Rated 6/10
Meh.
Courtney Love produced this album trying to distance herself from Seattle after Kurt passed, putting an LA sheen on punk/grunge. It works, but then it doesn't. You lose the edge of grunge and get serviceable rock. It's good, but not great. This album is propelled more into culture by it's association with Kurt than being excellent music. This is definitely not essential, and I did not need to hear it before I died.
My Rating: 3/5
Rated 6/10
What a fun album!
Don't expect anything deep here. It's Irish pop-punk, just a little too poppy and sounding almost like Jello Biafra with that vibrato. Like.. We know you were trained to sing by your primary education. It's all good. The songs are fun and silly, just slice of life stuff. Love and longing. I feel bad for Terry, though.
Not essential, but fun. I'm glad it's on the list, but I definitely didn't NEED to hear it.
My Rating: 3/5
Rated 10/10
An electronica masterpiece.
Yeah, a lot of the songs have the same beat structure or song structure. Yeah, a lot of the songs can get a bit samey, because they're just laying different samples in there. But you know what? This album invites, no, DEMANDS, that you get up and dance. It completes the mission of electronica to make you want to get up and dance. And they do it in the most infectious, solid grooves. For that one thing, I applaud them all day long. The Chemical Brothers deliver big beat dance music with expertise and aplomb. No stress, no filler, all killer.
My Rating: 5/5
Rated 6/10
"Tragic", that's an understatement!
Beautiful harmony singing songs of murder, death, heartbreak and loss. And, if you're listening through Spotify, Jesus! We all need an extra dose of Jesus in our lives.
The music all sounds the same, basically. It's just two guys, one on a guitar, one on a mandolin, playing perfectly matched syncopation and harmony, but it ALL SOUNDS THE SAME. The rhythmic structure is all the same, each song feeling much like a Texas Two-Step. Not that you'd actually dance to any of it, because it's all so depressing.
Come on guys, sing about getting the girl.
My Rating: 3/5
Rated 8/10
Hearing Arise made me realize how close Sepultura sits to the sound I connected with in Tourniquet. Same tight riffing, same rhythmic punch, same “why use a short word when a long one will do” energy. If I’d found Sepultura first, I would’ve been all over this. It’s serious, grounded thrash with zero fluff. And the Lovecraftian beast on the cover? Absolutely perfect.
Rating: 4/5
It's a deliciously sludgy album. It gets a bit robotically repetitive towards the end of the album. I couldn't tell you a single thing any song is about, though. None of it resonated or stuck with me. It's good, and I'd listen to it again, but on the second listen through, nothing has it's hooks in me.
My Rating: 3/5
Rated 10/10
An industrial masterpiece.
Trent opens hard and fast, pummeling you with emotion and bass. The vocals swing between whispering and yelling, collapsing in on themselves. The music and samples form a barrage of melody and noise, not chaos, but intentional psychological overload. If you’re new to Nine Inch Nails, I’m sorry: this should not be your entry point. Go listen to Pretty Hate Machine and Broken first. This album assumes you already understand the vocabulary.
While the lyrics often sound sexual, they’re really about self‑deprecation, envy, and self‑destruction. Trent uses physical language as metaphor for emotional collapse, not seduction.
And yes — Johnny Cash’s cover of Hurt eclipses Trent’s original. Cash turns it into something mythic, something final. Trent wrote the wound; Cash performed the scar.
Without this record, we don’t get Marilyn Manson, at least not the version that mattered. And thankfully, Trent never lowered himself to using sexuality as a weapon or a marketing gimmick. His darkness is internal, not performative.
My Rating: 10/5
Rated 6/10
This album stops just short of being really good. It felt like they were doing everything they could to not bring attention to themselves, but still make something that a certain group of people would enjoy and say is good. No hooks, but almost. Nothing catchy enough for the radio, but almost. I can say it's good, almost. I didn't enjoy it, and if it hadn't been for the project I would never have heard of them or listened to them.
My rating: 3.5/5 but almost. You get a 3.
Rated 2/10
Again, Elvis Costello thinks he's smarter than the room. He can't simply say what he;s feeling, he's got to eat a thesaurus and puke it back up, using EVERY BLOODY word he sees. He's a prat, and the worst kind. He's the one that will tell you how smart he is, and then scoff when you don't get it.
He can't write a hook for shit. If you're gonna write a rock album, gimme something to groove to, a riff, a theme, something. ANYTHING! No, we can't have that, Elvis has to give us HOMEWORK. You gotta sit down like it's frickin English class and decipher all the allegory he's dropping, when all we really needed was something to bob our heads to and get into a groove with.
He's probably got a girlfriend that reads Plato for fun, and then titters when she makes a joke nobody gets.
I hate Elvis Costello, almost as much as I hate the Beatles.
