My 100 Favourite Albums Ranked

75. 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) indicate 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

74. Joe Jackson, Night and Day (1982)

Joe Jackson’s gift for reinvention – with music if not with image – is reminiscent of David Bowie. After the new-wave focus of the early Joe Jackson Band albums, his writing became increasingly sophisticated. Night and Day is his homage to New York City life and culture. The original side one uses cross-fade so that the tracks flow into each other, creating a sense of a breathless walk around the city’s night-time streets. Like Bowie, Jackson would sometimes radically rework songs when he played them live. There is no better example of this than Steppin’ Out, my favourite Joe Jackson song. (Check out the version on his album Live 1980/86.)

Standout tracks: Steppin’ Out; Breaking Us In Two; Real Men; A Slow Song

73. Uriah Heep, Demons and Wizards (1972)

The only thing I knew about Uriah Heep for a very long time was that they released an album called …Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble. Inspired by the enthusiasm for Heep of Pete Pardo (from the Sea of Tranquility YouTube channel), I made the effort to listen to their early albums (in order, naturally). A good decision. It helped that the very first track on the first album is Gypsy, with its powerful driving riff. It was a toss-up for this list between their debut, ..Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble, and their fourth (and probably most well known) album, Demons and Wizards. This is heavy and experimental but accessible prog rock, packed with powerhouse riffing, great musicianship and great harmonies.

Standout tracks: The Wizard; Easy Livin’; Rainbow Demon; The Spell

72. Manic Street Preachers, Everything Must Go (1996)

How often has an outstanding single pulled me into the orbit of a band I otherwise wouldn’t go near? A Design for Life is the perfect example. I was vaguely aware of the strange disappearance of Richey Edwards and that this was a comeback of sorts – and what a comeback. I was immediately pulled in by the song’s opening lines – “Libraries gave us power / Then work came and made us free” – the passion in the singing and the powerhouse guitars. Not what I was expecting at all. The album as a whole feels like a huge emotional outpouring. Drummer Nicky Wire took over lyric-writing duties from Edwards and the album is suffused with a deep sense of pain, anger and defiance.

Standout tracks: A Design for Life; Australia; No Surface All Feeling

71. Kate Bush, The Kick Inside (1978)

I was eleven years old when Kate Bush first appeared on Top of the Pops performing Wuthering Heights, her sublime debut single. The next day I joined my mates in the playground, performing silly mock-dances while shrieking like banshees. How little we understood. The second single, The Man with the Child in His Eyes, a song she apparently wrote at the age of thirteen, is possibly even better. The ingredients that make Kate Bush such an outstanding talent – a unique voice, extraordinary creativity and a willingness to experiment and push at musical boundaries – are all evident on The Kick Inside, her debut album.

Standout tracks: Moving; The Man with the Child in His Eyes; Wuthering Heights; Them Heavy People

70. Weezer, Maladroit (2002)

Weezer are a band I discovered via not so much a single as its promotional video. Buddy Holly (1994) cleverly used footage from Happy Days to make it appear as if the band were performing in Arnold’s (Al’s diner/drive-in). The conceit appealed to someone who grew up in the 70s. In truth, Weezer are as far down the road of grungy geek-rock as I want to travel (see earlier in this list for a similar sentiment about In the Court of the Crimson King and prog rock), but I heard a lot that I liked on their first album – really catchy pop-rock tunes amidst all the cranked-up guitars and juvenile frat-boy lyrics.

After the underwhelming popular response to the ‘difficult’ second album (Pinkerton, 1996), the band eventually returned with two albums – the ‘Green’ album (2001) and Maladroit – that get straight to the point. Virtually every song clocks in at under three minutes. Blink and you’ve missed it. I could have picked either album. Maladroit is probably the heavier of the two (and the UK version includes the excellent Island in the Sun from the ‘Green’ album as a bonus track).

