Best Albums of 1968

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1.

The Beatles (The White Album) 

 The Beatles

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"This album has it all. From gorgeous songs like 'while my guitar gently weeps' and 'blackbird', to just great songs like 'happiness is a warm gun' and 'im so tired', to hard rock (for the time) like 'helter skelter' and 'birthday', to blues jams like 'why dont we do it in the road' and 'yer blues...""This album has it all. From gorgeous songs like 'while my guitar gently weeps' and 'blackbird', to just great songs like 'happiness is a warm gun' and 'im so tired', to hard rock (for the time) like 'helter skelter' and 'birthday', to blues jams like 'why dont we do it in the road' and 'yer blues', to folk-bluesy story telling like 'rock raccoon' and '... bungalo bill', to extended experimentals like 'revolution 9', to whatever the hell 'piggies' is. Thats a lot of grund covered in one album, and they managed to do each of these disparate genres wonderfully. This is the kind of album where a good song from some genre like "gregorian chant" wouldnt feel terribly out of place, and the beatles would probably do it well. "  [+]  Reply

- JulianR | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +12 votes (13 helpful | 1 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

1968

Appears in:

2,972 charts

Rank Score:

35,691

Rank in 1968:

1

Rank in 1960s:

6

Overall Rank:

14

Average Rating:

 89 (3,857 votes)

Comments:

342

2.

Electric Ladyland 

 The Jimi Hendrix Experience

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"By the time he began to record 'Electric Ladyland', Jimi Hendrix had already learned enough about studio recording to be able to reproduce all the sounds he had in his head, note for note. The result was, in my opinion, the ultimate Jimi Hendrix experience and a testament to his songwriting and p...""By the time he began to record 'Electric Ladyland', Jimi Hendrix had already learned enough about studio recording to be able to reproduce all the sounds he had in his head, note for note. The result was, in my opinion, the ultimate Jimi Hendrix experience and a testament to his songwriting and performance abilities. The whole thing is amazing, from the cosmic blues of 'Voodoo Chile' to the psychedelic 'Gypsy Eyes' to the jazzy prog-rock epic, '1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be), Hendrix managed to incorporate all of his musical influences without it sounding too convoluted or pretentious. Even near the end, the album keeps surprising us, its most memorable songs being its last two: 'All Along the Watchtower', probably the best cover ever made, and 'Voodoo Child (Slight Return)', a standard for rock guitarists all over the world. "  [+]  Reply

- chivocosmico | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +12 votes (12 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

1968

Appears in:

1,705 charts

Rank Score:

16,859

Rank in 1968:

2

Rank in 1960s:

14

Overall Rank:

59

Average Rating:

 86 (2,011 votes)

Comments:

109

3.

