REM have always been on a different level because they knew how to blend catchy musicality with lyrical potency. The protest song Orange Crush—which, with a stand, were radio favorites-is a great example it by reflecting that same spirit that Sophocles exhibited in Antigone questioning war thousands of years before, but doing it in under five minutes for the masses. Example #2: World Leader Pretend. I had never heard this album all the way through, and I’m glad I finally was given the time. Aside from Automatic for the People, this could be their best album. I was most surprised how much I liked the very folk-Zeppelin-IV-style song Hairshirt. Mike Mills really is the secret weapon of REM both vocally and musically, especially on You Are Everything. This album is powerful without being pretentious. This is worth returning for.
Ok! This is pretty good.
Welcome to the working week was an awesome start. I thought it was upbeat, and so much fun. While Miracle Man didn’t carry quite the same energy, it still had some absolutely awesome guitar and a pretty cool melody.
No dancing had such a good groove to it and so did Don’t blame it on Cain. Alison was quite sweet. Sneaky feelings was right back to the fun melodies of this album. I loved Angels wanna wear my red shoes! It was genuinely great.
Mystery dance was so much fun! Pay it back was a bop. I also really liked waiting for the end of the world. Watching the detectives was a bit weird as it almost changed the genre, but was a decent way to end the album.
4/5 ⭐️
224/1089
How have I lived this long without this album in my life. It’s a surrealist experience to listen to an album 30 years afterwards, and I can pinpoint exactly which top artists today were directly influenced by Fugees. I feel like I can hear Lauryn Hill’s impact on every Doechii track. Fastest 5 stars I’ve given, and I made my mind up even before listening to the staggering song that is Mista Mista. I immediately want to run it back again, and I just might.
Love this record! I like all their first five records. In some ways I could pick the debut LP as the best, with it's rougher energy aligned more to post-punk. Or I could convince myself that Speaking in Tongues is the best, with its smoother take on new-wave-funk. But ultimately, Remain in Light is the gem of their discography because it sits at the crossroads of those two sounds. I love the zany disco-punk kind of sound, which feels like being transplanted onto a dance floor in an alternative reality. I love David Byrne's eccentric charisma and memorable, surreal songwriting. It's a memorable and unique record, and I'm pretty sure you could play any ten notes from this and it would be immediately recognisable as Talking Heads material. Play another ten notes, and you'll already be dancing and having fun. 5*
I was so looking forward to the day the generator would throw this one at me and it's finally here
I've been genuinely smiling throughout, this is so funny, tongue in cheek, clever and comes from a deep love of music - Booker Tease is just an example of how brilliant this is
SEMOLINA! SEMOLINA!
I would have been about 13 or 14 when a slightly older school mate mockingly suggested that Autobahn was the sort of thing that I would like. I remember him sarcastically singing "fun fun fun on the autobahn" (as he pronounced it) like it was the most ridiculous song ever. I didn't actually know anything about Kraftwerk at that stage but mentally filed it away for future reference on the assumption that, if an obnoxious prick like him hated it, there must something worth investigating. A year or so later I picked up a copy from the Ashfield Record Bar in Hercules St -- I assume it was cheap, I didn't have much money -- and it became a core part of my nascent record collection. Not owning many LPs, I listened to this a lot.
The sound of this album has become such a part of the mainstream that it is hard to remember how fresh it once sounded. Minimal, repetitive synth pop is everywhere now, but it started here. While the 7" edit of the title track was a mere novelty for many, the album stretched to explore the possibilities of the synthesizer and suggested a whole new approach. I would argue that Autobahn is not as influential (or possibly even as good) as their following four albums, which set became unlikely influences on pop, electro and hip hop. It sounds a bit dated these days.
But I have a nostalgic love of Autobahn because it was a special record for me in my teens. I think my school mate had this pegged as nerd music, played by nerds and only fit for nerds like me. And it is true that Kraftwerk (and I) were nerds. But it was rare in the early 80s for a nerdy kid like me to have musical heroes that I could relate to.
