy. Not a lot of surprises stylistically if you’ve heard their bigger songs, but it was a good time.
Sounds a lot like The Clash to me, who I've never liked. I'm just not a fan of this sort of sound, especially with this dude's vocals.
It feels weird to hate on this because it's so far out of my wheelhouse, but wow, this was a rough listen.
Lots of weird sections, some parts that were really cool. My favorite parts were the instrumental sections - some of them brought to mind Radiohead and early post rock. Not really what I'd call enjoyable, but definitely interesting.
I don't have the jazz vocabulary to describe why this is a lot more appealing to me than the John Coltrane albums that I listened to a couple of weeks ago, but I think part of it is that there is a level of chaos and dissonance that can push a lot of jazz into the ‘not for me’ zone.
I dug this one more than 'Heroes', I think it's a little less experimental maybe, and Bowie isn't singing with his Extreme Bowie Voice this time.
The cringy parts of this album haven't gotten any less cringy over the years, but I found it to still be a really entertaining listen beyond that. I know a lot of people don't like the 'lyrical miracle' aspect of Eminem's music, but I don't mind it.
This was a nice listen. I had always heard that this was an underrated semi-classic; it didn't blow me away or anything, but I think I would have been really into it if I had discovered it around the time it came out.
I didn't like this one quite as much as MSABAF but it was cool to hear what Talking Heads sounded like on their first album.
Never listened to these guys before; I don't know why I always assumed that they were more 70's southern classic rock. Pretty solid listen; I dug how varied it was. Also I never knew that these guys were responsible for 'Somebody to Love' and 'White Rabbit'.
Pretty enjoyable for the most part; I'm not a big blues guy so more than a couple of songs like this will get old fast to me. The live setting/energy does give this a big boost.
Here's another all-time classic that I'd never heard all the way through. I didn't dig the slower songs like 'Save the Children' nearly as much as the more upbeat ones, but this thing is just gorgeous front to back. Absolutely love the overall vibe.
Had never heard of this guy, but I thought it was a good listen. Very soothing blend of folk and blues. The instrumentation/production in particular stood out to me.
This album has never totally clicked with me, which I think is largely because of how it compares stylistically to 'Discovery', one of my favorite albums of all time. I think I'd like this a bit more if I could 'Men In Black' the rest of DP's discography from my brain.
Maybe a liiiiiitle more boring in places than I remember, but still a very pleasant listen. Probably more like a 3 1/2 star for me these days.
As someone who just does not like fast, swing-y jazz, I unfortunately have to put this one in the 'not for me' pile.
Ramones, if they were 20% more polite and British
Musically grating, awful vocals, annoyingly repetitive, way too long. A pretty miserable experience overall.
I genuinely tried to get into this even though I think Pink Floyd kinda sucks. I know that a lot of people like how expansive and epic it is, but a lot of it just felt meandering and overly grandiose and boring to me, particularly in the second half. I had forgotten about 'mother are they going to try and break my balls' though, which is pretty funny when sung in a British accent.
I don't know why I never got into Biggie Smalls growing up; this is great.
I realize that this is extremely backwards, but as someone who has never been into Bruce Springsteen, a lot of this just hit me like a dated, somewhat corny version of The War On Drugs. I’m sorry, I know that sucks. I’m uncultured.
As far as twangy 80’s country rock music goes, I guess this could have been worse.
This was pretty fun. I haven’t listened to a lot of stuff like this before, but I think my appreciation of Drab Majesty helped make this more palatable than it might have been.
This was a pleasant surprise; I’ve never been a big Rolling Stones fan and was expecting this to be pretty straightforward blues rock, but it was more diverse and interesting than I thought it’d be.
Good stuff. I think my enjoyment of this would go up by like 20% if I listened to it a few more times and read up on all the interpersonal drama.
Kind of a mixed bag for me; yet another album on this list that I appreciated more than I enjoyed. I was surprised to see that this came out several years after Pet Sounds; I spent the whole album thinking this one was sort of a bridge album between their 'Surfin USA' days and their more experimental period.
I went through a pretty big Beastie Boys phase for a while there but never got around to listening to this. It’s definitely on the brash and grating side, but not as annoying as I was afraid it’d be.
Pretty solid for the most part; Iggy Popp’s energy/performance was probably the standout for me.
Really dug this. Some really nice guitar work, and I’m always a sucker for a B3 organ. Will probably end up coming back to this one.
As a white, 46 year old dad, you can definitely trust my opinion on rap music, and my opinion is that rap music peaked here
I think I liked Chapman’s overall vocal performance here a lot more than most of the actual songs. I found myself wishing that a lot of these songs were like 20% slower and sadder. I think my actual score would be a 2.5, but I'll round up to a 3 because 'Fast Car' is good
The vibes were good, but the repetition made for a somewhat boring listen IMO.
I've never listened to Massive Attack before this. To my uninformed ear, I think this must have been incredibly ahead of its time in 1991, but sounds pretty dated to me in 2026. I think the vocals/lyrics in particular don't help - every time Tricky was rapping it made me think of Flight of the Conchords.
Pretty solid tunes, dug the bass work.
