Reviews by gingerninja155

People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm by A Tribe Called Quest is such a refreshing Hip-Hop album. It's so happy and upbeat, while still just absolutely being as catchy as can be. The smooth Jazz mixed with Hip-Hop is an interesting combination, and while by itself wouldn't be much, when blended together make for a very good time. I'm a little biased, as the only song by these guys I know is "Can I Kick It?", but I'd be pretty hard pressed to not put it as my favorite song on the album as well. This is such a chill, vibe of an album, the entire thing works off of just good, positive vibes alone, and it all just works. It's kind of hard giving it an in depth review, but I think very highly of this album. The positive Hip-Hop albums always end up being my favorites, and this is a prime example of that. Songs like "Luck of Lucian", a song which literally revolves around playfully making fun of the French, are just so goofy, but god are they unbelievably catchy. Another interesting aspect of this album is the numerous samples used. They're everywhere, and are pretty fun to spot, especially if you know any of their origins. This is the fist album from A Tribe Called Quest I have rolled for this project, with 1 more group album, and 1 solo project from Q-Tip remaining. I'm very much in to it. I was surprised to find this album rated lower than their other group album in the book The Low End Theory, considering this one has "Can I Kick It?", so now I'm very interested to check that one out whenever I roll it. Great album. 4.3/5.

Not really my thing. Just a little bit too weird, slow, and I'm not exactly obsessed with this guys voice or vocals. The song names also come off as a little pretentious and annoying which don't exactly help his case. The first time through I absolutely despised listening to this, but as with most other albums I initially despised, this album grew on me. Not a lot, but enough to save it easily from a 1 to at least a very high 2. “A Sight to Behold”, “Fall” and “Insect Eyes” are my favorite 3 songs on the album, and having 3 that I genuinely enjoyed are good indications of at the bare minimum a 2 star album. 1 stars are saved for albums where I just straight up did not enjoy a single song or aspect of. At least this one has those 3 songs, "Fall" being my favorite of the bunch. I still don't love his voice, but the western tempo and melody of that song do go kind of hard. I did that song enough to say that it's pretty good. Not great, but good enough. Other songs, however, and this is a prominent reason the album isn't going to get a 3, come off as so artsy and pretentious that it legitimately aggravates me into just immediately skipping them when they start. I'm sorry, and this might be going too far, but any artist that uses the gimmick of messing up and restarting a song, and then leaves the outtake of starting the song over from the top in the final product is just annoying as shit, looking at you "Todo los Dolores". Whether it's intentional or not is irrelevant, it's one of my least favorite gimmicks and I seldom have to hear it, for good reason. It's not artistic, it's just kind of annoying. When it happens live, it's hilarious. Big difference is that this isn't a Live album. Anyway, yeah. That's my review of Rejoicing In The Hands by Devendra Banhart. Why was this one included exactly?? Don't know. I don't think I had to hear this one before I died, but besides some annoying vocals on a good bit of the songs and the entirety of "Todo los Dolores" it wasn't offensively bad, and I did manage to listen to it for the entire day. Yet another album that goes in the "Grew on me" category. I'm starting to write that so often in these reviews that I need to start keeping track of them all. Ok, review over. I don't generally give a lot of 2's, but I feel this one earned it. Next album please.

Oh, Marilyn Manson. Where do I even begin with you?? So, this guy was huge for about 2 years when I was a kid and then fell off the face of the Earth. I haven't heard anything about him since. His legacy to me is the Metalocalypse episode where the gang try to, uh, how do I word this appropriately, remove their rib cages to assist with putting their meat in their mouths. That's innocent sounding enough right?? So yeah, that was a very prominent rumor with Marilyn Manson, and even though it's not true, I still believe. I don't even think it started with him, but it's almost synonymous with him at this point, and it's really funny to think about all this time later. How is his singing? Well, it's unique. I'll give him that. The almost perfect distribution of 1's, 2's and 3's with no 4's or 5's in the site ratings almost perfectly sum him up. Either you hate him entirely as a person and just auto give him a 1, you find his singing tolerable and give it a 2, or you actually kind of enjoy it but acknowledge it's very flawed and give it a 3. I'm currently at a 3. It's fine. Aggressively average, but fine. His biggest hit is also the best song by a country mile, "The Beautiful People", and everything else is just filler. It's ok, but with a literal hour and eleven minute playtime, that's too much for even his hardest core fans. It's edgy. It's graphic. It didn't age well because it was never good to begin with. But, it's also EXTREMELY 90's coded, and for that honestly I can kind of vibe with it. This was the kind of music I was listening to when I was a kid, so it's always going to have just a little bit of a soft spot for me, even if it's just objectively bad music. So, I don't know. I get why anyone would give this a 1-3, as Metal in general is a tough sell for most people and Marilyn Manson himself was a huge, annoying asshole of a person when he had his 15 minutes in the spotlight. I'd compare him to someone like Fred Durst, Kid Rock, or Kanye West in the sense that a lot of these reviews are going to be biased because they just don't like the person. And that's kind of understandable honestly. Additionally, this is the first album I've rolled that's this screamy, and I'd be hard pressed to believe they have many with a remotely similar sound. That screaminess and vulgarity alone is going to throw off a bunch of people right out of the gate. So, it may be the bad kind of unique to most, but again, I kind of vibe with it. Yeah, it's a very safe 3.

