500,Arcade Fire,Funeral,"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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499,Rufus featuring Chaka Khan,Ask Rufus,"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.
499,"Rufus, Chaka Khan",Ask Rufus,"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.
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498,Suicide,Suicide,"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.
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497,Various Artists,The Indestructible Beat of Soweto,"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.
"
496,Shakira,¿Dónde Están los Ladrones?,"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.
496,Shakira,Dónde Están los Ladrones,"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.
"
495,Boyz II Men,II,"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.”
"
494,The Ronettes,Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica,"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.
494,The Ronettes,Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes,"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.
"
493,Marvin Gaye,"Here, My Dear","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.
486,John Mayer,Continuum,"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.
"
485,Richard Thompson and Linda Thompson,I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight,"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.”
485,Richard and Linda Thompson,I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight,"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.”
"
484,Lady Gaga,Born This Way,"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.
"
483,Muddy Waters,The Anthology: 1947–1972,"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.
483,Muddy Waters,The Anthology,"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.
"
482,The Pharcyde,Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde,"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.
"
481,Belle and Sebastian,If You're Feeling Sinister,"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.
481,Belle and Sebastian,If You’re Feeling Sinister,"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.
"
480,Miranda Lambert,The Weight of These Wings,"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.
478,The Kinks,Something Else by the Kinks,"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.”
"
477,Howlin' Wolf,Moanin' in the Moonlight,"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).”
477,Howlin’ Wolf,Moanin' in the Moonlight,"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).”
"
476,Sparks,Kimono My House,"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.
468,The Rolling Stones,Some Girls,"Rolling Stones, 1978","Why did the Stones call their big comeback album Some Girls? Keith explained, “Because we couldn’t remember their fucking names.” The Stones sounded revitalized on Some Girls, with Mick at his bitchiest, reveling in the NYC sleaze of “Shattered,” “Beast of Burden,” and the disco hit “Miss You.” It became their all-time biggest seller. Keith was in rough shape at the time — as Mick fumed, “Christ, Keith fuckin’ gets busted every year” — but he stands unrepentant in his outlaw theme song, “Before They Make Me Run.”
"
467,Maxwell,BLACKsummers'night,"Columbia, 2009","Maxwell was a successful Nineties neo-soul crooner who went on an eight-year hiatus between 2001’s Now and this 2009 release. BLACKSummers’night betrays no anxiety about the time off; in fact, it ranks among the great comeback records. Maxwell sang about post-breakup desperation as he navigated plush, complicated grooves with jazz players like Keyon Harrold and Derrick Hodge giving his arrangements extra zip. The album’s ecstatic triumph is “Pretty Wings,” a keening, chiming lullaby.
467,Maxwell,BLACKsummers’night,"Columbia, 2009","Maxwell was a successful Nineties neo-soul crooner who went on an eight-year hiatus between 2001’s Now and this 2009 release. BLACKSummers’night betrays no anxiety about the time off; in fact, it ranks among the great comeback records. Maxwell sang about post-breakup desperation as he navigated plush, complicated grooves with jazz players like Keyon Harrold and Derrick Hodge giving his arrangements extra zip. The album’s ecstatic triumph is “Pretty Wings,” a keening, chiming lullaby.
"
466,The Beach Boys,The Beach Boys Today!,"Capitol, 1965","“I only tried surfing once, and the board almost hit me in the head,” Brian Wilson told Rolling Stone in 1999. But Wilson turned his fantasies into a California dream world of fast cars and cool waves — a world that might even have room for a scared misfit like him. Yet even in this early phase, Wilson was writing yearningly complex tunes — “She Knows Me Too Well” feels like Greek tragedy translated into doo-wop harmonies and surf guitars.
464,The Isley Brothers,3 + 3,"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.
"
463,Laura Nyro,Eli and the Thirteenth Confession,"Columbia, 1968","Part confessional singer-songwriter and part would-be soul diva, Nyro was never an easy one to categorize. Her dazzling second album came the closest to blending both of her musical selves. Her pop instincts shine in the best-known songs here, like “Eli’s Comin’” and “Stoned Soul Picnic.” But the rest of the album finds her less restrained lyrically and musically, making for sensuous and often sexually ambiguous music that paved the way for many genre-busting female troubadours.
463,Laura Nyro,Eli & the 13th Confession,"Columbia, 1968","Part confessional singer-songwriter and part would-be soul diva, Nyro was never an easy one to categorize. Her dazzling second album came the closest to blending both of her musical selves. Her pop instincts shine in the best-known songs here, like “Eli’s Comin’” and “Stoned Soul Picnic.” But the rest of the album finds her less restrained lyrically and musically, making for sensuous and often sexually ambiguous music that paved the way for many genre-busting female troubadours.
"
462,The Flying Burrito Brothers,The Gilded Palace of Sin,"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.
"
461,Bon Iver,"For Emma, Forever Ago","Jagjaguwar, 2008","Justin Vernon didn’t plan on reshaping a generation’s understanding of love-torn folk music when he retreated to the Wisconsin woods to record his first album (“I was very sad and very lonely”), but that’s exactly what happened. What’s even more staggering is the way Vernon’s Auto-Tune and falsetto-laden DIY debut, which centered around the heartsick “Skinny Love,” would reshape the contours of the pop mainstream — from Ed Sheeran and Kanye West to James Blake and Taylor Swift — for years to come.
461,Bon Iver,For Emma,"Jagjaguwar, 2008","Justin Vernon didn’t plan on reshaping a generation’s understanding of love-torn folk music when he retreated to the Wisconsin woods to record his first album (“I was very sad and very lonely”), but that’s exactly what happened. What’s even more staggering is the way Vernon’s Auto-Tune and falsetto-laden DIY debut, which centered around the heartsick “Skinny Love,” would reshape the contours of the pop mainstream — from Ed Sheeran and Kanye West to James Blake and Taylor Swift — for years to come.
"
460,Lorde,Melodrama,"Universal, 2017","Lorde was 16 when the blockbuster hit “Royals” earned her acclaim as the voice of a generation. As her second album showed, that wasn’t quite accurate — she’s more like the voice of smart, self-conscious, neurotic people of all generations. “I think that you might be the same as me/Behave abnormally,” she sings on “Homemade Dynamite.” The sound is bigger-sounding and more club-friendly than the spare sound of her 2016 debut (especially on the single “Green Light”), and she’s even more impressive on a big stage.
"
459,Kid Cudi,Man on the Moon: The End of Day,"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.
459,Kid Cudi,Man on the Moon: The End of the Day,"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.
"
458,Jason Isbell,Southeastern,"Southeastern, 2013","After releasing three little-heard solo albums, Isbell turned his personal travails — fresh sobriety, getting married — into what would become his opus. “It gave me a story to tell,” the songwriter said of Southeastern, which featured his sharpest literary writing (“Elephant”), newfound vulnerability (“Traveling Alone”), and his new calling card (“Cover Me Up”). The album set a standard for new-age Seventies-inspired singer-songwriters and coronated the Alabama native and his wife and bandmate, Amanda Shires, as the new king and queen of Americana.
"
457,Sinéad O'Connor,I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got,"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.
457,Sinéad O’Connor,I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,"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.
"
456,Al Green,Al Green's Greatest Hits,"Hi/EMI, 1975","“In Memphis, you just do as you feel,” Al Green told Rolling Stone in 1972. “It’s not a modern, up-to-par, very glamorous, big-red-chairs-and-carpet-that-thick studio. It’s one of those places you can go into and stomp out a good soul jam.” In collaboration with producer Willie Mitchell and musicians like drummer Al Jackson Jr., Green was a natural album artist, making love-and-pain classics such as 1973’s Call Me. But this collection makes for a unified album in itself, compiling hits like “Let’s Stay Together,” “I’m Still in Love With You,” and “Tired of Being Alone” into a flawless 10-song suite.
456,Al Green,Greatest Hits,"Hi/EMI, 1975","“In Memphis, you just do as you feel,” Al Green told Rolling Stone in 1972. “It’s not a modern, up-to-par, very glamorous, big-red-chairs-and-carpet-that-thick studio. It’s one of those places you can go into and stomp out a good soul jam.” In collaboration with producer Willie Mitchell and musicians like drummer Al Jackson Jr., Green was a natural album artist, making love-and-pain classics such as 1973’s Call Me. But this collection makes for a unified album in itself, compiling hits like “Let’s Stay Together,” “I’m Still in Love With You,” and “Tired of Being Alone” into a flawless 10-song suite.
"
455,Bo Diddley,Bo Diddley/Go Bo Diddley,"Chess, 1958","Diddley’s influence on rock & roll is inestimable, from the off-kilter rhythmic thump of “Pretty Thing” to his revved-up take on singing the blues. This album — a repackaging of his first two records — has many of his best singles, including “I’m a Man”and “Who Do You Love?” Bands immediately started ripping off his signature rollicking beat, and they haven’t stopped yet — including many on this list, from Bruce Springsteen on Born to Run’s “She’s the One” to George Michael on “Faith.”
"
454,Can,Ege Bamyası,"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.”
454,Can,Ege Bamyasi,"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.”
"
453,Nine Inch Nails,Pretty Hate Machine,"TVT, 1989","“The music I always liked as a kid was stuff I could bum out to and realize, ‘Hey, someone else feels that way, too,'” Trent Reznor said in 1990. “So if someone can do that with my music, it’s mission accomplished.” Led by the hit “Head Like a Hole,” Nine Inch Nails’ debut album took bleak Midwestern goth-industrial disco to the rock masses, a move that would shape pop culture just as much as Nirvana’s Nevermind did. When Reznor sang, “Grey would be the color if I had a heart,” on “Something I Can Never Have,” millions felt his pain.
451,Roberta Flack,First Take,"Atlantic, 1969","At the peak of psychedelic soul music, Roberta Flack debuted with a classy quietude and thoughtful grace, recording with jazz musicians and complex horn and string arrangements. Her record was widely admired, but it didn’t become popular until three years later, after her pained version of Ewan MacColl’s 1950s folk ballad, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” scored a love scene in Clint Eastwood’s movie Play Misty for Me, and the song spent six weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
"
450,Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney,Ram,"Apple, 1971","In its day, Paul McCartney’s second post-Beatles album was widely disliked; John Lennon dismissed it as “muzak,” and Ringo Starr said the lack of good songs made him “sad.” In retrospect, it’s a modest, goofy, loose-limbed outing about domestic pleasures, full of eccentric, pastorale tunes like “Heart of the Country” and “Munkberry Moon Delight.” The loopy pastiche of whimsical song fragments “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” became Paul’s first post-Beatles Number One hit. “I was in a very free mood,” he said.
450,Paul and Linda McCartney,Ram,"Apple, 1971","In its day, Paul McCartney’s second post-Beatles album was widely disliked; John Lennon dismissed it as “muzak,” and Ringo Starr said the lack of good songs made him “sad.” In retrospect, it’s a modest, goofy, loose-limbed outing about domestic pleasures, full of eccentric, pastorale tunes like “Heart of the Country” and “Munkberry Moon Delight.” The loopy pastiche of whimsical song fragments “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” became Paul’s first post-Beatles Number One hit. “I was in a very free mood,” he said.
"
449,The White Stripes,Elephant,"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.”
"
448,Otis Redding,Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul,"Volt, 1966","Otis Redding’s last album before his tragic death in a plane crash, Dictionary of Soul, was just what the title promises: a definitive summary of an entire musical world. “Try a Little Tenderness” was a forgotten Bing Crosby oldie from the Thirties until Redding claimed it and turned it into pure Memphis soul. He does the same with “Tennessee Waltz” and the Beatles’ “Day Tripper,” as well as his own ballads “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)” and “My Lover’s Prayer.”
448,Otis Redding,Dictionary of Soul,"Volt, 1966","Otis Redding’s last album before his tragic death in a plane crash, Dictionary of Soul, was just what the title promises: a definitive summary of an entire musical world. “Try a Little Tenderness” was a forgotten Bing Crosby oldie from the Thirties until Redding claimed it and turned it into pure Memphis soul. He does the same with “Tennessee Waltz” and the Beatles’ “Day Tripper,” as well as his own ballads “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)” and “My Lover’s Prayer.”
"
447,Bad Bunny,X 100pre,"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.
"
446,Alice Coltrane,Journey in Satchidananda,"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.
446,Alice Coltrane,Journey in Satchidanada,"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.
"
445,Yes,Close to the Edge,"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.
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444,Fiona Apple,Extraordinary Machine,"Epic, 2005","After cutting a pristine chamber-pop version of her third album with Jon Brion, her collaborator on 1999’s When the Pawn…, Apple’s label demanded revisions, so she redid almost the whole thing with Dr. Dre sideman Mike Elizondo and Beatles aficionado Brian Kehew. The changes and attendant delays spurred protests from fans, but the end result was hardly a compromise: Extraordinary Machine is a complex, versatile breakup record, with Apple playing McCartney-esque piano lines over skipping rhythms on melodically rich, lyrically thorny songs like “O’ Sailor” and “Better Version of Me.” You try squeezing the word “stentorian” into hooks you can belt at karaoke.
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443,David Bowie,Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps),"RCA, 1980","It’s the end, the end of the Seventies; it’s the end, the end of the century. Bowie looks back over a decade he helped define and rips it into pieces, with futuristic post-punk lampoons like “Fashion” and “Teenage Wildlife,” where he bitches about “the same old thing in brand-new drag.” He revisits the Major Tom story with “Ashes to Ashes,” where he screams along with the New Romantic synths, acting out the sad story of the lost astronaut who finds the higher he gets, the lower he feels.
443,David Bowie,Scary Monsters,"RCA, 1980","It’s the end, the end of the Seventies; it’s the end, the end of the century. Bowie looks back over a decade he helped define and rips it into pieces, with futuristic post-punk lampoons like “Fashion” and “Teenage Wildlife,” where he bitches about “the same old thing in brand-new drag.” He revisits the Major Tom story with “Ashes to Ashes,” where he screams along with the New Romantic synths, acting out the sad story of the lost astronaut who finds the higher he gets, the lower he feels.
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442,The Weeknd,Beauty Behind the Madness,"XO, 2015","Abel Tesfaye lets you know who he is right out front, no metaphors, on the Kanye West co-produced track “Tell Your Friends”: His life is about “poppin’ pills, fuckin’ bitches, livin’ life so trill.” The Toronto R&B singer helped make pop music a darker place in the 2010s — “Bitch, I’m still a user,” he warns on his hugely successful second LP. His pristine, downy voice and spare, frosty electronic tracks suck you in, and Swedish pop genius Max Martin produces three tracks, including the bumping “Can’t Feel My Face,” a love song to cocaine as well as a massive pop hit.
430,Elvis Costello,My Aim Is True,"Columbia, 1977","Elvis Costello on the fuel for his debut: “I spent a lot of time with just a big jar of instant coffee and the first Clash album [see No. 102], listening to it over and over.” The music is more pub rock than punk rock, but the songs are full of punk’s verbal bite. The album’s opening lines — “Now that your picture’s in the paper being rhythmically admired” — and the poisoned-valentine ballad “Alison” established Costello as one of the sharpest, and nastiest, lyricists of his generation.
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429,Four Tops,Reach Out,"Tamla/Motown, 1967","The Four Tops were the most dramatic of the Motown singing groups, driven by the towering vocals of Levi Stubbs. Reach Out has overwrought classics like the title track, the goth-soul tsunami “7 Rooms of Gloom,” and “Bernadette,” on which lust and paranoia spontaneously combust. They also branch out into rock and folk with covers of the Monkees and Tim Hardin. It was the last Motown album for the label’s definitive songwriting team Holland, Dozier, and Holland.
429,The Four Tops,Reach Out,"Tamla/Motown, 1967","The Four Tops were the most dramatic of the Motown singing groups, driven by the towering vocals of Levi Stubbs. Reach Out has overwrought classics like the title track, the goth-soul tsunami “7 Rooms of Gloom,” and “Bernadette,” on which lust and paranoia spontaneously combust. They also branch out into rock and folk with covers of the Monkees and Tim Hardin. It was the last Motown album for the label’s definitive songwriting team Holland, Dozier, and Holland.
"
428,Hüsker Dü,New Day Rising,"SST, 1985","These three Minneapolis dudes played savagely emotional hardcore punk that became a key influence on Nirvana, among others (Hüsker Dü guitarist Bob Mould was an early candidate to produce Nevermind, before the job went to Butch Vig). Mould and the band created a roar like garbage trucks trying to sing Beach Boys songs, especially on the anthems “Celebrated Summer” and “Perfect Example,” and on the wondrous “Books About UFOs,” drummer Grant Hart gets on the piano and plunks out a jaunty love song to an amateur astronomer.
421,M.I.A.,Arular,"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.
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420,"Earth, Wind and Fire",That's the Way of the World,"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.
420,"Earth, Wind and Fire",That’s the Way of the World,"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.
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419,Eric Church,Chief,"EMI Nashville, 2011","Eric Church emerged in the mid-2000s as one of country music’s best new singer-songwriters, and his third album rolled all of his gifts into a tight package that was rock-influenced, rough around the edges, and catchy as hell. “Hungover & Hard Up” shows the North Carolina native’s abiding gift for drowning his sorrows in booze and melody, and on the classic “Springsteen,” he invokes Bruce’s music as a way to access the passion of youth. The songwriting is so confident, even the ballads swagger a bit.
416,The Roots,Things Fall Apart,"MCA, 1999","The Nineties’ alternative-rap scene hit its high-water mark as an album-length art form with this love letter to black music in the late 20th century. That theme is most explicit on on “Act Too (The Love of My Life),” a tender dedication to hip-hop’s redemptive power, but it’s also there in the playful way Black Thought and Malik B bounce rhymes off each other and in the beats that riff affectionately on everyone from Sly Stone to Schoolly D in a kaleidoscopic celebration of musical soul.
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415,The Meters,Look-Ka Py Py,"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.
415,The Meters,Looka Py Py,"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.
"
414,Chic,Risqué,"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.”
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413,Creedence Clearwater Revival,Cosmo's Factory,"Fantasy, 1970","Cosmo’s Factory was CCR’s third classic album in under a year. John Fogerty began it with the seven-minute power-choogle “Ramble Tamble,” raging against “actors in the White House.” The hits include the country travelogue “Lookin’ Out My Back Door,” the Vietnam nightmare “Run Through the Jungle,” the Little Richard tribute “Travelin’ Band,” and the Stax-style ballad “Long as I Can See the Light.” But the triumph is CCR’s 11-minute cowbell-crazed jam on “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” proof these guys could mix hippie visions with populist grit.
"
412,Smokey Robinson and the Miracles,Going to a Go-Go,"Tamla/Motown, 1965","Motown at its most debonair and sexy. Smokey Robinson works his sweeping soul falsetto over unbelievably sad ballads, including “The Tracks of My Tears” and “Ooo Baby Baby,” as the Miracles sob along. Robinson made it seem effortless to write a constant string of hit singles for the Miracles, as well as the rest of the Motown roster, but this album also has some of his finest deep cuts, especially the helpless yearning of “Choosey Beggar.”
412,Smokey Robinson and the Miracles,Going to a GoGo,"Tamla/Motown, 1965","Motown at its most debonair and sexy. Smokey Robinson works his sweeping soul falsetto over unbelievably sad ballads, including “The Tracks of My Tears” and “Ooo Baby Baby,” as the Miracles sob along. Robinson made it seem effortless to write a constant string of hit singles for the Miracles, as well as the rest of the Motown roster, but this album also has some of his finest deep cuts, especially the helpless yearning of “Choosey Beggar.”
"
411,Bob Dylan,Love and Theft,"Columbia, 2001","The blood and glory of 1997’s Time Out of Mind had raised the bar: This was the first Dylan album in years that had to live up to fans’ expectations. He didn’t just exceed them — he blew them up. Dylan sang in the voice of a grizzled drifter who’d visited every nook and cranny of America and gotten chased out of them all. Love and Theft was full of corny vaudeville jokes and apocalyptic floods, from the guitar rave “Summer Days” to the country lilt of “Po’ Boy.”
"
410,The Beach Boys,Wild Honey,"Capitol, 1967","After Pet Sounds and the aborted Smiley Smile, what was left for the Beach Boys to do? Invent the idea of DIY pop. Ditching the opulent and intricate arrangements of those two albums, Wild Honey returned them to their days as a spunky, self-contained band. In 24 concise but utterly winning minutes, they romp through set of low-fi sunbaked melodies and R&B and soul homages — all suffused with warmth, sly hooks, and a sense of band unity, even as a frazzled Brian Wilson was starting to pull back.
