Reviews by amanda

I thought we had some sort of Crosby et al. album already, but it was actually Buffalo Springfield, which contains Neil Young, who is sometimes one of Crosby et al. Forget the Beatles movies, I need a CSN(Y)+BS primer. Except I don't want one because this album is boring.
I did always think "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" was a novel kind of song title; you don't get a lot of colons in popular music. I'm sure I've heard the song before (I think it's on one of those Billboard albums?) but it clearly didn't stick with me. The best part is definitely the do-do-do-do-dos at the end.

It seems to me that Morocco (and Northern Africa in general) is way more prevalent in the pop culture of the 60s than it is now. What's up with that? Maybe I should read a history book instead of the Crosby et al. wiki compendium. Did you know Nash was in the Hollies?? We're in a deeply tangled web here. And Crosby was in the Byrds. Wow wow wow.

I'm really sleepy and 'Guinnevere' is not helping. The best part is definitely the do-do-do-do-dos in the middle. This one sounds a little like Simon and Garfunkel. Maybe that's Crosby's vibe.

My assessment is that Stills is my least favorite singer. And I think Crosby is my favorite. But also if you asked me to tell the three apart I would have no idea. I didn't really enjoy this album; it was very sleepy, but I didn't quite dislike it either, so I guess it scrapes a 3.

Highlight: 'Teach Your Children' (me: hm, where do I know this from? wiki: "In 1985, the song was used with modified lyrics in a TV commercial promoting schools' use of the Apple II family of personal computers" me: aha, so it was)

The Doors again, eh? I know they're super famous, but it's not for me. The album cover reminds me of a poison control sticker, which is apt.

'The Changeling' made me think they're like the musical equivalent of the show "Supernatural". 15 seasons of these brunette guys who look the same and do the same stuff every time? Really? I guess so.

At least 'Love Her Madly' has an adverb in it.

I know the song 'L.A. Woman' because of Billy Idol (who cut the length in half, thank goodness), but I don't really like either version, even though I like songs about places generally. Supposedly this was ranked the best song about LA. Wrong. Here are 5 that are better: 'Ænema' by Tool, 'California' by Rufus Wainwright, 'California Love' by 2Pac featuring Dr. Dre, 'Come Monday' by Jimmy Buffett, 'Drinking in L.A.' by Bran Van 3000. I do like that they sing "Mr. Mojo Risin'" because it's an anagram of "Jim Morrison". The Doors > JKR (but we're low in the rankings as it is).

I assumed "L'America" meant "Lil America" because that's how I use L', but I turns out it's actually... Latin America. That's way worse.

Overall, this album isn't bad, but I don't like it, so I'm going to give it a 2. Sorry for them that it didn't come 100 albums ago when I was still doing grade inflation!

French tops Portuguese in our non-English count once again! What a thrilling competition.

Désolée, I've never heard of this man. However, he'd fit right in to the ancient Eurovisions I'm watching! The sound quality is not great -- what is this, a live album recorded in a can???! -- but it makes me a little emotional anyway (because I love Eurovision! And 'Amsterdam' sounds like Greensleeves, which is a very sad song. OK, turns out it's literally Greensleeves. Well, good.) 'Les Vieux' is surely copying 'Grandfather's Clock' (the saddest Children's Favorites song of all time). Also as a proud Delawarean I appreciate that 'Le Plat Pays' is about liking your stupid, flat country.

Highlights: 'Amsterdam', the triple rhyme time line "l'ombre sombre de leur ombre", when he said "À mon de[rnier repas]" I thought he said "Amande" 🥺

Should I know who this is? His wiki is pretty long-- oh, he was in STEELY DAN. The Wilco of the 80s. More dentist office music. Maybe a little too peppy for a surgery, though. Better than Steely Dan, and I don't think I would have connected them on my own, but I still don't love it.

The "International Geophysical Year" concept is pleasant to learn about, so kudos to this album for introducing me to that.

I appreciate that this is an 8 track album. I bet people nowadays think that's what an "8-track" was (not me though! I looked it up long ago!).

This is more of an I-didn't-dislike-it 3. A snoozer but not quite a loser.

Highlight: 'The Goodbye Look' (if it were in Japanese, maybe it could be in a Persona soundtrack. Man, I'm really invested in video game music apparently!)

I have a fondness for Run DMC just because I watched a lot of vh1 countdowns and I-Love-The shows, and inevitably they all talked about how Run DMC started hip hop. (Seems a bit of an oversimplification, in retrospect, but hey, I wasn't there.) My vh1 recollection is basically like: "OK, so music was invented by Michael Jackson, Queen, Run DMC, and Madonna. The end." Oh, we had another Run DMC album 150 albums ago and I said the same thing. Time is a flat circle.

