1001 Albums Summary

Sort of the classic Reggae album, I was surprised to realize that no, I don't think I've listened to this all the way through before. The singles here sort of scream a White Boy Reggae vibe, which isn't really their fault but definitely probably steered me away from this. All in all tho, it's classic for a reason.

Transitional Polly. This feels like the obvious fork in the road that brings Dry along to Let England Shake There are parts of this that sound more like Chrissie Hynde than the wild yearning of PJ's earlier work. Never a bad thing, but it means the echoes of the past make you perk up a bit. There songs right in the middle help bolster the whole of the effort as far as im concerned. Probably 3.5, definitely worth a second spin. Top track? Probably The whores hustle and the Hustlers Whore, but that could change with familiarity

Classic era Stevie. A good mix of funky grooves and soulful slow jams, it's not his most indispensable, but it's still a gem. Superstition is the top track, but all of them have a feeling of completion and care about them to me. 4.5 stars

I've tried to get into Nick Drake a number of times in my life since first seeing folks hype him as a forgotten genius. It hasn't really taken, but i tried to come into it with fresh, unbiased ears. Drake's music feels sleepy, sort of like an early autumn day, light drizzle, cup of coffee slowly going cold as you sit alone with your guitar. Which isn't a bad vibe, just one that doesnt really inspire me personally. I can see why it might be nice and meditative for others. Top track is probably Road, which i really liked the guitar on. 3* all together.

Was meaning to re-listen to this one with the focus it deserves. Elizabeth Frasier's work is something I have had to come around to, but also something I have largely enjoyed in guest spots. HoLV is way more accessible than the band's reputation... it Bridges the 80s and 90s, goth and shoegaze and dream pop, the real world and the green world. It's a link between Kate Bush and Tori Amos, a linguistic progenitor to Sigur Ros... there's a lot here. And it is plaintive and exultant at turns, sparkling and brooding, often all in the same moment. And God, all that beautiful fuzz... I'll probably need to buy this, much to the chagrin of my partner, an avowed Cocteau hater. Somewhere between a 4* and 4.5* ... top track: i can't deny Cherry-Coloured Funk, but Road River and Rail was the second standout.

I once saw Krist Novoselic of Nirvana on a book tour, probably around 2004. I mostly recall that he said he wanted to start a band called Gavrillo Princip. This album is why. Despite finding "Take Me Out" to be the definition of rich white millennium privilege rock, I did come into this willing to be surprised, and I almost was when "Jacqueline" opened as an introspective, soft number. But honestly I find this sort of thing banal. Don't get me wrong, I love my share of big dumb albums, but the self-seriousness is too much for this sort of thing. It's like someone formed a band out of "and now's the time on Sprockets when we dance," without understanding that it was a send up, or even understanding the art snobbery that was being sent up. Nothing feels earnest or honest, but it sure feels like they want us to think it is. 2* mostly because I feel 1* should mean something, but i really didnt enjoy thos experience. "Take Me Out" is the best track here.

"Sensational" is doing a lot of unjustified heavy lifting here. I mean, I like a good sleazy rock album as much as the next guy, and sure, a gang bang might just wash the Blues away, but this just doesn't do anything for me. I feel like I can get this same thing from a dozen better bands that don't have similar vocal affectations to Adam Sandler. 2* Gang Bang was my top track simply for the scuzz of it, but i dont know that i'd actively go about relistening to it.

Another "how did I not get to this yet" album (though the conscientious objector period from Spotify didn't help, I'm sure). The middle of this album has a lot to live up to, being sandwiched between Hey Hey My My/My My Hey Hey, and it just... do you ever listen to an album that is considered iconic and just think "wow, a Million people have regularly listened to "welfare mothers"? Really?" Like, you expect an obscure album to maybe have some weird stuff on it, but you don't really expect something like "ride my llama" on an album as well known as this. But I liked Thrasher, powderfinger was fine, and of course, Hey Hey My My is the essential track here. 3*

So I guess it's worth a mental note that I am probably getting two more YYY albums, eh? No way It's Blitz is a must hear and not the two much more critically noteworthy albums that came prior. Maybe even a spin of Mosquito, owner of one of the worst album covers ever? Anyway, I digress. This isn't really an album that has anything to do with Karen O (presumably) crushing an egg with her bare hand, but it's serviceable electropop that would probably call itself punk but it is wrong. Karen's voice remains unique and feels more flexible here than in other work i've heard her do. You do get the feeling that this is why Elle King happened, and that shouldn't be praised, but this would feel right in place at a hipster dance party or basement party, and it would set the mood decently. Most of it is pretty energetic, not really full of earworms, but definitely infectious in a way. Low 3*.Top Track: Zero. The song, not me being snarky

It"s gotta sting to have an album explode because of a throwaway joke song, but that's what Blur's eponymous will always carry with it. At the time, I wrote this off because Beetlebum didn't grab me at all (so much so that on relisten, I didn't even remember its chorus, which is to be fair more lush than expected). So the proof is in the pudding for the post Song 2 tracks, I suppose. I appreciate that the album has a lot of diversity and experimentation on it. Blur is sort of like the more avant garde side of Oasis and the less faffy side of Radiohead in that regard. They don't really reach the highs of either in my experience, but I'm glad someone is in that middle ground. I'd say this album was a victim of a lot of things, but a lot of albums like this in the 90s were really hurt by being overly long. Not that 56 minutes is unthinkably long, but if you want to put 14 songs on an album they need to be largely super strong stuff, so even as we get to the crunch of Look Inside America or the twang of Country Sad Ballad Man, there's a lot of movement that isn't ending in a clutch of really successful tracks. But it's not that this is bad, just disjointed. "Strange News..." has big Bowie vibes, which I like (so does Movin On, but that doesn't hit as well for me). 3ish stars? Top track was Death of a Party

Zero real expectations on this. Solid early aughties rock. Definite influences of early psychedelia. Strong work, but i don't know if it's memorable? Probably the album ive had the least to say about so far. I'm not sad to hear it, but I feel like, even if I was to compile 2002 albums, this wouldnt make the top. There's a lot of music out there. A pretty square 3*. Top track? Liquid Bird really caught me more than anything.

Look, I am dreading the next few inevitable Coldplays on this list as much as anyone, but their debut? This is reasonable. It's slow, like so much of Coldplay is... in fact, I recall my critique of Yellow being just that... a little slow, a little boring. By comparison, it's a masterpiece, but that's always been a vibe they brought. But here there is still an earnestness. "Don't Panic" feels trite at this point, but it still delivers as an opener. "Trouble" crawls, but it's got a sluggish beauty. Like, these things are just facts here, not criticisms. Chris Martin feels tired in a way that you feel in your bones on songs like "Spies"... it's an ominous quiet. It feels stylistic in a way that it doesn't in future albums. Probably a light 4*, but worth having in the collection. I am so biased toward Shiver as the top track. It's got a great riff, a great melody, and an urgency that is rarely heard in Coldplay.

An hour of solo piano? I'm in. This is compelling enough for being about an hour of long form improvisation, but even more so for moving so smoothly over that period. The pieces don't feel boring (to me at least) or stagnant, even boiled down to one instrument for 25-30 minutes at a time. Hard to give a top track, but it's definitely a 4*

It's weird to call the Beasties game-changing, because hip-hop was already gaining major steam, but one cannot deny how big this was. There's such a distinctive Beastie Boys flow, the backbeats are as influenced as much by hard rock and punk as by hiphop of the age. It's immature as hell, as one can barely blame for a bunch of college age bros, chasing girls, creating tough guy mythologies (while simultaneously being the goofiest guys in the room). That can make it tough in places to listen to as someone about twice their age at the time, but there's also the feeling that they were tongue and cheek and knew there was an aspect of parody in a lot of this (even as a kid, "Girls" was way more of a clear winking joke than a serious statement on what women were like). Anyway, "fight for your right" still captures a certain childish anarchy that makes it continue to be appealing, "Slow Ride" makes excellent use of a "Lowrider" sample, "Paul Revere" was absolutely the first primarily hip-hop coded track that my stereotypical white self really rated, and the album in general just makes me want to get a sack of white castles. Nostalgia makes this a light 4*. Top Track remains No Sleep Till Brooklyn

Coming into this, I hated Gorillaz. They seemed to represent the worst bits of Blur, the most soulless bits of modern pop music, all wrapped up in a white guy's hip hop and anime obsession with a veneer of a fake band. But if i'm going to do this, I need listen as objectively as I can. I was surprised at the first few tracks. They aren't quite blur, but they're much closer than to the sound I have heard. I didn't like the first two, but they put the conception that I would hate this out of my head. There was hope. And honestly, some of this album is OK. Latin Simone benefits from sounding more like an Ibrahim Ferrer project than the rest of the album. But then we get to the singles, and I sincerely do not know what people fell in love with. "Clint Eastwood" bores me to tears, which is in part, I am sure, because Damon sounds like he is struggling to stay awake. It plods in a very different, more ploddy way than the other tracks. On the other hand, 19-2000 is an asinine nightmare despite contributions from absolute legends Miho Hatori and Tina Weymouth. It's at least not the acid chipmunk fever dream of the single. I couldn't do 15 tracks of that. But it somehow is even more uncool as a clunky slow word salad. The stuff between those songs aren't great either. There's a lot of Albarn's more yowling bits. There's the tin flute that sounds like it was just learned yesterday on Rock the House, giving the same vibes as albarn's singing. Overall not good, but for very different reasons than expected. 2*, top track Tomorrow Comes Today

First of all, I steadfastly believe this is too young an album to be here. I said what I said. And Lana immediately proves me right with "white dress," which is overflowing with the worst broken whispersinging. It says nothing and says it poorly. But then, what can you expect from an album whose title references both "chemtrails" and country clubs? Nightmare blunt rotation. That falsetto comes up elsewhere on thr album, and it is always bad, but never worse than the first song. There's a lot of trash here, but one thing that immediately rubbed me the wrong way was that there were two songs where "I only mention it because" is a major lyrical motif. This is a woman who has released books of poetry, which is either very bold of her or this is a major fall-off from that moment. It's not the only thing that bores me here (like Damon yesterday, she feels asleep or drugged... same Lana). It's the deeply childish idea of depth. It's the now-stale affectation without the semblance of edge that one could claim on Born to Die. Music to tradwife a redneck alligator farmer to. For the "not like other girls" girls for whom the thing that is not like other girls is their meth habit. My first 1*, I think, richly deserved. If I had to listen to another song again, i'd pick Dark but Just a Game.

Ive tried Marquee Moon a few times in the past so i'm trying to hear it with fresh ears. It's gotta be the voice, right? That's the hang up, right? It must be. Because objectively this is a strong clutch of songs. See No Evil is a great song altogether. The guitar work in Friction is compelling and addicting. The title track? Musically perfect. But vocals can be such a big piece when songs are being sung, and it's not always obvious when a voice will or won't be grating (I like Smashing Pumpkins, after all). So on my nth listen, i'm trying to read this like many people hear Dylan, as a template for the songs and not necessarily the definitive recording. Doing that opened the album up more. Though on the other hand, this album cover is one of the most haunted pictures ever taken. Maybe it requires the unsettled vocals brought to the tracks? Music is weird and wonderful. 3*, but stronger than ever before. Maybe some day itll make 4. Maybe it has a ceiling for me. Marquee Moon is the sort of special song that doesn't feel like it's 10 minutes, so that's my pick.

Another album I've gone to a few times and am happy to finally give the time it deserves. I had wanted to go through all of Lanegan's work when he passed, but there is a lot of it, after all, and it is prone to a dirge-y vibe. Hard to process en masse Getting back into this one feels like I never heard it. Halo of Ashes immediately hooks in with its driving beat and eastern tinged leads. Look at You is sad and stunning. There's a certain swirling feeling, not really a wall of sound but something very full and entrancing behind a lot of this that is hard to explain. Put another way, it's amazing hearing an album for the first time despite listening to it before. I think this could have been a 5 if side B was as strong as side A. But it"s definitely a 4 and I'm glad to properly discover it. I'm a sucker for All I Know, and have been for nigh 30 years, but on this listen it's Make My Mind that is stuck in my head

I knew nothing about this one. Going through? It's high energy indie pop. absolutely fine, absolutely unsure why this is on here. 3*, but minimal impression. Isle of Her was the only thing I was curious about, so let's call that the top track

Not many albums are this absolutely stacked at the beginning. Like honestly, this is just big, not just in fame and sales and exposure and all that, but it is just... big big quality. It fades in and builds perfectly and that first side just doesn't let up with great songs. I don't think these guys could write something like Bullet the Blue Sky again for love or money. With or Without You's only flaw is familiarity, but I haven't listened to this for years, and it opens itself up on its own terms after that. And it's not like the quality really meaningfully dips off. I have spent much less time with side B, but most other bands would kill for a side that strong, and U2 just murdered it with the first side. There's still a youthful passion here, the Edge still sounds like he's chopping away at the guitar like no one else, and the worst song here (Exit) is still a perfectly fine track. Everything else is a 4 at minimum, and it reminds one that there was a reason U2 got so huge. I think this is my first very well deserved 5? And it starts with probably one of my fave songs ever in Where The Streets Have No Name

Know what actually IS shocking? Realizing I know less of this album than I thought. Understanding how good Dave Navarro was pre-Carmen Electra (and how good Perry was, at that). Another album with a killer build in that first song. A lot more music that feels like an extended stream of vibes than I expected, though also that makes sense for Perry. As such, it is Mountain Song, not the world conquering Jane Says, that feels like the key track here. Some real stunning stuff, some less tethered ideas, definitely a 4* worth another listen

I suppose any album from Public Enemy is technically worth a spin, though this is an interesting third choice above and beyond the two albums i'm sure are in here already. Even here, these guys always sound a bit like a link. This is conscious rap with a "gangsta" feel. It is, as Flav notes early on, a bunch of very big beats. The tracks are like audio collages, sample heavy without being JUST sample. I am not a historian of the genre, but it feels like something new and old at the same time. I think it would be hard to not appreciate how this is being put together, though i definitely think there are a lot of folks who would find Chuck D's confrontational history lessons more dangerous than all the more "colorful" rap lyrics that the moral busybodies were constantly whining over in the 80s and 90s. High 3*, top track: Can't Truss It. Definitely getting a replay at some point

A friend made me borrow this in my 20s. I listened to it two or three times to make sure I gave it a fair shot. I am dreading the third or fourth, and probably final, listen today. I once saw Sonic Youth open for Pearl Jam and they were sincerely a top 5 worst band I've ever seen. A lot of this is Kim Gordon's fault. I hate her voice and her delivery and her lyrics, though i guess part of the latter could be Thurston's fault. He certainly isn't blameless. Catholic Block isn't "better" than Beauty Lies in the Eye, just differently bad. Some of this could be OK. Like, I like lots of the music this directly influenced. I'm not angry at the dischord of the music, though certainly there are moments that are just noise to me. It's not even dumb song names like Tuff Gnarl and Master-Dik, either of which could have been a Pavement or Pixies title. It's that Pacific Coast Highway is indelible in my head from those first listens as sounding like the definition of drug addiction, with Gordon moaning less angry than bored, atonal at best, tranqed animal at worst. Thurston tends to just bark meaningless words over his squonking. Kim is intentional in her unlistenability. If I had to hear one of these songs again, and I'd prefer not to, i'd probably go for Pipeline/Kill Time. 2*, but make no mistake, we are rounding up to get to 2.

