I’m embarrassed to say that I actually quite liked this! The best tracks were definitely the singles and popular tracks, and there were evidently weaker tracks that didn’t stand up to the rest of the album, but as a whole, this is a really solid Pop album. There’s nothing that significant about this album, it was just another generic Pop record of the late 90s, but something about it feels slightly more impactful and unique than some of the other worse albums at the time.
Aah het pedofielen lied!! Hey little girl is your daddy home…. Getverdegatver…
Toch blijft het een legendarisch album en blijk dat Witte Mannen van Middelbare Leeftijd soms nog smaak hebben.
Clever, cheeky bordering on salacious, and undoubtedly British, Different Class is a fun set of pop songs. Jarvis Cocker steals the show here, as happy to belt out a pop chorus as he is to croon or whisper. "I Spy" is an excellent example of the latter, showing off his cutting lyrics and evocative vocals. The album has a bit of separation between the best and worst songs, with "I Spy," "Disco 2000," "F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E," and "Common People" being much better than the rest. The rest of the songs have their merits, but don't add many new ideas musically. Still, "Common People" is one of my favorite songs and expertly skewers the upper class, a theme that's common throughout this album. Those lyrics and Cocker's showmanship mean this album is never uninteresting.
I really liked "Trout Mask Replica" in all its weirdness, but this is even better. Experimental, yet straight rocking and bluesy. Gets better with every run. One of my favorite discoveries in this project so far.
This was a tough listen. Nothing on this album is truly terrible, which is about the only good thing I can say about it (A Northern Soul gets pretty close though). When you zoom out this whole thing is just one big nothingburger. There are no memorable songs, and everything is painfully generic.
This sounds like a bad mashup of Radiohead, Blur, and Oasis. If Britpop had horsemen, this album would be Pestilence. It’s frequently reverb’d, delayed, and distorted well past the point of enjoyment and lacking in the focused production and sharp songwriting that they’re trying to emulate. When it’s not, the off key singing rips you right out of your immersion.
The album also meanders around like crazy. Why is almost every song 5+ minutes long? It suffers from the same self-indulgence that I called out in Made In Japan, except this was a studio album!! Good god man, spend some time on the cutting room floor.
2/10
John Lennon once described the accessibility of Imagine as a kind of sugar coating: difficult ideas could reach people if they were presented attractively enough. That seems to me one of the most useful ways into the whole album, because Lennon was unusually alert to the problem of delivery. What form will get this idea through the door? What degree of simplicity makes something portable? When does directness clarify and when does it merely make conviction sound like truth?
The title track has suffered from two readings which both seem to miss what it is actually doing. One turns it into a generic peace anthem, shorn of most of what makes its proposition remotely challenging. The other treats it as autobiography and reaches immediately for the obvious gotcha: wealthy man living very comfortably asks everybody else to imagine no possessions.
But Lennon is not describing his own life, still less presenting himself as the finished citizen of the world he imagines. “Imagine” belongs much more naturally alongside Lennon and Yoko Ono’s WAR IS OVER! IF YOU WANT IT campaign and Ono’s instruction pieces. It is advertising for a thought experiment.
Remove heaven and hell. Remove countries. Remove religious division. Remove possessions. Now look again at humanity and ask what has happened to some of the structures around which we organise conflict.
You don’t have to believe this world is practicable, desirable or even internally coherent. The verb is the point. Imagine it. Perform the operation mentally and see what happens.
The simplicity of the music makes perfect sense in that context. Lennon takes a potentially radical proposition, removes nearly all the theoretical machinery, puts it over a piano figure nobody is likely to forget and sends it into mass culture. Millions of people who would never knowingly volunteer for a piece of conceptual art end up performing one in their own heads.
There is some irony in Lennon arriving here after having mocked the quasi-hymnal quality of McCartney’s “Let It Be” as “Hark the Angels Come”. He could distrust that sort of musical directness when McCartney used it for consolation, but he plainly understood its power when he wanted to smuggle an idea into popular consciousness. McCartney uses the hymn form to console. Lennon uses it to infiltrate.
That relationship between form and delivery runs through Imagine. Again and again Lennon seems less interested in demonstrating mastery of a musical idiom than in discovering what the idiom can carry.
