Reviews by amanda

This album cover looks like every CD my parents own (even though I don't think they own this album). But I'm glad there are album covers, because at this point in the journey I'm losing track of what we've already listened to, and I would have guessed we already had this one. Are there multiple Dire Straits albums? (If so,,,, talk about dire straits.)

Nah, it's not that bad. Like a peppy Michael Bolton. There sure are a lot of songs called 'So Far Away'. I wonder what the most common song title is? Probably just covers of 'Hallelujah'. (A quick search reveals it's actually 'Intro'.)

I didn't know Sting was the "I Want My MTV" guy! Actually, I always thought this song was a famous mashup (idk where I got that idea -- Weird Al maybe?) but it turns out it's just a weird 8 minute song. With slurs in it >:( But also a good delivery on "microwave ovens". So even if it's not a mashup, it contains multitudes.

Wow, I know 'Walk of Life'! Actually, I think I just know the intro. It must be in a lot of media. It's fine. I like that the woo-hoo-hoos sound like Ducktales.

I like the random sax in 'Your Latest Trick'.

'Brothers in Arms' is a weird tone shift. Almost Poguesy.

Weird album altogether. Long songs with some catchy bits, but also some annoying bits. Add it to the 3 pile!

This is very 90s! I always liked 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' (I mean, the entire Cruel Intentions soundtrack is perfect) but not enough to look into what else The Verve were cooking. Turns out they were cooking a banquet of orchestration! I really like pop with strings, and Ashcroft has just enough of that cello-y vocal timbre to interest me. But this album is long, and started to lose its luster as it went on. I was waffling between a 3 and 4 by the end, but revisiting the first few tracks convinced me it's a 4.

Highlights: 'Bitter Sweet Symphony', 'Sonnet', 'The Drugs Don't Work', 'Velvet Morning'

Lowlights: 'The Rolling People' (it's fine, just a little generic/loud/stringless), 'Catching the Butterfly' (yes, it does sound like the Beatleses 'Within You Without You' ! except longer and with less compelling lyrics), 'Neon Wilderness'

Very wild album cover font decisions. I think this is our first album from The Who, who I know very little about consciously, but somewhat more subconsciously. (Not quite enough to distinguish between Roger Waters and Roger Daltrey and possibly Roger Dalton, a Timothy Dalton-Roger Moore hybrid I invented, though.)

I first heard 'Baba O'Riley' from Jordis Unga on the great show "Rockstar INXS". (Actually, that's probably where I first heard of like 30% of the classic rock songs on this list.) The original does a decent job at living up to the cover. I like the jolly little ostinato and the fact that people mess up the song's title regularly.

Hard to take any song called 'My Wife' seriously post-Borat. I like the random horn part, but this song (and others) are a little too country-sounding for my preference.

I like 'The Song is Over' mainly because it sounds like a Disney movie soundtrack song. Like 'Down to Earth' from Wall-E or something from Tarzan. Genesis Does Disney.

I like 'Getting in Tune' because it's very repetitive, with interesting Americanized vowels.

I like 'Going Mobile' because of the synths and the "beep beep", although I don't agree with the song's message. "Watch the police and taxman miss me" is kind of a modern phrasing, though!

I first heard 'Behind Blue Eyes' from Limp Bizkit (and listen, I bet a lot of people my age did), and I did not like it at all. Apparently that was a bad cover, and I do like this original better, but it's a little too slow for me still.

I first heard of 'Won't Get Fooled Again' thanks to that classic GWB quote, "There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again." The song lives up to the quote. Pretty good; far too long.

Even though I wrote a novel here, this was like a 3.5 for me. I bet it's got a high average review, but other than Baba O, I probably wouldn't listen to any of these tracks on my own time. So another 3 for the pile.

A 90s indie band I've never heard of? Intriguing. It is delightfully indie, too. Perhaps they were some of the first to do it. Would have fit right in as one of the bands on Buffy. Like Neutral Milk Hotel, but about dating instead of Anne Frank -- right down to the "we recorded this on an old cassette" vibe. Unfortunately, and I mean this genuinely, the vocals aren't weird or whiny enough for me to find them interesting! Kind of Shins-y. In fact, my favorite part of this album is the guitar(?!?), which is somehow plaintive in that indie-rock-way. The beginning of 'Sacred Attention' even sounds just like Placebo's 'Special K' (if only the middle and end did too).

