Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by 
bonafini 
Some observations on this chart:
Since the goal is to build a greatest albums chart, this list will only include music that was composed to be firstly released and/or mainly consumed in the form of an album in the album era, which is not a very easy thing to define by the end of the day. But that means, for example, no "classical" music and no compilations of the "best of" or "rare tracks" kind.
The chart contains only one album per artist for it to display a greater array of musicians and do some kind of overview of what is relevant to me in the history of album music. However, this is a best albums list, not a best artists list: people that I would most definitely include in such a list, like Otis Redding, Kraftwerk or Patti Smith, are not present because I consider none of their albums to be as strong as any of these here.
Leave a comment, please!
- Chart updated: 07/01/2023 17:45
- (Created: 07/17/2013 03:55).
- Chart size: 100 albums.
There are 71 comments for this chart from BestEverAlbums.com members and Top 100 Greatest Music Albums has an average rating of 89 out of 100 (from 103 votes). Please log in or register to leave a comment or assign a rating.
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This chart is currently filtered to only show albums from the 2010s. (Remove this filter)
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When the time arrives in a music aficionado's life to discover SMiLE, he can't help but get lost in its numerous of versions: two 'official' ones and countless bootlegs claiming preposterously but with detailed argumentation to be the most legitimate presentation or reconstruction of what SMiLE 'could have been'. After siding with one or the other, the more fundamental questions arise: does this really exist as an album? Is this only a dispersion of nonsensical fragments glued with the fetiche of its projected 'concept' or is there any 'conceptual' unity to this infinite variety? And then finally: what is a concept album?
The answer, of course, lies within the recordings. Some months before his declaration of surrender, Brian Wilson set high stakes for the project: "I'm composing a teenage symphony to God", he said by a dinner table stuffed with hip dilettantes. This apparent oxymoron is, nevertheless, its 'concept': the full realization of meaning in the work of art through pop language. But, in the implementation of this project, a not-so-hidden truth ripped open to Brian: SMiLE marks the irreversible perception by pop music that its material is nothing but fetichized formulas and fragmented mementos of past music: sound images that are obsessively reassembled and preserved through the recording, its privileged medium. And there is no possible realization of authentic meaning if there persists a dependence on the very limited borders of a musical language mortified by mass culture.
Facing a historical crossroads, Brian responded with two contradictory lines of action. Firstly, summoning mythical cycles to provide a structure for the album. The totalising narrative of the national American mythology would guarantee the narrative coherence of its Americana artifacts. If not, then the further-reaching myth of the four elements and its natural balance would. But this confronted an unprecedented deepening of the fragmentation: through his technique of 'modular recording', minuscule and disparate pieces of recorded sounds (that very often aren't strictly musical) are configured in an ever-changing mosaic that dissolve constantly the narrative unity they are summoned to serve.
A particularly astonishing example of that is 'The Elements: Fire' (or 'Mrs O'Leary's Cow' depending on the version), the track that would stand for the fire element. A confusion of percussion instruments, whistles and the crackles of an actual bucket of tores on fire drown the keyboard and bass lines that spell the notes between a tritone in the chromatic scale in opposite directions moving in a 12-bar-blues, the pop harmonic progression par exellence; after the slip of a whistle, the progression is taken by the siren of a fire truck. It is well known that Mrs O'Leary, the supposed starter of the Great Chicago Fire, was scapegoated to stirr xenophobic sentiments against the Irish that were starting to gain political power in the US, just like other minorities are today. To hate them is easier then to confront the deep antagonisms that structure our societies. In the 'song', this is acted out in the blues progression that insists perversely through a parodic image of destruction, as if the trained ear of the administered society couldn't help hearing its musical cliches even in the sound of a murderous fire and, sticking to them, softening its desperation. The natural image of the elements is disrupted by the very images that come to represent them, helplessly loaded with social meanings.
