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MUSIC

The 500 Greatest

Albums of All Time
The classics are still the classics, but
the canon keeps getting bigger and
better
BY ROLLING STONE
Illustration by Sean McCabe for Rolling Stone
SEP 22, 2020 9:15 AM

Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest

Albums of All Time was originally
published in 2003, with a slight update
in 2012. Over the years, it’s been the
most widely read — and argued over —
feature in the history of the magazine
(last year, the RS 500 got over 63 million
views on the site). But no list is definitive
— tastes change, new genres emerge, the
history of music keeps being rewritten.
So we decided to remake our greatest
albums list from scratch. To do so, we
received and tabulated Top 50 Albums
lists from more than 300 artists,
producers, critics, and music-industry
figures (from radio programmers to label
heads, like Atlantic Records CEO Craig
Kallman). The electorate includes
Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish;
rising artists like H.E.R., Tierra Whack,
and Lindsey Jordan of Snail Mail; as well
as veteran musicians, such as Adam
Clayton and the Edge of U2, Raekwon of
the Wu-Tang Clan, Gene Simmons, and
Stevie Nicks.

How We Made the List and Who Voted

When we first did the RS 500 in 2003,

people were talking about the “death of
the album.” The album —and especially
the album release — is more relevant
than ever. (As in 2003, we allowed votes
for compilations and greatest-hits
albums, mainly because a well-made
compilation can be just as coherent and
significant as an LP, because
compilations helped shaped music
history, and because many hugely
important artists recorded their best
work before the album had arrived as a
prominent format.)

Of course, it could still be argued that

embarking on a project like this is
increasingly difficult in an era of
streaming and fragmented taste. But that
was part of what made rebooting the RS
500 fascinating and fun; 86 of the
albums on the list are from this century,
and 154 are new additions that weren’t
on the 2003 or 2012 versions. The
classics are still the classics, but the
canon keeps getting bigger and better.

Written By

Jonathan Bernstein, Pat Blashill, Jon Blistein,

Nathan Brackett, David Browne, Anthony
DeCurtis, Matt Diehl, Jon Dolan, Chuck Eddy, Ben
Edmonds, Gavin Edwards, Jenny Eliscu, Brenna
Ehrlrich, Suzy Exposito, David Fricke, Elisa
Gardner, Holly George-Warren, Andy Greene, Kory
Grow, Will Hermes, Brian Hiatt, Christian Hoard,
Charles Holmes, Mark Kemp, Greg Kot, Elias
Leight, Joe Levy, Angie Martoccio, David McGee,
Chris Molanphy, Tom Moon, Jason Newman, Rob
O’Connor, Park Puterbaugh, Jody Rosen, Austin
Scaggs, Karen Schoemer, Bud Scoppa, Claire
Shaffer, Rob Sheffield, Hank Shteamer, Brittany
Spanos, Rob Tannenbaum, David Thigpen, Simon
Vozick-Levinson, Barry Walters, Jonah Weiner

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150
Bruce Springsteen,
‘Nebraska’
COLUMBIA, 1982

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Recorded on a four-track in
Springsteen’s bedroom, Nebraska’s
songs were stark, spooky acoustic demos
that he decided to release “bare,” packed
with hard-luck tales of underdogs. “I
wanted black bedtime stories,” he said in
his memoir, and he wrote the LP under
the influence of John Lee Hooker and
Robert Johnson, but also Flannery
O’Connor and James M. Cain, creating a
cross between the blues and pulp-noir
novels. “Down here it’s just winners and
losers,” he sings in “Atlantic City,” and
these 10 songs live on the wrong side of
that line. Yet, Springsteen ends the
album with “Reason to Believe,” one of
those songs where his search for faith
inspires faith itself.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

149
John Prine, ‘John Prine’
ATLANTIC, 1971

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When John Prine resigned from his job

as a USPS mailman, his supervisor
snickered, “You’ll be back.” Instead,
Prine became a revered folk-country-
rock songwriter, starting with this first
album, which is loaded with enduring
gems, including “Angel From
Montgomery,” “Hello in There,” and a
song that regularly returns to relevance,
“Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into
Heaven Anymore.” Prine seemed like a
Zen sage. He filled his songs with an
uncynical live-and-let-live morality, and
wrote in a colloquial voice that showed a
love of the way Americans speak. His
closest parallel isn’t another songwriter,
it’s Mark Twain.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

