Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by 
babyBlueSedan 
My favorite albums, or "The 100 albums I'd keep if iTunes had a capacity of 100 albums."
The theme of this update, as with the past couple, is upheaval. Every time I update this I claim to be moving new favorite up higher while still stubbornly putting albums I used to love but never listen to anymore near the top. I won't know for sure if I've been more successful this time around until I update this again. But I hope that this current iteration shook things up a bit and added a bit more variety, even if that variety is in the form of albums most people have heard of. I've tried to include as many artists and genres where possible, partially because I want to appear more interesting than I actually am, but in the end this is still very rock and pop oriented. In particular, this iteration makes obvious my current love of plaintive folk/singer-songwriter stuff.
I've also relaxed my artist limits just a bit to highlight the artists I really love, but I still couldn't include everything I wanted because spots are so limited. In some cases I decided what to include based on what I wanted to write about. I recommend checking out my decade charts for more deep cuts.
Also, I appreciate all the kind and generous comments - they're my main motivation for updating this every couple years or so.
- Chart updated: 05/30/2020 02:15
- (Created: 07/31/2013 04:33).
- Chart size: 100 albums.
There are 98 comments for this chart from BestEverAlbums.com members and Top 100 Greatest Music Albums has an average rating of 94 out of 100 (from 149 votes). Please log in or register to leave a comment or assign a rating.
View the complete list of 53,000 charts on BestEverAlbums.com from The Charts page.
This chart is currently filtered to only show albums from the 1960s. (Remove this filter)
Buy album
- #Sponsored
Like walking through a shady back alley, where a well-dressed man who you think is a pimp tries to convince you the pile of blood soaked tissues and needles on the ground is a piece of art
I have no interest in talking about music objectively, as if there's some kind of universal way of looking at different pieces of music that everyone can somehow agree on. Music is completely subjective, which is why I can say things like "The 1975's A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is a better album that Pet Sounds" without losing all of my credibility (just most of it). But let's pretend for a minute that I was hired by a major publication and was told to write a list of the top X hundred albums. I was told I could take my own taste into account a bit but that overall I should write a list that readers would expect; after all, I imagine a lot of the readers of those lists do so as much to confirm their own opinions as they do to find new things to listen to. In this situation, which album would I place at the top of the list? Well, this one of course.
This might be the most important rock album of all time. You know the quote about everyone buying this and starting a band, but the amount of influence this album had on rock is incredible. Does David Bowie create his most experimental work without this album? Does glam rock even happen without it? Does punk happen without it? What about noise rock? These are kind of silly questions; these movements likely would have happened anyway, but I'm sure they would have sounded much different. Punk especially - not only did John Cale work with The Stooges on their debut album, but songs like "I'm Waiting For the Man" are pretty far ahead of a lot of the other garage rock from this era. And like the Beatles before them, I think they took a lot of the avant-garde music that was already around and put it in a package that was a lot easier to digest. "European Son" is a tough listen, but it at least starts as a normal song. "The Black Angel's Death Song," on the other hand, is engaging throughout despite those sharp viola sounds. Of course, this album didn't achieve nearly the success of The Beatles' biggest albums, at least not in popular culture.
But the thing that makes me throw this on my own personal list is its biggest strength: it still sounds fresh today. The amount of music I like from the 50's and 60's is pretty short, and I think it's largely because of the recording quality. Listening to a grainy album from 50 years ago next to an immaculately produced one from the current century is like night and day, and fair or not it's kind of hard to listen to the older stuff once you've heard the newer. But this album? "Sunday Morning" starts with a twinkling sunrise that sounds clear as day. "All Tomorrow's Parties" sounds similarly crisp. And the songwriting! In another blending of the experimental and pop worlds, stuff like "European Son" is thrown next to the aforementioned "Sunday Morning" and other pop tunes like "Femme Fatale" and nothing sounds out of place. "Venus In Furs" sounds decades ahead of its time, and "Heroin," easily the strongest song here, is a transcendent, drugged out odyssey. Listen to the drums on that song - they're so simple but sound great and bring so much to the song. I think there's a lot more to say about this album - how it fit into the culture of the time, the transgression of "Venus in Furs," the nonchalance of "Heroin" - but it's all been written about before. I think what a lot of people miss about this album is that it's not just a relic: it holds up both in sound and writing.
