1001 Albums Summary

Laid back acoustic guitar and folk style vocals. Not bad not great, would listen if it was on, but likely wouldn't put in my regular rotation.

A classic from my college days. Several great songs, and a few not so great songs. Solid album but not ground breaking.

Wouldn't have made it through high school without this album. Definitely up there with one of the greatest bands of all time with a solid portfolio of albums.

Sure he's the boss, but just not really my style of music.

Not really my style.

GenX staple. Never been a huge Foo fan, but I respect Dave’s talent for what it is. Probably 3.5 but will round to 4.

I probably would have appreciated this more had I been born 10-20 years earlier.

Not New Order's best work.

Interesting mix of styles and genres on this album, blues, country, folk, rock. All decent songs but nothing that just screams I have to listen to this again.

4 for the music, 2 for the misogyny. Let's call it a 3.

Want to give it a 4 cause it's Willie, but settle for a 3 because I don't like 95% of country music and country artists. Willie get's a pass, but not that much of a pass.

This isn't the Doors best effort, good but not what I would call great.

I feel like someone put this album on the list just to mess with me. I listen to it, but hard pass on ever listening again.

I mean with lyrics like: Let's go down by the grapevine Drink my daddy's wine, get happy How could we go wrong?

Couple of synonymous hits that JA are known for. A handful of good songs and you get a three.

On the surface I might give it a 3, not great but not bad. But when I compare the other early 2000's offerings in this genre it's a 2.

Never really been much of a Lou Reed fan.

Don't worry about a thing... I strive to be as chill as Mr. Marley, not successful, but I try. Short of a five but a three would be criminal.

If I was a fan of this genre or ABBA in general I'd probably give it a 4. I'm sure there are several 5 ratings. But considering my musical tastes it's a three for me.

Personally think Damn is a better album, but this one is solid as well.

Decent, but not really a fan of this style of music.

If this album was produced today instead of 50 years ago, it would have been called just another electronic EDM album. But considering it was created in 1974, the technology was quite groundbreaking. Truly pioneering the electronic and industrial music revolution.

One good song does not make a great album. I’m sure if she’s reading this she’ll just say I’m judging her for her politics. If I was I’d give it a 1 star.

Could probably be a 4 or 5. But Billy we didn’t need a 7 minute song about an Italian restaurant.

Johnny was not a great role model of a man for how he led his life. But he also recognized that and was open and honest about his troubles. If gave him understanding of the men in that prison and what they lived through. He was unafraid to speak his mind to those in authority and that I respect. Certainly one of the great storytellers through song of my lifetime. Hate him or love him this is an iconic album of his work crossing several genres of musical style.

I'm having an internal struggle with tragedy of a man. To be fair I'll give Quincy Jones a 5 and MJ a 1 cause I just can't look at the music and not see the man that sung it. 1+5=6 6/2=3

Would rate higher if this was in my taste profile, but alas it isn't.

Let's be honest, if you had no idea who Cash was and didn't know his music or history would you give this album such high praise? More than a few would just call these bad covers. Still a 4 for me.

Probably be told I'm not Gen-X enough cause I was never a big PJ fan. I get told the same thing when I say I don't really like the Pixies.

2010's alt staple album. It's a good listen

I know this album will be downvoted by a lot of listeners. But as someone who grew up in the region and time frame where they were formed, Pantera was an example for every teenage kid that wished they were in a metal band. All we saw on TV was a market flooded with glam rock with non stop Poison, Motley Crue, and Bon Jovi. When we wanted AC DC instead. We hungered for something more. Pantera was harder and faster than what we had heard before. They were more like Metallica, Slayer, and Megadeth than the force fed MTV glam rock. Glam was dying and industrial and grunge were about to dominate the scene and us Gen-X kids were ready to get in the pit and "Walk".

Four top five singles from this single album and the first female artist to achieve this standard. A pioneer in pop music of the 80's who has remained relevant throughout her 40+ year career. Can't give it anything less than a four.

The year is 1989, you are about to turn 16 years old. You hate your high school and most of the students that go there. You're ready to just graduate and move away. The girl you've been chasing for 6 months has agreed to go on date and then this album drops. You spend the summer cruising around town while this plays on repeat. Almost 40 years later she's still by your side, anything less than a 5 would be disrespectful to the impact this album had on me as a teenager. It still bangs today.

I listened to it, but not really my thing. It's not a bad album per se. I wouldn't skip a song if it showed up on a playlist. However, it's not something I'd ever seek out to listen to again by choice.