148
Frank Ocean, ‘Channel
Orange’
DEF JAM, 2012

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On Channel Orange, Frank Ocean

became one of music’s most elusive
superstars — shy about speaking in
public, impossible to pin down
musically. He emerged from New
Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, writing
pop tunes for the likes of Brandy and
Justin Bieber. But he stepped into his
own avant-soul territory with Channel
Orange, his official debut. Soon after
coming out of the closet — still a rarity in
R&B at the time — Ocean had a hit with
the falsetto slow jam “Thinkin Bout
You.” He mixes up genres and vocal
personae, with guest shots from André
3000 to John Mayer. The peak: the
spacey 10-minute suite “Pyramids,” an
Egyptian fantasy starring Cleopatra as an
around-the-way girl. Years later,
Channel Orange still sounds like the
future.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

147
Jeff Buckley, ‘Grace’
COLUMBIA, 1994

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In an era when love was an unpopular

song topic, Buckley was a swooning
romantic. He was the son of the late
1960s cult singer Tim Buckley, but
identified himself as “rootless trailer-
trash born in Southern California.” On
extended slow-burning ballads like
“Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” and
his cover of “Hallelujah,” Buckley used
unrestrained amounts of falsetto and
vibrato to create an unearthly longing.
His music had a smattering of grunge, a
plateful of Led Zeppelin III (check the
fierce rocker “Eternal Life”), and an
opulent sense of tragedy. Grace is the
only album Buckley released in his
lifetime; he died in 1997 after going for a
swim in a Memphis river known for its
unpredictable currents.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

146
Blondie, ‘Parallel Lines’
CHRYSALIS, 1978

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Here’s where punk and New Wave broke

through to a mass U.S. audience, thanks
to the Number One hit “Heart of Glass,”
also known to Blondie fans as “The Disco
Song.” “I was trying to get that groove
that the drummer for the Bee Gees had,”
said Blondie drummer Clem Burke, who
credited Kraftwerk and the Saturday
Night Fever soundtrack as influences on
“Heart of Glass.” Parallel Lines is a
perfect synthesis of raw punk edge,
Sixties-pop smarts, and the cool New
Wave glamour that Blondie invented.
Debbie Harry, of course, invented a new
kind of rock & roll sex appeal that
brought New York demimonde style to
the mainstream. Madonna was surely
watching.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

145
Eminem, ‘The Marshall
Mathers LP’
INTERSCOPE, 2000

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Chris Rock joked that the world was so

crazy, “the best rapper is a white guy,”
referring to Eminem. He’d been accused
of corrupting the nation’s youth by
fostering misogyny on his major-label
debut, and to say he doubled down on
playing with offensive ideas only
exaggerates his joyful commitment to
earning more denunciations. “The Real
Slim Shady” and “Bitch Please II”
vaulted Eminem from a shock rapper
with a sense of humor to the voice of a
generation. And in “Stan,” he created a
verb and a meme to describe extreme
fandom in our era.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

144
Led Zeppelin, ‘Physical
Graffiti’
SWAN SONG, 1975

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The last great Led Zeppelin album is —

like most 1970s double LPs — a bloated
beast. But its self-indulgent swagger is
the very unifying thing that makes it so
much fun — and one of the heaviest
records of the Seventies. Physical
Graffiti is the ultimate in Zeppelin’s
attempts to fuse East and West,
exploring the Arabic and Indian
sonorities of “Kashmir” and “In the
Light.” It’s Zeppelin’s most eclectic
album, featuring down-and-dirty blues
(“Black Country Woman,” “Boogie With
Stu”), pop balladry (“Down by the
Seaside”), metal riffs (“The Wanton
Song”), and the 11-minute “In My Time
of Dying.” An excessive album from the
group that all but invented excess.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

143
The Velvet
Underground, ‘The
Velvet Underground’
MGM, 1969

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The third Velvet Underground album

doesn’t have any songs about S&M or
drug deals, and there’s no wailing
feedback. But quieter beauty was just as
revelatory. Lou Reed sang poignant folk-
rock tunes that describe loss (“Pale Blue
Eyes”) or spiritual thirst (“Jesus”). And
because the Velvets liked it when people
danced at their shows, there are two
great uptempo numbers, “Beginning to
See the Light” and “What Goes On,”
where Reed and Sterling Morrison
entwine their guitar licks and sustain a
joyful minimalist groove that creates a
blueprint for generations of bands,
including everyone from the Modern
Lovers to the Feelies to Parquet Courts.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

