326
Albums Rated
3.25
Average Rating
30%
Complete
763 albums remaining
Rating Distribution
Rating Timeline
Taste Profile
2010
Favorite Decade
Hip-hop
Favorite Genre
US
Top Origin
Wordsmith
Rater Style ?
43
5-Star Albums
17
1-Star Albums
Breakdown
By Genre
Top Styles
By Decade
By Origin
Albums
You Love More Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx
Raekwon
|
5 | 2.84 | +2.16 |
|
For Your Pleasure
Roxy Music
|
5 | 2.98 | +2.02 |
|
Maxinquaye
Tricky
|
5 | 3.05 | +1.95 |
|
Ambient 1/Music For Airports
Brian Eno
|
5 | 3.08 | +1.92 |
|
Songs From A Room
Leonard Cohen
|
5 | 3.16 | +1.84 |
|
Fun House
The Stooges
|
5 | 3.27 | +1.73 |
|
A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector
Various Artists
|
5 | 3.29 | +1.71 |
|
Bitches Brew
Miles Davis
|
5 | 3.3 | +1.7 |
|
There's A Riot Goin' On
Sly & The Family Stone
|
5 | 3.3 | +1.7 |
|
Horses
Patti Smith
|
5 | 3.31 | +1.69 |
You Love Less Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
The Yes Album
Yes
|
1 | 3.31 | -2.31 |
|
Countdown To Ecstasy
Steely Dan
|
1 | 3.28 | -2.28 |
|
S&M
Metallica
|
1 | 3.26 | -2.26 |
|
Skylarking
XTC
|
1 | 3.03 | -2.03 |
|
The Coral
The Coral
|
1 | 2.99 | -1.99 |
|
Pills 'n' Thrills And Bellyaches
Happy Mondays
|
1 | 2.99 | -1.99 |
|
Aha Shake Heartbreak
Kings of Leon
|
1 | 2.94 | -1.94 |
|
Live / Dead
Grateful Dead
|
1 | 2.81 | -1.81 |
|
Basket of Light
Pentangle
|
1 | 2.76 | -1.76 |
|
Maverick A Strike
Finley Quaye
|
1 | 2.74 | -1.74 |
Artists
Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Radiohead | 5 | 5 |
| Talking Heads | 3 | 4.67 |
| Miles Davis | 3 | 4.67 |
| Prince | 2 | 5 |
| Stevie Wonder | 3 | 4.33 |
Least Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Happy Mondays | 2 | 1 |
| Steely Dan | 3 | 1.67 |
| Kings of Leon | 2 | 1.5 |
Controversial
| Artist | Ratings |
|---|---|
| Metallica | 1, 3, 4 |
5-Star Albums (43)
View Album Wall
Popular Reviews
The War On Drugs · 2 likes
4/5
You know that part in The Lord of the Rings where Gandalf returns as Gandalf the White, and when pressed, reveals that he is Saruman as he should have been?
“Indeed, I am Don Henley now," The War On Drugs said, "One might almost say, Don Henley as he should have been."
Dion · 2 likes
2/5
Pretty forgettable
Leonard Cohen · 2 likes
5/5
Going back in to add a fifth star. Listened to it again this morning and it's really breathtaking. I've always been a little put off by his voice over the course of a full album, but something clicked today.
Tom Tom Club · 1 likes
2/5
This is pretty awful. And yet seemingly half the tracks here became a memorable sample for fun rap and pop songs in the 90s. So they’ve got that going for them, which is nice.
Beatles · 1 likes
5/5
I mean, it's Abbey Road. Every song is perfect*. The medley might be the pinnacle of their entire output (I still get chills when "Golden Slumber" gives way to "Carry That Weight") I'm so glad they stuck it out for "one last album" despite the imminent fracturing, and clearly** had so much fun doing it. What a gift this album was. Even the two silly songs are fun and well produced. And the medley... just 16 minutes exploding with creativity and musicianship and killer riffs and special moments for each member individually and as a foursome.
What else is there to say? Amongst the most five-star albums to ever get five stars.
*two silly songs probably excepted
**from the various documentaries and outtakes you can hear if you want to do a deep dive
4-Star Albums (92)
1-Star Albums (17)
All Ratings
Guns N' Roses
3/5
I'm not eager for this style of music to be rediscovered and reconsidered, but I'm not as bitter or cynical about it as I was in my early 90s teens. The singles are undeniable, and lyrically this is grittier and riskier than most of the other 80s hair metal debris still casually lying around. I struggled to find much to enjoy outside of those singles, but I get how someone who played this tape over and over and over and over again would find their way into its nooks and crannies.
Brian Wilson
3/5
I really wanted to love this, and have tried many, many times in the past. I admire the musicianship, but it just leaves me cold. It's an example of a very good thing that's not for me.
Talking Heads
4/5
Tears For Fears
3/5
I've somehow never given much thought to Tears For Fears outside of their singles. This was a pretty solid album front to back (though the ballads left me flat). The Genesis albums from this era have a certain hold on my imagination and I imagine if i had come to this closer to real time, it would have been formative. But will I ever listen to it again? [looks around; whispers] Probably not…
Hugh Masekela
3/5
The musicianship is clear, but at some point one track was just floating into the next with no discernable unique qualities, and I think that's where jazz lives for me: Love and admire it, but there are no songs I jump up for, no songs that get stuck in my head, no songs I can't wait to revisit. The masterpieces transcend that; this wasn't one of them.
Eels
4/5
I've been listening to this since it was released in '96, and revisiting it was a joy. This kind of grunge-meets-trip-hop-meets-elliott-smith is right up my alley and this one in particular hit me at a perfect moment as I was increasingly living in the tension of inner turmoil counter-balanced with a growing sense of wonder about the world. All the melancholy and minor key dirgeness balanced with exceptionally inventive arrangements and production are still to this day pretty dang close to perfect. The Eels have gone on to have a pretty legendary run of albums, but this one will always have my heart, even though more interesting albums are ahead.
That said, is this one of the 1001 albums you must hear before you die? Probably not. But I like it better than every "classic" album this list has thrown at me so far.
Throbbing Gristle
1/5
Thoughts I had while listening to this:
"Finally, the perfect soundtrack for a lazy Sunday"
"Wasn't this featured on 'NOW That's What I Call Music 32'?"
"That riff just kind of tunnels its way into your brain, doesn't it?"
I don't know, man. I want to be the kind of music lover that can appreciate this. I was so excited to check out an album I'd literally never heard of before that enough critics thought worthy of a list (even one as big as 1,001 albums.) But I didn't appreciate this on any level. I'm guessing it's hugely influential and there are artists I adore who were completely turned on by this. I can imagine this being a foundational record for Aphex Twin, Autechre, Whitney Houston. Oh, not Whitney Houston. Who am I thinking of?
(That being said, I listened to '20 Jazz Funk Greats' and there was some actually great stuff on there.)
Cream
3/5
There's something about that riff on "Sunshine of Your Love" that makes me want to sink way down into my floor, write shitty poetry and let the whole thing take me over. It occurs to me that I'm not nearly high enough to properly enjoy this*.
What to make of this one? Should an album be held captive by the heights of one song and the impossibility of sustaining that height**? Are the lows enough to knock a star off even if they're all well and good and I just don't appreciate psychedelia (and dumb British stuff like "Mother's Lament") all that much? Should I rate an album five stars because it's clearly a five-star album and therefore it deserves its flowers, or is this project personal enough that I ought to just stick to my gut and give it four stars? I did just give an Eels album five stars ostensibly for shits and giggles, and this is certainly more deserving of that rating. But, I am nothing if not inconsistent about my music tastes. What am I rambling on about now? Maybe I *am* high enough to properly enjoy this***?
* I'm not high at all, just for clarification.
** Though Jimi did it three times right around now.
*** Still not high at all.
Franz Ferdinand
3/5
It doesn't elevate the form like "Is This It?", "Turn On the Bright Lights" or "Fever to Tell," but it's holding up well and it did what it set out to do as well as one could, no?
Goldfrapp
3/5
Another perfectly fine album that seems like an odd inclusion in this list. Since there are better Goldfrapp albums, does that mean you need to hear MULTIPLE Goldfrapp albums before you die? That's hard to co-sign. Anyway, three stars.
Iron Maiden
3/5
Undeniable, even though it's not really for me.
k.d. lang
3/5
Sometimes I read a review prior to listening to an album in a genre I don’t connect with in order to have some context for what makes it great. In the case of Shadowland, it was Mark Deming’s review from allmusic.com. He painted a picture of a masterpiece of country music and, since all I really knew of KD Lang was “constant craving,” I dove in expecting the water to be warm.
I love many albums that fit the alt-country tag, and I grew up embedded in a town with abundant access to concerts featuring some of the genre’s most famous acts. And I can spot the magic in a Patsy Cline song and a Hank Williams album one, and some modern country like Sturgill Simpson or Kacey Musgrave has made it past my moat and taken up residence in a year-end list.
All this is to say, I *want* to love this. And I even feel bad *not* loving it. But this genre just isn’t for me, despite kind of sort of seeing what Mr. Deming was going on about.
Fugazi
4/5
Not much to say here. The first bona fide masterpiece of this project for me and the first that lives somewhere in my own top 100/head canon shortlist. Just 11 straight shots of pure adrenaline to the system. Every time I revisit it, it gets better, and that's like 25 years of revisiting at this point.
The Divine Comedy
2/5
Sure.
The Beach Boys
4/5
On one hand, this is a blessed album, overflowing with ideas and ambition and beauty. The production style influenced almost every rock band I love today. On the other hand, the ceiling on how much I could like the style of music Brian Wilson made is like a 3/5. Let's split the difference.
Also, "A Mouthful of Sores" has permanently tarnished my ability to not giggle when I listen to the Beach Boys. IYKYK.
Michael Jackson
4/5
This used to be pure joy. Now it’s something else. The music is still the music. What’s always been infectious and transcendent is still infectious and transcendent. But now there’s other emotions too. Complicated, confusing, and ultimately icky emotions. The joy is compromised. And if this record is designed for peak fun as its sole reward, what’s left in its wake?
Pet Shop Boys
3/5
I appreciate this more than I enjoy it. I've tried to talk myself into 4 stars.
Dusty Springfield
2/5
Lovely voice, some interesting arrangements, and a whole lot of songs that were appropriated, which tarnishes my ability to just enjoy the darn thing.
Miles Davis
5/5
This one is special. It hits all of my buttons. It makes me want to go back and knock my other 5-star albums down a star. After all these years I'm still being hooked by new grooves or hearing a new lick. (By the way, I peeked at what's ahead and since it won't be coming up, let me here suggest "On the Corner" as required listening if you were into this one.)
U2
4/5
I kind of loathe U2 most of the time, though this is one of the two U2 albums I ever spent my precious Columbia House/BMG pennies on (the other being its follow-up, Zooropa, which I adore; an opinion that I've discovered is out of step with the U2 core fanbase.) I'm fairly certain I owned this on cassette and then re-purchased a used copy of the CD later on. So, like all albums from about 91-94, there's a ton of nostalgia here since these songs made up at least some of my coming-of-age soundtrack, and "Mysterious Ways" was in the alternative MTV rotation by the time "Smells Like Teen Spirit" came to obliterate my small-town-Iowa worldview and forever change me.
Anyway, the first half of this album (plus "Mysterious Ways") is big, anthemic rock at its absolute finest. Banger after banger after banger.
The second half (minus "Mysterious Ways") is meandering and overproduced. It's the same production that takes the songs in the first half into the stratosphere, but since the melodies aren't strong,
the heavy handedness becomes both meat and potatoes. I've often wondered what a Rick-Rubin-Wildflowers-era version of U2 would have sounded like. "Tryin' to throw your arms…" and "Ultra Violet" especially feel like they would have benefitted from taking the foot off of the arena-rock/KROQ-hit gas.
But also, "Mysterious Ways" is on here. So, four stars I guess?
Funkadelic
4/5
The sharp exit from the transcendent, world altering title track into the acoustic guitar at the beginning of "Can You Get to That" is always so jarring; I want like 34 more seconds of silence or atmosphere. But since it's P-Funk, it more or less feels at home with their entire fun-but-scattered-and-inconsistent catalog. Still, there's nothing that could have followed the opening title track that would have felt worthy of its wake. Eddie Hazel made me feel the things all the elder statesmen said guitar music could make you feel. The rest of the album ranges from decent to pretty good, but "Maggot Brain" is a minor miracle.
Buck Owens
2/5
Paul Simon
3/5
There's a whole rang of music from this time period that I just kind of roll my eyes at and can't really meet on its own merits -- this, Bobby McFerrin, "Kokomo." The whole thing feels inseparable from Chevy Chase mugging for the camera in the 'Al' video.
That said, it's hard to hate on this album. Everything is fun and poppy, and there's clever Simon-y wordplay on most songs. Mbaqanga music is fun. But Graceland is so old fashioned, and the lyrics so rarely fit the music in any meaningful way, that it feels like Paul Simon wrote some catchy pop melodies and pasted a layer of mbaqanga music on top of it. I think I can understand why this all felt dynamic and new in 1986, and I guess pop artists get to be inspired by stuff (it seems like he at least tried to create some level of equity for the musicians he brought in to help him create this) so I shouldn't just cynically yell 'Appropriation!' like someone yelling 'Bomb!' on an airplane, but also it doesn't really inspire me to go any deeper into its influences, which … ideally it would?
Also, why is this called Graceland?
Garbage
4/5
Another album that hit at the right time in my life to love it well beyond its merit. "Vow," "Stupid Girl," and "Queer" are still in my personal heavy rotation. "Milk" is on a shortlist of my very favorite songs. It was fun revisiting this as a whole, though a lot of this sounds the same. At the time bringing all of these elements together at once felt groundbreaking for mainstream modern rock radio; it was as vibrant as anything in the post-Cobain era. It was fun revisiting this in whole.
Bumping it up a star for its personal meaning to me.
Finley Quaye
1/5
Im a fan of reggae and many of its offshoots. And also this sucked.
My Bloody Valentine
4/5
One of those albums that demands you listen on good headphones as loudly as you're willing to go. You want the wall of sound to overwhelm and the gorgeous, haunting melodies to emerge and worm their way into you. I'm completely swept up by shoegaze and My Bloody Valentine is the best of the genre.
I came to My Bloody Valentine very late in life -- after even this 2013 album was released -- writing them off as some kind of horror rock band that I had no interest in, so I didn't get to participate in the roller coaster of emotions that accompanied its sudden and startling release 22 years after it was begun after so many false promises and waylaid hopes. I've often wondered out loud if my whole life trajectory would have been changed by discovering Loveless in real time. Its hold on me is so complete that I imagine my younger self wandering through my hometown desperately searching for one likeminded fan of music to lay on a floor with and let the unstable tuning of the tremolo arm wash over us. The intimacy of the soft, sweet mix of Kevin and Belinda's voices buried so deep in the mix that they make you lean all the way in demand (in my mind's eye) to be pictured like the light of an early 90s indie movie projected through dusty air onto the screen of a worn-down theater that hasn't yet been scooped up by AMC. Their music lends itself to romanticizing a soundtrack to my teenage emotional turmoil, falling in love every other week, desperately wanting out of the house, longing for a place in the world that I can just be myself and not be shoved into lockers for it.
mbv isn't quite the monument that Loveless is, so I don't return to it quite as often. It's essentially broken into three distinct sections. Tracks 1-3 could fit onto Loveless seamlessly. Tracks 4-6 feel like a step into something new, possibly what a proper follow-up to Loveless would have felt like in the early 90s. Tracks 7-9 are stark departures with pummeling percussion only really hinted before now on the final track of Loveless, though there it was nearly a proper dance track. Those last three tracks by nature can't sink into your psyche quite the same way and so it's taken many more listens to find their melodic heart, especially buried in "Wonder 2." I don't know that I actually like the last three tracks so much as I feel obligated to like them, though on the right day I can find them invigorating.
Jorge Ben Jor
4/5
Never heard his before. Loved it.
The Byrds
2/5
The Teardrop Explodes
3/5
Nothing memorable, but decent enough in the background.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
4/5
An exquisite and powerful album with an iconic album cover to boot (not the one pictured here for some reason.)
Ladysmith Black Mambazo
4/5
There are some really stunning moments ("Golgotha" being my favorite) and while I don't know how this would ever fit into a regular rotation of music for me, I sincerely appreciated listening to it.
Also, I didn't know the connection between this album and Paul Simon's Graceland. Hearing them so close to each other thanks to this project did admittedly make me appreciate Graceland a little more in hindsight, or at least appreciate Paul Simon championing them.
Randy Newman
2/5
I have to admit that I've never once listened to a non-Toy Story Randy Newman song. It's very, very hard to hear this on its own terms and not hear some version of "You've Got a Friend In Me" on every track and I gave up trying about 20 seconds into "Every Man a King."
Nanci Griffith
2/5
4/5
Boy, they sure can write an anthem, can't they?
There are moments on this album where I think, "Is this one of the greatest albums ever made?" But then something else from the era will follow it -- Daydream Nation & Sign O' the Times are the same year; Surfer Rosa is a year away -- and I'll remember that U2 just doesn't turn me on or have its way with my soul. Alas.
Steely Dan
2/5
What am I missing? This is so boring. These guys are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This is a hugely popular album and I just don’t get it at all. It doesn't even have the decency to be cheesy and fun.
(Also, second album with a Chevy Chase connection so far!)
George Harrison
3/5
Sam Cooke
3/5
Not the kind of music I'd pull up regularly but I enjoyed hearing this. Lots of energy; would clearly have been dynamite to experience live. I got a little burnt out on it halfway through though.
Johnny Cash
4/5
I've never really connected with Johnny Cash, though I've heard this a bunch of times and admire it a great deal. The trappings of the setting and his banter are more compelling to me than the actual music, but that's no fault of Mr. Cash.
Black Sabbath
4/5
Even though I haven't spent a ton of time with this album, I felt like I knew every song by heart and every riff brought with it a flood of sense memories. When I first listened to Black Sabbath in earnest, the music felt so much less dangerous than the stuff happening in New York in the 70s that I didn't understand how they had a reputation as the church's Public Enemy No. 1. Ozzy's public image in the 90s and 00s didn't help anything. It all seemed like a parody of itself.
A few years ago I listened to Master of Reality in earnest for the first time (possibly for the first time period) and it was just a right-place/right-time situation where everything clicked and I couldn't get enough. I'd spent so much time tracing the lineage of my favorite 90s bands through Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Roger Waters, and/or Page & Plant that I never fully appreciated how much more influential Black Sabbath were on some of the giants. Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots and the Smashing Pumpkins all owe a far greater debt here than to whatever was happening at CBGB's.
Paranoid is one that deserves more of my attention. Aside from the ubiquitous War Pigs/Iron Man/Paranoid triumvirate, "Planet Caravan" caught me off guard in the best way, "Jack the Stripper" was a whole lot of headbangin' fun, and the sniveling vocals wrapping themselves around the monster riff on "Electric Funeral" went a long way to explaining how these guys could put the fear of lucifer into an impressionable young fundamentalist.
