Listed below are the overall rankings for the best albums in history as determined by their aggregate positions in over 59,000 different greatest album charts on BestEverAlbums.com! (Chart last updated: 2 hours ago).
"I've reviewed this album once already, listened to it too many times to count and I still keep coming back to it. Forget the slightly rough production, this is The Smiths laying out their mantra and their manifesto, and it is wonderful from start to finish. I grew up with this album and it helped...""I've reviewed this album once already, listened to it too many times to count and I still keep coming back to it. Forget the slightly rough production, this is The Smiths laying out their mantra and their manifesto, and it is wonderful from start to finish.
I grew up with this album and it helped make me who I am today. I bought it from HMV on CD in 2014, right at the start of Sixth Form for me. Few albums could have provided a better soundtrack, with the themes of youth, loneliness and discontent with the world contextualised against the sound of early-80s Manchester that is so vividly captured in the songs on this record embodying what I myself was going through.
Contrary to what some believe, it's not depressing. Far from it. It's filled with a melancholic hope, that despite how rubbish the world is, you are not alone and you certainly don't have to feel sad about it. The Smiths' debut is a friend, an accomplice and an advisor.
And the more you listen, the more you realise how accurate and relevant it is. And just how good it is; this is Jangle Pop like no other, and I could wax lyrical about all the tracks on here. The real highlight is the second half, from This Charming Man (on CD versions) to What Difference Does It Make?, which really is one amazing song after another.
Summarising what The Smiths' debut means to me is hard, because it's so personal and so integral both to who I am and the music I've since gone on to explore. And indeed, I feel like it's one of those albums that everyone has their own personal experience with. That's what makes it truly special.
For me, its greatest strength is the message it lays out: the world is rubbish, and there's not much you can do about it. So, rather than getting wallowed down in its sadness, embrace it.
Because the music that kind of attitude produces is what makes life worth living for."[+]Reply
"This is a band that is completely relaxed, completely focused on the music as they had noting to prove anymore. One of the best Blues albums I know. The only band besides the Beatles (Abbey Road) that succeeded to top their best work with their last recorded album, as many groups run out of energ...""This is a band that is completely relaxed, completely focused on the music as they had noting to prove anymore. One of the best Blues albums I know. The only band besides the Beatles (Abbey Road) that succeeded to top their best work with their last recorded album, as many groups run out of energy and inspiration after their debut.
It is one of these rare albums that I can listen to on endless repeat, with the most commercial song "Love Her Madly" as the weakest one."[+]Reply
"24 August 2013 - This is just about as perfect as it gets. This album just feels good, natural, real and off the cuff. At the same time it is perhaps the most beautifully varied set of songs Dylan ever put out. The break up songs, the social songs, the love songs, the talking blues songs, the blu...""24 August 2013 -
This is just about as perfect as it gets. This album just feels good, natural, real and off the cuff. At the same time it is perhaps the most beautifully varied set of songs Dylan ever put out. The break up songs, the social songs, the love songs, the talking blues songs, the blues songs, the cover songs are all immaculately performed and beautifully recorded. The some of all it's parts is just a complete musical experience that is so much deeper and richer and more reaffirming than any (almost) purely acoustic guitar/harmonica folk album should possibly be. This record is miraculously good. And Dylan was just 21 when he recorded this! WTF!?!?!!