Astral Weeks 

 Van Morrison

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"This remains for me one of those albums where its clear something strange and abstract and almost divine happened. Like few albums before or since such as A Love Supreme, this album almost feels like it has a Godly influence. I don't know how to explain it, but almost every aspect of this record ...""This remains for me one of those albums where its clear something strange and abstract and almost divine happened. Like few albums before or since such as A Love Supreme, this album almost feels like it has a Godly influence. I don't know how to explain it, but almost every aspect of this record seems soft as air, like a fleeting moment of clarity, like some gossamer in the air which when you reach for it, it is gone, never quite attainable in terms of full conception. The music, a brilliant mix of irish folk, soul, jazz, blues, and a hundred other things seemingly, is impossible for me to really pin down or categorize. There are moments here of musical beauty and ascendance which is rarely heard. And the vocals by a 23 year old master Van Morrison are mercurial, passionate, they sweep from extreme to extreme as if guided by some unseen hand of some unseen higher power. And the words keep the theme of dichotomy going. Insofar as there are words here that just feel right, they conjure up images and feelings so innate in us as human beings, so true to our conceived form or essence, and yet when you really try to analyze them they, again, seem completely unknowable and abstract. A Specific moment which for some reason never fails to send shivers down my body is in "Madame George". You know that point at the very beginning when you've just gotten done being happy and exuberant on the previous track "The Way Young Lovers Do" when the bass comes in all slack and earthy like and at that moment Van comes in with his sweet soul? That part for some reason, that exact moment and the whole concatenation of moments leading up to it for some reason makes me think of mental clouds opening, like a person (could be me or you when you listen or Van) is having a moment of spiritual oneness, when he is experiencing a moment of true epiphany and clarity. That for some reason just blows me away every time. Also the horn on "Slim Slow Rider" is unearthly. Anyway, I won't go into all the points which are exemplary of this albums majesty, cuz, I just don't wanna. Just listen to it again (and again and again and again...) or for the first time. Just a little inside baseball, I have had this post open and being edited for 3 days. I'm a freak about these lists. I do a lot of listening and dorky "Research". Anyway, you know you have a true towering classic when you find it nearly impossible to move away from an album long enough to even consider other albums for a list. Well, that's been the struggle with Astral Weeks lately. In closing, How this album came to be is one of those truly miraculous moments. 50 years later and there has still been nothing like Astral Weeks. And every time I go to listen to this profound statement of humanism and spiritual inspiration, I know that I am in for some sort of unearthly reward. This album... my God... Love Applause Love Applause Love "In another world In another world In another time Got a home on high Ain't nothing but a stranger in this world I'm nothing but a stranger in this world I got a home on high In another land So far away So far away Way up in the heaven Way up in the heaven Way up in the heaven Way up in the heaven" - Astral Weeks Grade: 10/10"  [+]  Reply

- Mercury | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +10 votes (10 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

1968

Appears in:

1,545 charts

Rank Score:

15,553

Rank in 1968:

3

Rank in 1960s:

17

Overall Rank:

70

Average Rating:

 84 (1,726 votes)

Comments:

139

4.

Odessey And Oracle 

 The Zombies

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"What I was trying to convey with the slightly awkward comment below is that this is not at all a fun and happy album as some commenters have said. I mean look at the lyric subjects for the first half of the album, we've got: longing (Care of cell 44), loneliness (A Rose for Emily), jealousy (Mayb...""What I was trying to convey with the slightly awkward comment below is that this is not at all a fun and happy album as some commenters have said. I mean look at the lyric subjects for the first half of the album, we've got: longing (Care of cell 44), loneliness (A Rose for Emily), jealousy (Maybe after he's gone), nostalgia (Beechwood Park) and lost love (?) (Brief Candles). Heavy stuff. Then suddenly it makes a full turn and we get hope for the future(Hung up on a dream, This will be our year), lust (I want her she wants me), with a slight reminder that war is horrible thrown in there (Butcher's Tale), all culminating in a euphoric description of friendship (Friends of mine). Actually if I have any critisism of the album it is that it could have ended after that one. Time of the season is really good, but it's the only song I could live without."  [+]  Reply

- gussteivi | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +10 votes (10 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

1968

Appears in:

1,312 charts

Rank Score:

13,365

Rank in 1968:

4

Rank in 1960s:

21

Overall Rank:

88

Average Rating:

 85 (1,364 votes)

Comments:

123

5.

The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society 

 The Kinks

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"Does anyone else realise that this is the first studio album by the Kinks that never made the album charts in the UK, and none of their subsequent albums did either. After Something Else - which only reached No 32 in 1967, only compilation LP's made the charts. I find this absolutely staggering, ...""Does anyone else realise that this is the first studio album by the Kinks that never made the album charts in the UK, and none of their subsequent albums did either. After Something Else - which only reached No 32 in 1967, only compilation LP's made the charts. I find this absolutely staggering, just what were the British public buying from 1967 onwards. Classics like this, Arthur, Muswell Hillbillies, Lola & Preservation Act's one & two seem to have been completely ignored at the time. I wonder how many copies these albums actually sold. I can't think of another band as huge as this that stopped making the charts at the height of their career. Does anyone have an explanation for this ?"  [+]  Reply

- Steppenwolf666 | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +8 votes (8 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

1968

Appears in:

1,067 charts

Rank Score:

9,107

Rank in 1968:

5

Rank in 1960s:

26

Overall Rank:

149

Average Rating:

 84 (1,157 votes)

Comments:

77

6.