Reserving a star because Master of Reality is ahead and Vol. 4 has, to my ears, so much more going on songwriting-wise. But this is a stone-cold classic.
Ministry
2/5
There's a lot going on here. I made it halfway through and needed a break and a glass of water.
Ministry freaked me out as a kid and they still freak me out a little now. That said, there’s interesting stuff here. Is it essential? Meh.
Beatles
5/5
I mean, it's Abbey Road. Every song is perfect*. The medley might be the pinnacle of their entire output (I still get chills when "Golden Slumber" gives way to "Carry That Weight") I'm so glad they stuck it out for "one last album" despite the imminent fracturing, and clearly** had so much fun doing it. What a gift this album was. Even the two silly songs are fun and well produced. And the medley... just 16 minutes exploding with creativity and musicianship and killer riffs and special moments for each member individually and as a foursome.
What else is there to say? Amongst the most five-star albums to ever get five stars.
*two silly songs probably excepted
**from the various documentaries and outtakes you can hear if you want to do a deep dive
Wire
4/5
Pink Flag came out the same year as Nevermind the Bollocks and The Clash's first album, so it's disappointing to me that this didn't make as big of an impact as those two records, though I suppose not surprising. Anyhoo, Pink Flag rocks.
(Wire was/is still putting out quality records as recently as 2020 and have a massive back catalog filled with little treasures, which is certainly preferable to the beautiful corpse of the Sex Pistols.)
White Denim
2/5
🤷🏻
It felt like this one never knew what it wanted to be. I can appreciate genre hopping, and not every band needs to pick one lane, but I just never got my head around this album, nevermind finding it essential.
The Band
2/5
I want to like this more than I do. "The Weight" is timeless though.
Kelela
2/5
I've tried many times with Kelela. Seems like the kind of music I'd love. But I just don't connect with it. The production is great though.
Marilyn Manson
2/5
Just… no.
(Giving this two stars cause if I give it one star, I have to look at the cover every time I click on my summary page.)
Jacques Brel
2/5
"The Elvis Presley of French Pop."
Je n'aime pas du tout ça. Le jeu trop emphatique et le manque total de charme ne sont pas mis en valeur par la mauvaise qualité de la production. Le public est enthousiaste, alors peut-être que je passe à côté de quelque chose à cause de la traduction (ou plutôt de l'absence de traduction).
The Go-Go's
3/5
Ended up enjoying this, especially “Lust for Love” and “this town. But mostly it just made me want to reach for those first couple B-52s masterpieces, and of course the immortal “Heaven is a Place on Earth.”
Tortoise
4/5
There are moments during "Djed" where I remind myself that someone wrote and recorded this, because it feels like music that has just always existed. There are other moments where I think, "Why did they choose this here?" only to seconds later be entirely captivated and swept away by that same choice. It's a song/composition/saga that rewards multiple listens, and it's so packed full of good stuff that multiple listens is not a chore, despite its running time. I wish that the other 20 minutes on this record matched it, but they don't, though they're all very listenable.
I peeked and saw that this is the only Tortoise album on the list. That's a shame because the next one, TNT, is just as great, and more consistent start to finish.
Dusty Springfield
4/5
I gave her other album on this list a very low grade. Not this one. This one is a banger.
Also, I almost certainly knew "Son of a Preacher Man" prior to Pulp Fiction, but its moment in that film, one of my ten favorites since the day I saw it, has become so etched in my memory that I can no longer separate Mia from Dusty.
Coldplay
4/5
Is this a 3-star album or a 4-star album? I'm so torn. It's obviously a 3½ star album, but since that's not allowed, do I round up or down? Let's break it down.
1. This is almost wholesale ripping off Bends-era Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, The Verve, and a host of other bands.
2. On the other hand, they do a pretty good impression, and Chris Martin is vulnerable enough and the guitars shimmer enough that it all stands on its own just fine.
3. Their gift for crafting earworms is impressive, and will remain so on all their subsequent albums, even as they start mostly just imitating themselves.
4. I spent *so* many nights in the fall of 2000 with this album on in the background. Every dorm room I landed in for like four months had it in heavy rotation. That wasn't a bad thing at all. It's a cozy album and has a consistent vibe.
5. I have almost all of these songs on the playlist I shuffle most frequently ("My Happy Place",) and I very rarely skip them when they come up.
6. As a result of 4 & 5, I have listened to this album hundreds of times, way more than the three albums I currently have at 5 stars on my summary page (46 albums in; it's still early days.)
Screw it, 4 stars.
John Martyn
2/5
Really tried with this one because Martyn is an influence on The Verve apparently, and The Verve are one of my heart-bands. But this just isn't for me.
Radiohead
5/5
Some meaningful part of my heart is taken by Radiohead's music, something that has been true since hearing "My Iron Lung" on a CMJ New Music Monthly sampler CD in early '95; a sentiment only strengthened by OK Computer, which is god-tier, and Kid A, which turned my music tastes upside down.
Where to start with In Rainbows…
"15 Step" signaled that they once again had redefined their music. "Bodysnatchers" was a thunderbolt of crunchy guitars. "Nude" continues to have little touches I discover each listen, and is one of the best showcases for how their music can be both melancholy and hopeful, moody and euphoric. "Weird Fishes," the standout track on the album, has inspired countless YouTube reaction videos of people having their minds blown. "All I Need" has that longing, plaintive quality combined with so many thoughtful little musical touches. The whole record rewards repeat listens like very few other records do. Each time I go back I find something new to love. I haven't even gotten to "Reckoner" or "Videotape," each worthy of dissertations. Each member of the band has fingerprints all over every song. No note is unexamined. No stretch of music isn't meticulously considered and iterated on.
For a very long time OK Computer and Kid A sat in my top 5 and I expected no album would come close to touching them. 18 years later, I listen to In Rainbows far more often than OK Computer, and have come to cherish it. It's a joy. It's vulnerable and filled with light. It's perfect in every way. And it's currently #4 on my all-time favorite albums list, a list I admittedly revise somewhat frequently, but its been within the top 5 for many years now, while OK Computer looks in from #6.
It's becoming more and more unlikely we'll ever get another mammoth Radiohead record. Who know if we'll get a tenth album, period. But In Rainbows showed me that a band 15 years into their run could once again reinvent themselves and deliver something seminal. So I sit hopeful that there's more to come.
5 stars. 6 stars. 11 billion stars.
(If you ever want to fully explore In Rainbows, there is a podcast called Dissect that did an incredible unpacking of each track a couple years ago. Highly recommended.)
Stevie Wonder
5/5
The burst of creativity from 1972's Music of My Mind to 1976's Songs in the Key of Life is, for my money, the greatest run of music there is. Five years, five albums, five masterpieces. You can have your Beatles and Dylan runs. Give me Stevie. In fact, inject it straight into my veins.
It's dealer's choice whether Innervisions or SITKOL is the pinnacle of that period. For me it's the latter, but just by a hair. Innervisions is 44 minutes of tightly-woven songs that rip. The ballads move. The funky jams jam funkily. More than once a song does that thing where they become a whole different song halfway through, and both sides are revelatory (I initially cringed at the “skit” (in modern terms) in the middle of “Living for the City,” but now think it’s an incredible flourish.)
And there are multiple songs that do that thing that Stevie is the best at -- taking a song and letting it climb higher and higher and higher until it bursts into a new octave, a new key, a new stratosphere, a rush of beauty. "Golden Lady", "Jesus Children of America", "Living for the City", and "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing” all give me chills.
Sometimes they feel like there are 2 or 3 distinct vocalists at the helm, but it's all Stevie. From his deep growl to his pre-Michael Jackson "heeeee"s and James Brown “Ow”s, he has an uncanny sense of when a song needs just a little something extra to send it over the edge (dig the way the album ends with growl-Stevie singing underneath heavenly-Stevie.) I love the way he does from the plaintive softness of “Visions” to the urgency of “Living …” to the silky smooth Bruno Mars-esque “Higher Ground” to the powerhouse, knock-em-dead performance on “All in Love is Fair,” an earned earnestness that too many American idol-y folks aim for without any conviction.
This album embodies beauty to me. And did I mention how *fun* it is?
All the stars.
Beck
3/5
There are so many sides to Beck in the first ten years — Mellow Gold to One Foot in the Grave to Odelay to Mutations to Midnite Vultures is a crazy melting pot — but I remember still being pretty caught off guard by Sea Change, an autumnal breakup album that rarely has a groove to ride or cares to bring us out of the muck. It's a whole album of “Nobody’s Fault but my Own,” which I don't remember clamoring for. But there's layers here — Nick Drake doing David Bowie or visa versa, with a little Patsy Cline sprinkled in — and it's a rewarding listen, elevated by Nigel Godrich's gorgeous production. Catch it in the right mood on a long stretch of starlit country highway and it may leave a lasting impression.
It gets a little long in the tooth by the end — shave off two tracks and maybe I would have returned to it more over the years — and I always feel compelled to like it more than I do because of the critical love it usually gets. Another 3.5 star album that I have to round up or down. It's lovely, and “Lost Cause” is maybe my favorite song he’s made, and I haven't done myself any favors rounding up on that eels record and Coldplay's debut. Still, I just so rarely come back to it. I guess that's a good thing?
Wild Beasts
2/5
I haven't listened to Wild Beasts in at least a decade. As this album began I thought, “This is groovy. Why don’t I listen to this more?”
And then Hayden Thorpe started singing…
Eric Clapton
3/5
461 Ocean Boulevard has good examples of what makes Clapton important -- the inspired guitar work, the bluesy, laid back ramblers, the maudlin ballads that are *just* earnest enough to be affecting -- but the some of it is just... kind of fine? Also, "I Shot the Sheriff" suffers from that same thing I didn't like about Paul Simon's Graceland. It hits all the beats of a Wailers song, but it's missing the essential quality that makes Bob Marley special.
Maybe I'm just grumpy about the person he's become as he's aged, but I have never fully understood the hype, and spending another hour with him didn't move the needle for me. He's got the goods, but not enough soul to elevate it.
Curtis Mayfield
4/5
Something that always gets me about the funk and soul music coming out of this era is how *free* it feels. It's loose but everyone feels fully engaged and each instrument and note *matters*. Curtis, like Stevie Wonder and Al Green and all the rest, channels his vocals from some deep place that sounds like they're all being made up for the very first time but that every throwaway change of energy or volume or extra oomph is thoughtfully considered, like he's less performing than letting it erupt from some visceral place in his psyche. If this is rehearsed to the point of perfection, no one is giving less than 100%. It's really magical. And even with all of those many, many instruments and elements going on, the arrangements and mixing are perfect -- drawing your attention right where it needs to be, and hiding little surprises and fills deep in the mix for discovery upon repeat listens.
Completely unrelated: is this the only movie soundtrack I've listened to dozens of times without ever bothering to actually see the movie it's soundtracking? I wonder how would my appreciation of it change if I understood where it was situated.
Milton Nascimento
3/5
I had never encountered this before, which was exciting, but I think I wanted to like it more than I did.
Raekwon
5/5
Maybe the finest album by anyone from Wu-Tang. Raekwon and Ghostface Killlah are a serendipitous match, and RZA's productions never sounded better. If you wanted to argue that this is the best rap album of the 90s, I wouldn't throw up much of a fuss. I came to this in college, when people still pored over one album for months unpacking the lyrics and learning the nooks and crannies of an album, and this one more than most rewarded that time.
There's a depth to the lyrics. It has the bravado and violence that were hallmarks of all of the gangster rap albums from this era, but Raekwon and Ghostface use that posturing to display a real vulnerability about what that life was like. And, importantly, it's a really fun listen. Raekwon's staccato delivery and multiple-rhymes-within-a-bar certainly influenced all of my favorite rappers (MF Doom, Andre 3000, Kendrick, etc.)
This is still in heavy rotation for me.
Metallica
1/5
As an indulgence for a legendary rock band and their fans, I don't begrudge it. Not sure the symphony adds any new layer to any song, or situates anything in a new light, and the mixing is pretty muddy. But mostly I just can't fathom how anyone could vote for this being one of the 1001 albums one must hear in their lifetime, let alone enough voters to land this on the list.
In that spirit, here are 50+ albums from the 90s / early 00s that aren't included on this list, in no particular order:
Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"
The Breeder's "Last Splash"
Bjork's "Homogenic" and "Post"
Outkast's "Aquemini" and "ATLiens"
Fiona Apple's "The Idler Wheel …" and "When the Pawn …"
Queens of the Stone Age's "Songs for the Deaf"
Every single Tom Petty album except his debut
Every Morphine album (less surprising, but still)
A Tribe Called Quest's "Midnight Marauders"
Janet Jackson's "The Velvet Rope"
Robyn's self-titled or "Body Talk"
Eric B & Rakim's "Paid in Full" and "Follow the Leader"
J Dilla's "Donuts"
The Tragically Hip’s “Fully Completely”
Daft Punk’s “Discovery”
Every Tool album
Massive Attack’s “Mezzanine”
Deftones’ “White Pony”
The Cranberries’ “No Need to Argue”
Cypress Hill's "Black Sunday"
Every Nine Inch Nails album except "The Downward Spiral"
Sonic Youth's "Washing Machine"
Every Yo La Tengo album
Every Low album
The Roots' "Things Fall Apart"
Missy Elliott's "Miss E… So Addictive"
Clipse's "Lord WIllin'"
Mclusky's "Mclusky Do Dallas"
Every Spoon album
Gang Starr's "Hard to Earn"
EVERY MF DOOM ALBUM including "Madvillainy"
Every Lil' Wayne album
Broken Social Scene's "You Forgot It In People"
Interpol's "Turn on the Bright Lights"
PJ Harvey's "To Bring You My Love"
Nick Cave's "No More Shall We Part"
Every Mos Def album, every Talib Kweli album, and the Black Star album (featuring Mos Def & Talib Kweli)
Jay-Z's "Reasonable Doubt"
Mobb Deep's "The Infamous"
Every Slowdive album
Every Death Cab album and the Postal Service album
Blur's "13"
Tupac's "All Eyez on Me"
Big Daddy Kane's "Long Live the Kane"
Every Pearl Jam album except "Ten"
Red Hot Chili Peppers' "By the Way"
Weezer's self-titled debut
Weezer's "Pinkerton"
You get the point.
Common
3/5
Flawless is a good word for this album, in the sense that every note and word feels polished and produced to go right the pleasure spot of white people who like hip hop. Whether that’s the chicken or the egg is up for debate, but everything down to the album’s cover feels polished and lab-tested to be Common’s big comeback album with critics and fans.
Which isn’t to say it’s bad. Kanye’s production feels rehashed from his big hits at the time, but they were hits for a reason. And Common is an excellent rapper, even if I find this a little toothless compared to “Resurrection” or “Like Water for Chocolate.”
I wanted “Be” to be legendary, but it’s just kind of pleasant and forgettable (though that live recording of "The Food" from the Chapelle Show felt electric when we all watched it for the first time, and I like that they included it here instead of recreating it in the studio.)
But all of this is a shame because of these three things:
1) Common felt for a moment like the epitome of socially conscious rap, the promised one after so many years of gangster rap hitting the zeitgeist which left little room for your Tribes Called Quest or Souls De La.
2) I saw Common live around this time and he was pure fire. He was alone on a stage and it felt like watching lightning.
3) There’s a moment on Jeen Yuhs where Kanye and Most Def freestyle what would become “Two Words,” and it’s also fire. In theory, Kanye linking up with all these guys should have been legendary.
The White Stripes
3/5
Not my favorite White Stripes album, but its the one that broke them so feels right that it's here. This seemed so invigorating when it first released. Wrapping Iggy Pop in blues music is right smack in my wheelhouse, beefed up by the rad crunch Jack gets out of his guitar and Meg's loose but fully embodied drums. (It also gave me the gift of seeking out their back catalog and finding "Little Bird" which has a complete hold on a handful of my brain cells for nigh on 25 years.)
Of course when I listen to it now it just makes me want to get to Elephant. White Blood Cells is good, but it's about to get So. Much. Better.
Emmylou Harris
2/5
I'm mostly familiar with Emmylou Harris from the 90s and on, which generally is when she shifted away from country music. My understanding is that she was a fairly progressive country artist before that, but maybe that happened after her debut. Anyway, I just don't know how to appreciate this music, though it seems like another very good version of something that's not for me.
Elliott Smith
4/5
In "Meet Me in the Bathroom," the oral history of early 00s rock music in New York, Tim Goldsworthy describes American indie music in the mid and late 90s as having completely lost its sexiness, and accuses it of being "sorry-I-have-a-penis" kind of indie rock.
Is Elliott Smith the epitome of that or the antithesis? Delicate, vulnerable, almost decaying at its seams, and yet so fully embodied and beautiful that nearly every sexy artist of indie rock in the late 00s name-checks it as a main influence (Apple music's profile featuers Billie Eilish, Julien Baker, slowthai, Mac Miller, Arlo Parks, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus. Sheesh.) He's somehow the Prince of indie rock.
I've heard him described as a master of chord progressions, and that strikes me as his superpower. All that intimacy has room to breathe because his guitar is such an extension of himself. There's a lot of Beatles here; "Cupid's Trick" feels like it could have landed somewhere on the White Album and "Say Yes" might as well be a cover song. But the layer of intimacy is what makes sets this apart as singular. I've listened to these simple songs hundreds of times and they've never failed to cast a spell. It's timeless and essential. If it hasn't worked its magic on you yet, stick with it, please.
I have two and only two complaints: One, where "Pictures of Me" sits in the tracklist is very jarring and breaks the hypnosis. I may be unknowingly treading on sacred ground, but I wish it would have been left out. Two, "Say Yes" ends in a very unsatisfying place. It demands another song after. You can loop back to the beginning or go on to XO, but that's when I just want to sit in quiet and process Either/Or, I feel unsettled. If this is a 4½ star album, are those two complaints enough to round down instead of up? Tonight I'm feeling generous and want to add another 5 stars to its average. I'll justify it by listening to "Angeles" again.
The Byrds
3/5
2/5
"Do you like Ornette Coleman?"
I do!
"Do you like John Zorn?"
Mostly! Especially when he's going slow and steady!
"Do you want to hear John Zorn play Ornette Coleman songs, only sped up and with a cacophony of instruments playing random notes?"
Stevie Wonder
4/5
Remember when I wrote that Stevie made five masterpieces in five years? Masterpiece #2. (Also, not for nothing, but this came out just *seven months* after "Music of My Mind.")
Electric Light Orchestra
2/5
I've never made it through an entire ELO album. I hear "Mr. Blue Sky" and think I would be able to find my way in, but something about his voice or the sheen or just the lack of any depth at all grates on me quickly.
Eagles
2/5
Have you seen the "History of the Eagles" documentary? Highly recommended.
Anyway, it's the f&#$ing Eagles. I don't know. They're not very good, but also, they're awesome?
Tito Puente
3/5
I first discovered Tito Puente in the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" episode of the Simpsons, and never shall Tito Puente and The Simpsons tear asunder in my mind.