Standout tracks: Keep Fishin’: Death and Destruction; Slob; December

69. Deep Purple, Machine Head (1972)

The 1975 compilation album 24 Carat Purple, which includes three tracks from the – cliché klaxon – legendary Made in Japan live album, was my introduction not just to Deep Purple but also to headbanging (or ‘freaking out’, as we 11- and 12-year-olds referred to it at the time).

I briefly considered selecting Burn for this list (the first album to feature David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes), but it really had to be an album by the classic Mark II line-up – Blackmore, Gillan, Glover, Lord and Paice. The band sound like they have run out of enthusiasm and ideas by the time Who Do We Think We Are came out in 1973, but In Rock, Fireball and Machine Head are all outstanding. Machine Head nudges it for me, as it is the home of three of their most iconic songs.

Standout tracks: Highway Star; Never Before; Smoke on the Water; Space Truckin’

68. Dire Straits, Love Over Gold (1982)

Brothers in Arms (the album) is not in this list. It was a massive global success and is in some respects era-defining – it is often cited as the first ‘CD album’ – but I was largely immune to its charms. Maybe I had just heard the line “I want my MTV” too many times and I definitely thought Walk of Life (both song and video) was shit. Love Over Gold was (and still is) much more to my taste.

The moody Private Investigations was an interesting choice to be the lead-off single (in the UK at least), and the fourteen-minute Telegraph Road, which opens the album, is a bona fide epic. But my favourite track is actually Industrial Disease, which is built around a hypnotic 60s-sounding keyboard riff. The final two songs – the title track Love Over Gold and It Never Rains – don’t quite match the quality of the rest of the album; if they did, Love Over Gold would undoubtedly be higher up this list.

Standout tracks: Telegraph Road; Private Investigations; Industrial Disease

67. Iron Maiden, Iron Maiden (1980)

I used to read Sounds magazine between (roughly) 1978 and 1981, so I was there – so to speak – at the birth of the new wave of British heavy metal. I was ambivalent about NWOBHM. It certainly wasn’t up there with the classic rock of the 70s but – with many of those classic bands imploding for one reason or another – it was more or less the only game in town for a young rock fan eager to hear something new. NWOBHM was raw and edgy and the similarities with the punk ethos of 1976–77 were obvious.

I didn’t particularly like Iron Maiden’s debut single, Running Free, and it is entirely possible that I bought their first album on the basis of the cover alone. That said, I instantly connected with the music, and before long I was sewing the Iron Maiden logo into my denim jacket. My interest in NWOBHM quickly faded, however. I don’t think I bought the second album (Killers, 1981), and by the time Bruce Dickinson replaced Paul Di’Anno as lead singer I was no longer paying any attention either to them or to other ‘heavy metal’ bands such as Saxon, Def Leppard and Judas Priest.

Standout tracks: Phantom of the Opera; Transylvania; Strange World; Iron Maiden

66. Roxy Music, For Your Pleasure (1973)

I wasn’t a fan of the second coming of Roxy Music (from the album Manifesto, released in 1979, onwards) – too smooth, too polished, too laid-back. I was vaguely aware from the re-release of the Virginia Plain single in 1977 (with Top of the Pops showing footage from its original release in 1972) that there was another, very different and potentially far more interesting Roxy Music. This was something that my ‘art rock’-loving neighbour in halls during my first year at university (1984–85) repeatedly countered with as I foolishly mocked his love of the band.

Streaming to the rescue – but only many years later and after several conversations with another longtime Roxy fan. Only the first two albums feature Brian Eno (whose heavily processed electronic solo on Virginia Plain I had found so mesmerising back in 1977), but I now discovered that all four albums released before their mid-70s split are great. The band are really finding their feet by the second album – For Your Pleasure – while never passing up an opportunity to surprise and beguile us with their musical and lyrical experimentation. Nine minutes of The Bogus Man, anyone?

