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Clean up repository by removing unnecessary files

Browse source 
- Removed HTML favicon creation files (create-favicon.html, favicon_generator.html)
- Removed log files (download_missing.log, failed_downloads.txt, server.log)
- Removed CSV backup files and old Wikipedia data file
- Removed duplicate cover file with incorrect encoding
- Removed covers_backup directory (not tracked by git)

Repository is now cleaner with only essential project files

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.ai/code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Johan Lundberg 2025-07-01 00:40:00 +02:00
parent 4f436643f9
commit ceaa845127
9 changed files with 0 additions and 2149 deletions
Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

BIN
covers/rank_454_Can_Ege_Bamyas.jpg
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Width:  |  Height:  |  Size: 121 KiB

157
create-favicon.html
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@ -1,157 +0,0 @@
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Create Favicon</title>
</head>
<body>
<canvas id="canvas" width="32" height="32" style="border: 1px solid #000; transform: scale(10);"></canvas>
<br><br>
<button onclick="downloadFavicon()">Download Favicon</button>
<script>
const canvas = document.getElementById('canvas');
const ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');
// Create favicon design
function createFavicon() {
// Clear canvas
ctx.clearRect(0, 0, 32, 32);
// Background gradient (purple/blue theme)
const gradient = ctx.createLinearGradient(0, 0, 32, 32);
gradient.addColorStop(0, '#667eea');
gradient.addColorStop(1, '#764ba2');
// Fill background
ctx.fillStyle = gradient;
ctx.fillRect(0, 0, 32, 32);
// Add vinyl record design
ctx.fillStyle = '#1a1a1a';
ctx.beginPath();
ctx.arc(16, 16, 14, 0, 2 * Math.PI);
ctx.fill();
// Center hole
ctx.fillStyle = gradient;
ctx.beginPath();
ctx.arc(16, 16, 4, 0, 2 * Math.PI);
ctx.fill();
// Add grooves
ctx.strokeStyle = '#333';
ctx.lineWidth = 1;
for (let r = 6; r <= 12; r += 2) {
ctx.beginPath();
ctx.arc(16, 16, r, 0, 2 * Math.PI);
ctx.stroke();
}
// Add number "500" in small text
ctx.fillStyle = 'white';
ctx.font = 'bold 6px Arial';
ctx.textAlign = 'center';
ctx.fillText('500', 16, 28);
}
function downloadFavicon() {
// Create multiple sizes for ICO file
const sizes = [16, 32, 48];
const images = [];
sizes.forEach(size => {
const tempCanvas = document.createElement('canvas');
tempCanvas.width = size;
tempCanvas.height = size;
const tempCtx = tempCanvas.getContext('2d');
// Scale the design
const scale = size / 32;
tempCtx.scale(scale, scale);
// Redraw for this size
// Background gradient
const gradient = tempCtx.createLinearGradient(0, 0, 32, 32);
gradient.addColorStop(0, '#667eea');
gradient.addColorStop(1, '#764ba2');
tempCtx.fillStyle = gradient;
tempCtx.fillRect(0, 0, 32, 32);
// Vinyl record
tempCtx.fillStyle = '#1a1a1a';
tempCtx.beginPath();
tempCtx.arc(16, 16, 14, 0, 2 * Math.PI);
tempCtx.fill();
// Center hole
tempCtx.fillStyle = gradient;
tempCtx.beginPath();
tempCtx.arc(16, 16, 4, 0, 2 * Math.PI);
tempCtx.fill();
// Grooves
if (size >= 24) {
tempCtx.strokeStyle = '#333';
tempCtx.lineWidth = 1;
for (let r = 6; r <= 12; r += 2) {
tempCtx.beginPath();
tempCtx.arc(16, 16, r, 0, 2 * Math.PI);
tempCtx.stroke();
}
}
// "500" text (only for larger sizes)
if (size >= 24) {
tempCtx.fillStyle = 'white';
tempCtx.font = 'bold 6px Arial';
tempCtx.textAlign = 'center';
tempCtx.fillText('500', 16, 28);
}
// Convert to blob
const imageData = tempCtx.getImageData(0, 0, size, size);
images.push({size, imageData});
});
// Download as PNG (browsers don't support ICO creation directly)
const link = document.createElement('a');
link.download = 'favicon-32x32.png';
link.href = canvas.toDataURL();
link.click();
// Also create 16x16 version
const canvas16 = document.createElement('canvas');
canvas16.width = 16;
canvas16.height = 16;
const ctx16 = canvas16.getContext('2d');
ctx16.scale(0.5, 0.5);
const gradient16 = ctx16.createLinearGradient(0, 0, 32, 32);
gradient16.addColorStop(0, '#667eea');
gradient16.addColorStop(1, '#764ba2');
ctx16.fillStyle = gradient16;
ctx16.fillRect(0, 0, 32, 32);
ctx16.fillStyle = '#1a1a1a';
ctx16.beginPath();
ctx16.arc(16, 16, 14, 0, 2 * Math.PI);
ctx16.fill();
ctx16.fillStyle = gradient16;
ctx16.beginPath();
ctx16.arc(16, 16, 4, 0, 2 * Math.PI);
ctx16.fill();
const link16 = document.createElement('a');
link16.download = 'favicon-16x16.png';
link16.href = canvas16.toDataURL();
link16.click();
}
// Create the favicon on load
createFavicon();
</script>
</body>
</html>

444
download_missing.log
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@ -1,444 +0,0 @@
Downloading covers for albums without covers...
This will take a while to be respectful to the iTunes API...\n
Searching [1/500]: 76. Curtis Mayfield - Super Fly
✗ No artwork found
Searching [2/500]: 78. Elvis Presley - The Sun Sessions
✗ No artwork found
Searching [3/500]: 217. Oasis - Definitely Maybe
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music124/v4/00/af/e3/00afe365-35f8-04cb-379a-e12abead71cd/5051961070132.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_217_Oasis_Definitely_Maybe.jpg
Searching [4/500]: 221. Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/8e/08/bf/8e08bf66-8690-1ba7-affb-fe173c08623d/074645295923.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_221_Rage_Against_the_Machine_Rage_Against_the_Machine.jpg
Searching [5/500]: 222. Madonna - Ray of Light
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/dd/2b/8d/dd2b8d84-e032-94d2-473a-3f8efd18fe36/dj.rwfgroxa.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_222_Madonna_Ray_of_Light.jpg
Searching [6/500]: 223. John Lennon - Imagine
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music126/v4/21/e3/b0/21e3b048-c917-92c4-bd7d-ace44797b388/13UABIM52808.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_223_John_Lennon_Imagine.jpg
Searching [7/500]: 224. Dixie Chicks - Fly
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/7c/39/60/7c3960ca-c0f1-8a47-1be8-1b6dd8ed3a50/dj.wtjjbgin.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_224_Dixie_Chicks_Fly.jpg
Searching [8/500]: 227. Little Richard - Here's Little Richard
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music128/v4/6a/59/ba/6a59ba83-b62c-0aba-afdf-70112572352d/00888072025745.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_227_Little_Richard_Heres_Little_Richard.jpg
Searching [9/500]: 228. De La Soul - De La Soul Is Dead
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music221/v4/61/95/c6/6195c62e-5ab7-da8b-b751-5a488060d728/810098503105.png/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_228_De_La_Soul_De_La_Soul_Is_Dead.jpg
Searching [10/500]: 229. Patsy Cline - The Ultimate Collection
✗ No artwork found
Searching [11/500]: 232. John Coltrane - Giant Steps
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music123/v4/9a/80/7c/9a807c65-0019-0e89-f423-a396f17df84d/603497847730.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_232_John_Coltrane_Giant_Steps.jpg
Searching [12/500]: 233. Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music114/v4/eb/21/72/eb217284-b1ec-7f11-16a9-ea9997c397cc/603497892945.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_233_Tori_Amos_Little_Earthquakes.jpg
Searching [13/500]: 234. Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music124/v4/c2/9f/a1/c29fa109-8c22-bb7f-82f2-a6891d961c28/075992725323.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_234_Black_Sabbath_Master_of_Reality.jpg
Searching [14/500]: 235. Metallica - Metallica
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music125/v4/18/93/db/1893db5c-ddd1-b95c-3112-b9b83bcceab0/0093624986553.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_235_Metallica_Metallica.jpg
Searching [15/500]: 237. Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music125/v4/08/28/02/082802b9-2d7a-9f29-3413-37eccfb98714/dj.prbhjyep.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_237_Willie_Nelson_Red_Headed_Stranger.jpg
Searching [16/500]: 242. The Velvet Underground - Loaded
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music124/v4/87/7d/5e/877d5e8d-8aff-717f-576c-f237ee8d7a34/603497884575.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_242_The_Velvet_Underground_Loaded.jpg
Searching [17/500]: 244. Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreak
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/fb/5c/f2/fb5cf235-2ae9-34c3-1ddb-ef896fb14175/16UMGIM58688.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_244_Kanye_West_808s_Heartbreak.jpg
Searching [18/500]: 246. LL Cool J - Mama Said Knock You Out
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music114/v4/19/7e/e0/197ee0b3-d43d-ee74-9a7f-586f3931e51b/00731452347725.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_246_LL_Cool_J_Mama_Said_Knock_You_Out.jpg
Searching [19/500]: 247. Sade - Love Deluxe
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music125/v4/18/c8/d7/18c8d7bc-8491-09e6-df0d-6e0a83ead680/mzi.wsikzifg.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_247_Sade_Love_Deluxe.jpg
Searching [20/500]: 248. Green Day - American Idiot
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music/f2/be/03/mzi.uxygrgff.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_248_Green_Day_American_Idiot.jpg
Searching [21/500]: 249. Whitney Houston - Whitney Houston
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/86/b5/25/86b525b1-bff1-4bf6-6112-531251b3d672/dj.hthdmusj.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_249_Whitney_Houston_Whitney_Houston.jpg
Searching [22/500]: 251. Elton John - Honky Château
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music116/v4/75/b6/da/75b6da76-a3e0-6a77-cbe5-ad6c42cb0692/06UMGIM48050.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_251_Elton_John_Honky_Château.jpg
Searching [23/500]: 254. Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music114/v4/4f/e5/f5/4fe5f511-462e-e87b-0711-d4e42809fb17/dj.goshfswo.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_254_Herbie_Hancock_Head_Hunters.jpg
Searching [24/500]: 259. Janis Joplin - Pearl
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Features114/v4/82/d8/c7/82d8c7e8-e4d5-a98c-2e0c-85efebd58f24/dj.jnsyrcqp.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_259_Janis_Joplin_Pearl.jpg
Searching [25/500]: 261. Beastie Boys - Check Your Head
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music128/v4/23/ab/f0/23abf094-b6b6-9339-c1e2-9589cb24c152/00077779893850.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_261_Beastie_Boys_Check_Your_Head.jpg
Searching [26/500]: 262. New Order - Power, Corruption & Lies
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/d2/3f/c8/d23fc8e7-3baa-eae3-7301-7a868d00ab09/825646053803.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_262_New_Order_Power_Corruption_Lies.jpg
Searching [27/500]: 265. Pavement - Wowee Zowee
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music116/v4/77/ee/5c/77ee5c49-87c9-c5c3-0a4a-be42743c916b/744861072263.png/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_265_Pavement_Wowee_Zowee.jpg
Searching [28/500]: 266. The Beatles - Help!
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music122/v4/1a/19/db/1a19db26-17ad-b986-11a9-f72ac7a6194b/18UMGIM31214.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_266_The_Beatles_Help.jpg
\n--- Progress Update ---
New downloads: 25
Already existed: 238
Failed: 3
----------------------\n
Searching [29/500]: 269. Kanye West - Yeezus
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music113/v4/21/fd/d3/21fdd3d4-0c00-53ef-3903-d0569c49a812/19UMGIM89397.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_269_Kanye_West_Yeezus.jpg
Searching [30/500]: 270. Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music125/v4/61/45/e8/6145e88a-6a79-fab1-ad8f-5ffdcbf44a28/18UMGIM03879.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_270_Kacey_Musgraves_Golden_Hour.jpg
Searching [31/500]: 271. Mary J. Blige - What's the 411?
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music122/v4/43/54/ba/4354ba48-b993-9c58-af75-2987f1d2fcab/06UMGIM05898.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_271_Mary_J._Blige_Whats_the_411.jpg
Searching [32/500]: 272. The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music123/v4/ee/ac/91/eeac9154-5178-ebbc-be57-81bfb11f8ce7/00602537589678.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_272_The_Velvet_Underground_White_LightWhite_Heat.jpg
Searching [33/500]: 277. Alicia Keys - The Diary of Alicia Keys
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music125/v4/c2/07/c6/c207c6ee-e3f1-cad2-1259-69a3ebd08b5c/828765571227.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_277_Alicia_Keys_The_Diary_of_Alicia_Keys.jpg
Searching [34/500]: 278. Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music114/v4/4f/88/ad/4f88ad28-3953-fded-6c18-fe87b5d0dc7b/dj.iqdrlirx.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_278_Led_Zeppelin_Houses_of_the_Holy.jpg
Searching [35/500]: 279. Nirvana - MTV Unplugged in New York
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music125/v4/46/24/33/462433f9-ee74-2d60-4538-859826a7bed7/00720642472729.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_279_Nirvana_MTV_Unplugged_in_New_York.jpg
Searching [36/500]: 282. Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music122/v4/97/a7/42/97a7424f-8161-052f-ce3c-93730c2d30de/14UMGIM32540.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_282_Frank_Sinatra_In_the_Wee_Small_Hours.jpg
Searching [37/500]: 283. Donna Summer - Bad Girls
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music114/v4/40/d0/58/40d05880-a8f1-0e07-9172-d0302c7ef65d/06UMGIM15219.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_283_Donna_Summer_Bad_Girls.jpg
Searching [38/500]: 284. Merle Haggard - Down Every Road 1962–1994
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music126/v4/6f/c8/9a/6fc89a43-b4cf-b1b7-99f2-4a8ea2b8ce0c/13ULAIM49214.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_284_Merle_Haggard_Down_Every_Road_19621994.jpg
Searching [39/500]: 285. Big Star - Third/Sister Lovers
✗ No artwork found
Searching [40/500]: 286. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music124/v4/4c/86/1d/4c861dab-5428-f3b7-8068-82bb69db5e89/093624932130.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_286_Red_Hot_Chili_Peppers_Californication.jpg
Searching [41/500]: 287. The Byrds - Mr. Tambourine Man
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music/d6/b7/81/mzi.mcvxlkfy.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_287_The_Byrds_Mr._Tambourine_Man.jpg
Searching [42/500]: 291. Destiny's Child - The Writing's on the Wall
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music125/v4/c9/29/74/c92974ce-2bdd-4b86-a261-01adc901bb65/mzi.cmambura.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_291_Destinys_Child_The_Writings_on_the_Wall.jpg
Searching [43/500]: 293. The Breeders - Last Splash
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music126/v4/c7/f2/9c/c7f29c36-434e-3e40-b517-dce503eb2d5c/652637301458.png/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_293_The_Breeders_Last_Splash.jpg
Searching [44/500]: 295. Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/e8/43/5f/e8435ffa-b6b9-b171-40ab-4ff3959ab661/886443919266.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_295_Daft_Punk_Random_Access_Memories.jpg
Searching [45/500]: 296. Neil Young and Crazy Horse - Rust Never Sleeps
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music1/v4/9a/65/18/9a6518c2-850f-f40a-5bad-540a9ef4ad70/093624924708.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_296_Neil_Young_and_Crazy_Horse_Rust_Never_Sleeps.jpg
Searching [46/500]: 297. Peter Gabriel - So
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music124/v4/7a/ee/3a/7aee3ac5-7627-0c97-e859-19ae7a6320b1/So_cover_iTunes_copy.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_297_Peter_Gabriel_So.jpg
Searching [47/500]: 298. Tom Petty - Full Moon Fever
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music112/v4/f3/71/47/f37147d5-d029-880b-bdc1-5929c907909a/06UMGIM04214.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_298_Tom_Petty_Full_Moon_Fever.jpg
Searching [48/500]: 299. B.B. King - Live at the Regal
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music118/v4/bc/fa/b8/bcfab88a-c67d-54c2-418d-dcd28420a507/00602547481955.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_299_B.B._King_Live_at_the_Regal.jpg
Searching [49/500]: 302. Neil Young - Tonight's the Night
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music7/v4/a5/17/c5/a517c57d-4f39-2227-bd56-8bb96e438827/093624924692.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_302_Neil_Young_Tonights_the_Night.jpg
Searching [50/500]: 303. ABBA - The Definitive Collection
✗ No artwork found
Searching [51/500]: 305. Kiss - Alive!
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music124/v4/22/36/4a/22364a55-ad91-c80e-c40f-89eb9ac10e01/00602537854462.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_305_Kiss_Alive.jpg
Searching [52/500]: 306. Al Green - I'm Still in Love with You
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music221/v4/8d/19/29/8d19295e-9776-1319-adb2-9d07249473ab/886445997743.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_306_Al_Green_Im_Still_in_Love_with_You.jpg
Searching [53/500]: 307. Sam Cooke - Portrait of a Legend: 1951–1964
✗ No artwork found
Searching [54/500]: 309. Joy Division - Closer
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Features114/v4/d9/2a/d1/d92ad12e-cdf2-e567-9612-af2fdfa82237/dj.uzqznczn.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_309_Joy_Division_Closer.jpg
Searching [55/500]: 312. Solange Knowles - A Seat at the Table
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music125/v4/76/2b/c4/762bc430-fae3-3262-ef16-bd74bad9cdea/886446143170.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_312_Solange_Knowles_A_Seat_at_the_Table.jpg
Searching [56/500]: 315. Rosalía - El Mal Querer
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music124/v4/2c/55/e1/2c55e13f-15d8-1c7c-1826-c5fa55deaa8f/886447217139.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_315_Rosalía_El_Mal_Querer.jpg
\n--- Progress Update ---
New downloads: 50
Already existed: 259
Failed: 6
----------------------\n
Searching [57/500]: 316. The Who - The Who Sell Out
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music114/v4/4e/bf/f8/4ebff81f-68fa-4cda-2f4d-5fdd4c211529/20UM1IM17971.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_316_The_Who_The_Who_Sell_Out.jpg
Searching [58/500]: 317. Billie Holiday - Lady in Satin
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music114/v4/1c/3e/26/1c3e263c-9f5e-738d-ab89-03667d78e1cf/886445102529.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [59/500]: 322. Elvis Presley - From Elvis in Memphis
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music124/v4/45/9d/ee/459deedc-c071-0f30-0d1c-18746dc18abc/886445944754.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [60/500]: 323. The Clash - Sandinista!
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music114/v4/01/d2/ad/01d2ad5f-21b1-fa56-251a-efc29063b361/886443566347.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [61/500]: 325. Jerry Lee Lewis - All Killer, No Filler: The Anthology
✗ No artwork found
Searching [62/500]: 327. The Who - Live at Leeds
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Searching [63/500]: 329. DJ Shadow - Endtroducing.....
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music122/v4/0d/14/6d/0d146d5c-44c5-22e2-c596-2242180f4774/5400863103361_cover.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [64/500]: 330. The Rolling Stones - Aftermath
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music211/v4/cd/89/04/cd890449-e58f-7257-2c60-9c8c31f24ce3/13ABKIM00063.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [65/500]: 332. Elvis Presley - Elvis Presley
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music125/v4/cb/5d/f5/cb5df548-c55a-e28e-dce9-bd91711f1e84/828768904824.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [66/500]: 333. Bill Withers - Still Bill
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/a3/a6/89/a3a68964-ea23-9fa1-d123-eb9728997231/886445193213.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [67/500]: 334. Santana - Abraxas
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/30/03/7f/30037fd6-3292-1806-c806-5341391c9aac/886444593038.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [68/500]: 336. Roxy Music - Avalon
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Searching [69/500]: 339. Janet Jackson - Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music124/v4/5c/06/a5/5c06a5fc-6424-25e4-37c4-da5a9a18dd8a/00602547592378.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [70/500]: 342. The Beatles - Let It Be
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Searching [71/500]: 346. Arctic Monkeys - AM
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Searching [72/500]: 347. GZA - Liquid Swords
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music124/v4/13/f6/27/13f62737-00fa-e459-5306-961cbbdfe685/00602547742261.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [73/500]: 348. Gillian Welch - Time (The Revelator)
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Searching [74/500]: 350. Stevie Wonder - Music of My Mind
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Searching [75/500]: 351. SZA - SOS
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music122/v4/bd/3b/a9/bd3ba9fb-9609-144f-bcfe-ead67b5f6ab3/196589564931.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [76/500]: 353. The Cars - The Cars
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music125/v4/6b/3c/1d/6b3c1d3e-46a3-d0ac-e386-c2e60c8c8f49/mzm.hdqcumzx.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [77/500]: 354. X-Ray Spex - Germfree Adolescents
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Searching [78/500]: 355. Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath
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Searching [79/500]: 358. Olivia Rodrigo - Sour
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Searching [80/500]: 360. Funkadelic - One Nation Under a Groove
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Searching [81/500]: 361. My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade
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Searching [82/500]: 362. Luther Vandross - Never Too Much
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Searching [83/500]: 363. Parliament - Mothership Connection
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Searching [84/500]: 364. Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music5/v4/ef/9a/42/ef9a424d-40c9-4922-407f-990e4a1b7759/dj.phknxsfv.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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\n--- Progress Update ---
New downloads: 75
Already existed: 280
Failed: 9
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Searching [85/500]: 367. Drake - If You're Reading This It's Too Late
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music125/v4/27/9a/8c/279a8c66-9914-add2-9c7f-912f2946fb8a/15UMGIM08570.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [86/500]: 371. The Temptations - Anthology
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Searching [87/500]: 374. Robert Johnson - King of the Delta Blues Singers
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Searching [88/500]: 378. Run-DMC - Run-D.M.C.
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Searching [89/500]: 380. Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
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Searching [90/500]: 381. Lynyrd Skynyrd - (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd)
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Searching [91/500]: 382. Tame Impala - Currents
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/a8/2e/b4/a82eb490-f30a-a321-461a-0383c88fec95/15UMGIM23316.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [92/500]: 383. Massive Attack - Mezzanine
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/0a/98/55/0a98555b-8d9d-3b46-660a-b91261557d17/00724384559953.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [93/500]: 385. Ramones - Rocket to Russia
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Features115/v4/e6/0b/f2/e60bf2bf-68d5-e014-e873-99c611fb6744/dj.zmwcwcur.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [94/500]: 391. Kelis - Kaleidoscope
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music116/v4/58/f8/25/58f82517-314d-b53f-ed75-8669e6ef88dc/5400863044961_cover.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [95/500]: 392. Ike & Tina Turner - Proud Mary: The Best of Ike & Tina Turner
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Searching [96/500]: 393. Taylor Swift - 1989
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Searching [97/500]: 394. Diana Ross - Diana
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music122/v4/e0/45/42/e04542ac-f078-2f00-5395-80f1b7cae5dc/07UMGIM04751.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [98/500]: 395. D'Angelo and the Vanguard - Black Messiah
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music114/v4/01/38/24/01382463-de8c-2a33-f8fe-fb3a008dfc87/886444977449.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [99/500]: 397. Billie Eilish - When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/1a/37/d1/1a37d1b1-8508-54f2-f541-bf4e437dda76/19UMGIM05028.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [100/500]: 400. The Go-Go's - Beauty and the Beat
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Searching [101/500]: 401. Blondie - Blondie
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music125/v4/49/3d/ab/493dab54-f920-9043-6181-80993b8116c9/19UMGIM53909.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [102/500]: 404. Anita Baker - Rapture
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music124/v4/64/ab/bc/64abbc66-b724-1ca1-68e5-afafbb2b9f2e/603497888283.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [103/500]: 405. Various artists - Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968
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Searching [104/500]: 409. Grateful Dead - Workingman's Dead
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Searching [105/500]: 410. The Beach Boys - Wild Honey
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music112/v4/70/cd/24/70cd2429-509d-916a-89e5-37fc493f2f28/13UABIM52542.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [106/500]: 411. Bob Dylan - Love and Theft
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music/v4/bd/4d/56/bd4d56c3-6dbc-8e24-c0c4-c144331d6ff7/886443614376.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [107/500]: 412. Smokey Robinson - Going to a Go-Go
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music122/v4/b9/e3/58/b9e35838-8084-06f7-8ae4-fb76e1160bcb/13UAAIM44691.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [108/500]: 413. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cosmo's Factory
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/f3/81/ca/f381ca2b-0779-4102-2c64-8b2563eedb96/00888072355996.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [109/500]: 416. The Roots - Things Fall Apart
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music126/v4/a2/56/c2/a256c22e-aa5d-0d93-0717-15a81eced86e/06UMGIM02261.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [110/500]: 418. Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/e8/bd/54/e8bd54fd-6595-4ebf-aa4c-58139ed316e6/dj.bngafruf.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [111/500]: 419. Eric Church - Chief
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/69/76/77/69767702-ea47-d219-a13c-0f51e19e6ccb/13UABIM59426.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [112/500]: 425. Paul Simon - Paul Simon
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music125/v4/5e/c9/a5/5ec9a59c-13b6-3a55-5511-9e3da438551a/dj.ojewaxgt.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_425_Paul_Simon_Paul_Simon.jpg
\n--- Progress Update ---
New downloads: 100
Already existed: 313
Failed: 12
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Searching [113/500]: 426. Lucinda Williams - Lucinda Williams
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music118/v4/47/8b/8e/478b8e7b-182a-258e-eded-1fc6e88f1341/886444344852.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [114/500]: 428. Hüsker Dü - New Day Rising
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music4/v4/25/3b/42/253b425d-a323-4f44-4a26-087c35d9941a/dj.vmxuycmg.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [115/500]: 429. Four Tops - Reach Out
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music114/v4/97/4c/58/974c5833-8190-ced8-f2d0-3ca9bd270248/14UMGIM28821.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [116/500]: 430. Bad Bunny - Un Verano Sin Ti
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music112/v4/3e/04/eb/3e04ebf6-370f-f59d-ec84-2c2643db92f1/196626945068.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [117/500]: 431. Los Lobos - How Will the Wolf Survive?
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music125/v4/57/da/73/57da735e-3512-c0a8-0b94-356d4a76820a/mzi.bclvaczz.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_431_Los_Lobos_How_Will_the_Wolf_Survive.jpg
Searching [118/500]: 434. Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music126/v4/38/9d/2d/389d2d6d-5b69-c8fc-d3c7-3f3100414876/744861061069.png/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_434_Pavement_Crooked_Rain_Crooked_Rain.jpg
Searching [119/500]: 439. James Brown - Sex Machine
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music128/v4/17/8b/05/178b05de-5855-0136-9827-a0e8a6ccf3db/00602547021656.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [120/500]: 442. The Weeknd - Beauty Behind the Madness
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music124/v4/40/cd/1a/40cd1a65-7948-eb96-74c6-1c4b3497456c/15UMGIM36513.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
✓ Downloaded: rank_442_The_Weeknd_Beauty_Behind_the_Madness.jpg
Searching [121/500]: 443. David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music124/v4/71/fe/14/71fe14df-5d77-9d69-2968-c38b6bfa82a4/190295842598.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [122/500]: 444. Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/4e/3e/09/4e3e09d9-6eff-5ba2-2af5-87f3eb39af04/696998668324.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [123/500]: 450. Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney - Ram
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music221/v4/36/a8/4f/36a84fe9-739f-0577-6117-6d40791b21c8/12CMGIM33823.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [124/500]: 451. Roberta Flack - First Take
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music114/v4/a2/56/1e/a2561e44-40f2-c839-f36f-38da586885a8/mzi.mkfiotkx.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [125/500]: 453. Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music124/v4/ca/12/6a/ca126ae1-0019-7c93-c5d4-6fbd49230e6b/14CMGIM00979.rgb.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [126/500]: 454. Can - Ege Bamyası
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music/v4/55/33/7e/55337e95-d781-1057-cd6a-94ee425b6850/5099930156159.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [127/500]: 455. Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley/Go Bo Diddley[a]
✗ No artwork found
Searching [128/500]: 456. Al Green - Al Green's Greatest Hits
Downloading from: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music116/v4/c0/90/63/c0906357-b17c-bfcc-30c8-0532c52d8d0d/886446283692.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
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Searching [129/500]: 458. Jason Isbell - Southeastern
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Searching [130/500]: 460. Lorde - Melodrama
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Searching [131/500]: 463. Laura Nyro - Eli and the Thirteenth Confession
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Searching [132/500]: 465. King Sunny Adé - The Best of the Classic Years
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Searching [133/500]: 466. Black Uhuru - Red
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Searching [134/500]: 467. Maxwell - BLACKsummers'night
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Searching [135/500]: 468. The Rolling Stones - Some Girls
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Searching [136/500]: 470. Juvenile - 400 Degreez
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Searching [137/500]: 483. Muddy Waters - The Anthology: 1947–1972
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Searching [138/500]: 489. Various artists - Back to Mono (1958–1969)
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Searching [139/500]: 491. Harry Styles - Harry's House
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\n🎉 FINAL RESULTS:
Albums processed: 500
Already existed: 361
New downloads: 124
Failed to find: 15
Total covers available: 485
Overall success rate: 97.0%
\n❌ Failed albums (15):
76. Curtis Mayfield - Super Fly
78. Elvis Presley - The Sun Sessions
229. Patsy Cline - The Ultimate Collection
285. Big Star - Third/Sister Lovers
303. ABBA - The Definitive Collection
307. Sam Cooke - Portrait of a Legend: 1951–1964
325. Jerry Lee Lewis - All Killer, No Filler: The Anthology
354. X-Ray Spex - Germfree Adolescents
360. Funkadelic - One Nation Under a Groove
371. The Temptations - Anthology
... and 5 more
\nFull list saved to failed_downloads.txt

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# Total coverage: 500/500 (100%)

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Rank,Artist,Album,Status,Info,Description
1,The Beatles,Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,+23,"Capitol, 1967","For the Beatles, it was a decisive goodbye to screaming crowds, world tours, and assembly-line record making. “We were fed up with being Beatles,” Paul McCartney said decades later. “We were not boys, we were men … artists rather than performers.” Sgt. Pepper christened the Summer of Love with the lavish psychedelic daydream “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” the jaunty Ringo Starr-sung communality anthem “With a Little Help From My Friends,” the album-closing multilayered masterwork, “A Day in the Life,” and the title track, which introduced the alter egos the Beatles had developed for the ambitious project. “It liberated you,” McCartney said. “You could do anything.” It is hard to imagine a more perfect setting for the Victorian jollity of John Lennon’s “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” (inspired by an 1843 circus poster) or the sumptuous melancholy of McCartney’s “Fixing a Hole,” with its blend of antique shadows (a harpsichord played by the Beatles’ producer George Martin) and modern sunshine lead guitar executed with ringing precision by George Harrison). The Sgt. Pepper premise was a license to take their music in every direction — rock spent the rest of the Sixties trying to keep up. "
2,The Beach Boys,Pet Sounds,No change,"Capitol, 1966","“Who’s gonna hear this shit?” Beach Boys singer Mike Love asked the band’s resident genius, Brian Wilson, in 1966, as Wilson played him the new songs he was working on. “The ears of a dog?” Confronted with his bandmate’s contempt, Wilson made lemonade of lemons. “Ironically,” he observed, “Mike’s barb inspired the album’s title.” Barking dogs – Wilson’s dog Banana among them, in fact – are prominent among the found sounds on the album. The Beatles made a point of echoing them on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – an acknowledgment that Pet Sounds was the inspiration for the Beatles’ masterpiece. That gesture actually completed a circle of influence: Wilson initially conceived of Pet Sounds as an effort to top the Beatles’ Rubber Soul. With its vivid orchestration, lyrical ambition, elegant pacing, and thematic coherence, Pet Sounds invented — and in several senses, perfected — the notion that an album could be more than the sum of its parts. When Wilson sang, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older,” on the album’s magnificent opening song, he wasn’t just imagining a love that could evolve past high school, he was suggesting a new grown-up identity for rock & roll music itself. Wilson made Pet Sounds without the rest of the band, using them only to flesh out the vocal arrangements. He even considered putting the album out as a solo project, and the first single, “Caroline, No,” was released under his own name. The personal nature of the songs, which Wilson co-wrote primarily with lyricist Tony Asher, further distinguished the album from the Beach Boys’ previous hits. Its luxurious sound conveys a heartbreaking wistfulness, as songs such as “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” and “I’m Waiting for the Day” bid farewell to the innocent world of the early Sixties. The album’s centerpiece is “God Only Knows,” arranged with harpsichord, horns, sleigh bells, and strings to create a spiritual feeling Wilson later compared to “being blind, but in being blind, you can see more. You close your eyes; you’re able to see a place or something that’s happening.” In the years to come, countless artists would live in his vision. "
3,The Beatles,Revolver,+8,"Apple, 1966","Revolver was the sound of the Beatles fully embracing the recording studio as a sonic canvas, free to pursue musical ideas and possibilities that would reshape rock forever. It speaks volumes that the first song the band worked on upon entering Abbey Road studios in April 1966 would have been impossible to replicate live — a swirl of hazy guitar, backward tape loops, kaleidoscopic drum tumble, and John Lennon’s voice recorded to sound like “the Dalai Lama singing from the highest mountaintop.” They titled it “The Void” and later renamed it “Tomorrow Never Knows.” “I was wondering how George Martin would take it,” Paul McCartney later recalled. Martin’s response: “Jolly interesting.” The Beatles’ lives were changing too: Lennon had taken LSD at this point, George Harrison was deepening his interest in Eastern mysticism, and McCartney was getting into avant-garde composition. All those influences came through here. Revolver wasn’t totally without precedent. The Beatles’ previous album, Rubber Soul [see No. 35], had a similar experimental introspect. Harrison once said Rubber Soul and Revolver “could be volume one and volume two.” But no band, including the Beatles, had tried anything like McCartney’s strikingly mature art song “Eleanor Rigby,” Lennon’s trippy tape-loop swirl “I’m Only Sleeping,” or Harrison’s “Taxman,” with its cutting groove and lyrics that took shots at British politicians. It made sense that the disappointing live shows the band played in the summer of 1966 would be their last. By the time Revolver came out, they’d already entered another world. "
4,Bob Dylan,Highway 61 Revisited,+14,"Columbia, 1965","Bruce Springsteen has described the beginning of “Like a Rolling Stone,” the opening song on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, as the “snare shot that sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind.” In and of itself, “Like a Rolling Stone,” which was rumored to be about Andy Warhol acolyte Edie Sedgwick, forever altered the landscape of popular music — its “vomitific” lyrics (in Dylan’s memorable term), literary ambition, and sheer length (6:13) shattered limitations of every kind. But that was literally only the beginning. The rest of the album, recorded in a shocking six days, was just as revelatory. If anyone questioned whether or not Dylan had truly “gone electric,” the roaring rock & roll of “From a Buick 6” and “Tombstone Blues” — both powered by legendary guitarist Mike Bloomfield of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band — left no doubt. The album ends with “Desolation Row,” a swirling 11-minute surrealist night journey of indescribable power, a Hieronymus Bosch-like season in hell that, in retrospect, seems to foretell all the Sixties cataclysms to come. Not that Dylan wasn’t having fun all the while as well. The toy siren that opens the album’s title track was keyboardist’s Al Kooper’s playful way of policing the recording sessions for Highway 61 Revisited. “If anybody started using drugs anywhere,” he explained, “I’d walk into the opposite corner of the room and just go whooooooooo.” "
5,The Beatles,Rubber Soul,+30,"Parlophone, 1965","Producer George Martin described Rubber Soul as “the first album to present a new, growing Beatles to the world,” and so it was. The first of what was to be a series of huge leaps forward with each new album, Rubber Soul opens with the comic character study “Drive My Car” and is suffused with Bob Dylan’s influence on “I’m Looking Through You,” “You Won’t See Me,” and “Norwegian Wood,” in which John Lennon sings about sex with a humor and candor unlike any rock & roller before and George Harrison lays down rock’s first sitar solo. Harrison called Rubber Soul “the best one we made,” because “we were suddenly hearing sounds that we weren’t able to hear before.” "
6,Bob Dylan,Blonde on Blonde,+32,"Columbia, 1966","Rock’s first studio double LP by a major artist was, as Bob Dylan declared in 1978, “the closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my head … that thin, that wild-mercury sound.” Blonde on Blonde was mainly recorded in Nashville with session pros (another rock first), who created an almost contradictory magnificence: a tightly wound tension around Dylan’s quicksilver language and incisive singing in barrelhouse surrealism such as “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35” and “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again.” Amid the frenzy, Dylan delivered some of his finest, clearest songs of comfort and desire: the sidelong beauty “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and “I Want You,” the title of which Dylan almost used for the album. "
7,The Beatles,"The Beatles (""The White Album"")",+22,,
8,The Clash,London Calling,+8,"CBS, 1979","Recorded in 1979 in London, which was then wrenched by surging unemployment and drug addiction, and released in America in January 1980, the dawn of an uncertain decade, London Calling is 19 songs of apocalypse fueled by an unbending faith in rock & roll to beat back the darkness. Produced with no-surrender energy by legendary Sixties studio madman Guy Stevens, the Clash’s third album sounds like a free-form radio broadcast from the end of the world, skidding from bleak punk (“London Calling”) to rampaging ska (“Wrong ’Em Boyo”) and disco resignation (“Lost in the Supermarket”). The album was made in dire straits too. Although the Clash fired singles into the Britain’s Top 40 with machine-gun regularity, the band was heavily in debt and openly at war with its record company. Singer-guitarists Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, the Clash’s Lennon and McCartney, wrote together in Jones’ grandmother’s flat, where he was living for lack of dough. “Joe, once he learned how to type, would bang the lyrics out at a high rate of good stuff,” Jones noted. “Then I’d be able to bang out some music while he was hitting the typewriter.” Stevens was on hand for inspiration. He threw chairs around the room “if he thought a track needed zapping up,” according to Strummer. The album ends with “Train in Vain,” a rousing song of fidelity (originally unlisted on the back cover) that became the sound of triumph: the Clash’s first Top 30 single in the U.S. "
9,Bob Dylan,Blood on the Tracks,No change,"Columbia, 1975","Bob Dylan once introduced this album’s opening song, “Tangled Up in Blue,” onstage as taking him 10 years to live and two years to write. It was, for him, a pointed reference to the personal crisis — the collapse of his marriage to Sara Lowndes — that at least partly inspired this album, Dylan’s best of the 1970s. In fact, he wrote all of these lyrically piercing, gingerly majestic folk-pop songs in two months, in mid-1974. He was so proud of them that he privately auditioned almost all of the album, from start to finish, for pals and peers, including Mike Bloomfield, David Crosby, and Graham Nash, before cutting them in September — in just a week, with members of the bluegrass band Deliverance. But in December, Dylan played the record for his brother, David, in Minneapolis, who suggested recutting some songs with local musicians. The final Blood was a mix of New York and Minneapolis tapes; the New York versions are slower, more pensive, while the Minneapolis versions are faster and wilder. Together, they frame the gritty anguish in Dylan’s vocals, as he rages through some of his most passionate, confessional songs — from adult breakup ballads like “You’re a Big Girl Now” and “If You See Her, Say Hello” to the sharp-tongued opprobrium of “Idiot Wind,” his greatest put-down song since “Like a Rolling Stone.” “A lot of people tell me they enjoyed that album,” Dylan said soon after it became an instant commercial and critical success. “It’s hard for me to relate to that — I mean, people enjoying that type of pain.” Yet Dylan had never turned so much pain into so much musical splendor. "
10,The Beatles,Abbey Road,-5,"Apple, 1969","“It was a very happy record,” said producer George Martin, describing this album in The Beatles Anthology. “I guess it was happy because everybody thought it was going to be the last.” Indeed, Abbey Road — recorded in two months during the summer of 1969 — almost never got made at all. That January, the Beatles were on the verge of a breakup, exhausted and angry with one another after the disastrous sessions for the aborted Get Back LP, later salvaged as Let It Be [see No. 342]. Yet determined to go out with the same glory with which they had first entranced the world at the start of the decade, the group reconvened at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios to make their most polished album: a collection of superb songs cut with an attention to refined detail, then segued together (especially on Side Two) with conceptual force. There was no thematic link, other than the Beatles’ unique genius. John Lennon veered from the stormy metal of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” to the exquisite vocal sunrise of “Because.” Paul McCartney was saucy (“Oh! Darling”), silly (“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”), and deliciously bitter (“You Never Give Me Your Money”). George Harrison proved his long-secret worth as a composer with “Something” (later covered by Frank Sinatra) and the folk-pop diamond “Here Comes the Sun,” written in his friend Eric Clapton’s garden after a grim round of business meetings. Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison reputedly sang more three-part harmonies here than on any other Beatles album. That warm feeling — a sense of an increasingly divided band warmly coming together as friends — may be one reason Abbey Road has become the most beloved Beatles album of all time. "
11,The Velvet Underground,The Velvet Underground & Nico,+132,"Verve, 1967","“We were trying to do a Phil Spector thing with as few instruments as possible,” John Cale, the classically trained pianist and viola player of the Velvet Underground, once said of this record. It was no idle boast. Much of what we take for granted in rock would not exist without this New York band or its seminal debut: the androgynous sexuality of glitter, punk’s raw noir, the blackened-riff howl of grunge and noise rock. It is a record of fearless breadth and lyrical depth. Singer-songwriter Lou Reed documented carnal desire and drug addiction with a pop wisdom he learned as a song-factory composer for Pickwick Records. Cale introduced the power of pulse and drone (from his work in early minimalism); guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker played with tribal force; Nico, a German vocalist briefly added to the band by manager Andy Warhol, brought an icy femininity to the heated ennui in Reed’s songs. Rejected as nihilistic by the love crowd in 1967, the Banana Album (so named for its Warhol-designed cover), is the most prophetic rock album ever made. "
12,The Rolling Stones,Exile on Main St.,New in 2023,"Rolling Stones Records, 1972","A dirty whirl of basement blues and punk boogie, the Rolling Stones’ 1972 double LP was, according to Keith Richards, “maybe the best thing we did.” Indeed, inside its deliberately dense squall — Richards’ and Mick Taylor’s dogfight riffing, the lusty jump of the Bill Wyman–Charlie Watts rhythm engine, Mick Jagger’s caged-animal bark and burned-soul croon — is the Stones’ greatest album and Jagger and Richards’ definitive songwriting statement of outlaw pride and dedication to grit and cold-morning redemption. In the existential shuffle of “Tumbling Dice,” the ­exhausted country beauty of “Torn and Frayed,” and the whiskey-soaked church of “Shine a Light,” you literally hear the Stones in exile: working at Richards’ villa in the South of France, on the run from media censure, British drug police (Jagger and Richards had been busted and arrested before), and the U.K.’s then-onerous tax code. The music rattles with corrosive abandon but also swings with a clear purpose — unconditional survival — in “Rocks Off” and “All Down the Line.” As Richards explained, “The Stones don’t have a home anymore — hence the exile — but they can still keep it together. Whatever people throw at us, we can still duck, improvise, overcome.” Great example: Richards ­recorded his jubilant romp “Happy” with only producer Jimmy Miller on drums and sax man Bobby Keys, while waiting for the other Stones to turn up for work. Exile on Main Street is the band at its fighting best, armed with the blues, playing to win. "
13,Marvin Gaye,What's Going On,-12,"Tamla/Motown, 1971","Marvin Gaye’s masterpiece began as a reaction to police brutality. In May 1969, Renaldo “Obie” Benson, the Four Tops’ bass singer, watched TV coverage of hundreds of club-wielding cops breaking up the People’s Park, a protest hub in Berkeley. Aghast at the violence, Benson began to write a song with Motown lyricist Al Cleveland, trying to capture the confusion and pain of the times. He knew he had something big in his nascent version of “What’s Going On,” but the rest of the Four Tops weren’t interested, and Benson’s efforts to get Joan Baez to record it didn’t work out, either. But one of Motown’s biggest stars and greatest voices turned out to be more receptive. Gaye was in a dark and contemplative place, wounded by the death of his frequent duet partner Tammi Terrell, yearning to sing subtler and more substantive material, and mulling over his brother Frankie’s horrifying tales of his recent stint fighting in Vietnam. Gaye had been keeping busy writing for and producing a group called the Originals, and trying to figure out what was next. “I’d been stumbling around for an idea,” he told biographer David Ritz. “I knew there was more inside me. And that was something no record executive or producer could see. But I saw it. I knew I had to get out there.” After some hesitation, Gaye embraced “What’s Going On,” and with the help of arranger David Van De Pitte, crafted a version of the song that was jazzier and more sophisticated than any Motown recording to date, layering cinematic strings over James Jamerson’s supernaturally sinuous bass line and a polyrhythmic groove. Gaye unleashed one of his most spectacular vocal performances in a career full of them, scatting and improvising around the main melody. Motown Records founder Berry Gordy initially resisted releasing “What’s Going On,” telling Gaye that he thought scatting was out of date and protest lyrics were too commercially risky. But when the song became an instant hit, Gordy gave Gaye a single month to craft an album to accompany “What’s Going On.” Gaye more than rose to the challenge. “I work best under pressure and when I’m depressed,” he told the Detroit Free Press at the time. “The world’s never been as depressing as it is right now. We’re killing the planet, killing our young men in the streets, and going to war around the world. Human rights … that’s the theme.” What emerged was soul music’s first concept album, and one of the most important and influential LPs ever made. John Legend recently described it as “the voice of black America speaking out that we couldn’t always smile on cue for you.” Building it all around one finished song lent What’s Going On a musical and thematic through line. “What’s Happening Brother” assumes the voice of a Vietnam vet like Gaye’s brother, puzzled by a changing America and looking for work; “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” is a taut ode to the environment; “Flyin’ High (In the Friendly Sky)” takes on drug addiction. After What’s Going On, black musicians at Motown and elsewhere felt a new freedom to push the musical and political boundaries of their art. “When I was struggling for the right of the Motown artist to express himself,” Gaye said, “Stevie [Wonder] knew I was also struggling for him.” At the end of the final song on What’s Going On, the lament “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler),” the music shifts back into a jazzier reprise of the title track. As the album fades out, the groove continues on. Five decades later, it still hasn’t stopped. "
14,Joni Mitchell,Blue,-11,"Reprise, 1971","In 1971, Joni Mitchell represented the West Coast feminine ideal — celebrated by Robert Plant as “a girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair” on Led Zeppelin’s “Goin’ to California.” It was a status that Mitchell hadn’t asked for and did not want: “I went, ‘Oh, my God, a lot of people are listening to me,’” she recalled in 2013. “’They better find out who they’re worshiping. Let’s see if they can take it. Let’s get real.’ So I wrote Blue.” From its smoky, introspective cover to its wholly unguarded approach to songwriting, Blue is the first time any major rock or pop artist had opened up so fully, producing what might be the ultimate breakup album and setting a still-unmatched standard for confessional poetry in pop music. Using acoustic instruments and her octave-leaping voice, Mitchell portrayed herself as a lonely painter, aching to make sense of all her heartbreak. She reflects on past relationships and encounters, including a chef from Crete (“Carey”) and rock luminaries like Graham Nash (“My Old Man”), Leonard Cohen (“A Case of You”), and James Taylor (“This Flight Tonight”), who lent a hand on a few tracks. Along with its romantic melancholy, Blue was the sound of a woman availing herself of the romantic and sexual freedom that was, until then, an exclusively male province in rock. The songs had such stark, emotional intensity that it shocked the men around her: “Kris Kristofferson said to me, ‘Oh, Joni. Save something for yourself.’ The vulnerability freaked them out.” On “Little Green,” she opens up about a baby she had given up for adoption, and on the staggering piano dirge “River,” she takes responsibility for a romance gone wrong, changing the scope of love songs forever: “I’m so hard to handle/I’m selfish, and I’m sad,” she laments. “Now I’ve gone and lost the best baby/That I ever had.” Mitchell continued to release excellent records throughout the Seventies, but Blue remains her masterpiece. “The Blue album, there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals,” she told Rolling Stone in 1979. “At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world, and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either.” "
15,Nirvana,Nevermind,-9,"Geffen, 1991","An overnight-success story of the 1990s, Nirvana’s second album and its totemic first single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” shot up from the Northwest underground — the nascent grunge scene in Seattle — to kick Michael Jackson’s Dangerous off the top of the Billboard charts and blow hair metal off the map. Few albums have had such an overpowering impact on a generation — a nation of teens suddenly turned punk — and such a catastrophic effect on its main creator. The weight of success led already-troubled singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain to take his own life in 1994. But his slashing riffs, corrosive singing, and deviously oblique writing — rammed home by the Zeppelin-via-Pixies might of bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl — put warrior purity back in rock & roll. Lyrically, Cobain raged in code — shorthand grenades of inner tumult and self-loathing. His genius, though, in songs like “Lithium,” “Breed,” and “Teen Spirit” was the soft-loud tension he created between verse and chorus, restraint and assault. Cobain was a pop lover at heart — and a Beatlemaniac: Nevermind co-producer Butch Vig remembered hearing Cobain play John Lennon’s “Julia” at sessions. Cobain also fought to maintain his underground honor with songs like the scabrous punk purge “Territorial Pissings.” Ultimately, it was a losing battle, but it is part of this album’s enduring power. Vig recalled when Cobain was forced to overdub the guitar intro to “Teen Spirit” because he couldn’t nail it live with the band: “That pissed him off. He wanted to play [the song] live all the way through.” "
16,Van Morrison,Astral Weeks,+44,"Warner Bros., 1968","Astral Weeks was the sound of sweet relief. Van Morrison was newly signed to artist-friendly Warner Bros., after a rough ride with his previous U.S. label, Bang, when he made Astral Weeks in the summer of 1968. He used the opportunity to explore the physical and dramatic range of his voice in his extended poetic-scat singing, setting hallucinatory reveries about his native Belfast (the daydream memoir “Cypress Avenue,” the hypnotic portrait of “Madame George”) to wandering melodies connecting the earthy poetry in Celtic folk and American R&B. The crowning touch was a superior jazz quartet, who recorded their basic backing tracks in one three-hour session, without any instruction from Morrison on what he wanted or what the lyrics meant. "
17,The Who,Who's Next,+60,"Decca, 1971","Pete Townshend suffered a nervous breakdown when his planned follow-up to the rock opera Tommy [see No. 190], the ambitious, theatrical Lifehouse, fell apart. But he was left with an extraordinary cache of songs that the Who honed for what became their best studio album, Who’s Next. “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Bargain,” and “Baba O’Riley” (named in tribute to avant-garde composer Terry Riley) all beam with epic majesty, often spiked with synthesizers. “I like synthesizers,” Townshend said, “because they bring into my hands things that aren’t in my hands: the sound of the orchestra, French horns, strings.… You press a switch and it plays it back at double speed.” "
18,Neil Young,After the Gold Rush,+72,"Reprise, 1970","For his third album, Neil Young fired Crazy Horse (the first of many times he would do so), picked up an acoustic guitar, and headed to his basement. He installed recording equipment in the cellar of his Topanga Canyon home, near Los Angeles, leaving room for only three or four people. There, Young made an album of heartbreaking ballads such as “Tell Me Why” and “Don’t Let It Bring You Down.” The music is gentle, but never smooth. Nils Lofgren, then an 18-year-old hotshot guitarist, squeezed into the sessions — but Young assigned him to the piano, an instrument he had never played in his life. "
19,Led Zeppelin,Led Zeppelin IV,+39,"Atlantic, 1971","“I put a lot of work into my lyrics,” Robert Plant told Rolling Stone in 1975. “Not all my stuff is meant to be scrutinized, though. Things like ‘Black Dog’ are blatant let’s-do-it-in-the-bath-type things, but they make their point just the same.” On their towering rune-titled fourth album, Led Zeppelin matched the raunch of “Black Dog” with Plant’s most poetic lyrics on the inescapable epic ballad “Stairway to Heaven,” while guitarist Jimmy Page veers from the blues apocalypse of “When the Levee Breaks” to the mandolin-driven “Battle of Evermore.” (“It sounded like a dance-around-the-maypole number,” Page later confessed.) "
20,Stevie Wonder,Songs in the Key of Life,-16,"Tamla/Motown, 1976","Months before the recording sessions for Songs in the Key of Life ended, the musicians in Stevie Wonder’s band had T-shirts made up that proclaimed, “We’re almost finished.” It was the stock answer to casual fans and Motown executives and everybody who’d fallen in love with Wonder’s early-Seventies gems – 1972’s Talking Book, 1973’s Innervisions, and 1974’s Fulfillingness’ First Finale – and who had been waiting two years for the next chapter. “I believed there was a lot that needed to be said,” Wonder said. More, in fact, than he could fit onto a double album – also included was a bonus EP, a seven-inch single with four more songs from the sessions. Songs, released in 1976, encompasses an incredible range of life experiences – from the giddy joy of a baby in the bathtub (“Isn’t She Lovely,” featuring the cries and giggles of Wonder’s infant daughter Aisha Morris) through tributes to his musical heroes (“Sir Duke”) to dismay about the indifference of the wealthy (“Village Ghetto Land”). Wonder pulled from every imaginable musical source — the ecstatic “Sir Duke” references Duke Elington and Ella Fitzgerald, while “As” featured Herbie Hancock on Fender Rhodes. Though Wonder’s blindness meant he could record faster by memorizing lyrics, some songs had four or five intricate verses, so somebody had to prompt him. Often it was engineer John Fischbach, reading lines into the headphone mix just seconds before Wonder sang them. “He never got thrown off,” engineer John Fischbach told Rolling Stone years later. “His vocals had so much power.” The album’s mastery of many styles remains astonishing, but the feat might not have meant so much had Wonder not delivered some of his most impassioned political art as well, like the autobiographical “I Wish,” the takedown of wealthy complacency “Village Ghetto Land,” and, perhaps most movingly, “Black Man,” in which he runs down a funky list of global Afro-diasporic aspirations and heroes. Songs in the Key of Life linked all this together, in Wonder’s all-encompassing innervision. "
21,Bob Dylan,Bringing It All Back Home,+160,"Columbia, 1965","“It’s very complicated to play with electricity,” Dylan said in the summer of 1965. “You’re dealing with other people.… Most people who don’t like rock & roll can’t relate to other people.” But on Side One of this pioneering album, Dylan amplifies his cryptic, confrontational songwriting with guitar lightning and galloping drums. “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Maggie’s Farm” are loud, caustic, and funny as hell. Dylan returns to solo acoustic guitar on the four superb songs on Side Two, including the scabrous “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and the closing ballad, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” arguably his finest, most affectionate song of dismissal. "
22,U2,The Joshua Tree,+113,"Island, 1987","“America’s the promised land to a lot of Irish people,” U2 singer Bono told Rolling Stone. “I’m one in a long line of Irishmen who made the trip.” On U2’s fifth full album, the band immerses itself in the mythology of the United States, while guitarist the Edge exploits the poetic echo of digital delay, drowning his trademark arpeggios in rippling tremolo. While many of these songs are about spiritual quests — “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” — U2 fortify the solemnity with the outright joys of rock & roll, although one of the most moving songs is “Running to Stand Still,” a stripped-down slide-guitar ballad about heroin addiction. "
23,Television,Marquee Moon,+84,"Elektra, 1977","When the members of Television materialized in New York, at the dawn of punk, they played an incongruous, soaring amalgam of genres: the noirish howl of the Velvet Underground, brainy art rock, the double-helix guitar sculpture of Quicksilver Messenger Service. As exhilarating in its lyrical ambitions as the Ramones’ debut was in its brutal simplicity, Marquee Moon still amazes. “Friction,” “Venus,” and the mighty title track are jagged, desperate, and beautiful all at once. As for punk credentials, don’t forget the cryptic electricity and strangled existentialism of guitarist Tom Verlaine’s voice and songwriting. "
24,The Rolling Stones,Let It Bleed,+17,"ABKCO, 1969","The record kicks off with the terrifying “Gimme Shelter,” the song that came to symbolize not only the catastrophe of the Stones’ free show at Altamont but also the death of the utopian spirit of the 1960s. And the entire album burns with apocalyptic cohesion: the sex-mad desperation of “Live With Me”; the murderous blues of “Midnight Rambler”; Keith Richards’ lethal, biting guitar on “Monkey Man”; the epic moralism, with honky-tonk piano and massed vocal chorus, of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” which Mick Jagger wrote on acoustic guitar in his bedroom. “Somebody said that we could get the London Bach Choir,” Jagger recalled, “and we said, ‘That will be a laugh.'” "
25,Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band,Trout Mask Replica,New in 2023,,
26,Patti Smith,Horses,No change,"Arista, 1975","From its first defiant line, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” the opening shot in a bold reinvention of Van Morrison’s garage-rock classic “Gloria,” Patti Smith’s debut album was a declaration of mutiny, a statement of faith in the transfigurative powers of rock & roll. Horses made her the queen of punk (her CBGB buddy Tom Verlaine of Television co-wrote the Jim Morrison tribute “Break It Up”), but Smith cared more for the poetry in rock. She sought the visions and passions that connected Keith Richards and Rimbaud — and found them, with the intuitive assistance of a killer band (pianist Richard Sohl, guitarist Lenny Kaye, bassist Ivan Kral, and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty) and her friend Robert Mapplethorpe, who shot the cover portrait.  “The real thing,” Smith later said, “was to keep rock & roll in the hands of the people.” "
27,Carole King,Tapestry,-2,"Sony, 1971","For a decade, Carole King wrote pop songs with her then-husband, Gerry Goffin: hits such as Little Eva’s “The Loco-Motion” (Eva Boyd was the couple’s babysitter) and the Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” Then King’s friend James Taylor encouraged her to sing her own tunes. “He just made it look so easy,” she recalled. “So I did Tapestry in the same spirit.” She slowed down “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” (originally a hit for the Shirelles in 1961), with Taylor and Joni Mithcell on background vocals, heightening the melancholy inside, while her warm, earnest singing brought out the sadness in “It’s Too Late” and the earthy joy on “I Feel the Earth Move.” As King later recalled, “I wasn’t in the same league vocally with Aretha Franklin, Joni Mitchell, Barbara Streisand. But I knew how to convey the mood and emotion of a song with honest, straight-from-the-heart interpretation.” The resulting collection of songs saw King remake herself as an artist and became one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, creating the reigning model for the 1970s female singer-songwriter. "
28,Aretha Franklin,Lady Soul,+47,"Atlantic, 1968","Aretha Franklin’s third Atlantic album in less than two years is another classic, with “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Ain’t No Way,” and a slinky version of the Rascals’ “Groovin’.” It was a year of triumph and turbulence for Franklin: Although she made the cover of Time, the magazine reported details of her rocky marriage to Ted White, then her manager. But Franklin channeled that frenzy into performances of funky pride and magisterial hurt. Among the best: the grand-prayer treatment of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” and her explosive anguish on the hit “Chain of Fools.” "
29,Brian Eno,Another Green World,+309,"Island, 19755","After years as a rock eccentric with Roxy Music and two groundbreaking solo LPs, Brian Eno was exploring new ideas about ambient music. But he said goodbye to song form with this album of pure synthetic beauty, mixing lush electronics (“Becalmed”) with acoustic instruments (“Everything Merges With the Night”) to cast a truly hypnotic spell. Eno’s work habits were pleasantly subversive too; at one impasse during the recording, he pulled out a cake from underneath the mixing console and served pieces to everyone in the studio. "
30,Led Zeppelin,Led Zeppelin II,+93,"Atlantic, 1969","This album — recorded on the fly while the band was touring — opens with one of the most exhilarating guitar riffs in rock & roll: Jimmy Page’s searing stutter in “Whole Lotta Love.” As Page told Rolling Stone, “On the second LP, you can hear the real group identity coming together,” by which he meant the unified might of his own white-blues sorcery, John Bonham’s hands-of-Zeus drumming, Robert Plant’s love-god howl and surprisingly tender lyrics (the gorgeous “Thank You”), and John Paul Jones’ firm bass and keyboard colors. Other great reasons to bang your head: “The Lemon Song,” “Heartbreaker,” and “Ramble On.” "
31,Talking Heads,Remain in Light,+8,"Sire, 1980","David Byrne said Remain in Light “was done in bits and pieces, one instrument at a time.” The result was a New Wave masterpiece powered by Byrne’s revelation, as he put it on “The Great Curve,” that “the world moves on a woman’s hips.” It combined thrust of a P-Funk dance party, the ancient-to-the-future rhythm hypnosis of Nigerian funkmaster Fela Kuti, and the studied adventurousness of the album’s producer and Heads co-conspirator, Brian Eno. Remain in Light marked Talking Heads’ transformation from avatars of the punk avant-garde to polyrhythmic magicians with hit-single appeal. Just try not dancing to “Once in a Lifetime.” "
32,Radiohead,OK Computer,+10,"Capitol, 1997","Radiohead recorded their third album in the mansion of actress Jane Seymour while she was filming Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. OK is where the band began pulling at its sound like taffy, seeing what happened, not worrying if it was still “rock.” What resulted is a slow, haunting album with unforgettable tracks such as “Karma Police.” Guitarist Jonny Greenwood said, “I got very excited at the prospect of doing string parts that didn’t sound like ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ which is what all string parts have sounded like for the past 30 years.… We used violins to make frightening white-noise stuff, like the last chord of ‘Climbing Up the Walls.’” "
33,Paul Simon,Graceland,+13,"Columbia, 1986","Frustrated by the experience of writing good songs that didn’t come to life in the studio, Paul Simon set out “to make really good tracks,” as he later put it. “I thought, ‘I have enough songwriting technique that I can reverse this process and write this song after the tracks are made.’” Simon risked severe criticism by going to South Africa (then under apartheid) and working with the best musicians from the black townships. With the fluid energy and expertise of guitarist Ray Phiri and the vocal troupe Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Simon created an album about isolation and redemption that transcended world music to become the whole world’s soundtrack. "
34,Pink Floyd,The Dark Side of the Moon,+21,"EMI, 1973","“I think every album was a step towards Dark Side of the Moon,” keyboardist Rick Wright said. “We were learning all the time; the techniques of the recording and our writing was getting better.” As a culmination of their inner-space explorations of the early 1970s, the Floyd toured the bulk of Dark Side in Britain for months prior to recording. But in the studio, the band articulated bassist Roger Waters’ reveries on the madness of everyday life with melodic precision (“Breathe,” “Us and Them”) and cinematic luster (Clare Torry’s guest vocal aria “The Great Gig in the Sky”). Dark Side is one of the best-produced rock albums ever, and “Money” may be rock’s only Top 20 hit in 7/4 time. "
35,The Smiths,The Queen Is Dead,+78,"Sire, 1986","Morrissey’s maudlin moanings have never been more acidic or self-aware than on the Smiths’ third studio album: “A dreaded sunny day, so let’s go where we’re happy/And I meet you at the cemetery gates,” indeed. Johnny Marr is the sugar to Morrissey’s rock salt, and his layered webs of guitar riffs and arpeggios, often in unconventional tunings, build a shifting but stable platform for Morrissey to croon about the drudgery of employment or being cruelly, cruelly shunned by the world. It’s mope rock with its eye on grandeur: With “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” Marr said, “I was trying to write my ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash.’” "
36,David Bowie,Low,+170,"RCA, 1977","David Bowie fled to Berlin to kick cocaine — not to mention his other drug of choice, stardom. He moved into a flat above a hardware store and restarted his music from scratch, teaming up with Brian Eno and producer Tony Visconti. Low was split between electronic instrumentals and quirky funk like “Sound and Vision.” It began his famous “Berlin trilogy” — though it was cut mostly in France — topped off by Heroes and Lodger. In 1977, Bowie also produced Iggy Pop’s two finest solo albums, The Idiot and Lust for Life. "
37,Randy Newman,Sail Away,+231,"Reprise, 1972","Producer Lenny Waronker called him the “King of the Suburban Blues Singers.” Randy Newman went on to a long career scoring Hollywood movies, but on Sail Away, he was still L.A.’s weirdest singer-songwriter, a piano man singing sardonic tales of sleazy grifters in tunes full of New Orleans R&B and Tin Pan Alley showbiz. Sail Away is his meanest and funniest American portrait, with the cold-blooded “Political Science,” the blasphemous “God’s Song,” and the romantic “You Can Leave Your Hat On.” "
38,Miles Davis,Kind of Blue,-7,"Columbia, 1959","This painterly masterpiece is one of the most important, influential, and popular albums in jazz. At the time it was made, Kind of Blue was also a revolution all its own. Turning his back on standard chord progressions, trumpeter Miles Davis used modal scales as a starting point for composition and improvisation — breaking new ground with warmth, subtlety, and understatement in the thick of hard bop. Davis and his peerless band — bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Jimmy Cobb, pianist Bill Evans, and the titanic sax team of John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley — soloed in uncluttered settings, typified by “melodic rather than harmonic variation,” as Davis put it. Two numbers, “All Blues” and “Freddie Freeloader” (the latter featuring Wynton Kelly at the ivories in place of Evans), are in 12-bar form, but Davis’ approach allowed his players a cool, new, collected freedom. "
39,The Rolling Stones,Sticky Fingers,+65,"Rolling Stones, 1971","Drummer Charlie Watts remembered the origin of Sticky Fingers as the songs Mick Jagger wrote while filming the movie Ned Kelly in Australia. “Mick started playing the guitar a lot,” Watts said. “He plays very strange rhythm guitar … very much how Brazilian guitarists play, on the upbeat. It is very much like the guitar on a James Brown track — for a drummer, it’s great to play with.” New guitarist Mick Taylor, replacing Brian Jones, stretches out the Stones sound in “Sway,” “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” and “Moonlight Mile.” But “Brown Sugar” is a classic Stones stomp, and two of the best cuts are country songs: one forlorn (“Wild Horses”) and one funny (“Dead Flowers”). "
40,Jimi Hendrix Experience,Are You Experienced,New in 2023,,
41,Sly & the Family Stone,There's a Riot Goin' On,+41,"Epic, 1971","This highly anticipated studio follow-up to Sly and the Family Stone’s 1969 blast of hope, Stand!, was the grim, exact opposite: implosive, numbing, darkly self-referential. Sly Stone’s voice is an exhausted grumble; the funk in “Family Affair,” “Runnin’ Away,” and especially the closing downward spiral, “Thank You for Talkin’ to Me Africa,” is spare and bleak, fiercely compelling in its anguish over the unfulfilled promises of civil rights and hippie counterculture. “It is Muzak with its finger on the trigger,” wrote critic Greil Marcus in Mystery Train. Take that as a recommendation. "
42,Bob Dylan & the Band,The Basement Tapes,+293,"Columbia, 1975","Bob Dylan and his pals spent the Summer of Love in Woodstock, messing around in the basement of a house they called Big Pink. The songs were so deeply weird, they sat unreleased for years, until The Basement Tapes finally collected bootleg favorites like “Million Dollar Bash” and “You Ain’t Going Nowhere.” (For a deeper dive, see the 2014 box set.) “They were a kick to do,” Dylan told Rolling Stone’s Jann S. Wenner in 1969. “That’s really the way to do a recording — in a peaceful, relaxed setting — in somebody’s basement. With the windows open … and a dog lying on the floor.” "
43,Prince and the Revolution,Purple Rain,-35,"Warner Bros., 1984","“I think Purple Rain is the most avant-garde, ‘purple’ thing I’ve ever done,” Prince told Ebony in 1986. He was still a rising star with only a couple of hits when he got the audacious idea to make a movie based on his life, and make his next LP the movie’s soundtrack. When it was released in 1984, he became the first artist to have the Number One song, album, and movie in North America. But Purple Rain was so much more than a huge movie soundtrack: It was a testament to Prince’s dream of creating a utopian Top 40, a place where funk, psychedelia, heavy-metal shredding, huge ballads, and daring experimentalism could coexist. “Listening to Purple Rain now, it’s kind of like a Beatles album,” keyboardist Matt Fink of the Revolution told Rolling Stone shortly after Prince’s death in 2016. “Every song is just so brilliant in its own way — all so unique and different.” It’s an incredible balance of contradicting impulses — from the pornographic “Darling Nikki” to the sparkling innocence of “Take Me With You.” When Purple Rain director Albert Magnoli asked for a good song to back a montage sequence, Prince came in the next day with “When Doves Cry,” a stark, eccentric-sounding brokenhearted song that became his first Number One single. The title track was one of several songs recorded live at his hometown club, First Avenue, in Minneapolis (strings and overdubs were added later in the studio). It was inspired by Bob Seger, of all people — when Prince was touring behind 1999 [see No. 130] in 1983, Seger was playing many of the same markets. Prince didn’t understand the Midwestern rocker’s appeal, but decided to try a ballad in the Seger mode — the result may be the greatest rock ballad of all time. "
44,Pavement,Slanted and Enchanted,+155,"Matador, 1993","Pavement were the quintessential American independent rock band, and this is the quintessential indie-rock album. The playing is loose-limbed, the production laid-back and primitive, the lyrics quirky and playful, the melodies sweet and seductive. But the sound is as intense as the white noise of the Velvet Underground, even as songs like “Summer Babe” reflect singer-guitarist Stephen Malkmus’ love of Seventies AM pop. Slanted and Enchanted is one of the most influential rock albums of the 1990s; its fuzzy recording style can be heard in the music of Nirvana, Liz Phair, Beck, the Strokes, and the White Stripes. "
45,Bruce Springsteen,Born to Run,-24,"Columbia, 1975","Bruce Springsteen spent everything he had — patience, energy, studio time, the physical endurance of his E Street Band — to ensure that his third album was a masterpiece. His reputation as a perfectionist begins here: There are a dozen guitar overdubs on the title track alone. He was also spending money he didn’t have. Engineer Jimmy Iovine had to hide the mounting recording bills from the Columbia paymasters. “The album became a monster,” Springsteen told his biographer, Dave Marsh. “It just ate up everyone’s life.” But in making Born to Run, Springsteen was living out the central drama in the album’s tenement-love operas (“Backstreets,” “Jungleland”) and gun-the-engine rock & roll (“Thunder Road,” “Born to Run”): the fight to reconcile big dreams with crushing reality. He found it so hard to translate the sound in his head — the Jersey-bar dynamite of his live gigs, Phil Spector’s Wagnerian grandeur, the heartbreaking melodrama of Roy Orbison’s hits — that Springsteen nearly scrapped Born to Run for a straight-up concert album. But his make-or-break attention to detail — including the iconic cover photo of Springsteen leaning onto saxman Clarence Clemons, a perfect metaphor for Springsteen’s brotherly reliance on the E Street Band — assured the integrity of Born to Run’s success. In his determination to make a great album, Springsteen produced a timeless, inspiring record about the labors and glories of aspiring to greatness. "
46,Stevie Wonder,Innervisions,-12,"Tamla/Motown, 1973","“We as a people are not interested in ‘baby, baby’ songs any more, there’s more to life than that,” Stevie Wonder said in 1972. With Innervisions, Wonder offered a landmark fusion of social realism and spiritual idealism; he brings expressive color and irresistible funk to his synth-based keyboards on “Too High” (a cautionary anti-drug song) and “Higher Ground” (which echoes Martin Luther King Jr.’s message of transcendence). The album’s centerpiece is “Living for the City,” a cinematic depiction of exploitation and injustice. “Innervisions gives my own perspective on what’s happening in my world,” Wonder said. “I think it is my most personal album. I don’t care if it sells only five copies.” "
47,Love,Forever Changes,+133,"Elektra, 1967","“When I did that album,” singer Arthur Lee said, “I thought I was going to die at that particular time, so those were my last words.” Lee, who died of cancer in 2006, was still performing this album live well into the ‘00s. And for good reason: Love’s third record is his crowning achievement. A biracial cult band from L.A. that rarely gigged out of town in its 1960s heyday, Love were Lee’s vehicle for a pioneering folk-rock turned into elegant armageddon with the symphonic sweep and mariachi-brass drama of “Alone Again Or,” “Andmoreagain,” and “You Set the Scene.” In the late Nineties, Lee served time in prison. After his release, he brought extra pathos to “Live and Let Live” when he sang, “Served my time, served it well.” "
48,Public Enemy,It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back,-33,"Def Jam, 1988","Loud, obnoxious, funky, avant-garde, political, uncompromising, hilarious – Public Enemy’s brilliant second album is all of these things — all at once. Chuck D booms intricate rhymes with a delivery inspired by sportscaster Marv Albert; sidekick Flavor Flav raps comic relief; and production team the Bomb Squad build mesmerizing, multilayered jams, pierced with shrieking sirens. The title and roiling force of “Bring the Noise” is truth in advertising. “If they’re calling my music ‘noise,’ ” said Chuck D, “if they’re saying that I’m really getting out of character being a black person in America, then fine – I’m bringing more noise.” Along with “Bring the Noise,” Nation classics like “Rebel Without a Pause” were conceived at Spectrum City in the band headquarters in Hempstead, New York. For “Rebel,” producer Hank Shocklee of the Bomb Squad looped a piercing sample of James Brown’s “The Grunt” with Brown’s “Funky Drummer” (“That song was like my milk,” said Shocklee). To write verses that could match such a sonic assault, Chuck locked himself in his house for 24 hours and emerged with broadsides like the media screed “Don’t Believe the Hype.” He wasn’t sure of the results until DMC, of Run-DMC, blasted it out of his Bronco on a Saturday night. Says Shocklee, “The whole block was grooving to it.” "
49,The Stooges,Fun House,+45,"Elektra, 1970","With garage-savvy ex-Kingsmen keyboardist Don Gallucci producing their second album, the Stooges made their most fully realized effort, despite their collective drug problems. “We had a certain purity of intention,” Iggy Pop asserted. “I don’t think we did ever get it from the drugs. I think they killed things.” They couldn’t kill what he has called the relentless “troglodyte groove” the band had on Fun House. “I stick it deep inside,” Iggy growls on “Loose,” one of the album’s typically confrontational tracks. Later, on “1970,” he insisted, ad infinitum, “I feel all right,” and there’s no question you wouldn’t want any of whatever he was on. "
50,Neil Young,Harvest,+22,"Reprise, 1972","Harvest yielded Neil Young’s only Number One hit, “Heart of Gold,” and helped set the stage for the Seventies soft-rock explosion — both James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt sing on the album. Along with Young, they were in Nashville to appear on Johnny Cash’s variety show the week that Harvest was cut with an odd group of accomplished session musicians that included bassist Tim Drummond, who had played with James Brown. The sound was Americana — steel guitar, slide guitar, banjo — stripped down and rebuilt with every jagged edge exposed. The standout tracks include “Old Man” and “The Needle and the Damage Done.” "
51,John Lennon,Plastic Ono Band,+34,"Apple, 1970","Also known as the “primal scream” album, referring to the painful therapy that gave rise to its songs, Plastic Ono Band was John Lennon’s first proper solo album and rock & roll’s most self-revelatory recording. Lennon attacks and denies idols and icons, including his own former band (“I don’t believe in Beatles,” he sings in “God”), to hit a pure, raw core of confession that, in its echo-drenched, garage-rock crudity, is years ahead of punk. He deals with childhood loss in “Mother” and skirts blasphemy in “Working Class Hero”: “You’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.” But the unkindest cut came in his frank 1970 Rolling Stone interview. “The Beatles was nothing,” Lennon stated acerbically. "
52,Bob Dylan,The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan,+203,"Columbia, 1963","Bob Dylan’s second LP was released on May 27th, 1963 – three days after his 22nd birthday. It was a tender age for such a triumph. On Freewheelin’, the poetry and articulate fury of Dylan’s lyrics and his simple, compelling melodies transformed American popular songwriting. His wholly original grip on grit, truth, and beauty in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Masters of War” still changes everyone who hears this album, four decades later. "
53,Nick Drake,Five Leaves Left,New in 2023,,
54,R.E.M.,Murmur,+111,"I.R.S., 1983","“We wanted to have this kind of timeless record,” guitarist Peter Buck said of R.E.M.’s debut LP, and this “technically limited” band (according to producer Don Dixon) did just that. Buck was a rock scholar who had worked in a record store; singer Michael Stipe unspooled his lyrics as if they constituted some new secret language. Murmur is full of ringing guitars and mystery. The lyrics and the melodies seem buried, almost subliminal, and even the songs with something approximating hooks, such as “Radio Free Europe,” resist clarity. Murmur was a founding document of alternative rock, released just as Gen X was heading off to college. "
55,Michael Jackson,Thriller,-43,"Epic, 1982","Michael Jackson towered over the Eighties the way no superstar before or since has dominated an era — not even Elvis or the Beatles. And Thriller is the reason why. Still in his early twenties, the R&B child star of the 1970s had ripened into a Technicolor soul man: a singer, dancer, and songwriter with incomparable crossover instincts. He and producer Quincy Jones established the something-for-everyone template of Thriller on 1979’s Off the Wall [see No. 36], on which Jackson captures the rare mania of his life — the applause and paranoia, the need for love and the fear of commitment — in a crisp fusion of pop hooks and dance beats. On Thriller, the pair heighten the sheen (the jaunty gloss of “The Girl Is Mine,” with a guest vocal by Paul McCartney), pump up the theater (the horror-movie spectacular “Thriller”), and deepen the funk. With its locomotive cadence and an acrobatic metal-guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen, “Beat It” was arguably the first industrial-disco Number One. It is hard now to separate Thriller from its commercial stature (Number One for 37 weeks, 33 million copies sold), the nightmarish tabloid celebrity that led to Jackson’s death, and the horrific revelations about him that have surfaced in recent years. But there was a time when we only knew Jackson as the King of Pop. This is it. "
56,Wire,Pink Flag,+254,"Harvest, 1977","This first-generation U.K. punk band made sparse tunes that erupted in combustible snippets on its 21-track debut album. America never got it, but Pink Flag — as revolutionary discs tend to do — influenced some important bands, including Sonic Youth and the Minutemen. It also might be one of the most-covered punk LPs ever: Minor Threat did “12XU,” R.E.M. did “Strange,” the New Bomb Turks did “Mr. Suit,” Spoon did “Lowdown,” the Lemonheads did “Fragile,” and on and on. "
57,Fleetwood Mac,Rumours,-50,"Warner Bros., 1977","With Rumours, Fleetwood Mac turned private turmoil into gleaming, melodic public art. The band’s two couples — bassist John McVie and singer-keyboard player Christine McVie, who were married; guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and vocalist Stevie Nicks, who were not — broke up during the protracted sessions for the album. As John later told Rolling Stone of the atmosphere during the making of Rumours, “Parties going on all over the house. Amazing. Terrifying. Huge amounts of illicit materials, yards and yards of this wretched stuff. Days and nights would just go on and on.” This frenzied, decadent vibe lent a highly charged, confessional aura to such songs as Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way,” Nicks’ “Dreams,” Christine’s “Don’t Stop,” and the group-composed anthem to betrayal, “The Chain.” The band’s soap opera fueled its own intricate creative conversation; on “You Make Loving Fun,” Christine sang about her new boyfriend, the band’s lighting designer, as her ex John dutifully drives home the song with a sunny, funky bass line. To write “Dreams,” Nicks sat on a black velvet bed in a tiny room hidden deep in the Record Plant, where the band was recording, creating one of her most haunting songs in 10 minutes. “[In ‘Go Your Own Way’] Lindsey is saying go ahead and date other men and go live your crappy life, and [I’m] singing about the rain washing you clean,” Nicks said. “We were coming at it from opposite angles, but we were really saying the same exact thing.” The Mac’s catchy exposés, produced with California-sunshine polish, touched a nerve: Rumours became the sixth-best-selling album of all time. "
58,The Sex Pistols,Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols,+22,"Warner Bros., 1977","“If the sessions had gone the way I wanted, it would have been unlistenable for most people,” Johnny Rotten said. “I guess it’s the very nature of music: If you want people to listen, you’re going to have to compromise.” But few heard it that way at the time. The Pistols’ only studio album sounds like a rejection of everything rock & roll — and the world itself — had to offer. True, the music was less shocking than Rotten himself, who sang about abortions, anarchy, and hatred on “Bodies” and “Anarchy in the U.K.” But Never Mind the Bollocks is the Sermon on the Mount of U.K. punk — and its echoes are everywhere. "
59,Otis Redding,Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul,+119,,
60,Dusty Springfield,Dusty in Memphis,+23,"Atlantic, 1969","Born in London, Dusty Springfield was a great soul singer hidden inside a white British pop queen — racking up Motown-style hits such as “I Only Want to Be With You” — when Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler brought her way down South, to Memphis, to make this album. She was so intimidated by the idea of recording with session guys from her favorite Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding hits that she never actually managed to sing a note there. Her vocals were overdubbed later, when the sessions moved to New York. But the result was blazing soul and sexual honesty (“Breakfast in Bed,” “Son of a Preacher Man”) that transcended both race and geography. "
61,Sonic Youth,Daydream Nation,+110,"Enigma, 1988","Sonic Youth took an ecstatic, specifically New York sound created in the late 1970s by the band Television and by composers Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, and turned it into an international clamor. On this double album, they make a move away from doomy riddles about pop culture and toward joyful riddles about pop culture. Their unconventional guitar tunings result in jarring chords and overtones, but also an array of gnarled hooks. Thurston Moore’s and Lee Ranaldo’s guitars are like antennae picking up otherworldly signals and channeling them into the scuzzy urban haze of “Teen Age Riot” and “Eric’s Trip,” and on “The Sprawl,” bassist Kim Gordon sums up the album’s measured chaos: “Does ‘Fuck you’ sound simple enough?” "
62,Prince,Sign 'O' the Times,-17,"Paisley Park/Warner Bros., 1987","He’d fired his band, and his latest movie, Under the Cherry Moon, had flopped; just three years after Purple Rain, Prince was in the market for a comeback. So he recorded one of the great albums of the Eighties. Times is best known for the apocalyptic title track, the brontosaurus funk of “Housequake,” and the gorgeous “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” Yet the simplest moments are unforgettable: the “Sweet Jane”-style guitar plea of “The Cross,” the Stax revamp on “Slow Love,” a jilted girl’s sadness in “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man.” “I hate the word ‘experiment,’” Prince said. “It sounds like something you didn’t finish.” Here, he finished. "
63,The Byrds,Sweetheart of the Rodeo,+211,"Columbia, 1968","On release, this bold experiment in Nashville classicism was shunned by rock fans and country purists alike. But the American rural song had been central to the Byrds’ folk-rock sound; here, driven by junior Byrd Gram Parsons, the band highlighted that connection, dressing Bob Dylan and Merle Haggard songs in steel guitar and rock & roll drive, setting the stage for country rock. Parsons left signs of his short, glorious future in his originals “Hickory Wind” and “One Hundred Years From Now.” "
64,Joni Mitchell,Hejira,+69,"Asylum, 1976","After redefining the possibilities of singer-songwriter music in the early 1970s, Mitchell set herself an even more ambitious challenge with Hejira, her ultimate jazz-folk statement. Setting her restless-soul visions to slippery instrumentals with help from bassist Jaco Pastorius, she weighed the costs of dedicating her life to fearless self-expression where others might have settled for mere happiness (“Amelia,” “Song for Sharon”). Getting to the point where she could make an album this singularly brilliant might have been a lonely enterprise, but it was worth it for the rest of us. "
65,Bob Dylan,John Wesley Harding,+272,"Columbia, 1967","Recovering from his 1966 motorcycle crash, Bob Dylan made a left turn into country fables and stark mystic folkways. He took a quick trip to Nashville and banged out John Wesley Harding. It’s his most ominous album, with characters from the Bible and the shadowy side of American history, from “I Am a Lonesome Hobo” to “All Along the Watchtower.” With his stripped-down sound and a black-and-white cover photo, Dylan was defiantly rejecting all the current trends — going his own way, as usual. "
66,The Replacements,Let It Be,+90,"Twin/Tone, 1984","Copping a Beatles title was cheeky; attaching it to a post-punk masterpiece was a sign of maturity. Said Paul Westerberg, “This was the first time I had songs that we arranged, rather than just banging out riffs.” Mixing punk, pop, and country with wry lyrics, his songs describe heroes (the gender-bending couple in “Androgynous”) and villains (an unsanitary dentist in “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out”; MTV in “Seen Your Video”), and pack in quips about the group’s lack of success (“Fingernails and cigarettes, a lousy dinner”) with swagger and pride. The coup is “Unsatisfied,” a pained howl of unhappiness that forced people to take this ratty band seriously. "
67,Can,Tago Mago,New in 2023,,
68,Simon & Garfunkel,Bookends,New in 2023,,
69,Sly & the Family Stone,Stand!,+50,"Epic, 1969","Stand! is party politics at its most inclusive and exciting — Sly Stone at the top of his funk-rock-soul game. A DJ and producer in San Francisco during the Dawn of Hippie, Stone rides the bonfire momentum of the civil rights movement in motivational-soul sermons such as “Stand!” and “You Can Make It If You Try” without denying the intrinsic divisions that threatened civil war (“Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey”). There was also the uplifting pure-pop beauty of “Everyday People” as well as the R&B ecstasy of “I Want to Take You Higher” and the swirling black psychedelia of “Sex Machine.” It makes Stand! a greatest-hits album in all but name. "
70,Roxy Music,For Your Pleasure,+281,"Warner Bros., 1973","Keyboardist Brian Eno’s last album with Roxy Music is the pop equivalent of Ultrasuede: highly stylish, abstract-leaning art rock. The collision of Eno’s and singer Bryan Ferry’s clashing visions gives Pleasure a wild, tense charm — especially on the driving “Editions of You” and “Do the Strand.” The album’s deeply weird centerpiece is “In Every Dream Home a Heartache”: Ferry sings a seductive ballad to an inflatable doll (“I blew up your body, but you blew my mind”), one of the creepiest love songs of all time. "
71,Hüsker Dü,Zen Arcade,New in 2023,,
72,Al Green,Call Me,+355,"Hi, 1973","Green was absolutely fearless at this point, an innovator willing to try any crazy idea — country ballads, jazz chords, even a gospel tune. Producer Willie Mitchell and his studio band of virtuoso Memphis R&B pros create the sultriest grooves south of the Mason-Dixon line. Green testifies to the glories of love in “Call Me” and “Have You Been Making Out O.K.” When he reaches up for that falsetto growl at the end of “Your Love Is Like the Morning Sun,” it’s like he’s bringing down the sugar walls of Jericho. "
73,Ray Charles,The Genius of Ray Charles,New in 2023,,
74,Kraftwerk,Trans-Europe Express,+164,"Kling Klang, 1977","In 1975, someone asked legendary rock critic Lester Bangs where music was going. “It’s being taken over by the Germans and the machines,” he replied. Not a bad prediction. This German group’s sound sought to eliminate the distinction between men and machines. Kraftwerk’s robot-synthesizer grooves influenced electrodisco hitmakers, experimental geniuses such as Brian Eno, and rappers including Afrika Bambaataa, who lifted the title track for “Planet Rock.” The whole world of EDM may not have happened without them. "
75,Big Star,Third/Sister Lovers,+210,"PVC, 1978","Big Star’s first two albums were crisp power-pop full of bright Sixties melodies. Their third album very much wasn’t. The band recorded it, their final LP, in 1974, but it didn’t get released until 1978, in part because singer Alex Chilton sounds like he’s having a nervous breakdown. It’s a record of gorgeous, disjointed heartbreak ballads such as “Take Care,” “Nighttime,” and “Blue Moon.” Even when they’re more optimistic, the songs almost seem to disintegrate as they unfold, finally collapsing into the sublime apocalypse of the album-closing “Kanga Roo.” "
76,The Jimi Hendrix Experience,Electric Ladyland,New in 2023,,
77,Radiohead,The Bends,+199,"Capitol, 1995","If the first half of the Nineties was shaped by Nirvana, the template for the second half was set by Radiohead. The Bends marries a majestic and somber guitar sound to Thom Yorke’s anguished-choirboy vocals. “Fake Plastic Trees” was something of a radio hit, an introspective acoustic ballad of alienation. And not yet shying away from guitar anthems, Radiohead drew on the epic grandeur of U2 and the melancholy of the Smiths in “Nice Dream,” “Just,” and the haunting finale, “Street Spirit (Fade Out).” "
78,The Rolling Stones,Beggars Banquet,+107,"Decca, 1968","“When we had been in the States between 1964 and ’66, I had gathered together this enormous collection of records, but I never had any time to listen to them,” Keith Richards recalled. “In late 1966 and ‘67, I unwrapped them and actually played them.” After the wayward psychedelia of Their Satanic Majesties Request, and with guitarist Brian Jones largely AWOL, Richards’ record collection led the Rolling Stones back to their version of America: country music on “Dear Doctor,” the blues on “Prodigal Son,” and urban riots on “Street Fighting Man.” And “Sympathy for the Devil,” of course, is an anthem for the darkness in every human heart. "
79,Blondie,Parallel Lines,+67,"Chrysalis, 1978","Here’s where punk and New Wave broke through to a mass U.S. audience, thanks to the Number One hit “Heart of Glass,” also known to Blondie fans as “The Disco Song.” “I was trying to get that groove that the drummer for the Bee Gees had,” said Blondie drummer Clem Burke, who credited Kraftwerk and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack as influences on “Heart of Glass.” Parallel Lines is a perfect synthesis of raw punk edge, Sixties-pop smarts, and the cool New Wave glamour that Blondie invented. Debbie Harry, of course, invented a new kind of rock & roll sex appeal that brought New York demimonde style to the mainstream. Madonna was surely watching. "
80,The Band,The Band,-23,"Capitol, 1969","The Band was four-fifths Canadian — drummer Levon Helm was from Arkansas – but their second album was all American. Guitarist Robbie Robertson’s songs vividly evoke the country’s pioneer age — “Across the Great Divide,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” — while reflecting the state of the nation in the 1960s. The Band’s long life on the road resonates in the brawn of Garth Hudson’s keyboards and Helm’s juke-joint attack. But Robertson’s stories truly live in Helm’s growl, Rick Danko’s high tenor, and Richard Manuel’s spectral croon. “Somebody once said he had a tear in his voice,” Helm said of Manuel. “Richard had one of the richest textured voices I’d ever heard.” "
81,Bruce Springsteen,Nebraska,+69,"Columbia, 1982","Recorded on a four-track in Springsteen’s bedroom, Nebraska’s songs were stark, spooky acoustic demos that he decided to release “bare,” packed with hard-luck tales of underdogs. “I wanted black bedtime stories,” he said in his memoir, and he wrote the LP under the influence of John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson, but also Flannery O’Connor and James M. Cain, creating a cross between the blues and pulp-noir novels. “Down here it’s just winners and losers,” he sings in “Atlantic City,” and these 10 songs live on the wrong side of that line. Yet, Springsteen ends the album with “Reason to Believe,” one of those songs where his search for faith inspires faith itself. "
82,Neil Young & Crazy Horse,Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,New in 2023,,
83,Stevie Wonder,Talking Book,-24,"Tamla/Motown, 1972","“I don’t think you know where I’m coming from,” Wonder warned Motown executives in 1971. “I don’t think you can understand it.” Indeed, the two albums Wonder released in 1972 — Music of My Mind and Talking Book — rewrote the rules of the Motown hit factory. Talking Book was full of introspection and social commentary, with Wonder producing, writing, and playing most of the instruments himself. “Superstition” and “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” were Number One singles; “Big Brother” is political consciousness draped in a light melody: “You’ve killed all our leaders/I don’t even have to do nothin’ to you/You’ll cause your own country to fall.” "
84,Tom Waits,Rain Dogs,+273,"Island, 1985","“I like weird, ludicrous things,” Tom Waits once said. That understatement plays out most clearly on Rain Dogs, his finest portrait of the tragic kingdom of the streets. Self-producing his music for the first time and recording in his native Los Angeles, he went for a sound he described as “kind of an interaction between Appalachia and Nigeria.” Waits abandoned his signature grungy minimalism on the gorgeous “Downtown Train” (later a hit for Rod Stewart) and gets backing by Keith Richards on “Big Black Mariah.” "
85,Van Morrison,Moondance,+35,"Warner Bros., 1970","“That was the type of band I dig,” Van Morrison said of the Moondance sessions. “Two horns and a rhythm section — they’re the type of bands that I like best.” Morrison took that soul-band lineup and blended it with jazz, blues, poetry, and vivid memories of his Irish childhood, until songs such as “And It Stoned Me” and “Caravan” felt like lucid dreams. In the title hit, Morrison turns the words over and over in his mouth, not scatting so much as searching for the sound of magic. “Into the Mystic” serves as an apt summary: To listen to the album is to get your passport stamped for Morrison’s world of ecstatic visions. "
86,My Bloody Valentine,Loveless,-13,"Sire, 1991","This vague, shimmering, gorgeous album reportedly cost as much as $500,000 to make and nearly bankrupted the band’s U.K. label. It was worth it. Forget the lyrics, which are buried in the mix and incomprehensible, and focus on Kevin Shields’ and Bilinda Butcher’s guitars, which build entire noise symphonies out of tremolo effects and pitch bending. Highlights like “Only Shallow” and “I Only Said” use sampling technology to build a distorted, shifting sound that is wholly original and ecstatically beautiful. It’s like being serenaded by ghosts. Generations of shoegaze bands were born in its shadow. "
87,Gram Parsons,Grievous Angel,New in 2023,,
88,David Bowie,Station to Station,-36,"RCA, 1976","The title track is where David Bowie proclaims himself the Thin White Duke. Thin he was: Station to Station was recorded in a blizzard of cocaine in Los Angeles, with Bowie subsisting on green peppers and milk and almost never sleeping. The manic mood fueled an album that was futuristic but accessible, “plastic soul” speeding toward the electronic epiphanies of his Berlin phase. “TVC 15” is New Orleans R&B as robotic funk; “Golden Years” is James Brown from outer space, with Bowie’s amazing falsetto; and the 10-minute title track summed up his constant sense of motion at the time — opening with the sound of a train coming and eventually exploding into a Euro-disco breakdown that sounds like Saturday Night Fever at the android factory. "
89,Todd Rundgren,Something/Anything?,+307,"Bearsville, 1972","“I’m probably the whitest singer in the world,” Todd Rundgren told Rolling Stone in 1972. “I have no ‘soul’ in the usual sense — but I can do this great feminine falsetto.” On this tour de force double album, Rundgren employs that falsetto on two great singles (“I Saw the Light” and “Hello It’s Me”). For the rest of the album, he demonstrates his complete command of the studio, playing almost all the instruments himself, experimenting with a kaleidoscope of rock genres, and even delivering a monologue on what poorly made records sound like. "
90,Pink Floyd,The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,+163,"EMI/Columbia, 1967","“I’m full of dust and guitars,” Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett told Rolling Stone. Here’s what that sounded like. The band’s debut is all playful, psychedelic imagery and acid guitars. “Astronomy Domine” shows the group’s pop side; “Interstellar Overdrive” shows its spacier freakouts. Released at the height of the Summer of Love, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn sums up the headlong feeling of the moment just as aptly as the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper. "
91,Joni Mitchell,The Hissing of Summer Lawns,+167,"Asylum, 1975","Joni Mitchell got deeper into glamorous L.A. groove theory on her seventh album, reveling in the possibilities of pure melody for a set of songs where her genius as a producer shines just as brightly as her writing. “In France They Kiss on Main Street” bids farewell to the rock & roll era in a blaze of freewheeling, jazzy joy; “Harry’s House/Centerpiece” frames a story of a loveless high-society marriage in supper-club swank. The rest of the pop world would take years to catch up to where she was here. "
92,Gang of Four,Entertainment!,+181,"Warner Bros., 1979","Formed in 1977, Gang of Four combined Marxist politics with punk rock. They played staccato guitar-driven funk, and the stiff, jerky aggression of songs such as “Damaged Goods” and “I Found That Essence Rare” invented a new style that influenced bands from the Minutemen to LCD Soundsystem to agit-rappers Run the Jewels, who sampled Entertainment!’s “Ether.” Even when they’re barking at you about the capitalist commodification of desire, they never sound like dogmatic grad students because the songs bite so hard. "
93,Kate Bush,Hounds of Love,-25,"EMI, 1985","Kate Bush was an avant-garde auteur as well as beloved English pop star. Her New Wave masterpiece Hounds of Love is one of the greatest examples of an artist enjoying Top 40 success while luxuriating in her own eccentricities. Playing a futurist Fairlight CMI synthesizer and singing in an ecstatic operatic chirp, she muses about Freudian psychology, career challenges, love and family, dreaming sheep, and waking witches. Side One had hits like “Running Up That Hill” and “Cloudbusting”; Side Two was an epic “story suite,” moving from goth terror to sci-fi abstraction to dark rustic revelry. It’s no wonder Björk, Florence Welch, and Mitski are just a few of the artists who’ve been swept up in Bush’s sensual world. "
94,Minutemen,Double Nickels on the Dime,+173,"SST, 1984","“Our band could be your life,” sing the Minutemen on “History Lesson – Part 2,” and never did a lyric better articulate punk’s everyman aesthetic. Guitarist D. Boon and bassist Mike Watt push each other to fast, funny, and agitated heights; they sing about everything from Vietnam to Michael Jackson, and cover CCR and Steely Dan, expanding their magnum opus double LP out to 46 songs. Sadly, Boon would die a year later in a van accident. "
95,P.J. Harvey,Rid of Me,New in 2023,"Island, 1993","“I very much wanted to write songs that shocked,” Polly Jean Harvey said years after releasing her second album. The shock came partly from her lyrics, which were often proclamations of sexual compulsion, and also from the intense dynamic shifts in her music, which careen from blues to goth, often in the space of one song. Harvey was under the influence of Howlin’ Wolf, Tom Waits, and Flannery O’Connor, and her singing, writing, and lead-guitar playing coalesce into something marked by flames. The lyrics have lots of licking, moaning, bleeding, stroking, open mouths, and dismembered body parts. The songs spew viscera as they build to a sticky ecstasy. "
96,The Kinks,The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society,+288,"Reprise, 1969","While their British Invasion peers— the Beatles, the Stones, the Who — were getting psychedelic, Ray Davies took his band for a pastoral retreat, with witty portraits of quaint English small-town life fading away like “Big Sky.” Nobody bought it, but Village Green went on to become one of the Kinks’ most influential statements. “With ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day and All of the Night,’ we were saying, ‘We’re here, we’re gonna grab you,’” Davies told Rolling Stone. “The music on Village Green says, ‘Come find us.’” "
97,Talking Heads,Fear of Music,New in 2023,,
98,Lou Reed,Transformer,+11,"RCA, 1972","David Bowie counted the former Velvet Underground leader as a major inspiration — and paid back the debt by producing Transformer. The album had glam flash courtesy of Ziggy Stardust guitarist Mick Ronson as well as Reed’s biggest hit, “Walk on the Wild Side” — which brought drag queens and hustlers into the Top 20 — and the exquisite ballad “Perfect Day.” It was Reed’s first producer, VU impresario Andy Warhol, who inspired the lead cut when he suggested “Vicious” as a song title. “You know, like, ‘Vicious/You hit me with a flower,’” Warhol elaborated. Reed took him at his word, penning the song and cribbing the lines verbatim. "
99,James Brown,Live at the Apollo,-34,"King, 1963","This may be the greatest live album ever recorded: from the breathless buildup of the spoken intro through terse, sweat-soaked early hits such as “Try Me” and “Think” into 11 minutes of the raw ballad “Lost Someone.” It climaxes with a frenzied nine-song medley, and ends with “Night Train.” Live at the Apollo is pure, uncut soul — and it almost didn’t happen. James Brown defied King Records boss Syd Nathan’s opposition to a live album by arranging to record a show himself — on October 24th, 1962, the last date of a run at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. His intuition proved correct; Live at the Apollo, the first of four albums Brown recorded there, charted for 66 weeks. "
100,Public Image Ltd.,Metal Box,New in 2023,,
101,Leonard Cohen,Songs of Leonard Cohen,+94,"Columbia, 1967","Leonard Cohen was already well into his thirties when he made his debut, in the Summer of Love. The Montreal poet had been publishing his books to literary acclaim for years, but he took to songwriting, with his acoustic guitar and the orchestrations of producer John Simon. These were the late-night ballads that made his legend, starting with “Suzanne” and “Sisters of Mercy.” But Cohen specialized in farewells, blowing kisses to his muses in “So Long, Marianne” and “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.” He kept writing brilliant songs into his eighties, right up to his death in 2016. "
102,Neil Young,On the Beach,+209,"Reprise, 1974","Reeling from the losses that sparked Tonight’s the Night the previous year, Neil Young shelved that album for a while and made this one instead: a wild fireball of anger (“Revolution Blues”), nihilism (“For the Turnstiles”), and tentative optimism (“Walk On”). The album peaks on Side Two, a stoned symphony of grieving whose three songs (“On the Beach,” “Motion Pictures,” “Ambulance Blues”) are among the most emotionally real in Young’s catalog. "
103,Pixies,Doolittle,+38,"4AD/Elektra, 1989","The Pixies’ second full-length album proved that noisy, arty college rock could be just as fun as anything else on MTV. With his antic vocal style and free-associative lyrics, singer-guitarist Black Francis seemed detached from humanity, but the rest of the Pixies grounded him. Bassist Kim Deal adds tart harmonies that feel like sarcastic asides, drummer David Lovering powers the loud-quiet-loud dynamic that influenced Nirvana and many others, and guitarist Joey Santiago tosses out concise, buzzing riffs. The Pixies’ second album is loaded: With “Debaser,” “Here Comes Your Man,” “Monkey Gone to Heaven,” “Hey,” and “Gouge Away,” it’s the college-radio version of a greatest-hits album. "
104,Yo La Tengo,I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One,+319,"Matador, 1997","In rock, as in life, breakups get all the attention; successful marriages tend to generate fewer headlines. But Yo La Tengo — the long-married couple of Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan, plus bassist James McNew — is a testament to figuring it out together. The band’s 1997 masterpiece is indie rock at its most joyfully exploratory, with deeply catchy fuzz-jams, some Casio-keyboard bossa nova, a cover of the Beach Boys’ “Little Honda, and “Autumn Sweater,” a stone-cold classic that turns organ, percussion, and shy murmuring into something mesmerizing and beautiful. "
105,Prince,Dirty Mind,+221,"Warner Bros., 1980","A mix of slinky funk, synth-driven rock, jittery pop, and sexual innuendo, Dirty Mind was Prince’s first great album, even if it only hinted at where he was headed. “White, black, Puerto Rican, everybody just a freakin’,” he sang on “Uptown,” a utopian ode to the Minneapolis club scene. The album includes the world’s merriest done-me-wrong song, “When You Were Mine,” and the incest ditty “Sister.” “I wasn’t being deliberately provocative,” Prince said. “I was being deliberately me.” "
106,Eminem,The Marshall Mathers LP,+39,"Interscope, 2000","Chris Rock joked that the world was so crazy, “the best rapper is a white guy,” referring to Eminem. He’d been accused of corrupting the nation’s youth by fostering misogyny on his major-label debut, and to say he doubled down on playing with offensive ideas only exaggerates his joyful commitment to earning more denunciations. “The Real Slim Shady” and “Bitch Please II” vaulted Eminem from a shock rapper with a sense of humor to the voice of a generation. And in “Stan,” he created a verb and a meme to describe extreme fandom in our era. "
107,Love,Da Capo,New in 2023,,
108,David Bowie,Hunky Dory,-20,"RCA, 1971","David Bowie, then 24, arrived at the Hunky Dory cover shoot with a book of photographs of Marlene Dietrich: a perfect metaphor for this album’s visionary blend of gay camp, flashy rock guitar, and saloon-piano balladry. Bowie marked the polar ends of his artistic ambitions with tribute songs to Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol. In “Oh! You Pretty Things,” “Quicksand,” and “Changes” he invented and perfected a new style of rock & roll glamour. On “Life on Mars?” he sings to all the weirdos like himself, who feel like aliens on Earth. Soon an entire army of kids would attempt to remake themselves in his spangled image, proving his point. "
109,Derek and the Dominos,Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,+117,"Atco, 1970","Eric Clapton was tired of stardom, so he formed a new band where he could be just another one of the lads. But there was no mistaking the blues guitar on “Layla,” as Clapton sang about falling in love with the wife of his best friend, George Harrison. The tortured love songs on Layla get a kick from guest Duane Allman, whose interplay with Clapton in “Key to the Highway” and “Have You Ever Loved a Woman” is both harmonious and fiercely competitive: electric, brotherly love. "
110,Elton John,Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,+2,"MCA, 1973","Elton John compared this double album to the Beatles’ White Album, and why not? He was by this point the most consistent hitmaker since the Fab Four, and soon enough he would be recording with John Lennon. Everything about Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was supersonically huge, from the Wagnerian-opera-like combo of “Funeral for a Friend” and “Love Lies Bleeding” to the electric boots and mohair suit of “Bennie and the Jets.” “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” was strutting rock & roll, “Candle in the Wind” paid tribute to Marilyn Monroe (and later, Princess Diana), and the title track harnessed the fantastical imagery of glam to a Gershwin-sweet melody. "
111,X,Wild Gift,New in 2023,,
112,Paul McCartney & Wings,Band on the Run,New in 2023,,
113,The Byrds,Younger Than Yesterday,New in 2023,,
114,Curtis Mayfield,Curtis,+161,"Curtom, 1970","In the late Sixties, Curtis Mayfield fronted the Impressions, masters of doo-wop soul with a knack for hiding bracing political commentary inside honeyed harmonies. His biting, tender solo debut proved he was lethal as a lone wolf, able to write complex, sprawling, intricate soul music: “Move On Up,” a persistence mantra; “The Makings of You,” impossibly lavish; and “(Don’t Worry) If There Is a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go,” a damning indictment of societal dysfunction that still stings today. "
115,Pere Ubu,The Modern Dance,New in 2023,,
116,Nick Drake,Pink Moon,+87,"Island, 1979","Nick Drake recorded his last album in a couple of nights, mailed the tapes to Island Records, and checked himself into a psychiatric ward. If the music were as dark as the lyrics, it might be unlistenable. But Drake’s soothing vocals and unadorned acoustic picking unfold with supernatural tenderness. Few heard Pink Moon when it was released, but its stark beauty has touched the intimate bedroom folk of Cat Power, Elliott Smith, and many others. "
117,Devo,Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!,+135,"Warner Bros., 1978","They came from Akron, Ohio, wore matching jumpsuits, and had a sinister theory of devolution. Their debut album runs on rubber-punk energy and mechanized New Wave beats, with a robotic, soul-chilling version of the Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” demented highlights like the troublingly catchy “Mongoloid,” and the Chuck Berry parody “Come Back Jonee.” Devo never got slowed down by their concept; “Gut Feeling/(Slap Your Mammy)” is warped Midwestern guitar mania at its finest. "
118,Bob Marley & the Wailers,Catch a Fire,+22,"Island, 1973","This was the album that introduced the whole world to Bob Marley, expanding his audience beyond Jamaica without diluting his bedrock reggae power. At the time, the Wailers were truly a unified band, fronted by three extraordinary singers in Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Livingston. The rhythm section of drummer Carlton Barrett and his brother, bassist Aston “Family Man” Barrett, defined the reggae beat. Producer and label boss Chris Blackwell subtly overdubbed and remixed the original Jamaican sessions for international ears, but the Wailers’ ghetto rage comes across uncut in “Concrete Jungle” and “Slave Driver.” "
119,Big Star,Radio City,+240,"Ardent, 1974","Alex Chilton and his band of Memphis misfits were years ahead of their time — when they released Radio City in 1974, hardly anyone heard it. But like the Velvet Underground, they became hugely influential when future generations discovered them and got their minds blown. Big Star came up with their own skewed pop sound, filtering their love of the Beatles through their Memphis-soul roots. “September Gurls” and “Life Is White” should have been hits, soaring with the sweetly eccentric guitar chime and the romantic ache in Chilton’s voice. "
120,Funkadelic,Maggot Brain,+16,"Westbound, 1971","“Play like your mama just died,” bandleader/genius George Clinton said to guitarist Eddie Hazel. That morose instruction worked; nothing has ever sounded like the 10 minutes of anguished, fuzzed-up blues Hazel plays on the title song. (Clinton likened the playing to “a silver web.”) Clinton was a funk surrealist and a provocateur, but he’d also been in a doo-wop group and had written songs for Motown — he balanced multicolored futurism with old-school R&B chops on the swinging “Can You Get to That,” the psychedelic “You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks,” and “Super Stupid,” another showcase for Hazel’s dense, distorted riffing. As Clinton later asked defiantly, “Who says a funk band can’t play rock?” "
121,Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention,We're Only in It for the Money,New in 2023,,
122,John Coltrane,A Love Supreme,-56,"Impulse!, 1965","Two important things happened to John Coltrane in 1957: The saxophonist left Miles Davis’ employ to join Thelonious Monk’s band and hit new heights in extended, ecstatic soloing. Coltrane also kicked his heroin addiction, a vital step in a religious awakening that climaxed with this legendary album-long hymn of praise. The indelible four-note theme of the first movement, “Acknowledgment,” is the humble foundation of the suite. But Coltrane’s majestic, often violent blowing (famously described as “sheets of sound”) is never self-aggrandizing. Coltrane soars with nothing but gratitude and joy. You can’t help but go with him. "
123,Beastie Boys,Paul's Boutique,+2,"Capitol, 1989","“I went to this party in Los Angeles,” recalled Adam Horovitz, “and they were playing this music, like … four breakbeat records playing at the same time.” The party soundtrack consisted of tracks by the Dust Brothers, who ended up co-producing this entire second record from the Beasties, providing the rap trio with some of the best samples ever put on wax, including the Ramones, Mountain, and the Funky 4 Plus 1. Paul’s Boutique is also an extended goof on Abbey Road [see No. 5], which was Paul McCartney’s boutique — and like that record, it ambitiously stitches together song fragments in a way rarely heard before or since. "
124,Jay-Z,The Blueprint,-74,"Roc-A-Fella, 2001","With The Blueprint, Jay-Z took on anyone and everyone who wanted to sit on his throne, even the jesters. “Takeover,” one of rap’s most precise and unrelenting diss tracks, commits GBH on rappers Nas and Prodigy from Mobb Deep. When Hova isn’t taking shots at record executives, cops, critics, haters, biters, and his absent dad (and still, sadly, using the word “faggot”), he inches toward vulnerability on “Song Cry.” “Izzo (H.O.V.A.),” with dynamic production by Kanye West, gave him his first Top 10 single. Jay-Z elevates clever rhymes and innovations with an unmatched air of calm control and a cavalier confidence. Here’s the moral of the story, courtesy of “Takeover”: “You guys don’t want it with HOV.” "
125,Lucinda Williams,Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,-27,"Mercury, 1998","It took three torturous years to finish, but it was worth it; there are no bad songs on this alt-country masterwork. The title track is one of Williams’ best: Over guitars that owe more to the Stones than to the Opry, she tells a story about the rootlessness of American life. Williams, who was born in Louisiana, describes the South in a loving, fearful tone (“Broken down shacks, engine parts” in one song, “Busted-down doors and borrowed cash” in another) and mourns pals who fell prey to hard liquor, drugs, or dreams of stardom. With production help from Roy Bittan of the E Street Band and a lot of twangy power chords, Williams rocks hard enough to give these troubled songs both dignity and a feeling of release. "
126,Roxy Music,Roxy Music,New in 2023,,
127,The Ramones,Ramones,-80,,
128,Frank Sinatra,Songs for Swingin' Lovers!,New in 2023,,
129,Bruce Springsteen,"The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle",+216,"Columbia, 1973","Reeling from the commercial fizzle of his debut LP, Bruce Springsteen threw off the “new Dylan” baggage and applied his Jersey-bar-band skills to some of the funniest tunes he’d ever write: “Rosalita,” “Kitty’s Back,” and the boardwalk love song “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy).” The music is loose, jazzy, and full of ambition — a studio take on the live muscle that Springsteen was already famous for — and “New York City Serenade” is the first of Springsteen’s epic street operas. "
130,Tim Buckley,Happy Sad,New in 2023,,
131,Black Sabbath,Paranoid,+8,"Vertigo, 1970","If you think Ozzy’s enduring fame is impressive, try taking a time machine back to the early Seventies and telling rock critics they’ll still be writing about Paranoid 50 years after its release. But Sabbath ruled for bummed-out kids in the Seventies, and nearly every heavy-metal and extreme rock band of the past three decades — from Metallica to Nirvana to Mastodon — owes a debt of worship to Tony Iommi’s crushing, granite-fuzz guitar chords, the Visigoth rhythm machine of Bill Ward and Geezer Butler, and Ozzy Osbourne’s agonized bray in “Paranoid,” “Iron Man,” and “War Pigs.” "
132,The B-52's,The B-52's,+66,"Warner Bros., 1979","The debut by the B-52’s sounds like a bunch of high school friends cramming all their running jokes, goofy sounds, and private nicknames into a New Wave record. “We never thought it would get past our circle of friends in Athens [Georgia],” vocalist Fred Schneider told Rolling Stone. It turned out that nobody could resist the band’s campy, arty funk, or the eccentric squeals and bouffant hairdos of Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson. (Playing organ, Pierson also defined the band’s sound.) They played toy instruments, and their thrift-store image was as inventive and colorful as their music — which, with “Rock Lobster,” was pretty inventive and colorful. "
133,The Stooges,Raw Power,New in 2023,,
134,The Beatles,A Hard Day's Night,+129,"United Artists, 1964","This soundtrack to the Richard Lester film cemented all that U.S. listeners had heard about the Beatles’ genius in the off-kilter beauty of John Lennon’s “If I Fell” and the rockabilly bounce of Paul McCartney’s “Can’t Buy Me Love.” It was their first album of all-original material, showcasing leaps in their songwriting as well as new tricks like George Harrison’s 12-string guitar, picked up on tour in America, and the Dylanesque harmonica blast that opens “I Should Have Known Better.” "
135,Sleater-Kinney,Dig Me Out,+54,"Kill Rock Stars, 1997","“I wanna be your Joey Ramone,” Corin Tucker promised on Sleater-Kinney’s 1996 album, Call the Doctor. Their next record made good on that mythic ambition. When drummer Janet Weiss joined singer-guitarists Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, a riot-grrrl force of nature became one of the world’s most potent rock bands. Tucker’s indelible vibrato takes off with avenging-angel ferocity on songs like the almost impossibly explosive title track and “Words and Guitar,” an awe-inspiring statement of rock & roll’s power to transform a broken world. "
136,Led Zeppelin,Physical Graffiti,+8,"Swan Song, 1975","The last great Led Zeppelin album is — like most 1970s double LPs — a bloated beast. But its self-indulgent swagger is the very unifying thing that makes it so much fun — and one of the heaviest records of the Seventies. Physical Graffiti is the ultimate in Zeppelin’s attempts to fuse East and West, exploring the Arabic and Indian sonorities of “Kashmir” and “In the Light.” It’s Zeppelin’s most eclectic album, featuring down-and-dirty blues (“Black Country Woman,” “Boogie With Stu”), pop balladry (“Down by the Seaside”), metal riffs (“The Wanton Song”), and the 11-minute “In My Time of Dying.” An excessive album from the group that all but invented excess. "
137,George Harrison,All Things Must Pass,+231,"Apple, 1970","After the end of the Beatles, the Quiet One suddenly looked like the one best prepared for the solo life. After years of writing in the shadow of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, George Harrison had enough songs saved up to make his solo debut a triple album, featuring friends like Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and Ringo Starr. All Things Must Pass is full of spiritual guitar quests like “Isn’t It a Pity” and “My Sweet Lord,” the first Number One hit to include a Hare Krishna chant. "
138,Ornette Coleman,The Shape of Jazz to Come,+279,"Atlantic, 1959","Ornette Coleman’s sound was so out there, one audience at an early gig threw his tenor sax over a cliff. He switched to alto and pioneered free jazz: no chords, no harmony, any player can take the lead. It’s still a jarring sound to encounter for the first time, but Coleman’s freedom was grounded in the cathartic release of the gospel and blues of his native Texas. On his first album for Atlantic Records, his music can be just as lyrical as it is demanding, particularly on the haunting “Lonely Woman.” "
139,R.E.M.,Automatic for the People,-43,"Warner Bros., 1992","“It doesn’t sound a whole lot like us,” warned guitarist Peter Buck. But by stripping back their sound to a spare, largely acoustic essence, the college-rock kings made the most powerful album of their career — an argument for sweetness and softness in an increasingly hard world. The bold sonic change-up laid bare Michael Stipe’s keening baritone and expansive vocal melodies, accentuated in several songs by Led Zeppelin member John Paul Jones’ gorgeous string arrangements. The album “was beautiful. It was quiet,” Stipe said. “It flew in the face of everything that was going down musically at the time.” At a time when grunge angst ruled, songs like “Everybody Hurts” and the lovely “Find the River” offered solace. "
140,Pink Floyd,Wish You Were Here,+124,"Columbia, 1975","For the follow-up to Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd got even darker, exploring their main themes of lunacy and alienation. The poignant title ballad is a lament for their ex-bandmate Syd Barrett, one of the Sixties’ saddest acid casualties. They pay tribute in “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” a 26-minute, nine-part suite that both opens and closes the album, with David Gilmour’s elegiac guitar. They also skewer the music business in “Have a Cigar” and “Welcome to the Machine.” "
