Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by Arthurknight

This chart has evolved a lot over the near decade its existed. I think in the past I used to try a lot harder at curating what was more a "recommendations" list, where I'd show off my esoteric finds and scatter in my favourite underrated greats . Other times I told myself the function of a good list was to be in contention with the Overall chart on this site; to be anti conventional music journalism and resist milquetoast taste. Nowadays I'm less ideological about it. To me, this chart is my music-hobbyist refuge where I delight in organising my own personal world of sounds. In short, it may well be the 100 greatest albums of all time (I certainly think so), but that's secondary to it being an outlet for creative expression. I've curated a display that says more about me than the music, to be glanced over by the few fellow BEA users who peruse it and friends at a bar who don't know what they're getting into when they ask me what I listen to.

~~ One Album per Artist. ~~

Notes:
Should you consider it a great injustice that there is very little emphasis on more recent music here, feel free to check out my 21st century decade charts. I'm also very active in making end of year charts which is really where all my heart and soul is poured into with BEA these days.

No Jazz, Hip-Hop, or Electronic albums feature in this chart simply because if they did 100 albums would barely suffice. I find it particularly difficult to compare these genres with other forms of popular music broadly or with each-other (I've similarly exempted classical recordings I especially enjoy for the same reason, but am too lazy to make a classical chart, for now...). In the past I have included these genres, but I've come to dislike it because the limits of 100 albums begins to feel too claustrophobic. Instead, I have made each their own respective custom chart, which you can find here:

Greatest 100 Jazz Albums: https://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?c=32925
Greatest 100 Hip-Hop Albums: https://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?c=32704
Greatest 100 Electronic/IDM Albums: https://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?c=42751

There are 68 comments for this chart from BestEverAlbums.com members and Top 100 Greatest Music Albums has an average rating of 93 out of 100 (from 119 votes). Please log in or register to leave a comment or assign a rating.

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Buy album United States
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"A choke of grief
Heart hardened I
Beyond belief a broken man too tough to cry."

10/10

“At his own sorrow and the emptiness of his life. Because he can’t even cry for the suffering in the world, for his own suffering. And then, hope.” - From Brian Wilson's annotations to Surf's Up.

I've kept myself from including this album since its not a 'studio release' or even an 'album' in the strictest sense. It's kind of like Sappho's 'You burn me,' It's art, but it's fragments of art picked up and put together. That having been said, this is the closest thing to Smile that we're ever going to get and even this 4 decade later salvage job is the greatest thing in popular music.

This album has since taken on a lot of significance for me over the years. Smile Sessions, the pinnacle of a small collection of albums that are just filled with joy, genuinely helped me move on many years ago from depression. It was a significant shift for me to listen to euphoric sounds and really enjoy them. Why I connected with this album in particular is because of how Wilson situates hope in songs like Surf's Up, plays with humour in music almost as if it were a sound, and how throughout there are these ebbs and flows between psychedelic exuberance and true sorrow, yet resolving with a reinforcement that this inevitable dialectic is beautiful. It is an album that to me now signifies getting better.

_
[First added to this chart: 01/13/2017]
Year of Release:
2011
Appears in:
Rank Score:
6,379
Rank in 2011:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
2. (=)
Germany Can
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"Searching for my black dope
Hallelalalaluwah."

10/10

Effectively, one need only listen to 'Aumgn' to understand why this album is so indisputably brilliant. I mean think about it, over half of this album was recorded without the band's knowing. The album is just a phenomenal jam session. That I find amazing.

I recently managed to get a copy of this album on a hazy blue vinyl from my housemate who was clearing their small but very good collection. It's become the prized gem of my collection – I sit back and listen to this album on hot Australian nights and can sort of feel it reverberate through the humid air, comfortable.

_
[First added to this chart: 10/23/2014]
Year of Release:
1971
Appears in:
Rank Score:
10,231
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Comments:
Buy album United States
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"Welled up within me
A hunger uncurbed by nature's calling."

10/10

Following the godly moment sometime around 1986 when they must have realized they were absolute musical garbage, Talk Talk changed tact entirely for their next albums 'The Colour of Spring', 'Spirit of Eden' and 'Laughing Stock', each in their own right astounding albums. However, with each successive release Talk Talk moved further in an experimental and adventurous direction. Laughing Stock, being the finale of their musical exploration, demonstrates Talk Talk's ability to construct vivid atmospheres and conjure raw emotions. If this album proves anything it is that silence can resonate.