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409,Grateful Dead,Workingman's Dead,"Warner Bros., 1970","“We weren’t feeling like an experimental music group, but were feeling more like a good old band,” Jerry Garcia said. The Dead stripped down for Workingman’s Dead, with eight spooky blues and country songs that rival the best of Bob Dylan, as in the morbid “Black Peter” and “Dire Wolf.” Garcia and Robert Hunter proved themselves one of rock’s sharpest songwriting teams, with the acoustic hymn “Uncle John’s Band.” Hunter said, “It was my feeling about what the Dead was and could be. It was very much a song for us and about us, in the most hopeful sense.”
409,Grateful Dead,Workingman’s Dead,"Warner Bros., 1970","“We weren’t feeling like an experimental music group, but were feeling more like a good old band,” Jerry Garcia said. The Dead stripped down for Workingman’s Dead, with eight spooky blues and country songs that rival the best of Bob Dylan, as in the morbid “Black Peter” and “Dire Wolf.” Garcia and Robert Hunter proved themselves one of rock’s sharpest songwriting teams, with the acoustic hymn “Uncle John’s Band.” Hunter said, “It was my feeling about what the Dead was and could be. It was very much a song for us and about us, in the most hopeful sense.”
"
408,Motörhead,Ace of Spades,"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.
"
407,Neil Young,Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,"Reprise, 1969","Neil Young and Crazy Horse hadn’t been together for more than eight weeks when they cut this album. It’s down-home hippie-grunge with the feel of a jam session conducted by master jammers. Both sides of the album end in monster, 10-minute guitar excursions, especially “Down by the River”and “Cowgirl in the Sand,” and “Cinnamon Girl” was Young’s first big solo single, three minutes of crunching distortion featuring a one-note guitar solo for the ages — “the closest thing Crazy Horse had to a hit,” Young said.
"
406,The Magnetic Fields,69 Love Songs,"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.
406,Magnetic Fields,69 Love Songs,"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.
"
405,Various artists,"Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968","Elektra, 1972","This collection of Sixties garage rock, compiled by rock critic and soon-to-be Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye, became a touchstone for Seventies punks and, years later, for the aftershock of post-punk. The 27-track, two-LP set was a radical idea in 1972: While rock was getting bigger, Nuggets established a new canon out of forgotten AM-radio hits — brutally simple singles like the Standells’ “Dirty Water,” the Shadows of Knight’s“Oh Yeah!” and the Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction.” Rhino expanded Nuggets into a sprawling four-CD box in 1998.
405,Various,Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era,"Elektra, 1972","This collection of Sixties garage rock, compiled by rock critic and soon-to-be Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye, became a touchstone for Seventies punks and, years later, for the aftershock of post-punk. The 27-track, two-LP set was a radical idea in 1972: While rock was getting bigger, Nuggets established a new canon out of forgotten AM-radio hits — brutally simple singles like the Standells’ “Dirty Water,” the Shadows of Knight’s“Oh Yeah!” and the Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction.” Rhino expanded Nuggets into a sprawling four-CD box in 1998.
"
404,Anita Baker,Rapture,"Elektra, 1986","Before releasing Rapture, her breakout album, Anita Baker spent months “going to every publishing house in Los Angeles” hunting for what she described as “fireside love songs with jazz overtones.” She found eight songs that satisfied her requirements and polished them until they gleamed, combining an unpredictability that hinted at jazz with reassuring, unimpeachable hooks to create an album of deep romantic intimacy that sounded like little else in Eighties pop but still went multiplatinum.
"
403,Ghostface Killah,Supreme Clientele,"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.
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402,Fela Kuti and Africa '70,Expensive Shit,"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.
402,Fela Kuti and Africa 70,Expensive Shit,"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.
"
401,Blondie,Blondie,"Private Stock, 1977","“We’re gonna shoot the tube!” Debbie Harry promises on “In the Sun,” hanging 10 on the Bowery. Blondie had a hard time getting taken seriously in the CBGB punk scene. But while the band’s debut celebrates Sixties rock & roll at its campiest — girl groups, garage trash, surf bubblegum — Harry’s heart-on-sleeve swoon during “In the Flesh “ sincerely updated the Shangri-Las for the Lower East Side circa 1977, and the gritty “Rip Her to Shreds” showed Blondie could get down with the tough guys, too.
"
400,The Go-Go's,Beauty and the Beat,"I.R.S., 1981","The most popular girl group of New Wave surfed to the top of the charts with this hooky debut. Everyone knows “We Got the Beat” and “Our Lips Our Sealed,” exuberant songs that livened up the Top 40, but the entire album welds punkish spirit to party-minded pop. It’s one of those albums where every song feels like it could’ve been a single — from “This Town,” a sweet, tough celebration of their L.A. scene, to the haunting “Lust to Love” to the album-ending one-two punch of “Skidmarks on My Heart” and “Can’t Stop the World.”
400,The Go-Go’s,Beauty and the Beat,"I.R.S., 1981","The most popular girl group of New Wave surfed to the top of the charts with this hooky debut. Everyone knows “We Got the Beat” and “Our Lips Our Sealed,” exuberant songs that livened up the Top 40, but the entire album welds punkish spirit to party-minded pop. It’s one of those albums where every song feels like it could’ve been a single — from “This Town,” a sweet, tough celebration of their L.A. scene, to the haunting “Lust to Love” to the album-ending one-two punch of “Skidmarks on My Heart” and “Can’t Stop the World.”
"
399,Brian Wilson,Brian Wilson Presents Smile,"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.
399,Brian Wilson,Smile,"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.
"
398,The Raincoats,The Raincoats,"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.
396,Todd Rundgren,Something/Anything?,"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.
"
395,D'Angelo and the Vanguard,Black Messiah,"RCA, 2014","Fourteen years after Voodoo, D’Angelo built up impossible levels of anticipation for his next move. But Black Messiah was worth the wait. He brought a new political rage to deep-soul grooves like “The Charade,” responding to the Black Lives Matter movement: “All we wanted was a chance to talk/Instead we only got outlined in chalk.” D’Angelo admits in “Really Love,” “I’m not an easy man to overstand.” Yet he meshes beautifully with kindred spirits, from Roots drummer Questlove to jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove.
395,D’Angelo and the Vanguard,Black Messiah,"RCA, 2014","Fourteen years after Voodoo, D’Angelo built up impossible levels of anticipation for his next move. But Black Messiah was worth the wait. He brought a new political rage to deep-soul grooves like “The Charade,” responding to the Black Lives Matter movement: “All we wanted was a chance to talk/Instead we only got outlined in chalk.” D’Angelo admits in “Really Love,” “I’m not an easy man to overstand.” Yet he meshes beautifully with kindred spirits, from Roots drummer Questlove to jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove.
"
394,Diana Ross,Diana,"Motown, 1980","By 1980, Diana Ross’ tenure with the Supremes had ended a decade earlier, and she had spent the Seventies basking in the glow of her successful film career and soundtrack hits. But she still wanted to shake things up. Her 10th album, Diana, was a Nile Rogers-assisted disco jaunt at a time when disco backlash was running rampant; featuring classics like “Upside Down” and “I’m Coming Out,” it became her biggest and most acclaimed album to date.
364,Talking Heads,More Songs About Buildings and Food,"Sire, 1978","For their second record, Talking Heads found the ideal producer in Brian Eno: Their trilogy of albums with him made the band’s reputation. David Byrne splutters over the twitchy rhythms of “Artists Only” and “Thank You for Sending Me an Angel,” while crooning “The Big Country” as a ballad about feeling lost in America. The Heads cover Al Green’s “Take Me to the River,” a Memphis R&B hit just a year old at the time that they make feel like some kind of ancient prayer.
"
363,Parliament,Mothership Connection,"Casablanca, 1975","George Clinton leads his Detroit crew of “extraterrestrial brothers” through a visionary album of science-fiction funk on jams like “Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication” and “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker).” It’s a concept album inspired by Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey, with Clinton as an outer-space radio DJ, broadcasting uncut funk from “the Chocolate Milky Way” and telling the people of Earth, “Put a glide in your stride and a dip in your hip, and come on up to the Mothership.”
363,Parliament,The Mothership Connection,"Casablanca, 1975","George Clinton leads his Detroit crew of “extraterrestrial brothers” through a visionary album of science-fiction funk on jams like “Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication” and “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker).” It’s a concept album inspired by Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey, with Clinton as an outer-space radio DJ, broadcasting uncut funk from “the Chocolate Milky Way” and telling the people of Earth, “Put a glide in your stride and a dip in your hip, and come on up to the Mothership.”
"
362,Luther Vandross,Never Too Much,"Epic, 1981","In the Seventies, Luther Vandross sang backup for Sister Sledge and Roberta Flack and co-wrote David Bowie’s “Fascination.” As a solo artist, he embodied sophisticated soul in the post-disco era. His debut LP shows off a dazzling range that came almost too easily — from the title track, one of the defining dance-funk hits of the Eighties, to his stunning rendition of the Burt Bacharach and Hal David classic “A House Is Not a Home,” which made the song uncoverable for future generations of singers.
340,Snoop Doggy Dogg,Doggystyle,"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.
"
339,Janet Jackson,Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814,"A&M, 1989","Janet Jackson bought a military suit and ruled the radio for two years with this album. Along with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, she fashioned a grand pop statement with hip-hop funk (“Rhythm Nation”), slow jams (“Love Will Never Do [Without You]”), and even hair metal (“Black Cat”). “While writing ‘Rhythm Nation’ I was kidding around, saying, ‘God, you guys, I feel like this could be the national anthem for the Nineties,’” Jackson recalled. “Just by a crazy chance we decided to look up when Francis Scott Key wrote the national anthem, and it was September 14th, 1814.”
339,Janet Jackson,Rhythm Nation 1814,"A&M, 1989","Janet Jackson bought a military suit and ruled the radio for two years with this album. Along with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, she fashioned a grand pop statement with hip-hop funk (“Rhythm Nation”), slow jams (“Love Will Never Do [Without You]”), and even hair metal (“Black Cat”). “While writing ‘Rhythm Nation’ I was kidding around, saying, ‘God, you guys, I feel like this could be the national anthem for the Nineties,’” Jackson recalled. “Just by a crazy chance we decided to look up when Francis Scott Key wrote the national anthem, and it was September 14th, 1814.”
"
338,Brian Eno,Another Green World,"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.
326,Prince,Dirty Mind,"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.”
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325,Jerry Lee Lewis,"All Killer, No Filler: The Anthology","Rhino, 1993","Jerry Lee Lewis is best known for his frenzied piano-pumping Sun classics like “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” cut in the late Fifties (before he derailed his success by marrying his 13-year-old cousin), yet his career as a country hitmaker lasted decades. Listen to “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)” and you might agree with the Killer’s characteristically self-deprecating claim that “Elvis was the greatest, but I’m the best.”
325,Jerry Lee Lewis,All Killer No Filler!,"Rhino, 1993","Jerry Lee Lewis is best known for his frenzied piano-pumping Sun classics like “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” cut in the late Fifties (before he derailed his success by marrying his 13-year-old cousin), yet his career as a country hitmaker lasted decades. Listen to “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)” and you might agree with the Killer’s characteristically self-deprecating claim that “Elvis was the greatest, but I’m the best.”
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324,Coldplay,A Rush of Blood to the Head,"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.
316,The Who,The Who Sell Out,"Decca, 1967","The Who’s third record was their first concept album, a tribute to the U.K.’s offshore pirate-radio stations. The band strung the songs together with mock commercials (“Heinz Baked Beans”) and genuine radio jingles. It’s the Who’s funniest record — the sad love ballad “Odorono” turns out to be an ad for deodorant. The band expanded its maximum-R&B sound with mini rock opera “Rael,” giving a hint of things to come (Tommy was two years away), and “I Can See for Miles” rode Pete Townshend’s thrashiest power chords into the Top 10.
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315,Rosalía,El Mal Querer,"Sony, 2018","In her Grammy-winning breakthrough album, El Mal Querer (in English, A Toxic Love), groundbreaking Spanish singer-producer Rosalía not only mainstreamed the centuries-old tradition of flamenco music, she also freaked it, using the power of 808s and a whole lotta heartbreak. Rosalía assumes a rapper’s bravado in the opening track, “Malamente,” and in the palma-pop gem “Di Mi Nombre,” she grabs her bullish lover by the horns. The result is one of the best ancient-modern mash-ups of the 21st century.
315,Rosalía,El Mal Querer,"Sony, 2018","In her Grammy-winning breakthrough album, El Mal Querer (in English, A Toxic Love), groundbreaking Spanish singer-producer Rosalía not only mainstreamed the centuries-old tradition of flamenco music, she also freaked it, using the power of 808s and a whole lotta heartbreak. Rosalía assumes a rapper’s bravado in the opening track, “Malamente,” and in the palma-pop gem “Di Mi Nombre,” she grabs her bullish lover by the horns. The result is one of the best ancient-modern mash-ups of the 21st century.
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314,Aaliyah,One in a Million,"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.
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313,PJ Harvey,"Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea","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.
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312,Solange Knowles,A Seat at the Table,"Saint/Columbia, 2016","Solange came into her own on A Seat at the Table, with songs she wrote mostly in the Louisiana town where her family had its roots. She includes spoken-word interludes from her parents as well as narrator Master P — as she said, “The album feels very, very Southern in my storytelling.” “Cranes in the Sky” is a soulful lament, anchored in Raphael Saadiq’s bass groove, while protests like “Don’t Touch My Hair” are about African American identity politics. “The hair journey of a black woman is so specific,” she explained.
312,Solange,A Seat at the Table,"Saint/Columbia, 2016","Solange came into her own on A Seat at the Table, with songs she wrote mostly in the Louisiana town where her family had its roots. She includes spoken-word interludes from her parents as well as narrator Master P — as she said, “The album feels very, very Southern in my storytelling.” “Cranes in the Sky” is a soulful lament, anchored in Raphael Saadiq’s bass groove, while protests like “Don’t Touch My Hair” are about African American identity politics. “The hair journey of a black woman is so specific,” she explained.
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311,Neil Young,On the Beach,"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.
308,Brian Eno,Here Come the Warm Jets,"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.
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307,Sam Cooke,Portrait of a Legend: 1951–1964,"ABKCO, 2003","“Sam Cooke was the best singer who ever lived, no contest,” asserted Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler. Cooke was a gospel star who crossed over to rock & roll, helping to invent the music that would become known as soul. This collection spans his whole career, from his early work with gospel kings the Soul Stirrers to the civil rights anthem “A Change Is Gonna Come,”which became a posthumous hit after Cooke was shot to death at an L.A. motel in 1964.
307,Sam Cooke,Portrait of a Legend,"ABKCO, 2003","“Sam Cooke was the best singer who ever lived, no contest,” asserted Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler. Cooke was a gospel star who crossed over to rock & roll, helping to invent the music that would become known as soul. This collection spans his whole career, from his early work with gospel kings the Soul Stirrers to the civil rights anthem “A Change Is Gonna Come,”which became a posthumous hit after Cooke was shot to death at an L.A. motel in 1964.
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306,Al Green,I'm Still in Love With You,"Hi, 1972","Al Green made one classic after another in the early Seventies — the Memphis soul master turned each LP into an all-out passion play, capturing the highs and lows of romance. After his smash Let’s Stay Together, I’m Still in Love With You was his second great album of 1972. It’s an even more sensual experience, with the sweat-dripping acoustic groove of “Simply Beautiful” and the vulnerable confessions of “Look What You Done for Me.” “We used chords that people never used before,” producer Willie Mitchell said. “Al Green always wanted to advance.”
297,Peter Gabriel,So,"Geffen, 1986","Peter Gabriel got funky on the 1982 single “Shock the Monkey,” and it took him four years to follow up the hit. The similarly visceral “Sledgehammer” slammed So into the mainstream, and its hold on radio and MTV deepened with the upbeat “Big Time,” the gothic love ballad “In Your Eyes” (beautifully employed by filmmaker Cameron Crowe in Say Anything), and the inspirational “Don’t Give Up,” a duet with Kate Bush, who was shown locked in a five-minute embrace with Gabriel in the video.
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296,Neil Young and Crazy Horse,Rust Never Sleeps,"Reprise, 1979","The live Rust Never Sleeps is essential Neil Young, full of impossibly delicate acoustic songs and ragged Crazy Horse rampages. Highlights: “My My Hey Hey” (a tribute to the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten); a surreal political spiel called “Welfare Mothers”; and “Powderfinger,” Young’s greatest song ever, where he unspools a hazy tale of a 22-year-old going up against government violence on the American frontier, and his guitar roars toward the collapsing sky like never before.
296,Neil Young,Rust Never Sleeps,"Reprise, 1979","The live Rust Never Sleeps is essential Neil Young, full of impossibly delicate acoustic songs and ragged Crazy Horse rampages. Highlights: “My My Hey Hey” (a tribute to the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten); a surreal political spiel called “Welfare Mothers”; and “Powderfinger,” Young’s greatest song ever, where he unspools a hazy tale of a 22-year-old going up against government violence on the American frontier, and his guitar roars toward the collapsing sky like never before.
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295,Daft Punk,Random Access Memories,"Columbia, 2013","Having played a massive role in the rise of EDM in the late ‘00s, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo turned away from EDM altogether for a Seventies disco record featuring appearances by Donna Summer producer Giorgio Moroder and Chic’s Nile Rodgers (who played guitar on the gigantic hit “Get Lucky”). The result was a mushy, otherworldly concept LP that was retro, futuristic, trippy, and weirdly human all at once.
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294,Weezer,Weezer,"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.”
294,Weezer,Weezer (The Blue Album),"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.”
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293,The Breeders,Last Splash,"Elektra, 1993","How did a weird little tune like “Cannonball” make the Top 40? It’s an only-in-the-Nineties mystery that may go forever unsolved. On the Breeders’ breakthrough LP, Kim Deal made a record every bit as good as her old band, the Pixies, with her sister Kelly on guitar, singing about sex and summer over the surfy buzz of “Divine Hammer” and “I Just Wanna Get Along.” The adorable, acoustic “Drivin’ on 9” is a wonderful alt-rock take on the age-old rock & roll theme of going to the chapel of love.
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292,Van Halen,Van Halen,"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.”
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291,Destiny's Child,The Writing's on the Wall,"Columbia, 1999","Looking back now, Destiny’s Child seem like the last gasp of the R&B vocal group, a tradition that was swept out of the mainstream in the 2000s. On this kinetic, shattering album, the group — especially a wunderkind named Beyoncé Knowles — took a more hands-on approach to writing and producing, helping to craft juddering club singles like “Bills, Bills, Bills” and “Bug a Boo.” The ballad “Say My Name” quickly became a modern standard.
291,Destiny's Child,The Writing’s on the Wall,"Columbia, 1999","Looking back now, Destiny’s Child seem like the last gasp of the R&B vocal group, a tradition that was swept out of the mainstream in the 2000s. On this kinetic, shattering album, the group — especially a wunderkind named Beyoncé Knowles — took a more hands-on approach to writing and producing, helping to craft juddering club singles like “Bills, Bills, Bills” and “Bug a Boo.” The ballad “Say My Name” quickly became a modern standard.
"
290,OutKast,Speakerboxxx/The Love Below,"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.”
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289,Björk,Post,"Elektra, 1995","“I have to re-create the universe every morning when I wake up,” Björk said, explaining her second solo album’s utter lack of musical inhibition. Post bounces from big-band jazz (“It’s Oh So Quiet”) to trip-hop (“These Modern Things” seems to be both of those things at once). Lush and disorienting, dissonant yet ensnaringly lovely, it proved the “Icelandic pixie” who’d dazzled MTV viewers fronting the Sugarcubes, was, in fact, one of the Nineties’ truly boundless musical thinkers. Fun fact: For her vocals, Björk extended her mic cord to a beach so she could sing to the sea.
289,Björk,Post,"Elektra, 1995","“I have to re-create the universe every morning when I wake up,” Björk said, explaining her second solo album’s utter lack of musical inhibition. Post bounces from big-band jazz (“It’s Oh So Quiet”) to trip-hop (“These Modern Things” seems to be both of those things at once). Lush and disorienting, dissonant yet ensnaringly lovely, it proved the “Icelandic pixie” who’d dazzled MTV viewers fronting the Sugarcubes, was, in fact, one of the Nineties’ truly boundless musical thinkers. Fun fact: For her vocals, Björk extended her mic cord to a beach so she could sing to the sea.
