Cover - It's strong, except the font, which is kinda ass? Love the picture though.
Let's Get it On is obvs ubiquitous, but uhhh every song is just that song over and over again?? 'Keep gettin' it On' literally so.
'Come Get To This' a bit better.
Yer man sure likes getting laid.
It was embarrassing then, it's somehow even more embarrassing now. Exhaustingly edgy, like the inane ramblings of the worst child that you hope no child you care about goes anywhere near. The most charitable reading is that it's all a 'joke', but even then, it isn't funny, at all.
Obviously this is absolute trash, and proof if proof be need be that popular ≠ good. So, let's consider skits instead - is there ANY good skit, even on a less repugnant record than this? I really don't think there is, and hopefully during this trip into the mainstream I will eventually find a skit where I think 'Oh, I definitely would listen to this more than once.' But somehow I doubt it.
uhhh I just heard Kim - wtf
Nostalgia overload but also still a brilliant album. Every track (except No No No) is great fun, and going from Maps into Y Control is as good as anything that came out of this NY scene. Even the sequencing feels nostalgic, with the traditional slow big drum track at the end. Still sounds massive, too.
Don't think I've ever heard this before, wasn't expecting much (probably unfairly cos the singles are great) but was pleasantly surprised! Definitely a bit hippy dippy, but mostly in that Forever Changes way, where the trip has gone bad and the Manson family are lurking off screen. 'D.C.B.A. -25' and the proto-Robbie Basho sound of 'Embryonic Journey' were my two faves that weren't 'White Rabbit'. Will listen again.
Boring at the time, somehow even duller now. 'Darts of Pleasure' is still a great song, and the first few tracks are catchy, but it's mostly just kind of a stompy mess of borrowed hooks and dull lyrics. The most remarkable thing about this for me is that I have intense memories of how much these guys had missed the dance-punk boat with this record - looking back, there's less than eighteen months between those highs and this release. What is time :\
I’m sure I’m going to say this a lot as we move forward, but how on earth is this on a best of anything list? A bunch of forgettable songs with no real discernible style, other than ‘not very good’ and horrible over-bright production. At its worst when it verges into an odd Stereolab-ey psych sort of thing.
Wikipedia says it's her best selling record, which is mad cos you'd assume that was Blue? I’d never even heard of this. It’s a pleasant listen, the first one of these I’ve felt compelled to play twice, and maybe eventually this is a 4. 'Down to You' is my clear fave, absolutely loved this song. 'Twisted' by far the worst and really has no business being on this record!
An all-timer, listened to this endlessly in my teens, still love it. The refined yin to 'Out of Time's cheesy yang (a duality that I think then informs all their warner bros work going forward!), it's just a masterful use of major label money to make something strange and indescribable, but also chock full of hits. Stipe's lyrics are great as ever ('Ignoreland' is so so so so good and the blueprint for every political Thom Yorke lyric), it all flows together beautifully despite all the disparate elements, the willingness to abandon drums through a lot of the record is so rewarding - man, I could go on (and on), but it's just an absolute banger.
Also, the last minute of 'Everybody Hurts' and the whole of 'Nightswimming', 'Sweetness Follows', 'Ignoreland' and 'Find the River' (one of the most beautiful songs about death ever written) are empirically perfect music, and I won't hear otherwise.
Any Rolling Stones record starts from a point of disadvantage because I absolutely cannot stand Mick Jagger’s voice, and I hate that I can see his stupid gurning face flapping around in my mind whenever I hear it.
This is one of the few Stones records I had heard all the way through before because people bang on about it a lot - it didn’t sound any better this time. Overly long, repetitive gurning and straining, and yeah I guess if you like 'rock & roll' music this is a great example of that (?), but I really, really don’t.
I really don’t know what to make of this. It’s fine, a pleasant listen, I wouldn’t mind hearing it again but I don’t think I’d ever put it on. It’s so old it almost feels like listening to music made by aliens or Neolithic man, but also you know exactly where every song is going even if you’ve never heard it before. And of course you don’t get The Beatles etc etc without this record, but if I start rating stuff based on stuff like that then I’m going to tie myself in knots and collapse.
Anyway, ‘Not Fade Away’ was the best track, loved how it sounds like it was recorded inside a Pringles can. Also the reverb on the chorus of ‘It’s Too Late’ was a fun time.
The 1001 roulette blessed us putting this on a Sunday, as it's perfect Sunday morning music. Enjoyed it so much more than Court and Spark, loved the intertwining guitars and Pastorius sliding about on the bass. 'Amelia' was probably my favourite, I wish the vibes on this track (the instrument, not the mood (but also the mood)) were featured more throughout the album. 'Hejira' also exceptional. I think it ran out of steam a bit towards the end, but overall this was super good and suspect it will only go up in my estimations with repeated listens.
