Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by slatsheit

I've tried to put this chart together the way that I believe everyone should: 1) ***no*** limitations on the number of albums by a single artist, because that would automatically make the chart a bald-faced lie (at least in my case), and 2) to rank every album meticulously in terms of desert island standards, rather than some sort of objective evaluation - with every single rank number, "hm, if I can only take this many albums with me to the desert island, would I rather have this album, or some other album I haven't included yet?" The desire to be absolutely honest with myself and others has led (and will continue to lead, until I die) to numerous revisions.

In terms of how I personally rate albums, I personally consider there to be four levels of "5 stars." The first three, I give 100 ratings to on this site; the others (more numerous) get 95s. 4.5s get 90s, 4s get 80 or 85, 3.5s get 70 or 75, 3s get 60 or 65, and so on. My ratings tend to trend higher on average than most here because if I listen to an album, something grabbed me that made me want to listen to it.

But I digress. #1-15 I would consider 5+++, #16-34 is 5++, 35-75 is 5+, and everything below (and everything contained on my "101-200" and "201-241" custom charts) is a straight 5.

I'm a self-proclaimed Gen X curmudgeon. I hate hip-hop and everything significantly influenced by it on principle - too meta and too non-musical, and I can't stand the non-stop foul language and degradation. That said, it's absolutely not a racial thing - I love and esteem plenty of r 'n' b, soul, and jazz. The first two of those three genres tend to be underrepresented here compared to my actual tastes because those genres are more singles-oriented. Jazz will probably grow in representation in time - up to this point, I generally haven't evaluated the jazz I like vs. the pop/rock because they're so apples and oranges. I do have to cop to having heard far fewer jazz albums than pop/rock albums (hundreds vs. thousands). I like classical more than jazz, and love certain pieces more than some of the pop/rock albums included here. However, classical is virtually impossible to rate in terms of albums, because classical albums are about performances, whereas I approach classical by finding a performance I like and listening to that, whereas my sense of classical favorites is a matter of pieces, not performances. If pop/rock vs. jazz, is apples and oranges, pop/rock vs. classical is apples and sweet potatoes. In terms of the album-oriented stuff I do like, I strongly believe that there was a precipitous drop-off in music in general after about 1988. Shoegaze and Radiohead's OK Computer are the only developments since which are both 1) original and 2) worthwhile. Everything else that is good is synthetic of prior styles. That's not necessarily a bad thing - there are many very good albums in such veins.

