This isn't the best Pink Floyd album, but that is kind of like saying a given pizza place isn't the best in NYC. It's still very good and has a couple of moments which one could consider essential. That said, it suffers from bloat in a way that isn't super uncommon for prog. A lot of the genius on other Pink Floyd albums is in avoiding that sort of thing, but this thing is 80 minutes long and feels like it.
There are some real high moments on here, but outside of that, it starts to run together a little quickly. I think this is one of those albums that's better as time capsule back to music at a particular time than it is as something you listen to cause it's just so good on it's own.
Sgt Peppers is often hailed as the once of the best albums ever, Perhaps the best that the Beatles ever made. This is both an incredible testament to the Beatles as a music making unit that for something to be in the upper part of their discography is must also be one of the best albums ever made. It's also a wonderful example of how powerful good aesthetics are. Sgt Peppers invokes such specific imagery, the cover, the outfits. There are also absolute bangers on here. The album starts with three of them back to back. But from there you get into a meaty middle of songs that don't keep up with that opening crawl. A decent number of these ideas in the heart of this album are explored better on albums that either came before or after this in the Beatles discography. There are really only a few songs on this that essential even within the Beatles own music. But this albums benefits from those few songs being at the extreme ends of the album and packaged in an all out and very fun packaging. Don't misinterpret me as saying this is bad by any means, 3 is probably harsh, but the actual music here isn't the best the Beatles had for us and is pretty massivley overrates. TLDR, Revolver is much better.
Bowie has sort of a funny voice. It isn't really pretty in a conventional sense, but that isn't to say he isn't a technically sound singer. Do half the stuff he does, singing the lines he sings, and making them sound good is an accomplishment. Bowie also just oozes charisma on this. It probably helps that huge portions of this are built out of recorded jam sessions. Bowie always had good taste in collaborators and this album sees him picking up a good portion of the major figures he could with for like a decade. It leaves on an absolute banger of a note with Fame, but the whole thing is strong.
Incredibly not for me. Jack White has good songs, but there's only like one on this album in my opinion.
This one grew on me. You kind of have to sit back and let it do it's thing. I do think the front half is probably a little stronger. Tumbling Dice is an excellent song. The Stones are sort of interesting as a band in general becuase they are active through the time that the album is being redefined as primary object that music is being made for. They have a tone of hits, but unless you're a fanatic, you probably only know a song or two off a given album. This is probably their most related to itself album. None of these songs feel like they could be pulled off and put onto some other project. Perhaps that's why this thing is so long, they felt like they had to just go ahead and get all the material together in one package. It will only sink it's claws into to you if you can find some room for the stones particular brand of rock n roll, but if you go on the ride it has some cool places to take you. I think it ends up being a 5 as a cohesive piece, but I'm not sure if everyone would feel that way.
The Brits are at it again. There is enough UK bias on this list that a bunch of reviews are going to amount to an unessential album that happens to be popular in Britain being dunked on by non-UK users and then a bunch of people who did coke or acid at the right time in history talking about how life changing the album was. Drum n' Bass is much bigger in the Uk, probably in no small part becuase it fit into the party culture over there in a way that is doesn't in the US. The actual music is fine, but this album is just way too long and samey to be enjoyed much in a sober mind. I'm sure it rocks if you're on molly, but that isn't really a huge credit to it. QVC rocks when you're high.
This album is fine. The guitars sound cool and the guy can sing. A consistent thing that seems to be developing is the way that the makers of list seem to have different idea of essential than I do. The mode they seem to be operating in is that albums are essential if they were interesting or impactful when they released. Put simply, if they are the sort of the receive anniversary editions down the line. I think that essential albums are those that are influential on everything that came afterwards, or whose quality is simply so high they have to be expierenced to marvel at the fact that they exist.
This album sort of profoundly highlights that divide. This albums doesn't have monumental influence becuase, to be blunt, it sounds too much like its influences. It's album by a bunch of guy who grew listening to the Rolling Stones and decided to write their own Rollings Stones Songs. That said, it came out near the height of hair metal and right before grunge and punk broke more into the mainstream. The meanest thing I can say about it is probably that this is the sort of thing that the guy from the chorus of In Bloom would have loved.
