the 150 greatest albums made by women - NPR

It's missing:

Rilo Kiley - The Execution of All Things and/or More Adventurous
Blonde Redhead - Misery is a Butterfly
Tegan and Sara - The Con
The Distillers - Coral Fang
 
That is a very solid Top Ten. I didn't think Lauryn Hill would be that high, I agree.

Norah Jones is far too low and its the wrong album. (Little Broken Hearts)
 
Mariah Carey - Daydream should be top 20 or replaced with music box

Christina got robbed

Also whitney's should be replaced with the bodyguard album, it was basically her.

Where is celine dion?

Carpenters are wayyyyy too low

Shania's come on over deserved top 30 (it's the best selling female album of all time btw)
 
I was hoping No Doubt was gonna be on the list. While I hate her now that album was part of my childhood and the album was really good for the time.
 
Kevtones said:
Too low:
The Breeders
The Slits
Sleater-Kinney
Bjork
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Yes, except for S-K, which IMO is too high and should definitely not be above The Slits. The Slits and The Raincoats should be top 20; without them, riot grrrl would've never probably existed, and the The Slits were the best British punk band, period.

The Siouxsie album they choose is good no doubt, but Juju is a more feminist album.

Nina Simone, I would've chosen Wild is the Wind, and put much higher on the list.

This list needed way more Björk, way more Sade.

There's no fucking Cat Power on this list. Moon Pix is one of the best albums of the 90's.

There's also a strong argument to be made for including Dusty Springfield's Dusty In Memphis. It's often highly-placed on album lists, and it gave us classics like Son of a Preacher Man.
 
eyeball_kid said:
Yes, except for S-K, which IMO is too high and should definitely not be above The Slits. The Slits and The Raincoats should be top 20; without them, riot grrrl would've never probably existed, and the The Slits were the best British punk band, period.

The Siouxsie album they choose is good no doubt, but Juju is a more feminist album.

Nina Simone, I would've chosen Wild is the Wind, and put much higher on the list.

This list needed way more Björk, way more Sade.

There's no fucking Cat Power on this list. Moon Pix is one of the best albums of the 90's.

There's also a strong argument to be made for including Dusty Springfield's Dusty In Memphis. It's often highly-placed on album lists, and it gave us classics like Son of a Preacher Man.
Click to expand...

I don't know how Love Deluxe did not make this list.
 
No Throwing Muses.
No Tanya Donnelly.
No Elastica.
No Belly.
No ABBA.
No Arcade Fire.
No BabyMetal.
No Smoke City.
No Cardigans.

Fuck this list and the horse it rode in on.
 
Lucinda Williams, Dolly Parton, Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, Fiona Apple, Emmylou Harris, Tina Turner, and Amy Winehouse are all on this list. I can sleep well tonight.
 
Wow, the Bangles make it on the list with "All Over the Place" as opposed to " Different Light". Marvelous!!! Also "Belladonna" both low on the list but I'll take it.

How are Rumors and the B-52's first album albums created by women?

I am sure Lindsey Buckingham and Ricky Wilson had much to do with creating those respective albums.
 
"The women who made them claimed authority as producers, bandleaders and songwriters. They collaborated with men as equals — not simply serving as "the face" and "the voice" of the hits they made, but co-writing them, even if sometimes that authorship came in the way they played instruments or turned a phrase."

This is the only justification I can think of for why a great like Carly Rae Jepsen doesn't make the list. (I'd pick Kiss, others would pick E-Mo-Tion, oh well). She has a co-writing credit on almost all of Kiss and all of Emotion, so I don't think she was disqualified, rather, she just didn't make the list.

No Lady Gaga. No Macintosh Plus (or Vektroid)?! Floral Shoppe became the face of vaporwave and is a great album in its own right. Too early, I know, for an NPR panel to recognize it, but give it a few decades and people will look at it as the beginning of a genre. (Despite the origins being traceable to before Floral Shoppe).

Lady Gaga and Vektroid should have been locks for this list. Jepsen is awesome too but had less of an impact on music as a whole, outside of Call Me Maybe (which I adore).

Madonna shows up twice, but with two forgettable albums. MDNA is overall a better album than Like a Prayer or Like a Virgin, and Confessions on a Dance Floor clearly inspired Lady Gaga's masterpiece megahit album Born This Way. Ray of Light is more meaningful too. It redefined what Madonna was and got her taken seriously (again?) as something other than a sex symbol headline-grabber flavor of the week. Even though I wouldn't pick it, I could respect the choice of Ray of Light much more than those too. Come on. Material Girl and Like a Prayer are magnificent, but the albums they appear on are full of b-sides that don't really need placement on a "best of all time" list.

No Lights? Now I'm getting desperate for my personal tastes. I still want to fight for her album "The Listening".
 
Suzi Quatro? Come on, she doesn't get the credit she deserves, she was one of the first rock n roll female singers, before Joan Jett and Pat Benatar.

Pat Benatar?
Annie Lennox?