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288,The Modern Lovers,The Modern Lovers,"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.
272,The Velvet Underground,White Light/White Heat,"Verve, 1968","“It’s a very rabid record,” bassist-violist John Cale wrote in the liner notes to the 1995 box set Peel Slowly and See. “The first one had some gentility, some beauty. The second one was consciously anti-beauty.” Drowning their songs in guitar fuzz and drone, the Velvet Underground captured the toe-clenching freakouts of their live shows with their second album — the most extreme disc in VU’s extreme catalog. The blow-your-wig-back highlight: “Sister Ray,” 17 minutes of amplifiers screaming.
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271,Mary J. Blige,What's the 411?,"Uptown/MCA, 1992","There was no way R&B was going to keep its distance from hip-hop; they had too much in common. But it required the right singer to build a road between the two. On her first album, Mary J. Blige was marketed as the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul, and the Bronx-born singer lived up to the regal hype, singing about pain and resolve in equal measures. Even when songwriters stuck her with pedestrian lines, you feel genuine longing and the weight of her experiences in every word.
271,Mary J. Blige,What’s the 411?,"Uptown/MCA, 1992","There was no way R&B was going to keep its distance from hip-hop; they had too much in common. But it required the right singer to build a road between the two. On her first album, Mary J. Blige was marketed as the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul, and the Bronx-born singer lived up to the regal hype, singing about pain and resolve in equal measures. Even when songwriters stuck her with pedestrian lines, you feel genuine longing and the weight of her experiences in every word.
"
270,Kacey Musgraves,Golden Hour,"MCA Nashville, 2018","On this album, Kacey Musgraves became Nashville’s most compelling crossover star since Taylor Swift, where she sings about acid trips, homesickness, and falling wildly in love with the witty precision of her earlier small-town polemics, but on a much bigger scale. Golden Hour’s lush yacht-country production re-envisioned what millennial pop might sound like: “I’ve always loved Sade, but I also love Dolly Parton,” Musgraves said. “I thought, ‘There’s got to be a world where all these things can live together.’”
264,Pink Floyd,Wish You Were Here,"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.”
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263,The Beatles,A Hard Day's Night,"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.”
263,The Beatles,Hard Day's Night,"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.”
"
262,New Order,"Power, Corruption & Lies","Factory, 1983","On Power, Corruption & Lies, Manchester, England’s New Order fully moved past the death of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis to create a gloriously danceable synth-rock breakthrough. It was a whole new sound, heavily influenced by their early tours of America. “In England, clubs played dead-straight cheesy music,” said frontman Bernard Sumner, “but in America, they played the Clash, funk, a great mix of black and white music, and American dance music, early electronic music.… We were right there, and this new sound found us.”
239,Boogie Down Productions,Criminal Minded,"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.
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238,Kraftwerk,Trans-Europe Express,"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.
238,Kraftwerk,TransEurope Express,"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.
"
237,Willie Nelson,Red Headed Stranger,"Columbia, 1975","Newly signed to Columbia, Nelson was feeling ambitious. “It was the first time I had ‘artistic control,’” he recalled. “So I thought I would just start writing.” Nelson had penned the song “Red Headed Stranger” years before, on a drive back to Austin after a Colorado ski trip. He kept the arrangements extremely spare, in sharp contrast to the gussied-up music coming out of Nashville at the time. The songs locked together to tell a riveting and heartfelt tale of murder and infidelity, and the concept album became one of Nelson’s biggest hits.
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236,Daft Punk,Discovery,"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.
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235,Metallica,Metallica,"Elektra, 1991","After a decade of breaking metal’s speed limits, Metallica pared down their sound to the bare bones for their self-titled “Black Album.” “Enter Sandman” became a blockbuster because listeners finally had the space to sing along with James Hetfield’s bleak visions. Metallica achieved maximum heaviness on “Sad but True” by letting their guitars ring out for once; they embraced cinematic melodrama on “The Unforgiven” and “Wherever I May Roam,” and showed unusual depth for a band named Metallica with the sincere, no-bullshit ballad “Nothing Else Matters.”
235,Metallica,Metallica (The Black Album),"Elektra, 1991","After a decade of breaking metal’s speed limits, Metallica pared down their sound to the bare bones for their self-titled “Black Album.” “Enter Sandman” became a blockbuster because listeners finally had the space to sing along with James Hetfield’s bleak visions. Metallica achieved maximum heaviness on “Sad but True” by letting their guitars ring out for once; they embraced cinematic melodrama on “The Unforgiven” and “Wherever I May Roam,” and showed unusual depth for a band named Metallica with the sincere, no-bullshit ballad “Nothing Else Matters.”
"
234,Black Sabbath,Master of Reality,"Veritgo, 1971","Paranoid may have bigger hits, but Master of Reality, released a mere six months later, is heavier. It was the band’s first attempt to use the recording studio, and it’s full of ambitious ideas (check out Bill Ward’s funky timbale work on “Children of the Grave”). The highlight is “Sweet Leaf,” a droning love song to marijuana. The vibe is perfectly summed up by the final track, “Into the Void.” But it isn’t all relentless doom: “After Forever,” written by bassist Geezer Butler, pretty much invents the idea of Christian metal.
228,De La Soul,De La Soul Is Dead,"Tommy Boy, 1991","The cover of De La Soul’s second album — an overturned flowerpot of dead daisies — was as subtle as a sledgehammer. After the sunny 3 Feet High and Rising, the confrontationally pessismsitic De La Soul Is Dead was a shock; songs dealt with sexual assault (“Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa”) and drug abuse (“My Brother’s a Basehead,” based on member Posdnuos’ brother’s crack addiction). But the fun wasn’t totally over (see “A Roller Skating Jam Named ‘Saturdays’”) and producer Prince Paul gave the dense LP a sample-delic flow.
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227,Little Richard,Here's Little Richard,"Specialty, 1957","“I came from a family where my people didn’t like rhythm and blues,” Little Richard told Rolling Stone in 1970. “Bing Crosby, ‘Pennies From Heaven,’ Ella Fitzgerald was all I heard. And I knew there was something that could be louder than that, but didn’t know where to find it. And I found it was me.” Richard’s raucous debut collected singles such as “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” in which his rollicking boogie-woogie piano and falsetto scream ignited the unfettered possibilities of rock & roll.
227,Little Richard,Here’s Little Richard,"Specialty, 1957","“I came from a family where my people didn’t like rhythm and blues,” Little Richard told Rolling Stone in 1970. “Bing Crosby, ‘Pennies From Heaven,’ Ella Fitzgerald was all I heard. And I knew there was something that could be louder than that, but didn’t know where to find it. And I found it was me.” Richard’s raucous debut collected singles such as “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” in which his rollicking boogie-woogie piano and falsetto scream ignited the unfettered possibilities of rock & roll.
"
226,Derek and the Dominos,Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,"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.
220,"Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young",Déjà Vu,"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 CSNYcombination 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”).
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219,Raekwon,Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...,"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.
219,Raekwon,Only Built 4 Cuban Linx,"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.
"
218,TLC,CrazySexyCool,"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.
214,Tom Petty,Wildflowers,"Warner Bros., 1994","Petty struggled for two years to make the Rick Rubin-produced follow-up to 1989’s hit Full Moon Fever. He left tons of songs in the can, and the final product stretched to 70 minutes but didn’t have any filler. Petty hit a new songwriting peak, going from intimate, soul-bearing songs like the title track and “Crawling Back to You” to rockers like “You Wreck Me” and “House in the Woods.” “I think it’s maybe my favorite LP that I’ve ever done,” Petty said.
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213,Fiona Apple,The Idler Wheel...,"Epic, 2012","The Idler Wheel continued Fiona Apple’s run as one of modern pop’s most thrilling eccentrics. There’s a single-minded intensity to songs like “Every Single Night” and “Hot Knife,” where she puts an almost shocking amount of feeling into each syllable. Apple can sound like a cabaret singer in one song and a blueswoman in the next, her voice full of sandpaper edges and bestial roars. “I may need a chaperone,” she wonders on “Daredevil,” but this album proves she’s at her very best when left to her own devices.
213,Fiona Apple,The Idler Wheel,"Epic, 2012","The Idler Wheel continued Fiona Apple’s run as one of modern pop’s most thrilling eccentrics. There’s a single-minded intensity to songs like “Every Single Night” and “Hot Knife,” where she puts an almost shocking amount of feeling into each syllable. Apple can sound like a cabaret singer in one song and a blueswoman in the next, her voice full of sandpaper edges and bestial roars. “I may need a chaperone,” she wonders on “Daredevil,” but this album proves she’s at her very best when left to her own devices.
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212,Nina Simone,Wild Is the Wind,"Philips, 1966","Aretha was the Queen of Soul, but Nina Simone, as one of her album titles proclaimed, was its high priestess, and this 1966 LP is among her most enthralling and eclectic. With her dusky voice at its most commanding, Simone works her way through roadhouse soul (“I Love Your Lovin’ Ways”) and dramatic set pieces (the melancholic “Lilac Wine,” later covered by Jeff Buckley). It peaks with “Four Women,” an ambitious saga of racially diverse women and their struggles, written by Simone.
188,T. Rex,Electric Warrior,"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.
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187,Ice Cube,AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted,"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.
187,Ice Cube,AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted,"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.
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186,Red Hot Chili Peppers,Blood Sugar Sex Magik,"Warner Bros., 1991","No one ever disputed the boisterous energy of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ music — it was only a matter of whether these funky monks could write riffs and songs that stood alongside their idols. On their fifth studio album, they got the balance right. They went touchy-feely (and multiplatinum) with the ballad “Under the Bridge,” the biggest of the album’s five hit singles. In addition, guitarist John Frusciante brought energizing, songful riffs, producer Rick Rubin kept the songs streamlined and free of juvenilia, and Anthony Kiedis brought a new degree of simplicity to his singing.
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185,The Rolling Stones,Beggars Banquet,"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.
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184,Cyndi Lauper,She's So Unusual,"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.
184,Cyndi Lauper,She’s So Unusual,"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.
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183,D'Angelo,Brown Sugar,"EMI, 1995","A minister’s son from Richmond, Virginia, who performed in a hip-hop group as a teenager, D’Angelo was just entering his twenties when he released his debut, a visionary fusion of Seventies soul and Nineties R&B that paved the way for neo-soul. D’Angelo did nearly everything on Brown Sugar, layering his own dazzling harmonies while displaying a studio command that recalled Prince and Stevie Wonder, whether on the down and dirty “Jonz in My Bonz” or psychedelic soul of “Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine,” sounding so warm and chill you almost don’t notice that “Shit, Damn, Motherfucker” is a did-me-wrong double-murder fantasy.
180,Love,Forever Changes,"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.”
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179,The Notorious B.I.G.,Life After Death,"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.
179,Notorious B.I.G.,Life After Death,"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.
"
178,Otis Redding,Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul,"Volt, 1965","Redding’s third album includes covers of three songs by Sam Cooke, Redding’s idol, who had died the previous December. Their styles were different:Cooke, smooth and sure; Redding, raw and pleading. But Redding’s versions of “Shake” and “A Change Is Gonna Come” show how Cooke’s sound and message helped shape Redding’s Southern soul, heard here in his originals “Respect” and “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and in a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” which was itself inspired by the Stax/Volt sound. “I use a lot of words different than the Stones’ version,” Redding noted. “That’s because I made them up.”
178,Otis Redding,Otis Blue,"Volt, 1965","Redding’s third album includes covers of three songs by Sam Cooke, Redding’s idol, who had died the previous December. Their styles were different:Cooke, smooth and sure; Redding, raw and pleading. But Redding’s versions of “Shake” and “A Change Is Gonna Come” show how Cooke’s sound and message helped shape Redding’s Southern soul, heard here in his originals “Respect” and “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and in a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” which was itself inspired by the Stax/Volt sound. “I use a lot of words different than the Stones’ version,” Redding noted. “That’s because I made them up.”
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177,Rod Stewart,Every Picture Tells a Story,"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. “MandolinWind” 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.
169,Billy Joel,The Stranger,"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 anItalian 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.
"
168,Steely Dan,Can't Buy a Thrill,"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.
168,Steely Dan,Can’t Buy a Thrill,"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.
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167,Depeche Mode,Violator,"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.
122,Nine Inch Nails,The Downward Spiral,"Nothing/Interscope, 1994","“When I rented the place, I didn’t realize it was that house,” claimed NIN’s Trent Reznor about recording Spiral in the onetime home of Manson-family victim Sharon Tate. Despite “a million electrical disturbances,” Reznor made the most successful album of his career — a cohesive, willful, and overpowering meditation on the central theme running through all of NIN’s videos, live shows, music, and lyrics:control. While Spiral has its share of Reznor’s trademark industrial corrosiveness, it’s balanced by the tentatively hopeful (and intensely personal) “Hurt” and soundscapes inspired by David Bowie’s Low.
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121,Elvis Costello,This Year's Model,"Columbia, 1978","His second album and first with his crack backing band, the Attractions, This Year’s Model is the most “punk” of Elvis Costello’s records — not in any I-hate-the-cops sense but in his emotionally explosive writing (“No Action,” “Lipstick Vogue,” “Pump It Up”) and the Attractions’ vicious gallop (particularly the psycho-circus organ playing of Steve Nieve). Many of the songs rattle with sexual paranoia, but the broadside against vanilla-pop broadcasting, “Radio, Radio” (a U.K. single added to the original U.S. vinyl LP), better reflects the general, righteous indignation of the album: Costello versus the world. And Costello wins.
121,Elvis Costello,This Year’s Model,"Columbia, 1978","His second album and first with his crack backing band, the Attractions, This Year’s Model is the most “punk” of Elvis Costello’s records — not in any I-hate-the-cops sense but in his emotionally explosive writing (“No Action,” “Lipstick Vogue,” “Pump It Up”) and the Attractions’ vicious gallop (particularly the psycho-circus organ playing of Steve Nieve). Many of the songs rattle with sexual paranoia, but the broadside against vanilla-pop broadcasting, “Radio, Radio” (a U.K. single added to the original U.S. vinyl LP), better reflects the general, righteous indignation of the album: Costello versus the world. And Costello wins.
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120,Van Morrison,Moondance,"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.
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119,Sly and the Family Stone,Stand!,"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.
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118,Eagles,Hotel California,"Asylum, 1976","In pursuit of note-perfect Hollywood-cowboy ennui, the Eagles spent eight months in the studio polishing take after take after take. As Don Henley recalled: “We just locked ourselves in. We had a refrigerator, a ping-pong table, roller skates, and a couple of cots. We would go in and stay for two or three days at a time.” With guitarist Joe Walsh replacing Bernie Leadon, the band backed off from straight country rock in favor of the harder sound of “Life in the Fast Lane.” The highlight is the title track, a monument to the rock-aristocrat decadence of the day and a feast of triple-guitar interplay. “Every band has their peak,” Henley said. “That was ours.”
118,The Eagles,Hotel California,"Asylum, 1976","In pursuit of note-perfect Hollywood-cowboy ennui, the Eagles spent eight months in the studio polishing take after take after take. As Don Henley recalled: “We just locked ourselves in. We had a refrigerator, a ping-pong table, roller skates, and a couple of cots. We would go in and stay for two or three days at a time.” With guitarist Joe Walsh replacing Bernie Leadon, the band backed off from straight country rock in favor of the harder sound of “Life in the Fast Lane.” The highlight is the title track, a monument to the rock-aristocrat decadence of the day and a feast of triple-guitar interplay. “Every band has their peak,” Henley said. “That was ours.”
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117,Kanye West,Late Registration,"Roc-A-Fella, 2005","The College Dropout introduced the world to a polo-shirt-wearing preppy who merged backpack-rap politics and bling-rap materialism. But it was on Late Registration that Kanye West really started showing off, calling in savvy producer Jon Brion to co-produce an album that ranged from triumphal autobiography (“Touch the Sky”) to witty club pop (“Gold Digger”) to heartstring-tuggers (“Hey Mama”), packing in Chinese bells, James Bond themes, and Houston hip-hop. The end result was a near-perfect album that remade the pop landscape in West’s own oddball image.
109,Lou Reed,Transformer,"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.
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108,Fiona Apple,When the Pawn...,"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.
108,Fiona Apple,When the Pawn...,"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.
"
107,Television,Marquee Moon,"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.
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106,Hole,Live Through This,"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.”
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105,The Allman Brothers Band,At Fillmore East,"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.
105,The Allman Brothers,At Fillmore East,"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.
"
104,The Rolling Stones,Sticky Fingers,"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”).
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103,De La Soul,3 Feet High and Rising,"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.
103,De La Soul,Three Feet High And Rising,"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.
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102,The Clash,The Clash,"CBS, 1977","“I haven’t got any illusions about anything,” Joe Strummer said. “Having said that, I still want to try to change things.” That youthful ambition bursts through the Clash’s debut, a machine-gun blast of songs about unemployment (“Career Opportunities”), race (“White Riot”), and the Clash themselves (“Clash City Rockers”). Most of the guitar was played by Mick Jones, because Strummer considered studio technique insufficiently punk. The American release was delayed two years and replaced some of the U.K. tracks with recent singles, including “Complete Control” — a complaint about exactly those sort of record-company shenanigans.
94,The Stooges,Fun House,"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.
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93,Missy Elliott,Supa Dupa Fly,"Goldmind, 1997","Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott made her name as a songwriter behind the scenes, even before she dropped her 1997 debut. But Supa Dupa Fly introduced everyone to Missy’s world, with avant-funk cosmic swamp beats from Timbaland. What a team: two kids from Virginia Beach, Virginia, dazzling the planet with a playful homegrown sound nobody could imitate. “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” was the breakout hit, taking an old-school Ann Peebles soul oldie and looping it into a Dirty South jam — Missy sings, raps, giggles, and talks her shit. Supa Dupa Fly changed the sound of hip-hop, but also kicked off a tradition — every year, Missy and Tim would score the jam of the summer, while everybody else was still trying to catch up with what they did the summer before.
93,Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott,Supa Dupa Fly,"Goldmind, 1997","Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott made her name as a songwriter behind the scenes, even before she dropped her 1997 debut. But Supa Dupa Fly introduced everyone to Missy’s world, with avant-funk cosmic swamp beats from Timbaland. What a team: two kids from Virginia Beach, Virginia, dazzling the planet with a playful homegrown sound nobody could imitate. “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” was the breakout hit, taking an old-school Ann Peebles soul oldie and looping it into a Dirty South jam — Missy sings, raps, giggles, and talks her shit. Supa Dupa Fly changed the sound of hip-hop, but also kicked off a tradition — every year, Missy and Tim would score the jam of the summer, while everybody else was still trying to catch up with what they did the summer before.
"
92,The Jimi Hendrix Experience,Axis: Bold as Love,"Track, 1967","Jimi Hendrix’s first album remade rock & roll with guitar magic that no one had ever even dreamed of before; his second album was just plain magic. It started with some musings on extraterrestrial life, then got really far out: jazzy drumming, funky balladry, liquid guitar solos, dragonfly heavy metal, and the immortal stoner’s maxim from “If Six Was Nine”:“I’m the one who’s got to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.” All over the album, Hendrix was inventing new ways to make the electric guitar roar, sing, talk, shriek, flutter, and fly. And with the delicate “Little Wing,” he delivered one of rock’s most cryptic and bewitching love songs.
86,The Doors,The Doors,"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.
"
85,John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band,"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.
85,John Lennon,Plastic Ono Band,"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.
"
84,AC/DC,Back in Black,"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.
"
83,Dusty Springfield,Dusty in Memphis,"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.
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82,Sly and the Family Stone,There's a Riot Goin' On,"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.
82,Sly and the Family Stone,There’s a Riot Goin’ On,"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.
"
81,Beyoncé,Beyoncé,"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 Beyoncéproved that nobody else was on her level.
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80,The Sex Pistols,"Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols","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.
80,The Sex Pistols,Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols,"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.