“It’s So Hard” is nominally a blues, but I hear it almost as a little radio play taking place inside Lennon’s head. The verses leave his voice relatively naked, an unusual choice for somebody who so often disliked hearing himself untreated. This is the nagging internal Lennon, the driver constantly insisting that you’ve got to do this and you’ve got to do that. Then the chorus expands him with that Elvis-like slapback and the private irritation becomes public declaration: it’s so hard. When he gets to the counterargument, the moment where life is good because he is holding Yoko, the language becomes less certain. The vocal is almost loosely doubled, as though two versions of Lennon have stopped quite coinciding. Then King Curtis’s saxophone says rather more than the words manage.
The blues is not the destination. It is the apparatus.
“I Don’t Want to Be a Soldier Mama” takes that instinct much further. It is one of the records on Imagine that made immediate sense to me long before I had any critical language with which to explain why. I bought the album as a teenager, from a run that still contained the photograph of Lennon holding the pig by the ears, needling McCartney by parodying the cover of Ram. I knew none of the clever ways of talking about the album that I know now. When I reached “I Don’t Want to Be a Soldier Mama”, all I could really think was: yes. Obviously. What is supposed to be revolutionary about this? It makes complete sense.
I simply fell into its logic.
The song is swampy, repetitive, hypnotic and almost wilfully reluctant to travel harmonically. There is something of “Baby You’re a Rich Man” in the construction: groove carrying a great deal of the structural weight while the harmony barely moves, the song becoming somewhere you inhabit rather than a route towards a destination.
The lyric is ridiculously simple, but the simplicity is doing the thinking. Soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, doctor, lawyer: things a child is told he might one day become. Lennon answers from somewhere before that process of socialisation has quite taken hold. I don’t wanna.
And, crucially, he also doesn’t want to be a failure.
That word changes the song. He is not simply rejecting a menu of jobs and identities. He is refusing the bargain by which adulthood says you should choose one of the available roles, strive successfully within it, and accept “failure” as the verdict if you do not make a sufficiently good job of becoming whatever you were supposed to become.
This feels entirely continuous with the teenage Lennon and his contempt for “Brummer Striving”, the world of proper jobs and respectable expectation. Before greater ambition transformed the Beatles into something considerably larger, being in a band was also a remarkably effective way of postponing a proper job. Lennon got out, spectacularly, but never seems to have lost the suspicion that the adult world might be selling you a very poor deal.
I am increasingly interested in Lennon’s use of the childlike, not as regression into childishness but as an alternative intellectual position. A child has not yet learned which absurdities everybody has agreed not to notice. The child can still ask why. The child can still say no without supplying a dissertation in respectable adult justification.
I had arrived at something similar artistically without having a name for it when I was much younger. In 1988-89 I devised a stage version of Ivor Cutler’s Life in a Scotch Sitting Room, Volume Two in which the actors played both children and adults, except that the Ivor figure remained a child. The children could simply turn and talk to the audience. The adults were trapped behind a fourth wall. I didn’t then have my current tentative word “Britchedelia” for this use of childlike British logic, but the principle was there: childhood as a position from which the supposedly sensible arrangements of adulthood become visible as constructions.
Whether that term belongs in a review of Imagine is another matter, but the underlying idea certainly does. Lennon repeatedly reaches for childlike clarity because simplicity can expose something that sophistication has learned to rationalise away.
The difficulty is that Lennon also places enormous moral value on directness. This is where the album becomes much more interesting than a collection of effectively delivered propositions.
“Gimme Some Truth” had existed in substantial form during the Get Back period, including its attack on Nixon, but by 1971 Lennon’s definition of bullshit has widened. Politicians remain there, but now so do chauvinists, condescending people, egocentric prima donnas and varieties of personal evasion. The demand has spread from politics into relationships.
Stop mediating everything. Say what you actually mean.
Given what follows on the album, the placement matters. Albums do not assemble themselves accidentally.
“Oh My Love” offers one version of directness: tiny, delicate, almost childlike in the clarity of its emotional statement. The two keyboard textures, Harrison’s guitar and Lennon’s voice form a sort of filigree miniature. Nothing pushes forward unnecessarily. Love has altered perception; Lennon says so without building much rhetorical machinery around the statement.
Then “How Do You Sleep?” gives us another version of directness entirely.
As an act between human beings, it is Lennon at his most petty, ungenerous and vindictive. As record-making, it is absolutely superb. I have no desire to solve that contradiction.
The lyric has attracted so much attention that it is easy to forget what an extraordinary piece of music it is. The band is loose, seductive and almost funky. There is very little of the clenched aggression that rock music usually uses to announce anger. George Harrison’s slide guitar curls around Lennon rather than stabbing at him. The rhythm section sits back. The melody nags instead of exploding.