Eventually the nerds would conquer the world, and Kraftwerk would be hailed as the innovators they were, despite the fact that they have essentially rested on their laurels for the past 40-odd years. Personally, I quite liked Electric Cafe, the last all-new album they released. I bought it on release, and I really dig the crisp, super-minimal, lock-step funkiness, especially on the first side. Most people consider it a flop, and it seems to have shattered Kraftwerk's creative operating model. Since then, it has been remixes, the odd "event" single, and increasingly elaborate live shows showcasing their classic catalogue. People say the shows are amazing, but I haven't felt the need to see them live -- the records are perfect.
Hot take I guess, but pop is way overrated, unless it's truly phenomenal in composition and execution. Forgot this the moment I listened to it, and before that it was mildly annoying. Really, just, like... Whatever. Give me dadrock or buttrock any day over this.
Like your experience of listening to Doggystyle last week, I was embarrassed to have The Marshall Mathers LP on when Aislinn walked into the room. The ubiquity of its singles in 2000 should have dulled that embarrassment. It's not as though she hasn't heard these words before. I'd only known the censored radio edits as a teenager, but the missing blanks never concealed much; the internal rhymes usually made the omitted slurs obvious enough. She also knows about this project, so if she catches me listening to something objectionable she'll ask whether it's our album of the day. There is, in other words, an acceptable reason to find me deluged by a torrent of "sluts" and "faggots". Even so, I wanted the headphones back on. Like pornography, certain forms of art change when another person enters the room. The embarrassment is no longer private. The problem is that, unlike pornography, there was no escaping Eminem in 2000. His work was everywhere: buses, shopping centres, bedrooms, MTV.
That ubiquity raises a question that has never really gone away. Challenging art often depends upon context. A line such as "You cheap, lousy faggot" in Fairytale of New York has an artistic function inside the song that disappears once it becomes something drunken strangers bellow every December. The song really is more of the order of a Eugene O'Neill play than a pop hit - the industry forces a category error. Elvis Costello recognised a similar problem with Oliver's Army, suggesting radio stations simply stop playing it rather than rewrite a lyric whose meaning depended on dramatic and historic context. Interestingly, the source of the problem is the appearance of the one offensive word that Eminem studiously avoids using. Art earns a certain licence because it asks us to enter a protected imaginative space. Pop music, however, is designed to escape that space. It leaks into supermarkets, taxis and children's bedrooms whether we invite it or not.
The question, then, is whether The Marshall Mathers LP deserves that artistic licence.
Its defenders generally argue two things. First, that the album is a satirical defence of free speech, saying outrageous things precisely to test tue boundaries and expose society's hypocrisies. Second, that the record stages a dialogue between Marshall Mathers, Eminem and Slim Shady, in the wake of his initial success, allowing one persona to critique another. If either argument holds, then the ugliness of the language becomes part of a larger artistic design rather than an end in itself. Neither argument holds.
Genuinely transgressive artists usually risk something. Momus, for instance, was sued over songs by Wendy Carlos and the Michelin corporation. The physical albums containing the songs were destroyed and he lost substantial sums in the process. His targets were specific, identifiable and powerful enough to answer back. Eminem's provocations rarely work like that. The album attacks journalists, celebrities and campaigners often enough, but its deepest reserves of venom are directed towards women and gay men: groups broad enough to symbolise anything he wishes and too diffuse to answer collectively. If satire punches anywhere, it usually punches down.
Chris Morris understood this better. His parody of Eminem, JLB8, is funnier than anything on The Marshall Mathers LP precisely because the self-appointed provocateur had himself become a worthy target. Satire gains force when directed at power, hypocrisy or certainty. It loses force when outrage becomes the point. The only person to sue Eminem was his own mother, a reminder that the work is soap opera rather than critique.
The album's central contradiction arrives with Stan. It remains its masterpiece because it imagines, however briefly, the consequences of treating violent fantasy as emotional truth. Eminem responds to an obsessive fan not with mockery but with patience, urging him to seek help, cherish his pregnant girlfriend and recognise the difference between entertainment and life. His reply arrives too late. Stan has already driven off the bridge.
