Purple Rain (1984) is, if possible, even more ’80s-sounding than Thriller (1982), and while I have frequently made my position quite clear throughout this list that I hate the way music sounded in the ’80s, great songwriting is great songwriting. Most of the time when...
Aja (1977) is frequently cited as Steely Dan’s signature work, but I consider Katy Lied to be their high-water mark. Following their previous album, 1974’s Pretzel Logic, Steely Dan ceased to really exist as a band, shunning life on the road by making the recording...
One of the great albums in alternative rock, The Bends was Radiohead’s artistic breakthrough, and even though they have since pushed their sound way beyond the guitar rock they present here, I still consider The Bends to be their best work. The Bends was released in...
R.E.M. legitimized alternative music, signing with a major label (Warner Bros.) following the success of 1987’s Document. Their major label debut, Green, dropped the following year. Eager to tour in support of it, R.E.M. embarked on an exhausting world tour that...
You know, it’s interesting. I listen to a lot of different things, as you can probably tell, but almost all of the albums on my list are pretty well known. Breadcrumb Trail by the Irish band the Frames, however, is probably the only album on my list that counts as a...
My two favorite Rolling Stones songs are “Gimme Shelter” and “Midnight Rambler,” in that order, so I have always been partial to Let It Bleed, their 1969 album that houses both tracks (at the start of each side, in fact). Surprisingly, neither was released as a...
I didn’t really take hip-hop seriously until I heard Illmatic my freshman year of college. I was a casual fan of Eminem -- his run from The Slim Shady LP (1999) to The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) to The Eminem Show (2002) to 8 Mile (2002) was truly breathtaking -- but...
As far as the Zeppelin catalog goes, I think their first one is the best, their fourth one is the most accomplished, and Physical Graffiti, with its great and epic sprawl, is by far the most interesting. They had been forced to leave some tracks off their previous...
Thriller was released in a perfect storm of economic conditions that made it the best-selling album in history, and its commercial success is impossible to overstate. The United States had just elected Ronald Reagan as its president, and the economy struggled for the...
Aerosmith burst onto the scene in 1973 with their hit single “Dream On” from their self-titled debut. It’s one of their definitive songs, but the album is never cited as anything special, and I have never bothered to listen to it. Their second album though, 1974’s Get...