Entertainment Weekly: The Greatest Albums Ever

[HolidayGuy]

EW has a 100 All Time Greatest edition, and, of course, it has an albums list.

The magazine had done a list that covered 1983-2008 several years ago. Not surprisingly, it strayed from the order for albums from that period on this list. For instance, albums ranked lower on that list appear on this list, while albums that ranked higher don't.

1. The Beatles, Revolver
2. Prince, Purple Rain
3. The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
4. Michael Jackson, Thriller
5. The Clash, London Calling
6. Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks
7. Aretha Franklin, Lady Soul
8. Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
9. The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds
10. Nirvana, Nevermind
11. Joni Mitchell, Blue
12. The Beatles, The White Album
13. Marvin Gaye, What's Going On
14. Johnny Cash, At Folsom Prison
15. Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run
16. Elvis Presley, Sunrise [anthology]
17. Adele, 21
18. Paul Simon, Graceland
19. Al Green, Call Me
20. The Rolling Stones, Beggars Banquet
21. Stevie Wonder, Innervisions
22. The Beatles, Abbey Road
23. U2, Achtung Baby
24. Daft Punk, Discovery
25. Bob Marley and the Wailers, Catch a Fire
26. Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced
27. Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited
28. Lauryn Hill, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
29. Fleetwood Mac, Rumours
30. Otis Redding, Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul
31. The Notorious B.I.G., Ready to Die
32. Guns N' Roses, Appetite for Destruction
33. Wu-Tang Clan, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
34. David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
35. The Rolling Stones, Some Girls
36. Jay-Z, The Blueprint
37. Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon
38. The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground & Nico
39. The Who, Who's Next
40. John Lennon, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
41. Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP
42. AC/DC, Back in Black
43. Madonna, Madonna
44. Michael Jackson, Off the Wall
45. Radiohead, OK Computer
46. The Beatles, Rubber Soul
47.The Cure, Disintegration
48. Outkast, Stankonia
49. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
50. The Smiths, The Queen is Dead
51. Chuck Berry, The Great Twenty-Eight [anthology]
52. A Tribe Called Quest, The Low End Theory
53. The Flaming Lips, The Soft Bulletin
54. R.E.M., Lifes Rich Pageant
55. Nas, Illmatic
56. Arcade Fire, Funeral
57. Alicia Keys, Songs in A Minor
58. Dr. Dre, The Chronic
59. Metallica, Master of Puppets
60. Beck, Odelay
61. De La Soul, 3 Feet High and Rising
62. The Replacements, Let It Be
63. Television, Marquee Moon
64. Nine Inch Nails, The Downward Spiral
65. Love, Forever Changes
66. Hole, Live Through This
67. Neil Young, After the Gold Rush
68. Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
69. Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation
70. Iggy and the Stooges, Raw Power
71. The Kinks, The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society
72. Beastie Boys, Paul's Boutique
73. Various Artists,The Harder They Come
74. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
75. Elvis Costello, My Aim is True
76. Talking Heads, Remain in Light
77. My Bloody Valentine, Loveless
78. Bjork, Post
79. Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin IV
80. Elton John, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
81. Pixies, Doolittle
82. Pavement, Slanted and Enchanted
83. James Brown, In the Jungle Groove [anthology]
84. Patti Smith, Horses
85. Tom Waits, Rain Dogs
86. PJ Harvey, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
87. Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Colors
88. New Order, Power, Corruption and Lies
89. Sleater-Kinney, Dig Me Out
90. The White Stripes, White Blood Cells
91. Sly and the Family Stone, There's a Riot Goin' On
92. Elliott Smith, Either/Or
93. N.W.A. Straight Outta Compton
94 Beyonce, B'Day
95. Various Artists, Saturday Night Fever
96. Dixie Chicks, Home
97. Dusty Springfield, Dusty in Memphis
98. Queens of the Stone Age, Songs for the Deaf
99. Erykah Badu, Mama's Gun
100. Ramones, Ramones

[Linnethia Monique]

94 Beyonce, B'Day
*Throws Laptop Out the Window*

[Verisimilitude]

Madonna's debut album as her best? Oooookay there......

And I wish America would hop off the Adele ass kissing already. I can already imagine the grand expectations 25 will have when released next year.

