UKC

So Sgt Pepper is today’s top album, but it’s not even the Beatles best album, let alone the best of all time. Revolver and Rubber Soul should take that place for the Fab 4. There’s too much filler on Sgt Pepper.

Same for Nirvana’s nevermind, filler again on side 2, otherwise that would take it.

so, that leaves Bowie’s Hunky Dory, Led Zeppelin 4, Wish You Were Here (way better than Dark Side of the Moon), Soundgarden’s Superunknown and Slayer’s Reign in Blood,  bit of an outsider of Blondie’s Parallel Lines, or any album by The Fall.

at least no one was suggesting Bumbling Bob Dylan or Pet Sounds!

Perry Como overlooked again.

Does anyone's favourite album ever endure the test of time?

Is this the radio 2 top 40 from today?

if so, based on sales, not necessarily quality (as 6 entries from a combination of Ed sheeran, Michael buble and dido surely shows....)

If we’re looking for the best album- a dead heat between Pixies- Doolittle; Suede- Dog Man Star; and U2 - Achtung baby...

https://news.sky.com/story/national-album-day-sgt-pepper-tops-list-of-favou...

No problem with the first two, but I'm of the opinion U2 haven't really released a good album since Joshua Tree.

Ah, right- they’ve taken the top 10 from this, and got people to vote on it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2QnbffHjH7pqfpKF20PQy7B/the-top-40...

Moving out of the top 10 on that list makes the blood run cold...

15. James Blunt - Back to Bedlam

14. Meat Loaf - Bat Out of Hell

13. Ed Sheeran - X

12. Shania Twain - Come on Over

11. Simply Red - Stars

6music faired better I think. MAH played Black Star in its entirety and HM selected Talk Talks Spirit of Eden to celebrate National Album Day. 

Given 1000 chances I wouldnt have guessed Leona Lewis or Shania Twain for the top 40 best selling studio albums

Heresy, perhaps- but I just don’t rate Joshua Tree- even the singles are dull, excepting ‘with or without you’...

There’s great singles across their career, but the only two albums I rate as a whole are achtung baby and zooropa. Though it did tail off pretty steeply after that...

I think album wise it went downhill from them, but you're right about the singles.

I couldn't get into those albums, but we agree on the tailing off...

The Beatles had their place. It isn't, now, in any attempt to define the higher strata of a 'Best . . . ' list.

T.

Neither, IMO, has Bowie; though I'm prepared to argue that's based on personal taste.

for me it’s the other way round; I’ve never been able to get into Joshua Tree. I feel much of it sounds harsh, and a bit two dimensional. I struggle to stay with it all the way through. 

Achtung baby seems to me to have a greater range of ‘textures’ to the music; and to have more interesting lyrical themes (or ones that resonate more with me, at any rate). There’s greater depth to the quality of the tracks on it- until the end of the world, ultraviolet and acrobat are better than many of the singles. 

Zooropa was less immediate, but it has a remarkably evocative feel to it, and lemon is a great track. 

I even liked Pop, though I think that was more linked to it being a pretty intense period of my life that it soundtracked; I listened to it again recently and there are some really poor moments on it. Even saying that, staring at the sun and gone are up there with the best from any other album, and overall the second half is ok.

after that- the sound of barrels being scraped. 

One thing to bear in mind is that the chart is based on physical sales, downloads and streaming.

Nothing from REM?  Nothing from Radio Head?

Surely Automatic for the People, at least, deserved to be in.

That Top 40 is based on sales, not necessarily quality. There would seem to be a large constituency who like the sort of thing that James blunt, mick hucknall and Leona Lewis churn out. 

Looking back i prefer Out of Time to automatic... but I’d have had an REM album in there; and probably The Bends over OK Computer. 

The 90s was a good era for albums, wasn’t it...?

Are you kidding? I'd like to think this was ironic...

Which alone can explain the otherwise inexplicable absence of Big Blacks' "Songs about F**king"

The Guardian list at the end of the 90s was good.

https://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?c=8

I'm going to take it a step further and say they never released a good album. Smug band who could have replaced the guitarist with a sequencer or a tape loop. I really didn't like them

Which bit, U2 or Radiohead?

Good post, that’s much more like it

I discovered I had somewhere in the 90's on that list when it came out so purchased the rest.  It's probably still a bit too white and british though.

Much better. 

It confirmed what I thought when I read your OP too - ranks Led Zep 2 higher than Led Zep 4.

It would have been nice to see a bit of Tom Waits in there, but perhaps he just has too many albums splitting the vote for any one to get anywhere in a poll.  Or maybe his many truly great songs are just spread out across too many albums and he never did quite produce one that was genuinely 'all killer, no filler'.  I would put Swordfishtrombones or Rain Dogs up there with anything on that list though.

I came home last night and caught a BBC4 documentary about Paul Simon's 'Graceland'.  I'd almost forgotten what a great album that is.  It was the first CD I ever bought, might have to go and have a rummage to see if I still have it.

‘Never mind the bollocks...’ is not the 3rd best album of all time. It’s not even the best punk album released in 1977...

and ‘pet sounds’ is an album for people that like to like albums that are in ‘best album’ lists...

