This is the first album that I'm going to be reviewing as part of the 1001 Albums challenge! As well as doing this random generator, I'll be simultaneously doing them in chronological order from the book, that way I get to hear each album twice, something that I think is important to truly understand an album.
So here's my review:
While I didn’t enjoy this as much as my first listen, the talent presented on this album is incredible! Joplin has one of the most powerful and unique voices in the history of music and really uses it to its full capability on this album. The first two tracks are my favourites, after them the album goes on a slight decline, but never too far, it always remains enjoyable! The last 2 tracks were great and so is the iconic ‘Me And Bobby McGee’!
This was great, but a bit disappointing. I love both Wilco and Billy Bragg’s work separately, Billy Bragg was one of my favourite artists earlier this year! However, I didn’t love this, it was pretty similar throughout and quite boring. The first few tracks were great, but after that, they started to feel a bit basic, that is, with the exception of the outro track, another standout! The quality of these tracks are not reflective of their work outside of the collaboration. I’d be willing to listen to this again to see if my opinion changes, but I didn’t love it upon my first listen.
Wow! I never really listened Johnny Cash’s music, it seemed quite typical and unoriginal, but this album is brilliant! The banter between songs, especially with the prisoners, was funny and tragic at the same time, but I loved when Cash was thanking the warden and all of the prisoners booed! As for the songs, they were very enjoyable, I particularly admire Cash’s courage to play ‘San Quentin’. The entire song is simply complaining about the quality of prisons, describing them as “hell” and talking about those who die there. Knowing Cash’s stance on prison reform, this just makes the whole album 10 times better!
While I typically love Bob Marley’s music, this album wasn’t something that I particularly loved. It was enjoyable and I definitely wasn’t having a bad time whilst listening to it, but its lack of energy at times made it a harder listen than his better works such as ‘Exodus’. This album showcases some interesting instrumentation and obviously Marley’s iconic voice, though, as I previously mentioned, the lack of energy made it less appealing than some of his other music.
My opinion has VASTLY changed! After giving a real relisten, I loved this! Aside from the ‘Swamp Song’ interludes, every single track was great, I particularly love ‘Hello’, ‘Roll With It’, ‘Morning Glory’ and ‘Champagne Supernova’. I have always loved Blur, so I think I went in pretty closed-minded last time, but this time I went in unbiased and I think that it was necessary to do that. It’s not flawless, some tracks (I’m talking about you ‘Hey Now!’!) dragged on for longer than they needed while remaining pretty basic. I think the phenomenal ‘Champagne Supernova’ immediately brings the album up a few points, but as a whole it was very consistently enjoyable!
I’ve heard a few songs by Steely Dan before. I didn’t really want to explore their discography, but they seemed pretty good. When I realised this was my album to listen to today in the 1001 generator, I was disappointed, I’d been getting some really good albums. However, this took me by surprise! It’s an earlier album by them and isn’t quite as overproduced as I was expecting. It was just a pretty fun high-energy and jazzy Soft Rock album. It was very catchy and fun, and, while the quality drops in the second half, there’s the brilliant title track! The first few were also great!
I absolutely love Paul Simon! This isn’t his greatest album, but it really just shows his talent perfectly! It has its darker moments, but really makes you feel good throughout. The guitar work is brilliant as per usual, utilising acoustic guitar, as a guitarist myself, I can safely say that the guitar in Paul Simon’s work, as well as in Simon & Garfunkel, is incredibly difficult! It isn’t flashy, but really fits the Folk Rock and Singer-Songwriter style!
It’s really a shame that this album has weaker moments. At its best moments, this album has some near perfect tracks, particularly ‘Getting Bright At Night’. However, so much of this album is generic, pretty much the entire second half feels like filler with a couple decent moments. On the other hand, I did particularly enjoy the Noise Rock-focused parts with guitar feedback, I think it made the album more interesting and gave it depth. Although I was very disappointed at the lack of consistency, at least I’ve discovered a few new songs that I really enjoy, though they were few and far between!
This is a really enjoyable album! it definitely peaks very early into the album, I think 'Something For The Weekend' should have been more central, around track 6 or 7. The first 3 tracks are brilliant and pretty fun, the last 2 also were, as well as 'If You Don't Want Me To Destroy You'. Essentially, what I'm saying is that this album might fall off towards the middle, but you're never far from a great track and even the weakest tracks are still fun!
