1001 Albums Summary

one of the most nostalgic albums of my childhood & it’s the first one generated for me. a blessing really. while i don’t know all the words, the melodies feel etched into my heart. my dad played some of these songs so many times, we asked him to stop. come to think of it, it was just old man. thinking of my dad aging with this album— an album so preemptively fixated on aging— is very poignant to me now that i’m thinking about it. i love my old man!!!! old faves: harvest heart of gold alabama new faves: the needle and the damage done

had me in the beginning, lost me in the middle, then had me again at the end. genuinely very fun & made me happy, but i think abba is a band i like to hear in small doses (playlist, radio, wedding, etc.) and not all together on a record. they are A Lot & the genre requires a lot of repetition but some songs (like knowing me, knowing you) would have benefited from variety imo. overall enjoyed greatly! old faves: dancing queen money money money new faves: my love, my life knowing me, knowing you arrival fernando most overstimulating (in a bad way): that’s me

sooo goooood this album made my drive home feel so short. i loved the instrumentation and his flow was dynamic and interesting while remaining steady. i need to relisten to focus more on the lyrics but i really loved the cast of voices coming in and out, it felt really genuine and helped break the album up nicely. my rap literacy is very low but it was nice to see a prime example of 90s rap outside of some others that felt corny to me. i saved a ton of songs!! can’t lib out to it tho lol faves: n.y. state of mind life’s a bitch one love it ain’t hard to tell

another shout out to king jerry for this one!! he played steely dan all the time, though mostly their album aja. i think this is the first time ive listened to this full album but god DAMN it’s great. not one skippable song imho. it’s innovative it’s fun it makes me want to hit the grill idk but i loved it so so much old faves: rikki don’t lose that number pretzel logic new faves: night by night barrytown!!!!

enjoyed this one a lot!!! when google told me they were british i was shook idk that just doesn’t feel right, i was certain it was american with the twang and the vocals. knowing now it kinda feels like american cosplay. tbh i have no special thoughts, but did particularly like the long instrumentals and solos, and the stripped back vibe. faves: down to the waterline six blade knife southbound again

loved down. already somewhat familiar with the album but great to sit and listen to. love when lou reed moans a little 👍

didn’t listen to the whole thing but definitely have heard it before and i KNOW it’s a 5/5

loveeeeeee this album!! it’s always nice to sit down with a full wilco record instead of abusing the main songs i know by them. i really enjoyed listening to their lyrics this time around. their use of imagery stood out to me especially. alt-country is hit or miss for me (and im not even 100% sure thats their genre) BUT this one definitely hits. old faves: i am trying to break your heart jesus etc heavy metal drummer new faves: radio cure i’m the man who loves you

this is the first album so far that i’ve started over immediately after finishing because i just wasn’t ready for it to be over. i just love the way bruce depicts this mythologized american space and experience. based on the few bruce albums i’ve listened to, this one feels more rooted in realism while remaining true to his previous sound. it’s just not overly shiny with optimistic anthems. i feel like ‘badlands’ is a good example of a driving anthemy song that speaks from a place of urgency rather than joy. when the urgency isn’t there, there’s a warning of stagnation & despair like in ‘racing in the street’ & ‘factory’. all of it culminates really well into a message about the need to choose for yourself what your life looks like. at least that’s what i got from it. i feel like the lyrics in “darkness of the edge of town” showcase it: “well everybody’s got a secret, sonny / something that they just can’t face / some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it / they carry it with them every step that they take / ‘til someday they just cut it loose / cut it loose or let it drag ‘em down”. LORD GRANT ME THE STRENGTH TO CUT IT LOOSE!!!!!!! before i felt moved to really write my feelings about this album, i was going to make a joke along the lines of “take a shot every time he sings about driving in a car” but that’s actually one of my favorite parts of bruce’s music. he has a short list of consistent imagery & sings a lot of the time about the same things. he is returning endlessly to his past, which maybe we all do but bruce does it best. it reminds me of 2 quotes that i want to share that have lived in my head for years & showcase my feelings about this better than i can articulate: “If you are a private poet, then your vocabulary is limited by your obsessions. It doesn’t bother me that the word “stone” appears more than thirty times in my third book, or that “wind” and “gray” appear over and over in my poems to the disdain of some reviewers. If I didn’t use them that often I’d be lying about my feelings, and I consider that unforgivable. In fact, most poets write the same poem over and over. Wallace Stevens was honest enough not to try to hide it. Frost’s state­ment that he tried to make every poem as different as possible from the last one is a way of saying that he knew it couldn’t be.” —Richard Hugo “I used to, uh, I had this habit for a long time. I would get in my car and I would drive back through my old neighborhood, back to the town that I grew up in. And I’d always drive past the old houses that I used to live in. Sometimes late at night … when I used to be up at night [laughs]. And I got so I would do it really regularly … two, three, four times a week, for years. And I eventually got to wonderin’, What the hell am I doin’? And so, I went to see this psychiatrist, and, uh – this is true – and I sat down and I said, ‘Doc, for years I’ve been getting in my car and I drive back to my town and I pass my houses late at night and, y’know, what am I doing?’ And he said, ‘I want you to tell me what you think that you’re doing.’ So I go, ‘That’s what I’m paying you for.’ So he says, ‘Well, what you’re doing is that something bad happened, and you’re goin’ back there, thinkin’ you can make it right again. Something went wrong, and you keep going back to see if you can fix it, or somehow make it right.’ And I sat there and I said, ‘That is what I’m doing.’ And he said, ‘Well, you can’t.” —Bruce Springsteen, introducing “My Father’s House” live old faves: badlands darkness on the edge of town new faves: something in the night racing in the street the promised land streets of fire least faves: candy’s room

very fun but it felt front heavy and got repetitive after a while. splitting it up helped to keep it fresh and i enjoyed it a lot. some songs really caught me off guard but i ended up liking a lot (independent women part 2 was so weird but cool & emotion being the first ballad after 9 tracks felt out of left field) the thank yous were weird too but sweet ig ?

didn’t know acclaimed 2000s actor ice t was a musician too!

loved! not my favorite the smiths album (that’ll be the queen is dead) but definitely solid. old faves: the headmasters ritual new faves: i want the one i can’t have what she said

s tier 2010s pop album!!! the hits just don’t stop coming (except for writer in the dark im so sorry i never liked her). it’s a cohesive and raw album, and it bangs. what more do you want??? old faves: supercut sober ii (melodrama) liability hard feelings/loveless rediscovered: perfect places liability (reprise)