Best Pop Albums - Music Diaries - Forums : Best Ever Albums

AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

NOTE: I am aware that various albums on this list are arguably (not strictly) "pop music" but may be a confluence of other genres as well. I am applying a somewhat loose definition of the term, as well as including some albums that don't necessarily originate in the genre in a specific sense, but serve a very similar purpose, and, on the majority, exhibit strong enough pop elements, even if accomplished by other means than the genre is usually known for.

Recommendations welcome. For "My Criteria & Guide For Art" pages, go here: https://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/v...hp?t=15503

Best Hard Rock & Metal Albums: https://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/v...hp?t=20822
Best Best Hip Hop/R & B/Soul/Funk Albums: https://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/v...hp?t=19805
Best Blues/Country/Roots Rock/Americana Albums: https://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/v...hp?t=19841
Best Folk/Singer-Songwriter/Slowcore Albums: https://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/v...hp?t=19838
Greatest Albums of All Time (Rock & Jazz): https://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/v...hp?t=15276

BOLD = Recently added to the list
BOLD + ITALICS = Recently upgraded/downgraded by 0.1 or more

Best Pop Albums

9/10
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel (1998)

8.5/10
The River - Bruce Springsteen (1980)
Original Sin - Pandora's Box (1989)

8/10
Jagged Little Pill - Alanis Morissette (1995)
On the Way Down From Moon Palace - Lisa Germano (1991)
Just For A Day - Slowdive (1991)
World Shut Your Mouth - Julian Cope (1984)
Underwater Moonlight - Soft Boys (1980)
The Lion and the Cobra - Sinead O'Connor (1987)
The Charm of the Highway Strip - The Magnetic Fields (1994)

7.5/10
Happiness - Lisa Germano (1993)
So Tonight That I Might See - Mazzy Star (1993)
Funeral - Arcade Fire (2004)
Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy - Brian Eno (1974)
The ArchAndroid - Janelle Monae (2010)
Slide - Lisa Germano (1998)
Electro-Shock Blues - Eels (1998)
Excerpts From A Love Circus - Lisa Germano (1996)
The Big Heat - Stan Ridgway (1986)
Return To Cookie Mountain - TV On The Radio (2006)
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Kanye West (2010)
Beautiful Freak - Eels (1996)
What's Going On - Marvin Gaye (1971)
Skylarking - XTC (1986)
Rocket to Russia - Ramones (1977)
Prayer For The Halcyon Fear - Tiny Lights (1985)
The College Dropout - Kanye West (2004)
The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses (1989)
Forever Changes - Love (1967)
Mars Audiac Quintet - Stereolab (1994)
White Soul - Green (1989)
Deserter's Songs - Mercury Rev (1998)
Eli And The 13th Confession - Laura Nyro (1968)
Person Pitch - Panda Bear (2007)
Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful - Waitresses (1982)
Bellybutton - Jellyfish (1990)
Something / Anything? - Todd Rundgren (1972)
Landlocked - Witch Hazel (1995)
Song Cycle - Van Dyke Parks (1967)
Whitechocolatespaceegg - Liz Phair (1998)
Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys (1966)
Murmur - R.E.M (1983)
If You're Feeling Sinister - Belle & Sebastian (1996)
They Might Be Giants - They Might Be Giants (1986)
On Avery Island - Neutral Milk Hotel (1996)
Marry Me - St Vincent (2007)
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill - Lauryn Hill (1998)
White Music – XTC (1977)