The Hard to Handle cover is really good though. I can't hate on that at all.
This is weird nonsense.
Naturally i loved it
Not the best police album, but a good listen.
I've checked out Depeche Mode beyond their biggest hits. After listening to this that's still basically true, because this album has a couple of their absolute biggest songs on it. Those are both good, Policy of Truth is also an absolute banger. The slower songs don't hit for me though and almost all the songs out stay their welcome for me. That's probably more of a personal thing, I like short songs and really long songs. A five or six minute usually just feels like a three minute song with an extra verse or two to me. I also kind of hate the guys voice, so songs that are more about putting him front and center don't hit for me. This is like a 2.5, but I'll round up.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs are, imo, one of the better bands to come out of the indie blow-up of the 2000's. This album has a few different classic cuts on it and stuff that's inflected with dance punk has a special place in my heart. Is it essential? Probably not, but I certainly like it, so I can't be too mean.
Trip Hop isn't really my thing. I like how Radiohead plays with it, but they pull in other elements that make it a bit more dynamic to my ears. Here, things sort of run together. I imagine this hits much harder if you have seen the movie.
The Brits are at it again. It's kind of profound that the first "hip-hop" album on this list is a white British guy doing "world music" The music isn't bad, but it makes me feel gross that this is hear instead of the music it's largely inspired by. On principle this is 1.
A perfect encapsulation of this album is that this is the Metallica album my dad likes. That's not bad per sei, but it is indicative of direction Metallica took on this. There's plenty of good songs, but there's not the same raw energy that basically every album they made before this had. I do kind of hate that this a huge part of why terrible bands like disturbed could ultimately exist down the line. But that isn't really the bands fault. It's a fine listen. probably a little overrated by being the one Metallica album a lot of people will actually listen to.
Also, the guy who said this is the Flavortown soundtrack is dead wrong. Flavortown would clearly be soundtracked by Reel Big Fish. Look up a picture of them, you'll know I'm right.
This is good, but it's also kind of bizarre inclusion. This album sounds like it was released like 10 years before it was. This came out the same year as the Eminem show and the blueprint part 2. It came out three years after Dr Dre's 2001, another album where production is one of the main draws released by someone based in LA. I find it hard to think of something as essential when it so thoroughly sounds older than it is. That doesn't make it a bad listen, it's just not and album you have to hear by any means.
Authenticity is a funny idea when it comes to art. We like to say that we like things to be authentic, unvarnished, real. We often use all those words interchangeably and treat them as goals that good art should aspire to. This is, of course, the sort of idea that goes in and out of fashion. The 80's were profoundly and perhaps proudly artificial time. Rock bands of the day made it a point cultivate the image of themselves as successors to their heroes of the 70's. They pushed the explicit idea that they were too fast, too loose, too good looking. They were "dangerous" in a very pleasantly marketable way.
The 90's was full of attempts to move away from that sort of myth making. Grunge was united far more by being a local scene full of people trying to do away with edifice and artifice of the 80's than by the actual music they played to do that. Seattle was perhaps biggest, but it wasn't necessarily special. Chicago had its own bustling indie scene and out of that scene came Liz Phair.
Other people have spun yarns about the history of this album, it's process, Phairs career, it's impact. I wasn't there, so I'll let them tell that story. It's a good one. One that establishes exactly why you should listen to this album. 30 Something years on from it's release, removed from a lot of it's context, certain aspects still shine. Phair's voice isn't exactly beautiful and the instrumentation and songwriting here bend towards the minimal to often for my liking. But when the arrangements are filled out like in "never said" then it still holds up without question. But better than half of this album is Phair's voice and an electric guitar flying solo. I find these track uncompelling on a musical level, which makes it difficult to sit through them for lyrical content, though that is certainly a personal thing for me. The lyrics are often the main subject that comes up about this album and it's easy to imagine how mind blowing this would have been in the early 90's to have some woman singing out about fucking guys till their dick turned blue. The value is a little diminished in a world where Taylor Swift says that Charli XCX talking shit about her makes her wet.
