Thirty Albums Everyone Must Own
Originally published at The Prodigal Blogger. You can comment here or there.
Rachel has encouraged me to accumulate a list of 30 albums that everyone on earth should own. I’ll take it a step further - here’s a list of thirty albums everyone MUST own. There’s no getting around or negotiating it. You need these albums. Your life pretty much depends on it. No, really it does.
I did give myself a few rules when making this list. The first and foremost is that I didn’t include “best of” compilations. This list would be dramatically different if I could put on discs with all of an artist’s best work (that’d be too easy). I’m also not including any other compilations or soundtracks, because they’re harder to compare to a single artist’s album (and I don’t think any soundtracks would’ve made this list anyway). The list is in alphabetical order and not ranked in any other way (though I may also make a running list of my Top 100 Albums that IS ranked in the coming weeks, particularly if anyone shows interest in seeing such a thing). Without further ado, here’s the list. Take a good look at it so you can pick up these albums and then get on with your life (of course, your life really begins after you pick these up):
- A Perfect Circle - Thirteenth Step
- The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
- The Beatles - Rubber Soul
- The Beatles - Revolver
- The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
- Jeff Buckley - Grace
- Collective Soul - Youth
- Counting Crows - August and Everything After
- Counting Crows - Recovering the Sattelites
- Dave Matthews Band - Before These Crowded Streets
- Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
- The Jayhawks - Rainy Day Music
- Led Zeppelin - IV (Zoso)
- Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral
- Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile
- Nirvana - Nevermind
- Oasis - (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
- Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
- Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
- Queens of the Stone Age - Songs For The Deaf
- R.E.M. - Automatic for the People
- Radiohead - OK Computer
- Radiohead - Kid A
- Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine
- Bruce Springsteen - The Rising
- Tool - Aenima
- Tool - Lateralus
- U2 - The Joshua Tree
- The Verve - Urban Hymns