My Take
In my case, the albums that have become my favorites are the ones I feel I absolutely have to listen to from start to finish. Of course, there are standout tracks, and some, though good, might pale in comparison to others. But it’s the experience of listening to the entire album that captivates me.
Examples:
- “Flowerboy” by Tyler, The Creator.
- “Affinity” by Haken
- “Brat” by Charli XCX
- The debut album by Gentle Giant
What are your favorite albums and why?
When I think of my favorite albums, they tend to have come to me at a time to hit me emotionally. There may be one or two songs that aren’t my favorite, but don’t detract from the whole. Oddly enough if I listen to an entire album I prefer it be a concept album, but my favorites tend to not have one cohesive theme. My favorites ordered by time include:
The Red Album by Weezer- My dad gave me the CD when I was in middle school, we’d jam to it in the car on the way to school, and when I got an mp3 player I’d listen to just about every song often.
Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd- Yes, this is a cliche. The one time I experienced ego death was on a heroic dose of LSD in college while laying in bed with an eye mask on listening to this album for the first time. I felt that I was in on a joke, that life was so vast and yet so short. I laughed, I cried, it moved me. I gave serious consideration to what I wanted out of life for the first time instead of only wanting some direction given to me. I listened to the album many more times after that when I needed a reminder of that experience.
The New Abnormal by The Strokes- This album came out at the start of the pandemic when I was stressing out of my mind at the state of the world. I loved the album name, I love every song off the album, they all felt relatable in some way, Spotify said I was in the top .5% of Strokes listeners that year. When one song comes on from my library I’m always tempted to play the whole thing. It’s great.
The Sonic Age by The Symposium- I think this is one of my favorites. I couldn’t name half the songs, but I found the artist and the album came out shortly after my dad passed away. I really like how rushed yet smooth and relaxed the album feels, it mirrored how I felt processing his death and I could just put it on and feel fine with not being fine for a bit.
Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd- Yes, this is a cliche.
Yeah, but for good reason. It’s still an amazing, near perfect, album.
The first CD I ever bought was The Matrix soundtrack.
These days I’ve been listening to Tycho a lot. I like all their albums. Awake may be my favorite.
Daft Punk - Interstella 5555 is magical, especially the anime.
Orbital makes some wonderful albums as well.
The short answer is no, not all songs on an album have to be masterpieces to elevate it for me, but obviously it helps if it is consistent. As far as determination goes, if i can keep coming back and hearing more detail, gaining a better understanding of lyrical themes, or just appreciating it a little more in some other way makes it a contender. Anyway, here is a too long list I’m taking on the mp3 player to be stranded on a tropical island with.
- ABBA - Arrival
- Anamanguchi - Endless Fantasy
- Anri - Timely!!
- Beach Bunny - Honeymoon
- Big Star - Radio City
- Blu-Swing - Flash
- Built To Spill - Live
- Counting Crows - Recovering the Satellites
- Cracker - Cracker
- Crying - Get Olde/Second Wind
- Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
- David Bowie - The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars
- Dissection - Reinkaos
- Dubmood - Machine
- Frou Frou - Details
- Jamie Paige - Constant Companions (Deluxe)
- Jellyfish - Spilt Milk
- Jurassic 5 - Power In Numbers
- Kno - Death Is Silent
- Mass Of The Fermenting Dregs - MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS (EP) + ワールドイズユアーズ (EP)
- Mariya Takeuchi - Variety
- Mutyumu - Ilya
- Oasis - Definitely Maybe
- Paramore - Brand New Eyes
- Perfume - Game
- Puffy AmiYumi - Nice (JP)
- Radiohead - The Bends
- Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine
- Remi Wolf - Juno
- S.C.X - Breeze
- The Pillows - Happy Bivouac
- The Posies - Failure
- Roll-Ups - Low Dives For Highballs
- Sarah McLachlan - Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
- Sloan - One Chord To Another
- Sneaker Pimps - Becoming X
- Streetlight Manifesto - Somewhere In The Between
- Tally Hall - Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum
- Tatsuro Yamashita - Ride On Time
- The Cranberries - Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We
- The Shins - Wincing The Night Away
- Vylet Pony - Monarch of Monsters
- The Waterboys - This Is The Sea
- Tool - 10,000 Days
- Wednesday Campanella - Superman
- Will Wood - The Normal Album
A Perfect Circle - Thirteenth Step is my perfect album.
They aren’t even my favorite band, but there isn’t a bad moment on it.