That being said, I like this, though probably in smaller doses than an entire album.
Louis Prima
3/5
A little bit of Louis goes a long way. He is fantastic under a scene in a movie or for a song or two in the background of your local Italian eatery. But I'm not super interested in a whole album of it.
Willie Nelson
3/5
I don't really know Willie Nelson the performer, just Willie Nelson the persona. Obviously this isn't my genre, but I didn't hate this. The songs are perfectly short -- one good idea, not drug out, like a good punk album. I didn't have time to get sick of songs before he was on to his next idea, though they are all cut from the same cloth. I appreciated how lively and present it was. "I Couldn't Believe It Was True" felt like it was recorded in my living room, in a good way.
Still, I was ready to move on halfway through, which is only like 15 minutes of music, and I can't imagine pulling it up again. Yet another example of a very good version of a thing that's not for me.
The Verve
4/5
I can't think about this album objectively. At my very lowest in high school, when everything felt too hard to keep going, I have vivid memories of lying on my floor with my yellow Discman and my crappy RCA headphones listening to Urban Hymns and feeling comforted. I have no great insights into why. There's obvious heart-beating-on-the-outside-of-your-body stuff like "The Drugs Don't Work" and "Sonnet." There's go-outside-and-embrace-life stuff like "Bitter Sweet Symphony" and "Lucky Man." But the one I really get lost in is the swirling grooves of "Catching the Butterfly," a song that sweeps me away every time.
28 years later, I still find it overwhelmingly beautiful.
Slint
3/5
I lowkey hate this album, but also every now and then I hear it and think it’s a work of genius.
Public Enemy
5/5
Because this still sounds like a bomb going off, I can’t imagine what it was like to discover this in 1988. It does sound precisely like 1988 hip hop, but somehow it also feels like it exists outside of time. Nearly every impactful rapper from the last 35+ years has a lineage back to Chuck D, and Flava Flav remains the all-time greatest hype man.
Morrissey
4/5
I was grumpy when this showed up because there are no less than *six* Smiths/Morrissey albums on this list, and that feels like overkill. Then "Alsatian Cousin" kicked in and it goes so hard that I just buckled in for one more double decker bus collision.
The highs on this one are up there with the very best Morrissey songs. The aforementioned "Alsatian," the towering "Every Day is Like Sunday," the Cure-esque guitars of "Suedehead," and the lyrical hatchet of "Margaret on the Guillotine."
Certainly one of the very best post-band-breakup albums.
The Byrds
2/5
There's nothing bad about these guys; there's just something about the genre and instrumentation and pace that grinds my gears. It might just be leftover aversions from childhood. But I'm never going to get through this whole album.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
Going through some of the albums I skipped initially. In general I don't love Creedence's sound, but the energy on this is pretty infectious.
Magazine
3/5
My opinion of this swung wildly throughout the day. I don’t remember hearing these guys before now. It was a little irritating getting started, but by "Motorcade” and "The Light Pours Out of Me,” I wanted to give it another shot.
The Buzzcocks lineage isn’t obvious. It sounds way more Bowie meets Roxy Music.
I think I like it, maybe a lot? I’ll revisit it soon.
Sepultura
2/5
Not today, thanks.
Le Tigre
3/5
I’ve always been a little on the fence about this album. It doesn’t totally work for me, but when it hits, it hits big. “Deceptacon” is one of my go-to “dance in the kitchen like no one is watching” songs, and “Eau D’ Bedroom Dancing” is on my shortlist of unused songs that have not yet but will one day (mark my words) soundtrack a killer scene in some prestige TV show. The lyrics throughout the whole album are delightful too. There’s a lot to recommend, but the jangle pop doesn’t work for me on many tracks.
Still, Kathleen Hanna is a goddess and four stars would be warranted for “Deceptacon” alone.
Coldplay
4/5
My goodness Chris Martin has an ear for huge radio hooks, doesn’t he? If you squint real hard, it almost sounds like Wings with an Abbey-Road-level Paul at the helm. Not a skippable track here. There's nothing groundbreaking -- they're not doing anything U2 or a handful of other bands haven't done before -- but A Rush Of Blood To The Head is more inspiration than imitation in the end.
From this point on Coldplay will more or less just try to imitate themselves (to varying degrees of effect,) but they earned their bonafides on this one.
Country Joe & The Fish
2/5
This felt like a deep cut from a genre that has been swallowed up by the paragons that moved in a hundred different directions (Hendrix, Pink Floyd, etc) and the bands that mined every ounce of psychedelia until it was stripped clean of meaning (looking at you, Grateful Dead.) There were moments here or there where I perked up ("Death Sound" chief among them) but mostly it failed to hold my attention. I imagine a completist of the genre -- or maybe someone who grew up with this -- would find more to like here.
Brian Eno
3/5
I’m so connected to Eno's ambient music that I find myself disoriented with albums like Before And After Science. In theory I understand that Brian Eno was the synth player in Roxy Music, and that he worked with Talking Heads and a host of other singular, genre-busting bands. So, I tried to clear my mind and let go of my pre-conceived notions. The problem is that I’m conditioned to receive anything Eno touched as legendary, and so I find myself trying to fit what I’m hearing into that box. And this one just wasn't clicking for me at any point. I can give it three stars on craft alone, but if I were to give it any more, I’d be doing it to be someone who rates Brian Eno albums four stars.
Mostly it made me want to listen to Roxy Music and Talking Heads though, which led to an LCD Soundsystem rabbit trail. So that was fun at least.
The Smiths
3/5
Not one of my favorite Smiths albums. Some gems ("Headmaster Ritual," "How Soon is Now" if we're counting it) but more misses than hits. Given how many Morrissey/Smiths albums there are on this list, this feels like an easy one to leave off.
Steely Dan
2/5
One of my least favorite internet tropes is when people share a medium-hot take that is ostensibly uncontroversial and then add on ‘There, I said it’ as if they've made peace with their god about confessing the white hot rage they've kept locked away for years, morality and social norms be damned.
Anyway, Steely Dan sucks. There, I said it.
The Libertines
2/5
I read that the British press dubbed these guys the “most important band of their generation” pretty quickly after their debut album (this is their second album, for reference.) It sounds like there’s some historical lineage connecting these guys to people who worked with the Beatles, the Clash, Oasis, etc. That lineage seems to have created a hype train that, to my ears, made critics more forgiving to the flaws.
This sounds pretty generic. It’s fine, but it doesn’t sound appreciably different or elevated over a couple dozen other bands from that stretch in the 2000s where New York & UK garage punk revival took over rock music. Whenever there’s a wave like that, it can be hard to know in the moment who is going to last and who is going to be a footnote. The Libertines are clearly a footnote, at least on the back of this album.
Neil Young
3/5
I've been listening to Neil Young since the early 90s and at almost no point in that run have I been able to get past his voice (give or take a song here or there, e.g. "Cinnamon Girl.")
Which is a shame cause there's a ton of good stuff throughout his catalog. His lyrics are profound. The music is urgent and thoughtfully crafted, even in the folksier corners that I'm usually allergic to. I *want* to love him and there are plenty of other lead singers with nasal, kind-of-annoying voices that I love. So what is it about Neil Young that cuts me off at the pass?
Anyway, I never got to a point on On The Beach where the music was so good that I didn't focus on his voice. "Revolution Blues" came closest.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
3/5
I don't know have much to say about CCR -- who certainly deserve their spot and I can completely get how someone stan for them -- but one thing that occured to me is that I can't hear their music without picturing a montage of Vietnam movie scenes.
Tom Waits
4/5
Prince
5/5
One of my 10 favorite albums.
Only about half of my top 25 are on this list, so what a joy it has been to spend today with Purple Rain on repeat.
I didn't understand or appreciate Prince until I was well into my 20s, but these songs all have a special place for me. The storytelling, craftsmanship, atmosphere, and inventiveness of each track is a wonder. Truly one of the most gifted artists of our lifetime. Not many others can create pop music that moves your butt and your heart, while also being musically complex.
I'm of the opinion that this is the greatest pop album ever made. And let me just save a line or two for the title track. That sucker is 9 minutes of perfect notes, guitar tones, vocal flourishes, surprising timing that gives it a "performed live every time" feel, rises and falls, use of silence and volume, emotionally moving singing, wonderfully enigmatic and yet universal lyrics. The way it builds and climaxes never ever fails to not raise the hair on my arms. Is it actually my favorite song ever? It's at least in that kind of conversation.
The five-est of five star albums.
The Everly Brothers
2/5
I'll take "Music That Hasn't Aged Well" for $500, Ken.
Fleet Foxes
3/5
You'll be shocked (shocked!) that this didn't really click with me. The production is pretty though.
Led Zeppelin
4/5
Zoso and Houses of the Holy fully triggered something in my adolescent brain which eventually led me to grab each Zeppelin album as it popped up in our local used CD store (Weird Harolds represent!)
What they start here will fuel all of their best music moving forward, but of all of the pantheon albums, I find III to be the most uneven and least essential. "Friends" and "Celebration Day" are bonafide staples, but they've never clicked for me, which more or less stops the whole project from ever being something I ever listen to front and back since they're tracks two and three. There are a dozen songs in their catalog that sound like "Out on the Tiles," and all of them are more inspired. "Hats Off to (Roy) Harper" benefits from hearing "Shake Em On Down" (the version I found was by RL Burnside) but the stereo separation and vibrato amplifier are unsettling. I could see it messing with someone on the wrong substances. If they'd swapped any of those out for "Hey Hey What Can I Do," a b-side to "Immigrant Song," I would approve.
All that said, it contains some of the very best Zeppelin: "Immigrant Song" which always seems like it's too overplayed, too over-the-top, but then it kicks into gear and kicks a$$ all over again; "Since I've Been Loving You" swelters into a groove that I imagine pairs well with the *right* substances; "Gallows Pole" and "Tangerine" are Robert Plant at his best; "That's the Way" never mattered to me until it was situated with the right visuals in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (and now matters to me a great deal.)
I'll save my most effusive praise for "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp," possibly the single Zeppelin song I most look forward to running into all these years later, after the call to head banging has faded and there is no one to simply drive around with listening to music with the windows down. Page's guitar is so propulsive and Robert Plant's vocals are so sly. The breakdown in the second half of the song is absolute dynamite. It's enough to wish they had a full collection of all of their songs performed acoustically.
Three stars + an extra star for "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" sounds about right.
Norah Jones
4/5
My wife and I listened to this album a lot when we were first dating (at her behest.) It has a special place in my heart.
Update: Been listening to this more lately and there are some choices Norah Makes with her vocal delivery that I find really stunning.
Trying my hand at in-depth critical analysi ... oh forget it, I just didn't like this.
Björk
4/5
Hearing Björk for the first time in 1993 was so confusing. MTV and Alternative Rock Radio positioned it alongside the best of bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam. There were a wave of amazing women bursting onto the scene like PJ Harvey, Liz Phair, and The Breeders, but Björk was too weird to be lumped in. There were bands debuting that stretched what could ride Nirvana's wave -- Morphine, Flaming Lips, and the Cranberries -- but those bands were all guitar-forward (in Morphine's case, bass guitar.) But even though Björk was playing with electro music, she was far too alien to fit in any sort of pop category. She also didn't really fit *anywhere*, so under the generous umbrella that was 'Alternative' she went, buoyed by an undeniable lead single in "Human Behavior."
She sounded like no one else out there, because of her eclectic sonic template as well as her mercurial, alien, Lolitaesque voice. There was a wild abandon in her music. It only really made sense when it was grounded by a visual artist like michel gondry, which itself is telling since most of her videos were bonkers. She was a force of nature calling like a Norwegian siren to anyone who wanted to explore the boundaries of music.
But for whatever reason, it took decades to grow on me. When it clicked, it clicked hard, though I don't love the techno spine of this album. The moments that most draw me in are the ones that point to Post, Homogenic, and Vespertine: the afformentioned "Human Behavior," "Aeroplane," "Venus as a Boy," "The Anchor Song."
Beyond those, Debut is littered with fun moments amongst its dance party. The strange step-into-another-room moments on "There's More to Life Than This." The out of left field bare-bones cover of "Like Someone in Love," even more delightful since you already thought the album had already taken up permanent residence in left field. The Smiths-on-ketamine lyrics of "Violently Happy."
But her music gets richer, fuller, warmer, and more beautiful as she moves away from the rave hall and towards the headphone experience on the next three albums, one of the very best three-album runs in music history. It's a felony that neither Post nor (especially) Homogenic are on this list.
Still, there's enough creativity and delight on Debut to earn a spot on any list of essential albums.
Miles Davis
5/5
Traffic
3/5
Manic Street Preachers
2/5
There are a handful of 90s alt rock bands that get critical and fan love that I just don't get. Bands like Superchunk, Super Furry Animals, and, yes, Manic Street Preachers.
I've tried putting my finger on what I don't get, and I think it comes down to I never, *ever* get their songs in my head. It's probably overstating it to say these songs are devoid of melody, but they just don't hook me in. And of course many of the greatest songs aren't big-riff-hit-singles, but nearly every song I love has some kind of melody or atmosphere or SOMETHING that brings me back. These feel totally flat.
I've always been fascinated by comparing a band like MSP to someone like Rage Against the Machine. Those RATM songs are almost entirely built on taking one riff and thrashing it till they've milked every ounce of its value out of it, and then getting out fast. Yet somehow I find their songs hummable, re-listenable, and fully fleshed out. Maybe it's the production quality? There's no nuance in the production here at all. No atmosphere, everything kind of at the same volume.
And I'm not pining for an album full of radio-friendly ear worms, but I do think on some level that's what these songs are going for. They *sound* like songs that are developing a melody, but they aren't at any point.
And I'm grumpy about it because people LOVE this album and I've tried to get into it for at least 20 years and at no point have I found my way in.
The lyrics are great though.
Steely Dan
1/5
Enough Steely Dan already.
The Notorious B.I.G.
4/5
On one hand, Biggie is one of the greatest storytellers in all of rap. His rhymes are deceptively complex, he’s easy to understand, and he paints vivid landscapes of the life of an east coast gangster. He changed the genre forever.
On the other hand, I’ve always found the production pretty muddy and uninspired, and tiresome after an hour. RZA or Dre or any number of others would have been incredible. Or imagine some of those early Fugees or Nas songs with Biggie at the helm. Tupac’s works suffered from the same issues.
It’s still a stone cold classic. I just wish it went a little harder. He deserved better.
Britney Spears
2/5
Ah "...Baby One More Time." One of the late 90s phenomenons that moved MTV away from being taste makers to going where the audience was. I was 18 when this came out. At the time, I found Britney's schoolgirl-baby-voice thing —ahem— compelling. Now it seems kind of icky. It's hard to understand how much of her popularity was fueled by the male gaze versus adoring teen girl fans.
The songs on "...Baby One More Time" range from Max Martin diamonds to obvious filler, and to my (pop-loving, dance-loving) ears there's far more of the latter. Britney was always a singles artist though, so I'm assuming the folks that voted this one onto the list did so because of her historical significance. Fine. There are better songs on future albums, but this is the seismic, culture-shifting one, and all of them are over-half filler.
It seems like she left a big footprint on many LGBTQ+ communities, and I've never understood if that was born out of a sincere place, and if so, why. It seems to be sincere now, though. People are very passionate about her. It doesn't *seem* like it has much to do with the music, but maybe I'm wrong.
Still, the things teenage girls (not to mention the LGBTQ+ community) have to go through are overwhelming and heartbreaking, and if this music brought them a little bit of joy, then I'm glad it exists.
Stevie Wonder
4/5
Another beautiful album that only falls short relative to the other albums he created during this stretch.
Fiona Apple
4/5
Studio executives seemed to not be able to see past her sexual appeal in 1996 (her video for "Criminal" caused my parents to call and have MTV blocked from our cable subscription.) Her experience over that first year of skyrocketed fame is gnarly and heartbreaking, and I'm so grateful that it didn't break her because she has certainly become my favorite female artist of all time.
There are artists with a half dozen albums on this list that I reactively raise a stink about, but if all five of Fiona Apple's extraordinary albums were represented on this list, I would stamp it with my full approval. Sadly, only two are, and since each successive album after Tidal got more daring, more sharp, and more gorgeous, I find myself wanting to review Tidal as a stand-in, especially "When the Pawn Hits…" and "The Idler Wheel…."
Sticking only to Tidal, so much of what makes her special is already here, some of it fully formed: her deep, soulful voice filled with lived pain; her deeply emotional piano; her ear for lush arrangements and propulsive percussion. There's a urgency to her music and her lyrics that demand attention. She’s an absolute fireball.
The front half of Tidal is stronger than the back half, carried by her breakthrough singles, though its the closing track, "Carrion," that most points to what’s ahead: moments that raise the hair on my arms (about a minute in here) evolving into a cacophonous symphony that evokes John, Paul, and George at the end of Abbey Road by way of Patti Smith.
If you like anything on this one and haven't spent time with her full catalog, you are in for a hell of a treat. That lull in the back half here knocks a star off. Do I add it back on as a sort of protest star at the absence of three of the next four albums? That's not usually how I approach my thinking through these ratings, but Fiona makes me do strange things.
Amy Winehouse
4/5
Amy was bottled lightning. Her music took something tucked away in the annals of America and injected it with a certain painful chaotic energy that portended the tragedy that sadly felt almost inevitable in real time. Back to Black holds her entire persona in a way that more or less transcends criticism. To speak ill of it is to speak ill of her, because rarely has someone put so much of themselves into their art. I remember it being pleasurable in 2006, but now find it nearly impossible to listen to without feeling a little ill and a little heartbroken. It's hard to objectively remember if her lyrics were once funny and tongue in cheek or if they were always too dark to blend into the background, especially against the exquisite soul and horns more often associated with throwaway love songs. Her first album, "Frank," has the same energy, but without the Motown backdrop, its punches feel pulled. Back to Black was like giving Nina Simone command of a Motown catalog. Genius.
Brian Eno
3/5
I admire this more than enjoy it, which I'm discovering is more or less how I receive everything Eno did prior to his ambient works.
XTC
1/5
I hated this. Maybe I'm missing something, but it was a chore to get through.
Sister Sledge
3/5
I've certainly only heard the title track before now. I like the music disco inspired more than disco music itself, but there were lots of fun moments here.
Bon Jovi
4/5
Street cred be damned, Slippery When Wet has brought me decades of memories, all of them wistful and good. What more could I possibly want?
Recall the group of boys clumped together, fists in the air, sing-shouting "Shot through the heart!"
Recall two buddies speeding down a country road in the summer with a broken air conditioner, windows down, cigarettes in hand, sing-shouting "Woah-OH! Livin' on a prayer!"
Recall brightly lit karaoke rooms, a few small beers in, sing-shouting, with all the passion of a half-drunk invincible kid in his early 20s, "I'm a cowboy... on a STEEL horse I ride..."
Just because glam metal / hair metal was almost immediately a parody of itself doesn't mean that there weren't sensational moments. Music doesn't all have to be challenging and deeply personal. Music that makes me feel this much joy has *immense* value.
