Top 100 Greatest Music Albums
by 
buzzdainer 
There are so many ways to make a "100 Greatest Albums" list. What do we mean, after all, by "greatest"? Do we mean most important? Most popular? Most influential? I'd end up with very different lists for each of those questions. What I've done is select the albums that are most meaningful to me personally, the ones I keep wanting to hear time and time again. These are the albums that have fed my soul in some way, often riding in the car or spacing out on my bed. My tastes lean toward Americana, but you'll see multiple genres represented here. In general, I prefer sincerity over sarcasm, earnestness over cynicism, sentiment over cleverness, and subtlety over bombast (though I'm sure you'll see exceptions). I've included no more than one album by any primary artist, which is an accurate reflection of my tastes: I like to listen to many different artists as opposed to concentrating on only a few. That's the college DJ in me coming out, I suppose. I invite your feedback and (especially) your music recommendations. Enjoy!
As difficult as it is to rank albums, it's probably even more difficult to rate other people's charts. Really, it all comes down to taste, which is subjective, or at least a product of our own individual listening experiences, preferences, biases, phobias, and desires. If you like the Cramps and I don't, who's to say who's correct? As Public Image Ltd. put it so many years ago, "I could be right; I could be wrong." Originally I tried to evaluate the quality of the albums on user charts, but I have learned that doing so was basically impossible. Now it seems to me that charts that are lovingly created, and with a sense of some depth and breadth of knowledge, are, by definition, good. I don't use my ratings and comments to try to police other people's tastes, but instead to seek common ground and spark conversation.
- Chart updated: 01/01/2025 18:45
- (Created: 09/24/2013 01:36).
- Chart size: 100 albums.
There are 126 comments for this chart from BestEverAlbums.com members and Top 100 Greatest Music Albums has an average rating of 92 out of 100 (from 118 votes). Please log in or create an account to leave a comment or assign a rating.
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In the spring of 1994, a group of friends and I followed Uncle Tupelo around New England on what turned out to be their final tour, in support of this outstanding album. They were playing small venues then; one friend from that tour recently reminded me, for instance, of Club Babyhead, a bizarre venue in Providence, Rhode Island, that had on its men's room wall a mural of some sort of pseudo-psychedelic imagery involving all manner of demonic, disturbing, devilish-looking eyes. But I suppose that's part of the fun of the small venue circuit. By the second show, the band recognized us, gave us comp tickets, and invited us to join them on their tour bus to play Sega hockey with them after the shows. We were treated like family. Every time I hear this terrific album, the crowning achievement of the alt-country genre, I'm grateful to have shared a few moments of the great musical odyssey that was Uncle Tupelo, before Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar went their separate ways to form Wilco and Son Volt, respectively. "Chickamauga" is a searing rocker that showcases Jay Farrar's talents as songwriter and lead guitarist, and is probably the most thoroughly self-aware band breakup song that I've ever heard.
[First added to this chart: 09/25/2013]
Year of Release:
1993
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Rank Score:
688
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Recently I was part of a conversation with some friends about the career trajectory of Buffalo Tom. Among my friends in college, it was undisputed conventional wisdom at the time that Buffalo Tom's first two albums, their self-titled debut and Birdbrain, are alternative-rock classics. The album where we began to split is Let Me Come Over. Some missed the raw, imperfect production of the first two albums, whereas others liked the slicker production of the new album. By the time Big Red Letter Day came out, most of my friends had moved on, rolling their eyes at the band's "selling out." I have always been in the camp that thinks Let Me Come Over is the band's high point: a loud, guitar-driven, three-chord rock album with some surprisingly tender moments layered into the album's overall arc. For me the clean production is a sign of the band's increasing maturity and development, and I for one welcome the change from the band's fuzzier early sound. Any discussion about this album has to begin with the driving rocker "Velvet Roof," which was about as close to a hit single Buffalo Tom ever came. A great, emotional statement from one of the best bands of the Northampton scene of the early nineties.