Landmark album, classic blues, solid 3

Femi Kuti - Femi Kuti Sort of like a bag of fun sized Fela Kuti bars for folks who can't eat a full king-size at once. Let's get this out of the way first: I do not prefer the very early 90s pop flash production here. But i do like that this blends more jazz elements into the Kuti style. I guess that is the nature of the younger generation, eh? There is something to be said for being able to open the gateway for folks who might be uncertain otherwise. I like this a lot, though. 4*, will relisten.

I am hopeful that in this exercise, I will find a 5* that I wasn't already familiar with. This is not that time. Honestly, this album makes as good a case as there is for heavy metal. It is regularly both melodic and heavy. Just that intro to Battery… stunning, layered, and perfect as a lead in to the onslaught of riffs and drums that immediately follows. It touches on all the normal points: violence and mania, abuses of power and the inhumanity of war, dark entities and light heresy. All the things you might want in a metal record. But this is also composed. That breakdown in Master of Puppets is proof enough… it goes from riff heaven to this beautiful dual guitar lead up to an emotional solo, and then builds back up to the heaviness. But then, so is Orion, a song that fits in like a heavy classical opus. These guys were serious about showing off what they could do, not just in speed or technicality, not just in brutality, but as songwriters.This is an album that is impossible to not headbang to, but it's also an album you can sing along with, you can go into a reverie with. It is Music that can mask the occasional metal cornyness in the lyrics (“kill” is such a friendly word? Dying time is here? Oh you scamps). It's hard to overstate how mindblowing this was to hear at 13 or so. It's hard to overstate how nice it is that it still holds up as an adult. This album may as well be heavy metal's Abbey Road. 5* well deserved, and a shout to Disposable Heroes, which I have always had a soft spot for and I think sometimes gets lost among all the other classics here.

Well, they can't all be Master of Puppets The thing about Arcade Fire isn't even that they're bad. They're aggressively fine. The thing is that they are never as good as the critics and fans try to say. There isn't really an analogue... there are lots of overrated bands that are at least unique. There are lots of very popular bands that are critically hated, because they are terrible. There aren't many bands who get the ass kissed deeper for less. And that makes rating hard, because it kinda always comes up against that bias. To be fair, though, this album isn't one I've heard and it is better than the ones i have. The best stuff here is the female fronted stuff. The majority of this is not that. It feels like an album that wants to be something without knowing exactly what. I think i would like it more if it succeeded in finding out. It also feels like it would be a breakout album from another band. For some reason, from the arcade fire, it feels more like a reinvention to fit into the modern scene, not one to shed a skin of youth into maturity. Certainly win butler cannot be said to have blossomed into maturity at all. There's just always something that feels not quite right. Probably a light 3* in total fairness, though Sprawl II is a hidden gem (compare to Sprawl I for my point about the female vocal songs being better than win's)

Is this the first rock opera? I really do not know, but i can confirm that it is probably the best known one. This is a big, ambitious album for a young band, and it rewards at least one repeat listen. The music has so many foreshadowed themes and callback themes... the overture does the classic Musical feat of cycling through a bunch of important themes (giving us some Entwistle trumpet in the process). The Underture is a really solid propelling piece of music. And then, we get to the lyrics. See, many a rock opera fails to stick the landing when it comes to telling the story. Tommy is little different. We get some character sketches here... obviously Tommy himself, the three major abusive figures in Tommy's life, a girl who devotes herself to Tommy. But the actual thread is jumbled. The whole backstory to the "deaf dumb and blind" Tommy featured in 1921 is only really clear when you've read about the intended story. The messianic final act is just bizarre. The Pinball thing is left field. The abuse feels gratuitous. The brief interstitial tracks are all faff. This wouldnt be a classic if we were rating the story, is the point. But there is some serious music in here, too. We can start with probably the most famous song here... when that electric guitar slide comes in over the speed angle of Pinball Wizard, it always feels a little exciting. It's a weird subject and weird plot point, but it's a pretty solid piece of music. But we also have those drums on Eyesight to the Blind. The uncomfortable trio of kevin/queen/ernie all have musically interesting songs, even as they all have their own cringe factor lyrically. Go To the Mirror gives us a lot of great Who. Tommy Can You Hear Me is possibly one of the most iconic simple minutes and a half in music. Heck, even the goofy stupidity of Tommy's Holiday Camp brings me a little joy. The good bits are very good, but they also kinda make you wish they weren't just a theme here and there. It's rarely a whole song, is the thing. 3.5* I think, against all odds, Christmas is the best song here. That chorus melody is one of the strongest things on the album, and it features the classic, frantic "Tommy can you hear me" refrain as well as the first "see me, feel me" theme. It is arguably as coherent a track on the album when it comes to actually telling a piece of the story.

Its funny to get this after Tommy, because Ryan is absolutely trying to do the Pinball Wizard intro vibe as the album starts. This album from Phoebe Bridgers' ex is prime Frat Boy With A Guitar rock. Highlights are Nobody Girl, which is about 10 minutes long and does not require it, an occasional Neil Young warble, a lot of mediocre white boy "blues", a second attempt at that Pinball wizard vibe... all couched in too many songs that just... are. I was surprised by how much this has clearly influenced dozens of equally uninspired singer songwriters. I don't think it is for the better. Ultimately any one of these songs on its own would be forgettable but fine (though some are definitely memorable for dragging on and on). As a bloated album of temu Black Crowes, it's about a 2*. "La Cienega Just Smiled" was the song I recall making the rounds at the time, and i guess thats as good a representation as anything

Honestly, I think is more of a showcase for Rod Stewart than for Jeff Beck. It's easy to forget that Rod used to be a rock star before he went adult contemporary and then swung to lounge singer. It takes a second to realize, hey... hey, I know this voice. Beck-as-guitarist doesn't get as many chances to shine alone. Sure, it's a solid blues album, but the big shining moment is Beck's Bolero, taking a classical vibe into 3 minutes of stunning electric blues. That's worth hearing, for sure... it feels like the genesis of all of the satrianis and vais of the future. But the rest of the album feels sorta indistinguishable from dozens of other solid releases like this. Ill give it a 3*. Besides Bolero, I think "Shapes of Things" finally contextualizes the Yardbirds in a way that I can more easily grasp. These sorts of lists tend to get REAL Yardbirds heavy. This update makes me appreciate them more than a dozen Roger the Engineers.

I have avoided this for 25 years but I guess it is time? Why did I avoid it? Because I hated every one of these “the” bands that blew up at the same time. Fell In Love With a Girl felt substance free and ragged in a slapdash way instead of a raw and passionate way. I realize I am very much in the minority here. I also found Seven Nation Army to be monotonous later on. Sue me. Getting into the album, the problem comes down to a few things, the first being that Jack's voice is about as good as Meg's drumming. Like, there's a definite difference between Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground and Hotel Yorba and We're Going to Be Friends, but there's something that feels… not quite inauthentic, I believe Jack White believes in this stuff… maybe style over substance? Either way, this mostly bores me and makes me think of the bands who did this first and better. I want to at least understand White's “guitar hero” status, and at least on this album, i can't pick that out at all. 2*, top track “the same boy you've always known

This starts out feeling like a pretty generic snide late 70s punk album, but thankfully it gets a bit more melodic past the first track. Pretty driving standard glam-adjacence. 3*, would probably shout out Lost and Found.

This is something I've never given a fair listen. It always felt like a joke, that's how weirdly ubiquitous it is. But as much as I sometimes grumble about the newer stuff on here, this is what i'm here for. Let's get into it. There is a delicate balance of total corniness and solid rock here. Take "Show Me The Way," which is both a total sapfest and an iconic showcase of talkbox distortion. "Baby I Love Your Way" is pretty much pure cheese, but I will hear no slander on it. It's hard to tell if the "live" aspect detracts from these songs, because this sounds like a particularly good crowd recording more than a soundboard one, or if that rawness saves the songs from being overly slick. It is the mid 70s after all... this could be classic rock revival or proto-Journey if you tipped the scales just a little bit. It's pretty clear here that Frampton knows what he is doing on the guitar. It's standard arena rock, but it's good at it. It has, far as I can tell, the three most important Frampton Compositions. It's definitely interesting that this is arguably THE album that blew this guy up when it is a double live album. It is impossible to understand that explosion 50 years later. This is fine work, a score in a record bin, but not really world breaking. The finale, the big long jam of Do You Feel Like We Do, suggests maybe people were wigged out over the talk box. Fair, but also, that's maybe an overreaction. But there's some good stuff here. I dig "i wanna go to the sun," some lovely solo work there. "Penny for Your Thoughts" is a stunning little interlude, and leads wonderfully into Ill Give You Money (which sounds real good but, kinda silly on the lyric front). Weirdly I think my early fave is Doobie Wah, a stupid name but a solid guitar rocker. On the light end of a 3.5

It is never a bad day when you get to listen to Dummy. This is, I imagine for many, what Trip Hop sounds like. It's really a meeting of the minds… the two hardest bits of this to get right is the right mood on the loops and the right voice. Some go a bit too electro or dance, some vocals are too smooth or emotionless. But every groove here is downbeat and sultry, and Beth Gibbons’ voice wraps around every word, aching, vulnerable, but also chameleonic. That isnt a word, is it? You get it tho. So while those backbeats are necessary, it's Beth who carries this. Think about Glory Box, with its guitar and its vintage crackle and its cinematic swells… a lot of this feels cinematic, not the least of which because Gibbons is a master at the pregnant pause. She lets words just hang (the hook from Sour Times is probably as indicative of this as anything). It's intentional in a way that a lot of similar genres and bands aren't… not just made to get a club moving but to make a piece of art. And while it probably does not hold up as well as it could, i cannot imagine giving it less than 5*. If you aren't feeling something on Roads, do you feel?

From one side of electronic inspiration to the next. Kraftwerk is interesting in that every time I listen to them, they become more human. The first time it just sounds like soulless automation. But Autobahn, overlong and repetitive though it is, opens up a bit more, a bit more, a bit more... this is the first time I found myself feeling a little let down each time it started to end, as opposed to relieved. Eventually you want more. Side B is still a bit more difficult. It is much more mood than composition... Lazer bleeps, drippy caves and jungles... Kraftwerk are showing off what electronic instrumentation can do. If the title track is them throwing all of the Compositional flourishes into one track, side B is exploring soundtracking. I'll always like something a bit more organic more, but it's exciting to start to "get" it. This'll probably keep growing but im surprised to be giving it 4*

First impression gets me somewhere at the intersection of Love and Rockets, Big Audio Dynamite, and basically anything on the Pure Moods of. Give me more of this sort of thing, honestly. Something hard to define but ostensibly listenable. It's got that eastern exoticism fascination, which rings a bit uncomfortable now but gives this a more interesting flavor than just having a nasal brit singing across 10 songs. I'd want to listen more attentively but I think this hovers around a 3.5* with Erzulie at the top

Hopefully the penny of profit from my hearing this isn't going to scientology. This theme is so iconic and goofy all at once. It is shorthand for an entire era of cinematic music and part of my favorite Xfiles episode. And it is only a few minutes of this whole soundtrack. That's sorta the tough thing with soundtracks: there are at least two more in this era and genre that i'd expect to be on this list, and both of them load up with stone cold bangers. With the exception of Soulsville, this is all soundtrack, all perfectly nice and of a piece and as good a representation of a moment in cinematic soundtracking as there is, but it rarely elevates from there. The highlight other than the classic theme is the extended vamp of Do Your Thing, which means if there's a record changer version of this with sides 1 and 4 on one platter, hey, serious bang for the buck. But as largely soundtrack divorced from its context, it's a 3* for me.

Look, i'll put scallions on anything.... Green Onions is one of those classic instrumentals you don't realize you know but you absolutely know. Maybe it's just the organ, but everything on here has that similar warm familiarity. Sometimes that's because the song is being covered, sometimes just because this is comfort food. The slower songs feel like a hazy summer boardwalk from a past none of us really lived. The faster or groovier ones, like the idealized childhoods of just before we were born (whenever that was). It's a light album, but i'd give it a light 4* for that

Korn basically birthed nu metal and they will never properly pay for that. This is something I have not listened through for well over 25 years, which was the proper time to have heard it. This probably isn't Korn's best or most important, but it's definitely the game changer for the band and genre. It's more polished in some ways than their previous stuff, and if you can get over the vocals, there probably is not a more pristine encapsulation of the best of the genre than the first few songs. The vocal thing, BTW, is less about the Boom Dat Da Oom of Freak on a Leash, but more the times that Davis goes whimpering dog vox. This was effective on some of the more emotional bits of their earlier albums, but feels much more forced by this point. Anyway: Got the Life probably is the key track here. It encapsulates a lot of what could be good about the genre: that floppy slap bass, the creeping guitar in the verses and soaring main chorus riff, the ways that hiphop influenced the genre, the abuse and rage and disillusionment that inspired so many of the progenitors of the genre. And sure, the lyrics are way less cool now that i'm older than 20, but i can still remember the way this felt revolutionary. The primal vocal actions of Freak on a Leash or the creepy music box intro of Dead Bodies Everywhere... this was all absolute candy to white suburban kids who didn't have a lot of real problems but were just starting to recognize something uncomfortable around the edges of society, were just starting to realize that all of us, as we grow up, start losing the joy and start hurting in new ways that we do not yet have words to express. Track 5 is where the album starts going off-piste, because while the rap influences make this interesting, the highlights are not great. Ice Cube brings the best he can to what is otherwise a muddy mess. Cameltosis is at least musically effective despite a stupid chorus, but also has almost nothing to do with the rest of the album. And of course, All in the Family aged like raw milk in the sun, and Fred Durst is the Brucellosis. It's cringe even if it wasn't so peppered with casual homophobia. Oh the 90s. Most of the rest? Pretty forgettable, as confirmed by my not remembering most of it despite spinning it heavily in the day. The highlight of the back half is My Gift to You, which brings out the bagpipes, and of course once-hidden track Earache My Eye. The former is a big long plodding emotional ending, something Korn were kind of known for by this point, and it is effective here in ways that even the popular songs dont always reach. The latter is a goofy cheech and chong cover, and works surprisingly well in this idiom. All told, i'd probably give this a light 3* though I think nostalgia is doing a lot of lifting.

