Hearts & Numbers - Taylor Swift - Folklore

Folklore

by Taylor Swift

I was sitting in the garage during pandemic, listening to records and reviewing them for the Facebook group when this album dropped. 

What they hell have I been doing with my? Taylor Swift goes into a cabin and writes records. I hadn't picked up my guitar in years. 

So, it had me wondering what I actually thought of each of her records and, instead of reviewing the records I am just going to listen to them and rate the songs based on how they hit me. Do I like them? Do I want to add them to a playlist? Would I "love" the song enough to give it a heart on Apple Music?  And what number out of 100 would I ascribe them. 

So, that's what I'm going to do. Hearts & Numbers. 

Folklore

1. The 1:  95  ❤️
2. Cardigan: 100  ❤️
3. The Last Great American Dynasty 95 ❤️
4. Exile 100 ❤️
5. My Tears Ricochet 95 ❤️
6. Mirrorball 95 ❤️
7. Seven  95 
8. August 100 ❤️
9. This Is Me Trying 100 ❤️
10. Illicit Affairs 100 ❤️
11. Invisible String 90 ❤️
12. Mad Woman 85
13. Epiphany 95 
14. Betty 100 ❤️
15. Peace 90
16. Hoax 80
17. The Lakes 100 ❤️

5 out of 5

Grade A+

After listening to Folklore, and I mean really listening...this is a remarkable album. A pop folk confessional masterwork. 

1001 Albums Generator - The United States of America - The United States of America

Album 14

The United States of America (1968)

by The United States of America 

As an acting student in the Experimental Theater Wing of NYU I am shocked that I never heard this album before.

Discordant and angry, subversive and challenging and any other host of adjectival couplets I can think of. 

Members of this group would work on, of all things, Sesame Street. And when I think about it, it makes perfect sense. Sesame Street was sort of subversive. Targeting the poor and the underprivileged, Sesame aimed to educate and used the tool of the elites, advertising, to do just that. It worked. For a while. 

4.5 out of 5

The American Metaphysical Circus

Hard Coming Love

The Garden of Earthly Delights

Where is Yesterday

1001 Albums Generator - Cypress Hill - Cypress Hill

 Album 13

Cypress Hill (1991)

by Cypress Hill

There was a time when alternative and rap converge. Almost like each genre was giving cred to the other. Rap reviving rock and rock helping rap make inroads into the mainstream. 

I miss that. We are so siloed these days. 

Sometimes this sounds just like Beasties and that makes sense, contemporaries will contemporary.

4.25 out of 5

How I could Just Kill a Man

Hand on the Pump

Real Estate

1001 Albums Generator - Santana - Abraxas

 Album 12

Abraxas - 1970

by Santana

It opens like a jazz ensemble warming up and then seamlessly merges into the monster hit, "Black Magic Woman", which has always, I guess, been a jam song and THAT song crashes into Gypsy Queen and I want to be at the Hayden Planeterium for the Abraxas Experience. 

It does get a bit samey-same after a while but just as I wrote this, the vocals on Mother's Daughter came in to save us. To be honest, the Santana-penned tunes are the least interesting.

4.25 out of 5

Singing Winds, Crying Beasts

Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen

Oye Como Va

Reflecting Pool - Bruce Springsteen - Faithless

Reflecting Pool - Bruce Springsteen - Faithless

There once was a movie that never got made. I think it was going to be directed by Martin Scorcese. I can't remember and I am not reading my book again (right now that is).

They commissioned a soundtrack by Bruce Springsteen. He wrote one. For the movie that never got made. 

This year, as Bruce crosses the mid-70s rubicon, he put out Faithless as one of the 7 unreleased records from the 90s. 

It's dark. 

It's ploddingly hopeless. But I don't mean that as a pejorative. 

I find myself returning to this record more than any other in the Tracks II collection. 

And I am an atheist. 

It pines. It aches. I could have seen any of these songs ending up on a future Bruce record. 

I don't think these songs were supposed to sit front and center. I think many of them would either play in the background, like "God Sent You" or as part of a montage, "Goin' to California", or over the credits, which could be the title track or the opener, "Where You Goin', Where You From".

And yet, they evoke. And I like every bit of this record more than I do Devils & Dust.

Grade B+

A Side: Where You Goin', Where You From, Faithless, God Sent You

BlindSide: Let Me Ride

DownSide: 

1001 Albums Generator - Neil Young and Crazy Horse - Rust Never Sleeps

 Album 11

Rust Never Sleeps (1978)

by Neil Young and Crazy Horse

If punk was folk.

