In the spring of 2019 I found myself about to turn fifty years old. Since I’m a Virgo, a natural list-maker and categorizer, I decided this would be a fine time to discuss my fifty favorite albums of all time. And it could have a catchy title: “Fifty At Fifty.” It didn’t happen. I had been writing on this site semi-consistently for a few years, putting up some number of posts each year – which are read by no more than a handful of people – but that’s OK. It’s mainly for me. As a list-maker and categorizer, I’m also a chronicler and a memoirist. And to retell things that happened to me and my friends in our thirties, or to me as a teenager, or when I found myself at a crossroads in my life, or what it was like seeing a certain band is fun for me. I’m getting it down on paper, so to speak, and I can reread it and reflect on it as I choose to. It’s opening my life up to others, maybe especially my grown children, even after I’m gone. But I’m getting maudlin.
This project took far longer than the six months I had set aside before my fiftieth birthday. I finish it now about four years later. Four eventful and exciting years, yes, but the task seemed so large I could not make myself write anything else on this site until it was finished, save one piece, because of the tragic passing of one of my favorite musicians, Justin Townes Earle.
But in 2019, approaching my fiftieth birthday, I had recently gotten back into vinyl albums after losing most of the those I had as a teenager to a home construction project. (Don’t ask. It’s a long story that maybe I’ll tell some other day.) My renewed record collecting in 2019 led me to start thinking hard about the albums that have meant the most to me in my life. My turn on this planet is certainly well over half-finished, and therefore the majority of my music-listening years are behind me, rather than ahead. But don’t worry, I won’t let that stop me from soldiering on into the wild, crazy world of rock and roll until I take my last steps out of a club. (One day he walked out of a club, and he never walked into another one.) Yeah, save it for my tombstone.
I’ve been listening to rock music seriously since about the third or fourth grade, and I’ve always been an album person. I don’t quite know why. I just want to listen to a whole album, plain and simple. All the songs, from start to finish. That’s absolutely my favorite way to listen to music. Of course I’ve logged tens of thousands of hours listening to terrestrial radio back when that was the only music-listening option other than the physical media you and your friends owned. Random collections of songs are swell. Mixtapes – and now playlists – have a special enjoyment. But albums were always my thing, and they still are. I’m fascinated by the idea that an artist was in a certain state at the time they produced an album: A particular frame of mind; a distinct place in their creative journey during that period. Which songs did they include, in what order, and why?
A great album is more than the sum of its parts. It’s a snapshot of a period in not only an artist’s life, but the listener’s life. Junior High, Tony’s room: Led Zeppelin‘s Houses Of The Holy. That was a special, formative period in my life. My 1979 Chevy Malibu, driving to work from North Hollywood to Pasadena: Beastie Boys‘ License To Ill on cassette. That was another memorable period that brings back not only who I was at the time, but all the unforgettable people circling around my life at that time: Barry, Dan, India, Mace, Nichole, Brian, Bridget, John, Tracey. They may not have loved that album as much as I did, but it will always remind me of them. 2018, leaving a twenty-year marriage: Lydia Loveless‘s Somewhere Else. Yeah, that was just a few years ago, but already Lydia’s masterpiece has tattooed itself onto my heart.
So, what are my favorite albums? Of all time? We have to frame the question that way: Favorite. Not, “What are the best albums of all time?” Best albums have been pontificated upon by smarter people and better writers than me. I have immense biases, not only toward a type of music – mainly rock and roll – but by the indiscriminate happenstances of which albums fell into my hands, at what age, and during which events of my life.
And what is a favorite album anyway? I’ll call it this way: a piece of mostly original recorded music, produced for the first time in a collective format with, say, seven to twenty separate songs, capturing a period in the artist’s creative life. This is not a collection of greatest hits, nor a snapshot of a live performance, but a grouping of original material, made available to the public at an exact time. You play this album from start to finish – whether the day it comes out or decades later – and you do it a lot! When a song ends, muscle memory tells you which upcoming notes to expect on the next track, down to the very back end of the album. A great record is not a couple of hits with a bunch of duds. It’s all killer no filler. A great record is an omnibus: a masterpiece of pure gold. Every song on an album is never a “hit,” but no great albums contain any “bad” songs. And if you say The White Album has any bad songs, I’ll cut you.
But is fifty too ambitious a number? At first I thought, yes, that’s nuts! Then as I began typing I quickly had a hundred records plus, and some very hard decisions to make about which were my top fifty. Again, this project in no way tries to convince you what the “best” albums are. All I know (“…is he was into field hockey players…there were rumors…“) is what I know, and I know which albums have ingrained themselves into my soul since I started listening to all the songs from Side A to Side B on a piece of circular wax as a little kid.
