The 100 Greatest Rock Albums Of All Time

Every one of these albums is worth a listen, whether you’re discovering it for the first time or reconnecting with a longtime favorite.

After many hours of head-scratching and more than a few worn grooves, we present one of the most ambitious and hopefully provocative lists we’ve ever done: The 100 Greatest Rock Albums of all time.

A few ground rules here: We’ve tried to cover the entirety of rock history, while making sure that each album still sounds great a few years after its release. This list adheres to a fairly narrow definition of “rock,” confining it to largely guitar-based music, and making exceptions only in a few cases where the album was too important to leave off. Which means, you won’t find a lot of blues, country, or R&B on this list, even though we realize how important they were as rock influences. (A few entries do fall into the R&B realm, but with so much of a rock sound that they had to be here). We’ve also left off certain genres, like electronica and acoustic singer-songwriter, that are closely related to the rock world but not really part of it. We have (or will) have other lists for that.

That said, we’ve tried to spread the wealth around, not favoring one genre of rock over another. Hence the presence of some highly mainstream albums right alongside the indie/underground entries. Punk and prog, hardcore and AOR, glam and metal, roots and arena rock – they’ve all got a place on this list, and your ears are better off for absorbing all of it.

Finally, this list has been confined strictly to one album per band/artist. When an artist obviously has more than one essential album, we’ve made a case for the one that we believe to be the most important of the lot. Only one artist appears twice, as a group member and solo, but if you were a Beatle and then made a game-changing solo debut we can cut you some slack. And yes, some of your favorites – and for that matter, some of ours – may be missing, but rock history is so loaded by now that 100 albums can only begin to tell the story.

One thing we’ll say without hesitation: Every one of these albums is worth a listen, whether you’re discovering it for the first time or reconnecting with a longtime favorite.

100: Blink-182 – Enema of the State

Skate-punk produced a number of the greatest rock albums ever. But few were catchier, funnier, or savvier than Enema of the State. For all their bluster, this was a band that knew and loved its audience: If you were hitting your late teens around 1999, “What’s My Age Again?” offered reassurance that you didn’t have to grow up just yet. In time, blink-182 proved they had a serious side; at this point nobody needed one.

99: Pearl Jam – Ten

While their Seattle brethren Nirvana distrusted everything about traditional hard rock, Pearl Jam saw the opportunity to make it meaningful again. There were plenty of visceral thrills in Mike McCready’s leads and Eddie Vedder’s vocal flights, but it was all channeled into the dark, sympathetic observations of “Alive,” “Even Flow” and “Jeremy.” Misfits seldom had this much power on their side.

98: Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream

Billy Corgan reaches for the heavens, pouring all of his guitar virtuosity and studio wizardry into a richly detailed album that still reveals new subtleties over two decades later. The wonder is that Siamese Dream’s songs, including hunting gems like “Today” and “Mayonaise,” don’t get lost in the mix.

97: Frank Zappa – Apostrophe

There’s a reason many fans remember this fondly as their first favorite Frank Zappa album: Apostrophe had so much musical invention and lyrical hilarity that it even had commercial potential (yes, “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” was even a single). The title track is his great power-trio moment, and it’s a wonder the New Age movement survived “Cozmik Debris.”

96: Television – Marquee Moon

A New York landmark, this album expanded the scope of punk rock by taking in the influence of free jazz and French Symbolist poetry; not for nothing, the leader did rechristen himself Tom Verlaine. And it’s still energetic as all get-up, especially on the classic opener “See No Evil” and the title track’s epic guitar jam.

95: Deep Purple – Machine Head

This isn’t just one of the loudest and greatest rock albums ever – it’s also one of the most joyful. Deep Purple’s darker side (in full display on the last album Fireball) is largely checked this time, on an album of pure rocking celebration. If the interplanetary stomp of “Space Truckin’” and the high-speed cruising anthem “Highway Star” don’t get your blood pumping, call the doctor.

94: Husker Du – Zen Arcade

The protean trio poured everything into this double epic, working psych, hardcore, avant-rock and noisy pop into a loose concept about a young man’s first year of freedom. Bob Mould and Grant Hart both emerge as first-class songwriters, and the band as a formidable power trio. It was famously recorded in a speed-fueled three-day session, and you can hear that too.

