Reviews by pops

I used to feel about Neil Young the way a lot of people feel about Bob Dylan - like his songs, hate his voice. He is growing on me now, although I still prefer Dolly Parton’s version of the title track (and not just because I’d put better odds on her surviving an apocalypse).

When I got Born to Run, I said it made me smile at my desk. This one makes me want to throw on a plaid shirt and take a moody walk to an abandoned factory - but in a good way.

Tainted Love and Say Hello, Wave Goodbye are such great tunes, and the rest is pleasantly sleazy.

I can understand why some fans would think of this as the real Chicago, rather than the soft rock hits, and there are some good tunes here, even if they are stretched out to breaking point. However, I’d take the cheesy charm of If You Leave Me Now over the torturous Free Form Guitar or never-ending Liberation any day of the week.

Pink Floyd are one of the big gaps in my “classic rock” knowledge, so I was intrigued to get this. Now I’ve heard Dark Side of the Moon, I like it, but it wasn’t quite the “where has this album been all my life?” revelation I thought it might be.

I can see why the live version of No Woman No Cry became the definitive one - that version is so warm and tender, the original is more “cheer up love, it might never happen”. There are some other great songs here though.

When this started, it seemed like the perfect soundtrack for a chilled Sunday morning (and a nice change after a run of albums by artists I already knew). But I must admit that towards the end, I started to get a bit bored with it.

This album may have been a victim of its own success - it spawned a lot of mediocre indie bands. Listening to it now though, I remember why so many people wanted to be the Strokes.

1960s girl groups are one of the casualties of a list that prioritises albums over singles, so I’m glad that’s there’s some Crystals/Ronettes representation. Also, Phil Spector’s maximalist approach works so well with Christmas songs.

This is such a great album by such a singular artist.

My dad loves Leonard Cohen (he wanted to name our dog after him until my mum vetoed it), and we listened to I’m Your Man a lot in the car when I was a kid. So maybe it’s genetic or maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome, but I adore this album. After a couple of pints, I could even try to mount an argument that the production is a deliberate artistic choice to add ironic distance and not just Cohen using the presets on a cheap keyboard and calling it a day.

It's a lot of fun with some great tunes, although the harder they try to sound cool and dangerous, the funnier they get. Is it just me or does the swearing on this sound weirdly self-conscious?

It’s admirable that they didn’t want to just make Rumours 2, but maybe they should have decided what to make instead before they spent over a million in 1970s money recording it. There are too many good songs for it to be a failure but it does sound a bit like a band with an identity crisis.

This probably made it on to the list for its historical significance. But surely only white blues purists/those people who insist Brian Jones was the real genius of the outfit/professional contrarians would argue this was the best Stones’ album?

I bought this album and was underwhelmed by it. Then I saw them live a couple of months later and it all clicked. (Seriously, Radiohead are incredible live.) However, if someone put forward an argument that if you’ve got Kid A on the list, you don’t need Amnesiac too, I’m not sure I’d have much of a rebuttal.

I was under the impression that Folklore and Evermore were the albums that made the music snobs go "I always thought Taylor Swift was a vacuous pop star, but now I know she's heard of The National, I guess it's ok to listen to her", but you lot are clearly a tougher crowd. Luckily, I've always been uncool enough to really like this album, with the caveat that I'm surprised it made the cut above Folklore.

Every time I hear Senorita, I think of a skit I saw pointing out that the intro sounds like Pharrell Williams is stalling for time because he's forgotten Justin Timberlake's name. Anyway, I think at the time this album benefited from being a lot better than anyone expected from that bloke out of NSYNC (see also Timberlake's acting career). When you include it on a list of 1001 Albums to Hear Before You Die though, that maybe raises those expectations too high for what is a decent but patchy pop album. Rock Your Body is still a banger though.

Tracey Thorn has such a great voice, but blimey, this is bland. Everything But the Girl were in their mid-20s when they made this album, but it all seems a bit self-consciously 'grown up'.

Audiences and critics in 1968 must have been really spoilt for classics if they felt they could give this album a miss. It’s a baroque psychedelic gem.

I liked this a lot - and in among the lurid gothic thing he’s doing is the rather lovely Straight To You.