1001 Albums Summary

It's pretty cool how they were going for a blend of hard rock/metal and hip-hop on about half of this album, but for the most part, it feels a bit underwhelming? They'd go on to better things over the next few albums, but "Fight for Your Right" aside, this one just doesn't have it.

Like most people, I know about half these songs from constant radio play back when I was in high school ("Someone Like You" was always my favorite). Unfortunately, the non-singles don't really add anything new for me. Still, it's always nice to revisit a few great songs I haven't thought all that much about in years.

No matter your age, race, gender, or even whether or not you like metal, we can all come together to say "hell yeah, I got Paranoid today," and I think that's beautiful.

Every song on this album sounds like it could have been a hit, and most of them were!

Like many of my age, American Idiot was my first exposure to punk. The singles from this were *everywhere* for the next year or so, which is an eternity when you're 7 years old! Off the top of my head, I can't think of another time that a punk band has had that level of cultural dominance. It's aged better than I'd have expected it to, too.

The late 80s always seemed to be the weakest stretch of R.E.M.'s discography to me, honestly. More straightforward than their earlier work, but without all the stylistic experimentation of the 90s. This one's probably the best of that stretch, though; the darker tone of the music works really well with the more overtly political bent many of the songs take. And let's be honest, even the worst R.E.M. album (with Bill Berry, of course) is still better than most bands' best albums.

First, you think "the lyrics of Imagine are actually so true", then you think "wait a second, it's actually really hypocritical of John Lennon to write those lyrics". But in the end, who really cares? Arguing about "Imagine" has got to be one of the least productive things you could be doing more than 50 years later. The real problem with this album is that just one year without Paul's granny music left John completely unable to write a decent hook!

Always thought this was a bit too gimmicky for its own good, though there's still a lot to like here. My favorites tend to be when they dip into country (e.g., "All My Little Words" or "The One You Really Love"), or the more Brill Building-ish songs (such as "Sweet Lovin' Man" or "When My Boy Walks Down the Street"). Luckily for me, both those types of songwriting get their own full albums, which I end up listening to a whole lot more. 3 hours is just too much! Listen to The Wayward Bus or Charm of the Highway Strip or something, don't listen to this one unless you're *really* dedicated.

All these songs start out like they're going to be on some dark post-punk album (sometimes even borderline industrial), but then after about 30 seconds they become a much lighter post-punk album. This one's gotta be the first (of hopefully many) great discoveries I make through the list!

The red-headed stranger: I'm going to kill my cheating wife! The red-headed stranger, 5 minutes later: I'm going to kill you for touching the horse that belonged to my wife, who I loved! Tommy Lee Jones: I don't care!

It's a perfectly serviceable alt rock album that probably wouldn't get quite as much good press if it weren't by Bob Mould. Not really much to say about it.

His voice kinda reminds me of Elvis Costello in places? It's all pretty well done funk-rock; I wouldn't turn it off if it came on the radio, but I probably wouldn't proactively decide to listen to him in the future, either.

It's extremely frontloaded, but how can you not love an album that gives you "Human Behaviour" and "Venus as a Boy"? Björk is an artist I've always respected more than liked; it's really impressive how she keeps reinventing herself and manages to sound unique the entire time. I don't really get her just yet, but every time I listen to Debut it feels like I get closer to being a huge fan of hers. I really hope it happens!

Despite the fact that so many bands I enjoy take at least a bit of influence from it, I've been pretty much entirely ignorant of reggae, aside from whatever Bob Marley songs come up on the radio or on TV/movies/etc. This album is doing a lot to convince me that that needs to be changed.

I always have high hopes any time I check out a new noise rock album. Like, I'm no stranger to guitar noise, and I'm always looking for more of it! But the problem is that most noise rock doesn't want to do noise in the way I want to hear noise. Like, there's distortion obviously, but instead of a whole lot of screechy feedback blanketing everything, they tend to want to play fast and loud and pummel the listener with sound in a different way. Plus, half the time they end up being an angular post-hardcore band, which is something I've never really learned to like so far. As you can imagine from me talking about that here, Yank Crime ends up being one of those fast, loud, angular post-hardcore albums that just leave me dissatisfied.

You're making me listen to an entire Mott the Hoople album? And it doesn't even have the one Mott the Hoople song that people actually *want* to hear? ("All the Way from Memphis" was kinda cool though, actually.)

Of course, I love "Personal Jesus" and "Enjoy the Silence" as much as anyone else, and the rest of the album isn't really a slouch either. But I still can't help but miss the less polished feeling of their earlier work like Some Great Reward. This one's not quite an all-time classic for me, but I feel like there's for to be something in their discography that is.

If I had a nickel for every time in the past week that the generator gave me a reggae album that got remixed to avoid scaring white people, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

5 minutes in: These beats aren't so big. 10 minutes in: Is it just going to be like this for an hour? I'm over it. 20 minutes in: I am the beat, the beat is me. 45 minutes in: No, I'm over it again.

1001 Albums to Listen to with Buffy's Mom

Never really realized until just now just how great the bass sounds on this album. Brings it from good to great!

One of the worst trends in music in the late 90s/early 00s was all the artists who decided they had to fill out the *entire* length of the CD because it was there. This album is way too long for me, and I had an unfortunate tendency to start tuning it out when it felt like an album should be ending. The beats sound good though, and I like his voice, just I wish it had been about 45 minutes instead! Between 2 and 3 on this; I rounded down for Licensed to Ill and ever since this site has been convinced that hip-hop is the one and only genre I don't like, I don't think that's necessarily the case! So hopefully rounding up here will fix that.

Mostly, it's a bunch of spoken word over noises, sort of reminds me of some of the artsier moments of Huggy Bear's Taking the Rough with the Smooch. Except there, you're listening to stuff like "Pro No From Now" and "Prayer" because you know you've got "Herjazz" coming up. Here, the payoff is some rudimentary beats with more noise over the top of them. Now, I'm not disparaging rudimentary beats with more noise; the same description is true for Psychocandy, and that's one of my all time favorite albums! The problem here is that they're just not very good at it. This album falls somewhere between a 1 and a 2, giving it the 1 because everything I've read about them in Simon Reynolds' Rip It Up and Start Again makes them sound like unbearable edgelords.

Killer Queen is probably my favorite of their songs, as someone who only ever really listened to Queen on the radio. Always assumed this album was just going to be Killer Queen and friends, but it turns out that might not even be the best song on here!

I don't really think about the White Stripes that much, other than maybe as that band whose song gets played at every sporting event I've ever been to. But every time I listen to them, they're a lot better than I expected! Not sure I see them as all-time greats, but certainly in the "if I had to listen to the modern rock station, I would be so relieved to get this instead of yet another post-grunge band" tier.

It's only 8 am, but I'm grooving in my seat right now. Kind of a shame I got this one on a work day, you know?

This cover looks like a forgotten late-90s screamo album that your friend is inexplicably obsessed with.

Thanks to the magic of modern recording technology, you no longer need to commit crimes to hear Johnny Cash in concert!

Surprisingly good for about 15 minutes! Unfortunately, there's still 40 minutes after that...

Being someone who doesn't always pay the most attention to lyrics makes it a bit difficult to really fall in love with a lot of folk albums, for which the lyrics are a big deal. Of course, even *I* know a perfect song when I hear one, and this album starts out with two of them.

Every time I hear "Panama", I think it's "Everybody Wants Some", which of course means that I'll be spending the day thinking of John Cusack and his anthropomorphic hamburger friend.

Always thought these guys were Irish for some reason, so mostly this album is just making me think of the Commitments. It's fine, but why wouldn't I just listen to classic soul instead?

A strong contender for the most frontloaded album of all time. We've all heard those first three songs a billion times before, but every time I listen to them again, it's like the first time. I've come to realize that they're actually pretty mindblowing, and can't imagine what they must have sounded like at the time. The rest of the album is fine, not really anything special, so overall it falls short of being an all-time great, but you can't beat that beginning.

Never really thought his version of "Walk On By" beat Dionne Warwick's until literally this listen, but yeah that's an all-time great. Unfortunately, I don't really care for the cover of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", which sucks because it's almost half the album.

I mostly only knew of Al Green for the Talking Heads cover of "Take Me to the River" and the Orange Juice cover of "L.O.V.E. Love", honestly. As it turns out, I'm not a huge fan of him. There's nothing *wrong* with this per se, it's just that the songs don't stick with me at all.

Why do I keep getting triple albums on the days I've got the least time to actually listen to them? Anyway, George Harrison looks like a gnome on this, which makes it disappointing that it's really not all that whimsical. Plus, Nina Simone makes the versions of "My Sweet Lord" and "Isn't It a Pity" on this completely and totally obsolete with her unsung classic Emergency Ward! Probably like a 2.5, but I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt because the aforementioned Nina Simone album is so good it justifies all this excess.

This one pretty much blew my mind hearing it for the first time many years ago, and for a while it was one of my all-time favorites. Revisiting it for this, I'm noticing just how much it relies on a great opener and great closer. Other than maybe "Mama Roux", everything in between that is more or less forgettable. But that first song and last song are totally perfect, the way that the backing vocals feel like they're ghosts rising out of the swamp is *still* eerie!

I mean, *duh*! You've got Paul's granny music at its absolute peak, you've got John doing freaky circus music, you've got Ringo being his endearing self, and George is there too (sorry George, your album was Revolver!) What else could you possibly want?

We have the Kinks at home

I always tend to underestimate how good "Smoke on the Water" is, and it's almost enough to make this album worth it. But that and the amazing line "could we have everything louder than everything else" are sort of immediately undercut by a drum solo that goes on way too long. I've never particularly cared for Deep Purple, and this doesn't really get me to reconsider.

That was actually better than I expected, as someone who didn't like the other Spiritualized album she heard! I don't remember any of it immediately after listening, but it was really pretty and went by way faster than I would have expected for an hour-long album.

I've always thought this album cover is inexplicably hilarious. Unfortunately, nothing after "And It Stoned Me" really catches me at all. It feels sort of like he's trying to combine soul with folk, which I appreciate the effort at, but he doesn't really do a very good job with it.

It's the weakest Fairport Convention album of 1969, but I'm never going to say no to listening to Sandy Denny. I've never really understood why people think of "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" one of her best songs, though "Percy's Song" is a highlight of the band's discography. I also like the party atmospheres of "Si Tu Dois Partir" and "Million Dollar Bash" a lot, though I think most people don't! Anyway, if you're reading this, make sure not to miss out on What We Did On Our Holidays. It's their first album with Sandy, back when the band still sounded like the British Jefferson Airplane, and it's definitely my favorite of theirs. Too bad it didn't make the cut here!

This might be the best Iommi's guitar has ever sounded, but they don't quite have the songs to match. I think it's an improvement over the overrated Master of Reality, but not really as good as the first two. Still pretty good though!

I hate handing it to Kanye for obvious reasons, but the production on this is a fairly big improvement over Like Water For Chocolate, and I thought the production on that one was already pretty good! Unfortunately, the songs still don't really stick with me, which prevents this from being as good as it could be.

I only knew about Take On Me coming in, but I really wanted to like this. Unfortunately, no matter how much I really want to like synthpop in general, it never really works for me.

One of the easiest 5s I'll ever give on this website, I've loved the Byrds ever since I got into music, and this is certainly their most ambitious album. It's got this amazing blend of psychedelic rock and country that no one else can do quite like them, like every time I hear a steel guitar and phasing at the same time I fall in love all over again. Unfortunately, it's a Byrds album, which means it ends with a bunch of nonsense. Space Odyssey is the clearly weakest song on here, even as it's probably one of their better closing tracks. Doesn't hurt that it maybe has Gene coming back to do backing vocals on it (that might be him you're hearing in your left ear! I go back and forth on this myself).

I gotta be honest, this one just blew right by me. Usually, even if I'm listening while I work, *something* is going to stick, good or bad, but that didn't happen here. As wallpaper music, it's fine, I guess? But as an album to listen to before you die, it's nothing.

Very familiar with this one, so I decided to change things up today by listening to the Closet Mix for once. I don't think the difference is quite as drastic as some people make it out to be (with the obvious exception of "Some Kinda Love"), but it's nice to have a change of pace every once in a while. The more intimate songs are my favorites by a long shot, the rockers just don't work quite as well with this new, meeker sound, though I still do quite like "Beginning to See the Light". I guess it's the two songs between that and "Murder Mystery" that really hurt the overall strength of this album. Those are just too slight and wouldn't work on any album.

There's this indie karaoke bar I go to sometimes, and all the other women there are always so cool that I'm too intimidated to even consider talking to them. But one time, I sang "One More Hour" at the bar, and one of those really cool women came over to tell me how cool she thought I was. If that's not 5-star worthy, I don't know what is!

We all start out by being disappointed when we think we're going to hear "Walk on the Wild Side" and instead it's "Can I Kick It". But then we grow up, and we learn that the proper order of things is to hope for "Can I Kick It" and be disappointed by "Walk on the Wild Side".

Yeah, this one's the best Kinks album. Listen to it when you're in a nostalgic mood (college graduation, first big move, significant birthday, etc.), and it'll blow you away. One of the fun things about it is that it's both genuine and ironic at the same time, much like how we make jokes about our own anxieties regarding the passing of time.

I know for sure that one of the first albums I bought when getting into music was Cheap Thrills, which makes it a bit weird that I don't think i've really thought about Janis Joplin in several years. Even "Me and Bobby Mcgee" here feels unfamiliar, despite having heard it a billion times. In all, I guess this album just made me want to listen to Kris Kristofferson, honestly. It's not all that psychedelic either, not sure what that genre is doing here.

I never have anything worthwhile to say about reggae, but I always think it sounds pretty cool. It was also pretty neat to read about how this album was mostly recorded in a bedroom, that kind of no-fi origin is the kind of thing I love to hear about!

I was probably the last person on Earth to have never heard the title song before, but that's all over now. I like the pounded-out piano riff on the chorus a lot! The rest of the album is done well enough, if a bit unmemorable. Probably not something I'll be coming back to, but yeah, I definitely had no excuse for not having heard the hits off it before, so I'm glad I did finally.

One of the first cool albums I ever fell in love with when getting into music, even if I ended up preferring Fear of Music for a long time. I've always loved songs with overlapping vocals, and I'm sure this is a big contributor to that. Also love how their "let's try to sound like Joy Division, who we have never heard" song is approximately a thousand times better than Joy Division.

Two albums in one day? Feels like cheating, but okay... I've heard OutKast's other albums, but I never got around to this one because I didn't quite like them enough to want to listen to two hours of them. So basically, I only knew "Hey Ya" off this album, which led me to assume that The Love Below was the main draw of this album. As it turns out, I was wrong; Speakerboxxx is actually great! Production sounds so cool, and I fall more in love every time I hear those horns. Also, it turns out that I've almost certainly also heard "I Love the Way You Move" and just never realized it (are we *sure* the hook there isn't sampled from somewhere? It feels like it should have always existed!) It's maybe a bit long, but still an easy 4. As for The Love Below: It's fine, I guess? Everything sounds fairly nice, but the songs lack memorability outside of the aforementioned "Hey Ya". I was feeling like it was starting to drag well before it even finished. Honestly, it's probably a 2? So that averages out to a 3 for the whole album, obviously.

I really love soul music, and literally everyone likes Marvin Gaye, so you'd think I'd be a big fan of his, right? Unfortunately, for whatever reason, his music has never really connected with me; it's typically good, but not great. Even more unfortunately, this album is 75 minutes of divorce songs (including one about having to pay alimony) that just aren't very good.

Some great songs on here obviously, but everyone except Ringo ("Yellow Submarine" is a good song, I don't care what everyone says!) also kinda has a dud too. Sorry, but you can't convince me that "Good Day Sunshine" and "Doctor Robert" aren't phoned in to pad the track list a bit! I go back and forth on if I like "Love You To" or not; right now the answer is no, but sometimes I actually really enjoy it! In any case, even in situations where I think it's a bit of a bust, this is still George's breakout album, with "Taxman" and "I Want to Tell You" both being highlights for me. And then there's "Tomorrow Never Knows", which everyone except me seems to think is an all-time classic. I've always hated it; it's tuneless experimentation for the sake of experimentation. I'm not totally opposed to experimentation for its own sake, but the underlying song has to be good first! But obviously, I can't rate the album with "Eleanor Rigby", "I'm Only Sleeping", "Here, There and Everywhere", and "She Said She Said" in addition to the aforementioned songs i really like anything less than a 4. I'm just contrarian, I'm not stupid!

