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: 25 hours ago
- (Created: 09/24/2013 01:36).
- Chart size: 100 albums.
There are 123 comments for this chart from BestEverAlbums.com members and Top 100 Greatest Music Albums has an average rating of 92 out of 100 (from 116 votes). Please log in or register to leave a comment or assign a rating.
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[First added to this chart: 11/27/2022]
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I'm still not sure whether or not, overall, I like Kate Bush. I've spent quite a lot of time listening to The Dreaming, and I don't hear much there that I love. But Hounds of Love is another story. It's one of those consistently great, inspired, timeless albums that transcends both its genre and the time period in which it was made. Since I moved to Montana, I've been especially taken with "The Big Sky," which captures through synths and airy, breathy vocals the vertigo feeling of standing under the biggest, most expansive sky on Earth.
[First added to this chart: 08/26/2018]
Year of Release:
1985
Appears in:
Rank Score:
19,261
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I first heard "Does My Ring Burn Your Finger?" from this album on WNCW, my favorite radio station in the late nineties when I lived in North Carolina. Immediately I heard echoes of my favorite alt-country artists of the time: Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Jim Lauderdale. Turns out these weren't mere echoes, as all these artists lend vocals to tracks on this album, and Miller opened for Steve Earle on his El Corazón tour. This is one of the most consistently great albums from the nineties alt-country movement--one that showcases Buddy Miller's outstanding singing, playing, songwriting, and above all, his skills at creative collaboration. This is so much better, so much more tasteful and restrained, than almost anything the mainstream country music industry has made in the past forty years.
[First added to this chart: 11/22/2022]
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The first time I listened to Strange Trails back in 2015, I could have sworn I'd heard every song on it before, and even felt like I could have sung along. That's how immediately agreeable this indie folk album is. Sometimes an album that's so familiar has a tendency to lose its appeal quickly, since it might be based on a formulaic approach, or on well-worn melodies and tropes. I can't deny that there's something of a middle-of-the-road feel to Ben Schneider's pacing, melodies, and lyrics. At the same time, I think he hones those qualities to such perfection that the album as a whole feels fresh, exciting, and immediate, even after many listens. There's such an evocative quality of these lines from "Meet Me in the Woods" that reminds me of cool summer nights and young love: "I have seen what the darkness does / Say goodbye to who I was / I ain't never been away so long / Don't look back, those days are gone / Follow me into the endless night / I can bring your fears to life / Show me yours and I'll show you mine / Meet me in the woods tonight."
[First added to this chart: 08/28/2021]
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Before Jeff Buckley decided to wade fully clothed into the Mississippi River late one night and get himself caught in the wake of a passing boat, he recorded this one and only proper full-length album. It's the one I had in the CD player of my truck for most of the year I lived in Bennington, Vermont, while I mourned the loss of my longest and most important relationship to date. It is raw, lean, impulsive, deeply emo stuff--one of the most inspired and engaging albums ever made. People know the brilliant cover of Leonard Cohen's "Halleljuah," but for me the starting point is the devastating "Last Goodbye."
[First added to this chart: 02/10/2016]
Year of Release:
1994
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Rank Score:
19,227
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Irish indie folk singer James Vincent McMorrow grabbed my attention a few years back with his excellent album Post Tropical, but it wasn't until I started digging back through his back catalog that I came to fully appreciate him. Early in the Morning contains a whole lot of McMorrow's trademark falsetto, as well as guitars and banjos that sound like they could have been outtakes from Mumford and Sons' debut album. I mean that as praise. The result is a warm, affable, immediately likeable collection of songs. "We Don't Eat" might be the track you're most likely to have heard before, but there's not a weak song anywhere here. An excellent, and underrated, record.
[First added to this chart: 09/23/2022]
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Some years back a friend and I spent several summers climbing all seventeen county highpoints in Nevada. To reach all these, we had to do a lot of driving on bumpy dirt roads through the desert. Fortunately for us, we had two artists we both liked listening to: Neil Young and Built to Spill. Riding in my old Nissan Pathfinder, this was the album we listened to more than any other. These tight, intensity-building songs, which never seem to end up anywhere near the place they started, were the perfect soundtrack to hikes that followed a similar trajectory. Opening tracks, and the opening to opening tracks, don't get much better than "The Plan."
[First added to this chart: 02/10/2016]
Year of Release:
1999
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Rank Score:
4,152
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It's tough for me to choose a favorite Wilco album, as they're one of the seminal bands of my generation, a band whose every release I anticipate with a lot of excitement. On any given day I might pick Summerteeth, or The Whole Love, or even Sky Blue Sky. I read a review once that classified Wilco as "dad rock," to which I love Jeff Tweedy's response: "I think anybody that thinks about that as a...critical term is an asshole." I agree, particularly when you consider how genre-bending and experimental Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is. It's fun, it's adventurous, it's understated, it contains traces of their alt-country roots, and it has some of the finest and most creative percussion you'll hear on a rock album, particularly on "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart." I dare you to try to play the air drums on that song, all you anti-dad rock hipster assholes.
[First added to this chart: 01/02/2016]
Year of Release:
2002
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Rank Score:
20,573
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When a band I love breaks up, most of the time I'm less enamored of the new bands, side projects, and solo endeavors that ensue afterward. There's often something special about the chemistry between band members that makes whatever they were doing unique and special, and it can be difficult for even the most talented musicians and songwriters to recapture the magic. I assumed that would be the case with Hüsker Dü, as Bob Mould and Grant Hart brought such different and complementary energies to that great punk/alternative rock band. But I think Workbook surpasses anything Hüsker Dü ever did. The use of acoustic guitar, paired with the searing distortion-heavy electric lead guitars for soloing, draws attention to Mould's talents as a lyricist in ways that Hüsker Dü's wall of noise tended to obscure. An unexpected and still much-underappreciated album, Workbook is an incredibly consistent collection of songs with many highlights, perhaps the most memorable of which is the scorching guitar work on "Wishing Well."