David Holmes
2/5
I liked this well enough in the late 90s/early 00s when it would get mixed in with likeminded (and better) stuff from Ninja Tune and Mo Wax, and I'm not shocked that this is on a British-leaning list. But it's just okay. I do appreciate Holmes's many contributions to Steven Soderbergh movies, and he's an object of James Murphy's scorn in Meet Me in the Bathroom, which is fun to have in the back of your head as you listen to this. But there's just so many better versions of this. These songs all have solid funky heist film hooks, but they just don't go anywhere. Which means they work perfectly fine as a jolt of energy in an Oceans Eleven scene. But there's nothing to sustain attentive listening.
If you like this, pull up Propellerheads or DJ Shadow or The Herbalist or DJ Krush or Kid Koala or Prefuse 73 or anyone on Xen Cuts or three dozen other likeminded artists. Almost none of those guys are going to pop up on this list, but they all deserve far more attention than David Holmes (especially Prefuse 73. He made some crazy stuff for a minute there.)
Big Brother & The Holding Company
3/5
Jackie Jormp-Jomp made some electric stuff. "Take another little chunk of my lung, now mister!"
Orbital
2/5
Orbital 2 and especially "Halcyon and On and On" felt like my little secret in the early 90s (clearly it was a worldwide hit, but try explaining that to an early teenage kid who stumbled onto it in a used CD bin.) It's dated now but still manages to give me the chills at the right moment. I'm not sure I ever listened to Snivilisation and I went in hoping to find more of that. Sadly, this feels like a lot of the bones of Orbital 1 & 2 without any of the lushness. I'm interested in why they zagged that direction, and I guess I'm impressed that they didn't just milk Halcyon for the rest of their career, but I didn't care for this.
Anthrax
3/5
The following review is based on actual events. The names haven’t been changed because none are mentioned.
A few minutes in: This was actually pretty fun.
A few tracks in: Okay, never mind. I’m tired of this already.
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
1/5
I don't really buy into many conspiracies. But people *revere* this album so much that you wouldn't have to work very hard to convince me it's part of an intergenerational prank, and at some point you're given the secret password like some kind of Stonecutters ritual where you're let in on the joke and then you too get to participate in the prank forever. Every review might as well be copypasta. And listen, I've tried so many times to find my way into this. My understanding was that this is heavily arranged, heavily rehearsed, and simply challenging to the ears on purpose, and for the life of me I can't understand:
a) why?
b) how someone gets on the right wavelength to appreciate it, let alone enjoy it
c) again, why?
Recommended ear cleansing: "The Deer's Cry" by Arvo Pärt; "The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid" by Stars of the Lid; "Getz/Gilberto" by Stan Getz and João Gilberto
Metallica
3/5
On some level you have to get into this when you're a teenager (or close to it.) There's something about their music that felt world-opening in the late 80s when the slightly older kid of my parents' friends played it for me. And yet, I was plum terrified of their whole thing the first time I heard them and swore Metallica off til their play for mainstream watered down the music and Nirvana was already pushing the limits far beyond what I had been exposed to, making the black album seem far more tame than Master of Puppets.
Listening to this now, I still feel the pull to it of a teenage boy, but I either can't find the thing that makes them special, or the thing that made them special was embedded in the context of their time. Or maybe I just don't have the hobbies or habits that lend themselves to getting swept away by Master of Puppets in 2025. Still, everything here is undeniably craftful and feels elevated above the other metal albums that have been served to me in the 1001 albums project so far.
I did grow tired of it after awhile and it felt like they were treading the same territory over and over again. Songs that want your attention for five minutes or more require the proper scaffolding to sustain their lifespan. New ideas or movements lift up many of the iconic 8+ minute songs, but even simple shifts in timing, octaves, or textures can do the trick (Stevie Wonder is the GOAT at this.) "Orion" had that going for it, to the point that I didn't even realize James Hetfield hadn't sang one note the entire track when it was over. The title track does that too, though it relies so heavily on speedy guitar solos that it wore thin, though the riff is so wildly kinetic that I can imagine someone living with that song since they were 12 years old holding it up as an all-timer. In general I've lost my taste for guitar solos over the years unless they're delivered by someone who can truly emote through their playing (Prince, Jimi, etc.)
Then again, I can listen to house music for an hour and notice every small shift and new element along the way, so maybe I'm just not a fan of metal.
Slayer
2/5
Being afforded the opportunity to listen to this the day after Metallica's Master of Puppets puts Slayer's Reign in Blood in sharp relief.
The Coral
1/5
Man, the critics in England really loved the early 00s rock bands that managed to write one radio-friendly hit.
I found this pretty bland, and most of it really grated on my nerves (insert clever quip about the Coral not making me wait for the heartaches.) The first half of this album sucked. The back half of this album *really* sucked. “Dreaming of You” is still catchy, but in that Gap-Ad kind of way (that didn’t stop it from getting stuck in my head all damn night.)
N.W.A.
4/5
I never really connected with this -- my personal tastes lean towards the subtler, more complex stuff many of the Native Tongues rappers were doing at the time, and rap wouldn't take a real hold on me until Wu Tang and Outkast were joining the fray a few years later -- but for whatever reason this has some kind of hold on one of my sons and so I've spent a ton of time with it the last few years.
The first three tracks are a fireball, even all these years later. Ice Cube was a force of nature. Dr. Dre's beats are simpler than many of his contemporaries, but still sound radical. Lyrically this is all gangster rap bravado with almost none of the introspection that Public Enemy demonstrated, or the humor and social consciousness of some of those afformentioned Native Tongues groups (Tribe, De La Soul, Black Sheep, etc) and its easy to understand how this crossed over to appeal to a nation of white (male) teenagers. Because the album has become so monumental in all of music history, it's hard to remember the local and national context this was situated in, and that history is well worth a deep dive to appreciate it on its own merits.
After the first three tracks, Straight Outta Compton doesn't hold my attention enough to call this a five-star classic, but certainly it deserves its spot on this list.
Don McLean
2/5
Sometimes this project gives gifts, and few have been more clarifying than going from NWA to Don freaking McLean.
Eagles
3/5
This was pleasant enough. But let me use this space to insist you track down the 2013 documentary, "History of the Eagles." *chef's kiss*
Donovan
4/5
I've heard the title track a billion times and didn't realize it. There are little touches on that song like the distortion and that key bent note that elevate it (is this the birthplace of Kevin Shields?)
I don't know Donovan at all, and I was hoping for more like the title track, and so the sharp drop in energy on the second track was jarring. But there also he included little touches that belied simplicity. I was engrossed as various instruments and thoughtful arrangements and flourishes expanded the song past its sleepy exterior (though it didn't need to be almost seven minutes.)
The whole album carried on like that. Songs that initially felt too folksy for my tastes caught my ear as the psychedelic and bluesy arrangements swept them into something infinitely more interesting. There were moments on "Season of the Witch" and "Celeste" that sounded very close to Lou Reed vocally and John Cale musically. I don't have many higher compliments than that.
There was a short stretch near the end that felt like we were just hitting the same beats again, and I ended the album unsure what I thought but compelled to listen again, which often portends an album I'll be listening to for years to come.Maybe a few years from now I'll bump this down to a 3, but for now, I'm excited.
My favorite discovery of this project so far.
The Zombies
3/5
Nothing that happens on the first 11 tracks lead you to think this is the same band that made "Time of the Season," which is an absolute monster of a song. The rest of the album is more Brian Wilson-adjacent, which means it was never going to be totally for me, but I ended up enjoying my time with it, though I doubt I'll return.
Several songs feel overwritten and overproduced. But there's a spark of something I'm responding to; those parts that probably influenced elements Bowie and Queen.
Dion
2/5
Pretty forgettable
Air
3/5
This album meant a lot to me in the early 00s, but barely registers now. It's a lot of style and vibes not backed up by anything terribly sophisticated or complex musically. A whole lot of bands iterated on the same types of sounds Air was playing with and many of them created transcendent work -- my beloved DJ Koze of course, but also Daft Punk, The Knife, and especially Hot Chip. Even some of their contemporaries like Morcheeba, Zero 7, Röyksopp, and Groove Armada were making far more interesting work from similar tools.
It still has its moments, but I'm not convinced its remained essential as anything other than background music at hipster dinner parties (though it's got that down in spades.) I far prefer their soundtrack for Sophia Coppola's "The Virgin Suicides," which also appears on this list, and their follow-up, "Talkie Walkie," which doesn't.
Roxy Music
4/5
There are like three or four bands that existed before the 1990s that make me wish I was born in a different time and place, and Roxy Music is one of them.
I have never, ever figured out the right setting for listening to the first half of their debut, where Brian Eno’s moogs lead a wild crew of saxophones and glam rock. It's impossible to politely play their debut in the background of anything.
A fellow reviewer suggested a blazing bonfire drinking Remy Martins. That sounds pretty dang close, and yet when the second half of "If There is Something" finds that groove, I would insist everyone shut the hell up, and who wants that kind of energy at a bonfire? Not to mention that when Bryan Ferry comes wailing back in like the guy who taught David Byrne everything he knew, I'd insist we all get up and dance.
The first half of this album is exactly perfect for that part of the party where everyone is at peak buzz before they have one too many and the night starts its slow descent into regret and consequence. Play it too early and it demands all attention to itself in an off-putting way for a proper party.
Of course, even if you had that perfect moment to play it, you have to deal with the second half. Songs like "The Bob" and "Chance Meeting" would send the mood over a cliff to a fiery, Toonces-esque crash, and the whole party would screech to a halt.
The second half of their debut is a beautiful mess that probably isn’t suited for anything, but it’s overflowing with ideas ranging from half to three-quarters baked.
Do songs like "2 H.B." deserve a better vocalist? Maybe. Put Bowie or Lou or Jagger on that track and its probably the soundtrack to a half dozen iconic movie scenes by now. But also Bryan Ferry's delivery somehow elevates it in the end. It's real and touchable and perfectly imperfect. The final track, “Bitter’s End” sounds like it was recorded in a stairwell after they got evicted from a studio but just had to get one last idea out. It’s awful. It’s wonderful.
Nothing about the second half of this album makes a lick of sense to me, and yet I wouldn't change a thing. It's so weird and unhinged and *fabulous.*
I have a lot more to say, but I'll save it for their follow-up, "For Their Pleasure," which came just six months later and worked through a lot of the same ideas to dizzying effect. (Bizarrely, it appears that only their first three records are going to show up on this list. For once I would have been happy with the British skew of this project.)
Jimmy Smith
3/5
Feels like one of those vinyl records you play on a Saturday morning while lounging around your pad because it fills the space but doesn’t demand a whole lot from you. Listened to it a couple times today and I’m not convinced this rewards dedicated listening.
Tom Tom Club
2/5
This is pretty awful. And yet seemingly half the tracks here became a memorable sample for fun rap and pop songs in the 90s. So they’ve got that going for them, which is nice.
Radiohead
5/5
Without OK Computer, music might not have the hold on me that it does. By 1997, alternative rock was sputtering its last breaths. I was moving towards rap and electronic music (mostly trip hop) but I wasn't obsessed with it the way i had been those other bands in the early 90s. There were a handful of bands that still meant something to me, but nothing compared to hearing OK Computer for the first time, the tenth time, the hundredth time, the thousandth time. It both captured my heart in its entirety and completely transformed my taste in music.
The Bends was a seminal album for me, and "Street Spirit" was the ground I'd most hoped they'd iterate on. The half-haunting, half-soaring melodies hit me exactly in the deepest pleasure spot music had ever hit (to that point.) I felt Thom's emotion as my emotion. Jonny's guitars swirled in my head and hypnotized me. "Street Spirit" took me somewhere new.
OK Computer not only picked up where that left off, but expanded their production palette and skill for finding a simple melody and twisting it into majestic shapes. The atmosphere on songs like “Let Down” and “Climbing Up the Walls”, even on my lousy foam Sony headphones, transported me. I have never fully returned.
This came out at the tail end of my junior year of high school. It is the soundtrack to my first girlfriend, my last high school musical (truly the times I was happiest in my first 18 years,) imagining a future outside of my hometown, my first cigarette, my first beer, moving to a new city for college and knowing very few people, my first nights alone, my first nights in a new community, forging something like a new identity, becoming who I am. It has soundtracked my life for 28+ years and *still* manages to surprise me, move me, and feel like a piece of heaven on earth.
I am still today an unapologetic Radiohead obsessive because of OK Computer and everything that came after. That it can sound fresh and timeless all these years later is a miracle of craft.
Currently #6 on my all-time list, and has been as high as #1.
ZZ Top
3/5
The Platonic ideal of whatever you’d call this vibe of music; it instantly transports me to a dive bar with a row of Harley’s out front. There’s more charm and charisma here than their cookie cutter 80s output that more immediately comes to mind when I think of ZZ Top.
However, unfairly or not, this comes on the heels of spending a day with OK Computer and it’s hard to take this on its face as a result; there’s just not much there to bite into. On a different day I might bump this up a star because it’s fun and fully realized.
“La Grange” somehow hasn’t suffered from being played to death, unlike “sharp dressed man” and (blech) “legs,” two songs I never need to hear again.
The Shamen
1/5
Like listening to Kurtis Blow and the Sugarhill Gang, I feel obligated to find things to like in this because there's breadcrumbs of Underworld and The Prodigy and other bands I love. But it just wasn't very good, or at least it's aged so poorly that it now feels like a parody of something. I could probaly give it a two-star pass, but the lyrics are so cringey that I couldn't make it through the whole thing.
Joy Division
5/5
It's fascinating listening to Substance and then Unknown Pleasures. The changes they made to their sound are so fully realized right out of the gate that it almost doesn't sound like the same band. The bass lines burrow and the way they space out the different drums in the mix is so intricate. I hadn't spent time with this in awhile and I found myself deeply grooving to every song, and then going right on to Closer and then the New Order albums, staying up WAY too late in the process. Just a remarkable statement, made all the more remarkable knowing that the band wasn't confident that the change in their sound from a more garage rock/punk rock was the right move.
I think I'll press play again …
System Of A Down
4/5
I was never able to keep up with SOAD's energy when they were first breaking through. Besides a single or two, I found the frenetic explosions a tough hang. I always appreciated Serj Tankian's more melodic vocals, and when songs were built around something earworm-y (like "Aerials," for example) I was captivated by it. They had a singular sound that elevated above almost every other "nü-metal" band of that era, but when the guitars and drums hit 100mph and Serj growled into a scream or even that yawp he is so good at, I lost interest.
This time through their debut though, I was enthralled. Those frenetic bursts worked for me and I found it tough to sit still for want of a mosh pit like the music calls for. What clicked? I'm not totally sure, to be honest. It got in my bones and I was happy to be tossed around the room by it.
That said, the last third of the album grew a little thin. It felt like the ideas had run out and they were powering ahead on adrenaline in lieu of melodies.
As a sidenote, it's wild to me that this album made the list but not Toxicity. I fired that up at one point today, and it expands on all of the ideas introduced here in briliant ways, and doesn't suffer from the band hitting the same gear over and over again. It's also helped by two of the most earworm-y tracks coming very late in the tracklist. Toxitcity left me wanting more where their self-titled left me wanting. But for ¾ of the runtime, it had me. That's plenty for four stars.
Destiny's Child
2/5
It won't be til her self-titled and especially Lemonade where we hit the inflection point of Beyoncé being a force of nature with songwriting to match. But there's plenty of her preternatural abilities on display in her performance serving these perfectly good pop songs. It's fun to revist the seeds of maybe the most important musician of the 21st century.
That said, those first three tracks are doing a lot of heavy lifting to prop this album up to classic status.
And why does "Independent Women," the first track out of the gates, keep the dumb shout outs to Lucy Liu, Drew Barrymore, and Cameron Diaz? That was already dated by the time the album hit the zeitgeist, and it pulls all the attention from what is otherwise a banger. Why not just make one version for the soundtrack and another for Survivor?
And how could an album with a song like "Nasty Girl" qualify for this list?
Kings of Leon
2/5
The epitome of "meh." I never understood why this blew up the way it did. Its arena-ready anthems are self-apparent, but the singer sounds half asleep and there just seems to be nothing differentiating these guys from a hundred other bands just like them.
R.E.M.
4/5
One of the ten or so bands that has meant the most to me over the course of my life. Murmur is a self-assured debut with catchy and jangly songs. By nature of when I came to them -- Out of Time and beyond -- I prefer a slightly darker, fuller, and warmer REM sound, but most if not all the seeds of their greatness are here.
The Adverts
2/5
I'm all in on 70s and 80s punk, and there's plenty of fantastic British punk from that era. Some of those bands even sound like The Adverts (like, exactly the same.) But most of those bands have some special quality that sets them apart, or at least some differentiating quality. Dynamic range, knacks for melodies, interesting lead singers. There's just nothing here to latch onto. Some of these songs showing up in a shuffled playlist would be welcome, but listening to the thing in its entirety was a case of it sounding like the first track got played on repeat. At least until "Bombsite Boy," but even there it felt like a shallow version of a certain punk song archetype.
3/5
“For Tomorrow” is a killer song. The rest of this still feels like a band finding themselves. It’s all pretty fun, but none of it stands out to me. Their next album, Parklife, is where everything clicks into place and then a string of modern classics are shortly after it.
Bonus points (but not stars) for one of my favorite album covers and titles.
Cat Stevens
3/5
This was a stretch for me. I very rarely enjoy the type of earnest folk music Yusuf Islam is known for, and his voice has always felt affected to me. But, since I've probably never listened to a full Cat/Yusuf album, I went in with as open of a heart as I could.
The instrumentation and dynamic range is far more varied than I expected. I didn't know he wrote "Wild World." It's not shocking to me that Mr. Big didn't create it from scratch, but I never engaged with it enough to discover its origins.
Around track 4 I had to reckon with whether or not I *could* like this album, or if it was another example of a very good thing that's not for me. I lost almost all interest by track 7 and got actively annoyed around track 8.
The more recent update of "Father and Son" where modern Yusuf duets with the original vocals, poignantly mirroring his younger self with his aged voice, has a tension that elevated that song for me. Alas, this is the original, and I felt ashamed of how much eye rolling was happening on my end. Am I so jaded that I can't appreciate this on its face?
I was grateful and relieved that the last track was mercifully short, essentially just a sketch of an idea for a song. Not entirely clear what its purpose was.
It feels weird to give this less than 3 stars, so here is where I have to wrestle with whether this collection of ratings is meant to be a reflection of my taste or a reflection of an album's objective worth. The former would be a 2-star record, maybe less. The latter a 3-star record, maybe more. In an effort to not be dead inside, I'll go with 3.
Happy Mondays
1/5
I was surprised to see how beloved this album is in some quarters. I wasn't familiar with it at all. Alas, it was... what's the word I'm searching for... annoying. It was kind of annoying.
