Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by 
JulianR 
Hey!
I am quite excited to discuss literally anything about music ("literal" used in the literal, not figurative sense). I don't really know anyone that listens to the breadth and depth of music that I do. So if you disagree with something I say, or just want to talk about music, totally message me. Also if you want recommendations, or have some for me, totally message me or comment. Thank you!
Just as a heads up, the descriptions for these albums could have been written yesterday, or 18 months ago. They may not be totally reflective of my opinions on them now, though they were at one point at least.
Chart of the Day: 2/21/18, 4/23/19
Questions, comments, concerns, and especially recommendations are all heavily encouraged
Thanks
- Julian
- Chart updated: 02/07/2020 06:45
- (Created: 12/14/2016 01:31).
- Chart size: 100 albums.
There are 73 comments for this chart from BestEverAlbums.com members and Top 100 Greatest Music Albums has an average rating of 92 out of 100 (from 108 votes). Please log in or register to leave a comment or assign a rating.
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This chart is currently filtered to only show albums from the 1980s. (Remove this filter)
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Rock • Prog • Rock Ballads
95/100
Cover Art: 5/10
If You Like This: Roger Waters' solo work
"They disembarked in '45
And no-one spoke and no-one smiled
There were too many spaces in the line"
I would like to boast that, of the entire site, I have this album ranked the highest. It's kinda cool (everyone likes being unique, right), but this album honestly deserves so much more recognition.
If I could sum up my childhood musically, it would be in the words "Pink Floyd". Ever since I have consciously listened to music, I have always been to hum along to every single note of every single solo of every single song of every single album from Dark Side to the Final Cut. It was never a conscious choice, I just have Gilmour ingrained in my brain, and my father to thank for it. Since I have begun rediscovering music on my own terms, I have discovered, for a fact, that this is the best Pink Floyd album. Sure, PF has some great albums. Everything from Meddle to this record is just top tier in my opinion. They are all grandiose, deep, insightful, innovative, but none are even close to this album, to be honest. None of them quite reach the deep, heartfelt, painful feeling that this album is able to capture. I think in order to get to this true, honest, painful place in his music, Roger Waters needed to cut through the excess at the core of what prog rock is, and for this he needed to cut a lot of the excess of the other members, exercising almost total creative control. With that he was able to create this album ("written by Roger Rogers, Performed by Pink Floyd", as the liner notes specify). You can call it a Waters solo album, but that doesn't make it any worse. It's still fantastic, no matter who got shafted in the process.
Every song feels like it was made through a deeply painful process to Roger; even The Wall, though he is supposedly speaking about himself, feels detached, inflated, melodramatic, abstract. But this album is very real; maybe the most real on this list, maybe of all time. It is an album about real experiences. They may not be Roger's exactly, but they might as well have been. He talks about it as if growing up in a world defined by a war he was barely alive for imbued him with an intimate knowledge of it--and it must have. Growing up, where every man either saw war himself or knew ten others who went and didn't make it back, must have been a strange experience. Roger Waters is conveying multi-generational wounds on this album, deep pain that, though he hasn't felt it, has felt the effects of every day of his life. In "your possible pasts", he is singing about the way could tell, growing up, that everyone was holding a strange and invisible burden, one that everyone saw but no-one talked about. And he also gets very personal. "When the tigers broke free" (ya i know it wasnt on the original release but its on the one I have and I consider it part of the album) is about his firsthand experience with how his dad died.
But this isn't an album just for him. It talks about his childhood experiences, but it also talks about the lives of the adults around him during that time through their eyes. And even more than that, it's an album for an entire country. A country he saw as sliding right back into the tendencies that led to all the pain he saw in the first place. The tendencies that have the possibility to kill us all in nuclear catastrophe, as he points out in what may be the greatest closer to an album ever.
" Finally, I understand, the feelings of the few
Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend
We were all equal in the end " [First added to this chart: 12/13/2016]
95/100
Cover Art: 5/10
If You Like This: Roger Waters' solo work
"They disembarked in '45
And no-one spoke and no-one smiled
There were too many spaces in the line"
I would like to boast that, of the entire site, I have this album ranked the highest. It's kinda cool (everyone likes being unique, right), but this album honestly deserves so much more recognition.