7/10
Rumours - Fleetwood Mac (1976)
A Wizard, A True Star - Todd Rundgren (1973)
Countdown to Ecstacy - Steely Dan (1973)
Picaresque - Decemberists (2005)
Holiday - The Magnetic Fields (1993)
Purple Rain - Prince (1984)
Bat Out of Hell - Meatloaf (1977)
This Year's Model - Elvis Costello (1978)
Born in the USA - Bruce Springsteen (1980)
The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do - Fiona Apple (2012)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles (1967)
Slanted and Enchanted - Pavement (1992)
Crooked Rain Crooked Rain - Pavement (1993)
The Joshua Tree - U2 (1987)
Low Kick & Hard Bop - Solex (2001)
Damn The Torpedoes - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (1979)
Neon Bible - Arcade Fire (2007)
The Tain - Decemberists (2005) [EP]
The Queen is Dead - The Smiths (1986)
Sign O' The Times - Prince (1987)
Pure Heroine - Lorde (2013)
No Now - Clarence Clarity (2015)
Heartland - Owen Pallett (2010)
Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production of Eggs - Andrew Bird (2005)
Dusk at Cubist Castle - Olivia Tremor Control (1996)
Graceland - Paul Simon (1986)
Castaways and Cutouts - Decemberists (2002)
Ultraviolence - Lana Del Rey (2014)
Hey Babe - Julianna Hatfield (1992)
Younger Than Yesterday - The Byrds (1967)
Smile - The Beach Boys (1967; released in 2011)
Gulag Orkestar - Beirut (2006)
Songs in the Key to Life - Stevie Wonder (1976)
Innervisions - Stevie Wonder (1973)
Noble Beast - Andrew Bird (2009)
Cardinal - Cardinal (1994)
Between The Buttons - The Rolling Stones (1966) [US Version]
Tusk - Fleetwood Mac (1979)
Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon & Garfunkel (1969)
The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society - The Kinks (1968)
Late Registration - Kanye West (2005)
Chris Isaak - Chris Isaak (1987)
Third - Big Star (1978)
The Score - The Fugees (1996)
Green - Green (1986)
Dookie - Green Day (1994)
Thunder, Lightning, Strike - The Go! Team (2004)
Bee Thousand - Guided by Voices (1994)
Armed Forces - Elvis Costello (1978)
Tigermilk - Belle & Sebasitan (1996)
The Smiths - The Smiths (1984)
Pretzel Logic - Steely Dan (1974)
Sylvan Esso - Sylvan Esso (2014)
Teen Dream - Beach House (2010)
Heartbeat City - The Cars (1984)
Ocean Rain - Echo and the Bunnymen (1984)
Radio City - Big Star (1974)
The Notorious Byrd Brothers - The Byrds (1968)
Excitable Boy - Warren Zevon (1978)
Abbey Road - The Beatles (1969)
Channel Orange - Frank Ocean (2012)
Mr. Tambourine Man - The Byrds (1965)
The Guild of Temporal Adventurers - Kendra Smith (1992)
Learning to Crawl - The Pretenders (1984)

NOTE: The 7/10 section is especially incomplete (mainly what I've revisited recently enough to have rated with confidence). The 7.5 section is probably missing some entries as well. Recommendations welcome (I tend to be stricter than most, so just try not to take too much offense if I disagree!).

Last edited by AfterHours on 12/18/2019 17:53; edited 118 times in total

Ashmark

I recently acquired the Neutral Milk Hotel album because it was so highly rated. I gave it a couple listens and enjoyed it but it hasn’t grabbed me yet. I hope one day, I will also want to give it 9/10.

Is there nothing by Bowie that cracks this list? Not even a 7/10. Hmmm, I question that!

TheHutts

Gender: Male

I really enjoy most of the albums on this list, but I'm always a little mystified by why both you and Scaruffi choose The River as Springsteen's best. I think Darkness is more intense, Nebraska has a more singular vision, Wild/Innocent has the most dynamic instrumentation, and Born to Run is a coherent masterpiece. In comparison, I like The River, but it just feels like a clearing house of whatever Springsteen had around at the time, with throwaways, not shaped into a great album like the others.

AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

Ashmark wrote:

I recently acquired the Neutral Milk Hotel album because it was so highly rated. I gave it a couple listens and enjoyed it but it hasn’t grabbed me yet. I hope one day, I will also want to give it 9/10.

Is there nothing by Bowie that cracks this list? Not even a 7/10. Hmmm, I question that!

The only two albums by Bowie that I'd rate 7/10 or higher are Low and Heroes (each 7.5/10), and neither are pop albums. Bowie isn't really a "pop music" artist, except maybe in some cases by the loosest definition of the term. He is primarily Glam and other genre mixtures. I suppose there might be a case for albums such as Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust but these are a bit of a stretch, and neither are 7/10 anyway. Bowie tends to be pretty superficial in my opinion.
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Last edited by AfterHours on 02/16/2018 01:32; edited 1 time in total

AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

TheHutts wrote:

I really enjoy most of the albums on this list, but I'm always a little mystified by why both you and Scaruffi choose The River as Springsteen's best. I think Darkness is more intense, Nebraska has a more singular vision, Wild/Innocent has the most dynamic instrumentation, and Born to Run is a coherent masterpiece. In comparison, I like The River, but it just feels like a clearing house of whatever Springsteen had around at the time, with throwaways, not shaped into a great album like the others.