Standout tracks: Do the Strand; Beauty Queen; Strictly Confidential; Grey Lagoons

65. Van Halen, Van Halen (1978)

I have heard it said that live albums by rock bands were so prevalent in the 1970s because of the frustrations of the recording studio and its sound limitations. If that’s true, no one seems to have told Ted Templeman, the producer of Van Halen. When it landed in 1978, Van Halen’s debut album sounded – and still sounds – incredible. Runnin’ with the Devil, with its other-worldly intro followed by pulsating bass, is a superb album opener, and then Eddie Van Halen’s Eruption – one minute and 42 seconds of guitar fireworks – leaves the listener in no doubt that this is an extraordinary new talent. The whole of the original side one, in fact, is outstandingly good; no wonder they weren’t quite able to sustain it across the full 35–40 minutes’ running-time.

Standout tracks: Runnin’ with the Devil; Eruption; You Really Got Me; Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love

64. Kaiser Chiefs, Yours Truly, Angry Mob (2007)

I could have picked either of the first two Kaiser Chiefs albums but plumped for this one because I love the overall sound, especially the guitars. (The album was produced by indie legend Stephen Street.) This is a really solid effort (probably more so than its 2005 predecessor, Employment): thirteen tracks, full of energy, great hooks and witty, socially aware lyrics – and not a dud to be found. They started to embrace a more electro-pop sound from the third album onwards and lost their songwriter along the way and so, though Kaiser Chiefs are still going strong, for me Yours Truly, Angry Mob marks their musical peak.

Standout tracks: The Angry Mob; I Can Do It Without You; My Kind of Guy; Boxing Champ

63. Leonard Cohen, I’m Your Man (1988)

I’m Your Man is the album that is probably most atypical of this list as a whole. I have never ‘got’ Dylan (though I like some of his songs when they are covered by others), so Leonard Cohen really was a punt in the dark. I picked up The Essential Leonard Cohen – thirty-plus songs, two-and-a-half hours of music – at a bargain price. The penny started to drop on the second play and within a few days I had bought a box set of all his albums. His first album – Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967) – is as good a place as any to start, but I picked the much later I’m Your Man, which finds Cohen embracing a more band-oriented approach.

Standout tracks: First We Take Manhattan; Everybody Knows, Take This Waltz, Tower of Song

62. Rainbow, Rising (1976)

Rainbow (originally Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow) were – for a while at least – the best of the Purple-adjacent groups. My introduction to them was the excellent Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll (1978, and the last of the Dio albums) and I didn’t mind 1979’s Down to Earth (even the chart-friendly singles Since You Been Gone and All Night Long) but it went downhill rapidly in the 80s as they chased success in America. Rising is the band at their best, even though it is all about three tracks. Side one is okay but unremarkable, except for the excellent Tarot Woman; side two, on the other hand, is anything but unremarkable. Blackmore, Powell and Dio – guitar, drums and vocals respectively – were an outstanding combination. Epic music, soaring vocals and one of the best album covers in rock.

Standout tracks: Tarot Woman; Stargazer; A Light in the Black

61. Electric Light Orchestra, A New World Record (1976)

The first band to appear twice in this list. My guess is that most people would choose Out of the Blue as their go-to ELO album, but I prefer A New World Record – possibly because Rockaria may have been the first ‘proper’ record I ever bought. (Useless trivia sidebar – A New World Record was recorded at the same studio and in the same year as Rainbow Rising.) As I have written elsewhere, “beyond the reference to Beethoven, the lyrics seemed like gobbledygook. I probably liked the song for the ‘novelty’ operatic voice and the feel-good, upbeat tempo.” Telephone Line is, I think, my favourite ELO single.

Standout tracks: Tightrope; Telephone Line; Rockaria; Livin’ Thing

60. Thin Lizzy, Jailbreak (1976)

Live and Dangerous was one of the first albums I ever bought. The super deluxe edition in 2023 (which features six shows from the Jailbreak and Bad Reputation tours from which the Live and Dangerous recordings were taken) strongly suggests to this amateur’s ears that the original 1978 album wasn’t – as has often been claimed – a product as much of the studio as of the stage. It is rightly lauded as a classic live album and the versions of several of the songs on it are definitive. All of which is a long way of saying that I steered clear of Thin Lizzy’s studio albums for many years. Despite its sound limitations, Jailbreak is their best and – like them all, in fact – is remarkably consistent. Phil Lynott was a great songwriter and an always-interesting lyricist.

