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COUNTDOWN: Top 50 Music Albums Of All-Time.

  • 23-09-2020 1:16am
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 2,293 ✭✭✭


    Welcome to the COUNTDOWN OF THE TOP 50 MUSIC ALBUMS OF ALL-TIME! according to these 51 random members who've likely forgotten what they nominated learned authorities and studied critics of the history of musicology.


    Plentyohtoole
    speckle
    Bonniesituation
    Arghus
    urbansprawl
    BaronVon
    thebronze14
    JP Liz V1
    NewbridgeIR
    Johngreenfan
    the purple tin
    bigtimecharlie
    greenspurs
    bubblypop
    Rothko
    Declan A Walsh
    Irish Aris
    paddythere
    Sheridan81
    Rikand
    The Crazy Cat Lady
    FHFM50
    y0ssar1an22
    Necro
    The Floyd p
    Electric Nitwit
    PressRun
    Pretzill
    corm500
    Spook_ie
    lassykk
    mr_fegelien
    Homer J. Fong
    ShaneU
    Hello 2D Person Below
    Also Starring LeVar Burton
    Hesh's Umpire
    Zaph
    Strawberry Milkshake
    Reberetta
    Sawduck
    Kolido
    NapoleonInRags
    AndrewJRenko
    adrian522
    gammygils
    Bobby Malone
    BPKS
    quickbeam
    splashthecash
    IAMAMORON


    Scoring system.

    5 Points per nomination and for numbered lists:

    1. 10 points
    2. 9
    3. 8
    4. 7
    5. 6
    6. 5
    7. 4
    8. 3
    9. 2
    10. 1 point

    Tiebreakers if albums are on the same number of points:

    A) Most nominations.
    B) Higher average of placings.

    There were some other tweaks to scoring as some sent me unnumbered lists, long lists etc. but it's not greatly important, it's just a bit of education and fun and you'll get the general idea.

    If your album does not make the list, do not fear, for a full list of albums nominated will be revealed at the end, so everyone will have plenty of recommendations.

    Coming soon so subscribe and stay tuned, and feel free to comment along with the countdown!


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Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 10,542 ✭✭✭✭Electric Nitwit


    No idea what I submitted, but I remember agonising about whether to play it as sheep or peehs :p


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,965 ✭✭✭Declan A Walsh


    Will we be scored based on the relative success of our nominations? Or is that for ourselves to do?


  • Registered Users Posts: 84,324 ✭✭✭✭JP Liz V1


    I barely remember my submissions :o


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,293 ✭✭✭Reberetta


    Will we be scored based on the relative success of our nominations? Or is that for ourselves to do?

    Yourselves.:P

    Kick off Saturday afternoon. It might be staggered over two days into Sunday.


  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    Looking forward to this, and to seeing none of my choices picked by anybody else! :p


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  • Registered Users Posts: 18,921 ✭✭✭✭BonnieSituation


    Looking forward to this, and to seeing none of my choices picked by anybody else! :p

    I feel this as well re mine.

    I just fear a certain over-rated band will sweep all before.


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,177 ✭✭✭✭greenspurs


    Reberetta wrote: »
    Yourselves.:P

    Kick off Saturday afternoon. It might be staggered over two days into Sunday.

    Oh … :(

    "Bright lights and Thunder .................... "



  • Registered Users Posts: 14,243 ✭✭✭✭Arghus


    I feel this as well re mine.

    I just fear a certain over-rated band will sweep all before.

    I've accepted that I'm going to be disgusted by much of the top 50. But I look forward to it none the less.


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,965 ✭✭✭Declan A Walsh


    It will be interesting to see the following:
    - multiple entries by which artistes
    - the decades represented
    - the genres of music represented


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,293 ✭✭✭Reberetta


    Kicking off sometime after 1pm today, Saturday.

    I spent some hours browsing interesting info about a lot of these albums so there will be plenty of reading material for the more intellectually inclined nerds out there!

