Top 60 Greatest Music Albums by Jackwc

I typically find the chore of organizing my music into categories based on which I believe is "best" to be positively horrifying. I was, however, able to somewhat gather myself together in order to assemble this list.
As a rule of thumb, I only include one album per band. ONLY ONE. This allows for more variety and flavour in my list. Also, I don't choose my albums based on the album's influence or history, just how I see its quality (and to some degree its sentimentality ...to a great degree, actually).
I understand that opinions are subjective, so I am open to any comments about my choice of albums in this list, or just about how much you hate me and how I don't know what I'm talking about.
Thank you.

• Chart updated: 04/20/2015 20:15
• (Created: 02/26/2011 23:02).
• Chart size: 60 albums.

The user that created this chart is banned. This chart does not count towards the overall rankings.

There are 86 comments for this chart from BestEverAlbums.com members and Top 60 Greatest Music Albums has an average rating of 83 out of 100 (from 94 votes). Please log in or register to leave a comment or assign a rating.

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2. (=)

Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness 

 The Smashing Pumpkins

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"Mellon Collie" has been with me all my life, so I have many memories concealed within its aural walls. Most of all I remember long car rides at night, slouching into the backseat on a bored sunset somewhere at the horizon of sleep. My father and my step-mother argue over overpasses and I close my eyes and turn up the volume and drift above it all like a heavy cloud.

"My life
Has Been
Extraordinary;
Blessed
And cursed
And won." [First added to this chart: 02/26/2011]

Year of Release:

1995

Appears in:

1,488 charts

Rank Score:

15,132

Rank in 1995:

3

Rank in 1990s:

16

Overall Rank:

84

Average Rating:

 83 (1,852 votes)

Comments:

168

3. (=)

The Great Misdirect 

 Between The Buried And Me

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Probably the greatest "metal" album ever recorded - assuming you do it justice to even classify it as merely that. It takes influences from folk music, honky tonk, jazz, progressive, alternative and death metal to construct a dystopian alien coming-of-age story set in the suburbs. Characterizing the benevolent punishments of parental guardians as the tyrannical rule of an alien overlord (the protagonists stereo being taken from him seen as a great forced drought of music in "Desert Of Song") it serves to both mock and celebrate the frivolity of youth.

"Everything's
A novelty;
Everyone grows
But me." [First added to this chart: 02/26/2011]

Year of Release:

2009

Appears in:

25 charts

Rank Score:

103

Rank in 2009:

201

Rank in 2000s:

2,011

Overall Rank:

11,327

Average Rating:

 76 (43 votes)

Comments:

0

5. (=)

Ys 

 Joanna Newsom

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An album so intimate you can feel its heartbeat and its breath on your neck. I once took a walk through the woods at night on shrooms while blaring this into my ears at full volume, watching the stars contort amongst the leafy heavens, scattering their light like luminous seeds from which the day will grow. This album is ethereal. It is the gentle wind through your hair at night and the earth between your bare toes.

"Scrape
Your knee,
It is
Only skin;
Makes
The sound
Of violins." [First added to this chart: 05/06/2012]

Year of Release:

2006

Appears in:

771 charts

Rank Score:

8,791

Rank in 2006:

2

Rank in 2000s:

27

Overall Rank:

173

Average Rating:

 82 (848 votes)

Comments:

87

7. (=)

Emergency & I 

 The Dismemberment Plan

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I was in freshman year when I first listened to "Emergency & I", and the crisp yet chaotic production felt as though a mirror to my own quickly declining, abusive relationship. An album about the apocalyptic end of youth and with it innocence, and the numb cynicism that accompanies it; as someone who was very new to adulthood, this spoke to me in volumes.

"Now I notice
The streetlamp’s hum,
The ghosts of graffiti
They couldn’t quite erase,
The blank-faced stares
On the subway
As the people go home." [First added to this chart: 05/14/2012]

Year of Release:

1999

Appears in:

466 charts

Rank Score:

3,751

Rank in 1999:

9

Rank in 1990s:

82

Overall Rank:

465

Average Rating:

 81 (525 votes)

Comments:

33

8. (=)

Boxer 

 The National

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When I was seventeen this album seemed to know everything about me, every petty nuance of my psyche elaborated upon with such prose. Their whimsical, rainy-afternoon indie rock pours down upon you and slowly wears you away and breaks you down, like so much rain on a jagged rockface, reducing you to weeping sediment, stroking the raw nerve imbedded in the rock.