The strings are especially good because here they are not sugar coating anything. They climb anxiously underneath the relaxed band, a restless ascending figure constantly destabilising the apparent poise. The groove says composure. The strings reveal the nervous system.
Even the harmonic language is very Lennon. One of his recurring habits is to create movement without moving the whole harmonic structure very far. He holds much of the chord in place while one internal voice moves chromatically. In the downward version, the tonic can descend internally through its major seventh towards the flattened seventh. In the other direction, the fifth sharpens towards the sixth. Eventually the apparently stable object has changed function underneath you.
You can hear forms of this in “This Boy” and “Yes It Is”, through “Strawberry Fields Forever”, and still in “(Just Like) Starting Over”. It is less useful to say that Lennon likes augmented chords or major sevenths than to recognise the deeper instinct: hold the harmonic frame still and move one constituent voice until the emotional meaning changes.
Lennon often does not move the room. He moves one wall.
That is almost absurdly appropriate to “How Do You Sleep?”, where the grievance itself seems unable to move on.
I am much less interested in dismantling every insult to demonstrate that I understand the Beatles references than in what Lennon is trying to do to the history of Lennon–McCartney. “The only thing you done was Yesterday” and “you must have learned something in all those years” are extraordinary claims about a partnership which was plainly reciprocal. Lennon emotionally rewrites it as two separate careers which happened to occupy the same band, with perhaps even the suggestion that McCartney’s years alongside him constituted some sort of education.
This is not reliable history.
It may be extremely good evidence of how Lennon needed to see that history in 1971.
There is a further possibility which I cannot prove but which makes psychological sense to me. Lennon is trying to establish a separate artistic identity while the economic machinery of Lennon–McCartney continues materially asserting their connection. Songs which were effectively McCartney compositions continue generating money through an entity bearing both names. Every royalty payment becomes another small reminder that the supposedly dead partnership remains alive in accounting.
Perhaps that makes the need to repudiate more intense. The myth can be declared dead while the accounting department keeps resurrecting it.
The important thing is not whether that explains Lennon. I do not know that it does. The important thing is the tension it exposes between emotional truth and factual truth. “How Do You Sleep?” may tell us something painfully true about Lennon’s anger while telling us something much less trustworthy about Paul McCartney.
That matters because Lennon has spent the album treating the removal of mediation as something close to a virtue. But sincerity and accuracy are not the same thing. Saying exactly what you believe does not transform belief into fact. A perfect delivery system can carry distortion just as efficiently as insight.
The sequence afterwards is fascinating because Lennon’s certainty collapses almost immediately. “How?” is built largely from rhetorical questions, and after the almost frightening certainty of “How Do You Sleep?” he suddenly sounds lost.
This feels like a developed position from John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Lennon had talked about the acid years as a period in which the ego had been heavily dismantled, and primal therapy had encouraged him to go after the pain underneath his defences. Plastic Ono Band performs the excavation with tremendous force.
Then you have to live there.
“How?” is the less spectacular question that follows the great stripping-away. Fine. You have exposed the wound. You have attacked the old myths. You have said what you believe to be true.
Now what?
To Lennon’s credit, he resists the temptation to manufacture a complete therapeutic breakthrough. The song does not solve him. Even its moments of apparent wisdom feel more like propositions he is testing than conclusions he has earned.
“Oh Yoko!” is, in its way, the resolution, but a wonderfully modest one.
It is goofy, repetitive, affectionate and conspicuously free of grandeur. In some ways it is the good-natured, heroin-free counterpart to “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”. Lennon once defended the extreme simplicity of that earlier song by invoking the drowning man: somebody drowning does not compose an elaborate polite request for assistance; he cries out what he needs.
“Oh Yoko!” works on the same principle with completely different emotional chemistry. Lennon keeps repeating what he requires because elaborate language would be beside the point. But where “I Want You” makes desire feel narcotic and almost annihilating, “Oh Yoko!” makes attachment buoyant and inhabitable.
Lennon does not solve himself. He finds somebody towards whom he can orient himself.
Then he wanders away on that deliberately Dylan-ish harmonica, sounding almost like a man walking down a corridor amusing himself and his wife.