SMiLE is a machine of self-destructing musical images, and that is its achievement: it is completed by its very in-completion. In doing that, it founded the aesthetic orientation of pop music, that is, its ambivalent nostalgia/resentment of its own material. There is a wisdom to the endless bootlegging around the album: the very dispute around its self-negating concepts is its concept. Its 'legitimate version' will only be heard when the shackles of music imposed by a monopolized culture industry are torn and its mementos are finally heard as at peace with pertaining to the past. Until that day, it will be the inevitable landmark of pop music that it is. [First added to this chart: 10/29/2019]
The answer, of course, lies within the recordings. Some months before his declaration of surrender, Brian Wilson set high stakes for the project: "I'm composing a teenage symphony to God", he said by a dinner table stuffed with hip dilettantes. This apparent oxymoron is, nevertheless, its 'concept': the full realization of meaning in the work of art through pop language. But, in the implementation of this project, a not-so-hidden truth ripped open to Brian: SMiLE marks the irreversible perception by pop music that its material is nothing but fetichized formulas and fragmented mementos of past music: sound images that are obsessively reassembled and preserved through the recording, its privileged medium. And there is no possible realization of authentic meaning if there persists a dependence on the very limited borders of a musical language mortified by mass culture.
Facing a historical crossroads, Brian responded with two contradictory lines of action. Firstly, summoning mythical cycles to provide a structure for the album. The totalising narrative of the national American mythology would guarantee the narrative coherence of its Americana artifacts. If not, then the further-reaching myth of the four elements and its natural balance would. But this confronted an unprecedented deepening of the fragmentation: through his technique of 'modular recording', minuscule and disparate pieces of recorded sounds (that very often aren't strictly musical) are configured in an ever-changing mosaic that dissolve constantly the narrative unity they are summoned to serve.
A particularly astonishing example of that is 'The Elements: Fire' (or 'Mrs O'Leary's Cow' depending on the version), the track that would stand for the fire element. A confusion of percussion instruments, whistles and the crackles of an actual bucket of tores on fire drown the keyboard and bass lines that spell the notes between a tritone in the chromatic scale in opposite directions moving in a 12-bar-blues, the pop harmonic progression par exellence; after the slip of a whistle, the progression is taken by the siren of a fire truck. It is well known that Mrs O'Leary, the supposed starter of the Great Chicago Fire, was scapegoated to stirr xenophobic sentiments against the Irish that were starting to gain political power in the US, just like other minorities are today. To hate them is easier then to confront the deep antagonisms that structure our societies. In the 'song', this is acted out in the blues progression that insists perversely through a parodic image of destruction, as if the trained ear of the administered society couldn't help hearing its musical cliches even in the sound of a murderous fire and, sticking to them, softening its desperation. The natural image of the elements is disrupted by the very images that come to represent them, helplessly loaded with social meanings.
SMiLE is a machine of self-destructing musical images, and that is its achievement: it is completed by its very in-completion. In doing that, it founded the aesthetic orientation of pop music, that is, its ambivalent nostalgia/resentment of its own material. There is a wisdom to the endless bootlegging around the album: the very dispute around its self-negating concepts is its concept. Its 'legitimate version' will only be heard when the shackles of music imposed by a monopolized culture industry are torn and its mementos are finally heard as at peace with pertaining to the past. Until that day, it will be the inevitable landmark of pop music that it is. [First added to this chart: 10/29/2019]
Year of Release:
2011
Appears in:
Rank Score:
6,311
Rank in 2011:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
7448. (=)
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Buy album
- #Sponsored
[First added to this chart: 07/12/2016]
Buy album
- #Sponsored
[First added to this chart: 07/12/2016]
Year of Release:
2015
Appears in:
Rank Score:
37,191
Rank in 2015:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Total albums: 3. Page 1 of 1