Beggars Banquet 

 The Rolling Stones

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"Quite simply, this is the Stones' best album IMO. Jagger comes through with his best set of lyrics on this album, especially on "Sympathy for the Devil", which is a chronicle of tragic historical events sung from the viewpoint of Satan, who admits to causing them to happen (no, it is definitely N...""Quite simply, this is the Stones' best album IMO. Jagger comes through with his best set of lyrics on this album, especially on "Sympathy for the Devil", which is a chronicle of tragic historical events sung from the viewpoint of Satan, who admits to causing them to happen (no, it is definitely NOT a song advocating Satanism, unlike what many believe). There is also an acknowledgment of the social protesting that was a clear component of the chaotic year of 1968 with "Street Fighting Man", and a sing-along tribute to the common working man and woman in "Salt of the Earth". In between, you have the band acknowledging their roots with a Delta blues cover, acoustic country and downright salacious rock. 'Beggars Banquet' has it all and has to rank as one of the three or four best rock albums of the '60's. The Stones never topped it, although 'Exile on Main Street' came close to equalling it. This one is a masterpiece."  [+]  Reply

- BlondGuy | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +5 votes (5 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

1968

Appears in:

1,233 charts

Rank Score:

8,820

Rank in 1968:

6

Rank in 1960s:

28

Overall Rank:

161

Average Rating:

 84 (1,564 votes)

Comments:

99

7.

White Light/White Heat 

 The Velvet Underground

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"Drugged out album which involves nearly zero songwriting, the sound of a band that doesn't give a fuck! I can't see its experimental nature, all The Velvet Underground ever did on this record was to turn up the volume and allow the created feed-back and noise to be maintained in the mix. The poem...""Drugged out album which involves nearly zero songwriting, the sound of a band that doesn't give a fuck! I can't see its experimental nature, all The Velvet Underground ever did on this record was to turn up the volume and allow the created feed-back and noise to be maintained in the mix. The poem on "The Gift" sounds goofy, most songs consist of monotonous rhythm patterns and the variety on this album is minimal. I get that most people see this as a groundbreaking wall of noise, but I think the band were lacking discipline in the creating of the album to make it anywhere near great. Besides the opener, which works fine as opener but nothing more, and the idea of a long track to end the album, this album is nothing but free play! I wasn't looking for a pleasant pop-album, but even from an avant-garde music lover's point of view, I wouldn't be able to see the greatness from this album. After all it isn't very experimental, it's only a pumping rhythm section that never stops, where each member play whatever they want to. We've already seen this from free-form jazz! So why is this album ranked and rated so high? My guess is because of The Velvet Underground's completely exaggerated image. It's not because I'm scared of the album's dissonant and unstructured composition, but this band's discography and especially this album is like a complex joke: If you don't get it, you're probably just stupid. Hurry up laughing, or someone else will notice!"  [+]  Reply

- Mother Nature's Son | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +6 votes (16 helpful | 10 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

1968

Appears in:

986 charts

Rank Score:

8,614

Rank in 1968:

7

Rank in 1960s:

29

Overall Rank:

164

Average Rating:

 84 (1,425 votes)

Comments:

101

8.

Bookends 

 Simon & Garfunkel

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"This is yet another great folk pop album from S&G. Maybe they go a little overboard with effects (like how the gospel-like vocals are piped in in "save the life of my child" and the voices in "voices of old people" go on a little long), but the album is still great regardless and feels BIG overal...""This is yet another great folk pop album from S&G. Maybe they go a little overboard with effects (like how the gospel-like vocals are piped in in "save the life of my child" and the voices in "voices of old people" go on a little long), but the album is still great regardless and feels BIG overall, from the cymbal flourishes in "america" to the pipe organ and strings in "fakin' it". "punky's dilemma" has a fun line about blueberry jam my wife digs ("I prefer boysenberry / More than any ordinary jam. / I'm a "Citizens for / Boysenberry Jam" fan."). The last three songs are probably the best last 3 closers on any S&G disc -- "mrs. robinson", "a hazy shade of winter" (i probably still prefer the bangles version) and "at the zoo" -- the last of which sounds like a kids zoo tale but is lyrically bleak where the animals are dumb, insincere, skeptical, reactionary and plot in secrecy while the zookeeper drinks his rum."  [+]  Reply

