Chez's 100 Albums Bucket List reviews

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Chez's 100 Albums Bucket List reviews, Done! Ranked list p11

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Popchartfreak View member profile	9th August 2020, 07:22 PM Post #121
BuzzJack Legend Joined: 18 July 2012 Posts: 22,833 User: 17,376	She was old-fashioned in the sense that she wore her heart on her soul sleeve, and the great voice reflected that. You can have the biggest range in the world and still have zero emotion, my fave singers have passion and emotion, not technical brilliance necessarily. Amy was all emotion and authenticity - and a real tragedy that she fulfilled the endless expectations of an early death that people in the media were grotesquely slavering over, given she clearly had mental and emotional problems and an addiction to alcohol and drugs. The album? Genuine classic. What she could have done in the future, though, we can only speculate, but I like to think she'd have delivered quallity.


Jade View member profile	9th August 2020, 10:31 PM Post #122
Alone and wounded Pronouns: She/her Joined: 18 January 2011 Posts: 60,176 User: 12,810	The movie 'Amy' that revolved around her life was a real eye-opener for me and made 'Back To Black' tougher than ever to listen to! My mum used to play it in the car a lot around the time the album first came out and I was instantly drawn to her voice (the opposite of you!) but I was definitely too young to appreciate the lyrical content at the time. But over the years I began to really love and understand the record more. We were truly robbed of more of her gift </3 'You Know I'm No Good' is definitely my favourite!


Chez Wombat View member profile	11th August 2020, 05:13 PM Post #123
The owls are not what they seem Pronouns: He/him Joined: 11 July 2009 Posts: 37,129 User: 9,232	You Know I'm No Good was another one I didn't really get at the time, but did appreciate much more in the context of the album again. Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP The third album for Eminem and like many of his, operating under the alter ego of Slim Shady. It was similar in content to his first few albums, but focused a lot more on his new-found fame including addressing his critics, his own rags to riches story and his...disputes to use a very light term with his existing family relations, sometimes using satire and various references to pop culture. It mainly incorporates the horrorcore and hardcore hip hop style. It was met with huge controversy with many politicians denouncing it's violent imagery, homophobia, misogyny and references to the Columbine High School Massacre and it's general transgressive nature. It was nonetheless very popular with critics and many people for it's daring tone and polished beats and has sold 25 million copies worldwide and even spawned a sequel in 2013. Whew, where do I start with this one? This is a difficult listen, very difficult. I actually had to take a break at one point as it was just so relentless in its explicitness and vulgarity. Eminem is many things, but you can never accuse him of holding back, because he doesn't at all here. I've listened to various gangsta rap albums on this list since this one and while they were controversial, they look clean and happy compared to this. The thing is nothing's off limits here, from the start of the album, Eminem's shouty and hardcore delivery completely ensnares you and you feel like he really is speaking right to you and trying to make you uncomfortable as possible, which I have no doubt was the intention, given how troll-ish he was in general. To be specific, he discusses matricide (Kill You), imitating the Columbine School Massacre killers (I'm Back) and ofc. satirising his deranged fans and formulating a new word with Stan, this is still a classic, an excellent use of a sample and a meaningful yet horrifying story, but listening to it uncensored does remind you of how horrifying it is! Although honestly, that's not as horrible as Kim, this brutal track features Eminem's mock-drunken abusive lyrics as he fights and abuses his girlfriend as their child sleeps before trapping, gagging and killing her, complete with sound effects of screaming to accompany it. It's truly horrifying and was just a bit too much even for me. That said, once you get past the shock value, there are some intelligent and hard hitting uses of satire here including a direct hit on people accusing him of being a bad influence like The Way I Am and Who Knew? and his flow is genuinely very good with some great production, he isn't just trying to troll, he feels a lot of these hard feelings genuinely and as tough as it is to listen to, he never loses your attention for any of the 75 minutes of the album. I'm conflicted with this one - it's a tough listen, don't get any mistakes about that, for the themes, blatant vulgarities (including a hell of a lot of homophobia and misogyny which is tough to look past even if it is a "persona" and not him himself) and general anger. This album predated social media, but it would still cause an outrage today and it's easily the most controversial, no holds barred record that he has put out so it would've been interesting to be around at the time to see the reaction. I do think ultimately it's an admirable record because of just how daring, audacious and well produced and lyrically powerful album it is, you need to look past a lot of things to appreciate it, and many won't be able to and I can understand that, but I do think it was an important record. I don't really have a desire to listen to it again just because of how difficult a listen it was, but I do respect it in a way. Tough one to score, but a middling one seems fair~ 7.5


