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?
I started adding star ratings to tracks in my library so I can auto populate a playlist only with songs getting 3 1/2 stars or more and download them to my phone.
The album that got the highest number of tracks on this playlist was Alligator by The National.
“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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Hello fellow Haken fan! Affinity and Visions are my favorites of theirs. I also love Phantom Island by King Gizzard.
For full album plays some of my favourites are:
- Lou Reed’s “New York”
- David Bowie “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”
- The Carpenters “Christmas Carol”
- The Bodeans “Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams”
- Bob Dylan’s “Infidels”
- Louis Prima’s “The Wildest”
- The Boomtown Rats “The Fine Art of Surfacing”
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.
I generally don’t really care about albums and just make a playlist with only the songs I like.
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 :-)
From what I listen, only Nujabes’ Luv(sic) Hexalogy I consider a masterpiece. I have to listen to it start to end. Though personally I have to be in the correct headspace to fully appreciate it.
There aren’t a lot of other albums that I have to listen front to back that comes to mind. Although there are lots of songs that I listen to frequently. According to Spotify (before I canceled my sub earlier this year) I’m a Muse fan lol. Top artist I listened to for 5 years straight (I didn’t subscribe to Spotify that long) Almost always dominate my yearly Top 10.