As a Gen-X kid who was more influenced by the 80's I appreciate influence later rock, blues, and alt artists would take from this era. The dirty guitar sounds that dominate the Grunge era are definitely felt here, Ball and Chain especially. Piece of My Heart is an obvious classic, but most of this is album if forgettable for me.

It's fun, it's catchy, it's kinda ridiculous at times, it's the B-52's. Just a 3 for me.

I know and like some Stevie songs. None were on this album.

I enjoy modern folk music, this I did not. Not saying that the music was bad. But it was incredibly boring. While I get that Alabama has red dirt too, I think a lot of fans of Red Dirt Music would agree that "Red Dirt Girl" does not capture that sound.

I once owned this album on tape. It was a staple of my youth. Probably deserves a 5 but holding that for other albums by R.E.M. on this list. So 4 it is.

Ranks right up there with Suburbs, but it's not worth a 5.

Forgettable background noise.

Respect has to be up there as one of the greatest earworms of all time, going to be singing that all day long now, thanks. Overall solid album, but rating to my taste just a three as it's not something I will put in regular rotation.

Technically a masterpiece. Emotionally complicated. Much like Clapton himself. The guitar work is genuinely stunning, which is deeply inconvenient. Every time Clapton launches into a solo, you're forced to briefly forget that he exists as a human being outside of this recording, which is honestly the best thing he could do for everyone involved. John Mayall does his best to carry the moral weight of the album on his harmonica. John McVie holds down the bass with the quiet dignity of a man who just wants everyone to get along. Hughie Flint plays drums with the energy of someone who absolutely did not sign up for any of this legacy. Clapton, meanwhile, shreds like a man who hasn't yet discovered that he also has opinions. This is peak Clapton — fingers fully engaged, mouth mercifully silent. The last 58 years have sadly inverted that ratio. They used to write "Clapton is God" on the walls of London. God, at least, has the decency to stay mysterious and not give interviews. 3 out of 5. One star deducted for general reasons. One star deducted because somebody has to. The three remaining stars have been placed in a trust, to be managed exclusively by the rhythm section, who seem genuinely lovely and are not the problem here.

A genuinely great Southern rock debut, which makes it all the more annoying to rate. Eight songs. Four of them stone cold classics. "Simple Man" is wise, warm, and timeless motherly advice wrapped in a gorgeous guitar melody — the kind of song that makes you briefly forget everything you know about the people who made it. "Free Bird" closes the album with nine minutes of escalating guitar heroics that somehow never overstays its welcome, which is more than can be said for the ideology the band would later wave around on a flag. Producer Al Kooper believed so little in "Simple Man" that Van Zant physically escorted him to his car and told him to stay there while they recorded it. This is the most correct creative decision anyone made in 1973, and also a useful metaphor for how to handle opinions you disagree with. Gary Rossington celebrated the iconic cover photo by immediately vomiting on the sidewalk. Honestly, the most relatable moment in the band's entire career. 2 out of 5. Three stars cheerfully awarded to the music itself, which didn't ask for any of this. Two immediately reclaimed on behalf of a flag that should have stayed in the history books.

The grandmother of every artist you have ever loved, sitting in her rocking chair, being completely right about everything, and you still only visit three times a year out of obligation. This is the album that told Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morissette, Adele, and roughly every other woman who ever sat down at a piano with feelings that it was allowed. That it could sell. That a woman writing her own songs, playing her own piano, and refusing to wear sequins or smile on command could sit on the Billboard charts for six straight years. Six. Years. Your favorite artists owe this woman rent money they will never pay back. Carole King wrote "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" for the Shirelles in 1960. She wrote "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" for Aretha Franklin in 1967. Then she sat down and recorded them herself, better, in her living room, in her socks, with James Taylor on guitar and absolutely zero interest in your opinion about it. Producer Lou Adler wanted it to sound like a demo. Mission accomplished, in the best possible way. Is it on my regular rotation? No. Does it need to be? Also no. It did its job. It built the house that an entire record collection could live in. 3 out of 5. All three stars awarded with genuine respect and zero desire to listen to it on a Tuesday.

Somebody in Kendal, England heard The Smiths once and never fully recovered. Hayden Thorpe sings like Morrissey attended a Renaissance fair, developed opinions about courtly love, and then got lost in a forest for several years before anyone found him and handed him a microphone. This is not necessarily a criticism. It is, however, an experience. The critics absolutely lost their minds over this record. NME called it "a treasure that deserves plundering." Pitchfork praised its "wondrous, mythic scale." It was nominated for the Mercury Prize. It also made this list, which is exactly the kind of sentence that makes you question the judgment of everyone involved in the book. The instrumentals are genuinely atmospheric and interesting, which makes it all the more unfortunate that someone insisted on singing over them. One reviewer helpfully noted the album is "a huge grower." This is critical music journalism for "you will not like it the first time." They were right. 2 out of 5. One star for the instrumentation, which deserved better. One star for the audacity. The remaining three stars are hiding somewhere in the forest with Hayden Thorpe.