141,The Notorious B.I.G.,Ready to Die,-119,"Bad Boy, 1994","The Notorious B.I.G. spread the love the Brooklyn way on his classic debut, introducing us to the most immediately likable voice in hip-hop history. “I made the record for New York, but I want the world to hear it,” he said. Ready to Die executive producer Sean “Puffy” Combs, who’d read about the fledgling Brooklyn rapper in The Source magazine, pushed his new discovery to leaven the stick-up-kid self-mythologizing of “Machine Gun Funk” and “Gimme the Loot” with inviting party-up pop like “Big Poppa” and the ecstatically playful origin story “Juicy.” But it was Biggie’s gift of gab, enormous personality, and sense of humor that made Ready to Die so wonderful — whether he was offering a 360-degree vision of the mean streets of Fort Greene on “Things Done Changed,” kicking it Bonnie and Clyde-style on “Me and My Bitch,” or delivering rags-to-riches brags like “Birthdays was the worst days/Now we sip champagne when we’re thirsty.” In the process, he changed rap forever. He ends the album with the dark prophecy of “Suicidal Thoughts.” As with Kurt Cobain, his tragic death while still in his twenties will always leave us wondering how far he might have gone. "
142,N.W.A,Straight Outta Compton,-72,"Ruthless, 1988","N.W.A’s debut brought West Coast gangsta rap to Middle America and changed hip-hop forever. It was the launching pad for the careers of Ice Cube, Eazy-E, and Dr. Dre. “Back then we was calling it ‘reality rap,’” Ice Cube told Rolling Stone years later. “‘Gangsta rap’ is the name that the media coined.” Ice Cube’s rage and Dr. Dre’s police-siren street beats combined for a truly fearsome sound on “Express Yourself” and “Straight Outta Compton.” But it was the protest track “Fuck Tha Police” that earned the crew its biggest honor: a threatening letter from the FBI. "
143,Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds,Murder Ballads,New in 2023,,
144,Jackson Browne,Late for the Sky,New in 2023,,
145,Portishead,Dummy,-14,"Go! Beat, 1994","It’s difficult to sustain, over an entire album, something as vague as ambiance, but Portishead did it on their debut. Along with fellow Bristol, England, innovators Massive Attack, they headed up the trendy mid-Nineties trip-hop movement. Long after the genre petered out, their debut remains immersive and haunting, built on skittering break beats, jazzy samples, spare arrangements, and discomforting pauses. But it’s singer Beth Gibbon’s brooding, pop-cabaret vocals that make it feel classic, hinting at real pain below trip-hop’s stoned exterior. The result was cinematic enough to recall John Barry’s lustrous scores for James Bond films. "
146,Björk,Homogenic,+56,"Elektra, 1997","Björk’s third album was a departure from the fun, playful electronics of her mid-Nineties solo sets Debut and Post, adopting a more uniform, chilly, and distinctly Icelandic sound in its fusion of trip-hop with neo-classical strings. “Jóga,” with its stratosphere-high vocals and beats inspired by volcanic eruptions, may be Björk’s signature song, but it’s only one sample of the album’s palette, jagged and luminescent like broken stained glass. The sheer beauty underneath its boldness and abrasion has enraptured countless artists, from Thom Yorke to Arca, in the years since its release. "
147,Charles Mingus,The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady,New in 2023,,
148,Liz Phair,Exile in Guyville,-92,"Matador, 1993","“Watch how fast they run to the flame,” Liz Phair sang, and true to that promise her debut double LP set the underground on fire. Phair and co-producer Brad Wood built off the bedroom demo intimacy of Phair’s Girly-Sound cassette releases, creating a loose response record to the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street (“I had a lot to say on the subject matter they put forth,” she told Rolling Stone). Her strikingly frank sex talk caused a media stir unheard of for a “low-fi” artitst, but it was the caffeinated drive of songs like “6’1” and “Never Said,” the painterly sonic impressionism of the piano piece “Canary” or the sunset majestic “Stratford-On-Guy,” and the real hurt and hunger of “Fuck and Run” and “Divorce Song” that made Exile hit home. "
149,Run-D.M.C.,Raising Hell,New in 2023,"Profile, 1986","Working for the first time with producer Rick Rubin, the Hollis, Queens, crew of Run, DMC, and Jam Master Jay made an album so undeniable, it forced the mainstream to cross over to hip-hop. “Peter Piper” kicked the rhymes over a jingling cowbell sampled from an old jazz-fusion record. On “My Adidas,” “It’s Tricky,” and “You Be Illin’,” Run and DMC talked trash while the DJ made their day. They even hit MTV with a vandalistic remake of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way,” featuring Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. "
150,Guided by Voices,Bee Thousand,New in 2023,,
151,The Jesus and Mary Chain,Psychocandy,New in 2023,,
152,Miles Davis,Bitches Brew,-65,"Columbia, 1970","In February 1969, Miles Davis recorded In a Silent Way, a bold step into ambient funk and electric futurism. Then just six months later, he was back in the studio, driven by his desire to assemble “the best damn rock & roll band in the world.” The idea was to connect his music to the audience of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. The result was this double album of jazz-rock fusion, cut in three days of on-the-spot improvisations with an electric orchestra that included three keyboardists, three drummers, two bassists, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, and guitarist John McLaughlin. The music was full of visceral thrills and the brooding darkness Davis brought to everything he touched. "
153,Elliott Smith,Either/Or,+63,"Kill Rock Stars, 1997","Elliott Smith had ambitions to make records with a Beatlesque sound — but zero interest in Beatlesque fame — when he recorded Either/Or. While he achieved his dreams on several subsequent major-label releases, the Portland, Oregon, indie-folk singer-songwriter’s third album resonates because of his low-fi whisper and gritty, sepia-toned lyrics. His songs struck a nerve well beyond the Northwest music scene — Madonna, of all people, covered the morosely pretty drunk’s lullaby “Between the Bars.” "
154,The Kinks,Something Else by the Kinks,+324,"Pye, 1968","Something Else was a commercial flop that nearly killed the band, but it shows off Ray Davies’ genius for writing about the secret lives of everyday people. “Waterloo Sunset” is a gorgeously chilly ballad about a lonely man watching lovers from his window; “Two Sisters” celebrates a housewife dancing around her house with curlers in her hair. He’s got poetic compassion for all these characters, even as he witnesses their private pain in “No Return,” “Afternoon Tea,” and “End of the Season.” "
155,Joni Mitchell,Court and Spark,-45,"Asylum, 1974","Joni Mitchell followed up Blue with the underrated For the Roses, a set of harmonically and lyrically complex songs. Court and Spark is, in comparison, smoother and more straight-ahead; it became the biggest record of her career, hitting Number Two. Working with saxophonist Tom Scott’s fusion group, L.A. Express, Mitchell settled into a folk-pop-jazz groove that remains a landmark of breezy sophistication, particularly on the Top 10 single “Help Me.” Strange but true: A cover of “Twisted,” by the scat-jazz vocal group Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, closes the album — with stoner comics Cheech and Chong singing backup. "
156,AC/DC,Back in Black,-72,"Atlantic, 1980","In the middle of album rehearsals, singer Bon Scott went on a drinking spree; he choked on his vomit and was found dead in the back seat of a car. After two days of mourning, guitarist Malcolm Young thought, “Well, fuck this, I’m not gonna sit around mopin’ all fuckin’ year.” He called his brother, guitarist Angus Young, and they went back to work with replacement vocalist Brian Johnson. The resulting album has the relentless logic of a sledgehammer. Back in Black remains the purest distillation of hard rock: “Hells Bells,” “You Shook Me All Night Long,” and the title track have all become enduring anthems of strutting blues-based guitar. "
157,Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers,Damn the Torpedoes,+74,"Backstreet, 1979","With hair like Jagger’s and a voice like Dylan’s in tune, Tom Petty and his bar band defrilled classic rock: In 1979, he filed for bankruptcy; then Torpedoes took off, mostly because “Here Comes My Girl” seemed to keep the promises those like Jagger et al., forgot they’d made. Perfectly produced by future music-industry megamogul Jimmy Iovine, Torpedoes gave bright jangling Sixties rock a sheen that made pretty much everything else on AOR radio seem lumpy and stiff, while Petty’s obvious authenticity kept the music from ever seeming calculated or overly polished. "
158,Iggy Pop,Lust for Life,New in 2023,,
159,The Doors,The Doors,-73,"Elektra, 1967","After blowing minds as the house band at the Whisky-a-Go-Go, where they were fired for playing the Oedipal drama “The End,” the Doors were ready to unleash their organ-driven rock on the world. “On each song, we had tried every possible arrangement,” drummer John Densmore said, “so we felt the whole album was tight.” “Break on Through (To the Other Side),” “Twentieth Century Fox,” and “Crystal Ship” are pop-art lighting for Top 40 attention spans. But the Doors hit pay dirt by editing one of their jam songs for airplay: “Light My Fire,” written by guitarist Robbie Krieger, after Jim Morrison told everybody in the band to write a song with universal imagery. "
160,Beck,Odelay,+264,"Geffen, 1996","Burrowing into the studio with the Dust Brothers, Beck came back with a Technicolor version of his Woody Guthrie-meets-Grandmaster Flash vision, demonstrating to all his rock peers on “Devil’s Haircut” and “Where It’s At” that turntables had a brighter future than refried grunge, while reminding listeners of the Sixties and his own folk roots with the shabby, lovely “Jack-Ass.” As he told Rolling Stone in 1997, “I’m a traditionalist in a lot of ways. A lot of what my generation is into, what it represents, I’m totally against.” "
161,The Zombies,Odessey and Oracle,+82,"Date, 1968","The Zombies broke up two weeks after they completed Odessey and Oracle, in December 1967, and the album wasn’t released in the U.S. until 1969. But its baroque psychedelic-pop arrangements continue to exert a powerful influence, particularly on whimsy-loving indie rockers. Recorded in London at both Abbey Road and a Stones haunt, Olympic Studios, Odessey combined the adventure of Sgt. Pepper with the concision of British Invasion pop. And “Time of the Season” went on to become a Number Three hit. "
162,Neutral Milk Hotel,In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,+214,"Merge, 1998","The Louisiana band nearly pulled off an indie-rock Pet Sounds with their second album, leavening low-fi guitar racket and twee folk with circus-y instruments like the singing saw and zanzithophone, as leader Jeff Magnum cut through the irony of the Seinfeld/Pavement era with his heraldic surrealist yammerings about broken homes, Anne Frank, religion, scary sexual awakenings, and other coming-of-age traumas. It’s weird, raw, harrowing stuff; if you think you can’t be moved by a song called “The King of Carrot Flowers Pts. 2 & 3,” hearing is believing. "
163,Cream,Disraeli Gears,+7,"Reaction, 1967","Of all Cream’s studio albums, Disraeli Gears is the sharpest and most linear. The power trio focused their instrumental explorations into colorful pop songs: “Strange Brew” (slinky funk), “Dance the Night Away” (trippy jangle), “Tales of Brave Ulysses” (a wah-wah freakout that Eric Clapton wrote with Martin Sharp, who created the kaleidoscopic cover art). The hit “Sunshine of Your Love” nearly didn’t make it onto the record; the band had trouble nailing it until famed Atlantic Records engineer Tom Dowd suggested that Ginger Baker try a Native American tribal beat, a simple adjustment that locked the song into place. "
164,Sam Cooke,"Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963",+76,"RCA, 1985","Sam Cooke was elegance and soul personified, but he works this Florida club until it’s hotter than hell, all while sounding like he never breaks a sweat. He croons and strokes “For Sentimental Reasons” like a superlover, and when the crowd sings along with him, it’s magic. RCA Records originally shelved the album out of fear that Cooke’s raw performance might alienate crossover (read: white) audiences. When it was finally released more than 20 years after he recorded, Live at the Harlem Square Club gave many fans a whole new perspective of his greatness. "
165,De La Soul,3 Feet High and Rising,-62,"Tommy Boy, 1989","Long Island high school friends Posdnuos, Trugoy, and Maseo linked up with Stetsasonic DJ Prince Paul to create a left-field hip-hop masterpiece, heralding a “D.A.I.S.Y. Age” and weaving samples of Steely Dan, Malcolm McLaren, and Johnny Cash with raps about everything from Public Enemy-style politics (“Ghetto Thang”) to individualism (“Take It Off”) to body odor (“A Little Bit of Soap”). “There was no plan back then,” Trugoy told Rolling Stone in 2009. Indeed, De La Soul’s anything-goes spirit sparked generations of oddballs to rise up and get theirs. "
166,Aretha Franklin,I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You,-153,"Atlantic, 1967","Aretha Franklin’s Atlantic debut is the place where gospel music collided with R&B and rock & roll and became soul. The Detroit-born preacher’s daughter was about $80,000 in debt to her previous label, Columbia, when Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler signed her in 1966. “I took her to church,” Wexler said, “sat her down at the piano, and let her be herself.” Recording with the best session men at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, she promptly cut the album’s title hit, a slow-fire ballad of ferocious sexuality. The historic moment, of course, was her storefront-church makeover of Otis Redding’s “Respect,” which became Franklin’s first Number One pop single, prompting Redding to exclaim, “I just lost my song.” Soon, it would be the new marching anthem of the women’s and civil rights movements. “Women did, and still do, need equal rights,” Franklin said decades later. “We’re doing the same job, we expect the same pay, and the same respect.” She reinforced that feminism on “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” and had the guts to wring more pathos from Sam Cooke’s civil rights anthem, “A Change Is Gonna Come,” than any other singer who has attempted that landmark song. Never Loved a Man began an unparalleled run of classic albums for Franklin; it’s the sound of the Queen of Soul claiming her crown. "
167,The Pretenders,Pretenders,-15,"Sire, 1980","After years of knocking around Ohio and England, writing record reviews and hanging with the Sex Pistols, Chrissie Hynde put together a band as tough as her attitude. The Pretenders’ debut is filled with no-nonsense New Wave rock such as “Mystery Achievement” — plus a cover of “Stop Your Sobbing,” by the Kinks’ Ray Davies (three years later, the father of Hynde’s child). The biggest hit was “Brass in Pocket,” a song of ambition and seduction. Hynde, however, wasn’t so sure about the song’s success. “I was embarrassed by it,” she said. “I hated it so much that if I was in Woolworth’s and they started playing it, I’d have to run out of the store.” "
168,Buzzcocks,Singles Going Steady,+82,"I.R.S., 1979","Some punks wanted to smash the state. The Buzzcocks just wanted to find someone to love, and if you didn’t return their intense affection, watch out (check the jilted tantrum “Oh Shit!”). Singles collects eight British 45s into a perfect punk album. This Manchester group took the sound of the Ramones and made it jittery and even faster. Songs such as “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays” define a world of permanently frustrated punk desire. "
169,Moby Grape,Moby Grape,New in 2023,,
170,Led Zeppelin,Led Zeppelin,-69,"Atlantic, 1969","On their first album, Led Zeppelin were still in the process of inventing their own sound, moving on from the heavy rave-ups of guitarist Jimmy Page’s previous band, the Yardbirds. But from the beginning, Zeppelin had the astonishing fusion of Page’s lyrical guitar playing and Robert Plant’s paint-peeling love-hound yowl. “We were learning what got us off most and what got people off most,” said Plant. Yet the template for everything Zeppelin achieved in the 1970s is here: brutal rock (“Communication Breakdown”), thundering power balladry (“Your Time Is Gonna Come”), and acid-flavored folk blues (“Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”). "
171,Dr. Dre,The Chronic,-134,"Deathrow, 1992","When George Clinton first heard hip-hop artists blending old records with new beats, he wasn’t too impressed. But then Dr. Dre turned samples of Clinton’s P-Funk sides into G-Funk, and Dr. Funkenstein approved, calling funk “the DNA of hip-hop and rap.” Dre had already taken gangsta rap to the mainstream with his earlier group, N.W.A, but on The Chronic, he funked up the rhymes with a smooth bass-heavy production style and the laid-back delivery of then-unknown rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg. When Dre and Snoop dropped “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang,” there was no getting out of the way. "
172,Wilco,Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,+53,"Nonesuch, 2001","When Reprise Records refused to release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco posted it for free on the internet. Two-hundred-thousand downloads later, Nonesuch Records (owned by the same company as Reprise) released the album, and it became critical and commercial gold. Its pretty acoustic-guitar melodies battled noise, skidded into dissonance, or got chopped off abruptly. Its lyrics pitted hope against doubt, with all bets off. “You have to learn how to die,” crooned Jeff Tweedy, “if you wanna … be alive.” "
173,Big Brother & the Holding Company,Cheap Thrills,+199,"Columbia, 1968","After Big Brother’s performance at the Monterey Pop Festival made Janis Joplin a star, fans were heatedly expecting a live album from them. But their in-the-red loudness and sloppy performances meant they had to cut their second album in a New York studio, with crowd noise added in later. “We’re just a sloppy group of street freaks,” Joplin said. But these San Francisco acid rockers were the most simpatico band she ever had, especially when their raw racket backs Joplin up on “Piece of My Heart,” perhaps her greatest recording. "
174,Creedence Clearwater Revival,Green River,New in 2023,,
175,Björk,Post,New in 2023,,
176,PJ Harvey,To Bring You My Love,New in 2023,,
177,Dire Straits,Dire Straits,New in 2023,,
178,Pulp,Different Class,-16,"Island, 1995","Pulp blew up in the Brit-pop scene of the 1990s, yet Jarvis Cocker outclassed all his rivals as a master storyteller and wit. This man was a born rock star in the Bowie mode, striking a pose in his thrift-shop razzmatazz, but with his own sly sense of compassion. On Different Class, he croons his breathy tales of working-class lust, envy, and dread, over the swishy, trash-disco grooves of “Common People” and “Disco 2000.” You can hear the shabby glamour in his voice when he sighs, “I’ve kissed your mother twice/And now I’m working on your dad.” But in the finale, “Bar Italia,” he makes a post-clubbing hangover sound like the most romantic adventure in the world. "
179,X-Ray Spex,Germfree Adolescents,+175,"EMI, 1978","Teenage multiracial London girl Poly Styrene had braces on her teeth and wore Day-Glo rags, screeching anthems like “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” over saxophone blasts, and chanting, “I am a poseur and I don’t care! I like to make people stare!” X-Ray Spex’s explosive punk-rock debut went criminally unreleased in the U.S., but it became a word-of-mouth cult classic throughout the indie-rock underground in the Eighties and Nineties, influencing Sleater-Kinney, the Beastie Boys, and many others. "
180,Black Flag,Damaged,+307,"SST, 1981","MCA refused to release this album, denouncing it as “immoral” and “anti-parent.” High praise, but Black Flag lived up to it, defining L.A. hardcore punk with Greg Ginn’s violent guitar and the pissed-off scream of Henry Rollins, especially on “TV Party” and “Rise Above,” which came with the timeless smash-the-glass salvo “We are tired of your abuse/Try to stop is but it’s no use.” Punks still listen to Damaged, and parents still hate it. "
181,The Flying Burrito Brothers,The Gilded Palace of Sin,+281,"A&M, 1969","A landmark of country rock — or, as Gram Parsons called it, “cosmic American music.” He and Chris Hillman were a pair of ex-Byrds who’d flown the coop. The Burritos put their poetic twist on hillbilly twang, proudly wearing Nudie suits and bringing in the pedal steel guitar of Sneaky Pete Kleinow. “Boy, I love them,” Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone. “Their record instantly knocked me out.” They sing “Sin City” in high-lonesome two-part harmony, sounding like country boys lost in the decadence of Sixties L.A.; “Wheels” is God-fearing hippie soul. "
182,Richard Hell & the Voidoids,Blank Generation,New in 2023,,
183,T. Rex,Electric Warrior,+5,"Reprise, 1971","“A successful, hit rock & roll record is a spell,” T. Rex leader Marc Bolan told Rolling Stone. And so, muttering “eye of Bowie, toe of Slade,” Bolan cast a spell over all of England. He took his Tolkienesque hippie music and gave it a glammed-out Chuck Berry update on sexy singles like “Bang a Gong (Get It On)”; this was rock that thrusted, quivered, and recklessly employed metaphors equating cars with sex (“You got a hubcap diamond star halo”). He outdid himself with “Jeepster,” an entire song on the topic, vibrating with lust, a shuffling beat, lots of guitar, and the sound of Bolan stomping on the studio floor. "
184,Patsy Cline,The Ultimate Collection,+45,"Universal, 2000","Her career was cut short when she died in a plane crash at 30, but Patsy Cline made her mark as one of country’s great singers. “Even though her style is considered country, her delivery is more like a classic pop singer,” Lucinda Williams has noted. Her hits “Walkin’ After Midnight” and “I Fall to Pieces” also made it to the pop charts, establishing the template for country crossover that pointed the way forward for generations; her version of “Crazy” was a godsend to the song’s struggling writer, a young Willie Nelson. "
185,Galaxie 500,On Fire,New in 2023,,
186,Isaac Hayes,Hot Buttered Soul,+187,"Enterprise, 1969","Isaac Hayes demanded Stax Records give him complete artistic control for his second album. What happened next sounded like nothing else in music at the time, an orchestral-soul watershed that forecast R&B’s turn toward symphonic excess and plush introspect. Hayes’ 12-minute Southern-psychedelic version of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David “Walk On By” and his spectacularly tortured 18-minute take on Jimmy Webb’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” took easy-listening tunes and refashioned them in his own radically laid-back image. "
187,Madonna,Like a Prayer,+144,"Sire, 1989","“I like the challenge of merging art and commerce,” Madonna told Rolling Stone. After dominating Eighties pop without always getting the critical respect she deserved, Madonna finally won artistic recognition with her most personal set of songs, including “Till Death Do Us Part” and “Oh Father.” And she nailed the commerce side with “Express Yourself” and the title track, the video of which had the Vatican talking about blasphemy. “I pray when I’m in trouble or when I’m happy,” she said. “When I feel any sort of extreme.” Like a Prayer fused all of her extremes brilliantly. "
188,New York Dolls,New York Dolls,+113,"Mercury, 1973","“Do you think that you could make it with Frankenstein?” they asked, not kidding. Glammed-out punkers the New York Dolls snatched riffs from Chuck Berry and Fats Domino and fattened them with loads of attitude and reverb. Produced by Todd Rundgren, songs like “Personality Crisis” and “Bad Girl” drip with sleaze and style. “What the Dolls did to be influential on punk was show that anybody could do it,” singer David Johansen said. Indeed, its hard to imagine the Ramones or the Replacements or a thousand other trash-junky bands without them. "
189,The Specials,The Specials,New in 2023,,
190,Buffalo Springfield,Buffalo Springfield Again,New in 2023,,
191,The Gun Club,Fire of Love,New in 2023,,
192,Pink Floyd,The Wall,-63,"Columbia, 1979","Pink Floyd’s most elaborately theatrical album was inspired by their own success: the alienating enormity of their tours after The Dark Side of the Moon [see No. 55], which was when bassist-lyricist Roger Waters first hit upon a wall as a metaphor for isolation and rebellion. He finished a demo of the work by July 1978; the double album then took the band a year to make. Rock’s ultimate self-pity opera, The Wall is also hypnotic in its indulgence: the totalitarian thunder of “In the Flesh?”; the suicidal languor of “Comfortably Numb”; the Brechtian drama of “The Trial.” Rock-star hubris has never been more electrifying. "
193,Dinosaur Jr.,You're Living All Over Me,New in 2023,,
194,Randy Newman,Good Old Boys,New in 2023,,
195,Hole,Live Through This,-89,"Geffen, 1994","One week before Hole’s breakthrough album was released, Kurt Cobain killed himself and made Courtney Love a widow. The media attention that followed guaranteed a close listen for Love’s fearsome songs and her shift from pure riot-grrrl punk to a more stable sound that MTV could embrace. Her coded songs have dark topics, including death (“Kill me pills”), violence (“Pee girl gets the belt”), and body shame (“Bad skin, doll heart”), as well as motherhood. (Cobain and Love became parents two years earlier, and briefly lost custody after she was reported to have used heroin while pregnant.) The horror in Love’s exposed voice on “Asking for It” and “Doll Parts” gives immediacy to her firsthand stories about being an outcast “pee girl.” "
196,The Raincoats,The Raincoats,+202,"Rough Trade, 1979","The Raincoats came up with one of the most experimental and thrilling sounds to emerge from the London punk explosion — four women making their own gloriously unkempt racket. As guitarist Ana Da Silva explained, “We rehearsed for hours, but we always fell apart.” Da Silva and Gina Birch chant over Palmolive’s manic drums and Vicky Aspinall’s buzz-saw violin, for gems like “In Love” and their gender-twisted cover of the Kinks’ “Lola.” Their debut album finally got its long-overdue U.S. release in 1993, at the insistence of Raincoats superfan Kurt Cobain. "
197,Massive Attack,Blue Lines,+44,"Wildbunch/Virgin, 1991","Perhaps the first post-hip-hop masterpiece: Blue Lines combined rap, dub, and soul that gave birth to trip-hop; if you ever found yourself in a “chillout room” in 1995, this album was probably on, and it can still suck you into its gravitational pull. In the U.K., where acid house and jungle were the dominant sounds, its creepingly slow ambiance knocked the music world on its back. “What’s important to us is the pace,” said the band’s 3D, “the weight of the bass and the mood.” "
198,The Modern Lovers,The Modern Lovers,+90,"Beserkley, 1976","Jonathan Richman moved from Boston to New York as a teenager in hopes of sleeping on Lou Reed’s couch. That influence shows on the two-chord anthem “Roadrunner.” Recorded in 1972 but not released until 1976, Lovers turned the tough sounds of the Velvets into an ode to suburban romanticism. “Rock & roll was about stuff that was natural,” Richman said. “I wasn’t about drugs and space.” Songs like “Pablo Picasso,” “Girl Friend,” and “Dignified and Old” touched generations of punk and indie-rock innocents. "
199,The Allman Brothers Band,At Fillmore East,New in 2023,"Capricorn, 1971","Although this double album is the perfect testimony to the Allman Brothers’ improvisational skills, it is also evidence of their unprecedented connection with the crowds at New York’s Fillmore East. “The audience would kind of play along with us,” singer-organist Gregg Allman said of those March 1971 shows. “They were right on top of every single vibration coming from the stage.” The guitar team of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts was at its peak, seamlessly fusing blues and jazz in “Whipping Post” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” But their telepathy was cut short: Just three months after the album’s release, Duane died in a motorcycle accident. "
200,Kanye West,My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,-183,"Roc-A-Fella, 2010","Our relationship with Kanye West was still in its love-hate phase when he created the 21st century’s most awe-inspiring hip-hop masterpiece. It’s an album every bit as chaotic as he was at the time — from the creepy funk of “Gorgeous” to the crushing attack of “Hell of a Life.” After his Taylor Swift VMAs fiasco in 2009, West went into a kind of self-exile, eventually ending up in Hawaii, where he imported a huge group of collaborators who included Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, Nicki Minaj, and RZA. In all-night recording sessions, he’d ping between studios, sculpting his most maximalist music ever; “a song like ‘Power’ took 5,000 hours,” he later said, “like literally.” West pulled from everywhere — Elton John played on “All of the Lights,” and “Power” sampled prog-rockers King Crimson. West’s sense of his own grandiose ambitions bordered on the comical; during the writing process for the nine-minute “Runaway,” he famously told guest rapper Pusha T to add “more douchebag” to his verses. The resulting track opened with just a single, eerie piano note before building into a mountainous, anarchic tune that incorporated everything from a Rick James sample to a vocoder that evoked Robert Fripp’s guitar playing on Brian Eno albums. The sonic overkill was lavish, but the record hit so hard because he mixed megalomania with introspect; “You been puttin’ up wit’ my shit just way too long,” he rapped on “Runaway.” West later called Dark Fantasy an apology record.” Perhaps. In any case, that wisdom has proved fleeting. "
201,Pixies,Surfer Rosa,+189,"4AD, 1988","The brainy Boston quartet went up against punk producer Steve Albini for one of the era’s most influential rock sounds: all razor-blade guitars and drum thud. It became the sound of the Nineties, as everyone from Nirvana to PJ Harvey went to Albini, hoping to get the raw power of Surfer Rosa. Black Francis goes from a whisper to a scream in oddities like “Bone Machine,” “River Euphrates,” and “Where Is My Mind?” But bassist (and future Breeder) Kim Deal steals the show with her cheeky Midwest vocals in “Gigantic.” "
202,Arcade Fire,Funeral,+298,"Merge, 2004","Loss, love, forced coming-of-age, and fragile generational hope: Arcade Fire’s debut touched on all these themes as it defined the independent rock of the ‘00s. Built on family ties (leader Win Butler, his wife, Régine Chassagne, his brother Will), the Montreal band made symphonic rock that truly rocked, simultaneously outsize and deeply personal, like the best pop. But for all its sad realism, Butler’s is music that still finds solace, and purpose, in communal celebration. "
203,LCD Soundsystem,Sound of Silver,+230,"DFA/Capitol, 2007","James Murphy had proven his kung fu as the most badass electro-punk producer in clubland. But not even fierce fans dreamed he’d make a masterpiece like Sound of Silver. Every track sounded like a different band’s greatest hit, from the political punk goof “North American Scum” to the synth-pop breakup lament “Someone Great.” The song for the ages was “All My Friends,” huge, sweeping, ferociously emotional, with disco keyboards and rock guitars pulsing as Murphy looked back on a youth of killer parties and silent mornings. "
204,The Go-Betweens,16 Lovers Lane,New in 2023,,
205,Dr. John,Gris-Gris,+151,"Atco, 1968","Mac Rebennack was a New Orleans piano player on songs for Professor Longhair and Frankie Ford who moved to L.A. in the Sixties, where he played on Phil Spector sessions and encountered California psychedelia. Rechristening himself Dr. John Creaux the Night Tripper, he made this swamp-funk classic. Gris-Gris blends New Orleans R&B, voodoo chants, and chemical inspiration. The groovy Afro-Caribbean percussion and creaky sound effects aren’t just otherworldly — they seem to come from several other worlds all at once. "
206,D'Angelo,Voodoo,-178,"EMI, 2000","In the five years following the release of his 1995 debut, Brown Sugar, D’Angelo grew disillusioned with the genre that had just anointed him a rising star. “I don’t consider myself an R&B artist,” the then-26-year-old told Jet. “R&B is pop, that’s the new word for R&B.” In his quest to create something new, he looked to both the masters of soul (Marvin, Curtis, Stevie) and contemporary innovators (Lauryn, Erykah). The end result was Voodoo, a moving, inventive masterpiece that stands as the ultimate achievement of the neo-soul era. Crafted with producer and drummer Questlove, who called the LP a “vicarious fantasy,” Voodoo places Pink Floyd-style cosmic jams (“Playa Playa”) next to Prince-inspired erotica (“Untitled [How Does It Feel]”). “I’m just looking at Voodoo as just the beginning,” D’Angelo said at the time. “It took a while, but I’m on my way now.” "
207,Metallica,Master of Puppets,-110,"Elektra, 1986","Metallica’s third album has a lyrical theme: manipulation. “It deals pretty much with drugs,” singer-guitarist James Hetfield said. “Instead of you controlling what you’re taking and doing, it’s drugs controlling you.” It also has a sonic theme: really loud guitars, played fast, with no regard for the hair metal that was then dominating the airwaves. When the band slows down on “Welcome Home (Sanitarium),” it just emphasizes the unrelenting nature of the rest of the songs. Recorded during three months in Copenhagen, Master of Puppets was bassist Cliff Burton’s last album with Metallica; he died in September 1986, when the band’s bus crashed. "
208,Uncle Tupelo,No Depression,New in 2023,,
209,Outkast,Aquemini,-160,"LaFace, 1998","The title of OutKast’s third album is a made-up word that combines the star signs of Big Boi (Aquarius) and André 3000 (Gemini). Their music is about duality too, matching Big Boi’s imperative to “make the club get crunk” with André’s determination to “activate the left and right brain.” André was the virtuoso, clipping off compound rhymes with grace, while Big Boi’s more grounded flow and clear diction rooted their songs. Hits like “Rosa Parks” put the duo’s hometown “Hotlanta” on the rap map, and at a time when formulaic albums by Master P and Puff Daddy topped the charts, OutKast unleashed an explosive sound that used live musicianship, social commentary, and a heavy dose of deep funk to create the greatest record ever to come out of the Dirty South. "
210,Air,Moon Safari,New in 2023,,
211,Richard & Linda Thompson,I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight,+274,"Island, 1974","With Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson was one of the first prominent Sixties folk rockers to look to his native England’s traditions for inspiration. After leaving Fairport, he joined with his wife, Linda Thompson to make stellar albums in the Seventies. Richard played guitar like a Sufi-mystic Neil Young; Linda had the voice of a Celtic Emmylou Harris. Bright Lights is their devastating masterwork of folk-rock dread. Radiohead even picked up some guitar tricks from “The Calvary Cross.” "
212,The White Stripes,Elephant,+237,"V2/XL/Third Man, 2003","The Stripes exploded out of Detroit with a minimalist garage-blues attack: just Jack White on guitar and Meg White on drums, taking on the world. These kids insisted they were a brother and sister, even after people learned they were secretly a divorced couple. But against all odds, the low-budget duo became a global sensation for their sheer rock power. Elephant seethes with raw desperation and lust in “Seven Nation Army,” “Hypnotize,” and “The Hardest Button to Button.” Jack plays guitar hero in the seven-minute jam “Ball and Biscuit.” "
213,Cheap Trick,In Color,New in 2023,,
214,Traffic,The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys,New in 2023,,
215,Echo & the Bunnymen,Heaven Up Here,New in 2023,,
216,The Stone Roses,The Stone Roses,+103,"Silvertone, 1989","For a few glorious moments at the dawn of the Nineties, the Stone Roses looked like they were going to lead another British Invasion, this one of baggy-panted, floppy-haired bands that loved Sixties guitars and rave-y dance beats with the same whimsical fervor. The sound never crossed over here, and the band fell apart — but first they made this incredible album, highlighted by the ecstatic eight-minute-long “I Am the Resurrection.” It laid the foundation for the Brit pop that blew up a few years later. "
217,Can,Ege Bamyasi,+237,"United Artists, 1972","Chugging out of Cologne, Germany, in the late Sixties, avant-psychedelic crew Can took influence from the Velvet Underground’s subterranean drones, Miles Davis’ molten jazz rock, and James Brown’s circular funk grooves. On Ege Bamyasi, new singer Damo Suzuki mumbles, chants, and shrieks his way through engulfing Kraut-boogie workouts like “Vitamin C” and “I’m So Green.” Spoon took their name from the LP’s Doors-meets-Stereolab closing track, and Kanye West sampled the lupine “Sing Swan Swing.” "
218,Iggy & the Stooges,Raw Power,New in 2023,,
219,Smashing Pumpkins,Siamese Dream,+122,"Virgin, 1993","“All these alternative bands today are so high up on their punk-rock horse that they’re in denial about being huge and playing big shows,” Billy Corgan told Rolling Stone in 1994. “Not only do we respect the clichés, we see the truth in them.” On their second disc, the Pumpkins pushed further from Nineties alt-rock to a grander, orchestrated sound with multiple guitar parts, strings, and a Mellotron. Alt-rock ended up following the band on its trip: Siamese Dream is packed with hits (“Cherub Rock,” “Today”). "
220,50 Cent,Get Rich or Die Tryin',+60,"Interscope, 2002","The backstory — promising street rapper gets shot nine times and lives to make a classic debut — was irresistible. So were the precision-engineered beats and hooks 50 Cent cooked up with his new mentor, Dr. Dre. Through a mixture of melody and menace, 50 enraptured the suburbs with “In da Club” and antagonized an entire generation of his peers on “Many Men.” His hulking figure, physically and metaphorically, loomed over the rap charts for years, teaching a generation of artists that nothing sold like fear itself. "
221,Peter Gabriel,Peter Gabriel 3: Melt,New in 2023,,
222,ABC,The Lexicon of Love,New in 2023,,
223,Bob Mould,Workbook,New in 2023,,
224,Guns N' Roses,Appetite for Destruction,-162,"Geffen, 1987","The biggest-selling debut album of the Eighties, Appetite hit the metal scene like an asteroid, bringing the grit and fury of Seventies rock back to a mainstream hard-rock scene that was starved for something real. Indiana-bred Axl Rose’s five-alarm yowl bowled over listeners. Guitarist Slash gave the band blues emotion and punk energy, while the rhythm section brought the funk on hits such as “Welcome to the Jungle.” When all the elements came together, as in the final two minutes of “Paradise City,” GN’R left all other Eighties metal bands in the dust, and they knew it, too. “A lot of rock bands are too fucking wimpy to have any sentiment or any emotion,” Rose said. “Unless they’re in pain.” "
225,Violent Femmes,Violent Femmes,New in 2023,,
226,Dexy's Midnight Runners,Searching for the Young Soul Rebels,New in 2023,,
227,Ray Charles,Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music,-100,"ABC-Paramount, 1962","Country and soul were deeply entangled Southern traditions and had been cross-pollinating for years. But Modern Sounds was still the audacious boundary smasher its title promised, with Ray Charles applying his gospel grit and luscious soul-pop strings to standards by Hank Williams (“Half as Much,” “You Win Again,” “Hey, Good Lookin’”) and Eddy Arnold, whose lover’s lament “You Don’t Know Me” is recast as a parable about race relations in light of the civil rights struggle. Modern Sounds became the most popular album of Charles’ career and includes the hits “I Can’t Stop Loving You” and “Born to Lose.” "
228,King Crimson,In the Court of the Crimson King,New in 2023,,
229,PJ Harvey,"Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea",+84,"Island, 2000","Polly Jean Harvey happy? Album number five found her in New York and in love, crowing “I’m immortal/When I’m with you” in the surging opener, “Big Exit.” Harvey had spent four records howling her sexual obsessions and romantic disappointments over stark postmodern blues. Her guitar attack was still forceful, but softened around the edges by marimba, piano, organ, and guest vocalist Thom Yorke, especially on the garage-y “Good Fortune” and the yearning “A Place Called Home” — mash notes to lovers in the big city. "
230,My Morning Jacket,Z,New in 2023,,
231,The Feelies,Crazy Rhythms,New in 2023,,
232,Ice Cube,AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted,-45,"Priority, 1990","Six months after quitting N.W.A, the group’s most gifted lyricist returned with a vengeance on AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, recorded with Public Enemy’s production crew, the Bomb Squad. Lyrically, it sharpened N.W.A’s politics; “Why more niggas in the pen than in college?” Cube asks on “The Nigga Ya Love to Hate.” The album’s rapacious sexism has aged horrendously, though give Cube some credit for being smart enough to include the stunning “It’s a Man’s World,” in which female rapper Yo-Yo tells him off straight to his face. "
233,Graham Parker & the Rumour,Squeezing Out Sparks,New in 2023,,
234,Suicide,Suicide,+264,"Red Star, 1977","These New York synth-punks evoke everything from the Velvet Underground to rockabilly. Martin Rev’s low-budget electronics are violent and hypnotic; Alan Vega screams as a rhythmic device. Late-night listening to “Frankie Teardrop,” a 10-minute-plus tale of a multiple murder, is not recommended. A droning voice in the wilderness when they appeared in the Seventies, the duo would influence bands from Arcade Fire and the National to Bruce Springsteen, who covered Suicide live in 2016. "
235,Steely Dan,Can't Buy a Thrill,-67,"ABC, 1972","Working as hired songwriters by day, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker rehearsed this debut in executives’ offices by night. “We play rock & roll, but we swing,” said Becker. For proof, check the cool lounge-jazz rhythms of “Do It Again” and the hot guitar of “Reelin’ in the Years.” Even florid lead vocalist David Palmer (who the band soon fired) couldn’t damage the sad, stately beauty of “Dirty Work”; on “Brooklyn,” Becker and Fagen wrote the perfect elusive ode to their native borough. Their debut kicked off an amazing run of albums, like 1973’s Countdown to Ecstasy and 1974’s Pretzel Logic, that are just as fantastic. "
236,Belle & Sebastian,If You're Feeling Sinister,+245,"Jeepster, 1996","Being a self-pitying shut-in has never sounded better than it does on the Scottish twee icons’ breakthrough. The chamber-folk arrangements are second to none — like a cup of tea brewed for you by a hopeless crush with a really good record collection — but don’t sleep on Stuart Murdoch’s subtly sardonic lyrics on “The Stars of Track and Field” and “Seeing Other People,” which give these wistful-sounding songs a bite that sets them apart from most imitators. "
237,Cocteau Twins,Heaven or Las Vegas,+8,"4AD, 1990","Cocteau Twins were Scot goths who helped invent the dream-pop aesthetic that ruled U.K. indie during the Eighties. Heaven or Las Vegas is their arrestingly beautiful pop peak, despite being released as the band itself was in turmoil, largely brought on by guitarist Robin Guthrie’s drug addiction. Somehow, they created something wholly transporting; Elizabeth Fraser’s celestial soprano works like a vocal Rorschach test, gorgeously floating over Guthrie and Simon Raymonde’s magic-hour instrumentation. "
238,The Strokes,Is This It,-124,"RCA, 2001","Before Is This It even came out, New York’s mod ragamuffins were overnight sensations, jumping from Avenue A to press hysteria and the inevitable backlash, all inside a year. The objective of Is This It, said singer Julian Casablancas, “was to be really cool and non-mainstream, and be really popular.” Recorded literally under the streets of New York, this blast of guitar-combo racket passionately reconciled those seemingly contradictory aspirations, and accomplished both, updating the propulsion of the Velvet Underground and the jangle of Seventies punk with Casablancas’ acidic dispatches mixed to the fore and ringed with distortion like he was singing from a pay phone. "
239,The Cure,Disintegration,-123,"Fiction, 1989","According to the kids on South Park, this is the best album ever made. According to many depressive Eighties-minded kids, it’s the only album ever made. Disintegration was the height of stadium goth rock, with the Cure stretching out for long, spacious wallows like ‘Plainsong” and “Prayers for Rain.” But it also shows off Robert Smith’s stunning pop mastery on “Lovesong,” which Smith wrote as a wedding present for his wife, and the rapturously forlorn “Pictures of You.” On “Fascination Street,” his voice shakes like milk as he makes adolescent angst sound so wonderfully, wonderfully pretty. “I was trying to put in one or two beacons of light in amongst the darkness,” he told Rolling Stone. "
240,Eric B. & Rakim,Paid in Full,-179,"4th & B’way, 1987","Ice-grilled, laid-back, diamond-sharp: Rakim was the Eighties’ greatest rapper, and this album is the record that cemented his legend. Paid in Full was one of the first hip-hop records to fully embrace Seventies funk samples on stone hip-hop classics such as “I Know You Got Soul” and “I Ain’t No Joke.” With a stark, chill declamatory flow that broke from the singsong-y style of most rapping at the time, Rakim moved hip-hop from stories about the world of the hood to ones about the mind (“I start to think and then I sink/Into the paper like I was ink”). Eric B. built the title track out of a luscious sampled bass line, and Rakim recounted days of poverty when he had “nothin’ but sweat inside my hand,” a problem solved by this debut’s platinum success. "
241,Tom Waits,Swordfishtrombones,New in 2023,,
242,The Pogues,Rum Sodomy & the Lash,New in 2023,,
243,The Police,Synchronicity,-84,"A&M, 1983","“I do my best work when I’m in pain and turmoil,” Sting told Rolling Stone. And indeed, the dissolution of his first marriage produced some of his best work, including “King of Pain” and the stalker’s anthem “Every Breath You Take.” There was pain and turmoil in the band, too — it would be the Police’s last album. But it became one of the Eighties’ biggest pop-rock blockbusters, perhaps the finest example of Sting’s unique gift for distilling complex psychological and romantic dramas, which still ruled radio and MTV, while making proggy musicianship and dense composition palatable to the mall-rat masses. "
244,Blur,Parklife,+194,"Food, 1994","Blur improbably burst into the mainstream with Parklife‘s “Girls & Boys,” a five-minute disco-rock barnburner about cross-dressing, bisexual libertines. They also sang about the joys of slacking (“Parklife”) but also how boring it is to conform (“End of the Century”), and they transformed a map of England into a metaphor for surviving rough patches (“This Is a Low”). Frontman Damon Albarn’s gifts for storytelling, singalong melodies, and Anglophilia set up Blur as heirs apparent to the Kinks and fierce rivals to Oasis for Brit pop’s crown. "
245,Meat Puppets,Meat Puppets II,New in 2023,,
246,Scritti Politti,Cupid & Psyche 85,New in 2023,,
247,Supertramp,Crime of the Century,New in 2023,,
248,Thelonious Monk,Brilliant Corners,New in 2023,,
249,Big Youth,Screaming Target,New in 2023,,
250,The Magnetic Fields,69 Love Songs,+156,"Merge, 1999","“It started with the title,” Stephin Merritt said of 69 Love Songs, which he imagined in the Sinatra-era tradition of “theme” albums. A tour de force of pop mastery, his three-disc splurge had everything from lounge jazz to Podunk country to punk parody, peaking with sidelong standards like “Papa Was a Rodeo” and “The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side.” God-level moment: “The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure,” which is titled after a French linguist and rhymes his name with closure, bulldozer, and classic Motown songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland, hooking it all to an unforgettable tune. "
251,Daft Punk,Discovery,-15,"Virgin, 2001","The robot duo from France perfected house music as pop on their 1997 album Homework. For the follow-up, they took electronic dance music to a whole new place, with the vocoder euphoria of “One More Time” and the deep-groove delight “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,” where the title is chanted like a mantra at a dystopian corporate retreat. But even the winky moments have heart, like “Digital Love,” where Eighties guitar cheese takes off toward Tomorrowland. "
252,Oasis,(What's the Story) Morning Glory?,-95,"Epic, 1995","With their second album, the fighting Gallagher brothers embraced their Stones and Beatles comparisons, then went ahead and established themselves as a rock & roll force in their own right with barnburners (“Roll With It”) and epic tunes, like the glorious “Wonderwall.” “The whole of the first album is about escape,” Noel Gallagher told Rolling Stone in 1996, of 1994’s Definitely Maybe. “It’s about getting away from the shitty, boring life of Manchester. The first album is about dreaming of being a pop star in a band. The second album is about actually being a pop star in a band.” "
253,The Impressions,The Impressions' Greatest Hits,New in 2023,,
254,Radiohead,Kid A,-234,"Parlophone, 2000","A new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century, Radiohead’s fourth album, released in October 2000, remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history. The band had the freedom to do whatever it wanted after its 1997 alt-rock breakthrough, OK Computer [see No. 42]. “Everyone expected us to become this U2 type of band, with that stadium credibility,” bassist Colin Greenwood said in 2001. Instead, frontman Thom Yorke gorged on albums by avant-techno innovator Aphex Twin and other artists on the Warp Records roster, inspiring him to put down his guitar and embrace the glacial beauty of abstract electronics, glitchy beats, and the challenge of free-form composition. “It was difficult for the others [in the band], ’cause when you’re working with a synthesizer it’s like there’s no connection,” Yorke said in 2017. What emerged was at once scary and enveloping, pitched between deep alienation and profound tenderness — from the womblike ambient flow of “Everything in Its Right Place” to the free-jazz implosion “The National Anthem” to the gizmo-groove paranoia of “Idioteque.” “I find it difficult to think of the path we’ve chosen as ‘rock music,’ ” Yorke told Rolling Stone in 2000. “Kid A is like getting a massive eraser out and starting again.” "
255,ZZ Top,Tres Hombres,New in 2023,,
256,Squeeze,East Side Story,New in 2023,,
257,Brian Eno,Before and After Science,New in 2023,,
258,Quicksilver Messenger Service,Happy Trails,New in 2023,,
259,The Temptations,Anthology,+112,"Tamla/Motown, 1973","Indisputably the greatest black vocal group of the modern era, the Temptations embodied Motown, channeling unique individual voices and talents into pristine hits and tight, tuxedoed choreography. This three-album set features masterpiece after masterpiece of chugging, gospel-tinged soul, including “My Girl,” “I Can’t Get Next to You,” and “I Wish It Would Rain,” and later, psychedelic-soul adventures like “Cloud Nine” and the gritty message-song masterpiece “Ball of Confusion.” "
260,Peter Tosh,Legalize It,New in 2023,,
261,Flying Lotus,Cosmogramma,New in 2023,,
262,The Pharcyde,Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde,+220,"Delicious Vinyl, 1992","These high school friends from L.A. were a little like a West Coast answer to De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, offering their own spin on alternative hip-hop in the Nineties and showing there was something going on in Southern California beyond G-funk. They rapped about innocent topics, like having a crush on a teacher in “Passin’ Me By,” which was a small hit, but also about dating a cute girl who turns out “to be a John Doe” and run-ins with the cops (the Public Enemy-homage “Officer”). It all came out as bright and refreshing as sorbet. "
263,Weezer,Weezer (Blue Album),+31,"Geffen, 1994","When it came out, Weezer’s debut was regarded as a quirky power-pop album with a couple of hit singles. The song’s were so catchy that some indie rockers wondered if they were put together by a record company, Monkees-style. But Rivers Cuomo’s band became a major influence on a whole generation of young sad-sack punkers. “People see us now as this credible band, and they assume we always were credible,” says Cuomo. “But, man, we could not have been more hated on when we came out.” "
264,Loretta Lynn,Coal Miner's Daughter,+176,"Decca, 1971","Loretta Lynn crossed over into pop with the autobiographical “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” in which she proudly recalled her meager upbringing amid weepy steel guitar — her mother read the Bible by “coal-oil light,” her dad sold hogs to buy her shoes. That resilient spirit carried over into the Coal Miner’s Daughter LP’s tunes about feeling jilted (“What Makes Me Tick”) and loving another woman’s man (“Any One, Any Worse, Any Where”), and the album, as well as the like-titled memoir and biopic, secured her place as one the most important country singers ever. "
265,Robyn,Body Talk,-69,"Konichiwa, 2010","Robyn had a few Swedish teen-pop hits in the Nineties, but she’s a worldly adult on Body Talk — this was the voice of a woman who knew how it felt to shed tears on the dance floor. She released Body Talk in three mini-album installments on her own Konichiwa label, before cherry-picking the highlights for this epochal feminist disco statement. “Dancing on My Own” became this century’s answer to “I Will Survive.” She told Rolling Stone, “I was pushing through the challenges and getting off on that liberated feeling of being able to explore desperation and passion and frustration and all that.” "
266,Def Leppard,Pyromania,New in 2023,,
267,Wu-Tang Clan,Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers),-240,"Loud, 1993","The first Wu-Tang Clan album launched rap’s most dominant franchise by inventing a new sound built around a hectic panoply of voices and spare, raw beats. RZA, the group’s sonic mastermind, constructed the Wu’s homemade world, he said, from a mix of “Eastern philosophy picked up from kung-fu movies, watered-down Nation of Islam preaching picked up on the New York streets, and comic books.” On “C.R.E.A.M.,” “Protect Ya Neck,” and the non-metaphorical “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing ta F’ Wit,” RZA’s offbeat samples (Thelonious Monk, the Dramatics, fellow New Yorker Barbra Streisand) create a grounding for the group’s nine members, including future solo stars Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Raekwon, GZA, Ghostface Killah, and Method Man. Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg had established L.A. as the center of hip-hop innovation and daring, but the Wu reclaimed the crown for the music’s birthplace. "
268,Rufus & Chaka Khan,Ask Rufus,+231,"ABC, 1977","Fronted by Chaka Khan, one of soul music’s most combustible singers, Rufus built its mid-Seventies sound on heavy-footed, guitar-slathered funk. But after spending 16 months in the studio working on Ask Rufus, they came out with a record that gave their songs more room to breathe, anticipating the lithe, loose arrangements of Nineties neo-soul. Khan glided through the head-nodding “Everlasting Love” and the twisty-turny “Better Days,” and fans appreciated the adjustment: Ask Rufus was the group’s first platinum record. "
269,Neil Diamond,The Bang Years 1966–1968,New in 2023,,
270,Fela Kuti & Africa 70,Expensive Shit,+132,"Sounds Workshop, 1975","The title track is a 13-minute odyssey that epitomizes Nigerian funk king Fela Kuti’s knack for channeling fearless social commentary into body-moving grooves; the Africa 70 horns blare out infectious riffs as peerless drummer Tony Allen keeps up an indefatigable shuffling pulse, while Fela calls out the “fools” who would “use your shit to put you for jail.” Side Two’s “Water No Get Enemy” slows things down to a celebratory strut, concluding a short-yet-sweet effort that plays like a primer on the joys of Afrobeat. "
271,Shania Twain,Come On Over,+29,"Mercury, 1997","Shania Twain’s third album was basically a country Thriller, still the biggest-selling album ever by a female artist. Twain and her husband, AC/DC and Def Leppard producer John “Mutt” Lange, had radio in a hammerlock during the late Nineties with hits like “You’re Still the One” and “Man! I Feel Like a Woman,” and Twain’s mix of genre-defying effervescence and feel-like-a-woman self-assertion helped pave the way for superstar rule breakers like the Dixie Chicks, Miranda Lambert, and Taylor Swift, who said seeing Shania perform inspired her to want to get onstage herself. "
272,A Tribe Called Quest,The Low End Theory,-229,"Jive, 1991","“We wanted the longevity of Earth, Wind, and Fire, and Prince, and people of that nature,” Phife Dawg told Rolling Stone. “We wanted to be known for full-length albums.” Other people connected the dots between hip-hop and jazz , but A Tribe Called Quest’s second album drew the entire picture. The sound is dominated by the low end of the title — they even recruited legendary jazz bassist Ron Carter (who’d worked with Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis). As Carter gets dope on the double bass, the Tribe discourse on matters ranging from the music industry (“Show Business”) to sexual politics (“The Infamous Date Rape”). Each time Q-Tip rhymes over Carter’s bass lines, the groove just gets deeper. "
273,The White Stripes,White Blood Cells,New in 2023,,
274,The Slits,Cut,-14,"Antilles, 1979","Avant-garde you can dance to — that’s the Slits’ Cut in a nutshell. The British group’s raucous debut took the best of late-Seventies post-punk’s favorite genre influences (dub, girl groups, abstract jazz), tossed them all into a blender, and somehow ended up with joyously anarchic songs like “Shoplifting,” with its awesome catchphrase, “We pay fuck-all!” Kurt Cobain would call “Typical Girls” one of the best songs ever recorded, and we can’t help but agree. "
275,Radiohead,In Rainbows,+112,"XL, 2007","Radiohead released In Rainbows as a surprise download in the fall of 2007, letting fans pay whatever they liked. But the real surprise was how expansive the music turned out to be, with material the band had road-tested live in the U.S. all summer. Thom Yorke gets soulful in the intense love songs “All I Need,” “House of Cards,” and “Nude.” It’s Radiohead’s warmest album, with the vibe of a communal jam session. One that’s taking place at the end of the world, of course. "
276,Green Day,Dookie,+99,"Reprise, 1994","The album that jump-started the Nineties punk-pop revival. The skittish Dookie was recorded in little more than three weeks, and singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong blazed through all the vocals in two days. “Right from getting the drum sound, everything seemed to click,” their A&R man (and Dookie producer) Rob Cavallo marveled. Indeed, “click” is the operative word here, also describing Armstrong’s airtight, three-minute bowshots like “Welcome to Paradise,” “Basket Case,” and the infectious smash “Longview” — which Armstrong described as “cheap self-therapy from watching too much TV.” "
277,Billy Joel,The Stranger,-108,"Columbia, 1977","On this record, Billy Joel found the recipe for success: a bottle of red, a bottle of white, and a sharp eye for the local color of New York street life. The Piano Man sharpens his storytelling gifts with a Scorsese-style sense of humor and compassion, whether he’s singing about a down-and-out Little Italy hustler in “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” the femme fatale in “She’s Always a Woman,” or the doomed Long Island greaser couple Brenda and Eddie in “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant.” Meanwhile, Joel hit the pop charts with the Grammy-winning “Just the Way You Are” (written for his first wife and manager, Elizabeth), which became a wedding-band standard. "
278,Can,Future Days,New in 2023,,
279,George Michael,Faith,-128,"Columbia, 1987","As the main singer and writer in the 1980s British pop band Wham!, George Michael paraded around in sleeveless mesh shirts and Fila short-shorts. Wham! songs were smarter than they appeared, and when Michael went solo to prove what he could do, he nailed it on the first try, integrating R&B in his songwriting, from soul ballads (“Father Figure,” “One More Try”) to horny Prince-inspired funk (“I Want Your Sex,” “Hard Day”). The album sold 25 million copies worldwide, and four singles went to Number One in the U.S. “You either see pop music as a contemporary art form, or you don’t. I do, very strongly,” Michael said. "
280,The Isley Brothers,3 + 3,+184,"T-Neck, 1973","The Isley Brothers ballooned from a trio that impressed the Beatles to a six-piece band on 3 + 3, which helped establish them as a funk force in the 1970s. The hit “That Lady” is stuffed with laser-bright guitar solos, and the slow numbers (including a cover of James Taylor’s “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight,” in which Ron Isley unfurled his heartbreaking falsetto and forceful midrange) hint toward the band’s bright future as pre-eminent balladeers in R&B’s Quiet Storm era. "
281,Brian Wilson,Smile,+118,"Nonesuch, 2004","This album lived in myth for decades. Brian Wilson’s unfinished response to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club took nearly 40 years to finally come to fruition. Longtime Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks helped him realize his vision, with lush string arrangements, sublime melodies, and vocal harmonies, all impeccably constructed. Close your eyes and you can imagine how it might’ve changed the world in 1968, but with Wilson’s influence still all over scads of indie bands in 2004, it sounds and feels majestically modern. "
282,The Fall,This Nation's Saving Grace,New in 2023,,
283,Jefferson Airplane,Surrealistic Pillow,+188,"RCA, 1967","Psychedelic scholars have long tried to pin down just what the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia did on this album (besides contribute some guitar playing) to earn a credit as “spiritual adviser.” But the real trip is the Airplane’s hallucinatory distillation of folk-blues vocals, garage-rock guitar, and crisp pop songwriting. Grace Slick’s vocal showcases — “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love” — made Surrealistic Pillow a commercial smash during San Francisco’s Summer of Love, and Marty Balin’s spectral “Today” is still the greatest ballad of that city’s glory days. "
284,EPMD,Strictly Business,New in 2023,,
285,Rod Stewart,Every Picture Tells a Story,-108,"Mercury, 1971","“We had no preconceived ideas of what we were going to do,” Rod Stewart said. “We would have a few drinks and strum away and play.” With a first-class band of drinking buddies (including guitarist Ron Wood and drummer Mickey Waller), Stewart made a loose, warm, compassionate album, rocking hard with mostly acoustic instruments. “Mandolin Wind” was his moving ballad of a country couple toughing out a long winter on the farm; the title tune was a hilarious goof. But Stewart scored his first Number One hit with “Maggie May,” his autobiographical tale of a young stud getting kicked in the head by an older lady. "
286,Todd Rundgren,"A Wizard, a True Star",New in 2023,,
287,Primal Scream,Screamadelica,+150,"Sire, 1991","Primal Scream was a run-of-the-mill U.K. alt-rock band who discovered rave culture, overdosed on acid-house music, and retrofitted their sound with the fun, trippy, druggy disco-rock diversions on Screamadelica. The single “Loaded,” their first U.K. hit, combined house piano, folk melodies, and a danceable beat, while “Movin’ On Up,” their U.S. breakthrough, drew from hippie-folk strumming, gospel choruses, and Stones-y guitar and tambourine. Sure, some of Screamadelica feels like meandering mood music, but that’s proof that sometimes the journey is more fun than the destination. "
288,The Ronettes,Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes,+206,"Philles, 1964","More a Spanish Harlem street gang than a girl group, the Ronettes were pop goddesses dressed as Catholic schoolgirls gone to hell and back. Phil Spector builds his Wall of Sound as his teen protégée (and future wife) Ronnie Spector belts “Be My Baby” and “Walking in the Rain,” while songs like “I Wonder” and “Baby, I Love You” ache with hope for a perfect love that always seems to be impossibly ideal and just within arm’s reach. "
289,Brian Eno,Here Come the Warm Jets,+19,"Island, 1974","The former Roxy Music keyboardist’s first solo album pioneered a new kind of glammy art rock: jagged, free-form, and dreamy, sounding like nothing else in rock at the time. “Baby’s on Fire” and “Needles in the Camel’s Eye” are vicious rockers with detached vocals, and Robert Fripp’s warped guitars swarm and stutter, while “On Some Faraway Beach” and the title track are glistening slo-mo-drone pastorales. “I called it ‘warm jet guitar’ because it sounded like a tuned jet,” Eno said later. "
290,Fiona Apple,When the Pawn...,-182,"Epic, 1999","Following the success of her precocious debut, Tidal, and saddled with a pop audience that didn’t quite know what to do with her, Fiona Apple took her critics to task on the mature yet daring When the Pawn … Backed by her expressive piano playing and impressionistic production from Jon Brion, Apple makes resentment seem almost fun on songs like “Fast as You Can,” “Paper Bag,” and “The Way Things Are.” In years to come, Apple would make peace with her outcast status, leaving far behind the MTV-generation gatekeepers who once gave her so much grief. For generations of young fans, the raw, hard-won triumph of When the Pawn … will always feel timeless. "
291,Grateful Dead,Anthem of the Sun,New in 2023,,
292,Junior Murvin,Police and Thieves,New in 2023,,
293,Suicide,Suicide,+205,"Red Star, 1977","These New York synth-punks evoke everything from the Velvet Underground to rockabilly. Martin Rev’s low-budget electronics are violent and hypnotic; Alan Vega screams as a rhythmic device. Late-night listening to “Frankie Teardrop,” a 10-minute-plus tale of a multiple murder, is not recommended. A droning voice in the wilderness when they appeared in the Seventies, the duo would influence bands from Arcade Fire and the National to Bruce Springsteen, who covered Suicide live in 2016. "
294,Burial,Untrue,New in 2023,,
295,Coldplay,A Rush of Blood to the Head,+29,"Capitol, 2002","In the early 2000s, starry-eyed Brit-pop boys doing a cuddly version of Radiohead were a dime a dozen. (Remember Starsailor?) It was Coldplay’s second album that showed they were true contenders. Songs like “Green Eyes” and “The Scientist” brought back the comforting melodies of “Yellow,” but the twinkling sonics suggested prime Smiths or U2. And darker stuff, like the austerely beautiful death meditation “Amsterdam” and the OK Computer-worthy “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face,” showed the group had more than arena anthems on its mind. "
296,Diana Ross & the Supremes,Anthology,+156,"Tamla/Motown, 1974","In the heyday of Motown, the Supremes were their own hit factory, all glamour and heartbreak. Diana Ross and her girls ruled the radio with tunes from the Motown brain trust of Holland, Dozier, and Holland. The Supremes could blaze with confidence, as in “Come See About Me.” Or they could sound elegantly morose, as in “My World Is Empty Without You” and “Where Did Our Love Go?” But in “Love Is Like an Itching in My Heart,” when Miss Ross gulps, “There ain’t nothing I can do about it,” it’s a spine-tingling moment. "
297,ABBA,The Definitive Collection,+6,"Universal, 2001","These Swedish pop stars became the world’s biggest group in the 1970s, with a streak of Nordic despair under the sparkly melodies. Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad were the bewitching frontwomen in the sequined pantsuits; their husbands, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, wrote global hits like the joyful “Dancing Queen,” the double-divorce drama “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” and the haunting farewell “Thank You for the Music.” "
298,Donald Fagen,The Nightfly,New in 2023,,
299,Ghostface Killah,Supreme Clientele,+104,"Epic, 2000","“I feel like I got my whole style from Ghostface,” Kanye West has said. Lavishly unhinged and viciously hard-hitting, Ghostface Killah’s second solo album helped revive the Wu-Tang franchise, marinating lines like “Ghost is back, stretch Cadillacs, fruit cocktails/Hit the shelves at Paul’s pastry rack,” in serrated Seventies-soul samples. On “Nutmeg” he drops a mind-boxing cluster of psychedelic bullshit, then simply stands back during the chorus, letting the tape roll as he mocks all comers — an untouchable champ at the top of his game. "
300,Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force,Planet Rock: The Album,New in 2023,,
301,Parquet Courts,Wide Awake!,New in 2023,,
302,The Fugees,The Score,-168,,
303,Ween,Chocolate and Cheese,New in 2023,,
304,Amy Winehouse,Back to Black,-271,"Island, 2006","With her love of Sixties girl-group pop and her dark beehive, Amy Winehouse came across as a star from another time. But as a child of the Nineties, she also loved hip-hop and wrote openly about her splattered relationships and issues with drugs and alcohol. Her breakthrough second album (recorded in Brooklyn with co-producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi) marked the arrival of a resplendently damaged 21st-century torch singer. Tracks like the mildly pushy “You Know I’m No Good” and the sumptuous “Love Is a Loving Game” had an elegant, beguiling smudginess that avoided the wax-museum quality of so much retro soul. “My odds are stacked,” Winehouse sings. “I’ll go back to black.” Indeed, the pain and tumult in her voice was very real. Before her death in 2011, she left behind a tragically unfulfilled promise. "
305,OutKast,Speakerboxxx/The Love Below,-15,"LaFace, 2003","For a decade, OutKast were a duo defined by dichotomies — regional versus celestial, order amid chaos, blackness and the universal. On their fifth studio album, that tension could no longer be contained on one CD. Big Boi’s verbal funk overflowed on Speakerboxxx, his half of the double-disc set, while André 3000’s inner crooner exhaled like never before on The Love Below. It was a gamble to break up their twin alchemy this way, but in dividing themselves, OutKast conquered: America fell as deeply in love with the borderless pop bliss of “Hey Ya!” as it did with the slick talk and soulful horns on “The Way You Move.” "
306,Dolly Parton,Coat of Many Colors,-49,"RCA, 1971","Dolly Parton’s starkest, most affecting album. The title track is about wearing rags but keeping your pride. “That was a very sad and cutting memory that I long kept deep within myself,” she said of the song in a 1977 Rolling Stone interview. “I remembered all the pain of it and the mockery.” The rest is more hard country: On “Traveling Man,” Parton’s mom runs off with the singer’s boyfriend; on “If I Lose My Mind,” her boyfriend has sex with another woman in front of her. "
307,The Shangri-Las,Leader of the Pack,New in 2023,,
308,Motörhead,Ace of Spades,+100,"Bronze, 1980","Neither punk nor metal, Motörhead played rock & roll nastier, grittier, and snarlier than their forebears on Ace of Spades. Amid a miasma of hypercharged guitar riffs and death-rattle drumming, frontman Lemmy Kilmister, splits his time between sleazy come-ons (“Love Me Like a Reptile”), war stories (“(We Are) The Road Crew”), and underdog maxims (“Live to Win”). The blazing title track epitomized the Motörhead experience: “You know I’m born to lose, and gambling’s for fools,” Lemmy growls, “but that’s the way I like it, baby, I don’t wanna live forever.” He meant it, too. "
309,Aphex Twin,Selected Ambient Works 85-92,New in 2023,,
310,Bon Iver,"For Emma, Forever Ago",+151,,
311,John Prine,John Prine,-162,"Atlantic, 1971","When John Prine resigned from his job as a USPS mailman, his supervisor snickered, “You’ll be back.” Instead, Prine became a revered folk-country-rock songwriter, starting with this first album, which is loaded with enduring gems, including “Angel From Montgomery,” “Hello in There,” and a song that regularly returns to relevance, “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.” Prine seemed like a Zen sage. He filled his songs with an uncynical live-and-let-live morality, and wrote in a colloquial voice that showed a love of the way Americans speak. His closest parallel isn’t another songwriter, it’s Mark Twain. "
312,Vampire Weekend,Modern Vampires of the City,+16,"XL, 2013","On Halloween 2012, with their hometown New York subsumed in a blackout, Vampire Weekend went on late-night TV to play an atheist reggae jam called “Unbelievers” dressed as skeletons. It was the perfect introduction to Modern Vampires of the City, a record that darkened their buoyant indie pop, as Ezra Koenig sang about moving beyond his post-college years into something scarier and weirder — hitting a cloudy peak with the beautifully worried Dylanesque travelogue “Hannah Hunt.” "
313,The Flaming Lips,The Soft Bulletin,New in 2023,,
314,Faust,Faust IV,New in 2023,,
315,Kid Cudi,Man on the Moon: The End of Day,+144,"Dream On, 2009","Kid Cudi helped Kanye West shape his introspective R&B/hip-hop hybrid 808s & Heartbreak. On his debut LP, the Cleveland rapper took that sound further and deeper, merging emo and psychedelic rock with hip-hop bombast. His introspect runs the gamut from the severe depression of “Day ‘n’ Nite” to the sweet contentment of “Pursuit of Happiness,” both of which became unlikely hits. A decade after Man on the Moon, every chart is dominated by Kudi’s sad children. "
316,Lou Reed,Berlin,New in 2023,,
317,Solange,When I Get Home,New in 2023,,
318,The Streets,Original Pirate Material,New in 2023,,
319,"Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young",Déjà Vu,-99,"Epic, 1970","Neil Young was just getting his solo career underway when he joined his old Buffalo Springfield bandmate Stephen Stills, ex-Byrd David Crosby, and former Hollie Graham Nash in the first of the West Coast supergroups. Young’s vision and guitar transformed the earlier folk-rock CSN into a rock & roll powerhouse. The CSNY combination was too volatile to last, but on their best album, they offered pop idealism (Nash’s “Teach Your Children”), militant blues (Crosby’s “Almost Cut My Hair”), and vocal-choir gallop (Stills’ “Carry On”). "
320,M.I.A.,Kala,New in 2023,,
321,The Weeknd,House of Balloons,New in 2023,,
322,Johnny Cash,At Folsom Prison,-158,"Columbia, 1968","By the late Sixties, Cash was ignored by country radio and struggling for a comeback. At Folsom Prison was a million-seller that reignited his career. A year later, he was writing liner notes for Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline and logging four weeks at Number One with his second prison album, At San Quentin. But Folsom Prison is essential Cash. Backed by a tough touring band, including fellow Sun Records alum Carl Perkins on guitar, Cash guffaws his way through “Cocaine Blues,” “25 Minutes to Go” (a countdown to an execution), and “Folsom Prison Blues,” with its line about shooting a man just to watch him die. The 2,000 inmates in attendance roar their approval. "
323,Spiritualized,Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space,New in 2023,,
324,Madvillain,Madvillainy,+41,"Stones Throw, 2004","This collaboration between rapper MF Doom and producer Madlib is one of underground hip-hop’s greatest moments. Madlib provides a shifting bed of warped funk and wildly unpredictable samples, drawing on everything from Thunder and Lightning’s “Bumpin’ Bus Stop” to “The Theme of the Justice League of America.” Doom’s rhymes are so casually adventurous that sometimes it takes a second to notice how stunning they are: “Still back in the game like Jack LaLanne/Think you know the name, don’t rack your brain/On a fast track to half sane” — hell yeah! "
325,Maxwell,Urban Hang Suite,New in 2023,,
326,Animal Collective,Merriweather Post Pavilion,New in 2023,,
327,Toots & the Maytals,Funky Kingston,+17,"Island, 1973","Loose, funky, and exuberant, Kingston is the quintessential document of Jamaica’s greatest act after Bob Marley. Showcasing some of the Maytals’ best songs (“Pressure Drop,” later covered by the Clash) and borrowing from soul, pop, and gospel, Funky Kingston introduced the world to the great Toots Hibbert. He performs versions of “Louie Louie” and, in a down-home surprise, John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” with Toots changing the lyrics from “West Virginia” to “West Jamaica.” "
328,The Human League,Dare,New in 2023,,
329,Yes,Close to the Edge,+116,"Atlantic, 1972","Sessions for this album were so intense and taxing that monster drummer Bill Bruford quit the band when it was over due to stress. The hard work paid off. Close to the Edge is the best of Yes’ many lineups at an absolute peak, with Jon Anderson’s sun-king vocals pouring out over new member Rick Wakeman’s dazzling keyboards. The title track, an 18-minute epic in four distinct parts, remains the most majestic moment in the prog-rock history. "
330,The Congos,Heart of the Congos,New in 2023,,
331,Pet Shop Boys,Actually,+104,"EMI Manhattan,, 1987","Neil Tennant was one of England’s best-known music journalists when he formed this Eighties synth-pop duo with Chris Lowe. The Pet Shop Boys scored a Number One smash with “West End Girls,” their ode to queer cruising. But they took their satirical wit even further on Actually — perhaps the only album on this list where the singer is yawning on the cover. The Boys dissect the sex-and-money connection in “Rent,” “Shopping,” and the Dusty Springfield duet, “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” "
332,Erykah Badu,Baduizm,-243,"Kedar, 1997","“If the head wrap was my trademark, the drums, African drums, were my soundtrack,” Erykah Badu recalled. “It’s just who I was at the time, and I wanted to be completely who I was when I did what I did.” Recorded between New York, Philadelphia, and her hometown of Dallas, the singer’s debut suggested a Billie Holiday raised on hip-hop and Stevie Wonder, celebrating herself and her heritage over resplendently relaxed grooves. Baduizm’s Seventies-meets-Nineties vibe, Badu’s exquisite lyricism (“On & On” is at once spiritual, apocalyptic, and funny), and jazz-steeped cadences (see “Appletree”) combined to make the 25-year-old singer a figurehead for the neo-soul genre that essentially began with this album. "
333,Disco Inferno,D.I. Go Pop,New in 2023,,
334,ESG,Come Away with ESG,New in 2023,,
335,The Sonics,Here Are the Sonics,New in 2023,,
336,Alice Coltrane,Journey in Satchidananda,New in 2023,"Impulse!, 1971","Alice Coltrane was a key part of her husband John’s fiery late-era bands. You can hear her own musical voice in full flower on this LP, named for her spiritual teacher Swami Satchidananda. Coltrane blended the sprawling modal jams pioneered by her late husband with drones from the Indian tanpura, Pharoah Sanders’ spiraling soprano sax, and her own rapturous harp. The result is a meditative bliss-out like jazz had never seen: part earthy blues and part ethereal mantra, and a potent influence on sonic seekers from Radiohead to Coltrane’s grandnephew Flying Lotus. "
337,TLC,CrazySexyCool,-119,"LaFace, 1994","Things were not well with TLC during the making of CrazySexyCool: Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes was lighting fires, and the group was in a financial slide that would end in bankruptcy proceedings. But they emerged with the most effervescent and soulful R&B pop anyone had heard since the Supremes. “Creep” is hard-edged but cute, the summery “Diggin’ on You” is almost pastoral in its intimate flow, and the transcendent “Waterfalls” may be the greatest song ever about how it’s not a great idea to go after your dreams. "
338,Tame Impala,Lonerism,New in 2023,,
339,M.I.A.,Arular,+82,"Interscope, 2005","What’s the opposite of a girl next door? Perhaps it might be a radicalized, globalized pop star like M.I.A., an English-Tamil writer who provocatively questioned and deconstructed ideas about power and rebellion throughout her first album. She raps and cajoles in hard-chopping cadences (“I bongo with my lingo,” indeed), and mixes jokes, disses, and political insight about the abuse of authority over electronic beats that can sound like New York City electroclash or Brazilian funk. And her hipster hit “Galang” hit as hard as any hip-hop around at the time. "
340,Dwight Yoakam,"Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.",New in 2023,,
341,Snoop Doggy Dogg,Doggystyle,-1,"Death Row/Interscope, 1993","Until Snoop Dogg came along, no one in rap — and hardly anyone in rock — realized that an aloof whisper could be more intimidating than a shout. Snoop never gets heated; he takes the same tone when he’s menacing a cop as he does with a woman who’s soaping his back in the tub. Emanuel Dean and Dr. Dre’s sterling G-funk productions on “Gin N Juice” and “Who Am I (What’s My Name)?” ensured enormous album sales for the D-O-double-G’s debut and his laidbaaaack Indo-flavored tales of life on the streets of Compton. "
342,Depeche Mode,Violator,-175,"Sire, 1990","One of England’s first synth-pop bands, Depeche Mode had moved beyond their bubblegum phase by the time of their seventh album and, under the influence of hip-hop, began playing with samples and loops, even betraying their keyboard roots with the twangy guitar that opens “Personal Jesus.” Alan Wilder created the dense, constantly shifting arrangements, Martin Gore wrote the pervy lyrics, and Dave Gahan croons implacably about betrayal, immorality, and sexual domination. The percolating “Enjoy the Silence” became their only U.S. Top 10 single, and “Policy of Truth” did almost as well. With its panoply of high-gloss hooks and arresting, artificial sounds, Violator cemented Depeche Mode’s status as the first electronic band that could fill stadiums. "
343,Jane's Addiction,Nothing's Shocking,New in 2023,,
344,Mobb Deep,The Infamous,+25,"Loud, 1995","“We were just straight hood,” Havoc said. “It wasn’t no pretty boy shit. He was talking about the Timberlands and bandanas he and Prodigy (R.I.P.) wore, but that was also the brutal appeal of their second album, which the duo produced mostly by themselves. Q Tip functioned as an executive producer, adding depth to sinister tracks built off of 1970s samples, many of them from the LP collection that Prodigy’s jazz-musician grandfather left to him. “Shook Ones Pt. II,” a minor hit, and “Survival of the Fittest” have only one impetus, to document life in a Queens project. "
345,Santana,Santana,New in 2023,,
346,John Cale,Paris 1919,New in 2023,,
347,Notorious B.I.G.,Life After Death,-168,"Bad Boy, 1997","Biggie’s second album was a victory lap following the immense, earth-shaking success of his 1994 debut, Ready to Die, and was prophetically and tragically released less than a month after the 24-year-old was shot and killed. The rubber-grooved “Hypnotize” was already on its way to becoming a smash when he died, and his lyrical genius and gift for narrative were on display all over this two-CD set, as he grapples with rap-game politics and delivers thinly veiled knocks at the West Coasters he long beefed with over clean, lush-sounding production. He was just getting started. "
348,The Feelies,The Good Earth,New in 2023,,
349,Frank Ocean,Channel Orange,-201,"Def Jam, 2012","On Channel Orange, Frank Ocean became one of music’s most elusive superstars — shy about speaking in public, impossible to pin down musically. He emerged from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, writing pop tunes for the likes of Brandy and Justin Bieber. But he stepped into his own avant-soul territory with Channel Orange, his official debut. Soon after coming out of the closet — still a rarity in R&B at the time — Ocean had a hit with the falsetto slow jam “Thinkin Bout You.” He mixes up genres and vocal personae, with guest shots from André 3000 to John Mayer. The peak: the spacey 10-minute suite “Pyramids,” an Egyptian fantasy starring Cleopatra as an around-the-way girl. Years later, Channel Orange still sounds like the future. "
350,Usher,Confessions,+82,"Arista, 2004","Usher was already a star in 2004, a sly singer and slick dancer whose R&B hits found a home with pop fans. But Confessions, which is one of the last 10-million-plus sellers ever made, turned him into an unstoppable juggernaut. Usher worked with a murderers’ row of R&B and hip-hop talent, from Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to Jermaine Dupri to Just Blaze; the album moves easily from club wreckers like the Lil Jon- and Ludacris-assisted smash “Yeah!” to forgive-me-for-cheating ballads to love-you-forever duets. "
351,Janet Jackson,Control,-240,"A&M, 1986","If properly, successfully maturing in pop after a childhood in the spotlight is an artform, then Janet Jackson is Michelangelo and Control her statue of David. The youngest member of the Jackson family released her third studio album while on the cusp of her twenties. Working with the dream team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Jackson made an assertive, hook-y, and powerful proclamation of her star power on sparkling, sculpted electro-pop dance songs like “Nasty,” “The Pleasure Principle,” and the title track. Control remains the blueprint for any young artist looking to find their own voice. "
352,Eagles,Hotel California,-234,,
353,Neneh Cherry,Raw Like Sushi,New in 2023,,
354,OutKast,Stankonia,-290,"LaFace, 2000","There’s a thrilling sprawl on OutKast’s fourth album, a sense of limitless possibilities within the boundaries of hip-hop. Big Boi and André 3000 rap about baby mamas’ mamas (“Ms. Jackson”), the perils of sex (“We Luv Deez Hoez”) and alcohol (“?”), feeling excluded from the American dream (“Gasoline Dreams”), good manners (“I’ll Call Before I Come”), and the trauma of teen pregnancy (“Toilet Tisha”). The music is sexy, bold, and hard, mixing, on “B.O.B.,” distorted metal guitar, an HBCU gospel choir, and a jittery techno beat. Big Boi says OutKast is “cooler than a polar bear’s toenails,” adds that they’re “just lyrically twerking,” and tells the police, “Officer, get off us, sir.” “We call it slumadelic,” said André 3000. "
355,Boogie Down Productions,Criminal Minded,-116,"B-Boy, 1987","BDP copped a gangsta stance, sporting guns on the album cover, but they opened their debut with “Poetry,” an ode to the edutaining power of their music — “It takes concentration for fresh communication,” KRS-One informs. DJ Scott LaRock laced funky samples into taut, hard-hitting tracks like the classic interborough beef fests “The Bridge Is Over” and “South Bronx,” the latter doubling as a glorious origin story of hip-hop’s early days. LaRock was killed shortly after the album’s release trying to break up a fight. "
356,King Sunny Adé,Juju Music,New in 2023,,
357,Missy Elliott,Supa Dupa Fly,New in 2023,,
358,Aerosmith,Rocks,+8,"Columbia, 1976","The bad boys from Boston perfected their Seventies guitar raunch on Rocks — it’s the musical equivalent of getting run over by a muscle car. Steven Tyler and Joe Perry sounded like America’s heirs to the Mick-and-Keith tradition with the filthy riffs of “Lick and a Promise” and “Back in the Saddle.” Tyler brings all his dirtbag swagger and gutter poetry to his favorite topic: sex. Surprise peak: “Sick as a Dog,” an incredible fusion of the Byrds, James Brown funk, and Sixties girl-group harmonies. "
359,Rihanna,Anti,-129,"Roc Nation, 2016","After dominating the Top 40 for years, Rihanna wanted to make an ambitious album-statement, brilliantly sustaining the tipsy two-in-the-morning vibe of this moody midcareer reinvention. “I just gravitated toward the songs that were … the things I want to listen to,” she said. “The things that I want to smoke to.” On Anti, she recast pop as her own hazy playground, referencing Dido and hair metal, covering Tame Impala, and merging dancehall and torch ballads. "
360,Muddy Waters,The Anthology,+123,"MCA, 2001","Muddy Waters started out playing acoustic Delta blues in Mississippi, but when he moved to Chicago in 1943, he needed an electric guitar to be heard over the tumult of South Side clubs. The sound he developed was the foundation of Chicago blues — and rock & roll; the thick, bleeding tones of his slide work anticipated rock-guitar distortion by nearly two decades. The 50 cuts on these two CDs run from guitar-and-stand-up-bass duets to full-band romps — and they still just scratch the surface of Waters’ legacy. "
361,Kendrick Lamar,"good kid, m.A.A.d city",-246,"TDE, 2012","Kendrick Lamar’s hip-hop autobiography came as a shock in 2012: musically downbeat, with a film director’s eye for narrative but the voice of a poet. Good kid is his story of growing up in Compton, surrounded by gunfire, gang warfare, police brutality, drugs, liquor, dead friends — billed on the cover as “A Short FIlm by Kendrick Lamar,” like a West Coast answer to Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets. K-Dot goes for emotional detail instead of gangsta bravado, whether cruising the streets in “Backseat Freestyle” or pondering addiction in “Swimming Pool (Drank).” As he told Rolling Stone, “The best entertainers have to have the most wickedest sense of humor, to be able to take pain and change it into laughter.” "
362,Harry Nilsson,Nilsson Schmilsson,-81,"RCA, 1971","A brilliant outlier on the Seventies L.A. singer-songwriter scene, Harry Nilsson had a voice and pop savvy like Paul McCartney and a biting ironic side like John Lennon. Nilsson Schmilsson produced three hits — the oddball island novelty “Coconut,” a cover of Badfinger’s “Without You,” where Nilsson sounds like a depressed Barry Manilow, and the surprise monster jam “Jump Into the Fire.” Nilsson was later covered by LCD Soundsystem. It was par for the course for a guy who could shruggingly pull off anything he wanted. "
363,Buddy Holly,"The ""Chirping"" Crickets",New in 2023,,
364,Nas,Illmatic,-320,"Columbia, 1994","Other rappers were harder and brasher, but nobody captured the creeping menace of life on the streets like this 20-year-old from New York’s Queensbridge projects. With lines like “I never sleep, ’cause sleep is the cousin of death,” Nas showed more poetic style than any MC since Rakim. His debut begins with the sound of a subway train, and for the next 39 minutes, he seems to visit every street corner from Queens to Brooklyn, detailing drug deals, escapism, persecution, prison life, and survival. Throughout, he displays a pure focus (there’s only one guest verse) and explosive dexterity; it’s one thing to say “I drop the ancient manifested hip-hop,” as he does in the first verse of “Memory Lane,” it’s another to back that up with a stunning, acrobatic second verse. Illmatic was an instant classic that never crossed over, which only deepened its myth with hip-hop heads. "
365,Raekwon,Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...,-146,"Loud/RCA, 1995","The finest Wu-Tang solo joint stands out due to Raekwon’s understated, eternally unflustered cool and densely woven verses. Abetted by hyperactive sideman Ghostface and hypnotically stark beats courtesy of the RZA, Raekwon crafts breathtaking drug-rap narratives. On “Knowledge God,” an Italian drug dealer with a “hairy chest” and “many minks” meets his colorful demise in just six words: “Sixteen shots in his fish tank.” It’s the rare hip-hop album that rivals the mob movies it celebrates for gripping detail. "
366,Manu Chao,Clandestino,+103,"Virgin, 1998","Born in Paris to Spanish parents, Manu Chao is a true citizen of the world on his 1998 debut. Clandestino, was a tribute to “clandestinos” everywhere: a derogatory term for undocumented migrants. Running on an internationalist platform of peace (and legalized pot), Chao was a digital busker (“a clown making too much dirty sound”), strumming his acoustic guitar as he moved effortlessly between languages and styles, singing with a playfully light touch as he made feel-good reggae rock for global nomads like himself. "
367,Janelle Monáe,The ArchAndroid,New in 2023,,
368,Throbbing Gristle,20 Jazz Funk Greats,New in 2023,,
369,Dead Kennedys,Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables,New in 2023,,
370,Fugazi,Repeater,New in 2023,,
371,Kanye West,The College Dropout,-297,"Roc-A-Fella, 2004","In 2003, Kanye West was a Chicago kid who’d produced some hot beats for Jay-Z, wore pastel polo shirts with the collars popped, and wanted to be on the mic, not behind it. Record labels were skeptical, but West got over on wit and determination; he wrote and sang the hit “Through the Wire” while his jaw was wired shut after being in a car accident, and followed it with more dynamic tracks, including “Slow Jamz,” about the seductive power of soul music, and the gospel riot “Jesus Walks.” West loved Jesus and strip clubs, made arrogant claims about his talent, and then professed his insecurity — which made his music all the richer. "
372,Weezer,Pinkerton,New in 2023,,
373,Lana Del Rey,Norman Fucking Rockwell!,-52,"Polydor/Interscope, 2019","Lana Del Rey became a music-blog sensation playing the poker-faced millennial Nancy Sinatra on her debut single, “Video Games.” She kept growing as an artist, and on her wonderfully titled sixth album perfected her epic vision of doomed, decadent, Seventies-steeped California romance on songs like “Mariner’s Apartment Complex” and the nine-minute crusher “Venice Bitch.” Del Rey dropped references to the Eagles and Graham Nash, merging her own music into the Laurel Canyon canon. No less an authority on Seventies greatness than Elton John called the album’s songs “timeless.” "
374,Schoolly D,Saturday Night! The Album,New in 2023,,
375,Eurythmics,Touch,New in 2023,,
376,Suede,Suede,New in 2023,,
377,Carly Rae Jepsen,E•MO•TION,New in 2023,,
378,Ornette Coleman,Free Jazz,New in 2023,,
379,Janet Jackson,The Velvet Rope,-61,"Virgin, 1997","Janet Jackson left behind her girl-next-door image forever with The Velvet Rope, an album of sexy, confessional, freewheeling hip-hop soul. She fuses Joni Mitchell and Q-Tip in “Got ’Til It’s Gone,” but the shocker is her girl-girl version of Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night.” “I always write about what’s in my life,” she told Rolling Stone. “I did that on Control, and I did the same thing with this album. It’s kind of like cutting yourself open and exposing yourself to the world, which is really a vulnerable thing.” "
380,Talk Talk,Laughing Stock,New in 2023,,
381,Pharoah Sanders,Karma,New in 2023,,
382,King Tubby,Meets Rockers Uptown,New in 2023,,
383,Elliott Smith,XO,New in 2023,,
384,The Chemical Brothers,Dig Your Own Hole,New in 2023,,
385,Aaliyah,One in a Million,-71,"Blackground/Atlantic, 1996","Aaliyah’s second album was her first with producer Timbaland, and until the singer’s tragic death in 2001, the pair reshaped the landscape of R&B. Aaliyah seems to be sparring with Timbaland’s hide-and-seek drum tracks, ducking and weaving — and, somehow, singing beautifully — as high-hats and shakers zip past her ears. As futuristic as this album sounds, even today, Aaliyah also benefited from her close study of the classics: Her version of the Isley Brothers’ “Choosey Lover” rises to the level of the original. "
386,Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers,Rockin' and Romance,New in 2023,,
387,Queens of the Stone Age,Songs for the Deaf,New in 2023,,
388,War,The World Is a Ghetto,New in 2023,,
389,Gary Numan/Tubeway Army,The Pleasure Principle,New in 2023,,
390,Boston,Boston,New in 2023,,
391,The Mothers of Invention,Freak Out!,New in 2023,,
392,Chic,Risqué,+22,"Atlantic, 1979","Nobody thought a disco band was supposed to make a brilliant third album — but Chic always thrived on defying the odds. On Risqué, the dynamic duo of guitarist Nile Rodgers and bassist Bernard Edwards fuse sleek tropical R&B, Anglophile New Wave, and NYC club flash for a sound that’s been the blueprint for pop radio ever since. “Good Times” is Chic’s most prophetic groove — the story of hip-hop on wax begins here, with the Sugarhill Gang rhyming over it for “Rapper’s Delight.” "
393,2Pac,All Eyez on Me,+43,"Death Row, 1996","2Pac wanted it all: credibility and success, “murderous lyrics” and voice-of-a-generation gravitas. On his fourth (and final) album, he briefly gets it. In the course of 27 songs and two discs, Pac empties his brain of the contradictory impulses. The Dr. Dre track “California Love” became a huge house-party hit, but what unifies the album, through an array of different producers and guest stars, is Pac’s charisma and his struggles with morality: “It’s similar to Rhythm Nation, but thugged out — forgive me, Janet.” "
394,John Fahey,The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death,New in 2023,,
395,Meat Loaf,Bat Out of Hell,New in 2023,,
396,Bon Iver,Bon Iver,New in 2023,,
397,Can,Soundtracks,New in 2023,,
398,Pantera,Vulgar Display of Power,New in 2023,,
399,Mary J. Blige,My Life,-273,"Uptown, 1994","The crucial development on Mary J. Blige’s second album is her emergence as a songwriter; in lyrics and interviews, she began to describe the traumas she’d had, both as a child growing up in the projects and as an adult. For fans, that intimacy turned her from a beloved singer to a member of the family. “Down and out, crying every day,” she sings on the title song. There’s plenty of thematic contrast — the playful bedroom come-on “Mary Jane (All Night Long),” a smashing cover of the 1970s funk ballad “I’m Going Down” — but the strongest impression from the album is that Blige had been through it, and her hopefulness was hard-won. "
400,Dinosaur,You're Living All Over Me,New in 2023,,
401,Jay-Z,Reasonable Doubt,-334,"Roc-A-Fella, 1996","Before there was Jay-Z the mogul, the legend, the Beyoncé boy toy, there was Jay-Z on his do-or-die hustle, trying just to get a seat at the UNO table. “Forever petty minds stay petty/Mine’s thinkin’ longevity, until I’m 70,” he rhymes on the virtuosic “22 Two’s,” his earliest experiment in toying with standard rap structures. When he raps about drug dealing and not trusting women, the details are specific and self-aware. Jay’s charisma and comic insouciance are evident even on small touches like his taunting laugh in the chorus of “Ain’t No Nigga,” a gloriously funky track that lit up dance clubs. Here, he planted a flag in the underground — within two years, the pop hits followed and the hustle went worldwide. "
402,"Tyler, the Creator",Igor,New in 2023,,
403,Misfits,Walk Among Us,New in 2023,,
404,The dB's,Stands for Decibels,New in 2023,,
405,Fela Kuti & Africa 70,Zombie,New in 2023,,
406,The Meters,Look-Ka Py Py,New in 2023,"Josie, 1969","The Meters were the house band for New Orleans’ genius producer Allen Toussaint and played on Seventies landmarks such as LaBelle’s Nightbirds, while also running off a series of their own rock-solid LPs. These instrumentals — sampled by rappers including Nas and Salt-N-Pepa — are funk of the gods; tight, cutting, but also relaxed and inviting, with Art Neville’s lyrical Hammond B3 organ adding chill texture to George Porter Jr.’s monster bass and the off-the-beat Second Line swing of drummer of Ziggy Modeliste. "
407,Mariah Carey,The Emancipation of Mimi,-18,"Island, 2005","Mariah Carey’s last couple of albums had only attained platinum status, paltry by her usual high-flying standards. But the vocal acrobat swept away the naysayers with “We Belong Together,” a chattering, heartbroken ballad that interpolates two R&B classics (Bobby Womack’s “If You Think You’re Lonely Now” and the Deele’s “Two Occasions”), then followed that song’s huge success with “Shake It Off,” a dismissive, vengeful cut for all the jilted lovers — and The Emancipation of Mimi turned out to be a sextuple-platinum return to form. "
408,Bad Bunny,X 100pre,+39,"Rimas, 2018","Heralded by a subtly symbolic Christmas Eve release, Bad Bunny’s 2018 debut, X 100pre, was the Puerto Rican artist’s bid to court listeners new to Latin sounds, running through trap, reggaeton, dembow, synth-pop, and even pop punk, with help from Anglophonic ambassadors like Diplo and Drake. Bad Bunny could be shamelessly crude and totally vulnerable, with his slow-burning baritone opening the floor for Latin pop that’s not afraid to get uncomfortable. "
409,Adele,21,-272,"Columbia, 2011","“Pain is art” may be a cliché, but for Adele, it rang especially true. Her debut album, 19, was a polite, tasteful set of soul-inflected pop. Its follow-up was something else again. Chewing over a tumultuous affair, she dug deep and came up with a modern masterpiece of post-breakup soul music. She’d actually cut an entire album with producer Rick Rubin but wound up preferring earlier demos of songs like “Rolling in the Deep,” “Someone Like You,” and “Set Fire to the Rain,” and mostly used those instead. The switch-up made for an even rawer and more emotional experience that clearly connected: 21 sold more than 30 million copies and swept the 2012 Grammys. "
410,The Descendents,Milo Goes to College,New in 2023,,
411,Nicki Minaj,The Pinkprint,New in 2023,,
412,Soundgarden,Superunknown,New in 2023,,
413,LL Cool J,Radio,New in 2023,,
414,Mazzy Star,So Tonight That I Might See,New in 2023,,
415,Rancid,...And Out Come the Wolves,New in 2023,,
416,Iron Maiden,The Number of the Beast,New in 2023,,
417,Saint Etienne,So Tough,New in 2023,,
418,Bright Eyes,"I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning",New in 2023,,
419,Gorillaz,Demon Days,New in 2023,,
420,J Dilla,Donuts,-34,"Stones Throw, 2006","Questlove of the Roots called the Detroit producer “the music god that music gods and music experts and music lovers worship.” During the Nineties and early ’00s, Dilla worked with a who’s who of hip-hop greats and helped shape the sound of albums like D’Angelo’s Voodoo [see No. 28]. Released three days before his death, Donuts is a beat head’s delight: 31 concise, wildly inventive sample-swirls (love the Frank Zappa bit on “Mash”), many of which would end up being sampled themselves in the years that followed. "
421,UGK,Ridin' Dirty,New in 2023,,
422,Travis Scott,Astroworld,New in 2023,,
423,Rush,Moving Pictures,-44,"Anthem, 1981","On Seventies albums like 2112 and Hemispheres, Rush mastered the high-prog epic. Moving Pictures was the record where they proved they could say as much in four minutes as they previously had in 20. Songs like “Tom Sawyer,” “Limelight,” and the Police-like “Vital Signs” showcased the trio’s superhuman chops in a radio-ready framework, while more adventurous tracks like the Morse code–inspired instrumental “YYZ” and the synth-heavy suite “The Camera Eye” found them tastefully streamlining their wildest ideas. Said Geddy Lee, “We learned it’s not so easy to write something simple.” "
424,R.E.M.,Reckoning,New in 2023,,
425,The Mekons,Fear and Whiskey,New in 2023,,
426,Minutemen,What Makes a Man Start Fires?,New in 2023,,
427,MC5,Kick Out the Jams,-78,"Elektra, 1969","It’s the ultimate rock salute: “Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!” Recorded live in Detroit by Rob Tyner and his anarchist crew, Kick Out the Jams writhes and screams with the belief that rock & roll is a necessary act of civil disobedience. The proof: It was banned by a Michigan department store. The MC5 proved their lefty credentials the summer before the album was recorded when they were the only band that showed up to play for the Yippies protesting the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. "
428,Manu Dibango,Soul Makossa,New in 2023,,
429,Bill Withers,Just As I Am,-125,"Sussex, 1971","On the cover, Bill Withers totes a lunch pail, highlighting the down-to-earth everyman vibe of the folk-soul music of his debut album (that’s Withers himself tapping on a box to keep the beat in “Grandma’s Hands”). As he said at the time, “I’m sick and tired of somebody saying ‘I love you’ with both arms up in the air like that.” Instead, Withers strummed his acoustic guitar and spun tales about absent fathers, his West Virginia grandmother, and life in Harlem. "
430,Dizzee Rascal,Boy in da Corner,New in 2023,,
431,Os Mutantes,Os Mutantes,New in 2023,,
432,Sade,Diamond Life,-232,"Epic, 1984","Nigerian-born fashion designer Sade Adu and her London band defined elegantly cool Eighties soul with their smash debut, Diamond Life. Torch ballads like “Smooth Operator” and “Your Love Is King” had a New Romantic opulence under the bittersweet pang of Adu’s voice. She wrote her first song, “When Am I Going to Make a Living,” on the back of a bill, while walking home in the rain from a bus stop after work. As she said, “All the songs I’ve ever loved — even jazz stuff — are things that tell a story.” "
433,Drive-By Truckers,Southern Rock Opera,New in 2023,,
434,Taylor Swift,Red,-335,"Big Machine, 2012","Taylor Swift shocked the world with her fourth album, breaking away from country music to make a record that recalled classics by the Beatles and Prince in the way it pulled from across the pop and rock landscape and transformed every sound it touched. The lead single, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” was stomping, swaying electro-twang. “I Know You Were Trouble” rode a dubstep groove, and the title track was a swirl of banjos, dusty guitars, and talk-box elation. Tabloid types tied themselves in knots trying to figure out which song was about which ex, but the real news was Swift’s songwriting on high points like the astonishing “All Too Well,” as vivid a post-breakup remembrance as any artist has ever produced. "
435,Judas Priest,British Steel,New in 2023,,
436,Yoko Ono,Fly,New in 2023,,
437,Boards of Canada,Music Has the Right to Children,New in 2023,,
438,Beat Happening,Jamboree,New in 2023,,
439,The Vaselines,Dum-Dum,New in 2023,,
440,The Avalanches,Since I Left You,New in 2023,,
441,Lil Wayne,Tha Carter III,-233,"Cash Money/Universal Motown, 2008","By 2008, Lil Wayne contained multitudes: Best Rapper Alive, Pussy Monster, Martian, Weezy F. Baby (and the “F” is for, well, pretty much any word starting with “F”). Tha Carter III was a monument to this multiple-personality menagerie. “A Milli,” a glorified freestyle, fully crossed over to the mainstream, while “Lollipop,” a robotic R&B jam, rightly bet that an audience was ready to invest in Wayne’s croaky, syrup-addled singing voice. More than a decade later, even Wayne’s most outré personalities are still birthing musical descendants. "
442,The Stranglers,Rattus Norvegicus,New in 2023,,
443,Beyoncé,Beyoncé,-362,"Parkwood/Columbia, 2013","“I didn’t want to release my music the way I’ve done it,” Beyoncé said. “I am bored with that.” So she dropped her self-titled album on an unsuspecting world at the end of 2013, without a word of warning. Her fifth solo album, Beyoncé showed off her musical scope and feminist outreach, but it was also a visual album with a film for each song, shot around the world: New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and of course, her native Houston. She had high-profile collabs: “Superpower” with Frank Ocean, “Mine” with Drake, “Flawless” with Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “Drunk in Love” with her husband, Jay-Z. But Beyoncé proved that nobody else was on her level. "
444,Ariana Grande,"thank u, next",New in 2023,,
445,Bonnie 'Prince' Billy,I See a Darkness,New in 2023,,
446,Britney Spears,Blackout,-5,"Jive, 2007","The pop queen vents all her raging party-girl hostility in Blackout — the weirdest, wildest music of her life. Blackout is her avant-disco concept album about fame, scandal, divorce, and dancing on tables in a cloud of glitter and Cheetos dust. “I’m Miss American Dream since I was 17,” Britney sneers in “Piece of Me,” with her voice warped into an electro-punk snarl. When she asks, “You want a piece of me?” she’s either pimping herself out or threatening to kick your ass. Either way, it’s Britney, bitch. "
447,The Orb,The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld,New in 2023,,
448,Queen,A Night at the Opera,-320,"Elektra, 1975","“Queen will be the Cecil B. DeMille of rock,” proclaimed singer Freddie Mercury, and this far-ranging, rococo album is the group’s ready-for-my-close-up moment. Bassist John Deacon wrote the melodic highlight “You’re My Best Friend,” a bouncy bit of Paul McCartney-esque pop; Mercury wrote the brutal rocker “Death on Two Legs,” about the band’s former manager; and guitarist Brian May wrote “The Prophet’s Song,” a doomy portent of a flood that runs 8:21 and includes a vocal canon from Mercury. But the coup was “Bohemian Rhapsody,” an opera buffa in which Mercury combined three different songs he’d been writing into a suite that took weeks to record. "
449,Big Thief,U.F.O.F.,New in 2023,,
450,The Mamas & the Papas,If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears,New in 2023,,
451,The Mountain Goats,The Sunset Tree,New in 2023,,
452,Black Lips,Good Bad Not Evil,New in 2023,,
453,X,Los Angeles,-133,"Slash, 1980","X stood out from the other L.A. punks — for one thing, they had a married couple in the band, John Doe and Exene Cervenka, venting their sexual and cultural rage over the high-speed rockabilly thrash of Billy Zoom and D.J. Bonebrake. Doe and Cervenka met in a poetry workshop, and you can hear it in the complex wordplay of “Johnny Hit and Run Paulene” and “Sex and Dying in High Society.” But they kick off their debut with a hilariously nasty bang: “Your Phone’s Off the Hook, But You’re Not.” "
454,Justin Timberlake,FutureSex/LoveSounds,New in 2023,,
455,Young Thug,Barter 6,New in 2023,,
456,Dean Martin,Sleep Warm,New in 2023,,
457,Shakira,Dónde Están los Ladrones?,+39,"Columbia, 1998","Long before she went blond and took her never-lying hips to the top of the American pop charts, Shakira was a raven-haired guitar rocker who’d hit peak superstardom in the Spanish-speaking world with her 1995 LP, Pies Descalzos. To keep up the momentum, Shakira enlisted Emilio Estefan to help produce her next LP, this stellar globetrotting dance-rock set, which blends sounds from Colombia, Mexico, and her father’s native Lebanon. "
458,Van Halen,Van Halen,-166,"Warner Bros., 1978","This debut gave the world a new guitar hero (Eddie Van Halen) and charismatic frontman (David Lee Roth). Tunes such as “Runnin’ With the Devil” and “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love” put the swagger back in hard rock, and Van Halen’s jaw-dropping technique, particularly on “Eruption,” raised the bar for rock guitar. “It sounded like it came from another planet,” Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready said of first encountering Van Halen’s playing. “Like hearing Mozart for the first time.” "
459,Tracy Chapman,Tracy Chapman,-203,"Elektra, 1988","Somehow, this young folk singer came out of nowhere to catch everyone’s ear during the hair-metal late Eighties. Tracy Chapman had already spent time strumming her acoustic guitar for spare change on the streets around Boston, but her gritty voice and storytelling made “Fast Car” a huge hit. Her debut confronted listeners with the raw truths of songs like “Behind the Wall,” a grueling portrayal of domestic violence sung a cappella, and the radical hope of the anthemic opening track, “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution.” "
460,The Libertines,Up the Bracket,New in 2023,,
461,Scott Walker,Scott 4,New in 2023,,
462,Merle Haggard,Mama Tried,New in 2023,,
463,Alice Cooper,Love It to Death,New in 2023,,
464,Kate Bush,The Dreaming,New in 2023,,
465,Yeah Yeah Yeahs,Fever to Tell,-88,"Interscope, 2003","These New York art-punk brats blew away the doldrums of the early 2000s with a true rock & roll goddess in Karen O. She knew how to work her sneer like a pair of ripped fishnets, trashing any room in sight. Yet the tender ballad “Maps” became a surprise hit, with Karen pleading “Wait, they don’t love you like I love you” over Nick Zinner’s warped guitar fuzz and Brian Chase’s drum thunder. “There’s a lot of loooove in that song,” she said. “But there’s a lot of fear, too.” "
466,Jimmy Cliff,The Harder They Come,New in 2023,,
467,Thin Lizzy,Live and Dangerous,New in 2023,,
468,Lily Allen,"Alright, Still",New in 2023,,
469,Earth Wind & Fire,That's the Way of the World,-49,"Columbia, 1975","Before he got into African thumb piano and otherworldly philosophizing, founder Maurice White was a session drummer at Chess studios (that’s him on Fontella Bass’ “Rescue Me”). He stayed behind the kit as he led EWF. Their sixth album is make-out music of the spheres, incorporating doo-wop, jazz, and African music into a sound that’s sleek but never too slick; the title track is one of funk’s most gorgeous ballads, and “Shining Star” is a Seventies self-help seminar delivered over one of the decade’s sweetest grooves. "
470,Sinéad O'Connor,I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got,-13,"Ensign/Chrysalis, 1990","“How could I possibly know what I want when I was only 21?” the Irish art rocker asked on her breakthrough second album. Sinéad O’Connor struck a nerve with her keening voice, her shaved head, and her tortured grandiosity in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and “I Am Stretched on Your Grave.” But she hit Number One with an obscure Prince breakup ballad, “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Originally just filler on a flop album by the Family, it became O’Connor’s signature song. "
471,Cyndi Lauper,She's So Unusual,-287,"Portrait, 1983","With her garish thrift-store fashions and exaggerated Queens accent, Lauper had a kooky image that was perfect for MTV. But she also had a superb, clarion voice and a pack of great covers, including “Money Changes Everything” (originally by Atlanta New Wave band the Brains) and Prince’s saucy “When You Were Mine.” Lauper co-wrote four songs, including the lovely ballad “Time After Time” and the masturbation call-to-arms “She Bop.” But her smartest move was to change the lyrics of Robert Hazard’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” until it became a “very blatantly feminist” song about equality. “For a minute, I made it popular to be the odd guy out,” she said. "
472,SZA,Ctrl,No change,"RCA, 2017","Thanks to SZA’s lyrics about insecurity, jealousy, loneliness, and her search for “lovin’ and licky,” this assured debut brought a new self-searching spirit to R&B. The tracks are gentle and erotic, but beneath the singer’s soft-grained style, there’s fierceness; in “Dove in the Wind,” she tells a lover she can easily replace him with a dildo. On “Love Galore,” a duet with Travis Scott that describes an ambivalent breakup, she makes clear the vulnerability beneath the bravado: “Gimme a paper towel, gimme another Valium.” "
473,Daddy Yankee,Barrio Fino,No change,"V.I. Music, 2004","Just when Latin pop radio was hitting a ballad-heavy plateau, Puerto Rican MC Daddy Yankee set the industry aflame with his 2004 reggaeton opus, Barrio Fino. Crowned by the hydraulic bounce of Yankee’s first international hit, “Gasolina,” the record marked a colossal breakthrough, not just for the rapper himself, but for the entire genre known as reggaeton: a raw blend of hip-hop and reggae, born in the mean streets of San Juan. "
474,Big Star,#1 Record,No change,"Ardent, 1972","Alex Chilton and Chris Bell were the Memphis whiz kids at the heart of Big Star. They mixed British Invasion pop finesse with all-American hard rock, from the surging “Feel” to the acoustic heartbreaker “Thirteen.” Big Star didn’t sell many records but did become a crucial inspiration to underdogs like R.E.M., the Replacements, and Elliott Smith. As Chilton said later, “If you only press up a hundred copies of a record, then eventually it will find its way to the hundred people in the world who want it the most.” "
475,Sheryl Crow,Sheryl Crow,No change,"A&M, 1996","The Missouri gal finally got to make an album her way, in 1996, with her self-titled, self-produced smash — an ingenious mix of roots-rock raunch and vengeful wit. As Crow told Rolling Stone, “My only objective on this record was to get under people’s skin, because I was feeling like I had so much shit to hurl at the tape.” “Every Day Is a Winding Road” and “A Change Would Do You Good” rock like a feminist Exile on Main Street, while “If It Makes You Happy” became an anthem for bad girls of all ages. "
476,Sparks,Kimono My House,No change,"Island, 1974","The duo of singer Russell Mael and songwriter-keyboardist Ron Mael coined a unique, influential sound that mixed glam and prog-rock, the Beach Boys and Frank Zappa. Russell adopts a florid falsetto to sing Ron’s lyrics about clumsy sex (“Amateur Hour”), Albert Einstein’s doting parents (the pun-filled “Talent Is an Asset”), and a broken suicide pact (“Here in Heaven”). The overwhelming sensation from Sparks’ third album is a sense that you’ve arrived at a party where you know no one and hear things you can’t comprehend but still have a great time. "
477,Howlin' Wolf,Moanin' in the Moonlight,No change,"Chess, 1959","“That man was the natural stuff,” Buddy Guy said. “His fists were as big as a car tire.” The Wolf had the biggest roar in Chicago blues — he raved in a fierce growl, backed by explosive playing from guitar geniuses Willie Johnson and Hubert Sumlin. His 1959 debut album has some of the meanest electric blues ever heard, cut for Chess Records, from the eerie railroad drone “Smokestack Lightnin’” to the lowdown “I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline).” "
478,The Kinks,The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society,-94,"Reprise, 1969","While their British Invasion peers— the Beatles, the Stones, the Who — were getting psychedelic, Ray Davies took his band for a pastoral retreat, with witty portraits of quaint English small-town life fading away like “Big Sky.” Nobody bought it, but Village Green went on to become one of the Kinks’ most influential statements. “With ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day and All of the Night,’ we were saying, ‘We’re here, we’re gonna grab you,’” Davies told Rolling Stone. “The music on Village Green says, ‘Come find us.’” "
479,Selena,Amor Prohibido,No change,"EMA Latin, 1994","Tejana star Selena Quintanilla-Pérez may not have been long for this world (she died when she was just 23), but she remains one of America’s most beloved singer-songwriters. At the heart of her regional Mexican masterwork, Amor Prohibido, is a universal, glittering pop core. The techno-cumbia title track tells the real-life story of her grandparents, who fell in love across class lines. It’s a Latina fairy tale, if ever there was one. Amor Prohibido, meaning “forbidden love,” became one of the bestselling Latin albums of all time. "
480,Miranda Lambert,The Weight of These Wings,No change,"eRCA Nashville, 2016","The Nashville superstar sounded especially free and artistically uninhibited after her divorce from Blake Shelton, and she channeled it all into this expansive, mind-clearing two-CD set, an ambitious grab bag of deep breakup tunes (“Use My Heart,” “Tin Man”), Radiohead-y alt-rock moodiness (“Vice”), eye-rolling, scuz-guitar glam (“Pink Sunglasses”), and tender reflections on the bonds and weights of messy commitment (“Getaway Car”). It’s the sound of bad history falling away in the cracked rearview and nothing but wide-open road ahead. "
481,Belle and Sebastian,If You're Feeling Sinister,No change,"Jeepster, 1996","Being a self-pitying shut-in has never sounded better than it does on the Scottish twee icons’ breakthrough. The chamber-folk arrangements are second to none — like a cup of tea brewed for you by a hopeless crush with a really good record collection — but don’t sleep on Stuart Murdoch’s subtly sardonic lyrics on “The Stars of Track and Field” and “Seeing Other People,” which give these wistful-sounding songs a bite that sets them apart from most imitators. "
482,The Pharcyde,Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde,No change,"Delicious Vinyl, 1992","These high school friends from L.A. were a little like a West Coast answer to De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, offering their own spin on alternative hip-hop in the Nineties and showing there was something going on in Southern California beyond G-funk. They rapped about innocent topics, like having a crush on a teacher in “Passin’ Me By,” which was a small hit, but also about dating a cute girl who turns out “to be a John Doe” and run-ins with the cops (the Public Enemy-homage “Officer”). It all came out as bright and refreshing as sorbet. "
483,Muddy Waters,The Anthology,No change,"MCA, 2001","Muddy Waters started out playing acoustic Delta blues in Mississippi, but when he moved to Chicago in 1943, he needed an electric guitar to be heard over the tumult of South Side clubs. The sound he developed was the foundation of Chicago blues — and rock & roll; the thick, bleeding tones of his slide work anticipated rock-guitar distortion by nearly two decades. The 50 cuts on these two CDs run from guitar-and-stand-up-bass duets to full-band romps — and they still just scratch the surface of Waters’ legacy. "
484,Lady Gaga,Born This Way,No change,"Interscope, 2011","“Over-the-top” isn’t an insult in Gaga’s world; it’s a statement of purpose. Her second album is a work of blessed bombast, all arena-size sonics and Springsteenian romanticism, complete with a Clarence Clemons sax solo. There’s a thumping, half-in-Spanish song that proposes marriage to “a girl in east L.A.” (“Americano”), a synth-pop jam that includes a come-on on to John F. Kennedy (“Government Hooker”), and a touching ballad about a guy from Nebraska (“You and I”). Fittingly, the glam-slam title track became an LGBTQ anthem. "
485,Richard & Linda Thompson,I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight,No change,"Island, 1974","With Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson was one of the first prominent Sixties folk rockers to look to his native England’s traditions for inspiration. After leaving Fairport, he joined with his wife, Linda Thompson to make stellar albums in the Seventies. Richard played guitar like a Sufi-mystic Neil Young; Linda had the voice of a Celtic Emmylou Harris. Bright Lights is their devastating masterwork of folk-rock dread. Radiohead even picked up some guitar tricks from “The Calvary Cross.” "
486,John Mayer,Continuum,No change,"Columbia, 2006","After establishing himself as a post-Dave Matthews heartthrob, John Mayer grew into his soul and blues ambitions for a subtly crafted album aided by ace musicians like guitarists Ben Harper and Charlie Hunter, drummer-producer Steve Jordan, and jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove — from the smooth Hi Records-tinged soul of “Vultures” to “Waiting for the World to Change,” a deceptively knowing and self-aware take on generational apathy. "
487,Black Flag,Damaged,No change,"SST, 1981","MCA refused to release this album, denouncing it as “immoral” and “anti-parent.” High praise, but Black Flag lived up to it, defining L.A. hardcore punk with Greg Ginn’s violent guitar and the pissed-off scream of Henry Rollins, especially on “TV Party” and “Rise Above,” which came with the timeless smash-the-glass salvo “We are tired of your abuse/Try to stop is but it’s no use.” Punks still listen to Damaged, and parents still hate it. "
488,The Stooges,The Stooges,No change,"Elektra, 1969","Fueled by “a little marijuana and a lotta alienation,” Michigan’s Stooges gave the lie to hippie idealism, playing with a savagery that unsettled even the most blasé clubgoers. Ex-Velvet Underground member John Cale produced a primitive debut wherein, amid Ron Asheton’s wah-wah blurts, Iggy Stooge (né James Osterberg) snarled seminal punk classics such as “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “No Fun,” and “1969,” bedrock examples of the weaponized boredom that would become a de rigueur punk posture. "
489,Phil Spector & Various Artists,Back to Mono (1958-1969),No change,"ABKCO, 1991","When the Righteous Brothers’ Bobby Hatfield first heard “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” with partner Bill Medley’s extended solo, he asked, “But what do I do while he’s singing the whole first verse?” Producer Phil Spector replied, “You can go directly to the bank!” Spector built his Wall of Sound out of hand claps, massive overdubs, and orchestras of percussion. This box has hits such as the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron,” which Spector called “little symphonies for the kids.” "
490,Linda Ronstadt,Heart Like a Wheel,No change,"Capitol, 1975","Linda Ronstadt completed her transition from California hippie-folk darling to soft-rock queen on her chart-topping fifth album, covering Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Little Feat, and Kate and Anna McGariggle on the gorgeous title track. Her version of the Betty Everett oldie “You’re No Good” hits a perfect mix of desire and paranoia. Along with being a showcase for Ronstadt’s peerless versatility, Heart Like a Wheel is Seventies pop-rock craft at its sweetest and sturdiest. "
491,Harry Styles,Fine Line,No change,"Columbia, 2019","Harry Styles achieved pop greatness with One Direction, but he got even deeper on his own. On Fine Line, he stakes his claim as one of his generation’s most savagely imaginative musical minds. Styles breathes in the 1970s California sunshine of his heroes — Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Stevie Nicks — with soulful breakup songs. As he explained, “It’s all about having sex and feeling sad.” Yet the music is drenched in starman joy: the ‘shroomadelic guitar trip “She,” the dulcimer-crazed “Canyon Moon,” the Number One juicy-fruit beach orgy “Watermelon Sugar.” "
492,Bonnie Raitt,Nick of Time,No change,"Capitol, 1989","After being dumped by her previous label, blues rocker Bonnie Raitt exacted revenge with this multiplatinum Grammy-award winner, led by an on-fire version of John Hiatt’s “Thing Called Love” and the brilliant title track, a study in midlife crisis told from a woman’s perspective. Producer Don Was helped her sharpen the songs without sacrificing any of her slide-guitar fire. And as Raitt herself pointed out, her 10th try was “my first sober album.” "
493,Marvin Gaye,"Here, My Dear",No change,"Tamla/Motown, 1978","It’s one of the weirdest Motown records ever. Marvin Gaye’s divorce settlement required him to make two new albums and pay the royalties to his ex-wife – the sister of Motown boss Berry Gordy. So Gaye made this bitterly funny double LP of breakup songs, including “You Can Leave, But It’s Going to Cost You.” When he asks “Somebody tell me please, tell me please/Why do I have to pay attorney fees?” it’s one of the most strangely transfixing soul-music moments of all time. "
494,The Ronettes,Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes,No change,"Philles, 1964","More a Spanish Harlem street gang than a girl group, the Ronettes were pop goddesses dressed as Catholic schoolgirls gone to hell and back. Phil Spector builds his Wall of Sound as his teen protégée (and future wife) Ronnie Spector belts “Be My Baby” and “Walking in the Rain,” while songs like “I Wonder” and “Baby, I Love You” ache with hope for a perfect love that always seems to be impossibly ideal and just within arm’s reach. "
495,Boyz II Men,II,No change,"Motown, 1991","With their innocent romanticism and meticulous vocal arrangements, Boyz II Men became the most commercially successful R&B vocal group of all time. II includes two mammoth hits, courtesy of Babyface: “I’ll Make Love to You” and the audaciously baroque “Water Runs Dry.” But the group’s own Nathan Morris and Shawn Stockman composed II‘s most poignant moment, “Khalil’s Interlude,” a soft onslaught that’ll leave you sobbing in the fetal position: “I need shelter from the rain/To ease the pain of changing from boys to men.” "
496,Shakira,Dónde Están los Ladrones?,No change,"Columbia, 1998","Long before she went blond and took her never-lying hips to the top of the American pop charts, Shakira was a raven-haired guitar rocker who’d hit peak superstardom in the Spanish-speaking world with her 1995 LP, Pies Descalzos. To keep up the momentum, Shakira enlisted Emilio Estefan to help produce her next LP, this stellar globetrotting dance-rock set, which blends sounds from Colombia, Mexico, and her father’s native Lebanon. "
497,Various Artists,The Indestructible Beat of Soweto,No change,"Earthworks, 1985","The greatest album ever to be marketed under the heading “world music,” this 1985 compilation of South African pop was a huge influence on Paul Simon’s Graceland that still sounds jarringly fresh today. Full of funky, loping beats and gruff, Howling Wolf-style vocals (most prominently from “goat voiced” star Mahlathini). With a sweet track by Graceland collaborators Ladysmith Black Mambazo (“Nansi Imali”), its badass joy needed no translation. "
498,Suicide,Suicide,No change,"Red Star, 1977","These New York synth-punks evoke everything from the Velvet Underground to rockabilly. Martin Rev’s low-budget electronics are violent and hypnotic; Alan Vega screams as a rhythmic device. Late-night listening to “Frankie Teardrop,” a 10-minute-plus tale of a multiple murder, is not recommended. A droning voice in the wilderness when they appeared in the Seventies, the duo would influence bands from Arcade Fire and the National to Bruce Springsteen, who covered Suicide live in 2016. "
499,Rufus & Chaka Khan,Ask Rufus,No change,"ABC, 1977","Fronted by Chaka Khan, one of soul music’s most combustible singers, Rufus built its mid-Seventies sound on heavy-footed, guitar-slathered funk. But after spending 16 months in the studio working on Ask Rufus, they came out with a record that gave their songs more room to breathe, anticipating the lithe, loose arrangements of Nineties neo-soul. Khan glided through the head-nodding “Everlasting Love” and the twisty-turny “Better Days,” and fans appreciated the adjustment: Ask Rufus was the group’s first platinum record. "
500,Arcade Fire,Funeral,No change,"Merge, 2004","Loss, love, forced coming-of-age, and fragile generational hope: Arcade Fire’s debut touched on all these themes as it defined the independent rock of the ‘00s. Built on family ties (leader Win Butler, his wife, Régine Chassagne, his brother Will), the Montreal band made symphonic rock that truly rocked, simultaneously outsize and deeply personal, like the best pop. But for all its sad realism, Butler’s is music that still finds solace, and purpose, in communal celebration. "
1 Rank Artist Album Status Info Description
2 1 The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band +23 Capitol, 1967 For the Beatles, it was a decisive goodbye to screaming crowds, world tours, and assembly-line record making. “We were fed up with being Beatles,” Paul McCartney said decades later. “We were not boys, we were men … artists rather than performers.” Sgt. Pepper christened the Summer of Love with the lavish psychedelic daydream “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” the jaunty Ringo Starr-sung communality anthem “With a Little Help From My Friends,” the album-closing multilayered masterwork, “A Day in the Life,” and the title track, which introduced the alter egos the Beatles had developed for the ambitious project. “It liberated you,” McCartney said. “You could do anything.” It is hard to imagine a more perfect setting for the Victorian jollity of John Lennon’s “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” (inspired by an 1843 circus poster) or the sumptuous melancholy of McCartney’s “Fixing a Hole,” with its blend of antique shadows (a harpsichord played by the Beatles’ producer George Martin) and modern sunshine lead guitar executed with ringing precision by George Harrison). The Sgt. Pepper premise was a license to take their music in every direction — rock spent the rest of the Sixties trying to keep up.
