Led Zeppelin 100 Greatest Rock Albums Of All Time.

Every one of these albums is worth a listen, whether you’re discovering it for the first time or reconnecting with a longtime favorite.

 

After many hours of head-scratching and more than a few worn grooves, we present one of the most ambitious and hopefully provocative lists we’ve ever done: The 100 Greatest Rock Albums of all time.

 

A few ground rules here: We’ve tried to cover the entirety of rock history, while making sure that each album still sounds great a few years after its release. This list adheres to a fairly narrow definition of “rock,” confining it to largely guitar-based music, and making exceptions only in a few cases where the album was too important to leave off. Which means, you won’t find a lot of blues, country, or R&B on this list, even though we realize how important they were as rock influences. (A few entries do fall into the R&B realm, but with so much of a rock sound that they had to be here). We’ve also left off certain genres, like electronica and acoustic singer-songwriter, that are closely related to the rock world but not really part of it. We have (or will) have other lists for that.

That said, we’ve tried to spread the wealth around, not favoring one genre of rock over another. Hence the presence of some highly mainstream albums right alongside the indie/underground entries. Punk and prog, hardcore and AOR, glam and metal, roots and arena rock – they’ve all got a place on this list, and your ears are better off for absorbing all of it.

 

Finally, this list has been confined strictly to one album per band/artist. When an artist obviously has more than one essential album, we’ve made a case for the one that we believe to be the most important of the lot. Only one artist appears twice, as a group member and solo, but if you were a Beatle and then made a game-changing solo debut we can cut you some slack. And yes, some of your favorites – and for that matter, some of ours – may be missing, but rock history is so loaded by now that 100 albums can only begin to tell the story.

 

One thing we’ll say without hesitation: Every one of these albums is worth a listen, whether you’re discovering it for the first time or reconnecting with a longtime favorite.

100: Blink-182 – Enema of the State

Skate-punk produced a number of the greatest rock albums ever. But few were catchier, funnier, or savvier than Enema of the State. For all their bluster, this was a band that knew and loved its audience: If you were hitting your late teens around 1999, “What’s My Age Again?” offered reassurance that you didn’t have to grow up just yet. In time, blink-182 proved they had a serious side; at this point nobody needed one.

99: Pearl Jam – Ten

While their Seattle brethren Nirvana distrusted everything about traditional hard rock, Pearl Jam saw the opportunity to make it meaningful again. There were plenty of visceral thrills in Mike McCready’s leads and Eddie Vedder’s vocal flights, but it was all channeled into the dark, sympathetic observations of “Alive,” “Even Flow” and “Jeremy.” Misfits seldom had this much power on their side.

98: Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream

Billy Corgan reaches for the heavens, pouring all of his guitar virtuosity and studio wizardry into a richly detailed album that still reveals new subtleties over two decades later. The wonder is that Siamese Dream’s songs, including hunting gems like “Today” and “Mayonaise,” don’t get lost in the mix.

97: Frank Zappa – Apostrophe

There’s a reason many fans remember this fondly as their first favorite Frank Zappa album: Apostrophe had so much musical invention and lyrical hilarity that it even had commercial potential (yes, “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” was even a single). The title track is his great power-trio moment, and it’s a wonder the New Age movement survived “Cozmik Debris.”

96: Television – Marquee Moon

A New York landmark, this album expanded the scope of punk rock by taking in the influence of free jazz and French Symbolist poetry; not for nothing, the leader did rechristen himself Tom Verlaine. And it’s still energetic as all get-up, especially on the classic opener “See No Evil” and the title track’s epic guitar jam.

95: Deep Purple – Machine Head

This isn’t just one of the loudest and greatest rock albums ever – it’s also one of the most joyful. Deep Purple’s darker side (in full display on the last album Fireball) is largely checked this time, on an album of pure rocking celebration. If the interplanetary stomp of “Space Truckin’” and the high-speed cruising anthem “Highway Star” don’t get your blood pumping, call the doctor.

94: Husker Du – Zen Arcade

The protean trio poured everything into this double epic, working psych, hardcore, avant-rock and noisy pop into a loose concept about a young man’s first year of freedom. Bob Mould and Grant Hart both emerge as first-class songwriters, and the band as a formidable power trio. It was famously recorded in a speed-fueled three-day session, and you can hear that too.

93: The Jam – Sound Affects

The trio’s fifth and best album shows why Paul Weller’s been a world-class rock songwriter ever since. They expand in all directions here, from furious commentary to open-hearted love songs to the sardonic classic “That’s Entertainment.” Note that The Jam regularly left their singles off the albums, and you must be at your peak when you can afford to omit a monolith like “Going Underground.”

92: Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

With a thoroughly original songwriter in Stephen Malkmus and a guitar sound to die for, Pavement avoided production trappings and delivered songs that rocked with heart and charmed with cerebral wit. The album’s influence ran deep. For one thing, it proved you didn’t need a massive studio budget when you had the songs.

91: Pretenders – Pretenders

Chrissie Hynde became an instant icon on this debut, but the original Pretenders were also a true band, taking in everything from pure punk to near-arena rock to disco and dub. But Hynde always dazzled as a singer, whether it was the personal revelations of “Tattooed Love Boys” or the cool swagger on “Brass in Pocket.”

90: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever to Tell

This album almost had too much going for it: A stack of between the eyes hooks, a band that could swing from raucous punk to classic-level pop, and Karen O’s vocal charisma and instant star quality. They’d get more polished later on, but the try-anything spirit on Fever to Tell makes it a winner – as does “Maps” one of the best rock singles of its time.

89: Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Jeff Tweedy had to fight hard for this album, with his label and even some of his band – but he knew he was on to something. The dense electronic touches prove an essential part of the picture, as the songs (largely written with the late and brilliant Jay Bennett) wrap up a fractured America headed to an uncertain future. The future of musical Americana proved brighter, making this one of the greatest rock albums ever made.