I listened to this back when I first decided to go through a bunch of classic albums, as many new music fans do. A lot of them left me cold on first listen, and I couldn't figure out what was so well loved about them. Many albums I eventually ended up loving - Doolittle, Remain in Light, London Calling, The Queen is Dead, Funeral - all confused me on first listen. This one didn't. From those opening twinkles I was entranced. I couldn't believe this came out when it did. I thought about it for the rest of the day as the chorus of "Run Run Run" was stuck in my head. It would be a while before I learned the broader context and explored the albums it clearly influenced, but the fact that it was so clearly great on first listen, even to me at that time, speaks to how timeless of an album this is. [First added to this chart: 08/04/2013]
I have no interest in talking about music objectively, as if there's some kind of universal way of looking at different pieces of music that everyone can somehow agree on. Music is completely subjective, which is why I can say things like "The 1975's A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is a better album that Pet Sounds" without losing all of my credibility (just most of it). But let's pretend for a minute that I was hired by a major publication and was told to write a list of the top X hundred albums. I was told I could take my own taste into account a bit but that overall I should write a list that readers would expect; after all, I imagine a lot of the readers of those lists do so as much to confirm their own opinions as they do to find new things to listen to. In this situation, which album would I place at the top of the list? Well, this one of course.
This might be the most important rock album of all time. You know the quote about everyone buying this and starting a band, but the amount of influence this album had on rock is incredible. Does David Bowie create his most experimental work without this album? Does glam rock even happen without it? Does punk happen without it? What about noise rock? These are kind of silly questions; these movements likely would have happened anyway, but I'm sure they would have sounded much different. Punk especially - not only did John Cale work with The Stooges on their debut album, but songs like "I'm Waiting For the Man" are pretty far ahead of a lot of the other garage rock from this era. And like the Beatles before them, I think they took a lot of the avant-garde music that was already around and put it in a package that was a lot easier to digest. "European Son" is a tough listen, but it at least starts as a normal song. "The Black Angel's Death Song," on the other hand, is engaging throughout despite those sharp viola sounds. Of course, this album didn't achieve nearly the success of The Beatles' biggest albums, at least not in popular culture.
But the thing that makes me throw this on my own personal list is its biggest strength: it still sounds fresh today. The amount of music I like from the 50's and 60's is pretty short, and I think it's largely because of the recording quality. Listening to a grainy album from 50 years ago next to an immaculately produced one from the current century is like night and day, and fair or not it's kind of hard to listen to the older stuff once you've heard the newer. But this album? "Sunday Morning" starts with a twinkling sunrise that sounds clear as day. "All Tomorrow's Parties" sounds similarly crisp. And the songwriting! In another blending of the experimental and pop worlds, stuff like "European Son" is thrown next to the aforementioned "Sunday Morning" and other pop tunes like "Femme Fatale" and nothing sounds out of place. "Venus In Furs" sounds decades ahead of its time, and "Heroin," easily the strongest song here, is a transcendent, drugged out odyssey. Listen to the drums on that song - they're so simple but sound great and bring so much to the song. I think there's a lot more to say about this album - how it fit into the culture of the time, the transgression of "Venus in Furs," the nonchalance of "Heroin" - but it's all been written about before. I think what a lot of people miss about this album is that it's not just a relic: it holds up both in sound and writing.
I listened to this back when I first decided to go through a bunch of classic albums, as many new music fans do. A lot of them left me cold on first listen, and I couldn't figure out what was so well loved about them. Many albums I eventually ended up loving - Doolittle, Remain in Light, London Calling, The Queen is Dead, Funeral - all confused me on first listen. This one didn't. From those opening twinkles I was entranced. I couldn't believe this came out when it did. I thought about it for the rest of the day as the chorus of "Run Run Run" was stuck in my head. It would be a while before I learned the broader context and explored the albums it clearly influenced, but the fact that it was so clearly great on first listen, even to me at that time, speaks to how timeless of an album this is. [First added to this chart: 08/04/2013]
Year of Release:
1967
Appears in:
Rank Score:
46,003
Rank in 1967:
Rank in 1960s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
350
Buy album
- #Sponsored
Like walking through a park on a sunny day, watching the colors start to blend as you're not sure if you're dreaming or not
Yeah yeah yeah, the Beatles are back on my chart. I removed Revolver during my last update, for a couple reasons. First, I figured this album didn't need my help to get any more attention. I'd rather promote some album with five ratings than a top 10 album of all time. Second, I was kind of sick of the Beatles at that point. After getting a bit obsessed with their history and the stories behind all of their songs back in college I had, with a few exceptions, fallen out of love with a lot of their best songs. But recently I listened to this one again and I had to put it back on because this is one of the best pop albums of all time.
