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 that being said, this is a very light 4; they have far better albums.
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. But “important”? “Classic”?? Why???
2 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?
Not for me but I totally get it. Some amazing guitar playing and even through all the chaos and noise Corgan has an obvious ear for songwriting
You just know he would have had dreads if he could grow out his hair
Racist southerners and black people should just agree to shake hands and beat the crap out of Randy Newman.
Lol I get the hate for this one but people who gave it 1 star don’t understand that this walked so Jai Paul could run.
Regular, straight ahead rock. I just feel like this band has much better music and even that music isn’t really for me.
She didn’t just sing the words in italics, she laid them flat on their side and made sweet love to them while Sarah Vaughan played in the background.
One time, a friend of mine who played the tuba told me he loved metal because it was the closest a popular genre came to classical music - the fast-paced figurations, the development of theme, the emphasis on instrumental virtuosity…
Metal and the harder rock genres have never been the music I gravitate towards, but I appreciate them so much more ever since that conversation.
I don’t know how often I’ll return to this album, but I’ll remember how it made my head positively vibrate, and I’ll remember thinking that Vivaldi would be proud.
It’s funny, as someone who never gravitated towards rock music, I was super into this album when it came out. I think their sound made me nostalgic for something I never really experienced or understood in the first place.
Now that I understand more of their reference points and context (thanks in part to this challenge) I can adequately describe this band as: competent.
Everything is totally in its place. Everything sounds exactly as it should (shout out Danger Mouse). But they never dare push against the boundaries they set for themselves in becoming a down-the-center blues rock band, and the result is something impressively listenable but incapable of reflecting anything personal, interesting or unique about them as a band or as people.
FWIW, El Camino is better.
#MichelleBranchForever
Waitwaitwait I got one: … “SO-SOasis”
Ok in all seriousness I should probably give this a 2 but after a week of down the middle dad rock I was so happy to get something new that I’m rewarding it with more than it deserves.
It’s interesting listening to this in a world where Harry Styles exists: a former member of a pop group who went solo and made reductive soft rock music. Maybe this is a tale as old as time.
There’s not much to love about this album but there’s also not much to hate. “Angels” is of course a stand out but also I thought “Let Me Entertain You” was such a deliciously fun track. The rest is forgettable but never offensive, and I eventually found myself endeared to the fact someone like him made something like this, even if it doesn’t really work.
Also, how long has Charlie Sheen been a punchline in the cultural zeitgeist??
If you take away the vocals on this track, you’d swear it’s an uplifting funk album; if you isolate the vocals, you’d swear it’s the saddest blues music ever made. That’s the magic of Curtis Mayfield.
This doesn’t rank among the best of his music for me, but even at his most middling he’s so evocative. His voice sounds like he’s slowly wringing out a decade’s worth of pain and passion from his throat. Fitting given the subject matter.
Also this is lowkey a GOATed album cover.
Cinematic Icelandic post-rock, or, as I like to call it, Reydjöhed. A pretty beautiful collection of music that’s just warm and inviting enough to then unsettle and challenge in all the right ways.
Sinatra had a voice like a French horn: declarative and full-bodied. On this album you can hear him trying to emulate the deep softness that made Jobim and Bossa Nova such a phenomenon. He does an admirable job for the most part. And in the few moments where he doesn’t quite succeed, Jobim taps in and breathes new life into the music.
All the negative reviews for this album are complaining about how it’s their 9th British punk album they’ve had to listen to but for me it’s my first so I’m riding high baby!
Some albums are a 3 because they’re just mid all the way through. Others are 3 because they flip-flop between genius and idiotic. This is the latter.
I never listened to a Police album before and came in with middling expectations. I was shocked when the opening track of this album positively blew my hair back. I then immediately crashed back down to earth when I had to listen to a PBS Kids song about respecting the dinosaurs. This essentially sums up my experience with the album as a whole.
P.S. everyone on here saying “Mother” shouldn’t have been on the album is insane, that song is an obvious highlight.
Ok in B-52’s defense, it’s genuinely not their fault that I was deeply sleep deprived when this album got assigned to me.
I don’t have kids but I imagine the experience of listening to this album sleep-deprived is similar to being woken up by your 4yo twins because they needed to tell you about their new imaginary friend:
“What’s that? It wasn’t a rock? Oh it was a rock lobster. Thats great sweetie I— what’s that about the moon ? It’s called the moon? That’s so true — listen honey daddy needs to close his eyes for a few more minutes…”
All that being said, if I was a quirked-up white boy living in a beach town in the 70’s I totally could see myself bumping this all summer long, half as a way to troll my friends and half out of unironic enjoyment.
Never listened to much Brian Eno despite understanding how influential he is. I was astounded by how well this held up. It could have easily come out 30 years later than it did. All the clunky use of sampling I hear today and to think that someone had it this dialed in back in the ‘80’s…
Never listened to much early punk before this challenge. Really enjoyed hearing a version that feels a little more musically intentional: interesting chords and scales, amazing riffs, thoughtful production. Can easily draw the line between this band and the alt rock of the ‘00s I grew up listening to.
[Seemingly obligatory reference to the fact he’s not a good person here]
What can I say? It’s truly astonishing this was his debut. So fully realized, so-well written and produced. It’s not perfect but also it’s perfect , you know?
