Regardless of one's opinion of Jackson as a person, it is clear that he left an indelible mark on the history of pop music. This becomes apparent when listening to this album, which features multiple bona fide classics. "Beat It", "Billie Jean" and also the fun, horror-themed "Thriller" stand out as clear highlights. "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" is also regarded as a classic, but to my ears it sounds a bit repetitive. Unfortunately, the album also includes an embarrassingly awful duet with Paul McCartney, "The Girl Is Mine", which should've been tossed into the recording studio trash can. Nevertheless, this is a really good album.
This was a fun listen. Lauper's singing style is idiosyncratic and won't please everyone, but I like it (in shortish bursts). The first six songs are all good to great but then the album loses a bit of steam at the end. There are no truly bad tracks here, although the sub-one-minute piece of filler "He's So Unusual" could've been left out.
A very mellow and pleasant jazz record, perfect for relaxing on a summer's afternoon. "The Girl from Ipanema" is the obvious stand out track but I enjoyed the whole album and wouldn't be averse to listening to it again sometime in the near future. The sound quality was great, too.
The album opens interestingly enough but soon it turns into a slog to get through. Almost all the songs sound way too repetitive, which is why I nearly fell asleep several times. I listened to the album twice, and the same thing happened both times. So the music is pretty soporific and on top of that the lyrics seem to be nothing more than a stream of thought, without any deeper meaning. Not my cuppa tea.
An improvement over the debut album, but even so this isn't a particularly exciting effort. For one thing, a major problem is that I don't really like Thom Yorke's whiny vocal style. Secondly, with a few exceptions, the songs are a bit samey and unengaging. The first few tracks and the album closer "Street Spirit" are pretty good, though. I wouldn't say the listening experience was unpleasant, but I wouldn't go out of my way to play this album very often.
One of the best albums I've heard in a long while. Inventive in every respect, excellent instrumentation, stellar guitar work, and dark yet captivating lyrics about voodoo dolls, severed heads, Halloween and whatnot. Moody and atmospheric throughout with dramatic vocals by Siouxsie Sioux. How could I not love this record? Now I also want to listen to the band's other albums.
It's been quite a while since I last listened to such a sleep-inducingly stodgy album. Musically this is bland and derivative folk rock. None of the songs are memorable and most of the lyrics are just tiresome whining about everything possible under the sun. It gets exhausting very fast. Grant has quite a good voice, I'll give him that, but otherwise I got nothing out of this album but utter boredom.
This is a very well-produced (and uniquely titled) soul album that strikes a good balance between slower ballads and funkier tracks. The entire record is consistently great, but if forced to choose favorites, I would pick the wonderfully positive "Smile Please," the truly groovy "Boogie On Reggae Woman," and the spiritual "Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away." Maybe not quite Wonder's best album, but it's still excellent and I enjoyed it a lot - in fact, I listened to it twice in a row.
Tedious, headache-inducing computer music exercise, overlaid with guest vocalists occasionally chanting incomprehensible nonsense. This album didn't engage me in any way whatsoever and actually actively annoyed the living daylights out of me. Perhaps this was innovative back in the day, but I didn't like this kind of stuff then, and I still don't. An appallingly boring and overlong album to suffer through.
This live jazz album is chock full of rambling improvisation that doesn't always lead anywhere. There are six songs and although undoubtedly very well played, none of them struck me as particularly memorable or engaging. I have to be in the mood for some heavy noodling to really enjoy this kind of stuff. A perfectly decent jazz record and the sound quality is surprisingly vivid.
I hated this album back in the day, and my opinion hasn't changed after a couple of additional listens. The music is pretty experimental electronic pop and I didn't connect with it on any level. Due to Björk's peculiar (or should I say downright annoying) vocal style and poor enunciation, I couldn't understand half the lyrics, though that hardly mattered. I quite liked the production, but that's about it for this album's redeeming qualities.
A very synth-heavy pop/rock album that makes for a pretty interesting listen overall. It features a few excellent tracks, such as "Zero," "Heads Will Roll," and especially the energetic "Dull Life." The rest of the record isn't quite of the same quality, though there aren't any bad songs either. I really like Karen O's vocals, although the lyrics feel a bit meaningless across the board. Oh well, that doesn't really matter. The bonus acoustic versions are also quite nice. All in all, this was a nice find.
I don't usually like hip hop and practically never listen to it, so I am the wrong person to compare this album to other examples of the genre. I can say, though, that the lyrics are somewhat amusing, juvenile, and at times startlingly transgressive, though mostly they amount to a stream of consciousness. Otherwise, the soundscape consists of repetitive beats and various sound effects that I quickly grew tired of. Honestly, listening to this album was an ordeal and I had to split it into two sessions.
My first thought about this album was "what in the name of all that is holy am I listening to?". Soon I was starting to get a slight headache and I had to turn the volume way down. On the surface this album sounds like pure chaos and cacophony, an unstructured assault on the senses in the form of a jazz record. The whole thing is played at breakneck speed. This is pretty extreme jazz, not something to relax to, which means it's not for me. I do have to give John Zorn props for making something so out of the ordinary. Special mention for the rad cover art.
I have previously only heard the album "Dookie" by this band, and compared to that, this release is more mature both musically and lyrically, though that's not saying very much. The album's political and social commentary borders on superficial, but thankfully the music is good. The songs are diverse for punk rock, ranging from shortish, sub-three-minute tracks to minor epics approaching ten minutes in length and comprising multiple sections. The early tracks are particularly good, but the quality doesn't really drop towards the end, either.
I guessed from the cover that this is a hip hop album, and sure enough I was right. I usually don't enjoy hip hop much at all, so this was a pretty painful listen. I gotta be honest, when the music is this simple and repetitive the chances of the album getting even a mediocre rating from me were fairly low from the start. After a couple of songs, I began to lose whatever little interest I had in the album, and soon I could no longer keep up with the lyrics and zoned out. I am reviewing these purely subjectively, so this album gets one star.
It isn't quite as painful to listen to as most hip hop, but I certainly can't call this even a mediocre album in good conscience. It falls prey to the genre's standard pitfalls: repetitiveness, tediousness, and annoying lyrics filled with posturing and a barrage of profanity. While there are a few halfway decent tracks included, the skits between them are just stupid. I became thoroughly numb to it all by the halfway mark, though I persevered until the end - unfortunately my endurance went unrewarded. Over seventy minutes of rap at a stretch is way too much, even if the quality were better than it is on this album.
