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
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.
The Great Twenty-Eight
1955
Berry trained as a beautician and worked on a car assembly line in St. Louis when Muddy Waters told him which Chicago label to try.
★ 6.7
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
The Sun Sessions
1955
Elvis was a nineteen-year-old truck driver. That's All Right came out of the three of them messing about during a break Sam Phillips had called.
★ 6.3
Every Picture Tells a Story
1971
The mandolin on Maggie May was played by a session man paid fifteen pounds, whose name Stewart admitted he had forgotten in the sleeve notes.
★ 6.1
Please Please Me
1963
Recorded in a single day. Lennon had a heavy cold and sang Twist and Shout last, in one take, because his voice was about to go.
★ 5.9
Elvis Presley
1956
Five of the tracks were leftovers from his Sun sessions. The Clash copied the sleeve, pink and green lettering and all, twenty-three years later.
★ 5.6
Meet the Beatles!
1964
Capitol assembled it themselves from a British album and some singles. The half-shadowed cover photograph came from a hotel session that took barely an hour.
★ 5.4
Out of Our Heads
1965
Keith Richards wanted horns on the Satisfaction riff and used a fuzz pedal as a placeholder. The placeholder is what got released.
★ 5.4
Bo Diddley
1958
The beat he hammered out here has been borrowed ever since, by Buddy Holly, the Stones and everyone after. He built his own square guitars.
★ 4.0
Elvis
1956
His second number one album in a single year, cut in Hollywood between films, with Elvis himself at the piano on several tracks.
★ 2.4