I don't really like reviews where someone takes a criticism of an album from someone else and lists the reasons they disagree with it, but if you'll indulge me for a minute, I'm going to do just that. One of the biggest critics of the Beatles is our old friend Scaruffi; his essay on why the band is overrated has basically become a meme at this point. I haven't read the whole thing, because why would I waste what precious time I have on this earth doing that, but I have skimmed parts of it. My biggest takeaway from it is that Scaruffi likes adventurous songs that do things that no one has done before, and he is disappointed with the Beatles for writing primarily short pop songs. But too often, I think Scaruffi's idea of "adventurous" or "new" just means "long." Why else would he praise The Doors' "Light My Fire," which is an overlong, meandering organ solo in the middle of a pretty by-the-numbers pop song? Yes, the Beatles wrote short songs. And they wrote pop songs. But I would argue that it's harder to write a short, perfect pop song than the kind of free-improvisational mess that appears on a Red Crayola album. It's at this point that I acknowledge that Scaruffi and I want different things out of music, so I'll leave my problems with his take at that. But on that note: pretty much all of these songs are perfect pop songs, which is incredible.
Another thing critics of the band often mention is that though they're famous for experimenting with drugs and writing songs like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," the band's music is much more pop than it is psychedelia. But again, I'd argue that their incorporation of psychedelia into pop music is just as impressive as longer, chaotic purely psychedelic songs. The trippy guitar on "I'm Only Sleeping" is fairly disorienting, even the middle of an otherwise fairly straightfoward Beatles tune. The lyrics of "She Said She Said" are appropriately claustrophobic, and of course the closer, "Tomorrow Never Knows," is the most creative of the bunch and one of the best songs on the album. If nothing else, even if the Beatles didn't invent psychedelic music (they didn't) they can perhaps be credited as bringing it to the masses in a tighter, but not really watered down, way. That's not a reason to praise this album per se, but credit where credit's due. Even the more traditional songs here are great though. "Eleanor Rigby" is one of the bands best and finds them performing a song where none of the band members actually touch an instrument. "Got to Get You Into My Life" is an ode to marijuana with a great horn part. And lastly, there's the band's best song of all: "For No One." The starkness of the song, combined with that beautiful French horn and dark (but admittedly a little melodramatic lyrics) makes this tower over the rest of the bunch. I could probably write a bizarre, 20 minute long free rock freakout that sounds like nothing anyone has ever done before without much training or thought, and it would be terrible. It would take me years to write a song as complete as "For No One."
Of course, this album does have one of the worst Beatles songs of all on it, one that many say tarnishes the rest of the album. To which I say: yes, "Doctor Robert" is bad, but it's not bad enough to ruin 13 other excellent tracks. [First added to this chart: 08/04/2013]
Yeah yeah yeah, the Beatles are back on my chart. I removed Revolver during my last update, for a couple reasons. First, I figured this album didn't need my help to get any more attention. I'd rather promote some album with five ratings than a top 10 album of all time. Second, I was kind of sick of the Beatles at that point. After getting a bit obsessed with their history and the stories behind all of their songs back in college I had, with a few exceptions, fallen out of love with a lot of their best songs. But recently I listened to this one again and I had to put it back on because this is one of the best pop albums of all time.
I don't really like reviews where someone takes a criticism of an album from someone else and lists the reasons they disagree with it, but if you'll indulge me for a minute, I'm going to do just that. One of the biggest critics of the Beatles is our old friend Scaruffi; his essay on why the band is overrated has basically become a meme at this point. I haven't read the whole thing, because why would I waste what precious time I have on this earth doing that, but I have skimmed parts of it. My biggest takeaway from it is that Scaruffi likes adventurous songs that do things that no one has done before, and he is disappointed with the Beatles for writing primarily short pop songs. But too often, I think Scaruffi's idea of "adventurous" or "new" just means "long." Why else would he praise The Doors' "Light My Fire," which is an overlong, meandering organ solo in the middle of a pretty by-the-numbers pop song? Yes, the Beatles wrote short songs. And they wrote pop songs. But I would argue that it's harder to write a short, perfect pop song than the kind of free-improvisational mess that appears on a Red Crayola album. It's at this point that I acknowledge that Scaruffi and I want different things out of music, so I'll leave my problems with his take at that. But on that note: pretty much all of these songs are perfect pop songs, which is incredible.
