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manisandher
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- #21
Yeah, and not a single mention of Patricia Barber anywhere!
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The Greatest Albums of All Time...
- Thread starter manisandher
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Yeah, and not a single mention of Patricia Barber anywhere!
Diana Krall didn't make the cut either.
Bland_username42069
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A tough day for Tangerine Dream in the electronic section - Alpha Centauri, Atem, Zeit, and Phaedra are all classics imo.
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manisandher
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- #24
Ah, I missed that!
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manisandher
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- #25
Agreed. I think o3 would give me the same excuse it made about omitting J-MJ.
whereisbrian
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And Iggy & The Stooges, Raw Power, Ash Ra Temple, Hüsker Dü, Minutemen, Stereolab, Boredoms ... !
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manisandher
Addicted to Fun and Learning
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- #27
o3:
Both Steely Dan and Tangerine Dream have very solid claims and their absence is really just the squeeze-play of a “20 only” rule.
In short, the omissions weren’t judgments on merit—just the tyranny of an arbitrary cut-off.
Both Steely Dan and Tangerine Dream have very solid claims and their absence is really just the squeeze-play of a “20 only” rule.
1 Steely Dan
- Flagship album: Aja (1977) – an audiophile reference record that bridged rock, jazz, pop and soul, preserved in the U.S. National Recording Registry and now as high as No. 63 on Rolling Stone’s 500-greatest revision Wikipedia.
- Why I left it out: the rock-20 skewed toward guitar-centric or era-defining cultural jolts; Steely Dan’s perfectionist studio craft felt more “jazz-rock fusion.”
- How to slot it in: I’d slide Aja in around the middle—say new #13—bumping the bottom of the list down one and dropping Funeral (Arcade Fire) to “honourable mention.”
2 Tangerine Dream
- Flagship album: Phaedra (1974) – routinely described as “one of the most important works in the history of electronic music,” and included in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die Wikipedia.
- Why I left it out: the electronic-20 already had two “foundations” picks (Kraftwerk, Eno), so I favoured ’90s–’00s styles (IDM, trip-hop, big-beat).
- How to slot it in: replace Squarepusher’s Hard Normal Daddy at #19 with Phaedra and move Squarepusher to the honourable-mention shelf.
Honourable-mention shelf
- Rock: Can’t Buy a Thrill (Steely Dan), Gaucho (Steely Dan), Fragile (Yes).
- Electronic: Rubycon (Tangerine Dream), Ricochet (Tangerine Dream live), Selected Ambient Works Vol. II (Aphex Twin).
In short, the omissions weren’t judgments on merit—just the tyranny of an arbitrary cut-off.
DavidEdwinAston
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Smashing thread which can go on forever, with more and more obscure artists.
I'll start. Our eldest grandchild's partner Ming. Who is at least on Qobuz/Spotify with his mini album Wonderland Prequel!
I'll start. Our eldest grandchild's partner Ming. Who is at least on Qobuz/Spotify with his mini album Wonderland Prequel!
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It’s not worth wondering why. Maybe it didn’t sell enough?
It really is one of the best rock albums in my opinion too. Something hard to describe about its genius. Takes me back to my teens like a real Time Machine.
HalSF
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It’s interesting to learn how closely the idiocy of mindless listicle culture and the genius of ChatGPT are aligned. Good to know!
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manisandher
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- #33
No Dire Straits? Common
o3:
Dire Straits are definitely in “borderline-top-20” territory for rock. The sticking point is simply that I forced myself to stop at 20 titles: once you’ve locked in the eight or nine acts who utterly rewired the genre (Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, Floyd, Hendrix, Nirvana, etc.), the final quarter of the list gets brutally competitive.
Their credentials at a glance
| Metric | Detail |
|---|---|
| Signature LP | Brothers in Arms (1985) |
| Commercial clout | 30 - 34 million copies worldwide and the first album to sell a million CDs, tipping the industry toward the format. Wikipedia |
| Critical standing | Ranked #418 on Rolling Stone’s revised 500-greatest list and #224 on the crowdsourced BestEverAlbums all-time chart. WikipediaBest Ever Albums |
| Catalogue depth | Fans also champion Making Movies (1980) and Love Over Gold (1982), but consensus points to Brothers in Arms as their canonical peak. |
| Legacy | Mark Knopfler’s finger-style electric tone has influenced everyone from John Mayer to prog-metal players; the album’s digital production became a reference point for ’80s AOR. |
How they could slot in
If you (or the ASR crowd) insist on a Steely Dan and Dire Straits presence without expanding past 20, here’s a tidy swap:
| Old #19 | New #19 |
|---|---|
| Guns N’ Roses — Appetite for Destruction (1987) | Dire Straits — Brothers in Arms (1985) |
Appetite is a genre pillar, but hard-rock already has Back in Black and Master of Puppets on the list, so losing one swagger-guitar entry keeps diversity intact. Everything else would shift down one, with Arcade Fire’s Funeral staying in the honourable-mention pile set up after the Steely Dan adjustment.