When he tries to step out of soft rock (whether it be blues like "Steamroller" or folk like "Oh Susannah), the results are pretty dire. As long as he's sticking to soft rock, it's fine enough, but mostly it makes me wish I had gotten Tapestry today instead. Oh well, at least this has "Fire and Rain", and Carole King playing piano.

I tend to think of this one as a solid, if unspectacular, alt-country album. But for some reason, it's really working for me this morning. I never realized just how good a song "Misguided Angel" is! The album also sounds so so desolate, which dovetails nicely with my current mood of "it's been weeks since the last time I saw my friends". The only issue is that I've never liked their version of "Sweet Jane" nearly as much as everyone else does, and also their cover of "Walking After Midnight" isn't quite Patsy-level.

Sorry, but I've never really gotten the appeal of the title song here, which works much better on Brian's version of Smile as a culmination of a movement than as a standalone song. The attempts at writing political songs tend to fall flat too, either being way too corny like "Don't Go Near the Water" or actively reactionary like "Student Demonstration Time", which seems to be blaming the students at Jackson State for the police shooting at them. I do like "Disney Girls", though; Bruce is a pretty underrated singer for the band. But overall, this has got to be the weakest of the albums that get a good bit of critical acclaim, despite maybe having their best cover art.

I've never really been able to get into vocal jazz in general, unfortunately, and nearly 3 and a half hours of it is too much. I listened to this as I worked, and a lot of it gets tuned out, but every time my attention gets drawn to it, it's pretty nice. Plus it doesn't actually feel like 3 and a half hours, somehow! Almost certainly never listening too this again, but I will be listening to one of Ella Fitzgerald's shorter albums soon. Maybe she'll be the one to finally get me into jazz?

Kinda crazy that their debut isn't the pick here, honestly. But I won't complain, because I don't actually care for their debut, and this one's new to me! Anyway, on to my thoughts about I Against I: I didn't expect it to be metal! I kinda like the bass here, but the guitar feels too clean. The vocals are pretty good and not what I'd usually expect for metal, but the songs don't really leave an impression on me. In all, it's one of those albums that I don't really care for, but getting to hear a whole new side of Bad Brains is something I really appreciate.

Not quite pinched enough to be part of the Possessed Doll Voice pantheon (Cranes, Lisa Germano, Stina Nordenstam), but closer than I expected from PJ Harvey! The arrangements sound cool too, can't really put my finger on what they sound like to me though. Maybe a less agoraphobic Lisa Germano? None of that really helps anyone who doesn't already know Lisa's whole deal, but it's not like anyone is going to read this anyway, so whatever.

I'd already heard too much bad blues rock before listening to Muddy Waters for the first time, so he comes off as more rock to me than is probably historically accurate. The songs are pretty good, but as someone whose ear isn't really attuned to blues nuances, they all sound more or less the same to me. But I'm sure others would say that about some of my favorites. Between a 3 and a 4 on this one at the time of writing, though I suspect I'll give it the 4 because otherwise I'd feel bad about implying that Disraeli Gears is on the same level.

Like any sane person, I really do love "September" but unfortunately, that's not on this album. These songs never really rose above the level of "fine" to me; nothing really stood out or gave me any reason to think about returning to this album later. Sorry guys, but maybe I'll check out one of the other albums sometime!

The atmosphere of this one's not nearly as much of an asset as At Folsom Prison, I guess because maybe it had to be cleaned up more for television than for just an album? But on the bright side, it gave us "A Boy Named Sue", and honestly might have a better song selection if not for playing "San Quentin" twice back to back?

The Soft Boys are basically all my favorite bands' favorite band, so why do they do so little for me? I guess part of the problem is something like "I Got the Hots" sounds like one of the throwaway tracks Guided By Voices would do for 30 seconds, but it's nearly 5 minutes long! The quality control here isn't very good, and even the good songs feel directly ripped from the 60s (for example, the verses of "I Wanna Destroy You" are basically just the Who's "Much to Much"). As a contrast to the Soft Boys, I'm gonna leave you with a band that proclaims themselves to be the "genuine original hard guys": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cGKaoL_kws

Doesn't have the atmosphere of Some Great Reward or the songs of Violator, and so it doesn't do much for me. It's fine, but not much more than that.

Sorry, I just don't get this kind of electronica. It doesn't really go anywhere or do anything interesting; I find it really hard to figure out what I'm supposed to be listening for in it. Probably I'd like it more if I were the type of girl to go to raves, but instead I'm the type of girl to sit in her room and listen to homework assigned by the 1001 Albums Generator.

Landfill indie that manages to do the impossible and make me wish I was listening to the Strokes instead

When I was getting into music, the popular wisdom was that this was *the* all-time best hip hop album. It's really hard to argue with that! Most of the time hip hop hooks don't really work for me, which leaves me thinking "these beats are kinda fun" and then having nothing else to do on, which means I tend to respect the genre more than I enjoy it. But this whole album works for me! Like yeah, maybe it is the greatest album of all time? I'm not quite there yet, but it's certainly up there.

This is just here because the author wanted Nuggets, but was prevented by his own rules, right?

Other than "She's Not There" and *maybe* "Tell Her No", nothing the Zombies did before this album is really worth your time. And then they broke up before this one came out, so there's only a couple lackluster partial reunion singles to compare it to. But then, this is one of the all-time great psych pop albums; it comes off favorably against the best work of anyone you'd think to compare it to, even the Beatles. Not sure how they managed it, but this might be the greatest flash-in-the-pan album of all time.

This is like if one of those annoying skronky bands from C86 (MacKenzies, bIG fLAME, the Shrubs) was actually good! All the hate this gets on here is mostly because of his voice, right? It's not even that bad, and there's not really anything else on here that feels too hateable.

I really enjoy The Bends and OK Computer, and I'm slowly starting to get the appeal of Kid A, but this one leaves me cold. I guess they're trying to show that they can still be a rock band, but unfortunately all the best songs they had must have already been used for Kid A, because nothing here is particularly memorable. Apparently I've still got 5 Radiohead albums ahead of me? Not looking forward to all that tbh.

I feel like I remember hearing many years ago about Buckley's Starsailor as being one of the weirdest things ever to be released by a major label. So I guess I was expecting something more experimental than this, though maybe it took him a bit to get all the way out there? Still pretty comprehensible as a folk artist, though there's bits of jazz coming in there at times. Luckily for Buckley, folk is one of the few genres where I've got patience for *multiple* 10+ minute songs. It's pretty enough, but it's probably not something I'm ever going to listen to very much after this.

Really wanted to like this one, since the idea of adapting classical music to rock like this is a neat one (albeit I'm admittedly a philistine who doesn't have the patience for most classical music). Unfortunately, it kinda ended up sounding like a generic prog jam? And as someone who's jam-averse, that obviously doesn't work for me!

Everyone talks about this album as if it's mostly lyrics (and don't get me wrong, the lyrics really are *that* good!), but I love Cohen because he writes such good songs in every other aspect too, and that's something people rarely talk about! In particular, I think the arrangements on this album are so pretty and just so perfect for his voice. This album (and especially her backing vocals on "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye") even made me go out and look for Nancy Priddy's solo album many years ago! (It's not really worth it, unfortunately.) Plus, "So Long, Marianne" is great accompaniment for dancing around the kitchen!

A bit more repetitive than I usually like, but the harmonium always sounds pretty cool. Towards the end I started getting more hooked in, and the repetition started to get hypnotic.

I've been doing some thinking, and I've got some ideas to improve the album. One: Ray Manzarek needs to be louder, angrier and have access to a time machine. Two: Whenever Ray Manzarek's not playing, all the other members should be asking, "Where's Ray Manzarek?"

I had a friend in college who was really into these guys and Bob Dylan, so I'm pretty familiar with this album. But I never loved it the same way he did; I've always been more of Neil Young and the Byrds, when it comes to folk rock of that era. They're like totally serviceable and everything, but the Band doesn't really do anything that stands out from the pack for me. "Up on Cripple Creek" is my pick for a song from this album, but even then I mostly remember it from seeing a live video of Bobbie Gentry singing it once! Now *that's* someone you ought to hear before you die.

Thanks to having a taste in music that runs far noisier than most, my main reaction to most of the canonized metal albums is "was *that* it?" Like, the riffs are fast, and I guess they came off as loud and dangerous to the average listener back then, but I'm not the average listener. Unfortunately, Iron Maiden is a victim of that same dynamic; I'm sitting around listening for it to get scary and it just... never does? I know it's not even just that I'm unfairly judging it according to the standards of noise rock, because Motorhead managed to do it right around this same timeframe! That being said, I'm convinced by Bruce Dickinson as a really good vocalist for the band, so maybe listening to more will get me there someday. Just not today, and not with this album.

Sometimes the production sounds a bit more artificial than I'd like to hear from soul, but I guess that's because it's a new wave soul combination? I guess the songs don't really stick with me too much, but it's a totally pleasant listen (though that's the case with like 95% of sophisti-pop for me).

I'll be honest, I can never remember the difference between Rod Stewart and James Taylor. They're basically the same type of guy to me, even though they don't really sound the same. I guess actually Rod Stewart is significantly better, but he's still not anything that feels like I've been missing out on over the 28 years I've been around.

Normally I don't care for standards, and I've always thought Willie was a bit overrated as an album artist, so it's a pleasant surprise to have really enjoyed this!

I always hear about how great David Bowie is, and how he's constantly reinventing himself. The latter is pretty apparent, but I don't think he's necessarily all *that* good at it. For a while, I thought this was the album of his that I liked best, but eventually it turned out that I just liked "Changes" (and also, to a lesser extent, "Kooks"). Somehow, "Life on Mars" is always in contention among Bowie fans to be one of his best songs, but it never felt like anything spectacular to me. Maybe the problem is I just don't like glam rock enough, but this album really never gets above fine.

The acoustic parts kinda feel like they're trying to be Led Zeppelin IV for the 90s, which I didn't like the first iteration of it anyway! I guess it kind of falls halfway between thrash metal and classic rock, which makes sense for its reputation. The album sounds pretty cool, but not cool enough to totally justify a 1 hour run time. Oh and also! I was always under the impression that Metallica fans saw Lars Ulrich as a bit of a joke, so I was really pleasantly surprised to hear just how great the drums sounded here?

At least once a week, every week, I log on to see that a 90s British electronica album has been generated for me. They're all an hour-long, they're all filled with vocal loops consisting of like five words, and they're always the absolute lowpoint of my week. Please, I beg you, no more!

I've listened to a few Beck albums before but, "Loser" aside, I never really liked them all that much. The reinvention on this one is this sorely welcomed by me! Indie folk has a very fine line between "heartbreakingly beautiful" and "most boring thing I've ever heard", and Beck manages to stay on the right side of the line here.

YES! This is exactly the kind of thing I want from the 1001 Albums Generator! I had never heard of Michael Kiwanuka before this, and it's love at first listen. I think generally I like the idea of psychedelic soul more than I actually like listening to it, but I really do enjoy this one a lot, and especially any time something gets fuzzy. It's probably a bit of an overreaction, but considering I *never* would have come across it if not for this site, I'm feeling excited enough about the discovery to give it a bump up to a 5. Can't wait to check out more from Kiwanuka on my own time!

I'll be honest, my reaction to seeing this one come up was "not *another* Muddy Waters album!" It's not even that I disliked the last one or anything, I just thought I wasn't in the mood for blues today. But before Mannish Boy was over, I had it properly proven to me that there's probably not really such a thing as not in the mood for Muddy Waters. The title's totally not a lie, this album really *does* go harder than most rockers can even imagine!

Friday: Listen to Sea Change Saturday and Sunday: Listen to other artists Monday: Listen to Guero Well, Beck to work I guess. This is more what I expected from Beck, and though I was prepared to be disappointed, I thought it was probably about as good as Sea Change. Not someone who'll ever likely be a favorite, but he's alright for 45 minutes at a time.

My introduction to David Berman was actually Purple Mountains, which had been one of my favorite albums of 2019. Then after his death, I never listened to it again. And I never really got around to Silver Jews after that, either. I don't know why I never did, because I'm a sucker for alt-country like this! Love that steel guitar, honestly.

As I said six days ago: "At least once a week, every week, I log on to see that a 90s British electronica album has been generated for me. They're all an hour-long, they're all filled with vocal loops consisting of like five words, and they're always the absolute lowpoint of my week. Please, I beg you, no more!" To be fair, this one's really more hip hop than electronica, and there's not a vocal loop in sight. It's too long and nothing really stands out, but it's pleasant enough. Things certainly could have been worse than this!

Title song here is really the only one that's worth your time. I know people like this one and that it's spiritually part of Bowie's Berlin Trilogy and whatever but who cares! I don't like any of that either! The proper way to listen to this album is to listen to the title song, let the bassline remind you it's been too long since you heard "You Can't Hurry Love", and then go put on a Supremes greatest hits compilation.

The second best thing to come out on the day I was born

The singles are absolutely great, the non-singles are just there. But that's still 8 minutes of "Good Times", which is 8 more than I normally think to have, so it's got that going for it!

Really like the call and response, and the harmonies are great, but it all tends to blend together and feel way longer than the 36 minutes it is. On the other hand, I had to listen to all the songs on Youtube and got ads between most of them which probably didn't help, so I'll give them an extra star and benefit of the doubt on that.

I'm pretty sure I actually liked this a lot when I first heard it, but I'm not going to bother listening to it again to see if that's still the case. Rating it as close to my hip hop average as possible so the fact that Kanye is an actual Nazi doesn't hurt the entire genre too much in my ratings.

When I first listened to this one, I didn't know what to make of it. Then I listened to it more, and I started to like it, until suddenly I decided I didn't. I didn't listen to it for a while after that, until one day I suddenly got the urge to revisit it, and I like it again! At least for now... I think I've always liked the quieter bits, with the guitar sounding like walking around a deserted city, but haven't always been convinced by the parts where they get loud, which don't really fit in with what I always think of the album as doing. Of course, I'm wrong, because if it didn't fit in with what they were going for, then they wouldn't do it quite so much! Generally, I still think the distorted guitar sounds a bit weak and disappointing, and still love how glassy the cleaner guitar sounds.

Metal with a harmonica feels so wrong, but sounds so right

This one had a *really* promising start! But alas, it kinda lost steam after that for me. I remember liking the other Skunk Anansie album I've heard, and probably I could get really into them if I listened a bit more? Time will tell, I suppose...

I typically don't like Bob Dylan for Bob Dylan; usually it's something else about the albums that will get me to listen (e.g., Al Kooper for Highway 61 Revisited, The Band for Blonde on Blonde or John Wesley Harding, etc). That being said, Bob Dylan's at his best on this one, I think! Or at least, on the rare occasions I feel like listening to Dylan, this is the one I tend to reach for. Can't give it a 5 because I don't like him enough, but it's a solid 4 for sure.

Wait this production is actually crazy? How have I never heard of these guys before! Sucks how they open it with repeated use of homophobic slurs, though.

The singles are, of course, all-time greats, but outside of those, Jennifer's Body, and Olympia, this one never really did much for me. I guess it's too raw to fit in with the alt rock, but too polished to really fit in with the riot grrrl albums that Love didn't really want to fit in with anyway.

David Bowie's like the most 2.5/5 artist I've ever heard; he's constantly reinventing himself but he's never even all that good at any of his new guises. Still got seven more albums to go, ugh...

The third best Teenage Fanclub album

Pink Floyd if they didn't kick Syd out

Tom Sawyer and 6 more songs that you won't care about

Impossible not to compare to Drive-By Truckers' Southern Rock Opera once you've heard them both. This one has the better songs, but that one says George Wallace is in hell for using racism to get ahead, so that probably about evens out.

Somehow, this one's gotten intertwined in my head with Odessey and Oracle, which is weird because they're not all that similar as far as psychedelic rock albums go? This one's a lot folkier than most, and certainly one of the prettiest psych albums you'll ever hear, in spite of the infamous "the snot has caked against my pants" line. I'm a sucker for any rock that has strings and horns and all that good stuff, so it's one of my personal favorites!

