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thisaintascenereviews · 3 months

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Top 20 Favorite Albums Of All Time: 2024 Edition

Ranking the best albums of all time is really hard, because there are thousands of albums out there, and you maybe haven’t heard a lot of those albums you’d love. I’ve been a music fan for the last 17 years, give or take, and I’ve listened to tons of albums, but one thing I don’t usually do is make ranked best of lists of albums I personally love. I like doing yearend lists, because that’s only the single year, not of all time. I’ve only done a best of all time ranking once, and that was maybe a decade ago, but in the span of that time, my taste has changed. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at my favorite albums of all time. It took awhile, but over the last few years, my taste has changed a lot. It’s going to, as that’s how tastes work. I’ve always thought of tastes in media are fluid, and not finite, because you can have different opinions at different points in time. With that said, some albums I used to absolutely revere aren’t always I love that much anymore, so if you’re wondering where something is, it’s probably that I still really love it, but not that much. I do have a handful of honorable mentions, and some of these albums are ones that I used to really love, and while I may still love them, they didn’t make the cut. I did have one rule, however, when I made this list: only two albums per band / artist on the main list. That’s because I love multiple albums from a lot of these bands and artists, so I only limited myself to two albums from any artist, but the honorable mentions might have an album that didn’t make the cut. They aren’t in any order, either, but let’s start with the honorable mentions, starting with…

Beastie Boys - Licensed To Ill

A lot of the albums on the entire list mean something to me, whether it’s the first album in a genre I discovered, or an album that I have a lot of nostalgia for, and Beastie Boys’ debut, Licensed To Ill is one of those, for sure. This is one of the first hip-hop albums I listened to, at least a few years after dipping my toes into the genre, and Beastie Boys blew my mind with their brand of hip-hop meets metal and punk, especially with Slayer’s Kerry King having a guest spot on their debut. Truthfully, their later albums are better, but I have a soft spot for their debut, because it’s so much fun and scrappy. For one of the first rap albums I ever listened to, I love it.

Childish Gambino - Because The Internet

Speaking of hip-hop, I don’t want to spoil too much of what you’ll see later, but Childish Gambino (otherwise known as Donald Glover) is the first rapper I ever listened to. I have another album of his on the list, but his sophomore album (not counting mixtapes), 2013’s Because The Internet, is a fun and experimental romp through hip-hop, R&B, pop, psychedelic, and electronic music. It’s got some of my favorite songs of his, but it’s also a really interesting and unique album that still doesn’t quite sound like anything I’ve ever heard.

Van Halen - S/T

Hard-rock band Van Halen is one of my favorite bands, and their 1978 self-titled debut is one of the best hard-rock albums ever made. This is the album that introduced people to both David Lee Roth, and Eddie Van Halen (may he rest in power). This isn’t anything necessarily unique, but it’s one hell of a record with some great riffs, solos, and hooks.

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Arguably the first metal band, Black Sabbath’s debut album, 1970’s Paranoid, is also considered to be the first true heavy metal album, and it rules. It’s got a couple of their most beloved and well known songs, but it’s the album that first showcased heavy metal as its own sound, versus being bluesy hard-rock. This album was one of the first traditional heavy metal album albums that I listened to, and showed me that a lot of classic metal albums have merit to them.

Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue

I’ve become a jazz fan over the last few years, at least more than I used to be, and one of my favorite jazz records, as well as the first jazz record I ever listened to, is Miles Davis’ magnum opus, 1959’s Kind Of Blue. This is such a dynamic and interesting little jazz album that took the genre into new and unexplored territories, especially with Miles Davis already being an influential band leader by that point.

Dio - Holy Diver

Along with Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, Dio’s - 1983 debut album, Holy Diver, is one of my favorite traditional heavy metal albums that got me into that style. Dio, the band, is made up of the 1980 - 1982 lineup of Black Sabbath, sans Tony Iommi, but one could also argue that Holy Diver was an influence on power metal. Ronnie James Dio isn’t only one of the best and most expressive metal vocalists, his sense of lyricism was more based on Lord Of The Rings and fantasy, versus the typical cliches of rock and metal at the time. This album is really catchy, fun, anthemic, and larger than life, but that was Dio in a nutshell.

Metallica - Ride The Lightning

Ah, Metallica, you know they’d be here, but this is one of the exceptions to my “two album rule,” as I have three albums from this legendary and iconic band on the list, although only two on the actual list, so I kept one here. That album is 1984’s Ride The Lightning. This is their second album, where they honed their sound a bit, but this isn’t the first album from them I listened to, nor is it quite my favorite, although this album is legendary, and for good reason.

The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

A decade ago, The Beatles were easily my favorite band. I went through a whole couple of years where they were all I listened to, and truth be told, 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, is still a great album, and it’s one of my favorites, but I haven’t gone back to it as much in recent years. Maybe I’m just burnt out on them, or my taste has changed, but this isn’t quite my all time favorite. I still love this album, and it’s a wonderful rock album, being a monumental album both for the genre and for its time.

Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

Arguably the best pop / pop-rock album of all time, you know Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 masterpiece Rumours had to be here. This album is a lightning in a bottle kind of album that could only have been made under the right set of circumstances. If just one small thing was off, who knows what this album would have sounded like? This is the best example of a breakup album that’s written by both parties of the breakup, let alone writing songs about each other and singing on each others’ songs. Talk about awkward, but that awkwardness makes for some of the best music ever made.

Spiritbox - Eternal Blue

This is the most recent album on my list, but I’ve gone on record as saying that Spiritbox’s debut album, 2021’s Eternal Blue, is one of my new all time favorite albums. It was my favorite album of 2021, and it’s one of the best albums of the 2020s so far. This band mixes alt-metal, djent, metalcore, progressive metal, and even pop and electronic sounds to make for a very fun, catchy, accessible, and palatable sound that is only getting better, especially with their newest EP from last year.

Okay, it’s time for my top 20 favorite albums of all time, so here we go!

20: Justin Timberlake - The 20/20 Experience

One of my all time favorite solo artists is pop and R&B singer Justin Timberlake, and I’ll go into more detail later, but his 2013 comeback album, The 20/20 Experience, is one of my favorite pop and R&B albums. I’m gonna cheat and just point you to the direction of the ten-year retrospective I wrote last year, because I go into a lot more detail than I could here.

19: Paramore - Riot

A huge congratulations is needed for Paramore in their Grammy wins last week, but the first album from them I ever heard is 2007’s Riot, and it’s also one of my favorite albums from the MySpace / scene era. It’s held up surprisingly well, but it’s such a catchy, energetic, and rambunctious pop-punk album that only began to show how talented that band really was (and frankly still is).

18: Bruce Springsteen - Born In The USA

You can’t have an all time favorite albums list without The Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen. At least my list, anyway, because I love me some Springsteen, but my favorite Springsteen album will always be 1984’s Born In The USA. Something about his gruff vocals paired with shimmering and catchy pop-tinged instrumentation is so good, but some of these songs are among his most iconic.

17: Sam Cooke - The Best Of Sam Cooke

I’ve come to love a lot of music from the 1940s and 1950s, and Sam Cooke is my favorite singer of that era, especially with his 1962 greatest hits album. I first listened to Sam Cooke in the movie Hitch, and it took me a long time to figure out who it was, but I absolutely love his work. His voice is among the best of all time, and that greatest hits is such a short but sweet collection of the best of the best.

16: Judas Priest - Screaming For vengeance

Judas Priest is among my favorite bands, and their 1982 album, Screaming For Vengeance, is the first album I ever listened to from them back maybe a decade ago. This is where the band went from a bluesy hard-rock / metal sound to a faster and more energetic sound, more akin to speed metal from that era, but that’s not to say that their earlier material isn’t good, either. Screaming For Vengeance is one of my favorite Priest albums, and for a long, it was my favorite of their albums, at least until I heard another one (which we’ll talk about soon enough).

15: The Gaslight Anthem - Handwritten

Handwritten, the 2012 album from The Gaslight Anthem, is one of my favorite rock albums, but this wasn’t the first album I listened to from them. That would be 2010’s American Slang, and while I enjoyed that album a lot, their foray into classic rock with Handwritten, just resonated a lot more. Brian Fallon and company sound great on this album, and it’s still my favorite album from these guys. Despite releasing one more album in 2014 before going on hiatus until releasing a comeback album last year, which was ultimately disappointing, nothing tops this album for me.

14: U2 - The Best Of 1980 - 1990

Like with Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience, I’m going to cheat a bit by saying check out my piece on U2, and how I’ve grown to love this band, but their first greatest hits album is an utterly killer album. Out of everything here, this is the most “recent” discovery I’ve made, but I truly do love U2, and this greatest hits album.

13: Metallica - The Black Album

Oh yeah, The Black Album, now we’re talking. I absolutely love this record. Metallica’s most accessible album, and depending on who you talk to, it’s either one of their best or worst albums, but this is where the band really honed in on their penchant for good hooks. This is their catchiest album, but it’s still heavy. Some of these riffs are downright nasty, and it features some of their best solos to date.

12: Fall Out Boy - Folie A Deux

It’s no secret Fall Out Boy is my favorite band, so it would make sense that 2008’s Folie A Deux is one of my favorite albums of all time. This is their catchiest and most accessible, but like with The Black Album, it has some of their best hooks and also some of my favorite Fall Out Boy lyrics. This album deals a lot with their newfound time after their last album came out, and it’s got a lot of biting social satire and commentary, but it’s also just a damn good time.

11: Judas Priest - Painkiller

Judas Priest became a full blown speed metal / thrash metal band in 1990 with Painkiller, and this was their last album Rob Halford until the 00s, but this is a monster of a record. It’s the best Judas Priest album by far, and easily my favorite, but for good reason. Sometimes all you need is a kickass album, and that’s what this is.

10: Guns ‘N Roses - Appetite For Destruction

Top ten time, and first up, is Guns ‘N Roses’ debut, 1987’s Appetite For Destruction, and this is another kickass album, but it rides the line between being hard rock and metal. You can call GNR a metal band, because this album leans very much into that territory, especially with how popular hair metal was at the time. Hair metal was at its prime in 1987, and this album is among the best of that sound, or at least, very close to it. Axl Rose and Slash are one of the best duos in hard rock and metal for good reason.