Very little sounds more early aughties than this. It's multi-genre, fusion, whatever you want to call it: music that wants to be a lot of things. Sometimes that means a lot of upbeat Latin rhythms or Arab influenced strings or whatever. Sometimes it means cringe-rap. Embracing culture can be a beautiful fusion or it can be a misunderstanding of someone else's reality. This does a little of both. Honestly, musically a lot of this is very good, and it was very promising from the start. I think where it loses me is that it has a very After School Special vibe to it. A lot of the lyrics feel like a song shown on a high-school news broadcast, adults trying to talk about world problems in a hip cool way but managing to just sound corny. The best of this, then, is where they stick to Spanish, which I understand minimally and ergo cannot tell if the lyrics are similar vibes in another language. I think i was most taken by Dona Isabelle. A strong 3* but ultimately that"s where it lands

There is a pantheon of songs that have been abused as background music for the worst movie trailer of the summer. Send Me On My Way. Solsbury Hill. And probably at the top sits Sister Sledge's “We Are Family.” which, ok, kinda cheesy, but unfairly pigeonholed. It's proper anthemic, it's proper funky, and those harmonies that suddenly burst up the scale (“get up everybody and SING”)... it's also 8 minutes long. This is the era of that sort of vamp, I suppose. And it's not like it is alone here… there's a similar conceptual vibe in You're a Friend To Me, so it all fits together. The album proper? Well, it starts with a groove so good that Will Smith stole it. It has Nile Rodgers’ fingers all over it. It straddles 70s soul and tolerable disco with just a thin coating of funk. It's dated in a fun way. The remaster desperately wants me to listen to a half hour of remixes for We Are Family and Lost in Music, and no, no thank you, but I do think this is surprising enough to slip into 4* territory

Ah yes, the first of the much debated Too Many Dexys. I think it's probably easy to not understand the context of this album, as largely non-Brits listening to an album that does not contain the huge international hit single. The vocals are distinctive but maybe less suited to white boy soul than the sort of highland jamboree vibe of Come On Eileen. But this did have a #1 single in the UK with Geno. I find this interesting because it is confusing: Geno is a perfectly fine song, but a #1 hit it is not, to my mind. But also I have never been British and was still a few years from my own debut in 1980. So again, the context of this album was probably very different for its immediate audience. With the title, and the intro to the first track, it feels like there may be an undercurrent of both rebirthing and reforming a classic sound from a post-punk mindset. So yeah, it hits me largely with general transitional sound vibes, nothing too mindbending, but some fun tracks. Seven Days Too Long is a genuinely fun little romp, and the back half is also weirdly stronger than the A side, to me, which is interesting since so many albums run out of steam instead of picking it up. At it's best there are light hints of Bowie and Queen here, though admittedly minor bits. The first song to hit me was The Teams that Meet in Caffs, so that'll probably be the one I add to my year's record of listening, but generally i'd say this is a fun but ultimately inessential 3* with possible growth potential.

There are little glimmers of classic Floyd here, though I'd argue that the Barrett years have even more glimmers of Robyn Hitchcock. I guess that is important enough for this one. But the soft focus epics of latter day Floyd are traded for more conventional psychedelics. I'm definitely more for the later school, but I appreciate the absurdity of a lot of this. The lunatic is on the grass, indeed. 3*

I am a big believer in art being political, but cannot possibly get excited about 80 minutes of The Boss singing about the twin towers. I tend to loathe Bruce at the best of times. His best songs are basically 3 stars for me, so this is daunting. The first thing is, at least the mealymouth is toned down. Also, god bless low expectations. This feels like a generic album of its ilk, which is a step up at least from a Springsteen album. Let's be Friends has notes of Rob Thomas in it, no less. But the only really notable bit is the inspiration, and it's sort of proof that even an emotional, earnest motivation doesn't mean the music will be great. This is a tepid 3*

When I said yesterday about music being political? This is more what i'm talking about. You've got the light and easy but pointed power of Stand and Everyday People. Stand is a pretty classic “keep your head up” song, and Everyday People does a lot with basically two single chords, the banality of our own prejudices and that big iconic “Aaaaaayyy”. On the other hand, you have “Don't Call Me…” which… well, if Everyday People puts a finger on the Humans are Humans idea, the latter really puts bluntly the vicious cycle of how hatred leads to more hatred. I think it's obvious where it all starts (as a white guy i cannot imagine being offended by being called “whitey" compared to the contempt of “whitey's” epithet), but Sly seems to be digging a bit under the skin of the cycle, not just the bigotry that started it. That's not the only place Sly Stone feels like he is on the edge of something. It's easy to listen back to this and hear proto-funk, but really thinking about it in context… this was early on, this was just a bit before P-Funk even, and it feels like a bridge to get to that from the psychedelic era. That descending riff in “i want to take you higher” is iconic enough to feel like it was born into collective knowledge. “Sex Machine” takes the familiar James Brown funk standard title and births something funky and what may have sounded futuristic at the time. What would early 70s funk be without the extended guitar vamp? Sly doesn't want us to find out. Let's call this a 4*

Unexpectedly cohesive for a soundtrack. This is certainly cinematic like you'd want it to be, but it also works well as a collection of compositions and a full album, which is rare to me. Usually at best you get a soundtrack with lots of great songs with a similar sound. More often you get a score that sounds great but doesn't necessarily pop without the movie. And even more often you get every bit of interstitial music regardless of how it holds up. This seems to walk the line of all of those things. “Dirty Trip” feels like the standout, but i also really liked the change in mood of The Word Hurricane. This is starting from a strong 4*... can imagine this growing to be a new unexpected obsession tho.

I don't actually need to listen to this. I will. But I do not need to. I was just young enough that I "found" Nirvana not long after they ended, so they weren't as formations for me as for many others. But goddamn do I know pretty much every note here by heart. From the opening chords of Smells Like Teen Spirit to the ending cello swells of Something in the Way. It's easy to get tired of an album that is frontloaded with unavoidable hits... you couldnt listen to rock radio that whole decade and avoid it, which is why Breed is probably my favorite track on side 1. But those tracks are still so good. Teen Spirit is inimitable... it's one of those songs that everyone wants to cover, everyone technically can play, but it never, never sounds right, from the tone of those first few chords right on down. And then you get things like On a Plain toward the end, probably my fave track on the album. Kurt had a supreme sense of both pop melody and sonic chaos and brooding darkness. I guess it might not be for everyone... my grandmother basically tapped out of music by the time those hooligans the Beatles came out... but this is an all time classic and immediate 5*

Oh my fuck. We're three for three. That's nice. This excels on a number of levels. It's a little bluesy, a little funky, some really lovely more folky and quiet songs (“love and affection” is the sort of song that could be schmaltzy and a slog, but is just done so so well), and largely soulful. I guess I shouldn't be surprised? Ive known of Joan long enough to know her calibre. But this era of music doesn't always scratch that itch for a whole album. Here, my ears perked up at Down to Zero, and everything else went down easy. Maybe it's the way her acoustic guitar plays with a more electric band. Maybe it's the fact that she made a song with a stupid title like “Join the Boys” (or “People” for that matter) still be good. Anyway, I'm gonna be bold and call this the first 5* that I didnt already know from this project. Sort of only fair if someone makes an album with no misses.

If Led Zeppelin set the stage for metal, and Black Sabbath birthed it, this feels like the zygote. I imagine that's why this shows up here… it represents an under-appreciated genre link, a forgotten ancestor, and also represents the pinnacle of the great Deep Purple tradition of stupid album covers. It's honestly not super memorable taken out of context, but I think it deserves a relisten despite being pretty firmly 3*

Michael Jackson - Thriller I don't really consider Thriller a 5-star album for a few reasons, though I probably wouldnt argue with anyone who thought it was. It's inarguably huge and influential and the quality is top notch. But there are a few things that make it impossible to get to the top. The biggest is: The Girl is Mine. How two of the biggest artists in the world could write such an unequivocally terrible song is confounding, especially since Say Say Say is perfectly fine. And yet… and yet. Then there are the two (yes, only two) non-hits. Both are absolutely fine, neither would feel like filler on an album that wasn't Thriller, but they still chip away a bit. And then there are the hits proper… PYT is fun, but it feels rushed. Human Nature is lovely but a little heavy handed. And the title track? Well, this is blasphemy maybe, but it works best with the video. The video is what made that song huge, and rightly so. But if that video never existed, it would not be the mega hit it is. And the video is not on the album. That all said, I also don't know that I would trust someone giving this less than a four. It's probably closer to a 4.5. It lives up to its hype most of the time. Again, the non-singles are still fine songs, and there aren't many of them. Thriller is a silly conceit but does have an absolutely killer groove behind it. Billie Jean is timeless, Beat It rips, Wanna Be Starting Something is the platonic ideal of a dancefloor packer. This album is the reason later Jackson albums have no curation… no one is gonna tell the man who created Thriller that maybe he's wrong about his musical direction

This is so cheesy it could've been called Buttrock Parmesan. I mean, it's not the worst thing in the world, but between this and Springsteen I almost feel bad for New Jersey. The first mistake on this album is putting “Let it Rock” first and not “Livin’ on a Prayer”. This is a mistake that Cross Road, the only Bon Jovi album you need, if you feel you need a Bon Jovi album, does not make. You start with that classic of big, dumb, hairspray-laden pop metal, and a multitude of sins can be forgiven. It's anthemic, it's everyman… it's got a talk box on the main riff. It's basically the foie gras of the Monster Ballads era. It's everything that, say, following track Social Disease is not. The A-side is the Hits Side, tho, and the three here have some classic riffs, even as JBJ yowls about blood red nails and fayngertips. And if Wanted: Dead or Alive is a foreshadowing of the band's eventual descent into schlock-Country pablum, you'd at least be forgiven for thinking they could have pulled it off. It even has one of the greatest worst lines ever, seeing a Million faces yadda yadda. But then side B starts, with a stupid “we're a rock band rock with us” song that makes the one beginning side A sound forgivable. And on this side, there are no singles to save it. Not even the Born to Run wannabe Wild in the Streets. Most of this album is a big helping of How Dare You, so even with the hits, this is a high 2*

More hiphop should sample frogs. I recall first coming across ATCQ and groking them as some sort of hardcore gangsta rap group. I was a child, so I knew literal nothing. It wouldn't have been something my family would have said. Who knows. I was pretty surprised when I actually heard them years later. Quest have always been pretty synonymous with groove, and this is true even in this, their first foray. Not a surprise that Ali would be instrumental in the recent Jazz Is Dead series, reintroducing the world to forgotten greats. It's what makes a silly song like “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo” still fun to listen to. That's something the guys got from the very beginning. These guys were so good at this that they literally found the riff that made the Fugees “Killing Me Softly” relevant. Lyrically? This feels a bit like Licensed to Ill, inasmuch as this was made by literal teenagers. It's a good flow, it's relaxed and conversational, which carries over later on. It is intentionally aware of its inspiration and calls out the music it is pulling that inspiration from. But it's also a diamond in the rough still, in need of a little maturation. It's like drinking grape juice instead of wine. This was probably pioneering at the time, but the seams are easier to distinguish now, looking back. Sure, we have Can I Kick It, which is as iconic a song as there was in the genre at this point, and there's a lot of good stuff here, but it needs a little time and polish. 3* but a respectable 3.

AI will probably eventually destroy all art, but this came out over 35 years ago and is just as creative. I guess it set the stage for people becoming ok with soulless music that sounds like it was made by a robot. I don't know if this broke new ground. Maybe this was the first dance album to use a certain synth patch. Maybe it was the first one to start the trend of meaningless new-agey repetitions lyrics in club music. But this is basically the Dick and Jane primer of electronic music. It is trite, it is uninteresting, it is wildly dated, nothing happens, and I presume it was created for belabored learners. There's a lot of bad music out there, but this is just so unforgivably boring. 1*

This feels like the most 80s punk ever, bridging that power-chord chug with the reverb and synth of the era. Honestly, I'm liking this, and not just for “The Wait,” which I forgot all about being in Metallica's covers library. Whatever this is (I'm going with proto-industrial the longer it goes on), I'm on board. That simple. Light 4*

This isn't even the best album CCR put out in its year. It's arguably not even the second best released within a year of itself. Which sort of speaks to what CCR was about… it is really impressive how iconic they ended up in so brief a time. Arguably rock's greatest appropriation act, Creedence all but defines swamp blues despite being California boys. Some of that is Fogerty's voice. Some of that is that distinctive guitar tone. The title track is a stomper. Lodi is a classic plea to escape a dead end town. Bad Moon Rising feels superstitious in a way that feels distinctly bayou. It's kinda amazing how well they create a sound that feels so at home in a setting they don't know. I didn't realize how comforting this sound would be. It's brief, but tight. It delivers exactly what you would want from it, and if tracks like Sinister Purpose and Wrote a Song For Everyone don't shine like the hits, they still remain more than filler, part of a clutch of songs that don't really have any gristle on them, that are all at least good (and let's be real, some of these songs are just as solid as the hits: Cross-Tie Walker came to mind immediately). Light 4* territory again.

This isn't the earliest of jazzes, but it's far more big-band than the experimentalism we normally imagine for the genre. Back when jazz was dance music as much as anything. It's part of why I hate “dance music”. You can dance fine to pretty much any music that's got the proper beat. And this does. You can picture a dancehall full of people. Because this is so associated stylistically with a thousand mediocre Sinatra wannabes, Big Band sometimes just feels perfunctory. Trite even. Just Big horn blasts, Vegas veneer, a vague feeling of mob toadies hanging around. But the best stuff is still about expression. Basie has always been able to walk that line, where the music feels well composed and flexible instead of just being a boring backdrop… it seems Basie is part of the reason music like this started having the ability to improvise and experiment, so right there, his influence cannot be ignored. But Basie was so many things: here, he is largely conductor and pianist, but he's also an arranger, a writer, someone who brought any number of names into the spotlight. It's not an everyday listen sort of album, but I'm glad it's out there and it's fun to spin such a solid example of what this COULD be freed from the rigidity of the standards set. 4*

I was looking to see if this was really an hour plus, and thankfully it is not, but i got a lot of background info while I did. Haunted and shambolic? That's certainly something that could be great or awful! I sort of lean toward the former? It's all very sparse, very rough, but it's ultimately kinda nice mostly? Spence's voice can be a very rich deep instrument, or a very stressed airy higher register. It's not really psychedelic, but it isn't -not-. It has some early western vibes in places, but is definitely not a classic western album. It's not as obviously the product of a mental breakdown as many reviews suggest, but that knowledge certainly informs how disconnected the album often feels. There are a lot of nice gems throughout… with a little polish, Diana would be iconic, and War in Peace feels like it should be anyway. I think the droning Grey/Afro feels like the definer here. It's intriguing and propulsive but also give the hint that there might be something more going on here than meets the ear. I'm leaning to a light 3.5*, with the expectation i'll relisten to this to get deeper in. I don't know if this is something i will love, but i am surprisingly happy to have experienced it. And Whatever the case, i'll certainly sign off on this being the better song about Cripple Creek. You know the other one.

