My Take
In my case, the albums that have become my favorites are the ones I feel I absolutely have to listen to from start to finish. Of course, there are standout tracks, and some, though good, might pale in comparison to others. But it’s the experience of listening to the entire album that captivates me.
Examples:
- “Flowerboy” by Tyler, The Creator.
- “Affinity” by Haken
- “Brat” by Charli XCX
- The debut album by Gentle Giant
What are your favorite albums and why?
A Perfect Circle - Thirteenth Step is my perfect album.
They aren’t even my favorite band, but there isn’t a bad moment on it.
A bunch of “classics”…
- Rumours
- Tapestry
- An Evening with John Denver
- …and then there were three…
- Boston
- Double Vision
- Out of the Blue
Yes… I am an oldster.
I’d put Trick of the Tail on there too!
Absolutely. Maybe Aja?
“My beautiful dark twisted fantasy” by Kanye West.
To me it’s such a ride from beginning to end. It’s his magnum opus
The Prodigy - Music for the Jilted Generation
Alanis Morisette - Jagged Little Pill
C2C - Tetra
Fuel Fandango - Aurora
Sepultura - Chaos AD
Hard Funk Trio - Mustang
These are all albums I can listen to and genuinely enjoy every track … I can’t give a particular reason. Most albums have tracks that I prefer to skip over, just not these ones.
Looking at it, that’s a pretty international lineup … purely by accident, lol … artists from the UK, Canada, France, Spain, Brazil, and Argentina :-)
Always good to see someone pick …Jilted Generation over Fat of the Land. I do like the latter, but MFTJG is perfection.
Yes.
I loved Fat of the Land, had the available singles before the whole album dropped. But not every song is that good.
Experience is close for me (plus it’s a nostalgia trip), and I also enjoy all of Invaders Must Die.
But Jilted is wall to wall Goldielocks perfect porridge :-)
Yeah, love Experience too, except for I think it maybe lacks the best mixes IMO of Charly (Alley Cat) and Everybody in the Place (Fairground). Can’t remember 100% off the top of my head, but I think it’s those two.
The live recording of death of the dancers isn’t the best either … I’m not a fan of live tracks for most bands, though
Most of the music I listen to either doesn’t come in albums, or is in a 40+ track OST. However, there are a few which I can say are enjoyable in their entirety.
UNDERTALE OST is 101 tracks, and while some of the tracks are ambient noise and sound effects, Like 93% of it is great. Basically anything Toby Fox does has a high rate of enjoyment from me.
Medium by Clark Powell is entirely a masterpiece—not only the individual tracks, but how they interact with one another, and what they represent to the story of their context.
Nothing Is Quick in the Desert by Public Enemy has a great listening experience, where nearly every track blends into the next. Not typical for the music I usually listen to.
It certainly isn’t for everyone, but The Caretaker’s Everywhere at the End of Time is excellent. The middle section up until nearly the end can be pretty abstract, but there’s a certain… bliss that can be derived from it.
There’s more, but these are the ones that immediately come to mind.
I find there are very few albums that are great beginning to end, and I’m not including “greatest hits” or “Best of…” collections.
- The Crystal Method - Vegas
- Bad Mojos - Songs that Make You Wanna Die!
- GZA - Pro Tools
- Sloppy Seconds - Destroyed (guilty pleasure of mine)
- Eddy Current Suppression Ring - Primary Colours
When I think of my favorite albums, they tend to have come to me at a time to hit me emotionally. There may be one or two songs that aren’t my favorite, but don’t detract from the whole. Oddly enough if I listen to an entire album I prefer it be a concept album, but my favorites tend to not have one cohesive theme. My favorites ordered by time include:
The Red Album by Weezer- My dad gave me the CD when I was in middle school, we’d jam to it in the car on the way to school, and when I got an mp3 player I’d listen to just about every song often.
Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd- Yes, this is a cliche. The one time I experienced ego death was on a heroic dose of LSD in college while laying in bed with an eye mask on listening to this album for the first time. I felt that I was in on a joke, that life was so vast and yet so short. I laughed, I cried, it moved me. I gave serious consideration to what I wanted out of life for the first time instead of only wanting some direction given to me. I listened to the album many more times after that when I needed a reminder of that experience.
The New Abnormal by The Strokes- This album came out at the start of the pandemic when I was stressing out of my mind at the state of the world. I loved the album name, I love every song off the album, they all felt relatable in some way, Spotify said I was in the top .5% of Strokes listeners that year. When one song comes on from my library I’m always tempted to play the whole thing. It’s great.
The Sonic Age by The Symposium- I think this is one of my favorites. I couldn’t name half the songs, but I found the artist and the album came out shortly after my dad passed away. I really like how rushed yet smooth and relaxed the album feels, it mirrored how I felt processing his death and I could just put it on and feel fine with not being fine for a bit.
For full album plays some of my favourites are:
- Lou Reed’s “New York”
- David Bowie “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”
- The Carpenters “Christmas Carol”
- The Bodeans “Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams”
- Bob Dylan’s “Infidels”
- Louis Prima’s “The Wildest”
- The Boomtown Rats “The Fine Art of Surfacing”
A lot of classic albums, for me, tend to have a connection running through all the songs. The album is a work in itself rather than just being a collection of random songs by the same artist.
The album I think of when this question comes up is Consolers of the Lonely by The Raconteurs. Every song is so expertly crafted; it’s a smooth effortless listen from beginning to end. Highly recommend.
“In case I make it,” made by will wood, is my favorite album of all time, mainly because it not only has one of the best overall songs I’ve heard ever, but because it deeply resonates with me as a person. I suppose I choose my favorites by the overall quality but also on my personal taste.
Does all the songs in your favorite music album are masterpieces?
Never did them wasn’t.
I believe in this and its been tested by research, he who fucks nuns will later join the church. A double album where all but maybe 1 song fantastic.
Booker T and the M.G.'s Universal Language
The album was dedicated to M.G.'s drummer Al Jackson, Jr., who was murdered in 1975;[2] the remaining members recruited Willie Hall to replace him on this album.[3] The group would not record another album for seventeen years, returning in 1994 with That’s the Way It Should Be.
There’s something so deep and unique about this album. Last Tango in Memphis is my favorite track, but this is one of the few albums of any genre I enjoy just putting on and listening to all the way through.