    Some of the chart peaks, specifically Irish ones, were difficult to find so there might be some inaccuracies.

    Should be able to breeze through this countdown in one day as all the hard work is done!


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  • Posts: 8,856 ✭✭✭[Deleted User]


    Most of my top 10 are fairly predictable and will be found in multiple listings on the inter web such as Rolling Stones top 500 etc Looking forward to putting a few new albums on my Spotify playlists so here’s hoping others aren’t as predictable as I was


  • Registered Users Posts: 18,503 ✭✭✭✭Also Starring LeVar Burton


    Looking back at what I submitted and I reckon only one (maybe two at a push) of my choices will make the Top 50 - went for albums that have personally played a massive part in my life rather than albums that are universally considered the greatest ones of all time.


  • Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 50,755 Mod ✭✭✭✭Necro


    Looking back at what I submitted and I reckon only one (maybe two at a push) of my choices will make the Top 50 - went for albums that have personally played a massive part in my life rather than albums that are universally considered the greatest ones of all time.

    Wonder if any of mine will :pac:


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,965 ✭✭✭Declan A Walsh


    Looking back at what I submitted and I reckon only one (maybe two at a push) of my choices will make the Top 50 - went for albums that have personally played a massive part in my life rather than albums that are universally considered the greatest ones of all time.

    I think most of us, if not all of us, nominated the albums that meant most to ourselves!

    Looking at my Top 10, I would say one is a definite to feature. Then, there is another that will probably feature, and a third that is a possibility. I will be pleasantly surprised if any of the other seven feature!


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,542 ✭✭✭✭Electric Nitwit


    Looking forward to putting a few new albums on my Spotify playlists so here’s hoping others aren’t as predictable as I was
    That's my hope too

    Honestly no idea what I submitted. I remember debating the split between personal choices and ones likely to be in the running but can't remember which side I landed on. I can only think of one that ticks both of those boxes

    @Reb - if you don't think it's a spoiler, would a single nomination in first place have been enough to make the overall top 50?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,429 ✭✭✭Sheridan81


    Choosing ten for me was easy. And just as long as Dire Straits don't win, it'll be grand.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,293 ✭✭✭Reberetta


    Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, it's finally time for the countdown!

    images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQBo-YISm4FLXaXY_kR_5VJYxCFHZ8D1smP7g&usqp=CAU


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,542 ✭✭✭✭Electric Nitwit


    QByfKp.gif


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,293 ✭✭✭Reberetta


    50th 20 Pts

    Queens Of The Stone Age
    Songs For The Deaf (2002)

    Chart Peak Ireland /UK/ USA: 32/4/17
    Singles:  "No One Knows", "Go with the Flow",  "First It Giveth"
    Nominated by theBronze14, Urbansprawl
    Nick Oliveri was the one who pushed for making this album a loose concept album. Joshua Homme was against it, as he thought it got in the way of the songs, but Nick thought it was a great idea. In the end, Joshua finally agreed to the concept, and Songs For The Deaf became QOTSA's only "concept album", even though it's extremely loose. This album featured the swan songs of original QOTSA members Gene Trautmann (who drummed the drums) and Brendon McNichol (who lap steeled the lap steel), as they left after they recorded parts for this album.

    The album takes the listener on a psyched out road trip across the Southern California desert from Chino Hills to Joshua Tree - hometown of front man Josh Homme. Along the way, the album is interspersed with fictional Californian radio stations that the listener manages to pick up along the route. From Kip Kasper’s K.L.O.N.E. Radio, a fictitious, tongue in-cheek jab at LA’s tiresome, repetitive pop music stations of the noughties, all the way through to the eerie W.O.M.B. fronted by a nameless female DJ.