Grade 100/100"[+]Reply
"This album just doesn't do it for me. Most of it comes across as just weak disco (Lose Yourself To Dance) overblown and trying too hard (Touch) or just outright dull (Within, The Game Of Love) Get Lucky is an exception, pulling off retro disco to great effect and making one of the best pop single...""This album just doesn't do it for me. Most of it comes across as just weak disco (Lose Yourself To Dance) overblown and trying too hard (Touch) or just outright dull (Within, The Game Of Love) Get Lucky is an exception, pulling off retro disco to great effect and making one of the best pop singles of the year, Giorgio By Moroder is legitimately amazing and works far better than Touch. Instant Crush is also pretty great synthpop, though I'm not sure I'd go as far as some have said that it's the best thing Julian Casablancas has ever worked on. Contact is alright but overrated, it's so obviously trying to be this amazing, epic ending that it's kinda funny. Overall, pretty disappointing, stick with Discovery."[+]Reply
"I’m not going to fight it. I’m addicted to the sparkling, candy colored songs of Beach House. Beach House go full-on arena-sized for this album. Launching the grandeur of the Cocteau Twins straight to the upper rafters. I completely give in to its waves of Cure and Loveless-era MBV guitars washin...""I’m not going to fight it. I’m addicted to the sparkling, candy colored songs of Beach House. Beach House go full-on arena-sized for this album. Launching the grandeur of the Cocteau Twins straight to the upper rafters. I completely give in to its waves of Cure and Loveless-era MBV guitars washing over me. I’m no longer Tilly. I'm just a rag doll. Letting myself drift effortlessly wherever the waves take me. These are the songs I play to beat back the doldrums when they’re nipping at my heels. To kick them off and instead reach to the heavens and sing and shout that I can still make it despite it all.
Grade: A. This is Beach House at their poppiest. And pop is a surprisingly good fit for them. I still prefer their sound when it’s little rougher around the edges and the guitar cuts a little bit more deeply such as on Thank Your Lucky Stars. But, it’s still essential Beach House and definitely one of the best dream pop albums of the last decade. "[+]Reply
"Patti Smith has never been given her due recognition for being the first female rock and roller to lead a band and have complete creative control over her music. Before Patti, a rock band would have a "chick" singer but the boyz in the band were the primary players of the music. Smith became an i...""Patti Smith has never been given her due recognition for being the first female rock and roller to lead a band and have complete creative control over her music. Before Patti, a rock band would have a "chick" singer but the boyz in the band were the primary players of the music. Smith became an icon to subsequent generations of female rockers. She never relied on sex appeal for her success — she was unabashedly intellectual and creatively uncompromising, and her appearance was usually lean, hard, and androgynous. "Horses" is a benchmark because Patti was the first of a plethora of CBGBs bands to get signed; she beat the Voidoids, Television, Blondie, the Talking Heads and even the Ramones to the recording studio and in doing so she became the godmother of American punk. "[+]Reply
"Guys, I know it's been a slow year for major label music but let's calm down a little. Yes it's very good and frankly a little surprising. Lana was already an artist who I think a lot of people anticipated had a ceiling . She definitely breaks through the ceiling - but best of the decade?? Maybe ...""Guys, I know it's been a slow year for major label music but let's calm down a little. Yes it's very good and frankly a little surprising. Lana was already an artist who I think a lot of people anticipated had a ceiling . She definitely breaks through the ceiling - but best of the decade?? Maybe a few more listens and it could crack the top 10 for me but I'm not so hasty to herald it as the AOTY or AOTD. I read things like "It establishes her as one of America’s greatest living songwriters." thanks pitchfork.
Pros:
Music is very good for the most part, Venice Bitch is awesome, a lot of really smooth songwriting on here. I've always liked her voice and it's good on here. Very well produced.
Cons:
There's still a handful of duds. The sound is nothing new she is serving up what she serves up so if you didn't like her sound previously this isn't going to change that. The cover shortly after venice bitch immediately kills the immersion for me. She still can't write lyrics I care about. I still don't care about her (or her persona's) sex life.