9: AC/DC - Back In Black

In the beginning of the same decade, AC/DC released the massive Back In Black, and this record is one of the first hard rock albums I ever heard, as well as “classic rock,” and this album will always have a place in my heart. I don’t listen to this album much anymore, because I’ve already played it a thousand times, but every time I dust this album off, so to speak, I think to when I was 12 or 13, listening to this album for the first time.

8: Iron Maiden - The Number Of The Beast

You know I had to put some Iron Maiden here, and of course, I went with 1982’s The Number Of The Beast. This is the quintessential Iron Maiden album, as well as a quintessential heavy metal album (especially from the 1980s). I feel like a lot has been said about this album already, and I’ve talked about it a lot over the years, so I don’t need to say much else other than this album rules.

7: Justin Timberlake - FutureSex / LoveSounds

Justin Timberlake is back, folks, and this time with 2006’s FutureSex / LoveSounds. This was one of the first pop albums I ever listened to, especially after randomly picking it up at FYE one day back in 2012. I was wanting to get out of my comfort zone, and I had always heard great thing about this album, all of which are founded in truth. This record is one of the best pop albums I’ve ever heard, and there’s only one that surpasses it, but we’ll talk about that in a second. This is JT at the top of his game, whether it’s the production, the vocals, or even a lot of the lyrics, this is an iconic album for a reason.

6: Eagles - Their Greatest Hits / Vol 2

I’m a huge fan of the Eagles, and instead of putting their first greatest hits album from 1975, I decided to cheat and put both that and their 1980 second one. Both greatest hits albums have some of my favorite songs from them, but they feel like two halves of a whole. You can’t have one without the other, but if you want some great harmonies, lyricism, vocals, and just the whole package of a band that first started as a country / folk-rock band and turned into one of the highest selling and most influential arena-rock bands, you can’t go wrong with these albums.

5: Childish Gambino - Camp

Childish Gambino’s debut, 2011’s Camp is the first rap album I ever heard, and it’s also one of my all time favorite albums, even today. This record showed me that hip-hop could be emotional, interesting, introspective, and was more than what the mainstream perpetuated. I’ve come around on the genre tenfold, but back then, I was just getting into other styles of music, and I was a fan of Donald Glover already, thanks to Community, and this record blew my mind when I first heard it. I think it holds up quite well today, too, but I plan on writing a piece on this, so I’m gonna save a lot of my thoughts for that, but I love this record a lot.

4: Van Halen - 1984

Hell yeah, brother, 1984 by Van Halen. This is a great album, and it turns 40 this year, although I believed it just did, actually. I talked about their self-titled debut earlier, but their 1984 LP of the same name is my favorite album of theirs. Songs like “Jump, “Top Jimmy,” and “Hot For Teacher” are god tier 80s rock and metal songs. This album is also really awesome for featuring synth, especially at a time when synths were becoming more popular, but not for rock music. Van Halen made it work, and 1984 is one of the best albums of all time.

3: Metallica - Master Of Puppets

A couple of years ago, I made a list ranking the first five Metallica albums, and I put 1983’s Kill ‘Em All as my number one, but I’d like to change my ranking a bit here, and put 1986’s Master Of Puppets as my number one, although I do still love their debut, and I go back to it quite a bit, it’s not their best album, or even my personal favorite anymore, but Master Of Puppets isn’t only my favorite Metallica album, it’s also the first album from these guys I listened to. I guess you could say this was the first thrash album I listened to, but metal in general doesn’t get any better than Master Of Puppets.

2: Fall Out Boy - Infinity On High

You know, I’ve said for the longest time that my favorite album of all time is Fall Out Boy’s Infinity On High, and I suppose you can say that the final (and top) two albums are interchangeable, but I’ve been thinking about what album is truly my number one. It depends on the day which one would really be my favorite, but with that said, these final two albums are two of the most influential albums on me personally. Fall Out Boy’s Infinity On High is the first album I ever got into, back when I was a wee lad, and only discovering music for the first time, so this album has a history with me. I just wrote extensively about this album on its anniversary a few days ago, so check that out for some more context on this album.

1: Michael Jackson - Thriller

Michael Jackson’s 1982 juggernaut Thriller is a GOATed album. Let’s not mince words here. I saw a clip of Donald Glover being interviewed by his costar from Mr. And Mrs. Smith about what album is considered the GOAT and he said Thriller. I’ve been thinking about that, and the more I keep saying to myself that’s true. This album is the first pop album I ever listened to, because I wanted to get out of my comfort zone of being into rock and metalcore, like I was at the time, so I remember seeing a copy of Thriller and I decided to grab it. Little did I know that album would blow my mind to smithereens, whether it was for its production or its vocals. I had only known Michael Jackson from the tabloids, especially before he passed, and didn’t understand how important and influential his music was, but knowing that history and context, this album is the highest selling album of all time for good reason.

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