50 Best Albums of All Time According to Rolling Stone's BRAND NEW, 100% Revamped Top 500

My ballot!

"so appalled
Spaulding...ball"

"I put the pussy in the sarcophagus"

"yeezy upholstered my pussy"

vs

"Raw I'ma give it to ya, with no trivia
Raw like cocaine straight from Bolivia
My hip-hop will rock and shock the nation
Like the Emancipation Proclamation
Weak MC's approach with slang that's dead
You might as well run into the wall and bang your head
I'm pushin' force, my force your doubtin'
I'm makin' devils cower to the Caucus Mountains"

xxposts

props for the Supreme Clientele vote

Alfred, your ballot is much better and more fascinating but, lol, let's face it...you never stood a chance.

before COVID went to a karaoke night where someone sang "Paranoid Android". was very confused. I understand "Karma Police", as that's very catchy and short, but ffs, as much as I love P.A. (and I do), it was awkward and lame.

Did you do the different voices during the opera section?

lol i will admit I was singing the bass part of the choir for about 20 secs and then got bored cos nobody else knew the song at my table

RS's list is an Elantra, Alfred's is a Corvette

Maybe picking Abbey Road as the best is more honest for a list that does whatever RS lists are supposed to do.

Great point. Abbey Road pretty much single-handedly set the sonic template for 70s rock/"classic rock"

Kid A was my first midnight release purchase ever

Yup, as a 14-year-old October 3, 2000 was the most important day of my life up until that point. I find it impossible to be remotely objective about Radiohead, but I think OK Computer is still their best.

Also I have absolutely no problem with the inclusion of Legend. It's orders of magnitude more iconic any other greatest hits comp I can think of (maybe the Great 28 is up there), and it's a flawless listening experience. They could have swapped it for Exodus, but I'm glad they didn't.

I do think it's a bummer that Tropicalia is the only era of Brazilian music that gets any attention from mags like RS; 70s and 80s MPB were way more interesting.

I've been thinking lately that I need to run back through the Radiohead discography (for the first time in a decade and a half, and having never ventured further than Hail to the Thief). Kid A was inarguably a mindblowing experience upon first listen but I went into it on release week with no real expectations, and also I was utterly bombed on substances in that particular moment so I can't say for sure that Cracked Rear View wouldn't have been a mindblowing listen.

"Idioteque" is my favourite song of theirs.

xpost can you create a thread where you trip acid and listen to Hootie plz

Here are a few albums that I’m genuinely surprised don’t make the cut (and not just based on my personal taste or whatever):

Talking Heads 77 – while More Songs... is good, this is even better! The list undervalues the band via this omission.

Volunteers – while Surrealistic Pillow is good, this is even better! The list undervalues the band via this omission.

The Blue Mask – this album rules; I thought that was universally acknowledged.

Green – ok, it is my favorite R.E.M. album; but I also think it’s their best (next to Murmur). It was a creative peak for the band, and has also (IMO) stood the test of time better than most of theirs.

John Fogerty, Centerfield – has anyone listened to this? It’s, like, great – and fits right in the RS pocket.

Neko Case, Blacklisted – this really should be a canonical LP, in the same vein as Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch.

Massive Attack, Protection – it’s even better than Blue Lines, no?

SAW II – nothing to explain here.

just noticed EPMD's Unfinished Business is not on this list

one more:

Traveling Wilburys, Vol. I – sorry to get all Boomer on ya, but this is a total pleasure; and if three Petty albums make the cut (including Full Moon Fever), there’s a perfect case.

top 50 lacks Neil Young, Al Green, Steely Dan.....all of whom I suppose lack a consensus best album

in general the complaints about philosophical coherence are right. I mean, if you’re gonna put Al Green’s Greatest Hits v1 on here at all it has to be a hell of a lot higher than #456...

top 50 lacks Neil Young, Al Green, Steely Dan.....all of whom I suppose lack a consensus best album

With Neil, Tonight's the Night and Rust Never Sleeps would be my two picks, but if I had to pick one, I'd go with the former.

I thought Call Me was as close to a consensus pick as you could get for Green, and it's certainly my favorite out of an incredible run of great albums. It's his most fully realized album and does everything just a little better IMHO.

Steely Dan's Pretzel Logic may have been the consensus pick at one point, and I go back and forth between that and Katy Lied. The latter is more consistent and even more gorgeous melodically speaking, but the former's a bit more idiosyncratic (a plus) and a bit sharper.

But hey, the fact that so many favorites are missing in a top 500 means there's just so, much, great, music in the world! What a wonderful Golden Age we're living in! (Apologies, the news has got me down.)

I thought it had been agreed that MBDTF Is not even the best Kanye album.

Marvin Gaye at #1 over Sgt Pepper’s is a choice I can get behind tho

Are the individual ballots for each voter going to get published? Interested in seeing those, specially a couple of the producers and musicians involved.

I shouldn't get annoyed about stuff like this, but that's a rubbish top 50 list. God knows what the rest of it is like.

