Reviews by pops

For some reason, I was under the impression Fishbone were a Grateful Dead-esque jam band (I think I was getting them confused with Phish). As a result, this had a lot more tunes than I was expecting, although I found it a tad wearying over the course of a whole album.

It's a sign of how ubiquitous this album was in Britain in the 1990s that even though I didn't buy it, I still know every track - everywhere I went, someone was playing it. I felt like I owned it by osmosis. I never asked anyone to turn it off either, because while I'm not an Oasis die-hard, there are some great songs here. And Liam sings them like they make sense, which is no mean feat.

She Knows Me Too Well is creepy as hell - “I’m jealous and abusive but she understands that I only act like that because I love her so much.” Yikes. Other than that, this is a fun midpoint between the early singles and the more ambitious Pet Sounds.

“Four gentlemen and one great, great broad.” Everything about this album is so of its time, including the intro and art work, but at least no one was pretending that Janis Joplin wasn’t the star attraction.

When did we stop using "ball" to mean sex, and is it time to bring it back? Or do you have to be Marvin Gaye to make it work? As this album proves, he can make a lot of stuff that would sound cheesy or sleazy from lesser mortals sound pretty hot.

I didn't hate this but it feels a bit like what you would get if you asked AI to make you a country rock album. Even his accent sounds put-on (especially on Little Rock 'n' Roller, where it gets weirdly Jagger-ish).

Well, this was unexpectedly charming. Anything that lets me feel like I'm riding the range when I'm actually at my desk job gets my vote.

I don't know what I was expecting this to be, but definitely not whatever Cool in the Pool is - it actually made me laugh when it started. However, after a long run of albums by artists I already knew, it was fun to get something so completely new (to me) and off kilter.

I like this album a lot, and I don't think Damon Albarn always gets the credit he deserves for being one of Britain's best and most consistently adventurous songwriters. But if there's only room for one Gorillaz album on this list, this wouldn't have been my pick.

The music press did Courtney Love so dirty in the 1990s. This album holds up really well - it’s angry and grungy but it also has tunes.

I had People’s Instinctive Travels by A Tribe Called Quest yesterday, and this feels like it could be the missing link between Native Tongues and the g-funk gangsta rap that was coming. I liked it a lot.

It's so joyful and occasionally jazzy - and Q-Tip has got crazy prophylactics. What's not to love?

I have fond memories of my dad playing Eliminator in the car when I was a kid, but this is my first real exposure to 1970s ZZ Top. There's nothing here as flat-out fun as Gimme All Your Lovin' or Sharp Dressed Man, but as blues boogie rock goes, I liked this a lot.

Is not being able to finish a common side effect of Sex Packets? Don't get me wrong, a lot of this was good for me but remember fellas, it is possible to last too long.

I'd never heard this album before, but it sounds like something I would have liked in the 1990s, when I was going through a bit of a chill-out/trip-hop phase, and then not listened to in 20 years. Then it would have come up on the generator and I'd be like "Blimey, Nightmares on Wax is on this list? I can see why I was into it at the time, I'm just surprised someone considered it one of the best albums ever made."

Yesterday, I had Rid of Me by PJ Harvey, which was my formative teenage 'yeah, fuck the lot of you!' album. RATM was clearly that album for a lot of people around my age, so I completely understand the love for it in the reviews. For me though, while I was amped up for the first few tracks, it eventually got a bit wearying.

When this came out, I remember reading in the music press how scary and intense it was. However, as a 15-year-old girl in 1993, I found the unapologetic rawness so exhilarating. Even today, when I got to 50ft Queenie, 47-year-old me was lip syncing along while adopting a power stance in the living room. This was just such a formative album for me and I love it.

The Wikipedia entry says Elvis Costello changed producers for this one because he thought Nick Lowe wouldn’t let him experiment as much in the studio. I’m team Lowe - I liked a couple of songs but I prefer my Costello angular and punchy rather than baroque.

Although I really like a couple of The Pretenders’ singles, most of the songs I know by them are variations on a theme. So while I thought this album was patchy, I do appreciate that it was more varied and punky than I was expecting.

I’m more familiar with Billie Holiday’s earlier recordings, so hearing how much her voice had aged on this was poignant. Her singing is still expressive, but the arrangements and tempos are so similar, the songs kind of blend into each other.