Even more than all those boring electronica albums, which I can at least imagine having been influential to a scene which doesn't include me, this feels like a total waste of a spot on the list. I can't help but believe that it's only here because British people can't help themselves when they see Damon Albarn? Musically, it's probably a 2, but I just feel like my time is being totally wasted by getting this one today, so it's getting a 1.

No one is as surprised as me to find out this is actually pretty cool? Unfortunately, it's also way too long, which prevents me from saying it's good

The doo-wop ones always remind me of Tom Lehrer, but I don't have much use for the psychedelic ones outside of maybe Hungry Freaks, Daddy.

I gotta be honest, I didn't realize people cared about any of the albums that don't have "Maps". And I don't even like that song, so it's an even bigger shock that I really enjoyed this one!

There's *multiple* songs on this that are 20-minute, mostly-instrumental jam sessions? What are you doing to me here?

I never know what to listen for in instrumental music, so most jazz ends up being a fairly pleasant 45 minutes that leaves me with nothing to say. Unfortunately, this one is no exception, though maybe it's slightly better than the overall output of the Brilliant Corners, an 80s indiepop band who got their name from it?

I only had 40 minutes this morning, so I listened to the original version. Probably a mistake, because it meant cutting most of the songs I already cared about! Anyway, their performance is really good, especially if you love distortion in your music. I've never considered them an essential band, personally, but this one is still a fun listen in the right mood.

Just yesterday, I was complaining about how Live at Leeds didn't have any songs I cared about on it, and then this one comes in to remind me that I don't actually need to know any of the songs to have a blast with a live album. I just need a singer with the energy of James Brown!

A bit too crooner-y for my tastes, personally. It's alright, but I like him a lot better on Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music.

Actually way less of a chore to listen to than any of the other purely electronica albums this site has given me to date! I don't think I love it, or that I'll ever listen to it again, but I do feel a bit silly for putting it off.

I'll never understand what people hear in 2000s Radiohead, I guess. I know people who think this is the greatest album ever, and to me it's just like fine? Nothing awful, but nothing particularly standing out.

"Rock On" didn't make a very good first impression and "Water" felt way too long, but overall this one was a pleasant surprise! I hadn't cared for Things Fall Apart, and this one was over an hour long, but there's just so much variety to it that it doesn't feel its runtime at all!

Pretty big disappointment outside of the singles, honestly! Nothing bad here, but nothing that makes me think I've really been badly neglecting the Police.

When I was about 10 or 11 or so, my mom upgraded from the 1974 Greatest Hits compilation that soundtracked every vacation of my life to a more recently-released two-disc one. With this upgrade, I was introduced to far more Elton John than I had previously been aware existed, including songs like Tiny Dancer and Levon, the latter of which ended up quickly supplanting Honky Cat as my favorite of his songs. Somehow, I never got around to checking out Elton John's discography when I started getting into music as a teenager, but honestly, I can't imagine that I could ever love him as much as I did in those days, when Tiny Dancer was the soundtrack to pulling into another hotel parking lot late at night, with the knowledge that tomorrow we'd be at the beach.

Not on the same level as Massive Attack at their best, but far better than the badly overrated Portishead. I think I'd put this on par with Protection, both of which run out of steam before they run out of songs. But while it's good, it's great!

London Calling is their best, obviously, but this one's probably the best album that the first wave of punk in the UK produced. Love the energy here, and appreciate how there's no shortage of songs to shout along to (in particular, "Career Opportunities" is always a crowd pleaser at the punk karaoke night).

This was actually really good and pretty and all, but it really could have been *great* with some more machines that NEATLY PUMP AIR

With the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, Gram Parsons tried for a "Cosmic American Music" that blended all the elements of American popular music to date, though it didn't quite work out for him, unfortunately. With No Other, Gene Clark succeeds in completing that vision.

Is that Quark on the cover? Never would have thought that he had the lobes for this type of music. Anyway, it's kind of impossible to guess what the next song is going to be like, but I'm not sure they're really excelling at any of these styles? Points for trying, of course, but I'm not going to listen to these guys again

I usually don't care for noodly guitar jams, but the ones on Down by the River and Cowgirl in the Sand go crazy. That guitar feedback is absolutely insane for a popular album from 1969! Easily Neil's best studio album (though I'd maybe put Weld ahead overall), and an absolute essential for fans of country rock and the noisier side of things alike.

I was listening to this in the car, so not as much attention as it probably deserves. I liked the poppier ones but not the dubby ones quite as much! I guess I'm just not ready to be a ska fan yet

I really tried to convince myself I liked this when I was going through the Rolling Stone top 500 in high school! But now, a decade later, I don't really care for half these songs, and the harmonica isn't nearly as charming as I remembered. "Blowing in the Wind" and "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" are both still great, but mostly, I only have time for electric Dylan.

Only came into this knowing Black Magic Woman, honestly. I usually don't have an easy time getting into things that are jazzy or jammy, and this is both, but somehow it works for me! Maybe because it's never extended out too far, and it's just normal length songs in a normal length album?

Every time I listen to this album, the absolutely perfect first half makes me wonder why I'm not listening to Pearl Jam all the time. Unfortunately, the second half is pretty forgettable, and loses a lot of the good will that the first half builds up, so that by the end, I'm not thinking about how much I should keep listening to Pearl Jam.

Decent glammy Britpop, but not much more than that.

Once upon a time, this would have been an easy 5 for me. It's not quite on that level for me these days (I've never really cared for "No More Sorry" or "All I Need", but it's still probably my favorite of MBV's albums. Like yeah, I love my noisy guitars and I love my 80s alt rock, so what's not to like? That being said, it's a shame that they finally make a total break from the twee-er side of their sound here; no "Drive it All Over Me" equivalent here!

The only Stones era I've ever really cared about was when they were trying to be the Beatles in the mid-60s. Most these albums that get held up as their best are just two good-to-great songs with a bunch of bluesy country rock filler.

Been putting this one off for like a month because I expected it to suck, and honestly it does? It's more interesting than like post-grunge or whatever, but "I guess I'd prefer this to Creed" isn't enough to avoid the 1, I'm afraid.

Really want to like this, because I always want to like metal, and it's got harmonies! Unfortunately, the harmonies sorta feel the same all the time, but I do appreciate the heaviness (especially from the drummer)! That being said, it's still probably my favorite grunge album not from Nirvana.

Rikki Don't Lose That Number and 10 more songs you totally won't care about

This one is supposed to be the one where Costello grows up and proves that he can be a Serious Writer. Back in high school, I really liked it for that, and Emerick's production actually made me appreciate the Beatles more (in particular, this album sounds kinda reminiscent of Happiness is a Warm Gun). But lately, these songs feel a bit lifeless, and I'd take any of his first five albums over it in a heartbeat.

This is what I always expected Portishead would sound like based on reading reviews of Dummy! Where the latter ends up sounding a bit conventional, if cold, this one's exactly the kind of retrofuturist album I really wanted to hear.

Wait, in places this actually sounds remarkably like what the Cure would be doing 5 years later on Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me? I wasn't expecting to give high marks to Dexys Midnight Runners (why do they have three albums here anyway), but if it's really that forward-looking, that's worth a 4 at least!

Sure to send all the "everything except rap and country" people in your life into absolute conniptions, but a bit uneven. The first half has great production and a whole lot of memorable moments, but it all starts to feel really corny after Express Yourself.

I knew that it was basically a fun little piece of trivia that Lemmy was in a prog rock band before joining Motorhead, but i never actually stopped to find out what Hawkwind sounded like. To be honest, I assumed something lighter-sounding for maximum irony! Anyway, this has a really cool sound, but it's way too long for me to ever listen to it again, especially without a standout song.

Like I said in my review of Unhalfbricking, I still prefer the more psychedelic incarnation of Fairport Convention seen on What We Did On Our Holidays. But after relistening to this one, I think it might actually have Sandy Denny's best vocal performance in "Farewell, Farewell"!

Basically only knew that Run-D.M.C. were best known for their collaboration with Aerosmith (though it turns out I never actually heard their version of Walk This Way before!) It's a bit more minimalist than I typically like in hip hop, but I really enjoyed it here. The rockier ones in particular kind of succeed at doing what the Beastie Boys couldn't quite reach with Licensed to Ill.

From what I remember, she really mellows out in this one (or did that first happen earlier?) It's decent, but I'd rather listen to most of my favorite more straightforwardly indiepop albums than hear PJ Harvey approximate the same thing.

Hate how much I was liking this! Not letting myself go above a 3 for any Kanye album because I'm not giving good scores to any self-proclaimed admirer of Hitler, but I totally see why people loved this one so much.

Gotta admit, I'm kind of tired of Teenage Kicks these days. As it turns out, I've never heard any other song of theirs before. None of these are as good as Teenage Kicks, but they are fresher to my ears, at least. I wouldn't take them over the Buzzcocks or Ramones, but might take them over Stiff Little Fingers.

I don't hate myself enough or in the right way to really get it. I really do like noisy music, I swear! And descriptions of this album from fans make it sound like it should sound really cool, but it ends up sounding kind of formless and smashed together, and overall I'd probably rather listen to Pretty Hate Machine.

Title song is super strong, but nothing else connects quite like that. I did notice the lyrics of "Hand to Mouth" as pretty good too, but as someone who is not interested in sex with George Michael, I am not the intended audience here.

The album where they finally get good at song melodies, and the one that sounds the coolest. I've always thought that Cocteau Twins were overall overrated, but this is the one that comes closest to meeting the hype.

I only ever really heard the album with "She Don't Use Jelly" on it, so it was a pretty big shock to find out this one's kind of electronic and kind of pretty! Unfortunately, it was really only the title song and "Do You Realize" that left all that much of an impression.

I don't know jazz at all, but I can definitely tell that this is a different form of it than on like Kind of Blue. Mostly it reminds me of Tom and Jerry soundtracks, which is cool.

I only knew of Zorn through his appearance on Violent Femmes' second album, Hallowed Ground, on which his whole deal comes off sounding pretty cool. It still sort of does here too! Unfortunately, here it's 40 minutes instead of the ~30 seconds he gets on Hallowed Ground, and thus way harder to take. I think maybe I enjoy it more than more traditionally well-respected jazz, though? (Of course, I don't care for jazz in general, so that's not saying much)

At one point in high school, I realized that all these songs sounded like they were being sung by a massive loser, and as someone who was trying to stave off loserdom, it really hurt my enjoyment of it! Of course, now with more age and wisdom, I can recognize that this is one of the coolest sounding albums out there, and that overrides everything else. Not quite a 5 though, because "Confessions" is not a very good song, and it's way too long.

Feels way less campy and/or abrasive than you'd expect for an album with what looks like Marvin the Martian's gun on the cover. Every time I listen to Foo Fighters, I think that I could easily get into them, but then I never actually keep it up. Sorry Dave, but Nirvana's the only one keeping my attention!

Love how this starts out with a corny spoken word intro about how Ray hopes we have a good time listening to his new album, when we all know that this album is meant for being the most heartbroken loser in the bar. Coincidentally, my dad and I were talking about the title song (albeit Willie Nelson's version) earlier today! He prefers Willie's, but I think this one's pretty good too.

Everyone thinks the Grace Slick songs are the only ones that matter at first, but once you've listened to this album enough times, they're still standouts, but not by nearly as much as you used to think. If I could only have one psych album again for the rest of my life, it would probably be this one.

Really cute cover that I could easily see belonging to a twee pop album, but the music itself doesn't do much for me. Folkiness is always nice, but there's bits where his voice gets more forceful and they really don't work imo.

So, thrash metal is basically the hardcore punk of metal, right? Like kinda lo-fi, very aggressive, and the guitars chug along real fast and sound pretty cool? Reign in Blood especially feels pretty close to hardcore punk, in that it lasts less than half an hour, and also doesn't really have any of the songs separate themselves from the pack.

Obviously, I was dreading this one! It's 75 minutes long, British electronica, and starts with two songs longer than 15 minutes! But actually, I ended up sort of enjoying it somehow! Still too long for me, but it did way more in that time than I expected it to.

His name had me wanting to listen to Vashti Bunyan, and suddenly, there she is! Unfortunately, that just makes me want to quit listening to this and start listening to Just Another Diamond Day instead. Probably he was one of the first with this indie folk sound, but it still sounds like cliche college radio filler, I'm afraid.

I hate the Big Lebowski, man. But this drops off *hard* after the title track.

These beats were actually pretty great, and not just because I recognized the Nirvana sample! I still wish they had been doing a bit more with them (especially for an album that's nearly an hour and a half long), but this one kept me interested a lot better than any of the electronica albums to date. Maybe I'm finally starting to get it!

John Lennon's solo work is just so underwhelming, especially considering that he's the writer of some of my favorite Beatles songs. The only part of this that I really remember is the start of "Working Class Hero" is the intro, and that only because REM stole it for "Swan Swan H".

I know everyone, including Ray Davies himself, are willing to give Blur credit for being the Kinks of the 90s, but you can leave me out of it! I've always hated how you can hear the sneering at people unlike them in songs like "Girls & Boys", "Tracy Jacks", or the title song. It's not even that they're so nasty about it (like, the Kinks come off homophobic in songs like "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" and "A Well Respected Man"), it's that they're not even funny about it. Like, "Girls & Boys"' much-parodied chorus sounds like nothing more than it does some right wing talk radio guy trying to make fun of liberals and their 27 genders. The only good thing I have to say about this album is that at least it's not Oasis, you know?

Another indistinguishable Radiohead album, notable only for being way too long

If I never have to hear another bluesy hard rock supergroup, it will be too soon

The first time I heard this, it didn't really do too much for me. The second time I heard it, I liked it better, but still nothing really stood out. I actually really enjoyed the classroom interludes though!

I never think of myself as particularly being a big fan of the Specials, but this is really hitting for me today! It's a ton of fun, and it's something I really need to be listening to more!

Yeah, this one's been my favorite for over a decade now, with no signs of anything replacing it any time soon. Hearing "Radio Free Europe" for the first time was just one of those moments, you know? The ones where your conceptions of what music can be are forever altered? Add in that one time I listened to it like 20 times over the weekend in high school while being totally anxious about a crush I never had a chance with, and it's not only been the album that singlehandedly had the most impact on how I listen to music, but also the one that I've read myself into the most. Like, yeah, the lyrics are hard to make out, and even when you know what they are, it's hard to know what they mean. But that's not really the point; the real thing is that the snatches you pick up here and there end up leaving you feeling like you're at a party, and the person you *really* want to talk to is having a conversation across the room, and you're only just barely picking up a phrase here and there while you try to work up the nerve to go over there.

"Victoria" is a fun little proto-CCR song, but overall this one sort of falls flat. The big clunker in their otherwise flawless late-60s (plus Lola) run, no matter how many times people try to tell me it has important things to say about British imperialism.

Somehow I never realized that the Killers were post-punk revival? Anyway, common wisdom on this one is right, it drops off *hard* after "All These Things I've Done" (a song I can't think of without thinking of the time I found myself in Notasulga and couldn't stop being like "We've got soul, we're Notasulga")

For the most part, Ackles ends up sounding like a worse version of Scott Walker. But sometimes, if we're very lucky, he'll actually sound more like a better version of Van Dyke Parks.

"Needles in the Camel's Eye" felt all futuristic and forward-thinking when I first heard it, and that had me briefly thinking this was a great album. Unfortunately, it doesn't hold up on relistens. Good enough that I got a copy when I saw a reasonably-priced original pressing in the record store, not good enough that I'm going to go around shouting Eno's praises.

Thought I remembered this one being really boring, but as it often turns out, Michael Stipe is right and I am wrong. Actually, it's pretty good alt-country!

I know Television came before Talking Heads, but I still can't listen to this without thinking that it's a less interesting version of Talking Heads 77. Never got the appeal outside of "See No Evil", and I doubt I ever will.

Usually, I'll revisit an album if I've only heard it a handful of times, but I think I'm going to have to make an exception here. Sure I like the title song just like everyone else does, but there was absolutely nothing else of note on here, and I'm not spending 45 minutes reconfirming that.

This site picked a great time to give me this album, because I've been really getting back into it the past few weeks! In the past, I've preferred Sounds of Silence and Bookends, but now I'm ready to come to the same conclusion as everyone else on this. They do slow and pretty very well obviously, but even the attempts at uptempo rockers work out and feel worth your time!

