1001 Albums Summary

My first of the 1001! R.E.M. is one of the those bands I'd been meaning to listen to forever, but could never find the excuse to. I quite liked it, I love Michael Stipe's voice, and I love his lyrics, they're so visceral and clever as well as being incredibly catchy. Although overall I feel it couldn't decide weather it wanted to go full-on hokey pop or stick with their moody alt rock roots, and I vastly prefer the latter. This is exemplified when you compare a song like "Welcome To The Occupation" and "It's The End of the World As We Know It", these are entirely different songs that feel they were written for entirely different albums. Good, but not my favorite. Excited to hear more of their material!

Thoroughly enjoyable. I found myself dancing and singing without a second thought, very catchy and fun rhythms. Not even entirely my thing, but you can just throw this on and have a great time no matter what.

This entry on the list confuses me. For one, this isn’t even the greatest Muse album, that’s Origin of Symmetry. And for two, is Muse considered culturally significant enough to warrant a spot on this kind of list? I certainly don’t think so. This did not do it for me. A so-so concept of a space rock opera combined with pop hits that sound more at home playing during a Ford commercial or during the Super Bowl. The riffs were bland, the lyrics were generic, just nothing very impressive on display here. Matt Bellamy is however incredibly talented, here’s an excellent guitar player and an even better vocalist, but I see this album less as “diverse”, and more as “scattered”. Knights or Cyndonia is still a great song, though.