Lowlights: 'Elixir is Zog', 'No Way Out' (don't yell at me)

Ah, another blue album! People call this the best jazz record of all time, which makes me think I really don't get jazz. Not that I dislike it -- I don't -- but I can't really differentiate it from the other jazz albums we had, which were also "fine". Chill. I think I'd like it better without the drums. And maybe... the jazz.

Wow, 2 Coldplay albums? OK, list. I do think this is better than their other album on here, though, or at least more Radioheady. Coldplay are just disappointing to me because I feel like they could be really great, all the pieces are there, but most of the songs fall flat for me (emotionally, musically, lyrically). Clearly other people like them, but I'm not here to grade on popularity or potential!

This album used to be *everywhere*, to the point where I thought we had it here already. I dunno why exactly I dislike(d) it so much; it's nothing personal, really just not my style. Having tracks with Mary J Blige and D'Angelo makes perfect sense because I feel the same way about them! Too slow, and the vocals don't compel me either. Like opera in a way. The lyrics and subject matter are mostly fine. I do like the cute little hidden skits, they're very wholesome.

So many Beatleses! I appreciate this cover primarily because all four of them are distinct looking for once, even with the funny mustaches. (The colorful ones, that is; no clue what's going on to the left there.) In general it's never a chore to listen to a Beatles's, although that's probably due to a combo of (a) short track length and (b) already knowing most of the songs, in addition to (c) being "good". For my personal ranking, I'd probably put this in the bottom half of Beatleses, even though that's not the received wisdom. A little too artsy for my taste.

Highlights: 'With a Little Help from my Friends', the line "if I'm wrong, I'm right / where I belong" (very poetic), 'Within You Without You' (long but good for my meditation era)

I imagine these guys on the cover are reacting to me saying "I hate old albums". "Oh you do, do you? Ha ha! How about this!" Touché, band I never heard of. This was actually more fun than I expected; the Dave Mason tracks reminded me of my beloved Disney's Children's Favorites* tape with Larry Groce. The Steve Winwood tracks reminded me of the old albums I hate. So it goes. But it's a good instantiation of the genre. Fun instrumentation.

*Shockingly I had this thought even before the songs 'Roamin' Thru' the Gloamin' with 40,000 Headmen' (which naturally evokes Dr. Seuss's "Yeoman of the Bowmen") and 'Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush' (self-explanatory)

HELLO FROM THE OTHER SIDE (of a bunch of half-century-old albums)! Although this extremely recent album is, er, 10 years old now. Hm.

I do like all songs called 'Hello', and Adele's is no exception. 'Send My Love (To Your New Lover)' is also good. 'When We Were Young' is decent. 'Water Under the Bridge' is decent. She picked the right singles. But they're all a little bit the same vibe. Maybe Adele's not for me. She's fine. A good singer, obviously. I wish that one song were called "Riverly" instead of River Lea (which is giving Family Stone!!!). I don't hate any of these songs, but I don't think I would listen to this again. So much for modernity.

This must be the first 2-track album I've heard. After all the yelly albums earlier this week, 'Shh/Peaceful' & 'In a Silent Way' certainly seem promising titles. And this is comparatively peaceful, nice little snares/toots & strings, although 'Shh/Peaceful' is actually less peaceful than 'In a Silent Way', which I like better. Pleasant, but non-orchestral instrumentals are a tough sell for me.

Tough week, man. At least this is *90s* screamy guitar stuff, so there's like, one iota of nostalgia since I've heard its ilk before. But mostly I hate it. Seeing Jonathan Davis from KoRn featured made me wish I were listening to KoRn instead, which is something I'm pretty sure I never wished before. This vs yesterday's Venom is a real tough call, but I think this might be even worse (to listen to, I mean, I'm not rating objective merit or anything). 'Ratamahatta' started out like it might be good for 20 seconds, and it's in Portuguese, so that's probably the highlight, but yikes. Oh, and the last track is 13 minutes of sparse vibra-noises, so that one is relatively fine. Still, I'm dropping my first 1 here, since if not now, when? So much screaming! Stop yelling at me!! >:(

And I thought Black Sabbath had a lot of Satan talk! In this one, Satan gets they/them pronouns. Baphomet also receives several shoutouts. That's not why I'm giving it a 2, mind you; the lyrics are interesting enough. I just sure don't like this heavy guitar and this growly style of singing. Or the random foray into Literotica.com territory, even if it made me lol.