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This, not Loveless, is the greatest of all shoegaze albums (and, by the way, the emergence of shoegaze ca. ’89 has been the penultimate positive development in the history of the pop/rock genre from my curmudgeonly perspective – absolutely *everything* good since, with the exception of OK Computer, has been a synthesis or revival of past styles). An enchanting blend of puissant songwriting (which Neil Halstead hasn’t matched at any other point in his career), gorgeous guitar-pedal-blasting, and emotional resonance. It would be higher except that “Altogether,” while being important to the lyrical flow of the album, needed a lot more shoegaze gussying up, as did “Melon Yellow.” Even the only pretty-good semi-acoustic track “Here She Comes” is better than those two. The other seven tracks are strong enough – the shoegaze take on Velvet Underground’s third influence of “Alison,” the glacial grandeur of “Machine Gun,” the mysterious Eno-contributed slo-mo crawl of “Sing,” the emotionally harrowing “Dagger,” the majestic sweep of “When the Sun Hits,” and most of all the dub-supershoegaze maelstrom of “Souvlaki Space Station” (which is never nearly as good live due to its dependance on studio effects) and the dramatically brilliant rush of “Days.” No one does Sturm und Drang within shoegaze like these guys. This album, plus their initial three ep’s, are their great legacy. [First added to this chart: 11/08/2024]
Year of Release:
1993
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Rank Score:
11,184
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Oh, trust me, Loveless is in the higher echelons of my 101-200 list, but this is the second-best shoegaze album of all-time (cf. Souvlaki, above), and one of the most crushingly underrated albums on this site. Another lightning-in-a-bottle album, in that they started to go all pseudo-metal hard rock on Chrome and completed the transition after that. They certainly have a more hard-rock/metal approach to their shoegaze, but Rob Dickinson’s strong songwriting and shoegaze-perfect hoarse vocals solidify its greatness. The guitars with their various effects dazzle and gleam (like black metallic?), sticking mainly to minor keys and creating a maelstrom of grippingly wistful emotional power just short of Slowdive’s best stuff. So many bangers – “Bill and Ben” (my favorite), the churning “Indigo is Blue,” of course “Black Metallic,” the extreme dynamics of “Ferment,” the pummeling “Texture,” the moody “Tumbledown,” and the surprising hook-filled power of “I Want to Touch You,” “She’s My Friend,” “Shallow,” “Flower to Hide,” “Salt,” and “Balloon.” If you haven’t been counting, that’s the whole friggin’ album. Yep, this is one of those that’s fantastic from beginning to end (which it has over Souvlaki, but I still love that album even more). I love it. And kudos to Tim Friese-Greene for his glorious 3D production. It’s quiet (especially compared to Chrome), so you have to crank it to get the full impact, but let’s hear it for spacious, headroom-filled production. [First added to this chart: 11/16/2024]
Year of Release:
1992
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Rank Score:
499
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“Oh, you just hate Radiohead!” No, I don’t; this is a fantastic album. No way is it the greatest of all time, but it’s an amazing, innovative achievement. And they’re still a rock band here, which makes it better than anything they did afterward. Solid, good from beginning to end, and visionary. The album has a cinematic conceptual sweep which owes much to Pink Floyd, while adding various oddball electronic elements to their rock band sound that often verge on the orchestral to frame their song cycle of modern alienation, confusion, isolation, and paranoia. My two favorites on the album are the super-catchy and gravely underrated opener “Airbag,” with its chiming 12-string rhythm guitar, stuttering rhythms, and Jonny’s sometimes cello-like and sometimes horn-like lead work, and the majestic “Lucky,” which is surely the climax of the album. “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” with its gorgeously spacey atmosphere and grand use of 12-string, isn’t far behind them. I also love the seemingly at-odds rhythms of the beautiful textures on “Let Down,” the dramatic use of choral Mellotron on “Exit Music (For a Film)” – n.b. any album that has the two best sounds in rock music, 12-string electric and Mellotron, already has to struggle mightily not to at least be a four-star album – and the hypnotic denouement of “The Tourist.” The dramatic crescendo of the appropriately-unhinged “Climbing Up the Walls,” the tinkling music box lullaby of “No Surprises,” and the dramatically episodic, joltingly varied “Paranoid Android” are also noteworthy. If you’re counting tracks, I haven’t mentioned “Electioneering,” which is decent for what it is, the weird interlude of “Fitter, Happier,” which is no one’s favorite track, and “Karma Police,” which is, but to me is slightly lesser than the bulk of this glorious masterpiece. Of course Thom Yorke presides over all with his burnt-out Bono persona, giving the whole album its emotional heft. [First added to this chart: 11/16/2024]
Year of Release:
1997
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Rank Score:
66,248
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Comments:
83. (=)
Ireland U2
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No other once-beloved artist has been so firmly rejected by Gen Y and Gen Z as U2. Not sure if Bono just became too much of a caricature of his former self, or what. However, to Gen X, for a time, they were the new Beatles, a huge part of popular culture and life. In the early ’80s, they blended post-punk with a wide-eyed optimism wholly uncharacteristic of that genre and a desire (and an unswerving confidence in their ability) to become huge, as well as their Irish identity (which came out, for example, with the uillean pipes on “Tomorrow,” or the fiddle on “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “The Drowning Man”). They gave their music a further cinematic sweep by working with Brian Eno on The Unforgettable Fire, became the biggest thing since sliced bread at Live Aid, and blended their sound with the Americana they encountered through Bono’s involvement with the Sun City project and the band’s participation in the Conspiracy of Hope tour on The Joshua Tree. However, they then chose to jump the shark via solar slingshot by making a movie about their embarrassing failures to explore those classic musical “influences” further on Rattle and Hum, rendering them the butt of jokes and making them completely irrelevant virtually overnight. They needed to reinvent themselves as never before. And what seems to be lost is how effective they were in doing so. My first reaction on hearing this album was, “This is not U2. They’ve lost it even worse.” However, by about the third listen, I became aware I was listening to deeply resonant music, a real masterpiece. In incorporating Euro dance and Krautrock influences and becoming slinky and sexy in their music, they gained a new relevance and created something which is futuristic and yet timelessly enduring. My favorite track is the pulsatingly danceable “Until the End of the World,” but the slower tunes like “One,” “So Cruel,” and “Trying to Throw Your Arms around the World” resonate, “Even Better Than the Real Thing” and “Mysterious Ways,” with its great bass line, gleam and grind, “Acrobat” is an apocalyptic climax, and “Love is Blindness” is an effectively gritty and blasted-out closer. [First added to this chart: 11/16/2024]
Year of Release:
1991
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Rank Score:
12,041
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59th in 1994. Just short of the top 2,500 albums on here. 74 average rating. Damn, has this album become underrated. This was the most resonant album to come out in the mid-‘90s hellscape of post-grunge. The flute, sax, and violin work made it harken back to the inventiveness of the seventies, it’s probably the best production work of Steve Lillywhite’s entire career, and the songwriting is extraordinarily strong. Singing like Dave Matthews became a pop/rock cliché after this, but here it was original. “Typical Situation,” “The Best of What’s Around,” “Lover Lay Down,” “Ants Marching,” and especially “Jimi Thing” are masterpiece-level tracks, and the rest are strong. [First added to this chart: 11/16/2024]
Year of Release:
1994
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Rank Score:
581
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Total albums: 5. Page 1 of 1

