My 100 Favourite Albums Ranked

Last updated: 11 October 2026

The first thing to say about the blog My 100 Favourite Albums Ranked is that it is not a list of my 100 favourite albums ranked. Just think about it for a moment – how could it be?

Diogenes

Click here to read the companion blog to this list, which goes through how I compiled the list and a few things I learned along the way.

100. The Beautiful South, 0898 (1992)

Having steered clear of the indie scene during my time at university in the mid-80s, I finally succumbed in 1987–8, just after the Smiths and the Housemartins had split up. Talk about timing. Fast forward a couple of years. I walked into a rough-arse pub in Basildon (were there any others?) with a couple of mates from work. Some charmer at the bar immediately started to sing “I love you from the bottom of my pencil-case…”. So I guess we must have looked the part.

I love those first three Beautiful South albums. Song for Whoever was an outstanding debut single and I particularly liked Oh Blackpool and Love Is… from the first album. Their music is more lightweight and pop-oriented than I am usually comfortable with, but the tunes are great and Paul Heaton’s lyrics, though he could do with a good editor, are provocative and never less than interesting.

Standout tracks: We Are Each Other; 36D

99. Razorlight, Razorlight (2006)

The first of what will be a lot of indie albums on this list. Rock and indie are my two great musical passions. Good indie music – certainly in the last couple of decades or so – combines infectious hooks and punchy lyrics with driving guitars, adventurous bass lines and in-your-face drums. I became aware of Razorlight via a couple of catchy singles. It was a toss-up between this album and Up All Night (2004).

Standout tracks: Before I Fall to Pieces; Los Angeles Waltz

98. Rick Wakeman, The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (1975)

I bought this album as a kid, presumably because I was listening to a lot of Yes at the time and was tentatively dipping my toes in the choppy waters of prog rock. I thought I had wasted my money. It didn’t get played much for many years, to be honest. I gave it a fresh listen about twenty years ago and was so enraptured that I immediately went out and bought his first two solo albums – The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1973) and Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1974). Masterpieces all.

Standout tracks: Arthur; The Last Battle

97. Gillan, Glory Road (1980)

I loved the well-known Deep Purple stuff when I was a kid. Of the Purple off-shoots, I liked early Rainbow (the more commercial sound of Down to Earth, released in 1979, was a wrong turn, I thought, though the album itself wasn’t bad), and Whitesnake, though rather blues-y, were beginning to attract my attention too. I had been a bit underwhelmed by an Ian Gillan Band live album, but his next group – Gillan – sounded much grittier – very much in the style of the new wave of British heavy metal.

This was my first Gillan album. I think I bought it because it came with a free LP – For Gillan Fans Only. Colin Towns’ keyboards are a dramatic contrast to Bernie Tormé’s scorching guitars and Ian Gillan’s screeching vocals – all delivered with healthy dollops of humour.

Standout tracks: Time and Again; No Easy Way

96. King Crimson, In the Court of the Crimson King (1969)

There is no shortage of ‘classic’ prog rock albums conspicuous by their absence from this list. King Crimson’s debut album – which is about as far down the prog rock road as I wish to travel – is often cited as the ‘daddy’ of the genre. It is nothing if not audaciously experimental. It is also grand, symphonic and melodramatic (the Mellotron is laid on with a particularly large trowel). Moonchild – which takes up a hefty chunk of the original side two – doesn’t really do much for me, but the rest of the album is often magnificent.

Standout tracks: 21st Century Schizoid Man; The Court of the Crimson King

95. Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run (1975)

I have always been somewhat immune to the fist-pumping, chest-thrusting heroics of the Boss – too darn American for my tastes – and settled for a Best Of… collection. But I love the song Born to Run, and so I took the plunge when I saw a thirtieth-anniversary edition of the album going cheap.

I was vaguely aware of Clarence Clemons and the E-Street Band, but I was still surprised by the variety of music on the album, particularly tracks like Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out. Thunder Road is everything I imagine early Springsteen to have been (“Oh, come take my hand / We’re riding out tonight to case the promised land”) and the title track is a bona fide classic.