Highlight:
`[Countess Bathory]'s riff also bears resemblance to the intro of the 1991 Nirvana hit song "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Years later, Lant had the opportunity to ask Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl, whom he collaborated with on Grohl's heavy metal side project Probot, if they had taken inspiration from the band's 1982 song. Grohl did not give Lant a response.' (from Wiki)

Someone save me from these old albums!!! This is nice and short, and has some big hits on it. But I don't like it. Even though 'Commotion' was in an episode of Parenthood. Fun fact: I used to use "there's a bad moon on the rise" being misheard as "there's a bathroom on the right" in my classes but I had to retire it because my students now have never heard of the song.

"Family Stone" is a weird compound word order, right? It's giving Sloop John. It's giving court martial. You get the picture. Anyway, this album isn't my genre of choice, but I do know it is a classic (at least according to the metric of "I listened to the best 500 songs as decided by Rolling Stone in high school and a few of these were definitely on there"). It is wild to see the n-word just in a title, uncensoredly (by the by, supposedly the euphemism "n-word" didn't come about until 1995!!! and now we've got r, b, c, f, gay f, simply all kinds of -words.) I like that there are multiple vocal-and-instrumentalists. I feel like 'Everyday People' would be a song I liked if only it weren't in a commercial I saw 50x/day at a critical period. Still, "I am no better and neither are you" is a linguistically interesting line. For that matter, so is "and they know what you're sayin' makes sense at all"! Did they not have negative polarity items in the 1960s?

Non-NPI highlight: the line "games are to be played with toys, et cetera".

Who knew Otis Redding looked like that?

This album is mostly covers, which is good for me because it means I actually know the songs. Well, covers and songs that will later be covered, like 'Respect'. (By the by, there seems to be a lot of misinformation about where "cover" in the music sense came from; it came from "coverage", as in market coverage!)

Double by the by, what's the deal with naming albums by colors? There's the Beatles' White album, which I always assumed inspired things like Weezer's Green album, Metallica's Black album, etc. But this album is older than the White Album! Of course I don't know if anyone called it Otis's Blue album, but surely it could have played some role in this tradition? It's a hard thing to research because colored vinyl records were also a thing, which may or not have had some influence (c.f. Bobby Vinton's 1963 "Blue on Blue", which was on blue vinyl).

Highlights: 'My Girl', 'Wonderful World' (I also don't know what a good slide rule is for), 'Satisfaction' (only because it reminds me of Britney Spears, ha)

We had another Black Sabbath just last week! This one has the wiki genre "traditional doom metal", though, which sounds pretty cool. Lotta Satan and/or Gandalf talk, which I guess is (mount) doom-themed content. Unlike on "Paranoid", I don't think I've heard any of these songs before, even though one of the riffs is supposedly famous. But I don't know if there's any riff I'd recognise, to be fair. (By the by, for those wondering (future!me?), the etymology of "riff" is a mystery.)

Never heard of this guy, but he is apparently an R&B nepo baby (not that there's anything wrong with that). Props to him for playing so many instruments. A perfectly serviceable album, but not very interesting to me. A bit sleepy at points. The Wilco of the 70s. The second half instrumentals felt very hold-music-esque (though perhaps the title 'Not Available' influenced that perception).

The Smiths are so funny. No one will ever confuse Morrissey for anyone else, which, again, is in my mind a desirable quality in a singer. Fall Out Boy and Panic At The Disco surely owe a debt to The Smiths's silly, long, emo song titles. I was starting to question if I even liked music at all until I listened to this album. (Still do, whew). I think this is better than "Meat is Murder", and so now that I broke the 5 seal, I'm going for it! 5 stars!!

Highlights: 'I Started Something I Couldn't Finish', 'Death of a Disco Dancer' ("Love, peace and harmony?/ Oh, very nice, very nice, very nice, very nice / But maybe in the next world"), 'Girlfriend in a Coma' (I always like the incongruity of a jaunty island melody with unhappy lyrics. Almost sounds like 'Here Comes the Sun'), 'Paint a Vulgar Picture'

Lowlight: 'Death at One's Elbow'

I figured the Rolling Stones would be on here eventually. Alas. The best part about the Rolling Stones is 'Ruby Tuesday'. The worst part is everything else. Lots of (blues?) guitar, second only to the Beatles in popularity, some concerning lyrics. This is their ninth album, which doesn't bode well for how many albums might be left of theirs.

Lowlight: 'Dead Flowers'