What a fun album! From a musical perspective, this isn't brilliant, typical Western guitar and some basic bass. However, the songwriting is fantastic, I mentioned this last time, but it's necessary, it's an album all about Cowboy storytelling. The highlight of the album for me was 'Big Iron', but 'El Paso' was a close second! Lots of people struggle to enjoy this album because of its 'Cowboy' style and can't look past some of the dated factors, but I think it's necessary to take into account the culture of when the album was released to get a proper understanding of the album's meaning!
This was boring. It's Punk, a genre I don't particularly love, but it's also really same-y throughout. 'White Girl' was a great track, but I really don't think there's anything else to write about it. It has some catchier tracks, however, if I was wanting Punk music of high-quality, I would look elsewhere. Ray Manzarek produced it as well, what a fall-off! From playing keyboard in one of the greatest bands of all-time to producing a weak Punk album!
This is a Trip-Hop masterpiece! Blue Lines is my first impression of Massive Attack; it's safe to say that I have very high hopes for the rest of their work! I haven't listened to much music in the Trip-Hop genre, but I definitely will after hearing this. Mezzanine is another album by Massive Attack that I'm now motivated to listen to, I already know and love 'Angel' and 'Teardrop' from that album. On this album though, I'd have to say that 'Safe From Harm' was the obvious highlight, it was a perfect introduction and really introduces you to the themes and style of the album. I wasn't quite as fond of the Reggae-style tracks, I love Reggae music, but some of the Trip-Hop elements don't work very well with it! Tricky is an absolute legend and it was great to hear him on this album, but most of the highlights were from Shara Nelson, someone who I hadn't heard of before this!
This is what people mean by Dad-Rock ! Admittedly, it's not great. Instrumentally, Frampton proves to be a great guitarist, but that isn't everything that makes music enjoyable. The lyrics aren't good at all, they lack any real meaning and aren't creative. However, the guitar solos are brilliant and there is obvious talent present on this album, these are the only things that stops this album from being weak though!
This is my second Johnny Cash album I have got from the generator in the space of 2 weeks. With most artists, I’d be disappointed having to hear multiple albums in a short space, but Johnny Cash is something special! In this album you can really hear his age, his voice is weaker and during his legendary cover of ‘Hurt’, he sounds as if he really is! ‘In My Life’ was a solid cover of The Beatles hit, though I think that The Beatles’ original was more emotional, despite Cash’s older voice making it sound more hopeless. ‘We’ll Meet Again’ was a perfect end to this album, it starts off deep, but really plateaus from an emotional standpoint when the choir enters, the Vera Lynn version was played at one of my family member’s funeral so the song has an even bigger meaning to me!
I didn't enjoy this as much as my first listen. There are highlights like 'If I Should Fall From Grace With God', 'Bottle Of Smoke' and 'Fairytale Of New York', but there's far too much filler. From 'Fiesta' there was only 1 or 2 tracks that I actually enjoyed. I'm not even going to mention 'Worms'! At least it's so short that you don't have to count it as a real factor in the album's rating, if you did, the album would be MUCH worse! As a whole, there is some notable tracks, but they are all in the first 15 minutes of the album and the worst tracks are very bland.
This fell off towards the end, but as someone who hates this style of music, this was actually solid! The first 3 tracks as well as 'The Story Of Beauty' were my favourite songs, the production was surprisingly great and despite the very generic style, there were some genuinely interesting lyrics! I don't like Destiny's Child's music and I didn't love this album, but this exceeded my expectations. I was expecting it to be awful, but instead it was tolerable with some highlights!
This is so groovy! From the first track to the last it was just constant funkiness and was insanely enjoyable! There are so many songs that have been sampled and I recognised such as ‘I’m Shady’ by Eminem sampling ‘Pusherman’ and ‘Egg Man’ by Beastie Boys sampling the title track! There isn’t too much to say aside from that, but it’s just exactly what you want in a Funk album, there’s gorgeous vocals and arrangements and an irresistible groove throughout. I hate dancing, but I felt like standing up and just feeling the music, this is surely a good sign for the music!