142
Bruce Springsteen,
‘Born in the U.S.A.’
COLUMBIA, 1984

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Bruce Springsteen wrote most of these

songs in a fit of inspiration that also gave
birth to the harrowing Nebraska [see
No. 150]. “Particularly on the first side,
it’s actually written very much like
Nebraska,” he said. “The characters and
the stories, the style of writing — except
it’s just in the rock-band setting.” It was
a crucial difference: The E Street Band
put so much punch into the title song
that millions misheard its questioning
allegiance as mere flag-waving instead.
The immortal force of the album is in
Springsteen’s frank mix of soaring
optimism and the feeling of, as he put it,
being “handcuffed to the bumper of a
state trooper’s Ford.”

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

141
Pixies, ‘Doolittle’
4AD/ELEKTRA, 1989

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The Pixies’ second full-length album

proved that noisy, arty college rock could
be just as fun as anything else on MTV.
With his antic vocal style and free-
associative lyrics, singer-guitarist Black
Francis seemed detached from
humanity, but the rest of the Pixies
grounded him. Bassist Kim Deal adds
tart harmonies that feel like sarcastic
asides, drummer David Lovering powers
the loud-quiet-loud dynamic that
influenced Nirvana and many others,
and guitarist Joey Santiago tosses out
concise, buzzing riffs. The Pixies’ second
album is loaded: With “Debaser,” “Here
Comes Your Man,” “Monkey Gone to
Heaven,” “Hey,” and “Gouge Away,” it’s
the college-radio version of a greatest-
hits album.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

140
Bob Marley and the
Wailers, ‘Catch a Fire’
ISLAND, 1973

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This was the album that introduced the

whole world to Bob Marley, expanding
his audience beyond Jamaica without
diluting his bedrock reggae power. At the
time, the Wailers were truly a unified
band, fronted by three extraordinary
singers in Marley, Peter Tosh, and
Bunny Livingston. The rhythm section of
drummer Carlton Barrett and his
brother, bassist Aston “Family Man”
Barrett, defined the reggae beat.
Producer and label boss Chris Blackwell
subtly overdubbed and remixed the
original Jamaican sessions for
international ears, but the Wailers’
ghetto rage comes across uncut in
“Concrete Jungle” and “Slave Driver.”

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

139
Black Sabbath,
‘Paranoid’
VERTIGO, 1970

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If you think Ozzy’s enduring fame is

impressive, try taking a time machine
back to the early Seventies and telling
rock critics they’ll still be writing about
Paranoid 50 years after its release. But
Sabbath ruled for bummed-out kids in
the Seventies, and nearly every heavy-
metal and extreme rock band of the past
three decades — from Metallica to
Nirvana to Mastodon — owes a debt of
worship to Tony Iommi’s crushing,
granite-fuzz guitar chords, the Visigoth
rhythm machine of Bill Ward and Geezer
Butler, and Ozzy Osbourne’s agonized
bray in “Paranoid,” “Iron Man,” and
“War Pigs.”

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

138
Madonna, ‘The
Immaculate Collection’
SIRE, 1990

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Like the 1987 remix album, You Can

Dance, this is a perfect Madonna CD:
nothing but good songs. You get timeless
pop such as “Holiday,” provocations like
“Papa Don’t Preach,” dance classics like
“Into the Groove,” and a new Lenny
Kravitz-co-produced sex jam, “Justify
My Love,” which samples Public Enemy.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

137
Adele, ’21’
COLUMBIA, 2011

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“Pain is art” may be a cliché, but for

Adele, it rang especially true. Her debut
album, 19, was a polite, tasteful set of
soul-inflected pop. Its follow-up was
something else again. Chewing over a
tumultuous affair, she dug deep and
came up with a modern masterpiece of
post-breakup soul music. She’d actually
cut an entire album with producer Rick
Rubin but wound up preferring earlier
demos of songs like “Rolling in the
Deep,” “Someone Like You,” and “Set
Fire to the Rain,” and mostly used those
instead. The switch-up made for an even
rawer and more emotional experience
that clearly connected: 21 sold more than
30 million copies and swept the 2012
Grammys.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

