Top 41 Greatest Music Albums by 
grohly 
Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man - El Grohlerino
Slimmed down list to include only my absolute favourites.
- Chart updated: 06/01/2023 21:15
- (Created: 06/16/2015 16:14).
- Chart size: 41 albums.
There are 11 comments for this chart from BestEverAlbums.com members and Top 41 Greatest Music Albums has an average rating of 91 out of 100 (from 28 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 1970s. (Remove this filter)
Buy album 
- #Sponsored
A perfect cosmic odyssey. There's not much I can say about this without being derivative so I'll tell a short story. I was in Boston with my Dad when we decided to check out a laser show to Dark Side at the planetarium. After a long time of not listening to the album in its entirety, my Dad enthusiastically told me of his experience of listening to it again. He told me that each song was better than the last. After settling on Time as his favourite, Great Gig would start and that would be his favourite. This just goes to show that Dark Side really is astonishing in its ability to create wonderment time and time again. I was a touch skeptical at first but the laser show really captured the character of each song and sitting in a huge dark room with many other Floyd fans reminded me of the beauty of the shared musical experience.
[First added to this chart: 08/17/2015]
Year of Release:
1973
Appears in:
Rank Score:
71,190
Rank in 1973:
Rank in 1970s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
581
Buy album
- #Sponsored
At times as soft as the wings of the bands symbolic angel. At other times as heavy as the footfalls of a giant stomping through the Midlands. As cliched as this probably sounds, Stairway To Heaven was the first song to show me how much scope a song could really reach for. It starts off tender and transforms into something incredibly powerful and uplifting. It is the angel and the giant. On any other album, Stairway would threaten to eclipse the other songs but not on IV. In fact, one could argue that Stairway isn't even the most influential song on IV. That honour would go to When The Levee Breaks, with Bonzo's drumming being sampled by a long list of artists. IV laid the groundwork for songwriting in hard rock and heavy metal, even more so than the rawer early Zeppelin records and the slightly bloated later ones.
[First added to this chart: 08/17/2015]
Year of Release:
1971
Appears in:
Rank Score:
44,305
Rank in 1971:
Rank in 1970s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album
- #Sponsored
Firing the fucking feed on the French rivera. This is a compilation of everything I love about music. Rock and roll, blues, country, soul, psychedelia and more rock. The perfect pick-me-up after a hard days grind. Songs to inspire kings and queens, labourers and wanderers. Mick brings the aristocratic attitude and Keef brings the workingman's spice. The two reach their songwriting zenith after a string of three brilliant albums. On Exile, the Glimmer Twins complement each other so well that they're almost one being. Hell, the entire band and motley crew of musicians who created this album are so together, they talk telepathically with their instruments. Anywho, enough rambling. I will say something about some cherrypicked songs.
Sweet Virginia is the perfect post night out sing-along song. If everyone knows the chorus, it's a brilliant song for a group of drunks to belt out. Tumbling Dice needs no introduction. It IS blues rock. The live version from Ladies & Gentlemen in Texas is as cool as the Stones ever were and Keef telling off Mick Taylor for noodling is amusing. In Let It Loose, Jagger commits (imo) his finest vocal performance, cut with raw emotion and heartbreaking vulnerability. The ladies who provide gospel backing vocals on the song elevate it to the heavens. Shine A Light is just poetry, especially the first verse. All Down the Line is the most ferocious song the Stones have produced and one of my absolute favourites. It's fast, uncomplicated and drenched in sweat.
Exile didn’t so much as teach me how to listen to a song but rather how to enjoy it. Sometimes music is just made to rock, and that’s a good thing. You don't need to read too much into something to appreciate it. There really is no substitute for a thoroughbred rock n roll song with the late great Bobby Keys blasting his sax in your ears. Yet further proof that cocaine (and brown sugar if you’re Keef) is a helluva drug! [First added to this chart: 08/17/2015]
Sweet Virginia is the perfect post night out sing-along song. If everyone knows the chorus, it's a brilliant song for a group of drunks to belt out. Tumbling Dice needs no introduction. It IS blues rock. The live version from Ladies & Gentlemen in Texas is as cool as the Stones ever were and Keef telling off Mick Taylor for noodling is amusing. In Let It Loose, Jagger commits (imo) his finest vocal performance, cut with raw emotion and heartbreaking vulnerability. The ladies who provide gospel backing vocals on the song elevate it to the heavens. Shine A Light is just poetry, especially the first verse. All Down the Line is the most ferocious song the Stones have produced and one of my absolute favourites. It's fast, uncomplicated and drenched in sweat.