There is much anciency-bias in my list in the posts that will follow this, meaning records that I adored decades ago tend to be represented more than albums I’ve acquired in recent years. With a few exceptions, of course. There are a number of reasons for this:
- Scarcity – Music was rarer in the past, and one would listen to the same albums over and over and over, simply because the supply was limited. Especially when we’re talking about cassettes in the car. You literally only ever had: an album or cassette, or, the radio. Those were the choices, and radio was likely to play a lot of Foreigner or Hall & Oates. So albums. And you learned those albums VERY well! But because of Spotify and similar services now, I don’t have to listen to the same albums repeatedly any more, and I seldom do. I embrace much more variety in music these days, but it comes at the cost of less familiarity than I used to have.
- Attention – Although I still listen to a lot of music, I listened to it more attentively when I was a teenager and in my twenties. Most of my listening now comes incidentally, because I can listen anywhere: when I walk, when I shower, when I cook, when I clean, when I work out. I’m usually doing something else when I’m listening to music these days, whereas in eras past I often just sat there and listened to the music, perusing the lyrics on the album or cassette sleeve if I was lucky enough to have such. Doing nothing else. Just sitting there. Listening to music. Can you imagine? Again, you learn albums VERY well this way.
- Youth – The things that mean something to you as a teenager always seem to hold an extra-special place in your heart. It’s just the way it is. It’s why my friends in their twenties and thirties love Emo Night and 90’s throwback stuff, why my generation loves 80’s dances, and those a little older than me love going down to Swabbies on the River to see local bands cover Santana and The Rolling Stones. The stuff we loved as teenagers? We’ll keep chasing that forever. I think there’s some science behind this, too. Look it up.
- Lyrics – I learned the lyrics to songs when I was younger, and I just don’t as much anymore, for a variety of reasons – some outlined above. When you can sing along, and when you know what the artist is really saying, it becomes a richer, deeper experience. The songs become poems you can recite on command. Even though in 2023 we have access to all lyrics of all time, it’s interesting that I know lyrics to past songs so much better than today, even when acquisition of such lyrics were scarce.
So, an ambitious undertaking this, but one that needs parameters. Fifty albums? OK, I can do that. I can cover the main ones I want to cover, but how many Beatles albums? How many Led Zeppelin? How many each of Josh Ritter, Concrete Blonde, Cowboy Junkies, or U2?
One (not the U2 song). The answer I came up with is one. Otherwise, it’s too much of a clusterfuck. Where do you put The Joshua Tree vs. War vs. Achtung Baby!? And where do those go alongside Sgt. Pepper’s, The White Album, and Abbey Road? Sorry, one band, one spot in the the top fifty favorite albums of all time. That’s it! (Except for a kinda exception, for one artist who was peerless in his original band, then later with his solo material. And no, he was not in The Beatles.)
Other rules? This is a tough one, because for me it leaves some of the most incredible artists in rock music behind. However painfully, I decided that no greatest hits nor live albums can be included. Only original studio recordings of a certain number of songs, produced and released by the artist on a particular record could be considered. This restriction seemed reasonable to me at first, but it hurts my list in that there were a lot of great bands I spent countless hours listening to, but these listens were mainly to greatest hits or live albums. These bands have studio albums that should absolutely be included in anyone’s list of top records, but they don’t make my list because if my list is going to mean anything, it has to be honest. And if my favorite album by a band was a greatest hits or live album, I can’t include it. Live albums, of course, are typically greatest hits albums performed live. It’s not fair, and I have to sadly exclude a whole host of incredible bands because of this (what some may think is a dumb) rule.
Another rule is that I have to set aside the desire to be cool, to seem hardcore, or punk rock, or enlightened, or eclectic, to eschew classic pop or rock bombast and pretension. I could tell you my top albums were from Dim Stars, The Wipers, Joy Division, and Minutemen, but I’d be lying. (Although Double Nickles on the Dime is undoubtedly badass). I can only tell you about the fifty albums that meant the very most to me, in my life, from my own hopefully authentic perspective. Whether they seem cool in 2023 or not.
This will be a series of posts, so let’s start here with some of the artists that are left off of my list because I never really, truly, deeply got into any of their albums besides greatest hits, live, or compilation recordings. I spent countless hours with these bands, and loved them dearly, but it’s not fair to judge their best of albums against regular studio recordings of other bands. It’s my fault that I didn’t dig deeper into their catalogues. In many cases, I did dig deeper, but it was much later, and I never got into their studio recordings like I did their greatest hits or live albums. Here are some of those left out:
The Doors – This is maybe the toughest band for me to leave completely out of my top fifty, since I spent – no hyperbole – likely a thousand hours listening to Doors music over the years. And that might be a woeful underestimation. But the truth is the album that I wore down to its grooves was 1973’s The Best Of The Doors. If I had to choose a Doors album to include in this list, it would be their first album from 1967. That album is a masterpiece, and is kind of a greatest hits album in its own right, with tracks like “Light My Fire,” “Break On Through,” “Soul Kitchen,” and “The End.” I owned that album later; I listened to it a lot, and I could justify its inclusion on this list. But if I’m not honest I’m not anything, and it was The Best Of The Doors, along with several live albums, like Alive, She Cried; In Concert; and Absolutely Live that most captivated me about The Doors. If this was a list of the fifty bands that shaped my love of rock and pop music, The Doors would absolutely be on it. Hell, I read Jim Morrison‘s biography, No One Here Gets out Alive, front to back as a twelve year old child. But for actual albums, sorry Jim and Ray. You get the footnote.