93: The Jam – Sound Affects

The trio’s fifth and best album shows why Paul Weller’s been a world-class rock songwriter ever since. They expand in all directions here, from furious commentary to open-hearted love songs to the sardonic classic “That’s Entertainment.” Note that The Jam regularly left their singles off the albums, and you must be at your peak when you can afford to omit a monolith like “Going Underground.”

92: Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

With a thoroughly original songwriter in Stephen Malkmus and a guitar sound to die for, Pavement avoided production trappings and delivered songs that rocked with heart and charmed with cerebral wit. The album’s influence ran deep. For one thing, it proved you didn’t need a massive studio budget when you had the songs.

91: Pretenders – Pretenders

Chrissie Hynde became an instant icon on this debut, but the original Pretenders were also a true band, taking in everything from pure punk to near-arena rock to disco and dub. But Hynde always dazzled as a singer, whether it was the personal revelations of “Tattooed Love Boys” or the cool swagger on “Brass in Pocket.”

90: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever to Tell

This album almost had too much going for it: A stack of between the eyes hooks, a band that could swing from raucous punk to classic-level pop, and Karen O’s vocal charisma and instant star quality. They’d get more polished later on, but the try-anything spirit on Fever to Tell makes it a winner – as does “Maps” one of the best rock singles of its time.

89: Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Jeff Tweedy had to fight hard for this album, with his label and even some of his band – but he knew he was on to something. The dense electronic touches prove an essential part of the picture, as the songs (largely written with the late and brilliant Jay Bennett) wrap up a fractured America headed to an uncertain future. The future of musical Americana proved brighter, making this one of the greatest rock albums ever made.

88: Boston – Boston

Originally rejected by nearly every record label, this record-breaking debut wrote the book on AOR rock. But while Boston’s countless imitators got the sound nearly right, they couldn’t get the underlying heart in Tom Scholz’s songs – especially when sung so emotively by the late Brad Delp. Besides, the imitators spent millions getting the kind of sounds that Scholz dreamed up in his living room.

87: The Kinks – The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society

The Kinks wasted no time in growing from their beat-group beginnings to a vehicle for Ray Davies’ sharp-eyed social comments. That trend hit its first peak on Village Green, an album of bittersweet wit, well-drawn characters, and indelible melodies. And The Kinks could still rock hard, anticipating punk on “Johnny Thunder” and becoming a rustic English blues band on “Last of the Steam-Powered Trains.”

86: The Cars – The Cars

Five savvy Boston-based guys give New Wave its first commercial blockbuster. With virtually every song becoming a radio hit, The Cars were the perfect mix of cool artsiness and rock’n’roll heart. Ric Ocasek’s songs put an ironic spin on rock catchphrases – shake it up, let the good times roll – but still invited you to clap along.

85: Siouxsie & the Banshees – Juju

An album full of dark allure, Juju was one of the goth movement’s seminal texts. Having long realized that punk rock didn’t suit her, Siouxsie Sioux became an otherworldly siren, delivering two of her most grabbing vocals in the singles “Arabian Knights” and “Spellbound.” The other key to the Banshees’ golden era was guitarist John McCeogh, whose array of guitar sounds meshed perfectly with the throbbing Severin/Budgie pulse.

84: Van Morrison – Astral Weeks

Fresh from a trailblazing R&B band and a war with his previous label, an angry young man makes an album of meditative, transcendental beauty. It’s arguably the least “rocky” album on this list, but then Astral Weeks – produced like a rock album, played mainly by jazz musicians, and sung with some kind of divine influence – doesn’t fit into any category but classic.

83: Elvis Costello – Armed Forces

Just when the world had him pegged as an angry young man, Elvis Costello hit back with an album of brilliant melodies, textured arrangements, multi-layered wordplay…and plenty of anger as well. As a bonus for the US album, he turned a perfectly lovely Nick Lowe song, “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding,” into an anthem for the ages.

82: Genesis –- Selling England By the Pound

One of prog’s pinnacles, Selling England By The Pound finds Genesis at their grandest. On “Dancing With the Moonlit Knight,” Peter Gabriel’s flights of lyrical fancy meet guitarist Steve Hackett’s landmark tapped solo. The instrumental breaks on “Cinema Show” and “Firth of Fifth” are among prog’s most majestic, while Gabriel’s surreal wit runs wild on “The Battle of Epping Forest.”

