Listed below are the overall rankings for the best albums in history as determined by their aggregate positions in over 58,000 different greatest album charts on BestEverAlbums.com! (Chart last updated: 4 hours ago).
"Pretty Hate Machine is Nine Inch Nail's first album, and it is awesome. Much dancier than any other NIN record, Pretty Hate Machine mixes synthpop with the industrial influences that would dominate the rest of his work. However, this album is not lacking in humanity, but incorporates it in the ly...""Pretty Hate Machine is Nine Inch Nail's first album, and it is awesome. Much dancier than any other NIN record, Pretty Hate Machine mixes synthpop with the industrial influences that would dominate the rest of his work. However, this album is not lacking in humanity, but incorporates it in the lyrics seamlessly with the industrial dance music beneath. "Head Like A Hole" is a classic, but the song that best showed Trent's potential is "Something I Could Never Have". An excellent album, and even though his subsequent releases wouldn't adapt this same sound, I think it's an incredible debut."[+]Reply
"These days, Interpol are a three-piece unit. This is a reality that tends to correlate to their recent dip in critical applause. Their latest two records, El Pintor and Marauder, both feature the absence of longtime bassist Carlos Dengler. Dengler had departed Interpol due to dissension between h...""These days, Interpol are a three-piece unit. This is a reality that tends to correlate to their recent dip in critical applause. Their latest two records, El Pintor and Marauder, both feature the absence of longtime bassist Carlos Dengler. Dengler had departed Interpol due to dissension between he and the rest of the band after 2010's self-titled album was released. Despite this change leading to reformed spiritual harmony within the trio, the band lost a sizable fragment of their sonic identity. The ex-bassist's greatest contributions to Interpol come in the form of 2004's sophomore effort, Antics. The record was received favorably by the music press but (ludicrously) didn't obtain the same amount of fanfare as their debut record. Antics is punchier, bleaker and just as addictive as Turn on the Bright Lights. It exhibits an artist unburdened by a gaping hole in their lineup and a quintet feverishly relishing their collective creative prime.
Antics begins by lighting a slow-burning fuse titled Next Exit. A somber, hypnotic opener introducing the listener, reluctantly, to the forthcoming tale of social turbulence. Vocalist Paul Banks remarks, "You've been building up steam, ignited by this fight, so do this thing with me instead of tying on a tight one tonight", calling for bravery in the face of a discouraging, drug-infused descent. The fuse then greets the explosive with second track, Evil. The track is powered by Dengler's intoxicating bassline that cradles the song throughout its duration. The jovial tinge of the track is diversified by Banks' lyrics that conjure the personas of infamous British serial killers Fred and Rosemary West. Spoken from the perspective of the former, Banks chants, "Rosemary, heaven restores you in life, you're coming with me, through the aging, the fearing, the strife." Fourth track, Take You on a Cruise, serves as the centerpiece, fading in slowly like a ship through a dense fog bank. Banks himself has described this as a slight departure from the pathos of the album. He claims, "It has a different tone to the rest of the record for that reason. It’s a tacky seduction story: this guy who may be worldly and well-educated but he’s trying to get laid with a cocktail waitress." The coalescence of the rhythm section in the second half of the track is as majestic as the maritime imagery Banks' poetry frames. This conglomerate plays wonderfully aside Banks chanting, "White Goddess, red Goddess, black Temptress of the sea, you treat me right," calling upon Greek mythology. The finale serves as one of the band's most overlooked cuts. A Time to Be So Small has sonic textures that fashion an appropriate ending for the album with Banks' baritone bathed in reverb as the track floats away. Fogarino's drum hits here have such a fascinating sense of weight that they can be felt within your chest cavity. The song itself is said to be written from the point of view of a crustacean watching a family squabble between a father and son. Go figure. However, aquatic anomaly aside, the lyrics convey a more sinister coloring. The LP ends with Banks proclaiming, "When the cadaverous mob saves its doors for the dead men, you cannot leave," sharpening the threat of death at sea.
Unfortunately for the immensely gifted ensemble, Antics would serve as the band's final full-length classic. Here, the synthesis of emotional tonnage into harmonious elixir is strikingly effortless. Interpol would go on to produce four more above-average, but never legendary albums. As conversed earlier, a portion of it spawned from the crater left by their skillful bass player, but this came long after they'd pumped out their fourth outing. Others would potentially point out that the fracture left behind from the infighting did more damage to the psyche of the band rather than the group's sonic capabilities. Whatever it was, Interpol would never reach these heights again but with that said, not many artists have. A very small sector of the music-making landscape could brandish not one, but two classics to start a recording career. Interpol swam in the deepest of waters with the most fearsome of fauna and emerged remarkably relevant and intact. They've climbed back into their luxury liner with two first-class albums shoveling coal into their furnaces. Interpol has earned the right to go at their own pace now and anything they serve us in the future is a much obliged bonus. The timid, sharply dressed boys from the big city have nothing more to prove.
