Reviews by therealab

The Temptations are like a less flashy/funky Sly and the Family Stone. Just as goofy though. Papa Was A Rollin' Stone is awesome though. This isn't awful, but across the history of R&B/Soul there are much better albums. The Temptations probably deserve credit for the barely singing bass member, I'm looking at you Boyz II Men. They really spelled it with a z. The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face is for a woman to sing. Something doesn't sit right when a man, no matter how falsetto his voice, sings it.

This is like country Sheryl Crow....or country Aimee Mann? That's not a knock, it feels like a female Dwight Yoakum. Very much like Aimee Mann. This is a good album, not something I'd come back to multiple times, but I wouldn't complain if it was playing. Joy is the low point on the album. Jackson is a good song to close out the album though.

I've been distracted, but this is his best album. I'm going to say, there aren't as many recognizable hits as some of his other albums, but I like this one the best so far. He's like good Billy Joel.

She has a lovely voice. I don't love the "traditional" folk songs, they all sound like updated takes on Greensleeves. I like her take on House of the Rising Sun but the Animals are still the definitive version. There's something both innocent and knowing about her delivery. I Know You Rider is the best song on the album. It's good, not great, but better than Joni Mitchell. She loves using the phrase "deep salt sea".

I don't love the shift to electronica. This does not hold up to The Bends. You And Whose Army? is the most melancholy song calling someone out I've ever heard. I also like it the best of the songs so far. Radiohead is like what Coldplay would sound like if they were sad and experimental. I love the line in Lego Movie 2 when 1980-Something Space Guy Benny says he finally gets Radiohead in Everything's Not Awesome. I Might Be Wrong has a Link Wray feel about the guitar riff. I wonder if these guys watched Lost Highway and this song came out of it. Knives Out feels more like "classic" Radiohead. So far, every song from You And What Army forward is more like the Radiohead I love. They're losing me again, rewins noise or moth flapping near a microphone noise in Like Spinning Plates is annoying. Ok, Like Spinning Plates is a jam. Too many space noises on this album. Life in a Glasshouse works somehow, it's like Radiohead's take on a jazz funeral.

Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding is like a cross between an 80s sci-fi death scene and Meatloaf. I bet Meatloaf loved Elton John. Eleven minutes is too long for an opening track. Candle In the Wind...the most famous song ever about a horny teenager. This song loses something when you know that later he'd remake the lyrics for Princess Diana. One a meditation on nostalgia and the images we carry with us from our youth....the other either a treacly attempt to express sorrow for a rich and powerful woman who never had a really hard day in her life or else a treacly cash crab and cynical injection of himself into a famous death. Bennie and The Jets is one of my least favorite Elton John songs but it was turned into the awesome Tribe Called Quest (featuring Busta Rhymes) song Solid Wall of Sound. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road on the other hand is one of my favorites. All of Elton's songs have a cinematic quality to them. Maybe that credit should go to Bernie Taupin. It's a double album! And all the hits were on the first side of the first disc.....it's going to be a long day. British musicians love Jamaican music. I've Seen That Movie Too is a good song. The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909-1934) is like the lyrics to early Bob Dylan with the music of a carnival. I'm not sure if this is the spiritual center or the pop music floor of glam rock. Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting) would have been the theme song for college football coverage if it had been released in 1994. It's catchy and the best song since the hits from the first side. The chirping birds on Social Disease are really distracting. His hits are hits but everything else is just "Generic Elton John" song. I'm surprised he didn't write a musical, his music is like one step short of it already.

Leading with the hit. This has to be one of the most played songs of all time. People love Imagine. I always thought of John Lennon as a pretentious jerk who wrecked the Beatles...I'm reconsidering. I don't love this album, but I like it significantly more than I thought I would. He's a great song writer, there's no denying that. This is definitely better than the Wings album on this list. I love Oh Yoko! It's a great song and it's great in Rushmore.

Four songs, one hour and six minutes. This isn't bad in the sense that it isn't just a melange of noise and found sound, but it feels li9ke background music. This is like the music from the "Romantic Classics" CD series sold on late night TV. The sporadic shouting while he's playing easy listening music is great. There's nothing unpleasant about this, it's just hard to imagine how far up your own ass you have to be to suggest this album belongs on this list. It's just Keith Jarrett and a piano for over an hour. After learning a little more about Keith Jarrett, he sounds like a real peach. I cannot imagine going to a concert where the performer is actively discouraging any crowd noise, including coughing, while he moans his way through his music.

The lyrics are nonsensical. This is another album I'm liking far more than I thought I would when I started it. I don't love Bruce Dickinson's voice but it's a damn sight better than the growling, screaming and unintelligible vocal noises other metal bands pass off as "singing". Run to the Hills is the hit, maybe their biggest hit on any album.

Accidentally closed my browser with my full review written. Not doing it again, can't. He hates America, He made an incel song. The whole thing is way too long. I don't get how so many kids were into this guy. That might be my cut and paste review for all of his solo work from now on. Maybe I should be writing these out of the browser and then copy/pasting into the browser because this happens way too often.

