Reviews by guggmo

I’m at a 4.5 that I’ll bump up to a 5.

Weirdly, I don’t feel like I have that much to say about this album. I figured since it was their bigger, more famous, more acclaimed “all-timer for the whole decade” album that I’d have more, but… no, it really is just an album that speaks for itself musically. Obviously, “Seven Nation Army” casts a big looming shadow on the rest of the album, setting a weird mental expectation that each track should be trying to chase that high, but that’s not what this album is trying to do at all. This is just a stellar showcase that feels like a culmination / peak of the garage rock scene of the early 2000s meeting the expectation / acclaim of the Rolling Stones & more, and as an album experience, it’s a free-flowing set of tracks that works really nicely together. I do wish some tracks actually transitioned into others, to give a sense of connectivity that generally feels missing on the album, but overall, it’s an album you can glide on off of the vibes & energy alone.

If I have any complaints, it’s that the album is a little more one-note than I thought it might be, given that the starring instrument of the album is Jack White’s distorted guitar, which gets a lot of play over the 50 minute runtime here. It does make a few too many tracks feel similar to each other, even with the variety of rock styles this album explores, and that does affect the album experience just a bit. Jack White’s vocals remedy this a lot of the time, with his voice gliding to meet the style, but to my ears, it lacks the full range of emotional depth that was more apparent on his later solo work. It stops each track’s lyrics (all generally well-written) from really shining. These are the sorts of little nitpicks that are stopping me giving this a flat 5, but they are nitpicks -- I could very well have just missed stuff on a first pass that would shut me up on a re-listen.

That said, it’s not an album made for the lyricism & or the vocal work – they are instruments that are made to give texture to the instrumentation, and it just happens to be a strong bonus that they’re both pretty damn good. As a whole, I really enjoyed this; for my tastes, I’m not sure if it’s honestly as good as Jack White’s solo album that we got, but it does feel more fulfilling overall than “Get Behind Me Satan” did. I do, however, wish the range of instrumentation that was present on that album were on here as well. With no bad tracks, some very high highs & a super enjoyable energy, how can you really complain? It didn’t quite hit the extreme critical acclaim for my ears, but it’s a damn good album regardless, and a worthy bump up to a 5.

I’m at a 5.

My first proper Depeche Mode album – all the big singles I know of are on the follow-up to this, “Violator” (which is also thankfully on the list), so I went into this one totally blind. I’m pleased to report that Depeche Mode is indeed that fucking good – this didn’t necessarily blow me away, but it did affirm that I’m a moron for never digging deeper, as has been proven multiple times by the list at this point. This album does feel exactly like what I’ve always assumed Depeche Mode to be like; a little moody, heavy on the synths, rhythmically pleasing as hell, and vocally gliding on all of these electronica-influenced pop beats.

I’m actually surprisingly really impressed by the lyrics; maybe I’ve just never paid as much attention to the lines of “Policy of Truth” or “Enjoy the Silence”, but these tracks all felt really well-written, and despite the filter & the slightly monotone feel of the vocals, the inflections pull some really good emotions out. Of course, the emotions are brilliantly complimented by the instrumentals, which act as THE highlight of the album. The spatial awareness these guys have in terms of capitalizing on a moment in the soundscape feels really reminiscent of Kate Bush. When a beat drops like that, it turns the energy of the track up on a dime, and they use that trick to perfection. In many ways, these are crafted similarly to hip-hop beats, and the momentum of each track shifts naturally in the same way. That spatial awareness applies to the sound design as well; a track like “Behind the Wheel” doesn’t work as well without the spinning plate / hubcap intro, and “I Want You Now” probably isn’t as effectively desperate without the vocal sounds throughout. All in all, it’s just a really well-produced album.

I wish I could gush more, but that was just 44 minutes that flew by in a heartbeat. The transitions on this album keep the pace moving really steadily, and the energy from the instrumentals is pretty infectious once they get going. This feels like a good hybrid sound between Eurythmics, Talking Heads, and a little bit of that goth rock vibe that The Cure explored on “Pornography”, whilst staying true to the synthpop trends of the mid-80s. I enjoyed it a lot, and I’m glad this was on the list and not just “Violator.” I’ll be looking forward to that one, though. For now, this gets a very easy 5 from me.

I’m at a 4.

That sure is 1960s country music; as far as listening to it goes, no real complaints other than a lack of variety in the instrumentation, though the composition of each track more than makes up for it. Her voice is great, especially on her held notes, and she glides on the instrumentals really nicely. If we were going just on the vibes, I might be compelled to go up to a 5, though it would be a rather hard sell.

All of that said, I think it’s the subject matter (NOT the lyricism, because each track is written really well) of each track that’s holding this album down for me. I thought Loretta Lynn would be a little more concrete in her opinions about relationships (or at least, be able to keep more stable ones than she portrays throughout this album), but I guess she’s more inconsistent than that. I dunno, it’s a minor thing, but it’s just kind of bugging me. The title track is great – it’s authoritative, and it’s her putting her foot down about her man’s drinking. Fine enough to turn it around on “The Shoe Goes On the Other Foot Tonight”, but that doesn’t fully absolve you of being met with the same criticism. That’s addressed well enough on “Saint To A Sinner” though, and it’s got a good empathic tone to it. To my brain though, that gets washed away by the closing track, “I Got Caught” – how are you gonna try to justify being a cheater by going “oh, well, YOU do it too, I just got caught doing it”? It feels like gaslighting, and none of it lines up with some of the earlier stuff in the album.

Yes, this is not a concept album, and yes, none of these tracks are actually connected, but between a growing sense of hypocrisy in the subject matter for a number of these tracks, combined with the amount of “woe is me, my man is leaving me” stuff on the album, I just feel like the vision for this album got lost somewhere between creating all of these songs & then actually deciding what should go on the album in a coherent way. Individually, all 12 of these are good to great tracks (with “The Devil Gets His Due” as the other major highlight aside from the title track), but as a whole album, it just kind of grinds a little bit, even though it’s only 28 minutes long.