Well, it does what it promises. This just kinda… is. It's maybe overtheatrical, definitely a little lounge-acty. It's the EP version of 69 love songs in some ways, though I think there's more genuine brilliance on 69LS. There's nothing BAD about it per se. But it doesn't hold me. I like the reinterpolation of “when i fall in love” on Timewatching, and I'm All You Need is more what i expected (and males me a bit hopefully for the other Divine Comedy stuff), but this just sort of passed by. This is also where I wish the star system was more descriptive. Something like 45% of my ratings lean to a 3-star, and this, I think, would too. But there's such a wider range of meanings on a 3 star. There are the “this is good” threes, the “this is fine” threes, the “this is generic but not bad” threes. There are lots of sorts of threes out there, and it's not really fair to say this is the same as Tommy (or on the other hand, the same as The Rising). It's just 3.

There's always something battered and tender in Cave's work, I've noticed. It's usually hiding just under the skin of the foreboding. Nick Cave, especially pre-Skeleton Tree, and Especially Especially pre-Boatman's Call, has cultivated an artistic persona that feels guaranteed to have killed a man and more women. At its worst it comes across overly tryhard. More often it just plays with levels of discomfort, the barely constrained maniac character conducting some beautiful and damned choir. The reality is that that means for me, most of his work has been a couple listens to sink in. With technically two different albums of content, this will probably not be different. But I like it. Even songs where I was skeptical come into some sort of new movement that changes the whole thing. And then there is O Children... i'm not entirely sure why this is seen as one of the 1001, but it could be due to O Children alone. Right now it's on the cusp between a 3 and 4. Im gonna give it the benefit of the doubt.

I'll be honest, I am not a true believer on the “Hurt” discourse. I think Cash does an interesting cover. I think it frames the song in a vastly different way, as a recording by a man a year from death. I don't think it's better. To me, the biggest intrigue is simply the idea that a man so separate from the culture and distant in age would connect. It is a big thumbed nose to the yuppies and boomers freaking out about youth culture in decline. That's a huge bit of Cash. Imagine a modern country boy confronted with What is Truth for the first time. They'd be ripping shit over the audacity. Cash was never really an outlaw for the sake of it, but he was always in opposition to the worst bits of “western” culture. It's another small protest at the very end. Damn their eyes. But Cash is at his best when he is at his more Cash. The opening track (and album namesake) is a perfect storm of this. Cash as dark preacher, Cash as divine arbiter of justice, Cash as exuberant strummer and inveterate storyteller. His energy here, even in his speaksinging, is just as interesting a contrast as the tiredness of “Hurt”. While Cash's choices in covering the extended terrain of an American songbook (and the British, i guess, given the Depeche Mode song), he feels more tentative in most of these than when that aging but robust voice reverberates on his own compositions. Not in a bad way, just a different one. Something like “We'll Meet Again,” of course, feels right in that wheelhouse. Is this really the first recordings of him doing it? And having Fiona Apple rippling through what is already a strong Bridge Over Troubled Water is a nice touch. But the real standout of those songs is I Hung My Head, to me. Probably the big surprise on the album, and double surprise that it was written not by Johnny, but by Sting. All in all tho, this is probably the genesis of the Critically Acclaimed Twilight Album. It's a few years before Genius Loves Company, the Ray Charles album that really ushered in dozens of Old Dudes With Modern Duets albums. It is long long before the mindful and nearly prophetic Blackstar and You Want it Darker. And if I think it is a little overblown in praise, and if I think that there is no ethical reason to subject someone to Desperado, it doesn't make this any less than 4* and an eventual addition to the collection

There are too many Smiles, but thankfully our intrepid list maker specified we're to listen to the 2004 release. Not Smiley Smile, not the Smile Sessions. Brian Wilson's version. I don't think this is marred by that, if for no other reason than Mike Love isn't associated with it. But I've never really -gotten- the Beach Boys. I don't love their harmonies. I find their music always feels a bit too stuck in a high school era that never really existed. This isn't really resolved by the album being recorded by a more mature, older Wilson. But the bigger statement is how weirdly structured these songs are. Harmonies that don't really resolve morphing into new keys, multiple movements in one song, songs that blend together… this is Wilson's White Album, in that, while I will stand for no argument against the White Album, this similarly feels like throwing every idea at a wall and seeing what sticks. And also, because Heroes and Villains’ instrumental is basically “I Want to Tell You” with a carnie organ solo (not that that was a white album track). The problem is, these don't feel like wholly baked ideas. They also often feel thinly composed, which is a weird thing to say about a man who never met a note he didn't want to harmonize thrice. And lots of this is goofy in ways that don't feel intentional. And as a concept? I mean, I don't know what he's going for, unless the concept is a man who just keeps starting new songs in his head as he looks at things. Maybe this is why there is a song about looking at wind chimes. Maybe that explains Child is Father of the Man's chanted chorus. Maybe this man sings Vega-Tables to himself every night at dinner. I like weird things and all. I like unconventional music choices. But I'm just so beyond what makes this genius. Even the most interesting bits of this never gel, or shift into a completely different idea too soon. And with that reliance on chaste 50s nostalgia that hampers so much Beach Boys music, it never really feels like experimentation so much as a very distractable former Beach bum. 2*

Among the greatest double albums of the 70s (and id say ever). Which comes with pros and cons. The pros? Well, that first side for starters. We can certainly go on about the full on camp of Bennie and the Jets (with that stomping piano and glitchy, sizzly outro guitar), or the weirdly earnest idol worship balladry of Candle in the Wind, neither of which should have truly worked but do beautifully in the hands of Peak Reg. But then there is Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, the sort of bold, big, sprawling affair that you would expect from anyone but Elton, and yet he slays it. And that's all before Jerry Lee Lewising through Saturday Night or the wistful haze of the title track. Throw on any two other songs to the end and almost any combination would make this a 5 star album. But it is a double LP. And if Elton was known for anything in this era, it was flamboyance and doing too much. I mean, I remember seeing a video for Candle in the Wind regularly as a kid, and Elton was sitting there, singing this serious tribute elegy in a full old-time wig and faux veruca. He couldn't really help himself. But therein lies the downfall… for every brilliant pop song there is something bloated. Like, as good as the best of this album is, that's how bad Jamaica Jerk Off is. JJO might be the biggest best-to-worst gap on any album. It's audio cancer. And while it's singular in its suck, it's not alone. Dirty Little Girl is similarly overlong, similarly cringe, but at least brings a vibe of failed Bowie and/or Stones. Your Sister cant twist is absolute Fodder. And while the music for All the Girls Love Alice is actually real great, the lyrics are… let's say conflicting. But overall, this hits a lot of stylistic notes, mostly successfully. It's, once again, gloriously camp. The sort of Vieux Carré vibe of so much of the filler, airy and pleasant and a little seedy. The proto-disco shimmer of Grey Seal, which purports to suggest that there is some entity to beseech for answers that goes by the name Grey Seal. The ability to make a song called This Song Has No Title not be absolutely pointless. The less remembered but also solid film idol nostalgia of Roy Rogers. You don't -need- to trim that much off to get to a 5 star album. But the fat that isn't trimmed keeps it at a 4*

I listened to this when it came out and remember none of it. I guess that is worth noting. I guess that'll happen when you put out an album that starts on track 3. Like, I -want- to be for this. That's why I listened to begin with. Women in rap deserve support. Women owning their own sexual agency deserve support. This is all shit I'm for. Conceptually. But in execution? This is B-grade generic hip-pop with C-grade Vagina Monologuing. It doesn't make an impression as music, except inasmuch as it walks a line between overproduction and untuned. But it doesn't even really live up to the salaciousness it suggests. And while sure, songs about money turning her on certainly check out regarding “heauxing”, the only real pushing of the envelope is “On It,” which falls into the common trap: trying too hard to be overt in sexuality and actually sounding like you've never actually had sex. Nothing hits the boldness of a WAP, the tunefulness of a Kiss Me More, not even the single minded mania of a Nicki Minaj rapping about her ass for four minutes. The best bits? The backtrack on Lost One, which could have been something, and the beginning statement of Antoinette's Tale, which isn't very heauxy (only Ari's tale feels remotely confessional) but is at least a political statement. The rest of this sounds like something anyone could write after getting disappointed after a month on tinder. 2*, and proof that you really need to let an album age more than 5 years before declaring it special.

Ive been doing this for just about 2 months and I have gotten stuck with two Sonic Youth albums already. This one's title, Evol, is the opposite of “love,” and I deeply opposite of love Sonic Youth. As I've said before, Kim is the biggest issue here. At least here she is more whispery, which is preferable to the novocaine howl. Thurston just leans toward pretention and noise too often (see In The Kingdom #19). Kim, though… take “Secret Girl,” reciting weak poetry in vocal bursts that sound like she had to run down the street to get to the studio in time to gasp then out. That said, this isn't as bad as Sister. This feels more gothic, more 80s, more drawn from Joy Division… listen to those opening chords on Madonna, Sean, and Me, which feels like the rough draft of something ive actually enjoyed by someone else. That vibe starts on Tom Violence, and carries throughout. But the best bits of this album are of another piece altogether. Between about half of Green Light until Kim starts up in Secret Girl, there is cleansing discord, not too pointlessly painfully loud, but clearly a palate cleanser after the rest of this. That's what makes Madonna so relatively good… it sounds like something filled with potential going over the edge into simpleton yearnings. But that is the end of it. More 2* than Sister was, but that is nitpicking, because Sister is pretty bad.

Peace Sells is Dave Mustaine at his Mustainiest. A bit less polished than his former brothers in Metallica, a bit less practiced at song craft, a chip on his shoulder and something to prove about his own chops. Also, starting with a song about getting plastered and sleeping with another woman and having to not wake up his partner. Again, Peak Mustaine. But then, has Metallica ever been so puckish as to even write a song title like “wake up dead” or “peace sells… but who's buying?” The closest would be titling a song about a sanitarium “Welcome Home.” Dave leans into the less serious side of thrash and metal, despite being probably as big an asshole as the genre has. That title track walks that line. We know Dave is exactly the person who would give a line “I go to court when I have to” and be both sarcastic and sneeringly honest. But that petulance is framed by the anthemic shout along outro and an intro that will forever just be the MTV news theme to me. Maybe cruel that the most memorable riff on this album isn't from Dave's guitar. It's trite to view Megadeth in Metallica terms, but it's not like Dave doesn't invite it. How can we not hear Good Mourning/Black Friday and not hear an intro that is trying to outshine Fade To Black's? That's probably the defining aspect here… Dave's single-mindedness to out-thrash his peers, albeit a little later. Countdown to Extinction comes just after the Black Album. Cryptic Writings comes in the wake of Load. So it's interesting that Peace Sells includes something totally unique: a blues cover. I Ain't Superstitious is pretty intriguing here… not only does it pre-date Metallica covering non-punk and metal songs by a decent clip, it ends up being both an earnest take as well as arguing that the blues structure could accommodate metal shred. Thrash isn't really my metal, and metal isn't often my jam, but you can see a lot of what people see in it. Especially in songs like My Last Words, which might be my fave here, or Devil's Island, which i liked the guitar work on. 3*

Imagine, if you will, that a major musician decides to play a concert at your place of work, in some area of the world where concert tours don't exactly come by. Imagine, further, that they get on stage, introduce themselves, and immediately launch into a song about how the place you work for is absolutely miserable. I imagine that must be how the crowd at Folsom prison felt here. I don't believe there are all that many truly iconic live albums. Most live shows are fun in the moment, an experience, but lightning in a a bottle… it never really translates even when it's great. The difference here? First off, the recording sounds solid. You get a bit of that live reverberating, but it also still sounds good. But I think there's also the fact that this is tailored to the crowd. Lots of songs about hard luck, crime and punishment, general outlawing. Cash also feels at home. He's making jokes here and there, connecting with the inmates, snarking shit at the prison industrial complex. The atmosphere is a part of the album. There is a ceiling on even classic western for me, but Cash can command a light 4*, even having been fed him twice this month.

I've heard this before, and i am angry that i am committing to giving everything a fair full listen on this list. This could potentially be a longer slog, but it's hard to imagine. People go dramatic on the Ella songbook, but an hour and a half of this bullshit feels twice as long as that could possibly feel. It's funny, and deeply unfair, to get this right after Johnny Cash, because it's such a contrast. Simple powerful songs vs whatever this is. I have zero time for Skynyrd Apologism even if it isnt in garbled, meterless lyricism. Yeah, yeah. I am sure the stars and bars dudes didn't meet any racist pieces of shit. But when this isn't confederate apologist music for catalytic converter thieves with a bachelor's degree, it's still just mediocre southern rock. It is so crushingly mediocre. Having this album on the list at the exclusion of more women and people of color is why DEI exists… it's War of Northern Aggression rock, and it does it's damnedest to decouple the human rights abuses of the last 300-500 years from Just Alabama Culture. The “duality of the southern thang” is a classic tactic to forgive a reality that is still absolutely drowning the American South, to pay loud lip service to equality but refuse to stand against the bits that have been instrumental to preventing it. You don't get to sing “Robert E Lee” next to “Martin Luther King” as though they're just two important southern historical figures. At least the average abject bigot countryboy doesnt try to hide it. If you need to understand that better, they conveniently give a shitty rundown in Three Great Alabama Icons, which tries to whitewash the racism of the three shitty humans he talks about, all while INSISTING he, the “singer”, was not a bad guy, not him, no. “Racism has existed since recorded history”... OK. But we're talking about this particular aspect. George Wallace ended up no better or worse than most white men of his generation? That's southern cope if ever there was, even ignoring the reality that racism is systemic and present all over america. Id say I digress, but the drive by Truckers don't. This is music for folks who heard Strange Fruit and said “well sure, but also there are peaches! Real delicious peaches! Just ignore the “strange fruit,” it's terrible but it's just PART OF THE SOUTH.” and there are just so so so many things that sound better than this without playing that card. And that's just the first disc. The second disc is when you start realizing that this isn't a rock opera about the south, which has been bad enough, but an opera about southern rock, specifically skynyrd. And that just somehow makes it all stupider. 1*

Listening to Shane MacGowan is more like drinking whisky than drinking whisky is. It's almost so Irish as to feel appropriative, except it's authentic, it's actually Shane and Co. On previous attempts with the Pogues (mostly the other album that is almost assuredly on the list), that deep Irishness has been a roadblock, because of how it imbues the sound of every track. Maybe I'm in a better mood or more open, or maybe this is just a better album, but it isn't really hurting it this time. Maybe that's in part due to Fairytale of New York, the down-on-luck anti-love-song that manages to be one of the few tolerable Christmas songs AND few tolerable songs including casual homophobia. Kirsty MacColl probably goes a long way there. But the Celtic throughline mixes with so many other sounds… latin vibes, eastern influences, spy movie soundtracks, and of course, plenty of punk cutting through it. It doesn't sound like trite drinking music like so many other Irish punk (and especially Irish American punk) bands… Shane definitely always sounds 8 sheets to the wind… he was basically Amy Winehouse before Amy Winehouse as that goes… but he has something to say through that busted mouth of his. This album is frontloaded, for sure… the weird vibe of Fiesta, not to mention the medley, or ending with Worms, makes the second side weaker… but that first side makes a super strong case already, so I think i feel comfortable keeping this at a light 4*. I'll be keeping a lookout for this in the crates.