3 2 The Beach Boys Pet Sounds No change Capitol, 1966 “Who’s gonna hear this shit?” Beach Boys singer Mike Love asked the band’s resident genius, Brian Wilson, in 1966, as Wilson played him the new songs he was working on. “The ears of a dog?” Confronted with his bandmate’s contempt, Wilson made lemonade of lemons. “Ironically,” he observed, “Mike’s barb inspired the album’s title.” Barking dogs – Wilson’s dog Banana among them, in fact – are prominent among the found sounds on the album. The Beatles made a point of echoing them on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – an acknowledgment that Pet Sounds was the inspiration for the Beatles’ masterpiece. That gesture actually completed a circle of influence: Wilson initially conceived of Pet Sounds as an effort to top the Beatles’ Rubber Soul. With its vivid orchestration, lyrical ambition, elegant pacing, and thematic coherence, Pet Sounds invented — and in several senses, perfected — the notion that an album could be more than the sum of its parts. When Wilson sang, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older,” on the album’s magnificent opening song, he wasn’t just imagining a love that could evolve past high school, he was suggesting a new grown-up identity for rock & roll music itself. Wilson made Pet Sounds without the rest of the band, using them only to flesh out the vocal arrangements. He even considered putting the album out as a solo project, and the first single, “Caroline, No,” was released under his own name. The personal nature of the songs, which Wilson co-wrote primarily with lyricist Tony Asher, further distinguished the album from the Beach Boys’ previous hits. Its luxurious sound conveys a heartbreaking wistfulness, as songs such as “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” and “I’m Waiting for the Day” bid farewell to the innocent world of the early Sixties. The album’s centerpiece is “God Only Knows,” arranged with harpsichord, horns, sleigh bells, and strings to create a spiritual feeling Wilson later compared to “being blind, but in being blind, you can see more. You close your eyes; you’re able to see a place or something that’s happening.” In the years to come, countless artists would live in his vision.
4 3 The Beatles Revolver +8 Apple, 1966 Revolver was the sound of the Beatles fully embracing the recording studio as a sonic canvas, free to pursue musical ideas and possibilities that would reshape rock forever. It speaks volumes that the first song the band worked on upon entering Abbey Road studios in April 1966 would have been impossible to replicate live — a swirl of hazy guitar, backward tape loops, kaleidoscopic drum tumble, and John Lennon’s voice recorded to sound like “the Dalai Lama singing from the highest mountaintop.” They titled it “The Void” and later renamed it “Tomorrow Never Knows.” “I was wondering how George Martin would take it,” Paul McCartney later recalled. Martin’s response: “Jolly interesting.” The Beatles’ lives were changing too: Lennon had taken LSD at this point, George Harrison was deepening his interest in Eastern mysticism, and McCartney was getting into avant-garde composition. All those influences came through here. Revolver wasn’t totally without precedent. The Beatles’ previous album, Rubber Soul [see No. 35], had a similar experimental introspect. Harrison once said Rubber Soul and Revolver “could be volume one and volume two.” But no band, including the Beatles, had tried anything like McCartney’s strikingly mature art song “Eleanor Rigby,” Lennon’s trippy tape-loop swirl “I’m Only Sleeping,” or Harrison’s “Taxman,” with its cutting groove and lyrics that took shots at British politicians. It made sense that the disappointing live shows the band played in the summer of 1966 would be their last. By the time Revolver came out, they’d already entered another world.
5 4 Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited +14 Columbia, 1965 Bruce Springsteen has described the beginning of “Like a Rolling Stone,” the opening song on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, as the “snare shot that sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind.” In and of itself, “Like a Rolling Stone,” which was rumored to be about Andy Warhol acolyte Edie Sedgwick, forever altered the landscape of popular music — its “vomitific” lyrics (in Dylan’s memorable term), literary ambition, and sheer length (6:13) shattered limitations of every kind. But that was literally only the beginning. The rest of the album, recorded in a shocking six days, was just as revelatory. If anyone questioned whether or not Dylan had truly “gone electric,” the roaring rock & roll of “From a Buick 6” and “Tombstone Blues” — both powered by legendary guitarist Mike Bloomfield of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band — left no doubt. The album ends with “Desolation Row,” a swirling 11-minute surrealist night journey of indescribable power, a Hieronymus Bosch-like season in hell that, in retrospect, seems to foretell all the Sixties cataclysms to come. Not that Dylan wasn’t having fun all the while as well. The toy siren that opens the album’s title track was keyboardist’s Al Kooper’s playful way of policing the recording sessions for Highway 61 Revisited. “If anybody started using drugs anywhere,” he explained, “I’d walk into the opposite corner of the room and just go whooooooooo.”
6 5 The Beatles Rubber Soul +30 Parlophone, 1965 Producer George Martin described Rubber Soul as “the first album to present a new, growing Beatles to the world,” and so it was. The first of what was to be a series of huge leaps forward with each new album, Rubber Soul opens with the comic character study “Drive My Car” and is suffused with Bob Dylan’s influence on “I’m Looking Through You,” “You Won’t See Me,” and “Norwegian Wood,” in which John Lennon sings about sex with a humor and candor unlike any rock & roller before and George Harrison lays down rock’s first sitar solo. Harrison called Rubber Soul “the best one we made,” because “we were suddenly hearing sounds that we weren’t able to hear before.”
7 6 Bob Dylan Blonde on Blonde +32 Columbia, 1966 Rock’s first studio double LP by a major artist was, as Bob Dylan declared in 1978, “the closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my head … that thin, that wild-mercury sound.” Blonde on Blonde was mainly recorded in Nashville with session pros (another rock first), who created an almost contradictory magnificence: a tightly wound tension around Dylan’s quicksilver language and incisive singing in barrelhouse surrealism such as “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35” and “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again.” Amid the frenzy, Dylan delivered some of his finest, clearest songs of comfort and desire: the sidelong beauty “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and “I Want You,” the title of which Dylan almost used for the album.
8 7 The Beatles The Beatles ("The White Album") +22
9 8 The Clash London Calling +8 CBS, 1979 Recorded in 1979 in London, which was then wrenched by surging unemployment and drug addiction, and released in America in January 1980, the dawn of an uncertain decade, London Calling is 19 songs of apocalypse fueled by an unbending faith in rock & roll to beat back the darkness. Produced with no-surrender energy by legendary Sixties studio madman Guy Stevens, the Clash’s third album sounds like a free-form radio broadcast from the end of the world, skidding from bleak punk (“London Calling”) to rampaging ska (“Wrong ’Em Boyo”) and disco resignation (“Lost in the Supermarket”). The album was made in dire straits too. Although the Clash fired singles into the Britain’s Top 40 with machine-gun regularity, the band was heavily in debt and openly at war with its record company. Singer-guitarists Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, the Clash’s Lennon and McCartney, wrote together in Jones’ grandmother’s flat, where he was living for lack of dough. “Joe, once he learned how to type, would bang the lyrics out at a high rate of good stuff,” Jones noted. “Then I’d be able to bang out some music while he was hitting the typewriter.” Stevens was on hand for inspiration. He threw chairs around the room “if he thought a track needed zapping up,” according to Strummer. The album ends with “Train in Vain,” a rousing song of fidelity (originally unlisted on the back cover) that became the sound of triumph: the Clash’s first Top 30 single in the U.S.
10 9 Bob Dylan Blood on the Tracks No change Columbia, 1975 Bob Dylan once introduced this album’s opening song, “Tangled Up in Blue,” onstage as taking him 10 years to live and two years to write. It was, for him, a pointed reference to the personal crisis — the collapse of his marriage to Sara Lowndes — that at least partly inspired this album, Dylan’s best of the 1970s. In fact, he wrote all of these lyrically piercing, gingerly majestic folk-pop songs in two months, in mid-1974. He was so proud of them that he privately auditioned almost all of the album, from start to finish, for pals and peers, including Mike Bloomfield, David Crosby, and Graham Nash, before cutting them in September — in just a week, with members of the bluegrass band Deliverance. But in December, Dylan played the record for his brother, David, in Minneapolis, who suggested recutting some songs with local musicians. The final Blood was a mix of New York and Minneapolis tapes; the New York versions are slower, more pensive, while the Minneapolis versions are faster and wilder. Together, they frame the gritty anguish in Dylan’s vocals, as he rages through some of his most passionate, confessional songs — from adult breakup ballads like “You’re a Big Girl Now” and “If You See Her, Say Hello” to the sharp-tongued opprobrium of “Idiot Wind,” his greatest put-down song since “Like a Rolling Stone.” “A lot of people tell me they enjoyed that album,” Dylan said soon after it became an instant commercial and critical success. “It’s hard for me to relate to that — I mean, people enjoying that type of pain.” Yet Dylan had never turned so much pain into so much musical splendor.
11 10 The Beatles Abbey Road -5 Apple, 1969 “It was a very happy record,” said producer George Martin, describing this album in The Beatles Anthology. “I guess it was happy because everybody thought it was going to be the last.” Indeed, Abbey Road — recorded in two months during the summer of 1969 — almost never got made at all. That January, the Beatles were on the verge of a breakup, exhausted and angry with one another after the disastrous sessions for the aborted Get Back LP, later salvaged as Let It Be [see No. 342]. Yet determined to go out with the same glory with which they had first entranced the world at the start of the decade, the group reconvened at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios to make their most polished album: a collection of superb songs cut with an attention to refined detail, then segued together (especially on Side Two) with conceptual force. There was no thematic link, other than the Beatles’ unique genius. John Lennon veered from the stormy metal of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” to the exquisite vocal sunrise of “Because.” Paul McCartney was saucy (“Oh! Darling”), silly (“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”), and deliciously bitter (“You Never Give Me Your Money”). George Harrison proved his long-secret worth as a composer with “Something” (later covered by Frank Sinatra) and the folk-pop diamond “Here Comes the Sun,” written in his friend Eric Clapton’s garden after a grim round of business meetings. Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison reputedly sang more three-part harmonies here than on any other Beatles album. That warm feeling — a sense of an increasingly divided band warmly coming together as friends — may be one reason Abbey Road has become the most beloved Beatles album of all time.
12 11 The Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground & Nico +132 Verve, 1967 “We were trying to do a Phil Spector thing with as few instruments as possible,” John Cale, the classically trained pianist and viola player of the Velvet Underground, once said of this record. It was no idle boast. Much of what we take for granted in rock would not exist without this New York band or its seminal debut: the androgynous sexuality of glitter, punk’s raw noir, the blackened-riff howl of grunge and noise rock. It is a record of fearless breadth and lyrical depth. Singer-songwriter Lou Reed documented carnal desire and drug addiction with a pop wisdom he learned as a song-factory composer for Pickwick Records. Cale introduced the power of pulse and drone (from his work in early minimalism); guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker played with tribal force; Nico, a German vocalist briefly added to the band by manager Andy Warhol, brought an icy femininity to the heated ennui in Reed’s songs. Rejected as nihilistic by the love crowd in 1967, the Banana Album (so named for its Warhol-designed cover), is the most prophetic rock album ever made.
13 12 The Rolling Stones Exile on Main St. New in 2023 Rolling Stones Records, 1972 A dirty whirl of basement blues and punk boogie, the Rolling Stones’ 1972 double LP was, according to Keith Richards, “maybe the best thing we did.” Indeed, inside its deliberately dense squall — Richards’ and Mick Taylor’s dogfight riffing, the lusty jump of the Bill Wyman–Charlie Watts rhythm engine, Mick Jagger’s caged-animal bark and burned-soul croon — is the Stones’ greatest album and Jagger and Richards’ definitive songwriting statement of outlaw pride and dedication to grit and cold-morning redemption. In the existential shuffle of “Tumbling Dice,” the ­exhausted country beauty of “Torn and Frayed,” and the whiskey-soaked church of “Shine a Light,” you literally hear the Stones in exile: working at Richards’ villa in the South of France, on the run from media censure, British drug police (Jagger and Richards had been busted and arrested before), and the U.K.’s then-onerous tax code. The music rattles with corrosive abandon but also swings with a clear purpose — unconditional survival — in “Rocks Off” and “All Down the Line.” As Richards explained, “The Stones don’t have a home anymore — hence the exile — but they can still keep it together. Whatever people throw at us, we can still duck, improvise, overcome.” Great example: Richards ­recorded his jubilant romp “Happy” with only producer Jimmy Miller on drums and sax man Bobby Keys, while waiting for the other Stones to turn up for work. Exile on Main Street is the band at its fighting best, armed with the blues, playing to win.
14 13 Marvin Gaye What's Going On -12 Tamla/Motown, 1971 Marvin Gaye’s masterpiece began as a reaction to police brutality. In May 1969, Renaldo “Obie” Benson, the Four Tops’ bass singer, watched TV coverage of hundreds of club-wielding cops breaking up the People’s Park, a protest hub in Berkeley. Aghast at the violence, Benson began to write a song with Motown lyricist Al Cleveland, trying to capture the confusion and pain of the times. He knew he had something big in his nascent version of “What’s Going On,” but the rest of the Four Tops weren’t interested, and Benson’s efforts to get Joan Baez to record it didn’t work out, either. But one of Motown’s biggest stars and greatest voices turned out to be more receptive. Gaye was in a dark and contemplative place, wounded by the death of his frequent duet partner Tammi Terrell, yearning to sing subtler and more substantive material, and mulling over his brother Frankie’s horrifying tales of his recent stint fighting in Vietnam. Gaye had been keeping busy writing for and producing a group called the Originals, and trying to figure out what was next. “I’d been stumbling around for an idea,” he told biographer David Ritz. “I knew there was more inside me. And that was something no record executive or producer could see. But I saw it. I knew I had to get out there.” After some hesitation, Gaye embraced “What’s Going On,” and with the help of arranger David Van De Pitte, crafted a version of the song that was jazzier and more sophisticated than any Motown recording to date, layering cinematic strings over James Jamerson’s supernaturally sinuous bass line and a polyrhythmic groove. Gaye unleashed one of his most spectacular vocal performances in a career full of them, scatting and improvising around the main melody. Motown Records founder Berry Gordy initially resisted releasing “What’s Going On,” telling Gaye that he thought scatting was out of date and protest lyrics were too commercially risky. But when the song became an instant hit, Gordy gave Gaye a single month to craft an album to accompany “What’s Going On.” Gaye more than rose to the challenge. “I work best under pressure and when I’m depressed,” he told the Detroit Free Press at the time. “The world’s never been as depressing as it is right now. We’re killing the planet, killing our young men in the streets, and going to war around the world. Human rights … that’s the theme.” What emerged was soul music’s first concept album, and one of the most important and influential LPs ever made. John Legend recently described it as “the voice of black America speaking out that we couldn’t always smile on cue for you.” Building it all around one finished song lent What’s Going On a musical and thematic through line. “What’s Happening Brother” assumes the voice of a Vietnam vet like Gaye’s brother, puzzled by a changing America and looking for work; “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” is a taut ode to the environment; “Flyin’ High (In the Friendly Sky)” takes on drug addiction. After What’s Going On, black musicians at Motown and elsewhere felt a new freedom to push the musical and political boundaries of their art. “When I was struggling for the right of the Motown artist to express himself,” Gaye said, “Stevie [Wonder] knew I was also struggling for him.” At the end of the final song on What’s Going On, the lament “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler),” the music shifts back into a jazzier reprise of the title track. As the album fades out, the groove continues on. Five decades later, it still hasn’t stopped.
15 14 Joni Mitchell Blue -11 Reprise, 1971 In 1971, Joni Mitchell represented the West Coast feminine ideal — celebrated by Robert Plant as “a girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair” on Led Zeppelin’s “Goin’ to California.” It was a status that Mitchell hadn’t asked for and did not want: “I went, ‘Oh, my God, a lot of people are listening to me,’” she recalled in 2013. “’They better find out who they’re worshiping. Let’s see if they can take it. Let’s get real.’ So I wrote Blue.” From its smoky, introspective cover to its wholly unguarded approach to songwriting, Blue is the first time any major rock or pop artist had opened up so fully, producing what might be the ultimate breakup album and setting a still-unmatched standard for confessional poetry in pop music. Using acoustic instruments and her octave-leaping voice, Mitchell portrayed herself as a lonely painter, aching to make sense of all her heartbreak. She reflects on past relationships and encounters, including a chef from Crete (“Carey”) and rock luminaries like Graham Nash (“My Old Man”), Leonard Cohen (“A Case of You”), and James Taylor (“This Flight Tonight”), who lent a hand on a few tracks. Along with its romantic melancholy, Blue was the sound of a woman availing herself of the romantic and sexual freedom that was, until then, an exclusively male province in rock. The songs had such stark, emotional intensity that it shocked the men around her: “Kris Kristofferson said to me, ‘Oh, Joni. Save something for yourself.’ The vulnerability freaked them out.” On “Little Green,” she opens up about a baby she had given up for adoption, and on the staggering piano dirge “River,” she takes responsibility for a romance gone wrong, changing the scope of love songs forever: “I’m so hard to handle/I’m selfish, and I’m sad,” she laments. “Now I’ve gone and lost the best baby/That I ever had.” Mitchell continued to release excellent records throughout the Seventies, but Blue remains her masterpiece. “The Blue album, there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals,” she told Rolling Stone in 1979. “At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world, and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either.”
16 15 Nirvana Nevermind -9 Geffen, 1991 An overnight-success story of the 1990s, Nirvana’s second album and its totemic first single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” shot up from the Northwest underground — the nascent grunge scene in Seattle — to kick Michael Jackson’s Dangerous off the top of the Billboard charts and blow hair metal off the map. Few albums have had such an overpowering impact on a generation — a nation of teens suddenly turned punk — and such a catastrophic effect on its main creator. The weight of success led already-troubled singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain to take his own life in 1994. But his slashing riffs, corrosive singing, and deviously oblique writing — rammed home by the Zeppelin-via-Pixies might of bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl — put warrior purity back in rock & roll. Lyrically, Cobain raged in code — shorthand grenades of inner tumult and self-loathing. His genius, though, in songs like “Lithium,” “Breed,” and “Teen Spirit” was the soft-loud tension he created between verse and chorus, restraint and assault. Cobain was a pop lover at heart — and a Beatlemaniac: Nevermind co-producer Butch Vig remembered hearing Cobain play John Lennon’s “Julia” at sessions. Cobain also fought to maintain his underground honor with songs like the scabrous punk purge “Territorial Pissings.” Ultimately, it was a losing battle, but it is part of this album’s enduring power. Vig recalled when Cobain was forced to overdub the guitar intro to “Teen Spirit” because he couldn’t nail it live with the band: “That pissed him off. He wanted to play [the song] live all the way through.”
17 16 Van Morrison Astral Weeks +44 Warner Bros., 1968 Astral Weeks was the sound of sweet relief. Van Morrison was newly signed to artist-friendly Warner Bros., after a rough ride with his previous U.S. label, Bang, when he made Astral Weeks in the summer of 1968. He used the opportunity to explore the physical and dramatic range of his voice in his extended poetic-scat singing, setting hallucinatory reveries about his native Belfast (the daydream memoir “Cypress Avenue,” the hypnotic portrait of “Madame George”) to wandering melodies connecting the earthy poetry in Celtic folk and American R&B. The crowning touch was a superior jazz quartet, who recorded their basic backing tracks in one three-hour session, without any instruction from Morrison on what he wanted or what the lyrics meant.
18 17 The Who Who's Next +60 Decca, 1971 Pete Townshend suffered a nervous breakdown when his planned follow-up to the rock opera Tommy [see No. 190], the ambitious, theatrical Lifehouse, fell apart. But he was left with an extraordinary cache of songs that the Who honed for what became their best studio album, Who’s Next. “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Bargain,” and “Baba O’Riley” (named in tribute to avant-garde composer Terry Riley) all beam with epic majesty, often spiked with synthesizers. “I like synthesizers,” Townshend said, “because they bring into my hands things that aren’t in my hands: the sound of the orchestra, French horns, strings.… You press a switch and it plays it back at double speed.”
19 18 Neil Young After the Gold Rush +72 Reprise, 1970 For his third album, Neil Young fired Crazy Horse (the first of many times he would do so), picked up an acoustic guitar, and headed to his basement. He installed recording equipment in the cellar of his Topanga Canyon home, near Los Angeles, leaving room for only three or four people. There, Young made an album of heartbreaking ballads such as “Tell Me Why” and “Don’t Let It Bring You Down.” The music is gentle, but never smooth. Nils Lofgren, then an 18-year-old hotshot guitarist, squeezed into the sessions — but Young assigned him to the piano, an instrument he had never played in his life.
20 19 Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin IV +39 Atlantic, 1971 “I put a lot of work into my lyrics,” Robert Plant told Rolling Stone in 1975. “Not all my stuff is meant to be scrutinized, though. Things like ‘Black Dog’ are blatant let’s-do-it-in-the-bath-type things, but they make their point just the same.” On their towering rune-titled fourth album, Led Zeppelin matched the raunch of “Black Dog” with Plant’s most poetic lyrics on the inescapable epic ballad “Stairway to Heaven,” while guitarist Jimmy Page veers from the blues apocalypse of “When the Levee Breaks” to the mandolin-driven “Battle of Evermore.” (“It sounded like a dance-around-the-maypole number,” Page later confessed.)
21 20 Stevie Wonder Songs in the Key of Life -16 Tamla/Motown, 1976 Months before the recording sessions for Songs in the Key of Life ended, the musicians in Stevie Wonder’s band had T-shirts made up that proclaimed, “We’re almost finished.” It was the stock answer to casual fans and Motown executives and everybody who’d fallen in love with Wonder’s early-Seventies gems – 1972’s Talking Book, 1973’s Innervisions, and 1974’s Fulfillingness’ First Finale – and who had been waiting two years for the next chapter. “I believed there was a lot that needed to be said,” Wonder said. More, in fact, than he could fit onto a double album – also included was a bonus EP, a seven-inch single with four more songs from the sessions. Songs, released in 1976, encompasses an incredible range of life experiences – from the giddy joy of a baby in the bathtub (“Isn’t She Lovely,” featuring the cries and giggles of Wonder’s infant daughter Aisha Morris) through tributes to his musical heroes (“Sir Duke”) to dismay about the indifference of the wealthy (“Village Ghetto Land”). Wonder pulled from every imaginable musical source — the ecstatic “Sir Duke” references Duke Elington and Ella Fitzgerald, while “As” featured Herbie Hancock on Fender Rhodes. Though Wonder’s blindness meant he could record faster by memorizing lyrics, some songs had four or five intricate verses, so somebody had to prompt him. Often it was engineer John Fischbach, reading lines into the headphone mix just seconds before Wonder sang them. “He never got thrown off,” engineer John Fischbach told Rolling Stone years later. “His vocals had so much power.” The album’s mastery of many styles remains astonishing, but the feat might not have meant so much had Wonder not delivered some of his most impassioned political art as well, like the autobiographical “I Wish,” the takedown of wealthy complacency “Village Ghetto Land,” and, perhaps most movingly, “Black Man,” in which he runs down a funky list of global Afro-diasporic aspirations and heroes. Songs in the Key of Life linked all this together, in Wonder’s all-encompassing innervision.
22 21 Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home +160 Columbia, 1965 “It’s very complicated to play with electricity,” Dylan said in the summer of 1965. “You’re dealing with other people.… Most people who don’t like rock & roll can’t relate to other people.” But on Side One of this pioneering album, Dylan amplifies his cryptic, confrontational songwriting with guitar lightning and galloping drums. “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Maggie’s Farm” are loud, caustic, and funny as hell. Dylan returns to solo acoustic guitar on the four superb songs on Side Two, including the scabrous “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and the closing ballad, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” arguably his finest, most affectionate song of dismissal.
23 22 U2 The Joshua Tree +113 Island, 1987 “America’s the promised land to a lot of Irish people,” U2 singer Bono told Rolling Stone. “I’m one in a long line of Irishmen who made the trip.” On U2’s fifth full album, the band immerses itself in the mythology of the United States, while guitarist the Edge exploits the poetic echo of digital delay, drowning his trademark arpeggios in rippling tremolo. While many of these songs are about spiritual quests — “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” — U2 fortify the solemnity with the outright joys of rock & roll, although one of the most moving songs is “Running to Stand Still,” a stripped-down slide-guitar ballad about heroin addiction.
24 23 Television Marquee Moon +84 Elektra, 1977 When the members of Television materialized in New York, at the dawn of punk, they played an incongruous, soaring amalgam of genres: the noirish howl of the Velvet Underground, brainy art rock, the double-helix guitar sculpture of Quicksilver Messenger Service. As exhilarating in its lyrical ambitions as the Ramones’ debut was in its brutal simplicity, Marquee Moon still amazes. “Friction,” “Venus,” and the mighty title track are jagged, desperate, and beautiful all at once. As for punk credentials, don’t forget the cryptic electricity and strangled existentialism of guitarist Tom Verlaine’s voice and songwriting.
25 24 The Rolling Stones Let It Bleed +17 ABKCO, 1969 The record kicks off with the terrifying “Gimme Shelter,” the song that came to symbolize not only the catastrophe of the Stones’ free show at Altamont but also the death of the utopian spirit of the 1960s. And the entire album burns with apocalyptic cohesion: the sex-mad desperation of “Live With Me”; the murderous blues of “Midnight Rambler”; Keith Richards’ lethal, biting guitar on “Monkey Man”; the epic moralism, with honky-tonk piano and massed vocal chorus, of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” which Mick Jagger wrote on acoustic guitar in his bedroom. “Somebody said that we could get the London Bach Choir,” Jagger recalled, “and we said, ‘That will be a laugh.'”
26 25 Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band Trout Mask Replica New in 2023
27 26 Patti Smith Horses No change Arista, 1975 From its first defiant line, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” the opening shot in a bold reinvention of Van Morrison’s garage-rock classic “Gloria,” Patti Smith’s debut album was a declaration of mutiny, a statement of faith in the transfigurative powers of rock & roll. Horses made her the queen of punk (her CBGB buddy Tom Verlaine of Television co-wrote the Jim Morrison tribute “Break It Up”), but Smith cared more for the poetry in rock. She sought the visions and passions that connected Keith Richards and Rimbaud — and found them, with the intuitive assistance of a killer band (pianist Richard Sohl, guitarist Lenny Kaye, bassist Ivan Kral, and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty) and her friend Robert Mapplethorpe, who shot the cover portrait.  “The real thing,” Smith later said, “was to keep rock & roll in the hands of the people.”
28 27 Carole King Tapestry -2 Sony, 1971 For a decade, Carole King wrote pop songs with her then-husband, Gerry Goffin: hits such as Little Eva’s “The Loco-Motion” (Eva Boyd was the couple’s babysitter) and the Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” Then King’s friend James Taylor encouraged her to sing her own tunes. “He just made it look so easy,” she recalled. “So I did Tapestry in the same spirit.” She slowed down “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” (originally a hit for the Shirelles in 1961), with Taylor and Joni Mithcell on background vocals, heightening the melancholy inside, while her warm, earnest singing brought out the sadness in “It’s Too Late” and the earthy joy on “I Feel the Earth Move.” As King later recalled, “I wasn’t in the same league vocally with Aretha Franklin, Joni Mitchell, Barbara Streisand. But I knew how to convey the mood and emotion of a song with honest, straight-from-the-heart interpretation.” The resulting collection of songs saw King remake herself as an artist and became one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, creating the reigning model for the 1970s female singer-songwriter.
29 28 Aretha Franklin Lady Soul +47 Atlantic, 1968 Aretha Franklin’s third Atlantic album in less than two years is another classic, with “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Ain’t No Way,” and a slinky version of the Rascals’ “Groovin’.” It was a year of triumph and turbulence for Franklin: Although she made the cover of Time, the magazine reported details of her rocky marriage to Ted White, then her manager. But Franklin channeled that frenzy into performances of funky pride and magisterial hurt. Among the best: the grand-prayer treatment of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” and her explosive anguish on the hit “Chain of Fools.”
30 29 Brian Eno Another Green World +309 Island, 19755 After years as a rock eccentric with Roxy Music and two groundbreaking solo LPs, Brian Eno was exploring new ideas about ambient music. But he said goodbye to song form with this album of pure synthetic beauty, mixing lush electronics (“Becalmed”) with acoustic instruments (“Everything Merges With the Night”) to cast a truly hypnotic spell. Eno’s work habits were pleasantly subversive too; at one impasse during the recording, he pulled out a cake from underneath the mixing console and served pieces to everyone in the studio.
31 30 Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin II +93 Atlantic, 1969 This album — recorded on the fly while the band was touring — opens with one of the most exhilarating guitar riffs in rock & roll: Jimmy Page’s searing stutter in “Whole Lotta Love.” As Page told Rolling Stone, “On the second LP, you can hear the real group identity coming together,” by which he meant the unified might of his own white-blues sorcery, John Bonham’s hands-of-Zeus drumming, Robert Plant’s love-god howl and surprisingly tender lyrics (the gorgeous “Thank You”), and John Paul Jones’ firm bass and keyboard colors. Other great reasons to bang your head: “The Lemon Song,” “Heartbreaker,” and “Ramble On.”
32 31 Talking Heads Remain in Light +8 Sire, 1980 David Byrne said Remain in Light “was done in bits and pieces, one instrument at a time.” The result was a New Wave masterpiece powered by Byrne’s revelation, as he put it on “The Great Curve,” that “the world moves on a woman’s hips.” It combined thrust of a P-Funk dance party, the ancient-to-the-future rhythm hypnosis of Nigerian funkmaster Fela Kuti, and the studied adventurousness of the album’s producer and Heads co-conspirator, Brian Eno. Remain in Light marked Talking Heads’ transformation from avatars of the punk avant-garde to polyrhythmic magicians with hit-single appeal. Just try not dancing to “Once in a Lifetime.”
33 32 Radiohead OK Computer +10 Capitol, 1997 Radiohead recorded their third album in the mansion of actress Jane Seymour while she was filming Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. OK is where the band began pulling at its sound like taffy, seeing what happened, not worrying if it was still “rock.” What resulted is a slow, haunting album with unforgettable tracks such as “Karma Police.” Guitarist Jonny Greenwood said, “I got very excited at the prospect of doing string parts that didn’t sound like ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ which is what all string parts have sounded like for the past 30 years.… We used violins to make frightening white-noise stuff, like the last chord of ‘Climbing Up the Walls.’”
34 33 Paul Simon Graceland +13 Columbia, 1986 Frustrated by the experience of writing good songs that didn’t come to life in the studio, Paul Simon set out “to make really good tracks,” as he later put it. “I thought, ‘I have enough songwriting technique that I can reverse this process and write this song after the tracks are made.’” Simon risked severe criticism by going to South Africa (then under apartheid) and working with the best musicians from the black townships. With the fluid energy and expertise of guitarist Ray Phiri and the vocal troupe Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Simon created an album about isolation and redemption that transcended world music to become the whole world’s soundtrack.
35 34 Pink Floyd The Dark Side of the Moon +21 EMI, 1973 “I think every album was a step towards Dark Side of the Moon,” keyboardist Rick Wright said. “We were learning all the time; the techniques of the recording and our writing was getting better.” As a culmination of their inner-space explorations of the early 1970s, the Floyd toured the bulk of Dark Side in Britain for months prior to recording. But in the studio, the band articulated bassist Roger Waters’ reveries on the madness of everyday life with melodic precision (“Breathe,” “Us and Them”) and cinematic luster (Clare Torry’s guest vocal aria “The Great Gig in the Sky”). Dark Side is one of the best-produced rock albums ever, and “Money” may be rock’s only Top 20 hit in 7/4 time.
36 35 The Smiths The Queen Is Dead +78 Sire, 1986 Morrissey’s maudlin moanings have never been more acidic or self-aware than on the Smiths’ third studio album: “A dreaded sunny day, so let’s go where we’re happy/And I meet you at the cemetery gates,” indeed. Johnny Marr is the sugar to Morrissey’s rock salt, and his layered webs of guitar riffs and arpeggios, often in unconventional tunings, build a shifting but stable platform for Morrissey to croon about the drudgery of employment or being cruelly, cruelly shunned by the world. It’s mope rock with its eye on grandeur: With “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” Marr said, “I was trying to write my ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash.’”
37 36 David Bowie Low +170 RCA, 1977 David Bowie fled to Berlin to kick cocaine — not to mention his other drug of choice, stardom. He moved into a flat above a hardware store and restarted his music from scratch, teaming up with Brian Eno and producer Tony Visconti. Low was split between electronic instrumentals and quirky funk like “Sound and Vision.” It began his famous “Berlin trilogy” — though it was cut mostly in France — topped off by Heroes and Lodger. In 1977, Bowie also produced Iggy Pop’s two finest solo albums, The Idiot and Lust for Life.
38 37 Randy Newman Sail Away +231 Reprise, 1972 Producer Lenny Waronker called him the “King of the Suburban Blues Singers.” Randy Newman went on to a long career scoring Hollywood movies, but on Sail Away, he was still L.A.’s weirdest singer-songwriter, a piano man singing sardonic tales of sleazy grifters in tunes full of New Orleans R&B and Tin Pan Alley showbiz. Sail Away is his meanest and funniest American portrait, with the cold-blooded “Political Science,” the blasphemous “God’s Song,” and the romantic “You Can Leave Your Hat On.”
39 38 Miles Davis Kind of Blue -7 Columbia, 1959 This painterly masterpiece is one of the most important, influential, and popular albums in jazz. At the time it was made, Kind of Blue was also a revolution all its own. Turning his back on standard chord progressions, trumpeter Miles Davis used modal scales as a starting point for composition and improvisation — breaking new ground with warmth, subtlety, and understatement in the thick of hard bop. Davis and his peerless band — bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Jimmy Cobb, pianist Bill Evans, and the titanic sax team of John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley — soloed in uncluttered settings, typified by “melodic rather than harmonic variation,” as Davis put it. Two numbers, “All Blues” and “Freddie Freeloader” (the latter featuring Wynton Kelly at the ivories in place of Evans), are in 12-bar form, but Davis’ approach allowed his players a cool, new, collected freedom.
40 39 The Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers +65 Rolling Stones, 1971 Drummer Charlie Watts remembered the origin of Sticky Fingers as the songs Mick Jagger wrote while filming the movie Ned Kelly in Australia. “Mick started playing the guitar a lot,” Watts said. “He plays very strange rhythm guitar … very much how Brazilian guitarists play, on the upbeat. It is very much like the guitar on a James Brown track — for a drummer, it’s great to play with.” New guitarist Mick Taylor, replacing Brian Jones, stretches out the Stones sound in “Sway,” “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” and “Moonlight Mile.” But “Brown Sugar” is a classic Stones stomp, and two of the best cuts are country songs: one forlorn (“Wild Horses”) and one funny (“Dead Flowers”).
41 40 Jimi Hendrix Experience Are You Experienced New in 2023
42 41 Sly & the Family Stone There's a Riot Goin' On +41 Epic, 1971 This highly anticipated studio follow-up to Sly and the Family Stone’s 1969 blast of hope, Stand!, was the grim, exact opposite: implosive, numbing, darkly self-referential. Sly Stone’s voice is an exhausted grumble; the funk in “Family Affair,” “Runnin’ Away,” and especially the closing downward spiral, “Thank You for Talkin’ to Me Africa,” is spare and bleak, fiercely compelling in its anguish over the unfulfilled promises of civil rights and hippie counterculture. “It is Muzak with its finger on the trigger,” wrote critic Greil Marcus in Mystery Train. Take that as a recommendation.
43 42 Bob Dylan & the Band The Basement Tapes +293 Columbia, 1975 Bob Dylan and his pals spent the Summer of Love in Woodstock, messing around in the basement of a house they called Big Pink. The songs were so deeply weird, they sat unreleased for years, until The Basement Tapes finally collected bootleg favorites like “Million Dollar Bash” and “You Ain’t Going Nowhere.” (For a deeper dive, see the 2014 box set.) “They were a kick to do,” Dylan told Rolling Stone’s Jann S. Wenner in 1969. “That’s really the way to do a recording — in a peaceful, relaxed setting — in somebody’s basement. With the windows open … and a dog lying on the floor.”
44 43 Prince and the Revolution Purple Rain -35 Warner Bros., 1984 “I think Purple Rain is the most avant-garde, ‘purple’ thing I’ve ever done,” Prince told Ebony in 1986. He was still a rising star with only a couple of hits when he got the audacious idea to make a movie based on his life, and make his next LP the movie’s soundtrack. When it was released in 1984, he became the first artist to have the Number One song, album, and movie in North America. But Purple Rain was so much more than a huge movie soundtrack: It was a testament to Prince’s dream of creating a utopian Top 40, a place where funk, psychedelia, heavy-metal shredding, huge ballads, and daring experimentalism could coexist. “Listening to Purple Rain now, it’s kind of like a Beatles album,” keyboardist Matt Fink of the Revolution told Rolling Stone shortly after Prince’s death in 2016. “Every song is just so brilliant in its own way — all so unique and different.” It’s an incredible balance of contradicting impulses — from the pornographic “Darling Nikki” to the sparkling innocence of “Take Me With You.” When Purple Rain director Albert Magnoli asked for a good song to back a montage sequence, Prince came in the next day with “When Doves Cry,” a stark, eccentric-sounding brokenhearted song that became his first Number One single. The title track was one of several songs recorded live at his hometown club, First Avenue, in Minneapolis (strings and overdubs were added later in the studio). It was inspired by Bob Seger, of all people — when Prince was touring behind 1999 [see No. 130] in 1983, Seger was playing many of the same markets. Prince didn’t understand the Midwestern rocker’s appeal, but decided to try a ballad in the Seger mode — the result may be the greatest rock ballad of all time.
45 44 Pavement Slanted and Enchanted +155 Matador, 1993 Pavement were the quintessential American independent rock band, and this is the quintessential indie-rock album. The playing is loose-limbed, the production laid-back and primitive, the lyrics quirky and playful, the melodies sweet and seductive. But the sound is as intense as the white noise of the Velvet Underground, even as songs like “Summer Babe” reflect singer-guitarist Stephen Malkmus’ love of Seventies AM pop. Slanted and Enchanted is one of the most influential rock albums of the 1990s; its fuzzy recording style can be heard in the music of Nirvana, Liz Phair, Beck, the Strokes, and the White Stripes.
46 45 Bruce Springsteen Born to Run -24 Columbia, 1975 Bruce Springsteen spent everything he had — patience, energy, studio time, the physical endurance of his E Street Band — to ensure that his third album was a masterpiece. His reputation as a perfectionist begins here: There are a dozen guitar overdubs on the title track alone. He was also spending money he didn’t have. Engineer Jimmy Iovine had to hide the mounting recording bills from the Columbia paymasters. “The album became a monster,” Springsteen told his biographer, Dave Marsh. “It just ate up everyone’s life.” But in making Born to Run, Springsteen was living out the central drama in the album’s tenement-love operas (“Backstreets,” “Jungleland”) and gun-the-engine rock & roll (“Thunder Road,” “Born to Run”): the fight to reconcile big dreams with crushing reality. He found it so hard to translate the sound in his head — the Jersey-bar dynamite of his live gigs, Phil Spector’s Wagnerian grandeur, the heartbreaking melodrama of Roy Orbison’s hits — that Springsteen nearly scrapped Born to Run for a straight-up concert album. But his make-or-break attention to detail — including the iconic cover photo of Springsteen leaning onto saxman Clarence Clemons, a perfect metaphor for Springsteen’s brotherly reliance on the E Street Band — assured the integrity of Born to Run’s success. In his determination to make a great album, Springsteen produced a timeless, inspiring record about the labors and glories of aspiring to greatness.
47 46 Stevie Wonder Innervisions -12 Tamla/Motown, 1973 “We as a people are not interested in ‘baby, baby’ songs any more, there’s more to life than that,” Stevie Wonder said in 1972. With Innervisions, Wonder offered a landmark fusion of social realism and spiritual idealism; he brings expressive color and irresistible funk to his synth-based keyboards on “Too High” (a cautionary anti-drug song) and “Higher Ground” (which echoes Martin Luther King Jr.’s message of transcendence). The album’s centerpiece is “Living for the City,” a cinematic depiction of exploitation and injustice. “Innervisions gives my own perspective on what’s happening in my world,” Wonder said. “I think it is my most personal album. I don’t care if it sells only five copies.”
48 47 Love Forever Changes +133 Elektra, 1967 “When I did that album,” singer Arthur Lee said, “I thought I was going to die at that particular time, so those were my last words.” Lee, who died of cancer in 2006, was still performing this album live well into the ‘00s. And for good reason: Love’s third record is his crowning achievement. A biracial cult band from L.A. that rarely gigged out of town in its 1960s heyday, Love were Lee’s vehicle for a pioneering folk-rock turned into elegant armageddon with the symphonic sweep and mariachi-brass drama of “Alone Again Or,” “Andmoreagain,” and “You Set the Scene.” In the late Nineties, Lee served time in prison. After his release, he brought extra pathos to “Live and Let Live” when he sang, “Served my time, served it well.”
49 48 Public Enemy It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back -33 Def Jam, 1988 Loud, obnoxious, funky, avant-garde, political, uncompromising, hilarious – Public Enemy’s brilliant second album is all of these things — all at once. Chuck D booms intricate rhymes with a delivery inspired by sportscaster Marv Albert; sidekick Flavor Flav raps comic relief; and production team the Bomb Squad build mesmerizing, multilayered jams, pierced with shrieking sirens. The title and roiling force of “Bring the Noise” is truth in advertising. “If they’re calling my music ‘noise,’ ” said Chuck D, “if they’re saying that I’m really getting out of character being a black person in America, then fine – I’m bringing more noise.” Along with “Bring the Noise,” Nation classics like “Rebel Without a Pause” were conceived at Spectrum City in the band headquarters in Hempstead, New York. For “Rebel,” producer Hank Shocklee of the Bomb Squad looped a piercing sample of James Brown’s “The Grunt” with Brown’s “Funky Drummer” (“That song was like my milk,” said Shocklee). To write verses that could match such a sonic assault, Chuck locked himself in his house for 24 hours and emerged with broadsides like the media screed “Don’t Believe the Hype.” He wasn’t sure of the results until DMC, of Run-DMC, blasted it out of his Bronco on a Saturday night. Says Shocklee, “The whole block was grooving to it.”
50 49 The Stooges Fun House +45 Elektra, 1970 With garage-savvy ex-Kingsmen keyboardist Don Gallucci producing their second album, the Stooges made their most fully realized effort, despite their collective drug problems. “We had a certain purity of intention,” Iggy Pop asserted. “I don’t think we did ever get it from the drugs. I think they killed things.” They couldn’t kill what he has called the relentless “troglodyte groove” the band had on Fun House. “I stick it deep inside,” Iggy growls on “Loose,” one of the album’s typically confrontational tracks. Later, on “1970,” he insisted, ad infinitum, “I feel all right,” and there’s no question you wouldn’t want any of whatever he was on.
51 50 Neil Young Harvest +22 Reprise, 1972 Harvest yielded Neil Young’s only Number One hit, “Heart of Gold,” and helped set the stage for the Seventies soft-rock explosion — both James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt sing on the album. Along with Young, they were in Nashville to appear on Johnny Cash’s variety show the week that Harvest was cut with an odd group of accomplished session musicians that included bassist Tim Drummond, who had played with James Brown. The sound was Americana — steel guitar, slide guitar, banjo — stripped down and rebuilt with every jagged edge exposed. The standout tracks include “Old Man” and “The Needle and the Damage Done.”
52 51 John Lennon Plastic Ono Band +34 Apple, 1970 Also known as the “primal scream” album, referring to the painful therapy that gave rise to its songs, Plastic Ono Band was John Lennon’s first proper solo album and rock & roll’s most self-revelatory recording. Lennon attacks and denies idols and icons, including his own former band (“I don’t believe in Beatles,” he sings in “God”), to hit a pure, raw core of confession that, in its echo-drenched, garage-rock crudity, is years ahead of punk. He deals with childhood loss in “Mother” and skirts blasphemy in “Working Class Hero”: “You’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.” But the unkindest cut came in his frank 1970 Rolling Stone interview. “The Beatles was nothing,” Lennon stated acerbically.
53 52 Bob Dylan The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan +203 Columbia, 1963 Bob Dylan’s second LP was released on May 27th, 1963 – three days after his 22nd birthday. It was a tender age for such a triumph. On Freewheelin’, the poetry and articulate fury of Dylan’s lyrics and his simple, compelling melodies transformed American popular songwriting. His wholly original grip on grit, truth, and beauty in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Masters of War” still changes everyone who hears this album, four decades later.
54 53 Nick Drake Five Leaves Left New in 2023
55 54 R.E.M. Murmur +111 I.R.S., 1983 “We wanted to have this kind of timeless record,” guitarist Peter Buck said of R.E.M.’s debut LP, and this “technically limited” band (according to producer Don Dixon) did just that. Buck was a rock scholar who had worked in a record store; singer Michael Stipe unspooled his lyrics as if they constituted some new secret language. Murmur is full of ringing guitars and mystery. The lyrics and the melodies seem buried, almost subliminal, and even the songs with something approximating hooks, such as “Radio Free Europe,” resist clarity. Murmur was a founding document of alternative rock, released just as Gen X was heading off to college.
56 55 Michael Jackson Thriller -43 Epic, 1982 Michael Jackson towered over the Eighties the way no superstar before or since has dominated an era — not even Elvis or the Beatles. And Thriller is the reason why. Still in his early twenties, the R&B child star of the 1970s had ripened into a Technicolor soul man: a singer, dancer, and songwriter with incomparable crossover instincts. He and producer Quincy Jones established the something-for-everyone template of Thriller on 1979’s Off the Wall [see No. 36], on which Jackson captures the rare mania of his life — the applause and paranoia, the need for love and the fear of commitment — in a crisp fusion of pop hooks and dance beats. On Thriller, the pair heighten the sheen (the jaunty gloss of “The Girl Is Mine,” with a guest vocal by Paul McCartney), pump up the theater (the horror-movie spectacular “Thriller”), and deepen the funk. With its locomotive cadence and an acrobatic metal-guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen, “Beat It” was arguably the first industrial-disco Number One. It is hard now to separate Thriller from its commercial stature (Number One for 37 weeks, 33 million copies sold), the nightmarish tabloid celebrity that led to Jackson’s death, and the horrific revelations about him that have surfaced in recent years. But there was a time when we only knew Jackson as the King of Pop. This is it.
57 56 Wire Pink Flag +254 Harvest, 1977 This first-generation U.K. punk band made sparse tunes that erupted in combustible snippets on its 21-track debut album. America never got it, but Pink Flag — as revolutionary discs tend to do — influenced some important bands, including Sonic Youth and the Minutemen. It also might be one of the most-covered punk LPs ever: Minor Threat did “12XU,” R.E.M. did “Strange,” the New Bomb Turks did “Mr. Suit,” Spoon did “Lowdown,” the Lemonheads did “Fragile,” and on and on.
58 57 Fleetwood Mac Rumours -50 Warner Bros., 1977 With Rumours, Fleetwood Mac turned private turmoil into gleaming, melodic public art. The band’s two couples — bassist John McVie and singer-keyboard player Christine McVie, who were married; guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and vocalist Stevie Nicks, who were not — broke up during the protracted sessions for the album. As John later told Rolling Stone of the atmosphere during the making of Rumours, “Parties going on all over the house. Amazing. Terrifying. Huge amounts of illicit materials, yards and yards of this wretched stuff. Days and nights would just go on and on.” This frenzied, decadent vibe lent a highly charged, confessional aura to such songs as Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way,” Nicks’ “Dreams,” Christine’s “Don’t Stop,” and the group-composed anthem to betrayal, “The Chain.” The band’s soap opera fueled its own intricate creative conversation; on “You Make Loving Fun,” Christine sang about her new boyfriend, the band’s lighting designer, as her ex John dutifully drives home the song with a sunny, funky bass line. To write “Dreams,” Nicks sat on a black velvet bed in a tiny room hidden deep in the Record Plant, where the band was recording, creating one of her most haunting songs in 10 minutes. “[In ‘Go Your Own Way’] Lindsey is saying go ahead and date other men and go live your crappy life, and [I’m] singing about the rain washing you clean,” Nicks said. “We were coming at it from opposite angles, but we were really saying the same exact thing.” The Mac’s catchy exposés, produced with California-sunshine polish, touched a nerve: Rumours became the sixth-best-selling album of all time.
59 58 The Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols +22 Warner Bros., 1977 “If the sessions had gone the way I wanted, it would have been unlistenable for most people,” Johnny Rotten said. “I guess it’s the very nature of music: If you want people to listen, you’re going to have to compromise.” But few heard it that way at the time. The Pistols’ only studio album sounds like a rejection of everything rock & roll — and the world itself — had to offer. True, the music was less shocking than Rotten himself, who sang about abortions, anarchy, and hatred on “Bodies” and “Anarchy in the U.K.” But Never Mind the Bollocks is the Sermon on the Mount of U.K. punk — and its echoes are everywhere.
60 59 Otis Redding Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul +119
61 60 Dusty Springfield Dusty in Memphis +23 Atlantic, 1969 Born in London, Dusty Springfield was a great soul singer hidden inside a white British pop queen — racking up Motown-style hits such as “I Only Want to Be With You” — when Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler brought her way down South, to Memphis, to make this album. She was so intimidated by the idea of recording with session guys from her favorite Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding hits that she never actually managed to sing a note there. Her vocals were overdubbed later, when the sessions moved to New York. But the result was blazing soul and sexual honesty (“Breakfast in Bed,” “Son of a Preacher Man”) that transcended both race and geography.
62 61 Sonic Youth Daydream Nation +110 Enigma, 1988 Sonic Youth took an ecstatic, specifically New York sound created in the late 1970s by the band Television and by composers Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, and turned it into an international clamor. On this double album, they make a move away from doomy riddles about pop culture and toward joyful riddles about pop culture. Their unconventional guitar tunings result in jarring chords and overtones, but also an array of gnarled hooks. Thurston Moore’s and Lee Ranaldo’s guitars are like antennae picking up otherworldly signals and channeling them into the scuzzy urban haze of “Teen Age Riot” and “Eric’s Trip,” and on “The Sprawl,” bassist Kim Gordon sums up the album’s measured chaos: “Does ‘Fuck you’ sound simple enough?”
63 62 Prince Sign 'O' the Times -17 Paisley Park/Warner Bros., 1987 He’d fired his band, and his latest movie, Under the Cherry Moon, had flopped; just three years after Purple Rain, Prince was in the market for a comeback. So he recorded one of the great albums of the Eighties. Times is best known for the apocalyptic title track, the brontosaurus funk of “Housequake,” and the gorgeous “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” Yet the simplest moments are unforgettable: the “Sweet Jane”-style guitar plea of “The Cross,” the Stax revamp on “Slow Love,” a jilted girl’s sadness in “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man.” “I hate the word ‘experiment,’” Prince said. “It sounds like something you didn’t finish.” Here, he finished.
64 63 The Byrds Sweetheart of the Rodeo +211 Columbia, 1968 On release, this bold experiment in Nashville classicism was shunned by rock fans and country purists alike. But the American rural song had been central to the Byrds’ folk-rock sound; here, driven by junior Byrd Gram Parsons, the band highlighted that connection, dressing Bob Dylan and Merle Haggard songs in steel guitar and rock & roll drive, setting the stage for country rock. Parsons left signs of his short, glorious future in his originals “Hickory Wind” and “One Hundred Years From Now.”
65 64 Joni Mitchell Hejira +69 Asylum, 1976 After redefining the possibilities of singer-songwriter music in the early 1970s, Mitchell set herself an even more ambitious challenge with Hejira, her ultimate jazz-folk statement. Setting her restless-soul visions to slippery instrumentals with help from bassist Jaco Pastorius, she weighed the costs of dedicating her life to fearless self-expression where others might have settled for mere happiness (“Amelia,” “Song for Sharon”). Getting to the point where she could make an album this singularly brilliant might have been a lonely enterprise, but it was worth it for the rest of us.
66 65 Bob Dylan John Wesley Harding +272 Columbia, 1967 Recovering from his 1966 motorcycle crash, Bob Dylan made a left turn into country fables and stark mystic folkways. He took a quick trip to Nashville and banged out John Wesley Harding. It’s his most ominous album, with characters from the Bible and the shadowy side of American history, from “I Am a Lonesome Hobo” to “All Along the Watchtower.” With his stripped-down sound and a black-and-white cover photo, Dylan was defiantly rejecting all the current trends — going his own way, as usual.
67 66 The Replacements Let It Be +90 Twin/Tone, 1984 Copping a Beatles title was cheeky; attaching it to a post-punk masterpiece was a sign of maturity. Said Paul Westerberg, “This was the first time I had songs that we arranged, rather than just banging out riffs.” Mixing punk, pop, and country with wry lyrics, his songs describe heroes (the gender-bending couple in “Androgynous”) and villains (an unsanitary dentist in “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out”; MTV in “Seen Your Video”), and pack in quips about the group’s lack of success (“Fingernails and cigarettes, a lousy dinner”) with swagger and pride. The coup is “Unsatisfied,” a pained howl of unhappiness that forced people to take this ratty band seriously.
68 67 Can Tago Mago New in 2023
69 68 Simon & Garfunkel Bookends New in 2023
70 69 Sly & the Family Stone Stand! +50 Epic, 1969 Stand! is party politics at its most inclusive and exciting — Sly Stone at the top of his funk-rock-soul game. A DJ and producer in San Francisco during the Dawn of Hippie, Stone rides the bonfire momentum of the civil rights movement in motivational-soul sermons such as “Stand!” and “You Can Make It If You Try” without denying the intrinsic divisions that threatened civil war (“Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey”). There was also the uplifting pure-pop beauty of “Everyday People” as well as the R&B ecstasy of “I Want to Take You Higher” and the swirling black psychedelia of “Sex Machine.” It makes Stand! a greatest-hits album in all but name.
71 70 Roxy Music For Your Pleasure +281 Warner Bros., 1973 Keyboardist Brian Eno’s last album with Roxy Music is the pop equivalent of Ultrasuede: highly stylish, abstract-leaning art rock. The collision of Eno’s and singer Bryan Ferry’s clashing visions gives Pleasure a wild, tense charm — especially on the driving “Editions of You” and “Do the Strand.” The album’s deeply weird centerpiece is “In Every Dream Home a Heartache”: Ferry sings a seductive ballad to an inflatable doll (“I blew up your body, but you blew my mind”), one of the creepiest love songs of all time.
72 71 Hüsker Dü Zen Arcade New in 2023
73 72 Al Green Call Me +355 Hi, 1973 Green was absolutely fearless at this point, an innovator willing to try any crazy idea — country ballads, jazz chords, even a gospel tune. Producer Willie Mitchell and his studio band of virtuoso Memphis R&B pros create the sultriest grooves south of the Mason-Dixon line. Green testifies to the glories of love in “Call Me” and “Have You Been Making Out O.K.” When he reaches up for that falsetto growl at the end of “Your Love Is Like the Morning Sun,” it’s like he’s bringing down the sugar walls of Jericho.
74 73 Ray Charles The Genius of Ray Charles New in 2023
75 74 Kraftwerk Trans-Europe Express +164 Kling Klang, 1977 In 1975, someone asked legendary rock critic Lester Bangs where music was going. “It’s being taken over by the Germans and the machines,” he replied. Not a bad prediction. This German group’s sound sought to eliminate the distinction between men and machines. Kraftwerk’s robot-synthesizer grooves influenced electrodisco hitmakers, experimental geniuses such as Brian Eno, and rappers including Afrika Bambaataa, who lifted the title track for “Planet Rock.” The whole world of EDM may not have happened without them.
76 75 Big Star Third/Sister Lovers +210 PVC, 1978 Big Star’s first two albums were crisp power-pop full of bright Sixties melodies. Their third album very much wasn’t. The band recorded it, their final LP, in 1974, but it didn’t get released until 1978, in part because singer Alex Chilton sounds like he’s having a nervous breakdown. It’s a record of gorgeous, disjointed heartbreak ballads such as “Take Care,” “Nighttime,” and “Blue Moon.” Even when they’re more optimistic, the songs almost seem to disintegrate as they unfold, finally collapsing into the sublime apocalypse of the album-closing “Kanga Roo.”
77 76 The Jimi Hendrix Experience Electric Ladyland New in 2023
78 77 Radiohead The Bends +199 Capitol, 1995 If the first half of the Nineties was shaped by Nirvana, the template for the second half was set by Radiohead. The Bends marries a majestic and somber guitar sound to Thom Yorke’s anguished-choirboy vocals. “Fake Plastic Trees” was something of a radio hit, an introspective acoustic ballad of alienation. And not yet shying away from guitar anthems, Radiohead drew on the epic grandeur of U2 and the melancholy of the Smiths in “Nice Dream,” “Just,” and the haunting finale, “Street Spirit (Fade Out).”
79 78 The Rolling Stones Beggars Banquet +107 Decca, 1968 “When we had been in the States between 1964 and ’66, I had gathered together this enormous collection of records, but I never had any time to listen to them,” Keith Richards recalled. “In late 1966 and ‘67, I unwrapped them and actually played them.” After the wayward psychedelia of Their Satanic Majesties Request, and with guitarist Brian Jones largely AWOL, Richards’ record collection led the Rolling Stones back to their version of America: country music on “Dear Doctor,” the blues on “Prodigal Son,” and urban riots on “Street Fighting Man.” And “Sympathy for the Devil,” of course, is an anthem for the darkness in every human heart.
80 79 Blondie Parallel Lines +67 Chrysalis, 1978 Here’s where punk and New Wave broke through to a mass U.S. audience, thanks to the Number One hit “Heart of Glass,” also known to Blondie fans as “The Disco Song.” “I was trying to get that groove that the drummer for the Bee Gees had,” said Blondie drummer Clem Burke, who credited Kraftwerk and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack as influences on “Heart of Glass.” Parallel Lines is a perfect synthesis of raw punk edge, Sixties-pop smarts, and the cool New Wave glamour that Blondie invented. Debbie Harry, of course, invented a new kind of rock & roll sex appeal that brought New York demimonde style to the mainstream. Madonna was surely watching.
81 80 The Band The Band -23 Capitol, 1969 The Band was four-fifths Canadian — drummer Levon Helm was from Arkansas – but their second album was all American. Guitarist Robbie Robertson’s songs vividly evoke the country’s pioneer age — “Across the Great Divide,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” — while reflecting the state of the nation in the 1960s. The Band’s long life on the road resonates in the brawn of Garth Hudson’s keyboards and Helm’s juke-joint attack. But Robertson’s stories truly live in Helm’s growl, Rick Danko’s high tenor, and Richard Manuel’s spectral croon. “Somebody once said he had a tear in his voice,” Helm said of Manuel. “Richard had one of the richest textured voices I’d ever heard.”
82 81 Bruce Springsteen Nebraska +69 Columbia, 1982 Recorded on a four-track in Springsteen’s bedroom, Nebraska’s songs were stark, spooky acoustic demos that he decided to release “bare,” packed with hard-luck tales of underdogs. “I wanted black bedtime stories,” he said in his memoir, and he wrote the LP under the influence of John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson, but also Flannery O’Connor and James M. Cain, creating a cross between the blues and pulp-noir novels. “Down here it’s just winners and losers,” he sings in “Atlantic City,” and these 10 songs live on the wrong side of that line. Yet, Springsteen ends the album with “Reason to Believe,” one of those songs where his search for faith inspires faith itself.
83 82 Neil Young & Crazy Horse Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere New in 2023
84 83 Stevie Wonder Talking Book -24 Tamla/Motown, 1972 “I don’t think you know where I’m coming from,” Wonder warned Motown executives in 1971. “I don’t think you can understand it.” Indeed, the two albums Wonder released in 1972 — Music of My Mind and Talking Book — rewrote the rules of the Motown hit factory. Talking Book was full of introspection and social commentary, with Wonder producing, writing, and playing most of the instruments himself. “Superstition” and “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” were Number One singles; “Big Brother” is political consciousness draped in a light melody: “You’ve killed all our leaders/I don’t even have to do nothin’ to you/You’ll cause your own country to fall.”
85 84 Tom Waits Rain Dogs +273 Island, 1985 “I like weird, ludicrous things,” Tom Waits once said. That understatement plays out most clearly on Rain Dogs, his finest portrait of the tragic kingdom of the streets. Self-producing his music for the first time and recording in his native Los Angeles, he went for a sound he described as “kind of an interaction between Appalachia and Nigeria.” Waits abandoned his signature grungy minimalism on the gorgeous “Downtown Train” (later a hit for Rod Stewart) and gets backing by Keith Richards on “Big Black Mariah.”
86 85 Van Morrison Moondance +35 Warner Bros., 1970 “That was the type of band I dig,” Van Morrison said of the Moondance sessions. “Two horns and a rhythm section — they’re the type of bands that I like best.” Morrison took that soul-band lineup and blended it with jazz, blues, poetry, and vivid memories of his Irish childhood, until songs such as “And It Stoned Me” and “Caravan” felt like lucid dreams. In the title hit, Morrison turns the words over and over in his mouth, not scatting so much as searching for the sound of magic. “Into the Mystic” serves as an apt summary: To listen to the album is to get your passport stamped for Morrison’s world of ecstatic visions.
87 86 My Bloody Valentine Loveless -13 Sire, 1991 This vague, shimmering, gorgeous album reportedly cost as much as $500,000 to make and nearly bankrupted the band’s U.K. label. It was worth it. Forget the lyrics, which are buried in the mix and incomprehensible, and focus on Kevin Shields’ and Bilinda Butcher’s guitars, which build entire noise symphonies out of tremolo effects and pitch bending. Highlights like “Only Shallow” and “I Only Said” use sampling technology to build a distorted, shifting sound that is wholly original and ecstatically beautiful. It’s like being serenaded by ghosts. Generations of shoegaze bands were born in its shadow.
88 87 Gram Parsons Grievous Angel New in 2023
89 88 David Bowie Station to Station -36 RCA, 1976 The title track is where David Bowie proclaims himself the Thin White Duke. Thin he was: Station to Station was recorded in a blizzard of cocaine in Los Angeles, with Bowie subsisting on green peppers and milk and almost never sleeping. The manic mood fueled an album that was futuristic but accessible, “plastic soul” speeding toward the electronic epiphanies of his Berlin phase. “TVC 15” is New Orleans R&B as robotic funk; “Golden Years” is James Brown from outer space, with Bowie’s amazing falsetto; and the 10-minute title track summed up his constant sense of motion at the time — opening with the sound of a train coming and eventually exploding into a Euro-disco breakdown that sounds like Saturday Night Fever at the android factory.
90 89 Todd Rundgren Something/Anything? +307 Bearsville, 1972 “I’m probably the whitest singer in the world,” Todd Rundgren told Rolling Stone in 1972. “I have no ‘soul’ in the usual sense — but I can do this great feminine falsetto.” On this tour de force double album, Rundgren employs that falsetto on two great singles (“I Saw the Light” and “Hello It’s Me”). For the rest of the album, he demonstrates his complete command of the studio, playing almost all the instruments himself, experimenting with a kaleidoscope of rock genres, and even delivering a monologue on what poorly made records sound like.
91 90 Pink Floyd The Piper at the Gates of Dawn +163 EMI/Columbia, 1967 “I’m full of dust and guitars,” Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett told Rolling Stone. Here’s what that sounded like. The band’s debut is all playful, psychedelic imagery and acid guitars. “Astronomy Domine” shows the group’s pop side; “Interstellar Overdrive” shows its spacier freakouts. Released at the height of the Summer of Love, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn sums up the headlong feeling of the moment just as aptly as the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper.
92 91 Joni Mitchell The Hissing of Summer Lawns +167 Asylum, 1975 Joni Mitchell got deeper into glamorous L.A. groove theory on her seventh album, reveling in the possibilities of pure melody for a set of songs where her genius as a producer shines just as brightly as her writing. “In France They Kiss on Main Street” bids farewell to the rock & roll era in a blaze of freewheeling, jazzy joy; “Harry’s House/Centerpiece” frames a story of a loveless high-society marriage in supper-club swank. The rest of the pop world would take years to catch up to where she was here.
93 92 Gang of Four Entertainment! +181 Warner Bros., 1979 Formed in 1977, Gang of Four combined Marxist politics with punk rock. They played staccato guitar-driven funk, and the stiff, jerky aggression of songs such as “Damaged Goods” and “I Found That Essence Rare” invented a new style that influenced bands from the Minutemen to LCD Soundsystem to agit-rappers Run the Jewels, who sampled Entertainment!’s “Ether.” Even when they’re barking at you about the capitalist commodification of desire, they never sound like dogmatic grad students because the songs bite so hard.
94 93 Kate Bush Hounds of Love -25 EMI, 1985 Kate Bush was an avant-garde auteur as well as beloved English pop star. Her New Wave masterpiece Hounds of Love is one of the greatest examples of an artist enjoying Top 40 success while luxuriating in her own eccentricities. Playing a futurist Fairlight CMI synthesizer and singing in an ecstatic operatic chirp, she muses about Freudian psychology, career challenges, love and family, dreaming sheep, and waking witches. Side One had hits like “Running Up That Hill” and “Cloudbusting”; Side Two was an epic “story suite,” moving from goth terror to sci-fi abstraction to dark rustic revelry. It’s no wonder Björk, Florence Welch, and Mitski are just a few of the artists who’ve been swept up in Bush’s sensual world.
95 94 Minutemen Double Nickels on the Dime +173 SST, 1984 “Our band could be your life,” sing the Minutemen on “History Lesson – Part 2,” and never did a lyric better articulate punk’s everyman aesthetic. Guitarist D. Boon and bassist Mike Watt push each other to fast, funny, and agitated heights; they sing about everything from Vietnam to Michael Jackson, and cover CCR and Steely Dan, expanding their magnum opus double LP out to 46 songs. Sadly, Boon would die a year later in a van accident.
96 95 P.J. Harvey Rid of Me New in 2023 Island, 1993 “I very much wanted to write songs that shocked,” Polly Jean Harvey said years after releasing her second album. The shock came partly from her lyrics, which were often proclamations of sexual compulsion, and also from the intense dynamic shifts in her music, which careen from blues to goth, often in the space of one song. Harvey was under the influence of Howlin’ Wolf, Tom Waits, and Flannery O’Connor, and her singing, writing, and lead-guitar playing coalesce into something marked by flames. The lyrics have lots of licking, moaning, bleeding, stroking, open mouths, and dismembered body parts. The songs spew viscera as they build to a sticky ecstasy.
97 96 The Kinks The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society +288 Reprise, 1969 While their British Invasion peers— the Beatles, the Stones, the Who — were getting psychedelic, Ray Davies took his band for a pastoral retreat, with witty portraits of quaint English small-town life fading away like “Big Sky.” Nobody bought it, but Village Green went on to become one of the Kinks’ most influential statements. “With ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day and All of the Night,’ we were saying, ‘We’re here, we’re gonna grab you,’” Davies told Rolling Stone. “The music on Village Green says, ‘Come find us.’”
98 97 Talking Heads Fear of Music New in 2023
99 98 Lou Reed Transformer +11 RCA, 1972 David Bowie counted the former Velvet Underground leader as a major inspiration — and paid back the debt by producing Transformer. The album had glam flash courtesy of Ziggy Stardust guitarist Mick Ronson as well as Reed’s biggest hit, “Walk on the Wild Side” — which brought drag queens and hustlers into the Top 20 — and the exquisite ballad “Perfect Day.” It was Reed’s first producer, VU impresario Andy Warhol, who inspired the lead cut when he suggested “Vicious” as a song title. “You know, like, ‘Vicious/You hit me with a flower,’” Warhol elaborated. Reed took him at his word, penning the song and cribbing the lines verbatim.
100 99 James Brown Live at the Apollo -34 King, 1963 This may be the greatest live album ever recorded: from the breathless buildup of the spoken intro through terse, sweat-soaked early hits such as “Try Me” and “Think” into 11 minutes of the raw ballad “Lost Someone.” It climaxes with a frenzied nine-song medley, and ends with “Night Train.” Live at the Apollo is pure, uncut soul — and it almost didn’t happen. James Brown defied King Records boss Syd Nathan’s opposition to a live album by arranging to record a show himself — on October 24th, 1962, the last date of a run at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. His intuition proved correct; Live at the Apollo, the first of four albums Brown recorded there, charted for 66 weeks.
101 100 Public Image Ltd. Metal Box New in 2023
102 101 Leonard Cohen Songs of Leonard Cohen +94 Columbia, 1967 Leonard Cohen was already well into his thirties when he made his debut, in the Summer of Love. The Montreal poet had been publishing his books to literary acclaim for years, but he took to songwriting, with his acoustic guitar and the orchestrations of producer John Simon. These were the late-night ballads that made his legend, starting with “Suzanne” and “Sisters of Mercy.” But Cohen specialized in farewells, blowing kisses to his muses in “So Long, Marianne” and “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.” He kept writing brilliant songs into his eighties, right up to his death in 2016.
103 102 Neil Young On the Beach +209 Reprise, 1974 Reeling from the losses that sparked Tonight’s the Night the previous year, Neil Young shelved that album for a while and made this one instead: a wild fireball of anger (“Revolution Blues”), nihilism (“For the Turnstiles”), and tentative optimism (“Walk On”). The album peaks on Side Two, a stoned symphony of grieving whose three songs (“On the Beach,” “Motion Pictures,” “Ambulance Blues”) are among the most emotionally real in Young’s catalog.
104 103 Pixies Doolittle +38 4AD/Elektra, 1989 The Pixies’ second full-length album proved that noisy, arty college rock could be just as fun as anything else on MTV. With his antic vocal style and free-associative lyrics, singer-guitarist Black Francis seemed detached from humanity, but the rest of the Pixies grounded him. Bassist Kim Deal adds tart harmonies that feel like sarcastic asides, drummer David Lovering powers the loud-quiet-loud dynamic that influenced Nirvana and many others, and guitarist Joey Santiago tosses out concise, buzzing riffs. The Pixies’ second album is loaded: With “Debaser,” “Here Comes Your Man,” “Monkey Gone to Heaven,” “Hey,” and “Gouge Away,” it’s the college-radio version of a greatest-hits album.
105 104 Yo La Tengo I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One +319 Matador, 1997 In rock, as in life, breakups get all the attention; successful marriages tend to generate fewer headlines. But Yo La Tengo — the long-married couple of Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan, plus bassist James McNew — is a testament to figuring it out together. The band’s 1997 masterpiece is indie rock at its most joyfully exploratory, with deeply catchy fuzz-jams, some Casio-keyboard bossa nova, a cover of the Beach Boys’ “Little Honda, and “Autumn Sweater,” a stone-cold classic that turns organ, percussion, and shy murmuring into something mesmerizing and beautiful.
106 105 Prince Dirty Mind +221 Warner Bros., 1980 A mix of slinky funk, synth-driven rock, jittery pop, and sexual innuendo, Dirty Mind was Prince’s first great album, even if it only hinted at where he was headed. “White, black, Puerto Rican, everybody just a freakin’,” he sang on “Uptown,” a utopian ode to the Minneapolis club scene. The album includes the world’s merriest done-me-wrong song, “When You Were Mine,” and the incest ditty “Sister.” “I wasn’t being deliberately provocative,” Prince said. “I was being deliberately me.”
107 106 Eminem The Marshall Mathers LP +39 Interscope, 2000 Chris Rock joked that the world was so crazy, “the best rapper is a white guy,” referring to Eminem. He’d been accused of corrupting the nation’s youth by fostering misogyny on his major-label debut, and to say he doubled down on playing with offensive ideas only exaggerates his joyful commitment to earning more denunciations. “The Real Slim Shady” and “Bitch Please II” vaulted Eminem from a shock rapper with a sense of humor to the voice of a generation. And in “Stan,” he created a verb and a meme to describe extreme fandom in our era.
108 107 Love Da Capo New in 2023
109 108 David Bowie Hunky Dory -20 RCA, 1971 David Bowie, then 24, arrived at the Hunky Dory cover shoot with a book of photographs of Marlene Dietrich: a perfect metaphor for this album’s visionary blend of gay camp, flashy rock guitar, and saloon-piano balladry. Bowie marked the polar ends of his artistic ambitions with tribute songs to Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol. In “Oh! You Pretty Things,” “Quicksand,” and “Changes” he invented and perfected a new style of rock & roll glamour. On “Life on Mars?” he sings to all the weirdos like himself, who feel like aliens on Earth. Soon an entire army of kids would attempt to remake themselves in his spangled image, proving his point.
110 109 Derek and the Dominos Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs +117 Atco, 1970 Eric Clapton was tired of stardom, so he formed a new band where he could be just another one of the lads. But there was no mistaking the blues guitar on “Layla,” as Clapton sang about falling in love with the wife of his best friend, George Harrison. The tortured love songs on Layla get a kick from guest Duane Allman, whose interplay with Clapton in “Key to the Highway” and “Have You Ever Loved a Woman” is both harmonious and fiercely competitive: electric, brotherly love.
111 110 Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road +2 MCA, 1973 Elton John compared this double album to the Beatles’ White Album, and why not? He was by this point the most consistent hitmaker since the Fab Four, and soon enough he would be recording with John Lennon. Everything about Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was supersonically huge, from the Wagnerian-opera-like combo of “Funeral for a Friend” and “Love Lies Bleeding” to the electric boots and mohair suit of “Bennie and the Jets.” “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” was strutting rock & roll, “Candle in the Wind” paid tribute to Marilyn Monroe (and later, Princess Diana), and the title track harnessed the fantastical imagery of glam to a Gershwin-sweet melody.
112 111 X Wild Gift New in 2023
113 112 Paul McCartney & Wings Band on the Run New in 2023
114 113 The Byrds Younger Than Yesterday New in 2023
115 114 Curtis Mayfield Curtis +161 Curtom, 1970 In the late Sixties, Curtis Mayfield fronted the Impressions, masters of doo-wop soul with a knack for hiding bracing political commentary inside honeyed harmonies. His biting, tender solo debut proved he was lethal as a lone wolf, able to write complex, sprawling, intricate soul music: “Move On Up,” a persistence mantra; “The Makings of You,” impossibly lavish; and “(Don’t Worry) If There Is a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go,” a damning indictment of societal dysfunction that still stings today.
116 115 Pere Ubu The Modern Dance New in 2023
117 116 Nick Drake Pink Moon +87 Island, 1979 Nick Drake recorded his last album in a couple of nights, mailed the tapes to Island Records, and checked himself into a psychiatric ward. If the music were as dark as the lyrics, it might be unlistenable. But Drake’s soothing vocals and unadorned acoustic picking unfold with supernatural tenderness. Few heard Pink Moon when it was released, but its stark beauty has touched the intimate bedroom folk of Cat Power, Elliott Smith, and many others.
118 117 Devo Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! +135 Warner Bros., 1978 They came from Akron, Ohio, wore matching jumpsuits, and had a sinister theory of devolution. Their debut album runs on rubber-punk energy and mechanized New Wave beats, with a robotic, soul-chilling version of the Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” demented highlights like the troublingly catchy “Mongoloid,” and the Chuck Berry parody “Come Back Jonee.” Devo never got slowed down by their concept; “Gut Feeling/(Slap Your Mammy)” is warped Midwestern guitar mania at its finest.
119 118 Bob Marley & the Wailers Catch a Fire +22 Island, 1973 This was the album that introduced the whole world to Bob Marley, expanding his audience beyond Jamaica without diluting his bedrock reggae power. At the time, the Wailers were truly a unified band, fronted by three extraordinary singers in Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Livingston. The rhythm section of drummer Carlton Barrett and his brother, bassist Aston “Family Man” Barrett, defined the reggae beat. Producer and label boss Chris Blackwell subtly overdubbed and remixed the original Jamaican sessions for international ears, but the Wailers’ ghetto rage comes across uncut in “Concrete Jungle” and “Slave Driver.”
120 119 Big Star Radio City +240 Ardent, 1974 Alex Chilton and his band of Memphis misfits were years ahead of their time — when they released Radio City in 1974, hardly anyone heard it. But like the Velvet Underground, they became hugely influential when future generations discovered them and got their minds blown. Big Star came up with their own skewed pop sound, filtering their love of the Beatles through their Memphis-soul roots. “September Gurls” and “Life Is White” should have been hits, soaring with the sweetly eccentric guitar chime and the romantic ache in Chilton’s voice.
121 120 Funkadelic Maggot Brain +16 Westbound, 1971 “Play like your mama just died,” bandleader/genius George Clinton said to guitarist Eddie Hazel. That morose instruction worked; nothing has ever sounded like the 10 minutes of anguished, fuzzed-up blues Hazel plays on the title song. (Clinton likened the playing to “a silver web.”) Clinton was a funk surrealist and a provocateur, but he’d also been in a doo-wop group and had written songs for Motown — he balanced multicolored futurism with old-school R&B chops on the swinging “Can You Get to That,” the psychedelic “You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks,” and “Super Stupid,” another showcase for Hazel’s dense, distorted riffing. As Clinton later asked defiantly, “Who says a funk band can’t play rock?”
122 121 Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention We're Only in It for the Money New in 2023
123 122 John Coltrane A Love Supreme -56 Impulse!, 1965 Two important things happened to John Coltrane in 1957: The saxophonist left Miles Davis’ employ to join Thelonious Monk’s band and hit new heights in extended, ecstatic soloing. Coltrane also kicked his heroin addiction, a vital step in a religious awakening that climaxed with this legendary album-long hymn of praise. The indelible four-note theme of the first movement, “Acknowledgment,” is the humble foundation of the suite. But Coltrane’s majestic, often violent blowing (famously described as “sheets of sound”) is never self-aggrandizing. Coltrane soars with nothing but gratitude and joy. You can’t help but go with him.
124 123 Beastie Boys Paul's Boutique +2 Capitol, 1989 “I went to this party in Los Angeles,” recalled Adam Horovitz, “and they were playing this music, like … four breakbeat records playing at the same time.” The party soundtrack consisted of tracks by the Dust Brothers, who ended up co-producing this entire second record from the Beasties, providing the rap trio with some of the best samples ever put on wax, including the Ramones, Mountain, and the Funky 4 Plus 1. Paul’s Boutique is also an extended goof on Abbey Road [see No. 5], which was Paul McCartney’s boutique — and like that record, it ambitiously stitches together song fragments in a way rarely heard before or since.
125 124 Jay-Z The Blueprint -74 Roc-A-Fella, 2001 With The Blueprint, Jay-Z took on anyone and everyone who wanted to sit on his throne, even the jesters. “Takeover,” one of rap’s most precise and unrelenting diss tracks, commits GBH on rappers Nas and Prodigy from Mobb Deep. When Hova isn’t taking shots at record executives, cops, critics, haters, biters, and his absent dad (and still, sadly, using the word “faggot”), he inches toward vulnerability on “Song Cry.” “Izzo (H.O.V.A.),” with dynamic production by Kanye West, gave him his first Top 10 single. Jay-Z elevates clever rhymes and innovations with an unmatched air of calm control and a cavalier confidence. Here’s the moral of the story, courtesy of “Takeover”: “You guys don’t want it with HOV.”
126 125 Lucinda Williams Car Wheels on a Gravel Road -27 Mercury, 1998 It took three torturous years to finish, but it was worth it; there are no bad songs on this alt-country masterwork. The title track is one of Williams’ best: Over guitars that owe more to the Stones than to the Opry, she tells a story about the rootlessness of American life. Williams, who was born in Louisiana, describes the South in a loving, fearful tone (“Broken down shacks, engine parts” in one song, “Busted-down doors and borrowed cash” in another) and mourns pals who fell prey to hard liquor, drugs, or dreams of stardom. With production help from Roy Bittan of the E Street Band and a lot of twangy power chords, Williams rocks hard enough to give these troubled songs both dignity and a feeling of release.
127 126 Roxy Music Roxy Music New in 2023
128 127 The Ramones Ramones -80
129 128 Frank Sinatra Songs for Swingin' Lovers! New in 2023
130 129 Bruce Springsteen The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle +216 Columbia, 1973 Reeling from the commercial fizzle of his debut LP, Bruce Springsteen threw off the “new Dylan” baggage and applied his Jersey-bar-band skills to some of the funniest tunes he’d ever write: “Rosalita,” “Kitty’s Back,” and the boardwalk love song “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy).” The music is loose, jazzy, and full of ambition — a studio take on the live muscle that Springsteen was already famous for — and “New York City Serenade” is the first of Springsteen’s epic street operas.
131 130 Tim Buckley Happy Sad New in 2023
132 131 Black Sabbath Paranoid +8 Vertigo, 1970 If you think Ozzy’s enduring fame is impressive, try taking a time machine back to the early Seventies and telling rock critics they’ll still be writing about Paranoid 50 years after its release. But Sabbath ruled for bummed-out kids in the Seventies, and nearly every heavy-metal and extreme rock band of the past three decades — from Metallica to Nirvana to Mastodon — owes a debt of worship to Tony Iommi’s crushing, granite-fuzz guitar chords, the Visigoth rhythm machine of Bill Ward and Geezer Butler, and Ozzy Osbourne’s agonized bray in “Paranoid,” “Iron Man,” and “War Pigs.”
133 132 The B-52's The B-52's +66 Warner Bros., 1979 The debut by the B-52’s sounds like a bunch of high school friends cramming all their running jokes, goofy sounds, and private nicknames into a New Wave record. “We never thought it would get past our circle of friends in Athens [Georgia],” vocalist Fred Schneider told Rolling Stone. It turned out that nobody could resist the band’s campy, arty funk, or the eccentric squeals and bouffant hairdos of Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson. (Playing organ, Pierson also defined the band’s sound.) They played toy instruments, and their thrift-store image was as inventive and colorful as their music — which, with “Rock Lobster,” was pretty inventive and colorful.
134 133 The Stooges Raw Power New in 2023
135 134 The Beatles A Hard Day's Night +129 United Artists, 1964 This soundtrack to the Richard Lester film cemented all that U.S. listeners had heard about the Beatles’ genius in the off-kilter beauty of John Lennon’s “If I Fell” and the rockabilly bounce of Paul McCartney’s “Can’t Buy Me Love.” It was their first album of all-original material, showcasing leaps in their songwriting as well as new tricks like George Harrison’s 12-string guitar, picked up on tour in America, and the Dylanesque harmonica blast that opens “I Should Have Known Better.”
136 135 Sleater-Kinney Dig Me Out +54 Kill Rock Stars, 1997 “I wanna be your Joey Ramone,” Corin Tucker promised on Sleater-Kinney’s 1996 album, Call the Doctor. Their next record made good on that mythic ambition. When drummer Janet Weiss joined singer-guitarists Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, a riot-grrrl force of nature became one of the world’s most potent rock bands. Tucker’s indelible vibrato takes off with avenging-angel ferocity on songs like the almost impossibly explosive title track and “Words and Guitar,” an awe-inspiring statement of rock & roll’s power to transform a broken world.
137 136 Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti +8 Swan Song, 1975 The last great Led Zeppelin album is — like most 1970s double LPs — a bloated beast. But its self-indulgent swagger is the very unifying thing that makes it so much fun — and one of the heaviest records of the Seventies. Physical Graffiti is the ultimate in Zeppelin’s attempts to fuse East and West, exploring the Arabic and Indian sonorities of “Kashmir” and “In the Light.” It’s Zeppelin’s most eclectic album, featuring down-and-dirty blues (“Black Country Woman,” “Boogie With Stu”), pop balladry (“Down by the Seaside”), metal riffs (“The Wanton Song”), and the 11-minute “In My Time of Dying.” An excessive album from the group that all but invented excess.
138 137 George Harrison All Things Must Pass +231 Apple, 1970 After the end of the Beatles, the Quiet One suddenly looked like the one best prepared for the solo life. After years of writing in the shadow of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, George Harrison had enough songs saved up to make his solo debut a triple album, featuring friends like Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and Ringo Starr. All Things Must Pass is full of spiritual guitar quests like “Isn’t It a Pity” and “My Sweet Lord,” the first Number One hit to include a Hare Krishna chant.
139 138 Ornette Coleman The Shape of Jazz to Come +279 Atlantic, 1959 Ornette Coleman’s sound was so out there, one audience at an early gig threw his tenor sax over a cliff. He switched to alto and pioneered free jazz: no chords, no harmony, any player can take the lead. It’s still a jarring sound to encounter for the first time, but Coleman’s freedom was grounded in the cathartic release of the gospel and blues of his native Texas. On his first album for Atlantic Records, his music can be just as lyrical as it is demanding, particularly on the haunting “Lonely Woman.”
140 139 R.E.M. Automatic for the People -43 Warner Bros., 1992 “It doesn’t sound a whole lot like us,” warned guitarist Peter Buck. But by stripping back their sound to a spare, largely acoustic essence, the college-rock kings made the most powerful album of their career — an argument for sweetness and softness in an increasingly hard world. The bold sonic change-up laid bare Michael Stipe’s keening baritone and expansive vocal melodies, accentuated in several songs by Led Zeppelin member John Paul Jones’ gorgeous string arrangements. The album “was beautiful. It was quiet,” Stipe said. “It flew in the face of everything that was going down musically at the time.” At a time when grunge angst ruled, songs like “Everybody Hurts” and the lovely “Find the River” offered solace.
141 140 Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here +124 Columbia, 1975 For the follow-up to Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd got even darker, exploring their main themes of lunacy and alienation. The poignant title ballad is a lament for their ex-bandmate Syd Barrett, one of the Sixties’ saddest acid casualties. They pay tribute in “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” a 26-minute, nine-part suite that both opens and closes the album, with David Gilmour’s elegiac guitar. They also skewer the music business in “Have a Cigar” and “Welcome to the Machine.”
142 141 The Notorious B.I.G. Ready to Die -119 Bad Boy, 1994 The Notorious B.I.G. spread the love the Brooklyn way on his classic debut, introducing us to the most immediately likable voice in hip-hop history. “I made the record for New York, but I want the world to hear it,” he said. Ready to Die executive producer Sean “Puffy” Combs, who’d read about the fledgling Brooklyn rapper in The Source magazine, pushed his new discovery to leaven the stick-up-kid self-mythologizing of “Machine Gun Funk” and “Gimme the Loot” with inviting party-up pop like “Big Poppa” and the ecstatically playful origin story “Juicy.” But it was Biggie’s gift of gab, enormous personality, and sense of humor that made Ready to Die so wonderful — whether he was offering a 360-degree vision of the mean streets of Fort Greene on “Things Done Changed,” kicking it Bonnie and Clyde-style on “Me and My Bitch,” or delivering rags-to-riches brags like “Birthdays was the worst days/Now we sip champagne when we’re thirsty.” In the process, he changed rap forever. He ends the album with the dark prophecy of “Suicidal Thoughts.” As with Kurt Cobain, his tragic death while still in his twenties will always leave us wondering how far he might have gone.
143 142 N.W.A Straight Outta Compton -72 Ruthless, 1988 N.W.A’s debut brought West Coast gangsta rap to Middle America and changed hip-hop forever. It was the launching pad for the careers of Ice Cube, Eazy-E, and Dr. Dre. “Back then we was calling it ‘reality rap,’” Ice Cube told Rolling Stone years later. “‘Gangsta rap’ is the name that the media coined.” Ice Cube’s rage and Dr. Dre’s police-siren street beats combined for a truly fearsome sound on “Express Yourself” and “Straight Outta Compton.” But it was the protest track “Fuck Tha Police” that earned the crew its biggest honor: a threatening letter from the FBI.
144 143 Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Murder Ballads New in 2023
145 144 Jackson Browne Late for the Sky New in 2023
146 145 Portishead Dummy -14 Go! Beat, 1994 It’s difficult to sustain, over an entire album, something as vague as ambiance, but Portishead did it on their debut. Along with fellow Bristol, England, innovators Massive Attack, they headed up the trendy mid-Nineties trip-hop movement. Long after the genre petered out, their debut remains immersive and haunting, built on skittering break beats, jazzy samples, spare arrangements, and discomforting pauses. But it’s singer Beth Gibbon’s brooding, pop-cabaret vocals that make it feel classic, hinting at real pain below trip-hop’s stoned exterior. The result was cinematic enough to recall John Barry’s lustrous scores for James Bond films.
147 146 Björk Homogenic +56 Elektra, 1997 Björk’s third album was a departure from the fun, playful electronics of her mid-Nineties solo sets Debut and Post, adopting a more uniform, chilly, and distinctly Icelandic sound in its fusion of trip-hop with neo-classical strings. “Jóga,” with its stratosphere-high vocals and beats inspired by volcanic eruptions, may be Björk’s signature song, but it’s only one sample of the album’s palette, jagged and luminescent like broken stained glass. The sheer beauty underneath its boldness and abrasion has enraptured countless artists, from Thom Yorke to Arca, in the years since its release.
148 147 Charles Mingus The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady New in 2023
149 148 Liz Phair Exile in Guyville -92 Matador, 1993 “Watch how fast they run to the flame,” Liz Phair sang, and true to that promise her debut double LP set the underground on fire. Phair and co-producer Brad Wood built off the bedroom demo intimacy of Phair’s Girly-Sound cassette releases, creating a loose response record to the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street (“I had a lot to say on the subject matter they put forth,” she told Rolling Stone). Her strikingly frank sex talk caused a media stir unheard of for a “low-fi” artitst, but it was the caffeinated drive of songs like “6’1” and “Never Said,” the painterly sonic impressionism of the piano piece “Canary” or the sunset majestic “Stratford-On-Guy,” and the real hurt and hunger of “Fuck and Run” and “Divorce Song” that made Exile hit home.
150 149 Run-D.M.C. Raising Hell New in 2023 Profile, 1986 Working for the first time with producer Rick Rubin, the Hollis, Queens, crew of Run, DMC, and Jam Master Jay made an album so undeniable, it forced the mainstream to cross over to hip-hop. “Peter Piper” kicked the rhymes over a jingling cowbell sampled from an old jazz-fusion record. On “My Adidas,” “It’s Tricky,” and “You Be Illin’,” Run and DMC talked trash while the DJ made their day. They even hit MTV with a vandalistic remake of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way,” featuring Steven Tyler and Joe Perry.
151 150 Guided by Voices Bee Thousand New in 2023
152 151 The Jesus and Mary Chain Psychocandy New in 2023
153 152 Miles Davis Bitches Brew -65 Columbia, 1970 In February 1969, Miles Davis recorded In a Silent Way, a bold step into ambient funk and electric futurism. Then just six months later, he was back in the studio, driven by his desire to assemble “the best damn rock & roll band in the world.” The idea was to connect his music to the audience of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. The result was this double album of jazz-rock fusion, cut in three days of on-the-spot improvisations with an electric orchestra that included three keyboardists, three drummers, two bassists, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, and guitarist John McLaughlin. The music was full of visceral thrills and the brooding darkness Davis brought to everything he touched.
154 153 Elliott Smith Either/Or +63 Kill Rock Stars, 1997 Elliott Smith had ambitions to make records with a Beatlesque sound — but zero interest in Beatlesque fame — when he recorded Either/Or. While he achieved his dreams on several subsequent major-label releases, the Portland, Oregon, indie-folk singer-songwriter’s third album resonates because of his low-fi whisper and gritty, sepia-toned lyrics. His songs struck a nerve well beyond the Northwest music scene — Madonna, of all people, covered the morosely pretty drunk’s lullaby “Between the Bars.”
155 154 The Kinks Something Else by the Kinks +324 Pye, 1968 Something Else was a commercial flop that nearly killed the band, but it shows off Ray Davies’ genius for writing about the secret lives of everyday people. “Waterloo Sunset” is a gorgeously chilly ballad about a lonely man watching lovers from his window; “Two Sisters” celebrates a housewife dancing around her house with curlers in her hair. He’s got poetic compassion for all these characters, even as he witnesses their private pain in “No Return,” “Afternoon Tea,” and “End of the Season.”
156 155 Joni Mitchell Court and Spark -45 Asylum, 1974 Joni Mitchell followed up Blue with the underrated For the Roses, a set of harmonically and lyrically complex songs. Court and Spark is, in comparison, smoother and more straight-ahead; it became the biggest record of her career, hitting Number Two. Working with saxophonist Tom Scott’s fusion group, L.A. Express, Mitchell settled into a folk-pop-jazz groove that remains a landmark of breezy sophistication, particularly on the Top 10 single “Help Me.” Strange but true: A cover of “Twisted,” by the scat-jazz vocal group Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, closes the album — with stoner comics Cheech and Chong singing backup.
157 156 AC/DC Back in Black -72 Atlantic, 1980 In the middle of album rehearsals, singer Bon Scott went on a drinking spree; he choked on his vomit and was found dead in the back seat of a car. After two days of mourning, guitarist Malcolm Young thought, “Well, fuck this, I’m not gonna sit around mopin’ all fuckin’ year.” He called his brother, guitarist Angus Young, and they went back to work with replacement vocalist Brian Johnson. The resulting album has the relentless logic of a sledgehammer. Back in Black remains the purest distillation of hard rock: “Hells Bells,” “You Shook Me All Night Long,” and the title track have all become enduring anthems of strutting blues-based guitar.
158 157 Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers Damn the Torpedoes +74 Backstreet, 1979 With hair like Jagger’s and a voice like Dylan’s in tune, Tom Petty and his bar band defrilled classic rock: In 1979, he filed for bankruptcy; then Torpedoes took off, mostly because “Here Comes My Girl” seemed to keep the promises those like Jagger et al., forgot they’d made. Perfectly produced by future music-industry megamogul Jimmy Iovine, Torpedoes gave bright jangling Sixties rock a sheen that made pretty much everything else on AOR radio seem lumpy and stiff, while Petty’s obvious authenticity kept the music from ever seeming calculated or overly polished.
159 158 Iggy Pop Lust for Life New in 2023
160 159 The Doors The Doors -73 Elektra, 1967 After blowing minds as the house band at the Whisky-a-Go-Go, where they were fired for playing the Oedipal drama “The End,” the Doors were ready to unleash their organ-driven rock on the world. “On each song, we had tried every possible arrangement,” drummer John Densmore said, “so we felt the whole album was tight.” “Break on Through (To the Other Side),” “Twentieth Century Fox,” and “Crystal Ship” are pop-art lighting for Top 40 attention spans. But the Doors hit pay dirt by editing one of their jam songs for airplay: “Light My Fire,” written by guitarist Robbie Krieger, after Jim Morrison told everybody in the band to write a song with universal imagery.
161 160 Beck Odelay +264 Geffen, 1996 Burrowing into the studio with the Dust Brothers, Beck came back with a Technicolor version of his Woody Guthrie-meets-Grandmaster Flash vision, demonstrating to all his rock peers on “Devil’s Haircut” and “Where It’s At” that turntables had a brighter future than refried grunge, while reminding listeners of the Sixties and his own folk roots with the shabby, lovely “Jack-Ass.” As he told Rolling Stone in 1997, “I’m a traditionalist in a lot of ways. A lot of what my generation is into, what it represents, I’m totally against.”
162 161 The Zombies Odessey and Oracle +82 Date, 1968 The Zombies broke up two weeks after they completed Odessey and Oracle, in December 1967, and the album wasn’t released in the U.S. until 1969. But its baroque psychedelic-pop arrangements continue to exert a powerful influence, particularly on whimsy-loving indie rockers. Recorded in London at both Abbey Road and a Stones haunt, Olympic Studios, Odessey combined the adventure of Sgt. Pepper with the concision of British Invasion pop. And “Time of the Season” went on to become a Number Three hit.
163 162 Neutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the Sea +214 Merge, 1998 The Louisiana band nearly pulled off an indie-rock Pet Sounds with their second album, leavening low-fi guitar racket and twee folk with circus-y instruments like the singing saw and zanzithophone, as leader Jeff Magnum cut through the irony of the Seinfeld/Pavement era with his heraldic surrealist yammerings about broken homes, Anne Frank, religion, scary sexual awakenings, and other coming-of-age traumas. It’s weird, raw, harrowing stuff; if you think you can’t be moved by a song called “The King of Carrot Flowers Pts. 2 & 3,” hearing is believing.
164 163 Cream Disraeli Gears +7 Reaction, 1967 Of all Cream’s studio albums, Disraeli Gears is the sharpest and most linear. The power trio focused their instrumental explorations into colorful pop songs: “Strange Brew” (slinky funk), “Dance the Night Away” (trippy jangle), “Tales of Brave Ulysses” (a wah-wah freakout that Eric Clapton wrote with Martin Sharp, who created the kaleidoscopic cover art). The hit “Sunshine of Your Love” nearly didn’t make it onto the record; the band had trouble nailing it until famed Atlantic Records engineer Tom Dowd suggested that Ginger Baker try a Native American tribal beat, a simple adjustment that locked the song into place.
165 164 Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 +76 RCA, 1985 Sam Cooke was elegance and soul personified, but he works this Florida club until it’s hotter than hell, all while sounding like he never breaks a sweat. He croons and strokes “For Sentimental Reasons” like a superlover, and when the crowd sings along with him, it’s magic. RCA Records originally shelved the album out of fear that Cooke’s raw performance might alienate crossover (read: white) audiences. When it was finally released more than 20 years after he recorded, Live at the Harlem Square Club gave many fans a whole new perspective of his greatness.
166 165 De La Soul 3 Feet High and Rising -62 Tommy Boy, 1989 Long Island high school friends Posdnuos, Trugoy, and Maseo linked up with Stetsasonic DJ Prince Paul to create a left-field hip-hop masterpiece, heralding a “D.A.I.S.Y. Age” and weaving samples of Steely Dan, Malcolm McLaren, and Johnny Cash with raps about everything from Public Enemy-style politics (“Ghetto Thang”) to individualism (“Take It Off”) to body odor (“A Little Bit of Soap”). “There was no plan back then,” Trugoy told Rolling Stone in 2009. Indeed, De La Soul’s anything-goes spirit sparked generations of oddballs to rise up and get theirs.
167 166 Aretha Franklin I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You -153 Atlantic, 1967 Aretha Franklin’s Atlantic debut is the place where gospel music collided with R&B and rock & roll and became soul. The Detroit-born preacher’s daughter was about $80,000 in debt to her previous label, Columbia, when Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler signed her in 1966. “I took her to church,” Wexler said, “sat her down at the piano, and let her be herself.” Recording with the best session men at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, she promptly cut the album’s title hit, a slow-fire ballad of ferocious sexuality. The historic moment, of course, was her storefront-church makeover of Otis Redding’s “Respect,” which became Franklin’s first Number One pop single, prompting Redding to exclaim, “I just lost my song.” Soon, it would be the new marching anthem of the women’s and civil rights movements. “Women did, and still do, need equal rights,” Franklin said decades later. “We’re doing the same job, we expect the same pay, and the same respect.” She reinforced that feminism on “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” and had the guts to wring more pathos from Sam Cooke’s civil rights anthem, “A Change Is Gonna Come,” than any other singer who has attempted that landmark song. Never Loved a Man began an unparalleled run of classic albums for Franklin; it’s the sound of the Queen of Soul claiming her crown.
168 167 The Pretenders Pretenders -15 Sire, 1980 After years of knocking around Ohio and England, writing record reviews and hanging with the Sex Pistols, Chrissie Hynde put together a band as tough as her attitude. The Pretenders’ debut is filled with no-nonsense New Wave rock such as “Mystery Achievement” — plus a cover of “Stop Your Sobbing,” by the Kinks’ Ray Davies (three years later, the father of Hynde’s child). The biggest hit was “Brass in Pocket,” a song of ambition and seduction. Hynde, however, wasn’t so sure about the song’s success. “I was embarrassed by it,” she said. “I hated it so much that if I was in Woolworth’s and they started playing it, I’d have to run out of the store.”
169 168 Buzzcocks Singles Going Steady +82 I.R.S., 1979 Some punks wanted to smash the state. The Buzzcocks just wanted to find someone to love, and if you didn’t return their intense affection, watch out (check the jilted tantrum “Oh Shit!”). Singles collects eight British 45s into a perfect punk album. This Manchester group took the sound of the Ramones and made it jittery and even faster. Songs such as “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays” define a world of permanently frustrated punk desire.
170 169 Moby Grape Moby Grape New in 2023
171 170 Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin -69 Atlantic, 1969 On their first album, Led Zeppelin were still in the process of inventing their own sound, moving on from the heavy rave-ups of guitarist Jimmy Page’s previous band, the Yardbirds. But from the beginning, Zeppelin had the astonishing fusion of Page’s lyrical guitar playing and Robert Plant’s paint-peeling love-hound yowl. “We were learning what got us off most and what got people off most,” said Plant. Yet the template for everything Zeppelin achieved in the 1970s is here: brutal rock (“Communication Breakdown”), thundering power balladry (“Your Time Is Gonna Come”), and acid-flavored folk blues (“Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”).
172 171 Dr. Dre The Chronic -134 Deathrow, 1992 When George Clinton first heard hip-hop artists blending old records with new beats, he wasn’t too impressed. But then Dr. Dre turned samples of Clinton’s P-Funk sides into G-Funk, and Dr. Funkenstein approved, calling funk “the DNA of hip-hop and rap.” Dre had already taken gangsta rap to the mainstream with his earlier group, N.W.A, but on The Chronic, he funked up the rhymes with a smooth bass-heavy production style and the laid-back delivery of then-unknown rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg. When Dre and Snoop dropped “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang,” there was no getting out of the way.
173 172 Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot +53 Nonesuch, 2001 When Reprise Records refused to release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco posted it for free on the internet. Two-hundred-thousand downloads later, Nonesuch Records (owned by the same company as Reprise) released the album, and it became critical and commercial gold. Its pretty acoustic-guitar melodies battled noise, skidded into dissonance, or got chopped off abruptly. Its lyrics pitted hope against doubt, with all bets off. “You have to learn how to die,” crooned Jeff Tweedy, “if you wanna … be alive.”
174 173 Big Brother & the Holding Company Cheap Thrills +199 Columbia, 1968 After Big Brother’s performance at the Monterey Pop Festival made Janis Joplin a star, fans were heatedly expecting a live album from them. But their in-the-red loudness and sloppy performances meant they had to cut their second album in a New York studio, with crowd noise added in later. “We’re just a sloppy group of street freaks,” Joplin said. But these San Francisco acid rockers were the most simpatico band she ever had, especially when their raw racket backs Joplin up on “Piece of My Heart,” perhaps her greatest recording.
175 174 Creedence Clearwater Revival Green River New in 2023
176 175 Björk Post New in 2023
177 176 PJ Harvey To Bring You My Love New in 2023
178 177 Dire Straits Dire Straits New in 2023
179 178 Pulp Different Class -16 Island, 1995 Pulp blew up in the Brit-pop scene of the 1990s, yet Jarvis Cocker outclassed all his rivals as a master storyteller and wit. This man was a born rock star in the Bowie mode, striking a pose in his thrift-shop razzmatazz, but with his own sly sense of compassion. On Different Class, he croons his breathy tales of working-class lust, envy, and dread, over the swishy, trash-disco grooves of “Common People” and “Disco 2000.” You can hear the shabby glamour in his voice when he sighs, “I’ve kissed your mother twice/And now I’m working on your dad.” But in the finale, “Bar Italia,” he makes a post-clubbing hangover sound like the most romantic adventure in the world.
180 179 X-Ray Spex Germfree Adolescents +175 EMI, 1978 Teenage multiracial London girl Poly Styrene had braces on her teeth and wore Day-Glo rags, screeching anthems like “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” over saxophone blasts, and chanting, “I am a poseur and I don’t care! I like to make people stare!” X-Ray Spex’s explosive punk-rock debut went criminally unreleased in the U.S., but it became a word-of-mouth cult classic throughout the indie-rock underground in the Eighties and Nineties, influencing Sleater-Kinney, the Beastie Boys, and many others.
181 180 Black Flag Damaged +307 SST, 1981 MCA refused to release this album, denouncing it as “immoral” and “anti-parent.” High praise, but Black Flag lived up to it, defining L.A. hardcore punk with Greg Ginn’s violent guitar and the pissed-off scream of Henry Rollins, especially on “TV Party” and “Rise Above,” which came with the timeless smash-the-glass salvo “We are tired of your abuse/Try to stop is but it’s no use.” Punks still listen to Damaged, and parents still hate it.
182 181 The Flying Burrito Brothers The Gilded Palace of Sin +281 A&M, 1969 A landmark of country rock — or, as Gram Parsons called it, “cosmic American music.” He and Chris Hillman were a pair of ex-Byrds who’d flown the coop. The Burritos put their poetic twist on hillbilly twang, proudly wearing Nudie suits and bringing in the pedal steel guitar of Sneaky Pete Kleinow. “Boy, I love them,” Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone. “Their record instantly knocked me out.” They sing “Sin City” in high-lonesome two-part harmony, sounding like country boys lost in the decadence of Sixties L.A.; “Wheels” is God-fearing hippie soul.
183 182 Richard Hell & the Voidoids Blank Generation New in 2023
184 183 T. Rex Electric Warrior +5 Reprise, 1971 “A successful, hit rock & roll record is a spell,” T. Rex leader Marc Bolan told Rolling Stone. And so, muttering “eye of Bowie, toe of Slade,” Bolan cast a spell over all of England. He took his Tolkienesque hippie music and gave it a glammed-out Chuck Berry update on sexy singles like “Bang a Gong (Get It On)”; this was rock that thrusted, quivered, and recklessly employed metaphors equating cars with sex (“You got a hubcap diamond star halo”). He outdid himself with “Jeepster,” an entire song on the topic, vibrating with lust, a shuffling beat, lots of guitar, and the sound of Bolan stomping on the studio floor.
185 184 Patsy Cline The Ultimate Collection +45 Universal, 2000 Her career was cut short when she died in a plane crash at 30, but Patsy Cline made her mark as one of country’s great singers. “Even though her style is considered country, her delivery is more like a classic pop singer,” Lucinda Williams has noted. Her hits “Walkin’ After Midnight” and “I Fall to Pieces” also made it to the pop charts, establishing the template for country crossover that pointed the way forward for generations; her version of “Crazy” was a godsend to the song’s struggling writer, a young Willie Nelson.
186 185 Galaxie 500 On Fire New in 2023
187 186 Isaac Hayes Hot Buttered Soul +187 Enterprise, 1969 Isaac Hayes demanded Stax Records give him complete artistic control for his second album. What happened next sounded like nothing else in music at the time, an orchestral-soul watershed that forecast R&B’s turn toward symphonic excess and plush introspect. Hayes’ 12-minute Southern-psychedelic version of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David “Walk On By” and his spectacularly tortured 18-minute take on Jimmy Webb’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” took easy-listening tunes and refashioned them in his own radically laid-back image.
188 187 Madonna Like a Prayer +144 Sire, 1989 “I like the challenge of merging art and commerce,” Madonna told Rolling Stone. After dominating Eighties pop without always getting the critical respect she deserved, Madonna finally won artistic recognition with her most personal set of songs, including “Till Death Do Us Part” and “Oh Father.” And she nailed the commerce side with “Express Yourself” and the title track, the video of which had the Vatican talking about blasphemy. “I pray when I’m in trouble or when I’m happy,” she said. “When I feel any sort of extreme.” Like a Prayer fused all of her extremes brilliantly.
189 188 New York Dolls New York Dolls +113 Mercury, 1973 “Do you think that you could make it with Frankenstein?” they asked, not kidding. Glammed-out punkers the New York Dolls snatched riffs from Chuck Berry and Fats Domino and fattened them with loads of attitude and reverb. Produced by Todd Rundgren, songs like “Personality Crisis” and “Bad Girl” drip with sleaze and style. “What the Dolls did to be influential on punk was show that anybody could do it,” singer David Johansen said. Indeed, its hard to imagine the Ramones or the Replacements or a thousand other trash-junky bands without them.
190 189 The Specials The Specials New in 2023
191 190 Buffalo Springfield Buffalo Springfield Again New in 2023
192 191 The Gun Club Fire of Love New in 2023
193 192 Pink Floyd The Wall -63 Columbia, 1979 Pink Floyd’s most elaborately theatrical album was inspired by their own success: the alienating enormity of their tours after The Dark Side of the Moon [see No. 55], which was when bassist-lyricist Roger Waters first hit upon a wall as a metaphor for isolation and rebellion. He finished a demo of the work by July 1978; the double album then took the band a year to make. Rock’s ultimate self-pity opera, The Wall is also hypnotic in its indulgence: the totalitarian thunder of “In the Flesh?”; the suicidal languor of “Comfortably Numb”; the Brechtian drama of “The Trial.” Rock-star hubris has never been more electrifying.
194 193 Dinosaur Jr. You're Living All Over Me New in 2023
195 194 Randy Newman Good Old Boys New in 2023
196 195 Hole Live Through This -89 Geffen, 1994 One week before Hole’s breakthrough album was released, Kurt Cobain killed himself and made Courtney Love a widow. The media attention that followed guaranteed a close listen for Love’s fearsome songs and her shift from pure riot-grrrl punk to a more stable sound that MTV could embrace. Her coded songs have dark topics, including death (“Kill me pills”), violence (“Pee girl gets the belt”), and body shame (“Bad skin, doll heart”), as well as motherhood. (Cobain and Love became parents two years earlier, and briefly lost custody after she was reported to have used heroin while pregnant.) The horror in Love’s exposed voice on “Asking for It” and “Doll Parts” gives immediacy to her firsthand stories about being an outcast “pee girl.”
197 196 The Raincoats The Raincoats +202 Rough Trade, 1979 The Raincoats came up with one of the most experimental and thrilling sounds to emerge from the London punk explosion — four women making their own gloriously unkempt racket. As guitarist Ana Da Silva explained, “We rehearsed for hours, but we always fell apart.” Da Silva and Gina Birch chant over Palmolive’s manic drums and Vicky Aspinall’s buzz-saw violin, for gems like “In Love” and their gender-twisted cover of the Kinks’ “Lola.” Their debut album finally got its long-overdue U.S. release in 1993, at the insistence of Raincoats superfan Kurt Cobain.
198 197 Massive Attack Blue Lines +44 Wildbunch/Virgin, 1991 Perhaps the first post-hip-hop masterpiece: Blue Lines combined rap, dub, and soul that gave birth to trip-hop; if you ever found yourself in a “chillout room” in 1995, this album was probably on, and it can still suck you into its gravitational pull. In the U.K., where acid house and jungle were the dominant sounds, its creepingly slow ambiance knocked the music world on its back. “What’s important to us is the pace,” said the band’s 3D, “the weight of the bass and the mood.”
199 198 The Modern Lovers The Modern Lovers +90 Beserkley, 1976 Jonathan Richman moved from Boston to New York as a teenager in hopes of sleeping on Lou Reed’s couch. That influence shows on the two-chord anthem “Roadrunner.” Recorded in 1972 but not released until 1976, Lovers turned the tough sounds of the Velvets into an ode to suburban romanticism. “Rock & roll was about stuff that was natural,” Richman said. “I wasn’t about drugs and space.” Songs like “Pablo Picasso,” “Girl Friend,” and “Dignified and Old” touched generations of punk and indie-rock innocents.
200 199 The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East New in 2023 Capricorn, 1971 Although this double album is the perfect testimony to the Allman Brothers’ improvisational skills, it is also evidence of their unprecedented connection with the crowds at New York’s Fillmore East. “The audience would kind of play along with us,” singer-organist Gregg Allman said of those March 1971 shows. “They were right on top of every single vibration coming from the stage.” The guitar team of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts was at its peak, seamlessly fusing blues and jazz in “Whipping Post” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” But their telepathy was cut short: Just three months after the album’s release, Duane died in a motorcycle accident.
201 200 Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy -183 Roc-A-Fella, 2010 Our relationship with Kanye West was still in its love-hate phase when he created the 21st century’s most awe-inspiring hip-hop masterpiece. It’s an album every bit as chaotic as he was at the time — from the creepy funk of “Gorgeous” to the crushing attack of “Hell of a Life.” After his Taylor Swift VMAs fiasco in 2009, West went into a kind of self-exile, eventually ending up in Hawaii, where he imported a huge group of collaborators who included Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, Nicki Minaj, and RZA. In all-night recording sessions, he’d ping between studios, sculpting his most maximalist music ever; “a song like ‘Power’ took 5,000 hours,” he later said, “like literally.” West pulled from everywhere — Elton John played on “All of the Lights,” and “Power” sampled prog-rockers King Crimson. West’s sense of his own grandiose ambitions bordered on the comical; during the writing process for the nine-minute “Runaway,” he famously told guest rapper Pusha T to add “more douchebag” to his verses. The resulting track opened with just a single, eerie piano note before building into a mountainous, anarchic tune that incorporated everything from a Rick James sample to a vocoder that evoked Robert Fripp’s guitar playing on Brian Eno albums. The sonic overkill was lavish, but the record hit so hard because he mixed megalomania with introspect; “You been puttin’ up wit’ my shit just way too long,” he rapped on “Runaway.” West later called Dark Fantasy an apology record.” Perhaps. In any case, that wisdom has proved fleeting.