If I could sum up my childhood musically, it would be in the words "Pink Floyd". Ever since I have consciously listened to music, I have always been to hum along to every single note of every single solo of every single song of every single album from Dark Side to the Final Cut. It was never a conscious choice, I just have Gilmour ingrained in my brain, and my father to thank for it. Since I have begun rediscovering music on my own terms, I have discovered, for a fact, that this is the best Pink Floyd album. Sure, PF has some great albums. Everything from Meddle to this record is just top tier in my opinion. They are all grandiose, deep, insightful, innovative, but none are even close to this album, to be honest. None of them quite reach the deep, heartfelt, painful feeling that this album is able to capture. I think in order to get to this true, honest, painful place in his music, Roger Waters needed to cut through the excess at the core of what prog rock is, and for this he needed to cut a lot of the excess of the other members, exercising almost total creative control. With that he was able to create this album ("written by Roger Rogers, Performed by Pink Floyd", as the liner notes specify). You can call it a Waters solo album, but that doesn't make it any worse. It's still fantastic, no matter who got shafted in the process.
Every song feels like it was made through a deeply painful process to Roger; even The Wall, though he is supposedly speaking about himself, feels detached, inflated, melodramatic, abstract. But this album is very real; maybe the most real on this list, maybe of all time. It is an album about real experiences. They may not be Roger's exactly, but they might as well have been. He talks about it as if growing up in a world defined by a war he was barely alive for imbued him with an intimate knowledge of it--and it must have. Growing up, where every man either saw war himself or knew ten others who went and didn't make it back, must have been a strange experience. Roger Waters is conveying multi-generational wounds on this album, deep pain that, though he hasn't felt it, has felt the effects of every day of his life. In "your possible pasts", he is singing about the way could tell, growing up, that everyone was holding a strange and invisible burden, one that everyone saw but no-one talked about. And he also gets very personal. "When the tigers broke free" (ya i know it wasnt on the original release but its on the one I have and I consider it part of the album) is about his firsthand experience with how his dad died.
But this isn't an album just for him. It talks about his childhood experiences, but it also talks about the lives of the adults around him during that time through their eyes. And even more than that, it's an album for an entire country. A country he saw as sliding right back into the tendencies that led to all the pain he saw in the first place. The tendencies that have the possibility to kill us all in nuclear catastrophe, as he points out in what may be the greatest closer to an album ever.
" Finally, I understand, the feelings of the few
Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend
We were all equal in the end " [First added to this chart: 12/13/2016]
Year of Release:
1983
Appears in:
Rank Score:
2,270
Rank in 1983:
Rank in 1980s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
72
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Avant-Garde
95/100
Terry Riley knows of another plane of existence, and he can take you there too, if you have the money for some headphones. [First added to this chart: 11/22/2017]
95/100
Terry Riley knows of another plane of existence, and he can take you there too, if you have the money for some headphones. [First added to this chart: 11/22/2017]
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Jazz-Rock • Improv • Art Rock
95/100
CA: 9/10
Just as the cover art would suggest, this album is the lighter counterpart to Laughing Stock. The noon-time sun shines on a colorful array of birds. At times, I find it prettier than Laughing Stock. The floating organs of Wealth, compared to the sparse, broken guitar of Runeii. This album is the sound of artists reaching their creative potential. Realizing the benefits of their years of hard work and learning. Wealth, Inheritance, Belief, the beauty of nature, the biblical gardens of Eden. This is where they arrive. It is beautiful. Laughing Stock marks the Ascension beyond the earthy, the beautiful. The sun setting on the same tree, darkened and hardened. That is the album of the end.
I'm sorry that I can't talk about this album without its relation to Laughing Stock. It's. just the only thing that compares to that incomparable work. [First added to this chart: 04/08/2018]
95/100
CA: 9/10
Just as the cover art would suggest, this album is the lighter counterpart to Laughing Stock. The noon-time sun shines on a colorful array of birds. At times, I find it prettier than Laughing Stock. The floating organs of Wealth, compared to the sparse, broken guitar of Runeii. This album is the sound of artists reaching their creative potential. Realizing the benefits of their years of hard work and learning. Wealth, Inheritance, Belief, the beauty of nature, the biblical gardens of Eden. This is where they arrive. It is beautiful. Laughing Stock marks the Ascension beyond the earthy, the beautiful. The sun setting on the same tree, darkened and hardened. That is the album of the end.