Ultimately, the similar instrumentation throughout, overlapping subject matter, hypocritical tone at times, and just a lack of cohesion is what’s keeping this at a 4 for me. I’m not that grumpy about all of those things though, and I am a sucker for old country music like this regardless, so maybe on another pass or two, it could go up to a 5 for me. It’s still a fine album, and Loretta Lynn’s vocals are the shining part of the entire thing. For now though, just a 4.

I’m at a 5.

Not too much to say, given that I mostly zoned out to this in the most positive way: that is 100% 42 minutes of South African acapella, and I enjoyed all 42 minutes. Easy as that, really. A lot of the harmonizations gave the album a more spiritual tone, obviously enhanced by some of the actual spirituals present here. The thing that struck me as the most interesting part of the album is how well my brain was able to use the gaps where percussion would obviously sit, taking those empty spots & just sort of using them as percussion in its own way. The group is very keenly aware of this too – there’s never ever a drum track, nor even a click track made with their mouths, but with the way they come into each rhythm, their voices go deep enough that the brain automatically fills it all in, whilst sounding totally natural.

If the sense of repetition here is not your thing, this album will bounce off of you. It’s not an album made for deeper critical analysis, it’s an album to just enjoy from an auditory standpoint. I certainly enjoyed it – there’s not a bad moment here, and when they find a hypnotic groove to settle into, it’s very easy to get caught in that groove with them. It’s not the most impressive album on the planet or anything, but it’s a super fun listen, and I enjoyed it enough that giving it a 5 feels fair to me.

I’m at a 10. I’ve got the words this time, thankfully.

First and foremost: you *need* headphones for this. It won't hit the same way without them. This is full of little intricacies that might get drowned out otherwise.

Talk about a wild fucking departure from “Something/Anything?”, huh? I was expecting much more of the same, but looking at the Wikipedia article for this album before listening to it, it talks about a tonal shift towards more psychedelic-y strange/chaotic stuff brought on by drug use, or at least, a more chaotically structured album than the generally pop-driven tone of “Something/Anything?”. That’s a scary proposition, given that some artists handle drug use as a tool for creation better than others, and to my ears on that last album, I didn’t think he could expand too far out of the box that album provides. Cautious optimism was the vibe going into this.

Straight out of the fucking gate with this album, man. I don’t know how the hell you decide to start an album off with a 26-minute fever dream of a suite, but I’m glad Todd Rundgren’s drug use didn’t ruin his sense of musicality. This thing might’ve bounced off of people’s ears in 1973 (save for some of the critical praise this got), but for 2025, this feels right at home to my ears. It’s avant garde as hell, yes, but I’ll be damned if it’s not entertaining as shit. Prog rock sensibilities across the board here, combined with a Frank Zappa-esque sense of “throw shit at the wall and see what works”, and a proper ear for music that doesn’t disdain the Beatles or the Beach Boys or any of the popular bands of the era, but instead, takes the best parts of them and blends it with those other two parts to create the equivalent of the Abbey Road medley on drugs. I loved every single second of it, and I’m surprised it felt as coherent as it did.

For 1973, the amount of styles that medley touches, while masterfully transitioning between a lot of the tracks, is stunning to me. It is 12 tracks, it goes 26 minutes, and it’s just a crazy premonition to my brain of where the entire decade would eventually go, crumpled into a ball and without making a mockery of anything within it. I let the whole thing play out in one take, while taking little notes, so here’s some out of context gems: “this feels like 1970s Death Grips”, “what the dogs doing”, & “I guess that evokes a flamingo”. There’s a moment specifically on “Zen Archer” that evoked the sort of crazy transitions that Frank Ocean or Tyler, The Creator might pull off in an album, and that one in particular blew me away. All in all, the entire first half of the album is a ridiculous whirlwind, but one that I was willing to let sweep me away into whatever the hell Todd had next. It did kinda feel like listening to the Abbey Road medley for the first time again, and that’s a big, big plus in my book.

So… how about that second half? I suppose we couldn’t leave all of “Something/Anything?”’s sensibilities behind, and what emerges from that is 29 minutes of an extremely focused set of tracks that mostly feel like a prog rock / R&B album, but with a bit of everything sprinkled in, including some Elton John, The Who, & Marvin Gaye. All of the techniques from the first half are here, but distilled back into the very best aspects of “Something/Anything?”. Granted, a third of the 29 minutes is literally from a series of R&B covers from the doowop / Motown era, but they’re brilliantly adapted & performed, in a way that honestly kind of foreshadows the rise of the quiet storm style that would eventually come into vogue down the line. I’m mostly stunned by how much parts of the second half feel like 80s production, albeit with 70s instrumentation. Hell, the start of “Is It My Name?” directly feels like the start to “Enter Sandman”, so this thing is jumping all over the place.

I really want to specifically point at “Just One Victory”, because it does feel like the triumphant ending to the general theme of the second half, which is coming to terms with the idea of fame from music, despite the style of music you’re being praised for not exactly vibing with what you want to create. Apparently, that’s the realization Todd had after the critical praise he received on “Something/Anything?” & the subsequent drug use, and it’s what spurred him to get to this album. It is his own victory lap, sure, but the lyricism overall just speaks to a sort of cheesy hopeful vibe that just feels lost nowadays. It is the sort of bombastic album closer that I fuck with, and even the “repeating chorus while it all fades out” thing feels entirely earned here.

So, yeah, I’ve got no complaints. That’s a stellar album. It feels like an unrecognized masterpiece of sorts, and I really don’t use that word lightly. “A tour de force”, as the top review for this album says on the site. I loved everything here, and both halves stand on their own merits to create 55 nonstop minutes of brilliance. This coming from the same guy who already made a pretty damn good pop album in “Something/Anything?” is nuts to me. For all I know, this might be your favorite artist’s favorite artist’s favorite album, or however many degrees of “favorite artist’s” it takes to get there. The tree of influence this must have spawned, with iron sharpening iron all the way down, has to be immense. I simply refuse to believe otherwise. It is the type of album that makes people want to make music. It’s an easy 10, if not higher. Unbelievable, truly.

I’m at a 10.

I’m just exhausted. What can you really say after listening to something like that? You want me to wax poetic about how blessed these guys were to have extremely proficient people at every position of the band in terms of their instruments & their voices before deaths shook their vision? You want me to praise every aspect of the production up & down, both in the mixing, structure, pacing & progression of the whole thing? You want me to say that “Free Form Guitar” is some “Tago Mago” by Can-esque insanity that’s super cool even though it barely fits on the album?