Strange record. The title track is good, and the doo-wop vocals over a more '70s soul sound is funny, but I guess kinda works. 'Runaway Child, Running Wild' is incredibly bizarre. The second side is much better, probably because it sounds more like you'd expect a Temptations record to sound.
Hilarious, and I think I'm laughing AT them, not WITH them? Yer man is very horny, but doesn't really have many words to express it. Special mention for 'Gods of War', a rare venture away from his pants into 'political' introspection, with guest lyrics by a small child. My high(low)light was definitely 'Love Bites', in which an existential crisis arrives for the singer in the form of catching his own eye in a mirror while fucking.
Truly abysmal.
The Liars’ debut ‘They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top’ (also a good record) ended with a locked groove loop on the CD release that lasts for over 20 minutes - it was the sound of a band staring you out, daring you to listen to the end, to tough out this relentless noise and find something there. I was 17 when it came out and was absolutely entranced by the idea. (There’s a similar device (but there for very different reasons) at the end of Wilco’s A Ghost is Born and it’s bloody great there, too. Music can be hard, it can be unpleasant, it can challenge in ways I think more people should embrace!)
My point here is that I feel like the rest of their career, and especially this record, are the direct continuation of that ethos, challenging you to figure out what else is going on beyond an abrasive front. Yes, this record absolutely spits on your face the first time you hear it, but underneath is rhythm, melody, hooks, all that good stuff music can do.
Swampy, messy, creepy, noisy but also at times so peaceful in an unsettling way, it took me a while to fully ‘get’ this LP, (and really only made complete sense after the follow-up ‘Drum’s Not Dead’ released) but I think it’s absolutely worth the effort.
It’s just so much fun, I love all the ambience, the ritual circle feel of the drums, the closeness, the sound of a highway somewhere in the middle of the record that suggests you’ve escaped, only to get got again. Such a great record.
Speaking of ‘Drum’s Not Dead’, the fact this record is on the list is even more bizarre because ‘Drum’s…’ isn’t, and I know I’m not alone in viewing that as by far the better record (which I would argue this is sort of the prototype for). ‘Drum’s…’ is an absolute masterpiece, one of my all-time favourites, and an album everyone should hear, even if this wasn’t your thing.
Never really got the hype with this (like MOST mercury winners I think), it's basically 2 good tracks ('Butterfly' is a true 5/5 banger) and then a load of nonsense after it. The drum programming is good but all the synths sound like they were made in Magix Music Maker (is that still a thing?). This isn't a hindsight thing either, btw, it sounded lame even at the time.
By no means my favourite Paul Simon, but still a really pleasant and solid record. The main problem I think is that Simon is basically showing off, making the case for a post-Garfunkel future by going through as many different genres as he can. I know he didn't exactly shy away from showing off throughout the rest of his career, but at least he slowed down enough to make more coherent records. It's good, but not his best.
I just love this album, and yes I am a super white boy loser cos this WAS my gateway into listening to African music, so fucking sue me. Whilst I completely get why some people have a problem with it, luckily for me these songs got in my head before I had any context (and even WITH context I don't think the 'issue's' here are clear cut enough, and I will never buy the 'no one benefited from it other than Simon' line - this record + Peter Gabriel basically invented 'world music' as a saleable commodity (which I'm pretty sure every artist on this record benefited from) - what happened from there (and the evolving concept of what that term means) is not Simon's fault etc. etc.)
Anywaaaayyy I love his lyrics, I love the instrumentation, pretty much every song is catchy enough to be a hit. The only knock against it really is the production is kinda flat and '80s and gross, but even that isn't a problem because there's so much nostalgia tied up in those big honking synth blasts. Is there a better guitar line than .57 seconds into 'Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes'? No, there isn't.
It's a wonderful, joyous, beautiful record that I will happily listen to on loop. 5/5, 10/10, all-time banger.
(ps Rhythm of the Saints should also be on this list, 'The Obvious Child' is better than anything on Graceland)
‘Just a Gigolo’ is incredible — the energy in the room, the whistles and cries that form into a call and response chorus, the wonderful delivery of ‘I ain’t so bad’ - Absolutely fantastic, listened to it four times already.
On a second playthrough the whole thing actually massively grew on me - this dude is just so infectious, everyone seems to be having so much fun! He seems to just lose his mind halfway through ‘Basin Street Blues’ and the band know exactly how to respond! Man, I love this stuff.
