For the iPod set: in this age of downloading 99 cent songs one at a time, what FULL albums would you still listen to beginning to end?
I’ll throw out a couple of softballs: “Dark Side of the Moon” and “The Wall.”
I have an Mp3 player with about 5,000 songs on it, but I still buy CDs. A few that are in my car right now that I listen to in their entirety are:
The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love
Neko Case – Middle Cyclone
Mark Knopfler – Kill to Get Crimson
I mostly listen to albums rather than singles, but the first one that came to mind for this thread was Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I go back to it again and again and again.
Every Zeppelin album
Odelay - Beck
Achtung Baby - U2
Déjà Vu - CSNY
Bad Company - Bad Company
Machine Head - Deep Purple
A lot of Beatles albums, maybe a couple R.E.M. albums (Out of Time and Automatic for the People) once in a while. Other than that, if I’m purposely listening to a whole album it’s something new (to me), and only a few times until I’ve figured out which songs aren’t gonna catch on with me. Even the strongest albums are composed of about 33% skips.
Except for Beatles albums.
A few that I always listen to in their entirety:
Quadrophenia
Utopia Parkway
Welcome Interstate Managers
Mutiny (Greg Kihn)
Live Bullet Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band
Bob Seger at his best
I really like the pacing of the album. The songs need to be heard in that order.
Vitalogy, Pearl Jam
Yield, Pearl Jam
Skylarking, XTC
Mummer, XTC
The Queen is Dead, The Smiths
Sam’s Town, The Killers
Let it Be, The Beatles
Selling England by the Pound, Genesis
Live, Mental Jewelry
Neil Young, Comes a Time
U2, The Unforgettable Fire
Vic Chesnutt, Is the Actor Happy
Pearl Jam’s Ten
The Crow Soundtrack
obviously The Wall
Just for starters:
Miles Davis: Kind of Blue & Birth of the Cool
Dave Brubeck Quartet: Live at Carnegie Hall
Stan Getz: Getz and Gilberto
Ali Farka Toure: all of them
Salif Keita: all of them
Habib Koite: all of them
Nora Jones: her first album
Santana: Supernatural
Beatles: Rubber Soul
Sergio Mendes: Brazileiro
Herb Alpert & Lani Hall: Anything Goes
A couple no one has mentioned:
The Eagles, The Long Run
Jesus Christ Superstar original cast
Miles Davis, Round About Midnight
Dave Brubeck, Time Out
I like listening to soundtracks in their entirety; O Brother Where Art Thou springs to mind, and the music from Ken Burns’ The Civil War.
Also:
Graceland, Paul Simon
Green, REM
I also have a couple albums by Beausoleil which I listen to all the way through. Once you go Cajun, you have to stick with it til the end. 
Guitar Man Bread
Roses in the Snow Emmylou Harris and a very young Ricky Skaggs
So many. Lots of what is listed here. (**blondebear **- loving Fountains of Wayne!)
Most of **The White Stripes **CD’s are solid end to end - Elephant, De Stijl especially
Most of my jazz CD’s - **Miles Davis **is brilliant at keeping a mood moving across all the songs…
David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Station to Station.
Out of the 7K+ plus tracks on my Ipods only two are single tracks - all others are full albums. I only listen to albums in its entirety (with very very occassionally skipping a track I dislike)
The Band – The Band
Safe as Milk – Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band
John Prine – John Prine
90% of my music is full albums, and I usually listen to them in their entirety about 95% at time at work (though when I’m driving, I will listen to tracks randomly). Listening to individual tracks of an album is usually like reading individual chapters of a book; if a CD is not worth listening to from start to finish, I don’t get it.
If you want a list here’s a small selection
Abbey Road
Revolver
Rubber Soul
Sgt. Pepper
Beatles 1
Beethoven symphonies
Child is Father to the man (Blood Sweat and Tears)
Blonde on Blonde
Gorilla, Tadpoles, and Urban Spaceman (Bonzo Dog Band)
Lick My Decals Off Baby (Captain Beefheart)
London Calling
Get It (Dave Edmunds)
11-17-70 and Honky Chateau (Elton John)
Flash and the Pan
It’s a Beautiful Day
Aqualung
One for the Road and Preservation Act I (Kinks)
Kiss Me Kate
Chicago
A Chorus Line
Recovery (Loudon Wainwright III)
Live in Texas, My Baby Don’t Tolerate, and his Large Band (Lyle Lovett)
Kind of Blue
Moondog
White African (Otis Taylor)
Atom Heart Mother, Pulse, the Division Bell
Procol Harum
The Six Wives of Henry VIII (Rick Wakeman)
Rock Bottom (Robert Wyatt)
She and Him
Flash Forward (Siegel Schwall Band)
Third (Soft Machine)
The Music Man
The Drowsy Chaperone
The Whole Fam Damily (The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band )
West Side Story
Elephant
I’ve left off the more obscure one and local groups.
It would take too long to list. I try to listen by album, not by single, when I’m working or running. For a sample, this is what comes up most often as full album listens on my iPod when I’m running:
Liz Phair - Exile on Guyville
Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
Pixies - Doolittle
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
The Clash - The Clash, Give 'Em Enough Rope
Flop - Flop and the Fall of the Mopsqueezer
Gang of Four - Entertainment!
Joy Division - Closer
The Kinks - Village Green Preservation Society
Van Morrison - Astral Weeks
Wire - Chairs Missing
XTC - English Settlement
But my iPod playlist is a small fraction of my full music library I listen to at home. You can pretty much put any Beatles album on there, any Stereolab, any Pixies, any Sleater-Kinney (which reminds me, I do need to sync them to my iPod, they’re probably my favorite band I’ve never had a chance to see live.)
I’ve been listening to the Flaming Lips’ Dark Side of the Moon, over and over and over and over and over. As if I hadn’t heard Pink Floyd’s version over and over and over and over.
I will pretty much listen to any Tool album front to back, as well as anything that’s closer to aural wallpaper, like Moby (Last night) or The Crystal Method (Divided by Night).