"
79,Frank Ocean,Blonde,"Boys Don’t Cry, 2016","Frank Ocean turned the release of Blondinto a daring aesthetic stunt in itself. After years of high expectations after Channel Orange [see No. 148], he fulfilled his Def Jam contract with the visual project Endless, but then — within hours — he released his own Blond. It’s a boldly personal statement full of layered harmonies, as Ocean mutates his voice to match every mood. The songs were so nakedly intimate, it felt like a post-hip-hop Pet Sounds in the spirit of Beyoncé (who sings on “Pink + White”) and Elliott Smith (whose voice appears on “Seigfried”). “Ivy” is his most deeply melancholic confession — Ocean mourns a lost love over a distorted guitar, lamenting, “We’ll never be those kids again.”
79,Frank Ocean,Blond,"Boys Don’t Cry, 2016","Frank Ocean turned the release of Blondinto a daring aesthetic stunt in itself. After years of high expectations after Channel Orange [see No. 148], he fulfilled his Def Jam contract with the visual project Endless, but then — within hours — he released his own Blond. It’s a boldly personal statement full of layered harmonies, as Ocean mutates his voice to match every mood. The songs were so nakedly intimate, it felt like a post-hip-hop Pet Sounds in the spirit of Beyoncé (who sings on “Pink + White”) and Elliott Smith (whose voice appears on “Seigfried”). “Ivy” is his most deeply melancholic confession — Ocean mourns a lost love over a distorted guitar, lamenting, “We’ll never be those kids again.”
"
78,Elvis Presley,The Sun Sessions,"RCA, 1976","On July 5th, 1954, at Sun Studios in Memphis, Elvis Presley, guitarist Scotty Moore, and bassist Bill Black were horsing around with “That’s All Right,”a tune by bluesman Arthur Crudup, when producer Sam Phillips stopped them and asked, “What are you doing?” “We don’t know,”they said. Phillips told them to “back up and do it again.”Bridging black and white, country and blues, Presley’s sound was playful and revolutionary, charged by a spontaneity and freedom that changed the world. He released four more singles on Sun — including definitive reinventions of Wynonie Harris’ “Good Rockin’ Tonight” and Junior Parker’s “Mystery Train” — before moving on to immortality at RCA. They’re all here on a collection that serves as well as anything out there as a definitive chronicle of the birth of rock & roll.
"
77,The Who,Who's Next,"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.”
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76,Curtis Mayfield,Super Fly,"Curtom, 1972","Isaac Hayes’ Shaft came first — but that record had one great single and a lot of instrumental filler. It was Curtis Mayfield who made a blaxploitation-film soundtrack album that packed more drama than the movie it accompanied. Musically, Superfly is astonishing, marrying lush string parts to deep bass grooves, with lots of wah-wah guitar. On top, Mayfield sings in his world-wise falsetto, narrating the bleak tales of “Pusherman” and “Freddie’s Dead,”telling hard truths about the drug trade and black life in the 1970s. “I don’t take credit for everything I write,” Mayfield said. “I only look upon my writings as interpretations of how the majority of people around me feel.”
76,Curtis Mayfield,Superfly,"Curtom, 1972","Isaac Hayes’ Shaft came first — but that record had one great single and a lot of instrumental filler. It was Curtis Mayfield who made a blaxploitation-film soundtrack album that packed more drama than the movie it accompanied. Musically, Superfly is astonishing, marrying lush string parts to deep bass grooves, with lots of wah-wah guitar. On top, Mayfield sings in his world-wise falsetto, narrating the bleak tales of “Pusherman” and “Freddie’s Dead,”telling hard truths about the drug trade and black life in the 1970s. “I don’t take credit for everything I write,” Mayfield said. “I only look upon my writings as interpretations of how the majority of people around me feel.”
"
75,Aretha Franklin,Lady Soul,"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.”
63,Steely Dan,Aja,"ABC, 1977","If you were an audiophile in the late Seventies, you owned Aja.Steely Dan’s sixth album is easy on the ears, thanks to both its meticulous production and its songs — this was Walter Becker and Donald Fagen’s no-holds-barred stab at becoming a huge mainstream jazz-pop success. And sure enough, thanks to sweet, slippery tracks like “Deacon Blues” and “Peg,” this collegiate band with a name plucked from a William Burroughs novel and a songbook full of smart, cynical lyrics became bona fide superstars, shooting to the Top Five and selling platinum. And, yes, Aja even won a Grammy for Best Engineered Album.
"
62,Guns N' Roses,Appetite for Destruction,"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.”
62,Guns N’ Roses,Appetite for Destruction,"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.”
"
61,Eric B. and Rakim,Paid in Full,"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.
54,James Brown,Star Time,"Polydor, 1991","So great is James Brown’s impact that even with 71 songs on four CDs, Star Time isn’t quite comprehensive — between 1956 and 1984, Brown placed an astounding 103 singles on the R&B charts. But every phase of his career is well-represented here: the pleading, straight-up R&B of “Please, Please, Please”; his instantaneous reinvention of R&B with “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” where the rhythm takes over and the melody is subsumed within the groove; his spokesmanship for the civil rights movement in “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud (Part 1)”; his founding document of Seventies funk, “Sex Machine”; and his blueprint for hip-hop in “Funky Drummer.”
"
53,The Jimi Hendrix Experience,Electric Ladyland,"Reprise, 1968","Jimi Hendrix’s third album was the first he produced himself, a fever dream of underwater electric soul cut in round-the-clock sessions at the Record Plant in New York. Hendrix would leave the Record Plant to jam at a club around the corner, the Scene, and “Voodoo Chile” – 15 minutes of live-in-the-studio blues exploration with Steve Winwood on organ and the Jefferson Airplane’s Jack Cassidy on bass – reflects those excursions. In addition to psychedelic Delta blues, there was the precision snap of “Crosstown Traffic” and a cover of “All Along the Watchtower” that took Bob Dylan into outer space before touching down with a final burst of spectral fury.
53,Jimi Hendrix,Electric Ladyland,"Reprise, 1968","Jimi Hendrix’s third album was the first he produced himself, a fever dream of underwater electric soul cut in round-the-clock sessions at the Record Plant in New York. Hendrix would leave the Record Plant to jam at a club around the corner, the Scene, and “Voodoo Chile” – 15 minutes of live-in-the-studio blues exploration with Steve Winwood on organ and the Jefferson Airplane’s Jack Cassidy on bass – reflects those excursions. In addition to psychedelic Delta blues, there was the precision snap of “Crosstown Traffic” and a cover of “All Along the Watchtower” that took Bob Dylan into outer space before touching down with a final burst of spectral fury.
"
52,David Bowie,Station to Station,"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.
31,Miles Davis,Kind of Blue,"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.
"
30,The Jimi Hendrix Experience,Are You Experienced,"Track, 1967","This is what Britain sounded like in late 1966 and early 1967: ablaze with rainbow blues, orchestral guitar feedback, and cosmic possibility. Jimi Hendrix’s incendiary guitar was historic in itself, the luminescent sum of his chitlin-circuit labors with Little Richard and the Isley Brothers and his melodic exploitation of amp howl. But it was the pictorial heat of songs like “Manic Depression”and “The Wind Cries Mary” that established the transcendent promise of psychedelia. Backed by drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, the guitarist made soul music for inner space. “It’s a collection of free feeling and imagination,” he said of the album. “Imagination is very important.” Widely assumed to be about an acid trip, “Purple Haze” had “nothing to do with drugs,” Hendrix insisted. “‘Purple Haze’ was all about a dream I had that I was walking under the sea.”
30,Jimi Hendrix,Are You Experienced,"Track, 1967","This is what Britain sounded like in late 1966 and early 1967: ablaze with rainbow blues, orchestral guitar feedback, and cosmic possibility. Jimi Hendrix’s incendiary guitar was historic in itself, the luminescent sum of his chitlin-circuit labors with Little Richard and the Isley Brothers and his melodic exploitation of amp howl. But it was the pictorial heat of songs like “Manic Depression”and “The Wind Cries Mary” that established the transcendent promise of psychedelia. Backed by drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, the guitarist made soul music for inner space. “It’s a collection of free feeling and imagination,” he said of the album. “Imagination is very important.” Widely assumed to be about an acid trip, “Purple Haze” had “nothing to do with drugs,” Hendrix insisted. “‘Purple Haze’ was all about a dream I had that I was walking under the sea.”
"
29,The Beatles,The Beatles,"Apple, 1968","They wrote the songs while on retreat with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India, taking a break from the celebrity grind. As John Lennon later said, “We sat in the mountains eating lousy vegetarian food, and we wrote all these songs.” They came back with more great tunes than they could release. Lennon pursued his hard-edged vision in the cynical wit of “Sexy Sadie” and “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,”as well as the childlike yearning of “Julia” and “Dear Prudence.”Paul McCartney’s playful pop energy came through in “Martha My Dear”and his inversion of Chuck Berry’s American values, “Back in the U.S.S.R.” George Harrison’s spiritual yearning led him to “Long, Long, Long”and “While MyGuitar Gently Weeps,”featuring a guest guitar solo fromEric Clapton. Even Ringo Starr contributes his first original, the country-tinged “Don’t Pass Me By.” The Beatles tried a little of everything, and all their adventures paid off.
29,The Beatles,White Album,"Apple, 1968","They wrote the songs while on retreat with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India, taking a break from the celebrity grind. As John Lennon later said, “We sat in the mountains eating lousy vegetarian food, and we wrote all these songs.” They came back with more great tunes than they could release. Lennon pursued his hard-edged vision in the cynical wit of “Sexy Sadie” and “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,”as well as the childlike yearning of “Julia” and “Dear Prudence.”Paul McCartney’s playful pop energy came through in “Martha My Dear”and his inversion of Chuck Berry’s American values, “Back in the U.S.S.R.” George Harrison’s spiritual yearning led him to “Long, Long, Long”and “While MyGuitar Gently Weeps,”featuring a guest guitar solo fromEric Clapton. Even Ringo Starr contributes his first original, the country-tinged “Don’t Pass Me By.” The Beatles tried a little of everything, and all their adventures paid off.
"
28,D’Angelo,Voodoo,"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.”
"
27,Wu-Tang Clan,Enter the Wu-Tang(36 Chambers),"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.
27,Wu-Tang Clan,Enter the Wu-Tang(36 Chambers),"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.
"
26,Patti Smith,Horses,"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.”
"
25,Carole King,Tapestry,"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.
"
24,The Beatles,Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,"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.
24,The Beatles,Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,"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.
"
23,The Velvet Underground,The Velvet Underground and Nico,"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.
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@ -981,7 +981,7 @@ The album was made in dire straits too. Although the Clash fired singles into t
15,Public Enemy,It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back,"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.”
"
14,The Rolling Stones,Exile on Main St,"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.
14,The Rolling Stones,Exile on Main Street,"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.
"
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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 featuring Chaka Khan,Ask Rufus,New in 2023,"ABC, 1977","Rufus' fifth studio album showcased the band at the height of their creative powers, blending funk, soul, and rock with Chaka Khan's extraordinary vocals leading the way. The album features the massive hit 'Sweet Thing,' which became one of Khan's signature songs and demonstrated her ability to convey both tenderness and power within a single performance. The band's tight musicianship, anchored by Tony Maiden's guitar work and the rhythm section's precise grooves, provided the perfect foundation for Khan's dynamic vocal style. Songs like 'Hollywood' and 'Egyptian Song' showcased the group's willingness to experiment while maintaining their essential funkiness. 'Ask Rufus' captured the band during their most successful period and helped establish Chaka Khan as one of the greatest vocalists of her generation, setting the stage for her legendary solo career. (by Claude)"
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. "
501,The Rolling Stones,Exile on Main Street,Dropped (was #14 in 2020),,
502,The Beatles,Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,Dropped (was #24 in 2020),,
503,Wu-Tang Clan,Enter the Wu-Tang(36 Chambers),Dropped (was #27 in 2020),,
504,D’Angelo,Voodoo,Dropped (was #28 in 2020),"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.”
501,The Rolling Stones,Exile on Main Street,Dropped (was #14 in 2020),"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."" The ultimate Stones album and Jagger and Richards' definitive songwriting statement of outlaw pride."
502,Eric B. and Rakim,Paid in Full,Dropped (was #61 in 2020),"4th & B'way, 1987","Ice-grilled, laid-back, diamond-sharp: Rakim was the Eighties' greatest rapper. This album cemented his legend with stark, chill declamatory flow that moved hip-hop from hood stories to mind exploration."
503,Metallica,Metallica (Black Album),Dropped (was #235 in 2020),"Elektra, 1991","Known as 'The Black Album' for its stark cover, Metallica's fifth studio album brought the thrash metal pioneers into the mainstream without sacrificing their essential power."
504,Weezer,Weezer (Blue Album),Dropped (was #294 in 2020),"DGC, 1994","Known as 'The Blue Album,' Weezer's debut perfectly captured the awkward charm and emotional intensity of alternative rock in the 1990s with Rivers Cuomo's deeply personal songwriting."
505,Sonic Youth,Goo,Dropped (was #358 in 2020),"DGC, 1990","Sonic Youth's major-label debut brought underground noise rock to MTV audiences without compromising their experimental edge, featuring Kim Deal's distinctive vocals and the band's signature alternate tunings."
506,The Beatles,Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,Dropped (was #24 in 2020),"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.
"
505,The Beatles,White Album,Dropped (was #29 in 2020),,
506,Jimi Hendrix,Are You Experienced,Dropped (was #30 in 2020),,
507,Beyoncé,Lemonade,Dropped (was #32 in 2020),"Parkwood/Columbia, 2016","“Nine times out of 10 I’m in my feelings,” Beyoncé announced on her heartbreak masterpiece, Lemonade. She dropped the album as a Saturday-night surprise, knocking the world sideways — her most expansive and personal statement, tapping into marital breakdown and the state of the nation. It was a different side than she’d shown before, raging over infidelity and jealousy, but reveling in the militant-feminist-funk strut of “Formation.” All over Lemonadeshe explores the betrayals of American blackness, claiming her place in all of America’s music traditions — she goes outlaw country on “Daddy Lessons,” she digs blues metal with Jack White on “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” she revamps the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on “Hold Up.” Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks — all hail the queen.
507,Wu-Tang Clan,Enter the Wu-Tang(36 Chambers),Dropped (was #27 in 2020),"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.
"
508,Bob Marley and the Wailers,Legend,Dropped (was #48 in 2020),"Island, 1984","Bob Marley said, “Reggae music too simple for [American musicians]. You must be inside of it, know what’s happening, and why you want to play this music. You don’t just run to play this music because you think you can make a million off it.” Ironically, this set of the late reggae idol’s greatest hits has sold in the millions. On a single disc, it captures everything that made him an international icon: his nuanced songcraft, his political message, and — of course — the universal soul he brought to Jamaican rhythm and Rastafarian spirituality in the gunfighter ballad “IShot the Sheriff,” the comforting swing of “No Woman, No Cry,” and the holy promise of “Redemption Song.”
508,D’Angelo,Voodoo,Dropped (was #28 in 2020),"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.”
"
509,Jimi Hendrix,Electric Ladyland,Dropped (was #53 in 2020),,
510,Guns N’ Roses,Appetite for Destruction,Dropped (was #62 in 2020),,
511,Curtis Mayfield,Superfly,Dropped (was #76 in 2020),,
512,Frank Ocean,Blond,Dropped (was #79 in 2020),,
513,The Sex Pistols,Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols,Dropped (was #80 in 2020),,
514,Sly and the Family Stone,There’s a Riot Goin’ On,Dropped (was #82 in 2020),,
515,John Lennon,Plastic Ono Band,Dropped (was #85 in 2020),,
516,Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott,Supa Dupa Fly,Dropped (was #93 in 2020),,
517,De La Soul,Three Feet High And Rising,Dropped (was #103 in 2020),,
518,The Allman Brothers,At Fillmore East,Dropped (was #105 in 2020),,
519,Fiona Apple,When the Pawn ...,Dropped (was #108 in 2020),,
520,The Eagles,Hotel California,Dropped (was #118 in 2020),,
521,Elvis Costello,This Year’s Model,Dropped (was #121 in 2020),,
522,Steely Dan,Can’t Buy a Thrill,Dropped (was #168 in 2020),,
523,Cream,Disraeli Gears,Dropped (was #170 in 2020),"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.
509,The Beatles,White Album,Dropped (was #29 in 2020),"Apple, 1968","They wrote the songs while on retreat with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India, taking a break from the celebrity grind. As John Lennon later said, “We sat in the mountains eating lousy vegetarian food, and we wrote all these songs.” They came back with more great tunes than they could release. Lennon pursued his hard-edged vision in the cynical wit of “Sexy Sadie” and “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,”as well as the childlike yearning of “Julia” and “Dear Prudence.”Paul McCartney’s playful pop energy came through in “Martha My Dear”and his inversion of Chuck Berry’s American values, “Back in the U.S.S.R.” George Harrison’s spiritual yearning led him to “Long, Long, Long”and “While MyGuitar Gently Weeps,”featuring a guest guitar solo fromEric Clapton. Even Ringo Starr contributes his first original, the country-tinged “Don’t Pass Me By.” The Beatles tried a little of everything, and all their adventures paid off.
"
524,Jimmy Cliff and Various Artists,The Harder They Come: Original Soundtrack,Dropped (was #174 in 2020),"Mango, 1972","This was the album that took reggae worldwide. The movie was a Jamaican stew of Robin Hood, High Sierra, and Easy Rider — reggae singer turns outlaw hero, goes on the run with guns blazing — with patois dialogue so thick that U.S. audiences needed subtitles. But the soundtrack needed no translation, introducing Babylon to the new beat. The film’s star, Jimmy Cliff, sings six songs, including the hymn “Many Rivers to Cross.” There are glorious one-shots (especially Scotty’s demented “Draw Your Brakes”), as well as artists such as Desmond Dekker (“Shanty Town”), the Melodians (“Rivers of Babylon), and Toots and the Maytals (“Pressure Drop”).
510,Jimi Hendrix,Are You Experienced,Dropped (was #30 in 2020),"Track, 1967","This is what Britain sounded like in late 1966 and early 1967: ablaze with rainbow blues, orchestral guitar feedback, and cosmic possibility. Jimi Hendrix’s incendiary guitar was historic in itself, the luminescent sum of his chitlin-circuit labors with Little Richard and the Isley Brothers and his melodic exploitation of amp howl. But it was the pictorial heat of songs like “Manic Depression”and “The Wind Cries Mary” that established the transcendent promise of psychedelia. Backed by drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, the guitarist made soul music for inner space. “It’s a collection of free feeling and imagination,” he said of the album. “Imagination is very important.” Widely assumed to be about an acid trip, “Purple Haze” had “nothing to do with drugs,” Hendrix insisted. “‘Purple Haze’ was all about a dream I had that I was walking under the sea.”
"
525,Kendrick Lamar,DAMN.,Dropped (was #175 in 2020),"TDE, 2017","After the sprawl of To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar tightened up, going for the jugular in the most aggressive, banger-based album of his career. He dissects his own “DNA,” as well as America’s, raving about “the feelin’ of an apocalypse happenin’.” He delves into his family history in “Duckworth” and scored his first Number One hit with “Humble.” It’s an album where both Bono and Rihanna sound right at home — but it all sounds like Lamar. “It came out exactly how I heard it in my head,” he explained at the time. “It’s all pieces of me.” Grammy-haters were vindicated when DAMN. lost out to Bruno Mars for Album of the Year, but DAMN. did end up pulling a Pulitzer Prize for Music, a first for a rap album.
511,Beyoncé,Lemonade,Dropped (was #32 in 2020),"Parkwood/Columbia, 2016","“Nine times out of 10 I’m in my feelings,” Beyoncé announced on her heartbreak masterpiece, Lemonade. She dropped the album as a Saturday-night surprise, knocking the world sideways — her most expansive and personal statement, tapping into marital breakdown and the state of the nation. It was a different side than she’d shown before, raging over infidelity and jealousy, but reveling in the militant-feminist-funk strut of “Formation.” All over Lemonadeshe explores the betrayals of American blackness, claiming her place in all of America’s music traditions — she goes outlaw country on “Daddy Lessons,” she digs blues metal with Jack White on “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” she revamps the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on “Hold Up.” Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks — all hail the queen.
