I've been listening to Led Zeppelin for 30 years.. They just aren't my thing. There are sparks of good things on here, Immigrant Song is OK. Tangerine is one of my favorite LZ songs.
Mostly though, these songs could possibly be really good if Robert Plant didn't screech all over them.
I hate to give this star one album. From Warren Zevon to the Mountain Goats, I love a lot of music that is folk adjacent. I love Hallelujah. But this album was a tough listen for me.
Where music I'm not loving can sometimes slip into the background of my attention, this album kept my focus on itself, but that was not a good thing.
I actively disliked listening to it.
I'd heard half of this album on the radio over the years, but this whole album is fantastic!
The Police aren't my favorite band, I've only ever heard the radio hits. This was my first time listening to an entire Police record.
This wasn't a bad time. It won't be elevated to a spot where I listen to it all of the time, but I enjoyed it enough for the duration.
This album is obviously Bowie trying something new. The results are middling. But the album is bookeneded with radio hits that are pretty good.
An obvious classic. Aretha is an amazing singer, and the songs are powerful. This album is more like a time capsule than something I'd be interesting in listening to often.
I imagine that this album sounded like the future when it was released. But this album is a stack of cold, digital sounds that attempt to be a facsimile of music, while never really getting there.
There was one track, perhaps Seconds, late in the album that had a warmth of decent modern electronic music. Otherwise, the rest of this album, including Don't You Want Me, is an easy pass for me.
This album was way better than I was expecting! I thought it was going to be old hippie noise, but this was a really good group of songs!
I was also surprised when I recognized This Will Be Our Year, a song I recognized now is a cover by OK Go.
I was familiar with Carol King, but I had never listened to all of Tapestry until now. I vascillated between 4 and 5, but landed on 4.
These songs have a lot of heart, and have a timeless quality to them, even as the production has a dated early 70s feel to it.
I remember hearing this album when it was new, the Bucket was one of my favorite songs that summer. This album is solid, but it's a little underbaked. By the release of Because of the Times, Kings of Leon will have their sound down, and their next several albums are at least 4/5 efforts.
The talent and creativity of Jimi Hendrix guitar playing is readily evident all across this album. While Hendrix is never going to be favorite style of music, listening with fresh ears, these tracks can really light a fire in me.
This album is full of hits I have heard before on radio and films and several of the album tracks I wasn't previously familiar with were also quite good. However, I feel the album was too long by a few tracks, and I was happy to be through it when it was over.
I didn't expect to like this album enough to warrant 4 stars, but this album was able to surprise me.
I had never listened to this album before, but I am glad that I have now. This album was very easy to listen to.
I expected an album to sound like a time capsule of it's age, but it has a timelessness that makes me want to add to it my collection.
This the the first time I ever sat down and listened to an entire Elvis record. It was a mix of songs that sound like the soundtrack to an Oceans 11 style "cool" movie, and some croony songs.
I don't see myself adding this to the regular rotation, but I had a decent time listening to this. Suspicious Minds is a classic.
I get this is an important, historic album. But it wasn't something I'd look forward to revisiting.
Several years ago, I listened to Aja because a friend told me it was great, and I was experimenting with albums from the "all time great" lists. I did not like it.
I wasn't expecting much from Pretzel Logic. But after Rikki, which I knew from radio play, this album was easier to listen to than I expected.
The music is technical. I can easily how this album would reward repeat listens, gaining familiarity and anticipating little things. Unfortunately, I would find that somewhat difficult to do. The lyrics are, to be charitable, profoundly stupid.
I assume the lyrical content was some mix of inside jokes, some.weird early 70s brand of "cool" that does not translate to a modern listener, or the result of the very specific drugs of the era (does doing quaaludes make Steely Dan appealing???)
The overall package is music that isn't actively offensive. At 33 minutes, this album doesn't wear out it's welcome. I could stand if this music was playing in tbe background with friends or something. But this didn't convince me to seek out more Steely Dan into my musical life.
I hit play on his album in Spotify without looking at the track list to see what I was in for. Unless I am mistaken, I had never heard I Ain't the One on track 1. Then, it was immediately followed by 3 staples of classic rock radio, all of them huge hits. The next three tracks were also new to me, then the record closes with Free Bird.
The four 'filler' songs sounded exactly like Skynyrd, but were also somewhat forgettable. It leaves me struggling to figure out how to rank this record. This is only my 23rd day of this challenge. I've heard a few really good albums, several kind of good albums, and a bunch that were ok at best. But the four songs are all time greats.
I'm of the opinion that Free Bird is overrated. But it's still a pretty great song. So is Tuesday's Gone and Simple Man. Gimme Three Steps is a staple of classic rock radio. The strength of these songs alone raises the bar and makes this album an all time great.
What the hell did I just listen to?!?
Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band's album Trout Mask Replica isn't some avant garde experiment. It isn't anti-art music to shed light on the pretensiousness of artists of the era. It is crap. Two albums, four sides, 80 minutes of crap. It is noise. It is nonsense. It is stupid.