A 23 year old man, deaf in one ear, high on LSD, locked himself in a studio while his bandmates toured Japan, spent $70,000, drove everyone around him to the brink of madness, plucked the inside strings of a piano, recorded bicycle bells and Coca Cola cans, hired an advertising jingle writer to pen the lyrics, and accidentally invented the concept album. His bandmate called him the Stalin of the Studio. Capitol Records responded by releasing a greatest hits collection at the same time to compete with their own artist. The goats on the cover photo were horrible and ate someone's radio. This is the origin story of every ambitious, expensive, slightly unhinged studio album ever made. Without Pet Sounds there is no Sgt. Pepper. Without Sgt. Pepper there is essentially no modern rock music as we understand it. Brian Wilson built the house, lost his mind furnishing it, and never really recovered. You Still Believe in Me opens with what sounds like a teenage boy discovering his vocal range in real time. This is technically intentional. The opening notes were made by plucking piano strings from the inside, which is either genius or what happens when you run out of normal ideas and your producer has gone to sit in his car. Is it on your regular rotation? Absolutely not. It sounds like your parents' road trip playlist filtered through an existential crisis. But somewhere in those bicycle bells and cracking harmonies is the DNA of basically everything you have ever loved. 3 out of 5. One star for the audacity. One for the bicycle bells. One because the goats ate someone's radio and that deserves recognition. The remaining two stars are somewhere in Brian Wilson's sandbox, where they have been since 1966.

Jack White punched a guy, got sued by his sound engineer, felt extremely betrayed by the Detroit music scene, quit smoking, rented a Steinway grand piano, dragged it into his living room, recorded an entire album in two weeks on a vintage 8-track machine with six microphones, and replaced his signature guitar sound with a marimba. This is either a man processing his feelings or a man daring you to still like him. Possibly both. Jack White's own label later called this the most misunderstood album in the White Stripes discography, which is a very polite way of saying people were confused and annoyed. The fact that it was in no way Elephant Part 2, they wrote, only further confused, infuriated, and beguiled many. That sentence contains three emotions and they are all correct. I gave Elephant a 5. Elephant was Jack White hitting you over the head with a guitar and Meg holding everything together with the confidence of someone who learned three drum patterns and decided that was enough. This album is Jack White sitting at a rented Steinway having feelings about truth, Rita Hayworth, and people who wronged him in Detroit. The marimba did not earn a Grammy by accident, but it also did not earn a fourth star today. The tape machine malfunctioned during recording. Water dripped from the ceiling. The band described the sessions as cursed. Jack White described the process as cathartic and rejuvenating. These are two very different albums being described by the same people. It also never got a vinyl release for ten years because Jack wanted to re-record the whole thing live in New Zealand, flew all the way there, and discovered the studio no longer had the equipment. This is the most Jack White sentence ever written and it tells you everything you need to know about this album. 3 out of 5. One star for Blue Orchid, which absolutely slaps. One for the marimba, which tried its best. One for Meg, who showed up, played drums, and asked no follow up questions about the Steinway. The fourth star is in New Zealand, waiting in a studio that no longer has the equipment to retrieve it.

The band set out to make a hard rocking album. They failed completely and accidentally made one of the greatest records of the 1990s. Sometimes being bad at your original plan is the best thing that can happen to you. Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry spent months in a rehearsal studio trading instruments and writing songs without Michael Stipe present, which is either a profound creative strategy or a very polite way of saying they needed a break from each other. They handed him the demos in early 1992. Stipe listened and described the music as pretty weird, more acoustic, more organ-based, less drums. He then went away and wrote an album about death, loss, AIDS, Reagan, grief and his dying grandmother. This is not what most bands do when handed a set of mid-tempo ballads but it is absolutely what R.E.M. did and it is exactly right. John Paul Jones, yes that John Paul Jones, arranged the strings for Drive, Everybody Hurts, The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite and Nightswimming. He showed up with charts, directed the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, swapped autographs with everyone afterward, and then went out for drinks and what he described as a bit of old style rock and roll behavior. Nobody deserved that dinner more. The title comes from a slogan at a soul food restaurant in Athens, Georgia called Weaver D's. Automatic for the People means we will take care of you without you having to ask. That is also what this album does. They did not tour. Not for Out of Time, not for this. Stipe's explanation was that you cannot play a festival in Belgium in front of 45,000 drunk muddy people and perform beautifully orchestrated slow songs. He is correct. Instead the album was left to stand entirely on its own merits, which turned out to be considerable given that it sold 18 million copies worldwide and topped the UK charts four separate times. Meanwhile the press, noting Stipe's thin frame and the album's relentless meditation on death, began printing rumors that he was dying of AIDS. His response was to wear a baseball cap to the Grammys that read White House, Stop AIDS. Stipe should be protected at all costs. This review stands by that position without reservation. Man on the Moon almost had no vocals. Stipe could not find the lyrics. He finally finished the song by walking around Seattle thinking about Kurt Cobain's use of the word yeah in Nirvana songs, and decided to end it with more yeahs than any Nirvana song had ever used. That is the most 1992 sentence in recorded history and the song is perfect. Monster came next. I lost interest. We do not talk about Monster. 5 out of 5. All five stars awarded without negotiation, without caveats, and without a single deduction for anyone's personal conduct.

