To quote the great Aaron Lewis, lead singer of the band Staind, it’s been ahwhiiiile since I’ve done one of these.  Basically my excuse is that when you’re dealing with immensely successful pop albums, even the bad ones are usually kind of fun, and thusly still fun to write about.  This week’s album is pretty interesting, but not really that fun at all.  In fact, it’s an album that’s occasionally so unfun to listen to that I couldn’t even get through one of the songs on this album without feeling the urge to click the skip button.  However, I urge you to click the anti-skip button known as the “Continue Reading” button, and see what I have to say about The Marshall Mathers LP.

Album: The Marshall Mathers LP
Artist: Eminem
Release Date: May 23, 2000
Copies Sold In The U.S.: 12.3 Million Continue reading →

I made sure to write this post before we talked about Abbey Road on our upcoming podcast, since I didn’t want to be burned out on the album before having to write in-depth about it.  Especially considering it’s already hard enough to write about The Beatles without sounding tired or clichéd.  Or maybe it isn’t, since at this point it almost seems like rock critics have become afraid to write about The Beatles for fear of sounding tired or clichéd.

Album: Abbey Road
Artist: The Beatles
Release Date: September 26, 1969
Copies Sold In The U.S.: 12 Million Continue reading →

Is it weird that this is the first People’s Album that’s also been declared a Classic Album on a Tuesday by this very blog?

I’m gonna say yeah, it’s a little weird.

Album: Slippery When Wet
Artist: Bon Jovi
Release Date: August 18, 1986
Copies Sold In The U.S.: 12 Million Continue reading →

II by Boyz II Men seems like an album that should’ve flown completely under my radar, especially considering I was around five when it came out.  And yet I can think of three different childhood memories that were directly related to this album.  The first involves a sketch from ‘90s Nickelodeon series All That, in which a young Kenan Thompson argues with another Boyz II Men fan that II was the band’s debut (which of course it wasn’t).  The other memory also came from ‘90s sketch comedy, as I remember a certain SNL TV Funhouse sketch in which the X-Presidents all performed their own rendition of “I’ll Make Love To You”.

Then my most personal connection to this album was that my mom owned it on cassette tape.  Now, I don’t think my mom was actually into Boyz II Men, but I think she saw it at a garage sale and since we had just bought a new van that had a tape deck in the stereo, I think she figured “Ah, why not?”.  Which is really strange to think that there was a not-so-distant time where being able to listen to an album in your own car was still such a novelty that people would be willing to listen to something that they were kind of indifferent towards.  Or maybe my mom just thought this’d be the kind of thing my sister and I would enjoy.  Either way, I don’t have any recollection of actually listening to it, so how about we make up for lost time?

Album: II
Artist: Boyz II Men
Release Date: August 30, 1994
Copies Sold In The U.S.: 12 Million

Continue reading →

One of my favorite quotes from the late great Roger Ebert is the one about how no great film can be too long, and no bad film can be too short.  As I’ve been doing this series, I’ve found that the same concept can easily be applied to albums, since it can be pretty tedious to sit through an album’s worth of songs that you’re not really into, especially if it’s a long one.  And that’s pretty much the experience I had wading through the hour-long hunk of butt-rock I’ll be talking about here.

Album: Hysteria
Artist: Def Leppard
Release Date: August 8, 1987
Copies Sold In The U.S.: 12 Million Continue reading →

So apparently people are still buying music.  Because I just looked at wikipedia’s list of the best-selling albums in the U.S. — which has been my guide while constructing these reviews — and apparently it’s changed.  I thought this album was going to be the 43^rd best-selling album of all-time when I wrote this, but a few albums got rearranged on this list when it was updated, so now it’s number 41.  Just wanted to clear that up.

Album: Wide Open Spaces
Artist: Dixie Chicks
Release Date: January 28, 1998
Copies Sold In The U.S.: 12 Million Continue reading →