2025 in 2025: Day 50

Dangerous - Michael Jackson

Jam jam here comes the man! Never have truer words been spoken. MJ albums always open with an awesome song, and this may well be the most awesome. The whole first half is New Jack badassery, before it slows down with Heal the World, which feels a lot like 'We Are The World Part II'. I don't care what anyone says - Black or White is peak pop-rock-funk perfection. Damn Slash's guitar solo on Give In To Me is seriously great. I can totally picture some young MJ fans crying when they first heard his spoken word outro for Will You Be There. MJ fans were insane like kids these days have no idea. I cannot hear Gone Too Soon without thinking of Usher singing it at MJ's memorial... Vocals on Dangerous are awesome. Bah gawd this album is awesome.

Highlights: Jam, Black or White, Keep the Faith

9/10

Dare! - The Human League

This is only the hit song Don't You Want Me. Alexis Sayle throwing this in to his Dr. Martin's song on The Young Ones will always be iconic.

8/10

Dark Horse - George Harrison

Hari's On Tour sounds like it is from some sports program or something, like maybe a cricket show? This album gets a bad rap, but I always find it really consistent and super listenable. The wobble-board thing in It Is "He" is hilariously fun. If his voice had not been so destroyed, I think this album would have been quite different.

Highlights: So Sad, Dark Horse, Far East Man

7.5/10

Darkbreaker (Elizabethtown Sessions) - Ryan Adams

A whole bunch of unfinished songs? I was about to say that this version of Everyone Knows is quite good, but then it all fell apart. Two is not bad, either, though the studio version on Easy Tiger is definitely better. I was concerned that during my Ryan Adams marathon 10 years ago I may have bought in to the hype (and my own obsession with this dude) and pretended this 'album' was great, but NOPE! Even then I knew this was trash.

Highlights: Don't Get Sentimental on Me, Elizabeth

4/10

Darkest Days - Stabbing Westward

The kind of industrial metal that makes you want to dye your hair black, paint your fingernails, turn out the lights and do whatever goths do in the dark. I used to listen to this while playing the original Gran Turismo, so not totally dissimilar? This dude's voice was seriously unbeatable until Taka came along. Thing is, amongst the angry dark heavy goth metal are some fantastic hooks. And that coupled with Christopher Hall's awesome screaming has me sitting here enjoying this album immensely. 

Highlights: You Complete Me, Save Yourself, Sometime It Hurts, Desperate Now, Waking Up Beside You

8/10

David Live - David Bowie

My man Bowie had better performances, but this is still a pretty decent live album. The bluesy version of All The Young Dudes is pretty great. Earl Slick sure likes shredding up a storm all over this show.

Highlights: Moonage Daydream, All the Young Dudes, Big Brother, Time

6.5/10

Day and Age - The Killers

This was when I started losing interest in The Killers. They still had a big stack of goodwill with me for their debut album, but this album is definitely a bit of a drop-off point. Well, mostly the last half - the first half is quite fun, though very different to what they had released up to this point. Brandon Flowers is the opposite of Christopher Hall, in that his voice is weaker and just getting more annoying. And the lyrics are getting pretty naff, as well. Again, it is not all terrible, but this is certainly where they stopped living up to their name.

Highlights: Losing Touch, Human, Spaceman, Goodnight Travel Well

6.5/10

A Day at the Races - Queen

Let's end day 50 with my first proper Queen album! It's fun; some years ago I would have told you this was one of the best albums ever, but then in the lead up to listening now I was convinced it was kind of average (for a Queen album - which is still top tier). But listening now and it just owns. Seriously. It has everything: straight up rock classics (Tie Your Mother Down), beautiful ballads (You Take My Breath Away), poptastic fun (You and I), epic dark stuff (White Man), random Japanese (Teo Torriatte) and some of the best songs in the Queen catalogue (Somebody to Love). Is that solo in Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy just the funnest? Drowse is the worst Roger Taylor song, but otherwise this album is Queen at their best.

Highlights: All the songs I already mentioned and everything else too

9/10

"Albums" listened to so far: 392

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Rewatch: Half-Time Report

It's been 9 years since I my initial complete viewing of the original 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, so I figured it was time to make another go of it. 100 episodes in, let's check in how things are going, shall we?

• There is not a bad episode in the first 3 seasons. Sure, there are a couple in season 3 that aren't so awesome as the others, but until I hit the European Vacation side-season, I didn't find myself not enjoying any of the episodes.
• But boy, that European Vacation side-season is pretty terrible. The whole things feels much cheaper and less polished. Raphael and Shredder having the replacement voices throughout (except for a couple of episodes for Shredder) doesn't help either. Also, and I'm guessing this is due to the Euro production involved, but people got way more into April. Shredder often talked to her about being beautiful and everyone wanted to kidnap her.
• Even more nonsense approach to the Euro episodes, is that Shredder and Krang knew the turtles were in Europe and decided this will be the one time they will explore the area. The turtles live in New York - if Krang knew about some special metal that could only be found in Italy, why didn't he go check that out in like episode 20? They can teleport to anywhere in the world, but the turtles can't.
• I think it was episode 74 when The Shredder said something like "I'm sick of the turtles foiling my plans!". Poor dude - we're not even halfway through them foiling your plans!
• David Wise was a great writer, but it is kinda funny how many similar stories he wrote for other cartoons.
• Shredder's Mom might well be one of the funniest episodes I never saw as a child. 
• I totally didn't notice when I was young, and I don't think I was paying too much attention last time I went through the series, but bah gawd Rob Paulsen, Cam Clarke and James Avery did a lot of voices. Peter Renaday as the various mob bosses always cracks me up.
• Irma is awesome. I think she used to annoy me, but now she is absolutely one of my favourite characters.
• Naming Zach "the fifth turtle" is incredibly ludicrous; he helped them ONE TIME and they give him such an honour, but then we only see him like twice afterwards - clearly he is not an important part of their lives or success. April, however, is always there and often helps the turtles in various ways. She's awesome and is the real fifth turtle.
• Elvis makes many appearances and in many forms.

I just read a quote from the voice of April O'Neil where she compared the main voice cast to the Marx Brothers and it all makes sense. I love the humour in this show and I love old vaudevillian humour. The bad puns, the play on words, and breaking the 4th wall. It's all hilarious to me.

Anyways, I think that is enough for now. Let's see how the next 93 episodes go!