Simon & Garfunkel are one of very few folk artists I don't just tolerate but actually enjoy listening to, even in this chaotic album.
I went into this album with my giant bag of skepticism. After all, I haven't listened to Iron Maiden in over a decade, and I've been off classic metal for almost as long because I was bored out of it. So, what could this dusty ol' record offer me, right?
Well, it turns out there is a lot to enjoy. One of the very few albums that deserve to be called genre-defining, The Number Of The Beast mixes Iron Maiden's propelling energy with its more progressive traits and delivers an explosive set of songs that are just fun to listen. What struck me the most this time around are the pop qualities of the record, the catchy melodies and thundering rhythm of so many of the songs.
It is also borderline funny how campy some of the lyrics are. I mean, it's all related to the proverbial beast, which is campy enough, but then you have some more demonic and wartime themes going on.
Great record, unless you truly hate any sort of metal.
4.5, rounded up because of Bruce Dickinson's debut
Queen are a prime example of a band with awesome songs and pretty disappointing albums. You can't have Bohemian Rhapsody and I'm In Love With My Car in the same album, and you can't have the latter in any truly good album.
The highs here are divine, but the lows are trashy in a bad way. A lot of the album is uninspiring or outright boring and I wouldn't recommend listening to those songs outside of educating yourself about the band's catalogue. Cutting maybe half the album would've made it a timeless classic.
Of course, there's Bohemian Rhapsody and Love Of My Life, which are two of the greatest songs ever recorded. However, two songs are far from enough to save this whole album from being mostly a dud.
Certainly not the best from Led Zeppelin, but still one of the best debut albums in the history of music. What strikes me the most about this album is that it still sounds relatively fresh after all those years.
We've heard something like this album a thousand times by now, but very few people can match the energy of Muddy Waters. Even for someone who's certainly not into blues, this album is a rather easy listen.
I'd say the lyrics can sound a bit confusing and even disturbing at first, but doing some digging about the meaning of certain phrases makes them shine much brighter.
I've been meaning to dive into Dinosaur Jr. for quite a while, but I never got to it. I am both underwhelmed and excited about this album because it is apparently a groundbreaking record with an outsized influence. On the other hand, I've been into grunge and alternative rock all my life, so I didn't really heard anything that's new to me.
I’m too biased to give anything less than a five, and nothing can change my opinion.
It’s all vibes and lost momentum in this album. While the music is great, the structure is doing it a disservice by making the whole thing feeling dragged out
I can feel there's something great beneath the folk-rock surface of this album, but this is not the time for me to discover it. It's also not certain such a time will ever arrive.
I am very uninterested in swing so I never truly made the connection it has with jazz. This album served as an educational listen that also opened my eyes to the joy of music I was dismissing all my life. Leaving the outrageous album cover aside, the music is explosive and exciting which makes the retro vibe much less noticeable than expected.
Well, it's funk. You either like it or you don't, but if you're looking for something beyond a funk type of fun, you're likely to be disappointed. It's all vibes with this type of music, I guess.
Tracing back mumble rap's origins back to 50s ramblin' folk was not on my list of activities for the day, but it happened after all. I can't say I hated this album, but being only 30 minutes long is certainly among its best qualities.
It may sound outrageous but Enter The Wu-Tang is among the most punk rock hip-hop albums ever recorded. You get the raw energy and minimalist production that make it feel like an unfiltered expression full of humor and freedom. It is thematically hardcore, but it also bears the barebones spirit and liberty that are at the roots of punk culture. This is enough for me to be impressed, even if I don't feel specifically attached to the music.
Still, hearing this album made me appreciate how much Wu-Tang Clan have influenced hip-hop and pop culture over the last three decades. And how can you hate an album as goofy as this one?
3.5/5 rounded down because old-school hip-hop is not really my thing
Nick Cave is certainly an acquired taste and it has taken me years to start vibing with his music. This album certainly helped and it may be a great overview of what to expect for The Bad Seeds. It has the darkness all around, but it’s also very rock and roll, except when it’s pretentious and deep, which often feels even better. What can be a curse or a bliss, depending on your opinions about Mr. Cave, is the fact it’s a double album. You can splurge on it and get lost in the whole or try separating the experience. I personally enjoyed both options and that’s what made me appreciate The Lyre of Orpheus more. I’m still not completely overtaken by love for Nick Cave, but that was a nice first real date.
It’s like hip hop but you can’t get truly offended by anything more than the silly lyrics. Though they’re sometimes offensively silly, it’s not all that bad. Still, I probably won’t play this album ever again.