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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums composition
| Decade | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
|
|
| 1930s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1940s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1950s | 3 | 3% | |
| 1960s | 11 | 11% | |
| 1970s | 27 | 27% | |
| 1980s | 20 | 20% | |
| 1990s | 17 | 17% | |
| 2000s | 19 | 19% | |
| 2010s | 3 | 3% | |
| 2020s | 0 | 0% |
| Artist | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
 |
|
|
| Chico Science & Nação Zumbi | 1 | 1% | |
| ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead | 1 | 1% | |
| Kate Bush | 1 | 1% | |
| Guided By Voices | 1 | 1% | |
| My Bloody Valentine | 1 | 1% | |
| Billie Holiday | 1 | 1% | |
| Belchior | 1 | 1% | |
| Show all | |||
| Country | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
38 | 38% | |
 |
28 | 28% | |
| |
23 | 23% | |
 |
5 | 5% | |
 |
2 | 2% | |
 |
1 | 1% | |
 |
1 | 1% | |
| Show all | |||
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums chart changes
| Biggest fallers |
|---|
| Down 1 from 96th to 97th Bee Thousand by Guided By Voices |
| Down 1 from 97th to 98th Ten by Pearl Jam |
| Down 1 from 98th to 99th O Ápice by Vzyadoq Moe |
| New entries |
|---|
 Selected Ambient Works 85-92by Aphex Twin |
| Leavers |
|---|
 Nó Na Orelhaby Criolo |
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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums ratings
89/100 (from 103 votes)
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.
Showing latest 5 ratings for this chart. | Show all 103 ratings for this chart.
| Rating | Date updated | Member | Chart ratings | Avg. chart rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
90/100  | 02/28/2024 12:51 |  Tamthebam | | 85/100 |
 95/100 | 11/03/2020 14:41 | BraddlesHendo | | 91/100 |
| 95/100 | 11/03/2020 11:56 | TheKing | | 90/100 |
| 95/100 | 08/09/2020 13:06 |  ssteve | | 92/100 |
| 100/100 | 01/30/2020 20:42 |  DommeDamian | | 90/100 |
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 4% of all charts on BestEverAlbums.com. This chart has a Bayesian average rating of 89.1/100, a mean average of 89.6/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 89.4/100. The standard deviation for this chart is 7.3.
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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums comments
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100/100
From 
flamingyesdept 02/28/2024 10:17
flamingyesdept 02/28/2024 10:17
Fantastic chart, and the correct #1!!
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
100/100
From DommeDamian 11/03/2020 20:42
DommeDamian 11/03/2020 20:42
DDiverse albums, and fun to read. Keep it up
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
90/100
From 
Lastings 10/28/2019 16:44
Lastings 10/28/2019 16:44
a very excellent adn individual chart.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
100/100
From 
ForegroundNoise 08/31/2018 16:57
ForegroundNoise 08/31/2018 16:57
It's amazing how a chart as incredible as this can creep on you out of nowhere. The choices, the write-ups: I adore your taste and your love of music that is clearly evident from this chart, which may well be my favourite from any I've seen on this whole site...
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +3 votes (3 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
75/100
From 
Boltzmann 08/31/2018 12:16
Boltzmann 08/31/2018 12:16
A bit predictable with regards to the non South America picks.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | -1 votes (1 helpful | 2 unhelpful)
100/100
From 
arthurbittencourt 05/23/2017 05:29
arthurbittencourt 05/23/2017 05:29
excelente, amei! ve o que acha da minha? abraço
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (1 helpful | 1 unhelpful)
80/100
From zrommeke 02/22/2017 07:24
Nice chart, but the many Brasilian albums make it quite unknown to me. To discover!
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +3 votes (3 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
80/100
From platus 02/21/2017 17:57
Good taste. Nice chart.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (2 helpful | 1 unhelpful)
90/100
From Lastings 02/21/2017 16:08
Lastings 02/21/2017 16:08
Excellent Chart, as well as excellent and well thought out interpretations or the albums you've chosen.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +4 votes (4 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From 
VitorHugoP 04/13/2016 18:28
VitorHugoP 04/13/2016 18:28
O que você acha de Gabriel, o Pensador?
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
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