I’m gonna give it a listen as soon as possible (as soon as i finish another of my hundreds of listens to Deine Lakaien lol). I’m already a Tool nerd, so that’s gonna be a fine music session for me :-)
Most of the music I listen to either doesn’t come in albums, or is in a 40+ track OST. However, there are a few which I can say are enjoyable in their entirety.
UNDERTALE OST is 101 tracks, and while some of the tracks are ambient noise and sound effects, Like 93% of it is great. Basically anything Toby Fox does has a high rate of enjoyment from me.
Medium by Clark Powell is entirely a masterpiece—not only the individual tracks, but how they interact with one another, and what they represent to the story of their context.
Nothing Is Quick in the Desert by Public Enemy has a great listening experience, where nearly every track blends into the next. Not typical for the music I usually listen to.
It certainly isn’t for everyone, but The Caretaker’s Everywhere at the End of Time is excellent. The middle section up until nearly the end can be pretty abstract, but there’s a certain… bliss that can be derived from it.
There’s more, but these are the ones that immediately come to mind.
Personal favourites:
‘Endless, Nameless’ / The Wildhearts - from the fake-out beginning (don’t turn the volume right up or you’ll get a surprise) to the fade at the end, it’s perfect to me. Joyously and gloriously noisy.
‘Dreamweaver’ / Sabbat - complex and clever thrash that gave young me a lot to think about; it’s loosely based on a book about a mediaeval Christian missionary and the lyrics are incredibly dense, yet so skilfully done that you don’t realise until you look at the lyric sheet and it’s huge.
‘Dopethrone’ / Electric Wizard - for those bad mood days
‘Mclusky Do Dallas’ / mclusky - inventive and slightly surrealist lyrics, noisy guitars and a great drummer.
‘Nothingface’ / Voivod - still sounds like it was recorded five years from now despite being around 30 years old. Best description I can give is ‘prog thrash’ and that’s not really very accurate.
‘The Big Roar’ / The Joy Formidable - noisy indie rock. Not going to win any awaawards for innovation but it’s so well done.
Like most people’s favourites, these were mostly released when I was starting to develop my own taste in music, and the release dates of most of them will tell you that means I’m getting old!
Voivod were such a delightful live act when I saw them tour that album. They made the sound effects vocally, like just stepped up to the mike and said woooooooo or whoooosh or beep or whatever. And had almost no English because they were from some little town in the French part of Canada. We saw them open for Soundgarden, but liked them better, they were amazing performers and really nice people.
Dopethrone is such a great album. I should have included it in my list. Mclusky Do Dallas was one of my favorite albums from my time co-DJing on college radio. Also had A.R.E. Weapons on heavy rotation those days.
“In case I make it,” made by will wood, is my favorite album of all time, mainly because it not only has one of the best overall songs I’ve heard ever, but because it deeply resonates with me as a person. I suppose I choose my favorites by the overall quality but also on my personal taste.
I find there are very few albums that are great beginning to end, and I’m not including “greatest hits” or “Best of…” collections.
- The Crystal Method - Vegas
- Bad Mojos - Songs that Make You Wanna Die!
- GZA - Pro Tools
- Sloppy Seconds - Destroyed (guilty pleasure of mine)
- Eddy Current Suppression Ring - Primary Colours
Shout out to Vegas, it is consistently excellent through the entire album. As a bonus, there was a PS1 game N2O that had the entire album on disc using redbook audio (essentially, you could pop the game disc in a CD player and listen to the tracks). It really worked for that games too.
Right on! I still own N2O. Easily one of the best tube shooters ever. The N2O in a CD player was a fun party trick, alongside scanning backwards from track 1 on Less Than Jake’s “Losing Streak.” Made the hidden bonus song(s) at the end of the CD technique seem amateur.
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon - someone else said it’s a cliche, but it’s a cliche for a reason. It’s a brilliant album that still stands up half a century later. No-one else does middle-aged angst quite like Floyd: “And then one day you find, Ten years have got behind you, No one told you when to run, You missed the starting gun… The time is gone, the song is over, Thought I’d something more to say.”
Queensrÿche - Operation: Mindcrime - a narrative concept album. Nothing else sounds quite like it, and it is operatic and amazing.
Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son - another narrative concept album, and the best thing Maiden did in their third musical period.
Metallica - Master of Puppets - not a concept album, but the best album Metallica made. Every song is a banger, with some absolute treasures: “Master of Puppets”, “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”, and especially the mighty “Orion”.
Pretty much. I wouldn’t presume to say "masterpieces " but easily the most important quality of my favorite albums is that they’re strong from start to finish.
