The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

Nigerian-born fashion designer Sade Adu and her London band defined elegantly cool Eighties soul with their smash debut, Diamond Life. Torch ballads like “Smooth Operator” and “Your Love Is King” had a New Romantic opulence under the bittersweet pang of Adu’s voice. She wrote her first song, “When Am I Going to Make a Living,” on the back of a bill, while walking home in the rain from a bus stop after work. As she said, “All the songs I’ve ever loved — even jazz stuff — are things that tell a story.”

Pavement were the quintessential American independent rock band, and this is the quintessential indie-rock album. The playing is loose-limbed, the production laid-back and primitive, the lyrics quirky and playful, the melodies sweet and seductive. But the sound is as intense as the white noise of the Velvet Underground, even as songs like “Summer Babe” reflect singer-guitarist Stephen Malkmus’ love of Seventies AM pop. Slanted and Enchanted is one of the most influential rock albums of the 1990s; its fuzzy recording style can be heard in the music of Nirvana, Liz Phair, Beck, the Strokes, and the White Stripes.

The debut by the B-52’s sounds like a bunch of high school friends cramming all their running jokes, goofy sounds, and private nicknames into a New Wave record. “We never thought it would get past our circle of friends in Athens [Georgia],” vocalist Fred Schneider told Rolling Stone. It turned out that nobody could resist the band’s campy, arty funk, or the eccentric squeals and bouffant hairdos of Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson. (Playing organ, Pierson also defined the band’s sound.) They played toy instruments, and their thrift-store image was as inventive and colorful as their music — which, with “Rock Lobster,” was pretty inventive and colorful.

For Americans in the full grip of Beatlemania, this was the first album they could buy. Meet took the Fabs’ second British record, With the Beatles, dropped five covers, and added three tracks, including the singles “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There.” (This arguably made a hash of the Beatles’ artistic intentions, yet made for a much better record.) John Lennon and Paul McCartney were on a roll that would be unmatched in rock history, and at this point they were a real team. They wrote “I Want to Hold Your Hand” together — on a piano in the basement of the home of Jane Asher, McCartney’s actress girlfriend — as Lennon put it, “eyeball to eyeball.”

Robyn had a few Swedish teen-pop hits in the Nineties, but she’s a worldly adult on Body Talk — this was the voice of a woman who knew how it felt to shed tears on the dance floor. She released Body Talk in three mini-album installments on her own Konichiwa label, before cherry-picking the highlights for this epochal feminist disco statement. “Dancing on My Own” became this century’s answer to “I Will Survive.” She told Rolling Stone, “I was pushing through the challenges and getting off on that liberated feeling of being able to explore desperation and passion and frustration and all that.”

Leonard Cohen was already well into his thirties when he made his debut, in the Summer of Love. The Montreal poet had been publishing his books to literary acclaim for years, but he took to songwriting, with his acoustic guitar and the orchestrations of producer John Simon. These were the late-night ballads that made his legend, starting with “Suzanne” and “Sisters of Mercy.” But Cohen specialized in farewells, blowing kisses to his muses in “So Long, Marianne” and “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.” He kept writing brilliant songs into his eighties, right up to his death in 2016.

After Thriller turned Michael Jackson into an international pop phenomenon, he spent two years of work on the follow-up. The title song came with a 17-minute video by Martin Scorsese that cost $2 million. Bad gave Jackson more hits to add to his collection: “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,” “Bad,” “The Way You Make Me Feel,” and “Man in the Mirror.” He also began to vent some of his darker emotions on “Smooth Criminal” and the paranoid “Dirty Diana.” Not long afterward, Jackson would retreat to his Neverland ranch.

Sharp social criticism (“Fortunate Son”) and party music (“Down on the Corner”) take a ride on the Creedence bandwagon. John Fogerty’s ability to wed swamp rock with catchy, complex arrangements gave Willy a durability few rock albums can match. “It Came Out of the Sky” told the story of a farm boy who finds a space ship in his backyard, with cameos by Spiro Agnew and Ronald Reagan, and the album climaxes with “Effigy,” an inferno image of apocalypse across the land that’ll leave you breathless, especially when you remember you’re listening to the biggest Top 40 band in America at the time.