[First added to this chart: 06/26/2020]
Year of Release:
1989
Appears in:
Rank Score:
430
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Indie rockers The National has made a half-dozen albums that easily could have made my top 100 of all time list. That's how consistently great they've been over the past twenty years. Alligator is their best, as it's the album that best utilizes Matt Berninger's smoky baritone and often ambiguous lyrical style. The album's opener and best song, “Secret Meeting,” tells a quintessential introvert's narrative of wanting to become invisible to avoid an awkward social encounter. “Didn’t anybody tell you how to gracefully disappear in a room?” Berninger wonders over Bryan Devendorf’s sparse drum pattern before feigning an apology both plausible and absurd: “I’m sorry I missed you / I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain.” If you can relate, you understand what it's like both craving social connection and resorting to the most desperate of tactics to avoid it.
[First added to this chart: 09/05/2020]
Year of Release:
2005
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Rank Score:
4,080
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Total albums: 100. Page 4 of 10
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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums composition
| Decade | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
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| 1930s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1940s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1950s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1960s | 4 | 4% | |
| 1970s | 14 | 14% | |
| 1980s | 16 | 16% | |
| 1990s | 21 | 21% | |
| 2000s | 17 | 17% | |
| 2010s | 22 | 22% | |
| 2020s | 6 | 6% |
| Artist | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
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|
|
| James McMurtry | 1 | 1% | |
| Toots & The Maytals | 1 | 1% | |
| Jason Isbell | 1 | 1% | |
| Andrew Bird | 1 | 1% | |
| Indigo Girls | 1 | 1% | |
| U2 | 1 | 1% | |
| Paul Simon | 1 | 1% | |
| Show all | |||
| Country | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
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| |
78 | 78% | |
 |
10 | 10% | |
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2 | 2% | |
 |
2 | 2% | |
 |
2 | 2% | |
 |
2 | 2% | |
 |
2 | 2% | |
| Show all | |||
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums chart changes
| Biggest climbers |
|---|
| Up 1 from 54th to 53rd Graceland by Paul Simon |
| Biggest fallers |
|---|
| Down 1 from 53rd to 54th Funeral by Arcade Fire |
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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums ratings
92/100 (from 116 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 116 ratings for this chart.
| Rating | Date updated | Member | Chart ratings | Avg. chart rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 100/100  | 5 hours ago | Larcx13 | | 86/100 |
| 90/100 | 01/12/2024 16:35 | joathome | | 80/100 |
| 90/100 | 06/26/2023 07:17 |  Applerill | | 75/100 |
| 100/100 | 02/19/2023 13:32 | BraddlesHendo | | 91/100 |
| 100/100 | 06/26/2022 02:53 | Rm12398 | | 89/100 |
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 91.7/100, a mean average of 91.0/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 92.2/100. The standard deviation for this chart is 12.0.
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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums comments
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100/100
From Larcx13 5 hours ago
Larcx13 5 hours ago
I honestly can't stand Taylor Swift... But this chart is quite original and I appreciate the fact that there was a lot of work put into it too. I love that Digable Planets and Parliament are somewhere in there. Cool stuff!
At this point I feel I can only recommend one thing: check out more foreign music, if you haven't already. Personally, I got into Ukraine, Brazil, Russia and Japan. Maybe I can push it a little and recommend music from my home province of Quebec.
Peace
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From buzzdainer 10/02/2022 18:32
buzzdainer 10/02/2022 18:32
Thank you for your kind comment, DiogoSRNunes! I don't consciously avoid the albums that are more popular and conventional, but I just think my tastes gravitate to the things that are less mainstream. That said, a Taylor Swift album just recently cracked my top ten of all time. So maybe I'm becoming more of a pop music fan in my old age.
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From buzzdainer 10/02/2021 17:16
buzzdainer 10/02/2021 17:16
Thank you for that generous and insightful comment, Mercury. Like you, I love March 16, 1992, and there are things about that album that I love even more than Anodyne. Albums that contain a lot of covers tend to get less attention on my charts than albums of mostly originals, which partially explains my preference for Anodyne. On that note, I have Uncle Tupelo, among others, to thank for my love of all things Gram Parsons. They recorded a version of "Blue Eyes," an early Gram Parsons tune, on one of the Gram Parsons tribute albums that came out in the early nineties. That led me on a search to hear more of his stuff, and the rest is history. If you love the Americana and alt-country movements, you can't help but love just about everything Gram Parsons ever did.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
100/100
From 
Mercury 09/18/2021 18:12
Mercury 09/18/2021 18:12
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 votes (2 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From buzzdainer 07/20/2021 00:52
buzzdainer 07/20/2021 00:52
StreakyNuno, can you show me on the doll where Jeff Tweedy hurt you?
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45/100
From StreakyNuno 07/18/2021 20:08
Anodyne by Uncle tupelo ........best album ever.ahahahahaahaha
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (1 helpful | 1 unhelpful)
From buzzdainer 07/11/2021 20:30
buzzdainer 07/11/2021 20:30
If Okkervil River’s The Silver Gymnasium and Drive-By Truckers’ The Dirty South aren't on your 5 best albums ever, I don't know what you know about music?
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45/100
From StreakyNuno 07/07/2021 16:23
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From buzzdainer 04/20/2021 17:25
buzzdainer 04/20/2021 17:25
StreakyNuno, I have the utmost respect for your chart. But Pink Floyd best ever album and Pink Floyd in second ???? Sorry, I respect but I don't feel like listening to the other albums in your chart.
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45/100
From StreakyNuno 04/19/2021 18:45
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