Apple Music's 100 Best Albums is stupid

[dead0man]

now, obviously all lists like this are easy to make fun of because it's impossible to do one and make any specific person happy, but this one is extra stupid.  link

    10. Lemonade by Beyoncé
    9. Nevermind by Nirvana
    8. Back to Black by Amy Winehouse
    7. Good Kid, M.A.A.D City by Kendrick Lamar
    6. Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder
    5. Blonde by Frank Ocean
    4. Purple Rain by Prince & The Revolution
    3. Abbey Road by The Beatles
    2. Thriller by Michael Jackson
    1. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Lauryn Hill


WTF is a Frank Ocean?  Not a single spot for The Who, Paul Simon, Queen, R.E.M., The Doors, The Band, solo Beatles, Elvis Presley, James Brown, Van Morrison, Chuck Berry, or Buddy Holly?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I looked at the full list...yep epic fail indeed. Ones I like on it...

74. The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails
67. Dummy by Portishead
31. Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette
14. Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan
12. OK Computer by Radiohead
9. Nevermind by Nirvana

That's it. And not a single emo album anywhere!

EDIT: OK that Oasis album does have two songs on it I really like...the obvious ones (Wonderwall and Champagne Supernova), but the rest is just kind of bland sounding.

It actually took me awhile to even come around to liking those, because I was an Oasis hater as a teenager...believe it or not it was very common back then to hate them and they were actually a pretty hated band on the level of Creed, Nickelback or Imagine Dragons. However the reason for this is kind of funny: upon its initial release (What's the Story) Morning Glory? actually got mixed and mediocre reviews, but was a huge hit and audiences loved it and those songs. So when they came out with their third album Be Here Now critics all raved about it and called it a masterpiece...problem is the album is complete garbage and even the band has said so, one of them called it something like "a bunch of guys on coke not giving a f[inks]", and so the dissonance and pushing of it by MTV and the like caused a huge backlash. And for me I was at the age when that was actually my intro to them on MTV, and thus...

But yeah my respect for them shot up once I found even they admitted that album was crap.

[Arizona Iced Pee]

As soon as I saw The Velvet Underground & Nico at #60 I knew the list was going to be a sham.

[This user has not been convicted of 34 felonies]

No To Pimp A Butterfly = not valid

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Also why the f[inks] is Travis Scott on the list? I was under the impression that guy was being blacklisted and "canceled" ala R. Kelly.

[DaleCooper]

It's very obvious that all of these film & music critics are worried about getting called racist and worried about getting called out-of-touch. This looks exactly like when Rolling Stone dramatically rearranged their 500 greatest albums list in 2020. To be fair, there were always huge problems and political choices in that list (I don't mean political as in racial, but political as in trying to include every big name in music) but in 2020 it was so obvious that some editors just said "This list needs fewer white acts in it, it needs more rap albums and it needs more crap that came out after 2000." Ironically this results in a lot of iconic black rock stars from the 50s and 60s getting excluded, like James Brown as you mentioned, even though they're some of the most influential musicians in the last 100 years.

There's a similar issue in the film world. The Sight & Sound poll was dramatically reworked in much the same way.

[Ancestral Republican]

The exclusion of Paul Simon's Graceland is enough to safely discard this list.

[Neo-Malthusian Misanthrope]

One thing I don't get is how Amy Winehouse went from being "pretty good, and could have gone on to be even better if not for everything that lead to her death" to "literally one of the GOATs". She's fine, I'd rather listen to her than Adele or Billie Eyelash or whatever, but 8th best album of all time is a huge reach. I bring her up in particular because I happened to listen to her recently and I think I noticed her in surprisingly high spots on other lists too.

[Anti-Trump Truth Socialite JD Vance Enjoying Juror]

If you were to add up all the "obvious" picks that people claim the authors of the list missed, you'd probably have 180+ albums at this point. Making a list that people won't complain about is impossible.

[dead0man]

If you were to add up all the "obvious" picks that people claim the authors of the list missed, you'd probably have 180+ albums at this point. Making a list that people won't complain about is impossible.

100% agreed, that's always going to be the case in a top 100 anything, but as noted, this one is especially bad.

On the other hand, one of the best things about Top Whatever lists is complaining about people complaining about them, so feel free to go off!

[Anti-Trump Truth Socialite JD Vance Enjoying Juror]

If you were to add up all the "obvious" picks that people claim the authors of the list missed, you'd probably have 180+ albums at this point. Making a list that people won't complain about is impossible.

100% agreed, that's always going to be the case in a top 100 anything, but as noted, this one is especially bad.

On the other hand, one of the best things about Top Whatever lists is complaining about people complaining about them, so feel free to go off!

It’s the whole point really. I laughed at the stupid Rolling Stone top 500 pop songs list like everyone else did. Still, I do recognize that it’s basically impossible to make a list that isn’t bad.

[7,052,770]

I've never heard the album that's at #1. Maybe I should give it a listen, despite it not being my typical genre.

[DaleCooper]

I've never heard the album that's at #1. Maybe I should give it a listen, despite it not being my typical genre.

Maybe you should. It is the best album ever after all.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Lauryn Hill at #1? Yeah, no.

[LabourJersey]

The exclusion of Paul Simon's Graceland is enough to safely discard this list.

A great album!

Anyway, these lists are always dumb. Music is extremely subjective compared to literature, movies and even visual art. And the depth of music genres is so wide that it's almost comical to try and compare every single album.

Miles Davis's IN A SILENT WAY is extremely different from Taylor Swift's 1989, and people who like each have extremely different tastes in music. It's unfair to both artists to try and rank which is better and why. (I'd of course take IN A SILENT WAY any day, but again that is my preference and not an objective note)

[vitoNova]

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill = 10/10 .  "Ex-Factor" is one of the greatest love songs of all time. 

I'm not a blacks, but the reason you've never heard of it or understand its significance...

....is because you've never been invited to the barbeque.

Just sayin'

But I digress.  The greatest album of all time is Rated R, Queens of the Stone Age.