I’m finally free of Kate Bush. This is the third and final Kate Bush album I’ve rolled for this project after giving her other 2 albums both a 2 star review. Surely, this one is similar to her other albums I didn’t care for, right?? Well, actually, hold on now. You’re going to think I’m joking, but I somehow kind of really liked this album. Words I never in a million years thought I would say about The Sensual World after listening to her other 2 albums on here. I stated after the last one that I was convinced this would be more of the same. To tell you why I liked this one so much requires a bit of backtracking to explain why I didn’t love the other ones. So, her other 2 albums have unique aspects to them that, and while I’m glad they exist for the sole purpose of being able to tell so easily that she’s just genuinely having fun with it the entire time, are not something I want to hear on an album personally. Every song she’s either making weird animal noises, sometimes actually barking, or doing weird throat things that just sound too experimental for my liking. Again, they’re fun, maybe a bit pretentious as an art form, but very goofy. Bad, yes, but also somehow true to her character and genuine sounding. If that even makes sense, glaring contradiction included. They made me want a Kate Bush album where she’s just singing normally. I figured she had it in her but wasn’t convinced I was ever going to get it. Ladies and gentlemen, this is that album. I gotta tell you, she’s got a great voice when she chooses to use it, and songs like “Heads We’re Dancing”, and my favorite song on the album “Rocket’s Tail” are proof of that. Let me be absolutely clear, this is still very much a Kate Bush album. She’s still very expressive and pitchy with her vocals. She will still occasionally do a random vocal stim out of nowhere. But it’s not as annoyingly breathy or just plain random and dog barky. It’s more contained and guided properly. And for that reason, you know what, this album truly surprised me. Not in a way where I thought it was barely tolerable, but in a way where I truly enjoyed it all the way through. I personally believe this is her best album, and now I’m glad the bot decided to save it for last. By the grace of God, I’ve found a Kate Bush album I enjoyed. Weird and unexpected times for sure. But I’m not complaining at all. “Rocket’s Tail” just rocks unnecessarily hard for no reason, and I thought it was awesome. Great job Kate. I like this one. You finally got me. Third time really is the charm for Kate Bush.

Alright, here it is. Definitive proof that unfortunately, I don’t like Jazz music. This is the highest rated Jazz album on the entire website and I kind of want to give it a 2, but it’s not notably worse than the 2 other Miles Davis albums I’ve rolled already. It’s weird to be the dissenting opinion for once, usually I do the opposite or agree with the majority. But here, I just don’t get it. It’s not for me, and that’s ok, but I don’t even understand why the people who do like it say they like it. Most of the Jazz I’ve heard so far I’ve at least given a 3, but coincidentally this is the Modal style of Jazz, as is “A Love Supreme”, another album I thought was borderline unlistenable and gave a 2. So, you know what, for all the Jazz that surprised me, I can tell you that something that won’t surprise me going forward is my unfortunate distaste for Modal Jazz. Furthermore, writing a complete review for one Jazz album is tough. Saying that is mostly just filler to pad out the length of this review, and I’ve mentioned it many times already. Coming up with a good review for what feels like 50 plus Jazz albums at this point is just unfair. I mean what do you honestly expect me to say at this point I haven’t already said before?? In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if I’ve done this bit before as well. The bottom line is that this album was boring. It bored me, it went on for too long, and I was happy when it ended. I gave it a few tries just to really try to understand why someone would enjoy this, and I couldn’t do it. I won’t be returning to this one, and I don’t care enough to pick a favorite, as even though it’s all improvised, it still just sounds the same to me. Boring background noise I wouldn’t even want as background noise. This is going to very probably be my biggest departure from the public consensus, but hey, everyone is different. I’ve enjoyed some things no one else liked, and I personally find this album to be just another boring and forgettable Jazz album like the majority of them are. It wasn’t offensively bad like some of them have been, but I didn’t enjoy it either. Sorry.

