Rated 4/10
There’s no need to be witty or philosophical. This album is just not very good. That opening track, though … that one’s got potential. Mark my words … watch the charts for that one.
And that cover photo … it’s nice to see that singing wasn’t the only art form at which Yoko was terrible.
Rated 6/10
Nothing says Monday morning quite like the Leonard Cohen death album - thanks randomizer! Listen, Lenny can write a brutally beautiful song but he can’t sing one anymore. Perhaps there’s an intended poignancy in Cohen’s inability to harmonize his lyrics, and he has earned the right to do this however he chooses, but his lack of tunefulness, along with the underdone orchestrations, only add to the barrenness of the album. Normally, I would trumpet this choice as genius metaphor in structural craftsmanship, but here, it feels like last rites more than artistic choice. Like Neil said, “It’s better to burn out than it is to rust.”
Rated 6/10
De La Soul is Dead. If you know, you know. p-p-put it on vibrate! RIP Trugoy.
Rated 4/10
I should like this because I like most things Kate Bush adjacent - Tori Amos, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Patti Smyth, Christie Hynde, but I don’t like it. There is nothing about this that makes me want to come back to it. It’s not brilliant or beautiful… it’s weird and indulgent. It’s off and it’s off-putting. Incredibly overrated.
Rated 10/10
A few years back, I had a diversity training at work which started by playing us ‘Brown Sugar’, and we all rocked out. Then they put the lyrics on the projector. Ooops…
Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields
Sold in a market down in New Orleans
Scarred old slaver knows he's doing alright
Hear him whip the women just around midnight
Brown sugar, how come you taste so good? Uh huh
Brown sugar, just like a young girl should uh huh
Drums beating, cold English blood runs hot
Lady of the house wonderin' when it's gonna stop
House boy knows that he's doing alright
You shoulda heard ‘em just around midnight
Brown sugar, how come you taste so good, now?
Brown sugar, just like a young girl should, now (yeah)
Ah, get on, brown sugar, how come you taste so good, baby?
Ah, got me craving’ the, the brown sugar just like a black girl should, yeah
I bet your mama was a tent show queen
And all her boyfriends were sweet sixteen
I'm no schoolboy, but I know what I like
You shoulda heard me just around midnight
Brown sugar, how come you taste so good, baby?
Ah, come down, brown sugar, just like a young girl should, yeah
I said yeah, yeah, yeah, woo
How come you... how come you taste so good?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, woo
Just like a, just like a black girl should
Yeah, yeah, yeah, woo
Not exactly Dylan… The rest is fine as classic rock goes. I wish they would stick to rock and leave the blues to those better suited to handle that genre, though. It’s not their strong suit at all. The Stones were always a bit too schticky and image conscious for my tastes, but it is what it is, and they certainly rock in places. I just can’t drink the ‘greatest rock and roll band in the world’ kool aid if this is their best offering.
The original gangster rap album.
Western side!
Jake Blues: So, what kind of music do you guys normally have here?
Bartender: Oh, we have both kinds - Country and Western.
Listening to this reworking of country standards into the big band and soul genres is really not the point of this one. This album had a tangible influence on making country music more mainstream and making black music more palatable to white audiences in the early 1960s. It was an important album in those respects and should be celebrated as such.
But musically, it’s very dated and feels repetitive, partly because of the material and partly because of the sheer number of songs and the similarity of the orchestration on them. Much respect to this album, just not going to be listening again.
Rated 4/10
This is the first album catagorized as post-punk on this list that actually fits the bill. It’s a weird combination of the emergent 80s pop lyricism with 70s punk rock style, and it reminds me of bands like Berlin or The Fixx if they trended harder. That said, I don’t care for it all that much. It is missing the energy and point of view that makes good punk good and I’m perfectly fine without reliving 1980 lyrically ever again (except Brass in Pocket, which slaps).