Another thing critics of the band often mention is that though they're famous for experimenting with drugs and writing songs like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," the band's music is much more pop than it is psychedelia. But again, I'd argue that their incorporation of psychedelia into pop music is just as impressive as longer, chaotic purely psychedelic songs. The trippy guitar on "I'm Only Sleeping" is fairly disorienting, even the middle of an otherwise fairly straightfoward Beatles tune. The lyrics of "She Said She Said" are appropriately claustrophobic, and of course the closer, "Tomorrow Never Knows," is the most creative of the bunch and one of the best songs on the album. If nothing else, even if the Beatles didn't invent psychedelic music (they didn't) they can perhaps be credited as bringing it to the masses in a tighter, but not really watered down, way. That's not a reason to praise this album per se, but credit where credit's due. Even the more traditional songs here are great though. "Eleanor Rigby" is one of the bands best and finds them performing a song where none of the band members actually touch an instrument. "Got to Get You Into My Life" is an ode to marijuana with a great horn part. And lastly, there's the band's best song of all: "For No One." The starkness of the song, combined with that beautiful French horn and dark (but admittedly a little melodramatic lyrics) makes this tower over the rest of the bunch. I could probably write a bizarre, 20 minute long free rock freakout that sounds like nothing anyone has ever done before without much training or thought, and it would be terrible. It would take me years to write a song as complete as "For No One."
Of course, this album does have one of the worst Beatles songs of all on it, one that many say tarnishes the rest of the album. To which I say: yes, "Doctor Robert" is bad, but it's not bad enough to ruin 13 other excellent tracks. [First added to this chart: 08/04/2013]
Year of Release:
1966
Appears in:
Rank Score:
56,920
Rank in 1966:
Rank in 1960s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album
- #Sponsored
Like walking through an apocalypse that only you realize is happening
There are a lot of albums that capture what was happening in America in the 60s, and though I'm too young for this opinion to be at all valid, I'd say this album captures it the best. Lots of 60s "counterculture" albums paint a picture of love and peace and new found independence, but that hardly captures what the world was like in the 60s. The Cold War was still ongoing, and though opposition to the Vietnam War was captured in a lot of protest songs, the central theme of a lot of these songs can be described as "war is bad". As great of a lyricist as Dylan was/is, it was hard to get scared by his songs - they didn't truly communicate the fear of dying in a war. But this album paints a pretty terrifying picture of war, because it's an upbeat entertaining album that one can listen to without hearing the horrors underneath.
The Red Telephone, the album's best song, starts off with the line "Sitting on a hill side, watching all the people die". But the song itself is actually a pretty fun romp, with overly-accentuated rhymes ("I believe in ma-a-GIC, why because it is. so. QUICK") and interesting layered voices (like where three different voices say three different colors all at once). In fact, you could get to the end of the song and think it was a happy song, until you get to the "they're locking them up today, they're throwing away the key, I wonder who it will be tomorrow you or me" repeated outro. But even this is done in a jokingly cheerful way, and it isn't to the end that the song gets truly haunting when a new voice says "all of God's children gotta have their freedom". Also the song is named after the telephone the White House used to communicate with the Kremlin during the cold war.
But musically, this album is a blast. There's lots of varied instruments, memorable choruses, and a horn solo on Maybe The People... that just consists of the same note over and over. There are even fun lyrics! ("Oh the snot has caked against my pants"*) But underneath, this is a dark album. Songs about being alone, life going on unchanging forever, unsettling song titles like "The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This", and a song called Old Man about an old man. Even the title is haunting when you think about it.
*upon further thought this was a bad choice of "legitimately cheerful", since the next lines are "There's a bluebird sitting on a branch / I guess I'll get my pistol / I have it in my hand / Because he's on my land" [First added to this chart: 07/13/2014]
There are a lot of albums that capture what was happening in America in the 60s, and though I'm too young for this opinion to be at all valid, I'd say this album captures it the best. Lots of 60s "counterculture" albums paint a picture of love and peace and new found independence, but that hardly captures what the world was like in the 60s. The Cold War was still ongoing, and though opposition to the Vietnam War was captured in a lot of protest songs, the central theme of a lot of these songs can be described as "war is bad". As great of a lyricist as Dylan was/is, it was hard to get scared by his songs - they didn't truly communicate the fear of dying in a war. But this album paints a pretty terrifying picture of war, because it's an upbeat entertaining album that one can listen to without hearing the horrors underneath.