Korn
1/5
I more or less want to just forget the whole nu-metal thing happened*, but in 1998, blaring this as loud as you could made you feel invincible. 27 (!) years later and the two singles ("Got the Life" and "Freak on a Leash") with monster rhythm sections still rile me all the way up. I'll admit this had a home in my CD binder, and for like 3 months of my life, a place in my 6-disc changer.
However, there are two issues with this album. First, the rampant homophobia and misogyny are out of control. What was it about the late 90s that fueled white men to be so pointlessly cruel?
Second, it's basically the same formula over and over again, with no real discernible differences. It certainly doesn't need to be an hour and seven minutes. Putting the two monster singles that have at least some personality right up top saps any potential momentum it could have had.
There are albums out there that sound like they were crafted during drug-fueled orgies because of their sharp teeth and dangerous, slightly sleazy vibe (Prince and Iggy Pop are two sides of a spectrum on this.) This one literally was and yet there's not a whiff of any carnal temptation that seems worth throwing your life away to pursue. It's all tilting at windmills with no care or craft, rendering the whole thing impotent. Which, given the bacchanalian way the album was made, I guess makes some sense.
Still, the two singles have a permanent place on several of my shuffled nostalgic playlists and workout playlists, and if I'm in the right mood and/or setting I'm always game to sing along and remember what it was like to be a teenager in the late 90s. (Not for nothing, but watching those kids explode at Woodstock 99 on MTV in the various docs they made about it was nuts. Somehow Korn was the biggest band on the planet for a year or two. Just absolutely wild.)
*obligatory note that Deftones are the exception to everything I'm positing about nu-metal, a category they got clumped into and then transcended. And still "White Pony" is nowhere to be found on a list that includes albums by Korn, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, and Linkin Park.
Hawkwind
3/5
Seems like it would benefit from substances.
Pulp
3/5
Musically this is fun. However,I don’t know if this persona of Jarvis Cocker is a character or if it’s close to his real personality and ethos, but it wore thin lyrically after awhile. (I also forget how rape-y some of that 90s alternative music was.)
“Common People” is a banger though.
Traffic
2/5
I kind of like other Traffic albums, but this one did nothing for me.
The Cramps
3/5
Lauryn Hill
5/5
I've *thought* a lot about this album in the last several years. The album managed to land at the very top of Apple's top albums of all time list, a list that was certainly divisive, but for my money was a valuable attempt to measure cultural impact on the moment in time the list was created. I was surprised both that it was voted #1 and that I was totally fine with that ranking. Is it the greatest album of all time™️? Probably not. Is it the most culturally impactful album of the last 30 years? At first blush I'd say an obvious no, but then I consider how many pantheon pop albums since this came out were created by women bursting past soul & r&b trappings and I think it's fair to say that dozens or even hundreds of groundbreaking albums can trace at least part of their lineage back to the Miseducation of LH. It's a real shame that she seems to have completely punted on a follow-up, and rode the good will of this record and The Score for 30 years. But it's a testament to its greatness that it's able to be ridden at that level. How many artists ever created an album that could have stood as their only output and still commanded headlining tours for decades?
What I haven't done in a very long time is to actually listen to it front to back. Doing so felt like rediscovering a companion album to Songs in the Key of Life (another album I wouldn't have a problem landing at the top of an all-time list.) Every song was a masterclass in American black music, traveling through rock, hip-hop, soul, r&b, blues, latin, Motown, and pop, but never feeling like homework. The lyrics are dripping with substance and specificity and display a real deftness with flow. Her voice if gorgeous. The arrangements are bursting with life. A masterpiece.
Paul McCartney
3/5
These mostly felt like sketches of songs rather than a fully fleshed-out album, "Maybe I'm Amazed" excepted.
Yes
1/5
I don't have much to say other than I truly hated this. All the notes one can play with no real vision for why you would play those notes. And that voice…
Cyndi Lauper
3/5
This was a pleasant hour, and there's stuff here to recommend. "When You Were Mine" was new to me and stuck with me, and "Time After Time" is undeniable. I was impressed that this wasn't all just bubblegum pop, and there were moments (like "All Through the Night") where I could find her place in the lineage of the pop music I'm really drawn to (Robyn, Charli XCX, etc.) All that said, I can't imagine coming back to this.
Talking Heads
5/5
This is an all-timer and a genuine leap forward in music history. Every time I revisit it, I find more to love.
Beatles
3/5
This was the only Beatles album my mom owned, or at least the only one that survived into my childhood, and for a long time, this was the music I most associated them with. I blame that for not really vibing with the Beatles until I was well into my 20s.
Anyway, it's fine.
Black Sabbath
3/5
Bigg riffs, off-center tuning, guitar and bass overlays, occultish lyrics (with the occasional ode to Gandalf); this is a self-assured, fully realized debut that sets the template for future legendary Black Sabbath albums. As their songwriting matures, they earn their place in the pantheon. But it's all here at the beginning, made even more impressive since they only had 12 hours and they recorded most of the songs live in one take.
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
3/5
Had not heard of these guys before today, but I’m generally up for any moody new wave music. There was nothing here that made them stand out compared to other bands of this era, but it was a solid album and I'll probably revisit it at some point.
Sebadoh
3/5
I had a little obsessive Sebadoh phase around 2005 (Russian MP3 sites and a steady income were a potent combination). It's wild how different this sounds from the (stellar) album, Bakesale, that came just a year later, sans Eric Gaffney. The band described Gaffney's departure as euphoric because he was so difficult to work with. Gaffney's absence clarified what he brought to the table; without him, Lou Barlow's Sebadoh sounds more like Lou's other legendary band, Dinosaur Jr.
There's a menacing rockabilly underlying Bubble & Scrape that seems to be all Gaffney. And I'm into it -- though not as much as Bakesale*. This whole album is the sonic equivalent of chaotic neutral. The band sounds loose and a little incohesive, prone to exploring whatever weird whim a song leads them to.
Sebadoh gets four stars as a band, but Bubble & Scrape isn't quite up to that territory.
*I'm referencing Bakesale so much in part because, like often happens on this list, that superior effort is missing from the 1001 albums.
The Cure
3/5
I'm a big Cure fan, but my love for them essentially begins with 1985's The Head on the Door (a few songs here or there excluded). The earlier, more goth-tinged albums are missing the melodies and emotional heft that led to their wonderful blend of radio-ready hits and hypnotic, swirling gloom. Pornography at least has the building blocks of the latter category, but it's slogged down by layers of murky production and Robert Smith in his most self-serious form. There are gorgeous moments ("Cold" being a personal favorite), but it's missing the playfulness and clarity that's coming.
Bruce Springsteen
2/5
I’ve made my peace with Springsteen just not being for me, so I was never going to love this, but this seems like a particularly uninspired album.
Pixies
5/5
Let's get this out of the way: "Gouge Away" is one of my very favorite songs. Like, shockingly-high-on-my-shortlist favorites. You-wouldn't-believe-how-high-on-my-shortlist-favorites. So high, in fact, that if I had to assemble a desert island disc collection, Doolittle would be in the running for inclusion on the strength of that one song and how insanely into it I am. The moment I first heard Kim Deal cooing in the background of "Gouge Away" was the moment I fell in love with the Pixies.
Luckily for my desert island collection, I wouldn't be sacrificing much to include it. This is one of the most self-assured, cohesive blasts of pure music gobbley-gook ever made. The Pixies know who they are, and who they are is masters of blending pop and fuzzed-out guitars. 38 minutes and every one of them is perfect. Not necessarily from the moment I first heard them -- some of those moments are pretty out there -- but as I've lived with this album for decades, all those idiosyncrasies and moments where I don't entirely get why Frank Black thought they would be a good idea have revealed themselves as works of mad genius. If they announced a Mount Rushmore would be carved out of (white) rock icons and the four included bands were The Beatles, The Velvet Underground, The Clash, and Pixies, I'd nod and send in my vote of approval.
They're one of those bands, and this is one of those albums, where they did not seem to be reaching for superstardom or growing songs in a lab to please anyone but themselves. It's just the full force of their personality (despite Gil Norton's tinkering).
What a pleasure it was to have this on today.
Beatles
3/5
Getting closer to the stretch of Beatles records that exploded my brain, but not quite there yet. Still, this is a big step forward from Please Please Me and With the Beatles.
Malcolm McLaren
3/5
The manager of the Sex Pistols apparently gets inspired by hip hop beats in the early 80s and music from a whole bunch of different countries (mostly Latin America?) and makes this very weird, eccentric dance record that Eminem borrowed from at the beginning of “Without Me”. Did I get all that right?
This is far better than it has any right to be.
Django Django
3/5
I found a lot to like here. Fun discovery from this list.
Method Man
4/5
Taking a few days off from this for the holidays, but I've listened to this one so much that I don't really need a dedicated listen to chime in. One of my favorite Wu-Tang projects, thereby making it one of my favorite rap albums. I've never found Method Man's lyrics terribly deep, but I love his flow, and he's one of my favorite baritone rappers. RZA's production is typically perfect — everything that he touched from this era sounds of a piece but never gets boring. Probably not one of the masterpieces of the genre, but it's a classic and "Bring the Pain" is one of the coolest songs ever.
If you're running into this for the first time, seek out the "Razor Sharp Mix" of "I'll Be There For You / You're All I Need to Get By," a remixed version of "All I Need" featuring Mary J Blige, released as a single in the wake of Tical.
Amy Winehouse
4/5
I haven't spent much time with this, and it's far more R&B-tinged than I remembered. I think I actually prefer this to her massive follow-up, though probably just because that one got overplayed.
Kendrick Lamar
5/5
Kendrick is the GOAT, and this is probably his most masterpiece-y masterpiece, but it's maybe only my fourth-most-listened-to album in his catalog. Good Kid MAAD City is the Kendrick album that I'd submit as his best, but I also turn to Damn. and GNX a lot more often. That makes TPAB a five-star album that I listen to less than two four-star albums. Is that meaningful?
Every song is thoughtfully crafted, his flow is difficult and impressive while still being loaded with substance, and it's an honest-to-goodness *album* in an age of singles and deluxe editions. It's endlessly rewarding. Just parsing out his various personas is a masterclass in rap music. The sequencing is perfect.
It's immaculate, but does it feel just a little bit like homework (albeit from a fun class)? Between Thundercat's crazy noodling and the unbreakable pace of almost every song, I get a little exhausted halfway through 'u'. And I use the word exhausted without any negative connotation. I'm exhausted after lots of things that are incredible and worth doing.
Plus, making it to the end of 'u' rewards you with the lightning jolt that begins 'Alright'.
So, five stars, and if I only throw it on once or twice a year, it's just because it's a heavy lift.
*It's worth recommending the Dissect Podcast's track-by-track breakdown of TPAB (amongst other Kendrick albums) if you're interested in digging into the lyrics and music motifs throughout the album.
Echo And The Bunnymen
3/5
Feel like I need to give this one another go at some point.
Tangerine Dream
4/5
Beautiful, ethereal, foundational stuff, and I'm happy to give Phaedra its flowers. But also, Tangerine Dream apparently created over 40 albums (it's unclear if that includes their many scores), and I struggle to tell them apart.
Janelle Monáe
4/5
It's a little overlong but endlessly creative. On a different day I may have inched this toward 5 stars. She's a special performer.
Slipknot
1/5
Ah, the pride of my home state. Is this any good? I can’t hear over the non-stop drumming and lack of dynamic range. There are eight (eight!) musicians in this band, but I can only discern enough happening in the mix to account for three of them. Rarely has someone done so little with so much.
Quicksilver Messenger Service
2/5
I'm not sure the riff at the center of "Who Do You Love?" provides enough coverage for 25 minutes of variations, and I'm sure "Mona" doesn't have enough to support even 7 minutes of runtime. I couldn't tell you about the rest; I bailed after a quick scrub.
2/5
I only really know the biggest Kinks hits and the songs Wes Anderson used in his various films, so I was looking forward to taking in an entire album and wanted to like it. I did not love it. My big takeaway is that I was way too harsh in giving only three stars to those early Beatles records. Everything felt half baked and detached. This is part of a lineage of music that I cherish, so I want to stay with it, but initially this is not something I’d return to.
MC Solaar
2/5
Remember Us3? They made "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)," a bebop-inspired pop-rap song that became a modest hit in the early '90s. I completely forgot about them until today. Turns out they have ten albums! And they were an early signee of Ninja Tune, one of the labels most responsible for my taste in music circa late 90s/early 2000s.
Probably not a great sign that I spent a lot of this album reading up on the whereabouts of a completely different band. This barely held my attention, and I'm always up for non-English-language albums. I have no idea how someone could consider this essential, let alone enough people to vote it onto a list like this.
Mudhoney
2/5
I remember seeking out Mudhoney in the wake of Nirvana's breakthrough, which hit at the exact right age to reshape my taste in music. It turned out that I was far more into Nirvana's Beatles-with-a-fuzzbox sound than I was the sludgey post-metal that most of the 80s/90s Seattle bands were pioneering. Some of those bands went on to tighten up their sound to capture more of the overflow Nirvana created, leading to incredible albums that I still listen to today. But Mudhoney's barely organized chaos buried under 16 feet of pure white fuzz just doesn't do anything for me. They inspired a lot of bands that I like, but, for me at least, this is a footnote in musical history, not an album worth diving into.
That said, I bet their live shows are legendary, and I would be happy to spend an hour with them at something like Riot Fest. They seem like a band that could blow the doors off a place and incite fierce loyalty from fans who encountered them that way.
Blur
3/5
I don’t connect with Blur this side of their self-titled album, but a handful of Parklife songs are among their best (This is a Low, To the End, End of a Century) and point towards the band that Blur eventually settles into. These earlier Blur albums sound like a band influenced more by the whimsical Beatles songs than the more serious/thoughtful ones. As awhole, there’s more here that annoys me than delights me, even if they're pretty well written and performed and beloved "across the pond".
Frank Sinatra
4/5
"Songs for Swingin' Lovers!" sounds like my childhood in the best way — growing up, we spent one weekend a month in Chicago visiting my Italian Nana, often driving into the city to get a bit of culture that wasn't available in our modest hometown. I have all these sense memories of Frank … but, here's the catch: I don't remember actually listening to Sinatra at any point in my childhood. I think I've created some narrative of his role in my life that is entirely romantic, an amalgamation of Nathan Detroit, Danny Ocean, Joe Piscopo, Phil Hartman, Johnny Fontane, "A Jolly Christmas", and a half dozen mob movies that I love to revisit. Honestly, it feels suitable for the man in question, so much larger than life, to have implanted himself into my life story without having to earn it in its crucibles.
This is a fine collection. His charming vocals are unstrained and borderline lazy, but every weird phrasing choice imbues them with so much personality. I can barely tell when one song ends and the next song begins, but for 45 minutes, I am transported to a life I apparently wish I could have had.
Leonard Cohen
5/5
Going back in to add a fifth star. Listened to it again this morning and it's really breathtaking. I've always been a little put off by his voice over the course of a full album, but something clicked today.
3/5
One of those bands I've always meant to check out but never got around to. Pretty fun.
Lou Reed
5/5
I don’t know how to capture the wavelength on which I connect with Lour Reed. It’s not save-my-life music. It's not transcendent, borderline holy music. I am not now nor have I ever been a casual user of drugs, let alone an addict. It’s just music that I must have heard on the right day in the right mood, and it permanently wormed its way into my soul.
Lou Reed is something like the North Star of my taste, the skeleton key that connects all the disparate bands I love across a mess of genres. The element they all have in common can be traced back to what Lou (and John Cale) brought to music. The “elegant and brutal” mission statement John Cale presents in Todd Haynes’ superb documentary a few years back.
There’s something about him — his persona, his talent, something — that makes everything sound cool and weirdly profound, even if it might be nonsense. (His lyrics in a British person’s voice would probably drive me batty.)
But this isn't supposed a review of Lou Reed the man; it's meant to be a review of Transformer.
I’m not sure this album alone would have shaped my musical taste — the reckless adventure of the four canonical Velvet Underground records made me a convert to this particular religion. I'm not even sure this is a five-star album. I maybe only love half the songs. The production is clear and mostly unfussy, missing that messy undertone that marked the best Velvet Underground songs. Bowie and Ronson have too heavy a thumb on a few of the songs, and a few of the straight rock songs feel a little phoned in.
But the best parts of Transformer capture most perfectly the thing I love about him. Vicious, Andy's Chest, Perfect Day, Walk on the Wild Side, Satellite of Love, and Goodnight Ladies feel distilled from the substance that makes him Lou Reed. His unassuming voice and perfect guitar tone. The way it sounds like he's in the room with you, and you can't tell if he's playing these songs for the first time or the hundredth time. The simple and elegant nature of his songwriting delivered with just enough bite to make it deceptively dangerous.
I'll never love his solo stuff as much as his VU stuff; Cale is too potent for that magic to exist without him. But I probably reach for this one more often than anything else in his storied discography.
Klaxons
3/5
"Golden Skans" still sounds like this whole era of music distilled down to three glorious. I probably downloaded it from one of the burgeoning mid-00s music blogs that Spotify eventually killed off. There are a handful of songs that put me right back in that headspace. It's like a time machine. Does that mean it's aging well or not aging well? It's good fun, but a little style over substance, and not very differentiated from three dozen other bands from that time. I was glad to bump into it again and toss a few songs onto a catch-all playlist, but this is probably the last time in my life I'll listen to a Klaxons album in full.
Talking Heads
5/5
Played this for the kids yesterday and expected to be told to turn it off near-immediately. On the contrary, they were super into it. I was jealous because it took me decades and some cajoling from Thom Yorke and James Murphy to really connect with Remain in Light, and with Talking Heads in general. Once it clicked, it clicked hard. What a unique, off-kilter masterpiece.
Kings of Leon
1/5
Capping off a week with Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Talking Heads and Frank Sinatra isn't doing any favors for Kings of Leon. But as boring and self-satisfied as I find the Followill clan, this list is making me defend them because if you're going to include two of their albums (and why would you?), how is the second one Aha Shake Heartbreak and not Only By the Night? At least Only By the Night shot them into superstardom and has a cultural argument to make the list. There is nothing on Aha Shake Heartbreak that two dozen other bands haven't done better. It's not even a good example of its genre. The production is so muddy, too. Completely forgettable. It's not a 1-star album in the wild, but in the context of this project, it should't be anywhere near this list.
Kanye West
3/5
Kanye defined the sound of rap music and popular music for like 20 years, first as a producer, then as a tastemaker. His production for Jay-Z and others was legendary, and The College Dropout concretized his fame when his unique voice somehow hit the zeitgeist. That he’s not a very good lyricist is almost (almost) beside the point. From here he released an unbroken string of 8 masterful albums, each better than the last, each bending the industry in his direction and inspiring numerous, less inspired, copycats.
And now it’s all way less fun and way more messy, and it’s getting harder to objectively listen to it. I can still get there with the albums that most blew me away (Yeezus, Pablo. 808s & Heartbreak) but these older albums that I never totally connected with anyway are basically a relic now. I just can’t find my way to enjoying them, quality be damned.
