Wax Ecstatic: The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time RECAP
We take you behind the scenes, share how this project came to pass, what surprised us along the way, and what's next.
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Good morning!
Sam and I have each now completed our picks for the 100 Best Albums. Below is a recap of the project. What went right, what might’ve been, and what surprised us.
Before we jump in:
Need to catch up? Check out Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.
All of Sam’s are here. While you're there, subscribe to This Is A Newsletter!
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.
Let’s get into it!
The Breakdown:
Sam’s List By Decade:
1950s: 1
1960s: 13
1970s: 20
1980s: 9
1990s: 27
2000s: 18
2010s: 12
2020s: 0
Kevin’s List By Decade:
1950s: 2
1960s: 5
1970s: 19
1980s: 39
1990s: 27
2000s: 3
2010s: 3
2020s: 2
Sam’s List By Genre:
“Classic” Rock: 17
Country: 1
Electronic/Dance: 7
Funk: 2
Hip-Hop: 15
Indie/Alt-Rock: 27
Jazz: 6
Pop: 7
R&B/Soul: 13
Reggae: 0
Singer/Songwriter: 6
Kevin’s List By Genre:
“Classic” Rock: 22
Country: 1
Electronic/Dance: 5
Funk: 1
Hip-Hop: 4
Indie/Alt-Rock: 41
Jazz: 4
Pop: 9
R&B/Soul: 8
Reggae: 1
Singer/Songwriter: 4
Overlapping Albums:
Disintegration - The Cure (Sam #38 / Kevin #4)
Doolittle - Pixies (Sam #62 / Kevin #30)
Hounds of Love - Kate Bush (Sam #18 / Kevin #8)
Heaven or Las Vegas - Cocteau Twins (Sam #31 / Kevin #12)
London Calling - The Clash (Sam #9 / Kevin #28)
Nevermind - Nirvana (Sam #13 / Kevin #11)
Purple Rain - Prince (Sam #6, Kevin #23)
Rid of Me - P.J. Harvey (Sam #46 / Kevin #45)
Sound of Silver - LCD Soundsystem (Sam #60 / Kevin #65)
Tim - The Replacements (Sam #78 / Kevin #14)
What’s Going On - Marvin Gaye (Sam #2 / Kevin #36)
Overlapping Artists:
The Beatles
Sam: The Beatles (White Album) #55 / Abbey Road #1
Kevin: Revolver #21
Björk
Sam: Vespertine #16
Kevin: Post #71
Bruce Springsteen
Sam: Born to Run #11
Kevin: Tunnel of Love #39
Ella Fitzgerald
Sam: Ella & Louis #72
Kevin: Ella Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook #34
Janet Jackson
Sam: Velvet Rope #32
Kevin: Control #94
Sade
Sam: Love Deluxe #47
Kevin: Diamond Life #89
Stereolab
Sam: Dots and Loops #91
Kevin: Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements #98
Talking Heads
Sam: Remain in Light #22
Kevin: Talking Heads ‘77 #22 / Stop Making Sense #4
Q&A
Q: How did you make your final picks?
Sam: I kicked off the series with my criteria: A 50/50 split between personal favorites and albums that are widely considered classics within their respective genres. As a personal rule, I wait 5-10 years before I consider an album a classic (there are rare exceptions like To Pimp a Butterfly), so there was no LP more recent than 2019 on my list.
I tried to include a diverse range of music, although, upon further reconsideration, my list could’ve used more metal, prog-rock, and country. I also wanted to throw some curveballs in there, not for the sake of being contrarian, but to go with less obvious picks so other deserving masterpieces get a shout-out: i.e., John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme was going to make the final cut, but it’s on every critic’s list of all-time great jazz records, so at the last minute, I swapped it with John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman.
I wanted to pay respect to some of the classics that have withstood the test of time, have been foundational to my music journey, and had a profound influence on my favorite music—I think I succeeded in that regard with my top 20—but I also didn’t want to recreate the typical Greatest Albums Ever list that you’d find on mainstream music publications. The internet does not need another white dude explaining why Dark Side of the Moon is amazing.
Kevin: 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.
I assumed that most of my initial iterations would over-index on things I liked rather than records that “belonged” on the list (more on that in a second), so that was top of mind as I made each revision. Without any guardrails, the top 30 would've just been the discographies of New Order, Wire, Jawbreaker, and The Replacements.