Standout tracks: Thunder Road; Born to Run

94. U2, The Joshua Tree (1987)

As a Queen mega-fan, I have often thought I ought to like U2 more than I do. They were massive in the mid-80s and wrote some magnificent anthems. Bono at a rain-soaked Red Rock belting out Sunday Bloody Sunday while holding aloft a white flag is one of the standout cultural images of the decade. But I struggle to take people who call themselves ‘Bono’ and ‘The Edge’ seriously when they disappear up their own backsides, as they often do (or, at least, did).

But there is no getting away from the epic quality of the music. Notwithstanding my Springsteen comment above, I have picked the album which (along with Rattle and Hum) was most influenced by their fascination with America.

Standout tracks: Where the Streets Have No Name; Bullet the Blue Sky

93. Scorpions, Taken by Force (1977)

Scorpions were one of those groups I discovered via a live album – in this case the magnificent Tokyo Tapes (1978). They are the first band or artist who will feature more than once in this list because although Taken by Force isn’t my favourite album of theirs I wanted to include something from the Uli Jon Roth era. Some of the lyrics are a bit dodgy and the less said about one or two of the original album covers the better, but the music – before they adopted a more straightforwardly commercial sound in the 80s – is great.

Standout tracks: Steamrock Fever; The Sails of Charon; He’s a Woman – She’s a Man

92. The Lathums, How Beautiful Life Can Be (2021)

Okay, I am biased. The Lathums are from Wigan and I am from Wigan. But putting that to one side, they are the best jingly-jangly band I have heard for a very long time. The title track of their debut album seems to sum up the essence of the band’s appeal – joyful, playful and infectiously upbeat.

Standout tracks: The Great Escape; How Beautiful Life Can Be; The Redemption of Sonic Beauty

91. Magnum, Chase the Dragon (1982)

I first stumbled across Magnum when they released a double single (for the price of one) called Live at the Marquee to promote their live album Marauder in 1980. I thought all four tracks were excellent (if a bit derivative) and – though I wouldn’t describe myself as a fan as such – Magnum have sort of been on my radar ever since.

Despite their longevity they have never really broken through to the really big time, but they have built up a body of work that combines great riffs, superb vocals and great storytelling. I considered including their debut album but went with this one – their third studio album.

Standout tracks: Soldier of the Line; The Spirit; The Lights Burned Out

90. The Police, Reggatta de Blanc (1979)

The biggest ‘things’ in pop in 1977–78 – the time when I was first starting to listen seriously to music – were the soundtrack albums Saturday Night Fever (and disco more generally) and Grease. The Police were the first band I remember going massive. This was a few months after Grease, after the belated success of their debut album and songs such as Roxanne and So Lonely. Reggatta de Blanc was the follow-up. I find all five of their albums somewhat hit and miss, but there are some great tracks on here standing alongside the big hit singles. It was only much later than I realised what great musicians they all were.

Standout tracks: Message in a Bottle; Bring on the Night; Walking on the Moon; The Bed’s Too Big Without You

89. Jim Steinman, Bad for Good (1981)

I bought this album on the basis of a five-star review in Sounds; the reviewer sold it as ‘the guy behind Bat Out of Hell’. It was indeed intended as the follow-up, and several of the songs have subsequently been recorded by Meatloaf. But I am not sure that any of them outshine the versions that appear here. The original album came with a free single, one of the tracks on which was an orchestral piece called The Storm that demonstrated Steinman’s outstanding abilities as composer and arranger.

Standout tracks: Bad for Good; Stark Raving Love; Dance in My Pants

88. The Verve, Urban Hymns (1997)

The Verve’s main songwriter and front-man, Richard Ashcroft, supported Oasis on their 2025 comeback tour, reviving a long-time connection (the Oasis song Cast No Shadow includes a line that, according to Noel Gallagher, relates to Ashcroft). Verve anthems like Bitter Sweet Symphony and Lucky Man were as crowd-pleasing in 1997–98 (and subsequently) as Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back in Anger had been a year or two earlier, though some people say that Urban Hymns captures the mood of Britpop in decline while Oasis epitomised the swagger of its prime.