My Rating: 1/5
Rated 8/10
Great, forward moving album. There are the big hits on here, "Scar Tissue", "Otherside", and "Californication". The rest of the album is pretty good, but even in 1999 I would have recoiled at the cheap joke of Chinese made in "Around The World". The rest of the album is a marked soulful deviation from the normal funk-hop we hear from RHCP. Maybe they should just stay funky and agressive and not pull the racist stuff.
My Rating: 4/5
Rated 4/10
It's pretty enough music, but that's all it is.
The lyrics. My god. I'm not going to repeat the line, but everyone has heard it. Ranks right up there with Milton. Maybe even Dante. NOT. Come on, I've heard better written, more heartfelt words in middle-school English poetry writing exercises.
Every song sounds the same. If you wanted background music for your average teenage girl drama watch marathon, here's your choice. No friction, no hooks, nothing to bite into. It's the audio equivalent of beige wallpaper. It's the perfect background music to "Will Chloe text him back?" Gimme a minor chord, a different tuning, a weird signature. Something!
My Rating: 2/5
Rated 8/10
Ok kids, let's realize that Randy Newman did more than "You've Got A Friend In Me". He's more than the "Toy Story" guy. Now that we've gotten that out of the way...
This is an interesting project, songs that we need to hear that we would never have heard otherwise. We're hearing and seeing the same problems with racism and intolerance and prejudice today, 52 years after this album was released. This man is dropping shock bombs on y'all, and sounding like Billy Joel in the process. The music is extremely well done, the lyrics provocative and thoughtful and satirical. Not my thing, but the artistry is undeniable.
My rating: 4/5
Rated 8/10
Ice T is an angry man who has lived through street culture, and he's gonna tell you how screwed up the world is. There's a lot of wisdom here, but it's hard to hear it past his anger. The beats are good. Thankfully, he avoids the standard gangsta rap trappings of talking about "bitches and hoes".
My rating: 4/5
Rated 10/10
I don't know what to say about this album. Front to back, I'm amazed. It's just a perfect metal album. You can see where Ozzy came from, through Black Sabbath and on his own. Even "Changes", the least metal track on the album, is amazing. If you're going to start your metal journey, this should be one of the first albums you listen to.
My Rating: 5/5
Rated 2/10
Nice try, poor execution.
I like Baroque. I kinda like pop. Cale could’ve fused the two into something with teeth or at least something interesting. Instead, he played it safe. This feels like running “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” through Mozart and then sanding it down until it’s radio-friendly. Yngwie Malmsteen does baroque metal, and it works. It's got bite and panache and verve and attitude. This has nothing going for it.
It’s cheap vanilla ice cream dressed up as gourmet: no surprises, no meat, no substance. Just airy chamber-pop that evaporates the moment you touch it. It’s culinary foam, and not even the good kind.
My Rating: 1/5
Rated 4/10
Pastoral and gentle, beautiful melodies, wonderful production. This album has about as many edges as a ball, though. It's wonderful music, but it's very safe and gentle. It's also very predictable, which makes it forgettable. The biggest surprise was the acapella ending to "Oliver James". And then they ended on it.
Good for a debut, I hope they do better.
My Rating: 2/5
Rated 8/10
Really good, not just all rap. I was surprised to hear the house tracks and the deep storytelling. The cyphers are a little weird to get around, especially isolated like this. Some tracks felt like homework assignments instead of songs, because in order to figure out what they're talking about I had to do a bunch of research. The grooves are solid.
My Rating: 4/5
Rated 2/10
Never have I been more underwhelmed by an album. The music is there, but it's not remarkable. The lyrics are forgettable. There are no hooks, and nothing that brings you back. I've been less enthused with an album, but I've never wondered more why such a boring an album was considered essential for the WORLD TO HEAR.
My Rating: 1/5
Rated 6/10
This is a project I respect more than I enjoy. Wilco’s contributions feel like genuine Americana, but Billy Bragg’s attempts at country land as genre cosplay: all hat, no cattle. The accent, phrasing, and emotional tone never quite fit the Guthrie framework. “Walt Whitman’s Niece” is the weakest moment, a self‑aware bit rather than a performance. After a few listens, I appreciated the intent, but the album never fully gels.
My Rating: 3/5
Rated 4/10
This is adequate 80s revival that didn't need to be done.
If you're gonna borrow Prince's schtick and do 80's tunes, you better be at least as good as good 80's bands. There's are no hooks here, nothing sticks. It goes in one ear and out the other.
If you're gonna borrow k.d. Lang's schtick and do genderbent, be good. This doesn't make me think she's performing as a man. This feels like cosplay layered over average synth-pop.
This is not good, no matter what the critics think.
My rating: 2/5