Iz 🌟 View member profile	11th August 2020, 05:42 PM Post #124
I'm a paragon so don't perceive me Joined: 3 February 2011 Posts: 37,420 User: 12,929	That is the only Eminem album I've ever really listened to multiple times in full. It's really not a pleasant listen. Kim, Kill You, multiple other songs are just violent and show Eminem's toxicity - you can almost see how awful a person he is in his album titles, every other album is some 'Re...' word as though they represent the rallying cry of the "I've changed for real this time, I promise" destructive types - that is, when he's not acting the 'funny, hard man' that he is on the other half of his work. His personality is everything I hate in a person and it comes through quite starkly on here as he's just blowing up and starting to attack the celebrity culture of the time. That at least I can give him credit for. All that said, he is a fantastic rapper most of the time and the big songs on here, The Way I Am, Stan, Amityville, Drug Ballad, they sound really good. Marshall Mathers is one of the few tracks of his where I actually feel like he's doing some proper introspection and therefore one of the few times I'm able to feel sympathy for him. So yes, great music if uncomfortable at times (quite a lot of times!), trash person.


Popchartfreak View member profile	12th August 2020, 07:15 AM Post #125
BuzzJack Legend Joined: 18 July 2012 Posts: 22,833 User: 17,376	Never listened to an Eminem album. The issue I have with his persona is how it pushed those toxic values amongst the dumber parts of his male fanbase, to the extent they started seeing him and those values as a macho-crap redneck role model, instead of a cartoon parody. Stan was great, Dido made it palatable and it had a point to it. If I'm generous, he's retracted a lot of stuff in later years, Elton supported him, and I like his poppier amusing word-play stuff, but vitriolic bitterness is not a good look and not a useful role model for impressionable hormone-driven teenage boys.


PeteFromLeeds View member profile	12th August 2020, 08:23 PM Post #126
Buy yourself a car, and a house in Devon Joined: 6 May 2016 Posts: 23,892 User: 23,247	Yay ABBA, another one I have heard in full As you say so many tunes on there, I think 'Does Your Mother Know' is one of my favourites, it was one I hadn't heard at first but when I went through the album again (when I was about 11) it really stood out.


Chez Wombat View member profile	13th August 2020, 05:43 PM Post #127
The owls are not what they seem Pronouns: He/him Joined: 11 July 2009 Posts: 37,129 User: 9,232	Yeah, Eminem is a pretty awful person, you have to separate art from artist to really appreciate him. I don't buy the 'persona' argument. I'm sure he may have changed his homophobic/misogynistic stance over the years, but it's still the one pretty unforgivable element of the album. QUOTE(PeteFromLeeds @ Aug 12 2020, 09:23 PM) Yay ABBA, another one I have heard in full As you say so many tunes on there, I think 'Does Your Mother Know' is one of my favourites, it was one I hadn't heard at first but when I went through the album again (when I was about 11) it really stood out. Ooh have you not heard Arctic Monkeys' one? (although I guess you would've been quite young when it came out) I feel like that's very up your street anyway! Next one coming up!