Also ‘I’ll be Glad When You’re Dead’ is a very strong title to close an album with.
So boring, like maybe peak boring (except Turin Brakes and so help me lord if they are on this list I think I may actually quit). Dude can't sing and they haven't got the plug-ins in place to correct that just yet. In fact, this has to be one of the worst produced records on this list. The drums, in particular, are so so terrible, narrow and tinny and so distracting. I get that this was probably made on the cheap, and sounds 'cosy', but I'm pretty sure anyone can mic a drum kit up better than this. Also, anyone can play drums better than this lol.
(The guitar on the chorus of 'Don't Panic' and at the start of 'Shiver' is good, so there's that. I think Coldplay as a whole are popular because their music is SO bland and Martin's lyrics so absolutely nothing that you can interpret everything however you want.)
I only had to wait a day to hear an album even more boring than Coldplay’s ‘Parachutes’. I don’t appreciate the stealth Rod Stewart, I don’t like noodling on a guitar, and I have no interest in hearing anything like this ever again. Which is a shame, cos I bet the list is full of this shite.
(‘Rock my Plimsoul’ is a good song name, and ‘Morning Dew’ being about the post apocalypse are ever so slight redeeming features)
'The Look of Love' is a stellar song, 'Poison Arrow', 'Valentine's Day' and 'All of my Heart' are also fantastic. The panoramic Trevor Horn production across this record is very much my kinda thing, and whenever Anne Dudley's incredible string arrangements pop up they sound fantastic. It's also crazy this is a debut, it sounds like the ambitious thing a band does three or four albums in. It's a bit too slick for me at times(nothing wrong with smashing disco and post-punk together, but I don't want absolutely ever corner rounded off), but overall it's a very good time.
What is there to say? I try not to think of any music as unlistenable, but then I had never actually heard a whole ELP record start to finish before. The 'highlight' was 'Nut Rocker' because it was absolutely hilarious. Dreadful stuff.
if you took the best bits of this and ‘Harvest’ you would have one of the greatest records ever recorded. as it is, this is still very very good. ‘Cinammon Girl’ is one of those songs i could happily loop forever (and the one note guitar solo is SO good), ‘Down by the River’ is an ultimate earworm, and the open tuned guitars on ‘Round and Round’ are gorgeous. there are clunkers elsewhere, but overall it’s such a warm record, a very pleasant listen.
It feels like half this album is people explaining the title to you. I love Busta Rhymes but he was the 23rd person to tell me that a woman has got to be not only crazy, but sexy when she needs to be, and you know, why not also a bit cool, too? I get it, it’s fine, stop telling me.
Anyway, this album was more fun than I thought it would be, relentlessly horny (and crazy and cool don’t forget!!) to the point of absurdity, and there’s a lot catchy choruses on here - and mercifully very few skits. And of course Waterfalls is one of the greatest pop songs ever.
This is a good record, and maybe a 4, but I can’t help but compare it to his later ‘classic’ stuff (Another Green World, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Ambient 1-4 etc etc), all of which I would much rather listen to. The title track is easily the highlight, post-rock 20 years before it had a name.
The 4th best of the 5 New Order records that count (and none of the top 3 are on this list wtf), but I still absolutely love it. When I was a kid I had a Yamaha keyboard that had the exact same frog sample they use in the weirdo breakdown of Perfect Kiss and I still think about how happy that made me whenever I hear this. Other than ‘Face Up’ it’s all good.
Absolutely bursting with ideas, this record is a long, intense listen. The vocals are toooo much but the instrumentation is so interesting throughout. It gets better as it goes on, ‘How Much a Dollar Cost’ and ‘The Blacker the Berry’ are my favourites. Also, I don’t think any album should be longer than 60 minutes!
I'm at the top of a high-rise in London, in a flat with peeling wallpaper and sticky carpets. I'm trapped in the corner of the living room while the worst man plays his awful music and tells me in excruciating detail about his grim sex life. He's drinking cheap, horrible alcohol, the room is full of cigarette smoke, and he is insistent that his wife deserves whatever she's got coming to her. When I get the chance I'm jumping out the window and hurtling towards the sweet release of death.
Please, bring back ELP, all is forgiven.
Bee Gees, more like BORE Gees, geddit??
Soft rock, wibbly wobbly warbling, very dull, very wet, very not for me.
The Doors could undoubtedly write a hook, and I like that 'Light my Fire' is a catchy pop song but also a 7 minute psych odyssey - this is really the best version of this band for me, I don’t care for pretty much everything else on here (and I think I just like this cos it’s funny).