If the whole record possessed the moral seriousness of that final verse, The Marshall Mathers LP might be a far richer work. Instead, the following song immediately retreats into incredulity. Who Knew acts as though the very suggestion that songs might influence people were absurd. No reasonable listener believes artists are directly responsible for crimes committed by their fans. That isn't the issue. The issue is that Stan itself demonstrates Eminem understands communication carries consequences. He writes an entire song about precisely that. Having recognised the problem, he immediately pretends not to. No serious person could write the concluding verse of Stan sincerely and then release the album as it is.
That pattern runs throughout the record. Whenever responsibility approaches, somebody else is blamed. The record company wants him to be outrageous. Hip hop, his chosen genre, rewards violence. His childhood damaged him. Slim Shady said it. Eminem said it. Marshall Mathers merely watched. The album's defining characteristic isn't rage but evasion. It continually insists that nothing is really under its author's control.
Sartre called this bad faith: the comforting fiction that we are merely the products of circumstance rather than agents capable of choosing differently. The Marshall Mathers LP is saturated with it. Eminem presents himself as both the most powerful voice in popular music and the least responsible person in the room. But he had a choice.
That's what ultimately distinguishes him from performers like Jerry Sadowitz. Sadowitz understand that transgression works because it is contained. Audiences knowingly entered a room where normal rules are suspended before returning to ordinary life. Eminem wanted no such containment. His record company wanted these songs on heavy rotation. He wanted them there too. The point wasn't simply to offend but to offend millions and profit from the offense. It was not enough that he denied his own capacity to choose, he denied the public choice as well. No one could avoid his vomit and vitriol. We were all subject to the desires of a juvenile demographic and the companies that would exploit their worst impulses.
That commercial ambition is crucial because the album repeatedly mistakes mass exposure for artistic courage. There is nothing inherently brave about saying offensive things when every mechanism of popular culture is amplifying them. He attacks journalists and celebrities and other rappers, never anyone with the power to shut him down, never anyone who is actually affected by his bile. Indeed, the existence of both explicit and clean editions demonstrates how comfortably outrage could coexist with market expansion. Where Momus had records destroyed, Eminem diversifies his portfolio - a version with inexorable Kim and one without. Where Momus loses out, Eminem and his company maximise profits.
None of this would matter so much if the music justified it. Dr. Dre's production is fine, giving Eminem ample room for to display his technical ability. His internal rhymes still tumble over themselves with a certain precision, and his command of rhythm is impressive. Yet technical brilliance continually serves dramatically thin material. The album mistakes escalation for development. Louder, nastier and more offensive becomes a substitute for saying anything new. Even Stan, for all its power, reveals Eminem's limitations as a dramatist. He awkwardly overexplains, drawing attention to the contrivance of the dramatic device when Stan questions how he will send the tape to Slim. Eminem's final sign-off, recognising that "it was... it was... you," is pure melodrama, reminding us again that the whole Eminem performance is soap opera. The worst offence, however, is in the strawman of Stan himself, at every opportunity, Eminem paints his number one fan as a fucking idiot - no idea how he'll send a tape from a submerged car; carefully printing the address in block capitals because writing by hand is hard. The barely contained contempt for his audience makes a mockery of the whole enterprise.
Actually, no, the greatest offence of Stan is the utter dreariness. One might try to pin this on Dido, whose Thank You provides the musical basis of the track, but her song has an actual chorus, there is harmonic movement and uplift, it goes somewhere. Stan is all mire with no release.
By the end of the record, what lingers isn't outrage but exhaustion. Every attack is somebody else's fault. Every excess belongs to another persona. Every criticism proves his enemies don't understand satire. Everybody else is shit. The album demands complete artistic freedom while declining the corresponding burden of artistic responsibility.
The Marshall Mathers LP is not a great work of transgressive art. It is a piece of commercial entertainment that appropriates the language of transgression while remaining remarkably safe within the structures that profit from it. Momus lost records. Costello withdrew his from radio. Genuine loss and genuine agency. Eminem sold millions of copies in two editions and became the biggest star on the planet.
