Wax Ecstatic: The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time- Honorable Mentions
The what might've been edition
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Good morning!
Sam and I have each now completed our picks for the 100 Best Albums. Below is a bit of a recap as well as some of the records that missed the cut.
Some classic records are borne from the merest of circumstances. A romance ends, and an artist uses songwriting as a way out of their heartbreak. People’s parents all happen to buy a home in the same geographical area, and the kids wind up meeting and forming a band. Someone hears bass booming from a party down the block and decides that the concussive feeling in their chest is one they want to replicate. A label owner buys a new car with a CD player in it and decides he wants to listen to one of his artists while driving.
Likewise, records often find their way to us by coincidence. People opt to live in a particular place, and their kids might not form bands, but they share music with each other at school. A specific song comes on the radio at just the exact moment you happen to be listening. That boy or girl you like likes a band. You wind up liking them, too. You buy your own car and want to use the CD player.
It was never going to be easy. When all was said and done, this project was one great idea (thanks again, Sam!): 200 records, thousands of songs, and over 100,000 words. And that barely scratches the surface.
Every record needed to make its case for the space it occupied. The guardrails were broad, but they were rigid. 100 records. No more, no less. 500 would've felt like we were copying Rolling Stone. 250 would’ve felt like a NASCAR race. 127 would’ve felt like I couldn’t commit…
And yet…
For every album that made the cut, dozens just missed. Plenty of worthy picks are right there, just on the other side of the glass, looking in. Some are personal faves that, had this been Kevin's Top 100, wouldn’t have shown up until week 8 or 9. Some are universally loved but they just never landed with me.
As discussed in the recap, there are some that I’ve long felt only make these lists because people assume they should be there. This handful of titles tends to be the same no matter who you ask, as long as they're a certain age. That wasn’t going to happen here. If we had wanted to do that, we would've saved the keystrokes and just pasted in 4-5 links to previous lists for people to read. We didn’t want that and bet—correctly, it turns out—that you didn’t either.
That said, with the benefit of hindsight—and a handy graphic to look at—I think it's worth addressing a few points before getting into the honorable mentions.
First, my list could've used more women artists. There are plenty here, but it’s a clear minority. That’s more a testament to what I was listening to (and when) than anything else. There are also a few artists who have never landed with me. I’d have loved to have found a place for Linda Ronstadt on this list. Joni Mitchell? Not so much. I respected what Kathleen Hanna and other Riot Grrls were doing, but I appreciated the change they were fighting for more than the sounds they were making. Joan Baez? Maybe. Joan Armatrading? Absolutely.
I’d have liked to have more jazz on the list as well. After all, it was one of the first genres I ever heard, and I’m having a field day slowly going through the records I inherited. But it would’ve been intellectually dishonest to add some just for the sake of rounding out the list. At a minimum, it would've felt a bit performative.
Threading the needle between personal favors and objective classics is more art than science. I only think about Dave Brubeck’s 5/4 on May 4th, and that’s mainly so I can post the meme that (gently) pokes fun at Star Wars fans and their May the 4th Be With You pics (I love you all. Please don’t @ me.)
May 4th is also Sluttering Day, a riff on a Jawbreaker song. Had this been Kevin's best or a top 127, all four of their studio albums would've made the cut, not just one. I probably would’ve figured out how to work the rest of their discography in as well.
It's the same story with The Replacements. You have to draw the line somewhere, but man, I agonized over leaving Don’t Tell a Soul off this list. Yes, I know a lot of people don't care for it. Again, please don't @ me.
And then there’s my beloved New Order. In a just world, Low Life would’ve made the list. Brotherhood, too, probably. And Republic…and Movement…and…
Last week, I shared how I came up with my list, noting that I started by taking a large sheet of teletype paper from the printer next to my desk at work and writing out a brain dump of every “good” record I could think of, adding specific records as they popped into my head. My goal was to thread the needle between objectively and subjectively good.
The records below are listed similarly- that is, they’re rostered in the utterly random order they were scribbled at the bottom of each of my lists. For this post, I just moved from left to right across the bottom of each sheet.
This also doesn’t account for records that popped into my head and disappeared back into the ether before I thought to write them down, genres that are blindspots for me, or records that I’ve simply never heard.
Note: Sam is sharing his 200-191 picks today as well. You can jump into the discussion by going here.