It's good, it's got some really great moments. It's her best album and a great accomplishment. She was always an artist I liked and would defend but not really ardently. This can change that. But man review sites giving this a higher rating than In Rainbows calling it the album of the decade? I'm not there yet. Will listen some more."[+]Reply
"It's like swimming in a sea of lemon lime & bitters, then flying away on a Pegasus and performing the best beatbox of all time. And there is cake. And you're a millionaire."Reply
"Perhaps there is no figure who approached music as a science more capably than Suffolk's sagacious Brian Eno. Eno, the preeminent sonic architect, crafts his tiniest compositions with the delicacy of an artisan with his most grandiose and longform exhibitions resembling sprawling city blocks desi...""Perhaps there is no figure who approached music as a science more capably than Suffolk's sagacious Brian Eno. Eno, the preeminent sonic architect, crafts his tiniest compositions with the delicacy of an artisan with his most grandiose and longform exhibitions resembling sprawling city blocks designed for optimal traversing, with each street name and traffic sign strategically plotted and placed. It seems as if any resulting emotional potency is unintentional, or at least, coincidental. Eno never sought out a comfortable groove in which to ride out his over fifty-year career. Instead, he opted to eschew convention and complacency, hell bent on meeting fresh, uncultivated sediment which was ripe for exploration. After opting out of Bryan Ferry's gyrating, glam force majeure, 'Roxy Music', Eno's subsequent musical forays produced far less immediate and less carnal fruits. Often categorized by complexity and an inherent pension for the abstract, his first pair of solo efforts embraced the unconventional, just as Ferry's project had, but now it was on his own terms as he set coordinates for the great beyond. It wouldn't be out of line to declare that nobody quite looked at music the way that Brian Eno did and, by 1975, he had severed the tendrils of his peers and was ready to deliver a idiosyncratic, alien, and career defining artifact.
'Another Green World' commences with 'Sky Saw', a serrated, buzzing entity with a taste for the dissonant. 'Sky Saw' is the first of a line of tracks linked by DNA and could only exist as mysterious fauna native to an entirely different cosmos. The robotic, ory instrumentation employed makes it seem like a fashionable dance track at a futurist discotheque. When Eno's vocals finally penetrate the aluminum atmosphere, it ends up jarring in a way that's welcomed. It's the lone piece of humanity amidst a mosaic of auditory gadgetry and a stark introduction to record's genetic code. Second track, 'Over Fire Island', contains a far more earthy timbre, largely centered on percussion and wet bass. It wouldn't be out of place at a tribal soiree but the whirring coda ends the dream and places you squarely back into a chilly reality. The track briefly embodies a memory of an AI recreation of native music, yet without a discernable, anthropomorphic soul. The most urgent cut on 'Another Green World' has to be fourth track, 'St. Elmo's Fire'. It's catalyzed with uptempo, accelerative energy with Robert Fripp's proggy guitar solo flooding over the dam and washing overtop of the rest of the components. It's a brilliant approach to the art of the earworm and a visionary compromise between the horizon-less limits of Eno's sonic fantasies and the hard line of pop music's rigid boundaries. The album takes a nefarious turn on 'In Dark Trees' with Eno as its lone captain. The sensation of tumbling downward is tactile, as the shallow, unloving electronic drums dutifully chug on, unswaying throughout the track. It's a brief showcase, but by the end of it, you'd swear you were subterranean and devoid of the sun's kiss. Fifth outing, 'The Big Ship', doesn't include a vocal feature from Eno, a trend that carries throughout the majority of the record. In it's place, a tangible sense of scale is meticulously constructed. The track harbors the qualities of an iceberg, with it's peak gloriously basking in warmth the sun, while the base is left to remain untraversed and unable to be properly gauged. Eno's synth work is frothy and luminous, bestowing the honor of "most winsome" onto 'The Big Ship'. However, its aesthetic beauty is perched above the aforementioned impression of scale and labyrinthian real estate held below like oil resting comfortably on top of the sea. The track is gigantic to the ear despite its minimal instrumentation and Eno's excellence creates a cognizance of a world uncharted between the notes.
