Hundreds of issues of Rolling Stone have appeared since we last asked the infamous question about the greatest albums in pop history in November 2004. It was the year in which Kanye West, Arcade Fire and Joanna Newsom released their debuts – artists who would have a decisive influence on the following two decades. But it’s not just the albums released since our last survey that make up our current list, for which we asked 135 artists, label operators, promoters, radio colleagues and music critics for their best lists. differ from what it was back then.
The view of history has also changed due to the topics and identity political discourses of our time. While the top ten in 2004 was made up exclusively of white male artists, Marvin Gaye, Patti Smith, Fleetwood Mac and Amy Winehouse are now in the top spots. “Blonde On Blonde” by Bob Dylan, which was at number 1 in 2004, has fallen to 8th place. Surprisingly, the Rolling Stones suffered the most dramatic fall. In 2004 they had two albums in the top 20, but now they appear at number 51 for the first time. The Stone Age seems to be over.
500
Beastie Boys
Paul’s Boutique
Capitol, 1989
Paul’s Boutique Beastie Boys Capitol, 1989 The boyish pranks of “Licensed To Ill”, under the guidance of Fähnleinführer Rick Rubin, were followed by reinvention as word acrobats and uber-hipsters, in a team with the sample masters The Dust Brothers. “Shake Your Rump” shows the Beasties’ lead over the rest of the world.
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499
Elvis Costello
My Aim Is True
Stiff, 1977
The fact that Nick Lowe managed to marry the poison and bile of this debutant with a West Coast band (Clover) stranded in London remains a great low-budget miracle. The feel was punk. Pieces like “Red Shoes” and “Alison” were the calling cards of a top songwriter. Stiff, 1977 The fact that Nick Lowe managed to marry the poison and bile of this debutant with a West Coast band (Clover) stranded in London remains a great low-budget miracle. The feel was punk. Pieces like “Red Shoes” and “Alison” were the calling cards of a top songwriter.
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498
Os Mutations
Os Mutations
Polydor, 1968
At the end of the Sixties, Os Mutants, as part of the Tropicália movement, played a courageously active role in the fight against the Brazilian military dictatorship. Three decades later, the colorful rascals sound of their debut LP inspired the lo-fi aesthetic of Beck and company.
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497
live
Throwing Copper
Radioactive, 1994
Selling the drama: Ed Kowalczyk could do that! On Live’s third album, powerful melodies, longing lyrics and fervent vocals form an irresistible combination. Pathos? Sure, of course! But in college rock hits like “I Alone” it was never an end in itself.
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496
Vampire Wbill witherseeking
Vampire Weekend
XL, 2008
Rich New Yorkers present themselves as even richer New Yorkers, mixing European baroque, West African guitar music and Californian surf pop and singing about the intricacies of English grammar. Cultural appropriation, done right, can be magical.
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495
Meatloaf
Bat Out Of Hell
Cleveland Intl./Epic, 1977
The producer Jim Steinman and the elemental force Meat Loaf created a flawless album that was pop, operetta and rock spectacle at the same time, with a sensational arc of suspense. All the longings of youth, all the heartbreak and despair, captured in bombast hits for eternity.
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494
Le Tiger
Feminist Sweepstakes
Mr Lady, 2001
“Feminist, we’re calling you/ Please report to the front desk.” With pleasure, we shout great slogans over the fuzz-punk-electronic carpet of these grown-up Riot Grrls and groove to the lesbian bar dance hit “Dyke March 2001”. Resist!
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493
AC/DC
Let There Be Rock
Albert, 1977
AC/DC’s fourth album is a middle finger to their uncooperative US label Atlantic. Hot off the back of successful tours in Europe and England, the band recites a riff rosary with hits like “Whole Lotta Rosie” and the title track.
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492
Jens Friebe
Before after pictures
ZigZag, 2004
Suddenly there was a German-speaking songwriter who could observe precisely, express emotions verbally and write melodies. Jens Friebe could be clever without coming across as brooding. With his debut he ushered in the post-Hamburg School era.
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491
The Postal Service
Give up
Sub Pop, 2003
What was intended as a casual finger exercise became a style-defining album: Death Cab For Cutie singer Ben Gibbard and electronic tinkerer Jimmy Tamborello combined digital glitches, beeps and boops with indie pop songwriting. The computers came to life.
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490
REM
Up
(Warner, 1998)
After “Murmur” and “Green”, the eleventh album was something like REM’s third debut, now as a trio. A battered, fragile and therefore so touching work full of magical highlights – from the love ballad “At My Most Beautiful” to the anthem “Walk Unafraid”.
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489
Eric B. & Rakim
Paid In Full
Iceland, 1987
A great achievement from the new school of mid-eighties hip hop. Symphonic sounds are created in Marley Marl’s studio. DJ Eric B. is responsible for the handmade scratches over which MC and internal rhyme inventor Rakim lays his ambitious rhyme flow.
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488
Kendrick Lamar
Damn
(TDE, 2017)
The opposite of the jazz rap and social commentary of “To Pimp A Butterfly”: hard trap, industrial sounds, tracks for the dance floor and for turning up the car radio. No Kendrick song is rapped more vehemently at concerts than the piano banger “Humble”.