Chez Wombat View member profile	13th August 2020, 06:13 PM Post #128
The owls are not what they seem Pronouns: He/him Joined: 11 July 2009 Posts: 37,129 User: 9,232	Guns N Roses - Appetite for Destruction The debut album for one of the premier bands of the 80s, Guns N Roses. Appetite for Destruction, released under the first and classic Guns N Roses line up preceding their many line-up changes, received little mainstream attention and it wasn't until after the success of the singles that it caught on and began to receive more attention, most of which remaining ubiquitous on classic rock radio to this day. They had a slightly tougher and more unconventional edge than other 80s 'hair metal' bands and that was perhaps why contemporary critics weren't as kind, but it nonetheless launched their superstar which they (kinda) continue to maintain to this day. I mean frankly anything would've sounded like a walk in the park after Eminem so this was frankly a nice bit of a comedown if anything! But on it's own merits, this is the kind of sex (literally, we'll get to that later), drugs and rock'n'roll in a similar style of AC/DC earlier in the countdown, but while I was slightly ambivalent towards that one, I actually preferred this one a lot more, there was a lot more variance in sound here and the guitar work throughout is pretty incredible and much more free-running, as well as that, the song structures sometimes changing tempo or key to sound like a completely different song midway and it's really effective, I suppose what can one expect from Slash. I do obvs already know the singles here, Paradise City is one I knew for years but could never put a name to it and it has a great repetitive yet still captivating structure that is very anthemic, Welcome to the Jungle is as good an introduction as any to the madness present on the album and Sweet Child O' Mine, though a tad overplayed, is still a great song with some wonderful solos. It actually serves as a rare tender and genuine moment on an album full of general debauchery and interspersed tales of Axl's upbringing (Out ta Get Me a pretty epic tale of policing in his hometown). My favourite of the album tracks is probably Rocket Queen, with two quite distinct halves with the first much more active and grunge-like with the second half taking more of a vocal power ballad approach. The most quirky fact I heard about this album was that Slash actually had sex with his girlfriend in a recording booth at the studio in order to get some genuine pornographic sounds, I missed them the first time but now I can't hear anything else. It suffers from the problem that most of these 80s metal albums suffer from, and that is the songs blend into each other a bit, and at 54 minutes, it's pretty overblown and could've easily been cut for size and lost none of the quality. But otherwise, it certainly feels the quintessential album for Guns N Roses, with lots of massive hooks and solos and Axl's crazy vocals providing the ideal backdrop for the head-banging madness that occurs. If you want to see what Guns N Roses were truly like in their glory days before all the controversies weighed them down, then this is all you need. 8.0


crazy chris View member profile	13th August 2020, 06:23 PM Post #129
BuzzJack Legend Joined: 7 March 2006 Posts: 22,001 User: 53	Abba Gold is obviously brilliant but More Abba Gold is very good too and you should all give that a listen. Obviously a mere fraction of the blockbuster's sales but well worth your attention. The brilliant Blancmange cover The Day Before You Came, I Do I Do I Do I Do I Do and Angel Eyes, which was the other double A side to Voulez Vouz and better imo and should have been on Gold too. The Marshall Mathers LP is Eminem's best album by far and his best-seller both in the UK and worldwide. Bit surprised you've not heard any of his albums Popchartfreak. I'm around your age and have all his CD's but don't like any other rap.


PeteFromLeeds View member profile	13th August 2020, 07:12 PM Post #130
Buy yourself a car, and a house in Devon Joined: 6 May 2016 Posts: 23,892 User: 23,247	QUOTE(Chez Wombat @ Aug 13 2020, 06:43 PM) Ooh have you not heard Arctic Monkeys' one? (although I guess you would've been quite young when it came out) I feel like that's very up your street anyway! I think most of the output I've heard from them (barring the singles) was from their second album! I'll make sure to give it a listen when I have the time though.


Popchartfreak View member profile	13th August 2020, 07:35 PM Post #131
BuzzJack Legend Joined: 18 July 2012 Posts: 22,833 User: 17,376	QUOTE(Crazy Chris @ Aug 13 2020, 07:23 PM) The Marshall Mathers LP is Eminem's best album by far and his best-seller both in the UK and worldwide. Bit surprised you've not heard any of his albums Popchartfreak. I'm around your age and have all his CD's but don't like any other rap. His ego always put me off investigating further, I'm afraid, but in any case I couldnt sit through a whole album of rap - some genres or acts sound great in small doses or Greatest Hits sets. Mind you I still don't play albums more than about 3 or 4 times at most, I cherry pick tracks cos I've always loved most of all collections of single tracks played when they are at their freshest. I'd say the record I've played most in 2020 is Watermelon Sugar, reckon I've played it close to 25 or 30 times, plus heard it on the radio 10 times or so. Guns N Roses, Sweet Child o mine is epic, and the band came in and immediately made all other US metal bands sound as dated as they were, it was like a clean sweep of the genre before Nirvana killed them all off. None of their other singles made anything like the same impression on me, though I did love (oddly) some of the later covers. So I never bought that album either.