It's interesting, and one wonders if it's intentional, how GnR start their huge debut with a guitar riff that could be Roth era Van Halen, before completely destroying the entirety of that style, both in the album AND in popular culture. The hair metal boys always blame Kurt Cobain for destroying them, but come on, that was just the nail in the coffin. Axl and Slash drew first blood, and if it wasn't for Axl himself, they would have likely stayed just as huge through the grunge era. The Use Your Illusion albums were bloated, but they were also huge. But today is about Appetite. And let's be real, I've never been a huge GnR fan, because even while burying hair metal, this is still over the top, often cheesy cock rock. Rose's voice easily slips between iconic and annoying. The songs that didn't get on the radio often feel like filler in a very real way. But so so much of this album was on rock radio. Like, enough of it that it's easy to forget how many were on this one album, and there is enough nostalgia to carry the day, whether that nostalgia comes from the impeccable tone of Sweet Child o Mine, or the supremely relatable “I get up around 7, get outta bed around 9,” the over the top theatrics of Welcome to the Jungle or that big sinister main riff in My Michelle. Whether intentional or not, the album middle-loads. The first song is huge, but you get three more bangers right in the center, and of course by the time Sweet Child comes in, with that riff that everyone but Slash loves and that iconic bass creeping up under it, you're almost done. Sure, there's a gap between the best stuff and the rest, but the album is balanced enough that it never really feels like a slog to cross those gaps. Realistically, this is another imperfect mid 80s metal album, but it still is leaps and bounds ahead of its peers. It's more adept, it's rougher around the edges (and edgier, at that), it feels aesthetically so different from its milieu. It's a different sort of 4* compared to most of what has gotten that, and it's probably lightly so, but it does what it aims to do.

This is a Dr Dre album, but it is just as much a Snoop album. Let's be honest with that. Dre's pretty iconic as a rapper, but this is more a highlight for his production. If you were listening to music in the 90s, this was basically the basis for all the hip hop you were hearing. This was the template. Sometimes that's obvious, like “let me ride” finding itself quoted in Regulate a few years later (and every future rap about cruising down the street in my 64)... and then ‘living in the city it's do or die” cropping up in Coolio (and watchu wanna do? WhatCHU wanna do? quoted in Shoop). This is a more important founding document than you probably remember. But for every iconic riff and track, there's equal amounts of the misogyny that gave racists a kernel of truth to hide behind. There are stupid skits, because what would a 90s rap alhum be without bloat? There's so much homophobic whining and, perhaps ironically related, a stupid amount of threats to suck dick. The only thing this album wants more than its dick in a dude's mouth is P-funk samples. Kinda hard not to get a solid set of beats if that's where you're pulling them from. And yet Bitches Aint Shit is still iconic. And while this is clearly an album with something to prove (and bones to pick), it's also a leg up. Snoop isn't the only dude who got a boost here. Dre brought a whole bunch of folks on board here, not the least being Warren G and the Lady of Rage (her turns on Lyrical Gangbang and Stranded on Death Row are probably the best stuff in the late half of this album). So yeah, this hasn't aged particularly well, not the least reason being Snoop's “izzles” and general “beeotch"es. Very little sounds as cringey in 2026 as “beeotch” does. But at the same time, it has aged amazingly… the sound still feels exciting, right down to those high pitched synth melody lines. “Nuthin but a G Thang” still contains some of the most vital hooks of the genre. So, eh, I don't think it can quite reach a 4, not for me at least, but the sheer impact and influence keep it a strong 3* despite it all.

Tina Weymouth is an underrated bass genius. This does not particularly suggest she is a genius at other things (love included?). Or maybe this is all just Chris Frantz fault. I believe that more. First, the good, which there isn't a lot of. The expected highlight is Genius of Love, which honestly was one of very few samples which feel more iconic as the sample. It is enjoyable as a hodgepodge of unserious nonsense. The high pitched and pinched guitar riff (especially the little flourishes during the verse). “What do you consider fun? Fun! NATURAL fun!” “James BROOOWWWWWN”. It's not actually great, but it is experimental and unique. I can at least embrace that. Honestly, though, I probably like On, On, On, On most. It's simple, but sort of ominous, it's tempo somewhere between too slow and too fast, the vocals, which have always been a bit like theyre coming from a can, working with the song here. And there is also the clamor and buzz saw guitars of L'Elephant, which goes heavy into a parable, using French lyrics and African themes. The Talking Heads have often been the subject of questions of appropriation vs influence. This feels like both at once, but it's at least good. But there is a lot of bad. Wordy Rappinghood is probably the absolute peak of terrible early white rap. It might be the worst rap song of the first 20 to 25 years of the genre's prominence. It makes a pretty good case for “words are stupid,” though, and it is so Talking Heads c-side coded musically. As Above, So Below doubles down and feels like a second rate Rapture. It's not as purely bad… it's just boring and bored-sounding. Lorelei sounds like a particularly low budget spy movie theme, a little mystery and psychedelia but mostly just rambling for long enough to fit all the credits in. And Booming and Zooming? By this point when I first heard this some years ago, I was joking to myself that it would just be “booming and zooming”. And it pretty much lived up to the parody in my head. This might come across better as an experimental thing if it wasn't so tightly connected to a band who was always experimental, and so much better at it. As it stands, it's highly uneven, and a high 2* at best.

As degenerate as modern country is, it's almost comforting to hear country that lives and dies by the old stereotypes. This is brokedown truck and old dead dog country. It's amazing how that can go from a snarky dismissal of the genre, and then the genre can get to a place where you start to miss all that. The first thing I really notice is that Waylon keeps shifting his voice across the first few tracks. All of them are dated, but it's sorta interesting that he keeps making those choices. And yet, the songs aren't all that different. They're just… they're there. It's fine music, but this is music that you listen to because it's on and it's inoffensive. Outlaw country would be upset realizing how inoffensive this is. Most of this is a step away from grandma music… a little more modern, but a solid clip less iconic. It doesn't deserve under a 3*, but it only barely deserves that. No one needs to hear this before they die. They've already heard a hundred identical songs and forgotten them all

I feel like this has been a perennial “why is this here” album on these charts. I guess that's fair… Dusty in Memphis is the really big release, and while these are just fine, it is another example of, this could be anyone singing these songs. Dusty's voice is quirky in a way that can be uncomfortable. It's not bad, but it's not really remarkable for good reasons. It's hard to explain, but it's on full display on Do Re Mi, which is a song you'd be hard pressed to make sound good. There are a couple such songs that proved that in the 50s and 60s, you could write any fool idea down and make someone sing it. Which is to say, My Colouring Book would be a clunky overwrought metaphor no matter who sang it. Largely this feels like it's in here as a debut of someone who became an icon, which would be like including Bowie's Images/Deram Anthology. Again, it's not -bad-, it's just not something that has maintained cultural relevance. There's a solid 24 Hours From Tulsa and Will You Love Me Tomorrow. Wishin' and Hopin’ is about as good as the song has the capacity for, and You Don't Own Me is probably the best track here. But nothing here feels like it was made FOR Dusty… all of those songs were done better and more iconically. Dusty basically just fills an early Amy Winehouse role… white woman does passable impression of Soul vocals. At least Amy was giving us original songs. It deserves a bit more respect than ive seen, but it's probably not more than a strong 2*.

I have been dreading my first Radiohead album, because I tend to be very down on them ever since being somewhat underwhelmed by OK computer. I'm looking forward to revisiting that, but Kid A came out and we got Optimistic on the radio and I couldn't get into it. I later heard Amnesiac… in Rainbows… I don't anticipate giving either of those above a 2. I come into this with a similar expectation, though I've never actually heard it all through. And the thing is, Kid A takes Radiohead from being a good rock band to being a mediocre electronic act (which i feel is redundant to begin with). And I suppose this is technically influential: when I hear this, I just think of better work by bands like Royksopp or Múm, but both exist in a post-Kid A world. And even those tracks are more structured than Everything in its Right Place (which feels more like a new synth user experimenting with every glitchy patch than it does a true song). This isn't as muddy an album as i recall Amnesiac being, but it is absolutely an album that isn't focused on structure in any conventional way. For as little as I still rate Optimistic, it is at least structured as a song. And it's not like this is totally devoid of interest. The National Anthem has a great groove and a lot of jazzy chaos until Thom comes in with those keening vocals, a voice that was a unique powerful instrument on The Bends but now just sounds like a hurt dog most of the time (when it is not distorted into cheesy robot tones like on the title track), and there is the wispy spirit of something floating throughout How to Disappear Completely. But there are more Idioteques, where unpleasant rhythm synths crash and fizzle more prominently than the caterwaul of Mr Yorke just a bit more distant in the mix. This was once a supremely promising rock band. By the time they get to Kid A, I feel like they are Emperors flaunting their new clothes, truly the sound of the aftermath of “red wine and sleeping pills”. Every choice feels like it is intentionally done in opposition to the three quite good albums that came before, and for me that lands on a 2*

AC/DC is probably the prototype for Big Dumb Rock done right. It's all id and big crunchy riffs that feel like blues training for a boxing match. It's a screech of a voice so distinctive that Brian Johnson has been doing his best Bon Scott impression for 46 years, from this very album onwards. It's the music you'd expect a Schoolboy like Angus has long portrayed having chugging through his veins as he leaves school to cause trouble somewhere. It is the exact sort of music that would give the world the brilliant and stupid You Shook Me All Night Long. It is not the music you'd expect from the second bestselling album of all time, but it is indeed pretty universal in its way The title track is far and away the icon here, though there are a few deserved singles. If no other rock song survived the heat death of earth, intergalactic travelers could piece together what rock and roll was just from those big chords and their corresponding blues licks. For me, I think what rock and roll wasn't (noise pollution, in this case) makes for an even better song, but there's no shortage of highlights from the moment those big bells re-introduce the band after Bon's untimely death. Now, AC/DC's particular brand of riffing does have a shelf life. It's part of why I do not listen to too much AC/DC. In this case though, it ends up being about 40 minutes and 10 tracks. And while the songs you don't already know are decidedly not as good as the ones you do, it's over all, and certainly as a full package, as consistently solid as it is consistently horny. 4*

OK, so we're gonna get all this bullshit out of the way early I guess. I mean, I suppose the album with the biggest asshole concertgoer punchline on it has to be here. Free Bird is iconic, after all, though wildly overrated. It's a solo with a banal preamble. Solid guitar work on the leads, throughout, from the early plaintive slide to the extended jam it's known for, but the song as composed isn't that great. For that matter, Simple Man can get bent sideways. If ever a song has been praised above its stature, that one has. Van Zant's mom sits him down and basically gives the opposite of the empowering “you can be whatever you put your mind to” speech, as it plods plods plods away. I suppose it attracts exactly the sort of mediocre man it praises. The exact sort of man any stars n bars waving group of nitwits would attract. This is, of course, a bit before LynSkyn glazed George Wallace in Sweet Home Alabama (and quite a bit before the Drive By Truckers glazed LynSkyn for glazing GW), so we can pretend that that means they weren't confederate apologists at the time. Which is fine. It allows us to talk about Tuesday's Gone, which is simply a better song than Free Bird and rarely mentioned. It mines a similar musical vocabulary, a different but parallel sadness. It could be Free Bird from the perspective of the person who is being traveled on from. I've always preferred it. I also can get behind the other single, Gimme Three Steps, in part because it proves dude never actually became a simple kinda man who is satisfied by whatever he has, but also because it's the sort of barroom drama song that at least lets the piano player get a little bounce going before he gets shot. That same Saloon bounce helps save Things Goin On from being dire, though the highlight of the non-singles is Poison Whiskey, at least instrumentally. As instrumentation, it's easily the thing that rocks the most. It's just bogged down with the lyrics (and let's be honest, Ronnie's voice, but that bogs all these songs down). I'm not really convinced this would be an essential album if half the band didn't die by the end of the decade (and man, I could name about a half dozen albums without batting an eye that SHOULD be iconic that didn't go anywhere once band members tragically died). They'd be like Kid Rock if they were still making music at all. I mean, I guess they still are just Kid Rock now anyway. But this is an interesting landmark in the southern rock moment and not entirely awful for it. No one needed a second helping, but this one is a light 3* all tallied.