The album's legacy isn't simply that it made offensive language mainstream. It helped normalise the idea that outrage is, in itself, a form of courage, and that refusing responsibility is a defence of free speech. Twenty-five years later, that seems far more significant than any individual slur and the impact is felt. The worst people online are called Stans and the right to be offensive is everywhere online and elsewhere. The cock-headed belief that lashing out is a defense of 'free speech' is the norm. I wouldn't say that this was Eminem's fault - he'd have a tantrum if I did - but he and his fellow angry boys contaminated the discourse for shits and giggles - and money, lots of money. They polluted the air and the media with self-indulgent shit-taking and now everything is clogged up with shit. "I never knew... I never knew..." he yaps. Well, now you know.
NB: I was walking the dog last night and there was a bunch of teens on the promenade, hurling stones, harassing old people, just destroying everything around them. One of them was wearing a Slim Shady t-shirt. So I'm knocking off another half star. -0.5
This album qualified as a cultural event no doubt - I remember the buzz about it among many of our peers in school. I expect there were young men who listened to almost nothing else that year. If that’s a sad thought it’s also perfectly understandable - here’s an album not only remote from the burden of substantive musical material (as most rap albums are) but which is also remote from the lyrical world of gangster rap. Eminem is excluded from offering any spin on the story of the black experience in America or the gang experience so all that’s left to him is the nihilism, the vulgarity and the self-aggrandisement. The Marshall Mathers LP proved ideal for young men with no real interest in music (two bars, round and round and round) and equally with no real interest in rap. Eminem’s facility for cartoonish provocation was gold in an era in which South Park was the coolest show on TV. South Park was very funny - exactly because it understood where public discourse (and popular art) had drawn the lines and when to cross them. Eminem had no such awareness, no such wit - just a limitless energy for the proliferation of images with which he could degrade himself and his audience. It was hard for young men to tell the difference in 2000, it is frightening to contemplate their struggle in 2026.
That Will Smith line is funny though.
0.5/5
It's an art pop wunderkammer, full of intricate, exquisite and beautiful crafted objects. I can admire it, but I wish the tunes were a bit catchier, you know? Great cover art, though.
Interestingly, once this album finished playing, spotify kept playing similar female art pop artists, and many of those songs caught my attention much more than FKA Twigs. Bjork, Sophie, Weyes Blood, Sky Ferreira, Fever Ray, St Vincent, Santigold, Flume all came up in the list following. This album was OK, but there is clearly a LOT of interesting, dynamic work happening in this field in the past decade or two. Not sure why this album....
In the early 90s I was in a short-lived band called 'Stuttgart Factory'. We had intended to play in the Sydney Uni band competition but never made it out of the rehearsal room. We had some old keyboards and a crappy drum machine and produced a few songs somewhere between homage and parody of The Man Machine-era Kraftwerk. The only songs I remember were 'Gimme Gimme Valium' and 'Deutsche Auto'. The lyrics were something like:
"Ist das ein Deutsche Auto?
Nein, das is ein Amerikanishe Auto.
Ist _das_ ein Deutsche Auto?
Nein, das ist ein Japanische Auto.
Deutsche Auto
(breathy whisper voice) Deutsch-aaahh."
Heady stuff. I wish I had a tape somewhere...
All synthpop is, in some way, a response to Kraftwerk; either embracing the cold "we are all robots" vibe (Gary Numan, for example) or reacting against with hyper-emotionalism (eg. Soft Cell or Depeche Mode). Kratfwerk's move from the ambient, musique concrete approach typical of synth bands of the 70s (Tangerine Dream, et al.) towards an embrace of pop forms was unexpected but genius. There are catchy tunes and jaunty beats and plenty of hooks here. You certainly couldn't accuse Tangerine Dream of those features.
The influence was surprisingly widespread and deep. I mean, who would have predicted Kraftwerk would be so central to early 80s hip hop? You can find elements of Kraftwerk in almost all popular music these days.
The Man Machine and Computer World are Kraftwerk at the height of their pop powers. Electric Cafe (an album I secretly quite like) "flopped", and they have basically rested on their well-deserved laurels ever since. But this is absolutely seminal, and a great listen.