Trust me, I want to. I want to write paragraphs up and down about this thing, but I’m just exhausted. I have not heard a band that in-sync on a debut project ever. I have not moved my head around that much to some ridiculous percussion work since… I dunno, maybe we got “Nevermind” by Nirvana? I have not lamented someone’s own stupidity this much in terms of Terry Kath killing himself like a complete moron, and I’ve literally never heard of or *heard* the guy until listening to this album. Jimi Hendrix apparently once said that Kath was even better than he was, and I’m almost inclined to believe it.

I understand that the overly bombastic, flashy style of this album is not everyone’s cup of tea. Hell, it’s only got a 3.18 on the site for that reason. I, however, could not give less of a shit. This is the sort of album that is perfectly down my alley, and I loved every single one of the 76 minutes here. That does include “Free Form Guitar”, for the record. I’m literally just too spent from the revelation that this has been here the entire fucking time, and yet I only knew these guys from their 80s Peter Cetera-led soft rock ballad era, which I already have a guilty pleasure soft spot for. I have literally never heard any other Chicago besides that era. The fact that THIS was here, the entire time, and I just never ever bothered to listen… god, it’s like a guy selling Bitcoin a decade ago for pennies, you know? I’m just stunned. I’m literally too stunned to write anything further. Someone else can put it all together; they’ll capture the words that are floating around my brain and express them, because right now, I truly can’t. It’s a 10. It might be higher. Regardless, it’s one of the very best albums I’ve gotten to discover from this whole thing.

I’m at a 4.5 that I’ll bump up to a 5.

One of two present on the list, this is my first full Madonna album, and really, my first proper dive into hearing anything she made after the 1980s (I guess “Vogue” came out in 1990, but shh). Granted, I’ve never been that big into Madonna, but I know her place in music history, and just how damn brightly her star was shining at her peak. For my first Madonna album, I have to imagine this is a bit of a style shift, but it’s a style shift that certainly works for 1998. It’s a bit dated to the era, sure, but it’s dated to the era in the best way. Sort of like how “Jagged Little Pill” is a quintessential example of 1995 production, this feels like the electronica trends of the late 90s finally being thrown into a high-profile situation and nailing it across the board. A lot of these tracks must’ve felt even cooler to listen to in 1998, and it’s no surprise to my ears why this had the acclaim it did.

Once again, I feel justified in saying that “Walking Wounded” by Everything but The Girl just didn’t go far enough in how it integrated electronica into pop, with Madonna’s effort here lapping that album in spades. Her vocals glide on these tracks, and the lyricism is often pretty damn good to match. Excellent production work across the board here, especially on William Orbit’s stuff (Ray of Light is indeed as good as advertised, thanks Weird Al). My only real knock production-wise is the length of the album. A number of these tracks could’ve been trimmed down to avoid some of the repetition, no matter how good the vibes were and how much space a CD had.

So, why the 4.5 then, and not a flat 5? A few tracks just bounced off of me, that’s all. Part of it is fatigue from the length of the album, part of it is that sense of repetition creeping too long, and part of it is just “the beat was too plain”. Realistically, I don’t have any major problems with the album. It’s a really good listen, no matter how “dated” it might feel. If you’re not the type of person to already feel predisposed to electronica like this (I’m avoiding video game music comparisons like the plague on this one), then it may very well just bounce entirely off of you, and I suppose that explains the average on this being less than a 3 on the site. A bit undeserved to my ears, though I guess a 38-year-old who wasn’t as present in the 1990s suddenly coming back into full swing by riding the electronica wave might be a little bit “how do you do, fellow kids” to some.

Ultimately, I just really enjoyed this – smart songwriting with some lovely tributes to her family throughout, great production work, gliding vocals, and if nothing else, 66 minutes of chill enough beats to do whatever the hell you want to, whether that’s studying, driving around, or belting out the chorus to “Ray of Light” on a whim. It didn’t all click, and the album does feel a little long, but it clicked enough where I feel just fine bumping this up from a 4.5 to a 5. Good stuff, Madonna.

I’m at a 4.5 that I’ll just barely bump down to a 4.

It’s a good album, don’t get me wrong, and honestly, it’ll probably click like a 5 someday. On a first pass, though? It’s just not quite there. Stephen Stills’ songwriting, while good, isn’t as strong as it could be, and not as strong as it would later be on “Manassas”, nor as strong as it was on the CSN(Y) albums. It’s a little broad here, with too much room for interpretation on a number of tracks, making the emotional pull a bit too ambiguous. It certainly doesn’t help that a lot of the context for that emotional pull feels sort of lost to the 55 years since this album dropped. Without that emotional pull, there’s just less “substance” to the album for me.

That leaves two other qualities to pick up some weight, being his vocals & the instrumentation. They’re both pretty good here, but once again, it just didn’t quite get there for me. Stephen’s vocals are good, but while I know he’s not necessarily a belter, there’s never really anything super standout. Namely, I never felt like he was using his voice to get the most emotional pull out of the tracks, and more so just singing the way one would “logically” sing them. For an analogy, it’s like a gifted technical singer hitting all the right notes on an Aretha Franklin track, but without that deeper, truly personal touch.

For the instrumentation itself, I’d argue much of the same thing – at a technical level, it’s wonderfully done, with a huge variety of instrumentation & some genuine star-studded appeal here. Jimi Hendrix rips a fucking stellar guitar solo on “Old Times Good Times”, as does Eric Clapton on “Go Back Home”. Hell, he got Ringo Starr on drums on a pair of tracks here, and he does a pretty good job. I think my thing with the instrumentation is that it’s kinda compensating for the “lesser” lyricism & vocal work. The problem is, at least to my brain, I think it ended up overcompensating. A little too much flashiness feels present here, and it creates a disconnect for me. I liked a lot of these tracks, but I felt like I was just enjoying them because they sounded good & did everything technically right, as opposed to genuinely feeling engaged with the tracks themselves, and entering that sort of “zen state” like I have with CSNY albums & with Stephen Stills himself on “Manassas”.