Individually these records are all great (or at least, I can see the appeal), but man is this a narrow slice. Among the best 50 records of all time, is there really no place at all for any classical music, opera, ambient, metal, afrobeat? Not a single house/techno album or even a DJ mix? No place for Sinatra, Duke, Coltrane, Ella, Billie? Kraftwerk?

christ a boring 50 in the most expected way imaginable. will have to be,'Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), the other albums i care for here were bested by their creators elsewhere

will toast alfred for putting oceans apart on his ballot

Obviously not, Siegbran.

Tbf, classical music isn't a tradition built primarily around recordings - doesn't mean that e.g. Bernstein's Beethoven 5 isn't a great recording but 'albums' don't quite mean the same thing imo. RS did come out of 60s rock culture; I don't necessarily think they're doing something wrong by privileging a particular aesthetic.

I agree with you all, albums do suck.

And it even came out of a particular literary, songwriterly approach to 60s rock culture whereby e.g. Bob Dylan is obviously greater than Led Zeppelin and the Velvet Underground are more significant than King Crimson, which, again, is fine.but is a particular aesthetic. (I mean, f. hazel is probably right that they DO love the Joshua Tree.)

One thing I'll say about eclecticism is that by its very nature it tends to make lists like this redundant. You can coherently rank and compare things that are comparable and can be evaluated relative to each other. The more aesthetics you are willing to appreciate on their own terms, the less it makes sense to rank the greatness of What's Going On vs a recording of the Paris Opera vs a 12" techno mix vs a field recording of Inuit vocal games etc. A list just becomes a random individual's favourites, cf. my EOY ballots for ILM polls. xp!

fwiw I know at least slightly about half of the critics who wrote blurbs, and I'm not sure "they" love TJT.

they ain't Robert Hilburn

Yeah, I totally defer to you on this; I'm just spitballing with no direct knowledge.

I'll never understand why Hot Buttered Soul is not considered one of the all time best

I am not 100% about this, but I am reasonably sure that there are no POC among the blurb writers. Not even Toure, who I believe was the first Black person on the edit staff, being that JW was allegedly uncomfortable around Black people. And so since this is the first big post Wenner, "c'mon, we're rilly rilly woke, honest" canon-building exercise, it seems to me to be fundamental that you get, like, Nelson George or Danyel Smith or some youngsters whose names do not come easily to me at the moment, instead of the pre-Pitchfork white guy/lady rockcrit establishment.

Too talkative, I’m guessing? I agree it should be up there.

xp

xxxposts: I understand that classical music prior to the 20th century isn’t built around recordings, and suddenly seeing an album by idk Glenn Gould doing Bach might feel surrounded by odd company, but I’’d argue that albums by composers such as “Music for 18 musicians” by Steve Reich or “Koyaanisqatsi” and “Glassworks” by Philip Glass do have very definitive albums behind them that have been very influential in pop/rock and wouldn’t feel out of place in a list like this.

Yeah, I would agree with those examples (though even then, ECM or Nonesuch version of Music for 18?) and, say, Branca. Obv, electroacoustic music also has definitive recordings. I'm not especially concerned about how RS reviewers would rank them relative to Carole King's Tapestry tbh but yeah, there's definitely a slice of contemporary composers who do focus on albums that could be considered.

I think in a list like this that is primarily centered around pop and rock, if you’re going to add token albums from other genres the only way they make sense is if they have been somewhat influential or have blurred lines into pop and rock music. E.g. albums by Fela Kuti, Kraftwerk, Philip Glass, Aphex Twin, several funk and soul albums, the DKC2 soundtrack...

Nina Simone, Jorge Ben, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, Curtis Mayfield, Gil Scott Heron, Bill Withers...

I am not 100% about this, but I am reasonably sure that there are no POC among the blurb writers.

Brittany Spanos

it's a provincial usa-focused list, attempts to extend the reach outside of its narrow focus reek of cultural imperialism or, less glibly, an attempt to flatten pop experiences to one accessible to usa-based readers.

you could adapt the point to why "it's fine" that there's so little country, rap, whatever.

I'd honestly appreciate an 8,000 word preface detailing their criteria and acknowledging their blind spots.

I've only skimmed the first and last groups of 50--going to take a wild guess that the Pet Shop Boys aren't anywhere.

Formal integrity, innovation in the harmonic language, mastery of counterpoint xp

Also: assume Husker Du is on there (good) for Zen Arcade (not good).

Based on the text list linked upthread, PSB are at 435 for Actually. New Day Rising is at 428. The glorious Zen Arcade didn't seem to make it.

Formal integrity, innovation in the harmonic language, mastery of counterpoint xp

:D

according to an FB post from Xhukk, his name on this list is based on blurbs that he wrote in 2003; when they say they "started over from scratch," that does not mean that all the text is new. So it's probly that citations of the, ahem, pre-Pitchfork rockcrit establishment are based on shit from 2003, and that the new shit is generated from the present staff.

(xpost) Wow, that's great--I would have gone with Introspective, but that's a good choice. Ditto Husker Du (Flip Your Wig for me).

Ha, wow, Moving Pictures is at 379. The Wenner days really are over.