The Honorable Mentions:
Wire- It’s Beginning to and Back Again
Bad Religion-Suffer/No Control
Ivy-Apartment Life
Saint Etienne-Tiger Bay/Fox Base Alpha
2nd II None- S/T
Talking Heads-Fear of Music/Remain In Light
Ned’s Atomic Dustbin- God Fodder
Yeah Yeah Yeahs- It’s Blitz!
Nick Lowe- Jesus of Cool
Pixies-Surfer Rosa
Beastie Boys-Check Your Head
Sonic Youth- Daydream Nation
George Benson-20/20
R.E.M.-Out of Time/Green/ (pretty much anything from the IRS era)
Japanese Breakfast- Psychopomp
Green Day- Kerplunk
Maggie Rogers- Don’t Forget Me
Nirvana-Bleach
Japandroids-Post-Nothing
The Judybats-Down in the Shacks Where the Satellite Dishes Grow
Stevie Wonder- Songs in the Key of Life
PJ Harvey-Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea
GBV- Bee Thousand
The Magnetic Fields- 69 Songs
Chemical Brothers-Exit Planet Dust
X- Los Angeles
Todd Rundgren-Something/Anything
Hall & Oates- Abandoned Luncheonette
The Fall-Extricate
American Music Club- San Francisco
Massive Attack- Mezzanine
Fleetwood Mac- Mirage/Tusk/Tango in the Night
The Surpremes-Where Did Our Love Go?
Martha & The Vandellas- Heat Wave
The Smiths- The Queen Is Dead
Sly and the Family Stone- Stand!
Wu-Tang Clan-Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
A Tribe Called Quest- The Low-End Theory
Metallica- Ride the Lightning
Eric B & Rakim- Paid in Full
Madonna- Like a Virgin
David Bowie- Ziggy Stardust/Station to Station
TV on the Radio-Seeds
The Grateful Dead- Europe ‘72
Linda and Richard Thompson-Shoot Out the Lights
Phoenix- Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Minutemen-Double Nickels on the Dime
The Band- The Last Waltz
Linda Ronstadt-Heart Like a Wheel
Guy-S/T
Nada Surf- Let Go/ The Weight is a Gift
Cocteau Twins- Treasure
Depeche Mode- Music for the Masses
Joe Jackson- Body and Soul
The Replacements- Don’t Tell a Soul/Pleased to Meet Me
Delaney & Bonnie- Accept No Substitutes
Scritti Politti- Cupid & Psyche ‘85
Jane’s Addiction-Nothing’s Shocking
TLC-Crazy, Sexy, Cool
Peter Gabriel- Melt
The Veldt- Marigolds
Pet Shop Boys-Actually
Luther Vandross- Never Too Much
Counting Crows- August & Everything After
And, of course, how could I forget New Order’s Substance? A record that is a stat leader by just about any metric you want to apply to me. Most played…most copies owned… owned in most formats…most favorite songs… whatever.
Substance is hard to classify. It’s a quasi-greatest-hits record. It’s a compilation of the band’s 12” singles and B-sides. It’s packed with all-timers. It’s one of the largest looming records in my life. But Technique and Power Corruption and Lies had already locked their spots in. I also had a couple of compilations elsewhere, and well, let’s just say in an alternate universe, this at least clocks in at 10a, if not higher.
Mostly, I just think the world’s a better place because of it…
…And it came into existence because Factory Records founder Tony Wilson bought a new car with a (then) new thing called a CD player and wanted all of those singles in one spot so he could listen to them while he was driving.
Your turn:
What does your top 10 look like?
Which one(s) on today’s list should have made the cut?
What would you have liked to see more of? Less of?
Need to catch up?
Check out Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.
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Be sure to check out the playlist as well! We’ve been adding selected tracks from the records covered here each week. It’s best enjoyed on shuffle.
Thanks for being here,
Kevin—
Really thought Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix and Double Nickels on the Dime would be in your top 100. I love both of these records.
Okay, I looked at the list. I can tell our 9 or 10 year age difference by many of these picks!:) I would definitely have Minutemen' Double Nickels in my top 10, and quite possibly Beasties' Check Your Head and Tribe's Low End Theory. Joe Jackson would make my list too, but probably not Body and Soul. Probably Look Sharp!, but also maybe Night and Day. Surprised to see Nada Surf and Grateful Dead on your list, for different reasons.
Imagining all the time and energy you must have put into these 200 LPs is making me sleepy. Nap time!