There is plenty on Imagine I would change. The Flux Fiddlers arrive too early on “Jealous Guy”. Later in the track their suspended harmonies are gorgeous, but the emotional cushion appears before Lennon, Nicky Hopkins and that unusually generous Lennon melody have quite been allowed enough naked space. Roxy Music’s later cover inadvertently makes the problem clearer by reaching immediately for the synth pad: once you hear that sustained harmonic bed as a structural device rather than simply “beautiful strings”, you start wondering whether the song needed it quite so soon.
Lennon’s theories of authenticity are also repeatedly disproved by his own art. He could disparage songs which were not sufficiently autobiographical, yet “Jealous Guy” itself takes a melody written years earlier for “Child of Nature” and discovers a completely different emotional truth inside it. “Crippled Inside” uses a jaunty country costume to examine hypocrisy and self-disgust. “It’s So Hard” uses the blues as a theatrical frame. Again and again artifice gets Lennon closer to something real.
That is part of why I give Imagine five stars.
Five stars do not have to mean that every decision is correct. Rubber Soul provides a useful comparison for me. Somebody can perfectly reasonably call it their favourite Beatles album while acknowledging that claiming it is objectively their best requires a much harder argument. What makes it lovable may include its strange contradictions, questionable decisions and moments where the people making it reveal their limitations.
Imagine works like that for me.
Its flaws are not pieces of grit surrounding an otherwise perfect object. They are among the things that keep it alive. Lennon understands, probably better than most rock musicians of his generation, that ideas need forms capable of carrying them. Sometimes he gets the delivery exactly right. Sometimes the coating arrives too early. Sometimes childlike simplicity cuts through decades of adult rationalisation. Sometimes a gorgeous musical object carries something petty and unfair with terrifying efficiency.
The title track demonstrates enormous confidence that art can take a difficult proposition, make it memorable and get it through the door.
The rest of the album leaves me with the much more interesting problem of what happens next.
Once you have got something through the door, how certain can you be that what you delivered was true?
This album started with such an awesome freaking vibe. While welcome to the Pleasuredome isn't a song I'd voluntarily listen to again, mainly because of how long it dragged on, the song was extremely cinematic with switches in beat/style + a contrast between naturalistic sounds in the beginning to 80s synth and chant-like rock at the end. I liked the antiwar sentiment of war and the cover of born to run was amazing. The rest of the songs experimented with music styles, some of which were lovely, some out of place and some stereotypical 80s music.
Madge is one of the iconic, all-time great pop artists, no arguments, and this is one of her better albums with some great singles on it.
I note that this has been expunged from more recent editions of 1001 Albums, presumably because it is so similar in vintage, style and intent to Ray of Light (and Ray of Light is clearly the superior album). And Madonna is an amazing pop artist, but, as a pop artist, probably better represented by singles than albums. And the singles here are bangers.
There are some production elements that date the album -- the occasionally egregious autotune, the digital glitch effects, the synth that goes "weeeeeeee-oooooooo-yoooooooooooow" -- but these are largely all forgivable. If you push into the cutting edge of fashion, then your records will eventually end up sounding of their time.
I am less forgiving of the bonus track cover of 'American Pie'. Not because I feel that the song is somehow sacred -- my eternal and burning hatred of that song is a matter of public record -- but rather because she has somehow made it even worse. It is four full minute shorter than Don McLean's original album version -- thank heavens for small mercies -- but it still feels stilted and joyless and it drags on forever before coming to an abrupt and anticlimactic end. I blame the record company for the inclusion of this mistake.
Everyone should own at least one of Madonna's singles compilations; they are full of bangers and show her at her best. Personally, I love The Immaculate Collection, although I understand if you also want some of her post-1990 hits as well. For me, Music would only scrape into her top five studio albums, but it is still a very strong pop album. Most pop artists would kill for an album this good.
Pretty ordinary, was hard not to skip to the end. I probably should have listened to the mono tracks, as the vocals in one ear was annoying.. But that's a release failure, why include both? 2/5
W album cover. Imagining what went through the talks about what to make it is really funny to me. First they thought about mount rushmore, realized there were 5 members, and just stuck the 5th one on there anyways. It just such a dumb idea it works. This album is pretty short except for "Child in Time". Overall its pretty middle of the road, but it definetly has some style to it. Would not look at someone strange if they gave this a 4 or even a 5. Best Song: Speed King. Worst Song: Hard Lovin' Man.
Well this album does some things very well. The production is excellent. The story telling and narrative are probably the main draw here, but to be honest they’re not things I really care too much about in an album, and here the story doesn’t really enthral me.
Sherane is fairly enjoyable for me, the instrumentals are great and the flow is pretty nice. I actually really like the skit as well.