The Smiths – A very hard band to leave out, because I LOVED Louder Than Bombs and I played it constantly between the ages of 18 and 23. However, technically it’s a compilation album of singles, although many not released in the U.S. before that 1987 album. I had this on a beat up cassette, a long term “borrow” from my friend Cameron, but I played the hell out of it. One could absolutely make the case for any other Smiths album making this list, but they only had four (FOUR!) official studio albums in their short career in the mid-eighties, with many of their best songs not even released on those albums. The one I had other than Louder Than Bombs was The Queen is Dead, which is a fantastic album, but it didn’t get the play that Louder did, and if I can’t include Louder, I would be remiss to include The Queen is Dead. Sorry, Morrissey, but you have dumber things to cry about.
The Who – Wow! How can my list of 50 favorite albums leave off The Who? But left off they must be, despite the fact that I wore a homemade Who T-shirt to the first day of junior high. Alas, the Who album that I wore out was Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy, a compilation of Who singles released in 1971. If I had to choose a Who album to include on this list, it would be Quadrophenia, but that’s an album I came to much, much later in life, and although I recognize its brilliance as a piece of rock opera, I never listened to it all the way through more than a handful of times. (I am proud to own it on vinyl now though. It’s a near-perfect piece of English storytelling and teenage lament.)
Elvis Costello – A real killer to leave out, this one, because his The Very Best of Elvis Costello and The Attractions 1977–86 compilation was an absolute warhorse in my CD player, and later my first iPod. Sadly, Costello was a guy I came to later than I should have, and although the case could truly be made for This Year’s Model or My Aim is True, if I’m being honest, I didn’t have those records, only this 22-track compilation of excellence, kicking off with the pure pop perfection of “Alison,” and culminating with the haunting “I Want You.” This is a brilliant collection, but it hurt my overall appreciation of Costello beyond those 22 tracks, despite how much I like many of his regular studio records.
Creedence Clearwater Revival – I played the hell out of their Chronicle: The 20 Greatest Hits compilation cassette. An amazing Northern California band with anthemic songs that will be covered forever, but I never really listened to any of their records other than this tape, and then only between the ages of about 17 and 20.
Jimi Hendrix – An interesting case, Jimi. I had his Smash Hits LP in junior high, and played it like crazy for years and years, but truly I never listened to much of his actual studio albums. Eventually I had the cassette of Are You Experienced?, which is mind-bending, but half of which (it seems) was included on his Smash Hits compilation. Are You Experienced? would be a more than worthy addition to anyone’s top fifty or top twenty list, but I just didn’t listen to it as much as I listened to Smash Hits. So Jimi, I’ll stand next to your fire, but I can’t put you on my list.
Squeeze – I can’t tell you how I wore out their Singles: 45’s And Under cassette, but I never, ever had another Squeeze album besides that one. What the hell? I couldn’t even tell you any of their studio albums, or the names of any members of the band, but that Singles cassette, with “Pulling Mussels from the Shell,” “Cool for Cats,” “Goodbye Girl,” “Tempted,” “Black Coffee in Bed,” “Take Me I’m Yours,” “Up the Junction…” I could go on and on from memory. A shockingly talented British band, but they fall into the “doesn’t count because greatest hits” category of my superlist.
Cat Stevens – A brilliant singer and songwriter, I logged many hours with his Footsteps in the Dark: Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 collection from 1984. This album contained a handful of songs from Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat, both of which would have been powerful additions to anyone’s top fifty, and I did spend quite a bit of time with Teaser later, but it was his Greatest His Vol. 2 album that really stayed with me when I was younger, and got a lot of airplay, so Yusuf must go.
Talking Heads – This is a really, really, really tough band to leave out of my top 50, since Stop Making Sense was a seminal album (along with U2‘s War and The Cult‘s Love) that broke me out of my classic rock / heavy metal mindset and into a whole new world of…whatever you want to call it: Alternative? modern rock? post punk? when I was about sixteen. The exclusion of this album is making me rethink my desire to leave off greatest hits and live albums from my list, but let’s finish what we’ve started here. We have to let Talking Heads stand on their own, not on the soundtrack to Jonathan Demme‘s classic concert film. My choice today would be Remain in Light or Speaking in Tongues, but if we’re talking about my fifty favorite albums of all time, those two came much later and they didn’t worm their way into my brain the way Stop Making Sense did. And if we can’t include Sense, we can’t include Talking Heads, one of the greatest bands in the history of rock and roll.