[HolidayGuy]

Yeha, EW has a hard** for Madge's first album. Is it enjoyable and have classics on it? Yes. But how can it be her best, when stacked against Like a Prayer, Ray of Light, etc.

Madonna's debut probably is her most influential, though- while it's not the be-all-end-all for dance-pop, you can trace any dance-pop that followed back to that album.

Nirvana's Nevermind wasn't on the 83-08 list (MTV Unplugged in New York was), but it's No. 10 here.

[Deleted]

Jun 28, 2013 12:09:39 GMT -5 HolidayGuy said:

EW has a 100 All Time Greatest edition, and, of course, it has an albums list.

The magazine had done a list that covered 1983-2008 several years ago. Not surprisingly, it strayed from the order for albums from that period on this list. For instance, albums ranked lower on that list appear on this list, while albums that ranked higher don't.

Statistically based lists don't change much over time unless you change the method. Opinion based lists will be based on who makes them

[HolidayGuy]

^Oh, I know. But there are some drastic differences- could be a result of changing staff, whatnot.

Beyonce's Dangerously in Love was No. 19 on the 83-08 list; it's not on this new list, yet B'Day appears. Some other acts also had a different album on the prior list.

[Deleted]

Dance-pop as a genre usually does not fare well on these sort of lists because the genre (generally speaking) is pretty vanilla.

There are few albums that will stand out over others. As such they do not hold up well over time. (Most - not all obviously)


The catalog chart is another indicator, that is rock dominated(few dance titles), these lists are as well.

[#LisaRinna]

Jun 28, 2013 14:01:20 GMT -5 Linnethia Monique said:

94 Beyonce, B'Day
*Throws Laptop Out the Window*

Finally some recognition!!!

[slicknickshady]

41. Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP - Severely underrated.

And no Tool albums. A Joke.

[ListenToItTwice]

8. Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

That's damn high.

[Devil Marlena Nylund]

Nice to see Dixie Chicks on here. No Gaga though :(

[Deleted]

Revolver, The White Album, Abbey Road, Rubber Soul but no Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?

Okey dokey.

[HolidayGuy]

^That would have been too predictable. EW, bein' all anti-establishment.

[ListenToItTwice]

Jun 28, 2013 17:55:31 GMT -5 Devil Marlena Nylund said:

Nice to see Dixie Chicks on here.

I didn't even notice! That is a nice inclusion. And Home of all albums!

[HolidayGuy]

Home is an example of an album that ranked low on the 83-08 list, but does better here (lower rank, but it's all time, not just a 25-year period) was No. 85 on EW's 83-08 list

[cking33]

This list is a head scratcher, for sure.

[Kurt]

I am dismayed at the noticeable lack of Hitbullegend on this list. :(

[Linnethia Monique]

Like I'm still perplexed by B'Day being on there but not something like Rhythm Nation 1814. I mean damn. I know they got to toss Beyonce in there for endorsement reasons but.....

[horchata]

Remain In Light should be higher.

[Deleted]

Jun 28, 2013 16:48:41 GMT -5 ListenToItTwice said:

8. Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

That's damn high.

Right? And above Pet Sounds.

Live Through This is an interesting inclusion.

I'm not mad at the list though. Any list that includes Forever Changes has some merit.

[HolidayGuy]

I know, right, Trombones? With all the acclaim he and his albums have racked up, I thought Hitbulllegend would have been a shoo-in.

[Ballroom Blitzed]

Don't these lists usually have one or two token jazz inclusions? And aren't they always Kind Of Blue or A Love Supreme?

[HolidayGuy]

I think there was a note about how it was genres that filled their iPods or whatever (and jazz wasn't one of them mentioned).

[when the pawn...]

Albums from the 21st century...
1. Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (8)
2. Adele, 21 (17)
3. Daft Punk, Discovery (24)
4. Jay-Z, The Blueprint (36)
5. Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP (41)
6. Outkast, Stankonia (48)
7. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver (49)
8. Arcade Fire, Funeral (56)
9. Alicia Keys, Songs in A Minor (57)
10. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black (74)
11. PJ Harvey, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (86)
12. The White Stripes, White Blood Cells (90)
13. Beyonce, B'Day (94)
14. Dixie Chicks, Home (96)
15. Queens of the Stone Age, Songs for the Deaf (98)
16. Erykah Badu, Mama's Gun (99)

I'm a huge Beyoncé fan but looking at it this way, B'Day looks even more out of place, no? Better pop/mainstream choices could've been FutureSex/LoveSounds, American Idiot, The Fame, Tha Carter III, A Rush of Blood to the Head

Also a bit disappointed to not see Jagged Little Pill or any Fiona Apple on there.