136
Funkadelic, ‘Maggot
Brain’
WESTBOUND, 1971

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“Play like your mama just died,”

bandleader/genius George Clinton said
to guitarist Eddie Hazel. That morose
instruction worked; nothing has ever
sounded like the 10 minutes of
anguished, fuzzed-up blues Hazel plays
on the title song. (Clinton likened the
playing to “a silver web.”) Clinton was a
funk surrealist and a provocateur, but
he’d also been in a doo-wop group and
had written songs for Motown — he
balanced multicolored futurism with old-
school R&B chops on the swinging “Can
You Get to That,” the psychedelic “You
and Your Folks, Me and My Folks,” and
“Super Stupid,” another showcase for
Hazel’s dense, distorted riffing. As
Clinton later asked defiantly, “Who says
a funk band can’t play rock?”

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

135
U2, ‘The Joshua Tree’
ISLAND, 1987

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“America’s the promised land to a lot of

Irish people,” U2 singer Bono told
Rolling Stone. “I’m one in a long line of
Irishmen who made the trip.” On U2’s
fifth full album, the band immerses itself
in the mythology of the United States,
while guitarist the Edge exploits the
poetic echo of digital delay, drowning his
trademark arpeggios in rippling tremolo.
While many of these songs are about
spiritual quests — “Where the Streets
Have No Name,” “I Still Haven’t Found
What I’m Looking For” — U2 fortify the
solemnity with the outright joys of rock
& roll, although one of the most moving
songs is “Running to Stand Still,” a
stripped-down slide-guitar ballad about
heroin addiction.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

134
Fugees, ‘The Score’
COLUMBIA, 1996

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The East Coast and West Coast were in

an arms race to see who could be more
hardcore when the Fugees snuck up
from behind and slayed everyone with a
feather. The trio of Wyclef Jean, Pras,
and Lauryn Hill blended rap, R&B, and
reggae into an intimate, widescreen
sound, using panache, a teasing sense of
humor, and a forthright intelligence.
Their second album was both an
underground and mainstream hit,
thanks to the singles “Fu-Gee-La,”
“Ready or Not,” and their breakbeat
cover of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me
Softly.” Hill lays out the highbrow-for-
lowbrows battle plan: “And even after all
my logic and my theory/I add a
‘motherfucker’ so you ignant niggas hear
me.”

A D V E RT I S E M E N T
133
Joni Mitchell, ‘Hejira’
ASYLUM, 1976

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After redefining the possibilities of

singer-songwriter music in the early
1970s, Mitchell set herself an even more
ambitious challenge with Hejira, her
ultimate jazz-folk statement. Setting her
restless-soul visions to slippery
instrumentals with help from bassist
Jaco Pastorius, she weighed the costs of
dedicating her life to fearless self-
expression where others might have
settled for mere happiness (“Amelia,”
“Song for Sharon”). Getting to the point
where she could make an album this
singularly brilliant might have been a
lonely enterprise, but it was worth it for
the rest of us.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

132
Hank Williams, ’40
Greatest Hits’
POLYDOR, 1978

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“I’m a rolling stone, all alone and lost,”

Hank Williams sang in “Lost Highway,”
“for a life of sin I have paid the cost.”
When he died on New Year’s Day 1953 at
age 29, in the back seat of a Cadillac
while en route to a gig in Canton, Ohio,
Williams was the biggest star in country
music, a charismatic songwriter and
performer equally at home with lovesick
ballads like “I’m So Lonesome I Could
Cry” and long-gone-daddy romps such as
“You’re Gonna Change (Or I’m Gonna
Leave).” Williams left his stamp on the
decades of country and rock & roll that
followed him, from the rockabilly of
Elvis Presley to Bob Dylan’s “Like a
Rolling Stone” to the lovesick ballads of
Beck and Jason Isbell’s mordant
depictions of life.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

131
Portishead, ‘Dummy’
GO! BEAT, 1994

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It’s difficult to sustain, over an entire

album, something as vague as ambiance,
but Portishead did it on their debut.
Along with fellow Bristol, England,
innovators Massive Attack, they headed
up the trendy mid-Nineties trip-hop
movement. Long after the genre petered
out, their debut remains immersive and
haunting, built on skittering break beats,
jazzy samples, spare arrangements, and
discomforting pauses. But it’s singer
Beth Gibbon’s brooding, pop-cabaret
vocals that make it feel classic, hinting at
real pain below trip-hop’s stoned
exterior. The result was cinematic
enough to recall John Barry’s lustrous
scores for James Bond films.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