202 201 Pixies Surfer Rosa +189 4AD, 1988 The brainy Boston quartet went up against punk producer Steve Albini for one of the era’s most influential rock sounds: all razor-blade guitars and drum thud. It became the sound of the Nineties, as everyone from Nirvana to PJ Harvey went to Albini, hoping to get the raw power of Surfer Rosa. Black Francis goes from a whisper to a scream in oddities like “Bone Machine,” “River Euphrates,” and “Where Is My Mind?” But bassist (and future Breeder) Kim Deal steals the show with her cheeky Midwest vocals in “Gigantic.”
203 202 Arcade Fire Funeral +298 Merge, 2004 Loss, love, forced coming-of-age, and fragile generational hope: Arcade Fire’s debut touched on all these themes as it defined the independent rock of the ‘00s. Built on family ties (leader Win Butler, his wife, Régine Chassagne, his brother Will), the Montreal band made symphonic rock that truly rocked, simultaneously outsize and deeply personal, like the best pop. But for all its sad realism, Butler’s is music that still finds solace, and purpose, in communal celebration.
204 203 LCD Soundsystem Sound of Silver +230 DFA/Capitol, 2007 James Murphy had proven his kung fu as the most badass electro-punk producer in clubland. But not even fierce fans dreamed he’d make a masterpiece like Sound of Silver. Every track sounded like a different band’s greatest hit, from the political punk goof “North American Scum” to the synth-pop breakup lament “Someone Great.” The song for the ages was “All My Friends,” huge, sweeping, ferociously emotional, with disco keyboards and rock guitars pulsing as Murphy looked back on a youth of killer parties and silent mornings.
205 204 The Go-Betweens 16 Lovers Lane New in 2023
206 205 Dr. John Gris-Gris +151 Atco, 1968 Mac Rebennack was a New Orleans piano player on songs for Professor Longhair and Frankie Ford who moved to L.A. in the Sixties, where he played on Phil Spector sessions and encountered California psychedelia. Rechristening himself Dr. John Creaux the Night Tripper, he made this swamp-funk classic. Gris-Gris blends New Orleans R&B, voodoo chants, and chemical inspiration. The groovy Afro-Caribbean percussion and creaky sound effects aren’t just otherworldly — they seem to come from several other worlds all at once.
207 206 D'Angelo Voodoo -178 EMI, 2000 In the five years following the release of his 1995 debut, Brown Sugar, D’Angelo grew disillusioned with the genre that had just anointed him a rising star. “I don’t consider myself an R&B artist,” the then-26-year-old told Jet. “R&B is pop, that’s the new word for R&B.” In his quest to create something new, he looked to both the masters of soul (Marvin, Curtis, Stevie) and contemporary innovators (Lauryn, Erykah). The end result was Voodoo, a moving, inventive masterpiece that stands as the ultimate achievement of the neo-soul era. Crafted with producer and drummer Questlove, who called the LP a “vicarious fantasy,” Voodoo places Pink Floyd-style cosmic jams (“Playa Playa”) next to Prince-inspired erotica (“Untitled [How Does It Feel]”). “I’m just looking at Voodoo as just the beginning,” D’Angelo said at the time. “It took a while, but I’m on my way now.”
208 207 Metallica Master of Puppets -110 Elektra, 1986 Metallica’s third album has a lyrical theme: manipulation. “It deals pretty much with drugs,” singer-guitarist James Hetfield said. “Instead of you controlling what you’re taking and doing, it’s drugs controlling you.” It also has a sonic theme: really loud guitars, played fast, with no regard for the hair metal that was then dominating the airwaves. When the band slows down on “Welcome Home (Sanitarium),” it just emphasizes the unrelenting nature of the rest of the songs. Recorded during three months in Copenhagen, Master of Puppets was bassist Cliff Burton’s last album with Metallica; he died in September 1986, when the band’s bus crashed.
209 208 Uncle Tupelo No Depression New in 2023
210 209 Outkast Aquemini -160 LaFace, 1998 The title of OutKast’s third album is a made-up word that combines the star signs of Big Boi (Aquarius) and André 3000 (Gemini). Their music is about duality too, matching Big Boi’s imperative to “make the club get crunk” with André’s determination to “activate the left and right brain.” André was the virtuoso, clipping off compound rhymes with grace, while Big Boi’s more grounded flow and clear diction rooted their songs. Hits like “Rosa Parks” put the duo’s hometown “Hotlanta” on the rap map, and at a time when formulaic albums by Master P and Puff Daddy topped the charts, OutKast unleashed an explosive sound that used live musicianship, social commentary, and a heavy dose of deep funk to create the greatest record ever to come out of the Dirty South.
211 210 Air Moon Safari New in 2023
212 211 Richard & Linda Thompson I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight +274 Island, 1974 With Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson was one of the first prominent Sixties folk rockers to look to his native England’s traditions for inspiration. After leaving Fairport, he joined with his wife, Linda Thompson to make stellar albums in the Seventies. Richard played guitar like a Sufi-mystic Neil Young; Linda had the voice of a Celtic Emmylou Harris. Bright Lights is their devastating masterwork of folk-rock dread. Radiohead even picked up some guitar tricks from “The Calvary Cross.”
213 212 The White Stripes Elephant +237 V2/XL/Third Man, 2003 The Stripes exploded out of Detroit with a minimalist garage-blues attack: just Jack White on guitar and Meg White on drums, taking on the world. These kids insisted they were a brother and sister, even after people learned they were secretly a divorced couple. But against all odds, the low-budget duo became a global sensation for their sheer rock power. Elephant seethes with raw desperation and lust in “Seven Nation Army,” “Hypnotize,” and “The Hardest Button to Button.” Jack plays guitar hero in the seven-minute jam “Ball and Biscuit.”
214 213 Cheap Trick In Color New in 2023
215 214 Traffic The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys New in 2023
216 215 Echo & the Bunnymen Heaven Up Here New in 2023
217 216 The Stone Roses The Stone Roses +103 Silvertone, 1989 For a few glorious moments at the dawn of the Nineties, the Stone Roses looked like they were going to lead another British Invasion, this one of baggy-panted, floppy-haired bands that loved Sixties guitars and rave-y dance beats with the same whimsical fervor. The sound never crossed over here, and the band fell apart — but first they made this incredible album, highlighted by the ecstatic eight-minute-long “I Am the Resurrection.” It laid the foundation for the Brit pop that blew up a few years later.
218 217 Can Ege Bamyasi +237 United Artists, 1972 Chugging out of Cologne, Germany, in the late Sixties, avant-psychedelic crew Can took influence from the Velvet Underground’s subterranean drones, Miles Davis’ molten jazz rock, and James Brown’s circular funk grooves. On Ege Bamyasi, new singer Damo Suzuki mumbles, chants, and shrieks his way through engulfing Kraut-boogie workouts like “Vitamin C” and “I’m So Green.” Spoon took their name from the LP’s Doors-meets-Stereolab closing track, and Kanye West sampled the lupine “Sing Swan Swing.”
219 218 Iggy & the Stooges Raw Power New in 2023
220 219 Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream +122 Virgin, 1993 “All these alternative bands today are so high up on their punk-rock horse that they’re in denial about being huge and playing big shows,” Billy Corgan told Rolling Stone in 1994. “Not only do we respect the clichés, we see the truth in them.” On their second disc, the Pumpkins pushed further from Nineties alt-rock to a grander, orchestrated sound with multiple guitar parts, strings, and a Mellotron. Alt-rock ended up following the band on its trip: Siamese Dream is packed with hits (“Cherub Rock,” “Today”).
221 220 50 Cent Get Rich or Die Tryin' +60 Interscope, 2002 The backstory — promising street rapper gets shot nine times and lives to make a classic debut — was irresistible. So were the precision-engineered beats and hooks 50 Cent cooked up with his new mentor, Dr. Dre. Through a mixture of melody and menace, 50 enraptured the suburbs with “In da Club” and antagonized an entire generation of his peers on “Many Men.” His hulking figure, physically and metaphorically, loomed over the rap charts for years, teaching a generation of artists that nothing sold like fear itself.
222 221 Peter Gabriel Peter Gabriel 3: Melt New in 2023
223 222 ABC The Lexicon of Love New in 2023
224 223 Bob Mould Workbook New in 2023
225 224 Guns N' Roses Appetite for Destruction -162 Geffen, 1987 The biggest-selling debut album of the Eighties, Appetite hit the metal scene like an asteroid, bringing the grit and fury of Seventies rock back to a mainstream hard-rock scene that was starved for something real. Indiana-bred Axl Rose’s five-alarm yowl bowled over listeners. Guitarist Slash gave the band blues emotion and punk energy, while the rhythm section brought the funk on hits such as “Welcome to the Jungle.” When all the elements came together, as in the final two minutes of “Paradise City,” GN’R left all other Eighties metal bands in the dust, and they knew it, too. “A lot of rock bands are too fucking wimpy to have any sentiment or any emotion,” Rose said. “Unless they’re in pain.”
226 225 Violent Femmes Violent Femmes New in 2023
227 226 Dexy's Midnight Runners Searching for the Young Soul Rebels New in 2023
228 227 Ray Charles Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music -100 ABC-Paramount, 1962 Country and soul were deeply entangled Southern traditions and had been cross-pollinating for years. But Modern Sounds was still the audacious boundary smasher its title promised, with Ray Charles applying his gospel grit and luscious soul-pop strings to standards by Hank Williams (“Half as Much,” “You Win Again,” “Hey, Good Lookin’”) and Eddy Arnold, whose lover’s lament “You Don’t Know Me” is recast as a parable about race relations in light of the civil rights struggle. Modern Sounds became the most popular album of Charles’ career and includes the hits “I Can’t Stop Loving You” and “Born to Lose.”
229 228 King Crimson In the Court of the Crimson King New in 2023
230 229 PJ Harvey Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea +84 Island, 2000 Polly Jean Harvey happy? Album number five found her in New York and in love, crowing “I’m immortal/When I’m with you” in the surging opener, “Big Exit.” Harvey had spent four records howling her sexual obsessions and romantic disappointments over stark postmodern blues. Her guitar attack was still forceful, but softened around the edges by marimba, piano, organ, and guest vocalist Thom Yorke, especially on the garage-y “Good Fortune” and the yearning “A Place Called Home” — mash notes to lovers in the big city.
231 230 My Morning Jacket Z New in 2023
232 231 The Feelies Crazy Rhythms New in 2023
233 232 Ice Cube AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted -45 Priority, 1990 Six months after quitting N.W.A, the group’s most gifted lyricist returned with a vengeance on AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, recorded with Public Enemy’s production crew, the Bomb Squad. Lyrically, it sharpened N.W.A’s politics; “Why more niggas in the pen than in college?” Cube asks on “The Nigga Ya Love to Hate.” The album’s rapacious sexism has aged horrendously, though give Cube some credit for being smart enough to include the stunning “It’s a Man’s World,” in which female rapper Yo-Yo tells him off straight to his face.
234 233 Graham Parker & the Rumour Squeezing Out Sparks New in 2023
235 234 Suicide Suicide +264 Red Star, 1977 These New York synth-punks evoke everything from the Velvet Underground to rockabilly. Martin Rev’s low-budget electronics are violent and hypnotic; Alan Vega screams as a rhythmic device. Late-night listening to “Frankie Teardrop,” a 10-minute-plus tale of a multiple murder, is not recommended. A droning voice in the wilderness when they appeared in the Seventies, the duo would influence bands from Arcade Fire and the National to Bruce Springsteen, who covered Suicide live in 2016.
236 235 Steely Dan Can't Buy a Thrill -67 ABC, 1972 Working as hired songwriters by day, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker rehearsed this debut in executives’ offices by night. “We play rock & roll, but we swing,” said Becker. For proof, check the cool lounge-jazz rhythms of “Do It Again” and the hot guitar of “Reelin’ in the Years.” Even florid lead vocalist David Palmer (who the band soon fired) couldn’t damage the sad, stately beauty of “Dirty Work”; on “Brooklyn,” Becker and Fagen wrote the perfect elusive ode to their native borough. Their debut kicked off an amazing run of albums, like 1973’s Countdown to Ecstasy and 1974’s Pretzel Logic, that are just as fantastic.
237 236 Belle & Sebastian If You're Feeling Sinister +245 Jeepster, 1996 Being a self-pitying shut-in has never sounded better than it does on the Scottish twee icons’ breakthrough. The chamber-folk arrangements are second to none — like a cup of tea brewed for you by a hopeless crush with a really good record collection — but don’t sleep on Stuart Murdoch’s subtly sardonic lyrics on “The Stars of Track and Field” and “Seeing Other People,” which give these wistful-sounding songs a bite that sets them apart from most imitators.
238 237 Cocteau Twins Heaven or Las Vegas +8 4AD, 1990 Cocteau Twins were Scot goths who helped invent the dream-pop aesthetic that ruled U.K. indie during the Eighties. Heaven or Las Vegas is their arrestingly beautiful pop peak, despite being released as the band itself was in turmoil, largely brought on by guitarist Robin Guthrie’s drug addiction. Somehow, they created something wholly transporting; Elizabeth Fraser’s celestial soprano works like a vocal Rorschach test, gorgeously floating over Guthrie and Simon Raymonde’s magic-hour instrumentation.
239 238 The Strokes Is This It -124 RCA, 2001 Before Is This It even came out, New York’s mod ragamuffins were overnight sensations, jumping from Avenue A to press hysteria and the inevitable backlash, all inside a year. The objective of Is This It, said singer Julian Casablancas, “was to be really cool and non-mainstream, and be really popular.” Recorded literally under the streets of New York, this blast of guitar-combo racket passionately reconciled those seemingly contradictory aspirations, and accomplished both, updating the propulsion of the Velvet Underground and the jangle of Seventies punk with Casablancas’ acidic dispatches mixed to the fore and ringed with distortion like he was singing from a pay phone.
240 239 The Cure Disintegration -123 Fiction, 1989 According to the kids on South Park, this is the best album ever made. According to many depressive Eighties-minded kids, it’s the only album ever made. Disintegration was the height of stadium goth rock, with the Cure stretching out for long, spacious wallows like ‘Plainsong” and “Prayers for Rain.” But it also shows off Robert Smith’s stunning pop mastery on “Lovesong,” which Smith wrote as a wedding present for his wife, and the rapturously forlorn “Pictures of You.” On “Fascination Street,” his voice shakes like milk as he makes adolescent angst sound so wonderfully, wonderfully pretty. “I was trying to put in one or two beacons of light in amongst the darkness,” he told Rolling Stone.
241 240 Eric B. & Rakim Paid in Full -179 4th & B’way, 1987 Ice-grilled, laid-back, diamond-sharp: Rakim was the Eighties’ greatest rapper, and this album is the record that cemented his legend. Paid in Full was one of the first hip-hop records to fully embrace Seventies funk samples on stone hip-hop classics such as “I Know You Got Soul” and “I Ain’t No Joke.” With a stark, chill declamatory flow that broke from the singsong-y style of most rapping at the time, Rakim moved hip-hop from stories about the world of the hood to ones about the mind (“I start to think and then I sink/Into the paper like I was ink”). Eric B. built the title track out of a luscious sampled bass line, and Rakim recounted days of poverty when he had “nothin’ but sweat inside my hand,” a problem solved by this debut’s platinum success.
242 241 Tom Waits Swordfishtrombones New in 2023
243 242 The Pogues Rum Sodomy & the Lash New in 2023
244 243 The Police Synchronicity -84 A&M, 1983 “I do my best work when I’m in pain and turmoil,” Sting told Rolling Stone. And indeed, the dissolution of his first marriage produced some of his best work, including “King of Pain” and the stalker’s anthem “Every Breath You Take.” There was pain and turmoil in the band, too — it would be the Police’s last album. But it became one of the Eighties’ biggest pop-rock blockbusters, perhaps the finest example of Sting’s unique gift for distilling complex psychological and romantic dramas, which still ruled radio and MTV, while making proggy musicianship and dense composition palatable to the mall-rat masses.
245 244 Blur Parklife +194 Food, 1994 Blur improbably burst into the mainstream with Parklife‘s “Girls & Boys,” a five-minute disco-rock barnburner about cross-dressing, bisexual libertines. They also sang about the joys of slacking (“Parklife”) but also how boring it is to conform (“End of the Century”), and they transformed a map of England into a metaphor for surviving rough patches (“This Is a Low”). Frontman Damon Albarn’s gifts for storytelling, singalong melodies, and Anglophilia set up Blur as heirs apparent to the Kinks and fierce rivals to Oasis for Brit pop’s crown.
246 245 Meat Puppets Meat Puppets II New in 2023
247 246 Scritti Politti Cupid & Psyche 85 New in 2023
248 247 Supertramp Crime of the Century New in 2023
249 248 Thelonious Monk Brilliant Corners New in 2023
250 249 Big Youth Screaming Target New in 2023
251 250 The Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs +156 Merge, 1999 “It started with the title,” Stephin Merritt said of 69 Love Songs, which he imagined in the Sinatra-era tradition of “theme” albums. A tour de force of pop mastery, his three-disc splurge had everything from lounge jazz to Podunk country to punk parody, peaking with sidelong standards like “Papa Was a Rodeo” and “The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side.” God-level moment: “The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure,” which is titled after a French linguist and rhymes his name with closure, bulldozer, and classic Motown songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland, hooking it all to an unforgettable tune.
252 251 Daft Punk Discovery -15 Virgin, 2001 The robot duo from France perfected house music as pop on their 1997 album Homework. For the follow-up, they took electronic dance music to a whole new place, with the vocoder euphoria of “One More Time” and the deep-groove delight “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,” where the title is chanted like a mantra at a dystopian corporate retreat. But even the winky moments have heart, like “Digital Love,” where Eighties guitar cheese takes off toward Tomorrowland.
253 252 Oasis (What's the Story) Morning Glory? -95 Epic, 1995 With their second album, the fighting Gallagher brothers embraced their Stones and Beatles comparisons, then went ahead and established themselves as a rock & roll force in their own right with barnburners (“Roll With It”) and epic tunes, like the glorious “Wonderwall.” “The whole of the first album is about escape,” Noel Gallagher told Rolling Stone in 1996, of 1994’s Definitely Maybe. “It’s about getting away from the shitty, boring life of Manchester. The first album is about dreaming of being a pop star in a band. The second album is about actually being a pop star in a band.”
254 253 The Impressions The Impressions' Greatest Hits New in 2023
255 254 Radiohead Kid A -234 Parlophone, 2000 A new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century, Radiohead’s fourth album, released in October 2000, remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history. The band had the freedom to do whatever it wanted after its 1997 alt-rock breakthrough, OK Computer [see No. 42]. “Everyone expected us to become this U2 type of band, with that stadium credibility,” bassist Colin Greenwood said in 2001. Instead, frontman Thom Yorke gorged on albums by avant-techno innovator Aphex Twin and other artists on the Warp Records roster, inspiring him to put down his guitar and embrace the glacial beauty of abstract electronics, glitchy beats, and the challenge of free-form composition. “It was difficult for the others [in the band], ’cause when you’re working with a synthesizer it’s like there’s no connection,” Yorke said in 2017. What emerged was at once scary and enveloping, pitched between deep alienation and profound tenderness — from the womblike ambient flow of “Everything in Its Right Place” to the free-jazz implosion “The National Anthem” to the gizmo-groove paranoia of “Idioteque.” “I find it difficult to think of the path we’ve chosen as ‘rock music,’ ” Yorke told Rolling Stone in 2000. “Kid A is like getting a massive eraser out and starting again.”
256 255 ZZ Top Tres Hombres New in 2023
257 256 Squeeze East Side Story New in 2023
258 257 Brian Eno Before and After Science New in 2023
259 258 Quicksilver Messenger Service Happy Trails New in 2023
260 259 The Temptations Anthology +112 Tamla/Motown, 1973 Indisputably the greatest black vocal group of the modern era, the Temptations embodied Motown, channeling unique individual voices and talents into pristine hits and tight, tuxedoed choreography. This three-album set features masterpiece after masterpiece of chugging, gospel-tinged soul, including “My Girl,” “I Can’t Get Next to You,” and “I Wish It Would Rain,” and later, psychedelic-soul adventures like “Cloud Nine” and the gritty message-song masterpiece “Ball of Confusion.”
261 260 Peter Tosh Legalize It New in 2023
262 261 Flying Lotus Cosmogramma New in 2023
263 262 The Pharcyde Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde +220 Delicious Vinyl, 1992 These high school friends from L.A. were a little like a West Coast answer to De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, offering their own spin on alternative hip-hop in the Nineties and showing there was something going on in Southern California beyond G-funk. They rapped about innocent topics, like having a crush on a teacher in “Passin’ Me By,” which was a small hit, but also about dating a cute girl who turns out “to be a John Doe” and run-ins with the cops (the Public Enemy-homage “Officer”). It all came out as bright and refreshing as sorbet.
264 263 Weezer Weezer (Blue Album) +31 Geffen, 1994 When it came out, Weezer’s debut was regarded as a quirky power-pop album with a couple of hit singles. The song’s were so catchy that some indie rockers wondered if they were put together by a record company, Monkees-style. But Rivers Cuomo’s band became a major influence on a whole generation of young sad-sack punkers. “People see us now as this credible band, and they assume we always were credible,” says Cuomo. “But, man, we could not have been more hated on when we came out.”
265 264 Loretta Lynn Coal Miner's Daughter +176 Decca, 1971 Loretta Lynn crossed over into pop with the autobiographical “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” in which she proudly recalled her meager upbringing amid weepy steel guitar — her mother read the Bible by “coal-oil light,” her dad sold hogs to buy her shoes. That resilient spirit carried over into the Coal Miner’s Daughter LP’s tunes about feeling jilted (“What Makes Me Tick”) and loving another woman’s man (“Any One, Any Worse, Any Where”), and the album, as well as the like-titled memoir and biopic, secured her place as one the most important country singers ever.
266 265 Robyn Body Talk -69 Konichiwa, 2010 Robyn had a few Swedish teen-pop hits in the Nineties, but she’s a worldly adult on Body Talk — this was the voice of a woman who knew how it felt to shed tears on the dance floor. She released Body Talk in three mini-album installments on her own Konichiwa label, before cherry-picking the highlights for this epochal feminist disco statement. “Dancing on My Own” became this century’s answer to “I Will Survive.” She told Rolling Stone, “I was pushing through the challenges and getting off on that liberated feeling of being able to explore desperation and passion and frustration and all that.”
267 266 Def Leppard Pyromania New in 2023
268 267 Wu-Tang Clan Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) -240 Loud, 1993 The first Wu-Tang Clan album launched rap’s most dominant franchise by inventing a new sound built around a hectic panoply of voices and spare, raw beats. RZA, the group’s sonic mastermind, constructed the Wu’s homemade world, he said, from a mix of “Eastern philosophy picked up from kung-fu movies, watered-down Nation of Islam preaching picked up on the New York streets, and comic books.” On “C.R.E.A.M.,” “Protect Ya Neck,” and the non-metaphorical “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing ta F’ Wit,” RZA’s offbeat samples (Thelonious Monk, the Dramatics, fellow New Yorker Barbra Streisand) create a grounding for the group’s nine members, including future solo stars Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Raekwon, GZA, Ghostface Killah, and Method Man. Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg had established L.A. as the center of hip-hop innovation and daring, but the Wu reclaimed the crown for the music’s birthplace.
269 268 Rufus & Chaka Khan Ask Rufus +231 ABC, 1977 Fronted by Chaka Khan, one of soul music’s most combustible singers, Rufus built its mid-Seventies sound on heavy-footed, guitar-slathered funk. But after spending 16 months in the studio working on Ask Rufus, they came out with a record that gave their songs more room to breathe, anticipating the lithe, loose arrangements of Nineties neo-soul. Khan glided through the head-nodding “Everlasting Love” and the twisty-turny “Better Days,” and fans appreciated the adjustment: Ask Rufus was the group’s first platinum record.
270 269 Neil Diamond The Bang Years 1966–1968 New in 2023
271 270 Fela Kuti & Africa 70 Expensive Shit +132 Sounds Workshop, 1975 The title track is a 13-minute odyssey that epitomizes Nigerian funk king Fela Kuti’s knack for channeling fearless social commentary into body-moving grooves; the Africa 70 horns blare out infectious riffs as peerless drummer Tony Allen keeps up an indefatigable shuffling pulse, while Fela calls out the “fools” who would “use your shit to put you for jail.” Side Two’s “Water No Get Enemy” slows things down to a celebratory strut, concluding a short-yet-sweet effort that plays like a primer on the joys of Afrobeat.
272 271 Shania Twain Come On Over +29 Mercury, 1997 Shania Twain’s third album was basically a country Thriller, still the biggest-selling album ever by a female artist. Twain and her husband, AC/DC and Def Leppard producer John “Mutt” Lange, had radio in a hammerlock during the late Nineties with hits like “You’re Still the One” and “Man! I Feel Like a Woman,” and Twain’s mix of genre-defying effervescence and feel-like-a-woman self-assertion helped pave the way for superstar rule breakers like the Dixie Chicks, Miranda Lambert, and Taylor Swift, who said seeing Shania perform inspired her to want to get onstage herself.
273 272 A Tribe Called Quest The Low End Theory -229 Jive, 1991 “We wanted the longevity of Earth, Wind, and Fire, and Prince, and people of that nature,” Phife Dawg told Rolling Stone. “We wanted to be known for full-length albums.” Other people connected the dots between hip-hop and jazz , but A Tribe Called Quest’s second album drew the entire picture. The sound is dominated by the low end of the title — they even recruited legendary jazz bassist Ron Carter (who’d worked with Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis). As Carter gets dope on the double bass, the Tribe discourse on matters ranging from the music industry (“Show Business”) to sexual politics (“The Infamous Date Rape”). Each time Q-Tip rhymes over Carter’s bass lines, the groove just gets deeper.
274 273 The White Stripes White Blood Cells New in 2023
275 274 The Slits Cut -14 Antilles, 1979 Avant-garde you can dance to — that’s the Slits’ Cut in a nutshell. The British group’s raucous debut took the best of late-Seventies post-punk’s favorite genre influences (dub, girl groups, abstract jazz), tossed them all into a blender, and somehow ended up with joyously anarchic songs like “Shoplifting,” with its awesome catchphrase, “We pay fuck-all!” Kurt Cobain would call “Typical Girls” one of the best songs ever recorded, and we can’t help but agree.
276 275 Radiohead In Rainbows +112 XL, 2007 Radiohead released In Rainbows as a surprise download in the fall of 2007, letting fans pay whatever they liked. But the real surprise was how expansive the music turned out to be, with material the band had road-tested live in the U.S. all summer. Thom Yorke gets soulful in the intense love songs “All I Need,” “House of Cards,” and “Nude.” It’s Radiohead’s warmest album, with the vibe of a communal jam session. One that’s taking place at the end of the world, of course.
277 276 Green Day Dookie +99 Reprise, 1994 The album that jump-started the Nineties punk-pop revival. The skittish Dookie was recorded in little more than three weeks, and singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong blazed through all the vocals in two days. “Right from getting the drum sound, everything seemed to click,” their A&R man (and Dookie producer) Rob Cavallo marveled. Indeed, “click” is the operative word here, also describing Armstrong’s airtight, three-minute bowshots like “Welcome to Paradise,” “Basket Case,” and the infectious smash “Longview” — which Armstrong described as “cheap self-therapy from watching too much TV.”
278 277 Billy Joel The Stranger -108 Columbia, 1977 On this record, Billy Joel found the recipe for success: a bottle of red, a bottle of white, and a sharp eye for the local color of New York street life. The Piano Man sharpens his storytelling gifts with a Scorsese-style sense of humor and compassion, whether he’s singing about a down-and-out Little Italy hustler in “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” the femme fatale in “She’s Always a Woman,” or the doomed Long Island greaser couple Brenda and Eddie in “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant.” Meanwhile, Joel hit the pop charts with the Grammy-winning “Just the Way You Are” (written for his first wife and manager, Elizabeth), which became a wedding-band standard.
279 278 Can Future Days New in 2023
280 279 George Michael Faith -128 Columbia, 1987 As the main singer and writer in the 1980s British pop band Wham!, George Michael paraded around in sleeveless mesh shirts and Fila short-shorts. Wham! songs were smarter than they appeared, and when Michael went solo to prove what he could do, he nailed it on the first try, integrating R&B in his songwriting, from soul ballads (“Father Figure,” “One More Try”) to horny Prince-inspired funk (“I Want Your Sex,” “Hard Day”). The album sold 25 million copies worldwide, and four singles went to Number One in the U.S. “You either see pop music as a contemporary art form, or you don’t. I do, very strongly,” Michael said.
281 280 The Isley Brothers 3 + 3 +184 T-Neck, 1973 The Isley Brothers ballooned from a trio that impressed the Beatles to a six-piece band on 3 + 3, which helped establish them as a funk force in the 1970s. The hit “That Lady” is stuffed with laser-bright guitar solos, and the slow numbers (including a cover of James Taylor’s “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight,” in which Ron Isley unfurled his heartbreaking falsetto and forceful midrange) hint toward the band’s bright future as pre-eminent balladeers in R&B’s Quiet Storm era.
282 281 Brian Wilson Smile +118 Nonesuch, 2004 This album lived in myth for decades. Brian Wilson’s unfinished response to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club took nearly 40 years to finally come to fruition. Longtime Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks helped him realize his vision, with lush string arrangements, sublime melodies, and vocal harmonies, all impeccably constructed. Close your eyes and you can imagine how it might’ve changed the world in 1968, but with Wilson’s influence still all over scads of indie bands in 2004, it sounds and feels majestically modern.
283 282 The Fall This Nation's Saving Grace New in 2023
284 283 Jefferson Airplane Surrealistic Pillow +188 RCA, 1967 Psychedelic scholars have long tried to pin down just what the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia did on this album (besides contribute some guitar playing) to earn a credit as “spiritual adviser.” But the real trip is the Airplane’s hallucinatory distillation of folk-blues vocals, garage-rock guitar, and crisp pop songwriting. Grace Slick’s vocal showcases — “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love” — made Surrealistic Pillow a commercial smash during San Francisco’s Summer of Love, and Marty Balin’s spectral “Today” is still the greatest ballad of that city’s glory days.
285 284 EPMD Strictly Business New in 2023
286 285 Rod Stewart Every Picture Tells a Story -108 Mercury, 1971 “We had no preconceived ideas of what we were going to do,” Rod Stewart said. “We would have a few drinks and strum away and play.” With a first-class band of drinking buddies (including guitarist Ron Wood and drummer Mickey Waller), Stewart made a loose, warm, compassionate album, rocking hard with mostly acoustic instruments. “Mandolin Wind” was his moving ballad of a country couple toughing out a long winter on the farm; the title tune was a hilarious goof. But Stewart scored his first Number One hit with “Maggie May,” his autobiographical tale of a young stud getting kicked in the head by an older lady.
287 286 Todd Rundgren A Wizard, a True Star New in 2023
288 287 Primal Scream Screamadelica +150 Sire, 1991 Primal Scream was a run-of-the-mill U.K. alt-rock band who discovered rave culture, overdosed on acid-house music, and retrofitted their sound with the fun, trippy, druggy disco-rock diversions on Screamadelica. The single “Loaded,” their first U.K. hit, combined house piano, folk melodies, and a danceable beat, while “Movin’ On Up,” their U.S. breakthrough, drew from hippie-folk strumming, gospel choruses, and Stones-y guitar and tambourine. Sure, some of Screamadelica feels like meandering mood music, but that’s proof that sometimes the journey is more fun than the destination.
289 288 The Ronettes Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes +206 Philles, 1964 More a Spanish Harlem street gang than a girl group, the Ronettes were pop goddesses dressed as Catholic schoolgirls gone to hell and back. Phil Spector builds his Wall of Sound as his teen protégée (and future wife) Ronnie Spector belts “Be My Baby” and “Walking in the Rain,” while songs like “I Wonder” and “Baby, I Love You” ache with hope for a perfect love that always seems to be impossibly ideal and just within arm’s reach.
290 289 Brian Eno Here Come the Warm Jets +19 Island, 1974 The former Roxy Music keyboardist’s first solo album pioneered a new kind of glammy art rock: jagged, free-form, and dreamy, sounding like nothing else in rock at the time. “Baby’s on Fire” and “Needles in the Camel’s Eye” are vicious rockers with detached vocals, and Robert Fripp’s warped guitars swarm and stutter, while “On Some Faraway Beach” and the title track are glistening slo-mo-drone pastorales. “I called it ‘warm jet guitar’ because it sounded like a tuned jet,” Eno said later.
291 290 Fiona Apple When the Pawn... -182 Epic, 1999 Following the success of her precocious debut, Tidal, and saddled with a pop audience that didn’t quite know what to do with her, Fiona Apple took her critics to task on the mature yet daring When the Pawn … Backed by her expressive piano playing and impressionistic production from Jon Brion, Apple makes resentment seem almost fun on songs like “Fast as You Can,” “Paper Bag,” and “The Way Things Are.” In years to come, Apple would make peace with her outcast status, leaving far behind the MTV-generation gatekeepers who once gave her so much grief. For generations of young fans, the raw, hard-won triumph of When the Pawn … will always feel timeless.
292 291 Grateful Dead Anthem of the Sun New in 2023
293 292 Junior Murvin Police and Thieves New in 2023
294 293 Suicide Suicide +205 Red Star, 1977 These New York synth-punks evoke everything from the Velvet Underground to rockabilly. Martin Rev’s low-budget electronics are violent and hypnotic; Alan Vega screams as a rhythmic device. Late-night listening to “Frankie Teardrop,” a 10-minute-plus tale of a multiple murder, is not recommended. A droning voice in the wilderness when they appeared in the Seventies, the duo would influence bands from Arcade Fire and the National to Bruce Springsteen, who covered Suicide live in 2016.
295 294 Burial Untrue New in 2023
296 295 Coldplay A Rush of Blood to the Head +29 Capitol, 2002 In the early 2000s, starry-eyed Brit-pop boys doing a cuddly version of Radiohead were a dime a dozen. (Remember Starsailor?) It was Coldplay’s second album that showed they were true contenders. Songs like “Green Eyes” and “The Scientist” brought back the comforting melodies of “Yellow,” but the twinkling sonics suggested prime Smiths or U2. And darker stuff, like the austerely beautiful death meditation “Amsterdam” and the OK Computer-worthy “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face,” showed the group had more than arena anthems on its mind.
297 296 Diana Ross & the Supremes Anthology +156 Tamla/Motown, 1974 In the heyday of Motown, the Supremes were their own hit factory, all glamour and heartbreak. Diana Ross and her girls ruled the radio with tunes from the Motown brain trust of Holland, Dozier, and Holland. The Supremes could blaze with confidence, as in “Come See About Me.” Or they could sound elegantly morose, as in “My World Is Empty Without You” and “Where Did Our Love Go?” But in “Love Is Like an Itching in My Heart,” when Miss Ross gulps, “There ain’t nothing I can do about it,” it’s a spine-tingling moment.
298 297 ABBA The Definitive Collection +6 Universal, 2001 These Swedish pop stars became the world’s biggest group in the 1970s, with a streak of Nordic despair under the sparkly melodies. Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad were the bewitching frontwomen in the sequined pantsuits; their husbands, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, wrote global hits like the joyful “Dancing Queen,” the double-divorce drama “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” and the haunting farewell “Thank You for the Music.”
299 298 Donald Fagen The Nightfly New in 2023
300 299 Ghostface Killah Supreme Clientele +104 Epic, 2000 “I feel like I got my whole style from Ghostface,” Kanye West has said. Lavishly unhinged and viciously hard-hitting, Ghostface Killah’s second solo album helped revive the Wu-Tang franchise, marinating lines like “Ghost is back, stretch Cadillacs, fruit cocktails/Hit the shelves at Paul’s pastry rack,” in serrated Seventies-soul samples. On “Nutmeg” he drops a mind-boxing cluster of psychedelic bullshit, then simply stands back during the chorus, letting the tape roll as he mocks all comers — an untouchable champ at the top of his game.
301 300 Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force Planet Rock: The Album New in 2023
302 301 Parquet Courts Wide Awake! New in 2023
303 302 The Fugees The Score -168
304 303 Ween Chocolate and Cheese New in 2023
305 304 Amy Winehouse Back to Black -271 Island, 2006 With her love of Sixties girl-group pop and her dark beehive, Amy Winehouse came across as a star from another time. But as a child of the Nineties, she also loved hip-hop and wrote openly about her splattered relationships and issues with drugs and alcohol. Her breakthrough second album (recorded in Brooklyn with co-producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi) marked the arrival of a resplendently damaged 21st-century torch singer. Tracks like the mildly pushy “You Know I’m No Good” and the sumptuous “Love Is a Loving Game” had an elegant, beguiling smudginess that avoided the wax-museum quality of so much retro soul. “My odds are stacked,” Winehouse sings. “I’ll go back to black.” Indeed, the pain and tumult in her voice was very real. Before her death in 2011, she left behind a tragically unfulfilled promise.
306 305 OutKast Speakerboxxx/The Love Below -15 LaFace, 2003 For a decade, OutKast were a duo defined by dichotomies — regional versus celestial, order amid chaos, blackness and the universal. On their fifth studio album, that tension could no longer be contained on one CD. Big Boi’s verbal funk overflowed on Speakerboxxx, his half of the double-disc set, while André 3000’s inner crooner exhaled like never before on The Love Below. It was a gamble to break up their twin alchemy this way, but in dividing themselves, OutKast conquered: America fell as deeply in love with the borderless pop bliss of “Hey Ya!” as it did with the slick talk and soulful horns on “The Way You Move.”
307 306 Dolly Parton Coat of Many Colors -49 RCA, 1971 Dolly Parton’s starkest, most affecting album. The title track is about wearing rags but keeping your pride. “That was a very sad and cutting memory that I long kept deep within myself,” she said of the song in a 1977 Rolling Stone interview. “I remembered all the pain of it and the mockery.” The rest is more hard country: On “Traveling Man,” Parton’s mom runs off with the singer’s boyfriend; on “If I Lose My Mind,” her boyfriend has sex with another woman in front of her.
308 307 The Shangri-Las Leader of the Pack New in 2023
309 308 Motörhead Ace of Spades +100 Bronze, 1980 Neither punk nor metal, Motörhead played rock & roll nastier, grittier, and snarlier than their forebears on Ace of Spades. Amid a miasma of hypercharged guitar riffs and death-rattle drumming, frontman Lemmy Kilmister, splits his time between sleazy come-ons (“Love Me Like a Reptile”), war stories (“(We Are) The Road Crew”), and underdog maxims (“Live to Win”). The blazing title track epitomized the Motörhead experience: “You know I’m born to lose, and gambling’s for fools,” Lemmy growls, “but that’s the way I like it, baby, I don’t wanna live forever.” He meant it, too.
310 309 Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works 85-92 New in 2023
311 310 Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago +151
312 311 John Prine John Prine -162 Atlantic, 1971 When John Prine resigned from his job as a USPS mailman, his supervisor snickered, “You’ll be back.” Instead, Prine became a revered folk-country-rock songwriter, starting with this first album, which is loaded with enduring gems, including “Angel From Montgomery,” “Hello in There,” and a song that regularly returns to relevance, “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.” Prine seemed like a Zen sage. He filled his songs with an uncynical live-and-let-live morality, and wrote in a colloquial voice that showed a love of the way Americans speak. His closest parallel isn’t another songwriter, it’s Mark Twain.
313 312 Vampire Weekend Modern Vampires of the City +16 XL, 2013 On Halloween 2012, with their hometown New York subsumed in a blackout, Vampire Weekend went on late-night TV to play an atheist reggae jam called “Unbelievers” dressed as skeletons. It was the perfect introduction to Modern Vampires of the City, a record that darkened their buoyant indie pop, as Ezra Koenig sang about moving beyond his post-college years into something scarier and weirder — hitting a cloudy peak with the beautifully worried Dylanesque travelogue “Hannah Hunt.”
314 313 The Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin New in 2023
315 314 Faust Faust IV New in 2023
316 315 Kid Cudi Man on the Moon: The End of Day +144 Dream On, 2009 Kid Cudi helped Kanye West shape his introspective R&B/hip-hop hybrid 808s & Heartbreak. On his debut LP, the Cleveland rapper took that sound further and deeper, merging emo and psychedelic rock with hip-hop bombast. His introspect runs the gamut from the severe depression of “Day ‘n’ Nite” to the sweet contentment of “Pursuit of Happiness,” both of which became unlikely hits. A decade after Man on the Moon, every chart is dominated by Kudi’s sad children.
317 316 Lou Reed Berlin New in 2023
318 317 Solange When I Get Home New in 2023
319 318 The Streets Original Pirate Material New in 2023
320 319 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Déjà Vu -99 Epic, 1970 Neil Young was just getting his solo career underway when he joined his old Buffalo Springfield bandmate Stephen Stills, ex-Byrd David Crosby, and former Hollie Graham Nash in the first of the West Coast supergroups. Young’s vision and guitar transformed the earlier folk-rock CSN into a rock & roll powerhouse. The CSNY combination was too volatile to last, but on their best album, they offered pop idealism (Nash’s “Teach Your Children”), militant blues (Crosby’s “Almost Cut My Hair”), and vocal-choir gallop (Stills’ “Carry On”).
321 320 M.I.A. Kala New in 2023
322 321 The Weeknd House of Balloons New in 2023
323 322 Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison -158 Columbia, 1968 By the late Sixties, Cash was ignored by country radio and struggling for a comeback. At Folsom Prison was a million-seller that reignited his career. A year later, he was writing liner notes for Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline and logging four weeks at Number One with his second prison album, At San Quentin. But Folsom Prison is essential Cash. Backed by a tough touring band, including fellow Sun Records alum Carl Perkins on guitar, Cash guffaws his way through “Cocaine Blues,” “25 Minutes to Go” (a countdown to an execution), and “Folsom Prison Blues,” with its line about shooting a man just to watch him die. The 2,000 inmates in attendance roar their approval.
324 323 Spiritualized Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space New in 2023
325 324 Madvillain Madvillainy +41 Stones Throw, 2004 This collaboration between rapper MF Doom and producer Madlib is one of underground hip-hop’s greatest moments. Madlib provides a shifting bed of warped funk and wildly unpredictable samples, drawing on everything from Thunder and Lightning’s “Bumpin’ Bus Stop” to “The Theme of the Justice League of America.” Doom’s rhymes are so casually adventurous that sometimes it takes a second to notice how stunning they are: “Still back in the game like Jack LaLanne/Think you know the name, don’t rack your brain/On a fast track to half sane” — hell yeah!
326 325 Maxwell Urban Hang Suite New in 2023
327 326 Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion New in 2023
328 327 Toots & the Maytals Funky Kingston +17 Island, 1973 Loose, funky, and exuberant, Kingston is the quintessential document of Jamaica’s greatest act after Bob Marley. Showcasing some of the Maytals’ best songs (“Pressure Drop,” later covered by the Clash) and borrowing from soul, pop, and gospel, Funky Kingston introduced the world to the great Toots Hibbert. He performs versions of “Louie Louie” and, in a down-home surprise, John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” with Toots changing the lyrics from “West Virginia” to “West Jamaica.”
329 328 The Human League Dare New in 2023
330 329 Yes Close to the Edge +116 Atlantic, 1972 Sessions for this album were so intense and taxing that monster drummer Bill Bruford quit the band when it was over due to stress. The hard work paid off. Close to the Edge is the best of Yes’ many lineups at an absolute peak, with Jon Anderson’s sun-king vocals pouring out over new member Rick Wakeman’s dazzling keyboards. The title track, an 18-minute epic in four distinct parts, remains the most majestic moment in the prog-rock history.
331 330 The Congos Heart of the Congos New in 2023
332 331 Pet Shop Boys Actually +104 EMI Manhattan,, 1987 Neil Tennant was one of England’s best-known music journalists when he formed this Eighties synth-pop duo with Chris Lowe. The Pet Shop Boys scored a Number One smash with “West End Girls,” their ode to queer cruising. But they took their satirical wit even further on Actually — perhaps the only album on this list where the singer is yawning on the cover. The Boys dissect the sex-and-money connection in “Rent,” “Shopping,” and the Dusty Springfield duet, “What Have I Done to Deserve This?”
333 332 Erykah Badu Baduizm -243 Kedar, 1997 “If the head wrap was my trademark, the drums, African drums, were my soundtrack,” Erykah Badu recalled. “It’s just who I was at the time, and I wanted to be completely who I was when I did what I did.” Recorded between New York, Philadelphia, and her hometown of Dallas, the singer’s debut suggested a Billie Holiday raised on hip-hop and Stevie Wonder, celebrating herself and her heritage over resplendently relaxed grooves. Baduizm’s Seventies-meets-Nineties vibe, Badu’s exquisite lyricism (“On & On” is at once spiritual, apocalyptic, and funny), and jazz-steeped cadences (see “Appletree”) combined to make the 25-year-old singer a figurehead for the neo-soul genre that essentially began with this album.
334 333 Disco Inferno D.I. Go Pop New in 2023
335 334 ESG Come Away with ESG New in 2023
336 335 The Sonics Here Are the Sonics New in 2023
337 336 Alice Coltrane Journey in Satchidananda New in 2023 Impulse!, 1971 Alice Coltrane was a key part of her husband John’s fiery late-era bands. You can hear her own musical voice in full flower on this LP, named for her spiritual teacher Swami Satchidananda. Coltrane blended the sprawling modal jams pioneered by her late husband with drones from the Indian tanpura, Pharoah Sanders’ spiraling soprano sax, and her own rapturous harp. The result is a meditative bliss-out like jazz had never seen: part earthy blues and part ethereal mantra, and a potent influence on sonic seekers from Radiohead to Coltrane’s grandnephew Flying Lotus.
338 337 TLC CrazySexyCool -119 LaFace, 1994 Things were not well with TLC during the making of CrazySexyCool: Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes was lighting fires, and the group was in a financial slide that would end in bankruptcy proceedings. But they emerged with the most effervescent and soulful R&B pop anyone had heard since the Supremes. “Creep” is hard-edged but cute, the summery “Diggin’ on You” is almost pastoral in its intimate flow, and the transcendent “Waterfalls” may be the greatest song ever about how it’s not a great idea to go after your dreams.
339 338 Tame Impala Lonerism New in 2023
340 339 M.I.A. Arular +82 Interscope, 2005 What’s the opposite of a girl next door? Perhaps it might be a radicalized, globalized pop star like M.I.A., an English-Tamil writer who provocatively questioned and deconstructed ideas about power and rebellion throughout her first album. She raps and cajoles in hard-chopping cadences (“I bongo with my lingo,” indeed), and mixes jokes, disses, and political insight about the abuse of authority over electronic beats that can sound like New York City electroclash or Brazilian funk. And her hipster hit “Galang” hit as hard as any hip-hop around at the time.
341 340 Dwight Yoakam Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. New in 2023
342 341 Snoop Doggy Dogg Doggystyle -1 Death Row/Interscope, 1993 Until Snoop Dogg came along, no one in rap — and hardly anyone in rock — realized that an aloof whisper could be more intimidating than a shout. Snoop never gets heated; he takes the same tone when he’s menacing a cop as he does with a woman who’s soaping his back in the tub. Emanuel Dean and Dr. Dre’s sterling G-funk productions on “Gin N Juice” and “Who Am I (What’s My Name)?” ensured enormous album sales for the D-O-double-G’s debut and his laidbaaaack Indo-flavored tales of life on the streets of Compton.
343 342 Depeche Mode Violator -175 Sire, 1990 One of England’s first synth-pop bands, Depeche Mode had moved beyond their bubblegum phase by the time of their seventh album and, under the influence of hip-hop, began playing with samples and loops, even betraying their keyboard roots with the twangy guitar that opens “Personal Jesus.” Alan Wilder created the dense, constantly shifting arrangements, Martin Gore wrote the pervy lyrics, and Dave Gahan croons implacably about betrayal, immorality, and sexual domination. The percolating “Enjoy the Silence” became their only U.S. Top 10 single, and “Policy of Truth” did almost as well. With its panoply of high-gloss hooks and arresting, artificial sounds, Violator cemented Depeche Mode’s status as the first electronic band that could fill stadiums.
344 343 Jane's Addiction Nothing's Shocking New in 2023
345 344 Mobb Deep The Infamous +25 Loud, 1995 “We were just straight hood,” Havoc said. “It wasn’t no pretty boy shit. He was talking about the Timberlands and bandanas he and Prodigy (R.I.P.) wore, but that was also the brutal appeal of their second album, which the duo produced mostly by themselves. Q Tip functioned as an executive producer, adding depth to sinister tracks built off of 1970s samples, many of them from the LP collection that Prodigy’s jazz-musician grandfather left to him. “Shook Ones Pt. II,” a minor hit, and “Survival of the Fittest” have only one impetus, to document life in a Queens project.
346 345 Santana Santana New in 2023
347 346 John Cale Paris 1919 New in 2023
348 347 Notorious B.I.G. Life After Death -168 Bad Boy, 1997 Biggie’s second album was a victory lap following the immense, earth-shaking success of his 1994 debut, Ready to Die, and was prophetically and tragically released less than a month after the 24-year-old was shot and killed. The rubber-grooved “Hypnotize” was already on its way to becoming a smash when he died, and his lyrical genius and gift for narrative were on display all over this two-CD set, as he grapples with rap-game politics and delivers thinly veiled knocks at the West Coasters he long beefed with over clean, lush-sounding production. He was just getting started.
349 348 The Feelies The Good Earth New in 2023
350 349 Frank Ocean Channel Orange -201 Def Jam, 2012 On Channel Orange, Frank Ocean became one of music’s most elusive superstars — shy about speaking in public, impossible to pin down musically. He emerged from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, writing pop tunes for the likes of Brandy and Justin Bieber. But he stepped into his own avant-soul territory with Channel Orange, his official debut. Soon after coming out of the closet — still a rarity in R&B at the time — Ocean had a hit with the falsetto slow jam “Thinkin Bout You.” He mixes up genres and vocal personae, with guest shots from André 3000 to John Mayer. The peak: the spacey 10-minute suite “Pyramids,” an Egyptian fantasy starring Cleopatra as an around-the-way girl. Years later, Channel Orange still sounds like the future.
351 350 Usher Confessions +82 Arista, 2004 Usher was already a star in 2004, a sly singer and slick dancer whose R&B hits found a home with pop fans. But Confessions, which is one of the last 10-million-plus sellers ever made, turned him into an unstoppable juggernaut. Usher worked with a murderers’ row of R&B and hip-hop talent, from Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to Jermaine Dupri to Just Blaze; the album moves easily from club wreckers like the Lil Jon- and Ludacris-assisted smash “Yeah!” to forgive-me-for-cheating ballads to love-you-forever duets.
352 351 Janet Jackson Control -240 A&M, 1986 If properly, successfully maturing in pop after a childhood in the spotlight is an artform, then Janet Jackson is Michelangelo and Control her statue of David. The youngest member of the Jackson family released her third studio album while on the cusp of her twenties. Working with the dream team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Jackson made an assertive, hook-y, and powerful proclamation of her star power on sparkling, sculpted electro-pop dance songs like “Nasty,” “The Pleasure Principle,” and the title track. Control remains the blueprint for any young artist looking to find their own voice.
353 352 Eagles Hotel California -234
354 353 Neneh Cherry Raw Like Sushi New in 2023
355 354 OutKast Stankonia -290 LaFace, 2000 There’s a thrilling sprawl on OutKast’s fourth album, a sense of limitless possibilities within the boundaries of hip-hop. Big Boi and André 3000 rap about baby mamas’ mamas (“Ms. Jackson”), the perils of sex (“We Luv Deez Hoez”) and alcohol (“?”), feeling excluded from the American dream (“Gasoline Dreams”), good manners (“I’ll Call Before I Come”), and the trauma of teen pregnancy (“Toilet Tisha”). The music is sexy, bold, and hard, mixing, on “B.O.B.,” distorted metal guitar, an HBCU gospel choir, and a jittery techno beat. Big Boi says OutKast is “cooler than a polar bear’s toenails,” adds that they’re “just lyrically twerking,” and tells the police, “Officer, get off us, sir.” “We call it slumadelic,” said André 3000.
356 355 Boogie Down Productions Criminal Minded -116 B-Boy, 1987 BDP copped a gangsta stance, sporting guns on the album cover, but they opened their debut with “Poetry,” an ode to the edutaining power of their music — “It takes concentration for fresh communication,” KRS-One informs. DJ Scott LaRock laced funky samples into taut, hard-hitting tracks like the classic interborough beef fests “The Bridge Is Over” and “South Bronx,” the latter doubling as a glorious origin story of hip-hop’s early days. LaRock was killed shortly after the album’s release trying to break up a fight.
357 356 King Sunny Adé Juju Music New in 2023
358 357 Missy Elliott Supa Dupa Fly New in 2023
359 358 Aerosmith Rocks +8 Columbia, 1976 The bad boys from Boston perfected their Seventies guitar raunch on Rocks — it’s the musical equivalent of getting run over by a muscle car. Steven Tyler and Joe Perry sounded like America’s heirs to the Mick-and-Keith tradition with the filthy riffs of “Lick and a Promise” and “Back in the Saddle.” Tyler brings all his dirtbag swagger and gutter poetry to his favorite topic: sex. Surprise peak: “Sick as a Dog,” an incredible fusion of the Byrds, James Brown funk, and Sixties girl-group harmonies.
360 359 Rihanna Anti -129 Roc Nation, 2016 After dominating the Top 40 for years, Rihanna wanted to make an ambitious album-statement, brilliantly sustaining the tipsy two-in-the-morning vibe of this moody midcareer reinvention. “I just gravitated toward the songs that were … the things I want to listen to,” she said. “The things that I want to smoke to.” On Anti, she recast pop as her own hazy playground, referencing Dido and hair metal, covering Tame Impala, and merging dancehall and torch ballads.
361 360 Muddy Waters The Anthology +123 MCA, 2001 Muddy Waters started out playing acoustic Delta blues in Mississippi, but when he moved to Chicago in 1943, he needed an electric guitar to be heard over the tumult of South Side clubs. The sound he developed was the foundation of Chicago blues — and rock & roll; the thick, bleeding tones of his slide work anticipated rock-guitar distortion by nearly two decades. The 50 cuts on these two CDs run from guitar-and-stand-up-bass duets to full-band romps — and they still just scratch the surface of Waters’ legacy.
362 361 Kendrick Lamar good kid, m.A.A.d city -246 TDE, 2012 Kendrick Lamar’s hip-hop autobiography came as a shock in 2012: musically downbeat, with a film director’s eye for narrative but the voice of a poet. Good kid is his story of growing up in Compton, surrounded by gunfire, gang warfare, police brutality, drugs, liquor, dead friends — billed on the cover as “A Short FIlm by Kendrick Lamar,” like a West Coast answer to Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets. K-Dot goes for emotional detail instead of gangsta bravado, whether cruising the streets in “Backseat Freestyle” or pondering addiction in “Swimming Pool (Drank).” As he told Rolling Stone, “The best entertainers have to have the most wickedest sense of humor, to be able to take pain and change it into laughter.”
363 362 Harry Nilsson Nilsson Schmilsson -81 RCA, 1971 A brilliant outlier on the Seventies L.A. singer-songwriter scene, Harry Nilsson had a voice and pop savvy like Paul McCartney and a biting ironic side like John Lennon. Nilsson Schmilsson produced three hits — the oddball island novelty “Coconut,” a cover of Badfinger’s “Without You,” where Nilsson sounds like a depressed Barry Manilow, and the surprise monster jam “Jump Into the Fire.” Nilsson was later covered by LCD Soundsystem. It was par for the course for a guy who could shruggingly pull off anything he wanted.
364 363 Buddy Holly The "Chirping" Crickets New in 2023
365 364 Nas Illmatic -320 Columbia, 1994 Other rappers were harder and brasher, but nobody captured the creeping menace of life on the streets like this 20-year-old from New York’s Queensbridge projects. With lines like “I never sleep, ’cause sleep is the cousin of death,” Nas showed more poetic style than any MC since Rakim. His debut begins with the sound of a subway train, and for the next 39 minutes, he seems to visit every street corner from Queens to Brooklyn, detailing drug deals, escapism, persecution, prison life, and survival. Throughout, he displays a pure focus (there’s only one guest verse) and explosive dexterity; it’s one thing to say “I drop the ancient manifested hip-hop,” as he does in the first verse of “Memory Lane,” it’s another to back that up with a stunning, acrobatic second verse. Illmatic was an instant classic that never crossed over, which only deepened its myth with hip-hop heads.
366 365 Raekwon Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... -146 Loud/RCA, 1995 The finest Wu-Tang solo joint stands out due to Raekwon’s understated, eternally unflustered cool and densely woven verses. Abetted by hyperactive sideman Ghostface and hypnotically stark beats courtesy of the RZA, Raekwon crafts breathtaking drug-rap narratives. On “Knowledge God,” an Italian drug dealer with a “hairy chest” and “many minks” meets his colorful demise in just six words: “Sixteen shots in his fish tank.” It’s the rare hip-hop album that rivals the mob movies it celebrates for gripping detail.
367 366 Manu Chao Clandestino +103 Virgin, 1998 Born in Paris to Spanish parents, Manu Chao is a true citizen of the world on his 1998 debut. Clandestino, was a tribute to “clandestinos” everywhere: a derogatory term for undocumented migrants. Running on an internationalist platform of peace (and legalized pot), Chao was a digital busker (“a clown making too much dirty sound”), strumming his acoustic guitar as he moved effortlessly between languages and styles, singing with a playfully light touch as he made feel-good reggae rock for global nomads like himself.
368 367 Janelle Monáe The ArchAndroid New in 2023
369 368 Throbbing Gristle 20 Jazz Funk Greats New in 2023
370 369 Dead Kennedys Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables New in 2023
371 370 Fugazi Repeater New in 2023
372 371 Kanye West The College Dropout -297 Roc-A-Fella, 2004 In 2003, Kanye West was a Chicago kid who’d produced some hot beats for Jay-Z, wore pastel polo shirts with the collars popped, and wanted to be on the mic, not behind it. Record labels were skeptical, but West got over on wit and determination; he wrote and sang the hit “Through the Wire” while his jaw was wired shut after being in a car accident, and followed it with more dynamic tracks, including “Slow Jamz,” about the seductive power of soul music, and the gospel riot “Jesus Walks.” West loved Jesus and strip clubs, made arrogant claims about his talent, and then professed his insecurity — which made his music all the richer.
373 372 Weezer Pinkerton New in 2023
374 373 Lana Del Rey Norman Fucking Rockwell! -52 Polydor/Interscope, 2019 Lana Del Rey became a music-blog sensation playing the poker-faced millennial Nancy Sinatra on her debut single, “Video Games.” She kept growing as an artist, and on her wonderfully titled sixth album perfected her epic vision of doomed, decadent, Seventies-steeped California romance on songs like “Mariner’s Apartment Complex” and the nine-minute crusher “Venice Bitch.” Del Rey dropped references to the Eagles and Graham Nash, merging her own music into the Laurel Canyon canon. No less an authority on Seventies greatness than Elton John called the album’s songs “timeless.”
375 374 Schoolly D Saturday Night! The Album New in 2023
376 375 Eurythmics Touch New in 2023
377 376 Suede Suede New in 2023
378 377 Carly Rae Jepsen E•MO•TION New in 2023
379 378 Ornette Coleman Free Jazz New in 2023
380 379 Janet Jackson The Velvet Rope -61 Virgin, 1997 Janet Jackson left behind her girl-next-door image forever with The Velvet Rope, an album of sexy, confessional, freewheeling hip-hop soul. She fuses Joni Mitchell and Q-Tip in “Got ’Til It’s Gone,” but the shocker is her girl-girl version of Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night.” “I always write about what’s in my life,” she told Rolling Stone. “I did that on Control, and I did the same thing with this album. It’s kind of like cutting yourself open and exposing yourself to the world, which is really a vulnerable thing.”
381 380 Talk Talk Laughing Stock New in 2023
382 381 Pharoah Sanders Karma New in 2023
383 382 King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown New in 2023
384 383 Elliott Smith XO New in 2023
385 384 The Chemical Brothers Dig Your Own Hole New in 2023
386 385 Aaliyah One in a Million -71 Blackground/Atlantic, 1996 Aaliyah’s second album was her first with producer Timbaland, and until the singer’s tragic death in 2001, the pair reshaped the landscape of R&B. Aaliyah seems to be sparring with Timbaland’s hide-and-seek drum tracks, ducking and weaving — and, somehow, singing beautifully — as high-hats and shakers zip past her ears. As futuristic as this album sounds, even today, Aaliyah also benefited from her close study of the classics: Her version of the Isley Brothers’ “Choosey Lover” rises to the level of the original.
387 386 Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers Rockin' and Romance New in 2023
388 387 Queens of the Stone Age Songs for the Deaf New in 2023
389 388 War The World Is a Ghetto New in 2023
390 389 Gary Numan/Tubeway Army The Pleasure Principle New in 2023
391 390 Boston Boston New in 2023
392 391 The Mothers of Invention Freak Out! New in 2023
393 392 Chic Risqué +22 Atlantic, 1979 Nobody thought a disco band was supposed to make a brilliant third album — but Chic always thrived on defying the odds. On Risqué, the dynamic duo of guitarist Nile Rodgers and bassist Bernard Edwards fuse sleek tropical R&B, Anglophile New Wave, and NYC club flash for a sound that’s been the blueprint for pop radio ever since. “Good Times” is Chic’s most prophetic groove — the story of hip-hop on wax begins here, with the Sugarhill Gang rhyming over it for “Rapper’s Delight.”
394 393 2Pac All Eyez on Me +43 Death Row, 1996 2Pac wanted it all: credibility and success, “murderous lyrics” and voice-of-a-generation gravitas. On his fourth (and final) album, he briefly gets it. In the course of 27 songs and two discs, Pac empties his brain of the contradictory impulses. The Dr. Dre track “California Love” became a huge house-party hit, but what unifies the album, through an array of different producers and guest stars, is Pac’s charisma and his struggles with morality: “It’s similar to Rhythm Nation, but thugged out — forgive me, Janet.”
395 394 John Fahey The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death New in 2023
396 395 Meat Loaf Bat Out of Hell New in 2023
397 396 Bon Iver Bon Iver New in 2023
398 397 Can Soundtracks New in 2023
399 398 Pantera Vulgar Display of Power New in 2023
400 399 Mary J. Blige My Life -273 Uptown, 1994 The crucial development on Mary J. Blige’s second album is her emergence as a songwriter; in lyrics and interviews, she began to describe the traumas she’d had, both as a child growing up in the projects and as an adult. For fans, that intimacy turned her from a beloved singer to a member of the family. “Down and out, crying every day,” she sings on the title song. There’s plenty of thematic contrast — the playful bedroom come-on “Mary Jane (All Night Long),” a smashing cover of the 1970s funk ballad “I’m Going Down” — but the strongest impression from the album is that Blige had been through it, and her hopefulness was hard-won.
401 400 Dinosaur You're Living All Over Me New in 2023
402 401 Jay-Z Reasonable Doubt -334 Roc-A-Fella, 1996 Before there was Jay-Z the mogul, the legend, the Beyoncé boy toy, there was Jay-Z on his do-or-die hustle, trying just to get a seat at the UNO table. “Forever petty minds stay petty/Mine’s thinkin’ longevity, until I’m 70,” he rhymes on the virtuosic “22 Two’s,” his earliest experiment in toying with standard rap structures. When he raps about drug dealing and not trusting women, the details are specific and self-aware. Jay’s charisma and comic insouciance are evident even on small touches like his taunting laugh in the chorus of “Ain’t No Nigga,” a gloriously funky track that lit up dance clubs. Here, he planted a flag in the underground — within two years, the pop hits followed and the hustle went worldwide.
403 402 Tyler, the Creator Igor New in 2023
404 403 Misfits Walk Among Us New in 2023
405 404 The dB's Stands for Decibels New in 2023
406 405 Fela Kuti & Africa 70 Zombie New in 2023
407 406 The Meters Look-Ka Py Py New in 2023 Josie, 1969 The Meters were the house band for New Orleans’ genius producer Allen Toussaint and played on Seventies landmarks such as LaBelle’s Nightbirds, while also running off a series of their own rock-solid LPs. These instrumentals — sampled by rappers including Nas and Salt-N-Pepa — are funk of the gods; tight, cutting, but also relaxed and inviting, with Art Neville’s lyrical Hammond B3 organ adding chill texture to George Porter Jr.’s monster bass and the off-the-beat Second Line swing of drummer of Ziggy Modeliste.
408 407 Mariah Carey The Emancipation of Mimi -18 Island, 2005 Mariah Carey’s last couple of albums had only attained platinum status, paltry by her usual high-flying standards. But the vocal acrobat swept away the naysayers with “We Belong Together,” a chattering, heartbroken ballad that interpolates two R&B classics (Bobby Womack’s “If You Think You’re Lonely Now” and the Deele’s “Two Occasions”), then followed that song’s huge success with “Shake It Off,” a dismissive, vengeful cut for all the jilted lovers — and The Emancipation of Mimi turned out to be a sextuple-platinum return to form.
409 408 Bad Bunny X 100pre +39 Rimas, 2018 Heralded by a subtly symbolic Christmas Eve release, Bad Bunny’s 2018 debut, X 100pre, was the Puerto Rican artist’s bid to court listeners new to Latin sounds, running through trap, reggaeton, dembow, synth-pop, and even pop punk, with help from Anglophonic ambassadors like Diplo and Drake. Bad Bunny could be shamelessly crude and totally vulnerable, with his slow-burning baritone opening the floor for Latin pop that’s not afraid to get uncomfortable.
410 409 Adele 21 -272 Columbia, 2011 “Pain is art” may be a cliché, but for Adele, it rang especially true. Her debut album, 19, was a polite, tasteful set of soul-inflected pop. Its follow-up was something else again. Chewing over a tumultuous affair, she dug deep and came up with a modern masterpiece of post-breakup soul music. She’d actually cut an entire album with producer Rick Rubin but wound up preferring earlier demos of songs like “Rolling in the Deep,” “Someone Like You,” and “Set Fire to the Rain,” and mostly used those instead. The switch-up made for an even rawer and more emotional experience that clearly connected: 21 sold more than 30 million copies and swept the 2012 Grammys.
411 410 The Descendents Milo Goes to College New in 2023
412 411 Nicki Minaj The Pinkprint New in 2023
413 412 Soundgarden Superunknown New in 2023
414 413 LL Cool J Radio New in 2023
415 414 Mazzy Star So Tonight That I Might See New in 2023
416 415 Rancid ...And Out Come the Wolves New in 2023
417 416 Iron Maiden The Number of the Beast New in 2023
418 417 Saint Etienne So Tough New in 2023
419 418 Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning New in 2023
420 419 Gorillaz Demon Days New in 2023
421 420 J Dilla Donuts -34 Stones Throw, 2006 Questlove of the Roots called the Detroit producer “the music god that music gods and music experts and music lovers worship.” During the Nineties and early ’00s, Dilla worked with a who’s who of hip-hop greats and helped shape the sound of albums like D’Angelo’s Voodoo [see No. 28]. Released three days before his death, Donuts is a beat head’s delight: 31 concise, wildly inventive sample-swirls (love the Frank Zappa bit on “Mash”), many of which would end up being sampled themselves in the years that followed.
422 421 UGK Ridin' Dirty New in 2023
423 422 Travis Scott Astroworld New in 2023
424 423 Rush Moving Pictures -44 Anthem, 1981 On Seventies albums like 2112 and Hemispheres, Rush mastered the high-prog epic. Moving Pictures was the record where they proved they could say as much in four minutes as they previously had in 20. Songs like “Tom Sawyer,” “Limelight,” and the Police-like “Vital Signs” showcased the trio’s superhuman chops in a radio-ready framework, while more adventurous tracks like the Morse code–inspired instrumental “YYZ” and the synth-heavy suite “The Camera Eye” found them tastefully streamlining their wildest ideas. Said Geddy Lee, “We learned it’s not so easy to write something simple.”
425 424 R.E.M. Reckoning New in 2023
426 425 The Mekons Fear and Whiskey New in 2023
427 426 Minutemen What Makes a Man Start Fires? New in 2023
428 427 MC5 Kick Out the Jams -78 Elektra, 1969 It’s the ultimate rock salute: “Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!” Recorded live in Detroit by Rob Tyner and his anarchist crew, Kick Out the Jams writhes and screams with the belief that rock & roll is a necessary act of civil disobedience. The proof: It was banned by a Michigan department store. The MC5 proved their lefty credentials the summer before the album was recorded when they were the only band that showed up to play for the Yippies protesting the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.
429 428 Manu Dibango Soul Makossa New in 2023
430 429 Bill Withers Just As I Am -125 Sussex, 1971 On the cover, Bill Withers totes a lunch pail, highlighting the down-to-earth everyman vibe of the folk-soul music of his debut album (that’s Withers himself tapping on a box to keep the beat in “Grandma’s Hands”). As he said at the time, “I’m sick and tired of somebody saying ‘I love you’ with both arms up in the air like that.” Instead, Withers strummed his acoustic guitar and spun tales about absent fathers, his West Virginia grandmother, and life in Harlem.
431 430 Dizzee Rascal Boy in da Corner New in 2023
432 431 Os Mutantes Os Mutantes New in 2023
433 432 Sade Diamond Life -232 Epic, 1984 Nigerian-born fashion designer Sade Adu and her London band defined elegantly cool Eighties soul with their smash debut, Diamond Life. Torch ballads like “Smooth Operator” and “Your Love Is King” had a New Romantic opulence under the bittersweet pang of Adu’s voice. She wrote her first song, “When Am I Going to Make a Living,” on the back of a bill, while walking home in the rain from a bus stop after work. As she said, “All the songs I’ve ever loved — even jazz stuff — are things that tell a story.”
434 433 Drive-By Truckers Southern Rock Opera New in 2023
435 434 Taylor Swift Red -335 Big Machine, 2012 Taylor Swift shocked the world with her fourth album, breaking away from country music to make a record that recalled classics by the Beatles and Prince in the way it pulled from across the pop and rock landscape and transformed every sound it touched. The lead single, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” was stomping, swaying electro-twang. “I Know You Were Trouble” rode a dubstep groove, and the title track was a swirl of banjos, dusty guitars, and talk-box elation. Tabloid types tied themselves in knots trying to figure out which song was about which ex, but the real news was Swift’s songwriting on high points like the astonishing “All Too Well,” as vivid a post-breakup remembrance as any artist has ever produced.
436 435 Judas Priest British Steel New in 2023
437 436 Yoko Ono Fly New in 2023
438 437 Boards of Canada Music Has the Right to Children New in 2023
439 438 Beat Happening Jamboree New in 2023
440 439 The Vaselines Dum-Dum New in 2023
441 440 The Avalanches Since I Left You New in 2023
442 441 Lil Wayne Tha Carter III -233 Cash Money/Universal Motown, 2008 By 2008, Lil Wayne contained multitudes: Best Rapper Alive, Pussy Monster, Martian, Weezy F. Baby (and the “F” is for, well, pretty much any word starting with “F”). Tha Carter III was a monument to this multiple-personality menagerie. “A Milli,” a glorified freestyle, fully crossed over to the mainstream, while “Lollipop,” a robotic R&B jam, rightly bet that an audience was ready to invest in Wayne’s croaky, syrup-addled singing voice. More than a decade later, even Wayne’s most outré personalities are still birthing musical descendants.
443 442 The Stranglers Rattus Norvegicus New in 2023
444 443 Beyoncé Beyoncé -362 Parkwood/Columbia, 2013 “I didn’t want to release my music the way I’ve done it,” Beyoncé said. “I am bored with that.” So she dropped her self-titled album on an unsuspecting world at the end of 2013, without a word of warning. Her fifth solo album, Beyoncé showed off her musical scope and feminist outreach, but it was also a visual album with a film for each song, shot around the world: New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and of course, her native Houston. She had high-profile collabs: “Superpower” with Frank Ocean, “Mine” with Drake, “Flawless” with Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “Drunk in Love” with her husband, Jay-Z. But Beyoncé proved that nobody else was on her level.
445 444 Ariana Grande thank u, next New in 2023
446 445 Bonnie 'Prince' Billy I See a Darkness New in 2023
447 446 Britney Spears Blackout -5 Jive, 2007 The pop queen vents all her raging party-girl hostility in Blackout — the weirdest, wildest music of her life. Blackout is her avant-disco concept album about fame, scandal, divorce, and dancing on tables in a cloud of glitter and Cheetos dust. “I’m Miss American Dream since I was 17,” Britney sneers in “Piece of Me,” with her voice warped into an electro-punk snarl. When she asks, “You want a piece of me?” she’s either pimping herself out or threatening to kick your ass. Either way, it’s Britney, bitch.
448 447 The Orb The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld New in 2023
449 448 Queen A Night at the Opera -320 Elektra, 1975 “Queen will be the Cecil B. DeMille of rock,” proclaimed singer Freddie Mercury, and this far-ranging, rococo album is the group’s ready-for-my-close-up moment. Bassist John Deacon wrote the melodic highlight “You’re My Best Friend,” a bouncy bit of Paul McCartney-esque pop; Mercury wrote the brutal rocker “Death on Two Legs,” about the band’s former manager; and guitarist Brian May wrote “The Prophet’s Song,” a doomy portent of a flood that runs 8:21 and includes a vocal canon from Mercury. But the coup was “Bohemian Rhapsody,” an opera buffa in which Mercury combined three different songs he’d been writing into a suite that took weeks to record.
450 449 Big Thief U.F.O.F. New in 2023
451 450 The Mamas & the Papas If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears New in 2023
452 451 The Mountain Goats The Sunset Tree New in 2023
453 452 Black Lips Good Bad Not Evil New in 2023
454 453 X Los Angeles -133 Slash, 1980 X stood out from the other L.A. punks — for one thing, they had a married couple in the band, John Doe and Exene Cervenka, venting their sexual and cultural rage over the high-speed rockabilly thrash of Billy Zoom and D.J. Bonebrake. Doe and Cervenka met in a poetry workshop, and you can hear it in the complex wordplay of “Johnny Hit and Run Paulene” and “Sex and Dying in High Society.” But they kick off their debut with a hilariously nasty bang: “Your Phone’s Off the Hook, But You’re Not.”
455 454 Justin Timberlake FutureSex/LoveSounds New in 2023
456 455 Young Thug Barter 6 New in 2023
457 456 Dean Martin Sleep Warm New in 2023
458 457 Shakira Dónde Están los Ladrones? +39 Columbia, 1998 Long before she went blond and took her never-lying hips to the top of the American pop charts, Shakira was a raven-haired guitar rocker who’d hit peak superstardom in the Spanish-speaking world with her 1995 LP, Pies Descalzos. To keep up the momentum, Shakira enlisted Emilio Estefan to help produce her next LP, this stellar globetrotting dance-rock set, which blends sounds from Colombia, Mexico, and her father’s native Lebanon.
459 458 Van Halen Van Halen -166 Warner Bros., 1978 This debut gave the world a new guitar hero (Eddie Van Halen) and charismatic frontman (David Lee Roth). Tunes such as “Runnin’ With the Devil” and “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love” put the swagger back in hard rock, and Van Halen’s jaw-dropping technique, particularly on “Eruption,” raised the bar for rock guitar. “It sounded like it came from another planet,” Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready said of first encountering Van Halen’s playing. “Like hearing Mozart for the first time.”
460 459 Tracy Chapman Tracy Chapman -203 Elektra, 1988 Somehow, this young folk singer came out of nowhere to catch everyone’s ear during the hair-metal late Eighties. Tracy Chapman had already spent time strumming her acoustic guitar for spare change on the streets around Boston, but her gritty voice and storytelling made “Fast Car” a huge hit. Her debut confronted listeners with the raw truths of songs like “Behind the Wall,” a grueling portrayal of domestic violence sung a cappella, and the radical hope of the anthemic opening track, “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution.”
461 460 The Libertines Up the Bracket New in 2023
462 461 Scott Walker Scott 4 New in 2023
463 462 Merle Haggard Mama Tried New in 2023
464 463 Alice Cooper Love It to Death New in 2023
465 464 Kate Bush The Dreaming New in 2023
466 465 Yeah Yeah Yeahs Fever to Tell -88 Interscope, 2003 These New York art-punk brats blew away the doldrums of the early 2000s with a true rock & roll goddess in Karen O. She knew how to work her sneer like a pair of ripped fishnets, trashing any room in sight. Yet the tender ballad “Maps” became a surprise hit, with Karen pleading “Wait, they don’t love you like I love you” over Nick Zinner’s warped guitar fuzz and Brian Chase’s drum thunder. “There’s a lot of loooove in that song,” she said. “But there’s a lot of fear, too.”
467 466 Jimmy Cliff The Harder They Come New in 2023
468 467 Thin Lizzy Live and Dangerous New in 2023
469 468 Lily Allen Alright, Still New in 2023
470 469 Earth Wind & Fire That's the Way of the World -49 Columbia, 1975 Before he got into African thumb piano and otherworldly philosophizing, founder Maurice White was a session drummer at Chess studios (that’s him on Fontella Bass’ “Rescue Me”). He stayed behind the kit as he led EWF. Their sixth album is make-out music of the spheres, incorporating doo-wop, jazz, and African music into a sound that’s sleek but never too slick; the title track is one of funk’s most gorgeous ballads, and “Shining Star” is a Seventies self-help seminar delivered over one of the decade’s sweetest grooves.
471 470 Sinéad O'Connor I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got -13 Ensign/Chrysalis, 1990 “How could I possibly know what I want when I was only 21?” the Irish art rocker asked on her breakthrough second album. Sinéad O’Connor struck a nerve with her keening voice, her shaved head, and her tortured grandiosity in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and “I Am Stretched on Your Grave.” But she hit Number One with an obscure Prince breakup ballad, “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Originally just filler on a flop album by the Family, it became O’Connor’s signature song.
472 471 Cyndi Lauper She's So Unusual -287 Portrait, 1983 With her garish thrift-store fashions and exaggerated Queens accent, Lauper had a kooky image that was perfect for MTV. But she also had a superb, clarion voice and a pack of great covers, including “Money Changes Everything” (originally by Atlanta New Wave band the Brains) and Prince’s saucy “When You Were Mine.” Lauper co-wrote four songs, including the lovely ballad “Time After Time” and the masturbation call-to-arms “She Bop.” But her smartest move was to change the lyrics of Robert Hazard’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” until it became a “very blatantly feminist” song about equality. “For a minute, I made it popular to be the odd guy out,” she said.
473 472 SZA Ctrl No change RCA, 2017 Thanks to SZA’s lyrics about insecurity, jealousy, loneliness, and her search for “lovin’ and licky,” this assured debut brought a new self-searching spirit to R&B. The tracks are gentle and erotic, but beneath the singer’s soft-grained style, there’s fierceness; in “Dove in the Wind,” she tells a lover she can easily replace him with a dildo. On “Love Galore,” a duet with Travis Scott that describes an ambivalent breakup, she makes clear the vulnerability beneath the bravado: “Gimme a paper towel, gimme another Valium.”
474 473 Daddy Yankee Barrio Fino No change V.I. Music, 2004 Just when Latin pop radio was hitting a ballad-heavy plateau, Puerto Rican MC Daddy Yankee set the industry aflame with his 2004 reggaeton opus, Barrio Fino. Crowned by the hydraulic bounce of Yankee’s first international hit, “Gasolina,” the record marked a colossal breakthrough, not just for the rapper himself, but for the entire genre known as reggaeton: a raw blend of hip-hop and reggae, born in the mean streets of San Juan.
475 474 Big Star #1 Record No change Ardent, 1972 Alex Chilton and Chris Bell were the Memphis whiz kids at the heart of Big Star. They mixed British Invasion pop finesse with all-American hard rock, from the surging “Feel” to the acoustic heartbreaker “Thirteen.” Big Star didn’t sell many records but did become a crucial inspiration to underdogs like R.E.M., the Replacements, and Elliott Smith. As Chilton said later, “If you only press up a hundred copies of a record, then eventually it will find its way to the hundred people in the world who want it the most.”
476 475 Sheryl Crow Sheryl Crow No change A&M, 1996 The Missouri gal finally got to make an album her way, in 1996, with her self-titled, self-produced smash — an ingenious mix of roots-rock raunch and vengeful wit. As Crow told Rolling Stone, “My only objective on this record was to get under people’s skin, because I was feeling like I had so much shit to hurl at the tape.” “Every Day Is a Winding Road” and “A Change Would Do You Good” rock like a feminist Exile on Main Street, while “If It Makes You Happy” became an anthem for bad girls of all ages.
477 476 Sparks Kimono My House No change Island, 1974 The duo of singer Russell Mael and songwriter-keyboardist Ron Mael coined a unique, influential sound that mixed glam and prog-rock, the Beach Boys and Frank Zappa. Russell adopts a florid falsetto to sing Ron’s lyrics about clumsy sex (“Amateur Hour”), Albert Einstein’s doting parents (the pun-filled “Talent Is an Asset”), and a broken suicide pact (“Here in Heaven”). The overwhelming sensation from Sparks’ third album is a sense that you’ve arrived at a party where you know no one and hear things you can’t comprehend but still have a great time.
478 477 Howlin' Wolf Moanin' in the Moonlight No change Chess, 1959 “That man was the natural stuff,” Buddy Guy said. “His fists were as big as a car tire.” The Wolf had the biggest roar in Chicago blues — he raved in a fierce growl, backed by explosive playing from guitar geniuses Willie Johnson and Hubert Sumlin. His 1959 debut album has some of the meanest electric blues ever heard, cut for Chess Records, from the eerie railroad drone “Smokestack Lightnin’” to the lowdown “I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline).”
479 478 The Kinks The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society -94 Reprise, 1969 While their British Invasion peers— the Beatles, the Stones, the Who — were getting psychedelic, Ray Davies took his band for a pastoral retreat, with witty portraits of quaint English small-town life fading away like “Big Sky.” Nobody bought it, but Village Green went on to become one of the Kinks’ most influential statements. “With ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day and All of the Night,’ we were saying, ‘We’re here, we’re gonna grab you,’” Davies told Rolling Stone. “The music on Village Green says, ‘Come find us.’”
480 479 Selena Amor Prohibido No change EMA Latin, 1994 Tejana star Selena Quintanilla-Pérez may not have been long for this world (she died when she was just 23), but she remains one of America’s most beloved singer-songwriters. At the heart of her regional Mexican masterwork, Amor Prohibido, is a universal, glittering pop core. The techno-cumbia title track tells the real-life story of her grandparents, who fell in love across class lines. It’s a Latina fairy tale, if ever there was one. Amor Prohibido, meaning “forbidden love,” became one of the bestselling Latin albums of all time.
481 480 Miranda Lambert The Weight of These Wings No change eRCA Nashville, 2016 The Nashville superstar sounded especially free and artistically uninhibited after her divorce from Blake Shelton, and she channeled it all into this expansive, mind-clearing two-CD set, an ambitious grab bag of deep breakup tunes (“Use My Heart,” “Tin Man”), Radiohead-y alt-rock moodiness (“Vice”), eye-rolling, scuz-guitar glam (“Pink Sunglasses”), and tender reflections on the bonds and weights of messy commitment (“Getaway Car”). It’s the sound of bad history falling away in the cracked rearview and nothing but wide-open road ahead.
482 481 Belle and Sebastian If You're Feeling Sinister No change Jeepster, 1996 Being a self-pitying shut-in has never sounded better than it does on the Scottish twee icons’ breakthrough. The chamber-folk arrangements are second to none — like a cup of tea brewed for you by a hopeless crush with a really good record collection — but don’t sleep on Stuart Murdoch’s subtly sardonic lyrics on “The Stars of Track and Field” and “Seeing Other People,” which give these wistful-sounding songs a bite that sets them apart from most imitators.
483 482 The Pharcyde Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde No change Delicious Vinyl, 1992 These high school friends from L.A. were a little like a West Coast answer to De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, offering their own spin on alternative hip-hop in the Nineties and showing there was something going on in Southern California beyond G-funk. They rapped about innocent topics, like having a crush on a teacher in “Passin’ Me By,” which was a small hit, but also about dating a cute girl who turns out “to be a John Doe” and run-ins with the cops (the Public Enemy-homage “Officer”). It all came out as bright and refreshing as sorbet.
484 483 Muddy Waters The Anthology No change MCA, 2001 Muddy Waters started out playing acoustic Delta blues in Mississippi, but when he moved to Chicago in 1943, he needed an electric guitar to be heard over the tumult of South Side clubs. The sound he developed was the foundation of Chicago blues — and rock & roll; the thick, bleeding tones of his slide work anticipated rock-guitar distortion by nearly two decades. The 50 cuts on these two CDs run from guitar-and-stand-up-bass duets to full-band romps — and they still just scratch the surface of Waters’ legacy.
485 484 Lady Gaga Born This Way No change Interscope, 2011 “Over-the-top” isn’t an insult in Gaga’s world; it’s a statement of purpose. Her second album is a work of blessed bombast, all arena-size sonics and Springsteenian romanticism, complete with a Clarence Clemons sax solo. There’s a thumping, half-in-Spanish song that proposes marriage to “a girl in east L.A.” (“Americano”), a synth-pop jam that includes a come-on on to John F. Kennedy (“Government Hooker”), and a touching ballad about a guy from Nebraska (“You and I”). Fittingly, the glam-slam title track became an LGBTQ anthem.
486 485 Richard & Linda Thompson I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight No change Island, 1974 With Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson was one of the first prominent Sixties folk rockers to look to his native England’s traditions for inspiration. After leaving Fairport, he joined with his wife, Linda Thompson to make stellar albums in the Seventies. Richard played guitar like a Sufi-mystic Neil Young; Linda had the voice of a Celtic Emmylou Harris. Bright Lights is their devastating masterwork of folk-rock dread. Radiohead even picked up some guitar tricks from “The Calvary Cross.”
487 486 John Mayer Continuum No change Columbia, 2006 After establishing himself as a post-Dave Matthews heartthrob, John Mayer grew into his soul and blues ambitions for a subtly crafted album aided by ace musicians like guitarists Ben Harper and Charlie Hunter, drummer-producer Steve Jordan, and jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove — from the smooth Hi Records-tinged soul of “Vultures” to “Waiting for the World to Change,” a deceptively knowing and self-aware take on generational apathy.
488 487 Black Flag Damaged No change SST, 1981 MCA refused to release this album, denouncing it as “immoral” and “anti-parent.” High praise, but Black Flag lived up to it, defining L.A. hardcore punk with Greg Ginn’s violent guitar and the pissed-off scream of Henry Rollins, especially on “TV Party” and “Rise Above,” which came with the timeless smash-the-glass salvo “We are tired of your abuse/Try to stop is but it’s no use.” Punks still listen to Damaged, and parents still hate it.
489 488 The Stooges The Stooges No change Elektra, 1969 Fueled by “a little marijuana and a lotta alienation,” Michigan’s Stooges gave the lie to hippie idealism, playing with a savagery that unsettled even the most blasé clubgoers. Ex-Velvet Underground member John Cale produced a primitive debut wherein, amid Ron Asheton’s wah-wah blurts, Iggy Stooge (né James Osterberg) snarled seminal punk classics such as “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “No Fun,” and “1969,” bedrock examples of the weaponized boredom that would become a de rigueur punk posture.
490 489 Phil Spector & Various Artists Back to Mono (1958-1969) No change ABKCO, 1991 When the Righteous Brothers’ Bobby Hatfield first heard “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” with partner Bill Medley’s extended solo, he asked, “But what do I do while he’s singing the whole first verse?” Producer Phil Spector replied, “You can go directly to the bank!” Spector built his Wall of Sound out of hand claps, massive overdubs, and orchestras of percussion. This box has hits such as the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron,” which Spector called “little symphonies for the kids.”
491 490 Linda Ronstadt Heart Like a Wheel No change Capitol, 1975 Linda Ronstadt completed her transition from California hippie-folk darling to soft-rock queen on her chart-topping fifth album, covering Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Little Feat, and Kate and Anna McGariggle on the gorgeous title track. Her version of the Betty Everett oldie “You’re No Good” hits a perfect mix of desire and paranoia. Along with being a showcase for Ronstadt’s peerless versatility, Heart Like a Wheel is Seventies pop-rock craft at its sweetest and sturdiest.
492 491 Harry Styles Fine Line No change Columbia, 2019 Harry Styles achieved pop greatness with One Direction, but he got even deeper on his own. On Fine Line, he stakes his claim as one of his generation’s most savagely imaginative musical minds. Styles breathes in the 1970s California sunshine of his heroes — Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Stevie Nicks — with soulful breakup songs. As he explained, “It’s all about having sex and feeling sad.” Yet the music is drenched in starman joy: the ‘shroomadelic guitar trip “She,” the dulcimer-crazed “Canyon Moon,” the Number One juicy-fruit beach orgy “Watermelon Sugar.”
493 492 Bonnie Raitt Nick of Time No change Capitol, 1989 After being dumped by her previous label, blues rocker Bonnie Raitt exacted revenge with this multiplatinum Grammy-award winner, led by an on-fire version of John Hiatt’s “Thing Called Love” and the brilliant title track, a study in midlife crisis told from a woman’s perspective. Producer Don Was helped her sharpen the songs without sacrificing any of her slide-guitar fire. And as Raitt herself pointed out, her 10th try was “my first sober album.”
494 493 Marvin Gaye Here, My Dear No change Tamla/Motown, 1978 It’s one of the weirdest Motown records ever. Marvin Gaye’s divorce settlement required him to make two new albums and pay the royalties to his ex-wife – the sister of Motown boss Berry Gordy. So Gaye made this bitterly funny double LP of breakup songs, including “You Can Leave, But It’s Going to Cost You.” When he asks “Somebody tell me please, tell me please/Why do I have to pay attorney fees?” it’s one of the most strangely transfixing soul-music moments of all time.
495 494 The Ronettes Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes No change Philles, 1964 More a Spanish Harlem street gang than a girl group, the Ronettes were pop goddesses dressed as Catholic schoolgirls gone to hell and back. Phil Spector builds his Wall of Sound as his teen protégée (and future wife) Ronnie Spector belts “Be My Baby” and “Walking in the Rain,” while songs like “I Wonder” and “Baby, I Love You” ache with hope for a perfect love that always seems to be impossibly ideal and just within arm’s reach.
496 495 Boyz II Men II No change Motown, 1991 With their innocent romanticism and meticulous vocal arrangements, Boyz II Men became the most commercially successful R&B vocal group of all time. II includes two mammoth hits, courtesy of Babyface: “I’ll Make Love to You” and the audaciously baroque “Water Runs Dry.” But the group’s own Nathan Morris and Shawn Stockman composed II‘s most poignant moment, “Khalil’s Interlude,” a soft onslaught that’ll leave you sobbing in the fetal position: “I need shelter from the rain/To ease the pain of changing from boys to men.”
497 496 Shakira Dónde Están los Ladrones? No change Columbia, 1998 Long before she went blond and took her never-lying hips to the top of the American pop charts, Shakira was a raven-haired guitar rocker who’d hit peak superstardom in the Spanish-speaking world with her 1995 LP, Pies Descalzos. To keep up the momentum, Shakira enlisted Emilio Estefan to help produce her next LP, this stellar globetrotting dance-rock set, which blends sounds from Colombia, Mexico, and her father’s native Lebanon.
498 497 Various Artists The Indestructible Beat of Soweto No change Earthworks, 1985 The greatest album ever to be marketed under the heading “world music,” this 1985 compilation of South African pop was a huge influence on Paul Simon’s Graceland that still sounds jarringly fresh today. Full of funky, loping beats and gruff, Howling Wolf-style vocals (most prominently from “goat voiced” star Mahlathini). With a sweet track by Graceland collaborators Ladysmith Black Mambazo (“Nansi Imali”), its badass joy needed no translation.
499 498 Suicide Suicide No change Red Star, 1977 These New York synth-punks evoke everything from the Velvet Underground to rockabilly. Martin Rev’s low-budget electronics are violent and hypnotic; Alan Vega screams as a rhythmic device. Late-night listening to “Frankie Teardrop,” a 10-minute-plus tale of a multiple murder, is not recommended. A droning voice in the wilderness when they appeared in the Seventies, the duo would influence bands from Arcade Fire and the National to Bruce Springsteen, who covered Suicide live in 2016.
500 499 Rufus & Chaka Khan Ask Rufus No change ABC, 1977 Fronted by Chaka Khan, one of soul music’s most combustible singers, Rufus built its mid-Seventies sound on heavy-footed, guitar-slathered funk. But after spending 16 months in the studio working on Ask Rufus, they came out with a record that gave their songs more room to breathe, anticipating the lithe, loose arrangements of Nineties neo-soul. Khan glided through the head-nodding “Everlasting Love” and the twisty-turny “Better Days,” and fans appreciated the adjustment: Ask Rufus was the group’s first platinum record.
501 500 Arcade Fire Funeral No change Merge, 2004 Loss, love, forced coming-of-age, and fragile generational hope: Arcade Fire’s debut touched on all these themes as it defined the independent rock of the ‘00s. Built on family ties (leader Win Butler, his wife, Régine Chassagne, his brother Will), the Montreal band made symphonic rock that truly rocked, simultaneously outsize and deeply personal, like the best pop. But for all its sad realism, Butler’s is music that still finds solace, and purpose, in communal celebration.

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Rank,Artist,Album,Status,Info,Description
1,The Beatles,Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,+23,"Capitol, 1967","For the Beatles, it was a decisive goodbye to screaming crowds, world tours, and assembly-line record making. “We were fed up with being Beatles,” Paul McCartney said decades later. “We were not boys, we were men … artists rather than performers.” Sgt. Pepper christened the Summer of Love with the lavish psychedelic daydream “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” the jaunty Ringo Starr-sung communality anthem “With a Little Help From My Friends,” the album-closing multilayered masterwork, “A Day in the Life,” and the title track, which introduced the alter egos the Beatles had developed for the ambitious project. “It liberated you,” McCartney said. “You could do anything.” It is hard to imagine a more perfect setting for the Victorian jollity of John Lennon’s “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” (inspired by an 1843 circus poster) or the sumptuous melancholy of McCartney’s “Fixing a Hole,” with its blend of antique shadows (a harpsichord played by the Beatles’ producer George Martin) and modern sunshine lead guitar executed with ringing precision by George Harrison). The Sgt. Pepper premise was a license to take their music in every direction — rock spent the rest of the Sixties trying to keep up. "
2,The Beach Boys,Pet Sounds,No change,"Capitol, 1966","“Who’s gonna hear this shit?” Beach Boys singer Mike Love asked the band’s resident genius, Brian Wilson, in 1966, as Wilson played him the new songs he was working on. “The ears of a dog?” Confronted with his bandmate’s contempt, Wilson made lemonade of lemons. “Ironically,” he observed, “Mike’s barb inspired the album’s title.” Barking dogs – Wilson’s dog Banana among them, in fact – are prominent among the found sounds on the album. The Beatles made a point of echoing them on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – an acknowledgment that Pet Sounds was the inspiration for the Beatles’ masterpiece. That gesture actually completed a circle of influence: Wilson initially conceived of Pet Sounds as an effort to top the Beatles’ Rubber Soul. With its vivid orchestration, lyrical ambition, elegant pacing, and thematic coherence, Pet Sounds invented — and in several senses, perfected — the notion that an album could be more than the sum of its parts. When Wilson sang, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older,” on the album’s magnificent opening song, he wasn’t just imagining a love that could evolve past high school, he was suggesting a new grown-up identity for rock & roll music itself. Wilson made Pet Sounds without the rest of the band, using them only to flesh out the vocal arrangements. He even considered putting the album out as a solo project, and the first single, “Caroline, No,” was released under his own name. The personal nature of the songs, which Wilson co-wrote primarily with lyricist Tony Asher, further distinguished the album from the Beach Boys’ previous hits. Its luxurious sound conveys a heartbreaking wistfulness, as songs such as “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” and “I’m Waiting for the Day” bid farewell to the innocent world of the early Sixties. The album’s centerpiece is “God Only Knows,” arranged with harpsichord, horns, sleigh bells, and strings to create a spiritual feeling Wilson later compared to “being blind, but in being blind, you can see more. You close your eyes; you’re able to see a place or something that’s happening.” In the years to come, countless artists would live in his vision. "
3,The Beatles,Revolver,+8,"Apple, 1966","Revolver was the sound of the Beatles fully embracing the recording studio as a sonic canvas, free to pursue musical ideas and possibilities that would reshape rock forever. It speaks volumes that the first song the band worked on upon entering Abbey Road studios in April 1966 would have been impossible to replicate live — a swirl of hazy guitar, backward tape loops, kaleidoscopic drum tumble, and John Lennon’s voice recorded to sound like “the Dalai Lama singing from the highest mountaintop.” They titled it “The Void” and later renamed it “Tomorrow Never Knows.” “I was wondering how George Martin would take it,” Paul McCartney later recalled. Martin’s response: “Jolly interesting.” The Beatles’ lives were changing too: Lennon had taken LSD at this point, George Harrison was deepening his interest in Eastern mysticism, and McCartney was getting into avant-garde composition. All those influences came through here. Revolver wasn’t totally without precedent. The Beatles’ previous album, Rubber Soul [see No. 35], had a similar experimental introspect. Harrison once said Rubber Soul and Revolver “could be volume one and volume two.” But no band, including the Beatles, had tried anything like McCartney’s strikingly mature art song “Eleanor Rigby,” Lennon’s trippy tape-loop swirl “I’m Only Sleeping,” or Harrison’s “Taxman,” with its cutting groove and lyrics that took shots at British politicians. It made sense that the disappointing live shows the band played in the summer of 1966 would be their last. By the time Revolver came out, they’d already entered another world. "
4,Bob Dylan,Highway 61 Revisited,+14,"Columbia, 1965","Bruce Springsteen has described the beginning of “Like a Rolling Stone,” the opening song on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, as the “snare shot that sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind.” In and of itself, “Like a Rolling Stone,” which was rumored to be about Andy Warhol acolyte Edie Sedgwick, forever altered the landscape of popular music — its “vomitific” lyrics (in Dylan’s memorable term), literary ambition, and sheer length (6:13) shattered limitations of every kind. But that was literally only the beginning. The rest of the album, recorded in a shocking six days, was just as revelatory. If anyone questioned whether or not Dylan had truly “gone electric,” the roaring rock & roll of “From a Buick 6” and “Tombstone Blues” — both powered by legendary guitarist Mike Bloomfield of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band — left no doubt. The album ends with “Desolation Row,” a swirling 11-minute surrealist night journey of indescribable power, a Hieronymus Bosch-like season in hell that, in retrospect, seems to foretell all the Sixties cataclysms to come. Not that Dylan wasn’t having fun all the while as well. The toy siren that opens the album’s title track was keyboardist’s Al Kooper’s playful way of policing the recording sessions for Highway 61 Revisited. “If anybody started using drugs anywhere,” he explained, “I’d walk into the opposite corner of the room and just go whooooooooo.” "
5,The Beatles,Rubber Soul,+30,"Parlophone, 1965","Producer George Martin described Rubber Soul as “the first album to present a new, growing Beatles to the world,” and so it was. The first of what was to be a series of huge leaps forward with each new album, Rubber Soul opens with the comic character study “Drive My Car” and is suffused with Bob Dylan’s influence on “I’m Looking Through You,” “You Won’t See Me,” and “Norwegian Wood,” in which John Lennon sings about sex with a humor and candor unlike any rock & roller before and George Harrison lays down rock’s first sitar solo. Harrison called Rubber Soul “the best one we made,” because “we were suddenly hearing sounds that we weren’t able to hear before.” "
6,Bob Dylan,Blonde on Blonde,+32,"Columbia, 1966","Rock’s first studio double LP by a major artist was, as Bob Dylan declared in 1978, “the closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my head … that thin, that wild-mercury sound.” Blonde on Blonde was mainly recorded in Nashville with session pros (another rock first), who created an almost contradictory magnificence: a tightly wound tension around Dylan’s quicksilver language and incisive singing in barrelhouse surrealism such as “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35” and “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again.” Amid the frenzy, Dylan delivered some of his finest, clearest songs of comfort and desire: the sidelong beauty “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and “I Want You,” the title of which Dylan almost used for the album. "
7,The Beatles,"The Beatles (""The White Album"")",+22,"Apple, 1968","The Beatles' ambitious double album, officially titled 'The Beatles' but universally known as 'The White Album' due to its stark cover, showcased the band's incredible diversity and individual creativity. Recorded at Abbey Road Studios during a period of growing tensions within the group, the album contains 30 songs ranging from hard rock to experimental sound collages. Each member contributed distinctive material - from McCartney's vaudeville-inspired 'Honey Pie' to Lennon's minimalist 'Revolution 9' to Harrison's spiritual 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' featuring Eric Clapton. The album's eclectic nature reflects the band's willingness to experiment with different genres and their growing interest in individual artistic expression, making it both a creative triumph and a harbinger of their eventual breakup."
8,The Clash,London Calling,+8,"CBS, 1979","Recorded in 1979 in London, which was then wrenched by surging unemployment and drug addiction, and released in America in January 1980, the dawn of an uncertain decade, London Calling is 19 songs of apocalypse fueled by an unbending faith in rock & roll to beat back the darkness. Produced with no-surrender energy by legendary Sixties studio madman Guy Stevens, the Clash’s third album sounds like a free-form radio broadcast from the end of the world, skidding from bleak punk (“London Calling”) to rampaging ska (“Wrong ’Em Boyo”) and disco resignation (“Lost in the Supermarket”). The album was made in dire straits too. Although the Clash fired singles into the Britain’s Top 40 with machine-gun regularity, the band was heavily in debt and openly at war with its record company. Singer-guitarists Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, the Clash’s Lennon and McCartney, wrote together in Jones’ grandmother’s flat, where he was living for lack of dough. “Joe, once he learned how to type, would bang the lyrics out at a high rate of good stuff,” Jones noted. “Then I’d be able to bang out some music while he was hitting the typewriter.” Stevens was on hand for inspiration. He threw chairs around the room “if he thought a track needed zapping up,” according to Strummer. The album ends with “Train in Vain,” a rousing song of fidelity (originally unlisted on the back cover) that became the sound of triumph: the Clash’s first Top 30 single in the U.S. "
9,Bob Dylan,Blood on the Tracks,No change,"Columbia, 1975","Bob Dylan once introduced this album’s opening song, “Tangled Up in Blue,” onstage as taking him 10 years to live and two years to write. It was, for him, a pointed reference to the personal crisis — the collapse of his marriage to Sara Lowndes — that at least partly inspired this album, Dylan’s best of the 1970s. In fact, he wrote all of these lyrically piercing, gingerly majestic folk-pop songs in two months, in mid-1974. He was so proud of them that he privately auditioned almost all of the album, from start to finish, for pals and peers, including Mike Bloomfield, David Crosby, and Graham Nash, before cutting them in September — in just a week, with members of the bluegrass band Deliverance. But in December, Dylan played the record for his brother, David, in Minneapolis, who suggested recutting some songs with local musicians. The final Blood was a mix of New York and Minneapolis tapes; the New York versions are slower, more pensive, while the Minneapolis versions are faster and wilder. Together, they frame the gritty anguish in Dylan’s vocals, as he rages through some of his most passionate, confessional songs — from adult breakup ballads like “You’re a Big Girl Now” and “If You See Her, Say Hello” to the sharp-tongued opprobrium of “Idiot Wind,” his greatest put-down song since “Like a Rolling Stone.” “A lot of people tell me they enjoyed that album,” Dylan said soon after it became an instant commercial and critical success. “It’s hard for me to relate to that — I mean, people enjoying that type of pain.” Yet Dylan had never turned so much pain into so much musical splendor. "
10,The Beatles,Abbey Road,-5,"Apple, 1969","“It was a very happy record,” said producer George Martin, describing this album in The Beatles Anthology. “I guess it was happy because everybody thought it was going to be the last.” Indeed, Abbey Road — recorded in two months during the summer of 1969 — almost never got made at all. That January, the Beatles were on the verge of a breakup, exhausted and angry with one another after the disastrous sessions for the aborted Get Back LP, later salvaged as Let It Be [see No. 342]. Yet determined to go out with the same glory with which they had first entranced the world at the start of the decade, the group reconvened at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios to make their most polished album: a collection of superb songs cut with an attention to refined detail, then segued together (especially on Side Two) with conceptual force. There was no thematic link, other than the Beatles’ unique genius. John Lennon veered from the stormy metal of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” to the exquisite vocal sunrise of “Because.” Paul McCartney was saucy (“Oh! Darling”), silly (“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”), and deliciously bitter (“You Never Give Me Your Money”). George Harrison proved his long-secret worth as a composer with “Something” (later covered by Frank Sinatra) and the folk-pop diamond “Here Comes the Sun,” written in his friend Eric Clapton’s garden after a grim round of business meetings. Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison reputedly sang more three-part harmonies here than on any other Beatles album. That warm feeling — a sense of an increasingly divided band warmly coming together as friends — may be one reason Abbey Road has become the most beloved Beatles album of all time. "
11,The Velvet Underground,The Velvet Underground & Nico,+132,"Verve, 1967","“We were trying to do a Phil Spector thing with as few instruments as possible,” John Cale, the classically trained pianist and viola player of the Velvet Underground, once said of this record. It was no idle boast. Much of what we take for granted in rock would not exist without this New York band or its seminal debut: the androgynous sexuality of glitter, punk’s raw noir, the blackened-riff howl of grunge and noise rock. It is a record of fearless breadth and lyrical depth. Singer-songwriter Lou Reed documented carnal desire and drug addiction with a pop wisdom he learned as a song-factory composer for Pickwick Records. Cale introduced the power of pulse and drone (from his work in early minimalism); guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker played with tribal force; Nico, a German vocalist briefly added to the band by manager Andy Warhol, brought an icy femininity to the heated ennui in Reed’s songs. Rejected as nihilistic by the love crowd in 1967, the Banana Album (so named for its Warhol-designed cover), is the most prophetic rock album ever made. "
12,The Rolling Stones,Exile on Main St.,New in 2023,"Rolling Stones Records, 1972","A dirty whirl of basement blues and punk boogie, the Rolling Stones’ 1972 double LP was, according to Keith Richards, “maybe the best thing we did.” Indeed, inside its deliberately dense squall — Richards’ and Mick Taylor’s dogfight riffing, the lusty jump of the Bill Wyman–Charlie Watts rhythm engine, Mick Jagger’s caged-animal bark and burned-soul croon — is the Stones’ greatest album and Jagger and Richards’ definitive songwriting statement of outlaw pride and dedication to grit and cold-morning redemption. In the existential shuffle of “Tumbling Dice,” the ­exhausted country beauty of “Torn and Frayed,” and the whiskey-soaked church of “Shine a Light,” you literally hear the Stones in exile: working at Richards’ villa in the South of France, on the run from media censure, British drug police (Jagger and Richards had been busted and arrested before), and the U.K.’s then-onerous tax code. The music rattles with corrosive abandon but also swings with a clear purpose — unconditional survival — in “Rocks Off” and “All Down the Line.” As Richards explained, “The Stones don’t have a home anymore — hence the exile — but they can still keep it together. Whatever people throw at us, we can still duck, improvise, overcome.” Great example: Richards ­recorded his jubilant romp “Happy” with only producer Jimmy Miller on drums and sax man Bobby Keys, while waiting for the other Stones to turn up for work. Exile on Main Street is the band at its fighting best, armed with the blues, playing to win. "
13,Marvin Gaye,What's Going On,-12,"Tamla/Motown, 1971","Marvin Gaye’s masterpiece began as a reaction to police brutality. In May 1969, Renaldo “Obie” Benson, the Four Tops’ bass singer, watched TV coverage of hundreds of club-wielding cops breaking up the People’s Park, a protest hub in Berkeley. Aghast at the violence, Benson began to write a song with Motown lyricist Al Cleveland, trying to capture the confusion and pain of the times. He knew he had something big in his nascent version of “What’s Going On,” but the rest of the Four Tops weren’t interested, and Benson’s efforts to get Joan Baez to record it didn’t work out, either. But one of Motown’s biggest stars and greatest voices turned out to be more receptive. Gaye was in a dark and contemplative place, wounded by the death of his frequent duet partner Tammi Terrell, yearning to sing subtler and more substantive material, and mulling over his brother Frankie’s horrifying tales of his recent stint fighting in Vietnam. Gaye had been keeping busy writing for and producing a group called the Originals, and trying to figure out what was next. “I’d been stumbling around for an idea,” he told biographer David Ritz. “I knew there was more inside me. And that was something no record executive or producer could see. But I saw it. I knew I had to get out there.” After some hesitation, Gaye embraced “What’s Going On,” and with the help of arranger David Van De Pitte, crafted a version of the song that was jazzier and more sophisticated than any Motown recording to date, layering cinematic strings over James Jamerson’s supernaturally sinuous bass line and a polyrhythmic groove. Gaye unleashed one of his most spectacular vocal performances in a career full of them, scatting and improvising around the main melody. Motown Records founder Berry Gordy initially resisted releasing “What’s Going On,” telling Gaye that he thought scatting was out of date and protest lyrics were too commercially risky. But when the song became an instant hit, Gordy gave Gaye a single month to craft an album to accompany “What’s Going On.” Gaye more than rose to the challenge. “I work best under pressure and when I’m depressed,” he told the Detroit Free Press at the time. “The world’s never been as depressing as it is right now. We’re killing the planet, killing our young men in the streets, and going to war around the world. Human rights … that’s the theme.” What emerged was soul music’s first concept album, and one of the most important and influential LPs ever made. John Legend recently described it as “the voice of black America speaking out that we couldn’t always smile on cue for you.” Building it all around one finished song lent What’s Going On a musical and thematic through line. “What’s Happening Brother” assumes the voice of a Vietnam vet like Gaye’s brother, puzzled by a changing America and looking for work; “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” is a taut ode to the environment; “Flyin’ High (In the Friendly Sky)” takes on drug addiction. After What’s Going On, black musicians at Motown and elsewhere felt a new freedom to push the musical and political boundaries of their art. “When I was struggling for the right of the Motown artist to express himself,” Gaye said, “Stevie [Wonder] knew I was also struggling for him.” At the end of the final song on What’s Going On, the lament “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler),” the music shifts back into a jazzier reprise of the title track. As the album fades out, the groove continues on. Five decades later, it still hasn’t stopped. "
14,Joni Mitchell,Blue,-11,"Reprise, 1971","In 1971, Joni Mitchell represented the West Coast feminine ideal — celebrated by Robert Plant as “a girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair” on Led Zeppelin’s “Goin’ to California.” It was a status that Mitchell hadn’t asked for and did not want: “I went, ‘Oh, my God, a lot of people are listening to me,’” she recalled in 2013. “’They better find out who they’re worshiping. Let’s see if they can take it. Let’s get real.’ So I wrote Blue.” From its smoky, introspective cover to its wholly unguarded approach to songwriting, Blue is the first time any major rock or pop artist had opened up so fully, producing what might be the ultimate breakup album and setting a still-unmatched standard for confessional poetry in pop music. Using acoustic instruments and her octave-leaping voice, Mitchell portrayed herself as a lonely painter, aching to make sense of all her heartbreak. She reflects on past relationships and encounters, including a chef from Crete (“Carey”) and rock luminaries like Graham Nash (“My Old Man”), Leonard Cohen (“A Case of You”), and James Taylor (“This Flight Tonight”), who lent a hand on a few tracks. Along with its romantic melancholy, Blue was the sound of a woman availing herself of the romantic and sexual freedom that was, until then, an exclusively male province in rock. The songs had such stark, emotional intensity that it shocked the men around her: “Kris Kristofferson said to me, ‘Oh, Joni. Save something for yourself.’ The vulnerability freaked them out.” On “Little Green,” she opens up about a baby she had given up for adoption, and on the staggering piano dirge “River,” she takes responsibility for a romance gone wrong, changing the scope of love songs forever: “I’m so hard to handle/I’m selfish, and I’m sad,” she laments. “Now I’ve gone and lost the best baby/That I ever had.” Mitchell continued to release excellent records throughout the Seventies, but Blue remains her masterpiece. “The Blue album, there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals,” she told Rolling Stone in 1979. “At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world, and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either.” "
15,Nirvana,Nevermind,-9,"Geffen, 1991","An overnight-success story of the 1990s, Nirvana’s second album and its totemic first single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” shot up from the Northwest underground — the nascent grunge scene in Seattle — to kick Michael Jackson’s Dangerous off the top of the Billboard charts and blow hair metal off the map. Few albums have had such an overpowering impact on a generation — a nation of teens suddenly turned punk — and such a catastrophic effect on its main creator. The weight of success led already-troubled singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain to take his own life in 1994. But his slashing riffs, corrosive singing, and deviously oblique writing — rammed home by the Zeppelin-via-Pixies might of bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl — put warrior purity back in rock & roll. Lyrically, Cobain raged in code — shorthand grenades of inner tumult and self-loathing. His genius, though, in songs like “Lithium,” “Breed,” and “Teen Spirit” was the soft-loud tension he created between verse and chorus, restraint and assault. Cobain was a pop lover at heart — and a Beatlemaniac: Nevermind co-producer Butch Vig remembered hearing Cobain play John Lennon’s “Julia” at sessions. Cobain also fought to maintain his underground honor with songs like the scabrous punk purge “Territorial Pissings.” Ultimately, it was a losing battle, but it is part of this album’s enduring power. Vig recalled when Cobain was forced to overdub the guitar intro to “Teen Spirit” because he couldn’t nail it live with the band: “That pissed him off. He wanted to play [the song] live all the way through.” "
16,Van Morrison,Astral Weeks,+44,"Warner Bros., 1968","Astral Weeks was the sound of sweet relief. Van Morrison was newly signed to artist-friendly Warner Bros., after a rough ride with his previous U.S. label, Bang, when he made Astral Weeks in the summer of 1968. He used the opportunity to explore the physical and dramatic range of his voice in his extended poetic-scat singing, setting hallucinatory reveries about his native Belfast (the daydream memoir “Cypress Avenue,” the hypnotic portrait of “Madame George”) to wandering melodies connecting the earthy poetry in Celtic folk and American R&B. The crowning touch was a superior jazz quartet, who recorded their basic backing tracks in one three-hour session, without any instruction from Morrison on what he wanted or what the lyrics meant. "
17,The Who,Who's Next,+60,"Decca, 1971","Pete Townshend suffered a nervous breakdown when his planned follow-up to the rock opera Tommy [see No. 190], the ambitious, theatrical Lifehouse, fell apart. But he was left with an extraordinary cache of songs that the Who honed for what became their best studio album, Who’s Next. “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Bargain,” and “Baba O’Riley” (named in tribute to avant-garde composer Terry Riley) all beam with epic majesty, often spiked with synthesizers. “I like synthesizers,” Townshend said, “because they bring into my hands things that aren’t in my hands: the sound of the orchestra, French horns, strings.… You press a switch and it plays it back at double speed.” "
18,Neil Young,After the Gold Rush,+72,"Reprise, 1970","For his third album, Neil Young fired Crazy Horse (the first of many times he would do so), picked up an acoustic guitar, and headed to his basement. He installed recording equipment in the cellar of his Topanga Canyon home, near Los Angeles, leaving room for only three or four people. There, Young made an album of heartbreaking ballads such as “Tell Me Why” and “Don’t Let It Bring You Down.” The music is gentle, but never smooth. Nils Lofgren, then an 18-year-old hotshot guitarist, squeezed into the sessions — but Young assigned him to the piano, an instrument he had never played in his life. "
19,Led Zeppelin,Led Zeppelin IV,+39,"Atlantic, 1971","“I put a lot of work into my lyrics,” Robert Plant told Rolling Stone in 1975. “Not all my stuff is meant to be scrutinized, though. Things like ‘Black Dog’ are blatant let’s-do-it-in-the-bath-type things, but they make their point just the same.” On their towering rune-titled fourth album, Led Zeppelin matched the raunch of “Black Dog” with Plant’s most poetic lyrics on the inescapable epic ballad “Stairway to Heaven,” while guitarist Jimmy Page veers from the blues apocalypse of “When the Levee Breaks” to the mandolin-driven “Battle of Evermore.” (“It sounded like a dance-around-the-maypole number,” Page later confessed.) "
20,Stevie Wonder,Songs in the Key of Life,-16,"Tamla/Motown, 1976","Months before the recording sessions for Songs in the Key of Life ended, the musicians in Stevie Wonder’s band had T-shirts made up that proclaimed, “We’re almost finished.” It was the stock answer to casual fans and Motown executives and everybody who’d fallen in love with Wonder’s early-Seventies gems – 1972’s Talking Book, 1973’s Innervisions, and 1974’s Fulfillingness’ First Finale – and who had been waiting two years for the next chapter. “I believed there was a lot that needed to be said,” Wonder said. More, in fact, than he could fit onto a double album – also included was a bonus EP, a seven-inch single with four more songs from the sessions. Songs, released in 1976, encompasses an incredible range of life experiences – from the giddy joy of a baby in the bathtub (“Isn’t She Lovely,” featuring the cries and giggles of Wonder’s infant daughter Aisha Morris) through tributes to his musical heroes (“Sir Duke”) to dismay about the indifference of the wealthy (“Village Ghetto Land”). Wonder pulled from every imaginable musical source — the ecstatic “Sir Duke” references Duke Elington and Ella Fitzgerald, while “As” featured Herbie Hancock on Fender Rhodes. Though Wonder’s blindness meant he could record faster by memorizing lyrics, some songs had four or five intricate verses, so somebody had to prompt him. Often it was engineer John Fischbach, reading lines into the headphone mix just seconds before Wonder sang them. “He never got thrown off,” engineer John Fischbach told Rolling Stone years later. “His vocals had so much power.” The album’s mastery of many styles remains astonishing, but the feat might not have meant so much had Wonder not delivered some of his most impassioned political art as well, like the autobiographical “I Wish,” the takedown of wealthy complacency “Village Ghetto Land,” and, perhaps most movingly, “Black Man,” in which he runs down a funky list of global Afro-diasporic aspirations and heroes. Songs in the Key of Life linked all this together, in Wonder’s all-encompassing innervision. "
21,Bob Dylan,Bringing It All Back Home,+160,"Columbia, 1965","“It’s very complicated to play with electricity,” Dylan said in the summer of 1965. “You’re dealing with other people.… Most people who don’t like rock & roll can’t relate to other people.” But on Side One of this pioneering album, Dylan amplifies his cryptic, confrontational songwriting with guitar lightning and galloping drums. “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Maggie’s Farm” are loud, caustic, and funny as hell. Dylan returns to solo acoustic guitar on the four superb songs on Side Two, including the scabrous “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and the closing ballad, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” arguably his finest, most affectionate song of dismissal. "
22,U2,The Joshua Tree,+113,"Island, 1987","“America’s the promised land to a lot of Irish people,” U2 singer Bono told Rolling Stone. “I’m one in a long line of Irishmen who made the trip.” On U2’s fifth full album, the band immerses itself in the mythology of the United States, while guitarist the Edge exploits the poetic echo of digital delay, drowning his trademark arpeggios in rippling tremolo. While many of these songs are about spiritual quests — “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” — U2 fortify the solemnity with the outright joys of rock & roll, although one of the most moving songs is “Running to Stand Still,” a stripped-down slide-guitar ballad about heroin addiction. "
23,Television,Marquee Moon,+84,"Elektra, 1977","When the members of Television materialized in New York, at the dawn of punk, they played an incongruous, soaring amalgam of genres: the noirish howl of the Velvet Underground, brainy art rock, the double-helix guitar sculpture of Quicksilver Messenger Service. As exhilarating in its lyrical ambitions as the Ramones’ debut was in its brutal simplicity, Marquee Moon still amazes. “Friction,” “Venus,” and the mighty title track are jagged, desperate, and beautiful all at once. As for punk credentials, don’t forget the cryptic electricity and strangled existentialism of guitarist Tom Verlaine’s voice and songwriting. "
24,The Rolling Stones,Let It Bleed,+17,"ABKCO, 1969","The record kicks off with the terrifying “Gimme Shelter,” the song that came to symbolize not only the catastrophe of the Stones’ free show at Altamont but also the death of the utopian spirit of the 1960s. And the entire album burns with apocalyptic cohesion: the sex-mad desperation of “Live With Me”; the murderous blues of “Midnight Rambler”; Keith Richards’ lethal, biting guitar on “Monkey Man”; the epic moralism, with honky-tonk piano and massed vocal chorus, of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” which Mick Jagger wrote on acoustic guitar in his bedroom. “Somebody said that we could get the London Bach Choir,” Jagger recalled, “and we said, ‘That will be a laugh.'” "
25,Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band,Trout Mask Replica,New in 2023,,
26,Patti Smith,Horses,No change,"Arista, 1975","From its first defiant line, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” the opening shot in a bold reinvention of Van Morrison’s garage-rock classic “Gloria,” Patti Smith’s debut album was a declaration of mutiny, a statement of faith in the transfigurative powers of rock & roll. Horses made her the queen of punk (her CBGB buddy Tom Verlaine of Television co-wrote the Jim Morrison tribute “Break It Up”), but Smith cared more for the poetry in rock. She sought the visions and passions that connected Keith Richards and Rimbaud — and found them, with the intuitive assistance of a killer band (pianist Richard Sohl, guitarist Lenny Kaye, bassist Ivan Kral, and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty) and her friend Robert Mapplethorpe, who shot the cover portrait.  “The real thing,” Smith later said, “was to keep rock & roll in the hands of the people.” "
27,Carole King,Tapestry,-2,"Sony, 1971","For a decade, Carole King wrote pop songs with her then-husband, Gerry Goffin: hits such as Little Eva’s “The Loco-Motion” (Eva Boyd was the couple’s babysitter) and the Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” Then King’s friend James Taylor encouraged her to sing her own tunes. “He just made it look so easy,” she recalled. “So I did Tapestry in the same spirit.” She slowed down “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” (originally a hit for the Shirelles in 1961), with Taylor and Joni Mithcell on background vocals, heightening the melancholy inside, while her warm, earnest singing brought out the sadness in “It’s Too Late” and the earthy joy on “I Feel the Earth Move.” As King later recalled, “I wasn’t in the same league vocally with Aretha Franklin, Joni Mitchell, Barbara Streisand. But I knew how to convey the mood and emotion of a song with honest, straight-from-the-heart interpretation.” The resulting collection of songs saw King remake herself as an artist and became one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, creating the reigning model for the 1970s female singer-songwriter. "
28,Aretha Franklin,Lady Soul,+47,"Atlantic, 1968","Aretha Franklin’s third Atlantic album in less than two years is another classic, with “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Ain’t No Way,” and a slinky version of the Rascals’ “Groovin’.” It was a year of triumph and turbulence for Franklin: Although she made the cover of Time, the magazine reported details of her rocky marriage to Ted White, then her manager. But Franklin channeled that frenzy into performances of funky pride and magisterial hurt. Among the best: the grand-prayer treatment of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” and her explosive anguish on the hit “Chain of Fools.” "
29,Brian Eno,Another Green World,+309,"Island, 19755","After years as a rock eccentric with Roxy Music and two groundbreaking solo LPs, Brian Eno was exploring new ideas about ambient music. But he said goodbye to song form with this album of pure synthetic beauty, mixing lush electronics (“Becalmed”) with acoustic instruments (“Everything Merges With the Night”) to cast a truly hypnotic spell. Eno’s work habits were pleasantly subversive too; at one impasse during the recording, he pulled out a cake from underneath the mixing console and served pieces to everyone in the studio. "
30,Led Zeppelin,Led Zeppelin II,+93,"Atlantic, 1969","This album — recorded on the fly while the band was touring — opens with one of the most exhilarating guitar riffs in rock & roll: Jimmy Page’s searing stutter in “Whole Lotta Love.” As Page told Rolling Stone, “On the second LP, you can hear the real group identity coming together,” by which he meant the unified might of his own white-blues sorcery, John Bonham’s hands-of-Zeus drumming, Robert Plant’s love-god howl and surprisingly tender lyrics (the gorgeous “Thank You”), and John Paul Jones’ firm bass and keyboard colors. Other great reasons to bang your head: “The Lemon Song,” “Heartbreaker,” and “Ramble On.” "
31,Talking Heads,Remain in Light,+8,"Sire, 1980","David Byrne said Remain in Light “was done in bits and pieces, one instrument at a time.” The result was a New Wave masterpiece powered by Byrne’s revelation, as he put it on “The Great Curve,” that “the world moves on a woman’s hips.” It combined thrust of a P-Funk dance party, the ancient-to-the-future rhythm hypnosis of Nigerian funkmaster Fela Kuti, and the studied adventurousness of the album’s producer and Heads co-conspirator, Brian Eno. Remain in Light marked Talking Heads’ transformation from avatars of the punk avant-garde to polyrhythmic magicians with hit-single appeal. Just try not dancing to “Once in a Lifetime.” "
32,Radiohead,OK Computer,+10,"Capitol, 1997","Radiohead recorded their third album in the mansion of actress Jane Seymour while she was filming Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. OK is where the band began pulling at its sound like taffy, seeing what happened, not worrying if it was still “rock.” What resulted is a slow, haunting album with unforgettable tracks such as “Karma Police.” Guitarist Jonny Greenwood said, “I got very excited at the prospect of doing string parts that didn’t sound like ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ which is what all string parts have sounded like for the past 30 years.… We used violins to make frightening white-noise stuff, like the last chord of ‘Climbing Up the Walls.’” "
33,Paul Simon,Graceland,+13,"Columbia, 1986","Frustrated by the experience of writing good songs that didn’t come to life in the studio, Paul Simon set out “to make really good tracks,” as he later put it. “I thought, ‘I have enough songwriting technique that I can reverse this process and write this song after the tracks are made.’” Simon risked severe criticism by going to South Africa (then under apartheid) and working with the best musicians from the black townships. With the fluid energy and expertise of guitarist Ray Phiri and the vocal troupe Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Simon created an album about isolation and redemption that transcended world music to become the whole world’s soundtrack. "
34,Pink Floyd,The Dark Side of the Moon,+21,"EMI, 1973","“I think every album was a step towards Dark Side of the Moon,” keyboardist Rick Wright said. “We were learning all the time; the techniques of the recording and our writing was getting better.” As a culmination of their inner-space explorations of the early 1970s, the Floyd toured the bulk of Dark Side in Britain for months prior to recording. But in the studio, the band articulated bassist Roger Waters’ reveries on the madness of everyday life with melodic precision (“Breathe,” “Us and Them”) and cinematic luster (Clare Torry’s guest vocal aria “The Great Gig in the Sky”). Dark Side is one of the best-produced rock albums ever, and “Money” may be rock’s only Top 20 hit in 7/4 time. "
35,The Smiths,The Queen Is Dead,+78,"Sire, 1986","Morrissey’s maudlin moanings have never been more acidic or self-aware than on the Smiths’ third studio album: “A dreaded sunny day, so let’s go where we’re happy/And I meet you at the cemetery gates,” indeed. Johnny Marr is the sugar to Morrissey’s rock salt, and his layered webs of guitar riffs and arpeggios, often in unconventional tunings, build a shifting but stable platform for Morrissey to croon about the drudgery of employment or being cruelly, cruelly shunned by the world. It’s mope rock with its eye on grandeur: With “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” Marr said, “I was trying to write my ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash.’” "
36,David Bowie,Low,+170,"RCA, 1977","David Bowie fled to Berlin to kick cocaine — not to mention his other drug of choice, stardom. He moved into a flat above a hardware store and restarted his music from scratch, teaming up with Brian Eno and producer Tony Visconti. Low was split between electronic instrumentals and quirky funk like “Sound and Vision.” It began his famous “Berlin trilogy” — though it was cut mostly in France — topped off by Heroes and Lodger. In 1977, Bowie also produced Iggy Pop’s two finest solo albums, The Idiot and Lust for Life. "
37,Randy Newman,Sail Away,+231,"Reprise, 1972","Producer Lenny Waronker called him the “King of the Suburban Blues Singers.” Randy Newman went on to a long career scoring Hollywood movies, but on Sail Away, he was still L.A.’s weirdest singer-songwriter, a piano man singing sardonic tales of sleazy grifters in tunes full of New Orleans R&B and Tin Pan Alley showbiz. Sail Away is his meanest and funniest American portrait, with the cold-blooded “Political Science,” the blasphemous “God’s Song,” and the romantic “You Can Leave Your Hat On.” "
38,Miles Davis,Kind of Blue,-7,"Columbia, 1959","This painterly masterpiece is one of the most important, influential, and popular albums in jazz. At the time it was made, Kind of Blue was also a revolution all its own. Turning his back on standard chord progressions, trumpeter Miles Davis used modal scales as a starting point for composition and improvisation — breaking new ground with warmth, subtlety, and understatement in the thick of hard bop. Davis and his peerless band — bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Jimmy Cobb, pianist Bill Evans, and the titanic sax team of John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley — soloed in uncluttered settings, typified by “melodic rather than harmonic variation,” as Davis put it. Two numbers, “All Blues” and “Freddie Freeloader” (the latter featuring Wynton Kelly at the ivories in place of Evans), are in 12-bar form, but Davis’ approach allowed his players a cool, new, collected freedom. "
39,The Rolling Stones,Sticky Fingers,+65,"Rolling Stones, 1971","Drummer Charlie Watts remembered the origin of Sticky Fingers as the songs Mick Jagger wrote while filming the movie Ned Kelly in Australia. “Mick started playing the guitar a lot,” Watts said. “He plays very strange rhythm guitar … very much how Brazilian guitarists play, on the upbeat. It is very much like the guitar on a James Brown track — for a drummer, it’s great to play with.” New guitarist Mick Taylor, replacing Brian Jones, stretches out the Stones sound in “Sway,” “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” and “Moonlight Mile.” But “Brown Sugar” is a classic Stones stomp, and two of the best cuts are country songs: one forlorn (“Wild Horses”) and one funny (“Dead Flowers”). "
40,Jimi Hendrix Experience,Are You Experienced,New in 2023,"Reprise/Track, 1967","Jimi Hendrix's explosive debut album revolutionized rock guitar and established him as one of music's most innovative artists. Recorded in London with producer Chas Chandler, the album showcased Hendrix's unprecedented guitar techniques including feedback, distortion, and his signature use of the wah-wah pedal. Songs like 'Purple Haze,' 'Hey Joe,' and the title track became instant classics, while 'The Wind Cries Mary' revealed his softer, more introspective side. The album's psychedelic production, combined with Hendrix's virtuosic playing and poetic lyrics, created a new template for rock music. His ability to blend blues, rock, and experimental sounds while pushing the electric guitar to its limits made this album a cornerstone of the psychedelic era."
