Make it stop... I want my sounds and time back from that experience.
How can you not like Dancing Queen? This album is adorable.
This feels like a bit like broadway show music. Tik Tik Boom Boom, Rent, something like that but more whiny and worse. The music behind the lyrics are alright. Every track feels like he's suffering into the mic.
I was pretty excited for this album considering how much other artists have referenced him in their musical career. I may have to do a Cohen deep dive because I didn't fully get it with this record. Hopeful this was just a miss for me and not a full dissolution of music history.
This is an album I feel like I should like, but don't. NOW called and wants their track back. This is what I would have listened to because it was "popular" but deep down inside I didn't care for. Take that nostalgia. I liked Derelict but at that point there are other artists that do that track better.
1981 you say? Hmmm... While I couldn't name an ABBA song off the top of my head listening to this record feels like I am hanging out with my step-mom.
3.5/5
This album is a fever dream. Turning point at the end of the 90's. The deep cuts on the album are what make this special.
Hmmm.... there were sections of this that I really liked... then 11min at pt II came on and it made the whole thing weird. 1973 had some real bangers and some interesting takes like this that brings the 70's back to earth from it's lofty place in music history.
2.5/5
I am conflicted on this record. Maybe it's listening to way too much Wonderwall for my entire life. Listening to a couple songs is great. An entire Oasis record and his voice sounds like it pining and whining at me for an hour.
Never heard of them before this experience. The whole thing works for me. Bit genre melding. Sounds like the Jezabels were heavily influenced by Sparks so maybe in retrospect that influenced my enjoyment of this album. Would totally turn this on again.
The first half of this album felt very 90's and then the 70's called and hijacked the last half. Feels like some tracks would have definitely been on the radio during its heyday but I can't recall making mixtapes with The Charlatans on it.
Paul Simon feels like his style got born again into so many other artists that used his sound. Love those open slappin chords where you can feel the strings. Armistice day was a fav from this record.
This record is a banger. Maybe some of it is nostalgia and my mom loving Simon & Garfunkel. Or marching to Bridge Over Troubled Water at ASU. Half this record has songs played everywhere still for a reason.
This felt a bit on the ska punk side of alternative rock. This vibe has a cult following for a reason. Not in my wheel house and trying to assimilate it into a daily listening routine would not be attainable.
This is comfy 70's vibes. Reminds me of Cat Stevens or Carol King.
Alright… this is something that younger me would have totally jammed out to and probably did. This sets the tone for the 80’s in the best way. Current me wouldn’t listen to this entire album except for Once in a Lifetime… that track is still such a banger.
I don't listen to rap consistently but growing up near LA I am familiar with Tupac and the influence he had on the music community. Some of the tracks on this record don't connect with me and feel grating. There are other tracks that do connect and add a dimension to musical prose that is quite impressive. The underlying music on nearly every track has a swagger to them. And I never knew Tupac used harmonica in his songs. More R&B sounding than I expected. Controversy surrounding him aside, there's something here to still be talked about.
That squealing on "Who's Gonna Take the Weight?" drove me insane. I am no rap pro, but the space and breath between lyrics felt off putting and disjointed to me. It's like he was reading a paper in front of the mic over feeling it and letting it flow on many tracks. Some of the lyrics are decent and others made me giggle with what he was putting together. It needed to up the BPM to keep the momentum. Coffee shop rap. Early 90's feel. They may have laid the groundwork for what was coming. Many beats on this record are similar to what I don't like about certain EDM genres.
2.7/5
Big band, swing and Sinatra. What a voice, what a time to be alive post WWII and have this silky smooth sounds come over the radio. The album as a whole sounds like a run on sentence. Works more for me on a song by song basis.
I don't like how Spotify will force a rerelease of an album and not simply have the original. That annoyance aside, Suicide might be one of the worst songs I have ever forced myself to listen to.