    The album’s opening track You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar, But I Feel Like A Millionaire starts the journey off with a punishing, ear ringing meld of thick bass and distorted, yet melodic guitar riffs that are used to awaken the “Deaf” listeners whom have been hypnotised by the generic, repetitive pop music they’ve been subjected to, until now. Nick Olivieri’s lyrics, also a stab at the sanitised, nonsensical drivel spouted by the manufactured pop princesses and boy bands that saturated the airwaves at the time. Two minutes and 37 seconds in, the track goes silent, and you’re lead to believe the sadistically pleasing assault on your senses is over, just as you’re about to take a breath, the punishing beat kicks back in for one last bridge before seamlessly marching in to the album’s lead single, No One Knows.

    Although music can never be considered perfect, it’s ever evolving and too diverse to ever achieve such an acclaim, yet No One Knows comes close to it. Written by Josh Homme and Mark Lanegan, the song proves you can use melodies and pop sensibilities; still manage to sound unique and create a song of commendable calibre. The track aided by drumming from the infamous Dave Grohl, and a bass riff that cattle-brands itself into your brain. The track manages the envious feat of still sounding fresh nearly 15 years after its release, a theme that runs through the entire LP.

    The album doesn’t subscribe to any pre-established genre, each track taking on a different theme or style, mimicking the album’s concept of a tripped out wanderer scanning through the varied stations on his/her FM dial. We’re taken from the (somewhat) radio friendly No One Knows to the Desert Rock chant-a-long First It Giveth, a throwback to Homme’s earlier endeavours in Kyuss, this being a more polished piece of work than those Stoner Rock days.  This is followed by what is probably the album’s stand out track, Song For The Dead. It slowly creeps in, then there’s an abrupt hissing of a hi-hat followed by a dulled, fast paced guitar riff, all of which is then overshadowed by the most beautifully intricate drumming, again provided by Grohl. Singing duties are taken-up by the raspy vocal tones of former Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan. As the title suggests, this song is a powerhouse, of levels that would be appropriate to raise the departed from their eternal slumber.

    The adventure continues into The Sky Is Fallin’ a wistful, flowing track, carried along by a harmonic chant from Homme. Often overlooked; most likely due to it being sandwiched in the middle of an album filled with work of such a high calibre.  Six Shooter is a short, explosive track, penned and performed solely by Olivieri. Profanity filled, with an excitement for violence (it pretty much summarises why Olivieri, would later be sacked from the band). This track alone awarded the album its parental advisory sticker.

    Hanging Tree the second track taken and reworked from Homme & Co’s ‘Desert Sessions’, uses Lanegan’s rough and raw vocal delivery to portray the brutality that is aptly described in the track’s title.  The trippy journey through the Californian desert continues with Go With The Flow, arguably one of the decades greatest hard rock songs, that even non-fans can’t help but subscribe to for its high energy and accessibility. The album’s closer, Mosquito Song aptly juxtaposes the LPs opener. A medieval ballad, it begins on a whimsical note and climaxes in an epic sound of crescendoing drums and horns.

    Josh Tyrangiel of Entertainment Weekly called it "the year's best hard-rock album", giving it an A. Splendid said "the bottom line is that QOTSA turns in another genre-demolishing, hard-as-titanium album in Songs for the Deaf. This is not your father's metal. It's better." Mojo listed the album as the year's third best. Kludge ranked it at number six on their list of best albums of 2002. Music critic Steven Hyden called the album the greatest hard-rock record of the 21st century.

    In October 2001, while the album was being recorded, Dave Grohl stated that Songs for the Deaf was his favorite album that he had ever played drums on.
    A few other guests were Billy Gibbons (of ZZ Top fame, and who would later guest on Lullabies To Paralyze and Era Vulgaris), Jeordie White (of Marilyn Manson fame, but only as a radio DJ), Dean Ween (of Ween fame), Paz Lenchantin (of A Perfect Circle and Zwan fame), and many people with guest spots on previous (and future) albums, such as Dave Catching and Chris Goss.

    Songs for the Deaf received critical acclaim, and earned the band their first gold certification in the United States. Over one million copies were sold in Europe, earning a platinum certification from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in 2008. The album received two Best Hard Rock Performance Grammy nominations for singles "No One Knows" (2002),[49] and "Go with the Flow" (2003).