The best album Goldie was responsible for is Bjork's Homogenic, though mostly that's due to her basically using their breakup to inspire her work. How Scandinavian of her. But yeah, I guess this was influential in the drum and bass world? I don't really know what would make something influential in the drum and bass world, so my gut says it's two things: first, it's that big side-long intro/title track. Compositions that big and sprawling are always the sorts of overindulgent experiments that are gonna be critical darlings. Secondly though, it could be a matter of making drum and bass that feels like it's moving. That same epic of a track is absolutely bloated, but it has movements to it that a lot of club music does not. It feels more trip-hop than classic club music, insofar as classic club music only feels like it goes on for 20 minutes because nothing happens. Once that ends, though, all bets are off. It's not all propulsive, and even other tracks with frenetic drum loops still feel more listless than active (Sea of Tears is where I realized I was suddenly unable to pay attention). It's just too long of an album to be so largely one note. There may have been a statement being made in that singular title track, but even narrowing this down to one disc would have made it tighter. Cutting it just to a single LP? Even better. 2* as it exists now, though

I guess even the modern greatest in the hip-hop game can't help himself. That first track? It's a solid showcase of what was, at the time, a rising star's flow, rhymes storytelling… and it starts with baby crying samples and ends with a voice message that feels like skit territory. In 2011? Why couldn't Kendrick have a dream where we don't do that any more? I don't really get K.dot in general, though. I get that he is skilled, I like that he pisses off people that should die mad. I just haven't really taken the plunge yet over a number of his albums. There's plenty of the childish bravado that takes some really clever work for me to get into, but I don't think that's it. There is the full on lift of Janet Jackson's “Anytime Anyplace,” the sort of wholesale use that should have died with Diddy's popularity. There's the embarrassing chorus on Real (*im really really real”... ok sure). There's “Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe,” which feels like it is too hazy and downbeat, which could have been a proverbial banger with a different, er, vibe. Something just doesn't connect. I think the two tracks that make up the title, on the other hand, are pretty solid showcases with minimal complaints. I appreciate the ambition of the 12 minute “Sing About Me I'm Dying of Thirst”. “Compton” puts Kendrick with Dr Dre, which can only be so bad, right? It's not my bag, it's not something I get the hype on, but it is a proof of concept for the mythology he's created in the ensuing years. 3*

This is probably the boomeriest of all rock songs. It drank from the garden hose, rode a rusty merry go round, was whacked with a belt, and it turned out fine! Except it didn't. By verse 3 it becomes a miserable, humorless “kids these days with their Beatles and Stones” sloppy metaphor. Like so much that is 50s nostalgia, it goes heavy into the least interesting bits of the American experience, eventually doing what American Nostalgia Politics does: it calls Mick Jagger Satan, because ultimately this sort of shit is religious zealotry. So the only reason this album is on here at all is a bloated missive from the culture wars. Imagine going so hard for “Chantilly Lace” that you wrote over 8 minutes about how modern rock and roll is ruining the world. But what about the other stuff on the album. Surely there IS other stuff on the album, right? Well, there's at least one more track about a dead artist, which is sort of funny, because if McLean had been alive at the time, he would have probably written Tarte Tatin Francais about how Van Gogh is tainting the true art of Delacroix or something. Otherwise, most of this is dull and sleepy, so musically American Pie actually is the best thing on the album. The only other thing that comes close to being upbeat is Everybody Loves Me, Baby, which is absolutely abysmal and the less we discuss it the better. Usually though, this is mid tier folk, with melodies that don't particularly differentiate from any of the others. Bet we could get ol Don to play some of these classics at the Freedom250 concert, tho. 2*

Just a little something to take the edge off after a few disappointing ones. Once upon a time, this was what “indie” and “college rock” sounded like. When I went to college it sounded like Dispatch. I'd take this any day. The thing of course, though, is this is their first. The production sounds like a few college kids instead of the commercial juggernaut they would become. The songs are fine but they haven't yet really become REM. One might argue that happens at Document. But still, lower-fidelity or not, Radio Free Europe still has glimmers of all of it. The harmonies, the jungle, the Michael Stipe style of song craft. I don't know that this is important outside of the fact that any album REM debuted with would be important because they themselves are important, but it's a proper genesis album, something that arrives less than fully formed but with lots of promise, and what it lacks in the big songs it makes up for by being consistent, which isn't always REM's forte. I'm kinda surprises how often the sound and production of this feels like early Meat Puppets or Flaming Lips, bands that were coming up at around the same time but probably wouldn't have crossed paths often. Obviously REM has always been doing something a bit more tuneful and normative, but I was surprised to hear shades of that at all. Again, no idea if this would be as charming to a newbie to REM as it is to someone who can trace what's going on here to those huge albums at the turn of the next decade, but I think a 3* is fair.

suppose for a Brit, Suede is a much more iconic band than over here. It's hard to judge from here. But it is definitely harder to get excited about a band that I haven't really gotten into as yet when there is already so much 90s UK rock clogging the list’s veins. But honestly, I liked this way more than I expected to. What was the hit? No clue and honestly don't much care. This is largely solid regardless, and from track 2 onward, every song has a little something to snag me in. It dips a little toward the end, as 90s rock sometimes can (these long albums often were expected when it came to the CD era), a bit too many slower songs in a row, but The Asphalt World is quietly massive, and Still Life is quite the impassioned outro. I think this'll need a few more spins. For now, it's a very high 3… for the purposes of the generator ill give it 4*

I'm about 8% through with this project and there is already a bit of a roadblock. I suppose it's inevitable that a collection of 1001 albums would be difficult to compile depending on the rubric by which you define “must hear”. But while I definitely don't want to only be listening to albums I already know, I could really use a bit more stuff that I believe in. At least Marianne is an artist that was relevant in her time. At least she is a woman, which is infrequent. I'm not even angry at the fact that she sounds like Cruella DeVille (despite being in her early 30s here), though that does make this a tough listen. The thing for me is that this has just so much that isn't particularly good on it. Is this her best album? No idea. It would be a shame. The only things that really held my attention are the cover of Working Class Hero and the venomous fuck off of Why'd Ya Do It? The latter feels like it walks a line of shock for shock's sake and shock to really hammer home the inappropriateness of what was done. It's not a track I'm dying to come back to. It's uncomfortable. But it's pretty obviously supposed to be. There is power in rejecting the confines of demure femininity, and this does that. I'd welcome this on the list just for the bros who are inevitably gonna squirm over it. But the rest, I chose to relisten to, because surely I missed something? Well, I say the rest, but I knew i did not need to relisten to the title track, which fails both on annoying production and clunky lyrics. I suppose this is ahead of its time there: there is a lot of production here that feels more like the filler on an 80s new wave album (those shuddering synths on The Ballad of Lucy Jordan, for example). It's not quite as bad on round two, but it still gives me nothing to hang onto. And that's a concern… we'll see if the flow gets stronger or if this is gonna be 100 good albums and 900 chores. This is probably a 3.01* or so all told. I'm bummed about that too, guys

Well, I guess ask and you shall receive when it comes to better generating Despite spending most of the last decade exploring jazz more deeply and becoming the old white music nerd that I was always destined to be, I have continually avoided A Love Supreme. It's pretty purely because of its status (one of the all time greats) and structure (technically 4 movements of one piece). This deserved focus, and whenever it has come to mind, I have not had the ability to give it that focus. Thank the generator gods that this wasn't substituted for a Menswe@r album. I feel like that could have been a risk at this point. Anyway: everyone is in solid form here. The drums are cacophonous but rhythmic, the piano is tuneful but also has just a bit of discord and tension. The bass wanders all over. And of course Trane is playing his sax in ways that always feel improvisational but also feel composed, intentional, and melodic. People have compared this to a musical prayer, and certainly there is a spiritual jazz sound in places, but a prayer feels more banal than this could ever be. Instead, this feels like it goes, to lightly paraphrase from the lost album, in [All] Directions at Once. It doesn't really entirely fit in any one genre of jazz. Pursuance (pt III) feels like the most important of the pieces, because it intentionally leaves space for all four players to solo extensively. Acknowledgment (I) is obviously where the title comes from. Psalm (IV) feels like the most emotive piece. I probably will need a few more spins to really get this, but I'll give it a 5* as it is because it really does seem to exist in a world where you can hear it pretty easily at a first listen, but it's obvious itll open up even more on better speakers, on vinyl, etc.

It shouldn't be a hot take, but Eminem is only famous because white men wanted something violent and misogynistic and childishly angry after the grunge and post grunge era, which was, by rock and roll standards, pretty feminist and thoughtful. And while Em is certainly a more mellowed dude and has better politics than you'd expect (I suppose getting money sometimes helps you grow the fuck up), the majority of his fans revere him as a great white savior. At this point, having already made his mark on shitty white men, you start getting the tightrope. You have the absolute homicidal glee of Kill You and then the 180 of Counselor Marshall being the voice of reason in Stan, and then gets back into the ultraviolet in Who Knew, while starting to take it meta, arguing with the critics. It's funny how the free speech absolutists always end up being really really focused on insisting that they did nothing wrong. And sure, I get the need to have an outlet. That's a part of lots of music (gangsta rap long got this same reputation just for talking about surviving in ghettos and gang life, but for some reason, can't put my finger on it, Em hasn't had it stick). I get the idea of creating a world and a persona that isn't you. But it's weird to have created a persona for yourself who is such a piece of shit, and then spend so much of this album oscillating between doubling down and going full on victim. “Radio won't even play my jam,” he unironically growls on a radio hit. But that's not really all. Because again, if Eminem wasn't ironically part of the blueprint for the white grievance that gave us the trash politics of the last 15 years that he is probably not aware of his part in, it wouldn’t be the only album like this out there. But without that? Em's flow tends to be about reference, about name dropping, about mining culture and being snarky about it. It makes The Real Slim Shady incredibly dated. Imagine not knowing Eminem, and hearing him in 2026 rapping about Britney Spears. Imagine hearing him then rap another song (two tracks later on the album) that also whines about Nsync and Christina Aguilera (and then a third time on the next track). It's either lazy or obsessive (sort of like his homophobia. Or his mommy issues. Or or or) One thing he -is- good at, though, besides playing the victim, is picking music to steal to rap over. I am sure I'll have to hear his first album too, so we'll get there. Dido's “thank you” doesnt really make a lot of sense on Stan, but she got big retroactively off it. And yet, the best thing on the album is Bitch Please II, which basically rides off of Dre, Snoop, and the laurels of a track that was better. Anyway, this is childish pap. Some dude in your high school class heard Kim and felt some real feels about it and definitely made it his personality. Some dude in your class who will say terrible things about black folks thinks this is the greatest album of all time. That's probably true even if you were in high school in the 70s. This is music for broken shitty white men of all generations, regardless of what the artist wants to pretend. And honestly, after over an hour of this bullshit, and expecting i'd at least be able to praise the dude's flow? Nah. That's not even interesting, and even less so after 18 tracks of cringe rhymes and cringier skits and cringiest “oh poor me, i am not being serious, the real oppression is happening to me” bet-hedging. 1* and to paraphrase ol’ Three Personas, one can suck my dick if one doesnt like that shit.

For starters, I can unequivocally say this is beyond unnecessary listening. It is barely necessary listening for Metallica fans (not the least because less than ⅓ of it is 80s era, which many Metallica fans will whine about being the only real era). This album is superfluous to the Metallica Catalog, let alone the list of albums one must hear before death. But the cool thing is, it's not a throwaway. It is a pretty unique record… we are sort of in a golden era of rock bands playing with symphonies, and this was probably a bridge for some of that. Surely this was a footnote in that trend as an early experiment. It's also recorded well, clearly set up to capture a home audio worthy performance. The orchestra sounds live, the crowd cheers are obvious between songs, but it never feels like a bootleg. It's clear this was set up to capture everything. And finally, the arrangements aren't just perfunctory strings. Some tracks utilize the expanded sound palette better (who is surprised Call of Ktulu thrives with a symphony behind it?) than others (Fuel, which is too hectic and not so nuanced as other arrangements), but even when there's just a lot going on, where the orchestra muddles the band and the band drowns out the orchestra, it still works in such a way that it's clear the symphony is being conducted as a complement to the songs. So this sounds good, but I'm not entirely sure who it's for. We all know what the metal goons thought when the biggest metal band dared to experiment on Load and Reload, and then they come out with this? I am proud of this era of Metallica, but I also bought this at the time and if I listened to it once, that was a lot. But I was a kid. I got into Metallica in part because of the music the gatekeepers hated. So if it wasn't for me then, I don't know what non-Metallica fan is hearing this now and finding it to be a revelation. Half the excitement for me is knowing the originals, enjoying a new take. Who is the casual generator user who is really sucked in by this? Who is the not-yet-Metallica-fan that needed to hear these songs with every “ooooughh” and “yeah yeaaaaaah” and other Hetfieldian gutteralizations? I think it's a fair experiment that works, a good mid 3*. But it's ludicrous to include this here.

Where were you when you first heard the Buena Vista Social Club? For me, it must have been in a music class in High School, and then again with the full documentary in a university elective. I probably wasn't ready to care about this the first time, but the second, it was ear opening. The documentary definitely gives a different flair, seeing these hidden masters of Cuban music, forgotten on an island ravaged both by dictatorship and America's disastrous response to it. You really get a sense of how fragile these voices are… folks who enjoyed a very late in life resurgence due to this film, voices that may have gone extinct. As an album, it may be harder to gain the same context, but I find it hard to imagine that someone couldn't be sucked into the smoky music club of Chan Chan, Compay Segundo taking that baritone harmony and Eliades Ochoa on the high. It's something that conjures up an idealized night out, part discovery, part comfort, all vibe. This can be excellent background music, but there is so much going on for a close listen. It's a time capsule… these were the big names in Havana in the 60s, 50s, even 40s and 30s, and having these voices now aged, these instruments now a bit worse for wear, does something otherworldly to them, like a benevolently haunted music box. There is a very real timeline where we don't get to hear this music at all. In ours, though, many of these artists even got to release very late career albums of similar quality off the backs of this. Omara Portuondo, for example, shows up on one track (a standout, to be fair) and that's enough to bring us two stunning solo albums. I could, I suppose, see someone finding this a bit samey. I don't agree, but it is all in the same stylistic wheelhouse, and while one song might sound unique and exciting, 14 might be too much of similar rhythmic ideas, similar call and response vocals, etc. But for me, this is a pretty perfect document, with all those layers of sound, all those voices chiming in to remember the past and honor the music they made their living on. We should be so lucky that more music like this gets preserved so well for the future. 5*

The US version has Paint it, Black. But this is showing the UK version, which starts with Mother's Little Helper instead. “What a drag it is getting old,” eh? More like what a drag it is living with a shitty man and being forced to raise kids. Ultimately a hilarious morality tale to put forth from a band containing Keith Richards. I'd be drugged to the gills too if I had to live the life of a 60s homemaker. I am, admittedly, very firmly on the Beatles side of the Beatles/Stones debate. Not that I don't like some Stones, but… well, this has a lot of pretty terrible songs. “Stupid Girl” suggests that this pretty banal woman is “the worst thing in this world.” Shit like that is why mother is getting her little helper. It's not the only foolishly misogynist song here: Under My Thumb continues the tradition, but at least we can argue that Under My Thumb is coherent and at least has good bones. Stupid Girl is an easy contender for worst songs ever, and certainly would put up a strong fight for “worst second track.” The US version omits four of these tracks before adding PiB, and yet continues to keep Stupid Girl in the second spot. That's the sort of choice that feels like self sabotage. Equally so is the UK version sticking 11 minutes of Going Home in the mix before even getting halfway through (the US wisely sticks this at the end of the album, so you can ignore it). Largely this is an album built around perfunctory blues, and despite their best efforts at the start it's pretty inoffensive. Among the more interesting things here? I'm partial to I Am Waiting, but that's partly due to a Lindsay Buckingham cover. The Stones original doesn't hit the same, but the skeleton is there. Past that, the highlights are the “tell me, whose fault was that, babe?” hook on Think and the arrangement on Lady Jane, and while not particularly memorable, about half of what remains on the US version could have been swapped for UK's “Take It or Leave It” Anyway, though, this is an album which wouldn't inspire anyone to listen to more Stones. It might, might creep to a low or nearly 3 with the US version with Paint It, Black and some trimmed fat, but I think there's just too much filler and too many specifically bad songs here to make it out of the 2* range even then. One iconic song simply isn't enough to justify listening to the whole album… I'd honestly probably appreciate the song LESS having heard the whole thing.