Much like living in the suburbs, when you're listening to The Suburbs it takes you an hour to get anywhere

Of the Uncle Tupelo/Wilco/Son Volt triumvirate, Wilco is actually by far my least favorite. So of course, they're the only one represented on the list, and they've got three different albums on here. I actually liked this one fine, though! It's at least closer to the alt-country I wanted than YHF ever gets. Still got a problem with it being 80 minutes long though...

Pretty fun little jangle pop album, though it can get unbearable on songs like "I Am the Resurrection" when they start buying into their own mythos. Basically, everything up until that is great though; it's the bridge between C86 and Britpop, and mostly it has the good qualities of both and misses out on their bad qualities.

He's kind of giving Brian Wilson on the cover, but as we all know, he's the American Beatle, endorsed by Lennon and McCartney personally. Unfortunately, Coconut is one of his biggest hits and very annoying, with the rest being pleasant enough but never coming off all that special (I much prefer Badfinger's original version of "Without You"). When it comes to American Beatles, give me Emitt Rhodes any day. Between a 2 and a 3, but as a Natasha Lyonne fan, I'll be nice because of "Gotta Get Up"

Expected this one to wear on me by virtue of being an hour long and famously bass-less, but it's probably my favorite Metallica album on first listen? Nothing really intelligent to say about it, just I like the way the guitar chugs along on it better than on their previous albums.

This one was pretty big for me when I was first getting into indie music, but as of late it doesn't really hold up in the second half, honestly. That being said, it's the only Pixies album I ever feel any sort of urge to listen to these days, and you really can't argue with that first half anyway.

It's a bit Out There for sure, but this really isn't worlds apart from someone like Dr. John, honestly! I really enjoyed this one; Tom Waits is one of those guys I've only listened to a handful of times, but each time it's like "wow! I really like this!", and then I totally forget he exists for a couple years.

I've always thought of this as the Britpop album for people who think they're too good for Britpop. And as someone who thinks she's too good for Britpop, well, you know how it is...

In the past, this has been my favorite S&G album. I still think the A-side is the strongest stretch of their discography (yeah, I even appreciate "Voices of Old People", got a problem with that?), but it's started bothering me more how thrown-together the B-side is. But when you're throwing together "Fakin' It", "Mrs. Robinson", and "Hazy Shade of Winter", it's not like it's bad or anything! Maybe not quite on the same level as Bridge Over Troubled Water, but it's still an absolute essential to anyone who cares about the music of the 60s.

Always kinda liked Nashville Sound more than any of the outlaws, and Waylon's not giving me any real standouts here, unfortunately. Pleasant, I wouldn't turn off the country station if this came on, but not much more than that.

When Jens thought she talked about the season, sure, I totally understand why you might hear it that way. But when Jens thought she talked about the most overrated post-punk band of all time, it's like, no? Why would you *ever* think that's what I meant?

This sounds all scuzzy and awful, and that's why it's the only Stones album that actually lives up to their reputation!

Always associated this band with Animal Collective, who I don't like, and I see a lot of reviews here comparing the album to Captain Beefheart, who I also can't really get into. But I like this one, actually! It's pretty, I like the singers' voices, kinda reminds me a bit of like Linda Perhacs maybe?

This guitar sounds so pretty! It actually kinda reminds me of the acoustic side of Rust Never Sleeps? Plus there's a lot of call and response vocals, which I always love. Would never have come across this one without this site, thanks!

It's honestly so cool how something as weird as this was able to be one of the biggest albums of the year. *Seventeen* weeks at number one, can you imagine that? The Police have always been a singles band for me, with this one being the only album that I really have a need for as an entire album. Just a really cool-sounding album, even if the start of it makes me think of Encarta Encyclopedia (remember that?) for some reason.

So, this is basically shoegaze's commercial peak, right? Like, not full-on shoegaze, obviously, but it's not worlds away from someone like Curve. I tend to like it more than most of the "real" shoegaze bands, actually, and better than pretty much any shoegaze album to come out in the past decade.

At its best, it sounds a bit like one of those Fairport Convention songs where someone who isn't Sandy Denny insists on singing. It's better than I expected, but it still feels very standard for the time period.

I'd heard of Julian Cope mostly as one of those guys who like writes introductory essays for compilations of forgotten/underground rock, but I never put much thought into what his own music would sound like. Turns out, it's pretty cool!

Elvis Costello, and particularly his first two albums, was the artist that got me into music in general, so I've obviously gotta give this one full marks. That being said, this one's charms have worn off on me to an extent. The classic songs are all still obviously classics, no way I could ever get sick of songs like "Welcome to the Working Week", "Alison", or "Red Shoes", but especially in the second half these songs start to feel a bit insubstantial. Hiring a dedicated backing band instead of relying on the News was easily the best move Costello could make for his next album. (Side note: this is the closest we get to Huey Lewis on the list, right?)

It doesn't surprise me that there's a Brecht-written album on the list, but it *does* surprise me that it's not that Lotte Lenya/Kurt Weill one! I'd never heard of Eisler or Krause before, and I'm still not really sure what the list compiler heard in this one. I'm just not the right person to be listening to art lieder, I suppose.

The title led me to expect something way more defiant, but he actually sounds pretty resigned to the fact that he's not going to beat the world. So many of these songs are about how he'll probably die early! I'm not super impressed by it, but that approach is pretty interesting.

Elliott Smith has been so influential that listening to his albums now, they just come off as conventional folky indie. Knowing that, I feel like I should give some extra credit for being the originator, but honestly I've heard enough music that sounds just like this and don't really need more in my life.

Love's debut was garage rock, and Forever Changes is obviously very pretty folk/psychedelic rock, so I expected that Da Capo would be a bit of a mess in transitioning between the two. It sort of is? But also in the first half of the album they're more focused on the pretty folk psych stuff, with the exception of "7 and 7 Is", which does make its appearance a bit jarring and not entirely welcome, even as an acknowledged garage rock classic. Revelation is a lot more of a mess, and I really don't need 20 minutes of blues in my life, but it's not all that far removed from the Seeds' Up in Her Room, so it's actually kinda fine? Overall not nearly as good as Forever Changes, but still surprisingly worth your time!

I don't love everything here, but it's absolutely insane that this is from *2007*! Some of this would still sound brand new if it were released today! Can't help but be impressed by how forward-thinking this album really is, plus who doesn't love "Paper Planes"?

Really did not expect the follow-up to Rumours to be this lo-fi honestly, even after reading about how it was like the Smiley Smile to Rumours' Pet Sounds. When I saw that this was here and their self-titled wasn't, I was a bit disappointed, but I think getting to see a version of Fleetwood Mac I didn't really know existed more than makes up for that.

I tend to love it when a band reinvents themselves, but this one's never done much for me. I suppose part of the problem is that U2's reinvention involves becoming more danceable, whereas I'm someone who stays firmly planted in her seat. Intellectually, I can recognize that this is just as daring as any of R.E.M.'s wild stylistic shifts in the 90s, but emotionally, I just don't really need it in my life.

Let me get this straight, there's one neo-psych album from 2012 on this list and it's *not* Lonerism? It's just a bunch of British guys? Come on now, I don't even *like* Tame Impala that much, but they're clearly the most important indie band of the 2010s, if not the entire 21st century! On the other hand, this is totally bland indie-by-numbers, with the cover being the most interesting thing about it.

To me, this feels more post-punk than new wave (I can't quite put my finger on what the difference is, but it's there to me). Usually, post-punk bands have to choose between emphasizing the ability to dance to them or being dour, but Heaven 17 here are attempting to do both at once. I don't think it quite works, but it does lead to a post-punk album that doesn't quite feel like any of the countless others I've heard. I do really like the cover; gotta love these ironic representations of corporate life!

It's a favorite of many because of the Albini production, but the songs just aren't as good as they'd get on Doolittle. Plus I've never actually liked the way Albini-produced albums sound all that much, so in terms of rawness I'd rather have Come On Pilgrim.

Everyone always talks about how Spot's production really hurts Zen Arcade and (especially) New Day Rising, but those albums both sound *so* much better than this one. At least the thinness there serves to make those guitars sound so much sharper, whereas here they feel way more distant. Maybe that's their attempt to broaden out their sound for the major label, but it really hurts the album. And they don't even have the decency to give us another "Don't Want to Know if You Are Lonely" on here, either! Honestly, this one is probably the Hüsker Dü album that you *least* need to hear before you die!

Back in the early 2010s when I was getting into music, it was not cool to like Springsteen if you were a nerd about music. The exception was always Nebraska, which doesn't sound much like the songs he's best known for, and was overtly influenced by this album (just compare it to songs like "Johnny 99" and "State Trooper"). I guess I should thank Vega and Rev for being part of the gateway that got all the nerds to realize Springsteen is good, but I just don't enjoy them that much. Synth punk rockabilly sounds like a great idea, and for a song or two it is! But they don't really have the ability to keep it interesting for the length of an entire album. Go listen to like Silver Apples or Colossal Youth instead.

I think I'd only ever heard the American version of this one before? It's the better one though, it drops a pedestrian cover of "I'm a Man", a song you've already heard better from multiple bands, for "Instant Party (Circles)", which is a highlight. This album is mostly a bunch of lightweight disposable pop songs like "Much Too Much" or "La La Lies" that wouldn't be out of place on like a Herman's Hermits album, but the cool thing about them is that everything here is covered over with this lo-fi humming quality that makes everything feel heavier than nearly anything else of the period. They're not quite the gold standard for heavy rock way earlier than you'd expect (give me the Sonics or those early Kinks singles any day), but they're pretty close!

Have you ever thought "that Springsteen guy is pretty good, but he's a bit too lowkey for my tastes"? Well, then have I got an album for you! Steinman's maximalist production isn't too dissimilar from Phil Spector, really. The main difference is Spector is totally serious about his lushly orchestrated silly love songs, while Steinman is fully aware that it's ridiculous to take it *that* seriously. So, he gives us the grandiosity that the sound deserves, which only draws our attention to how ridiculous it is to treat teenage love that way.

I basically knew Slade was a glam rock band whose popularity didn't really translate outside of the UK, so I was not expecting to enjoy this at all. To my shock, it's actually one of the better glam rock albums I've heard! It's not quite on par with Transformer or Ziggy Stardust, but it's easily better than Electric Warrior, and maybe even a bit better than Hunky Dory. Guitars are all good and crunchy, I like the singer's voice, really no complaints here. It's nothing world-changing or anything, but I guess I'm actually kinda glad I heard it?

Hello, and welcome to Morri-fone! If you know the name of the song you would like to perform, press 1. *beep* Using your touch-tone keypad, please enter the first three letters of the song you would like to perform. *beep* *beep* *beep* You have selected... "Brown Eyed Girl"? If this is correct, press 1. Why don't you just tell me the name of the song you would like to perform?

Turns out I can't stand Axle Rose's voice when I have to listen to this much of it! Guitars sound fine, but nothing special, I guess I could see how this would be mind-blowing to a burgeoning metalhead the way "Radio Free Europe" was for my development as an indie nerd? Also sort-of shoutout to "Mr. Brownstone" for, at least in part, inspiring the lyrics to Mary Lou Lord's classic "Some Jingle-Jangle Morning (When I'm Straight)"

Wow, why have I never heard this before! I'd heard of Jorge Ben Jor, but somehow never got around to checking him out. Great Brazilian funk here, it's got me feeling like I *need* to listen to more from him and just more from Brazil in general. Probably my favorite first listen I've gotten from this site so far.

Gotta love the singles off this one; "All I Really Want" is almost sort of shoegazey, "You Oughta Know" is obviously an absolute classic, "Head Over Feet" invented the term "friend with benefits" (no seriously, look it up!), and "Ironic" is a fun one to shout along too if you get over yourself and avoid doing the whole "but that's not what irony is" routine. As someone who likes a lot of 90s indie but was not around for it, I can go read old discussions of the time and see that the tastemakers *hated* Jagged Little Pill. But from where I'm standing, it honestly doesn't sound that far off from those indie-approved bands? Honestly, I think it's really cool that this album is one of the biggest ever.

I knew Pharrell had had a career before becoming inescapable with "Happy", but I hadn't had a clue what it sounded like. It sounds alright, but there's nothing here that's got me interested in coming back to it. RateYourMusic tells me that there's a different N.E.R.D. album that's considered *a lot* better than this one, maybe I'll have to check that out to see this group at their best?

At their best, the songs on this album stand up with the best of Simon and Garfunkel's work, but at their worst they don't even approach Simon and Garfunkel's filler. Not sure what's the deal with that, since Garfunkel didn't even write the songs? I guess maybe Simon needed a quality control guy?

When I had a show on my college radio station, obviously one of the requirements the station had was that I keep my show clean. Sometimes, when making my show playlists, I would find myself looking at a song and asking "is this too sexually explicit for the radio?" In these situations, I had a simple system: 1. Listen to "You Shook Me All Night Long" 2. Realize that my song was nowhere near that explicit 3. Put it on the playlist

This album cover has always sort of reminded me of the scene in Back to the Future where Marty decides to introduce the 50s to rock and roll (and later, metal). Unlike Marty's performance, there's nothing about Grace that would have Buckley telling his audience "guess you guys weren't ready for that yet". Some of these songs sort of feel like melodies Thom Yorke would have written (Thom! Thom! It's your cousin, *Marvin* Yorke!), but performed by a better singer, but instrumentally the backing band really doesn't do anything interesting here, and Buckley's songs themselves aren't quite good enough to stand up entirely on their own like that.

Every time I get a jazz album, I keep hoping that this is the one that suddenly unlocks the genre for me. For a minute or two, I had hopes that that watery organ was going to do it for me, but alas... Yet another "it's not you, it's me" 3/5 ranking, just like all the other jazz albums.

This one's always felt extremely similar to Marquee Moon for me, albeit less ambitious. I don't really think the ambition in Marquee Moon works for me though, so I've gotta go with this one, especially considering it's got more pop appeal. It sounds a lot more skeletal than the songs they'd be best known for, but I really love this version of Talking Heads with these intentionally anodyne lyrics about favorite laws and all that. While it's admittedly done better on the first disc of The Name of This Band is Talking Heads, I'm never going to say no to this one.

This one had the deck stacked against it: not only is it a transitional album between their disposable pop era and the well-regarded post-rock period that I don't particularly like, but I also had heard it before and didn't remember liking it all that much. But I'm pleased to say that I was pleasantly surprised by this relisten! It's got some pretty orchestration going on, and most importantly, it actually does have melodies! I'm still not totally sold on Mark Hollis's voice, and I'm shocked that the band got any amount of commercial success with it, but it's not a huge dealbreaker. Could totally see myself going on to reevaluate the post-rock stuff now that I'm enjoying this one, maybe?

I'd only been familiar with the EP they did with Beat Happening, and was kinda disappointed that they didn't really sound like that most of the time. To make matters worse, I was tired and driving to Thanksgiving and looking forward to some grunge to blast me awake, except Screaming Trees are just so mellow! Lanegan sounds a bit like Bono, even! But as I slowly woke up naturally, I started to get into it more. The songs didn't really have any standouts, but I did think it was pretty cool how psychedelic it sounds! That's not something I've ever seen in grunge before, and I like it.

Does it feel a little "indie-folk-by-numbers" sometimes? Sure, but that's because they were the originator of a lot of that! Even if these songs aren't always the most memorable, they've got harmonies that are almost on par with those of the Beach Boys! Easily one of the prettiest indie albums there is.

I remember hearing "Roadhouse Blues" on the radio once and begging my dad to tell me who that was. The Doors have never sounded better to me than that first time, and in particular this album doesn't really stack up to all of that. Manzarek's organ is still the star, but it just doesn't do much here to interest me.

Thanks to "Cut Your Hair", this was my official album of "I just got my hair done" all through my college years, up until I decided I was over the whole "I'm just a boy" thing. I've never found Pavement to be as much of a revelation as everyone else seems to, but their first two albums have always struck me as pretty solid, and this one does a pretty good job of polishing their sound slightly and coming up with better songs (even if I prefer Slanted and Enchanted overall). Actually, on this relisten, I'm kind of realizing how much Versus (one of my favorite indie rock groups of the 90s) sort of sounds like Pavement, and clearly was taking the sound from them, but it really doesn't change how I feel about the two relative to each other. This part's just here because hopefully I can convince someone to listen to The Stars Are Insane!

