Top Ten Albums of All Time – How do You Choose?
KEXP is having a fund drive now and during the drive they are playing the top 903 albums of all time as voted on by their listeners who submitted their lists of top-ten albums.
I meant to vote in the KEXP poll, but I agonized for so long over my list that the deadline passed before I could vote.
And you may ask yourself, what’s so difficult about naming your ten favorite albums? Well… in many cases it’s difficult to select one album from an artists entire body of work. What’s the best Dylan album? The best Springsteen? The best Neil Young? The best Nick Cave? Should you choose more than one album from your favorite artists? How would a list of top-ten albums of all time look if it included three from Dylan, two from Springsteen, three from Nick Cave, and two from Neil Young? I could easily make that list. You might be able to create a similar list from the works of your four favorite artists.
Should you stay within the realm of folk/blues/pop/rock/soul or should you include jazz and classical? Should you care about what era the music was made? I ask because it would be very easy for me to list the ten best albums from each decade beginning with the fifties and ending with our current decade. So by not including something from all five decades, would you or I be ignoring great works because they are too old or too new?
Those were all difficult issues for me to resolve. My wife said I was overthinking it. She suggested I just go through my albums and pick my ten favorites. Okay… but that’s a huge stack to sort through. It would take me a whole lot longer to that than it’s taking me to write this.
So in the end what I came up with is what’s probably obvious to people who don’t dwell on these types of decisions like I do. I started thinking of the albums that I never tire of hearing and that I listen to quite often.
Here’s the list is in alphabetical order because it’s impossible to rank them numerically:
Hector Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique/Tristia, Cleveland Orchestra, Pierre Boulez (1997)
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Let Love In (1994)
Mile Davis – Kind of Blue (1959)
Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited (1965)
Alejandro Escovedo – Gravity (1992)
P.J. Harvey – To Bring You My Love (1995)
Nirvana – Nevermind (1991)
Patti Smith – Horses (1975)
Bruce Springsteen – Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)
Neil Young – Rust Never Sleeps (1979)
That’s ten. It wasn’t easy because my first draft was twice as long, so I’ve left off at least ten more really great albums that deserve to be on this list.
What albums are on your list of the Top Ten Greatest Albums of All Time? I want to know! Please click on “Comments” below this post heading and tell me.
Well that’s a great list you have there but, as you said, there’s room for a whole lot more great albums. I agree that it’s difficult to choose one album from an artist’s entire catalogue. I have the same problem with Tom Waits and Sonic Youth.
I like to rock a bit harder than you and I think my list shows it:
I meant to vote in the KEXP poll, and did, after agonizing over it for minutes.
Here’s the list is in autobiographical order because it’s impossible to rank them numerically:
Johnny Cash – At Folsom Prison [1968] (For obvious reasons, the only selection to receive a waiver of the Live Album Exclusion.)
Bob Dylan – Blonde On Blonde [1966] (The reason Top 10/Desert Island Discs lists were created.)
The Band – Music From Big Pink [1968] (No album has ever melded so many voices, traditions, and seemingly improvisational performances into such a perfect blend.)
Bruce Springsteen – Darkness On The Edge Of Town [1978]
Miles Davis – Kind Of Blue [1959] (Waiver of the Genre Exclusion.)
The Replacements – Let It Be [1984] (An album that can make you alternately laugh, cry, or pump your fist.)
Tom Waits – Small Change [1976] (Other of Waits’ albums were perhaps more acclaimed and influential, but this the quintessential example of Waits ability to sound like a barfly that hopped on a Barnum & Bailey train from the Bowery to Bourbon Street.)
Leonard Cohen – I’m Your Man [1988] (The instrumentation may now sound a bit dated, but there is no better example of brilliant songwriting coupled with a dulcet baritone. Don’t believe me? Listen to “Everybody Knows” and “Tower of Song” again.)
Dave Alvin – Blackjack David [1998] (A greatly under appreciated singer-songwriter. Dave Alvin is California’s answer to Townes Van Zandt.)
Radiohead – The Bends [1995] (Simply, takes you to a whole different place.)