Every Friday our 7th grade English teacher would have us bring in poems and read to the class. I always chose something from The Portmanteau Book. One kid, David Gould, would read something by Neil Young. 

David was a stoner before getting stoned was a thing in our grade. Years later he would ask friends who went to The Who concert if The Whoo performed "Oooh, Wally." They laughed at him. "You mean, "Who Are You"? 

David died at age 53 about 7 years ago. We weren't friends. He's one of those kids who you just know and you are sad when you hear of his passing even though there's no relationship, per se. 

I never cared about Neil Young. Every Neil Young sounds the same to me.

This is fine. It's good in many places. 

I never need to listen to it again.

4.25 out of 5

My My Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)

Welfare Mothers

Hey Hey My My (Into the Black)

1001 Albums Generator - Korn - Follow the Leader

 Album 10

Follow the Leader (1998)

by Korn

I heard about Korn 30 years before I heard their music. 

I was driving a cab overnight in the sleepy, Meth infected desert town of California. The dispatcher was some girl, name unremembered. We talked about music because, fuck me, there were no rides. Except the nightly lab specimen and the one guy who hired me to take him to the bus station every morning so he could go to work.

"Have you heard of Korn?" She asked. And she wouldn't stop talking about them.

I talk about my location because I was about the same distance from Lancaster as Lancaster is to Los Angeles. So, they were local. 

I heard some of their music on MTV but I never listened all the way through. 

This is the soundtrack to Gen X depression. From the imagery on the covers to the music. It's all schism and chaos. It's primitive rage borne from soul wrenching. Inorganic but also purely meth capital desert bloomed. 

If you took a lot of Meth and forced Rage Against the Machine to listen to nothing but Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nine Inch Nails all day long, this is what you get. 

It's On

Freak On a Leash

Got the Life

Children of the Korn

1001 Albums Generator - Fleetwood Mac - Rumors

 Album 9

Rumors (1977)

by Fleetwood Mac

How many times have I listened to this? I am surprised that my original 1977 vinyl copy still has grooves, it's been played so much.

Obviously this belongs on this list. It plays like a Greatest Hits record because every song has been ubiquitous for the past ~50 years. And deservedly so. Immaculately produced this is an album from the sky. It's remarkable and rewards with every subsequent listen. 

5 out of 5

Second Hand News

Dreams

Don't Stop

Go Your Own Way

Songbird

The Chain

You Make Loving Fun

Gold Dust Woman

1001 Albums Generator - Kenya - Machito

 Album 8

Kenya (1957)

by Machito

I don't know if this is the first but it HAD to have been one of the most influential of it's kind because this sounds like every single television show from the 50s all the way through the 70s. 

And I mean that in the greatest way possible. 

4.25 out of 5

Wild Jungle

Congo Mulence

1001 Albums Generator - The Louvin Brothers - Tragic Songs of Life

Album 7

Tragic Songs of Life (1956)

by The Louvin Brothers

How does one even approach this record? It's a time capsule of a time, that shows that nothing really changes and the heart longs for what the heart always longs for. 

At the same time, it has been rendered parody over the past decades by the likes of O' Father, Where Art Thou and A Mighty Wind. 

It's very early, pre-rock country. And it's fine. But I don't know why it's in the top of this list. Fine does not equal greatness. 

3.25 out of 5

1001 Albums Generator - Funkadelic - One Nation Under a Groove

 Album 6

One Nation Under a Groove

by Funkadelic

For the most successful Funkadelic record it's weird that it's not available to stream, no?

My son loves James Brown and we were talking about soul and rock the other day and I was saying how incredible it is that Rock Music, invented by Black people, from Sister Rosetta Thorpe to Big Mama Thornton to Chuck Berry and all the way through Jimi Hendrix, is now considered a White Sound. The scene including the modern Black shredder in Sinners encapsulated that, in a movie about White people literally sucking the life out of an entire culture. 

So, I loved the fact that the biggest hit on this is "Who Says a Funk Band Can't Play Rock?!" and the lead guitar is as good as anything anyone from Hendrix to...I dunno...every white kid that wanted to BE Hendrix ever tried. 

Does it lose a little steam toward the end? Umm...yeah. But I think that's also by design. It's a record from the 70s. You are supposed to lose yourself in this thing, not sit and critically review it for some stupid blog. 

4.75 out of 5

One Nation Under a Groove

Groovallegience

Who Says a Funk Band Can't Play Rock?!

Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis

1001 Albums Generator - Yes - The Yes Album

 Album 5

The Yes Album

by Yes

In my high school there were not a few brown paper text book covers that were bedecked with renditions of the Yes logo. And, yes, it's a great logo. For some inexplicable reason the only Yes album I bought was Tormato. And I loved it. And I bought zero Yes albums after that. Didn't even indulge in the catalog. 

I was also stunned when my college roommate, who had such impeccable underground and cult tastes, and was responsible for my artistic awakening, turned out to be a Yes fan. 

So, here we go. Into the first Yes album that matters, apparently.

It's 1971. We are just 16 years removed from "Rock Around the Clock". That hurts my brain to think about. 13 years prior to "The Clap", Chuck Berry was invigorating the world with his expansion of Sister Rosetta Tharp. And here is Steve Howe blowing people's minds in a pub.

While listening to "Starship Troopers" I found myself thinking about Tom O'Horgan and Experimental Theater of the 70s. This suite would fit in perfectly into that world. 

Is "I've Seen All Good People" the proggiest folk song ever or the folkiest prog song? I can't tell. It still sounds fresh and interesting 55 years later. Well, maybe not fresh. But certainly interesting.

Do I get a little weary towards the end? Yes. "Perpetual Change" was the one that did me in. 

4 out of 5

Yours Is No Disgrace

The Clap

I've Seen All Good People

1001 Albums Generator - Eagles - Hotel California

 Album 4

Hotel California

by Eagles

I'm glad that this album was chosen because I have listened to it on a variety of systems over the years but the one thing I never did was plug headphones in and listened while I spun the vinyl. I've played it in my car and on a CD player but putting the remastered version on with high end noise cancelling headphones presented a new experience. One where each member of the band is able to breath on it's own. And that proves the reason this record is timeless and one for the ages. 

That said, it gets really sloggy in the middle. One mid-tempo beer fest raise your lighters track after another.

Boy is this thing front loaded...

3.75 out of 5

Hotel California

New Kid in Town

Life in the Fast Lane

1001 Albums Generator - Amy Winehouse - Frank

Album 3

Frank

by Amy Winehouse

In the early 00s this night club/60s soul revival exploded into our lives. Led by Amy Winehouse, there was Duffy, The Pipettes, Estelle, Adele, Lily Allen, Sharon Jones...it was everywhere. And when it popped up on a playlist or a blog or my radio, I always listened. But I never deep dived.

Amy's story is more well know to me than any of her albums in full. So, it's weird that I would start with Frank and not Back to Black. But, that's the order they came out and that's what 1001 albums generator demanded.

I rarely agree with Pitchfork but when they are Christgau are on the same page I listen to them. 

This is not an album I must hear before I die. It's a pastiche of retro ideas without actual songs. It's the artist that comes on around midnight in the bar, everyone's drunk and she just left working costumes backstage for her 99 seat theater company's production of a local playwright's reimagining of a popular comic strip.

Highlights:

Fuck Me Pumps

Amy Amy Amy

2 out of 5

1001 Albums Generator - Kate Bush - The Sensual World

 Album 2

The Sensual World

by Kate Bush

While I don't think I would ever reach for a Kate Bush record, I also don't think I've ever heard a bad Kate Bush record. And this one is no exception to that rule. 

But the sheer scope of songs like "Reaching Out" is inspiring.This is the culmination of everything the 80s became...in every good way.

Toward the end I got really tired of the wailing and there wasn't as much to hold on to as I would have liked. But Rocket's Tale pulled me out of that malaise and the monster "This Woman's Work" showed up like a siren and I could see Tori Amos and a million songwriters being born. 

Favorite Tracks

Love and Anger

Reaching Out

Heads We're Dancing

Rocket's Tale

This Woman's Work

1001 Albums Generator - DJ Shadow's Endtroducing...

 Album 1

Endtroducing...

DJ Shadow

It's obvious to me that The Kleptones and Girl Talk and others do not exist without this record. And I am not well versed enough in the genre to talk with ANY authority.

But this is eminently listenable and explosive. It builds on what I loved about Public Enemy (and they must be on this list somewhere) but this is not a political polemic. At least not obviously. This is to Hip Hop as Brian Eno was to Glam Rock. OF the genre but building on it and creating something new, yet familiar.

In the end I found myself losing interest. This could be because it is over an hour long, as most albums of the 90s were and, while none of it is filler, I just think that's about 15-20 minutes too long to sustain interest. It really doesn't matter the genre.

Favorite tracks:

The Number Song

Stem/Long Stem

Mutual Slump

Midnight in a Perfect World