The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time: 100-1
So you don't have to click 100 times:
Here's the top 20:
200-101
300-201
400-301
500-401
So you don't have to click 100 times:
NME's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
01. The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead
02. The Beatles - Revolver
03. David Bowie - Hunky Dory
04. The Strokes - Is This It
05. The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico
06. Pulp - Different Class
07. The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses
08. Pixies - Doolittle
09. The Beatles - The Beatles
10. Oasis - Definitely Maybe
11. Nirvana - Nevermind
12. Patti Smith - Horses
13. Arcade Fire - Funeral
14. David Bowie - Low
15. PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
16. Joy Division - Closer
17. Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
18. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
19. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
20. Radiohead - OK Computer
21. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
22. Blur - Parklife
23. David Bowie - The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars
24. The Rolling Stones - Exile On Main St. Street
25. Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
26. The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
27. Primal Scream - Screamadelica
28. Amy Winehouse - Back To Black
29. Television - Marquee Moon
30. Wu-Tang Clan - Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
31. Suede - Dog Man Star
32. Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique
33. Blur - Modern Life Is Rubbish
34. The Beatles - Abbey Road
35. Nirvana - In Utero
36. Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks
37. Love - Forever Changes
38. Sex Pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks... Here's The Sex Pistols
39. The Clash - London Calling
40. Joy Division - Unknown Pleasure
41. Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
42. Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
43. The Beatles - Rubber Soul
44. Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible
45. Blondie - Parallel Lines
46. Björk - Debut
47. The Smiths - Strangeways, Here We Come
48. Kate Bush - Hounds Of Love
49. LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver
50. Dusty Springfield - Dusty In Memphis
51. Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
52. The Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed
53. David Bowie - Station To Station
54. Talking Heads - Remain In Light
55. The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
56. Neil Young - After The Gold Rush
57. Kraftwerk - The Man Machine
58. Pixies - Surfer Rosa
59. Radiohead - In Rainbows
60. Massive Attack - Blue Lines
61. The Clash - The Clash
62. Bob Dylan - Blonde On Blonde
63. Joni Mitchell - Blue
64. Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
65. REM - Automatic For The People
66. Radiohead - The Bends
67. Oasis - (What's The Story) Morning Glory
68. Van Morrison - Astral Weeks
69. REM - Murmur
70. The Libertines - Up The Bracket
71. Neil Young - Harvest
72. Lou Reed - Transformer
73. Bob Dylan - Bringing It All Back Home
74. Nas - IIImatic
75. Green Day - Dookie
76. Daft Punk - Discovery
77. The White Stripes - White Blood Cells
78. Suede - Suede
79. Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue
80. Iggy And The Stooges - Raw Power
81. Kraftwerk - Trans-Europe Express
82. Carole King - Tapestry
83. The Band - The Band
84. Hole - Live Through This
85. Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run
86. Jeff Buckley - Grace
87. The Beatles - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
88. Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
89. Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill
90. The Streets - A Grand Don't Come For Free
91. Prince And The Revolution - Purple Rain
92. Super Furry Animals - Radiator
93. Queens Of The Stone Age - Songs For The Deaf
94. The Rolling Stone - Beggars Banquet
95. Talk Talk - Spirit Of Eden
96. Public Enemy - Fear Of A Black Planet
97. The Smiths - The Smiths
98. Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
99. The Libertines - The Libertines
100. The Smiths - Hatful Of Hollow
Here's the top 20:
1.The Smiths, The Queen Is Dead (1986). Rough Trade. What distinguishes it as the greatest ever made? For one thing, timelessness. It is a state-of-the-nation address which seems impervious to the passage of years. Morrissey and Marr compliment each other perfectly. It is one of those select few albums which seem to transcend its influences, working them into something singular and new.
2. The Beatles, Revolver (1966). Parlophone. Far and away the best album of rocks Phase One, virtually every one of these 35 minutes brought a fresh revelation, featuring more stylistic and cultural innovation in its first ten minutes than most other bands achieve in their lifespan. Slacker pop, psychedelia, new wave, dance: Revolver is the fountainhead, and were still drinking deep.
3. David Bowie, Hunky Dory (1971) RCA. If the message of 'Changes' was that nothing lasts forever, it's ironic how that song has gone on to become his most enduring hit, and 'Hunky Dory' his most time-tested album. Forget the glitter, the Spiders, the weird eyes, it was Bowie's incredible song-writing gifts on 'Hunky Dory' that convinced us he was beamed from the stars.
4. The Strokes, Is This It (2001) Rough Trade. Albert Hammond Jnr: ''That was just the set list we had been playing, it was underneath our fingers and the feeling was one of extreme excitement. I felt like it would succeed to the point where we would be able to make another record. I felt like we were a really cool band playing really cool songs, like we were awesome "
5. The Velvet Underground & Nico, The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967) Verve. The Velvet Underground & Nico has been worn smooth by the years. Nowadays, it is just the baptismal font of hipness. Its the one unbroken link that takes you from Richard Hell to The Ramones to Joy Division to The Jesus & Mary Chain to OMD to Pulp to The Strokes to whatevers happening a week next Tuesday.