That said, there are records here that changed the world and ones that live on only in the memories of the people lucky enough to have been in the right place at the right time. There are a couple of albums on here that changed a city. There are a couple that might’ve only changed me.
When Sam and I first started chatting about putting this together, one of the things we didn't want to do was churn out another version of the RS 500. That’s been done, and people have read it all 100 times.
We weren't interested in doing a rage bait series either, but at the same time, there were no sacred cows. Dylan wasn’t going to get a first-round bye just because of who he is, ya know? Same with the Stones.
Ultimately, I was trying to draw out a Venn diagram of objectively good LPs, some of my personal faves, and a few others that people might not have considered before. That overlap became my list.
Q: How long did it take to make your list?
Sam: I approached Kevin with this idea in late-June, so it took me about 4-6 weeks. I began by listing as many off the top of my head that would crack such a list, then I dug through my saved albums in my Spotify library, and after I perused Pitchfork’s and Rolling Stone’s Top Albums lists to see if I missed anything.
Kevin: Far too long. Lol. I’m incredibly fussy when it comes to this sort of thing, and had we not set up a fixed publishing schedule, I would probably still be hunched over a table somewhere, wondering where best to fit in another Wire record. In the end, it was similar to Sam’s timeline above— about 4-6 weeks.
Q: How many times did you change it up?
Sam: My top 20 picks were assembled pretty quickly, and surprisingly, my top 50 was solidified not too far after with minimal tweaking. The biggest challenge was fitting 150 albums into my bottom 50. These lists are so subjective and arbitrary because hundreds of albums warrant a plausible argument of deserving to be in the Top 100 Albums Ever, and you’re just hairsplitting and making personal decisions at that point. (Next week, I’ll host a discussion thread on the other 100 that just missed the cut.)
If you asked me to recreate this list 5-10 years from now, it would probably look very different; and if I changed my criteria to be purely personal or strictly based on cultural/musical impact, my rankings would be reshuffled. But that’s what made this project so fun: It was both a good-spirited appreciation of dope music and an insight into who Kevin and I are as individuals and fans. All this is to say that I changed my list dozens of times.
Kevin: How many zeroes are in a gazillion, again? After the initial brain dump, I started trying to chisel it all into something resembling a list. My first versions were in pencil. Then I thought I’d be slick and build a colossal survey using Jotform, where I could just force rank all of my choices. Easy right? What I didn’t realize is that every time I signed out, it would reset them. Oops.
Ultimately I went back to pencil/paper, and grouped my final 100 into the blocks of 10 I thought they’d best fit in. Some of those were jostled around right up until the last minute.
Q: What did you learn about yourself and Kevin/Sam through this exercise?
Sam: I alluded to this sentiment in one of the earlier installments of this series, but my biggest takeaway was how much the context of our upbringings influenced our listening patterns and what we enjoy. Obviously, Napster, social media, and music streaming eliminated the need for radio gatekeepers and MTV, but I feel fortunate to have come of age at a time when I had a universe of music at my fingertips. It’s wild that I can discover an album released in the ‘70s and it feels like finding “new” music.
The biggest benefit is that it has allowed me to listen to and appreciate a wide range of music. However, sometimes I feel like a bit of an interloper in these genres rather than a native. What I respect the most out of Kevin’s list and the stories attached to the albums is he seems deeply rooted in a scene and has an intense passion for the types of music that he listens to—thinking about picks like Sweaty Nipples, Garbage, Guided By Voices, Sugar, etc.
I’ve long held the belief that you can learn a lot about a person based on what kind of art and entertainment they appreciate. My favorite aspect of this project is I felt like I got to inhabit a bit of Kevin’s world and get a glimpse of what music shaped him as a person and what was the soundtrack to different points of his life. I hope he got a similar experience out of it, because while I have never met Kevin in-person, I felt like I got to know him a bit throughout this exercise and I’m looking forward to some future collabs.
Kevin: I was genuinely surprised at how many records from the 1980s are represented here. We’ve all heard the theory that the music you find in your formative years tends to shape your tastes for life—and that tracks here—but at a minimum, I thought the 80s (39) and 90s (27) would’ve been flipped. The 00s and early 2010s are a bit of a musical blind spot for me. I had two young kids at home, and there wasn’t much time (or money) for new music discovery. There are only six total records on my list from those years. I knew there’d only be a few; I was surprised at just how few.
