The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

Recording after his onerous contract with Motown had expired, a newly empowered Stevie Wonder flexed his artistic control on Music of My Mind, making a relaxed, love-smitten warmup for blockbusters — like Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life — to come, and playing nearly every funky note on classics such as “Love Having You Around” and “Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You).” Elsewhere, Wonder jammed on a Clavinet during the the tight boogie “Keep on Running” and on “Evil,” an openhearted intimacy with political overtones.

It’s the ultimate rock salute: “Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!” Recorded live in Detroit by Rob Tyner and his anarchist crew, Kick Out the Jams writhes and screams with the belief that rock & roll is a necessary act of civil disobedience. The proof: It was banned by a Michigan department store. The MC5 proved their lefty credentials the summer before the album was recorded when they were the only band that showed up to play for the Yippies protesting the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Gillian Welch had a breakout moment when she appeared in the Coen brothers’ folk-music-themed movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?. She followed it with this striking modern-roots album, collaborating with guitarist David Rawlings on songs about love, sex, nostalgia, and the music of Elvis Presley. It ends with the 15-minute meditation “I Dream a Highway,” which the pair had never played before they recorded it, one example of the spontaneous power of an LP that made Depression-era music feel time-warped into the present.

The “Wu”-est of all of the Wu-Tang solo masterpieces, full of grimily cinematic production, winding crime narratives, mysticism, and mystery, not to mention copious kung fu-movie references and contributions from every Wu member. GZA delivers rhymes that are economical but devastating in their wisdom and narrative detail; “Bloodbaths in elevator shafts/Like these murderous rhymes tight from genuine craft,” he raps, summing up his style. Whatever strange alchemy the Staten Island guys came up with, Liquid Swords has it in utterly potent form.

Not many Brit-pop bands come up with strong second acts like this. The Arctic Monkeys debuted with the stun-gun pop punk of 2005’s Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. But by 2013, they’d moved to L.A. and, on AM, hit a sound that frontman Alex Turner likened to “the Spiders From Mars covering Aaliyah.” The results were not unlike David Bowie’s transformation on Station to Station — alluringly spooky, full of distressed falsetto soul, noir guitars, and rife with bar scenes that look like crime scenes with dead-end hookups.

Reeling from the commercial fizzle of his debut LP, Bruce Springsteen threw off the “new Dylan” baggage and applied his Jersey-bar-band skills to some of the funniest tunes he’d ever write: “Rosalita,” “Kitty’s Back,” and the boardwalk love song “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy).” The music is loose, jazzy, and full of ambition — a studio take on the live muscle that Springsteen was already famous for — and “New York City Serenade” is the first of Springsteen’s epic street operas.

Loose, funky, and exuberant, Kingston is the quintessential document of Jamaica’s greatest act after Bob Marley. Showcasing some of the Maytals’ best songs (“Pressure Drop,” later covered by the Clash) and borrowing from soul, pop, and gospel, Funky Kingston introduced the world to the great Toots Hibbert. He performs versions of “Louie Louie” and, in a down-home surprise, John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” with Toots changing the lyrics from “West Virginia” to “West Jamaica.”

Sly and the Family Stone created a musical utopia: an interracial group of men and women who blended funk, rock, and positive vibes. Sly Stone, the Family mastermind, was one of the Sixties’ most ambitious artists, mixing up the hardest funk beats with hippie psychedelia on hits such as “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).” Greatest Hits ranges from gospel-style ballads (“Everybody Is a Star”) to rump shakers (“Everyday People”).

Let It Be is the sound of the world’s biggest pop group at war with itself. John Lennon is at his most acidic; George Harrison’s “I Me Mine” is about the sin of pride. Only Paul McCartney sounds focused, as if the title song were his personal survival mantra. The original concept was a live-in-the-studio album and film, begun in January 1969, that left the Beatles so weary that they abandoned the project to make Abbey Road. Phil Spector went back to the tapes later, sweetening ballads like “Across the Universe” and “The Long and Winding Road.”

“All these alternative bands today are so high up on their punk-rock horse that they’re in denial about being huge and playing big shows,” Billy Corgan told Rolling Stone in 1994. “Not only do we respect the clichés, we see the truth in them.” On their second disc, the Pumpkins pushed further from Nineties alt-rock to a grander, orchestrated sound with multiple guitar parts, strings, and a Mellotron. Alt-rock ended up following the band on its trip: Siamese Dream is packed with hits (“Cherub Rock,” “Today”).

Until Snoop Dogg came along, no one in rap — and hardly anyone in rock — realized that an aloof whisper could be more intimidating than a shout. Snoop never gets heated; he takes the same tone when he’s menacing a cop as he does with a woman who’s soaping his back in the tub. Emanuel Dean and Dr. Dre’s sterling G-funk productions on “Gin N Juice” and “Who Am I (What’s My Name)?” ensured enormous album sales for the D-O-double-G’s debut and his laidbaaaack Indo-flavored tales of life on the streets of Compton.