"If time is my vessel, then learning to love
Might be my way back to sea
The flying, the metal, the turning above
These are just ways to be seen"
-Public Pervert
Standout Tracks:
1. Take You on a Cruise
2. A Time to Be So Small
3. C'mere
95
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"In the future filmakers who make war movies are totally going to use these songs for their soundtracks. Haunting, rough, and downright scary, this is definitely the best art rock album to emerge from 2012."Reply
"no comments at all on this album? makes sense, people were probably listening to it, ready to comment, then suddenly found themselves in a steamy, salty, nine-hour sex marathon. IT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LISTEN TO VOODOO."Reply
"1964 was a turbulent year for the United States of America. Injustice violated the air with a stench that, at its best, resembled cigar smoke caked into waterlogged, whiskey-stained clothing. At its worst, it conjured the fragrance of rotting corpses piled into black plague mass graves. A societa...""1964 was a turbulent year for the United States of America. Injustice violated the air with a stench that, at its best, resembled cigar smoke caked into waterlogged, whiskey-stained clothing. At its worst, it conjured the fragrance of rotting corpses piled into black plague mass graves. A societal powder keg was ready to burst, sending shrapnel in the form of violence and revolution across the land. Chronicles of this time in history are aplenty, but Bob Dylan's 'The Times They are A-Changin' occupies a place of poignance and societal relevance as our newest decade commences. The greatest art tends to come rocket-strapped with perennial staying power and universal application. Bob Dylan's third LP effort slides comfortably into those categories and classifications. It touches upon righteous, homely, American ethnocentrism, the painful ineffectiveness of the justice system and selective poverty. Despite Dylan rejecting the label of "Protest Songs", journalists flocked to confine his writing to an ideological box that they could present to the curious and quick-to-judge public. Dylan coyly sat on the fence during interviews which felt more like police interrogations, never confirming or denying anything. Still, the lyricism said more than Dylan ever could, surely illuminating the fact that the poet staunchly sympathized with the plight of the racially suppressed and disenfranchised. The inner shade of Dylan's heart was never in doubt with his position usually reserved for artists of color, those with intentions of questioning the status quo when it came to inequality in the United States. To hear a mid-western, white youth comment on the hypocrisy of American military conquest, the hideousness of white nationalism and imbalanced nature of wealth distribution was refreshing to millions and for thousands more fortunate, feather ruffling. 'The Times They are A-Changin' is concurrently a pinpoint, flaming arrow aimed at the controversial topics of the 1960's and a philosophical thought cloud of ideas and wisdom. All this from a scrawny, Minnesota-born New Yorker who could seemingly wear both hats and walk in all kinds of shoes.
The record greets us with the eternal strums of an acoustic guitar as Dylan's voice, strained and imperfect, a survivor of house fire, arrives with its own visage. The seminal opener chugs along at a fixed tempo, adorned with harmonica bursts that enliven the docile guitar tones. The harmonica, a humble and inexpensive instrument that acted as a trusted companion for many, was Dylan's weapon of choice during his early years. He declares, "Come mothers and fathers throughout the land and don't criticize what you can't understand." His prophetic and anthemic rallying cry has endured for nearly 60 years since it first graced ears. The album turns to a significantly grimmer beast with the introduction of second track, 'Ballad of Hollis Brown', a look at a poverty-stricken farmer in rural South Dakota. Dylan takes his tale of desperation and uses it as an allegory for those struggling with destitution. The metaphors are intentionally fatalistic, but many could view them as exaggerated. Here, Dylan's goal is to establish perspective, not provide a factual retelling. It's merely a painting of despair to be learned from. Dylan sings, "Your brain is a-bleedin' and your legs can’t seem to stand; Your eyes fix on the shotgun that you’re holding in your hand." The expanding wage distribution, in Dylan's estimation, provides a slow death with one alternative. One of Dylan's darkest, yet powerful statements. Next, he confronts an extremely prevalent bias during the middle of the 20th century in the United States. 'With God on Our Side' creates an image of an elitist America, one that can do no wrong and is justified, no matter the bloodshed. Dylan sees toxic patriotism acting as a slow, indoctrinating cancer (another contemporary issue). He wails, "The First World War, boys, it came and it went; The reason for fightin' I never did get but I learned to accept it, accept it with pride; For you don’t count the dead when God’s on your side." The arrogance needed to assume God identifies with a specific country's crusade is elephantine, however, it's a belief typified by the Pledge of Allegiance and by swearing upon a bible. Dylan's character comes to the realization that God's love is reserved for people and not places and that a country is just a plot of land and nothing more. Sadly, it's usually the prize for which fighting is done. The Vietnam War enveloped the decade and Dylan's parable is forever an unheeded warning.
