Top Five Favorite Albums Ever?

[Aspirant Audiophile]

I think I was (volunteering) in an addiction shelter upon first hear..."Scar Tissue" was my morning song on repeat!

"Get On Top" in a Chevy Blazer sounds like a pretty perfect setup.

[TMoney]

Necro-ing this because I needed something to listen to and this seemed as good a thread as any to find a good album.

It is interesting how little my tastes have changed in the 12 years since I posted here. I'd still have 3 of my 5, easily. Sub the White Album and Joshua Tree in for Stevie and Miles and I'm basically in the same ballpark I always was.

Edited November 16 by TMoney

[Dusty Chalk]

Yeah, I don't know if I could even pick just 5...still...so I guess I haven't changed much, but my old top 5 are no longer my top 5, so I'll give it a shot:

1 & 2:  Animals and Wish You Were Here still, but I don't listen to them much, even though I have the WYWH Immersion box and Animals remaster with me, they're both unopened.  So they might still be my favourites?

I do still love jazz (Keith Jarrett's solo piano concerts, like the Sun Bear box; Return to Forever/Chick Corea/Al Di Meola; et al), but the new number one in that category has become:

3:  Hiromi's Sonicbloom, Time Control -- it still has to be part of her Sonicbloom group.  I mean, I love all her stuff, but her work with David Fiuczynski and the others was just peak.

Shoutout to Greg Howard (RIP) for the single most electrifying solo instrument performance, Water on the Moon.

4:  I do still love prog, but my tastes have mellowed so I'd have to go with Porcupine Tree's The Sky Moves Sideways.

5:  I do still love what I used to call e-metal, but the public seem to have settled on calling it "electro-rock" (Curve, Garbage, Stabbing Westward, Placebo, Muse, Kardi, et al), but this is an easy one, as I still listen to all of their albums regularly, so pick any:

Al1ce, The End of the Beginning, The Thirteenth Hour, As Above So Below

Plus, it's also Post-punk!

6:  My love for all the various incarnations of synthesizer-based music (from "Kosmische Musik" to synth-pop to ambient) isn't well represented here, as is neither all the centuries' worth of "classical" music or "instrumentalism" (Jean-Michel Jarre, Mike Oldfield, Vangelis, et al), so...

Isao Tomita, The Planets

[swt61]

A Hundred Miles or More: Alison Krause

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: Elton John

Brothers in Arms: Dire Straights

Shadowland: KD Lang

The Dream Academy: The Dream Academy

[aerius]

On 11/16/2025 at 12:31 AM, TMoney said:

Necro-ing this because I needed something to listen to and this seemed as good a thread as any to find a good album.

It is interesting how little my tastes have changed in the 12 years since I posted here. I'd still have 3 of my 5, easily. Sub the White Album and Joshua Tree in for Stevie and Miles and I'm basically in the same ballpark I always was.

This thread was so long ago that I don't even remember posting in it, I tried to take a guess at what I picked 12 years ago and the only one I got right was Black Sabbath.  That one remains on my updated list but everything else is new.

Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath.  Still one of the most fun albums to listen to for me, I've played it countless times over the years and it's still one of my go-to albums.

Deep Purple - Concerto For Group And Orchestra.  You can tell Blackmore's a bit sulky on some of the songs, but when he's into it it's fun as heck and shreds hard.

Bob Marley - Babylon by Bus.  Almost all my favourite Bob Marley songs on one album, with live energy & improvisation.

Pelageya - Girl's Songs.  Russian folk/rock/jazz songs, I don't understand a single word but Pelageya is such a good singer that it doesn't matter.  Very interesting & different music than what I listened to for most of my life.

Tito Puente - Tambo.  Has more of a tribal/jungle beats vibe than his other albums, more percussion, less brass.  Fun as heck, and it'll stress a lot of hifi systems.

[robm321]

Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath

IMHO is the best heavy metal album of all time. Everything after it is modeled, to some degree, from it.