Franz Ferdinand is a very interesting band to me. This was the defining band of the PS2 era for me specifically. I swear to God, these guys had a song in just about every video game I played around the year 2005. I’ve added probably 15 of their songs from multiple albums on my Spotify from them already. The song “40’” was in my Top 5 most played songs last year, and there’s always a random smattering of Franz Ferdinand songs that end up on my playlist somehow, one way or another. All that being said, obviously I’m a very big fan of this band. Nothing weird about that right?? Actually, for how much I adore this band, I don’t really know a single thing about them, and I’d never heard an album of theirs from front to back until now. Couldn’t tell you anything about them other than the fact that every single time I hear one of their songs, I end up listening to it for the next month because I enjoy it so much. I don’t know what it is about this band, they just sound so unique to me. They’re having a lot of fun on this first album, which not only clearly shows in the music itself, but enhances it and makes it sound amazing. To paraphrase what another reviewer said, all of these songs sound very different from each other, while at the same time sounding very much like a Franz Ferdinand song. It’s just one of those bands man. I don’t know how any of them do it, but it’s just one of those bands you hear for a millisecond, and if you’ve ever heard a song by them, you’re instantly like, “Wait, that’s Franz Ferdinand. I haven’t heard this one before, time to add it to my library and listen to it for the next entire month until I get it out of my head. Otherwise I’ll be singing it at work unconsciously.” This album is great. My favorites include “Jacqueline”, “Take Me Out”, “This Fire”, and “40’”. My favorite song in general is going to vary from day to day, but “Take Me Out” is just so iconic and nostalgic, it’s hard not to call it the best song on the album because of that. This is going to once again send me into a spiral where all I’m going to do when not working on this project is listening to all of the Franz Ferdinand albums on a loop for the next couple of months. It’s unexplainable just why this is one of my favorite bands. I hardly get it myself, I just think they sound really really good. Love the singer, love the funky chord progressions, love the variance of sounds, it’s just everything I’m looking for on an album. All killer, no filler. It’s my third 5 star album in a row. Keep it coming!!!!

This might be the most radically different week of music day to day I’ve had on the site since I started. I’ve jumped from Taylor Swift, to Jimi Hendrix, to N.W.A. And the ladder 2 of those are both absolutely deserving of 5 stars, and are pivotal, important albums that still kick ass today. Can’t wait to see what I get tomorrow, it’s either going to be something really good or notably bad, I almost guarantee it. No in between, those are the only options. Straight Outta Compton is a pivotally important album not just for rap, but for music in general. There’s a good reason why it was put into the National Recording Registry. Among the cavalcade of positive things it accomplished, some of the many notable feats include launching the careers of multiple now famous rappers including the wildly successful Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, became the first gangsta rap album to sell over a million copies thanks to breakthrough and important songs like “Fuck Tha Police”, “Straight Outta Compton”, “Gangsta Gangsta”, and “Express Yourself”, had an entire documentary made about it, drew attention to many cultural issues by the sheer power of spoken word alone enough to get the entire crew targeted by the US government, and most importantly it’s just actually catchy as shit. I don’t personally believe any of the rappers here miss a single beat throughout the length of the album. Another really cool aspect about this album is just how diverse the track listing is. It helps of course to have like 8 different rappers available at any given moment, but each song really feels different. The difference for instance between “Fuck Tha Police” and “Express Yourself” is almost staggering, both lyrically and tonally. Where some rap albums suffer with annoying skits that never impress me, this one doesn’t have a single one, which is so relieving to hear. I’ve never cared for them, and I never will. They ruin the flow of most albums they appear in. It’s also never repetitive, and looking at each song by name is easy to remember which one is which, a rarity with album like this. Notably, that’s due to having a lot of people contributing, which I previously mentioned, but that’s still obviously a good thing. A lot of the comments mention how vulgar and offensive this album is as if that’s even remotely an issue, or something inherently wrong with the album itself. You have to think of the context here though. These guys were young, Black teenagers from Compton in the 80’s, so of fucking course it’s going to be vulgar. Sure, the subject matter in some of the songs, notably “I Ain’t Tha 1” aren’t great, but again, these guys were young, inexperienced, and pissed off at the world. Rightfully so, and at the bare minimum that song still at least slaps, lyrics aside. This album rocks. It’s probably the most important rap album ever released, and sadly a lot of the greater themes addressed in it are still relevant today. Is “Fuck Tha Police” the best song on the album?? Yeah, probably. It’s my favorite at least.