Rated 6/10
You know that guy at the bar who’s had a few too many and he thinks everything he says is way more charming than it really is? Nick Drake is that guy in musical form. He doesn’t sing so much as suggestively whisper his lyrics into your ears, mumbling and slurring in his ‘sexy’ voice. It’s kind of fun at first but it gets annoying real quick.
When Drake creates simple songs with an unadorned arrangements, something he will do on subsequent albums, the drunken whisper delivery works. Songs like Northern Sky from the next album and a couple from Pink Moon come to mind, but nothing on this album works like that at all. This album is too busy with all those instrumentations. It all feels sloppy and overdone.
Rated 6/10
Like a certificate of perfect attendance or a trophy for winning a pickleball tournament, this album signifies that a great deal of work, commitment and time was invested in achieving a goal, but was it really worth it? This is such a niche, specific sound that I don’t know what to do with this album other than throw the shittiest rave imaginable.
Rated 8/10
I love this album … one of my all time favorites. It is peak acoustic Neil on some legendary songs … Heart of Gold, Old Man, Harvest, Alabama, Needle and the Danage Done. But, it’s not perfect. I can’t get it to 5 when Are You Ready for the Country and A Man Needs a Maid on the track list. It’s as solid as a 4.5 gets on this list and I want it to be a 5, but it’s not. It’s in my personal top 10 albums of all time but, alas, that doesn’t make it immaculate. A live Neil Young album is always better lthan a studio session anyway.
Rated 6/10
ZZ Top was a fine 70s rock band that was remade into pop-rock stars in the early 80s. Turning away from their guitar driven, gritty rock hits like Tush, La Grange and Cheap Sunglasses, this album started the remolding of their image into a more upbeat, pop friendly music group with a playful attitude. MTV packaged that with great music videos, full of those spinning furry guitars, the sunglasses and long beards and those cool old cars. The band became very visual and image conscious but it made them very commercially successful. They followed this formula to longtime success but left their ‘real’ rock roots behind. I liked the hits this produced when I was younger, but looking back now, I wish they had stuck with their early stuff more strongly instead of selling out.
Rated 2/10
My favorite song was the one where he screamed about death and hell over the loud guitars. Yeah, that one was really original.
Rated 4/10
Björk: I will write the most obscure, unlistenable songs and screech my way through them, singing off-key just enough to fool people into thinking it’s some sort of artistic choice and no one will be able to doubt I am the quirkiest, most annoying singer at work today.
Joanna Newsom: Hold my kombucha.
The Nickelback of British folk rock.
Rated 8/10
I really enjoyed this album. The low key beats and chill rhymes drew me in and I immediately went back for a second listen. Much better than most of the upbeat, over-the-top trip hop I’ve been exposed to, which always felt too dance-driven. It’s good to know that it came from a place that was more clean and soulful than where it ended up … even if it does come from grown men named Daddy G, Tricky and Mushroom.
Rated 6/10
If Coldplay’s Chris Martin kidnapped Bono and then became the frontman for U2, this is the kind of hyper-pop, not quite rock you might get. Doves sound like a less melodic Coldplay or U2 without grit, nether of which is a good thing. There are worse things on this list but this doesn’t stand out in any way.
Rated 2/10
It is a rare album that makes you challenge your deepest beliefs about the meaning of life. This is such an album. After Skylarking, I now believe that reincarnation is real and that I have done some sort of horrendous, unspeakable acts in a previous life for which I must now atone. That is the only explanation for the punishment I endured by listening to this torturous collection of musical masturbation disguised as songs. They are so far up their own asses with this music, I have no idea how anyone let this be released. There remain no redeeming moments in this endeavor. It is a boring, pointless collage of off-key singing and other assorted unpleasantness. What a bunch of asshats!
Rated 8/10
Smooth guitar licks fronting these classic rock tunes, memorably accompanied by the Latin rhythms of the congas and timbales. While the album veers too jazzy for my liking, the quality cannot be denied.
Rated 6/10
Every picture tells a story …
And most of those stories are really boring and end up sounding exactly the same.