Why they just missed the cut originally
- Cultural “shock” factor: Brothers in Arms rewrote sales records yet didn’t move the creative goalposts the way Nevermind or OK Computer did.
- Stylistic overlap: The lush, adult-oriented blues-rock Knopfler perfected overlaps with Springsteen’s big-canvas songwriting and Pink Floyd’s audiophile polish—already covered in the 20.
- One unanimous classic: Critics almost universally pick Brothers in Arms; most other artists on the list have at least two or three albums that turn up in top-100 debates.
That said, if your forum’s ethos leans toward studio-craft and hi-fi listening, Sneaking Dire Straits in is an easy call. I’m happy to treat the swap above as the “forum edition” of the rock list.
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manisandher
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- #34
Not much fun for me though. (Not understanding a word.)
Withal, not bad lists 
Pearljam5000
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Where's In Utero?
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manisandher
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- #37
We've got "Nevermind" at least.
whereisbrian
Active Member
A large part of Japanese rock and pop music is forgotten in this list.
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manisandher
Addicted to Fun and Learning
- Thread Starter
- #39
o3:
Why each #1 sets the bar for its genre
Each of these albums is not just exemplary within its field; it permanently changed the conversation—technically, culturally, or both—setting a high-water mark that later classics still measure themselves against.
Why each #1 sets the bar for its genre
| Genre | #1 pick | Why it tops the list |
|---|---|---|
| Rock | The Beatles – Abbey Road (1969) | Combines the band’s most advanced studio craft (“Here Comes the Sun,” the side-two medley) with forward-looking production techniques (eight-track tape, Moog synth) while closing the Beatles’ arc on a near-perfect note. It appears in the top handful of virtually every all-time poll, including Apple Music’s recent top-100. |
| Pop | Michael Jackson – Thriller (1982) | The best-selling album ever (70 M+ copies) and the first to fuse pop, R&B, rock and video spectacle into a single global template; its seven top-10 singles reshaped radio formats worldwide. |
| Progressive Rock | Yes – Close to the Edge (1972) | A seamless 38-minute suite of symphonic ambition, virtuosic playing and Roger Dean-designed world-building; it sits at No. 1 on ProgArchives’ all-time user poll and is the reference text for symphonic prog. |
| Jazz | Miles Davis – Kind of Blue (1959) | The modal blueprint: still the best-selling jazz album, archived by the U.S. Library of Congress and cited by generations of players across genres for its improvisational clarity and atmosphere. |
| Classical (recording) | Glenn Gould – Bach: Goldberg Variations (1955) | A debut that upended Baroque performance practice with analytical precision and studio savvy, became Columbia’s best-selling classical LP, and entered the U.S. National Recording Registry—proof that a single reading can reset modern Bach interpretation. |
| Electronic | Kraftwerk – Trans-Europe Express (1977) | Melded synth-pop minimalism with motorik groove, directly inspiring hip-hop (“Planet Rock”), techno (Detroit’s Belleville Three) and synth-pop; its concept of pan-European futurism still frames electronic music’s aesthetic. |
| R&B / Soul | Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On (1971) | A socially conscious concept album whose blend of gospel orchestration and funk grooves redefined R&B’s lyrical scope; in Rolling Stone’s 2020 poll it was the overwhelming No. 1 of all genres. |
| Folk | Bob Dylan – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963) | Introduced literate, self-penned protest songs (“Blowin’ in the Wind”) to the mainstream, moving folk from traditionals to singer-songwriter art and influencing everything from ’60s protest to modern indie folk. |
| Blues | B.B. King – Live at the Regal (1965) | A fiery Chicago performance that became the electric-blues touchstone for Clapton, Hendrix and Page; its taut set list and audience interplay define the modern blues-guitar template. |
| Reggae | Bob Marley & the Wailers – Exodus (1977) | Written in exile after an assassination attempt, it merges roots, rockers and spiritual themes into anthems (“One Love,” “Jamming”) that globalised reggae and landed on Time magazine’s list of the century’s 100 best albums. |
Each of these albums is not just exemplary within its field; it permanently changed the conversation—technically, culturally, or both—setting a high-water mark that later classics still measure themselves against.
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