Well, shit. Don’t know if it’s something with the algorithm or just plain bad luck, but I was hoping to space out the Jimi Hendrix albums over the long course of this project. I just heard my second album of his a few weeks ago. Alas, this is the third and final album I’ve rolled, following Electric Ladyland and Axis: Bold As Love. I’m now left with the gargantuan and impossible task that no man should ever have to have of ranking them all, whether that be objectively, or more likely just subjectively, as that seems more convenient and personalized. But first, let’s not get too off topic and review Are You Experienced, which I feel should have a question mark at the end for style. I don’t know, minor pet peeve of mine. Ok, so right off the bat I have to say that this is the perfect album. It’s a guaranteed 5. This is his best album and I wish I could tell you it was close. When picking a favorite song from like 6 choices is the hardest thing to do, you know you’ve struck some real gold. My favorites on this album include what I’m begrudgingly saying is my favorite, which is the opener, “Purple Haze”, but I also loved “Manic Depression”, “Hey Joe”, “The Wind Cries Mary”, “Fire”, “Foxey Lady”, “Are You Experienced?”, and “Stone Free”. So yeah, I liked a few of them. All that being said, this is one of those albums where I’d be able to provide very little input that hasn’t already been said before, so instead I’ll just be one of many adding to the list of people saying that Jimi Hendrix is one of the greatest musicians in history, and this was his magnum opus. Now that I’ve heard and reviewed all 3 of his albums, I think I’ve actually got a pretty good grasp of how to personally rank them. Here’s a very brief summary on why I ranked these the way I did.
3. Electric Ladyland: His longest album, closes with the actual 2 best songs he ever performed in “All Along The Watchtower” and “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”, but is bogged down a slight bit with a lot of unmemorable but still outstanding sounding filler songs across the entire album.
2. Axis: Bold As Love: His shortest album by far, this one lacks in the biggest hits but it makes up for it in having some deep cuts that are just incredible. In fact, the album in general is short, concise, and absolutely shreds for the duration of the album, minus the terrible opener. Also has “Little Wing”.
1. Are You Experienced: By sheer volume, this has the most well deserved hits over his other albums, and it’s all killer and very very few filler songs, only having a few missteps at the very end, minus the closer. Pure musical ecstasy, and truly his best album.
Well, I’m bummed that I’m already completely done with the Hendrix albums, but it’s been a hell of a journey. Rock on and shoutout to one of the best to ever do it.

*sighs*. Ok. Fine. I’ll just go ahead and say it. This album wasn’t terrible. For some unnecessary context, the year is 2026 and Taylor Swift is everywhere. She is so unavoidable that you’d have to specifically attempt to go out of your way to avoid hearing about her, and you’d still likely fail. Are you a football fan?? There she is at a Chiefs game. Enjoy supporting your local record store?? She’s front and center in every store. Watch the news at all?? She’s likely going to be making headlines again for something inane. The only thing I find appealing about Taylor Swift are the plane memes about just how often she gets in a plane, and how funny they are. Madness, all of it. I can’t think of someone who’s gotten this much attention for this long. I can’t in good faith say it’s unwarranted, but it really is insufferable at times. She is so unavoidable that despite spitefully never actively seeking her out, I’d still heard of 3 of these songs previously. The overexposure of Taylor and her rabidly dedicated Swiftie fan base is truly something to be studied for the history books. This might be worse than the Justin Bieber days of old. I rolled her album evermore previously, making this the second of 2 Taylor Swift albums I’ll have to endure for this project. It’s an artist I know I dislike, so better just knock it out of the way early, right?? I was going to have to listen to this eventually anyway. While evermore didn’t have a single song that reached out to me, and I still question its inclusion in the book at all, it physically pains me to say that this album is actually pretty good. It’s got a lot of the hits that I recognized, including “Blank Space”, “Bad Blood”, and my personal favorite (I can’t believe I’m saying that) song on the album, “Shake It Off”. Does it have filler?? Absolutely, and every song is overproduced, has annoying auto tune/distortion/etc filters, is ungodly repetitive and tailor made (See what I did there) for people with an attention span that lasts for all of about 5 seconds. But you know what?? I didn’t really hate any of it. It’s catchy, and that’s all that matters. While evermore was moody, edgy, whiny and insufferable, this one is at least full of energy and good vibes. So, you know what?? I’m not going to give this one a 1 out of spite. I’m going to give it a 3 and tell you that for all its flaws, I rather enjoyed it as a whole. Damn you, Taylor Swift. Damn you. Was I dramatic enough, because I was really trying to have fun with this one and go on a random goofy tangent. I’m not actually that upset, it’s just fun to be so unserious occasionally, and this felt like a good opportunity to do just that.

Wasn’t really feeling this one. This is my second and last Fela Kuti album on the list, following Live! With Ginger Baker. I barely tolerated that one, but this one was just sadly hard to get through. I know Fela is a prolific name in the Black community, I even mentioned him last week on another album his family had involvement with, but his music simply isn’t for me. It’s too free form to be enjoyable, and each song just goes on and on and on, and the longer they go on the quicker I just want it all to be over. This is literally 4 songs that are each worse than the last. Only listened to this one a single time before I wanted to stop listening to it. It’s not unlistenable by any means, and I can see why people who like Jazz would love this album. Sadly, that’s not me though. I did not like this one. Giving it a rare 2/5. Sorry Fela. Not my thing, but I respect it and can see why others would enjoy it though. My favorite song on this album, or rather the one that bugged me the least was the second song, “Mr. Follow Follow”. Jazz music continues to be a poison pill on my daily quest to make it through the end of this long project. I want to like it, and sometimes I do, but more often then not I just can’t vibe with it, and this was unfortunately one of the worst examples of that. I gave it a try at least. Anyway, moving on.