[First added to this chart: 12/14/2018]
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My favorite album by Josh Ritter, the artist I've listened to more than any other over the past fifteen years or so, who writes meticulously crafted lyrics within his relatively traditional, organ- and guitar-centric, Dylan-inspired folk Americana. These songs evoke beautifully the rolling agricultural landscapes of Ritter's native western Idaho, a place I first visited in 1997 when I helped my sister move from Boulder, Colorado, to Moscow, Idaho (Ritter's hometown), to start graduate school. Hello Starling is chock full of stories and mythologies unique to Ritter's tunnel-blasting, lentil-growing, West-winning oeuvre. The romantic "Kathleen" is the highlight here, with one of the all-time greatest musical pickup lines: "All the other girls here are stars; you are the Northern Lights."
[First added to this chart: 04/28/2015]
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The Silver Gymnasium is a criminally underrated record, one that gets overshadowed when we talk about Okkervil River because they're recorded so many great albums in such a short time. I understand, though, that not all listeners will identify with it as much as I do. These are Will Sheff's stories of growing up in a small New England town, an experience that resonates for me, having grown up in the next state over. The stories are unsettling, with hints of violence and darkness always lurking just around the corner, as in these lyrics from "Down Down the Deep River": "We lie awake at night in a tent and I say / Tell me about your uncle and his friend / Because they seem like very bad men / Well we'll want to keep away from them." Haunting. This feels like a thematic step toward a Will Sheff solo album, although the sound of the band as a whole has never sounded more full.
[First added to this chart: 09/25/2013]
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This album is the loud, swampy, in-your-face high-water mark for great Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers. Unlike their spiritual forebears Lynyrd Skynyrd, who have at times been naïve and reactionary in their uncritical depiction of white Southern pride, Drive-By Truckers have always understood the underlying irony of Faulknerian Southernness, which principal songwriter Patterson Hood has elsewhere called "the duality of the Southern thing." I'm not even sure that the best track here is one of Hood's, though; that honor has to go to Jason Isbell's brutal, whiskey-drenched ballad "Goddamn Lonely Love," with its achingly desperate chorus: "I'll take two of what you're having / And I'll take all of what you've got / To kill this goddamn lonely, goddamn lonely love."
[First added to this chart: 03/14/2015]
Year of Release:
2004
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Rank Score:
795
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I have approached few albums in my lifetime with as much anticipation as I did this one when it was first released in 1995. At the time I was fully convinced that Jay Farrar was the real talent behind Uncle Tupelo, so when they broke up it was Farrar's work, rather than Jeff Tweedy's, that I most wanted to hear. This was Farrar's first album with Son Volt coming off the last, and greatest, Uncle Tupelo album, Anodyne. So when it came out I persuaded the woman I was seeing at the time to drive with me into Portland, Maine, to my favorite independent record store to buy it, and we listened to it in the car on the way back to Ferry Beach. I loved it immediately, of course. "Windfall" is one of those songs that, upon first listening, sounded to me like something I'd known and loved all my life, with its timeworn, world-weary wisdom: "May wind take your troubles away / Both feet on the floor, two hands on the wheel / May the wind take your troubles away."
[First added to this chart: 03/14/2015]
Year of Release:
1995
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Rank Score:
791
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This album brings together rock and dance music in a way that's more successful than any other album I can think of. I love the club freakouts in "Get Innocuous" and "North American Scum," but then there's also the incredible tenderness of "All My Friends" and "Someone Great." James Murphy brings these disparate styles together better than anyone, perhaps because he seems oblivious of, or indifference to, distinctions between what constitutes "pop" and "indie," respectively. All that matters to him are sounds that work beautifully, and he brings it all together with real instrumentation and analog production that feel fresh, immediate, and spacious.
[First added to this chart: 02/10/2016]
Year of Release:
2007
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Rank Score:
11,295
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When I was living in Korea back in 1997, my sister mailed me a cassette tape of this album. It was one of three tapes I had with me at the time (for some reason I didn't have the presence of mind to bring more music with me), and I wore the thing out. The title track is one of the sweetest love songs I've ever heard, and while it's probably overplayed, it still moves me every time. It reminds me sense of kinship that I always experience when I'm in the wilderness, and the profound longing I feel when I hear the words, "You belong with your love on your arm."