This is one of the albums that moves me so much on a personal level, because I find myself listening to this album most in times of loneliness. It now harkens back to when I was in a dark place and found the tranquil beauty of Laughing Stock simultaneously understanding of my state of mind, and uplifting of it. I recall listening to Laughing Stock as I walked through the streets of my hometown Chester in the rain. The streets were empty, the park and the river bridge too, but the music made me so happy to look at the place I knew with fondness, even allowing me to see the poetic in a tossed empty pack of cigarettes – trying to – collect rain, as if it was looking for a purpose.

_
[First added to this chart: 10/28/2014]
Year of Release:
1991
Appears in:
Rank Score:
9,303
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Comments:
4. (=)
Low 
Buy album United States
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“Under the cool, under the cool and under having a ball
What you gonna say to the real me, to the real me?”

10/10

It would be hard to pick a favourite Bowie album, if not for Low. I listened to this album a lot during a weird school language trip to Germany, alongside many other albums I'd either associated with the country or were in fact german. I was with a sort of ramshackle bunch that I didn't feel comfortably a part of, and I mostly spent the trip alone. If I was with others I was constantly worried about being peripheral, worrying about what the others thought of me or spoke about me in my absence. So I found solace in being able to wander down cobbled roads alone with an earphone in, it was something I could sort of focus on. I listened to Low above all because the trip was speckled with good times and bad times; this album embodied the heights of the trip, and – to be blatantly punny – the lows. I remember listening to Low as I - having given the group the slip and wandered out past the inner city wall - walked alone in wet post-downpour Nuremberg park. Afterwards I switched over to Heroes and ran blissfully back through the city centre like a complete idiot. Everyone stared but for a moment I couldn't care less.

_
[First added to this chart: 10/23/2014]
Year of Release:
1977
Appears in:
Rank Score:
19,554
Rank in 1977:
Rank in 1970s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
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"Like my good hand I
tatooed E.V.I.L. across its brother's fist
That filthy five! They did nothing to challenge or resist."

10/10

This has been a major shift for me, like how shifts in historiography may involve revisionist arguments that dismantle the entire status quo framework of understanding. Anyway, for years now I've declared 'Your Funeral My Trial' the best Bad Seeds album and it's largely been down to a few reasons: 1. It's the album that I first embraced as a teen when getting into Cave, 2. I have a love affair with Blixa and 'Stranger Than Kindness' is one of my most loved songs period, and 3. Cave says it's the best (the reaffirmation I needed when deciding a favourite from an artist with more great albums in my mind than anyone else.)

The album here has not always been Your Funeral My Trial. For a time it was 'No More Shall We Part' - we don't talk about that period of my music appreciation anymore though - and for slightly longer a time The Good Son. Perhaps even 'Boatman's Call' found it's way onto the list at some point. I suppose when discussing the great works of Cave it's hard to ignore mentioning Boatman's Call. But, it doesn't come close for me. However, for anyone who prefers soft ballad Bad Seeds you don't need to worry about my reservations; you have all the major publications on your side and my Step-father.

Anyway this moment of revisionism came because I'd sort of blinded myself to the great albums 'From Her to Eternity' and 'Tender Prey' as I elevated Your Funeral... to a certain unreachable height. That's not to say I didn't listen to them or really enjoy them, but I'd become immoveable in my steadfast view that Your Funeral... was untouchably better; I'd built it up to such Icarian heights that it was almost bound to come crashing down. So, the other week I put on Tender Prey and it just sort of clicked, and then I played Your Funeral... and the click stayed. I realised Tender Prey was the better album (still an incredibly precarious position, this could easily revert at any moment). But then it became even more difficult because I then listened to From Her to Eternity and had a second click, and before you know it 2 albums were battling for the spot and neither of them were the one that had held it for so long with total security.

Rather than spend much time delving into any internal debate about which album is better - it's arbitrary in the end, they sound and feel so differently - It might be a better opportunity to mention how this reveals the limitations of the "1 Album per Artist" chart. One could very easily just say "Well to you they're all 10s so why not just include them all?" That's fine and all - not to be too hypercritical as I can't stand charts with half a dozen albums from one artist - but I think it's been quite enriching to compare Cave's (or anyone's for that matter) discography with a fine tooth comb and with stakes set. The challenge of picking a favourite is one that invites me to really intently listen to his music.

Whether Tender Prey remains here for long is a question for tomorrow, but this profound difficulty picking a favourite makes me all the more sure of my love for Nick Cave, and how he is most definitely my musical icon. I watch Wings of Desire regularly to try and vicariously experience being present in the mythic underground-Berlin wonder that 80s Bad Seeds inhabited. Cave's albums, and the early ones in particular, take me places, all dark, all sinister, and I love it - I want it.

_
[First added to this chart: 02/14/2018]
Year of Release:
1988
Appears in:
Rank Score:
1,594
Rank in 1988:
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Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
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"Trumpets, violins, I hear them in the distance
And my skin emits a ray, but I think it's sad, it's much too bad
That our friends can't be with us today."

