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
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.
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
Master of Puppets
1986
No singles and no videos, and it sold millions anyway. Bassist Cliff Burton was killed when the tour bus crashed in Sweden months later.
★ 8.0
The Black Album
1991
The producer Bob Rock made them play together in one room instead of tracking separately, which took a year and nearly ended the band.
★ 8.0
Paranoid
1970
The title song was written in about twenty minutes as filler. Tony Iommi plays with plastic fingertips after losing his in a factory.
★ 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
Black Sabbath
1970
Recorded in a single day for a few hundred pounds and released on a Friday the thirteenth. The riff is a devil's interval.
★ 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
Rocks
1976
They recorded it in a converted warehouse they rented as a clubhouse. Slash and Kurt Cobain both named it the record that started them.
★ 5.9
2112
1976
The label wanted something commercial, so Rush delivered a twenty-minute dystopian suite about a banned guitar. It worked, and bought them their freedom.
★ 5.1
Made in Japan
1972
The band thought a live album was a waste of time and only agreed because it was for the Japanese market alone.
★ 5.0
Toxicity
2001
Serj Tankian and Daron Malakian sing over each other constantly, one shouting while the other croons, often within the same bar.
★ 4.8
Use Your Illusion I
1991
Both volumes were recorded together and released the same day, because the band could not agree on what to leave off a single album.
★ 4.8
Use Your Illusion II
1991
Knockin' on Heaven's Door is a Bob Dylan song written for a western. The video for Estranged cost around four million dollars to make.
★ 4.8
Alive!
1975
It is billed as a live album but a good deal of it was rebuilt in the studio afterward. It saved the record label from bankruptcy.
★ 2.9