Recorded when the three New York rappers were barely out of high school, Licensed to Ill remains a revolutionary combination of hip-hop beats, metal riffs, and some of the most exuberant, unapologetic smart-aleck rhymes ever made. “Three Jerks Make a Masterpiece” read the headline in the Village Voice, the Beastie Boys’ hometown weekly. It’s the relentless commitment to jerkdom that distinguished this debut LP, though the hilarious snaps, obscure pop-culture references, and unique trade-off flow of Mike D, MCA, and Ad-Rock make that attitude resonate. “The girlies I like are underage” hasn’t aged well as far as boasts go, but the Boys realized that soon enough and became dedicated feminists, jerks no more.

Etta James was a self-described “juvenile delinquent” when R&B band boss Johnny Otis took her under his wing and made her a precociously sexual teenage star with 1954’s “Roll With Me, Henry.” Seven years later, James bloomed into a mature, fiery interpreter on this spellbinding LP. Against Riley Hampton’s meaty orchestrations, James wraps her husky voice around strange bedfellows such as “Stormy Weather” and Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You,” injecting them with rock & roll heart. She hit the pop and R&B charts with three of the songs here and, in the process, created a new vocal model: the crossover diva.

“Rock opera” is one way to describe the pioneering ambition in Pete Townshend’s musical exploration of childhood trauma, sexual abuse, repression, and spiritual release (after all, it does have an overture). Here’s another way: the slash and thunder of “My Generation” blown wide open. Driven by the hellbent drumming of Keith Moon, the Who surge and shine, igniting the drama in Townshend’s melodies (“Pinball Wizard,” “We’re Not Gonna Take It”). “We worked out the sociological implications, the religious implications, the rock implications,” Townshend said. “When we’d done that, we went into the studio, got smashed out of our brains, and made it.”

“I wanna be your Joey Ramone,” Corin Tucker promised on Sleater-Kinney’s 1996 album, Call the Doctor. Their next record made good on that mythic ambition. When drummer Janet Weiss joined singer-guitarists Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, a riot-grrrl force of nature became one of the world’s most potent rock bands. Tucker’s indelible vibrato takes off with avenging-angel ferocity on songs like the almost impossibly explosive title track and “Words and Guitar,” an awe-inspiring statement of rock & roll’s power to transform a broken world.

“A successful, hit rock & roll record is a spell,” T. Rex leader Marc Bolan told Rolling Stone. And so, muttering “eye of Bowie, toe of Slade,” Bolan cast a spell over all of England. He took his Tolkienesque hippie music and gave it a glammed-out Chuck Berry update on sexy singles like “Bang a Gong (Get It On)”; this was rock that thrusted, quivered, and recklessly employed metaphors equating cars with sex (“You got a hubcap diamond star halo”). He outdid himself with “Jeepster,” an entire song on the topic, vibrating with lust, a shuffling beat, lots of guitar, and the sound of Bolan stomping on the studio floor.

Six months after quitting N.W.A, the group’s most gifted lyricist returned with a vengeance on AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, recorded with Public Enemy’s production crew, the Bomb Squad. Lyrically, it sharpened N.W.A’s politics; “Why more niggas in the pen than in college?” Cube asks on “The Nigga Ya Love to Hate.” The album’s rapacious sexism has aged horrendously, though give Cube some credit for being smart enough to include the stunning “It’s a Man’s World,” in which female rapper Yo-Yo tells him off straight to his face.

No one ever disputed the boisterous energy of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ music — it was only a matter of whether these funky monks could write riffs and songs that stood alongside their idols. On their fifth studio album, they got the balance right. They went touchy-feely (and multiplatinum) with the ballad “Under the Bridge,” the biggest of the album’s five hit singles. In addition, guitarist John Frusciante brought energizing, songful riffs, producer Rick Rubin kept the songs streamlined and free of juvenilia, and Anthony Kiedis brought a new degree of simplicity to his singing.

“When we had been in the States between 1964 and ’66, I had gathered together this enormous collection of records, but I never had any time to listen to them,” Keith Richards recalled. “In late 1966 and ‘67, I unwrapped them and actually played them.” After the wayward psychedelia of Their Satanic Majesties Request, and with guitarist Brian Jones largely AWOL, Richards’ record collection led the Rolling Stones back to their version of America: country music on “Dear Doctor,” the blues on “Prodigal Son,” and urban riots on “Street Fighting Man.” And “Sympathy for the Devil,” of course, is an anthem for the darkness in every human heart.

With her garish thrift-store fashions and exaggerated Queens accent, Lauper had a kooky image that was perfect for MTV. But she also had a superb, clarion voice and a pack of great covers, including “Money Changes Everything” (originally by Atlanta New Wave band the Brains) and Prince’s saucy “When You Were Mine.” Lauper co-wrote four songs, including the lovely ballad “Time After Time” and the masturbation call-to-arms “She Bop.” But her smartest move was to change the lyrics of Robert Hazard’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” until it became a “very blatantly feminist” song about equality. “For a minute, I made it popular to be the odd guy out,” she said.