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,542 ✭✭✭✭Electric Nitwit


    That is a very, very decent start :)


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  • Registered Users Posts: 2,293 ✭✭✭Reberetta


    49th 20 pts

    The Pixies
    Surfer Rosa (1988)
    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMxy067kbpQhJkOZtEDdjn97sir7HmzkQ
    Chart Peak Ireland /UK/ USA: 43/?/?
    Singles: Gigantic
    Nominated by Urbansprawl, Bobby Malone
    Both Surfer Rosa and Steve Albini's production of the album have been influential on alternative rock, and on grunge in particular. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain cited Surfer Rosa as the basis for Nevermind's songwriting. When he first heard the album, Cobain discovered a template for the mix of heavy noise and pop he was aiming to achieve. Cobain hired Albini to produce Nirvana's 1993 album In Utero, primarily due to his contribution to Surfer Rosa. The Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan described Surfer Rosa as "the one that made me go, 'holy ****'. It was so fresh. It rocked without being lame." Corgan was impressed by the album's drum sound, and acknowledged that The Smashing Pumpkins used to study the record for its technical elements.Musician PJ Harvey said that Surfer Rosa "blew my mind," and that she "immediately went to track down Steve Albini."  

    Francis and Santiago were ripping up the rule book, messing with song structures and pairing chords and riffs that sat uneasily, Santiago’s anti-solo stance at the heart of many of the album’s most memorable moments. Witness the thrilling sense of discord in the riff and churning unison bends on Where Is My Mind? That song’s solo, too, is unusual, Santiago playing notes from the B minor pentatonic scale over major chords.

    “The music is unconventional,” Francis told Guitar.com. “There’s a lot of half-steps, a lot of chords that don’t theoretically go with the key, but it seems to work.”

    The end product is a set of songs that buzz with a frightening feral energy. After Santiago’s angular riff on opening track Bone Machine, Francis howling “I’m the horny loser/ you’ll find me crashing through my mother’s door” on Break My Body and the breathless charge of Something Against You and Broken Face, it’s something of a respite when the sweet melodicism of Gigantic arrives five tracks in, yet somehow only eight and a half minutes into Surfer Rosa.

    The pace and thematic content remain frenetically intense throughout the remaining eight songs, on Cactus Francis disturbingly imploring his lover to “Bloody your hands on a cactus tree / Wipe it on your dress and send it to me”. Santiago’s one-note riffing burrows all the way through Oh My Golly! and Vamos is littered with squalls of feedback, pick scrapes and savage fretting.

    The Gigantic Legacy Of Surfer Rosa

    The Complicated Role Of Puerto Rico in Pixies Surfer Rosa

    The genius of Surfer Rosa.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,293 ✭✭✭Reberetta


    48th 21 Pts

    Bruce Springsteen
    Nebraska (1982)
    Playlist
    Chart Peak Ireland /UK/ USA:  78/3/3
    Singles: Open All Night, Atlantic City
    Nominated by the purple tin, quickbeam
    E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zant recalled to Rolling Stone magazine that Springsteen started cutting the tracks that made up Nebraska as demos for the band. However he saw potential in them and persuaded Springsteen to record them for an album:

    "I remember him playing them for me one day and said 'Here's my new songs. We'll start rehearsing them as a band soon.' And I listened to this thing and I thought to myself, 'I gotta say there's something extraordinary about this.' There was no intention of it being a record and no intention of it being released, but there was something just extraordinarily intimate about it. And I thought 'What a wonderful moment has been captured here just accidentally.' And I said to him, 'Listen, I know this is a bit strange but I honestly think this is an album unto itself and I think you should release it.' And he was like 'What do you mean? It's just demos for the band.' And I'm like 'I know you didn't intended for this to be recorded but I just know greatness when I hear it, okay? It's my thing, it's why I'm a record producer and that's why I'm your friend and I'm just telling you I think your fans will just love this and I think it's actually an important piece of work. Because it captures this amazingly strange, weirdly cinematic kind of dreamlike mood. I don't know what it is. All I know is I know greatness when I hear it and this is it, okay? And this deserves to be heard I think people will love it and I think it's a unique opportunity to actually release something absurdly intimate.'"