With Sam’s picks, I was surprised at how varied they were. I knew we were making a list that wasn’t genre-specific, but in my head, I still thought it would be a lot of 2000s-era indie rock and hip hop. Seeing records from the Strokes and Avalanches felt on brand. Funkadelic, Pink Floyd and Alice Coltrane most certainly did not. Again, these picks make perfect sense in context—the only thing they were contradicting were the ginned-up assumptions in my head.
Q: What were your favorite 5 albums that Kevin/Sam picked that you discovered or finally listened to for the first time front-to-back?
Sam:
The Gilded Palace of Sin - The Flying Burrito Brothers: I grew up on ‘60s rock, so I had always known of the Flying Burrito Brothers, but judging by the name, I assumed they were a gimmicky B-tier psych rock band. I was hopelessly wrong. This album blew me away.
Tapestry - Carol King: I’ve heard the singles off Tapestry for what feels like my entire life, but I’m glad I dug into the deeper cuts on this one.
Twin Cinema - The New Pornographers: I confused them with the New Radicals, so I looked them up and when I found out Destroyer was in this band, I realized my erroneous ways and gave this a spin. It’s another indie classic from the Socialist Republic of Canuckistan.
Tunnel of Love - Bruce Springsteen: I stubbornly stuck to the albums from The Wild, the Innocent, and the E-Street Shuffle to Born in the U.S.A., and specifically stayed away from this one because I assumed it would be an ‘80s cheeseball album. Well, it is in some regards, but it’s also a gutting and affective heartbreak album, and I respect the Boss’s artistic integrity not to churn out Born in the U.S.A. Part 2.
Copper Blue - Sugar: I loved Hüsker Dü in high school and was amazed that I had never heard of this. It’s an incredible power pop record.
Kevin:
Yellow House - Grizzly Bear: I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this wasn't it. At all. What a treat!
Zombie - Fela Kuti: When Sam made his pick, I noted that this might be the first time I'd sat down and listened to a Fela Kuti record. I had a rough idea of what I was in for. I didn't bargain on how much I’d enjoy it and return to it even after we’d moved on with the lists.
Journey in Satchidananda - Alice Coltrane: What an out-of-left-field pick this was. And what a gorgeous LP it is. I was entranced, and it got me to sit down, stop everything I was doing, and just listen. In 2024, that’s a heck of a win.
Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan: For as sure as I am that I’ve listened to this all the way through before, I’m equally sure that I’m one of the people I mentioned who never got past the first track. Last week, I wrote about coming into records exactly when you're supposed to. Maybe that was the case here?
Lonerism - Tame Impala: Anything made by someone named Kevin will warrant a look from me. This was fantastic.
As for records front-to-back, it is once again worth noting that Sam accomplished what no person has ever done before—he got me to listen to not one but two Radiohead records in their entirety.
Q: Were there any albums that Kevin/Sam picked that made you reevaluate your stance on them, or gain a greater appreciation of?
Sam:
II - Meat Puppets: I loved this album in middle school, as I discovered it through the covers Nirvana did on their MTV Unplugged. It had been a while since I gave this a spin and I remembered how amazing this quirky piece of psychedelic, low-fi cowboy punk is.
Exile in Guyville - Liz Phair: It’s an album that I had respected as a feminist indie rock classic, but giving this another listen made me appreciate Liz’s disaffected storytelling and the emotional forthrightness in her delivery.
Graceland - Paul Simon: It’s not that I forgot how much I love this album, but revisiting it made me love it more.
Dusty in Memphis - Dusty Springfield: This was an album that I had always liked but never loved. I have since changed my tune. This is a definitive ‘60s record.
Pretty Hate Machine - Nine Inch Nails: This one always got lost in The Downward Spiral’s shadow for me. I hadn’t listened to Nine Inch Nails in a while, and I somewhat (and regretably) fell out of love with them. Going back to this sparked a NIN spree. The Downward Spiral is still my favorite, but this is a stellar industrial rock/electronic album.
Parallel Lines - Blondie: This absolutely slaps. I haven’t listened to Blondie since undergrad, but it’s a perfect new wave album.
Pink Flag - Wire: Another one I know is a perfect post-punk album, but hadn’t listened to it in years. Spoiler: It’s in my next 100 albums, but after giving this a recent spin, I’d handily put it in my top 50.
