This week's list is borrowed -- I love when I can do that, within reason -- from the folks at time.com, as in the magazine. They (more specifically, site managing editor/music critic Josh Tyrangiel and the estimable ex-Tracks/Vibe editor Alan Light) joined the throngs of publications who have attempted to isolate the top 100 albums of all time, rendering their list fair game for you to dissect here.
It's an unnumbered list, organized by decade, so check it out, then let the quibbling begin. Mine follows.
It always seems like a cop-out of sorts to include anthologies, box sets, greatest-hits packages, etc. It's too easy to coast on those. But it appears the Time keepers played fair, only using anthologies when artists (mostly '50s artists, a good thing since the '50s are otherwise meagerly represented, half of the decade's four albums being by Frank Sinatra) didn't have truly representative conventional albums -- Elvis Presley had no real Sun album at the time, only retrospectively; Phil Spector is best represented by a collection of his various artists, etc. You might be able to find a good Sam Cooke album (Night Beat, say), but again, the collection better captures the breadth of his artistry.
At the same time, out of 10 albums listed in this incomplete decade, five of them are repackages, leaving the impression that this is an artistically barren period. (Especially when one of the current albums is the somewhat capricious-seeming PJ Harvey Stories From the City... -- good album, yes, all-time 100, maybe not. I'm not sure Radiohead's Kid A is going to stand the test of time either.)
I'll just make a casual scan, because I'd rather give you the main first shot at questioning the choices. So, let's see, Pavement and Hole seem like typical critic moves (although great to see Oasis represented) and Garth Brooks?? There's only about 300 country albums from the last 20 years more deserving.
A lot of apparent base-covering in the '80s (make sure there's enough hip-hop, get a metal album in there, etc.), but it'sthe albums you'd pretty much expect. '70s stuff is a lot of usual suspects -- I'd observe that Black Sabbath's Paranoid album, as an album, is inferior to the two that followed (as a song, of course, it's their crowning moment), and I'd throw in some stuff like Big Star, maybe a Raspberries album.
As for my favorite decade, the '60s, I have tons of problems. No Who album? (Who's Next is in there in the next decade, but the first three Who albums are all better or at least equally deserving.) No Rolling Stones (Aftermath? Between the Buttons? Beggars Banquet? All better (or at least equal to) the nominated critics' staples from the '70s, Sticky Fingers and Exile. Kinks, Yardbirds, Zombies? Anybody in there?
Not just British omissions -- where the hell are The Byrds? Only (arguably, of course) the most influential, important American band of 1965-1967 (give or take the Beach Boys). Ditch a couple of the Beatles albums here (Abbey Road and White Album would be my choices for overratedness) to make room -- and a lot of the '70s and '80s critical touchstones. And, in the interests of brevity, I will only mention one more glaring omission -- quite possibly the best album of the '60s, Love's Forever Changes -- and turn it over to you.