Probably my favorite glam rock album, though admittedly that's not saying much. Better than WL/WH or Loaded, but worse than the two self-titled Velvet Underground albums. For the most part it works as a fun rock album, but I've got no real need for "Walk on the Wild Side". If I want poorly-aged trans songs, I'll listen to "Lola", and if I want that bassline, I'll listen to "Can I Kick It".

Bonus point for getting Sandy Denny, I guess? This one's never wowed me like it has everyone else, though I'm more amenable to the pretty moments than I used to be. I was even enjoying the intro to Stairway this time! But this one's still just an album of moments for me, rather than the songs as a whole ever doing much.

One of the best pop albums of the 80s until it runs out of singles. Everything after "All Through the Night" isn't nearly as good, but most albums can't have six great singles in them, so it's just a problem of sequencing. I didn't used to like "Girls Just Want to Have Fun", but it was really working for me this time!

For me, this one's easily the best Who album. I love every goofy moment, from Heinz Baked Beans to the lines about regretting tattoos to the fake radio jingles. It helps that they're totally credible at every style they try here; they can pull off the folkiness of "Mary Anne with the Shaky Hands" just as well as the hard rock of "I Can See for Miles" just as well as the psych of "Armenia City in the Sky" just as well as... well, you get the point. Not a perfect album, but certainly one of the most fun albums of the 60s, which is already filled with a bunch of fun little goofy psych albums.

Probably a bit unfair that I'm comparing this in my mind to Thriller, which really changed the game with regards to "every song could be (and was) a massive hit", but it's inescapable. This one ends up as merely a very good disco album (which makes me realize I need to listen to more disco), with "only" two absolute classic songs (as if that's not more than most pop albums manage).

You can keep your Appetite for Destruction and your Metallica black album for yourself, *this* is the great pop metal album for me. The songs are great ("Cult of Personality" is an all-time great and not even the best on here!), that echoey booming production on the drums just hits so hard for me, and of course you've got Vernon Reid on guitar. Maybe it's just the Talking Heads cover influencing my thoughts here, but sometimes his solos sound like a better version of what Adrian Belew was doing on Remain in Light. Great stylistic diversity on the album too, there aren't really any songs where I think "well they already did that sound better last song" or anything like that. I really need to get around to checking out their other albums, I'll bet they're more or less on part with this.

All these hard rock bands that classic rock stations have a love affair for are honestly so boring. The songs aren't memorable, the guitars don't even sound that great, there's just a whole lot of nothing to anything that wasn't released as a single ("Sweet Emotion" is alright though). You're telling me I'm going to have to listen to *three* of these? And this one's the only one that has any songs anybody has ever heard of? Come on, man, seriously?

I know, I know, this one is *the* jazz album that even people who don't get jazz are supposed to like. I've listened to it a couple times a year for a while now, hoping eventually it's something I'll come to get, but it never happens. I tend to give jazz albums an "it's not you, it's me" rating, but I'm not going to do that here. Like, yes, it's me, but it's also that I just like this album a lot less than any of those other random jazz albums that the generator has assigned me over the past year.

Probably it doesn't really hold up as an album without a film, but I was listening to it at work and it was pretty good for that purpose. And you know what? I think I'm going to try to find the time to watch Shaft this weekend.

You listen to something like this and you think England must have been the gayest place on Earth, until you look at what was actually going on in England at the time. I actually really enjoyed the covers section of the album! Not perfect, but I can kinda see why people were so hyped for this album when it came out. Still can't understand why *straight* people were excited for it though...

I wasn't expecting great things from an instrumental electronic album, but I actually really liked this! Especially toward the end, there's a lot of cool sounds going on here, even if it's not something that is going to have any like particularly memorable moments?

Had been under the impression that the Pretenders were kind of like Blondie, except British? Turns out they're way more on the punk side of the pop-punk spectrum! Actually, aside from "Stop Your Sobbing" and "Kid", I didn't hear too many pop hooks at all? Coming into this, I knew "Brass in Pocket" was the big hit off this album, and I knew I'd heard it a hundred times before, but try as I might I could never actually remember how it goes. Turns out that's because they've got a great pre-chorus with the "gonna make you, make you", and then the chorus totally falls flat on its face! What a disappointment that one is! At least they ended strong with "Mystery Achievement", now that one's a great song.

It's objectively insane for a goth band to listen to "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights" and "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and think "now *that's* the guy I want producing my album," and yet it actually kinda works? Too bad he only produced two songs, though...

The songs are better than the ones on Parklife, but it's definitely not good enough for me to ever want to listen to an hour of it? Literally just pick and Kinks album and listen to that instead, honestly!

My defining memory of this album is listening to it on the way home after the first time I asked a girl out (and got turned down). With that in mind and an extra decade of thinking about the lyrics, I gotta say this album doesn't really beat the misogyny allegations? But as a woman, I'll still always love this album anyway for at least three things: 1) Being my introduction to less straight-forward rock music, 2) Steve Nieve's amazing keyboard playing, 3) Giving a name to an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Starts out with an absolute bang with the one-two punch of "So Young" and "Animal Nitrate", and at about this point you realize that the only thing Britpop ever really needed to be great was to sound ten times gayer. Unfortunately, it drops off *hard* after that, and with the exception of "The Drowners", there's not much else here to like too much. But it's crazy how the combination of glam (which I tend to dislike) and Britpop (which I also tend to dislike) ended up creating some songs I actually really love.

Nothing revolutionary, but it was fun! This is the album people always try to say Licensed to Ill is, honestly.

Unbearable herky-jerky post-punk for the "Idiocracy was a documentary" crowd

Didn't really like this one as much as Catch a Fire, honestly? I don't like "No Woman, No Cry" all that much and everything else was just fine. I did really like the backing vocals on the last song though!

I like Bon Scott as a singer better than Brian Johnson, but Back in Black had a slightly better set of songs (or at least more songs that I already knew). We'll call this one a draw. (Really it's a slight edge to Highway to Hell, but not enough to bump it from a 3 to a 4.)

Actually liked this a lot more than I tend to like the British electronica albums! It's not life-changing or anything, but it does hew closer to something like replacement-level Golden Age hip-hop, which means we get some solid beats and actual hooks. There are moments where it pushes at those borders in a direction that I don't care for, but I can recognize that, for example, "Theme from "Reportage"" is good at what they're trying to do with it.

This has a really cool, really oppressive atmosphere going on for it that would probably be really great accompaniment for when I'm Going Through It mentally, if I ever thought to listen to them in those times. Otherwise, it's still a pretty cool atmosphere but I always listen to it with a bit of emotional distance. My impression is that it's the coolest Cure album to have as a favorite, but also it's easily the one that you least want to tell people all about your love for (like when you're on a first date and connecting about music, do you really want to be saying "Yeah, I really love Pornography"?)

I never really thought the Jam were anything special, honestly? So I'm obviously not the target audience for a Paul Weller solo album. I can tell he's more ambitious on this one than he was on those Jam albums, but I'm not sure it ever becomes more than just a fairly pleasant folky rock album.

This one's always been my least favorite of their first six, honestly? It loses the minimalism that makes 77 so special, but it's not yet reaching the heights of Fear of Music or especially Remain in Light songwriting-wise. To make matters worse, pretty much all these songs are done better on their live albums! Of course, "Take Me to the River" is great in any form, but even still, listening to it on Stop Making Sense or especially the second disc of The Name of This Band is Talking Heads is going to ruin the studio version for you forever. Not bad, just nothing special.

Part of me feels like the Ronettes' album would have been a better choice, but right now I'm filled with Christmas cheer and glad for the others that they get to be included. Some of the intros here are a bit syrupy, but if there's a time for being overly sentimental, it's now of course. The main thing holding this back, of course, is when there's a man. Bob B. Soxx is a perfectly serviceable singer, but he's certainly no Ronnie Spector or Darlene Love, or even a LaLa Brooks. Even worse is Phil Spector's rendition of Silent Night, which is just too much. It's even worse knowing what we know now, that *this* man is doing the song about sleeping in heavenly peace.

I knew basically two things coming into this one: that Peter Gabriel, like Phil Collins, was once in Genesis, and that "In Your Eyes" appears in the boombox scene of Say Anything. The combination of those two facts led me to expect some forgettable 80s cheese here. It's a bit more memorable than I was expecting ("Red Rain", "Sledgehammer", and of course "In Your Eyes" are all good!), and cameo appearances from Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson are pretty cool, but it's still just 80s cheese.

Dinosaur Jr. answers the age-old question of "would my favorite wimpy indie rock albums *really* be improved by the guitarist shredding?" with an emphatic "YES!!!"

I guess this is just me realizing what thrash metal's whole deal is, but Dave Mustaine and his lyrics really sound a lot like if you dropped a hardcore punk singer into a metal band!

The first half had too many slow songs to really feel dangerous, but the title is totally appropriate when we get to the second half! I like the harmonized guitars in theory, but I'm not sure how well I actually like their sound, but at least the songs on here are all pretty good.

There's four or five different Lana Del Rey albums that I could name off the top of my head, even as someone who's totally unfamiliar with her work. This is not one of them, and I don't think I've even heard any fans of her mentioning its name before! I guess I just don't understand why this one's here and not Born to Die or Ultraviolence, which I associate with the indie-er girls I went to high school with, and which I think were fairly important in the direction 2010s music took? Anyway, this is fine but kind of boring. It's got me feeling like I need to check out Born to Die and Ultraviolence, so it's not a total loss of a day, I guess?

There might as well not even be a backing band on this, the way Jerry Lee's bashing away you can't even hear anyone else but the drummer most of the time. But you don't really miss them though; Jerry Lee might be a reprehensible egomaniac, but he sure knows how to make it sound like hell is coming out of his piano. All those 50s/60s rock and roll standards can kind of sound tame when you listen with modern ears, like you listen to "Money" or "Hound Dog" and it's hard to understand how *this* was once considered a societal problem. Along with the Sonics' debut album, this gives you all the danger, all the delinquency, all the *racket*. Coming into this, I didn't think it would live up to what I had built it up to being when I was in high school, but honestly it sort of does? Probably I should feel a bit more conflicted about talking up this album as much as I am in light of what we know about him, but like, he's dead now so whatever.

I'd have preferred Willy and the Poor Boys personally, but I can't really complain about the album that's got "Born on the Bayou" and "Proud Mary", now, can I? Plus it's got my favorite cover of theirs. Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of long meandering songs, and here Fogerty's giving us *two* of them. Now that's just not necessary, dude.

Previously, I'd only known "Ain't That a Shame" from a movie soundtrack, so I was excited to learn a bit more about Fats Domino. It turns out, he's pretty one-note, though that note's pretty good. Like, all these songs kind of sound like lesser versions of "Blueberry Hill", honestly? They've all got that casual pace and same thing with the horns, and they're kinda short on hooks. If this were an hour long, I'd absolutely hate it, but for less than half an hour it's fun enough. It's all very consistent, it's just not all that exciting to modern ears.

I was a bit disappointed at first to find out that this album wasn't actually by someone from Mexico, but the music did win me over. I'm not at all familiar with the traditions he's pulling from, but it all sounded cool and a bit sound collage-y at times? Normally sound collage stuff doesn't do much for me but it did here.

As someone from the area, I always hear about DC hardcore in these hushed reverent tones whenever I go to local shows. Unfortunately, recognizing its significance to the local scene does not make me any more interested in listening to hardcore. Ironically, this makes me *way* more out of step than Ian Mackaye!

Doesn't really have any big songs on it that would make it stand out from the pack, but Stevie Wonder was just on another level in the mid-70s. This is his *weakest* album of the era, and yet it's such a mood-raiser, even on my first day back at work after the holiday!

There's a picture of the Modern Lovers featuring four of them looking all punk: long, unkempt hair, clad in leather and denim and brooding. And then there's Jonathan, standing off to the side in a white cardigan and khakis, smiling sweetly and looking entirely out of place. That's pretty much the energy he brings to this album too. He sings about what the punks sing about, whether it be romantic frustration or the generation gap or the government. But he's not angry about any of it; he kind of romanticizes his loneliness, he still loves the old world, he wants to go play music at the government center to cheer up the bureaucrats. Some of these are the cheeriest songs about feeling alone that you'll ever hear!

As someone who comes to metal with a noise pop background, I'm always expecting there to be *noise* to it. Unfortunately for me, extreme metal tends to prioritize speed and aggression and they'll have distorted guitars, but they're never really noisy like someone like the Jesus and Mary Chain or Medicine or what have you (maybe the black metal bands get there, but I don't have the time to do the research necessary to avoid listening to neo-Nazis, so that's out of the question). Fortunately for me, there's Motorhead. They've got the speed, they've got the aggression, *and* they're bringing the noise! They might not be quite the noise metal band of my dreams, but they're they closest that I've found yet, and they're just great overall!

I don't think I'd ever knowingly heard a Missy Elliott song before today, even though I'd totally heard of her before and the chorus of "Work It" is something I've seen referenced before. I really liked that one and the way she made those reversed vocals sound natural instead of off-kilter like in psychedelic rock! Also really liked "Nothing Out There For Me" and how she got those spoken vocals through a phone to fit in just perfectly. The rest was a nice enough listen (if a bit unmemorable for me), though the spoken interludes kinda broke it up a bit too much (even if I get what she was going for with them). I thought the occasional "this is a Missy Elliott exclusive" intros were fun though!

I still don't get it, but I can tell it's less complex than Kind of Blue, which means there's a bit less for me not to get. Which if you think about it, means I almost sort of get it a bit more?

This production is so weird! I think these songs are probably straightforward rock songs, but I can't actually be sure about that because my brain keeps sliding off any attempt to figure anything about it out. Is it good? Is it bad? I literally cannot tell! One thing's for sure, it's not really like anything else I've ever heard.

Yesterday, I got an album where a rock band tried to appeal to dance fans. I came away from that one unsure of my feelings because they ended up sounding unlike anything else I'm familiar with. Today, I've got an album where a dance band tries to appeal to rock fans. Unfortunately, I don't feel like I'm hearing anything new on this. To make matters worse, this rock fan isn't feeling particularly appealed to here.

For some reason, I've never listened to Aretha Franklin all that much? This one's been my default favorite anyway, because "Chain of Fools" is my favorite song of hers, but actually it's all great. I really love how the backing singers sound here, which sounds like a slight on Franklin herself, but it's not! It's just that everyone's in top form here! I really need to stop neglecting her other albums, don't I?

It's got a cool sound to it (absolutely love that guitar) and some good grooves, but it's just missing something for me, unfortunately?

As someone who doesn't listen to techno, I fully recognize that this one is probably a me problem, but I just couldn't figure out what the point of all this was?

For some reason I had assumed from the cover that this was like Donald Fagen going post-punk or something? Unfortunately, it's literally just more Steely Dan, and that's not something I really need in my life.

The secret to making Blonde on Blonde into a perfect single album is to grab a spray bottle and squirt it at Dylan any time it sounds like he's starting to have fun. That being said, I subscribe to the "new year, new me" philosophy, and besides I actually do like some of the fun ones, so in 2026 I can give this a 5.

Always thought this one sounded weirdly thin for its reputation and what it's trying to be. Also, it's weird they've got a New York Dolls diss track on here when this actually sounds a lot like them in places! P.S. I cannot possibly talk about this album without sharing the incredibly incongruous cover that Blueboy (possibly the twee-est band on Earth) did of "Anarchy in the UK": https://youtu.be/OBVrmykG0_E?si=kme1Iw51-e-0_tJP

My second Missy Elliott album for this in the space of about a week! None of the songs on here are quite as good as "Work It", but the production here sounds great and overall I prefer this album. I looked a bit more into her career and found out she started out her career as a producer for people like Aaliyah, so I guess I shouldn't really be shocked her own album has great production.

Always thought of this album as sort of like being a Belle and Sebastian wannabe? But on this listen, I'm realizing that the arrangements here are much more complex than anything Belle and Sebastian ever did, even though at the same time most of the songs are weaker. That being said, if you tried to tell me that something like "Come On Feel the Illinoise", "Chicago", or "Casimir Pulaski Day" surpasses Belle and Sebastian, I wouldn't exactly agree but I couldn't really rush to tell you that you're obviously wrong, you know?