I love this style of music, but I unfortunately think that this was pretty weak. After getting 'Superfly' as my previous album from the generator, I was really looking forward to this, but it seems that Superfly was so strong that this just pales in comparison! They are both very funky Soul albums that serve as a soundtrack to iconic Blaxploitation movies, but I think that this album tries too hard compared to the beauty of Superfly. For example, 'Do Your Thing' is nearly 20 minutes, but I wouldn't say that anything too interesting happens after the first several minutes, it almost feels self-indulgent! I can appreciate some of the other soundtrack pieces, particularly 'Cafe Regio's', they were all pleasant with some interesting moments, but the absence of Hayes' vocals is quite disappointing. Conclusively, this album has some clear highlights, but feels unnecessarily long and has several moments throughout where uninteresting moments can drag.
Again, the score stays the same. Upon this relisten, I enjoyed 'I'm Waiting For The Day' and 'Pet Sounds' significantly more than in my previous listens! 'You Still Believe In Me' also stood out more, the harmonies are some of the best on the album. 'I Know There's An Answer' remained one of my least favourite tracks, while it's very enjoyable, I don't think that it's close to the high quality of every other song on the album.
This was great! After seeing some mixed reviews, I was skeptical about this, people especially hated the last track. I ended up really liking the albums as a whole, the first track is brilliant and despite being unconventional, the last track was actually really interesting and even funny! I can see where the appeal is lost, it’s quite experimental, but this a great, more artistic take on punk, it’s really interesting!
This has to be one of the greatest pop albums ever released! 'Shout', 'Everybody Wants To Rule The World', 'Mothers Talk' and 'Head Over Heels' are completely flawless songs, definitely some of the greatest ever released, but it's not like the other tracks are bad. In comparison, they're weaker, but it'd be very unfair to judge these tracks because they aren't perfect! My favourite would have to be 'Head Over Heels', there just aren't any other songs quite like it, the other ones that I claimed to be flawless are, but 'Head Over Heels' is in a league of its own!
This was my first impression of The White Stripes! I knew a couple of their hits, but this is the first time I've deliberately listened to one of their albums - I'm very impressed! It's primarily a high-energy Garage Rock album with hits like 'Seven Nation Army' and 'Ball And Biscuit', but there are softer moments. The 2 least liked songs are generally 'You've Got Her In Your Pocket' and 'Well It's True That We Love One Another', but I loved both of them! 'You've Got Her In Your Pocket' is actually in my top 5 from the album! I'll definitely be giving some more of their music (As well as some of Jack's solo music!) a listen in the future as this was a really enjoyable and catchy album!
This was fun, but incredibly generic. It's Britpop, so I wasn't expecting anything more than that, the songs are catchy, but they're very similar to each other as well as those of other Britpop artists. There were some real highlights of the Britpop era and it was great for people to start bands with their friends and sometimes make it big, but bands like Elastica show that there isn't always lots of progression from when writing an EP in your garage to making a major album. I really enjoyed 'Annie' and 'S.O.F.T.' as well as several others, but most were too similar to warrant separate mentions.
This wasn't downright bad, the first 3 tracks were actually really enjoyable! However, this album does feel like one long repetitive song! The lyrics don't really mean anything, but some of them are terrible and extremely cringeworthy, but the guitar is the main attraction so I wasn't expecting any insightful or intelligent lyrics. Hard Rock is very hit-or-miss, but I've found that it's often very repetitive and most albums in the genre have a couple hits then a whole lot of filler. This fits that description perfectly.
I don't like Coldplay. This is stronger than most of the music of theirs that I had previously heard, but this isn't great. The first 6 tracks were great, I don't love 'The Scientist', it's far too pop-centred for my liking, but 'Clocks' (Despite also being a major pop hit!) was much better and a lot more enjoyable. After 'Clocks', the album took a significant decline in quality and I didn't love a single track after it.
This is such a unique album. There’s so much freedom and energy on this album and I can really see why Cobain chose these guys for the iconic performance! This whole album is bursting with quirkiness and rawness! Continuing with my Nirvana comparison, the singer uses a similar vocal style to Cobain’s screeching, pushing their voice past the limits and getting a raspy sound, it’s very impressive! This is definitely an album that I’d revisit and I’d love to explore some more of Meat Puppets’ work, especially if any of it sounds like this!