A minister’s son from Richmond, Virginia, who performed in a hip-hop group as a teenager, D’Angelo was just entering his twenties when he released his debut, a visionary fusion of Seventies soul and Nineties R&B that paved the way for neo-soul. D’Angelo did nearly everything on Brown Sugar, layering his own dazzling harmonies while displaying a studio command that recalled Prince and Stevie Wonder, whether on the down and dirty “Jonz in My Bonz” or psychedelic soul of “Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine,” sounding so warm and chill you almost don’t notice that “Shit, Damn, Motherfucker” is a did-me-wrong double-murder fantasy.

Taylor’s second album landed him on the cover of Time magazine, and its gentle melodies drew the blueprint for many of the Seventies singer-songwriters that followed. But he went through a private hell on his way to success; the hit “Fire and Rain” was inspired by his stay in a psychiatric institution in the mid-1960s (he had committed himself) and the suicide of a close friend. In the months before making this album, Taylor committed himself again, this time to kick heroin. His confessional lyrics set a new standard, as did the spare melodicism of his songs. But it was the quiet strength in his voice that makes this album a model of folk-pop healing.

“It’s very complicated to play with electricity,” Dylan said in the summer of 1965. “You’re dealing with other people.… Most people who don’t like rock & roll can’t relate to other people.” But on Side One of this pioneering album, Dylan amplifies his cryptic, confrontational songwriting with guitar lightning and galloping drums. “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Maggie’s Farm” are loud, caustic, and funny as hell. Dylan returns to solo acoustic guitar on the four superb songs on Side Two, including the scabrous “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and the closing ballad, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” arguably his finest, most affectionate song of dismissal.

“When I did that album,” singer Arthur Lee said, “I thought I was going to die at that particular time, so those were my last words.” Lee, who died of cancer in 2006, was still performing this album live well into the ‘00s. And for good reason: Love’s third record is his crowning achievement. A biracial cult band from L.A. that rarely gigged out of town in its 1960s heyday, Love were Lee’s vehicle for a pioneering folk-rock turned into elegant armageddon with the symphonic sweep and mariachi-brass drama of “Alone Again Or,” “Andmoreagain,” and “You Set the Scene.” In the late Nineties, Lee served time in prison. After his release, he brought extra pathos to “Live and Let Live” when he sang, “Served my time, served it well.”

Biggie’s second album was a victory lap following the immense, earth-shaking success of his 1994 debut, Ready to Die, and was prophetically and tragically released less than a month after the 24-year-old was shot and killed. The rubber-grooved “Hypnotize” was already on its way to becoming a smash when he died, and his lyrical genius and gift for narrative were on display all over this two-CD set, as he grapples with rap-game politics and delivers thinly veiled knocks at the West Coasters he long beefed with over clean, lush-sounding production. He was just getting started.

Redding’s third album includes covers of three songs by Sam Cooke, Redding’s idol, who had died the previous December. Their styles were different: Cooke, smooth and sure; Redding, raw and pleading. But Redding’s versions of “Shake” and “A Change Is Gonna Come” show how Cooke’s sound and message helped shape Redding’s Southern soul, heard here in his originals “Respect” and “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and in a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” which was itself inspired by the Stax/Volt sound. “I use a lot of words different than the Stones’ version,” Redding noted. “That’s because I made them up.”

“We had no preconceived ideas of what we were going to do,” Rod Stewart said. “We would have a few drinks and strum away and play.” With a first-class band of drinking buddies (including guitarist Ron Wood and drummer Mickey Waller), Stewart made a loose, warm, compassionate album, rocking hard with mostly acoustic instruments. “Mandolin Wind” was his moving ballad of a country couple toughing out a long winter on the farm; the title tune was a hilarious goof. But Stewart scored his first Number One hit with “Maggie May,” his autobiographical tale of a young stud getting kicked in the head by an older lady.

Public Enemy derived the title of their pyrophoric third album from the writing of Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, a professor who theorized that the purpose of racism was to assure “white genetic survival.” (That’s her speaking in the first few bars of “Meet the G That Killed Me.”) The lyrical flap surrounding “Welcome to the Terrordome” couldn’t overwhelm Public Enemy’s widescreen vision of hip-hop, which included the righteous noise of “Fight the Power,” the uplifting sentiment of “Brothers Gonna Work It Out,” and the agit-funk of “911 Is a Joke.”

