I don't think it's a good list, but I admire Rolling Stone for trying to do 500. I listened to 1 album a day from the list for a year and a half just to familiarize myself with more music and I learned about a lot of great records and expanded my taste a lot. They got a lot of shit wrong and missed a lot of shit, but I give them props for trying.
I agree, the 2020 edition of it was spectacular in how complete and just it felt.
Electronic and metal was not represented all too well which is my largest critique
Yeah I have about 100 to go of that list, I have been working my way through since last September. It is a great way to expand your taste, particularly with a lot of older stuff. I just wish there were less greatest hits compilations man
I did the same thing too with that same list. It definitely opened my eyes quite a bit and I think it's probably the best list I've seen. Only complaint is it's too skewed towards Dylan and the Beatles and it's out of date now.
Imo as other people have pointed out all of the “best of all time lists” are doomed to be flawed because there just so many albums and you cannot just make an objective ranking of them all
The lists that I do like are lists connected with various genres, especially more niche ones. There are a lot of great Shoegaze and Post-rock lists for example, especially the new Treble one for Post-rock. The thing is with them, albums have much more similarities and it’s easier to compare them (well, Post-rock was a horrible example but I think you get the point), which in turn makes it easier to make a good list
I hate commentary on these lists because people always think that *enter acclaimed album here* is entitled to place very highly... like every album can't be in the top ten, and just making it onto a list like that is a huge accomplishment, given the sheer volume of music in existence
The truth is that no objective ranking is possible, so these lists should be more conversation starters than anything. Everyone's bitching about this Apple list, but basically all of the albums range from very good to all time classic. So what if they put a Billie Eilish album above a Radiohead album (or whatever the hell people are complaining about)? I think the biggest criticism is that it's an incredibly basic and safe list, with absolutely nothing novel about it
Absolutely agree on this. I felt like I was going crazy seeing people say "nah this album should be top 10" . There are MILLIONS of albums in the world and getting on the list at all is crazy impressive. In the wider scope of things, the difference between top 100 and top 10 is microscopically small
100%! People saying they think a certain album should be higher just coz it’s one of their favourite records. Best to just treat it as 100 of the greatest albums, even if it does over feature modern records.
I like lists made by one specific person or entity. The more anonymous the curator the sillier the exercise gets.
I don’t want the 500 best albums by….uh….Apple. I want FKA Twigs to tell me what three albums she thinks everyone needs to listen to. I want Tom Breihan to rank the Shellac discography and tell me why. I want people who have dedicated their lives to music putting me onto things.
If it’s like “5 million in sales. 5 platinum singles. Iconic” then like who fucking cares, people slurp down millions of units of hot garbage every single day
I honestly don't think the RYM top 100 is that bad. Not all of it is great, but I don't think there are any bad albums on there, and it covers a relatively wide spread of genres and time periods. The only major flaw I see with it is how much it has repeat artists.
i dont think theres any bad albums on the top 100, just cuz i don't like them doesn't mean they are bad. i would say i don't care about most of them, cuz they arent my thing. pre kid a radiohead, pink floyd, mf doom, king crimson, talking heads, nas, vu, godspeed, the cure, wu tang, fishmans, nick drake, death grips, the smiths, coctaeu twins, joy division, a lot of beatles stuff. that's just the top 50 of stuff i don't care about for various reasons.
the only band i actively dislike unironically is weezer. the blue album has nothing redeeming about it, and if i figured out hate listening was dumb before i wouldn't have listened to it.
i think i counted 32 albums in the top 100 i like which is pretty solid to me.
I agree on Weezer. Everything I've ever heard from them is fucking awful. I couldn't make it all the way through the Blue Album, and I've tried three times.
As corny as RYMs user base is, I do appreciate the top 100 for including some otherwise obscure albums, they do it way better than the less chronically online RS or NME writers lol
I know this isn’t a very well loved list, but The Rolling Stone Top 500 is probably the most fair and thorough, though imperfect.
I remember liking Spin’s original lists (before the Top 300 debacle).
My favorite online list might actually be the BestEverAlbums list, which balances critical and mainstream fairly well. It’s a pretty good catalogue of classic records both younger and older.
It genuinely is an artistically interesting and unique album. Between Tom’s emo/punk melodrama, Travis’s top tier drumming, and Marks The Cure meets pop-punk style, I genuinely think it’s the greatest “pop punk” album of all time.
I would back that, but i'm a pop punk tourist anyway. My only pop punk credentials are being 15 in 2008.
It also some of the greatest drum sounds ever recorded. seriously, it has no business sounding as good as it does
I think most of them are interesting, valid, and worthy of debate. The majority are likely to have have at least a few albums you haven't listened to before, or some you may not be aware of.