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Top 100 Greatest Music Albums composition

Decade Albums %


1930s 0 0%
1940s 0 0%
1950s 1 1%
1960s 40 40%
1970s 36 36%
1980s 17 17%
1990s 5 5%
2000s 1 1%
2010s 0 0%
2020s 0 0%
Country Albums %


United Kingdom 56 56%
United States 37 37%
Canada 4 4%
Mixed Nationality 2 2%
Ireland 1 1%
Live? Albums %
No 98 98%
Yes 2 2%
Soundtrack? Albums %
No 98 98%
Yes 2 2%

Top 100 Greatest Music Albums chart changes

There have been no changes to this chart.
TitleSourceTypePublishedCountry
Mojo Readers: The 100 Greatest Albums Ever MadeMojoOverall chart1996United Kingdom
AllMusic's Greatest Albumsmusicologist97Custom chart2019
Ya joking? Should've been higher! All Time edition PurplepashCustom chart2025
BEA Top 100 Reorganized According To My TastebonnequestionCustom chart2025
200 Greatest albums of all time (1 - 100) - Uncut 2016JohnnyoCustom chart2020
200 Greatest Albums of All TimeUncutOverall chart2016United Kingdom
My Personal Ranking of Best Ever Albums' Top 100 Xxnu99etxXCustom chart2022
Going With My Gut: The Overall Chart Top 100 Re-ranked CharlieBarleyCustom chart2024
Top 100 Greatest Music Albumsalbum guru joeOverall chart2013
BEA+RYM Overall RankImaybeparanoidCustom chart2017Unknown

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Average Rating: 
89/100 (from 5 votes)
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From 08/18/2025 04:16
Nice list - lost of albums that I love here :) A little Beatles heavy but hey… you love what you
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Rating:  
90/100
From 04/01/2025 00:34
Thanks for pointing out the Overall Chart and how it can be distorted. It's true, technically, but this would be a much more valid critique of me making custom charts for certain genres instead of placing their best in the greatest. Right now, they're hardly counting for the Overall Chart, when they could be counting a lot more. I've thought about that a little bit over the years since the website as a whole has a massive rock bias as it stands, but it doesn't outweigh how annoying it is for me to try and compare them in good faith (I, like you, have my genre preferences).