Standout tracks: Jailbreak; Running Back; The Boys Are Back in Town; Emerald

59. REO Speedwagon, You Can Tune a Piano, but You Can’t Tuna Fish (1978)

My introduction to REO Speedwagon was the epic power-ballad Keep On Loving You from 1980, which was a huge commercial success for the band – as was the album Hi-Infidelity from which it came, along with Take It on the Run – and helped propel them in a more mainstream musical direction. Their 70s output is generally more hard-edged, though with lashings of boogie-woogie piano, vocal harmonies and catchy melodies alongside the wailing guitars. The best of their albums – as well as the worst titled – is this one. Its 1979 follow-up, Nine Lives, repeats the formula but with considerably less success.

Standout tracks: Roll with the Changes; Time for Me to Fly; Do You Know Where Your Woman Is Tonight?; Say You Love Me or Say Goodnight

58. The Sundays, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic (1990)

The Sundays should have been as big as the Cranberries. The release of their debut album in 1990 was a godsend for those of us still mourning the demise of the Smiths and troubled by Morrissey’s apparent inability to follow up Viva Hate. The original side one of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, in particular, is a joy. The Sundays released three albums in all but the two later efforts – released in 1992 and 1997 respectively – failed to reach the heights of this glorious debut.

Standout tracks: Skin & Bones; Here’s Where the Story Ends; Can’t Be Sure; My Finest Hour

57. Meat Loaf, Bat Out of Hell (1977)

I am not sure I can satisfactorily explain why, but I only bought this album about fifteen years ago. It goes without saying that when I played it I was familiar with every single track. Given my musical likes as a young teenager, I ought to have been a massive Meat Loaf fan. Maybe this album was just too popular, too ubiquitous. As it is – see earlier in this list – I happily made do with Jim Steinman’s album Bad for Good. Looking back from a safe distance of nearly fifty years, I can confidently say that – apart from the exceptional quality of the songs – there really was nothing comparable to Bat Out of Hell in 1977. Steinman was a genius and Meat the perfect voice to bring Steinman’s vision to life. Alas, the two ‘sequels’ failed to reach the heights of this masterpiece.

Standout tracks: Bat Out of Hell; All Revved Up with No Place to Go; Paradise by the Dashboard Light

56. The Eagles, Hotel California (1977)

If ELO’s Rockaria was my first ever single buy, Hotel California by the Eagles was quite possibly the second. Even at the age of ten, I sensed there was something special about the song (though I was baffled by the lyrics – what the fuck were fajitas?). I was also aware at a young age that their Greatest Hits was one of the biggest-selling albums of all time. And indeed, there is no doubt that the Eagles have recorded plenty of classic songs, but maybe that early-70s West Coast sound is just too soft and easy for my tastes because it is the rockier material of the Joe Walsh era that most appeals to me.

Standout tracks: Hotel California; Life in the Fast Lane; Victim of Love; The Last Resort

55. Jean-Michel Jarre, Oxygène (1976)

Oxygène (Part 4) was a really intriguing single for an 10-year-old, unlike anything else in the charts at the time and – as far as I was aware – unique. I was definitely not a fan of the New Romantic music of the early-80s and what you might call electro-pop more generally (and I am still not), but Oxygène is, to my ears, in a different musical category altogether – call it ‘experimental’, maybe, or ‘ambient’. This is 40 minutes of a young genius at work, recording (apparently) in his apartment. The follow-up, Equinoxe (1978), is a good listen as well.

