Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by NickVolos

There is so much great music, it is impossible to fit it all in a 100-entry chart.

Not only that, but it is also impossible to rank your favorite 100 records too - they are your best 100 albums after all.

This is an attempt to chart my taste in strictly rock 'n' roll music as it stands today after 35+ years of actively listening to it. In this attempt I was "forced" to leave out many of my favorites in order to:

1) List one album per artist,
2) "Promote" less known but equably great (to me) albums, and
3) Produce a chart that is equally distributed from the 60's to 10's.

In the process I am using a simple ranking algorithm, for which I posted about, because I still believe that if an album has many great songs, well, that makes it a great album.

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Rank Score: 94.55% [First added to this chart: 10/02/2013]
Year of Release:
1967
Appears in:
Rank Score:
15,858
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The opener "Poor Old Man" is an inspired leadoff track that features a strong west coast influence, both Love & The Doors immediately come to mind, it sports a killer bass riff along with loose, John Densmore style percussion and a myriad of psychedelic effects, about midway in, the whole piece breaks down and singer Jack Bryant does this totally off the wall jazz type scat vocal that completely derails the song, luckily it doesn't last long as the group leap back into the opening riff and it's back to the races. "A Horn Playing On My Thin Wall" is next and it is a dead ringer for "Da Capo" era Love (both "Orange Skies" & "Que Vida"), this track becomes better as it rolls along, it ends with a rush of great harmony vocals. "Something You Can Hide In" is full tilt psychedelia that features every psychedelic trick in the book with fabulous results, this number reminds me a great deal of Love's underrated "Four Sail" album.

"Tell You A Story" is a brief interlude that features an out of tune acoustic guitar with a nursery rhyme type vocal, and it works like a charm. Coming next is "Silent Garden" which displays a British influence along the lines of late period Zombies and the UK Kaleidoscope. "Look To The Sun" is largely a solo acoustic outing by singer Jack Bryant, this one reminds me a great deal of the archive releases by Love guitarist Bryan MacLean "Ifyoubelievein" & "Candy's Waltz." The next number "One Of The Few Ones Left" is a beautiful melodic ballad with strings that brings to mind the Left Banke's second album "Left Banke Too."

"I Really Love My Mother" is a short, jokey novelty type number that blends the style of The Kinks with USA groups The Sopwith Camel & Lovin' Spoonful. "Look At The Wind" is once again in the Love "Four Sail" bag, this is one of the record's real highlights, everything comes together in beautiful fashion, the guitar work and drumming are fantastic, the keyboards are also exceptional. "Didn't I" is a sad, acoustic ballad that recalls a superb west coast group The Common People, it even reminds me of contemporary singer/songwriter Grant Lee Phillips. (http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/review/1714/)

Rank Score: 94.38%
[First added to this chart: 11/01/2013]
Year of Release:
1968
Appears in:
Rank Score:
228
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The dirty secret behind the vast majority of Lost! Unheard! Masterpieces! is that the back story is almost always far more interesting than the music itself. Certainly that would appear to be the case with Bobb Trimble, an almost unknown singer/songwriter from blue-collar Worcester, MA, whose two albums' worth of surreal acid folk could not have been more out of step with their new wave times. Iron Curtain Innocence was originally released in a tiny vinyl pressing of between 300 and 500 copies and featured a disquieting cover image of the moon-faced Trimble sitting in front of a Sears Portrait Studio-style class photo backdrop, blankly holding both a guitar and a submachine gun, and everything about the album has an air of "that boy ain't right." Another major part of the Trimble legend -- that his live backing group, the Kidds, had an average age somewhere south of adolescence and was broken up by suspicious parents who didn't like this weird guy hanging around their children -- gives rise to darker mutterings and unsupported conjectures that have little to do with the music, and that's what it really boils down to: obscurantist cult records almost never have anything to do with the music, which almost invariably turns out to be considerably less interesting when listened to on its own merits.
Almost, that is. Because as it turns out, Iron Curtain Innocence turns out to be a really good piece of lo-fi psychedelia. In particular, the outstanding first three tracks, "Glass Menagerie Fantasies," "Night at the Asylum," and "When the Raven Calls," are an increasingly disturbing trilogy blending the druggy atmosphere of Pink Floyd's first few post-Syd Barrett albums, the gentle acoustic side of late-era Beatles, and some lo-fi synthesizers and tape loops, culminating in the disquieting climax of the epic "When the Raven Calls." Though the rest of the brief album doesn't quite live up to its outstanding first half, "Killed at the Hands of an Unknown Rock Starr" features some fine space rock guitar noodling and one of the helium-pitched Trimble's most assertive lead vocals, and "Through My Eyes (Hopeless as Hell: D.O.A.)" makes good use of backwards tapes and hand percussion. (allmusic)