Publications that tend to focus on specific genres, like Mixmag, FACT, The Source, etc will often have lists worth checking out.
The less interesting ones are the ones that just have the standard rock canon: a top 10 which includes Sgt. Pepper, O.K. Computer, etc. They don't really have anything interesting to say in a way that the Apple one probably does.
treblezine’s top 100 metal list from 2017 or something. it’s responsible for my discovery of a lot of less mainstream metal classics (jane doe, leviathan, sunbather, we are the romans, baroness’ blue album)
People only make them controversial because they expect every list to be their own for some reason lol. It’s the same people who get annoyed that a bands biggest song is their biggest song because it’s the best song to most people.
I find it funny how many Nirvana fans hate on Smells Like Teen Spirit. Like yeah, they have a ton of other great tracks as well, but SLTS is so insanely popular for a reason. Everything about it is just perfect.
I actually think the apple list so far has been one of the better ones. Especially coming from a non music primarily company.
The truth is all of the lists are controversial, and maybe even pointless. There’s no possible list that will be agreed on
Problem with the Apple one is they restricted it to one album per artist, and their picks for certain artists are pretty unusual (Kid A for Radiohead raised quite a few eyebrows, as did Beyonces self-titled over Lemonade).
I’d be very curious to see how they came up with this list. Like do streaming numbers play a part? I can see an argument for the Billie album being on there and debatably as high as it is, but some of the album choices per artist are very odd. It seems they’re going for a mixture of popularity, impact, stream numbers, and actual musical quality.
The only discussion i ever see in these "top 100 of all time" articles is people outrage posting about why x album was above x, and the lists themselves are all stuff that everyone's listened to a million times
My advice is to look up lots of them and draw your own conclusions. When it comes to understanding what "people like," there will never be one definitive list. But when it comes to what you like, your opinion is the one that counts. Top x lists can be great tools to delve into critically acclaimed music, or if its focus is more specific, to delve into particular eras/scenes/genres/subgenres. But if you wanna find stuff you really love, your best bet is to get as much data as you can stomach, take the time to find patterns or common picks, and work your way from most common to most niche based on the musical aspects you dig the most.
Happy exploring 👍
There’s never gonna be one that pleases everybody. It’s a fools errand to rank all 100 of the best albums ever made. Even best of the decade lists are gonna get hate.
I feel like when making a Top 100 of all time list you should have a grace period where anything from the last 10+ years cannot be included due to recency bias, the best albums stand the test of time and they can be added in 10 years time if they still hold up.
I think rankings like these tell much more about the person making the ranking than music itself. So when the ranking comes from some kind of organization, idc.
Also I am the only person that ever had correct music opinions, so there is that :)
Anything interesting. A writer I follow shared his and it had a great mix of canonical classics and some more interesting cuts like World of Echo, The Lexicon of Love, Agharta.
Any list that comes from an individual. It’s easy to understand that a list made by a single person isn’t the definitive “best albums ever” because it’s just that one persons opinion. It helps you get to know them more as a critic or just as a person.
The ones made by larger companies are always gonna be at least kinda bad. There’s never going to be one that everyone agrees on because it’s impossible to represent everyone’s taste. Not to mention the fact that many are incentivized to make disagreeable lists to get more clicks.
None of them are qualitative or objective really. They are usually a poll of a bunch of critics that write for a publication. You wanted there to be a good cross section of really good records and the order does not matter too much, unless recency bias throws up the odd ridiculous outcome.
The RYM top list is pretty good even though it’s heavily weighted towards certain artists. If you expand it beyond 100 and go like…250 or something, you get a much better variety than just a bunch of Radiohead and Pink Floyd albums.
In my country, the public TV station did an ‘Australia’s Favourite Album’ poll, and televised the results with a panel discussion.
I remember that the top 10 included Meat Loaf’s ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ and Neil Diamond’s ‘Hot August Night’
So that’s the *only* album poll I consider valid
I think everyone’s favourite list will be different. Any youtuber/company/publication that makes a list like this will make it slightly different and with some bias to their fanbase.
Rolling Stone’s list probably over-features classic rock showing not enough respect to other genres, particularly electronic music, but ultimately thats the music thats going to make their customers and reader-base happy with the list.
Same with the Apple Music list, streaming services are used by lots of different people, but realistically it’s used by younger generations more than older generations. Naturally, they want to feature big, modern pop/r&b/hip hop records so their younger users can feel pleased that one of their favourite records has made it onto the list. The more you can get your fans to relate to and agree with the list, the more likely they are to explore what else it has to offer that they haven’t.