Nick Drake, as I have said before, has been a bit of an albatross for me over the what, 20 or so years since folks decided to give him a rebirth? Because ultimately he is a fine guitarist but his post-hippie stoner-kid vibe just hasn't grabbed me. Like, I feel like this inspired every Jack Johnson/John Mayer/Dispatch/whisper mouthed frat guitarist of the turn of the century, and he will never properly pay amends for that. I think the guitar work strikes me a bit more on this earlier album than on Pink Moon. It's been a few months since I got that by now, but this feels a bit more upbeat, a bit more interesting. It's something I can picture wanting to learn musically. But it's that codeine voice that keeps this from resonating. Another 3* for nick.

In the generator's apparent quest to give me every country and/or western album in my first hundred, today we have this bright pink monstrosity. Robbins (i presume that's Robbins) looks like Nic Cage at his most bankrupt, but i appreciate the contrast of black on salmon. I also appreciate that this leans more to the Western side of things. The idea of an entire album full of songs about outlaws and gunfights feels incredibly tedious, but this is one of those albums at the forefront of this sort of storytelling song. Single minded fever fantasies about big tough gun men and horses. Nowadays the people who would have once just written their 14th song about how quick a draw some stranger was at a duel are writing similar fantasies online about how the big city is a cesspit of danger and filth. Bring back people just writing prairie fantasy porn with some buddies harmonizing very very straightly we swear. (Also, it is wild to talk about having 160 acres and having dudes be like yes, this is the everyman) But this is about the music too. Marty can get a good croon on, to his credit. It's absolutely full of twilight campfire melancholy… let's call it white Saudade. That's addictive in its own way, even if this isn't my style. So even though it is ridiculous to think this man has ever seen a stampede, let alone had a religious awakening during one… even though all of this is wildly unrelatable to real humans… it's still melodically compelling. That's how you get El Paso finding its way into Breaking Bad. But nothing here really resonates with me conceptually. I guess except for liking cool water when I am thirsty. Definitely more about the Trail Songs bit though. Murder count: 7 (unless you count the 20 dudes the other outlaw killed in Big Iron, the 21 on Billy's Pistol, and all the other deaths mentioned prior to the songs themselves). Other deaths: 2 (including the man getting hanged tonight, but not those who died when the Master called. Stars: 3* but light ones.

The Police put out 5 albums and honestly any of them could fit here. Not bad for a band that must have been impossible to properly promote. Oh yeah, the police are gonna be there? I'll pass. Anyway, I guess this is as good a second choice as any. I'd probably have gone Ghost in the Machine tho. We all know what the first choice is. The singles themselves are, well, singular. Message in a Bottle captures isolation and desperation beautifully alongside that iconic guitar line. Walking on the Moon FEELS like it's shimmering through zero-g and no oxygen. It's airy and bouncy and just haunted enough. Both of these would be fair competition for the best songs of the 80s if they weren't released in 1979. Flawless tracks and those alone set this up for a favorable rating. It's an unenviable task to be the rest of the album, then, and try to live up to that. And like, nothing is bad of course, but I think someone could tell what the singles were even if they heard this on random with no further context. For my money the best of the rest would probably be “Deathwish” but even the worst of the rest is still interesting. I do disagree with the concept of “the bed's too big without you” though. No such thing as a too big bed, lonely or not. I feel like this is a 3.5, maybe a bit higher, but I don't think it quite nears a 4, so i'll give it 3* in the generator.

This could be any album released in the late 60s. This could be any album released in the mid 70s. It could be anything Jack White has ever released if Jack was more tuneful. It's the music playing before the rock concert, you know, the song you don't really know that just sounds like what you'd hear waiting to hear the band you paid for? This is that. I guess it's cool if you are in fact needing 30 minutes to swap out drums and take a piss before your show but don't want to make a Playlist. But it's the definition of a pure 3*. It's just not offensive enough or interesting enough to land anywhere else.

The thing i've found with what people would most often call “goth” music is that it is so deep into mood. What that mood is can be a moving target, but a big piece of it is the outer trappings. Let's look at “hollow hills”. It's very spare, with a murky bass and guitar, but the more dramatic bits are the slow thump of drum, both muffled and echoed, or the hum and whine of the guitars over the top. It's not always in service to great songs, but it tends to be interesting texturally when it is not. Would bauhaus want to be called goth at all? Most of the most iconic goth bands don't. They can be wrong. As far as actually liking this? Eh. I am less excited. Again, there's some solid bass here mostly, but the songs are much thinner as songs. When we think of Bela Lugosi's Dead, their very not on a proper album breakthrough, it works because of atmosphere and a certain drone/trance vibe, like an incantation. It's over long, but it is primed to be appreciated anyway because of that incantationlike vibe. You're in a ritual. That's what really carries over from Hollow Hills, too. So while I can really appreciate the composition, the drums and groove of something like Muscle in Plastic, it doesn't really come together as a song so much as an audio idea. It's admittedly a genre i still find hard to figure out, like it is in the dank cave that the sound often evokes, so maybe with enough similar albums I will end up with a different view and revisit this. But for now it's a pretty light (and I guess dark) 3*.

The The, among the least googleable bands, is pretty give and take for me. They have some excellent songs, some interesting albums, but also a lot that is overwrought and more concerned with theatrics than craft. This feels like the latter for me. Dark and grimy camp, but camp all the way. I guess a light 3* but i couldnt really get into it enough to feel much

My vibe on Muse has always been if Radiohead had gone deep into prog instead of releasing OK Computer. Matt Bellamy's voice does a lot of the same affectations. The other thing? Muse loves a good, grandiose backdrop. Something that screams high drama even if the song does not. Those big echoing pianos and stomping drums in Starlight, for example, which have no real right to be in what is essentially a love song. Or the noodly synth waves buried in the mix for the pre-chorus. The drop-out of everything as he sings the album title. It's honestly a great song, but the biggest bit is that it feels like it should be. And it succeeds in being what they attempted to create. That doesn't always work: the slant-title song, for example, attempts to be a slinky sexy yearn, but it sounds way too much like, well, prog radiohead trying to be Marvin gaye or something. At most charitable it's an astronomy geek trying to seduce someone while in the background they are thinking of outerspace. There's frequently just a bit of the videogame to them too (imagine speed running a platform game with Map of the Problematique in the background). And of course there's that big big drama on Hoodoo. How could it come to this, indeed. Which is to say that Muse never really feels totally authentic to me, even when they're producing fine songs. It always feels at least a little overwrought, a little bigger than makes any sense for thr song itself. I imagine it's exactly that which makes them huge with some people, but it loses me. It lost me enough that some of these songs were ones i remembered from hearing clips of this on various in-store retail play, but which immediately escaped my brain when it stopped being played. We'll see if it lasts this time. Still, i'd give this a strong 3*. I'm not sure why it is a particularly must hear album, but it's not a hard listen

I feel like I've gotten less than my fair share of the real difficult albums so far. I am not sure that The Fall are really that deeply difficult, but my previous exposure has been mixed at best. It's largely Mark E Smith's vocal delivery, less a singer and more a snarky ranter in the local gutter. There's some fun music here, and even attempting to be catchy (Spoilt Victorian Child is weirdly addictive despite feeling like it's twice as long as it is). This is inherently not my bag, but I appreciate it being something different. There's a term, Rock in Opposition, that I've seen describe a lot of avant garde rock, rock with jazzy elements, messy psych and zeuhl… but this feels much more “in opposition” to something. It's music that exists to be a thorn in a side, not snotty, nor overtly political, not intensely unlistenable, though Smith revels in a little of all of that. It's just that every musical fiber of this feels like it's spiting something or someone. Good for it. Lightly 3*.

Today is a day of contrasts. First, the generator gives us the worst of the four original Pixies LPs. Now, let's be clear that I call this “the worst,” because it is, but it is not BAD. The Pixies didn't put out a bad album during the Kim Deal era. But this is the one that feels the most rudderless, the least essential. It feels like a weird album to include in this book unless all three of the others are, too. While Surfer Rosa and Doolittle feel like Revelations from the future, this feels more like a reversal deep into the 80s. Look at all that sheen on “Velouria,” for example. It is a flawless 5* song as far as I am concerned, but it's a very different band. That's kind of what I mean here. Even Trompe le Monde, which is nearly Dealless, feels more cut from the same cloth as the first few. But you have the almost surf inflected trio of ladies: Cecelia Ann, Allison, and Ana. You have “Is She Weird,” which approaches the old stuff conceptually, and Dig for Fire, which doesn't but is still a minor classic. It's an album I have come around to quite a bit since I first heard it, but it still doesn't carry the weight of the others (and it has that kinda dead area between Dig for Fire and Stormy Weather). Again, I want to make it clear, this is a 4* album without a doubt. But it's more of a 4.11 while the others range closer to 4.5 to 5. Always nice to hear it, but a weird choice for the project.

If RHCP put out a career greatest hits it would be three LPs. One would just be One Hot Minute, and any fans who disagree can get bent. One side each would represent the best stuff from Mother's Milk and earlier and Californication and after. And the third LP would be mostly BSSM and also Soul to Squeeze. Even this would be more RHCP than anyone NEEDS, it wouldn't be ALL good, but no one would ever need MORE than that. You could easily do that without losing a single essential track. While I will absolutely die on the hill that Dave Navarro is the only person who managed to harness Anthony Kiedis's weird dubbed-kung-fu style rapping and flapjawed singing into a consistent product, one cannot deny that BSSM has the hits. Even as tiring as those hits are. Even as bloated as the album is. It has a pretty distinct aura to it… from the jump you have the same sonic palette as Give It Away and Suck My Kiss. You also have probably the least cool song to ever say “death to the ku klux klan”. That should be a slam dunk on making your song cool. You can't actually follow along lyrically with an RHCP song. It's a terrible idea if you're trying to approach them as unbiased as possible, because there are few worse lyricists in the entire world than Kiedis. It makes a song like Breaking the Girl all the more astonishing, not that it is exactly poetry, but it's a coherent, actually kinda lovely song couched between two unselfconsciously silly songs. “There are no monks in my band”. OK, Shakespeare. And there really is the feeling that this could have been at least a solid album if anyone else was fronting these songs except for Sir Psycho Sexy over here (sincerely one of the least sexy songs exclusively about fucking, but I guess that's not surprising from a dude who called sex “done did do” earlier in the album). It could have even been equally relentlessly horny if the vocalist or at least lyricist wasn't the sort of guy to pursue barely legal women while in his 60s. Hell, even lots of other old predator types would do better. The best of those tracks is Suck My Kiss, but that's in spite of itself. This album is an excellent reminder of how bad heroin can mess you up, but Under the Bridge is definitely not the best evidence of that. So yeah, there's the four hits. That's one half of that full platter. Let's say we put that as Suck My Kiss, then slip in Naked in the Rain, and continue with Breaking the Girl, Give it Away, and Under the Bridge. Side B? Soul to Squeeze (where it belongs, what band doesn't include this song if they wrote it for this album?) Righteous and the Wicked. I Could Have Lied. My Lovely Man. Let's toss “they're red hot” at the end as a coda. Maybe I'd throw Mellowship Slinky on the bonus deluxe platter as an instrumental demo. That single LP is a good 4*. The album as it stands? I can't really give it a 2… it's weirdly more than the sum of its parts… but I can barely go much higher than a light 3*. And again, this is basically the second best album these cats put out

I am a big fan of mid 90s rock. There are absolutely albums I recommend to people all the time that I think are forgotten classics, things that got barely any play and deserved better. I see more than my fair share of nostalgia acts that I didn't get to see growing up in that era. But loving Marcy Playground's debut doesn't mean that, if writing about the thousand most essential listening experiences out there, I would include it. Some albums, I might, but they'd need to feel really special, really worth it. This is to say: Orange Juice feels like an inclusion from someone who loved 80s new wave but didn't have any sense of editing. From the lead single of Rip it Up, which I only know from some of the more obscure 80s playlists I've found (and definitely wouldn't have had a name for until now) onward to Tenterhook, nothing feels distinctive. It's a pastiche of a little of everything we think of in New Wave. The lead single starts with synth bass that sounds like it is, indeed, being channeled through Orange juice, kinda squelchy above anything else. I can't help myself brings in what to me feels like the distinctly 80s sex solo. Shattered throughout there is plenty of Uncomfortable White British Reggae and Afrobeat flourishes. Lead singer Edwyn Collins would, over a decade later, get his biggest single, at least in the US, with A Girl Like You, iconic in its vibes thrown back even further to a romanticized 60s via the 70s. It's such a complete song, fuzzed and psyched out. Simple enough to sing along, but complex enough that it sounded musically compelling. Its anachronism set it apart from the rest of the mid-90s, which is one of the reasons I love the era… it felt like so many different ideas were percolating under the relatively meaningless banner of Alternative Rock. I am less enthused by the relative flatness that early synths gave the 80s, though, and this feels wildly inessential generic 80s, something you hear intuitively at a club and then forget ever existed. High 2*

I will argue that Rhythm Nation still sounds like the future even after decades have passed where this general sound blew up and bloated and died out. I don't know how we as a society went from a world where RN1814 was possible to whatever world we are left with now. Like, understand that Dangerous sounds like this because lil sister Janet got this sound. Understand that this title track's video was all stark and dystopic, both as a symbol of the “state of the world” and also as a symbol of being able to unite and fight through it. It's a little gender bending even, with those unisex uniforms. We coulda had a rhythm nation, guys, and they threw out supreme leader under the bus for a nip slip. Timberlake will answer for that some day. How good is this? Besides being a futuristic and cohesive and LOOOONG but never dragging pop album, it has 8, count ‘em, 8 interludes. That's hip-hop skit album ruining numbers. In this case, though, it operates as consideration, possibly without expecting it. The 20 track layout must have fucked with cd shuffles, but it allows the digital age, and indeed cd to cassette tapers, to take the songs for their mixes and leave the interstitials alone. Because that's really what they are… links between songs, easily embraced on a listen through, but easily skipped. It's honestly impressive enough to use the “channel surf” gimmick without sounding cheesy, but then, she also manages to have some of the less hamfisted social commentary tracks of the era. Michael could never. And let's talk about the singles. Four? Eight? A lot regardless. But I really want to talk about Love Will Never Do Without You, an absolute top tier pop love song, even before you mix the sweet vocals and arpeggiated plinks of the intro with the throb of the backbeat and the purely industrial sounding percussion. This is a love song between Janet and a Gundam or something, and yet it works so damned well. This is what basically everyone was trying to do for the next 4 years, and Janet still got the hit single out of it two years after the album released. That's such a hallmark of this album: beauty and concrete, arguably beauty DESPITE the harshness. Is there a song that can have something as purely faerie-coded as the the descending glockenspeil of Escapade while also being as effortlessly cool? Maybe, but good luck. That's not to say everything is perfect. The calls out throughout the songs are probably the one bit that particularly feels dated (“minneapolis!”), and songs like “Lonely” or “The Knowledge” are sort of destined to be filler, certainly compared to the rest of the album. But then we have “Black Cat” tearing through with more metal cred than a lot of what was passing for actual metal at the time. We have Living in a World (They Didn't Make), and if that is a bit out of place soundwise, I dare you to not be outraged when it fizzled into an end clip that could be from yesterday, and what do we have to show for it? Trust, I was prepared to be happy with this, but if Michael owned the 80s, this is Janet stating she's the ruler from here to the mid 90s. This should be seen as an equal to Thriller, but even that wouldnt be fair because I think it might be better than Thriller. Let's 5* this