130
Prince, ‘1999’
WARNER BROS., 1982

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“I didn’t want to do a double album,”

Prince said, “but I just kept on writing.
Of course, I’m not one for editing.” The
second half of 1999 is just exceptional
sex-obsessed dance music; the first half
is the best fusion of rock and funk
achieved to that date, and it lays out the
blueprint for Prince’s next decade.
Except for a few background hand claps
and vocals, Prince plays most every
instrument himself and creates a
relentless, irresistible musical sequence
of apocalypse (“1999”) and the raunchy
sex that he proposes as the only possible
response — “Little Red Corvette,” “Let’s
Pretend We’re Married,” “Delirious,”
and, well, just about every other song on
the album.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

129
Pink Floyd, ‘The Wall’
COLUMBIA, 1979

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Pink Floyd’s most elaborately theatrical

album was inspired by their own
success: the alienating enormity of their
tours after The Dark Side of the Moon
[see No. 55], which was when bassist-
lyricist Roger Waters first hit upon a wall
as a metaphor for isolation and
rebellion. He finished a demo of the
work by July 1978; the double album
then took the band a year to make.
Rock’s ultimate self-pity opera, The Wall
is also hypnotic in its indulgence: the
totalitarian thunder of “In the Flesh?”;
the suicidal languor of “Comfortably
Numb”; the Brechtian drama of “The
Trial.” Rock-star hubris has never been
more electrifying.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

128
Queen, ‘A Night at the
Opera’
ELEKTRA, 1975

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“Queen will be the Cecil B. DeMille of

rock,” proclaimed singer Freddie
Mercury, and this far-ranging, rococo
album is the group’s ready-for-my-close-
up moment. Bassist John Deacon wrote
the melodic highlight “You’re My Best
Friend,” a bouncy bit of Paul McCartney-
esque pop; Mercury wrote the brutal
rocker “Death on Two Legs,” about the
band’s former manager; and guitarist
Brian May wrote “The Prophet’s Song,” a
doomy portent of a flood that runs 8:21
and includes a vocal canon from
Mercury. But the coup was “Bohemian
Rhapsody,” an opera buffa in which
Mercury combined three different songs
he’d been writing into a suite that took
weeks to record.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

127
Ray Charles, ‘Modern
Sounds in Country and
Western Music’
ABC-PARAMOUNT, 1962

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Country and soul were deeply entangled

Southern traditions and had been cross-
pollinating for years. But Modern
Sounds was still the audacious boundary
smasher its title promised, with Ray
Charles applying his gospel grit and
luscious soul-pop strings to standards by
Hank Williams (“Half as Much,” “You
Win Again,” “Hey, Good Lookin’”) and
Eddy Arnold, whose lover’s lament “You
Don’t Know Me” is recast as a parable
about race relations in light of the civil
rights struggle. Modern Sounds became
the most popular album of Charles’
career and includes the hits “I Can’t Stop
Loving You” and “Born to Lose.”

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

126
Mary J. Blige, ‘My Life’
UPTOWN, 1994

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The crucial development on Mary J.

Blige’s second album is her emergence as
a songwriter; in lyrics and interviews,
she began to describe the traumas she’d
had, both as a child growing up in the
projects and as an adult. For fans, that
intimacy turned her from a beloved
singer to a member of the family. “Down
and out, crying every day,” she sings on
the title song. There’s plenty of thematic
contrast — the playful bedroom come-on
“Mary Jane (All Night Long),” a
smashing cover of the 1970s funk ballad
“I’m Going Down” — but the strongest
impression from the album is that Blige
had been through it, and her hopefulness
was hard-won.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

125
Beastie Boys, ‘Paul’s
Boutique’
CAPITOL, 1989

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“I went to this party in Los Angeles,”

recalled Adam Horovitz, “and they were
playing this music, like … four breakbeat
records playing at the same time.” The
party soundtrack consisted of tracks by
the Dust Brothers, who ended up co-
producing this entire second record from
the Beasties, providing the rap trio with
some of the best samples ever put on
wax, including the Ramones, Mountain,
and the Funky 4 Plus 1. Paul’s Boutique
is also an extended goof on Abbey Road
[see No. 5], which was Paul McCartney’s
boutique — and like that record, it
ambitiously stitches together song
fragments in a way rarely heard before
or since.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