I hated every minute of this album, and couldn't wait for it to be over. Unfortunately for me, it is a super long double album, so it felt like it took forever.
I could find no redeeming feature in this utter slog of a listen. I hated myself while I was listening to it. This album doesn't take long to show how completely terrible it is. Maybe it was by the third track, a ditty about Nazi Germany's death camps. Maybe it was the five minute "instrumental" cacophony of noise on track five. Somewhere after the one hour mark, I lost all hope that I could ever hear music again. I thought I should abandon all hope and puncture my own ear drums.
I actually sat down and pondered who, in the era that this crime against humanity was published, would have actually taken the time to listen to this album the whole way through side 1, then willingly flip the album over to side two and resume play, then, in some act of sheer audacity, change the record to the second disc, and listen to that entire side of music before making the concious decision that they had to flip the album over to really see how this thing ends up? That wasn't hitting play on an iPod and zoning out. This was actual effort! For this album?!
I thought I liked some weird ass stuff. I read the wikipedia article where some interesting people count this album as a masterpiece. I read the opinion that after 7 listens, you really can "get" this album. I can promise you that I will NEVER EVER subject myself to this nonsense another six times to reach any understanding with this.
I hated every second of the eighty minutes of this album.
This is a hard album to review. On one hand, it sounds like a Randy Newman album. If you like his musical stylings, this album is in your wheelhouse. On the other hand, it's a concept album about racist southerners told from the perspective of the racist southerner.
There's not a lot of replay value to an album that begins by so casually dropping hard N words right out of the gate. Even getting what he's going for in this album, it still feels ichy.
Steve Earle attempted a similar feat by recording Ghosts of West Virginia about people he didn't agree with politically. He succeeded in making an album that you don't feel the need to wash off afterwards.
It's weird to compile a list of a thousand albums. There's bound to be lots of albums that not everyone is going to like or click in with. That's how this album lands for me. This record would have never landed on my Now Playing list without this.
It's not a bad listen, but it's not my wheelhouse. So I don't know how to rate this fairly. It's a 2-3 for me because I don't have the skillset for R&B msuic in general.
I had never heard of Ride before, but this album was very good. It will be a repeat listen for me.
I've been doing this album challenge for about a month now, and it was only a matter of time until I got the Beatles. Here's the thing, the Beatles are overrated. Sure they have a lot of good songs, but man, some people worship them.
That that, this album has some good stuff on it. There's a ton of radio hits on this album, and some of my favorite Beatles songs on here. Buffalo Bill, Rocky Racoon, Revolution, Helter Skelter are really good.
There's some real stinkers on here too, though. Some songs that are just bizarre, or long and indulgent. It makes the album too long and by the end, it was really hard not skip some of the tracks as they dragged on. Revolution 9 was over eight minutes of noise.
It made an album that ballooned to 90 minutes. If they had more restraint, there could have been a better overall album.
I don't have a sophisticated palette for jazz, but I liked a lot of this album. I liked how it slid from orchestral, big band, flamenco guitar, and jazzy elements. Sometimes the sounds blended into a cacophony that sounded very much like noise. That was the point.
Often times, I rate these albums by how much I enjoyed the listening experience, and I think about how much I would want to listen again. I would like to think I'd give this one a listen again.
A collection of 10 hippie folk melodramas.
This is probably the first good Chili Peppers record. It still has a lot of their funk, rap style from the 80s, but took the lineup and style from Mother's Milk, and congealed into a really solid record.
The album is too long, and there's some songs that I don't love, but there's some great songs on here.
Breaking the Girl, I Could Have Lied, and Under The Bridge are highlights of this record for me.
I wasn't familiar with this record prior to this listening. But I liked it a lot. It is a different style of beach boys, made evident by the first track telling us Don't Go Near the Water.
Barely a month into this album a day experiment, and I just got my second Bowie album. In my past experience, I like Bowie radio hits, but not a fan of Bowie albums.
Listening through Hunky Dory didn't really change my mind. The songs here didn't really grab my attention, I found myself wandering away.
Ultimately, I liked Changes, I was already familiar with that track. Queen Bitch near the end was also really good. The rest of the album was meh to ok.
This generator is hammering me with Bowie lately, so I must admit I'm getting a little weary. I wrote in my review of Hunky Dory just the day before yesterday that I'm often a fan of Bowie songs,but not Bowie albums.
Despite this being Bowie's magnum opus, and being the one David Bowie album I know for sure that I've listened to in the past, this album failed to convert me. This album was...fine, but I am not adding this to my regular rotation.
I know I am going against popular opinion, but Prince just isn't for me.
This album generator has been about expanding my musical horizons, but damn if I haven't had a long string of 'great' albums that I really didn't like much.
Metallica's Black album is a familiar album. One I listened to many times over the years. This album was more or less my intro to Metallica, I wasn't familiar with their previous work when Enter Sandman blew up on radio and MTV when I was about 10.
After familiarizing myself with everything from Kill Em All to And Justice For All, I can see how some people would find this an abrupt change to the sound of Metallica.
