1001 Albums Summary

***

excellent

Energizing!

Fun throwback hip-hop by an iconic individual - my favorite track is “Queen of Royal Badness”

A hipster millenial masterpiece

An enjoyable listen, and I respect the experimental approach - highlights include the microtonal kalimba sounds on “Derelict” and the unexpected Schubert Unfinished Symphony sample on “High 5”

Nice.

No

melancholic; iconic

Legendary! Angsty for sure, but also with reminders that “everything is gonna be fine, fine, fine” — even when life gives you “ten thousand spoons, when all you need is a knife.”

Feels like background music for a restaurant inside a shopping mall at nighttime or something

Voa, Jorge, voa! I wish I could give this even more stars *****

Awesome

Just lovely *****

Awesome jazz orchestra sound - plus Basie's way of playing at the piano conveys such cleverness and confidence. "Teddy The Toad" and "Splanky" are classics (and throwbacks to playing in high school jazz band...), and "Flight of the Foo Birds" and "Fantail" are also highlights!

awesome

The ambient part was an unexpected surprise after what came before it. I hear resonances with Brian Eno’s “Ambient 1: Music for Airports,” also on the 1001 Albums list.

Creates an experience of minimalism through repitition and long timescales

"Breaking The Law! Breaking The Law!"

A pleasant throwback to an era that I never lived through myself - "You Don't Own Me," "Do Re Mi," and "Wishin' and Hopin'" were highlights

DOOM METAL!

This is excellent: very 80s, done very well. I was pleasantly reminded that I knew a couple of the hit songs ("Shout" and "Everybody Wants to Rule The World"), and I had a great time getting to know the rest, especially the quasi-ambient tour de force "Listen," which ends the album.

This still sounds fresh in 2026! I can see how Hayes ultimately influenced classic 90s/00s R&B - but also hear resonances with the styles of newer postmillenial fusion-y artists like Hiatus Kaiyote and Snarky Puppy.

Awesome sample-based beats that draw on quite an eclectic variety of sources. A quirky and fun listen from classic hip-hop history.

What a pleasant surprise! I did not expect the jazz and West Side Story references and they were great fun.

Not my favorite by The Cure - I look forward to their shoegaze-ier music coming up later on this list!

I guess I've only ever listened to Jay-Z before as a featured rapper with Beyoncé and Alicia Keys. This album has some nice beats and feels like a throwback to earlier rap and R&B -- though the album felt a bit overly long at times, with some tracks stronger than others.

Fantastic. Twee pop that stands the test of time; the earnest whimsy feels very of this moment now in 2026

I acknowledge and understand why this album is important, historically significant, and well deserving of its critical acclaim. That being said, I find it more artful than listenable and it is not my favorite, which I say from the perspective of someone who does enjoy other 21st-century hip-hop and R&B very much!

This is the best-selling jazz album and my knowledge of that fact once won me a point in a game of Trivial Pursuit. I also think I once had to transcribe the piano solo on "Freddie Freeloader" for a jazz band class assignment in school. Anyway: this album is classic for a reason, an important early work of modal jazz style. I highly recommend listening to the 2009 chiptune tribute, "Kind of Bloop," after this for some lolz, and for some musical nostalgia of a different variety...

the "One-Note Samba" (or "Samba De Uma Nota So" in Portuguese) is iconic

Unexpectedly kind of awesome?

That cow mooing sound on that one song was really unnecessary

"Forming a poetic mass over pathetic trash / Other writers are outclassed / Surpassed by the words and the wit" - Guru's "oratory gift is abundant" and DJ Premier's beats are classic ****

Just what I needed after a long day

much ado about lynyrd skynyrd

Somehow this music makes me think of what Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau would be if he were an Anglophone singer-songwriter instead of a German art song performer (which I wonder if other classical music fans would confirm??) - an earnest baritone with real emotions, but also the ironic distance of a performer playing a (necessarily artificial) role in something carefully crafted and composed

Awesome!!! The track featuring Raphael Saadiq was a highlight. I will keep listening to this one.

"Jazz police are talking to my niece" was an unexpected bit of internal rhyme. The synths and drum machines sound very 80s but kind of charming? I also wonder why and how he chose to pose with a banana in the album cover photo.

Is that a little Gershwin quotation in "Birmingham Blues"?

Iconic!!! Clever work with asymmetrical meters and excellent playing by all of the quartet members. I'd give this five stars on the basis of the first three tracks alone, which are all highlights - the rest of the album is nice as well.

I'd forgotten how grunge-adjacent (but also stylistically varied!) the Smashing Pumpkins could be

unnecessarily scary album cover lol but good energy!

Awesome raucous but melodic rock with a unique sound - I hear the influence of the American minimalists here (especially Philip Glass), of course with a new noise-rock reinterpretation. I had actually heard of Lightning Bolt before this listen because I once heard a Providence-based community brass band perform a cover of one of their songs; the brass/percussion rendition worked very well on the repeating melodic riffs, and the band was proud to share the music of a band representing their home in Rhode Island.

"Cars" is a catchy classic! It was cool how some other tracks shared the style and vibe of "Cars" to make a cohesive larger-scale work of the album - but the album continued on a bit too long for my taste.