Typically, I hold off from giving the boring electronica a 1 because I'm able to see why someone who's a fan of the genre might find it important, but I'm not holding off here. These beats aren't even all that impressive that they even come close to standing on their own, and the street interview interludes just don't do anywhere near enough to save it.

You Can't Hide Your Love Forever is well-canonized as an indiepop classic for the way it blends dorky vocals and hesitant, jangly guitars with just a tiny pinch of soul influence. Rip It Up, coming a few months later, tends to be remembered for the title track and for little else, but to me it's the better album by a nose. Basically, I like the increased role that funk plays in this album, and especially I like the two songs contributed by new drummer Zeke Manyika. One could easily be forgiven for thinking that it's merely a rip-off of Speaking in Tongues, except for the fact that Orange Juice beat Talking Heads to it. The pop is still popping too, of course. Basically, this is a potential avenue that indiepop could have taken, and though the genre's practitioners ended up too funk-averse for that, we'll always have this glimpse at what might have been.

It's not my personal pick for greatest album of all time, but it's totally fitting for the top album on this list. Rumours basically unites everyone: the indie nerds, the top 40 listeners, even the people who don't really care for music. We all hear "Dreams" and we all think "this is one of the greatest things I've ever heard", and as long as people still listen to music, we're all going to keep thinking that.

For the second day in a row, I get an album that I've already heard a billion times over just from listening to the radio. And you know, that's okay with me. I don't normally consider myself to be like a huge Michael Jackson fan or anything, but then I listen to Thriller and it's like "hey, I like that one! Oh hey, I like this one too! Wow, you'll never believe about this third one!" I even like the one with Paul McCartney on it, and *nobody* ever admits to liking that one!

I just don't operate on Bjork's wavelength, I guess. I like Debut and Post decently well, but she loses me after that. It's cool that she did all this a cappella, but it just does nothing for me.

Yeah this one might be the greatest live album ever. The energy's just so good, I need to go to a Sam Cooke show! But alas... I'm pretty sure somehow I'd missed out on hearing all the songs on here except Bring It On Home to Me, which you'd think would have made me slower to catch on, but nope! Instant favorite from day one.

For whatever reason, this is the one canonical jazz album that's always worked for me! I guess it's because the keyboards sound really cool? I'm not smart enough to know what's going on here, otherwise?

Something weird about psych rock is that the first-rate bands are all really good all the time, and the third-rate bands all tend to have at least one really good song, but the second-rate bands just tend to be disappointing. Unfortunately, Pretty Things are one of the second-rate bands. They've got all the right elements going on here, but they just can't put it together!

Not enough of a metalhead to agree with that Onion article, but yeah this kinda ruled. Maybe I'll get into Megadeth one day?

This title feels like it should be more experimental than Here Come the Warm Jets, but it doesn't really sound that way? Maybe it's something that got more adopted into later music, maybe it's just less ambitious. In any case, I think it sounds less interesting.

As a trans woman, I never really got to have a typical girlhood, not like the ones you see on TV or in the movies or whatever. None of the gossiping about crushes, none of the slumber parties, et cetera. And though a lot of that vision of what "girlhood" should be is a media creation that isn't true to the experiences of many cis women either, it sometimes still feels a bit like I missed out, you know? Instead, in the privacy of my own room, I'd listen to a lot of girl groups and girl group-adjacent artists. I listened to Skeeter Davis, I listened to the Shangri-Las, and I listened (of course) to Dusty Springfield. And in singing along to their peppiest songs (with a hairbrush for a microphone, naturally), I could reach an approximation of the girlhood that the media was telling me I should be having. I don't think there's really that many people out there that would have A Girl Named Dusty as her best work. Most would probably say Dusty in Memphis, and in all honesty, it *is* a better album than this one. If you were picking her best song, you might go with "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me", which again isn't on this album. Most of the songs on here were unmistakably done more definitively by other artists (we've got, for example, songs by Lesley Gore, the Supremes, Dionne Warwick, and the Shirelles). And yet, A Girl Named Dusty unmistakably has the greatest hairbrush factor of all her albums. Strictly speaking, we're not supposed to consider "I Only Want to Be With You" one of the songs on here, but it's there as a bonus track and it's her best song of the era, so we'll count it anyway. Listen to that, and you'll know exactly what I mean by "hairbrush factor"; it's got this massive amount of momentum to it that keeps it rolling along and basically forces you to grab your hairbrush and dance around your room, singing (or lipsyncing, if you're shy) along. And pretty much every single song on the album has been picked specifically to produce that same effect in you. I mean, I guess not "Wishing and Hoping", but that's one where you can slow it down and think you look the part of a coquettish ingenue, but really you just look silly, and that's honestly just as important to the whole vibe? Now, years later, I've settled into a fairly normal womanhood. Of course the fact of being trans continues to affect my life and my interactions with others, but I've got my friend groups, and most importantly, don't usually feel like a total outsider anymore when those friend groups are mostly women, cis or otherwise. It turns out there's no arbiter of womanhood who turns you away if you didn't have a girlhood! (Well there *is*, but we don't listen to people like that, now do we?) But then one of those old girl groups comes on shuffle, and I reminisce about the bits of girlhood I was able to give myself.

Sure, like most people I really like "Beautiful", but the rest doesn't leave much of an impression on me. It's too bad that it's one of those albums that tries to use every second of the CD, because unless you're Janet Jackson doing The Velvet Rope, it's just a law of nature that you're not a good enough pop star to justify that length.

It's got a fuller sound than Unknown Pleasures, and it certainly sounds more goth, but it's just not for me. I don't like goth music all that much (not even the Cure!), and it's the emptiness of Unknown Pleasures that makes it work for me to the extent that I actually enjoy it (admittedly not that much). So what's left to like here?

I never got trip hop until I heard this one. There's just a whole lot going on here, all of it good. We've got some soul, some hip-hop, some reggae, and some stuff that's just uncategorizable. One of my all-time top albums for when I'm looking to have a good time.

Honestly, that first song being as good as it was saved this from being just another forgettable pop album of the era? Nothing's particularly bad, but nothing else is particularly good either. Not much to say, honestly.

Got them mixed up with Fountains of Wayne for a second. Imagine my disappointment when I didn't get to hear "Stacy's Mom"!

There's a lot you can talk about with this one but in particular I want to talk about how great that guitar sounds. She never really changes that part up, and yet it works equally well with the uptempo rockers, the slower stuff, and even the weird experimental bits! It's an absolute must-hear, for sure!

There's some really pretty moments to this, but unfortunately a lot of it ends up as musical wallpaper. Pretty good album for listening to while you work, though!

2015 was my senior year of high school, and so probably the year that I was most aware of what was going on with pop music before I went off to college and dove straight into college radio indie rock. As a result, I remember the release of 25 being supposedly a very big deal! And yet, I'm pretty sure I never heard anything off this except "Hello"?

I always mix her up with Beth Gibbons, but I like this better than Portishead. Mixing folk with slight electronics is a winning combination for me! (See also: Beth Gibbons' solo work)

You can hear this album any time, day or night, at your local Olive Garden.

Title song is an all-time great psych-folk tune, but the rest of this is just varying levels of diminishing returns. Better than I remembered though, I always kind of thought of this as being pretty disposable and it's not!

I guess his first album after getting out of the army is of historical interest, but I'm not really feeling it. It's not just that there's no hits on it (his debut aside from Blue Suede Shoes is similar in that respect, from what I remember), it's that it just feels kind of phoned-in, Elvis-by-numbers.

Reading about this one, I've learned they took inspiration from acid house, a genre that's never done much for me. Luckily, the main result here is an album that maybe feels a bit shinier than New Order's typical output? Actually, more than anything, I think this kind of reminds me of Modern English, the way they've got the synthesizers and some jangly guitars?

I have never heard a so-called "stoner rock" album that wasn't just way too much of the most boring hard rock imaginable. (And yes, that includes Songs for the Deaf!)

Started off feeling like this was just pretty standard blues, but as it went on I felt like it was standing out a bit more. My favorite bits are when he and his backing singers do call and response, which tends to be pretty typical for me, honestly.

I hate this band's sophomoric name, and their even more sophomoric album title. I was all prepared to slap a 1 on this, but the issue with that is it's not actually as bad as I expected! I mean, it's not *good*, and it's way too long, but there's some songs on here I actually thought were kind of fun! Still never listening to it again after this though.

I've always thought that this is the weakest of the Big 4 grunge albums, but I was at the record store a while back and they were playing it, and it was sounding like the coolest album ever. Unfortunately, I find it too long to ever make time to listen to it, even though I actually really like several of the songs!

As something that is neither an hour long nor extremely embarrassing to be caught listening to, I think this is easily the best nu-metal album I've ever heard. Of course, I still don't actually like nu-metal?

The cover looks like B-52's rejects, but as it turns out, it's just a solid dance album.

I'm kind of surprised we don't get any of Beyonce's most ambitious albums on this list? Anyway, A Seat at the Table feels less immediate than the songs I've heard from Beyonce's albums, but I like it! Nothing really stuck out in particular honestly, but I'm just a fan in general of how neo-soul albums sound and Solange has a good voice.

Typically, this is considered the one where the Beatles truly become the Beatles, I think? It's a framing that undervalues all their early work, but it's true that they take a step forward in terms of complexity here. But all my favorite parts of this album are the ones in which they're keeping elements of that early era (e.g., any time they go "ooh la la la"). I think the fact that it's so in between these two versions of who the Beatles could be that makes this one such a good album.

Now I've never been particularly a fan of Led Zeppelin to begin with, but this just kind of feels like a retread of their debut, right down to having the pretty organ ballad in the middle! Just listen to the debut, it's better in all respects.

I feel like I'd always seen people putting Vaughan on par with singers like Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, but for some reason I'd never really ever heard of anything major she did? Unfortunately my jazz blind spot remains a massive one here; she's a good singer but I don't really understand what makes her great? I liked the part early on where it sounds like she messed something up and improvised around it though, that was fun!

Look, I recognize that this was basically *the* rock opera until the release of The Wall. But the problem is, I don't care for rock operas! And like, "here's a blind kid who plays pinball and starts a cult" isn't the most coherent basis for one anyway? Worst of all, though, is how seriously they take it. Like with The Who Sell Out, that was all a big joke, and it was absolutely perfect. But I don't hear much of that here. I'll just stick to hearing "Pinball Wizard" twice a day on the classic rock station, thank you very much.

I never used to care for this outside of the incredible title song, but this listen was doing it for me more, it turns out. It still can't keep up with the level that one sets, but the lushness of it all is definitely winning me over now. Plus, I loved how I actually recognized a Francoise Hardy sample in it this time around!

I couldn't tell you anything about what grime is or why this album just works for me, but it does. I love that dirty, lo-fi type of electronic beat, I guess? I didn't even care that it was almost an hour long!

Dolly Parton is an all-time great country singer, Linda Ronstadt sings one of my favorite songs ("Different Drum"), and Emmylou Harris is my absolute favorite backing vocalist ever, so this should have been a slam dunk, right? Unfortunately, not really. The vocals are great, as you'd expect, but it's sort of let down by the song choices. They're all kind of these gentle ballads that give the three ample opportunity is harmonize, but it doesn't really give anyone an opportunity to stand out. Perfectly fine as background music if you're a country fan, it's just too insubstantial to really be as great as the sum of its parts.

Parts of this remind me a lot of post-Dots and Loops Stereolab, or especially early Broadcast. Unfortunately, it all feels a bit incomplete here, and mostly I'd rather just listen to The Noise Made by People, honestly.

I tend to think of myself as being a fairly adventurous music listener, but without fail, my spirit always breaks somewhere in the middle of the combined 50 minutes of the Halleluhwah/Aumgn/Peking O. trio, and I realize that maybe real experimentation just isn't for me. Now, as it has always been, the closest I can come to truly appreciating Tago Mago is in my love for its more straightforward predecessor, Monster Movie (love Malcolm Mooney!). There are people who can tell you all about the great things going on here, and I believe them, but personally I'm gonna stick to more conventionally structured (though noisy) rock songs.

Springsteen is one of my all time favorite artists; he's got my favorite discography of anyone in the 70s, and he's at least top 5 for the 80s. Depending on how I feel on the day I get Nebraska, three or four of the Springsteen albums on here are getting a 5. This one's got some interesting ideas to it (especially when he takes a little influence from Middle Eastern music), but it's overlong and just not his best work. Glad I didn't have to give him a 1 at least.

Like any other poser, this is basically the only bossa nova album I've got any real amount of familiarity with, even though it's definitely not the only one I've heard. Worse still, I basically just know Girl from Ipanema! Seriously though, I love how bossa nova guitars sound so much, and I really ought to fill the blind spots in my knowledge.

The problem with singer-songwriters whose names aren't Leonard Cohen is that I'm just not someone who gets much out of lyrics. Randy Newman's music is pleasant enough, but it doesn't really do anything to stick with me (aside from the infamous usage of racial slurs in the first song). I guess "Birmingham" did a good job of evoking Civil Rights Era Alabama without ever explicitly mentioning any of it, at least, which is something?

As someone who's always liked the Animals, I was worried that I'd miss Eric Burdon's presence on this one too much to give it a fair chance. As it turns out, I might like this better than the albums he was on? It's not really the best funk jam album I've ever heard, but you know, I just haven't heard enough funk jam albums lately so it was just what I needed this week.

Pretty much any band from the 90s onward that's worth your time will be able to tell you how great Fugazi is. I've read about how it's the one band that unified the hardcore punks and the indie rockers in the DC music scene at the time. They're unquestionably foundational to pretty much everything I like listening to. And yet, I don't care for Repeater. I don't have anything against them, really. It's all perfectly fine, and it's got a few memorable moments (mostly from Guy Picciotto). I guess I just don't really care for Ian Mackaye, I didn't like Minor Threat much either, after all. Maybe I was just born too late to really get what's the big deal about Repeater? After all, I like Red Medicine well enough, and I really do enjoy The Argument.

Whatever might have been revolutionary about this album instrumentally has been wholly folded into the fabric of rock music by now, such that it might seem a bit tame. But they couldn't do that with Little Richard's vocal performance here, which still feels as revolutionary as ever. Sure, you'll see no shortage of singers trying to emulate him, even in his day, but he puts everything he's got into his vocals, and no one else is ever quite able to match that intensity. I mean, I guess there's like death metal growling or whatever, but even that comes off almost like a pale imitation.

I have a slight preference for the production on Born to Run, but when it comes to songwriting this one's Bruce's best to me. I guess that on the one hand it's a bit more typical classic rock, but on the other hand it's more anthemic? Like, this album still sounds really good, but it's not quite as interesting as the Spector-style thing he was going for with Born to Run. But then, while you certainly can shout along to "Thunder Road" or "Born to Run", they're not as good for that purpose as something like "Badlands" or "Promised Land". That being said, I think the way "Candy's Room" builds in intensity might be my favorite thing he's ever done in any of his songs? I think this one falls just short of being his best album because I've never really cared for "Racing in the Street", but it's still easily one of the best albums of the 70s, and an all-time driving album for me.

Kinda sounds like a cross between new wave like Blondie or the Pretenders and American indie rock of the period like Scrawl or Archers of Loaf? They're best known for "Connection" partially taking the riff from Wire's "Three Girl Rhumba", but it also sounds a bit like Liz Phair's "Supernova" to me. Anyway, this feels like something that should be right up my alley, but despite what they say, the vital connection isn't made here for me. The sound is just about right, but the I'm not really impressed by any of the songs. It's perfectly fine and I couldn't fault anyone for having it as a favorite album of the period, but it just doesn't do anything for me.

Look, I can recognize the importance of the White Stripes, and I think I could even learn to love them, but a Jack White solo album is just a bridge too far! The best moments on this sound like a wannabe Led Zeppelin IV, and I don't even like Led Zeppelin IV!

I was actually thinking about these guys over the weekend, so I guess it's fate that I get them now! Reading about all the antics they got up to in the public eye, I was expecting something a lot more out there and anarchic, but musically I can't really say it stands out to me? I guess it sounds like they pioneered this "stadium house" idea, but like, it's not an idea that still sounds particularly fresh after 35 or so years of us all hearing stuff like this at every sporting event. Not very exciting, but it's not bad, and it's clearly quite important. Wish it had the Tammy Wynette version of Justified and Ancient on it though!