This was boring. Britpop is a pretty uninteresting genre aside from some exceptions (Blur, Pulp, Suede [if you aren't Luke Haines!] The Auteurs, etc) - this isn’t one of them. It starts off with a couple decent tracks that aren’t anything special, but when you get about half-way through, it’s just impossible to enjoy! Nothing stands out and it’s actually bad at certain points. I didn’t hate this album, but I’d be very reluctant to revisit it.
This is a really weird one. I think that its biggest flaw is its biggest appeal, but also the reason why many people don’t like it. It’s just a very unusual album as a whole, imagine party music with crazy vocals and strange lyrics. There’s obviously the hit ‘Rock Lobster’, but aside from that I was very confused with what the albums was trying to do. This seems like the sort of album to have a cult following that thinks it’s the best album to ever be released! I didn’t really see the appeal, but I found it to be a fun listen!
This was really fun, but it definitely falls off quickly! The opener obviously had mixed reception due to his usage of the N-word, but he is playing the part of a redneck and used it satirically - pretty much mocking the racists! The rest of the albums fails to reach the heights of that song though, as it’s the highlight of the album; the rest of the album is a lot more generic, but anything Randy Newman makes is guaranteed to be an enjoyable listen!
This definitely falls off in the second half, I adored the first 3 tracks, but after that it became quite tiring. None of the songs were weak, but I kept getting distracted because none of the later songs really grabbed my attention. I wasn’t expecting to like any of this album, but I did end up enjoying a select few songs, so at least it was better than I expected!
Upon my first listen of this album, I was disappointed, it seemed fairly generic and was weaker than some of the bands that they would later inspire. However, now that I have relistened with greater knowledge surrounding The Strokes and their music, it's safe to say that this is one of the greatest albums of the 2000s! My favourite tracks were 'Is This It', 'Someday', 'Last Nite', 'Hard To Explain' and - surprisingly - 'Trying Your Luck'! I remember not particularly enjoying 'The Modern Age', despite it frequently being cited as a highlight from the album, but even on my relisten, I struggled to see the appeal, it was the one of the least interesting on the album! I don't think that there were any tracks that I disliked, but 'New York City Cops' is probably the least brilliant. Sadly, I don't really enjoy any of The Strokes' work after this, I particularly don't love 'Room On Fire' even though it's considered equal or superior to this album.
What a masterpiece! Seriously, this is some of the best Hip-Hop I have heard in a long time! This was produced by J Dilla and Kanye, arguably while both of them were at their very best and mixing that with the talent of Common, this is easily one of the greatest Rap albums of the 21st Century! 'GO!' and 'Faithful' were my favourite tracks, but it would be ignorant not to recognise every tracks as phenomenal. 'Testify' and 'Real People' were the weakest, but not many rappers (Or music artists in general!) would ever dream of making tracks as brilliant as them!
First of all, Dolly Parton sadly died yesterday. R.I.P, she seemed like a great person and made some great music, my negative opinion from this album doesn't reflect my feelings about the people involved, they're all fantastic, but this album doesn't present them that way. The cover is absolutely horrendous, but the music is also pretty awful! There were a couple tracks early on that I enjoyed, but after 'Wildflowers', there wasn't a single song that stood out and some were actually bad. It's a shame, each member is immensely talented, but together, they made one of the most generic and boring albums that I have ever heard.
This was decent. The opening track was brilliant, it was definitely the highlight of the album for me, but the rest was quite basic. I didn’t dislike any of it, but it felt pretty generic and similar throughout. There were a couple of better tracks towards the end, but it stayed consistent in being simply mediocre. I loved the first track though, that definitely save the album from being boring!
This remains one of Dylan’s best musical achievements! From ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ to ‘Desolation Row’ there isn’t really a single flaw, but there are definitely high points. Both of the aforementioned tracks as well as ‘Tombstone Blues’ and ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man’ are arguably some of his greatest tracks overall. This album has a similar level of quality to ‘Blonde On Blonde’, but encapsulates it into a single record with his iconic ‘Electric’ style. To this day I prefer acoustic Dylan (Some of Bringing It All Back Home and Blonde On Blonde as well as the criminally underrated John Wesley Harding!), but if any album was going to make me love ‘Electric’ Dylan - it would be this one!