Also is this a "female only" albums? Cause I'd put Mary Travers in that list at least, Peter, Paul, and Mary were a huge influence in the 60's as well as Grace Slick.
 
I would have liked to see Rainer Maria on here somewhere but I dig the list. Also Whitney's bodyguard album should be here. Missy top 5 is a bold choice, and I fucking love it.
 
6. Beyoncé - Lemonade (Parkwood/Columbia, 2016)
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sickvomitssmileysmlz1ogs.gif
 
Vince McMahon said:
Well, there's a good reason for that. Just can't match up
Click to expand...

I'd put an album or two of theirs above many on this particular list. But I'm a different person than you, NeoGAF Vince McMahon. Can you believe it? Can you??

eyeball_kid said:
There's no fucking Cat Power on this list. Moon Pix is one of the best albums of the 90's.

There's also a strong argument to be made for including Dusty Springfield's Dusty In Memphis. It's often highly-placed on album lists, and it gave us classics like Son of a Preacher Man.
Click to expand...

Oooh. Yeah. Cat Power could've made the list, for sure. I'll probably listen to her today now. :D

And Dusty in Memphis is on the list (#45). Not a bad album. "Son of a Preacher Man" is great.

EatChildren said:
[unhappy about Lemonade]
Click to expand...

I've enjoyed it. Hadn't heard it before until the other day. I like it quite a bit, really. I think "Formation" is a bad closer, though. "Freedom" probably should've closed the album.

Still haven't watched the movie or whatever on the other disc, though. Will get to that soonish maybe hopefully.

Camper Van Beethoven said:
Not sure how albums produced by an army of men like Lemonade count as “made by a woman” but whatever works I guess.
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Reading up on each of these as I listened, there are pretty much always a bunch of dudes working on the albums in some way. It's kind of, I dunno, sad is too harsh of a word. But it's something worth thinking about, I guess. Really highlights that not a lot of women have jobs working behind the scenes in music. I wonder how different -- if at all -- some of these albums would've been had the studio been all women, instead of a woman and 30 guys or whatever.
 
Zach said:
Oooh. Yeah. Cat Power could've made the list, for sure. I'll probably listen to her today now. :D

And Dusty in Memphis is on the list (#45). Not a bad album. "Son of a Preacher Man" is great.
Click to expand...

Ah thanks, my control-F failed me. Glad Dusty got some recognition. Though 45 is probably way too high for Memphis.

Zach said:
Reading up on each of these as I listened, there are pretty much always a bunch of dudes working on the albums in some way. It's kind of, I dunno, sad is too harsh of a word. But it's something worth thinking about, I guess. Really highlights that not a lot of women have jobs working behind the scenes in music. I wonder how different -- if at all -- some of these albums would've been had the studio been all women, instead of a woman and 30 guys or whatever.
Click to expand...

From what I've heard, historically the audio production side of music was very male-dominated in the same way the tech industry is. A combination of a sexist, misogynistic boys club mentality, along with some kind of societal dissuasion that made women think it wasn't the kind of job for them.

With the computer bedroom studio becoming much more common, it has democratized the recording process, and so we're seeing more women doing recording and producing. I'm generally down on how cheap home studios have reduced the quality of the albums we hear now, and it has forced many recording studios with long legacies to shut down, but the one positive is it has really empowered women to be able to do recording on their own terms.
 
No Billie Holiday lmao. List fucking invalidated. I see some random did include one of the songbooks from Ella Fitzgerald.

PJ Harvey's best albums not even on here. Does she only have ONE album on this list. WTF lol. Bleh, list is not my kind of list at all. Beyonce's Lemonade is way too high. Bjork's Vespertine should be in the top 50. i don't even see it or much from her at all.

Does Jefferson Airplane not really count? How and why?

Cranberries should count no? Their first album is classic.

I feel like if you start counting shit like Rumors you are really on weird waters here. I'm looking more for single female artists to be honest.

Might as well also put shit like Yo La Tengo on here and Low? No Low album get outta here.

Honestly, I'm not that picky with lists, but yes this one is just bad.

Cat Power has at least one album any list like this would need. Huge gaping holes in this list. Not having Billie Holiday on here is like some fucked up thing.
 
Neith said:
No Billie Holiday lmao. List fucking invalidated. I see some random did include one of the songbooks from Ella Fitzgerald.
Click to expand...

They weren't doing full-length albums when Holiday was in her prime in the 1930's and 1940's. By the time albums came into fashion in the 1950's, her vocal powers were fading. This list is focused on greatest albums, and her full-length albums just weren't that great. In terms of greatest (women or in general) in music, yeah she'd be near the top of any list I'd make.
 
Timeless said:
No Lights? Now I'm getting desperate for my personal tastes. I still want to fight for her album "The Listening".
Click to expand...

I would have been all for this as well, actually. The Listening is one of my favourite albums, and she's a good representative of us Canadians as well, which never hurts. Top 150 of all time is a tall order, but I think she could have ranked for sure.
 
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