81: TV on the Radio – Return to Cookie Mountain

This was and is a band bursting with ideas, and found space on this album to try them all out. This is an album to get immersed in, with endless sonic textures to explore, and an underlying sense of existential dread. They made this an old-fashioned album experience, putting the most jarring track “I Was a Lover” right up front and letting you dig for catchier tunes like the single “Wolf Like Me.”

80: Hole – Live Through This

Just before Courtney Love became an endlessly controversial personality, she made one of the greatest rock albums ever. Live Through This was designed to be pretty on the outside, with an attractive alt-pop sound that would get its frank, feminist lyrics on the air. She gives a vocal performance to match, with venom behind the sweetness.

79: The White Stripes – White Blood Cells

Jack and Meg White took the world by storm, with enough raw nerve for their underground fans and enough wattage for the Zeppelin lovers. Few two-piece bands ever had this much intuitive chemistry, and the tracklist bears out their ability to do just about anything – from grisly blues-rockers to the giddy bubblegum of “I Think We’re Going to Be Friends.”

78: The Doors – The Doors

During the first week of 1967 when this album was released, the future of rock could be anything, including a jazz-identified band with a Dionysian Beat poet upfront. The Doors’ self-titled debut is remarkably diverse, with covers of songs by both Willie Dixon and Bertolt Brecht. The first side closes with the sexual release of “Light My Fire” while the second ends with the Apocalypse on “The End.”

77: PJ Harvey – Rid of Me

PJ Harvey was still messing with the blues on her sophomore album Rid of Me, but her songs had taken on more of a raw, personal tinge. Key tracks “50 Ft. Queenie,” “Rub Til It Bleeds” and the previous album’s belated title track “Dry” look fearlessly into the darkest corners of romantic relationships, and producer Steve Albini makes it all razor-sharp.

76: The Police – Synchronicity

By their fifth and final album, The Police had largely dropped their trademark reggae grooves, but by now their sound was so distinctive it was even recognizable on a ghostly textured piece like “Tea in the Sahara.” Side two is Sting’s post-breakup outpouring, while the band’s creative eccentricity is all over Side One. It also marked the first (and probably the only) use of the phrase “humiliating kick in the crotch” in a hit single.

75: Love – Forever Changes

Love’s 1967 classic really stands apart from the rest of the psychedelic masterpieces. There are no studio effects, no freeform jams, and barely any electric guitars. The psychedelic influence came entirely from the mind of Arthur Lee, whose lyrics were always otherworldly and never fully possible to pin down, and whose melodies were completely unforgettable. ‘You Set The Scene’ still ranks as one of rock’s great existential statements.

74: Thin Lizzy – Jailbreak

Thin Lizzy had so much going for them that it still boggles the mind that they were essentially a one-hit-wonder in the US. But the UK knew all about Phil Lynott’s resonant street poetry and the band’s distinctive harmony guitars. “The Boys Are Back in Town” and “Cowboy Song” are the epics on this, their greatest album, but the Irish rock group’s secret weapon was always its musical roots, put to memorable use in “Emerald.”

73: R.E.M. – Murmur

They’d have many peaks over the years but R.E.M.’s long-playing debut really defined their sound, embracing unfashionable things (in 1983) like subtlety, Southern-ness, and jangly Rickenbackers. They already had a flair for hauntingly lovely tunes (see the acoustic “Perfect Circle”) and “Radio Free Europe” became a rallying call for the 80s musical underground. And for all that was said about his enunciation, the poetic imagery in Michael Stipe’s lyrics was immediately apparent.

72: Megadeth – Rust in Peace

Dave Mustaine and his crew had been raising hell for nearly a decade by this time, but Rust in Peace marked the debut of Megadeth’s classic lineup with guitarist Marty Friedman. It was also where Mustaine refined his vision, with equal parts personal dread, dark political forecasts, and just a bit of superhero fantasy. With its tricky structure and underlying fury, “Holy Wars…The Punishment Due,” is one of thrash’s pinnacles.