Top 100 Greatest Music Albums
by 
MadhattanJack 
- Chart updated: 07/15/2025 23:15
- (Created: 08/28/2021 02:46).
- Chart size: 100 albums.
There are 13 comments for this chart from BestEverAlbums.com members and Top 100 Greatest Music Albums has an average rating of 89 out of 100 (from 28 votes). Please log in or register to leave a comment or assign a rating.
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I won't deny that ranking this as the all-time #1 album is a completely subjective choice on my part. While I do believe that someday in the distant future people all over the world (or what's left of it) will agree with me, I'm not so delusional as to think that will happen "naturally" or "organically" — in other words, without the use of psychoactive chemicals surreptitiously introduced into the global water supply. In the meantime, the album cover stands as perhaps the most accurate prediction ever of how an artificial-intelligence text generator would answer the question, "what is this thing?" when confronted with a pop music album.
[First added to this chart: 06/28/2022]
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If I were being completely OB-jective, then this would be the all-time #1 album, since this is actually XTC's "best" album. And they knew it, too — that's why they needed the deep-sea diving suits. The original title was going to be "Work Under Pressure," but "Black Sea" was just easier to pronounce underwater.
[First added to this chart: 05/25/2022]
Year of Release:
1980
Appears in:
Rank Score:
1,539
Rank in 1980:
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Though this album was released in 1993, most of us folks in the USA prefer to go with the 1994 US release date because the British music press inexplicably and unfairly trashed the album as "boring" in 1993. The later release date is our way of "giving them a mulligan" because it's such a good album, and everyone in the USA is obsessed with cheating at golf.
[First added to this chart: 05/25/2022]
Year of Release:
1993
Appears in:
Rank Score:
10,815
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Rank in 1990s:
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This is Hitchcock at the peak of his powers, which at the time included mass hypnosis, producing streams of an unidentified liquid from the apex of his head ("the tops"), and the ability to make carrots disappear, seemingly without eating them.
[First added to this chart: 05/25/2022]
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Most people pick "Treasure" or "Heaven or Las Vegas" as the best Cocteau Twins album, but if you bought the US vinyl LP version with the fancy gatefold cover when it first came out, as I did, you got a special "golden ticket" that gained you admission to the strange-yet-wonderful chocolate factory just up the street.
[First added to this chart: 05/25/2022]
Year of Release:
1988
Appears in:
Rank Score:
1,012
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I won't apologize for liking XTC so much that I've ranked their second, third, and fourth albums among the top ten of all time, but if you were to hold a gun to my head and insist, I might be willing to mumble sheepishly about it for a minute or so.
[First added to this chart: 05/25/2022]
Year of Release:
1979
Appears in:
Rank Score:
1,312
Rank in 1979:
Rank in 1970s:
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Average Rating:
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I remember when I first heard this album, I was thinking, "Wow, this is going to change everything." And it did! I mean, sure, everything got worse, but everything always gets worse, there's no way around that problem. The important thing is that this is the album that made it all happen.
[First added to this chart: 05/25/2022]
Year of Release:
1979
Appears in:
Rank Score:
1,711
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Average Rating:
Comments:
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This is the album that made me want to play guitar, and not just PLAY guitar, but play guitar through a dizzying array of effects pedals and studio trickery, "just like Dave Fielding." Admittedly, I already had a guitar and knew how to play, and I was even in a band and everything. I just didn't WANT to before I heard this album.
[First added to this chart: 05/25/2022]
Year of Release:
1985
Appears in:
Rank Score:
522
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Comments:
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There was a moment there, way back in the good ol' 1970s, when this was my all-time favorite album — just beating out Roxy Music's "Stranded" (currently at #11). Unfortunately, back then most kids in the USA thought you were "weird" if you were a Bowie fan. So I would tell people I was really a Doja Cat fan instead, because Doja Cat hadn't been born yet.
[First added to this chart: 05/25/2022]
Year of Release:
1973
Appears in:
Rank Score:
5,486
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Average Rating:
Comments:
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This album was released about two weeks before I went off to college. I think I would have been better off if it had come out two weeks after I got there, because then I wouldn't have ended up ranking it so highly, but I guess beggars can't be choosers.