10/10

Such a moving poetic voice. I had the privilege of seeing Patti perform horses in Melbourne in what was a sort of near out-of-body transcendental concert. I now listen to the 2005 live recording of horses in repeatedly more desperate attempts of re-living that experience. But, just as Patti ponders on our lives and our loved ones, such moments are too singular and ephemeral to clutch back at and actually grab. Still, I keep trying.

_
[First added to this chart: 10/23/2014]
Year of Release:
1975
Appears in:
Rank Score:
8,645
Rank in 1975:
Rank in 1970s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
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"I still have my memory.
I still have my gold ring... beautiful, I love it, I love it!
I still have my allergies.
I still have my philosophy."

10/10

One of a small handful of compositions that move me to tears on virtually every listen. There are some others, notably: Steve Reich's Different Trains, Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa, Olivier Messiaen's Quatour Pour La Fin Du Temps, Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach (and Glassworks), La Monte Young's The Well Tuned Piano, or Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of the Titanic. All of which I feel would be a bit uncomfortable in this list as they are principally classical compositions, with multiple recorded studio/live album versions. Dolmen Music, however, feels right in this chart, it's "contemporary classical" in lieu of anything else – in reality it's more a prelude to NY performance art, such as the audiovisual work of the Wooster Group. Musically her influences can be seen everywhere, but especially in the work of Laurie Anderson and Diamanda Galás in the 80s.

I remember once in a university lecture for theatre, a recording of a Singaporean play was presented and over the top of the clips the title track was playing. I imagine to any who didn't know Monk would have just presumed the song was Singaporean. Apart from nearly – from an almost knee-jerk memorised reaction – crying, I realised that Monk achieved in Dolmen Music a sound that feels totally foreign and incomprehensible, like she is sort of out of reach of my understanding. Yet the same also feels attuned to some sort of inward emotional universality. I feel closer to something when I listen to this work, I'm just never sure what, and I'm totally fine with that.

_
[First added to this chart: 07/15/2016]
Year of Release:
1981
Appears in:
Rank Score:
737
Rank in 1981:
Rank in 1980s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
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"The captain is a one-armed dwarf
He's throwing dice along the wharf."

10/10

Actual genius, ugly and erotic, but mesmerising. When I listen to Waits I almost find the music wrong. There's an interview of Waits in Australia on the Don Lane Show where he, opening the interview after moving over to the chair half saunter swagger half drunken stumble – he looked like a shell of a man – says he feels "better than nothing." He was, just barely. He seemed to me a near parody of a music artist in the interview. Lane didn't take him seriously at all, he was obviously high as a kite. However, he later stepped over to the piano, touched fingers to keys, and the mood changed immediately. When asked, Waits said that his songs are all sort of travel logs, and that he "can't say really where they come from." It was then I experienced his music, it was them I fell for his music, in a way. Wait's songs straddle the ugly, but they’re also, at their core, beautiful. Other artists that disregard convention tend to never achieve this bizarre and moving duality; Waits most assuredly does. He is certainly no parody.

_
[First added to this chart: 10/10/2014]
Year of Release:
1985
Appears in:
Rank Score:
13,195
Rank in 1985:
Rank in 1980s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
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"No chains can hold me, no walls confine me
Come on now people, come on and slide with me
Cause I'm blind, but not as blind as blind as you."

10/10

I keep coming back to this. A once no.1 spot pick. I overlistened to Ladies and Gentlemen to death in my teens so much so that I couldn't touch it with a ten foot pole for awhile. But even then hearing its songs live at my first Spiritualized gig was a transcendental, or one could say spiritual, moment. More recently, Jason Piece fell asleep on a plane next to me with a book in his hands like a true middle aged man (not to mention vaping in the airport too), breaking the spell of sun-glassed mystery entirely – but I don't care. "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space" is the best opener to any album, and "Cop Shoot Cop" very well may be the best closer to any album. This is one of those ones I'm just too invested in to deny it's a forever favourite.

_
[First added to this chart: 11/08/2014]
Year of Release:
1997
Appears in:
Rank Score:
7,228
Rank in 1997:
Rank in 1990s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
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"夕暮れ時を二人で走ってゆく
風を呼んで 君を呼んで
東京の街のスミからスミまで
僕ら半分 夢の中."

10/10

"Running in the evening twilight just two of us
Calling the wind, calling you
From Tokyo city corner to corner
We are half in a dream."

Lyrics from Long Season. A truly spectacular live album, It's transformative in the ways the band treats their own music, and in how they chose to approach a live show and by extension a live album.