That’s not to say there weren’t tracks I engaged with, because there definitely were. Hell, I really did enjoy a lot of the album, regardless of feeling that deeper sense of connection or not, because at the most technical level, it’s still a very enjoyable listen. It’s just some intangible things about my own personal tastes that built up over the course of the runtime stopping me from giving it a full 5 on a first pass, but I’d still recommend it regardless. If you like CSNY-adjacent stuff, it’s certainly going to scratch an itch. It’s a good 38 minutes, but for whatever reason, I never felt like it took the next step that would make me go “yep, this is a 5”. It probably will someday, though, hence a 4.5 barely bumped down to a 4.

I’m at a 4.

Just a better version of Lam Toro, really. My big issues with that album were that it was too long, and that the sense of progression got completely lost by track 7 and beyond, with each track hitting a stale point way too fast, making the whole thing feel like an exercise in enduring repetition. Good soundscapes, but not very compelling listens.

This album remedies that to a nicer degree; even though each track here is about 6:02 long on average (if you’re only doing the original 8 tracks like I did), they don’t hit that stale point early enough for it to be a bigger deal. Yes, there’s still repetition abound in this thing, and mileage may ultimately vary on how much you can endure the first minute or two of each track, which sets up the foundation that gets layered upon every time, but for my tastes, it’s a less bothersome repetition than what was present on Lam Toro. It also helps that a lot more of these tracks have a better overall structure, cutting out some of (but not all) of the “fat” that got left in. There’s not as many moments of tracks looping at a specific point for 2-3 minutes at a time, and the vocals have a much more constant presence, giving each track a good sense of progression. Overall, I enjoyed this one a lot more, just because it’s paced much better.

That said, I’m still only at a 4 because, for the most part, this album never quite evoked a bigger sense of imagery for me. On other primarily instrumental albums, I can feel the vibe a soundscape is going for, and get sort of whisked away by my brain, connecting to the music in a deeper fashion. This album only got there maybe two or three times, which isn’t bad for 8 tracks, but the other 5 or 6 times literally evoked nothing from me. They’re good listens, but they are basically just wallpaper to the brain. If this album did a little more with its sound design, perhaps I could’ve entered that state more, but the music speaks for itself well enough. It just didn’t quite speak to *me* like that. It’s a good one though, and it clicked nicely for me. Still just a 4, ending a streak of 5s for me, but a solid 4 regardless. I wouldn’t blame anyone if they went for a 3 or lower, though.

I’m at an easy 5.

Not too much to say from me, other than a bit of anger that I chose to listen to “All Eyez On Me” when I was younger because it was the one that had “California Love” on it. I should’ve listened to this one, after giving it a full listen for the first time, it may very well be 2pac’s magnum opus, as some people say. Not a single miss here, with the only real minor complaint I have being the runtime. 65 minutes is a little long here, and that’s enough to make even 2pac’s flows & structures start to feel a little stale, in part because it does start to circle the bases just a little bit on subject matter after “Dear Mama”. Trust me, I see the irony of saying that it gets stale when “All Eyez On Me” is literally twice as long, but I haven’t heard that album in full in years, and I'd be probably REALLY worn out by it nowadays.

I’m too pressed for time to go super deep into this album, so I do have to keep this shorter, but I have two mandatory bits of praise. 2pac’s rap flow has a melodic tone to it that very few people of this era could match – it’s all in the timing & inflection that he raps with, as even his voice reaches kind of a crescendo at the climax on a lot of verses, structuring them in a way that feels like an R&B track, leading into the chorus in a way that feels super satisfying. It helps that, much like Jay-Z, his voice just feels made for rap, and his lyricism throughout this album only enhances it. There are bars upon bars upon bars on this thing, and I can fully understand why Kendrick would quite literally still go to war for the guy, like he did against Drake.

West Coast production in the ‘90s is a fucking dream, man. This might have some of the tightest beats of the whole decade. At the very least, it feels like a rather early pinnacle to the Chronic / Doggystyle / G-Funk era, before production advanced further & further going into the latter half of the 1990s. 2pac flows on these, no matter what tempo, but the variety of styles in the production work is what gives the album the variety it needs. The only reason that the 65 minute runtime isn’t a bigger thing for me is because, despite the subject matter starting to loop on itself, each beat feels fresh, and gives the tracks their own shelf life without it really affecting the enjoyment of the album. It really is a ridiculous stretch through the first 8 tracks though (9 if you count the intro). I really wish Kendrick would hop on something like “Young N****z”.

As a whole though, just a banger of an album. “Dear Mama” is very obviously THE highlight, but each track brings something to the table. 2pac may have never been more prescient in his life than the constant presence of paranoia & self-fulfilling prophecies that’s in the lyrics throughout this album. He did, however, channel that paranoia into more of a celebration of existence, tinged with the newfound knowledge after the attempt on his life that it’s all indeed that fragile, while pleading with the streets to stay smart. It gives the album a more intimate sense of depth than “All Eyez On Me”, which was perhaps a bit too sharpened by the desire for "revenge via living" borne out of his own prison experience, and a little too heavy on the party / gangsta side of things.

I’m still just mad at myself for not spinning this one years ago, and I’m mad at myself for really only knowing 2pac by “All Eyez On Me” (still a great but very long album!) and some of his bigger singles. It’s as good as advertised, and if only one 2pac album could make the list, I’m glad it was this one. A very easy 5 for me, held back from being a 10 only by everything after "Dear Mama" not hitting quite as hard.

I might need to go spin "The 7 Day Theory" now.

I’m at a 5.

The elephant in the room is of course the lack of a very audible bassline, but ignoring that (seemingly as the mixing process did), I’m just fucking annoyed at myself for not digging deeper into heavy metal & hard rock years ago. Metallica’s self-titled album proved it to me, every band & album within the genre we’ve gotten before & since has proven it to me (save for “Apocalypse Dudes”, which again, deserves a re-listen on my part), and this album has once again, really reaffirmed it.

I’ve really got nothing major to complain about – I was just jamming out for 65 minutes, and I love the more political leaning bend this album takes. Everyone in the band deserves their credit, even Jason Newsted, despite his quite literally inaudible contributions to this album. Quite frankly, it’s a miracle this album is as good as it is despite a truly baffling mixing job at times. It’s not the same “commercially appealing” vibe as the self-titled is, but it’s a vibe I fuck with regardless. This is Metallica doing more of a prog rock approach on a number of tracks, letting the instrumentation set the tone even more than the lyrics & vocals already do, and showcasing it with some incredible fucking solos across the board, from a guitar & percussive standpoint.