"
526,Otis Redding,Otis Blue,Dropped (was #178 in 2020),,
527,Notorious B.I.G.,Life After Death,Dropped (was #179 in 2020),,
528,Cyndi Lauper,She’s So Unusual,Dropped (was #184 in 2020),,
529,Ice Cube,AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted,Dropped (was #187 in 2020),,
530,Joy Divison,Unknown Pleasures,Dropped (was #211 in 2020),"Factory, 1980","Joy Division came from the northern England industrial gloom of Manchester, four blue-collar lads chasing a new kind of goth-punk grandeur. Right from the opening, “Disorder,” Unknown Pleasures sounds like nothing else, with the doomed Ian Curtis yelping his dark poetry (“I got the spirit!”) over Peter Hook’s bass pulse. But for all the despair, there’s something inspiring in the surge of “Interzone” and “New Dawn Fades.” Black-clad young bands have been imitating Joy Division ever since.
512,Bob Marley and the Wailers,Legend,Dropped (was #48 in 2020),"Island, 1984","Bob Marley said, “Reggae music too simple for [American musicians]. You must be inside of it, know what’s happening, and why you want to play this music. You don’t just run to play this music because you think you can make a million off it.” Ironically, this set of the late reggae idol’s greatest hits has sold in the millions. On a single disc, it captures everything that made him an international icon: his nuanced songcraft, his political message, and — of course — the universal soul he brought to Jamaican rhythm and Rastafarian spirituality in the gunfighter ballad “IShot the Sheriff,” the comforting swing of “No Woman, No Cry,” and the holy promise of “Redemption Song.”
"
531,Fiona Apple,The Idler Wheel,Dropped (was #213 in 2020),,
532,Raekwon,Only Built 4 Cuban Linx,Dropped (was #219 in 2020),,
533,"Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young",Déjà Vu,Dropped (was #220 in 2020),"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 CSNYcombination 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”).
513,Jimi Hendrix,Electric Ladyland,Dropped (was #53 in 2020),"Reprise, 1968","Jimi Hendrix’s third album was the first he produced himself, a fever dream of underwater electric soul cut in round-the-clock sessions at the Record Plant in New York. Hendrix would leave the Record Plant to jam at a club around the corner, the Scene, and “Voodoo Chile” – 15 minutes of live-in-the-studio blues exploration with Steve Winwood on organ and the Jefferson Airplane’s Jack Cassidy on bass – reflects those excursions. In addition to psychedelic Delta blues, there was the precision snap of “Crosstown Traffic” and a cover of “All Along the Watchtower” that took Bob Dylan into outer space before touching down with a final burst of spectral fury.
"
534,Little Richard,Here’s Little Richard,Dropped (was #227 in 2020),,
535,Metallica,Metallica (The Black Album),Dropped (was #235 in 2020),,
536,Kraftwerk,Trans Europe Express,Dropped (was #238 in 2020),,
537,The Beatles,Hard Day's Night,Dropped (was #263 in 2020),,
538,Mary J. Blige,What’s the 411?,Dropped (was #271 in 2020),,
539,Merle Haggard,Down Every Road 1962-1994,Dropped (was #284 in 2020),"Capitol, 1996","Haggard’s tough country sound was born in Bakersfield, California, a.k.a. Nashville West. His songs are full of drifters, fugitives, and rogues, and this four-disc set — culled from his seminal recordings for Capitol as well as MCA and Epic — is the ultimate collection from one of country’s finest singers. Songs like “Mama Tried” and “All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers” are archetypal statements of lonely tough-guy individualism, and like James Brown’s Star Time, the quality stays rock solid over four CDs.
514,Guns N’ Roses,Appetite for Destruction,Dropped (was #62 in 2020),"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.”
"
540,Björk,Post,Dropped (was #289 in 2020),,
541,Destiny's Child,The Writing’s on the Wall,Dropped (was #291 in 2020),,
542,Weezer,Weezer (The Blue Album),Dropped (was #294 in 2020),,
543,Neil Young,Rust Never Sleeps,Dropped (was #296 in 2020),,
544,Sam Cooke,Portrait of a Legend,Dropped (was #307 in 2020),,
545,Joy Divison,Closer,Dropped (was #309 in 2020),"Factory, 1980","One of the most depressing albums ever made, with droning guitars and synthesizers, chilly bass lines, stentorian vocals, and drums that sound as if they’re steadily beating out the rhythm of doom. And that’s not even considering the lyrics, which are about singer Ian Curtis’ failing marriage and how he suffered from epilepsy. (Curtis hanged himself on May 18th, 1980, at the age of 23 — the rest of the band regrouped as New Order.) On Closer, Joy Division fully earned their reputation as England’s most harrowing punk band.
515,Curtis Mayfield,Superfly,Dropped (was #76 in 2020),"Curtom, 1972","Isaac Hayes’ Shaft came first — but that record had one great single and a lot of instrumental filler. It was Curtis Mayfield who made a blaxploitation-film soundtrack album that packed more drama than the movie it accompanied. Musically, Superfly is astonishing, marrying lush string parts to deep bass grooves, with lots of wah-wah guitar. On top, Mayfield sings in his world-wise falsetto, narrating the bleak tales of “Pusherman” and “Freddie’s Dead,”telling hard truths about the drug trade and black life in the 1970s. “I don’t take credit for everything I write,” Mayfield said. “I only look upon my writings as interpretations of how the majority of people around me feel.”
"
546,Solange,A Seat at the Table,Dropped (was #312 in 2020),,
547,Rosalía,El Mal Querer,Dropped (was #315 in 2020),,
548,Jerry Lee Lewis,All Killer No Filler!,Dropped (was #325 in 2020),,
549,Janet Jackson,Rhythm Nation 1814,Dropped (was #339 in 2020),,
550,Roxy Music,For Your Pleasure,Dropped (was #351 in 2020),"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.
516,Frank Ocean,Blond,Dropped (was #79 in 2020),"Boys Don’t Cry, 2016","Frank Ocean turned the release of Blondinto a daring aesthetic stunt in itself. After years of high expectations after Channel Orange [see No. 148], he fulfilled his Def Jam contract with the visual project Endless, but then — within hours — he released his own Blond. It’s a boldly personal statement full of layered harmonies, as Ocean mutates his voice to match every mood. The songs were so nakedly intimate, it felt like a post-hip-hop Pet Sounds in the spirit of Beyoncé (who sings on “Pink + White”) and Elliott Smith (whose voice appears on “Seigfried”). “Ivy” is his most deeply melancholic confession — Ocean mourns a lost love over a distorted guitar, lamenting, “We’ll never be those kids again.”
"
551,Sonic Youth,Goo,Dropped (was #358 in 2020),"Geffen, 1990","With their sixth full album, the New York art-of-noise band made the leap from indie to major label, but few sold out so beautifully. From Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo’s frazzled guitar freakouts to Kim Gordon’s ghostly ode to Karen Carpenter, Goo retained all of Sonic Youth’s quirks and hallmarks. The sessions were technologically fraught, but they used those added production dollars to amp up their sonic assault. On tracks like “Kool Thing” and “Disappearer” they’d never sounded burlier — and yet more true to their alt-nation selves.
517,The Sex Pistols,Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols,Dropped (was #80 in 2020),"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.
"
552,Parliament,The Mothership Connection,Dropped (was #363 in 2020),,
553,D’Angelo and the Vanguard,Black Messiah,Dropped (was #395 in 2020),,
554,Brian Wilson,Smile,Dropped (was #399 in 2020),,
555,The Go-Go’s,Beauty and the Beat,Dropped (was #400 in 2020),,
556,Fela Kuti and Africa 70,Expensive Shit,Dropped (was #402 in 2020),,
557,Various,Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era,Dropped (was #405 in 2020),,
558,Magnetic Fields,69 Love Songs,Dropped (was #406 in 2020),,
559,Grateful Dead,Workingman’s Dead,Dropped (was #409 in 2020),,
560,Smokey Robinson and the Miracles,Going to a Go Go,Dropped (was #412 in 2020),,
561,The Meters,Looka Py Py,Dropped (was #415 in 2020),,
562,"Earth, Wind and Fire",That’s the Way of the World,Dropped (was #420 in 2020),,
563,The Four Tops,Reach Out,Dropped (was #429 in 2020),,
564,Elvis Costello,My Aim Is True,Dropped (was #430 in 2020),"Columbia, 1977","Elvis Costello on the fuel for his debut: “I spent a lot of time with just a big jar of instant coffee and the first Clash album [see No. 102], listening to it over and over.” The music is more pub rock than punk rock, but the songs are full of punk’s verbal bite. The album’s opening lines — “Now that your picture’s in the paper being rhythmically admired” — and the poisoned-valentine ballad “Alison” established Costello as one of the sharpest, and nastiest, lyricists of his generation.
518,Sly and the Family Stone,There’s a Riot Goin’ On,Dropped (was #82 in 2020),"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.
"
565,Primal Scream,Screamadelica,Dropped (was #437 in 2020),"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.
519,John Lennon,Plastic Ono Band,Dropped (was #85 in 2020),"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.
"
566,David Bowie,Scary Monsters,Dropped (was #443 in 2020),,
567,Alice Coltrane,Journey in Satchidanada,Dropped (was #446 in 2020),,
568,Otis Redding,Dictionary of Soul,Dropped (was #448 in 2020),,
569,Paul and Linda McCartney,Ram,Dropped (was #450 in 2020),,
570,Diana Ross and the Supremes,Anthology,Dropped (was #452 in 2020),"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.
520,Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott,Supa Dupa Fly,Dropped (was #93 in 2020),"Goldmind, 1997","Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott made her name as a songwriter behind the scenes, even before she dropped her 1997 debut. But Supa Dupa Fly introduced everyone to Missy’s world, with avant-funk cosmic swamp beats from Timbaland. What a team: two kids from Virginia Beach, Virginia, dazzling the planet with a playful homegrown sound nobody could imitate. “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” was the breakout hit, taking an old-school Ann Peebles soul oldie and looping it into a Dirty South jam — Missy sings, raps, giggles, and talks her shit. Supa Dupa Fly changed the sound of hip-hop, but also kicked off a tradition — every year, Missy and Tim would score the jam of the summer, while everybody else was still trying to catch up with what they did the summer before.
"
571,Can,Ege Bamyasi,Dropped (was #454 in 2020),,
572,Bo Diddley,Bo Diddley/Go Bo Diddley,Dropped (was #455 in 2020),"Chess, 1958","Diddley’s influence on rock & roll is inestimable, from the off-kilter rhythmic thump of “Pretty Thing” to his revved-up take on singing the blues. This album — a repackaging of his first two records — has many of his best singles, including “I’m a Man”and “Who Do You Love?” Bands immediately started ripping off his signature rollicking beat, and they haven’t stopped yet — including many on this list, from Bruce Springsteen on Born to Run’s “She’s the One” to George Michael on “Faith.”
521,De La Soul,Three Feet High And Rising,Dropped (was #103 in 2020),"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.
"
573,Al Green,Greatest Hits,Dropped (was #456 in 2020),,
574,Sinéad O’Connor,I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,Dropped (was #457 in 2020),,
575,Kid Cudi,Man on the Moon: The End of the Day,Dropped (was #459 in 2020),,
576,Bon Iver,For Emma,Dropped (was #461 in 2020),,
577,Laura Nyro,Eli & the 13th Confession,Dropped (was #463 in 2020),,
578,The Beach Boys,The Beach Boys Today!,Dropped (was #466 in 2020),"Capitol, 1965","“I only tried surfing once, and the board almost hit me in the head,” Brian Wilson told Rolling Stone in 1999. But Wilson turned his fantasies into a California dream world of fast cars and cool waves — a world that might even have room for a scared misfit like him. Yet even in this early phase, Wilson was writing yearningly complex tunes — “She Knows Me Too Well” feels like Greek tragedy translated into doo-wop harmonies and surf guitars.
522,The Allman Brothers,At Fillmore East,Dropped (was #105 in 2020),"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.
"
579,Maxwell,BLACKsummers’night,Dropped (was #467 in 2020),,
580,Howlin’ Wolf,Moanin' in the Moonlight,Dropped (was #477 in 2020),,
581,Belle and Sebastian,If You’re Feeling Sinister,Dropped (was #481 in 2020),,
582,Muddy Waters,The Anthology,Dropped (was #483 in 2020),,
583,Richard and Linda Thompson,I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight,Dropped (was #485 in 2020),,
584,Phil Spector and Various Artists,Back to Mono (1958-1969),Dropped (was #489 in 2020),"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 MyBaby” and the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron,” which Spector called “little symphonies for the kids.”
523,Fiona Apple,When the Pawn ...,Dropped (was #108 in 2020),"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.
"
585,Harry Styles,Fine Line,Dropped (was #491 in 2020),"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.”
524,The Eagles,Hotel California,Dropped (was #118 in 2020),"Asylum, 1976","In pursuit of note-perfect Hollywood-cowboy ennui, the Eagles spent eight months in the studio polishing take after take after take. As Don Henley recalled: “We just locked ourselves in. We had a refrigerator, a ping-pong table, roller skates, and a couple of cots. We would go in and stay for two or three days at a time.” With guitarist Joe Walsh replacing Bernie Leadon, the band backed off from straight country rock in favor of the harder sound of “Life in the Fast Lane.” The highlight is the title track, a monument to the rock-aristocrat decadence of the day and a feast of triple-guitar interplay. “Every band has their peak,” Henley said. “That was ours.”
"
586,The Ronettes,Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes,Dropped (was #494 in 2020),,
587,Shakira,Dónde Están los Ladrones,Dropped (was #496 in 2020),,
588,"Rufus, Chaka Khan",Ask Rufus,Dropped (was #499 in 2020),,
589,Arcade Fire,Funeral,Dropped (was #500 in 2020),"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.
525,Elvis Costello,This Year’s Model,Dropped (was #121 in 2020),"Columbia, 1978","His second album and first with his crack backing band, the Attractions, This Year’s Model is the most “punk” of Elvis Costello’s records — not in any I-hate-the-cops sense but in his emotionally explosive writing (“No Action,” “Lipstick Vogue,” “Pump It Up”) and the Attractions’ vicious gallop (particularly the psycho-circus organ playing of Steve Nieve). Many of the songs rattle with sexual paranoia, but the broadside against vanilla-pop broadcasting, “Radio, Radio” (a U.K. single added to the original U.S. vinyl LP), better reflects the general, righteous indignation of the album: Costello versus the world. And Costello wins.
"
526,Steely Dan,Can’t Buy a Thrill,Dropped (was #168 in 2020),"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.
"
527,Cream,Disraeli Gears,Dropped (was #170 in 2020),"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.
"
528,Jimmy Cliff and Various Artists,The Harder They Come: Original Soundtrack,Dropped (was #174 in 2020),"Mango, 1972","This was the album that took reggae worldwide. The movie was a Jamaican stew of Robin Hood, High Sierra, and Easy Rider — reggae singer turns outlaw hero, goes on the run with guns blazing — with patois dialogue so thick that U.S. audiences needed subtitles. But the soundtrack needed no translation, introducing Babylon to the new beat. The film’s star, Jimmy Cliff, sings six songs, including the hymn “Many Rivers to Cross.” There are glorious one-shots (especially Scotty’s demented “Draw Your Brakes”), as well as artists such as Desmond Dekker (“Shanty Town”), the Melodians (“Rivers of Babylon), and Toots and the Maytals (“Pressure Drop”).
"
529,Kendrick Lamar,DAMN.,Dropped (was #175 in 2020),"TDE, 2017","After the sprawl of To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar tightened up, going for the jugular in the most aggressive, banger-based album of his career. He dissects his own “DNA,” as well as America’s, raving about “the feelin’ of an apocalypse happenin’.” He delves into his family history in “Duckworth” and scored his first Number One hit with “Humble.” It’s an album where both Bono and Rihanna sound right at home — but it all sounds like Lamar. “It came out exactly how I heard it in my head,” he explained at the time. “It’s all pieces of me.” Grammy-haters were vindicated when DAMN. lost out to Bruno Mars for Album of the Year, but DAMN. did end up pulling a Pulitzer Prize for Music, a first for a rap album.
"
530,Otis Redding,Otis Blue,Dropped (was #178 in 2020),"Volt, 1965","Redding’s third album includes covers of three songs by Sam Cooke, Redding’s idol, who had died the previous December. Their styles were different:Cooke, smooth and sure; Redding, raw and pleading. But Redding’s versions of “Shake” and “A Change Is Gonna Come” show how Cooke’s sound and message helped shape Redding’s Southern soul, heard here in his originals “Respect” and “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and in a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” which was itself inspired by the Stax/Volt sound. “I use a lot of words different than the Stones’ version,” Redding noted. “That’s because I made them up.”
"
531,Notorious B.I.G.,Life After Death,Dropped (was #179 in 2020),"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.
"
532,Cyndi Lauper,She’s So Unusual,Dropped (was #184 in 2020),"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.
"
533,Ice Cube,AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted,Dropped (was #187 in 2020),"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.
"
534,Joy Divison,Unknown Pleasures,Dropped (was #211 in 2020),"Factory, 1980","Joy Division came from the northern England industrial gloom of Manchester, four blue-collar lads chasing a new kind of goth-punk grandeur. Right from the opening, “Disorder,” Unknown Pleasures sounds like nothing else, with the doomed Ian Curtis yelping his dark poetry (“I got the spirit!”) over Peter Hook’s bass pulse. But for all the despair, there’s something inspiring in the surge of “Interzone” and “New Dawn Fades.” Black-clad young bands have been imitating Joy Division ever since.
"
535,Fiona Apple,The Idler Wheel,Dropped (was #213 in 2020),"Epic, 2012","The Idler Wheel continued Fiona Apple’s run as one of modern pop’s most thrilling eccentrics. There’s a single-minded intensity to songs like “Every Single Night” and “Hot Knife,” where she puts an almost shocking amount of feeling into each syllable. Apple can sound like a cabaret singer in one song and a blueswoman in the next, her voice full of sandpaper edges and bestial roars. “I may need a chaperone,” she wonders on “Daredevil,” but this album proves she’s at her very best when left to her own devices.
"
536,Raekwon,Only Built 4 Cuban Linx,Dropped (was #219 in 2020),"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.
"
537,"Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young",Déjà Vu,Dropped (was #220 in 2020),"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 CSNYcombination 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”).
"
538,Little Richard,Here’s Little Richard,Dropped (was #227 in 2020),"Specialty, 1957","“I came from a family where my people didn’t like rhythm and blues,” Little Richard told Rolling Stone in 1970. “Bing Crosby, ‘Pennies From Heaven,’ Ella Fitzgerald was all I heard. And I knew there was something that could be louder than that, but didn’t know where to find it. And I found it was me.” Richard’s raucous debut collected singles such as “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” in which his rollicking boogie-woogie piano and falsetto scream ignited the unfettered possibilities of rock & roll.
"
539,Kraftwerk,Trans Europe Express,Dropped (was #238 in 2020),"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.
"
540,The Beatles,Hard Day's Night,Dropped (was #263 in 2020),"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.”
"
541,Mary J. Blige,What’s the 411?,Dropped (was #271 in 2020),"Uptown/MCA, 1992","There was no way R&B was going to keep its distance from hip-hop; they had too much in common. But it required the right singer to build a road between the two. On her first album, Mary J. Blige was marketed as the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul, and the Bronx-born singer lived up to the regal hype, singing about pain and resolve in equal measures. Even when songwriters stuck her with pedestrian lines, you feel genuine longing and the weight of her experiences in every word.
"
542,Merle Haggard,Down Every Road 1962-1994,Dropped (was #284 in 2020),"Capitol, 1996","Haggard’s tough country sound was born in Bakersfield, California, a.k.a. Nashville West. His songs are full of drifters, fugitives, and rogues, and this four-disc set — culled from his seminal recordings for Capitol as well as MCA and Epic — is the ultimate collection from one of country’s finest singers. Songs like “Mama Tried” and “All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers” are archetypal statements of lonely tough-guy individualism, and like James Brown’s Star Time, the quality stays rock solid over four CDs.
"
543,Björk,Post,Dropped (was #289 in 2020),"Elektra, 1995","“I have to re-create the universe every morning when I wake up,” Björk said, explaining her second solo album’s utter lack of musical inhibition. Post bounces from big-band jazz (“It’s Oh So Quiet”) to trip-hop (“These Modern Things” seems to be both of those things at once). Lush and disorienting, dissonant yet ensnaringly lovely, it proved the “Icelandic pixie” who’d dazzled MTV viewers fronting the Sugarcubes, was, in fact, one of the Nineties’ truly boundless musical thinkers. Fun fact: For her vocals, Björk extended her mic cord to a beach so she could sing to the sea.