Well then, I guess the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were just dying to make another appearance on my feed. This is the last of 2 Yeah Yeah Yeahs albums on the list, following 2003’s debut album Fever To Tell, which I rolled last week and mentioned I’d probably forget about just as quickly. Hit the nail on the head with that prediction. I did a re-listen of that album before diving into this one and said a whole lot of “Oh, right, that one”. How did this band evolve 6 years later, and does this one have more of a staying power than Fever To Tell?? Actually, yeah. A little bit, I think it does. First off, love the album art. The visual of seeing a squished egg in someone's hand is the perfect encapsulation for what this album is trying to convey. Second, the hit song on the album "Heads Will Roll" I believe is better and catchier than the hit from their first album, "Maps". Right out of the gate I'm hit with a cool opener in "Zero" which has a killer hook and a catchy rhythm, not to mention Karen and her still incredible voice. In fact, the rhythm's on all of these songs are pretty cool and memorable as a whole, with few exceptions. It's hard to explain, but it just adds to the kind of vibes I enjoy on an album, paired with an amazing singing voice. "Dull Life" is worth talking about as well, and is almost tied for my favorite song on the album. It's probably the song that traditionally rocks the hardest, and it's also the one that sticks out as the most catchy sans "Heads Will Roll". The album loses just a little bit of the magic that the first 5 songs have from this point on, but they're all mostly not skippable, and sound different enough so it's still very easy to listen to all of them and tell them apart from each other. My favorites from the ladder half of the album are "Shame And Fortune" and "Dragon Queen". It all adds up to an album that, while I still really enjoyed, even with a better ensemble of songs, I'm still not likely to remember a lot of in a few days time. However, if I return to it, I can still greatly enjoy it again, so that's cool. This is one of those bands that, since I'm now done with both albums they have on here, I am free to explore their entire discography. And you know what, I did just that, and immediately found the song "Gold Lion", which while not a part of the book, is worth listening to. I might not remember the Yeah Yeah Yeahs going forward the more I crack into this project, but they are a band that I thought had 2 great albums, and worth the inclusion. I came away satisfied listening to both of them. I only wish the songs had JUST a bit more to them. They're pretty close to great, but always leave you wanting just a little something more in the end.

This one is going to be really hard to review for more than a few lines, seeing as Disco music is almost unanimously known for being repetitive by design. I haven’t rolled many, if any Disco albums yet to my knowledge, but this one was surprisingly easy to listen to on repeat. I’m for sure not always going to be in the mood for this kind of music, but when I am, it’s just simply charming to hear. Musically, there isn’t a ton here, it’s 36 minutes and 7 songs of just good vibes basically. I was kind of shocked that I’d heard of any of these songs at all, and yet the opener, “Good Times” is a classic Disco staple as well as the best song on the album. Hilariously, the songs are pretty easy to differentiate from each other, so luckily it’s not just 36 minutes of the exact same Disco flourish. Generally speaking, the songs are more often than not easily identifiable by the name of the song being sung on repeat, and that’s basically the loop of the entire album. You only needed one song to take off to get sales, and I think for CHIC, this particular album had “Good Times”. Even though that’s the one that took off, I did rather enjoy the whole album, and found other songs like “My Feet Keep Dancing” and “My Forbidden Lover” to be a worthwhile listening experience. It’s fun, it makes me want to dance, and it caught me on a good day where I could afford to just bob my head up and down the office, looking like an idiot in the process (Worth it though). This is the first of 2 CHIC albums I have rolled so far, and I think it’s hilarious that of all the artists to get 2 albums, they’re letting a Disco band have them. How different could the other album be, really?? It came out the previous year. I can’t imagine it would be radically different than this one. In fact, I guarantee it won’t be. I digress. Fun album, not exactly mould breaking, but still fun and accomplishes what it was meant to do, which is make me get up and dance.