It’s just a kick-ass album, man. I fucking loved it; someone else can write the 700-word track by track breakdown & history lesson about this one, because it does deserve that type of breakdown. I’m just gonna listen to it again and rock the fuck out, because I think the music speaks for itself. A very easy 5 for me. If it had a bassline, I might be entering 10 territory, but c’est la vie.

I’m at a 5.

It’s our first Jay-Z album on the list, but also our last. Outside of maybe The Black Album or Reasonable Doubt, you probably couldn’t pick a better one than this. I haven’t heard this album in full in a while, and unlike a lot of the other albums that I have some level of familiarity with on the list, I basically forgot everything here, save for the hooks & choruses on the really famous stuff. Thankfully, I was very quickly reminded why I had every track from this album in my big playlist to begin with; this album just fucking rules, man.

Unfortunate release dates aside, this thing is the perfect blend of the Biggie/2pac era of production & the chipmunk soul that would come to define Roc-a-Fella records throughout the mid 2000s, including some guy called “Kanye West” who happens to have produced a few tracks here. Modern insanity aside from the man (total fucking dickhead), I’ve always said I like the version of the guy from 2004, and an even younger, hungrier one is present here, and he does have some of the best beats on the entire album. “Heart of the City (Ain't No Love)” is the shining example to me; I fucking love that sample flip. That said, Just Blaze is the star of the show beat-wise here, and Jay fucking flows on all of these tracks regardless of who made them.

It’s extremely easy to just sit back & zone out whenever Jay-Z is rapping, because the tone of his voice & all of the minor inflections that he does to give extra emphasis on each line just add a lot to each track. I know, it’s just the way his voice is, but that means the man was literally born to rap. If you get that type of voice, you gotta do it. Zoning out on these tracks though means you’re missing out on a world of wordplay, interpolations, flips & pop culture references – Jay-Z’s style here is, unironically, The Blueprint for the more soulful direction rap would take in the mid-2000s, while still retaining & blending in the swagger & braggadocious lifestyles of the 90s. There’s not THAT many specific bars or witty one-liners, ala modern day Instagram captions or a banger Kendrick lyric, but Jay’s style lends itself to smarter lines, layering them onto each other, in an effort to paint a picture. It’s a style I like, and it’s a style that Jay himself would refine later down the line, to keep up with the contemporaries who bit & expanded upon his style.

I’ve genuinely got no complaints – great production, great flows, great lyrics, and if nothing else, this album delivered us both Eminem’s first verse on “Renegade” & kickstarted the beef with Nas that would eventually lead to “Ether”. Jury’s out on if giving us Kanye West was a good thing in the super long run, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t pay off for about 10 years. Sure, it’s a little long at an hour, but when it’s that entertaining, is the runtime really that big of a deal? I really enjoyed it, and I’m very glad it’s here to give me an excuse to give it a re-listen. A pretty easy 5.

It’s a 10.

When we got Adele’s “21” over a year ago, I said that it might’ve been the album that defined the sounds of the 2010s. That’s partially true, but “Thinkin Bout You”, by itself, rewired the entire landscape. It’s the sound of hip-hop & R&B in the 2010s coming into light, in real time. Sure, Carly Rae Jepsen and Adele and Justin Bieber & whoever else set the tone for pop music of the decade pretty quickly, but this is the blueprint, right here. This became the mold to follow. Everyone hopped into it, old & new alike. It’s the catalyst for the whole decade, and its effects are still felt well into 2025, with a lot of moodier modern pop standards adopting Frank Ocean’s more intimate & vulnerable tone that he takes on the latter stage of this album & fully explores on “Blond”. It’s a consequence of this album taking off into the stratosphere, and for better or worse, I think it really has inspired a generation.

Someone else will be able to write the words that I can’t, but this is a truly formative album for me. I don’t remember when it fully hit my radar, but I want to say it was around 2016 or 2017. With each consecutive listen that I gave this thing years ago, I just kept uncovering more & more. Everything from the Stevie Wonder-esque “Sweet Life”, to the slow smooth groove on “Super Rich Kids” (very grateful for the “Real Love” interpolation, by the way), to my first instruction to longer tracks on “Pyramids”, to the undeniable catchiness of “Lost” (took me YEARS & a Breaking Bad watch to get the proper meaning), & the perfect 1-2-3 punch of “Bad Religion”, “Pink Matter” (my introduction to Andre 3000 & subsequently OutKast), and “Forrest Gump” as effectively the final tracks of the album… god, it’s just so so good.

I burnt out on this album for a while, so this is the first full listen I’ve given to it in years. Coming back to it with a lot of the wisdom I didn’t have opens the album up even more, and even on this listen, I found myself catching little subtleties that my brain just glossed over. The writing is a bit dated to 2012, but even then, I can’t really find any faults in it. It’s much more aligned to societal complaints & gripes as opposed to Frank Ocean’s more soul-baring stuff, but that’s partially why I prefer this to “Blond”. It's also because this just aligns a little more with my pop-influenced brain. They’re both great, great albums though.

I know, I know – this album’s success & all the artists it inspired has opened up a Pandora’s Box of sorts, and if you want to blame Frank Ocean for a sea of mediocrity that may have emerged from the people who were inspired by this album (but without the talent to match it), then go ahead. Does he deserve it, though? Absolutely not. It is not Frank Ocean’s fault that the people inspired by him, for the most part, couldn’t quite capture the same magic. It’s why people still want him back; hell, it’s why I still want him back. I know the circumstances surrounding another Frank Ocean album make it kind of unlikely, but if it ever does happen… everyone’s ready & waiting, and I do mean everyone. As far as “channel ORANGE” goes though, it’s very obviously a 10 to my ears. It’s a formative album to my musical tastes & sensibilities, and probably one of the most impactful records I can think of in my lifetime.

Pretty damn easy 5.