Exile didn’t so much as teach me how to listen to a song but rather how to enjoy it. Sometimes music is just made to rock, and that’s a good thing. You don't need to read too much into something to appreciate it. There really is no substitute for a thoroughbred rock n roll song with the late great Bobby Keys blasting his sax in your ears. Yet further proof that cocaine (and brown sugar if you’re Keef) is a helluva drug! [First added to this chart: 08/17/2015]
Year of Release:
1972
Appears in:
Rank Score:
22,607
Rank in 1972:
Rank in 1970s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album
- #Sponsored
If Exile is beer and cigarettes, Sticky Fingers is bourbon, apple pie and whipped cream. Less strung out and European that Exile but just as soulful and a tad more bluesy. A huge slice of southern American rock done the English way. Fuck, I love the Stones. On Sticky Fingers they gave me my favourite song of all time in Wild Horses. The best combination of Keef's guitar riff and Jagger's lyrics. The best portrayal of longing for where you want to be. There are also some real underrated gems on this album too. The string orchestra that comes in at the end of Sway gives gravitas to an already great blues song. Similarly, the horns on Bitch add thunder to an insanely catchy rock and roll number. Then there's Dead Flowers, a sweet song with not so sweet lyrics that exudes the Stones passion for country music. The whole album foreshadows the hard rock music that the seventies would be known for and not many albums in the genre would come close to capturing its spirit. I mean how many rock songs are as iconic as Brown Sugar? Considering that 1971 is considered one of the greatest years for music, Sticky Fingers is one of the best of the best.
[First added to this chart: 08/17/2015]
Year of Release:
1971
Appears in:
Rank Score:
19,283
Rank in 1971:
Rank in 1970s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album
- #Sponsored
Impossible not to have the red-haired spaceman kicking around somewhere high on this godforsaken list. Ziggy was and always will be my favourite incarnation of Bowie, for all the vivid and fervent imagery he manages to conjure up in this dissipated noggin of mine. And all the while he's just having a ball with cats from Japan and Spiders from Mars. The lyrics in this are some of my favourites from any album and Ziggy brings each and every word to life. David was such an emotive singer and the suicide finale displays this in a fitting fall of the curtain.
[First added to this chart: 01/06/2016]
Year of Release:
1972
Appears in:
Rank Score:
50,119
Rank in 1972:
Rank in 1970s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album
- #Sponsored
Ode to Syd. How it must have shocked the band to have seen a ghostly imitation of their friend floating around the recording studio. Despite having nothing to do with the making of Wish You Were Here, Syd had everything to do with it. He casts a long shadow over Pink Floyd's legacy and you are hearing the band literally coming to terms with that. They out grew him for sure, but without Syd you'd never have those crazy synthesisers in Welcome To The Machine, you might not have the weird transition to radio sound on Have a Cigar and you certainly would never have Shine On You Crazy Diamond, a galactic magnum opus that transcends the harsh winds of the Earth and reaches for the cosmos. So much of the song is saturated with aching guitars and vocals that signal doom but the genius of Floyd is that they upend all your expectations. While condemning the soullessness of the music industry, the last thirty seconds of Wish You Were Here show that Pink Floyd have a lot of hope left for lost souls.
