As always, everything is rated on the Binary Scale.

• Synthesizer Greatest, Volume 2
  A compilation of new-age synthesizer music. Very spacey.

  Score: 1
  Top picks: Magnetic Fields

• Gwen Stefani - The Sweet Escape
  Roughly half bubblegum pop and half rapless-hiphop (the subject of another article I might write soon), not entirely dissimilar to her previous album.

  Score: 1
  Top Picks: The Sweet Escape, Early Winter, 4 in the Morning, U Started It, Wonderful Life

• Experience Hendrix - The Best of Jimi Hendrix
  My dad will surely disown me for this, but this album merely taught me that I don’t really like much of Hendrix’s music.

  Score: .5
  Top Picks: Fire, All Along the Watchtower, Foxy Lady

• Oystein Sevag - Global House
  Acoustic (mainly), mellow, worldly new-age music. My mom gave me this album some years ago, but I stupidly gave it back because I didn’t like it. Turns out I was a bit too quick to judge.

  Score: 1
  Top Picks: Global House

• Dire Straits - Money For Nothing
  This is one of Dire Straits’ best-of albums. I bought it thinking it was Brothers in Arms. There’s only one track on it that I really like that’s not on Brothers in Arms.

  Score: .5
  Top Picks: Sultans of Swing, Walk of Life, Money for Nothing, Brothers in Arms

• Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms
  A week later, after realizing my mistake, I bought this album. Turns out the only songs I really like are already on Money for Nothing, though at least buying this album got me the full versions. (The ones on Money for Nothing are edited)

  Score: .5
  Top Picks: Money for Nothing, Walk of Life, The Man’s Too Strong, Brothers in Arms

• Pink Floyd - Is There Anybody Out There?
  The live recordings of The Wall from the original 1980-81 tour. It’s remarkably similar to the studio version, though the live shows had some extra material that were cut from the studio album for time.

  Score: 1
  Top Picks: Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2, Mother, One Of My Turns, Comfortably Numb, Run Like Hell

• Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers Greatest Hits
  It’s Tom Petty. How far wrong can you go?

  Score: 1
  Top Picks: I Need To Know, Refugee, Runnin’ Down A Dream, Free Fallin’, Mary Jane’s Last Dance

• The Police - Every Breath You Take: The Classics
  Anyone following this blog may have noticed by now that I buy a lot of “best of” albums. I do this when there’s an artist that I’m interested in, but not sure of any particular album I want to get. In this case I bought it based on some of their songs that I’d heard before that I liked, and discovered a few more that I liked.

  Score: 1
  Top Picks: Can’t Stand Losing You, Message in a Bottle, Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic

• The Beatles - Past Masters
  The definitive collection of all the singles, EPs, and other tracks that didn’t see release on any of the ‘official’ albums.

  Score: 1
  Top Picks: Hey Jude, Let It Be

• The Beatles - Help!
  Probably my second favorite Beatles album (after Abbey Road), this is the album where they start to emerge from their ‘sappy love songs’ phase that dominated their earlier releases. I’ve liked this album since I first saw the movie in my teens, and subsequently raided my dad’s old reel-to-reel tapes (and machine) for more Beatles (and other) material.

  Score: 1
  Top Picks: Help!, The Night Before, You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away, Ticket to Ride, Yesterday

• Beatles For Sale
  More of their aforementioned ‘sappy love songs’ phase.

  Score: 0

• The Beatles — Let It Be
  The last Beatles record released (though the second-to-last recorded), this is the version originally produced by Phil Spector from the raw studio tapes (as opposed to the ‘Naked’ version released years later, remastered without Spector’s embellishments)

  Score: 1
  Top Picks: Let It Be, Get Back

• Beastie Boys - Hello Nasty
  Mostly hip-hop (from a trio of white boys no less), with some experimental, even downright jazzy tracks.

  Score: 1
  Top Picks: Body Movin’, Intergalactic