Revolver
1966
On Tomorrow Never Knows, engineers held five tape loops on pencils and mixed them live. No Beatle plays an instrument on Eleanor Rigby.
★ 9.9
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.
Purple Rain
1984
When Doves Cry has no bass on it at all, which Prince did deliberately. Several tracks were taped live at a Minneapolis club.
★ 8.5
So
1986
The Sledgehammer video was shot frame by frame with Gabriel lying under glass for sixteen hours. Youssou N'Dour sings the end of In Your Eyes.
★ 8.0
Odessey and Oracle
1968
The misspelling on the sleeve was the cover artist's mistake and they left it. The band had broken up before it came out.
★ 6.8
Avalon
1982
Roxy Music's last record, made partly in the Bahamas and finished so smoothly it barely sounds played. Bryan Ferry never made another with the band.
★ 6.1
The Stranger
1977
Scenes from an Italian Restaurant is three unfinished songs stitched into one. The whistling at the start of the record is Joel himself.
★ 5.8
Private Dancer
1984
Recorded in about two weeks in London on almost no budget, when Turner was forty-four and considered finished. Mark Knopfler wrote the title song.
★ 5.0
Something/Anything?
1972
Rundgren played every instrument himself on three of the four sides, then used an actual band for the fourth, just to show the difference.
★ 4.9
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