Now THIS is how your rebound from a bad record! Bringing the funk, the soul, and a marvelously extended version of Papa Was A Rolling Stone (over a third of its overall run time), this one was a breathe of fresh air that didn't overstay its welcome and left plenty of time for a repeat performance. I'm going out on a strong limb saying that the mentioned track alone earns this one three stars, but the remainder (while groovy and eminently listenable) doesn't quite garner it two more. Still manages a very respectable 4.5/5 that I'm hesitant to round up without a good deal of revisiting and an improved estimation of its other tracks.
(4/5) I've always had mixed feelings about 'glam'/'hair metal'. I was a child when it was at its peak and was a teenager in the 90s, so its inglorious exit was fine by me. If a guitar didn't have a distortion effect on it I wouldn't give it the time of day. My flannels all had holes in them. That's how '90s' I was.
Time has passed however and so much of that which I dismissed out of hand, like Bon Jovi, has all come back to haunt me. I got really, really tired (with a few exceptions) of pretentious, self-serious music. Some bands stuck with me but a lot was sloughed off like a skin rash. On the other side of that I re-discovered that this big, dumb music from the 80s was really.. *FUN*. I slowly realized not all of my music needed to be some deep, introspection into the mysteries of the human psyche and nature. I wasn't sad all the time, so why did my music have to be? It was OK to chant along with a power chord chorus. I am allowed to smile at a song and bang my head to a catchy tune. This album is a good encapsulation of some of those feelings. Teenage me would be really disappointed in middle-aged me, but I don't give a shit. I want to have fun now and I could do worse than put on this album.
I am a record fiend from way back and I spend a lot of time trawling for bargains in dusty record stores. I have a special place in my heart for classic records that you commonly see for $1. Willie Nelson's Stardust is one of those records. It sold a bazillion copies back in the day but has fallen a bit out of favour, so it is common to find vinyl copies languishing in the bargain bins. It is an under-appreciated gem.
Willie Nelson might dress like a country outlaw, but secretly he is a jazzbo -- he always liked a clever chord, a surprisingly complex solo, and 'jazz' cigarettes. Especially the 'jazz' cigarettes. Willie obviously loves American popular song, and so do I. These are some of the greatest songs of all time. Willie knows and loves these songs and he deeply understands them. I love the modest and tasteful arrangements from Booker T. Jones, thankfully avoiding over-egging the pudding with strings or backing choirs. Willie's regular band plays with sympathetic and understated restraint. I like the road-weariness in Willie's voice -- it makes everything seem heartful and honest. It is a welcome opportunity to hear these classic songs with fresh ears.
Many artists have copied this concept with a late-career tribute to the American songbook, but few attempts approach the sincere beauty and warmth of this album.
This is an evergreen album I can happily listen to any day.
I was interested in what you said yesterday about Bitches Brew being treated and effected in the studio, making it more of a rock record than a jazz document. It did more than just capture the performance in the room.
There is certainly a little of that going on here, but, still, I don't think that Kollaps is a record in that sense. Up until this point, Einstürzende Neubauten had been a notorious performance art group, banging sheet metal and miking up industrial tools. It was a ritual of extremity and, at one early London gig, they dangerously undermined the foundations of the venue.
There is nothing in that musical approach that really belongs on a record and nothing much about it that needs to be recorded. Kollaps suggests that the estranging, shamanic nature of the performance cannot be replicated in a studio and that, while the group may add a few effects here and there, or bewilder the listener with a meandering tracklist, to simulate the psychodrama of the live experience, this is not the real deal. It is, in fact, quite a soft, spare, gentle record for the most part. Most of the tracks have a clear 4/4 pulse, so, unlike Bitches Brew, you can follow along and you could quite easily dance. It would be a primitive, animalistic form of dance, but that's appropriate. With the record, you can set the volume yourself, so it won't be overwhelming. It is genuinely the safer option than seeing the group live.
But the recording is hardly the point. Making records is just what groups did back then. Like many great live acts (I use the work great advisedly, as I've never seen Neubauten live), the record is just a byproduct, another form of merc that supports the group in their actual goal. Who really listens to albums by Crass or Boredoms or Acid Mothers Temple? No one. Who went to see Crass and Boredoms or Acid Mothers Temples? Loads of people. Well, I've never seen Crass, but I've seen the other two and they were great experiences. Their records cannot replicate that greatness, but the records are a necessity of the business. They are a token by which listeners can demonstrate support of the band's artistic vision and mission. Ownership of a Crass record communicates your endorsement of the band's ethic. Ownership of Kollaps communicates your comfort with their live extremity, your hardiness, your wearwithal. No one expects you to listen to any of these things often. Indeed, the neutered, conservative quality of Kollaps might kill the whole thing for you.