    Springsteen stated that the stories in this album were partly inspired by historian Howard Zinn's book A People's History of the United States.

    In the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll, Nebraska was voted the third best album of 1982. 

    In 1989, it was ranked 43rd on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s.

    That same year, Richard Williams wrote in Q magazine that "Nebraska would simply have been a vastly better record with the benefit of the E Street Band and a few months in the studio."

    In 2003, Nebraska was ranked number 224 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and 226 in a 2012 revised list. Pitchfork listed it as the 60th greatest album of the 1980s. 

    In 2006, Q placed the album at number 13 in its list of "40 Best Albums of the '80s". 

    In 2012, Slant Magazine listed the album at number 57 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980s". 

    The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

    Bruce Springsteen on Nebraska and when the demo is the album.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,429 ✭✭✭Sheridan81


    Surfer Rosa is crazy fun.


  • Posts: 8,856 ✭✭✭[Deleted User]


    I'm liking what i see already- this is gonna be a mega thread :D


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,293 ✭✭✭Reberetta


    47th 22 pts

    Bruce Springsteen
    Born To Run (1975)

    Chart Peak Ireland /UK/ USA: 20/17/3
    Singles: "Born to Run" and "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out"
    Nominated by andrewjrenko, Necro
    The album is noted for its use of introductions to set the tone of each song (all of the record was composed on piano, not guitar), and for the Phil Spector-like "Wall of Sound" arrangements and production. Springsteen has said that he wanted Born to Run to sound like "Roy Orbison singing Bob Dylan, produced by Spector."

    Born to Run was voted the third best album of 1975 in the Pazz & Jop, an annual critics poll run by The Village Voice. Christgau, the poll's creator, ranked it 12th on his own year-end list. He later wrote that its major flaw was its pompous declaration of greatness, typified by elements such as the "wall-of-sound, white-soul-at-the-opera-house" aesthetic and an "unresolved quest narrative". Nonetheless, he maintained the record was important for how "its class-conscious songcraft provided a relief from the emptier pretensions of late-hippie arena-rock." On the other hand, AllMusic's William Ruhlmann contended that although "some thought it took itself too seriously, many found that exalting."

    According to Acclaimed Music, it is the 17th most celebrated album in popular music history. In 1987, it was ranked No. 8 by Rolling Stone in its "100 Best Albums of the Last Twenty Years" and in 2003, the magazine ranked it 18th on its list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list.

    In 2001, the TV network VH1 named it the 27th-greatest album of all time,and in 2003, it was ranked as the most popular album in the first Zagat Survey Music Guide.

    The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

    It was voted number 20 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000).

    Born to Run was also listed in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry of historic recordings.
    Track by track guide.

    Born To Run and the decline of the American Dream.

    Music that wouldn't exist without Born To Run.

    Tom Hanks, Jimmy Fallon, David Chase and others on Born To Run


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,293 ✭✭✭Reberetta


    I'm liking what i see already- this is gonna be a mega thread :D

    Yes, I've got a lot of time on my hands.:D


  • Registered Users Posts: 14,243 ✭✭✭✭Arghus


    Nebraska: the only Springsteen album I like.

    Surfer Rosa, solid.

    Songs for The Deaf, yeah, can't argue with that.


  • Registered Users Posts: 322 ✭✭BobbyMalone


    Some great choices, and already making me think I should've had a different list :D


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,429 ✭✭✭Sheridan81


    I like what I'm seeing but less Bruce Springsteen please.


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  • Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 50,755 Mod ✭✭✭✭Necro


    Can't remember what I nominated and don't have the PM anymore but I *think* that was the only Springsteen album I nominated


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