N.E.R.D
2/5
Post-"Happy", it's easy to forget now that The Neptunes were one of the most exciting, boundary-pushing producers in music for about a decade, creating many of the best moments from Clipse, Mystikal, Jay-Z, and many others. When NERD's debut, "In Search Of…" came along in 2001, it didn't cleanly fit into the alternative or rap landscape. It became something of an indie fixation for forward-thinking "Kid A"-embracing webzines that were already moving well past genre limitations. By 2004, "Fly Or Die" was one of my most anticipated records of the year. Alas, it was a letdown. There was enough good songwriting to sustain interest for an hour, and occasionally songs like "Maybe" and "She Wants to Move" brought some genuine Neptunes magic. But most everything else sounded rehashed and generic, and it hasn't fared any better with age. Of course, "In Search Of…" still holds up, which naturally means it is nowhere to be found on this list.
Patti Smith
5/5
A couple months ago I put this on to remedy one of the biggest blind spots of my entire music-listening life. It was absolutely incredible. I don't know what I was expecting. Somewhere along the line, I got the impression that this was in a class with Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, and Stevie Nicks (all artists I admire, but maybe don’t love). It appears the only thing that connects all those artists is the lack of a Y chromosome and a truckload of talent. Patti’s sound is so unique and ferocious. Why did I put this off for so long?
Sonic Youth
4/5
Sonic Youth made so many incredible albums (Sister, Evol, Daydream Nation, Goo, Washing Machine, Sonic Nurse, Rather Ripped, to name a few), and Goo is the one I reach for the most. If you put together a five-star compilation of Sonic Youth songs, at least four, maybe five of them would come from Goo. And they were never cooler than the unsyncopated refrain of "Tunic" ("You are never going anywhere"), a poignant song about Karen Carpenter that I devoured as a kid and only actually appreciated as an adult ("I feel like I'm disappearing, getting smaller every day / But when I open my mouth to sing, I'm bigger in every way"). Goo has many of Kim Gordon's finest moments to boot. An underappreciated classic.
Sonic Youth
3/5
We got two Sonic Youth albums in a row, and I love them so that’s fine. But Dirty has never been one of my favorites, and listening to it a day after Goo didn’t improve my opinion of it. There are cool moments (Sugar Kane chief among them), and the band is as tight as ever, but it’s missing that hypnotic quality that gets you lost in the organized noise.
Various Artists
5/5
I’m not sure which is more accurate: does ACGFYFPS get me in the mood for Christmas, or do I look forward to Christmas because I get to listen to ACGFYFPS? Along with Vince Guaraldi, this is one of two Christmas albums that cut through all of my cynicism and help me embrace joy. Darlene Love’s shout-singing and Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” are a match made in heaven. It’s genuinely great, and my only hesitation is how much the Christmas season does the heavy lifting. If I got this in July, would I reach for a fifth star? Still, there are stone cold classics that I listen to way less in a year’s time, or don’t make annual appointment listening (though now I think I should.)
King Crimson
3/5
David Bowie
3/5
I’ve never totally clicked with Bowie. I’m hoping I can find my in during this project. It’s obviously good and trendsetting, but I must be missing something.
The Fall
4/5
I loved this. Looking forward to listening to it again.
Carole King
5/5
I rolled my eyes when I saw this was today's album, and I am pleasantly shocked to give it four stars [editing this a week later to change it to five stars because I haven't stopped thinking about it]. These songs have all become clichés, but approach them on their face, and they are individually remarkable. I kept waiting to be cynical about it, but I never did. I fully gave myself over to it once I started crying during "You've Got a Friend."
Simon & Garfunkel
4/5
We listened to these two a lot growing up. Sadly, my mom leaned toward the folky Ren faire stuff that never resonated with me. About half of this album is surprising and aiming for something far left of their center. I found those tracks something of a revelation. The rest of them I could take or leave, though I leaned towards take. I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would.
Joan Baez
3/5
I’m usually not the right audience for this kind of music, but reading the backstory was compelling, and I was able to find my way in.
Pentangle
1/5
Speaking of not loving Ren-Faire-core…
I eventually made it halfway through this. I can say without hesitation that 200 albums into this project, this was the album I hated the most.
Radiohead
5/5
I distinctly remember the run-up to this album. The media narrative was that this was their concession to fans, a genuine guitar-rock album in the wake of the genre-bending experimentation of the previous year's Kid A. There was also a narrative that fans revolted. Certainly, there were still fans clamoring for a return to OK Computer, or even The Bends, but I was not one of them. Kid A enveloped me. It had my whole soul in its palms. For a minute there, I lost myself. I loved those earlier albums enough to welcome more, but I was a little disappointed to hear that the Kid A road ended there. I needn't have worried. If anything, Amnesiac is the more genre-bending and more experimental of the pair.
Amnesiac wasn't an immediate masterpiece for me. For years, I would pop it on for specific songs, or skip a handful of tracks on my way to my favorites. But over time, it has become one of the records I return to the most, and it continues to reveal itself. In 2001, I would have argued that it was an elevated collection of B-sides, a series of experiments that didn't fit the tight construction of Kid A, from a band whose lack of ego and commercial ambition killed the possibility of a double album. But these tracks fit together in their own perfect way, each song leading into the next and taking you on a journey of the senses distinct from other Radiohead records.
Each song here is a marvel. Even the immediately off-putting "Pulk / Pull Revolving Doors" creates a dense soundscape with a warm, tender center. There *are* guitar-forward bangers ("I Might Be Wrong") and songs that probably started as guitar-forward bangers ("Packt Like Sardines…", whose live version smokes.) But mostly it's a band full of astonishing musicians playing with the form; the slow burn of "You and Whose Army?" (now a live staple), the absent refrain of "Knives Out", a somehow more-trippy alternate version of "Morning Bell" that most of us assumed would be a guitar heavy rendition but instead recedes into layers of bells and keys. "Dollars & Cents" has suffocating tension. "Hunting Bears" can be a transcendental experience on an old country road late at night. On my crummy 2001 headphones, "Like Spinning Plates" sounded like being beamed into a UFO, and it's still otherworldly as I spin my worn vinyl copy on decent speakers. "Life in a Glasshouse" brings back the horn section from "The National Anthem" and invites them to a New Orleans funeral march; it's an unexpected ending to a wild snipe-hunt of an album.
The crowning achievement is "Pyramid Song," maybe my second-favorite song in their canon. The plaintive piano, the soaring, gorgeous vocals draw something at once haunting and hopeful. It is perhaps the definitive song of this era; it swells as instruments layer, building not a wall of sound to pummel your senses, but a heightened presence of mystery and beauty as the song hypnotically takes you down the proverbial river, more flora and fauna and stars and black-eyed angels emerging as the song carries you to its conclusion.
I was lucky enough to have my first live Radiohead experience in 2001 at an outdoor concert in Chicago's Grant Park, a beautiful area near the lake usually reserved for multi-day festivals. I was living in Iowa and just in town for the weekend for a college-related event, and someone I met at the function said they were playing that night and convinced me to go with him, even though neither of us had tickets, in hopes that the outdoor venue would still sound from outside the official perimeter. We skipped a big banquet-y event and braved public transportation (no small thing for a small-town-Iowa kid). We stood behind the fences to hear what we could of the main set, and snuck in when they opened the gates before the second encore (of three). Watching Thom do "True Love Waits" solo and the whole band do "Lucky," "Fake Plastic Trees," and "Street Spirit" was something of a spiritual experience, the culmination of seven years of loving a band more than I'd ever loved a band, growing with them and anticipating albums and being first shellshocked by what they put out there, and then having that music wrap itself around me like sinews of muscle on my bones. I heard something of God in their music, like they tapped into a hum underneath the surface of our reality (a feeling confirmed later in life, a story for another time and place.)
Amnesiac takes me to my safest place, filled with mystery and wonder. It is their underappreciated gem in a catalog filled with "best album of all time" contenders. I think I'll flip to Side A again right now.
The Beau Brummels
1/5
This was annoying – the music itself, but also that there are so many of these albums on this list. There's nothing special that elevates them, or even any distinct quality that sets them apart from the hundreds of other bands that sound exactly like this from the same time period. Also, the lead vocal is too forward in the mix. It's aggressive and obnoxious.
But squint at that album cover a little, and you can see the faces of Charlie, Dennis, and Mac, and if you keep that Always Sunny trio in mind for a song or two, it becomes very, very funny. (Or maybe I just haven't slept enough lately.)
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
4/5
I've never known what to do with Elvis Costello. Half of his songs are lush, low-key masterworks, and half of his songs have a tweeness that grates on me. This album was more of the former.
Johnny Cash
5/5
There's something about the gravitas of his wisened, aged voice that transforms all of these songs. Do I like NIN's "Hurt"? Of course. Does it make me cry? Not until Johnny Cash sang it. Same with "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and some others. But what really got me on this listen was how moved I was by "Give My Love to Rose." A gift of this project is that I'm paying more attention to lyrics and the voices that sing them. I wouldn't have predicted giving this five stars before now, but it was incredible.
Saving some extra flowers for Rick Rubin's sparse, slightly clipped production that gives this album an immediacy that feels like a ghost is in the room.
Jean-Michel Jarre
2/5
I'd like to give Oxygène its flowers for its importance in the lineage of ambient music. Jean-Michel Jarre is a pioneer, etc, and influenced artists I blah blah blah. But this album did nothing for me.
Tom Waits
3/5
Some of these ballads were affecting, but his normal secret sauce largely felt missing here.
Frank Sinatra
3/5
Probably the single best collection of slower and more boozy Frank Sinatra songs.
The White Stripes
5/5
In 2003, this sounded like wildfire, and it's aging well.
The secret sauce they found on Elephant is their ability to match tempo and dynamic changes. It's like a pitcher who had two pitches suddenly coming back with five, mixing them fluidly and perfectly.
Notice:
The beat change 1:04 in on "Black Math" and the return to the original, raging tempo at 1:50.
The way he comes in for the refrain of "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself," his voice barely holding on, and the second time it happens, when the guitar goes to 11.
The low rumble of "In the Cold, Cold Night."
The one-two punch of "Ball and Biscuit" and "The Hardest Button to Button," two songs that go hard and take no prisoners. You feel every tempo and dynamic change in your bones. Easily my two favorite songs in their catalog.
For that matter, the entire stretch starting with "Ball and Biscuit" and ending with "The Air Near My Fingers" is one of the most badass five-song runs ever.
And of course, the total restraint of "Seven Nation Army," immortalized in every arena to bring the crowd all the way in, a magic trick of a song that wants to go 90 mph but hits cruise control at 43 and drags you into its weird pace.
14 songs, no skips.
2Pac
4/5
I have never connected with Tupac, whose confessional poetry mode here parted the seas of hip hop and made way for so many of the artists I revere. But I still can’t find my way in. I simply don’t like the production enough to go back again and again to mine for the lyrical riches. Still, it’s undeniably a pantheon album.
Wu-Tang Clan
5/5
36 Chambers has a raw, grimy, and gregarious sound that hits me right in the dopamine receptors. It's not deep or a massive leap ahead in the genre, but it is endlessly fun, hugely influential, and one of the albums (of any genre) that I return to the most.
The Police
2/5
One of those bands where if all you own is the greatest hits, I won't give you a hard time. The two hits are excellent. The rest...
Lucinda Williams
4/5
I liked this a great deal more than I expected to, especially the second half.
Calexico
4/5
Julian Cope
3/5
I found myself alternating between engagement and boredom/disengagement with almost every song.
Queen
4/5
In general, I don't really vibe with Queen … or so I thought? This was wonderful! I think I enjoyed this differently as a full album with a start and stop time, where I could throw myself into it, rather than a song that pops up here or there.
Spiritualized
4/5
I've spent a lot of time with this album over the years, and I still haven't formed a firm opinion of it. Sometimes, it feels like the excess is a sleight-of-hand disguising mediocre songwriting. More often, the scope and grandeur sweep me away. It is a perfect stress test of the Picasso quote, "Good artists copy; great artists steal." Is Jason Pierce copying and hiding it under layers of unnecessary sound? Or is he stealing and making it his glorious own?
Either way, "Broken Heart" is always perfect.
There are days when I'd give this three stars, and days when I'd give it four, maybe even five. Today was a three-star listen, but my three-star listens never seem to dissuade me from revisiting it regularly, so I'll go with four. I recommend listening with patience, dedication, and good headphones.
Curtis Mayfield
3/5
I couldn’t find my way into this.
Sex Pistols
2/5
I've never connected with this album, and today was no different. I feel obligated to give this four or five stars because without the Sex Pistols, there is no blah blah blah. But it's just noisy and pointless. Lying in stark contrast to other musical forms is interesting for a history lesson, but Never Mind The Bollocks is just not that fun to listen to. I don't know. Maybe you had to be there?
Hanoi Rocks
2/5
Apparently, these guys helped birth Poison, Guns N ' Roses, Motley Crue, and all the other '80s hard rock glam bands. I don't knee-jerk hate those bands the way I did when I was younger, but I also don't find much that differentiates one band from another, to the point of boredom. If I didn't know the history/lineage, I'd assume Hanoi Rocks was just another one of those bands, because this sounds like all of them. I struggled to keep this on past the third track.
The Monks
4/5
I'm into this.
Muddy Waters
4/5
Grateful Dead
1/5
Jam bands are never going to be my thing, but at least they can showcase ability and skill; it just requires the band being in sync with one another, something no one in the Grateful Dead seems to concern themselves with. Perhaps today wasn't the day to try to find my way into The Grateful Dead, a band animated by excessive, self-satisfied meandering. Despite its origins in counterculture, they're a band that has nothing to say and takes forever to say it, whose obsessive fans give the vibe that the Dead are an end unto themselves. Which, I guess, is what it is, except that nothing about this recording or others I've heard reveals a band worthy of obsession.
Sly & The Family Stone
5/5
Lived with this one for a long, long time. Dark and seductive, teeming with anger, apathy, and nihilism. Sly's disillusionment with society and his full joyful embrace of drugs make for strange bedfellows, but the music is undeniably incredible, wild, and free. Sadly, it's feeling more and more like the soundtrack we deserve to Stand!'s soundtrack we need.
Portishead
5/5
*Top 15 All-Time Favorite*
I must have picked this up within days of its 1994 release, and it's been in heavy rotation ever since. It wriggles its way into my soul like few other albums. It's sensual, mysterious, a little haunting, and demands you bob your head like this: [demonstrates proper head bobbing]. Beth Gibbons' disintegrating voice, that low, deep bass, and all those chill grooves create a masterclass in mood. When you toast me after my time on earth comes to an end, "Roads" ought to be on the playlist.
A quick aside about a moment in 2011 that altered my relationship with music in some meaningful way:
Dummy always felt like music the gods birthed, a gift to romantic alt-rock kids stuck in small county hubs far away from the cities where this music must live. It was a feast of imagination wandering the rain-soaked Bristol streets after midnight every time I pressed play on my well-loved CD. And at that point, after 17 years of obsessing over every nook and cranny of Dummy, I had Beth's voice memorized, and every beat and organ note was wrapped around my fingers. It was spiritual, and loomed large in my life.
Portishead is a famously hermetic band, rarely touring and releasing only a small handful of albums over the course of their career, all monuments. In 2011, they announced a tour, and we stood in line for hours outside the venue to get a spot right up against the stage. At some point in the show, Beth looked me in the eyes and reached out and touched my hand. Suddenly, like some kind of reverse Daphne, this goddess transformed into a real, touchable person.
In the months that followed, I found myself listening to Dummy with new ears, hearing not something ethereal, but earthly; stardust turned into dirt. It grounded my listening in a special way, and it's affected how I listen to all music ever since, turning all these minor gods into real people with lives, souls, families, emotions. It's had a profound effect on my relationship with music.
Abdullah Ibrahim
2/5
Light, breezy, too easy to ignore.
Nitin Sawhney
2/5
I can't tell if this is familiar because I ran into it in the late 90s/early 00s, or if it just sounds like a hundred other bands from around that time. It blends a bunch of genres neatly, but it's too straightforward and rhythmically unadventurous to elevate past "music that would have made me pull up Shazam at a Gap, add it to a playlist, and then never listen to it again."
The Yardbirds
3/5
If I'm understanding correctly, The Yardbirds were the band of the legendary blues-rock guitar god Eric Clapton until he left. They replaced him with Jeff Beck, one of the most critical psychedelic guitarists of all time, and Roger the Engineer was Jeff Beck's first full album with The Yardbirds. It's fascinating because you can hear blues-rock and psychedelic music smashing into each other here, but they never really integrate. Still, this was pretty fun. I couldn't help but compare this to The Who, who are obviously contemporaries doing something similar, but who have them beat on both the songwriting and arranging fronts. It reminded me of Pearl Jam's Ten vs. Stone Temple Pilots' Core: two bands that sounded almost the same, but Pearl Jam had a style so nailed down that they could play in it like a big sandbox, trying different things out. In contrast, STP sounded like they were trying to write Pearl Jam songs (and occasionally succeeding).
I'd be interested in where this partnership could have gone if those two sides had integrated better, but it sounds like Beck left to form the Jeff Beck Group not long after this was released. And then, famously, Jimmy Page and Roger Plant came along and did what Jeff Beck was doing, only with better songwriting and arranging. He truly was the Salieri of psychedelic blues-rock in the late 60s/early 70s.
Songhoy Blues
3/5
Blood, Sweat & Tears
2/5
What in the Tom-Jones-meets-Chicago is this? Throwing Satie at the top is such a strange flex.
Led Zeppelin
3/5
It's probably a curse of an artist to have this many albums in their discography, or to have such a high peak; at a certain point, there has to be enough there not to just send me back to IV or Houses of the Holy, and Phyical Graffiti feels like another run of the same kind of songs, only with a certain playful quality largely missing. There's good stuff, of course — "Houses of the Holy," "Trampled Under Foot," "Kashmir," "Black Country Woman," "Ten Years Gone." But most of it feels bland. I imagine big fans of the band or the genre may feel very differently. As a kid, I dove deep into their catalog because my library made all their albums available on CD. But all these years later, I'm probably closer to a "greatest hits compilation" fan, and whatever nuance Physical Graffiti has is lost on me.
Lorde
4/5
One of my favorite pop artists from the last 20 years, and this is her peak (so far). Her music is cathartic and messy. Her lyrics are best in genre ("They'll hang us in the Louvre / down the back, but who cares? Still the Louvre"). Gets deeper and better on each listen. A modern masterpiece.
Nick Drake
4/5
Nick Drake spawned three hundred artists that my generation crowned kings of music, and almost all of them annoy me to some degree. The ones that didn't took this template and flew to new heights. Too many just kept writing little folk songs over and over. I've often wondered how many of those artists bothered to listen to his progression over the three albums. There's so much about his sound here that evolved from Five Leaves Left, while still being obviously him. I mostly hate this genre, but I'll never hate Nick Drake.
New York Dolls
3/5
I guess I can see why this was so influential, but I struggled to find something to hold on to, despite the Stooges-meet-Roxy-Music core that seems up my alley.