41,Sly & the Family Stone,There's a Riot Goin' On,+41,"Epic, 1971","This highly anticipated studio follow-up to Sly and the Family Stone’s 1969 blast of hope, Stand!, was the grim, exact opposite: implosive, numbing, darkly self-referential. Sly Stone’s voice is an exhausted grumble; the funk in “Family Affair,” “Runnin’ Away,” and especially the closing downward spiral, “Thank You for Talkin’ to Me Africa,” is spare and bleak, fiercely compelling in its anguish over the unfulfilled promises of civil rights and hippie counterculture. “It is Muzak with its finger on the trigger,” wrote critic Greil Marcus in Mystery Train. Take that as a recommendation. "
42,Bob Dylan & the Band,The Basement Tapes,+293,"Columbia, 1975","Bob Dylan and his pals spent the Summer of Love in Woodstock, messing around in the basement of a house they called Big Pink. The songs were so deeply weird, they sat unreleased for years, until The Basement Tapes finally collected bootleg favorites like “Million Dollar Bash” and “You Ain’t Going Nowhere.” (For a deeper dive, see the 2014 box set.) “They were a kick to do,” Dylan told Rolling Stone’s Jann S. Wenner in 1969. “That’s really the way to do a recording — in a peaceful, relaxed setting — in somebody’s basement. With the windows open … and a dog lying on the floor.” "
43,Prince and the Revolution,Purple Rain,-35,"Warner Bros., 1984","“I think Purple Rain is the most avant-garde, ‘purple’ thing I’ve ever done,” Prince told Ebony in 1986. He was still a rising star with only a couple of hits when he got the audacious idea to make a movie based on his life, and make his next LP the movie’s soundtrack. When it was released in 1984, he became the first artist to have the Number One song, album, and movie in North America. But Purple Rain was so much more than a huge movie soundtrack: It was a testament to Prince’s dream of creating a utopian Top 40, a place where funk, psychedelia, heavy-metal shredding, huge ballads, and daring experimentalism could coexist. “Listening to Purple Rain now, it’s kind of like a Beatles album,” keyboardist Matt Fink of the Revolution told Rolling Stone shortly after Prince’s death in 2016. “Every song is just so brilliant in its own way — all so unique and different.” It’s an incredible balance of contradicting impulses — from the pornographic “Darling Nikki” to the sparkling innocence of “Take Me With You.” When Purple Rain director Albert Magnoli asked for a good song to back a montage sequence, Prince came in the next day with “When Doves Cry,” a stark, eccentric-sounding brokenhearted song that became his first Number One single. The title track was one of several songs recorded live at his hometown club, First Avenue, in Minneapolis (strings and overdubs were added later in the studio). It was inspired by Bob Seger, of all people — when Prince was touring behind 1999 [see No. 130] in 1983, Seger was playing many of the same markets. Prince didn’t understand the Midwestern rocker’s appeal, but decided to try a ballad in the Seger mode — the result may be the greatest rock ballad of all time. "
44,Pavement,Slanted and Enchanted,+155,"Matador, 1993","Pavement were the quintessential American independent rock band, and this is the quintessential indie-rock album. The playing is loose-limbed, the production laid-back and primitive, the lyrics quirky and playful, the melodies sweet and seductive. But the sound is as intense as the white noise of the Velvet Underground, even as songs like “Summer Babe” reflect singer-guitarist Stephen Malkmus’ love of Seventies AM pop. Slanted and Enchanted is one of the most influential rock albums of the 1990s; its fuzzy recording style can be heard in the music of Nirvana, Liz Phair, Beck, the Strokes, and the White Stripes. "
45,Bruce Springsteen,Born to Run,-24,"Columbia, 1975","Bruce Springsteen spent everything he had — patience, energy, studio time, the physical endurance of his E Street Band — to ensure that his third album was a masterpiece. His reputation as a perfectionist begins here: There are a dozen guitar overdubs on the title track alone. He was also spending money he didn’t have. Engineer Jimmy Iovine had to hide the mounting recording bills from the Columbia paymasters. “The album became a monster,” Springsteen told his biographer, Dave Marsh. “It just ate up everyone’s life.” But in making Born to Run, Springsteen was living out the central drama in the album’s tenement-love operas (“Backstreets,” “Jungleland”) and gun-the-engine rock & roll (“Thunder Road,” “Born to Run”): the fight to reconcile big dreams with crushing reality. He found it so hard to translate the sound in his head — the Jersey-bar dynamite of his live gigs, Phil Spector’s Wagnerian grandeur, the heartbreaking melodrama of Roy Orbison’s hits — that Springsteen nearly scrapped Born to Run for a straight-up concert album. But his make-or-break attention to detail — including the iconic cover photo of Springsteen leaning onto saxman Clarence Clemons, a perfect metaphor for Springsteen’s brotherly reliance on the E Street Band — assured the integrity of Born to Run’s success. In his determination to make a great album, Springsteen produced a timeless, inspiring record about the labors and glories of aspiring to greatness. "
46,Stevie Wonder,Innervisions,-12,"Tamla/Motown, 1973","“We as a people are not interested in ‘baby, baby’ songs any more, there’s more to life than that,” Stevie Wonder said in 1972. With Innervisions, Wonder offered a landmark fusion of social realism and spiritual idealism; he brings expressive color and irresistible funk to his synth-based keyboards on “Too High” (a cautionary anti-drug song) and “Higher Ground” (which echoes Martin Luther King Jr.’s message of transcendence). The album’s centerpiece is “Living for the City,” a cinematic depiction of exploitation and injustice. “Innervisions gives my own perspective on what’s happening in my world,” Wonder said. “I think it is my most personal album. I don’t care if it sells only five copies.” "
47,Love,Forever Changes,+133,"Elektra, 1967","“When I did that album,” singer Arthur Lee said, “I thought I was going to die at that particular time, so those were my last words.” Lee, who died of cancer in 2006, was still performing this album live well into the ‘00s. And for good reason: Love’s third record is his crowning achievement. A biracial cult band from L.A. that rarely gigged out of town in its 1960s heyday, Love were Lee’s vehicle for a pioneering folk-rock turned into elegant armageddon with the symphonic sweep and mariachi-brass drama of “Alone Again Or,” “Andmoreagain,” and “You Set the Scene.” In the late Nineties, Lee served time in prison. After his release, he brought extra pathos to “Live and Let Live” when he sang, “Served my time, served it well.” "
48,Public Enemy,It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back,-33,"Def Jam, 1988","Loud, obnoxious, funky, avant-garde, political, uncompromising, hilarious – Public Enemy’s brilliant second album is all of these things — all at once. Chuck D booms intricate rhymes with a delivery inspired by sportscaster Marv Albert; sidekick Flavor Flav raps comic relief; and production team the Bomb Squad build mesmerizing, multilayered jams, pierced with shrieking sirens. The title and roiling force of “Bring the Noise” is truth in advertising. “If they’re calling my music ‘noise,’ ” said Chuck D, “if they’re saying that I’m really getting out of character being a black person in America, then fine – I’m bringing more noise.” Along with “Bring the Noise,” Nation classics like “Rebel Without a Pause” were conceived at Spectrum City in the band headquarters in Hempstead, New York. For “Rebel,” producer Hank Shocklee of the Bomb Squad looped a piercing sample of James Brown’s “The Grunt” with Brown’s “Funky Drummer” (“That song was like my milk,” said Shocklee). To write verses that could match such a sonic assault, Chuck locked himself in his house for 24 hours and emerged with broadsides like the media screed “Don’t Believe the Hype.” He wasn’t sure of the results until DMC, of Run-DMC, blasted it out of his Bronco on a Saturday night. Says Shocklee, “The whole block was grooving to it.” "
49,The Stooges,Fun House,+45,"Elektra, 1970","With garage-savvy ex-Kingsmen keyboardist Don Gallucci producing their second album, the Stooges made their most fully realized effort, despite their collective drug problems. “We had a certain purity of intention,” Iggy Pop asserted. “I don’t think we did ever get it from the drugs. I think they killed things.” They couldn’t kill what he has called the relentless “troglodyte groove” the band had on Fun House. “I stick it deep inside,” Iggy growls on “Loose,” one of the album’s typically confrontational tracks. Later, on “1970,” he insisted, ad infinitum, “I feel all right,” and there’s no question you wouldn’t want any of whatever he was on. "
50,Neil Young,Harvest,+22,"Reprise, 1972","Harvest yielded Neil Young’s only Number One hit, “Heart of Gold,” and helped set the stage for the Seventies soft-rock explosion — both James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt sing on the album. Along with Young, they were in Nashville to appear on Johnny Cash’s variety show the week that Harvest was cut with an odd group of accomplished session musicians that included bassist Tim Drummond, who had played with James Brown. The sound was Americana — steel guitar, slide guitar, banjo — stripped down and rebuilt with every jagged edge exposed. The standout tracks include “Old Man” and “The Needle and the Damage Done.” "
51,John Lennon,Plastic Ono Band,+34,"Apple, 1970","Also known as the “primal scream” album, referring to the painful therapy that gave rise to its songs, Plastic Ono Band was John Lennon’s first proper solo album and rock & roll’s most self-revelatory recording. Lennon attacks and denies idols and icons, including his own former band (“I don’t believe in Beatles,” he sings in “God”), to hit a pure, raw core of confession that, in its echo-drenched, garage-rock crudity, is years ahead of punk. He deals with childhood loss in “Mother” and skirts blasphemy in “Working Class Hero”: “You’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.” But the unkindest cut came in his frank 1970 Rolling Stone interview. “The Beatles was nothing,” Lennon stated acerbically. "
52,Bob Dylan,The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan,+203,"Columbia, 1963","Bob Dylan’s second LP was released on May 27th, 1963 – three days after his 22nd birthday. It was a tender age for such a triumph. On Freewheelin’, the poetry and articulate fury of Dylan’s lyrics and his simple, compelling melodies transformed American popular songwriting. His wholly original grip on grit, truth, and beauty in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Masters of War” still changes everyone who hears this album, four decades later. "
53,Nick Drake,Five Leaves Left,New in 2023,"Island, 1969","Nick Drake's haunting debut album is a masterpiece of melancholy folk that established him as one of Britain's most gifted singer-songwriters. Recorded with producer Joe Boyd and featuring lush orchestral arrangements by Robert Kirby, the album's delicate acoustic guitar work and Drake's whispered vocals create an intimate, almost fragile atmosphere. Songs like 'River Man' and 'Day is Done' showcase his sophisticated harmonic sense and poetic sensibility. Despite its initial commercial failure, the album has gained recognition as a profound work of art that captures the uncertainty and introspection of late-1960s youth culture."
54,R.E.M.,Murmur,+111,"I.R.S., 1983","“We wanted to have this kind of timeless record,” guitarist Peter Buck said of R.E.M.’s debut LP, and this “technically limited” band (according to producer Don Dixon) did just that. Buck was a rock scholar who had worked in a record store; singer Michael Stipe unspooled his lyrics as if they constituted some new secret language. Murmur is full of ringing guitars and mystery. The lyrics and the melodies seem buried, almost subliminal, and even the songs with something approximating hooks, such as “Radio Free Europe,” resist clarity. Murmur was a founding document of alternative rock, released just as Gen X was heading off to college. "
55,Michael Jackson,Thriller,-43,"Epic, 1982","Michael Jackson towered over the Eighties the way no superstar before or since has dominated an era — not even Elvis or the Beatles. And Thriller is the reason why. Still in his early twenties, the R&B child star of the 1970s had ripened into a Technicolor soul man: a singer, dancer, and songwriter with incomparable crossover instincts. He and producer Quincy Jones established the something-for-everyone template of Thriller on 1979’s Off the Wall [see No. 36], on which Jackson captures the rare mania of his life — the applause and paranoia, the need for love and the fear of commitment — in a crisp fusion of pop hooks and dance beats. On Thriller, the pair heighten the sheen (the jaunty gloss of “The Girl Is Mine,” with a guest vocal by Paul McCartney), pump up the theater (the horror-movie spectacular “Thriller”), and deepen the funk. With its locomotive cadence and an acrobatic metal-guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen, “Beat It” was arguably the first industrial-disco Number One. It is hard now to separate Thriller from its commercial stature (Number One for 37 weeks, 33 million copies sold), the nightmarish tabloid celebrity that led to Jackson’s death, and the horrific revelations about him that have surfaced in recent years. But there was a time when we only knew Jackson as the King of Pop. This is it. "
56,Wire,Pink Flag,+254,"Harvest, 1977","This first-generation U.K. punk band made sparse tunes that erupted in combustible snippets on its 21-track debut album. America never got it, but Pink Flag — as revolutionary discs tend to do — influenced some important bands, including Sonic Youth and the Minutemen. It also might be one of the most-covered punk LPs ever: Minor Threat did “12XU,” R.E.M. did “Strange,” the New Bomb Turks did “Mr. Suit,” Spoon did “Lowdown,” the Lemonheads did “Fragile,” and on and on. "
57,Fleetwood Mac,Rumours,-50,"Warner Bros., 1977","With Rumours, Fleetwood Mac turned private turmoil into gleaming, melodic public art. The band’s two couples — bassist John McVie and singer-keyboard player Christine McVie, who were married; guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and vocalist Stevie Nicks, who were not — broke up during the protracted sessions for the album. As John later told Rolling Stone of the atmosphere during the making of Rumours, “Parties going on all over the house. Amazing. Terrifying. Huge amounts of illicit materials, yards and yards of this wretched stuff. Days and nights would just go on and on.” This frenzied, decadent vibe lent a highly charged, confessional aura to such songs as Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way,” Nicks’ “Dreams,” Christine’s “Don’t Stop,” and the group-composed anthem to betrayal, “The Chain.” The band’s soap opera fueled its own intricate creative conversation; on “You Make Loving Fun,” Christine sang about her new boyfriend, the band’s lighting designer, as her ex John dutifully drives home the song with a sunny, funky bass line. To write “Dreams,” Nicks sat on a black velvet bed in a tiny room hidden deep in the Record Plant, where the band was recording, creating one of her most haunting songs in 10 minutes. “[In ‘Go Your Own Way’] Lindsey is saying go ahead and date other men and go live your crappy life, and [I’m] singing about the rain washing you clean,” Nicks said. “We were coming at it from opposite angles, but we were really saying the same exact thing.” The Mac’s catchy exposés, produced with California-sunshine polish, touched a nerve: Rumours became the sixth-best-selling album of all time. "
58,The Sex Pistols,Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols,+22,"Warner Bros., 1977","“If the sessions had gone the way I wanted, it would have been unlistenable for most people,” Johnny Rotten said. “I guess it’s the very nature of music: If you want people to listen, you’re going to have to compromise.” But few heard it that way at the time. The Pistols’ only studio album sounds like a rejection of everything rock & roll — and the world itself — had to offer. True, the music was less shocking than Rotten himself, who sang about abortions, anarchy, and hatred on “Bodies” and “Anarchy in the U.K.” But Never Mind the Bollocks is the Sermon on the Mount of U.K. punk — and its echoes are everywhere. "
59,Otis Redding,Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul,+119,"Volt, 1965","Recorded in a single day at Stax Studios in Memphis, this album captures Otis Redding's raw vocal power and emotional intensity at its peak. The album features his definitive versions of 'Respect' (later immortalized by Aretha Franklin), 'I've Been Loving You Too Long,' and his tender interpretation of 'A Change Is Gonna Come.' Backed by Booker T. & the M.G.'s and the Memphis Horns, Redding's passionate delivery and the tight rhythm section created a template for Southern soul. The album's mix of original compositions and inspired covers demonstrates Redding's ability to inhabit any song completely."
60,Dusty Springfield,Dusty in Memphis,+23,"Atlantic, 1969","Born in London, Dusty Springfield was a great soul singer hidden inside a white British pop queen — racking up Motown-style hits such as “I Only Want to Be With You” — when Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler brought her way down South, to Memphis, to make this album. She was so intimidated by the idea of recording with session guys from her favorite Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding hits that she never actually managed to sing a note there. Her vocals were overdubbed later, when the sessions moved to New York. But the result was blazing soul and sexual honesty (“Breakfast in Bed,” “Son of a Preacher Man”) that transcended both race and geography. "
61,Sonic Youth,Daydream Nation,+110,"Enigma, 1988","Sonic Youth took an ecstatic, specifically New York sound created in the late 1970s by the band Television and by composers Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, and turned it into an international clamor. On this double album, they make a move away from doomy riddles about pop culture and toward joyful riddles about pop culture. Their unconventional guitar tunings result in jarring chords and overtones, but also an array of gnarled hooks. Thurston Moore’s and Lee Ranaldo’s guitars are like antennae picking up otherworldly signals and channeling them into the scuzzy urban haze of “Teen Age Riot” and “Eric’s Trip,” and on “The Sprawl,” bassist Kim Gordon sums up the album’s measured chaos: “Does ‘Fuck you’ sound simple enough?” "
62,Prince,Sign 'O' the Times,-17,"Paisley Park/Warner Bros., 1987","He’d fired his band, and his latest movie, Under the Cherry Moon, had flopped; just three years after Purple Rain, Prince was in the market for a comeback. So he recorded one of the great albums of the Eighties. Times is best known for the apocalyptic title track, the brontosaurus funk of “Housequake,” and the gorgeous “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” Yet the simplest moments are unforgettable: the “Sweet Jane”-style guitar plea of “The Cross,” the Stax revamp on “Slow Love,” a jilted girl’s sadness in “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man.” “I hate the word ‘experiment,’” Prince said. “It sounds like something you didn’t finish.” Here, he finished. "
63,The Byrds,Sweetheart of the Rodeo,+211,"Columbia, 1968","On release, this bold experiment in Nashville classicism was shunned by rock fans and country purists alike. But the American rural song had been central to the Byrds’ folk-rock sound; here, driven by junior Byrd Gram Parsons, the band highlighted that connection, dressing Bob Dylan and Merle Haggard songs in steel guitar and rock & roll drive, setting the stage for country rock. Parsons left signs of his short, glorious future in his originals “Hickory Wind” and “One Hundred Years From Now.” "
64,Joni Mitchell,Hejira,+69,"Asylum, 1976","After redefining the possibilities of singer-songwriter music in the early 1970s, Mitchell set herself an even more ambitious challenge with Hejira, her ultimate jazz-folk statement. Setting her restless-soul visions to slippery instrumentals with help from bassist Jaco Pastorius, she weighed the costs of dedicating her life to fearless self-expression where others might have settled for mere happiness (“Amelia,” “Song for Sharon”). Getting to the point where she could make an album this singularly brilliant might have been a lonely enterprise, but it was worth it for the rest of us. "
65,Bob Dylan,John Wesley Harding,+272,"Columbia, 1967","Recovering from his 1966 motorcycle crash, Bob Dylan made a left turn into country fables and stark mystic folkways. He took a quick trip to Nashville and banged out John Wesley Harding. It’s his most ominous album, with characters from the Bible and the shadowy side of American history, from “I Am a Lonesome Hobo” to “All Along the Watchtower.” With his stripped-down sound and a black-and-white cover photo, Dylan was defiantly rejecting all the current trends — going his own way, as usual. "
66,The Replacements,Let It Be,+90,"Twin/Tone, 1984","Copping a Beatles title was cheeky; attaching it to a post-punk masterpiece was a sign of maturity. Said Paul Westerberg, “This was the first time I had songs that we arranged, rather than just banging out riffs.” Mixing punk, pop, and country with wry lyrics, his songs describe heroes (the gender-bending couple in “Androgynous”) and villains (an unsanitary dentist in “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out”; MTV in “Seen Your Video”), and pack in quips about the group’s lack of success (“Fingernails and cigarettes, a lousy dinner”) with swagger and pride. The coup is “Unsatisfied,” a pained howl of unhappiness that forced people to take this ratty band seriously. "
67,Can,Tago Mago,New in 2023,"United Artists, 1971","Can's second studio album is a groundbreaking work of experimental rock that helped establish the krautrock movement. The German band's combination of repetitive rhythms, electronic textures, and improvised elements created a hypnotic form of rock music. The album's two-disc format allowed for extended compositions like 'Halleluhwah' and 'Aumgn' that showcased their ability to create trance-like states through repetition and subtle variation."
68,Simon & Garfunkel,Bookends,New in 2023,"Columbia, 1968","Simon & Garfunkel's fourth studio album is a conceptual meditation on aging and the passage of time, bookended by different versions of the title track. The album features some of their most beloved songs, including 'Mrs. Robinson' (featured in 'The Graduate'), 'America,' and 'Hazy Shade of Winter.' Paul Simon's sophisticated songwriting, exploring themes of alienation and American society, combined with Art Garfunkel's pristine harmonies, created folk-rock of unprecedented literary depth. The album's seamless flow between individual songs and the 'Voices of Old People' interludes gives it a unified, almost cinematic quality."
69,Sly & the Family Stone,Stand!,+50,"Epic, 1969","Stand! is party politics at its most inclusive and exciting — Sly Stone at the top of his funk-rock-soul game. A DJ and producer in San Francisco during the Dawn of Hippie, Stone rides the bonfire momentum of the civil rights movement in motivational-soul sermons such as “Stand!” and “You Can Make It If You Try” without denying the intrinsic divisions that threatened civil war (“Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey”). There was also the uplifting pure-pop beauty of “Everyday People” as well as the R&B ecstasy of “I Want to Take You Higher” and the swirling black psychedelia of “Sex Machine.” It makes Stand! a greatest-hits album in all but name. "
70,Roxy Music,For Your Pleasure,+281,"Warner Bros., 1973","Keyboardist Brian Eno’s last album with Roxy Music is the pop equivalent of Ultrasuede: highly stylish, abstract-leaning art rock. The collision of Eno’s and singer Bryan Ferry’s clashing visions gives Pleasure a wild, tense charm — especially on the driving “Editions of You” and “Do the Strand.” The album’s deeply weird centerpiece is “In Every Dream Home a Heartache”: Ferry sings a seductive ballad to an inflatable doll (“I blew up your body, but you blew my mind”), one of the creepiest love songs of all time. "
71,Hüsker Dü,Zen Arcade,New in 2023,,
72,Al Green,Call Me,+355,"Hi, 1973","Green was absolutely fearless at this point, an innovator willing to try any crazy idea — country ballads, jazz chords, even a gospel tune. Producer Willie Mitchell and his studio band of virtuoso Memphis R&B pros create the sultriest grooves south of the Mason-Dixon line. Green testifies to the glories of love in “Call Me” and “Have You Been Making Out O.K.” When he reaches up for that falsetto growl at the end of “Your Love Is Like the Morning Sun,” it’s like he’s bringing down the sugar walls of Jericho. "
73,Ray Charles,The Genius of Ray Charles,New in 2023,,
74,Kraftwerk,Trans-Europe Express,+164,"Kling Klang, 1977","In 1975, someone asked legendary rock critic Lester Bangs where music was going. “It’s being taken over by the Germans and the machines,” he replied. Not a bad prediction. This German group’s sound sought to eliminate the distinction between men and machines. Kraftwerk’s robot-synthesizer grooves influenced electrodisco hitmakers, experimental geniuses such as Brian Eno, and rappers including Afrika Bambaataa, who lifted the title track for “Planet Rock.” The whole world of EDM may not have happened without them. "
75,Big Star,Third/Sister Lovers,+210,"PVC, 1978","Big Star’s first two albums were crisp power-pop full of bright Sixties melodies. Their third album very much wasn’t. The band recorded it, their final LP, in 1974, but it didn’t get released until 1978, in part because singer Alex Chilton sounds like he’s having a nervous breakdown. It’s a record of gorgeous, disjointed heartbreak ballads such as “Take Care,” “Nighttime,” and “Blue Moon.” Even when they’re more optimistic, the songs almost seem to disintegrate as they unfold, finally collapsing into the sublime apocalypse of the album-closing “Kanga Roo.” "
76,The Jimi Hendrix Experience,Electric Ladyland,New in 2023,"Reprise, 1968","Hendrix's ambitious double album showcased his studio wizardry and experimental vision at its peak. Recorded across multiple sessions in New York, the album features extended jams, intricate overdubs, and innovative production techniques. The epic 'Voodoo Child (Slight Return)' and his iconic cover of Dylan's 'All Along the Watchtower' demonstrated his ability to transform any song into something uniquely his own. The album's diverse range, from the funky 'Crosstown Traffic' to the ethereal '1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be),' established Hendrix as not just a guitarist but a visionary composer and producer."
77,Radiohead,The Bends,+199,"Capitol, 1995","If the first half of the Nineties was shaped by Nirvana, the template for the second half was set by Radiohead. The Bends marries a majestic and somber guitar sound to Thom Yorke’s anguished-choirboy vocals. “Fake Plastic Trees” was something of a radio hit, an introspective acoustic ballad of alienation. And not yet shying away from guitar anthems, Radiohead drew on the epic grandeur of U2 and the melancholy of the Smiths in “Nice Dream,” “Just,” and the haunting finale, “Street Spirit (Fade Out).” "
78,The Rolling Stones,Beggars Banquet,+107,"Decca, 1968","“When we had been in the States between 1964 and ’66, I had gathered together this enormous collection of records, but I never had any time to listen to them,” Keith Richards recalled. “In late 1966 and ‘67, I unwrapped them and actually played them.” After the wayward psychedelia of Their Satanic Majesties Request, and with guitarist Brian Jones largely AWOL, Richards’ record collection led the Rolling Stones back to their version of America: country music on “Dear Doctor,” the blues on “Prodigal Son,” and urban riots on “Street Fighting Man.” And “Sympathy for the Devil,” of course, is an anthem for the darkness in every human heart. "
79,Blondie,Parallel Lines,+67,"Chrysalis, 1978","Here’s where punk and New Wave broke through to a mass U.S. audience, thanks to the Number One hit “Heart of Glass,” also known to Blondie fans as “The Disco Song.” “I was trying to get that groove that the drummer for the Bee Gees had,” said Blondie drummer Clem Burke, who credited Kraftwerk and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack as influences on “Heart of Glass.” Parallel Lines is a perfect synthesis of raw punk edge, Sixties-pop smarts, and the cool New Wave glamour that Blondie invented. Debbie Harry, of course, invented a new kind of rock & roll sex appeal that brought New York demimonde style to the mainstream. Madonna was surely watching. "
80,The Band,The Band,-23,"Capitol, 1969","The Band was four-fifths Canadian — drummer Levon Helm was from Arkansas – but their second album was all American. Guitarist Robbie Robertson’s songs vividly evoke the country’s pioneer age — “Across the Great Divide,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” — while reflecting the state of the nation in the 1960s. The Band’s long life on the road resonates in the brawn of Garth Hudson’s keyboards and Helm’s juke-joint attack. But Robertson’s stories truly live in Helm’s growl, Rick Danko’s high tenor, and Richard Manuel’s spectral croon. “Somebody once said he had a tear in his voice,” Helm said of Manuel. “Richard had one of the richest textured voices I’d ever heard.” "
81,Bruce Springsteen,Nebraska,+69,"Columbia, 1982","Recorded on a four-track in Springsteen’s bedroom, Nebraska’s songs were stark, spooky acoustic demos that he decided to release “bare,” packed with hard-luck tales of underdogs. “I wanted black bedtime stories,” he said in his memoir, and he wrote the LP under the influence of John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson, but also Flannery O’Connor and James M. Cain, creating a cross between the blues and pulp-noir novels. “Down here it’s just winners and losers,” he sings in “Atlantic City,” and these 10 songs live on the wrong side of that line. Yet, Springsteen ends the album with “Reason to Believe,” one of those songs where his search for faith inspires faith itself. "
82,Neil Young & Crazy Horse,Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,New in 2023,,
83,Stevie Wonder,Talking Book,-24,"Tamla/Motown, 1972","“I don’t think you know where I’m coming from,” Wonder warned Motown executives in 1971. “I don’t think you can understand it.” Indeed, the two albums Wonder released in 1972 — Music of My Mind and Talking Book — rewrote the rules of the Motown hit factory. Talking Book was full of introspection and social commentary, with Wonder producing, writing, and playing most of the instruments himself. “Superstition” and “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” were Number One singles; “Big Brother” is political consciousness draped in a light melody: “You’ve killed all our leaders/I don’t even have to do nothin’ to you/You’ll cause your own country to fall.” "
84,Tom Waits,Rain Dogs,+273,"Island, 1985","“I like weird, ludicrous things,” Tom Waits once said. That understatement plays out most clearly on Rain Dogs, his finest portrait of the tragic kingdom of the streets. Self-producing his music for the first time and recording in his native Los Angeles, he went for a sound he described as “kind of an interaction between Appalachia and Nigeria.” Waits abandoned his signature grungy minimalism on the gorgeous “Downtown Train” (later a hit for Rod Stewart) and gets backing by Keith Richards on “Big Black Mariah.” "
85,Van Morrison,Moondance,+35,"Warner Bros., 1970","“That was the type of band I dig,” Van Morrison said of the Moondance sessions. “Two horns and a rhythm section — they’re the type of bands that I like best.” Morrison took that soul-band lineup and blended it with jazz, blues, poetry, and vivid memories of his Irish childhood, until songs such as “And It Stoned Me” and “Caravan” felt like lucid dreams. In the title hit, Morrison turns the words over and over in his mouth, not scatting so much as searching for the sound of magic. “Into the Mystic” serves as an apt summary: To listen to the album is to get your passport stamped for Morrison’s world of ecstatic visions. "
86,My Bloody Valentine,Loveless,-13,"Sire, 1991","This vague, shimmering, gorgeous album reportedly cost as much as $500,000 to make and nearly bankrupted the band’s U.K. label. It was worth it. Forget the lyrics, which are buried in the mix and incomprehensible, and focus on Kevin Shields’ and Bilinda Butcher’s guitars, which build entire noise symphonies out of tremolo effects and pitch bending. Highlights like “Only Shallow” and “I Only Said” use sampling technology to build a distorted, shifting sound that is wholly original and ecstatically beautiful. It’s like being serenaded by ghosts. Generations of shoegaze bands were born in its shadow. "
87,Gram Parsons,Grievous Angel,New in 2023,,
88,David Bowie,Station to Station,-36,"RCA, 1976","The title track is where David Bowie proclaims himself the Thin White Duke. Thin he was: Station to Station was recorded in a blizzard of cocaine in Los Angeles, with Bowie subsisting on green peppers and milk and almost never sleeping. The manic mood fueled an album that was futuristic but accessible, “plastic soul” speeding toward the electronic epiphanies of his Berlin phase. “TVC 15” is New Orleans R&B as robotic funk; “Golden Years” is James Brown from outer space, with Bowie’s amazing falsetto; and the 10-minute title track summed up his constant sense of motion at the time — opening with the sound of a train coming and eventually exploding into a Euro-disco breakdown that sounds like Saturday Night Fever at the android factory. "
89,Todd Rundgren,Something/Anything?,+307,"Bearsville, 1972","“I’m probably the whitest singer in the world,” Todd Rundgren told Rolling Stone in 1972. “I have no ‘soul’ in the usual sense — but I can do this great feminine falsetto.” On this tour de force double album, Rundgren employs that falsetto on two great singles (“I Saw the Light” and “Hello It’s Me”). For the rest of the album, he demonstrates his complete command of the studio, playing almost all the instruments himself, experimenting with a kaleidoscope of rock genres, and even delivering a monologue on what poorly made records sound like. "
90,Pink Floyd,The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,+163,"EMI/Columbia, 1967","“I’m full of dust and guitars,” Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett told Rolling Stone. Here’s what that sounded like. The band’s debut is all playful, psychedelic imagery and acid guitars. “Astronomy Domine” shows the group’s pop side; “Interstellar Overdrive” shows its spacier freakouts. Released at the height of the Summer of Love, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn sums up the headlong feeling of the moment just as aptly as the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper. "
91,Joni Mitchell,The Hissing of Summer Lawns,+167,"Asylum, 1975","Joni Mitchell got deeper into glamorous L.A. groove theory on her seventh album, reveling in the possibilities of pure melody for a set of songs where her genius as a producer shines just as brightly as her writing. “In France They Kiss on Main Street” bids farewell to the rock & roll era in a blaze of freewheeling, jazzy joy; “Harry’s House/Centerpiece” frames a story of a loveless high-society marriage in supper-club swank. The rest of the pop world would take years to catch up to where she was here. "
92,Gang of Four,Entertainment!,+181,"Warner Bros., 1979","Formed in 1977, Gang of Four combined Marxist politics with punk rock. They played staccato guitar-driven funk, and the stiff, jerky aggression of songs such as “Damaged Goods” and “I Found That Essence Rare” invented a new style that influenced bands from the Minutemen to LCD Soundsystem to agit-rappers Run the Jewels, who sampled Entertainment!’s “Ether.” Even when they’re barking at you about the capitalist commodification of desire, they never sound like dogmatic grad students because the songs bite so hard. "
93,Kate Bush,Hounds of Love,-25,"EMI, 1985","Kate Bush was an avant-garde auteur as well as beloved English pop star. Her New Wave masterpiece Hounds of Love is one of the greatest examples of an artist enjoying Top 40 success while luxuriating in her own eccentricities. Playing a futurist Fairlight CMI synthesizer and singing in an ecstatic operatic chirp, she muses about Freudian psychology, career challenges, love and family, dreaming sheep, and waking witches. Side One had hits like “Running Up That Hill” and “Cloudbusting”; Side Two was an epic “story suite,” moving from goth terror to sci-fi abstraction to dark rustic revelry. It’s no wonder Björk, Florence Welch, and Mitski are just a few of the artists who’ve been swept up in Bush’s sensual world. "
94,Minutemen,Double Nickels on the Dime,+173,"SST, 1984","“Our band could be your life,” sing the Minutemen on “History Lesson – Part 2,” and never did a lyric better articulate punk’s everyman aesthetic. Guitarist D. Boon and bassist Mike Watt push each other to fast, funny, and agitated heights; they sing about everything from Vietnam to Michael Jackson, and cover CCR and Steely Dan, expanding their magnum opus double LP out to 46 songs. Sadly, Boon would die a year later in a van accident. "
95,P.J. Harvey,Rid of Me,New in 2023,"Island, 1993","“I very much wanted to write songs that shocked,” Polly Jean Harvey said years after releasing her second album. The shock came partly from her lyrics, which were often proclamations of sexual compulsion, and also from the intense dynamic shifts in her music, which careen from blues to goth, often in the space of one song. Harvey was under the influence of Howlin’ Wolf, Tom Waits, and Flannery O’Connor, and her singing, writing, and lead-guitar playing coalesce into something marked by flames. The lyrics have lots of licking, moaning, bleeding, stroking, open mouths, and dismembered body parts. The songs spew viscera as they build to a sticky ecstasy. "
96,The Kinks,The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society,+288,"Reprise, 1969","While their British Invasion peers— the Beatles, the Stones, the Who — were getting psychedelic, Ray Davies took his band for a pastoral retreat, with witty portraits of quaint English small-town life fading away like “Big Sky.” Nobody bought it, but Village Green went on to become one of the Kinks’ most influential statements. “With ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day and All of the Night,’ we were saying, ‘We’re here, we’re gonna grab you,’” Davies told Rolling Stone. “The music on Village Green says, ‘Come find us.’” "
97,Talking Heads,Fear of Music,New in 2023,,
98,Lou Reed,Transformer,+11,"RCA, 1972","David Bowie counted the former Velvet Underground leader as a major inspiration — and paid back the debt by producing Transformer. The album had glam flash courtesy of Ziggy Stardust guitarist Mick Ronson as well as Reed’s biggest hit, “Walk on the Wild Side” — which brought drag queens and hustlers into the Top 20 — and the exquisite ballad “Perfect Day.” It was Reed’s first producer, VU impresario Andy Warhol, who inspired the lead cut when he suggested “Vicious” as a song title. “You know, like, ‘Vicious/You hit me with a flower,’” Warhol elaborated. Reed took him at his word, penning the song and cribbing the lines verbatim. "
99,James Brown,Live at the Apollo,-34,"King, 1963","This may be the greatest live album ever recorded: from the breathless buildup of the spoken intro through terse, sweat-soaked early hits such as “Try Me” and “Think” into 11 minutes of the raw ballad “Lost Someone.” It climaxes with a frenzied nine-song medley, and ends with “Night Train.” Live at the Apollo is pure, uncut soul — and it almost didn’t happen. James Brown defied King Records boss Syd Nathan’s opposition to a live album by arranging to record a show himself — on October 24th, 1962, the last date of a run at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. His intuition proved correct; Live at the Apollo, the first of four albums Brown recorded there, charted for 66 weeks. "
100,Public Image Ltd.,Metal Box,New in 2023,,
101,Leonard Cohen,Songs of Leonard Cohen,+94,"Columbia, 1967","Leonard Cohen was already well into his thirties when he made his debut, in the Summer of Love. The Montreal poet had been publishing his books to literary acclaim for years, but he took to songwriting, with his acoustic guitar and the orchestrations of producer John Simon. These were the late-night ballads that made his legend, starting with “Suzanne” and “Sisters of Mercy.” But Cohen specialized in farewells, blowing kisses to his muses in “So Long, Marianne” and “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.” He kept writing brilliant songs into his eighties, right up to his death in 2016. "
102,Neil Young,On the Beach,+209,"Reprise, 1974","Reeling from the losses that sparked Tonight’s the Night the previous year, Neil Young shelved that album for a while and made this one instead: a wild fireball of anger (“Revolution Blues”), nihilism (“For the Turnstiles”), and tentative optimism (“Walk On”). The album peaks on Side Two, a stoned symphony of grieving whose three songs (“On the Beach,” “Motion Pictures,” “Ambulance Blues”) are among the most emotionally real in Young’s catalog. "
103,Pixies,Doolittle,+38,"4AD/Elektra, 1989","The Pixies’ second full-length album proved that noisy, arty college rock could be just as fun as anything else on MTV. With his antic vocal style and free-associative lyrics, singer-guitarist Black Francis seemed detached from humanity, but the rest of the Pixies grounded him. Bassist Kim Deal adds tart harmonies that feel like sarcastic asides, drummer David Lovering powers the loud-quiet-loud dynamic that influenced Nirvana and many others, and guitarist Joey Santiago tosses out concise, buzzing riffs. The Pixies’ second album is loaded: With “Debaser,” “Here Comes Your Man,” “Monkey Gone to Heaven,” “Hey,” and “Gouge Away,” it’s the college-radio version of a greatest-hits album. "
104,Yo La Tengo,I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One,+319,"Matador, 1997","In rock, as in life, breakups get all the attention; successful marriages tend to generate fewer headlines. But Yo La Tengo — the long-married couple of Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan, plus bassist James McNew — is a testament to figuring it out together. The band’s 1997 masterpiece is indie rock at its most joyfully exploratory, with deeply catchy fuzz-jams, some Casio-keyboard bossa nova, a cover of the Beach Boys’ “Little Honda, and “Autumn Sweater,” a stone-cold classic that turns organ, percussion, and shy murmuring into something mesmerizing and beautiful. "
105,Prince,Dirty Mind,+221,"Warner Bros., 1980","A mix of slinky funk, synth-driven rock, jittery pop, and sexual innuendo, Dirty Mind was Prince’s first great album, even if it only hinted at where he was headed. “White, black, Puerto Rican, everybody just a freakin’,” he sang on “Uptown,” a utopian ode to the Minneapolis club scene. The album includes the world’s merriest done-me-wrong song, “When You Were Mine,” and the incest ditty “Sister.” “I wasn’t being deliberately provocative,” Prince said. “I was being deliberately me.” "
106,Eminem,The Marshall Mathers LP,+39,"Interscope, 2000","Chris Rock joked that the world was so crazy, “the best rapper is a white guy,” referring to Eminem. He’d been accused of corrupting the nation’s youth by fostering misogyny on his major-label debut, and to say he doubled down on playing with offensive ideas only exaggerates his joyful commitment to earning more denunciations. “The Real Slim Shady” and “Bitch Please II” vaulted Eminem from a shock rapper with a sense of humor to the voice of a generation. And in “Stan,” he created a verb and a meme to describe extreme fandom in our era. "
107,Love,Da Capo,New in 2023,,
108,David Bowie,Hunky Dory,-20,"RCA, 1971","David Bowie, then 24, arrived at the Hunky Dory cover shoot with a book of photographs of Marlene Dietrich: a perfect metaphor for this album’s visionary blend of gay camp, flashy rock guitar, and saloon-piano balladry. Bowie marked the polar ends of his artistic ambitions with tribute songs to Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol. In “Oh! You Pretty Things,” “Quicksand,” and “Changes” he invented and perfected a new style of rock & roll glamour. On “Life on Mars?” he sings to all the weirdos like himself, who feel like aliens on Earth. Soon an entire army of kids would attempt to remake themselves in his spangled image, proving his point. "
109,Derek and the Dominos,Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,+117,"Atco, 1970","Eric Clapton was tired of stardom, so he formed a new band where he could be just another one of the lads. But there was no mistaking the blues guitar on “Layla,” as Clapton sang about falling in love with the wife of his best friend, George Harrison. The tortured love songs on Layla get a kick from guest Duane Allman, whose interplay with Clapton in “Key to the Highway” and “Have You Ever Loved a Woman” is both harmonious and fiercely competitive: electric, brotherly love. "
110,Elton John,Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,+2,"MCA, 1973","Elton John compared this double album to the Beatles’ White Album, and why not? He was by this point the most consistent hitmaker since the Fab Four, and soon enough he would be recording with John Lennon. Everything about Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was supersonically huge, from the Wagnerian-opera-like combo of “Funeral for a Friend” and “Love Lies Bleeding” to the electric boots and mohair suit of “Bennie and the Jets.” “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” was strutting rock & roll, “Candle in the Wind” paid tribute to Marilyn Monroe (and later, Princess Diana), and the title track harnessed the fantastical imagery of glam to a Gershwin-sweet melody. "
111,X,Wild Gift,New in 2023,,
112,Paul McCartney & Wings,Band on the Run,New in 2023,,
113,The Byrds,Younger Than Yesterday,New in 2023,,
114,Curtis Mayfield,Curtis,+161,"Curtom, 1970","In the late Sixties, Curtis Mayfield fronted the Impressions, masters of doo-wop soul with a knack for hiding bracing political commentary inside honeyed harmonies. His biting, tender solo debut proved he was lethal as a lone wolf, able to write complex, sprawling, intricate soul music: “Move On Up,” a persistence mantra; “The Makings of You,” impossibly lavish; and “(Don’t Worry) If There Is a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go,” a damning indictment of societal dysfunction that still stings today. "
115,Pere Ubu,The Modern Dance,New in 2023,,
116,Nick Drake,Pink Moon,+87,"Island, 1979","Nick Drake recorded his last album in a couple of nights, mailed the tapes to Island Records, and checked himself into a psychiatric ward. If the music were as dark as the lyrics, it might be unlistenable. But Drake’s soothing vocals and unadorned acoustic picking unfold with supernatural tenderness. Few heard Pink Moon when it was released, but its stark beauty has touched the intimate bedroom folk of Cat Power, Elliott Smith, and many others. "
117,Devo,Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!,+135,"Warner Bros., 1978","They came from Akron, Ohio, wore matching jumpsuits, and had a sinister theory of devolution. Their debut album runs on rubber-punk energy and mechanized New Wave beats, with a robotic, soul-chilling version of the Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” demented highlights like the troublingly catchy “Mongoloid,” and the Chuck Berry parody “Come Back Jonee.” Devo never got slowed down by their concept; “Gut Feeling/(Slap Your Mammy)” is warped Midwestern guitar mania at its finest. "
118,Bob Marley & the Wailers,Catch a Fire,+22,"Island, 1973","This was the album that introduced the whole world to Bob Marley, expanding his audience beyond Jamaica without diluting his bedrock reggae power. At the time, the Wailers were truly a unified band, fronted by three extraordinary singers in Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Livingston. The rhythm section of drummer Carlton Barrett and his brother, bassist Aston “Family Man” Barrett, defined the reggae beat. Producer and label boss Chris Blackwell subtly overdubbed and remixed the original Jamaican sessions for international ears, but the Wailers’ ghetto rage comes across uncut in “Concrete Jungle” and “Slave Driver.” "
119,Big Star,Radio City,+240,"Ardent, 1974","Alex Chilton and his band of Memphis misfits were years ahead of their time — when they released Radio City in 1974, hardly anyone heard it. But like the Velvet Underground, they became hugely influential when future generations discovered them and got their minds blown. Big Star came up with their own skewed pop sound, filtering their love of the Beatles through their Memphis-soul roots. “September Gurls” and “Life Is White” should have been hits, soaring with the sweetly eccentric guitar chime and the romantic ache in Chilton’s voice. "
120,Funkadelic,Maggot Brain,+16,"Westbound, 1971","“Play like your mama just died,” bandleader/genius George Clinton said to guitarist Eddie Hazel. That morose instruction worked; nothing has ever sounded like the 10 minutes of anguished, fuzzed-up blues Hazel plays on the title song. (Clinton likened the playing to “a silver web.”) Clinton was a funk surrealist and a provocateur, but he’d also been in a doo-wop group and had written songs for Motown — he balanced multicolored futurism with old-school R&B chops on the swinging “Can You Get to That,” the psychedelic “You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks,” and “Super Stupid,” another showcase for Hazel’s dense, distorted riffing. As Clinton later asked defiantly, “Who says a funk band can’t play rock?” "
121,Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention,We're Only in It for the Money,New in 2023,,
122,John Coltrane,A Love Supreme,-56,"Impulse!, 1965","Two important things happened to John Coltrane in 1957: The saxophonist left Miles Davis’ employ to join Thelonious Monk’s band and hit new heights in extended, ecstatic soloing. Coltrane also kicked his heroin addiction, a vital step in a religious awakening that climaxed with this legendary album-long hymn of praise. The indelible four-note theme of the first movement, “Acknowledgment,” is the humble foundation of the suite. But Coltrane’s majestic, often violent blowing (famously described as “sheets of sound”) is never self-aggrandizing. Coltrane soars with nothing but gratitude and joy. You can’t help but go with him. "
123,Beastie Boys,Paul's Boutique,+2,"Capitol, 1989","“I went to this party in Los Angeles,” recalled Adam Horovitz, “and they were playing this music, like … four breakbeat records playing at the same time.” The party soundtrack consisted of tracks by the Dust Brothers, who ended up co-producing this entire second record from the Beasties, providing the rap trio with some of the best samples ever put on wax, including the Ramones, Mountain, and the Funky 4 Plus 1. Paul’s Boutique is also an extended goof on Abbey Road [see No. 5], which was Paul McCartney’s boutique — and like that record, it ambitiously stitches together song fragments in a way rarely heard before or since. "
124,Jay-Z,The Blueprint,-74,"Roc-A-Fella, 2001","With The Blueprint, Jay-Z took on anyone and everyone who wanted to sit on his throne, even the jesters. “Takeover,” one of rap’s most precise and unrelenting diss tracks, commits GBH on rappers Nas and Prodigy from Mobb Deep. When Hova isn’t taking shots at record executives, cops, critics, haters, biters, and his absent dad (and still, sadly, using the word “faggot”), he inches toward vulnerability on “Song Cry.” “Izzo (H.O.V.A.),” with dynamic production by Kanye West, gave him his first Top 10 single. Jay-Z elevates clever rhymes and innovations with an unmatched air of calm control and a cavalier confidence. Here’s the moral of the story, courtesy of “Takeover”: “You guys don’t want it with HOV.” "
125,Lucinda Williams,Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,-27,"Mercury, 1998","It took three torturous years to finish, but it was worth it; there are no bad songs on this alt-country masterwork. The title track is one of Williams’ best: Over guitars that owe more to the Stones than to the Opry, she tells a story about the rootlessness of American life. Williams, who was born in Louisiana, describes the South in a loving, fearful tone (“Broken down shacks, engine parts” in one song, “Busted-down doors and borrowed cash” in another) and mourns pals who fell prey to hard liquor, drugs, or dreams of stardom. With production help from Roy Bittan of the E Street Band and a lot of twangy power chords, Williams rocks hard enough to give these troubled songs both dignity and a feeling of release. "
126,Roxy Music,Roxy Music,New in 2023,,
127,The Ramones,Ramones,-80,"Sire, 1976","The Ramones' self-titled debut album stripped rock & roll down to its essential elements and invented punk rock in the process. Recorded in just 18 days for $6,400, the album's 14 songs clock in at under 30 minutes, featuring buzzsaw guitars, pounding drums, and Joey Ramone's nasal vocals. Songs like 'Blitzkrieg Bop,' 'I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,' and 'Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue' combined teenage themes with breakneck tempos and three-chord simplicity. The album's aesthetic of deliberate amateurism and punk attitude influenced countless bands and launched the punk movement."
128,Frank Sinatra,Songs for Swingin' Lovers!,New in 2023,"Capitol, 1956","One of Sinatra's finest Capitol albums, this collection of love songs arranged by Nelson Riddle showcases the Chairman of the Board at his swinging best. The album features definitive versions of American songbook standards like 'I've Got You Under My Skin,' 'Anything Goes,' and 'Makin' Whoopee.' Sinatra's mature vocal style, combining technical precision with emotional depth, paired with Riddle's sophisticated arrangements, created the template for the classic American pop album. The album's joyful celebration of romance and its impeccable production values made it both a commercial and artistic triumph."
129,Bruce Springsteen,"The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle",+216,"Columbia, 1973","Reeling from the commercial fizzle of his debut LP, Bruce Springsteen threw off the “new Dylan” baggage and applied his Jersey-bar-band skills to some of the funniest tunes he’d ever write: “Rosalita,” “Kitty’s Back,” and the boardwalk love song “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy).” The music is loose, jazzy, and full of ambition — a studio take on the live muscle that Springsteen was already famous for — and “New York City Serenade” is the first of Springsteen’s epic street operas. "
130,Tim Buckley,Happy Sad,New in 2023,,
131,Black Sabbath,Paranoid,+8,"Vertigo, 1970","If you think Ozzy’s enduring fame is impressive, try taking a time machine back to the early Seventies and telling rock critics they’ll still be writing about Paranoid 50 years after its release. But Sabbath ruled for bummed-out kids in the Seventies, and nearly every heavy-metal and extreme rock band of the past three decades — from Metallica to Nirvana to Mastodon — owes a debt of worship to Tony Iommi’s crushing, granite-fuzz guitar chords, the Visigoth rhythm machine of Bill Ward and Geezer Butler, and Ozzy Osbourne’s agonized bray in “Paranoid,” “Iron Man,” and “War Pigs.” "
132,The B-52's,The B-52's,+66,"Warner Bros., 1979","The debut by the B-52’s sounds like a bunch of high school friends cramming all their running jokes, goofy sounds, and private nicknames into a New Wave record. “We never thought it would get past our circle of friends in Athens [Georgia],” vocalist Fred Schneider told Rolling Stone. It turned out that nobody could resist the band’s campy, arty funk, or the eccentric squeals and bouffant hairdos of Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson. (Playing organ, Pierson also defined the band’s sound.) They played toy instruments, and their thrift-store image was as inventive and colorful as their music — which, with “Rock Lobster,” was pretty inventive and colorful. "
133,The Stooges,Raw Power,New in 2023,"Columbia, 1973","The Stooges' final studio album is a primal scream of garage rock fury that anticipated punk rock by several years. Produced by David Bowie and featuring James Williamson's slashing guitar work alongside Iggy Pop's unhinged vocals, the album's raw energy and nihilistic attitude influenced generations of punk and alternative rock musicians. Songs like 'Search and Destroy' and 'I Need Somebody' combine primitive power with sophisticated songcraft. Despite its initial commercial failure, the album is now recognized as a crucial link between garage rock and punk."
134,The Beatles,A Hard Day's Night,+129,"United Artists, 1964","This soundtrack to the Richard Lester film cemented all that U.S. listeners had heard about the Beatles’ genius in the off-kilter beauty of John Lennon’s “If I Fell” and the rockabilly bounce of Paul McCartney’s “Can’t Buy Me Love.” It was their first album of all-original material, showcasing leaps in their songwriting as well as new tricks like George Harrison’s 12-string guitar, picked up on tour in America, and the Dylanesque harmonica blast that opens “I Should Have Known Better.” "
135,Sleater-Kinney,Dig Me Out,+54,"Kill Rock Stars, 1997","“I wanna be your Joey Ramone,” Corin Tucker promised on Sleater-Kinney’s 1996 album, Call the Doctor. Their next record made good on that mythic ambition. When drummer Janet Weiss joined singer-guitarists Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, a riot-grrrl force of nature became one of the world’s most potent rock bands. Tucker’s indelible vibrato takes off with avenging-angel ferocity on songs like the almost impossibly explosive title track and “Words and Guitar,” an awe-inspiring statement of rock & roll’s power to transform a broken world. "
136,Led Zeppelin,Physical Graffiti,+8,"Swan Song, 1975","The last great Led Zeppelin album is — like most 1970s double LPs — a bloated beast. But its self-indulgent swagger is the very unifying thing that makes it so much fun — and one of the heaviest records of the Seventies. Physical Graffiti is the ultimate in Zeppelin’s attempts to fuse East and West, exploring the Arabic and Indian sonorities of “Kashmir” and “In the Light.” It’s Zeppelin’s most eclectic album, featuring down-and-dirty blues (“Black Country Woman,” “Boogie With Stu”), pop balladry (“Down by the Seaside”), metal riffs (“The Wanton Song”), and the 11-minute “In My Time of Dying.” An excessive album from the group that all but invented excess. "
137,George Harrison,All Things Must Pass,+231,"Apple, 1970","After the end of the Beatles, the Quiet One suddenly looked like the one best prepared for the solo life. After years of writing in the shadow of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, George Harrison had enough songs saved up to make his solo debut a triple album, featuring friends like Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and Ringo Starr. All Things Must Pass is full of spiritual guitar quests like “Isn’t It a Pity” and “My Sweet Lord,” the first Number One hit to include a Hare Krishna chant. "
138,Ornette Coleman,The Shape of Jazz to Come,+279,"Atlantic, 1959","Ornette Coleman’s sound was so out there, one audience at an early gig threw his tenor sax over a cliff. He switched to alto and pioneered free jazz: no chords, no harmony, any player can take the lead. It’s still a jarring sound to encounter for the first time, but Coleman’s freedom was grounded in the cathartic release of the gospel and blues of his native Texas. On his first album for Atlantic Records, his music can be just as lyrical as it is demanding, particularly on the haunting “Lonely Woman.” "
139,R.E.M.,Automatic for the People,-43,"Warner Bros., 1992","“It doesn’t sound a whole lot like us,” warned guitarist Peter Buck. But by stripping back their sound to a spare, largely acoustic essence, the college-rock kings made the most powerful album of their career — an argument for sweetness and softness in an increasingly hard world. The bold sonic change-up laid bare Michael Stipe’s keening baritone and expansive vocal melodies, accentuated in several songs by Led Zeppelin member John Paul Jones’ gorgeous string arrangements. The album “was beautiful. It was quiet,” Stipe said. “It flew in the face of everything that was going down musically at the time.” At a time when grunge angst ruled, songs like “Everybody Hurts” and the lovely “Find the River” offered solace. "
140,Pink Floyd,Wish You Were Here,+124,"Columbia, 1975","For the follow-up to Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd got even darker, exploring their main themes of lunacy and alienation. The poignant title ballad is a lament for their ex-bandmate Syd Barrett, one of the Sixties’ saddest acid casualties. They pay tribute in “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” a 26-minute, nine-part suite that both opens and closes the album, with David Gilmour’s elegiac guitar. They also skewer the music business in “Have a Cigar” and “Welcome to the Machine.” "
141,The Notorious B.I.G.,Ready to Die,-119,"Bad Boy, 1994","The Notorious B.I.G. spread the love the Brooklyn way on his classic debut, introducing us to the most immediately likable voice in hip-hop history. “I made the record for New York, but I want the world to hear it,” he said. Ready to Die executive producer Sean “Puffy” Combs, who’d read about the fledgling Brooklyn rapper in The Source magazine, pushed his new discovery to leaven the stick-up-kid self-mythologizing of “Machine Gun Funk” and “Gimme the Loot” with inviting party-up pop like “Big Poppa” and the ecstatically playful origin story “Juicy.” But it was Biggie’s gift of gab, enormous personality, and sense of humor that made Ready to Die so wonderful — whether he was offering a 360-degree vision of the mean streets of Fort Greene on “Things Done Changed,” kicking it Bonnie and Clyde-style on “Me and My Bitch,” or delivering rags-to-riches brags like “Birthdays was the worst days/Now we sip champagne when we’re thirsty.” In the process, he changed rap forever. He ends the album with the dark prophecy of “Suicidal Thoughts.” As with Kurt Cobain, his tragic death while still in his twenties will always leave us wondering how far he might have gone. "
142,N.W.A,Straight Outta Compton,-72,"Ruthless, 1988","N.W.A’s debut brought West Coast gangsta rap to Middle America and changed hip-hop forever. It was the launching pad for the careers of Ice Cube, Eazy-E, and Dr. Dre. “Back then we was calling it ‘reality rap,’” Ice Cube told Rolling Stone years later. “‘Gangsta rap’ is the name that the media coined.” Ice Cube’s rage and Dr. Dre’s police-siren street beats combined for a truly fearsome sound on “Express Yourself” and “Straight Outta Compton.” But it was the protest track “Fuck Tha Police” that earned the crew its biggest honor: a threatening letter from the FBI. "
143,Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds,Murder Ballads,New in 2023,,
144,Jackson Browne,Late for the Sky,New in 2023,,
145,Portishead,Dummy,-14,"Go! Beat, 1994","It’s difficult to sustain, over an entire album, something as vague as ambiance, but Portishead did it on their debut. Along with fellow Bristol, England, innovators Massive Attack, they headed up the trendy mid-Nineties trip-hop movement. Long after the genre petered out, their debut remains immersive and haunting, built on skittering break beats, jazzy samples, spare arrangements, and discomforting pauses. But it’s singer Beth Gibbon’s brooding, pop-cabaret vocals that make it feel classic, hinting at real pain below trip-hop’s stoned exterior. The result was cinematic enough to recall John Barry’s lustrous scores for James Bond films. "
146,Björk,Homogenic,+56,"Elektra, 1997","Björk’s third album was a departure from the fun, playful electronics of her mid-Nineties solo sets Debut and Post, adopting a more uniform, chilly, and distinctly Icelandic sound in its fusion of trip-hop with neo-classical strings. “Jóga,” with its stratosphere-high vocals and beats inspired by volcanic eruptions, may be Björk’s signature song, but it’s only one sample of the album’s palette, jagged and luminescent like broken stained glass. The sheer beauty underneath its boldness and abrasion has enraptured countless artists, from Thom Yorke to Arca, in the years since its release. "
147,Charles Mingus,The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady,New in 2023,"Impulse!, 1963","Charles Mingus's extended composition is considered one of the greatest achievements in jazz, combining elements of classical music, gospel, and blues into a cohesive whole. The album's complex arrangements and Mingus's passionate bass playing create a deeply emotional musical journey. The work's integration of different musical styles and its emotional intensity make it a landmark of modern jazz."
148,Liz Phair,Exile in Guyville,-92,"Matador, 1993","“Watch how fast they run to the flame,” Liz Phair sang, and true to that promise her debut double LP set the underground on fire. Phair and co-producer Brad Wood built off the bedroom demo intimacy of Phair’s Girly-Sound cassette releases, creating a loose response record to the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street (“I had a lot to say on the subject matter they put forth,” she told Rolling Stone). Her strikingly frank sex talk caused a media stir unheard of for a “low-fi” artitst, but it was the caffeinated drive of songs like “6’1” and “Never Said,” the painterly sonic impressionism of the piano piece “Canary” or the sunset majestic “Stratford-On-Guy,” and the real hurt and hunger of “Fuck and Run” and “Divorce Song” that made Exile hit home. "
149,Run-D.M.C.,Raising Hell,New in 2023,"Profile, 1986","Working for the first time with producer Rick Rubin, the Hollis, Queens, crew of Run, DMC, and Jam Master Jay made an album so undeniable, it forced the mainstream to cross over to hip-hop. “Peter Piper” kicked the rhymes over a jingling cowbell sampled from an old jazz-fusion record. On “My Adidas,” “It’s Tricky,” and “You Be Illin’,” Run and DMC talked trash while the DJ made their day. They even hit MTV with a vandalistic remake of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way,” featuring Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. "
150,Guided by Voices,Bee Thousand,New in 2023,,
151,The Jesus and Mary Chain,Psychocandy,New in 2023,,
152,Miles Davis,Bitches Brew,-65,"Columbia, 1970","In February 1969, Miles Davis recorded In a Silent Way, a bold step into ambient funk and electric futurism. Then just six months later, he was back in the studio, driven by his desire to assemble “the best damn rock & roll band in the world.” The idea was to connect his music to the audience of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. The result was this double album of jazz-rock fusion, cut in three days of on-the-spot improvisations with an electric orchestra that included three keyboardists, three drummers, two bassists, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, and guitarist John McLaughlin. The music was full of visceral thrills and the brooding darkness Davis brought to everything he touched. "
153,Elliott Smith,Either/Or,+63,"Kill Rock Stars, 1997","Elliott Smith had ambitions to make records with a Beatlesque sound — but zero interest in Beatlesque fame — when he recorded Either/Or. While he achieved his dreams on several subsequent major-label releases, the Portland, Oregon, indie-folk singer-songwriter’s third album resonates because of his low-fi whisper and gritty, sepia-toned lyrics. His songs struck a nerve well beyond the Northwest music scene — Madonna, of all people, covered the morosely pretty drunk’s lullaby “Between the Bars.” "
154,The Kinks,Something Else by the Kinks,+324,"Pye, 1968","Something Else was a commercial flop that nearly killed the band, but it shows off Ray Davies’ genius for writing about the secret lives of everyday people. “Waterloo Sunset” is a gorgeously chilly ballad about a lonely man watching lovers from his window; “Two Sisters” celebrates a housewife dancing around her house with curlers in her hair. He’s got poetic compassion for all these characters, even as he witnesses their private pain in “No Return,” “Afternoon Tea,” and “End of the Season.” "
155,Joni Mitchell,Court and Spark,-45,"Asylum, 1974","Joni Mitchell followed up Blue with the underrated For the Roses, a set of harmonically and lyrically complex songs. Court and Spark is, in comparison, smoother and more straight-ahead; it became the biggest record of her career, hitting Number Two. Working with saxophonist Tom Scott’s fusion group, L.A. Express, Mitchell settled into a folk-pop-jazz groove that remains a landmark of breezy sophistication, particularly on the Top 10 single “Help Me.” Strange but true: A cover of “Twisted,” by the scat-jazz vocal group Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, closes the album — with stoner comics Cheech and Chong singing backup. "
156,AC/DC,Back in Black,-72,"Atlantic, 1980","In the middle of album rehearsals, singer Bon Scott went on a drinking spree; he choked on his vomit and was found dead in the back seat of a car. After two days of mourning, guitarist Malcolm Young thought, “Well, fuck this, I’m not gonna sit around mopin’ all fuckin’ year.” He called his brother, guitarist Angus Young, and they went back to work with replacement vocalist Brian Johnson. The resulting album has the relentless logic of a sledgehammer. Back in Black remains the purest distillation of hard rock: “Hells Bells,” “You Shook Me All Night Long,” and the title track have all become enduring anthems of strutting blues-based guitar. "
157,Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers,Damn the Torpedoes,+74,"Backstreet, 1979","With hair like Jagger’s and a voice like Dylan’s in tune, Tom Petty and his bar band defrilled classic rock: In 1979, he filed for bankruptcy; then Torpedoes took off, mostly because “Here Comes My Girl” seemed to keep the promises those like Jagger et al., forgot they’d made. Perfectly produced by future music-industry megamogul Jimmy Iovine, Torpedoes gave bright jangling Sixties rock a sheen that made pretty much everything else on AOR radio seem lumpy and stiff, while Petty’s obvious authenticity kept the music from ever seeming calculated or overly polished. "
158,Iggy Pop,Lust for Life,New in 2023,,
159,The Doors,The Doors,-73,"Elektra, 1967","After blowing minds as the house band at the Whisky-a-Go-Go, where they were fired for playing the Oedipal drama “The End,” the Doors were ready to unleash their organ-driven rock on the world. “On each song, we had tried every possible arrangement,” drummer John Densmore said, “so we felt the whole album was tight.” “Break on Through (To the Other Side),” “Twentieth Century Fox,” and “Crystal Ship” are pop-art lighting for Top 40 attention spans. But the Doors hit pay dirt by editing one of their jam songs for airplay: “Light My Fire,” written by guitarist Robbie Krieger, after Jim Morrison told everybody in the band to write a song with universal imagery. "
160,Beck,Odelay,+264,"Geffen, 1996","Burrowing into the studio with the Dust Brothers, Beck came back with a Technicolor version of his Woody Guthrie-meets-Grandmaster Flash vision, demonstrating to all his rock peers on “Devil’s Haircut” and “Where It’s At” that turntables had a brighter future than refried grunge, while reminding listeners of the Sixties and his own folk roots with the shabby, lovely “Jack-Ass.” As he told Rolling Stone in 1997, “I’m a traditionalist in a lot of ways. A lot of what my generation is into, what it represents, I’m totally against.” "
161,The Zombies,Odessey and Oracle,+82,"Date, 1968","The Zombies broke up two weeks after they completed Odessey and Oracle, in December 1967, and the album wasn’t released in the U.S. until 1969. But its baroque psychedelic-pop arrangements continue to exert a powerful influence, particularly on whimsy-loving indie rockers. Recorded in London at both Abbey Road and a Stones haunt, Olympic Studios, Odessey combined the adventure of Sgt. Pepper with the concision of British Invasion pop. And “Time of the Season” went on to become a Number Three hit. "
162,Neutral Milk Hotel,In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,+214,"Merge, 1998","The Louisiana band nearly pulled off an indie-rock Pet Sounds with their second album, leavening low-fi guitar racket and twee folk with circus-y instruments like the singing saw and zanzithophone, as leader Jeff Magnum cut through the irony of the Seinfeld/Pavement era with his heraldic surrealist yammerings about broken homes, Anne Frank, religion, scary sexual awakenings, and other coming-of-age traumas. It’s weird, raw, harrowing stuff; if you think you can’t be moved by a song called “The King of Carrot Flowers Pts. 2 & 3,” hearing is believing. "
163,Cream,Disraeli Gears,+7,"Reaction, 1967","Of all Cream’s studio albums, Disraeli Gears is the sharpest and most linear. The power trio focused their instrumental explorations into colorful pop songs: “Strange Brew” (slinky funk), “Dance the Night Away” (trippy jangle), “Tales of Brave Ulysses” (a wah-wah freakout that Eric Clapton wrote with Martin Sharp, who created the kaleidoscopic cover art). The hit “Sunshine of Your Love” nearly didn’t make it onto the record; the band had trouble nailing it until famed Atlantic Records engineer Tom Dowd suggested that Ginger Baker try a Native American tribal beat, a simple adjustment that locked the song into place. "
164,Sam Cooke,"Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963",+76,"RCA, 1985","Sam Cooke was elegance and soul personified, but he works this Florida club until it’s hotter than hell, all while sounding like he never breaks a sweat. He croons and strokes “For Sentimental Reasons” like a superlover, and when the crowd sings along with him, it’s magic. RCA Records originally shelved the album out of fear that Cooke’s raw performance might alienate crossover (read: white) audiences. When it was finally released more than 20 years after he recorded, Live at the Harlem Square Club gave many fans a whole new perspective of his greatness. "
165,De La Soul,3 Feet High and Rising,-62,"Tommy Boy, 1989","Long Island high school friends Posdnuos, Trugoy, and Maseo linked up with Stetsasonic DJ Prince Paul to create a left-field hip-hop masterpiece, heralding a “D.A.I.S.Y. Age” and weaving samples of Steely Dan, Malcolm McLaren, and Johnny Cash with raps about everything from Public Enemy-style politics (“Ghetto Thang”) to individualism (“Take It Off”) to body odor (“A Little Bit of Soap”). “There was no plan back then,” Trugoy told Rolling Stone in 2009. Indeed, De La Soul’s anything-goes spirit sparked generations of oddballs to rise up and get theirs. "
166,Aretha Franklin,I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You,-153,"Atlantic, 1967","Aretha Franklin’s Atlantic debut is the place where gospel music collided with R&B and rock & roll and became soul. The Detroit-born preacher’s daughter was about $80,000 in debt to her previous label, Columbia, when Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler signed her in 1966. “I took her to church,” Wexler said, “sat her down at the piano, and let her be herself.” Recording with the best session men at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, she promptly cut the album’s title hit, a slow-fire ballad of ferocious sexuality. The historic moment, of course, was her storefront-church makeover of Otis Redding’s “Respect,” which became Franklin’s first Number One pop single, prompting Redding to exclaim, “I just lost my song.” Soon, it would be the new marching anthem of the women’s and civil rights movements. “Women did, and still do, need equal rights,” Franklin said decades later. “We’re doing the same job, we expect the same pay, and the same respect.” She reinforced that feminism on “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” and had the guts to wring more pathos from Sam Cooke’s civil rights anthem, “A Change Is Gonna Come,” than any other singer who has attempted that landmark song. Never Loved a Man began an unparalleled run of classic albums for Franklin; it’s the sound of the Queen of Soul claiming her crown. "
167,The Pretenders,Pretenders,-15,"Sire, 1980","After years of knocking around Ohio and England, writing record reviews and hanging with the Sex Pistols, Chrissie Hynde put together a band as tough as her attitude. The Pretenders’ debut is filled with no-nonsense New Wave rock such as “Mystery Achievement” — plus a cover of “Stop Your Sobbing,” by the Kinks’ Ray Davies (three years later, the father of Hynde’s child). The biggest hit was “Brass in Pocket,” a song of ambition and seduction. Hynde, however, wasn’t so sure about the song’s success. “I was embarrassed by it,” she said. “I hated it so much that if I was in Woolworth’s and they started playing it, I’d have to run out of the store.” "
168,Buzzcocks,Singles Going Steady,+82,"I.R.S., 1979","Some punks wanted to smash the state. The Buzzcocks just wanted to find someone to love, and if you didn’t return their intense affection, watch out (check the jilted tantrum “Oh Shit!”). Singles collects eight British 45s into a perfect punk album. This Manchester group took the sound of the Ramones and made it jittery and even faster. Songs such as “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays” define a world of permanently frustrated punk desire. "
169,Moby Grape,Moby Grape,New in 2023,,
170,Led Zeppelin,Led Zeppelin,-69,"Atlantic, 1969","On their first album, Led Zeppelin were still in the process of inventing their own sound, moving on from the heavy rave-ups of guitarist Jimmy Page’s previous band, the Yardbirds. But from the beginning, Zeppelin had the astonishing fusion of Page’s lyrical guitar playing and Robert Plant’s paint-peeling love-hound yowl. “We were learning what got us off most and what got people off most,” said Plant. Yet the template for everything Zeppelin achieved in the 1970s is here: brutal rock (“Communication Breakdown”), thundering power balladry (“Your Time Is Gonna Come”), and acid-flavored folk blues (“Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”). "
171,Dr. Dre,The Chronic,-134,"Deathrow, 1992","When George Clinton first heard hip-hop artists blending old records with new beats, he wasn’t too impressed. But then Dr. Dre turned samples of Clinton’s P-Funk sides into G-Funk, and Dr. Funkenstein approved, calling funk “the DNA of hip-hop and rap.” Dre had already taken gangsta rap to the mainstream with his earlier group, N.W.A, but on The Chronic, he funked up the rhymes with a smooth bass-heavy production style and the laid-back delivery of then-unknown rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg. When Dre and Snoop dropped “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang,” there was no getting out of the way. "
172,Wilco,Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,+53,"Nonesuch, 2001","When Reprise Records refused to release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco posted it for free on the internet. Two-hundred-thousand downloads later, Nonesuch Records (owned by the same company as Reprise) released the album, and it became critical and commercial gold. Its pretty acoustic-guitar melodies battled noise, skidded into dissonance, or got chopped off abruptly. Its lyrics pitted hope against doubt, with all bets off. “You have to learn how to die,” crooned Jeff Tweedy, “if you wanna … be alive.” "
173,Big Brother & the Holding Company,Cheap Thrills,+199,"Columbia, 1968","After Big Brother’s performance at the Monterey Pop Festival made Janis Joplin a star, fans were heatedly expecting a live album from them. But their in-the-red loudness and sloppy performances meant they had to cut their second album in a New York studio, with crowd noise added in later. “We’re just a sloppy group of street freaks,” Joplin said. But these San Francisco acid rockers were the most simpatico band she ever had, especially when their raw racket backs Joplin up on “Piece of My Heart,” perhaps her greatest recording. "
174,Creedence Clearwater Revival,Green River,New in 2023,,
175,Björk,Post,New in 2023,"One Little Indian, 1995","Björk's second solo album expanded her artistic palette beyond the experimental rock of 'Debut' to incorporate electronic music, jazz, and world music influences. Working with producers including Nellee Hooper, Tricky, and Graham Massey, Björk created a genre-defying album that features the hit singles 'Army of Me' and 'It's Oh So Quiet.' The album's adventurous spirit, combining her unique vocal style with cutting-edge production, established Björk as one of the most innovative artists of the 1990s. Her fearless experimentation with different genres while maintaining her distinctive artistic voice makes 'Post' a landmark of electronic music."
176,PJ Harvey,To Bring You My Love,New in 2023,"Island, 1995","Polly Jean Harvey's third album marked a dramatic shift toward a more experimental and theatrical approach. Recorded with producer Flood, the album features Harvey's most diverse musical palette yet, incorporating blues, gospel, and electronic elements. Songs like 'Down by the Water' and 'C'mon Billy' showcase her powerful vocals and provocative lyrics, while tracks like 'Long Snake Moan' reveal her deep connection to American roots music. The album's dark, atmospheric production and Harvey's fearless artistic vision established her as one of the most important alternative rock artists of the 1990s."
177,Dire Straits,Dire Straits,New in 2023,,
178,Pulp,Different Class,-16,"Island, 1995","Pulp blew up in the Brit-pop scene of the 1990s, yet Jarvis Cocker outclassed all his rivals as a master storyteller and wit. This man was a born rock star in the Bowie mode, striking a pose in his thrift-shop razzmatazz, but with his own sly sense of compassion. On Different Class, he croons his breathy tales of working-class lust, envy, and dread, over the swishy, trash-disco grooves of “Common People” and “Disco 2000.” You can hear the shabby glamour in his voice when he sighs, “I’ve kissed your mother twice/And now I’m working on your dad.” But in the finale, “Bar Italia,” he makes a post-clubbing hangover sound like the most romantic adventure in the world. "
179,X-Ray Spex,Germfree Adolescents,+175,"EMI, 1978","Teenage multiracial London girl Poly Styrene had braces on her teeth and wore Day-Glo rags, screeching anthems like “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” over saxophone blasts, and chanting, “I am a poseur and I don’t care! I like to make people stare!” X-Ray Spex’s explosive punk-rock debut went criminally unreleased in the U.S., but it became a word-of-mouth cult classic throughout the indie-rock underground in the Eighties and Nineties, influencing Sleater-Kinney, the Beastie Boys, and many others. "
180,Black Flag,Damaged,+307,"SST, 1981","MCA refused to release this album, denouncing it as “immoral” and “anti-parent.” High praise, but Black Flag lived up to it, defining L.A. hardcore punk with Greg Ginn’s violent guitar and the pissed-off scream of Henry Rollins, especially on “TV Party” and “Rise Above,” which came with the timeless smash-the-glass salvo “We are tired of your abuse/Try to stop is but it’s no use.” Punks still listen to Damaged, and parents still hate it. "
181,The Flying Burrito Brothers,The Gilded Palace of Sin,+281,"A&M, 1969","A landmark of country rock — or, as Gram Parsons called it, “cosmic American music.” He and Chris Hillman were a pair of ex-Byrds who’d flown the coop. The Burritos put their poetic twist on hillbilly twang, proudly wearing Nudie suits and bringing in the pedal steel guitar of Sneaky Pete Kleinow. “Boy, I love them,” Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone. “Their record instantly knocked me out.” They sing “Sin City” in high-lonesome two-part harmony, sounding like country boys lost in the decadence of Sixties L.A.; “Wheels” is God-fearing hippie soul. "
182,Richard Hell & the Voidoids,Blank Generation,New in 2023,,
183,T. Rex,Electric Warrior,+5,"Reprise, 1971","“A successful, hit rock & roll record is a spell,” T. Rex leader Marc Bolan told Rolling Stone. And so, muttering “eye of Bowie, toe of Slade,” Bolan cast a spell over all of England. He took his Tolkienesque hippie music and gave it a glammed-out Chuck Berry update on sexy singles like “Bang a Gong (Get It On)”; this was rock that thrusted, quivered, and recklessly employed metaphors equating cars with sex (“You got a hubcap diamond star halo”). He outdid himself with “Jeepster,” an entire song on the topic, vibrating with lust, a shuffling beat, lots of guitar, and the sound of Bolan stomping on the studio floor. "
184,Patsy Cline,The Ultimate Collection,+45,"Universal, 2000","Her career was cut short when she died in a plane crash at 30, but Patsy Cline made her mark as one of country’s great singers. “Even though her style is considered country, her delivery is more like a classic pop singer,” Lucinda Williams has noted. Her hits “Walkin’ After Midnight” and “I Fall to Pieces” also made it to the pop charts, establishing the template for country crossover that pointed the way forward for generations; her version of “Crazy” was a godsend to the song’s struggling writer, a young Willie Nelson. "
185,Galaxie 500,On Fire,New in 2023,,
186,Isaac Hayes,Hot Buttered Soul,+187,"Enterprise, 1969","Isaac Hayes demanded Stax Records give him complete artistic control for his second album. What happened next sounded like nothing else in music at the time, an orchestral-soul watershed that forecast R&B’s turn toward symphonic excess and plush introspect. Hayes’ 12-minute Southern-psychedelic version of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David “Walk On By” and his spectacularly tortured 18-minute take on Jimmy Webb’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” took easy-listening tunes and refashioned them in his own radically laid-back image. "
187,Madonna,Like a Prayer,+144,"Sire, 1989","“I like the challenge of merging art and commerce,” Madonna told Rolling Stone. After dominating Eighties pop without always getting the critical respect she deserved, Madonna finally won artistic recognition with her most personal set of songs, including “Till Death Do Us Part” and “Oh Father.” And she nailed the commerce side with “Express Yourself” and the title track, the video of which had the Vatican talking about blasphemy. “I pray when I’m in trouble or when I’m happy,” she said. “When I feel any sort of extreme.” Like a Prayer fused all of her extremes brilliantly. "
188,New York Dolls,New York Dolls,+113,"Mercury, 1973","“Do you think that you could make it with Frankenstein?” they asked, not kidding. Glammed-out punkers the New York Dolls snatched riffs from Chuck Berry and Fats Domino and fattened them with loads of attitude and reverb. Produced by Todd Rundgren, songs like “Personality Crisis” and “Bad Girl” drip with sleaze and style. “What the Dolls did to be influential on punk was show that anybody could do it,” singer David Johansen said. Indeed, its hard to imagine the Ramones or the Replacements or a thousand other trash-junky bands without them. "
189,The Specials,The Specials,New in 2023,,
190,Buffalo Springfield,Buffalo Springfield Again,New in 2023,,
191,The Gun Club,Fire of Love,New in 2023,,
192,Pink Floyd,The Wall,-63,"Columbia, 1979","Pink Floyd’s most elaborately theatrical album was inspired by their own success: the alienating enormity of their tours after The Dark Side of the Moon [see No. 55], which was when bassist-lyricist Roger Waters first hit upon a wall as a metaphor for isolation and rebellion. He finished a demo of the work by July 1978; the double album then took the band a year to make. Rock’s ultimate self-pity opera, The Wall is also hypnotic in its indulgence: the totalitarian thunder of “In the Flesh?”; the suicidal languor of “Comfortably Numb”; the Brechtian drama of “The Trial.” Rock-star hubris has never been more electrifying. "
193,Dinosaur Jr.,You're Living All Over Me,New in 2023,,
194,Randy Newman,Good Old Boys,New in 2023,,
195,Hole,Live Through This,-89,"Geffen, 1994","One week before Hole’s breakthrough album was released, Kurt Cobain killed himself and made Courtney Love a widow. The media attention that followed guaranteed a close listen for Love’s fearsome songs and her shift from pure riot-grrrl punk to a more stable sound that MTV could embrace. Her coded songs have dark topics, including death (“Kill me pills”), violence (“Pee girl gets the belt”), and body shame (“Bad skin, doll heart”), as well as motherhood. (Cobain and Love became parents two years earlier, and briefly lost custody after she was reported to have used heroin while pregnant.) The horror in Love’s exposed voice on “Asking for It” and “Doll Parts” gives immediacy to her firsthand stories about being an outcast “pee girl.” "
196,The Raincoats,The Raincoats,+202,"Rough Trade, 1979","The Raincoats came up with one of the most experimental and thrilling sounds to emerge from the London punk explosion — four women making their own gloriously unkempt racket. As guitarist Ana Da Silva explained, “We rehearsed for hours, but we always fell apart.” Da Silva and Gina Birch chant over Palmolive’s manic drums and Vicky Aspinall’s buzz-saw violin, for gems like “In Love” and their gender-twisted cover of the Kinks’ “Lola.” Their debut album finally got its long-overdue U.S. release in 1993, at the insistence of Raincoats superfan Kurt Cobain. "
197,Massive Attack,Blue Lines,+44,"Wildbunch/Virgin, 1991","Perhaps the first post-hip-hop masterpiece: Blue Lines combined rap, dub, and soul that gave birth to trip-hop; if you ever found yourself in a “chillout room” in 1995, this album was probably on, and it can still suck you into its gravitational pull. In the U.K., where acid house and jungle were the dominant sounds, its creepingly slow ambiance knocked the music world on its back. “What’s important to us is the pace,” said the band’s 3D, “the weight of the bass and the mood.” "
198,The Modern Lovers,The Modern Lovers,+90,"Beserkley, 1976","Jonathan Richman moved from Boston to New York as a teenager in hopes of sleeping on Lou Reed’s couch. That influence shows on the two-chord anthem “Roadrunner.” Recorded in 1972 but not released until 1976, Lovers turned the tough sounds of the Velvets into an ode to suburban romanticism. “Rock & roll was about stuff that was natural,” Richman said. “I wasn’t about drugs and space.” Songs like “Pablo Picasso,” “Girl Friend,” and “Dignified and Old” touched generations of punk and indie-rock innocents. "
199,The Allman Brothers Band,At Fillmore East,New in 2023,"Capricorn, 1971","Although this double album is the perfect testimony to the Allman Brothers’ improvisational skills, it is also evidence of their unprecedented connection with the crowds at New York’s Fillmore East. “The audience would kind of play along with us,” singer-organist Gregg Allman said of those March 1971 shows. “They were right on top of every single vibration coming from the stage.” The guitar team of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts was at its peak, seamlessly fusing blues and jazz in “Whipping Post” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” But their telepathy was cut short: Just three months after the album’s release, Duane died in a motorcycle accident. "
200,Kanye West,My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,-183,"Roc-A-Fella, 2010","Our relationship with Kanye West was still in its love-hate phase when he created the 21st century’s most awe-inspiring hip-hop masterpiece. It’s an album every bit as chaotic as he was at the time — from the creepy funk of “Gorgeous” to the crushing attack of “Hell of a Life.” After his Taylor Swift VMAs fiasco in 2009, West went into a kind of self-exile, eventually ending up in Hawaii, where he imported a huge group of collaborators who included Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, Nicki Minaj, and RZA. In all-night recording sessions, he’d ping between studios, sculpting his most maximalist music ever; “a song like ‘Power’ took 5,000 hours,” he later said, “like literally.” West pulled from everywhere — Elton John played on “All of the Lights,” and “Power” sampled prog-rockers King Crimson. West’s sense of his own grandiose ambitions bordered on the comical; during the writing process for the nine-minute “Runaway,” he famously told guest rapper Pusha T to add “more douchebag” to his verses. The resulting track opened with just a single, eerie piano note before building into a mountainous, anarchic tune that incorporated everything from a Rick James sample to a vocoder that evoked Robert Fripp’s guitar playing on Brian Eno albums. The sonic overkill was lavish, but the record hit so hard because he mixed megalomania with introspect; “You been puttin’ up wit’ my shit just way too long,” he rapped on “Runaway.” West later called Dark Fantasy an apology record.” Perhaps. In any case, that wisdom has proved fleeting. "
201,Pixies,Surfer Rosa,+189,"4AD, 1988","The brainy Boston quartet went up against punk producer Steve Albini for one of the era’s most influential rock sounds: all razor-blade guitars and drum thud. It became the sound of the Nineties, as everyone from Nirvana to PJ Harvey went to Albini, hoping to get the raw power of Surfer Rosa. Black Francis goes from a whisper to a scream in oddities like “Bone Machine,” “River Euphrates,” and “Where Is My Mind?” But bassist (and future Breeder) Kim Deal steals the show with her cheeky Midwest vocals in “Gigantic.” "
202,Arcade Fire,Funeral,+298,"Merge, 2004","Loss, love, forced coming-of-age, and fragile generational hope: Arcade Fire’s debut touched on all these themes as it defined the independent rock of the ‘00s. Built on family ties (leader Win Butler, his wife, Régine Chassagne, his brother Will), the Montreal band made symphonic rock that truly rocked, simultaneously outsize and deeply personal, like the best pop. But for all its sad realism, Butler’s is music that still finds solace, and purpose, in communal celebration. "
203,LCD Soundsystem,Sound of Silver,+230,"DFA/Capitol, 2007","James Murphy had proven his kung fu as the most badass electro-punk producer in clubland. But not even fierce fans dreamed he’d make a masterpiece like Sound of Silver. Every track sounded like a different band’s greatest hit, from the political punk goof “North American Scum” to the synth-pop breakup lament “Someone Great.” The song for the ages was “All My Friends,” huge, sweeping, ferociously emotional, with disco keyboards and rock guitars pulsing as Murphy looked back on a youth of killer parties and silent mornings. "
204,The Go-Betweens,16 Lovers Lane,New in 2023,,
205,Dr. John,Gris-Gris,+151,"Atco, 1968","Mac Rebennack was a New Orleans piano player on songs for Professor Longhair and Frankie Ford who moved to L.A. in the Sixties, where he played on Phil Spector sessions and encountered California psychedelia. Rechristening himself Dr. John Creaux the Night Tripper, he made this swamp-funk classic. Gris-Gris blends New Orleans R&B, voodoo chants, and chemical inspiration. The groovy Afro-Caribbean percussion and creaky sound effects aren’t just otherworldly — they seem to come from several other worlds all at once. "
206,D'Angelo,Voodoo,-178,"EMI, 2000","In the five years following the release of his 1995 debut, Brown Sugar, D’Angelo grew disillusioned with the genre that had just anointed him a rising star. “I don’t consider myself an R&B artist,” the then-26-year-old told Jet. “R&B is pop, that’s the new word for R&B.” In his quest to create something new, he looked to both the masters of soul (Marvin, Curtis, Stevie) and contemporary innovators (Lauryn, Erykah). The end result was Voodoo, a moving, inventive masterpiece that stands as the ultimate achievement of the neo-soul era. Crafted with producer and drummer Questlove, who called the LP a “vicarious fantasy,” Voodoo places Pink Floyd-style cosmic jams (“Playa Playa”) next to Prince-inspired erotica (“Untitled [How Does It Feel]”). “I’m just looking at Voodoo as just the beginning,” D’Angelo said at the time. “It took a while, but I’m on my way now.” "
207,Metallica,Master of Puppets,-110,"Elektra, 1986","Metallica’s third album has a lyrical theme: manipulation. “It deals pretty much with drugs,” singer-guitarist James Hetfield said. “Instead of you controlling what you’re taking and doing, it’s drugs controlling you.” It also has a sonic theme: really loud guitars, played fast, with no regard for the hair metal that was then dominating the airwaves. When the band slows down on “Welcome Home (Sanitarium),” it just emphasizes the unrelenting nature of the rest of the songs. Recorded during three months in Copenhagen, Master of Puppets was bassist Cliff Burton’s last album with Metallica; he died in September 1986, when the band’s bus crashed. "
208,Uncle Tupelo,No Depression,New in 2023,,
209,Outkast,Aquemini,-160,"LaFace, 1998","The title of OutKast’s third album is a made-up word that combines the star signs of Big Boi (Aquarius) and André 3000 (Gemini). Their music is about duality too, matching Big Boi’s imperative to “make the club get crunk” with André’s determination to “activate the left and right brain.” André was the virtuoso, clipping off compound rhymes with grace, while Big Boi’s more grounded flow and clear diction rooted their songs. Hits like “Rosa Parks” put the duo’s hometown “Hotlanta” on the rap map, and at a time when formulaic albums by Master P and Puff Daddy topped the charts, OutKast unleashed an explosive sound that used live musicianship, social commentary, and a heavy dose of deep funk to create the greatest record ever to come out of the Dirty South. "
210,Air,Moon Safari,New in 2023,,
211,Richard & Linda Thompson,I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight,+274,"Island, 1974","With Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson was one of the first prominent Sixties folk rockers to look to his native England’s traditions for inspiration. After leaving Fairport, he joined with his wife, Linda Thompson to make stellar albums in the Seventies. Richard played guitar like a Sufi-mystic Neil Young; Linda had the voice of a Celtic Emmylou Harris. Bright Lights is their devastating masterwork of folk-rock dread. Radiohead even picked up some guitar tricks from “The Calvary Cross.” "
212,The White Stripes,Elephant,+237,"V2/XL/Third Man, 2003","The Stripes exploded out of Detroit with a minimalist garage-blues attack: just Jack White on guitar and Meg White on drums, taking on the world. These kids insisted they were a brother and sister, even after people learned they were secretly a divorced couple. But against all odds, the low-budget duo became a global sensation for their sheer rock power. Elephant seethes with raw desperation and lust in “Seven Nation Army,” “Hypnotize,” and “The Hardest Button to Button.” Jack plays guitar hero in the seven-minute jam “Ball and Biscuit.” "
213,Cheap Trick,In Color,New in 2023,,
214,Traffic,The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys,New in 2023,,
215,Echo & the Bunnymen,Heaven Up Here,New in 2023,,
216,The Stone Roses,The Stone Roses,+103,"Silvertone, 1989","For a few glorious moments at the dawn of the Nineties, the Stone Roses looked like they were going to lead another British Invasion, this one of baggy-panted, floppy-haired bands that loved Sixties guitars and rave-y dance beats with the same whimsical fervor. The sound never crossed over here, and the band fell apart — but first they made this incredible album, highlighted by the ecstatic eight-minute-long “I Am the Resurrection.” It laid the foundation for the Brit pop that blew up a few years later. "
217,Can,Ege Bamyasi,+237,"United Artists, 1972","Chugging out of Cologne, Germany, in the late Sixties, avant-psychedelic crew Can took influence from the Velvet Underground’s subterranean drones, Miles Davis’ molten jazz rock, and James Brown’s circular funk grooves. On Ege Bamyasi, new singer Damo Suzuki mumbles, chants, and shrieks his way through engulfing Kraut-boogie workouts like “Vitamin C” and “I’m So Green.” Spoon took their name from the LP’s Doors-meets-Stereolab closing track, and Kanye West sampled the lupine “Sing Swan Swing.” "
218,Iggy & the Stooges,Raw Power,New in 2023,,
219,Smashing Pumpkins,Siamese Dream,+122,"Virgin, 1993","“All these alternative bands today are so high up on their punk-rock horse that they’re in denial about being huge and playing big shows,” Billy Corgan told Rolling Stone in 1994. “Not only do we respect the clichés, we see the truth in them.” On their second disc, the Pumpkins pushed further from Nineties alt-rock to a grander, orchestrated sound with multiple guitar parts, strings, and a Mellotron. Alt-rock ended up following the band on its trip: Siamese Dream is packed with hits (“Cherub Rock,” “Today”). "
220,50 Cent,Get Rich or Die Tryin',+60,"Interscope, 2002","The backstory — promising street rapper gets shot nine times and lives to make a classic debut — was irresistible. So were the precision-engineered beats and hooks 50 Cent cooked up with his new mentor, Dr. Dre. Through a mixture of melody and menace, 50 enraptured the suburbs with “In da Club” and antagonized an entire generation of his peers on “Many Men.” His hulking figure, physically and metaphorically, loomed over the rap charts for years, teaching a generation of artists that nothing sold like fear itself. "
221,Peter Gabriel,Peter Gabriel 3: Melt,New in 2023,,
222,ABC,The Lexicon of Love,New in 2023,,
223,Bob Mould,Workbook,New in 2023,,
224,Guns N' Roses,Appetite for Destruction,-162,"Geffen, 1987","The biggest-selling debut album of the Eighties, Appetite hit the metal scene like an asteroid, bringing the grit and fury of Seventies rock back to a mainstream hard-rock scene that was starved for something real. Indiana-bred Axl Rose’s five-alarm yowl bowled over listeners. Guitarist Slash gave the band blues emotion and punk energy, while the rhythm section brought the funk on hits such as “Welcome to the Jungle.” When all the elements came together, as in the final two minutes of “Paradise City,” GN’R left all other Eighties metal bands in the dust, and they knew it, too. “A lot of rock bands are too fucking wimpy to have any sentiment or any emotion,” Rose said. “Unless they’re in pain.” "
225,Violent Femmes,Violent Femmes,New in 2023,,
226,Dexy's Midnight Runners,Searching for the Young Soul Rebels,New in 2023,,
227,Ray Charles,Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music,-100,"ABC-Paramount, 1962","Country and soul were deeply entangled Southern traditions and had been cross-pollinating for years. But Modern Sounds was still the audacious boundary smasher its title promised, with Ray Charles applying his gospel grit and luscious soul-pop strings to standards by Hank Williams (“Half as Much,” “You Win Again,” “Hey, Good Lookin’”) and Eddy Arnold, whose lover’s lament “You Don’t Know Me” is recast as a parable about race relations in light of the civil rights struggle. Modern Sounds became the most popular album of Charles’ career and includes the hits “I Can’t Stop Loving You” and “Born to Lose.” "
228,King Crimson,In the Court of the Crimson King,New in 2023,,
229,PJ Harvey,"Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea",+84,"Island, 2000","Polly Jean Harvey happy? Album number five found her in New York and in love, crowing “I’m immortal/When I’m with you” in the surging opener, “Big Exit.” Harvey had spent four records howling her sexual obsessions and romantic disappointments over stark postmodern blues. Her guitar attack was still forceful, but softened around the edges by marimba, piano, organ, and guest vocalist Thom Yorke, especially on the garage-y “Good Fortune” and the yearning “A Place Called Home” — mash notes to lovers in the big city. "
230,My Morning Jacket,Z,New in 2023,,
231,The Feelies,Crazy Rhythms,New in 2023,,
232,Ice Cube,AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted,-45,"Priority, 1990","Six months after quitting N.W.A, the group’s most gifted lyricist returned with a vengeance on AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, recorded with Public Enemy’s production crew, the Bomb Squad. Lyrically, it sharpened N.W.A’s politics; “Why more niggas in the pen than in college?” Cube asks on “The Nigga Ya Love to Hate.” The album’s rapacious sexism has aged horrendously, though give Cube some credit for being smart enough to include the stunning “It’s a Man’s World,” in which female rapper Yo-Yo tells him off straight to his face. "
233,Graham Parker & the Rumour,Squeezing Out Sparks,New in 2023,,
234,Suicide,Suicide,+264,"Red Star, 1977","These New York synth-punks evoke everything from the Velvet Underground to rockabilly. Martin Rev’s low-budget electronics are violent and hypnotic; Alan Vega screams as a rhythmic device. Late-night listening to “Frankie Teardrop,” a 10-minute-plus tale of a multiple murder, is not recommended. A droning voice in the wilderness when they appeared in the Seventies, the duo would influence bands from Arcade Fire and the National to Bruce Springsteen, who covered Suicide live in 2016. "
235,Steely Dan,Can't Buy a Thrill,-67,"ABC, 1972","Working as hired songwriters by day, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker rehearsed this debut in executives’ offices by night. “We play rock & roll, but we swing,” said Becker. For proof, check the cool lounge-jazz rhythms of “Do It Again” and the hot guitar of “Reelin’ in the Years.” Even florid lead vocalist David Palmer (who the band soon fired) couldn’t damage the sad, stately beauty of “Dirty Work”; on “Brooklyn,” Becker and Fagen wrote the perfect elusive ode to their native borough. Their debut kicked off an amazing run of albums, like 1973’s Countdown to Ecstasy and 1974’s Pretzel Logic, that are just as fantastic. "
236,Belle & Sebastian,If You're Feeling Sinister,+245,"Jeepster, 1996","Being a self-pitying shut-in has never sounded better than it does on the Scottish twee icons’ breakthrough. The chamber-folk arrangements are second to none — like a cup of tea brewed for you by a hopeless crush with a really good record collection — but don’t sleep on Stuart Murdoch’s subtly sardonic lyrics on “The Stars of Track and Field” and “Seeing Other People,” which give these wistful-sounding songs a bite that sets them apart from most imitators. "
237,Cocteau Twins,Heaven or Las Vegas,+8,"4AD, 1990","Cocteau Twins were Scot goths who helped invent the dream-pop aesthetic that ruled U.K. indie during the Eighties. Heaven or Las Vegas is their arrestingly beautiful pop peak, despite being released as the band itself was in turmoil, largely brought on by guitarist Robin Guthrie’s drug addiction. Somehow, they created something wholly transporting; Elizabeth Fraser’s celestial soprano works like a vocal Rorschach test, gorgeously floating over Guthrie and Simon Raymonde’s magic-hour instrumentation. "
238,The Strokes,Is This It,-124,"RCA, 2001","Before Is This It even came out, New York’s mod ragamuffins were overnight sensations, jumping from Avenue A to press hysteria and the inevitable backlash, all inside a year. The objective of Is This It, said singer Julian Casablancas, “was to be really cool and non-mainstream, and be really popular.” Recorded literally under the streets of New York, this blast of guitar-combo racket passionately reconciled those seemingly contradictory aspirations, and accomplished both, updating the propulsion of the Velvet Underground and the jangle of Seventies punk with Casablancas’ acidic dispatches mixed to the fore and ringed with distortion like he was singing from a pay phone. "
239,The Cure,Disintegration,-123,"Fiction, 1989","According to the kids on South Park, this is the best album ever made. According to many depressive Eighties-minded kids, it’s the only album ever made. Disintegration was the height of stadium goth rock, with the Cure stretching out for long, spacious wallows like ‘Plainsong” and “Prayers for Rain.” But it also shows off Robert Smith’s stunning pop mastery on “Lovesong,” which Smith wrote as a wedding present for his wife, and the rapturously forlorn “Pictures of You.” On “Fascination Street,” his voice shakes like milk as he makes adolescent angst sound so wonderfully, wonderfully pretty. “I was trying to put in one or two beacons of light in amongst the darkness,” he told Rolling Stone. "
240,Eric B. & Rakim,Paid in Full,-179,"4th & B’way, 1987","Ice-grilled, laid-back, diamond-sharp: Rakim was the Eighties’ greatest rapper, and this album is the record that cemented his legend. Paid in Full was one of the first hip-hop records to fully embrace Seventies funk samples on stone hip-hop classics such as “I Know You Got Soul” and “I Ain’t No Joke.” With a stark, chill declamatory flow that broke from the singsong-y style of most rapping at the time, Rakim moved hip-hop from stories about the world of the hood to ones about the mind (“I start to think and then I sink/Into the paper like I was ink”). Eric B. built the title track out of a luscious sampled bass line, and Rakim recounted days of poverty when he had “nothin’ but sweat inside my hand,” a problem solved by this debut’s platinum success. "
241,Tom Waits,Swordfishtrombones,New in 2023,,
242,The Pogues,Rum Sodomy & the Lash,New in 2023,,
243,The Police,Synchronicity,-84,"A&M, 1983","“I do my best work when I’m in pain and turmoil,” Sting told Rolling Stone. And indeed, the dissolution of his first marriage produced some of his best work, including “King of Pain” and the stalker’s anthem “Every Breath You Take.” There was pain and turmoil in the band, too — it would be the Police’s last album. But it became one of the Eighties’ biggest pop-rock blockbusters, perhaps the finest example of Sting’s unique gift for distilling complex psychological and romantic dramas, which still ruled radio and MTV, while making proggy musicianship and dense composition palatable to the mall-rat masses. "
244,Blur,Parklife,+194,"Food, 1994","Blur improbably burst into the mainstream with Parklife‘s “Girls & Boys,” a five-minute disco-rock barnburner about cross-dressing, bisexual libertines. They also sang about the joys of slacking (“Parklife”) but also how boring it is to conform (“End of the Century”), and they transformed a map of England into a metaphor for surviving rough patches (“This Is a Low”). Frontman Damon Albarn’s gifts for storytelling, singalong melodies, and Anglophilia set up Blur as heirs apparent to the Kinks and fierce rivals to Oasis for Brit pop’s crown. "
245,Meat Puppets,Meat Puppets II,New in 2023,,
246,Scritti Politti,Cupid & Psyche 85,New in 2023,,
247,Supertramp,Crime of the Century,New in 2023,,
248,Thelonious Monk,Brilliant Corners,New in 2023,"Riverside, 1957","Thelonious Monk's breakthrough album showcased his unique approach to jazz composition and performance. The album's angular melodies and unconventional harmonies, particularly on the title track, established Monk as one of jazz's most important innovators. Working with saxophonist Sonny Rollins and other top musicians, Monk created a form of jazz that was both challenging and deeply swinging."
