By the end of the first album the rage felt forced, loved the disparity between the first song and the last, so many of these are my teenager “voice” songs.
It’s amazing how this became background music to me. It used to be THE EDGE! Now I ended up talking over most of it (blasphemy!).
Did love the swing song which was a huge surprise! And, yes, this music is still great, if not stop-what-you’re-doing-to-listen great.
:) have loved Gilberto for so long…
I can’t believe how forgettable most of these songs are and how much they feel like “hippy garbage.” If you had asked me 3 days ago who the Rolling Stones were, these two words would have been the last thing on my mind.
How is it possible for albums to be so boring?
“And His Buckaroos” is hilarious to me.
Buck Owens is just perfect for today and I love that Wham Bam is in a “voice” so you can take it as ironic.
There was only one song I didn’t immediately “love” on this album.
I’ve always known I love country. I didn’t realize how much I needed Buck in my life. Perfect album.
I hated this album and had so many notes about it and it didn’t sacs them. :(
This album is just fantastic. Not something I would think to pick up (though I know I’ve heard all of it before), but exactly what ai needed to listen to.
This just isn’t for me. There were a couple songs I liked, but on the whole it just felt dated.
I love this album, but I think the score is more “vibe” based and nostalgia…until another truly great song comes on.
I like some of these songs, but overall there were so many places there was just “noise” and it was annoying.
I’d be calmly listening to something I liked and then a new song would start with the sound of banging pots.
Still, I added 4 songs to my “liked” songs.
I love this album. I can’t judge it properly because there are too many emotions tied up in it.
As with many albums, there were songs I disliked. And T&K coming in and saying a song I was loving was “weird” and “uncomfortable” was funny, but the amazing songs were AMAZING. Over all, this album was just fantastic and made me feel things I have not felt for music in a long time.
I’m a little disappointed in the blue joke in the album title. It’s such a gorgeous album. I’ve often wondered if it’s a gate for those who the album isn’t for. My Sentimental Melody reminds me of why accordians have been with us for long. My absolute most favorite, tear-my-hair-out song is on this album. Part of me wants you to name it yourself. It isn’t Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing, though that song is fucking insanely wonderful. Both NMWWD and this other song are in my personal faith songs for when the world is too much.
Love Is Like Jazz seems like a weird racist insult, especially as it includes “strange fruit” in the lyrics. It’s hard to get around that feeling now in 2026.
I Shatter is insanely challenging. It’s one of those songs that haunts me for months after I hear it. And when I’m severely depressed it has come back to me as someone having felt this feeling and been able to communicate it to other people. It’s amazing and horrible at the same time.
I give it 1 star for the pain it leaves me with. And to prevent others from finding it and knowing how amazing it is. But seriously, it started out as 5 star and then slowly dropped with the second disc as the less than ideal songs started playing. Then You’re My Only Home comes on and … is there anything that brings me back to synths and how synths can represent love? “I’ll stay if you let me stay and I’ll go if you let me go, but I won’t go far away, Because you’re my only home.” And 5 gorgeous songs immediately following…
The whole album is overloaded and needed padding to make that stupid 69 joke. Revision and discernment would have helped to prevent the horror of the worst of it.
But The Book of Love means that you could have 50 songs of a baby screaming and it would still be 5 stars. Because no other song, not even Jeff Buckley’s Halleluliah hits me in the same way.
And, really, what if the show didn’t go on?
Lover to Fall is simultaneously the worst professionally produced song a I’ve ever heard and the one I want to hear on repeat for the next ten years.
I mean, they’re going to run away *and* steal her boyfriend/husband’s car?
And Wood Beez. Am I having a stroke? “Be Easy?”
This album is making me concerned I will have horrible brain worms I’ll never be able track down.
I do not know how this album made this list. I can’t even hate it. It’s just the most 1985 album I’ve ever heard and I can’t imagine anyone “lovingl it.
This is the first album I kept wishing would end.
There were no songs I liked from it.
For some reason they over mic-ed the percussion so strange things sounding like drops of water or those …c*** things that are wooden columns? They were just too loud and upsetting.
And it was boring aside from those points that made me jump.
Listening to this album is a revelation for the character of Max on Stranger Things. There are songs I can’t stand and the idea of listening on cassette, where you can’t skip to the songs that you love (which there are many I would have continued to listen for)… It’s an album of waiting, both for the songs I prefer and for many of the themes of those songs.
Time exists in a way similar to the way I feel it, with Jig of Life bringing me back to some very exciting wakes, while the “futuristic” feel of many of the songs (futuristic for their own time period in 1985, not so much ours) still wrings out drops of the past. … yeah, this album made me feel weird things, which is good because I thought the last album bored me so much I’d stop caring about any of this and just go back to listening to my weird blend of annoying music everyone wants me to turn off.