Standout tracks: Sonnet; The Drugs Don’t Work

87. Blondie, Plastic Letters (1978)

I was first aware of Blondie from their appearances on Top of the Pops promoting their breakthrough single, Denis, and I liked follow-up singles such as Picture This and Hanging on a Telephone. Alas, they soon embraced a more disco-orientated sound, and so it was only many years later that I went beyond a Best Of collection.

Blondie were to have greater commercial success with Parallel Lines (1978) and Eat to the Beat (1979) but their second album is my pick of their albums. Its variety and depth demonstrate that there was much more to the band that the ‘new wave’ label often attached to them in those early days suggested.

Standout tracks: Denis; Bermuda Triangle Blues (Flight 45); I Didn’t Have the Nerve to Say No; No Imagination

86. Marillion, Script for a Jester’s Tear (1983)

The new wave of British heavy metal was dominating rock music in the early 80s, so the prog-influenced sound of Marillion was certainly intriguing. Plenty of people couldn’t get beyond the obvious similarities with early Genesis but I wasn’t complaining too loudly. Their first single Market Square Heroes has distinct echoes of the Genesis classic The Knife, and the seventeen-minute Grendel on the twelve-inch single clearly owes much to Supper’s Ready.

Marillion were popular in the mid-80s and had big hits with Kayleigh and Lavender from the third – concept – album, Misplaced Childhood. But I am opting for Script for a Jester’s Tear, which is an excellent debut (and would have been even better with the inclusion of Market Square Heroes). The title track is my favourite Marillion song.

Standout tracks: Script for a Jester’s Tear; Garden Party

85. Phil Collins, Face Value (1981)

I bought Face Value – Collins’s first solo album – more or less at time of release. It came out a few months before Abacab sent Genesis off in a radically different musical direction and before the name ‘Phil Collins’ was even particularly well known. I can’t quite explain why it appealed to me at the time. I didn’t buy the Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks solo albums that had already come out. Perhaps it was that I liked Misunderstanding, a song of his on the Genesis album Duke, and his contributions to the third Peter Gabriel album, released in 1980.

The first single, In the Air Tonight, was a big success (who can forget the tin of paint?!) but the two follow-ups were only relatively minor hits. I was particularly drawn, I think, to the homemade, stripped-back nature of the recording, and though much of the music was definitely not my usual thing it was catchy and listenable but not – and this mattered – overly commercial.

Standout tracks: The Roof Is Leaking; Droned / Hand in Hand; You Know What I Mean

84. Electric Light Orchestra, On the Third Day (1973)

ELO are one of the bands to feature twice in this list. For a long time my idea of ELO was based on the big hits of the later-70s, so it was a revelation hearing the early albums and discovering (no pun intended) how experimental and proggy they had once been. I have chosen On the Third Day to represent those early albums, though it is the first not to feature Roy Wood whose influence on the first two albums is huge. My box set includes the following Jeff Lynne comment: “This album may be a little obscure to some, but to others it’s very obscure.”

Standout tracks: Ocean Breakup / King of the Universe

83. Cast, All Change (1995)

The biggest surprise for me on this list is this album – mainly because I had forgotten I even owned a copy. I must have picked it up in my peak indie phase in the mid-90s, presumably on the back of hearing one of the singles. (I also have a copy of Expecting to Fly by the Bluetones, released in early-96. I was a semi-regular at an indie nightclub called The Pink Toothbrush in Rayleigh, Essex at the time.) All Change contains twelve songs and not a single dud – just fab guitars and lots and lots of great hooks.

Standout tracks: Sandstorm; Tell It Like It Is; Four Walls; Walkaway

82. The Vaccines, What Did You Expect from the Vaccines? (2011)

I thought long and hard about whether to include this album – the debut by indie band the Vaccines – because I first heard it only very recently and have played it just a handful of times. It is undeniably raw and gritty in places and (like later Kaiser Chiefs music) some of the songs over-repeat their hooky choruses (Post Break-Up Sex, for example), but it is a thrilling collection that doesn’t outstay its welcome (36 minutes in total, including a ‘hidden’ track).