Anyway, this is good. The rhythm/stress pattern is so consistent that it's kind of like the album is all one big song ("my name's aMANda and i'm HERE to SAY, i'm likin' this ALbum in a MAjor way"). No slurs! I arbitrarily decided that 4 is for albums I'd listen to in my spare time, which is apparently a pretty high bar, but among 3s, this is one of the 3s-I-like and not one of the 3s-I-don't-dislike. It's tricky to sort a disc, to sort a disc that's just like this, it's tricky :(

Highlight: 'Sucker M.C.'s (Krush-Groove 1)' (it unlocked a core memory for me of the rhythm game(?) in Sega's Toejam and Earl 2, which I was terrible at but liked a lot), 'Wake Up' (nice dream. presumably "we weren't afraid to show our faces / it was cool to chill in foreign places" was meant about race, but now it applies even more broadly 😔)

Lowlight: 'Jay's Game' (the only break in the long song -- I also hate these short repeated loops (IDK if there's a DJ name for this thing); I think it's one reason I dislike Missy Elliott['s songs] actually)

This album looks like a textbook. Portuguese takes the lead over French yet again! This is great for those chasing a chill, mellow, familiar sound (i.e. me, most of the time). No one but Astrud Gilberto can get away with rhyming "sea" and "him". Nice but not very exciting, and since I don't know Portuguese I can't reeeally get into it.

This album cover made me gasp (and lol). It reminds me that Kyle Mooney recently released an album ("The Real Me"). Nice font though. Also, I do genuinely like 'Moondance' the song. Also, Wiki says Van Morrison's wife was named Janet Planet. Amazing. Perhaps the inspiration for "The Wedding Singer"'s Julia Gulia?

I'm not sure what my preconception of Van Morrison was (old? like Tom Petty but more old?) but even though this is kind of country-adjacent (as well as old), I kinda like it. Mellow, lyrical, some background horns (I'm calling saxes horns now, sue me). After the first few songs, it began to feel a little too dentist-office for me, though. (Apparently 'Into the Mystic' is one of the best songs to do surgery to, which is cool, but I don't want to imagine being surgeried during my music listening time).

Highlights: 'Moondance' (nice lil compound, implies the existence of Sundance... wait a second!), 'Glad Tidings'

Jah Wobble, now there's a British name. A very unaesthetic album cover. I never heard of him or his band(s), but he is indeed British, and has collaborated with a lot of heard-of people, including Sinéad O'Connor on the first track here. It's fine. Wiki calls it "world music", which is an interesting little phrase. Mostly it's chill electro with a little bit of chanting and Spanish guitar. And finally a song in Spanish! Sung by... an Egyptian-Belgian lady? Hmm. OK, you have my attention, Jah Wobble. But then, there's also some talk-singing over non-Spanish guitar. It's a pretty eclectic album, I'll give em that. But I think I'd prefer to just have an album of Natacha Atlas tracks (the aforementioned singer, who also sings in French on a different song). It's better than average, or at least more interesting, but I don't think it's quite 4 territory.

Highlights: 'Bomba', 'Wonderful World'

Sure, this inclusion makes sense. I had exactly 0 Van Halen thoughts and feelings going in, and I have exactly 0 going out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Highlight: 'You Really Got Me' (probably just because I know it)

A lot going on here. A political Human League (like actually, it's two of the same guys). I do generally like the music and lyrics, but it's a little bit maximalist for my preference. Hey la hoooo. Rounding up because they got their name from A Clockwork Orange, and because the final line "for a very long time" repeated indefinitely on the original vinyl album (and I love a gimmick).

Highlight: 'Soul Warfare'

Ha, this album takes me back to the early 2000s. I actually didn't know they were French, so it's good the album cover filled me in. The album starts extremely mellow, so I see where the "lounge" & "chill-out" genres come in. Luckily there are some bleeps and bloops and rocket launching vwooshes to grab my interest ("space pop"). Also, the album is called Moon Safari. I am having an aha moment that space pop is 50% in the naming of things. Next you'll be telling me La Femme d'argent is a pseudonym for the moon! (I found no evidence of this, but I did check just to make sure.) Their big hit 'Sexy Boy' always reminded me of the Sneaker Pimps (surely "trip-hop"), but a bit less good. However I also never clocked that it had French in it, so I may not have been the most discerning 13 year old. I like it more now that I know about all these genres! The underlying beat is not original, but is one I always like. Also, I think French has probably overtaken Portuguese in the non-English-language album count, non? Someone should make a 'Kelly Watch the Stars'/'Andy You're a Star' mashup. Set phasers to Daft Punk. Etc.