I'm sorry that I can't talk about this album without its relation to Laughing Stock. It's. just the only thing that compares to that incomparable work. [First added to this chart: 04/08/2018]
Year of Release:
1988
Appears in:
Rank Score:
10,390
Rank in 1988:
Rank in 1980s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
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90/100
[First added to this chart: 07/26/2018]
Year of Release:
1986
Appears in:
Rank Score:
4,064
Rank in 1986:
Rank in 1980s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
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Indie Rock • Noise Rock
90/100
Cover Art: 7/10
IYLT: The Breeders - Last Splash; The Flaming Lips - Telepathic Surgery
"Must be a devil between us
Or whores in my head"
This is not an album anyone enjoys. Not on their first listen at least. This is even more true of their earlier releases, but this is the album of theirs that stands out as a masterpiece. The tracks Tame, Dead, and others, do not immediately make the genius of their composition and abrasive, discordant instrumentation clear. But they really are genius. Under the oblique guitar licks and thrashing, off-kilter drumming are excellent songs, warped and distorted and screamed at the top of Francis' lungs with lyrics equally incomprehensible and disturbing, and yet made better because of all that.
This album is the perfection of the art of dissonance. Dissonance is the combination of notes that aren't supposed to sound good together to our western ears (concepts of dissonance vary by culture, its very interesting, but I won't get into that here). But somehow, this band made these dissonant sounds sound thoroughly cohesive in this album.
BM:
Monkey Gone to Heaven: "an' if the devil is six... then godddddddddd is seven!!!" [First added to this chart: 12/13/2016]
90/100
Cover Art: 7/10
IYLT: The Breeders - Last Splash; The Flaming Lips - Telepathic Surgery
"Must be a devil between us
Or whores in my head"
This is not an album anyone enjoys. Not on their first listen at least. This is even more true of their earlier releases, but this is the album of theirs that stands out as a masterpiece. The tracks Tame, Dead, and others, do not immediately make the genius of their composition and abrasive, discordant instrumentation clear. But they really are genius. Under the oblique guitar licks and thrashing, off-kilter drumming are excellent songs, warped and distorted and screamed at the top of Francis' lungs with lyrics equally incomprehensible and disturbing, and yet made better because of all that.
This album is the perfection of the art of dissonance. Dissonance is the combination of notes that aren't supposed to sound good together to our western ears (concepts of dissonance vary by culture, its very interesting, but I won't get into that here). But somehow, this band made these dissonant sounds sound thoroughly cohesive in this album.
BM:
Monkey Gone to Heaven: "an' if the devil is six... then godddddddddd is seven!!!" [First added to this chart: 12/13/2016]
Year of Release:
1989
Appears in:
Rank Score:
32,564
Rank in 1989:
Rank in 1980s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
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[First added to this chart: 12/13/2016]
Year of Release:
1987
Appears in:
Rank Score:
18,489
Rank in 1987:
Rank in 1980s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album
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90/100
[First added to this chart: 09/12/2019]
Year of Release:
1980
Appears in:
Rank Score:
4,745
Rank in 1980:
Rank in 1980s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
90. 
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Buy album
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90/100
Year of Release:
1980
Appears in:
Rank Score:
1,390
Rank in 1980:
Rank in 1980s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Total albums: 8. Page 1 of 1
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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums composition
| Decade | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
|
|
| 1930s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1940s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1950s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1960s | 13 | 13% | |
| 1970s | 12 | 12% | |
| 1980s | 8 | 8% | |
| 1990s | 25 | 25% | |
| 2000s | 21 | 21% | |
| 2010s | 21 | 21% | |
| 2020s | 0 | 0% |
| Artist | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
 |
|
|
| The Flaming Lips | 5 | 5% | |
| Pink Floyd | 4 | 4% | |
| Kanye West | 3 | 3% | |
| Talk Talk | 3 | 3% | |
| Radiohead | 3 | 3% | |
| Bob Dylan | 3 | 3% | |
| Kendrick Lamar | 3 | 3% | |
| Show all | |||
| Country | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
58 | 58% | |
 |
26 | 26% | |
 |
5 | 5% | |
 |
5 | 5% | |
 |
2 | 2% | |
 |
1 | 1% | |
 |
1 | 1% | |
| Show all | |||
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums chart changes
| Biggest fallers |
|---|
| Down 1 from 60th to 61st The Glow Pt. 2 by The Microphones |
| Down 1 from 61st to 62nd Souvlaki by Slowdive |
| Down 1 from 62nd to 63rd Yank Crime by Drive Like Jehu |
| New entries |
|---|
| Turn On The Bright Lights by Interpol |
| In The Flat Field by Bauhaus |
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| PPV Overall Ranking | bea | Custom chart | 2021 |  |
| BEA Forum Regulars' Top 100 (2015) |  HigherThanTheSun | Custom chart | 2015 | |
| Top 100 Greatest Music Albums | TheNowhereGuy | Overall chart | 2020 |  |
| Top 100 Greatest Music Albums | FlapJackJoey | Overall chart | 2025 | |
| Top 100 Greatest Music Albums | juanr1096 | Overall chart | 2025 | |
| Top 100 Greatest Music Albums | Tidus1997 | Overall chart | 2020 | |
| BEA 100 (One Album per Artist) |  BozoTyrannus | Custom chart | 2020 |  |
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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums ratings
92/100 (from 108 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 108 ratings for this chart.