6. Pulp, Different Class (1995) Island. On one level its a brilliant pop record, full of songs custom-built for the indie disco. On another its full of Cockers idiosyncratic takes on song-writers fancying people and taking lots of lovely drugs. Its also much more than that. Different Class is the sound of Pulp smuggling some deeply subversive truths into our record players.
7. The Stone Roses, 'The Stone Roses' (1989)Silvertone. The Stone Roses were a band for all seasons, pulling influences from dance music and psychedelia, indie and rock and fusing them into one effortless whole. And here was an album that managed to utterly encapsulate the baggy Madchester scene of the moment and that would continue to influence bands to this day.
8.Pixies, 'Doolittle'(1989)4AD. 'Doolittle' saw Pixies perfect their slasher pop aesthetic, creating an artifact that drew you into their clutches with the fascination of horror flick teenagers checking out the thumps in the basement. More than any schlocky death metal gorefest, 'Doolittle' was the most evil album ever made. But the devil clearly still had a monopoly on all the best tunes.
9. The Beatles, 'The Beatles' (1968)Apple. While it's easy to feel like you know every beat of 'Revolver' or 'Abbey Road', 'The White Album' remains The Beatles' dark continent, vast enough to retain some mystery, varied enough to still surprise. 'The Beatles' proved that the group were just as brilliant while unravelling as they were when everything was fab.
10. Oasis, 'Definitely Maybe' (1994) Creation. Oasis debut album came from a background of grit and graft, lager-splashed hedonism and domestic battles far more troubling than any French festival guitar-smashing that would estrange the Gallagher brothers later in life. But rather than wallowing in it all, they soared above the squalor.
11. Nirvana, 'Nevermind' (1991) Geffen. Tackling subjects such as suicide, abduction and Kurt Cobains disintegrating relationship with his then-girlfriend, Bikini Kill drummer Tobi Vail, Nirvanas second album Nevermind would sell over 30 million copies worldwide and define the grunge era.
12. Patti Smith, 'Horses' (1975) Arista. A scrawny girl from New Jersey with a truckers' accent, Patti Smith was a punk poet like no other. 'Horses' roared with hunger. Never for commercial success, but a hunger for art, for honesty, for beauty. Screeching and visceral, raw with fury and full of desire, it's chaotic poetry. Rapturous rock n' roll.
13.Arcade Fire, Funeral (2004)Rough Trade. The Montreal collectives debut saw them contemplating nothing smaller than life and death itself. Funeral captured a broad, mature and considered philosophical spirit rarely found in popular music. The whole package sparked a shift in music, putting intensity, grandiosity and scale of ambition back on the agenda, and introducing nu-folk boom.
14. David Bowie, Low (1977) RCA. Low is still the most powerful and influential of Bowie's late-70s records; it opened unimagined doors of possibility as to what a rock album, and even a rock song, could be, while the fusion of pain and joy in the process of healing beamed bright.
15. PJ Harvey, 'Let England Shake' (2011) Island. PJ Harvey had always wanted to make an album about war. But she knew that to fully convey the horror of that bloody string that ties history together required a level of strength and depth as a writer that would take years to accomplish. It was a masterstroke of lyrical poetry, a piece of work that will continue to live through the ages.
16. Joy Division, 'Closer' (1980) Factory. Released two months after singer Ian Curtis suicide, its almost impossible to untangle Closer from the events that surrounded it. Joy Division produced a record that perversely thrived because of the weight of its own burden, a record that writhed with an all-encompassing internal atmosphere that would go on to influence artists to this day.
17. Public Enemy, 'It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back' (1988) Def Jam. The most striking aspect of Public Enemy's second LP is how it still sounds like the future. Noisier than punk, funk only in the most technical sense and with Chuck's righteous sloganeering spliced between Flavor's manic cackles and declamations, it redefined the possibilities for rap, rock, soul and beyond.
18. My Bloody Valentine, 'Loveless' (1991) Creation. Shields magnum opus sounds like an authentic field recording from its authors - or should that be architects? - sleeping subconscious: immersive and impressionistic, 'Come In Alone' and 'To Here Knows When' sounded as if they were being beamed in from another plane of consciousness. Loveless was the genres music of the spheres.
19. Arctic Monkeys, 'Whatever People Say I Am, Thats What Im Not' (2006) Domino. Its the fastest-selling debut album by a British band ever (it shifted over 360,000 copies in its first week) and its now gone quadruple-platinum in the UK alone. No sales figures can convey the gut-punch excitement of I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor. A hormone-drenched racket.
20. Radiohead, 'OK Computer' (1997) Parlophone. Radioheads OK Computer crystallized in song a specific mood, in this case the fragile pre-millennial atmosphere of late 90s Britain with lyrics about yuppie culture, political malaise, paranoia and emotional isolation. A startling expression of human existence, bringing form to chaos and raising the bar.
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