The most sugary offering on the record is 'I'll Come Running', which bottles a domestic, romantic syrup into a nearly four-minute nocturne, à la The Beatles' 'When I'm Sixty-Four'. The frolicking piano, which strides to and fro, projects a sensation of repetitive bliss and the notion that life's banalities make for gratifying exertion when in service of a special someone. It's strangely human for Eno, or perhaps, deceptively snide. Side one ceases with the title track, a brief , patient transitional that pokes its head out of the clouds just to be quickly shrouded once more. Eno's 'Desert Guitars' parabola as the track comes and goes like a sun shower. Side two, unfurls with a pair of wordless pieces with alternating physiology. 'Sombre Reptiles' is charged with locomotive energy powered by pistons set to world music of the Peruvian variety. Its straight-line fidelity is in stark divergence with follow up tune, 'Little Fishes', which effectively meanders in a way which could easily harmonize within the confines of a sound studio or underneath an electron microscope. Possibly the most apropos moniker on the LP, the track's prepared piano conjures an image of a minnow swimming up and downstream, susceptible to the gentlest of currents. It's clear by this point that Eno is reserving ample space for some of his most three-dimensional soundscapes. Track ten, 'Golden Hours' surely contains helium, as its carefully batted around expertly by Eno and Fripp. It also holds some of the album's finest lyrical pearls as Fripp's guitar solo sews the track shut with thin kevlar. Subsequent track, 'Becalmed' sounds as if Eno has harnessed the full weight of artificial placidity as the track swells and shrinks at the moments most opportune. Impressively, the music remains terrifically pastoral while also sounding akin to a deep-space, cosmic happening. 'Zawinul/Lava' plays like a wise man recounting an ancient prophecy or event responsible for population bottleneck, with more than a hint of dread as fretless bass drops leave the back door open for distant howls propelled by the wind. It's a musing piece that depicts what's coming and what has occurred without a moment's thought for the present. Eno carves out one more slot for a ballad, as to not drift too far into the ether, but even Eno's narratives inject a dose of the illusory. 'Everything Merges with the Night' depicts a love affair, but in which stage we never know. It's as if Eno wrote a treatment for a couple he viewed on a canvas, no doubt one with soft, pastellic edges. Our subject has been "waiting all evening or possibly years" as Eno's piano ensures us that the character is not displeased or even losing patience. Finally, the record concludes with 'Spirits Drifting', which feels evocative of an ending, yet strangely behaves as if it could run parallel to the entire album. The synth work does indeed achieve spectral ambience, but the track functions more effectively as the main mode of transit for the lost souls of Eno's gaseous, nearly imperceptible world of sonic dominion.
When entering the studio for what would become the third record under his stewardship, Brian Eno was without much of a foundation, save for the knowledge that he had begun to tire of the rock's dependent formula that still lingered on his previous two efforts. His lack of sonic provision actually proved to be a strength in the studio as it aided in the construction of a fossil which relished its own formlessness and supernatural ideology. As the sessions commenced, Eno's vision began to take shape, a vision that permeated like a vapor while remaining stoic and shapeshifting with no classification able to weigh down its ascent. 'Another Green World' was indeed the composer's first step into a new paradigm, where music was kinetic and a naturally occurring element with conscious, sonic landscapes capable of forming their own chemical makeup. It marked the beginning of four-decade long pilgrimage to a haven of musical liberation which had long thought to be bestiary. It was a place that married well with Eno's disdain for the shelters of sonic conventionalism and it's a dimension that Eno has yet to bid adieu to.
Standout Tracks:
1. The Big Ship
2. Becalmed
3. St. Elmo's Fire
92"[+]Reply
"My favourite ever album. Complex, and simple, assured but experimental. Done in one session! with the best jazz musicians assembled, they were all on form. You cannot "get" this music, it seems to change and surprise and delight at every playing. Mature, confident, engaging and rewarding. The mor...""My favourite ever album. Complex, and simple, assured but experimental. Done in one session! with the best jazz musicians assembled, they were all on form. You cannot "get" this music, it seems to change and surprise and delight at every playing. Mature, confident, engaging and rewarding. The more you play the better it gets. The pinnacle output of a genius! It takes you to levels that other artists can only dream about. The best album ever made. "[+]Reply
DeusExMackia | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +9 votes (9 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
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Mercury | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +7 votes (7 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
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alelsupreme | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +10 votes (16 helpful | 6 unhelpful)
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Repo | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +12 votes (12 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
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corenfro | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +10 votes (11 helpful | 1 unhelpful)
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SquishypuffDave | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +24 votes (24 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
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DriftingOrpheus | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +2 votes (2 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
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