| Rating | Date updated | Member | Chart ratings | Avg. chart rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
90/100  | 09/18/2025 08:50 | Johnnyo | | 80/100 |
95/100 | 04/16/2025 15:35 | DrewHamster | | 79/100 |
100/100 | 01/22/2023 22:16 | Rm12398 | | 89/100 |
80/100 | 07/13/2022 22:08 |  Applerill | | 75/100 |
85/100 | 12/10/2020 00:38 | ars2458 | | 78/100 |
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 92.0/100, a mean average of 92.0/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 92.6/100. The standard deviation for this chart is 10.2.
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Showing latest 20 members who have added this chart as a favourite | Show all 22 members
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums comments
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90/100
From Johnnyo 09/18/2025 08:50
Great picks and love the write ups. Really enjoyed reading your stuff
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
100/100
From Rm12398 01/22/2023 22:17
What a chart!
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
90/100
From Juneof44 04/29/2021 06:58
I really appreciate your effort, a solid chart and i love the rating to the cover
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From Foxforce5 02/05/2021 03:26
Thanks for the hard work. I came to your chart after reading your comments about Rubber Soul and Bringing It All Back Home being ‘transitional’ albums and thought to myself ‘there’s someone with a similar pair of ears’!
Anyhow, your comments inspired me to listen to the ‘transitional’ Bon Iver album, and I’ll give Lorde another go. I mean listening is what it’s all about, right?
In answer to your question on Mezzanine, Pet Sounds is better produced, so now you know.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
85/100
From ars2458 12/10/2020 00:38
Wow, I truly love FEFEA and Age of Adz, but I don't have the depth on older stuff. I am going to give those specific albums a chance. I have listened to Bowie and Pink Floyd, but not those albums, so maybe I will hear something different this time.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
100/100
From Vegetariat 02/03/2020 10:16
Great list with wonderful notes and recommendations. Your description of Loveless and Shoegaze is as touching as it is true. You're right about Touched, haha
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
80/100
From mianfei 12/16/2019 13:05
Although the list is really an odd mix of soul/hip of and progressive rock/post-rock (if I am not mistaken, I did see a similar combination somewhere else on this site on an earlier browse last autumn), there is not that much of real note in the chart.
However, the lack of really unusual albums and a grouping of genres that is merely on the “eccentric” side is certainly compensated for by some impressive notes, which substantially add to the rating.
Some albums you might not have heard that I could attempt to recommend based on your taste:
— ‘Yeti’ by Amon Düül II
— ‘H to He Who Am the Only One’ and ‘Pawn Hearts’ by Van der Graaf Generator
— ‘A Return to the Inner Experience’, ‘This Timeless Turning’ and ‘Moonbathing on Sleeping Leaves’ by Sky Cries Mary
— ‘Gala’ and ‘Spooky’ by Lush
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +2 votes (2 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
95/100
From bonnequestion 12/04/2019 12:41
Very nice and unique chart, very inspiring! And also, good job on all those comments.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +3 votes (3 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
100/100
From Timooosterink 12/04/2019 10:20
Really nice chart, maybe you like Gorillaz?
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +3 votes (3 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
95/100
From 
kynes 12/04/2019 09:07
kynes 12/04/2019 09:07
the final cut getting some deserved appreciation is nice to see! i will always have respect for users who take the time to write significant blurbs for many of the records in their charts
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +2 votes (2 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
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