Suedehead2 View member profile	13th August 2020, 07:45 PM Post #132
BuzzJack Legend Joined: 13 April 2007 Posts: 36,674 User: 3,272	QUOTE(Crazy Chris @ Aug 13 2020, 07:23 PM) Abba Gold is obviously brilliant but More Abba Gold is very good too and you should all give that a listen. Obviously a mere fraction of the blockbuster's sales but well worth your attention. The brilliant Blancmange cover The Day Before You Came, I Do I Do I Do I Do I Do and Angel Eyes, which was the other double A side to Voulez Vouz and better imo and should have been on Gold too. The Day Before You Came is an Abba song which was later brilliantly covered by Blancmange.


crazy chris View member profile	14th August 2020, 04:30 PM Post #133
BuzzJack Legend Joined: 7 March 2006 Posts: 22,001 User: 53	QUOTE(Suedehead2 @ Aug 13 2020, 08:45 PM) The Day Before You Came is an Abba song which was later brilliantly covered by Blancmange. Sorry got it the wrong way round. Of course it was.


Chez Wombat View member profile	14th August 2020, 05:51 PM Post #134
The owls are not what they seem Pronouns: He/him Joined: 11 July 2009 Posts: 37,129 User: 9,232	Kate Bush - Hounds of Love The fifth studio album from Kate Bush came at a crucial point in her career as her last album, The Dreaming, had sold poorly so for this album, she took some time out and escaped to the rural country that helped her in writing and visualising this album. Thus the album draws on many themes of nature, spirituality and going out of oneself, many of which are covered in the second half of the album - which turns into a seven song conceptual suite about a person who gets lost at sea at night. It was thankfully worth the risk as the album was a big critical and commercial success for Bush and is still regarded today as her greatest album with some of her most recognisable songs on there. I've been waiting to talk about this one, I'm a big fan of Kate Bush from the little I've heard of her, I love her unconventional approach to music and literary influences and it's an inspiring success story to more left-field artists like her, and was glad I finally got a chance to listen to an album from her, and I certainly wasn't disappointed by this magnificent piece of work. It's straight away a very confident piece of work that indicates she is fully in control, her voice sounds so crisp clear and the production and instrumentals are wonderfully eclectic and bonkers throughout giving the two a great harmony that allows both to shine. A good contrast is The Big Sky is an energetic and epic-scaled upbeat track going straight into Mother Stands for Comfort is a more tender and wistful moment with stripped back instruments that allow her voice to shine. These two and the first five songs of the album are great - the other three are still some of her most recognisable today - Running Up That Hill, Cloudbusting and the title track. The latter two I was more familiar with their remixes/covers than the original, but as great songs should, they both sound excellent, but it isn't until the second part of the album - the conceptual suite, The Ninth Wave - where the album truly turns into a stunningly creative and beautifully realised piece of work. It is built around a character getting lost at sea and spending a night in the water, having an out of body experience as her past, present and future catch up with her. Grim on the surface but beautiful in conception, it makes use of so many eclectic and unique song styles and additional samples to make something truly captivating. I could write so much about this as it's so rich for analysis and deeper meaning, but it's wayyy too long for this, so here's a great blog post about it that can go into much more depth probably better than I can. In a nutshell though, it is a musical journey through different sounds and moods, from the sad and moody beginning as she gets lost (And Dream of Sheep and Under the Ice) to the unsettlung use of chopped up soundbites to hallucinatory effect (Waking the Witch, Watching You Without Me) to the more frantic, desperate and upbeat (Jig of Life) and finally reaching it's emotional, Gregorian Chant sampling crescendo and calming as her body settles as she is rescued (Hello Earth and The Morning Fog). So yes, a pretty beautifully realised and extremely eclectic and creative foray into nature that definitely showed Kate at her most inspired. I'm somewhat surprised something as left-field and experimental as this did so well, but I suppose at the time, you knew what to expect from her. It's truly excellent, obvs being a nature and literature lover myself and I'm always interested by conceptual pieces of work anyway, I feel like we're on the same wavelength anyway so I was always gonna love this, but it's also so strikingly and massively produced that almost anyone can enjoy it and the creativity that went into the composition shows a real auteur at work and a true victory for letting the artist take control of her vision. I can't honestly say I can fault this at all, it had me utterly captivated throughout soooo .... 10


Jade View member profile	14th August 2020, 05:57 PM Post #135
Alone and wounded Pronouns: She/her Joined: 18 January 2011 Posts: 60,176 User: 12,810	Wow I'm familiar with the more classic songs from the album but I've never heard it in full, despite my mum being a big fan! Shall have to get around to it.


