As tastes in music change, so does your list of top 100 favorite albums tend to change. A while ago I had made myself my top favorite albums of all time, but between the 3 years since I’ve made that, I’ve had a chance to re-evaluate what truly belongs on the list for me, what stayed the same, and what has changed for me. This is my retrospective on my Top 100 Albums of All Time
I will start with not much has changed for me at the top of the list:
Blackstar by David Bowie, To Pimp A Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar, and Velvet Underground and Nico are still 10/10 albums for me. Blackstar themes of existentialism, death, and ongoing life and loss are beautiful and elegant a good mix of symphonic, somber soft jazz-rock. It ends up being Bowie’s best album, released posthumously. Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, with its amazing production and instrumentals, along with its deep themes about identity, personality, race, and coming of age make these a perfect 10 out of 10.
Now onto my changes, going a bit below the first row, the first one that I might swap out is Demon Days. Although I’ve come to appreciate the production, experimentation, great production, amazing songs, and overall uniqueness of this album in the discography of the Gorillaz even more in recent years, I would still swap this one out with Plastic Beach. The themes of Plastic beach, the tracklist, and the production really keep me coming back to the album every time, “Up On Melancholy Hill” is one of my most listened to songs. The melodies across this album are near perfect and when there is experimentation, it is near excellence.
The next albums I would shift towards changing are Let it Be and Ok Computer by Radiohead. As much as I love Let it Be as an album by the Beatles, it mostly held a place in my heart due to Nostalgia. If I were to replace it by looking thoughtfully at the tracks and album overall, I would either replace it with Help or Abbey Road. The tracks on those two seem much more cohesive and production-wise are great, also nothing beats classic early Beatles.
As for Ok Computer, I think it’s a very unique album, where the pieces together are much stronger than the whole. I do think that it is a very online album and that it is a bit overdone as the best album of all time. Whilst it does have very interesting themes, instrumentation, and production something more emotional and rawer for me, especially lyrically and instrumentally is In Rainbows by Radiohead. So this is another album I would swap out.
Lastly, I would replace, the Bob Marley album, and the Clapton Album. I have made a new rule for myself, no more compilation albums, although their live albums are great I would swap them out with fully realized albums.
One thing I did several months ago, replaced Eric Clapton’s unplugged with Cream’s Disraeli Gears. However, I lost the original edited image. In my opinion, Clapton’s particular personal views are ones I’m not a fan of, but aside from that, as a solo artist, he was mostly average, without a band to back him, in my opinion, his only strong solo album was MTV unplugged and that was a very interesting and raw take on songs he’s made along with covers of other songs. With Cream, however, I feel a sense of consistency and enjoyment, along with thoughtfulness to the music. The psychedelic reverb and compression definitely enhance the enjoyment also.
As for Bob Marley, Exodus is a brilliant album that I would definitely go for, every song on there is written very well and is a classic.
Finally, with the last replacement, I would change the Santana album. Santana’s newer albums don’t hit the mark for me as much as their prime work. Albums like Borboletta and Abraxas on the production and the writing the instrumentation are much stronger. Their music from the 90s onward tries to emulate their old style but it sounds uncanny because is a bit overproduced from their older works.
With that being said, here are the final albums with all of my changes + color coding, because one of the most enjoyable things about this chart was color-coding it
I however see this as a living document. Music I like and anything I like in general, tastes change with time and I have no doubt this will change again, but that is the beauty of music and I’m looking forward to discovering more.