249,Big Youth,Screaming Target,New in 2023,,
250,The Magnetic Fields,69 Love Songs,+156,"Merge, 1999","“It started with the title,” Stephin Merritt said of 69 Love Songs, which he imagined in the Sinatra-era tradition of “theme” albums. A tour de force of pop mastery, his three-disc splurge had everything from lounge jazz to Podunk country to punk parody, peaking with sidelong standards like “Papa Was a Rodeo” and “The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side.” God-level moment: “The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure,” which is titled after a French linguist and rhymes his name with closure, bulldozer, and classic Motown songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland, hooking it all to an unforgettable tune. "
251,Daft Punk,Discovery,-15,"Virgin, 2001","The robot duo from France perfected house music as pop on their 1997 album Homework. For the follow-up, they took electronic dance music to a whole new place, with the vocoder euphoria of “One More Time” and the deep-groove delight “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,” where the title is chanted like a mantra at a dystopian corporate retreat. But even the winky moments have heart, like “Digital Love,” where Eighties guitar cheese takes off toward Tomorrowland. "
252,Oasis,(What's the Story) Morning Glory?,-95,"Epic, 1995","With their second album, the fighting Gallagher brothers embraced their Stones and Beatles comparisons, then went ahead and established themselves as a rock & roll force in their own right with barnburners (“Roll With It”) and epic tunes, like the glorious “Wonderwall.” “The whole of the first album is about escape,” Noel Gallagher told Rolling Stone in 1996, of 1994’s Definitely Maybe. “It’s about getting away from the shitty, boring life of Manchester. The first album is about dreaming of being a pop star in a band. The second album is about actually being a pop star in a band.” "
253,The Impressions,The Impressions' Greatest Hits,New in 2023,,
254,Radiohead,Kid A,-234,"Parlophone, 2000","A new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century, Radiohead’s fourth album, released in October 2000, remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history. The band had the freedom to do whatever it wanted after its 1997 alt-rock breakthrough, OK Computer [see No. 42]. “Everyone expected us to become this U2 type of band, with that stadium credibility,” bassist Colin Greenwood said in 2001. Instead, frontman Thom Yorke gorged on albums by avant-techno innovator Aphex Twin and other artists on the Warp Records roster, inspiring him to put down his guitar and embrace the glacial beauty of abstract electronics, glitchy beats, and the challenge of free-form composition. “It was difficult for the others [in the band], ’cause when you’re working with a synthesizer it’s like there’s no connection,” Yorke said in 2017. What emerged was at once scary and enveloping, pitched between deep alienation and profound tenderness — from the womblike ambient flow of “Everything in Its Right Place” to the free-jazz implosion “The National Anthem” to the gizmo-groove paranoia of “Idioteque.” “I find it difficult to think of the path we’ve chosen as ‘rock music,’ ” Yorke told Rolling Stone in 2000. “Kid A is like getting a massive eraser out and starting again.” "
255,ZZ Top,Tres Hombres,New in 2023,,
256,Squeeze,East Side Story,New in 2023,,
257,Brian Eno,Before and After Science,New in 2023,,
258,Quicksilver Messenger Service,Happy Trails,New in 2023,,
259,The Temptations,Anthology,+112,"Tamla/Motown, 1973","Indisputably the greatest black vocal group of the modern era, the Temptations embodied Motown, channeling unique individual voices and talents into pristine hits and tight, tuxedoed choreography. This three-album set features masterpiece after masterpiece of chugging, gospel-tinged soul, including “My Girl,” “I Can’t Get Next to You,” and “I Wish It Would Rain,” and later, psychedelic-soul adventures like “Cloud Nine” and the gritty message-song masterpiece “Ball of Confusion.” "
260,Peter Tosh,Legalize It,New in 2023,,
261,Flying Lotus,Cosmogramma,New in 2023,,
262,The Pharcyde,Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde,+220,"Delicious Vinyl, 1992","These high school friends from L.A. were a little like a West Coast answer to De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, offering their own spin on alternative hip-hop in the Nineties and showing there was something going on in Southern California beyond G-funk. They rapped about innocent topics, like having a crush on a teacher in “Passin’ Me By,” which was a small hit, but also about dating a cute girl who turns out “to be a John Doe” and run-ins with the cops (the Public Enemy-homage “Officer”). It all came out as bright and refreshing as sorbet. "
263,Weezer,Weezer (Blue Album),+31,"Geffen, 1994","When it came out, Weezer’s debut was regarded as a quirky power-pop album with a couple of hit singles. The song’s were so catchy that some indie rockers wondered if they were put together by a record company, Monkees-style. But Rivers Cuomo’s band became a major influence on a whole generation of young sad-sack punkers. “People see us now as this credible band, and they assume we always were credible,” says Cuomo. “But, man, we could not have been more hated on when we came out.” "
264,Loretta Lynn,Coal Miner's Daughter,+176,"Decca, 1971","Loretta Lynn crossed over into pop with the autobiographical “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” in which she proudly recalled her meager upbringing amid weepy steel guitar — her mother read the Bible by “coal-oil light,” her dad sold hogs to buy her shoes. That resilient spirit carried over into the Coal Miner’s Daughter LP’s tunes about feeling jilted (“What Makes Me Tick”) and loving another woman’s man (“Any One, Any Worse, Any Where”), and the album, as well as the like-titled memoir and biopic, secured her place as one the most important country singers ever. "
265,Robyn,Body Talk,-69,"Konichiwa, 2010","Robyn had a few Swedish teen-pop hits in the Nineties, but she’s a worldly adult on Body Talk — this was the voice of a woman who knew how it felt to shed tears on the dance floor. She released Body Talk in three mini-album installments on her own Konichiwa label, before cherry-picking the highlights for this epochal feminist disco statement. “Dancing on My Own” became this century’s answer to “I Will Survive.” She told Rolling Stone, “I was pushing through the challenges and getting off on that liberated feeling of being able to explore desperation and passion and frustration and all that.” "
266,Def Leppard,Pyromania,New in 2023,,
267,Wu-Tang Clan,Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers),-240,"Loud, 1993","The first Wu-Tang Clan album launched rap’s most dominant franchise by inventing a new sound built around a hectic panoply of voices and spare, raw beats. RZA, the group’s sonic mastermind, constructed the Wu’s homemade world, he said, from a mix of “Eastern philosophy picked up from kung-fu movies, watered-down Nation of Islam preaching picked up on the New York streets, and comic books.” On “C.R.E.A.M.,” “Protect Ya Neck,” and the non-metaphorical “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing ta F’ Wit,” RZA’s offbeat samples (Thelonious Monk, the Dramatics, fellow New Yorker Barbra Streisand) create a grounding for the group’s nine members, including future solo stars Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Raekwon, GZA, Ghostface Killah, and Method Man. Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg had established L.A. as the center of hip-hop innovation and daring, but the Wu reclaimed the crown for the music’s birthplace. "
268,Rufus & Chaka Khan,Ask Rufus,+231,"ABC, 1977","Fronted by Chaka Khan, one of soul music’s most combustible singers, Rufus built its mid-Seventies sound on heavy-footed, guitar-slathered funk. But after spending 16 months in the studio working on Ask Rufus, they came out with a record that gave their songs more room to breathe, anticipating the lithe, loose arrangements of Nineties neo-soul. Khan glided through the head-nodding “Everlasting Love” and the twisty-turny “Better Days,” and fans appreciated the adjustment: Ask Rufus was the group’s first platinum record. "
269,Neil Diamond,The Bang Years 1966–1968,New in 2023,,
270,Fela Kuti & Africa 70,Expensive Shit,+132,"Sounds Workshop, 1975","The title track is a 13-minute odyssey that epitomizes Nigerian funk king Fela Kuti’s knack for channeling fearless social commentary into body-moving grooves; the Africa 70 horns blare out infectious riffs as peerless drummer Tony Allen keeps up an indefatigable shuffling pulse, while Fela calls out the “fools” who would “use your shit to put you for jail.” Side Two’s “Water No Get Enemy” slows things down to a celebratory strut, concluding a short-yet-sweet effort that plays like a primer on the joys of Afrobeat. "
271,Shania Twain,Come On Over,+29,"Mercury, 1997","Shania Twain’s third album was basically a country Thriller, still the biggest-selling album ever by a female artist. Twain and her husband, AC/DC and Def Leppard producer John “Mutt” Lange, had radio in a hammerlock during the late Nineties with hits like “You’re Still the One” and “Man! I Feel Like a Woman,” and Twain’s mix of genre-defying effervescence and feel-like-a-woman self-assertion helped pave the way for superstar rule breakers like the Dixie Chicks, Miranda Lambert, and Taylor Swift, who said seeing Shania perform inspired her to want to get onstage herself. "
272,A Tribe Called Quest,The Low End Theory,-229,"Jive, 1991","“We wanted the longevity of Earth, Wind, and Fire, and Prince, and people of that nature,” Phife Dawg told Rolling Stone. “We wanted to be known for full-length albums.” Other people connected the dots between hip-hop and jazz , but A Tribe Called Quest’s second album drew the entire picture. The sound is dominated by the low end of the title — they even recruited legendary jazz bassist Ron Carter (who’d worked with Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis). As Carter gets dope on the double bass, the Tribe discourse on matters ranging from the music industry (“Show Business”) to sexual politics (“The Infamous Date Rape”). Each time Q-Tip rhymes over Carter’s bass lines, the groove just gets deeper. "
273,The White Stripes,White Blood Cells,New in 2023,,
274,The Slits,Cut,-14,"Antilles, 1979","Avant-garde you can dance to — that’s the Slits’ Cut in a nutshell. The British group’s raucous debut took the best of late-Seventies post-punk’s favorite genre influences (dub, girl groups, abstract jazz), tossed them all into a blender, and somehow ended up with joyously anarchic songs like “Shoplifting,” with its awesome catchphrase, “We pay fuck-all!” Kurt Cobain would call “Typical Girls” one of the best songs ever recorded, and we can’t help but agree. "
275,Radiohead,In Rainbows,+112,"XL, 2007","Radiohead released In Rainbows as a surprise download in the fall of 2007, letting fans pay whatever they liked. But the real surprise was how expansive the music turned out to be, with material the band had road-tested live in the U.S. all summer. Thom Yorke gets soulful in the intense love songs “All I Need,” “House of Cards,” and “Nude.” It’s Radiohead’s warmest album, with the vibe of a communal jam session. One that’s taking place at the end of the world, of course. "
276,Green Day,Dookie,+99,"Reprise, 1994","The album that jump-started the Nineties punk-pop revival. The skittish Dookie was recorded in little more than three weeks, and singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong blazed through all the vocals in two days. “Right from getting the drum sound, everything seemed to click,” their A&R man (and Dookie producer) Rob Cavallo marveled. Indeed, “click” is the operative word here, also describing Armstrong’s airtight, three-minute bowshots like “Welcome to Paradise,” “Basket Case,” and the infectious smash “Longview” — which Armstrong described as “cheap self-therapy from watching too much TV.” "
277,Billy Joel,The Stranger,-108,"Columbia, 1977","On this record, Billy Joel found the recipe for success: a bottle of red, a bottle of white, and a sharp eye for the local color of New York street life. The Piano Man sharpens his storytelling gifts with a Scorsese-style sense of humor and compassion, whether he’s singing about a down-and-out Little Italy hustler in “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” the femme fatale in “She’s Always a Woman,” or the doomed Long Island greaser couple Brenda and Eddie in “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant.” Meanwhile, Joel hit the pop charts with the Grammy-winning “Just the Way You Are” (written for his first wife and manager, Elizabeth), which became a wedding-band standard. "
278,Can,Future Days,New in 2023,,
279,George Michael,Faith,-128,"Columbia, 1987","As the main singer and writer in the 1980s British pop band Wham!, George Michael paraded around in sleeveless mesh shirts and Fila short-shorts. Wham! songs were smarter than they appeared, and when Michael went solo to prove what he could do, he nailed it on the first try, integrating R&B in his songwriting, from soul ballads (“Father Figure,” “One More Try”) to horny Prince-inspired funk (“I Want Your Sex,” “Hard Day”). The album sold 25 million copies worldwide, and four singles went to Number One in the U.S. “You either see pop music as a contemporary art form, or you don’t. I do, very strongly,” Michael said. "
280,The Isley Brothers,3 + 3,+184,"T-Neck, 1973","The Isley Brothers ballooned from a trio that impressed the Beatles to a six-piece band on 3 + 3, which helped establish them as a funk force in the 1970s. The hit “That Lady” is stuffed with laser-bright guitar solos, and the slow numbers (including a cover of James Taylor’s “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight,” in which Ron Isley unfurled his heartbreaking falsetto and forceful midrange) hint toward the band’s bright future as pre-eminent balladeers in R&B’s Quiet Storm era. "
281,Brian Wilson,Smile,+118,"Nonesuch, 2004","This album lived in myth for decades. Brian Wilson’s unfinished response to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club took nearly 40 years to finally come to fruition. Longtime Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks helped him realize his vision, with lush string arrangements, sublime melodies, and vocal harmonies, all impeccably constructed. Close your eyes and you can imagine how it might’ve changed the world in 1968, but with Wilson’s influence still all over scads of indie bands in 2004, it sounds and feels majestically modern. "
282,The Fall,This Nation's Saving Grace,New in 2023,,
283,Jefferson Airplane,Surrealistic Pillow,+188,"RCA, 1967","Psychedelic scholars have long tried to pin down just what the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia did on this album (besides contribute some guitar playing) to earn a credit as “spiritual adviser.” But the real trip is the Airplane’s hallucinatory distillation of folk-blues vocals, garage-rock guitar, and crisp pop songwriting. Grace Slick’s vocal showcases — “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love” — made Surrealistic Pillow a commercial smash during San Francisco’s Summer of Love, and Marty Balin’s spectral “Today” is still the greatest ballad of that city’s glory days. "
284,EPMD,Strictly Business,New in 2023,,
285,Rod Stewart,Every Picture Tells a Story,-108,"Mercury, 1971","“We had no preconceived ideas of what we were going to do,” Rod Stewart said. “We would have a few drinks and strum away and play.” With a first-class band of drinking buddies (including guitarist Ron Wood and drummer Mickey Waller), Stewart made a loose, warm, compassionate album, rocking hard with mostly acoustic instruments. “Mandolin Wind” was his moving ballad of a country couple toughing out a long winter on the farm; the title tune was a hilarious goof. But Stewart scored his first Number One hit with “Maggie May,” his autobiographical tale of a young stud getting kicked in the head by an older lady. "
286,Todd Rundgren,"A Wizard, a True Star",New in 2023,,
287,Primal Scream,Screamadelica,+150,"Sire, 1991","Primal Scream was a run-of-the-mill U.K. alt-rock band who discovered rave culture, overdosed on acid-house music, and retrofitted their sound with the fun, trippy, druggy disco-rock diversions on Screamadelica. The single “Loaded,” their first U.K. hit, combined house piano, folk melodies, and a danceable beat, while “Movin’ On Up,” their U.S. breakthrough, drew from hippie-folk strumming, gospel choruses, and Stones-y guitar and tambourine. Sure, some of Screamadelica feels like meandering mood music, but that’s proof that sometimes the journey is more fun than the destination. "
288,The Ronettes,Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes,+206,"Philles, 1964","More a Spanish Harlem street gang than a girl group, the Ronettes were pop goddesses dressed as Catholic schoolgirls gone to hell and back. Phil Spector builds his Wall of Sound as his teen protégée (and future wife) Ronnie Spector belts “Be My Baby” and “Walking in the Rain,” while songs like “I Wonder” and “Baby, I Love You” ache with hope for a perfect love that always seems to be impossibly ideal and just within arm’s reach. "
289,Brian Eno,Here Come the Warm Jets,+19,"Island, 1974","The former Roxy Music keyboardist’s first solo album pioneered a new kind of glammy art rock: jagged, free-form, and dreamy, sounding like nothing else in rock at the time. “Baby’s on Fire” and “Needles in the Camel’s Eye” are vicious rockers with detached vocals, and Robert Fripp’s warped guitars swarm and stutter, while “On Some Faraway Beach” and the title track are glistening slo-mo-drone pastorales. “I called it ‘warm jet guitar’ because it sounded like a tuned jet,” Eno said later. "
290,Fiona Apple,When the Pawn...,-182,"Epic, 1999","Following the success of her precocious debut, Tidal, and saddled with a pop audience that didn’t quite know what to do with her, Fiona Apple took her critics to task on the mature yet daring When the Pawn … Backed by her expressive piano playing and impressionistic production from Jon Brion, Apple makes resentment seem almost fun on songs like “Fast as You Can,” “Paper Bag,” and “The Way Things Are.” In years to come, Apple would make peace with her outcast status, leaving far behind the MTV-generation gatekeepers who once gave her so much grief. For generations of young fans, the raw, hard-won triumph of When the Pawn … will always feel timeless. "
291,Grateful Dead,Anthem of the Sun,New in 2023,,
292,Junior Murvin,Police and Thieves,New in 2023,,
293,Suicide,Suicide,+205,"Red Star, 1977","These New York synth-punks evoke everything from the Velvet Underground to rockabilly. Martin Rev’s low-budget electronics are violent and hypnotic; Alan Vega screams as a rhythmic device. Late-night listening to “Frankie Teardrop,” a 10-minute-plus tale of a multiple murder, is not recommended. A droning voice in the wilderness when they appeared in the Seventies, the duo would influence bands from Arcade Fire and the National to Bruce Springsteen, who covered Suicide live in 2016. "
294,Burial,Untrue,New in 2023,"Hyperdub, 2007","Burial's second album is a masterpiece of UK electronic music that captures the melancholy and alienation of urban life. Using a collage technique that incorporates vocal samples, vinyl crackle, and atmospheric textures, William Bevan created a deeply emotional form of dubstep. Tracks like 'Archangel' and 'Near Dark' evoke the ghostly atmosphere of London's nighttime streets. The album's influence on electronic music and its unique aesthetic of urban decay and romantic longing make it a defining work of 2000s electronic music."
295,Coldplay,A Rush of Blood to the Head,+29,"Capitol, 2002","In the early 2000s, starry-eyed Brit-pop boys doing a cuddly version of Radiohead were a dime a dozen. (Remember Starsailor?) It was Coldplay’s second album that showed they were true contenders. Songs like “Green Eyes” and “The Scientist” brought back the comforting melodies of “Yellow,” but the twinkling sonics suggested prime Smiths or U2. And darker stuff, like the austerely beautiful death meditation “Amsterdam” and the OK Computer-worthy “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face,” showed the group had more than arena anthems on its mind. "
296,Diana Ross & the Supremes,Anthology,+156,"Tamla/Motown, 1974","In the heyday of Motown, the Supremes were their own hit factory, all glamour and heartbreak. Diana Ross and her girls ruled the radio with tunes from the Motown brain trust of Holland, Dozier, and Holland. The Supremes could blaze with confidence, as in “Come See About Me.” Or they could sound elegantly morose, as in “My World Is Empty Without You” and “Where Did Our Love Go?” But in “Love Is Like an Itching in My Heart,” when Miss Ross gulps, “There ain’t nothing I can do about it,” it’s a spine-tingling moment. "
297,ABBA,The Definitive Collection,+6,"Universal, 2001","These Swedish pop stars became the world’s biggest group in the 1970s, with a streak of Nordic despair under the sparkly melodies. Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad were the bewitching frontwomen in the sequined pantsuits; their husbands, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, wrote global hits like the joyful “Dancing Queen,” the double-divorce drama “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” and the haunting farewell “Thank You for the Music.” "
298,Donald Fagen,The Nightfly,New in 2023,,
299,Ghostface Killah,Supreme Clientele,+104,"Epic, 2000","“I feel like I got my whole style from Ghostface,” Kanye West has said. Lavishly unhinged and viciously hard-hitting, Ghostface Killah’s second solo album helped revive the Wu-Tang franchise, marinating lines like “Ghost is back, stretch Cadillacs, fruit cocktails/Hit the shelves at Paul’s pastry rack,” in serrated Seventies-soul samples. On “Nutmeg” he drops a mind-boxing cluster of psychedelic bullshit, then simply stands back during the chorus, letting the tape roll as he mocks all comers — an untouchable champ at the top of his game. "
300,Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force,Planet Rock: The Album,New in 2023,,
301,Parquet Courts,Wide Awake!,New in 2023,,
302,The Fugees,The Score,-168,,
303,Ween,Chocolate and Cheese,New in 2023,,
304,Amy Winehouse,Back to Black,-271,"Island, 2006","With her love of Sixties girl-group pop and her dark beehive, Amy Winehouse came across as a star from another time. But as a child of the Nineties, she also loved hip-hop and wrote openly about her splattered relationships and issues with drugs and alcohol. Her breakthrough second album (recorded in Brooklyn with co-producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi) marked the arrival of a resplendently damaged 21st-century torch singer. Tracks like the mildly pushy “You Know I’m No Good” and the sumptuous “Love Is a Loving Game” had an elegant, beguiling smudginess that avoided the wax-museum quality of so much retro soul. “My odds are stacked,” Winehouse sings. “I’ll go back to black.” Indeed, the pain and tumult in her voice was very real. Before her death in 2011, she left behind a tragically unfulfilled promise. "
305,OutKast,Speakerboxxx/The Love Below,-15,"LaFace, 2003","For a decade, OutKast were a duo defined by dichotomies — regional versus celestial, order amid chaos, blackness and the universal. On their fifth studio album, that tension could no longer be contained on one CD. Big Boi’s verbal funk overflowed on Speakerboxxx, his half of the double-disc set, while André 3000’s inner crooner exhaled like never before on The Love Below. It was a gamble to break up their twin alchemy this way, but in dividing themselves, OutKast conquered: America fell as deeply in love with the borderless pop bliss of “Hey Ya!” as it did with the slick talk and soulful horns on “The Way You Move.” "
306,Dolly Parton,Coat of Many Colors,-49,"RCA, 1971","Dolly Parton’s starkest, most affecting album. The title track is about wearing rags but keeping your pride. “That was a very sad and cutting memory that I long kept deep within myself,” she said of the song in a 1977 Rolling Stone interview. “I remembered all the pain of it and the mockery.” The rest is more hard country: On “Traveling Man,” Parton’s mom runs off with the singer’s boyfriend; on “If I Lose My Mind,” her boyfriend has sex with another woman in front of her. "
307,The Shangri-Las,Leader of the Pack,New in 2023,,
308,Motörhead,Ace of Spades,+100,"Bronze, 1980","Neither punk nor metal, Motörhead played rock & roll nastier, grittier, and snarlier than their forebears on Ace of Spades. Amid a miasma of hypercharged guitar riffs and death-rattle drumming, frontman Lemmy Kilmister, splits his time between sleazy come-ons (“Love Me Like a Reptile”), war stories (“(We Are) The Road Crew”), and underdog maxims (“Live to Win”). The blazing title track epitomized the Motörhead experience: “You know I’m born to lose, and gambling’s for fools,” Lemmy growls, “but that’s the way I like it, baby, I don’t wanna live forever.” He meant it, too. "
309,Aphex Twin,Selected Ambient Works 85-92,New in 2023,"R&S/Sire, 1992","Richard D. James's debut album as Aphex Twin established him as electronic music's most innovative and influential artist. Recorded primarily on analog equipment in his bedroom, the album's combination of ambient textures and intricate rhythms created a new form of electronic music. Tracks like 'Xtal' and 'Pulsewidth' showcase his ability to create both beautiful and unsettling soundscapes. The album's influence on electronic music genres from IDM to ambient techno cannot be overstated."
310,Bon Iver,"For Emma, Forever Ago",+151,"Jagjaguwar, 2007","Justin Vernon's debut album as Bon Iver was recorded in isolation at a remote cabin in Wisconsin, creating an intimate folk album that captured the loneliness and beauty of rural life. The album's sparse arrangements, featuring acoustic guitar, falsetto vocals, and subtle electronic textures, created a new template for indie folk. Songs like 'Skinny Love' and 'Re: Stacks' showcase Vernon's gift for melody and his ability to create emotional depth through minimalism."
311,John Prine,John Prine,-162,"Atlantic, 1971","When John Prine resigned from his job as a USPS mailman, his supervisor snickered, “You’ll be back.” Instead, Prine became a revered folk-country-rock songwriter, starting with this first album, which is loaded with enduring gems, including “Angel From Montgomery,” “Hello in There,” and a song that regularly returns to relevance, “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.” Prine seemed like a Zen sage. He filled his songs with an uncynical live-and-let-live morality, and wrote in a colloquial voice that showed a love of the way Americans speak. His closest parallel isn’t another songwriter, it’s Mark Twain. "
312,Vampire Weekend,Modern Vampires of the City,+16,"XL, 2013","On Halloween 2012, with their hometown New York subsumed in a blackout, Vampire Weekend went on late-night TV to play an atheist reggae jam called “Unbelievers” dressed as skeletons. It was the perfect introduction to Modern Vampires of the City, a record that darkened their buoyant indie pop, as Ezra Koenig sang about moving beyond his post-college years into something scarier and weirder — hitting a cloudy peak with the beautifully worried Dylanesque travelogue “Hannah Hunt.” "
313,The Flaming Lips,The Soft Bulletin,New in 2023,,
314,Faust,Faust IV,New in 2023,,
315,Kid Cudi,Man on the Moon: The End of Day,+144,"Dream On, 2009","Kid Cudi helped Kanye West shape his introspective R&B/hip-hop hybrid 808s & Heartbreak. On his debut LP, the Cleveland rapper took that sound further and deeper, merging emo and psychedelic rock with hip-hop bombast. His introspect runs the gamut from the severe depression of “Day ‘n’ Nite” to the sweet contentment of “Pursuit of Happiness,” both of which became unlikely hits. A decade after Man on the Moon, every chart is dominated by Kudi’s sad children. "
316,Lou Reed,Berlin,New in 2023,,
317,Solange,When I Get Home,New in 2023,,
318,The Streets,Original Pirate Material,New in 2023,,
319,"Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young",Déjà Vu,-99,"Epic, 1970","Neil Young was just getting his solo career underway when he joined his old Buffalo Springfield bandmate Stephen Stills, ex-Byrd David Crosby, and former Hollie Graham Nash in the first of the West Coast supergroups. Young’s vision and guitar transformed the earlier folk-rock CSN into a rock & roll powerhouse. The CSNY combination was too volatile to last, but on their best album, they offered pop idealism (Nash’s “Teach Your Children”), militant blues (Crosby’s “Almost Cut My Hair”), and vocal-choir gallop (Stills’ “Carry On”). "
320,M.I.A.,Kala,New in 2023,,
321,The Weeknd,House of Balloons,New in 2023,"XO/Republic, 2011","The Weeknd's debut mixtape, later remastered and commercially released, established Abel Tesfaye as a major force in contemporary R&B. The album's dark, atmospheric production and sexually explicit lyrics created a new template for alternative R&B. Songs like 'Wicked Games' and 'The Morning' showcase his distinctive falsetto and the album's nocturnal, drug-hazed aesthetic. The mysterious circumstances of its initial release and its influence on a generation of R&B artists make it a defining work of 2010s music."
322,Johnny Cash,At Folsom Prison,-158,"Columbia, 1968","By the late Sixties, Cash was ignored by country radio and struggling for a comeback. At Folsom Prison was a million-seller that reignited his career. A year later, he was writing liner notes for Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline and logging four weeks at Number One with his second prison album, At San Quentin. But Folsom Prison is essential Cash. Backed by a tough touring band, including fellow Sun Records alum Carl Perkins on guitar, Cash guffaws his way through “Cocaine Blues,” “25 Minutes to Go” (a countdown to an execution), and “Folsom Prison Blues,” with its line about shooting a man just to watch him die. The 2,000 inmates in attendance roar their approval. "
323,Spiritualized,Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space,New in 2023,,
324,Madvillain,Madvillainy,+41,"Stones Throw, 2004","This collaboration between rapper MF Doom and producer Madlib is one of underground hip-hop’s greatest moments. Madlib provides a shifting bed of warped funk and wildly unpredictable samples, drawing on everything from Thunder and Lightning’s “Bumpin’ Bus Stop” to “The Theme of the Justice League of America.” Doom’s rhymes are so casually adventurous that sometimes it takes a second to notice how stunning they are: “Still back in the game like Jack LaLanne/Think you know the name, don’t rack your brain/On a fast track to half sane” — hell yeah! "
325,Maxwell,Urban Hang Suite,New in 2023,"Columbia, 1996","Maxwell's debut album established him as a leader of the neo-soul movement, combining classic soul with contemporary R&B production. The album's sophisticated arrangements and Maxwell's smooth vocal delivery on songs like 'Ascension (Don't Ever Wonder)' and 'Whenever Wherever Whatever' created a more mature alternative to contemporary R&B. The album's influence on artists like D'Angelo and Erykah Badu helped establish neo-soul as a major force in 1990s music."
326,Animal Collective,Merriweather Post Pavilion,New in 2023,"Domino, 2009","Animal Collective's eighth studio album marked their transition to a more electronic, dance-influenced sound while maintaining their experimental edge. The album's layered production, featuring Panda Bear's rhythmic vocals and Avey Tare's melodic contributions, creates a psychedelic electronic landscape. Songs like 'My Girls' and 'Summertime Clothes' showcase their ability to create accessible pop songs within an experimental framework."
327,Toots & the Maytals,Funky Kingston,+17,"Island, 1973","Loose, funky, and exuberant, Kingston is the quintessential document of Jamaica’s greatest act after Bob Marley. Showcasing some of the Maytals’ best songs (“Pressure Drop,” later covered by the Clash) and borrowing from soul, pop, and gospel, Funky Kingston introduced the world to the great Toots Hibbert. He performs versions of “Louie Louie” and, in a down-home surprise, John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” with Toots changing the lyrics from “West Virginia” to “West Jamaica.” "
328,The Human League,Dare,New in 2023,,
329,Yes,Close to the Edge,+116,"Atlantic, 1972","Sessions for this album were so intense and taxing that monster drummer Bill Bruford quit the band when it was over due to stress. The hard work paid off. Close to the Edge is the best of Yes’ many lineups at an absolute peak, with Jon Anderson’s sun-king vocals pouring out over new member Rick Wakeman’s dazzling keyboards. The title track, an 18-minute epic in four distinct parts, remains the most majestic moment in the prog-rock history. "
330,The Congos,Heart of the Congos,New in 2023,,
331,Pet Shop Boys,Actually,+104,"EMI Manhattan,, 1987","Neil Tennant was one of England’s best-known music journalists when he formed this Eighties synth-pop duo with Chris Lowe. The Pet Shop Boys scored a Number One smash with “West End Girls,” their ode to queer cruising. But they took their satirical wit even further on Actually — perhaps the only album on this list where the singer is yawning on the cover. The Boys dissect the sex-and-money connection in “Rent,” “Shopping,” and the Dusty Springfield duet, “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” "
332,Erykah Badu,Baduizm,-243,"Kedar, 1997","“If the head wrap was my trademark, the drums, African drums, were my soundtrack,” Erykah Badu recalled. “It’s just who I was at the time, and I wanted to be completely who I was when I did what I did.” Recorded between New York, Philadelphia, and her hometown of Dallas, the singer’s debut suggested a Billie Holiday raised on hip-hop and Stevie Wonder, celebrating herself and her heritage over resplendently relaxed grooves. Baduizm’s Seventies-meets-Nineties vibe, Badu’s exquisite lyricism (“On & On” is at once spiritual, apocalyptic, and funny), and jazz-steeped cadences (see “Appletree”) combined to make the 25-year-old singer a figurehead for the neo-soul genre that essentially began with this album. "
333,Disco Inferno,D.I. Go Pop,New in 2023,,
334,ESG,Come Away with ESG,New in 2023,,
335,The Sonics,Here Are the Sonics,New in 2023,,
336,Alice Coltrane,Journey in Satchidananda,New in 2023,"Impulse!, 1971","Alice Coltrane was a key part of her husband John’s fiery late-era bands. You can hear her own musical voice in full flower on this LP, named for her spiritual teacher Swami Satchidananda. Coltrane blended the sprawling modal jams pioneered by her late husband with drones from the Indian tanpura, Pharoah Sanders’ spiraling soprano sax, and her own rapturous harp. The result is a meditative bliss-out like jazz had never seen: part earthy blues and part ethereal mantra, and a potent influence on sonic seekers from Radiohead to Coltrane’s grandnephew Flying Lotus. "
337,TLC,CrazySexyCool,-119,"LaFace, 1994","Things were not well with TLC during the making of CrazySexyCool: Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes was lighting fires, and the group was in a financial slide that would end in bankruptcy proceedings. But they emerged with the most effervescent and soulful R&B pop anyone had heard since the Supremes. “Creep” is hard-edged but cute, the summery “Diggin’ on You” is almost pastoral in its intimate flow, and the transcendent “Waterfalls” may be the greatest song ever about how it’s not a great idea to go after your dreams. "
338,Tame Impala,Lonerism,New in 2023,,
339,M.I.A.,Arular,+82,"Interscope, 2005","What’s the opposite of a girl next door? Perhaps it might be a radicalized, globalized pop star like M.I.A., an English-Tamil writer who provocatively questioned and deconstructed ideas about power and rebellion throughout her first album. She raps and cajoles in hard-chopping cadences (“I bongo with my lingo,” indeed), and mixes jokes, disses, and political insight about the abuse of authority over electronic beats that can sound like New York City electroclash or Brazilian funk. And her hipster hit “Galang” hit as hard as any hip-hop around at the time. "
340,Dwight Yoakam,"Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.",New in 2023,,
341,Snoop Doggy Dogg,Doggystyle,-1,"Death Row/Interscope, 1993","Until Snoop Dogg came along, no one in rap — and hardly anyone in rock — realized that an aloof whisper could be more intimidating than a shout. Snoop never gets heated; he takes the same tone when he’s menacing a cop as he does with a woman who’s soaping his back in the tub. Emanuel Dean and Dr. Dre’s sterling G-funk productions on “Gin N Juice” and “Who Am I (What’s My Name)?” ensured enormous album sales for the D-O-double-G’s debut and his laidbaaaack Indo-flavored tales of life on the streets of Compton. "
342,Depeche Mode,Violator,-175,"Sire, 1990","One of England’s first synth-pop bands, Depeche Mode had moved beyond their bubblegum phase by the time of their seventh album and, under the influence of hip-hop, began playing with samples and loops, even betraying their keyboard roots with the twangy guitar that opens “Personal Jesus.” Alan Wilder created the dense, constantly shifting arrangements, Martin Gore wrote the pervy lyrics, and Dave Gahan croons implacably about betrayal, immorality, and sexual domination. The percolating “Enjoy the Silence” became their only U.S. Top 10 single, and “Policy of Truth” did almost as well. With its panoply of high-gloss hooks and arresting, artificial sounds, Violator cemented Depeche Mode’s status as the first electronic band that could fill stadiums. "
343,Jane's Addiction,Nothing's Shocking,New in 2023,,
344,Mobb Deep,The Infamous,+25,"Loud, 1995","“We were just straight hood,” Havoc said. “It wasn’t no pretty boy shit. He was talking about the Timberlands and bandanas he and Prodigy (R.I.P.) wore, but that was also the brutal appeal of their second album, which the duo produced mostly by themselves. Q Tip functioned as an executive producer, adding depth to sinister tracks built off of 1970s samples, many of them from the LP collection that Prodigy’s jazz-musician grandfather left to him. “Shook Ones Pt. II,” a minor hit, and “Survival of the Fittest” have only one impetus, to document life in a Queens project. "
345,Santana,Santana,New in 2023,,
346,John Cale,Paris 1919,New in 2023,,
347,Notorious B.I.G.,Life After Death,-168,"Bad Boy, 1997","Biggie’s second album was a victory lap following the immense, earth-shaking success of his 1994 debut, Ready to Die, and was prophetically and tragically released less than a month after the 24-year-old was shot and killed. The rubber-grooved “Hypnotize” was already on its way to becoming a smash when he died, and his lyrical genius and gift for narrative were on display all over this two-CD set, as he grapples with rap-game politics and delivers thinly veiled knocks at the West Coasters he long beefed with over clean, lush-sounding production. He was just getting started. "
348,The Feelies,The Good Earth,New in 2023,,
349,Frank Ocean,Channel Orange,-201,"Def Jam, 2012","On Channel Orange, Frank Ocean became one of music’s most elusive superstars — shy about speaking in public, impossible to pin down musically. He emerged from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, writing pop tunes for the likes of Brandy and Justin Bieber. But he stepped into his own avant-soul territory with Channel Orange, his official debut. Soon after coming out of the closet — still a rarity in R&B at the time — Ocean had a hit with the falsetto slow jam “Thinkin Bout You.” He mixes up genres and vocal personae, with guest shots from André 3000 to John Mayer. The peak: the spacey 10-minute suite “Pyramids,” an Egyptian fantasy starring Cleopatra as an around-the-way girl. Years later, Channel Orange still sounds like the future. "
350,Usher,Confessions,+82,"Arista, 2004","Usher was already a star in 2004, a sly singer and slick dancer whose R&B hits found a home with pop fans. But Confessions, which is one of the last 10-million-plus sellers ever made, turned him into an unstoppable juggernaut. Usher worked with a murderers’ row of R&B and hip-hop talent, from Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to Jermaine Dupri to Just Blaze; the album moves easily from club wreckers like the Lil Jon- and Ludacris-assisted smash “Yeah!” to forgive-me-for-cheating ballads to love-you-forever duets. "
351,Janet Jackson,Control,-240,"A&M, 1986","If properly, successfully maturing in pop after a childhood in the spotlight is an artform, then Janet Jackson is Michelangelo and Control her statue of David. The youngest member of the Jackson family released her third studio album while on the cusp of her twenties. Working with the dream team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Jackson made an assertive, hook-y, and powerful proclamation of her star power on sparkling, sculpted electro-pop dance songs like “Nasty,” “The Pleasure Principle,” and the title track. Control remains the blueprint for any young artist looking to find their own voice. "
352,Eagles,Hotel California,-234,,
353,Neneh Cherry,Raw Like Sushi,New in 2023,,
354,OutKast,Stankonia,-290,"LaFace, 2000","There’s a thrilling sprawl on OutKast’s fourth album, a sense of limitless possibilities within the boundaries of hip-hop. Big Boi and André 3000 rap about baby mamas’ mamas (“Ms. Jackson”), the perils of sex (“We Luv Deez Hoez”) and alcohol (“?”), feeling excluded from the American dream (“Gasoline Dreams”), good manners (“I’ll Call Before I Come”), and the trauma of teen pregnancy (“Toilet Tisha”). The music is sexy, bold, and hard, mixing, on “B.O.B.,” distorted metal guitar, an HBCU gospel choir, and a jittery techno beat. Big Boi says OutKast is “cooler than a polar bear’s toenails,” adds that they’re “just lyrically twerking,” and tells the police, “Officer, get off us, sir.” “We call it slumadelic,” said André 3000. "
355,Boogie Down Productions,Criminal Minded,-116,"B-Boy, 1987","BDP copped a gangsta stance, sporting guns on the album cover, but they opened their debut with “Poetry,” an ode to the edutaining power of their music — “It takes concentration for fresh communication,” KRS-One informs. DJ Scott LaRock laced funky samples into taut, hard-hitting tracks like the classic interborough beef fests “The Bridge Is Over” and “South Bronx,” the latter doubling as a glorious origin story of hip-hop’s early days. LaRock was killed shortly after the album’s release trying to break up a fight. "
356,King Sunny Adé,Juju Music,New in 2023,,
357,Missy Elliott,Supa Dupa Fly,New in 2023,,
358,Aerosmith,Rocks,+8,"Columbia, 1976","The bad boys from Boston perfected their Seventies guitar raunch on Rocks — it’s the musical equivalent of getting run over by a muscle car. Steven Tyler and Joe Perry sounded like America’s heirs to the Mick-and-Keith tradition with the filthy riffs of “Lick and a Promise” and “Back in the Saddle.” Tyler brings all his dirtbag swagger and gutter poetry to his favorite topic: sex. Surprise peak: “Sick as a Dog,” an incredible fusion of the Byrds, James Brown funk, and Sixties girl-group harmonies. "
359,Rihanna,Anti,-129,"Roc Nation, 2016","After dominating the Top 40 for years, Rihanna wanted to make an ambitious album-statement, brilliantly sustaining the tipsy two-in-the-morning vibe of this moody midcareer reinvention. “I just gravitated toward the songs that were … the things I want to listen to,” she said. “The things that I want to smoke to.” On Anti, she recast pop as her own hazy playground, referencing Dido and hair metal, covering Tame Impala, and merging dancehall and torch ballads. "
360,Muddy Waters,The Anthology,+123,"MCA, 2001","Muddy Waters started out playing acoustic Delta blues in Mississippi, but when he moved to Chicago in 1943, he needed an electric guitar to be heard over the tumult of South Side clubs. The sound he developed was the foundation of Chicago blues — and rock & roll; the thick, bleeding tones of his slide work anticipated rock-guitar distortion by nearly two decades. The 50 cuts on these two CDs run from guitar-and-stand-up-bass duets to full-band romps — and they still just scratch the surface of Waters’ legacy. "
361,Kendrick Lamar,"good kid, m.A.A.d city",-246,"TDE, 2012","Kendrick Lamar’s hip-hop autobiography came as a shock in 2012: musically downbeat, with a film director’s eye for narrative but the voice of a poet. Good kid is his story of growing up in Compton, surrounded by gunfire, gang warfare, police brutality, drugs, liquor, dead friends — billed on the cover as “A Short FIlm by Kendrick Lamar,” like a West Coast answer to Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets. K-Dot goes for emotional detail instead of gangsta bravado, whether cruising the streets in “Backseat Freestyle” or pondering addiction in “Swimming Pool (Drank).” As he told Rolling Stone, “The best entertainers have to have the most wickedest sense of humor, to be able to take pain and change it into laughter.” "
362,Harry Nilsson,Nilsson Schmilsson,-81,"RCA, 1971","A brilliant outlier on the Seventies L.A. singer-songwriter scene, Harry Nilsson had a voice and pop savvy like Paul McCartney and a biting ironic side like John Lennon. Nilsson Schmilsson produced three hits — the oddball island novelty “Coconut,” a cover of Badfinger’s “Without You,” where Nilsson sounds like a depressed Barry Manilow, and the surprise monster jam “Jump Into the Fire.” Nilsson was later covered by LCD Soundsystem. It was par for the course for a guy who could shruggingly pull off anything he wanted. "
363,Buddy Holly,"The ""Chirping"" Crickets",New in 2023,,
364,Nas,Illmatic,-320,"Columbia, 1994","Other rappers were harder and brasher, but nobody captured the creeping menace of life on the streets like this 20-year-old from New York’s Queensbridge projects. With lines like “I never sleep, ’cause sleep is the cousin of death,” Nas showed more poetic style than any MC since Rakim. His debut begins with the sound of a subway train, and for the next 39 minutes, he seems to visit every street corner from Queens to Brooklyn, detailing drug deals, escapism, persecution, prison life, and survival. Throughout, he displays a pure focus (there’s only one guest verse) and explosive dexterity; it’s one thing to say “I drop the ancient manifested hip-hop,” as he does in the first verse of “Memory Lane,” it’s another to back that up with a stunning, acrobatic second verse. Illmatic was an instant classic that never crossed over, which only deepened its myth with hip-hop heads. "
365,Raekwon,Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...,-146,"Loud/RCA, 1995","The finest Wu-Tang solo joint stands out due to Raekwon’s understated, eternally unflustered cool and densely woven verses. Abetted by hyperactive sideman Ghostface and hypnotically stark beats courtesy of the RZA, Raekwon crafts breathtaking drug-rap narratives. On “Knowledge God,” an Italian drug dealer with a “hairy chest” and “many minks” meets his colorful demise in just six words: “Sixteen shots in his fish tank.” It’s the rare hip-hop album that rivals the mob movies it celebrates for gripping detail. "
366,Manu Chao,Clandestino,+103,"Virgin, 1998","Born in Paris to Spanish parents, Manu Chao is a true citizen of the world on his 1998 debut. Clandestino, was a tribute to “clandestinos” everywhere: a derogatory term for undocumented migrants. Running on an internationalist platform of peace (and legalized pot), Chao was a digital busker (“a clown making too much dirty sound”), strumming his acoustic guitar as he moved effortlessly between languages and styles, singing with a playfully light touch as he made feel-good reggae rock for global nomads like himself. "
367,Janelle Monáe,The ArchAndroid,New in 2023,,
368,Throbbing Gristle,20 Jazz Funk Greats,New in 2023,,
369,Dead Kennedys,Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables,New in 2023,"Alternative Tentacles, 1980","The Dead Kennedys' debut album is a scorching indictment of American society and politics wrapped in some of the most energetic punk rock ever recorded. Jello Biafra's provocative lyrics and theatrical vocals, combined with East Bay Ray's surf-punk guitar work, created a unique sound that influenced countless punk bands. Songs like 'Holiday in Cambodia' and 'California Über Alles' showcase their ability to combine political commentary with irresistible hooks."
370,Fugazi,Repeater,New in 2023,"Dischord, 1990",Fugazi's debut full-length album established the Washington D.C. band as leaders of the post-hardcore movement. Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto's dual vocals and the band's innovative use of dynamics created a more complex form of punk rock. Songs like 'Waiting Room' and 'Merchandise' combine political lyrics with experimental song structures. The band's DIY ethics and refusal to sign with major labels made them heroes of the underground punk scene.
371,Kanye West,The College Dropout,-297,"Roc-A-Fella, 2004","In 2003, Kanye West was a Chicago kid who’d produced some hot beats for Jay-Z, wore pastel polo shirts with the collars popped, and wanted to be on the mic, not behind it. Record labels were skeptical, but West got over on wit and determination; he wrote and sang the hit “Through the Wire” while his jaw was wired shut after being in a car accident, and followed it with more dynamic tracks, including “Slow Jamz,” about the seductive power of soul music, and the gospel riot “Jesus Walks.” West loved Jesus and strip clubs, made arrogant claims about his talent, and then professed his insecurity — which made his music all the richer. "
372,Weezer,Pinkerton,New in 2023,"DGC, 1996","Rivers Cuomo's deeply personal second album was initially dismissed by critics but has since been recognized as a masterpiece of alternative rock. Named after the character from Puccini's 'Madame Butterfly,' the album explores themes of loneliness, sexual frustration, and cultural identity with unprecedented honesty. Songs like 'El Scorcho' and 'The Good Life' combine Cuomo's neurotic lyrics with the band's powerful pop-rock sound. The album's raw emotional content and innovative song structures influenced countless alternative rock bands."
373,Lana Del Rey,Norman Fucking Rockwell!,-52,"Polydor/Interscope, 2019","Lana Del Rey became a music-blog sensation playing the poker-faced millennial Nancy Sinatra on her debut single, “Video Games.” She kept growing as an artist, and on her wonderfully titled sixth album perfected her epic vision of doomed, decadent, Seventies-steeped California romance on songs like “Mariner’s Apartment Complex” and the nine-minute crusher “Venice Bitch.” Del Rey dropped references to the Eagles and Graham Nash, merging her own music into the Laurel Canyon canon. No less an authority on Seventies greatness than Elton John called the album’s songs “timeless.” "
374,Schoolly D,Saturday Night! The Album,New in 2023,,
375,Eurythmics,Touch,New in 2023,,
376,Suede,Suede,New in 2023,,
377,Carly Rae Jepsen,E•MO•TION,New in 2023,,
378,Ornette Coleman,Free Jazz,New in 2023,,
379,Janet Jackson,The Velvet Rope,-61,"Virgin, 1997","Janet Jackson left behind her girl-next-door image forever with The Velvet Rope, an album of sexy, confessional, freewheeling hip-hop soul. She fuses Joni Mitchell and Q-Tip in “Got ’Til It’s Gone,” but the shocker is her girl-girl version of Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night.” “I always write about what’s in my life,” she told Rolling Stone. “I did that on Control, and I did the same thing with this album. It’s kind of like cutting yourself open and exposing yourself to the world, which is really a vulnerable thing.” "
380,Talk Talk,Laughing Stock,New in 2023,,
381,Pharoah Sanders,Karma,New in 2023,,
382,King Tubby,Meets Rockers Uptown,New in 2023,,
383,Elliott Smith,XO,New in 2023,"DreamWorks, 1998","Elliott Smith's major-label debut expanded his intimate acoustic style with lush orchestration and multi-tracked vocals while maintaining his gift for melody and devastating emotional honesty. Songs like 'Waltz #2 (XO)' and 'Baby Britain' showcase his sophisticated harmonic sense and whispered vocal delivery. The album's themes of depression, addiction, and alienation, combined with its beautiful melodies, created a template for indie rock introspection. Smith's tragic death in 2003 has only enhanced the album's reputation as a classic of alternative rock."
384,The Chemical Brothers,Dig Your Own Hole,New in 2023,"Freestyle Dust/Virgin, 1997","The Chemical Brothers' second album established them as leaders of the big beat movement and masters of electronic dance music. The album's combination of rock samples, breakbeats, and psychedelic elements created a new form of electronic music that worked equally well in clubs and on headphones. Tracks like 'Block Rockin' Beats' and 'Setting Sun' (featuring Noel Gallagher) became dancefloor anthems, while the album's innovative production techniques influenced a generation of electronic artists."
385,Aaliyah,One in a Million,-71,"Blackground/Atlantic, 1996","Aaliyah’s second album was her first with producer Timbaland, and until the singer’s tragic death in 2001, the pair reshaped the landscape of R&B. Aaliyah seems to be sparring with Timbaland’s hide-and-seek drum tracks, ducking and weaving — and, somehow, singing beautifully — as high-hats and shakers zip past her ears. As futuristic as this album sounds, even today, Aaliyah also benefited from her close study of the classics: Her version of the Isley Brothers’ “Choosey Lover” rises to the level of the original. "
386,Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers,Rockin' and Romance,New in 2023,,
387,Queens of the Stone Age,Songs for the Deaf,New in 2023,"Interscope, 2002","Queens of the Stone Age's third album, featuring Dave Grohl on drums, is a desert rock masterpiece that combines heavy riffs with psychedelic elements. The album's concept as a road trip through Palm Desert radio stations provides a unifying theme for Josh Homme's distinctive songwriting. Songs like 'No One Knows' and 'First It Giveth' showcase the band's ability to create heavy music that's both aggressive and melodic."
388,War,The World Is a Ghetto,New in 2023,,
389,Gary Numan/Tubeway Army,The Pleasure Principle,New in 2023,,
390,Boston,Boston,New in 2023,,
391,The Mothers of Invention,Freak Out!,New in 2023,,
392,Chic,Risqué,+22,"Atlantic, 1979","Nobody thought a disco band was supposed to make a brilliant third album — but Chic always thrived on defying the odds. On Risqué, the dynamic duo of guitarist Nile Rodgers and bassist Bernard Edwards fuse sleek tropical R&B, Anglophile New Wave, and NYC club flash for a sound that’s been the blueprint for pop radio ever since. “Good Times” is Chic’s most prophetic groove — the story of hip-hop on wax begins here, with the Sugarhill Gang rhyming over it for “Rapper’s Delight.” "
393,2Pac,All Eyez on Me,+43,"Death Row, 1996","2Pac wanted it all: credibility and success, “murderous lyrics” and voice-of-a-generation gravitas. On his fourth (and final) album, he briefly gets it. In the course of 27 songs and two discs, Pac empties his brain of the contradictory impulses. The Dr. Dre track “California Love” became a huge house-party hit, but what unifies the album, through an array of different producers and guest stars, is Pac’s charisma and his struggles with morality: “It’s similar to Rhythm Nation, but thugged out — forgive me, Janet.” "
394,John Fahey,The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death,New in 2023,,
395,Meat Loaf,Bat Out of Hell,New in 2023,,
396,Bon Iver,Bon Iver,New in 2023,,
397,Can,Soundtracks,New in 2023,,
398,Pantera,Vulgar Display of Power,New in 2023,,
399,Mary J. Blige,My Life,-273,"Uptown, 1994","The crucial development on Mary J. Blige’s second album is her emergence as a songwriter; in lyrics and interviews, she began to describe the traumas she’d had, both as a child growing up in the projects and as an adult. For fans, that intimacy turned her from a beloved singer to a member of the family. “Down and out, crying every day,” she sings on the title song. There’s plenty of thematic contrast — the playful bedroom come-on “Mary Jane (All Night Long),” a smashing cover of the 1970s funk ballad “I’m Going Down” — but the strongest impression from the album is that Blige had been through it, and her hopefulness was hard-won. "
400,Dinosaur,You're Living All Over Me,New in 2023,,
401,Jay-Z,Reasonable Doubt,-334,"Roc-A-Fella, 1996","Before there was Jay-Z the mogul, the legend, the Beyoncé boy toy, there was Jay-Z on his do-or-die hustle, trying just to get a seat at the UNO table. “Forever petty minds stay petty/Mine’s thinkin’ longevity, until I’m 70,” he rhymes on the virtuosic “22 Two’s,” his earliest experiment in toying with standard rap structures. When he raps about drug dealing and not trusting women, the details are specific and self-aware. Jay’s charisma and comic insouciance are evident even on small touches like his taunting laugh in the chorus of “Ain’t No Nigga,” a gloriously funky track that lit up dance clubs. Here, he planted a flag in the underground — within two years, the pop hits followed and the hustle went worldwide. "
402,"Tyler, the Creator",Igor,New in 2023,"Columbia, 2019","Tyler's fifth studio album marked a complete artistic transformation, moving away from the shock value of his early work toward a more mature exploration of love and relationships. The album's lush production, featuring live instrumentation and Tyler's increasingly sophisticated songwriting, creates a cohesive narrative arc. Songs like 'EARFQUAKE' and 'I THINK' showcase his growth as both a rapper and singer. The album's Grammy win and critical acclaim established Tyler as one of hip-hop's most creative and unpredictable artists."
403,Misfits,Walk Among Us,New in 2023,,
404,The dB's,Stands for Decibels,New in 2023,,
405,Fela Kuti & Africa 70,Zombie,New in 2023,,
406,The Meters,Look-Ka Py Py,New in 2023,"Josie, 1969","The Meters were the house band for New Orleans’ genius producer Allen Toussaint and played on Seventies landmarks such as LaBelle’s Nightbirds, while also running off a series of their own rock-solid LPs. These instrumentals — sampled by rappers including Nas and Salt-N-Pepa — are funk of the gods; tight, cutting, but also relaxed and inviting, with Art Neville’s lyrical Hammond B3 organ adding chill texture to George Porter Jr.’s monster bass and the off-the-beat Second Line swing of drummer of Ziggy Modeliste. "
407,Mariah Carey,The Emancipation of Mimi,-18,"Island, 2005","Mariah Carey’s last couple of albums had only attained platinum status, paltry by her usual high-flying standards. But the vocal acrobat swept away the naysayers with “We Belong Together,” a chattering, heartbroken ballad that interpolates two R&B classics (Bobby Womack’s “If You Think You’re Lonely Now” and the Deele’s “Two Occasions”), then followed that song’s huge success with “Shake It Off,” a dismissive, vengeful cut for all the jilted lovers — and The Emancipation of Mimi turned out to be a sextuple-platinum return to form. "
408,Bad Bunny,X 100pre,+39,"Rimas, 2018","Heralded by a subtly symbolic Christmas Eve release, Bad Bunny’s 2018 debut, X 100pre, was the Puerto Rican artist’s bid to court listeners new to Latin sounds, running through trap, reggaeton, dembow, synth-pop, and even pop punk, with help from Anglophonic ambassadors like Diplo and Drake. Bad Bunny could be shamelessly crude and totally vulnerable, with his slow-burning baritone opening the floor for Latin pop that’s not afraid to get uncomfortable. "
409,Adele,21,-272,"Columbia, 2011","“Pain is art” may be a cliché, but for Adele, it rang especially true. Her debut album, 19, was a polite, tasteful set of soul-inflected pop. Its follow-up was something else again. Chewing over a tumultuous affair, she dug deep and came up with a modern masterpiece of post-breakup soul music. She’d actually cut an entire album with producer Rick Rubin but wound up preferring earlier demos of songs like “Rolling in the Deep,” “Someone Like You,” and “Set Fire to the Rain,” and mostly used those instead. The switch-up made for an even rawer and more emotional experience that clearly connected: 21 sold more than 30 million copies and swept the 2012 Grammys. "
410,The Descendents,Milo Goes to College,New in 2023,,
411,Nicki Minaj,The Pinkprint,New in 2023,,
412,Soundgarden,Superunknown,New in 2023,"A&M, 1994","Soundgarden's fourth studio album marked the band's creative and commercial peak, combining heavy metal with psychedelic and experimental elements. Chris Cornell's powerful vocals and the band's innovative use of alternate tunings created a unique sound that set them apart from their grunge peers. Songs like 'Black Hole Sun' and 'Spoonman' became alternative radio staples, while deeper cuts like '4th of July' and 'Limo Wreck' showcased the band's experimental side. The album's Grammy wins and multi-platinum success established Soundgarden as one of the most important bands of the 1990s."
413,LL Cool J,Radio,New in 2023,"Def Jam, 1985","LL Cool J's debut album was one of the first rap albums to achieve mainstream commercial success while maintaining street credibility. Produced by Rick Rubin, the album's raw, stripped-down production and LL's aggressive delivery on tracks like 'Rock the Bells' and 'I Can't Live Without My Radio' established the template for hardcore rap. The album's success helped launch Def Jam Records and proved that rap could be both commercially viable and artistically innovative."
414,Mazzy Star,So Tonight That I Might See,New in 2023,,
415,Rancid,...And Out Come the Wolves,New in 2023,,
416,Iron Maiden,The Number of the Beast,New in 2023,"EMI, 1982","Iron Maiden's third studio album, and the first to feature vocalist Bruce Dickinson, established them as leaders of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. The album's epic compositions, galloping rhythms, and literary lyrics created a more sophisticated form of heavy metal. Songs like 'Run to the Hills' and the title track became metal classics, while Steve Harris's complex bass lines and the dual guitar attack of Dave Murray and Adrian Smith set the template for melodic metal."
417,Saint Etienne,So Tough,New in 2023,,
418,Bright Eyes,"I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning",New in 2023,"Saddle Creek, 2005","Conor Oberst's most accessible album as Bright Eyes showcased his evolution from lo-fi indie folk to a more polished, country-influenced sound. Recorded with a full band including Emmylou Harris, the album features some of Oberst's most memorable songs, including 'First Day of My Life' and 'Lover I Don't Have to Love.' The album's political themes and personal revelations, combined with its warm production, established Bright Eyes as one of indie rock's most important voices."
419,Gorillaz,Demon Days,New in 2023,"Parlophone/Virgin, 2005","Damon Albarn's virtual band project reached its creative peak on this genre-blending masterpiece featuring collaborations with De La Soul, MF DOOM, and Neneh Cherry. The album's dark themes and eclectic musical palette, from the hip-hop of 'Feel Good Inc.' to the gospel-influenced 'DARE,' created a unique sound that defied categorization. The album's success proved that experimental pop could achieve mainstream success."
420,J Dilla,Donuts,-34,"Stones Throw, 2006","Questlove of the Roots called the Detroit producer “the music god that music gods and music experts and music lovers worship.” During the Nineties and early ’00s, Dilla worked with a who’s who of hip-hop greats and helped shape the sound of albums like D’Angelo’s Voodoo [see No. 28]. Released three days before his death, Donuts is a beat head’s delight: 31 concise, wildly inventive sample-swirls (love the Frank Zappa bit on “Mash”), many of which would end up being sampled themselves in the years that followed. "
421,UGK,Ridin' Dirty,New in 2023,"Jive, 1996","UGK's fourth studio album is considered a masterpiece of Southern hip-hop, establishing the duo of Bun B and Pimp C as pioneers of the genre. The album's laid-back production, featuring live instrumentation and jazz samples, provides the perfect backdrop for their distinctive flows and street narratives. Songs like 'One Day' and 'Murder' showcase their ability to balance hardcore rap with melodic sensibilities. The album's influence on Southern rap and its role in establishing Houston as a hip-hop center cannot be overstated."
422,Travis Scott,Astroworld,New in 2023,"Cactus Jack/Grand Hustle, 2018","Travis Scott's third studio album is a psychedelic journey through hip-hop that draws inspiration from the defunct AstroWorld theme park in Houston. The album features innovative production techniques, auto-tuned vocals, and collaborations with artists ranging from Drake to Tame Impala. Songs like 'SICKO MODE' and 'STARLIGHT' showcase Scott's ability to create immersive sonic landscapes. The album's theme park concept and its blend of hip-hop with psychedelic and electronic elements established Scott as one of the most creative forces in contemporary rap."
423,Rush,Moving Pictures,-44,"Anthem, 1981","On Seventies albums like 2112 and Hemispheres, Rush mastered the high-prog epic. Moving Pictures was the record where they proved they could say as much in four minutes as they previously had in 20. Songs like “Tom Sawyer,” “Limelight,” and the Police-like “Vital Signs” showcased the trio’s superhuman chops in a radio-ready framework, while more adventurous tracks like the Morse code–inspired instrumental “YYZ” and the synth-heavy suite “The Camera Eye” found them tastefully streamlining their wildest ideas. Said Geddy Lee, “We learned it’s not so easy to write something simple.” "
424,R.E.M.,Reckoning,New in 2023,,
425,The Mekons,Fear and Whiskey,New in 2023,,
426,Minutemen,What Makes a Man Start Fires?,New in 2023,,
427,MC5,Kick Out the Jams,-78,"Elektra, 1969","It’s the ultimate rock salute: “Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!” Recorded live in Detroit by Rob Tyner and his anarchist crew, Kick Out the Jams writhes and screams with the belief that rock & roll is a necessary act of civil disobedience. The proof: It was banned by a Michigan department store. The MC5 proved their lefty credentials the summer before the album was recorded when they were the only band that showed up to play for the Yippies protesting the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. "
428,Manu Dibango,Soul Makossa,New in 2023,,
429,Bill Withers,Just As I Am,-125,"Sussex, 1971","On the cover, Bill Withers totes a lunch pail, highlighting the down-to-earth everyman vibe of the folk-soul music of his debut album (that’s Withers himself tapping on a box to keep the beat in “Grandma’s Hands”). As he said at the time, “I’m sick and tired of somebody saying ‘I love you’ with both arms up in the air like that.” Instead, Withers strummed his acoustic guitar and spun tales about absent fathers, his West Virginia grandmother, and life in Harlem. "
430,Dizzee Rascal,Boy in da Corner,New in 2023,,
431,Os Mutantes,Os Mutantes,New in 2023,,
432,Sade,Diamond Life,-232,"Epic, 1984","Nigerian-born fashion designer Sade Adu and her London band defined elegantly cool Eighties soul with their smash debut, Diamond Life. Torch ballads like “Smooth Operator” and “Your Love Is King” had a New Romantic opulence under the bittersweet pang of Adu’s voice. She wrote her first song, “When Am I Going to Make a Living,” on the back of a bill, while walking home in the rain from a bus stop after work. As she said, “All the songs I’ve ever loved — even jazz stuff — are things that tell a story.” "
433,Drive-By Truckers,Southern Rock Opera,New in 2023,,
434,Taylor Swift,Red,-335,"Big Machine, 2012","Taylor Swift shocked the world with her fourth album, breaking away from country music to make a record that recalled classics by the Beatles and Prince in the way it pulled from across the pop and rock landscape and transformed every sound it touched. The lead single, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” was stomping, swaying electro-twang. “I Know You Were Trouble” rode a dubstep groove, and the title track was a swirl of banjos, dusty guitars, and talk-box elation. Tabloid types tied themselves in knots trying to figure out which song was about which ex, but the real news was Swift’s songwriting on high points like the astonishing “All Too Well,” as vivid a post-breakup remembrance as any artist has ever produced. "
435,Judas Priest,British Steel,New in 2023,"Columbia, 1980",Judas Priest's sixth studio album streamlined their heavy metal sound into a more accessible form without sacrificing power. Rob Halford's operatic vocals and the band's twin-guitar attack on songs like 'Breaking the Law' and 'Living After Midnight' created anthems that defined heavy metal for the 1980s. The album's leather-and-studs aesthetic and uncompromising metal sound influenced countless metal bands.
436,Yoko Ono,Fly,New in 2023,,
437,Boards of Canada,Music Has the Right to Children,New in 2023,"Warp/Skam, 1998","The Scottish duo's debut album created a nostalgic, dream-like form of electronic music that seemed to capture the hazy memories of childhood. Using analog synthesizers, tape manipulation, and field recordings, Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin crafted an album that feels both futuristic and deeply nostalgic. Tracks like 'Roygbiv' and 'Turquoise Hexagon Sun' feature their signature combination of warm melodies and degraded textures. The album's unique aesthetic and emotional depth established Boards of Canada as masters of ambient electronic music."
438,Beat Happening,Jamboree,New in 2023,,
439,The Vaselines,Dum-Dum,New in 2023,,
440,The Avalanches,Since I Left You,New in 2023,"Modular, 2000","The Avalanches' debut album is a masterpiece of sample-based music, constructed from over 3,500 vinyl samples. The Australian group's cut-and-paste technique creates a dreamy, nostalgic journey through decades of recorded music. The title track and songs like 'Frontier Psychiatrist' showcase their ability to create coherent songs from disparate sources. The album's joyful celebration of musical history and its innovative production techniques make it a landmark of electronic music."
441,Lil Wayne,Tha Carter III,-233,"Cash Money/Universal Motown, 2008","By 2008, Lil Wayne contained multitudes: Best Rapper Alive, Pussy Monster, Martian, Weezy F. Baby (and the “F” is for, well, pretty much any word starting with “F”). Tha Carter III was a monument to this multiple-personality menagerie. “A Milli,” a glorified freestyle, fully crossed over to the mainstream, while “Lollipop,” a robotic R&B jam, rightly bet that an audience was ready to invest in Wayne’s croaky, syrup-addled singing voice. More than a decade later, even Wayne’s most outré personalities are still birthing musical descendants. "
442,The Stranglers,Rattus Norvegicus,New in 2023,,
443,Beyoncé,Beyoncé,-362,"Parkwood/Columbia, 2013","“I didn’t want to release my music the way I’ve done it,” Beyoncé said. “I am bored with that.” So she dropped her self-titled album on an unsuspecting world at the end of 2013, without a word of warning. Her fifth solo album, Beyoncé showed off her musical scope and feminist outreach, but it was also a visual album with a film for each song, shot around the world: New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and of course, her native Houston. She had high-profile collabs: “Superpower” with Frank Ocean, “Mine” with Drake, “Flawless” with Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “Drunk in Love” with her husband, Jay-Z. But Beyoncé proved that nobody else was on her level. "
444,Ariana Grande,"thank u, next",New in 2023,"Republic, 2019","Ariana Grande's fifth studio album emerged from personal trauma and public scrutiny to become a statement of resilience and self-empowerment. The album's trap-influenced production and Grande's powerful vocals on songs like the title track and '7 rings' created some of the most memorable pop music of the late 2010s. The album's themes of healing and growth, combined with its commercial success, established Grande as one of pop's most important voices."
445,Bonnie 'Prince' Billy,I See a Darkness,New in 2023,,
446,Britney Spears,Blackout,-5,"Jive, 2007","The pop queen vents all her raging party-girl hostility in Blackout — the weirdest, wildest music of her life. Blackout is her avant-disco concept album about fame, scandal, divorce, and dancing on tables in a cloud of glitter and Cheetos dust. “I’m Miss American Dream since I was 17,” Britney sneers in “Piece of Me,” with her voice warped into an electro-punk snarl. When she asks, “You want a piece of me?” she’s either pimping herself out or threatening to kick your ass. Either way, it’s Britney, bitch. "
447,The Orb,The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld,New in 2023,,
448,Queen,A Night at the Opera,-320,"Elektra, 1975","“Queen will be the Cecil B. DeMille of rock,” proclaimed singer Freddie Mercury, and this far-ranging, rococo album is the group’s ready-for-my-close-up moment. Bassist John Deacon wrote the melodic highlight “You’re My Best Friend,” a bouncy bit of Paul McCartney-esque pop; Mercury wrote the brutal rocker “Death on Two Legs,” about the band’s former manager; and guitarist Brian May wrote “The Prophet’s Song,” a doomy portent of a flood that runs 8:21 and includes a vocal canon from Mercury. But the coup was “Bohemian Rhapsody,” an opera buffa in which Mercury combined three different songs he’d been writing into a suite that took weeks to record. "
449,Big Thief,U.F.O.F.,New in 2023,,
450,The Mamas & the Papas,If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears,New in 2023,,
451,The Mountain Goats,The Sunset Tree,New in 2023,,
452,Black Lips,Good Bad Not Evil,New in 2023,,
453,X,Los Angeles,-133,"Slash, 1980","X stood out from the other L.A. punks — for one thing, they had a married couple in the band, John Doe and Exene Cervenka, venting their sexual and cultural rage over the high-speed rockabilly thrash of Billy Zoom and D.J. Bonebrake. Doe and Cervenka met in a poetry workshop, and you can hear it in the complex wordplay of “Johnny Hit and Run Paulene” and “Sex and Dying in High Society.” But they kick off their debut with a hilariously nasty bang: “Your Phone’s Off the Hook, But You’re Not.” "
454,Justin Timberlake,FutureSex/LoveSounds,New in 2023,"Jive, 2006","Justin Timberlake's second solo album, produced by Timbaland, created a futuristic form of pop-R&B that dominated the mid-2000s. The album's innovative production, featuring unconventional rhythms and electronic textures, provided the perfect backdrop for Timberlake's smooth vocals. Songs like 'SexyBack' and 'My Love' showcased his evolution from boy band member to serious solo artist."
455,Young Thug,Barter 6,New in 2023,,
456,Dean Martin,Sleep Warm,New in 2023,,
457,Shakira,Dónde Están los Ladrones?,+39,"Columbia, 1998","Long before she went blond and took her never-lying hips to the top of the American pop charts, Shakira was a raven-haired guitar rocker who’d hit peak superstardom in the Spanish-speaking world with her 1995 LP, Pies Descalzos. To keep up the momentum, Shakira enlisted Emilio Estefan to help produce her next LP, this stellar globetrotting dance-rock set, which blends sounds from Colombia, Mexico, and her father’s native Lebanon. "
458,Van Halen,Van Halen,-166,"Warner Bros., 1978","This debut gave the world a new guitar hero (Eddie Van Halen) and charismatic frontman (David Lee Roth). Tunes such as “Runnin’ With the Devil” and “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love” put the swagger back in hard rock, and Van Halen’s jaw-dropping technique, particularly on “Eruption,” raised the bar for rock guitar. “It sounded like it came from another planet,” Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready said of first encountering Van Halen’s playing. “Like hearing Mozart for the first time.” "
459,Tracy Chapman,Tracy Chapman,-203,"Elektra, 1988","Somehow, this young folk singer came out of nowhere to catch everyone’s ear during the hair-metal late Eighties. Tracy Chapman had already spent time strumming her acoustic guitar for spare change on the streets around Boston, but her gritty voice and storytelling made “Fast Car” a huge hit. Her debut confronted listeners with the raw truths of songs like “Behind the Wall,” a grueling portrayal of domestic violence sung a cappella, and the radical hope of the anthemic opening track, “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution.” "
460,The Libertines,Up the Bracket,New in 2023,,
461,Scott Walker,Scott 4,New in 2023,,
462,Merle Haggard,Mama Tried,New in 2023,,
463,Alice Cooper,Love It to Death,New in 2023,,
464,Kate Bush,The Dreaming,New in 2023,"EMI, 1982","Kate Bush's fourth studio album marked her complete artistic independence and her most experimental phase. Produced entirely by Bush herself, the album's dense, layered production and unconventional song structures pushed the boundaries of pop music. Songs like 'Suspended in Gaffa' and the title track showcase her unique vocal style and artistic vision. The album's initial commercial disappointment has been reversed by critical reappraisal recognizing it as her most adventurous work."
465,Yeah Yeah Yeahs,Fever to Tell,-88,"Interscope, 2003","These New York art-punk brats blew away the doldrums of the early 2000s with a true rock & roll goddess in Karen O. She knew how to work her sneer like a pair of ripped fishnets, trashing any room in sight. Yet the tender ballad “Maps” became a surprise hit, with Karen pleading “Wait, they don’t love you like I love you” over Nick Zinner’s warped guitar fuzz and Brian Chase’s drum thunder. “There’s a lot of loooove in that song,” she said. “But there’s a lot of fear, too.” "
466,Jimmy Cliff,The Harder They Come,New in 2023,,
467,Thin Lizzy,Live and Dangerous,New in 2023,,
468,Lily Allen,"Alright, Still",New in 2023,,
469,Earth Wind & Fire,That's the Way of the World,-49,"Columbia, 1975","Before he got into African thumb piano and otherworldly philosophizing, founder Maurice White was a session drummer at Chess studios (that’s him on Fontella Bass’ “Rescue Me”). He stayed behind the kit as he led EWF. Their sixth album is make-out music of the spheres, incorporating doo-wop, jazz, and African music into a sound that’s sleek but never too slick; the title track is one of funk’s most gorgeous ballads, and “Shining Star” is a Seventies self-help seminar delivered over one of the decade’s sweetest grooves. "
470,Sinéad O'Connor,I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got,-13,"Ensign/Chrysalis, 1990","“How could I possibly know what I want when I was only 21?” the Irish art rocker asked on her breakthrough second album. Sinéad O’Connor struck a nerve with her keening voice, her shaved head, and her tortured grandiosity in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and “I Am Stretched on Your Grave.” But she hit Number One with an obscure Prince breakup ballad, “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Originally just filler on a flop album by the Family, it became O’Connor’s signature song. "
471,Cyndi Lauper,She's So Unusual,-287,"Portrait, 1983","With her garish thrift-store fashions and exaggerated Queens accent, Lauper had a kooky image that was perfect for MTV. But she also had a superb, clarion voice and a pack of great covers, including “Money Changes Everything” (originally by Atlanta New Wave band the Brains) and Prince’s saucy “When You Were Mine.” Lauper co-wrote four songs, including the lovely ballad “Time After Time” and the masturbation call-to-arms “She Bop.” But her smartest move was to change the lyrics of Robert Hazard’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” until it became a “very blatantly feminist” song about equality. “For a minute, I made it popular to be the odd guy out,” she said. "
472,SZA,Ctrl,No change,"RCA, 2017","Thanks to SZA’s lyrics about insecurity, jealousy, loneliness, and her search for “lovin’ and licky,” this assured debut brought a new self-searching spirit to R&B. The tracks are gentle and erotic, but beneath the singer’s soft-grained style, there’s fierceness; in “Dove in the Wind,” she tells a lover she can easily replace him with a dildo. On “Love Galore,” a duet with Travis Scott that describes an ambivalent breakup, she makes clear the vulnerability beneath the bravado: “Gimme a paper towel, gimme another Valium.” "
473,Daddy Yankee,Barrio Fino,No change,"V.I. Music, 2004","Just when Latin pop radio was hitting a ballad-heavy plateau, Puerto Rican MC Daddy Yankee set the industry aflame with his 2004 reggaeton opus, Barrio Fino. Crowned by the hydraulic bounce of Yankee’s first international hit, “Gasolina,” the record marked a colossal breakthrough, not just for the rapper himself, but for the entire genre known as reggaeton: a raw blend of hip-hop and reggae, born in the mean streets of San Juan. "
474,Big Star,#1 Record,No change,"Ardent, 1972","Alex Chilton and Chris Bell were the Memphis whiz kids at the heart of Big Star. They mixed British Invasion pop finesse with all-American hard rock, from the surging “Feel” to the acoustic heartbreaker “Thirteen.” Big Star didn’t sell many records but did become a crucial inspiration to underdogs like R.E.M., the Replacements, and Elliott Smith. As Chilton said later, “If you only press up a hundred copies of a record, then eventually it will find its way to the hundred people in the world who want it the most.” "
475,Sheryl Crow,Sheryl Crow,No change,"A&M, 1996","The Missouri gal finally got to make an album her way, in 1996, with her self-titled, self-produced smash — an ingenious mix of roots-rock raunch and vengeful wit. As Crow told Rolling Stone, “My only objective on this record was to get under people’s skin, because I was feeling like I had so much shit to hurl at the tape.” “Every Day Is a Winding Road” and “A Change Would Do You Good” rock like a feminist Exile on Main Street, while “If It Makes You Happy” became an anthem for bad girls of all ages. "
476,Sparks,Kimono My House,No change,"Island, 1974","The duo of singer Russell Mael and songwriter-keyboardist Ron Mael coined a unique, influential sound that mixed glam and prog-rock, the Beach Boys and Frank Zappa. Russell adopts a florid falsetto to sing Ron’s lyrics about clumsy sex (“Amateur Hour”), Albert Einstein’s doting parents (the pun-filled “Talent Is an Asset”), and a broken suicide pact (“Here in Heaven”). The overwhelming sensation from Sparks’ third album is a sense that you’ve arrived at a party where you know no one and hear things you can’t comprehend but still have a great time. "
477,Howlin' Wolf,Moanin' in the Moonlight,No change,"Chess, 1959","“That man was the natural stuff,” Buddy Guy said. “His fists were as big as a car tire.” The Wolf had the biggest roar in Chicago blues — he raved in a fierce growl, backed by explosive playing from guitar geniuses Willie Johnson and Hubert Sumlin. His 1959 debut album has some of the meanest electric blues ever heard, cut for Chess Records, from the eerie railroad drone “Smokestack Lightnin’” to the lowdown “I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline).” "
478,The Kinks,The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society,-94,"Reprise, 1969","While their British Invasion peers— the Beatles, the Stones, the Who — were getting psychedelic, Ray Davies took his band for a pastoral retreat, with witty portraits of quaint English small-town life fading away like “Big Sky.” Nobody bought it, but Village Green went on to become one of the Kinks’ most influential statements. “With ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day and All of the Night,’ we were saying, ‘We’re here, we’re gonna grab you,’” Davies told Rolling Stone. “The music on Village Green says, ‘Come find us.’” "
479,Selena,Amor Prohibido,No change,"EMA Latin, 1994","Tejana star Selena Quintanilla-Pérez may not have been long for this world (she died when she was just 23), but she remains one of America’s most beloved singer-songwriters. At the heart of her regional Mexican masterwork, Amor Prohibido, is a universal, glittering pop core. The techno-cumbia title track tells the real-life story of her grandparents, who fell in love across class lines. It’s a Latina fairy tale, if ever there was one. Amor Prohibido, meaning “forbidden love,” became one of the bestselling Latin albums of all time. "
480,Miranda Lambert,The Weight of These Wings,No change,"eRCA Nashville, 2016","The Nashville superstar sounded especially free and artistically uninhibited after her divorce from Blake Shelton, and she channeled it all into this expansive, mind-clearing two-CD set, an ambitious grab bag of deep breakup tunes (“Use My Heart,” “Tin Man”), Radiohead-y alt-rock moodiness (“Vice”), eye-rolling, scuz-guitar glam (“Pink Sunglasses”), and tender reflections on the bonds and weights of messy commitment (“Getaway Car”). It’s the sound of bad history falling away in the cracked rearview and nothing but wide-open road ahead. "
481,Belle and Sebastian,If You're Feeling Sinister,No change,"Jeepster, 1996","Being a self-pitying shut-in has never sounded better than it does on the Scottish twee icons’ breakthrough. The chamber-folk arrangements are second to none — like a cup of tea brewed for you by a hopeless crush with a really good record collection — but don’t sleep on Stuart Murdoch’s subtly sardonic lyrics on “The Stars of Track and Field” and “Seeing Other People,” which give these wistful-sounding songs a bite that sets them apart from most imitators. "
482,The Pharcyde,Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde,No change,"Delicious Vinyl, 1992","These high school friends from L.A. were a little like a West Coast answer to De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, offering their own spin on alternative hip-hop in the Nineties and showing there was something going on in Southern California beyond G-funk. They rapped about innocent topics, like having a crush on a teacher in “Passin’ Me By,” which was a small hit, but also about dating a cute girl who turns out “to be a John Doe” and run-ins with the cops (the Public Enemy-homage “Officer”). It all came out as bright and refreshing as sorbet. "
483,Muddy Waters,The Anthology,No change,"MCA, 2001","Muddy Waters started out playing acoustic Delta blues in Mississippi, but when he moved to Chicago in 1943, he needed an electric guitar to be heard over the tumult of South Side clubs. The sound he developed was the foundation of Chicago blues — and rock & roll; the thick, bleeding tones of his slide work anticipated rock-guitar distortion by nearly two decades. The 50 cuts on these two CDs run from guitar-and-stand-up-bass duets to full-band romps — and they still just scratch the surface of Waters’ legacy. "
484,Lady Gaga,Born This Way,No change,"Interscope, 2011","“Over-the-top” isn’t an insult in Gaga’s world; it’s a statement of purpose. Her second album is a work of blessed bombast, all arena-size sonics and Springsteenian romanticism, complete with a Clarence Clemons sax solo. There’s a thumping, half-in-Spanish song that proposes marriage to “a girl in east L.A.” (“Americano”), a synth-pop jam that includes a come-on on to John F. Kennedy (“Government Hooker”), and a touching ballad about a guy from Nebraska (“You and I”). Fittingly, the glam-slam title track became an LGBTQ anthem. "
485,Richard & Linda Thompson,I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight,No change,"Island, 1974","With Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson was one of the first prominent Sixties folk rockers to look to his native England’s traditions for inspiration. After leaving Fairport, he joined with his wife, Linda Thompson to make stellar albums in the Seventies. Richard played guitar like a Sufi-mystic Neil Young; Linda had the voice of a Celtic Emmylou Harris. Bright Lights is their devastating masterwork of folk-rock dread. Radiohead even picked up some guitar tricks from “The Calvary Cross.” "
486,John Mayer,Continuum,No change,"Columbia, 2006","After establishing himself as a post-Dave Matthews heartthrob, John Mayer grew into his soul and blues ambitions for a subtly crafted album aided by ace musicians like guitarists Ben Harper and Charlie Hunter, drummer-producer Steve Jordan, and jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove — from the smooth Hi Records-tinged soul of “Vultures” to “Waiting for the World to Change,” a deceptively knowing and self-aware take on generational apathy. "
487,Black Flag,Damaged,No change,"SST, 1981","MCA refused to release this album, denouncing it as “immoral” and “anti-parent.” High praise, but Black Flag lived up to it, defining L.A. hardcore punk with Greg Ginn’s violent guitar and the pissed-off scream of Henry Rollins, especially on “TV Party” and “Rise Above,” which came with the timeless smash-the-glass salvo “We are tired of your abuse/Try to stop is but it’s no use.” Punks still listen to Damaged, and parents still hate it. "
488,The Stooges,The Stooges,No change,"Elektra, 1969","Fueled by “a little marijuana and a lotta alienation,” Michigan’s Stooges gave the lie to hippie idealism, playing with a savagery that unsettled even the most blasé clubgoers. Ex-Velvet Underground member John Cale produced a primitive debut wherein, amid Ron Asheton’s wah-wah blurts, Iggy Stooge (né James Osterberg) snarled seminal punk classics such as “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “No Fun,” and “1969,” bedrock examples of the weaponized boredom that would become a de rigueur punk posture. "
489,Phil Spector & Various Artists,Back to Mono (1958-1969),No change,"ABKCO, 1991","When the Righteous Brothers’ Bobby Hatfield first heard “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” with partner Bill Medley’s extended solo, he asked, “But what do I do while he’s singing the whole first verse?” Producer Phil Spector replied, “You can go directly to the bank!” Spector built his Wall of Sound out of hand claps, massive overdubs, and orchestras of percussion. This box has hits such as the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron,” which Spector called “little symphonies for the kids.” "
490,Linda Ronstadt,Heart Like a Wheel,No change,"Capitol, 1975","Linda Ronstadt completed her transition from California hippie-folk darling to soft-rock queen on her chart-topping fifth album, covering Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Little Feat, and Kate and Anna McGariggle on the gorgeous title track. Her version of the Betty Everett oldie “You’re No Good” hits a perfect mix of desire and paranoia. Along with being a showcase for Ronstadt’s peerless versatility, Heart Like a Wheel is Seventies pop-rock craft at its sweetest and sturdiest. "
491,Harry Styles,Fine Line,No change,"Columbia, 2019","Harry Styles achieved pop greatness with One Direction, but he got even deeper on his own. On Fine Line, he stakes his claim as one of his generation’s most savagely imaginative musical minds. Styles breathes in the 1970s California sunshine of his heroes — Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Stevie Nicks — with soulful breakup songs. As he explained, “It’s all about having sex and feeling sad.” Yet the music is drenched in starman joy: the ‘shroomadelic guitar trip “She,” the dulcimer-crazed “Canyon Moon,” the Number One juicy-fruit beach orgy “Watermelon Sugar.” "
492,Bonnie Raitt,Nick of Time,No change,"Capitol, 1989","After being dumped by her previous label, blues rocker Bonnie Raitt exacted revenge with this multiplatinum Grammy-award winner, led by an on-fire version of John Hiatt’s “Thing Called Love” and the brilliant title track, a study in midlife crisis told from a woman’s perspective. Producer Don Was helped her sharpen the songs without sacrificing any of her slide-guitar fire. And as Raitt herself pointed out, her 10th try was “my first sober album.” "
493,Marvin Gaye,"Here, My Dear",No change,"Tamla/Motown, 1978","It’s one of the weirdest Motown records ever. Marvin Gaye’s divorce settlement required him to make two new albums and pay the royalties to his ex-wife – the sister of Motown boss Berry Gordy. So Gaye made this bitterly funny double LP of breakup songs, including “You Can Leave, But It’s Going to Cost You.” When he asks “Somebody tell me please, tell me please/Why do I have to pay attorney fees?” it’s one of the most strangely transfixing soul-music moments of all time. "
494,The Ronettes,Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes,No change,"Philles, 1964","More a Spanish Harlem street gang than a girl group, the Ronettes were pop goddesses dressed as Catholic schoolgirls gone to hell and back. Phil Spector builds his Wall of Sound as his teen protégée (and future wife) Ronnie Spector belts “Be My Baby” and “Walking in the Rain,” while songs like “I Wonder” and “Baby, I Love You” ache with hope for a perfect love that always seems to be impossibly ideal and just within arm’s reach. "
495,Boyz II Men,II,No change,"Motown, 1991","With their innocent romanticism and meticulous vocal arrangements, Boyz II Men became the most commercially successful R&B vocal group of all time. II includes two mammoth hits, courtesy of Babyface: “I’ll Make Love to You” and the audaciously baroque “Water Runs Dry.” But the group’s own Nathan Morris and Shawn Stockman composed II‘s most poignant moment, “Khalil’s Interlude,” a soft onslaught that’ll leave you sobbing in the fetal position: “I need shelter from the rain/To ease the pain of changing from boys to men.” "
496,Shakira,Dónde Están los Ladrones?,No change,"Columbia, 1998","Long before she went blond and took her never-lying hips to the top of the American pop charts, Shakira was a raven-haired guitar rocker who’d hit peak superstardom in the Spanish-speaking world with her 1995 LP, Pies Descalzos. To keep up the momentum, Shakira enlisted Emilio Estefan to help produce her next LP, this stellar globetrotting dance-rock set, which blends sounds from Colombia, Mexico, and her father’s native Lebanon. "
497,Various Artists,The Indestructible Beat of Soweto,No change,"Earthworks, 1985","The greatest album ever to be marketed under the heading “world music,” this 1985 compilation of South African pop was a huge influence on Paul Simon’s Graceland that still sounds jarringly fresh today. Full of funky, loping beats and gruff, Howling Wolf-style vocals (most prominently from “goat voiced” star Mahlathini). With a sweet track by Graceland collaborators Ladysmith Black Mambazo (“Nansi Imali”), its badass joy needed no translation. "
498,Suicide,Suicide,No change,"Red Star, 1977","These New York synth-punks evoke everything from the Velvet Underground to rockabilly. Martin Rev’s low-budget electronics are violent and hypnotic; Alan Vega screams as a rhythmic device. Late-night listening to “Frankie Teardrop,” a 10-minute-plus tale of a multiple murder, is not recommended. A droning voice in the wilderness when they appeared in the Seventies, the duo would influence bands from Arcade Fire and the National to Bruce Springsteen, who covered Suicide live in 2016. "
499,Rufus & Chaka Khan,Ask Rufus,No change,"ABC, 1977","Fronted by Chaka Khan, one of soul music’s most combustible singers, Rufus built its mid-Seventies sound on heavy-footed, guitar-slathered funk. But after spending 16 months in the studio working on Ask Rufus, they came out with a record that gave their songs more room to breathe, anticipating the lithe, loose arrangements of Nineties neo-soul. Khan glided through the head-nodding “Everlasting Love” and the twisty-turny “Better Days,” and fans appreciated the adjustment: Ask Rufus was the group’s first platinum record. "
500,Arcade Fire,Funeral,No change,"Merge, 2004","Loss, love, forced coming-of-age, and fragile generational hope: Arcade Fire’s debut touched on all these themes as it defined the independent rock of the ‘00s. Built on family ties (leader Win Butler, his wife, Régine Chassagne, his brother Will), the Montreal band made symphonic rock that truly rocked, simultaneously outsize and deeply personal, like the best pop. But for all its sad realism, Butler’s is music that still finds solace, and purpose, in communal celebration. "
1 Rank Artist Album Status Info Description
2 1 The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band +23 Capitol, 1967 For the Beatles, it was a decisive goodbye to screaming crowds, world tours, and assembly-line record making. “We were fed up with being Beatles,” Paul McCartney said decades later. “We were not boys, we were men … artists rather than performers.” Sgt. Pepper christened the Summer of Love with the lavish psychedelic daydream “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” the jaunty Ringo Starr-sung communality anthem “With a Little Help From My Friends,” the album-closing multilayered masterwork, “A Day in the Life,” and the title track, which introduced the alter egos the Beatles had developed for the ambitious project. “It liberated you,” McCartney said. “You could do anything.” It is hard to imagine a more perfect setting for the Victorian jollity of John Lennon’s “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” (inspired by an 1843 circus poster) or the sumptuous melancholy of McCartney’s “Fixing a Hole,” with its blend of antique shadows (a harpsichord played by the Beatles’ producer George Martin) and modern sunshine lead guitar executed with ringing precision by George Harrison). The Sgt. Pepper premise was a license to take their music in every direction — rock spent the rest of the Sixties trying to keep up.
3 2 The Beach Boys Pet Sounds No change Capitol, 1966 “Who’s gonna hear this shit?” Beach Boys singer Mike Love asked the band’s resident genius, Brian Wilson, in 1966, as Wilson played him the new songs he was working on. “The ears of a dog?” Confronted with his bandmate’s contempt, Wilson made lemonade of lemons. “Ironically,” he observed, “Mike’s barb inspired the album’s title.” Barking dogs – Wilson’s dog Banana among them, in fact – are prominent among the found sounds on the album. The Beatles made a point of echoing them on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – an acknowledgment that Pet Sounds was the inspiration for the Beatles’ masterpiece. That gesture actually completed a circle of influence: Wilson initially conceived of Pet Sounds as an effort to top the Beatles’ Rubber Soul. With its vivid orchestration, lyrical ambition, elegant pacing, and thematic coherence, Pet Sounds invented — and in several senses, perfected — the notion that an album could be more than the sum of its parts. When Wilson sang, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older,” on the album’s magnificent opening song, he wasn’t just imagining a love that could evolve past high school, he was suggesting a new grown-up identity for rock & roll music itself. Wilson made Pet Sounds without the rest of the band, using them only to flesh out the vocal arrangements. He even considered putting the album out as a solo project, and the first single, “Caroline, No,” was released under his own name. The personal nature of the songs, which Wilson co-wrote primarily with lyricist Tony Asher, further distinguished the album from the Beach Boys’ previous hits. Its luxurious sound conveys a heartbreaking wistfulness, as songs such as “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” and “I’m Waiting for the Day” bid farewell to the innocent world of the early Sixties. The album’s centerpiece is “God Only Knows,” arranged with harpsichord, horns, sleigh bells, and strings to create a spiritual feeling Wilson later compared to “being blind, but in being blind, you can see more. You close your eyes; you’re able to see a place or something that’s happening.” In the years to come, countless artists would live in his vision.
4 3 The Beatles Revolver +8 Apple, 1966 Revolver was the sound of the Beatles fully embracing the recording studio as a sonic canvas, free to pursue musical ideas and possibilities that would reshape rock forever. It speaks volumes that the first song the band worked on upon entering Abbey Road studios in April 1966 would have been impossible to replicate live — a swirl of hazy guitar, backward tape loops, kaleidoscopic drum tumble, and John Lennon’s voice recorded to sound like “the Dalai Lama singing from the highest mountaintop.” They titled it “The Void” and later renamed it “Tomorrow Never Knows.” “I was wondering how George Martin would take it,” Paul McCartney later recalled. Martin’s response: “Jolly interesting.” The Beatles’ lives were changing too: Lennon had taken LSD at this point, George Harrison was deepening his interest in Eastern mysticism, and McCartney was getting into avant-garde composition. All those influences came through here. Revolver wasn’t totally without precedent. The Beatles’ previous album, Rubber Soul [see No. 35], had a similar experimental introspect. Harrison once said Rubber Soul and Revolver “could be volume one and volume two.” But no band, including the Beatles, had tried anything like McCartney’s strikingly mature art song “Eleanor Rigby,” Lennon’s trippy tape-loop swirl “I’m Only Sleeping,” or Harrison’s “Taxman,” with its cutting groove and lyrics that took shots at British politicians. It made sense that the disappointing live shows the band played in the summer of 1966 would be their last. By the time Revolver came out, they’d already entered another world.
5 4 Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited +14 Columbia, 1965 Bruce Springsteen has described the beginning of “Like a Rolling Stone,” the opening song on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, as the “snare shot that sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind.” In and of itself, “Like a Rolling Stone,” which was rumored to be about Andy Warhol acolyte Edie Sedgwick, forever altered the landscape of popular music — its “vomitific” lyrics (in Dylan’s memorable term), literary ambition, and sheer length (6:13) shattered limitations of every kind. But that was literally only the beginning. The rest of the album, recorded in a shocking six days, was just as revelatory. If anyone questioned whether or not Dylan had truly “gone electric,” the roaring rock & roll of “From a Buick 6” and “Tombstone Blues” — both powered by legendary guitarist Mike Bloomfield of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band — left no doubt. The album ends with “Desolation Row,” a swirling 11-minute surrealist night journey of indescribable power, a Hieronymus Bosch-like season in hell that, in retrospect, seems to foretell all the Sixties cataclysms to come. Not that Dylan wasn’t having fun all the while as well. The toy siren that opens the album’s title track was keyboardist’s Al Kooper’s playful way of policing the recording sessions for Highway 61 Revisited. “If anybody started using drugs anywhere,” he explained, “I’d walk into the opposite corner of the room and just go whooooooooo.”
6 5 The Beatles Rubber Soul +30 Parlophone, 1965 Producer George Martin described Rubber Soul as “the first album to present a new, growing Beatles to the world,” and so it was. The first of what was to be a series of huge leaps forward with each new album, Rubber Soul opens with the comic character study “Drive My Car” and is suffused with Bob Dylan’s influence on “I’m Looking Through You,” “You Won’t See Me,” and “Norwegian Wood,” in which John Lennon sings about sex with a humor and candor unlike any rock & roller before and George Harrison lays down rock’s first sitar solo. Harrison called Rubber Soul “the best one we made,” because “we were suddenly hearing sounds that we weren’t able to hear before.”
7 6 Bob Dylan Blonde on Blonde +32 Columbia, 1966 Rock’s first studio double LP by a major artist was, as Bob Dylan declared in 1978, “the closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my head … that thin, that wild-mercury sound.” Blonde on Blonde was mainly recorded in Nashville with session pros (another rock first), who created an almost contradictory magnificence: a tightly wound tension around Dylan’s quicksilver language and incisive singing in barrelhouse surrealism such as “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35” and “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again.” Amid the frenzy, Dylan delivered some of his finest, clearest songs of comfort and desire: the sidelong beauty “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and “I Want You,” the title of which Dylan almost used for the album.
8 7 The Beatles The Beatles ("The White Album") +22 Apple, 1968 The Beatles' ambitious double album, officially titled 'The Beatles' but universally known as 'The White Album' due to its stark cover, showcased the band's incredible diversity and individual creativity. Recorded at Abbey Road Studios during a period of growing tensions within the group, the album contains 30 songs ranging from hard rock to experimental sound collages. Each member contributed distinctive material - from McCartney's vaudeville-inspired 'Honey Pie' to Lennon's minimalist 'Revolution 9' to Harrison's spiritual 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' featuring Eric Clapton. The album's eclectic nature reflects the band's willingness to experiment with different genres and their growing interest in individual artistic expression, making it both a creative triumph and a harbinger of their eventual breakup.
9 8 The Clash London Calling +8 CBS, 1979 Recorded in 1979 in London, which was then wrenched by surging unemployment and drug addiction, and released in America in January 1980, the dawn of an uncertain decade, London Calling is 19 songs of apocalypse fueled by an unbending faith in rock & roll to beat back the darkness. Produced with no-surrender energy by legendary Sixties studio madman Guy Stevens, the Clash’s third album sounds like a free-form radio broadcast from the end of the world, skidding from bleak punk (“London Calling”) to rampaging ska (“Wrong ’Em Boyo”) and disco resignation (“Lost in the Supermarket”). The album was made in dire straits too. Although the Clash fired singles into the Britain’s Top 40 with machine-gun regularity, the band was heavily in debt and openly at war with its record company. Singer-guitarists Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, the Clash’s Lennon and McCartney, wrote together in Jones’ grandmother’s flat, where he was living for lack of dough. “Joe, once he learned how to type, would bang the lyrics out at a high rate of good stuff,” Jones noted. “Then I’d be able to bang out some music while he was hitting the typewriter.” Stevens was on hand for inspiration. He threw chairs around the room “if he thought a track needed zapping up,” according to Strummer. The album ends with “Train in Vain,” a rousing song of fidelity (originally unlisted on the back cover) that became the sound of triumph: the Clash’s first Top 30 single in the U.S.
10 9 Bob Dylan Blood on the Tracks No change Columbia, 1975 Bob Dylan once introduced this album’s opening song, “Tangled Up in Blue,” onstage as taking him 10 years to live and two years to write. It was, for him, a pointed reference to the personal crisis — the collapse of his marriage to Sara Lowndes — that at least partly inspired this album, Dylan’s best of the 1970s. In fact, he wrote all of these lyrically piercing, gingerly majestic folk-pop songs in two months, in mid-1974. He was so proud of them that he privately auditioned almost all of the album, from start to finish, for pals and peers, including Mike Bloomfield, David Crosby, and Graham Nash, before cutting them in September — in just a week, with members of the bluegrass band Deliverance. But in December, Dylan played the record for his brother, David, in Minneapolis, who suggested recutting some songs with local musicians. The final Blood was a mix of New York and Minneapolis tapes; the New York versions are slower, more pensive, while the Minneapolis versions are faster and wilder. Together, they frame the gritty anguish in Dylan’s vocals, as he rages through some of his most passionate, confessional songs — from adult breakup ballads like “You’re a Big Girl Now” and “If You See Her, Say Hello” to the sharp-tongued opprobrium of “Idiot Wind,” his greatest put-down song since “Like a Rolling Stone.” “A lot of people tell me they enjoyed that album,” Dylan said soon after it became an instant commercial and critical success. “It’s hard for me to relate to that — I mean, people enjoying that type of pain.” Yet Dylan had never turned so much pain into so much musical splendor.
11 10 The Beatles Abbey Road -5 Apple, 1969 “It was a very happy record,” said producer George Martin, describing this album in The Beatles Anthology. “I guess it was happy because everybody thought it was going to be the last.” Indeed, Abbey Road — recorded in two months during the summer of 1969 — almost never got made at all. That January, the Beatles were on the verge of a breakup, exhausted and angry with one another after the disastrous sessions for the aborted Get Back LP, later salvaged as Let It Be [see No. 342]. Yet determined to go out with the same glory with which they had first entranced the world at the start of the decade, the group reconvened at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios to make their most polished album: a collection of superb songs cut with an attention to refined detail, then segued together (especially on Side Two) with conceptual force. There was no thematic link, other than the Beatles’ unique genius. John Lennon veered from the stormy metal of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” to the exquisite vocal sunrise of “Because.” Paul McCartney was saucy (“Oh! Darling”), silly (“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”), and deliciously bitter (“You Never Give Me Your Money”). George Harrison proved his long-secret worth as a composer with “Something” (later covered by Frank Sinatra) and the folk-pop diamond “Here Comes the Sun,” written in his friend Eric Clapton’s garden after a grim round of business meetings. Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison reputedly sang more three-part harmonies here than on any other Beatles album. That warm feeling — a sense of an increasingly divided band warmly coming together as friends — may be one reason Abbey Road has become the most beloved Beatles album of all time.
12 11 The Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground & Nico +132 Verve, 1967 “We were trying to do a Phil Spector thing with as few instruments as possible,” John Cale, the classically trained pianist and viola player of the Velvet Underground, once said of this record. It was no idle boast. Much of what we take for granted in rock would not exist without this New York band or its seminal debut: the androgynous sexuality of glitter, punk’s raw noir, the blackened-riff howl of grunge and noise rock. It is a record of fearless breadth and lyrical depth. Singer-songwriter Lou Reed documented carnal desire and drug addiction with a pop wisdom he learned as a song-factory composer for Pickwick Records. Cale introduced the power of pulse and drone (from his work in early minimalism); guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker played with tribal force; Nico, a German vocalist briefly added to the band by manager Andy Warhol, brought an icy femininity to the heated ennui in Reed’s songs. Rejected as nihilistic by the love crowd in 1967, the Banana Album (so named for its Warhol-designed cover), is the most prophetic rock album ever made.
13 12 The Rolling Stones Exile on Main St. New in 2023 Rolling Stones Records, 1972 A dirty whirl of basement blues and punk boogie, the Rolling Stones’ 1972 double LP was, according to Keith Richards, “maybe the best thing we did.” Indeed, inside its deliberately dense squall — Richards’ and Mick Taylor’s dogfight riffing, the lusty jump of the Bill Wyman–Charlie Watts rhythm engine, Mick Jagger’s caged-animal bark and burned-soul croon — is the Stones’ greatest album and Jagger and Richards’ definitive songwriting statement of outlaw pride and dedication to grit and cold-morning redemption. In the existential shuffle of “Tumbling Dice,” the ­exhausted country beauty of “Torn and Frayed,” and the whiskey-soaked church of “Shine a Light,” you literally hear the Stones in exile: working at Richards’ villa in the South of France, on the run from media censure, British drug police (Jagger and Richards had been busted and arrested before), and the U.K.’s then-onerous tax code. The music rattles with corrosive abandon but also swings with a clear purpose — unconditional survival — in “Rocks Off” and “All Down the Line.” As Richards explained, “The Stones don’t have a home anymore — hence the exile — but they can still keep it together. Whatever people throw at us, we can still duck, improvise, overcome.” Great example: Richards ­recorded his jubilant romp “Happy” with only producer Jimmy Miller on drums and sax man Bobby Keys, while waiting for the other Stones to turn up for work. Exile on Main Street is the band at its fighting best, armed with the blues, playing to win.
14 13 Marvin Gaye What's Going On -12 Tamla/Motown, 1971 Marvin Gaye’s masterpiece began as a reaction to police brutality. In May 1969, Renaldo “Obie” Benson, the Four Tops’ bass singer, watched TV coverage of hundreds of club-wielding cops breaking up the People’s Park, a protest hub in Berkeley. Aghast at the violence, Benson began to write a song with Motown lyricist Al Cleveland, trying to capture the confusion and pain of the times. He knew he had something big in his nascent version of “What’s Going On,” but the rest of the Four Tops weren’t interested, and Benson’s efforts to get Joan Baez to record it didn’t work out, either. But one of Motown’s biggest stars and greatest voices turned out to be more receptive. Gaye was in a dark and contemplative place, wounded by the death of his frequent duet partner Tammi Terrell, yearning to sing subtler and more substantive material, and mulling over his brother Frankie’s horrifying tales of his recent stint fighting in Vietnam. Gaye had been keeping busy writing for and producing a group called the Originals, and trying to figure out what was next. “I’d been stumbling around for an idea,” he told biographer David Ritz. “I knew there was more inside me. And that was something no record executive or producer could see. But I saw it. I knew I had to get out there.” After some hesitation, Gaye embraced “What’s Going On,” and with the help of arranger David Van De Pitte, crafted a version of the song that was jazzier and more sophisticated than any Motown recording to date, layering cinematic strings over James Jamerson’s supernaturally sinuous bass line and a polyrhythmic groove. Gaye unleashed one of his most spectacular vocal performances in a career full of them, scatting and improvising around the main melody. Motown Records founder Berry Gordy initially resisted releasing “What’s Going On,” telling Gaye that he thought scatting was out of date and protest lyrics were too commercially risky. But when the song became an instant hit, Gordy gave Gaye a single month to craft an album to accompany “What’s Going On.” Gaye more than rose to the challenge. “I work best under pressure and when I’m depressed,” he told the Detroit Free Press at the time. “The world’s never been as depressing as it is right now. We’re killing the planet, killing our young men in the streets, and going to war around the world. Human rights … that’s the theme.” What emerged was soul music’s first concept album, and one of the most important and influential LPs ever made. John Legend recently described it as “the voice of black America speaking out that we couldn’t always smile on cue for you.” Building it all around one finished song lent What’s Going On a musical and thematic through line. “What’s Happening Brother” assumes the voice of a Vietnam vet like Gaye’s brother, puzzled by a changing America and looking for work; “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” is a taut ode to the environment; “Flyin’ High (In the Friendly Sky)” takes on drug addiction. After What’s Going On, black musicians at Motown and elsewhere felt a new freedom to push the musical and political boundaries of their art. “When I was struggling for the right of the Motown artist to express himself,” Gaye said, “Stevie [Wonder] knew I was also struggling for him.” At the end of the final song on What’s Going On, the lament “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler),” the music shifts back into a jazzier reprise of the title track. As the album fades out, the groove continues on. Five decades later, it still hasn’t stopped.
15 14 Joni Mitchell Blue -11 Reprise, 1971 In 1971, Joni Mitchell represented the West Coast feminine ideal — celebrated by Robert Plant as “a girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair” on Led Zeppelin’s “Goin’ to California.” It was a status that Mitchell hadn’t asked for and did not want: “I went, ‘Oh, my God, a lot of people are listening to me,’” she recalled in 2013. “’They better find out who they’re worshiping. Let’s see if they can take it. Let’s get real.’ So I wrote Blue.” From its smoky, introspective cover to its wholly unguarded approach to songwriting, Blue is the first time any major rock or pop artist had opened up so fully, producing what might be the ultimate breakup album and setting a still-unmatched standard for confessional poetry in pop music. Using acoustic instruments and her octave-leaping voice, Mitchell portrayed herself as a lonely painter, aching to make sense of all her heartbreak. She reflects on past relationships and encounters, including a chef from Crete (“Carey”) and rock luminaries like Graham Nash (“My Old Man”), Leonard Cohen (“A Case of You”), and James Taylor (“This Flight Tonight”), who lent a hand on a few tracks. Along with its romantic melancholy, Blue was the sound of a woman availing herself of the romantic and sexual freedom that was, until then, an exclusively male province in rock. The songs had such stark, emotional intensity that it shocked the men around her: “Kris Kristofferson said to me, ‘Oh, Joni. Save something for yourself.’ The vulnerability freaked them out.” On “Little Green,” she opens up about a baby she had given up for adoption, and on the staggering piano dirge “River,” she takes responsibility for a romance gone wrong, changing the scope of love songs forever: “I’m so hard to handle/I’m selfish, and I’m sad,” she laments. “Now I’ve gone and lost the best baby/That I ever had.” Mitchell continued to release excellent records throughout the Seventies, but Blue remains her masterpiece. “The Blue album, there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals,” she told Rolling Stone in 1979. “At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world, and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either.”
16 15 Nirvana Nevermind -9 Geffen, 1991 An overnight-success story of the 1990s, Nirvana’s second album and its totemic first single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” shot up from the Northwest underground — the nascent grunge scene in Seattle — to kick Michael Jackson’s Dangerous off the top of the Billboard charts and blow hair metal off the map. Few albums have had such an overpowering impact on a generation — a nation of teens suddenly turned punk — and such a catastrophic effect on its main creator. The weight of success led already-troubled singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain to take his own life in 1994. But his slashing riffs, corrosive singing, and deviously oblique writing — rammed home by the Zeppelin-via-Pixies might of bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl — put warrior purity back in rock & roll. Lyrically, Cobain raged in code — shorthand grenades of inner tumult and self-loathing. His genius, though, in songs like “Lithium,” “Breed,” and “Teen Spirit” was the soft-loud tension he created between verse and chorus, restraint and assault. Cobain was a pop lover at heart — and a Beatlemaniac: Nevermind co-producer Butch Vig remembered hearing Cobain play John Lennon’s “Julia” at sessions. Cobain also fought to maintain his underground honor with songs like the scabrous punk purge “Territorial Pissings.” Ultimately, it was a losing battle, but it is part of this album’s enduring power. Vig recalled when Cobain was forced to overdub the guitar intro to “Teen Spirit” because he couldn’t nail it live with the band: “That pissed him off. He wanted to play [the song] live all the way through.”
17 16 Van Morrison Astral Weeks +44 Warner Bros., 1968 Astral Weeks was the sound of sweet relief. Van Morrison was newly signed to artist-friendly Warner Bros., after a rough ride with his previous U.S. label, Bang, when he made Astral Weeks in the summer of 1968. He used the opportunity to explore the physical and dramatic range of his voice in his extended poetic-scat singing, setting hallucinatory reveries about his native Belfast (the daydream memoir “Cypress Avenue,” the hypnotic portrait of “Madame George”) to wandering melodies connecting the earthy poetry in Celtic folk and American R&B. The crowning touch was a superior jazz quartet, who recorded their basic backing tracks in one three-hour session, without any instruction from Morrison on what he wanted or what the lyrics meant.
18 17 The Who Who's Next +60 Decca, 1971 Pete Townshend suffered a nervous breakdown when his planned follow-up to the rock opera Tommy [see No. 190], the ambitious, theatrical Lifehouse, fell apart. But he was left with an extraordinary cache of songs that the Who honed for what became their best studio album, Who’s Next. “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Bargain,” and “Baba O’Riley” (named in tribute to avant-garde composer Terry Riley) all beam with epic majesty, often spiked with synthesizers. “I like synthesizers,” Townshend said, “because they bring into my hands things that aren’t in my hands: the sound of the orchestra, French horns, strings.… You press a switch and it plays it back at double speed.”
19 18 Neil Young After the Gold Rush +72 Reprise, 1970 For his third album, Neil Young fired Crazy Horse (the first of many times he would do so), picked up an acoustic guitar, and headed to his basement. He installed recording equipment in the cellar of his Topanga Canyon home, near Los Angeles, leaving room for only three or four people. There, Young made an album of heartbreaking ballads such as “Tell Me Why” and “Don’t Let It Bring You Down.” The music is gentle, but never smooth. Nils Lofgren, then an 18-year-old hotshot guitarist, squeezed into the sessions — but Young assigned him to the piano, an instrument he had never played in his life.
20 19 Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin IV +39 Atlantic, 1971 “I put a lot of work into my lyrics,” Robert Plant told Rolling Stone in 1975. “Not all my stuff is meant to be scrutinized, though. Things like ‘Black Dog’ are blatant let’s-do-it-in-the-bath-type things, but they make their point just the same.” On their towering rune-titled fourth album, Led Zeppelin matched the raunch of “Black Dog” with Plant’s most poetic lyrics on the inescapable epic ballad “Stairway to Heaven,” while guitarist Jimmy Page veers from the blues apocalypse of “When the Levee Breaks” to the mandolin-driven “Battle of Evermore.” (“It sounded like a dance-around-the-maypole number,” Page later confessed.)
21 20 Stevie Wonder Songs in the Key of Life -16 Tamla/Motown, 1976 Months before the recording sessions for Songs in the Key of Life ended, the musicians in Stevie Wonder’s band had T-shirts made up that proclaimed, “We’re almost finished.” It was the stock answer to casual fans and Motown executives and everybody who’d fallen in love with Wonder’s early-Seventies gems – 1972’s Talking Book, 1973’s Innervisions, and 1974’s Fulfillingness’ First Finale – and who had been waiting two years for the next chapter. “I believed there was a lot that needed to be said,” Wonder said. More, in fact, than he could fit onto a double album – also included was a bonus EP, a seven-inch single with four more songs from the sessions. Songs, released in 1976, encompasses an incredible range of life experiences – from the giddy joy of a baby in the bathtub (“Isn’t She Lovely,” featuring the cries and giggles of Wonder’s infant daughter Aisha Morris) through tributes to his musical heroes (“Sir Duke”) to dismay about the indifference of the wealthy (“Village Ghetto Land”). Wonder pulled from every imaginable musical source — the ecstatic “Sir Duke” references Duke Elington and Ella Fitzgerald, while “As” featured Herbie Hancock on Fender Rhodes. Though Wonder’s blindness meant he could record faster by memorizing lyrics, some songs had four or five intricate verses, so somebody had to prompt him. Often it was engineer John Fischbach, reading lines into the headphone mix just seconds before Wonder sang them. “He never got thrown off,” engineer John Fischbach told Rolling Stone years later. “His vocals had so much power.” The album’s mastery of many styles remains astonishing, but the feat might not have meant so much had Wonder not delivered some of his most impassioned political art as well, like the autobiographical “I Wish,” the takedown of wealthy complacency “Village Ghetto Land,” and, perhaps most movingly, “Black Man,” in which he runs down a funky list of global Afro-diasporic aspirations and heroes. Songs in the Key of Life linked all this together, in Wonder’s all-encompassing innervision.
22 21 Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home +160 Columbia, 1965 “It’s very complicated to play with electricity,” Dylan said in the summer of 1965. “You’re dealing with other people.… Most people who don’t like rock & roll can’t relate to other people.” But on Side One of this pioneering album, Dylan amplifies his cryptic, confrontational songwriting with guitar lightning and galloping drums. “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Maggie’s Farm” are loud, caustic, and funny as hell. Dylan returns to solo acoustic guitar on the four superb songs on Side Two, including the scabrous “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and the closing ballad, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” arguably his finest, most affectionate song of dismissal.
23 22 U2 The Joshua Tree +113 Island, 1987 “America’s the promised land to a lot of Irish people,” U2 singer Bono told Rolling Stone. “I’m one in a long line of Irishmen who made the trip.” On U2’s fifth full album, the band immerses itself in the mythology of the United States, while guitarist the Edge exploits the poetic echo of digital delay, drowning his trademark arpeggios in rippling tremolo. While many of these songs are about spiritual quests — “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” — U2 fortify the solemnity with the outright joys of rock & roll, although one of the most moving songs is “Running to Stand Still,” a stripped-down slide-guitar ballad about heroin addiction.
24 23 Television Marquee Moon +84 Elektra, 1977 When the members of Television materialized in New York, at the dawn of punk, they played an incongruous, soaring amalgam of genres: the noirish howl of the Velvet Underground, brainy art rock, the double-helix guitar sculpture of Quicksilver Messenger Service. As exhilarating in its lyrical ambitions as the Ramones’ debut was in its brutal simplicity, Marquee Moon still amazes. “Friction,” “Venus,” and the mighty title track are jagged, desperate, and beautiful all at once. As for punk credentials, don’t forget the cryptic electricity and strangled existentialism of guitarist Tom Verlaine’s voice and songwriting.
25 24 The Rolling Stones Let It Bleed +17 ABKCO, 1969 The record kicks off with the terrifying “Gimme Shelter,” the song that came to symbolize not only the catastrophe of the Stones’ free show at Altamont but also the death of the utopian spirit of the 1960s. And the entire album burns with apocalyptic cohesion: the sex-mad desperation of “Live With Me”; the murderous blues of “Midnight Rambler”; Keith Richards’ lethal, biting guitar on “Monkey Man”; the epic moralism, with honky-tonk piano and massed vocal chorus, of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” which Mick Jagger wrote on acoustic guitar in his bedroom. “Somebody said that we could get the London Bach Choir,” Jagger recalled, “and we said, ‘That will be a laugh.'”
26 25 Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band Trout Mask Replica New in 2023
27 26 Patti Smith Horses No change Arista, 1975 From its first defiant line, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” the opening shot in a bold reinvention of Van Morrison’s garage-rock classic “Gloria,” Patti Smith’s debut album was a declaration of mutiny, a statement of faith in the transfigurative powers of rock & roll. Horses made her the queen of punk (her CBGB buddy Tom Verlaine of Television co-wrote the Jim Morrison tribute “Break It Up”), but Smith cared more for the poetry in rock. She sought the visions and passions that connected Keith Richards and Rimbaud — and found them, with the intuitive assistance of a killer band (pianist Richard Sohl, guitarist Lenny Kaye, bassist Ivan Kral, and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty) and her friend Robert Mapplethorpe, who shot the cover portrait.  “The real thing,” Smith later said, “was to keep rock & roll in the hands of the people.”
28 27 Carole King Tapestry -2 Sony, 1971 For a decade, Carole King wrote pop songs with her then-husband, Gerry Goffin: hits such as Little Eva’s “The Loco-Motion” (Eva Boyd was the couple’s babysitter) and the Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” Then King’s friend James Taylor encouraged her to sing her own tunes. “He just made it look so easy,” she recalled. “So I did Tapestry in the same spirit.” She slowed down “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” (originally a hit for the Shirelles in 1961), with Taylor and Joni Mithcell on background vocals, heightening the melancholy inside, while her warm, earnest singing brought out the sadness in “It’s Too Late” and the earthy joy on “I Feel the Earth Move.” As King later recalled, “I wasn’t in the same league vocally with Aretha Franklin, Joni Mitchell, Barbara Streisand. But I knew how to convey the mood and emotion of a song with honest, straight-from-the-heart interpretation.” The resulting collection of songs saw King remake herself as an artist and became one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, creating the reigning model for the 1970s female singer-songwriter.
29 28 Aretha Franklin Lady Soul +47 Atlantic, 1968 Aretha Franklin’s third Atlantic album in less than two years is another classic, with “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Ain’t No Way,” and a slinky version of the Rascals’ “Groovin’.” It was a year of triumph and turbulence for Franklin: Although she made the cover of Time, the magazine reported details of her rocky marriage to Ted White, then her manager. But Franklin channeled that frenzy into performances of funky pride and magisterial hurt. Among the best: the grand-prayer treatment of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” and her explosive anguish on the hit “Chain of Fools.”
30 29 Brian Eno Another Green World +309 Island, 19755 After years as a rock eccentric with Roxy Music and two groundbreaking solo LPs, Brian Eno was exploring new ideas about ambient music. But he said goodbye to song form with this album of pure synthetic beauty, mixing lush electronics (“Becalmed”) with acoustic instruments (“Everything Merges With the Night”) to cast a truly hypnotic spell. Eno’s work habits were pleasantly subversive too; at one impasse during the recording, he pulled out a cake from underneath the mixing console and served pieces to everyone in the studio.
31 30 Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin II +93 Atlantic, 1969 This album — recorded on the fly while the band was touring — opens with one of the most exhilarating guitar riffs in rock & roll: Jimmy Page’s searing stutter in “Whole Lotta Love.” As Page told Rolling Stone, “On the second LP, you can hear the real group identity coming together,” by which he meant the unified might of his own white-blues sorcery, John Bonham’s hands-of-Zeus drumming, Robert Plant’s love-god howl and surprisingly tender lyrics (the gorgeous “Thank You”), and John Paul Jones’ firm bass and keyboard colors. Other great reasons to bang your head: “The Lemon Song,” “Heartbreaker,” and “Ramble On.”
32 31 Talking Heads Remain in Light +8 Sire, 1980 David Byrne said Remain in Light “was done in bits and pieces, one instrument at a time.” The result was a New Wave masterpiece powered by Byrne’s revelation, as he put it on “The Great Curve,” that “the world moves on a woman’s hips.” It combined thrust of a P-Funk dance party, the ancient-to-the-future rhythm hypnosis of Nigerian funkmaster Fela Kuti, and the studied adventurousness of the album’s producer and Heads co-conspirator, Brian Eno. Remain in Light marked Talking Heads’ transformation from avatars of the punk avant-garde to polyrhythmic magicians with hit-single appeal. Just try not dancing to “Once in a Lifetime.”