Kevin:
E. 1999 Eternal - Bone Thugs-n-Harmony: It had been decades since I listened to this all the way through. I expected some of it to sound dated. I was pleasantly surprised at how much it held up. I didn’t have nearly enough “old school” hip hop on my list. I’m not sure ‘95 is old enough to count, and I don’t know that it would crack a revised best 100, but it’d for sure make a deep run.
What’s Going On? - Marvin Gaye: I knew placing it in the mid-30s would raise some hackles. Sam made an impassioned case for why it deserves to be higher. If I were to do this again, it would be.
Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen: This is an excellent record, but it always feels like the default Springsteen pick (with Nebraska a close second). Just once, I want someone to choose chaos and opt for The River. But listening again, it almost felt like the first time. I stand by picking Tunnel of Love and why I did, but man, Born To Run would be hard to leave off the list.
After the Gold Rush - Neil Young: I’m not the biggest Neil Young fan, and even when I do listen, I need to really be in the mood. I was not officially in the mood when I played it for this project (whatever that means), but in this case, it didn’t matter. I enjoyed it, and now I think I should give more of his stuff a closer listen.
Led Zeppelin IV - Led Zeppelin: It's weird how you can know almost every note on a record yet don't recognize it for the whole. I’d been doing that for years with the songs on IV, but that’s now changed.
Abbey Road - The Beatles: I’ve listened to it more than any other record in this category.
Q: Were you surprised by the years of releases on Sam’s/Kevin’s list? What about your own?
Sam: I didn’t expect to have so many ‘70s albums. My initial list had more indie rock albums from the 2000s that were staples of my high school and college years. Judging by Kevin’s album write-ups, I figured his list would be ‘80s and ‘90s heavy, but I thought he’d have some more albums from the aughts—I know he loves Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, for example, so I thought some more records from that era would’ve cracked his list.
Kevin: Again, I was surprised how over-indexed my list was on the 1980s. I would’ve thought there would be a (relatively) even split between the 1970s, 1980s, and 90s, or, at a minimum, the ‘90s would’ve made up the majority of picks.
For Sam, we’d previously worked together on a Best-of-2023 list. If you'd asked me at the start, I would’ve been sure at least one of them would’ve made the list. Later, I learned that he feels records should marinate a bit before warranting being placed on a list. It’s a fair point, but a few of last year's picks were good enough that I felt I had no choice but to include them. That said, I was surprised how many of his picks came from the 60s & 70s.
Q: Which of Kevin’s/Sam’s picks did you agree with the most and which did you disagree with the most?
Sam: I’m still salty about Kevin’s What’s Going On placement, and I’m sure he feels the same about where I landed with Disintegration. And, of course, Kevin’s complete and inexcusable Radiohead erasure—although, that was a given from the start.
In all seriousness, there wasn’t much to disagree with on some “objective” point of view. Kevin grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and is drawn to a lot of indie and alt-rock of that timeframe, so coming from that standpoint, it’s hard to argue with his picks, especially when there was a lot of fire in his top 30. Aja is an album that’s in my next 100 and narrowly missed my cut, but it fucking rules, so I wouldn’t begrudge anyone for listing it as their greatest or favorite album.
Ultimately, and I assume Kevin would agree, the vibes I tried to bring to this project were to celebrate great albums—and hopefully discover some great new tunes—and everyone in our respective comment sections reciprocated the positivity, which made for some fun and lively discussions. And, at least my goal was to get in better touch with my taste in music, why I hold certain albums in such high regard, and to learn more about Kevin throughout the process. It was a success on all fronts.
Kevin: See above. This echoes my sentiments exactly. We wanted to celebrate some universally loved records, bring our own picks to the table, learn a little about each other’s tastes, and hear about these records' role in reader’s lives. I think we hit every one of those marks.
Q: What were the biggest surprise inclusions, placements, and omissions?
Sam:
Inclusion: I had no idea what I was in for with a band called Sweaty Nipples, but I was glad I checked them out.
Inclusion: Since Kevin went with a Jesus and Mary Chain record, I thought he would go with Psychocandy over Barbed Wire Kisses.
Placement: I didn’t expect Purple Rain and London Calling to be higher on my rankings.
Placement: I expected Heaven or Las Vegas and a Replacements album to be in Kevin’s top 10.
Placement: I was surprised to see Yo La Tengo outside Kevin’s top 25.