Pastime Paradise became Gangsta's Paradise. I Wish became the backbone of Will Smith's Summertime. Sir Duke has been inside your head your entire life whether you invited it or not. Isn't She Lovely exists. The Library of Congress inducted this album into the National Recording Registry. Rolling Stone ranked it number four on the greatest albums of all time. Paul Simon won the Grammy for Album of the Year the previous year and publicly thanked Stevie for not releasing anything, because when Stevie releases something, everyone else goes home. I grew up on MTV, alternative, metal, and punk. I know exactly what this album is and exactly where it sits in the history of recorded music. I hold Stevie Wonder in a respect reserved for very few artists. I will not however be putting this on regular rotation. That is not a criticism. That is just an honest accounting of who I am versus what this album requires. Songs in the Key of Life does not need my regular rotation. It was doing fine before I arrived and will continue doing fine long after I am gone. 3 out of 5. All three stars given with a slight bow.

Four teenagers from Sheffield gave away free demo CDs at their own gigs, uploaded their music to MySpace, and accidentally revolutionized how bands find audiences, all before anyone had heard of them. The music industry spent 2005 watching this happen and taking absolutely no notes. This is arguably more interesting than anything on the actual album. It is a perfectly good album that I will not be returning to. It did exactly what it promised, delivered it competently, and then became background noise, which is a fine way to exist in the world and also an accurate description of most of my afternoons. 3 out of 5. Competent, confident, and entirely content to sound like itself for forty minutes without apology. Three stars awarded with genuine respect and zero urgency.

Siouxsie later said that the goth bands who came in their wake simply ended up diluting what Juju built. She said this without apparent irony, which is exactly the correct energy. She is right. Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, every band who ever wore eyeliner in a fog machine at a university venue in 1984, all of them owe rent money to this record that they will never pay back. Juju did not start the goth scene so much as accidentally invent it while trying to do something more interesting, which is honestly the most goth origin story possible. During the recording sessions, Siouxsie and drummer Budgie quietly fell in love, which they kept secret from the rest of the band. They later formed a side project called The Creatures together and released their first EP two months after Juju came out. Nobody in the band noticed until it was already happening, which suggests the album's atmosphere of psychological tension and paranoia was not entirely fictional. I came to Siouxsie through Peepshow, which is a more colourful, upbeat, and immediately accessible version of what Juju is doing in the dark with the curtains closed. Knowing Peepshow first and arriving at Juju later is like meeting someone's fun party version before discovering they also write intense poetry at 3am. Both are real. One is just easier to invite to things. Spellbound is a perfect song. The rest of the album is very good and deeply committed to an atmosphere that rewards patience more than it rewards casual listening. I appreciate it the way I appreciate a very serious film that I am glad exists and will not be revisiting frequently. 3 out of 5. One star for Spellbound. One for the cover art, which involved scissors, sheet music, and a tribal mask and somehow looks incredible. One for Siouxsie, who invented an entire subculture by accident while falling in love with her drummer and keeping it secret. Iconic behavior across the board.