[First added to this chart: 02/26/2016]
Year of Release:
1975
Appears in:
Rank Score:
50,777
Rank in 1975:
Rank in 1970s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album
- #Sponsored
There's a wealth of riches here. But I'll focus on In My Time of Dying. I've been a Zeppelin fan since I was a wee boy. They were one of my first favourite bands and their music, along with that from The Stones and Floyd, got me into rock and roll (the first genre of music I fell in love with and still my favourite). I adored all the typical Zeppelin songs at the start but In My Time of Dying is one song that I have only appreciated as I've gotten older. As my taste in music has become more eclectic, I have learnt to appreciate long songs that are basically jam sessions that showcase the individual talents of each band member in perfect equilibrium. In My Time of Dying is a perfect example of a song where the mood of the song chances constantly like a chemical reaction, but everything is so tight, as if the instruments are talking with each other telepathically. It's also a very bluesy song, a genre which has definitely shaped my tastes in adulthood. I wish more modern bands would give space to let their instruments sing like Zeppelin did on this song. And I always find Plant's vocals so surreal. The way he merges his voice with the rest of the sounds makes it seem like he is saying two different things at once, further adding to the beauty of this piece. Oh Georgina! Oh my Jesus!
[First added to this chart: 05/30/2016]
Year of Release:
1975
Appears in:
Rank Score:
13,294
Rank in 1975:
Rank in 1970s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
25. (=)
Safe Mode: On Certain images on this site may contain adult content and are flagged as 'unsafe'. BestEverAlbums.com does not display these images by default, but you may choose to show or hide these images from your profile page. If you choose to hide these images, you'll see an image with a warning message instead of the actual image. If you choose to show them, you'll see these images no differently than regular (safe) images.
Buy album
- #Sponsored
What amazes me about Led Zeppelin at this point in their legacy was that they didn't try to better what they did before (which would have been futile coming off the back of IV) but how they tried to better themselves by doing something different. Houses Of The Holy may be their fifth album but it most certainly isn't V. It feels lighter, with a touch more pop influence than their previous albums. It showed a Led Zeppelin willing to smile as well as snarl. Even a brooding number like No Quarter hums with a light keyboard in the middle. But the band's sound on Houses is typified by The Rain Song, Zep's first ballad inspired by George Harrison and defying expectation. Every chord strikes at the perfect time, creating an atmosphere that starts with melancholia and ends with joyfulness when the drums break in. Rick Rubin said it best: "I could listen to this song all day. That would be a good day."
[First added to this chart: 03/12/2016]
Year of Release:
1973
Appears in:
Rank Score:
12,911
Rank in 1973:
Rank in 1970s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album
- #Sponsored
[First added to this chart: 12/21/2017]
Year of Release:
1977
Appears in:
Rank Score:
34,082
Rank in 1977:
Rank in 1970s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album
- #Sponsored
Tusk is so underrated and I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's too long and people end up forgetting about half of the more subtle songs. But that really is a shame because there are so many blissful moments to be found throughout this album. What makes Tusk truly special is the way it manages to balance the dreamy quiet songs with the upbeat funny ones. When I first listened to Tusk, I didn't like the upbeat tunes as much but my have they grown on me. In fact, the upbeat tunes are what make the album so powerful. No matter how you're feeling, there's a song in Tusk that gives you what you need. In need of a pick me up? Play What Makes You Think You're The One. Feeling melancholic? Play Storms. Want to party? Play Tusk. Feeling in love? Try Angel and Beautiful Child. Rumours is the album that everyone will remember but Tusk is the album that no one should forget.
[First added to this chart: 12/25/2015]
Year of Release:
1979
Appears in:
Rank Score:
2,739
Rank in 1979:
Rank in 1970s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Total albums: 12. Page 1 of 2
Don't agree with this chart? Create your own from the My Charts page!
Top 41 Greatest Music Albums composition
| Decade | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
|
|
| 1930s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1940s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1950s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1960s | 2 | 5% | |
| 1970s | 12 | 29% | |
| 1980s | 2 | 5% | |
| 1990s | 6 | 15% | |
| 2000s | 5 | 12% | |
| 2010s | 14 | 34% | |
| 2020s | 0 | 0% |
| Artist | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
 |
|
|
| Led Zeppelin | 4 | 10% | |
| Kanye West | 3 | 7% | |
| The Rolling Stones | 3 | 7% | |
| Pink Floyd | 2 | 5% | |
| Frightened Rabbit | 2 | 5% | |
| The Smashing Pumpkins | 2 | 5% | |
| Fleetwood Mac | 2 | 5% | |
| Show all | |||
Top 41 Greatest Music Albums chart changes
| Biggest fallers |
|---|
| Down 1 from 39th to 40th Screamadelica by Primal Scream |
| Down 1 from 40th to 41st MASSEDUCTION by St. Vincent |
| New entries |
|---|
 Wasting Lightby Foo Fighters |
Top 41 Greatest Music Albums similar charts
- Top 40 Greatest Music Albums by jcmusic (2018)
- Top 40 Greatest Music Albums by Petar96 (2016)
- Top 40 Greatest Music Albums by HarryDrengen (2022)
- Top 30 Greatest Music Albums by bfischer (2018)
- Top 40 Greatest Music Albums by favas19 (2018)
- Top 40 Greatest Music Albums by unger19 (2018)
- Top 37 Greatest Music Albums by
Owens (2018) - Top 40 Greatest Music Albums by Banjolord (2016)
- Top 40 Greatest Music Albums by txnqa (2015)
- Top 35 Greatest Music Albums by MattSyms1 (2017)
Top 41 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 41 Greatest Music Albums ratings
91/100 (from 28 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 28 ratings for this chart.