I feel like this album strikes a nice balance of being sad but not gloomy or self-pitying. I would put this firmly over Beck's other more laid back albums.
There are some solid tunes here, but like 75% of this just sounded like wanky blues dad stuff to me. No way did this need to be an hour+.
For my money, there’s a fine line between vintage synths that sound charmingly retro and ones that sound dated and corny, and unfortunately I found a lot of the lead synths on this album to be the latter. I did like this album overall.
I was hoping that more of this would be more fun, upbeat stuff along the lines of Freedom 90 and Faith, but this album was pretty mid-tempo ballad heavy, which I found to be kind of a drag.
Not too shabby. I've listened to very little Joy Division/New Order and I expected this to be darker, but it was a lot dancier than I was thinking it'd be. I can see where a lot of later bands pulled inspiration from this.
I can never put my finger on what it is about R.E.M. that is just slightly off-putting to me. Similar to The Cure, I wonder if I’d enjoy this a lot more with a different singer. I think it also doesn’t help that the Atlanta alt-rock station that I grew up on played R.E.M. to death.
Solid beats, solid bars, nothing that really blew me away. Similar to how I felt about EPMD’s album on this list, I think I would have enjoyed this album a lot more if I’d listened to it back when it came out.
Out of the three Bowie albums on this list that I’ve listened to so far, this one has been my favorite. I don’t think Bowie’s voice will ever be my cup of tea, but I dug the funk/soul influence on this one.
I appreciate the dumb, brash energy of this album. I miss this era of electronic music.
This is a 5 even though ‘The Girl is Mine’ sucks
This was fine; nothing about it really stood out to me other than ‘Sultans of Swing’.
The songs themselves are fine - I didn't even mind the harmonica that much - but the eccentricities of Dylan's voice were a real killer for me. It started to feel like he was singing like that just to annoy me personally.
I'm a little surprised at the low-ish ratings for this one; I can see how people would find it a bit repetitive and meandering, but I dug the spread out, spacey vibe for the most part. I think it sounded relatively modern to have come out in 1992.
Somewhat predictably I have to hit this one with the 'Not For Me' stamp, but I thought the intro/explanation bits were sort of cool.
This is more like a 2.5 for me; I generally don't like this sort of 80's new wave sort of thing, but this one was OK. It was weirdly just kind of non-descript. I actually went back and listened to it again because it didn't really stick with me at all on first listen.
I was a pretty big fan of Garbage's first couple of albums in the 90s but haven't listened to this one in probably 20+ years. I went back and forth between wanting to give a 3-star and 4-star rating for this; at the time it was a pretty novel, catchy blend of styles/sounds, and Shirley Manson remains a very compelling front woman, but there are some real clunkers among the deep cuts, and a lot of the lyrics were pretty cringy even back when this came out. I settled on 4 stars because I always appreciate a confident, guns blazing debut like this.
A couple of decent tunes, but a lot of this ranged from boring to actively annoying to me.
This felt like fairly down-the-middle 60’s psych rock until it became super goofy/corny in the second half.
This was the most aggressively British thing I've ever heard; holy SMOKES. Impossible to not picture Burt the chimney sweep while listening to this. Also, I refuse to believe this was only 38 minutes long.
Very pleasant sounding; kind of the platonic ideal of this sort of singer-songwriter-y folk stuff.
Really great. Loved the performances, loved the energy. Aretha's voice and charisma are top-tier.
I went through a HUGE Zeppelin phase back in college and ended up kind of burning myself out on them, so it's tough to try and listen to this with fresh ears, but even so, it's insane how stacked this album is. An easy 5/5.
I dug the first song on this one but it was kind of downhill from there unfortunately; just kind of in one ear and out the other after a somewhat promising start.
I remember trying and failing to get into this one back when people were going bonkers over it during the pandemic. My opinion of it hasn’t changed; I respect the experimentation and I think Fiona Apple has a really great voice, but so much about this album is so off-putting to me that I can’t really enjoy it.
Some cool moments mixed in with some very weird bits, but most importantly, there's "Honey, get hip - it's time to unzip / To unzip, zip-a, zip-a zip! Whipee!"
As I've mentioned in several other album reviews: I'm not a big jazz guy, but the vibes and the musicianship on this album are pretty undeniable.
Look, I hate present-day Kanye as much as the next guy, but this is still a 5/5
Really great voice; probably my favorite 'world music' selection that I've listened to on this list so far.
Minus points for being a bit overstuffed and having some pretty dated production, but I still enjoyed this more than I expected to. I've never been a huge Prince appreciator, but he was obviously quite talented, and he was trying some stuff here.
Honestly, could probably just copy and paste my review from the other Echo and the Bunnymen album for this one
This is one of the many albums on this list that makes me with the rating system used half stars. The first half of the album had me thinking 'oh yeah, this is an obvious 4' but then then the second half feels like they’d already used up all of the magic.
This sounds like music made by a cool guy who had a cool speaking voice and had people tell him that he should try his hand at singing, but he didn't really want to.
Enjoyed this one more than I did the last REM album on this list. I felt like it did get pretty same-y in the back half.
