The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time — Rolling Stone

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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!

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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”.

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.

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”).

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”).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.