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
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.
Otis Blue
1965
Recorded in a single twenty-four-hour stretch, with a break so the musicians could play their regular Saturday gigs, and three Sam Cooke songs on it.
★ 7.5
Dusty in Memphis
1969
Springfield was so intimidated by the Memphis players that she could not sing in front of them. Her vocals were added later in New York.
★ 6.9
Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music
1962
His label thought recording country songs would finish him. He put strings and a choir behind them and it became his biggest record.
★ 6.8
Here's Little Richard
1957
The words to Tutti Frutti were too obscene to record, so a local songwriter rewrote them in fifteen minutes over a lunch break.
★ 6.4
From Elvis in Memphis
1969
His first proper studio album in eight years of films, cut with a Memphis house band who treated him like any other singer.
★ 6.0
The Birth of Soul: The Complete Atlantic Recordings
He took a gospel song and put worldly words to it, which scandalized the churches and effectively invented soul music in the process.
★ 5.6
At Last!
1961
The title song was already twenty years old, a Glenn Miller tune, when Etta James took it away from everybody for good.
★ 5.1