124
U2, ‘Achtung Baby’
ISLAND, 1991

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After fostering a solemn public image for

years, U2 loosened up on Achtung Baby,
recorded in Berlin with Brian Eno and
Daniel Lanois. They no longer sounded
like young men sure of the answers; now
they were full of doubt and longing. “It’s
a con, in a way,” Bono told Rolling Stone
about the album in 1992. “We call it
Achtung Baby, grinning up our sleeves
in all the photography. But it’s probably
the heaviest record we’ve ever made.”
“One” may be their most gorgeous song,
but it’s a dark ballad about a relationship
in peril and the struggle to keep it
together. Yet the emotional turmoil
made U2 sound more human than ever.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

123
Led Zeppelin, ‘Led
Zeppelin II’
ATLANTIC, 1969

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This album — recorded on the fly while

the band was touring — opens with one
of the most exhilarating guitar riffs in
rock & roll: Jimmy Page’s searing stutter
in “Whole Lotta Love.” As Page told
Rolling Stone, “On the second LP, you
can hear the real group identity coming
together,” by which he meant the unified
might of his own white-blues sorcery,
John Bonham’s hands-of-Zeus
drumming, Robert Plant’s love-god howl
and surprisingly tender lyrics (the
gorgeous “Thank You”), and John Paul
Jones’ firm bass and keyboard colors.
Other great reasons to bang your head:
“The Lemon Song,” “Heartbreaker,” and
“Ramble On.”

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

122
Nine Inch Nails, ‘The
Downward Spiral’
NOTHING/INTERSCOPE, 1994

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“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.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

121
Elvis Costello, ‘This
Year’s Model’
COLUMBIA, 1978

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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.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

120
Van Morrison,
‘Moondance’
WARNER BROS., 1970

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“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.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

119
Sly and the Family
Stone, ‘Stand!’
EPIC, 1969

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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.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

118
The Eagles, ‘Hotel
California’
ASYLUM, 1976

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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.”

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

117
Kanye West, ‘Late
Registration’
ROC-A-FELLA, 2005

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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.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

116
The Cure,
‘Disintegration’
FICTION, 1989

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According to the kids on South Park, this

is the best album ever made. According
to many depressive Eighties-minded
kids, it’s the only album ever made.
Disintegration was the height of stadium
goth rock, with the Cure stretching out
for long, spacious wallows like
‘Plainsong” and “Prayers for Rain.” But it
also shows off Robert Smith’s stunning
pop mastery on “Lovesong,” which Smith
wrote as a wedding present for his wife,
and the rapturously forlorn “Pictures of
You.” On “Fascination Street,” his voice
shakes like milk as he makes adolescent
angst sound so wonderfully, wonderfully
pretty. “I was trying to put in one or two
beacons of light in amongst the
darkness,” he told Rolling Stone.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

115
Kendrick Lamar, ‘good
kid, m.A.A.d city’
TDE, 2012

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Kendrick Lamar’s hip-hop

autobiography came as a shock in 2012:
musically downbeat, with a film
director’s eye for narrative but the voice
of a poet. Good kid is his story of
growing up in Compton, surrounded by
gunfire, gang warfare, police brutality,
drugs, liquor, dead friends — billed on
the cover as “A Short FIlm by Kendrick
Lamar,” like a West Coast answer to
Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets. K-Dot
goes for emotional detail instead of
gangsta bravado, whether cruising the
streets in “Backseat Freestyle” or
pondering addiction in “Swimming Pool
(Drank).” As he told Rolling Stone, “The
best entertainers have to have the most
wickedest sense of humor, to be able to
take pain and change it into laughter.”