Man, I really don’t know what happened to Common in the 5 years following between this and his other album on the list, Be, but this album is astronomically different than that one. As terrible as he is now, Be being produced by Kanye likely has everything to do with that, and you’d be foolish to not see or accept that. While still good in its own right, Like Water For Chocolate doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. It’s full of that classic homophobia and misogyny we’ve all come to love out of Hip-Hop, and the songs are all pretty generic to be honest. They’re still good, but they aren’t very memorable. It’s long as hell and doesn’t have many real bangers, although “Payback Is A Grandmother” was my favorite for sampling “The Payback” by James Brown. I love that song. In fact, a good deal of these songs pay tribute to Black icons like Fela Kuti (“Time Travelin' (A Tribute To Fela))” and Thelonious Monk (“Thelonius”), which is pretty cool. Not exactly subtle either with the naming conventions on those two songs, but still cool. I only became familiar with Kuti, his talented family, and Monk because of this project. Getting to understand and listen to the inspirations behind some of these albums ahead of time has been a very rewarding experience I must say. Anyway, while this album is pretty violent and angry at times, Be I would call more grounded, more focused, less angry, and much more accessible to everyone. That being said, I guarantee you can probably find a bunch of people that prefer the more uncut feelings and vibes of Like Water For Chocolate compared to Be, and I would completely understand. While I gave that one a 4, minus one because of the Kanye tax, I’d give this one more of a 3.6. It’s very long, and it’s not tremendously memorable, but Common has such a great and catchy cadence, and I still have to say I don’t think this has a lot of filler, length be damned. Really fun features as well, even if I don’t recognize many of them. I have to confess something to you. Be was my 3rd most listened to album of 2025, and this project is entirely to blame/thank for that. While I largely prefer Be, I still thoroughly enjoyed listening to this one, even if it isn’t as focused. Common is absolutely on my radar now, and I vibe with his music pretty heavily.

I really liked this album. Never heard of James Taylor before, but he blends a very good amount of lighter songs with intermittent heavier songs that often times come out of nowhere and kick ass. The better songs on the album are few and far between, but being only 31 minutes long, you never have to wait too long to get to them. For instance, the first three songs are pretty light and traditional Singer Songwriter pieces. A little fillery in places, but they’re still fun to listen to. Nothing special. James has a voice that doesn’t necessarily blow me away. In fact, it took me a little bit to warm up to, but I still think it’s pretty good, and at the end of the day I ended up rather enjoying it. Song 4, “Steamroller Blues” is where this album starts getting really good. A few very good songs as well as a tight playtime save this from being a low 3, and this is one of them. This song sounds like it’s parodying classic Blues aspects, since the first 3 songs had nothing to do with that genre, but it’s executed so well here, and stands out so much by itself that it ends up being my second favorite song on the album. Immediately following it is “Country Road”, which was another fun one with some charming Country aspects, naturally, as well as the only song I recognized my first listen through. Following that is another filler song, and then “Fire and Rain”, his most popular song. I thought that one was just ok personally. Reminded me a little too much of the music you’d hear at a school graduation for my liking. 3 more filler songs and then finally, my favorite song on the album, the closer, “Suite for 20 G”. Not an amazing song name, but a pretty amazing song. It starts off light, like the other songs on the album, but then out of nowhere you get a killer guitar solo to end the album off on a strong note, and some very old fashioned Rock and Roll aspects that again feel like more of a parody or an homage to the genre itself. It also truly stands out, so much so that if the rest of the album had more of that, I’d consider giving this a 5. As it stands now, there’s a lot of filler here, but the short run time makes that not as big of an issue when the song variety itself here is pretty good, especially when you get to one of the better songs on the album. It feels rewarding to listen to them almost. This is very much Singer Songwriter first and foremost, but the random interspersion of other genres make it an interesting and truly worthwhile listen. I did end up adding the closer to my usual rotation as well. Good album, thank you James.

Fairly standard Punk album. I haven't done a lot of research on this one as I was pretty busy today, but this one kind of feels like it's pretty important and I don't know exactly why. The Ramones are a band I've heard of by name and can't pull a song of theirs unless you tell me one. I checked out their top songs on Spotify pre first listen and found, not on this album, "I Wanna Be Sedated", which is a banger, as well as "Blitzkrieg Bop", which is not only the opening track, but also probably the best, catchiest song on the album. Fairly certain that's another classic Rock Band game jam as well, always going to give bonus points for that. Truly a memorable, ear wormy song. As I started the album, I get to song 2, "Beat on the Brat", and I was surprised to find out that I knew that song as well. Get to track 3, "Judy Is a Punk", and it dawned on me that this was another one of those bands in which I can't name anything off the top of my head from, but then when you play any of the hits, I recognize them pretty quickly. Anyway, after song 3, I think the album just turns into about 25 minutes of the same repetitive song, over and over again. With an album that's 14 different songs with a play time of only 29 minutes and 14 seconds, you quickly get burned out when the album happens to be that short if they don't have much of a different sound from song to song, and unfortunately The Ramones, at least on this album, made 14 different versions of "Blitzkrieg Bop". Noted, it's a great song, and my first couple of listen throughs I was really digging it, but man, there's only so much of this I can take at one time. Maybe I should start opting for Deluxe Editions of albums every day if they start becoming a bit harder to listen to over time. The Deluxe Edition of this album is a staggering 78 songs and is over 2 hours and 45 minutes long. Definitely would not have been over this one as soon if I played that at some point during the day. Anyway, good songs, a bit repetitive, and nothing stood out to really wow me. Good album though, a solid 3 and a half stars on this one. It's my fault for listening to this on repeat, some albums I believe are meant to just be enjoyed one time only. This is one of those albums where you'll breeze through and not even realize it ended. That's probably enough for someone to give it a 4 or 5, but to me this was, again, pretty standard, but still good, Punk music.

