Hotel California
1976
The two guitars at the end of the title track were worked out note for note in advance, and have to be played identically every night.
★ 8.9
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.
Harvest
1972
Young had hurt his back and recorded much of it sitting down in a brace. The London Symphony Orchestra plays on two of the songs.
★ 8.6
After the Gold Rush
1970
Recorded mostly in the basement of his Topanga house, with an eighteen-year-old Nils Lofgren on piano, an instrument he had not played before.
★ 8.2
Sweetheart of the Rodeo
1968
Gram Parsons sang lead on much of it and his vocals were wiped for contractual reasons. The Grand Ole Opry audience booed them off.
★ 7.4
Sea Change
2002
Beck wrote it after a nine-year relationship ended and recorded it in about two weeks. His father wrote the string arrangements.
★ 6.4
Workingman's Dead
1970
They made it in about nine days, in debt and facing charges after a New Orleans arrest, singing harmonies learned from Crosby, Stills and Nash.
★ 6.3
Grievous Angel
1973
Parsons died before it came out, and his road manager stole the body from the airport and burned it in Joshua Tree, as promised.
★ 6.0
Pearl
1971
Joplin died before recording her vocal for one song, so it appears as an instrumental with the space where she should be.
★ 6.0
Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd
1973
The band named themselves after a gym teacher who kept sending them home over their hair. Free Bird's guitar outro runs five minutes.
★ 5.9
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
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
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
Heart Like a Wheel
1974
Ronstadt's touring band had already left to become the Eagles by the time this made her the biggest-selling woman in American music.
★ 5.0
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
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
Nashville Skyline
1969
Dylan had stopped smoking and his voice came back completely different, which nobody was expecting. Johnny Cash sings with him on the opener.
★ 4.3
Tumbleweed Connection
1970
Neither John nor Bernie Taupin had set foot in America when they wrote these songs about it. Taupin had been listening to The Band.
★ 4.3
Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.
1986
Nashville would not have him, so Yoakam played Los Angeles punk clubs instead, on bills with X and the Blasters, in very tight jeans.
★ 4.0
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