I've heard this album a couple of times before and honestly, while I don't love it I do think it is pretty solid overall - the opener, 'Blitzkrieg Bop' is probably the Ramones' signature song and for good reason, and I do appreciate that this album was pretty short, but I'd be lying if I said that I was engaged the whole way through even if I did generally have a good time with it. I'd probably give it a 7/10 if I could, but I do feel more comfortable with a 3/5 than a 4/5. Still good, though.
So I think this one would have always been kind of an uphill battle for me: I'm not huge on hard rock on the best of days, and from what I've heard from AC/DC, they're not exactly one of my favorites of the genre. And yeah, after a full listen this is good, but I still don't really see anything special about it, even if I do think the first and last tracks are both genuinely excellent. So yeah, good but not exactly what I'd call great and not really something I think I'll go back to very much.
I've been a pretty massive fan of this album for a while: it's probably my favorite Britpop album and 'Girls & Boys' is an all-time great album opener, and I was fully expecting to give it an easy 5/5, but sadly I do think it has shrunk on me since I first heard it 5 years ago. It's still fantastic, mind you, 'Girls & Boys' is just as good as ever, and it's surprisingly really varied genre-wise, but I'd be lying if I thought that it's fully consistent the whole way through. Still, at its best, this album is stellar - 'This Is a Low' is a stunning late-album highlight and 'To the End' is a really beautiful chamber pop pastiche that works really well. Not as good as I remember, but still really great.
I think my biggest hot take of any album on this list so far is that I think that 'Tiny Dancer' is kind of overrated. Not that it's not very good, but I wouldn't put it amongst Elton John's best like so many others do. And sadly, that leaves me with a pretty mixed view on this album. I think that 'Levon' is pretty great - honestly I might like it more than 'Tiny Dancer' on some days, and 'Indian Sunset' is also a high point, but the rest of this album just doesn't do much for me. Not a bad album, but I don't see myself going back to it very much.
It's short, sweet, and a ton of fun. There are some ballads on here which I don't really think work all that well, but the biggest hits on this are undeniably good. This is the first album I've gotten on this list that I've never heard of before, and I really enjoyed it.
Another album I was pretty familiar with before going into this, and while I didn’t really love it before, I can pretty confidently say I do now! This is pretty easily the most “pop” Joni Mitchell album: it still obviously has a lot of folky elements, but it also adds a bunch of really fantastic hooks while still being just as well-written as any other Joni album. I don’t think it’s her best, but it’s grown on me a lot and I do love it a lot. And ‘Help Me’ is her best song.
I wish I was able to get into R.E.M. I really, really do. I like a lot of their individual songs, but despite how much I've tried, I could never get into one of the albums. The closest I've gotten so far is probably 'Automatic For The People', and even then I don't think it ever fully clicked for me. But this is one of their albums that I've never heard before...and I'm sorry, but it's still not clicking for me. Again, some fantastic songs (the end of the A side and the start of the B side, in particular), but most of this kind of just bounced off of me. I wish it didn't.