Oh goodie!! I get to do the meme. “It’s Linkin Park. 5 stars.” Do I really have to explain why I love this so much?? Ok fine, I’ll age myself. This was the music of my childhood and no amount of growing up is going to make me dislike it at all, and it makes me very nostalgic listening to it. Going to make me go down a rabbit hole and listen to all the old stuff in general. This was my weekend album, and I did in fact end up binging the first 3 Linkin Park albums for the entirety of the weekend. It was very worth it. A great blend of early 2000's Rock and a unique blend of Rap make this a phenomenal first album for Linkin Park. Is it my favorite album they have? Close, but that goes to Meteora. This is a close second though. I could name you several deep cut tracks this one has that I love, but I don't even need to, because "One Step Closer", "Crawling" and "In The End" exist. Those are the best 3 on the album for sure. They all got immensely popular for good reason. Not only was Hybrid Theory a killer first album, but it was also Linkin Park's best selling album as well, and it's easy to see why. It's really good, and every song has been somewhere roaming around the recesses of my head this entire time. Listening to this again awakened my inner kid. It was a blast checking this one out again, even if it made me feel a bit old being able to reminisce like this. Favorite song on this one? Any given day and I'll give you a different answer. This one is the easiest 5 I've given so far. I only wish we had more Linkin Park representation on here, even though I'm not only happy that we got this one at all, but kind of surprised that it was included at all. Goated stuff, RIP Chester Bennington. You were the man.

Man, what on Earth was this album?? This was so far removed from anything I’ve listened to so far and I honestly just kind of loved every weird minute of it. This is the kind of random album I started this project to hear. This is a band I just BARELY remember hearing in Madden when I was a little kid, so in a weird sense it also feels like a bit of a time capsule of sorts, back to when gaming was actually good and we didn’t have to worry about micro-transactions or AI nonsense. Street Signs is a completely mixed bag of musical genres and drastic vibe changes, sometimes being very traditionally Latin, other times going to Hip Hop, Pop, and frequently switching between Spanish and English lyrics. Sometimes, it works. Other times it really doesn’t. What does or does not work for you is going to largely depend on what you enjoy hearing, as the biggest compliment I can give this album is that every song sounds wholly unique from the last. Could also be a double edged sword at times, but I digress. Take Chali 2na randomly showing up on “Who’s To Blame” for instance. Furthering the fun time capsule, he immediately made me want to go listen to Jurassic 5. With his unbelievably smooth voice, I would listen to that man read the phone book. Then you’ve got songs like “(Who Discovered) America?” and “Love And Hope”, which are mostly in English but have a few lines and background elements in Spanish. On top of that, you’ve got “Dejame En Paz” and other songs which are entirely sung in Spanish. This album switches like that on the fly, and there’s truly a lot to take in. Sometimes to its benefit, other times it doesn’t really work. The end result for me personally was that I found myself adding a new song just about every single time I replayed the album. The only song I haven’t mentioned by name yet that I really enjoyed is “Saturday Night”, which I remember coming straight out of Madden. Picking a favorite song here was way harder than I was expecting, but it’s going to go to Chali 2na and “Who’s To Blame”. I had no idea he was going to show up, but he absolutely kills it on that song. “Saturday Night” gets my second favorite. It was a very close fight. Both are catchy as hell, but I think the ladder is maybe just a bit repetitive. I still don’t entirely know what this album was, and sure there’s plenty to skip on it, but man, I ended up adding 5 songs on the album, and most of the rest aren’t even bad, so I’m going to give it a 4.1 right on the dot. I think for being so unique and different, as well as just being very good and trying something new, that rating makes sense to me.