Juvenile as hell & a bit suspect lyrically for some dudes in their 40s, over-produced to high heaven & dated like a motherfucker to 1989, with Steven Tyler belting like there’s no tomorrow & the band playing with an energy that’s beyond reminiscent of Bon Jovi’s “Slippery When Wet”. It is yet another encapsulation of 1980s hard rock, and it’s just a style that I am an unabashed complete sucker for. Don’t get me wrong; I see the haters, I understand the haters, and I honestly kind of get where it’s coming from. With that said, I could give less of a shit about any of their entirely valid complaints. I am a simple man with a simple rule for 80s hard rock, which is “just rock the fuck out and let me enjoy it”.

They rocked the fuck out, and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a LOT, really. Give me some power guitar, some loud drums, & Steven Tyler belting to some totally fine lyrics on a decent variety of styles, no matter how vaguely one-note it ends up feeling, and you’ve got a successful formula for an album. This is, ironically, my first full Aerosmith album. The extent of my Aerosmith knowledge is probably like most people’s: “Sweet Emotion”, “Dream On”, “Walk This Way”, & the eternally cheesy classic “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”. None of those are on this album, so I truly had no point of reference, but I’m very glad I didn’t come into this with an expectation. 3 of those 4 tracks are the slower, more ballad-y ones, and in the case of “Walk This Way”, it’s much closer to the Thin Lizzy school of 70s rock. They’re all very different from what this album goes for, which is just pure 80s hard rock, flaws & all.

I hit a complete zen state with this one, so as far as the individual tracks go, I don’t really have much to say. The bigger ones on this album (mainly the singles & especially “Janie’s Got a Gun”) lived up to their acclaim, but this thing is just peppered with high-energy stuff throughout, a lot of which is well written when it’s not horny as hell. Even when it is horny as hell, it’s so over-the-top cheesy that I can’t in all seriousness really think that a 41-year-old Steven Tyler actually wants “young lust”, or that he’s actually “masturbating with a noose” on Voodoo Medicine Man. I really wish I could touch more on a lot of these tracks, but I was extremely locked in on the vocal progressions (killer when he hits the one syllable at a time thing), the drum fills & guitar solos. Obviously, my brain caught the lyrics, but they’re secondary here to the energy everyone brings.

For my first full Aerosmith album, I think this was pretty damn good. Obviously, I’m biased, but again, it’s a style that works for me. I know “Toys in the Attic” is the one with the classics, and I’ll be ready whenever we get that one, but I’m glad to get something from their comeback phase in here as a primer. Pretty easy 5 for me.

I’m at a 5.

This is the second time we’ve gotten Nick Cave, and while I liked “Henry’s Dream”, my big thing with that album was just a big disconnect between the bombast of the instrumentation & the rather plain storytelling that accompanied some of the tracks. This album remedies that in the best way possible, giving the same sort of storytelling tone as “John Finn’s Wife” did, but expanded out for most of the runtime here. That creates a much more satisfying top to bottom album, powered not only by the strength of its lyricism, but pulling out much more measured & intentional vocal performances that fit each track. Special shoutouts to both PJ Harvey & Kylie Minogue, who absolutely kill it on their features.

Obviously, all of these tracks (save for the last one, kind of) are based on titular “murder ballads”. If you hate death (or every track having a similar subject matter), you’re not gonna like this album, and if you like death, you might really like this one (especially on “O’Malley’s Bar”). For my money’s worth, I think these are pretty well written & they’re certainly well performed. Yes, some of them are a little cheesy, and a few of them are a little awkward (namely “Lovely Creature” & “The Kindness of Strangers”), but I never once found myself bored throughout the 59 minute runtime of this album, which is a pretty good sign.

Part of that is from how many tracks still manage to infuse a lot of humor, despite the morbid tones present throughout this thing. “The Curse of Millhaven” & “O’Malley’s Bar” fit the bill for me here, with the former acting as a sort of 7-minute Irish drinking song about the biggest menace in the most cursed town in the world, and the latter acting as Nick Cave doing his best impression of a deranged Batman villain, killing without a care in the world & monologuing while doing it, in one of the most entertaining 14-minute tracks I’ve ever heard. I’d also be remiss to not acknowledge Nick Cave dropping so many “motherfuckers” in the span of 5 minutes on “Stagger Lee” that you could say he’s doing a Limp Bizkit impression a few years early.

All in all, I just think it’s a damn good album; lots of fun variety throughout, and captivating enough storytelling (despite some repetitive themes) that it made a whole hour fly by pretty quickly. It’s not gonna be for everyone, but if your ear is more attuned to the cinematic tones this album reaches for, it should click well enough to at least give this a 4. For my ears, it’s a pretty easy 5.

I’m at a 4.5 that I’ll bump up to a 5.

Lots of bias from me on this one, unabashedly so, and yet I don’t care one bit. I have a soft spot for a lot of this album, and while I don’t think it’s as good as FutureSex/LoveSounds (rather criminally not on the list), I still like it regardless. There’s a couple of misses for me, namely “(And She Said) Take Me Now” & “Right For Me”, but beyond those, the other 11 tracks here are just guilty pleasures of mine, and I won’t take any slander.

Obviously, it’s nowhere near perfect, and in terms of albums with this general style… yeah, I’ve heard better from the list. This is tremendously dated to 2002, and Justin Timberlake’s name recognition & star power coming off of both the breakup of N*SYNC & his breakup with Britney Spears is partially why this album was as big as it was. It’s largely known as the one with “Cry Me A River” & “Rock Your Body”, and I’d be a fool to not acknowledge they’re the two biggest tracks for a reason. “Rock Your Body” in particular might have the best 35 seconds of Justin Timberlake’s entire career; the buildup to the bridge of that track, and the bridge itself, will forever live in my brain. I will genuinely rewind that part so, so many times because it’s just perfect to my ears.