"
544,Destiny's Child,The Writing’s on the Wall,Dropped (was #291 in 2020),"Columbia, 1999","Looking back now, Destiny’s Child seem like the last gasp of the R&B vocal group, a tradition that was swept out of the mainstream in the 2000s. On this kinetic, shattering album, the group — especially a wunderkind named Beyoncé Knowles — took a more hands-on approach to writing and producing, helping to craft juddering club singles like “Bills, Bills, Bills” and “Bug a Boo.” The ballad “Say My Name” quickly became a modern standard.
"
545,Neil Young,Rust Never Sleeps,Dropped (was #296 in 2020),"Reprise, 1979","The live Rust Never Sleeps is essential Neil Young, full of impossibly delicate acoustic songs and ragged Crazy Horse rampages. Highlights: “My My Hey Hey” (a tribute to the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten); a surreal political spiel called “Welfare Mothers”; and “Powderfinger,” Young’s greatest song ever, where he unspools a hazy tale of a 22-year-old going up against government violence on the American frontier, and his guitar roars toward the collapsing sky like never before.
"
546,Sam Cooke,Portrait of a Legend,Dropped (was #307 in 2020),"ABKCO, 2003","“Sam Cooke was the best singer who ever lived, no contest,” asserted Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler. Cooke was a gospel star who crossed over to rock & roll, helping to invent the music that would become known as soul. This collection spans his whole career, from his early work with gospel kings the Soul Stirrers to the civil rights anthem “A Change Is Gonna Come,”which became a posthumous hit after Cooke was shot to death at an L.A. motel in 1964.
"
547,Joy Divison,Closer,Dropped (was #309 in 2020),"Factory, 1980","One of the most depressing albums ever made, with droning guitars and synthesizers, chilly bass lines, stentorian vocals, and drums that sound as if they’re steadily beating out the rhythm of doom. And that’s not even considering the lyrics, which are about singer Ian Curtis’ failing marriage and how he suffered from epilepsy. (Curtis hanged himself on May 18th, 1980, at the age of 23 — the rest of the band regrouped as New Order.) On Closer, Joy Division fully earned their reputation as England’s most harrowing punk band.
"
548,Solange,A Seat at the Table,Dropped (was #312 in 2020),"Saint/Columbia, 2016","Solange came into her own on A Seat at the Table, with songs she wrote mostly in the Louisiana town where her family had its roots. She includes spoken-word interludes from her parents as well as narrator Master P — as she said, “The album feels very, very Southern in my storytelling.” “Cranes in the Sky” is a soulful lament, anchored in Raphael Saadiq’s bass groove, while protests like “Don’t Touch My Hair” are about African American identity politics. “The hair journey of a black woman is so specific,” she explained.
"
549,Rosalía,El Mal Querer,Dropped (was #315 in 2020),"Sony, 2018","In her Grammy-winning breakthrough album, El Mal Querer (in English, A Toxic Love), groundbreaking Spanish singer-producer Rosalía not only mainstreamed the centuries-old tradition of flamenco music, she also freaked it, using the power of 808s and a whole lotta heartbreak. Rosalía assumes a rapper’s bravado in the opening track, “Malamente,” and in the palma-pop gem “Di Mi Nombre,” she grabs her bullish lover by the horns. The result is one of the best ancient-modern mash-ups of the 21st century.
"
550,Jerry Lee Lewis,All Killer No Filler!,Dropped (was #325 in 2020),"Rhino, 1993","Jerry Lee Lewis is best known for his frenzied piano-pumping Sun classics like “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” cut in the late Fifties (before he derailed his success by marrying his 13-year-old cousin), yet his career as a country hitmaker lasted decades. Listen to “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)” and you might agree with the Killer’s characteristically self-deprecating claim that “Elvis was the greatest, but I’m the best.”
"
551,Janet Jackson,Rhythm Nation 1814,Dropped (was #339 in 2020),"A&M, 1989","Janet Jackson bought a military suit and ruled the radio for two years with this album. Along with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, she fashioned a grand pop statement with hip-hop funk (“Rhythm Nation”), slow jams (“Love Will Never Do [Without You]”), and even hair metal (“Black Cat”). “While writing ‘Rhythm Nation’ I was kidding around, saying, ‘God, you guys, I feel like this could be the national anthem for the Nineties,’” Jackson recalled. “Just by a crazy chance we decided to look up when Francis Scott Key wrote the national anthem, and it was September 14th, 1814.”
"
552,Roxy Music,For Your Pleasure,Dropped (was #351 in 2020),"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.
"
553,Parliament,The Mothership Connection,Dropped (was #363 in 2020),"Casablanca, 1975","George Clinton leads his Detroit crew of “extraterrestrial brothers” through a visionary album of science-fiction funk on jams like “Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication” and “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker).” It’s a concept album inspired by Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey, with Clinton as an outer-space radio DJ, broadcasting uncut funk from “the Chocolate Milky Way” and telling the people of Earth, “Put a glide in your stride and a dip in your hip, and come on up to the Mothership.”
"
554,D’Angelo and the Vanguard,Black Messiah,Dropped (was #395 in 2020),"RCA, 2014","Fourteen years after Voodoo, D’Angelo built up impossible levels of anticipation for his next move. But Black Messiah was worth the wait. He brought a new political rage to deep-soul grooves like “The Charade,” responding to the Black Lives Matter movement: “All we wanted was a chance to talk/Instead we only got outlined in chalk.” D’Angelo admits in “Really Love,” “I’m not an easy man to overstand.” Yet he meshes beautifully with kindred spirits, from Roots drummer Questlove to jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove.
"
555,Brian Wilson,Smile,Dropped (was #399 in 2020),"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.
"
556,The Go-Go’s,Beauty and the Beat,Dropped (was #400 in 2020),"I.R.S., 1981","The most popular girl group of New Wave surfed to the top of the charts with this hooky debut. Everyone knows “We Got the Beat” and “Our Lips Our Sealed,” exuberant songs that livened up the Top 40, but the entire album welds punkish spirit to party-minded pop. It’s one of those albums where every song feels like it could’ve been a single — from “This Town,” a sweet, tough celebration of their L.A. scene, to the haunting “Lust to Love” to the album-ending one-two punch of “Skidmarks on My Heart” and “Can’t Stop the World.”
"
557,Fela Kuti and Africa 70,Expensive Shit,Dropped (was #402 in 2020),"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.
"
558,Various,Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era,Dropped (was #405 in 2020),"Elektra, 1972","This collection of Sixties garage rock, compiled by rock critic and soon-to-be Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye, became a touchstone for Seventies punks and, years later, for the aftershock of post-punk. The 27-track, two-LP set was a radical idea in 1972: While rock was getting bigger, Nuggets established a new canon out of forgotten AM-radio hits — brutally simple singles like the Standells’ “Dirty Water,” the Shadows of Knight’s“Oh Yeah!” and the Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction.” Rhino expanded Nuggets into a sprawling four-CD box in 1998.
"
559,Magnetic Fields,69 Love Songs,Dropped (was #406 in 2020),"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.
"
560,Grateful Dead,Workingman’s Dead,Dropped (was #409 in 2020),"Warner Bros., 1970","“We weren’t feeling like an experimental music group, but were feeling more like a good old band,” Jerry Garcia said. The Dead stripped down for Workingman’s Dead, with eight spooky blues and country songs that rival the best of Bob Dylan, as in the morbid “Black Peter” and “Dire Wolf.” Garcia and Robert Hunter proved themselves one of rock’s sharpest songwriting teams, with the acoustic hymn “Uncle John’s Band.” Hunter said, “It was my feeling about what the Dead was and could be. It was very much a song for us and about us, in the most hopeful sense.”
"
561,Smokey Robinson and the Miracles,Going to a Go Go,Dropped (was #412 in 2020),"Tamla/Motown, 1965","Motown at its most debonair and sexy. Smokey Robinson works his sweeping soul falsetto over unbelievably sad ballads, including “The Tracks of My Tears” and “Ooo Baby Baby,” as the Miracles sob along. Robinson made it seem effortless to write a constant string of hit singles for the Miracles, as well as the rest of the Motown roster, but this album also has some of his finest deep cuts, especially the helpless yearning of “Choosey Beggar.”
"
562,The Meters,Looka Py Py,Dropped (was #415 in 2020),"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.
"
563,"Earth, Wind and Fire",That’s the Way of the World,Dropped (was #420 in 2020),"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.
"
564,The Four Tops,Reach Out,Dropped (was #429 in 2020),"Tamla/Motown, 1967","The Four Tops were the most dramatic of the Motown singing groups, driven by the towering vocals of Levi Stubbs. Reach Out has overwrought classics like the title track, the goth-soul tsunami “7 Rooms of Gloom,” and “Bernadette,” on which lust and paranoia spontaneously combust. They also branch out into rock and folk with covers of the Monkees and Tim Hardin. It was the last Motown album for the label’s definitive songwriting team Holland, Dozier, and Holland.
"
565,Elvis Costello,My Aim Is True,Dropped (was #430 in 2020),"Columbia, 1977","Elvis Costello on the fuel for his debut: “I spent a lot of time with just a big jar of instant coffee and the first Clash album [see No. 102], listening to it over and over.” The music is more pub rock than punk rock, but the songs are full of punk’s verbal bite. The album’s opening lines — “Now that your picture’s in the paper being rhythmically admired” — and the poisoned-valentine ballad “Alison” established Costello as one of the sharpest, and nastiest, lyricists of his generation.
"
566,Primal Scream,Screamadelica,Dropped (was #437 in 2020),"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.
"
567,David Bowie,Scary Monsters,Dropped (was #443 in 2020),"RCA, 1980","It’s the end, the end of the Seventies; it’s the end, the end of the century. Bowie looks back over a decade he helped define and rips it into pieces, with futuristic post-punk lampoons like “Fashion” and “Teenage Wildlife,” where he bitches about “the same old thing in brand-new drag.” He revisits the Major Tom story with “Ashes to Ashes,” where he screams along with the New Romantic synths, acting out the sad story of the lost astronaut who finds the higher he gets, the lower he feels.
"
568,Alice Coltrane,Journey in Satchidanada,Dropped (was #446 in 2020),"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.
"
569,Otis Redding,Dictionary of Soul,Dropped (was #448 in 2020),"Volt, 1966","Otis Redding’s last album before his tragic death in a plane crash, Dictionary of Soul, was just what the title promises: a definitive summary of an entire musical world. “Try a Little Tenderness” was a forgotten Bing Crosby oldie from the Thirties until Redding claimed it and turned it into pure Memphis soul. He does the same with “Tennessee Waltz” and the Beatles’ “Day Tripper,” as well as his own ballads “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)” and “My Lover’s Prayer.”
"
570,Paul and Linda McCartney,Ram,Dropped (was #450 in 2020),"Apple, 1971","In its day, Paul McCartney’s second post-Beatles album was widely disliked; John Lennon dismissed it as “muzak,” and Ringo Starr said the lack of good songs made him “sad.” In retrospect, it’s a modest, goofy, loose-limbed outing about domestic pleasures, full of eccentric, pastorale tunes like “Heart of the Country” and “Munkberry Moon Delight.” The loopy pastiche of whimsical song fragments “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” became Paul’s first post-Beatles Number One hit. “I was in a very free mood,” he said.
"
571,Diana Ross and the Supremes,Anthology,Dropped (was #452 in 2020),"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.
"
572,Can,Ege Bamyasi,Dropped (was #454 in 2020),"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.”
"
573,Bo Diddley,Bo Diddley/Go Bo Diddley,Dropped (was #455 in 2020),"Chess, 1958","Diddley’s influence on rock & roll is inestimable, from the off-kilter rhythmic thump of “Pretty Thing” to his revved-up take on singing the blues. This album — a repackaging of his first two records — has many of his best singles, including “I’m a Man”and “Who Do You Love?” Bands immediately started ripping off his signature rollicking beat, and they haven’t stopped yet — including many on this list, from Bruce Springsteen on Born to Run’s “She’s the One” to George Michael on “Faith.”
"
574,Al Green,Greatest Hits,Dropped (was #456 in 2020),"Hi/EMI, 1975","“In Memphis, you just do as you feel,” Al Green told Rolling Stone in 1972. “It’s not a modern, up-to-par, very glamorous, big-red-chairs-and-carpet-that-thick studio. It’s one of those places you can go into and stomp out a good soul jam.” In collaboration with producer Willie Mitchell and musicians like drummer Al Jackson Jr., Green was a natural album artist, making love-and-pain classics such as 1973’s Call Me. But this collection makes for a unified album in itself, compiling hits like “Let’s Stay Together,” “I’m Still in Love With You,” and “Tired of Being Alone” into a flawless 10-song suite.
"
575,Sinéad O’Connor,I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,Dropped (was #457 in 2020),"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.
"
576,Kid Cudi,Man on the Moon: The End of the Day,Dropped (was #459 in 2020),"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.
"
577,Bon Iver,For Emma,Dropped (was #461 in 2020),"Jagjaguwar, 2008","Justin Vernon didn’t plan on reshaping a generation’s understanding of love-torn folk music when he retreated to the Wisconsin woods to record his first album (“I was very sad and very lonely”), but that’s exactly what happened. What’s even more staggering is the way Vernon’s Auto-Tune and falsetto-laden DIY debut, which centered around the heartsick “Skinny Love,” would reshape the contours of the pop mainstream — from Ed Sheeran and Kanye West to James Blake and Taylor Swift — for years to come.
"
578,Laura Nyro,Eli & the 13th Confession,Dropped (was #463 in 2020),"Columbia, 1968","Part confessional singer-songwriter and part would-be soul diva, Nyro was never an easy one to categorize. Her dazzling second album came the closest to blending both of her musical selves. Her pop instincts shine in the best-known songs here, like “Eli’s Comin’” and “Stoned Soul Picnic.” But the rest of the album finds her less restrained lyrically and musically, making for sensuous and often sexually ambiguous music that paved the way for many genre-busting female troubadours.
"
579,The Beach Boys,The Beach Boys Today!,Dropped (was #466 in 2020),"Capitol, 1965","“I only tried surfing once, and the board almost hit me in the head,” Brian Wilson told Rolling Stone in 1999. But Wilson turned his fantasies into a California dream world of fast cars and cool waves — a world that might even have room for a scared misfit like him. Yet even in this early phase, Wilson was writing yearningly complex tunes — “She Knows Me Too Well” feels like Greek tragedy translated into doo-wop harmonies and surf guitars.
"
580,Maxwell,BLACKsummers’night,Dropped (was #467 in 2020),"Columbia, 2009","Maxwell was a successful Nineties neo-soul crooner who went on an eight-year hiatus between 2001’s Now and this 2009 release. BLACKSummers’night betrays no anxiety about the time off; in fact, it ranks among the great comeback records. Maxwell sang about post-breakup desperation as he navigated plush, complicated grooves with jazz players like Keyon Harrold and Derrick Hodge giving his arrangements extra zip. The album’s ecstatic triumph is “Pretty Wings,” a keening, chiming lullaby.
"
581,Howlin’ Wolf,Moanin' in the Moonlight,Dropped (was #477 in 2020),"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).”
"
582,Belle and Sebastian,If You’re Feeling Sinister,Dropped (was #481 in 2020),"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.
"
583,Muddy Waters,The Anthology,Dropped (was #483 in 2020),"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.
"
584,Richard and Linda Thompson,I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight,Dropped (was #485 in 2020),"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.”
"
585,Phil Spector and Various Artists,Back to Mono (1958-1969),Dropped (was #489 in 2020),"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 MyBaby” and the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron,” which Spector called “little symphonies for the kids.”
"
586,Harry Styles,Fine Line,Dropped (was #491 in 2020),"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.”
"
587,The Ronettes,Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes,Dropped (was #494 in 2020),"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.
"
588,Shakira,Dónde Están los Ladrones,Dropped (was #496 in 2020),"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.
"
589,"Rufus, Chaka Khan",Ask Rufus,Dropped (was #499 in 2020),"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.
"
1
Rank
Artist
Album
Status
Info
Description
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 featuring Chaka Khan
Ask Rufus
New in 2023
ABC, 1977
Rufus' fifth studio album showcased the band at the height of their creative powers, blending funk, soul, and rock with Chaka Khan's extraordinary vocals leading the way. The album features the massive hit 'Sweet Thing,' which became one of Khan's signature songs and demonstrated her ability to convey both tenderness and power within a single performance. The band's tight musicianship, anchored by Tony Maiden's guitar work and the rhythm section's precise grooves, provided the perfect foundation for Khan's dynamic vocal style. Songs like 'Hollywood' and 'Egyptian Song' showcased the group's willingness to experiment while maintaining their essential funkiness. 'Ask Rufus' captured the band during their most successful period and helped establish Chaka Khan as one of the greatest vocalists of her generation, setting the stage for her legendary solo career. (by Claude)
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.
502
501
The Rolling Stones
Exile on Main Street
Dropped (was #14 in 2020)
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." The ultimate Stones album and Jagger and Richards' definitive songwriting statement of outlaw pride.
503
502
The BeatlesEric B. and Rakim
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club BandPaid in Full
Dropped (was #24 in 2020)Dropped (was #61 in 2020)
4th & B'way, 1987
Ice-grilled, laid-back, diamond-sharp: Rakim was the Eighties' greatest rapper. This album cemented his legend with stark, chill declamatory flow that moved hip-hop from hood stories to mind exploration.
504
503
Wu-Tang ClanMetallica
Enter the Wu-Tang(36 Chambers)Metallica (Black Album)
Dropped (was #27 in 2020)Dropped (was #235 in 2020)
Elektra, 1991
Known as 'The Black Album' for its stark cover, Metallica's fifth studio album brought the thrash metal pioneers into the mainstream without sacrificing their essential power.
505
504
D’AngeloWeezer
VoodooWeezer (Blue Album)
Dropped (was #28 in 2020)Dropped (was #294 in 2020)
EMI, 2000DGC, 1994
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.”
Known as 'The Blue Album,' Weezer's debut perfectly captured the awkward charm and emotional intensity of alternative rock in the 1990s with Rivers Cuomo's deeply personal songwriting.
506
505
Sonic Youth
Goo
Dropped (was #358 in 2020)
DGC, 1990
Sonic Youth's major-label debut brought underground noise rock to MTV audiences without compromising their experimental edge, featuring Kim Deal's distinctive vocals and the band's signature alternate tunings.
507
506
The Beatles
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Dropped (was #24 in 2020)
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.
508
505507
The BeatlesWu-Tang Clan
White AlbumEnter the Wu-Tang(36 Chambers)
Dropped (was #29 in 2020)Dropped (was #27 in 2020)
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.
509
506508
Jimi HendrixD’Angelo
Are You ExperiencedVoodoo
Dropped (was #30 in 2020)Dropped (was #28 in 2020)
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.”
507
Beyoncé
Lemonade
Dropped (was #32 in 2020)
Parkwood/Columbia, 2016
“Nine times out of 10 I’m in my feelings,” Beyoncé announced on her heartbreak masterpiece, Lemonade. She dropped the album as a Saturday-night surprise, knocking the world sideways — her most expansive and personal statement, tapping into marital breakdown and the state of the nation. It was a different side than she’d shown before, raging over infidelity and jealousy, but reveling in the militant-feminist-funk strut of “Formation.” All over Lemonade she explores the betrayals of American blackness, claiming her place in all of America’s music traditions — she goes outlaw country on “Daddy Lessons,” she digs blues metal with Jack White on “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” she revamps the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on “Hold Up.” Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks — all hail the queen.
508
Bob Marley and the Wailers
Legend
Dropped (was #48 in 2020)
Island, 1984
Bob Marley said, “Reggae music too simple for [American musicians]. You must be inside of it, know what’s happening, and why you want to play this music. You don’t just run to play this music because you think you can make a million off it.” Ironically, this set of the late reggae idol’s greatest hits has sold in the millions. On a single disc, it captures everything that made him an international icon: his nuanced songcraft, his political message, and — of course — the universal soul he brought to Jamaican rhythm and Rastafarian spirituality in the gunfighter ballad “I Shot the Sheriff,” the comforting swing of “No Woman, No Cry,” and the holy promise of “Redemption Song.”