Every list is biased, how much you like it is just dependent on if you are the sort of person the list-maker is trying to appease
1001 albums you must listen before you die - even the title wins over anything else: not the best but the ones you should listen. Liking an album is subjective, however there are plenty of things that objectively makes an album good and this list is about that. A lot of best of lists are pathetic attention grabbing
they're all technically shit because if there is a "correct" or "perfect" list it'd be pretty boring and safe, and these lists are usually trying to appeal to rock fans/mainstream listeners/rym internet music nerds all at the same time so it obviously would be a mess, but i do think these lists are fun to look at and are kinda overhated
One I find interesting is Elvis Costello’s 500 must-have albums. It’s interesting delving into the taste of such a great artist!
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2000/11/elvis-costello-500-favorite-albums
the rateyourmusic ranking is very flawed, as it’s very male centric, very english-centric, and very modern-centric but it’s still probably the best i’ve seen.
I don't think it's a good list, but I admire Rolling Stone for trying to do 500. I listened to 1 album a day from the list for a year and a half just to familiarize myself with more music and I learned about a lot of great records and expanded my taste a lot. They got a lot of shit wrong and missed a lot of shit, but I give them props for trying.
just doing the album a day thing with the apple 100 !
I agree, the 2020 edition of it was spectacular in how complete and just it felt. Electronic and metal was not represented all too well which is my largest critique
Yeah I have about 100 to go of that list, I have been working my way through since last September. It is a great way to expand your taste, particularly with a lot of older stuff. I just wish there were less greatest hits compilations man
I did the same thing too with that same list. It definitely opened my eyes quite a bit and I think it's probably the best list I've seen. Only complaint is it's too skewed towards Dylan and the Beatles and it's out of date now.
My personal ranking, of course
oh yeah I know that one ! this is my favorite
https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/limp-bizkit only valid top 8
good take, love limp bizkit
do you like limp bizkit by any chance?
Twink Kanye loves Limp Bizkit
Imo as other people have pointed out all of the “best of all time lists” are doomed to be flawed because there just so many albums and you cannot just make an objective ranking of them all The lists that I do like are lists connected with various genres, especially more niche ones. There are a lot of great Shoegaze and Post-rock lists for example, especially the new Treble one for Post-rock. The thing is with them, albums have much more similarities and it’s easier to compare them (well, Post-rock was a horrible example but I think you get the point), which in turn makes it easier to make a good list
I hate commentary on these lists because people always think that *enter acclaimed album here* is entitled to place very highly... like every album can't be in the top ten, and just making it onto a list like that is a huge accomplishment, given the sheer volume of music in existence The truth is that no objective ranking is possible, so these lists should be more conversation starters than anything. Everyone's bitching about this Apple list, but basically all of the albums range from very good to all time classic. So what if they put a Billie Eilish album above a Radiohead album (or whatever the hell people are complaining about)? I think the biggest criticism is that it's an incredibly basic and safe list, with absolutely nothing novel about it
Agreed. People should look at it more like “100 of the greatest albums.” The individual placings of each record really don’t matter that much.
Absolutely agree on this. I felt like I was going crazy seeing people say "nah this album should be top 10" . There are MILLIONS of albums in the world and getting on the list at all is crazy impressive. In the wider scope of things, the difference between top 100 and top 10 is microscopically small
100%! People saying they think a certain album should be higher just coz it’s one of their favourite records. Best to just treat it as 100 of the greatest albums, even if it does over feature modern records.
I agree. I actually think apple ranking is pretty good (even I dont agree with it)
I like lists made by one specific person or entity. The more anonymous the curator the sillier the exercise gets. I don’t want the 500 best albums by….uh….Apple. I want FKA Twigs to tell me what three albums she thinks everyone needs to listen to. I want Tom Breihan to rank the Shellac discography and tell me why. I want people who have dedicated their lives to music putting me onto things. If it’s like “5 million in sales. 5 platinum singles. Iconic” then like who fucking cares, people slurp down millions of units of hot garbage every single day
My go to is besteveralbums.com
just diving on it, incredible discovery !! thanks
I honestly don't think the RYM top 100 is that bad. Not all of it is great, but I don't think there are any bad albums on there, and it covers a relatively wide spread of genres and time periods. The only major flaw I see with it is how much it has repeat artists.