Nevertheless, I love this album, there are so many timeless songs, from the aforementioned Enter Sandman, Whereever I May Roam, The Unforgiven Nothing Else Matters, this album is a powerful introduction to Metallica of the 90s.
The Who isn't my favorite band, but I do like a lot of their songs. It's hard not to call this a great album. I've heard over half this album just listening to local radio.
Baba O'Riley, Bargain, and Won't Get Fooled Again are amongst my favorite Who tracks.
This isn't the big Sabbath album. There is no Iron Man or Paranoid on it. But it's still a solid collection of hard rock songs. Really good listen the whole way through.
I remember when the Libertines came out and were dismissed as "English Strokes". I haven't listened to this album for a bunch of years, but it was fun to revisit it. It's not may favorite, but it's OK.
This is peak Age of Acquarius hippy bullshit. It has every accouterment of the era, it has the mystical song with sitar.
The only song I was familiar with was Season of the Witch. It's still pretty bad. I think Donovan realized that witch rhymes with stitch and wrote the whole song about it.
I have loved this album since I was a kid. Perfect mix of synth and rock guitar. Over half of these songs still get regular airplay on radio. There's a bar band out there right this second singing "Just What I Needed".
While soul isn't my wheelhouse, this was upbeat and uplifting. It was an enjoyable listen.
A fun and occasionally funny selection of big band style jazz standards. Sarah's voice is stellar throughout. I wish the band was a little louder in the mix.
I admittedly am not a Bowie fan. I've been doing this generator challenge for less than 2 months, and this the 4th album I've tolerated. It's also the worst.
Despite this album being released very close to his death, I don't see any reason to see this as Bowie's swan song. Dollar Song near tbe end is tbe only track that even sounds introspective to me, suggesting that the author is considering his mortality.
The rest of this album sounds like another stupid character that Bowie donned, as so many alter egos throughout his catalog.
I do not expect to give this another go later to see if I was too harsh.. It was terrible the first time.
Loud, silly, cheesy - and fun!
I liked this album far more than I expected. I didn't like Oyo Como Ya, expecting it to be the best song on the album. Instead, it is kind of the worst. I could listen to this album in the background and enjoy it.
It has a cool vibe. But it's hard for me to be too interested in a foreign language album.
This is sort of a weird album. There are some interesting tracks. Then there's some songs that aren't really even songs. Three Great Alabama Icons was a dissertation loosely set to music about George Wallace.
As a piece of art, this album is interesting and possibly has a message to tell. As a piece of music, it doesn't lend itself to repeat listens.
Document was my first REM record, and it will always be special.
Document is a great mix of their less polished sound of their earlier records while showing where they would get to with albums like Automatic for the People
I don't know how the Stones became considered essential classics. This album is a prime example that they don't write great albums.
Beggars Banquet is not a good album. Starting with the two tracks everyone knows, street fighting man is nothing special. Sympathy for the Devil is an annoying song. It's over 6 minutes of "hoo hoo.... Hoo hoo... Hoo hoo".
There are no hidden jems in the remaining album tracks. The rest are the generic and forgettable.
This album is a bloated mess. There's a couple of good songs in here. But I don't want to listen to this enough to decide which songs to cut and which to keep.
I didn't like this album much back in its day, despite several friends loved it. Listening to it today, it was better than I remembered, but that is damning with faint praise.
Eminem is a brilliant rapper, and his lyrics are creative, but seriously deranged.
The production is very good, but the overall package is too long, and the skits are just really bad.
A rowdy and highly entertaining live record.
Sweet Dreams is a pretty good song. The rest of the album is dreadful. Cold and repetitive.
I like the Prodigy, in that it means I like the couple of The Prodigy songs that used to be on TV or radio. None of which were on this record.
But it's still the same recipe, electronic music that metal heads would dig.
I am not a regular listener to Adele, but I generally like her, or at least admire the strength of her voice when I hear her songs. This collection of songs has the vocal strength, but lacks the substance of the "hits" in her catalog.
Water Under the Bridge was the only track that really stood out to me that I would want to add to my regular rotation. The rest just make me want to listen to Adele songs I already know.
According to the label and the description, this should be right in my wheelhouse. But upon listening, I am left cold.
This album is quiet, acoustic, contemplative, and very sad.
The album suffers from a weird patronizing tone. Had Springsteen ever heard anyone from Nebraska talk? He sings in an accent that suggests that Nebraksa is between Alabama and Mississippi.
Atlantic City and Highway Patrolman are standouts, the chorus to Atlantic City sticks in my head every time I hear it, and Highway Patrolman is probably mostly because I'm a sucker for history and Bruce sings about a song "The night of the Johnstown Flood".
Open All Night suffers from the spare acoustic production. It needs the full sound of the E Street Band. Bruce sounds like he's trying to make the song sound big, but can't get there by himself.
This album can sometimes fit a feel, but I often need to shower this album off after listening, and find something much less dismal.
I didn't look at what I was about to listen to, so I was expecting an album of Vietnam war movie soundtrack hippie bullshit. I was happy to find this wasn't that. And while I didn't love it, I do love some of the 90s country rock that sounds like it owes it sound to this album.
