A review by otterno11
1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die by Robert Dimery, Michael Lydon

3.0

Part of a growing stable of “1001 blanks you must blank before you die” titles published by Universe, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die lists a variety of records from a variety of popular music genres from 1955 to 2008 (though heavily weighted towards the later periods of this range), organized by large group of music critics and editors to be particularly representative of the development and evolution of modern music. Borrowed to me by a friend after I expressed my desire to learn more about the diverse world of popular music (a topic of which I have been sadly ignorant for years) I found it to be a good introduction to some of the most influential pieces of music from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Of course, with 1001 albums to look through, I am still in the process of listening to the small fraction I decided to look into (and probably will never get to every album “before I die”). The book does deal with the inherent difficulties of discussing musical styles without the benefit of being able to listen to the choices fairly well, with the short articles that accompany the album choices do an adequate job of explaining the choice. However, I still resorted to Wikipedia for more information and music samples. In any case, 1001 Albums did provide some good background to begin my exploration of some of the last fifty years worth of music, though even I can tell that there are some biases and neglected areas in the author's choices. I am interested to see what “1001 Songs...” and “1001 Classical Recordings...” have to offer.