The second half of the record begins with 'Only a Pawn in Their Game', another narration confronting hatred and prejudice, this time by way of propaganda and inculcation. The track examines lower-income, white southerners who are brainwashed into hating their black neighbors with an end goal of sustained oppression. Dylan illustrates this with syntax, "A South politician preaches to the poor white man “You got more than the blacks, don’t complain; You’re better than them, you been born with white skin." The simple instrumentation of 'Pawn' and the stressed rhyme repetition make sure that the message doesn't get clouded beneath the music. However, Dylan doesn't refuse the chance to include a romantic ballad on the LP. 'Boots of Spanish Leather' is a letter-exchanged anecdote of longing and gradual realization. The song is tinted by delicately plucked strings and alternating perspectives that create a gloomy overtone that comes to fruition when the narrator surmises the final fate of his crumbling union across a vast ocean. "I’m sure your mind is a-roamin'; I’m sure your thoughts are not with me but with the country to where you’re goin." The record arrives at an uptick in morale with 'When the Ship Comes In', an affirmative, inspirational testification that the future holds brighter days and that those who engage in tyranny and bigotry will eventually be overcome. Finally, LP centerpiece, 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll', draws inspiration from the murder of an African-American barmaid by the wealthy William Zantzinger. The track directs scrutiny at the murderer for devaluing the life of a woman he deemed "lesser than" and the justice system for (mostly) turning a blind eye. Dylan delivers the verdict, "And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance, William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence." The track is a microcosm of the record's major themes and an unsettling reminder that justice remains imbalanced.
Dylan was just 23 years of age when 'Times' was first pressed, but his incredible perception was decades his senior. The clairvoyance of his prose is even parts astonishing and tragic given that little has changed since his pen first hit the paper. The poetry of these 10 tracks easily sit amongst the scribe's most visceral compositions. The album presents Dylan at perhaps his most uncompromising and forthright, functioning as his final, unabashed protest record. Oddly, the LP is often shunned from the 1960's landmark music rolodex with albums such as 'Highway 61 Revisited', 'Bringing It All Back Home' and even 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan' achieving a higher sense of reverence. Strangely enough, its content makes it a contender for his most topical, underrated and pertinent enterprise, both in 1964 and 2021. Dylan's uncanny ability to find the pulse of the given zeitgeist has never been in doubt, as he's strung together lyrical encapsulations at will for 60 years. Here, he weaves sorrow and hope into a homogeneous, digestible whole the likes of which none could reproduce. The power of 'Times' does not lie in division, but in a belief that human morality will win out. It's a beautiful sentiment and an eternal principle. In some ways, we're still waiting.
"And we’ll shout from the bow your days are numbered
And like Pharoah’s tribe they’ll be drowdned in the tide
and like Goliath, they’ll be conquered."
-When the Ship Comes In
Standout Tracks:
1. The Times They are A-Changin'
2. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
3. When the Ship Comes In
94.4"[+]Reply
"It took me a bit to get into this sound, but this really grew on me. Even though I didn't love it at first, this is undoubtedly one of the prettiest collection of songs I've ever heard."Reply
"Their best album. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. On this one Simon has finally reached his peak as an arranger and composer (maybe not as a lyricist, but not a big problem) and Garfunkel and him sing these songs with pastoral youthful emotion. There's an emotional arc to almost every song, and the...""Their best album. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. On this one Simon has finally reached his peak as an arranger and composer (maybe not as a lyricist, but not a big problem) and Garfunkel and him sing these songs with pastoral youthful emotion. There's an emotional arc to almost every song, and the instrumental pallete is always mysterious but soothing. "Homeward Bound" and "The 59th Street Bridge Song" are pop at its purest and most charming level. Must listen."[+]Reply
"There's a brilliant hook in every track with the most famous one being the one in "Computer Love" thanks to Coldplay. Ironic how an album aiming for something very futuristic ends up sounding this nostalgic. A compliment, not a complaint!"Reply