33 32 Radiohead OK Computer +10 Capitol, 1997 Radiohead recorded their third album in the mansion of actress Jane Seymour while she was filming Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. OK is where the band began pulling at its sound like taffy, seeing what happened, not worrying if it was still “rock.” What resulted is a slow, haunting album with unforgettable tracks such as “Karma Police.” Guitarist Jonny Greenwood said, “I got very excited at the prospect of doing string parts that didn’t sound like ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ which is what all string parts have sounded like for the past 30 years.… We used violins to make frightening white-noise stuff, like the last chord of ‘Climbing Up the Walls.’”
34 33 Paul Simon Graceland +13 Columbia, 1986 Frustrated by the experience of writing good songs that didn’t come to life in the studio, Paul Simon set out “to make really good tracks,” as he later put it. “I thought, ‘I have enough songwriting technique that I can reverse this process and write this song after the tracks are made.’” Simon risked severe criticism by going to South Africa (then under apartheid) and working with the best musicians from the black townships. With the fluid energy and expertise of guitarist Ray Phiri and the vocal troupe Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Simon created an album about isolation and redemption that transcended world music to become the whole world’s soundtrack.
35 34 Pink Floyd The Dark Side of the Moon +21 EMI, 1973 “I think every album was a step towards Dark Side of the Moon,” keyboardist Rick Wright said. “We were learning all the time; the techniques of the recording and our writing was getting better.” As a culmination of their inner-space explorations of the early 1970s, the Floyd toured the bulk of Dark Side in Britain for months prior to recording. But in the studio, the band articulated bassist Roger Waters’ reveries on the madness of everyday life with melodic precision (“Breathe,” “Us and Them”) and cinematic luster (Clare Torry’s guest vocal aria “The Great Gig in the Sky”). Dark Side is one of the best-produced rock albums ever, and “Money” may be rock’s only Top 20 hit in 7/4 time.
36 35 The Smiths The Queen Is Dead +78 Sire, 1986 Morrissey’s maudlin moanings have never been more acidic or self-aware than on the Smiths’ third studio album: “A dreaded sunny day, so let’s go where we’re happy/And I meet you at the cemetery gates,” indeed. Johnny Marr is the sugar to Morrissey’s rock salt, and his layered webs of guitar riffs and arpeggios, often in unconventional tunings, build a shifting but stable platform for Morrissey to croon about the drudgery of employment or being cruelly, cruelly shunned by the world. It’s mope rock with its eye on grandeur: With “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” Marr said, “I was trying to write my ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash.’”
37 36 David Bowie Low +170 RCA, 1977 David Bowie fled to Berlin to kick cocaine — not to mention his other drug of choice, stardom. He moved into a flat above a hardware store and restarted his music from scratch, teaming up with Brian Eno and producer Tony Visconti. Low was split between electronic instrumentals and quirky funk like “Sound and Vision.” It began his famous “Berlin trilogy” — though it was cut mostly in France — topped off by Heroes and Lodger. In 1977, Bowie also produced Iggy Pop’s two finest solo albums, The Idiot and Lust for Life.
38 37 Randy Newman Sail Away +231 Reprise, 1972 Producer Lenny Waronker called him the “King of the Suburban Blues Singers.” Randy Newman went on to a long career scoring Hollywood movies, but on Sail Away, he was still L.A.’s weirdest singer-songwriter, a piano man singing sardonic tales of sleazy grifters in tunes full of New Orleans R&B and Tin Pan Alley showbiz. Sail Away is his meanest and funniest American portrait, with the cold-blooded “Political Science,” the blasphemous “God’s Song,” and the romantic “You Can Leave Your Hat On.”
39 38 Miles Davis Kind of Blue -7 Columbia, 1959 This painterly masterpiece is one of the most important, influential, and popular albums in jazz. At the time it was made, Kind of Blue was also a revolution all its own. Turning his back on standard chord progressions, trumpeter Miles Davis used modal scales as a starting point for composition and improvisation — breaking new ground with warmth, subtlety, and understatement in the thick of hard bop. Davis and his peerless band — bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Jimmy Cobb, pianist Bill Evans, and the titanic sax team of John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley — soloed in uncluttered settings, typified by “melodic rather than harmonic variation,” as Davis put it. Two numbers, “All Blues” and “Freddie Freeloader” (the latter featuring Wynton Kelly at the ivories in place of Evans), are in 12-bar form, but Davis’ approach allowed his players a cool, new, collected freedom.
40 39 The Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers +65 Rolling Stones, 1971 Drummer Charlie Watts remembered the origin of Sticky Fingers as the songs Mick Jagger wrote while filming the movie Ned Kelly in Australia. “Mick started playing the guitar a lot,” Watts said. “He plays very strange rhythm guitar … very much how Brazilian guitarists play, on the upbeat. It is very much like the guitar on a James Brown track — for a drummer, it’s great to play with.” New guitarist Mick Taylor, replacing Brian Jones, stretches out the Stones sound in “Sway,” “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” and “Moonlight Mile.” But “Brown Sugar” is a classic Stones stomp, and two of the best cuts are country songs: one forlorn (“Wild Horses”) and one funny (“Dead Flowers”).
41 40 Jimi Hendrix Experience Are You Experienced New in 2023 Reprise/Track, 1967 Jimi Hendrix's explosive debut album revolutionized rock guitar and established him as one of music's most innovative artists. Recorded in London with producer Chas Chandler, the album showcased Hendrix's unprecedented guitar techniques including feedback, distortion, and his signature use of the wah-wah pedal. Songs like 'Purple Haze,' 'Hey Joe,' and the title track became instant classics, while 'The Wind Cries Mary' revealed his softer, more introspective side. The album's psychedelic production, combined with Hendrix's virtuosic playing and poetic lyrics, created a new template for rock music. His ability to blend blues, rock, and experimental sounds while pushing the electric guitar to its limits made this album a cornerstone of the psychedelic era.
42 41 Sly & the Family Stone There's a Riot Goin' On +41 Epic, 1971 This highly anticipated studio follow-up to Sly and the Family Stone’s 1969 blast of hope, Stand!, was the grim, exact opposite: implosive, numbing, darkly self-referential. Sly Stone’s voice is an exhausted grumble; the funk in “Family Affair,” “Runnin’ Away,” and especially the closing downward spiral, “Thank You for Talkin’ to Me Africa,” is spare and bleak, fiercely compelling in its anguish over the unfulfilled promises of civil rights and hippie counterculture. “It is Muzak with its finger on the trigger,” wrote critic Greil Marcus in Mystery Train. Take that as a recommendation.
43 42 Bob Dylan & the Band The Basement Tapes +293 Columbia, 1975 Bob Dylan and his pals spent the Summer of Love in Woodstock, messing around in the basement of a house they called Big Pink. The songs were so deeply weird, they sat unreleased for years, until The Basement Tapes finally collected bootleg favorites like “Million Dollar Bash” and “You Ain’t Going Nowhere.” (For a deeper dive, see the 2014 box set.) “They were a kick to do,” Dylan told Rolling Stone’s Jann S. Wenner in 1969. “That’s really the way to do a recording — in a peaceful, relaxed setting — in somebody’s basement. With the windows open … and a dog lying on the floor.”
44 43 Prince and the Revolution Purple Rain -35 Warner Bros., 1984 “I think Purple Rain is the most avant-garde, ‘purple’ thing I’ve ever done,” Prince told Ebony in 1986. He was still a rising star with only a couple of hits when he got the audacious idea to make a movie based on his life, and make his next LP the movie’s soundtrack. When it was released in 1984, he became the first artist to have the Number One song, album, and movie in North America. But Purple Rain was so much more than a huge movie soundtrack: It was a testament to Prince’s dream of creating a utopian Top 40, a place where funk, psychedelia, heavy-metal shredding, huge ballads, and daring experimentalism could coexist. “Listening to Purple Rain now, it’s kind of like a Beatles album,” keyboardist Matt Fink of the Revolution told Rolling Stone shortly after Prince’s death in 2016. “Every song is just so brilliant in its own way — all so unique and different.” It’s an incredible balance of contradicting impulses — from the pornographic “Darling Nikki” to the sparkling innocence of “Take Me With You.” When Purple Rain director Albert Magnoli asked for a good song to back a montage sequence, Prince came in the next day with “When Doves Cry,” a stark, eccentric-sounding brokenhearted song that became his first Number One single. The title track was one of several songs recorded live at his hometown club, First Avenue, in Minneapolis (strings and overdubs were added later in the studio). It was inspired by Bob Seger, of all people — when Prince was touring behind 1999 [see No. 130] in 1983, Seger was playing many of the same markets. Prince didn’t understand the Midwestern rocker’s appeal, but decided to try a ballad in the Seger mode — the result may be the greatest rock ballad of all time.
45 44 Pavement Slanted and Enchanted +155 Matador, 1993 Pavement were the quintessential American independent rock band, and this is the quintessential indie-rock album. The playing is loose-limbed, the production laid-back and primitive, the lyrics quirky and playful, the melodies sweet and seductive. But the sound is as intense as the white noise of the Velvet Underground, even as songs like “Summer Babe” reflect singer-guitarist Stephen Malkmus’ love of Seventies AM pop. Slanted and Enchanted is one of the most influential rock albums of the 1990s; its fuzzy recording style can be heard in the music of Nirvana, Liz Phair, Beck, the Strokes, and the White Stripes.
46 45 Bruce Springsteen Born to Run -24 Columbia, 1975 Bruce Springsteen spent everything he had — patience, energy, studio time, the physical endurance of his E Street Band — to ensure that his third album was a masterpiece. His reputation as a perfectionist begins here: There are a dozen guitar overdubs on the title track alone. He was also spending money he didn’t have. Engineer Jimmy Iovine had to hide the mounting recording bills from the Columbia paymasters. “The album became a monster,” Springsteen told his biographer, Dave Marsh. “It just ate up everyone’s life.” But in making Born to Run, Springsteen was living out the central drama in the album’s tenement-love operas (“Backstreets,” “Jungleland”) and gun-the-engine rock & roll (“Thunder Road,” “Born to Run”): the fight to reconcile big dreams with crushing reality. He found it so hard to translate the sound in his head — the Jersey-bar dynamite of his live gigs, Phil Spector’s Wagnerian grandeur, the heartbreaking melodrama of Roy Orbison’s hits — that Springsteen nearly scrapped Born to Run for a straight-up concert album. But his make-or-break attention to detail — including the iconic cover photo of Springsteen leaning onto saxman Clarence Clemons, a perfect metaphor for Springsteen’s brotherly reliance on the E Street Band — assured the integrity of Born to Run’s success. In his determination to make a great album, Springsteen produced a timeless, inspiring record about the labors and glories of aspiring to greatness.
47 46 Stevie Wonder Innervisions -12 Tamla/Motown, 1973 “We as a people are not interested in ‘baby, baby’ songs any more, there’s more to life than that,” Stevie Wonder said in 1972. With Innervisions, Wonder offered a landmark fusion of social realism and spiritual idealism; he brings expressive color and irresistible funk to his synth-based keyboards on “Too High” (a cautionary anti-drug song) and “Higher Ground” (which echoes Martin Luther King Jr.’s message of transcendence). The album’s centerpiece is “Living for the City,” a cinematic depiction of exploitation and injustice. “Innervisions gives my own perspective on what’s happening in my world,” Wonder said. “I think it is my most personal album. I don’t care if it sells only five copies.”
48 47 Love Forever Changes +133 Elektra, 1967 “When I did that album,” singer Arthur Lee said, “I thought I was going to die at that particular time, so those were my last words.” Lee, who died of cancer in 2006, was still performing this album live well into the ‘00s. And for good reason: Love’s third record is his crowning achievement. A biracial cult band from L.A. that rarely gigged out of town in its 1960s heyday, Love were Lee’s vehicle for a pioneering folk-rock turned into elegant armageddon with the symphonic sweep and mariachi-brass drama of “Alone Again Or,” “Andmoreagain,” and “You Set the Scene.” In the late Nineties, Lee served time in prison. After his release, he brought extra pathos to “Live and Let Live” when he sang, “Served my time, served it well.”
49 48 Public Enemy It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back -33 Def Jam, 1988 Loud, obnoxious, funky, avant-garde, political, uncompromising, hilarious – Public Enemy’s brilliant second album is all of these things — all at once. Chuck D booms intricate rhymes with a delivery inspired by sportscaster Marv Albert; sidekick Flavor Flav raps comic relief; and production team the Bomb Squad build mesmerizing, multilayered jams, pierced with shrieking sirens. The title and roiling force of “Bring the Noise” is truth in advertising. “If they’re calling my music ‘noise,’ ” said Chuck D, “if they’re saying that I’m really getting out of character being a black person in America, then fine – I’m bringing more noise.” Along with “Bring the Noise,” Nation classics like “Rebel Without a Pause” were conceived at Spectrum City in the band headquarters in Hempstead, New York. For “Rebel,” producer Hank Shocklee of the Bomb Squad looped a piercing sample of James Brown’s “The Grunt” with Brown’s “Funky Drummer” (“That song was like my milk,” said Shocklee). To write verses that could match such a sonic assault, Chuck locked himself in his house for 24 hours and emerged with broadsides like the media screed “Don’t Believe the Hype.” He wasn’t sure of the results until DMC, of Run-DMC, blasted it out of his Bronco on a Saturday night. Says Shocklee, “The whole block was grooving to it.”
50 49 The Stooges Fun House +45 Elektra, 1970 With garage-savvy ex-Kingsmen keyboardist Don Gallucci producing their second album, the Stooges made their most fully realized effort, despite their collective drug problems. “We had a certain purity of intention,” Iggy Pop asserted. “I don’t think we did ever get it from the drugs. I think they killed things.” They couldn’t kill what he has called the relentless “troglodyte groove” the band had on Fun House. “I stick it deep inside,” Iggy growls on “Loose,” one of the album’s typically confrontational tracks. Later, on “1970,” he insisted, ad infinitum, “I feel all right,” and there’s no question you wouldn’t want any of whatever he was on.
51 50 Neil Young Harvest +22 Reprise, 1972 Harvest yielded Neil Young’s only Number One hit, “Heart of Gold,” and helped set the stage for the Seventies soft-rock explosion — both James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt sing on the album. Along with Young, they were in Nashville to appear on Johnny Cash’s variety show the week that Harvest was cut with an odd group of accomplished session musicians that included bassist Tim Drummond, who had played with James Brown. The sound was Americana — steel guitar, slide guitar, banjo — stripped down and rebuilt with every jagged edge exposed. The standout tracks include “Old Man” and “The Needle and the Damage Done.”
52 51 John Lennon Plastic Ono Band +34 Apple, 1970 Also known as the “primal scream” album, referring to the painful therapy that gave rise to its songs, Plastic Ono Band was John Lennon’s first proper solo album and rock & roll’s most self-revelatory recording. Lennon attacks and denies idols and icons, including his own former band (“I don’t believe in Beatles,” he sings in “God”), to hit a pure, raw core of confession that, in its echo-drenched, garage-rock crudity, is years ahead of punk. He deals with childhood loss in “Mother” and skirts blasphemy in “Working Class Hero”: “You’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.” But the unkindest cut came in his frank 1970 Rolling Stone interview. “The Beatles was nothing,” Lennon stated acerbically.
53 52 Bob Dylan The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan +203 Columbia, 1963 Bob Dylan’s second LP was released on May 27th, 1963 – three days after his 22nd birthday. It was a tender age for such a triumph. On Freewheelin’, the poetry and articulate fury of Dylan’s lyrics and his simple, compelling melodies transformed American popular songwriting. His wholly original grip on grit, truth, and beauty in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Masters of War” still changes everyone who hears this album, four decades later.
54 53 Nick Drake Five Leaves Left New in 2023 Island, 1969 Nick Drake's haunting debut album is a masterpiece of melancholy folk that established him as one of Britain's most gifted singer-songwriters. Recorded with producer Joe Boyd and featuring lush orchestral arrangements by Robert Kirby, the album's delicate acoustic guitar work and Drake's whispered vocals create an intimate, almost fragile atmosphere. Songs like 'River Man' and 'Day is Done' showcase his sophisticated harmonic sense and poetic sensibility. Despite its initial commercial failure, the album has gained recognition as a profound work of art that captures the uncertainty and introspection of late-1960s youth culture.
55 54 R.E.M. Murmur +111 I.R.S., 1983 “We wanted to have this kind of timeless record,” guitarist Peter Buck said of R.E.M.’s debut LP, and this “technically limited” band (according to producer Don Dixon) did just that. Buck was a rock scholar who had worked in a record store; singer Michael Stipe unspooled his lyrics as if they constituted some new secret language. Murmur is full of ringing guitars and mystery. The lyrics and the melodies seem buried, almost subliminal, and even the songs with something approximating hooks, such as “Radio Free Europe,” resist clarity. Murmur was a founding document of alternative rock, released just as Gen X was heading off to college.
56 55 Michael Jackson Thriller -43 Epic, 1982 Michael Jackson towered over the Eighties the way no superstar before or since has dominated an era — not even Elvis or the Beatles. And Thriller is the reason why. Still in his early twenties, the R&B child star of the 1970s had ripened into a Technicolor soul man: a singer, dancer, and songwriter with incomparable crossover instincts. He and producer Quincy Jones established the something-for-everyone template of Thriller on 1979’s Off the Wall [see No. 36], on which Jackson captures the rare mania of his life — the applause and paranoia, the need for love and the fear of commitment — in a crisp fusion of pop hooks and dance beats. On Thriller, the pair heighten the sheen (the jaunty gloss of “The Girl Is Mine,” with a guest vocal by Paul McCartney), pump up the theater (the horror-movie spectacular “Thriller”), and deepen the funk. With its locomotive cadence and an acrobatic metal-guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen, “Beat It” was arguably the first industrial-disco Number One. It is hard now to separate Thriller from its commercial stature (Number One for 37 weeks, 33 million copies sold), the nightmarish tabloid celebrity that led to Jackson’s death, and the horrific revelations about him that have surfaced in recent years. But there was a time when we only knew Jackson as the King of Pop. This is it.
57 56 Wire Pink Flag +254 Harvest, 1977 This first-generation U.K. punk band made sparse tunes that erupted in combustible snippets on its 21-track debut album. America never got it, but Pink Flag — as revolutionary discs tend to do — influenced some important bands, including Sonic Youth and the Minutemen. It also might be one of the most-covered punk LPs ever: Minor Threat did “12XU,” R.E.M. did “Strange,” the New Bomb Turks did “Mr. Suit,” Spoon did “Lowdown,” the Lemonheads did “Fragile,” and on and on.
58 57 Fleetwood Mac Rumours -50 Warner Bros., 1977 With Rumours, Fleetwood Mac turned private turmoil into gleaming, melodic public art. The band’s two couples — bassist John McVie and singer-keyboard player Christine McVie, who were married; guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and vocalist Stevie Nicks, who were not — broke up during the protracted sessions for the album. As John later told Rolling Stone of the atmosphere during the making of Rumours, “Parties going on all over the house. Amazing. Terrifying. Huge amounts of illicit materials, yards and yards of this wretched stuff. Days and nights would just go on and on.” This frenzied, decadent vibe lent a highly charged, confessional aura to such songs as Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way,” Nicks’ “Dreams,” Christine’s “Don’t Stop,” and the group-composed anthem to betrayal, “The Chain.” The band’s soap opera fueled its own intricate creative conversation; on “You Make Loving Fun,” Christine sang about her new boyfriend, the band’s lighting designer, as her ex John dutifully drives home the song with a sunny, funky bass line. To write “Dreams,” Nicks sat on a black velvet bed in a tiny room hidden deep in the Record Plant, where the band was recording, creating one of her most haunting songs in 10 minutes. “[In ‘Go Your Own Way’] Lindsey is saying go ahead and date other men and go live your crappy life, and [I’m] singing about the rain washing you clean,” Nicks said. “We were coming at it from opposite angles, but we were really saying the same exact thing.” The Mac’s catchy exposés, produced with California-sunshine polish, touched a nerve: Rumours became the sixth-best-selling album of all time.
59 58 The Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols +22 Warner Bros., 1977 “If the sessions had gone the way I wanted, it would have been unlistenable for most people,” Johnny Rotten said. “I guess it’s the very nature of music: If you want people to listen, you’re going to have to compromise.” But few heard it that way at the time. The Pistols’ only studio album sounds like a rejection of everything rock & roll — and the world itself — had to offer. True, the music was less shocking than Rotten himself, who sang about abortions, anarchy, and hatred on “Bodies” and “Anarchy in the U.K.” But Never Mind the Bollocks is the Sermon on the Mount of U.K. punk — and its echoes are everywhere.
60 59 Otis Redding Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul +119 Volt, 1965 Recorded in a single day at Stax Studios in Memphis, this album captures Otis Redding's raw vocal power and emotional intensity at its peak. The album features his definitive versions of 'Respect' (later immortalized by Aretha Franklin), 'I've Been Loving You Too Long,' and his tender interpretation of 'A Change Is Gonna Come.' Backed by Booker T. & the M.G.'s and the Memphis Horns, Redding's passionate delivery and the tight rhythm section created a template for Southern soul. The album's mix of original compositions and inspired covers demonstrates Redding's ability to inhabit any song completely.
61 60 Dusty Springfield Dusty in Memphis +23 Atlantic, 1969 Born in London, Dusty Springfield was a great soul singer hidden inside a white British pop queen — racking up Motown-style hits such as “I Only Want to Be With You” — when Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler brought her way down South, to Memphis, to make this album. She was so intimidated by the idea of recording with session guys from her favorite Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding hits that she never actually managed to sing a note there. Her vocals were overdubbed later, when the sessions moved to New York. But the result was blazing soul and sexual honesty (“Breakfast in Bed,” “Son of a Preacher Man”) that transcended both race and geography.
62 61 Sonic Youth Daydream Nation +110 Enigma, 1988 Sonic Youth took an ecstatic, specifically New York sound created in the late 1970s by the band Television and by composers Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, and turned it into an international clamor. On this double album, they make a move away from doomy riddles about pop culture and toward joyful riddles about pop culture. Their unconventional guitar tunings result in jarring chords and overtones, but also an array of gnarled hooks. Thurston Moore’s and Lee Ranaldo’s guitars are like antennae picking up otherworldly signals and channeling them into the scuzzy urban haze of “Teen Age Riot” and “Eric’s Trip,” and on “The Sprawl,” bassist Kim Gordon sums up the album’s measured chaos: “Does ‘Fuck you’ sound simple enough?”
63 62 Prince Sign 'O' the Times -17 Paisley Park/Warner Bros., 1987 He’d fired his band, and his latest movie, Under the Cherry Moon, had flopped; just three years after Purple Rain, Prince was in the market for a comeback. So he recorded one of the great albums of the Eighties. Times is best known for the apocalyptic title track, the brontosaurus funk of “Housequake,” and the gorgeous “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” Yet the simplest moments are unforgettable: the “Sweet Jane”-style guitar plea of “The Cross,” the Stax revamp on “Slow Love,” a jilted girl’s sadness in “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man.” “I hate the word ‘experiment,’” Prince said. “It sounds like something you didn’t finish.” Here, he finished.
64 63 The Byrds Sweetheart of the Rodeo +211 Columbia, 1968 On release, this bold experiment in Nashville classicism was shunned by rock fans and country purists alike. But the American rural song had been central to the Byrds’ folk-rock sound; here, driven by junior Byrd Gram Parsons, the band highlighted that connection, dressing Bob Dylan and Merle Haggard songs in steel guitar and rock & roll drive, setting the stage for country rock. Parsons left signs of his short, glorious future in his originals “Hickory Wind” and “One Hundred Years From Now.”
65 64 Joni Mitchell Hejira +69 Asylum, 1976 After redefining the possibilities of singer-songwriter music in the early 1970s, Mitchell set herself an even more ambitious challenge with Hejira, her ultimate jazz-folk statement. Setting her restless-soul visions to slippery instrumentals with help from bassist Jaco Pastorius, she weighed the costs of dedicating her life to fearless self-expression where others might have settled for mere happiness (“Amelia,” “Song for Sharon”). Getting to the point where she could make an album this singularly brilliant might have been a lonely enterprise, but it was worth it for the rest of us.
66 65 Bob Dylan John Wesley Harding +272 Columbia, 1967 Recovering from his 1966 motorcycle crash, Bob Dylan made a left turn into country fables and stark mystic folkways. He took a quick trip to Nashville and banged out John Wesley Harding. It’s his most ominous album, with characters from the Bible and the shadowy side of American history, from “I Am a Lonesome Hobo” to “All Along the Watchtower.” With his stripped-down sound and a black-and-white cover photo, Dylan was defiantly rejecting all the current trends — going his own way, as usual.
67 66 The Replacements Let It Be +90 Twin/Tone, 1984 Copping a Beatles title was cheeky; attaching it to a post-punk masterpiece was a sign of maturity. Said Paul Westerberg, “This was the first time I had songs that we arranged, rather than just banging out riffs.” Mixing punk, pop, and country with wry lyrics, his songs describe heroes (the gender-bending couple in “Androgynous”) and villains (an unsanitary dentist in “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out”; MTV in “Seen Your Video”), and pack in quips about the group’s lack of success (“Fingernails and cigarettes, a lousy dinner”) with swagger and pride. The coup is “Unsatisfied,” a pained howl of unhappiness that forced people to take this ratty band seriously.
68 67 Can Tago Mago New in 2023 United Artists, 1971 Can's second studio album is a groundbreaking work of experimental rock that helped establish the krautrock movement. The German band's combination of repetitive rhythms, electronic textures, and improvised elements created a hypnotic form of rock music. The album's two-disc format allowed for extended compositions like 'Halleluhwah' and 'Aumgn' that showcased their ability to create trance-like states through repetition and subtle variation.
69 68 Simon & Garfunkel Bookends New in 2023 Columbia, 1968 Simon & Garfunkel's fourth studio album is a conceptual meditation on aging and the passage of time, bookended by different versions of the title track. The album features some of their most beloved songs, including 'Mrs. Robinson' (featured in 'The Graduate'), 'America,' and 'Hazy Shade of Winter.' Paul Simon's sophisticated songwriting, exploring themes of alienation and American society, combined with Art Garfunkel's pristine harmonies, created folk-rock of unprecedented literary depth. The album's seamless flow between individual songs and the 'Voices of Old People' interludes gives it a unified, almost cinematic quality.
70 69 Sly & the Family Stone Stand! +50 Epic, 1969 Stand! is party politics at its most inclusive and exciting — Sly Stone at the top of his funk-rock-soul game. A DJ and producer in San Francisco during the Dawn of Hippie, Stone rides the bonfire momentum of the civil rights movement in motivational-soul sermons such as “Stand!” and “You Can Make It If You Try” without denying the intrinsic divisions that threatened civil war (“Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey”). There was also the uplifting pure-pop beauty of “Everyday People” as well as the R&B ecstasy of “I Want to Take You Higher” and the swirling black psychedelia of “Sex Machine.” It makes Stand! a greatest-hits album in all but name.
71 70 Roxy Music For Your Pleasure +281 Warner Bros., 1973 Keyboardist Brian Eno’s last album with Roxy Music is the pop equivalent of Ultrasuede: highly stylish, abstract-leaning art rock. The collision of Eno’s and singer Bryan Ferry’s clashing visions gives Pleasure a wild, tense charm — especially on the driving “Editions of You” and “Do the Strand.” The album’s deeply weird centerpiece is “In Every Dream Home a Heartache”: Ferry sings a seductive ballad to an inflatable doll (“I blew up your body, but you blew my mind”), one of the creepiest love songs of all time.
72 71 Hüsker Dü Zen Arcade New in 2023
73 72 Al Green Call Me +355 Hi, 1973 Green was absolutely fearless at this point, an innovator willing to try any crazy idea — country ballads, jazz chords, even a gospel tune. Producer Willie Mitchell and his studio band of virtuoso Memphis R&B pros create the sultriest grooves south of the Mason-Dixon line. Green testifies to the glories of love in “Call Me” and “Have You Been Making Out O.K.” When he reaches up for that falsetto growl at the end of “Your Love Is Like the Morning Sun,” it’s like he’s bringing down the sugar walls of Jericho.
74 73 Ray Charles The Genius of Ray Charles New in 2023
75 74 Kraftwerk Trans-Europe Express +164 Kling Klang, 1977 In 1975, someone asked legendary rock critic Lester Bangs where music was going. “It’s being taken over by the Germans and the machines,” he replied. Not a bad prediction. This German group’s sound sought to eliminate the distinction between men and machines. Kraftwerk’s robot-synthesizer grooves influenced electrodisco hitmakers, experimental geniuses such as Brian Eno, and rappers including Afrika Bambaataa, who lifted the title track for “Planet Rock.” The whole world of EDM may not have happened without them.
76 75 Big Star Third/Sister Lovers +210 PVC, 1978 Big Star’s first two albums were crisp power-pop full of bright Sixties melodies. Their third album very much wasn’t. The band recorded it, their final LP, in 1974, but it didn’t get released until 1978, in part because singer Alex Chilton sounds like he’s having a nervous breakdown. It’s a record of gorgeous, disjointed heartbreak ballads such as “Take Care,” “Nighttime,” and “Blue Moon.” Even when they’re more optimistic, the songs almost seem to disintegrate as they unfold, finally collapsing into the sublime apocalypse of the album-closing “Kanga Roo.”
77 76 The Jimi Hendrix Experience Electric Ladyland New in 2023 Reprise, 1968 Hendrix's ambitious double album showcased his studio wizardry and experimental vision at its peak. Recorded across multiple sessions in New York, the album features extended jams, intricate overdubs, and innovative production techniques. The epic 'Voodoo Child (Slight Return)' and his iconic cover of Dylan's 'All Along the Watchtower' demonstrated his ability to transform any song into something uniquely his own. The album's diverse range, from the funky 'Crosstown Traffic' to the ethereal '1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be),' established Hendrix as not just a guitarist but a visionary composer and producer.
78 77 Radiohead The Bends +199 Capitol, 1995 If the first half of the Nineties was shaped by Nirvana, the template for the second half was set by Radiohead. The Bends marries a majestic and somber guitar sound to Thom Yorke’s anguished-choirboy vocals. “Fake Plastic Trees” was something of a radio hit, an introspective acoustic ballad of alienation. And not yet shying away from guitar anthems, Radiohead drew on the epic grandeur of U2 and the melancholy of the Smiths in “Nice Dream,” “Just,” and the haunting finale, “Street Spirit (Fade Out).”
79 78 The Rolling Stones Beggars Banquet +107 Decca, 1968 “When we had been in the States between 1964 and ’66, I had gathered together this enormous collection of records, but I never had any time to listen to them,” Keith Richards recalled. “In late 1966 and ‘67, I unwrapped them and actually played them.” After the wayward psychedelia of Their Satanic Majesties Request, and with guitarist Brian Jones largely AWOL, Richards’ record collection led the Rolling Stones back to their version of America: country music on “Dear Doctor,” the blues on “Prodigal Son,” and urban riots on “Street Fighting Man.” And “Sympathy for the Devil,” of course, is an anthem for the darkness in every human heart.
80 79 Blondie Parallel Lines +67 Chrysalis, 1978 Here’s where punk and New Wave broke through to a mass U.S. audience, thanks to the Number One hit “Heart of Glass,” also known to Blondie fans as “The Disco Song.” “I was trying to get that groove that the drummer for the Bee Gees had,” said Blondie drummer Clem Burke, who credited Kraftwerk and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack as influences on “Heart of Glass.” Parallel Lines is a perfect synthesis of raw punk edge, Sixties-pop smarts, and the cool New Wave glamour that Blondie invented. Debbie Harry, of course, invented a new kind of rock & roll sex appeal that brought New York demimonde style to the mainstream. Madonna was surely watching.
81 80 The Band The Band -23 Capitol, 1969 The Band was four-fifths Canadian — drummer Levon Helm was from Arkansas – but their second album was all American. Guitarist Robbie Robertson’s songs vividly evoke the country’s pioneer age — “Across the Great Divide,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” — while reflecting the state of the nation in the 1960s. The Band’s long life on the road resonates in the brawn of Garth Hudson’s keyboards and Helm’s juke-joint attack. But Robertson’s stories truly live in Helm’s growl, Rick Danko’s high tenor, and Richard Manuel’s spectral croon. “Somebody once said he had a tear in his voice,” Helm said of Manuel. “Richard had one of the richest textured voices I’d ever heard.”
82 81 Bruce Springsteen Nebraska +69 Columbia, 1982 Recorded on a four-track in Springsteen’s bedroom, Nebraska’s songs were stark, spooky acoustic demos that he decided to release “bare,” packed with hard-luck tales of underdogs. “I wanted black bedtime stories,” he said in his memoir, and he wrote the LP under the influence of John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson, but also Flannery O’Connor and James M. Cain, creating a cross between the blues and pulp-noir novels. “Down here it’s just winners and losers,” he sings in “Atlantic City,” and these 10 songs live on the wrong side of that line. Yet, Springsteen ends the album with “Reason to Believe,” one of those songs where his search for faith inspires faith itself.
83 82 Neil Young & Crazy Horse Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere New in 2023
84 83 Stevie Wonder Talking Book -24 Tamla/Motown, 1972 “I don’t think you know where I’m coming from,” Wonder warned Motown executives in 1971. “I don’t think you can understand it.” Indeed, the two albums Wonder released in 1972 — Music of My Mind and Talking Book — rewrote the rules of the Motown hit factory. Talking Book was full of introspection and social commentary, with Wonder producing, writing, and playing most of the instruments himself. “Superstition” and “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” were Number One singles; “Big Brother” is political consciousness draped in a light melody: “You’ve killed all our leaders/I don’t even have to do nothin’ to you/You’ll cause your own country to fall.”
85 84 Tom Waits Rain Dogs +273 Island, 1985 “I like weird, ludicrous things,” Tom Waits once said. That understatement plays out most clearly on Rain Dogs, his finest portrait of the tragic kingdom of the streets. Self-producing his music for the first time and recording in his native Los Angeles, he went for a sound he described as “kind of an interaction between Appalachia and Nigeria.” Waits abandoned his signature grungy minimalism on the gorgeous “Downtown Train” (later a hit for Rod Stewart) and gets backing by Keith Richards on “Big Black Mariah.”
86 85 Van Morrison Moondance +35 Warner Bros., 1970 “That was the type of band I dig,” Van Morrison said of the Moondance sessions. “Two horns and a rhythm section — they’re the type of bands that I like best.” Morrison took that soul-band lineup and blended it with jazz, blues, poetry, and vivid memories of his Irish childhood, until songs such as “And It Stoned Me” and “Caravan” felt like lucid dreams. In the title hit, Morrison turns the words over and over in his mouth, not scatting so much as searching for the sound of magic. “Into the Mystic” serves as an apt summary: To listen to the album is to get your passport stamped for Morrison’s world of ecstatic visions.
87 86 My Bloody Valentine Loveless -13 Sire, 1991 This vague, shimmering, gorgeous album reportedly cost as much as $500,000 to make and nearly bankrupted the band’s U.K. label. It was worth it. Forget the lyrics, which are buried in the mix and incomprehensible, and focus on Kevin Shields’ and Bilinda Butcher’s guitars, which build entire noise symphonies out of tremolo effects and pitch bending. Highlights like “Only Shallow” and “I Only Said” use sampling technology to build a distorted, shifting sound that is wholly original and ecstatically beautiful. It’s like being serenaded by ghosts. Generations of shoegaze bands were born in its shadow.
88 87 Gram Parsons Grievous Angel New in 2023
89 88 David Bowie Station to Station -36 RCA, 1976 The title track is where David Bowie proclaims himself the Thin White Duke. Thin he was: Station to Station was recorded in a blizzard of cocaine in Los Angeles, with Bowie subsisting on green peppers and milk and almost never sleeping. The manic mood fueled an album that was futuristic but accessible, “plastic soul” speeding toward the electronic epiphanies of his Berlin phase. “TVC 15” is New Orleans R&B as robotic funk; “Golden Years” is James Brown from outer space, with Bowie’s amazing falsetto; and the 10-minute title track summed up his constant sense of motion at the time — opening with the sound of a train coming and eventually exploding into a Euro-disco breakdown that sounds like Saturday Night Fever at the android factory.
90 89 Todd Rundgren Something/Anything? +307 Bearsville, 1972 “I’m probably the whitest singer in the world,” Todd Rundgren told Rolling Stone in 1972. “I have no ‘soul’ in the usual sense — but I can do this great feminine falsetto.” On this tour de force double album, Rundgren employs that falsetto on two great singles (“I Saw the Light” and “Hello It’s Me”). For the rest of the album, he demonstrates his complete command of the studio, playing almost all the instruments himself, experimenting with a kaleidoscope of rock genres, and even delivering a monologue on what poorly made records sound like.
91 90 Pink Floyd The Piper at the Gates of Dawn +163 EMI/Columbia, 1967 “I’m full of dust and guitars,” Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett told Rolling Stone. Here’s what that sounded like. The band’s debut is all playful, psychedelic imagery and acid guitars. “Astronomy Domine” shows the group’s pop side; “Interstellar Overdrive” shows its spacier freakouts. Released at the height of the Summer of Love, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn sums up the headlong feeling of the moment just as aptly as the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper.
92 91 Joni Mitchell The Hissing of Summer Lawns +167 Asylum, 1975 Joni Mitchell got deeper into glamorous L.A. groove theory on her seventh album, reveling in the possibilities of pure melody for a set of songs where her genius as a producer shines just as brightly as her writing. “In France They Kiss on Main Street” bids farewell to the rock & roll era in a blaze of freewheeling, jazzy joy; “Harry’s House/Centerpiece” frames a story of a loveless high-society marriage in supper-club swank. The rest of the pop world would take years to catch up to where she was here.
93 92 Gang of Four Entertainment! +181 Warner Bros., 1979 Formed in 1977, Gang of Four combined Marxist politics with punk rock. They played staccato guitar-driven funk, and the stiff, jerky aggression of songs such as “Damaged Goods” and “I Found That Essence Rare” invented a new style that influenced bands from the Minutemen to LCD Soundsystem to agit-rappers Run the Jewels, who sampled Entertainment!’s “Ether.” Even when they’re barking at you about the capitalist commodification of desire, they never sound like dogmatic grad students because the songs bite so hard.
94 93 Kate Bush Hounds of Love -25 EMI, 1985 Kate Bush was an avant-garde auteur as well as beloved English pop star. Her New Wave masterpiece Hounds of Love is one of the greatest examples of an artist enjoying Top 40 success while luxuriating in her own eccentricities. Playing a futurist Fairlight CMI synthesizer and singing in an ecstatic operatic chirp, she muses about Freudian psychology, career challenges, love and family, dreaming sheep, and waking witches. Side One had hits like “Running Up That Hill” and “Cloudbusting”; Side Two was an epic “story suite,” moving from goth terror to sci-fi abstraction to dark rustic revelry. It’s no wonder Björk, Florence Welch, and Mitski are just a few of the artists who’ve been swept up in Bush’s sensual world.
95 94 Minutemen Double Nickels on the Dime +173 SST, 1984 “Our band could be your life,” sing the Minutemen on “History Lesson – Part 2,” and never did a lyric better articulate punk’s everyman aesthetic. Guitarist D. Boon and bassist Mike Watt push each other to fast, funny, and agitated heights; they sing about everything from Vietnam to Michael Jackson, and cover CCR and Steely Dan, expanding their magnum opus double LP out to 46 songs. Sadly, Boon would die a year later in a van accident.
96 95 P.J. Harvey Rid of Me New in 2023 Island, 1993 “I very much wanted to write songs that shocked,” Polly Jean Harvey said years after releasing her second album. The shock came partly from her lyrics, which were often proclamations of sexual compulsion, and also from the intense dynamic shifts in her music, which careen from blues to goth, often in the space of one song. Harvey was under the influence of Howlin’ Wolf, Tom Waits, and Flannery O’Connor, and her singing, writing, and lead-guitar playing coalesce into something marked by flames. The lyrics have lots of licking, moaning, bleeding, stroking, open mouths, and dismembered body parts. The songs spew viscera as they build to a sticky ecstasy.
97 96 The Kinks The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society +288 Reprise, 1969 While their British Invasion peers— the Beatles, the Stones, the Who — were getting psychedelic, Ray Davies took his band for a pastoral retreat, with witty portraits of quaint English small-town life fading away like “Big Sky.” Nobody bought it, but Village Green went on to become one of the Kinks’ most influential statements. “With ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day and All of the Night,’ we were saying, ‘We’re here, we’re gonna grab you,’” Davies told Rolling Stone. “The music on Village Green says, ‘Come find us.’”
98 97 Talking Heads Fear of Music New in 2023
99 98 Lou Reed Transformer +11 RCA, 1972 David Bowie counted the former Velvet Underground leader as a major inspiration — and paid back the debt by producing Transformer. The album had glam flash courtesy of Ziggy Stardust guitarist Mick Ronson as well as Reed’s biggest hit, “Walk on the Wild Side” — which brought drag queens and hustlers into the Top 20 — and the exquisite ballad “Perfect Day.” It was Reed’s first producer, VU impresario Andy Warhol, who inspired the lead cut when he suggested “Vicious” as a song title. “You know, like, ‘Vicious/You hit me with a flower,’” Warhol elaborated. Reed took him at his word, penning the song and cribbing the lines verbatim.
100 99 James Brown Live at the Apollo -34 King, 1963 This may be the greatest live album ever recorded: from the breathless buildup of the spoken intro through terse, sweat-soaked early hits such as “Try Me” and “Think” into 11 minutes of the raw ballad “Lost Someone.” It climaxes with a frenzied nine-song medley, and ends with “Night Train.” Live at the Apollo is pure, uncut soul — and it almost didn’t happen. James Brown defied King Records boss Syd Nathan’s opposition to a live album by arranging to record a show himself — on October 24th, 1962, the last date of a run at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. His intuition proved correct; Live at the Apollo, the first of four albums Brown recorded there, charted for 66 weeks.
101 100 Public Image Ltd. Metal Box New in 2023
102 101 Leonard Cohen Songs of Leonard Cohen +94 Columbia, 1967 Leonard Cohen was already well into his thirties when he made his debut, in the Summer of Love. The Montreal poet had been publishing his books to literary acclaim for years, but he took to songwriting, with his acoustic guitar and the orchestrations of producer John Simon. These were the late-night ballads that made his legend, starting with “Suzanne” and “Sisters of Mercy.” But Cohen specialized in farewells, blowing kisses to his muses in “So Long, Marianne” and “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.” He kept writing brilliant songs into his eighties, right up to his death in 2016.
103 102 Neil Young On the Beach +209 Reprise, 1974 Reeling from the losses that sparked Tonight’s the Night the previous year, Neil Young shelved that album for a while and made this one instead: a wild fireball of anger (“Revolution Blues”), nihilism (“For the Turnstiles”), and tentative optimism (“Walk On”). The album peaks on Side Two, a stoned symphony of grieving whose three songs (“On the Beach,” “Motion Pictures,” “Ambulance Blues”) are among the most emotionally real in Young’s catalog.
104 103 Pixies Doolittle +38 4AD/Elektra, 1989 The Pixies’ second full-length album proved that noisy, arty college rock could be just as fun as anything else on MTV. With his antic vocal style and free-associative lyrics, singer-guitarist Black Francis seemed detached from humanity, but the rest of the Pixies grounded him. Bassist Kim Deal adds tart harmonies that feel like sarcastic asides, drummer David Lovering powers the loud-quiet-loud dynamic that influenced Nirvana and many others, and guitarist Joey Santiago tosses out concise, buzzing riffs. The Pixies’ second album is loaded: With “Debaser,” “Here Comes Your Man,” “Monkey Gone to Heaven,” “Hey,” and “Gouge Away,” it’s the college-radio version of a greatest-hits album.
105 104 Yo La Tengo I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One +319 Matador, 1997 In rock, as in life, breakups get all the attention; successful marriages tend to generate fewer headlines. But Yo La Tengo — the long-married couple of Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan, plus bassist James McNew — is a testament to figuring it out together. The band’s 1997 masterpiece is indie rock at its most joyfully exploratory, with deeply catchy fuzz-jams, some Casio-keyboard bossa nova, a cover of the Beach Boys’ “Little Honda, and “Autumn Sweater,” a stone-cold classic that turns organ, percussion, and shy murmuring into something mesmerizing and beautiful.
106 105 Prince Dirty Mind +221 Warner Bros., 1980 A mix of slinky funk, synth-driven rock, jittery pop, and sexual innuendo, Dirty Mind was Prince’s first great album, even if it only hinted at where he was headed. “White, black, Puerto Rican, everybody just a freakin’,” he sang on “Uptown,” a utopian ode to the Minneapolis club scene. The album includes the world’s merriest done-me-wrong song, “When You Were Mine,” and the incest ditty “Sister.” “I wasn’t being deliberately provocative,” Prince said. “I was being deliberately me.”
107 106 Eminem The Marshall Mathers LP +39 Interscope, 2000 Chris Rock joked that the world was so crazy, “the best rapper is a white guy,” referring to Eminem. He’d been accused of corrupting the nation’s youth by fostering misogyny on his major-label debut, and to say he doubled down on playing with offensive ideas only exaggerates his joyful commitment to earning more denunciations. “The Real Slim Shady” and “Bitch Please II” vaulted Eminem from a shock rapper with a sense of humor to the voice of a generation. And in “Stan,” he created a verb and a meme to describe extreme fandom in our era.
108 107 Love Da Capo New in 2023
109 108 David Bowie Hunky Dory -20 RCA, 1971 David Bowie, then 24, arrived at the Hunky Dory cover shoot with a book of photographs of Marlene Dietrich: a perfect metaphor for this album’s visionary blend of gay camp, flashy rock guitar, and saloon-piano balladry. Bowie marked the polar ends of his artistic ambitions with tribute songs to Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol. In “Oh! You Pretty Things,” “Quicksand,” and “Changes” he invented and perfected a new style of rock & roll glamour. On “Life on Mars?” he sings to all the weirdos like himself, who feel like aliens on Earth. Soon an entire army of kids would attempt to remake themselves in his spangled image, proving his point.
110 109 Derek and the Dominos Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs +117 Atco, 1970 Eric Clapton was tired of stardom, so he formed a new band where he could be just another one of the lads. But there was no mistaking the blues guitar on “Layla,” as Clapton sang about falling in love with the wife of his best friend, George Harrison. The tortured love songs on Layla get a kick from guest Duane Allman, whose interplay with Clapton in “Key to the Highway” and “Have You Ever Loved a Woman” is both harmonious and fiercely competitive: electric, brotherly love.
111 110 Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road +2 MCA, 1973 Elton John compared this double album to the Beatles’ White Album, and why not? He was by this point the most consistent hitmaker since the Fab Four, and soon enough he would be recording with John Lennon. Everything about Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was supersonically huge, from the Wagnerian-opera-like combo of “Funeral for a Friend” and “Love Lies Bleeding” to the electric boots and mohair suit of “Bennie and the Jets.” “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” was strutting rock & roll, “Candle in the Wind” paid tribute to Marilyn Monroe (and later, Princess Diana), and the title track harnessed the fantastical imagery of glam to a Gershwin-sweet melody.
112 111 X Wild Gift New in 2023
113 112 Paul McCartney & Wings Band on the Run New in 2023
114 113 The Byrds Younger Than Yesterday New in 2023
115 114 Curtis Mayfield Curtis +161 Curtom, 1970 In the late Sixties, Curtis Mayfield fronted the Impressions, masters of doo-wop soul with a knack for hiding bracing political commentary inside honeyed harmonies. His biting, tender solo debut proved he was lethal as a lone wolf, able to write complex, sprawling, intricate soul music: “Move On Up,” a persistence mantra; “The Makings of You,” impossibly lavish; and “(Don’t Worry) If There Is a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go,” a damning indictment of societal dysfunction that still stings today.
116 115 Pere Ubu The Modern Dance New in 2023
117 116 Nick Drake Pink Moon +87 Island, 1979 Nick Drake recorded his last album in a couple of nights, mailed the tapes to Island Records, and checked himself into a psychiatric ward. If the music were as dark as the lyrics, it might be unlistenable. But Drake’s soothing vocals and unadorned acoustic picking unfold with supernatural tenderness. Few heard Pink Moon when it was released, but its stark beauty has touched the intimate bedroom folk of Cat Power, Elliott Smith, and many others.
118 117 Devo Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! +135 Warner Bros., 1978 They came from Akron, Ohio, wore matching jumpsuits, and had a sinister theory of devolution. Their debut album runs on rubber-punk energy and mechanized New Wave beats, with a robotic, soul-chilling version of the Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” demented highlights like the troublingly catchy “Mongoloid,” and the Chuck Berry parody “Come Back Jonee.” Devo never got slowed down by their concept; “Gut Feeling/(Slap Your Mammy)” is warped Midwestern guitar mania at its finest.
119 118 Bob Marley & the Wailers Catch a Fire +22 Island, 1973 This was the album that introduced the whole world to Bob Marley, expanding his audience beyond Jamaica without diluting his bedrock reggae power. At the time, the Wailers were truly a unified band, fronted by three extraordinary singers in Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Livingston. The rhythm section of drummer Carlton Barrett and his brother, bassist Aston “Family Man” Barrett, defined the reggae beat. Producer and label boss Chris Blackwell subtly overdubbed and remixed the original Jamaican sessions for international ears, but the Wailers’ ghetto rage comes across uncut in “Concrete Jungle” and “Slave Driver.”
120 119 Big Star Radio City +240 Ardent, 1974 Alex Chilton and his band of Memphis misfits were years ahead of their time — when they released Radio City in 1974, hardly anyone heard it. But like the Velvet Underground, they became hugely influential when future generations discovered them and got their minds blown. Big Star came up with their own skewed pop sound, filtering their love of the Beatles through their Memphis-soul roots. “September Gurls” and “Life Is White” should have been hits, soaring with the sweetly eccentric guitar chime and the romantic ache in Chilton’s voice.
121 120 Funkadelic Maggot Brain +16 Westbound, 1971 “Play like your mama just died,” bandleader/genius George Clinton said to guitarist Eddie Hazel. That morose instruction worked; nothing has ever sounded like the 10 minutes of anguished, fuzzed-up blues Hazel plays on the title song. (Clinton likened the playing to “a silver web.”) Clinton was a funk surrealist and a provocateur, but he’d also been in a doo-wop group and had written songs for Motown — he balanced multicolored futurism with old-school R&B chops on the swinging “Can You Get to That,” the psychedelic “You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks,” and “Super Stupid,” another showcase for Hazel’s dense, distorted riffing. As Clinton later asked defiantly, “Who says a funk band can’t play rock?”
122 121 Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention We're Only in It for the Money New in 2023
123 122 John Coltrane A Love Supreme -56 Impulse!, 1965 Two important things happened to John Coltrane in 1957: The saxophonist left Miles Davis’ employ to join Thelonious Monk’s band and hit new heights in extended, ecstatic soloing. Coltrane also kicked his heroin addiction, a vital step in a religious awakening that climaxed with this legendary album-long hymn of praise. The indelible four-note theme of the first movement, “Acknowledgment,” is the humble foundation of the suite. But Coltrane’s majestic, often violent blowing (famously described as “sheets of sound”) is never self-aggrandizing. Coltrane soars with nothing but gratitude and joy. You can’t help but go with him.
124 123 Beastie Boys Paul's Boutique +2 Capitol, 1989 “I went to this party in Los Angeles,” recalled Adam Horovitz, “and they were playing this music, like … four breakbeat records playing at the same time.” The party soundtrack consisted of tracks by the Dust Brothers, who ended up co-producing this entire second record from the Beasties, providing the rap trio with some of the best samples ever put on wax, including the Ramones, Mountain, and the Funky 4 Plus 1. Paul’s Boutique is also an extended goof on Abbey Road [see No. 5], which was Paul McCartney’s boutique — and like that record, it ambitiously stitches together song fragments in a way rarely heard before or since.
125 124 Jay-Z The Blueprint -74 Roc-A-Fella, 2001 With The Blueprint, Jay-Z took on anyone and everyone who wanted to sit on his throne, even the jesters. “Takeover,” one of rap’s most precise and unrelenting diss tracks, commits GBH on rappers Nas and Prodigy from Mobb Deep. When Hova isn’t taking shots at record executives, cops, critics, haters, biters, and his absent dad (and still, sadly, using the word “faggot”), he inches toward vulnerability on “Song Cry.” “Izzo (H.O.V.A.),” with dynamic production by Kanye West, gave him his first Top 10 single. Jay-Z elevates clever rhymes and innovations with an unmatched air of calm control and a cavalier confidence. Here’s the moral of the story, courtesy of “Takeover”: “You guys don’t want it with HOV.”
126 125 Lucinda Williams Car Wheels on a Gravel Road -27 Mercury, 1998 It took three torturous years to finish, but it was worth it; there are no bad songs on this alt-country masterwork. The title track is one of Williams’ best: Over guitars that owe more to the Stones than to the Opry, she tells a story about the rootlessness of American life. Williams, who was born in Louisiana, describes the South in a loving, fearful tone (“Broken down shacks, engine parts” in one song, “Busted-down doors and borrowed cash” in another) and mourns pals who fell prey to hard liquor, drugs, or dreams of stardom. With production help from Roy Bittan of the E Street Band and a lot of twangy power chords, Williams rocks hard enough to give these troubled songs both dignity and a feeling of release.
127 126 Roxy Music Roxy Music New in 2023
128 127 The Ramones Ramones -80 Sire, 1976 The Ramones' self-titled debut album stripped rock & roll down to its essential elements and invented punk rock in the process. Recorded in just 18 days for $6,400, the album's 14 songs clock in at under 30 minutes, featuring buzzsaw guitars, pounding drums, and Joey Ramone's nasal vocals. Songs like 'Blitzkrieg Bop,' 'I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,' and 'Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue' combined teenage themes with breakneck tempos and three-chord simplicity. The album's aesthetic of deliberate amateurism and punk attitude influenced countless bands and launched the punk movement.
129 128 Frank Sinatra Songs for Swingin' Lovers! New in 2023 Capitol, 1956 One of Sinatra's finest Capitol albums, this collection of love songs arranged by Nelson Riddle showcases the Chairman of the Board at his swinging best. The album features definitive versions of American songbook standards like 'I've Got You Under My Skin,' 'Anything Goes,' and 'Makin' Whoopee.' Sinatra's mature vocal style, combining technical precision with emotional depth, paired with Riddle's sophisticated arrangements, created the template for the classic American pop album. The album's joyful celebration of romance and its impeccable production values made it both a commercial and artistic triumph.
130 129 Bruce Springsteen The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle +216 Columbia, 1973 Reeling from the commercial fizzle of his debut LP, Bruce Springsteen threw off the “new Dylan” baggage and applied his Jersey-bar-band skills to some of the funniest tunes he’d ever write: “Rosalita,” “Kitty’s Back,” and the boardwalk love song “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy).” The music is loose, jazzy, and full of ambition — a studio take on the live muscle that Springsteen was already famous for — and “New York City Serenade” is the first of Springsteen’s epic street operas.
131 130 Tim Buckley Happy Sad New in 2023
132 131 Black Sabbath Paranoid +8 Vertigo, 1970 If you think Ozzy’s enduring fame is impressive, try taking a time machine back to the early Seventies and telling rock critics they’ll still be writing about Paranoid 50 years after its release. But Sabbath ruled for bummed-out kids in the Seventies, and nearly every heavy-metal and extreme rock band of the past three decades — from Metallica to Nirvana to Mastodon — owes a debt of worship to Tony Iommi’s crushing, granite-fuzz guitar chords, the Visigoth rhythm machine of Bill Ward and Geezer Butler, and Ozzy Osbourne’s agonized bray in “Paranoid,” “Iron Man,” and “War Pigs.”
133 132 The B-52's The B-52's +66 Warner Bros., 1979 The debut by the B-52’s sounds like a bunch of high school friends cramming all their running jokes, goofy sounds, and private nicknames into a New Wave record. “We never thought it would get past our circle of friends in Athens [Georgia],” vocalist Fred Schneider told Rolling Stone. It turned out that nobody could resist the band’s campy, arty funk, or the eccentric squeals and bouffant hairdos of Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson. (Playing organ, Pierson also defined the band’s sound.) They played toy instruments, and their thrift-store image was as inventive and colorful as their music — which, with “Rock Lobster,” was pretty inventive and colorful.
134 133 The Stooges Raw Power New in 2023 Columbia, 1973 The Stooges' final studio album is a primal scream of garage rock fury that anticipated punk rock by several years. Produced by David Bowie and featuring James Williamson's slashing guitar work alongside Iggy Pop's unhinged vocals, the album's raw energy and nihilistic attitude influenced generations of punk and alternative rock musicians. Songs like 'Search and Destroy' and 'I Need Somebody' combine primitive power with sophisticated songcraft. Despite its initial commercial failure, the album is now recognized as a crucial link between garage rock and punk.
135 134 The Beatles A Hard Day's Night +129 United Artists, 1964 This soundtrack to the Richard Lester film cemented all that U.S. listeners had heard about the Beatles’ genius in the off-kilter beauty of John Lennon’s “If I Fell” and the rockabilly bounce of Paul McCartney’s “Can’t Buy Me Love.” It was their first album of all-original material, showcasing leaps in their songwriting as well as new tricks like George Harrison’s 12-string guitar, picked up on tour in America, and the Dylanesque harmonica blast that opens “I Should Have Known Better.”
136 135 Sleater-Kinney Dig Me Out +54 Kill Rock Stars, 1997 “I wanna be your Joey Ramone,” Corin Tucker promised on Sleater-Kinney’s 1996 album, Call the Doctor. Their next record made good on that mythic ambition. When drummer Janet Weiss joined singer-guitarists Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, a riot-grrrl force of nature became one of the world’s most potent rock bands. Tucker’s indelible vibrato takes off with avenging-angel ferocity on songs like the almost impossibly explosive title track and “Words and Guitar,” an awe-inspiring statement of rock & roll’s power to transform a broken world.
137 136 Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti +8 Swan Song, 1975 The last great Led Zeppelin album is — like most 1970s double LPs — a bloated beast. But its self-indulgent swagger is the very unifying thing that makes it so much fun — and one of the heaviest records of the Seventies. Physical Graffiti is the ultimate in Zeppelin’s attempts to fuse East and West, exploring the Arabic and Indian sonorities of “Kashmir” and “In the Light.” It’s Zeppelin’s most eclectic album, featuring down-and-dirty blues (“Black Country Woman,” “Boogie With Stu”), pop balladry (“Down by the Seaside”), metal riffs (“The Wanton Song”), and the 11-minute “In My Time of Dying.” An excessive album from the group that all but invented excess.
138 137 George Harrison All Things Must Pass +231 Apple, 1970 After the end of the Beatles, the Quiet One suddenly looked like the one best prepared for the solo life. After years of writing in the shadow of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, George Harrison had enough songs saved up to make his solo debut a triple album, featuring friends like Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and Ringo Starr. All Things Must Pass is full of spiritual guitar quests like “Isn’t It a Pity” and “My Sweet Lord,” the first Number One hit to include a Hare Krishna chant.
139 138 Ornette Coleman The Shape of Jazz to Come +279 Atlantic, 1959 Ornette Coleman’s sound was so out there, one audience at an early gig threw his tenor sax over a cliff. He switched to alto and pioneered free jazz: no chords, no harmony, any player can take the lead. It’s still a jarring sound to encounter for the first time, but Coleman’s freedom was grounded in the cathartic release of the gospel and blues of his native Texas. On his first album for Atlantic Records, his music can be just as lyrical as it is demanding, particularly on the haunting “Lonely Woman.”
140 139 R.E.M. Automatic for the People -43 Warner Bros., 1992 “It doesn’t sound a whole lot like us,” warned guitarist Peter Buck. But by stripping back their sound to a spare, largely acoustic essence, the college-rock kings made the most powerful album of their career — an argument for sweetness and softness in an increasingly hard world. The bold sonic change-up laid bare Michael Stipe’s keening baritone and expansive vocal melodies, accentuated in several songs by Led Zeppelin member John Paul Jones’ gorgeous string arrangements. The album “was beautiful. It was quiet,” Stipe said. “It flew in the face of everything that was going down musically at the time.” At a time when grunge angst ruled, songs like “Everybody Hurts” and the lovely “Find the River” offered solace.
141 140 Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here +124 Columbia, 1975 For the follow-up to Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd got even darker, exploring their main themes of lunacy and alienation. The poignant title ballad is a lament for their ex-bandmate Syd Barrett, one of the Sixties’ saddest acid casualties. They pay tribute in “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” a 26-minute, nine-part suite that both opens and closes the album, with David Gilmour’s elegiac guitar. They also skewer the music business in “Have a Cigar” and “Welcome to the Machine.”
142 141 The Notorious B.I.G. Ready to Die -119 Bad Boy, 1994 The Notorious B.I.G. spread the love the Brooklyn way on his classic debut, introducing us to the most immediately likable voice in hip-hop history. “I made the record for New York, but I want the world to hear it,” he said. Ready to Die executive producer Sean “Puffy” Combs, who’d read about the fledgling Brooklyn rapper in The Source magazine, pushed his new discovery to leaven the stick-up-kid self-mythologizing of “Machine Gun Funk” and “Gimme the Loot” with inviting party-up pop like “Big Poppa” and the ecstatically playful origin story “Juicy.” But it was Biggie’s gift of gab, enormous personality, and sense of humor that made Ready to Die so wonderful — whether he was offering a 360-degree vision of the mean streets of Fort Greene on “Things Done Changed,” kicking it Bonnie and Clyde-style on “Me and My Bitch,” or delivering rags-to-riches brags like “Birthdays was the worst days/Now we sip champagne when we’re thirsty.” In the process, he changed rap forever. He ends the album with the dark prophecy of “Suicidal Thoughts.” As with Kurt Cobain, his tragic death while still in his twenties will always leave us wondering how far he might have gone.
143 142 N.W.A Straight Outta Compton -72 Ruthless, 1988 N.W.A’s debut brought West Coast gangsta rap to Middle America and changed hip-hop forever. It was the launching pad for the careers of Ice Cube, Eazy-E, and Dr. Dre. “Back then we was calling it ‘reality rap,’” Ice Cube told Rolling Stone years later. “‘Gangsta rap’ is the name that the media coined.” Ice Cube’s rage and Dr. Dre’s police-siren street beats combined for a truly fearsome sound on “Express Yourself” and “Straight Outta Compton.” But it was the protest track “Fuck Tha Police” that earned the crew its biggest honor: a threatening letter from the FBI.
144 143 Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Murder Ballads New in 2023
145 144 Jackson Browne Late for the Sky New in 2023
146 145 Portishead Dummy -14 Go! Beat, 1994 It’s difficult to sustain, over an entire album, something as vague as ambiance, but Portishead did it on their debut. Along with fellow Bristol, England, innovators Massive Attack, they headed up the trendy mid-Nineties trip-hop movement. Long after the genre petered out, their debut remains immersive and haunting, built on skittering break beats, jazzy samples, spare arrangements, and discomforting pauses. But it’s singer Beth Gibbon’s brooding, pop-cabaret vocals that make it feel classic, hinting at real pain below trip-hop’s stoned exterior. The result was cinematic enough to recall John Barry’s lustrous scores for James Bond films.
147 146 Björk Homogenic +56 Elektra, 1997 Björk’s third album was a departure from the fun, playful electronics of her mid-Nineties solo sets Debut and Post, adopting a more uniform, chilly, and distinctly Icelandic sound in its fusion of trip-hop with neo-classical strings. “Jóga,” with its stratosphere-high vocals and beats inspired by volcanic eruptions, may be Björk’s signature song, but it’s only one sample of the album’s palette, jagged and luminescent like broken stained glass. The sheer beauty underneath its boldness and abrasion has enraptured countless artists, from Thom Yorke to Arca, in the years since its release.
148 147 Charles Mingus The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady New in 2023 Impulse!, 1963 Charles Mingus's extended composition is considered one of the greatest achievements in jazz, combining elements of classical music, gospel, and blues into a cohesive whole. The album's complex arrangements and Mingus's passionate bass playing create a deeply emotional musical journey. The work's integration of different musical styles and its emotional intensity make it a landmark of modern jazz.
149 148 Liz Phair Exile in Guyville -92 Matador, 1993 “Watch how fast they run to the flame,” Liz Phair sang, and true to that promise her debut double LP set the underground on fire. Phair and co-producer Brad Wood built off the bedroom demo intimacy of Phair’s Girly-Sound cassette releases, creating a loose response record to the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street (“I had a lot to say on the subject matter they put forth,” she told Rolling Stone). Her strikingly frank sex talk caused a media stir unheard of for a “low-fi” artitst, but it was the caffeinated drive of songs like “6’1” and “Never Said,” the painterly sonic impressionism of the piano piece “Canary” or the sunset majestic “Stratford-On-Guy,” and the real hurt and hunger of “Fuck and Run” and “Divorce Song” that made Exile hit home.
150 149 Run-D.M.C. Raising Hell New in 2023 Profile, 1986 Working for the first time with producer Rick Rubin, the Hollis, Queens, crew of Run, DMC, and Jam Master Jay made an album so undeniable, it forced the mainstream to cross over to hip-hop. “Peter Piper” kicked the rhymes over a jingling cowbell sampled from an old jazz-fusion record. On “My Adidas,” “It’s Tricky,” and “You Be Illin’,” Run and DMC talked trash while the DJ made their day. They even hit MTV with a vandalistic remake of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way,” featuring Steven Tyler and Joe Perry.
151 150 Guided by Voices Bee Thousand New in 2023
152 151 The Jesus and Mary Chain Psychocandy New in 2023
153 152 Miles Davis Bitches Brew -65 Columbia, 1970 In February 1969, Miles Davis recorded In a Silent Way, a bold step into ambient funk and electric futurism. Then just six months later, he was back in the studio, driven by his desire to assemble “the best damn rock & roll band in the world.” The idea was to connect his music to the audience of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. The result was this double album of jazz-rock fusion, cut in three days of on-the-spot improvisations with an electric orchestra that included three keyboardists, three drummers, two bassists, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, and guitarist John McLaughlin. The music was full of visceral thrills and the brooding darkness Davis brought to everything he touched.
154 153 Elliott Smith Either/Or +63 Kill Rock Stars, 1997 Elliott Smith had ambitions to make records with a Beatlesque sound — but zero interest in Beatlesque fame — when he recorded Either/Or. While he achieved his dreams on several subsequent major-label releases, the Portland, Oregon, indie-folk singer-songwriter’s third album resonates because of his low-fi whisper and gritty, sepia-toned lyrics. His songs struck a nerve well beyond the Northwest music scene — Madonna, of all people, covered the morosely pretty drunk’s lullaby “Between the Bars.”
155 154 The Kinks Something Else by the Kinks +324 Pye, 1968 Something Else was a commercial flop that nearly killed the band, but it shows off Ray Davies’ genius for writing about the secret lives of everyday people. “Waterloo Sunset” is a gorgeously chilly ballad about a lonely man watching lovers from his window; “Two Sisters” celebrates a housewife dancing around her house with curlers in her hair. He’s got poetic compassion for all these characters, even as he witnesses their private pain in “No Return,” “Afternoon Tea,” and “End of the Season.”
156 155 Joni Mitchell Court and Spark -45 Asylum, 1974 Joni Mitchell followed up Blue with the underrated For the Roses, a set of harmonically and lyrically complex songs. Court and Spark is, in comparison, smoother and more straight-ahead; it became the biggest record of her career, hitting Number Two. Working with saxophonist Tom Scott’s fusion group, L.A. Express, Mitchell settled into a folk-pop-jazz groove that remains a landmark of breezy sophistication, particularly on the Top 10 single “Help Me.” Strange but true: A cover of “Twisted,” by the scat-jazz vocal group Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, closes the album — with stoner comics Cheech and Chong singing backup.
157 156 AC/DC Back in Black -72 Atlantic, 1980 In the middle of album rehearsals, singer Bon Scott went on a drinking spree; he choked on his vomit and was found dead in the back seat of a car. After two days of mourning, guitarist Malcolm Young thought, “Well, fuck this, I’m not gonna sit around mopin’ all fuckin’ year.” He called his brother, guitarist Angus Young, and they went back to work with replacement vocalist Brian Johnson. The resulting album has the relentless logic of a sledgehammer. Back in Black remains the purest distillation of hard rock: “Hells Bells,” “You Shook Me All Night Long,” and the title track have all become enduring anthems of strutting blues-based guitar.
158 157 Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers Damn the Torpedoes +74 Backstreet, 1979 With hair like Jagger’s and a voice like Dylan’s in tune, Tom Petty and his bar band defrilled classic rock: In 1979, he filed for bankruptcy; then Torpedoes took off, mostly because “Here Comes My Girl” seemed to keep the promises those like Jagger et al., forgot they’d made. Perfectly produced by future music-industry megamogul Jimmy Iovine, Torpedoes gave bright jangling Sixties rock a sheen that made pretty much everything else on AOR radio seem lumpy and stiff, while Petty’s obvious authenticity kept the music from ever seeming calculated or overly polished.
159 158 Iggy Pop Lust for Life New in 2023
160 159 The Doors The Doors -73 Elektra, 1967 After blowing minds as the house band at the Whisky-a-Go-Go, where they were fired for playing the Oedipal drama “The End,” the Doors were ready to unleash their organ-driven rock on the world. “On each song, we had tried every possible arrangement,” drummer John Densmore said, “so we felt the whole album was tight.” “Break on Through (To the Other Side),” “Twentieth Century Fox,” and “Crystal Ship” are pop-art lighting for Top 40 attention spans. But the Doors hit pay dirt by editing one of their jam songs for airplay: “Light My Fire,” written by guitarist Robbie Krieger, after Jim Morrison told everybody in the band to write a song with universal imagery.
161 160 Beck Odelay +264 Geffen, 1996 Burrowing into the studio with the Dust Brothers, Beck came back with a Technicolor version of his Woody Guthrie-meets-Grandmaster Flash vision, demonstrating to all his rock peers on “Devil’s Haircut” and “Where It’s At” that turntables had a brighter future than refried grunge, while reminding listeners of the Sixties and his own folk roots with the shabby, lovely “Jack-Ass.” As he told Rolling Stone in 1997, “I’m a traditionalist in a lot of ways. A lot of what my generation is into, what it represents, I’m totally against.”
162 161 The Zombies Odessey and Oracle +82 Date, 1968 The Zombies broke up two weeks after they completed Odessey and Oracle, in December 1967, and the album wasn’t released in the U.S. until 1969. But its baroque psychedelic-pop arrangements continue to exert a powerful influence, particularly on whimsy-loving indie rockers. Recorded in London at both Abbey Road and a Stones haunt, Olympic Studios, Odessey combined the adventure of Sgt. Pepper with the concision of British Invasion pop. And “Time of the Season” went on to become a Number Three hit.
163 162 Neutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the Sea +214 Merge, 1998 The Louisiana band nearly pulled off an indie-rock Pet Sounds with their second album, leavening low-fi guitar racket and twee folk with circus-y instruments like the singing saw and zanzithophone, as leader Jeff Magnum cut through the irony of the Seinfeld/Pavement era with his heraldic surrealist yammerings about broken homes, Anne Frank, religion, scary sexual awakenings, and other coming-of-age traumas. It’s weird, raw, harrowing stuff; if you think you can’t be moved by a song called “The King of Carrot Flowers Pts. 2 & 3,” hearing is believing.
164 163 Cream Disraeli Gears +7 Reaction, 1967 Of all Cream’s studio albums, Disraeli Gears is the sharpest and most linear. The power trio focused their instrumental explorations into colorful pop songs: “Strange Brew” (slinky funk), “Dance the Night Away” (trippy jangle), “Tales of Brave Ulysses” (a wah-wah freakout that Eric Clapton wrote with Martin Sharp, who created the kaleidoscopic cover art). The hit “Sunshine of Your Love” nearly didn’t make it onto the record; the band had trouble nailing it until famed Atlantic Records engineer Tom Dowd suggested that Ginger Baker try a Native American tribal beat, a simple adjustment that locked the song into place.
165 164 Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 +76 RCA, 1985 Sam Cooke was elegance and soul personified, but he works this Florida club until it’s hotter than hell, all while sounding like he never breaks a sweat. He croons and strokes “For Sentimental Reasons” like a superlover, and when the crowd sings along with him, it’s magic. RCA Records originally shelved the album out of fear that Cooke’s raw performance might alienate crossover (read: white) audiences. When it was finally released more than 20 years after he recorded, Live at the Harlem Square Club gave many fans a whole new perspective of his greatness.
166 165 De La Soul 3 Feet High and Rising -62 Tommy Boy, 1989 Long Island high school friends Posdnuos, Trugoy, and Maseo linked up with Stetsasonic DJ Prince Paul to create a left-field hip-hop masterpiece, heralding a “D.A.I.S.Y. Age” and weaving samples of Steely Dan, Malcolm McLaren, and Johnny Cash with raps about everything from Public Enemy-style politics (“Ghetto Thang”) to individualism (“Take It Off”) to body odor (“A Little Bit of Soap”). “There was no plan back then,” Trugoy told Rolling Stone in 2009. Indeed, De La Soul’s anything-goes spirit sparked generations of oddballs to rise up and get theirs.
167 166 Aretha Franklin I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You -153 Atlantic, 1967 Aretha Franklin’s Atlantic debut is the place where gospel music collided with R&B and rock & roll and became soul. The Detroit-born preacher’s daughter was about $80,000 in debt to her previous label, Columbia, when Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler signed her in 1966. “I took her to church,” Wexler said, “sat her down at the piano, and let her be herself.” Recording with the best session men at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, she promptly cut the album’s title hit, a slow-fire ballad of ferocious sexuality. The historic moment, of course, was her storefront-church makeover of Otis Redding’s “Respect,” which became Franklin’s first Number One pop single, prompting Redding to exclaim, “I just lost my song.” Soon, it would be the new marching anthem of the women’s and civil rights movements. “Women did, and still do, need equal rights,” Franklin said decades later. “We’re doing the same job, we expect the same pay, and the same respect.” She reinforced that feminism on “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” and had the guts to wring more pathos from Sam Cooke’s civil rights anthem, “A Change Is Gonna Come,” than any other singer who has attempted that landmark song. Never Loved a Man began an unparalleled run of classic albums for Franklin; it’s the sound of the Queen of Soul claiming her crown.
168 167 The Pretenders Pretenders -15 Sire, 1980 After years of knocking around Ohio and England, writing record reviews and hanging with the Sex Pistols, Chrissie Hynde put together a band as tough as her attitude. The Pretenders’ debut is filled with no-nonsense New Wave rock such as “Mystery Achievement” — plus a cover of “Stop Your Sobbing,” by the Kinks’ Ray Davies (three years later, the father of Hynde’s child). The biggest hit was “Brass in Pocket,” a song of ambition and seduction. Hynde, however, wasn’t so sure about the song’s success. “I was embarrassed by it,” she said. “I hated it so much that if I was in Woolworth’s and they started playing it, I’d have to run out of the store.”
169 168 Buzzcocks Singles Going Steady +82 I.R.S., 1979 Some punks wanted to smash the state. The Buzzcocks just wanted to find someone to love, and if you didn’t return their intense affection, watch out (check the jilted tantrum “Oh Shit!”). Singles collects eight British 45s into a perfect punk album. This Manchester group took the sound of the Ramones and made it jittery and even faster. Songs such as “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays” define a world of permanently frustrated punk desire.
170 169 Moby Grape Moby Grape New in 2023
171 170 Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin -69 Atlantic, 1969 On their first album, Led Zeppelin were still in the process of inventing their own sound, moving on from the heavy rave-ups of guitarist Jimmy Page’s previous band, the Yardbirds. But from the beginning, Zeppelin had the astonishing fusion of Page’s lyrical guitar playing and Robert Plant’s paint-peeling love-hound yowl. “We were learning what got us off most and what got people off most,” said Plant. Yet the template for everything Zeppelin achieved in the 1970s is here: brutal rock (“Communication Breakdown”), thundering power balladry (“Your Time Is Gonna Come”), and acid-flavored folk blues (“Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”).
172 171 Dr. Dre The Chronic -134 Deathrow, 1992 When George Clinton first heard hip-hop artists blending old records with new beats, he wasn’t too impressed. But then Dr. Dre turned samples of Clinton’s P-Funk sides into G-Funk, and Dr. Funkenstein approved, calling funk “the DNA of hip-hop and rap.” Dre had already taken gangsta rap to the mainstream with his earlier group, N.W.A, but on The Chronic, he funked up the rhymes with a smooth bass-heavy production style and the laid-back delivery of then-unknown rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg. When Dre and Snoop dropped “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang,” there was no getting out of the way.
173 172 Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot +53 Nonesuch, 2001 When Reprise Records refused to release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco posted it for free on the internet. Two-hundred-thousand downloads later, Nonesuch Records (owned by the same company as Reprise) released the album, and it became critical and commercial gold. Its pretty acoustic-guitar melodies battled noise, skidded into dissonance, or got chopped off abruptly. Its lyrics pitted hope against doubt, with all bets off. “You have to learn how to die,” crooned Jeff Tweedy, “if you wanna … be alive.”
174 173 Big Brother & the Holding Company Cheap Thrills +199 Columbia, 1968 After Big Brother’s performance at the Monterey Pop Festival made Janis Joplin a star, fans were heatedly expecting a live album from them. But their in-the-red loudness and sloppy performances meant they had to cut their second album in a New York studio, with crowd noise added in later. “We’re just a sloppy group of street freaks,” Joplin said. But these San Francisco acid rockers were the most simpatico band she ever had, especially when their raw racket backs Joplin up on “Piece of My Heart,” perhaps her greatest recording.
175 174 Creedence Clearwater Revival Green River New in 2023
176 175 Björk Post New in 2023 One Little Indian, 1995 Björk's second solo album expanded her artistic palette beyond the experimental rock of 'Debut' to incorporate electronic music, jazz, and world music influences. Working with producers including Nellee Hooper, Tricky, and Graham Massey, Björk created a genre-defying album that features the hit singles 'Army of Me' and 'It's Oh So Quiet.' The album's adventurous spirit, combining her unique vocal style with cutting-edge production, established Björk as one of the most innovative artists of the 1990s. Her fearless experimentation with different genres while maintaining her distinctive artistic voice makes 'Post' a landmark of electronic music.
177 176 PJ Harvey To Bring You My Love New in 2023 Island, 1995 Polly Jean Harvey's third album marked a dramatic shift toward a more experimental and theatrical approach. Recorded with producer Flood, the album features Harvey's most diverse musical palette yet, incorporating blues, gospel, and electronic elements. Songs like 'Down by the Water' and 'C'mon Billy' showcase her powerful vocals and provocative lyrics, while tracks like 'Long Snake Moan' reveal her deep connection to American roots music. The album's dark, atmospheric production and Harvey's fearless artistic vision established her as one of the most important alternative rock artists of the 1990s.
178 177 Dire Straits Dire Straits New in 2023
179 178 Pulp Different Class -16 Island, 1995 Pulp blew up in the Brit-pop scene of the 1990s, yet Jarvis Cocker outclassed all his rivals as a master storyteller and wit. This man was a born rock star in the Bowie mode, striking a pose in his thrift-shop razzmatazz, but with his own sly sense of compassion. On Different Class, he croons his breathy tales of working-class lust, envy, and dread, over the swishy, trash-disco grooves of “Common People” and “Disco 2000.” You can hear the shabby glamour in his voice when he sighs, “I’ve kissed your mother twice/And now I’m working on your dad.” But in the finale, “Bar Italia,” he makes a post-clubbing hangover sound like the most romantic adventure in the world.
180 179 X-Ray Spex Germfree Adolescents +175 EMI, 1978 Teenage multiracial London girl Poly Styrene had braces on her teeth and wore Day-Glo rags, screeching anthems like “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” over saxophone blasts, and chanting, “I am a poseur and I don’t care! I like to make people stare!” X-Ray Spex’s explosive punk-rock debut went criminally unreleased in the U.S., but it became a word-of-mouth cult classic throughout the indie-rock underground in the Eighties and Nineties, influencing Sleater-Kinney, the Beastie Boys, and many others.
181 180 Black Flag Damaged +307 SST, 1981 MCA refused to release this album, denouncing it as “immoral” and “anti-parent.” High praise, but Black Flag lived up to it, defining L.A. hardcore punk with Greg Ginn’s violent guitar and the pissed-off scream of Henry Rollins, especially on “TV Party” and “Rise Above,” which came with the timeless smash-the-glass salvo “We are tired of your abuse/Try to stop is but it’s no use.” Punks still listen to Damaged, and parents still hate it.
182 181 The Flying Burrito Brothers The Gilded Palace of Sin +281 A&M, 1969 A landmark of country rock — or, as Gram Parsons called it, “cosmic American music.” He and Chris Hillman were a pair of ex-Byrds who’d flown the coop. The Burritos put their poetic twist on hillbilly twang, proudly wearing Nudie suits and bringing in the pedal steel guitar of Sneaky Pete Kleinow. “Boy, I love them,” Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone. “Their record instantly knocked me out.” They sing “Sin City” in high-lonesome two-part harmony, sounding like country boys lost in the decadence of Sixties L.A.; “Wheels” is God-fearing hippie soul.
183 182 Richard Hell & the Voidoids Blank Generation New in 2023
184 183 T. Rex Electric Warrior +5 Reprise, 1971 “A successful, hit rock & roll record is a spell,” T. Rex leader Marc Bolan told Rolling Stone. And so, muttering “eye of Bowie, toe of Slade,” Bolan cast a spell over all of England. He took his Tolkienesque hippie music and gave it a glammed-out Chuck Berry update on sexy singles like “Bang a Gong (Get It On)”; this was rock that thrusted, quivered, and recklessly employed metaphors equating cars with sex (“You got a hubcap diamond star halo”). He outdid himself with “Jeepster,” an entire song on the topic, vibrating with lust, a shuffling beat, lots of guitar, and the sound of Bolan stomping on the studio floor.
185 184 Patsy Cline The Ultimate Collection +45 Universal, 2000 Her career was cut short when she died in a plane crash at 30, but Patsy Cline made her mark as one of country’s great singers. “Even though her style is considered country, her delivery is more like a classic pop singer,” Lucinda Williams has noted. Her hits “Walkin’ After Midnight” and “I Fall to Pieces” also made it to the pop charts, establishing the template for country crossover that pointed the way forward for generations; her version of “Crazy” was a godsend to the song’s struggling writer, a young Willie Nelson.
186 185 Galaxie 500 On Fire New in 2023
187 186 Isaac Hayes Hot Buttered Soul +187 Enterprise, 1969 Isaac Hayes demanded Stax Records give him complete artistic control for his second album. What happened next sounded like nothing else in music at the time, an orchestral-soul watershed that forecast R&B’s turn toward symphonic excess and plush introspect. Hayes’ 12-minute Southern-psychedelic version of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David “Walk On By” and his spectacularly tortured 18-minute take on Jimmy Webb’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” took easy-listening tunes and refashioned them in his own radically laid-back image.
188 187 Madonna Like a Prayer +144 Sire, 1989 “I like the challenge of merging art and commerce,” Madonna told Rolling Stone. After dominating Eighties pop without always getting the critical respect she deserved, Madonna finally won artistic recognition with her most personal set of songs, including “Till Death Do Us Part” and “Oh Father.” And she nailed the commerce side with “Express Yourself” and the title track, the video of which had the Vatican talking about blasphemy. “I pray when I’m in trouble or when I’m happy,” she said. “When I feel any sort of extreme.” Like a Prayer fused all of her extremes brilliantly.
189 188 New York Dolls New York Dolls +113 Mercury, 1973 “Do you think that you could make it with Frankenstein?” they asked, not kidding. Glammed-out punkers the New York Dolls snatched riffs from Chuck Berry and Fats Domino and fattened them with loads of attitude and reverb. Produced by Todd Rundgren, songs like “Personality Crisis” and “Bad Girl” drip with sleaze and style. “What the Dolls did to be influential on punk was show that anybody could do it,” singer David Johansen said. Indeed, its hard to imagine the Ramones or the Replacements or a thousand other trash-junky bands without them.
190 189 The Specials The Specials New in 2023
191 190 Buffalo Springfield Buffalo Springfield Again New in 2023
192 191 The Gun Club Fire of Love New in 2023
193 192 Pink Floyd The Wall -63 Columbia, 1979 Pink Floyd’s most elaborately theatrical album was inspired by their own success: the alienating enormity of their tours after The Dark Side of the Moon [see No. 55], which was when bassist-lyricist Roger Waters first hit upon a wall as a metaphor for isolation and rebellion. He finished a demo of the work by July 1978; the double album then took the band a year to make. Rock’s ultimate self-pity opera, The Wall is also hypnotic in its indulgence: the totalitarian thunder of “In the Flesh?”; the suicidal languor of “Comfortably Numb”; the Brechtian drama of “The Trial.” Rock-star hubris has never been more electrifying.
194 193 Dinosaur Jr. You're Living All Over Me New in 2023
195 194 Randy Newman Good Old Boys New in 2023
196 195 Hole Live Through This -89 Geffen, 1994 One week before Hole’s breakthrough album was released, Kurt Cobain killed himself and made Courtney Love a widow. The media attention that followed guaranteed a close listen for Love’s fearsome songs and her shift from pure riot-grrrl punk to a more stable sound that MTV could embrace. Her coded songs have dark topics, including death (“Kill me pills”), violence (“Pee girl gets the belt”), and body shame (“Bad skin, doll heart”), as well as motherhood. (Cobain and Love became parents two years earlier, and briefly lost custody after she was reported to have used heroin while pregnant.) The horror in Love’s exposed voice on “Asking for It” and “Doll Parts” gives immediacy to her firsthand stories about being an outcast “pee girl.”
197 196 The Raincoats The Raincoats +202 Rough Trade, 1979 The Raincoats came up with one of the most experimental and thrilling sounds to emerge from the London punk explosion — four women making their own gloriously unkempt racket. As guitarist Ana Da Silva explained, “We rehearsed for hours, but we always fell apart.” Da Silva and Gina Birch chant over Palmolive’s manic drums and Vicky Aspinall’s buzz-saw violin, for gems like “In Love” and their gender-twisted cover of the Kinks’ “Lola.” Their debut album finally got its long-overdue U.S. release in 1993, at the insistence of Raincoats superfan Kurt Cobain.
198 197 Massive Attack Blue Lines +44 Wildbunch/Virgin, 1991 Perhaps the first post-hip-hop masterpiece: Blue Lines combined rap, dub, and soul that gave birth to trip-hop; if you ever found yourself in a “chillout room” in 1995, this album was probably on, and it can still suck you into its gravitational pull. In the U.K., where acid house and jungle were the dominant sounds, its creepingly slow ambiance knocked the music world on its back. “What’s important to us is the pace,” said the band’s 3D, “the weight of the bass and the mood.”
199 198 The Modern Lovers The Modern Lovers +90 Beserkley, 1976 Jonathan Richman moved from Boston to New York as a teenager in hopes of sleeping on Lou Reed’s couch. That influence shows on the two-chord anthem “Roadrunner.” Recorded in 1972 but not released until 1976, Lovers turned the tough sounds of the Velvets into an ode to suburban romanticism. “Rock & roll was about stuff that was natural,” Richman said. “I wasn’t about drugs and space.” Songs like “Pablo Picasso,” “Girl Friend,” and “Dignified and Old” touched generations of punk and indie-rock innocents.
200 199 The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East New in 2023 Capricorn, 1971 Although this double album is the perfect testimony to the Allman Brothers’ improvisational skills, it is also evidence of their unprecedented connection with the crowds at New York’s Fillmore East. “The audience would kind of play along with us,” singer-organist Gregg Allman said of those March 1971 shows. “They were right on top of every single vibration coming from the stage.” The guitar team of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts was at its peak, seamlessly fusing blues and jazz in “Whipping Post” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” But their telepathy was cut short: Just three months after the album’s release, Duane died in a motorcycle accident.
201 200 Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy -183 Roc-A-Fella, 2010 Our relationship with Kanye West was still in its love-hate phase when he created the 21st century’s most awe-inspiring hip-hop masterpiece. It’s an album every bit as chaotic as he was at the time — from the creepy funk of “Gorgeous” to the crushing attack of “Hell of a Life.” After his Taylor Swift VMAs fiasco in 2009, West went into a kind of self-exile, eventually ending up in Hawaii, where he imported a huge group of collaborators who included Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, Nicki Minaj, and RZA. In all-night recording sessions, he’d ping between studios, sculpting his most maximalist music ever; “a song like ‘Power’ took 5,000 hours,” he later said, “like literally.” West pulled from everywhere — Elton John played on “All of the Lights,” and “Power” sampled prog-rockers King Crimson. West’s sense of his own grandiose ambitions bordered on the comical; during the writing process for the nine-minute “Runaway,” he famously told guest rapper Pusha T to add “more douchebag” to his verses. The resulting track opened with just a single, eerie piano note before building into a mountainous, anarchic tune that incorporated everything from a Rick James sample to a vocoder that evoked Robert Fripp’s guitar playing on Brian Eno albums. The sonic overkill was lavish, but the record hit so hard because he mixed megalomania with introspect; “You been puttin’ up wit’ my shit just way too long,” he rapped on “Runaway.” West later called Dark Fantasy an apology record.” Perhaps. In any case, that wisdom has proved fleeting.
202 201 Pixies Surfer Rosa +189 4AD, 1988 The brainy Boston quartet went up against punk producer Steve Albini for one of the era’s most influential rock sounds: all razor-blade guitars and drum thud. It became the sound of the Nineties, as everyone from Nirvana to PJ Harvey went to Albini, hoping to get the raw power of Surfer Rosa. Black Francis goes from a whisper to a scream in oddities like “Bone Machine,” “River Euphrates,” and “Where Is My Mind?” But bassist (and future Breeder) Kim Deal steals the show with her cheeky Midwest vocals in “Gigantic.”
203 202 Arcade Fire Funeral +298 Merge, 2004 Loss, love, forced coming-of-age, and fragile generational hope: Arcade Fire’s debut touched on all these themes as it defined the independent rock of the ‘00s. Built on family ties (leader Win Butler, his wife, Régine Chassagne, his brother Will), the Montreal band made symphonic rock that truly rocked, simultaneously outsize and deeply personal, like the best pop. But for all its sad realism, Butler’s is music that still finds solace, and purpose, in communal celebration.
204 203 LCD Soundsystem Sound of Silver +230 DFA/Capitol, 2007 James Murphy had proven his kung fu as the most badass electro-punk producer in clubland. But not even fierce fans dreamed he’d make a masterpiece like Sound of Silver. Every track sounded like a different band’s greatest hit, from the political punk goof “North American Scum” to the synth-pop breakup lament “Someone Great.” The song for the ages was “All My Friends,” huge, sweeping, ferociously emotional, with disco keyboards and rock guitars pulsing as Murphy looked back on a youth of killer parties and silent mornings.
205 204 The Go-Betweens 16 Lovers Lane New in 2023
206 205 Dr. John Gris-Gris +151 Atco, 1968 Mac Rebennack was a New Orleans piano player on songs for Professor Longhair and Frankie Ford who moved to L.A. in the Sixties, where he played on Phil Spector sessions and encountered California psychedelia. Rechristening himself Dr. John Creaux the Night Tripper, he made this swamp-funk classic. Gris-Gris blends New Orleans R&B, voodoo chants, and chemical inspiration. The groovy Afro-Caribbean percussion and creaky sound effects aren’t just otherworldly — they seem to come from several other worlds all at once.
207 206 D'Angelo Voodoo -178 EMI, 2000 In the five years following the release of his 1995 debut, Brown Sugar, D’Angelo grew disillusioned with the genre that had just anointed him a rising star. “I don’t consider myself an R&B artist,” the then-26-year-old told Jet. “R&B is pop, that’s the new word for R&B.” In his quest to create something new, he looked to both the masters of soul (Marvin, Curtis, Stevie) and contemporary innovators (Lauryn, Erykah). The end result was Voodoo, a moving, inventive masterpiece that stands as the ultimate achievement of the neo-soul era. Crafted with producer and drummer Questlove, who called the LP a “vicarious fantasy,” Voodoo places Pink Floyd-style cosmic jams (“Playa Playa”) next to Prince-inspired erotica (“Untitled [How Does It Feel]”). “I’m just looking at Voodoo as just the beginning,” D’Angelo said at the time. “It took a while, but I’m on my way now.”
208 207 Metallica Master of Puppets -110 Elektra, 1986 Metallica’s third album has a lyrical theme: manipulation. “It deals pretty much with drugs,” singer-guitarist James Hetfield said. “Instead of you controlling what you’re taking and doing, it’s drugs controlling you.” It also has a sonic theme: really loud guitars, played fast, with no regard for the hair metal that was then dominating the airwaves. When the band slows down on “Welcome Home (Sanitarium),” it just emphasizes the unrelenting nature of the rest of the songs. Recorded during three months in Copenhagen, Master of Puppets was bassist Cliff Burton’s last album with Metallica; he died in September 1986, when the band’s bus crashed.
209 208 Uncle Tupelo No Depression New in 2023
210 209 Outkast Aquemini -160 LaFace, 1998 The title of OutKast’s third album is a made-up word that combines the star signs of Big Boi (Aquarius) and André 3000 (Gemini). Their music is about duality too, matching Big Boi’s imperative to “make the club get crunk” with André’s determination to “activate the left and right brain.” André was the virtuoso, clipping off compound rhymes with grace, while Big Boi’s more grounded flow and clear diction rooted their songs. Hits like “Rosa Parks” put the duo’s hometown “Hotlanta” on the rap map, and at a time when formulaic albums by Master P and Puff Daddy topped the charts, OutKast unleashed an explosive sound that used live musicianship, social commentary, and a heavy dose of deep funk to create the greatest record ever to come out of the Dirty South.
211 210 Air Moon Safari New in 2023
212 211 Richard & Linda Thompson I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight +274 Island, 1974 With Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson was one of the first prominent Sixties folk rockers to look to his native England’s traditions for inspiration. After leaving Fairport, he joined with his wife, Linda Thompson to make stellar albums in the Seventies. Richard played guitar like a Sufi-mystic Neil Young; Linda had the voice of a Celtic Emmylou Harris. Bright Lights is their devastating masterwork of folk-rock dread. Radiohead even picked up some guitar tricks from “The Calvary Cross.”
213 212 The White Stripes Elephant +237 V2/XL/Third Man, 2003 The Stripes exploded out of Detroit with a minimalist garage-blues attack: just Jack White on guitar and Meg White on drums, taking on the world. These kids insisted they were a brother and sister, even after people learned they were secretly a divorced couple. But against all odds, the low-budget duo became a global sensation for their sheer rock power. Elephant seethes with raw desperation and lust in “Seven Nation Army,” “Hypnotize,” and “The Hardest Button to Button.” Jack plays guitar hero in the seven-minute jam “Ball and Biscuit.”
214 213 Cheap Trick In Color New in 2023
215 214 Traffic The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys New in 2023
216 215 Echo & the Bunnymen Heaven Up Here New in 2023
217 216 The Stone Roses The Stone Roses +103 Silvertone, 1989 For a few glorious moments at the dawn of the Nineties, the Stone Roses looked like they were going to lead another British Invasion, this one of baggy-panted, floppy-haired bands that loved Sixties guitars and rave-y dance beats with the same whimsical fervor. The sound never crossed over here, and the band fell apart — but first they made this incredible album, highlighted by the ecstatic eight-minute-long “I Am the Resurrection.” It laid the foundation for the Brit pop that blew up a few years later.
218 217 Can Ege Bamyasi +237 United Artists, 1972 Chugging out of Cologne, Germany, in the late Sixties, avant-psychedelic crew Can took influence from the Velvet Underground’s subterranean drones, Miles Davis’ molten jazz rock, and James Brown’s circular funk grooves. On Ege Bamyasi, new singer Damo Suzuki mumbles, chants, and shrieks his way through engulfing Kraut-boogie workouts like “Vitamin C” and “I’m So Green.” Spoon took their name from the LP’s Doors-meets-Stereolab closing track, and Kanye West sampled the lupine “Sing Swan Swing.”
219 218 Iggy & the Stooges Raw Power New in 2023
220 219 Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream +122 Virgin, 1993 “All these alternative bands today are so high up on their punk-rock horse that they’re in denial about being huge and playing big shows,” Billy Corgan told Rolling Stone in 1994. “Not only do we respect the clichés, we see the truth in them.” On their second disc, the Pumpkins pushed further from Nineties alt-rock to a grander, orchestrated sound with multiple guitar parts, strings, and a Mellotron. Alt-rock ended up following the band on its trip: Siamese Dream is packed with hits (“Cherub Rock,” “Today”).
221 220 50 Cent Get Rich or Die Tryin' +60 Interscope, 2002 The backstory — promising street rapper gets shot nine times and lives to make a classic debut — was irresistible. So were the precision-engineered beats and hooks 50 Cent cooked up with his new mentor, Dr. Dre. Through a mixture of melody and menace, 50 enraptured the suburbs with “In da Club” and antagonized an entire generation of his peers on “Many Men.” His hulking figure, physically and metaphorically, loomed over the rap charts for years, teaching a generation of artists that nothing sold like fear itself.
222 221 Peter Gabriel Peter Gabriel 3: Melt New in 2023
223 222 ABC The Lexicon of Love New in 2023
224 223 Bob Mould Workbook New in 2023
225 224 Guns N' Roses Appetite for Destruction -162 Geffen, 1987 The biggest-selling debut album of the Eighties, Appetite hit the metal scene like an asteroid, bringing the grit and fury of Seventies rock back to a mainstream hard-rock scene that was starved for something real. Indiana-bred Axl Rose’s five-alarm yowl bowled over listeners. Guitarist Slash gave the band blues emotion and punk energy, while the rhythm section brought the funk on hits such as “Welcome to the Jungle.” When all the elements came together, as in the final two minutes of “Paradise City,” GN’R left all other Eighties metal bands in the dust, and they knew it, too. “A lot of rock bands are too fucking wimpy to have any sentiment or any emotion,” Rose said. “Unless they’re in pain.”
226 225 Violent Femmes Violent Femmes New in 2023
227 226 Dexy's Midnight Runners Searching for the Young Soul Rebels New in 2023
228 227 Ray Charles Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music -100 ABC-Paramount, 1962 Country and soul were deeply entangled Southern traditions and had been cross-pollinating for years. But Modern Sounds was still the audacious boundary smasher its title promised, with Ray Charles applying his gospel grit and luscious soul-pop strings to standards by Hank Williams (“Half as Much,” “You Win Again,” “Hey, Good Lookin’”) and Eddy Arnold, whose lover’s lament “You Don’t Know Me” is recast as a parable about race relations in light of the civil rights struggle. Modern Sounds became the most popular album of Charles’ career and includes the hits “I Can’t Stop Loving You” and “Born to Lose.”
229 228 King Crimson In the Court of the Crimson King New in 2023
230 229 PJ Harvey Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea +84 Island, 2000 Polly Jean Harvey happy? Album number five found her in New York and in love, crowing “I’m immortal/When I’m with you” in the surging opener, “Big Exit.” Harvey had spent four records howling her sexual obsessions and romantic disappointments over stark postmodern blues. Her guitar attack was still forceful, but softened around the edges by marimba, piano, organ, and guest vocalist Thom Yorke, especially on the garage-y “Good Fortune” and the yearning “A Place Called Home” — mash notes to lovers in the big city.
231 230 My Morning Jacket Z New in 2023
232 231 The Feelies Crazy Rhythms New in 2023
233 232 Ice Cube AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted -45 Priority, 1990 Six months after quitting N.W.A, the group’s most gifted lyricist returned with a vengeance on AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, recorded with Public Enemy’s production crew, the Bomb Squad. Lyrically, it sharpened N.W.A’s politics; “Why more niggas in the pen than in college?” Cube asks on “The Nigga Ya Love to Hate.” The album’s rapacious sexism has aged horrendously, though give Cube some credit for being smart enough to include the stunning “It’s a Man’s World,” in which female rapper Yo-Yo tells him off straight to his face.
234 233 Graham Parker & the Rumour Squeezing Out Sparks New in 2023
235 234 Suicide Suicide +264 Red Star, 1977 These New York synth-punks evoke everything from the Velvet Underground to rockabilly. Martin Rev’s low-budget electronics are violent and hypnotic; Alan Vega screams as a rhythmic device. Late-night listening to “Frankie Teardrop,” a 10-minute-plus tale of a multiple murder, is not recommended. A droning voice in the wilderness when they appeared in the Seventies, the duo would influence bands from Arcade Fire and the National to Bruce Springsteen, who covered Suicide live in 2016.
236 235 Steely Dan Can't Buy a Thrill -67 ABC, 1972 Working as hired songwriters by day, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker rehearsed this debut in executives’ offices by night. “We play rock & roll, but we swing,” said Becker. For proof, check the cool lounge-jazz rhythms of “Do It Again” and the hot guitar of “Reelin’ in the Years.” Even florid lead vocalist David Palmer (who the band soon fired) couldn’t damage the sad, stately beauty of “Dirty Work”; on “Brooklyn,” Becker and Fagen wrote the perfect elusive ode to their native borough. Their debut kicked off an amazing run of albums, like 1973’s Countdown to Ecstasy and 1974’s Pretzel Logic, that are just as fantastic.
237 236 Belle & Sebastian If You're Feeling Sinister +245 Jeepster, 1996 Being a self-pitying shut-in has never sounded better than it does on the Scottish twee icons’ breakthrough. The chamber-folk arrangements are second to none — like a cup of tea brewed for you by a hopeless crush with a really good record collection — but don’t sleep on Stuart Murdoch’s subtly sardonic lyrics on “The Stars of Track and Field” and “Seeing Other People,” which give these wistful-sounding songs a bite that sets them apart from most imitators.
238 237 Cocteau Twins Heaven or Las Vegas +8 4AD, 1990 Cocteau Twins were Scot goths who helped invent the dream-pop aesthetic that ruled U.K. indie during the Eighties. Heaven or Las Vegas is their arrestingly beautiful pop peak, despite being released as the band itself was in turmoil, largely brought on by guitarist Robin Guthrie’s drug addiction. Somehow, they created something wholly transporting; Elizabeth Fraser’s celestial soprano works like a vocal Rorschach test, gorgeously floating over Guthrie and Simon Raymonde’s magic-hour instrumentation.
239 238 The Strokes Is This It -124 RCA, 2001 Before Is This It even came out, New York’s mod ragamuffins were overnight sensations, jumping from Avenue A to press hysteria and the inevitable backlash, all inside a year. The objective of Is This It, said singer Julian Casablancas, “was to be really cool and non-mainstream, and be really popular.” Recorded literally under the streets of New York, this blast of guitar-combo racket passionately reconciled those seemingly contradictory aspirations, and accomplished both, updating the propulsion of the Velvet Underground and the jangle of Seventies punk with Casablancas’ acidic dispatches mixed to the fore and ringed with distortion like he was singing from a pay phone.
240 239 The Cure Disintegration -123 Fiction, 1989 According to the kids on South Park, this is the best album ever made. According to many depressive Eighties-minded kids, it’s the only album ever made. Disintegration was the height of stadium goth rock, with the Cure stretching out for long, spacious wallows like ‘Plainsong” and “Prayers for Rain.” But it also shows off Robert Smith’s stunning pop mastery on “Lovesong,” which Smith wrote as a wedding present for his wife, and the rapturously forlorn “Pictures of You.” On “Fascination Street,” his voice shakes like milk as he makes adolescent angst sound so wonderfully, wonderfully pretty. “I was trying to put in one or two beacons of light in amongst the darkness,” he told Rolling Stone.
241 240 Eric B. & Rakim Paid in Full -179 4th & B’way, 1987 Ice-grilled, laid-back, diamond-sharp: Rakim was the Eighties’ greatest rapper, and this album is the record that cemented his legend. Paid in Full was one of the first hip-hop records to fully embrace Seventies funk samples on stone hip-hop classics such as “I Know You Got Soul” and “I Ain’t No Joke.” With a stark, chill declamatory flow that broke from the singsong-y style of most rapping at the time, Rakim moved hip-hop from stories about the world of the hood to ones about the mind (“I start to think and then I sink/Into the paper like I was ink”). Eric B. built the title track out of a luscious sampled bass line, and Rakim recounted days of poverty when he had “nothin’ but sweat inside my hand,” a problem solved by this debut’s platinum success.
242 241 Tom Waits Swordfishtrombones New in 2023
243 242 The Pogues Rum Sodomy & the Lash New in 2023
244 243 The Police Synchronicity -84 A&M, 1983 “I do my best work when I’m in pain and turmoil,” Sting told Rolling Stone. And indeed, the dissolution of his first marriage produced some of his best work, including “King of Pain” and the stalker’s anthem “Every Breath You Take.” There was pain and turmoil in the band, too — it would be the Police’s last album. But it became one of the Eighties’ biggest pop-rock blockbusters, perhaps the finest example of Sting’s unique gift for distilling complex psychological and romantic dramas, which still ruled radio and MTV, while making proggy musicianship and dense composition palatable to the mall-rat masses.
245 244 Blur Parklife +194 Food, 1994 Blur improbably burst into the mainstream with Parklife‘s “Girls & Boys,” a five-minute disco-rock barnburner about cross-dressing, bisexual libertines. They also sang about the joys of slacking (“Parklife”) but also how boring it is to conform (“End of the Century”), and they transformed a map of England into a metaphor for surviving rough patches (“This Is a Low”). Frontman Damon Albarn’s gifts for storytelling, singalong melodies, and Anglophilia set up Blur as heirs apparent to the Kinks and fierce rivals to Oasis for Brit pop’s crown.
246 245 Meat Puppets Meat Puppets II New in 2023
247 246 Scritti Politti Cupid & Psyche 85 New in 2023
248 247 Supertramp Crime of the Century New in 2023
249 248 Thelonious Monk Brilliant Corners New in 2023 Riverside, 1957 Thelonious Monk's breakthrough album showcased his unique approach to jazz composition and performance. The album's angular melodies and unconventional harmonies, particularly on the title track, established Monk as one of jazz's most important innovators. Working with saxophonist Sonny Rollins and other top musicians, Monk created a form of jazz that was both challenging and deeply swinging.
250 249 Big Youth Screaming Target New in 2023
251 250 The Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs +156 Merge, 1999 “It started with the title,” Stephin Merritt said of 69 Love Songs, which he imagined in the Sinatra-era tradition of “theme” albums. A tour de force of pop mastery, his three-disc splurge had everything from lounge jazz to Podunk country to punk parody, peaking with sidelong standards like “Papa Was a Rodeo” and “The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side.” God-level moment: “The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure,” which is titled after a French linguist and rhymes his name with closure, bulldozer, and classic Motown songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland, hooking it all to an unforgettable tune.
252 251 Daft Punk Discovery -15 Virgin, 2001 The robot duo from France perfected house music as pop on their 1997 album Homework. For the follow-up, they took electronic dance music to a whole new place, with the vocoder euphoria of “One More Time” and the deep-groove delight “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,” where the title is chanted like a mantra at a dystopian corporate retreat. But even the winky moments have heart, like “Digital Love,” where Eighties guitar cheese takes off toward Tomorrowland.
253 252 Oasis (What's the Story) Morning Glory? -95 Epic, 1995 With their second album, the fighting Gallagher brothers embraced their Stones and Beatles comparisons, then went ahead and established themselves as a rock & roll force in their own right with barnburners (“Roll With It”) and epic tunes, like the glorious “Wonderwall.” “The whole of the first album is about escape,” Noel Gallagher told Rolling Stone in 1996, of 1994’s Definitely Maybe. “It’s about getting away from the shitty, boring life of Manchester. The first album is about dreaming of being a pop star in a band. The second album is about actually being a pop star in a band.”
254 253 The Impressions The Impressions' Greatest Hits New in 2023
255 254 Radiohead Kid A -234 Parlophone, 2000 A new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century, Radiohead’s fourth album, released in October 2000, remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history. The band had the freedom to do whatever it wanted after its 1997 alt-rock breakthrough, OK Computer [see No. 42]. “Everyone expected us to become this U2 type of band, with that stadium credibility,” bassist Colin Greenwood said in 2001. Instead, frontman Thom Yorke gorged on albums by avant-techno innovator Aphex Twin and other artists on the Warp Records roster, inspiring him to put down his guitar and embrace the glacial beauty of abstract electronics, glitchy beats, and the challenge of free-form composition. “It was difficult for the others [in the band], ’cause when you’re working with a synthesizer it’s like there’s no connection,” Yorke said in 2017. What emerged was at once scary and enveloping, pitched between deep alienation and profound tenderness — from the womblike ambient flow of “Everything in Its Right Place” to the free-jazz implosion “The National Anthem” to the gizmo-groove paranoia of “Idioteque.” “I find it difficult to think of the path we’ve chosen as ‘rock music,’ ” Yorke told Rolling Stone in 2000. “Kid A is like getting a massive eraser out and starting again.”
256 255 ZZ Top Tres Hombres New in 2023
257 256 Squeeze East Side Story New in 2023
258 257 Brian Eno Before and After Science New in 2023
259 258 Quicksilver Messenger Service Happy Trails New in 2023
260 259 The Temptations Anthology +112 Tamla/Motown, 1973 Indisputably the greatest black vocal group of the modern era, the Temptations embodied Motown, channeling unique individual voices and talents into pristine hits and tight, tuxedoed choreography. This three-album set features masterpiece after masterpiece of chugging, gospel-tinged soul, including “My Girl,” “I Can’t Get Next to You,” and “I Wish It Would Rain,” and later, psychedelic-soul adventures like “Cloud Nine” and the gritty message-song masterpiece “Ball of Confusion.”
261 260 Peter Tosh Legalize It New in 2023
262 261 Flying Lotus Cosmogramma New in 2023
263 262 The Pharcyde Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde +220 Delicious Vinyl, 1992 These high school friends from L.A. were a little like a West Coast answer to De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, offering their own spin on alternative hip-hop in the Nineties and showing there was something going on in Southern California beyond G-funk. They rapped about innocent topics, like having a crush on a teacher in “Passin’ Me By,” which was a small hit, but also about dating a cute girl who turns out “to be a John Doe” and run-ins with the cops (the Public Enemy-homage “Officer”). It all came out as bright and refreshing as sorbet.
264 263 Weezer Weezer (Blue Album) +31 Geffen, 1994 When it came out, Weezer’s debut was regarded as a quirky power-pop album with a couple of hit singles. The song’s were so catchy that some indie rockers wondered if they were put together by a record company, Monkees-style. But Rivers Cuomo’s band became a major influence on a whole generation of young sad-sack punkers. “People see us now as this credible band, and they assume we always were credible,” says Cuomo. “But, man, we could not have been more hated on when we came out.”
265 264 Loretta Lynn Coal Miner's Daughter +176 Decca, 1971 Loretta Lynn crossed over into pop with the autobiographical “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” in which she proudly recalled her meager upbringing amid weepy steel guitar — her mother read the Bible by “coal-oil light,” her dad sold hogs to buy her shoes. That resilient spirit carried over into the Coal Miner’s Daughter LP’s tunes about feeling jilted (“What Makes Me Tick”) and loving another woman’s man (“Any One, Any Worse, Any Where”), and the album, as well as the like-titled memoir and biopic, secured her place as one the most important country singers ever.
266 265 Robyn Body Talk -69 Konichiwa, 2010 Robyn had a few Swedish teen-pop hits in the Nineties, but she’s a worldly adult on Body Talk — this was the voice of a woman who knew how it felt to shed tears on the dance floor. She released Body Talk in three mini-album installments on her own Konichiwa label, before cherry-picking the highlights for this epochal feminist disco statement. “Dancing on My Own” became this century’s answer to “I Will Survive.” She told Rolling Stone, “I was pushing through the challenges and getting off on that liberated feeling of being able to explore desperation and passion and frustration and all that.”
267 266 Def Leppard Pyromania New in 2023
268 267 Wu-Tang Clan Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) -240 Loud, 1993 The first Wu-Tang Clan album launched rap’s most dominant franchise by inventing a new sound built around a hectic panoply of voices and spare, raw beats. RZA, the group’s sonic mastermind, constructed the Wu’s homemade world, he said, from a mix of “Eastern philosophy picked up from kung-fu movies, watered-down Nation of Islam preaching picked up on the New York streets, and comic books.” On “C.R.E.A.M.,” “Protect Ya Neck,” and the non-metaphorical “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing ta F’ Wit,” RZA’s offbeat samples (Thelonious Monk, the Dramatics, fellow New Yorker Barbra Streisand) create a grounding for the group’s nine members, including future solo stars Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Raekwon, GZA, Ghostface Killah, and Method Man. Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg had established L.A. as the center of hip-hop innovation and daring, but the Wu reclaimed the crown for the music’s birthplace.
269 268 Rufus & Chaka Khan Ask Rufus +231 ABC, 1977 Fronted by Chaka Khan, one of soul music’s most combustible singers, Rufus built its mid-Seventies sound on heavy-footed, guitar-slathered funk. But after spending 16 months in the studio working on Ask Rufus, they came out with a record that gave their songs more room to breathe, anticipating the lithe, loose arrangements of Nineties neo-soul. Khan glided through the head-nodding “Everlasting Love” and the twisty-turny “Better Days,” and fans appreciated the adjustment: Ask Rufus was the group’s first platinum record.
270 269 Neil Diamond The Bang Years 1966–1968 New in 2023
271 270 Fela Kuti & Africa 70 Expensive Shit +132 Sounds Workshop, 1975 The title track is a 13-minute odyssey that epitomizes Nigerian funk king Fela Kuti’s knack for channeling fearless social commentary into body-moving grooves; the Africa 70 horns blare out infectious riffs as peerless drummer Tony Allen keeps up an indefatigable shuffling pulse, while Fela calls out the “fools” who would “use your shit to put you for jail.” Side Two’s “Water No Get Enemy” slows things down to a celebratory strut, concluding a short-yet-sweet effort that plays like a primer on the joys of Afrobeat.
272 271 Shania Twain Come On Over +29 Mercury, 1997 Shania Twain’s third album was basically a country Thriller, still the biggest-selling album ever by a female artist. Twain and her husband, AC/DC and Def Leppard producer John “Mutt” Lange, had radio in a hammerlock during the late Nineties with hits like “You’re Still the One” and “Man! I Feel Like a Woman,” and Twain’s mix of genre-defying effervescence and feel-like-a-woman self-assertion helped pave the way for superstar rule breakers like the Dixie Chicks, Miranda Lambert, and Taylor Swift, who said seeing Shania perform inspired her to want to get onstage herself.
273 272 A Tribe Called Quest The Low End Theory -229 Jive, 1991 “We wanted the longevity of Earth, Wind, and Fire, and Prince, and people of that nature,” Phife Dawg told Rolling Stone. “We wanted to be known for full-length albums.” Other people connected the dots between hip-hop and jazz , but A Tribe Called Quest’s second album drew the entire picture. The sound is dominated by the low end of the title — they even recruited legendary jazz bassist Ron Carter (who’d worked with Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis). As Carter gets dope on the double bass, the Tribe discourse on matters ranging from the music industry (“Show Business”) to sexual politics (“The Infamous Date Rape”). Each time Q-Tip rhymes over Carter’s bass lines, the groove just gets deeper.
274 273 The White Stripes White Blood Cells New in 2023
275 274 The Slits Cut -14 Antilles, 1979 Avant-garde you can dance to — that’s the Slits’ Cut in a nutshell. The British group’s raucous debut took the best of late-Seventies post-punk’s favorite genre influences (dub, girl groups, abstract jazz), tossed them all into a blender, and somehow ended up with joyously anarchic songs like “Shoplifting,” with its awesome catchphrase, “We pay fuck-all!” Kurt Cobain would call “Typical Girls” one of the best songs ever recorded, and we can’t help but agree.
276 275 Radiohead In Rainbows +112 XL, 2007 Radiohead released In Rainbows as a surprise download in the fall of 2007, letting fans pay whatever they liked. But the real surprise was how expansive the music turned out to be, with material the band had road-tested live in the U.S. all summer. Thom Yorke gets soulful in the intense love songs “All I Need,” “House of Cards,” and “Nude.” It’s Radiohead’s warmest album, with the vibe of a communal jam session. One that’s taking place at the end of the world, of course.
277 276 Green Day Dookie +99 Reprise, 1994 The album that jump-started the Nineties punk-pop revival. The skittish Dookie was recorded in little more than three weeks, and singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong blazed through all the vocals in two days. “Right from getting the drum sound, everything seemed to click,” their A&R man (and Dookie producer) Rob Cavallo marveled. Indeed, “click” is the operative word here, also describing Armstrong’s airtight, three-minute bowshots like “Welcome to Paradise,” “Basket Case,” and the infectious smash “Longview” — which Armstrong described as “cheap self-therapy from watching too much TV.”
278 277 Billy Joel The Stranger -108 Columbia, 1977 On this record, Billy Joel found the recipe for success: a bottle of red, a bottle of white, and a sharp eye for the local color of New York street life. The Piano Man sharpens his storytelling gifts with a Scorsese-style sense of humor and compassion, whether he’s singing about a down-and-out Little Italy hustler in “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” the femme fatale in “She’s Always a Woman,” or the doomed Long Island greaser couple Brenda and Eddie in “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant.” Meanwhile, Joel hit the pop charts with the Grammy-winning “Just the Way You Are” (written for his first wife and manager, Elizabeth), which became a wedding-band standard.
279 278 Can Future Days New in 2023
280 279 George Michael Faith -128 Columbia, 1987 As the main singer and writer in the 1980s British pop band Wham!, George Michael paraded around in sleeveless mesh shirts and Fila short-shorts. Wham! songs were smarter than they appeared, and when Michael went solo to prove what he could do, he nailed it on the first try, integrating R&B in his songwriting, from soul ballads (“Father Figure,” “One More Try”) to horny Prince-inspired funk (“I Want Your Sex,” “Hard Day”). The album sold 25 million copies worldwide, and four singles went to Number One in the U.S. “You either see pop music as a contemporary art form, or you don’t. I do, very strongly,” Michael said.