Rank Score: 94.38%
[First added to this chart: 04/12/2014]
Year of Release:
1980
Appears in:
Rank Score:
128
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Hoodoo Man Blues is one of the truly classic blues albums of the 1960s, and one of the first to fully document, in the superior acoustics of a recording studio, the smoky ambience of a night at a West Side nightspot. Junior Wells just set up with his usual cohorts -- guitarist Buddy Guy, bassist Jack Myers, and drummer Billy Warren -- and proceeded to blow up a storm, bringing an immediacy to "Snatch It Back and Hold It," "You Don't Love Me, Baby," "Chitlins con Carne," and the rest of the tracks that is absolutely mesmerizing. Widely regarded as one of Wells' finest achievements, it also became Delmark's best-selling release of all time. Producer Bob Koester vividly captures the type of grit that Wells brought to the stage. When Wells and his colleagues dig into "Good Morning, Schoolgirl," "Yonder Wall," or "We're Ready," they sound raw, gutsy, and uninhibited. And while Guy leaves the singing to Wells, he really shines on guitar. Guy, it should be noted, was listed as "Friendly Chap" on Delmark's original LP version of Hoodoo Man Blues; Delmark thought Guy was under contract to Chess, so they gave him a pseudonym. But by the early '70s, Guy's real name was being listed on pressings. This is essential listening for lovers of electric Chicago blues. (allmusic.com)

Rank Score: 94.17%
[First added to this chart: 05/24/2014]
Year of Release:
1965
Appears in:
Rank Score:
547
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Ahh, Baby Lemonade's third album is a wonderful, cheeky effort that would be redeemed by its whimsicality even if it was not so classically (in the AM rock sense) supreme on a musical level. It's a record that manages to have it both ways. It is streamlined to an airtight finish (the gargantuan guitars are so crisp and pristine -- even when they have a nasty '70s grit like Thin Lizzy or very early Steely Dan -- that you could eat dinner off them) but it is also a groggy, hungover, gauze-colored daydream that reimagines that old El Lay sound of yore. The solo albums put out the previous year by both Mike Randle and Rusty Squeezebox without a doubt had a galvanizing influence on the The High Life Suite, particularly the more hallucinatory, languid moments here, like the soft opening strains of "Ballad of Scott Pain" and breezy "Reno." But the album outright explodes with glittery eyefuls of color from the completely Big Star gestures of "High Life" to the detailed flourishes that follow 'til the end. "Flourishes" is actually a rather inaccurate description since the album is, at all times, a playful and self-conscious pastiche. The band treats it as an homage not just through its seamless sequencing á la side two of Abbey Road, but through its melodic and harmonic impulses as well. The Beatles landmark album is clearly the structural model, and it places Baby Lemonade in a category all its own. As many artists as have looked to White Album-album-and-before Fab Four for the melodic and textural sensibilities, none have even approached the milepost Abbey Road, let alone try to outplay the record at its own game, exactly what happens here, as on "Ocean Bleu," where the quartet solders together the Beatles' "Because" and "Sun King" with Sunflower-era Beach Boys. The song, like much of the suite, comes out sounding translucently lovely and harmonically spectral in a way that rock music has rarely approached since its larger-than-life heyday pre-mid-1970s. Impeccably fine-tuned and intricately crafted, The High Life Suite ultimately transcends any allusions that can be thrown its way. It is, without a doubt, intentionally derivative, but, as with the best efforts of Todd Rundgren, it is intentionally derivative in only clever, unique, and ultimately timeless ways. (allmusic)