510
509
Jimi HendrixThe Beatles
Electric LadylandWhite Album
Dropped (was #53 in 2020)Dropped (was #29 in 2020)
Apple, 1968
They wrote the songs while on retreat with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India, taking a break from the celebrity grind. As John Lennon later said, “We sat in the mountains eating lousy vegetarian food, and we wrote all these songs.” They came back with more great tunes than they could release. Lennon pursued his hard-edged vision in the cynical wit of “Sexy Sadie” and “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” as well as the childlike yearning of “Julia” and “Dear Prudence.” Paul McCartney’s playful pop energy came through in “Martha My Dear” and his inversion of Chuck Berry’s American values, “Back in the U.S.S.R.” George Harrison’s spiritual yearning led him to “Long, Long, Long” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” featuring a guest guitar solo from Eric Clapton. Even Ringo Starr contributes his first original, the country-tinged “Don’t Pass Me By.” The Beatles tried a little of everything, and all their adventures paid off.
511
510
Guns N’ RosesJimi Hendrix
Appetite for DestructionAre You Experienced
Dropped (was #62 in 2020)Dropped (was #30 in 2020)
Track, 1967
This is what Britain sounded like in late 1966 and early 1967: ablaze with rainbow blues, orchestral guitar feedback, and cosmic possibility. Jimi Hendrix’s incendiary guitar was historic in itself, the luminescent sum of his chitlin-circuit labors with Little Richard and the Isley Brothers and his melodic exploitation of amp howl. But it was the pictorial heat of songs like “Manic Depression” and “The Wind Cries Mary” that established the transcendent promise of psychedelia. Backed by drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, the guitarist made soul music for inner space. “It’s a collection of free feeling and imagination,” he said of the album. “Imagination is very important.” Widely assumed to be about an acid trip, “Purple Haze” had “nothing to do with drugs,” Hendrix insisted. “‘Purple Haze’ was all about a dream I had that I was walking under the sea.”
512
511
Curtis MayfieldBeyoncé
SuperflyLemonade
Dropped (was #76 in 2020)Dropped (was #32 in 2020)
Parkwood/Columbia, 2016
“Nine times out of 10 I’m in my feelings,” Beyoncé announced on her heartbreak masterpiece, Lemonade. She dropped the album as a Saturday-night surprise, knocking the world sideways — her most expansive and personal statement, tapping into marital breakdown and the state of the nation. It was a different side than she’d shown before, raging over infidelity and jealousy, but reveling in the militant-feminist-funk strut of “Formation.” All over Lemonade she explores the betrayals of American blackness, claiming her place in all of America’s music traditions — she goes outlaw country on “Daddy Lessons,” she digs blues metal with Jack White on “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” she revamps the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on “Hold Up.” Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks — all hail the queen.
513
512
Frank OceanBob Marley and the Wailers
BlondLegend
Dropped (was #79 in 2020)Dropped (was #48 in 2020)
Island, 1984
Bob Marley said, “Reggae music too simple for [American musicians]. You must be inside of it, know what’s happening, and why you want to play this music. You don’t just run to play this music because you think you can make a million off it.” Ironically, this set of the late reggae idol’s greatest hits has sold in the millions. On a single disc, it captures everything that made him an international icon: his nuanced songcraft, his political message, and — of course — the universal soul he brought to Jamaican rhythm and Rastafarian spirituality in the gunfighter ballad “I Shot the Sheriff,” the comforting swing of “No Woman, No Cry,” and the holy promise of “Redemption Song.”
513
The Sex Pistols
Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols
Dropped (was #80 in 2020)
514
Sly and the Family Stone
There’s a Riot Goin’ On
Dropped (was #82 in 2020)
515
John Lennon
Plastic Ono Band
Dropped (was #85 in 2020)
516
Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott
Supa Dupa Fly
Dropped (was #93 in 2020)
517
De La Soul
Three Feet High And Rising
Dropped (was #103 in 2020)
518
The Allman Brothers
At Fillmore East
Dropped (was #105 in 2020)
519
Fiona Apple
When the Pawn ...
Dropped (was #108 in 2020)
520
The Eagles
Hotel California
Dropped (was #118 in 2020)
521
Elvis Costello
This Year’s Model
Dropped (was #121 in 2020)
522
Steely Dan
Can’t Buy a Thrill
Dropped (was #168 in 2020)
523
Cream
Disraeli Gears
Dropped (was #170 in 2020)
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.
524
Jimmy Cliff and Various Artists
The Harder They Come: Original Soundtrack
Dropped (was #174 in 2020)
Mango, 1972
This was the album that took reggae worldwide. The movie was a Jamaican stew of Robin Hood, High Sierra, and Easy Rider — reggae singer turns outlaw hero, goes on the run with guns blazing — with patois dialogue so thick that U.S. audiences needed subtitles. But the soundtrack needed no translation, introducing Babylon to the new beat. The film’s star, Jimmy Cliff, sings six songs, including the hymn “Many Rivers to Cross.” There are glorious one-shots (especially Scotty’s demented “Draw Your Brakes”), as well as artists such as Desmond Dekker (“Shanty Town”), the Melodians (“Rivers of Babylon), and Toots and the Maytals (“Pressure Drop”).
525
Kendrick Lamar
DAMN.
Dropped (was #175 in 2020)
TDE, 2017
After the sprawl of To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar tightened up, going for the jugular in the most aggressive, banger-based album of his career. He dissects his own “DNA,” as well as America’s, raving about “the feelin’ of an apocalypse happenin’.” He delves into his family history in “Duckworth” and scored his first Number One hit with “Humble.” It’s an album where both Bono and Rihanna sound right at home — but it all sounds like Lamar. “It came out exactly how I heard it in my head,” he explained at the time. “It’s all pieces of me.” Grammy-haters were vindicated when DAMN. lost out to Bruno Mars for Album of the Year, but DAMN. did end up pulling a Pulitzer Prize for Music, a first for a rap album.
526
Otis Redding
Otis Blue
Dropped (was #178 in 2020)
514
527513
Notorious B.I.G.Jimi Hendrix
Life After DeathElectric Ladyland
Dropped (was #179 in 2020)Dropped (was #53 in 2020)
Reprise, 1968
Jimi Hendrix’s third album was the first he produced himself, a fever dream of underwater electric soul cut in round-the-clock sessions at the Record Plant in New York. Hendrix would leave the Record Plant to jam at a club around the corner, the Scene, and “Voodoo Chile” – 15 minutes of live-in-the-studio blues exploration with Steve Winwood on organ and the Jefferson Airplane’s Jack Cassidy on bass – reflects those excursions. In addition to psychedelic Delta blues, there was the precision snap of “Crosstown Traffic” and a cover of “All Along the Watchtower” that took Bob Dylan into outer space before touching down with a final burst of spectral fury.
515
528514
Cyndi LauperGuns N’ Roses
She’s So UnusualAppetite for Destruction
Dropped (was #184 in 2020)Dropped (was #62 in 2020)
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.”
516
529515
Ice CubeCurtis Mayfield
AmeriKKKa’s Most WantedSuperfly
Dropped (was #187 in 2020)Dropped (was #76 in 2020)
Curtom, 1972
Isaac Hayes’ Shaft came first — but that record had one great single and a lot of instrumental filler. It was Curtis Mayfield who made a blaxploitation-film soundtrack album that packed more drama than the movie it accompanied. Musically, Superfly is astonishing, marrying lush string parts to deep bass grooves, with lots of wah-wah guitar. On top, Mayfield sings in his world-wise falsetto, narrating the bleak tales of “Pusherman” and “Freddie’s Dead,” telling hard truths about the drug trade and black life in the 1970s. “I don’t take credit for everything I write,” Mayfield said. “I only look upon my writings as interpretations of how the majority of people around me feel.”
517
530516
Joy DivisonFrank Ocean
Unknown PleasuresBlond
Dropped (was #211 in 2020)Dropped (was #79 in 2020)
Factory, 1980Boys Don’t Cry, 2016
Joy Division came from the northern England industrial gloom of Manchester, four blue-collar lads chasing a new kind of goth-punk grandeur. Right from the opening, “Disorder,” Unknown Pleasures sounds like nothing else, with the doomed Ian Curtis yelping his dark poetry (“I got the spirit!”) over Peter Hook’s bass pulse. But for all the despair, there’s something inspiring in the surge of “Interzone” and “New Dawn Fades.” Black-clad young bands have been imitating Joy Division ever since.
Frank Ocean turned the release of Blond into a daring aesthetic stunt in itself. After years of high expectations after Channel Orange [see No. 148], he fulfilled his Def Jam contract with the visual project Endless, but then — within hours — he released his own Blond. It’s a boldly personal statement full of layered harmonies, as Ocean mutates his voice to match every mood. The songs were so nakedly intimate, it felt like a post-hip-hop Pet Sounds in the spirit of Beyoncé (who sings on “Pink + White”) and Elliott Smith (whose voice appears on “Seigfried”). “Ivy” is his most deeply melancholic confession — Ocean mourns a lost love over a distorted guitar, lamenting, “We’ll never be those kids again.”
518
531517
Fiona AppleThe Sex Pistols
The Idler WheelNever Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols
Dropped (was #213 in 2020)Dropped (was #80 in 2020)
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.
519
532518
RaekwonSly and the Family Stone
Only Built 4 Cuban LinxThere’s a Riot Goin’ On
Dropped (was #219 in 2020)Dropped (was #82 in 2020)
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.
533
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
Déjà Vu
Dropped (was #220 in 2020)
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”).
534
Little Richard
Here’s Little Richard
Dropped (was #227 in 2020)
535
Metallica
Metallica (The Black Album)
Dropped (was #235 in 2020)
536
Kraftwerk
Trans Europe Express
Dropped (was #238 in 2020)
520
537519
The BeatlesJohn Lennon
Hard Day's NightPlastic Ono Band
Dropped (was #263 in 2020)Dropped (was #85 in 2020)
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.
521
538520
Mary J. BligeMissy “Misdemeanor” Elliott
What’s the 411?Supa Dupa Fly
Dropped (was #271 in 2020)Dropped (was #93 in 2020)
Goldmind, 1997
Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott made her name as a songwriter behind the scenes, even before she dropped her 1997 debut. But Supa Dupa Fly introduced everyone to Missy’s world, with avant-funk cosmic swamp beats from Timbaland. What a team: two kids from Virginia Beach, Virginia, dazzling the planet with a playful homegrown sound nobody could imitate. “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” was the breakout hit, taking an old-school Ann Peebles soul oldie and looping it into a Dirty South jam — Missy sings, raps, giggles, and talks her shit. Supa Dupa Fly changed the sound of hip-hop, but also kicked off a tradition — every year, Missy and Tim would score the jam of the summer, while everybody else was still trying to catch up with what they did the summer before.
539
Merle Haggard
Down Every Road 1962-1994
Dropped (was #284 in 2020)
Capitol, 1996
Haggard’s tough country sound was born in Bakersfield, California, a.k.a. Nashville West. His songs are full of drifters, fugitives, and rogues, and this four-disc set — culled from his seminal recordings for Capitol as well as MCA and Epic — is the ultimate collection from one of country’s finest singers. Songs like “Mama Tried” and “All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers” are archetypal statements of lonely tough-guy individualism, and like James Brown’s Star Time, the quality stays rock solid over four CDs.
540
Björk
Post
Dropped (was #289 in 2020)
522
541521
Destiny's ChildDe La Soul
The Writing’s on the WallThree Feet High And Rising
Dropped (was #291 in 2020)Dropped (was #103 in 2020)
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.
523
542522
WeezerThe Allman Brothers
Weezer (The Blue Album)At Fillmore East
Dropped (was #294 in 2020)Dropped (was #105 in 2020)
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.
543
Neil Young
Rust Never Sleeps
Dropped (was #296 in 2020)
544
Sam Cooke
Portrait of a Legend
Dropped (was #307 in 2020)
545
Joy Divison
Closer
Dropped (was #309 in 2020)
Factory, 1980
One of the most depressing albums ever made, with droning guitars and synthesizers, chilly bass lines, stentorian vocals, and drums that sound as if they’re steadily beating out the rhythm of doom. And that’s not even considering the lyrics, which are about singer Ian Curtis’ failing marriage and how he suffered from epilepsy. (Curtis hanged himself on May 18th, 1980, at the age of 23 — the rest of the band regrouped as New Order.) On Closer, Joy Division fully earned their reputation as England’s most harrowing punk band.
546
Solange
A Seat at the Table
Dropped (was #312 in 2020)
547
Rosalía
El Mal Querer
Dropped (was #315 in 2020)
524
548523
Jerry Lee LewisFiona Apple
All Killer No Filler!When the Pawn ...
Dropped (was #325 in 2020)Dropped (was #108 in 2020)
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.
525
549524
Janet JacksonThe Eagles
Rhythm Nation 1814Hotel California
Dropped (was #339 in 2020)Dropped (was #118 in 2020)
Asylum, 1976
In pursuit of note-perfect Hollywood-cowboy ennui, the Eagles spent eight months in the studio polishing take after take after take. As Don Henley recalled: “We just locked ourselves in. We had a refrigerator, a ping-pong table, roller skates, and a couple of cots. We would go in and stay for two or three days at a time.” With guitarist Joe Walsh replacing Bernie Leadon, the band backed off from straight country rock in favor of the harder sound of “Life in the Fast Lane.” The highlight is the title track, a monument to the rock-aristocrat decadence of the day and a feast of triple-guitar interplay. “Every band has their peak,” Henley said. “That was ours.”
550
Roxy Music
For Your Pleasure
Dropped (was #351 in 2020)
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.
551
Sonic Youth
Goo
Dropped (was #358 in 2020)
Geffen, 1990
With their sixth full album, the New York art-of-noise band made the leap from indie to major label, but few sold out so beautifully. From Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo’s frazzled guitar freakouts to Kim Gordon’s ghostly ode to Karen Carpenter, Goo retained all of Sonic Youth’s quirks and hallmarks. The sessions were technologically fraught, but they used those added production dollars to amp up their sonic assault. On tracks like “Kool Thing” and “Disappearer” they’d never sounded burlier — and yet more true to their alt-nation selves.
552
Parliament
The Mothership Connection
Dropped (was #363 in 2020)
553
D’Angelo and the Vanguard
Black Messiah
Dropped (was #395 in 2020)
554
Brian Wilson
Smile
Dropped (was #399 in 2020)
526
555525
The Go-Go’sElvis Costello
Beauty and the BeatThis Year’s Model
Dropped (was #400 in 2020)Dropped (was #121 in 2020)
Columbia, 1978
His second album and first with his crack backing band, the Attractions, This Year’s Model is the most “punk” of Elvis Costello’s records — not in any I-hate-the-cops sense but in his emotionally explosive writing (“No Action,” “Lipstick Vogue,” “Pump It Up”) and the Attractions’ vicious gallop (particularly the psycho-circus organ playing of Steve Nieve). Many of the songs rattle with sexual paranoia, but the broadside against vanilla-pop broadcasting, “Radio, Radio” (a U.K. single added to the original U.S. vinyl LP), better reflects the general, righteous indignation of the album: Costello versus the world. And Costello wins.
527
556526
Fela Kuti and Africa 70Steely Dan
Expensive ShitCan’t Buy a Thrill
Dropped (was #402 in 2020)Dropped (was #168 in 2020)
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.
557
Various
Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era
Dropped (was #405 in 2020)
558
Magnetic Fields
69 Love Songs
Dropped (was #406 in 2020)
559
Grateful Dead
Workingman’s Dead
Dropped (was #409 in 2020)
560
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
Going to a Go Go
Dropped (was #412 in 2020)
528
561527
The MetersCream
Looka Py PyDisraeli Gears
Dropped (was #415 in 2020)Dropped (was #170 in 2020)
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.
529
562528
Earth, Wind and FireJimmy Cliff and Various Artists
That’s the Way of the WorldThe Harder They Come: Original Soundtrack
Dropped (was #420 in 2020)Dropped (was #174 in 2020)
Mango, 1972
This was the album that took reggae worldwide. The movie was a Jamaican stew of Robin Hood, High Sierra, and Easy Rider — reggae singer turns outlaw hero, goes on the run with guns blazing — with patois dialogue so thick that U.S. audiences needed subtitles. But the soundtrack needed no translation, introducing Babylon to the new beat. The film’s star, Jimmy Cliff, sings six songs, including the hymn “Many Rivers to Cross.” There are glorious one-shots (especially Scotty’s demented “Draw Your Brakes”), as well as artists such as Desmond Dekker (“Shanty Town”), the Melodians (“Rivers of Babylon), and Toots and the Maytals (“Pressure Drop”).
530
563529
The Four TopsKendrick Lamar
Reach OutDAMN.
Dropped (was #429 in 2020)Dropped (was #175 in 2020)
TDE, 2017
After the sprawl of To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar tightened up, going for the jugular in the most aggressive, banger-based album of his career. He dissects his own “DNA,” as well as America’s, raving about “the feelin’ of an apocalypse happenin’.” He delves into his family history in “Duckworth” and scored his first Number One hit with “Humble.” It’s an album where both Bono and Rihanna sound right at home — but it all sounds like Lamar. “It came out exactly how I heard it in my head,” he explained at the time. “It’s all pieces of me.” Grammy-haters were vindicated when DAMN. lost out to Bruno Mars for Album of the Year, but DAMN. did end up pulling a Pulitzer Prize for Music, a first for a rap album.
531
564530
Elvis CostelloOtis Redding
My Aim Is TrueOtis Blue
Dropped (was #430 in 2020)Dropped (was #178 in 2020)
Columbia, 1977Volt, 1965
Elvis Costello on the fuel for his debut: “I spent a lot of time with just a big jar of instant coffee and the first Clash album [see No. 102], listening to it over and over.” The music is more pub rock than punk rock, but the songs are full of punk’s verbal bite. The album’s opening lines — “Now that your picture’s in the paper being rhythmically admired” — and the poisoned-valentine ballad “Alison” established Costello as one of the sharpest, and nastiest, lyricists of his generation.
Redding’s third album includes covers of three songs by Sam Cooke, Redding’s idol, who had died the previous December. Their styles were different: Cooke, smooth and sure; Redding, raw and pleading. But Redding’s versions of “Shake” and “A Change Is Gonna Come” show how Cooke’s sound and message helped shape Redding’s Southern soul, heard here in his originals “Respect” and “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and in a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” which was itself inspired by the Stax/Volt sound. “I use a lot of words different than the Stones’ version,” Redding noted. “That’s because I made them up.”
565
Primal Scream
Screamadelica
Dropped (was #437 in 2020)
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.
566
David Bowie
Scary Monsters
Dropped (was #443 in 2020)
567
Alice Coltrane
Journey in Satchidanada
Dropped (was #446 in 2020)
568
Otis Redding
Dictionary of Soul
Dropped (was #448 in 2020)
569
Paul and Linda McCartney
Ram
Dropped (was #450 in 2020)
570
Diana Ross and the Supremes
Anthology
Dropped (was #452 in 2020)
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.
571
Can
Ege Bamyasi
Dropped (was #454 in 2020)
572
Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley/Go Bo Diddley
Dropped (was #455 in 2020)
Chess, 1958
Diddley’s influence on rock & roll is inestimable, from the off-kilter rhythmic thump of “Pretty Thing” to his revved-up take on singing the blues. This album — a repackaging of his first two records — has many of his best singles, including “I’m a Man” and “Who Do You Love?” Bands immediately started ripping off his signature rollicking beat, and they haven’t stopped yet — including many on this list, from Bruce Springsteen on Born to Run’s “She’s the One” to George Michael on “Faith.”
573
Al Green
Greatest Hits
Dropped (was #456 in 2020)
574
Sinéad O’Connor
I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
Dropped (was #457 in 2020)
575
Kid Cudi
Man on the Moon: The End of the Day
Dropped (was #459 in 2020)
576
Bon Iver
For Emma
Dropped (was #461 in 2020)
532
577531
Laura NyroNotorious B.I.G.
Eli & the 13th ConfessionLife After Death
Dropped (was #463 in 2020)Dropped (was #179 in 2020)
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.
533
578532
The Beach BoysCyndi Lauper
The Beach Boys Today!She’s So Unusual
Dropped (was #466 in 2020)Dropped (was #184 in 2020)
Capitol, 1965Portrait, 1983
“I only tried surfing once, and the board almost hit me in the head,” Brian Wilson told Rolling Stone in 1999. But Wilson turned his fantasies into a California dream world of fast cars and cool waves — a world that might even have room for a scared misfit like him. Yet even in this early phase, Wilson was writing yearningly complex tunes — “She Knows Me Too Well” feels like Greek tragedy translated into doo-wop harmonies and surf guitars.
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.
534
579533
MaxwellIce Cube
BLACKsummers’nightAmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted
Dropped (was #467 in 2020)Dropped (was #187 in 2020)
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.