281 280 The Isley Brothers 3 + 3 +184 T-Neck, 1973 The Isley Brothers ballooned from a trio that impressed the Beatles to a six-piece band on 3 + 3, which helped establish them as a funk force in the 1970s. The hit “That Lady” is stuffed with laser-bright guitar solos, and the slow numbers (including a cover of James Taylor’s “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight,” in which Ron Isley unfurled his heartbreaking falsetto and forceful midrange) hint toward the band’s bright future as pre-eminent balladeers in R&B’s Quiet Storm era.
282 281 Brian Wilson Smile +118 Nonesuch, 2004 This album lived in myth for decades. Brian Wilson’s unfinished response to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club took nearly 40 years to finally come to fruition. Longtime Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks helped him realize his vision, with lush string arrangements, sublime melodies, and vocal harmonies, all impeccably constructed. Close your eyes and you can imagine how it might’ve changed the world in 1968, but with Wilson’s influence still all over scads of indie bands in 2004, it sounds and feels majestically modern.
283 282 The Fall This Nation's Saving Grace New in 2023
284 283 Jefferson Airplane Surrealistic Pillow +188 RCA, 1967 Psychedelic scholars have long tried to pin down just what the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia did on this album (besides contribute some guitar playing) to earn a credit as “spiritual adviser.” But the real trip is the Airplane’s hallucinatory distillation of folk-blues vocals, garage-rock guitar, and crisp pop songwriting. Grace Slick’s vocal showcases — “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love” — made Surrealistic Pillow a commercial smash during San Francisco’s Summer of Love, and Marty Balin’s spectral “Today” is still the greatest ballad of that city’s glory days.
285 284 EPMD Strictly Business New in 2023
286 285 Rod Stewart Every Picture Tells a Story -108 Mercury, 1971 “We had no preconceived ideas of what we were going to do,” Rod Stewart said. “We would have a few drinks and strum away and play.” With a first-class band of drinking buddies (including guitarist Ron Wood and drummer Mickey Waller), Stewart made a loose, warm, compassionate album, rocking hard with mostly acoustic instruments. “Mandolin Wind” was his moving ballad of a country couple toughing out a long winter on the farm; the title tune was a hilarious goof. But Stewart scored his first Number One hit with “Maggie May,” his autobiographical tale of a young stud getting kicked in the head by an older lady.
287 286 Todd Rundgren A Wizard, a True Star New in 2023
288 287 Primal Scream Screamadelica +150 Sire, 1991 Primal Scream was a run-of-the-mill U.K. alt-rock band who discovered rave culture, overdosed on acid-house music, and retrofitted their sound with the fun, trippy, druggy disco-rock diversions on Screamadelica. The single “Loaded,” their first U.K. hit, combined house piano, folk melodies, and a danceable beat, while “Movin’ On Up,” their U.S. breakthrough, drew from hippie-folk strumming, gospel choruses, and Stones-y guitar and tambourine. Sure, some of Screamadelica feels like meandering mood music, but that’s proof that sometimes the journey is more fun than the destination.
289 288 The Ronettes Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes +206 Philles, 1964 More a Spanish Harlem street gang than a girl group, the Ronettes were pop goddesses dressed as Catholic schoolgirls gone to hell and back. Phil Spector builds his Wall of Sound as his teen protégée (and future wife) Ronnie Spector belts “Be My Baby” and “Walking in the Rain,” while songs like “I Wonder” and “Baby, I Love You” ache with hope for a perfect love that always seems to be impossibly ideal and just within arm’s reach.
290 289 Brian Eno Here Come the Warm Jets +19 Island, 1974 The former Roxy Music keyboardist’s first solo album pioneered a new kind of glammy art rock: jagged, free-form, and dreamy, sounding like nothing else in rock at the time. “Baby’s on Fire” and “Needles in the Camel’s Eye” are vicious rockers with detached vocals, and Robert Fripp’s warped guitars swarm and stutter, while “On Some Faraway Beach” and the title track are glistening slo-mo-drone pastorales. “I called it ‘warm jet guitar’ because it sounded like a tuned jet,” Eno said later.
291 290 Fiona Apple When the Pawn... -182 Epic, 1999 Following the success of her precocious debut, Tidal, and saddled with a pop audience that didn’t quite know what to do with her, Fiona Apple took her critics to task on the mature yet daring When the Pawn … Backed by her expressive piano playing and impressionistic production from Jon Brion, Apple makes resentment seem almost fun on songs like “Fast as You Can,” “Paper Bag,” and “The Way Things Are.” In years to come, Apple would make peace with her outcast status, leaving far behind the MTV-generation gatekeepers who once gave her so much grief. For generations of young fans, the raw, hard-won triumph of When the Pawn … will always feel timeless.
292 291 Grateful Dead Anthem of the Sun New in 2023
293 292 Junior Murvin Police and Thieves New in 2023
294 293 Suicide Suicide +205 Red Star, 1977 These New York synth-punks evoke everything from the Velvet Underground to rockabilly. Martin Rev’s low-budget electronics are violent and hypnotic; Alan Vega screams as a rhythmic device. Late-night listening to “Frankie Teardrop,” a 10-minute-plus tale of a multiple murder, is not recommended. A droning voice in the wilderness when they appeared in the Seventies, the duo would influence bands from Arcade Fire and the National to Bruce Springsteen, who covered Suicide live in 2016.
295 294 Burial Untrue New in 2023 Hyperdub, 2007 Burial's second album is a masterpiece of UK electronic music that captures the melancholy and alienation of urban life. Using a collage technique that incorporates vocal samples, vinyl crackle, and atmospheric textures, William Bevan created a deeply emotional form of dubstep. Tracks like 'Archangel' and 'Near Dark' evoke the ghostly atmosphere of London's nighttime streets. The album's influence on electronic music and its unique aesthetic of urban decay and romantic longing make it a defining work of 2000s electronic music.
296 295 Coldplay A Rush of Blood to the Head +29 Capitol, 2002 In the early 2000s, starry-eyed Brit-pop boys doing a cuddly version of Radiohead were a dime a dozen. (Remember Starsailor?) It was Coldplay’s second album that showed they were true contenders. Songs like “Green Eyes” and “The Scientist” brought back the comforting melodies of “Yellow,” but the twinkling sonics suggested prime Smiths or U2. And darker stuff, like the austerely beautiful death meditation “Amsterdam” and the OK Computer-worthy “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face,” showed the group had more than arena anthems on its mind.
297 296 Diana Ross & the Supremes Anthology +156 Tamla/Motown, 1974 In the heyday of Motown, the Supremes were their own hit factory, all glamour and heartbreak. Diana Ross and her girls ruled the radio with tunes from the Motown brain trust of Holland, Dozier, and Holland. The Supremes could blaze with confidence, as in “Come See About Me.” Or they could sound elegantly morose, as in “My World Is Empty Without You” and “Where Did Our Love Go?” But in “Love Is Like an Itching in My Heart,” when Miss Ross gulps, “There ain’t nothing I can do about it,” it’s a spine-tingling moment.
298 297 ABBA The Definitive Collection +6 Universal, 2001 These Swedish pop stars became the world’s biggest group in the 1970s, with a streak of Nordic despair under the sparkly melodies. Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad were the bewitching frontwomen in the sequined pantsuits; their husbands, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, wrote global hits like the joyful “Dancing Queen,” the double-divorce drama “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” and the haunting farewell “Thank You for the Music.”
299 298 Donald Fagen The Nightfly New in 2023
300 299 Ghostface Killah Supreme Clientele +104 Epic, 2000 “I feel like I got my whole style from Ghostface,” Kanye West has said. Lavishly unhinged and viciously hard-hitting, Ghostface Killah’s second solo album helped revive the Wu-Tang franchise, marinating lines like “Ghost is back, stretch Cadillacs, fruit cocktails/Hit the shelves at Paul’s pastry rack,” in serrated Seventies-soul samples. On “Nutmeg” he drops a mind-boxing cluster of psychedelic bullshit, then simply stands back during the chorus, letting the tape roll as he mocks all comers — an untouchable champ at the top of his game.
301 300 Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force Planet Rock: The Album New in 2023
302 301 Parquet Courts Wide Awake! New in 2023
303 302 The Fugees The Score -168
304 303 Ween Chocolate and Cheese New in 2023
305 304 Amy Winehouse Back to Black -271 Island, 2006 With her love of Sixties girl-group pop and her dark beehive, Amy Winehouse came across as a star from another time. But as a child of the Nineties, she also loved hip-hop and wrote openly about her splattered relationships and issues with drugs and alcohol. Her breakthrough second album (recorded in Brooklyn with co-producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi) marked the arrival of a resplendently damaged 21st-century torch singer. Tracks like the mildly pushy “You Know I’m No Good” and the sumptuous “Love Is a Loving Game” had an elegant, beguiling smudginess that avoided the wax-museum quality of so much retro soul. “My odds are stacked,” Winehouse sings. “I’ll go back to black.” Indeed, the pain and tumult in her voice was very real. Before her death in 2011, she left behind a tragically unfulfilled promise.
306 305 OutKast Speakerboxxx/The Love Below -15 LaFace, 2003 For a decade, OutKast were a duo defined by dichotomies — regional versus celestial, order amid chaos, blackness and the universal. On their fifth studio album, that tension could no longer be contained on one CD. Big Boi’s verbal funk overflowed on Speakerboxxx, his half of the double-disc set, while André 3000’s inner crooner exhaled like never before on The Love Below. It was a gamble to break up their twin alchemy this way, but in dividing themselves, OutKast conquered: America fell as deeply in love with the borderless pop bliss of “Hey Ya!” as it did with the slick talk and soulful horns on “The Way You Move.”
307 306 Dolly Parton Coat of Many Colors -49 RCA, 1971 Dolly Parton’s starkest, most affecting album. The title track is about wearing rags but keeping your pride. “That was a very sad and cutting memory that I long kept deep within myself,” she said of the song in a 1977 Rolling Stone interview. “I remembered all the pain of it and the mockery.” The rest is more hard country: On “Traveling Man,” Parton’s mom runs off with the singer’s boyfriend; on “If I Lose My Mind,” her boyfriend has sex with another woman in front of her.
308 307 The Shangri-Las Leader of the Pack New in 2023
309 308 Motörhead Ace of Spades +100 Bronze, 1980 Neither punk nor metal, Motörhead played rock & roll nastier, grittier, and snarlier than their forebears on Ace of Spades. Amid a miasma of hypercharged guitar riffs and death-rattle drumming, frontman Lemmy Kilmister, splits his time between sleazy come-ons (“Love Me Like a Reptile”), war stories (“(We Are) The Road Crew”), and underdog maxims (“Live to Win”). The blazing title track epitomized the Motörhead experience: “You know I’m born to lose, and gambling’s for fools,” Lemmy growls, “but that’s the way I like it, baby, I don’t wanna live forever.” He meant it, too.
310 309 Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works 85-92 New in 2023 R&S/Sire, 1992 Richard D. James's debut album as Aphex Twin established him as electronic music's most innovative and influential artist. Recorded primarily on analog equipment in his bedroom, the album's combination of ambient textures and intricate rhythms created a new form of electronic music. Tracks like 'Xtal' and 'Pulsewidth' showcase his ability to create both beautiful and unsettling soundscapes. The album's influence on electronic music genres from IDM to ambient techno cannot be overstated.
311 310 Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago +151 Jagjaguwar, 2007 Justin Vernon's debut album as Bon Iver was recorded in isolation at a remote cabin in Wisconsin, creating an intimate folk album that captured the loneliness and beauty of rural life. The album's sparse arrangements, featuring acoustic guitar, falsetto vocals, and subtle electronic textures, created a new template for indie folk. Songs like 'Skinny Love' and 'Re: Stacks' showcase Vernon's gift for melody and his ability to create emotional depth through minimalism.
312 311 John Prine John Prine -162 Atlantic, 1971 When John Prine resigned from his job as a USPS mailman, his supervisor snickered, “You’ll be back.” Instead, Prine became a revered folk-country-rock songwriter, starting with this first album, which is loaded with enduring gems, including “Angel From Montgomery,” “Hello in There,” and a song that regularly returns to relevance, “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.” Prine seemed like a Zen sage. He filled his songs with an uncynical live-and-let-live morality, and wrote in a colloquial voice that showed a love of the way Americans speak. His closest parallel isn’t another songwriter, it’s Mark Twain.
313 312 Vampire Weekend Modern Vampires of the City +16 XL, 2013 On Halloween 2012, with their hometown New York subsumed in a blackout, Vampire Weekend went on late-night TV to play an atheist reggae jam called “Unbelievers” dressed as skeletons. It was the perfect introduction to Modern Vampires of the City, a record that darkened their buoyant indie pop, as Ezra Koenig sang about moving beyond his post-college years into something scarier and weirder — hitting a cloudy peak with the beautifully worried Dylanesque travelogue “Hannah Hunt.”
314 313 The Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin New in 2023
315 314 Faust Faust IV New in 2023
316 315 Kid Cudi Man on the Moon: The End of Day +144 Dream On, 2009 Kid Cudi helped Kanye West shape his introspective R&B/hip-hop hybrid 808s & Heartbreak. On his debut LP, the Cleveland rapper took that sound further and deeper, merging emo and psychedelic rock with hip-hop bombast. His introspect runs the gamut from the severe depression of “Day ‘n’ Nite” to the sweet contentment of “Pursuit of Happiness,” both of which became unlikely hits. A decade after Man on the Moon, every chart is dominated by Kudi’s sad children.
317 316 Lou Reed Berlin New in 2023
318 317 Solange When I Get Home New in 2023
319 318 The Streets Original Pirate Material New in 2023
320 319 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Déjà Vu -99 Epic, 1970 Neil Young was just getting his solo career underway when he joined his old Buffalo Springfield bandmate Stephen Stills, ex-Byrd David Crosby, and former Hollie Graham Nash in the first of the West Coast supergroups. Young’s vision and guitar transformed the earlier folk-rock CSN into a rock & roll powerhouse. The CSNY combination was too volatile to last, but on their best album, they offered pop idealism (Nash’s “Teach Your Children”), militant blues (Crosby’s “Almost Cut My Hair”), and vocal-choir gallop (Stills’ “Carry On”).
321 320 M.I.A. Kala New in 2023
322 321 The Weeknd House of Balloons New in 2023 XO/Republic, 2011 The Weeknd's debut mixtape, later remastered and commercially released, established Abel Tesfaye as a major force in contemporary R&B. The album's dark, atmospheric production and sexually explicit lyrics created a new template for alternative R&B. Songs like 'Wicked Games' and 'The Morning' showcase his distinctive falsetto and the album's nocturnal, drug-hazed aesthetic. The mysterious circumstances of its initial release and its influence on a generation of R&B artists make it a defining work of 2010s music.
323 322 Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison -158 Columbia, 1968 By the late Sixties, Cash was ignored by country radio and struggling for a comeback. At Folsom Prison was a million-seller that reignited his career. A year later, he was writing liner notes for Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline and logging four weeks at Number One with his second prison album, At San Quentin. But Folsom Prison is essential Cash. Backed by a tough touring band, including fellow Sun Records alum Carl Perkins on guitar, Cash guffaws his way through “Cocaine Blues,” “25 Minutes to Go” (a countdown to an execution), and “Folsom Prison Blues,” with its line about shooting a man just to watch him die. The 2,000 inmates in attendance roar their approval.
324 323 Spiritualized Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space New in 2023
325 324 Madvillain Madvillainy +41 Stones Throw, 2004 This collaboration between rapper MF Doom and producer Madlib is one of underground hip-hop’s greatest moments. Madlib provides a shifting bed of warped funk and wildly unpredictable samples, drawing on everything from Thunder and Lightning’s “Bumpin’ Bus Stop” to “The Theme of the Justice League of America.” Doom’s rhymes are so casually adventurous that sometimes it takes a second to notice how stunning they are: “Still back in the game like Jack LaLanne/Think you know the name, don’t rack your brain/On a fast track to half sane” — hell yeah!
326 325 Maxwell Urban Hang Suite New in 2023 Columbia, 1996 Maxwell's debut album established him as a leader of the neo-soul movement, combining classic soul with contemporary R&B production. The album's sophisticated arrangements and Maxwell's smooth vocal delivery on songs like 'Ascension (Don't Ever Wonder)' and 'Whenever Wherever Whatever' created a more mature alternative to contemporary R&B. The album's influence on artists like D'Angelo and Erykah Badu helped establish neo-soul as a major force in 1990s music.
327 326 Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion New in 2023 Domino, 2009 Animal Collective's eighth studio album marked their transition to a more electronic, dance-influenced sound while maintaining their experimental edge. The album's layered production, featuring Panda Bear's rhythmic vocals and Avey Tare's melodic contributions, creates a psychedelic electronic landscape. Songs like 'My Girls' and 'Summertime Clothes' showcase their ability to create accessible pop songs within an experimental framework.
328 327 Toots & the Maytals Funky Kingston +17 Island, 1973 Loose, funky, and exuberant, Kingston is the quintessential document of Jamaica’s greatest act after Bob Marley. Showcasing some of the Maytals’ best songs (“Pressure Drop,” later covered by the Clash) and borrowing from soul, pop, and gospel, Funky Kingston introduced the world to the great Toots Hibbert. He performs versions of “Louie Louie” and, in a down-home surprise, John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” with Toots changing the lyrics from “West Virginia” to “West Jamaica.”
329 328 The Human League Dare New in 2023
330 329 Yes Close to the Edge +116 Atlantic, 1972 Sessions for this album were so intense and taxing that monster drummer Bill Bruford quit the band when it was over due to stress. The hard work paid off. Close to the Edge is the best of Yes’ many lineups at an absolute peak, with Jon Anderson’s sun-king vocals pouring out over new member Rick Wakeman’s dazzling keyboards. The title track, an 18-minute epic in four distinct parts, remains the most majestic moment in the prog-rock history.
331 330 The Congos Heart of the Congos New in 2023
332 331 Pet Shop Boys Actually +104 EMI Manhattan,, 1987 Neil Tennant was one of England’s best-known music journalists when he formed this Eighties synth-pop duo with Chris Lowe. The Pet Shop Boys scored a Number One smash with “West End Girls,” their ode to queer cruising. But they took their satirical wit even further on Actually — perhaps the only album on this list where the singer is yawning on the cover. The Boys dissect the sex-and-money connection in “Rent,” “Shopping,” and the Dusty Springfield duet, “What Have I Done to Deserve This?”
333 332 Erykah Badu Baduizm -243 Kedar, 1997 “If the head wrap was my trademark, the drums, African drums, were my soundtrack,” Erykah Badu recalled. “It’s just who I was at the time, and I wanted to be completely who I was when I did what I did.” Recorded between New York, Philadelphia, and her hometown of Dallas, the singer’s debut suggested a Billie Holiday raised on hip-hop and Stevie Wonder, celebrating herself and her heritage over resplendently relaxed grooves. Baduizm’s Seventies-meets-Nineties vibe, Badu’s exquisite lyricism (“On & On” is at once spiritual, apocalyptic, and funny), and jazz-steeped cadences (see “Appletree”) combined to make the 25-year-old singer a figurehead for the neo-soul genre that essentially began with this album.
334 333 Disco Inferno D.I. Go Pop New in 2023
335 334 ESG Come Away with ESG New in 2023
336 335 The Sonics Here Are the Sonics New in 2023
337 336 Alice Coltrane Journey in Satchidananda New in 2023 Impulse!, 1971 Alice Coltrane was a key part of her husband John’s fiery late-era bands. You can hear her own musical voice in full flower on this LP, named for her spiritual teacher Swami Satchidananda. Coltrane blended the sprawling modal jams pioneered by her late husband with drones from the Indian tanpura, Pharoah Sanders’ spiraling soprano sax, and her own rapturous harp. The result is a meditative bliss-out like jazz had never seen: part earthy blues and part ethereal mantra, and a potent influence on sonic seekers from Radiohead to Coltrane’s grandnephew Flying Lotus.
338 337 TLC CrazySexyCool -119 LaFace, 1994 Things were not well with TLC during the making of CrazySexyCool: Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes was lighting fires, and the group was in a financial slide that would end in bankruptcy proceedings. But they emerged with the most effervescent and soulful R&B pop anyone had heard since the Supremes. “Creep” is hard-edged but cute, the summery “Diggin’ on You” is almost pastoral in its intimate flow, and the transcendent “Waterfalls” may be the greatest song ever about how it’s not a great idea to go after your dreams.
339 338 Tame Impala Lonerism New in 2023
340 339 M.I.A. Arular +82 Interscope, 2005 What’s the opposite of a girl next door? Perhaps it might be a radicalized, globalized pop star like M.I.A., an English-Tamil writer who provocatively questioned and deconstructed ideas about power and rebellion throughout her first album. She raps and cajoles in hard-chopping cadences (“I bongo with my lingo,” indeed), and mixes jokes, disses, and political insight about the abuse of authority over electronic beats that can sound like New York City electroclash or Brazilian funk. And her hipster hit “Galang” hit as hard as any hip-hop around at the time.
341 340 Dwight Yoakam Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. New in 2023
342 341 Snoop Doggy Dogg Doggystyle -1 Death Row/Interscope, 1993 Until Snoop Dogg came along, no one in rap — and hardly anyone in rock — realized that an aloof whisper could be more intimidating than a shout. Snoop never gets heated; he takes the same tone when he’s menacing a cop as he does with a woman who’s soaping his back in the tub. Emanuel Dean and Dr. Dre’s sterling G-funk productions on “Gin N Juice” and “Who Am I (What’s My Name)?” ensured enormous album sales for the D-O-double-G’s debut and his laidbaaaack Indo-flavored tales of life on the streets of Compton.
343 342 Depeche Mode Violator -175 Sire, 1990 One of England’s first synth-pop bands, Depeche Mode had moved beyond their bubblegum phase by the time of their seventh album and, under the influence of hip-hop, began playing with samples and loops, even betraying their keyboard roots with the twangy guitar that opens “Personal Jesus.” Alan Wilder created the dense, constantly shifting arrangements, Martin Gore wrote the pervy lyrics, and Dave Gahan croons implacably about betrayal, immorality, and sexual domination. The percolating “Enjoy the Silence” became their only U.S. Top 10 single, and “Policy of Truth” did almost as well. With its panoply of high-gloss hooks and arresting, artificial sounds, Violator cemented Depeche Mode’s status as the first electronic band that could fill stadiums.
344 343 Jane's Addiction Nothing's Shocking New in 2023
345 344 Mobb Deep The Infamous +25 Loud, 1995 “We were just straight hood,” Havoc said. “It wasn’t no pretty boy shit. He was talking about the Timberlands and bandanas he and Prodigy (R.I.P.) wore, but that was also the brutal appeal of their second album, which the duo produced mostly by themselves. Q Tip functioned as an executive producer, adding depth to sinister tracks built off of 1970s samples, many of them from the LP collection that Prodigy’s jazz-musician grandfather left to him. “Shook Ones Pt. II,” a minor hit, and “Survival of the Fittest” have only one impetus, to document life in a Queens project.
346 345 Santana Santana New in 2023
347 346 John Cale Paris 1919 New in 2023
348 347 Notorious B.I.G. Life After Death -168 Bad Boy, 1997 Biggie’s second album was a victory lap following the immense, earth-shaking success of his 1994 debut, Ready to Die, and was prophetically and tragically released less than a month after the 24-year-old was shot and killed. The rubber-grooved “Hypnotize” was already on its way to becoming a smash when he died, and his lyrical genius and gift for narrative were on display all over this two-CD set, as he grapples with rap-game politics and delivers thinly veiled knocks at the West Coasters he long beefed with over clean, lush-sounding production. He was just getting started.
349 348 The Feelies The Good Earth New in 2023
350 349 Frank Ocean Channel Orange -201 Def Jam, 2012 On Channel Orange, Frank Ocean became one of music’s most elusive superstars — shy about speaking in public, impossible to pin down musically. He emerged from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, writing pop tunes for the likes of Brandy and Justin Bieber. But he stepped into his own avant-soul territory with Channel Orange, his official debut. Soon after coming out of the closet — still a rarity in R&B at the time — Ocean had a hit with the falsetto slow jam “Thinkin Bout You.” He mixes up genres and vocal personae, with guest shots from André 3000 to John Mayer. The peak: the spacey 10-minute suite “Pyramids,” an Egyptian fantasy starring Cleopatra as an around-the-way girl. Years later, Channel Orange still sounds like the future.
351 350 Usher Confessions +82 Arista, 2004 Usher was already a star in 2004, a sly singer and slick dancer whose R&B hits found a home with pop fans. But Confessions, which is one of the last 10-million-plus sellers ever made, turned him into an unstoppable juggernaut. Usher worked with a murderers’ row of R&B and hip-hop talent, from Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to Jermaine Dupri to Just Blaze; the album moves easily from club wreckers like the Lil Jon- and Ludacris-assisted smash “Yeah!” to forgive-me-for-cheating ballads to love-you-forever duets.
352 351 Janet Jackson Control -240 A&M, 1986 If properly, successfully maturing in pop after a childhood in the spotlight is an artform, then Janet Jackson is Michelangelo and Control her statue of David. The youngest member of the Jackson family released her third studio album while on the cusp of her twenties. Working with the dream team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Jackson made an assertive, hook-y, and powerful proclamation of her star power on sparkling, sculpted electro-pop dance songs like “Nasty,” “The Pleasure Principle,” and the title track. Control remains the blueprint for any young artist looking to find their own voice.
353 352 Eagles Hotel California -234
354 353 Neneh Cherry Raw Like Sushi New in 2023
355 354 OutKast Stankonia -290 LaFace, 2000 There’s a thrilling sprawl on OutKast’s fourth album, a sense of limitless possibilities within the boundaries of hip-hop. Big Boi and André 3000 rap about baby mamas’ mamas (“Ms. Jackson”), the perils of sex (“We Luv Deez Hoez”) and alcohol (“?”), feeling excluded from the American dream (“Gasoline Dreams”), good manners (“I’ll Call Before I Come”), and the trauma of teen pregnancy (“Toilet Tisha”). The music is sexy, bold, and hard, mixing, on “B.O.B.,” distorted metal guitar, an HBCU gospel choir, and a jittery techno beat. Big Boi says OutKast is “cooler than a polar bear’s toenails,” adds that they’re “just lyrically twerking,” and tells the police, “Officer, get off us, sir.” “We call it slumadelic,” said André 3000.
356 355 Boogie Down Productions Criminal Minded -116 B-Boy, 1987 BDP copped a gangsta stance, sporting guns on the album cover, but they opened their debut with “Poetry,” an ode to the edutaining power of their music — “It takes concentration for fresh communication,” KRS-One informs. DJ Scott LaRock laced funky samples into taut, hard-hitting tracks like the classic interborough beef fests “The Bridge Is Over” and “South Bronx,” the latter doubling as a glorious origin story of hip-hop’s early days. LaRock was killed shortly after the album’s release trying to break up a fight.
357 356 King Sunny Adé Juju Music New in 2023
358 357 Missy Elliott Supa Dupa Fly New in 2023
359 358 Aerosmith Rocks +8 Columbia, 1976 The bad boys from Boston perfected their Seventies guitar raunch on Rocks — it’s the musical equivalent of getting run over by a muscle car. Steven Tyler and Joe Perry sounded like America’s heirs to the Mick-and-Keith tradition with the filthy riffs of “Lick and a Promise” and “Back in the Saddle.” Tyler brings all his dirtbag swagger and gutter poetry to his favorite topic: sex. Surprise peak: “Sick as a Dog,” an incredible fusion of the Byrds, James Brown funk, and Sixties girl-group harmonies.
360 359 Rihanna Anti -129 Roc Nation, 2016 After dominating the Top 40 for years, Rihanna wanted to make an ambitious album-statement, brilliantly sustaining the tipsy two-in-the-morning vibe of this moody midcareer reinvention. “I just gravitated toward the songs that were … the things I want to listen to,” she said. “The things that I want to smoke to.” On Anti, she recast pop as her own hazy playground, referencing Dido and hair metal, covering Tame Impala, and merging dancehall and torch ballads.
361 360 Muddy Waters The Anthology +123 MCA, 2001 Muddy Waters started out playing acoustic Delta blues in Mississippi, but when he moved to Chicago in 1943, he needed an electric guitar to be heard over the tumult of South Side clubs. The sound he developed was the foundation of Chicago blues — and rock & roll; the thick, bleeding tones of his slide work anticipated rock-guitar distortion by nearly two decades. The 50 cuts on these two CDs run from guitar-and-stand-up-bass duets to full-band romps — and they still just scratch the surface of Waters’ legacy.
362 361 Kendrick Lamar good kid, m.A.A.d city -246 TDE, 2012 Kendrick Lamar’s hip-hop autobiography came as a shock in 2012: musically downbeat, with a film director’s eye for narrative but the voice of a poet. Good kid is his story of growing up in Compton, surrounded by gunfire, gang warfare, police brutality, drugs, liquor, dead friends — billed on the cover as “A Short FIlm by Kendrick Lamar,” like a West Coast answer to Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets. K-Dot goes for emotional detail instead of gangsta bravado, whether cruising the streets in “Backseat Freestyle” or pondering addiction in “Swimming Pool (Drank).” As he told Rolling Stone, “The best entertainers have to have the most wickedest sense of humor, to be able to take pain and change it into laughter.”
363 362 Harry Nilsson Nilsson Schmilsson -81 RCA, 1971 A brilliant outlier on the Seventies L.A. singer-songwriter scene, Harry Nilsson had a voice and pop savvy like Paul McCartney and a biting ironic side like John Lennon. Nilsson Schmilsson produced three hits — the oddball island novelty “Coconut,” a cover of Badfinger’s “Without You,” where Nilsson sounds like a depressed Barry Manilow, and the surprise monster jam “Jump Into the Fire.” Nilsson was later covered by LCD Soundsystem. It was par for the course for a guy who could shruggingly pull off anything he wanted.
364 363 Buddy Holly The "Chirping" Crickets New in 2023
365 364 Nas Illmatic -320 Columbia, 1994 Other rappers were harder and brasher, but nobody captured the creeping menace of life on the streets like this 20-year-old from New York’s Queensbridge projects. With lines like “I never sleep, ’cause sleep is the cousin of death,” Nas showed more poetic style than any MC since Rakim. His debut begins with the sound of a subway train, and for the next 39 minutes, he seems to visit every street corner from Queens to Brooklyn, detailing drug deals, escapism, persecution, prison life, and survival. Throughout, he displays a pure focus (there’s only one guest verse) and explosive dexterity; it’s one thing to say “I drop the ancient manifested hip-hop,” as he does in the first verse of “Memory Lane,” it’s another to back that up with a stunning, acrobatic second verse. Illmatic was an instant classic that never crossed over, which only deepened its myth with hip-hop heads.
366 365 Raekwon Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... -146 Loud/RCA, 1995 The finest Wu-Tang solo joint stands out due to Raekwon’s understated, eternally unflustered cool and densely woven verses. Abetted by hyperactive sideman Ghostface and hypnotically stark beats courtesy of the RZA, Raekwon crafts breathtaking drug-rap narratives. On “Knowledge God,” an Italian drug dealer with a “hairy chest” and “many minks” meets his colorful demise in just six words: “Sixteen shots in his fish tank.” It’s the rare hip-hop album that rivals the mob movies it celebrates for gripping detail.
367 366 Manu Chao Clandestino +103 Virgin, 1998 Born in Paris to Spanish parents, Manu Chao is a true citizen of the world on his 1998 debut. Clandestino, was a tribute to “clandestinos” everywhere: a derogatory term for undocumented migrants. Running on an internationalist platform of peace (and legalized pot), Chao was a digital busker (“a clown making too much dirty sound”), strumming his acoustic guitar as he moved effortlessly between languages and styles, singing with a playfully light touch as he made feel-good reggae rock for global nomads like himself.
368 367 Janelle Monáe The ArchAndroid New in 2023
369 368 Throbbing Gristle 20 Jazz Funk Greats New in 2023
370 369 Dead Kennedys Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables New in 2023 Alternative Tentacles, 1980 The Dead Kennedys' debut album is a scorching indictment of American society and politics wrapped in some of the most energetic punk rock ever recorded. Jello Biafra's provocative lyrics and theatrical vocals, combined with East Bay Ray's surf-punk guitar work, created a unique sound that influenced countless punk bands. Songs like 'Holiday in Cambodia' and 'California Über Alles' showcase their ability to combine political commentary with irresistible hooks.
371 370 Fugazi Repeater New in 2023 Dischord, 1990 Fugazi's debut full-length album established the Washington D.C. band as leaders of the post-hardcore movement. Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto's dual vocals and the band's innovative use of dynamics created a more complex form of punk rock. Songs like 'Waiting Room' and 'Merchandise' combine political lyrics with experimental song structures. The band's DIY ethics and refusal to sign with major labels made them heroes of the underground punk scene.
372 371 Kanye West The College Dropout -297 Roc-A-Fella, 2004 In 2003, Kanye West was a Chicago kid who’d produced some hot beats for Jay-Z, wore pastel polo shirts with the collars popped, and wanted to be on the mic, not behind it. Record labels were skeptical, but West got over on wit and determination; he wrote and sang the hit “Through the Wire” while his jaw was wired shut after being in a car accident, and followed it with more dynamic tracks, including “Slow Jamz,” about the seductive power of soul music, and the gospel riot “Jesus Walks.” West loved Jesus and strip clubs, made arrogant claims about his talent, and then professed his insecurity — which made his music all the richer.
373 372 Weezer Pinkerton New in 2023 DGC, 1996 Rivers Cuomo's deeply personal second album was initially dismissed by critics but has since been recognized as a masterpiece of alternative rock. Named after the character from Puccini's 'Madame Butterfly,' the album explores themes of loneliness, sexual frustration, and cultural identity with unprecedented honesty. Songs like 'El Scorcho' and 'The Good Life' combine Cuomo's neurotic lyrics with the band's powerful pop-rock sound. The album's raw emotional content and innovative song structures influenced countless alternative rock bands.
374 373 Lana Del Rey Norman Fucking Rockwell! -52 Polydor/Interscope, 2019 Lana Del Rey became a music-blog sensation playing the poker-faced millennial Nancy Sinatra on her debut single, “Video Games.” She kept growing as an artist, and on her wonderfully titled sixth album perfected her epic vision of doomed, decadent, Seventies-steeped California romance on songs like “Mariner’s Apartment Complex” and the nine-minute crusher “Venice Bitch.” Del Rey dropped references to the Eagles and Graham Nash, merging her own music into the Laurel Canyon canon. No less an authority on Seventies greatness than Elton John called the album’s songs “timeless.”
375 374 Schoolly D Saturday Night! The Album New in 2023
376 375 Eurythmics Touch New in 2023
377 376 Suede Suede New in 2023
378 377 Carly Rae Jepsen E•MO•TION New in 2023
379 378 Ornette Coleman Free Jazz New in 2023
380 379 Janet Jackson The Velvet Rope -61 Virgin, 1997 Janet Jackson left behind her girl-next-door image forever with The Velvet Rope, an album of sexy, confessional, freewheeling hip-hop soul. She fuses Joni Mitchell and Q-Tip in “Got ’Til It’s Gone,” but the shocker is her girl-girl version of Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night.” “I always write about what’s in my life,” she told Rolling Stone. “I did that on Control, and I did the same thing with this album. It’s kind of like cutting yourself open and exposing yourself to the world, which is really a vulnerable thing.”
381 380 Talk Talk Laughing Stock New in 2023
382 381 Pharoah Sanders Karma New in 2023
383 382 King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown New in 2023
384 383 Elliott Smith XO New in 2023 DreamWorks, 1998 Elliott Smith's major-label debut expanded his intimate acoustic style with lush orchestration and multi-tracked vocals while maintaining his gift for melody and devastating emotional honesty. Songs like 'Waltz #2 (XO)' and 'Baby Britain' showcase his sophisticated harmonic sense and whispered vocal delivery. The album's themes of depression, addiction, and alienation, combined with its beautiful melodies, created a template for indie rock introspection. Smith's tragic death in 2003 has only enhanced the album's reputation as a classic of alternative rock.
385 384 The Chemical Brothers Dig Your Own Hole New in 2023 Freestyle Dust/Virgin, 1997 The Chemical Brothers' second album established them as leaders of the big beat movement and masters of electronic dance music. The album's combination of rock samples, breakbeats, and psychedelic elements created a new form of electronic music that worked equally well in clubs and on headphones. Tracks like 'Block Rockin' Beats' and 'Setting Sun' (featuring Noel Gallagher) became dancefloor anthems, while the album's innovative production techniques influenced a generation of electronic artists.
386 385 Aaliyah One in a Million -71 Blackground/Atlantic, 1996 Aaliyah’s second album was her first with producer Timbaland, and until the singer’s tragic death in 2001, the pair reshaped the landscape of R&B. Aaliyah seems to be sparring with Timbaland’s hide-and-seek drum tracks, ducking and weaving — and, somehow, singing beautifully — as high-hats and shakers zip past her ears. As futuristic as this album sounds, even today, Aaliyah also benefited from her close study of the classics: Her version of the Isley Brothers’ “Choosey Lover” rises to the level of the original.
387 386 Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers Rockin' and Romance New in 2023
388 387 Queens of the Stone Age Songs for the Deaf New in 2023 Interscope, 2002 Queens of the Stone Age's third album, featuring Dave Grohl on drums, is a desert rock masterpiece that combines heavy riffs with psychedelic elements. The album's concept as a road trip through Palm Desert radio stations provides a unifying theme for Josh Homme's distinctive songwriting. Songs like 'No One Knows' and 'First It Giveth' showcase the band's ability to create heavy music that's both aggressive and melodic.
389 388 War The World Is a Ghetto New in 2023
390 389 Gary Numan/Tubeway Army The Pleasure Principle New in 2023
391 390 Boston Boston New in 2023
392 391 The Mothers of Invention Freak Out! New in 2023
393 392 Chic Risqué +22 Atlantic, 1979 Nobody thought a disco band was supposed to make a brilliant third album — but Chic always thrived on defying the odds. On Risqué, the dynamic duo of guitarist Nile Rodgers and bassist Bernard Edwards fuse sleek tropical R&B, Anglophile New Wave, and NYC club flash for a sound that’s been the blueprint for pop radio ever since. “Good Times” is Chic’s most prophetic groove — the story of hip-hop on wax begins here, with the Sugarhill Gang rhyming over it for “Rapper’s Delight.”
394 393 2Pac All Eyez on Me +43 Death Row, 1996 2Pac wanted it all: credibility and success, “murderous lyrics” and voice-of-a-generation gravitas. On his fourth (and final) album, he briefly gets it. In the course of 27 songs and two discs, Pac empties his brain of the contradictory impulses. The Dr. Dre track “California Love” became a huge house-party hit, but what unifies the album, through an array of different producers and guest stars, is Pac’s charisma and his struggles with morality: “It’s similar to Rhythm Nation, but thugged out — forgive me, Janet.”
395 394 John Fahey The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death New in 2023
396 395 Meat Loaf Bat Out of Hell New in 2023
397 396 Bon Iver Bon Iver New in 2023
398 397 Can Soundtracks New in 2023
399 398 Pantera Vulgar Display of Power New in 2023
400 399 Mary J. Blige My Life -273 Uptown, 1994 The crucial development on Mary J. Blige’s second album is her emergence as a songwriter; in lyrics and interviews, she began to describe the traumas she’d had, both as a child growing up in the projects and as an adult. For fans, that intimacy turned her from a beloved singer to a member of the family. “Down and out, crying every day,” she sings on the title song. There’s plenty of thematic contrast — the playful bedroom come-on “Mary Jane (All Night Long),” a smashing cover of the 1970s funk ballad “I’m Going Down” — but the strongest impression from the album is that Blige had been through it, and her hopefulness was hard-won.
401 400 Dinosaur You're Living All Over Me New in 2023
402 401 Jay-Z Reasonable Doubt -334 Roc-A-Fella, 1996 Before there was Jay-Z the mogul, the legend, the Beyoncé boy toy, there was Jay-Z on his do-or-die hustle, trying just to get a seat at the UNO table. “Forever petty minds stay petty/Mine’s thinkin’ longevity, until I’m 70,” he rhymes on the virtuosic “22 Two’s,” his earliest experiment in toying with standard rap structures. When he raps about drug dealing and not trusting women, the details are specific and self-aware. Jay’s charisma and comic insouciance are evident even on small touches like his taunting laugh in the chorus of “Ain’t No Nigga,” a gloriously funky track that lit up dance clubs. Here, he planted a flag in the underground — within two years, the pop hits followed and the hustle went worldwide.
403 402 Tyler, the Creator Igor New in 2023 Columbia, 2019 Tyler's fifth studio album marked a complete artistic transformation, moving away from the shock value of his early work toward a more mature exploration of love and relationships. The album's lush production, featuring live instrumentation and Tyler's increasingly sophisticated songwriting, creates a cohesive narrative arc. Songs like 'EARFQUAKE' and 'I THINK' showcase his growth as both a rapper and singer. The album's Grammy win and critical acclaim established Tyler as one of hip-hop's most creative and unpredictable artists.
404 403 Misfits Walk Among Us New in 2023
405 404 The dB's Stands for Decibels New in 2023
406 405 Fela Kuti & Africa 70 Zombie New in 2023
407 406 The Meters Look-Ka Py Py New in 2023 Josie, 1969 The Meters were the house band for New Orleans’ genius producer Allen Toussaint and played on Seventies landmarks such as LaBelle’s Nightbirds, while also running off a series of their own rock-solid LPs. These instrumentals — sampled by rappers including Nas and Salt-N-Pepa — are funk of the gods; tight, cutting, but also relaxed and inviting, with Art Neville’s lyrical Hammond B3 organ adding chill texture to George Porter Jr.’s monster bass and the off-the-beat Second Line swing of drummer of Ziggy Modeliste.
408 407 Mariah Carey The Emancipation of Mimi -18 Island, 2005 Mariah Carey’s last couple of albums had only attained platinum status, paltry by her usual high-flying standards. But the vocal acrobat swept away the naysayers with “We Belong Together,” a chattering, heartbroken ballad that interpolates two R&B classics (Bobby Womack’s “If You Think You’re Lonely Now” and the Deele’s “Two Occasions”), then followed that song’s huge success with “Shake It Off,” a dismissive, vengeful cut for all the jilted lovers — and The Emancipation of Mimi turned out to be a sextuple-platinum return to form.
409 408 Bad Bunny X 100pre +39 Rimas, 2018 Heralded by a subtly symbolic Christmas Eve release, Bad Bunny’s 2018 debut, X 100pre, was the Puerto Rican artist’s bid to court listeners new to Latin sounds, running through trap, reggaeton, dembow, synth-pop, and even pop punk, with help from Anglophonic ambassadors like Diplo and Drake. Bad Bunny could be shamelessly crude and totally vulnerable, with his slow-burning baritone opening the floor for Latin pop that’s not afraid to get uncomfortable.
410 409 Adele 21 -272 Columbia, 2011 “Pain is art” may be a cliché, but for Adele, it rang especially true. Her debut album, 19, was a polite, tasteful set of soul-inflected pop. Its follow-up was something else again. Chewing over a tumultuous affair, she dug deep and came up with a modern masterpiece of post-breakup soul music. She’d actually cut an entire album with producer Rick Rubin but wound up preferring earlier demos of songs like “Rolling in the Deep,” “Someone Like You,” and “Set Fire to the Rain,” and mostly used those instead. The switch-up made for an even rawer and more emotional experience that clearly connected: 21 sold more than 30 million copies and swept the 2012 Grammys.
411 410 The Descendents Milo Goes to College New in 2023
412 411 Nicki Minaj The Pinkprint New in 2023
413 412 Soundgarden Superunknown New in 2023 A&M, 1994 Soundgarden's fourth studio album marked the band's creative and commercial peak, combining heavy metal with psychedelic and experimental elements. Chris Cornell's powerful vocals and the band's innovative use of alternate tunings created a unique sound that set them apart from their grunge peers. Songs like 'Black Hole Sun' and 'Spoonman' became alternative radio staples, while deeper cuts like '4th of July' and 'Limo Wreck' showcased the band's experimental side. The album's Grammy wins and multi-platinum success established Soundgarden as one of the most important bands of the 1990s.
414 413 LL Cool J Radio New in 2023 Def Jam, 1985 LL Cool J's debut album was one of the first rap albums to achieve mainstream commercial success while maintaining street credibility. Produced by Rick Rubin, the album's raw, stripped-down production and LL's aggressive delivery on tracks like 'Rock the Bells' and 'I Can't Live Without My Radio' established the template for hardcore rap. The album's success helped launch Def Jam Records and proved that rap could be both commercially viable and artistically innovative.
415 414 Mazzy Star So Tonight That I Might See New in 2023
416 415 Rancid ...And Out Come the Wolves New in 2023
417 416 Iron Maiden The Number of the Beast New in 2023 EMI, 1982 Iron Maiden's third studio album, and the first to feature vocalist Bruce Dickinson, established them as leaders of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. The album's epic compositions, galloping rhythms, and literary lyrics created a more sophisticated form of heavy metal. Songs like 'Run to the Hills' and the title track became metal classics, while Steve Harris's complex bass lines and the dual guitar attack of Dave Murray and Adrian Smith set the template for melodic metal.
418 417 Saint Etienne So Tough New in 2023
419 418 Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning New in 2023 Saddle Creek, 2005 Conor Oberst's most accessible album as Bright Eyes showcased his evolution from lo-fi indie folk to a more polished, country-influenced sound. Recorded with a full band including Emmylou Harris, the album features some of Oberst's most memorable songs, including 'First Day of My Life' and 'Lover I Don't Have to Love.' The album's political themes and personal revelations, combined with its warm production, established Bright Eyes as one of indie rock's most important voices.
420 419 Gorillaz Demon Days New in 2023 Parlophone/Virgin, 2005 Damon Albarn's virtual band project reached its creative peak on this genre-blending masterpiece featuring collaborations with De La Soul, MF DOOM, and Neneh Cherry. The album's dark themes and eclectic musical palette, from the hip-hop of 'Feel Good Inc.' to the gospel-influenced 'DARE,' created a unique sound that defied categorization. The album's success proved that experimental pop could achieve mainstream success.
421 420 J Dilla Donuts -34 Stones Throw, 2006 Questlove of the Roots called the Detroit producer “the music god that music gods and music experts and music lovers worship.” During the Nineties and early ’00s, Dilla worked with a who’s who of hip-hop greats and helped shape the sound of albums like D’Angelo’s Voodoo [see No. 28]. Released three days before his death, Donuts is a beat head’s delight: 31 concise, wildly inventive sample-swirls (love the Frank Zappa bit on “Mash”), many of which would end up being sampled themselves in the years that followed.
422 421 UGK Ridin' Dirty New in 2023 Jive, 1996 UGK's fourth studio album is considered a masterpiece of Southern hip-hop, establishing the duo of Bun B and Pimp C as pioneers of the genre. The album's laid-back production, featuring live instrumentation and jazz samples, provides the perfect backdrop for their distinctive flows and street narratives. Songs like 'One Day' and 'Murder' showcase their ability to balance hardcore rap with melodic sensibilities. The album's influence on Southern rap and its role in establishing Houston as a hip-hop center cannot be overstated.
423 422 Travis Scott Astroworld New in 2023 Cactus Jack/Grand Hustle, 2018 Travis Scott's third studio album is a psychedelic journey through hip-hop that draws inspiration from the defunct AstroWorld theme park in Houston. The album features innovative production techniques, auto-tuned vocals, and collaborations with artists ranging from Drake to Tame Impala. Songs like 'SICKO MODE' and 'STARLIGHT' showcase Scott's ability to create immersive sonic landscapes. The album's theme park concept and its blend of hip-hop with psychedelic and electronic elements established Scott as one of the most creative forces in contemporary rap.
424 423 Rush Moving Pictures -44 Anthem, 1981 On Seventies albums like 2112 and Hemispheres, Rush mastered the high-prog epic. Moving Pictures was the record where they proved they could say as much in four minutes as they previously had in 20. Songs like “Tom Sawyer,” “Limelight,” and the Police-like “Vital Signs” showcased the trio’s superhuman chops in a radio-ready framework, while more adventurous tracks like the Morse code–inspired instrumental “YYZ” and the synth-heavy suite “The Camera Eye” found them tastefully streamlining their wildest ideas. Said Geddy Lee, “We learned it’s not so easy to write something simple.”
425 424 R.E.M. Reckoning New in 2023
426 425 The Mekons Fear and Whiskey New in 2023
427 426 Minutemen What Makes a Man Start Fires? New in 2023
428 427 MC5 Kick Out the Jams -78 Elektra, 1969 It’s the ultimate rock salute: “Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!” Recorded live in Detroit by Rob Tyner and his anarchist crew, Kick Out the Jams writhes and screams with the belief that rock & roll is a necessary act of civil disobedience. The proof: It was banned by a Michigan department store. The MC5 proved their lefty credentials the summer before the album was recorded when they were the only band that showed up to play for the Yippies protesting the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.
429 428 Manu Dibango Soul Makossa New in 2023
430 429 Bill Withers Just As I Am -125 Sussex, 1971 On the cover, Bill Withers totes a lunch pail, highlighting the down-to-earth everyman vibe of the folk-soul music of his debut album (that’s Withers himself tapping on a box to keep the beat in “Grandma’s Hands”). As he said at the time, “I’m sick and tired of somebody saying ‘I love you’ with both arms up in the air like that.” Instead, Withers strummed his acoustic guitar and spun tales about absent fathers, his West Virginia grandmother, and life in Harlem.
431 430 Dizzee Rascal Boy in da Corner New in 2023
432 431 Os Mutantes Os Mutantes New in 2023
433 432 Sade Diamond Life -232 Epic, 1984 Nigerian-born fashion designer Sade Adu and her London band defined elegantly cool Eighties soul with their smash debut, Diamond Life. Torch ballads like “Smooth Operator” and “Your Love Is King” had a New Romantic opulence under the bittersweet pang of Adu’s voice. She wrote her first song, “When Am I Going to Make a Living,” on the back of a bill, while walking home in the rain from a bus stop after work. As she said, “All the songs I’ve ever loved — even jazz stuff — are things that tell a story.”
434 433 Drive-By Truckers Southern Rock Opera New in 2023
435 434 Taylor Swift Red -335 Big Machine, 2012 Taylor Swift shocked the world with her fourth album, breaking away from country music to make a record that recalled classics by the Beatles and Prince in the way it pulled from across the pop and rock landscape and transformed every sound it touched. The lead single, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” was stomping, swaying electro-twang. “I Know You Were Trouble” rode a dubstep groove, and the title track was a swirl of banjos, dusty guitars, and talk-box elation. Tabloid types tied themselves in knots trying to figure out which song was about which ex, but the real news was Swift’s songwriting on high points like the astonishing “All Too Well,” as vivid a post-breakup remembrance as any artist has ever produced.
436 435 Judas Priest British Steel New in 2023 Columbia, 1980 Judas Priest's sixth studio album streamlined their heavy metal sound into a more accessible form without sacrificing power. Rob Halford's operatic vocals and the band's twin-guitar attack on songs like 'Breaking the Law' and 'Living After Midnight' created anthems that defined heavy metal for the 1980s. The album's leather-and-studs aesthetic and uncompromising metal sound influenced countless metal bands.
437 436 Yoko Ono Fly New in 2023
438 437 Boards of Canada Music Has the Right to Children New in 2023 Warp/Skam, 1998 The Scottish duo's debut album created a nostalgic, dream-like form of electronic music that seemed to capture the hazy memories of childhood. Using analog synthesizers, tape manipulation, and field recordings, Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin crafted an album that feels both futuristic and deeply nostalgic. Tracks like 'Roygbiv' and 'Turquoise Hexagon Sun' feature their signature combination of warm melodies and degraded textures. The album's unique aesthetic and emotional depth established Boards of Canada as masters of ambient electronic music.
439 438 Beat Happening Jamboree New in 2023
440 439 The Vaselines Dum-Dum New in 2023
441 440 The Avalanches Since I Left You New in 2023 Modular, 2000 The Avalanches' debut album is a masterpiece of sample-based music, constructed from over 3,500 vinyl samples. The Australian group's cut-and-paste technique creates a dreamy, nostalgic journey through decades of recorded music. The title track and songs like 'Frontier Psychiatrist' showcase their ability to create coherent songs from disparate sources. The album's joyful celebration of musical history and its innovative production techniques make it a landmark of electronic music.
442 441 Lil Wayne Tha Carter III -233 Cash Money/Universal Motown, 2008 By 2008, Lil Wayne contained multitudes: Best Rapper Alive, Pussy Monster, Martian, Weezy F. Baby (and the “F” is for, well, pretty much any word starting with “F”). Tha Carter III was a monument to this multiple-personality menagerie. “A Milli,” a glorified freestyle, fully crossed over to the mainstream, while “Lollipop,” a robotic R&B jam, rightly bet that an audience was ready to invest in Wayne’s croaky, syrup-addled singing voice. More than a decade later, even Wayne’s most outré personalities are still birthing musical descendants.
443 442 The Stranglers Rattus Norvegicus New in 2023
444 443 Beyoncé Beyoncé -362 Parkwood/Columbia, 2013 “I didn’t want to release my music the way I’ve done it,” Beyoncé said. “I am bored with that.” So she dropped her self-titled album on an unsuspecting world at the end of 2013, without a word of warning. Her fifth solo album, Beyoncé showed off her musical scope and feminist outreach, but it was also a visual album with a film for each song, shot around the world: New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and of course, her native Houston. She had high-profile collabs: “Superpower” with Frank Ocean, “Mine” with Drake, “Flawless” with Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “Drunk in Love” with her husband, Jay-Z. But Beyoncé proved that nobody else was on her level.
445 444 Ariana Grande thank u, next New in 2023 Republic, 2019 Ariana Grande's fifth studio album emerged from personal trauma and public scrutiny to become a statement of resilience and self-empowerment. The album's trap-influenced production and Grande's powerful vocals on songs like the title track and '7 rings' created some of the most memorable pop music of the late 2010s. The album's themes of healing and growth, combined with its commercial success, established Grande as one of pop's most important voices.
446 445 Bonnie 'Prince' Billy I See a Darkness New in 2023
447 446 Britney Spears Blackout -5 Jive, 2007 The pop queen vents all her raging party-girl hostility in Blackout — the weirdest, wildest music of her life. Blackout is her avant-disco concept album about fame, scandal, divorce, and dancing on tables in a cloud of glitter and Cheetos dust. “I’m Miss American Dream since I was 17,” Britney sneers in “Piece of Me,” with her voice warped into an electro-punk snarl. When she asks, “You want a piece of me?” she’s either pimping herself out or threatening to kick your ass. Either way, it’s Britney, bitch.
448 447 The Orb The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld New in 2023
449 448 Queen A Night at the Opera -320 Elektra, 1975 “Queen will be the Cecil B. DeMille of rock,” proclaimed singer Freddie Mercury, and this far-ranging, rococo album is the group’s ready-for-my-close-up moment. Bassist John Deacon wrote the melodic highlight “You’re My Best Friend,” a bouncy bit of Paul McCartney-esque pop; Mercury wrote the brutal rocker “Death on Two Legs,” about the band’s former manager; and guitarist Brian May wrote “The Prophet’s Song,” a doomy portent of a flood that runs 8:21 and includes a vocal canon from Mercury. But the coup was “Bohemian Rhapsody,” an opera buffa in which Mercury combined three different songs he’d been writing into a suite that took weeks to record.
450 449 Big Thief U.F.O.F. New in 2023
451 450 The Mamas & the Papas If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears New in 2023
452 451 The Mountain Goats The Sunset Tree New in 2023
453 452 Black Lips Good Bad Not Evil New in 2023
454 453 X Los Angeles -133 Slash, 1980 X stood out from the other L.A. punks — for one thing, they had a married couple in the band, John Doe and Exene Cervenka, venting their sexual and cultural rage over the high-speed rockabilly thrash of Billy Zoom and D.J. Bonebrake. Doe and Cervenka met in a poetry workshop, and you can hear it in the complex wordplay of “Johnny Hit and Run Paulene” and “Sex and Dying in High Society.” But they kick off their debut with a hilariously nasty bang: “Your Phone’s Off the Hook, But You’re Not.”
455 454 Justin Timberlake FutureSex/LoveSounds New in 2023 Jive, 2006 Justin Timberlake's second solo album, produced by Timbaland, created a futuristic form of pop-R&B that dominated the mid-2000s. The album's innovative production, featuring unconventional rhythms and electronic textures, provided the perfect backdrop for Timberlake's smooth vocals. Songs like 'SexyBack' and 'My Love' showcased his evolution from boy band member to serious solo artist.
456 455 Young Thug Barter 6 New in 2023
457 456 Dean Martin Sleep Warm New in 2023
458 457 Shakira Dónde Están los Ladrones? +39 Columbia, 1998 Long before she went blond and took her never-lying hips to the top of the American pop charts, Shakira was a raven-haired guitar rocker who’d hit peak superstardom in the Spanish-speaking world with her 1995 LP, Pies Descalzos. To keep up the momentum, Shakira enlisted Emilio Estefan to help produce her next LP, this stellar globetrotting dance-rock set, which blends sounds from Colombia, Mexico, and her father’s native Lebanon.
459 458 Van Halen Van Halen -166 Warner Bros., 1978 This debut gave the world a new guitar hero (Eddie Van Halen) and charismatic frontman (David Lee Roth). Tunes such as “Runnin’ With the Devil” and “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love” put the swagger back in hard rock, and Van Halen’s jaw-dropping technique, particularly on “Eruption,” raised the bar for rock guitar. “It sounded like it came from another planet,” Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready said of first encountering Van Halen’s playing. “Like hearing Mozart for the first time.”
460 459 Tracy Chapman Tracy Chapman -203 Elektra, 1988 Somehow, this young folk singer came out of nowhere to catch everyone’s ear during the hair-metal late Eighties. Tracy Chapman had already spent time strumming her acoustic guitar for spare change on the streets around Boston, but her gritty voice and storytelling made “Fast Car” a huge hit. Her debut confronted listeners with the raw truths of songs like “Behind the Wall,” a grueling portrayal of domestic violence sung a cappella, and the radical hope of the anthemic opening track, “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution.”
461 460 The Libertines Up the Bracket New in 2023
462 461 Scott Walker Scott 4 New in 2023
463 462 Merle Haggard Mama Tried New in 2023
464 463 Alice Cooper Love It to Death New in 2023
465 464 Kate Bush The Dreaming New in 2023 EMI, 1982 Kate Bush's fourth studio album marked her complete artistic independence and her most experimental phase. Produced entirely by Bush herself, the album's dense, layered production and unconventional song structures pushed the boundaries of pop music. Songs like 'Suspended in Gaffa' and the title track showcase her unique vocal style and artistic vision. The album's initial commercial disappointment has been reversed by critical reappraisal recognizing it as her most adventurous work.
466 465 Yeah Yeah Yeahs Fever to Tell -88 Interscope, 2003 These New York art-punk brats blew away the doldrums of the early 2000s with a true rock & roll goddess in Karen O. She knew how to work her sneer like a pair of ripped fishnets, trashing any room in sight. Yet the tender ballad “Maps” became a surprise hit, with Karen pleading “Wait, they don’t love you like I love you” over Nick Zinner’s warped guitar fuzz and Brian Chase’s drum thunder. “There’s a lot of loooove in that song,” she said. “But there’s a lot of fear, too.”
467 466 Jimmy Cliff The Harder They Come New in 2023
468 467 Thin Lizzy Live and Dangerous New in 2023
469 468 Lily Allen Alright, Still New in 2023
470 469 Earth Wind & Fire That's the Way of the World -49 Columbia, 1975 Before he got into African thumb piano and otherworldly philosophizing, founder Maurice White was a session drummer at Chess studios (that’s him on Fontella Bass’ “Rescue Me”). He stayed behind the kit as he led EWF. Their sixth album is make-out music of the spheres, incorporating doo-wop, jazz, and African music into a sound that’s sleek but never too slick; the title track is one of funk’s most gorgeous ballads, and “Shining Star” is a Seventies self-help seminar delivered over one of the decade’s sweetest grooves.
471 470 Sinéad O'Connor I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got -13 Ensign/Chrysalis, 1990 “How could I possibly know what I want when I was only 21?” the Irish art rocker asked on her breakthrough second album. Sinéad O’Connor struck a nerve with her keening voice, her shaved head, and her tortured grandiosity in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and “I Am Stretched on Your Grave.” But she hit Number One with an obscure Prince breakup ballad, “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Originally just filler on a flop album by the Family, it became O’Connor’s signature song.
472 471 Cyndi Lauper She's So Unusual -287 Portrait, 1983 With her garish thrift-store fashions and exaggerated Queens accent, Lauper had a kooky image that was perfect for MTV. But she also had a superb, clarion voice and a pack of great covers, including “Money Changes Everything” (originally by Atlanta New Wave band the Brains) and Prince’s saucy “When You Were Mine.” Lauper co-wrote four songs, including the lovely ballad “Time After Time” and the masturbation call-to-arms “She Bop.” But her smartest move was to change the lyrics of Robert Hazard’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” until it became a “very blatantly feminist” song about equality. “For a minute, I made it popular to be the odd guy out,” she said.
473 472 SZA Ctrl No change RCA, 2017 Thanks to SZA’s lyrics about insecurity, jealousy, loneliness, and her search for “lovin’ and licky,” this assured debut brought a new self-searching spirit to R&B. The tracks are gentle and erotic, but beneath the singer’s soft-grained style, there’s fierceness; in “Dove in the Wind,” she tells a lover she can easily replace him with a dildo. On “Love Galore,” a duet with Travis Scott that describes an ambivalent breakup, she makes clear the vulnerability beneath the bravado: “Gimme a paper towel, gimme another Valium.”
474 473 Daddy Yankee Barrio Fino No change V.I. Music, 2004 Just when Latin pop radio was hitting a ballad-heavy plateau, Puerto Rican MC Daddy Yankee set the industry aflame with his 2004 reggaeton opus, Barrio Fino. Crowned by the hydraulic bounce of Yankee’s first international hit, “Gasolina,” the record marked a colossal breakthrough, not just for the rapper himself, but for the entire genre known as reggaeton: a raw blend of hip-hop and reggae, born in the mean streets of San Juan.
475 474 Big Star #1 Record No change Ardent, 1972 Alex Chilton and Chris Bell were the Memphis whiz kids at the heart of Big Star. They mixed British Invasion pop finesse with all-American hard rock, from the surging “Feel” to the acoustic heartbreaker “Thirteen.” Big Star didn’t sell many records but did become a crucial inspiration to underdogs like R.E.M., the Replacements, and Elliott Smith. As Chilton said later, “If you only press up a hundred copies of a record, then eventually it will find its way to the hundred people in the world who want it the most.”
476 475 Sheryl Crow Sheryl Crow No change A&M, 1996 The Missouri gal finally got to make an album her way, in 1996, with her self-titled, self-produced smash — an ingenious mix of roots-rock raunch and vengeful wit. As Crow told Rolling Stone, “My only objective on this record was to get under people’s skin, because I was feeling like I had so much shit to hurl at the tape.” “Every Day Is a Winding Road” and “A Change Would Do You Good” rock like a feminist Exile on Main Street, while “If It Makes You Happy” became an anthem for bad girls of all ages.
477 476 Sparks Kimono My House No change Island, 1974 The duo of singer Russell Mael and songwriter-keyboardist Ron Mael coined a unique, influential sound that mixed glam and prog-rock, the Beach Boys and Frank Zappa. Russell adopts a florid falsetto to sing Ron’s lyrics about clumsy sex (“Amateur Hour”), Albert Einstein’s doting parents (the pun-filled “Talent Is an Asset”), and a broken suicide pact (“Here in Heaven”). The overwhelming sensation from Sparks’ third album is a sense that you’ve arrived at a party where you know no one and hear things you can’t comprehend but still have a great time.
478 477 Howlin' Wolf Moanin' in the Moonlight No change Chess, 1959 “That man was the natural stuff,” Buddy Guy said. “His fists were as big as a car tire.” The Wolf had the biggest roar in Chicago blues — he raved in a fierce growl, backed by explosive playing from guitar geniuses Willie Johnson and Hubert Sumlin. His 1959 debut album has some of the meanest electric blues ever heard, cut for Chess Records, from the eerie railroad drone “Smokestack Lightnin’” to the lowdown “I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline).”
479 478 The Kinks The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society -94 Reprise, 1969 While their British Invasion peers— the Beatles, the Stones, the Who — were getting psychedelic, Ray Davies took his band for a pastoral retreat, with witty portraits of quaint English small-town life fading away like “Big Sky.” Nobody bought it, but Village Green went on to become one of the Kinks’ most influential statements. “With ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day and All of the Night,’ we were saying, ‘We’re here, we’re gonna grab you,’” Davies told Rolling Stone. “The music on Village Green says, ‘Come find us.’”
480 479 Selena Amor Prohibido No change EMA Latin, 1994 Tejana star Selena Quintanilla-Pérez may not have been long for this world (she died when she was just 23), but she remains one of America’s most beloved singer-songwriters. At the heart of her regional Mexican masterwork, Amor Prohibido, is a universal, glittering pop core. The techno-cumbia title track tells the real-life story of her grandparents, who fell in love across class lines. It’s a Latina fairy tale, if ever there was one. Amor Prohibido, meaning “forbidden love,” became one of the bestselling Latin albums of all time.
481 480 Miranda Lambert The Weight of These Wings No change eRCA Nashville, 2016 The Nashville superstar sounded especially free and artistically uninhibited after her divorce from Blake Shelton, and she channeled it all into this expansive, mind-clearing two-CD set, an ambitious grab bag of deep breakup tunes (“Use My Heart,” “Tin Man”), Radiohead-y alt-rock moodiness (“Vice”), eye-rolling, scuz-guitar glam (“Pink Sunglasses”), and tender reflections on the bonds and weights of messy commitment (“Getaway Car”). It’s the sound of bad history falling away in the cracked rearview and nothing but wide-open road ahead.
482 481 Belle and Sebastian If You're Feeling Sinister No change Jeepster, 1996 Being a self-pitying shut-in has never sounded better than it does on the Scottish twee icons’ breakthrough. The chamber-folk arrangements are second to none — like a cup of tea brewed for you by a hopeless crush with a really good record collection — but don’t sleep on Stuart Murdoch’s subtly sardonic lyrics on “The Stars of Track and Field” and “Seeing Other People,” which give these wistful-sounding songs a bite that sets them apart from most imitators.
483 482 The Pharcyde Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde No change Delicious Vinyl, 1992 These high school friends from L.A. were a little like a West Coast answer to De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, offering their own spin on alternative hip-hop in the Nineties and showing there was something going on in Southern California beyond G-funk. They rapped about innocent topics, like having a crush on a teacher in “Passin’ Me By,” which was a small hit, but also about dating a cute girl who turns out “to be a John Doe” and run-ins with the cops (the Public Enemy-homage “Officer”). It all came out as bright and refreshing as sorbet.
484 483 Muddy Waters The Anthology No change MCA, 2001 Muddy Waters started out playing acoustic Delta blues in Mississippi, but when he moved to Chicago in 1943, he needed an electric guitar to be heard over the tumult of South Side clubs. The sound he developed was the foundation of Chicago blues — and rock & roll; the thick, bleeding tones of his slide work anticipated rock-guitar distortion by nearly two decades. The 50 cuts on these two CDs run from guitar-and-stand-up-bass duets to full-band romps — and they still just scratch the surface of Waters’ legacy.
485 484 Lady Gaga Born This Way No change Interscope, 2011 “Over-the-top” isn’t an insult in Gaga’s world; it’s a statement of purpose. Her second album is a work of blessed bombast, all arena-size sonics and Springsteenian romanticism, complete with a Clarence Clemons sax solo. There’s a thumping, half-in-Spanish song that proposes marriage to “a girl in east L.A.” (“Americano”), a synth-pop jam that includes a come-on on to John F. Kennedy (“Government Hooker”), and a touching ballad about a guy from Nebraska (“You and I”). Fittingly, the glam-slam title track became an LGBTQ anthem.
486 485 Richard & Linda Thompson I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight No change Island, 1974 With Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson was one of the first prominent Sixties folk rockers to look to his native England’s traditions for inspiration. After leaving Fairport, he joined with his wife, Linda Thompson to make stellar albums in the Seventies. Richard played guitar like a Sufi-mystic Neil Young; Linda had the voice of a Celtic Emmylou Harris. Bright Lights is their devastating masterwork of folk-rock dread. Radiohead even picked up some guitar tricks from “The Calvary Cross.”
487 486 John Mayer Continuum No change Columbia, 2006 After establishing himself as a post-Dave Matthews heartthrob, John Mayer grew into his soul and blues ambitions for a subtly crafted album aided by ace musicians like guitarists Ben Harper and Charlie Hunter, drummer-producer Steve Jordan, and jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove — from the smooth Hi Records-tinged soul of “Vultures” to “Waiting for the World to Change,” a deceptively knowing and self-aware take on generational apathy.
488 487 Black Flag Damaged No change SST, 1981 MCA refused to release this album, denouncing it as “immoral” and “anti-parent.” High praise, but Black Flag lived up to it, defining L.A. hardcore punk with Greg Ginn’s violent guitar and the pissed-off scream of Henry Rollins, especially on “TV Party” and “Rise Above,” which came with the timeless smash-the-glass salvo “We are tired of your abuse/Try to stop is but it’s no use.” Punks still listen to Damaged, and parents still hate it.
489 488 The Stooges The Stooges No change Elektra, 1969 Fueled by “a little marijuana and a lotta alienation,” Michigan’s Stooges gave the lie to hippie idealism, playing with a savagery that unsettled even the most blasé clubgoers. Ex-Velvet Underground member John Cale produced a primitive debut wherein, amid Ron Asheton’s wah-wah blurts, Iggy Stooge (né James Osterberg) snarled seminal punk classics such as “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “No Fun,” and “1969,” bedrock examples of the weaponized boredom that would become a de rigueur punk posture.
490 489 Phil Spector & Various Artists Back to Mono (1958-1969) No change ABKCO, 1991 When the Righteous Brothers’ Bobby Hatfield first heard “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” with partner Bill Medley’s extended solo, he asked, “But what do I do while he’s singing the whole first verse?” Producer Phil Spector replied, “You can go directly to the bank!” Spector built his Wall of Sound out of hand claps, massive overdubs, and orchestras of percussion. This box has hits such as the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron,” which Spector called “little symphonies for the kids.”
491 490 Linda Ronstadt Heart Like a Wheel No change Capitol, 1975 Linda Ronstadt completed her transition from California hippie-folk darling to soft-rock queen on her chart-topping fifth album, covering Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Little Feat, and Kate and Anna McGariggle on the gorgeous title track. Her version of the Betty Everett oldie “You’re No Good” hits a perfect mix of desire and paranoia. Along with being a showcase for Ronstadt’s peerless versatility, Heart Like a Wheel is Seventies pop-rock craft at its sweetest and sturdiest.
492 491 Harry Styles Fine Line No change Columbia, 2019 Harry Styles achieved pop greatness with One Direction, but he got even deeper on his own. On Fine Line, he stakes his claim as one of his generation’s most savagely imaginative musical minds. Styles breathes in the 1970s California sunshine of his heroes — Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Stevie Nicks — with soulful breakup songs. As he explained, “It’s all about having sex and feeling sad.” Yet the music is drenched in starman joy: the ‘shroomadelic guitar trip “She,” the dulcimer-crazed “Canyon Moon,” the Number One juicy-fruit beach orgy “Watermelon Sugar.”
493 492 Bonnie Raitt Nick of Time No change Capitol, 1989 After being dumped by her previous label, blues rocker Bonnie Raitt exacted revenge with this multiplatinum Grammy-award winner, led by an on-fire version of John Hiatt’s “Thing Called Love” and the brilliant title track, a study in midlife crisis told from a woman’s perspective. Producer Don Was helped her sharpen the songs without sacrificing any of her slide-guitar fire. And as Raitt herself pointed out, her 10th try was “my first sober album.”
494 493 Marvin Gaye Here, My Dear No change Tamla/Motown, 1978 It’s one of the weirdest Motown records ever. Marvin Gaye’s divorce settlement required him to make two new albums and pay the royalties to his ex-wife – the sister of Motown boss Berry Gordy. So Gaye made this bitterly funny double LP of breakup songs, including “You Can Leave, But It’s Going to Cost You.” When he asks “Somebody tell me please, tell me please/Why do I have to pay attorney fees?” it’s one of the most strangely transfixing soul-music moments of all time.
495 494 The Ronettes Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes No change Philles, 1964 More a Spanish Harlem street gang than a girl group, the Ronettes were pop goddesses dressed as Catholic schoolgirls gone to hell and back. Phil Spector builds his Wall of Sound as his teen protégée (and future wife) Ronnie Spector belts “Be My Baby” and “Walking in the Rain,” while songs like “I Wonder” and “Baby, I Love You” ache with hope for a perfect love that always seems to be impossibly ideal and just within arm’s reach.
496 495 Boyz II Men II No change Motown, 1991 With their innocent romanticism and meticulous vocal arrangements, Boyz II Men became the most commercially successful R&B vocal group of all time. II includes two mammoth hits, courtesy of Babyface: “I’ll Make Love to You” and the audaciously baroque “Water Runs Dry.” But the group’s own Nathan Morris and Shawn Stockman composed II‘s most poignant moment, “Khalil’s Interlude,” a soft onslaught that’ll leave you sobbing in the fetal position: “I need shelter from the rain/To ease the pain of changing from boys to men.”
497 496 Shakira Dónde Están los Ladrones? No change Columbia, 1998 Long before she went blond and took her never-lying hips to the top of the American pop charts, Shakira was a raven-haired guitar rocker who’d hit peak superstardom in the Spanish-speaking world with her 1995 LP, Pies Descalzos. To keep up the momentum, Shakira enlisted Emilio Estefan to help produce her next LP, this stellar globetrotting dance-rock set, which blends sounds from Colombia, Mexico, and her father’s native Lebanon.
498 497 Various Artists The Indestructible Beat of Soweto No change Earthworks, 1985 The greatest album ever to be marketed under the heading “world music,” this 1985 compilation of South African pop was a huge influence on Paul Simon’s Graceland that still sounds jarringly fresh today. Full of funky, loping beats and gruff, Howling Wolf-style vocals (most prominently from “goat voiced” star Mahlathini). With a sweet track by Graceland collaborators Ladysmith Black Mambazo (“Nansi Imali”), its badass joy needed no translation.
499 498 Suicide Suicide No change Red Star, 1977 These New York synth-punks evoke everything from the Velvet Underground to rockabilly. Martin Rev’s low-budget electronics are violent and hypnotic; Alan Vega screams as a rhythmic device. Late-night listening to “Frankie Teardrop,” a 10-minute-plus tale of a multiple murder, is not recommended. A droning voice in the wilderness when they appeared in the Seventies, the duo would influence bands from Arcade Fire and the National to Bruce Springsteen, who covered Suicide live in 2016.
500 499 Rufus & Chaka Khan Ask Rufus No change ABC, 1977 Fronted by Chaka Khan, one of soul music’s most combustible singers, Rufus built its mid-Seventies sound on heavy-footed, guitar-slathered funk. But after spending 16 months in the studio working on Ask Rufus, they came out with a record that gave their songs more room to breathe, anticipating the lithe, loose arrangements of Nineties neo-soul. Khan glided through the head-nodding “Everlasting Love” and the twisty-turny “Better Days,” and fans appreciated the adjustment: Ask Rufus was the group’s first platinum record.
501 500 Arcade Fire Funeral No change Merge, 2004 Loss, love, forced coming-of-age, and fragile generational hope: Arcade Fire’s debut touched on all these themes as it defined the independent rock of the ‘00s. Built on family ties (leader Win Butler, his wife, Régine Chassagne, his brother Will), the Montreal band made symphonic rock that truly rocked, simultaneously outsize and deeply personal, like the best pop. But for all its sad realism, Butler’s is music that still finds solace, and purpose, in communal celebration.

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Rank,Artist,Album
1,The Beatles,Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
2,The Beach Boys,Pet Sounds
3,The Beatles,Revolver
4,Bob Dylan,Highway 61 Revisited
5,The Beatles,Rubber Soul
6,Bob Dylan,Blonde on Blonde
7,The Beatles,"The Beatles (""The White Album"")"
8,The Clash,London Calling
9,Bob Dylan,Blood on the Tracks
10,The Beatles,Abbey Road
11,The Velvet Underground,The Velvet Underground & Nico
12,The Rolling Stones,Exile on Main St.
13,Marvin Gaye,What's Going On
14,Joni Mitchell,Blue
15,Nirvana,Nevermind
16,Van Morrison,Astral Weeks
17,The Who,Who's Next
18,Neil Young,After the Gold Rush
19,Led Zeppelin,Led Zeppelin IV
20,Stevie Wonder,Songs in the Key of Life
21,Bob Dylan,Bringing It All Back Home
22,U2,The Joshua Tree
23,Television,Marquee Moon
24,The Rolling Stones,Let It Bleed
25,Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band,Trout Mask Replica
26,Patti Smith,Horses
27,Carole King,Tapestry
28,Aretha Franklin,Lady Soul
29,Brian Eno,Another Green World
30,Led Zeppelin,Led Zeppelin II
31,Talking Heads,Remain in Light
32,Radiohead,OK Computer
33,Paul Simon,Graceland
34,Pink Floyd,The Dark Side of the Moon
35,The Smiths,The Queen Is Dead
36,David Bowie,Low
37,Randy Newman,Sail Away
38,Miles Davis,Kind of Blue
39,The Rolling Stones,Sticky Fingers
40,Jimi Hendrix Experience,Are You Experienced
41,Sly & the Family Stone,There's a Riot Goin' On
42,Bob Dylan & the Band,The Basement Tapes
43,Prince and the Revolution,Purple Rain
44,Pavement,Slanted and Enchanted
45,Bruce Springsteen,Born to Run
46,Stevie Wonder,Innervisions
47,Love,Forever Changes
48,Public Enemy,It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
49,The Stooges,Fun House
50,Neil Young,Harvest
51,John Lennon,Plastic Ono Band
52,Bob Dylan,The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
53,Nick Drake,Five Leaves Left
54,R.E.M.,Murmur
55,Michael Jackson,Thriller
56,Wire,Pink Flag
57,Fleetwood Mac,Rumours
58,The Sex Pistols,Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols
59,Otis Redding,Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul
60,Dusty Springfield,Dusty in Memphis
61,Sonic Youth,Daydream Nation
62,Prince,Sign 'O' the Times
63,The Byrds,Sweetheart of the Rodeo
64,Joni Mitchell,Hejira
65,Bob Dylan,John Wesley Harding
66,The Replacements,Let It Be
67,Can,Tago Mago
68,Simon & Garfunkel,Bookends
69,Sly & the Family Stone,Stand!
70,Roxy Music,For Your Pleasure
71,Hüsker Dü,Zen Arcade
72,Al Green,Call Me
73,Ray Charles,The Genius of Ray Charles
74,Kraftwerk,Trans-Europe Express
75,Big Star,Third/Sister Lovers
76,The Jimi Hendrix Experience,Electric Ladyland
77,Radiohead,The Bends
78,The Rolling Stones,Beggars Banquet
79,Blondie,Parallel Lines
80,The Band,The Band
81,Bruce Springsteen,Nebraska
82,Neil Young & Crazy Horse,Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
83,Stevie Wonder,Talking Book
84,Tom Waits,Rain Dogs
85,Van Morrison,Moondance
86,My Bloody Valentine,Loveless
87,Gram Parsons,Grievous Angel
88,David Bowie,Station to Station
89,Todd Rundgren,Something/Anything?
90,Pink Floyd,The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
91,Joni Mitchell,The Hissing of Summer Lawns
92,Gang of Four,Entertainment!
93,Kate Bush,Hounds of Love
94,Minutemen,Double Nickels on the Dime
95,P.J. Harvey,Rid of Me
96,The Kinks,The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
97,Talking Heads,Fear of Music
98,Lou Reed,Transformer
99,James Brown,Live at the Apollo
100,Public Image Ltd.,Metal Box
101,Leonard Cohen,Songs of Leonard Cohen
102,Neil Young,On the Beach
103,Pixies,Doolittle
104,Yo La Tengo,I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
105,Prince,Dirty Mind
106,Eminem,The Marshall Mathers LP
107,Love,Da Capo
108,David Bowie,Hunky Dory
109,Derek and the Dominos,Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
110,Elton John,Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
111,X,Wild Gift
112,Paul McCartney & Wings,Band on the Run
113,The Byrds,Younger Than Yesterday
114,Curtis Mayfield,Curtis
115,Pere Ubu,The Modern Dance
116,Nick Drake,Pink Moon
117,Devo,Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
118,Bob Marley & the Wailers,Catch a Fire
119,Big Star,Radio City
120,Funkadelic,Maggot Brain
121,Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention,We're Only in It for the Money
122,John Coltrane,A Love Supreme
123,Beastie Boys,Paul's Boutique
124,Jay-Z,The Blueprint
125,Lucinda Williams,Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
126,Roxy Music,Roxy Music
127,The Ramones,Ramones
128,Frank Sinatra,Songs for Swingin' Lovers!
129,Bruce Springsteen,"The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle"
130,Tim Buckley,Happy Sad
131,Black Sabbath,Paranoid
132,The B-52's,The B-52's
133,The Stooges,Raw Power
134,The Beatles,A Hard Day's Night
135,Sleater-Kinney,Dig Me Out
136,Led Zeppelin,Physical Graffiti
137,George Harrison,All Things Must Pass
138,Ornette Coleman,The Shape of Jazz to Come
139,R.E.M.,Automatic for the People
140,Pink Floyd,Wish You Were Here
141,The Notorious B.I.G.,Ready to Die
142,N.W.A,Straight Outta Compton
143,Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds,Murder Ballads
144,Jackson Browne,Late for the Sky
145,Portishead,Dummy
146,Björk,Homogenic
147,Charles Mingus,The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
148,Liz Phair,Exile in Guyville
149,Run-D.M.C.,Raising Hell
150,Guided by Voices,Bee Thousand
151,The Jesus and Mary Chain,Psychocandy
152,Miles Davis,Bitches Brew
153,Elliott Smith,Either/Or
154,The Kinks,Something Else by the Kinks
155,Joni Mitchell,Court and Spark
156,AC/DC,Back in Black
157,Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers,Damn the Torpedoes
158,Iggy Pop,Lust for Life
159,The Doors,The Doors
160,Beck,Odelay
161,The Zombies,Odessey and Oracle
162,Neutral Milk Hotel,In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
163,Cream,Disraeli Gears
164,Sam Cooke,"Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963"
165,De La Soul,3 Feet High and Rising
166,Aretha Franklin,I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You
167,The Pretenders,Pretenders
168,Buzzcocks,Singles Going Steady
169,Moby Grape,Moby Grape
170,Led Zeppelin,Led Zeppelin
171,Dr. Dre,The Chronic
172,Wilco,Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
173,Big Brother & the Holding Company,Cheap Thrills
174,Creedence Clearwater Revival,Green River
175,Björk,Post
176,PJ Harvey,To Bring You My Love
177,Dire Straits,Dire Straits
178,Pulp,Different Class
179,X-Ray Spex,Germfree Adolescents
180,Black Flag,Damaged
181,The Flying Burrito Brothers,The Gilded Palace of Sin
182,Richard Hell & the Voidoids,Blank Generation
183,T. Rex,Electric Warrior
184,Patsy Cline,The Ultimate Collection
185,Galaxie 500,On Fire
186,Isaac Hayes,Hot Buttered Soul
187,Madonna,Like a Prayer
188,New York Dolls,New York Dolls
189,The Specials,The Specials
190,Buffalo Springfield,Buffalo Springfield Again
191,The Gun Club,Fire of Love
192,Pink Floyd,The Wall
193,Dinosaur Jr.,You're Living All Over Me
194,Randy Newman,Good Old Boys
195,Hole,Live Through This
196,The Raincoats,The Raincoats
197,Massive Attack,Blue Lines
198,The Modern Lovers,The Modern Lovers
199,The Allman Brothers Band,At Fillmore East
200,Kanye West,My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
201,Pixies,Surfer Rosa
202,Arcade Fire,Funeral
203,LCD Soundsystem,Sound of Silver
204,The Go-Betweens,16 Lovers Lane
205,Dr. John,Gris-Gris
206,D'Angelo,Voodoo
207,Metallica,Master of Puppets
208,Uncle Tupelo,No Depression
209,Outkast,Aquemini
210,Air,Moon Safari
211,Richard & Linda Thompson,I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
212,The White Stripes,Elephant
213,Cheap Trick,In Color
214,Traffic,The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys
215,Echo & the Bunnymen,Heaven Up Here
216,The Stone Roses,The Stone Roses
217,Can,Ege Bamyasi
218,Iggy & the Stooges,Raw Power
219,Smashing Pumpkins,Siamese Dream
220,50 Cent,Get Rich or Die Tryin'
221,Peter Gabriel,Peter Gabriel 3: Melt
222,ABC,The Lexicon of Love
223,Bob Mould,Workbook
224,Guns N' Roses,Appetite for Destruction
225,Violent Femmes,Violent Femmes
226,Dexy's Midnight Runners,Searching for the Young Soul Rebels
227,Ray Charles,Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music
228,King Crimson,In the Court of the Crimson King
229,PJ Harvey,"Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea"
230,My Morning Jacket,Z
231,The Feelies,Crazy Rhythms
232,Ice Cube,AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted
233,Graham Parker & the Rumour,Squeezing Out Sparks
234,Suicide,Suicide
235,Steely Dan,Can't Buy a Thrill
236,Belle & Sebastian,If You're Feeling Sinister
237,Cocteau Twins,Heaven or Las Vegas
238,The Strokes,Is This It
239,The Cure,Disintegration
240,Eric B. & Rakim,Paid in Full
241,Tom Waits,Swordfishtrombones
242,The Pogues,Rum Sodomy & the Lash
243,The Police,Synchronicity
244,Blur,Parklife
245,Meat Puppets,Meat Puppets II
246,Scritti Politti,Cupid & Psyche 85
247,Supertramp,Crime of the Century
248,Thelonious Monk,Brilliant Corners
249,Big Youth,Screaming Target
250,The Magnetic Fields,69 Love Songs
251,Daft Punk,Discovery
252,Oasis,(What's the Story) Morning Glory?
253,The Impressions,The Impressions' Greatest Hits
254,Radiohead,Kid A
255,ZZ Top,Tres Hombres
256,Squeeze,East Side Story
257,Brian Eno,Before and After Science
258,Quicksilver Messenger Service,Happy Trails
259,The Temptations,Anthology
260,Peter Tosh,Legalize It
261,Flying Lotus,Cosmogramma
262,The Pharcyde,Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde
263,Weezer,Weezer (Blue Album)
264,Loretta Lynn,Coal Miner's Daughter
265,Robyn,Body Talk
266,Def Leppard,Pyromania
267,Wu-Tang Clan,Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
268,Rufus & Chaka Khan,Ask Rufus
269,Neil Diamond,The Bang Years 1966–1968
270,Fela Kuti & Africa 70,Expensive Shit
271,Shania Twain,Come On Over
272,A Tribe Called Quest,The Low End Theory
273,The White Stripes,White Blood Cells
274,The Slits,Cut
275,Radiohead,In Rainbows
276,Green Day,Dookie
277,Billy Joel,The Stranger
278,Can,Future Days
279,George Michael,Faith
280,The Isley Brothers,3 + 3
281,Brian Wilson,Smile
282,The Fall,This Nation's Saving Grace
283,Jefferson Airplane,Surrealistic Pillow
284,EPMD,Strictly Business
285,Rod Stewart,Every Picture Tells a Story
286,Todd Rundgren,"A Wizard, a True Star"
287,Primal Scream,Screamadelica
288,The Ronettes,Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes
289,Brian Eno,Here Come the Warm Jets
290,Fiona Apple,When the Pawn...
291,Grateful Dead,Anthem of the Sun
292,Junior Murvin,Police and Thieves
293,Suicide,Suicide
294,Burial,Untrue
295,Coldplay,A Rush of Blood to the Head
296,Diana Ross & the Supremes,Anthology
297,ABBA,The Definitive Collection
298,Donald Fagen,The Nightfly
299,Ghostface Killah,Supreme Clientele
300,Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force,Planet Rock: The Album
301,Parquet Courts,Wide Awake!
302,The Fugees,The Score
303,Ween,Chocolate and Cheese
304,Amy Winehouse,Back to Black
305,OutKast,Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
306,Dolly Parton,Coat of Many Colors
307,The Shangri-Las,Leader of the Pack
308,Motörhead,Ace of Spades
309,Aphex Twin,Selected Ambient Works 85-92
310,Bon Iver,"For Emma, Forever Ago"
311,John Prine,John Prine
312,Vampire Weekend,Modern Vampires of the City
313,The Flaming Lips,The Soft Bulletin
314,Faust,Faust IV
315,Kid Cudi,Man on the Moon: The End of Day
316,Lou Reed,Berlin
317,Solange,When I Get Home
318,The Streets,Original Pirate Material
319,"Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young",Déjà Vu
320,M.I.A.,Kala
321,The Weeknd,House of Balloons
322,Johnny Cash,At Folsom Prison
323,Spiritualized,Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
324,Madvillain,Madvillainy
325,Maxwell,Urban Hang Suite
326,Animal Collective,Merriweather Post Pavilion
327,Toots & the Maytals,Funky Kingston
328,The Human League,Dare
329,Yes,Close to the Edge
330,The Congos,Heart of the Congos
331,Pet Shop Boys,Actually
332,Erykah Badu,Baduizm
333,Disco Inferno,D.I. Go Pop
334,ESG,Come Away with ESG
335,The Sonics,Here Are the Sonics
336,Alice Coltrane,Journey in Satchidananda
337,TLC,CrazySexyCool
338,Tame Impala,Lonerism
339,M.I.A.,Arular
340,Dwight Yoakam,"Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc."
341,Snoop Doggy Dogg,Doggystyle
342,Depeche Mode,Violator
343,Jane's Addiction,Nothing's Shocking
344,Mobb Deep,The Infamous
345,Santana,Santana
346,John Cale,Paris 1919
347,Notorious B.I.G.,Life After Death
348,The Feelies,The Good Earth
349,Frank Ocean,Channel Orange
350,Usher,Confessions
351,Janet Jackson,Control
352,Eagles,Hotel California
353,Neneh Cherry,Raw Like Sushi
354,OutKast,Stankonia
355,Boogie Down Productions,Criminal Minded
356,King Sunny Adé,Juju Music
357,Missy Elliott,Supa Dupa Fly
358,Aerosmith,Rocks
359,Rihanna,Anti
360,Muddy Waters,The Anthology
361,Kendrick Lamar,"good kid, m.A.A.d city"
362,Harry Nilsson,Nilsson Schmilsson
363,Buddy Holly,"The ""Chirping"" Crickets"
364,Nas,Illmatic
365,Raekwon,Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...
366,Manu Chao,Clandestino
367,Janelle Monáe,The ArchAndroid
368,Throbbing Gristle,20 Jazz Funk Greats
369,Dead Kennedys,Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
370,Fugazi,Repeater
371,Kanye West,The College Dropout
372,Weezer,Pinkerton
373,Lana Del Rey,Norman Fucking Rockwell!
374,Schoolly D,Saturday Night! The Album
375,Eurythmics,Touch
376,Suede,Suede
377,Carly Rae Jepsen,E•MO•TION
378,Ornette Coleman,Free Jazz
379,Janet Jackson,The Velvet Rope
380,Talk Talk,Laughing Stock
381,Pharoah Sanders,Karma
382,King Tubby,Meets Rockers Uptown
383,Elliott Smith,XO
384,The Chemical Brothers,Dig Your Own Hole
385,Aaliyah,One in a Million
386,Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers,Rockin' and Romance
387,Queens of the Stone Age,Songs for the Deaf
388,War,The World Is a Ghetto
389,Gary Numan/Tubeway Army,The Pleasure Principle
390,Boston,Boston
391,The Mothers of Invention,Freak Out!
392,Chic,Risqué
393,2Pac,All Eyez on Me
394,John Fahey,The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death
395,Meat Loaf,Bat Out of Hell
396,Bon Iver,Bon Iver
397,Can,Soundtracks
398,Pantera,Vulgar Display of Power
399,Mary J. Blige,My Life
400,Dinosaur,You're Living All Over Me
401,Jay-Z,Reasonable Doubt
402,"Tyler, the Creator",Igor
403,Misfits,Walk Among Us
404,The dB's,Stands for Decibels
405,Fela Kuti & Africa 70,Zombie
406,The Meters,Look-Ka Py Py
407,Mariah Carey,The Emancipation of Mimi
408,Bad Bunny,X 100pre
409,Adele,21
410,The Descendents,Milo Goes to College
411,Nicki Minaj,The Pinkprint
412,Soundgarden,Superunknown
413,LL Cool J,Radio
414,Mazzy Star,So Tonight That I Might See
415,Rancid,...And Out Come the Wolves
416,Iron Maiden,The Number of the Beast
417,Saint Etienne,So Tough
418,Bright Eyes,"I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning"
419,Gorillaz,Demon Days
420,J Dilla,Donuts
421,UGK,Ridin' Dirty
422,Travis Scott,Astroworld
423,Rush,Moving Pictures
424,R.E.M.,Reckoning
425,The Mekons,Fear and Whiskey
426,Minutemen,What Makes a Man Start Fires?
427,MC5,Kick Out the Jams
428,Manu Dibango,Soul Makossa
429,Bill Withers,Just As I Am
430,Dizzee Rascal,Boy in da Corner
431,Os Mutantes,Os Mutantes
432,Sade,Diamond Life
433,Drive-By Truckers,Southern Rock Opera
434,Taylor Swift,Red
435,Judas Priest,British Steel
436,Yoko Ono,Fly
437,Boards of Canada,Music Has the Right to Children
438,Beat Happening,Jamboree
439,The Vaselines,Dum-Dum
440,The Avalanches,Since I Left You
441,Lil Wayne,Tha Carter III
442,The Stranglers,Rattus Norvegicus
443,Beyoncé,Beyoncé
444,Ariana Grande,"thank u, next"
445,Bonnie 'Prince' Billy,I See a Darkness
446,Britney Spears,Blackout
447,The Orb,The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
448,Queen,A Night at the Opera
449,Big Thief,U.F.O.F.
450,The Mamas & the Papas,If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears
451,The Mountain Goats,The Sunset Tree
452,Black Lips,Good Bad Not Evil
453,X,Los Angeles
454,Justin Timberlake,FutureSex/LoveSounds
455,Young Thug,Barter 6
456,Dean Martin,Sleep Warm
457,Shakira,Dónde Están los Ladrones?
458,Van Halen,Van Halen
459,Tracy Chapman,Tracy Chapman
460,The Libertines,Up the Bracket
461,Scott Walker,Scott 4
462,Merle Haggard,Mama Tried
463,Alice Cooper,Love It to Death
464,Kate Bush,The Dreaming
465,Yeah Yeah Yeahs,Fever to Tell
466,Jimmy Cliff,The Harder They Come
467,Thin Lizzy,Live and Dangerous
468,Lily Allen,"Alright, Still"
469,Earth Wind & Fire,That's the Way of the World
470,Sinéad O'Connor,I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
471,Cyndi Lauper,She's So Unusual
472,SZA,Ctrl
473,Daddy Yankee,Barrio Fino
474,Big Star,#1 Record
475,Sheryl Crow,Sheryl Crow
476,Sparks,Kimono My House
477,Howlin' Wolf,Moanin' in the Moonlight
478,The Kinks,The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
479,Selena,Amor Prohibido
480,Miranda Lambert,The Weight of These Wings
481,Belle and Sebastian,If You're Feeling Sinister
482,The Pharcyde,Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde
483,Muddy Waters,The Anthology
484,Lady Gaga,Born This Way
485,Richard & Linda Thompson,I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
486,John Mayer,Continuum
487,Black Flag,Damaged
488,The Stooges,The Stooges
489,Phil Spector & Various Artists,Back to Mono (1958-1969)
490,Linda Ronstadt,Heart Like a Wheel
491,Harry Styles,Fine Line
492,Bonnie Raitt,Nick of Time
493,Marvin Gaye,"Here, My Dear"
494,The Ronettes,Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes
495,Boyz II Men,II
496,Shakira,Dónde Están los Ladrones?
497,Various Artists,The Indestructible Beat of Soweto
498,Suicide,Suicide
499,Rufus & Chaka Khan,Ask Rufus
500,Arcade Fire,Funeral
1 Rank Artist Album
2 1 The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
3 2 The Beach Boys Pet Sounds
4 3 The Beatles Revolver
5 4 Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited
6 5 The Beatles Rubber Soul
7 6 Bob Dylan Blonde on Blonde
8 7 The Beatles The Beatles ("The White Album")
9 8 The Clash London Calling
10 9 Bob Dylan Blood on the Tracks
11 10 The Beatles Abbey Road
12 11 The Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground & Nico
13 12 The Rolling Stones Exile on Main St.
14 13 Marvin Gaye What's Going On
15 14 Joni Mitchell Blue
16 15 Nirvana Nevermind
17 16 Van Morrison Astral Weeks
18 17 The Who Who's Next
19 18 Neil Young After the Gold Rush
20 19 Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin IV
21 20 Stevie Wonder Songs in the Key of Life
22 21 Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home
23 22 U2 The Joshua Tree
24 23 Television Marquee Moon
25 24 The Rolling Stones Let It Bleed
26 25 Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band Trout Mask Replica
27 26 Patti Smith Horses
28 27 Carole King Tapestry
29 28 Aretha Franklin Lady Soul
30 29 Brian Eno Another Green World
31 30 Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin II
32 31 Talking Heads Remain in Light
33 32 Radiohead OK Computer
34 33 Paul Simon Graceland
35 34 Pink Floyd The Dark Side of the Moon
36 35 The Smiths The Queen Is Dead
37 36 David Bowie Low
38 37 Randy Newman Sail Away
39 38 Miles Davis Kind of Blue
40 39 The Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers
41 40 Jimi Hendrix Experience Are You Experienced
42 41 Sly & the Family Stone There's a Riot Goin' On
43 42 Bob Dylan & the Band The Basement Tapes
44 43 Prince and the Revolution Purple Rain
45 44 Pavement Slanted and Enchanted
46 45 Bruce Springsteen Born to Run
47 46 Stevie Wonder Innervisions
48 47 Love Forever Changes
49 48 Public Enemy It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
50 49 The Stooges Fun House
51 50 Neil Young Harvest
52 51 John Lennon Plastic Ono Band
53 52 Bob Dylan The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
54 53 Nick Drake Five Leaves Left
55 54 R.E.M. Murmur
56 55 Michael Jackson Thriller
57 56 Wire Pink Flag
58 57 Fleetwood Mac Rumours
59 58 The Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols
60 59 Otis Redding Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul
61 60 Dusty Springfield Dusty in Memphis
62 61 Sonic Youth Daydream Nation
63 62 Prince Sign 'O' the Times
64 63 The Byrds Sweetheart of the Rodeo
65 64 Joni Mitchell Hejira
66 65 Bob Dylan John Wesley Harding
67 66 The Replacements Let It Be
68 67 Can Tago Mago
69 68 Simon & Garfunkel Bookends
70 69 Sly & the Family Stone Stand!
71 70 Roxy Music For Your Pleasure
72 71 Hüsker Dü Zen Arcade
73 72 Al Green Call Me
74 73 Ray Charles The Genius of Ray Charles
75 74 Kraftwerk Trans-Europe Express
76 75 Big Star Third/Sister Lovers
77 76 The Jimi Hendrix Experience Electric Ladyland
78 77 Radiohead The Bends
79 78 The Rolling Stones Beggars Banquet
80 79 Blondie Parallel Lines
81 80 The Band The Band
82 81 Bruce Springsteen Nebraska
83 82 Neil Young & Crazy Horse Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
84 83 Stevie Wonder Talking Book
85 84 Tom Waits Rain Dogs
86 85 Van Morrison Moondance
87 86 My Bloody Valentine Loveless
88 87 Gram Parsons Grievous Angel
89 88 David Bowie Station to Station
90 89 Todd Rundgren Something/Anything?
91 90 Pink Floyd The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
92 91 Joni Mitchell The Hissing of Summer Lawns
93 92 Gang of Four Entertainment!
94 93 Kate Bush Hounds of Love
95 94 Minutemen Double Nickels on the Dime
96 95 P.J. Harvey Rid of Me
97 96 The Kinks The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
98 97 Talking Heads Fear of Music
99 98 Lou Reed Transformer
100 99 James Brown Live at the Apollo
101 100 Public Image Ltd. Metal Box
102 101 Leonard Cohen Songs of Leonard Cohen
103 102 Neil Young On the Beach
104 103 Pixies Doolittle
105 104 Yo La Tengo I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
106 105 Prince Dirty Mind
107 106 Eminem The Marshall Mathers LP
108 107 Love Da Capo
109 108 David Bowie Hunky Dory
110 109 Derek and the Dominos Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
111 110 Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
112 111 X Wild Gift
113 112 Paul McCartney & Wings Band on the Run
114 113 The Byrds Younger Than Yesterday
115 114 Curtis Mayfield Curtis
116 115 Pere Ubu The Modern Dance
117 116 Nick Drake Pink Moon
118 117 Devo Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
119 118 Bob Marley & the Wailers Catch a Fire
120 119 Big Star Radio City
121 120 Funkadelic Maggot Brain
122 121 Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention We're Only in It for the Money
123 122 John Coltrane A Love Supreme
124 123 Beastie Boys Paul's Boutique
125 124 Jay-Z The Blueprint
126 125 Lucinda Williams Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
127 126 Roxy Music Roxy Music
128 127 The Ramones Ramones
129 128 Frank Sinatra Songs for Swingin' Lovers!
130 129 Bruce Springsteen The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
131 130 Tim Buckley Happy Sad
132 131 Black Sabbath Paranoid
133 132 The B-52's The B-52's
134 133 The Stooges Raw Power
135 134 The Beatles A Hard Day's Night
136 135 Sleater-Kinney Dig Me Out
137 136 Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti
138 137 George Harrison All Things Must Pass
139 138 Ornette Coleman The Shape of Jazz to Come
140 139 R.E.M. Automatic for the People
141 140 Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here
142 141 The Notorious B.I.G. Ready to Die
143 142 N.W.A Straight Outta Compton
144 143 Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Murder Ballads
145 144 Jackson Browne Late for the Sky
146 145 Portishead Dummy
147 146 Björk Homogenic
148 147 Charles Mingus The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
149 148 Liz Phair Exile in Guyville
150 149 Run-D.M.C. Raising Hell
151 150 Guided by Voices Bee Thousand
152 151 The Jesus and Mary Chain Psychocandy
153 152 Miles Davis Bitches Brew
154 153 Elliott Smith Either/Or
155 154 The Kinks Something Else by the Kinks
156 155 Joni Mitchell Court and Spark
157 156 AC/DC Back in Black
158 157 Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers Damn the Torpedoes
159 158 Iggy Pop Lust for Life
160 159 The Doors The Doors
161 160 Beck Odelay
162 161 The Zombies Odessey and Oracle
163 162 Neutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
164 163 Cream Disraeli Gears
165 164 Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963
166 165 De La Soul 3 Feet High and Rising
167 166 Aretha Franklin I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You
168 167 The Pretenders Pretenders
169 168 Buzzcocks Singles Going Steady
170 169 Moby Grape Moby Grape
171 170 Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin
172 171 Dr. Dre The Chronic
173 172 Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
174 173 Big Brother & the Holding Company Cheap Thrills
175 174 Creedence Clearwater Revival Green River
176 175 Björk Post
177 176 PJ Harvey To Bring You My Love
178 177 Dire Straits Dire Straits
179 178 Pulp Different Class
180 179 X-Ray Spex Germfree Adolescents
181 180 Black Flag Damaged
182 181 The Flying Burrito Brothers The Gilded Palace of Sin
183 182 Richard Hell & the Voidoids Blank Generation
184 183 T. Rex Electric Warrior
185 184 Patsy Cline The Ultimate Collection
186 185 Galaxie 500 On Fire
187 186 Isaac Hayes Hot Buttered Soul
188 187 Madonna Like a Prayer
189 188 New York Dolls New York Dolls
190 189 The Specials The Specials
191 190 Buffalo Springfield Buffalo Springfield Again
192 191 The Gun Club Fire of Love
193 192 Pink Floyd The Wall
194 193 Dinosaur Jr. You're Living All Over Me
195 194 Randy Newman Good Old Boys
196 195 Hole Live Through This
197 196 The Raincoats The Raincoats
198 197 Massive Attack Blue Lines
199 198 The Modern Lovers The Modern Lovers
200 199 The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East
201 200 Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
202 201 Pixies Surfer Rosa
203 202 Arcade Fire Funeral
204 203 LCD Soundsystem Sound of Silver
205 204 The Go-Betweens 16 Lovers Lane
206 205 Dr. John Gris-Gris
207 206 D'Angelo Voodoo
208 207 Metallica Master of Puppets
209 208 Uncle Tupelo No Depression
210 209 Outkast Aquemini
211 210 Air Moon Safari
212 211 Richard & Linda Thompson I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
213 212 The White Stripes Elephant
214 213 Cheap Trick In Color
215 214 Traffic The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys
216 215 Echo & the Bunnymen Heaven Up Here
217 216 The Stone Roses The Stone Roses
218 217 Can Ege Bamyasi
219 218 Iggy & the Stooges Raw Power
220 219 Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream
221 220 50 Cent Get Rich or Die Tryin'
222 221 Peter Gabriel Peter Gabriel 3: Melt
223 222 ABC The Lexicon of Love
224 223 Bob Mould Workbook
225 224 Guns N' Roses Appetite for Destruction
226 225 Violent Femmes Violent Femmes
227 226 Dexy's Midnight Runners Searching for the Young Soul Rebels
228 227 Ray Charles Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music
229 228 King Crimson In the Court of the Crimson King
230 229 PJ Harvey Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
231 230 My Morning Jacket Z
232 231 The Feelies Crazy Rhythms
233 232 Ice Cube AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted
234 233 Graham Parker & the Rumour Squeezing Out Sparks
235 234 Suicide Suicide
236 235 Steely Dan Can't Buy a Thrill
237 236 Belle & Sebastian If You're Feeling Sinister
238 237 Cocteau Twins Heaven or Las Vegas
239 238 The Strokes Is This It
240 239 The Cure Disintegration
241 240 Eric B. & Rakim Paid in Full
242 241 Tom Waits Swordfishtrombones
243 242 The Pogues Rum Sodomy & the Lash
244 243 The Police Synchronicity
245 244 Blur Parklife
246 245 Meat Puppets Meat Puppets II
247 246 Scritti Politti Cupid & Psyche 85
248 247 Supertramp Crime of the Century
249 248 Thelonious Monk Brilliant Corners
250 249 Big Youth Screaming Target
251 250 The Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs
252 251 Daft Punk Discovery
253 252 Oasis (What's the Story) Morning Glory?
254 253 The Impressions The Impressions' Greatest Hits
255 254 Radiohead Kid A
256 255 ZZ Top Tres Hombres
257 256 Squeeze East Side Story
258 257 Brian Eno Before and After Science
259 258 Quicksilver Messenger Service Happy Trails
260 259 The Temptations Anthology
261 260 Peter Tosh Legalize It
262 261 Flying Lotus Cosmogramma
263 262 The Pharcyde Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde
264 263 Weezer Weezer (Blue Album)
265 264 Loretta Lynn Coal Miner's Daughter
266 265 Robyn Body Talk
267 266 Def Leppard Pyromania
268 267 Wu-Tang Clan Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
269 268 Rufus & Chaka Khan Ask Rufus
270 269 Neil Diamond The Bang Years 1966–1968
271 270 Fela Kuti & Africa 70 Expensive Shit
272 271 Shania Twain Come On Over
273 272 A Tribe Called Quest The Low End Theory
274 273 The White Stripes White Blood Cells
275 274 The Slits Cut
276 275 Radiohead In Rainbows
277 276 Green Day Dookie
278 277 Billy Joel The Stranger
279 278 Can Future Days
280 279 George Michael Faith
281 280 The Isley Brothers 3 + 3
282 281 Brian Wilson Smile
283 282 The Fall This Nation's Saving Grace
284 283 Jefferson Airplane Surrealistic Pillow
285 284 EPMD Strictly Business
286 285 Rod Stewart Every Picture Tells a Story
287 286 Todd Rundgren A Wizard, a True Star
288 287 Primal Scream Screamadelica
289 288 The Ronettes Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes
290 289 Brian Eno Here Come the Warm Jets
291 290 Fiona Apple When the Pawn...
292 291 Grateful Dead Anthem of the Sun
293 292 Junior Murvin Police and Thieves
294 293 Suicide Suicide
295 294 Burial Untrue
296 295 Coldplay A Rush of Blood to the Head
297 296 Diana Ross & the Supremes Anthology
298 297 ABBA The Definitive Collection
299 298 Donald Fagen The Nightfly
300 299 Ghostface Killah Supreme Clientele
301 300 Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force Planet Rock: The Album
302 301 Parquet Courts Wide Awake!
303 302 The Fugees The Score
304 303 Ween Chocolate and Cheese
305 304 Amy Winehouse Back to Black
306 305 OutKast Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
307 306 Dolly Parton Coat of Many Colors
308 307 The Shangri-Las Leader of the Pack
309 308 Motörhead Ace of Spades
310 309 Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works 85-92
311 310 Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago
312 311 John Prine John Prine
313 312 Vampire Weekend Modern Vampires of the City
314 313 The Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin
315 314 Faust Faust IV
316 315 Kid Cudi Man on the Moon: The End of Day
317 316 Lou Reed Berlin
318 317 Solange When I Get Home
319 318 The Streets Original Pirate Material
320 319 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Déjà Vu
321 320 M.I.A. Kala
322 321 The Weeknd House of Balloons
323 322 Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison
324 323 Spiritualized Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
325 324 Madvillain Madvillainy
326 325 Maxwell Urban Hang Suite
327 326 Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion
328 327 Toots & the Maytals Funky Kingston
329 328 The Human League Dare
330 329 Yes Close to the Edge
331 330 The Congos Heart of the Congos
332 331 Pet Shop Boys Actually
333 332 Erykah Badu Baduizm
334 333 Disco Inferno D.I. Go Pop
335 334 ESG Come Away with ESG
336 335 The Sonics Here Are the Sonics
337 336 Alice Coltrane Journey in Satchidananda
338 337 TLC CrazySexyCool
339 338 Tame Impala Lonerism
340 339 M.I.A. Arular
341 340 Dwight Yoakam Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.
342 341 Snoop Doggy Dogg Doggystyle
343 342 Depeche Mode Violator
344 343 Jane's Addiction Nothing's Shocking
345 344 Mobb Deep The Infamous
346 345 Santana Santana
347 346 John Cale Paris 1919
348 347 Notorious B.I.G. Life After Death
349 348 The Feelies The Good Earth
350 349 Frank Ocean Channel Orange
351 350 Usher Confessions
352 351 Janet Jackson Control
353 352 Eagles Hotel California
354 353 Neneh Cherry Raw Like Sushi
355 354 OutKast Stankonia
356 355 Boogie Down Productions Criminal Minded
357 356 King Sunny Adé Juju Music
358 357 Missy Elliott Supa Dupa Fly
359 358 Aerosmith Rocks
360 359 Rihanna Anti
361 360 Muddy Waters The Anthology
362 361 Kendrick Lamar good kid, m.A.A.d city
363 362 Harry Nilsson Nilsson Schmilsson
364 363 Buddy Holly The "Chirping" Crickets
365 364 Nas Illmatic
366 365 Raekwon Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...
367 366 Manu Chao Clandestino
368 367 Janelle Monáe The ArchAndroid
369 368 Throbbing Gristle 20 Jazz Funk Greats
370 369 Dead Kennedys Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
371 370 Fugazi Repeater
372 371 Kanye West The College Dropout
373 372 Weezer Pinkerton
374 373 Lana Del Rey Norman Fucking Rockwell!
375 374 Schoolly D Saturday Night! The Album
376 375 Eurythmics Touch
377 376 Suede Suede
378 377 Carly Rae Jepsen E•MO•TION
379 378 Ornette Coleman Free Jazz
380 379 Janet Jackson The Velvet Rope
381 380 Talk Talk Laughing Stock
382 381 Pharoah Sanders Karma
383 382 King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown
384 383 Elliott Smith XO
385 384 The Chemical Brothers Dig Your Own Hole
386 385 Aaliyah One in a Million
387 386 Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers Rockin' and Romance
388 387 Queens of the Stone Age Songs for the Deaf
389 388 War The World Is a Ghetto
390 389 Gary Numan/Tubeway Army The Pleasure Principle
391 390 Boston Boston
392 391 The Mothers of Invention Freak Out!
393 392 Chic Risqué
394 393 2Pac All Eyez on Me
395 394 John Fahey The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death
396 395 Meat Loaf Bat Out of Hell
397 396 Bon Iver Bon Iver
398 397 Can Soundtracks
399 398 Pantera Vulgar Display of Power
400 399 Mary J. Blige My Life
401 400 Dinosaur You're Living All Over Me
402 401 Jay-Z Reasonable Doubt
403 402 Tyler, the Creator Igor
404 403 Misfits Walk Among Us
405 404 The dB's Stands for Decibels
406 405 Fela Kuti & Africa 70 Zombie
407 406 The Meters Look-Ka Py Py
408 407 Mariah Carey The Emancipation of Mimi
409 408 Bad Bunny X 100pre
410 409 Adele 21
411 410 The Descendents Milo Goes to College
412 411 Nicki Minaj The Pinkprint
413 412 Soundgarden Superunknown
414 413 LL Cool J Radio
415 414 Mazzy Star So Tonight That I Might See
416 415 Rancid ...And Out Come the Wolves
417 416 Iron Maiden The Number of the Beast
418 417 Saint Etienne So Tough
419 418 Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
420 419 Gorillaz Demon Days
421 420 J Dilla Donuts
422 421 UGK Ridin' Dirty
423 422 Travis Scott Astroworld
424 423 Rush Moving Pictures
425 424 R.E.M. Reckoning
426 425 The Mekons Fear and Whiskey
427 426 Minutemen What Makes a Man Start Fires?
428 427 MC5 Kick Out the Jams
429 428 Manu Dibango Soul Makossa
430 429 Bill Withers Just As I Am
431 430 Dizzee Rascal Boy in da Corner
432 431 Os Mutantes Os Mutantes
433 432 Sade Diamond Life
434 433 Drive-By Truckers Southern Rock Opera
435 434 Taylor Swift Red
436 435 Judas Priest British Steel
437 436 Yoko Ono Fly
438 437 Boards of Canada Music Has the Right to Children
439 438 Beat Happening Jamboree
440 439 The Vaselines Dum-Dum
441 440 The Avalanches Since I Left You
442 441 Lil Wayne Tha Carter III
443 442 The Stranglers Rattus Norvegicus
444 443 Beyoncé Beyoncé
445 444 Ariana Grande thank u, next
446 445 Bonnie 'Prince' Billy I See a Darkness
447 446 Britney Spears Blackout
448 447 The Orb The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
449 448 Queen A Night at the Opera
450 449 Big Thief U.F.O.F.
451 450 The Mamas & the Papas If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears
452 451 The Mountain Goats The Sunset Tree
453 452 Black Lips Good Bad Not Evil
454 453 X Los Angeles
455 454 Justin Timberlake FutureSex/LoveSounds
456 455 Young Thug Barter 6
457 456 Dean Martin Sleep Warm
458 457 Shakira Dónde Están los Ladrones?
459 458 Van Halen Van Halen
460 459 Tracy Chapman Tracy Chapman
461 460 The Libertines Up the Bracket
462 461 Scott Walker Scott 4
463 462 Merle Haggard Mama Tried
464 463 Alice Cooper Love It to Death
465 464 Kate Bush The Dreaming
466 465 Yeah Yeah Yeahs Fever to Tell
467 466 Jimmy Cliff The Harder They Come
468 467 Thin Lizzy Live and Dangerous
469 468 Lily Allen Alright, Still
470 469 Earth Wind & Fire That's the Way of the World
471 470 Sinéad O'Connor I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
472 471 Cyndi Lauper She's So Unusual
473 472 SZA Ctrl
474 473 Daddy Yankee Barrio Fino
475 474 Big Star #1 Record
476 475 Sheryl Crow Sheryl Crow
477 476 Sparks Kimono My House
478 477 Howlin' Wolf Moanin' in the Moonlight
479 478 The Kinks The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
480 479 Selena Amor Prohibido
481 480 Miranda Lambert The Weight of These Wings
482 481 Belle and Sebastian If You're Feeling Sinister
483 482 The Pharcyde Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde
484 483 Muddy Waters The Anthology
485 484 Lady Gaga Born This Way
486 485 Richard & Linda Thompson I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
487 486 John Mayer Continuum
488 487 Black Flag Damaged
489 488 The Stooges The Stooges
490 489 Phil Spector & Various Artists Back to Mono (1958-1969)
491 490 Linda Ronstadt Heart Like a Wheel
492 491 Harry Styles Fine Line
493 492 Bonnie Raitt Nick of Time
494 493 Marvin Gaye Here, My Dear
495 494 The Ronettes Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes
496 495 Boyz II Men II
497 496 Shakira Dónde Están los Ladrones?
498 497 Various Artists The Indestructible Beat of Soweto
499 498 Suicide Suicide
500 499 Rufus & Chaka Khan Ask Rufus
501 500 Arcade Fire Funeral