Also, I wish Manzarek would drop the Vox Continental, or at least limit it to one or two songs, or maybe do something a little different than that sort of sloppy chromatic chord change thing that's on EVERY TRACK. Actually, I guess Alabama Song is a bit different, and it's dreadful, so maybe not.
'The End' is without doubt my favourite song on this album, even though 'Light my Fire' is the best - it's brilliant because it's so bad and it makes me think of Homer's psychedelic pepper trip in The Simpson's and, of course, Apocalypse Now. Ride the snake, the snake is long, 7 miles long etc. etc. never ever ever fails to make me laugh and drifts through my head more often than it should. Also the 'father i want to kill you' bit - excellent in its own awful way. Jim Morrison was a hack!
I absolutely adore this record. The midpoint of a run of incredible releases by SY, this is one of those albums I got in my late teens because it was so revered at the time and was instantly fascinated by what was going on, it felt like a whole new world opening up!
As I keep saying in these reviews, I like when a hook is mangled and wrecked but still recognisably a hook and that is what’s happening here - these are mostly pop songs, stretched to breaking point, and then often dissected and tortured to collapse at the end of the song. That balance isn’t as, er, balanced anywhere else in their discography.
Honestly, it’s just brilliant - the melodies, the scope, the production, the lyrics (love all the sci-fi stuff), the noise. I usually really can’t be bothered with double albums, but if this is on I’m listening all the way through every time. And ‘Teen Age Riot’ is their best song and an amazing way to open a record.
Also, this released in 1988!! I think it still sounds like the future - also the same year Spirit of Eden created and perfected a genre, so maybe they both fell out of a time hole - to think it predates grunge and the horrors that that wrought, it’s crazy! How could people hear something this interesting and still want something so boring?
One of the records I was told to hear be People Who Know when I was trying to understand rap, but of all the ‘classic’ rap records I find this one hardest to get. I love the beats, frequently love the samples, but it’s tooooo long and all the mafia nonsense in the bits of lyric I understand are boring.
Basically two nice love songs (Oh my Love/Oh Yoko) and a load of tat. The chorus for ‘How do you sleep?’ Is a real earworm, but it’s one of the most embarrassing songs ever recorded and makes my physically cringe. Also, ‘Imagine’ is trash and I wont hear otherwise.
This record starts with the Cave insanity dialled up to 10, the Cormac Mcarthy-esque cowboy hellscape is hilarious AND terrifying. I'm less into the slow, epic tracks, but overall this was lots of fun.
Faaaar too long, double albums just should not be a thing, by anyone. This is just isn't my kinda music, I enjoy some of the riffs and whatever, but the vocals leave me cold and I have no interest in guitar solos, sorry.
I rolled my eyes at the list picking LCD's comeback album, cos its such a 1001 list thing to do, but it's probably their second most consistent record, so I guess whatever That still doesn't really make it worth being on here, though - the problem with all their albums (even sound of silver despite what idiots say) is that there always a couple of bangers and a load of nonsense. Also, I kind of have a pathologic dislike of James Murphy (but this has softened somewhat since watching 'The Comedy' which suggest he is either a) completely oblivious or b) Actually very in on the joke).
At least on this one, all the songs are kind of okay, and 'Call the Police' is great. There's a bit too much cosplaying as Bowie in Berlin, but wholesale ripping off songs and sounds and putting a big fat synth on them is and has always been LCD's MO.
As I have cheated and searched for a few albums, I can tell you that this is the list peaking for me right here, unless there is something truly surprising coming up. Kid A is one of three albums I would consider the ‘best’ of all time, but in terms of subjective and emotional importance to me, nothing can ever come close. Kid A is perfect, Kid A is the basis of my taste in almost everything, Kid A is about as formative as formative gets for me. I can confidently say there is no album I have heard more in my life. Let me now write way too much about it while I listen to it for the nth time.
First, the music. Kid A is a journey away from the confines of 'rock', in a way that I would contend feels pretty timeless. Much was - and probably still is - written about the tortured production of the record, of Thom Yorke's burnout, of the band struggling to figure out where to go after OK Computer. To emerge with something that almost entirely ignores verse-chorus structure, that left the best song these sessions produced ('Pyramid Song') on the cutting room floor, that is so confident it drops a straight-up ambient track in the middle, well it’s a work of genius.