I would include others (Wild, Born to Run, Born in the USA) if I decide they are "pop" enough (but they probably arent, except perhaps Born in the USA). You'll find "Wild" on my overall list and Born to Run is a 7.1 or 7.2 so falls just short. Born in the USA is probably 7/10.

The River has a pretty staggering variety of emotions, all of them expressed successfully, but much more economically than other works. It is a synthesis of all his preoccupations/his entire career, in very tight highly focused compositional formats, that often feature much more ambiguous tones, sudden turns and swings in emotion than is immediately obvious (maybe even appearing superficial, when its actually the artist enraged and/or disillusioned about his own anthems/ethos propagandized by prior works).

I said the following about it very recently, which might help to further illuminate some of what makes it so compelling:

"Revisited Bruce Springsteen's The River last night. Ever wondered why the hell I (or Scaruffi) rate/rank it so highly?

The River is perhaps the most "mainstream" album I (or Scaruffi) rate/rank above 8/10, and it's caused more than its fair share of head-scratching over the years.

I don't have time to devote to a fully fledged analysis right now, but I do feel the key points to pay attention to when listening are as follows. Assimilated with these in mind (attended to in real-time while listening), it may surprise you just how amazing the experience is.

Notice how the instrumentation and execution of the songs (faster paced songs especially) tends to be walls of granitic sound, vibrant and packed and whole -- with a lot of tonal/melodic/instrumental nuance/inter-weaving elements running through them. The songs tend to keep toppling upon its own prior phrases/verses so that a shape-shifting momentum of vibrant emotional freedom and ecstasy takes place in the expanding forward thrust of the instrumentation. These songs are packed with sound, and the shifts and turns are composed and resolved with an extreme economy and positive formal logic.

That in mind, notice how Springsteen's vocals (even in the faster paced songs) are often shifting between enthusiasm and wragged glory/exhaustion/disillusionment/nostalgia/aching regret/rage. This often adds a gripping juxtaposition and tension between voice and the roving, emphatic texture of the walls of sound backing him.

Further, and perhaps most importantly, this tension creates an amazing textural metaphor between the surface emotions of the music and Springsteen himself, in all the songs. In all the songs, Springsteen's voice sounds like it is inside the wall of sound but also trying to escape it, trying to break free, on the verge but also never getting too far from its musical center to entirely do so. Due to this juxtaposition of emotional/tonal contrasts (slight and large), each emphatic punch or cry or lament of his voice is a metaphor (but also physically in the textural balance itself) of him trying to escape his predicament/environment, which aligns flawlessly to the overall concept and Springsteen's ethos/modus operandi (the rebel spirit, "born to run" etc).

His voice is agreeably in the rhythm and flow of the music, in counterpoint with it, but also emotionally ambiguous, elusive, diametric or with further expressive facet(s) to it -- between yearning, passionate pleas and ferocious, violent urges to escape.

The final three songs mark the end of the road for all the hopeful, energetic paths strewn throughout the work (heretofore viewed from all angles) into a desperate emptiness, a sustained rejection of optimistic youth met by each increasingly lonely fate in succession (Price You Pay, Drive All Night, Wreck on the Highway).

Just some bullet points that might just improve the work by quite a bit for you, if you don't love it already."
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AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

Ashmark wrote:

I recently acquired the Neutral Milk Hotel album because it was so highly rated. I gave it a couple listens and enjoyed it but it hasn’t grabbed me yet. I hope one day, I will also want to give it 9/10.

Is there nothing by Bowie that cracks this list? Not even a 7/10. Hmmm, I question that!

Re: Aeroplane

The entire album is a never ending circle/spiral through time, from its merry-go-round and unified emotional arc, down to the cyclic structures of individual songs, even down to the circular chordal sequences. As a whole, it becomes akin to a single, elongated stream-of-consciousness that is constantly expanding or delving deeper into itself, a series of visions consistently on the verge of spinning out of control.

