Yet another list to tear apart (Apple Music's 100 Best Albums list)

Cafe Society
1

Yeah, I know. Lists – particularly music lists – often seem to be created primarily to generate outrage.

Here is a link to Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums list.

It is a very crapified list, in my opinion.

Some observations:

  • There is just one Bob Dylan album - “Highway 61 Revisited” - and it appears in spot #14.

  • The Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” is #20.

  • Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” is #28.

  • Taylor Swift appears just once, at #18 (“1989”).

  • Only three of the albums are jazz, only two are Motown, only one is country.

  • Beyoncé is the only female with more than one album on the list.

  • Hip-Hop/Rap albums hold 21 spots.

  • The 1950s contribute just one album, the 1960s, 10.

  • The fifth best album of all time is…”Blonde”, by Frank Ocean. Huh??

Discuss.

mmm

2

More observations:

Just one entry: The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen

Zero entries: The Who, Paul Simon, Queen, R.E.M., The Doors, The Band, solo Beatles, Elvis Presley, James Brown, Van Morrison, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly

3

A bad list, both from an inclusion/exclusion perspective and in its order.

Did they have rules, e.g., no more than two albums per artist?

4

I don’t believe there were any rules or limitations.

And it has nothing to do with streaming numbers.

From the Wikipedia article:

“The list is an editorial statement and does not take into account any streaming figures on Apple Music or any other streaming service.”

mmm

5

To be fair, these guys were really singles artists.

Although a case could be made for James Brown at the Apollo.

6

I had the same thought. There are some musical giants that weren’t really album artists.

7

Meh. It’s reasonable enough to me. I don’t have any major gripes. I mean, my number one and two are “Loveless” by My Bloody Valentine and “Pet Sounds” by the Beach Boys, and the first isn’t even listed. I can deal with “Pet Sounds” at #20. “Blonde” is a colossal album, though it may not be on my own Top 10 list. I was going to say “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” by Kanye better be up there somewhere, and it is, at #26. When it comes to lists of the top 1% of 1% of 1%, any order is pretty much acceptable to me.

8

Another useless listing. Some of the albums chosen aren’t even the best albums by the bands discography! Hello, Sgt pepper? Zoso?

And nothing by a LOT of influential bands with great albums.

9

The list is the opinion of people that do not share my taste in music. That makes it a crap list to me. Only 17 of them would make it to a list of my favorite albums and it would have a lot more that 100 of them.

10

I agree wholeheartedly! I do own a few of the albums on the list but in my opinion, there are many more worthy musicians than have been included in this bunch. Whoever put the list together has simply written down their personal favourites, and chucked them into some kind of order.

11

That’s mostly my reaction.

It has a lot more recent albums than other “best albums” lists I’ve seen. Which is fair and reasonable, but there’s a lot on there in styles or genres that I don’t enjoy and don’t relate to (like rap). For example, I long ago bought a used copy of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (#1 on the list) on the basis of its good reviews and reputation, but I couldn’t get into it,

12

Paul Simon’s Graceland should be on any list of top albums.

13

How do you determine the length of the emperor’s nose when no one is allowed to see the emperor? Survey every citizen and ask them how long the think they think the emperor’s nose is, add up all the numbers and divide by the number of citizens.

14

Heh, that’s a good way of putting it. Someone posted an article before about how Rolling Stone’s top album lists have changed as a result of younger and more diverse judges. That’s a good thing and more power to them but it also means any list like that has less real estate devoted to artists/genres I care about. It’s not even that I only want white guy music from 1965-1975, I just don’t give a shit about (for example) Kanye.

15

With lists like these, there always seems to be some entries that are there because people think they should be there. They don’t actually like it, or have never heard it, but they feel they’ll look biased if they don’t include it.

So some albums always end up on these lists, which them creates a self-perpetuating idea that the album is actually a good complete album. And no I’m not slamming rap or whatnot that I just don’t like.

16

Took a look at the list and found an edit that will disappear quickly:

    1. The rest of the list is incorrect
    1. Pet sounds
    1. Dark side of the moon
    1. Sgt peppers lonely hearts club band

:slight_smile:

17

Ha, yeah, I noticed that and was going to comment on it if no one already had. Can’t argue with pick #4 :rofl:

18

From Wiki,

I’ve only heard of one of those artists. Would explain that there are more hip hop/rap albums (21) than rock (18).

Come to think of it, does “album” have much relevance anymore? I mean album as in “collection”, not “those big black CDs” (as my kids called them). In a digital world where you pay for a song, does anyone care about the “b” side?

19

Nobody “pays” for individual songs anymore, either, everybody streams music, and the young’uns on (mostly pre-fabricated) playlists.

20

Me, I always get a division by zero error when puzzling out the ontological foundation of these lists.

At any rate, since my favorite album of all time wouldn’t finish within a googolplex of the top of these lists they are invariably pretty irrelevant to me.