In fairness, this isn't my typical listening genre, but I did really enjoy the sampling on this record, and there were quite a few moments of lyrical/rhythmic genius - however, this album did struggle to keep my attention for the whole time. I don't know if I would go out of my way to put this album on again, but I wouldn't skip it if it appeared in my shuffle.
This album sounds like The Rocky Horror Show, but for straight people, which is ironic because the lyrics are actually quite gay. Reed's voice is very pleasant to the ear, and reminds me a little of Mick Jagger. There's actually a nice variation on this record, some glam rock, some lowkey rock and roll, even some jazzy elements.
The first half is filled with infectious grooves, almost rock opera harmonies, and feels about a decade ahead of its time both sonically and technically. By contrast, the last half of the album morphs into a swirling, ambient soundscape - if the rock starlings in the first half felt like they hailed from 1987, then this second half feels like it was unearthed from a capsule sent from 3000AD. Bowie's voice is like 5000 gigawatts jammed right through the speakers: this is a bible for the rock religion, the new testament of the electronic age.
The vocal intercourse between members is like listening to a Wimbledon tennis match, batting lyrics back and forth with such gusto and precision that you could almost believe it was a one-man-band. The production on this record is air-tight, so crisp and so fresh.
I actually enjoyed this album a lot more than I thought I would, and I think it has something to do with the fact that Roth's vocals are less grating and more chesty than I imagined they would be, and the guitar grooves are positively dirty. I don't feel like myself when I listen to this, but I do enjoy the sort of glam-rock/punk person I become.
You can hear the drug-fueled, whirling dirvish stylings all over this album, as if Bowie cant keep his restless self from settling for too long. The music lurches from krautrock to disco to art rock without much care or consideration. The production on this thing is tight as ever, infectiously groovy, if sometimes a little skittish or unsettled. Bowie's voice is particularly agile on standout Golden Years, and the cover of Wild is the Wind is another stellar track.
I really don't appreciate that the World musicians that performed on this album were left uncredited by McLaren - they are far and away the best parts of this album, and their omission from official credits feels exploitative and racist, especially considering this album seems to steal almost exclusively from musical cultures that are predominantly black. Malcolm McLaren is nowhere to be found on this album; what could have been a really eclectic mix of musical styles ends up being an almost mocking pastiche of "the other". There is no original personality or voice on this album, and with each song, I was increasingly interested in listening to the original songs that were sampled (stolen).
1/5
This album sounds like if Twin Peaks was set in Arizona, instead of Washington. The pace is slow, deliberate; the instrumentals are spacey and laid-back; Timmins' vocals are intimate and warbling. The music swings and shimmies in a haze, smokey with age, like French hennessy. There's something very beautiful about how simple this album is, just melancholic and slow country ballads, which make you feel like you're a cowboy in the middle of Navajo country, with a 'gal' waiting for you back home on a wraparound porch, putting up bunting in the last light of the Sun.
This album feels like the precurser to Coldplay's 'Parachutes' in a way, full of soft rock swoonings and nihilistic stank. The orchestral touches throughout are very pleasant, and the violins particularly complement the naturally nasal timbre of Ashcroft's voice. Unfortunately for this album, and for Britpop in general, there is an issue of authenticity, because there are moments when the symphonic swathes of angst start to become grating or boring, and the music starts to feel like it is trying too hard to sound too cool and aloof. Despite this, the sound here is tight and definitive, and one can definitely feel some pleasure in listening to this record.
Grant's voice is burnished and subdued, layered together like the album cover would suggest. The orchestration on this album is expansive, at times both resembling a small rock band and a sprawling symphony, with Grant sat somewhere in the centre, both isolated and fully part of the fabric of his music. His lyrics are sardonic and snarky, drawing from what feels like real life experiences and thought patterns, although his use of the N-word sours the sentiment of the song; by contrast, the moments of ambience are haunting and cerebral. I suppose that's the beauty of this album - there is so much palpable contrast; the music and the singer, the words and the silence, the them and the other.
There's such an air of French mystery to this album - the music almost oozes with sensual, slurring panache, and would perfectly fit a modern noir film set in Paris. Air's command over their unique sound leaves the listener swirling in a post-acid haze, caught somewhere in the hookah smoke of the 60s and the fuzzy bitmaps of the 90s.
I feel like I need to be stood on the balcony of a Miami penthouse apartment, while white-silk curtains unfurl out of the windows with the late summer night breeze, watching the twinkling lights of the city below me, superslim in hand.
