Reviews by therealab

This is an amazing album. This is what alternative music should be. Every song is good and some are great. It's impossible to pick the best song so many of them are good, the singles are good (Planet Telex, High and Dry, Fake Plastic Trees) the album cuts are good (The Bends, Black Star, Street Spirit (Fade Out)). A great album by a legendary band.

This album is the worst I've listened to so far. This is like a glam rock cover band.

Maybe the surprise album that I've listened to so far. The hits (Smack My Bitch Up, Breathe and Firestarter) still rock but there were a number of songs on the album I liked that I'd never heard before, Climbatize was especially good as was Diesel Power. This is the music you put on to finish a run or workout. For the most part everything works and works together to make a good album.

I started this album thinking it was going to be a 5 and nostalgia may be giving this album a star all by itself as the opening notes of Where the Streets Have No Name play. This album goes back-to-back-to-back with Where the Streets Have No Name, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and With or Without You....that's maybe the best three opening songs to an album ever. With or Without You is great, everything about it feels wistful, the bass line, the guitar, the lyrics. This album has a lot of good songs on it outside of the hits...it's sad to think what U2 has become now.

This whole album is meh. I like Scar Tissue but everything else just doesn't even register including the other hits (Californication, Around the World and Otherside). It's like if AI wrote a Red Hot Chili Peppers album. Plus, it's a double album which is hard to pull off. You better have everything pulled together because that is a lot of songs to have to get right.

Best Song: This Town
Hits: Our Lips Are Sealed, We Got The Beat
Worst Song: Skidmarks On My Heart
I'm not sure if I like this album or any less than Belinda Carlisle's solo work. Her voice is annoying and while Our Lips Are Sealed and This Town are not terrible, we Got the Beat is the album's big hit and it is horrible. It's mind boggling that this made the list. It feels more like they had to find a way to put in an "all-girl" rock band than this being a deserving entry. I also realized while listening to it that I like New Wave less than Psychedelic rock. Every backing track of every New Wave song sounds like every song on this album.

Earth, Wind and Fire are the quintessential pop-funk band and this album is a good example of that. The R&B-inspired songs, particularly That's the Way of the World, are the better part of the album but the jazz and world music inspired songs, while not as catchy are not a distraction.

Another surprising album. ELO seems so corny but I liked this album. The hits are there (Turn to Stone, Mr. Blue Sky), all of the songs hang together and there's very little to actively dislike.

I like some Pink Floyd songs, but I don't like Pink Floyd. This album is the perfect encapsulation of why. One great song (Wish You Were Here) surrounded by psychedelic noise.

It's hard to rate an album like this simply because the three big songs, What's Going On, Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) and Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) are GREAT, truly classic songs. But the other six tracks feel like they would have been part of the extended singles of those hits or filler.

I did not expect to like this album as much as I did. I am not usually a fan of early rock and roll. However, not only were there a number of great songs (led by Tutti Frutti of course) but the album felt like a composed whole. Little Richard has always been one of those artists that I never understood why he was so popular or why so many musicians considered him so influential. I understand a little better now.