Ice Cube started recording this album in early 1992. Then on April 29th, four police officers were acquitted for the videotaped beating of Rodney King, Los Angeles erupted into six days of riots, and Ice Cube scrapped a significant portion of what he had already recorded and started over. The album that came out in November was a fundamentally different record than the one he had planned to make. Sometimes history rewrites your album for you and there is nothing to do but get in the studio and respond. It Was a Good Day is a national holiday and I will not be taking questions on this. The genius of the song is not just the groove, which is built on an Isley Brothers sample so smooth it should be illegal, but the fact that Ice Cube treats the complete absence of violence and harassment as cause for celebration. Nobody he knew got killed. He did not need his AK. These are the criteria for a perfect day in South Central in 1992. The song ends with the music cutting out abruptly and Cube muttering to himself before the album lurches immediately into We Had to Tear This Mothafucka Up, which is about the Rodney King verdict, which is either the most jarring album sequencing decision of the decade or the most honest one. Probably both. The album also coined the phrase "It's on like Donkey Kong." Nintendo later trademarked this phrase in 2010 to promote a Wii game, which is the most 2010 sentence ever written and Ice Cube deserves royalties he will never see. The second half bogs down somewhat, which is the honest critical consensus and also my honest experience. A 4 was within reach and the back half let it slip. 3 out of 5. One star for It Was a Good Day. One for the production, which hits like a freight train with good taste in samples. One for the historical document this album represents, angry and specific and completely unwilling to make anyone comfortable.

Doug Ingle drank an entire gallon of Red Mountain wine, sat down at a tiny Vox Continental organ balanced on a cocktail table, and wrote a song called In the Garden of Eden. Then he played it for drummer Ron Bushy while slurring so badly that Bushy wrote down what he heard, looked at it the next morning, decided it sounded catchy, and nobody ever corrected it. The song was originally one minute and twenty seconds long. It was a country song. This is the most important fact about this album and it explains everything that follows. The band then spent months playing the song live every single night, during which it grew from eight minutes to seventeen, acquiring a drum solo, an extended organ passage, and enough repetition to qualify as a weather pattern. They were recorded at Ultrasonic Studios in Hempstead, New York without knowing the tape was rolling. The engineer secretly pressed record, watched them play the entire thing in one take, then invited them upstairs to listen back. Their response was to redo the vocals and overdub the lead guitar. That was it. The greatest accidental recording in psychedelic rock history was finished before lunch. The first side of the album is actually quite good, five tight psychedelic rock songs that would have made a perfectly respectable EP and sent everyone home happy. Then side two happens. Seventeen minutes. One song. A two and a half minute drum solo that reportedly inspired Ringo Starr's drum solo on The End from Abbey Road, which means even the Beatles owe a debt to a man who was making pizza for a living six months earlier to support the band. The album became the first ever to be certified Platinum when the Platinum Award was introduced in 1976, having sold over four million copies. It has now sold over thirty million copies worldwide. Thirty million people sat through that drum solo voluntarily. We are a species of mysteries. I grew up on MTV, alternative, metal and punk. Seventeen minutes of organ and drums is not my natural habitat. The first side suggested we could have been friends. The second side confirmed we could not. 2 out of 5. One star for the first side, which deserved a better roommate. One star for the origin story, which is the greatest accidental title in rock history and was born from a gallon of cheap wine and a cocktail table. The remaining three stars evaporated somewhere around minute nine of the drum solo and have not been seen since.

The Vatican's official newspaper named it the best pop album of all time in 2010. The Vatican. John Lennon had told the press four years earlier that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Nobody in Rome apparently held a grudge. I grew up knowing the Beatles the way I grew up knowing electricity, as infrastructure rather than discovery. Eleanor Rigby is a genuine earworm and Good Day Sunshine is exactly what it promises. Yellow Submarine is catchy in the way that songs designed to lodge permanently in the human brain tend to be catchy. The rest of the album is good but not exactly my cup of tea. As with many of the albums on this list I may enjoy a few songs from each, but as a whole this won't be on regular rotation. 3 out of 5. Sure I'm just supposed to dole out a 5 just because it is the Beatles right? Well the Vatican gave it five stars, I gave it three. We are both correct within our respective frameworks.