- paladisiac | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +3 votes (4 helpful | 1 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

1968

Appears in:

814 charts

Rank Score:

5,856

Rank in 1968:

8

Rank in 1960s:

43

Overall Rank:

278

Average Rating:

 82 (883 votes)

Comments:

54

9.

Music From Big Pink 

 The Band

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"It was very brave of the Band to open their debut album with the long, slow and dark "Tears of Rage" . They were praised for this at the time, but now more than three decades later, the song may scare away new listeners which is really a big shame because is one the Band's greatest and probably t...""It was very brave of the Band to open their debut album with the long, slow and dark "Tears of Rage" . They were praised for this at the time, but now more than three decades later, the song may scare away new listeners which is really a big shame because is one the Band's greatest and probably their most influential album. It's not that "Tears of Rage" is a bad song; it just may take some time to get into it. "Music From Big Pink" was actually the only Band album with two equally important songwriters; by their fourth album "Cahoots" keyboard player and occasional drummer Richard Manuel had completely stopped writing. This was really a shame, because his material on "Big Pink" equals that of Robbie Robertson. The relaxed and slightly whimsical "We Can Talk" is one of the catchiest tunes on the album and in my opinion an early Band classic. Another outstanding Manuel tune is "In a Station", which somehow reminds me of the legendary Danish band the "Savage Rose". Darker Manuel tunes like "Tears of Rage" and "Lonesome Suzie" may be harder to get into, especially for people who have not grown up with the music of the Band. Interesting to hear the jazzier and faster alternate version of "Lonesome Suzie" among the bonus-tracks; actually I find that version more appealing. Of course Robbie Robertson turned out to be their main song-writer and he also shines here on the debut-album. "The Weight" is more or less their signature tune; a great song showcasing all three lead-singers. In fact one of the great things about this great group is that it had these three singer whose vocals blended uniquely; especially on their earliest albums. Another Robertson classic is the organ-riff based "Chest Fever" which eventually becane a Garth Hudson live tour-de-force. The bonus-track are all good, though several lack in sound - "Basemant Tapes" sound. The last tune "Ferdinand the Imposter" could really have been great; also the country-inpired "If I Lose" is also quite charming "  [+]  Reply

- Rovers | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +2 votes (2 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

1968

Appears in:

798 charts

Rank Score:

5,578

Rank in 1968:

9

Rank in 1960s:

45

Overall Rank:

294

Average Rating:

 81 (978 votes)

Comments:

45

10.

At Folsom Prison 
Live

 Johnny Cash

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"Every time I listen to this album it's 1968 and not even my computer can convince me otherwise. The honesty and raw delivery of this performance bleeds a humanity that transcends beyond the music itself. This hour-long performance yielded the best country LP you will come across."  Reply

- dmercado | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +9 votes (9 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

1968

Appears in:

799 charts

Rank Score:

5,183

Rank in 1968:

10

Rank in 1960s:

46

Overall Rank:

321

Average Rating:

 83 (997 votes)

Comments:

55

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Total albums: 994. Page 1 of 100

Best Albums of 1968 composition

Top 500 Top 250 Top 100

Artist	Albums	%
Various Artists	11	1%
James Brown	5	1%
Johnny Cash	4	0%
Elvis Presley	4	0%
Buck Owens	4	0%
Frank Sinatra	3	0%
John Barry	3	0%
Show all

Country	Albums	%
	549	55%
	150	15%
	36	4%
	36	4%
	32	3%
	22	2%
	18	2%
Show all

Compilation?	Albums	%
No	955	96%
Yes	39	4%

Live?	Albums	%
No	971	98%
Yes	23	2%

Soundtrack?	Albums	%
No	978	98%
Yes	16	2%