I Saw the Light...the big hit off a double album. I wonder what makes bands think double albums are a good idea. I Saw the Light is the big hit and it's the first song...this is going to be a long listen. This is vastly superior to the other album he had on the list though. I might actually like Todd Rundgren? Nevermind, Todd Rundgren sucks. And his stupid Intro seven tracks in is really dumb. Wow, this just keeps getting worse. Little Red Lights is one of the least cool songs about a car ever and there is some serious competition for that dishonor. The little interlude of a studio session is better than most of the album. My god, it gets worse as it goes on. If this was two sides, it would be at least one side higher...the second two sides would still be one lower so maybe the system works? Piss Aaron makes me realize that this is like a combination of Chicago and Harry Nilsson, but it is definitely worse than the sum of its parts. Hello It's Me doesn't have that many listens on Spotify but it's definitely the song I'm most familiar with other than I Saw the Light.

I just don't get Pink Floyd. This is better than Piper at the Gates of Dawn, but I can't say much more about it. Maybe it has to be played at the same time as a supercut of Thundercats like the guys across the hall from me in college used to play at parties. Those were some weird cats. Time is probably my favorite song from the album, definitely the best so far. Money is one of the most overrated songs on one of the most overrated albums of all time. Brain Damage was good as well. Maybe it isn't "the most overrated album of all time" after all.

I like this better than the last Sonic Youth album I had. It is a double album though so we'll see if that feeling holds up across over an hour of "noise rock". If you asked me what "post-punk" meant, I would say this album. Sonic Youth is the 90s Velvet Underground. There are a lot of long songs on this album. Noise rock is right. I just got a flash of their collaboration with Cypress Hill on the Judgement Night soundtrack, I Love You Mary Jane. I guess I like this better than most Pixies albums? There's a lot of this era of music on this list for the amount of popular appeal it had. I can't tell if I like the more punk songs more or less.

The world music selections are not my favorites. This is no different. Ladysmith Black Mambazo did the African singing over 80s African music best. Daande Lenol sounds like the music behind a montage of an African scientist and a white scientist working in the lab tirelessly to discover the cure to the epidemic that started as something they saw in one boy in a village and is now threatening to wipeout humanity. Hamady Boiro has a similar feel to Caught Stealing by Jane's Addiction. Everything sounds like Graceland. This is so foreign as to be boring because it all sounds the same.

I love the Black Keys. I'm going to try to be unbiased, but with the first notes of Everlasting Light, I know this is a five star album. Every song is good, Next Girl, Tighten Up, Howlin' for You...they're all awesome. The drums from Howlin' for You remind me of Rock and Roll, Part 2 by Gary Glitter. Sinister Kid is one of my favorite songs, not just from the Black Keys. A sinister kid/Is a kid who/Runs to meet his maker/A drop dead sprint from the day he's born/Straight into his maker's arms/And that's me, that's me/The boy with the broken halo/And that's me, that's me/The Devil won't let me be is a great chorus. It's stupid but I also love the album cover. Great band, great album.

I like this better than the other Kinks albums on the list, but maybe that's only because it's the last one. Harry Rag feels like the kind of song you'd write to disguise chasing tail...turns out it's about cigarettes. I definitely come down on the side of blues rock vs. psychedelic rock. Lazy Old Sun is the worst song so far...but I don't want to say it's the worst on the album yet...still four songs to go.

This is fine. I like the Hammond B3 in it. Nope. This is just not my jam. The screechy saxophone solo on Minawa is hard for my untrained ear to distinguish from someone who just picked up the instrument. This is a long album of what basically amounts to one long song. Parts of this album feel like a Bitches Brew knock off. Nomali is my favorite song from this album. Ends with the worst song on the album.

More techno?!? I honestly feel like there is usually too much Classic Rock on these types of lists. I'm now realizing that I'd trade half the albums I've heard so far for some more Classic Rock. It's over an hour long and the first full length song has some dialogue from something, this is hitting all the buttons. I know what Nicholas Britell was listening to when he composed the score for Andor, especially the dance/Club sequences. Telephasic Workshop was the stand in music for Niamos. Among terrible long techno albums on this list, this one seems worse. The random numbers on Aquarius are annoying. It is impossible to tell the difference between these tracks. Yes, someone is trying to censor a virtually wordless collection of near random electronic noises and found sound. Almost over and they hit you with an 8 minute song. Seagull noises, terrific.

I love Amy Winehouse. This is right in my wheelhouse. Amy Winehouse, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu...all of them making music at the same time, a great time for women in R&B. Know You Now is a great song. I know Fuck Me Pumps is the hit, but I don't understand why, it's the weakest song on the album so far. I mean, I get it. It has Fuck in the title and talks about a woman having sex but the lyrics are like what a 16 year old would write. I could do without all the split songs. Just make two or cut the coda. In My Bed is a jam. Help Yourself is probably my favorite Amy Winehouse song. I wish someone would get the rights situation sorted out so this could be streamed in the US. Amy, Amy, Amy is a fun song. Followed by a stupid Outro and two post-Outro songs for some dumb reason. I'm so glad streaming is killing the hidden track. Great album, underrated album.

Mother is a great opening song, in the running for best debut album first track. Hold On is good too...maybe I never gave John Lennon a fair shake. I think I love this album. I have liked every song on this album so far. I like this better than the Beatles. My Mummy's Dead is the first miss. Great album.