Are You Experienced?
1967
Hendrix cut it on four tracks in stolen studio hours between gigs, and nobody had heard a guitar do any of it before.
★ 9.3
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.
Led Zeppelin IV
1971
There is no title and no band name anywhere on the sleeve, just four symbols the members chose. The label thought it was commercial suicide.
★ 9.3
Electric Ladyland
1968
Hendrix produced it himself, and spent so long in the studio that his manager walked out. One track is thirteen minutes of imagined underwater life.
★ 8.9
Let It Bleed
1969
Merry Clayton was called in at midnight, heavily pregnant, to sing on Gimme Shelter. Her voice cracks on the third take and Jagger whoops.
★ 8.8
Who's Next
1971
What survived an abandoned science-fiction project became this record. The keyboard figure opening Baba O'Riley was generated by a machine rather than played.
★ 8.8
Appetite for Destruction
1987
It sold almost nothing for a year until MTV agreed to play Welcome to the Jungle once, at four in the morning. Then it never stopped.
★ 8.7
Back in Black
1980
Their singer had died five months earlier. They hired Brian Johnson, put out a record in an all-black sleeve, and sold fifty million.
★ 8.6
Led Zeppelin II
1969
Written and recorded in snatched hours in studios across two continents while touring. Willie Dixon later sued over the words to Whole Lotta Love.
★ 8.6
Led Zeppelin
1969
Guitarist Jimmy Page paid for the sessions himself and the record took about thirty-six hours of studio time. Nobody had heard drums recorded like that.
★ 8.6
Physical Graffiti
1975
They did not have enough songs for a double album, so they raided outtakes from three earlier records to fill it out.
★ 8.5
Highway to Hell
1979
Bon Scott was dead six months after it came out. It was the first record they made with a producer who cared about choruses.
★ 8.3
A Night at the Opera
1975
The most expensive record ever made at the time, and they layered the Bohemian Rhapsody vocals until the tape went nearly transparent.
★ 8.2
Beggars Banquet
1968
The label refused the original sleeve, a photograph of a graffitied lavatory wall, and held the record back for months over it.
★ 8.2
Darkness on the Edge of Town
1978
Three years of litigation kept Springsteen out of a studio, and when he got back in he gave away most of the catchy songs.
★ 8.2
Sticky Fingers
1971
Andy Warhol's sleeve had a real working zip, which scratched the records stacked behind it in the crates. The tongue logo starts here.
★ 8.0
Houses of the Holy
1973
The song called Houses of the Holy is not on Houses of the Holy. The cover children were photographed at the Giant's Causeway.
★ 7.6
Axis: Bold as Love
1968
Hendrix left the finished master of side one in a taxi and had to mix the whole thing again overnight.
★ 7.1
Toys in the Attic
1975
The title of Walk This Way came from a line in Young Frankenstein, which the band went to see during a break in the sessions.
★ 6.7
Raw Power
1973
David Bowie mixed it and everyone including Iggy Pop hated the result. Iggy remixed the whole thing himself twenty-four years later.
★ 6.4
Disraeli Gears
1967
The title came from a roadie getting derailleur gears wrong. They recorded the whole thing in New York in under a week.
★ 6.1