The value in this album to someone who wasn't there in the early 90's, someone hearing it for the first time, relies understanding a bit of that contrast. Phair was the first to push a lot of boundaries that have been broken through by now. Whether they know or it or not, Swift, Charli, and countless other women at least little bit of credit to Phair for being one of the first to kick in a door they would later waltz through. After a decade of manufactured rock, Phair gave people something unpolished and unvarnished for them to enjoy.
But that bring us back to authenticity thing. You see, as as we crave authenticity and openess, we don't really want them. Everyone approaches the world with an image they want to project. To not do so is something we generally regard as unhinged. Phair cultivates an image here just the same as any hair band from the 80's. But in 93 she was unique and today she's influential. Not too bad for a girl and her guitar. Definitely an essential listen, perhaps even becuase it shows just how far we've come since then.
The Brits are at it again. I could convince myself this was a three despite the fact that soft rock is generally sand paper to my soul. However the weird review here where a guy here keeps comparing glam rock to women’s lingerie has left a bad taste in my mouth, so I’m bumping it down for that.
An interesting piece of musical history that is mixed pretty awfully. Some have called this proto- metal and that seems fair enough. That said, metal moved fast and by 1970 had already evolved far beyond whats on offer here. Worth a visit, but maybe not multiple visits.
Springsteen is an almost perfect artist encapsulate America. He has written like a dozen albums about being the everyman and the various ways that the system abuses the average person, sends them to their wits ends and forces them into ever more desperate situation. He is a gifted storyteller and the yarns he weaves are remarkable in their ability to make highly specific details service narratives that feel universal. Springsteen is also perfectly American in that with all that understanding of the injustices the system can perpetrate, his diagnosis never really calls for upheaval. His politics are generally liberal, but general vibe and demeanor are constantly being hijacked by all sorts of right wingers in no small part becuase it's all so American. That maybe all seems like a silly set of things to talk about in relation to this album, but the themes, the images, the motifs, they run through this album as thoroughly as any other in his discography. One more thing that is perfectly American about Springsteen is that he's spent basically the entirety of his career playing the same variety of rock that is neither revolutionary nor derivative. There's a signature way springsteen stuff sounds and it's always obvious when someone is trying to key into that. But this isn't an imitator, this is the real thing. And it's nearly perfect, even with all it's Americaness.
A very good albums that suffers from having its best song first in the track listing. It’s kind of marvel to behold even if I don’t think it’s Pete felt. Definitely an essential listen.
Green Day are about as main stream and big as punk can get and remain recognizable. Musically this stretches a little thin and it’s not exactly a master’s thesis conceptually. But it is a really good distillation of a current of thought from its time of release, so it’s certainly worth a listen for that, and it’s highlights are great for a revisit.
The Avalanches are a little to big to be underground and not quite big enough to be mainstream. This leaves them in a sort of liminal space where they are too popular to be properly underrated, Since I left You is largely regarded as classic after all, but are also definitely underappreciated by the masses. Maybe that's the price of working in plunderphonics, or maybe it's becuase they're Australian or took so long on a follow up. Whatever the answer, they are worth however much time you give them and, while you can debate about exactly how good their other albums are, there's no debate about this one. They came out of the gate as hot as possible and whether you think they managed to live up to it since or not, this remains as an incredible artifact of music. Definitely a must hear.
I don’t have a to say about this one. It’s good, it’s has some classics. Is it essential? Ehhh, maybe not. But I’m glad to have listened.
Soft rock and singer songwriter stuff isn’t generally my thing.