"Oh, we're so disarming, darling,
Everything we did believe
Is diving, diving, diving,
Diving off the balcony.
Tired and wired,
We ruin too easy.
Sleep in our clothes
And wait for winter to leave." [First added to this chart: 05/21/2011]

Year of Release:

2007

Appears in:

995 charts

Rank Score:

9,809

Rank in 2007:

4

Rank in 2000s:

21

Overall Rank:

147

Average Rating:

 82 (1,208 votes)

Comments:

92

9. (=)

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My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 

 Kanye West

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The first great hip hop tragedy. "MBDTF" begins by describing Kanye as a man of great bravado; arrogant and sure of himself, beheld to no one. But as the album progresses, the cracks in the surface begin to become more prevalent. The album begins to become more and more introspective and we are left in the end not with a great man, but a sadly pathetic man, desperately grasping at fallen pieces on the ground, trying to recognize his own lost humanity. When money and power become as much the tools to bring you to your knees as they are to raise you on your feet, "who will survive in America?"

"I made mistakes,
I bump my head,
The courts sucked me dry,
I spent that bread.
She needs her daddy,
Baby please,
Can't let her grow up
In that ghetto university" [First added to this chart: 11/23/2011]

Year of Release:

2010

Appears in:

1,725 charts

Rank Score:

23,560

Rank in 2010:

1

Rank in 2010s:

2

Overall Rank:

34

Average Rating:

 85 (2,356 votes)

Comments:

280

10. (=)

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea 

 Neutral Milk Hotel

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I starred into her smokey gray eyes in the dark, the lights off because we couldn't afford the electricity, sitting on the floor because there weren't any chairs and there was wine and toast on the floor around us, and she asked if I would like to go to bed and I said yes. And I lay there next to her, pressing my hand against the tambourine-headed tattoo that marked her thigh and in that single bed we dove into milky-white dreams.

"The only girl
I ever loved
Was born with roses
In her eyes,
But then they buried her alive
One evening,
1945." [First added to this chart: 12/05/2012]

Year of Release:

1998

Appears in:

2,423 charts

Rank Score:

34,598

Rank in 1998:

1

Rank in 1990s:

3

Overall Rank:

17

Average Rating:

 87 (2,947 votes)

Comments:

430

11. (=)

The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady 

 Charles Mingus

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[First added to this chart: 05/14/2012]

Year of Release:

1963

Appears in:

973 charts

Rank Score:

13,341

Rank in 1963:

1

Rank in 1960s:

22

Overall Rank:

91

Average Rating:

 86 (1,023 votes)

Comments:

74

13. (=)

The Low End Theory 

 A Tribe Called Quest

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[First added to this chart: 05/16/2012]

Year of Release:

1991

Appears in:

1,002 charts

Rank Score:

10,431

Rank in 1991:

6

Rank in 1990s:

29

Overall Rank:

133

Average Rating:

 85 (1,129 votes)

Comments:

67

15. (=)

Illinois 

 Sufjan Stevens

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[First added to this chart: 08/06/2011]

Year of Release:

2005

Appears in:

1,652 charts

Rank Score:

21,097

Rank in 2005:

1

Rank in 2000s:

5

Overall Rank:

43

Average Rating:

 86 (1,903 votes)

Comments:

169

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Top 60 Greatest Music Albums composition

Decade	Albums	%
1930s	0	0%
1940s	0	0%
1950s	0	0%
1960s	5	8%
1970s	7	12%
1980s	8	13%
1990s	15	25%
2000s	22	37%
2010s	3	5%
2020s	0	0%

Artist	Albums	%
Burzum	1	2%
Mission Of Burma	1	2%
Between The Buried And Me	1	2%
The Who	1	2%
Blut Aus Nord	1	2%
Albert Ayler Trio	1	2%
Belle And Sebastian	1	2%
Show all

Country	Albums	%
	32	53%
	13	22%
	9	15%
	2	3%
	1	2%
	1	2%
	1	2%
Show all

Top 60 Greatest Music Albums chart changes

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Top 40 Greatest Music Albums	fiore9891	Overall chart	2012
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Top 40 Greatest Music Albums	remco27	Overall chart	2013
Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s	MaxStorm98	1990s decade chart	2018

Top 60 Greatest Music Albums similarity to your chart(s)