The rules for the list were well defined and in what is always a balance of opinions, I'd alwys trust combined opinions of that type over any individual opinionated UKC poster. Your statement of your opinion as if it were a fact just makes you look silly (as is all too common with opinions here). Pet Sounds was highly influential (one of the factors on the list).

I don't enjoy Pets Sounds much and certainly prefer several Punk albums from '77 more than NMTB.

Hells bells, lighten up offwidth! It’s just a low key Sunday thread about music, not the Brit awards judging panel...

(I’m right about pet sounds though... ) 

Can't find the rules, but since I am an individual, this list is surely no good guide to what I or anyone else will actually like. If I am inclined to like what lists suggest is best, then maybe, but what if I like obscure Swedish folk punk? (I do, I wanted to contribute to another thread, but couldn't remember the band name or the title of a dimly remembered track from the 90s!) To say that an album of that is no match for, say, Blonde on Blonde, is no help to me since there is no accounting for taste.

So is this list about which albums had the most influence? More interesting would be a list, tailored to me, that told me what I would most likely like. That sounds like a machine learning thing.

On, the actual picks of that list, I do like many of them, but then I have read such lists since the 70s. So maybe I have grown to like what I have been told is best. 

On Desert Island Discs, Bruce Springsteen said that Marvin Gaye's What's Going On was a masterpiece from start to finish. I have tried, I really have, to like it, but I just don't. Not yet, anyway. Same with Christine and the Queens, and I have never understood why people rate Nirvana.

And where is Parallel Lines on that list?

I would always vote Physical Graffitti in higher than 2 or 4, personal taste. Mind, I might vote the first 5 Sabbath albums into the top 5 spots 

Couldn't agree more. Happy to see Shania at number 12 and (No more Scotch Eggs) she doesn't make my blood run cold at all.

Deviant! 

I bet you even like James Blunt...!

;-P

(note: some opinions expressed in my posts are for entertainment purposes only and do not necessarily represent my considered  position on the subject. Refunds will be given only if accompanied by proof of purchase. This does not affect your statutory rights.

and, less facetiously: I like a good hook as much as the next person, and I’d agree that That Don’t Impress Me Much has got a pretty good one. But; it’s not *that* outstanding- i do find it interesting why some albums clearly resonate and reach remarkable sales figures when others don’t. Certainly 3 of the 5 I copied and pasted fall into that ‘perfectly fine but why have they sold so many millions’ category)

Its always interesting to see that rock/pop music has its own version of Harry Enfields 'Opera Snobs'. Why do people have to compare music and go on about this is the best and this is crap (in their view). Everybody's choice of music is personal and usually quite eclectic and the stuff that has most impact on you and on your memory is when you are between 15 and 20 years of age. So its not surprising there are biases towards music you heard in your youth.

 The top selling album worldwide is the 'Eagles Greatest Hits',do you own a copy ?.Simple accessible singalong songs, well produced so why would you hate it. Is it because its too popular and lots of common people like it and youre not one of them because you know better. Or is it because theyre badly sung, its too 'commercial'. Its just popular music by definition.

Some people have tried to put intellectual pretensions on to popular music. When middle class students in the late sixties discovered 'pop' they tried to intellectualise it and called it underground resulting eventually in the excesses of prog rock. Similarly to a lesser extent in the nineties with indy. Labels on popular music have proliferated but at the end of the day 'its what it says on the tin' its just popular music.

Think Screamadelica has dated horribly. Theres only so much of Bobby droning on about how many drugs he's taken I can listen to nowadays. In fact its more of an Andy Weatherhall album really.

I'm sure there will be a critics swedish punk list out there somewhere (a good teen punk film to watch is this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_the_Best! )

If such a critcs list matches a lot of what you like it is really useful, if not, its not. The Guardian list was poor for fans of many genres. To be fair the same might apply to ordinary people's top 100s...similar common tastes make recommendations more worthwhile . I'd worry a little about fandom with anyone with 5 Black Sabbath albums up there though (3 from their early work might be OK). 

I'd agree Parallel Lines is near perfect pop.

I found a version of the slightly later Observer list with an introduction on how they produced it.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2004/jun/20/shopping

(The list is here... links sadly no longer work... https://www.theguardian.com/observer/omm/idx/0,,1242360,00.html )

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs

Musical taste is far too serious for such jokes

All time favourite encompasses err all time , not best album of today

Slayer v The Beach Boys.........hmmm

Only one winner there. I've seen Brian Wilson solo-  absolute drivel. Might have been worth it in his day, but that day was decades ago.

Seeing Slayer next month and I expect to leave a shell of the man I previously was.

Camell Laird Social Club gets overlooked once again

Dream gig would be Slayer and Pantera supporting Sabbath ( first half Ronnie James Dio, then Ozzie). Don’t suppose that’s going to happen ;-(

fyi, have you seen Body Count's cover of Reign in Blood?

youtube.com/watch?v=LPHJLB1ZeAc&

Will give that a watch.

I was at a "my life in music" gig with Tony Iommi chatting all things musical and beyond on Saturday night. Thoroughly nice chap.

Anthrax are one of the Slayer supports so that's two heavy hitters ticked off in one.

Ozzy and Priest to look forward to next year too.