Entertainment Weekly recently released a “100 All-Time Greatest of Everything” that included lists for movies, music, plays, and book. While they were good lists, they weren’t perfect. So I’m creating a few G.O.A.T lists of my own. I’m going to kick it off with music. My criteria for choosing the albums and ranking them was based on three things – 1) How good the actual music is, 2) How influential the album is, and 3) How consistent the album is. The second rule really helped shape the list. Because if we’re talking about a list of simply perfect records Illmatic would be the obvious number one choice. But this is my list of great, important with a capital I records.
1. Let It Be – The Beatles (1970)
The Beatles were the most influential rock band ever and they have a handful of seminal albums that are all tremendously significant. So, let’s just pick the one with the tightest set of songs. They don’t over-experiment here like they did occasionally on the White Album and Sgt. Pepper, but the songs are much more intricate than Revolver. Phil Spector’s maligned production adds a nice elegiac tone to their final proper album.
2. Thriller – Michael Jackson (1982)
Every R&B, Rap, Dance, and Pop artist performing today have been influenced by this album, whether consciously or not. It’s not just the sound either, MJ’s dance moves are still being copied and updated to this day. And the Thriller video remains the pinnacle that every music video director is chasing.
3. The Chronic – Dr. Dre (1992)
Love it or hate it, Dre changed rap forever with this album. After the Chronic there were whole new tempos, styles, and subjects for rap to explore.
4. Kind of Blue – Miles Davis (1959)
This is almost universally considered the best and most important jazz album of all time by people who know much better than I do. You won’t get it the first time but listen again and you’ll realize it’s an amazing feat.
5. The Velvet Underground & Nico – the Velvet Underground (1967)
Without this noisy, arty, almost non-musical piece there would likely be no independent and punk music scene. These experimental songs about the seedier side of life are legitimate great compositions. They’re noisy, but not just noise. They were powerful enough to let the world know that music didn’t have to sound the way it had always sounded in the past.
6. London Calling – the Clash (1979)
London Calling showed Punk music wasn’t just snotty, three chord songs. It could also be political, anthemic, genre-bending, and even commercial. It’s the greatest Punk album ever, even if it’s arguably not technically Punk.
7. Doolittle – Pixies (1989)
This album is one of the greatest collections of indie/alternative rock ever. Everyone’s heard how it was a huge influence on bands like Nirvana and Modest Mouse. In many ways it was a forerunner to grunge, recent punk-pop, and current indie rock.
8. Funeral – Arcade Fire (2004)
When this came out in 2004 it was simply an amazing debut album, but over the past few years it’s become a formative masterpiece. It seems like no indie rock band that came after the Arcade Fire could ignore their sound. Before there were two schools, the indie noise school and the indie melody school. The indie noise school would layer noise on top of disharmonious noise. The melodic school would build and build on the melody. Funeral mashes both those schools together into a new unique sound that has been aped countless times since.
9. OK Computer – Radiohead (1997)
Radiohead is another band that has multiple influential albums, but this is their masterwork. A perfect album, it proved that “alternative” music could be difficult, layered, smart and still poetic and commercial at the same time.
10. Diary – Sunny Day Real Estate (1994)
There had been “emo” albums before but this was the first big recording of the genre. And no record after really captured the emotional highs and lows of this music, -particularly on songs like “In Circles” and “A Song About a Angel”.