Eurythmics
4/5
As a mood, this is wildly successful. As individual songs, nothing really holds up to the anticipation of when we're going to get to “Sweet Dreams”, one of the great songs of my lifetime.
Little Richard
2/5
What do you want from me?
Randy Newman
2/5
I think I'm just grumpy this week.
Serge Gainsbourg
3/5
And now, a running diary of listening to Histoire De Melody Nelson for the first time in February of 2026 in the United States:
[Track 1, 4:10] Oh wow, this is hitting all my sweet spots. Is this one of my new favorite albums? It's so lush and moody. That bass guitar belongs in a museum.
[5:29] I wonder what he's talking about. Knowing Gainsbourg, it's probably scandalous.
[6:18] This album is about what now? Oh wow. Big yikes.
[Track 2, 1:02] Am I a terrible person for loving this? Do I need to turn this off right this minute? Not an hour ago, I was infuriated by the latest Epstein file stuff. This is beyond the pale … right?
[Track 3, 0:30] I'm really curious what people make of this album.
[Track 4, 0:46] 1001 listeners are all the way out, which is justified and righteous. Critics and musicians seem to totally embrace this, though admittedly not recently. Oh, wait, here's a 2020 article. Nope, still on board. Apparently, it's embraced musically and is what it is. Also, this (obviously, in hindsight) influenced a lot of my favorite bands.
[Track 5, 1:02] It appears that the woman on the cover / providing some of the vocals was 24 when they recorded this. Thank goodness.
[Track 6, 0:18] Goodness this music rules. Should I buy this on vinyl? Should I clear my browsing history?
[1:32] Wait, what are these shrieking and laughing sounds?
[2:04] Oh I see. Uh... what the actual f*ck?
[Track 7, 2:05] If this were in English, I would likely have turned it off. But since it’s in French, I’m mostly just riding on vibes. And my goodness the vibes...
[6:41] I feel dirty. But also, I want to listen to this many times.
What kind of rating am I giving this?
Five stars? In this political climate? On an internet site that will be archived under my own name? You have to do an awful lot of caveating and twisting yourself in knots to give this a bunch of stars.
It'd be easy to pretend this is some artistic cautionary tale ala Lolita, but (as far as I know) Nabokov and Kubrick weren’t writing a fantasy story of something they demonstrably wanted, as evidenced in their life stories.
Then again, docking it down to virtue signal also feels antithetical to my whole schtick (though, admittedly, I am morally repulsed by it, so I’d at least be signaling something based in reality). I can't deny that musically, this was one of my favorite 30 minutes of this whole project. I also can't deny that I feel icky.
Judas Priest
2/5
Hard to listen to Judas Priest as a child of the 90s and not conjure Beavis holding a chainsaw, chopping off Butthead's finger. Maybe not what you want, but it has a certain charm.
Rage Against The Machine
4/5
This has all the guttural, cathartic viscerality that you go to Rage Against the Machine for, but it's also pretty shaggy. That this is my least favorite of their three albums is not really a knock; I just prefer that tigthened songwriting of the next two efforts. There's a reason punk songs are typically short. Most songs exceed five minutes, and the formula of Zach De La Rocha raging over a Tom Morello riff can't sustain the momentum for that long. The best tracks justify the length with memorable codas or tempo shifts ("Wake Up", "Freedom", "Killing in the Name"). The rest coast to the extended length on guitar solos or an extra dollop or two of the same riff. The idea that a RATM song could be boring is a real failure of imagination on the part of the producer. Subsequent albums feature a barrage of 2-3-minute songs, with a couple longer ones peppered in for flavor and a change of pace (and almost all of them justify their length).
Still, when the guitar, drums, and bass explode 30 seconds into "Bombtrack" and Zach lets out his first grunt, I can feel it in my whole body, and their lyrics have never felt more poignant. This isn't the most sophisticated music; it's The Stooges with something to say, or Black Sabbath meets Public Enemy by way of Pixies. But Tom Morello's ability to write a riff is s-tier, and they perfected a formula that feels essential to modern living.
The Mothers Of Invention
3/5
I always enjoy Frank Zappa for 2-3 tracks, and then I get exhausted by the zaniness. But I can choose any three-track run and enjoy it, so I'm a little lost on what to rate this.
Simon & Garfunkel
3/5
I think I've already covered my ambivalence about Simon & Garfunkel in this project, so I won't rehash it. Nothing about this one changed my mind.
Metallica
4/5
I have no capacity to be objective about The Black Album. As soon as I press play, I immediately become 11 again. I think it's pretty good? I couldn't tell you for sure; the critical part of my brain is offline because of all the headbanging. Has a kickdrum ever sounded more ferocious? Not to an 11-year-old, I'll tell you that much.
Richard Hawley
2/5
British people sure do love Pulp, don’t they?
Fairport Convention
3/5
Shuggie Otis
3/5
I wasn't as engaged as I'd hoped, but it was still a good time.
The War On Drugs
4/5
You know that part in The Lord of the Rings where Gandalf returns as Gandalf the White, and when pressed, reveals that he is Saruman as he should have been?
“Indeed, I am Don Henley now," The War On Drugs said, "One might almost say, Don Henley as he should have been."
4/5
Can they play well or write complex songs? No. But, really, who gives a shit? There are far more important things happening on this record than songwriting and musicianship. I've listened to dozens of albums during this project with incredible songwriting and musicianship, and none of them made me want to grab this world and shake it till all the evil currently wreaking havoc fell out like loose change and breath mints. Oh, that there were a dozen bands just like them at our current moment in history (and not just trying to monetize themselves on various platforms). MC5 rocks and they rock with intention.
Parliament
4/5
Mothership Connection is a gem. There are so many P-Funk albums, and at some point, I have a hard time telling one from another. But if I needed to point to a perfect entry point, it'd be this one.
PSA: If you haven't had the pleasure of seeing them live, make it a top concert-going priority. George Clinton probably doesn't have much time left, and they are truly magical live. Or maybe he's immortal. There would be worse choices for a Highlander.
Frank Ocean
5/5
I wish I had more time to examine Channel Orange today thoughtfully, but suffice to say that lyrically and musically, Frank Ocean is in a class all of his own. I'd point to the beat shift/modulation halfway through "Pyramids" as one of the most profound moments in music you'll ever encounter. Nearly every song features something innovative, insightful, and delightful. "Bad Religion" packs an enormous punch more than a decade later. Channel Orange is one of the all-time albums of any genre, and rewards repeated listens exponentially. And its follow-up, Blonde (criminally absent from this list), is an even greater leap forward and has a permanent spot in my top 15 or so albums.
Suede
3/5
God save the Queen and all that. Am I doing it right?
Weather Report
2/5
I never put my finger on why this is elevated in any meaningful way. Maybe it just hasn't aged well?
The Who
3/5
When God was handing out talent to the Holy Triumverate, The Stones got all the swagger, The Beatles got all the artfulness, and The Who got all the self-seriousness. That "Who's Next" was created from the ashes of another rock opera is very revealing.
The Who were very formative for me, but somewhere along the way, I lost interest. "Who's Next" is about as good as it gets, and there are plenty of songs that still get me all the way there. But there's just something missing. Maybe it's the demise of classic rock radio; individual Who songs are jolts of electricity. But after sitting with an album for an hour, I found myself wanting to skip to the next song or take a break to listen to something else.
Still, Keith Moon and Pete Townshend's prodigiousness is the perfect time capsule for the era of big drum fills and bigger guitar solos.
Holger Czukay
2/5
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh it's the guy from Can. Okay, sure. This sounds exactly what he would make on his own. Your time would be better spent spending another hour with Ege Bamyasi, to be honest.
Tricky
5/5
I've lived with this one since 1995, and every year my appreciation for it deepens. One mood, perfectly sustained, every crevice of its potential explored.
Joan Armatrading
4/5
Wow! I've literally never heard of Joan Armatrading, and I was very moved by this.
Bee Gees
2/5
Two things i didn't know: How many years before Saturday Night Fever the Bee Gees existed, and that their music was pretty far away from disco to start. I'm curious about their journey now, but I didn't connect with this at all. I generally like Robin Gibb's voice as a complement to Barry's falsetto, but with Robin front and center, his weird warble sounds like an affectation.
The Smashing Pumpkins
5/5
*Top Five Favorite Album*
Of all the albums that formed and clarified my tastes and identity in high school, this is the one that has aged with me the most. I was drawn to the guitar tones, the pretentious high school diary lyrics, and the songcraft, but that was true of dozens of records. So why this one? I'd boil it down to this: I can wrap myself in the barrage of soaring, euphoric guitars on Siamese Dream, and the hypnotic solos and breaks. I feel the drums in my gut. When the band goes to 11, it takes me with them. They are a master of dynamics. I feel 40 feet tall when 'Quiet' is playing. The melancholy of 'Mayonaise' has been a port in the storm for 30 years. And there have been so many storms, so the years are grafted onto that song in particular, and the album as a whole.
More than most records, my mood affects how I hear the album. It makes for a non-static listening experience. Pressing play is an act of adding another layer of my life on top of the music. There's nothing distant or detached about the listening experience. Each year, my relationship with the music changes and matures. I don't feel nostalgic when I listen to it, unless I'm already feeling nostalgic. Is it a great album? I think objectively it is, but more importantly, it is *my* album. It has my whole heart because it somehow contains it.
Primal Scream
4/5
Arcade Fire
4/5
I sure do wish Win Butler wasn’t a creep, for just about everyone’s sake.
Youssou N'Dour
3/5
Nirvana
5/5
There's a whole chapter in the MTV oral history ("I Want My MTV" by Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks) that's worth reading to grasp Kurt's profound vision of this hour of music and what a thumb in the face it was to MTV's producers, who just wanted a night of Teen Spirit. I was, of course, the perfect age for this - 14 when it aired, 15 when it was released. I watched the first viewing, and then watched it over and over throughout the year as a way to mourn Kurt Cobain, the man who, more than anyone else, upended my musical taste and introduced me to the concept of music imprinting on your identity (my mom didn't want to write the family Christmas letter in 1994 and turned it over to then 15-year-old me; I dutifully laid out what each member of the family had been up to, and then spent the paragraph reserved for my own update processing my feelings about Kurt Cobain's suicide. That letter's become an endearing family heirloom.)
I still listen to this through the lens of mourning Kurt. How could you not? The small talk between songs, the gentle sighs, the little lyric flubs here or there ("I'm anem-enny royal tea"). It's a relic of the man himself at his most real, or at least as close as we mortals could get. It contains so much of who he was:
- A peek at the music that inspired him (I spent so much of my young musical education searching for the albums he'd mention in interviews, etc)
- A forefronting of the Beatles-esque pop melodies that animated his punk-by-way-of-grunge sound and made it so accessible to the masses
- The grunge aesthetic, arguably more coherent than the sound, as evidenced by the black candles, the cardigans, the stargazer lilies
- So many great songs
- His complete grasp of those songs ("Come As You Are" feels like a concession; otherwise, there are no hits to be found here, largely because they wouldn't work nearly as well in this setting)
- Using their moment to showcase a whole second band (three Meat Puppets songs with the Meat Puppets!)
- His sense of humor and natural charisma, and the warmth the bandmates seemed to have for each other, which neutralized some of the sensationalized rhetoric, especially between Kurt and Dave Grohl
- His voice, filled with emotion, the not-so-secret sauce that made Nirvana's dumb lyrics so weighty and meaningful
When he climbs outside of the limits of his register at the end of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night", I have the same experience every time. Kurt, why are you straining your voice so much? You don't have to do this to yourself. But also, thank you for giving us all of yourself. It got me through the worst years of my life.
I still cannot write about Kurt without retreating to a 15-year-old version of myself. It still hurts a little remembering how much he meant to me. It still feels like knowing someone who understood all the bad stuff. And Unplugged in New York still feels like a balm.
This recording is a miracle.
Fairport Convention
3/5
I found more to like here than I could have ever hoped. Even the 11-minute song held my attention (and then some!) for its entire run time. I dare say I even *liked* this album. There was just enough bite in their songs to make them initially intriguing — with honest-to-goodness riffs! — and their sound reminded me of some of Nick Drake's darker songs with a full band, or some of Led Zeppelin's early work that leaned more folk rock than metal. That is to say, the songs went somewhere. Generally, when I kneejerk-hate a folk album, or a folk rock album, it's because the songs feel like whisps in the air, and then they just kind of sit there for 4-5 minutes asking you to admire their bravery for singing into a microphone or gently strumming their instruments. That never happened here, even on the half of the album that I didn't respond to.
On most 10-song albums, I'd probably rate it as a failure if only half the songs did something for me, but hell, five songs totally got me, and made me revisit Liege & Lief, which is also not nothing. And while those five songs were playing, I hovered my finger over the four-star button. I'll be back for more.
Michael Jackson
3/5
Sure do miss the days this could be enjoyed without qualifiers … I get burnt out on disco after a few tracks, but this may be Quincy's finest moment, so each individual track is fantastic.
Pearl Jam
3/5
My childhood was filled with Pearl Jam records. They were my ride-or-die all the way through Yield. In 1994, I would've told you Vitalogy was the best album ever made. Vs. was the first album I bought on the day of its release, which was a Tuesday back then, and before I had a license, meaning I had to convince my parents to drive me somewhere after school to buy a cassette.
But Ten never hit me quite the same way. There are songs I love (“Black”, “Porch”) and songs whose soundscapes were formative to my taste (“Oceans”, “Release”), but the mix is muddy, many of the songs sound more or less the same, and the whole album is self-serious. The singles can get me pumping my fist in the air, of course, but I don’t seek them out. Overall, it’s just not my favorite 90s relic and, despite everyone’s reverence and its obvious importance, it’s maybe my least favorite Pearl Jam album through (and including) Avocado.
(There's a new mix of this album by Brendan O'Brien that came out in 2009, dubbed "Ten Redux," that solved a lot of my issues with it. It sounds more urgent and timeless, and cleans up most of the heavy-handedness of Rick Parashar's original mix. I'd give that version four stars, though it admittedly makes it feel less like a 90s grunge time capsule. YMMV.)
Prince
5/5
Prince's magnum opus is a juggernaut of a record. I'm still finding lots of new things to be enthralled by. Wish I had more time to write about this one today.
Linkin Park
3/5
Like everyone else in 2000, I got sucked in and played this to the point of wearing it out, but it hasn't aged very well. The singles still go though.
Marty Robbins
2/5
And it was also the night that the skeletons came to life
The bones are their money
So are the worms
They pull your hair up, but not out
To turn into a man and have another chance at life
All they want is another chance at life
They’ve never seen so much food as this
Underground there’s half as much food as this
And the worms are their money
The bones are their dollars
The Waterboys
2/5
I really tried with this one.
D'Angelo
3/5
This is as good as Soul got in the mid-'90s, but Voodoo (and later Black Messiah) bested it in every way, to the point that I rarely make it through the first couple tracks on Brown Sugar before just putting Voodoo on for the 1000th time.
Hey, guess what D'Angelo album isn't on this list? Infuriating.
A hypothetical five stars for Voodoo, the sexiest album ever recorded.
OutKast
4/5
Each album is so strong and showcases what each does so brilliantly that it was easier to accept this as a swan song, even though we all understood that this was the end of Outkast (though I recall plenty of denial and bargaining in the media as people went through their stages of grief).
I haven't done a proper front-to-back listen in probably 20 years. Speakerboxxx is such a shot of adrenaline that it's probably impossible to sustain for an hour. I petered out after "The Rooster", though there are plenty of good moments in the following *13* tracks. The Love Below sustained a bit longer, but I was done after "Pink and Blue" (possibly including, but I think that song is a groove and maybe I'd include it on my master mix).
Their musical interests are so melded into that mix of funk/jazz/Prince that things feel more cohesive than I remembered. It's a natural evolution of Stankonia, itself an experimental mess that yielded a half-dozen all-time classics. There's one five-mic album somewhere in here. Maybe the alternate timeline I'd be most interested in is this project being one last proper collaboration before calling it a day. Imagine Big Boi having a firecracker verse or two on "Behold a Lady", or Andre lending some off-kilter flourishes to "Church" or "Knowing". We could be in Aquemini/ATLiens territory. Alas.
Eminem
4/5
So many complicated feelings about this album. Sonically adventurous. So surprising and so funny. Predictably, he goes way too far and tips into celebrating misogyny rather than parodying it. But the rhymes are so tight and creative, and the attitude is so self-confident that it's hard not to enjoy yourself. I'd say he's doing that "force you to come to terms with what it means that you're having a great time," but I don't see any evidence in the world that he ever properly wrestled with that. He acknowledges it, but it was always in a winking, almost dismissive "I'm such a rascal" way. That's probably necessary in order to be the person capable of making this album, but I can't decide what to do with that. Is this a five-star album that's intensely, intentionally complicated? Or is it a one-star album that the world would be better without? Is he holding up a mirror to society, or is he creating culture? The answer is both, and that's really messy.
I was 20 when this came out, and I remember already vacillating between "this is a work of genius" and "the world is probably a worse place because this exists." At the time, I leaned toward the former statement. In my 40s, I still sit somewhere between these two sentiments, but now lean towards the latter. I still secretly love it, but don't want my kids to ever hear it. If this weren't a public record, would I just give this five stars and be done with it?
Then again, I listened to this constantly, memorized all the lyrics, and absorbed none of it into my personality. Is that self-awareness at work? Or am I overestimating the power of this music? Maybe it's just funny to hear him go so over the line, and I shouldn't worry that a whole generation had their values shaped by the violence, homophobia, and celebration of misogyny.
All that said, what was it about the early 00s that made everyone overstuff their albums to get close to the 79-minute limit on a CD? A bunch of kids grew up on Enter the Wu-Tang but never noticed that it's the perfect length, leaving you wanting more rather than skipping late-album filler tracks.
James Taylor
4/5
Koffi Olomide
3/5
Beck
4/5
For my money, this is his strongest start-to-finish album. Guero has all the crazy pastiche and creative abandon of Odelay minus the schizophrenia, which means there are fewer surprises around every corner, but the album as a whole is more sustainably grooveful (is that a word?) He sounds settled, content, reconciling the creator of Odelay/Midnite Vultures with the creator of Sea Change/Mutations. After living with his catalog for 20+ years, this has landed as maybe my favorite Beck album? Lots of contenders for that title, including his underappreciated late-career Modern Guilt record.
The Doors
4/5
John Grant
2/5
Something about his lyrics really chafed.
Air
3/5
I don't know what it is about Air that's lost on me. It seems like something I should be bananas for, but none of their stuff clicks for me.
Pixies
3/5
This is pretty straightforward by Pixies standards, and I kind of forget about it, but there's a lot of good stuff here.
The Dandy Warhols
4/5
OutKast
5/5
This is an absolute mess. Five stars.
Roxy Music
5/5
I would argue that this is the most under-appreciated album of the 70s, at least in terms of what has made it into the Rock Canon circa 2026. Maybe because it doesn't belong to any one genre? Or because it sounds more like a musical than a hard rock Ebenezer? Or maybe just because nothing here really works as a single, so it never had the radio legs needed to stick in the zeitgeist. Whatever the reason, this is a momentous work of genius, overflowing with creativity. I could listen to this a thousand times in a row and find something new to delight in each time.