A few that come to me right off:
Lloyd Cole and the Commotions - Rattlesnakes
Fountains of Wayne - Fountains of Wayne
The Presidents of the United States of America - The Presidents of the United States of America
XTC - Black Sea
They Might Be Giants - Flood
The Rainmakers - Flirting with the Universe
Was (Not Was) - What Up Dog?
Morphine - Cure for Pain
I’ll admit, I’ve not listened to much of Fountains of Wayne’s first album, more the others. They’ve been one of my favorites about as long as I can remember though. I tend to resonate with a new song of theirs every year or two. Do you have any favorites off their first album?
It’s hard to pick a favorite - that’s the point. Every one of them is good.
That said, the first one that popped into my head was Leave the Biker, and Survival Car, Joe Rey, Radiation Vibe, Sick Day and Sink to the Bottom come to mind quickly and easily.
I second Flood.
Third. Perfect album.
Presidents! Hell yeah, that’s such a fun album
They just might be my all time favorite band.
They’re one that I really want to see live, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. Seems like the band members all moved on to other things
You can still get some of the PUSA goodness by checking out Chris Ballew, he’s been putting out some nice records as a solo act. I love his 7th album, Void Crusher.
A bunch of “classics”…
- Rumours
- Tapestry
- An Evening with John Denver
- …and then there were three…
- Boston
- Double Vision
- Out of the Blue
Yes… I am an oldster.
I’d put Trick of the Tail on there too!
Absolutely. Maybe Aja?
Hello fellow Haken fan! Affinity and Visions are my favorites of theirs. I also love Phantom Island by King Gizzard.
Does all the songs in your favorite music album are masterpieces?
Never did them wasn’t.
I have favorite albums and then I have the 3(maybe 4 now) perfect 10 albums.
What makes a perfect 10 album? Like you I have to listen to it from start to finish. There’s not a single skip or down track on the album. They have exquisite and timeless production quality. These albums sound good even in the worst quality. On top notch files they’re the best of the best. They hit me at a time in my life where they just clicked emotionally.
For the longest time the 3 were and are:
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Animals - Pink Floyd - It’s their best album. It has a zen like flow state to it. There’s no pretentious bullshit on it. Sounds amazing.
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Ten - Pearl Jam - Jeremy is one of the first songs I remember hearing as a child. The rest of the album is just as good. Also amazing sound quality. Flows perfectly across the whole album.
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Exoplanet - The Contortionist - It’s late summer 2010. An album finally came out that dethroned Colors by BTBAM from 3 straight years of nonstop listening. That album was P1 by Periphery. I didn’t think anything could possibly top that album. It spawned a whole new genre almost instantly. Then on the last day of August, Exoplanet drops. I was floored. Much better sound production. It ebbs and flows with a grace not heard of in Deathcore. It has these magical peaks and valleys all throughout the album. Not a single miss. It’s crushing. Then it gently sets you down and tucks you in bed as the alarms of the spaceship you just had a musical journey on are softly beeping away in the distance. It’s the single best Deathcore album to ever be released. It’s so far and above everything else most people don’t even count it as Deathcore. It book ended one era of music as another one just began and what a way for Deathcore to end it’s dominance.
The fourth album that’s slowly adding itself to the list is Lonely People With Power by Deafheaven. It does all of the things the other 3 do. It hit at the exact time I needed that album. It tells these crazy stories throughout lyrically and musically. There’s not a single skip on the record. It’s honestly up there as one of the best metal of any type albums of all time IMO. The only thing that’s preventing me from adding it to the list is time. Those other records have a longevity unmatched by most. If I still feel the way I feel about LPWP in 5 years, then yeah it’s a perfect 10.
Deafheaven is great, although I’m usually sucked into New Bermuda. I’m not a huge metal person, and I don’t know if it’s their best album, but it’s the one I go back to the most frequently.
They’re one of my favorite bands. Their whole discography is good but LPWP took everything they’ve done before and stepped it up a lot. If you was to ask me what their best album was before LPWP I would say New Bermuda. Now without hesitation its Lonely People With Power.
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There‘s (or at least can be) a difference between an album full of bangers and a album you enjoy from beginning to end in one sitting. But I’m with you on this one. Thinking about it, the following albums come to mind:
Tower of Power - „Soul Vaccination“
Linkin Park - „Meteora“
Opeth - „Blackwater Park“
Queensrÿche - „Operation Mindcrime“
Queen - „A Night At The Opera“
Fleetwood Mac - „Rumours“
Tracy Chapman - „Crossroads“
Elende - „Todbringer“
Tenhi - „Kauan“
While I‘m writing this, it occurs to me, that it’s impossible for me to name a favourite album. I can’t even name a favourite album for each genre.