_
[First added to this chart: 03/26/2017]
Year of Release:
1999
Appears in:
Rank Score:
5,718
Rank in 1999:
Rank in 1990s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Total albums: 100. Page 1 of 10

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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums composition

Decade Albums %


1930s 0 0%
1940s 0 0%
1950s 0 0%
1960s 14 14%
1970s 28 28%
1980s 20 20%
1990s 29 29%
2000s 8 8%
2010s 1 1%
2020s 0 0%
Country Albums %


United States 40 40%
United Kingdom 26 26%
Canada 6 6%
Germany 6 6%
Russia 3 3%
Mixed Nationality 3 3%
Australia 3 3%
Show all
Live? Albums %
No 99 99%
Yes 1 1%

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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums ratings

Average Rating: 
93/100 (from 119 votes)
  Ratings distributionRatings distribution Average Rating = (n ÷ (n + m)) × av + (m ÷ (n + m)) × AV
where:
av = trimmed mean average rating an item has currently received.
n = number of ratings an item has currently received.
m = minimum number of ratings required for an item to appear in a 'top-rated' chart (currently 10).
AV = the site mean average rating.

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80/100
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03/19/2024 11:07 Tamthebam  Ratings distributionRatings distribution 54985/100
 
85/100
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03/05/2024 19:32 martintho  Ratings distributionRatings distribution 15574/100
 
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02/18/2024 09:24 Tuur  Ratings distributionRatings distribution 4886/100
  
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07/02/2023 08:02 MadhattanJack  Ratings distributionRatings distribution 15484/100
  
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11/10/2022 16:03 Rm12398  Ratings distributionRatings distribution 9989/100

Rating metrics: Outliers can be removed when calculating a mean average to dampen the effects of ratings outside the normal distribution. This figure is provided as the trimmed mean. A high standard deviation can be legitimate, but can sometimes indicate 'gaming' is occurring. Consider a simplified example* of an item receiving ratings of 100, 50, & 0. The mean average rating would be 50. However, ratings of 55, 50 & 45 could also result in the same average. The second average might be more trusted because there is more consensus around a particular rating (a lower deviation).
(*In practice, some charts can have several thousand ratings)

This chart is rated in the top 1% of all charts on BestEverAlbums.com. This chart has a Bayesian average rating of 93.2/100, a mean average of 93.2/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 93.8/100. The standard deviation for this chart is 8.2.

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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums comments

Showing latest 10 comments | Show all 68 comments |
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Rating:  
100/100
From 11/10/2022 16:03
Love the Murmur- R.E.M. placement here! Have always felt that was my favourite record of theirs, so it's nice to see my opinion validated with your chart. “La Máquina De Hacer Pájaros” is fantastic to see here as well. Massively underrated on this site in my opinion. Love the multicultural feel of the list as well. Have recently been trying to get into more international music so your chart may be a great help to do that.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Rating:  
80/100
From 11/10/2022 09:53
Thanks for the comment and the rating.
Great tastes as well, very heavy on classical rock but still very sold chart
Kudos for including Youth of America 👌
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Rating:  
100/100
From 11/09/2022 08:36
Fabulous chart. One of the best on the site
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Rating:  
85/100
From 11/09/2022 02:54
Was really hoping to see a few more exceptional Australian albums in the chart. Otherwise, cool chart and appreciate the effort in putting together your comments.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | -1 votes (0 helpful | 1 unhelpful)
Rating:  
100/100
From 10/05/2022 08:04
Still my favourite chart! SMiLE Sessions really is the greatest thing in popular music ♥
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Rating:  
100/100
From 07/21/2022 11:17
Nice.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Rating:  
100/100
From 12/21/2021 00:48
Wow Great job and very good list
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Rating:  
95/100
From 12/07/2020 19:34
one of the best lists on the site. Creative, methodical, and just overall cool
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Rating:  
95/100
From 09/11/2020 16:18
I'll definitely use this for recs!
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Rating:  
100/100
From 09/11/2020 08:48
Brrrrrrravo!
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Best Albums of 1967
1. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles
2. The Velvet Underground & Nico by The Velvet Underground & Nico
3. The Doors by The Doors
4. Are You Experienced by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
5. Forever Changes by Love
6. Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles
7. Songs Of Leonard Cohen by Leonard Cohen
8. The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn by Pink Floyd
9. Axis: Bold As Love by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
10. Strange Days by The Doors
11. Disraeli Gears by Cream
12. Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane
13. Days Of Future Passed by The Moody Blues
14. I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You by Aretha Franklin
15. Something Else By The Kinks by The Kinks
16. The Who Sell Out by The Who
17. Safe As Milk by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
18. Chelsea Girl by Nico
19. Goodbye And Hello by Tim Buckley
20. John Wesley Harding by Bob Dylan
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