Standout tracks: Wetsuit; Norgaard; Post-Break-Up Sex; Family Friend

81. Steve Hackett, The Night Siren (2017)

An early Hackett album features higher up in this list, but I knew little or nothing of his work from the 80s onwards until I bought The Night Siren – on a hunch – at the time of release. I thought it was exceptional in places (though I am not a huge fan of his singing) and it led me to his immense back catalogue which, while not uniformly outstanding, is highly impressive. His later-career output has been prodigious – album after album of adventurous and experimental prog-rock picture-painting and story-telling at its hypnotic best. The two albums before this – Beyond the Shrouded Horizon (2011) and Wolflight (2015) – are excellent and his post-Night Siren work has been just as good.

Standout tracks: Martian Sea; In the Skeleton Gallery; West to East

80. Black Sabbath, Vol 4 (1972)

Paranoid was one of the first ‘heavy rock’ (the term we used as kids) songs I ever heard. It is a stonewall classic but – fast and furious – not actually particularly typical of the early Sabbath sound. Hearing the track Black Sabbath itself (from the debut album) for the first time was a revelation. I could have picked any of their first five albums for this list. I chose Vol 4 because of the inclusion of some surprisingly un-Sabbath-y elements (Changes; FX; Laguna Sunrise) alongside the heavier material. Truly the masters of the doom-laden riff.

Standout tracks: Wheels of Confusion; Tomorrow’s Dream; Supernaut; St Vitus Dance

79. Paul McCartney and Wings, Band on the Run (1973)

I was a big fan of the Beatles from a relatively young age but always steered well clear of McCartney’s post-Beatles music. Other than the Wings’ song Live and Let Die (still my favourite Bond theme tune), as a teenager I was only really aware of the last Wings album and then his solo singles and collaborations, which I found increasingly trite and irritating (Wonderful Christmastime; Ebony and Ivory; Pipes of Peace; We All Stand Together) – and I absolutely loathed Mull of Kintyre. In recent years I have gone back to the Wings material. The live triple-album Wings Over America is a great collection, but Band on the Run is the one studio album that really stands out. I was surprised how much it reminded me of Abbey Road in places – not least the Lennon-esque Let Me Roll It.

Standout tracks: Band on the Run; Jet; Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five

78. David Gray, White Ladder (2000)

I think This Year’s Love was the song that attracted me to David Gray. Its minimalism – piano and vocal and little else – adds to the rawness and emotional intensity of the lyrics. Recorded on a shoestring, the album as a whole has a similar vibe. (See my comments above about Face Value.) It ends with a superb extended acoustic version of the Soft Cell song Say Hello Wave Goodbye. This isn’t usually my sort of music but I have followed Gray’s career ever since.

Standout tracks: Nightblindness; This Year’s Love; Sail Away; Say Hello Wave Goodbye

77. Kansas, Leftoverture (1976)

Two epic songs by American bands that I first heard in 1977 made a huge impression on me at the time and remain favourites to this day – More Than a Feeling by Boston and Carry On Wayward Son by Kansas. It wasn’t until the streaming era that I began exploring Kansas’s back catalogue. Epic is indeed the word for tracks such as Carry On Wayward Son and Magnum Opus. The early Kansas albums paint musical pictures on the grandest of canvases and marry them with often deeply personal and introspective lyrics.

Standout tracks: Carry On Wayward Son; Miracles Out of Nowhere; Cheyenne Anthem; Magnum Opus

76. The Jam, All Mod Cons (1978)

This was the third Jam album and the first – both in its title and in the songs themselves – to do more than just hint that there was much more to the band than their initial success during the height of punk/new wave suggested. Several of the songs on the album (including the cover of the Kinks song David Watts) clearly reflect Paul Weller’s interest in class issues at the time. Down in the Tube Station at Midnight (the second single from the album) is my favourite Jam track. The Butterfly Collector is also one of my favourites but neither it nor the single Strange Town (of which it was the b-side), though also recorded in 1978, feature on All Mod Cons.

Standout tracks: In the Crowd; Down in the Tube Station at Midnight

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