This list of bands I’m leaving out because of greatest hits or live albums could go on forever. Bob Marley – Legend, Sly and the Family Stone‘s Greatest Hits, The Kinks, Jethro Tull, The Beautiful South, Billy Joel, Janis Joplin, UB40, James Taylor, Aerosmith, James Brown, Kiss, Cheap Trick. The list goes on and on. As I said above, these bands gave me hundreds, thousands of hours of amazing music, but they’re left out of the top fifty.
Other bands cause me different problems than the greatest hits/live issues. B-52’s, for example. Their first album was their best, and I gave it many listens, but I’m not embarrassed to say I listened more to Cosmic Thing with its hits like “Love Shack,” “Rome,” and “Deadbeat Club.” Both are great albums, but they miss the top fifty. Devo has a similar issue. Are We Not Men is the better album, but Freedom of Choice got many more plays by me, starting when I was in about sixth grade.
KRS-One and Boogie Down Productions had a couple of albums that got a lot of rotation in my world, and to this day, KRS-One live in concert at Harlow’s in Sacramento may be one of my top five live music experiences, but The Teacher doesn’t rate an individual album in my list, although he’s without question one of the five most influential and talented people in hip hop.
Sonic Youth is a problem, and not because I over-listened to their greatest hits album. (They have no hits, greatest or otherwise.) It’s really because I listened to Sister, Daydream Nation, Goo, and Dirty in almost equal measure. I can’t decide which one is best. They are brilliant records, but none of them got that “I’ve played this album thirty times in a row and I’m not sick of it” treatment. Sonic Youth is like your cool, crazy uncle who you can only take so much of. You love him to death, you’re stoked when he’s around, but then you need a little break.
The Velvet Underground and Lou Reed are another situation. I had The Best of The Velvet Underground: Words and Music of Lou Reed when I was an older teenager, and I listened to it a handful of times, but it didn’t grab me until I was much older, and it was Lou Reed on his own that had more of an impact. Magic and Loss is probably the Lou Reed album with which I spent the most time, as it ruminated on death and existence, entirely “hit-free.” I went backwards from there, from New York to Transformer, back to the VU stuff. Lou Reed is brilliant, but there’s no certain album of his or VU‘s that I feel compelled to include here, despite their obvious merit.
This leads me to the trickiest omission of all: Bob Dylan. I like Dylan, I dig his music, I respect his position as elder sage in the history of rock, folk, and activism/counter-culture. A true poet’s poet. But I’ve never been in deep love with the actual music. I like it well enough. “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Visions of Johanna,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Watchtower,” “Baby Blue,” “Queen Jane,” “Desolation Row…” I could fill up pages and pages with his great songs. But for whatever reason, Dylan’s music itself, although I like it, never quite grabbed me by the lapels and shook the shit out of me, the way these top fifty albums did.
Other absent bands are glaring. I’ve spent a lot of time with the music of Santana, Morphine, Elliot Smith, Queens of the Stone Age, Tom Petty, Neutral Milk Hotel, Chris Isaak, X, Redd Kross, Michael Jackson, Green Day, Van Morrison, Cadillac Tramps, Nick Drake, Thee Oh Sees, Steve Earle, Nine Inch Nails, Elton John, KMFDM, and Stevie Wonder. These artists all have great albums, but none that made my top fifty, or even the next fifty. But various people near and dear to me would put many of these groups in their all time top five, if not G.O.A.T. It saddens me to demote them to honorable mentions.
Finally, I should confess there are a bunch of artists that I just never fell in love with, or don’t particularly like all that much, despite their obvious artistic merit, based on smart and cultured people loving their stuff. Some of these that I just never quite fully connected with (though most have their moments for me) are: Prince, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Alice in Chains, Beck, Frank Zappa, Tupac Shakur, and Soundgarden. This list, sadly, can go on and on too.
Thanks for reading this far. We’re going to get to the top fifty albums, I promise. When I put the list together, frantically adjusting and revising over the course of several weeks at first, then months, then years, I felt I needed to do something with the albums that kept getting dropped out of the top fifty. So in Part II next week I’ll chronicle the next fifty albums – #’s 51 to 100 – in alphabetical order: not ranked at all, before I get to the top fifty. I’m curious to hear what anyone has to say about what is left out of that 51-100 group, because if it’s left out, it either made the top 50, or it didn’t make the top 100 at all. Let me know what you think!
Until then, stay tuned and rock on!
Police Horse 
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