I don’t really vibe with “Bitch don’t Kill my Vibe”, it sounds like he’s doing a weird voice, and it’s too lethargic almost. But my dislike for this track is blown out of the water by how shit the next track, “Backseat Freestyle” is. It’s probably the worst thing I’ve ever heard. It’s not even the puerile lewd lyrics that bother me (though they don’t help). It’s the awful melody(if you can call it that), the weird voice he’s doing, and the like bell ostinato thing that’s like drilling into my skull. It’s actually hard to listen to. Single handedly brings the album down a star for me.
The next few tracks are all fine I guess, pretty nice instrumentals and beats.
The gold nugget here is “Good Kid” which is pretty phenomenal, I particularly enjoy the bass in it.
The other highlight is “Sing About Me, I’m dying of thirst.” It’s got a very pretty sound and I think it’s the one track where the storytelling does actually engage me.
I’m between a 2 & 3 here.
as prolific as dylan is i don’t listen to his full albums very often. but man i do understand why he’s a force. there’s some obvious classics on here but i don’t know if i had heard masters of war before and it really stuck with me. bob dylan’s dream also very beautiful and made me think about my friends. yea honestly some pretty incredible stuff
I was recently watching an episode of Ted Lasso (s3e6 if you need receipts) that ended with the team leaving Amsterdam by bus, tired but in high spirits, all singing 'Three Little Birds'. Or, more accurately, the same two lines of 'Three Little Birds' over and over in terrible faux-Jamaican accents.
You can't pick your fans. Bob Marley had the ambition to take reggae -- a very specific and marginal musical genre -- and become one of the biggest artists in the world. I admire the chutzpah. Marley did great work in presenting reggae to American and European audiences in a way that highlighted the genre's strengths without diluting the music or message _too_ much.
Unfortunately, I just can't shake the feeling that Marley's music is often reduced to a feel-good caricature, as in that regrettable episode of Ted Lasso. Marley's friendly "peace, love, and ganja" aspects were readily adopted by Western audiences who conveniently ignored many of Bob's less comfortable political and cultural messages. I'm sure that Bob would find those audiences ridiculous, but he was happy to sell records to them.
Exodus a pretty schmick production -- a crack band in an expensive studio, using recording techniques common in rock -- and it sounds really great. This is the reggae album that even people who don't like reggae can happily listen to. I just find it hard to get past the cultural baggage that has accumulated around Bob Marley since his death. The weird hagiography seems out of kilter with the man and the artist. I need to do more investigation. But this is a fantastic sounding album.
3.5 stars, rounding up.
I can remember exactly where I was the first time I heard Portishead. I was at the Valhalla cinema when their short film 'To Kill a Dead Man' came on (unannounced? I can't remember expecting to see it) before the feature. I got the references to 60s spy films and Goddard and John Barry etc. I appreciated the low budget, homespun scrappiness of it, even if it is not the most compelling thing I have ever seen. It's an interesting artefact, full of retro references and throwbacks. The soundtrack is more sound design than music and only necessary listening if you're a mad Portishead completist.
But then they played 'Sour Times' over the credits. "Woah" I said to myself "what's _that_?" It was mesmerizing and instantly grabbed me. I could immediately grasp what they were presenting. Languid down-tempo hip hop beats, cheesy 60s soundtrack guitar and smoky torch song vocals. It was a simulacrum of 60s torch song or soundtrack, like it was from a crackly vinyl record found in the back of a charity shop or grandparent's collection, but a world where hip hop beats were around in 1965. Or even the samples they created as if they were from (non-existent) old records.
I chased the album down and it did not disappoint. 'Sour Times' wasn't even the best song on the album; 'Glory Box' gets the guernsey as best track, in my opinion. It was moody and sad and spacious and artful and different and stylish and gritty and cool and had a consistent and compelling worldview throughout. I was obsessed and listened to it a lot, nearly always as the whole album each sitting.
It is one of the core foundational texts of trip hop, although I can see why the band distance themselves from the label. The signifiers of the sound were easily replicated and quickly established a clichéd genre of largely interchangeable moody wine bar background music. Some of it was not bad -- Morcheeba, Sneaker Pimps -- but a lot of it was really forgettable. Portishead shouldn't be blamed for any of the bland dross that copied their formula in the following years -- that is just Sturgeon's Law in action. What the imitator rarely understood is that it isn't about the signifiers -- the samples, the slow beats, the vinyl crackle, the smoky vocals -- it's the visionary _space_ that Portishead created that makes this so special. But I can see why Portishead's subsequent records are a reaction against the production hallmarks of Dummy.