Janet Jackson bought a military suit and ruled the radio for two years with this album. Along with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, she fashioned a grand pop statement with hip-hop funk (“Rhythm Nation”), slow jams (“Love Will Never Do [Without You]”), and even hair metal (“Black Cat”). “While writing ‘Rhythm Nation’ I was kidding around, saying, ‘God, you guys, I feel like this could be the national anthem for the Nineties,’” Jackson recalled. “Just by a crazy chance we decided to look up when Francis Scott Key wrote the national anthem, and it was September 14th, 1814.”

After years as a rock eccentric with Roxy Music and two groundbreaking solo LPs, Brian Eno was exploring new ideas about ambient music. But he said goodbye to song form with this album of pure synthetic beauty, mixing lush electronics (“Becalmed”) with acoustic instruments (“Everything Merges With the Night”) to cast a truly hypnotic spell. Eno’s work habits were pleasantly subversive too; at one impasse during the recording, he pulled out a cake from underneath the mixing console and served pieces to everyone in the studio.

Recovering from his 1966 motorcycle crash, Bob Dylan made a left turn into country fables and stark mystic folkways. He took a quick trip to Nashville and banged out John Wesley Harding. It’s his most ominous album, with characters from the Bible and the shadowy side of American history, from “I Am a Lonesome Hobo” to “All Along the Watchtower.” With his stripped-down sound and a black-and-white cover photo, Dylan was defiantly rejecting all the current trends — going his own way, as usual.

Peter Sinfield, the producer of Roxy Music’s angular and wild 1972 debut, said that on Avalon they “ran out of naiveté.” Their sound was now woozy and refined, horny yet mature, and unabashedly, unironically romantic. A synth-soul landmark, Avalon was their biggest hit, their swan song, and the height of rock elegance and sophistication. The reggae lilt of the album’s title track was inspired by Bob Marley, who had recorded at the same studio as Roxy Music during the Seventies.

Bob Dylan and his pals spent the Summer of Love in Woodstock, messing around in the basement of a house they called Big Pink. The songs were so deeply weird, they sat unreleased for years, until The Basement Tapes finally collected bootleg favorites like “Million Dollar Bash” and “You Ain’t Going Nowhere.” (For a deeper dive, see the 2014 box set.) “They were a kick to do,” Dylan told Rolling Stone’s Jann S. Wenner in 1969. “That’s really the way to do a recording — in a peaceful, relaxed setting — in somebody’s basement. With the windows open … and a dog lying on the floor.”

“Black Magic Woman,” the Top Five hit from Abraxas, is definitive Santana: Afro-Latin grooves and piercing, lyrical, psychedelic blues guitar. It’s a cover of a Fleetwood Mac song written by one of Carlos Santana’s guitar heroes, Peter Green. The album’s other hit was also a cover: Tito Puente’s “Oye Como Va.” The clarion quality of Santana’s solos inspired many guitarists, especially artists looking to bridge seemingly divergent styles, including Prince.

“Too many black artists get conned into doing so-called standards,” Withers said in 1972. “Songs by white writers who make the big money.” On his second album, Withers simply decided to write his own standards. The friendship anthem “Lean on Me” became his signature, while the propulsive “Use Me” would become one of the most-beloved tunes of all time, later sung by D’Angelo, Fiona Apple, and many others. If Just As I Am introduced Withers as a vital voice, Still Bill solidified him as a songwriter’s songwriter.

In November 1955, RCA Records bought Elvis Presley’s contract, singles, and unreleased master tapes from Sun Records for $35,000. His first full-length album came out four months later, with tracks drawn from both the Sun sessions and from further recording at RCA’s studios in New York and Nashville. “There wasn’t any pressure,” guitarist Scotty Moore said. “They were just bigger studios with different equipment.” On tracks such as “Blue Suede Shoes,” that meant revved-up country music with the sexiest voice anyone had ever heard.

“I like the challenge of merging art and commerce,” Madonna told Rolling Stone. After dominating Eighties pop without always getting the critical respect she deserved, Madonna finally won artistic recognition with her most personal set of songs, including “Till Death Do Us Part” and “Oh Father.” And she nailed the commerce side with “Express Yourself” and the title track, the video of which had the Vatican talking about blasphemy. “I pray when I’m in trouble or when I’m happy,” she said. “When I feel any sort of extreme.” Like a Prayer fused all of her extremes brilliantly.

The Stones sound mean and jaded on Aftermath, writing bad-boy songs about Swinging London’s overnight stars, groupies, hustlers, and parasites. This is the first Stones album completely written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, a collection of tough riffs (“It’s Not Easy”) and tougher acoustic blues (“High and Dry”); of girls seeking kicks (“Under My Thumb”) or just escape (“Think”), of zooming psychedelia (“Paint It, Black”), baroque-folk gallantry (“I Am Waiting”), and an epic groove (the 11-minute “Going Home”).