[First added to this chart: 05/25/2022]
Year of Release:
1979
Appears in:
Rank Score:
6,822
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Comments:
Total albums: 100. Page 1 of 10
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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums composition
| Decade | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1930s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1940s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1950s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1960s | 3 | 3% | |
| 1970s | 21 | 21% | |
| 1980s | 32 | 32% | |
| 1990s | 26 | 26% | |
| 2000s | 10 | 10% | |
| 2010s | 7 | 7% | |
| 2020s | 1 | 1% |
| Artist | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|||
| XTC | 7 | 7% | |
| Roxy Music | 3 | 3% | |
| David Bowie | 3 | 3% | |
| I Like Trains | 2 | 2% | |
| Slowdive | 2 | 2% | |
| Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians | 2 | 2% | |
| Cocteau Twins | 2 | 2% | |
| Show all | |||
| Country | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|||
 |
72 | 72% | |
| |
21 | 21% | |
 |
1 | 1% | |
 |
1 | 1% | |
 |
1 | 1% | |
 |
1 | 1% | |
 |
1 | 1% | |
| Show all | |||
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums chart changes
There have been no changes to this chart.Top 100 Greatest Music Albums similar charts
| Title | Source | Type | Published | Country |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 1980s | MadhattanJack | 1980s decade chart | 2025 | |
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s | MadhattanJack | 1990s decade chart | 2023 | |
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 1970s | MadhattanJack | 1970s decade chart | 2023 | |
| Top 100 Greatest Music Albums |  Secondsoul | Overall chart | 2015 | |
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| Best albums of all time | Fast 'n' Bulbous | Overall chart | 2021 | |
| Top 100 Greatest Music Albums | LittleM1971 | Overall chart | 2026 | |
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 1980s | DanielU | 1980s decade chart | 2020 |  |
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s | Secondsoul | 1990s decade chart | 2015 | |
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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums ratings
Average Rating = (n ÷ (n + m)) × av + (m ÷ (n + m)) × AVwhere:
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ! | 01/04/2026 16:55 | jnmayles | 12 | 88/100 |
| ! | 11/16/2025 19:54 |  Dankel | 175 | 84/100 |
| ! | 08/02/2025 21:26 | Vulgarplacards | 1 | 90/100 |
| ! | 07/12/2025 16:21 |  baystateoftheart | 95 | 96/100 |
| ! | 07/12/2025 15:32 | BorderFreeAndrew | 105 | 81/100 |
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 4% of all charts on BestEverAlbums.com. This chart has a Bayesian average rating of 89.3/100, a mean average of 88.2/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 90.6/100. The standard deviation for this chart is 13.9.
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums favourites
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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums comments
Showing latest 10 comments | Show all 13 comments |
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From Dankel 11/16/2025 19:56 | #311696
Dankel 11/16/2025 19:56 | #311696
Great Chart! Lots of interesting stuff. Would have given it 100% but I can't really get into shoegaze. My main takeaway from this chart is I must play more XTC and Original Mirrors! I had forgotten their existence.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From Vulgarplacards 08/02/2025 21:27 | #310391
Great choices, some new to me- I’ll seek them out!
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From baystateoftheart 07/12/2025 16:23 | #310077
baystateoftheart 07/12/2025 16:23 | #310077
Great unique choices, and the entertaining write-ups especially make it shine. Your notes about excluding Radiohead do make me wonder what a totally unaltered list of your favorites would be like.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From BorderFreeAndrew 07/12/2025 15:32 | #310076
Kudos for a refreshingly unique chart. And for being even more obsessed with XTC than I used to be.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From 
urmom22 07/03/2025 01:27 | #309865
urmom22 07/03/2025 01:27 | #309865
That's really suuuuuuuuper super girl
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From matterhornrider 06/08/2025 02:34 | #309287
7 Albums by the amazing XTC, no problem with me. So many bands I love here and so many Albums I look forward to listening to.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From 
seb7 08/12/2024 16:03 | #304734
seb7 08/12/2024 16:03 | #304734
Very cool and fairly specific taste. Dig it!
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From Steppenwolf666 10/10/2023 15:53 | #299436
Great chart, not because of the music, because of the hilarious comments. Of course it could be a great chart music wise, but I wouldn't know, although the few albums in it I do know are very good. I would never have thought of checking out XTC's go2, but now I just might! P.S. The DIV I DED album is now in another chart.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From Tony58 06/19/2023 17:11 | #297679
Very interesting chart. Glad to see included a number of artists I like who don't usually get as much recognition as they deserve, eg The Auteurs, The Associates and Lush. Also, I enjoyed the witty comments, eg on the Beatles and Paul McCartney albums!
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From Moondance 05/06/2023 22:17 | #296698
I've had a lot of fun checking out this chart and reading the comments. Definitely different to most BEA charts and that's what I really like. It ooooozes personality & sincerity (no BEA peer pressure here!)
I love it that we only have 1 album in common.
I love it that a citizen of the USA significantly favours the music of the UK (very very rare in my observation of BEA charts).
I love it that I can return to this chart and (hopefully) discover an album/artist (or 2) who has evaded my line of sight & hearing for the past 50 - 10years ¬ and be everly grateful for the guided discovery.
I love it that someone from the northern hemisphere has included 1 album from Australia (that is not Nick Cave, AC/DC, Tame Impala or KG&TLW) AND 1 album from New Zealand (any album from NZ is amazing!).
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
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