Without this context, it is unfair to present Kollaps for assessment by randomers. The one star and five star reviews are equally hyperbolic, barely grappling with the flickering ghost content of this partial field recording. This is a solid three star record, whether or not I'm listening to it, because it has to be. Good for Neubauten. Keep it up! 3
“All music after Mahler sounds exactly like that.”
Captain Raymond Holt
The most striking thing about this (almost) most-despised of albums on this list of over a thousand, is how conservative it is. 4/4 dominates. Beats repeat in loop. The singer sings the title of the songs with rhythmic regularity. Most of the tracks are 2-3 minutes long. ‘Found Instruments’? John Cage was doing this on television in the 1950s. Stockhausen is on the cover of Sgt Pepper’s.
I don’t mean to put down Einstürzende Neubauten by any of those observations - I credit them for folding their interest in sound experiment into the pop format with as much discipline as they do. I don’t know that the results are all that worthy of celebration - although I did quite like some of this, particularly the title track. I am puzzled that listeners are so intolerant of it however. What do you people want? More Neil Young probably. So I’m giving a wee extra half mark to poor Einstürzende Neubauten in reparations.
2.5/5
Ladysmith Black Mambazo had 25 years performing and more than a dozen albums under their belt by the time they cameoed on the Graceland album. I have strong feelings about Paul Simon's relationship with collaborators (*cough cough * serial plagiarist and musical colonialist *cough cough*) but will concede that he did strong-arm Warners into giving wide release to a full album that he produced. Simon had the good sense to keep himself relatively out of the spotlight -- no cameos, don't muck around with the formula -- although the liberal application of reverb and delay in the mix have dated the production a bit. And Ladysmith won a Grammy, sold a bunch of records and have built a career touring the world ever since, even if Warners couldn't be bothered sustaining their interest for more than a couple of records.
There are some concessions to Western audiences here - four songs in English, a translated lyrics sheet, the aforementioned mix -- but Joseph Shabalala and his well-honed choir did what they had always done. You could potentially accuse them of being a one-trick pony, but it is a really good trick. Frankly, you could happily swap this out for almost any one of their many albums and get a great representation of what is wonderful about the group.
Oh look, it's another serving of mid-90s world music gumbo forced through the Dinner-Music-O-Matic Synthulator. Mmm, that's tasteful! (I don't mean that in a good way)
TL;DR: This is "prog-hop"!! It's a Postmodern, Millennial-coded progressive hip hop album!! It's like a less focused "Tommy" for Millennials.
******
This is ambitious. I'll grant it that. There was a lot of care and thought put into the production that is clearly evident, as well. I knew nothing of Ms. Monae prior to an hour ago and she has surprised me with a rich, compelling voice that is highlighted throughout this endeavour. So, at first, this has all the right elements of a good -- possibly great -- album for me.
Where this starts to derail is in its confusing scope. The ambition has taken over and made this a bit of a mess. It is **all over the place**. Every track swings WILDLY from one style and tone to another as you progress through the record. Add to my criticism it's length. It's an hour of this crazy back and forth and up and down all over the place.
The hits/standout tracks are great, but I don't think this justifies much more than a (3/5) from me. It's just too sprawling and eclectic for my tastes. If she had narrowed in on the more soul or hip hop pieces of this, it likely would have ranked higher with me. It's inclusion here? Possibly. A concept album (loosely) based off of a movie from 1920's in the 2010's? That's unique and I'll concede the inclusion as well. For the first time in a while, DIMERY gives us something that was interesting and challenging.
I can’t believe the top review for this record (as of Dec 2023) is from someone trying to use their PhD in Mathematics as justification for not liking hip-hop.
Weak.
Oh fuck yeah, now we're talking. Wait no, I swear I'm not being pretentious.