A D V E RT I S E M E N T
114
The Strokes, ‘Is This It’
RCA, 2001

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Before Is This It even came out, New

York’s mod ragamuffins were overnight
sensations, jumping from Avenue A to
press hysteria and the inevitable
backlash, all inside a year. The objective
of Is This It, said singer Julian
Casablancas, “was to be really cool and
non-mainstream, and be really popular.”
Recorded literally under the streets of
New York, this blast of guitar-combo
racket passionately reconciled those
seemingly contradictory aspirations, and
accomplished both, updating the
propulsion of the Velvet Underground
and the jangle of Seventies punk with
Casablancas’ acidic dispatches mixed to
the fore and ringed with distortion like
he was singing from a pay phone.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

113
The Smiths, ‘The Queen
Is Dead’
SIRE, 1986

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Morrissey’s maudlin moanings have

never been more acidic or self-aware
than on the Smiths’ third studio album:
“A dreaded sunny day, so let’s go where
we’re happy/And I meet you at the
cemetery gates,” indeed. Johnny Marr is
the sugar to Morrissey’s rock salt, and
his layered webs of guitar riffs and
arpeggios, often in unconventional
tunings, build a shifting but stable
platform for Morrissey to croon about
the drudgery of employment or being
cruelly, cruelly shunned by the world.
It’s mope rock with its eye on grandeur:
With “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” Marr
said, “I was trying to write my ‘Jumpin’
Jack Flash.’”

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

112
Elton John, ‘Goodbye
Yellow Brick Road’
MCA, 1973

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Elton John compared this double album

to the Beatles’ White Album, and why
not? He was by this point the most
consistent hitmaker since the Fab Four,
and soon enough he would be recording
with John Lennon. Everything about
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was
supersonically huge, from the
Wagnerian-opera-like combo of “Funeral
for a Friend” and “Love Lies Bleeding” to
the electric boots and mohair suit of
“Bennie and the Jets.” “Saturday Night’s
Alright for Fighting” was strutting rock &
roll, “Candle in the Wind” paid tribute to
Marilyn Monroe (and later, Princess
Diana), and the title track harnessed the
fantastical imagery of glam to a
Gershwin-sweet melody.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

111
Janet Jackson, ‘Control’
A&M, 1986

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If properly, successfully maturing in pop

after a childhood in the spotlight is an
artform, then Janet Jackson is
Michelangelo and Control her statue of
David. The youngest member of the
Jackson family released her third studio
album while on the cusp of her twenties.
Working with the dream team of Jimmy
Jam and Terry Lewis, Jackson made an
assertive, hook-y, and powerful
proclamation of her star power on
sparkling, sculpted electro-pop dance
songs like “Nasty,” “The Pleasure
Principle,” and the title track. Control
remains the blueprint for any young
artist looking to find their own voice.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

110
Joni Mitchell, ‘Court
and Spark’
ASYLUM, 1974

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Joni Mitchell followed up Blue with the

underrated For the Roses, a set of
harmonically and lyrically complex
songs. Court and Spark is, in
comparison, smoother and more
straight-ahead; it became the biggest
record of her career, hitting Number
Two. Working with saxophonist Tom
Scott’s fusion group, L.A. Express,
Mitchell settled into a folk-pop-jazz
groove that remains a landmark of
breezy sophistication, particularly on the
Top 10 single “Help Me.” Strange but
true: A cover of “Twisted,” by the scat-
jazz vocal group Lambert, Hendricks,
and Ross, closes the album — with
stoner comics Cheech and Chong singing
backup.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

109
Lou Reed,
‘Transformer’
RCA, 1972

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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.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

108
Fiona Apple, ‘When the
Pawn …’
EPIC, 1999

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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.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

107
Television, ‘Marquee
Moon’
ELEKTRA, 1977

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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.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

106
Hole, ‘Live Through
This’
GEFFEN, 1994

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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.”

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

105
The Allman Brothers,
‘At Fillmore East’
CAPRICORN, 1971

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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.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

104
The Rolling Stones,
‘Sticky Fingers’
ROLLING STONES, 1971

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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”).

A D V E RT I S E M E N T
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.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

102
The Clash, ‘The Clash’
CBS, 1977

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“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.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

101
Led Zeppelin, ‘Led
Zeppelin’
ATLANTIC, 1969

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On their first album, Led Zeppelin were

still in the process of inventing their own
sound, moving on from the heavy rave-
ups of guitarist Jimmy Page’s previous
band, the Yardbirds. But from the
beginning, Zeppelin had the astonishing
fusion of Page’s lyrical guitar playing and
Robert Plant’s paint-peeling love-hound
yowl. “We were learning what got us off
most and what got people off most,” said
Plant. Yet the template for everything
Zeppelin achieved in the 1970s is here:
brutal rock (“Communication
Breakdown”), thundering power balladry
(“Your Time Is Gonna Come”), and acid-
flavored folk blues (“Babe I’m Gonna
Leave You”).

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