[Deleted]

from EW

By now, you’ve probably combed through Entertainment Weekly‘s All Time Greatest issue, which features our humble picks for the 100 best albums ever made. (Within certain paremeters—the lack of jazz or, you know, Beethoven should have tipped you off to the list’s limitations.)

Though I’m proud of the amount of hip-hop, R&B, and pop featured on the final tally of 100, the list is dominated by rock albums. That’s to be expected, as rock music (and particularly the albums made by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan) set the template for what an album was and what it could be, and there have been few variations on that template since the ’60s. (For all its forward-thinking and genre-hopping, Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is structured and paced an awful lot like a Beatles LP.)

Plus, traditional rock music had a few decades’ worth of a jump on other genres we incorporated into our list, so Rubber Soul and Blonde On Blonde have had an extra 20 years to constantly re-entrench themselves, while the legacies of the first wave of great hip-hop albums are only now just being established.

But another pattern emerged as we were putting the list together: As we considered newer albums to incorporate into the conversation, fewer and fewer of them were rock albums.

GET MORE EW: Subscribe to the magazine for only 33¢ an issue!

The newest straight-ahead rock albums on the list are Queens of the Stone Age’s 2002 release Songs for the Deaf (number 98) and Arcade Fire’s 2004 debut Funeral (56). (Though Funeral would certainly fall under the genre tag of “indie rock,” that album’s adherence to orchestral flourishes and church organ make it almost a series of anti-rock gestures.) The rest of the “newer” rock albums are few and far between—in fact, the White Stripes’ 2001 album White Blood Cells is the only other 21st century rock album that we put on the list (and you can have PJ Harvey’s 2000 Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea if you really want to argue about it, but considering Harvey’s ’90s output, that doesn’t necessarily qualify as rock either). Several others were considered, including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Fever To Tell, the Strokes’ Is This It? and Green Day’s American Idiot, but nothing felt transcendent enough to be included (Fever is too inconsistent, Is This It? is aging poorly, and American Idiot tends to get tripped up by its narrative).

A writer friend of mine once referred to grunge as “rock’s last best thing.” What he meant was it was the last time guitar-based music would find itself at the center of any kind of monoculture (mostly because the very idea of monoculture, especially in music, is pretty much dead, “Get Lucky” notwithstanding). But was that also the end of consistently great rock albums? Or has the long shadow of those ’60s greats made it harder to consider the greatness of a rock album?

More importantly, I ask you a simple question: What was the last truly great rock album? And what does a rock album need to do to go toe-to-toe with all those canonical legends from half a century ago? Sound off in the comments and listen in Tuesday afternoon at 2 PM Eastern on Entertainment Weekly Radio (SiriusXM 105) when our music staff discusses the picks in our All Time Greatest issue, on stands now.

[Positive Tension]

Jun 28, 2013 14:10:31 GMT -5 HolidayGuy said:

Yeha, EW has a hard** for Madge's first album. Is it enjoyable and have classics on it? Yes. But how can it be her best, when stacked against Like a Prayer, Ray of Light, etc.

Madonna's debut probably is her most influential, though- while it's not the be-all-end-all for dance-pop, you can trace any dance-pop that followed back to that album.

Nirvana's Nevermind wasn't on the 83-08 list (MTV Unplugged in New York was), but it's No. 10 here.

While I think ROL and LAP are her best albums, the debut album is easily third for me. It's a tight album full of classics that still sound terrific today. I'm glad it got recognition in this list.

Glad to see OK Computer, Live Through This, and Funeral on the list.

[SPRΞΞ]

what is Kanye doing in the Top 10? That seems weird to me. Of all time? I don't know anyone who is listening to that album.

[tshawn74]

Jun 28, 2013 14:01:20 GMT -5 Linnethia Monique said:

94 Beyonce, B'Day
*Throws Laptop Out the Window*

This is why I only trust Billboard

[Deleted]

Would Billboard rank Beyonce higher on an all-time albums list?

[HolidayGuy]

^Yah- I don't get the correlation, either. :)