The Red Telephone, the album's best song, starts off with the line "Sitting on a hill side, watching all the people die". But the song itself is actually a pretty fun romp, with overly-accentuated rhymes ("I believe in ma-a-GIC, why because it is. so. QUICK") and interesting layered voices (like where three different voices say three different colors all at once). In fact, you could get to the end of the song and think it was a happy song, until you get to the "they're locking them up today, they're throwing away the key, I wonder who it will be tomorrow you or me" repeated outro. But even this is done in a jokingly cheerful way, and it isn't to the end that the song gets truly haunting when a new voice says "all of God's children gotta have their freedom". Also the song is named after the telephone the White House used to communicate with the Kremlin during the cold war.
But musically, this album is a blast. There's lots of varied instruments, memorable choruses, and a horn solo on Maybe The People... that just consists of the same note over and over. There are even fun lyrics! ("Oh the snot has caked against my pants"*) But underneath, this is a dark album. Songs about being alone, life going on unchanging forever, unsettling song titles like "The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This", and a song called Old Man about an old man. Even the title is haunting when you think about it.
*upon further thought this was a bad choice of "legitimately cheerful", since the next lines are "There's a bluebird sitting on a branch / I guess I'll get my pistol / I have it in my hand / Because he's on my land" [First added to this chart: 07/13/2014]
Year of Release:
1967
Appears in:
Rank Score:
17,128
Rank in 1967:
Rank in 1960s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album
- #Sponsored
Like walking into a religious ceremony, getting high off the incense, and meeting God
I don't like jazz. I don't mean that in a disdainful "jazz is meandering and artsy" way. I mean it in a sheepish "I've never been able to appreciate what jazz has to offer" way. Outside of learning sheet music so I could play the piano as a kid, I have no musical training or knowledge. I know nothing about music theory; I evaluate music purely on the way it makes me feel with no regard to how impressive or novel anything is. As such, a lot of classic jazz albums sound pleasant but make me feel almost nothing. People say great things about Kind of Blue, but I hear nothing interesting about it. It's forty minutes of elevator music. "It's about the notes they're not playing" they say. Well, then they should play those notes so I know what I'm missing.
Pharoah Sanders plays an awful lot of notes on this album. He starts right out of the gate, with some loud blasts from his saxophone. And it really doesn't let up much until the end of the album's centerpiece "The Creator Has a Master Plan." There are a few really chaotic portions, but the majority of it is fairly melodic, and it's all incredibly exhilarating. The first time I listened to this I was about six minutes in when I realized it was the best jazz album I had ever heard. And I realized that one of my problems with jazz was that there just wasn't enough going on. Or rather, what I thought jazz was didn't have a lot going on. I didn't realize the possibilities that the genre could have, but this album made it all make sense. The sense of improvisation and freedom. Of never knowing where a song will go next. And a sense of real passion, of meaning. I know jazz was an important genre. It gave African Americans a way to express themselves and was a major contribution to American culture from a group of people who were, and still are, treated unfairly. It's a genre of innovation, fearlessness, and defiance. But I had just never heard that in the genre before. Jazz reminded me of stuffy hotel lobbies, not protests. And while this isn't a protest album - it's a worship album obviously - it sure as hell has the boldness and fearlessness that I had been looking for in the genre. And thankfully it led me to discover other similar forms of jazz, from Alice Coltrane (who was closely associated with Sanders) to Sons of Kemet, whose recent album was the jazz protest album I was looking for. So in a way this was a gateway for me. But it's also the standard bearer, the album I compare all other jazz albums I hear to.
Before I finish, I want to talk about "Colors" for a few minutes. I feel like "Colors" doesn't get its due. And I understand why: when you follow up a 30+ minute, two sides of an album spanning masterpiece you're bound to be overlooked by comparison. It's like that final scene in Psycho where some rando explains the plot, or that live track tacked on to the end of Dopesmoker that I never listen to. I get it. But it's still a beautiful song that includes a lot of the things that make the album's centerpiece great. And every great masterpiece needs a way to help you cool down. In that way "Colors" is the feeling of going on a ten mile run and spending the next five minutes catching your breath and considering your accomplishment. It's watching your favorite team make a comeback and spending the rest of the night basking in the victory. It's not the main attraction, but it's a way to hold onto that feeling for just a bit longer.
