Wasn't huge on this to be honest, I see the influence and significance but it felt a little repetitive. Some good bass parts but could've been better at times.
Well, I'm not going to lie when this came up as day two as something I hadn't heard much about and saw the genres, I was not excited, but, as I'm writing this part three tracks in, I'm actually quite intrigued.
The production is really nice and it sounds great, and the songwriting is really fun and cool. It's not something I thought I'd ever rush to listen to, but honestly I really might have to check out more of his albums. That's the point of this challenge I guess, so I'm already glad I impulsively started it, even if the app seems to be glitching around a bit. The vocals are really nice, some of the harmonies on songs like For The Turnstiles are great, being an element that I didn't think I'd be as interested in as I was. The solos are all really nice too, and they feel well placed within the somewhat repetitive but atmospheric song structures that don't overstay their welcome. It does feel a little bit weird to say all this when the Led Zeppelin album yesterday felt similar in context of how I feel about that kind of music in general, and it could've been listening condition bias, but honestly this just hit way better than yesterday.
Really think this album is quite overrated. It's got really repetitive song structures, with most the songs being built off the same boring straight quaver chords. All the drum parts are very similar. The main thing I appreciate about this is the production and its influence in general, but even the production leads to a muddying of the already minimal melodies, which just leads to it feeling even less catchy and less danceable. It just doesn't really have anything that hooks me in, other than maybe Julian's more distorted voice being pretty cool. Overall, though, I'd much rather listen to one of the albums that this inspired, like Twin Fantasy or maybe even Geese, if you agree they seem to show some Strokes influence. But yeah, lack of melodies, lack of interesting structures, lack of striking lyrics, even the guitar tones aren't that cool, it's mainly the idea of it and the vocals that feeling influential. Not a fan.
For the sake of this challenge, I'm giving this 2 stars, because I really don't enjoy it, but on my AOTY page it's a 66 due to the influence on stuff I do like.
Only one disc in as of writing this bit , but WOW: this challenge is already immensely worth it.
This album is so amazing. It is full of passionate vocals that feel like you're drowning in Wonder's soulful voice, whilst being accompanied by a very surprisingly proggy accompaniment, with some amazing bass guitar that is honestly super inspiring - I'll be checking out more of Nathan Watts' Stuff. The lyrics are also all really interesting, I love how Wonder pays homage to music as an art form in Sir Duke. Honestly, this could be considered a life changing listen for me, really really enjoyed this, and I've needed more joyful music in my rotation.
I quite enjoyed this as background music, but some of the songs were less interesting than others. Notably, I really enjoyed the first track and Unfinished Sympathies, but songs like One Love had interesting cores but ones that weren't built to be used for the songs' entire durations. My favourite will always be the bass in Safe from Harm though.
So I've finally come back to the first artist I ever loved! I remember listening to Smooth Criminal from the age of like, 3! Weirdly though, it took until this challenge to finally come to approaching a full album, and to be completely honest... I don't know if I just wasn't in the mood, but I'm not too impressed to be honest. There are definitely great cores to each song, with Michael's voice being amazing throughout, but to be honest I found several songs, even Beat It (until the guitar solo) to get quite repetitive to the point I started feeling like the loop was almost missing something. The song with Paul McCartney was quite corny in my opinion, but it was an interesting idea. My favourites though were Billie Jean and PYT by far, which are both amazing songs. I don't know, maybe I'll have to come back to this, but I definitely think it was a bit overrated when looking at AOTY.
Pretty cool, but nothing too good. I'm glad I've been forced to try more hip-hop as I do need to get into the genre more but some of these lyrics are better than others. Favourites were by far the ones on Hurt Me Soul, but songs like Sunshine featured some real stinkers. What do you mean this guy said "Working like a... hmm... reverse archaeologist, except his buried treasure was sunshine"??? The beats are pretty good and some of the features are great, I'm just not huge into hip-hop yet and this album doesn't have as layered production as there was on GKMC and TPAB, as well as lacking as much interesting stories to tell as Kendrick in my opinion.
First song was really good, not sure I'd come back to a lot of the rest. Definitely a certain vibe but that vibe is rare and a bit corny to me.
Look, I know I complained about the Led Zeppelin album being too long, but this is just too short.The first song actually intrigued me, but then it built up to nothing. Then, about 3 songs in, I just started getting extremely sick of his voice and accent, it's super annoying. The guitars do moderately interesting stuff occasionally but overall if that's what you're looking for, go to another band... His voice is so annoying it makes it impossible for any of the songs to be catchy, and there's nothing else interesting about it. Even the strokes are better than this.
Nice and chill, with some pretty cool songs, but overall a bit boring and I found it dragged even though it was only background music.
Pretty nice album, really like the first 5 songs but it felt like it fell off a bit from there. I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would, and it's very nice and groovy, I really like the bass work on here.