Northern California beat junkie Josh Davis (a.k.a. DJ Shadow) spent a year and a half chasing his dream of “the ultimate sample record,” and nailed it with his debut LP. Endtroducing….. is the height of the mid-Nineties trend of the hip-hop DJ as an experimental sound painter, a mix of head-trip beats, absurdist samples, and old-school block-party showmanship that touched listeners way beyond the turntablist underground. “Endtroducing was a big influence on OK Computer,” Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead recalled.

On Halloween 2012, with their hometown New York subsumed in a blackout, Vampire Weekend went on late-night TV to play an atheist reggae jam called “Unbelievers” dressed as skeletons. It was the perfect introduction to Modern Vampires of the City, a record that darkened their buoyant indie pop, as Ezra Koenig sang about moving beyond his post-college years into something scarier and weirder — hitting a cloudy peak with the beautifully worried Dylanesque travelogue “Hannah Hunt.”

Faced with the impossible task of following up the grand statement of Tommy [see No. 190], the Who just cranked up their amps. Rather than wade through 80 hours of American shows for a live album, Pete Townshend claimed he burned those tapes “in a huge bonfire” and selected a concert at the University of Leeds in England. Live at Leeds is a warts-and-all live album, including an accidental clunking sound on “My Generation.” There’s no finesse, just the pure power of a band able to play as loud as it wants to.

A mix of slinky funk, synth-driven rock, jittery pop, and sexual innuendo, Dirty Mind was Prince’s first great album, even if it only hinted at where he was headed. “White, black, Puerto Rican, everybody just a freakin’,” he sang on “Uptown,” a utopian ode to the Minneapolis club scene. The album includes the world’s merriest done-me-wrong song, “When You Were Mine,” and the incest ditty “Sister.” “I wasn’t being deliberately provocative,” Prince said. “I was being deliberately me.”

Jerry Lee Lewis is best known for his frenzied piano-pumping Sun classics like “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” cut in the late Fifties (before he derailed his success by marrying his 13-year-old cousin), yet his career as a country hitmaker lasted decades. Listen to “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)” and you might agree with the Killer’s characteristically self-deprecating claim that “Elvis was the greatest, but I’m the best.”

In the early 2000s, starry-eyed Brit-pop boys doing a cuddly version of Radiohead were a dime a dozen. (Remember Starsailor?) It was Coldplay’s second album that showed they were true contenders. Songs like “Green Eyes” and “The Scientist” brought back the comforting melodies of “Yellow,” but the twinkling sonics suggested prime Smiths or U2. And darker stuff, like the austerely beautiful death meditation “Amsterdam” and the OK Computer-worthy “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face,” showed the group had more than arena anthems on its mind.

The Clash’s ballooning ambition peaked with Sandinista!, a three-album set named after the Nicaraguan revolutionary movement. Joe Strummer and Mick Jones reached beyond punk and reggae and into dub, R&B, calypso, gospel, and even a kids’ chorus on “Career Opportunities” — whatever crossed their minds. As Strummer said years later, “Even though it would have been better as a double album, or a single album, or an EP! Who knows? The fact is that we recorded all that music in one spat, at one moment. In one three-week blast. For better or worse, [Sandinista!] is the document.”

“I had to leave town for a little while,” Elvis Presley sings on the first track. Along with his 1968 TV special, this record announced he was back. With help from a crack crew of Memphis musicians, Presley masterfully tackles quality material from country (“I’m Movin’ On”), gospel (“Long Black Limousine”), soul (“Only the Strong Survive”), and pop (“Any Day Now”), as well as message songs (“In the Ghetto”). The same sessions also yielded one of Presley’s greatest singles, the towering pop-soul masterpiece “Suspicious Minds.”

Lana Del Rey became a music-blog sensation playing the poker-faced millennial Nancy Sinatra on her debut single, “Video Games.” She kept growing as an artist, and on her wonderfully titled sixth album perfected her epic vision of doomed, decadent, Seventies-steeped California romance on songs like “Mariner’s Apartment Complex” and the nine-minute crusher “Venice Bitch.” Del Rey dropped references to the Eagles and Graham Nash, merging her own music into the Laurel Canyon canon. No less an authority on Seventies greatness than Elton John called the album’s songs “timeless.”

X stood out from the other L.A. punks — for one thing, they had a married couple in the band, John Doe and Exene Cervenka, venting their sexual and cultural rage over the high-speed rockabilly thrash of Billy Zoom and D.J. Bonebrake. Doe and Cervenka met in a poetry workshop, and you can hear it in the complex wordplay of “Johnny Hit and Run Paulene” and “Sex and Dying in High Society.” But they kick off their debut with a hilariously nasty bang: “Your Phone’s Off the Hook, But You’re Not.”