I don't like jazz. I don't mean that in a disdainful "jazz is meandering and artsy" way. I mean it in a sheepish "I've never been able to appreciate what jazz has to offer" way. Outside of learning sheet music so I could play the piano as a kid, I have no musical training or knowledge. I know nothing about music theory; I evaluate music purely on the way it makes me feel with no regard to how impressive or novel anything is. As such, a lot of classic jazz albums sound pleasant but make me feel almost nothing. People say great things about Kind of Blue, but I hear nothing interesting about it. It's forty minutes of elevator music. "It's about the notes they're not playing" they say. Well, then they should play those notes so I know what I'm missing.
Pharoah Sanders plays an awful lot of notes on this album. He starts right out of the gate, with some loud blasts from his saxophone. And it really doesn't let up much until the end of the album's centerpiece "The Creator Has a Master Plan." There are a few really chaotic portions, but the majority of it is fairly melodic, and it's all incredibly exhilarating. The first time I listened to this I was about six minutes in when I realized it was the best jazz album I had ever heard. And I realized that one of my problems with jazz was that there just wasn't enough going on. Or rather, what I thought jazz was didn't have a lot going on. I didn't realize the possibilities that the genre could have, but this album made it all make sense. The sense of improvisation and freedom. Of never knowing where a song will go next. And a sense of real passion, of meaning. I know jazz was an important genre. It gave African Americans a way to express themselves and was a major contribution to American culture from a group of people who were, and still are, treated unfairly. It's a genre of innovation, fearlessness, and defiance. But I had just never heard that in the genre before. Jazz reminded me of stuffy hotel lobbies, not protests. And while this isn't a protest album - it's a worship album obviously - it sure as hell has the boldness and fearlessness that I had been looking for in the genre. And thankfully it led me to discover other similar forms of jazz, from Alice Coltrane (who was closely associated with Sanders) to Sons of Kemet, whose recent album was the jazz protest album I was looking for. So in a way this was a gateway for me. But it's also the standard bearer, the album I compare all other jazz albums I hear to.
Before I finish, I want to talk about "Colors" for a few minutes. I feel like "Colors" doesn't get its due. And I understand why: when you follow up a 30+ minute, two sides of an album spanning masterpiece you're bound to be overlooked by comparison. It's like that final scene in Psycho where some rando explains the plot, or that live track tacked on to the end of Dopesmoker that I never listen to. I get it. But it's still a beautiful song that includes a lot of the things that make the album's centerpiece great. And every great masterpiece needs a way to help you cool down. In that way "Colors" is the feeling of going on a ten mile run and spending the next five minutes catching your breath and considering your accomplishment. It's watching your favorite team make a comeback and spending the rest of the night basking in the victory. It's not the main attraction, but it's a way to hold onto that feeling for just a bit longer.
Year of Release:
1969
Appears in:
Rank Score:
2,674
Rank in 1969:
Rank in 1960s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Total albums: 4. Page 1 of 1
Don't agree with this chart? Create your own from the My Charts page!
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums composition
| Decade | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
|
|
| 1930s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1940s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1950s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1960s | 4 | 4% | |
| 1970s | 9 | 9% | |
| 1980s | 8 | 8% | |
| 1990s | 23 | 23% | |
| 2000s | 28 | 28% | |
| 2010s | 28 | 28% | |
| 2020s | 0 | 0% |
| Artist | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
 |
|
|
| Modest Mouse | 3 | 3% | |
| Songs: Ohia | 2 | 2% | |
| Sufjan Stevens | 2 | 2% | |
| Kendrick Lamar | 2 | 2% | |
| Kanye West | 2 | 2% | |
| Neil Young | 1 | 1% | |
| The Beatles | 1 | 1% | |
| Show all | |||
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums chart changes
| Biggest climbers |
|---|
| Up 44 from 79th to 35th E•MO•TION by Carly Rae Jepsen |
| Up 35 from 45th to 10th Songs About Leaving by Carissa's Wierd |
| Up 29 from 76th to 47th The Glow Pt. 2 by The Microphones |
| Biggest fallers |
|---|
| Down 32 from 57th to 89th Dig Me Out by Sleater-Kinney |
| Down 29 from 26th to 55th The Suburbs by Arcade Fire |
| Down 29 from 52nd to 81st Crack The Skye by Mastodon |
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums similar charts
- Favorite Album Covers by babyBlueSedan (2018)
- Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s by babyBlueSedan (2021)
- Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010s by babyBlueSedan (2021)
- Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by bkogz (2021)
- Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by blackflag29 (2019)
- Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by
Mattdup279 (2020) - Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by
pjohnsongolf (2023) - Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s by babyBlueSedan (2021)
- Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by gravityrider999 (2019)
- BEA Forum Regulars' Top 100 (2015) by
HigherThanTheSun (2015)
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums similarity to your chart(s)
Not a member? Registering is quick, easy and FREE!
