A completely cohesive album that tells a story with an ambiguous ending. Comments on humanity's fascist tendencies throughout society, school, motherhood, the courts, etc. Musical themes perfectly set the mood and match the lyrics. At times, mostly near the end of the album, the lyrics get a little too on the nose, but that's a minor quibble. Excellent album.
Great riffs abound on this album. It's wonderfully lofi, low tech, and high energy. The album sounds as though they just put a single mic in the middle of the room and let them play. Mistakes in Jack White's playing crop up, but they just add to the live feel of the album.
The songs are very simple, but the songs are so great that you never get bored. This is helped by the fact that the songs average out to 2.5 minutes each.
If this were just guitar and drums for the entire album, that could be tiring, but there are songs with organ and piano mixed in throughout to keep things interesting.
This is a FUN album that can be listened to over and over again.
The first half of this album (through Kids) is incredible and then it falls off. All filler in the second half, but the first half of the album is nothing but perfect pop hooks.
This was ok. Sex machine was great, but outside of that I found myself to be a bit bored.
A lot of good songs that are enjoyable to listen to. Little to no rock and roll on here. A very bluesy album. I anticipated not liking this, but was pleasantly surprised.
Despite owning and enjoying much of his catalog, this album is boring. The only thing that caught my ear was his use of a riff from “Apache” during “How Does the Grass Grow?”. Completely forgettable otherwise.
Excellent artistry at work. The musicians stretch their creative muscles without ever losing the song’s backbone. Plenty of weirdness that reminded me of Zappa. I will be able to list to this many times without hearing the same thing twice.
An incredible tour de force, lyrically and musically.
You can see why so many artists cover his songs. Full of emotion and excellent songwriting. Interesting lyrics and hooks. Great album.
I can see why this is on here. I can hear the influences on later recordings, but not having heard it at the time it was made leaves it sounding extremely dated to my ears.
Sounds like Coldplay if they ditched the piano abd played the same drums every song. First few songs are solid though.
Everything they say about Sade is true. I was surprised though that the songs would be so enjoyable. A must-have album.
I can see why this is popular and considered to be great, but I don't like this album very much. It's just a musical with distorted guitars. I don't typically like musicals so this doesn't do much for me. That said, Meat Loaf is a vocal tour de force and the songwriting is good.
Right up there with Blood Sugar Sex Majik. No misses throughout the entire album.
Fantastic soundscapes from front to back. I haven’t watched the movie, but this score (including the narration in thr final track) make me want to check it out.
Holds up surprisingly well. Probably in large part due the emphasis on great vocals feom Chuck D and great work as always from Terminator X. Songs have a lot going on without losing the foundational beat driving the song.
An all-time great album. Every song is well-written and performed. The recording itself has a bit of live edge to it, while sounding well-produced. Very warm-sounding. The opening track is incredible and it maintains a very high level from there. If there’s a better Stones album, I haven’t heard it yet.
I found this to be above average throughout, but not really a “great” album. I enjoyed hearing the song from the Clueless soundtrack and overall enjoyed listening, but it was immediately forgettable outside of “Alright”.
Singing is atrocious. When it's just music, it's mostly interesting and good, but the vocals are really really bad. I understand why it's on here - they were influential to bands who became very popular, but the 'singing' is really hard to get past.
Music and vocals balance the cringey lyrics throughout the album. If you don’t listen to the lyrics, this is a good album. With them, it’s average.
The opening track is a masterpiece and steals the show. The rest of the tracks don’t come close to touching it, but are still above average.
Exceptional album. Mildly dated with some of the music, but only slightly. The vocals especially are very 80s, but are still great. Lyrically, there are several memorable moments even after only one listen.
Has a lot of good and interesting elements and was fun to listen to. The second half suffered from what Bat Out of Hell suffered from - it just sounded like a musical with distorted guitars. Not my cup of tea. It's also lacking any ear worms, which is probably why there aren't any hits on this album. It's a solid album, but not one I feel would be necessary to have in my collection.
This is a solid, above average album, but not something that would probably approach a top 1000 list for me, personally. There may be some 'it was great at the time' bias here, but I'm not sure. It kind of sounds like a lot of psychedelic stuff out around that time - it basically sounds like the Kinks version of Sgt. Peppers..