I think I always vaguely knew that Peter Gabriel was the more interesting of the former Genesis members to go solo, but this one actually really surprised me! Like, I was expecting something kinda cheesy like So, but instead he's just straight-up doing post-punk here! Not sure that I particularly care about any of the songs honestly, but it all sounds really cool.

I found Silent Shout at the secondhand store earlier this year, which I was pretty excited about because I'd never actually listened to The Knife before. Unfortunately, it just wasn't for me, and the same applies to Karin's solo album here. Every so often I tell myself that I could get into pure electronic music because of how much I like it when indie pop gets electronic, but that idea basically never survives contact worth actual electronic albums.

This was actually (along with Murmur) the first record I ever bought! It's not quite as ambitious as they'd get on Remain in Light, but Fear of Music probably gets as close to it as they were ever going to be able to get (mostly) without bringing in additional musicians. As such, this one's probably the best example of Talking Heads as art school post-punk.

Sure, the chorus to "Maps" is really good, but not much else here is particularly interesting or memorable, just a sub-standard garage rock revival album.

It's so funny how there used to be a whole community of people who were like "all rap except Eminem sucks because it's about women and violence" because they clearly never listened to a single song of his. I don't see so much of that type of thing on the internet anymore, which is nice to see. I didn't particularly like this aside from the Dido sample, but it's interesting how much of it I was already passively aware of, certainly one of the more significant albums I've heard for this.

I know they share a producer and all, but I never realized until today how much this album sounds like Fear of Music in places. Unfortunately Bowie, though he may be rock music's most well-known chameleon, just isn't as interesting to me as David Byrne. It's above his typical standard, but it still leaves me cold.

Reggae is always a pretty good genre to get here, and this is no exception. I'm not a smoker by any means, but I had a great time with this anyway!

As any self-respecting 60s rock fan knows, this is the one where the Rolling Stones dropped their ill-advised attempts to match the Beatles' psychedelic rock and truly became *the Stones*. Unfortunately for me, I actually really liked their forays into psychedelia, and don't care too much for bluesy rock. This classic period lives or dies by the big songs for me, but "Sympathy for the Devil" has always been my least favorite of those.

Even though it's clearly the weakest of Dylan's electric era, it's honestly still pretty clear just how revolutionary the first half of this album was for him. It helps, I guess, that he starts it out with his most radical departure, that way you think of electric Dylan as "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and not as one of the later standard blues rock ones that don't really go anywhere. And yet, it's somehow the acoustic side that's the real highlight here! Maybe it's just because I'm a Byrds fan being swayed by "Mr. Tambourine Man", but these songs that all go on way too long are somehow among his most compelling! Simultaneously an album that serves to get you excited for the Dylan to come and one that makes you mourn the Dylan you're losing; it's not quite among his best, but if you called it the most important one, I couldn't argue with you.

A bit unfairly maligned because of the (admittedly subpar) title song, though I think this one's one of their more interesting albums. My favorite has always been their debut and the way it's kind of shrouded in a mystery that Morrissey would never have to him again, but that's not totally dispelled here either (plus they're coming closer to post-punk here!) Headmaster Ritual and That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore are a really compelling look at a direction they might have taken if Morrissey didn't steer things towards straightforward guitar pop with even more self-involved lyrics.

The Springsteen album for people who don't like Springsteen, and as such also the album that got me into Springsteen. It's probably like my fifth favorite now, but I knew it was going to be on the line between 4 and 5 based on my mood that day. And well, I'm at an all-day indie pop festival today, so that's not really conducive to a "Nebraska is a 5" sort of mood.

Rocket to Russia has the better songs, but recently I've been realizing that this is one of the best sounding punk albums there is. Just love how that guitar and bass combine to grind on like that! Like sure, it all sounds the same, but that's okay because you'll love how it sounds. Anyway, if you're a fan of punk or indie rock or anything like that, this is easily one of the most essential albums you'll ever hear.

Carole's just one of the all-time best, you know? And on Tapestry, she moves from writing pop songs for teens to writing for a more adult audience, with a whole lot of success. Soft rock often has a connotation, at least to me, of being a bit corny, but in Tapestry's case it's actually very comforting. If you can only listen to one singer-songwriter, this is the one, honestly!

Not to be reductive, but I've always thought about this one as a twin to White Town's album Women in Technology. After all, what we have here are two albums released in 1997, by bands with Indian frontmen (Tjinder Singh and Jyoti Mishra), connected to labels which are usually only of interest to indie nerds (Wiijia and Parasol), with somewhat inexplicable smash hits (Brimful of Asha and Your Woman). The main difference, as I've finally realized today, is that Cornershop's album is far more interesting than White Town's. See, White Town sticks to a pretty standard version of indie pop, something akin to the Field Mice with sampling. This is pretty fun if you're an indie pop nut, but it's not the type of album that's going to push music further or anything. On the other hand, Cornershop's got a whole lot going on here, like I'm hearing elements of trip hop and indie rock and Punjabi music and all sorts of things! And so, while Brimful of Asha is still the clear standout here, everything else is strong enough to feel truly worth your time, whether or not you're already an indie nerd. (But also, you should listen to White Town too!)

Like, it sounds good and all, but isn't 2002 a bit late to be doing this type of alt-rock? Not really anything special, but I kinda do love this type of sound so I don't completely hate it really.

I always kinda thought that Adam Ant was some corny synthpop guy, but instead he's a corny spaghetti western guy? And honestly, that's a big improvement over my expectations!

As a 70-minute concept album, you'd really expect me to be dreading this one. And yet, it totally grabs you from the Suite II overture and never lets go! I can't say that I really follow the story of the album, but I can tell you that it's got several of the all-time best songs I've heard, and that it's easily the most creative and gorgeous album of the 2010s onward. Its length keeps from listening to it all too often, but every opportunity I get to sit down and listen to it is one that's worth treasuring.

I kinda forgot that this wasn't just garage rock but Brazilian, there's a lot more interesting stuff going on in here! Like there's some garage rock, but there's also psych rock and chansons among other things, and it all just sounds so wonderful. I don't know Brazilian music well enough to put my finger on how exactly tropicalia separates itself from standard-issue psych, but I can hear the difference and I love it.

I remember having a friend in high school who was really into Lupe Fiasco, but over the years I had totally forgotten who it was she was into. That kinda led me to think that this would be a more immature-sounding album, but as it turns out that's not the case at all (despite the DS on the cover)! There's some pretty interesting production going on here at times, though the songs themselves don't really stand out all that much.

In high school, I remember reading that Robert Smith was obsessed with the idea that no one ever made a great album after the age of 30 while making this one. Now, as someone who is almost 30 and has never made a great album, I guess it's too late for me! I didn't particularly care for this one at first aside from "Pictures of You", because it was so long and not particularly tuneful, in a stage of my life where mostly I was listening to 60s pop music. Over the years, I've developed a greater appreciation for the Cure, but I still prefer them at their more poppy, like The Head on the Door or Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. There's definitely a few songs on here that live up to that standard, but honestly high school me was kinda right? While it has its moments at times, this album really *is* way too long and not particularly tuneful. Unrelatedly, I always get the titles of "The Same Deep Water As You" and Raymond Carver's "So Much Water So Close to Home" mixed up for some reason.

Every time I listen to "Belong" by the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, it makes me really want to give Siamese Dream another chance. And every time I listen to Siamese Dream, I think the guitars sound incredibly cool for a few minutes before I get tired of Billy Corgan after "Today" is over. Except for that one time I made it to "Disarm" before I got tired of him, of course. It's still way too long for me to want to listen to it all that much, but those guitars really do sound cool.

I did college radio in the late 2010s and my station still had their old poster from the release of this album up on the wall of the studio when I was there, as well as one from some band called "Loney Dear". And yet, I don't think I ever listened to it! Now that I'm more interested in 00s indie, it was a good time to fill that gap, I guess. It's cool how they don't really sound like anything else I've ever heard, but I'm not sure that I actually enjoy them all that much outside of "Wolf Like Me", which isn't on this one. Probably better than Loney Dear though, at least.

In yet another win for college radio, I heard Nanci Griffith for the first time on the Georgia Tech station, driving through Atlanta late one night. That particular song, "Drive-In Movies and Dashboard Lights", isn't here, but this one's definitely her best album I've heard. Part of me sort of wants to associate Nanci with Lucinda Williams, though it's not really a good comparison aside from both of them being women in country who aren't burning up the charts. Nanci's got a much thinner choice, her songs sound a bit more like they're radio-ready (even if only WREK plays them), and honestly she's really not nearly as good as Lucinda. But you know, I love her voice and sometimes you just want a nice country album! I'm glad to know about her, for sure.

When the guitar solo comes in on "That Lady", it gets me expecting that I'm about to hear the greatest album of all time. But alas, after that it settles in to being merely a very good funk album. There's several covers of white-bread soft rock hits on here, and they're all solid, but they're not like vast improvements or anything. Still, a fun listen, and one that makes me think I need to look into the Isley Brothers more.

Sounded a bit too 70s pop for me, unfortunately, though there's some great moments with the backing vocals occasionally. Not sure why exactly this gets to be here as a compilation when basically every other compilation is excluded?

He's definitely better with the Gilbertos, but the guitar here sounds nice enough to save this from being just forgettable elevator music.

Typically, when you tell me that an album is almost two hours long, I'm not going to be excited about the prospect of having to listen to something that long. But when you tell me I'm listening to almost two hours of Stevie Wonder at his creative peak, my response is "how come I only get two hours?" It's not my absolute favorite album of all time (though it's certainly up there), but it's got a very strong argument for being the *best* album of all time.

Something I've noticed that's kind of weird is that I don't like New Order that much, and I really do like Pet Shop Boys quite a bit, but any time I think of them it's kinda like "oh, those guys who are like New Order but not as good?" Anyway, all I knew about this one is that it's the one with the Lego brick jewel case that I can find in most thrift stores. But you know, I think it's my favorite album I've heard from them! It just sounds so stately, and even if it's not really going to be burning up my mind's pop chart with hits, it's still a delight to listen to. Maybe someday I'll finally give Pet Shop Boys the love they truly deserve!

As someone who never really got into Can, I'm clearly not the type of person who's going to understand the Holger Czukay solo album. It's even more out there than Tago Mago's most out-there moments!

Reading about glam rock, it can often sound like it should be one of the coolest movements in rock history, but it rarely ever lives up to that promise. For example, on this album, Roxy Music kind of comes off as sounding like one of those rock musicals like Hair or whatever, except with a composer who is a bit contemptuous of rock audiences. Which honestly, that *also* sounds like something which should be cool, but it's really not, honestly?

Honestly, why is this one even here? I've always thought it's the absolute weakest in their discography (even behind the much-maligned Beatles for Sale). The covers are a bit too obvious (come on, we don't need *another* rendition of "Money" and "Roll Over Beethoven"), and "All My Loving" aside, the originals are uninspired. If you're interested in the Beatlemania phase of their careers, do yourself a favor and just listen to Please Please Me instead.

I've never really been head over heels (no pun intended) for Cocteau Twins the way a lot of other indie nerds are. Like sure, I enjoy Heaven or Las Vegas, and I even think Victorialand is underrated, but I've never really liked this one. I'm just not goth enough for this stage of their careers I guess? Plus I really can't stand the alliteration that Elisabeth Fraser is indulging in on "Ivo" and "Lorelei", which just sounds too contrived compared to the near-glossolalic quality that people tend to attribute to her singing.

Just a few days after getting an album that made me realize that maybe I actually really like Pet Shop Boys, I get an album that kinda makes me pump the brakes on that realization. This one just feels like average synthpop to me; there's some synthesized choral stuff that sounds pretty cool, but the songs just aren't as good as they were on my last album of theirs.

I really hate this glorified bar band that totally sucked up all the air around everything actually interesting going in in British music at the time. And unlike Definitely Maybe, this one can't even offer me a guilty pleasure favorite like "Live Forever"!

I like the more atmospheric bits of this a lot more than I like songs like "Time" or "Money", but it's still a pretty great album. Pink Floyd has never really been my thing outside of this, but finding an old copy of this at the secondhand record store just felt so right, and that's the only way I listen to it these days. Perfect for when you want to imagine yourself floating out in space.

I've always thought of this one as possibly my favorite punk album of the first wave. This listen didn't change that, even though it did make me realize how much they kinda drop off in quality after 'Identity". But still, Poly's screaming and that dizzy saxophone are enough to make even the lackluster songs exciting to listen to.

Tom Waits kind of sounds like if Dr. John were a cartoon villain, but that's a vibe that I really enjoy, as it turns out! Some really beautiful moments here too, which I don't remember being the case in the last Tom Waits album I got.

Not content with being called the Ray Davies of the 90s, here Damon Albarn decides he's going to be the Archies of the 00s. And like the Archies, he's capable of creating a decent song from time to time, but it just doesn't feel substantial. Shoutout to the classic "flimsy Steve" tweet though, that alone is enough to justify the existence of this project.

Love when a Brazilian album has some psych elements, and in particular here I love it when they let the guitar get a bit fuzzy.

I've done my time in the Wall of Sound trenches, of course. I've got half the Ronettes' discography memorized, I've got a well-loved copy of Back to Mono, honestly I even like that one Leonard Cohen album! But this is an example of it that you truly do not need to hear. Like, the sound is fine enough, but it's just an attempt to cover up uninspired performances by someone whose time is past (see also: Let It Be, Byrdmaniax).

I was *so* prepared to give this 5 stars. Like "Let's Go Crazy", "Take Me With U", "When Doves Cry", and "I Would Die 4 U" all on one album? What else is there really to say except "yes please!" Unfortunately, then I was confronted with the fact that I don't actually like the title song very much at all, and there's like 9 minutes of that. So alas, Purple Rain falls just short of perfection.

Pretty solid disco album, though "Le Freak" is the only real standout. I actually did like the slower ones a lot too, maybe I wouldn't on the dance floor but I'm actually sitting at a desk right now.

In the past, I've avoided really listening to any post-punk revival because I've thought it was a bunch of dour, humorless Joy Division wannabes. In the case of Franz Ferdinand, at least, that assumption has proved to be unfounded. This is post-punk you can dance to, even, and the band sounds like they'd like you to actually enjoy listening to their album!

It's not really possible to talk about a British folk rock band without comparing them to Fairport Convention, so I'll just say that Pentangle are more psychedelic, more acoustic, and somewhat less beautiful.

For as long as I've been into music, people have been talking about how ABBA is the ultimate guilty pleasure. Now that we all agree on that, maybe it's time to stop being guilty about it? Anyway, I've always been more of a "Waterloo" girl, but I can't really deny the concentration of hits here! Unfortunately, aside from "When I Kissed the Teacher", the album tracks don't really live up to the near-impossible standards set by the singles.

Well, now I know who had all the talent in the Pixies

I know I got a live album from them last year that should have told me otherwise already, but I still think of Deep Purple just as the corny band behind "Smoke on the Water". This, on the other hand, is absolutely insane! Typically I end up feeling like early heavy metal feels pretty tame to modern ears, but no, I can still totally hear just how this must have felt to hear in 1970. The songs themselves are just alright, but that *sound*!

"Gloria" is the only one here I particularly care for, I think it does a really good job of building up tension. The rest is sort of like, we're told that she's a punk predecessor, but she's not really punk in form, and the original spirit of punk was kinda anti-intellectual so that's not her either, so I'm not really sure where she comes in? "Redondo Beach" sounds like worse Blondie, the rest is in the vein of "Gloria" but doesn't grab me all that much.

For me, the problem with music that's too smooth is that it slides right past me, honestly. So this one probably won't join the ranks of my all-time favorites, but it's a perfectly lovely album to spend an evening with.

I mean, I know that the way that they mixed rap with metal is *super* influential on all sorts of bands that followed. Unfortunately, nearly all those bands kinda suck. I'm obviously familiar with "Killing in the Name", and it always brings the house down when the guy at my karaoke night does it, but honestly it kinda felt tame here compared to the guy jumping around so much it shakes the stage?

I truly did not need an hour of Cee-Lo Green

I see this get compared to Colossal Youth, one of my favorite albums, a lot. And while they're superficially similar in their minimalism, I think this comparison misses the mark. See, the minimalism of Colossal Youth underscores the beaten-down anger of that album, whereas here the minimalism is in service of a hazy, dreamlike atmosphere. That latter is something that I hear *a lot* in music that followed, and while I recognize that this is the originator, I'm just so tired of that type of thing, I prefer for there to be more substance in my music, personally.