[First added to this chart: 09/25/2013]
Year of Release:
1994
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Rank Score:
1,766
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This is the album that lifted Jason Isbell to the summit of Americana's songwriting mountain, the one that established him as the finest craftsman working today at his particular art. It's no coincidence that this was the first album he recorded after quitting drinking. While he wrote a number of terrific songs while still suffering from the ravages of alcoholism--he was a notoriously mean drunk, so much that his bandmates in Drive-By Truckers, no saints themselves, kicked him out of the band for his own good--the songs on this album have an emotional clarity, and raw honesty, that make them unlike anything he'd done previously. These are songs of heartache and addiction, but also profound redemption and gratitude. Isbell's singing has never been stronger, too, as evidenced by the powerful and fantastic opener, "Cover Me Up." I always get a lump in my throat when he sings, "In days when we raged / We flew off the page / Such damage was done / But I made it through / To somebody new / I was meant for someone."
[First added to this chart: 03/07/2015]
Year of Release:
2013
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Rank Score:
1,521
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Back when I lived in Reno, I played in a folk rock band. We had some original songs, but two-thirds of our set list was covers. Of those, I'd say a third of them were Gillian Welch songs. That was never our intention, but her songs are so good, so jammable, so well crafted and well written, so ready for reinterpretation, that we couldn't resist adding more. Our favorite was the title track from this album--a slow burner, mesmerizing, mysterious. Really, that description fits every song on this wonderful album.
[First added to this chart: 03/17/2016]
Year of Release:
2001
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1,288
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Total albums: 100. Page 1 of 10
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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums composition
| Decade | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1930s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1940s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1950s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1960s | 4 | 4% | |
| 1970s | 14 | 14% | |
| 1980s | 16 | 16% | |
| 1990s | 19 | 19% | |
| 2000s | 17 | 17% | |
| 2010s | 22 | 22% | |
| 2020s | 8 | 8% |
| Artist | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|||
| James McMurtry | 1 | 1% | |
| Lykke Li | 1 | 1% | |
| The Velvet Underground | 1 | 1% | |
| LCD Soundsystem | 1 | 1% | |
| Bob Mould | 1 | 1% | |
| Toots & The Maytals | 1 | 1% | |
| U2 | 1 | 1% | |
| Show all | |||
| Country | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|||
| |
77 | 77% | |
 |
10 | 10% | |
 |
3 | 3% | |
 |
2 | 2% | |
 |
2 | 2% | |
 |
2 | 2% | |
 |
2 | 2% | |
| Show all | |||
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums chart changes
| Biggest fallers |
|---|
Down 1 from 82nd to 83rd |
Down 1 from 83rd to 84th |
Down 1 from 84th to 85th |
| New entries |
|---|
| Leavers |
|---|
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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums ratings
Average Rating = (n ÷ (n + m)) × av + (m ÷ (n + m)) × AVwhere:
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).
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Showing latest 3 ratings for this chart. | Show all 118 ratings for this chart.
| Rating | Date updated | Member | Chart ratings | Avg. chart rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ! | 01/25/2025 14:17 |  SomethingSpecial | 1,090 | 86/100 |
| ! | 01/02/2025 00:35 | Exist-en-ciel | 166 | 97/100 |
| ! | 09/19/2024 12:41 |  LedZep | 1,099 | 84/100 |
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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).
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This chart is rated in the top 1% of all charts on BestEverAlbums.com. This chart has a Bayesian average rating of 92.1/100, a mean average of 91.3/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 92.6/100. The standard deviation for this chart is 11.9.
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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums forum mentions
This chart has been referenced 6 times on the forums, Explore the wider forum discussion to see what members have said about it.