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487
Johnny Cash
At Folsom Prison
Columbia, 1968
Johnny Cash first brought the Man in Black, who became a legend, to the stage in Folsom State Prison. In the face of the prison backdrop, his repertoire calculation disappears behind a performance of carrots and sticks.
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486
Phoenix
United
Astralwerks, 2000
College rock like something out of a John Hughes dramedy, retro pop like it enchanted the world at the beginning of the millennium. With their debut, four smarmy Frenchmen celebrate eternal youth (“Too Young”), but also heartbreak that will of course never end (“If I Ever Feel Better”).
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485
Led Zeppelin
Houses Of The Holy
Atlantic, 1973
Between the monster records “IV” and “Physical Graffiti” lies Led Zeppelin’s most beautiful and funniest album. Folk epics (“The Rain Song”) and psych-rock (“No Quarter”) meet over-the-top funk (“The Crunge”) and reggae-funny (“D’yer Mak’er”).
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484
Ezra Furman
Perpetual motion people
(Bella Union, 2015)
With his third studio album, Ezra Furman grew into the role of a solo artist. This type of rock music doesn’t have any clichés, and yet it’s classically about departures and outbursts. Anger and confusion erupt in grandiose anger.
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483
Bunny Wailer
Blackheart Man
Iceland, 1976
Neville O’Riley Livingston, who died in 2021, delivered an early masterpiece that was released alongside “Exodus” by friend Bob Marley. All-star line-up with Peter Tosh, the Wailers as the rhythm section. Marijuana, gospel and Jamaican classics.
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482
Robyn
Robyn
Konichiwa, 2005
In her mid-twenties and on a major label, Robyn was supposed to be the Swedish Britney Spears. But she didn’t want to. She bought her freedom, contacted avant-pop eccentrics The Knife and made that seminal synth record that brought indie electro into pop – and vice versa.
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481
Elastica
Elastica
DGC, 1995
While other Britpop acts plundered the Sixties, Elastica initiated a monochrome, minimalist post-punk revival that would never completely go out of fashion from London to Brooklyn. It was only fair that Wire and The Stranglers earned a lot of money from it.
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480
The Velvet Underground
White Light/White Heat
Verve, 1968
Lou Reed finally left his pop ambitions behind on his second album. The influence of the avant-gardist John Cale grew. The lyrics became more explicit (inspired by William S. Burroughs), everything sounded rough and distorted. The birth of punk.
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479
The Monks
Black Monk Time
Polydor, 1966
The craziest and most visionary band in German beat music. Five GIs who got stuck here and, with repetitive, primitivist noise, anticipate everything that will later appear threatening and funny, from The Velvet Underground to The Fall.
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478
power plant
Radioactivity
Sound Sound, 1975
Everyone said: Nuclear power plant, no. Kraftwerk said: “Radio activity”, Fritz Lang, belief in the future, future thinking, electronics. On the cover of the People’s Receiver. That should also work. Against the grain, and yet everyone had to hear it, even those in the wool sweaters. Everyone!
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477
Sleater Kinney
Dig Me Out
Kill Rock Stars, 1997
The new drummer Janet Weiss gave the songs of Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker, who had just separated as a couple, more force and structure and made the third Sleater-Kinney record sound like a big rock album that also deconstructed all the rock clichés in the lyrics.
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476
Daft Punk
Discovery
Virgin, 2001
A pioneer of retromania: Daft Punk paired EDM with John Paul Young’s “Love Is In The Air”, future pop with city pop and house with hard rock from the seventies, which we would later call yacht rock and which the duo did again at the beginning of the millennium was made cool.
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475
Picture book
Send shock
Machine, 2015
This album was the counterprogram to Wanda’s sweaty, beer-filled Austro rock. Funk and disco, pop and hip hop, decadence and style, Falco and Prince. And the single “Maschin” was the biggest monster to ever hit the radio waves on this side of the Alps.
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474
Supertramp
Crime Of The Century
A&M, 1974
The album that made Supertramp famous. Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson had each written four songs for the record, but among Hodgson’s contributions are “School” and “Dreamer”. Davies’ “Rudy” and “Bloody Well Right”, on the other hand, seem a bit staid.
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473
Chet Baker
Chet Baker Sings
Pacific Jazz, 1954
The record that every ballad singer and trumpeter wanted to make. Chet Baker looked outrageously good and sang songs by Jimmy Van Heusen, Jerome Kern and Frank Loesser, especially “My Funny Valentine”, “I Fall In Love Too Easily” and “The Thrill Is Gone”.
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472
No Doubt
Tragic Kingdom
Trauma, 1996
The album with “Don’t Speak” and “Just A Girl”, but Gwen Stefani’s band had more to it than just those two hits. Their fairly Californian mix of pop, rock and ska attracted a number of similar bands at the time, but none were as perfectly on point as No Doubt.
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471
Led Zeppelin
Physical graffiti
Swan Song, 1975
It should be her “Sgt. Pepper”. Eight new songs, including their masterpiece “Kashmir,” and leftovers from past sessions fill an artfully packaged double album that provides unnecessary proof that rock is taken seriously as an art form.