Rank Score: 93.33%
[First added to this chart: 06/11/2014]
Year of Release:
2001
Appears in:
Rank Score:
25
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Rank Score: 93.18% [First added to this chart: 11/20/2013]
Year of Release:
2002
Appears in:
Rank Score:
13,578
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Overall Rank:
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Rusty Squeezebox's debut solo album opens with a heavy metal guitar riff, but it couldn't be farther away from the adrenalized arena rock than it is. Or, for that matter, from the volcanic outbursts and reverberating buzz of guitar that dominate the songs of his band Baby Lemonade's recorded output. After the electric riff that starts "Same Old Song," Isotopes shows where its true heart lies, and it is completely mellow and intimate terrain, mood music for the sensitive and spaced-out alike. The album is not a complete departure from and break with Baby Lemonade. "Lights Out" and the spacy "Better World," for instance, could easily find a spot in future band set lists once reworked. But it is certainly a lengthy sidestep that trades in the brashness of full-on electric assault for a phenomenally varied production full of acoustic guitars and beautiful touches of pedal steel, harpsichord, saxophone, and flute, sitar, keyboards, and strings, as well as electronic effects and subtle studio trickery. It is just as epic as Baby Lemonade's previous Exploring Music, but in a dramatically different, almost rococo-delicate way. The music occasionally has the wistful lilt of the High Llamas, as on "Playa de Carmen" and "Little Century." The latter song is so gorgeous that it can only be called Baroque, as can "Settle Down," a huge acoustic strummer that breaks into exceptional Baroque jazz, and the cover of the Buffalo Springfield classic, "Expecting to Fly," shares the same qualities. In many ways, Isotopes is a descendent of the soft side of Neil Young, particularly his Buffalo Springfield work, with its so-hallucinatory-it's-almost-surreal atmosphere and a clouded, ethereal beauty, like the flecks of sunlight that reflect off the rain crystals in fog, diffuse but sparkling. Squeezebox and co-producer Nick Walusko (of fellow Los Angeles band Wondermints) show the full breadth of their vision, and Isotopes is definitely the product of a sophisticated vision. The two utilize the studio as a primary instrument, pasting the music with phasing and deep echo, and giving the album an island-of-its-own sound with odd synthesizer textures and layer upon layer of offbeat instrumental flourishes. The album does not bypass the usual hooks, but it is comprised of far more than hooks. It shows the full scope of an extraordinary songwriter. Isotopes is frequently breathtaking, relentlessly beautiful, and enveloping music that is totally at ease with itself. It resonates loudly by turning the volume down. (allmusic)

Rank Score: 93.18%
[First added to this chart: 06/11/2014]
Year of Release:
2000
Appears in:
Rank Score:
25
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Comments:
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Upon its release in 1974, Gene Clark's No Other was soundly reviled as an exercise in studio and financial excess, a critical and commercial failure -- it was pop music's Heaven's Gate. However, a scant year and a half later, Fleetwood Mac's self-titled album and its successor, Rumours, utilizing similar performance and production techniques, were adored by critics and the record-buying public, and have become cultural mainstays...There are no edges on No Other, even in its rockier tracks such as "Strength of Strings," which echoes Neil Young's "Cowgirl in the Sand" melodically, but its bridge is pure mystic Eastern harmony, complete with slide guitar wizardry. The shimmering dark textures of "Silver Raven," where Clark's falsetto vocal is kissed by synth and muted basslines and extended by a chorus that could have come off CSNY's Déjà Vu, is one of the most heartbreakingly blissed-out country-folk songs in recorded music history. "From a Silver Phial," as haunting and beautiful as it is, is one of the strangest songs Clark ever wrote, given its anti-drug references (especially considering this is one of the more coked-out records to come from L.A. during the era). The final two cuts, "The True One" and "Lady of the North" (co-written with Doug Dillard), are the only two pieces on the disc that mirror back with accuracy where Clark had come from, but even these, as they wind around the listener, are far bigger than mere country-rock tunes, and they offer glissando passages of pedal steel and ostinato piano that create narrative movement in the lyrics. This is one of those recordings, one that is being rediscovered for the masterpiece it is. (allmusic)