This album, for me, truly marks the beginning of the 1980s sound as we know it; the new wave elements are fresh and timeless, Smith's vocals are emotive and keening. The music is bruised and brooding, steeped in angsty guitar twangs and gothic-esque textures, sitting on harmonies that mediate between pleasant and intentionally discordant. While very much a harbinger of The Cure that was sure to come, this album still tends to feel like a run-up, as some ideas and sounds are still left needing development.
The panning on this album is so aggressive, its almost nauseating. The vocals sit in one pocket of your ears, and the drum sit completely opposite, and everything else follows suit, meaning nothing bridges between the two ears and everything is at war with everything else. The vocals are garish and mediocre, like someone trying to do a metal Elvis Presley while getting sucked off. Musically, there is nothing wrong with this album, but it was unfortunately created with all the taste and craftsmanship of an airplane with no landing gear, one wing alight, and the captain chainsmoking in the toilets. This is, so far, the most unlistenable album I've had to listen to.
Unlike The Verve’s Urban Hymns, this Brit-pop album didn’t feel grating or pretentious. I still have some issues with the genre that make listening feel like a chore, but the hits were considerably better.
Every song was sensational, his voice is emotive and the swing on each track was perfect. I feel like I need to be nursing an old fashioned in the kitchen while my husband is having an affair.
This album is calamitous and angry, smothered in grungy gauze, throttle and grit. At times it’s both perfectly incensed and unlistenable.
While this album is sonically and technically lovely, every song sounds the same, and the entire album ends up feeling very unimpressive and “fine”. I shudder to imagine the boredom I would get from being sat in the audience as this set was played at me, as I simply would have had to locate the fusebox, and jammed my finger into an open socket to shorten the thing for the greater good. Don’t worry, I’m sure another rock album will be given to me next, to add to the growing plethora that seems to make up this entire list!
I’m sure this is for someone, and I’m sure that “someone” finds this album to be magnificent, but this, for me, falls into the category of “nice, but that’s about it”.
This is from the 70s? If you played me the opening track, and told me it was from 2004, I would have wholeheartedly believed you. I don’t think I’ve heard an album sound so incongruent with the year of its release - the mix is crisp, the instrumentals are clean and plucky, and Costello’s voice is characteristically pitching with spunky anguish. I’m sort of astounded by this album.
Some of the instrumentals are fine, but the lead singer’s voice is like a fork scratching on a plate.
There were some elements that I enjoyed with this album, some of the more lyrical and melancholy moments were quite ornamental and pretty, but overall, I found this rather stale and stagnant.
Apart from Tainted Love, there is very little melodic coherency or semblance of pulse within the vocals. It’s a grating contrast, where the instrumentals are classic 80s synth-pop, but the vocals are more like meandering spoken word passages superimposed on top. There’s a lot to enjoy within the music itself, but there’s not much to sing along to, unlike what the beats would suggest. It’s like the promise of a pop song, with none of the deliverance.
There’s something so devastatingly elegiac about this album, Cohen’s once velvet voice is reduced to a husky, almost spoken-word timbre. There’s reflections on relationships, religion and love, all swimming in the beautifully soulful orchestrations in the background and the rumbling bass of Cohen’s voice.
Aside from the opening track, this album doesn't really offer anything exciting or captivating to the listener. I can understand, potentially, the groundbreaking nature of this album when it came out, but I feel we've progressed enough musically since then for this to not need to be included on this list.
Janis Joplin's vocals are what makes this album worthy of inclusion in this list. She is electrifying and spellbinding with every note - I can't wait for her to reappear later! The music itself is spunky and bubbling with gumption; there's so much innate grit here, it pairs perfectly with Joplin's signature croaky voice. I think I have to be in the mood to listen to this album again: it's a case of "I fully appreciate this album, but I don't need to listen to it again by itself".
There's so much noise happening here, and I'm just not sure I like the mesh it all creates. Yorke's voice is particularly grating on this, which maybe is appropriate considering the subject matter - although, on that topic, I find myself struggling to identify the point of this record; I understand what they wanted to say, I'm just not sure they really said it. Sail To The Moon is absolutely spectacular, the piano is so beautiful, and the whole thing just convalesces together so well.
Well... this was right up my alley. I feel like I'm a sexy 90s woman, clad in blood-red lipstick, grey-eyed, pixie cut, slinking around a night club, on a secret mission, because I'm also a Vampire Slayer, and the club is actually a secret vampire nest, and I need to scope out the leader.