535
580534
Howlin’ WolfJoy Divison
Moanin' in the MoonlightUnknown Pleasures
Dropped (was #477 in 2020)Dropped (was #211 in 2020)
Factory, 1980
Joy Division came from the northern England industrial gloom of Manchester, four blue-collar lads chasing a new kind of goth-punk grandeur. Right from the opening, “Disorder,” Unknown Pleasures sounds like nothing else, with the doomed Ian Curtis yelping his dark poetry (“I got the spirit!”) over Peter Hook’s bass pulse. But for all the despair, there’s something inspiring in the surge of “Interzone” and “New Dawn Fades.” Black-clad young bands have been imitating Joy Division ever since.
581
Belle and Sebastian
If You’re Feeling Sinister
Dropped (was #481 in 2020)
582
Muddy Waters
The Anthology
Dropped (was #483 in 2020)
583
Richard and Linda Thompson
I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
Dropped (was #485 in 2020)
584
Phil Spector and Various Artists
Back to Mono (1958-1969)
Dropped (was #489 in 2020)
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.”
536
585535
Harry StylesFiona Apple
Fine LineThe Idler Wheel
Dropped (was #491 in 2020)Dropped (was #213 in 2020)
Columbia, 2019Epic, 2012
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.”
The Idler Wheel continued Fiona Apple’s run as one of modern pop’s most thrilling eccentrics. There’s a single-minded intensity to songs like “Every Single Night” and “Hot Knife,” where she puts an almost shocking amount of feeling into each syllable. Apple can sound like a cabaret singer in one song and a blueswoman in the next, her voice full of sandpaper edges and bestial roars. “I may need a chaperone,” she wonders on “Daredevil,” but this album proves she’s at her very best when left to her own devices.
537
586536
The RonettesRaekwon
Presenting the Fabulous RonettesOnly Built 4 Cuban Linx
Dropped (was #494 in 2020)Dropped (was #219 in 2020)
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.
587
Shakira
Dónde Están los Ladrones
Dropped (was #496 in 2020)
538
588537
Rufus, Chaka KhanCrosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
Ask RufusDéjà Vu
Dropped (was #499 in 2020)Dropped (was #220 in 2020)
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”).
539
589538
Arcade FireLittle Richard
FuneralHere’s Little Richard
Dropped (was #500 in 2020)Dropped (was #227 in 2020)
Merge, 2004Specialty, 1957
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.
“I came from a family where my people didn’t like rhythm and blues,” Little Richard told Rolling Stone in 1970. “Bing Crosby, ‘Pennies From Heaven,’ Ella Fitzgerald was all I heard. And I knew there was something that could be louder than that, but didn’t know where to find it. And I found it was me.” Richard’s raucous debut collected singles such as “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” in which his rollicking boogie-woogie piano and falsetto scream ignited the unfettered possibilities of rock & roll.
540
539
Kraftwerk
Trans Europe Express
Dropped (was #238 in 2020)
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.
541
540
The Beatles
Hard Day's Night
Dropped (was #263 in 2020)
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.”
542
541
Mary J. Blige
What’s the 411?
Dropped (was #271 in 2020)
Uptown/MCA, 1992
There was no way R&B was going to keep its distance from hip-hop; they had too much in common. But it required the right singer to build a road between the two. On her first album, Mary J. Blige was marketed as the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul, and the Bronx-born singer lived up to the regal hype, singing about pain and resolve in equal measures. Even when songwriters stuck her with pedestrian lines, you feel genuine longing and the weight of her experiences in every word.
543
542
Merle Haggard
Down Every Road 1962-1994
Dropped (was #284 in 2020)
Capitol, 1996
Haggard’s tough country sound was born in Bakersfield, California, a.k.a. Nashville West. His songs are full of drifters, fugitives, and rogues, and this four-disc set — culled from his seminal recordings for Capitol as well as MCA and Epic — is the ultimate collection from one of country’s finest singers. Songs like “Mama Tried” and “All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers” are archetypal statements of lonely tough-guy individualism, and like James Brown’s Star Time, the quality stays rock solid over four CDs.
544
543
Björk
Post
Dropped (was #289 in 2020)
Elektra, 1995
“I have to re-create the universe every morning when I wake up,” Björk said, explaining her second solo album’s utter lack of musical inhibition. Post bounces from big-band jazz (“It’s Oh So Quiet”) to trip-hop (“These Modern Things” seems to be both of those things at once). Lush and disorienting, dissonant yet ensnaringly lovely, it proved the “Icelandic pixie” who’d dazzled MTV viewers fronting the Sugarcubes, was, in fact, one of the Nineties’ truly boundless musical thinkers. Fun fact: For her vocals, Björk extended her mic cord to a beach so she could sing to the sea.
545
544
Destiny's Child
The Writing’s on the Wall
Dropped (was #291 in 2020)
Columbia, 1999
Looking back now, Destiny’s Child seem like the last gasp of the R&B vocal group, a tradition that was swept out of the mainstream in the 2000s. On this kinetic, shattering album, the group — especially a wunderkind named Beyoncé Knowles — took a more hands-on approach to writing and producing, helping to craft juddering club singles like “Bills, Bills, Bills” and “Bug a Boo.” The ballad “Say My Name” quickly became a modern standard.
546
545
Neil Young
Rust Never Sleeps
Dropped (was #296 in 2020)
Reprise, 1979
The live Rust Never Sleeps is essential Neil Young, full of impossibly delicate acoustic songs and ragged Crazy Horse rampages. Highlights: “My My Hey Hey” (a tribute to the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten); a surreal political spiel called “Welfare Mothers”; and “Powderfinger,” Young’s greatest song ever, where he unspools a hazy tale of a 22-year-old going up against government violence on the American frontier, and his guitar roars toward the collapsing sky like never before.
547
546
Sam Cooke
Portrait of a Legend
Dropped (was #307 in 2020)
ABKCO, 2003
“Sam Cooke was the best singer who ever lived, no contest,” asserted Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler. Cooke was a gospel star who crossed over to rock & roll, helping to invent the music that would become known as soul. This collection spans his whole career, from his early work with gospel kings the Soul Stirrers to the civil rights anthem “A Change Is Gonna Come,” which became a posthumous hit after Cooke was shot to death at an L.A. motel in 1964.
548
547
Joy Divison
Closer
Dropped (was #309 in 2020)
Factory, 1980
One of the most depressing albums ever made, with droning guitars and synthesizers, chilly bass lines, stentorian vocals, and drums that sound as if they’re steadily beating out the rhythm of doom. And that’s not even considering the lyrics, which are about singer Ian Curtis’ failing marriage and how he suffered from epilepsy. (Curtis hanged himself on May 18th, 1980, at the age of 23 — the rest of the band regrouped as New Order.) On Closer, Joy Division fully earned their reputation as England’s most harrowing punk band.
549
548
Solange
A Seat at the Table
Dropped (was #312 in 2020)
Saint/Columbia, 2016
Solange came into her own on A Seat at the Table, with songs she wrote mostly in the Louisiana town where her family had its roots. She includes spoken-word interludes from her parents as well as narrator Master P — as she said, “The album feels very, very Southern in my storytelling.” “Cranes in the Sky” is a soulful lament, anchored in Raphael Saadiq’s bass groove, while protests like “Don’t Touch My Hair” are about African American identity politics. “The hair journey of a black woman is so specific,” she explained.
550
549
Rosalía
El Mal Querer
Dropped (was #315 in 2020)
Sony, 2018
In her Grammy-winning breakthrough album, El Mal Querer (in English, A Toxic Love), groundbreaking Spanish singer-producer Rosalía not only mainstreamed the centuries-old tradition of flamenco music, she also freaked it, using the power of 808s and a whole lotta heartbreak. Rosalía assumes a rapper’s bravado in the opening track, “Malamente,” and in the palma-pop gem “Di Mi Nombre,” she grabs her bullish lover by the horns. The result is one of the best ancient-modern mash-ups of the 21st century.
551
550
Jerry Lee Lewis
All Killer No Filler!
Dropped (was #325 in 2020)
Rhino, 1993
Jerry Lee Lewis is best known for his frenzied piano-pumping Sun classics like “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” cut in the late Fifties (before he derailed his success by marrying his 13-year-old cousin), yet his career as a country hitmaker lasted decades. Listen to “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)” and you might agree with the Killer’s characteristically self-deprecating claim that “Elvis was the greatest, but I’m the best.”
552
551
Janet Jackson
Rhythm Nation 1814
Dropped (was #339 in 2020)
A&M, 1989
Janet Jackson bought a military suit and ruled the radio for two years with this album. Along with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, she fashioned a grand pop statement with hip-hop funk (“Rhythm Nation”), slow jams (“Love Will Never Do [Without You]”), and even hair metal (“Black Cat”). “While writing ‘Rhythm Nation’ I was kidding around, saying, ‘God, you guys, I feel like this could be the national anthem for the Nineties,’” Jackson recalled. “Just by a crazy chance we decided to look up when Francis Scott Key wrote the national anthem, and it was September 14th, 1814.”
553
552
Roxy Music
For Your Pleasure
Dropped (was #351 in 2020)
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.
554
553
Parliament
The Mothership Connection
Dropped (was #363 in 2020)
Casablanca, 1975
George Clinton leads his Detroit crew of “extraterrestrial brothers” through a visionary album of science-fiction funk on jams like “Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication” and “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker).” It’s a concept album inspired by Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey, with Clinton as an outer-space radio DJ, broadcasting uncut funk from “the Chocolate Milky Way” and telling the people of Earth, “Put a glide in your stride and a dip in your hip, and come on up to the Mothership.”
555
554
D’Angelo and the Vanguard
Black Messiah
Dropped (was #395 in 2020)
RCA, 2014
Fourteen years after Voodoo, D’Angelo built up impossible levels of anticipation for his next move. But Black Messiah was worth the wait. He brought a new political rage to deep-soul grooves like “The Charade,” responding to the Black Lives Matter movement: “All we wanted was a chance to talk/Instead we only got outlined in chalk.” D’Angelo admits in “Really Love,” “I’m not an easy man to overstand.” Yet he meshes beautifully with kindred spirits, from Roots drummer Questlove to jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove.
556
555
Brian Wilson
Smile
Dropped (was #399 in 2020)
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.
557
556
The Go-Go’s
Beauty and the Beat
Dropped (was #400 in 2020)
I.R.S., 1981
The most popular girl group of New Wave surfed to the top of the charts with this hooky debut. Everyone knows “We Got the Beat” and “Our Lips Our Sealed,” exuberant songs that livened up the Top 40, but the entire album welds punkish spirit to party-minded pop. It’s one of those albums where every song feels like it could’ve been a single — from “This Town,” a sweet, tough celebration of their L.A. scene, to the haunting “Lust to Love” to the album-ending one-two punch of “Skidmarks on My Heart” and “Can’t Stop the World.”
558
557
Fela Kuti and Africa 70
Expensive Shit
Dropped (was #402 in 2020)
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.
559
558
Various
Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era
Dropped (was #405 in 2020)
Elektra, 1972
This collection of Sixties garage rock, compiled by rock critic and soon-to-be Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye, became a touchstone for Seventies punks and, years later, for the aftershock of post-punk. The 27-track, two-LP set was a radical idea in 1972: While rock was getting bigger, Nuggets established a new canon out of forgotten AM-radio hits — brutally simple singles like the Standells’ “Dirty Water,” the Shadows of Knight’s “Oh Yeah!” and the Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction.” Rhino expanded Nuggets into a sprawling four-CD box in 1998.
560
559
Magnetic Fields
69 Love Songs
Dropped (was #406 in 2020)
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.
561
560
Grateful Dead
Workingman’s Dead
Dropped (was #409 in 2020)
Warner Bros., 1970
“We weren’t feeling like an experimental music group, but were feeling more like a good old band,” Jerry Garcia said. The Dead stripped down for Workingman’s Dead, with eight spooky blues and country songs that rival the best of Bob Dylan, as in the morbid “Black Peter” and “Dire Wolf.” Garcia and Robert Hunter proved themselves one of rock’s sharpest songwriting teams, with the acoustic hymn “Uncle John’s Band.” Hunter said, “It was my feeling about what the Dead was and could be. It was very much a song for us and about us, in the most hopeful sense.”
562
561
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
Going to a Go Go
Dropped (was #412 in 2020)
Tamla/Motown, 1965
Motown at its most debonair and sexy. Smokey Robinson works his sweeping soul falsetto over unbelievably sad ballads, including “The Tracks of My Tears” and “Ooo Baby Baby,” as the Miracles sob along. Robinson made it seem effortless to write a constant string of hit singles for the Miracles, as well as the rest of the Motown roster, but this album also has some of his finest deep cuts, especially the helpless yearning of “Choosey Beggar.”
563
562
The Meters
Looka Py Py
Dropped (was #415 in 2020)
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.
564
563
Earth, Wind and Fire
That’s the Way of the World
Dropped (was #420 in 2020)
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.
565
564
The Four Tops
Reach Out
Dropped (was #429 in 2020)
Tamla/Motown, 1967
The Four Tops were the most dramatic of the Motown singing groups, driven by the towering vocals of Levi Stubbs. Reach Out has overwrought classics like the title track, the goth-soul tsunami “7 Rooms of Gloom,” and “Bernadette,” on which lust and paranoia spontaneously combust. They also branch out into rock and folk with covers of the Monkees and Tim Hardin. It was the last Motown album for the label’s definitive songwriting team Holland, Dozier, and Holland.
566
565
Elvis Costello
My Aim Is True
Dropped (was #430 in 2020)
Columbia, 1977
Elvis Costello on the fuel for his debut: “I spent a lot of time with just a big jar of instant coffee and the first Clash album [see No. 102], listening to it over and over.” The music is more pub rock than punk rock, but the songs are full of punk’s verbal bite. The album’s opening lines — “Now that your picture’s in the paper being rhythmically admired” — and the poisoned-valentine ballad “Alison” established Costello as one of the sharpest, and nastiest, lyricists of his generation.
567
566
Primal Scream
Screamadelica
Dropped (was #437 in 2020)
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.
568
567
David Bowie
Scary Monsters
Dropped (was #443 in 2020)
RCA, 1980
It’s the end, the end of the Seventies; it’s the end, the end of the century. Bowie looks back over a decade he helped define and rips it into pieces, with futuristic post-punk lampoons like “Fashion” and “Teenage Wildlife,” where he bitches about “the same old thing in brand-new drag.” He revisits the Major Tom story with “Ashes to Ashes,” where he screams along with the New Romantic synths, acting out the sad story of the lost astronaut who finds the higher he gets, the lower he feels.
569
568
Alice Coltrane
Journey in Satchidanada
Dropped (was #446 in 2020)
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.
570
569
Otis Redding
Dictionary of Soul
Dropped (was #448 in 2020)
Volt, 1966
Otis Redding’s last album before his tragic death in a plane crash, Dictionary of Soul, was just what the title promises: a definitive summary of an entire musical world. “Try a Little Tenderness” was a forgotten Bing Crosby oldie from the Thirties until Redding claimed it and turned it into pure Memphis soul. He does the same with “Tennessee Waltz” and the Beatles’ “Day Tripper,” as well as his own ballads “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)” and “My Lover’s Prayer.”
571
570
Paul and Linda McCartney
Ram
Dropped (was #450 in 2020)
Apple, 1971
In its day, Paul McCartney’s second post-Beatles album was widely disliked; John Lennon dismissed it as “muzak,” and Ringo Starr said the lack of good songs made him “sad.” In retrospect, it’s a modest, goofy, loose-limbed outing about domestic pleasures, full of eccentric, pastorale tunes like “Heart of the Country” and “Munkberry Moon Delight.” The loopy pastiche of whimsical song fragments “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” became Paul’s first post-Beatles Number One hit. “I was in a very free mood,” he said.
572
571
Diana Ross and the Supremes
Anthology
Dropped (was #452 in 2020)
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.
573
572
Can
Ege Bamyasi
Dropped (was #454 in 2020)
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.”
574
573
Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley/Go Bo Diddley
Dropped (was #455 in 2020)
Chess, 1958
Diddley’s influence on rock & roll is inestimable, from the off-kilter rhythmic thump of “Pretty Thing” to his revved-up take on singing the blues. This album — a repackaging of his first two records — has many of his best singles, including “I’m a Man” and “Who Do You Love?” Bands immediately started ripping off his signature rollicking beat, and they haven’t stopped yet — including many on this list, from Bruce Springsteen on Born to Run’s “She’s the One” to George Michael on “Faith.”
575
574
Al Green
Greatest Hits
Dropped (was #456 in 2020)
Hi/EMI, 1975
“In Memphis, you just do as you feel,” Al Green told Rolling Stone in 1972. “It’s not a modern, up-to-par, very glamorous, big-red-chairs-and-carpet-that-thick studio. It’s one of those places you can go into and stomp out a good soul jam.” In collaboration with producer Willie Mitchell and musicians like drummer Al Jackson Jr., Green was a natural album artist, making love-and-pain classics such as 1973’s Call Me. But this collection makes for a unified album in itself, compiling hits like “Let’s Stay Together,” “I’m Still in Love With You,” and “Tired of Being Alone” into a flawless 10-song suite.
576
575
Sinéad O’Connor
I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
Dropped (was #457 in 2020)
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.
577
576
Kid Cudi
Man on the Moon: The End of the Day
Dropped (was #459 in 2020)
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.
578
577
Bon Iver
For Emma
Dropped (was #461 in 2020)
Jagjaguwar, 2008
Justin Vernon didn’t plan on reshaping a generation’s understanding of love-torn folk music when he retreated to the Wisconsin woods to record his first album (“I was very sad and very lonely”), but that’s exactly what happened. What’s even more staggering is the way Vernon’s Auto-Tune and falsetto-laden DIY debut, which centered around the heartsick “Skinny Love,” would reshape the contours of the pop mainstream — from Ed Sheeran and Kanye West to James Blake and Taylor Swift — for years to come.
579
578
Laura Nyro
Eli & the 13th Confession
Dropped (was #463 in 2020)
Columbia, 1968
Part confessional singer-songwriter and part would-be soul diva, Nyro was never an easy one to categorize. Her dazzling second album came the closest to blending both of her musical selves. Her pop instincts shine in the best-known songs here, like “Eli’s Comin’” and “Stoned Soul Picnic.” But the rest of the album finds her less restrained lyrically and musically, making for sensuous and often sexually ambiguous music that paved the way for many genre-busting female troubadours.
580
579
The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys Today!
Dropped (was #466 in 2020)
Capitol, 1965
“I only tried surfing once, and the board almost hit me in the head,” Brian Wilson told Rolling Stone in 1999. But Wilson turned his fantasies into a California dream world of fast cars and cool waves — a world that might even have room for a scared misfit like him. Yet even in this early phase, Wilson was writing yearningly complex tunes — “She Knows Me Too Well” feels like Greek tragedy translated into doo-wop harmonies and surf guitars.
581
580
Maxwell
BLACKsummers’night
Dropped (was #467 in 2020)
Columbia, 2009
Maxwell was a successful Nineties neo-soul crooner who went on an eight-year hiatus between 2001’s Now and this 2009 release. BLACKSummers’night betrays no anxiety about the time off; in fact, it ranks among the great comeback records. Maxwell sang about post-breakup desperation as he navigated plush, complicated grooves with jazz players like Keyon Harrold and Derrick Hodge giving his arrangements extra zip. The album’s ecstatic triumph is “Pretty Wings,” a keening, chiming lullaby.
582
581
Howlin’ Wolf
Moanin' in the Moonlight
Dropped (was #477 in 2020)
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).”
583
582
Belle and Sebastian
If You’re Feeling Sinister
Dropped (was #481 in 2020)
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.
584
583
Muddy Waters
The Anthology
Dropped (was #483 in 2020)
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.
585
584
Richard and Linda Thompson
I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
Dropped (was #485 in 2020)
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.”
586
585
Phil Spector and Various Artists
Back to Mono (1958-1969)
Dropped (was #489 in 2020)
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.”
587
586
Harry Styles
Fine Line
Dropped (was #491 in 2020)
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.”
588
587
The Ronettes
Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes
Dropped (was #494 in 2020)
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.
589
588
Shakira
Dónde Están los Ladrones
Dropped (was #496 in 2020)
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.
590
589
Rufus, Chaka Khan
Ask Rufus
Dropped (was #499 in 2020)
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.