Reviews by pops

So many bangers, it plays like a greatest hits. What a funky, filthy genius.

I love this melancholy album and there’s something so earthy and English about Linda Thompson’s voice. She’s the aural equivalent of a bracing winter walk.

One of those albums that’s not really up my street but I can completely understand why it was massive. Adele has an incredible voice and this is a solid set of songs. Also, fair play for making Lovesong by the Cure sound like a Bond theme.

I listened to this on a hot, sunny day when I was in a really good mood, and I liked it a lot. I have a sneaking suspicion though that if both the weather and I had been a bit more miserable, I might have gone to five stars for this.

I didn’t think I was going to like this. But I did - so much so, that I’m now wondering what I ever had against ELO.

I saw The Kinks in the early 1990s, and they didn't play Waterloo Sunset. If my parents hadn't paid (I was 14 and went with them), I would have demanded my money back. Although this album proves that they were knocking out classics at an impressive rate in the 1960s, that song is the jewel in their crown.

I saw The Bees at a festival around the mid 2000s, which is a good way to hear them. This works best as 'sitting in a field with your mates on a summer day' music, rather than 'giving it your full attention after being told it's one of the greatest albums of all time' music.

Forget Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, at times this sounded more like wasps trapped in a crisp packet. I kind of liked a couple of tracks (especially Exile), but the other two thirds of this really tested my patience.

This is even more of a banger than I remembered.

I don't feel like anyone really talks about The Young Rascals as a classic 1960s pop band, so I was surprised that this had a better killer to filler ratio than, say, the Mamas and the Papas' album I got the other week.

It's very wordy, sometimes to the detriment of the melodies, but Marlene on the Wall is a tune.

It's... fine. If it had been a single album, I might have gone to 'a pleasant but not that memorable' three stars but it had no business being this long.

The Boy With The Thorn In His Side and There Is a Light That Never Goes Out would get this five stars on their own.

My brother once tried to convince me that A-ha weren’t really Norwegian - it was just a marketing gimmick to make them seem more exotic. He should have told me the Fun Lovin’ Criminals were Brits pretending to be from New York instead, as I might have believed that. There are some fun tracks here, but it’s not just the Tarantino samples that make it feel like they cobbled their whole schtick together from gangster movies and lad mags.

So Young is right - as soon as this started, I was 15 again. (Side note - I’m impressed by how many albums on this list I first heard when one of my friends at school taped it for me. Maybe we were cooler than I realised at the time.) I may be letting the nostalgia sway me, but I think this really holds up.

A couple of all-time classics interspersed with nice but forgettable 1960s pop.

They really threw everything but the kitchen sink at this one - jazz, rap, ballads, and I suspect someone had been listening to Dexy's Midnight Runners too. I can see why it must have wrong-footed Jam fans at the time, but I'm realising that I like Paul Weller in (most) of his ever-changing moods.

I was a student in Britain in the late 1990s, so obviously I've danced to One to Another at a lot of indie discos, but beyond that, the Charlatans were never a band I could get that excited about. This hasn't really changed my mind - it's fine, I quite enjoyed it, but I'm unlikely to actively seek it out again. (It's also made me wonder if part of the reason I never fully embraced them is Tim Burgess' voice - it's like Liam Gallagher with twice the whine and half the conviction.)

I was fully ready to make a 'we've got Daft Punk at home' joke, but I actually really enjoyed this. So, I'll just have to save it in case there are any other dance acts pretending to be French on the list.

I liked Sister more than I expected, but EVOL feels like Sonic Youth are trying to be more melodic but don't really have the tunes yet.