This is the lowest rated album on this site because I guess mostly people aren't very fond of German people smashing metal plates together - who would have guessed.
But halle-fucking-lujah, this is something this list needs more of. Albums that make you go "well, that was an experience and now I'm a changed man". Nobody is lying on their deathbed wishing they heard more crappy 80s post-punk or late 60s psychedelic rock. THIS is what we all deserve to be listening to as we embrace eternal oblivion.
I'm giving this a high rating not only because I genuinely really love it, but also to help Kid Rock move to his rightful place as the actual worst album on this list.
Together we can make a difference. Save the turtles.
Brings back vivid memories of when me and my mate Ray went on a trip to Dresden. We met this rotund goth in a bar, head to toe with tattoos and piercings, real filth and after a while took her into the disabled bogs for a spit roast. We were both pumping away in her with Napalm Death on in the background and her wailing "MEIN GOTT" at the top of her lungs. I remember spaffing all over her back just as Siege of Power kicked in. As i shoot over her, she takes Ray's cock out of her gob and says "do you want fries with that?" in a faux American accent. Anyway, we go outside and there's this gammy little geezer in a wheelchair sitting there furious, giving me daggers, because he's had to wait so long, so I lean into him and I go "I hope you have as much fun in there as we just did you little cunt".
I really don't get rap, and I am completely aware of why. I'm a STEM guy, specifically a Ph.D. student in mathematics. Although my verbal intelligence is quite high, it's still about a standard deviation below my quantitative intelligence. Therefore, it should not be too surprising that I prefer melodies to lyricism, and that a genre based on the latter doesn't wow me. I know I'm pretty far out of step with public opinion on this one, but that can easily be attributed to the fact that hipsters with humanities degrees (i.e. extremely verbal-dominant people) are considered the ultimate arbiters of taste for some reason. (Side note: this also explains why prog rock is seen as being for losers.) Best song: Be (Intro), which had a decent instrumental part at the beginning. Everything else just sort of ran together.
Back when I was in college I used to go to a bar and listen to Neil tunes and do magic tricks for women. There was a bartender there, he was the best. I loved that guy. Some of the best years of my life.
Back when I was in college, there was this dude who would come into the bar I worked at on a Friday night and play fucking 10 Neil Young songs in a row. He would also hit on girls by doing magic tricks. I remember how angry I got every time he made me listen to an hour of Neil Young because I was just trying to have a good time, and he fucking made me listen to this sad, soppy fuck who writes nothing but songs that sound indistinguishable from each other and never seemed to enjoy a happy moment in his entire like. Fuck that guy, and fuck Neil Young.
2/5
Shit like this on the list is both refreshing and infuriating.
Refreshing because it is good, fun, interesting, and also not something I would regularly be exposed to! It's why I started this project and keeps me coming back.
It's infuriating because the fact that it is included here means that Robert Dimery, the original author of the 1001 albums list is aware that music like this exists. He's clearly aware that there is an entire world of music out there. SO WHY HAVE I LISTENED TO 200 80s BRITISH NEW WAVE ALBUMS AND 200 SCOTTISH ROCK ALBUMS FROM THE 90S??!!?
The beauty of music is that it is subjective. It’s typically great for a certain group of people, though it’s never right for everyone. Some for the masses, some more niche, but it all has its place.
Meanwhile, with lists like this, there’s always artists or records that anyone would have put on in place of what actually made it. Personally, I would have included Queensryche’s Operation Mindcrime, Live’s Throwing Copper, Joe Satriani’s The Extremist, Sara Bareilles’ Little Voice, or John Mellencamp’s Scarecrow album on a list of must hear records. Others would put totally different albums on and that's awesome. What someone likes vs. dislikes is truly subjective. Again, that's the beauty.
With that said, this album objectively sucks.
I mean truly horrible. Something had to be the lowest rated album on the list, and this was a place well earned. There is nothing redeemable about this record.
To quote my wife, “they should have stopped at 1,000.”
I am definitely not the target demographic for this album, but I still thought it was very good. There's a lot of skill and artistry put into these tracks, so much so that it is almost invisible. 4 stars for me, plus an extra star just to spite the mathematics PHD guy.