Personally, I really like the deliberately fucked up production aesthetic, but it is the songs and Beth Gibbons vocals that really make this album special to me. Moody torch song wasn't really much of thing in the 90s, so this album really stood out on release. I haven't listened to this in a long time -- possibly a result of me over-playing it in the 90s -- but it has been a pleasure to listen to this again today. It still stands up.
(And now I confess; earlier in this project, when reviewing Isaac Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul, the track 'Walk On By' triggered a memory for me. "Oh, that's in a Portishead song" I thought, and scrubbed through Dummy about 4 times trying to find the track. Only to then realize the song I was thinking of was '2wicky' by Hooverphonic. Which is a pretty good song but stylistically ripped off from this album).
The musical equivalent of comfort food. These three were three of the best voices in country music at the time, and they use those voices to great effect here. Trio is truly a collaborative effort, as most of the songs here feature all three singers performing some of the most gorgeous harmonies you've ever heard. To me, Parton easily has the most distinct voice and the best performances, but the thing that makes this album work is how all three work together to make something even better than the sum of their parts. Musically, this album takes a variety of different styles and merges them into a quiet, cozy country pop sound. The gentles guitars and pianos aren't the most adventurous thing in the world, but they're easy on the ears and act as the perfect foundation for the trio's vocals to build upon.
There is a section in my record box for DJing parties called "floor fillers". They are singles pretty much guaranteed to get people out on the floor dancing. You can throw them on the deck when energy is flagging a bit or for the last set of the night when you want to leave everyone in a sweaty mess. I'm not prepared to reveal all my trade secrets, but 'Groove is in the Heart' is one of those songs. It is a fun and likeable confection, absolutely chock full o'hooks, and anyone can dance to it. Perfectly deployed guest spots in Bootsy Collins, Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker and Q-Tip. Everybody loves that track. It is one of the greatest pop singles of all time, full of nostalgic 60s and 70s references, sly jokes, soulful pop tunes, silliness and hip-hop inflections..
The rest of the album is similarly brightly coloured and camp fun, but listening through the whole thing is like eating 4lbs of candy in a single sitting. There are tracks here I would happily put on a compilation (or drop in a DJ set), but it is a bit rich as an album. Although I do admire their commitment to fun. There should be more of that.
This is a solid 3 star album throughout, with one world class banger in 'Groove is in the Heart' for a bonus star.
It's pleasant and upbeat African pop from the early 90s. the production and cover art demonstrate the aspiration to a level of sophistication, even if the budget clearly didn't extend that far. Personally, I find that kind of fun and charming.
But, not speaking French or knowing anything about Mr Koffi, I looked him up on wikipedia. The lengthy sections under 'Feuds' and 'Legal issues' have turned me off. Is his behavior much worse than any number of higher profile Western artists? Well, Koffi's crimes (most notably statutory rape, then fleeing the country to avoid imprisonment) are comparable to Roman Polanski. I think Polanski is irremediable too.
The cognitive dissonance between the light and breezy cruise-liner pop (3 stars, I could dance to that) and the terrible actions of the man (no stars, would not recommend) leave me feeling queasy.
"I won’t say anything ’cause no one ever listens to me, anyway. I might as well be a Leonard Cohen record" -- Neil, The Young Ones.
This is the most Leonard Cohen-y Leonard Cohen album. Simple arrangements, mostly just guitar with tastefully restrained string or vocal backings. There are some classic songs here ('Avalanche', 'Famous Blue Raincoat'), and he is putting his back into the wordsmithing.
His voice is an acquired taste, but the yelling on 'Diamonds in the Mine' is a real career low point. Cohen's songs often come alive when sung by other more accomplished singers (for example, the I'm Your Fan tribute compilation of Jennifer Warnes' album of Cohen covers Famous Blue Raincoat), so you gotta give him his props for the songwriting. But jeez, some of it makes me want to slash my wrists. 'Dress Rehearsal Rag' is one of the most depressing songs I have ever heard.