Standout Tracks: Oxygène (Part 1); Oxygène (Part 2); Oxygène (Part 4); Oxygène (Part 6)

54. The Lightning Seeds, Jollification (1994)

I can’t remember why but in the early-90s I was actively on the lookout for a band able to combine the infectiousness of the Housemartins and the songwriting craft of Abba. Step forward the Lightning Seeds. I was aware of (and didn’t mind) The Life of Riley from 1992, but it was Lucky You – the first single from Jollification – that hooked me in. Ready or Not from the follow-up album, Dizzy Heights (1996), is probably my favourite Lightning Seeds track, but Jollification is the better album. It doesn’t put a foot wrong from start to finish.

Standout tracks: Perfect; Lucky You; Change; Marvellous

53. Crowded House, Together Alone (1993)

It’s funny what first gets you listening to a band. I was a young history teacher in the early-90s and picked up on the lines “Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire / Couldn’t conquer the blue sky” from the Weather with You single to mention in the classroom. That led me to the Woodface (1991) album, which features several great singles and a profoundly moving closing track about alcoholism, How Will You Go. Together Alone was the follow-up. I have chosen it because it is arguably the more consistent album of the two (I always thought – probably unfairly – that the old side two of Woodface struggled in comparison with side one, which included all the singles).

Many Crowded House songs include short passages of music – sometimes just a few bars, often combined with deeply affecting lyrics – that floor me emotionally. How Will You Go is an outstanding example, as is the closing section of Nails in My Feet from this album: “Total surrender / Your touch is so tender / Your skin is like water / On a burning beach / And it brings me relief”.

Standout tracks: Nails in My Feet; Fingers of Love; Private Universe; Distant Sun

52. Muse, Black Holes and Revelations (2006)

I was drawn to Muse in the late-2000s after hearing more than one reference to similarities with the music of Queen. There is indeed an epic swagger and symphonic ambition to them that is reminiscent of Queen at their most majestic. At times, too, Matt Bellamy’s guitar-playing sounds uncannily like that of Brian May. (Sidebar: there is also a later Muse song called Save Me.) The magnificent opener, Take a Bow, is typical of their approach, with layer upon musical layer introduced as the song slowly crescendoes. The overall production is outstanding. It is astonishing how three musicians can conjure up such a tsunami of sound. The following two albums – Resistance (2009) and The 2nd Law (2012) – are also excellent.

Standout tracks: Take a Bow; Starlight; Exo-Politics; Knights of Cydonia

51. Rush, Power Windows (1985)

I get the impression that many Rush fans consider – and therefore condemn – Power Windows as the one where the keyboards took control. I don’t hear it that way, perhaps because I remember an interview with Alex Lifeson in which he said that he was in the UK for three weeks to work on his guitar parts. I much prefer the sound of Power Windows – with every instrument crystal clear in the mix – to that of Signals (1982), for example, where the guitars sound muffled and mushy. Neil Peart is an outstanding lyricist and the lyrics to Mystic Rhythms – about the beauty and unknowability of life itself – are among his finest: “We feel the powers and we wonder what they are”.

Standout tracks: The Big Money; Territories; Emotion Detector; Mystic Rhythms

50. Morrissey, Your Arsenal (1992)

With the aid of producer and ex-Spider from Mars Mick Ronson, who introduced a decidedly early-70s glam vibe to the proceedings, Your Arsenal (Your arse ‘n’ all – ho ho) was a triumphant return to form for Morrissey after the underwhelming and somewhat lacklustre Kill Uncle (1991). Ever the contrarian, Morrissey has a track record of releasing some of his weaker songs as singles. It’s fair to say that tracks 5–7 – Certain People I Know, We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful and You’re the One for Me, Fatty – are not the best songs on this album. I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday could be a Bowie song; indeed, Bowie covered it almost immediately for his Black Tie, White Noise album.

Seasick, Yet Still Docked is one of my favourite Morrissey songs. The emotional punch of the lines “My love is as sharp as a needle in your eye / You must be such a fool to pass me by” is matched a few bars later by an achingly beautiful descending bass line (reminiscent of the downbeat closing music to The Sweeney television programme) as the song draws to a close.

Standout tracks: You’re Gonna Need Someone on Your Side; The National Front Disco; Seasick, Yet Still Docked; Tomorrow

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