| Rating | Date updated | Member | Chart ratings | Avg. chart rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 90/100  | 06/24/2021 18:44 | MasterOfPuppets | | 91/100 |
| 85/100 | 10/06/2020 16:49 | leniad | | 85/100 |
| 100/100 | 02/21/2020 02:01 | DJENNY | | 100/100 |
| 100/100 | 11/08/2018 23:31 |  phantom1305 | | 92/100 |
| 90/100 | 06/01/2018 13:33 |  bobbyb5 | | 90/100 |
Rating metrics:
Outliers can be removed when calculating a mean average to dampen the effects of ratings outside the normal distribution. This figure is provided as the trimmed mean. A high standard deviation can be legitimate, but can sometimes indicate 'gaming' is occurring. Consider a simplified example* of an item receiving ratings of 100, 50, & 0. The mean average rating would be 50. However, ratings of 55, 50 & 45 could also result in the same average. The second average might be more trusted because there is more consensus around a particular rating (a lower deviation).
(*In practice, some charts can have several thousand ratings)
This chart is rated in the top 2% of all charts on BestEverAlbums.com. This chart has a Bayesian average rating of 90.6/100, a mean average of 91.6/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 92.1/100. The standard deviation for this chart is 5.7.
Please log in or register if you want to be able to leave a rating
Top 41 Greatest Music Albums favourites
Showing all 2 members who have added this chart as a favourite
Top 41 Greatest Music Albums comments
Showing latest 10 comments | Show all 11 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 
NowhereMan 01/02/2018 18:45
NowhereMan 01/02/2018 18:45
I was in that Stone Roses bar recently that you talk about. A cracking dive. Love the enthusiasm for the Stones, too few out and out Stones maniacs on this site.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
95/100
From 
LedZep 04/09/2017 10:42
LedZep 04/09/2017 10:42
Came back, saw Biffy, saw Lebowski quote and decided to close one eye and ignore Kanye albums. Don't like his music, but that's just, like, my opinion, man
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
80/100
From zrommeke 01/06/2017 08:07
Very good chart, but a bit more variation would make it even better.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
85/100
From platus 01/05/2017 18:15
flamboyant chart. I like it.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
95/100
From jackharrison21 01/05/2017 16:35
Wonderful chart, 8 albums in common and some really interesting reading in the comments
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
95/100
From LedZep 09/05/2016 10:54
LedZep 09/05/2016 10:54
I'm really not a great Kanye fan, but the rest is fantastic
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
90/100
From 
Davy 08/22/2016 16:49
Davy 08/22/2016 16:49
pretty neat
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
95/100
From 
buzzdainer 07/12/2016 14:46
buzzdainer 07/12/2016 14:46
I share your feelings about Tusk, as you know. And your putting two albums by the Stones in your top ten reminds me that I've got to find space for them in my top 100. I love this chart, and I enjoy the pithy notes you've attached to some of your entries. Would love to see more of those!
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
90/100
From 
WildHorses 05/06/2016 22:53
WildHorses 05/06/2016 22:53
Some great albums here. Hope to see the rest soon!
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
100/100
From martinjaa 01/25/2016 15:38
It's great! Exile on Main Street is an incredible album
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Please log in or register if you want to be able to add a comment
Your feedback for Top 41 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.