(1/5) There are NO edges on this, is there? It's been so thoroughly sanded down there is nothing to hate -- but likewise and more damning -- there's nothing to love. I haven't been paying attention to most music from the 2010s, but everything is just coated in this slick, greasy autotune bullshit, isn't it? I can't honestly tell if she's a good singer or not. How could anyone? She's drowned out by the persistent and overpowering ambient music, and then her voice is filtered through what seems to be a dozen filters and autotune. Add to my laundry list of reasons why this isn't good -- the extremely repetitive nature of all the songs. The tempo for what seems like every song is within 10 beats of one another. MIX IT UP! What a slog of a runtime as well. I won't blame Ms. Kelela for this, because I can barely tell what she contributed. Let's blast the flattened (apocalyptic perhaps?) musical landscape of the 2010s and later when the handful of major labels and styles just sorta merged into a gooey, greasy blob of autotuned shit. This is a great example of it and could easily be placed side to side with ANY OTHER contemporaneous music and it would truly all sound the absolute same. I feel gross, and I hate what it's all become. There's a hungry totalizing algorithm that says you better not deviate from the formula because if you do the stockholders won't be rich anymore!!! Fuck them all and fuck this.
I bought this CD when it first came out, it's a lot of fun. This album was wildly over-played in the 90s, so I haven't felt the need to play it much for about twenty years, but my 18-year-old son (hey Alfie!) recently discovered this, and so I have started listening to this again with him, and it's a really fun listen. It's a damn good time and you can dance to it. As a result, when I stumbled across a reasonably priced vinyl copy just last week, I snaffled it up for my collection.
There are lots of things to like and admire about Fatboy Slim. He approaches making songs like a DJ, not a musician. He builds songs like miniature sets, with breaks and snippets cut in from his eclectic but well curated collection. The songs are full of hooks and snippets, transitions and surprising changes, and, above all, those big funky breaks. He is not afraid to let a beat play out for a while, augmented with DJ tricks like big sweeping filters, drops or stuttering delays.
His taste is exquisite -- wide ranging and obscure -- but not cool. Norman Cook is less concerned with 'cool' than with 'fun'. Is the hook really catchy? Is it funky? Does this drum break insist that you absolutely must dance? And I like that. His songs are fun and inclusive and catchy and easy to dance to. He has a great ear for sounds, hooks, breaks and moments from other records. His sources are often obscure, but not for obscurity's sake. Rather he chooses them because they are a great fresh sound. These tracks are more than the mere sum of their parts; it's an accessible and optimistic collage of energy and excitement.
I did copy Fatboy's habit of turning up to DJ gigs with only a box of 7" vinyl singles. I like the way it forces you to only play short, poppy songs, and I use the approach sometimes when doing my own DJ sets.
This is the definitive 90s big beat album. Maybe not the world's most 'artistic' genre or album, but one of the most entertaining. Let's dance!
(sigh) This is a very intimate and personal album, and I am sure that, if it connects with the listener on that personal level, it is profound and meaningful and delicately beautiful and emotionally resonant and blah blah blah. But this does not speak to me.
It's not bad -- it's smartly written, tastefully arranged and played -- but Mr Callahan's laconic, deadpan vocal stylings annoyed me more and more as the album progressed. I find his disaffected, enervated drawl emotionally alienating.
I can't help but imagine what it would be like if we just replaced all the vocal tracks with a good singer; Phoebe Bridgers is the name that immediately springs to mind because her material is not a million miles from this, but if we're playing fantasy-casting here, what about Emmylou Harris? Shit yeah, now we're talking! That could potentially be a 4-star album.
But that final song, 'Faith/Void' has no business being nearly 10 minutes long. That is just taking the piss.
Dimery is pushing up against his own 'no compilations' rule. He obviously and desperately wants to include 'Legend' on the list, but can't, so has included three of Bob Marley's strongest 70s albums to cover the spread. I would argue that one is sufficient ('Exodus' would be my pick), but this is an admittedly pretty strong album, and it has a few classic tracks, 'Concrete Jungle' and 'Stir It up' immediately spring to mind. The inclusion of two Peter Tosh songs helps add some variety to the album and reduce the filler quotient ('Kinky Reggae' is the most egregious filler track). And the band is certainly _tight_. The groove is always in the pocket, and the band sounds great. Even Chris Blackwell's overdubbing interventions don't ruin the core performances.
Australians fuckin' love ABBA. ABBA, at their best, are much like Australians; big, dumb, mostly harmless and a lot of fun. It's a recipe for a damn good time.
But this more mature, sophisticated, moody, and refined ABBA is not what anyone really wants. Where's the fun? Where are the good times? The crazy outfits? The big catchy hooks and choruses? The ridiculous lyrics? Even the big single is somewhat melancholic. The _joy_ of ABBA is missing in action.
