Love learning more about Dylan and there are some lyrics here that bowl me over but when you grow up a Stevie Wonder fan it’s hard to listen to someone who’s actively bad at playing the harmonica.
The older I get the more I understand this band. Being weird can be really hard to do, and artists who try often do so with an air of bitter defiance; David Byrne does it with pure love and joy. I just don’t know if this is my favorite music I’ve heard from them.
Ok someone needs to explain this one to me.
Lyrically inane and musically obvious. And it’s not even a “oh but you have to listen to it with 1987 ears” situation because AC/DC was doing this 10 years prior!
“Fun” I could see. I’d disagree with it but I could see. But “important”? “Classic”?? Why???
1.5 stars cuz Sweet Child O’ Mine kinda goes.
This album went down incredibly smooth for me. It has the skeleton of psych and glam rock but boiled down to its bare essentials. Rich and fun yet somehow also minimalist and intimate?
Called one of the best solo Beatles album for a reason. George flexes such an incredible ear for melody and Phil Spector brings his wall of sound style to its logical conclusion. So dynamic, so heartfelt, so lucious. I’d give it a 4.5 if I could. The only thing that’s holding it back are the static instrumental sessions at the end and the every-now-and-then silly and simplistic lyrics that defined some of the Beatles’ later music.
Edit: ok I just re-listened to this and I was being so annoying not giving it a 5. What a collection of music.
Arguably the Beatliest Beatles album, the one I’d give an alien if they asked about this band. They had mastered the simple charm and harmonies of 50’s rock, which you can hear on songs like Drive My Car and You Won’t See Me, but they also started getting into the psychedelia that would help define their later career (Norwegian Wood, etc). The result is an endearingly disjointed, very winking and extremely confident album.
Not every track earns its place, but the ones that do are all-timers. In My Life remains one of the most romantic songs I ever heard.
I feel about this album the way I feel about penicillin which is that I don’t have anything interesting to say about it but I’m very glad it exists.
Never thought to listen to this album front to back but I’m glad I did. Cyndi Lauper has the kind of voice that tricks you into thinking she has no idea what she’s doing until she hits a note in a way that knocks you down.
Thematically it’s delightfully brash. Love me an album with a killer masturbation anthem. Is it weird to say this album feels proto-“Brat”?…
Anyway, this probably wont stick with me but it was a super fun listen regardless.
This is an album for people who love a Singer with a capital S: Someone who knows how to use their instrument and interpret a lyric and phrase a melody and belt and holler and also be lilting and tender and seductive and fun. She really was one of them ones.
Hmm idk I think this one just isn’t for me. It’s definitely not bad - I really liked Down to Zero and Save Me - but it reminded me of the worst singer-songwriter music I grew up hearing from the 90’s. I suppose she’s the inspiration for all that music which is genuinely cool. I think if something had been a click more engaging - either the arrangements or the lyrics or the vocal presentation - I might have liked it, but as it was it felt anodyne. It might bear a re-listen or understanding more of the context.
Edit: OK the two songs I mentioned ended up sticking with me so much that I decided to give this album another listen and am bumping this up from a 2 to a 3. Touché Joan.
I knew nothing about Tom Waits’ music going in to this and was completely sucked in by the album.
The world he built here is so complete. The storytelling, the sound engineering, the clanging drums, his vocal stylings - it all took me to post-apocalyptic New Orleans.
It’s so deeply strange and macabre but was made with too much intentionality to ever verge into childish trauma porn. Then, between all the doom and gloom, he sneaks in moments of tenderness and vulnerability like in Who Are You, A Little Rain and That Feel.
I can confidently say I’ve never heard anything like this before.
Dave Grohl loves to be like “oh I never even took music lessons.” Yeah buddy we can tell.
Not to be the friend who’s too woke but with all the white rock bands that are already suffocating this list did we rly need a B-tier Pixies album? Did I really need to listen to this before I died?