Placement: I was sure Power, Corruption, and Lies would be Kevin’s top pick, and Aja swooped in for the top spot.
Omission: Given how much Kevin has praised Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock, I was shocked this didn’t make his list.
Omission: Since Kevin loves ‘80s college/alt-rock, I assumed a Smiths or Dinosaur Jr. album would’ve cracked his top 100.
Omission: I was convinced Kevin would have two R.E.M. albums on his list.
Omission: No Dylan, Zeppelin, Bowie, or Stones album on Kevin’s list. Not saying he had to have one of each on there, but not even one album from those four combined was a bit of a curveball.
Hopefully, all these bullet points don’t give off the impression that I’m disappointed with Kevin’s picks. I’m glad my expectations weren’t met, because that would’ve sapped a lot of the fun out of the series. It’s similar to the same reason why watching sports can be so entertaining—it’s the randomness and surprise that makes it worth paying attention to. Having us only see each other picks at 10 per week added an element of chaos to the series, and I’m glad we made that decision because we were originally going to unload our entire lists to each other at the beginning back in August.
Kevin:
Given the genesis of this project and the blowback at Apple naming Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill its top pick, I was surprised to see it in his top three.
That PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me would be the closest we’d come to a bingo (the same record ranked in the same spot) was not something I would’ve seen coming.
Given Sam’s comments about where I ranked What’s Going On, I knew he’d likely place it higher. I was surprised at just how much higher it ultimately was.
I knew we’d have some overlap, but I was surprised at what those records/artists ultimately were.
Going in, I had a theory that there would be some throughlines here, and on a surface level, a couple of those played out (we both placed a Beatles record relatively high, for example). I also had a theory that as we went, any overlapping records—and their placement— would reflect our age. I mean that I might place it relatively higher if it was an older release, he’d place it higher if it was younger, etc. In other words, I assumed we’d weight records from our youth higher while actively trying to resist recency bias. As you saw from this list at the top of the article, that was much more of a mixed bag than I had banked on.
No Depeche Mode?
I was surprised that Sam named Dylan, Bowie, The Stones, and Led Zeppelin.
I didn’t expect multiple Pink Floyd picks.
No R.E.M.?
I was delighted to see Stereolab make the cut. IMO, we each picked one of the band’s two best records.
The idea that a prog record or two would show up had never crossed my mind.
I also want to double-click on the fact that we didn't share all 100 of our picks with each other at once. It was ten at a time, just a few days before everyone else saw them. That element of the unknown made this all more exciting (at least for me), and for ten weeks in a row, I was surprised at least once. It was kind of genius on Sam’s part, really.
Related: I’d love to have some dramatic tale about Laughing Stock not making the cut, but the reason is much simpler: I forgot to add it back where I wanted it, and by then, the ship had sailed.
If this project had been titled The Best 110 albums—or even 105— I can assure you a second R.E.M. record would've made the cut, and it likely would've set some people's hair on fire because that pick would’ve been Out of Time.
Q: Any of Kevin’s/Sam’s picks that didn't make your list that you wish you had on yours?
Sam:
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - Public Enemy
Paul’s Boutique - Beastie Boys
Aja - Steely Dan
Pink Flag - Wire
Revolver - The Beatles
Dusty in Memphis - Dusty Springfield
Violator - Depeche Mode
Exodus - Bob Marley
Stop Making Sense - Talking Heads
Power, Corruption, and Lies - New Order
Technique - New Order
Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division
Kevin:
Laughing Stock - Talk Talk
I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You - Aretha Franklin
Nina Simone Sings the Blues - Nina Simone
Live From Folsom Prison - Johnny Cash
Mezzanine - Massive Attack
The Low-End Theory - A Tribe Called Quest
The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths
Led Zeppelin IV (ZOSO) - Led Zeppelin
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars - David Bowie
Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys
Thank you to Sam for formatting the data and Q&As here and, more importantly, for inviting me along on this odyssey.
Thanks also to
and for their help/expertise along the way.Most of all, thank you (yes, you!) for coming along on this ride, lauding us, laughing at us, sharing our work with the larger community, and sharing your stories. Stay tuned for next week as we discuss which records missed the cut.
Thanks for being here,
Kevin—
Thanks Kevin. Thanks Sam. Music matters.
Thanks so much again for this mammoth undertaking! I appreciate the time and effort that it took and am grateful for all the new-to-me music I’ve been introduced to across the entire series.