From 
BestEverAlbums 08/17/2025 08:00 in Chart of the day (#5043): By buzzdainer
BestEverAlbums 08/17/2025 08:00 in Chart of the day (#5043): By buzzdainer“Today's chart of the day Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by buzzdainer () 1. Anodyne by Uncle Tupelo (1993) 2. Let Me Come Over by Buffalo Tom (1992) 3. Hello Starling by Josh Ritter (2003) 4. The Silver Gymnasium by Okkervil River (2013) 5. The Dirty South by Drive-By Truckers (2004) 6. Trace by Son…”
View forum post →From BestEverAlbums 07/05/2022 08:00 in Chart of the day (#3906): By buzzdainer
BestEverAlbums 07/05/2022 08:00 in Chart of the day (#3906): By buzzdainer“Today's chart of the day Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by buzzdainer () 1. Anodyne by Uncle Tupelo (1993) 2. Let Me Come Over by Buffalo Tom (1992) 3. Hello Starling by Josh Ritter (2003) 4. The Silver Gymnasium by Okkervil River (2013) 5. The Dirty South by Drive-By Truckers (2004) 6. Trace by Son…”
View forum post →From BestEverAlbums 04/10/2021 08:00 in Chart of the day (#3455): By buzzdainer
BestEverAlbums 04/10/2021 08:00 in Chart of the day (#3455): By buzzdainer“Today's chart of the day Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by buzzdainer () 1. Anodyne by Uncle Tupelo (1993) 2. Let Me Come Over by Buffalo Tom (1992) 3. Hello Starling by Josh Ritter (2003) 4. The Silver Gymnasium by Okkervil River (2013) 5. The Dirty South by Drive-By Truckers (2004) 6. Trace by Son…”
View forum post →Top 100 Greatest Music Albums comments
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From
daftpunter 06/09/2016 05:36 | #168253
This is an absolutely terrific chart. I got to know the author, a little about his life, some experiences, and idea about how and why he loves certain genres and artists...everything a chart should be. It made me revisit albums and artists that needed revisiting. Take note all. This is what the site is supposed to be about.
Only advice: finish!
Helpful? (Log in to vote) · 3
From
Mercury TOP 100 COMMENTER 09/18/2021 18:12 | #273898
Mercury TOP 100 COMMENTER 09/18/2021 18:12 | #273898
Well, jeez, not sure how I have never come by your chart, my friend. Considering how many time while scrolling all 100 albums I was nodding appreciatively I am surprised we *only* have 8 albums in common. This is a downright excellent chart, and especially love the down and gritty americana/alt-country/folk tradition that is so beautifully shown throughout this album. Oh and that tasty tasty Gram Parsons run from 24 to 26 was beautiful to see :). Love this, truly.
And yeah, Anodyne is a great record. I may slightly prefer March 16-20 1992, but they are neck and neck. I consider Tweedy/Farrar royalty in the alt-country kingdom. the last guy who commented is a character lol.
Oh and I meant to leave a comment on your 2020s chart but its not open for such at this time, and I wanted to thank you for the kind and enthusiastic comment on my 2020s chart. Agreed Stapleton and Starting Over are treasures. I need to listen to it a few more times, as I think I am not giving it nearly enough love and attention. A Truly resonant album and indeed a great stable rock in music form for these crazy times we are all experiencing. The album I've gleaned the most comfort and reassurance from in this young and chaotic decade so far is ... hmm, none from the decade lol. My top albums have been pretty damn bleak, harsh or escapist.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) · 2
From
kickerofelves 07/14/2016 16:05 | #171295
Fair play for not only commenting all those albums but actually having something interesting to say about them! I never would have equated Alt-J to metal myself, though I am largely ignorant of the genre. I like that you rate other peoples charts on their own merits, rather than just seek out ones with similar choices.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) · 3
From
buzzdainer TOP 100 COMMENTER 02/05/2017 20:00 | #184971
buzzdainer TOP 100 COMMENTER 02/05/2017 20:00 | #184971
Many thanks, LedZep and Cardboardfolder! An album all three of us have in common is OK Computer, not a surprising development since it's the #1 rated album on this site. I was talking with a friend recently about how much of Radiohead's music feels like a call to arms, in the sense that it calls us to do something about the ways that technology has stunted our ability to interact meaningfully with other people, how it limits connection. I like to think of the BEA community as an antidote to that, since it enables us to give each other feedback and more importantly, share recommendations. With that in mind, I'll be mining both of your charts for new ideas.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) · 2
From
buzzdainer TOP 100 COMMENTER 02/06/2017 20:04 | #185018
buzzdainer TOP 100 COMMENTER 02/06/2017 20:04 | #185018
Closing Time is my favorite Tom Waits album, but it's not at all representative of the type of singer and performer he became later in his career. Closing Time is far more straightforward, piano- and guitar-driven bluesy jazzy lounge folk than anything he's recorded since. I absolutely love it. Many Waits fans will cite Rain Dogs as his best album, and I'll agree that it's also great. If you're interested in Waits's "weird" work, the stuff he's better known for, I'd recommend Bone Machine and Mule Variations, both of which are thoroughly bizarre, creepy, and funny at times, and contain lots of great songwriting. But Closing Time is the one with the most heart.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) · 2
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