1001 Albums Summary

Thank you RNJesus, because without Kashmir I would still be trying to find that unbelievable riff ten years from now.

Ubiquitous horny, romantic and sad staples all together on one album, therapeutic for Gaye and great stuff, but What’s Going On mogs Let’s Get It On entirely. That he was bold enough to name one song Let’s Get It On and another Keep Gettin’ It On, and both are fantastic, is amazing work and You Know How to Ball is absolutely smutty.

Tracey Thorn’s voice is wondrous and I am a slave to the beat, but the production is less eclectic and absorbing than their contemporaries (see: Massive Attack/Tricky/Portishead etc). Textbook definition of Fine.

A wonderful old favorite. Not a soul or a voice on this spinning earth quite like Joni.

Love 90s alternative rock/grunge, love the doom metal energy, love Chris Cornell and the slick time signatures on this. But… that’s all I’ve got. I expected to love this instead I can just barely differentiate it, a shame. The length is diabolical too.

Favorites: Love Her Madly, Been Down So Long (ish), Cars Hiss By My Window, Hyacinth House, Riders of the Storm. Mostly extremely fascinating despite not being my taste, but certain tracks I simply hate Morrison’s voice (The Changeling, L’America and again Been Down So Long).

it’s all downhill from the title track, which due to childhood indoctrination of classic rock radio I still enjoy… But the title track is track ONE. Ladies and gentlemen, the Eagles.

I love getting this album now, of all times. It’s actively one of my very favorites. When I went on a month and a half long dive into Bowie’s music in 2025 I had already long since heard Blackstar, having dug into it when the man himself died mere days after its release, after his birthday. That didn’t by any means stop me from returning to it again and again as I tore through his material I hadn’t previously touched. Blackstar insists on staying with me now, as if it is now one of my increasing grey hairs. I listened to it once more on its ten year anniversary, making it all the funnier to get it from the 1001 albums randomizer just over a week later. The title track basks in circling the sound and distance of finalities, of Death, of time. I have seen it often noted that one of Bowie’s inspirations for this final album was Death Grips but nowhere is this more apparent than in the fraught, dark cacophony and violent power of ‘Tis a Pity She Was a Whore. I follow Girl Loves Me around like a stranger I’ve known all my life but cannot speak to, the opportunity long gone to clarify the why’s and how’s. Dollar Days is melancholic, brittle yet contains a bold finality so frank in retrospect it sometimes pains me to tears. We are ten years on now from David Bowie’s death yet I Can’t Give Everything Away still feels like a final farewell I will never really be ready for, still feels like a fresh wound. Yet it’s laced with so much enigmatic kindness, an injury given with a gentle touch and goodbye. I am generally at war with myself over getting too attached to musicians and artists because generally they aren’t your friends or family, they are people who are capable of mistakes and lives lived at a distance from you, that possess talents that can touch us in indescribable ways. But it can’t be helped some days. Blackstar has always made that apparent. I do in fact miss him greatly still. I wasn’t ready for his goodbye. But I am glad he was able to make one. I’m glad it was this.

Good news: Shane McGowan is a poet Bad news: He needs lyrics/subtitles by default Good news: it’s a good album. Bad news: a little of it goes a very long way. I was burned out by track 8.

Promising for a first album, but still sounds like reheated leftovers.

Sometimes fine, most times a thousand years long.

A classic, an old favorite. How Halloween isn’t a literal holiday staple everywhere (and not just in my own personal rotation) is beyond me.

Enough potent imagery, poetic storytelling and frank intimacy to catch me falling madly in love with this man even after he’s long been gone. Like damn.