'Everything in Its Right Place' is a warm bath, that hook starting up, the close production, the skittering cut-up vocals, it's the greatest album opener because - by design - it reveals nothing about what’s going to follow, it eases you in to this strange, angular, paranoid world. But track 2, ‘Kid A’ itself, that has always been my favourite. A strange lullaby melody, a bit-crushed vocal, a jittery tribal drum, the synths washing in at the end - this music is just so exciting to me. The whole album just reflects the endless possibility of sound, the re-configuring of the familiar into something alien. This isn't some Metal Music attempt to become willfully obtuse, this is a band wanting to make music that moves and emotes but on their own terms.
‘The National Anthem’ is such an invigorating blast of HORN DEATH that I never tire of, ‘How to Disappear’ is a Normal Song but with ondes martenot and tortured strings crying throughout. ‘Treefingers’ is the only misstep, the only sign of the band reaching too far to make their point in my opinion, but it’s swiftly battered aside by the ‘single’ (sort of) ‘Optimistic’, which again has incredible percussion and sounds like being in a swamp made of lo-res polygons. ‘In Limbo’ skitters across the surface, before the monumental ‘Idioteque’ pummels its paranoid refrains into your skull. If any song has sort of lost its impact for me from this record it’s this track, but only because I just listened to it on loop for months and months and months. I’m wondering writing this how many times my Dad has heard this album of his own free will, and how many times he instead heard it being blasted out of my bedroom! ‘Morning Bell’ is another lullaby of doom and misery, and then ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’ manages to be both incredibly moving and also aware of its own schlocky production at once, like sincerity being swallowed by irony even as each syllable leaves Thom’s mouth.
Anyway, needless to say, I love it, it’s the greatest record ever made, and the list is all downhill from here.
Now… if you want even more words, here’s another review, this time from a very subjective place, because that's what makes this my favourite album of all time.
I had just turned 16 when Kid A released. By that point I was roughly 18 months into my absolute, all-encompassing Radiohead obsession, devouring anything I could, spending far too much on imports of EPs at Tower Records, annoyingly probably only six months before I was just getting all that stuff and more off Napster. I was primed for Kid A in a way I have never been primed for anything.
In the lead-up to the album Q published a massive interview with the band, where they talked about the influences behind what they were about to release. They mentioned Autechre and Aphex Twin, Naomi Klein's No Logo, Charles Mingus. They covered Can on the accompanying tour, they hired Humphrey Littleton's jazz band for Kid A's sister Amnesiac (recorded at the same time). They talked about Messiaen, Neu!, Squarepusher, and on and on.
All these new influences hit at just the right time - Napster existed (I first heard Kid A the weekend before its release after it leaked online, slowly downloading each track and listening to each one repeatedly before the next one finished) so I could follow up on all these musical leads. And that's why Kid A is of infinite importance to me. I adored music before Kid A, and thanks to Blur's endless namedropping of Pavement in previous years had already started to escape the bubble of late britpop a bit, but Kid A felt like a guidebook for exploring to the very edges of the map, and a manual for how to appreciate music that some would call 'difficult'. I have Kid A to thank for most of the music I now consider my favourite, and weirdly I think this is even more the case as time goes on - it takes a lot for an indie band to make much of an impression at all on me these days.
Nearly done, but first back to the release. A friend and I had convinced his older brother to drive us to Warrington to see Radiohead touring Kid A, the day after the album had released. The little of my paper round money I hadn't already spent on Radiohead hoodies, CDs, t-shirts etc. went on the ticket price, and away we went. Inspired by the aforementioned No Logo, Radiohead toured the album in purpose-built white circus tents, free of any corporate sponsors, hence the odd location - they needed big parks to do this in.
This gig exists in my brain like some sort of mythical experience that I have read about myself in a book, but also I can recall the evening like it was yesterday. I remember the sound as we approached, my incredulity at my friend’s brother’s friend arriving with no ticket and just buying one from a tout, the endless mud and people along the track to the tent, the buzz of excitement. I remember the merch stand (I still wear the top I bought here!), I remember the girl who I instantly fell in love with (I was 16 after all) who spoke to me briefly about the band, I remember being amazed by how much stuff they had on stage, I remember the excitement I had whenever they played a track that would later appear on ‘Amnesiac’, like we were privately visiting the future.
It finished, we went home, I hung the overpriced poster on my wall for years and years until it literally fell apart, I wore my figure-hugging very goth black long-sleeved Kid A shirt to my GCSE results with black nail varnish and a fringe I could hide behind, and said fuck you to my miserable youth.
I lived and breathed this record, it got under my skin and it became a part of me. Kid A is brilliant because it is exciting, it’s difficult but still tuneful, every track is an ocean of possibility, and because without it I absolutely would not be who I am. I genuinely still shiver with excitement throughout, 26 years and thousands of plays later. It doesn’t get better than this.