I think people can be a bit harsh on this album. It can be quite unfunny at times, but it’s quite theatrical and I find it literally impossible to not enjoy 2 Tone music! It might be a bit corny at times, but the album is so fun and bright that I can totally put the bad parts aside and enjoy this!
I have never loved Elton John’s music, I found a lot of it to be too safe or just not interesting, but this is a brilliant shift from the work of his that I had previously heard! ‘Tiny Dancer’ is obviously the big hit from this album, everyone knows the chorus and it’s one of his greatest tracks, but ‘Indian Sunset’ surprised me, it might have been my favourite on the album! Some of those high-pitched vocals and the storytelling are amazing and unlike anything else I have heard from Elton. I will definitely give some more of his early music a listen now that I’ve enjoyed this!
This is exactly what I expected when I saw it was ZZ Top - an incredibly generic Blues Rock album with a couple fun tracks. While I didn’t hate this album, it was definitely a less enjoyable listen than most 70s rock, there’s no innovation and it’s just very basic overall. It has their big hit ‘La Grange’, but again, it’s quite mediocre compared to other artists’ hits.
There are some great tracks on this, particularly 'Ladybird (Green Grass)', 'It's A Curse' and 'Paranoia Man In Cheap Shit Room', but as a whole, it felt quite mediocre consistently. It was always fun and catchy, but I felt like there was a fundamental part missing. The vocals are great and I found the unusual last track to be interesting, but there just wasn't enough consistency for me to really love it.
This album has everything, from Classic Rock to Folk to Hard Rock to Avant-Garde, but it never loses any quality. 'Wild Honey Pie' and 'Revolution 9' are considered the weakest - or least accessible! - tracks on the album, but the former is too short to really dislike and the latter really grows on you, I find myself enjoying 'Revolution 9' often! Despite its large runtime, there are rarely moments of boredom as it is incredibly consistent, even by The Beatles' standards. The one issue with this album though is the fact that you can hear The Beatles collapse. Throughout their previous 2-3 albums, you hear each member develop their own sound, Paul's is whimsical, John's is cynical, George's is spiritual and Ringo rarely gets time to do anything except for masterfully accompanying with wit and drums, but while their unique musical styles are shown on this album, it becomes clearer that their only connection as a band is their instrumentation. The deceptive Lennon-McCartney credits mislead you to think that the songs are collaborations, but did John really contribute anything to 'Blackbird'? Over the next year, they would collapse through the catastrophic 'Let It Be' sessions, but after the trip to India, nothing was the same for The Beatles.
This wasn’t terrible, but it was definitely lacking in variety. Every track sounds the exact same and has that really irritating polished 80s feel. ‘Absolute’ was solid and sounds like something off of 1999 by Prince, but the whole album had a very generic and pointless synth-led theme and really didn’t appeal to me.
I’m not really into the clubbing and dancing scene, but this album is clearly designed for that atmosphere; it was definitely an unusual listen while sitting down on my sofa! However, despite this, I still really enjoyed it. I didn’t know that Fatboy Slim made half of these songs, lots of them were very recognisable and incredibly famous - ‘Praise You’ and ‘The Rockafeller Skank’ in particular. This wasn’t some masterpiece, but it was a very easy listen and put me in a good mood.
I definitely enjoyed this. The first track was great, but it was definitely the weakest of the bunch. The rest of the album has quite a typical Prog and Jazz Fusion theme that was intriguing, but didn't blow me away. By the end of the album, I had had enough, but it's surprising quite how entertaining this is for an album that lasts over an hour - most albums start dragging much earlier!
I don't quite know how to describe this, it's very psychedelic, but also strangely hypnotic. I've not heard much Krautrock music before and haven't heard anything by Can before, but this has definitely piqued my curiosity; the whole album is very strange, particularly the 20-minute long closer 'Bel-Air'. My favourite track would have to be 'Moonshake' though, it was just so weird - I loved it!