Album 100, and I'm treated to B grade Steely Dan leftovers (and sadly it's the best thing the generators fed me today). I have heard this album probably dozens of times, but it's been a while, so I'll give it one more fair spin. The title track takes a chorus that feels like a station tag from an old radio station: “WJAZ, with jazz and conversation from the foot of Mt. Belzoni”. To some degree this is a framework in which the whole album fits. In others it's a framework in which Donald Fagen's entire oeuvre fits. There may not be a better way to explain Steely Dan, and especially this album, than that it sounds like the station tag for some independent smooth jazz radio from the 80s. How you feel about an entire album or catalog of songs that sound like the interstitials where you learn the call letters of your local station is obviously gonna be your feeling about Fagen's output. Donny has never felt smarmier to me than on the Nightfly. You can almost smell the ashtrays and the hair oil. If you didn't know this is technically what all of his work sounds like, you'd be tempted to think it was a parody. What the title track does for radio, IGY does for sitcom intros. It's the sort of music that makes people think they hate jazz, and without Becker there to tear a proper solo here and there, that smooth banality is something the tracks really lean into. The slickness is almost all there is. Empty though that leaves the songs, it is simply too composed to be rated too poorly. It continues to leave me cold, but there's no blatant misstep, except for not liking Fagen's songwriting, his vibe, his everything. So do I rate from an unbiased place, or do I give this a 2 and move on? I think it gets the 2*. I can be more generous with the more nimble and diversified Steely Dan stuff, but this just feels like citypop without the charm and then the sludgy sleepy chord changes of Maxine. The least generous I'm apt to be is with albums that don't deserve their place here.

Technically, Cloud Nine sounds like a 50s group trying to pivot to the 60s while the 70s is nipping at their heels. But I bet that's not the primary vibe you'll get from it if you're not thinking about it. Sure, the reimagining of Heard It Through the Grapevine makes it a bit hard to avoid, but generally it's hard to hear past this group's skill as a vocal combo. So while sure, this feels a little on the edges of psych and definitely on the edges of funk, this doesn't feel exactly like classic Temptations, it does not feel forced or phoned in or like old people trying to do the youth thing. It sounds like the Temptations. And that's a good thing to sound like. The Temptationy stuff is good here… can't mess with a good formula… but the key track feels like “Runaway Child, Running Wild,” which builds into what could be a defining statement of what the guys were trying to do here. It's long and epic sounding, and you don't quite realize it until you get to about minute 7 and think “huh, this feels a little longer than the average motown song.” The Grapevine Experiment comes closest to a falter here… the arrangement is simply not as strong as the classic ones… but this gives a slate of songs up to par with the classic era, right alongside some more interesting sides of the band. I think it's probably just under a 4*, but no reason to round down.

Today we get the least essential member of CSNY doing a solo album. Neat cover tho. Dig the weird giraffe thing. I'm probably not as down on “Love the One You're With” as many are. It's pseudo-deep, but I think it is true that often we carry love for people who are far from us, for people who do not return it, for people no longer with us, for people who, however rightfully, have left. Love isn't an on/off switch. But we should not let love for those we cannot be with make us resent the friends, the family, even the lovers we have. The fires we burn should be for us, not something that burns others. Who knows what Stills is truly driving at here, but I think it's probably wise to love the people who you are involved with regardless of who we want to be involved with. The sin is that that relatively silly track, clearly built to sound like the group he is not with currently, is pretty much top dog here. Some bits are cluttered with shaky narrative (old times good times). Some are just lyrically banal (“and it's hard yes it is”). When Stills isn't trying to build the harmonies his group mates are known for, it instead boils down to dull blues. This is peak “no one needs to hear this whole album, there's just one sorta important song,” and that one song isn't exactly must hear, either. I both want to find a reason to make this a three (it's technically constructed alright even if the songs aren't great) and to make this a one (which is unfair to album quality but real tempting when the album fails to meet the basic threshold of inclusion). There is a non-zero chance of someone getting bopped in the nose if they, in person, came shouting “oh, stop everything and listen to this” and then played this nonsense. I think by the end, though, a 2 is inevitable. The B-side is much more actively bad, and Black Queen especially combines a clunky playing card “concept” with “look at me” guitars but “please don't look at me” vocals. It's a middling 2* at that. Onward to Nash's solo work. Maybe an essential cut from Greg Lake.

I bought this some years ago, but I haven't listened to it in quite a while. Let's reacquaint and see how it holds up. The thing is that TVotR did the rock fusion thing better than most of their peers, in part because they started from a rock mindset, instead of making a pop song or a hip hop song or a soul song and then just cramming distorted guitars in to pretend it isn't those genres. Amy Grant's “Good for Me” has a ripping guitar solo, but it's still pure pop. But TV can slip a little electronic, a little drum machine, a little soulfulness and a little funk into “Crying” and it always feels like it serves the sound. I can only get so into the most dancey bits here, and the album definitely lacks a few good Wolf Like Me moments, but there are some solid compositions in “Family Tree” or the Running Down a Dream vibes of “Shout me Out,” and it's a solid listen throughout. It's probably lightly so, but i'll give it a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Stan Getz is not exactly a worldbreaking Jazz dude, but he sure did a lot on the exposure front. This album (to say nothing of That Other One) may well have gone a long way to introducing this sort of music to bland white america. Certainly there is a long long long history of that… when Chef Boy-ar-dee first came about, Italian was still seen as exotic. Teaming with Byrd, Getz is taking the samba vibe and creating something just a bit more accessible. And we can talk appropration… that's a fair discussion for work like this… but honestly, with how deep Getz gets into the genre, how he pulled folks like the Gilbertos up the ladder with him, it really does feel more like love of that vibe, the cool breeze across a hot sky, the “saudade” adjacent vibes… it is like getting a little miniature vacation on your hi-fi. Great little album, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is probably one of the best “jam band” albums out there. Faint praise because jam bands by and large are wanky stoners who have never met a song they couldn't beat the life out of. But it tops other faint praise lists two. It's probably among the best “southern rock” albums. It's among the most iconic “live” albums. They hadn't even written “Jessica” by this point, and fully half of this album is made up of blues numbers they didn't write, but I guess that's neither here nor there. If nothing else, this is a defining document of the guitar skill of Duane Allman, which I don't think is reason enough to have to listen to this but I also cannot deny, the dude knew his way around the instrument. It's certainly a fair stand-in for dozens of other, worse albums of this genre. This is the one that had a talented backing band, that had two drummers for reasons best known to Duane himself (eat your hearts out Slipknot), that arguably brought “Hotlanta” into common slang. It's not really earth shattering stuff, but there is a certain beauty to a solid set of guitar solos. Even if, by every sensible metric, they are far too long. LP2 is the better output, which is nice since it's the stuff the Allmans actually wrote themselves. It obviously includes Whipping Post, a track that became mainstream enough to be a belter for the generic mid-tier country rocker on any season of American Idol, while also being something that Frank Zappa would often play live and even record late in his career. Probably Whipping Post survives even in a world where Duane doesn't die tragically young. I don't think this version is a particularly good representation of it (I feel the chorus, which is the emotional weight of the song, is rushed and stumbled), but let's be honest, this is on here so we can listen to 3ish minutes of Gregg and 20 minutes of noodlin'. Gregg could have been singing Baa Baa Black Sheep drunk and in Tagalog and no one would be listening. For my money I think In Memory of Elizabeth Reed is more interesting. It's long, skilled, but doesn't feel so much like an endurance run. But again, if I have to listen to something like this, better this than the Dead, Phish, Gizzard, Goose, whatever. I know I won't come out of this totally unscathed by the rest, but at least I can respect this inclusion. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½

recall “Babylon” coming out and thinking it sucked out loud. Gray made Dave Matthews’ singing style feel articulate, and I always pictured him as a yawp-jawed bobblehead, the vague forms of lyrics jostling out of his mouth by chance. Suffice it to say this is my first time listening to the album in toto. I do feel like if you saw David Gray in a crowd, no you didn't. His most distinguishing feature is that he looks sort of like nothing. Like the taste of air… technically it's there, but not really? And his music is pretty much the same. Sure, technically these are songs, but unless I force myself to hear them as often as Babylon was forced on us, I will not remember any of them. The most notable bit is the maniac insistence of putting a fruity-loops synthetic percussion track over (never under) these sparsely composed, boring as hell songs. If you told me this was early AI I would believe it. If you told me that this album was just 50 minutes of silence, I won't be able to confirm it wasn't. On the one hand, these are songs that never needed to be written. On the other, are any of these songs intentional enough to say they were written at all? The longer this goes on the more inessential it feels. It's as mealy mouthed as John Mayer but without the guitar chops. It manages to stuff absolutely terrible sounds (We're Not Right's weird pattering and annoying ufo synth) into songs that still immediately want to escape your brain. I'm not going to remember what these notes refer to in the morning. It's the musical equivalent of putting water in your cornflakes…bland made blander and at least a little psychopathic to enjoy it. It's 50 minutes of silent farts in the wind. And it was on the charts for three years? They thought any of these songs, much less five, made decent singles? This is apparently the album where music died. ⭐️ ½ for killing music. For that matter, ⭐️ ½ to anyone who bought this album.

I recall being in grade school, my mother driving me and some neighbor friends to school, and her stopping and excitedly shouting that we “needed to hear this.” It was Loser, by Beck. We all thought she was insane, but not for long. That was the kind of shock to the system that Beck was at the time. And while he kind of was already fully formed when we got Mellow Gold out of him, Odelay is the album that really cemented him as a genius for a good decade. Beck is at worst a collage-ist. Weird slacker rap, samples, multi-instrumental flourishes, word salad lyricism (heads are hanging from the garbage man trees/ mouthwash, jukebox, gasoline). There isn't really anything that sounded like Beck from about here to Guero. At this point not even Beck sounds like Beck. It’s got country vibes without being trash. It is always too awkward to feel appropriative in its hip hop. It is always too goofy to not be an antidote to a sometimes too serious grunge scene. And songs like Derelict, Ramshackle, Readymade… this is like the city cousin to Tom Waits in some ways, the shabby undertones feeling a lot like the carnivalesque of Waits’ world (and cmon, “bottles and cans and just clap your hands” could describe Tom's music just fine). But come now, you listen to The New Pollution, full of iconic riffs, retro vibes with modern execution. It's weird that we had so many dull as hell djs get big in the 90s when Beck was making music like this and putting them to shame. I think “Jackass” is probably the forgotten standout on this album, dreamy but tired, Beck weaving a monotone but stunning and sad vocal throughout. But every song feels like a microcosm of the mid 90s rock scene, where labels were so desperate for a new Nirvana that everything was potentially being tossed at the wall. There might not be an album that more succinctly explains the post-Cobain, pre-Korn era. And appropriately, it doesn't -really- explain anything. It just exists as a beautiful cacophonous chaos that feels impossible at any other time I can imagine. It's almost a shame this already came out. I think Beck would capture the minds of a generation raised on lowest common denominator slop. He would be like a bomb dropped if he hadn't already detonated almost exactly 30 years ago. Maybe that was the magic of the 90s for me… it felt like weird was cool and normal, it felt like one big rock and roll tent with a hundred weirdos making their weird rock songs. It's absolutely impossible to reflect on it totally outside of the nostalgia and potential of Youth, but I want to go back to there. It really was kinda where it's at. Anyway, I got deeply excited about this one. It's like a Where's Waldo of weird little glitches and sounds and riffs coming together into catchy singular songs. There's never a bad time for 90s Beck. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ but I'll round it up to 5 for the sake of the generator.

I don't think anyone on earth has ever, in any moment, thought Michael Jackson's was “Bad” in the way he projects in the title track here. Obviously in other ways, there have been plenty of allegations (see also “Leave Me Alone”) but never like, this guy shouldn't be crossed. Shamon. Sitting right between the worldbeating Thriller and sister Janet's iconic Rhythm Nation, Bad does not ascend to either. The title track is fine in a cheesy way. The Way You Make Me Feel is pure pop perfection. Smooth Criminal is anxious and dangerous in a way that Bad wishes it could be. Michael was the “king of pop” for a reason… he knew his way around. But this is also where we see him, post Thriller, start desperately needing some editing. Man in the Mirror isn't as bad as some of his future work in this vein, but it is definitely not cool. Leave Me Alone is fine, but is also the iceberg tip of Jackson's descent into paranoid madness. And those are just the singles. But this is also a good time to kind of discuss the different world that late 80s and early 90s pop inhabited. Let's look at “Speed Demon”, which has minimal song craft but still has some insane bass in it. It's little bits like this that make me feel like I'm not an old man yelling at a cloud, pop music really has changed for the worse. Modern stuff is less goofy than, say, Just Good Friends, largely because it is still current, but it's a shell. Unlike Thriller, I've never heard this all the way through, and about half of this is even something I might have heard independently. Unlike Thriller, this is not timeless. Dirty Diana is no Billie Jean. It's more consistent than Dangerous (I have WORDS about Dangerous if it comes up) but it also lacks some of the dynamic highs. I'm sort of surprised how middle-⭐️⭐️⭐️ this is.

Look, before I even dig into this: i'm prepared to like this. I enjoyed “Not if you were the last junkie on earth.” But something described as one of “the best britpop albums not by brits” feels really really non-essential. This Could be a 5 and it should not be here. And honest? I do like this from the start. As a 90s kid, this sort of chugging fuzz tickles a certain part of my lizard brain. It's rare at this point to hear something that strikes the same chords that enamored me with so much music then (it's rare with bands I didn't know then, almost impossible with so called modern “revival” acts). It's something I am glad I have now been exposed to… the Dandys haven't exactly been on my follow up list. But does anyone but me need to ever hear this in 2026? What makes this a must listen to for anyone other than someone who wants to explore the mid-90s rock scene with a fine toothed comb? It's an album that tops its biggest song immediately after its biggest song. It's an album that very rightly recommends being as cool as Kim Deal, but on a list that snubbed Last Splash. Overall a weird pick. It's a definite relisten, probably an add to my collection. I'll give it ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ on enjoyment. But it does call into question who the book itself is made for, what the book itself is defining as must hear. This time it worked in my favor, but lots of these picks… much less so.