Every so often, a perfectly good silly pop act decides it's time to Get Serious. They'll always imagine themselves pivoting like the Beatles did with Revolver, and it'll basically never be as good as their more frivolous work. ABBA didn't come up with the next Revolver here either, but their play for credibility actually worked out decently well!

Clearly a cut above their nu-metal contemporaries, in that they sound like someone I can mostly take seriously, and in that they're capable of writing memorable songs. But possibly the best thing about Hybrid Theory is that it's like the only nu metal album where they're willing to keep it to a normal length!

Somehow, "Three Little Birds" is the only one I've heard on here before. Anyway, this one ends up much the same as all the other reggae I've heard before: something I really enjoy listening to, but the sentiments of the lyrics don't really stick with me, even though I know that the genre is quite political.

I've never really been a huge fan of "El Paso", and half this album sounds like variations on "El Paso", so it doesn't really work for me. It's not that I don't like country music of the era, it's that I prefer the more urbanified Nashville sound type of song to the open spaces of the Western. On the other hand, I do really like "Big Iron", and particularly its backing vocals (which I've only just now learned aren't actually the Jordanaires).

TV on the Radio got to that ominous buzzing and darkened atmosphere that's unique to their music really fast, but they've never really done much with it that I particularly enjoy, honestly (aside from "Wolf Like Me", of course). I can totally see how it would be hypnotic to some, but it's not doing much for me.

No, because why am I listening to an Arctic Monkeys side project before I've ever even heard an actual Arctic Monkeys album? This one was all set to be a typical "why is this here?" 1, but the only problem with that is that I actually kind of liked it? Like, they sound like Belle and Sebastian, who I love! Not in that they're copying Belle and Sebastian, but in that they're clearly making this with the same set of influences that Belle and Sebastian were working with.

David Bowie made his name by being able to jump on the trends just before they became the trends, even as he was never really among the best to do them. On Blackstar, he finally makes an album that doesn't really fit in with everything around it; I guess maybe it sounds like late Scott Walker sort of? Of course, this type of experimental rock didn't work for me when Walker did it either, and I like him a lot more. And as someone who never cared for Bowie in the first place, the fact that this album is him writing his oen eulogy is important to understanding the album, but I don't have the visceral emotional connection that would put it over the top for a Bowie fan.

The bass sounds absolutely perfect on here is you're even remotely a post-punk fan, those jagged shards of guitar all over the place do a good job of creating a foreboding atmosphere, the only problem is that Lydon's vocals are better suited for the Sex Pistols than they are for something like this. Listening to this, I can totally hear how many of my favorite bands echo it (especially Pylon, whose basslines I was hearing all through this), but it falls just short of greatness on its own. On the other hand, it really didn't feel like it was an entire hour, which is always nice!

Scott-Heron isn't much of a singer, but I like the flutes on this a lot, actually. Like a lot of people in the reviews, this one's making me want to revisit Pieces of a Man, an album which I definitely didn't know how to appreciate the first time I heard it. H2Ogate Blues goes a bit more into the spoken-word poetry of that album, and I enjoy it here, so hopefully I'll better appreciate his work in general now.

Boygenius for boomers

Title song aside, I've never really gotten the overwhelming love that this one receives. I'm just not prog, I guess!

As we all know, the White Album is an overly-sprawling mess of an album that really ought to be half as long. And yet, that's what makes it so compelling! You can almost hear the creative processes going in real-time here, what with the mix of songs that should have never been written, the songs that should have been left on the cutting room floor, the songs that could have used a bit more work, and the all-time classics. Sure, you don't really need "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" in your life, but doesn't the contrast make "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" just that little bit more satisfying?

People always complain about Iggy's mix for this, saying things like "this is the most brickwalled album I've ever heard" or "he literally just pushed everything as far into the red as it can go". To those people, I have just one thing to say: what, exactly, did you think he meant by "Raw Power"?

For most people, this is the Rolling Stones at their absolute peak. For me, this is their third straight album sounding exactly the same. When Sticky Fingers came up this morning, my first thought was "I could have sworn I got this one already". In reality, I had already gotten Beggars Banquet and Let it Bleed, but there's not really much difference, now is there? P.S. I don't care what people say, "Wild Horses" will always be Gram Parsons' song to me!

This one is beautiful and perfect and the sound of R.E.M. all grown up, and yet it wouldn't even make my top 5 from the band. The middle half is a bit less memorable than the rest, but that start and end are both world-beaters. In particular, I think "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" might be one of the all-time most quotable songs.

Post-Britpop might be slightly less painful to listen to than post-grunge, but it's not really any more worth your time.

Karen's got a great voice ("Merry Christmas, Darling" is one of my favorite Christmas songs, and it's because of her), but mostly this is just a lesser version of someone like the Free Design, doing covers that never approach the levels of the originals.

As any music nerd will tell you, this one's the crowning achievement of shoegaze and probably more interesting from a technical standpoint than Isn't Anything, and I do appreciate the hazy, amorphous atmosphere of it. And yet, I can't help but miss the hodgepodge of goth and noise rock and indie pop and whatever that they were throwing in on their earlier work! The extreme consistency of Loveless soundwise is both its biggest asset and its greatest drawback; I'm up for Kevin's grand artistic vision mostly, but eventually I do want to hear *more* from them! Honestly, this is just synecdoche for the same thing happening to shoegaze in general? Like, there were all sorts of bands taking varied approaches to the genre before Loveless, and now after Loveless, all the bands seem to just wish they could Pierre Menard, Author of the Loveless.

I was already familiar with Rufus Wainwright through his guest appearance on I Am a Bird now, so I thought I knew to expect mostly the same thing. Instead, it turns out he's actually more like Radiohead as an Elephant 6 band, with overblown production! Alas, I'm generally not huge on either Radiohead or Elephant 6, so it doesn't really do much for me, but nevertheless it's always a bit exciting to have your expectations blown to shreds!

They really took one of Roger McGuinn's alien encounter songs, removed the 12-string guitar, and made it 20 minutes long and libertarian

Something I've tended to underrate in the past is that Durango and Albini both seem to have different ways of getting these inhumanely noisy sounds out of their guitars. Durango is as conventional about it as you can get with noise rock, his guitar sounds like he's probably getting real close to the amp so it sounds like his guitar is shooting out sparks of feedback. I have no idea what Albini's doing to get *his* sounds, but it makes it sound like he's throwing knives around or something! Personally, I prefer noise the way Durango (or someone like the Jesus and Mary Chain) does it, with Albini's knife-guitar being something I hear a lot in latter-day noise rock but have never really come to love myself. But in any case, the secret weapons here are Riley's bass and the drum machine, which make this album way more danceable than it has any right to be. Because why am I constantly grooving in my seat every time "Kerosene" comes on? Overall though, Atomizer is an album I respect more than I love; it's influential on all sorts of my favorite bands, and I do think "Kerosene" is an absolute classic of the genre, but aside from that Atomizer fails to consistently capture my attention.

A massive improvement over Licensed to Ill soundwise, love these beats! On the other hand, nothing here is nearly as memorable as the best songs there. But I care way more about the production when it comes to late-80s hip-hop, so that's not too huge a problem, honestly.

Just listen to it: that jagged guitar, those dispassionate vocals, the humorless complaints about every aspect of society. These guys have obviously never had fun a single day in their life. And yet, they've somehow ended up making one of the most fun albums I've ever heard. I spent like a month dancing down the sidewalk on my way to class every single day listening to this when I first heard of, no other "fun" album can even compare!

I don't like Screamadelica at all, but at least I get that it deserves to be here for its reputation of getting the indie kids to go to raves. With this one, I just don't see the importance? They bring back a bit of psychedelic from their hippy-dippy jangle pop past, but it's all still so boring.

I'm always impressed by the sheer breadth of what Prince was able to do pretty much all on his own, and this album feels like a culmination of it all. There's the funk he made his name on, some of the hard rock that we all knew he was capable of, and the psychedelia he got interested in after Purple Rain. Unfortunately, the songs just aren't as memorable as they were on his previous albums. I could see this one being a big grower some day if I could get past the 80 minute runtime, but as of right now it's easily my least favorite of his albums that I've heard.

When you've got the best-sounding drums and the best-sounding bass in the business, you don't really need much more to have great beats. As much as I like sample-heavy artists like De La Soul or the Beastie Boys in theory, ATCQ's minimalism is executed so well that they're my easy pick for best hip hop group!

Johnny Cash's voice is shockingly limited on here for someone who was only 70! The best songs, like "The Man Comes Around" or "Give My Love to Rose", manage to work with his limitations to arrive at something that's better than it would have been with a younger Cash, but for most of these songs, he's just a shadow of his former self. The cover of "Hurt" gets all the attention these days, but honestly I've never cared for that song in any form? When it comes to aged Cash singing non-country songs, give me "Personal Jesus" any day! At least that one's got a pretty strong guitar hook to it.

Typically, I like pre-British Invasion American popular music, but this type of folk revival stuff has never done much for me. Just crazy to me that this stuff was in the present day indie rock lane of largely appealing to college kids as the subversive alternative to the other music of the era. Elliott bringing in Sarah Vaughan for a song is interesting as an attempt to bridge the divide between jazz and folk of the era, but it's not really enough to make this album all that interesting.

Typically, I don't know what I'm listening for in jazz, but here I feel like the motifs that he's varying on are a lot easier for me to notice. I still wouldn't say that I *get* it really, but unlike most jazz, at least here I can hear exactly what it is there is for me to get!

Out of the gate, the Byrds established themselves as one of the most forward-thinking rock groups of the time. But less than a year later, jealousy led them to kick out the best songwriter right as it seemed they were reaching a new peak. The resulting album, Fifth Dimension, was a very uneven affair, featuring arguably the band's best song (written by the now-fired Gene Clark), "Eight Miles High", along with some of the worst filler ever recorded by a major band, like "Captain Soul" or "The Lear Jet Song". After taking some time to regroup, the Byrds came out with Younger Than Yesterday. And though they're now working within the trends rather than setting them themselves, the album works mostly because Chris Hillman, who had never written a song for the band before, suddenly emerged as the best songwriter in the band. In fact, all three songwriters in the band (McGuinn, Hillman, and Crosby) are operating at their peak level on this album. You're not hearing the future born before your ears when you listen to Younger than Yesterday like you would with Mr. Tambourine Man or the better songs on Fifth Dimension, but you'll hear a solid set of original songs by a band who's typically better known for their covers. It falls just short of classic status when compared to what other bands like Jefferson Airplane and Love were doing at the time (or especially compared to Revolver, to which it's clearly indebted), but it's certainly worth your time.

It's not nearly as good as his non-album singles around the same timeframe, but this album is actually way more solid than I remembered. On the slow songs, everything else sometimes gets drowned out by all that echo on his voice, but the uptempo rockers all hold up better than his present-day reputation would suggest. Plus, his backing band just sounds *great* most of the time, especially if you're someone who likes folk punk or the Violent Femmes or whatever else gives you a combination of acoustic guitars and fast tempos. There are people these days who will talk about Elvis like he's Pat Boone or something, but this album isn't a watered-down version of anything. Like sure, his version of "Tutti Frutti" is more restrained than Little Richard's, but Little Richard was always one of the least restrained rock singers so that's not really a knock against Elvis here.

The only Quaye I need in my life is one of the Maxin- variety

Everyone always says this is like more Beatles than the Beatles or whatever, but honestly I was hearing something more like futuristic Motown? Like it's something about the string arrangements for me, and of course "Turn to Stone" takes some melodic ideas from the Four Tops' "I'll Turn to Stone". With respect to "Mr Blue Sky", that's not the Beatles either; that's the Kinks' "Do You Remember Walter"! Anyway, fun album, if a bit too long.

I was a bit disappointed to get *another* Kings of Leon album, but this one's actually almost fine. It's sort of like Hot Fuss, where it starts out with a handful of songs that you've heard a billion times on the radio, and then you don't care about anything after that. In the case of Kings of Leon, I feel like some of those later songs (especially "Be Somebody") are trying to be U2? Anyway, this is probably their album that's most worthy of being here and most listenable, though I can't imagine I'll ever think about it again.

Pink Floyd goes pop! All these songs are fairly accessible and normal-length, and it features about half the Pink Floyd songs a radio listener really cares about. As someone who doesn't care for prog albums like Wish You Were Here where they have the long song in many movements, this is much more my speed, though the length is a bit too much typically.

"Itchycoo Park" aside, I never particularly cared for the Small Faces. And now that they've cast aside all that psychedelic stuff and become normal-sized Faces, I dislike them even more! I didn't hate the cover of "Memphis", but that's still obsolete compared to Berry's original, and there's not much else of interest here. British people thinking they can boogie is truly one of the most dire things in existence...

For some reason, I assumed this was one of those bands where you could still hear traces of post-punk under the pop gloss, but mostly the only thing that stood out was how much the basslines sounded like Yes? I've always theoretically been a fan of New Pop and the way it sort of like carries punk ideology into the popular imagination and all, but most of the bands operating in that milieu don't do much for me.

This album is way more interesting in theory than it is in reality, unfortunately. The constant sampling is cool for a little bit and I guess it's revolutionary sort of, but they don't really go anywhere with it? Others would figure out better ways to handle the combination of grooves and randomly sampled stuff, but Eno and Byrne fall short here.

My longest yeah boy ever

As much respect as I have for Jimi, the long jams are still a bit much for me someone. To make matters worse, I've never agreed with the common wisdom that his version of "All Along the Watchtower" beats Dylan's original. On the bright side, on "Crosstown Traffic", he becomes the first person ever to make a kazoo sound cool!

Haven't I already had this album like five times already? I like Astrud Gilberto's voice now and then, but all these albums with her end up sounding entirely the same, and I don't like her voice *that* much.

This one's just such a lonely folk album; Nico famously hated the strings and flutes but as a fan of orchestrated folk, I think they're what make this album good. Her voice isn't the traditionally beautiful kind you'd expect on an album like this, but it really works well here (and dare I say, better than with the Velvet Underground?) Hearing her vision for the album could be an interesting change of pace in the future if anyone ever does that, but it's certainly not going to be a better album than what we've got.

I can't believe the entire internet has spent the past 5+ years trying to tell me that *this* is an all-time great band. I like Gaucho, though, wish that were here instead of this album in particular.

I thought I remembered these guys being more like Syd-era Pink Floyd? I was all ready for some whimsy about elves, and did not want over an hour of jazz rock!

I like Janis' voice fine, but "Piece of my Heart" aside, there's just not too much here to care about. A bit too much blues, not enough psychedelia, and they're not doing much to change my view that Jefferson Airplane is the only San Francisco band worth caring about.

There's a bit of Springsteen and Dylan in this, but mostly it reminds me of U2? And sure, I like Joshua Tree as much as the next girl, but the type of thing that's comes across as transcendently beautiful in 1987 is honestly just kind of typical by 2014?

You can tell that he's Growing And Maturing as an artist because it sounds just like a listless version of his older work

I've never really been able to get into Kate Bush, but I respect a "let's get weird"-type album. Despite not listening to her much at all, I somehow learned that "Suspended in Gaffa" was the name of her fans' mailing list? Anyway, it's a bit disappointing to look up what gaffa is and find out it's just tape and not like a gummy substance of some kind?

I guess it's cool to see the ways that the two main members were diverging by this point, but I don't really care for Neu as a proto-punk band. Those vocals are honestly pretty bad? But the half that's more akin to their debut is pretty fun, at least

This one was actually a really good way to follow up Neu as my previous album! More electronic of course, but it's in the same direction of being hypnotic and all. And honestly, I liked it better than the Neu album we get here!

I've really liked Sound of Confusion in the past, but this one doesn't work for me. Maybe I just like hypnotic garage rock, instead of hypnotic music in general? Or maybe Spacemen 3 just lost their fuzz pedal here.

So this is finally the Nick Cave I've always heard so much about! One of the top reviews here says this is like Tom Waits doing Leonard Cohen songs, which sounds pretty great to me! And it's not even an inaccurate description! But unfortunately, it's Tom Waits without the unique and exciting arrangements, and it's Leonard Cohen without being anywhere close to the greatest lyricist of all time. So alas, it's a big disappointment.