While clearly a band at the height of its powers in terms of its craft, nobody is enjoying the process, including the band and this Australian listener. The break-up of the band was inevitable.
2.5 stars, rounding down.
This album gets a lot of props for being 'politically aware'. I will concede that it is relatively socially conscious by mainstream pop standards, but Ms Jackson's "violence, drugs and bigotry are bad, education and getting along are good" is hardly a controversial or nuanced platform. And, when married to the fascism-lite imagery of the title track (check out the video!), it becomes a bit... confusing. Maybe "fascism-lite" is a bit harsh; maybe this is more "sparkling authoritarianism". There is a youthful optimism here that borders on naivety and strays into unsettling conclusions if you really think it through ("we can be our own nation and we will all agree and the world will be a better place if we all listen to Janet! We are all individuals!"). But you can't deny that Janet -- young and naive as she was -- was speaking with her own voice and presenting a powerful and multi-dimensional image; strong, sexy, smart, informed, aware, sensitive. Janet had found her own voice on the 'Control' album (which probably also deserves a spot on this list) and follows the approach through to an ultimate conclusion here. And you can dance to it.
Jam & Lewis' mechanical funk is very of its time but still sounds awesome. I could live without the interludes (which come across as a bit pretentious and preachy) but they are mercifully brief, and the songs proper are nearly all bangers. Seven top five singles! I do get pissed off when people describe any pop music with a hard edge and strict beats as 'industrial' -- it's really not, people -- but this is an uncompromising sound. There are plenty of references to the history of funk here - notably the Sly sample in the title track or Lyn Collins sampled on Alright - but this is reconstituted into a new and powerful form.
This album really established Janet Jackson as an iconic artist. But, as Michael also discovered, it can be difficult to follow up this kind of iconographic success (let's not speak of the 32 foot tall HIStory statues he floated down the Thames). Janet's 90s albums are, I would argue, a return to more human-scale concerns (and better for it, even if less singular than this album) But this is a manifesto for a world view, for Janet as an iconic artist. for socially aware pop. And you can dance to it.
I was more of a rock guy than dance music guy in 1990, but Pacific State (in all its versions) was inescapable at the time. It is one of the best tracks of late 80s/early 90s UK dance, no argument. It is atmospheric and catchy and compelling, and even the terrible sax playing is weirdly affecting.
I have read several reviews that suggest that 808:90 proved that dance music could be an album medium, rather than just singles. Well, 35 years later, there have been plenty of acclaimed dance music albums, but I still lean towards the opinion that dance really is a singles medium. That doesn't work well for this list, as focusing on albums doesn't serve all musical genres or artists equitably and leads to some unfortunate biases.
That said, I own this record and the Quadrastate EP and Ooops 12". I think I inherited them from the vinyl collection of Mark Selway (RIP), my friend and former bandmate. Mark went down a deep, dark rabbit-hole of experimental electronic music. You can hear his work on the Lecter Macabre album 13 Hobbs Lane (https://joshshipton.bandcamp.com/album/13-hobs-lane). Be warned; it's difficult listening.
Now that I come to think of it, I visited the Eastern Bloc record store in Manchester in the mid 90s because I had heard about it as the early meeting place of 808 State. I bought a really nice LP bag that I still use.
I feel like much of this smart, stylish 90s electronic album is not designed for the dancefloor, but for listening in the lounge room while coming down from a big night out. It is more intelligent and varied than many EDM albums (largely attributable to the occasional use of guitar and the vocals). I have mixed feelings about the chant-like vocals -- they avoid the usual house cliche of whacking a big soul vocal over the top of an electronic track to give it some drama. The repetitive, rhythmic singing -- often just a single note -- and impressionistic lyrics make the vocals an intrinsic part of the track rather than a decorative topline. But I can't work out whether I really like that or not. Jury is still out.
I assume that 'Born Slippy' was an album outtake they agreed to offer up for the Trainspotting soundtrack, which accidentally then became their biggest hit and turned out not to be on the album (oops), but belatedly added to the deluxe issues.
The sound is pretty sophisticated, but of that seems to come down to the judicious use of digital delays and reverb.
Better than most of its genre but still doesn't really move me.
This might be the most developed of the 70s punk albums that I've heard. Much stronger musicianship than I would expect from British punk of the era based on what this list has handed me.
I think 4 overall but a 5 in the context of its peers.
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.
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.
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".
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??!!?
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.
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.”
