The 40 Most Groundbreaking Albums of All Time

[Zing]

:text-link:


Interesting side note (from ASCAP):

Ignoring Elvis on this list shows how irrelevant Rolling Stone has become.
Not that every album on this list shouldn't be in everybody's collection, but ignoring Elvis Presley's first RCA album shows an inexplicable ignorance of the subject at hand. (Be sure to read the notes included in the preceding link.) If the echoes of how Elvis turned the music industry on its head and opened the door to the mainstream for rock, country, black and gospel music aren't still reverberating today, I believe it's because many of those who pass themselves off as this generation's rock historians haven't taken the time to absorb, or care about, much of the history that preceded their personal frames of reference.

Perhaps Rolling Stone should stick to news stories like rapes on campuses. Oh wait...

Regardless, my collection is missing 15 of these titles.

 

[CMonster]

Regardless, my collection is missing 15 of these titles.

Mine's missing 36...

 

[Haywood]

Whoever made that list is a moron. Not only does it exclude Elvis. It excludes Pink Floyd. How can anyone argue that Dark Side is not one of the most important rock albums of all time? It was on the Billboard Hot 100 for more than a decade.

 

[mcad64]

Really...someone who's album is "Auto-Tune-heavy" is groundbreaking?

 

[Zing]

How can anyone argue that Dark Side is not one of the most important rock albums of all time?

Well, for starters, "groundbreaking" was the apparent criteria, not importance. They also excluded Boston's first album which I find almost insulting. So I guess the editors at RS have a different definition of groundbreaking than you and I do because I think both of those albums should've been included.

Really...someone who's album is "Auto-Tune-heavy" is groundbreaking?

If they were the first, then they were DEFINITELY groundbreaking. :happy-smileygiantred:

 

[Haywood]

Beach Boys Pet Sounds probably should have been on there too.

 

[CMonster]

Beach Boys Pet Sounds probably should have been on there too.

It is. :handgestures-thumbup:

 

[Haywood]

Beach Boys Pet Sounds probably should have been on there too.

It is. :handgestures-thumbup:

You're right. My bad. They got one right.

 

[Deleted member 133]

I only have 12 out of 40.

I'm going to look into 6-10 others.

The rest, despite my pretty wide taste in music, have zero appeal.

HOWEVER, all of the above is about what sounds good to me, and is irrelevant to the actual subject. I honestly don't know how many of these, including the ones I have, are truly groundbreaking, and if they are, for what reasons.

Take Brubeck's Time Out for example. I own multiple copies. Absolutely love it. But I don't know enough about jazz, or even that period, to say why it should be on the list.

And I suspect that I'm not alone in that regard.

Maybe I should get myself better educated.

Jeff

 

[Botch]

These kinds of lists are totally ridiculous, but I love seeing them as they generate some cool discussions! :handgestures-thumbup:

Missing, IMNSHO:
Never Mind the Bollocks;
DSOTM;
A Love Supreme;
Love Over Gold;
Remain in Light;
Rust Never Sleeps;

... to be continued...
:music-rockout:

 

[Deacon]

I'll have to add that there is no representation of Parliment/Funkadelic. George Clinton if nothing else was definitly groundbreaking with his creation of funk.

 

[PaulyT]

Take Brubeck's Time Out for example. I own multiple copies. Absolutely love it. But I don't know enough about jazz, or even that period, to say why it should be on the list.

In my opinion, it would be their breaking out of the usual 4/4 or 3/4 time signatures. Nobody in jazz every played in 5/4 before Brubeck.

 

[Deleted member 133]

Take Brubeck's Time Out for example. I own multiple copies. Absolutely love it. But I don't know enough about jazz, or even that period, to say why it should be on the list.

In my opinion, it would be their breaking out of the usual 4/4 or 3/4 time signatures. Nobody in jazz every played in 5/4 before Brubeck.

See that part I already knew, but I didn't know for sure if he was first. So I looked at the Wiki entry and this is what it says, in part:

While "Take Five" was not the first jazz composition to use the quintuple meter, it was one of the first that did and achieved mainstream significance in the United States. Released as a single initially on September 21, 1959, its chart potential was fulfilled only after its re-release in May 1961, reaching #25 on the Billboard Hot 100 on October 9 that year and #5 on Billboard's Easy Listening chart three weeks later. The single is a different recording than the LP version, and does not include most of the album performance's drum solo.

From that I see two things relevant to this thread:

1. Brubeck ("Take Five") was not the first, but it did get recognition; and

2. It really only came to prominence two years later when it was released as a single - and that version was different than the one found on the album.

But the list under discussion is about albums, not singles. So I am left wondering why that album made the list?

Maybe it comes down to the definition of groundbreaking. Again from Wiki: The term groundbreaking, when used as an adjective, may mean being or making something that has never been done or seen or made before; "stylistically innovative works". But as we've seen, "it" (the use of quintuple meter) had been done before, and while the album "achieved mainstream significance in the United States" that does not seem, at least to me, to be "groundbreaking."

Yeah I know I'm splitting hairs to some extent, but that's part of the problem with such lists.

Jeff

 

[Rope]

No question about that list. Anything that contains Bob Dylan has to be correct.

Rope

 

[Srvy]

No Johnny Cash-Live at Folsom Prison. Who voted on this? Rolling Stone reviewers? Pretty arrogant of them to think they are the deciders of what is groundbreaking.
Back in the 70s and 80s when I bought the mag I would read the reviews and then buy the album they raved about. Get it home give it a spin and think WTF is this shit. Album would go to an obscure spot in the album rack to collect dust and not be touched again. Typical of reviewers usually the ones they ripped to shreds I loved.

 

[Kazaam]

Did I miss Paul's Boutique?

I don't even own it, but it seems like it's been on lists like this before for its incredible use of samples.