You've made me think a little bit about that line in my description. It's been there for over a decade now and had you strolled in at the start and said what you've said it'd ring a lot more true. Back then, I enforced it on myself to get away from a list that had double ups on double ups. It was also part of an impetus to go and listen to new things. Today, all the albums in the list are -- I think -- 5/5 records, and consequently there's actually a very small cross section of possible records I could consider that this rule presently excludes, here they are:

The Beatles - The Beatles [White Album]
The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
Boredoms - Vision Creation Newsun
David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
David Bowie - Station to Station
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Good Son
Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left
Nick Drake - Pink Moon
Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour
Guided by Voices - Alien Lanes
Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
Talking Heads - Remain in Light
The Velvet Underground - White Light / White Heat
The Wrens - Album 4.5 (bootleg wouldn't qualify)
Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones
Neil Young - After the Gold Rush
Neil Young - Tonight's the Night

Would I add any of them to my list though? Maybe like 1 or 2 at any random given day, or certainly I'd be more likely right after listening to one of them, but I think they fight against my no. 100 on pretty equal footing and there's at least as many more left out that are from artists not in the list at all. This is a result of 10+ years of such a rule. I just have a very wide tastes now and I kind of like it that way. It doesn't mean anything really because I'd still defend the rule as it stands but food for thought. Interested in hearing more from you mate keep in touch.
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Rating:  
90/100
From 03/26/2025 08:27
Thanks for your comment. I wouldn't describe our tastes as majorly divergent, at least not from where I'm sitting. There's only a handful of records in your list I don't rate at least an 8, and many more I utterly adore.

Regarding the one artist limit, I can see why you might take issue with it considering the effect it would have on your list, but I'll hazard a minor challenge to your reasoning. You -- correctly -- dismiss the premise of objectivity in the construction of your list, and instead defer to your heart. I do so too, but isn't there a tension here with how you rationalise what a list should be?

I don't have a problem with your rules per se; do your thing. However, you argue that a list with restriction is in some way a lie. You then go on to volubly articulate all the ways your own list is limited in favour of how you personally imagine and derive joy from music. My point being, we are both using the list to document and convey us and how we see our own tastes, far more so than making a claim to what is good. It seems you're aware of that but it's lost on me you'd consider my version of how to demonstrate mine somehow me lying to myself.

Simply put, I kind of figure that when someone sees I like Neil Young's On The Beach that they can also figure I like the rest of catalogue; and if they're so curious as to what extent that information is readily available on my profile. Moreover, it's compelling for me to make that commitment to a favourite by an artist that I could otherwise proliferate my list with indiscriminately, and it frees me up to self-express a modicum more and to make recommendations.

A list can do more than one thing at a time.

In any case, I enjoyed reading through your list. I appreciated picks like New York Tendaberry and the wild self-reporting of being a Gen-Xer (with that Joe Jackson live album, I promise you we can tell), however I am also left without anything new to go discover which leaves me wanting.
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Best Ever Albums
1. OK Computer by Radiohead
2. The Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd
3. Abbey Road by The Beatles
4. Revolver by The Beatles
5. Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd
6. In Rainbows by Radiohead
7. The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars by David Bowie
8. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles
9. Kid A by Radiohead
10. The Velvet Underground & Nico by The Velvet Underground & Nico
11. Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys
12. Untitled (Led Zeppelin IV) by Led Zeppelin
13. Nevermind by Nirvana
14. The Beatles (The White Album) by The Beatles
15. Funeral by Arcade Fire
16. The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths
17. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel
18. Doolittle by Pixies
19. To Pimp A Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar
20. London Calling by The Clash
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