All Time Top 1100 Albums (Aerosmith - Big Ones) P265

The girl next door gave me this album to listen to, when I was 15. As she sunbathed in her back garden on a hot summers day, she asked over the fence if I enjoyed it and wanted to come over and I assumed listen to it again, as I thought it was shite and Madonna ugly I declined and went out to play football with my mates, being a very slow learner, I only had a WTF moment about 2 years later.
Ha ha, great story.
Music is like that, brings back some very personal memories.
I remember at the time of her arrival on the scene, she was often referred to as 'madogga'
A bit unfair I thought, she made the most of what she had, and has stood the test of time.
 
To introduce some quality control and pick albums that are widely considered to be great. There's loads of greatest album lists out there, why stick to one.
Fair enough, but I quite like the randomness of it all.
I actually enjoy the anticipation, not knowing what we might get next.
Quality control is subjective, and Mr hammer is aware of this, hence his random number generation system he's using.
Good answer though, fair play :-)
 
To introduce some quality control and pick albums that are widely considered to be great. There's loads of greatest album lists out there, why stick to one.

What might be a nice idea is to get a list of people who wish to regularly contribute to the thread and each of them submit their top 5 (or 10) albums with a rationale for their inclusion. They are then all put together and albums are chosen at random and scored.

That way you'd probably get a wider range of music and it would have the added bonus of most likely being finished before the world comes to an end (unlike the current list!!).
 
What might be a nice idea is to get a list of people who wish to regularly contribute to the thread and each of them submit their top 5 (or 10) albums with a rationale for their inclusion. They are then all put together and albums are chosen at random and scored.

That way you'd probably get a wider range of music and it would have the added bonus of most likely being finished before the world comes to an end (unlike the current list!!).
It'd be full of fucking Beatles man and we'd learn nothing - plus we have already done Bluemoon album rankings haven't we @BlueHammer85 ?
 
It'd be full of fucking Beatles man and we'd learn nothing - plus we have already done Bluemoon album rankings haven't we @BlueHammer85 ?
Wouldn't be any Beatles in mine ;-)

I thought it might bring up a wider range of music than the present one. I doubt more than 1 or 2 of mine (at most) will be on the current 1100 list that we are currently ploughing through.
 
Wouldn't be any Beatles in mine ;-)

I thought it might bring up a wider range of music than the present one. I doubt more than 1 or 2 of mine (at most) will be on the current 1100 list that we are currently ploughing through.
Fair enough - did you take part in BH's Top 100 albums (if that is what it was from memory)?

Think Stone Roses won out much to my bemusement...........

Edit: And fucking Morrissey finished high up from memory as well
 
Fair enough - did you take part in BH's Top 100 albums (if that is what it was from memory)?

Think Stone Roses won out much to my bemusement...........

Edit: And fucking Morrissey finished high up from memory as well
Don't think so (don't remember doing so anyway). I assume that an album would have had to be proposed by a number of people to make that list, so probably would have to be fairly mainstream/popular to make it.
 
I’ve been away for several days and am just catching up but here’s another I’ve not heard and will give it a spin at some point before our deadline — just a busy week!

However, again, please note this list is not “anyone’s” top 1000. It’s going to have a lot of utter shite, more than great stuff, because the list itself is so long and because . . .

“The list presented is the result of over 200,000 votes cast by the public in record shops, universities, schools and the French music trade show MIDEM – and ranked in order.”

Immediately one should note that the French are involved, which should be a very large red flag to those who like good music. But given the identity and breadth of the ballot-casters, every major selling artist of the last 50 years has nearly ALL their records on this list, whether they were any good or not. Very, very few lesser-known underground critics’ faves are in here. There are some “belters” but the list is missing I think about half of my own personal top 20 and I don’t think my taste is THAT out of whack with everyone else’s at all.

The majority of the list is second- and third-rate stuff by first-rate (in terms of popularity) artists. It is what it is. We haven’t gotten unlucky IMO — we have a random sample of the list which is representative of the quality of the list. For every Sonic Youth-type record, there’s more than one Lionel Richie-type record; for every Wire-type record, there’s more than one Backstreet Boys-type. If you think Madonna is bad, just you wait! That’s why the best album in terms of quality has held that spot for months, and may do for a long while longer.

I’m totally fine with that as I’m listening to stuff I’ve not heard, and as you may be able to tell I enjoy writing reviews, and the ones on music or artists I don’t care for are especially fun to write :).
 
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It’s no secret that Madonna is more PR than talent, except that her talent is PR, so therefore she actually does have colossal talent. Years of debate over whether or not her iconic status is deserved or not ultimately has to rest on her tunes and her lyrics though. Personally I think all that we’ll ever need is on The Immaculate Collection (circa 1990) save for the titanic “Ray of Light” — far and away her best song — and “Beautiful Stranger.” None of this is better than that, so the question is how close or far away is it?

This is a dance record fundamentally, which is good, but it starts far away. Did we really need yet another (but snakier) version of “Fever” with the lyrical melody copied but otherwise bearing no resemblance to the start/stop dynamics of the original (which is what made it iconic)? Answer: we did not.

“Deeper and Deeper” sounds like a Madonna song — and not a bad one at all — but I find her vocals covered up in mush on all of these opening songs as opposed to projected. She almost sounds like a back-up singer. I wish her vocals had been buried 25 feet under that mush on “Where Life Begins”, where she apparently begs for cunnilingus. Yet another opportunity for me to plug the brilliance of Liz Phair’s Exile In Guyville which has a far, far better tune on the subject of “where her love is.” Madonna’s song is neither sexy, nor clever, nor erotic, nor funny. That three and a half minutes turned me the opposite of on.

“Thief of Hearts” is yet another unsubtle set of lyrics, this time about some “woman” Madonna hates along with a strong “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM” vibe. Clearly if you piss off Madonna by trying to steal her man, she’ll — errrr — write a mediocre song about you, I guess? Chrissie Hynde or the members of L7 would just hit the “woman” over the head with a guitar.

So this is sounding pretty underwhelming, but suddenly, and unexpectedly, we find a return to the Madonna of old. “Words”, with the vocals finally mixed high as they should be, is the first and only song here that could make the next set of greatest hits in her pantheon, and has a few tricky turns of phrase I really liked and a great drive. “Rain” is not horrible either though I do prefer her sped up and not her at ballad pace, though it has the nicest harmonies on the record — quite lovely.

Anyhow, I think I agree that for Madonna this is a pretty odd mix of styles and reasonably mediocre on balance, save for one really strong one and a few tunes that could/should have been better but least knock out a groove for the Peloton (disclaimer: I do not own a Peloton). I do like the pacy drum runs scattered throughout enough to give it a generous 4/10 — by a fingernail.
 
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