Jeff Buckley described himself in his own press bio as "the warped lovechild of Nina Simone and all four members of Led Zeppelin, with the fertilized egg transplanted into the womb of Edith Piaf." This is either the most accurate self description in music history or the most exhausting one, depending on your tolerance for that kind of energy. Buckley had a four octave range, could play guitar like Jimmy Page on a good day, and sang with the kind of emotional intensity that makes other singers quietly reconsider their career choices. He was also, by all accounts, chronically scattered, constitutionally unable to focus, and in constant need of someone pointing him toward the next decision. His producer described him as among the most talented musicians he had ever worked with, immediately followed by the word "but," which is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Grace peaked at number 149 on the Billboard 200 in 1994, sold roughly 175,000 copies in Buckley's lifetime, and was not certified Platinum in the United States until 2016, nineteen years after its author waded fully clothed into a Mississippi tributary singing Led Zeppelin to his road manager on the bank and drowned at thirty years old. David Bowie called it the one album he would take to a desert island. Bob Dylan named Buckley one of the great songwriters of the decade. Jimmy Page called it close to his favourite album of the decade. Robert Christgau of the Village Voice gave it a C and suggested the force of hype would blow Buckley all the way to Uranus. Nobody agreed on anything, which is usually a sign that something real was happening. The album is front loaded in a way that rewards the first three tracks and tests your patience with the rest. Mojo Pin, Grace, and Last Goodbye arrive like a punch, a slow burn, and a heartbreak in sequence. Then the album spends its remaining runtime being interesting rather than immediate, which is the honest critical distinction between a 3 and a 4 for someone who needs both great lyrics and a great musical arrangement to fully commit. The album also contains a cover of Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, delivered by a man with the voice of an actual angel, which is the most complicated listening experience available to me personally cause I don't really like Cohen's music at all. The song is genuinely extraordinary. The ghost of a man I find musically intolerable is visible in every chord change. This is not Buckley's fault. He recorded over twenty takes to get it right, insisted on including it over Columbia's objections, and was proven spectacularly correct when it became the song that introduced him to an entire generation of new listeners after his death. None of that changes the fact that Leonard Cohen is in there somewhere, looking smug. 3 out of 5. One star for the first three tracks, which deserve their own separate rating. One for the voice, which belonged in a different universe from the rest of us. One for Buckley not listening to the record execs and doing what he wanted. The fourth star is on a desert island with David Bowie, who apparently had better taste and more patience than I do.

Morrissey recorded this album at Hook End Manor in Oxfordshire during the summer of 1993, immediately after his longtime producer Mick Ronson died of cancer. He responded to this loss the way Morrissey responds to everything, by making it about Morrissey. The result is an album described by critics as a swansong, a masterpiece, an elegant midlife crisis, and a windowless hallway of nonstop self pity. All of these descriptions are correct simultaneously, which is the particular magic trick Morrissey has been pulling since 1983 and which I find approximately as charming as a persistent car alarm. The album debuted at number one in the UK. Thom Yorke later said it was all over The Bends, which means Radiohead owes Morrissey a debt they will never publicly acknowledge and Morrissey has almost certainly mentioned this in an interview. The lead single became the only Morrissey or Smiths song to crack the American top fifty, which tells you everything about America and also about Morrissey. Hold On To Your Friends, is a song about the importance of not abandoning the people closest to you, written by a man who has spent thirty years being abandoned by or abandoning virtually everyone closest to him. Johnny Marr left. Mike Joyce sued him. His manager quit. His label dropped him. The list of people who have played on a Morrissey album and then given a carefully worded interview about it is long enough to form its own support group, which they would probably enjoy more than working with Morrissey. One critic described the experience of listening to this album as being tossed down a windowless hallway of self pity with a surprisingly good groove underneath it. This is the most accurate sentence written about Morrissey since Johnny Marr handed in his notice. The orchestra is beautiful. It is Morrissey with more instruments. This changes nothing fundamental about the experience of listening to Morrissey, which is the experience of being cornered at a party by someone who is genuinely witty and completely exhausting in equal measure and will not let you leave until the song is over. Morrissey has seventeen albums, a voice like a man sighing in a library, and a songwriting catalogue of documented grievances against people who have since moved on and are doing fine. This is the first I have been subjected to so far for this project, I'm afraid there will be more. 2 out of 5. One star for Now My Heart Is Full, which is genuinely beautiful and almost made me forget who made it. One star for the band, who recorded a number one album at Hook End Manor with a man who titled a song I Am Hated For Loving and apparently did not find this exhausting. The remaining three stars are holding onto their friends somewhere, which is more than can be said for the artist.