It's surprising that I have never heard of Scott Walker before, but this is the type of album making this whole thing worth it for me. It's obviously pretentious, considering it refers to a Bergman movie with the first song and it's inspired by authors such as Camus and Sartre. While I found the lyrical contents nothing more than intriguing (a good thing anyways), I am in love with this man's voice and singing style. It's dramatic, oftentimes majestic and it feels equally classic and modern. I can clearly hear how everyone from David Bowie to Jarvis Cocker and Thom Yorke is influenced by him. I can't wait to dive deeper into his music!
Courtney Love deserves to be more popular because of her music and less popular because of her outrageous media persona. I had never paid much attention to Hole, but this album is a perfectly fine power pop record with several great songs and fewer duds than I would've expected.
There's a specific line between hardcore and punk where the two genres work really well for me, and I think Out of Step is a perfect example of the line. It's the OG hardcore record with all the energy and moral postures of straight-edge but that doesn't overshadow the punk part of it.
What I like about this album is that, contrary to popular believe, it's full of melody. It's well hidden behind the explosive anger and overwhelming rhythm, but it's there and it's giving the fun vibe I like to have even in my angriest punk rock moments.
This is especially obvious in songs like Think Again, where the bass line is as much of a rhythm engine as it's a melodic pause. Of course, even there it's all stripped down and basic, which is kind of the point.
Honestly, I don't think hardcore punk did something better after Minor Threat, but I'll keep trying to find it.
I thought liking Depeche Mode would mean I'd also like Japan (the band), but that wasn't the case. This is a dull album, which I don't plan to even try listening to again. I think that's the type of music that makes people say the 80s sounded horribly.
Apparently old-school hip-hop is not my cup of tea, and I can't say I enjoyed this album enough to even bother playing it a second time. It still had some nice moments, but that's all I can say about it.
Oh, it's the band with THAT song! I've always liked THAT song but I never knew who wrote it or performed it, but now I do, which is great. THAT song is great, but there's also a lot of nice things going in the rest of this album. I don't know why I've never listened to The Zombies before (except for THAT song probably), but the baroque pop aesthetic and the psychedelic vibes are connecting greatly.
I could hear they've been recording this album shortly after Sgt. Peppers was recorded, but I could also hear how Brian May had probably listened to before recording some of Queen's songs.
Surprisingly great album.
Listening to this album can explain so much of what happened with alternative rock music over the last 50 years that it would be blasphemy to dismiss it. Still, I could never fall for Siouxsie Sioux's voice, which is why I could never truly enjoy Siouxsie and The Banshees.
This time around, I tried to approach things with the most open mind possible and once again I loved the punk energy and the groundbreaking sound. It's gritty, it's dark, it's explosive, it's like nothing before it, and it's still familiar. It also still has Siouxsie Sioux's voice.
I'm still giving it 4 stars, because this album is brilliant. It has this version of Helter Skelter, and Hong Kong Garden, and the energy that reverberates everywhere from Joy Division to LCD Soundsystem.
Ali Farka Touré walked so bands like Khruangbin could fly (iykyk). I played this album with hesitation, expecting another insufferable attempt at making Westerners listen to non-Western music. Instead, I got an album that felt like the bridge between the blues and their African roots. This is the type of surprise I've started doing this challenge for.
4/5, but I'm giving it a 5 because of the joy it brought me.
Oh, now I get why they call him grunge grandaddy, and it fits him so well. I was never interested in Neil Young as I always connected him with Bob Dylan and I like Dylan as an artist but I don't enjoy his music almost at all. Considering Young has recorded over 50 albums, I can't say I enjoy his music, but I certainly enjoyed On The Beach more than most folk rock albums of that era.
3.5/5 rounded up because I love weird singing, mellow vibes, and surprising joy.
Honestly, this album containing a sample I have always thought to be exceptional, alongside a lyric that namedrops medulla oblongata, and being just four exceptional songs was something I didn't expect. I can definitely say it's something I'm glad I've heard before dying, and I'll keep listening to it.
I'll also play this specifically to one friend of mine who made fun of me for listening to a 13-minute Car Seat Headrest song once. He said if someone can't say what they want to say in a normal-length song, maybe they shouldn't write songs at all. While the Phoenix song could survive a trim, this whole album is proving him and all the folks whining about long songs wrong.
See, this is not so much about sending a message. I mean, it's cute to sing about medulla oblongata, but that's nothing compared to the vibes that riff at the 40th second of "Walk On By." It's exquisite, groovy, ridiculously sexy, and even 60 years later it is fresh in a way modern music just isn't.
I didn't know who Isaac Hayes was before this popping up, but I can't imagine him topping this masterpiece.
It's the easiest 10/10 I've given an album from an artist I've never heard before.
I have to give it to Kacey Musgraves, some of her lyrics made me smile, but not because they were funny. Still, I can easily believe she was tripping while writing some of these songs.