As far as the rest of the tracks I like go, “Senorita” is a banger, and “Like I Love You” just scratches my brain really nicely with the opening guitar & Justin’s vocals gliding throughout. “(Oh No) What You Got” is good; a little long though, and it does stagnate about halfway in. “Take It From Here” is largely similar, but Justin’s vocals do a much better job of filling out the last half of that track. “Nothin’ Else” is deeply underrated to my ears; one of my favorites on the entire album, giving huge Stevie Wonder vibes. “Last Night” is just catchy to my ears, with a kind of Persona-esque vibe that’s right down my alley. “Still On My Brain” is cheesy as hell, but it reminds me a lot of the Mariah Carey-esque power ballads of the mid-90s (down to the stock explosion in the bridge), so I’m just a sucker for it. “Let’s Take a Ride” is legitimately a banger and I won’t hear otherwise; something about the vocal structure of that track just has a really nice groove to me. “Never Again” is a Brian McKnight track (quite literally), and Justin’s vocals ride the piano in a way that pulls out the same emotion as “Back at One” does. If you know, you know.

All the credit in the world to Pharrell Williams & Hugo, as this album would be nowhere close to what it is without their production work taking center stage for a lot of the album. Yes, Timbaland is here on a few tracks, and his stuff is fine, but it sounds more like he’s trying to copy Pharrell’s homework instead of bringing his own philosophy, and it makes his tracks feel less compelling. That’s no fault on Timbaland though; he just wasn’t the primary producer here. He redeemed himself big time for FutureSex/LoveSounds.

All in all, I understand why this has a 2.68 on the site; it’s not Justin’s best work, it’s dated by 23 years, it could’ve been trimmed down a bit from the 63 minute runtime, it’s cheesy as hell, and a lot of the emotional pull here entirely depends on a relationship between two pop stars that you may or may not give a shit about. However, for my Michael Jackson-influenced pop brain, this is a guilty pleasure album of mine. Obviously, the flaws are a bit more apparent on a re-listen years later with a more critical ear, but when I was in the groove with the tracks that I already like, I was just having a good time, and you can’t take that away from me. It’s a 4.5 that I’ll bump up to a 5, and it was probably always going to be that for me. If someone else wants to give this a 3, I wouldn’t blame them one bit. I think it might be a little bit of a stretch to go for a 2, though, and a 1 just tells me you were never gonna like the album to begin with.

I’m at a 10.

I knew this one had acclaim going in, and I’m very glad that it lived up to it. It’s much easier to feel this album in the moment, while your ears are just encapsulated by it & while the brain is conjuring up the imagery to match. In this case, it’s one of those albums where I got so deeply encapsulated that I’m having trouble finding the words to write down. There’s broad strokes flying around my head; “stellar lyrics”, “his vocals pull incredible emotion out of them”, “instrumentation & sound design that always fits the mood”, “perfectly captures a feeling my brain hasn’t gone to since Radiohead’s Kid A”, “did these guys steal the Beatles’ talents on ‘I’m The Man Who Loves You’ like they were the Monstars”, and so on. I guess I’ll touch on those a bit.

Vocally, it did feel dry at first, but the intentions revealed by the end of “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” made the monotony of that track suddenly feel brilliant, and from that point onward, I was all in on Jeff Tweedy’s style. It’s subdued yet authoritative, for the most part, but when he needs to break out for the sake of the track, he meets the moment really nicely. I think the instrumentation & sound design do deserve as much credit as they’ll get here – I absolutely love the way each track sounds, & I can’t say I ever had a dull moment with the instrumentation, save for the last minute or so of “Reservations”. The moments where everything feels like it’s falling apart on a few tracks do a great job of mirroring the mental state of each track’s protagonist (is it the same guy throughout?), but even in this album’s happier & brighter moments, the instrumentation never really misses a beat. I’m fully convinced they stole a track from the cutting room floor of Sgt. Pepper’s for “I’m The Man Who Loves You”.

As far as the Kid A comparison goes (which, by the way, also a 10 in retrospect), perhaps it’s a bit of a stretch, but this does feel a lot like a Radiohead album to me, at least in the way it’s structured & performed. I’m obviously not the first person to point this out & I won’t be the last. It did capture some type of vibe though, one that became far more apparent to me by “Radio Cure”. It’s like capturing a panic attack in slow motion, with all of the insecurities & self-doubt brought to the forefront. Sometimes, people say their brain is thinking at 100 miles an hour, so what if you just caught that on a camera & tried to actually view it? Kid A does a similar thing, but it takes the approach of sonic therapy in an effort to heal, whereas this one feels like introspection, swaddled in clothing that feels like toxic disdain for yourself, never quite resolving that inner turmoil.

The lyrics do deserve a bit of love for enhancing that vibe; for tracks like these, I’m very much the type of person who follows along, reads them in the moment, and just treats it like a sort of live karaoke, to try and get a sense of how my brain would feel saying them. It’s a hit & miss approach, but in this case, it just worked perfectly. This is an album that I might define as poetry, but not in the curmudgeonly Bob Dylan sense where it’s far too wordy. It’s poetry in the style of a Maya Angelou, where the rhymes & verbiage are simple, but the imagery they evoke says far beyond the words themselves. Much in the same way that a poet can enter a zen state while reading their words aloud, I think I entered a zen state while reading along. I wish I could bottle up that sort of zen state, when it just feels like you’re in sync with the music, so I could more properly describe it, but I haven’t been able to do it for these moments on the last 545 albums, and I don’t think I’ll have an epiphany for the 546th.

All in all, I just really, really enjoyed this. I haven’t been avoiding it for years, I’ve just never had a drive to listen to it until now, and I’m obviously a moron for not biting the bullet earlier. It’s one of those albums where I’m just glad I started doing this “project” to begin with. Fantastic stuff here, and a seminal album of 2001. Probably the whole decade, really. It’s a 10.

I’m at a 4.5 that I’ll bump up to a 5.

A rather long 361 days since the last time we got a Kraftwerk album, but that’s a break that feels well-needed. It’s also the last Kraftwerk album on the list for us, so it feels good to end on something that finally feels a bit closer to the Daft Punk-y style of electronica my brain expected when we first got “Trans-Europe Express” as our 12th album. I still need to give that a re-listen, because I was probably too harsh on it.

Gone is the imagery of winding landscapes & European transportation, swapped in for the science fiction worlds that most electronica of this era was usually pointing at. It’s rewarded pretty immediately; the first 4 tracks of this album kick ass, acting as some of the more danceable stuff Kraftwerk had put out to this point, with synth-driven grooves that do a good job of foreshadowing what video game soundtracks would eventually be in the not-too-distant future. A lot of the first 4 tracks immediately bring to mind weaker soundchips, ala a Commodore 64 or a ZX Spectrum, but tracks 3 & 4 in particular just sound exactly like SEGA Genesis tracks to me. “Metropolis”, in particular, is fantastic – the highlight of the whole album for me.

