Reviews by ohlessergod

Holy bleh. At points I tried to say to myself that there was merit in her voice, but after awhile it became clear she just sounds like she is belting the same high notes over and over. This was not for me at all. Too showtune-y.

Ah the teen pop days of the Beatles. Before the LSD and Hari Krishna meditation. The boring but catchy Beatles that are obsessed with young romance. A Hard Day's Night is a great album, but I do prefer the psychedelic Beatles more. This feels like the standard early 60's earworms they would play at the sock hop. It's fine. Sounds like a car show your dad takes you to when you're 7 and your parents are divorced and he thinks standing around staring at car engines in the heat is fun for you but really you're just listening to the music that is already old as shit anyway. Anybody else get that vibe from this album? No? Just me? Anyway, it's got some real bangers and a few that I can't say I've ever heard or ever care to hear again. After the 5th song about unrequited young love or how much that love makes you happy, the message runs stale. We get it. Thanks for the catchy tune.

I try to find one song from every album that stands out as the reason the album made the list. I have no idea what song that would be on this album. We're any of these hits in 2006? Did music die in 2006? I can't say I'm a fan of Christina but I know her hits and I was disappointed to not recognize having heard any of these songs. It's almost like this album just appeared on Earth today.

Anyway, I didn't find anything here worth ever listening to again. Some of the hip hop beats were decent on the first disc, but I can't help feeling like Christina's entire repertoire has existed as a rip off of music created by black artists. C'est la vie though when that has been the case for a very long time. White artists exploit and steal the sounds created by black artists.

What if Christina had collabed with Throbbing Gristle? Wouldn't that have been something?

And if anyone knows where I can hear a song Christina sang about oral sex which was supposedly drunkenly recorded for this album and titled "Fuck You, Suck You," I would love to hear that so I can add that song to my playlist as the standout track from this album.

I'm not sure if Throbbing Gristle had ever been on my radar as a band I needed to listen to. The name is familiar as is Genesis P-Orridge, but I had only ever heard single songs if anything and never took the time to listen to an entire album. I am glad I finally did. I love music that pushes the boundaries of music. I may also be a bit contrarian when it comes to music sometimes as I get off on music that makes other people upset or hate it and I often despise the mainstream popular music. Don't get me wrong, I like the hits too, but I really like when people hate something so much and I hear it and think "hey, that wasn't that bad!" That is this album. An obvious "fuck you" to anyone who thinks "music" has to have structure and melody. In my opinion, Donald Trump could record an album of his nightly farts during his second presidency and that may completely change my extremely low opinion of him as a president into a very high opinion of him as a trolling avant garde artist who, thank God, was just fucking with us his entire life. "Farting on Melania in My Gold Plated 4-Post Bed in Mar-A-Lago next to a banker's box of sensitive documents @ 3:14 AM 4/16/25" would have to be played at my funeral. I would eat that shit up. One can dream, right? This is all a joke, right?

Back to Throbbing Gristle. As others have mentioned, this album evokes a mood. I am not sure exactly what that mood is or was meant to be, but it ain't happy. It's the existential dread of life mixed with life's surreal underbelly. Why are we here? Why do we make and listen to these sounds? Do they have meaning or do they exist as a random assortment of noises that someone took the time to record? And how does one find meaning amid the meaninglessness of it all? Throbbing Gristle knows this isn't Top 40 material. They know it is bottom 40 material, but they are sending it out into the universe to ask us to challenge our perception of what "music" is. To be contrarian in a world of yeasayers. I appreciate that. It gets my blood flowing and melts a little bit of the plaque and microplastics in my brain.

Would any of the songs on this album go on a playlist containing my favorite songs that I would want to hear again? Absolutely not. Can you sing along to Hamburger Lady or Hit By a Rock? You can try if you want to. Did this album evoke more emotion from me than Christina Aguilera's Back to Basics? Yes. And what was that elicited emotion exactly? I am not sure, but I felt something listening to this and I am of the thought that feeling something even if it is painful or depressing is much better than feeling nothing at all.

So, as you listen to this, ask yourself what it makes you feel. A lot of music is just someone trying to make a buck by trying to make you happy. Throbbing Gristle said fuck that. We will make no money to make you depressed. Your happiness is not our concern, if you want to be happy listen to Van Morrison or Raffi, but if you want to think and feel something completely different, give us a try.

I don't think I have ever come across Scritti Politti before and if I had I likely would have immediately written it off as some weird 80's boy band of sorts. And maybe that was my initial feeling but then I found comfort in how it both sounded like it was from the 80s and modern at the same time, how it sounded like it was a boy band but also a band emulating and subverting the sounds of a boy band. At times I found it to be a little funny because it sounded so corny. But that is exactly why I also enjoyed the entire album. It's so cheesy at times it feels like an SNL skit. And there is a weird discordance in the music too. Like something is off. Like it wants to be catchy so bad, but it can't, but the lack of catchiness in itself becomes catchy? I both liked this and laughed at this, but in laughing at it I liked it more.

Meh. I'm starting to think I only like Mr. Cooper's hits. "No More Mr. Nice Guy" is truly the only standout track musically. Lyrically, I appreciate a lot of the subversive themes, but I feel like I'm supposed to laugh at the subversion and I can't find the actual humor. Trust me, I'd be the first to laugh at a song about necrophilia or sexual harassment. It doesn't work that well for me here. Maybe it's a little too subdued for me and I prefer a more in-your-face approach. And maybe that's what this was at the time, but now it feels relatively tame.