Phenomenal album. Never a dull moment. Interesting and catchy tracks throughout. The album flows as one full piece.
Lots of experimentation with stereo panning and other effects in the studio. From a recording perspective, this album SOUND amazing, even without considering the music itself. The drums and bass are hot for some tracks, but it works, much like LZ II. Fortunately, the music itself is fantastic so you can hear every instrument's contribution to each composition. The songs on this album have more complexity than the songs on 'Are You Experienced?' without having any feeling of just going on unnecessarily long.
Sounds like they dipped their toe into psychedelic music in parts of this album, especially with the second track, "Patterns". "Scarborough Fair / Canticle" has a mix of psychedelia with old English folk music, making for an interesting piece. The harmonies here are wonderful. "A Simple Desultory Philippic" pays homage to Bob Dylan musically and lyrically. The final track is a great dichotomy with the singing of Silent Night combined with the reading of the news of the day that emphasizes the chaotic upheaval of the times. On first listen, many of the songs sound out of place with one another because of the genre jumps from song to song, but additional listens allows them to start to meld together in a cohesive unit.
The only thing I can think of that would put this on the list is that it was lyrically dark and, for the time, obscene. But none of that is shocking anymore. So what we're left with is a series of sentimental singing with an overabundance of vocal vibrato throughout. This was difficult to get through. I hated all 43 minutes of this album. I'd rather listen to Richard Cheese.
I wouldn’t say this is a great album, but it’s clearly important. Playing hardcore like this in 1979 is wild. That said, I DO like it - it’s just not something I’d want to listen to often.
The country rock album against which all country rock albums are judged. So easy to listen to. As with many genre-jumping acts, they made a ton of country fans upset that a bunch of hippies were playing 'their' music. But they showed what was possible and created the path for bands like the Eagles to become hugely popular.
Great album front to back. Great rock album with the rawness that he usually puts out. Spends time jamming, but Neil Young's jamming is always emotive and never makes me feel like he's just showing off technique. Case in point - Down by the River is 9 minutes long, but feels like 3 or 4 at most. Ends with Cowgirl in the Sand - a tour de force in guitars sounding like they want to punch you in the face. I'm sure Young's voice is divisive, but it fits his music perfectly.
Terrific fun. Really captures a live feel in the performance throughout the album. Prima’s voice is unmistakably unique. Several songs went on to have second lives as popular covers showing the quality of the songwriting.
The hits on this album are very good. The rest of the album is above average, but I found myself getting bored as I listened. Not as many hooks as there were from albums like White Blood Cells. I think the issue is that the songs were longer without much added complexity. It's still something I would listen to, but fails to live up to previous albums by them.
This is the first time going through these albums that I've skipped through songs. There have been albums I haven't liked and have even given one star to. But this is aggravating. Just because a pop star makes an album that isn't completely saccharin, that doesn't make it great. There were some hits on this album, but nothing on here, including those hits, are particularly memorable. Songs like Make Over might end up being memorable due to how awful it is. Aguilera is certainly a talented singer, but these songs are awful. I can't believe this album is on this list. There's nothing wrong with pop or even unserious music. Something like Justin Timberlake's Justified is a great example of a pop album that's great. This is not that. This is just plain bad.
This album suffers from being a product of its time. It has a ton of 80s tropes throughout the album. Fortunately, for much of the album, the quality of the song-writing overshadows the heavy synths and over-reverberated drums. The opening track was everywhere when it was used in Stranger Things. Despite the exposure, the song is still a great listen. The next two albums made me wonder whether she was going to continue to sing in that same style for the whole album. Because of the lack of change in vocal style, those two songs (Hounds of Love and The Big Sky) were fairly boring to me.
The rest of the album is a good listen. Standouts for me were Mother Stands for Comfort, Under Ice, and Jig of Life. Waking the Witch has some Pink Floyd vibes to it with some background dialogue and finishing with a helicopter sound, evoking memories of The Wall.
Overall, I'd give this a 3.5 if half scores were allowed, but since they aren't, I'm rounding down just due to the number of 80s ballads on this album that are one of my least favorite types of songs.