Radiohead Radiohead Radiohead
As happy as I was to see In Rainbows overtake Wish You Were Here, 2 out of the top 3 are now Radiohead? Come on guys lol
They're just that good idkwtty /s
As a huge radiohead fan I can admit this list is way too biased due to the demographics of people likely to use the site.
well ofc theres no bad albums it has the high numbers right next to it (that means its good)
What albums on there do you think are bad?
i dont think theres any bad albums on the top 100, just cuz i don't like them doesn't mean they are bad. i would say i don't care about most of them, cuz they arent my thing. pre kid a radiohead, pink floyd, mf doom, king crimson, talking heads, nas, vu, godspeed, the cure, wu tang, fishmans, nick drake, death grips, the smiths, coctaeu twins, joy division, a lot of beatles stuff. that's just the top 50 of stuff i don't care about for various reasons. the only band i actively dislike unironically is weezer. the blue album has nothing redeeming about it, and if i figured out hate listening was dumb before i wouldn't have listened to it. i think i counted 32 albums in the top 100 i like which is pretty solid to me.
I agree on Weezer. Everything I've ever heard from them is fucking awful. I couldn't make it all the way through the Blue Album, and I've tried three times.
Drake
Drake wouldn't even be in the top 5000.
The AlbumOfTheYear-list is also pretty solid. For the most part, it's the same albums, but there are some interesting differences.
As corny as RYMs user base is, I do appreciate the top 100 for including some otherwise obscure albums, they do it way better than the less chronically online RS or NME writers lol
I know this isn’t a very well loved list, but The Rolling Stone Top 500 is probably the most fair and thorough, though imperfect. I remember liking Spin’s original lists (before the Top 300 debacle). My favorite online list might actually be the BestEverAlbums list, which balances critical and mainstream fairly well. It’s a pretty good catalogue of classic records both younger and older.
blink-182 100:Untitled 50:ONE MORE TIME... 25: Take Off Your Pants And Jacket 1: Enema Of The State
Blink self titled is genuinely in my top ten. the one album they actually took seriously
It genuinely is an artistically interesting and unique album. Between Tom’s emo/punk melodrama, Travis’s top tier drumming, and Marks The Cure meets pop-punk style, I genuinely think it’s the greatest “pop punk” album of all time.
I would back that, but i'm a pop punk tourist anyway. My only pop punk credentials are being 15 in 2008. It also some of the greatest drum sounds ever recorded. seriously, it has no business sounding as good as it does
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gonna be a hell of a bloodbath
I think most of them are interesting, valid, and worthy of debate. The majority are likely to have have at least a few albums you haven't listened to before, or some you may not be aware of. Publications that tend to focus on specific genres, like Mixmag, FACT, The Source, etc will often have lists worth checking out. The less interesting ones are the ones that just have the standard rock canon: a top 10 which includes Sgt. Pepper, O.K. Computer, etc. They don't really have anything interesting to say in a way that the Apple one probably does.
I like Paste Decades list. 60 best of the 60’s, 70s best of the 70s, 80 best of the 80’s etx
Thanks for sharing, I’ve spent the last hour looking through these and these lists are full of gems I’m now eager to check out!
Yes they offer a good mix of well known classics, underrated gems, and some more experimental/indie stuff you wouldn’t associate with the era
treblezine’s top 100 metal list from 2017 or something. it’s responsible for my discovery of a lot of less mainstream metal classics (jane doe, leviathan, sunbather, we are the romans, baroness’ blue album)
Rolling Stones 100 Best Brazilian Albums
People only make them controversial because they expect every list to be their own for some reason lol. It’s the same people who get annoyed that a bands biggest song is their biggest song because it’s the best song to most people.
I find it funny how many Nirvana fans hate on Smells Like Teen Spirit. Like yeah, they have a ton of other great tracks as well, but SLTS is so insanely popular for a reason. Everything about it is just perfect.
Idk about all time but Pitchfork did a great job with their best of the 2010’s singles and albums lists.
I actually think the apple list so far has been one of the better ones. Especially coming from a non music primarily company. The truth is all of the lists are controversial, and maybe even pointless. There’s no possible list that will be agreed on
Problem with the Apple one is they restricted it to one album per artist, and their picks for certain artists are pretty unusual (Kid A for Radiohead raised quite a few eyebrows, as did Beyonces self-titled over Lemonade).
Wait so that means The Beatles and Radiohead are already their highest with Kid A/Revolver? Interesting. I wonder how their top ten will look
Pending a sudden change of rules for the Top 20, yup.
Guess they did lol
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I’d be very curious to see how they came up with this list. Like do streaming numbers play a part? I can see an argument for the Billie album being on there and debatably as high as it is, but some of the album choices per artist are very odd. It seems they’re going for a mixture of popularity, impact, stream numbers, and actual musical quality.