I think I let out an audible groan the morning I got this album. Who wants to sit through their commute listening to ABBA? And I have to say as I was driving home still listening to this album, I became of fan of ABBA that day. First I never noticed (or paid much attention) to the fact that ABBA is always in all caps until I typed this. Lo and behold, it is an acronym of all the letters of the members first names. It is also a fish canning company in Sweden, but don't worry, they asked permission to use the name first. Anyway, this album by ABBA has all the hits you know and love. Who can deny a straight man a good singalong to "Dancing Queen" and "Fernando?" And what a fun little ditty to be found in "Dum Dum Diddle." I may not be selling it, but this album isn't as terrible as I expected and dare I say I had fun listening to it? Do I want to listen to it again right now? No. But did I find myself pleasantly surprised - yes. Relax a little. Throw on some ABBA (not to be confused with the fish cannery) and let your cares and worries disappear.

I wondered why I hadn't listened to much of the OG Beck. And this is why. Not sure what exactly I didn't like. Too blues rocky. I didn't even really care much for the Shapes of Things revamp (my favorite version is by The Allman Joys mostly because I think I heard their version first). And on top of all that I am not a fan of Rod Stewart and, even though he isn't prominently featured, it's not doing this album any favors. Reading about "Beck's Bolero" makes it sound like it was the first heavy metal song ever written, but I didn't see the appeal.

Not my favorite album by The Smiths. The lyrics are still moody and sexual but they're often paired with a more upbeat sound that creates a bipolar discordance I wasn't enjoying. May need more continuous listens to get the bigger picture.

I was really hoping the song "Turd on the Run" would change my opinion of this album as a whole, but they even managed to fuck that one up for me. I don't know what it means that the only song I liked was "Soul Survivor." I felt it had drifted away from the rest of the stolen R&B sound of the album back into the moodier rock sound that I enjoy from the Stones. Having heard the title Exile on Main Street before, I knew this album was iconic. It just isn't for me. The blues ain't my thing, man.

A near perfect album. I only didn't care much for the title track which I find interesting."On any other Day" is maybe the most interesting song by The Police...

Not entirely my style of rock, but interesting to listen to nonetheless. I liked a few songs here and there but it all kind of blurs together.

Such an activist themed album from a surf rock band. I like the one about taking care of your feet.

This is not an album I think I ever would have listened to without this generator. When I started the first song I worried I was in for a whole album of showtune-esque songs that I would begrudgingly have to sit through. And while I felt most songs did have a show tune aesthetic to them mostly because of Ute Lemper's voice (Ute actually did star in musicals), they are so dark and moody and strange enough for me to disregard that feeling. They also oddly feel as though they are covers of songs the artists featured on them would have already released. The song Nick Cave is featured on sounds like a Nick Cave song. The Elvis Costello song exudes Elvis Costello while being sung by Ute. The Tom Waits song sounds like Tom sung it to Ute first and then she spun it into her own. The music is very well orchestrated and while sometimes also feeling a bit showtune-esque, it comes as no surprise that the backing band was The Divine Comedy who I have not had a chance to dive into their entire discography but based on the one album I know and enjoy (Bang Goes the Knighthood) they too seem to lean heavily into a musical sound without being too annoying about it. I can't stand musicals unless they are dark and bizarre and this album feels like it could have soundtracked one of the darkest most bizarre musicals.

Sorry, the blues just ain't my thing. The title track with Santana was pretty interesting and some of the grooves in other songs were good, but I am just not into the blues.

I can't say every song on this album gets me going as much as Candle in the wind, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and buh-buh-Bennie and the Jets, but on this listen I did discover some of the forgotten tracks that were obviously overshadowed by those hits. Grey Seal is fun and Jamaica Jerk-Off may be the only time Elton John tested the Reggae waters. Not sure what The Ballad of Danny Bailey is about but the tune was good. I can't wait to sing Dirty Little Girl to my twin daughters in the bath. Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting is another one of the hits. Overall a lot of good stuff here with just a few songs that didn't make my cut.

Never listened to this whole album. The first handful of songs didn't do much for me but maybe they warmed me up for the rest of the album because starting with God Save the Queen it gets good. Johnny Rotten's vocal delivery sounds just like a pissed off 21 year old Brit should sound and the rest of the band sound pissed off at their instruments. It verges on being humorous at times despite the underlying anger present - punk rock in a nutshell and maybe one of the earliest instances of this type of sound. Yes, a lot of bands came after this with a similar sound that owe a tremendous debt to the Sex Pistols for paving the way.

I ended up enjoying every song on this album. I had no idea this was from the early 80s. I always thought it came out sometime near the year 2000, but never expected it to have been from 1982! It sounds like an album from the 90's emulating the sound of the 80's! Despite 1999 and Little Red Corvette, the rest of the album maintains the sex and romance and quirk. As I mentioned the sound feels like both a fresh take on the 80's sound while also transcending it despite it's creation before most of the 80's sound really took off. This album must have been a trendsetter for that sound and it is obvious.

I need to go back and listen to this one. With it not being available on Spotify or Amazon Music, I had to listen to it on YouTube which is always an annoying experience. What I listened to was very unique and I definitely think I want to explore it further.

Some good stuff here like Stir It Up and High Tide or Low Tide but it was a little too much of a laid back reggae sound for me. I prefer more upbeat reggae. I'd have to be in a particular mood for this slower stuff.