After the sprawl of To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar tightened up, going for the jugular in the most aggressive, banger-based album of his career. He dissects his own “DNA,” as well as America’s, raving about “the feelin’ of an apocalypse happenin’.” He delves into his family history in “Duckworth” and scored his first Number One hit with “Humble.” It’s an album where both Bono and Rihanna sound right at home — but it all sounds like Lamar. “It came out exactly how I heard it in my head,” he explained at the time. “It’s all pieces of me.” Grammy-haters were vindicated when DAMN. lost out to Bruno Mars for Album of the Year, but DAMN. did end up pulling a Pulitzer Prize for Music, a first for a rap album.

This was the album that took reggae worldwide. The movie was a Jamaican stew of Robin Hood, High Sierra, and Easy Rider — reggae singer turns outlaw hero, goes on the run with guns blazing — with patois dialogue so thick that U.S. audiences needed subtitles. But the soundtrack needed no translation, introducing Babylon to the new beat. The film’s star, Jimmy Cliff, sings six songs, including the hymn “Many Rivers to Cross.” There are glorious one-shots (especially Scotty’s demented “Draw Your Brakes”), as well as artists such as Desmond Dekker (“Shanty Town”), the Melodians (“Rivers of Babylon), and Toots and the Maytals (“Pressure Drop”).

After Nevermind went megaplatinum, Kurt Cobain detested how the band had drawn frat boys and homophobe fans — “plankton,” he called them, adding, “Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.” Nirvana hired indie-rock producer Steve Albini to record their new album, resulting in a record sonically forbidding enough that Geffen Records asked them to clean it up. In “Scentless Apprentice,” he screams, “Go away!” at no one and everyone, summarizing this powerfully unsettling third album. Melodies peak through the clouds of his wrath, especially on “All Apologies,” “Dumb,” and “Pennyroyal Tea,” but the prevailing mood is queasy, like a visit to the inside of Cobain’s aching stomach.

On their fifth and final studio album, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were pulling away from each other: Simon assembled some of it while Garfunkel was in Mexico starting his acting career with a part in the film version of Catch-22. Garfunkel vetoed Simon’s song “Cuba Sí, Nixon No,” and Simon nixed Garfunkel’s idea for a Bach chorale. What remains is the partnership at its best: wry, wounded songs with healing harmonies such as “The Boxer,” though the gorgeous title track was sung by Garfunkel alone, despite his resistance. “He felt I should have done it,” Simon told Rolling Stone in 1972. “And many times, I’m sorry I didn’t do it.”

Sonic Youth took an ecstatic, specifically New York sound created in the late 1970s by the band Television and by composers Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, and turned it into an international clamor. On this double album, they make a move away from doomy riddles about pop culture and toward joyful riddles about pop culture. Their unconventional guitar tunings result in jarring chords and overtones, but also an array of gnarled hooks. Thurston Moore’s and Lee Ranaldo’s guitars are like antennae picking up otherworldly signals and channeling them into the scuzzy urban haze of “Teen Age Riot” and “Eric’s Trip,” and on “The Sprawl,” bassist Kim Gordon sums up the album’s measured chaos: “Does ‘Fuck you’ sound simple enough?”

Of all Cream’s studio albums, Disraeli Gears is the sharpest and most linear. The power trio focused their instrumental explorations into colorful pop songs: “Strange Brew” (slinky funk), “Dance the Night Away” (trippy jangle), “Tales of Brave Ulysses” (a wah-wah freakout that Eric Clapton wrote with Martin Sharp, who created the kaleidoscopic cover art). The hit “Sunshine of Your Love” nearly didn’t make it onto the record; the band had trouble nailing it until famed Atlantic Records engineer Tom Dowd suggested that Ginger Baker try a Native American tribal beat, a simple adjustment that locked the song into place.

On this record, Billy Joel found the recipe for success: a bottle of red, a bottle of white, and a sharp eye for the local color of New York street life. The Piano Man sharpens his storytelling gifts with a Scorsese-style sense of humor and compassion, whether he’s singing about a down-and-out Little Italy hustler in “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” the femme fatale in “She’s Always a Woman,” or the doomed Long Island greaser couple Brenda and Eddie in “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant.” Meanwhile, Joel hit the pop charts with the Grammy-winning “Just the Way You Are” (written for his first wife and manager, Elizabeth), which became a wedding-band standard.