King Rollo View member profile	14th August 2020, 06:35 PM Post #136
BuzzJack Platinum Member Joined: 3 January 2017 Posts: 10,160 User: 23,961	I like many of Kate Bush's singles but I've never listened to any of her albums. I should really rectify this so I'll start with Hounds Of Love. It was only yesterday in Ireland that two women (one 17 years old and the other 23) were rescued after being lost at sea for 15 hours off the County Galway coast. They had been paddleboarding and got blown out to sea. They survived by clinging on to a lobster pot marker buoy.


dandy* View member profile	14th August 2020, 06:46 PM Post #137
Mansonette Joined: 7 March 2006 Posts: 35,311 User: 54	I really hoped you would love Hounds of Love. It’s definitely one of the very best albums ever made, it’s got the catchy and interestingly varied singles (which are all superb) and then the conceptual 9th Wave side which is more unusual yes still really rather breathtaking. Stunning album and delighted to see it receive that elusive 10!


Popchartfreak View member profile	14th August 2020, 07:07 PM Post #138
BuzzJack Legend Joined: 18 July 2012 Posts: 22,833 User: 17,376	a classic. Kate is unique, has been since day one. The album did so well due to the singles, Running Up That Hill was a masterpiece and she appeared in person on TOTP to promote, which was quite rare for her, Cloudbusting had that amazing video with Donald Sutherland, Hounds Of Love is just her best single, I adore it, and The Big Sky as a 4th single was enough to push anyone who hadnt already decided to try the album as good value with 4 hit singles...


Suedehead2 View member profile	14th August 2020, 09:52 PM Post #139
BuzzJack Legend Joined: 13 April 2007 Posts: 36,674 User: 3,272	Kate Bush always was a one-off. The Kick Inside is an extraordinary debut album by any standard, let alone by a singer-songwriter still in her teens. I assume the cover versions you refer to are the ones by Placebo and Futureheads. Covering a Kate Bush song has always seemed to be a very brave thing to do but I think the fact that these two bands pulled it off so well is very much a testament to the quality of the song. In the same way, there have been some outstanding cover versions of songs originally preformed by The Beatles and David Bowie. Hounds Of Love contains some of my favourite Kate Bush singles. Other favourites include Wuthering Heights (obviously), The Man With The Child In His Eyes (the follow-up which demonstrated beyond doubt that she wasn't a novelty act) and Experiment IV.


Chez Wombat View member profile	17th August 2020, 05:43 PM Post #140
The owls are not what they seem Pronouns: He/him Joined: 11 July 2009 Posts: 37,129 User: 9,232	QUOTE(Suedehead2 @ Aug 14 2020, 10:52 PM) Kate Bush always was a one-off. The Kick Inside is an extraordinary debut album by any standard, let alone by a singer-songwriter still in her teens. I assume the cover versions you refer to are the ones by Placebo and Futureheads. Covering a Kate Bush song has always seemed to be a very brave thing to do but I think the fact that these two bands pulled it off so well is very much a testament to the quality of the song. In the same way, there have been some outstanding cover versions of songs originally preformed by The Beatles and David Bowie. Hounds Of Love contains some of my favourite Kate Bush singles. Other favourites include Wuthering Heights (obviously), The Man With The Child In His Eyes (the follow-up which demonstrated beyond doubt that she wasn't a novelty act) and Experiment IV. I was referring to Futureheads' cover of Hounds of Love, but with Cloudbusting, I actually meant the remixes like the one by Just Us a few years ago. I didn't actually know about Placebo's, but yes I agree, trademarks of a great pop song that both on the cover and the original can stand alone as great songs. Writing up the next one now, glad to see the positive opinions for this *.