Ram Sam Sam, Ram Sam Sam, something about words, Words Words Words! Something in another language! Who needs to think? I'm going to lie, my favourite type of song is when someone just repeats the same three phrases over and over again over the top of a clunky, gallumphing hellscape of noise. I especially enjoy when the vocals are recorded on a microwave on the opposite end of the room!!! The album sounds exactly like how the album cover looks. Do with that what you will.
Finally, one that I've already listened to! I love this album so fucking much, I love her voice, its like cream, I love her poetry, her lyrics. I cannot emphasise how much this album is a must-listen. If you rated this anything less than 5, you need to seriously reconsider yourself, and then maybe section yourself.
Oh my God, we're on a ROLL! Like Tracy Chapman's self-titled album, I have already heard, loved and bought this album on CD. Every song on this record is curling with mysticism and Americana, like walking through the Smoky Mountains with nothing but a compass, or taking the back streets of New York, listening to elderly women selling metal flowers. There's also so much variety here: American Pie is the pinnacle of Rock and Roll, songs like Vincent, Winterwood and Empty Chairs are melodic, peaceful and sometimes even mournful, all set within a folk tome, Babylon even sounds like a mythological canticle, and The Grave is like a call to arms, not for war but for devastating and harrowing peace. My favourite track has to be Sister Fatima - there's so much mystery and intrigue, the guitar is sometimes dissonant and unravelling, the lyrics are vague and folkloric, speaking of a cryptic woman who seems to know everything, but will only reveal it to you in the comfort of her home-temple for $5/hour. This is a necessary listening experience.
Holy FUCK this is BAD! Who made this list, Helen Keller? This is the sort of music that results when you let a music classroom full of 10-year-olds all press a different demo button on the keyboards at slightly different times and let them fuck around for an hour and twenty minutes.
The perfect album to put on while you kill yourself by overdosing on phenobarbital, featuring some guy screeching in your ears via a tin can about how much he hates you, the same drum beat over and over again, an organ because why not, and unless you happen to own this record at home, you have to jump through the unnecessary hoop of finding it on YouTube, where the two unskippable adverts that play before it are more interesting and enjoyable.
The lo-fi trip hop beats are where this album excels, its dirty, gungey, and full of noughties swagger. Albarn's vocals swing from Thom Yorke-esque and melancholic, to whiny and annoying with reckless abandon, but generally I feel like it works. Surprisingly, I had actually already heard Clint Eastwood, and never realised - it was also a hit for me. If I had to associate a vibe to this album, its Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles graffiti dive bar, with such notable patrons as Ben10, your lesbian goth friend, and anyone who was ever on MySpace.
King's voice is endlessly endearing, you feel every word so humanly inside your heart. The music itself is soulful and ripe, rich with American woe; like the music of a lowly bar singer that you can't help but be enraptured with, even in your darkest moments. This album is like a ray of sunlight, dust suspended in it for infinity, or for just that one small moment, when all you needed was that shaft of light to find the strength to keep trying for tomorrow. This album is a cup of tea, a plate of bacon and eggs, apple pie, the taste of life, the flavour of morning. How I haven't listened to this album until now, I don't know, and honestly I feel a bit ashamed. Spectacular.
The music is jangly, digitally ornamental, crawling and sprawling, and full of latin flavour. Chao's voice does become mosquito-esque at times, but maybe I'm just hungover and pissed off.
As a self-proclaimed "funk sceptic", I have to mildly eat my words, because this was actually very enjoyable. Specifically, the Afrofuturism elements here, both sonically and in the album cover, are very cool, and the backing tracks are teeming with sensual saxophone and plinky-plonky piano. There's still something I'm not crazy about, namely the overly-conversational style of the lead vocals which, other than the small sung refrains, seem to populate the entirety of this album, as if someone is playing a really good instrumental album next to a table of friends reuniting in a busy restaurant.
Skylarking is seeped in bombastic drums, sparkly piano, and Partridge's vocals are quintessentially 1980s chamber pop. This album reminisces on the small moments of life, like the summer sun, teenage sex, admiration and religious speculation, all set to the backdrop of birds and ozone. The record becomes a sort of texture; pampas grass, mineral, the smell of hydrocortisone, promenade walking, patchwork, cigarettes, and the promise of a forever life.