Highlight: 'Ce matin-là'

Lowlight: 'All I Need' (just makes me wish I were listening to Radiohead's instead)

This album cover has a certain appeal. Not only does it tell it like it is, but the text looks like MS Word WordArt circa 1998. Extremely ahead of its time!

Surprisingly, I do know the title song, which according to Wiki is "named after a cat known as Green Onions, whose way of walking inspired the riff". I like that. Probably a chonky cat. :3

OK, I guess these are all instrumentals! I like that too. Although I find it hard to imagine an instrumental finding commercial success these days. I wonder what the most recent one is. (Answer: Google says 'Harlem Shake' in 2013, but that is not what I'd call an instrumental. Anyway, lots of other people asked this question and had the same reaction as me, so that's nice.)

Overall, this was fine. Very middle of the road, but unique as an album.

More Beck!? First, throw this album cover right in the trash. How dare they cover the doodly monstrosity with a fake sticker. Second, here's the return of the Beck I know and mildly dislike. Peak hipster.

Highlights: 'Girl' (I thought the lyric "my sun-eyed girl" was "My son, a girl", oops), 'Missing' (mainly because it sounds exactly like 'Cold Feet' by Lost Lander)

Lowlights: 'Qué Onda Guero' (Even though I too existed whitely on Pico and Vermont), 'Farewell Ride'

Not too surprised to get this one today since Ozzy died yesterday*, but I am a little surprised since it means that there are 3 (or more) Black Sabbath albums on here! The first one had a lot of hits, the second one was about wizards, so I wonder what's the vibe on No.3 (aka Vol. 4)? Good album cover, anyway. Nice font decisions; fight on, Halloween Ozzy!

Well, I find the vibe kind of boring. Not actively unpleasant to listen to like your Led Zeppelins, but still a lot of Guitar Time. The very sleepy 'Changes' rhymes "way" with "way", one of my greatest music pet peeves. I also vaguely remember this song from Kelly Osbourne's album, lol. (A father-daughter duet is cute though; you don't get a lot of those, other than in rap when the daughter is like, 3.) This is probably a 2.5 for me, but since I'm mentally in knots about not wanting to be biased, I'll round down.

*Here's my favorite of the Ozzy stories going around social media:
❝I thought America was fabulous. Take pizza for example. For years I’d been thinking, I wish someone would invent a new kind of food. In England it was always egg and chips, sausage and chips, pie and chips … anything and chips. After a while it just got boring, y’know? But you couldn’t exactly order a shaved Parmesan and rocket salad in Birmingham in the early ’70s. If it didn’t come out of a deep-fat fryer, no one knew what the fuck it was. But then, in New York, I discovered pizza. It blew my mind wide fucking open. I would buy ten or twenty slices a day. And then, when I realized you could buy a great big pizza all for yourself, I started ordering them wherever we went. I couldn’t wait to get back home and tell all my mates: ‘There’s this incredible new thing. It’s American and it’s called pizza. It’s like bread, but it’s better than any bread you’ve tasted in your life.’ I even tried to recreate a New York pizza for Thelma once. I made some dough, then I got all these cans of beans and pilchards and olives and shit and put them on top—it must have been about 15 quid’s worth of gear—but after ten minutes it just came dribbling out of the oven. It was like someone had been sick in there. Thelma just looked at it and went, ‘I don’t think I like pizza, John.’ She never called me Ozzy, my first wife.❞
—Ozzy Osbourne, from ‘I Am Ozzy’ (Grand Central Publishing, 2010)

Oh nooo. I'll give them this: the album cover is fun and visually appealing. The album name, on the other hand, is vaguely threatening (if it's anything like Now That's What I Call Music III...). I never would have been able to ID it, but I know 'Immigrant Song' well from introducing a slow-mo action scene in like 5000 movies. As with many classic rock bands, they sound to me like a more boring version of Rush (slower, more guitar breaks). Not my vibe.

Relative highlight: 'Out on the Tiles'

This could be an 80s album cover! Kind of a boring album, though. I don't remember what I thought about the last Wholbum, even though we just had it, so maybe that's just their thing. It was, overall, fine.