Why register?
Join a passionate community of over 50,000 music fans.- Create & share your own charts.
- Have your say in the overall rankings.
- Post comments in the forums and vote on polls.
- Comment on or rate any album, artist, track or chart.
- Discover new music & improve your music collection.
- Customise the overall chart using a variety of different filters & metrics.
- Create a wishlist of albums.
- Help maintain the BEA database.
- Earn member points and gain access to increasing levels of functionality!
- ... And lots more!
Register now - it only takes a moment!
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums ratings
94/100 (from 149 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 149 ratings for this chart.
| Rating | Date updated | Member | Chart ratings | Avg. chart rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
90/100  | 01/16/2023 22:04 | Johnnyo | | 80/100 |
90/100 | 05/21/2022 09:11 |  Timestarter | | 90/100 |
 100/100 | 09/11/2021 15:03 |  AvalancheGrips | | 89/100 |
95/100 | 08/31/2021 21:02 | leniad | | 85/100 |
100/100 | 04/28/2021 09:45 |  DriftingOrpheus | | 91/100 |
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 93.6/100, a mean average of 93.5/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 94.1/100. The standard deviation for this chart is 7.6.
Please log in or register if you want to be able to leave a rating
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums favourites
Showing latest 20 members who have added this chart as a favourite | Show all 43 members
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums comments
Showing latest 10 comments | Show all 98 comments |
Most Helpful First | Newest First | Maximum Rated First |
Longest Comments First
(Only showing comments with -2 votes or higher. You can alter this threshold from your profile page. Manage Profile)
90/100
From Johnnyo 01/16/2023 22:05
Great chart and the work that has gone into each entry. Wow! Brilliant stuff
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
95/100
From leniad 08/31/2021 21:02
good writing and good taste
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From weyesgroove 09/29/2020 16:32
cool chart man. love the descriptions.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
100/100
From 
Keatownrodriguez 10/28/2019 21:19
Keatownrodriguez 10/28/2019 21:19
Any chart with this much time put into it is so cool to me
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
95/100
From pctrooper 10/04/2019 19:23
These notes are so detailed and helpful for advocating your choices. You must really know how to listen to music and listen to it hard. Great albums, too.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
100/100
From eharrell 07/24/2019 00:02
Best Chart ever
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
100/100
From tk421ucopy 07/23/2019 19:24
incredible. you have a different taste in music, but wow these descriptions are prime
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
100/100
From 
DommeDamian 07/23/2019 12:00
DommeDamian 07/23/2019 12:00
Is there a limit of how much inspiration, this chart can give?
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
100/100
From xXhermitXx 10/18/2018 04:05
Holy crap what a chart, have a bunch in common with me and a whole list of new ones to check out, i also loved your descriptions.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +2 votes (2 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
100/100
From 
jdenny2018 10/18/2018 01:19
jdenny2018 10/18/2018 01:19
This is one of the most amazing things I've ever read
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +2 votes (2 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Please log in or register if you want to be able to add a comment
Your feedback for Top 100 Greatest Music Albums
Let us know what you think of this chart by adding a comment or assigning a rating below!
If you enjoy our site, please consider supporting us by sparing a few seconds to disable your ad blocker.
A lot of hard work happens in the background to keep BEA running, and it's especially difficult to do this when we can't pay our hosting fees :(
We work very hard to ensure our site is as fast (and FREE!) as possible, and we respect your privacy.
A lot of hard work happens in the background to keep BEA running, and it's especially difficult to do this when we can't pay our hosting fees :(
We work very hard to ensure our site is as fast (and FREE!) as possible, and we respect your privacy.