Rank Score: 93.13%
[First added to this chart: 11/01/2013]
Year of Release:
1974
Appears in:
Rank Score:
1,616
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Comments:
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Rank Score: 93.13% [First added to this chart: 03/28/2014]
Year of Release:
2003
Appears in:
Rank Score:
3,612
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Comments:
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Rank Score: 93.00% [First added to this chart: 11/16/2013]
Year of Release:
2005
Appears in:
Rank Score:
21,118
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Total albums: 59. Page 1 of 6

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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums composition

Decade Albums %


1930s 0 0%
1940s 0 0%
1950s 0 0%
1960s 20 20%
1970s 20 20%
1980s 18 18%
1990s 20 20%
2000s 18 18%
2010s 4 4%
2020s 0 0%
Country Albums %


United States 59 59%
United Kingdom 25 25%
Canada 5 5%
Germany 3 3%
Mixed Nationality 3 3%
Australia 2 2%
Jamaica 1 1%
Show all

Top 100 Greatest Music Albums chart changes

Biggest fallers
Faller Down 1 from 72nd to 73rd
On The Beach
by Neil Young
Faller Down 1 from 73rd to 74th
Phantasmagoria
by Curved Air
Faller Down 1 from 74th to 75th
Perfect From Now On
by Built To Spill
TitleSourceTypePublishedCountry
Top 100 Greatest Music Albumssteve_o_619Overall chart2014
BEA 100 (One Album per Artist) BozoTyrannusCustom chart2020
One Album per Artist ChartImaybeparanoidCustom chart2016Unknown
PPV Overall RankingbeaCustom chart2021Unknown
Top 100 Greatest Music AlbumsTheNowhereGuyOverall chart2020
BEA Forum Regulars' Top 100 (2015) HigherThanTheSunCustom chart2015
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums MechalodonOverall chart2017
BEA+RYM Overall RankImaybeparanoidCustom chart2017Unknown
The BEA Friendly Chart alelsupremeCustom chart2015
Top 100 Greatest Music AlbumsbarbarossaOverall chart2022Unknown

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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums ratings

Average Rating: 
91/100 (from 86 votes)
  Ratings distributionRatings distribution Average Rating = (n ÷ (n + m)) × av + (m ÷ (n + m)) × AV
where:
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n = number of ratings an item has currently received.
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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).
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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 91.4/100, a mean average of 92.3/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 92.0/100. The standard deviation for this chart is 8.2.

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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums comments

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Rating:  
90/100
From 01/06/2021 11:26
Nice chart.

Do you like nothing from the 50s?
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From 04/18/2020 11:08
Wow! This can be the most interesting chart on this site. Thanks for sharing it.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Rating:  
100/100
From 06/24/2019 14:20
Great Job! Very diverse chart!
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Rating:  
100/100
From 06/02/2019 08:45
Awesome chart for people like me who like to expand their music horizon. Great great work!
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Rating:  
75/100
From 10/12/2018 12:58
Never heard of a lot of these artists, must take a look
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Rating:  
90/100
From 04/03/2018 21:01
Listen this is one of a number of impressive charts from you. You really have been putting the effort and listening in. Whereas I don't recognise many of the artists, let alone the albums, I am intrigued about many of your choices. More comments please against your choices.
I've only been getting into this over the last two years having switched off since the early 90s.
I only have 6 albums or your albums in my top 100 for now. I saw the Verve in there and agree it is a cracking album but surprised it scored so highly. I also got your number 1 by Love to listen to just last year and it is infectious. The bit in Red Telephone when he voices over with "We're all normal and we want our freedom" could be a parody from Flight of the Conchords ("New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo")
Also like your thought process behind this top 100 and I'll come back and review my rating after I've tested out a few of your choices, but you are doing great work here and making it easier for guys like me trying to catch up
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Rating:  
75/100
From 07/19/2017 21:17
Bobb Trimble. Never heard of before. Thanks for that.
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Rating:  
95/100
From 05/23/2017 14:56
Extremely interesting, try Rush if you like classic rock and prog and also Godspeed You Black Emperor and Iron Maiden. They're both crucial bands in their respective genres, and neither of these genres is represented here so you might be interested in them :)
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Rating:  
90/100
From 08/15/2015 01:11
Very nice chart man, take a look at mines.
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Rating:  
100/100
From 08/04/2015 21:05
oh this is a thing of beauty - a wonderful chart that I have thoroughly enjoyed reading! Lovely! :)
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