I was prepared to hate this but Dylan is surprising tuneful and the minimal instrumentation on this keeps his storytelling front and center. The man hasn't won a nobel prize in literature for nothing. Perhaps a a bit more surprsing than his lyrics being a compelling is that his guitar playing is as well. He consistently does something more interesting than simply simply playing a few a chords. I'm not an expert on this realm of music, but his playing feels almost bluegrassy at points. We'll see how much it grows on me and how sick I get of his albums coming up, but as an introduction to the man and his work, I immediately understand the appeal.
This is, to me, one of the best examples of what a list like this is for. There's oceans of ink to be spilled about this album, about it's cultural commentary, it's musical composition. There is a phrase that art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable and it feels like something along those lines was a core ethos in the construction of this album. This is not really easy, accessible art. It's dense and layered, both in composition and in meaning. Some of the other reviews here criticize it for being about "money and bitches" and other stereotypical rap subjects. That sort of criticism both belies a lack of close listening, "for free" isn't actually about women at all, but also a lack of familiarity with the subject matter here. My favorite thing is someone calling the opening sample a parody of 70's soul music, when it's actually just a sample of a 70's song.
If you simply want to jam to some music, there are better rap albums for that, even in Kendricks own catalogue. But if you want to hear a man try to explain and understand the experience of blackness in America, then few albums are better.
This is not to say that Kendrick's understanding or opinions are perfect, or even the most deep and nuanced. If you want genuine intellectual rigor then there's plenty of academic work out there for you and even other artists who diagnosis of the the various plights of black people in America are far more grounded in politics and material causes. But that isn't really where the value here lies. This is a part of one man's story, a part of his comprehension of the world and while Kendrick certainly hoped putting it out could change things and was markedly depressed when it did not, that doesn't cause it lose it's value as an examination of his experience, of how it relates to others, of the time and place that it came from. You need to hear this.
It kind of feels like dudes just noodling on their instruments for an hour, and I'm someone who likes instrumental music a lot, but these songs don't feel like they're going anywhere on rhis,
I’m normally not fond white boy funk in its various forms, but Jamiroquai is different. It’s doesn’t feel corporate and sterile. It’s alive and whimsical. It feels in tune with the things that inspire it.
At this point this is a classic of indie music. The intro is iconic in a way few songs ever get to be, which is impressive that it has no words and just repeats simple motif for a few minutes. But simple works wonders when simple is good, which could basically be a slogan for this album. The mix is incredibly clean and the choice of having a producer instead of a more traditional drummer consistently works wonders. The heavy reverb on the guitars and the minimalistic electronic flourishes that pop in and out create a mood that is often replicated and the mix makes the band sound so supremely confident in their abilities. Is prefer a little more dynamic range than what's on offer with this album and the actual songwriting doesn't ever blow me away, but this is a really, really good listen.
Dookie can be hard album to evaluate. It's sort of a monumental landmark album, but not quite in musical sense as much as cultural one. There's nothing particularly unique or special about green day and yet this album has a specific sound that never quite gets duplicated when people try. Perhaps it's the partcular influences these guys bring in, their lineage coming out of bay area punk comes through loud and clear, but they are clearly poppier and more radio friendly than a lot of those bands. Maybe it's just that these three guys have a really natural interplay on a musical level.
Whatever the reason, this album blew Green Day up beyond belief. They became a cultural force that could never really go away, for better or worse. They headlined Coachella in 2024, they played before the super bowl on national television this year. There's a marvel that this album is what launched all that into even being a remote possibility. Before this they were a bunch of young punks from SF that Reprise took on shot on trying to find the next big rock band now that grunge seemed to have run its course.
There's a lot to be said about Green Day and what they became. Their journey from being countercultural weirdos to being one of the handful of the biggest acts on the planet. These days they aren't really countercultural anymore, the more the default band for the guy "doesn't like what's on the radio." They make constant political statements, but they aren't actually radical. They play alternative music, but they fill stadiums. 32 years after the dookie dropped, they have been fully subsumed by culture. It's fascinating to keep that in mind when you listen to this record.
Is that story a triumph or a tragedy? ultimately is depends on your individual views, but I think that certainly makes this an essential listen, if only to see where the tide shifted.