Billy Bragg
3/5
I'm told I'm supposed to listen for Dylan and The Clash, but I mostly hear a try-hard version of Elvis Costello. I hear the appeal, but maybe there's a better album to start with? (Came back for a second listen of "Levi Stubbs' Tears" though.)
Beastie Boys
5/5
Grew up with this as my go-to BB album, so I’m a little biased calling it their best. It’s all over the place, but I love how they followed their muse wherever it took them. Miss these guys.
The Sonics
4/5
I love the edge these guys bring to stuff like "Have Love Will Travel" and "Strychnine". It's probably not more authentic than other white guys co-opting black music in the mid-60s, but it feels just a bit more dangerous than 'Please Please Me' or 'The Rolling Stones', which puts it square in my sweet spot of 60s music.
Harry Nilsson
3/5
"Coconut" has become such a parody of itself that it was hard to listen to this with fresh ears. But I didn't hate it.
Emmylou Harris
4/5
The songwriting and lyrics were beautiful, but the production got on my nerves, though I can't put my finger on why exactly. I bet this sounded amazing live.
Miles Davis
4/5
This isn’t my flavor of Miles Davis, but it is pretty great. One of the first jazz records I got turned on to as a kid.
Queens Of The Stone Age
3/5
Two QotSA albums are among my inner circle of the most loved albums of my life (Rated R & Songs for the Deaf). Rated R is a four, going on five-star album, full of artistic flourishes and genuinely interesting production and songwriting. Songs for the Deaf is the best pure rock album of this century, taking everything from Rated R and adding massive riffs and an S-tier rhythm section.
Two other QotSA albums (Lullabies to Paralyze & … Like Clockwork) are stone-cold classics in their genre, and while they probably shouldn't be in the 1001 albums to hear before you die, they're worth all of your time if you like the genre. And Era Vulgaris, In Times New Roman, and Villains each have songs worth recommending.
This debut album, which was not popular or impactful culturally, lays the groundwork for how their sound would develop, and it has its moments for sure; I'd put it in that lower tier of QotSA albums, though it's probably more consistent than the other albums in that tier, and inconsistency is the flaw of those albums (and the awful, awful production on Villains).
But what is it doing on this list? And more importantly, why is it the *only* Queens album on this list over Songs for the Deaf and maybe Rated R?
Fleetwood Mac
3/5
One of those bands for whom my opinion changes just about every time I have cause to listen. This was a disinterested day; tomorrow may be different. "Tusk" is a cool song, though.
Caetano Veloso
4/5
Paul Revere & The Raiders
3/5
I found this one pretty engaging, though a hits compilation is probably more useful since the songs individually don't feel like they have a ton of nuance. I randomly saw these guys live in the 90s as a legacy act a local music festival. The chorus to "Indian Reservation" is permanently stuck in my head for all time.
Fela Kuti
5/5
First time hearing this and first time this project that I’ve listened to something new three times in one day. Immediately one of my favorite records. Can’t wait to dive deep into this discography.
The Police
3/5
I really want to like this. The craft is high, but their sound just gets on my nerves.
Ali Farka Touré
3/5
Dinosaur Jr.
3/5
Fun revisiting this, though I prefer their later, more melodic work, at least in part because they place the bass more prominently in the mix, which lets the low end provide a better foundation to hold the noise. That might make me a lame Dinousaur Jr fan. (I think it's held in high regard, so this isn't much of a hot take, but Farm is their pinnacle and the one I'd slot into this list.) Regardless, happy to let J Mascis blow out my speakers any day.
Duran Duran
4/5
The Replacements
3/5
The Stooges
5/5
Jimi Hendrix
5/5
It feels wrong to say Electric Ladyland was ahead of its time. More like it exists outside of time. Very occasionally, I'd like the production to be a little more straightforward, but that would require him to come back to our space-time continuum, and who am I to wreak that paradox on our lowly planet?
Bebel Gilberto
3/5
Cypress Hill
4/5
I'm guessing which of the two Cypress Hill classics you prefer entirely depends on which one you encountered first. For me, that was Black Sunday, an album with a storied place in my childhood, and an album that I still listen to with some regularity today. But that's not on this list, so I'll gladly give their debut its flowers. They're so funny, the beats go hard, and that grimy, hazy, jazzy sound is ultra recognizable. There's maybe too little variation, but that's more or less true of nearly every rap album. I've never really partaken in the circumstances that this album almost requires, but I still love it to pieces.
Janet Jackson
4/5
It's easy to forget now that in the 90s and into the 00s, Janet was way bigger than Michael, at least in terms of radio hits and cultural presence. But even in the 80s she had stone-cold classic after stone-cold classic. Five of her albums deserve a spot on this list (this one, Control, janet., The Velvet Rope, and All For You).
Guess how many albums she has in this project? Good thing we'll get that seventh Neil Young album.
If there can be only one, Control is probably the obvious choice in terms of cultural impact, but The Velvet Rope is undenialby her best album, with janet. not too far behind. Rhythm Nation 1814 is pretty great in its own right, it just never reaches the highs of those other albums, and the last four tracks stink of filler.
So, five stars for Janet Jackson, five stars for The Velvet Rope, and four stars for the first 8 (proper) tracks of Rhythm Nation 1814.
Violent Femmes
5/5
Every song here is perfect. It's five stars and it sounds like it was recorded cramemd into someone's bathroom on the cheapest gear Radio Shack had, and they still probably tried to return it opened and used. "Good Feeling" is one of the most romantic songs Lou Reed or Elvis Costello never wrote. I can't help myself from dancing during "Kiss Off". Heading to a little vinyl mini-con at Sketchbook in a bit. Don’t be shocked if this comes home with me.
David Bowie
3/5
One of my goals with this project is to find my way into Bowie. It’s not for lack of trying. Everything here was pretty good, but nothing grabbed me and said “genius!”
Silver Jews
4/5
Otis Redding
4/5
Mariah Carey
2/5
I can hang with a Mariah Carey album (Daydream is one of the genre's giants), but this one just felt aimless. I couldn't find the melodies in the endless runs and all of the time spent in the whistle register. She spends at least 75% of this one whispering and moaning. It's all vibes and nothing to hold onto. Look no further than her cover of "The Beautiful Ones". If you weren't already familiar with the Prince masterpiece, could you make out the hook?
Brian Eno
5/5
I've spent hundreds of hours with this and in all of my attempts to find other ambient albums that hit me the same way, I've come up empty. It's sparseness is fully engrossing. I dare say something spiritual is happening.
Tim Buckley
3/5
Radiohead
5/5
After they released Kid A and Amnesiac, which were largely recorded without the band's full involvement, they had to figure out how to perform all those songs live. That process seemed to fully level the band up into who they are today. They weave together electronic and acoustic elements in a way that almost blends the era of The Bends/OK Computer and Kid A/Amnesiac — slightly but permanently leaning toward the latter.
Hail to the Thief is the first album they created after this process, and you can hear them still awkwardly figuring out how to make this kind of music as a full band. The album as a whole is less cohesive than what's come before, and it's a smidge bloated and just a little undercooked. Still, every song here has something that I love, and just by virtue of it being my favorite band, I've listened to it far more and for far longer than 90% of other music. It has a handful of my very favorite songs ("There, There", "The Gloaming", "Where I End and You Begin", and especially "A Wolf at the Door") and everything that I didn't just list is still a song I know by heart and never skip, with maybe the exception of "We Suck Young Blood" and "I Will", which you kind of have to be in the mood for.
There's a 10-song tracklist that Thom threw out once in response to a message board Q&A that I maybe *slightly* prefer it, so going to throw it in here:
There, There
The Gloaming
Sail to the Moon
Sit Down. Stand Up
Go to Sleep
Where I End and You Begin
Scatterbrain
2+2=5
Myxomatosis
A Wolf at the Door
Queen Latifah
3/5
This was very solid. Latifah's flow isn't revelatory, but it's a fun record, and she can hold her own against all but the very best of the era. "Latifah's Law" and "Wrath of My Madness" had especially great beats. The reggae flourishes are surprising, and I'm curious how they fit into the lineage of The Fugees, who made a meal out of that hip-hop/reggae blend.
Muddy Waters
4/5
Not my cup of tea, but it's obviously really good tea.
Os Mutantes
4/5
I got into this back when it surfaced as an obvious influence on all those 2005-2013 bands (New Pornographers, of Montreal, Vampire Weekend, and a hundred others) but had totally forgotten about it. I loved revisiting it. Breath of fresh air.
3/5
A defining album of the 90s, and "Wonderwall" is a staid earworm that I'll never not be happy to sing along to. But for some reason, every time I listen to this album, I grow less impressed. I don't have a solid reason for not loving this, but I just don't. Maybe it's a hype thing. There are some bangers, obviously. But I don't think it deserves its place on the mantle.
Alanis Morissette
4/5
Speaking of albums that deserve their place on the mantle of 90s alt rock, Jagged Little Pill deserves all of its flowers and all of its 42.6 million copies sold (more than Sgt. Pepper's! more than Purple Rain & Like a Virgin!). The singles are undeniable, the album tracks are thoughtful and complex by 1995 standards, and her ability to weave between pop and riot grrrl energy was a complete time capsule of 1995 and of most alt-rock music to follow.
It's maybe a net negative that this took over the sales charts the way it did — the industry chasing crunchy guitars with a catchy over-produced earwormy single pre-existed this, but something switched post-Nirvana where the music felt impersonal and in sole pursuit of radio play; Jagged Little Pill isn't guilty of this (in my opinion), but it is emblematic of the money that was out there to be made if something caught wildfire. None of that is Alanis's fault, of course. And regardless, this album is fantastic.
Bill Evans Trio
5/5
Another one of those albums that I’ve listened to hundreds of times but still manage to reveal new things. One of the great albums from the era of jazz that I most respond to. Works in the background or as a dedicated listen.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
Several songs here are woven into the fabric of American life, at least if you were a child of the 80s and 90s. Not sure I'll ever be truly passionate about their music, but it's easy to understand how people got there. That said, it's interesting seeing their footprint on American culture fade a bit over time. Can't remember the last time I saw a sincere Stones vs. Beatles argument, and I don't see their songs pop up in media the way they used to (save for just about every Scorsese movie). Stones vs. Beatles was always kind of a false binary anyway, but I was brought up to believe this was one of the two Most Important Bands Ever™, and that sentiment seems to be completely dried up at this point. There's a series of Beatles biopics coming in a couple of years, one a week for four weeks, each focused on a different Beatle. It's hard to imagine the market having an appetite for a single Stones movie, let alone one about Jagger and one about Richards. To some extent, that's happening to all of the classic rock stalwarts in the absence of monoculture (Bowie, Reed, Pink Floyd, and Zeppelin are all probably due for a biopic moment like Queen, Dylan, and Springsteen had recently), but it's still wild to experience since it was just unimaginable 20-30 years ago.
Maybe that's just a shifting of who gets to create the canon now that magazines like Rolling Stone and Spin have less relevance than Pitchfork, and Pitchfork has less relevance than Anthony Fantano and a hundred young influencers on Instagram. Only speaking for myself, I don't feel the energy or passion to get my kids excited about their songs when they come up on shuffle, and they don't trigger my own nostalgia buttons, even though they soundtracked their fair share of it. It's probably a shame that I don't make much time for them anymore since the four-album run of Beggar's Banquet → Let It Bleed → Sticky Fingers → Exile on Main Street is hard to beat in all of music history. The songs are punchy, plaintive, fully formed; they're still aping the black artists who came before them, but they do so with complete command of the material. "Wild Horses" still captivates me, "Brown Sugar" still makes me want to move, and there is genuine experimentation on songs like "Moonlight Mile", and best-in-genre craftsmanship in "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" (especially towards the end when they really get cooking).
I don't know where this album or this band lives for me, but I was glad to revisit it. While I doubt I'll reach for it again without something like this project prompting it, I look forward to inevitably running into these songs again down the road.
Beastie Boys
4/5
This was a crazy leveling up, and nearly 40 years later, it remains as vibrant as ever. There are probably hundreds of better rappers, but no one has ever had as much fun rapping as Mike D, Ad-Rock & and MCA.
Radiohead
5/5
I daydreamed about the day I'd reflect here on Kid A. I love this record. If I could only have one, this would be it. If I had to eschew all other music and was only allowed one record to have ever heard, I would choose Kid A, and I'd be at peace with it. It shaped all of my modern tastes and uprooted how I understand music and where it sits with me at a heart level, and it continues to do so. I doubt I'll be able to capture why, but here's a go:
I've been chasing this sound for the last 25 years: rhythms inspired by electronic artists, low-end-forward, melody-forward, atmospheric, beautiful, a little haunting, a little romantic, infused with warmth and soul. It has led me to some truly amazing artists, but rarely has something hit the same way. (The melodies under all the bleeps and bloops are gorgeous. Go listen to a live version of the title track if you're struggling to find your way in.)
I bought Kid A at a midnight release party at a music store near our college campus. At that point, Radiohead had been one of my two or three favorite bands since The Bends, and I had completely absorbed every inch of OK Computer. I'd kept up with the leaks leading up to Kid A, and while I was intrigued, I was hoping for more Guitar Rock God™ music. My first listen to Kid A was in my car at midnight on the way back to campus. I didn't love it. It was weird and moody and far outside what I wanted from it. But within a few days (or, rather, nights, since Kid A really pops at night) it had already completely upended my whole relationship with music.
I was more ready for it than some of my friends. I adored trip hop music throughout the 90s, and was all in on the big beat takeover of America for those few months in the late 90s by The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy. Where others heard electronic music invading their favorite rock band, I heard rock music invading my favorite electronic artists. It was a merging of the two genres I responded to most.
It's not just electronic influence that got me; it was a widening of their songwriting lens. "How to Disappear Completely" can move me to tears with its orchestral waves, and "Motion Picture Soundtrack" can raise the hair on my neck when the harp comes in. They'd always funneled their anxiety and angst and sadness into something hopeful and cathartic, and hear that felt more finely tuned than ever. The music creates a container for the existential dread of the lyrics that is inherently hopeful, rooted in the togetherness of the band and their fans.
I have so much more to say. A million stars. A billion stars. All the stars.
The White Stripes
4/5
This doesn’t blow me away like Elephant, but I’m not sure these two were capable of making an album that was less than four stars. It could have been another white stripes album, but they mixed things up a bunch here, and it’s all for the better.
Ash
3/5
There’s an alternate universe where Spike Jonze made some music videos for Ash and they had a Weezer-esque career. They’re probably better off. I like this album a lot, though like a lot of 90s pop-punk, I forget about it the moment the CD ends.
Sade
3/5
This sounds super dated compared to Love Deluxe, which makes it harder to sink into. However, I enjoyed it once I contextualized it as a funk album. The band is pretty spry, and her lyrics are intriguing. I initially wrote it off as an album where you can grab the best stuff on a compilation and move on to her masterpiece, but there is really good stuff here.
Depeche Mode
3/5
I haven't spent all that much time with Depeche Mode outside of Violator, and it's possible this was the first time I've heard this. I appreciated the restraint they showed throughout and their efforts to mix up the song structures and dynamics. It almost lost me when it moved into a pair of chamber music songs, but then they reopened the aperture on "Behind the Wheel," and I got pulled back into the second half. Lots of Christian imagery, but it feels like they're not just aiming for cheap taboo. I could see myself growing to like this if I had encountered it when I was much younger. However, the first time through, nothing grabbed me the way Violator does. Chalk it up to this not being accessible, which doesn't mean bad. It feels worthy of a deeper listen, but not sure I'll come back for it.
Happy Mondays
1/5
I hated this.
New Order
3/5
Elvis Presley
2/5
Elvis really feels like a "you had to be there" musician. I just can't find my way in.
Fatboy Slim
3/5
Pretty fun big beat album. It hit harder when I was 16 though.
A Tribe Called Quest
5/5
Three notes about The Low End Theory:
1. By some act of kismet, I heard "Scenario" on MTV around the time of its release, and was obsessed with hearing it again. I don't remember what was so electrifying about it, but I put together all of the money I had to buy the cassette and played the hell out of it, basically until I discovered Nevermind. Was I the only 11-year-old white kid in southeast Iowa bumping The Low End Theory? I sometimes wonder: if I had just one other friend, older sibling, or music magazine other than The Rolling Stone, would I have grown up with Gang Starr, De La Soul, and Outkast instead of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Radiohead? My parents likely would have shut that down, but it's an interesting sliding door.
2. When my boys were little, I started playing them "Excursions," and we practiced it over and over so that whenever the three of us were in the car together, we could rap it together. It kick-started their obsession with rap, and it's one of my favorite memories of when they were young. And, it's still a go-to for the three of us. The other day, one of them suggested that their mom and sister should also memorize it before our long road trip this summer. I highly recommend picking one song -- rap or otherwise -- for your kids to memorize so you can sing along in the car together.
3. The infusion of dusty jazz, lo-fi beats, and talented lyricists who can swing from justice-oriented cultural commentary to making you laugh out loud is a special sauce that very few rap artists or rap groups ever bested. It remains one of the five rap albums I return to most, and that's after I finally found friends, mags, and proverbial older siblings in college who turned me on to a whole lot more rap music worthy of scrutiny.
Nick Drake
4/5
Erykah Badu
4/5
Bauhaus
2/5
I like Bauhaus, but this didn't sustain my interest.
Arcade Fire
4/5
The Suburbs is clearly The Arcade Fire's best, most fully realized album. Their whole sound is built upon nostalgia and catharsis. Those big anthems, the moments of release. There are few things that can elicit more pure joy for me than an Arcade Fire climax, and building them on the backs of "remember when we were kids and life was easier, but now we're grown, and everything is complex" pricks my easily manipulated heart with the force of an avalanche. The Suburbs is chock full of those moments, ostensibly a concept album or a rock opera waiting to happen. By the time it gets to their crowning achievement, "Sprawl 11 (Mountains Beyond Mountains)," I'm putty in its hands.
And Win Butler had to go do a bunch of stuff that was icky enough to rob all the purity out of that joy and greatly diminish its ability to land. I can still get there with Funeral because it is embedded in a time and place in my life that I cherish, so my own experiences can almost supersede my reservations. And there are moments on Reflektor that are so serene and cosmic that I temporarily forget all the bad stuff. But The Suburbs never took hold that way, and it is merely perfecting the Arcade Fire formula, so its moments aren't transcendent, and I honestly have no access to the "life is worth living so throw your arms wide open and breathe it in" catharsis that fuels every wonderful moment. Which, honestly, is just a huge bummer all around.
A four-nearly-five star album that I just have no capacity to enjoy on its face any longer.
Sparks
4/5
It's fun hearing this the day after an Arcade Fire album. Lots of connective tissue there.
Sparks was one of the major blind spots I was looking to rectify through this project, and it didn't disappoint. Such a blast.