COUNTDOWN: Top 50 Music Albums Of All-Time.

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).

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 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.

Blur frontman Damon Albarn told NME in 1994, "For me, Parklife is like a loosely linked concept album involving all these different stories. It's the travels of the mystical lager-eater, seeing what's going on in the world and commenting on it." Albarn cited the Martin Amis novel London Fields as a major influence on the album. Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher was once quoted saying that Parklife was, "Like Southern England personified".

The songs themselves span many genres, such as the synthpop-influenced hit single "Girls & Boys", the instrumental waltz interlude of "The Debt Collector", the punk rock-influenced "Bank Holiday", the spacey, Syd Barrett-esque "Far Out", and the fairly new wave-influenced "Trouble in the Message Centre".

Journalist John Harris commented that while many of the album's songs "reflected Albarn's claims to a bittersweet take on the UK's human patchwork", he stated that several songs, including "To the End" (featuring Lætitia Sadier of Stereolab) and "Badhead" "lay in a much more personal space".

Sign o' the Times has been regarded by critics as Prince's best album.According to journalist Kristen Pyszczyk, "critics tend to be pretty evenly divided over Prince’s best album: about half will go for Purple Rain, and the rest usually vouch for Sign o' the Times, a double album sometimes regarded as Prince's magnum opus."

In a retrospective review, John McKie of BBC News cited it as "one of the most acclaimed albums of the second half of the 20th century" and a "masterpiece - encompassing all of [Prince's] musical personas: bedroom balladeer; penitent Christian; one-track-mind loverman; modern-day Basie-style bandleader; whimsical storyteller; meticulous orchestrator, guitar-wielding axeman and pop craftsman."

Simon Price deemed it Prince's best album,as did Michaelangelo Matos, who wrote in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004) that it was "the most complete example of his artistry's breadth, and arguably the finest album of the 1980s".Matos also believed it was "the last classic R&B album prior to hip hop's takeover of black music and the final four-sided blockbuster of the vinyl era".

Writing in The Brooklyn Rail, Grimstad said that Sign o' the Times is "to be included with other double sets that actually cohere (The White Album, The Basement Tapes, Something/Anything). Proves there is no limit to what [Prince] can do." In a BBC Music review, Daryl Easla also compared the record to the Beatles' The White Album, saying "Although Sign ‘O’ The Times didn’t rival his commercial sales peak of Purple Rain, it is his [The] White Album".

For Susan Rogers, Prince’s sound engineer from 1983 to 1987, Sign O’ the Times was an intentional departure for the artist. “Purple Rain was the work of a brilliant young man,” she tells BBC Culture. “Boys are cocky. Sign O’ the Times was an album made by a grown man. The charts had moved on and hip-hop was taking over. There was a world outside his door; there was restlessness; there was curiosity; there was the Aids epidemic.”

According to Acclaimed Music, it is the 29th most celebrated album in popular music history, and the best album of 1987.

Wildflowers is not Tom Petty’s tightest album, nor his easiest to listen to. There’s hopelessness and anger; disappointment and regret. Its disparate modes—blues, country, folk, power-pop, torch songs—are connected by the roads, both literal and figurative, that led him to where he found himself: lonely, middle-aged, digging through his consciousness as one would ransack a room to find a small, lost object. “You were so cool back in high school,” he sings smoothly in the last song before switching to his frank, Southern speaking voice: “What happened?” He asks the question and deflates with no hint of poetry or romance, let alone an answer.

In tone and structure, Wildflowers recalls Neil Young’s 1970 album After the Gold Rush. Petty’s lyrics are simple and intuitive (“In the middle of his life/He left his wife”), spoken as plainly as possible. Yet every word comes alive, speaking multitudes. “Don’t be afraid anymore,” he sings in one song, “It’s only a broken heart.” Young once sang something similar, employing the second-person to place himself as the distanced narrator, the wiser voice offering sage advice. But did anyone buy it? You don’t write songs like these when you’re standing back trying to see the big picture: You write them when you’re in the middle of it, unraveling, talking to yourself, looking for a friend.