Younger Than Yesterday
1967
Chris Hillman had never written a song before and suddenly wrote four, because Gene Clark had left and Crosby could not fill the gap alone.
★ 3.9
The Albums canon
Sourced and spun.
Every record chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 542 records or filter by genre, artist, and year.
Browse all 542 records or filter by genre, artist, and year.
Benji
2014
Mark Kozelek uses real names throughout, and the deaths in it are real deaths in his family. Almost nothing is dressed up as metaphor.
★ 4.0
The Crane Wife
2006
The title song is in three parts, and they are scattered across the record out of order. The story is a Japanese folk tale.
★ 4.3
Sounds of Silence
1966
Their producer added drums and electric guitar to an old acoustic track without telling them. It became a hit and the duo reformed.
★ 4.3
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
1966
The last track lays a Christmas carol over a real news broadcast, so the two get harder to separate as it goes on.
★ 4.3
If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears
1966
The four of them sang in a block harmony nobody had used in pop, and the first cover photograph had them all in a bathtub.
★ 4.4
Buffalo Springfield Again
1967
The band was falling apart while they made it, recording their songs separately. Neil Young quit twice before it was finished.
★ 4.5
The Notorious Byrd Brothers
1968
David Crosby was fired partway through the sessions, and the horse on the cover has been read ever since as a joke at his expense.
★ 4.9
Morning Phase
2014
Beck's father wrote the string arrangements, as he had on Sea Change. It won Album of the Year and Kanye West objected onstage.
★ 5.0
Surrealistic Pillow
1967
Jerry Garcia played on it and is credited only as the band's spiritual adviser. The whole record took thirteen days.
★ 5.4
Harvest Moon
1992
Ringing ears from his previous, much louder album meant Young had to play quietly, so he called the band back and made a sequel.
★ 5.4
Helplessness Blues
2011
Singer Robin Pecknold scrapped a finished version and started over. The title song is about not wanting to be anyone special.
★ 5.4
Bryter Layter
1970
It sold fewer than three thousand copies. John Cale played on two songs, and Drake barely performed any of it in public.
★ 5.5
Raising Sand
2007
T Bone Burnett chose every song and neither singer had heard most of them. Plant sings underneath Krauss rather than over her.
★ 5.7
The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle
1973
It sold almost nothing and Columbia nearly dropped him. Rosalita runs past seven minutes and closed his concerts for years afterwards.
★ 5.8
Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975)
1976
It was the first album certified platinum, and for decades it traded places with Thriller as the best-selling record in America.
★ 5.8
Pink Moon
1972
Twenty-eight minutes, recorded in two late-night sessions with nobody else playing. Drake left the tapes at his label's reception desk and walked out.
★ 6.0
Five Leaves Left
1969
The title comes from the warning near the end of a packet of cigarette papers. A college friend with no professional credits wrote the string parts.
★ 6.0
Electric Warrior
1971
Marc Bolan sings everything with the same wobbling vibrato over two-chord boogie, and producer Tony Visconti buried strings underneath it.
★ 6.1
Every Picture Tells a Story
1971
The mandolin on Maggie May was played by a session man paid fifteen pounds, whose name Stewart admitted he had forgotten in the sleeve notes.
★ 6.1