It does start to fall down a little bit over halfway through “Neon Lights” for me, as I think the sense of repetition in the lead synth melody just got a little strong to my ears & it made the track feel a bit stale, starting around the 5:30 mark. It’s still a good 9 minutes though. The same sort of applies to “The Man-Machine”, though I can’t tell if that’s just residue from the back half of “Neon Lights” wearing me down. As a closer, it never really hooked me in, and it doesn’t feel like a super satisfying ending to the rather rich world that gets established on the first 4 tracks.

All of that said, this is a pretty damn good Kraftwerk album, and you can feel the direct lines from this sort of electronica to the French house madness of Daft Punk starting to take form here, especially with the vocoded voices present throughout the album. I don’t think it’s as consistently satisfying to me as “Autobahn” was, but in terms of getting what I finally was expecting / wanting from Kraftwerk, this is thankfully scratching an itch in history that my brain is grateful for. It’s more compelling on a first pass than “Trans-Europe Express” was to my ears, at least. The last 7 or so minutes of the album falling short for me is a little lame, but it’s not that big of a deal to bump this down to a 4. It’s a breezy 28 minutes, and if you’re not as bothered by the sense of repetition, it’ll be a breezy 36 minutes. All in all, it’s a 4.5 that I feel good about bumping up to a 5.

I’m at a 3.5 that I’ll bump down to a 3, though I really wish I didn’t have to. The album forced my hand, though.

I liked 6 of the 8 tracks here, honestly. “Dance Indra” is ultimately just fine; totally nice listen, but rather plain. I respect Ananda Shankar’s mission statement on the cover of this album, and for the most part, his goal to combine Western music, “modern” electronic devices, & Indian music through the sitar, which his dad arguably made palatable & famous to American audiences, is really successful here. The first 5 tracks of this album, including the covers of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” & “Light My Fire”, alongside the banger that is “Metamorphosis”, are a great listen, and “Raghupati” brings back the energy at the end. All in all, those 6 tracks would probably be at a 4.5 for me, one that I might be compelled to round up, since “Dance Indra” isn’t even bad to me.

It is all brought down to hell by Track 6, “Sagar (The Ocean)”, which isn’t even necessarily that bad of a track, but is so painfully, utterly boring that it screeches the momentum of the first 5 tracks to a grinding, 13-minute halt that feels like listening to a deflated balloon in slow motion. I truly love the way it starts, and the opening 2 minutes of it show incredible potential. I just didn’t get any sense of musical progression out of it, at least not for the first… god, 7:40-ish of that track? If you’ve gone 7:40 without any audible progression to the ear, then you haven’t made wallpaper music, you’ve made blackout music. The lights have gone out, the crowd is confused, and you can’t see the sheet music in front of you, so you just stick to the most basic tones & riffs imaginable until the lights start to come back on. The lights do go back on in that track, but they come in so late (like, the 10:20 mark of a 13-minute track??), that the vibe is already dead at this performance. I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that this is the single-most album-stopping track there has been on a single one of the 544 albums we’ve gotten to so far, at least to my ears.

Am I overreacting because I got bored? Yeah, maybe. Is it possible that I just didn’t enter an intended zen state & the track just felt like it droned on because of it? Yeah, that’s definitely possible, but after the energy of the first 5 tracks, my brain wasn’t prepared to go into that vibe. Was there more to the track that my ears simply didn’t pick up on? Possibly, but it did feel like algorithmically generated sitar tones over a droning synth loop for 7 minutes, so if there was more in that first portion, I wasn’t very compelled to listen for it. Hell, if it only knocked down the album by a point to my ears, was it really THAT bad? I guess not, but it was just that fucking stale to me that I don’t think I can give this album a bump up to a 4. So, despite my rather regretful 3, I do highly recommend this album. Just skip “Sagar (The Ocean)” and you’ll get a really competent 27 minutes of great sitar work mixed with Western instrumentation that probably earns at least a 4, if not a 5, especially if it just clicks that nicely for you. It did for me, but… damn, that track is a momentum killer.

I’m at a 5.

I’ve had a pretty healthy respect for Arctic Monkeys for a while, and I think I might’ve read about this side project from Alex Turner once on a Wikipedia dive, but I’ve never listened to it until now. Of course, calling this an Alex Turner side project sort of undermines how much of a group effort this truly is, so some big kudos to Miles Kane, James Ford & Zach Dawes.

With that said… yeah, this is an Alex Turner side project. It is not another Arctic Monkeys album, instead opting for a more cinematic feel, inspired by stuff like James Bond soundtracks, golden age Hollywood (the strings are SO good on this album) & spaghetti westerns of the 60s, blended with some of the indie rock sensibilities of Arctic Monkeys (& everyone else within that general style) to create a really cool set of tracks that feel really captivating, even without the lyrics or vocals to go with them.

It is a blessing that the lyrics & vocals match their quality – in essence, this is a much, MUCH better version of “16 Lovers Lane” by the Go-Betweens, which our group got about 6 days ago. All of these tracks tackle the same ideas of breakups, manipulation, peer pressure, and more, but this album underlines them all with a true sense of lost connection & lost love, written with such earnesty that they all feel plausible, real, and more emotionally fruitful. That added sense of relatability ultimately gives a lot more for Alex Turner to work with vocally, and he knocks it out of the park. There’s a really strong flexibility to his voice, and while it’s explored a bit more on “AM” (which is CRIMINALLY not on this list), the earliest showcases of it are here, gliding through angrier & softer tones in a way that pulls the proper sense of emotion out of each track here.

If you’re not a fan of Arctic Monkeys or other bands with a similar style, this album will probably not hit like that. I loved this style though, and I really, really enjoyed this album – it’s a breezy 35 minutes that feels perfectly paced. If anything, I’m kicking myself for reading about this on Wikipedia years ago & not bothering to give it a listen, because this is right down my alley. One of the better albums from the back half of the 2000s that we’ve gotten so far, and a very easy 5 for me. Great stuff.