I didn’t skip Waking the Witch, though I really wanted to. The song wants to tell me that I want to skip it because it’s powerful and I can’t handle that power! But, it’s not that. It’s just annoying. I’m sure it was crazy, wonderful feminine energy when it was created, but we’ve come far beyond that and can contain feminine energy in so many different ways now, it’s okay if I don’t like this version.
I loved the last two songs and added two others to my favorites. So it’s a decent album. It’s just hard to say the album is 3 stars when I truly could not stand 2 songs, and disliked others enough to never listen to the album again. Because albums should stand together? Maybe? I think an album should end up being more than a sum of the songs that make it up.
Which makes me wonder when we’ll get to Prince.
I’m afraid we won’t because the 1001 albums are mostly British and white? Not all, but most. I am wondering where I will seek out a list after I get through this (which, seriously will be in a few years), so that I can vary my listening habits more.
Okay. I love Bowie. But not this album. Even this version of Young Americans and Across the Universe are unpleasant.
But what is going on in those songs poorly, Fame brings in and brasses up. Makes up for a lot of boredom.
Okay. I like Dada. I like Krautrock. But when you put them together in a band that is already angry about their being labeled “krautrock” I seem to hate it.
“Just a second” was pretty good. And I guess everyone likes Jennifer (not me), but when I tried to find information on why this album would be included—what did it contribute to other artists, etc., I found that this is considered the *worst* of Faust. Given that I plan on checking out other albums when the taste of this one has dissipated.
My notes while listening to Disc 1:
Faust: Faust IV (1973) Dear Lord, why? There’s no emotion. … drooooooooone. on and on and on… oh! drums! Yay for … boring repetitive drumming. This “song” is still going and I cannot remember the last time I thought there was anything good in the world. Krautrock. What an insult.
Oh, screaming. Now everything is in my left ear. Did my right ear finally get too impacted, no the singing…and I sort of wish it were back to not hearing. Space lasers? wooden mallet percussion…
I don’t think my feelings on this song can be taken as true because I developed feelings for my captors. But that mallet percussion part sort of jams.
Do not go toward the light.
I guess if I stop thinking about it and do something else and turn it down soooo low it sounds like a car crash in the next town over…
Not really in the spirit of this.. eh?
Now they are killing very wet bumble bees with space lasers.
Dear Lord, how can a song with “smile” and no “devil” be so horribly repetitive? This is the worst. What did that guy just say? Oh, right, I know German. Just not that much German.
Okay, this isn’t so bad. Still repetitive. but flute. Oh. Clapping…okay. Okay. Still. okay.
Why.Why click click click. no. Bad. Stop. Phew. AHHHHH more click and I thought done!
Lou Reed: Transformer (1972): I didn’t realize how completely ridiculous Lou Reed was in the 70s. I can’t decide if that is a bonus or annoyance for me. But those songs we all know and get excited for (Perfect Day, Walk on the Wild Side, Ladies Goodnight) will always be some of my favorite songs ever. Does that make the albume 5 stars? I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ll ever return to hear the album as a whole unless it’s part of something like this.
Kanye West: Yeezus (2013) I’m not thrilled that I’m listening to Kanye West. I still expected it to start with somethig better than On Sight. But damn I love Hold My Liquor. And the loss of footing in New Slaves does something to me, even if I don’t know that I’ll search for the song again. And fuck if Blood on the Leaves isn’t amazing. Fuck. I added it. I did it. Fuck. The “strange fruit” reference at least makes more sense than it’s really upsetting inclusion in 69 Love Songs.
Bound 2 is also amazing. It’s not really something I want to listen to again (as with a lot of music it turns women into an object and I’m not an object of worth to most), but especially that “first step, eh eh” (AA) and the “aha honey” and “I know, you’re tired, of loving, with no one to love, so just grab somebody…” just, it’s really good. It’s poetry.
I’m going to need to rely on someone else to tell me about who I can listen to without feeling like I’m aiding the …
We Don’t Care and Otis came on as recommendations after this and I forgot how much I loved both of these. No, I’m not the Culture. No, I don’t get a lot of what’s here. But man, I can recognize something in this that comes from the angels. (and lots and lots of hard work and talent!)
Siouxsie and the Banshees
Damn. the twisty noisemaker sounds on Halloween just sold me over. I would never have listened to this. I’m so freaking happy and yet need to get through the rest of what doesn’t seem to be a very interesting album (remastered and explanded… I wonder if it will be missing songs like that last horror…)
I Heard a Rumor is totally Umbrella Academy.
We all know this: Paul Simon is a poet. He is amazing. There is something weird about a white man using this music, but also would most of America have heard it if he didn’t? It’s an uncomfortable question so I’m leaving it.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo is amazing.
And I love so many songs from this album. And even if I’d never heard it before I would have jammed to it.
And no stinkers!