Highlights: 'La-La-La-Lies', 'Much Too Much', the fact that the dozens of takeoffs of 'The Kids Are Alright' all disagree with the central premise

Ah, I remember my 8th grade art class being obsessed with this album, whilst I was sooo annoyed about it. Just one of those sets of singles I disliked from the moment I heard them, and the extreme repetition fossilized my annoyance (see also: Macklemore, Ylvis). I also consider OutKast to be in a natural class with the Black-Eyed Peas, who I disliked for more legitimate reasons. As far as I know, OutKast didn't do anything offensive, I'm just not into the vibe. But there's like 500 songs here, so maybe I'll like one of them!

Pros: Speakerboxxx is a grade A name, and they say it a lot. Even Ludacris says it! (I think there's also two "the love below" mentions.) 'Bowtie' has good energy/horns. Actually, Speakerboxxx has good energy throughout. The lyrics aren't really my vibe for the most part, but are technically competent, I guess. 'Happy Valentine's Day' is about the 14th and I like that. The track with R.Kelly on it is not good at all.

Cons: I did not particularly like any of the songs. There were 87 slurs (which is only moderate on the slur count considering how long this album is, but it's not 0!). 'Bust' (too loud). The Love Below is less energetic than Speakerboxxx and less good. It also contains 'Hey Ya' and 'Roses', about which I did not change my 8th grade opinion. Although I will admit the line "she's got a hottie's body / but her attitude is potty" is solid. Andre 3000 and Jeff Probst have the same taste for funny British-ish accents. Norah Jones.

I would probably give Speakerboxxx a 3, The Love Below a 2, but since I had to listen to both, we'll round down.

Ha, I just said I wouldn't hold my breath for other non-English stuff, and here comes this. Another confusing album, since 'Devotional Songs' was a real release, but this is a reissue(?) called 'Love & Devotion' with probably(?) the same content? Hmph. At least it's something different. I never listened to qawwali before, and let's be real, I probably won't in the future. It's too opaque for me -- I don't know any Urdu, if I've even correctly ID'd the language here*, and the sound is pleasant, but I end up mentally relegating it to the background just because I don't know what the lyrics mean, and they seem like the main draw for this genre! I think I liked what I'm assuming is the Love half (first 6) more than the Devotion half (second 6).

*OK, it's both Urdu & Punjabi (and a tiny bit of Persian), and also: Jeff Buckley was a big Nusrat fan and even covered 'Yeh Jo Halka Saroor Hae'! That's more fun than 500 Hallelujah covers.

Highlight: 'Un Ke Dar Pen Pohchne to Payen' (seemed more energetic than the rest), 'Allah Hoo Allah Hoo' (mainly because of the transparent vibe)

O happy day! I like both Nicks, but Cave > Drake, and this is probably his best-known album (at least by me). The cover brings me intense nostalgia, and I support the font decisions. Nick Cave is part of a Wainwright - Cohen natural class and I am glad to see him represented here.

Highlights: 'Into My Arms' (Not overplayed imo -- properly played), 'People Ain't No Good', 'There is a Kingdom' (feeling somewhat "Girl who has only heard 'Within You Without You'" about this)

Almost highlight: '(Are You) The One That I've Been Waiting For' (I want to like this song, but it is too distractingly Hootie-and-the-Blowfishy)

Lowlights: 'Black Hair' (not much going on here; it's giving poetry reading), 'Green Eyes' (far too much going on here; put 'em together, it's the harry potter special (which I disavow))

Last Ray Charles we had, I was surprised he was around in the 60s. Now I learn he was around in the 50s! While reading about this album I learned a bit about the world of best-selling sheet music, as in the first half of the 20th century, successful sheet music(s?) sold millions(!!) of copies. I guess pre-radio people would, like, play hit songs on their own instruments?? That's some Jane Austen stuff. Anyway, Ray Charles didn't write these songs; most of them were decades old and have some very popular sheet music. Seems to have been a genius move on his part. I didn't particularly love the album, but I do like this style of music (aka "old") and I wish there were more 50s (or older??) albums on here!

Highlights: 'It Had to Be You' (used in not 1, not 2, but 3!! Looney Tuneses), 'Am I Blue' (perhaps only in a single Looney Tune)

Related queries: Where did the "deep (as a) river, high (as a) mountain" dual originate? Not 'River Deep – Mountain High', clearly, since it's in the much older 'Come Rain or Come Shine' here. Is that just a coincidence? Surely there are other natural features with measurements that could be paired together and aren't ("canyon so wide; valley so low", anyone?). There's an African-American spiritual called 'Deep River', but it makes no mention of mountains. There's a Bible verse that includes "go up on a high mountain", but no mention of rivers. Is the answer obvious? Or is there nothing to answer? Maybe future albums will shed some light.