It is possibly the most haphazardly heart-on-sleeve album of all time, erupting in a whole new level of emotional honesty, conviction and abandon for songs realized primarily in strict pop formats. The singer, Jeff Mangum, is completely uninhibited and lost in the moment, and his backing band is extraordinarily evocative and nearly his equal in spontaneity. The album is performed as if it all just suddenly happened in a burst of miraculous inspiration. Lightning in a bottle that can never be repeated (not even by Mangum himself). Incredibly it doesn't come across as pretentious (which should be impossible considering its content and how it is expressed) because none of it sounds even remotely premeditated, but overwhelmingly inspired in the exact moment of elicitation. This is practically revolutionary for "pop music" which is generally highly contrived and the opposite of such an inspiration and epiphany of expression. It amounts to an anti-thesis or dichotomy upon the genre itself, an expressive force of nature its format is designed to inhibit, a paradigm shift for pop music and an emotional liberation and blueprint for artists ever since.

The album reinvigorates the young Bob Dylan in its folk, evangelical tones and streams-of-consciousness. It reinvigorates the wragged glory and moral odysseys of Neil Young. It reinvigorates the surreal Pop Art of Pearls Before Swine and The Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever and Across the Universe. It reinvigorates the wild, circus atmospheres of Frank Zappa's masterpieces. It reinvigorates the awestruck, characterful vocal elocution and sonority of Stan Ridgway's most expressive works.

It synthesizes all of these, surpassing them into its own inimitable delirium, an incredible outpouring of courageous emotional honesty.

Emotionally the album constantly strikes a dilated paradox between overwhelming depression, sympathy, loss and nostalgia with an awestruck, child-like wonder or ecstacy. Virtually every phrase of voice and instrument holds this juxtaposition to bear in wide-eyed visions and lullabies. Due to this, the result is simultaneously devastating and life-affirming.

Ultimately its emotional expressions are a tremendous suffering of abandonment, in great sympathy and tenderness, from a longing, yearning and needy newborn or child to his dying mother. Its lullabies are the sound (literally, physically) of Mangum being cradled and rocking interminably and inconsolably in the devastation and disbelief at such irreversible loss. Ultimately, it is Mangum, through an astonishing and paralyzing emotional transference, physically and expressively becoming the Anne Frank of her diaries merged unto his own, eliciting a synthesis of his personality through hers in a collision of shock and despair, carrying her dead body against his in monumental scenes of burden and compassion.
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Last edited by AfterHours on 02/16/2018 19:16; edited 6 times in total

Ashmark

Thanks for your extremely evocative reflection on this album. I can see on BEA that is a favourite of many well informed music appreciators and critics. I promise to give it my time, so that I may love it too.

AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

Ashmark wrote:

Thanks for your extremely evocative reflection on this album. I can see on BEA that is a favourite of many well informed music appreciators and critics. I promise to give it my time, so that I may love it too.

You're welcome Smile

Yes, there are much more famous, and more universally accliamed albums, but few (if any) that are as passionately beloved.
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AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

I was kind of shocked to discover last night that Alanis Morrissette's Jagged Little Pill (now equally reviled and beloved the world over; when I was growing up it could do no wrong) is probably some kind of female singer-songwriter masterpiece. It's much more compelling than I remember, with somewhat incongruous, bouncy and flippant arrangements juxtaposing Morrisette's relentlessly modulating, off-balanced vocals that run the gamut of teenage-hood, when life and its problems can seem like an unfair rollercoaster. Where its issues can seem much more dramatic and where hormones and volatile, regretful, embarassing reactions are the norm. When one is growing into their body and adulthood a little too fast for comfort and hasn't acclimated to their feelings and how to temper them with tact. Morrissette's vocals are expressions of all of those feelings, of a teenage girl that has a complete voice but doesn't know how to artfully handle and resolve things yet. Who is so emotionally strewn about what she is going through that, without considering the consequences, she just lets it loose with a spirited aplomb (represented in the arrangements) with all the embarassingly naive explosion of hormones that teenagers often do (represented in the vocals).

I used to find the album obviously accomplished but also partially annoying which made me hesitant towards rating it very high, but now I find it to be a pretty amazing document of the above issues that many people go through in one way or another.
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Ashmark

I agree with your assessment. I don’t listen to it often but I always enjoy it-loud. It might qualify as another “lightning in a bottle” creation, an expression used in reference to In an Aeroplane Over the Sea. I am not sur Alannis reached these heights before or after. Some of its shine is lost because it was overplayed when it came out. It will be in my top 100, but probably second half.