John Prine was a 24 year old mailman from Maywood, Illinois who wrote songs on his delivery route because he had nowhere else to be and nothing better to do. He got his first gig by heckling an open mic night, loudly, until someone dared him to get up there himself. He sang Hello In There, Sam Stone, and Paradise to a nearly empty room. The owner offered him a job on the spot. This is the origin story of one of the greatest songwriters America ever produced and it happened because he had too many beers and a loud opinion, which is arguably the most American origin story possible. Kris Kristofferson dragged himself to a late night Chicago club after his own show, sat down in front of a stranger with a guitar, and by the end of the first song reportedly said the kid writes like he is two hundred and twenty years old. Bob Dylan later called it pure Proustian existentialism, midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree, which is exactly the kind of sentence Bob Dylan writes when he is trying to compliment someone and cannot help making it about Bob Dylan. Bruce Springsteen simply called Prine a national treasure and a songwriter for the ages, which is what you say when you have run out of superlatives and the facts are doing all the work anyway. The album was recorded at American Sound Studios in Memphis using Elvis Presley's rhythm section, which Prine described as terrifying because he went straight from playing alone in bars, still learning how to sing, to performing with the best session players in the world. He threw everything in because, as he later explained, he did not know any better. Sam Stone alone contains enough emotional weight to sustain an entire career. Hello In There was written at 22 years old by a man who delivered newspapers to an old people's home where residents would pretend he was a visiting relative. He wrote the song because it stuck with him and because nobody else was saying it. Kris Kristofferson joked that Prine was so good they would have to break his thumbs. This was a compliment. The cover features Prine sitting on a bale of hay. He had never sat on a bale of hay in his life. The photographer apparently saw a hick trying to get out and made an executive decision. Prine later said he had suggested being photographed on a bus, which would have been the more honest image and a significantly less iconic album cover. The songs are extraordinary. The arrangements are sparse, acoustic, and rooted in a sonic world that predates everything I grew up on by fifteen years. If Noah Kahan had produced this record I would have given it a 5 without blinking. The songs deserve that production. They deserve the full dynamic build, the electric guitar swells, the drums that hit you before the words arrive. Instead they live in the quiet company of acoustic guitar and restrained instrumentation, which is the correct artistic choice and not entirely my natural habitat. I respect this album more than I enjoy it, which is a distinction John Prine would have understood completely and written a song about. 3 out of 5. One star for Hello In There, written at 22, which has no business being that wise. One for Sam Stone, which arrived in 1971 before anyone was ready for it and has been hitting people in the stomach ever since. One for the mailman from Maywood who heckled an open mic night and accidentally became a legend. The remaining two stars are somewhere on his delivery route, waiting patiently.

Keith Jarrett drove 400 miles overnight from Switzerland to Cologne in an old car, in the rain, with a bad back, no sleep, and the reasonable expectation that a Bösendorfer 290 Imperial concert grand, a near ten foot eight octave instrument of extraordinary resonance and power, would be waiting for him at the Cologne Opera House. What was waiting for him was a small battered baby grand that had been left backstage for rehearsals, with keys that stuck, pedals that barely functioned, a tinny upper register, and a bass end so weak it was essentially decorative. A replacement piano was located across town. A piano tuner on the scene advised that transporting a concert grand in the rain at low temperatures without proper equipment would destroy it. The universe had made its position clear. Vera Brandes was 17 years old, Germany's youngest concert promoter, and the person responsible for organizing the entire evening. She stood in a parking lot in the cold and talked Keith Jarrett out of his car. This is the most important thing anyone did in jazz in 1975 and she has never received adequate credit for it. Jarrett sat down at the terrible piano, furious, exhausted, and in pain, and played for 66 minutes without stopping, without a plan, without a single note written down in advance. Because the instrument was so weak in the bass and so brittle in the upper register, he was forced into the middle range of the keyboard, where he developed rolling left hand rhythmic patterns to compensate for what the piano could not do. ECM producer Manfred Eicher later reflected that Jarrett probably played the way he did precisely because the piano was so poor. The instrument's limitations became the music's greatest strength. After the concert, Vera Brandes ran to the recording engineer and asked simply, did you get that. He had. The album became the best selling solo jazz album in history and the best selling piano album ever recorded. Four million copies sold. The Library of Congress inducted it in 2025, fifty years after it was made, deeming it culturally, historically and aesthetically significant. Rockers thought it was jazz. Jazz fans thought it was New Age. Classical listeners were reportedly blown away. Nobody agreed on what it was, which is usually a sign that something genuinely original happened. Keith Jarrett, for his part, said in 1992 that he wanted to see every single copy stomped into the ground. His complaint was that people were using it as ambient background music, a lifestyle soundtrack for the patchouli scented seventies. This is the most Keith Jarrett sentence imaginable and also the most accurate description of how a significant portion of its audience actually experienced it, which is not entirely their fault and not entirely not their fault. I came to this album fresh, with no history and no context and it is genuinely good. It is one man turning a bad piano and a worse night into something that 1,300 people in a German opera house and four million subsequent listeners found impossible to forget. I respect that enormously. But it is not my jam. If Leonard Cohen had been sitting next to Jarrett singing along it would have dropped to a 1, which tells you everything about my relationship with this record that needs to be said. 3 out of 5. One star for Vera Brandes, who stood in a parking lot in the rain and talked a furious pianist back inside, and who is the real hero of this entire story. One for the bad piano, which accidentally made the record better than a good piano ever could have. One for the 66 unplanned minutes, which have now outlasted almost everything else recorded in 1975. The remaining two stars are somewhere in that Cologne parking lot, waiting for Keith Jarrett to come back outside.