Definitely some middle of the road and overall pretty generic Indie Rock/Punk music. That’s for sure. Has all the traits of an album that is just kind of cookie cutter, and was mostly a good listen, but I’m going to forget about it in a few days time. For being the bands debut album, it’s not bad though. Few skips on here, notably the last 2 songs I don’t love listening to on repeat. But the singer has a pretty good voice that never got tiring to listen to besides when she starts singing softly, again only at the very end of the album. When it really wants to, this album can end up rocking pretty hard. The problem with that though is it doesn’t bring anything new or interesting to the table and always comes across as just another generic sound that doesn’t get elevated into anything very special or interesting, a kind of similar sound in which I’ve heard over 100 times already during this project. I get it man, it’s hard to be unique in this genre, especially considering how many of these albums are vying for my attention. Despite that, this still sounded good enough to me to say that despite not being unique, I very much enjoyed my time listening to it. It’s also only 36 minutes long, which is a pretty awesome length, and a bit surprising for a debut album from 2003. I would have expected this to be a lot longer than it actually is. To their credit, I have heard of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs before. If my memory serves me correctly, “Maps” was one of the first songs on the original set list for the game Rock Band 1, which also happens to be on this album. “Heads Will Roll”, of which I’ve only ever heard the remix of, is also very good, but is not on this album unfortunately. A few tracks stood out to me here, my favorite of the bunch this time being “Black Tongue”, but “Rich” was also a really good opener as well. I actually how bitchy and vitriolic “Black Tongue” comes off as, it really gave me kind of a chuckle. Yes, it was very Punk, but also kind of funny as well, if that makes sense. I don’t know if that was the intent, but regardless I enjoyed it a lot. This is the first of 2 Yeah Yeah Yeahs albums I have rolled for this project, and I’m very interested to see how they progressed over time. Would I return to this? Actually, yeah. I think I would. Yeah Yeah Yeah I would. Terrible joke, I know. I had to do it.

I’ve listened to more Jazz albums than any one man should ever listen to since I started this long journey, now approaching an entire year on the site. I have heard many different types and sub genres of Jazz during this time. There have been some types of Jazz that I outright despise, some that were just ok, but most of them have rarely been worth listening to again after the day ends. This, and I don’t know why, is for sure one of the best ones that I have heard so far. I don’t know what causes me to like some Jazz and hate others, but now I want to do a deep dive into all the different forms. This album is giving me a deep appreciation for the craft that I otherwise didn’t have yet. It’s an album I’m thankful the site has given me. This barely registers as Jazz, it feels like Funky Electronica with a smooth Jazzy finish hidden underneath. I don’t know exactly what you would call this, but I’d call it pretty damn good. Favorite song on the album is the opener, “Chameleon”. It’s the fastest song on the album and some of the rapid tone changes towards the middle of the song are just incredibly ear wormy. Song lives up to its name, it’s constantly changing, but not in the way other free form Jazz albums have that have previously not done much for me. Again, I don’t really know what it is about this one specifically, but I’m not complaining. As far as Jazz goes, this was outstanding. I would gladly listen to more of this. Plus, I have no idea what’s going on with the album art, but I dig it. It’s pretty cool. Funky.

This has to be the final boss of Jazz albums for people who don’t love Jazz albums. 3 hours and 14 minutes long?? Be real. I’m honor bound and determined to listen to every album in the book front to back at least once, as well as pick a favorite song from each album, but this one is really going to try my patience. Those were my initial thoughts upon, mouth agape, seeing what I rolled this morning. What follows for the remainder of the review is post listen. I like Ella Fitzgerald, and I don’t even dislike The Gershwin Songbook by Ella Fitzgerald, but whoever included this album in the book had to have been trolling. You can’t seriously tell me I had to listen to this before I die, rather than something shorter and more focused by the same artist. Despite that, here I am, victorious, one entire listen-through later. The final disc is also just instrumental stuff with no Ella vocals, really unnecessary to include that at all, but I sure did listen to it anyway. It took me one whole work shift and the drive home to get through this one completely, which doesn’t say a lot about the album other than the length is just outrageous, and I had to pause it a lot to focus on important stuff. Generally I’m always going to listen to an album multiple times front to back to really form an opinion on it, and pick a favorite for the playlist as previously mentioned. Soak it all in, get to know and understand it better. You feel me?? This time, however, I’m just thankful to escape listening to it in full at all. Nothing of note stood out here, and if it did, I probably listened to it 6 hours ago. That being said, I really do like Ella’s voice, and admittedly I never felt like I was just praying for the album to end. As far as Jazz goes, this was alright. I’d be being disingenuous if I gave it a 2 just because of how long it was. Hyper-analyzing the album is going to be impossible unfortunately, as I was only able to listen to this one once. Would have been better as a weekend album so I could spend more time with it. Regardless, I wouldn’t come back to it anyway given the extra time. Jazz is Jazz, and this was very much tolerable, but not spectacular by any sense of the word. I’ll go with “Soon” as my favorite. Why?? I kind of remember how that one went, which is good enough for me. For Jazz lovers I think this one is going to be a must. It’s super long, has a singer with a beautiful voice, and it’s endlessly re-playable. For the rest of us, it exists somewhere between just alright and ok. It’s more Jazz, and the book has plenty of it. I wish it was about 2 and a half hours shorter, but for what it is, it’s not terrible. I’ll consider that a win and move on the the next challenge. Is this the longest album in the book?? It has to be, right??