Fuck it, I love country music. It's predictably sad and yearning, the chords are familiar and warm, and within that, there's a security - I know what I'm expecting within the genre, and because I like it, I'm filled with a familiar and secure warmth. This album transports me right to the wetlands of Valdosta, Georgia, I'm drinking something dark and unforgiving, in the pardoning and merciful sunrise, while the bulrushes ensnare my legs; I've got a cowboy husband somewhere out there in the great, wide world - I last heard from him somewhere near Amarillo, he's currently seeking some small taste of destiny over on Route 66 - and I'm waiting so patiently for him to come home to me.
Sluggish with sparky, sizzling guitar; eruptive, clapping drum parts; and punching with Vedder's shredded vocal stylings - this album is quintessential 90's grunge-rock. I can fully appreciate this album for what it is, an impeccably produced rock project, well performed and written, and destined to appear at some point in the P3 club in an episode of Charmed, but this just really isn't my style of music, and I genuinely struggle to imagine a time where I would voluntarily put any one of these songs on.
Neil Young is the Trina Vega of soft-rock - the music behind him is actually not bad, clearly there is genuine musical talent here, but he's singing like someone who thinks they're really really good, when they're really not. His voice is tinny and feeble, which makes everything whiny and limp. Give it up, Delicious, keep that microphone on the guitar, make the album fully instrumental, and we'll call it square.
I'm just not really sure about this one...
For some reason I'm having a hard time deciding what I like and don't like about this album, and because of that, I'm really struggling to decide whether I like this album in general. I think her voice is cool, it's strained and angsty while still maintaining a laissez faire, unbothered quality. The music itself is polished and crisp, but there's just some hidden thing that isn't gelling together here - I just don't think this is a very exciting project. To me, this is more of a 2.5/5, but I like her enough to round up to a 3.
This is Elton John in his element, sparkling and thrumming and glittery and mopey. There's a similar lyrical nature to Don McLean, with the almost operatic glam rock verve seen on Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. This whole album feels like a spaceship either taking off, landing, or entering hyperspace. Unfortunately, there is a wet dog on board the ship - Jamaica Jerk-Off is downright stupid. Aside from that, this album being on this list makes total sense.
For an album that very prominently features a guitar on the cover, there is a surprising abundance of saxophone? Like, Madness levels of saxophone. Meatloaf levels of saxophone. I mean, it's good! But this is the saxophone album if ever I did hear it. Springsteen's voice goes from a meaty low register to a very gravelly rasp higher up with almost no preamble, and the album is scattered with this contrast all over the place, lurching from soulful sadness to violent exultation within seconds from each other. This is a calamitous album, without resulting to cacophonous noise and nonsense, which makes a nice change for this list! This album is also the perfect length, it doesn't overstay it's welcome, and every song has something new and poignant to say. The title track is easily the best song, joining the hall of anti-American-Dream with the likes of Ethel Cain's "American Teenager" and Billy Joel's "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant". That is the calibre of this album, for me.
Opera is fucking right! This album is melodramatic, grandiose and sporadic. I think I used this term to describe Bowie's "Station to Station", but there's a certain whirling dervish nature to this record; it sort of spins and spins and spins so far off the stage, diving into the pit, and gnawing at the seats of the auditorium. This album has every right to be on this list, and the influence that has trickled down into modern music is undeniable. 4/5
This is the sort of music that I'd imagine a moody, "you don't get me, mom!" teenage son would play obnoxiously loud in a 2000s movie, in the basement, just to be as annoying as possible, because he's so gosh-darn angry over nothing of note! Suffice to say, this album is irritating, stupid, pretentious and unlistenable. It sounds like watching someone having a severe manic episode, while someone hyperventilates and wheezes next to your ears, and also there's an air raid siren going off.
This album is swampy, buzzing and whiskey-hot. Phillips' vocals sound like a cross-breed of Neil Diamond, Mark Chadwick from The Levellers, and Elton John, all passed through a grittier, rawer filter. I see that this album sits strongly at 3.02/5 on this site, and I think that's all together too low - maybe I'm just a fan of this sort of music, I am an established country fan, but this sort of country-fusion is right up my alley, joining the likes of Ethel Cain and The Men They Couldn’t Hang. I can understand why this album was included on this list, but I can also understand that this isn't everybody's thing, and therefore why this sits squarely average in peoples rankings. This, however, is absolutely my sort of music, and would go perfectly if I'm wanting to sit and brood, or imagine myself as a tortured traveller of the American Plains.
I have nothing to say - this is a top 10 album of all time for me. I remember the first time I listened to it in full, I was on a ferry to Ireland. That just seems so right. This is a 5/5 if ever there was one. I will not elaborate.