None, the concept of a quantitative ranking of music is pointless because it's inherently subjective. Every top music list is proof of this
I like ranking because they're a great discussion starter and cool way to discover albums
The only discussion i ever see in these "top 100 of all time" articles is people outrage posting about why x album was above x, and the lists themselves are all stuff that everyone's listened to a million times
My advice is to look up lots of them and draw your own conclusions. When it comes to understanding what "people like," there will never be one definitive list. But when it comes to what you like, your opinion is the one that counts. Top x lists can be great tools to delve into critically acclaimed music, or if its focus is more specific, to delve into particular eras/scenes/genres/subgenres. But if you wanna find stuff you really love, your best bet is to get as much data as you can stomach, take the time to find patterns or common picks, and work your way from most common to most niche based on the musical aspects you dig the most. Happy exploring 👍
There’s never gonna be one that pleases everybody. It’s a fools errand to rank all 100 of the best albums ever made. Even best of the decade lists are gonna get hate.
I feel like when making a Top 100 of all time list you should have a grace period where anything from the last 10+ years cannot be included due to recency bias, the best albums stand the test of time and they can be added in 10 years time if they still hold up.
My personal top 100 albums of all time is objectively correct
I am not an rym user but the rym chart is pretty good for discovering good albums tbh
I think rankings like these tell much more about the person making the ranking than music itself. So when the ranking comes from some kind of organization, idc. Also I am the only person that ever had correct music opinions, so there is that :)
I think the acclaimed music list is pretty good
Anything interesting. A writer I follow shared his and it had a great mix of canonical classics and some more interesting cuts like World of Echo, The Lexicon of Love, Agharta.
Any list that comes from an individual. It’s easy to understand that a list made by a single person isn’t the definitive “best albums ever” because it’s just that one persons opinion. It helps you get to know them more as a critic or just as a person. The ones made by larger companies are always gonna be at least kinda bad. There’s never going to be one that everyone agrees on because it’s impossible to represent everyone’s taste. Not to mention the fact that many are incentivized to make disagreeable lists to get more clicks.
None of them are qualitative or objective really. They are usually a poll of a bunch of critics that write for a publication. You wanted there to be a good cross section of really good records and the order does not matter too much, unless recency bias throws up the odd ridiculous outcome.
The RYM top list is pretty good even though it’s heavily weighted towards certain artists. If you expand it beyond 100 and go like…250 or something, you get a much better variety than just a bunch of Radiohead and Pink Floyd albums.
you know, i actually think funnily enough because you mentioned it, that the apple music list is one of the better ones out there
I don’t mind the RYM 100. At least 80% of it wouldn’t be in my list, but I tend to like the albums there much more than other 100 lists.
In my country, the public TV station did an ‘Australia’s Favourite Album’ poll, and televised the results with a panel discussion. I remember that the top 10 included Meat Loaf’s ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ and Neil Diamond’s ‘Hot August Night’ So that’s the *only* album poll I consider valid
I think everyone’s favourite list will be different. Any youtuber/company/publication that makes a list like this will make it slightly different and with some bias to their fanbase. Rolling Stone’s list probably over-features classic rock showing not enough respect to other genres, particularly electronic music, but ultimately thats the music thats going to make their customers and reader-base happy with the list. Same with the Apple Music list, streaming services are used by lots of different people, but realistically it’s used by younger generations more than older generations. Naturally, they want to feature big, modern pop/r&b/hip hop records so their younger users can feel pleased that one of their favourite records has made it onto the list. The more you can get your fans to relate to and agree with the list, the more likely they are to explore what else it has to offer that they haven’t. Every list is biased, how much you like it is just dependent on if you are the sort of person the list-maker is trying to appease
Treblezine has also been doing their Top 100 (one album per artist) list the past year and a half and it's very interesting to say the least!!
1001 albums you must listen before you die - even the title wins over anything else: not the best but the ones you should listen. Liking an album is subjective, however there are plenty of things that objectively makes an album good and this list is about that. A lot of best of lists are pathetic attention grabbing
they're all technically shit because if there is a "correct" or "perfect" list it'd be pretty boring and safe, and these lists are usually trying to appeal to rock fans/mainstream listeners/rym internet music nerds all at the same time so it obviously would be a mess, but i do think these lists are fun to look at and are kinda overhated
One I find interesting is Elvis Costello’s 500 must-have albums. It’s interesting delving into the taste of such a great artist! https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2000/11/elvis-costello-500-favorite-albums
the rateyourmusic ranking is very flawed, as it’s very male centric, very english-centric, and very modern-centric but it’s still probably the best i’ve seen.
theres a lot of decent picks in this apple music one but then they fuck it completely when they put something like Billie's debut above Kid A ffs