The album began life as a Peter Pan musical. It was influenced by Richard Wagner, Phil Spector, and Bruce Springsteen simultaneously, which is the most chaotic set of influences ever assembled in one room and somehow produced exactly the sound you would expect from that combination. Steinman described his creative philosophy as follows: he had no interest in writing about ordinary real life stuff and could not see the point of subtle music. This is the most honest artist statement in rock history and also a perfect description of why I am giving this two stars. Todd Rundgren, the producer, reportedly had to be pleaded with throughout the entire recording process to play the now famous motorcycle guitar on the title track. He eventually agreed. The motorcycle guitar on a song that began life as a Peter Pan musical is either the greatest creative decision of 1977 or a sign that everyone involved had simply stopped asking questions and committed fully to the chaos. Both things are simultaneously true. I was about ten years old when Motley Crue handed me Shout at the Devil. The album cover showed Tommy Lee destroying things and Nikki Sixx looking like a man who had genuinely escaped from somewhere. The music hit me like a physical object before I understood what it was doing. A few years later I saw an album with a motorcycle bursting through a gravestone, a bat overhead, and a muscular figure launching into the sky. The cover art promised me everything Shout at the Devil had delivered and possibly more. Then I pressed play and a theatrical man began an eight minute song about a motorcycle while a piano ran underneath it like a Broadway overture and somewhere in the background there were horns and a choir and the growing realization that I had been profoundly misled by cover art. The album is, in its own terms, a complete artistic success. It does exactly what Jim Steinman intended, which was to create something feverous, strong, romantic, violent, rebellious, fun and heroic. Those are his words. He achieved all of them. The problem is that I did not ask for feverous and romantic. I asked for Motley Crue and received Andrew Lloyd Webber on a Harley, which is a betrayal so specific it has its own emotional category. 2 out of 5. One star for the sheer audacity of a man who started with a Peter Pan musical and ended up with 43 million copies sold. One star for Todd Rundgren, who was pleaded with, relented, and played the motorcycle guitar anyway, which is the most sensible decision anyone made during this entire project. The remaining three stars are somewhere in Hell trying to get out, which is exactly where they belong.

Aretha Franklin was 25 years old. She recorded three albums in 1968 alone. Martin Luther King was assassinated in April of that year, Robert F. Kennedy in June, and America was watching cities burn on the evening news while simultaneously making Lady Soul her second consecutive number one R&B album. Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, who were at the time the most famous couple in swinging London and had opinions about everything, summarized her voice as follows: Aretha is the voice of God. This was not hyperbole. This was a weather report. The album opens with Chain of Fools, which arrives on the back of Joe South's Gretsch guitar tremolo like a physical object coming through the speakers before Aretha has sung a single word. This is the correct way to open a record for someone who needs a great musical arrangement to fully commit, and Lady Soul understood this assignment before the term existed. The horns are enormous. The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section is so tight it should be studied in universities. Eric Clapton appears as a session musician on one track, behaves himself professionally, plays well, and leaves without incident, which at this point in our series constitutes remarkable personal growth. A Natural Woman was written by Carole King, who I gave 3 stars to, based on a title coined by producer Jerry Wexler, who handed it to Aretha and watched her turn it into something so far beyond the original that calling it a cover feels like calling Niagara Falls a puddle. Carole King later watched Aretha perform it at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2015 and was visibly reduced to tears in the audience. This is the correct response and also the most accurate critical review of what Aretha does to other people's songs. The album runs 29 minutes and 51 seconds. It contains three top ten hits and a fourth that made the top twenty. It influenced Whitney Houston, Beyoncé, and essentially every female vocalist who came after it. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone routinely places it among the greatest albums ever made. Whitney owes it a tithe. Beyoncé owes it several. Soul music from 1968 is not my most natural daily listening habitat. And yet Lady Soul hits with a physicality and an emotional directness that bypasses genre entirely. This is not a record that asks for your patience or your historical context. It grabs you by the lapels in the first eight bars and does not let go for half an hour. R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Find out what it means to me. It means a 4. 4 out of 5. One star for Chain of Fools, which arrives like a freight train with impeccable taste. One for A Natural Woman, which is the greatest thing anyone has ever done with a Carole King song including Carole King. One for the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, who are the finest collection of musicians to appear in this series and who deserve every accolade they have never quite received. One for Aretha Franklin, who was 25 years old, recorded three albums in a single year, and still found time to be the voice of God. The fifth star exists somewhere in the universe but belongs to Aretha alone and was never ours to give.